New Makers of Modern Culture

(Note: Introduction is taken from uncorrected proofs. Changes may be made prior to publication.)

The term 'encyclopaedic' may mislead. With certain exceptions, it is improbable that an entire knowledge could be contained within the confines of a single reference work, whether one- or multi-volumed; and when the topic to hand is something as broad, diffuse and open-ended as 'culture', improbability turns to inconceivability. Rather the intention here is to provide readers and users not so much with a comprehensive manual of any kind, as with stimulating, information-rich starting points for territories they may be unfamiliar with, as well as summaries of better-known ground. To this end, we present 955 entries on those who have shaped our times. These entries are cross-referenced, where appropriate, via See Alsos at the end of an entry, where further readings (See/Other Works Include) are also suggested.

This understanding, and these objectives, were present from the outset—a quarter of a century ago—when Routledge commissioned me to compile and edit two companion reference books, Makers of Modern Culture (1981) and Makers of Nineteenth Century Culture (1982). My design was to approach culture through its practitioners, focussing on their achievements more than on the detail of their biographies. As for culture itself, my working definition was deliberately loose: just 'how we see ourselves'. This enabled a wide view of what constitutes cultural activity, drifting away from (but not altogether abandoning) any notion of 'high culture'. I expressly wished the end-product to be both multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary, mainly because that was where, around 1980, intellectual life seemed either to have arrived or be heading. Certainly, the drawbacks of narrow specialisation, conducted without reference to the greater ebb and flow of ideas, had been spotted and exposed.

Both books were generously received, with perhaps Peter Conrad making the most pertinent comments in The Observer. 'For Arnold and Eliot,' he wrote, 'the purpose of culture was conservation. Wintle and his cohorts treat their field more radically and progressively. They're not dealing with an inheritance entrusted to the present from the past, but with ideas which provoke the future into being.... The dictionary is not a fortification of official culture but a demonstration of our culture's volatility and instability.'

I warmed to that. How the world has changed since then, though, is something few of us could or did predict in any meaningful detail. Of the transformations that have taken place perhaps the three most obvious are the apparent demise of Marxism-Leninism as a main political and ideational current outside of China; the near-universal adoption of the Internet as a primary means of communication; and the resurgence of political Islam. Added to these, especially from the cultural viewpoint, have been the maturation and leveling off of 'post-modernism', and the erosion of Sigmund Freud's reputation as a reliable guide to the workings of the human psyche.

It was against this background that in 2003 Routledge asked me to prepare this updated, fully revised and much expanded two-volume edition of Makers of Modern Culture. While many of the original entries have been carried forward in re-edited versions, a large number of entirely new entries have been added, to take account of all that has happened in the interim. Where critical opinion concerning the subject has altered significantly (Freud being a case in point) some original entries have been replaced by freshly commissioned essays.

The critical decision has been to reset the parameters of 'modern'. Originally the start-point was circa 1914, but for this new edition we have taken this date back to circa 1850, largely to accommodate Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, without whom any approach to modern culture must be sorely undermined. Darwin and Marx were both included in Makers of Nineteenth Century Culture, but it now seems more sensible to place them in the same barn as all those who were, and have been, profoundly influenced by their thought.

This re-divisioning of time and culture brings with it its own liabilities. Many figures straddle the mid-nineteenth century, just as many figures straddled 1914. My criteria for retention/non-retention have been based on when the subject in question completed the work he or she is best known by. Thus, although he died in 1855, Soren Kierkegaard is not retained as he wrote nothing of significance in the last years of his life, even though his contribution to specifically twentieth century existentialist philosophy is undeniable. Conversely, the composer Hector Berlioz, albeit so much of his finest music was written pre-1850, is retained just because he continued to 'produce', notably his opera Les Troyens.

The matter of retention versus non-retention was a lesser issue, however, compared with the question of whom to include in the first place (and whom to add for this new edition). Ideally I would like to have found room for pretty well everyone with any claim, great or small, to have affected 'how we see ourselves', but that would have been to defeat the purpose of the project, which, as intimated, has been to furnish a reasonably portable introduction to its subject-matter. Editorial decisions just had to be made. Whereas there is little argument about the claims of a string of truly major figures (Picasso and Hemingway, for instance, as well as Darwin and Marx), the same is not automatically true of lesser mortals.

