Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization

Jini Kim Watson

Open Access Published by Fordham University Press 2021

Cold War Reckonings

Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization

Jini Kim Watson

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823294855

Overview
Contents

About this book

Cold War Reckonings shows how the Cold War shaped culture and political power in the decolonizing world and gave rise, paradoxically, to authoritarian regimes of the so-called free world.

The author lucidly engages a wide range of cultural materials, including dissident literature, Cold War writers’ conferences, and contemporary literature and film that look back from our present to repressive regimes.

Author / Editor information

Watson Jini Kim :

Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of the New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present.Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of the New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present.

Reviews

Joseph Slaughter, Columbia University:
“Jini Kim Watson’s Cold War Reckonings is an important, brilliant, and extremely engaging book that is beautifully written and bold and innovative in its arguments. Watson shows how the social and political promises of decolonization were derailed by the developmentalism that permitted certain sectors of postcolonial states to seize power by vowing ‘to fast-forward the time of national development.’ Treating third-world dictatorial regimes neither as unprepared political actors nor as dupes, Watson shows the overlapping interests between global capitalism and authoritarianism in some of Asia’s ‘capitalist success stories.’”

Jodi Kim, University of California, Riverside:
“Cold War Reckonings is not only a sophisticated work of cultural criticism, but also an astounding articulation of political theory. Analyzing literary and cinematic texts alongside occasions like PEN regional meetings, Jini Kim Watson offers an altogether original story about the Cold War and decolonization in Asia, on the one hand, and about the relationship between capitalism and authoritarianism, on the other. The book profoundly shifts our understanding of the Cold War, arrested decolonization, postcolonial sovereignty, and the developmental state within capitalist modernity. In short, it offers a new theory of the state in general, and of the capitalist authoritarian state in particular.”

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Note on Romanizations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Ruling Like a Foreigner: Theorizing “Free World” Authoritarianism in the Asia- Pacific Cold War Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I. Authorities of Alignment, 1955–1988 Open Access Download PDF	27
Part II. Genres of Cold War Reckoning, 1997–2017 Open Access Download PDF	101
Epilogue: Authoritarian Lessons for Neoliberal Times Open Access Download PDF	183
Acknowledgments Open Access Download PDF	199
Notes Open Access Download PDF	203
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	253
Index Open Access Download PDF	271

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 272
Illustrations
- Other: 12 b/w illustrations
Keywords: Anti-communism; Authoritarianism; Decolonization; Developmental state; Global Cold war; Indonesian literature and film; Philippine Literature; Postcolonial studies; Singaporean literature and film; South Korean literature and film

eBook

Published: August 5, 2021
ISBN: 9780823294855