Modernist ambiguity stems from a romantic refusal of objective commitment

Evidence

In a brief but remarkable essay Franco Moretti has recently warned against the tendency of contemporary Marxist criticism to become ‘little more than a left-wing “Apology for Modernism” ’, treating its devices as inherently subversive of the existing social order. Moretti argues that the characteristic Modernist stress on ambiguity expresses ‘an aesthetic-ironic attitude whose best definition still lies in an old formula — “willing suspension of disbelief” — which shows how much of the modernist imagination — where nothing is unbelievable — has its source in romantic irony’. In order adequately to characterize Romanticism Moretti appeals to one of the most remarkable figures of the modern European right, the brilliant but sinister Carl Schmitt. ‘Romanticism is subjectified occasionalism,’ Schmitt says. ’. .. the romantic subject treats the world as an occasion and opportunity for his romantic productivity.’ Any sense of the world itself and of the subject’s transactions with that world being governed by objective, causal relationships is lost. ‘The romantic withdraws from reality … He ironically avoids the constraints of objectivity and guards himself against being committed to anything. The reservation of all infinite possibilities lies in irony.’ Consequently, ‘everything - society and history, the cosmos and humanity - serves only the productivity of the romantic ego … every event is transformed into a fantastic and dreamlike ambiguity, and every object can become anything.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 212

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Jameson’s political unconscious thesis and critiques the left’s canonization of modernist formal devices as inherently subversive — the core of the book’s anti-postmodernist argument. — connects to: The Romantic imagination rejected Enlightenment rationalism and embraced the subconscious — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 437; Joy Division and the Fall represent opposite ends of Romantic modernism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1108

Broader Connections

• The Romantic imagination rejected Enlightenment rationalism and embraced the subconscious #corroborates (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 437