Slide 2 Modernity secularization sacralization, disenchantment
re-enchantment Illusion of a rift with the past and with all other
traditional cultures Myth of history-as-progress Fetishistic
equation of technological development with social progress The new
as eternal repetition of the old Slide 3 Key dates in the
development of Modern Western Identity Years of revolution: 1789,
1848, 1871 Between the World Wars: Weimar Republic 1919-1933
Fascism: 1933-1939 Slide 4 From Marxism to Neo-Marxism Neo-Marxism
also called Western Marxism Frankfurt School: Benjamin, Adorno,
Horkheimer, Marcuse, Habermas, Questioning of the substructure
superstructure reductionism/determinism Influence of Freudian
psychoanalysis and Nietzsche/Husserl/Heidegger (phenomenology)
Slide 5 Maxism / Neo-Marxism Marx: culture, ideology, religion, the
superstructure = illusion that must be torn away, like a veil,
revealing the underlying reality of exploitation and class
structure Barthes: mythology/ideology naturalizes what is
historically contingent Benjamin: archaic mythic forces have been
reactivate by the new urban industrial landscape they must
harnessed to the end of awakening a revolutionary consciousness
rather than reified Slide 6 Flaneur the flneur is the prototypical
embodiment of the key modern experiences of the customer, the
shopper or consumer. Slide 7 The Flaneur A 'gentleman' who spends
most of the day roaming the streets observing the urban spectacle
-- the fashions in dress and adornment, the buildings, the shops,
the books, the novelties and attractions. A kind of voyeur with an
endless curiosity for witnessing the ordinary scenes of city life.
His means of support are invisible, there is the suggestion of
private wealth (he is possibly a rentier) but an apparent absence
of family, business or landowning responsibilities. His interests
are primarily aesthetic and he frequents cafs and restaurants where
actors, journalists, writers and artists gather. Slide 8 In varying
degrees flnerie is evident in the novels of Charles Dickens
(Benjamin specifically identifies Sketches by Boz), the documentary
reports of the Victorian 'social explorers' like Booth and Mayhew,
the 'man in the crowd' of Edgar Allen Poe, the sociology of Georg
Simmel, as well as Benjamin's own reflections on Paris (the Arcades
Project). Slide 9 The flaneur as amiguous character The flaneur is
the observer of the marketplace. His knowledge is akin to the
occult science of industrial fluctuations. He is a spy for the
capitalists, on assignment in the realm of consumers. (AP M5,6) The
idleness of the flaneur is a demonstration against the division of
labour. (AP M5,8) Slide 10 Feminists have highlighted the
taken-for-granted associations implicit in the flneur figure as a
bourgeois, bohemian and male. From one point of view the
non-existence of the role of flneuse symbolises women's restricted
participation in public places as well as the malestream bias of
some of the classical literature on modernity (Wolff 1985). The
invisibility of the flneuse underscores how the freedom to roam was
very much a male freedom: the flneur's licence to watch the city
sights can be regarded as the walking embodiment of the 'male
gaze'. Slide 11 Other feminists have argued that there is a risk of
overgeneralising this argument. Women's experiences of the urban
life, even in the nineteenth century, varied from city to city and
from class to class. The growth of department stores, tea rooms,
railway station buffets, ladies-only dining rooms, public
conveniences with female attendants and so forth, made it possible
for middle and lower middle class women to experience public places
and thus afforded at least some women the opportunity for flnerie.
Slide 12 Death of the Flaneur Bon Marche, pioneer of the department
store, opens in 1852 Shop windows organized as an enticement to
stop and gaze Commodities visibly piled high become spectacle in
their own right Army of salespeople blatant sexuality involved
Women have much more important role, as both buyers and sellers
Slide 13 While the role of bourgeois women was in some ways
enhanced by this progression from the arcades to the department
stores, it was still their lot to be exploited, though this time as
consumers rather than as managers of the household. It became a
fashionable necessity for them to stroll the boulevards,
window-shop, buy and display their acquisitions in the public space
Women became part of the spectacle that fed upon itself and defined
public spaces as exhibition sites for commodities overlain with an
aura of sexual desire
