The Detective of Modernity: Essays on the Work of David Frisby 2020034357, 2020034358, 9780367192563, 9780429201370

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The Detective of Modernity

This book explores the thought of – and is dedicated to – David Frisby, one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first cen­ turies. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation of modern metropolitan society and culture, it emphasises Frisby’s legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective and archivist of the phenomena and ideas that exemplify the modern metropolis as society. With contributions from sociologists, cultural theorists, historians of the city, urban geographers and designers, and architectural historians and theorists, The Detective of Modernity constitutes a wide-ranging engagement with Frisby’s profound legacy in social and cultural theory. Georgia Giannakopoulou is Associate Lecturer in Sociology and the Interna­ tional Honors Program at ACG-Deree, The American College of Greece and an Affiliate Researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Glasgow, UK. Graeme Gilloch is Professor in Sociology at Lancaster University and the author of Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations; Siegfried Kracauer: Our Companion in Misfortune; and Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City.

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both 'classical' and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being con­ fined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the con­ tribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts. Series Editor Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, USA Titles in this series Anxiety and Lucidity Reflections on Culture in Times of Unrest Leszek Koczanowicz Making the Familiar Strange Sociology Contra Reification Ryan Gunderson Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being Garrett Thomson and Scherto Gill with Ivor Goodson Towards a General Theory of Boredom A Case Study of Anglo and Russian Society Elina Tochilnikova The Detective of Modernity Essays on the Work of David Frisby Edited by Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1383

The Detective of Modernity Essays on the Work of David Frisby

Edited by Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Giannakopoulou, Georgia, 1975- editor. | Gilloch, Graeme, editor. Title: The detective of modernity : essays on the work of David Frisby / edited by Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020034357 (print) | LCCN 2020034358 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367192563 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429201370 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Frisby, David. | Social sciences–Philosophy. Classification: LCC H61.15 .D48 2020 (print) | LCC H61.15 (ebook) | DDC 300.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034357 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034358 ISBN: 978-0-367-19256-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-20137-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

Editors and authors Acknowledgements Introduction

vii xii 1

GEORGIA GIANNAKOPOULOU AND GRAEME GILLOCH

PART 1

Modernity, metropolis and method 1 Critical sociology: The methodological controversy

15 17

MATTHIAS BENZER

2 Siegfried Kracauer’s metaphysics of the passage and methodology of social science

28

CHANGNAM LEE

3 The metropolis and emotional life: Experience, rifts and knowledge

38

MASSIMO CERULO AND ANTONIO RAFELE

4 The social experience of urban life: An aesthetic interpretation of places and ambiences

46

FABIO LA ROCCA

PART 2

Fragments and faces 5 The street and the fragment: Aesthetics of experience; aesthetics of the particular in David Frisby

55 57

ESTHER LESLIE

6 Cinematic ‘fragments of modernity’: Film and society revisited SPIROS GANGAS

67

vi

Contents

7 On the face of things: Béla Balázs and Siegfried Kracauer on physiognomy and film

79

STÉPHANE SYMONS

PART 3

Cityscapes 8 Fragments of cityscapes

91 93

GÜNTER GASSNER

9 Urban aestheticization processes: Cityscape, landscape and image

104

MIKE FEATHERSTONE

10 Architecture and fashion in fin-de-siècle Vienna

123

IAIN BOYD WHYTE

PART 4

Haunts

139

11 Flâneurs, detectives, and architects

141

CHRISTIAN HERMANSEN CORDUA

12 Cotton and other threads

153

JANET WOLFF

13 In search of lost streets

168

ELIZABETH WILSON

PART 5

Figures

179

14 ‘Hamlet wird Detektiv’: Reflections on Kracauer, Benjamin and (neo-)noir

181

GRAEME GILLOCH

15 The collector’s touch: The task of the cultural critic in the age of digital media

196

JAEHO KANG

16 Unmasking the flâneur

208

GEORGIA GIANNAKOPOULOU

Index

218

Editors and authors

The editors Georgia Giannakopoulou is Associate Lecturer at Deree – The American College of Greece and an Affiliate Researcher with the University of Glasgow Sociology Department. She studied under Frisby for her MPhil and PhD. She has translated and edited two collections of his essays in Greek. Since 2010, she has been responsible for the safekeeping and pub­ lication of part of his unpublished notes and essays, and is the editor of the material of the University of Glasgow, David Frisby website: http://www. gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/frisbymemoriallectures/ davidfrisby/ Her other research and publications focus on the critiques of post-18th­ century historiographies as they apply in the construction of the ideal of Athens in Greece and beyond. Email: [email protected] Graeme Gilloch is Professor in Sociology at Lancaster University. He is the author of two monographs on the works of Walter Benjamin (Myth and Metropolis, [1996] and Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations [2002]) and an exploration of the writings of Siegfried Kracauer (Siegfried Kra­ cauer: Our Companion in Misfortune [2015]). His most recent book is the co-authored The Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan: The Global Vision of a Turkish Filmmaker (with Bülent Diken and Craig Hammond, 2018). David Frisby was the external examiner for his doctoral thesis on Walter Benjamin at the University of Cambridge in 1990 and has remained an enduring intellectual inspiration. Email: [email protected]

The authors Matthias Benzer is a Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield, where he teaches social and socio­ logical theory. He previously worked as a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics and Political Science and as a Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester. Benzer completed his doctorate

viii

Editors and authors

at the London School of Economics and Political Science with a thesis on Theodor Adorno, for which David Frisby acted as internal examiner. His publications include The Sociology of Theodor Adorno (2011, Cambridge University Press), Social Life: Contemporary Social Theory (co-authored with Kate Reed, 2019, SAGE), and articles on critical and poststructuralist social thought. Email: m.benzer@sheffield.ac.uk Massimo Cerulo is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Perugia (IT), and chercheur associé of Sociology at the CERLIS Laboratory, University Paris V Descartes, Sorbonne. He teaches “Sociology of Emotions” and “Sociology of Cul­ ture” in the Masters degree of the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Perugia. He is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Sur­ gical and Biomedical Sciences of the same University. He is the author of the first Italian manual in the sociology of emotions, Sociologia delle emozioni. Autori, teorie, concetti (il Mulino, 2018). Email: [email protected] Mike Featherstone is a Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is founding editor of the journal Theory, Culture & Society and the Theory, Culture & Society Book Series. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Body & Society. Author of Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (2nd edition 2007) and Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (1995). Co-author of Surviving Middle Age (1982). Editor of over a dozen books and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on social and cultural theory, consumer and global culture, ageing and the body. His books and articles have been translated into sixteen languages. He has spent time as a visiting professor in Barcelona, Geneva, Kyoto, Recife, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, and Vancouver. Email: [email protected] Christian Hermansen Cordua, Professor of Architecture, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design and Tianjin University. Dip.Arch., Master in Architecture and Urban Design, Registered Architect (NAL & CAC). Pro­ fessor Hermansen Cordua studied and practiced architecture in Chile, the USA and Britain. From 1984 to 2002 he worked in the Mackintosh School of Architecture, where he was Director of Post Graduate Studies, and with Elder and Cannon Architects, where the work won numerous awards. In 2002 he moved to Oslo, Norway where he was appointed Professor and Head of the Institute of Architecture. He has lectured in America, Europe, and Asia, has been Visiting Professor at The Central European University, Prague; Washington University, USA; University of Dundee; and Uni­ versidad del Desarrollo, Chile; visiting researcher at the LSE, Cities Pro­ gramme. He has published several books, the last of which is Manifestoes and Transformations, Ashgate, 2010, and contributed to journals, books, and exhibitions in Europe and America. Recent research projects include: HERA, Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment (2010–1013) and

Editors and authors

ix

Erasmus Mundus Latin America Project (2012–2015). The work of the last 10 years will be published by Routledge in 2021. Email: [email protected] Spiros Gangas is Associate Professor of Sociology at Deree – The American College of Greece. His research interests are in the field of social and sociological theory, epistemology, and film studies. He earned a PhD at the University of Edinburgh with a dissertation on Simmel, which was exam­ ined by David Frisby. He has taught at the University of Wales (College of Cardiff), Panteion University of Athens and Kobe College in Japan. He is the author of the book Sociological Theory and the Capability Approach (Routledge, 2019). He has published journal articles in: Journal of Classi­ cal Sociology, History of the Human Sciences, Human Studies, Social Sci­ ence Information, Current Sociology and book chapters with Brill and Palgrave. Spiros has also published a book in Greek on Durkheim, a co­ edited volume on Simmel as well as articles in Greek journals. He also writes regularly on film for the Greek journal To Dendro. Email: [email protected] Günter Gassner is an architect and a Lecturer in Urban Design at the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University. He is the author of Ruined Skylines: Aesthetics, Politics and London’s Towering Cityscape (Routledge 2019). His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of critical theory and spatial practices. He specializes in questions about relationships between aesthetics and politics, history and power, and urban visions and visualizations. He holds a PhD in Urban Sociology from the London School of Economics and a Masters in Architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Email: gassnerg@cardiff.ac.uk Fabio La Rocca is a sociologist, Maître de conferences at Université PaulValéry Montpellier 3 and researcher at LERSEM-IRSA (Institut de Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques). He is a member of the researcher group Kinepoliticom of the PUC-RS University of Porto Alegre (Brazil) and collaborates with ATOPOS a centre study on digital commu­ nication of University of São Paulo. He is editorial coordinator of the social science journal Sociétés (Deboeck Ed.). He is the author of books and of several articles and book chapters with a focus on visual sociology, technologies, the metropolis and images and of the book La ville dans tous ses états (CNRS Éditions, 2013). Area of interests: Visual Sociology; Urban Spaces; the Metropolis; Sociology of the Imaginary; Visual Culture; Media, Communication and Technology. Email: [email protected] Jaeho Kang is Associate Professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University in South Korea. He was Senior Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies at SOAS, University of London (2012–2018), Assistant Professor in

x

Editors and authors Sociology of Media at the New School in New York City (2005–2012), and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institut für Sozial­ forschung of the University of Frankfurt (2004–2005). He completed his PhD in social and critical theory at the University of Cambridge in 2004. His work focuses on critical and social theory of media with particular reference to the intersections of digital screen, media spectacle, and urban space. Kang is the author of Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Specta­ cle of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014). Email: [email protected]

Changnam Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of German Lan­ guage and Literature at Kyoungpook National University in Korea, spe­ cializing in the theory of German literary criticism and cultural sociology. He is the author of Poesiebegriff des Athenäumszeit (Ferdinand Schöningh 2005), and co-edited the journal special issues The Transnational Flaneur (Sociétés 2017), Ghosttowns: Cityscapes, Memories and Critical Theory (Sociétés 2013). His Korean monograph Cities and Flaneur – Walking through Paris, Berlin, Kyoungsung and Tokyo is forthcoming in 2020. He is currently working on the German literature and urban sociology of the early 20th century from transnational perspectives. Email: [email protected] Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (Pluto, 2000), Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemi­ cal Industry (Reaktion, 2005), Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreck­ age (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016), and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018). Email: [email protected] Antonio Rafele is Research Scientist at CEAQ, University of Paris La Sor­ bonne. He is the author of Representations of Fashion: The Metropolis and Mediological Reflection (San Diego University Press, 2013) and Replay. Calcio, vetrine e choc (Luca Sossella, 2018). Email: [email protected] Stéphane Symons is Associate Professor in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven (Belgium). His research interests are continental philosophy and aesthetics, with a focus on Critical Theory and post-war, French thought. His most recent book publications are More than Life: Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and The Work of Forgetting: Or How Can we Make the Future Possible? (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2019). Email: [email protected]

Editors and authors

xi

Elizabeth Wilson formerly taught at London Metropolitan University, Gold­ smiths College, Stanford University, California, and the University of the Arts, London. Among her published works are Adorned in Dreams: Fash­ ion and Modernity (1985, 2003), The Sphinx in the City (1993), Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts (2000), Cultural Passions (2011) and Love Game: A History of Tennis (2014). She has also published four period crime novels, The Twilight Hour (2006), War Damage (2009), The Girl in Berlin (2012) and She Died Young (2016). Janet Wolff is Professor Emerita in the School of Arts, Languages and Cul­ tures at the University of Manchester, where she was Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts. Her earlier positions include: Reader in Sociology of Culture, University of Leeds; Professor of Art History and Director of the PhD Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester (New York); and Associate Dean, School of the Arts, Columbia University. She is the author of seven books and numerous articles on aesthetics, the sociology of art and cultural studies, and editor/co-editor of several books in this area. Her most recent book is a memoir/family history, Austerity Baby (Manchester University Press, 2017). Email: Janet.wolff@manchester.ac.uk Iain Boyd Whyte is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on architectural modernism in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, and on post-1945 urbanism. Beyond architecture, he has written on twentieth-century German art and on Anglo-German literary relations. A former fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and a Getty Scholar, he was co-curator of the Council of Europe exhibition Art and Power, shown in London, Barcelona, and Berlin in 1996/97. He is founding editor of the journal, Art in Translation, has served as chair of RIHA, the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art, and in 2015–2016 was Samuel H. Kress Professor at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His recent books include (with David Frisby) Metropolis Berlin 1880–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) and Hot Art, Cold War (two volumes, Routledge, New York, 2020). Email: [email protected]

Acknowledgements

This festschrift to David Frisby is a celebration of his legacy and of the fields of study and knowledge that he served with dedication for over forty years. It is an expression of our gratitude to our ever-generous teacher who shared his time, resources, and sociology with us. As such, it consists of papers written by some of his many intellectual allies, associates, colleagues, former students, and friends. Our wholehearted thanks go to all the contributors to this volume for their truly moving enthusiasm, supportiveness, and host of inspiring ideas. All have given their heart to this project and we are grateful to each and every one of them. Many thanks are also due to our always sup­ portive and patient Routledge editors Neil Jordan and Alice Salt and the reviewers who responded to our original proposal with such positive and encouraging comments. And lastly, a sincere thanks to our friends, colleagues and families for their love and understanding during the preparation of this work.

