For a prospective peer-reviewed cluster on Modernism/modernity’s Print Plus platform, we seek proposals for original essays that analyze the role of art and culture in building modern worlds in the aftermath of revolutions. Situated within the discourse of global modernisms, the transdisciplinary cluster probes whether there is something intrinsic to the post-revolutionary reconstructive moment that can be teased out through focused studies on contemporaneous constellations between the aesthetic and the political around the globe during the twentieth century.
Demands for revolution emerge whenever the status quo makes an existing social order no longer tenable for a significant portion of the population. Revolution is often understood as a force from below, one in which a group exerts its will against an established governmental or political order. But revolutionaries usually have as their ultimate goal the establishment of a new social or political system—a new normal—rather than a perpetual state of upheaval. They envision new possibilities, and different worlds. The production of culture in various forms—fine art, literature, music, performing arts, visual culture, philosophy, and so on—are essential to their success, both in consolidating the revolution’s narrative, and in producing as well as sustaining the resultant new realities. Indeed, the expectation of their role as spearheads in revolution is embedded in the very phrase “avant-garde.”
If not an exclusively modernist phenomenon, localized revolutions in the modern era have been characterized as affirmative responses to Enlightenment values such as liberty and equality, and have frequently sought to overthrow absolutist, autocratic, and colonial rule. The establishment of new forms of government are often the result. But radical change is by no means guaranteed to be emancipatory, liberal, and egalitarian in character, nor is it always successful. As evidenced by Italian fascism, the so-called “conservative revolution” in Germany during the interwar-period, or the Chinese “Cultural Revolution,” a revolution might well slide into dictatorship, create a power vacuum in which multiple agents claim control, or engender oppressive political systems. Similarly, avant-garde art and culture are not immune from stifling and perverting critical, transgressive impulses. Indeed, their post-revolutionary impact has sometimes been framed as “propaganda,” or as “selling out” to become palatable to “the masses.”