Edward W Soja Thirdspace Journeys To Los Angeles and Other Realandimagined Places 1 PDF

THIRDSPACE
For the students who have taught me Journeys to Los Angeles and Other
Real-and-Imagined Places
Edward W. S~ja
II]BLACI<WELL
Publishers
Copyright Edward W. Soja 1996
The right of Edward W. Soja to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 1996

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Blackwell Publishers Inc.

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Contents
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the publisher.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise List of Illustrations viii
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Acknowledgements X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Introduction/Itinerary/Overture 1
Soja, Edward W.
Thirdspace I Edward W. Soja
PART I DISCOVERING THIRDSPACE 24
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55786-674-0.- ISBN 1-55786-675-9 26
1 The Extraordinary Voyages of Henri Lefebvre
1. Space perception. 2. Geographical perception. 3 Sociology,
Urban. 4. Postrnodernism-Social aspects. 5. Los Angeles (Calif.)- Origins 29
-Social conditions. I. Title. Pathways 32
HM206.S633 1966 95-26474 Approximations 36
304.2'3-dc20 CIP
Arrivals 47
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
2 The Trialectics of Spatiality 53
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library. Envisioning Thirdspace Through "The Aleph" 54
Thirding-as-Othering 60
Typeset in 11 on 13pt Palatino Summarizing Again/Before Moving On 70
by Wearset, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Printed in Great Britain by T. J. Press (Padstow) Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
3 Exploring the Spaces that Difference Makes:
This book is printed on acid-free paper 83
Notes on the Margin
On the Differences that Postmodernity Makes 86
On the Workings of Power 86
On Radical Subjectivities 88
On the Disordering of Difference 92
vi Contents Contents vii
In Thirdspace with bell hooks 96 Palimpsest 218

Choosing Marginality 97 Panopticon 228
The Margin as a Space of Radical Difference 100 Back to the Beginning 236
4 Increasing the Openness of Thirdspace 106 8 Inside Exopolis: Everyday Life in the Postmodern
The Spatial Feminist Critique 107 World 237
Gendering Cityspace: The Feminist Critique of Urbanism 108 "Toto, I've Got a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Any More" 238
The Postmodern Spatial Feminist Critique 111 Introducing Exopolis 238
The Paradoxical Space of Feminism and Geography 119 Re-imaged-in-LA: A Little Bit of Baudrillard 239
The Postcolonial Critique 125 Scenes from Orange County and a Little Beyond 244
The Borderlands of Gloria Anzaldua 127 Scene 1: A Mythology of Origins 245
ChicanismafChicanismo: Reworlding the Border 129 Scene 2: Iconic Emplacements 249
The Reworldings of Gayatri Spivak 134 Scene 3: The Diversions of Yorba Linda 252
The Imaginative Geographies of Edward Said 136 Scene 4: UCI- A Campus by Design 254
The Third Space of Homi Bhabha 139 Scene 5: Spotting the Spotless in the City of Irvine 258
Scene 6: Roots and Wings 259
5 Heterotopologies: Foucault and the Geohistory of Scene 7: It's a Mall World After All 263
Otherness 145 Scene 8: Cities That Are Doubles of Themselves 266
A Second Discovery 145 Scene 9: On the Little Tactics of the Habitat 270
Crossing Paths: Lefebvre and Foucault 146 Scene 10: Scamscapes: The Capitals of Fiction Become Reality 27 4
Other Crossings 149 Finale: The Precession of Exopolis 278
In Thirdspace with Michel Foucault 154
Utopias and Heterotopias 9 The Stimulus of a Little Confusion: A Contemporary
155
The Principles of Heterotopology 159 Comparison of Amsterdam and Los Angeles 280
The Heterotopology ofThirdspace 162 On Spuistraat 281
Off Spuistraat 296
Postscript I: On the Views from Above and Below 310
6 Re-Presenting the Spatial Critique of Historicism 164 Postscript II: A Preview of Postmetropolis 315
A New Introduction 165
The Persistence of Historicism 174 Select Bibliography 321
Why Loving Maps is Not Enough 174
Hayden White Meets Henri Lefebvre 179 Name Index 326
Subject Index 329

PART II INSIDE AND OUTSIDE LOS ANGELES 184
7 Remembrances: A Heterotopology of the Citadei-LA 186

Pictured at an Exhibition 187
The Preliminary Discourse 187
Getting to Biddy Mason's Place 188
Remembering the Bastille: 1789-1989 193
The Main Event: Symbolizing the Civic Center 194
Entrancement 195
CITADEL-LA 204
Cultural Crown 211
List of Illustrations ix
8 The Cultural Acropolis (Original photo of Disney Hall

model courtesy of Joshua White; photo of homeless
shelters courtesy of Diego Cardoso) 217
9 Pueblo Palimpsest (Image of Avila Adobe from drawing

by Eduard Van Voorhees Shaw in G. DeMarco, A Short
History of Los Angeles, San Francisco: Lexikos, 1988;
List of Illustrations photos by Edward Soja) 227
10 The New World (Photos by Antonis Ricos and Edward Soja;