1

Introduction Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

I One of the most insightful social theorists of his generation, Professor David Patrick Frisby (1944–2010) taught sociology at a number of uni­ versities including the London School of Economics, University of Glas­ gow, University of California, University of Heidelberg, Yale and Princeton. His numerous writings include major books such as The Alienated Mind (1983), Fragments of Modernity (1985), Simmel and Since (1992) and Cityscapes of Modernity (2001). There is no doubt that he was the leading Anglophone expert on the work of the German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), providing us with the most acute reading and profound understanding of this hitherto largely overlooked founding figure of the discipline. But Frisby’s writings also explored and forged connections with and between other key ‘readers’ of the social world, including the ‘antisociologist’ Friedrich Nietzsche, the ‘archaeologist’ Walter Benjamin and the ‘ragpicker’ Siegfried Kracauer. In doing so, Frisby offered us not only elaborate panoramas of the metropolis as the battleground of modern capitalist society but also articulated the critical theoretical and methodo­ logical tools with which we may explore and study it. His distinctive social theory is grounded on a fundamental observation: the way out of the illu­ sions and chaos of modern metropolitan capitalism may be found within the modern metropolis, through the theories, and, indeed, in the critiques of metropolitan modernity. Whichever of his writings we choose, Frisby unveiled the contested nature of the ‘modern’ that moves beyond the dichotomies of ‘decadence’ and ‘pro­ gress’, ‘the rights of the individual’ and ‘collective security’, ‘freedom’ and ‘order’ in metropolitan society. Starting from his study of the sociology of knowledge and disputes over ‘what is society’ (and concomitantly ‘what is sociology’), Frisby re-evaluated the ways in which we experience and assess the ‘new’ in the metropolis conceived as the very ‘showplace of modernity’. But this does not imply emphasis on mere subjective experience, though the subject, the agent himself (and gender intended here for it points to the gen­ dered character of capitalism), is indeed crucial. This is, then, not only a question of ‘what is society’ but of who makes ‘it’, why he makes it so, of who studies it and with what purpose in mind. These concerns epitomize Frisby’s legacy in introducing a distinctive kind of sociology and sociologist, one who

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Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

reads ‘society’ through Marxist conflict approaches, Simmelian ambiguities, Critical Theory dialectics, and Nietzschean doubts. A careful look at Frisby’s writings and teaching1 suggests that the answers to these questions, or the attempts to find them, require an inqui­ sitive and insistent attention to the apparent world; this attention is com­ bined with strong cognitive foundations, and a critical and highly reflexive approach. Frisby’s work built such epistemological and methodological foundations by means of an interdisciplinary social theory that refuses the claims to absoluteness of an explanatory science of society. Instead, his sociological journeys always remain faithful to social theory understood as the critical study of the fragments, the threads, the traces, the ‘refuse’ and ‘refuge’ of the social world. ‘Society’ is both contested and negotiated, materially and ideologically. For example, in combining sociology with architectural study – and this was preceded by analyses of philosophy, literature and art – Frisby revealed the façades of the metropolis and urban representations as key elements in conflicts regarding the building of modern capitalist society itself. He iden­ tified how various aesthetic representations and dialectical claims – authentic versus generic cities, old versus new cities, beautiful versus func­ tional cities, traditional versus modern cities – conceal not just scholarly debates (modern, anti-modern, postmodern) but also ideologies (including the corroding influence of historicism, the persistence of social inequalities in seemingly democratic political structures and the dialectic between civi­ lization and barbarism). These in turn provide the raw materials of the political infrastructure of everyday social life (as manifest in urban build­ ings, streets, monuments). More than this, Frisby detailed not just the for­ tuitousness, the fragmentariness, the transience but also the stability and continuity, the calculability of the power relations that lie behind the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of our explicitly urban, modern world. His experimentation with the question ‘how is society possible?’ therefore, involved tracing and deciphering the constellations of the every­ day and of the veils, which conceal the violence, social inequality and col­ lective forgetting behind the glamour of newness, ‘modernization’ and ‘progress’ in the metropolis. The dialectic between social change and transformation embedded in the study of urban representations answers not ‘what is society’ as such – since the answer depends on who is asking and why – but what society each citys­ cape or representation itself represents. In other words, what kind of history, politics, culture and possible society each representation destroys and obliter­ ates – from memory, from hope – in order to warrant that one society, that is to say modern metropolitan capitalist society, will prevail over all possible others. Though admittedly less obviously political than many of the ‘Frank­ furt School’ writers, and especially Benjamin, Frisby nevertheless emphasized the capitalist monopoly of ‘modernity’ by means first, of periodization (i.e. the spurious identification of modernity with the eve and prevalence of capitalism); second, of a particular process of city-building wherein the mature money economy either hides behind, or is glorified in, urban aes­ thetics (including city representations); and, finally, through an insistence

Introduction

3

upon the notion of ‘progress’. Hence, capitalism is not just a ‘cult of distrac­ tion’, but a whole social universe of distraction. Frisby’s published and unpublished projects, notes and lectures on detec­ tion are significant for our understanding of these manifold processes of domination at work in modern capitalist society.2 Even though Cityscapes of Modernity (2001) remains his most complete expository work on detection, his earlier essays ‘Siegfried Kracauer and the Detective Novel’ (1992a) and ‘Walter Benjamin and Detection’ (1994) already announced his interest in this theme at around the same time he was writing extensively on the flâneur. This is, of course, no mere coincidence. After all, “where the flâneur’s gaze becomes directed and focused, the flâneur becomes a detective.”3 Ever faithful to his particular study of the dialectic between the fragment and the totality, Frisby’s work on detection focused on three autonomous and yet inter-related axes. First, his work on Benjamin and Kracauer in this context investigated the detective novel itself, its development, history and themes. Second, the analysis of the figure of the detective, both fictional as with Sherlock Holmes and ‘real’ as with the Pinkerton agents introduced in Cityscapes of Modernity. Finally, the relationship between sociology and detection, itself divided into two fields – the sociologist studying this thematic complex and the sociologist as a detective. Accordingly, in an unpublished transcript entitled ‘Cityscapes­ 2’ dated 23 February 2000 – one that was later revised for Cityscapes of Modernity – Frisby announced the study of the “prehistory of detective novel”. There, he encouraged an “understanding of the practice of social research as detection” related to post-nineteenth-century historiography, to the sociological critique of historiography and, of course, to an urban ethno­ graphy related to flânerie. Here too, he anticipated “a history of the social construction of surveillance and detection in the metropolis which grounds the representation of the individual, private detective, the ‘private eye’”. But first things first; a few comments from Frisby’s notes on the develop­ ment of the genre: Nineteenth century historical strands that periodically interrelate and sometimes coalesce: 1 2 3 4 5

Mystery (Sue [1843–44] – city as mystery, Dickens, Gaboriau, Col­ lins, ‘Sensational novel’) Urban topographies (Dark side of the city) Ratiocination (Poe [1843], Doyle, Christie, Sayer, etc) True Crime (Vidocq [1833], Russell, ‘Waters’, Pinkerton) Popular (‘Penny Dreadfuls’ [1840s], Dime Novel, Nick Carter) […] ‘Hard boiled’ genre from late 1920s: Detection as work Street as setting Private eye (but also ‘Continental Op’)4

From the ‘city as mystery’ to the city as crime and corruption, detective and mystery novels develop parallel to dystopian representations of the modern

4

Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

metropolis; detective novels heighten sensationalism, increase the adrenaline to controlled levels (to avoid acts that would challenge the state monopoly to violence) and introduce a new dialectic of modern heroism and anti-heroism. In all the complexities and mysteries of their predominantly male protagonist detectives, and in all their varied scenarios including stories from dangerous urban locations to world-organized crime networks, detective stories promise to restore order and ‘security’ through rationalization. Frisby’s study of Kracauer’s interest in the genre discloses the detective novel’s close relation to rationality, in particular the persistent search for the kinds of social order that will later lead to surveillance, as well as a number of other key themes. These include: � � � � � �

World emptied of meaning. Waiting. Clues. Notion of uncovering what is hidden. Clever labyrinth of deception. Labyrinth of the city.5

Another unpublished document, entitled “Report on: Kracauer Der Detek­ tivroman (1922–25/1970)” dated 23 December 2001, that was to be included in Frisby’s larger project on detection, discussed how: The detective novel as embodiment of abstract reason (Ratio). […] In this earlier, but still developing, tradition, Kracauer argues that its presenta­ tion of the world is of one lacking in genuine human meaning and fun­ damentally unknown. The restricted formal reason of the detective seeks to penetrate the world of fortuitous events and facts in order to secure an ordering of knowledge of this world. In so doing, the detective operates beyond conventional society, the policy [sic] and the criminal. The restoration of order and meaning to the world, which the narrative secures through puzzle solving, remains a limited one. In no sense is society as meaningful totality restored to us. Indeed, for Frisby, Kracauer’s work on the detective novel encapsulates an alternative critical study of modern society specifically in the context of metropolitan modernity. Interestingly enough, this was one of the ideas that Frisby invited not only his readers but also his students to consider. For example, one of the exam questions in his 2004 course on the “Sociology of Modernity” at the then Glasgow Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences asked: “Can the development of the detective novel genre be linked to significant changes in our modern metropolitan experience?” The answer is clear enough: maybe, Frisby’s favourite response – the answer is up to the reader to discover. As with all his subjects, such as architecture and urban planning, the study of detection reveals Frisby’s dedicated interest to the individuals, the groups of people involved in each phenomenon. In other words, with the agents – and literally in the case of detection – behind the ideas and the actions that

Introduction

5

make up the reality of each phenomenon. Frisby’s studies expose the private detective as the spy of the power elites. On the one hand, “the activity of detective agencies might cover crimes (murders, robberies, fraud, etc.)” On the other, “it might also include strike breaking, industrial spying, and general anti-union activity”.6 As such, “the detective is engaged in surveillance, i.e. surveying the city for those in power”.7 So how can such a contested char­ acter teach us anything about anything with regards to a critical social theory and sociological research practice? How can sociology escape the servile sci­ entific practices, measurements and explanations that justify dominant ideol­ ogies? A possible answer lies in Frisby’s work on Benjamin in this context. Here, the detective escapes the discussion of fictional or real agents and serves as a metaphor that urges us to reconsider the relationship between theory, teaching and research. When in a dialectical pair with the flâneur, the ‘detec­ tive’ reaffirms the passionate relationship between a scholar and the truth: Walter Benjamin’s Prehistory of Modernity 1

Metaphorical investigators: � � �

Archaeologist / critical allegorist Collector / Ragpicker Flâneur / Detective8

Benjamin, argues Frisby, “provides a rich source for satisfying the ‘detecti­ vistic expectations of sociologists’ in that part of his ‘Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire […] entitled ‘Flâneur’’, (1994 94). Detection as a method becomes even clearer when we combine Benjamin and Simmel, two of Frisby’s primary flâneurs: Detection and sociology – e.g. study of social types, social dimensions of crowd, and away from individual physiognomies (e.g. Simmel as socio­ logical flâneur). More generally detection can take place in city but also in archive. But some of these features can also be treated positively: […] � Relation between flânerie and detection (which takes flânerie well beyond the historical confines in the arcades).9 In the end, this is not only a question of what we study and how but of why. In retaining the power to reveal the hidden, or to decipher the reality of social life under metropolitan capitalism, detection resembles the sociological ‘stranger’s’ study of the social world: “puzzle – unknown connections of motives revealed by outsider”.10 This outsider, ‘detective’, stranger, flâneur, collector, ragpicker, this sociologist and archivist of modernity reminds us of a fundamental hypothesis: “the most important, the less important, and the unimportant only appear to be important, less important, unimportant”. (Roth 2003 25) This critical re-examination and re-evaluation of what is important – according to and for whom? – introduces a significant part of Frisby’s unique contribution and distinctive way of studying ‘society’.

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Simmel, Frisby’s most beloved companion, suggested that “all of us are fragments”; and that is true “not only of general man, but also of ourselves. We are outlines not only of the types ‘man’, ‘good’, ‘bad’ and the like but also of the individuality and uniqueness of ourselves”. (Simmel 1971 10) First principle: the sociologist too, is, therefore, a fragment. Second principle: society is a construction. Third principle: social life under modern metropo­ litan capitalism is further fragmented. Fourth principle: we study fragments and distinguish between the important and the unimportant – and we ask ‘says who?’ Sixth principle: we question the above – in theory and in research. Like Benjamin, we too, study “fragments of high culture” and “garbage” (Frisby 1996 19). In Frisby’s words: In the context of metropolitan experience, the profusion of fragmentary images, the rapid transformation of images, indeed images as snapshots, the whole as an artificial panorama, external stimuli as a mass of impressions (sounds, colours, etc.) requires attempts to capture those fragments and movements in some coherent whole. (Frisby 1992b 178) More than just an aesthetic choice, the study of fragments and the use of lit­ erary montage – both of which are considered throughout this collection – reveal how, fragmented and divested of meaning (or with meaning hidden in many cases), metropolitan everyday life becomes yet another labyrinth. Fris­ by’s characteristic study of fragments teaches us that: The most vacuous fragments, those which represent ‘an epoch’s judge­ ment upon itself ’, are left to flutter in the morning breeze. It is the rag­ picker who makes use of the scraps, the fragments, since he is aware of their history. The fragments can be used again, they can be reassembled in context that renders their mosaic intelligible. (Frisby 1988 186) And so, we collect and study that which modernity ‘veils’: reality and social relations. Frisby maintains that, after his turn from the existential concerns of Lebensphilosophie, Kracauer defined the goal of sociology as the “mas­ tery of the immediately experienced social reality of life” (1988 120). But he further noted that such a goal “cannot be achieved by abstract con­ ceptualization. Rather, the starting point must be the object itself, whose empirical diversity provides no enclosed system of concepts” (1988 120). The concrete fragment becomes the object and the subject matter of socio­ logical investigation and “the justification for commencing with the social fragment is quite apparent since the fortuitous fragment is no longer merely a fragment: the ‘unique’ contains the ‘typical’, the ‘fleeting fragment is the ‘essence’” (1988 57). This monadological approach signifies a distinctive discipline, a discipline that assumes some meaning to existence; a discipline that struggles for meaning and insists that ‘meaninglessness’ too is an illu­ sion. If it is true, in the end, that “perhaps the fragments of human interac­ tion are to represent the lost totality, the vision of society as a whole”,

Introduction

7

(Frisby 1992b 95) then Frisby surely welcomes us to the study of the social world as meaningful experience. This festschrift is dedicated to David Frisby. It emphasizes his legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective, ragpicker and archivist of the phenomena and ideas, indeed of the fragments, that exemplify and epitomize the modern metropolis as society. As such, it introduces an interdisciplinary ‘symposium’ of sociologists, cultural critics and theorists, urban historians, geographers and designers, archi­ tectural practitioners, historians and theorists, one that both offers the first wide-ranging engagement with Frisby’s profound legacy in social and cultural theory and at the same time serves as a testimony and a tribute to it.

