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Wittgenstein said that philosophers should greet each other, not by saying, “Hello,” but rather, “Take your time.” But what is time? Time is money, but this points to an even better answer to this basic question for our modern epoch: time is acceleration. In a cultural system which stresses economic efficiency, the quicker route is always the more prized, if not always the better one. Wittgenstein’s dictum thus constitutes an act of rebellion against the dominant vector of our culture, but as such it threatens to become (quickly) anti-modern. We need an approach to “reading” our information-rich culture which is ...
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
The Pace of Fiction redefines the literary history of the novel by analyzing its most elaborate feature: its pace. It moves from the rise of the novel to realism and modernism. It starts by tracing the evolution of two narrative units: scenes (shown slowly) and summaries (told swiftly). These units emerge from the conflict of epic and drama, gain shape in the commentaries of Fielding and Goethe, and become dynamically opposed in nineteenth-century realism. In Middlemarch, they rotate in regular sequence: summaries move swiftly until scenes slow them down; scenes play out dramatically until summaries sweep them forward; their movement imitates the conflict of fate and free will. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, scenic impulses overtake summary storytelling. The reader sees the tendency already in Austen's dialogues, Hawthorne's tableaux, or Balzac's battering drama, and finds it in Jane Eyre's placement of summaries in private scenes. When Flaubert extends scenic vividness to all of his summaries, and when Henry James subordinates his summaries to scenic consciousness, the extreme pressure of scene upon summary brings the opposition of realist pacing to collapse. But other oppositions arise in the modernisms that follow. In the alternation of stasis and kinesis, of drifting thoughts and everyday actions, of stories and acts of storytelling--in Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Mann, Hemingway--pace gathers and creates meaning in new ways.
The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in “resonance.” The quality of a human life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, options, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world. Applying his theory of resonance to many domains of human activity, Rosa describes the full spectrum of ways in which we establish our relationship to the world, from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. He then turns to the realms of concrete experience and action – family and politics, work and sports, religion and art – in which we as late modern subjects seek out resonance. This task is proving ever more difficult as modernity’s logic of escalation is both cause and consequence of a distorted relationship to the world, at individual and collective levels. As Rosa shows, all the great crises of modern society – the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, the psychological crisis – can also be understood and analyzed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us. Building on his now classic work on acceleration, Rosa’s new book is a major new contribution to the theory of modernity, showing how our problematic relation to the world is at the crux of some of the most pressing issues we face today. This bold renewal of critical theory for our times will be of great interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities.
These original papers provide a guide and analysis to one of the most controversial writers of the present day. They examine Baudrillard's work in relation to consumption, politics, feminism, culture, theory and postmodernism.
Modernity's Metonyms considers the representation of temporal frameworks in stories by the nineteenth-century Spanish authors, Leopoldo Alas and Antonio Ros de Olano. Adopting a metonymic approach_exploring the reiteration of specific associations across a range of disciplines, from literature, philosophy, historiography, to natural history_Modernity's Metonyms moves beyond the consideration of nineteenth-century Spanish literary modernity in terms of the problem of representation. Through an exploration of the associations prompted by three themes, the railway, food, and suicide, it argues that literary modernity can be considered as the expression of the perception that a linear model of time bringing together the past, the present and the future, was fragmenting into a proliferation of simultaneous moments. It draws French, German, American and British writers into discussion of stories by the canonical author Alas, and Ros de Olano, an author who is receiving increasing attention from scholars of nineteenth-century Spanish literature. Recent scholarship in the field of nineteenth-century Spanish literature and culture has challenged the thesis of 'retraso,' the thesis that Spain lagged far behind its European neighbors. Building on this scholarship, this monograph incorporates shorter works of experimental prose fiction into discussions of nineteenth-century literary modernity in Spain. It further expands the field by combining analysis of the writing of the canonical author, Leopoldo Alas with stories by Antonio Ros de Olano, whose work has been receiving increasing attention from scholars in the field. Rather than thinking of these works in terms of the ways they conform to established models provided by either contemporaneous French and British works, or by fin de siglo and early twentieth-century Spanish literature, Modernity's Metonyms works inductively. It builds outwards from the seven stories studies, identifying patterns of associations shared with writing by figures as diverse as Ludwig Feuerbach, Thomas Carlyle, Emilio Castelar, Briere de Boismont, P.J. Cabanis, or Jean-Anselme Brillat-Savarin. The seven stories discussed are Alas's 'Do-a Berta,' 'Zurita,' 'Cuervo' and 'Cuento futuro,' and Ros de Olano's 'Jornadas de retorno escritas por un aparecido,' 'Maese Cornelio TOcito,' and 'La noche de mOscaras.'
