Fetishizing the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban Technological

Networks
- By Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw

[]- my comments
--Technological networks: Physical networks forming the backbone of modern technological
society
--Fetishizing: Having excessive commitment; attaches itself to products of labor as soon as
they are commodities and are thus inseparable from the production of commodities.
-- Commodification: Social & cultural process of inserting socially metabolized goods into
commodity/market relations.

This paper discusses how the spectacles of modernity that allowed visibility of progress have
become opaque and invisible in modern society, using primarily the example of water. These
urban fetishes that were compulsively marveled at earlier because they were the symbols of
progress have lost their ideology of progress. The authors discuss how fetishization parallels
commodification and argue that the cultural/aesthetic role of technology has been overlooked.
Q. What are technological networks?
● Technological networks are the mediators between nature and society allowing the
transformation of nature into a city by creating connections between multiple
technologies.
● City is described as a space of flows having interconnected conduits. It represents de-
territorialization- which becomes a condition for entry into the network. The
backcountry is separated from the countryside.
● A material flux that is never fixed as it constantly keeps moving.

Urban networks in contemporary cities today are hidden, opaque, invisible,

underground etc. This blurs the relation b/w nature and city. The social relations that are
enacted through these flows are rendered occult.
Urban Dowry (dams, power plants etc.) have gone through historical changes in their
visible role & material modernization. They weren’t always opaque. Earlier, they were
prominently visible and were shrines to look at as a measure of progress. Once
completed, they became underground.

Commodification- the medium through which ‘nature’ turns urban & production of urban
environment. Fetishization allows for commodities to become the form of existence,
severed from the historical & geographical process of production.
Commodity fetishism brings together politics, culture and economy.

WATER: When the flow of water is buried it masks the social relations making the
urbanization of water possible. This allows to sever the intimate bond b/w use, exchange
value and social power.
Jules Verne, 1960: Sees Sienne, Paris as the beating heart satisfying the thirst of the city.

Dams, water towers etc. were celebrated as glorious icons & were prominently
located so they could be marveled at. They lost their mobilizing powers in the 20th
century, becoming engineering constructs and thus began disappearing.
Commodity fetishism helps understand the dialects between economic/political and
cultural/ideological roles of networks. It brings together economics, politics and culture.
All goods needed to sustain human life are produced. They transform into products
involving extraction of raw materials and their subsequent transformation through human
labor allows entry into social & urban fabric as commodities.
-The use value gets combined with universal, homogenized characteristics of exchange value.
-The exchange value is based on the fact they are produced under specific relations of
production.
-Production process presupposes transformation of nature through human labor.
-The link between nature & final product is severed and socioeconomic conditions are
obscured.
-Commodities become embodiments of exchange value. This allows for quantification.

However, one can desire a commodity they cannot afford.

The price a customer pays for a commodity depends on the ability of the market to render
socio environmental relations in the production of the process opaque. The fetish character is
independent of the use value, it turns objects of desire in and for themselves.
Commodities carry with them the dream of a better life. For ex- an advertisement for a car
showing how it brings the family together makes one see the object as a solution to their
problem.
The contradictory character of the old and the new, the phantasmagoric character of the
commodity subverts the possibility of actually experiencing & living the desires promised by
the commodity.

Urban environment produced by transformation of nature through human labor is forgotten.

