The Specter of Power: Literature and the Political Revisited

The essay examines the complex links between literature and the political. Specifically, it offers a comparative analysis of three twentieth-century forms of conceptualizing the relationship: an author-focused model (Benjamin), an artwork-centered model (Adorno), and, finally, a paradigm where literature is conceived as an institution (Althusser). Both the advantages and the limits of these models are carefully assessed. What they share is the impact of the Marxist tradition and the centrality of the state as the defining moment of the political. These older models are contrasted then with two more recent discourse-oriented models (Mouffe and Benhabib) that in different ways open up the possibility of an active role of literature within a democratic community, yet without stressing the weight of state power.