Megalopolis: Contemporary Cultural Sensibilities

Employing an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the complexities of contemporary urban culture, this work examines a diverse range of cultural expressions that may be considered typical of the 1980s, from retro fashion, to Latinization, to the recycling of religious imagery as kitsch. The topics Olalquiaga explores are shown to be exemplary condensations of different cultural currents, and she establishes reception as a vantage point from which to think about city life. "Megalopolis" sees in 1950s and 1960s retro fashion a re-enactment of space-age fears of technological dehumanization, in the resurfacing of kitsch an attempt at recovering emotional intensity, in an aesthetics of death and ruins a lament for the loss of a concrete and organic reality. Consumption is the basis of an unavoidable postmodernity in which the traditional ways of looking at the world have become so many icons; technology is the new language through - or against - which experience is articulated.