Arun Saldanha’s suffering continues

NOTES ON PLACE

• I know perfectly well my theory is ridiculously ambitious, but that’s the only way I can think of to tackle the fundamental problem of human space. We are surprisingly flexible in applying supposedly local knowledge to universal cases : Foucault to Chinese working spaces, Derrida to Madonna, Geertz to audience studies, Gramsci to patriarchy. Let’s be aware of our blatant universalism in building and applying theory. That’s what theory is all about - being blatant and knowing it.

• Human life is the complex and interaction of representations, desires, behaviour and relating to nature. Human life is organised in places.

• The relationships between the realms of human life (subject, language, action) is a ‘sociological’ problem and not immediately related to space, time and place. An articulation of representations, feelings and practices is called culture. A particular, identified articulation of representations, feelings and practices is called a culture.. Important cultural structures are what we call ‘society’, ‘community’, ‘economy’, ‘art’, ‘media’, ‘education’, ‘modernity’, ‘ethnicity’. Cultural structures can’t exist without each of the three realms - for instance, economy depends on exchange value (representation), use value (feelings) and production and consumption (practices). Cultural structures always exist in space-time envelops, and the representations of and feelings towards their location and distantiation in space-time is part of their structure. For example, the feelings and knowledge an indigenous group has about the insertion of their local economy in global capitalism is part of their economy. The self-representation of avant-garde within the history and geography of modernity is part of the avant-garde.

• Thus, perceived coherence in representation, subjectivity and action is called CULTURE. This coherence always has to bracket internal difference, and this always involves the POWER to do so. Coherence in time is called cultural reproduction. Coherence in space is called bounded community. Culture is connected to landscape, culture shapes landscape, landscape is culture materialized, landscape signifies culture and makes us feel home… but still I want to separate the material realm of environment from the cultural realm of action, subjectivity and discourse. The first is shaped by the second. Just for analytical reasons.

• In the first instance, with practices I mean purely bodily movement. With representations I mean purely semiotic potentialities. With feelings I mean purely subjective processes. With landscape I mean purely the environment as it is. In the second instance I might conflate action with ‘practices’ (rule-governed actions, social action), semiotics with ‘media discourse’ (‘texts’, codes, social definitions, myths, ideology), feelings with subjectivity and individuality and embodied knowledge and power as well, and landscape with the whole nature of a place, including geology and climatology.

• Representations and feelings on places can be grouped under the concept ‘imaginary spaces’. Imaginary spaces are the interplay of desires directed at places and truths constructed around places. Practices and the built environment can be grouped under the concept ‘actual spaces’ (I avoid the term ‘real spaces’ to bypass feminist critiques of masculinizing the ‘real’ and feminizing the ‘imaginary’, although this critique shows more essentialism than I would). Practices are enacted spaces, to do is to do space — practices exist, however fleetingly, in Euclidian space and that’s why I’d like to call them actual. I don’t think there’s need to justify calling the environment actual.

• I will need to incorporate the following concepts in order to avoid criticism :
• POWER, hegemony, domination, inequality, status
• ideology
• technology
• material culture
• identity
• means of production, commodification etc.
• discourse in the Foucauldian sense

• Debates I will need to explicitly mention to present my theory as something worthwhile :

• humanizing human geography
• time in geography
• space in social theory
• anti-essentialism in cultural studies
• materialism/textualism/subjectivism in social theory
• political economy vs cultural studies
• essentialism in humanist geography
• structuration theory
• environmental determinism and location theory
• power as productive
• embodiment

• How central is discourse ? Does discourse come ‘before’ practices, experience and landscape ? Or is there no need to follow Foucault — even though he seems correct in stressing the centrality of dicourse we might be getting into some new sort of base-superstructure metaphysics, a new causalism. I’d prefer, if I’d have to, putting practices as central to human life : discourse, knowledge and power cannot exist without practice, experience cannot exist without practice.

