ABSTRACT The article reviews mid-century debates about politics and art by Sartre and Adorno to tease out a coherent sense of the political dimension of the novel form. The novel is essentially mediated by art-autonomous concerns, but it nonetheless exists to serve an ethical or political function. Alain Robbe-Grillet is then reviewed as developing a (late) modernist, critical, political aesthetic. I then closely read several mid-60s novels linked within a capacious understanding of World Literature as the modern world-system. Out (1964) by Christine Brooke-Rose is juxtaposed with A Grain of Wheat (1967) by Ngugi wa Thiong’o to bring out key questions in the debate: the role of tradition and technique, the necessity of critical social knowledge, and the importance of the implied reader. While Adorno provides one of the most compelling accounts of modern art and the relation of aesthetics and politics, his contemporary interlocutors still have much to add to a critical understanding of the artwork, and finally Ngugi’s example remains a vital one for thinking about these issues.

中文翻译：

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大约1965年小说的政治：与Ngugi wa Thiong'o一起阅读Brooke-Rose

摘要本文回顾了萨特（Sartre）和阿多诺（Adorno）在20世纪中叶关于政治和艺术的辩论，以梳理这种小说形式的政治层面的连贯感。这部小说实质上是由艺术自主的问题所介导的，但它的存在却具有伦理或政治功能。阿兰·罗伯-格里耶（Alain Robbe-Grillet）随后被评述为发展（晚期）现代主义，批判性的政治美学。然后，我仔细阅读了几本60年代中期的小说，这些小说在对世界文学作为现代世界体系的宽广理解中联系在一起。Christine Brooke-Rose的《 Out（1964）》与Ngugi wa Thiong'o的《 A Grain of Wheat》（1967）并列，提出了辩论中的关键问题：传统和技术的作用，批判性社会知识的必要性以及隐含读者的重要性。