sculptures by Torn Otterness; "Molecule Men" by Jonathan
Borofsky) 230
11 Orange County Sites 245
12 Cathedrals of Iconic Reassurance (Photos by Edward Soja) 248
13 Ex-Centric Centralities (Photos by Edward Soja) 266
All the illustrations have been designed and produced at Ricos 14 Free to Be in Amsterdam (Photos by Edward Soja;
Studios ([email protected]) by Antonis Ricos in collaboration with background adapted from poster "Free as a Bird in
the author. Acknowledgements for the photographs used are pre- Amsterdam", WV Amsterdam Tourist Office) 284
sented here rather than in the text. Illustrations are identified in the
text only by page number. 15 On Spuistraat (Photos by Edward Soja; upper right
window view adapted from photo H. Lozes, in
1 Henri Lefebvre/Discovering Thirdspace (Frontispiece to Part I; Amsterdam: Everyman Guides, London: David Campbell
photo courtesy of John Friedmann) 25 Publishers, 1993: 113) 288
2a The Trialectics of Being: Spatiality-Sociality-Historicality 71

Cover artwork The cover and spine were designed by Ricos-Soja.
2b The Trialectics of Spatiality: Lived-Perceived-Conceived Spaces 74 Background photos adapted from Illustrations 1, 3, and 10; icon of
swirling complementary colors represents the Trialectics of
3 Inside and Outside Los Angeles (Frontispiece to Part II; Illustrations 2a and 2b.
photo Antonis Ricos) 184
4 Biddy Mason's Place (Photo of Biddy Mason and original

map courtesy of Dolores Hayden and MIT Press, publishers
of The Power of Place, 1995) 189
5 Floreal Entrancement (Photo courtesy of Garo Ajanian) 195
6 The Bastaventure (Photos courtesy of Garo Ajanian and

Antonis Ricos; model designed by Edward Soja and
produced by Ali Barar and James Kaylor) 197
7 The Citadel-LA 207

Acknowledgements xi
My greatest appreciation is reserved for the graduate students I

have worked with over the past 23 years in what, seen in retrospect
because it no longer exists in its erstwhile form, was one of the most
intellectually stimulating and innovative interdisciplinary communi-
ties of spatial scholars ever to exist at an American university, the
Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA. A
professional schools restructuring designed, like corporate restruc-
Acknowledgements turings, for leaner and meaner administration (and reduced pay-
rolls) has moved Architecture to the School of the Arts, and Urban
Planning to a new School of Public Policy and Social Research. As I
write, the new structure is awkwardly sorting itself out, but fortu-
nately the flow of outstanding students continues, adding to the long
list of students who have taught me and to whom I dedicate this
book. Every university professor not just biding time dreams of that
reciprocal moment when teaching turns to being taught. I have been
fortunate to have more than my share of such moments, and they
have invigorated Thirdspace more than I can say.
The list begins with Costis Hadjimichalis and Dina Vaiou, who
expanded my knowledge of the writings of Hemi Lefebvre in the
Presenting formal acknowledgements has been made easier by a mid-1970s; and with Margaret FitzSimmons, who has moved with
decision not to seek official permission for every epigraph and pas- nurturing agility from student to colleague to lifelong friend and
sage quoted. But I must express my deepest appreciation for the intellectual confidant. Dina and Costis also introduced me to
work of every author whose words I have borrowed to make Antonis Ricos, then a doctoral student in Critical Studies in the
Thirdspace as polyvocal as I know how. I am especially grateful for UCLA department of theater, film, and television, and today one of
the poetry that appears: to Gloria Anzaldua and Spinsters/ Aunt Los Angeles's leading photographers and computer artists.
Lute Press for the poem extracted from Borderlands/La Frontera Antonis's creative eye and our warm friendship are responsible for
(1987); to Anna Deveare Smith and Doubleday Anchor Books for the all the visual material that appears in this book. On almost as long
performance poem composed from the words of Homi Bhabha; to an interactive path are Don Parson, Fassil Demissie, Larry Barth, and
Guillermo G6mez-Pefta and Graywolf Press for the excerpts from Marco Cenzatti. I continue to learn from all of them, and from the
Warriors for Gringostroika (1993); and to bell hooks and South End remarkable cluster of students who received their PhD over the past
Press for the poetic prose extracted from Yearning (1990). five years: Susan Ruddick, Beverley Pitman, Clyde Woods, Jane
Many of the chapters have drawn on my previously published Pollard, Moira Kenney, and Sylvia Sensiper. All have helped me to
work. Sections of chapters 3 and 4 originally appeared in Keith think differently about space and place, the city and the region.
and Pile (eds), Place and the Politics of Identity (Routledge, 1993) in And now there is the current flow of students, so many of whom
an essay I co-authored with Barbara Hooper; parts of chapters 5 have helped me significantly in writing this book. As my research
and 7 are taken from "Heterotopologies" in Strategies: A Journal of assistant, Olivier Kramsch (at present in Barcelona doing field work
Theory, Culture, and Politics (1990); the first half of chapter 6 draws for his dissertation) strengthened my understanding of Homi
heavily from "Postmodern Geographies and the Critique of Bhabha, Michel de Certeau, and current debates on regionalism.
Historicism" in Jones, Natter, and Schatzki (eds), Postmodern Mary Pat Brady (currently completing her dissertation in the English
Contentions (Guildford Press, 1993); chapter 8 is a much expanded Department at UCLA) made me aware of the creative spatial turn
and, I think, improved version of "Inside Exopolis," which first taken in the recent Chicana and Chicano literature and effectively
appeared in Michael Sorkin (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park (Hill and enhanced my appreciation for the work of radical women of color.
Wang, 1992); and chapter 9 builds on a 1991 publication of the Dora Epstein keeps challenging me with her sensitive writings on
Center for Metropolitan Research in Amsterdam. My thanks to the the lesbian experience of space and place, and her prose, photos, and
publishers, editors, and co-authors. insights on the new federal complex in downtown Los Angeles
xii Acknowledgements
significantly improve chapter 7. My thanks also to Gail Sansbury for

