Deplorable Political Consciousness in Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground

• In Event: Literature, Persons, and Modern Politics

Abstract

Contemporary political science tends to ignore role of literature in shaping politics. Instead, it appropriates mathematical and statistical formulas in its attempt to mimic the methods of the physical sciences. It does so to presumably more effectively measure things like institutional behavior, bureaucratic decision-making, public opinion, voter preferences and so on, in order to predict outcomes. This approach captures a only a partial view, at most. It misses the fundamental experience of politics as it unfolds among participants that are socially and historically conscious. Furthermore, creative writing is historically a popular vehicle for political philosophy, from Plato's Republic to Orwell's 1984. The average citizen is more likely to understand his or her place in political society in light of Orwell’s “Big Brother” than in that of Nash’s equilibrium. Of the critics that use literary fiction as a vehicle for political philosophy, perhaps the most notorious is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In his novella, Notes from Underground, a fictional tale about a bungling bureaucrat, Dostoyevsky employs various literary techniques to both anticipate and criticize the predicaments modern politics presents to the individual. Notes offers the contemporary student of political science an alternative approach to the contemporary predominant methods of political analysis.

Author

• Thomas Hutchinson