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Sensationalism and the
Genealogy of Modernity
A Global Nineteenth-Century Perspective
Edited by Alberto Gabriele
Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity
Alberto Gabriele
Editor
Sensationalism
and the Genealogy
of Modernity
A Global Nineteenth-Century Perspective
Editor
Alberto Gabriele
Department of English and American Studies
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
v
CONTENTS
vii
viii CONTENTS
Index 297
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES
Alberto Gabriele
1
See also Alberto Gabriele (2009).
A. Gabriele ()
Department of English and American Studies,
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
2
See James Chandler, xvii. For a thorough investigation of the relation between economic
advancements and the theories of sentiment see Pocock, J.G.A., Virtue, Commerce and
History.
3
See Alberto Gabriele (2008).
4 A. GABRIELE
4
See Trotter’s Nervous Temperament, qtd. by John Brewer in “Sentiment and Sensibility,”
in The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature, p. 26.
INTRODUCTION: SENSATIONALISM AND THE GENEALOGY OF MODERNITY... 5
spatial and temporal conventions. The spatial and temporal dislocation that
modernity brought since its inception became a shared language for artists
and writers in the early part of the twentieth century, thus providing an
easy narrative of rupture and innovation in opposition to the tradition of
aestheticism that had only reinstated older intellectual formations such as
the discourse of beauty, with different degrees of abstraction from figura-
tive representation or the immediate reality of everyday life.
Mapping the temporal and geographic coordinates of the trope of
sensationalism in the long, global nineteenth century, therefore, helps to
reorient the temporal coordinates of the history of industrial modernity
and to identify a continuum in its manifestation and representations.
Such a continuum closely links modernist experimentations with the
highlighting of materiality and the engagement with fragmentation and
disruptive sensations in the course of the long nineteenth century. This calls
for a comparative approach, not only by juxtaposing different geographical
areas that might be viewed in clearer focus in opposition to other ones, but
by dispersing this history over a longue durée. This is why Sensationalism
and the Genealogy of Modernity chooses to focus on cultural productions
drawn from the whole time span of the “(very) long nineteenth century,”
in order to allow to perceive the hidden and often unacknowledged con-
tinuities throughout a period that is often divided into separate disciplin-
ary fields (Romantic, Victorian, Modernist) all reduced to the confines of
the national disciplines of literature, art and cultural studies. The collec-
tion allows to see, through the prism of different geographical locations,
in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia, how the larger questions associ-
ated with the inception of modernity, ranging from the redefinition of the
psychology of perception to the gendered structures of social organization,
were articulated in each context, and to take note of invisible tangential
points of cultural exchange, and of parallel developments that might have
resulted from these contingencies. While the “Global Nineteenth Century”
approach of the subtitle dispenses with an impossible encyclopedic thor-
oughness, it nonetheless aims to recognize the unavoidable necessity to
incorporate such a global perspective in contemporary research, in order
to better highlight the phenomena usually ascribed to only one cultural
context. The collection Nineteenth Century Worlds. Global Formation Past
and Present (2008), while choosing to address “the most pressing con-
cerns of contemporary geopolitics,” presents studies that focus only on
English-language texts. However critical such a perspective might be, it
nonetheless reaffirms the structures and formations of one form of global
6 A. GABRIELE
PERIODIZATION
The essays contained in Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity,
far from focusing only on the most symptomatic representations, such as
the sensational 1860s in the British Victorian context, expand the focus
to encompass on one hand the precursors of sensationalism in the his-
tory of popular art forms such as political ballads (Brophy) or gothic fic-
tion (Lethbridge), and on the other the later articulation of the trope of
sensationalism in the fin de siècle culture of journalism (Laube, Pashut)
and the early part of the twentieth-century entertainment through mass
culture, periodical literature, early cinema and performance (Valence,
Letourneux, Rein, Devine, Müller, Tang).
5
For a productive overview of the question of place in colonial and postcolonial studies see
the introduction (Chap. 1) and the conclusion (Chap. 11) of (Dis)Placing Empire by Lindsay
J Proudfoot and Michael M Roche.
