Another quote from M. de Certeau that I am in love with right now:
"What is a theory, if not the articulatoin of a pracitce? And what is an epistemology, if not a discourse that elucidates that relationship?"
I am hoping that our cluster could be a pracitce of inquiry as such.
5.23.2009
"politics of location" : Provocative extracts from bell hooks's writing
Thinking of our discussion yesterday, I was very excited when reading these extracts as follows this morning, which may be helpful in terms of clarifing our research identities and place/space/location. Here I would like to share with you all since I really like it though the label of "postmodernity" might remain an ongoing issue open to debate.
It is actually quoted by E. D. Soja in his "Planning in/for Postmodernity"(pp.247-8) from this book
"Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space where ties are severed or it can provide the occasion for new and varied forms of bonding. To some extent, ruptures, surfaces, contextuality, and a host of other happenings create gaps that make space for oppositional practices... A space is there for critical exchange...[and] this may very well be "the" central future location of resistance struggle, a meeting place where new and radical happenings can occur.
As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, the "politics of location" necessarily calls those of us who would participate in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision oneself there is diffcult yet necessary. It is not a "safe" place. One is always at risk. One needs a community of resistance.
There is a definite distinction between the marginality which is imposed by oppresive structure and that marginality one chooses as a site of resistance, as a location of radical openness and possibility. It was this marginality that I was naming as a central location for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse that is not just found in words but in habits of being and the way one lives. As such I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes to lose, to give up, but rather as a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one's capacity to resist. It offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and to create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds.
This is an intervention. A message from that space in the margin that is a site of creativity and power, that inclusive space where we recover ourselves, where we move in solidarity to erase the category colonizer/colonized. Marginality is the space of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there."
Isn't the last paragraph inspiringly covering what we were grappling with yesterday? :P
It is actually quoted by E. D. Soja in his "Planning in/for Postmodernity"(pp.247-8) from this book
"Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space where ties are severed or it can provide the occasion for new and varied forms of bonding. To some extent, ruptures, surfaces, contextuality, and a host of other happenings create gaps that make space for oppositional practices... A space is there for critical exchange...[and] this may very well be "the" central future location of resistance struggle, a meeting place where new and radical happenings can occur.
As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, the "politics of location" necessarily calls those of us who would participate in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision oneself there is diffcult yet necessary. It is not a "safe" place. One is always at risk. One needs a community of resistance.
There is a definite distinction between the marginality which is imposed by oppresive structure and that marginality one chooses as a site of resistance, as a location of radical openness and possibility. It was this marginality that I was naming as a central location for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse that is not just found in words but in habits of being and the way one lives. As such I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes to lose, to give up, but rather as a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one's capacity to resist. It offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and to create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds.
This is an intervention. A message from that space in the margin that is a site of creativity and power, that inclusive space where we recover ourselves, where we move in solidarity to erase the category colonizer/colonized. Marginality is the space of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there."
Isn't the last paragraph inspiringly covering what we were grappling with yesterday? :P
3.27.2009
5.10.2008
The right to the City
In "Loose Space," Lefebvre’s explication, the ”right to the city” encompassing the “right to freedom, to individualization, to habitat and to inhabit” is borrowed to lay theoretical ground for arguing freely used public space. Then I realized that "The right to the City" is both a piece and a section in Lefebvre's "Wrtings on Cities". This seemingly banal phrase is actually related to his pursuit for "urban people in the urban," which encourages revolutionary approaches and practice in humanism, especially architects and planners and who else serve the making of the city but slip beyond the narrowly-defined professional categories (see on 152-153 how he criticize us!!).
In this regards, Lefebvre calls for new urban strategy(see 154-157) and interestingly cries for the philosophical sense of "art" to help fashioning the practice. As he suggests,
" As necessary as science, but not sufficient, art brings to the realization of urban society its long meditation on life as drama and pleasure."(156)
After grounding the context, he turns to arguing the significance of "the right to the city." To my surprise, he actually parallels “rights to the city” as cry and a demand in the face of the emergence of the pseudo-right, as coined, “the right to nature." As I am concerned, he implicated that people would rather suffer in the city with the hope to find compensation in the nature without dreaming for change our city today. Such cruel comment is given, "
As follows is from the annotated bibliography from "Loose Space" (293)
Lefebvre, H.(1996) Writings on Cities
Lefebvre criticizes the "functional" understanding of both cities and urban spaces, counterposing it to the diversity and creativity of everyday "use value." He notes that throughout history, city centers were not only commercial but also ocncentrations of religious, intellectual, political and economically productive activity. It is in urban spaces that people meet their needs for socialization, representation and play. The diversity of social needs inevitably leads to tension, to the confrontation and negotiation of difference, and also to disequilibrium and unpredictability. This is part of what attracts people to urban space. The book's introduction provides a digestible overview of Lefebvre's ideas and his influences on a later generation of US scholars.
