Modernism/modernity

Wollaeger, Mark A., 1957-
Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (review)
Modernism/modernity - Volume 14, Number 1, January 2007, pp. 161-165

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Mark A. Wollaeger - Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (review) - Modernism/modernity 14:1 Modernism/modernity 14.1 (2007) 161-165 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Mark Wollaeger Vanderbilt University Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation. Rebecca L. Walkowitz. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 231. $29.50 (cloth). Rebecca Walkowitz situates her ambitious book at the heart of a wide range of contemporary discussions in modernist and cultural studies: the relationship between literary style and political critique; competing definitions of modernism and its relation to postcoloniality; the place of affect in critical thinking and critical theory; the role of literature in cultural studies; relationships between modernism and globalization; and debates about cosmopolitanism. Very broadly, she aims to revise, perhaps ultimately replace, the familiar notion of international modernism by reconceiving it through what she calls "critical cosmopolitanism," a version of global consciousness in which "critical" is meant to invoke both the sociology of knowledge associated with critical theory and also a "critique of critique" aimed at restoring a range of affective conditions and social attitudes, such as distraction, confusion, and attachment, that are typically devalued in familiar modes of critique. To this end, Walkowitz focuses on "novels that develop and examine new attitudes of...