Non-Places

An Introduction to Supermodernity

Marc Augé, John Howe

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English

Verso Books
30 January 2024

Anthropology

An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computer and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls 'non-space' results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of 'supermodernity' to describe the logic of these late-capitalist phenomena - a logic of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating and lucid essay he seeks to establish and intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity. Starting with an attempt to disentangle anthropology from history, Auge goes on to map the distinction between place, encrusted with historical monuments and creative social life, and non-place, to which individuals are connected in a uniform manner and where no organic social life is possible.

Unlike Baudelairean modernity, where old and new are interwoven, supermodernity is self-contained: from the motorway or aircraft, local or exotic particularities are presented two-dimensionally as a sort of theme-park spectacle. Auge does not suggest that supermodernity is all-encompassing: place still exist outside non-place and tend to reconstitute themselves inside it. But he argues powerfully that we are in transit through non-place for more and more of our time, as if between immense parentheses, and concludes that this new form of solitude should become the subject of an anthropology of its own.

By: Marc Augé
Translated by: John Howe
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 9mm
Weight: 110g
ISBN: 9781804292600
ISBN 10: 1804292605
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 30 January 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Marc Augé is Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

Reviews for Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity

Unsettling, elegantly written and illuminating: essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our supermodern condition. -- PD Smith * Guardian * Shopping malls, motorways, airport lounges-we are all familiar with these curious spaces which are both everywhere and nowhere. But only now do we have a coherent analysis of their far-reaching effects on public and private experience. Marc Auge has become their anthropologist, and has written a timely and original book. -- Patrick Wright It is indeed very seldom that one finds it difficult to put down a book because of the intellectual excitement it generates. Auge's Non-Places is such a book-a powerful message, modestly delivered, which stands out as a unique and refreshing anthropological voice. * Current Anthropology *