Cult of the Will is the first comprehensive study of modernity's preoccupation with willpower. From Nietzsche's 'will to power' to the fantasy of a 'triumph of the will' under Nazism, the will--its pathologies and potential cures--was a topic of urgent debates in European modernity. In this study, Michael Cowan examines the emergence of 'will therapy' and its impact on arts and culture in Germany after 1900. The book's five chapters lead readers through cross sections of modern German cultural history, including not only literature and aesthetics but also self-help medicine, economics, body culture, and pedagogy. Modernity's fixation on willpower helped prepare the way for fascism, but this trajectory is not Cowan's main concern. His focus falls rather on more widespread 'technologies of the self' and their role in the effort to reimagine agency for a modern subject caught up in increasingly complex systemic networks.
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Editorial Reviews
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Cult of the Will is a superb study which covers familiar terrain with an entirely new approach. Cowan provides very fine examples of interdisciplinary interpretation. His book goes far beyond providing a history of nervousness. It finds the implications of psychiatric theory in the internal structure of film, architecture, dance, and literature. --Daniel Purdy, Penn State University
Cowan's work presents a pathbreaking and truly meaningful discovery not only in the field of German Studies. It belongs to the multiple merits of this book that it participates in the opening and development of a new discursive space within the Humanities. Over the past two decades, much of the historical research on the time between 1850 and 1950 concentrated on the 'discovery' of the human body-a historical discovery that took place above all against the hitherto unchallenged dominance of the Cartesian paradigm, and the control and repression of the Christian religious authorities. What Cowan presents is a tendency, during the same historical period, to 'master' the body and its fickleness (the 'nervousness' in Cowan's subtitle, a tendency that had a strong impact not only on certain contexts and environments in Western intellectual life but also undoubtedly in the formation of Fascist ideologies and practices. This book should become obligatory reading for all Germanists, not only Germanists working in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The breadth of the epistemological and cultural dimension is well balanced by the astonishing variety of languages, literatures, and national cultural traditions that Cowan has managed to integrate into this amazing book. --Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University
Cowan deftly incorporates many contemporary fin-de-siecle examples to argue his central contention that attempts at control were widespread and deemed crucial for a rapidly transforming German society. --M. Deshmukh, Choice
Cowan's work presents a pathbreaking and truly meaningful discovery not only in the field of German Studies. It belongs to the multiple merits of this book that it participates in the opening and development of a new discursive space within the Humanities. Over the past two decades, much of the historical research on the time between 1850 and 1950 concentrated on the 'discovery' of the human body-a historical discovery that took place above all against the hitherto unchallenged dominance of the Cartesian paradigm, and the control and repression of the Christian religious authorities. What Cowan presents is a tendency, during the same historical period, to 'master' the body and its fickleness (the 'nervousness' in Cowan's subtitle, a tendency that had a strong impact not only on certain contexts and environments in Western intellectual life but also undoubtedly in the formation of Fascist ideologies and practices. This book should become obligatory reading for all Germanists, not only Germanists working in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The breadth of the epistemological and cultural dimension is well balanced by the astonishing variety of languages, literatures, and national cultural traditions that Cowan has managed to integrate into this amazing book. --Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University
Cowan deftly incorporates many contemporary fin-de-siecle examples to argue his central contention that attempts at control were widespread and deemed crucial for a rapidly transforming German society. --M. Deshmukh, Choice
Cowan's work presents a pathbreaking and truly meaningful discovery not only in the field of German Studies. It belongs to the multiple merits of this book that it participates in the opening and development of a new discursive space within the Humanities. Over the past two decades, much of the historical research on the time between 1850 and 1950 concentrated on the 'discovery' of the human body-a historical discovery that took place above all against the hitherto unchallenged dominance of the Cartesian paradigm, and the control and repression of the Christian religious authorities. What Cowan presents is a tendency, during the same historical period, to 'master' the body and its fickleness (the 'nervousness' in Cowan's subtitle, a tendency that had a strong impact not only on certain contexts and environments in Western intellectual life but also undoubtedly in the formation of Fascist ideologies and practices. This book should become obligatory reading for all Germanists, not only Germanists working in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The breadth of the epistemological and cultural dimension is well balanced by the astonishing variety of languages, literatures, and national cultural traditions that Cowan has managed to integrate into this amazing book. --Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University
Cowan deftly incorporates many contemporary fin-de-siecle examples to argue his central contention that attempts at control were widespread and deemed crucial for a rapidly transforming German society. --M. Deshmukh, Choice
Cowan's work presents a pathbreaking and truly meaningful discovery not only in the field of German Studies. It belongs to the multiple merits of this book that it participates in the opening and development of a new discursive space within the Humanities. Over the past two decades, much of the historical research on the time between 1850 and 1950 concentrated on the 'discovery' of the human body-a historical discovery that took place above all against the hitherto unchallenged dominance of the Cartesian paradigm, and the control and repression of the Christian religious authorities. What Cowan presents is a tendency, during the same historical period, to 'master' the body and its fickleness (the 'nervousness' in Cowan's subtitle, a tendency that had a strong impact not only on certain contexts and environments in Western intellectual life but also undoubtedly in the formation of Fascist ideologies and practices. This book should become obligatory reading for all Germanists, not only Germanists working in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The breadth of the epistemological and cultural dimension is well balanced by the astonishing variety of languages, literatures, and national cultural traditions that Cowan has managed to integrate into this amazing book. --Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University
Cowan deftly incorporates many contemporary fin-de-siecle examples to argue his central contention that attempts at control were widespread and deemed crucial for a rapidly transforming German society. --M. Deshmukh, Choice
About the Author
Michael Cowan is Assistant Professor of German Studies at McGill University. With Kai Marcel Sicks, he is co-editor of Leibhaftige Moderne: Körperper in Kunst und Massenmedien, 1918-ì1933 (2005).
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royal jump, rhythmical gymnastics, educating the will, anguishing sensation, research into hysteria, will therapy, modern nervousness, overcoming nervousness, will impairment, nervous body, body culture, nervous subject, performative rituals, will training, nervous life Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Die Schönheit, Thomas Buddenbrook, Herkules Bell, Der Kulturmensch, Alfred Kubin, Sascha Schneider, Hermann Bahr, Thomas Mann, Der Rhythmus, Gymnastik des Willens, Reinhold Gerling, William James, Christian Buddenbrook, Founding Years, Des Esseintes, Middle Ages, Der Aussergewöhnliche, Franz Biberkopf, Die Ermordung, Principles of Psychology, George Beard, Wolf Dohrn, Anson Rabinbach, Alfred Fouillée, Deutscher Werkbund Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
royal jump, rhythmical gymnastics, educating the will, anguishing sensation, research into hysteria, will therapy, modern nervousness, overcoming nervousness, will impairment, nervous body, body culture, nervous subject, performative rituals, will training, nervous life Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Die Schönheit, Thomas Buddenbrook, Herkules Bell, Der Kulturmensch, Alfred Kubin, Sascha Schneider, Hermann Bahr, Thomas Mann, Der Rhythmus, Gymnastik des Willens, Reinhold Gerling, William James, Christian Buddenbrook, Founding Years, Des Esseintes, Middle Ages, Der Aussergewöhnliche, Franz Biberkopf, Die Ermordung, Principles of Psychology, George Beard, Wolf Dohrn, Anson Rabinbach, Alfred Fouillée, Deutscher Werkbund Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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