Seeing is Believing

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element; its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it hapens to be”  Benjamin in “The work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction.  In comparing film versus theatre as art forms I think Benjamin’s quotation gives a possible answer as to which form will ultimately pass the test of time.  Why?  Because of the live nature of theatre and the fact that it is humans watching other humans in a live environment with an exchange of energy between the performer and the spectator.  People have tried to capture theatre on camrera with very little success and besides the technical differences between acting for theatre and film the core reason for this is that the reproduction of those pieces of art lose the liveness and energy that the original productions contained.  I think theatre needs to go back to its origins as ritual and in this capacity has a great deal of transformative potential for spectators.  How can people get past the filtered gaze of the screen?  Film and theatre both give illusion to the spectator but theatre offers it in an ephemeral way.  I think thats the beauty of the art form.  But its hard to compartmentalize something that can’t be reproduced and I think thats the main problem facing theatre.  What is its role in a society increasingly dependent on technology and the quick fix?

–Aaron

Akaki’s Alienation

I think Gogol was way ahead of his time in his critique of the cold, uncompromising nature of bureacracy in “The Overcoat”.  We see in the protagonist Akaky Bashmachin a small man lost in the big modern city and an early vision of the corporate office.  We also see an early commentary on materiaism.  Once Akaki finally receives his overcoat he begins to be welcomed into society and adorned for his coat.  His identity becomes linked with the overcoat as he enjoys his newfound status.  However, once the coat is gone so is his newfound social status.  With Gogos humoroous tone and unamed first person prose I think he’s able to throw some Jabs at the Russia he lived in. We see the harsh Russian winter and the struggle of poverty through early industry and the social distinctions between men created through hierachy in status. His narration style allowed me to feel for Akaki but I didn’t feel like was being preached to feel sorry for him.  He’s described as an unremarkable man and I think thats part of what makes the story more tragic.  The fact that Akakis is a simple man lost in the shuffle of a world that he doesn’t fit into.  He is a social outsider who dies a cold harsh death.

–Aaron

Down with”The Reign of Logic”!

“When one ceases to feel, I am of the opinion one should keep quiet”  Amen Mr Breton. I thinkfundamentally what makes us human is our ability to feel: to love, to dance, to express ourselves.  Logic only goes so far in terms of defining the human experience.  Breton adds that “children set off each day without a worry in the world”  Baudelaire in “The Painter of Modern Life” also suggests that the heart of creativity lies in seeing the world as a child does.  What does this mean?  I think its about being uninhibited and searching for freedom.  I’d like to define creative freedom as action without judgement.  As a songwriter I often feel trapped by this ‘inner critic’.  How do we turn that off and ‘feel’ as we create or as we live day to day.  PLAY!!!!  We learn how to speak, write and do mathematics.  Are we properly taught and encouraged how to feel?  How do you teach empathy?  With an open heart and an understanding that people need to connect with each other on a personal level and with their minds.  I think Breton is onto something when he says, “Beloved imagination, what I most like is your unsparing quality”.  The imagination is a generous gift and one that society and logic put boundaries on.  Next time you feel like dancing in public: DO IT!

–Aaron

We Have Never Been Modern

What does it mean to be modern?  This is a question that has faced us all term and a difficult one to answer.  Latour suggests something radical (in its opposition the other opinions we’ve read on modernity); that we have never been modern.  What resonated with me from Latour is the distinctions that he finds problematic in modernity; nature versus society, human versus thing.  People live in nature and humans create and use things.  When binary thinking is the predominant way of looking at things I think people lose sight of the way that things are connected.  Is a beautiful summer day not enhanced by a delicious ice cream cone or baseball game.

How much is knowledge worth?  I think one of the problems with our “modern” education is the perception that university is for job training.  Gone is the ideal vision of knowledge for education’s sake.  Often people ask “what will you do with that?” and its a fair question to ask.  However, knowledge when compartmentalized is only a fraction of its potential.  Latour suggests more interdisciplinary approaches to learning and I completely agree.  He uses the term “reworking the mental landscape” and I think its appropriate because it forces each person to reorient themselves.  The “modern” disconnect or alienation that many people feel I think relates to the distinctions that Latour finds.  I don’t think people truly understand how nature is connected to society.  I’m not sure that I do.  What type of society values asking the questions as much as finding the answers? Is that merely a Utopian model or can we find a way to learn to love to seek and not get the instant gratification of an easy fix.  After all, thats the modern way.

