Introduction: Ex-centric Modernisms

Abstract

Homi Bhabba’s assertion from 1994 seems to have been borne out by subsequent developments within modernist studies. The spatial and chronological boundaries of those studies have been pushed to bursting point, and the two categories also intertwine in ever more complex ways. Bhabha points to the inextricable political dimension of our thinking about the relationship between space and time. Raised explicitly and repeatedly in both modernist art and its subsequent criticism, this may be one of the reasons for the continued currency of a term such as modernism, which had once seemed to be outmoded in the demand that we get beyond or ‘post’ modernism. Under the heading ‘Ex-centric Modernisms’ this special issue brings together a range of essays, all of which use comparative perspectives to explore these crossings of time, space, and inclusion. Modernist studies have long connected aesthetic invention with geographical displacement, representing a specific group of European cities as the crucibles of innovation and alienation from national traditions, allied to the experience of the modern cosmopolis as the background for artistic radicalism. Recently, however, this view has been questioned. It has been suggested that it was not the specific passage from country to city, but the experience of modernisation itself