A Vast Amount of Strategy: Soviet Mapping, Neoliberal Publishing and Political Communication
Simon Frost
Bournemouth University
Chris Madders
Abstract
Certain domains of cultural production are supposed to be free from the pressures by vested interests or corporate organisations and their self-promotional agendas. Writings from the domains of Arts and literature and from the Sciences are supposed to retain a high degree of autonomy. While it is a commonplace that this claim is an oversimplification, a critique that is exemplified in now-questionable positions adopted by critical Marxism from 1970s and 1980s media and literary criticism, it is equally common to forget how deep and still-present the over-simplification can be. Works of literature from the humanities, or mapping from applied sciences are supposed to be reliable texts free from promotional bias. But with two prime, and perhaps necessarily extreme examples from Soviet world mapping and the phenomenon of world literature, the extent to which both domains are irrevocably entangled becomes apparent. Through its comparative case studies, this article aims to suggest a new outline to how practices in contemporary corporate literary publishing may be indeed be saturated in the logic of corporate promotion.Author Biography
Simon Frost, Bournemouth University
Simon Frost a). Humanities and Law; Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK. Simon Frost is Principle Lecturer in English at Bournemouth University; Senior Commissioning Editor for Oxford University Press ORE (Oxford Research Encyclopedia); former Director of Transnational Affairs and Executive Board member of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). His second monograph, Reading, Wanting and Broken Economics, was published by SUNY Press in spring 2021.References
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