–Aaron

Making Sense of it All

How have my ideas of Modernity changed? To answer honestly, I’m not sure that they have much. While much more educated on the subject through the various readings and discussions I will admit to being just as confused about my feelings on the Modernity as when we first started in January. We have studied Marx’s interpretation on human labour and commodification, Nietzche’s theories behind nature and human cultural practices, Freud’s theories of the unconscious, Baudelaire’s ideas about Modernity, Gogol and surrealism, issues with human existence according to Sartre, modern architecture in Metropolis and Latour’s rejection of Modernity. Just as we have covered a broad range of topics, we have learned that Modernity cannot just be contained in a single definition, but instead is an interdisciplinary term, with each term having its own way of dealing with problems or issues. All of these modernist thinkers contribute something innovative and different as an attempt to make sense of an individual’s place in the world. They each try to answer the question “why are we here?” While each of these theorists attempt to answer this  I do not feel that I can answer this question any easier than I had prior to this course. If anything, I am only asking more questions. Perhaps that is what modernity is to me… questioning the world that surrounds us in an attempt to find reason to human existence. While it can threaten one’s security and the comfort that may have come before such knowledge, I believe that it is through this process of deconstruction and understanding of such Modernist theories that positive changes, both in the individual and his or her surrounding world, can transpire.

Thanks for a great semester!

Heather

Thanks!

Thanks everyone for a great class! I will grade your essays while I am away. You can pick up graded essays in the GBLS office, GLN 213, after May 7th.

To those of you who are graduating, congratulations! Good luck in your whatever you choose to do and keep me posted on your success. To those of you who are returning to Brock in the fall, consider taking my GBLS 4th year seminar “The Modern City as a Cultural Object.” If all goes well, you will be able to take it a a GBLS, HIST or VISA credit. Some of the readings will change, and I might have students do a blog, but the basic premise will remain, as will my commitment to inquiry-based teaching and learning. Here is the syllabus from last year.

– Prof. Steer

Is modernity all it’s cracked up to be?

I think that we take a lot of what can be considered the blessings of modernity for granted. We have freedoms that are not available to so many parts of the world. Modernity is a Western luxury. It is not all pervasive.

Modernity is not just about the technology, although that does factor in. It is about the ideals within our society. For the last week I was living without the ‘modern conveniences,’ no watch, no computer, no phone, and yet I could still consider myself to be a modern person. The locals had some of the technology, but did not seem to be modern to me. I had to ask myself why? Is it because I came from a different background? I think that there is a sense of urgency that surrounds the modern culture. It doesn’t exist where I was. I was functioning on “Cuba time” all week. Though there were people wearing watches, even those who were working were not in a hurry, everything would get done when it got done, and not before. The fast paced life that we are used to doesn’t seem to get things done any better, just faster.

There was also an extreme sense of community. In our modern cities we barely speak to our neighbours, let alone know if they need anything. But along with the relaxed atmosphere was a sense of family. I think that is one of the major drawbacks of living in our modern western society. We place such emphasis on individuality, that we tend to lose sight of the social ties that surround us. Are we richer for having more things? Our coveted sense of individuality actually prevents us from having strong relationships with people. we have been taught not to compromise our principals, but if no-one compromises how can we function and grow.

I know this seems like a rant about all the negative influences of the modern world, but having just spent some time away from it, it seemed like a good time to reflect on what is more important to me.

