Friday 14 June 2013

Political engagement in a contemporary novel: A Disaffection, by James Kelman.












The first part of this essay will survey arguments surrounding the issue of political engagement through art, paying particular attention to Peter Bürger and Frederic Jameson as critics of postmodern or apolitical production. It will then attempt to relate these arguments to a work by a contemporary novelist who declares himself as engaged, and implicitly explores issues raised in the debate; James Kelman's A Disaffection.


It is first necessary to identify why engaged art might be opposed in some quarters. Firstly, many call attention to the way in which art that carries a political message can become indistinguishable from propaganda. The state sanctioned Socialist Realism of the USSR is an obvious example (it is ironic that 'realism', which actually represents an aspirational or distracting unreality, becomes the art of choice for such regimes). Most would agree that an artist assigned a particular social function (to endorse state policies or besmirch those of other states) by an oppressive regime imposing a teleological historical model on its people, loses the right to term himself an artist. The issue is complicated when we consider art that belongs to pre-revolutionary Russia, but anticipates revolution hopefully. Such work may have been independently produced as critical of the Tsarist situation, but later appropriated by the new regime and made to perform a potentially oppressive social function for which it was not designed. Perhaps we must always consider art as bound up with a particular historical context. But can art truly be independent of any controlling social mechanism?


Theodor Adorno insists that for art to be relevant to society it must be distanced from society. Its "manifest statement" is open to suspicion, as is any personal expression of opinion. Paradoxically, "Insofar as a social function can be ascribed to art, it is its functionlessness." Any possible benefit is derived not from message, but from critical analysis of form, correlation with other art and appreciation of interaction with context. This is not the same as the imposition of meaning on works, rather an interpretative practice removed from political interest, and aware of any situational prejudice we may bring with us as readers. Adorno is however aware, that apolitical literature, "content to be a fetish […] for those who would like to sleep through the deluge that threatens them", is "in fact deeply political," in its affirmation of the status quo. Art is produced not only by the artist, but by the social infrastructure. Literature can either be engaged - the expression of a choice; or non-engaged - the expression of the failure to choose; a dialectic resolved on the level of appeal to the reader. The choice is dependent on the options available, which exist outside of the text, making contextual reading necessary.


Another current problem with political art is the perceived failure of what may be termed the Enlightenment project, which had for its object the spread of liberal humanity. Art which mobilises and moralises towards a social end becomes suspect after the technological genocides of the 20th century. Its production is implicated in horrors perpetrated in quest of a particular world-idea; its utopianism equated with a form of fascism, the imposition of prescriptive codes by an elite on the masses. Jean-Francois Lyotard, sharing Adorno's pessimism for art post-Auschwitz points out that the realisation of such an 'enlightened' project would mean a "uniform end" compromise between so many divergent human desires that it would amount to a repressive imposition, satisfying few, if any. On the same theme, Charles Jencks draws attention to the architectural example of the worldwide demolition of reviled utopian housing solutions. If art is to avoid such charges, its resistance must be resistance that does not seek power, or posit alternate imperatives. Thus utopian fictions may give way to dystopian projections, which show what will happen if a current course is followed, but may not suggest an alternative. However, such art still calls into being abstract criteria for objective ethical judgements which are held to be self-evident, but may in fact be illusory. The problem is not that we have to agree a particular character is bad, but on the concept of badness. Political art tends also to rely on acceptance of a common, causal universe. As such, art simply reinforces preconceived ideas, and, as Robert Boyers puts it, "At a time when literary theorists of every kind deny there can be a valid ethical criticism, political novels continue to demand an ethical interpretation."


