In this seminar we investigate the interpenetration of aesthetics and politics in interwar Europe, structuring our conversation around particular debates, such as the question of violence in Sorel and Marinetti, the problem of sovereignty in Schmitt, Benjamin, and Ball, the polemics about modernism and realism around Lukács, the return to dis/order in France and Italy, and the desire for ritual in the Collège de Sociologie.
Among the discussed movements are Vorticism, Futurism, Scuola metafisica, Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit, and dissident Surrealism.