Subjectivity

Subjectivity is one of the central issues of twentieth-century philosophy, literature and art. Modernism, which “discovered” the subconscious, put an end to the belief in the Cartesian Subject as the autonomous centre of knowledge and self-consciousness. Instead, the subject became something uncontrollable, unreliable, incomplete and fragmentary. The attempts to recapture the unity of the subject led to the existential quest and the flight into ideology (nazism, communism). Postmodernism, the cultural movement of the second half of the twentieth century, did not consider the subject any longer as an important category. Attention was focused on the “I” and the “Other”, on dialogism and polyphonism (Bakhtin). Ideology lost its appeal and so did the “great” stories (Lyotard). In this issue of Avant-Garde Critical Studies the problem of subjectivity in twentieth-century culture is discussed from various angles by specialists in the field of philosophy, literature, film, music and dance. INTRODUCTION DYNAMICS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN THE HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDE 1. Introduction 2. An Analysis of Four Avant-Garde Texts. 3. Conclusion Notes Bibliography DADAIST SUBJECTIVITY AND THE POLITICS OF INDIFFERENCE Notes Bibliography SUBJECTIVITY IN A POST-COLONIAL SYMBOLIC THE ANXIETY OF JOYCE: Notes Bibliography PROUST AND SUBJECTIVITY1 1. The awakenings of the self 2. Mourning or the experience of the multiple self The multiplicity of the other The work of mourning Albertine multiplied The self of the hero multiplied 3. The sleeper, the mourner, the writer Notes Bibliography A GLIMPSE OF THE SELF 1. The persistence of the approach of the self 2. Images of the approach of the self and the confrontation with this tendency 3. Monologue and narration in the dramatic texts Notes Bibliography THE SUBJECT IN MODERN RUSSIAN POETRY Vladimir Mayakovsky Boris Pasternak Velimir Khlebnikov The postmodernists Notes Bibliography SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE Notes TESTED TO THE BREAKING POINT: POSTMODERNITY IN MODERNITY Knowledge and the critique of knowledge The postmodern critique of the “modern” conception of language and its consequences Art and Ethics Notes Bibliography The Russian Novel as a Serial Murder or The Poetics of Bureaucracy Notes SUBJECTIVITY AS A BASIC PRESUPPOSITION OF MODERNITY IN MUSIC Musical examples Notes NEW SUBJECTIVITY IN CINEMA The Hitchcockian “Subject”: Guilty by Jouissance or Confused in Time? Vertigo: The Abyss of the Real and the Crystal of Time Strange Days: Brain Stimulation and a Bergsonian Ethics of Time Notes Bibliography IT TAKES THREE TO EPISTEMOLOGY The problem Epistemology Method Representation Notes Bibliography