her useful essays and comments.
And then, there is Barbara Hooper. An older student and experi-
enced writer who returned to the university after almost two
decades of "other" work, Barbara almost instantaneously began by
teaching me far more than I was able to teach her. Barbara is the only
person who has read and creatively critiqued a complete draft of
Thirdspace, after responding to earlier drafts as well. She has softened Introd uction/lti nera ry/Overtu re
what she calls my rottweiler growls, steadfastly insisted on keeping
Thirdspace open to constant (and unruly) reinterpretation, fed me
informative quotes and ideas, and helped more than any other to
make this book better than I could have made it alone.
Finally, there are those that deserve thanks for helping me com-
plete what was beginning to feel like a neverending project. A grant
from the Getty Foundation for collaborative research with Janet
Abu-Lughod on 'The Arts of Citybuilding: New York, Chicago, and
Los Angeles" contributed significantly in pushing me to finish
Thirdspace so that I could move on to new adventures. John Davey at
Blackwell was always there, from beginning to end, with his gentle
support. And also always there but far from gentle in her pressures My objective in Thirdspace can be simply stated. It is to encourage
to get me out of my smoky garden office-cell, finish the damned you to think differently about the meanings and significance of space
book, and do something for a change, was Maureen. She always gets and those related concepts that compose and comprise the inherent
the last word. spatiality of human life: place, location, locality, landscape, environ-
ment, home, city, region, territory, and geography. In encouraging
you to think differently, I am not suggesting that you discard your
old and familiar ways of thinking about space and spatiality, but
rather that you question them in new ways that are aimed at open-
ing up and expanding the scope and critical sensibility of your
already established spatial or geographical imaginations.
Mobilizing this objective is a belief that the spatial dimension of V
our lives has never been of greater practical and political relevance
than it is today. Whether we are attempting to deal with the increas-
ing intervention of electronic media in our daily routines; seeking
ways to act politically to deal with the growing problems of poverty,
racism, sexual discrimination, and environmental degradation; or
trying to understand the multiplying geopolitical conflicts around
the globe, we are becoming increasingly aware that we are, and
always have been, intrinsically spatial beings, active participants in
the social construction of our embracing spatialities. Perhaps more
than ever before, a strategic awareness of this collectively created
spatiality and its social consequences has become a vital part of mak-
ing both theoretical and practical sense of our contemporary life-
worlds at all scales, from the most intimate to the most global.
At the same time as this relevance is rising, however, there is rea-
son to be concerned that the practical and theoretical understanding
2 Discovering Thirdspace Introduction 3
of space and spatiality is being muddled and misconstrued either by third existential dimension is now provocatively infusing the tradi-
the baggage of tradition, by older definitions that no longer fit the tional coupling of historicality-sociality with new modes of thinking
changing contexts of the contemporary moment, or by faddish buzz- and interpretation. As we approach the fin de siecle, there is a grow-
words that substitute apparently current relevance for deeper under- ing awareness of the simultaneity and interwoven complexity of the
standing. It thus becomes more urgent than ever to keep our social, the historical, and the spatial, their inseparability and interde-
contemporary consciousness of spatiality- our critical geographical pendence. And this three-sided sensibility of spatiality-historical-
imagination - creatively open to redefinition and expansion in new ity-sociality is not only bringing about a profound change in the
directions; and to resist any attempt to narrow or confine its scope. ways we think about space, it is also beginning to lead to major revi- I
In keeping with these objectives and premises, I use the concept of sions in how we study history and society. The challenge being/
Thirdspace most broadly to highlight what I consider to be the most raised in Thirdspace is therefore transdisciplinary in scope. It cuts
interesting new ways of thinking about space and social spatiality, across all perspectives and modes of thought, and is not confined
and go about in great detail, but also with some attendant caution, to solely to geographers, architects, urbanists and others for whom spa-
explain why I have chosen to do so. In its broadest sense, Thirdspace tial thinking is a primary professional preoccupation.
is a purposefully tentative and flexible term that attempts to capture There is still another attachment I wish to make before beginning
what is actually a constantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, to explore the real and imagined worlds of Thirdspace. As I shall
events, appearances, and meanings. If you would like to invent a dif- argue repeatedly, the most interesting and insightful new ways of
ferent term to capture what I am trying to convey, go ahead and do thinking about space and spatiality, and hence the most significant
so. I only ask that the radical challenge to think differently, to expansions of the spatial or geographical imagination, have been
expand your geographical imagination beyond its current limits, is coming from what can be described as a radical postmodernist per-
retained and not recast to pour old wine into new barrels, no matter spective. Given the swirling confusion that fiTis1ne-current11terature