II The essays which comprise this collection have been arranged according to what we see as the particular themes and central concepts on which they focus rather than, for example, in line with some linear chronological recon­ struction. It should be made clear from the outset, of course, that these themes are not discrete but rather overlapping and intersecting aspects of Frisby’s rich and wide-ranging intellectual oeuvre. And so there is inevitably a degree of arbitrariness in the architecture of our collection: for example, Chapter 3 by Antonio Rafele and Massimo Cerulo explores urban experience and could certainly sit happily alongside the texts of both Part 2 and Part 3; at the same time, Georgia Giannakopoulou’s essay (Part 5, Chapter 16), in its attention to the figure and practice of the metropolitan ragpicker as dis­ tinctive epistemological / methodological tropes would be very much at home among the papers in Part 1. The figure of the detective spans Chapters 13 (Elizabeth Wilson) and 14 (Graeme Gilloch). Threads tie together the con­ tributions of Esther Leslie (Chapter 5) and Janet Wolff (Chapter 12). Indeed, there are strands interweaving and binding all the texts. So, on the one hand, each piece is free-standing, each can be read alone and can be read in any order – their arrangement is of necessity contingent; at the same time, on the other hand, they work together, teasing out, crisscrossing and patterning. Each one highlights subtle details, unfolds distinctive motifs, elaborates new configurations and illuminates fresh colours in Frisby’s writings. And in combination, irrespective of starting point or sequence, the effect is cumula­ tive, collaborative and kaleidoscopic. Part 1 brings together a series of essays which focus on Frisby’s funda­ mental preoccupation with theoretical and methodological issues in socio­ logical analysis and, in particular, the exploration of modern metropolitan culture and experience. Matthias Benzer opens our collection with a lucid exploration of Frisby’s nuanced and “far-reaching” engagement with the Adorno-Popper dispute with particular regard to their competing notions of contradiction and critique. Taken as an exemplary instance of writers speak­ ing past each other rather than in debate with each other, Frisby’s articulation of this as a case of the “incommensurability of theories” is taken a step fur­ ther by Benzer in relation to Jean-François Lyotard’s reflections on the postmodern condition. Benzer concludes with an appreciation of Frisby’s

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challenge in the name of Critical Theory to the hegemony of positivist and neo-positivist thinking in British sociology both then and now. The following three chapters all explore the possibilities of critical reflection upon, and the critical representation of, the experience of metropolitan mod­ ernity. Each one argues for and seeks to articulate distinctive ways of making sense of the city and of sensing the city corresponding to, or in accord with, the very conditions, experiences and qualities they look to capture. And each points to a different aspect or dimension: motion, mobility and transience; emotion, shock and affect; the senses, moods and ‘atmospheres’. In Chapter 2, Changnam Lee unfolds the key significance of one of Siegfried Kracauer’s less discussed feuilleton pieces for the Frankfurter Zeitung – his ‘Farewell to the Linden Arcade’ from 1930. Lee elaborates two key figures of dis­ appearance, which provide for a critical understanding of, and a prescient reorientation to, the emerging highly mobile, nomadic society of today: firstly, that of the ‘passage’ as a liminal space to be moved through; as a site of transit, transition and transience; and as an edifice now filled with the sur­ viving bric-a-brac and kitsch souvenirs of the ruinous bourgeois world; and secondly, that of the flâneur who moves in and through this structure, disin­ terestedly eyeing its curiosities, yet who is him/herself also very much a per­ ambulating relic or residue from a bygone age. Together, these motifs – passage and flâneur – suggest ways of experiencing, knowing and representing modernity in keeping with its fugitive, ephemeral and contingent qualities. Lee argues for the value and significance of the flâneur-as-journalist-as-intel­ lectual as a model of and for contemporary sociological analysis – the current ‘mobilities turn’ in particular – and then proceeds to extol and advocate its hallmarks – humility, partiality, situatedness, embodied, momentary – in contradistinction to the faux claims of objectivity, universality and eternal verity once professed by positivist science. In Chapter 3, Massimo Cerulo and Antonio Rafele foreground the sig­ nificance and fate of emotional life amid the turmoil and tumult of metro­ politan living. Frisby recognized and appreciated the fundamental insights of Simmel and Benjamin into the disintegration of coherent experience [Erfah­ rung] as the ever-increasing and ever-accelerating welter of external stimuli leads to nervousness, agitation, indifference and cold calculation in everyday affairs. As the key experience of modernity, shock leads to “the paralysis of reflexive ability” and the diminution of human inner sensibilities and sensi­ tivities, exemplified here by the “emotional ambivalence” and ambiguities of love. The authors look to Benjamin’s key historiographical and epistemologi­ cal category of the dialectical image – the moment of fleeting recognition and redemption of an endangered past moment in the present – as a form of cri­ tical praxis necessitated by, and running counter to, the amnesia and apathy engendered by the contemporary city. The elusive, ineffable and intangible elements of ‘atmospheres’ provide the central theme for Fabio La Rocca’s essay forming Chapter 4. Taking as his key point of departure the dialectical interplay between, and/or co-constitu­ tion of, the physical fabric of the city and the everyday lives of its inhabitants, La Rocca reflects upon how we simultaneously ‘read’ and ‘write’ the citys­ cape-as-text as we walk through and imagine / envisage its spaces and

Introduction

9

structures. His primary concern is with how we both sense and make sense of the urban environment. With this in mind, he proposes the study of affectual ‘atmospheres’ – feelings, emotions, moods, sensibilities, sensations, sensitiv­ ities, dispositions – by means of a metropolitan ‘meteorology’ or, as La Rocca terms it, a ‘climatology’ of the city. This directs our attention beyond urban optics towards the bodily and embodied. In this foregrounding of the cor­ poreal and synaesthetic, La Rocca thus makes an implicit plea for a “nomadism of the senses” involving not only Kracauer’s ‘redemption of phy­ sical reality’ but also the due recognition and recovery of what one might term ‘psychical reality’. There is, moreover, a distinctly mimetic aspect to La Rocca’s writing here: it is itself an exercise in discursive flânerie, leading the reader on digressions and detours, complex and poetic itineraries, ones that nevertheless always wind their way back to the same central topos. Opening Part 2, Esther Leslie’s essay (Chapter 5) is inspired by and explores the suggestive title of Frisby’s 1985 book Fragments of Modernity. The rela­ tionship between the fragment and the modern is more profound and necessary than just an elective affinity: on the one hand, modern experience, in particular that of the metropolitan environment, is characterized by disjuncture, distrac­ tion and discontinuity; on the other, the modern is only available to us for analysis and interrogation in its detritus and debris. The fragment is conceived as the fundamental category of the modern aesthetic – aesthetic understood here both in the broader sense of ‘life of the senses’, that which is sensed, and in its most limited (and common) usage as pertaining to artistic and repre­ sentational practices. Frisby’s favourite triumvirate of Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel were the writers most attuned to and adept in reading and (re)fashioning these fragmentary moments, insights and materials as monadological forms bearing within them the telltale marks and traces of wider socio-economic, political and cultural crises and transforma­ tions. And it is to the discovery and deciphering of such precious yet unpre­ possessing remains – whether found on the street or lodged in archives – that Frisby, as heir to these intellectual ragpickers, dedicates himself. In Chapters 6 and 7, we join Siegfried Kracauer in one of his own favourite haunts – the cinema – in the company of Spiros Gangas and Stéphane Symons. Our two writers provide contrasting appraisals of his classic 1960 book Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Tracing back Kracauer’s normative vision of the film medium to Simmel’s own ‘socio­ logical impressionism’ – in particular, the extraction of fragments from the social totality and their subsequent reintegration within it as part of a mosaic – Gangas (Chapter 6) writes appreciatively of such a utopian vision of cinema, one he contrasts favourably with other, more contemporary, readings of film content, which fail to grasp the importance of cinematic form. Emphasizing the capacity of film to (re)present us with quotidian fragments wrenched out of everyday life – including moments of horror, violence and atrocity – Gangas identifies Simmelian currents not only in Kracauer’s work but also, more speculatively, as traces of Lebensphilosophie working through the vitalism of Henri Bergson, in the cinematic writings of Gilles Deleuze. By contrast, Symons (Chapter 7) is distinctly less enthusiastic regarding Kracauer’s trajectory in Theory of Film. In foregrounding a potential

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Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

aesthetic / cinematic overcoming of contemporary disenchantment instead of a radical political one, this work compares unfavourably with Kracauer’s own earlier, bleaker and more critical vision of both film and photographic images first expressed back in the mid-1920s and then reiterated in his original Mar­ seilles notebooks from 1940. Instead of exacerbating the alienation of the modern capitalistic lifeworld – an approach that Symons sees as aligned with Benjamin’s vision of allegory as the fragmentation and mortification of the godforsaken world – Kracauer’s vision of the cinematic medium in 1960 constitutes a reversion to the kind of Simmelian Lebensphilosophie and romanticism, which Symons identifies as central to the work of the Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs. The camera now no longer reveals and intensifies a broken world in need of redemption through revolutionary political action but rather – by means of a re-awakening of human faculties and sensitivities, through what Balázs describes as giving a ‘face’ to Nature and the object world, ‘envisaging’ them – serves to restore and redeem this world itself. Fol­ lowing Benjamin, for Symons the only true ‘face’ of things to be inventoried by the camera is that of the facies hippocratica, the withered and wasted countenance of the dying and the dead. Part 3 comprises a series of writings addressing Frisby’s abiding fascination with, and passion for, the structures, spaces and perspectives creating modern cityscapes – urban architecture and assemblages, iconic buildings, street pat­ terns, vistas and panoramas, cityscapes and skylines. The last two of these are the principal foci for Chapters 8 and 9. Günter Gassner’s study (Chapter 8) shares Symons appreciation of the critical potential of the fragmentary and the Baroque. In providing a genealogy of the concept of ‘sky-line’ and sketching the Surrealist-inspired montage aesthetics of the now largely for­ gotten British Townscape movement, Gassner argues for a radical politics of the cityscape, which breaks with notions of an overarching aesthetic totality and instead seeks plurality and alterity, embraces contradiction and con­ tingency, manifests the accidental and incidental; and, attests to transience and transformation. His “detour through the Baroque” highlights and con­ figures the notion of the fragment-as-monad in which notions of multiplicity (variety and diversity) and potentiality (the possible and compossible) combine. In Chapter 9, Mike Featherstone’s wide-ranging reflections take the reader from the top of the Eiffel Tower to subterranean tunnels and networks on the lookout for different perspectives and vantage points to take in the manifold images of the city, so many different cityscapes or Stadtbilder. This is not just a question of how we see the modern city today but also, equally importantly, how the city sees us through the increasingly sophisticated and evermore ubi­ quitous forms of sur- and sousveillance technologies, continuously capturing our images, tracking our movements, collecting, collating and moneytizing our data. Recognizing this growing hybridity of cityscapes and mediascapes, Featherstone examines not only questions of visual aesthetics in the compo­ sition and configuration of urban and technological assemblages as coherent and/or unitary forms (as ‘scapes’) – by architects, planners, artists, film­ makers, cultural intermediaries of all kinds and, not least, by humble tour­ ists – but also highlights the significance of the synaesthetic, that is to say, the

Introduction

11

all-too-often overlooked role of affect, ambience and mood in imbuing and inflecting urban experience. Featherstone’s essay echoes La Rocca’s call in Chapter 4 for an attentiveness to and appreciation of urban ‘atmospheres’. In Chapter 10, Iain Boyd Whyte makes a compelling connection between two figures who proved abiding sources of fascination for Frisby – the sociologist Georg Simmel and his contemporary, the ‘father of modern architecture’ Otto Wagner – through their mutual preoccupation with fashion and the modern. Against the backdrop of a new ‘fashionable’ architecture – decorative, transient, Parisian – in the guise of Art Nouveau and Viennese Successionism, Whyte focuses on the principles set out in Wagner’s 1896 pamphlet Moderne Arkitektur. A lucid account follows of two key construc­ tion projects undertaken by Wagner in Vienna combining decorative forms with advanced engineering and materials: the bridges and stations of the city’s inner railway loop (the Gürtelbahn) and the Post Office Savings Bank. Whyte considers how Wagner’s micro-logical attention to detail in terms of the design of highly wrought individual components and façades elevated these not only into exemplary expressions of a new and distinctly modern aesthetic sensibility, but also – skipping generations – anticipated the rejection of the ‘form follows function’ austerity of high modernism and the return to playful ornamentation characteristic of postmodern architecture and design. Under the rubric ‘Haunts’, both an activity and set of sites, the essays forming Part 4 are concerned with how past traces adhere to and inform certain places in the present, with how specific sites are bound up with and occasion particular narratives and stories. In Chapter 11, we head to the far north to the remote hamlet of Kleivan on the Norwegian Lofoten Islands and then to the far south, to Valparaiso in Chile, in the company of the architect Christian Hermansen Cordua. His contribution to the collection is a series of short narratives – textual fragments – locating and detailing two contrasting design projects, each though informed by an attentiveness to the “spirit of the place”, a specific localized configuration of time and space: an Arts and Culture Production Centre (The Bands) in a remote former cod-fishing village just within the Arctic Circle; and, The Wave, a public performance space constructed in the historical centre of what is still one of South America’s major port cities. These projects give new life to structures that have long fallen into ruins, states of collapse and neglect, which point in different directions. In seeking to give expression to its desolate location, the harshness of its landscapes, and the loss of the fish shoals, which once sustained the few hardy souls who eked out their living here, The Bands is very much tied to Benjaminian ‘natural history’ [Naturgeschichte]. The Wave, by contrast, attests to a different kind of ruination and impoverishment – that occasioned by the human-made economic crises and catastrophic inequalities of neo­ liberal Chilean society – and to those who continue the work of socio-eco­ nomic, political and cultural resistance. Chapter 12 transports us from these rather remote coastal locations to the city of Manchester so as to bear witness to a triple homecoming. A statue of Friedrich Engels has made the journey from rural Ukraine to north-west England to take up residence outside the new arts complex, finding a new resting place in front of HOME. The cotton industry itself has recently

