VICTOR SERGE AND THE POETICS OF POLITICAL FICTION

Abstract

Orthodox poetics of the novel has viewed politically radical fiction as a violation of the novel's proper form. The case against radical fiction is, superficially at least, a strong one, for the novel's development as a form is intimately bound up with a conception of the individual as the site and source of meaning and value. The dilemma for the radical novelist is how to offset the methodological individualism of the novel's typical form and still write a satisfactory novel. Victor Serge wrote several novels in the thirties and forties which succeed as radical fiction by replacing the isolated individual with a collective protagonist. The relevance of his work to South African writing can be seen in the recent controversy between Njabulo Ndebele, who supports the privileging in fiction of individual subjectivity, and radical critics, who have insisted on displacing the individual in favour of the collectivity.