The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature by Peter J. Kalliney (review)

Reviewed by: The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature by Peter J. Kalliney Christopher Krentz Peter J. Kalliney. The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature. Princeton UP, 2022. xv + 320 pp. With The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature, Peter J. Kalliney provides an original and nuanced contribution to the understanding of postcolonial literary production. While most readers of the anglophone literature of decolonization understandably approach it as a matter primarily between colonized and colonizer, or as a product of global capitalism, Kalliney reveals striking ways in which the Cold War shaped literature in former colonies after World War II. From soft cultural diplomacy that helped to nurture writers to more aggressive measures such as surveillance and imprisonment, powerful states tried to influence literary ventures in the Global South in ways that Kalliney argues are not marginal but rather integral to literatures of decolonization. This book is not a political diatribe. Drawing on an amazing amount of archival research, and ambitiously ranging from sub-Saharan Africa to China to the Caribbean, Kalliney shows how post-colonial writers did not simply embrace one side or the other in the Cold War, but instead used both sides on occasion while staking out their own intellectual independence. To Kalliney's great credit, he avoids partisan political ideology and lets the evidence guide him. Such an approach apparently did not come easily. He reports, in the Conclusion, that "it took me a long time to make decent sense of the archival record" (246). When Kalliney presented his preliminary research, he was "surprised by the number of audience members and readers expecting me to adopt a definitive position on the cold war" (15). But Kalliney resists taking a partisan political stance because few of the writers do; instead, they consistently seek freedom from orthodoxy. Early on Kalliney directs attention to the soft power of cultural diplomacy programs that, sometimes clandestinely, helped to support the development of postcolonial writers. In chapter 3, he discusses the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an organization dedicated to promoting the arts; most important in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the CCF "consistently supported the independence of speech and thought from state oversight" (58) and was tacitly against authoritarianism. The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly financed its operations in Africa. The CCF sponsored the well-known postcolonial African literature conference at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, with Chinua Achebe and others participating in key debates about language, End Page 185 culture, and indigeneity. In the same way, the CCF also supported other conferences, African literary magazines such as Black Orpheus and Transition, and even radio broadcasts. One big break early in Wole Soyinka's career was winning a drama prize sponsored by the CCF. Although the CIA largely adopted a hands-off approach, in part to hide its involvement, when the agency's participation came to light in 1967 it caused a scandal. The CCF and the US looked like hypocrites, advocating the independence of speech and thought from state oversight but doing the opposite. Like the US, the Soviet Union was actively involved in trying to influence postcolonial writers. The revelation of the CIA's funding helped to create an opening for the Soviet-backed Afro-Asian Writers' Association (AAWA), which Kalliney asserts outlasted the CCF and was arguably the most influential postwar network. The organization's magazine, Lotus, was published simultaneously in three languages (Arabic, English, and French) and did not attempt to hide its sponsor. Kalliney reports that "it will come as no surprise that Lotus tends to depict the Soviet Union as having achieved a cultural and social level to which other decolonizing nations might aspire" (83), including respect for national minorities (implicitly in contrast to the US) and Indigenous cultural traditions, high levels of education, gender parity, and generous state patronage of cultural workers. Furthermore, Kalliney shows that the Soviet Union published a lot of books from the 1950s to the 1980s. It had a robust translation industry, too, all of which allowed African writers such as Achebe and Alex La Guma to achieve Soviet readerships. Kalliney makes it clear that postcolonial writers adroitly took advantage of...