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Georgia Giannakopoulou and Graeme Gilloch

returned to its ‘spiritual home’ with the refurbishment and reactivation of a mill to the east of the city. And Janet Wolff has returned to her native city, too. We are privileged to share in the return of the flâneuse. She presents here a fascinating mapping of the complex German-Jewish heritage of Manchester, ‘capital of the nineteenth century,’ one that deftly and intricately interweaves urban, industrial and family history. Less a flâneuse though and much more a literary ragpicker, Wolff gathers together a rich assortment of textual scraps – local, national and international newspapers reports; salacious stories and gossip; trade magazines; industrial and trade association reports and records; paperwork from civic and commercial archives; artistic and academic sour­ ces – to create a collage, or better, a rich tapestry detailing the indebtedness of ‘Cottonopolis’ to German emigrés and exiles, her own father among them. Inspired by Benjamin’s insistence upon the history of the recent past as ima­ gistic, and the imperative to show, Wolff’s experimental montage of juxta­ posed textual quotations, excerpts and illustrations, constitutes here a Mancunian ‘Arcades Project’ in miniature. In Chapter 13, we are invited to accompany Elizabeth Wilson ‘in search of lost streets’. She, too, takes Fragments of Modernity as her point of departure and Kracauer as her guiding spirit. Her essay is an exemplary work of intel­ lectual flânerie conceived here as the practice of keen-eyed ragpicking, seizing upon and salvaging remnants and residues of metropolitan popular culture – the detective story in particular. These serve as ‘surface-level expressions’, vestiges disclosing the deeper structures of capitalist modernity, and – as mnemonics – prompting personal recollections of her own London childhood experiences. Such ‘nostalgia’ is here rightly configured not as some senti­ mental looking to a romanticized past but rather as a profound sense of melancholy occasioning the passage of time, of the experience of the ruin and the ruination of experience, of loss and of being lost. Part 5 brings together three essays, which in different ways look beyond the figure of the flâneur to examine a trio of other exemplary incarnations of metropolitan modernity, ones offering models both of contemporary experi­ ence and for critical practice: the detective, the collector, and the ragpicker. In Chapter 14, Graeme Gilloch examines Frisby’s 1992 reflections on Kracauer’s study of the detective story written in the early 1920s. Focusing on the cur­ rently popular genre of Nordic-noir, Gilloch sketches some of the possible dimensions for a work Frisby himself proposed but eventually never devel­ oped: “an interesting and unresearched comparison” (1992: 3) between Kra­ cauer’s treatise and Benjamin’s study of the Trauerspiel. Such a comparison, Gilloch contends, might place the detective story in the same relation to the modernity of the early twentieth century as Benjamin claims the Trauerspiel occupied with respect to its time and place – as its quintessential expression. If this is plausible, then perhaps Nordic-noir constitutes the most acute and melancholy expression of our own times today. And so we look forward here to something Frisby suggested but never wrote himself; something that he inspired, something that still awaits writing. In Chapters 15 and 16, Jaeho Kang and Georgia Giannakopoulou respec­ tively consider and then decisively move beyond the various paradigmatic and methodological claims of flânerie to assert the significance of other modes of

Introduction

13

engaging with the metropolitan environment, ones displacing male ocularcentrism and scopophilia in favour of other senses – above all, the haptic and tactile. Kang presents Benjamin’s own critique of ‘left-wing melancholy’ and the limitations of surrealist experimentation – authors and texts too wedded to the optics and individual intoxication of the flâneur – in terms of their wider failure to grasp the radical transformation of art and aesthetics accel­ erated by the advent of new media technologies and mass metropolitan pub­ lics. It is the collector who rudely and roughly takes hold of things, wrenching them from their conventional contexts, handles them with assurance and without deference, and reinserts them into new and startling configurations, ones which reveal the political, economic and ideological workings from which these artefacts were first sundered. It is the collector who, through proximity and tactility with the world of things, disenchants the fetishized commodity world and redeems the object in the act of ‘profane illumination’. In the final essay of our collection, Giannakopoulou’s interest is directed to another figure of haptic practice – not the (bourgeois) collector but the lum­ penproletarian ragpicker or chiffonier, a figure who, as Benjamin observed, fascinated his/her time as the very embodiment of destitution and misery. From the outset, her essay focuses on the significance of the detritus, the leavings, the discarded waste materials of the workaday world and the metropolitan environment, discovering therein, and redeeming from oblivion, precious traces and residues, fragments within which totalities may be dis­ cerned (as monads) and from which new totalities may be constructed (as montages, as mosaics). Giannakopoulou elaborates such themes with respect to Frisby’s epistemological and methodological preoccupations, which – grounded above all in the essayistic writing of Simmel – underpin his own articulation and advocacy of a critical theory of modernity. Fittingly, her essay thereby returns us to our starting point in Part 1. The essays collected here are intentionally independent and intriguingly interdependent writings. Accordingly, the reader will find moments of contra­ diction and dissonance – like Gassner’s cityscape. And this is as it should be: it is the very principle of dialectics. She will also recognize moments of corre­ spondence and congruence. These contributions are more than the sum of their parts. They do add up, but how exactly? This is also as it should be: it is the foundation of good detective work. These essays should both stimulate debate and spur on discovery. Most importantly, this means that for us as editors each essay is an entry or starting point, an introduction, not a conclusion. For surely nothing could be less interesting, less engaging, than a book of conclusions. What follows is a series of invitations, enticements, to explore the wonderful writings of a most perceptive, provocative and profound sociological imagina­ tion. And so what each and every contribution ultimately attests to is this: David, you inspired us; you are missed; you are remembered.

Notes 1 For Frisby’s teaching and publications see the David Frisby Glasgow University website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/frisbymem oriallectures/davidfrisby/.

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2 All lectures, papers, and other unpublished material cited here are saved in the David Frisby Athens Archive, held by Georgia Giannakopoulou. 3 From D. Frisby’s handwritten notebook entitled “Detective Novel and the City.” 4 Unpublished document entitled “Development of Mystery/Detective Genres”, dated 23/12/2001. 5 From D. Frisby’s handwritten notebook entitled “The Detective Novel.” 6 From D. Frisby’s handwritten notebook entitled “Detective Novel and the City.” 7 From D. Frisby’s handwritten notebook entitled “Detective Novel and the City.” 8 Document entitled “Walter Benjamin’s Prehistory of Modernity” 27/9/2006 from D. Frisby’s unpublished notes. 9 Lecture notes, entitled “SO 450, L2, FLANEUR, FLANEUSE, FLANERIE, Issues,” dated 24/9/2009. 10 From D. Frisby’s handwritten notebook entitled “Detective Novel + Expressionism.”

References Frisby, David (1988) Fragments of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Frisby, David (1992a) ‘Siegfried Kracauer and the Detective Novel.’ Theory, Culture and Society, 9 (2): 1–22. Frisby, David (1992b) Sociological Impressionism. London: Routledge. Frisby, David (1994) ‘Walter Benjamin and Detection.’ German Politics and Society, Summer, 32: 89–106. Frisby, David (1996) ‘Walter Benjamin’s Prehistory of Modernity as Anticipation of Postmodernity? Some Methodological Reflections’ in Gerhard Fischer (Ed.) With the Sharpened Axe of Reason. Oxford: Berg, 15–32. Frisby, David (2001) Cityscapes of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Glasgow University David Frisby website: www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/resea rch/sociology/frisbymemoriallectures/davidfrisby/. Roth, Joseph (2003) What I Saw. London: Granta. Simmel, Georg (1971) ‘How is Society Possible’ in D.N. Levine (Ed.) Georg Simmel On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Part 1

Modernity, metropolis and method

17

1

Critical sociology The methodological controversy Matthias Benzer

Indeed the history of almost continuous dispute suggests that con­ troversy must characterize ‘normal science’ in the social sciences. David Frisby1

I David Frisby’s work from the 1970s on the themes of the positivist dispute in German sociology contains several critical comments on positivism and some on critical theory. It does not, though, explicitly show him side firmly with either Karl Popper or Theodor W. Adorno, the initial disputants. His 1972 “examination” of their discussion from 1961 was justified, Frisby suggested, by the lack of familiarity in “the Anglo-American tradition” with that dis­ cussion and with the subsequently unfolding “controversy” as well as by Popper’s recent remarks on the conflict he had been involved in (Frisby 1972, 105; see also Adorno 1976b; Popper 1976a, 1976b). To describe the result of his investigations, however, Frisby chose unassuming terms: an “outline of the major arguments” on both sides of the Popper-Adorno encounter (Frisby 1972, 105). In a closely related piece printed two years later, Frisby diagnosed the “predominance” in Great Britain “of a neo-positivist paradigm for social research” (1974, 207). The “Frankfurt School tradition”, in which “positivism” had been subjected to criticism, deserved “careful examination” particularly “as a tradition” that ran “counter to” then “dominant trends in sociology” (1974, 208). Frisby’s aim was to try to assemble the writings con­ taining that criticism in “the framework of a paradigm which contrasts positivism with Critical Theory” (1974, 209).2 The specific “contrast between Popper’s theses on the logic of the social sciences and their critique by Adorno”, Frisby stated, would allow for scrutiny of “widely held tenets of positivism” (1974, 212). Yet while he proceeded to expose, much like in the 1972 article, “the central areas of opposition” between the two thinkers so as “to clarify the methodological issues” (1974, 212), his examinations did not culminate in an out-and-out rejection of Popper’s ideas decidedly in favour of those of Adorno. It is worth bearing in mind in this regard that around the same time, having briefly complained of the unavailability of English lan­ guage versions (Frisby 1972, 105), Frisby, together with Glyn Adey, was also

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producing translations of the 1969 German collection of interventions in the positivist dispute, Der Positivismusstreit in der Deutschen Soziologie,3 for Anglophone readers. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology was pub­ lished in 1976 (Adorno et al. 1976). “Frisby’s most significant contribution to sociology has … been his work on Simmel, both as a faithful translator and as a refreshingly clear inter­ preter” (Dodd 2013, 3; see also Kemple 2010). But this does not mean that his work as a commentator on, and translator of, the positivist dispute lacks significance. Nor, in actual fact, were these endeavours modest in any tenable sense. For one thing, the original texts – Adorno’s writings, one may suspect, above all – cannot but have posed considerable challenges to the translators. For another, the implications of the way in which Frisby’s commentaries – on the Popper-Adorno discussion (Frisby 1972); on the Frankfurt School and positivism (1974), as well as his “Introduction to the English Translation” (1976a) of Der Positivismusstreit – approach that discussion are far-reaching.

II Frisby does, of course, sketch those of Popper’s by now well-known twentyseven theses decisive for the discussion with Adorno (Frisby 1972, 109; 1974, 213) as well as the latter’s reply (Frisby 1972, 111; 1974, 214). Yet this is but one step in a project that also involves a penetrating inquiry into the two thinkers’ interventions. Pointing out that according to Popper “all scientists” confront “common problems” (Frisby 1972, 107), Frisby (1972, 109; 1974, 213) spotlights, among others, the philosopher’s fourth thesis: “Knowledge [Erkenntnis]” begins with “problems”, and a “problem” emerges “from the discovery of an apparent contradiction between our supposed knowledge [Wissen] and the supposed facts” (Popper 1976a, 88). Popper’s fifth thesis states that an “observation” forms a “starting-point” of sorts “only if it reveals a problem”, that is to say, “if it shows us that something is not quite in order … with our expecta­ tions, … our theories” (1976a, 89). Scientists seek and suggest “solutions” to “problems” thus understood (Frisby 1972, 109; see also 1974, 213; Popper 1976a, 89). Adorno’s reply, as Frisby, referring also to Popper’s (1976b, 288–291) eva­ luation of the Positivismusstreit volume, highlights, does not criticise Popper’s every single “thesis” (Frisby 1972, 111). Instead, “Adorno’s critique” con­ stitutes in part “a general criticism” of several “key concepts” of Popper’s (Frisby 1972, 111). Indeed, Adorno offers an “alternative standpoint” (Frisby 1972, 111). Among those elements “fundamental” to the way Popper presents his stance on methodology that Adorno calls into question, Frisby pinpoints precisely the category of the “problem” (Frisby 1972, 111). Popper, writes Frisby, situates “[p]roblems … in … knowledge, in … statements about rea­ lity” (Frisby 1972, 111; 1974, 214). For Adorno, however, sociology’s “object”, too, “… is a problem” – and “in an emphatic sense” (1976b, 108; see also Frisby 1972, 111; 1974, 214). He points out that this “object”, namely contemporary “society … keeps itself and its members alive” and at

