Fragments of Modernity (Routledge Revivals): Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin - Softcover

Frisby, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041570264X ISBN 13: 9780415702645

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

Fragments of Modernity, first published in 1985, provides a critical introduction to the work of three of the most original German thinkers of the early twentieth century. In their different ways, all three illuminated the experience of the modern urban life, whether in mid nineteenth-century Paris, Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century or later as the vanguard city of the Weimar Republic. They related the new modes of experiencing the world to the maturation of the money economy (Simmel), the process of rationalization of capital (Kracauer) and the fantasy world of commodity fetishism (Benjamin). In each case they focus on those fragments of social experience that could best capture the sense of modernity.

About this title

About the Author:

David Frisby is Reader in Sociology at Glasgow University.

Review:

"[A] systemically organised and meticulously documented study ... This rich and sensitively argued book will be an essential guide to at least one important strand of contemporary thinking about modernity" – Times Higher Education Supplement

"An essential resource not only for students of 20th-century German thought, but also for anyone wrestling with the dilemmas of contemporary existence" – Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 041570264X
• ISBN 13: 9780415702645
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320