Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814781373 ISBN 13: 9780814781371

Publisher: NYU Press, 2001

Synopsis

Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies and contemporary theory, Modernism, Inc. provides a new look at the relationship between modernism and postmodernism within the critical frame of twentieth-century American culture.
Organized around the idea of "incorporation"—embodiment, repressed memory, and advanced capitalism—Modernism, Inc. covers a wide range of topics: Josephine Baker's "hot house style"; the president's penis in American political life; myth-making and the Hoover Dam; trauma, poetics, and the Armenian genocide; feminist kitsch and the recuperation of North America's "Great Lady painters"; Gertrude Stein and Jewish Social Science; the Reno Divorce Factory and the production of gender; Andy Razaf and Black Bolshevism. Collectively, the essays suggest that the relationship between the modern and the postmodern is not one of rupture, belatedness, dilution, or extremity, but of haunting.
Modernism, Inc. looks at our ghosts, and at the unspeakable secrets of modernity from which they're derived.
Contributors: Maria Damon, Walter Kalidjian, Walter Lew, Janet Lyon, William J. Maxwell, Cary Nelson, John Timberman Newcombe, David G. Nicholls, Thomas Pepper, Paula Rabinowitz, Daniel Rosenberg, Marlon Ross, Jani Scandura, Kathleen Stewart, Julia Walker.

About this title

About the Author:

Jani Scandura is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Minnesota.

Michael Thurston is Assistant Professor of English at Yale.

Review:

"An intriguing investigation of the cultures and counter-cultures of modernity. Dealing in subjects ranging from black bolshevism to feminist kitsch, from the Hoover Dam to the Reno divorce factory, the authors retell the story of American modernity in ways that are fascinating, illuminating and often unexpected." (Rita Felski,author of Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture)

"This consistently striking and fresh collection explores modernity's encryptions in bodies and machines, phantoms and genocidal trauma, nativism and bolshevism. I'm still trying to put it down." (Eric Lott,author of Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class)

"Buried Gold." (Choice)

"Fetching volume of thirteen radiant interventions." (Cultural Critique)

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0814781373
• ISBN 13: 9780814781371
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Scandura Jani, Thurston Michael