Nancy Cunard And the afterlives of decadent desire
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22157192 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kristin Mahoney (0009-0004-2908-0363, Michigan State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 222-234 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Modernist Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2469-2921 • E-ISSN: 2469-293X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/24692921.2021.1950473 |
| OpenAlex | W3179431580 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 12 |
While Nancy Cunard is often understood in relation to the modernist and surrealist circles in which she moved in the early-twentieth century, as Jane Marcus’s recent work on Cunard indicates, her connections with late-Victorian aestheticism and decadent modernism were also quite strong. The decadent modernist Norman Douglas was a particularly significant influence on Cunard. This essay considers the manner in which decadent eroticism and Orientalism shaped Cunard’s consumption of Blackness and her relationship to the Black jazz musician Henry Crowder by paying close attention to two texts, her own Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas and Crowder’s account of his affair with Cunard, As Wonderful as All That? Placing these two texts in conversation with one another provides insight into the way Cunard’s admiration for Douglas informed and enabled her erotic appetites, illuminating the perpetual pull towards racial fetishism so evident within her practices. The impact of Douglas’s mentorship on Cunard serves here as a representative example of decadent cosmopolitanism’s more troubling afterlives, allowing for a consideration of the bad affects and disturbing attachments decadence fostered in its wake
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Psychoanalysis · Cinema and Media Studies · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |