Dances with Darwin, 1875-1910: Vernacular Modernity in France

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Examining the extraordinary influence of Darwin's theory of evolution on French thought from 1875 to 1910, Rae Beth Gordon argues for a reconsideration of modernism both in time and in place that situates its beginnings in the French caf�-concert aesthetic. Gordon weaves the history of medical science, ethnology, and popular culture into a groundbreaking exploration of the cultural implications of gesture in dance performances at late-nineteenth-century Parisian caf�-concerts and music halls. While art historians have studied the ties between primitivism and modernism, their convergence in fin-de-si�cle popular entertainment has been largely overlooked. Gordon argues that while the impact of Darwinism was unprecedented in science, it was no less present in popular culture through the popular press and popular entertainment, where it constituted a kind of "evolutionist aesthetic" on display in the caf�-concert, circus, and music-hall as well as in the spectator's reception of the representations on the stage. Modernity in these sites, Gordon contends, was composed by the convergence of contemporary medical theory with representations of the primitive, staged in entertainments that ranged from the can-can, Missing Links, and epileptic singers to the Cake-Walk. Her anthropology of gesture uncovers in these dislocations of the human form an aesthetic of disorder a half century before the eruptions of Dada and Surrealism. Cover Half Title Dedication Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: An anthropology of gesture: the place and gesture of movement in evolution theory; The impact of evolution theory and psychopathology on spectators; Ethnological spectacle and hybrid performance style 1 The Epileptic Singers Dangerous Dances Contagion A New Genre of Entertainer Sex, Vulgarity, and Disease Just For a Laugh Polaire The Cancan The Last Laugh 2 Darwinism and Degeneration Theory in Popular Culture Making Order out of Difference The Year 1878 Phenomena: from Hybrids to Hottentots What the Spectator Really Wants to See Doubtful Species: The Anthropoid in Our Past and Physical Anthropology in France Degeneration, Anthropological and Medical Monkey Business Trouble-Makers 3 What Is Ugly? Part I: Scientific and Evolutionist Aesthetics The Wild Men of Paris Movement and Creativity The Body: Sex, Pain, and the Ugly Part II: The Making of a New Café-Concert Aesthetic The Ugliness Prize The Grimace The Voracious Mouth: Animals and Cannibals The First Laugh 4 Natural Rhythm: Africans and Black Americans in Paris The Music-Hall Helps the Cause of Colonialism Before the Cake-Walk The Black Menace Chocolat and Chocolates Retribution The Minstrels Cake-Walking Babies from Back Home Trading Places Chocolat Redux: An American in Paris 5 Epileptic Singers and the Mysteries of the Dark Continent Fashion and the White Savage The Nude and the Naked The Blond and the Black Venus Polaire The Ugliest Woman in the World Hybridity 6 Darwin Meets Père Ubu Jarry, Natural Historian Ubu Cocu The Ignoble Double Bergson’s Lesson Epilogue: Darwin’s Avant-Garde: Ubu’s Progeny Dancing the Primitive Josephine Baker and the Danse Sauvage Bibliography Index