Utopian Generations develops a strong interpretive matrix for knowing international literature--one that renders modernism and postcolonial African literature understandable in one framework, during which neither will ever glance an identical. African literature has usually been noticeable as representationally naïve vis-à-vis modernism, and canonical modernism as reactionary vis-à-vis postcolonial literature. What brings those our bodies of labor jointly, argues Nicholas Brown, is their disposition towards Utopia or "the horizon of a thorough reconfiguration of social relations.?

Grounded in a profound rethinking of the Hegelian Marxist culture, this fluently written ebook takes as its aspect of departure the partial displacement in the course of the 20th century of capitalism's "internal restrict" (classically conceived because the clash among hard work and capital) onto a geographic department of work and wealth. meting out with complete genres of common modern pieties, Brown examines works from each side of this department to create a dialectical mapping of other modes of Utopian aesthetic perform. the idea of global literature built within the advent grounds the delicate and robust readings on the middle of the book--focusing on works by means of James Joyce, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ford Madox Ford, Chinua Achebe, Wyndham Lewis, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Pepetela. a last bankruptcy, arguing that this literary dialectic has reached some degree of exhaustion, means that a extensively reconceived thought of musical perform can be required to figure the Utopian wish immanent within the items of latest culture.