Liberalism

Issue 8.2 - Special Issue "Locating the Centre in Contemporary Literature" Previous Issues

Alluvium Editorial 8.2: Locating the Centre in Contemporary Literature

This special issue of Alluvium takes as its subject contemporary literature’s relationship with the political centre. The editors remind us that there is more than one answer to this question. Indeed, locating this ideological ground is in part so difficult because of the constantly shifting discursive environment concerning centrism, and its relationship with both the left and the right.

Issue 8.2 - Special Issue "Locating the Centre in Contemporary Literature" Previous Issues

Class, Authenticity and Centrism

Jacob Soule July 13, 2020 No Comments authenticity Centrist politics Class politics contemporary British fiction Happy endings Ian McEwan Iraq War protest Liberalism

The wider political formation of centrism within the last two decades can be more thoroughly articulated by examining its cultural expressions. This article argues that no accounting of the political centre’s literary and cultural mediations would be complete without Ian McEwan, who has shown remarkable permanence as the pinnacle of a specifically English, middlebrow literary culture.