Includes bibliographical references (pages 300-313) and index
Theories of the avant-garde -- Re-writing the discursive world: revolution and the expressionist avant-garde -- Counter-discourses of the avant-garde: Jameson, Bakhtin and the problem of realism -- The poetics of hysteria: expressionist drama and the melodramatic imagination -- Kafka's photograph of the imaginary. Dialogical interplay between realism and the fantastic. (The metamorphosis) -- Weimar silent film and expressionism: representational instability and oppositional discourse in The cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- Conclusion. Postmodernism and the avant-garde
In Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity, Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde. He assesses the importance of the avant-garde for contemporary culture and for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulation of the avant-garde in Lukacs, Bloch and Burger, especially their discussion of aesthetic autonomy, and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin
Combining close textual readings of a wide range of works of literature as well as films, it draws on a rich array of critical theories, such as those of Bakhtin, Todorov, MacCabe, Belsey and Raymond Williams. This interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in modernist and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, and provides a critical rethinking of the present-day controversy regarding postmodernity
