Revolutionary Subjects

The literary history of radical selfhood across borders and centuries.

What do novels reveal about how radical selves are made?

Kohlmann traces two centuries of literature shaped by emancipatory and internationalist commitments, charting the evolution of “red” world writing and the aesthetic forms that carry its politics. At the center is the radical Bildungsroman, which rewrites dominant ideas of personal development. From Sartre’s Roads to Freedom to Ding Ling’s The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, these works imagine the self through collective struggle and global solidarity.Introduction: World Literature and the Work of Revolution
1. The Left Bildungsroman’s Early History: Genre at Modernity’s Periphery
2. Educating the Educator: The Radical Bildungsroman and the Problem of Second Bildung
3. “Knowledge in Struggle”: Collective Formation and Revolutionary Pedagogy
4. No Home but the Struggle: The Left Bildungsroman and the Formlessness of History
CodaBenjamin Kohlmann is Professor of English at the University of Regensburg (Germany), working on the relationship between literature and politics. He is the author of Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature and British Literature and the Life of Institutions: Speculative States. He co-founded and co-edits the book series Literature & Politics at Oxford University Press.