Dances with Darwin, 1875–1910: Vernacular Modernity in FranceRoutledge, 5 dec 2016 - 330 pagina's Examining the extraordinary influence of Darwin's theory of evolution on French thought from 1875 to 1910, Rae Beth Gordon argues for a reconsideration of modernism both in time and in place that situates its beginnings in the French café-concert aesthetic. Gordon weaves the history of medical science, ethnology, and popular culture into a groundbreaking exploration of the cultural implications of gesture in dance performances at late-nineteenth-century Parisian café-concerts and music halls. While art historians have studied the ties between primitivism and modernism, their convergence in fin-de-siècle popular entertainment has been largely overlooked. Gordon argues that while the impact of Darwinism was unprecedented in science, it was no less present in popular culture through the popular press and popular entertainment, where it constituted a kind of "evolutionist aesthetic" on display in the café-concert, circus, and music-hall as well as in the spectator's reception of the representations on the stage. Modernity in these sites, Gordon contends, was composed by the convergence of contemporary medical theory with representations of the primitive, staged in entertainments that ranged from the can-can, Missing Links, and epileptic singers to the Cake-Walk. Her anthropology of gesture uncovers in these dislocations of the human form an aesthetic of disorder a half century before the eruptions of Dada and Surrealism. |
Inhoudsopgave
Polaire | |
Darwinism and Degeneration Theory in Popular Culture | |
The Anthropoid in Our Past and Physical Anthropology | |
What Is Ugly? | |
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Dances with Darwin, 1875-1910: Vernacular Modernity in France Rae Beth Gordon Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2009 |
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
aesthetics African dance André animal anthropology Archaeopteryx artists attraction audience black American blackface body brain café-concert Cake-Walk cancan cannibalism century chanteuse Chapter Charles Féré Chocolat cited comic contagion contortions convulsive Courrier Français Courtesy Bibliothèque Forney culture Dahomey dancers Darwin degeneration emphasis entertainment epilepsy epileptic singers evolution evolutionary example exhibited exotic Exposition Universelle expression fantasies fascination fear Figure France French genre gestures grimaces grotesque Henri Hottentot human hysteria hysterical ibid instinct Jarry Jarry's Josephine Baker journalist laughter Le Monde illustré Le Rire minstrel shows minstrels modern Monde illustré monkey Moulin Rouge movement music-hall Nègre Negro neurasthenia nineteenth nineteenth-century pain Parisian Parisienne Pataphysics performers play Polaire Polaire's popular primitive prostitute races racial reader regression resemblance Revue rhythm Rire Salpêtrière savage scientific sensations sexual simian songs species spectacle spectators stage strange theater Théâtre theory Ubu Roi Ubu's ugliness underlined woman women wrote Yvette Guilbert