Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians
Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians Author(s): Robert Wohl Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 74, No. 3 (September 2002), pp. 573-621 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345112 . Accessed: 30/09/2012 11:34
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Review Article Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians*
Robert Wohl
University of California, Los Angeles Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues (T. S. ELIOT, 1922)
Twenty years ago, historians could happily ignore the concept of modernism. I offer myself as an example. When asked in 1982 to participate in a conference on modernism being held at the Claremont Colleges in California, I cavalierly declared in my paper, and then went on to repeat later in the essay that was published in the resulting volume: “Modernism is not a word that the historian ordinarily uses. Glancing through the books in my library that deal with the cultural history of Europe during the last century, I seldom find it on a title page, in the text, or even in an index. One may feel that this is testimony to the intellectual bulkheads that separate the academic disciplines; but I suspect that it is also an indication that historians have found the term difficult to apply, irrelevant to
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History.
http://www.jstor.org
Review Article Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians*
Robert Wohl
University of California, Los Angeles Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues (T. S. ELIOT, 1922)
Twenty years ago, historians could happily ignore the concept of modernism. I offer myself as an example. When asked in 1982 to participate in a conference on modernism being held at the Claremont Colleges in California, I cavalierly declared in my paper, and then went on to repeat later in the essay that was published in the resulting volume: “Modernism is not a word that the historian ordinarily uses. Glancing through the books in my library that deal with the cultural history of Europe during the last century, I seldom find it on a title page, in the text, or even in an index. One may feel that this is testimony to the intellectual bulkheads that separate the academic disciplines; but I suspect that it is also an indication that historians have found the term difficult to apply, irrelevant to