
Swinging City : A Cultural Geography of London 1950-1974.
Title:
Swinging City : A Cultural Geography of London 1950-1974.
Author:
Rycroft, Simon.
ISBN:
9780754689157
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (200 pages)
Series:
Re-materialising Cultural Geography
Contents:
Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Preface -- 1 Introduction: The Material and Immaterial Geographies of 1960s London -- 2 The Long Front of Material and Immaterial Culture I: Beat and Angry -- 3 The Long Front of Material and Immaterial Culture II: Architecture and Visual Culture -- 4 Mapping Swinging London -- 5 A Historical Geography of Countercultural London -- 6 Rephrasing and Reimagining Dissent: Technology, Nature and Humanity -- 7 Oz, London and Cosmic Consciousness -- 8 Lightshows and Multi-media Environments: Cosmic Connections and the Countercultural Subject -- 9 Conclusions: Post-War Vision and Representation -- References -- Index.
Abstract:
This book works with two contrasting imaginings of 1960s London: the one of the excess and comic vacuousness of Swinging London, the other of the radical and experimental cultural politics generated by the city's counterculture. The connections between these two scenes are mapped looking firstly at the spectacular events that shaped post-war London, then at the modernist physical and social reconstruction of the city alongside artistic experiments such as Pop and Op Art. Making extensive use of London's underground press the book then explores the replacement of this seemingly materialistic image with the counterculture of underground London from the mid-1960s. Swinging City develops the argument that these disparate threads cohere around a shared cosmology associated with a new understanding of nature which differently positioned humanity and technology. The book tracks a moment in the historical geography of London during which the city asserts itself as a post-imperial global city. Swinging London it argues, emerged as the product of this recapitalisation, by absorbing avant-garde developments from the provinces and a range of transnational, mainly transatlantic, influences.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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