The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era: An Introduction

The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era

Introduction

The aim of this workshop and its contributions was to explore the literary and political challenges that the digital age poses to the genre of the novel, particularly the political novel. At our two-days meeting in January 2025, we examined the interaction between two types of constraint: the technological, economic and political constraints imposed by the digital age, for example through platforms designed to capture and monetise attention; and the constraints of the novel, which we understand as a reflexive form with a centuries-old history that involves symbolisation and distance. However, we viewed the new digital age not merely as a constraint, but as a condition that enables media to become an element of experimental literature capable of shaping and being shaped by the novel (or the political novel) in unprecedented ways. Here, we set out from Jessica Pressman's essay “Digital Modernism, Making It New in New Media”, where she defines “modernism” as “a strategy of innovation that employs the media of its time to reform and refashion older literary practices in ways that produce new art” (2014, 4). What Pressman calls “Digital Modernism” transposes this logic to current practices and issues: “Digital Modernism [...] allows us to reconsider how and why media is (and always has been) a central aspect of experimental literature and the strategy of making it new” (2014, 5). Our workshop has attempted to link these formal considerations to more explicitly political issues. In short, the focus of this workshop was on how the digital age, or “digital lifewords”[1], become an environment not only for the political novel, but also for the novel itself, and on how the political novel actively uses digitality for its own purposes.

In our conversations, we deliberately resisted the temptation to idealise the potential that the digital environments offer for the political novel: digital technology undoubtedly makes it possible to connect marginalised communities and redefine the relations of authority and even domination that characterise the literary practice and the literary field, but it does not automatically lead to an ideal democratisation, nor does it necessarily eradicate different forms of hierarchy.[2]

Digital technologies turn all phases of the literary process upside down, and perhaps even more fundamentally, all the relationships this literary process involves. The literary gesture is disseminated across different platforms; the book is detached from its physical carrier; the author may disappear in the face of the possibilities offered by automatic generation (artificial intelligence); and editorial hierarchies and mediations are called into question. Digital topics and practices touch on fundamental notions of literary studies. But how are these changes reflected in the novel itself? How has this new context redefined (or not) relations with the political sphere? What kind of political novel is possible in the digital age? Taking an interest in the political novel, both past and present, inevitably involves asking how it responds to, integrates, subverts or simply reflects on these issues.

As the contributions to this workshop demonstrate, the question of the role and potential of the political novel in the digital age demands a dual focus: on the novel itself – its content and forms, and how it reworks political issues or politicises the unpolitical –and on the politics that shape its social context and conditions of possibility. Even if we assume that a surge in artificial intelligence would profoundly impact existing political landscapes and literary production, turning our lifeworlds upside down, many political questions dating from the last century and the pre-digital era remain pertinent. The terms “digital age” and “digital lifewords” are used to refer to a new stage in the history of literary production in terms of its content, forms and appearances, and to a cultural environment in which digitality plays an important role in human communication and self-understanding. However, these terms should be examined from a longer historical perspective that takes into account the different geographical and political contexts in which they manifest themselves, including the different uses of digitality that occur in these contexts.

Therefore, besides focusing on the “relationship between literature and location” in a geographical sense (Veronica Paula Gómez), at the workshop we also considered location in terms of property, i. e. who owns the place of publication (the website, to begin with). We discussed the constitution of publics and the production of commons in cyberspace – for example, what is the exact status of something public when its primary purpose is profit maximisation? – as well as re-emerging forms of state agency, such as energy storytelling in the 1980s and today, and the mainstreaming of political discussions through social media and popular literary forms, as in Günter Grass's short novel Crabwalk. We also considered knowledge transfer and knowledge withholding. This effort to identify continuities, rather than just the disruptions caused by technological innovations, ultimately led us to consider digital, interactive and computer-generated elements as existing on a scale, rather than as components of a binary opposition. With this in mind, we are happy to publish workshop contributions that include the following:

