This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today’s context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel’s and Benjamin’s metropolis has thus become an “endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.
This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today’s context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel’s and Benjamin’s metropolis has thus become an “endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.
What is real about city life? Real Cities shows why it is necessary to take seriously the more imaginary, fantastic and emotional aspects of city life. Drawing inspiration from the work of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud and Georg Simmel, Pile explores the dream-like and ghost-like experiences of the city. Such experiences are, he argues, best described as phantasmagorias. The phantasmagorias of city life, though commonplace, are far from self-evident and little understood. This book is a path-breaking exploration of urban phantasmagorias, grounded empirically in a series of unusual and exciting case studies. In this study, four substantial phantasmagorias are identified: dreams, magic, vampires and ghosts. The investigation of each phantasmagoria is developed using a wide variety of clear examples. Thus, voodoo in New York and New Orleans shows how ideas about magic are forged within cities. Meanwhile vampires reveal how specific fears about sex and death are expressed within, and circulate between, cities such as London and Singapore. Taken together, such examples build a unique picture of the diverse roles of the imaginary, fantastic and the emotional in modern city life. What is "real" about the city has radical consequences for how we think about improving city life, for all too often these are over-looked in utopian schemes for the city. Real Cities forcefully argues that an appreciation of urban phantasmagorias must be central to what is considered real about city life.
Fragments of Modernity, first published in 1985, provides a critical introduction to the work of three of the most original German thinkers of the early twentieth century. In their different ways, all three illuminated the experience of the modern urban life, whether in mid nineteenth-century Paris, Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century or later as the vanguard city of the Weimar Republic. They related the new modes of experiencing the world to the maturation of the money economy (Simmel), the process of rationalization of capital (Kracauer) and the fantasy world of commodity fetishism (Benjamin). In each case they focus on those fragments of social experience that could best capture the sense of modernity.
"If only more new media commentators had this level of historical-critical reference, engaging, good stories, and a degree of wonder at what media and windows bring to the city, to life." - John Hutnyk, Goldsmiths, University of London "Just when you thought the last word had been said about cities and media, along comes Scott McQuire to breathe new life into the debate. When revisiting existing pathways, his always ingenious eyes produce startling and original insights. When striking out into new territory, he opens up before us inspiring new vistas. I love this book." - James Donald, University of New South Wales "A book that crams into a single chapter more insights and illustrations than seems feasible, yet which ties all threads together through a consistent, theoretically rich analysis of the interplay of media and city... Writing with effusiveness uncharacteristic of back-cover blurbs on academic tomes, James Donald says ′I love this book′. But I will end by echoing his praise, and make a promise to readers: you will love The Media City, too." - European Journal of Communication "Refreshingly clear, getting to grips with some of the key concepts of urban sociology in a way that moves beyond the wistful evocation and splatter of undigested terms that characterises so much academic writing on culture and cities." - Media, Culture & Society Significant changes are occurring in the spaces and rhythms of contemporary cities and in the social functioning of media. This forceful book argues that the redefinition of urban space by mobile, instantaneous and pervasive media is producing a distinctive mode of social experience. Media are no longer separate from the city. Instead the proliferation of spatialized media platforms has produced a media-architecture complex - the media city. Offering critical and historical analysis at the deepest levels, The Media City links the formation of the modern city to the development of modern image technologies and outlines a new genealogy for assessing contemporary developments such as digital networks and digital architecture, web cams and public screens, surveillance society and reality television. Wide-ranging and thoughtfully illustrated, it intersects disciplines and connects phenomena which are too often left isolated from each other to propose a new way of understanding public and private space and social life in contemporary cities. It will find a broad readership in media and communications, cultural studies, social theory, urban sociology, architecture and art history. Winner of the 2009 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Award, awarded by the Urban Communication Association.
This is a study of a distinctive brand of modernism that first emerged in late nineteenth-century Germany and remained influential throughout the inter-war years and beyond. Its supporters saw themselves as a new elite, ideally placed to tackle the many challenges facing the young and rapidly industrializing German nation-state. They defined themselves as bourgeois, and acted as self-appointed champions of a modern consciousness. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher, and Karl-Ernst Osthaus, and the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund and other networks of bourgeois designers, writers, and 'experts', this book shows how bourgeois modernism shaped the infrastructure of social and political life in early twentieth-century Germany. Bourgeois modernism exercised its power not so much in the realm of ideas, but by transforming the physical environment of German cities, from domestic interiors, via consumer objects, to urban and regional planning. Drawing on a detailed analysis of key material sites of bourgeois modernism, and interpreting them in conjunction with written sources, this study offers new insights into the history of the bourgeois mindset and its operations in the private and public realms. Thematic chapters examine leitmotifs such as the sense of locality and place, the sense of history and time, and the sense of nature and culture. Yet for all its self-conscious progressivism, German bourgeois modernism was not an inevitable precursor of neo-liberal global capitalism. It remained a hotly contested historical construct, which was constantly re-defined in different geographical and political settings.
Comprising more than 65 pieces - journal articles, reviews, extended essays, sketches, aphorisms, and fragments - this volume shows the range of Walter Benjamin's writing. His topics here include poetry, fiction, drama, history, religion, love, violence, morality and mythology.
