City and Modernity in Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin

Vincenzo Mele is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pisa, Italy. His research focuses on the history and sociology of modernity, social theory, critical theory, social imaginary and cultural industry, and ethnography.

• 1. Introduction: Investigating Postmodernity through Modernity. .- 2. Metropolis as general Form of Modernity.- 3. Georg Simmel’s Theory of Knowledge.- 4. Sociological Aesthetic of Modernity.-5. Metropolis, Money and the Style of Modern Life.- 6. Metropolization of Social Life: How is Society Possible?.- 7. What is The Arcades Project?.- 8. Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Knowledge.- 9. The Phantasmagoria of Modernity: Benjamin on Commodity Fetishism.- 10. Benjamin and Baudelaire as the lyric poet in the age of mature capitalism.- 11. Metropolis as Tragedy, Metropolis as Trauerspiel.-