Annaliese

We will always be Modern

From Marx to Latour my notions of what modernity is and its social influences have expanded my theoretical knowledge but still leaves a void. I believe my preconceived definition of modernity was to break away from conventional traditions, and I still think that’s true but on a more extended level. Before this class I was naïve to believe it was the arts that inspired the development of modernity and carried it along throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century, but now thinking about modernism in a scientific academic context I would refute LaTour’ s notion that ‘we have never been modern’ and claim that we have always been modern and always will be. I say this because usually there is a moment that initiates a new era and one that ends it, but it seems this is empty in reference to modernity. While in the late nineteenth century there was an outbreak of new and innovative thoughts being put to practice, this claimed to have initiated the modern era. My view is how can it cease to exist when its characterizations imply the innovation of old customs, isn’t this a constant change always in process?

Overall this class opened up my mind to new significant readings and academics, some I was aware of but did not fully understand such as Nietzsche, Benjamin, and others I never heard of, Gogol and Latour. It was the topics and ideas brought up in class discussion that really expanded my way of thinking. I would have to say that my favourite class was the discussion and reading of Gogol and the art exhibit we attended. Having the short story reading, a class discussion and a visual really helped my understanding of the topic in three dimensions. Anyways, I thought the class was great and always looked forward to attending.
Have a good summer!

-Jessica Hay

Fear and Loathing in Modernity

After watching Metropolis is perfectly clear the biggest beef everyone has with Modernity: the schisms that divide us.

Even as urbanization has moved us closer together, emotionally, we have never been farther apart. The workers in Metropolis may have run the city such that the heart of the city could never be maintained without their help, the elites depended on them and yet ever step was taken to ensure they would never meet. To the elites the workers were nothing but mere extensions of the machine. Were it merely that the workers were being oppressed it would be no different than slavery or a class system, but that’s not entirely where it ends. The elites, the supposed ruling class is also divided amongst each other. They find themselves taken in by a stripper! Not a flim flam man, or an individual with any particular skill at manipulation, but only a stripper. Such an incident could only be the result of a people not used to any particular challange found in ordinary human relationships, and so find themselves taken in by the most basic of human interaction.

Though exaggerated in Metropolis, this alienation between the workers and rulers is present in the real world as well. I remember watching films in the past where the protaganist had bulters and servents, and thinking how uncomfortable it would be to live with people that had been hired to serve me. To think, that we would engage in a business relationship with someone we know makes us uncomfortable. They say we should never lend money to friends, and it sounds like a good rule of thumb. Though we may socialize with our superiors at work, in the end for most of us our superiors are not the ones signing our checks. It is unlikely that many of us will have had a coffee with that individual.

Perhaps it is life imitating art, as it works just as well with those who work under us. The workers we employ may not be underground, though they may as well be. Jeans, cars, and various other items we take for granted are manufactured not here where standards of living are high, but rather in the poorer countries of the world. Are we really no different than the elites of Metropolis? We may not frequent strip clubs as much, but the meaning we find in our life is just as trivial. Instead of a stripper it’s Brittany Spears, or Martha Stewart; people that make us watch them not out of respect or love but for the sadistic pleasure of watching them fail.

Metropolis is an attempt to break through these barriers that divide us so that this relationship may be realized; by seeing ourselves as a people united, it may be not only that the workers benefit, but also the ruling elites. Depression, social anxiety, and various other mental conditions are on the rise; perhaps it is because we too lack meaning in our lives, and perhaps in uniting we can find that meaning.

–Josh

Mod Squad

Wrapping up the year, I’d like to think for a second on something that Jason mentioned in seminar and in his blog post – how Modernism seeks progress through rejection.  I think that is what is at the heart of what it truly means to be modern, and forgive me for saying this, I think that condition of rejection is what lies at the heart of Modernism’s “cynical” outlook, and the cynicism 2.0 of Postmodernism down the road.  The only way to sustain a movement that is so rooted in rejection (albeit “evolution” may be a kinder word, if less accurate) is with copious amounts of cynical reflection on the part of its participants.

There are rebels, to be sure.  I think this may be why I so highly enjoyed authors like Baudelaire, who were able to find a little joy, a little celebration in the redefinition of barriers (I actually laughed at his writing).  I believe we truly have been modern, many times over, that it’s inescapable.

