Modernity, Hegemony, and Public Transport as Public Space: A Reading of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz

Abstract

Abstract:This article explores through a reading of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz how public transport as a public space serves as a technology of discipline. First, the article argues that modern subjectivity is articulated at least in part through public transport as a public space. Second, the article outlines how the conception of modernity formed in public transport as a public space requires defining the lumpenproletariat as a constitutive other of modernity insofar as they cannot substantially participate in the public culture of modern public transport. Third, in order to maintain its hegemony, modern culture disciplines the lumpenproletariat into becoming modern subjects by using the public space of modern public transport as a disciplinary technology.