Avant-garde: Making war, revolutionary politics and art

Abstract

In the article the authors are dealing with the militant potential of the concept of avant-garde. Emerging in the politics and art in the first half of the 19th century and designed to ruin almost the whole tradition of 'bourgeois' enlightenment, political and artistic avant-garde was never capable of emancipating itself from its roots in strategic military thinking. Its true essence was to create battlefields in every domain of public life where the chance was given to ruin civil society - its politics, its art, its way of thinking, its civilization. In the name of freedom never heard of before, it spread violence and spread totalitarian seeds on the scorched soil. And in the end it was not defeated by its numerous enemies because it became victim of its own destructiveness.

Keywords

• avant-garde
• war
• politics
• art
• enlightment
• romantics