The Avant-Garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism
Editor: Sanja Bahun-Radunovic and Marinos Pourgouris
Date Of Publication: Sep 2006
Isbn13: 9781847180308
Isbn: 1-84718-030-2
The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of the Modernist Avant-garde refigures the critical and historical picture of the modernist avant-garde by introducing a variety of less-commonly discussed geo-artistic sites and dynamics. The contributors explore the multifaceted relations established between the avant-garde “centers” (France, Germany, England, and others) and their counterparts in the cultural “periphery” (Greece, India, Japan, Poland, Quebec, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia), as well as the unique artistic and literary dialogues which these encounters engendered. The primary concern of the anthology is the set of relations established between the center and the margin, the redefinition of which was pivotal for the formulation of the modernist avant-garde aesthetic project itself.

While enriching the kaleidoscopic picture of modernism, the essays in this collection also offer new methodological approaches to this polychrome cultural image. In this way, the collection avoids the pitfalls of both the traditional diffusionist/Eurocentric model of the world and the more recent over-relativization of the positions of the margin and the center. In their stead, the anthology proposes a hermeneutics of encounter that is simultaneously “spatial” and “historical,” aware of its limits but convinced of its own necessity.

SANJA BAHUN-RADUNOVIĆ, Ph.D., received her doctorate degree in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University. She has published articles and book-chapters on a variety of topics, ranging from psychoanalysis, through modernist literature and arts, to the refigurations of literature in “marginal” settings, to the theory of the novel. Bahun-Radunović has completed a book-length study Modernism and Melancholia: History As Mourning-Work and she is currently occupied with the co-editorial work on the collection of essays The Intimate and the Extimate: Violence and Gender in the Globalized World. Bahun-Radunović has authored two books of creative writing and is the recipient of many scholarly and creative writing awards.

MARINOS POURGOURIS, Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University. His specialization is the twentieth century Greek literature and his research interests include European modernism, modernist lyric, psychoanalytic criticism, the classical subtext, and film. His publications include essays on the metaphysical theories of Odysseus Elytis, the Homeric subtext in the poetry of Yiannis Ritsos, the politics of history in Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Lukács, and the influence of Nietzsche’s writings on Nikos Kazantzakis. He has completed a book-length study on the poetic metaphysics of Odysseus Elytis and he is currently co-editing a volume on Balkan history and literature. His poetry-collection Of Myth and Brine was published by Dodoni Publications, Athens, in 2002.

"The anthology The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism has been long awaited. This exemplary series of essays proposes novel ways of looking at the dynamic of the center and the margin while performatively and theoretically targeting the most pressing issue in modernist studies—namely, the geographical and temporal expansion of its scope of inquiry."

"The collection provides a fresh look at the geocultural spaces of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Americas in the extended epoch of modernism and offers multiple surprising insights into the hidden dynamics of modernist intercultural relating, in particular, those pertaining to the studies of Slavic literatures in comparative context. Finally, this multifaceted inquiry into the neglected “territories of modernism” goes beyond a simple disclosure of the previously unattended aesthetic achievements of “marginal” modernisms: it moves the boundaries of the present theoretical conceptualizations of the dynamic of centers and margins, opening a set of new questions and theoretical frameworks. I recommend this anthology strongly not only to modernist scholars, but also to any serious student of aesthetic interculturality."

Novica Milić, Professor of Comparative Literature and Theory, University of Belgrade

"The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism offers an insightful discussion of the dialogue, in modernism, between the so-called “centers’’ of aesthetic production and their counterparts in the cultural “periphery,” questioning the very existence of centers and margins and proposing a theory that argues for fruitful bi-directional (rather than only uni-directional) intercultural encounters in specific historical contexts. While much has been written on modernism in Western Europe and England, this volume breaks new ground in its concentration on modernism practiced in locations ranging from Romania, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia to Greece, French Canada, Japan, and India. Shedding light on the genres of poetry and drama; movements such as Surrealism, DADA, and other avant-gardes; and issues such as gender, modernity, and nationalism, it demonstrates that the concepts of center and margin are useful in the study of intercultural interactions and that the study of modernism practiced from the periphery reveals important truths about the routes of cultural transfer. The volume contributes to the ongoing discussion of cultural trafficking across boundaries and borders in the twentieth century."

Janet A. Walker, Professor of Comparative Literature, Rutgers University

"Avoiding the predictable poles of center and margin, metropolitan and colonized, the west and the east, The Avant Garde and the Margin looks at the modernist traditions in forgotten and often uncelebrated places: Quebec, Greece, Poland, Romania, India, the former Yugoslavia. Wide-ranging in subject matter and comprehensive in theoretical approach, this collection of essays broadens our understanding of cultural interaction. In so doing, it challenges our conception of world literature by forcing us to think about modes of literary and cultural exchange that both traditional and poststructuralist discourses have neglected."

Gregory Jusdanis, Humanities Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University

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