The production often becomes naturalized as something that has always been there. However,
the author argues that the urban environment goes through the process of fetishization. Where
technological networks are constitutive parts.
The use-value of networks dwells exactly in their capacity of & role in facilitating the process
of socio-environmental transformation and allows for commodification & fetishization of the
commodities it carries.
Water-supply networks transform H2O (natural element) into portable, clean water (socially
produced commodity). The networks are a prerequisite to deliver the final product to the city.
While until recently, there was no price tag attached to them but that doesn’t mean there was
no exchange value. Their exchange value is embodied in the exchange value of the
commodities they deliver. The exchange value isn’t just monetary.
The connection implies use of utility and realizes the promise of participating in a
phantasmagoric new world of progress. During early modernity, networks of technology
fitted Marx’s definition of ‘fetish’ (bewildering thing full of metaphysical subtleties and
theological capers)
The industrial revolution was accompanied by secularization of society & a growing
belief in reason as means of solving social problems. Human reason is seen as the means of
achieving good in human nature. As long as there was progress, there was no way of going
backwards. Technology was seen as the force that will liberate individuals from their current
conditions. The disempowered would have technological freedom if they were patient and
hardworking for some time (undefined period). [Basically, the hope attached to freedom by
technology was said to work only if the people (suffering) would work still so the change can
be realized]

This age of reason and secularization also affected the material environment. Ex- 1780s
surveyor’s house by Claude Nicolas Ledoux which mastered nature through taming a stream
into a desired course. [Shows the power of control people have over technology and it
manifests into power in society]
Conservative classism still existed which endured historical aesthetic appeal.
Consolidation of free trade, global monetary system and mass movements went hand in hand
with the need to connect the world. Technology slowly entered daily life. Networks of
technology became the embodiment of progress during early modernity and were linked to
emancipation, prestige. The exclusion from the same symbolized exclusion from spheres of
power.
It didn’t necessarily lead to emancipation since practices of exclusion continue and poor
living conditions continued.
-Social unrest intensified, ex- Dock Strike, UK-1880, Paris Commune-1871 etc.
-Unsanitary living conditions: 1831 & 1848-49 cholera epidemic of London.
-1840s: linking of cleanliness & water supply.

The commodification of water led to the urban elites becoming confined to private spaces of
toilets for the consumption of the same which led to redefining class (prolétariat &
bourgeoisie) and gender relations (males & females). [Like in History of Sexuality, Foucault
discusses the openness of sexuality in earlier period, this basically looks at the how the
privatization of water leading to creation of spaces that are gendered leads to the redefining
of the earlier social system where such relations weren’t optimal]

The body was culturally differentiated. Women’s bodies became rare and evolved around
secrets, intimacy. Smells became associated with genders: roses- females & leather – males.
‘Class & gender relations became impregnated with smell & odor and the body aura
became an element in cultural & social differentiation and power relations.’
Water was seen as public good and essential to the urban society which promised a great
future. Exhibitions were staged for familiarizing the public with the technologies.
Late 19th century- social reformers & engineers worked together for a better world.
Technology, earlier seen as a threat, soon started to be seen as beneficial and
symbols/promise of progress. They are also aestheticized. Ex- Eiffel Tower is seen as its own
unique beauty and remains a landscape to this day.

The state also played a role by being a promoter of technological change.

Germ theory: Diseases were the product of environmental factors like contaminated water,
foul air & poor hygienic conditions. The engineers were seen at par with the doctors.
1908- Peter Behrens AEG factory started the period when urban technological dowry
acquired its own aesthetics & asserted itself in the urban.
Urban- pipelines, cables whose existence became a proof of progress. They were objects of
admiration – Fetishization of materials of technology.

The elements of built environment supporting the network were fetishized as well, ex- water
towers, power stations etc. also known as the ‘urban dowry’ of networks. These were
prominently visible in early modernity. Their beauty lay in the promise of an equal future.
Though part of networks, they were situated outside the urban areas ex- dams, power stations.
Visiting dams was a popular activity in the 20th century until the 1960s, seen as a quasi-
religious experience. Boat trips became a prestigious activity. Urban dowry of networks
gained a life of its own and became a thing in and for itself.
The technological networks became fetishized products in a double sense.
● First, in a Marxian sense, the networks enshrined instrumentality in classifying class
relations. Acc. to Marx, commodities automatically supply their own ideology.
 Fascination with technology made progress appear a matter of construction and
innovation. Uses ‘phantasmagoria’ to describe fetish nature.
● Second, Acc. to Walter Benjamin, they became objects of delight & desire in
themselves, as signs of a better society yet to arrive. He was interested in the
commodity on display having representational value. The symbolic value of is
enhanced by the high price tag.
The desire to connect to these structures meant connecting to progress and emancipation. City
was the shop window for their display, since materiality of fetish objects infused with utopian
dream which permits the visualization of the dream. Even though they failed to deliver the
promise, they were wish-images (fetishes) for the same because the future remained
unknown.
Eventually the fetish character of commodified reification was subverted. They became
‘eidola’, idols adored in themselves. Marveling at networks as embodiment of urban
emancipation obscured seeing the exploitation of living labor. Removing meaning from them
made them phantom-like material expressions of a myth & progress.

