London after London

Abstract

'I have no more faith than a grain of mustard seed in the future history of "civilization", which I know now is doomed to destruction, and probably before very long, ' wrote the socialist William Morris in 1885. 'What a joy it is, ' he added in a tone of vengeful satisfaction, 'to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies…' Morris's deliciously intemperate outburst was inspired by After London (1885), a curious novel by the naturalist Richard Jefferies, which depicts a society reshaped by some nameless environmental cataclysm that has almost completely destroyed the British capital. 'This marvellous city, of which such legends are related, ' its narrator unsentimentally comments, 'was after all only of brick, and when the ivy grew over and trees and shrubs sprang up, and, lastly, the waters underneath burst in, this huge metropolis was soon overthrown. ' Morris was bewitched by this vision. ' Absurd hopes curled round my heart as I read it, ' he confided; 'I wish I were thirty years younger. I want to see the game played out. ' In a sense, Morris himself played the game out-in the form of News from Nowhere (1890-91), a utopian romance that he set in London approximately a century after a socialist revolution that, in 1952, transformed the nation's social relations. But, compared to After London, there is something rather tame about Morris's pastoral vision of twenty-first century England, which is centred on a series of picturesque descriptions of Bloomsbury. It domesticates Jeffries's fanaticism.Like Morris, I too have always found the descriptions of the city's destruction that Jefferies included in After London deeply seductive. Indeed, when I see disaster movies in the cinema, I secretly dream about barbarism once more flooding the world. Absurd hopes curl round my heart as I watch entire cities being reduced to rubble by biblical floods and quakes. Because in these ends there is a beginning. The silence of almost empty streets, filmed at first light by the directors of contemporary disaster movies, before the roads and pavements are convulsed by the rhythms of commuters, trembles with utopian promise. 'The post-catastrophe situation, ' in Fredric Jameson's formulation, 'constitutes the preparation for the emergence of Utopia itself. '

“Wider Den Nächtlichen Unfug”—Bielefeld’s Street Lighting from 1853 to the 1880s as a Securatization Infrastructure and Tool for Self-Discipline

“…Die Nacht veränderte die Lebenswelt der Zeitgenoss*innen, schuf Unordnung und weckte Ängste vor dem Fremden, das sich in ihrem vermeintlichen Chaos formierte (Baldwin 2012 : 1–14). Normative Ordnungen ermahnten daher „ehrliche Bürger*innen“, sie möglichst zu meiden (Bouman 1987 : 8; Beaumont 2016 : 15–30). Die Nacht schien gerade die Stadt zu transformieren; selbst für Einheimische wurde sie dann eher zur „terra incognita“ (Bouman 1987 : 9).…”

“…In seiner Studie zum frühneuzeitlichen London präsentiert Matthew Beaumont die nächtliche Straße als gefährlich, aber auch als Freiraum der Marginalisierten und stellt das Narrativ der Gefährlichkeit sogenannter „Nightwalker“ infrage. Er verweist darauf, dass es eine dezidiert politische Perspektive ist, die nächtliche Straße als Sicherheitsproblem außerhalb regulierter Herrschaft zu begreifen (Beaumont 2016 : 5–11).…”

“…Neben solchen Überlegungen gab es auch marginalisierte Gruppen, die die Nacht als Rückzugsraum sahen (Beaumont 2016 : 1–3). Sowohl die Nacht als auch die Beleuchtung wurden somit als ambivalent wahrgenommen und es gab keinesfalls einen Automatismus in Bezug auf die Verankerung der Gasbeleuchtung im öffentlichen Raum.…”