• The relationships between the realms of human life are pretty easy to concretize with examples. Practices shaping landscape : plouging (of course representations mediate). Landscape shaping action : vastness of the desert inviting explorers (of course, representations mediate). Representations shaping behaviour : rules in public spaces. Action shaping representations : travel tales. Landscape shaping experience : awe at the Grand Canyon (of course representations mediate). Experience shaping landscape is impossible, there is no influence of the ‘inner world’ on the ‘real world’ without action. Representations shaping experience : fear in dirty neighbourhoods. Experience shaping representation : poetic descriptions of places. Representations shaping landscape : spatial policy. Landscape shaping representations : mapping (in spite of deconstructions of maps, there’s no way you can deny there is some semblance between map and territory mapped). The connection between practices and experience is a bit tricky, I guess they’re no way you can separate them anyhow — whatever you do, you have to have some feelings towards what you’re doing, you have to think, sense, remember, intend. If you really want causalism : experience shaping practice is when you’re hungry, you walk to the fridge ; practice shaping experience, is when you hit your head on the fridge door, it hurts.

• A place is a named envelop in space-time : a section of three-dimensional space, always existing in time. Berlin before 1989, this was my bedroom, the old Greece, Zaire.

• Sometimes it might be funny talking about ‘places’, e.g. ‘the desert’ for colonialists, ‘at sea’ for vikings. My discussion is, speaking more precisely, more about spatiality , as socially constructed and interseting sets of places, than about ‘place.’ Place is also the space of a moving bus, even the place of a word on a page; place is my bed, place is heaven, place is Atlantis.

• Place is much more than a section of Euclidian space because an Euclidian demarcation doesn’t account for the representations, desires and practices about/within its space. Places are social constructs, and their existence and reproduction (identity) depends entirely on the interaction of their representations, the feelings people have about them, the activities that take place within them, and the material cultivation of the location. What’s more important perhaps, is that an abstract, empty vision of space cannot account for its production and constituting effects on social life (Lefebvre).

• Because places are social constructs, their demarcations will be never absolute. Boundaries are fluid, contested, and change over time. An example is the European Union. Nomads create places when they put up temporary camps, but when they move on the places cease to exist (at least for a while). The Indian and Pakistani governments have differing views on where exactly each country stops and the other begins.

The identity (sameness and selfness) of one particular place will always be constructed in relation to the identities of other places, a general ‘out there’, or places at a larger scale than the place we’re talking about. This is the constitutive outside of a place. Respective examples: Sydney defines its character as opposed to Melbourne; Earth as opposed to outer space; Scotland as opposed to United Kingdom. Because every place has a constitutive outside, it’s practically impossible to describe the identity of a place by refering to only this place’s representations, feelings, practices and form.

• Politics of place arises whenever there is meaningful difference within

- the intersubjective representations of that place

- the subjective experiences of that place

- the activities that take place within that place

This differentiation can come about in time (diachronic) or because of differences between social groups (synchronic). Diachronic and synchronic differentiation act together when the place gets inserted in supralocal flows. Taking into my previous note, the environment in itself doesn’t contain any culture or politics, but a social group or individual defines the landscape to be contradictory (or harmonious). A hammer is a hammer is a hammer, only when it’s got a different use-value for different people will politics arise. I don’t think this is subject/object dualism, because it’s the power to define the objects and the environment which makes the objects and environment compelling to humans and definitive for human conduct in their turn.

• Or, to cut the crap, difference is politics, identity is culture. Even identity of a person is culture (too much poststructuralist revisions of Freud to deny that). Even identity of an apple is culture (where and when does the apple end ?). And difference between two persons (difference in might, in sex, in age, in colour of skin, in income, in dialect) is politics. Difference within a place is politics, when there’s no difference, there’s nothing to worry about, the place is allright as it is, there’s perfect consensus on what’s supposed to happen in that place, who and what belongs there, how you’re supposed to talk about it, and everyone has the same experiences about it. It’s pretty clear no place without difference — no place without politics — can exist. That is, it’s clear culture is always charged. This is intimately related to the fact that places and cultures are spatially constituted, that is, with inter-local flows, local harmonies are ripped apart as new things, people, technologies, strategies and pleasures enter the stage. In this way, space has a power of its own, space, as the spatial order of social relations, is productive.

