The Architecture of the Visible: Technology and Urban Visual Culture: v. 3 (Technologies: Studies in Culture & Theory S.) - Hardcover

MacPhee, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826459250 ISBN 13: 9780826459251

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2002

Synopsis

Visual technology now saturates everyday life. Theories of the visual - now key to debates across cultural studies, social theory, art history, literary studies and philosophy - have interpreted this condition as the beginning of a dystopian future, of cultural decline, social disempowerment and political passivity. This book presents a wide-ranging critical reassessment of contemporary visual culture through an analysis of pivotal technological innovation from the telescope, through photography to film. A range of theorists - from Baudelaire to Merleau-Ponty, Debord, Benjamin, Virilio, Jameson, Baudrillard and Derrida - have explored how technology not only reinvents the visual but also changes the nature of culture itself. The heartland of all such cultural analysis has been the city, from Baudelaire's flaneur to Benjamin's Arcades. Drawing on the examples of Paris and New York - two key world cities since the 19th century - the book analyses how visual technology is revolutionising the landscape of modern thought, politics and culture.

About this title

About the Author

Graham MacPhee is Lecturer in English Literature in the School of Languages and Area Studies. University of Portsmouth. He has written on Walter Benjamin, modernist poetics and the relationship between modern philosophy and contemporary theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0826459250
• ISBN 13: 9780826459251
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256