| Marshall Berman |
Article Index for Marshall |
Website Links For Marshall |
Information AboutMarshall Berman |
|
Berman completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968. He is on the editorial board of '' Dissent '' and a regular contributor to '' The Nation '', '' The New York Times Book Review '', '' Bennington Review '', '' New Left Review '', '' New Politics '' and the '' Village Voice Literary Supplement ''. His main works are '' The Politics Of Authenticity '', '' All That Is Solid Melts Into Air '', '' One Hundred Years Of Spectacle '' and '' Adventures In Marxism ''. In ''Adventures in Marxism'', Berman tells of how while a student at Columbia University in 1959 , the chance discovery of Karl Marx 's '' Economic And Philosophical Manuscripts Of 1844 '' proved a revelation and inspiration, and became the foundation for all his future work. This personal tone pervades his work, linking historical trends with individual observations and inflections from the situation. MODERNITY AND MODERNISM During the mid- to late-20th century philosophical discourse focused on issues of Modernity and cultural attitudes and philosophies towards the modern condition. Berman put forward his own definition of Modernism to counter '' Post-modern '' philosophies. Others believe that the really distinctive forms of contemporary art and thought have made a quantum leap beyond all the diverse sensibilities of modernism, and earned the right to call themselves “post-modern”. I want to respond to these antithetical but complementary claims by reviewing the vision of modernity with which this book began. To be modern, I said, is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one's world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air. To be a modernist is to make oneself somehow at home in the maelstrom, to make its rhythms one’s own, to move within its currents in search of the forms of reality, of beauty, of freedom, of justice, that its fervid and perilous flow allows. This view of modernism is at odds with Post-modernism . Michel Foucault simply defined Modernism as the ''the will to “heroize” the present'' {Link without Title} . SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|