James Kelman: Politics and Aesthetics

This study argues that James Kelman�s work should not be construed as a resigned capitulation to capitalist domination or to the fracture of a once unified working-class collective purpose.\n\nPolitics are to be found not only in the content but also the form of Kelman�s work. The radical aspect of his style is that rather than pandering to a ready-made identity, he remains antagonistically non-identical to the prevailing logic of capitalism by contesting its supposedly shared worldview and modes of perception. Instead, Kelman�s fiction continually disputes the notion of consensus by revealing the voices of those excluded, those who are unaccounted for in that false consensus. His work uncovers a stark contradiction in the governing logic of our times: we are asked to accept that class has disappeared at the same time that we are told the system that causes it in the first place � capitalism � is inevitably here forever. Even the most alienated individuals in his stories remind us that isolation can transcend itself by returning us to the social conditions that are its cause. We find politics in Kelman�s aesthetics, as his work formally contests who has the right to feel, to think, to speak.James Kelman: Politics and Aesthetics 1st Edition is written by Aaron Kelly and published by Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. ISBNs for James Kelman are 9783035304640, 3035304645 and the print ISBNs are 9783039111305, 3039111302.