Modernism and Nihilism

191 Pages·2011·1.16 MB·English

by  Shane Weller

Modernism and …
Series Editor: Roger Griffin, Professor in Modern History, Oxford Brookes
University, UK.
The series Modernism and ... invites experts in a wide range of cultural, social, scien-
tific and political phenomena to explore the relationship between a particular topic
in modern history and ‘modernism’. Apart from their intrinsic value as short but
groundbreaking specialist monographs, the books aim through their cumulative
impact to expand the application of this highly contested term beyond its conven-
tional remit of art and aesthetics. Our definition of modernism embraces the vast
profusion of creative acts, reforming initiatives, and utopian projects that, since the
late nineteenth century, have sought either to articulate, and so symbolically tran-
scend, the spiritual malaise or decadence of modernity, or to find a radical solution to
it through a movement of spiritual, social, political – even racial – regeneration and
renewal. The ultimate aim is to foster a spirit of transdisciplinary collaboration in
shifting the structural forces that define modern history beyond their c onventional
conceptual frameworks.
Titles include:
Marius Turda
MODERNISM AND EUGENICS
Shane Weller
MODERNISM AND NIHILISM
Forthcoming titles:
Tamir Bar-On
MODERNISM AND THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT
Maria Bucur
MODERNISM AND GENDER
Frances Connelly
MODERNISM AND THE GROTESQUE
Elizabeth Darling
MODERNISM AND DOMESTICITY
Matthew Feldman
MODERNISM AND PROPAGANDA
Claudio Fogu
MODERNISM AND MEDITERRANEANISM
Roger Griffin
MODERNISM AND TERRORISM
Ben Hutchinson
MODERNISM AND STYLE
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Carmen Kuhling
MODERNISM AND NEW RELIGIONS
Patricia Leighten
MODERNISM AND ANARCHISM
Thomas Linehan
MODERNISM AND BRITISH SOCIALISM
Gregory Maertz
MODERNISM AND NAZI PAINTING
Paul March-Russell
MODERNISM AND SCIENCE FICTION
Anna Katharina Schaffner
MODERNISM AND PERVERSION
Richard Shorten
MODERNISM AND TOTALITARIANISM
Mihai Spariosu
MODERNISM, EXILE AND UTOPIA
Roy Starrs
MODERNISM AND JAPANESE CULTURE
Erik Tonning
MODERNISM AND CHRISTIANITY
Veronica West-Harling
MODERNISM AND THE QUEST
Modernism and ...
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MODERNISM
AND
NIHILISM
Shane Weller
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© Shane Weller 2011
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ISBN 978–0–230–23104–7 paperback
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weller, Shane.
Modernism and nihilism / Shane Weller.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0–230–23104–7 (pbk.)
1. Philosophy, Modern. 2. Nihilism. I. Title.
B791. W45 2011
149'.8—dc22 2010034765
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
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In memory of my father
John Jeremy Weller (1938–2010)
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CONTENTS
Introduction: Modernity, Modernism, Nihilism 1
Part I: Philosophical Modernism and Nihilism 15
1. From the French Revolution to Nietzsche 17
2. Nietzsche’s Long Shadow 42
Part II: Aesthetic Modernism and Nihilism 75
3. From Flaubert to Dada 77
4. Kafka and After 102
Part III: Postmodernism and Nihilism 137
5. Our Only Chance? 139
Bibliography 166
Index 177
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INTRODUCTION:
MODERNITY, MODERNISM,
NIHILISM
In the field of modernism studies, it has long been the accepted
practice to consider modernism primarily, if not exclusively, as an
aesthetic phenomenon. As Roger Griffin argues in Modernism and
Fascism (2007), however, there are also philosophical and political
forms of modernism, and if one wishes to move towards a more com-
prehensive understanding of the movement, then one has to analyse
all three forms in a manner that takes account of their relation to
one another. The second major claim made by Griffin in his work on
fascism is that modernism in this broader sense is to be understood
as a reaction against a modernity that is seen to have passed from
a revolutionary, progressive phase in the late eighteenth and first
half of the nineteenth century, to a decadent and ultimately nihil-
ist phase in the later nineteenth and first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. In short, modernism is a ‘revolt against decadence’, an attempt
both to destroy that which, in the realms of philosophy, politics,
and aesthetics, no longer effectively bestows shape and meaning on
experience, and to find ‘new sources of meaning, spirituality, and
communality’ (Griffin 2007: 52). At their most fundamental level, all
forms of modernism, be they philosophical, political, or aesthetic,
are committed to the idea of palingenesis, to the rebirth of culture
in a form that is uncontaminated by the spiritual sickness besetting
modernity.
As David Harvey remarks, however, modernism is ‘a troubled
and fluctuating aesthetic response to conditions of modernity pro-
duced by a particular process of modernization’ (Harvey 1989: 98).
These fluctuations are nowhere more evident than in the history of
modernism’s relation to the concept of nihilism. If one is to begin to
grasp in its complexity the relationship between modernity, modern-
ism, and nihilism as a whole, then, as we shall see, the c onjunction
1