The Politics of the Novel Circa 1965: Reading Brooke-Rose with Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article reviews mid-century debates about politics and art by Sartre and Adorno to tease out a coherent sense of the political dimension of the novel form. The novel is essentially mediated by art-autonomous concerns, but it nonetheless exists to serve an ethical or political function. Alain Robbe-Grillet is then reviewed as developing a (late) modernist, critical, political aesthetic. I then closely read several mid-60s novels linked within a capacious understanding of World Literature as the modern world-system. Out (1964) by Christine Brooke-Rose is juxtaposed with A Grain of Wheat (1967) by Ngugi wa Thiong’o to bring out key questions in the debate: the role of tradition and technique, the necessity of critical social knowledge, and the importance of the implied reader. While Adorno provides one of the most compelling accounts of modern art and the relation of aesthetics and politics, his contemporary interlocutors still have much to add to a critical understanding of the artwork, and finally Ngugi’s example remains a vital one for thinking about these issues.