8 A. GABRIELE
GLOBAL CURRENTS
Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity seeks to understand the
rise of industrial modernity and the workings of popular culture by cre-
ating a dialogue between American studies specialists (Devine, Valance),
Australian (Laube), Austrian (Müller), British (Letheridge, Pashut,
Rein), Chinese (Tang), French (Migozzi), German (Brophy, Messing
Marcus) and Italian (Coen). Since the inception of industrial modernity
in these areas happened at different times and in relation to different
power structures, the juxtaposition of essays on different periods helps
to build a narrative that will inevitably identify common patterns as well
as recognize more historically specific responses to the culture of moder-
nity. An essay such as Tang’s stresses even more the need, in focusing
on the global circulation of popular fiction, for an attention to what
Arjun Appadurai calls the “radical disjuncture” between different sorts of
global flows and “the uncertain landscapes created in and through these
disjunctures” (Appadurai 3).
One of the challenges in the study of the cultural productions associated with
industrial modernity is the unstoppable proliferations of copies, adaptations
and mediations, which imply a complex and often elusive lived experience
of the contemporary consumers caught between different media. In the
multiplication of stimuli accompanying the cultural landscape of industrial
10 A. GABRIELE
that were theorized and practiced at the same time. The famous “serate,”
the happenings of the futurist avant-garde, harking back to the theatrical
slaps in the face of traditional audiences of performances such as Jarry’s
1896 Ubu Roi, constitute a place for experimenting with novel percep-
tions and for practicing a dislocation of accepted signifying conventions.
These perceptions became memorable stylistic features in the history of
modernism only when fixed on a canvas or in another tangible artistic form
by the performers-artists themselves, while necessarily dispersing the origi-
nal experience of performance. The ephemeral origin of painting in perfor-
mance is highlighted in the Futurist proclamation that “the gesture for us
will no longer be a fixed moment of universal dynamism: it will be decisively
the dynamic sensation made eternal” (Goldberg 2011: 14). The collabora-
tion of modernist artists who designed props and costumes for the theater
is a constant feature throughout the history of modernism, from the sets for
Ubu Roi made by Bonnard, Vuillard and Toulouse-Lautrec, to the ongo-
ing collaboration of avant-garde artists and filmmakers such as Malevich,
Eisenstein, Rodchenko and De Chirico with the theater for the production
of plays, ballets and operas (Goldberg 2011: 12; Bowlt 2014; Bellow 2013).
The question of movement of forms and colors, as well as the dislocation of
traditional meaning, was a central concern for all, but it was in the futurist
“words-in-freedom-drama” performed in Rome in 1914 at the Sprovieri
gallery, where paintings by Carrà, Balla, Boccioni, Russolo and Severini
were exhibited, that Marinetti, Balla and Cangiullo themselves provided
a live performance of the “words in freedom” written by Cangiullo, while
enhancing the sensory dissonance of the visitors of the gallery by producing
a series of noises (Goldberg 2011: 18).
Paris and the space of the Parisian café or of the theater have a central
role not only in the history of performance and the emergence of modern-
ist art and literature—the influence of Ubu Roi for the young Marinetti
being a case in point—but as one of the earliest sites in which specta-
tors were exposed, among other acts, to Lumière’s patented invention
of the cinematograph. The café, the traditional site for the exchange of
ideas in the newly constituted public sphere, was also a crucial place for
the reinvention of modern forms of visual spectacle, in a fluid transition
from lived performance to a material, and also mechanical, recreation of a
spectacular attraction, as attested also by the countless monotypes printed
by Edgar Degas registering the impressions of the café concert on paper
(Hauptman). Vanessa Schwartz in Spectacular Realities has demonstrated
that the first projections of the cinematograph in Parisian cafés was eyed
12 A. GABRIELE
the self, clothes here frequently indicate disjunctions between subject and
object and on occasion a disquieting domination of the material over the
spiritual.” Horror results “when there is a loss of control over the individ-
ual’s negotiations with their social environment, when the material surface
observed by others changes or eliminates the subject beyond the subject’s
control.” Most interestingly, the essay also links the material aspect of
book production itself, “the cover of the book,” to a similar concern with
appearance, social status and the slippery sites of signification that social
mobility and commodity culture enabled in the course of the nineteenth
century. This section of the essay points to a rich variety of commodities
disseminated by the publishing industry and in doing so, it prompts a
parallel reflection on the question of agency that these objects enabled,
albeit in disguise. Letheridge’s opens up a whole set of questions for a cul-
tural historical approach to the study of nineteenth-century book history.