It may also be that any political expression within the artistic sphere runs counter to its intentions, as it detracts (via bourgeois formal associations, isolation from the praxis of life, and consolatory nature – the representation of that which is unattainable in life) from real potential to resist through practical measures. Ital Calvino criticises the kind of literature which aspires to the presentation of timeless truths, and so has "a function of consolation, preservation, and regression" Culture perhaps then, according to the title of Herbert Marcuse's work, inevitably has an "Affirmative Character" in its limiting of its values to the imaginative sphere only, "without any transformation of the world of fact," possibly, as Peter Bürger suggests, it even "stabilises the very conditions against which it protests." More extreme is Nietzsche's contention, discussed by Jameson, that ethics itself is the "sedimented or fossilized trace of the concrete praxis of systems of domination." Art which ostensibly resists oppression is perhaps a tool of oppression created to release pressure which otherwise may have lead to unfavourable social change. In any case, autonomous art cannot alienate those of the bourgeoisie who form its market, and whose development as a class made it a possibility. As Jameson argues, the autonomy of art itself is not such a "proud boast" but rather a superstructural, bourgeois emanation of evolving capitalism. The independence of art, then, if it exists at all, is at best relative and precarious.


For Jameson, the romantic idealism of the Enlightenment, with its stress on both generally applicable humane values, and the unique individual within society, feeds into a strand of modernism. This modernism retains a value system and an aspiration to engage society politically – though these features are now stylistically concealed. What distinguishes this modernism from romanticism or realism is innovation in form. Novels tend to dispense with devices such as omniscient narrators and arbitrary shifts of viewpoint; in short, with the obvious tools of a moralising author which comprise the thinly disguised polemics of 19th century novels. In their place we have definable compositional laws (the novel that encompasses a day; the first person narrative composed by a character with a definite temporal and spatial location; the narrative of stream of consciousness). It could be said that this modernism's project is to represent the individual in society more realistically than the old artificial realist form made possible – I will argue below that this is Kelman's project. An unashamedly subjective representation, in which time and space are also subjectively handled, of an individual responding to social pressures which insist on uniformity, becomes an implicit protest against those pressures. Thus, 20th century realism may contain protest without recourse to moralising pretensions and implicitly reified abstractions: truth, falsehood, good, evil. However, it could also be argued that such a style may simply conceal those abstractions whilst insisting on their acceptance, aggregating authorial views across content and form.


Additionally, the insistence on adoption of a form which is justifiable in terms of 'true' realism can itself be seen as a kind of totalitarianism on the part of the academic establishment; and the postmodern era has seen a retreat from modernist formal doctrines in favour of a multiplicity of forms free from any formal manifesto. It has, according to some, therefore lost much of its meaningful potential for resistance. This postmodernism is influenced by the avant-garde, which, according to Burger, had for its goal the repoliticising of art, but largely failed in that project. For many, much postmodern production indicates the lack of social relevance of art, which either seems to be produced for a small academic community or to exist simply as commodity - Jameson distinguishes postmodern production as "integrated into commodity production generally."


Bürger reveals the limitations of the avant-garde for its criticism only of art through its choice of form, yet holds that it fulfilled a vital purpose in presenting its challenge to art institutions, through the concept of "system-immanent criticism," leading to self-criticism. He cites Marx's example of religion which was, after internal disputes between (for example) Catholicism and Protestantism, able to reach "an objective understanding of earlier mythologies only when its self-criticism had been accomplished to a certain degree." This understanding is an appreciation of the repressive social function of myth (and so ultimately a denial of Christianity itself). Self criticism within a dominant institution negates the one sidedness of history constructed by that dominant institution, and so allows (relative) objectivity about the past. In literature, for example, via the perception of the dichotomy between the aesthetic and naturalist novel in the 1880s, it became possible to achieve critical distance from the formal institutions of that fiction, and so to appreciate and move beyond them, to an avant-garde movement which challenged not just those schools, but art itself.


However, criticism should not necessarily negate the content of those works, as the Marxist critique of religion still enabled perception of its character of protest, it is "truthful as an expression of misery." Bürger therefore protests against current criticism which concentrates only on form, suppressing any element of protest contained in the work. However, he states the objectivity provided in the light of avant-garde movement largely affirms art's impotence in the face of social problems. Also, the antithetical power of the avant-garde to provide objectivity is finite, as it is inevitably assimilated into the institution of art, entailing loss of critical distance. Its defamiliarizing agenda cannot be sustained, its acts of increasing violence absorbed into Marcuse's model of affirmation. Additionally, such art finds itself with commercial value, which taints its protest. As the avant-garde feeds into the culturally dominant postmodernism, it could be argued a new antithetical movement may be required, and this role may be filled by a form of late-modernist production, of which I will argue Kelman is an exponent.


