A Disturbed Book: Bubbles Under the Throne

Abstract

Urban Awakenings was a project conceived in early 2019 as a series of urban investigations. We set out to find novel ways of looking at the contemporary industrial city, in this case the metropolis of Melbourne, capital of the State of Victoria, Australia. As outlined in this opening chapter, we were inspired by the thesis presented in Jane Bennett’s book, The Enchantment of Modern Life. We wanted to apply and extend her analysis to the urban landscape, by walking the city with eyes open to the possibility of enchantment—a methodology we describe in the opening chapters as ‘urban tramping’. Our project was disrupted midway by COVID-19, a plague that ended up performing our thesis of a fractured modernity vulnerable to various internal contradictions.