Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time

Susan Stanford Friedman reimagines modernity as a networked, circulating, and recurrent phenomenon, producing multiple aesthetic innovations across millennia. She moves from large-scale instances of pre-1500 modernities to small-scale instances, maps the interconnected modernisms of the long twentieth century, and rejects the modernist concepts of marginality, othering, and major/minor.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 472 pages
Publication date: 27 February 2018
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Susan Stanford Friedman's groundbreaking work reimagines modernity as a networked, circulating, and recurring phenomenon that has produced numerous aesthetic innovations across millennia. By considering cosmopolitan as well as nomadic and oceanic worlds, she expands the scope of modernist critique and opens the practice to more integrated study. Friedman's analysis spans from large-scale instances of pre-1500 modernities, such as Tang Dynasty China and the Mongol Empire, to small-scale instances of modernisms, including the poetry of Du Fu and Kabir and Abbasid ceramic art. She maps the interconnected modernisms of the long twentieth century, pairing Joseph Conrad with Tayeb Salih, E. M. Forster with Arundhati Roy, Virginia Woolf with the Tagores, and Aime Cesaire with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. She also engages with postcolonial works from Sudan and India and explores the concept of Negritude.

In contrast to modernist notions of marginality, othering, and major/minor, Friedman advocates for rupture, mobility, speed, networks, and divergence, elevating the agencies and creative capacities of all cultures not only in the past and present but also in the century to come. Through her comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach, Friedman offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of modernity and its impact on global culture.

Weight: 632g
Dimension: 154 x 229 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231170918