Postmodernism is seen by Jameson as characterised by commodification and the removal of the subject, representing a fundamental break with the artistic continuum from romanticism to modernism. Feeling the abandonment of Enlightenment values may be premature, he calls attention to the vacuity of much postmodern art, and the all-pervasive nature of capitalism, which makes critical distance an impossibility. He gives the example of pastiche as a typical feature of postmodern texts. Pastiche is distinguished from parody by its lack of ironic authorial comment. That Jameson feels the inadequacy of pastiche is clear, calling it the mere "imitation of dead styles" He sees postmodern production as immersed in simulacra, pandering to its audience whilst reinforcing the media stereotypes it depends upon. He critiques the argument that the modernist project should have been abandoned because of its implication in 20th century fascism, pointing out that postmodern culture is itself the "superstructural expression of a whole new wave of economic and military domination," shifting the focus onto the economic base that produces such schools. Critiquing Jencks, Jameson bemoans the conservatism of postmodern domestic architecture, which draws on an assortment of past styles. These homes simply respond to the generally conservative aesthetic desires of the bourgeoisie, increasing their commercial value. In its retreat from the formal difficulties (for a wide readership) of modernism, the contemporary novel must also be open to the charge of economic interest.


For Jameson and Calvino, the Modernist values of subjectivity and individualism retain potential to provide a "moral resource," which is not in the service of any (even a Leftist or revisionist) ideology, but which has the potential to become a "vital area of collective awareness." The notion of "resource", which shifts the emphasis onto critical reading as a potentially antithetical act, brings us back close to Adorno's qualified view of literature's use. For Jameson, a Marxist reading which takes into account what is not present in supposedly autonomous literature, ie: information pertaining to those elements of society suppressed by the dominant class, is required. Both seem to assert that the socially marginalised present the more interesting literature.


Arguments against engaged literature, for Kelman, largely evaporate in circumstances where a particular political situation demands engagement. Following Jean-Paul Sartre, he insists that all textual production reveals a political position, and that this avowal cannot be halted: "since [the writer] has committed himself in the universe of language, he can never again pretend he cannot speak." Where others are afraid of compromising the freedom of art, Sartre states that freedom is not necessarily positive, but disruptive, the place of art being to promote social responsibility for a specific audience. Kelman's own views are similar, seeing the assertion of a-historical independence as a consequence of shame induced by consciousness of privilege. Identifying himself as both a working class, and a colonised (as a Scot) voice, he sees his task as filling in some of the absences in the text called attention to by Jameson. As such his work is reacting to the textual canon; though he qualifies his position both on class and nationality as not straightforward, a point dealt with through the character of Doyle, who is both Scottish and British, and therefore sees himself as both colonised and coloniser. The schizophrenic position of Doyle, who is also trapped between social classes, calls attention to the unsatisfactory position adopted by much criticism, that writers who are in some way oppressed, by race, class, or gender may write against their oppression, but their work will forfeit a right to serious academic attention as it insists on values whose existence seems obvious enough but cannot be proven, and generally employs a form (of realism) which is seen as outmoded. Kelman does not recognise the authority of academic or critical institutions, seeing them as socially irresponsible, as exemplified in the condemnation of the Indian government's refusal to sanction the publication of The Satanic Verses, when there were pragmatic reasons (the avoidance of rioting) for this decision. Whilst he writes against stereotypical representations of the working class, he is careful not to idealise them, seeing characteristics largely as products of economic infrastructure, and consequently the working class as instrumental in their own oppression.


