Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Translation/Transnation Book 15)

Poetry of the Revolution tells the story of political and artistic upheavals through the manifestos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ranging from the Communist Manifesto to the manifestos of the 1960s and beyond, it highlights the varied alliances and rivalries between socialism and repeated waves of avant-garde art. Martin Puchner argues that the manifesto—what Marx called the "poetry" of the revolution—was the genre through which modern culture articulated its revolutionary ambitions and desires. When it intruded into the sphere of art, the manifesto created an art in its own image: shrill and aggressive, political and polemical. The result was "manifesto art"—combinations of manifesto and art that fundamentally transformed the artistic landscape of the twentieth century. Central to modern politics and art, the manifesto also measures the geography of modernity. The translations, editions, and adaptations of such texts as the Communist Manifesto and the Futurist Manifesto registered and advanced the spread of revolutionary modernity and of avant-garde movements across Europe and to the Americas. The rapid diffusion of these manifestos was made "possible by networks—such as the successive socialist internationals and international avant-garde movements—that connected Santiago and Zurich, Moscow and New York, London and Mexico City. Poetry of the Revolution thus provides the point of departure for a truly global analysis of modernism and modernity. Frontmatter LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (page xi) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xiii) INTRODUCTION Manifestos-Poetry and Revolution (page 1) PART ONE MARX AND THE MANIFESTO 1 The Formation of a Genre (page 11) 2 Marxian Speech Acts (page 23) 3 The History of the Communist Manifesto (page 33) 4 The Geography of the Communist Manifesto (page 47) PART TWO THE FUTURISM EFFECT 5 Marinetti and Avant-Garde Manifesto (page 69) 6 Russian Futurism and the Soviet State (page 94) 7 The Rear Guard of British Modernism (page 107) PART THREE THE AVANT-GARDE AT LARGE 8 Dada and the Internationalism of the Avant-Garde (page 135) 9 Huidobro's Creation of a Latin American Vanguard (page 166) PART FOUR MANIFESTOS AS MEANS AND END 10 Surrealism, Latent and Manifest (page 179) 11 Artaud's Manifesto Theatre (page 196) PART FIVE A NEW POETRY FOR A NEW REVOLUTION 12 The Manifesto in the Sixties (page 211) 13 Debord's Society of the Counterspectacle (page 220) 14 The Avant-Garde Is Dead: Long Live the Avant-Garde! (page 241) EPILOGUE Poetry for the Future (page 259) NOTES (page 263) BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 295) INDEX (page 309) Martin Puchner tells the story of political and artistic upheavals through the political manifestos of the 19th and 20th centuries. He argues that the manifesto was the genre through which modern culture articulated its revolutionary ambitions and desires The Communist Manifesto influenced the course of history more directly and lastingly than almost any other text. Martin Puchner. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [295]-307) And Index.