Fionnghuala Sweeney, Kate Marsh (eds.): Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem, Haiti and the Avant-garde (2013)

“This collection of ten essays makes a persuasive case for a black Atlantic literary renaissance and its impact on modernist studies. The chapters stretch and challenge current canonical configurations of modernism in two ways: by considering the centrality of black artists, writers and intellectuals as key actors and core presences in the development of a modernist avant-garde; and by interrogating ‘blackness’ as an aesthetic and political category at critical moments during the twentieth century. This is the first book-length publication to explore the term ‘Afromodernisms’ and the first study to address together the cognate fields of modernism and the black Atlantic.”

Publisher Edinburgh University Press, 2013
ISBN 074864640X, 9780748646401
264 pages

Review: Dominic Thomas (French Studies, 2013).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2020-6-9)

Benjamin Noys: Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism (2014)

“We are told our lives are too fast, subject to the accelerating demand that we innovate more, work more, enjoy more, produce more, and consume more. That’s one familiar story. Another, stranger, story is told here: of those who think we haven’t gone fast enough. Instead of rejecting the increasing tempo of capitalist production they argue that we should embrace and accelerate it. Rejecting this conclusion, Malign Velocities tracks this ‘accelerationism‘ as the symptom of the misery and pain of labour under capitalism. Retracing a series of historical moments of accelerationism – the Italian Futurism; communist accelerationism after the Russian Revolution; the ‘cyberpunk phuturism’ of the ’90s and ’00s; the unconscious fantasies of our integration with machines; the apocalyptic accelerationism of the post-2008 moment of crisis; and the terminal moment of negative accelerationism – suggests the pleasures and pains of speed signal the need to disengage, negate, and develop a new politics that truly challenges the supposed pleasures of speed.”

Publisher Zero Books, 2014
ISBN 1782793003, 9781782793007
130 pages

Publisher

EPUB, EPUB (updated on 2019-6-9)

Francesco Cangiullo: Piedigrotta (1916) [Italian]

“Francesco Cangiullo, from Naples, was essentially a comedian; his theatrical attitude towards life that turned whatever he did into a performance. For this reason, Cangiullo could have equally well been a Futurist, a Dadaist, or a Surrealist. Indeed, in 1916, Cangiullo’s writings were published on the pages of the Zurich Dadaist journal Cabaret Voltaire. This volume featured many “words-in-freedom” of hilarious and ludic tone, with a dramatic and almost surrealistic bend. Cangiullo’s Piedigrotta: Manifesto on the Dynamic and Synoptic Declamation theorizes a kind of robotic and syncopated declamation.

The title and cover illustration, Piedigrotta, come from an annual Naples folk tradition, a pyrotechnic feast with extraordinary fireworks. These elements suggest the explosive thrust of Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano that stands over the gulf of Naples. Futurist evenings were also explosive. Originally introduced as literary and artistic evenings, they often turned into riots with people fighting, screaming and throwing all kinds of objects onto the stage. Cangiullo’s Piedigrotta features both explosive content and form.” (Source)

Piedigrotta: col manifesto sulla declamazi one dinamica sinottica
Publisher Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia, Milan, 1916
28 pages
via Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Commentary: Mladen Ovadija (2013).

PDF (127 MB)