New Literary History 41(4): What Is an Avant-Garde? (2010)

“What is an avant-garde? In posing such a question, this issue of New Literary History seeks to reexamine a category that often seems all too self-evident. Our aim is not to draw up a fresh list of definitions, specifications, and prescriptions but to explore the conditions and repercussions of the question itself. In the spirit of analogously titled queries—from Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” to Foucault’s “What is an Author?”—we hope to spur reflection not only on a particular object of study but also on the frameworks and critical faculties that we bring to bear on it. As Paul Mann notes, every critical text on the avant-garde, whether tacitly or overtly, “has a stake in the avant-garde, in its force or destruction, in its survival or death (or both).” A reassessment of these stakes is one of the priorities of this special issue.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Jonathan P. Eburne and Rita Felski, Peter Bürger, John Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, Mike Sell, Benjamin Lee, Griselda Pollock, Amy J. Elias, Philippe Sers, Walter L. Adamson, Bob Perelman, Richard Schechner, Martin Puchner

Editor Rita Felski
Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press

Publisher

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