Cult of the Will

“Cowan’s work presents a pathbreaking and truly meaningful discovery not only in the field of German studies. It belongs to the multiple merits of this book that it participates in the opening and development of a new discursive space within the Humanities. Over the past two decades, much of the historical research on the time between 1850 and 1950 concentrated on the ‘discovery’ of the human body—a historical discovery that took place above all against the hitherto unchallenged dominance of the Cartesian paradigm, and the control and repression of the Christian religious authorities. What Cowan presents is a tendency, during the same historical period, to ‘master’ the body and its fickleness (the ‘nervousness’ in Cowan’s subtitle, a tendency that had a strong impact not only on certain contexts and environments in Western intellectual life but also undoubtedly in the formation of Fascist ideologies and practices. This book should become obligatory reading for all Germanists, not only Germanists working in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The breadth of the epistemological and cultural dimension is well balanced by the astonishing variety of languages, literatures, and national cultural traditions that Cowan has managed to integrate into this amazing book.”

—Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University

“Cult of the Will is a superb study that covers familiar terrain with an entirely new approach. Cowan provides very fine examples of interdisciplinary interpretation. His book goes far beyond providing a history of ‘nervousness.’ It finds the implications of psychiatric theory in the internal structure of film, architecture, dance, and literature.”

—Daniel Purdy, Penn State University

“Cowan deftly incorporates many contemporary fin-de-siècle examples to argue his central contention that attempts at control were widespread and deemed crucial for a rapidly transforming German society.”

—M. Deshmukh Choice

“This story has been often told, but Cowan has found a fascinating and altogether novel way of retelling it, through the lens of the turn-of-the-century preoccupation with overcoming the condition of will impairment, or abulia.”

—Andreas Killen Central European History