The Jewish Decadence
Jews and the Aesthetics of Modernity
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Published:26th Apr '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This book explores the connection between Jewish culture and the avant-garde movement of decadence, revealing its impact on modernism and contemporary society.
As Jewish writers, artists, and intellectuals navigated their way into the cultural hubs of Western Europe and Anglo-America, they encountered a society deeply fascinated by decadence. This avant-garde movement, marked by a self-aware approach to art and literature, philosophical pessimism, and an exploration of nonnormative sexualities, also served as a derogatory label. Jews were often depicted as the architects of social and cultural decay. In The Jewish Decadence, Jonathan Freedman posits that the Jewish relationship with decadence significantly influenced the rise of modernism and the evolution of Jewish culture from the 1870s onward.
Freedman is the first to weave this expansive narrative, illustrating how decadence is integral to the aesthetics of modernity and inseparable from Jewish identity. He presents a series of diverse and unexpected episodes that challenge the notion that this identification is merely historical. Instead, he emphasizes that the association of Jewishness with decadence continues to resonate in contemporary society.
Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, The Jewish Decadence sheds light on the complexities of Jewish cultural expression and its entanglement with broader societal trends. Freedman's exploration reveals how these themes have shaped not only Jewish identity but also the artistic and intellectual landscape of modernity itself.
"It is chock-full of exciting and provocative ideas, but it is also just plain fun — something akin to Freedman leading the reader by the hand on a tour of a cultural landscape that he knows like the back of his hand." * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"This is a profoundly important book in Jewish Studies, as well as among the cultural and literary criticism of its artistic subject." * Religion and the Arts *
"Erudite, gossipy, nuanced, funny, and moving. . . Freedman serves as collector culling materials from a wide array of sources, arranging them into an often dizzying but unfailingly interesting and almost always entirely persuasive account that supports his thesis, each time from a different direction." * Victorian Studies *
"Overall, The Jewish Decadence is a richly rewarding read, blending deep knowledge, provocative insight and unsparing honesty to the role Jews have played in fin-de-siècle culture of Europe and the USA. Barely a page goes by with an insight into cultural production and consumption and unexpected links between creators, places and ideas. This book will be of value to anyone wishing to under early Modernism and Jewish contribution to vanguard art." -- alexanderadamsart: Reviews of art, culture and literature
"Freedman’s argument, that Jewish novelists, poets, actors, and philosophers reworked the
discourse of decadence, which often linked Jewishness to decline, to their own ends in order
to generate a Jewish response to the conditions of modernity, is compelling. More importantly,
it offers a model of how work on afterlives and transnational circulation can avoid the trap of
thinking in terms of unidirectional influence and attend to the agency and creativity of those
influenced." * Journal of British Studies *
Bringing his capacious cultural expertise and scholarly rigor to a wide-ranging exploration of the association between Jews and decline and degeneracy, Jonathan Freedman performs an erudite, original, and wonderfully chutzpadik act of reclamation. -- Alisa Solomon, Columbia University
“This book takes us on an extraordinary journey through what the author calls ‘something like modernity,’ as it is to be found in dance, literature, song, painting, theatre, film, and history. Decadence turns out to mean what it seems to mean, and an almost unimaginable range of other things as well. Its richness, as well as its constant entanglement in ideas of Jewishness, would have caused any other writer either to simplify or get lost, but Freedman wittily and resolutely does neither. His book is ‘example-drunk,’ as he says, but it doesn’t stumble. It celebrates complication and reflection and masquerade, and we find ourselves wishing the show—the one he is evoking and the one to be seen in the fabulous evocation itself—would never end.” -- Michael Wood, Princeton University
“Freedman reconceives of Jews as architects rather than victims of modernity. Although Jews were often demonized as sexual and artistic deviants, they also entered into dialogue with their detractors by contesting or reshaping the prejudices of the day. Most important, Jews played a central role in European culture as artists, critics, sponsors, networkers, and entrepreneurs; throughout the book, Freedman spots Jews where none have been discerned before, testifying to their ubiquity among the avant-garde.” -- Maud Ellman, University of Chicago
"A book that transforms our experiences of familiar works and encourages us to carry on the work of Jewish cultural studies, following the example of one of its most gifted practitioners." * Reading Religion *
ISBN: 9780226581088
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm
Weight: 399g
304 pages