The Building of a Modern Antiquity

Hymns and Laments for Athens

Georgia Giannakopoulou (ACG-Deree, The American College of Greece)

$284

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Routledge
29 November 2024

Theory of architecture; History of architecture; Philosophy; Urban communities; Social theory

Series: Visual Modernities

This book considers post-19th-century Athens as a unique instance of a secret side of metropolitan capitalism. With a focus on modern antiquity as the hidden element of the dialectic between the past and the present, it suggests that the sociological study of one of the great European capital cities – a city not intended as a modern capital – and its architectural representations may expose part of the veiled processes of the reconstruction of the past, thus shedding light on the abuse of antiquity for the celebration of European capitalist metropolitan modernity. From the ‘glorious’ white-marble cityscape of the 19th century that aimed at ‘re-enchanting’ metropolitan modernity, to the inglorious grey reinforced-concrete 21st-century metropolis, modern Athens exposes the battle between the modern and a modern image of antiquity: a false, socially-constructed historiography born of the dialectics between the ancient and the modern, the new and the old, collective memory and collective forgetting. As such, The Building of a Modern Antiquity will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in social and critical theory, urban studies, and visual sociology.

By: Georgia Giannakopoulou (ACG-Deree The American College of Greece)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032053936
ISBN 10: 1032053933
Series: Visual Modernities
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 29 November 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Georgia Giannakopoulou is Associate Professor in Sociology at The American College of Greece and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, UK. She is the co-editor of The Detective of Modernity: Essays on the Work of David Frisby.