Whilst Kelman affiliates himself with specific political positions in his essays, his fiction engages via its form, realism. For Kelman, realism is "detailing of day to day experience, and most writers who advocate social change are realists. Nothing is more crucial, nor as potentially subversive as a genuine appreciation of how the lives of ordinary people are lived from moment to moment." Art can therefore represent a direct attack on society. Kelman is an exponent of a twentieth century realism; meaning the absolute avoidance of a third person omniscience which pretends objectivity and so implies "a whole value system" and so needs to be eradicated from the text, which adheres to self-imposed formal constraints. Its aim is to represent individual subjective consciousness (because, as Doyle asks, "What else can we do except infer"), and to not privilege the reader with information. Other novels which focalise a particular character do not necessarily do this, as they may: provide descriptions external to characters' consciousness; present speech with reporting clauses which imply objective truth; employ a structure framed by a particular opening and conclusion, or use arbitrary shifts in time, implying a hierarchy of importance is to be attached to events. For Kelman, character is not fixed, but exists, as Doyle does, in contradictory flux; fixity of character being a staple constituent of the explicitly moralising novel.


It may be that Kelman chooses an essentially modernist formal technique as Jameson argues "modernism conceives its formal vocation to be the resistance to commodity form", and resistance to "instrumentalization." It aims to be symptomatic of social crisis, not to have wide commercial appeal to, or to be appropriable by, that society. The form enables Kelman to avoid charges of moralising in the manner of the conventional Realist novel. A Disaffection clearly identifies itself with the tradition of romanticism / modernism, signalling this via the recurrent references to such figures as Goya, Hölderlin, Dostoyevsky, and Joyce, who obsess Doyle's thought. However, it
is not totally devoid of features associated with postmodern writing. Notably, it calls attention to the vulnerability of the subject in the face of political pressures and the uniformity of conventional living. Doyle teaches his class about "the naming process and imperialism and the colonisation of the subject, obliteration of the subject." For a novel built around subjective consciousness, the obliteration of the subject seems a paradoxical theme; there is evidently a tension between form and content. Doyle feels his individuality breaking down, thinking his own brother considers him "somebody like himself," a generalised product of an economic-political system, just as Doyle himself considers people in generalised terms. The novel however ultimately defends individuality, while admitting its fragility. This is summarised comically when Patrick talks about reviewing his old writing and finding a prevalence of the first person: "I I I. I got really fucking sick of it."


The novel naturally selects the internal narrative form. However, it does not at first seem to be consistently applied. The story opens in the third person: "Patrick Doyle was a teacher. Gradually he had become sickened by it." The declamatory style of these opening lines seems to imply a narrative removed to some degree in time and space from its subject. However, the paragraph continues with digression which obviously relates to Doyle's thought process. The third and first person become conflated; Doyle is allowed to narrate himself. Like Duffy, the anti-hero of the James Joyce story 'A Painful Case', he has "an odd autobiographical habit [of composing] in his mind from time to time a short sentence containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense." This narrative device has several effects. Firstly, it reinforces the sense of Doyle's loneliness and alienation; he constructs various imaginary scenarios along the lines of narratives taken from a variety of sources and projects himself into them. These sources range from the writings or lives of Doyle's artistic heroes, to mainstream advertising, romantic or pornographic film plot lines; and they become conflated in ways where the intrusion into the consciousness of narratives of consumerist/sexual fantasy taint any genuine value which might be present – as when Doyle imagines picking up a "tee-shirt-clad female hitchhiker" on his regenerative trip to the highlands, or being a citizen of an Eastern bloc country and being attended by a female plumber. Elsewhere, the narrative that starts to condition Doyle's perception is that of mainstream romance: "Pat . . . Alison was whispering to him. In fact she was not whispering at all she was just speaking normally." Similarly, Doyle constructs a fantasy soap opera history of the Rossi family who own his local chip shop. In Doyle's muddled consciousness, these sources offer him a place in so many different, though corresponding, narratives he can only vacillate endlessly between inauthentic options which we know are unlikely to be realised. Authentic selfhood is dislocated amongst these narratives, causing Doyle to frequently feel disoriented or paranoid. Notably his authentic actions occur as ruptures or ellipsis in the text (a text in which, otherwise, precious little is omitted), after Doyle has supposedly made an alternate decision, as when has apparently definitely decided to go out, only for us to be told "He had stayed on at his parents' house till after midnight, just watching television and yapping about old things from the past." Although we assume Doyle is happy at his parents' house, the "just" implies the dissatisfaction caused by consumer society's insistence that there are other things he should be doing with his weekend, and pre-empts the cynicism he feels impelled to use when speaking of the experience to others. Also notably, there are the two occasions when Doyle finds himself dialling Alison's number. These moments are conspicuous because of their lack of premeditation, ironic, as they, unlike the premeditated plans, actually occur. Conversely, when conventional temporal distance does appears in the narrative, for example via the use of a locating adverbial phrase coupled with the perfect tense, as in: "Patrick Doyle, drove right out of Glasgow, late that Friday evening. He had decided to visit his old pal Eric," we discover this does not actually happen. Doyle is attempting to create a life for himself using the narratives he has absorbed, though this life is doomed to inauthenticity.


