Modernism and Magic
Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult
While modernism’s engagement with the occult has been approached by critics as the result of a loss of faith in representation, an attempt to draw on science as the primary discourse of modernity, or as an attempt to draw on a hidden history of ideas, Modernism and Magic argues that occult discourses have at their heart a magical practice which attempts to remake the relationship between world and representation. As Leigh Wilson demonstrates, 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, from powerless to powerful. It is this magical mimesis that proved so attractive and productive for those early twentieth-century artists committed to remaking writing, the visual arts and film.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: ‘But the facts of life persist’: Magic, Experiment and the Problem of Representing the World Otherwise
Chapter 2: ‘And what has all this to do with experimental writing?’: Words and Ghosts
Chapter 3: A ‘subtle metamorphosis’: Sound, Mimesis and Transformation
Chapter 4: ‘Here is where the magic is’: Telepathy and Experiment in Film
Chapter 5: ‘Disney against the metaphysicals’: Eisenstein, Pound, Ectoplasm and the Politics of Animation
Bibliography
Index.
[A] valuable contribution towards a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of occult discourses and those of modernist art.
[A] valuable contribution towards a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of occult discourses and those of modernist art. The connection she establishes between modernism’s problem of mimesis and its recourse to the magical as a solution is convincingly argued.
"In this provocative and engaging book, Leigh Wilson finds magic at the heart of modernism. Looking afresh at its fascination with the occult, she suggests that modernist writers and filmmakers drew on magical thinking in their experimental art to create works that radically transformed the world they knew."Professor Helen Carr, Goldsmiths, University of London "This is a major contribution not only to our understanding of modernism's fascination with the supernatural, but of modernism’s fundamental investment in modern magic. It breaks new ground by considering magic’s importance for filmmakers and artists, novelists and poets. It is the most important book on the topic in over a decade."Dr Stephen Ross, University of Victoria
I learned a great deal in reading Modernism and Magic and recommend it unreservedly to anyone interested in modernism and the occult.
Wilson’s text provides an excellent rereading of modernism in the context of magic. It offers the reader wonderful background on a number of modernist authors and filmmakers.
The greatest achievement of this book lies in its opening up an area of intellectual activity that hitherto has been underestimated, under-respected, and even viewed as dubious, despite the fact that it is of crucial importance for the development of the arts and thought of the twentieth century (continuing to this day).
