Seminar in Modernist Art and Theory: The Avant-Garde in a State of Emergency

In this seminar we investigate the interpenetration of aesthetics and politics in the interwar period, structuring our conversation around particular debates, such as the question of Violence in Sorel and Marinetti, the problem of sovereignty in Schmitt and Benjamin, the polemics about modernism and realism around Lukacs, the base materialism of the College De Sociologie, the rise of factography in the USSR, and the return to dis/order in France and Italy.