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Best regards, Andrew Stewart - - - Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/ Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org> > Date: March 12, 2020 at 7:49:17 AM EDT > To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: McCready on Das and McLoughlin, 'The First > World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity' > Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > > Santanu Das, Kate McLoughlin. The First World War: Literature, > Culture, Modernity. New York Oxford University Press, 2018. xi + > 268 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-726626-7. > > Reviewed by Susan McCready (University of South Alabama) > Published on H-War (March, 2020) > Commissioned by Margaret Sankey > > The eleven essays in this volume were adapted from papers delivered > at the 2014 British Academy conference "The First World War: > Literature, Culture, Modernity." The volume hangs together much > better than most "proceedings" volumes and contributes to the > outpouring of excellent work about the war occasioned in part by the > recently concluded centennial commemorations. Santanu Das and Kate > McLoughlin's introduction situates the volume within the field of > First World War studies and points to the interdisciplinary richness > that has characterized scholarship of the Great War for at least the > past thirty years. While the volume is essentially literary, aiming > to address "how literature, culture, and the Frist World War coalesce > in a putative modernity" (p. 4), the editors have grouped the > contributions around three principles: the philosophical, the > representational, and the political. "Conventionally understood as a > crisis in representation," they argue, "the war, in this volume is > cast in the different light of epistemology, as a failure in knowing > rather than in writing" (p. 10). > > In the first part of the volume, entitled, "Unfathomable," essays by > McLoughlin, Hope Wolf, and Vincent Sherry address what the editors > consider the philosophical questions of speaking and silence, the > limits of language, and the meaning of sacrifice. McLoughlin reads > the veteran experience through Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller" > (1936) and concludes that the uncommunicative war veterans in the > texts she studies are "at odds with modernity" (p. 54), refusing "the > domination of enlightenment" (p. 55). Wolf's essay focuses entirely > on David Jones's _In Parenthesis_ (1937), which she reads as a work > about the breakdown of language and the need to recalibrate it as an > instrument of memory. Vincent Sherry's wide-ranging essay relies on > literary texts, political discourse, and posters to argue that "the > figure of the sacrificial offering appears and reappears to > consecrate [the] otherwise uncertain purpose [of the war]" (p. 74). > > "Scoping the War" is the second part of volume, which consists of > essays by Sarah Cole, Laura Marcus, Christine Froula, and Mark > Rawlinson that the editors have grouped together because of their > focus on representation. Cole's essay treats texts by noncombatant > authors (H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, and Mary Borden) and > demonstrates their claim to a shared war experience with veterans, > even if imagined from a distance. Marcus explores how several films > of the First World War "gave rise to an imaginary shaped by images of > the departed" (p. 127). Froula's contribution returns once again > largely to Virginia Woolf, although touching on a variety of other > sources, in an examination of the ways in which aerial bombing > affected British civilians. Rawlinson's essay, which I think is the > best in the volume, addresses the problem of dissent in war > literature. Through powerful readings of Wyndham Lewis and Henry > Williamson, he demonstrates that "our faith in war literature as a > cultural protest against war is in tension with the facility with > which war writing can be mobilized to frame or validate military > violence" (p. 154). > > The last group of essays "'Cosmopolitan Sympathies'?" takes its title > from Isaac Rosenberg's 1916 poem, "Break of Day in the Trenches_,_" > and includes chapters by Jahan Ramazani, Margaret Higonnet, Claire > Buck, and Das. This section of the book is political in focus, > examining both nationalism and various encounters between Europeans > and non-Europeans occasioned by the war. In his essay, Ramazani > analyzes how poems by combatants and noncombatants deploy language > and form to "perform and vivify the global" (p. 195). Higgonet > examines the work of a "universal sisterhood" (p. 197) of central and > eastern European antiwar women artists, focusing especially on Käthe > Kollwitz, whose work called on women, especially mothers, to resist > the lure of war. Buck considers encounters between colonial subjects > and women in the work of Mary Borden and Enid Bagnold. She argues > that their "racial thinking is richly diagnostic of the uneven and > asymmetrical intersections between modernity, war, and > cosmopolitanism (p. 239). Das's contribution closes the volume by > examining the war experience of some of the four million nonwhite men > mobilized in the war effort, men whom he calls "joint conscripts of > modernity and empire" (p. 241). He concludes with an analysis of > Rabindranath Tagore's postwar rhetoric that brought together the > concepts of war and empire. Das demonstrates that Tagore's critique > laid the foundation for Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Frantz > Fanon. > > All eleven essays and the introduction are well written and deploy a > variety of approaches to the vast topic proposed in the volume's > title; each essay, moreover, demonstrates a thorough knowledge of its > particular subfield. The volume itself is handsome and, unlike many > essay collections, includes an index. The authors and editors deserve > praise for selecting essays that expand on the cannon of war > literature beyond the well-known combatant-poets and for moving > beyond the literary to include film and the plastic arts. My only > quibble is that the volume remains heavily, somewhat disappointingly, > Anglocentric, and poetry focused. Still, there is a great deal of > merit in this very fine contribution to the field of First World War > literary studies. > > Citation: Susan McCready. Review of Das, Santanu; McLoughlin, Kate, > _The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity_. H-War, H-Net > Reviews. March, 2020. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53977 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