In Picturing American Modernity, Kristen Whissel investigates the relationship between early American cinema and the experience of technological modernity. She demonstrates how between the late 1890s and the eve of the First World War moving pictures helped the U.S. public understand the possibilities and perils of new forms of “traffic” produced by industrialization and urbanization. As more efficient ways to move people, goods, and information transformed work and leisure at home and contributed to the expansion of the U.S. empire abroad, silent films presented compelling visual representations of the spaces, bodies, machines, and forms of mobility that increasingly defined modern life in the United States and its new territories. Whissel shows that by portraying key events, achievements, and anxieties, the cinema invited American audiences to participate in the rapidly changing world around them. Moving pictures provided astonishing visual dispatches from military camps prior to the outbreak of fighting in the Spanish-American War. They allowed audiences to delight in images of the Pan-American Exposition, and also to mourn the assassination of President McKinley there. One early film genre, the reenactment, presented spectators with renditions of bloody battles fought overseas during the Philippine-American War. Early features offered sensational dramatizations of the scandalous “white slave trade,” which was often linked to immigration and new forms of urban work and leisure. By bringing these frequently distant events and anxieties “near” to audiences in cities and towns across the country, the cinema helped construct an American national identity for the machine age.
In this new collection of essays, Andrew Feenberg argues that conflicts over the design and organization of the technical systems that structure our society shape deep choices for the future. A pioneer in the philosophy of technology, Feenberg demonstrates the continuing vitality of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He calls into question the anti-technological stance commonly associated with its theoretical legacy and argues that technology contains potentialities that could be developed as the basis for an alternative form of modern society. Feenberg's critical reflections on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-François Lyotard, and Kitaro Nishida shed new light on the philosophical study of technology and modernity. He contests the prevalent conception of technology as an unstoppable force responsive only to its own internal dynamic and politicizes the discussion of its social and cultural construction. This argument is substantiated in a series of compelling and well-grounded case studies. Through his exploration of science fiction and film, AIDS research, the French experience with the "information superhighway," and the Japanese reception of Western values, he demonstrates how technology, when subjected to public pressure and debate, can incorporate ethical and aesthetic values.
Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is dedicated to the recent and rapid high-profile development of museums in the Arabian Peninsula, focusing on the a number of the Arabian Peninsula states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and theUAE. These Gulf states are dynamically involved in the establishment of museums to preserve and , represent their distinct national culture and heritage, as well as engaging in the regional and global art worlds through the construction of state-of-the-art art museums. Alongside such developments is a rich world of collection and displaying material culture in homes and private museums that is little known to the outside world. Museum Studies literature has struggled to keep pace with such developments and Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is the first book to coherently present: a contemporary overview of the ever-evolving landscape of museums and related heritage projects in the Arabian Peninsula a critical evaluation of the nature of these museum projects within the political and cultural conditions in the Arabian Peninsula suggestions for productive ways forward for museum developments in the Arabian Peninsula Museums Studies students and museum professionals now have a book that fills an important gap in the picture of the museum worldwide. Contextualising this study in the history and politics of the region, from a scholar working within the region, this in-depth overview and critical analysis of museums in the Arabian Peninsula stands alone as an entry into this important topic.
The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes - from the development of democracy, the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation - have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also presented challenges to the historians who have researched and written about Britain's past politics. This Handbook shows the ways in which political historians have responded to these challenges, providing a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain's political past and a thought-provoking 'long view' for those interested in current political challenges.