In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ENGINEERS 99
"social engineering" may turn into a nightmare. This is apparent in an
interview with BertoIt Brecht about the recent premiere of his drama
Mann ist Mann (Man Is Man) specifically in the author's explication of
the plot and its political significance. Brecht: "It's about a man being
taken to pieces and rebuilt as someone else for a particular purpose."
Interviewer: "And who does the rebuilding?" Brecht: "Three engineers
of the feelings" (Willett, 153). [see Individuality vs. Collectivity] Nevertheless,
the gestures and technique of Brecht's own "epic theater," which
he demonstrates for the first time in Mann ist Mann, are themselves a
type of "engineering of the feelings." Such manipulation of emotions
from the stage assumes its most condensed, hyperbolic form in the role
of the modulador, who is described in a satirical article on the "theater
of the future" published in the Revista de Occidente: "Everything obeyed
the control of one man, called the modulador, who prescribed the movements,
the emotional processes, the voices, and everything else ... The
purpose of a drama ... was to suggest a simple or complex existential
state, and once the modulador had been informed of the required degree
of intensity, it was incumbent on him to produce the necessary emotion"
(Revista de Occidente, 172).
Similar criticisms of the futuristic claims generally attributed to the
engineer (rather than propounded by actual engineers) often turn into a
defense of the creative individual. The journalist Friedrich Sieburg is thus
eager to describe the cult of the engineer as a-legitimate but not so
innovative-contemporary version of the Romantic admiration for the
genius: "What otherworldliness is apparent in this 'engineer romanticism,'
which doesn't understand how a carburetor works, and is therefore
unable to distinguish the breathing of our age from the rhythm of
a six-cylinder engine. Those who used to dress in velvet and whimsical
ties wear leather jackets today" (Sieburg, 275). [see Gomina] It is Jose
Ortega y Gasset, the best journalist among the philosophers of his time,
who finds a modernist form for such conservative feelings. The true
intellectual adventure, according to him, lies not in the application of
knowledge for specific purposes but in the unlimited production of
knowledge. Seen from this perspective, the practice-oriented engineer is
doomed to remain a secondary figure: "On the one hand, the analytical
spirit is helpful for life; it creates practical resources; it is useful. On the
other hand, it constructs the most abstract and superfluous edifices. So,
of the enormous block of knowledge that constitutes modern science,