Social context

1. Social context • 1870-1913: The mostremarkableperiodofeconomicgrowth in history • Great Britain, France, Germanycommandedover 60% of the world market • Urbanization. By 1900: 11 metropoliseswith a populationofover a million people (Greater London and New York 5 millions, Paris 3, etc.) • Mass production for a mass market

2. Technologicalinnovations • 1870-90s: Internalcombustionengine, diesel engineand steam turbine • Electricity, oil and petroleumasnewsourcesofpower • Telephone (Meucci, 1871), typewriter • 1888: Kodak camera • 1895: Marconi’s Radio • 1895: Lumièrescinematograph

3. Technological innovations2 • 1903: Ford car company • 1903: First air flight by the brothers Wright • Productionsofsyntheticmaterials– dyes, man-madefibres and plastics

4. Social Context 2 • Mass production for a mass market (Henry Ford in the U.S.A., William Lever in G.B.) • Mass entertainment industry • Popular Press (1896, Daily Mail, publishedby Alfred Harmsworth) • Imperialism: British Empire onequarterof the landsurfaceof the whole globe with a populationofover 400 millions people

5. Intellectualcontext: Physics • 1895: Röntgen’s discoveryofX-rays. Radioactivepropertiesofuranium and radium • Rutherford introducedhismodelof the atom (positevelychargednucleus, electronsmoving in orbits) • 1900-1913: Quantum theory (Planck, Bohr, Rutherford) • 1905: Einstein’s SpecialTheoryofRelativity • 1916: Einstein’s GeneralPrinciplesofRelativity • 1923: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty’s Principle

6. Ford Madox Ford, The Soul of London, 1905 • Ifyouwanttoseethingsyou are at a greaterheight, yourrangeofsightismuchlonger. [...] The otherday I sawfrom the top ofanelectric tram, very far away, above the converginglines in the perspectiveof a broad highway ofnewshops, a steamcrane at work high in the air on an upper storey. The thinarmstretched out above the street, spidery and blackagainst a mistinessthatwashalfsky, halfhaze; at the end of a long chaintherehungdiagonally some baulksofwood, turningslowly in mid-air. Theywererisingimperceptibly, weapproachingimperceptibly. A puffofsmokeshot out, writhedverywhite, melted and vanishedbetween the housefronts. Weglided up to and pastit.Looking back I couldsee down the reverse of the long perspective the baulksoftimberturning a littlecloserto the side of the building, the thinextendedarmof the crane a little more foreshortenedagainst the haze. Then the outlinesgrewtremulous, itallvanishedwith a touchofthat pathos like a hungerthatattachestoallthingsofwhichwesee the beginnings or the middle courseswithoutknowing the ends. Itwasimpressiveenough – the modernspiritexpressingitself in termsnotofmenbutofforces, weglidingby, the timbersswinging up, withoutanyvisiblehumanaction in eithermotion [...] That, too, is the ModernSpirit: greatorganisationsrunbymenasimpersonalas the atomsofourownframes, noiseless, and at allappearancesinfallible

7. Intellectual context2 Sigmund Freud • 1900: The InterpretationofDreams • 1901: The PsychopathologyofEveryday Life • 1905: The Three Essays on the TheoryofSexuality • 1919-20: Beyond the PleasurePrinciple • 1923: The Ego and the Id • 1915: English Translationof Freud’s works (James Stratchey)

8. Intellectual Context3 • 1889 - Henri Bergson, Saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza (Time and Free Will) (chronologicaltime vs duration) [Bergsonwas]More thananyother single figure … responsiblefor the themainintellectualcharacteristicsof the world we live in, and the implicitdebtofalmostallcontemporaryphilosophytohimis immense (Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man, 1927

9. Bergson • Tempo cronologico vs durata reale duréereelle • Durata: “Gli stati di coscienza, anche se successivi, si compenetrano l’un l’altro, e nel più semplice di essi si può riflettere l’anima intera” • Tempo cronologico: “Quando proiettiamo il tempo nello spazio, esprimiamo la durata in estensione, e la successione prende la forma di una linea continua o di una catena, le cui parti si toccano senza penetrarsi”. Il risultato è la costruzione di un tempo ‘spazializzato’ in una sequenza di elementi o stati immobili, distinti, ma tutti uguali.

10. Bergson • La durata è “la forma assunta dalla successione dei nostri stati di coscienza, quando il mio io si lascia vivere e si astiene da ogni tentativo di stabilire delle separazioni fra stato e stato” • Tempo cronologico vs durata“quando osservo le lancette muoversi sul quadrante di un orologio … non misuro la durata… Al di fuori di me, nello spazio, la lancetta non può che occupare una sola posizione… dentro di me si compie un processo di interpenetrazioni di stati della coscienza che rappresenta la durata reale”