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Expressionism, Futurism, And The Dream Of Mass Democracy, Douglas Brent Mcbride

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay throws new light on a radical tendency in cultural modernism by analyzing the role of a single metaphor—the figure of politics as a stage—in political debates among German Expressionists and Italian Futurists before World War I. As the essay argues, this trope was used to critique liberalism's limited notion of popular rule and envision how disenfranchised masses might develop the political subjectivity needed to create a truly mass democracy. While the essay demonstrates that Futurists and Expressionists failed to develop a clear vision of what form mass democracy might take, it concludes that they agreed on one point. …