Modernist Work : Labor, Aesthetics, and the Work of Art

Through a wide-ranging selection of essays representing a variety of different media, national contexts and critical approaches, this volume provides a broad overview of the idea of work in modernism, considered in its aesthetic, theoretical, historical and political dimensions. Several individual chapters discuss canonical figures, including Richard Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein, but Modernist Work also addresses contexts that are chronologically and geographically foreign to the main stream of modernist studies, such as Swedish proletarian writing, Haitian nationalism and South African inheritors of Dada. Prominent historical themes include the ideas of class, revolution and the changing nature of women’s work, while more conceptual chapters explore topics including autonomy, inheritance, intention, failure and intimacy. Modernist Work investigates an important but relatively neglected topic in modernist studies, demonstrating the central relevance of the concept of “work” to a diverse selection of writers and artists and opening up pathways for future research. This collection posits that “work” is a modernist keyword. In the phrase “work of art”, it designates one of modernism’s most urgently debated aesthetic and ontological questions, calling to mind such themes as the artwork’s autonomy or its status in an age of mechanical reproduction. As the name of a process, “work” denotes another, closely related subject of modernist inquiry, to do with the social identity of the artist and the vexed status of artistic production in a period of accelerating industrialization. “Work”, finally, is a modernist keyword because the transformation of the Arbeitswelt was one of the modernist period’s most significant vectors of historical change. Through a wide-ranging selection of essays representing a variety of different media, national contexts, and critical approaches, this collection provides a broad overview of the idea of work in modernism, considered in its historical, political, aesthetic, and theoretical dimensions. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS FIGURES CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERNIST WORK “[T]he inevitable collapse of all technique” Arts and crafts “[T]he most advanced procedures of material production” “[M]aking and seeing” Overview Notes Part I THE WORK OF ART Chapter 1 THE ABSOLUTE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE WORK: FRANZ KAFKA’S “THE BURROW ” Notes Chapter 2 AUTONOMY, DIFFICULTY, AND THE WORK OF LITERATURE IN WYNDHAM LEWIS’S TARR AND ANDRÉ GIDE’S THE COUNTERFEITERS Notes Chapter 3 MIMESIS AND THE TASK OF THE WRITER FOR LAWRENCE AND WOOLF Lawrence: (art)work imitates life Woolf: life imitates art(work) Notes Part II A RTISTIC LABOR Chapter 4 RICHARD STRAUSS AT WORK IN HIS WORKS Wife, child, music: Strauss’s values Strauss’s heroic avatar Strauss’s domestic persona Notes Chapter 5 STEIN’S IMMATERIAL LABORS Notes Chapter 6 TRACE AND FACTURE: LEGACIES OF THE “READY-MADE” IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN ART Introduction: From representation to re-presentation Some implications of the ready-made Trace and facture A perpetual state of becoming Transforming the everyday Rupture/continuum Notes Part III REPRESENTING WORK AND WORKERS Chapter 7 JOSEPH CONRAD’S NOSTROMO: WORK, INHERITANCE, AND DESERT IN THE MODERNIST NOVEL Anti-commercialism The fruits of work: inheritance as moral desert Notes Chapter 8 MAGIC, MODERNITY, AND WOMEN AT WORK Notes Chapter 9 THE DISCLOSURE OF WORK IN THE POETRY OF RON SILLIMAN Autobiography and portraiture The Heideggerian project Heidegger, Enframing, and the work of art Continuity and discontinuity “Albany,” Enframing, and violence Notes Part IV CLASS IDENTITY AND CLASS CONFLICT Chapter 10 SWEDISH SOCIAL MODERNISM: THE INWARD AND OUTWARD TURN IN EYVIND JOHNSON’S STAD I LJUS Introduction Working-class literature and modernism in Sweden The inward and outward turn in Stad i Ljus Notes Chapter 11 PERCUSSION AND REPERCUSSION: THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION AS WORKER UPRISING IN GUY ENDORE’S BABOUK (1934) AND C. L. R. J AMES’S BLACK JACOBINS (1938) Sounding Black Jacobinism “No romance this”: Guy Endore’s Babouk Notes Chapter 12 DOMESTIC HOLOCAUST: MICHAEL HANEKE’S INTRACTABLE CLASS WAR A victim of numbers: The Seventh Continent Culture masks politics: Hidden Coda: The pathologies of privilege in Happy End Notes A FTERWORD: WORK, MODERNISM, AND THINKING THROUGH THE AESTHETIC Notes INDEX "Through a wide-ranging selection of essays representing a variety of different media, national contexts and critical approaches, this volume provides a broad overview of the idea of work in modernism, considered in its historical, political, aesthetic and theoretical dimensions. Several individual chapters discuss canonical figures, including Richard Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein, but Modernist Work also addresses contexts that are chronologically and geographically foreign to the main stream of modernist studies, such as Swedish proletarian writing, Haitian nationalism and South African inheritors of Dada. Prominent historical themes include the ideas of class, revolution and the changing nature of women's work, while more conceptual chapters explore topics including autonomy, inheritance, intention, failure and intimacy." -- Provided by publisher