how tasty the vintage has been in the past. h:)th-for and against postmodernism, it may help to explain briefly
To help ensure that the magnitude of the challenge being pre- what I mean by radical or critical postmodernism and why, contrary
sented is understood, I add a much bolder assertion. In what I am to so many current writings, it does not represent a complete contra-
convinced will eventually be considered one of the most important diction in terms, a fanciful oxymoron.
intellectual and political developments of the late 20th century, a To clarify the meaning of radical postmodernism requires a much
growing community of scholars and citizens has, for perhaps the more substantial look at the flurry of scholarly debates that has come
first time, begun to think about the spatiality of human life in much to surround the postmodern critiques of modernism. Later chapters
the same way that we have persistently approached life's intrinsic will return to these debates in greater detail, but for the moment let
and richly revealing historical and social qualities: its historicality and us begin by focusing attention on what I consider to ~th~_!DQSt
sociality. For much too long, spatiality has been relatively peripheral important olthese.posInnde.J:Jbe:tili.que.s:dain referring.to what post-
to what are now called the human sciences, especially among those modern scholars .have described~:uctiQ.:t;!J].nc;lg_@!gg!s=
who approach knowledge formation from a more critical, politically !~~tl,ljiQn..a.f....c.oJ:kWilllt-i.oJlal~e~~!!i:q:t~log.i:~s -c. .in . other
committed perspective. Whether in writing the biography of a par- words: thg.L<:!_c;lic,a,l:,r~j:l:l!CP.lring_Q.flQll:~~.lishe~gl_sJ.es !:,!sn~w l-
ticular individual or interpreting a momentous event or simply deal- e~g~-!<?.f.]ll!1ion--:oLho~::W:e.,asur:~~9ch:th~wl~Q.~e-~~.,.ggta~Jl,..Of
ing with our everyday lives, the closely associated historical (or t~e w~~~,d c<~J11?.:~~Jitly_J.1L!J1!1~.Q...t~L.t::,;~<;Q;II&!J&~ll~~~~l.
temporal) and social (or sociological) imaginations have always been This epistemological critique has ranged from a formidable attack on
at the forefront of making practical and informative sense of the sub- the foundations of modern science; to a deep questioning of the
1 ject at hand. Every life, every event, every activity we engage in is established disciplinary canons of the separate social sciences, arts,
fn usually unquestionably assumed to have a pertinent and revealing and humanities; and further, to a reformulation of the basic knowl-
~:!\historical and social dimension. Although there are significant edge structure of scientific socialism or Marxism as well as other
~ exceptions, few would deny that understanding the world is, in the fields of radical tfieory and practice, such as feminism and the strug-
most general sense, a simultaneously historical and social project. gles against racism and colonialism.
Without reducing the significance of these historical and social In every one of these targeted arenas, the postmodern epistemo-
qualities or dimming the creative and critical imaginations that have logical critique of modernism and its tendencies to become locked
developed around their practical and theoretical understanding, a into "me~:;;t~J:.fl:Cirratives"
-~- . -
-- --~-------
and "!~t<1l!&.i!;t.g,..,.c!,i9.:!!!~~~::
- "'". .. "- -
~ ~. .~.
that limit the
~
scope of knowledge formation, has created deep divisions. For some, European Enlightenment. And vice versa: to be committed to radical
the power of the critique has been so profound that modernism is social change one must resist the enchantments of postmodern
abandoned entirely and new, explicitly postmodern ways of think- thinking. Simply practicing the methods of deconstruction or
ing take its place in making sense of the contemporary world: For expressing sympathy with the writings of Derrida, Lyotard~
others, the postmodern challenge is either ignored or creatively Foucault, or Baudrillard brands you as either unremittingly neocon-
reconstituted to reaffirm more traditional modes of still avowedly servative or deviously apolitical. One particularly misguided purifi- l
1
modernist thought and practice. As I shall argue throughout cation game, engaged in even by those who appear to reject such
Thirdspace, these are not the only choices available. Unfortunately, simplistic dichotomization, involves searching for traces of mod-
such categorically postmodernist and modernist responses have ernism in the writings of postmodernists, as if these discoveries were
dominated and polarized the current literature, leaving little room a signal of duplicity, unforgivable inconsistency, or some sort of
for alternative views. false consciousness. No mixture or combination is permitted. There)
The opposing camps are increasingly clearly drawn. On one side is only an either I or choice, especially for those on the political left. .
are those self-proclaimed postmodernists who interpret the episte- I urge you to begin reading Thirdspace with an open mind on these
mological critique as a license to destroy all vestiges of modernism. debates. At least temporarily, set aside the demands to make an
They become, as I once called them, the smiling morticians who cele- either I or choice and contemplate instead the possibility of a
brate the death or, more figuratively, the "end of" practically every- both/ and also logic, one that not only permits but encourages a cre-
thing associated with the modern movements of the twentieth ative combination of postmodernist and modernist perspectives,
century: of the subject and the author, of communism and liberalism, even when a specific form of postmodernism is being highlighted.
of ideology and history, of the entire enlightenment project of pro- Singling out <Lradical~P2?.:!TI!Qcl~:':l!..Perspec~ve for p~rf:icu,la:catten
gressive social change. In essence, postmodernism is reduced here to tion is .. not. meanUo..establishjt~ ~xdus}y~p_Jjyg~g~in_explQrif.lg_and
