The Ego Made Manifest: Max Stirner, Egoism, and the Modern Manifesto
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
The Ego Made Manifest: Max Stirner, Egoism, and the Modern Manifesto
By (Author) Dr. Wayne Bradshaw
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
5th October 2023
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Literary theory
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900
Idealism
809.93352
Physical Properties
Hardback
224
Width 152mm, Height 229mm
Description
From Karl Marx to Wyndham Lewis, this book examines Max Stirners influence on the modern manifesto. Max Stirner has long proven to be an elusive figure at the fringes of 19th-century German idealism. He has been portrayed as the father of the philosophical dead end that was egoistic anarchism: a withered branch of an ineffectual movement, remembered largely because of its suggestion that crime was a valid form of revolutionary action. From this perspective, egoists subscribed to extreme forms of anarchism and defended acts of theft, assault, and even murder; egoism only held lasting appeal to rebels, nihilists, and criminals; and Stirners ideas could and should be consigned to the dustbin of history accordingly. The Ego Made Manifest argues that many of the accepted truisms about Stirner and his reception are false and that his contribution to modernist and avant-garde manifesto-writing traditions has been overlooked. Beginning with his influence on Marxs Communist Manifesto, Wayne Bradshaw reinserts Stirner into the history of manifestos that not only rebelled against tradition but sought to take ownership of history, culture, and peoples minds. This study documents the trajectory of Stirners reception from mid-19th-century Germany to his rediscovery by German and American readers almost 50 years later, and from his popularity among manifesto writers in fin de sicle Paris to the birth of Italian Futurism. Finally, it considers how American and British interest in egoism helped inspire Vorticisms satirical approach to revolt, and how, in an age of extremism, Stirners ideas continue to haunt the modern mind.
Author Bio
Wayne Bradshaw is Adjunct Research Associate in the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University, Australia. He holds a PhD in literary studies and the history of ideas and researches egoisms influence on modernist literature.
