Power And Class In Political Fiction

This book introduces Elite Theory to the literary study of class as a framework for addressing issues of the nature of governance in political fiction. The book describes the historical development and major tenets of Elite Theory, and shows how each of four post-war Washington novels—Gore Vidal’s Washington, D.C.; Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent; Joan Didion’s Democracy; and Ward Just’s Echo House—illustrates the way class-based political elites exhibit forms of “ruling-class consciousness” and maintain their legitimacy in an ostensibly democratic form of government by promoting themselves as models of behavior, promulgating an ideology that justifies their rule through their control of the media, and accepting new members from the lower classes. Reading these novels through a socio-political lens, David Smit offers suggestions for ways to work for a more just and equitable society in light of what this analysis reveals about the “culture” that produces our political elites.

This book analyzes what many critics consider to be the three best examples of modern American political fiction—Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, and Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place—to address a specific problem in American governance: how the intense competition for power among elite factions often results in their ignoring major groups of their constituents, thereby providing political bosses with a rationale to seize authoritarian control of the government in the name of constituent groups who feel ignored or neglected, promising them more democratic rule, but in the process, excluding other groups, so that the bosses themselves become elitist, ruling only for the sake of some constituents and not others.

From the bestselling author of Fatherland and Pompeii, comes the first novel of a trilogy about the struggle for power in ancient Rome. In his “most accomplished work to date” (Los Angeles Times), master of historical fiction Robert Harris lures readers back in time to the compelling life of Roman Senator Marcus Cicero. The re-creation of a vanished biography written by his household slave and righthand man, Tiro, Imperium follows Cicero’s extraordinary struggle to attain supreme power in Rome. On a cold November morning, Tiro opens the door to find a terrified, bedraggled stranger begging for help. Once a Sicilian aristocrat, the man was robbed by the corrupt Roman governor, Verres, who is now trying to convict him under false pretenses and sentence him to a violent death. The man claims that only the great senator Marcus Cicero, one of Rome’s most ambitious lawyers and spellbinding orators, can bring him justice in a crooked society manipulated by the villainous governor. But for Cicero, it is a chance to prove himself worthy of absolute power. What follows is one of the most gripping courtroom dramas in history, and the beginning of a quest for political glory by a man who fought his way to the top using only his voice—defeating the most daunting figures in Roman history.

Globalization is an extraordinary phenomenon affecting virtually everything in our lives. And it is imperative that we understand the operation of economic power in a globalized world if we are to address the most challenging issues our world is facing today, from climate change to world hunger and poverty. This revolutionary work rethinks globalization as a power system feeding from, and in competition with, the state system. Cutting across disciplines of law, politics and economics, it explores how multinational enterprises morphed into world political organisations with global reach and power, but without the corresponding responsibilities. In illuminating how the concentration of property rights within corporations has led to the rejection of democracy as an ineffective system of government and to the rise in inequality, Robé offers a clear pathway to a fairer and more sustainable power system.

This book explores the intricate manifestations of contemporary power, its related ideology, and the “resistance” and reaction to the dominant discourse in Jonathan Coe’s political fiction, covering the dismantling of the British social-democratic consensus, Thatcherism and Blairism, up to the new ideology of “Globalism.” Beyond the predictable dichotomy of support-opposition to power, the book argues the modern individual seems to have found another ontological approach, for which it coins the concept of “intentional unpower”. Furthermore, it demonstrates that there are three possibilities regarding the evolution of this type of social response, and invites the readers to discover them, while enjoying Coe’s subtlety and humour. Given its broad approach, the book will appeal to researchers in a wide range of domains, including literary and cultural studies, political theory, and sociology, as well as any reader fascinated with the essence of power, intellectual response, and discourses containing their own elements of subversion.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In these coolly observant essays, the iconic bestselling writer looks at the American political process and at "that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life." Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals the mechanics of American politics. She tells us the uncomfortable truth about the way we vote, the candidates we vote for, and the people who tell us to vote for them. These pieces build, one on the other, into a disturbing portrait of the American political landscape, providing essential reading on our democracy.

By examining the representation of urban space in contemporary British fiction, this book argues that key to the political left's strategy was a model of action which folded politics into culture and elevated disenfranchisement to the status of a political principle.