Crash Cultures: Modernity, Mediation and the Material

Jane Arthurs, Iain Grant1841500712, 9781841500713, 9781841508696

Twenty-one British scholars contribute 14 essays which consider the crash (of physical objects, living beings, and nonvisible systems in the contemporary world) as a symbolic and material event which can give insights about the experiences of living in a modern, technologically-oriented world. Their analyses suggest the force of conventionalized ways of seeing and being, as a means of managing the unruly materiality of modern life, and address the interrelations between inanimate machines and living organisms. No subject index.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Information……Page 2
Contents……Page 4
Contributors……Page 5
1 Introduction……Page 6
The Essays……Page 12
References……Page 18
2 Will It Smash? Modernity and theFear of Falling……Page 20
Notes……Page 26
References……Page 27
Collision Montage……Page 28
Nineteenth- century Nervous Breakdown……Page 32
Urban Speed……Page 33
Instant Experience……Page 35
Technical Ecstasy……Page 36
References……Page 38
4 Eye-Hunger: Physical Pleasure and Non-Narrative Cinema……Page 40
Notes……Page 53
References……Page 54
The Death of the Author……Page 58
Tame and Mad Choices……Page 59
Materialism and Urban Modernity……Page 60
The Fragile Body and the Urban War-Zone……Page 62
Protectionism and Total Mobilization……Page 63
Image Repertoire……Page 65
Coda: Stepping off the Curb……Page 66
References……Page 67
6 Crash: Beyond the Boundaries of Sense……Page 68
The Trauma of the Real……Page 70
The Scandal……Page 73
Multiple Crashes: the audience researched……Page 74
Afterword……Page 80
References……Page 81
7 Sexcrash……Page 84
References……Page 93
The Other Side of Hyperspace……Page 96
Ballard, Baudrillard and the Anagrammatized Body……Page 99
Terminal Metaphor……Page 102
Drive Theory……Page 105
References……Page 106
9 Spirit in Crashes: Animist Machines andthe Powers of Number……Page 108
1. Magic and Doubles……Page 109
2. The Infinite Transgression of the Mimetic Taboo……Page 111
3. The Automobile and Enlightenment……Page 112
4. Primitive Crashes, n Times……Page 114
5. Duel: the True Nature of Drives……Page 118
References……Page 120
10 Racing Fatalities: White Highway, Black Wreckage……Page 122
Notes……Page 132
References……Page 133
Thinking the desert……Page 136
Thinking the desert in The English Patient……Page 139
Thinking the desert in fragments……Page 140
Other deserts: fragments; traces and ruins……Page 141
Planes and deserts ( Bang! Bang! The plane is shot out of the sky)……Page 142
Embodiment and otherness in The English Patient……Page 144
References……Page 145
The Accident……Page 148
The Relation to the Car……Page 150
The Body of the Car……Page 151
Virtual Death……Page 152
The Body and the Repression of Death……Page 154
The Iconic Body and the Crash……Page 155
References……Page 157
13 Of Hallowed Spacings: Diana s Crashas Heterotopia……Page 158
From heterochrony to anachrony……Page 168
The hereafter……Page 174
References……Page 179
14 Fuel, Metal, Air: The Appearances and Disappearances of Amelia Earhart……Page 180
Postscript……Page 206