Anexact form and modernist culture / James Reath.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reath, James, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in avant-garde writing

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Culture--Philosophy--History--20th century.

Culture.

Modernism (Art)--History--20th century.

Modernism (Art).

Modernism (Literature)--History--20th century.

Modernism (Literature).

Philosophy and civilization--History--20th century.

Philosophy and civilization.

Culture--Philosophy.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations (chiefly color).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"What happens to form in a time of random walks and Uncertainty Principles, self-organising plasma membranes and multivalent logics? And how might we better categorise the modernist avant-garde’s confrontation with such complex and contradictory formalisms? Anexact Form and Modernist Culture presents a soft taxonomy of the long mid-century avant-garde’s fuzzy, grey, and viscous forms while investigating the aesthetic and affective valences of that which is 'essentially and not accidentally inexact', as Edmund Husserl writes in Ideas I (1913). Across five chapters – on doodles and inkblots; iridescent surfaces and the noise of becoming; the erratic cultural life of precision; the mesomorphic imagination of protoplasm; and the groovy aesthetics of industrial chemistry – Anexact Form and Modernist Culture offers a unique examination of avant-garde art and literature in a time of unprecedented err, smudge, ooze and wriggle"-- De Gruyter Brill.

Contents:

General introduction : here comes everything

History of the doodle : pareidoliamania and the cultural logic of squiggles and inkblots

The iridescent : seven types of colour-writing, poikilos-mētis and the surface of surfaces

After exactitude : idiometry and the art of mechanical precision

Plasmodial form : wortschleim and the mesomorphic imagination of protoplasm

Theory of the groovy : latex, jelly, nylon, ruthmos

Coda : on floating bodies.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 14, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Reath, James Anexact form and modernist culture

ISBN:

9781399547512

1399547518

9781399547505

139954750X

OCLC:

1522005342

Publisher Number:

CIPO000233553

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license