Modernist work : labor aesthetics and the work of art Through a wide ranging selection of essays representing a variety of different media national contexts and critical approaches this volume provides a broad overview of the idea of work in modernism considered in its historical political aesthetic and theoretical dimensions. Several individual chapters discuss canonical figures including Richard Strauss Joseph Conrad Virginia Woolf Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein but Modernist Work also addresses contexts that are chronologically and geographically foreign to the main stream of modernist studies such as Swedish proletarian writing Haitian nationalism and South African inheritors of Dada. Prominent historical themes include the ideas of class revolution and the changing nature of womens work while more conceptual chapters explore topics including autonomy inheritance intention failure and intimacy. List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements An Introduction to Modernist Work John Attridge University of New South Wales Australia I The Work of Art 1. The Absolute and the Impossible Work: Franz Kafkas The Burrow Robert Buch University of New South Wales Australia 2. Autonomy Difficulty and the Work of Literature in Wyndham Lewiss Tarr and André Gides The Counterfeiters Emmett Stinson University of Newcastle Australia 3. Mimesis and the Task of the Writer for Lawrence and Woolf Helen Rydstrand University of New South Wales Australia II Artistic Labor 4. Richard Strauss at Work in His Works David Larkin University of Sydney Australia 5. Steins Immaterial Labors Kristin Grogan St. Catharines College Cambridge UK 6. Trace and Facture: Legacies of the Ready made in Contemporary South African Art Alison Kearney University of the Witwatersrand South Africa III Representing Work and Workers 7. Joseph Conrads Nostromo: Work Inheritance and Desert in the Modernist Novel Evelyn Chan Chinese University of Hong Kong 8. Magic Modernity and Women at Work Caroline Webb University of Newcastle Australia 9. The Disclosure of Work in the Poetry of Ron Silliman Christopher Oakey University of New South Wales Australia IV Class Identity and Class Conflict 10. Swedish Social Modernism: The Inward and Outward Turn in Eyvind Johnsons Stad i ljus Niklas Salmose Linnaeus University Sweden 11. Percussion and Repercussion: The Haitian Revolution as Worker Uprising in Guy Endores Babouk (1934) and C. L. R. Jamess Black Jacobins (1938) Sascha Morrell Monash University Australia 12. Domestic Holocaust: Michael Hanekes Intractable Class War Paul Sheehan Macquarie University Australia Afterword: Work Modernism and Thinking Through the Aesthetic Morag Shiach Queen Mary University of London UK Index.