anti-modernism, to a strategy of annihilation that derives from mod- under?J<!..~ciing _ _ Ll:QIQJ?.'!~~:.J! _!.i!lt~acL <m _t;ffi.c:i~Dt . . il\Y!ti'l ti2ILtO
ernism's demonstrated epistemological weaknesses and its pre- enter. i'1 .space. QL~~:tr.!:lo.r.dinar-{lp.enness,..a ..place..otc:xitiilL~2'-chs.ng~
sumed failures to deal with the pressing problems of the w ;11er~!J:l~g~o~~~ali_~<tgil_l:<.lf:i2D-ca_g_p~e-~_~panggg.J9___)Qlll.pa5S
contemporary world. Intentionally or not, this focused form of a multiplicity~9Lp.erspectives that.have.heJ:eofoxe..heen..c.cmsidered
inflexible and unselective anti-modernism has entered contemporary by the epistemologic9,l__ref~re~J() ];J~ i[lCOJ:ll_l)atiblt:;, :t:!.J.}~()_JP:J:::!~a~.:..Ji
politics all over the world primarily to support and sustain both pre- is a space where issues of race, class, and gender "'can be addressed
modern fundamentalisms and reactionary and hyperconservative simultaneously without privileging one over the other; where one
forms of postmodern political practice that today threaten to destroy can be Marxist and post-Marxist, materialist and idealist, structural-
the most progressive accomplishments of the 20th century. ist and humanist, disciplined and transdisciplinary at the same time.
At the other extreme is a growing cadre of adamant anti-postmod- Thirdspace itself, as you will soon discover, is rooted in just such a
ernists. Usually marching under the banner of preserving the pro- recombinatoriala..l!<i.r9:d!c:_a,IJygp~~~ peJ,:p~ctive. In what I will call a
gressive projects of liberal and radical modernism, these critics see in critical strategy_()L"thirding-as-Othering," I ~!Y to open up our spa-
postmodernism and postmodern politics only a polar opposition tiAL.irn.aginaries.._to__w..a.y__ Qt __thinking. and_ actin_g- poliR"i:rufy-ffiaT-
to their progressive intentions. Just as reductionist as the anti- respond to _aJLb.Lll<trislJ,ls, to any attempt to coi:lfille -tfiougfitand
modernists, they deflect the power of the epistemological critique of political action to only two alternatives, by interjecting an-Other set
modernism by associating it exclusively with nihilism, with neo- of choices. In this critical thirding, the original binary choice is not
conservative empowerment, or with a vacuous anything-goes "new dismissed entirely but is subjected to a creative process of restructur-
age" philosophy. In this simplistic caricaturing, there is no possibil- ing that draws selectively and strategically from the two opposing
ity for a radical postmodernism to exist unless it is self-deluding, categories to open new alternatives. Two _of .tb.~~:>~..cri.ticaLthirdings
really modernism in oxymoronic disguise. have alreadyJ2egn!nimduc.ed. Ih~_fir~trevolves around the interjec-
Not only have the debates on modernism and postmodernism tion of a critical spa!i<tU_Ill<tgi!lati.Qninto the interpretive du_alism
polarized around these reductionist stances, a kind of ritual purifica- th(lthas for the past two centuries confin~d.how we.n:lake.practical
tion has been practiced to rule out any alternative possibilities. If you and theoret~~<t! ~~i;ts_:e_ of the..w-orld pri11J.<lJ;ily. to. the historical and
are a postmodernist, it is proclaimed, then you cannot be a Marxist sociologicp.Limaginations. The second has shaped the preceding dis-
or be committed to a continuation of the progressive projects of the cussion of modernism and postmodernism, creating the possibility
for a more open and combinatorial perspective. Still another is philosophy, as well as comprehensive and critical interpretations of
implied in this book's title and subtitle. Thirdspace too can be the historical development and social composition of this modern
described as a creative recombination and extension, one that builds world. What distinguishes Lefebvre from so many others is that he
on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the "real" material "chose space" as his primary interpretive thread and, beginning in
world and '!_Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality the 1960s, insistently wove space into all his major writings. How the I
through "imagined" representations of spatiality. With this brief meaning of what I have described as a "triple dialectic" - Lefebvre 1
and, I hope, helpful and inviting introduction, we are ready to begin called it une dialectique de triplicite - relates to his expanding geo-1
our journeys to a multiplicity of real-and-imagined places. graphical imagination will become clearer as we move on.
I approach Lefebvre's biography in the first chapter as an intro-
ductory voyage of discovery, selectively excavating from his adven-
Discovering Thirdspace turous life its most revealing moments of spatial insight. The chapter
can thus be seen in part as an attempt to spatialize what we normally
The six chapters that comprise Part I, "Discovering Thirdspace" are think of as biography, to make life-stories as intrinsically and reveal-
aimed at showing how and why spatiality and the inquisitive spatial ingly spatial as they are temporal and social. It is also a more specific
imagination have recently entered, as a vital third mode of practical historical geography of Lefebvre's triple consciousness of the com-
and theoretical understanding, what has heretofore been seen as an plex linkages between space, time, and social being, or, as I suspect
essentially two-sided socio-historical project. These chapters collec- he would prefer them to be called, the production of space, the mak-
tively establish the points of departure and an itinerary for the jour- ing of history, and the composition of social relations or society. En
neys Inside and Outside Los Angeles that comprise Part II and will route through his 90 years, this triple consciousness took many dif-
be continued in a companion volume to Thirdspace that will be pub- ferent twists and turns, from his early fascination with surrealism
