GABRIELA CORBISIER TESSITORE

This research project will focus on the relationship between subjective formation and its interrelation with the emergence and rise of mass media, that is, on the impact that the production and reproduction of information and images – both static and moving – has had, has, and will increasingly have on the subjective constitution of the modern individual. What is sought here is the relationship between social history and the history of mentalities, following the guiding thread of subjectivity and mass culture. For periodization purposes, the section of modernity that will be used in this project follows that of Benjamin's text on “Paris of the Second Empire”. For Benjamin, it is from the trauma of 1848 (the coup d'état by Napoleon III) and the urban reform promoted by Baron Haussmann that modern life truly begins to unfold. A new type of sensitivity emerged, guided by the crowd, by anonymity, by industrial and commercial forces, by the new bourgeois interiors, by the wide avenues and their boulevards; in short, after the mid-1860s, the effects of the first industrial revolution were felt in the lifestyle and daily lives of individuals in France.