Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:05:03.236Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Globalism’s Prehistory: Technologies of Modernism

from Part I - Genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Julian Murphet
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Get access

Summary

This essay considers modernist internationalism and formal mutation in light of the globalized media ecology brought about by imperialism’s capitalist monopoly of the world-system. Since imperialism and colonialism constituted the first ever properly global system of control and circulation, modernism’s global imaginary and technical innovations cannot be understood outside of a world economic and technological frame. Building on scholarly narratives of modernism’s global vision and its metropolitan incorporation of the colonial periphery/“other,” this article shows how new media technology allowed for the rounding of the world and the advent of new literary forms such as the montage. Media discussed include cinema, photography, magazines, and the phonograph, while poets considered include but are not limited to Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Blaise Cendrars.

Keywords

modernismcinemamediaimperialismglobalization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 148 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor, and Horkheimer, Max. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford Univeristy Press.Google Scholar
Ahearn, Barry, ed. 2003. The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky. Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Appolonio, Umbro, ed. 1973. Futurist Manifestos. Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cendrars, Blaise. 1992. Complete Poems. Trans. Ron Padgett. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clover, Joshua, and Christopher, Nealon. 2017. “Literary and Economic Value.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. July 27, Oxford University Press. https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-123Google Scholar
Cowie, Peter, ed. 1971. A Concise History of the Cinema. Vol. I: Before 1940. A. Zwemmer.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. 1974. The Waste Land: Collected Poems, 1909–1962. Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Hikmet, Nazim. 2002. Human Landscapes from My Country. Trans. Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing. Persea Books.Google Scholar
Jameson, Frederic. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso,Google Scholar
Jameson, Frederic. 2007. “Interview with Sabry Hafez, Abbas Al-Tonsi, and Mona Abousenna.” In Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism, ed. Buchanan, Ian. Duke University Press, n.p.Google Scholar
Jennison, Ruth. 2019 “‘A Whole New Set of Stars’: Poetics and Revolutionary Consciousness.” In Communism and Poetry: Writing against Capital, ed. Jennison, Ruth and Murphet, Julian. Palgrave Macmillan, 209–29.Google Scholar
Kadlec, David. 2004. “Early Soviet Cinema and American Poetry.” Modernism/modernity, Vol. 11, No. 2: 299–331.Google Scholar
Kittler, Friedrich. 1999. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Konuk, Mutlu. 2002. “Introduction.” In Human Landscapes from My Country, ed. Hikmet, Nazim; trans. Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing Persea Books.Google Scholar
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, Corra, Bruno, Settimelli, Emilio, et al. 2004. “The Futurist Cinema.” Trans. R. W. Flint. In Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed. Simpson, Philip, Utterson, Andrew, and Shepherdson, K. J.. Vol. I. Routledge, 225–28.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. 1978. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, Robert C.. Norton, 469–500.Google Scholar
Mayakovsky, Vladimir. 2016. “Vladimir Mayakovsky” and Other Poems. Ed. and trans. Womack, James. Carcanet.Google Scholar
McKay, Claude. 2008. Complete Poems. Ed. Maxwell, William J.. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Mirrlees, Hope. 1919. Paris: A Poem. Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Murphet, Julian. 2009. Multimedia Modernism: Literature and the Anglo-American Avant-Garde. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Musser, Charles. 1997. “Silent Cinema, 1895–1929: Documentary.” In The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. Oxford University Press, 86–94.Google Scholar
Prévost, Jean. 1927. “André Gide and Marc Allegret’s Voyage to the Congo.” Close-Up, Vol. 1, No. 1 (July): 40.Google Scholar
Pisano, Dominick, ed. 2003. The Airplane in American Culture. University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ram, Harsha. 2016. “The Scale of Global Modernisms: Imperial, National, Regional, Local.” PMLA, Vol. 131, No. 5: 1372–85.Google Scholar
Ram, Harsha. n.d. “World Literature as World Revolution: Velimir Khlebnikov’s Zangezi and the Utopian Geopoetics of the Russian Avant-Garde.” Unpublished draft.Google Scholar
Shklovsky, Viktor. 1988. “The Semantics of Cinema.” In The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet in Documents, 1896–1939, ed. Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian, trans. Taylor, Richard. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 131–33.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. 1937. “Tolstoy on the Cinema.” Trans. David Bernstein, The New York Times, 31 January.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. 1994. The Waves. Four Great Novels. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zukofsky, Louis. 2000. Prepositions +: The Collected Critical Essays. Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×