TY - JOUR

T1 - Pod Stalinem

T2 - field notes from another modernity

AU - Sayer, Derek

N1 - Written for a special issue in memory of the late David P. Frisby, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - David Frisby’s work was a career-long engagement with modernity, informed by a tradition of classical social theory whose neglect in Anglo-American sociology David did much to remedy through his translations as well as his writings: the ‘sociological impressionism’ that seeks to grasp totalities through ‘snapshots’ and ‘fragments’ whose representatives included Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. Conceived as a homage to David’s legacy (and his personalinfluence on my own intellectual development) rather than a commentary on his work, this essay is a Benjaminian dérive through twentieth-century Prague, which complements and counterpoints David’s beloved Vienna and Berlin. Prague’s modern history, I argue, gives Baudelaire’s celebrated definition of modernity as ‘le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent’ surreally new dimensions. Indeed, thecity might well be regarded as a ‘capital of the twentieth century’ in whose ‘ruins’ we can begin to excavate the ‘prehistory of postmodernity.’

AB - David Frisby’s work was a career-long engagement with modernity, informed by a tradition of classical social theory whose neglect in Anglo-American sociology David did much to remedy through his translations as well as his writings: the ‘sociological impressionism’ that seeks to grasp totalities through ‘snapshots’ and ‘fragments’ whose representatives included Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. Conceived as a homage to David’s legacy (and his personalinfluence on my own intellectual development) rather than a commentary on his work, this essay is a Benjaminian dérive through twentieth-century Prague, which complements and counterpoints David’s beloved Vienna and Berlin. Prague’s modern history, I argue, gives Baudelaire’s celebrated definition of modernity as ‘le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent’ surreally new dimensions. Indeed, thecity might well be regarded as a ‘capital of the twentieth century’ in whose ‘ruins’ we can begin to excavate the ‘prehistory of postmodernity.’

KW - Baudelaire

KW - Benjamin

KW - memory

KW - reality

KW - Prague

KW - surrealism

U2 - 10.1177/1468795X12461705

DO - 10.1177/1468795X12461705

M3 - Journal article

VL - 13

SP - 87

EP - 103

JO - Journal of Classical Sociology

JF - Journal of Classical Sociology

SN - 1468-795X

IS - 1

ER -