• Examples places/spaces with interesting politics
• the bathroom in a house with a teenage daughter
• a pop-art exhibition
• graffiti
• the English landscape
• Brussels
• the ‘black continent’
• the moon
• Zion
• Uluru/Ayer’s Rock
• a narrow two-way road
• anthropological field work

• What needs to be done is to conceptualize the friction between the ‘equilibrial place’ concept of existentialism and the ‘self-disruptive place’ concept of poststructuralism. The funny thing is, the larger society is, the more it has to break apart out of itself ; the more structure, the more action needed to reproduce and further diffuse it ; the more order, the more chaos, the more identity, the more difference; the more rationalization and homogenization of space, the more fragmentation and heterogenization. Wow this is some paradox.

• Translocality in the sense Appadurai uses it seems to be a purely representational phenomenon (though maybe produced by real translocal links of practices and technoscapes), translocality is an imagined geography, an imagined translocality. But actual spaces are more important I feel. Placing too much importance on imagined geographies gets us into stating that technology has eroded our sense of place, that we all live in an instant now, we are all part of a planetary consciousness, one community, one audience, one goal, one connectivity, one village. That’s clearly not the case and I will continue to call everyday life ‘outside’ reading practices and telecommunication (encounters with texts, use of technology, media reception, whatever) more important. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no relationship between translocal imaginings and ‘real’ practices, as in the questioning of traditional institutions by global youth in Bangalore exemplified.

• Giddens’ structuration theory and Castell’s understanding of place in space are certainly to be brought into the picture. Let’s say that apart from the material and cultural realms of place (resp. the landscape and the representations/practices/ feelings), there is a SPATIAL aspect of place — its position in time-space, and how it relates to other places in time-space in ‘objective’ terms. These are two aspects of the same thing : when there is time-space distantiation, there is interlocal influencing, and local accumulation of interlocal exchange. Location-distantiation is objective, ‘physical’, but not part of the cultural realm of a place, nor of the material realm. But it can have its cultural or material effects and underpinnings. Location-distantiation in representation is e.g. the nation-state; in feelings, homeland; in landscape, cables ; in practices, exploring.

• Power is an extremely elusive concept. I broadly align myself with Foucault’s analysis. Humans define objects, phenomena, places, spaces, activities etc. — an observation from symbolic interactionism I think we can safely apply. This definition and evaluation is what we called culture above. But definition, identity always involves power, here’s where Foucault comes into the picture. Culture is power. The signification, categorization, dichotomization, placing, spacing of everything around us needs the exertion of power to do so. In itself, the world is pure movement, flux, flow, betweenness, dynamics (see philosophy from Heraclitos to Deleuze). Giving the world meaning, coping with it, requires pinning things down. This pinning down, this reification of meaning, happens through culture and is thus culturally variable.

• ‘Pop music’, ‘Australian culture’, ‘Geography’, ‘cultural imperialism’, ‘breasts are sexy’, ‘art’, ‘criminals’, ‘sacred sites’, ‘free trade is democracy’, ‘red light is stop’ : to speak of these is to identify them and to idenfity them requires force, discursive violence. It’s not a repressive proces, as I said it enables us to live. We not only live by these definitions, we live these definitions. Power is productive, it’s the condition for the order of life. Music journalists can call Spice Girls a commercial farce ; white Australians can feel at home in a landscape that wasn’t theirs before ; professors can claim faculty funding ; Third World Leninists can demonstrate against MacDonald’s ; heterosexual men can get aroused at exposed breasts (and homosexual men can get squeamish) ; ministers of Culture can allow subsidies to the art sector ; graffiti artists can be fined ; people feel the presence of God in the solemness of the church ; multinationals can exert pressure on national governments to close down economic bariers in the name of democracy ; cars don’t crash. As you can see, power is multidirectional and reaches every little thing we do and think (Foucault’s ‘microphysics of power’).

• What we usually call ‘domination’ and ‘resistance’ can both involve power, both can involve forms of knowledge, government of action, strategies, defining what has to be done, defining options for the future. Socialism requires disciplining labourers as much as capitalism does. Domination and resistance are connected in Gramscian terms (coercion needs consent) but Foucault enables us to overcome the fault many sociologists (including some Gramscians) make in defining resistance negatively, as that what exists in the spaces untouched by power, that what remains after we bracket power. Domination is effective and real when it brings forth resistance — resistance is the proof that a power relation exists. But obviously, power relations are unequal, that is, those ‘in power’ can define and prescribe more than those ‘under power’. Even though the definitions and prescriptions might be actively reproduced more by the ‘oppressed’ than the ‘oppressors’, we shouldn’t forget whose definitions and prescriptions they were in the first place.