• contemporary developments

Anna Murashova analyses Russian self-publishing literary platforms as spaces where political and cultural dynamics intersect. Her essay explores how these platforms have evolved amid Russia’s tightening digital control, especially after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and how they reflect gendered divisions and national identity. While often dismissed as lowbrow or escapist, the popular texts on these platforms offer marginalised voices a space to express personal and political experiences. Simultaneously, the study shows that these platforms, once seen as arenas of creative freedom, are increasingly constrained by state politics and cultural norms. In her response to Murashova, Isabell A. Meske recapitulates some key elements of Murashova’s argument and praises her analysis of the intersection of literature, politics and digital media in authoritarianism. Meske also draws parallels with historical examples of exile and oppression, as well as contemporary phenomena in the so-called ‘west’ (e.g. Kindle Direct Publishing) and in China. She also raises the pedagogic question about how digital platform-based literary consumption leads to less linguistic complexity among young readers and writers alike.

Puo-an Francisca Wu Fu also focuses on digital platforms. The essay takes Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti as a case study for understanding the role of digital platforms and the English language in contemporary German academic and anti-racist discourse. It argues that English, particularly in its U. S. form, functions as a geopolitical “supra-language” that shapes political identity, academic legitimacy and internet culture. Through the protagonist’s journey, the novel reveals how English dominates online activism and university discourse, often serving as a symbol of imported authority and community. Joana Roqué Pesquer demonstrates how small presses operate not just as cultural institutions but as sites of negotiation between economic structures, sociopolitical commitment and literary experiment. She also analyses the political novel by Jessi Jezewska Stevens The Visitors which is saturated with the syntax of programming languages, database queries and machine logic, both on a paratextual and textual level, revealing a fault in digital infrastructure as a system that promises coherence but delivers only selective readability.

• historical retrospectives – or perspectives that appear ‘historical’ from today’s perspective.

Sophie Salvo’s analysis of Günter Grass’s short novel Crabwalk not only deals with a non-contemporary novel, but also reflects on the changing conditions during the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, a crucial aspect of our Caponeu project. Although Crabwalk is set at the very beginning of the digital age, the effect of the internet on political discourse and its monopoly on the political imagination are already palpable. In his response, Elias Kreuzmair suggests broadening the discussion by taking into account the complex media discourse beyond the book-internet binary; the interplay of genre, media, and gender; and the political potential of the media in building communities. He emphasises the importance of considering how literature circulates and engages with other media, and how it reflects on these processes of interaction and circulation in order to highlight its political significance.

• transcultural perspectives

Verónica Paula Gómez explores how the idea of nation, that has been considered obsolete for some time, is being reshaped in today’s geopolitical cyberspace. Gómez claims that digital literature disrupts the traditional connection between the novel and the nation-state by proposing a new “political domicile” called the interzone. Unlike printed national literature rooted in territorial sovereignty, digital literature – through its intermedia forms, code-based language and networked production – exists in a decentralised, transnational cyberspace. By analysing two digital works (Writers Are Not Strangers and novelling), Gómez shows how these texts challenge linearity, fixed authorship and national identity. She concludes by calling for a rethinking of literary categories and emphasises the political implications of form and media in the digital age. In his response to Gómez’s essay, Liam Connell questions whether the democratic potential of internet-based texts still holds in an era dominated by the reassertion of big tech and private property – which calls into question the utopian quality of the communicative infrastructure we commonly refer to as the internet. He also considers whether postcolonial novels have already achieved the kind of deterritorialisation that Gómez ascribes to electronic literature: “Translation technologies may promise to achieve something more but would that re-enshrine national belonging or further disperse the reader from a national frame?”

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We would like to thank all participants once again for making the workshop on the challenges of the digital era such a great and stimulating exchange. In addition to our other speakers Anna-Lena Eick and Inna Häkkinen, we especially thank to respondents Liam Connell, Isabell Meske and Elias Kreuzmair as well as Tara Talwar Windsor and Rossie Artemis, who agreed to participate as experts both on both digitality and on the other topics mentioned above, ranging from the historical perspective of the novel to its geographical, or rather: geopolitical, significance in a globalised world.

Works cited  

Pressman, Jessica. 2014. Digital Modernism. Making It New in New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Risse, Matthias. 2023. Political Theory of the Digital Age. Where Artificial Intelligence Might Take Us. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.  

Skains, R. Lyle. 2022. Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction. London: Bloomsbury.