Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 18:25:58 +0100
Subject: Re: hating the modern
From: Steve watts <sw235-AT-cam.ac.uk>


An interesting version of this debate is central to at least one other
modernist author, Thomas Mann. In some ways he was that elusive figure the
'moderate, corporatist Republican' but also a disciple (critical) of
Nietzsche who perhaps as much as anyone spearheaded the intellectual
critique of the Enlightenment - itself a product/cause of 'modernity'. The
debate that Mann engendered in his Reflections of a non-Political Man, and
throughout his oeuvre, particularly in the Magic Mountain and Dr Faustus, is
keenly alert to the contradictoriness of both the bourgeoisie and its
enemies from left and right.

Taking the point about Yeats and decolonisation, is there any theoretical
model which might help relate the similar (though admittedly different)
problem with modernity and "civilization" that Mann pondered?

Steve Watts