Modernism is post-industrial, like Marxism. Both celebrate intellectualism, the rational, and the importance of the individual.
Modernism is a movement spanning roughly 1910 to 1940, although some might place its parameters more broadly. It emerged in art, literature, music, and philosophy as a force for innovation in thinking, rejection of conventional societal values, and perhaps was one of the first (at least in the US) forays into identity politics. Background, whether poor or female or African-American, was finally part of identity in artistic expression - yet paradoxically the Modernism movement spanned cultures and continents.
Two great examples of modernism are the poetry of Langston Hughes and the Jazz movement. Although Jazz has continued to evolve, it is an excellent example of the influence of modernism that spanned cultures and classes.
Hughes spoke of his unique cultural identity, wrote poetry that was biographical but helped define a corner of America not well-explored, traveled and became semi-European, was a man of no country but a uniquely American citizen, and didn't let his artistry keep him from politics. His poems were free-flowing, questioned societal values, and retained the importance of beauty in expression. He celebrated his individuality, and his own personal story, and experimented in how his poems were structured.
Jazz is also an American invention, and broke a lot of musical rules. It let musicians make up their verses as they went, encouraged individual expression, and took music into sophisticated directions. Prior to jazz, many people listened to either classical (wealthy) or folk music (poorer). Unlike these popular musical forms, jazz was neither structured, nor orchestrated, nor mainstream. It didn't necessarily tell a story, and often lack lyrics. Over time, it has become a musical form that is more popular but it may never rival country western, rock-n-roll, or opera as crowd-pleasing entertainment.
Marxism was a philosophy that critiqued the industrial revolution as robbing individuals of their souls, their connection to their work, and any hope of ownership in real terms. Marx was an economist, but his interest was in the relationship between the individual and private property, and the result of the state having undo control over the individual and the devaluation of huge numbers of people (the proletariat) as cogs in an economic machine.
Marxist theory didn't so much celebrate the individual as it chronicled the demise of individual freedom through economic slavery. Human servitude was a direct result of a proletariat class that emerged as a result of industrialized society with its factories, mills, and sweatshops. Marxism wanted people to wake up to the dehumanizing conditions, and in this respect parallels the Modernist movement.
Marxism and Modernism share a marked distrust of the picture of reality generated by capitalist society and its institutions. Marxists and Modernists alike are masters of suspicion, challenging the various claims made by capitalism and its ideological discourses in purporting to advance a truthful account of the world around us. Modernism undermines the dominant ideology from within, subverting the prevailing picture of reality through a number of strategies such as psychoanalysis in the field of science and stream-of-consciousness in modernist poetry and literature.
Modernists generally believed that reality was a good deal more complex than the prevailing ideology would have us believe. There was always something going on beneath the surface, something buried deep within the darkest recesses of the human psyche, something which could not be reached or adequately explained by established methods of intellectual discourse. Modernism in its various forms sought to remedy this deficiency by bringing to the surface that which had previously been hidden: the complex, often disturbing inner life of the individual.
Marxists, for their part, have tended to subvert the existing order of reality from the outside. Like Modernists, they seek to reveal what they regard as the truth beneath the distorted portrait of reality given to us by capitalism. However, their main focus is on exterior factors such as institutions: the concrete, material expressions of capitalist ideology. Marxists would argue that it is only by subverting and challenging these institutions and their ideological foundations that a true picture of reality will emerge, a picture that will faithfully portray the reality of class relations in capitalist society and their inherently exploitative nature.
Modernism is a collection of philosophies characterized by rationalism, intellectualism, material advancement, scientific reasoning, a rejection of tradition, and moral relativism. Historically, modernism is associated with a society's departure from feudalism. Modernism is the intellectual and philosophical transition that accompanies a society's economic transition from an agrarian to a more industrial economy.
Marxism is an example of a modernist philosophy. Marxist philosophy claims that history itself is a trajectory that can be understood intellectually and scientifically. Pre-modern notions of history emphasize the will of the Gods or the stars in the unfolding of human history. Pre-modern history also emphasizes the precarious nature of human existence and the capricious nature of the Gods. Marxism, on the other hand, presents history as a progressive story that can be understood and manipulated through scientific or intellectual means.
Marxism also emphasizes a break from tradition. It contains a strong critique of traditional class structures, religious systems, and traditional systems of morality. Marxism, with its emphasis on deconstructing tradition and moving history forward, exemplifies many core aspects of modernism.
No comments:
Post a Comment