Containerkörper

Zur Genese logistischer Regierungstechniken in New York City, 1900-1950

Abstract

English abstract: In the densely populated Metropolises around 1900, we can witness the emergence of a new bodily paradigm: the container body. Focusing on the New York City subway, the largest urban transit system of the twentieth century, this article traces the dynamics of standardizing and modularizing the passengers’ bodies while black-boxing their emotions in favor of ideas of input and output. In implementing these ideals into both the materialities and logistics of the system, the engineers not only aimed to counter the perceived problem of the uncontrollable and irrational urban masses. By linking these strategies of containerization with an ethics of containment, they also helped to give rise to a crucial program of subjectivation in late modernity.