The narrative style also suggests that as a member of the (educational) establishment, Doyle has the power to posit his own narrative, a power denied to others. Doyle feels the power he has over the children, and is aware of the potential he has for its abuse, the values of their parents "absolutely worthless" in comparison to his, working as he feels himself to do, "at the behest of a dictatorship government." Deeply concerned about the social function of school, he is unable to resolve this on the level of pragmatism as his colleagues do – though when it comes down to it, he does not want to leave the school at all. Doyle feels the incongruity of his position compared with that of the rest of his family, and by extension, the working class. He also exhibits a kind of schizophrenia as his classroom persona self-for-others becomes confused with his actual self, knowing also that "one of the dangers inherent to the teaching racket is starting to act out the character parts of the topics you get paid to encounter." At times, he can accept these issues or combat them through irony, as when he refers to himself as "the heroic Doyle", "Auld Doyle", "the fucking Doyle-fellow" or "Patrick Doyle, MA (hons)", at others he reacts (as to his brother's provocation) with paranoia or aggression.


Utterly subjective, the novel creates a feeling of disoriented suspense in the reader because of the tension between the narratives in Doyle's head and what may be really happening. This is not, however, to assume there is a definite objective 'story' which can be inferred (as Jameson notes, much apparently unrealistic art only serves to emphasis a nineteenth century notion of realism through the reading process). The narrative never leaves Doyle, though its focus is his consciousness, rather than his external situation. The speech that is given, and its accompanying reporting clauses, is not necessarily accurate, corresponding to what Doyle hears, rather than what is said. This goes for his own speech too – we would be wrong to assume that the expletives which punctuate his addresses to his classes are in fact all articulated aloud. The lack of tonal information associated with speech, apart from the speculations of the unreliable Doyle, conveys an extreme sense of paranoia, as when Doyle is drinking with his brother's friends:


I think you're trying to tell me something. Because in fact he was getting told to leave. His big brother was asking him to kindly vacate the premises.


Doyle is probably not being asked to leave at this point, though it is perhaps worth remarking that he is being asked to vacate premises in another sense – to empty his speech from meaning, to not take the conversation so seriously. (Patrick laments later his inability to make small-talk, an inability he sees as central to his problems). When he is (frequently) not listening to what people are saying, what they say is not reported. When Doyle is stopped by Milne, the headmaster, Doyle is too consumed with distaste for him to hear anything he says until he catches the words:


At ten minutes to four then Mister Doyle… in my eh ah…
    And he continued to fucking stand there as if he was muttering internally! What the fuck could he be muttering about internally in the name of God what was up!


The internal muttering could equally refer to Milne or Doyle himself; Doyle's self-reflexivity frequently causes him to wonder where his train of thought is leading him. Doyle concludes he is "being carpeted," (though this turns out to not be the case, implying Doyle's conclusions are formed from prejudiced, paranoid readings of situations) but misses the appointment, speculating that "leaving such an event cloaked in mystery was only good sense." The comment applies to traditional novelistic structure itself, which relies on the deferred resolution of events for audience appeal. Doyle's subjective perception is neatly figured in the novel via the "greasy spot on the windscreen," which causes everything he views through it to become blurred.


