عنوان

Anarchy & culture :

(Number (ISBN

1558490833

(Number (ISBN

1558490841

(Number (ISBN

9781558490833

(Number (ISBN

9781558490840

Number

b518457

Title Proper

Anarchy & culture :

General Material Designation

[Book]

Other Title Information

the aesthetic politics of modernism /

First Statement of Responsibility

David Weir

Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.

Amherst :

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Massachusetts Press,

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

[1997]

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

©1997

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

ix, 303 pages ;

Dimensions

24 cm

Series Title

Critical perspectives on modern culture

Text of Note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-296) and index

Text of Note

Anarchism is generally understood as a failed ideology, a political philosophy that once may have had many followers but today attracts only cranks and eccentrics. This book argues that the decline of political anarchism is only half the story; the other half is a tale of widespread cultural success. David Weir develops this thesis in several ways. He begins by considering the place of culture in the political thought of the classical anarchist thinkers William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. He then shows how the perceived "anarchy" of nineteenth-century society induced writers such as Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to turn away from politics and seek unity in the idea of a common culture. Yet as other late nineteenth-century writers and artists began to sympathize with anarchism, the prospect of a common culture became increasingly remote. In Weir's view, the affinity for anarchism that developed among members of the artistic avant-garde lies behind much of fin de siecle culture. Indeed, the emergence of modernism itself can be understood as the aesthetic realization of anarchist politics. In support of this contention, Weir shows that anarchism is the key aesthetic principle informing the work of a broad range of modernist figures, from Henrik Ibsen and James Joyce to dadaist Hugo Ball and surrealist Luis Bunuel. Weir concludes by reevaluating the phenomenon of postmodernism as only the most recent case of the migration of politics into aesthetics, and by suggesting that anarchism is still very much with us as a cultural condition

Title

Anarchy & culture.

Parallel Title

Anarchy and culture

Anarchism

Literature and society

Literature, Modern-- 19th century-- History and criticism

Modernism (Literature)

Politics and literature

Number

Edition

Class number

Book number

Weir, David,1947 April 20-

Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress)

Date of Transaction

20160712062502.0

Electronic name

[Book]

Y