2019/01/01 by Ian Afflerbach · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Themes in Literature Analysis #Gothic Literature and Media Analysis #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices #CONTEST #Politics #Liberalism #Presidency #Politics of the United States #Sociology #Depiction #Ambivalence #Classical liberalism #Democracy #Aesthetics #Law #Political science #Literature #Philosophy #Psychoanalysis #Art
paper · doi:10.1353/sdn.2019.0051
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/30
It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 rendering of an American fascism, became a bestseller and national talking point once again during the 2016 presidential election. This essay takes the renewed interest in ICHH to revisit debates about its depiction of fascism, liberalism, and their contest. While scholars have often charged Lewis with failing to adequately represent a fascist regime, I show how ICHH distinguishes fascism and liberalism through their cultures of reading, valorizing the progressive, pluralistic intelligence of his liberal protagonist by depicting political reaction as a deficiency in reading habits. Lewis’s satire, however, displays a troubling ambivalence about its protagonist and his values, as it continually forecloses the liberal-democratic formal features of the realist novel. Pushing back against those championing ICHH as a liberal guidebook through the Trump presidency, I call attention to points of friction between the novel’s satirical project and contemporary political discourse in the US.