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the very same time “threatens” both its members and itself “with ruin” (1976b, 108). Adorno defends a “conception” according to which “societal reality” is “contradictory” (1976b, 109; see also Frisby 1974, 214). He oppo­ ses the thoroughgoing division between “problems” within “science” and those that are “real” (1976b, 109; see also Frisby 1972, 111, 114; 1974, 214, 215). The implication for Adorno is that sociology’s “problems” by no means always emerge from the recognition “‘that something is not in order with our supposed knowledge …’” (1976b, 108, citing Popper 1976a, 88; see also Frisby 1972, 111; 1974, 214) or come into being “‘in the development of an inner contradiction in our supposed knowledge’” (Adorno 1969, 129, prob­ ably citing Popper 1962, 234).4 The problems of sociology, Adorno seems to hold, sometimes arise from a putative source in the realm of statements, which, in turn, is fed by the recognition of contradictions in social reality. And yet, consistently with Frisby’s approach to the Popper-Adorno discus­ sion, one may hesitate to equate these assertions with a straightforward refu­ tation of the section Adorno quotes from Popper’s fourth thesis. Behind Adorno’s contentions lies his defence of the notion of the problem of a “contradictory” social “reality” and his opposition to “radically separat[ing]” science’s “immanent problems from the real ones” (1976b, 109). As Frisby puts it, “Adorno criticise[s] the central concepts of Popper’s methodology”, and he does so “from the standpoint of critical theory” (1974, 214), which diverges from the basis upon which Popper rests his theses. What is more, Popper, to repeat, characterises as “apparent” the “contra­ diction” out of “the discovery” of which “arises” every “problem” (1976a, 88). “The contradiction”, Adorno replies, “need not … be a merely ‘apparent’ one …” (1976b, 108, translation modified).5 If, in Popper’s fourth thesis, the contradiction is between an accepted fact and our supposed knowledge, then the former undermines the latter, and what is entailed is a “statemen[t]” we now no longer suppose to be “about reality” – to use Frisby’s (1972, 111; 1974, 214) terminology – in configuration with a statement about reality, so that one may call that contradiction apparent. To Adorno’s mind, the “con­ tradiction” does not have to be one “between subject and object”, which, qua inadequacy of the “judgment”, would need to be laid at the door of “the subject alone” (1976b, 108; see also Frisby 1972, 112). In fact, “the contra­ diction” may be one which cannot be eliminated “by increased knowledge and clearer formulation”; it “can”, namely, “in very real terms [höchst real], have its place in reality [in der Sache]” (1976b, 108; see also Frisby 1972, 112; 1974, 214). Still following Frisby’s footsteps, one may, though, once again stop short of reading this as simply Adorno’s rejection of Popper’s assertion. For Adorno’s contentions continue to be oriented by his espousal of the “conception of the contradictory nature of social reality” and his objection to keeping scientific “problems” strictly apart from those of reality (1976b, 109). Finally, Adorno’s (1976b, 108–109) reply remains consistent with both in his remarks on paragraph 243 of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Assessing “civil society”, Hegel argues that “as the association … of human beings through their needs is universalized, and with it the ways in which means of satisfying these needs are devised and made available, the

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accumulation of wealth increases”. This is because “the greatest profit is derived from this twofold universality”. Yet, continues Hegel, through that universalisation “also increase” at the same time “the specialization … and limitation of particular work …” and “the dependence and want of the class which is tied to such work …” (1991, 266). Adorno seems to consider this passage quite a successful – describing it, in any case, as the “oldest” – “sociological model” of the sort of contradiction he seeks to draw attention to: “of … a contradiction which necessarily develops” or unfolds6 “in reality” (1976b, 108). Adorno suggests that he reads the tension between Hegel’s statement about one tendency in social reality and his statement about another tendency in social reality as a representation of the contradiction unfolding within that reality between those two tendencies. Popper’s seventh thesis underscores that “knowledge [Wissen]” only ever comprises proposals “for tentative solutions” to “problems” (1976a, 90). “Solutions”, crucially, “are … criticised” (Frisby 1974, 213, see also 214; 1972, 109, 110; Popper 1976a, 89). Criticising “a proposed solution” means trying “to refute” it (Popper 1976a, 89; see also Frisby 1972, 109, 113; 1974, 213). For Popper, Frisby summarises, scientific “method” means “the control of the tentative search for solutions by the sharpest possible critiques” (Frisby 1972, 109, see also 110; 1974, 213; Popper 1976a, 89–90). Moreover, Frisby highlights Popper’s considerations of “scientific objectivity” (Frisby 1972, 109; see also 1974, 213). Popper deems it a “fact that objectivity rests solely upon … criticism” (1976a, 96). Science’s “objectivity” is grounded, on the one hand, in the “critical tradition” (1976a, 95; see also Frisby 1972, 109; 1974, 213). On the other hand, its “so-called objectivity … lies in the objectivity of the critical method” (Popper 1976a, 90; see also Frisby 1972, 109, 110; 1974, 213, 216). Critique is supported by “pure deductive logic” (Popper 1976a, 98, see also 99; Frisby 1972, 110; 1974, 213). The logical devices for criticising, the category of “the logical contradiction”, in turn, are “objective” (Popper 1976a, 90; see also Frisby 1972, 110, 114; 1974, 215). Popper clarifies this vision of criticism by pointing out that scientists “work with theories”, which form “deductive systems”. They constitute “attempt[ed]” solutions to sci­ ence’s “problem[s]”, and they are open to critique (1976a, 99; see also Frisby 1972, 110). The instrument of critique is “formal logic” (Popper 1976a, 99; see also Frisby 1972, 110; 1974, 213). “Deductive logic”, Frisby makes expli­ cit, constitutes, for Popper, a tool “for the transfer of the truth of premises to their conclusion” (Frisby 1972, 110; see also 1974, 213; Popper 1976a, 98). Simultaneously, Popper sees in “deductive logic” a “theory of the retransmis­ sion of falsity from the conclusion to at least one of the premises”. This is vital for critique. For it is to say that “if … the conclusion is false in a valid inference”, a minimum of one premise must also be false (1976a, 98; see also Frisby 1972, 110; 1974, 213, who, however, emphasises a slightly different aspect of Popper’s sixteenth and seventeenth thesis here). In other words, “deriving, logically, unacceptable conclusions from an assertion” amounts to “refut[ing]” it (Popper 1976a, 99). Yet, still consistent with Frisby’s commentary, one might pause before reading Adorno’s response as but a straightforward rebuttal of Popper’s pro­ positions regarding critique. For Adorno again underpins his contentions with

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quite specific notions. As Frisby argues, Adorno treats Popper’s theses in “terms” that are not those of Popper’s oeuvre but “derived from a tradition to which [Popper] is fundamentally opposed” (Frisby 1972, 118). Central to Adorno’s response is certainly an emphatic disavowal of the possibility to “restric[t]” sociology’s “critical work … to self-criticism”, that is, “to reflection upon its statements, theorems, conceptual apparatus and methods” (1976b, 114; see also Frisby 1972, 113; 1974, 215). But Adorno explains that one cannot do so specifically once one places emphasis on “the dependency of the method upon reality [Sache]” (1976b, 114; see also Frisby 1972, 112; 1974, 214–215). Sociology’s critical work, his response continues, is simultaneously “a critique of the object” (1976b, 114; see also Frisby 1972, 113; 1974, 215), “a critique of society” (Frisby 1972, 113; 1974, 215). After all, Adorno specifies further, those “moments” – the statements, theorems, conceptual apparatus, and methods – “localized” in the domain of the “subjects united for the pur­ pose of organized science” depend on that “object” (1976b, 114). What does not cease to be “demanded” of such “moments” of sociology’s “mode of pro­ cedure” is that they be adequate to “the object” (1976b, 114). “In the method, the object [Sache] must” (1976b, 114), as Adorno puts it, “zur Geltung kommen” (1969, 135) – take effect, make itself felt, be visible – “in accord with [the object’s] significance and importance” (1976b, 114). And for Adorno this also means that “in the … form of the theory”, the object’s own form “must appear” (1976b, 114). On this basis, Adorno sketches the situation in which a “theorem … is to be criticized” as follows. Where this theorem has “content” of a certain quality, the “object” itself is “claim[ing] to be” a particular way, and the issue is that the object “is not” what it itself is claiming to be. Here, “the discrepancy between concept and object is to the … detriment” or to the debt7 of the object, which means “the critique of sociological categories” is not merely criticism “of the methods” (1976b, 114). Frisby (1972, 113) draws attention to a key passage in which Adorno elu­ cidates that situation by adumbrating such circumstances more concretely. Adorno pictures the case of social scientists who understand “the concept of a liberal society as implying freedom and equality” (1976b, 115). At the same time, social scientists “disput[e], in principle, the truth content of these cate­ gories under liberalism”; they dispute it, namely, specifically because “of the inequality of the social power which determines the relations between people” (1976b, 115). Here, asserts Adorno, surfaces “the structural constitution of society” (1976b, 115). In other words, he maintains, echoing his aforemen­ tioned remarks on problems, that the matter should not be mistaken for “logical contradictions” social scientists could remove “by means of more sophisticated definitions” (1976b, 115; see also Frisby 1972, 113). Corre­ spondingly, critique entails more than “reformulat[ing] … contradictory statements” to ensure “consistency” within the context of science (1976b, 115; see also Frisby 1972, 113; 1974, 215).

III These considerations of Popper’s and Adorno’s have been analysed exten­ sively in their own right elsewhere. While this is not to claim that their

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implications have been exhaustively examined, an important matter that Frisby’s investigations of the Popper-Adorno discussion have raised affords closer attention. According to Popper’s (1976b, 288–291) assessment, no “genuine debate” (Frisby 1972, 106) – no “genuine discussion of his theses” – had, in fact, taken place (Frisby 1972, 115). For Frisby, this “lamen[t]” of Popper’s was partly due to the fact that Popper and Adorno had proceeded “from widely divergent premises” (Frisby 1972, 115). In the introduction to his examination, Frisby identifies Adorno’s not having “take[n] up” those twenty-seven “theses individually” and having “presented an alternative posi­ tion” instead as fuel for “Popper’s complaint that none of them had been discussed” (Frisby 1972, 105). Moreover, the positivist dispute that unfolded in the 1960s can, in Frisby’s view, scarcely be described as a “‘debate’”, because there was often not the “common ground to the discussion” that word “usually presupposes” (1972, 106). Not only is it evident that Popper and Adorno disagreed, but in the course of “the controversy … even the notion of a debate between competing standpoints became problematical” (Frisby 1976, x, see also xxvii). His inquiry, adds Frisby, has detected, “in perhaps a novel form, the pro­ blem of the incommensurability of theories”, especially that which Paul Feyerabend has pointed out (Frisby 1972, 106; see Feyerabend 1970, espe­ cially 72–92). Acknowledging the disputants’ complaints that their ideas have not been understood, “examined”, or subjected “to genuine criticism” by the other side, Frisby suspects that “this apparent process of talking past one another” springs from “the incommensurability of theories” (1976, xv). Both sides, he explains, “lay claim to the development of a critical stance”, namely “as critical rationalism”, such as in Popper’s case, “or as a critical theory of society”, such as in the case of Adorno (Frisby 1976, xv). But the controversy, as indicated above, is focused on “the nature of the criticism” and, crucially, on “the foundations of such criticism and rationalism” (Frisby 1976, xv). Feyerabend discusses “changes of ontology”, which frequently occur toge­ ther with “conceptual changes” (1970, 81). “Classical physics” illustrates a “comprehensive” “ontology” in this situation (1970, 81–82). Classical physics, says Feyerabend, comprises “a comprehensive terminology for describing” the universe’s basic “mechanical properties”, for instance “masses” (1970, 82). Its “terminology” is interlinked with a “conceptual system” which “assumes that the properties inhere in objects” (1970, 82). According to the “theory of relativity”, however, “no such inherent properties” exist (1970, 82). This theory generates a “new conceptual system”, which “… does not even permit … formulat[ing] statements expressing [classical] states of affairs” (1970, 82, see also 89). The new and the old conceptual system “cannot … share a single statement” (1970, 82). In Feyerabend’s view, such “[c]ompre­ hensive theories” are utterly “disjointed”, that is, “incommensurable” (1970, 82, see also 85–87). In the third section of his introduction to the English version of Der Posi­ tivismusstreit, Frisby argues that any “discussion of methodology usually presupposes” the discussants’ knowledge of, and indeed agreement about, “the object to which the methodology is related” (1976, xxviii). In the positi­ vist controversy, this condition is not fulfilled: what some disputants see as

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“the real object of social research”, other participants “do not recognize as a genuine object” at all (1976, xxviii). According to Frisby, this may be what is behind “the lamented lack of genuine discussion” in their encounters (1976, xxviii). Frisby adds that the “divergen[ce]” between “methodological stand­ points and their interpretation” emerging here indicates the need to consider “methodology” in connection with “its object” (1976, xxviii; see also 1974, 219). Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, for their part, did not treat “methodology” as “an exclusive interest”. Quite the contrary – their works predating the very “distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘methods’” – methodology was “an integral part … of their orientation towards specific areas of social life” (Frisby 1976, xxviii, see also 1974, 219). However, while this passage briefly refers to Feyerabend (Frisby 1976, xxviiin56), it does not explicitly mention incommensurability. In his article on the Popper-Adorno controversy, Frisby highlights Ador­ no’s rejection of the division “between theory and method” (Frisby 1972, 115, see also 1974, 219). Adorno’s “critique” of the mode of procedure put for­ ward by Popper is also Adorno’s socio-theoretical “standpoint” (Frisby 1972, 115, see also 1974, 219). It is only possible to sketch one strand of Frisby’s investigation here. “Society”, Adorno states, “is”, inter alia, “full of contra­ dictions and yet determinable; rational and irrational in one …” (1976b, 106; see also Frisby 1972, 116; 1974, 220). Sociology as Adorno envisages it must proceed “from these contradictions” (Frisby 1974, 220, see also 1972, 116). In fact, Adorno demands that sociology’s “mode of procedure … bow to” those qualities of society (1976b, 106). If “society … is neither consistent, nor simple”, then “the cognitive ideal of the consistent, preferably simple … explanation” fails, Adorno argues (1976b, 106; see also Frisby 1972, 112). A conflict between the “structure” of sociology’s procedure and the structure “of its object” is to be avoided (Frisby 1972, 115; see also Adorno 1976b, 106). Adorno’s contentions resonate strongly with above-mentioned considerations that orient his reply to Popper. Indeed, on the basis of his assertions Adorno argues that the “sociological ignorance” Popper thematises at the outset of his paper largely “merely signifies the divergence between society as an object and traditional method” (1976b, 106; see also Frisby 1972, 115–116; Popper 1976b, 87–88). As regards ostensible “temporary ignorance” in sociology, Adorno insists that “reality [die Sache] opposes the clean, systematic unity of assembled” or connected8 “statements” (1976b, 106). Again, though, what Frisby does not detail is the connection between the issues his inquiry has raised in this context and that of incommensurability. Nor does he specify in which sense it is the latter problem in a new form that those issues are related to. This may justify pursuing the implications of his examination of the Popper-Adorno discussion in a slightly different direction – one in which they might, ultimately, stretch further.

