The particular power of the word, and by extension literature, in forming and transforming people’s worldview has been widely used by governments focused on ideology to describe to those whom they control the kinds of social and political character they desire for their society. This course explores, through primary and occasional secondary texts, the literature created during three periods of social suppression and political tyranny: the socialist dictatorship in Mongolia between 1921 and 1990, the period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan (1996-2001), and the ongoing dictatorship in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In addition to thinking about the primary texts in their historical contexts, we will also explore ancillary media - music, film, fine art - to understand the artistic framework in which writers lived and produced their work. Moreover, these various media will offer a chance to think about the fraught and often toxic interaction of politics and creativity in such societies, as well as the process of remembering those who are killed for their art.
The study undertaken in this course falls at the intersection of cultural history, literary studies, and politics, and deals directly with a form of cultural production which at the same time supports and refuses the people’s engagement in social, religious, and political repression.