Automatic for the Masses : : The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist Realism / / Petre M. Petrov.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter ACUP Complete eBook-Package 2015
• VerfasserIn: Petrov, Petre M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.)

At the end of the 1920s, the Modernist and avant-garde artistic programmes of the early Soviet Union were swept away by the rise of Stalinism and the dictates of Socialist Realism. Did this aesthetic transition also constitute a conceptual break, or were there unseen continuities between these two movements? In Automatic for the Masses, Petre M. Petrov offers a novel, theoretically informed account of that transition, tracing those connections through Modernist notions of agency and authorship.Reading the statements and manifestos of the Formalists, Constructivists, and other Soviet avant-garde artists, Petrov argues that Socialist Realism perpetuated in a new form the Modernist “death of the author.” In interpreting this symbolic demise, he shows how the official culture of the 1930s can be seen as a perverted realization of modernism’s unrealizable project. An insightful and challenging interpretation of the era, Automatic for the Masses will be required reading for those interested in understanding early Soviet culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part One -- Chapter 1. The Imperative of Form -- Chapter 2. The Imperative of Content -- Chapter 3. Knowledge Become Practice -- Chapter 4. The Organization of Things -- Chapter 5. The Organization of Minds -- Part Two -- Chapter 6. The Anonymous Centre of Style -- Chapter 7. The Unbearable Light of Being -- Chapter 8. Ideology as Authentication -- Chapter 9. The Blind, the Seeing, and the Shiny -- Chapter 10. Life Happens -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index