Crash Cultures: Modernity, Mediation and the Material

Our culture is both fascinated and horrified, paralysed and animated, by disaster. Princess Diana's shocking death and the Paddington and Hatfield rail crashes have generated considerable media attention. Likewise, fictional crashes such as Cronberg's and Ballard's versions of 'Crash' and Cameron's blockbuster 'Titanic', horrify and attract. While insurers, politicians and social scientists seek to explain crashes - whose fault was it, what is to be done to prevent them, and so on - there has been little or no attention paid to the cultural dimensions of the crash.

Keywords: Modernity, mediation, material