lished by Blackwell in early 1997 under the title Postmetropolis. As and the various mystifications of working-class consciousness;
these chapters presume some prior knowledge of the debates and through his Marxist explorations of the spatiality and sociology of
academic discourse that have arisen over the interpretation and the- everyday life and the equally mystifying "urban condition;" to his
orization of spatiality in recent years, I give more space and time later work on the social production of space and what he called
here to assist in comprehending the often complex and perhaps, for "rhythmanalysis." At all times he remained a restless intellectual
some, abstruse arguments they contain. nomad, a person from the periphery who was able to survive and
thrive in the center as well, as a refined barbarian, a Parisian peasant
The Extraordinary Voyages of Henri Lefebvre from the Occitanian forelands of the Pyrenees.
In his personal (re)conceptualization of the relation between cen-
The intellectual journeys of discovery begin with an appropriately ters and peripheries comes one of his most important ideas, a deep
allegorical tour of the life of Henri Lefebvre, a French "metaphiloso- critique not just of this oppositional dichotomy of power but of all
pher" who has been more influential than any other scholar in open- forms of categorical or binary logic. As he always insisted, two terms
ing up and exploring the limitless dimensions of our social (and the oppositions and antinomies built around them) are never
spatiality; and also in arguing forcefully for linking historicality, enough. II y a tou jours l' Autre, there is always an-Other term, with
sociality, and spatiality in a strategically balanced and transdiscipli- Autre/Other capitalized to emphasize its critical importance. When
nary "triple dialectic." I use his term "transdisciplinary" to mean not faced with a choice confined to the either/or, Lefebvre creatively
being the privileged turf of such specialized fields as History, resisted by choosing instead an-Other alternative, marked by the
Sociology, and Geography, but spanning all interpretive perspec- openness of the both/and also ... , with the "also" reverberating
, tives. As Lefebvre insistently argued, historicality, sociality, and back to disrupt the categorical closures implicit in the either/or
V spatiality are too important to be left only to such narrowed logic.
specializations. Emanating from his insistent disordering or, to use a more con-
There are many such transdisciplinary perspectives, or as temporary term, deconstrESifQILQ[J:ll!!.~EYJs>Z~!=jf.l tNI1J<irl.g (}bout
Lefebvre described them, "ways to thread through the complexities space an<! other colilplexities of the moc!~~:r:t">V()rl9 ""'!rt:!. his various
of the modern world." One might think of literary criticism, psycho- rEmrnbirtations-oHfie center~p~!:fp)i~1i~i~J<t.ti9!!. ill gJI~h"<:Q!!c~p!""'!s
analysis, linguistics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and critical the_ cr_itig_~~-~~ryQay life! the XW.IQQJWD.C>Xl. gfJb-~ ~ocial rela~Q!i?-
of~d~!!C>~!__the. bt1r~aucratic so_ciery of controlled consump!ion fashion, and from Lefebvre's frequently mentioned love of music, I
(thef()r_E2runner of what we today call consumer society),the struggle began to think that perhaps Lefebvre was presenting The Production
over therigJ-tt to the city and the right to be different,. the urha-fliza- of Space as a musical composition, with a multiplicity of instruments
tion of consciousness <mdJhe. necessity for an urban revolutio~and and voices playing together at the same time. More specifically, I
a more generaLernphasis on the dynamics of geogr_<iphicallyJJ.neven found that the text could be read as a polyphonic fugue that
dev~lopment from the local to the global scales. These conceptualiza- assertively introduced its keynote themes early on and then changed
tions and others springing from Lefebvre's creative spatial con- them intentionally in contrapuntal variations that took radically dif-
sciousness infiltrate every chapter of Thirdspace. ferent forms and harmonies.
Composing the text as a fugue served multiple purposes. First of
2 The Trialectics of Spatiality all, it was a way of spatializing the text, of breaking out of the con-
ventional temporal flow of introduction-development-conclusion to
In chapter 2, I re-engage with Lefebvre's journeys through an alter- explore new "rhythms" of argument and (con)textual representation.
native reading of The Production of Space, arguably the most impor- Similarly, it spatialized the equally temporal, sequential logic of
tant book ever written about the social and historical significance of dialectical thinking, always a vital part of Lefebvre's work. Thesis,
human spatiality and the particular powers of the spatial imagina- antithesis, and synthesis are thus made to appear simultaneously,
tion. The Production of Space is a bewildering book, filled with unruly together in every chapter in both contrapuntal harmonies as well as
textual practices, bold assertions that seem to get tossed aside as the disruptive dissonances. Just as importantly, the fugue formed some
arguments develop, and perplexing inconsistencies and apparent protection for Lefebvre against the canonization of his ideas into
self-contradictions. Yet its meandering, idiosyncratic, and whole- rigidly authoritative protocols. Although he was frequently vicious
somely anarchic style and structure are in themselves a creative and dogmatic in his attacks on the "schools" that developed around
expression of Lefebvre's expansive spatial imagination. Years ago, the work of other leading scholars, especially his fellow Marxists,
when I first read the original French version (La Production de l'espace, Lefebvre always saw his own intellectual project as a series of
