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Anarchy & culture : the aesthetic politics of modernism

Author: David Weir; Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress)
Publisher: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, ©1997.
Series: Critical perspectives on modern culture.
Edition/Format:   Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
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  Read more...
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Weir, David, 1947 Apr. 20-
Anarchy & culture.
Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, c1997
(OCoLC)646934417
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: David Weir; Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress)
ISBN: 1558490833 9781558490833 1558490841 9781558490840
OCLC Number: 36024045
Description: ix, 303 p. ; 24 cm.
Series Title: Critical perspectives on modern culture.
Other Titles: Anarchy and culture
Responsibility: David Weir.

Abstract:

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.

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