Synopses & Reviews
The postwar histories of Paris and Amsterdam have been significantly defined by the notion of the andldquo;undergroundandrdquo; as both a material and metaphorical space. Examining the underground traffic between the two cities, this book interrogates the countercultural histories of Paris and Amsterdam in the mid to late-twentieth century. Shuttling between Paris and Amsterdam, as well as between postwar avant-gardism and twenty-first century global urbanism, this interdisciplinary book seeks to create a mirroring effect over the notion of the underground as a driving force in the making of the contemporary European city.
Synopsis
In Metropolis on the Styx, David L. Pike considers how underground spaces and their many myths have organized ways of seeing, thinking about, and living in the modern city. Expanding on the cultural history of underground construction in his acclaimed previous book, Subterranean Cities, Pike details the emergence of a vertical city in the imagination of nineteenth-century Paris and London, a city overseen by hosts of devils and undermined by subterranean villains, a city whose ground level was replete with passages between above and below. Metropolis on the Styx brings together a rich variety of visual and written sources ranging from pulp mysteries and movie serials to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and the novels of Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Elinor Glyn to the broadsheets and ephemera of everyday urban life. From these materials, Pike conjures a working theory of modern underground space that explains why our notions about urban environments remain essentially nineteenth-century in character, even though cities themselves have since changed almost beyond recognition.Highly original in subject matter, methodology, and conclusions, Metropolis on the Styx synthesizes a number of critical approaches, periods of study, and disciplines in the analysis of a single category of space--the underground. Pike studies the built environments and the textual and visual ephemera (including little-known or unknown archival material) of Paris, London, and other cities in conjunction with canonical modern literature and art. This book integrates a rich visual component--photographs, movie stills, prints, engravings, paintings, cartoons, maps, and drawings of actual and imagined subterranean spaces--into the fabric of the argument.
About the Author
Christoph Lindner is professor of media studies and director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam.
Andrew Hussey is dean of the University of London Institute in Paris and author of
Paris: The Secret History.
Table of Contents
and#160;
Acknowledgements
Foreword
David Pinder
1. Concepts and Practices of the Underground
Christoph Lindner and Andrew Hussey
Part 1: Projections
2. Metromania or the Undersides of Painting
Sophie Berrebi
3. Mapping Utopia: Debord and Constant between Amsterdam and Paris
Andrew Hussey
4. Amsterdamandrsquo;s Sexual Underground in the 1960s
Gert Hekma
Part 2: Mobility
5. Detours, Delays, Derailments: La Petite Jandeacute;rusalem and
Slow Training in Culture
Sudeep Dasgupta
6. Underground Visions: Strategies of Resistance along
the Amsterdam Metro Lines
Ginette Verstraete
7. Underground Circulation: The Beats in Paris and Beyond
Allen Hibbard
and#160;
Part 3: Visibility
8. (In)audible Frequencies: Sounding out the Contemporary Branded City
Carolyn Birdsall
9. Red Lights and Legitimate Trade: Paying for Sex in the Branded City
Joyce Goggin
10. Visibly Underground: When Clandestine Workers Take the Law
into Their Own Hands
Anna-Louise Milne
11. Archaeology of the Parisian Underground
Stephen W. Sawyer
Bibliography
Illustrations
Contributors
Index