Modernism has long been characterized as more concerned with aesthetics than politics, but Jessica Berman argues that modernist narrative bridges the gap between ethics and politics, connecting ethical attitudes and responsibilitiesideas about what we ought to be and doto active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges the divisions usually drawn between "modernist" and "committed" writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation.