The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1IntroductionJonathan Raban's Soft city, a highly personalized account of Londonlife in the early 1970s, was published in 1974. It received a fairamount of favourable comment at the time. But its interest to mehere is as a historical marker, because it was written at a momentwhen a certain shifting can be detected in the way in which problemsof urban life were being talked about in both popular and academiccircles. It presaged a new kind of discourse that would later generateterms like 'gentrification' and 'yuppie' as common descriptors ofurban living. It was also written at that cusp in intellectual andcultural history when something called 'postmodernism' emergedfrom its chrysalis of the anti-modern to establish itself as a culturalaesthetic in its own right.Unlike most of the critical and oppositional writing about urbanlife in the 1960s (and I here think primarily of Jane Jacobs, whosebook on The death and life of great American cities came out in1961, but also Theodore Roszak), Raban depicts as both vibrant andpresent what many earlier writers had felt as a chronic absence. Tothe thesis that the city was falling victim to a rationalized andautomated system of mass production and mass consumption ofmaterial goods, Raban replied that it was in practice mainly aboutthe production of signs and images. He rejected the thesis of a citytightly stratified by occupation and class, depicting instead a widespreadindividualism and entrepreneurial ism in which the marks ofsocial distinction were broadly conferred by possessions and appearances.To the supposed domination of rational planning (see plate1.1) Raban opposed the image of the city as an 'encyclopaedia' or'emporium of styles' in which all sense of hierarchy or even homogeneityof values was in the course of dissolution. The city dwellerwas not, he argued, someone necessarily given over to calculatingrationality (as many sociologists presumed). The city was more like a
Introduction 5theatre, a series of stages upon which individuals could work theirown distinctive magic while performing a multiplicity of roles. Tothe ideology of the city as some lost but longed-for community,Raban responded with a picture of the city as labyrinth, honeycombedwith such diverse networks of social interaction oriented tosuch diverse goals that
Page 1: The Conditionof PostmodernityAn Enq
Page 4: PrefaceI cannot remember exactly wh
Page 9 and 10: 8 The passage from modernity to pos
Page 11 and 12: 12 The passage from modernity to po
Page 17 and 18: 24The passage from modernity to pos
Page 47 and 48: Postmodernism in the city 85Here we
Page 55 and 56:
100 The passage from modernity to p
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
7IntroductionIf there has been some
Page 67 and 68:
124 Political-economic capitalist t
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
From Fordism to flexible accumulati
Page 79 and 80:
12 10Ql+-'l:'+-' 8CQlE>E 6Cl.EQlC4Q
Page 81 and 82:
152 political-economic capitalist t
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
12IntroductionMarshall Berman (1982
Page 107 and 108:
204 The experience of space and tim
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
212tThe experience of space and tim
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Table 3.1 A 'grid' of spatial pract
Page 117 and 118:
TypeEnduringtimeDeceptivetimeErrati
Page 119 and 120:
I228 The experience of space and ti
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
15The time and space of theEnlighte
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Plate 3 5 Dynasty versus the map: t
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Time and space of the Enlightenment
Page 135 and 136:
The rise of modernism as a cultural
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
17Time-space compresson and thepost
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
18Time and space In the postmodernC
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Part IVThe condition of postmoderni
Page 169 and 170:
328 The condition of postmodernityw
Page 171 and 172:
332 The condition of postmodernityC
Page 173 and 174:
21Postmodernism as the mIrror ofmIr
Page 175 and 176:
Table 4.1 Fordist modernity versus
Page 177 and 178:
344 The condition of postmodernityN
Page 179 and 180:
348 The condition of postmodernityc
Page 181 and 182:
352 The condition 0/ postmodernityf
Page 183 and 184:
27Cracks in the mIrrors, fusions at
Page 185 and 186:
ReferencesAglietta, M. (1979): A th
Page 187 and 188:
364 ReferencesJacobs, J. (1961): Th
Page 189 and 190:
Index 369Adorno, T. 13Aglietta, M.
Page 191 and 192:
372IndexSoja, E. 284Sorel, G. 34Spe
Page 193 and 194:
376IndexIndex 377jouissance 57-8, 9
show all

The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?