Ross Chambers
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823265848
- eISBN:
- 9780823266739
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265848.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
An Atmospherics of the City traces Baudelaire’s evolution from an aesthetics of fetishizing, in which the function of poetry is to produce beauty out of the ordinary by means of the poet’s artifice, ...
More
An Atmospherics of the City traces Baudelaire’s evolution from an aesthetics of fetishizing, in which the function of poetry is to produce beauty out of the ordinary by means of the poet’s artifice, to a poetics of allegory that reads the modern city’s atmospherics as a product of urban noise and as a function, therefore, of what today would be recognized as entropy. In this later stage, the function of the poetic becomes one of disalienation; it strives to awaken readers to the presence of Evil as a malevolent force that is responsible for the depredations of human history over time. This evolution, in which poetic practice is redefined for the modern age as one of bearing witness to that which is most alien to (and destructive of) the poetic, is traced through readings of verse poems drawn principally from the “Tableaux Parisiens” section of the Fleurs du Mal (in that volume’s second edition of 1861), and of prose poems from the posthumously published Le Spleen de Paris, defined here as a poet’s “urban diary” and understood as a manifestation of temporality in its very absence of structure. Motifs such as the pane of glass and the statue are traced as their significance evolves from a very early poem (“Je n’ai pas oublié”) through later poems in both verse and prose.Less
An Atmospherics of the City traces Baudelaire’s evolution from an aesthetics of fetishizing, in which the function of poetry is to produce beauty out of the ordinary by means of the poet’s artifice, to a poetics of allegory that reads the modern city’s atmospherics as a product of urban noise and as a function, therefore, of what today would be recognized as entropy. In this later stage, the function of the poetic becomes one of disalienation; it strives to awaken readers to the presence of Evil as a malevolent force that is responsible for the depredations of human history over time. This evolution, in which poetic practice is redefined for the modern age as one of bearing witness to that which is most alien to (and destructive of) the poetic, is traced through readings of verse poems drawn principally from the “Tableaux Parisiens” section of the Fleurs du Mal (in that volume’s second edition of 1861), and of prose poems from the posthumously published Le Spleen de Paris, defined here as a poet’s “urban diary” and understood as a manifestation of temporality in its very absence of structure. Motifs such as the pane of glass and the statue are traced as their significance evolves from a very early poem (“Je n’ai pas oublié”) through later poems in both verse and prose.
Ross Chambers
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823265848
- eISBN:
- 9780823266739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265848.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
A brief reading of “L’Ennemi” [The Enemy] introduces the concept of noise as a signifier of time-the-enemy; and the allegorical figures of the major poems of “Tableaux Parisiens” [Parisian Pictures] ...
More
A brief reading of “L’Ennemi” [The Enemy] introduces the concept of noise as a signifier of time-the-enemy; and the allegorical figures of the major poems of “Tableaux Parisiens” [Parisian Pictures] are described as a function of the section on urban statuary in Baudelaire’s account of the 1859 Art Salon. The figure of the “noisy chiasmus” as an allegorical device of disalienation is discussed with reference to “Le Cygne” [The Swan].Less
A brief reading of “L’Ennemi” [The Enemy] introduces the concept of noise as a signifier of time-the-enemy; and the allegorical figures of the major poems of “Tableaux Parisiens” [Parisian Pictures] are described as a function of the section on urban statuary in Baudelaire’s account of the 1859 Art Salon. The figure of the “noisy chiasmus” as an allegorical device of disalienation is discussed with reference to “Le Cygne” [The Swan].
Ipsita Chatterjee
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199465132
- eISBN:
- 9780199086825
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199465132.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies, Economic Sociology
A cognitive map is, as Jameson indicated, a postmodern subject’s representation of her place in the world. Alienation happens when the postmodern subject is no longer able to map her position. The ...
More
A cognitive map is, as Jameson indicated, a postmodern subject’s representation of her place in the world. Alienation happens when the postmodern subject is no longer able to map her position. The author produces a map of the themed landscapes of the Akshardham temples in India for which tickets are sold. Just like capitalism, she argues, accumulation in religion is fraught with contradictions: religion needs worldly wealth to survive, but it must preach the need for alienation from worldly wealth. The production of spectacle through themed landscapes provides resolution to these contradictions. Capital produces Vedic boat rides, mystique India dioramas, and laser show that allow accumulation, and, at the same time, these spaces are programmed to teach alienation from capital accumulation. In ‘acting out’ this consumptive ideology, we may one day develop disalienation producing alternative maps and, hence, alternative globalization.Less
A cognitive map is, as Jameson indicated, a postmodern subject’s representation of her place in the world. Alienation happens when the postmodern subject is no longer able to map her position. The author produces a map of the themed landscapes of the Akshardham temples in India for which tickets are sold. Just like capitalism, she argues, accumulation in religion is fraught with contradictions: religion needs worldly wealth to survive, but it must preach the need for alienation from worldly wealth. The production of spectacle through themed landscapes provides resolution to these contradictions. Capital produces Vedic boat rides, mystique India dioramas, and laser show that allow accumulation, and, at the same time, these spaces are programmed to teach alienation from capital accumulation. In ‘acting out’ this consumptive ideology, we may one day develop disalienation producing alternative maps and, hence, alternative globalization.
