Open AccessI tvivlsomme kampe. Strejken og romanen, 1850-1950
Author(s) -
Nicklas Freisleben Lund
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
k and k/kandk
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2246-2589
pISSN - 0905-6998
DOI - 10.7146/kok.v45i123.96837
Subject(s) - ambivalence , topos theory , politics , object (grammar) , resistance (ecology) , phenomenon , history , sociology , literature , political science , philosophy , epistemology , law , art , linguistics , psychoanalysis , psychology , ecology , biology
Through the analyses of Émile Zola’s Germinal (1885) and Martin Andersen Nexø’s The Great Struggle (1909) the article investigates the strike as a topos in Western literature between 1850 and 1950. The article argues that the strike should be not considered a passive object; something that is merely being portrayed. Rather the strike has an active and formative function in the texts in which it appears, as it generates a distinct literary form – the Strike Novel – that among other things is characterized by a peculiar and ambivalent political outlook. An ambivalence emerging from the strike’s own characteristics as a practical form of political resistance linking the phenomenon closely to the question of how to act politically.