City Research Online

Abstract

History bears testament to the Manifesto’s planetary circulation, global readership and material impact. Interpretations of this short document have affected the lives of millions globally, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. The text is somehow able to outline the complex theoretical foundations for the world’s most enduring critique of capitalism in a comprehensible and persuasive language, and as such, readers of all classes, professions, nations and ethnicities have drawn on – and in many cases warped and manipulated – its valuable insights. Whilst arguing for the importance of the Manifesto as an anti-imperial book and exploring the reasons for its viral circulation, this chapter will also show that it is a self-reflexive text that predicts its own historic impact. It is the formal and generic – or, in fact, ‘literary’ – qualities of this astonishing document that have given it such primacy in the canon of anti-imperial and anti-capitalist writing.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	This is an Accepted Manuscript that has been published in Fighting Words: Fifteen Books That Shaped the Postcolonial World editied by Dominic Davies, Erica Lombard and Benjamin Mountford in the series Race and Resistance Across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century Dominic Davies. The original work can be found at: https://doi.org/10.3726/b13185. © Peter Lang AG 2017. All rights reserved.
Subjects:	P Language and Literature P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Media, Culture & Creative Industries > English, Publishing & Creative Writing

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