1918-60: Subversion of fetish & reinvention of urban

1900- Paris World Exhibition showed Taylor’s experimentations in US scientific
management. After WW1, science-based industries developed around the world. European
industries were Americanized until WW2. New relations b/w humans and machines were
introduced. Technology determines the work & timings for a worker. The assembly line
[Read: Fredrick Winslow Taylor to understand the concept of assembly line, though it’s not
absolutely necessary for the reading] made people realize that the technology might not lead
to freedom. Movies like Modern Times, Metropolis became cultural expressions of these
doubts that the materiality of technology might not necessarily create the utopia imagined by
people which was accentuated by WW2. Technology harbored a destructive underbelly
(concentration camps) and tools of technology can be used for the purpose of enhancing
inequality. [The other face of modernity has the ability to put into application dangerous
ideas –nuclear bombs, concentration camps while maintaining a grey space b/w the
administrator who allows it and the individual who acts on the order. Basically the idea here
is to see that modernity while promising freedom holds dangers of creating an unequal
society]
The entry into the capitalist market revealed that technological innovation only profited those
who controlled the means of production. People understood that the material failed to deliver
a better society. Networks still remained etched in the city and were re-inscribed with a new
meaning i.e. that of material embodiments of failure of emancipation project of modernity.

● How could urban regain glitter? Urban technologies to be swept under the carpet, yet
they perpetuated in a new & innovative way.
● In the 1930s, high modernity functionalism became a part of the daily life of people.
The city itself is designed after a machine, the factory assembly line permeates every
aspect of people’s life – place of work, spaces for recreation etc.
● A new networked spatiality emerges linking privatized spaces of high modernity by
means of colorizing and erasing public space. Robert Moses’s reconstruction of New
York as a city of movement attempts to link modern, networked & private homes to
places of consumption, work and leisure by bypassing marginality.
● 1920s- private bathrooms, water closets etc. show the domestication of water.
● Modernity believes that the human body is clean- Lahiji.
● There have been changes in the patterns of lifestyle among people, they don’t visit
dams, cables in USA & Europe have been hidden and most production processes are
hidden. The materials disappeared materially & symbolically.
● The promise of freedom turned to an individual level where the house became a
machine for living in.
● The ideal city was clean & sanitized, in visual & literary terms. It became a spectacle,
a space for consumption. The city as a flow became invisible.
● The silencing of water & other relations rendered water mute.
● The new urban fetish: aesthetic disconnection from all old, dirty, unsafe & ugly
networks. The clean water had no reference to the production relations of the
underbelly.
● Still, the author argues that the cities are ‘urban trash’ in forms of networks, dirt,
sewage, pipes etc. These keep lurking underneath bursting out occasionally (rat
infestation, homelessness, high leakage rates).
● The contradictions between the outskirts and the city are difficult to contain. This is
expressed in the emergence of environmental problems. The city exemplifies the
fallacy behind the myth of the perfectly managed city.
● Under capitalism, commodity relations hide socio-ecological processes of
domination/subordination.
● Walter Benjamin: Urban underworld = urban Hell. Everything about urban life was
Hell disguised as heaven. The urban paradise exploits organic & inorganic, human &
non-human urban trash to sustain itself.