Although Doyle is paranoid and unreliable to that extent, he is able to not only narrate but also to interpret himself with lucid self-awareness, and thus pre-empt much of the reader's expected task in the consumption of a novel. He can draw his own literary parallels (notably with Goethe's Werther), conduct his own psychoanalysis, and interpret apparent symbolism. The pipes Doyle finds take the place of a central symbol in the novel, though he refutes any over simplifying reading of them: denying they are to be connected with sexual frustration, and explaining "these pipes have got fuck all to do with Scotland." That the pipes are referred to in the novel's second sentence: "Then a very odd thing happened, or was made to happen," implies their importance, which Doyle finds impossible to articulate except as "a crazy sort of nostalgia." Later he makes them the "magical" subject of a story he tells his niece and nephew, which functions as a kind of meta-text for the novel, although admits to himself that he may be attributing false significance to them due to "states of hallucinatory imaginings brought about by urinary dysfunctioning." It is interesting to view the pipes either as a device that, by inviting and resisting interpretation, calls attention to the notion of interpretation itself; or as a vague unifying symbol (they "represented the whole world.") of seemingly opposed signifiers: loneliness and fulfilment, alienation and belonging, happiness and sadness. Doyle finds that the vocabulary he has in relation to the pipes carries inappropriate connotations. He does not want to "perform" on them, nor is the "object […] to play a fucking tune." These terms entail the pipes in limiting narrative contexts which subjugate them to a particular meaning and so diminish their potential.


This leads to the more complex question of where the author's voice occurs in the novel. We may suspect Doyle is a frustrated version of Kelman himself, though to interpret the novel in this way would be an over-simplification. Kelman's task, as I have suggested, is partly the modernist project of providing a careful mimesis of subjective reality, of a particular reality which may have been excluded from other, more conventional, narratives. According to this reading, Doyle is the presentation of a potentially real subjectivity via characterisation in a novel, a subjectivity struggling to cope with internal and external pressures. This is not a straightforward attack on the modern world; Doyle's expressions of desire to experience nature, paint or play the pies will not necessarily fulfil him if realised. Instead, the effect of the presentation is to highlight and indict the extent to which the confusion of narratives extant in society, including narratives based on stereotypical situations and associated with capitalism and colonialism, penetrate, pervade and corrupt our faculties. In some cases, this penetration may go unnoticed by the subject; in Doyle's it leads to near emotional breakdown. This reading suggests the absence of any kind of authorial voice. However, as I have suggested, Kelman's voice does seem to make appearances, through occasional puns, symbolism, ambiguity and ironic juxtaposition of character and plot (as when Doyle attends his meeting with the headmaster contemplating the fate of Josef K, before receiving the mysterious news that a transfer he has no recollection of applying for has come through – though of course this may be explainable as a result of drunkenness).


I would argue however that the novel calls for another reading, of Doyle's tortured indecision as a dramatisation of the dilemma facing the contemporary artist. Naturally, Doyle's status as a teacher is important here: should one take a didactic approach, which necessarily entails the calling into being of outmoded abstractions in the name of social pragmatism; or instead teach "by performance instead of pointing the finger"? Doyle resents his own endless "conceptualising. Creating a distance already," which he sees as removing himself from the sphere of praxis. Additionally, he sees the liberalism of academia, "so absolutely hypocritical it was a way of being […] so smugly satisfied to let you say and do what you wanted to do, just so long as it didn't threaten what they possessed," as impotent or even repressive, interested in "maintenance of the status quo."


