SOURCE: Murphy, Richard. “Re-Writing the Discursive World: Revolution and the Expressionist Avant-Garde.” In Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity, pp. 49-73. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Murphy explores the revolutionary tendency of many Expressionist poets, citing their use of such techniques as irony, skepticism, and manipulation of the signifier in language.

“Death to the Moonlight!”

(Futurist slogan)

The heterogeneous and frequently vague nature of the many manifestoes and programmatic statements produced by the numerous writers of the expressionist movement has made it a notoriously difficult phenomenon to pin down to any clear ideological line.¹ The great variety of political and religious groupings which many of its prominent associates went on to join after its official demise, such as the various socialist and communist factions, the National-Socialists, Christians and radical Zionists, may be an indication that a breadth of opinion already...