IV It is conspicuous that Frisby’s commentary on the factors behind the alleged dearth of genuine debate between Adorno and Popper, on the pro­ blematisation of the notion of a competition of standpoints during the

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positivist dispute, and on incommensurability conveys no particular con­ sternation at these issues.9 For this suggests certain similarities between Frisby’s interpretation of the Popper-Adorno discussion and the reflections conducted later by another analyst of scientific discussions, namely those in Jean-François Lyotard’s writings. In The Postmodern Condition, for instance, which was published several years after Frisby’s commentaries, Lyotard, speaking of the coming “society”, famously identifies “the hetero­ geneity of elements” with the existence of “many different language games” (1984, xxiv, see also xxv, 23, 46, 65). He associates “a certain level of terror” with the constraint to “be … commensurable” (1984, xxiv). By contrast, “[p]ostmodern knowledge” is said to “reinforc[e] our ability to tolerate the incommensurable” (1984, xxv). In fact, what came to bewilder him not long after he had penned these lines, remembers Lyotard in the early 1990s, was historian Pierre Nora’s lament that 1960s and 1970s “Parisian writers and thinkers”, striving to sur­ pass “the incomprehensible poetics of Mallarmé or Artaud”, were confront­ ing each other in “groups” of which each, however, was in pursuit of “the unreadable practice of its talent”, and that in French thought “debate” was “interdict[ed]” (Lyotard 1998, 28–29). It was demanded, Lyotard recalls, that intellectual “order” be re-established “through debate” (1998, 29). This met effortlessly with the approval of “popular opinion and the media”. They demand, “in matters of thought”, that they can “feel … they are on familiar ground” (1998, 29) – “‘s’y retrouver’” (1993, 176), literally: find themselves again in them. Lyotard, though, found himself wondering whether certain “works” of “greatness” (1998, 30), such as the phenomenologies of Hegel, Husserl, or Merleau-Ponty, could ever be matters “of a debate”, and whether one could ever “feel on familiar ground [s’y retrouver]” when “reading them” (Lyotard 1998, 29). The resonances between Lyotard’s considerations and Frisby’s commentary are sustained through a further concern. At the start of the piece containing the reflections just referred to, Lyotard (1998, 25) makes a point that Bearn has summarised. The “global reach of capitalist democracy” is now “unop­ posed”. This “system”, crucially, mobilises “polite competition”. While not allowing “peace”, it thereby ensures “security” and “generates … develop­ ment”, while not assuring “progress” (Bearn 2000, 230–231). Lyotard adds that in these conditions “alternation is a rule” and “alternatives are excluded” (1998, 25). Lyotard has the political arena in mind, yet Bearn links the reflections he has summarised directly to Lyotard’s (1984) diagnosis – from 1979 again – that the university’s function is increasingly the supply of “information” with the sole “value” of supporting “the efficient performance of the system” (Bearn 2000, 230) and to the view that universities will “make themselves more marketable” by focusing on that function (2000, 231). These concerns are quite consistent with Frisby’s resistance to being fazed by what he has ascertained of the positivist controversy: by Adorno’s presentation of a “position” precisely “alternative” to that developed by Popper (Frisby 1972, 105, see also 111, 115), and by the dispute’s rendering problematic the very concept of “a debate between” – precisely – “competing standpoints” (Frisby 1976, x).

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All this comes to little more than signposts of certain directions of the farreaching implications of Frisby’s inquiry into the Popper-Adorno discus­ sion.10 But a guiding aim of that part of his oeuvre may thus have been cap­ tured. Framing his inquiry in his 1974 piece, Frisby noted that in Great Britain “neo-positivism” had given “ideological justification” to sociological “research … practices” in which “the apparent sophistication of much posi­ tivist methodology” had, in fact, “seldom been attained” (1974, 208). What had enabled it to do so, he insisted, was the lack of sufficiently strong “alter­ natives” (1974, 208). His own intention was to demonstrate that there was “at least one significant theoretical tradition” capable of providing “an alternative to positivist methodology” after all (1974, 224). Such a demonstration is not the same as an outright rejection of the dominant perspective on sociological methodology and the definitive installation of the other in its place. Rather, Frisby’s commentary on Popper and Adorno suggests that whenever one perspective has reached dominance – as was the case, in his view, in Britain in the first half of the 1970s, by which time “[s]ociology ha[d] resorted too often to unexamined positivist prescriptions … to support …. its theoretical orien­ tation and … research practice” (1974, 208) – it is high time to find alter­ natives and think them through.

Notes 1 1976, xliii. 2 As John Rex, in his editor’s introduction to the volume of which the piece formed a part, accentuated, “the reason” for Frisby’s discussion of “some of the problems of the Frankfurt school” – principally concerned, as it was, with “the revealing controversy between Adorno and Popper” – was not “to add a chapter on an obscure German sect”. Rather, that school’s thinkers had “challenged pro­ foundly … the empiricism of pre-war and post-war empiricism [sic] in the USA and Britain …” (Rex 1974, 7). 3 Contributions had been published in German over the years, and several, together with further writings, had been collected in that volume (Adorno et al. 1976, vii–­ viii; Frisby 1976, ix; see also Adorno et al. 1969). 4 Adorno appears to be misquoting Popper, though, whose term is “Entdeckung” (discovery), not “Entwicklung” (development). 5 Adorno’s formulation is: “Der Widerspruch muß nicht … ein bloß ‘anschei­ nender’ … sein …” (1969, 129). 6 Adorno’s phrase is “sich entfaltenden” (1969, 129). 7 Adorno’s formulation is “zu Lasten … geht” (1969, 135). 8 Adorno’s term is “verbundener” (1969, 126) 9 Frisby was aware of the scepticism of “many” towards “Feyerabend’s … radical theoretical pluralism and … anti-methodology of ‘anything goes’” (1976, xlii; see e.g. Feyerabend 1970, 26, for the latter formulation). But that scepticism seems not to have influenced Frisby’s reading of the positivist dispute especially strongly. 10 Notably, reiterating that one of the positivist dispute’s components “is the incom­ mensurability of paradigms for scientific research”, Frisby states that the “groups” embroiled in the controversy hold “such divergent assumptions that it is difficult to see how an exchange could take place” (1972, 117–118). If “competition” has been paramount to “the market” in neoliberal thought, “exchange” was paramount to it in classical liberalism, as Foucault emphasises in a 1979 lecture (2010, 118–119). In the context of a remark on a note by Charles Baudelaire from 1862, Lyotard, in turn, explicitly associates the “exchange” of “words” in a “debate” with that of “use-value[s]” (1998, 31).

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References Adorno, Theodor W. 1969. “Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. Der Positivismusstreit in der Deutschen Soziologie, 125–143. Berlin: Luchterhand. Adorno, Theodor W. 1976a. “Introduction.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. The Positi­ vist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby, 1–67. London: Heinemann. Adorno, Theodor W. 1976b. “On the Logic of the Social Sciences.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby, 105–122. London: Heinemann. Adorno, Theodor W., Albert, Hans, Dahrendorf, Ralf, Habermas, Jürgen, Pilot, Harald, and Popper, Karl R. 1969. Der Positivismusstreit in der Deutschen Soziolo­ gie. Berlin: Luchterhand. Adorno, Theodor W., Albert, Hans, Dahrendorf, Ralf, Habermas, Jürgen, Pilot, Harald, and Popper, Karl R. 1976. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby. London: Heinemann. Bearn, Gordon C. F. 2000. “Pointlessness and the University of Beauty.” In Lyotard: Just Education, edited by Pradeep A. Dhillon and Paul Standish, 230–258. London: Routledge. Dodd, Nigel. 2013. “Editorial.” Journal of Classical Sociology 13 (1): 3–7. Feyerabend, Paul K. 1970. “Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge.” In Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology. Vol 4 of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, edited by Michael Radner and Stephen Winokur, 17–130. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Frisby, David. 1972. “The Popper-Adorno Controversy: The Methodological Dispute in German Sociology.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1): 105–119. Frisby, David. 1974. “The Frankfurt School: Critical Theory and Positivism.” In Approaches to Sociology: An Introduction to the Major Trends in British Sociology, edited by John Rex, 205–229. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Frisby, David. 1976. “Introduction to the English Translation.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby, ix–xliv. LondonHeinemann. Hegel, Georg W. F. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by Hugh B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemple, Thomas. 2010. “Introduction to David Frisby’s Writings in TCS”. www.theo ryculturesociety.org/thomas-kemple-introduces-david-frisby-on-georg-simmel-and-so cial-theory/. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1993. Moralités Postmodernes. Paris: Éditions Galilée. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1998. “Terror on the Run.” Translated by Philip R. Wood and Graham Harris. In Terror and Consensus: Vicissitudes of French Thought, edited by Jean-Joseph Goux and Philip R. Wood, 25–36. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Popper, Karl R. 1962. “Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften.” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 14 (2): 233–248. Popper, Karl R. 1976a. “The Logic of the Social Sciences.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby, 87–104. London: Heinemann. Popper, Karl R. 1976b. “Reason or Revolution?” In Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, and Karl R. Popper. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby, 288–300. London: Heinemann. Rex, John. 1974. “Introduction.” In Approaches to Sociology: An Introduction to the Major Trends in British Sociology, edited by John Rex, 1–11. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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Siegfried Kracauer’s metaphysics of the passage and methodology of social science Changnam Lee

I Dialectic of the passage and the flâneur The time of the arcades has run out. (Kracauer 1995, 338) In the 1930s, Siegfried Kracauer made this declaration after walking through the Linden Arcade [Lindenpassage] in central Berlin, where old shops had been located, panoramas had been visible, and flâneurs/flâneuses had been haunting the area since the nineteenth century. However, these were not his last words on the Lindenpassage or on passages/arcades at that time in gen­ eral. In his “Farewell to the Linden Arcade,” he concluded with the following question: “What would be the point of an arcade [Passage] in a society that is itself only a passageway?” (1995, 342). With this final sentence, he suggested the possibility that the rubric of a passage can be extended to a whole society: society itself has become a passage. The Linden Arcade stood in the middle of Berlin as a passage between Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden. However, when Kracauer revisited the place, it had already lost its function as a passage and stood merely as a legacy of the past. Kracauer used to walk the passage before the First World War and it reminded him of his student years when he found pleasure in strolling beneath its long glass roof and between its shops decorated with marble plates. He also enjoyed seeing the Renaissance architecture that remained from the time of his father and grandfather (see Kracauer 1995, 337) and later found that all of these had sunk into a “mass grave of cool marble” (1995, 337). It may not be a coincidence that the Lindenpassage was not able to play the role of a passage when society itself became a passage. The semantics of the flâneur had also changed in accordance with the dynamic change of the passage. While in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries most people, such as George Bryan Brummell (1778–1840), Lord Byron (1788–1824), and Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), who could be characterized as flâneurs, were intellectuals or literary figures – Bohemians and dandies with a particular individualistic style – by the twentieth century, the distinctions between the flâneur and the streetwalker began to blur. Kra­ cauer’s friend Walter Benjamin, who was also concerned with the passage and the flâneur, dramatically described the downfall of the flâneur as framed by the capitalistic development of society: “the sandwich-man is the last incar­ nation of the flâneur” (1999, 451).

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Benjamin implied the disappearance of the flâneur as an idle stroller and of flânerie itself as a type of behaviour in industrialized and commercialized society. However, as Frisby indicated, “Benjamin’s reviews of the work of his friend Franz Hessel in Weimar Germany and the title of one of those reviews, ‘The Return of the Flâneur,’ suggest that this decline of flânerie lacked fin­ ality” (2007, 13). In fact, Benjamin also had the rebirth of the flâneur in mind; in his Arcades Project, he drew attention to the behavioural features of the flâneur, comparing them with those of modern consumers or streetwalkers. In a society in which we are all, to a certain extent, a kind of flâneur, the significance of the passage and the flâneur – as well as the contribution of flâneur-intellectuals such as Kracauer and Benjamin to social and cultural studies – cannot be overestimated. However, their experiences were often regarded as fragmentary and episodic, their observations as superficial, and their writings as undialectical (Adorno 2007). As such, their efforts to grasp social and cultural changes were often not sincerely considered in social sci­ ence during the interwar period. In fact, they were faced with the methodo­ logical problem of dealing with the fleeting and the transitional nature of modernity (see Frisby 1986, 46), which traditional sociology – ironically given its desire to be scientific – failed to surmount. This is one of the reasons why the methodology inherent in Benjamin and Kracauer’s concept(s) of the passage and the flâneur gains in significance today so as to cope flexibly with the ‘new’ in society. In particular, despite their significance for understanding new urban phenomena and milieus, Kra­ cauer’s contributions to social and cultural studies remain relatively less recognized than those of Benjamin. Therefore, in the following, I will mainly review in detail Kracauer’s early essay “Farewell to Lindenpassage” from his Streets in Berlin and Elsewhere (2013) collection as well as other writings in The Salaried Masses (1998) and The Mass Ornament (1995). Consequently, I will suggest the significance of Kracauer’s thematic orientation for making the passage a crucial object of his socio-cultural studies and define the ‘actu­ ality’ of his methodology for adopting the gaze of the flâneur as a research perspective.

