Subject Without Nation Robert Musil and the History of Modern Identity
- List Price: $30.95
- Binding: Paperback
- Publisher: Duke Univ Pr
- Publish date: 12/01/2000
It was to this society that Musil responded in his great work The Man Without Qualities. Exploring the nooks and crannies of this modernist classic, Jonsson shows that Musil's narrative evolves along two axes that must be considered in tandem: Whereas the central plot portrays a Viennese elite that in 1913 attempts to restore social cohesion by gathering popular support for the cultural essence of the empire, the protagonist discovers that he lacks essence altogether and finds himself attracted by monsters, criminals, and revolutionary figures that reject the social order. In this way, Musil's novel traces the disappearance of what Jonsson calls the expressivist paradigm -- the conviction that identities such as gender, nationality, class, and social character are expressions of permanent intrinsic dispositions. This, Jonsson argues, is Musil's great legacy. For not only did the Austrian author seek to liquidate prevailing conceptions of personal and cultural identity; he also projected "a new human being", one who would resist assimilation into imperialist, nationalist, or fascist communities.
Subject Without Nation presents a new interpretation of Viennese modernity and uncovers thehistorical foundations of poststructural and postcolonial reconceptualizations of human subjectivity. Illuminating links between Musil's oeuvre as a whole and postwar developments in critical thought, this book locates an important crossroads between literary criticism, intellectual history, and cultural theory.
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