Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde

Irina Sirotkina is a lecturer at the Institute for the Theory and History of the Humanities, The Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. She is a cultural historian who has published on the history of psychiatry and on the history of free dance.Roger Smith is Emeritus Reader in the History of Science, Lancaster University, UK and Associate Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation. He is an internationally well known historian and philosopher of psychology and the human sciences, the author of standard texts in the field as well as specialist studies relating to the history of mind and brain and the understanding of ‘being human’, including Inhibition: History and Meaning in the Sciences of Mind and Brain (1992), and The Norton History of the Human Sciences (1997).

What makes The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde an invaluable scholarly contribution is the persuasive and ambitious argument that the authors, Irina Sirotkina and Roger Smith, present in the book – an argument that extends well beyond literary and artistic studies of modernist practices. Specifically, they seek to reassess longstanding notions on the senses of perception … [The book] provides an interesting perspective on avant-garde art, offering a wide-ranging overview of the ideas that preoccupied intellectuals at that time. As such, it can be of interest to scholars of various backgrounds. Furthermore, while the authors try to redefine and even dismantle some of the stable categories and bring attention to a concept of the ‘knowing body,’ they also keep the content lively and engaging for their readers throughout the entire work.

• List of illustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgementsNote on text/translationList of abbreviationsIntroduction: Movement and exuberant modernismChapter 1 The sixth sense The sensesMuscular feeling and kinaesthesia Chapter 2 Search for deeper knowledgeThe kinaesthetic intellect‘The higher sensitivity’Kinaesthesia and synaesthesiaChapter 3 Expression in dance The new danceThe Russian Hellenes ‘Ach, the devil take it, they’re dancing here again’Chapter 4 Speaking movementThe perfect language: Andrei Bely on gesture The dance-word: the creative union of Esenin and DuncanWord plasticity: the budetliane and the bare-footed Chapter 5 By ‘the fourth way’The mystic artsFrom Dalcroze to Gurdjieff‘Presence’ Chapter 6 Thinking with the bodyMayakovsky dances the fox-trotBrik-danceWho thought up biomechanics?Chapter 7 Art as bodily knowledgeTechnique Kinaesthesia in cultureFurther readingNotesIndex