This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today's context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel's and Benjamin's metropolis has thus become an endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.

Explores a classic topic in social and cultural theory, the metropolis, as conceived by Simmel and Benjamin Brings in scholarship in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian for the development of urban reality Provides a comprehensive and comparative overview of Simmel and Benjamin's theories of modernity

Autorentext
Vincenzo Mele is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pisa, Italy. His research focuses on the history and sociology of modernity, social theory, critical theory, social imaginary and cultural industry, and ethnography.

Inhalt
1. Introduction: Investigating Postmodernity through Modernity. .- 2. Metropolis as general Form of Modernity.- 3. Georg Simmel's Theory of Knowledge.- 4. Sociological Aesthetic of Modernity.- 5. Metropolis, Money and the Style of Modern Life.- 6. Metropolization of Social Life: How is Society Possible?.- 7. What is The Arcades Project?.- 8. Walter Benjamin's Theory of Knowledge.- 9. The Phantasmagoria of Modernity: Benjamin on Commodity Fetishism.- 10. Benjamin and Baudelaire as the lyric poet in the age of mature capitalism.- 11. Metropolis as Tragedy, Metropolis as Trauerspiel.- ****