So “the development of the railway completes the detachment from nature initiated by the discovery of steam power” (20). When riding the train, “The landscape appeared behind the telegraph poles and wires” in a distant, denatured panorama (31). The telegraph was considered the nerve system of the railways. “Tunnel passages provided the telegraph with its first practical application,” allowing trains to see if the track ahead is clear or not (30). “The railroad as a machine ensemble received its legal and politico-economic sanction in the form of transport monopoly” (28). “Route and vehicle became technically conjoined on the railroad,” unlike canals and boats (16). The politician Thomas Creevy remarked of engine-powered transport, “It is really flying, and it is impossible to divest yourself of the notion of instant death to all upon the least accident happening” (quoted on 15). But “certain residues of anxiety remained” (15). “The sensitive and nervous man, in whom those horses in front of the coach, tended to cause unhealthy excitement, was enabled to relax in the railway carriage, and to sit in it without moving a muscle, without exertion or any other passions” (14). The steam-powered engine allowed ships to avoid tacking and jibing techniques, which regularized and shortened paths of sea travel. Hence the engine-powered railway become commercialized in an effort to replace commercial horse-powered transportation of people and mail. The rise in food prices made it harder to feed animals, which led elites to subsidize inventors of alternate forms of power. Since coal was so cheap and could transport cheaper foods from further away, the agricultural elites in government created import taxes like the Corn Law. The rails of Middle-Age mine shafts became the railways between specialized industrialized sites (materials, construction, market). The high-pressure steam engine followed, which required new industries for making higher quality materials and parts. waterwheels until the rotary steam engine was invented. The steam engine became capable, and was oddly hybridized with e.g. The shift to mineral materials created a demand for specialized labor, and even the functions of wood were split among materials like iron (for construction) and coal (for combustion). Wood was the main pre-industrial (pre-modern) material for construction and combustion, leading to the deforestation of Europe. Effectively what we are given here is a historical account of modern subjectivity arising from the an-aesthetics of mechanical transportation and its horrific accidents, which is in line with Simmel's theory of modern an-aesthetics. What is this about? What follows is the history of the railroad, wherein theories of railway accident neuroses laid the conceptual ground for specifically psychoanalytic models of subjectivity and trauma. From The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Space and Time (1987):įreud speaks of a condition called “railway spine” in his theories on infantile sexuality.
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