Degeneration and Revolution

Robert Heynen teaches in Communication Studies at York University. He has published numerous articles on Weimar culture, socialist history, and surveillance, including in New Formations and Canadian Journal of Communication.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsChapter 1: Introduction: Weimar Germany and the Cultures of Capitalist Modernity1.1 Rethinking Weimar History1.2 Weimar Germany: The Crises of Capitalist Modernity1.3 Degeneration, Embodiment, and the Politics of Culture: A Marxist Perspective1.4 The Structure of the BookChapter 2: Degeneration: Gender, War and the Politics of the Volkskörper2.1 Introduction2.2 August 19142.3 Women’s Protests and Left Politics2.4 Masculinity, War, and the Cultural Politics of the Weimar Radical RightChapter 3: Revolution: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Question of Totality3.1 Introduction3.2 Nostalgia and Shock3.3 Art, Politics, and Revolution3.4 Expressionism and After3.5 TotalityChapter 4: Bodies and Minds: Art and the Politics of Degeneration4.1 Introduction4.2 (De)militarised Bodies: Art and Gender after War4.3 The Prostitute4.4 The Prosthetic Man: The Wounded or Disabled Veteran4.5 Outsider Art: Asylums and the Cultural Politics of Madness4.6 Primitivism, the Body, and Colonial NostalgiaChapter 5: Transforming Vision: Film, Photography, and the Politics of Social Hygiene5.1 Introduction: The Birth of Homo Cinematicus5.2 The Photo-Eye: New Modes of Vision5.3 The Primitive Spectator: Race, Gender, Class, and the Weimar Audience5.4 Optical Hygiene: Sanitising Vision5.5 Racial Aesthetics: Photography, Film, and the Weimar BodyChapter 6: Revolution and the Degeneration of the Weimar Republic: Worker Culture and the Rise of Fascism6.1 Introduction6.2 Towards a Worker Culture6.3 ‘We Are the Eyes of Our Class!’: Workers’ Photography and Film6.4 Proletarian Theatre and the Fight for the Streets6.5 Radical Cultures of the Body: The Left and the Struggle over Abortion6.6 In the Shadow of Fascism: Brecht, the Left, and the End of the Weimar RepublicReferencesIndex