Inspired by our present historical moment in which science and technologies are radically changing how we envision our bodies, this dissertation weighs the aesthetic and political implications of Italian Futurism's negotiation and integration of shifting paradigms of the body following the advent of four important technologies and discoveries of the Second Industrial Revolution: X-rays, the cinematograph, ether physics, and organ transplantation. Self-proclaimed the "Primitives of a new sensibility ... utterly transformed" by science, the Futurists are the ideal avatar for experiencing the body at the beginning of the 20th century. <br/> The study draws on primary Futurist sources, including manifestos, diaries, and correspondence. It also relies heavily on primary resources documenting the popular diffusion of the four technologies and discoveries: early X-ray images, early films, popular scientific journalism, and scientific sections from popular illustrated journals of the time. <br/> By examining the formal integration of and the theoretical struggle with a new, technologically redefined vision of the body in the artworks and writings of Umberto Boccioni and Aldo Palazzeschi, I argue that the body became a central point of contention for the Futurists, creating an ideological and aesthetic rift in the movement between those galvanized by and those resistant and threatened by the notion of erasing the traditional boundaries of the human body. The study traces the contours of this debate in relation to the formulation of four new paradigms of the body: X-rays' vision of the body as permeable; Ether physics theorization of the body pervaded by ether; cinematography's projection of the body as two-dimensional and diaphanous; and early organ transplantation surgery's prophesy of the body as a series of interchangeable parts. <br/>
Marth, Stephen,
"Ethereal Avant-garde. The Body in 20th Century Italian Literature, Visual Culture and Science"
(2013).
Italian Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z00Z71MV
