Abstract

This dissertation explores the mutual dependence of conceptions of human identity and group experience in the work of Wyndham Lewis. Modernist writers and social theorists were very much concerned with questions of mass psychology and crowd behavior, but these issues have received little scholarly attention of late. An examination of Lewis' major works allows us to return the question of group practice to the center of modernist studies, and to develop a theory of crowd activity that accounts for present-day notions of representation and agency. ;While predominantly a literary investigation, this dissertation calls upon interdisciplinary approaches, among them anthropology, philosophy and psychoanalysis, in order to situate Lewis' diverse activities in the larger cultural context of modernism. The first chapter examines modernist conceptions of cultural hierarchy, and their implications for Lewis' understanding of processes of social distinction and aesthetic judgement. It suggests that "disgust" is an organizing principle for Lewis' work, and that its operations are grounded in notions of artistic cultivation and political consensus. The second chapter extends this argument to explore Lewis' pathological rejection of fashion and design. Concentrating on The Caliph's Design, it contends that Lewis' preference for representation over abstraction in visual art leads him to conceive of group identification as a mimetic process. By examining the critical debates surrounding the novel Tarr, the third chapter demonstrates that Lewis' racial ideologies, like his conceptions of nationalism, are rooted in a "spatial philosophy" that renders culture itself a territorial concept. The final chapter interrogates the problems surrounding Lewis politics, and explores their ramifications for the narrative strategies of The Revenge For Love. In conclusion, Lewis is presented as a crucial figure who forces us not only to rethink the institutional history of modernism, but to question our current modes of thinking about human identity and cultural transformation