Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:10:33.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Berlin Dada and the Time of Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Patrizia C. McBride
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite its brief history, Berlin Dada (1918–20) produced a glut of chronicles and memoirs, as if to immortalize its ephemeral insurgency. Its self-appointed chronicler, Richard Huelsenbeck, tried to harness this compulsion to memorialize in the service of Dadaist agitation he hoped would unleash a revolutionary time and redeem the failure of the communist uprisings at the end of World War I. his seditious temporality was based on two incompatible concepts of revolution: a properly political notion aimed at overthrowing an unjust regime and a vitalist discourse aimed at tapping into the circular low of life. he clash of the two modes of revolutionary time is enacted in Hannah Höch's photomontage “Cut with the Kitchen Knife” (1919). he spectral temporality that sustains both is conjured by the Dada Almanac (1920), a literary compendium that doubles as a quirky inquiry into political normativity and an inluential paradigm of Dada's self-legitimation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 3 , May 2018 , pp. 491 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2018

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

Works Cited

Agamben, Giorgio. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Translated by Chiesa, Lorenzo, Stanford UP, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baader, Johannes. “Deutschlands Größe und Untergang.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, pp. 91–95.Google Scholar
Baader, Johannes. “Germany's Greatness and Decline.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, pp. 97–103.Google Scholar
Ball, Hugo. Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary. Ed ited by John Elderlield, U of California P, 1974.Google Scholar
Bergius, Hanne. Das Lachen Dadas: Die Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen. Anabas, 1989.Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will. 1899. Translated by F.L. Pogson, John Allen, 1910.Google Scholar
Dech, Jula. Hannah Hoch: Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepo-che Deutschlands: Untersuchungen zur Fotom outage bei Hannah Hoch. Fischer, 1993.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Kamuf, Peggy, Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Dickerman, Leah, editor. Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris. National Gallery of Art / Distributed Art Publishers, 2005.Google Scholar
Doherty, Brigid. “The Work of Art and the Problem of Politics in Berlin Dada.” October, no. 105, Summer 2003, pp. 73–92.10.1162/016228703769684164CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuechtner, Veronika. Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond. U of California P, 2011.Google Scholar
Hausmann, Raoul. Bilanz der Feierlichkeit: Texte bis 1933. vol. 1, edited by Michael ErlhorT, Edition Text + Kritik, 1982.Google Scholar
Hausmann, Raoul. Scharfrichter der bürgerlichen Seek: Raoul Hausinaiui in Berlin 1900–1933: Unverdjfentöchte Briefe, Texte, Dokumente. edited by Züchner, Eva, Gerd Hatje, 1998.Google Scholar
Hentea, Marius. TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara. MIT P, 2014.Google Scholar
Herzfelde, Wieland. “Introduction to the First International Dada Fair.” Translated by Brigid Doherty. Dada, special issue of October, edited by Leah Dick-erman, vol. 105, Summer 2003, pp. 93–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard, editor. Vie Dada Almanac. edited by Greene, Malcolm and Brotchie, Alastair, translated by Greene, Atlas Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard, editor. Dada Almanach. Edition Nautilus, 1987.Google Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard. Dada-Logik, 1913–1972. edited by Kapfer, Herbert, Belleville, 2012.Google Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard. “Einleitung.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, pp. 3–9.Google Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard. “En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism.” Motherwell, pp. 21–48.Google Scholar
Huelsenbeck, Richard. Introduction. Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, pp. 9–14.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhard. Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zurSe-mantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache. Suhrkamp, 2006.Google Scholar
Lavin, Maud. Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch. Yale UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Lefort, Claude. “The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?” 1981. Translated by David Macey. Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World, edited by de Vries, Hent and Sullivan, Lawrence E., Fordham UP, 2006, pp. 148–87.Google Scholar
Mehring, Walter. “Enthüllungen.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, pp. 62–81.Google Scholar
Mehring, Walter. “Revelations.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, pp. 69–87.Google Scholar
Mix, York Gothart. Die deutschen Musenalmanache des 18. Jahrhurtderts. Beck, 1987.Google Scholar
Motherwell, Robert, editor. Vie Dada Painters and Poets. 1951. 2nd ed., Belknap Press, 1979, pp. 21–48.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Fall Wagner. Der Fall Wagner. Götzen-Dänimerung. Der Antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysos-Dithyramben. Nietzsche contra Wagner. edited by Colli, Giorgio and Montanari, Mazzino, DTV/ DeGruyter, 1980, pp. 9–53. Vol. 6 of Kritische Studi-enausgabe.Google Scholar
Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture. 2nd ed., U of Chicago P, 2003.Google Scholar
Puchner, Martin. Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. Princeton UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Richter, Hans. Dada: Art and Anti-Art. 1964. Thamesand Hudson, 1997.Google Scholar
Santner, Eric. Tlie Royal Remains. U of Chicago P, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santner, Eric. The Weight of All Flesh. Oxford UP, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheppard, Richard. Modernism, Dada, Postmodernism. Northwestern UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. 1983. Translated by Michael Eldred, U of Minnesota P, 1987.Google Scholar
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Atkinson, Charles Francis, Hardpress, 2013.Google Scholar
Toller, Ernst. Masse Mensch: Ein Stuck aus der sozialen Revolution des 20. jahrhunderts. Literaricon,2016.Google Scholar
Tzara, Tristan. “Chronique Zurichoise, 1915–19.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, pp. 10–29.Google Scholar
Tzara, Tristan.“Dada Manifesto 1918.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, pp. 121–32.Google Scholar
Tzara, Tristan. “Manifest Dada 1918.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, pp. 116–31.Google Scholar
Tzara, Tristan. “Zurich Chronicle, 1915–19.” Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, pp. 15–34.Google Scholar
White, Michael. Generation Dada: The Berlin Avant-Garde and the First World War. Yale UP, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar