... in the seventeenth century—without god’s solace, human beings realize their mortal condition.37 The “torture of now-time” is the translation of the horror vacui into contemporary parlance. Today, not only have the theological groundings of individual life lost their persuasive value (i.e., God is dead...

... of radical transparency and immediate feedback. The approach I offer here and further elaborate in my book is an anthropological and media-ontological one. 1 I contend that the old human horror vacui as well as the mechanical, “posthuman” reproduction of the world via photography can be read as keys...

... that is not subsumed in the central cultural concepts of our civilization. His cen- tral thesis is that our dealings with death and the dead determine the qual- ity of a culture. The potential of a culture to compensate for the horror vacui caused by the dynamic of civilization depends on its...

..., while the Funkturm is abandoned as well. When people do show up, they are gathered as a community around a street merchant or a fl ower seller, sweeping leaves together, clustered around children playing in a sandbox, or leaving work. Stone’s amor vacui contrasted with the horror vacui that Kra...

... East and West Germans. Here the city as terrain vague signifies the possibility of unity based on a concept of flourishing multiple identities.4 The amor vacui or fascination with derelict, uninhabited spaces that characterizes much contemporary German literature does not, however...