II New tasks of social science: to grasp things and incidents in motion The first element of the passage that Kracauer pinpointed as a new quality of modern society was movement: people cannot stop walking or moving through a passage. As Kracauer indicated, “the motto” of the passage is “Away!” [Die Parole heißt: Fort!] (1995, 340). While this was an experience located in a particular place in the past, it is widespread in everyday urban life. Kracauer found this symptom of a modern, globally connected society encapsulated in two travel agency offices at the entrance to the Lindenpassage: It is a meaningful coincidence that two travel agencies flank the entrance to the arcade on Linden Avenue. But the trips to which one is tempted by their model ships and poster hymns no longer have anything in common with the journeys one used to undertake in the arcade; the modern

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Changnam Lee luggage store likewise barely belongs inside the passageway. Ever since the Earth began shrinking noticeably, bourgeois existence has incorpo­ rated travel just as it has appropriated the Bohemian lifestyle; it main­ tains itself by appropriating these sorts of dissipation for its own purposes and devaluing them into distractions. (1995, 340)

Bohemian movement could not, of course, be identified with small and short journeys through passages. However, this development anticipated accelerated and expanded movements in modern society. The travel agency offices on either side of the Lindenpassage symbolize the change of everyday life, one which had begun to be perceived not as sedentary but nomadic. To describe this constant movement of everyday urban life, Kracauer employs the Kan­ tian dichotomy of the infinite and finite; this we see, for example, in the “Travel and Dance” article in his essay collection The Mass Ornament. For Kracauer, the category of the finite was insufficient to fully grasp the flux of modern society and its people. He differentiated modern travel from earlier types of journeying, characterizing the former as seeking only to change places in so far as modern humans “do not feel at home anywhere at all” (1995, 66). The destination of any trip did not have much meaning. In other words, stretching the scope of one’s life to the infinite, the goal of modern travel was movement itself. This was, according to Kracauer, exactly what made people feel that a certain lost metaphysical sense in everyday urban life was recovered by going beyond the boundaries of their finite everyday lives. Furthermore, a seemingly purposeless change in the tempo of modern dance was understood as breaking the monotonous flow, the “mere marking [Skandierung] of time” (Kracauer 1995, 66), thus making people feel the temporal infinite. In this way, the modus of presentation of absoluteness – which, according to Immanuel Kant (1986) stood behind the barrier of the capacity of human knowledge – was understood as fully secularized. The barrier of perception was perceived as transgressed by a purposeless change of place and the rhythmic breaking of the everyday temporal flow in the cultural field. As such, travel and dance were regarded as the topoi on which abso­ luteness was experienced in profane ways for people to be freed from the finite boundary of working life. The trajectory of Kracauer’s argument in ‘Travel and Dance’ seemed, at first, related to the discourse on the freedom of art as locus absolutus. However, his concept of dance and trips is fundamentally different from that of traditional writers and aesthetes who found escape from society in art.1 For Kracauer, dance and travel remain such alternatives, but they are also socio-cultural phenomena of mass society and, as such, deeply related to everyday social practices. In this context, he observed that though modern people felt the void of the transcendental this experience was compensated through their leisure activities, such as, indeed, dance and trips. Dance and trips then became exotic ways of experiencing the infinite, which was con­ trasted with and simultaneously deeply involved in workday activity. As is well known, Kracauer also used the theoretical dichotomy of the finite and infinite for his analysis of office worker and their leisure activities outside of

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the bureaucratic machine in The Salaried Masses. This philosophical dichot­ omy, repeated in his writings, could also be understood sociologically as two modes of capitalism, namely the rational and fortuitous as suggested respec­ tively by Max Weber and Georg Simmel – in particular, the embodiment of the fortuitous in Benjamin’s figures, such as the gambler and the flâneur (see Frisby 2007, 8–12). Referring to Simmel, Frisby described “the adventurer in the modern metropolis” as “seeking new sensations and stimulations and seeking to break out of everyday mundane existence” (2007, 11). This aptly fits Kracauer’s concept of the leisure activities of the masses outside their workplaces. The philosophical and sociological schemes are productively interrelated in Kra­ cauer’s writings on the modern metropolis, especially when he saw the philo­ sophically transcendental become fully secularized. More than this, the interrelation between the metaphysical and social shaped the methodological orientation of Kracauer’s essays. The infinite, which Kracauer found was secularized in everyday life, might be a “bad one” [eine schlechte Unendlich­ keit] in the Hegelian sense. However, he perceived a desire of the masses in an endlessly moving society that had to be satisfied. This desire could be compared to a death-impulse entangled with the life-impulse of the modern masses. Describing white- and blue-collar workers in a Berlin amusement park (the Lunarpark) that provides a kitsch image of New York, Kracauer saw them scream in a carriage ascending to the height of some thirty stories over the park; he theorized that they felt freed from the finite local city and experi­ enced living in an infinitely self-expanding global society. It is also the cry of bliss to drive through New York (…). It almost seems as if everyone was screaming because they finally thought they were saved. A triumphant scream: we are there, we float in the middle of happiness, we race, on and on. The racing can mean death; it is also fulfillment. (2013, 47) The desire of office workers and local residents to go beyond their bound­ aries had much to do with the wish-image of a global city produced by the globalization process at that time, in which local people were keen to feel involved. First, it is notable here that Kracauer’s understanding of mobility was not oriented toward merely a technical possibility or capacity of movement, but was, rather, rooted in his philosophical and sociological diagnosis of his time. He did not see the cause of movement simply as the consequence of the development of technical devices for transportation and communication; he also acknowledged that they accelerated the mobility of society. In other words, he did not reduce mobility to a technical development but found in it the spiritual and social problems of the modern masses suffering from ‘spiri­ tual homelessness’ that, ironically, became their impulse to move constantly without any destination. The dictum in the passage “Away!” [Fort!] was, in fact, an imperative of modernity. Some contemporary scholars have even

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suggested that “it sometimes seems as if all the world is on the move” (Urry 2007, 3). “The mobility turn” as a recent academic tendency “spreading in and through the social sciences, mobilizing analyses that have been histori­ cally static, fixed and concerned with predominantly aspatial ‘social struc­ ture’” is “post-disciplinary” (Urry 2007, 6). Indebted, of course, to Simmel, Kracauer’s study of mobility anticipated the widespread modern mobile tendency, which he tried to illuminate with his representative concept of the passage and the flâneur. As such, his concept of mobility is incarnated in his holistic assumption of society as a passage with its concretion by an observer in it as a passer-by.

III The entangled body and image In the following, I look in greater depth into the socio-cultural implications and consequences of Kracauer’s concept of the passage and the flâneur in terms of the entanglement of body and image, reality and appearance, in the arcade. The accelerated mobility of modern people has been accompanied by many changes in human perception; this also significantly affects social rela­ tions. As Simmel defines the ‘stranger’ in terms of the remoteness and closeness of a person to a group and perceives him as a significant element for measuring modern social relationships, so the feeling of distance between people is not only spatial but also social. His concept of the stranger can be understood as a crucial element of modern social association different from traditional relations.2 Contrary to the wanderer “who comes today and leaves tomorrow,” Sim­ mel’s stranger is an unavoidable element of group affiliation, he is the one who “comes today and stays tomorrow” (Simmel 1971, 143).3 Kracauer took Simmel’s analysis of the stranger and applied it to modern media representa­ tion. Concerning shops full of souvenirs in the Lindenpassage, he explained a change in the perception of the stranger: “how much further and more familiar was the stranger in the time of souvenirs” (2013, 35). The perception of the spatial and psychological closeness and remoteness between people (i.e. the strangeness of a stranger) can be changed. Thus, remote places can also be felt to be near through media representation. For Kracauer, the passage was a space where the body and its image, and place and its representation, were entangled. He felt that the hierarchical difference between the two was disappearing from the perception of the modern masses; ultimately he sug­ gested that media – such as photos, panoramas, and souvenirs – were “part of the very body of Berlin” (Kracauer 1995, 340) that replaced the originals.4 The traditional metaphysical hierarchy between the original and representa­ tion was being upturned. “The marble has become a photo” (2013, 200), wrote Kracauer in an essay about Kurfürstendamm (‘Der Kufürstendamm als Siegesallee’ 1931), one of the central pleasure streets in Berlin. A moral verdict on deceptive abstraction and distortion by replacing the original with the representation did not pre­ cede Kracauer’s analytical description of media-mediated perception. Instead, he characterized Kurfürstendamm as an “image galley” (2013, 199) and found it consumed on a massive scale. In this urban environment full of images, and

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in the consciousness of the masses glancing at and passing by it, the difference between the original and its representation was of no great value – the latter could be easily replaced by the former. The equally serendipitous proximity of the Anatomical Museum and the World Panorama in the Linden Arcade mean that “it is only a tiny leap from the graspable body to the ungraspable distance” (Kracauer 1995, 340). This would bring a significant change in the spatial and social perceptions of people and places. In The Mass Ornament, Kracauer discussed the trend of people seeking not a substantial entity but superficial glamour. Social status could also be easily disguised or displayed through fashion. In such a media-driven society, the difference between the social strata of classes, locales, or nations would blur or be (re)created imaginatively through outward show and conspicuous con­ sumption. It is no coincidence that such a media-related theory of appear­ ances clashed with traditional metaphysical hypotheses and with the tents of realism which was still caught in a transcendental or real ‘home’ in a meta­ phorical sense. He especially stressed the gap between the idealistic bourgeois culture and the popular one in the passage – “Everything that was excluded from this bourgeois life because it was not presentable or even because ran counter to the official world view settled in the arcades” (1995, 338). He even mentioned the “revenge” (1995, 341) of the passage against the idealism represented by the high culture of the Church and universities, as the idealism revealed itself to be merely kitsch in the Lindenpassage. This kitsch showed the outdatedness of the assumptions of idealism. According to Kracauer, the world as it should be revealed itself as an ideology, and the world as it is no longer existed in the passage. Even though he shared Georg Lukács’ diagnosis of modern society as ‘transcendental homelessness,’ this attitude toward idealism and realism also led to his refusal of the idealistic trajectory of Lukács’ Hegelian Marxism.5 In a similar tenor to that of Lukács, Kracauer wrote about the uprootedness of the modern social being: “Here in the arcade the world is rattled and shaken until it can serve the daily needs of the passerby” (1995, 341). As a witness of the broken world, Kracauer’s social and cultural studies were not directly reliant on empirical material data or presupposed social structures. Rather, his writings can be characterized as critical semantic plays with the fragments of the world in diverse forms, such as essays, novels, and feuilletons, to grasp newly emerging social and cultural relations during the interwar period. The way he presented his interviews and observations is characterized most fit­ tingly as “a form of literary montage” (Frisby 1986, 163), was somewhat different from that of sociology as an academic discipline, and did not work well with philosophical and sociological doctrines at that time. However, the actuality of Kracauer’s writings in social and cultural studies began to be recognized some decades later and furthered our perception of Kracauer as “our companion” (Gilloch 2015).

IV Impediments and actualities of flâneur-intellectuals In this broken world, Kracauer, as a flâneur-intellectual, collected data and composed essays giving special attention to neglected and concealed things

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and incidents. In his review of The Salaried Masses, Benjamin characterized him as “a ragpicker at daybreak, lancing with this stick scraps of language and tatters of speech in order to throw them into his cart” (1998, 114). The time of the passage is neither day nor night but a mixed time between both when no one exactly knew what would remain and what would disappear in the morning. The passage can be compared to a modernized, self-expanding kind of Platonic cave in which the modern masses pass by, not quite knowing their destination, and identifying themselves with their shadows cast on its wall through modern media such as illustrations, photos, and films. Flâneurs would be residents and witnesses of the passage who, despite all their ambiguous situations, dream of “the dawn of the day of revolution” (Benjamin 1998, 114). Benjamin (1998, 113) saw an attempt to re-politicize his contemporary intellectuals in The Salaried Masses. As a contributor to the Frankfurter Zeitung in the 1920s, Kracauer intended a revolution in a wide sense – against the ruling class, the economic system, and the dominant academic culture. As his essay collections The Salaried Masses and The Mass Ornament convincingly attest, Kracauer possessed the writing skills of an intuitive jour­ nalist and the abilities of an analytical sociologist. However, his attempts could not easily find their place in the sociology of the time. According to Frisby, this might suggest the traditional affinity between flânerie as journal­ ism and social investigation: Benjamin also detected a connection between the flâneur and the jour­ nalist, thereby pointing, in turn, to an affinity between the flâneur-jour­ nalist and social investigation from Henry Mayhew, through many other urban explorations in the nineteenth century to some of the work of Georg Simmel, Robert Park, Siegfried Kracauer, and others, including Benjamin himself. Such connections have often been obscured by sociol­ ogy’s own desire to lay claim to its academic credentials as a scientific discipline, as the science of society, by purging its historical development of any figures other than the most scientifically and often formalistically acceptable. (Frisby 2007, 29) Henrik Reeh also pointed out that Kracauer’s interest in social science was not restricted by the internal division of labor of university disciplines: “free of formalized scientific criteria, Kracauer was able to allow his interest in modern urbanity to develop in the comprehensive culture section of the Frankfurter Zeitung” (2004, 2). The writings of flâneur-journalists were not compatible with the scientific norms of the time; being ‘scientific’ would mean being ‘objective’ and ‘universal’; as such, it presumptuously produced a “causally necessary knowledge of reality” (Frisby 1986, 120). However, for Kracauer, “this is only possible in ‘an epoch filled with meaning’” (Frisby 1986, 120). The modern masses as ‘spiritually homeless’ stand as a perfect example of Kracauer’s diagnosis of modern society’s void of meaning. In this sense, the

