Militantní modernismus

Owen Hatherley's book Militant Modernism (2009) explores the phenomenon of 20th century modernism and offers new starting points for understanding it. It focuses on modern design and film, with a particular attention to architecture (whether in terms of Russian Constructivism or British Brutalism). The four chapters of the book - devoted to brutality, totalitarianism, genderlessness and alienation - are a defense of radical modernist positions; the eclectically constructed texts lead the reader from Vorticism through Soviet film theory to an analysis of Bertolt Brecht, here referring to the utopian social projects in the first Soviet Five-Year Plan, elsewhere to the radical visions of Wilhelm Reich (Sexpol), etc. Hatherley is an active, insightful and learned blogger whose texts have compacted into book format. He brings several elements to the table that can be useful to Czech discourse: he is not afraid to work with leftist concepts and shows that without a deeper understanding of communist ideology and practice we cannot understand modernist culture, not only in the Soviet Union. The book is supplemented with pictorial material and extensive notes.

Czech edition