Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult
Leigh Wilson
Abstract
While the engagement of modernist artists with the occult has been approached by critics as the result of a loss of faith in representation, as an attempt to draw on science as the primary discourse of modernity, or as a hidden history of ideas, this book argues that the discourses of the occult were used by a range of modernist artists, writers and filmmakers because at their heart is a magical practice which remakes the relationship between world and representation. The discourses of the occult are based on a magical mimesis which transforms the nature of the copy, from inert to vital, from ... More
While the engagement of modernist artists with the occult has been approached by critics as the result of a loss of faith in representation, as an attempt to draw on science as the primary discourse of modernity, or as a hidden history of ideas, this book argues that the discourses of the occult were used by a range of modernist artists, writers and filmmakers because at their heart is a magical practice which remakes the relationship between world and representation. The discourses of the occult are based on a magical mimesis which transforms the nature of the copy, from inert to vital, from dead to alive, from static to animated. The book explores the aesthetic and political implications of this, and argues that those modernists who were most self-consciously experimental – including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Dziga Vertov and Sergei M. Eisenstein – drew on the magical mimesis at the heart of occult discourses in order to renew and transform their art.
Keywords:
Modernism,
Spiritualism,
Theosophy,
Occult,
Aesthetics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780748627691 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: May 2013 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001 |
