Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, Elliot Neaman, eds. The Modernist Imagination: Intellectual History and Critical Theory. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. xxxix + 417 pp. $120.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-84545-428-9. Reviewed by Mitchell M. Harris Published on H-German (January, 2010) Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher It is no small secret to scholars across the dis‐ grand theory, or "big theory," and its relationship ciplines that the festschrift is a dying enterprise. with historicism across the disciplines. The essays Increasingly, trade presses are following universi‐ stretch out in several different directions, remind‐ ty presses in setting strict policies against them, ing us of how a scholar's life can impact his or her which makes the appearance of The Modernist students and colleagues and, in turn, their own in‐ Imagination: Intellectual History and Critical tellectual paths. That such paths can appear dis‐ Theory: Essays in Honor of Martin Jay, edited by parate at times may not be a source of concern for five of Jay's former students (Warren Breckman, this volume's readers, but I also would not go so Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, and far as to consider it a source of celebration. The Elliot Neaman) all the more surprising. The Mod‐ essays testify to what appears to be Jay's own ernist Imagination commits the expected cardinal scholarly cause: demonstrating that the enterpris‐ sins of the festschrift. The essays are, at times, a es of intellectual history and "big theory," often bit self-gratifying and too indebted to the critical thought to be mutually exclusive, have much to methodologies and theoretical lenses of the schol‐ say to each other, and in ways we seldom imagine ar they attempt to praise. They also often fail to them to speak. engage the work of Jay critically in ways that oth‐ The collection begins with Lloyd Kramer's ers who were not bound to produce an essay in synoptic introductory essay on Jay's work, "Mar‐ his honor might, and, like many a festschrift be‐ tin Jay and the Dialectics of Intellectual History." fore it, this one fails to fnd cohesion and unity, or However, Kramer wants to remind his readers speak a direct critical narrative. But for all of its not so much about Jay's work, but about his criti‐ weaknesses, the authors here align with the possi‐ cal methodology--an even-handed dialectical bilities of the genre to present compelling essays treatment of diverse, and often shunned, histori‐ that challenge us to think (once again) about cal interests. This commitment to this even-hand‐ H-Net Reviews ed dialectical approach (post-Enlightenment posi‐ Jerrold Seigel considers the dialectical con‐ tivism, on the one hand, and poststructuralist lin‐ tours not of reason and revelation, but of another guistic theory, on the other) fnds its way into the timely site of scholarly debate--post-Enlighten‐ intellectual fabric of this collection. ment speculation regarding subjectivity. While Part 1 is a series of seven essays devoted to Seigel concedes that Robert Musil and Marcel "Intellectual History," which Kramer describes in Duchamp both advocated a "fluid and unsettled his introduction as the "sub-discipline of historical manner of individual existence" (p. 24) that is studies that describes and interprets the creative highly palatable to recent poststructuralist con‐ work of past thinkers and artists" (p. xi). As he ar‐ cepts of subjectivity, the similarity of their posi‐ gues, "[t]he best intellectual historians resemble tions, upon closer scrutiny, gives way to a more the creative thinkers they write about because intriguing narrative of two men "in search of very they often see unexpected connections among ap‐ different kinds of selves" (p. 25). Seigel contends, parently diverse ideas." Kramer explains why however, that this difference is only palpable by Jay's work often demonstrates how "past intellec‐ way of supplement--a third conversation that tual debates can still provide theoretical re‐ stands strictly apart from Musil and Duchamp's sources for ongoing debates in our own culture" historical period and remains embedded in the (p. xi). Part 1's focus on the "theoretical resources theoretical substratum of our own contemporary for ongoing debates in our own culture" is evident critical concerns. Thus, he turns to Dror from the very beginning as David Sorkin sets out Wahrman's recent book, The Making of the Mod‐ to contextualize an "obscure incident of the ern Self (2004), in order to elicit the acute differ‐ French Revolution" recently made widely known ences between Musil and Duchamp's vision of by Robert Darnton: the famous "Kiss of Lam‐ subjectivity.