Can the narrative of the circulation and production of books be differ-
ent and freer than the more overdetermined and teleological one that the
plot of the novel imposes on the actions of its characters? The case of the
material nature of books that reveal, expose or demystify the functioning
structure of culture offers a distinctive and different typology in the history
of commodity culture in the nineteenth century that can help redefine a
notion of subjectivity built in relation to the material object. Could, fur-
thermore, a freer agency be ascribed to the reader, one that can transcend
the taxonomic imperatives of the age?
The following two essays take the discussion of the trope of sensational-
ism in the Victorian context outside of the limited scope of the “sensational
craze” of the 1860s, by tracking the evolution of the trope in the history
of journalism: Anthony Laube traces the genealogy of the emergence of
“new journalism” in South Australian papers from the 1850s, whereas Efrat
Pashut codifies the modalities of sensationalism in the text-image dynam-
ics in the Victorian magazine Cycling, during the peak popularity of the
manufacture and sale of the Safety model (1894–96). Methodologically,
Laube’s essay chooses to focus on the South Australian context (the col-
ony that had Adelaide as its capital) in order to revise a model of dissemi-
nation of cultural innovation from the metropole to the colonial outposts.
Laube distinguishes two phases: an early period of experimentation and
entrepreneurial prowess on the part of the first newspaper editors, many
of which anticipated some of the practices of New Journalism, and a later,
profit-dominated development, defined by a less fluid structure of power
within the management of the South Australian papers, in an attempt to
INTRODUCTION: SENSATIONALISM AND THE GENEALOGY OF MODERNITY... 15
please the local political class and steer away, at least initially, from sen-
sational elements. Laube identifies several important forces that shaped
the development of journalism in Australia: the discovery of gold in the
neighboring colony of Victoria, the technological advancements in com-
munications between Europe and the colonies represented by the opening
of the Suez Canal and the establishment of telegraphic communication,
and the intercolonial and international mobility of the journalists that set-
tled there after stints in Britain, America, South Africa, Hong Kong and
Germany. He proceeds to investigate South Australian history of the press
through specific genres, such as the alternative press, the illustrated press
and the mainstream press, and also by identifying sub-genres in the ongo-
ing shaping of the new language of journalism in the Australian colony
such as sports reporting, the creation of a target audience of women and
investigative journalism.
Efrat Pashut’s essay “The Sensational Bicycle: Textual and Visual
Narratives in Cycling, 1891–1896” expands the study of the sensational
trope beyond the often studied period of the “sensation craze” of the
1860s to track the impact of the newly marketed “Safety” model with
pneumatic tire, as represented in the British journal Cycling through
fiction, non-fiction and illustrations between 1891 and 1896. The trope
of sensationalism, with the thrill of exciting news and sudden discoveries
it sustains, is both inextricably linked to the naturalization of consump-
tion patterns and immersed in the logic of market economy at large,
with which the genre of sensation fiction has often been associated. In
choosing the macrotext of the complete run of the magazine in the years
1891–96, Pashut avoids a purely thematic reading of the digital archive of
the Victorian periodical press, which can produce a “google-like” list of
references on any topic at a click of a mouse, in order to conduct a more
rigorous research aiming at retracing the experience of reading the maga-
zine in its original format, incorporating stimuli and suggestions coming
from the juxtaposition of several elements in the language of journalism
at the end of the nineteenth century. In tracking the psychological effects
of riding a bicycle in the city and, most interestingly, in the countryside,
she is then able to dispel the ungrounded notion that the sensory overkill
was only relegated to life in the city. The bicycle appears, therefore, as
an agent of the ambivalence that modernity represents, and sometimes
it becomes a symbol of the project of enlightenment that dispels super-
stitious notions associated with the rural folklore of the “undead.” The
latter mode is present in E. Douglass Fawcett’s story “A Hand from the
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P. 50, l. 1: Nulais.—Ms. B 6: Et fut messire Joffroy de Cargni, le
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