1974), I found myself having great difficulty navigating through the heuristic "approximations," never as permanent dogma to be
chapters that followed the extraordinarily exciting and relatively defended against all non-believers.
clearly written introduction, translated in English as "Plan of the In the first of our all too brief meetings, I almost convinced him to
Present Work." Lefebvre seemed not to be following his own plan, agree that The Production of Space was his most pathbreaking work.
flying off in lateral directions and posing very different arguments But he was clearly uneasy. It was to him just another approximation,
from those presented earlier. There was so much there in the first incomplete, merely a re-elaboration of his earlier approximations as
chapter, however, that I set aside my frustrations with the rest of the well as those of Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche and others, another tempo-
text as a product of my own linguistic deficiencies and Lefebvre's rary stop en route to new discoveries, such as the "rhythmanalysis"
complicated writing style. he was working on up to his death in 1991. To the end, Lefebvre was
But I had the same reaction when I read the 1991 English transla- a restless, nomadic, unruly thinker, settling down for a while to
tion. Nearly all that seemed solid and convincing in the "Plan" frus- explore a new terrain, building on his earlier adventures, and then
tratingly melted into air in the dense and eclectic prose of the picking up what was most worth keeping and moving on. For him
subsequent chapters. I dutifully recommended this apparently there are no "conclusions" that are not also "openings," as he
badly-planned book to my planning students, but told them, quite expressed in the title of the last chapter of The Production of Space.\
uncomfortably, to read seriously only the introductory chapter and Following Lefebvre, I have tried to compose every one of the chap-
to browse the rest with a sense of caveat lector. It was only when I ters of Thirdspace as a new approximation, a different way of looking/
began writing chapter 2 of Thirdspace, after going over dozens of at the same subject, a sequence of neverending variations on recur-~
Lefebvre's other writings to prepare chapter 1, that I realized he may rent spatial themes. Whether or not I have been successful in this
not have intended The Production of Space to be read as a conven- effort, I hope the reader will at least keep this intention in mind:
tional academic text, with arguments developed in a neat linear while plowing through the text.
sequence from beginning to middle to end. Taking a clue from Jorge Given these intentions, what I have done with The Production of
Luis Borges, who in his short story, "The Aleph," expressed his Space in chapter 2 would probably have discomforted Lefebvre. I
despair in writing about the simultaneities of space in such a linear have extracted from the introductory "Plan" a central argument and
!"
attached to it a specific critical methodology. The central argument I In the late 1960s, in the midst of an urban or, looking back, a more
refer to has already been mentioned: the ontological, epistemologi- generally spatial crisis spreading all over the world, an-Other form
cal, and theoretical rebalancing of spatiality, historicality, and social- of spatial awareness began to emerge. I have chosen to call this new
ity as all-embracing dimensions of human life. This "meta- awareness Thirdspace and to initiate its evolving definition by
philosophy," to use Lefebvre's preferred description of his work, describing it as a product of a "thirding" of the spatial imagination,
builds upon a method that I present as a critical "thirding- the creation of another mode of thinking about space that draws
as-Othering," with Other capitalized to retain the meaning of upon the material and mental spaces of the traditional dualism but
Lefebvre's insistent, anti-reductionist phrase il y a tou jours l' Autre. extends well beyond them in scope, substance, and meaning.
And for the result of this critical thirding, I have used another term, Simultaneously real and imagined and more (both and also ... ), the
"trialectics," to describe not just a triple dialectic but also a mode of exploration of Thirdspace can be described and inscribed in journeys
dialectical reasoning that is more inherently spatial than the conven- to "real-and-imagined" (or perhaps "realandimagined"?) places.
tional temporally-defined dialectics of Hegel or Marx. I then use this Hence the subtitle of this book.
method to re-describe and help clarify what I think Lefebvre wa~
1
For reasons which I will not attempt to explain here, flUs new way
writing about in the thematic "Plan'' of The Production of Space fugue: ofJhlnkin& abuuLspa~beeame-IDOSt-d.early__formulated_Jn.Earis, in
a trialectic~ of.s.pc;ttia)ity, of spatipJ thinking, of the spatial imagina- particular in the writings of Lefebvre and his colleagues, but also,
tion that echoes from Lefebvre's interweaving incantation of three much less visibly, in the work of Michel Foucault. For almost 20
different kinds of spaces: the perceived space of materializeq Spatial 1 years, however, fuese "Oilier spaces" (des espaces autres, Foucault '
Practice; the conceived space he defined as Representatio.IJ.!LoLSpace; I called them) remained unexplored and often substantially misunder-
and t}1e Jivfd Spaces of Representation (translated into English as \ stood by even the greatest admirers of Lefebvre and Foucault.
"Representational Spaces"). \ Outside the spatial disciplines, the new importance being given to
It is upon these formulations that I define Thirdspace as an-Other--' space and spatiality, when it was noticed at all, was seen primarily
way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human as another data set, interpretive language, or collection of modish
life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate tropes to be added to the serious business-as-usual of historical and
