Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

In this provocative and wide-ranging study, Douglas Mao argues that a profound tension between veneration of human production and anxiety about production's dangers lay at the heart of literary modernism. Focusing on the work of Virginia Woolf, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens, Mao shows that modernists were captivated by physical objects, which, regarded as objects, seemed to partake of a utopian serenity beyond the reach of human ideological conflicts. Under a variety of historical pressures, Mao observes, these writers came to revere the making of such things, and especially the crafting of the work of art, as the surest guarantee of meaning for an individual life. Yet they also found troubling contradictions here, since any kind of making, be it handicraft or mass production, could also be understood as a violation of the nonhuman world by an increasingly predatory and imperialistic subjectivity. If modernists began by embracing production as a test of meaning, then they frequently ended by testing production itself and finding it wanting.

To make this case, Mao interweaves social and political history with readings in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and economics. He explores modernism's relation to aestheticism, existentialism, and the culture of consumption, joining current debates on the politics of engagement and the social meanings of art. And he shows conclusively, in this elegantly written and consistently surprising work, that we cannot understand the theories and practices of modernism without addressing the question of the object and production's ambivalent allure.

Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production by Douglas Mao

From reader reviews:

Aaron Ryan:

Book is usually written, printed, or created for everything. You can recognize everything you want by a guide. Book has a different type. As we know that book is important issue to bring us around the world. Alongside that you can your reading proficiency was fluently. A publication Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production will make you to possibly be smarter. You can feel more confidence if you can know about anything. But some of you think that open or reading a book make you bored. It is far from make you fun. Why they could be thought like that? Have you searching for best book or ideal book with you?

Cheryl Cooley:

This book untitled Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production to be one of several books that best seller in this year, honestly, that is because when you read this e-book you can get a lot of benefit on it. You will easily to buy this kind of book in the book shop or you can order it by using online. The publisher of this book sells the e-book too. It makes you quickly to read this book, since you can read this book in your Smart phone. So there is no reason to you to past this book from your list.

Erica Futch:

Reading can called mind hangout, why? Because when you are reading a book specially book entitled Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production the mind will drift away trough every dimension, wandering in each and every aspect that maybe unfamiliar for but surely will become your mind friends. Imaging just about every word written in a e-book then become one contact form conclusion and explanation which maybe you never get just before. The Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production giving you an additional experience more than blown away your thoughts but also giving you useful details for your better life in this era. So now let us present to you the relaxing pattern this is your body and mind will be pleased when you are finished examining it, like winning an activity. Do you want to try this extraordinary paying spare time activity?

Patricia Stroud:

Your reading 6th sense will not betray anyone, why because this Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production reserve written by well-known writer who really knows well how to make book that can be understand by anyone who all read the book. Written in good manner for you, still dripping wet every ideas and publishing skill only for eliminate your own personal hunger then you still skepticism Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production as good book not simply by the cover but also with the content. This is one publication that can break don't ascertain book by its include, so do you still needing yet another sixth sense to pick that!? Oh come on your studying sixth sense already alerted you so why you have to listening to another sixth sense.