A Tale of two Cities: Revisiting compressed modernity(ies) and their logic(s)

Abstract

Chang Kyung-Sup’s The Logic of Compressed Modernity opens with the book cover seemingly coming alive, right from the first science fiction attempts from the beginning of the twentieth century to describe the city and people of the future. At once anonymous but familiar, phantasmagorical but realistic, dark but illuminated by thousands of electric lights, and lonely but densely populated, such a dystopian portrayal of a (post)modern metropolis and a (half)man peeking out of the soon-to-be-museum slums can exist anywhere–a non-place.