Fragments of Modernity (Modernity Theory in the Works of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin)

Author: Frisby
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: In recent years in China, we have repeatedly encountered modernity, experiencing deeply over and over again: the yearning for progress, the back and forth between retrogression and advancement, radicalism and conservatism, passion and disappointment, ideals and reality. These conflicting experiences have shaped our understanding and judgment of modernity. Modernity, from the West to the East, from modern times to the contemporary era, is an open concept of "family resemblance," serving as the focal point of contradictions and conflicts across political, economic, social, and cultural levels in the modern process. This book primarily discusses the modernity thoughts and methods of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin. The author argues that unlike scholars such as Habermas and Weber, who attempt to construct all-encompassing abstract theories of modernity, the three scholars' research on modernity begins by deciphering the mysteries of fragments of modernity: the "fragment of the real contingency" revealed in Simmel's Philosophy of Money, and the "trivial surface phenomena" or "monadology" expressed in Kracauer's Mass Ornament and White Collar Worker, all redeeming the subtle traces of modernity on the level of the everyday world. The book is innovative in content and delicately written, making it an excellent work that interprets modernity from aesthetic, political, or historical perspectives.