Ruins of Modernity

Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle (Editors)

Description

Images of ruins may represent the raw realities created by bombs, natural disasters, or factory closings, but the way we see and understand ruins is not raw or unmediated. Rather, looking at ruins, writing about them, and representing them are acts framed by a long tradition. This unique interdisciplinary collection traces discourses about and representations of ruins from a richly contextualized perspective. In the introduction, Julia Hell and Andreas Schonle discuss how European modernity emerged partly through a confrontation with the ruins of the premodern past.Several contributors discuss ideas about ruins developed by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benjamin. One contributor examines how W. G. Sebald's novel The Rings of Saturn betrays the ruins erased or forgotten in the Hegelian philosophy of history. Another analyzes the repressed specter of being bombed out of existence that underpins post-Second World War modernist architecture, especially Le Corbusier's plans for Paris. Still another compares the ways that formerly dominant white populations relate to urban-industrial ruins in Detroit and to colonial ruins in Namibia. Other topics include atomic ruins at a Nevada test site, the connection between the cinema and ruins, the various narratives that have accrued around the Inca ruin of Vilcashuaman, Tolstoy's response in War and Peace to the destruction of Moscow in the fire of 1812, the Nazis' obsession with imperial ruins, and the emergence in Mumbai of a new "kinetic city" on what some might consider the ruins of a modernist city. By focusing on the concept of ruin, this collection sheds new light on modernity and its vast ramifications and complexities.Contributors. Kerstin Barndt, Jon Beasley-Murray, Russell A. Berman, Jonathan Bolton, Svetlana Boym, Amir Eshel, Julia Hell, Daniel Herwitz, Andreas Huyssen, Rahul Mehrotra, Johannes von Moltke, Vladimir Paperny, Helen Petrovsky, Todd Presner, Helmut Puff, Alexander Regier, Eric Rentschler, Lucia Saks, Andreas Schonle, Tatiana Smoliarova, George Steinmetz, Jonathan Veitch, Gustavo Verdesio, Anthony Vidler

Sujets

• History of art

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822390749
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

R U I N SofM O D E R N I T Y

POLITICS, HISTORY, AND CULTURE AseriesfromtheInternationalInstituteattheUniversityofMichigan s e r i e s e d i t o r s George Steinmetz and Julia Adams s e r i e s e d i t o r i a l a d v i s o ry b o a r d Fernando Coronil Nancy Rose Hunt Julie Skurski Mamadou Diouf Andreas Kalyvas Margaret Somers Michael Dutton Webb Keane Ann Laura Stoler Geo√ Eley David Laitin Katherine Verdery Fatma Müge Göcek Lydia Liu Elizabeth Wingrove Sponsored by the International Institute at the University of Michigan and published by Duke University Press, this series is centered around cultural and historical studies of power, politics, and the state—a field that cuts across the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and cultural studies. The focus on the relationship between state and culture refers both to a methodological approach—the study of politics and the state using cultural- ist methods—and a substantive one that treats signifying practices as an essen- tial dimension of politics. The dialectic of politics, culture, and history figures prominently in all the books selected for the series.

R U I N S of MODE R N I T Y

E d i t e d b  JulIa Héll an Anréas Schönlé

Duké UnIvérsITy Préss

Durham an Lonon 2010

∫2010 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Minion Pro by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges support for the publication of this book from the Regents of the University of Michigan.

C ONT E NT S

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1 j u l i a h e l l a n d a n d r e a s s c h ö n l e

PART I CATASTROPHE, UTOPIA, AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION

1. Authentic Ruins: Products of Modernity a n d r e a s h u y s s e n 17

2. Air War and Architecture a n t h o n y v i d l e r 29

3. Modernism and Destruction in Architecture v l a d i m i r pa p e r n y 41

4. Ruins of the Avant-Garde: From Tatlin’s Tower to Paper Architecture s v e t l a n a b o y m 58

PART II RUINS AND THE DEMOCRATIC POLITY

5. Modernity as a ‘‘Destroyed Anthill’’: Tolstoy on History and the Aesthetics of Ruins a n d r e a s s c h ö n l e 89

6. Democratic Destruction: Ruins and Emancipation in the American Tradition r u s s e l l a . b e r m a n 104

7. The Ruins of a Republic: Czech Modernism after Munich, 1938–1939 j o n at h a n b o lt o n 118

8. Layered Time: Ruins as Shattered Past, Ruins as Hope in Israeli and German Landscapes and Literature a m i r e s h e l 133

