The Themes of the Body and Physical Experience Characterise Classic Urban Theory - Essay Example

With the rise of the metropolis, ive society as known in the rural districts increasingly becomes supplanted by the objective society imposed by the nature of such large collective societies. Through the use of factories and other time-ordered activities, the physical experience of the individual has changed to be one of outer, rather than inner, organization. Because of this enforced rhythm to life in the city, it is impossible to study urban theory without taking these concepts into consideration. Therefore, the themes of the body and physical experience characterise classic urban theory, shaping views of hyper stimulation, phantasmagoria and alienation. One of the most important features of capitalism in industries arising in the nineteenth century was the capacity to impose a work discipline with uniform and regular patterns while eliminating the possibility of self-organisation by bringing all production work into a single location and under a single exploitive directive. This brought out the idea of the mills, in which production techniques suffered a radical change from techniques employed in the cottage industries. As these techniques became more and more refined, the labor force was divided on the basis of the knowledge and skill individuals were able to acquire. The faster they adapted to the changing conditions, the better the pay they received. “The nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another …, however, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others” (Simmel, 1903). Because many of the cottage industries were forced to shut down in the age of industrial revolution as a result of rapidly falling prices and mass production, more and more individuals were force to leave the rural life and gather in the cities to find work. In addition, the influx of the factory enabled corporate heads to enact surveillance strategies, if for no other reason than to negotiate pay with workers or to keep track of wages earned. This surveillance further served to dictate the impersonal ordering of the clock into working hours and off-time hours, creating a means by which individuals could only identify themselves with part of a crowd rather than a subjective being. This led to feelings of alienation as the individual perceived themselves as different from, yet the same as, their co-workers on the factory floor, yet had no room in which to explore or express this difference. Explorations of art, literature and science into this mechanized realm produced the idea of the phantasmagorical. Phantasmagorical is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions. J.C. Powys defines it as the “incongruous imagery in surreal art and literature” (Phantasmagorical, 2005). It was through this imagery of the avant-garde artists and intellectuals immersed in the Dada, Surrealism and Letterism movementns that the Situationists Movement arose, giving us “their critique of modern culture, their celebration of creativity, and their stress on the immediate transformation of everyday life” (Marshall, 2000). It is ‘everyday’ life, they maintain, that deadens the mind into a numb acceptance of being just part of the crowd, while it is exploration into this surreal realm that provides the only release and/or escape from this experience and allows one to remain subjective. This movement led to the development of the concept of psychogeography as a part of the system of unitary urbanism. This refers to the study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Situationnise Internationale, 1958). The study recognizes the conflict between the idealized role as citizens and the subjectivity arising from the material conditions of life. Moving into the twentieth century, the emergence of communications technology has redefined subjectivity in the modern world. Considering a philosophical viewpoint on the questions inherent in technology, Francis Bacon considered science and technology as a means to understand and master nature by identifying key innovations that changed the abilities of his culture to navigate the globe and produce mass communication. Rene Descartes held a mechanistic worldview in which people should be controlled by mathematical principles. Through the use of the computer and the internet as well as the factory before them, humans have indeed overcome a great deal of dependence upon nature for daily operations and have transcended traditional methods of communication with the light-speed abilities of the internet. “The colonization of space (through agriculture, mining, architecture, civil engineering, etc.) and of time (through systems of communication, from language to telegraph), in its perfected form, would constitute a ‘universal telegraphics’ linking world languages, semiotics, and inventions into a global transfiguration of the earth and a truly human habitat (Mitchum, 1994, p. 23). New technologies are capable of changing the fabric of society within a few decades and the modern changing images of society are captured in the camera and revealed through exhibitions that bring our attention to just how far integrated technology has become in our ‘everyday’ lives. This concept of the phantasmagorical coupled with the forms of modernity that depend greatly on the technological achievements of recent years leads into reflections on the relationship between the physical body and the technology that has been achieved to date to help that body function, especially as seen in the works of Donna Haraway. “In terms of the general shift from thinking of individuals as isolated from the “world” to thinking of them as nodes on networks, the 1990s may well be remembered as the beginning of the cyborg era” (Kunzru, 1997). In terms of technology replaced all or part of the human body, it is easy to see how the urbanized state has led to a construct of nearly complete mechanical function. The post-human view is itself suggestive rather than prescriptive in that it privileges information pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. This view regards the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body, as one might a machine, with other attachments becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born (Hayles, 1999). Subscribing to this view enough to even call herself a cyborg, “For Haraway, the realities of modern life happen to include a relationship between people and technology so intimate that it’s no longer possible to tell where we end and machines begin” (Kunzru, 1997). References Hayles, Katherine N. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. University of Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kunzru, Hari. (February, 1997). You Are Cyborg. Wired Magazine. i. 5.02. Retrieved 13 January, 2006 from < http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway.html?pg=2&topic=> Mitchum. (1994). Phantasmagorical. (2005). The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 13 January, 2006 from Simmel, Georg. (1903). The Metropolis and Mental Life. New York: Free Press. Situationnise Internationale, 1958 Read More