Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity by Laura Doyle, Laura Winkiel

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MLR, I03.I, 2oo8 173 Buchheim-who had always been an ardent Conrad reader, having been introduced tohim by Peter Suhrkamp himself-and Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the cap tain of the submarine on which, in I941, Buchheim served as a war correspondent with the rankof lieutenant. Fothergill, who actually met and talked toBuchheim, ex plains thathis 'very reading ofConrad, secretly,but with [Lehmann-Willenbrock's] endorsement, constitutes a cultural political gesture at the time' (p. i88) and that for both men talking about Conrad is a covert way to speak critically about the naval high command. He then establishes parallels between the fictional happenings in Conrad's novels and the real-life situations related by Buchheim. He sets great store by the similarities between Conrad's criticism of thewould-be philanthropic rhetoric of the imperialist age, particularly inHeart ofDarkness, and Buchheim's (as well as Lehmann-Willenbrock's) criticism of the language ofwar correspondents, propa ganda, and the officially approved literature of thewar period. In the case of Buch heim, affinities toConrad appear tobe significant debts; therefore thischaptermakes for more rewarding reading than the affinity-relatedpassages in that about Mann. The sixth chapter concentrates upon Conrad reflections inChrista Wolf's novel Stdrfall. Fothergill discovers structural and thematic parallels between both authors, in particular the simultaneity of past and present in both Heart ofDarkness and Storfall and the emphasis both novels place on the destructive faculties of social and technological progress. Regarding the latter issue, one would have liked the re semblances to be viewed in greater detail against the background of the completely differentangles from which the twoauthors approach it. Heart ofDarkness features ex plicitly and prominently inStorfall, and Fothergill argues that 'ChristaWolf's think ing about Conrad pervades the structure and thematic of thewhole novel' (p. 206). In the seventh chapter reflectionsofConrad in Werner Herzog's cinematographic work are considered, with a focus on the filmAguirre, der Zorn Gottes. Fothergill's starting-point-which connects thischapter to thaton Buchheim-is the ambition of both artists 'tobreakwith thehabituated, the worn-out clicheswith which (they think) we normally understand theworld' (p. 232), todiscover a 'language' to make the reader 'see'. On this basis he contemplates the subject of empire-building, which, in both artists, ispresented as the clash of theproductive dream with natural and historical realities, and its subsequent failure,with Herzog 'borrow[ing] heavily fromConrad's tale' (p. 234), Heart ofDarkness. The thread running through this chapter is the problem of historical representation as reflected inConrad and Herzog, arising from theobservation that 'we are objects of history far more than subjects over it' (p. 245). On thewhole one would identify the weaknesses of this otherwise remarkable study in, first,its tendency toconcentrate toomuch on affinities(asmentioned above) and, second, its regrettable failure to take into account theGerman roots ofmuch of Conrad's thinking (especially Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), explained thoroughly inDaphna Erdinast-Vulcan's book Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I99 I),which would have provided Fothergill's analysiswith a firmer basis in thehistory of ideas. ST JOHN'SCOLLEGE,OXFORD LENNARTBRAND Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity. Ed. by LAURA DOYLE and LAURA WINKIEL. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2006. xiv + 354 PP. $24.95. ISBN 978-o-253-2I778-3. The last ten years have seen a remarkable expansion in our ways of thinking about modernism. It iscommonplace now to acknowledge that itcomes in many shapes and guises and that these are profoundly determined by specificities of place and time. I74 Reviews The forms ofmodernism are no longer viewed through a purely aesthetic lens, and as critics have increasingly grappled with the social and political implications of the modern arts, so we have seen a proliferation of studies that explore modernism in relation toanarchism, psychoanalysis, thepublic sphere, theNew Deal, and so on. As if to emphasize this problematic and often contradictory association ofmodernism with the institutional formsofmodern society, theunderlying category ofmodernity has itselfnow been pluralized and cast in a global frame so as toemphasize an uneven ness of development which has produced (to use Dilip Gaonkar's influential phrase) 'alternativemodernities' (quoted p. 7). This is the terrain of Geomodernisms, whose contributors seek to de-Westernize concepts ofmodernity...