Om arbetarlitteratur och socialistisk realism

 Min kollega Nicklas och jag har skrivit en artikel om relationen mellan skandinavisk (nåja, dansk och svensk, i alla fall) arbetarlitteratur och socialistisk realism. Den publicerades förra året, på isländska. Nu har det kommit en engelsk (lätt omarbetad) version också, som publicerats i Journal of Class & Culture (mer info här).

Sammanfattningen lyder som följer:

This article analyses the relationship between the doctrine of socialist realism and Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) working-class literature. It focuses on three authors who were part of the Scandinavian delegation at the First Congress of the Soviet Writers’ Union in Moscow – the Swedes Moa Martinson (1890–1964) and Harry Martinson (1904–78), and the Dane Martin Andersen Nexø (1869–1954) – and also on a number of influential working-class writers and critics who contributed to the discussions of socialist realism in Scandinavia: the Swedes Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901–90) and Erik Blomberg (1894–1965), and the Danes Julius Bomholt (1896–1969), Harald Herdal (1900–79) and Hans Kirk (1898–1962). Even if the direct impact of socialist realism in Scandinavia was limited, it still received attention in literary debates. This article argues that the analysis of the relationship between socialist realism and Scandinavian working-class literature can generate new insights not only about two specific left literary cultures, but also regarding the conceptualization of such cultures in an international context. The nature of the relation and the exchange between the doctrine of socialist realism and Scandinavian working-class literature in the late 1930s, the article argues, emphasizes the heterogeneity of the cultural geography of socialist world literature due to its multifaceted manifestations in different national and regional contexts. Thus, the study of this literature must stress the existence of many, different and even potentially conflicting left literatures.

Nu går vi vidare genom att skriva en artikel – tillsammans med Henrik Yde – som fokuserar på Nexøs relation till de kommunistiska länderna och litteraturen där (den är också är tänkt att utgöra en engelkspråkig presentation av Nexøs förattarskap i allmänhet). Den kommer förhoppningsvis ut nästa år.

 

Ny bok: Transnational Working-Class Literatures

 Idag utkom en bok som jag redigerat tillsammans med Wiktor Marzec och Mike Sanders: Transnational Working-Class Literatures: Canons and Connections in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. 

Det är alltid roligt när man får se forskning materialiseras i bokform, men just denna bokutgivning är särskilt efterlängtad. Det beror inte bara på att boken skulle vara särskilt bra, utan också på att det tagit väldigt lång tid att producera den (nästan sex år!)

Såhär har vi sammanfattat bokens innehåll:

This book offers a pioneering study of the national, transnational, and international dimensions of working-class literature. It explores both the historically and geographically varied nature of the relationship between working-class literatures and national ‘canons’, and the importance of international and transnational exchanges in the development of working-class literature. Through a series of detailed case studies (its sixteen essays analyse working-class literatures from the early nineteenth century to the present day and cover thirteen countries across three continents) this collection not only analyses the factors which lead to the incorporation or exclusion of working-class literature from a given national ‘canon’, but also traces the various ways in which working-class literatures participate in international networks of exchange. With its wide historical range, extensive geographical coverage and broad definition of working-class literature, which includes samba poetry as well as socialist realism, this collection charts new territory for the study of working-class literature.

Mitt bidrag har titeln Ordinary People and Literary Pirouettes: Working-Class Literature in the Swedish Municipal Workers' Trade-Union Magazine Until 1970. Den beskriver ganska väl vad jag skriver om: arbetarlitteraturen i Kommunalarbetaren fram till 1970.

Dessvärre är boken inte helt billig, men man kan ju alltid be sitt bibliotek skaffa den. Mer info hittar man här. 

Asian Workers Stories

I det nya numret av Journal of Working-Class Studies recenserar jag en samling av arbetarlitteratur från Asien som redigerats av Luka Lei Zhang. 

För att läsa recensionen, klicka här. 

Och för att skaffa boken, klicka här.