The Badlands of Modernity

by Hetherington,Kevin

• ISBN13: 9780415114691
• ISBN10: 0415114691
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-09-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

IThe Badlands of Modernityoffers a wide ranging and original interpretation of modernity. Through an analysis of some of the most important social spaces of the eighteenth century, this book examines contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity, the character of social order and the significance of marginal space in relation to issues of order, transgression and resistance. Drawing on Foucault's analysis of heterotopia, or spaces of alternate ordering, Kevin Hetherington argues that modernity originates through an interplay between ideas of utopia and heterotopia. Tha Palais Royal during the French Revolution, the masonic lodge and the early factories of the industrial revolution are all analyzed as heterotopia, in which modern social ordering is developed. Rather than seeing modernity as being defined by social order, the book argues that we need to take account of the processes that produce social ordering, their ambiguity and the spaces in which they emerge, if we are tounderstand the character of modern societies.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
1 The Palais Royal as modernity	1	(19)
2 Margins, orderings and the laboratories of society	20	(19)
3 Two castles Heterotopia as sites of alternate ordering	39	(16)
4 The utopics of modernity	55	(17)
5 Secret virtues, Euclidean spaces Freemasonry, Solomon's Temple and the lodge	72	(37)
6 The factory for itself	109	(30)
7 The space of the horizon	139	(5)
Notes	144	(5)
Bibliography	149	(10)
Index	159