Modernism and Nihilism

✍ Scribed by Shane Weller

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 191
• Series: Modernism and...
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

At the heart of some of the most influential strands of philosophical, political, and aesthetic modernism lies the conviction that modernity is fundamentally nihilistic. This book offers a wide-ranging critical history of the concept of nihilism from its origins in French Revolutionary discourse to its place in recent theorizations of the postmodern. Key moments in that history include the concept's appropriation by political activists in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, by Nietzsche in the 1880s, by the European avant-garde and 'high' modernists in the early decades of the twentieth century, by conservative revolutionaries in Germany in the interwar years, and by major theorists in the post-Holocaust period. Focusing in particular on the abiding impact of Nietzsche's claim that art is the 'only superior counterforce' to nihilism, Weller argues that an understanding of modernism (and, indeed, of postmodernism) is impossible without a reflection upon the decisive role played by the concept of nihilism therein.   

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Introduction: Modernity, Modernism, Nihilism......Page 10
Part I: Philosophical Modernism and Nihilism......Page 24
1 From the French Revolution to Nietzsche......Page 26
2 Nietzsche's Long Shadow......Page 51
Part II: Aesthetic Modernism and Nihilism......Page 84
3 From Flaubert to Dada......Page 86
4 Kafka and After......Page 111
Part III: Postmodernism and Nihilism......Page 146
5 Our Only Chance?......Page 148
Bibliography......Page 175
Index......Page 186