European Avant-garde Studies and the Future of Europe

Abstract

European Avant-garde Studies and Future of Europa! Europa!: The Avant-Garde, Modernism and Fate of a Continent, eds. Sascha Bru, Jan Baertens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania 0rum, Hubert van den Berg. 2009. Berlin: De Gruyter, Pages 534, and Regarding Popular: Modernism, Avante-Garde and High and Low Culture, ed. by Sascha Bru, Laurence van Nuijs, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania 0rum, Hubert van den Berg. 2011. Berlin: De Gruyter, Pages 490. The European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) came into being in 2006, setting for itself goal of studying the and modernism in within a global setting, throughout nineteenth and twentieth centuries; promoting interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics; and encouraging an interest in cultural dimensions and contexts of and modernism. The Network organizes bi-annual conferences, each of which has so far been followed by a trilingual anthology of articles in English, French and German. The Network, or collective, of scholars have already held three conferences in three different European cities, first in EU's heartland state of Belgium, second in Poland (representing Eastern Europe), and latest in UK. The upcoming EAM conference will be held in 2014 in Finland, representing Scandinavian North. Europa! Europa!, first volume to be brought out by Network, contains 30 papers from first EAM conference. They are grouped under four headings. The first six of them are devoted to setting Terms and Canons of debate in which Network participates and will continue to do so in future. The second, and largest section, consisting of ten papers, deals with Images and Ideas of Europe, as its heading suggests. The dominant concern with ideas and images, coupled with thematic concern with modernism, evinces a desire on part of Network-or at least its leaders and most of scholars anthologized here (although a clear majority of them are literary scholars)-to distance itself from post-structuralism that defined itself by linguistic turn of 1960s. In this sense, second section is most Eurocentric and outdated sections in anthology. The last two sections, Tendencies and Identities and Europe and its Others, remain far more successful in realizing goal of decentring avant-garde announced in editorial introduction to anthology. The overall tendency of scholarship embodied in book's second half and anthology as a whole is no doubt towards world-wide internationalism and a greater inclusiveness with regard to Europe's periphery. Concerning space extended to margins of Europe, perhaps most remarkable aspect of anthology is generous representation in it of Central European scholarship on arts and letters. Out of six papers that set terms and canons of debate, two are formulated by Central European scholars-a Slovenian and a Polish scholar. Elsewhere in trilingual anthology, representation of scholarship from Mitteleuropa is similarly abundant. Avant-garde movements, artists, and their works from outside and US are grouped in last section under title Europe and Its Others. Among this group of articles, two have fallen into share of African continent and one each for Latin America, Caribbean, Australia and Japan. Conspicuous by its near total absence in collection are Russian avantgarde movements. The anthology, in this regard, marks a clear departure from work of scholars and practitioners like Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, both of whom maintained a long and deep fascination with Russian avant-garde. …