However, the resolution to this problem is problematic to say the least. Teaching by performance seems to imply firstly a social responsibility which may be either subject to politics, as in the Rushdie affair; and secondly valorisation of the type of modernism which retains but conceals its didactic intent. Doyle's ideal job, that of mural painter, conjures images of a Leftist social prescription many would find to threaten the supposed autonomy of art, an autonomy Doyle seems to insist on, despite his contention that teachers are tools of oppression. The answer may lie in the fact that Doyle does not actually want to leave teaching at all, but actually rather enjoys his role of criticising it as an institution from within.


I have suggested that A Disaffection corresponds more to an aggregate of modernist, rather than postmodernist stylistic features, though this entails a rewriting of modernist subjectivisation which concedes the colonisation, in Jameson's terms, of potentially capitalist narratives into the unconscious. Kelman does not however see the result of this intrusion as the eradication of the subject, but rather its disruption and displacement, which should be resisted. As Doyle criticises the institution of education from within, so Kelman, via his selection of form, sets up dialectic with the dominant school of postmodernism and its rejection of ethics. This dialectic then creates for the reader an approximation of the critical distance postmodernism has supposedly abolished. Although this remains an approximation (as Kelman is subject to the same laws of artistic production as other artists), it is important in that it allows for a more objective critique of postmodern theory, which in any case contains Marx's "full validity" only in application to its particular historical circumstances, and must remain open to challenge. The type of self-criticism provided by novels such as A Disaffection, which self-consciously identify themselves as part of an artistic genealogy rather than a period, addresses the tendency within a theoretical school to see history as the pre-history of that theory; the tendency to ask questions which preclude particular factors. This occurs just as the twentieth century avant-garde formed the antithesis to some strands of modernism, as discussed earlier. Any such antithetical reaction may have a finite lifespan, or may evolve to become itself the dominant school, in which case it becomes appropriate to find an alternate source of antithesis. Kelman's strategy is the resurrection of that brand of modernism, as a reactionary measure within a totality of literary production. Thus Kelman's novel at least keeps open (whilst dramatising) the debate on engagement for consumers of literature, by insisting that there can be valid, moral artistic production which does not adhere to postmodernist dogma.


























Bibliography


Kelman, James. A Disaffection. London: Picador, 1989.


Kelman, James. 'Artists and Value', 'English Literature and the Small Coterie' in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political. Stirling: AK Press, 1992. pp.5-15, 16-26.


Kelman, James. And The Judges Said… London: Vintage, 2003.
   
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetics and Politics (Noten zur Literatur) [1965]. Trans. MacDonagh, Francis. Ed. Taylor, Ronald. London: New Left Books, 1977.



Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory (Ästhetische Theorie). Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.


Boyers, Robert. Atrocity and Amnesia: The Political Novel Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.


Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde (Theorie der Avantgarde) [1974]. Trans. Shaw, Michael. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.


Calvino, Ital. 'Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature' in The Uses of Literature
(Una Pictra Sopra) [1980]. Trans. Creagh, Patrick. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1986. pp.89-101.


Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Seabury, 1975.


Jameson, Frederic. 'Beyond the Cave. Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism' [1975]. 'Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' [1984]. 'Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture' [1979]. in The Jameson Reader. Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. pp.175-188, 188-233, 123-149.


Jameson, Frederic. 'Magical Narratives, On the Dialectical Uses of Genre Criticism' [1981] in The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 2002. pp.3-33.


Jencks, Charles. What is Post-modernism? London: Academy, 1986


Joyce, James. Dubliners [1914] London: Penguin, 1926.


Klaus, H. Gustav. James Kelman. Tavistock, Devon: Northcote, 2004.


Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 'Note on the meaning of Post' [1985] 'Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?' [1982] Trans. Bennington, Geoffrey in Ed. Docherty, Thomas. Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. pp.35-46, 75-80.


Marcuse, Herbert. 'The Affirmative Character of Culture' in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory. Trans. Shapiro, Jeremy J. Boston: Beacon, 1968. pp.88-133.



Marx, Karl. Foundations for the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie) [1939]. Trans. Nicolaus, Martin. Penguin: London, 1973.


Sartre, Jean-Paul. What is Literature? (Qu'est ce que la litérature?) [1948] Trans. Frechtman, B. London: Methuen, 1967



[1] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p.338.

