Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T02:39:28.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

1939-40: Of Virginia Woolf, Gramophones, and Fascism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michele Pridmore-Brown
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Virginia Woolf in her last novel, Between the Acts, explores fascism from the vantage of the new physics and of information technology. Her knowledge of the new physics is attested to by myriad diary entries; her knowledge of information technology was largely intuitive. In Between the Acts, she uses a gramophone to brew patriotic emotion and thus to transform a group of British pageant goers into a herd. Ultimately, however, she short-circuits the herd impulse by privileging the audience members' interpretative acts. In the novel, patriotic messages of authority are deliberately adulterated by the gramophone's static or noise. The audience members must therefore make meaning out of noise; these interpretative acts break their visceral connection to the sound waves, the rhythm and rhyme, of patriotism. Woolf's intuitive grasp of the concept of noise inherent in information technology allows her to articulate an antiauthoritarian pluralist politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 113 , Issue 3 , May 1998 , pp. 408 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” Arato and Gebhardt 270–27.Google Scholar
Arato, Andrew, and Gebhardt, Eike, eds The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum, 1990.Google Scholar
Barrett, Eileen “Matriarchal Myth on a Patriarchal Stage.” Twentieth Century Literature 33 (1987): 18–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beer, Gillian “Eddington and the Idiom of Modernism.” Science, Reason, and Rhetoric. Ed. Krips, Henry, McGuire, J. E., and Melia, Trevor. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. 295–315.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian “Physics, Sound and Substance: Later Woolf.” Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground: Essays by Gillian Beer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996. 112–11.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian “‘Wireless’: Popular Physics, Radio and Modernism.” Cultural Babbage: Time, Technology, and Invention. Ed. Spufford, Francis and Uglow, Jenny. London: Faber, 1996. 149–14.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Eddington, Arthur The Expanding Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1933.Google Scholar
Eddington, Arthur New Pathways in Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1935.Google Scholar
Hayles, Katherine Chaos and Order. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.10.7208/chicago/9780226230047.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeans, James The Mysterious Universe. New York: Macmillan, 1930.Google Scholar
Joplin, Patricia “The Authority of Illusion: Feminism and Fascism in Virginia Woolf.” South Central Review 6.2 (1989): 88–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Bon, Gustave The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Viking, 1960.Google Scholar
Lewis, Wyndham Men without Art. New York: Russell, 1964.Google Scholar
Manchester, William Winston Spencer Churchill: The Last Lion. New York: Dell, 1983.Google Scholar
Marcuse, Herbert “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology.” Arato and Gebhardt 138–13.Google Scholar
Paulson, William The Noise of Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Poole, Robert “Bloomsbury and Bicycles.” ELH 56 (1989): 951–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Bertrand The Scientific Outlook. London: Allen, 1931.Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard The End of Humanism: Writings on Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1982.Google Scholar
Serres, Michel Hermes: Literature, Science, and Philosophy. Ed. Harari, Josué and Bell, David F. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Speer, Albert Inside the Third Reich. Trans. Winston, Richard and Winston, Clara. New York: Macmillan, 1989.Google Scholar
Theweleit, Klaus Male Fantasies. 2 vols. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia Between the Acts. New York: Harcourt, 1941.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Bell, Anne Olivier. 5 vols. New York: Harcourt, 1977-84.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia Letters. Vol. 4. Ed. Nicolson, Nigel and Trautmann, Joanne. New York: Harcourt, 1980.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia Pointz Hall: The Earlier and Later Typescripts of Between the Acts. Ed. Mitchell Leaska. New York: New York UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, 1929.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia “A Sketch of the Past.” Moments of Being. New York: Harcourt, 1976. 64–159.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia “Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid.” Collected Essays. Vol. 4. London: Hogarth, 1967. 173–17.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt, 1938.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia The Waves. New York: Harcourt, 1933.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989.Google Scholar