Bardamu, fugind din Africa, ajuns in uzinele Ford. Voyage au bout de la nuit, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Tout tremblait dans l’immense édifice et soi-même des pieds aux oreilles possédé par le tremblement, il en venait des vitres et du plancher et de la ferraille, des secousses, vibré de haut en bas. On en devenait machine aussi soi-même à force et de toute sa viande encore tremblotante dans ce bruit de rage énorme qui vous prenait le dedans et le tour de la tête et plus bas vous agitant les tripes et remontait aux yeux par petits coups précipités, infinis, inlassables. (…)
On cède au bruit comme on cède à la guerre. On se laisse aller aux machines avec les trois idées qui restent à vaciller tout en haut derrière le front de la tête. C’est fini. Partout ce qu’on regarde, tout ce que la main touche, c’est dur à présent. Et tout ce dont on arrive à se souvenir encore un peu est raidi aussi comme du fer et n’a plus de gout dans la pensée.
On est devenu salement vieux d’un seul coup.
Il faut abolir la vie du dehors, en faire aussi d’elle de l’acier, quelque chose d’utile. On l’aimait pas assez telle qu’elle était, c’est pour ça. Faut en faire un objet donc, du solide, c’est la Règle.
Lefty Stephanides, emigrant grec, in Detroitul aceleiasi perioade. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we’ve all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
But in 1922 it was still a new thing to be a machine. (…)
Every fourteen seconds Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stephanides grinds a bearing and O’Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. This camshaft travels away on a conveyor, curling around the factory, through its clouds of metal dust, its acid fogs, until another worker fifty yards on reaches up and removes the camshaft, fitting it onto the engine block (twenty seconds). Simultaneously, other men are unhooking parts from adjacent conveyors – the carburetor, the distributor, the intake manifold – and connecting them to the engine block. Above their bent heads, huge spindles pound steam-powered fists. No one says a word. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stephanides grinds a bearing and O’Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft.
Astazi, timpul nu mai are rabdare: Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. The ruins of Detroit, Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography
“Până la Holocaust, gândirea critică a Occidentului şi a Europei în general a fost una lipsită de autocenzură, universalistă şi triumfantă. Holocaustul a provocat însă un sentiment de vinovăţie atât de puternic, încât a dus la o paralizie a spiritului european, l-a făcut prudent şi ezitant. Faptul că o monstruozitate precum Holocaustul a fost posibilă în Europa aşa-zis “civilizată” a pulverizat pentru un timp încă nedeterminat autoritatea morală a Europei. 
