You know what this Wednesday night is? Theory for Dinner Time. Any last minute cramers can find our processional hymn, Michel Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces”, here.
Unlike the seminar room, drinking is somewhat encouraged. Bring tasty snacks, libations, and an appetite for discussion. It’s far better to come with questions rather than answers, so please don’t be discouraged by any linguistic trickery on Foucault’s part. He’s a pretty likeable guy once you get to know him, I promise.
Merriment starts at 7pm and the philosophizing begins more so around 7:30, so the court finds your lateness quite tolerable.
I hope to see your faces and get to know you better!
There seems to be a lot of confusion about SlutWalk.
It began with a comment from a Toronto police officer who said, “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized,” but it’s not really about that one comment.
It encompasses an effort to reclaim ‘slut’, but its not really about that one word.
It’s an opportunity for people to meet wearing their most ostentatious outfits, but it’s not really about the clothes.
It wouldn’t be enough to take back a word, or to confront people with bare legs. Resoundingly, at its core, it’s about the discourse of victim-blaming and how we “manage” sexual assault by disciplining select behaviours, primarily that of women.
It is an expression of outrage at the neo-liberal self-management of our bodies that is so deeply woven into our system of policing sexual assault.
It is an assertion of keeping sexuality alive and free in the face of narratives that seek to keep women afraid- discourses which code certain spaces, acts and behaviours as self-violating.
It seems that a great deal of art today takes the form of an investigation of space.
Beginning with the spatial relations of minimalist sculpture, moving to Robert Smithson’s site/non-site relations, and evolving into street art, earth art, installations and interventions, all these practices seem to strengthen Michel Foucault’s suggestion that the present epoch has abandoned the 19th century obsession with time in lieu of an on-going anxiety about space. His essay “Text/Contexts: Of Other Spaces” (available here) attempts to account for this phenomenon and, in doing so, lays out a useful vocabulary of speaking about spaces and the relations formed therein.
A space, it seems, is never simply a space. It is public or private, open or closed, productive or fallow. This suggests to Foucault that, despite the promise of rationality and the desacralization of modern life, spaces have not yet been practically desanctified. The taboos and rituals of spaces, whether in terms of access, purification, or location, still continue to a degree, detached from their precise spiritual praxis and filtered imperfectly down to us today. For example, graveyards would seem ideally suited as neighbours, and yet the resonance of the dead can make their proximity uncomfortable. Burial grounds are not parks, places for leisure or quiet contemplation, because it would seem profane to go about the business of living in the space of the dead. Likewise, in order to enter a church, courthouse, or art gallery you usually have to climb several steps and pass through an antechamber before entering into its proper space rather than merely entering its property. This serves to sacralize its procedures and render its space separate from the profane and public sphere. It was no mere happenstance that these spaces were often delineated with marble columns and classical architecture, sanctifying the interior through the formal vocabulary of a Greek temple. Alternatively, other spaces become demarcated as abject without due cause. Trash, dilapidated neighbourhoods, and infirmaries induce hygienic concerns both parts medical and moral.
In-between Edmonton’s snow storms and perilous slush there sometimes emerges a brief window of perfect pedestrian weather. The sidewalks are shovelled and ice-free. The wind is warm so there’s no need to bury your face into a scarf or tuck your chin into your jacket collar. You are able to be aware of your surroundings in ways that the cold often denies us. If winter is the season of downcast glances and plodding steps, then spring is not only a time of re-awakening the senses, but also intensifying the gaze.
Whether watching passersby from a patio or taking in the multitude of a festival crowd, many of the phenomena of living in the city are profoundly scopic and situate us in a network of visual exchange. Vision is often thought of as a fleeting act, innocent enough, and certainly not harmful. And yet, there are those who claim that looking can be a vector of power and that gazes, moreover, are very rarely an equal exchange.
Barbra Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face), 1981.
These kinds of thoughts have lately had me pondering issues of surveillance and the freedom of mobility in the city. A convincing argument can be made that public spaces are never free spaces because we are always disciplined by this network of implied vision. Someone, after all, could be watching. This is a relatively old idea, and one that found its way into some very influential theory. I’d like to run two such theoretical models by you, and also suggest how theory might find its way into practice.
