104 research outputs found
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Introduction: the Unconscious, Transference, Drives, Repetition and Other Things Tied to Geography
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"Creating a World for Spirit": affectual infrastructures and the production of a place for affect
A progressive sense of place and the open city: Micro-spatialities and micro-conflicts on a north London council estate
Doreen Masseyâs progressive sense of place (2005) and Richard Sennettâs ethical case for the open city (2018) rely on seeing space as open. It is openness that guarantees an open future, an openness to others, and the possibility of a progressive politics. Curiously, the Garden City, for both, becomes a test case for a progressive sense of the open city. For Massey, her lived experience of growing up in Wythenshawe reveals both the pos- sibility of, and also the undermining of, the possibility of creating a progressive sense of place. In contrast, Sennett sees the Garden City, for all its progressive elements, as ultimately blocking new ways of dwelling in the city. The Garden City, for him, is too closed to provide a progressive sense of place. In north London, we discover a hidden Garden City, with secret gardens. Its micro-spatialities â and its micro-conflicts â enable us to rethink both these accounts of a progressive sense of place and of the open city. Rather than seeing openness in a physical infrastructure of space and place, we wish to emphasize the openness and closedness that emerges from the ways the people encounter, manage and dispute the microspatialities of everyday life on the estate
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âLondon is avocado on toastâ: The urban imaginaries of the #LondonIsOpen campaign
This article examines the production, representations and reactions to the #LondonIsOpen campaign to ask how urban imaginaries are produced and what they entail for understanding the city. The analysis considers how the idea of a cosmopolitan, diverse and multicultural city is framed, what it includes and excludes and the distinct geographies of the city it produces. It draws on three data sources: documentary analysis of videos used in the campaign; social media analysis of tweets using #LondonIsOpen; and semi-structured interviews with key figures in the campaign team. The main arguments are that the appeal to openness contributes to the versatility of the campaign and the range of responses to it, making it highly adaptable and flexible to respond to current affairs; and that open London is geographically selective and imagined as business focused, trendy and cosmopolitan. In turn, the reactions to the idea of open London range from seeking a borderless world to anti-migrant rhetoric. Although the campaign represents London as welcoming and inclusive, such welcoming is partial and subject to contestation. The article concludes that over time, the openness of #LondonIsOpen has come to serve multiple political functions and act as a brand for the city
âLondon is avocado on toastâ: the urban imaginaries of the #LondonIsOpen campaign
This article examines the production, representations and reactions to the #LondonIsOpen campaign to ask how urban imaginaries are produced and what they entail for understanding the city. The analysis considers how the idea of a cosmopolitan, diverse and multicultural city is framed, what it includes and excludes and the distinct geographies of the city it produces. It draws on three data sources: documentary analysis of videos used in the campaign; social media analysis of tweets using #LondonIsOpen; and semi-structured interviews with key figures in the campaign team. The main arguments are that the appeal to openness contributes to the versatility of the campaign and the range of responses to it, making it highly adaptable and flexible to respond to current affairs; and that open London is geographically selective and imagined as business focused, trendy and cosmopolitan. In turn, the reactions to the idea of open London range from seeking a borderless world to anti-migrant rhetoric. Although the campaign represents London as welcoming and inclusive, such welcoming is partial and subject to contestation. The article concludes that over time, the openness of #LondonIsOpen has come to serve multiple political functions and act as a brand for the city
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Politicization, postpolitics and the open city: Openness, closedness and the spatialisation of the political
The idea of the open city has been used both conceptually and analytically to understand the politics of the city. The contrast between the open city and the closed city relies, in part, upon an understanding of the global systems that enfold cities and, consequently, the politics that are â and are not â afforded cities. Notions such as the postpolitical city depend not on temporality where the city has ceased to be political, but a spatialisation of politics where the (properly) political has become excluded by the closed systems that envelope cities. In this paper, we explore analytical and theoretical responses to the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire to disclose the ways that different critiques of neoliberalism and racial capitalism deploy and rely upon different conceptions of the open and closed systems of the city. Rather than settle for the open/closed binary, we seek to understand how different forms of openness and closedness afford/constrain the politicisation (and depoliticization) of city life â and its catastrophes
Bodies Moving and Being Moved: Mapping affect in Christian Nold's Bio Mapping
In A History of Spaces (2004), John Pickles observes that one of the less well-known representational norms of mapping is its focus on ânatural and physical objects rather than developing universal conventions dealing with symbol, affect and movement.â New media artist Christian Nold's work has dealt explicitly with two of these cartographic blindspots, grafting new and old technologies that both, in different ways, create bodily tracesâââthe GPS trace of movement and the GSR (galvanic skin response) trace of arousal, often taken as an index of emotional response. Although Nold's socially engaged practice can be placed within the âlocative mediaâ genre it also taps into the technological imaginaries around physiological sensors and intimate data. This paper considers Nold's Bio Mapping (2004-) projects in the context of his longstanding concern with social collectives and public space as a field of social relations. Looking at particular maps from Nold's Bio Mapping project, it considers the implications of blending the traces of the body's internal states with the traces produced by locomotive movement, and the relationship between the individuals thus traced and the collectives that Nold seeks to represent. Concurrent with Nold's practice there has been a wave of interest in affect and emotion (and the distinction between them) within the humanities. This paper brings Nold's work into contact with the Deleuzian/Spinozan concept of affect employed in one strand of this writing, drawing in particular on the work of Brian Massumi. Rather than using theory to simply illustrate Nold's practice, it follows the implications of Deleuze's cartographic model of individuation, the logic of which ultimately problematises the very distinction between the two bodily phenomena traced by Nold's device
Revisiting âplaceâ in a realist novel: âThinking spaceâ in GaldĂłsâs Torquemada en la hoguera (1889)
Departing from the premise that GaldĂłsâs close engagement with space and place deserves to be at the forefront of scholarly attention, this article provides an in-depth study of their significance in Torquemada en la hoguera. It begins by analysing the relationship between the novelâs locations and the real world, demonstrating that the author codes the city of Madrid to express social concerns and promote reader engagement. It then proceeds to examine the public and private spheres, before highlighting the âplace of the imaginationâ in the novel. It reveals that, as in GaldĂłsâs press articles, reality is used as a springboard in Torquemada en la hoguera and, drawing upon recent theories, it posits that places serve as a framework for engaging readers with contemporary concerns and as an imaginative springboard for GaldĂłs. They trigger what is effectively a âthinking spaceâ for the author and it is through unravelling their significance that we can fully appreciate GaldĂłsâs psychological sensitivity, the novelâs modernity, its symbolic value, and imaginative depth. The article concludes by proposing that GaldĂłsâs works deserve to be re-examined as âNovels of the Geographical Imaginationâ and urges readers to revisit the significance of space and place therein
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