Modernism's Other Work

Lisa Siraganian argues that the formalist detachment of high modernism serves as a laboratory for theorizing political agency and individual liberty. By examining the works of Gertrude Stein, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, and Marcel Duchamp, she demonstrates how the demand for aesthetic autonomy—treating the artwork as an object independent of the viewer’s perspective—mirrors questions of how a citizen exists within a state. Siraganian connects the specific linguistic puzzles of experimental poetry and the physical presence of avant-garde sculpture to the internal mechanisms of liberal corporate personhood and democratic sovereignty.

Scholars of twentieth-century literature and art historians read this book to understand the hidden political investments of seemingly aloof aesthetic movements. The text provides a framework for interpreting why writers like William Gaddis or Amiri Baraka pursued difficult formal styles as a means of asserting personal freedom. Readers walk away with a specific understanding of how the ontological status of an art object functions as a proxy for the legal and social status of the human subject in modern society.

Deep, outward-looking and open-ended; a demanding read.

Best for readers like The Deep Diver. Which reader are you?