Posts Tagged ‘books’

Non-places – An introduction to supermodernity, Marc Augé

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

4 key citations from the short and very interesting book written by Marc Augé in1995 (contemporary philosophy and anthropology):

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. Supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position.”
“Our towns have been turning into museums (restored, exposed and floodlit monuments, listed areas, pedestrian precincts) while at the same time bypasses, motorways, high-speed trains and one-way systems have made it unnecessary for us to linger in them.”
“Motorway travel is thus doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us; and it makes comments on them [texts planted along the way side]. Service stations add to this information, adopting an increasingly aggressive role as centres of regional culture, selling a range of local goods with a few maps and guidebooks that might be useful to anyone who is thinking of stopping.”
“A person entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants. He becomes no more than what he does and experiences in the role of passenger, customer or driver [...] he obeys the same code as others, receives the same messages, responds to the same entreaties.”

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Here are the books that have been used to prepare the Dreams of Progress philosophical debate, centred around the themes of Utopia and Progress. Books and authors with an asterisk (*) can be borrowed for free at the Westminster Reference Library and other libraries of Westminster: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/libraries/.

Also to read around the same subject: