Speaker: Michael Henderson [tag author here @ ]
Affiliation: Washington University in St. Louis
Title: Aesthetics of Solidarity/Aesthetics as Solidarity: A Network Analysis of Anti-Fascist Literary Congresses in the 1930s
Short Abstract: This project analyzes the citation networks in speeches given by authors at the International Writers’ Congress in Defense of Culture to uncover the literary alliances and influences that have often been obscured by traditional literary histories of the period.
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Long abstract
The 1930s were rightly remembered as an era of catastrophe, a “low, dishonest decade” in the words of the English poet, W.H. Auden. Amidst the economic and political turmoil of the time, writers from around the world found themselves also facing a moral and aesthetic crisis. As Fascism began to spread across Europe, overthrowing the republics in Spain, Italy, and Germany, artists began to interrogate their own responsibility–and ability–to denounce this new form of tyrannical state apparatus. In attempts to mobilize the cultural front, the International Writers’ Congress in Defense of Culture was formed to address the question: What is the responsibility of the writer in a time of dishonesty, cruelty, and futility? Though often remembered by historians as nothing more than an opportunity for Stalinists to consolidate their influence over the Popular Front, this paper will seek to move past this Cold War-influenced reading of the International Writers’ Congresses. Adopting a methodology of “distant reading” through the use of network analysis, this paper traces the citation networks of writers at the Congress to reveal how they were imagining their ties of solidarity. Through the use of cluster analysis, this paper will seek to demonstrate that ideology was far from the only factor involved in the consolidation of the anti-fascist cultural front at these Congresses–indeed, matters of aesthetics emerge as surprising predictors of writers’ alignment. This paper will thus demonstrate how a distant reading of anti-fascist cultural organization in the 1930s depended just as much on questions of aesthetic judgment and form as they did over geopolitical and utilitarian interests.