9. Cities, Citizenship, and otherriesStJooburg l u c i a s a k s 151

PART III EMPIRES, RUINS, AND THEIR STORIES

10. Imperial Ruin Gazers, or Why Did Scipio Weep? j u l i a h e l l 169

11. Hegel’s Philosophy of World History via Sebald’s Imaginary of Ruins: A Contrapuntal Critique of the ‘‘New Space’’ of Modernity t o d d s a m u e l p r e s n e r 193

12. Vilcashuamán: Telling Stories in Ruins j o n b e a s l e y - m u r r ay 212

13. The Monument in Ruins d a n i e l h e rw i t z 232

14. Simultaneous Modernity: Negotiations and Resistances in Urban India r a h u l m e h r o t r a 244

PART IV (POST)RUINSCAPES

15. Ruins as Models: Displaying Destruction in Postwar Germany h e l m u t p u f f 253

16. ‘‘Memory Traces of an Abandoned Set of Futures’’: Industrial Ruins in the Postindustrial Landscapes of Germany k e r s t i n b a r n d t 270

17. Colonial Melancholy and Fordist Nostalgia: The Ruinscapes of Namibia and Detroit g e o r g e s t e i n m e t z 294

18. Dr. Strangelove’s Cabinet of Wonder: Sifting through the Atomic Ruins at the Nevada Test Site j o n at h a n v e i t c h 321

19. Invisible at a Glance: Indigenous Cultures of the Past, Ruins, Archaeological Sites, and Our Regimes of Visibility g u s tavo v e r d e s i o 339

PART V RUIN GAZING

20. Foundational Ruins: The Lisbon Earthquake and the Sublime a l e x a n d e r r e g i e r 357

21. The Promise of a Ruin: Gavrila Derzhavin’s Archaic Modernity tat i a n a s m o l i a r o va 375

22. Ruin Cinema j o h a n n e s vo n m o lt k e 395

23. The Place of Rubble in theTrümmerfilm e r i c r e n t s c h l e r 418

24. Lost in Time: Boris Mikhailov and His Study of the Soviet h e l e n p e t r o v s k y 439

Bibliography 459

Contributors 489

Index 493

L I S T OF I L L US T R AT I ONS

b o y m 1. Model forttoumenMonThentonlraeadnriItTihteh, November 1920 62 2. Vladimir Tatlin, trying Letatlin (Moscow, 1932) 67 3. Sketch for the set decoration ofalCheicJofoy(1949–50) 68 4. Vladimir Tatlin,hWottaPodanrJaeit(1948–51) 69 5. Vladimir Tatlin,ASkullontheOpenBook(1948–53) 69 6. Model of Tatlin’s Tower 70 7. Constantin Boym,aPofalecSovitheetsandltaTs’niwoTre(1996) 71 8. Leonid Sokov,ardoMcswoY72 9. Leonid Sokov,erowhttcWatiartrop-fleS:dierSolasa74 10. Leonid Sokov,Teoerow-NUr-Geo74 11. Yuri Avvakumov,restroikPeaoTewr(1990) 76 12. Ilya Kabakov, sketch forThejeroscttfoPehlaPeca(1999) 77 13. Ilya Kabakov, sketch forThesctjeroPehtfoecalaP(1999) 78 14. Svetlana Boym, ‘‘Return Home,’’ fromTcinhcegoloseiosNlgta80 15. Tatlin’s Letatlin and Nabokov’s Butterfly fromirbyHaipsotUd(2003–6) 81 16. Tatlin’s Letatlin and Nabokov’s Butterfly fromsaipotUdirHyb(2003–6) 82 17. Tatlin’s Letatlin and Nabokov’s Butterfly fromaipoHsriybUtd(2003–6) 82

e s h e l 1. Deserted, cemented-up houses in Haifa’s Arab quarter 138 2. Igal Shtayim,Untitled139 3. Nava Semel, ‘‘Le’vad’’ (Alone) 140 4. Facsimile of first page of Kluge, ‘‘Der Luftangri√ auf Halberstadt am 8. April 1945’’ 145