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This book argues that during the Cold War modern political imagination was held captive by the split between two visions of universality—freedom in the West versus social justice in the East—and by a culture of secrecy that tied national identity to national security. Examining post- 1945 American and Eastern European interpretive novels in dialogue with each other and with postfoundational democratic theory, The Underside of Politics brings to light the ideas, forces, and circumstances that shattered modernity’s promises (such as secularization, autonomy, and rights) on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In this context, literary fictions by Kundera and Roth, Popescu and Coover, Kiš and DeLillo become global as they reveal the trials of popular sovereignty in the “fog of the Cold War” and trace the elements around which its world discourse or global picture is constructed: the atom bomb, Stalinist show trials, anticommunist propaganda, totalitarian terror, secret military operations, and political targeting.

Cold War --- National characteristics in literature. --- Political fiction --- Cold War in literature. --- Fiction --- World politics --- Social aspects --- History and criticism. --- American exceptionalism. --- Cold War. --- World order. --- globalism. --- literature. --- political theology. --- popular sovereignty. --- prophetic writing. --- the contemporary. --- totalitarianism. --- transnational networks.

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The Naked Communist argues that the political ideologies of modernity were fundamentally determined by four basic figures: the world, the enemy, the secret, and the catastrophe. While the “world” names the totality that functioned as the ultimate horizon of modern political imagination, the three other figures define the necessary limits of this totality by reflecting on the limits of representation. The book highlights the enduring presence of these figures in the modern imagination through detailed analysis of a concrete historical example: American anti-Communist politics of the 1950's. Its primary objective is to describe the internal mechanisms of what we could call an anti- Communist “aesthetic ideology.” The book thus traces the way anti-Communist popular culture emerged in the discourse of Cold War liberalism as a political symptom of modernism. Based on a discursive analysis of American anti-Communist politics, the book presents parallel readings of modernism and popular fiction from the 1950's (nuclear holocaust novels, spy novels, and popular political novels) in order to show that, despite the radical separation of the two cultural fields, they both participated in a common ideological program.

Anti-communist movements --- Cold War --- Popular culture --- Aesthetics --- Anti-communist movements in literature. --- Cold War in literature. --- American literature --- Beautiful, The --- Beauty --- Esthetics --- Taste (Aesthetics) --- Philosophy --- Art --- Criticism --- Literature --- Proportion --- Symmetry --- Anti-communist resistance --- Underground, Anti-communist --- Communism --- World politics --- Culture, Popular --- Mass culture --- Pop culture --- Popular arts --- Communication --- Intellectual life --- Mass society --- Recreation --- Culture --- History --- Philosophy. --- Political aspects --- History and criticism. --- Psychology --- United States --- Politics and government --- Aesthetic Ideology. --- Anti-Communism. --- Catastrophe. --- Cold War. --- Enemy. --- Modernism. --- Popular fiction. --- Secrecy. --- Radio broadcasting Aesthetics