Can I read Beautiful Terrible Ruins : Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline on EtoBox?

Beautiful Terrible Ruins : Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline by Apel, Dora is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Beautiful Terrible Ruins : Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline about?

Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the nation, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere—the paradigmatic city of ruins—and the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In __Beautiful Terrible Ruins__, art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. Apel shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a pervasive and growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a deepening fear that worse times are coming. The images of Detroit’s decay speak to the overarching anxieties of our era: increasing poverty, declining wages and social services, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and ecological disaster—in short, the failure of capitalism. Apel reveals how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the haunted beauty and fascination of ruin imagery, embodied by Detroit’s abandoned downtown skyscrapers, empty urban spaces, decaying factories, and derelict neighborhoods help us to cope with our fears. But Apel warns that thes

Who reads Beautiful Terrible Ruins : Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline?

Author

Apel, Dora

Publisher

Rutgers University Press

Published

2015

Language

EN

ISBN

9780813574080

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Political Science, Sociology, History