The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature

337 Pages·2022·15.638 MB·English

by  Peter J. Kalliney

the aesthetic cold war

The Aesthetic Cold War
decolonization and global
lite ra t ure
peter j. kalliney
prince ton university press
princet on & oxford
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ISBN 9780691230634
ISBN (e- book) 9780691230641
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
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Production Editorial: Ali Parrington
Jacket Design: Katie Osborne
Production: Erin Suydam
Publicity: Alyssa Sanford & Charlotte Coyne
Copyeditor: Michele Rosen
Jacket image: Courtesy of the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research
Center, University of Chicago Library.
This book has been composed in Arno
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowl edgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Note on Translation and Transliteration xv
part i 1
1 Cultural Diplomacy, the Po liti cal Police, and Nonalignment 3
2 A Brief Intellectual History of the Aesthetic Cold War 17
part ii 49
3 Modernism, African Lit er a ture, and the Congress
for Cultural Freedom 51
4 Indigeneity and Internationalism: Soviet Diplomacy
and Afro- Asian Lit er a ture 83
5 A Failure of Diplomacy: Placing Eileen Chang
in Global Literary History 117
part iii 149
6 The Activist Manquée, or How Doris Lessing Became
an Experimental Writer 151
v
vi Contents
7 Ca rib bean Intellectuals and National Culture:
C.L.R. James and Claudia Jones 180
8 Notes from Prison: Individual Testimony Meets
Collective Re sis tance 217
Conclusion 245
Notes 251
Bibliography 285
Index 307
illustrations
2.1. Intersection of debates about language choice and
aesthetic in de pen dence. 46
3.1. Chinua Achebe, Frances Ademola, Theodore Bull, André
Deutsch, Arthur Drayton, Dennis Duerden, Bernard
Fonlon, and Bob Leshoai, at the Makerere conference,
June 1962. 52
3.2. Françoise Robinet, Dennis Duerden, Gerald Moore, and
Langston Hughes at the Makerere conference, June 1962. 69
3.3. “7 T ONE = 7 E TON,” by Rajat Neogy. From Transition
magazine #1, November 1961. 72
3.4. Neville Rubin, Elizabeth Spio- Garbrah, and Wole Soyinka
at the Makerere conference, June 1962. 76
4.1. Unidentified woman, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Mulk Raj Anand
at the Tashkent Conference, 1958. 94
4.2. Sembène Ousmane (center, smoking pipe), Majhemout
Diop, and unidentified others at the Tashkent
conference, 1958. 97
4.3. Sembène Ousmane, Thu Bon, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
celebrating the Lotus Award at the Alma- Ata Conference,
1973. 98
4.4. Youssef El- Sebai presenting the Lotus Award to Sembène
Ousmane at the Alma- Ata Conference, 1973. 99
4.5. Alex La Guma and Chinghiz Aitmatov at the Alma- Ata
Conference, 1973. 104
5.1. Installment of Little Ai [Xiao’ai], under pen name Liang
Jing. Yibao newspaper (Shanghai), 4 January 1952. 128
vii
viii List of Illustrations
5.2. First installment of The Rice- Sprout Song in the USIA
magazine World Today [Jinri shijie], 1954. 131
5.3. USIA memo distributed with World Today [Jinri shijie],
1954, page 1. 132
5.4. USIA memo distributed with World Today [Jinri shijie],
1954, page 2. 133
5.5. First manuscript page of “The Spyring” by Eileen Chang. 142
6.1. Doris Lessing’s Communist Party registration card, 1955,
from MI5 dossier. 157
6.2. Doris Lessing’s passport photo circa 1950s, from MI5
dossier. 159
6.3. Intercepted letter from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
November 1962, with handwritten cross- references to
intelligence file numbers of Lessing and other writers in
attendance. 165
7.1. Prosecutive Summary, 1951, from Claudia Jones’s FBI
dossier. 189
7.2. Claudia Jones reading the West Indian Gazette. 192
7.3. One of the earliest documents in C.L.R. James’s FBI
dossier, dated 22 July 1947. 197
7.4. FBI memo in C.L.R. James’s dossier showing heavy
redactions, likely concealing names of confidential
in for mants and agents. 199
7.5. C.L.R. James’s MI5 dossier springs back to life with this 1953
report, which includes information from an agent about his
ocean crossing after he was deported from the United
States. Page 1 of this report includes details of his stay in the
US and his ocean crossing. 200
7.6. C.L.R. James’s MI5 dossier springs back to life after
deportation from the US in 1953. Page 2 of this report
includes information from an agent about his ocean crossing. 201
8.1. Harold Pinter reading Jack Mapanje’s poetry at a PEN protest
in front of the Malawi High Commission, London, 1987. 231
acknowle dgments
this book would not have been pos si ble without the help of archivists and
librarians. The staff at the University of Kentucky Library system, the Library
of Congress, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center
(University of Chicago), the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas), the
British Library, the National Archives and Rec ords Administration II (United
States), the National Archives (United Kingdom), the Mayibuye Centre (Uni-
versity of the Western Cape), the Beinecke Library (Yale University), the
Bodleian Library (University of Oxford), the Rare Books and Manuscript
Library (Columbia University), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division (New York Public
Library), the National Museum of Labour History (United Kingdom), the
British Archive for Con temporary Writing (University of East Anglia), The
Keep (University of Sussex), the East Asian Library Special Collections (Uni-
versity of Southern California), the Georgetown University Library, and the
Rus sian State Archive of Lit er a ture and Art (RGALI) have been enormously
helpful. Courtney Taulbee at the University of Kentucky went to g reat lengths
to track down rare materials.
Research support and leave time also helped. Fellowships from the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for
the Humanities were crucial. The dean’s office and the En glish department at
the University of Kentucky offered additional support. Jonathan Allison, Jeff
Clymer, and Mark Kornbluh deserve special mention.
I have benefitted from conversations with colleagues near and far. I learned
a lot from Adélékè AdéCk>, Rita Barnard, Greg Barnhisel, Elleke Boehmer,
Molly Blasing, Marshall Brown, Eric Bulson, Nesrine Chahine, Laura Chris-
man, Katy Clark, Elliott Colla, Eleni Coundouriotis, Jacqueline Couti, Julie
Cyzewski, Carole Boyce Davies, Tommy Davis, Rossen Djagalov, Jim En glish,
Jed Esty, Harris Feinsod, Leah Feldman, Roger Field, Susan Stanford Friedman,
Simon Gikandi, Yogita Goyal, Weihsin Gui, Allan Hepburn, DaMaris Hill,
ix