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Indlæser... Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (1990)af Rosalind Williams
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Real and imagined undergrounds in the late nineteenth century viewed as offering a prophetic look at life in today's technology-dominated world. The underground has always played a prominent role in human imaginings, both as a place of refuge and as a source of fear. The late nineteenth century saw a new fascination with the underground as Western societies tried to cope with the pervasive changes of a new social and technological order. In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams takes us inside that critical historical moment, giving equal coverage to actual and imaginary undergrounds. She looks at the real-life invasions of the underground that occurred as modern urban infrastructures of sewers and subways were laid, and at the simultaneous archaeological excavations that were unearthing both human history and the planet's deep past. She also examines the subterranean stories of Verne, Wells, Forster, Hugo, Bulwer-Lytton, and other writers who proposed alternative visions of the coming technological civilization. Williams argues that these imagined and real underground environments provide models of human life in a world dominated by human presence and offer a prophetic look at today's technology-dominated society. In a new essay written for this edition, Williams points out that her book traces the emergence in the nineteenth century of what we would now call an environmental consciousness--an awareness that there will be consequences when humans live in a sealed, finite environment. Today we are more aware than ever of our limited biosphere and how vulnerable it is. Notes on the Underground, now even more than when it first appeared, offers a guide to the human, cultural, and technical consequences of what Williams calls "the human empire on earth." No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.48Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Social change Causes of changeLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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After pointing out that the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in an unprecedented amount of excavation all over Europe (for canals, then railways, then subways and sewers), the author discusses various ways in which "the underground" was viewed in literature of the time, for example in terms of a path to knowledge (the
beginnings of geology and paleontology), or as somewhere to place utopias or dystopias.
I don't really know how to view literary criticism like this. It certainly is entertaining to see such erudition displayed, and to see various unexpected threads pulled together. On the other hand, I'm not sure of the extent to which one can view it as anything more than entertainment. It seems to me that one can probably prove any thesis one likes about how "society" feels or felt about some issue by cherry-picking from the available art and literature, and how is one to quantify that enough examples qualify as a weight of evidence, not cherry-picking?
But that's not to deny that the book really is very well written and very interesting. ( )