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Eurydice at Euston?: Walter Benjamin and Marc Augé Go Underground
- Source :
- Societies, Vol 4, Iss 1, Pp 16-29 (2014), Societies, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 16-29
- Publication Year :
- 2014
- Publisher :
- MDPI AG, 2014.
-
Abstract
- Taking as its point of departure Walter Benjamin’s repeatedly unsuccessful attempt to give spatial form to his past, this paper suggests that it is perhaps the contemporary French anthropologist, Marc Augé, who provides the most appropriate envisioning of a ‘map of memories’ in his brief writings on the Parisian métro system. For Augé, the labyrinthine subway network constitutes nothing less than a ‘memory machine’ in which lines and station names serve as mnemonics, recalling long-forgotten childhood encounters and experiences. Mirroring the cityscape above, places themselves unexplored, unknown, the serried toponyms of the métro become an incantation summoning forth the shades of the past. As Augé points out, those stations that provide opportunities to change lines are felicitously termed ‘correspondences’, a Baudelairean term that fascinated Benjamin and informed his key historiographical notion of the ‘dialectical image,’ the intersection and mutual illumination of past and present moments. For me, Augé’s highly suggestive reflections bring to mind my own memories of a London childhood around 1970. Looking at the London underground map today, I cannot but see the sites of many past meetings and partings, dots connected by lines forming complex figures, constellations of memory.
- Subjects :
- jel:Z1
Eurydice
Parisian metro
media_common.quotation_subject
Art history
jel:P0
jel:P1
jel:P2
jel:P3
jel:P4
jel:P5
memory
jel:P
Critical Theory
city
Nothing
lcsh:Social sciences (General)
media_common
Dialectic
Incantation
biology
jel:A14
General Social Sciences
Historiography
Art
jel:A13
biology.organism_classification
Performance art
lcsh:H1-99
Cityscape
Cartography
Mirroring
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20754698
- Volume :
- 4
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Societies
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c7d017bb48382c72ba77c3b496e6fb67