Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital

by Jani Scandura (Editor), Michael Thurston (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814708569
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2000
Series:	Cultural Front , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

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

Michael Thurston is Assistant Professor of English at Yale.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Introduction: America And The Phantom Modern	1
I	Body	19
1.	Machine Dreams	21
2.	Josephine Baker's Hothouse	29
3.	Trespassing The Colorline: Aggressive Mobility And Sexual Trangression In The Construction Of New Negro Modernity	48
4.	Bodies, Voices, Words: Modern Drama And The Problem Of The Literary	68
II	Memory	81
5.	No One Is Buried In Hoover Dam	84
6.	The Edge Of Modernism: Genocide And The Poetics Of Traumatic Memory	107
7.	Writing, Social Science, And Ethnicity In Gertrude Stein And Certain Others	133
8.	Jean Toomer's Cane, Modernization, And The Spectral Folk	151
9.	Grafts, Transplants, Translation: The Americanizing Of Younghill Kang	171
III	Capital	191
10.	Great Lady Painters, Inc.: Icons Of Feminism, Modernism, And The Nation	193
11.	Kitchen Mechanics And Parlor Nationalists: Andy Razaf, Black Bolshevism, And Harlem's Renaissance	219
12.	Reno-Vating Gender: Place, Production, And The Reno Divorce Factory	238
13.	Politics And Labor In Poetry Of The Fin De Siecle And Beyond: Fragments Of An Unwritable History	268
	Contributors	289
	Index	293

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"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

"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

"Buried Gold."

-Choice,

"Fetching volume of thirteen radiant interventions."

-Cultural Critique

Editorial Reviews

"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

"Buried Gold."

-Choice

"Fetching volume of thirteen radiant interventions."

-Cultural Critique

"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

From the Publisher