In general, I have sought to ensure that all those fields that can be associated with the term 'culture' are represented by some at least of their leading exponents, ranging from art, cinema, literature and music through philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to science, technology and industry. Also included are a handful of major politicians, who, by attempting to redesign society, also attempted to redesign lives. The emphasis however is on the arts and the written word. Only those scientists, technologists and industrialists who are perceived to have greatly affected cultural paradigms are included. Excluded are live performers—musicians, singers, actors, and so forth—except where they have performed their own materials. This is not to deny either the creativity or cultural impact of such men and women, often very great indeed, but rather to acknowledge a limitation on space.

Because New Makers of Modern Culture is an English-language publication its choice of entries is to some degree biased toward cultural practitioners drawn from English-speaking territories, especially the United States and Great Britain. This new edition is, however, markedly more international than its predecessors, accommodating the slide toward 'globalisation' that has been so much on people's lips these last twenty-five years. Thus—to give but one example—some readers may never have heard of Sayyid Qutb, the ideologue of the Egyptian-nurtured Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, in the Editor's view at least, some knowledge of his writings is indispensable to an understanding of contemporary Islam in its more assertive manifestations, and so Qutb is included.

That said, it seems a simple fact that some forms of cultural activity 'travel' between linguistically determined boundaries better than others. Thus while many poets have attained eminence within their own cultures, relatively few are or perhaps can be known in any depth outside their cultures. By contrast fiction travels more freely, as do architecture, painting, sculpture and cinema, while in some fields—philosophy and sociology, for example—it is taken for granted that nourishment is trans-national.

The list of those cultural practitioners who are included reflects some of these constraints, or conditions. While as Editor I take full responsibility for the final cut, my task has always been made easier, and greatly more interesting, by the often lively advice and recommendations of many of those writers and academics who have contributed to this work. In a very real sense, it is their book, not mine, the more so since so many contributors responded with impressive alacrity to my invitation to write interpretatively about their chosen subjects. If 'modern culture' is in its nature multi-centred, multi-faceted, then this account of it is fittingly multi-voiced.

Wherever appropriate entries that appeared in the original Makers of Culture volumes have been revised and updated by their writers. Inevitably, however, and sadly, some of those who contributed to the original volumes are now deceased. It has also proved impossible to trace a handful of others. In these circumstances revision and updating of existing entries has been undertaken either by myself, or by other parties, as indicated in the text.

Justin Wintle

Acknowledgements

While it is perhaps invidious to single out individual contributors for particular thanks in helping guide New Makers of Modern Culture home—so many have had an input beyond the call of duty, sparing the need to work through a cumbersome 'editorial board'—the Editor would like to acknowledge the particular generosity of the following in giving freely of their time and thoughts: Professor Roger Cardinal, Professor John Cottingham, Sir Bernard Crick, Professor Antony Flew, Professor John Hamilton Frazer, Professor Andrew Gibson, Professor Paul Jorion, Professor A. Robert Lee, Professor Sebastian Lucas, Nick Reyland, Professor James Richmond, Professor Stephen Serafin, Charles Warren, Gray Watson and his brother Christopher Wintle. Alan Bold, His Excellency José Guilherme Merquior, Professor Eric Mottram and Professor Anthony Storr have not survived to witness the present work, but their special contributions to the original two volumes are still keenly remembered. Outside the magic circle of contributors, the Editor wishes to thank Andrew Lockett and Joe Staines for their help and advice, as also young Angela Mardle. Various members of the staff at Routledge, among them Gerard Greenway and Dominic Shryane in London, and Kate Aker, Beth Renner, and Ruth Gilbert in New York, provided invaluable support. Last, but perennially first, the Editor wishes to thank his wife, Kimiko Tezuka-Wintle, for her altogether disproportionate, and therefore mystifying, patience. Pace Jacques Derrida et al., altruism—if one must call it that—is alive and kicking.