How Modernity Forgets [Hardcover]

This book provides an insight into how modern society and contemporary living affects our ability to remember things.Why are we sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? This book explores the concept of 'forgetting', and how the structure and speed of modern society affects our ability to remember things. A must-read for anyone interested in the contemporary western world.Why are we sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? This book explores the concept of 'forgetting', and how the structure and speed of modern society affects our ability to remember things. A must-read for anyone interested in the contemporary western world.Why are we sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? This concise overview explores the concept of 'forgetting', and how modern society affects our ability to remember things. It takes ideas from Francis Yates classic work, The Art of Memory, which viewed memory as being dependent on stability, and argues that today's world is full of change, making 'forgetting' characteristic of contemporary society. We live our lives at great speed; cities have become so enormous that they are unmemorable; consumerism has become disconnected from the labour process; urban architecture has a short life-span; and social relationships are less clearly defined - all of which has eroded the foundations on which we build and share our memories. Providing a profound insight into the effects of modern society, this book is a must-read for anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and philosophers, as well as anyone interested in social theory and the contemporary western world.1. Introduction; 2. Two types of place memory; 3. Temporalities of forgetting; 4. Topographies of forgetting; 5. Conclusion.'How Societies Remember was a tightly argued account of the importance of habitual, bodily memory to cultural transmission; How Modernity Forgets is a substantive cultural diagnosis of modernity, centred on the theme of cultlsJ