[1] He concludes by proclaiming a ourette." Following in Jay's dialectical footsteps, paradox that sustains the poststructuralist fantasy Sorkin resituates our understanding of the histor‐ of the fuid and malleable subject: "To regard a ical circumstances leading to the Legislative As‐ self conceived in terms of fuidity and malleability sembly's radical displays of brotherly love on July as excluding one understood as constant and sta‐ 7, 1792. He uses a dialectical approach to contex‐ ble is to line up with Duchamp rather than Musil" tualize the historically extant middle ground be‐ (p. 50). Thus, Seigel suggests that although the his‐ tween a Catholic France and a free France: "Lam‐ torians and theorists who champion Duchamp's ourette's attempt to defend the middle ground of "kind of aesthetic utopia" may "not aspire to live" the Civil Constitution and constitutional monar‐ within the confines of that utopia, that is ultimate‐ chy was the background to his 'kiss.' His proposal ly precisely where they fnd themselves, because was not a curiosity, but part and parcel of his "the temptation to imagine a human nature so highly informed theological and political agenda" malleable that it can only appear inside succes‐ (p. 12). Hence, Sorkin reminds us that the descrip‐ sive and antithetical regimes of the self lands tion of the Enlightenment as an epoch best de‐ them in a position that shares much with it" (p. fined by the dichotomy of reason versus revela‐ 50). tion can no longer stand in light of the mounting The rest of the essays in part 1 follow similar historical evidence. Sorkin's essay emerges as a trajectories, defining topics of interest in dire timely discussion of religion and reason in the need of proper historical contextualization that midst of what we might term the "postsecular" speak directly to some of the most pressing theo‐ scholarly movement in the humanities. retical concerns of our current times. Gregory B. Moynahan challenges Jürgen Habermas's apoliti‐ cal reading of Ernst Cassirer's philosophy by look‐ 2 H-Net Reviews ing at the theological and political undertones of directly dispenses with Jay's thesis. In fact, she of‐ Cassirer's earlier work. In turn, Moynahan is able ten broadens, refines, qualifies, and, only when to carve out an appropriate distinction between appropriate, takes exception to it. Cassirer's secularized and structuralist vision of Part 2, "Violence, Memory, Identity," broadens the law and Hans Kelsen's "purely functionalist the methodological scope of the collection, mov‐ understanding of law" during the Weimar period ing it from the praxis of intellectual history prop‐ (p. 68). In "The Artwork Beyond Itself: Adorno, er to a more distanced consideration of the mean‐ Beethoven, and Late Style," Peter E. Gordon inves‐ ing of history. Andreas Huyssen, looking back to tigates Theodor Adorno's unfinished great study Jay's insightful essay, "When Did the Holocaust of Beethoven, and further suggests that Jay was End? Reflections on Historical Objectivity" (2003), among the frst readers to "appreciate the signifi‐ argues that "memory culture" can come to an im‐ cance of Adorno's musicological work as a privi‐ passe when "memorialization and forgetting" en‐ leged laboratory for the development of theoreti‐ ter into "an unholy alliance that betrays both past cal principles, and not as an application of a prior and present" (p. 152). Carolyn J. Dean builds upon theory" (p. 80). Specifically, Adorno used this logic by looking at recent critiques of victim Beethoven's music to develop a theory of "late- culture and Jewish memory surrounding the style," an essential feature of which is aesthetic Holocaust. Always even-handed, Dean fnds a way fragmentation. Samuel Moyn investigates Claude to give voice to the critics of false victims, while Lefort's (re-)visionary treatment of Maurice Mer‐ asking more probing questions regarding such leau-Ponty's break with Marxism. Ever the intel‐ culture and its relationship with memory and his‐ lectual historian, Moyn proposes "that Lefort's tory: How does this culture affect memory? How reading [of Merleau-Ponty] fows, in the frst in‐ does it affect history? And, perhaps even more im‐ stance, out of a personal and political conjunc‐ portantly, what is the relationship between mem‐ ture"--a break from communism after the Korean ory and history in the first place? In "Paris, Capital War (p. 108). However, Moyn expresses a cautious of Anti-Fascism," Anson Rabinbach returns to the apprehension that breaks down along disci‐ same problematic relationship between memory plinary lines about this reading: "Unlike philoso‐ and history. Here, Rabinbach suggests that phers, however, intellectual historians care a archival material now allows one to move from great deal about distinguishing anticipation from memorial to historical treatments of anti-fascism achievement and telling retroactive attribution in France during the 1930s. Dominick LaCapra's from real contribution" (p. 112). In "The Return of "Toward a Critique of Violence" makes a similar the King: Hegelianism and Post-Marxism in Žižek move. Critiquing the dimension "wherein critical and Nancy," Warren Breckman weaves his way distance drops to a minimum or disappears" from through two distinct responses to G.