Andrew Ross on the Failure of Modernism

Andrew Ross argues that Modernism considers subjectivity problematic due to compelling contemporary attacks on epistemology (i.e. subjectivism). Subjectivity, from this perspective, is a "problem" which must be resolved, however inconclusively, by reforming language. Ross maintains that poetic practice, and language in general, always retains a role in subjectivity. Because modernism does not understand that this role persists, failure is its chief theme. This theme plays out primarily in a poetry that dismisses subjectivity in favor of other modes of apprehending a truer reality; but Ross points out that these efforts to obtain some sort of unifying conception of reality are bound to fail. Modernism speaks of and through these failures.

I'm inclined to agree with the basics of Ross's argument, but I don't find modernism's interest in failure evidence of failure. That is, it seems modernist poets merely see in the failure of subjectivism an important loss for the subject, not necessarily an equivalency. Parallel discoveries might include the heliocentric solar system, the existence of other galaxies, or the theory of relativity. Each of these revolutionary ideas affects our notions of ourselves, damaging (or at least recasting) the development of our subjectivities. Again, this is a human drama.

I think Ross recognizes that modernist explorations of these revelations are not completely without value. While Ross points out that modernist's believe the aesthetic process cannot bridge the rift torn open by the indeterminacy remaining after subjectivism has been demolished, they certainly have done something in producing their texts. Ross's reading of "Gerontion" (and, by extension, Eliot's other early work) involves, in part, an interpretation of sexual frustration as a rejection of subjectivity marred by imperfect desire (57). Sex is itself an articulation bound to fail because it derives from a too-complete sense of complementarity. From this perspective, Eliot's poetic project may fail, but in doing so it provides a diagnosis of the various manifestations of failure in modern life.