Modernist Form and the Myth of Jewification

272 Pages·2013·2.972 MB·English

by  Neil Levi

Modernist Form and the Myth of Jewifi cation
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Modernist Form and the
Myth of Jewifi cation
Neil Levi
Fordham University Press
New York 2014
Copyright © 2014 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levi, Neil Jonathan, 1967–
Modernist form and the myth of Jewifi cation / Neil Levi. —
First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “This book argues that the antisemitic interpreta-
tion of modernist form as a symptom of a mobile, contagious
Jewish spirit needs to be treated as integral to the history of
European modernism. The notion of modernist form as Jewifi ed
lies at the heart of both a certain modernism’s hostile reception,
and its self-conception” — Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-5506-1 (hardback)
1. Modernism (Art) 2. Art criticism. 3. Antisemitism.
I. Title.
NX456.5.M64L48 2014
700'.4112—dc23
2013016311
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
For Beth
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C on t e n t s
Ac know ledgm ents ix
Introduction: Phobic Reading, Modernist Form,
and the Figure of the Antisemite 1
part i: modernist form as judaization
1. Genealogies: Judaization, Wagner, Nordau 23
2. Jews, Art, and History: The Nazi Exhibition of
“Degenerate Art” as Historicopo liti cal Spectacle 50
3. Fanatical Abstraction: Wyndham Lewis’s Critique of
Modernist Form as Judaization in Time and Western Man 90
part ii: modernist form and the
antisemitic imagination
4. Straw Men: Projection, Personifi cation, and Narrative
Form in Ulysses 121
5. Images of the Bilderverbot: Adorno, Antisemitism, and
the Enemies of Modernism 139
6. The Labor of Late Modernist Poetics: Beckett after Céline 170
Notes 201
Bibliography 235
Index 247
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Ac k now l e d g m e n t s
First thanks must go to my invaluable mentors, Franco Moretti and An-
dreas Huyssen: this book would not have come into existence without
them. For their crucial encouragement and support for this project in its
earliest incarnation, I would also like to thank David J. Levin, Ursula
Heise, Benjamin Buchloh, and Martin Puchner. David Damrosch, Colleen
Lye, and Kelly Barry made helpful suggestions at important stages of my
research. Dominick LaCapra, Jim Shapiro, and Rebecca Walkowitz gave
me valuable advice and encouragement when I most needed it. I am espe-
cially grateful to Andreas and Dominick for their continued support of my
work in recent years.
Early research on this book was made possible by the support of the
German Academic Exchange Serv ice (DAAD). I would also like to thank
the archives of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin for allowing me access to
its newspaper and image fi les on the “Degenerate Art” exhibition. A Sesqui
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney gave me time to re-
think this project from the ground up; I am also grateful to Sydney’s En-
glish department for providing me with an institutional home for that
period. Support from Drew University, including a research grant and pe-
riods of leave, gave me time to turn this into the book I wanted it to be.
Many thanks in par tic u lar to my colleagues in the Eng lish department for
all their encouragement and moral support over the period of this book’s
development.
I would like to thank Helen Tartar of Fordham University Press for her
patient support of this project, as well as the authors of the two anony-
mous reports I received on an earlier version of the book’s manuscript.
ix