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fragmentary and episodic character of Kracauer’s writings may not be a consequence understood only from his job as a flâneur-journalist, but also as one that resulted from his epistemologically intended challenge to the scien­ tific pretentions of being universal and objective at a time when that had become impossible. As Frisby observes, “Kracauer argues against the appli­ cation of abstract categories as a means to ordering this reality and favours, instead, a phenomenology of intentional existence and events” (1986, 120). His urban analysis also involves “a critique of the principle of reality as applied in traditional urban planning as well as in much social research” (Reeh 2004, 4). As a flâneur-intellectual, Kracauer was confronted with prevailing methodological and thematic doctrines of philosophy and social research. He was – and had to be – an outsider of academic circles. In Benjamin’s words, “he has even left the sociologist’s doctoral cap at home. He elbows his way boorishly through the crowd, here and there lifting the mask of someone particularly jaunty” (Benjamin 1998, 109). However, we can find a significant contribution of his experimental writings to social and cultural studies, suggesting the traditional metaphysical home to be transformed in mass culture of a passage-like society. To recognize Kracauer’s true con­ tribution to sociology, therefore, it is necessary to critically review scientific and moral attitudes toward flâneur-intellectuals and their writings. Aca­ demic discourse is still not entirely free of scientific and moral prejudice regarding them, the kind of prejudices which those within the secure boundary of a home or nation often have in relation to strangers in city life. The metaphorical ‘home’ where the moral individual is based contradicts the moral and existential conditions of a flâneur whose views Kracauer performatively adopted as his method. Kracauer assumed that the ‘absolute’ lay neither beyond society nor deep inside it but rather on the very surface of things and incidents that were ignored, deserted, and put aside. He tried to find their significance from emerging modern socio-cultural relations and milieus. These efforts have prefigured the adventurous methodology of his flâneur-like reviews and research which can be productively developed further in our social and cul­ tural research on the current global movement- and media-driven society. To deal with the changing conditions of modern society in social and cultural studies properly, it is necessary to take Kracauer’s insights into modern society and rightly value his efforts to approach it with his creative metho­ dology. However, many scientific and moral obstacles remain to recognize Kracauer’s contributions to social and cultural studies fully. He may have been and still be a stranger to the ‘home’ of social and cultural science. However, his concept of the homeless passage-like society has considerable relevance or ‘actuality’ in our globally expanded and connected society, transcending the traditional social and cultural boundaries of the home and nation. The impediments of Kracauer as a flâneur-intellectual could thus generate productive tension to develop a methodology for the paradoxical attempts of social and cultural science to grasp phenomena and incidents in motion and

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find their depth on their surface. To achieve this, David Frisby with his cutting-edge research on Simmel, Benjamin, and Kracauer paved the way.

Notes 1 Oschmann explains Kracauer’s “idea of the operative writer” in this sense and points to the non-aesthetic feature of his view of language with reference to Bloch’s letter to him: “You see words like things, for the first time neither grammatically nor aesthetically” (Bloch, 9 July 1930, cited in Oschmann [2009, 41]). 2 As such, it could be compared to Tönnies’ concept of “Gemeinschaft and Gesell­ schaft” (Saalmann 2007, 2), though they may have valued the traditional social form and modern one differently, as Frisby suggested: “Tönnies emphasized … that Gesellschaft ‘is only a transitional and superficial phenomenon’ which one goes into ‘as into a strange country’” (Frisby 1986, 13). 3 According to Zygmunt Bauman, the figure of the stranger is crucial to our under­ standing of modern society where one can say, “each of us is a stranger when he goes out” (2007, 206). In fact, most “city life takes place among strangers” (2007, 205–206). 4 The 1995 translation perhaps does not do full justice here to the corporeality of Kracauer’s language. He describes souvenirs as “Leib vom Leibe Berlins” (Kracauer 2013, 36) – viscera of the living body of the city. 5 As Frisby indicates, he was critical of Lukács’ turn to “the spirit and metaphysics of an exhausted idealism” (Kracauer to Bloch, 27 May 1926, cited in Frisby [1986, 123]).

References Adorno, Theodor, Benjamin, Walter, Brecht, Bertolt, Lukács, György, Bloch, Ernst, and Jameson, Frederic. 2007. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. Flâneur, Spieler und Touristen – Essays zu Postmodernen Lebensformen. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Benjamin, Walter. 1998. “An outsider attracts attention.” In The Salaried Masses – Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, translated by Quintin Hoare with an introduction by Inka Mülder-Bach, 109–114. London: Verso. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Frisby, David. 1986. Fragments of Modernity – Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Frisby, David. 2007. Cityscapes of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gilloch, Graeme. 2015. Siegfried Kracauer – Our Companion in Misfortune. Cam­ bridge: Polity Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1986. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Stuttgart: Reclam. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1995. The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays, translated, edited and with an Introduction by Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1998. The Salaried Masses – Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, translated by Quintin Hoare with an Introduction by Inka Mülder-Bach. London: Verso. Kracauer, Siegfried. 2013. Strassen in Berlin und Anderswo [Streets in Berlin and else­ where], 2. Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp. Oschmann, Dirk. 2009. “Kracauers Ideal der Konkretion.” In Denken durch die Dinge – Siegfried Kracauer im Kontext. Frank Grunert, Dorothee Kimmich (Hrsg.), 9–46. München: Wilhelm Fink.

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Reeh, Henrik. 2004. Ornament of the Metropolis – Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture, translated by John Irons. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Saalmann, Gernot. 2007. “Simmels Bestimmung des Fremden im Exkurs von 1908.” Seit Februar. 2007. auf “Simmel Online.” [Since February 2007 at ‘Simmel Online’] http:// socio.ch/sim/on_simmel/t_saalmann.pdf. Simmel, George. 1971. The Stranger. In On Individuality and Social Forms, Selected Writings Edited with an Introduction by Donald N. Livine, 143–149. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

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3

The metropolis and emotional life Experience, rifts and knowledge1 Massimo Cerulo and Antonio Rafele

I The intensification of nervous life The core concept of the theories related to modernity developed by David Frisby concerns different forms of experience and ways in which memories are used by the subject to relate and configure them: a sort of division of the subject and the self (Frisby 1988). Absorbed by the rhythms of modernity that rise like an advancing avalanche, one struggles to remember what has been experienced. This process creates a sort of atrophy of experience (Erfahrung) reflecting the aphasia which grips the modern subject: a double inability to express what is felt. This analysis clearly recalls those produced by Simmel and Benjamin (cf. Simmel 1903; Benjamin 1968 [1939]). As Frisby points out while referring to Simmel, the problem is that mod­ ernity seems to lack the room for in-depth analysis and for letting experiences sediment (Frisby 1981). Anything that happens is nervous and quick: one’s awareness is forced to protect itself from continuous daily demands: to actu­ ally protect because modernity is “ferocious”. As Simmel states, one’s ability to think about one’s single actions and experiences loses effect when over­ whelmed by the rhythms of modern daily life, by a continuous flow of infor­ mation, requests and impulses (Simmel 1908). According to Benjamin, this could even bring about the end of Erfahrung, as this psychic behaviour of protection from the incitements of modernity could render the subject unable to allow the meaning of their experiences to sediment and emerge again (Benjamin 1969 [1923]). According to Georg Simmel (1903), it is precisely within modern daily life in the metropolis that it becomes evident that the intensification of nervous and emotional life [Nervenleben] brings the subject to an “intellectualization of awareness” [Verstand] and so to the detriment of reason [Vernunft]. Life becomes more and more ‘nervous’ because of that rush of incentives and information which assault the subject (cf. Simmel 1908; Frisby 1981). One is forced to live a situation that Frisby defines as “bivalent”: one is excited and gripped by a flow of incentives and information repeated all day long; but, at the same time, linked to the need for undertaking multiple interactions: work, family, sex, free time, etc., we must be active. To keep the two inclinations together, protection is needed from this psychic bombard­ ment. The decision is taken to act mainly using reason, the more logicalcombinatorial ability, allowing one to act automatically, without producing

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effects on one’s own actions but still allowing automatic and multiple beha­ viours (Idem). Reason allows one to act within multiple interactions, to be a member of modern life, to surf daily life superficially but without an in-depth analysis of what happens. Participation in the daily life of the metropolis threatens to become emotional, excited, sometimes nervous – and not reflec­ tive, slow, reasoned, critical. This continuous use of reason causes another form of ambivalence: the subject lives numerous experiences [Erlebnisse] while becoming poor in experience [Erfahrung]. Obliged to protect oneself from the continuous excitements of the metropolis, one is unable to reflect on one’s experiences and the possibility of elaborating what happens.

II The experience of the emotions within modernity Another point of contact between Frisby, Simmel and Benjamin is the con­ cept of ‘emotional shock’. In German, we can refer to modern experience as Chockerlebnis (shock experience) and as the paralysis of our reflective abilities. The so-called blasé subject, the ideal inhabitant of the modern metropolis, is the person forced to be indifferent to what happens around them to protect them from the bombardment of stimuli lived through every day (Simmel 1903). We can thus define this as an emotional indifference, used as a defence mechanism from the modern onrush of excitements, when con­ versely, such multiple incentives and interactions could bring the subject to an in-depth analysis of their emotional side (cf. Frisby 1988). However, the atrophy of Erfahrung affects the sensibility of subjects. They are more and more able to get excited but are less able to feel and listen to their emotions and to leave them to accumulate and evolve into sentiments. Between feeling obliged to continuously show emotions shared with other members of one’s daily life and one’s own inner reality, the subject is gripped by a controversial and ambivalent feeling that clearly appears if we consider particular emotions (cf. Cerulo 2015). Let us turn to love, which Simmel studies as a relation rather than an emotion or a sentiment, and one that represents one of the main examples of modern ambivalence (Simmel 1984; cf. Frisby 1981; Cerulo 2016). In a rela­ tionship of love the subject is held between the wish to blend with a partner and that of keeping one’s own individuality. This is a test of the meeting between ‘Me’ and ‘You’, one of the great educative categories of experience. According to Simmel, because of the intensification of nervous life and the intellectualism of awareness, the modern subject is rooted in individualism – career, professional performances, goals to be met (cf. Dumont 1983; Lipo­ vetsky 1983; Bauman 2001) – but, at the same time, undergoes the attraction of the partner, the desire and the need to build a relationship. This is why, in modernity, love is considered the very epitome of a tragic and ambivalent relationship (Simmel 1984). The relationship becomes a ‘victim’ of modernity, developing from an absolute, romantic and passionate experience, into a tragic experience then becoming a specious relationship (cf. Hochschild 2003). For Simmel, this happens because ambivalent modernity causes an unresolvable tragedy:

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Massimo Cerulo and Antonio Rafele

however attracted and desirous of joining with the ‘You’, the Ego lives an experience characterized by free choice that will never fail as an intrinsic characteristic of modernity. The love relationship is forced to face the swirling rhythms of modernity: the law of market and consumption, the intellectual­ ism of awareness, the privilege of calculation and of a specious relation rather than a free interaction (cf. Hochschild 1983, 2003; Illouz 2008). With various goals and several possibilities, the subject begins a relationship suspended between two branches of their daily life, ready to leave as soon as a new flow of opportunities arrives. However, modernity is the time of ambiva­ lence: possibilities and solitude, excitement and disorientation, individualism and ‘team building’. The analyses of Frisby, Simmel and Benjamin are pres­ cient in terms of emotional interactions that, in late-modern society, appear to be a result of the processes involving the intensification of emotional life. Nowadays, we can say we are living in a society of emotions, because social interactions are emotional and related to each other. In fact, emotions affect our social acting: they represent resources for understanding and interpreting ourselves, others and society. In these terms they are social elements, not only psychological ones (Shott 1979; Rimé 2005). This happens because the modern subject is rational and emotional at the same time (cf. Turner and Stets 2005), being homo sentiens: a person who acts rationally and emotion­ ally because they own the cognitive possibilities to mediate between the two (Hochschild 2003). We would, therefore, maintain that Frisby goes beyond the analysis of Simmel and Benjamin on modernity, highlighting emotional ambivalence. On the one hand, the subject suffers the bombardment of excitements and infor­ mation that could invalidate their critical analysis of the emotions, ones that do not reflect their own actions but only the automatic reaction to society’s stimuli. On the other hand, it is the subject who holds the possibility of using emotions with intelligence and therefore as modes of communication and tools of understanding (cf. Tarde 1893; Nussbaum 2001). In today’s moder­ nity, therefore, Frisby conveys to us the idea of a subject facing a bifurcation of their daily life: they can become an intelligent monitor and user of the emotions or a victim (Frisby 1988). The choice is theirs, since it is certain that they cannot refuse to face their emotions (Martuccelli 1999, 2016). A confrontation with our emotions becomes an inevitable process for the contemporary subject. If the intensification of nervous life and of the crisis of experience has nowadays increased compared to the time in which Simmel and Benjamin wrote (cf. Bauman 2000; Illouz 2008; Chiapello and Boltanski 2011), the reflections they produced that were then analysed by Frisby gain a special sociological relevance. It is, in fact, still the subject who is able to choose which behaviour to adopt. Although we live in a society characterized by structures, most of the time strongly determining, the subject has the pos­ sibility of choosing their social way of acting (cf. Crespi 1992, 2015).

III Knowing the minutiae From a gnosiological (that is to say, epistemological) point of view, the phe­ nomena described in Sections I and II imply a series of consequences:

The metropolis and emotional life

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combining Simmel and Benjamin, these can be gathered around three reflex­ ive nodes: minutiae, shock and dialectic images. The changed sensorial conditions of the metropolis delineate a scenario of incessant disruptions whose fleeting duration is equivalent to that of photo­ graphy and fashion (see Rafele 2013). It is no coincidence that Simmel (1990) and Benjamin (2002) identified these as the media in which modernity pre­ cipitates and reaches a configuration loaded with sense. An image presents existence as a succession of isolated instances, distanced from each other, both vital and ephemeral (cf. Benjamin 2002). While without purpose, the circum­ stances nevertheless still fulfil an essential role; shaping the forms of experi­ ence till they have determined entire psychical or sensory configurations. Benjamin examines ancient and modern history, paying particular attention to the deepest and most intimate bonds set up between individuals and their habits These habits act as containers, while the individual appears as “putty in one’s hands”, infinitely conformable. In the centre are the images of the observer, or the ways in which history manages to impress itself on the perceptive faculties of the individual. Benja­ min writes: In what way this now-being [Jetztsein] (which is something other than the now-being of ‘the present time’ >Jetztzeit