Carl Gelderloos: Biological Modernism: The New Human in Weimar Culture, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 2020.

• Ross Shields

Carl Gelderloos’s “Biological Modernism” is a book that pushes boundaries. This is already evident in an offhand remark made in the introduction, where the author indicates his preference for the term “trans-” over “inter”-disciplinary. Recalling Leslie A. Adelson’s critique of betweenness, Gelderloos argues that the prefix “inter” actually separates what it purports to connect, such that the things connected remain unaffected by the fact of their inter(-)connection. What appears to be a methodological aside reflects the theoretical impetus of “Biological Modernism,” which problematizes the simple notion of boundaries and borders through four chapters focusing on four moments of Weimar culture: Helmut Plessner’s theory of the new human, the “comparative photography” of August Sanders and Karl Blossfeldt, Alfred Döblin’s “Berge Meere und Giganten,” and Ernst Jünger’s “Der Arbeiter.”