[1] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury, 1975), p.274.  Gadamer insists that objective reading, removed from our particular socio-historical conditions of ideology is an impossibility, but that reading will implicitly question such prejudice.

[1] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics Trans. MacDonagh, Francis.  Ed. Taylor, Ronald. (London: New Left Books, 1977), p.90.

[1] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics Trans. MacDonagh, Francis.  Ed. Taylor, Ronald. (London: New Left Books, 1977), p.91.

[1] Jean-Francois Lyotard,  ‘Note on the meaning of Post’  Trans. Geoffrey  Bennington, in Ed. Thomas Docherty,.  Postmodernism: A Reader.  (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p.78.

[1] Jean-Francois Lyotard,  Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?  Trans. Geoffrey  Bennington, in Ed. Thomas Docherty,  Postmodernism: A Reader.  (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p.37.

[1] Charles Jencks, What is Post-modernism? (London, Academy, 1986), p.19.

[1] Robert Boyers, Atrocity and Amnesia: The Political Novel Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p.229.

[1] Ital Calvino, ‘Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature’ in The Uses of Literature Trans. Creagh, Patrick (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1986), p.95.

[1] Herbert Marcuse, ‘The Affirmative Character of Culture’ in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1968), p.95.

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.11.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Magical Narratives, On the Dialectical Uses of Genre Criticism’ in The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Routledge, 2002), p.8.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Beyond the Cave.  Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.179. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.190. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.191. 

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.4.

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.21.

[1] Karl Marx, Foundations for the Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1973) p.105. 

[1] Karl Marx, Foundations for the Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1973) p.105.  Referenced in: Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.21.  Marx points out that religion’s self-criticism is in turn made possible by changes in the economic base: as society moves away from feudalism, myths that idealise submission to authority become unnecessary.     

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.7.

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.10.

[1] Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde Trans. Michael Shaw  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.22.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.191. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.193. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.201. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.201. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.193. 

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.190. 

[1] Ital Calvino, ‘Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature’ in The Uses of Literature  Trans. Creagh, Patrick (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1986), p.96.

[1] Ital Calvino, ‘Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature’ in The Uses of Literature  Trans. Creagh, Patrick (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1986), p.96.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Beyond the Cave.  Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.179. 

[1] Kelman, James ‘Artists and Value’in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political  (Stirling: AK Press, 1992), p.10. ; Jean Paul Sartre, What is Literature? Trans. B. Frechtman  (London: Methuen, 1967), p.49.

[1] Jean Paul Sartre, What is Literature? Trans. B. Frechtman  (London: Methuen, 1967), p.50.

[1] Jean Paul Sartre, What is Literature? Trans. B. Frechtman  (London: Methuen, 1967), p.59.

[1] Kelman, James ‘Artists and Value’in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political  (Stirling: AK Press, 1992), p.10.

[1] Kelman, James ‘Artists and Value’in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political  (Stirling: AK Press, 1992), p.7.

[1] Kelman, James ‘English Literature and the Small Coterie’in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political  (Stirling: AK Press, 1992), p.25.

[1] Kelman, James ‘Artists and Value’in Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political  (Stirling: AK Press, 1992), p.11.

[1] James Kelman, And The Judges Said… (London: Vintage, 2003), p.100.

[1] Interview with James Kelman, Chapman, 57 (1989), p.4.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.131.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.134. 

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.194.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.303.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.145.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.1.

[1] James Joyce, Dubliners (London: Penguin, 1926), p.120.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.61.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.15.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.121.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.69.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.7.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.25.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.45.

[1] Frederic Jameson, ‘Beyond the Cave.  Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism’ in The Jameson Reader.  Eds. Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p.191.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.271.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.29.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.29.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.158.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.24.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.1.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.258.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.5.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.8.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.10.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.9.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.53.

[1] James Kelman, A Disaffection  (London: Picador, 1989) p.87.

[1] Karl Marx, Foundations for the Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1973) p.105.