A Bridge Too Close: Narrative Wars to End Fascism and Imperialism

Abstract

While by definition modern literature is always expanding and complicat- ing its boundaries, this inclusiveness has been challenged by the intersec- tion of modernism with postmodernism and by the impact of postcolonial studies.1 Although studies of modernism and postmodern literature have been historicized over the last several years, with intense attention to the impact on literary form of the Great War and the Great Depression, post- colonial studies has urgently reminded us that all modern literature, even as it is identified with discrete historical crises, is implicated in the colo- nial history of race. And yet even as the inclusion of race as a category of analysis has so dramatically altered the study of modern literature, the specifically racialized decade of the 1940s and its literary concerns have found no points of convergence with studies of any of the new mod- ernisms.2 Most significantly, despite the fact that World War II was launched by the Axis powers as an imperial conquest based on racialist ideology and precipitated the end of European empires, there has been lit- tle attempt to integrate this cataclysmic event into the racially defined postcolonial narrative.3 This is particularly startling precisely because the relationship between the necessary and decisive War to end fascism and the indecisive victories of anti-colonial, anti-racist narratives would seem