• Let’s say resistance on an everyday and unconscious level, that is, before it’s organized in ‘social movement’, does not include power/knowledge and instrumentality, as in the ‘resistance’ in Eco’s semiotic guerilla warfare, or in Bakhtin’s carnaval. (Note however that some cultural studies scholars called this type of resistance cultural power…) Maybe it’s fruitful to make an analytical distinction between resistance as tactic and resistance as strategy, using Certeau’s terminology. While both involve ‘power’ (even the oppositional tactic of shoplifting for pleasure involves certain rules, ways of knowing and doing) the power of tactics are mostly based on pleasure not rational interest, and can’t intentionally shape the conduct and thinking of others to the same extent the power of larger instutions can.

• Hegemonic as well as counterhegemonic power depend on discursive violence — as analysts we can use our privileged positions in society for supporting counterhegemonic forces because we feel responsible for critiqueing power structures, and that without our support, some people (the ‘oppressed’) will be worse off than they already are. Hegemony and counterhegemony are two power-blocs clashing.

• Of course, hegemonies articulate (Laclau). Foucault’s sweeping critique of Power shouldn’t blind the fact that there are only multiplicities and temporary alliances of power, that is, different social groups might ‘work together’ to achieve differing political goals or cultural satisfactions. This is true on the level of strategy as well as tactic.

• However, there’s something awkward with Foucault as I understand him. Foucault, even though he introduced the concept of power into philosophy leaves no place for politics. Foucault’s power just happens, it is exerted, there are no concrete subjects doing this, the anonymous ‘one’ of structuralism and poststructuralism Lefebvre complains about. Granted, Foucault does theorize about how subjects subject themselves to power, how power actually constitutes individuality and sense of identity, but there is hardly any talk of ambivalence and struggle. If self and interpretation and body and unconscious resistance are nothing but the effects and the constituents of Power, Power becomes inescapable and all-encompassing, totally self-reproducing and self-evident… in fact, as metaphysical as the concept ‘modes of production’. Against this view, I want to treat power (and culture and identity and truth) as something that has to be performed , practised, maintained, not only with the necessity of resistance, but always with the possibility of change and variability. Like in the examples above, we live definitions ; power is productive, it is enabling, but for this, it has to be reflexively exerted by agents. Taking into account the interpretativity of agents (and the ethics of agency) means we sometimes doubt our categories, doubt what we are doing (is this really criminal ? aren’t aboriginals also Australians ? can drag queens be beautiful ? will political economy bring salvation ?) — the contradictions and situatedness in our cultural definitions becoming apparent. When the conflicts become apparent, what arises is politics, the definitions are contested, fought over, the things attaining more meanings, difference. Power therefore necessarily entails politics. Politics is not only the result of the resistances to and the clashings and articulations of hegemonies and counterhegemonies, but there is also politics within hegemony and politics within counterhegemony. Thus, my problem with Foucault is not that he talks of ‘domination’ and is relatively silent on ‘resistance’ — resistance is also power, reactive power. My problem lies in the status he acredits to power. Power is not faceless, patriarchy isn’t faceless, exploitation isn’t faceless. Power is experienced, power depends on interpretation and negotiation, and is therefore malleable and messy.

• How about : to contain, categorize, eliminate, control, conceal difference, to attain IDENTITY of action, of thinking, of space, of meaning, of people, you’ll need POWER (power by means of rules, valuation, dispersion, discipline, coercion, ‘complicit pleasures’, knowledge, technologies, truth, law, ideology, status, roles - in short, by means of CULTURE). When power fails, there’s POLITICS. When power is effective, there’s no conflict, there is consensus. But because power has to be performed by interpreting agents, and because power is capricious, ambivalent, contradictory, situated and multiple, there is always difference, hence there is always politics.