Antifascist Narrative and the Politics of Optimism

Abstract

AbstractThis essay identifies the structure of US antifascist literary narrative, and in so doing, outlines its history and theorizes its democratic intervention. It argues that since the 1930s, antifascist narratives have been fueled by an optimism they maintain in the face of an existential threat to democracy. Spawned at moments of danger, antifascist narratives do not fight fascism simply to restore the status quo of liberalism, but strive to expand democracy through the defeat of fascism, forging a new reality in the fight against monsters. The essay focuses on two largely forgotten works published in the late 1930s, perhaps the darkest era for antifascists: James T. Farrell’s novella, Tommy Gallagher’s Crusade (1939), and William Thomas Smith’s serial novel, The Black Stockings (1937), which appeared in the Baltimore Afro-American. These two works are part of a subgenre of antifascist literature that I call “the blackshirt narrative,” a subgenre particularly worth revisiting for those interested in preserving and expanding democracy in the twenty-first century.Spawned at a moment of danger, [antifascist] optimism does not just fight fascism in order to restore the status quo of liberalism, but . . . strives to expand democracy through the defeat of fascism, forging a new reality in the fight against monsters.