The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

316 The experience of space and timephotography, though set in motion through the camera lens. It is aselective landscape that we see. The facts of production, and thenecessary class relations that attach thereto, are noticeable by theirabsence. We are treated to a picture of the urban that is, in thefashion of postmodern sociology, entirely declasse, much closer toSimmel (in his 'Metropolis and Mental Life' essay) than to Marx.Death, birth, anxiety, pleasure, loneliness"are all aestheticized on thesame plane, empty of any sense of class struggle or of ethical ormoral commentary.The identity of this place called Berlin is constituted through thisalien but quite beautiful imagery. The distinctive organization ofspace and time is, moreover, seen as the framework within whichindividual identities are forged. The image of divided spaces is particularlypowerful, and they are superimposed upon each other in thefashion of montage and collage. The Berlin Wall is one such divide,and it is again and again evoked as a symbol of overarching division.Is this where space now ends? 'It is impossible to get lost in Berlin,'someone says, 'because you can always find the wall.' More finegraineddivisions exist, however. Germany, the driver of a car reflectsas he tracks through street scenes that conjure up images of war-timedestruction, has become fragmented to the point where every individualconstitutes a mini-state, where each street has its barrierssurrounded by a no man's land through which one can pass only ifone has the right password. Even access from any one individual toanother demands payment of a toll. Not only may this extremecondition of alienated and isolated individualism (of the sort thatSimmel described) be considered a good thing (compared with thecollective life of Nazism that had gone before) but individuals mayseek it out. 'Get a good costume, that's half the battle,' says Falkthinking about the part he is to play, and, in a wonderfully humorousscene he tries on hat after hat in order, he says, to be able to passunrecognized among the crowd and achieve the anonymity he desires.The hats he puts on turn into virtual masks of characters, inmuch the same way that Cindy Sherman photographs mask theperson. This hat makes him look like Humphrey Bogart, this one isfor going to the races, that one for going to the opera, and another isfor getting married in. The act of masking and disguising connectswith spatial fragmentation and alienated individualism.This landscape bears all the marks of high postmodernist art asPfeil (1988, 384) for one has recently described it. 'One is confrontednot with a unified text, much less by the presence of a distinctpersonality and sensibility, but by a discontinuous terrain of heterogeneousdiscourses uttered by anonymous, unplaceable tongues, aTime and space in the postmodern cinema 317chaos different from that of the classic texts of high modernismprecisely insofar as it is not recontained or recuperated within anoverarching mythic framework.' The quality of utterance is 'deadpan,indifferent, depersonalized, effaced,' so as to cancel out 'the possibilityof traditional audience participation.' Only the angels have anoverall view, and they, when they perch on high, hear only a babbleof intersecting voices and whispers, and see nothing but a monochromaticworld.How can some sense of identity be forged and sustained in such aworld ? Two spaces assume a peculiar significance in this regard. Thelibrary - a repository of historical knowledge and collective memory- is a space into which many are evidently drawn (even angels seemto take their rest there). An old man enters the library. He is to playan extremely important, though ambiguous role. He sees himself asthe story-teller, the muse, the potential guardian of collective memoryand history, the representative of 'everyman.' But he is disturbed atthe thought that the tight circle of listeners who used to gatherround him has been broken up and dispersed, he knows not where,as readers who do not communicate with each other. Even language,the meanings of words and sentences, he complains, seem to slip andslide into incoherent fragments. Forced now to live 'from day today,' he uses the library to try and recuperate a proper sense of thehistory of this distinctive place called Berlin. He wants to do it notfrom the standpoint of leaders and kings, but as a hymn of peace.The books and photographs, however, conjure up images of thedeath and destruction wrought in World War II, a trauma to whichthe film again and again makes reference, as if this was indeed whenthis time began and when the spaces of the city were shattered. Theold man, surrounded by model globes in the library, spins a wheel,thinking that the whole world is disappearing in the dusk. He leavesthe library and walks in search of the Potsdamer Platz (one of thoseurban spaces that Sitte would surely have admired), the heart of oldBerlin, with its Cafe Josti where he used to take coffee and a cigarand watch the crowd. Walking alongside the Berlin Wall, all he canfind is an empty weed-strewn lot. Puzzled, he collapses into anabandoned armchair, insisting that his quest is neither hopeless norunimportant. Even though he feels like a poet ignored and mockedon the edge of no man's land, he cannot give up, he says, because ifmankind loses its story-teller then it loses its childhood. Even thoughthe story may in parts be ugly - and he recalls how when flagsappeared in the Potsdamer Platz the crowd turned unfriendly andthe police brutish - it still has to be told. Besides, he feels personallyprotected, saved, he says, 'from present and future troubles by the