In this regards, Lefebvre calls for new urban strategy(see 154-157) and interestingly cries for the philosophical sense of "art" to help fashioning the practice. As he suggests,
" As necessary as science, but not sufficient, art brings to the realization of urban society its long meditation on life as drama and pleasure."(156)
After grounding the context, he turns to arguing the significance of "the right to the city." To my surprise, he actually parallels “rights to the city” as cry and a demand in the face of the emergence of the pseudo-right, as coined, “the right to nature." As I am concerned, he implicated that people would rather suffer in the city with the hope to find compensation in the nature without dreaming for change our city today. Such cruel comment is given, "
The point for Lefebvre is that the urban environment, “place of encounter, priority of use value, inscription in space of a time promoted to the rank of a supreme resource among all resources, find its morphological base and its practiceo-material realization.”(158) Besides, h
As follows is from the annotated bibliography from "Loose Space" (293)
Lefebvre, H.(1996) Writings on Cities
Lefebvre criticizes the "functional" understanding of both cities and urban spaces, counterposing it to the diversity and creativity of everyday "use value." He notes that throughout history, city centers were not only commercial but also ocncentrations of religious, intellectual, political and economically productive activity. It is in urban spaces that people meet their needs for socialization, representation and play. The diversity of social needs inevitably leads to tension, to the confrontation and negotiation of difference, and also to disequilibrium and unpredictability. This is part of what attracts people to urban space. The book's introduction provides a digestible overview of Lefebvre's ideas and his influences on a later generation of US scholars.
5.01.2008
"raisins in dough"-Victor Turner's ethnographic approach
Some description and quotations found in Wiki's entry of Victor Turner are so impressive as follows. I personally appreciate his using raisins in dough as metaphor to implicate flickers and flashes of thoughts.
---
Turner was also a committed ethnographer who constantly mused about his craft in his books and articles. Eclectic in his use of ideas borrowed from other theorists, he was rigorous in demanding that the ideas he developed illuminate ethnographic data; a theorist for theory's sake he was not. A powerful example of his attitudes can be found in the opening paragraph of the essay “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors” in Victor Turner (1974) Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. There he writes,
In moving from experience of social life to conceptualization and intellectual history, I follow the path of anthropologists almost everywhere. Although we take theories into the field with us, these become relevant only if and when they illuminate social reality. Moreover, we tend to find very frequently that it is not a theorist’s whole system which so illuminates, but his scattered ideas, his flashes of insight taken out of systemic context and applied to scattered data. Such ideas have a virtue of their own and may generate new hypotheses. They even show how scattered facts may be systematically connected! Randomly distributed through some monstrous logical system, they resemble nourishing raisins in a cellular mass of inedible dough. The intuitions, not the tissue of logic connecting them, are what tend to survive in the field experience.
---
Turner was also a committed ethnographer who constantly mused about his craft in his books and articles. Eclectic in his use of ideas borrowed from other theorists, he was rigorous in demanding that the ideas he developed illuminate ethnographic data; a theorist for theory's sake he was not. A powerful example of his attitudes can be found in the opening paragraph of the essay “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors” in Victor Turner (1974) Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. There he writes,
In moving from experience of social life to conceptualization and intellectual history, I follow the path of anthropologists almost everywhere. Although we take theories into the field with us, these become relevant only if and when they illuminate social reality. Moreover, we tend to find very frequently that it is not a theorist’s whole system which so illuminates, but his scattered ideas, his flashes of insight taken out of systemic context and applied to scattered data. Such ideas have a virtue of their own and may generate new hypotheses. They even show how scattered facts may be systematically connected! Randomly distributed through some monstrous logical system, they resemble nourishing raisins in a cellular mass of inedible dough. The intuitions, not the tissue of logic connecting them, are what tend to survive in the field experience.
Why Gossip? on Everyday Urbanism?
I do believe that everyone enjoys gossiping to certain degree. It just varies in topics and manners. Sometimes you don't realize that you are actually practicing it. Yet you could not deny it is a rather easy way to communicate and to share.
Then, the point is what to share. As you could see, our target should be "everyday urbanism." To be plain, the motivation to share thoughts here is a proposal for mapping and understanding this notion in a more dynamic way. Since the notion itself is such a concept in flux, I hope the discussion about it could be more creative and unlimited, as if we are practicing our everyday life in such a virtual space. So, let's gossip.
If you don't know how to get started, here are some suggestion:
1. A term that confuses you when reading literatures in this vein
2. An academic that you would suggest anyone interests in this topic should learn from
3. Any interesting book? or books that suck?
4. Any creative practice that you happen to learn?
5. Cool thing or idea? Any thought?
I actually have a hope that a glossaries of "everyday urbanism" could be accumulated by these gossip-style collaboration. The more diverse materials and perspectives we share, the richer the content will be.
Then, the point is what to share. As you could see, our target should be "everyday urbanism." To be plain, the motivation to share thoughts here is a proposal for mapping and understanding this notion in a more dynamic way. Since the notion itself is such a concept in flux, I hope the discussion about it could be more creative and unlimited, as if we are practicing our everyday life in such a virtual space. So, let's gossip.
If you don't know how to get started, here are some suggestion:
1. A term that confuses you when reading literatures in this vein
2. An academic that you would suggest anyone interests in this topic should learn from
3. Any interesting book? or books that suck?
4. Any creative practice that you happen to learn?
5. Cool thing or idea? Any thought?
I actually have a hope that a glossaries of "everyday urbanism" could be accumulated by these gossip-style collaboration. The more diverse materials and perspectives we share, the richer the content will be.
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