NeMLA Roundtable: Carefully Realist: (Re)turn of Realist Fiction in the Era of Globalized Crisis
updated:
Thursday, July 8, 2021 - 1:23pm
Northeast Modern Language Association
deadline for submissions:
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Realism, which had played an important role in the literary output of the era of decolonization, is now often cast as outmoded, especially in comparison to post/modernism and impugned as insufficient to represent the current crisis. Mark Fisher and Amitav Ghosh are two of the most recent, widely read critics who maintain realism is incapable to address the politics of our times. Others, pointing to Lukács’ classical definition of realism as specific to bourgeois culture, argue that it is an inherently conservatism form, able only to depict the status quo, but incapable of imagining alternative frameworks for thinking about the world in an era of increased globalization and climate crisis.