Can LaTour truly say that we have never been Modern?  Is that not something of a paradox to say that we have never been what we have ourselves defined and created?  I don’t think so.  We are modern in moving forward, and in adapting.  I think that we are also beyond it now, in being able, not only to define our time, but to construct a definition of the definition.  Perhaps we have, in a sense, closed the circle on ourselves.

This seminar is modern.  I noticed it in myself when a few of the comments I made were actually a rejection of another’s comment (a friendly rejection, I should add!).  I think what I wanted to drive at was the danger in taking a cynical, modern view.  Perhaps it’s more pronounced now more than ever, in the throws of PoModernism.  What I fear for is the assertion that we are living in a more and more disjuncted society, that there are more layers of “simulacra” that ever before.

To a certain degree, this may be true.  But we cannot envision a society in dire need of analysis, and resulting from that, reconstruction.  We cannot assume that others do not see this, that everyone is complacent.  That attitude prevails in universities and academic circles, and it’s a slippery slope.  I think we can look for answers, as men like Freud do, but not sell those who do not enter the discussion short.  It’s entirely possible they see society for what it is and either analyze it in their own, non-academic terms, or have found a way to be happy within it, and that is never a bad thing.

Anyway, it’s been a great class, and everyone have a nice summer!

-Steve

The resurrection of Modernity

            Modernity is not necessarily a rejection of everything that came before it, but rather a morphing of definitions and divisions as our worldview becomes more sophisticated. Two major currents have been the catalyst for this transformation: the ascendancy of positivism and enlightenment ideals and the descent of the primacy of the Church. Nietzsche put coins on God’s eyes, Marx gave the workers supremacy over the employers, and Freud took the ethereal out of dreams, leaving sex wrapped in death.

            Modernity then gave us the freedom (and the burden) of a self-awareness that could not be resolved in our classical worldview. The reassuring hierarchy of God-Church-Laity is now reduced to “respectability” rather than metaphysical sureties. Robbed of our positioning in God’s scheme, Modernity is the framework in which we must regain our relevance in a large, mechanistic universe that will probably continue to exist with, or without, us. Once upon a time we were sure that God had created us in some Very Important plan. It was the self-absorption of a child. Collectively we are recognizing that we may in fact have been the accidental arrangement of amino acids and DNA devoid of intention or purpose.

            The mission then is to find meaning in existence, or even to ask if meaning is even important. Sartre beat us mercilessly with this futility. It is the evolution of Modern thought that we face that worthlessness and defiantly find reason in the chaos, if just to give us a reason to get out of bed tomorrow.

            The reaction to Modernity unanswered questions – the nihilism – of post modernism is the unsatisfactory conclusion to the trajectory of Modernity. Personally, I think that post modernism is cowardly; if you can’t find the answer then go sulk and declare it unimportant. After some reflection, I think that post modernism will be abandoned as a cop out, and the questions that Modernity left unanswered will be attacked with fresh enthusiasm.

 

Sean

The Reactionary Nature of Modernity

From the readings we have done this semester it is evident that Modernity is reactionary in nature. Nietzsche was reacting against the Christian faith and ethics that he felt was a construction of humans and which taught one to look to the afterlife rather than this life for purpose. He reacted against this, teaching that God is dead and the ethics constructed around this belief in God must die with him, making way for a new system of ethics which lead to the Overhuman: a transcending of one’s humanity. The Surrealists and the Automatistes too were reacting against the ‘oppressive’ powers of their day, namely the Catholic Church and the ideals of Enlightenment. Sartre reacted against the general understanding of how things are perceived and given meaning, claiming that only existence is absolute, beyond that all is relative; things develop their meaning from the observers who project meaning on to them. These are three examples in a pool of many. Modernity is reactionary making it: atheistic, devoid of absolute meaning, able to create its own ethics, interested in the imagination, individualistic, and certain only of the existence of things, among other characteristics.
As many of my posts have commented on, this has left us bereft of a system of ethics and meaning. It has also led me to the conclusion that reacting to something in order to develop a new system of beliefs or practices is a dangerous path, not to be done lightly or without an examination of the possible consequences. Perhaps the better route is to work within the current framework, trying to understand what is wrong in order to improve upon it.

Jason DeRoche