Modernism and Time: The Logic of Abundance in Literature, Science, and Culture, 1880–1930

by Ronald Schleifer

• ISBN13: 9780521661249
• ISBN10: 0521661242
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-02-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In Modernism and Time, Ronald Schleifer analyses the transition from the Enlightenment to post-Enlightenment ways of understanding in Western thought. Schleifer argues that this transition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century expresses itself centrally in an altered conception of temporality. He examines this period's remarkable breaks with the past in literature, music, and the arts more generally. Whereas Enlightenment thought sees time as a homogenous, neutral medium, in which events and actions take place, post-Enlightenment thought sees time as discontinuous and inexorably bound up with both the subjects and events that seem to inhabit it. This fundamental change of perception, Schleifer argues, takes place across disciplines as varied as physics, economics and philosophy. Schleifer's study engages with the work of writers and thinkers as varied as George Eliot, Walter Benjamin, Einstein and Russell, and offers a powerful reassessment of the politics and culture of modernism.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: Post-Enlightenment Modernism and the experience of time	1	(34)
PART I: POST---ENLIGHTENMENT APPREHENSIONS
The Enlightenment, abundance, and postmodernity	35	(32)
Temporal allegories: George Eliot, Walter Benjamin, and the redemption of time	67	(41)
The second Industrial Revolution: history, knowledge, and subjectivity	108	(41)
PART II: LOGICS OF ABUNDANCE
The natural history of time: mathematics and meaning in Einstein and Russell	149	(35)
Analogy and example: Heisenberg, linguistic negation, and the language of quantum physics	184	(24)
The global aesthetics of genre: Mikhail Bakhtin and the borders of modernity	208	(25)
Notes	233	(22)
References	255	(13)
Index	268