to the new scope and significance being brought about in the re- social analysis. Within the spatial disciplines, when noticed, the
balanced trialectics of spatiality-historicality-sociality. This begins a work of Lefebvre and Foucault was taken as a reconfirming benedic-
longer story, or journey, that weaves its way through all the chap- tion on the long-established scope of conventional spatial or geo-
ters. Briefly told, the spatial story opens with the recognition that the graphical imaginations. What was almost entirely missed by nearly
mainstream spatial or geographical imagination has, for at least the all was the radical critique and disruptive challenge detonated by
past century, revolved primarily around a dual mode of thinking Lefebvre and Foucault to restructure the most familiar ways of
about space; one, which I have described as a Firs.!s_eace perspective thinking about space across all disciplines and disciplinarities.
and epistemology, fixed mainly on tlJ.E2_Co!lcreteii-tatericiiitj ofspanal Rather than accepting the critique and responding to the challenges
forms, ()_i1f]:Ungst1ial can be~Illpirically mapped; and the_~t,;_cooo, as to think differently about space, the work of Lefebvre and Foucault
Secondspace,-EonEeived-in !deas about space, in thoughtful re-pre- was obliviously sucked back into unchanged disciplinary cocoons.
sentations o{human s_eatiaiity in-mentarorco-gnitive--forms. Tnese In Geography, the field I know best, there continues to be a wholly
co1nc1de--more -orles~ -wlfn--Lefebvri? s perceived and--conceived disciplined absorption or, alternatively, complete rejection of what I
1
spaces, with the first often thought of as "real" and the second as describe as the Thirdspace perspectives of Lefebvre and what I
~
"imagined." What Lefebvre described specifically as lived space was Foucault called "~ol<_:)gyL Given my disciplinary back-
typically seen as a simple combination or mixture of the "real" and ground, I refer relatively infrequently to the work of geographers on
the "imagined" in varying doses, although many in the so-called the pages of Thirdspace. When asked to speak to audiences of geogra-
\spatial disciplines (Geography, Architecture, Urban and Regional phers about my recent work I tend to emphasize its "bad news" for
Studies, and City Planning, with capital letters used to signify the Geography, especially regarding the formidable rigidity of the
formally constituted discipline) as well as scholars in other disci- Firstspace-Secondspace dualism into which geographers have been
plined fields tended to concentrate almost entirely on only one of so tightly socialized. I do so to compensate for the tendency to use
these modes of thinking, that is on either Firstspace or Secondspace the rising importance being given to the spatial imagination either to
perspectives. reaffirm proudly (and uncritically) the traditional disciplinary
project, with Geography crowned as the master discipline of space; found no one better to illustrate the radical openness of Thirdspace,
or to reject the new approaches completely as not Geography at all, its strategic flexibility in dealing with multiple forms of oppression
thereby preserving the canonical traditions of the past. Similar reac- and inequality, and its direct relevance to contemporary politics,
tions occur in Architecture, Urban Planning, and Urban Sociology, particularly with respect to the journeys that will be taken to Los
alternatively co-opting or rejecting the new modes of thinking I am Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. My own real-and-
associating with a Thirdspace perspective. The most sig~~nt imagined homeplace for my first 20 years in the Bronx and my acad-
exc~!igns seem to arise only..among tb.ose in the-sp?_tfaDil.Sciplines emic specialization in African studies for the next 20 years of my life
who have bee_n e1lgaging)>erimJsly with. the recent literi.ih!r_E!i!lJbe have added other compelling attractions and connections to her
broad ne~ flglg_oLcriticalcultural stucUes. This moves the spatial work. And just as important, liil1~L_hooks's radicaLop.enn&Ss-and
sto-;:y;~j;~~ney I am recounting to the next chapters. chosen margiJ1aliiy<! pQ~erful antidote t() th~narmwed anc! aggres-
s1vecentrisms and essentiaiTsm."sThat11a~e deflected most modernist
3 Exploring the Spaces that Difference Makes: Notes on movementS based on-gender; rac:~,_~ri_cl da_S ~:gtQ.hQStlJe.~.IlCl.C:OD:q?:~r
the Margin itive l:JinaJ:y battlegrounds of woman yerstg; man, black versus
whlte, labor versus capital. In a discussion of "the difference post-
Chapter 3 re-opens the voyages of discovery through an excavation modernity makes," I elaborate on my own definitions of postmoder-
of the more contemporary writings of I:>~!L]lQ91s~_an__Afdcg_n- nity and postmodernism and the comparison between modernist
Al:!l~J"5.C:_i!RCJJlwraLcritic who has been advancing- and reconceptu- and postmodernist cultural politics.
alizing- the frontiers of Thirdspace through creative inquiries into But there are still a few problems worth mentioning in my "choos-
the connected spatialities of race, class, and gender. Although influ- ing" bell hooks and in her "choosing marginality." Almost impossi-
enced by Lefebvre and Foucault, hooks has not been a spatial theo- ble to set aside entirely are reactions that here is another example of
retician but has instead put into personal and political practice a a powerful, presumably established and affluent, White Western
vivid Thirdspatial imagination, especially in her American Book Man liberally attaching himself, in the margins no less, to a radical
Award winning Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990). In woman of color, who in her turn is a well-established and presum-
essays on "Postmodern Blackness," "Homeplace: A Site of ably affluent scholar. For those who feel compelled to respond in this
Resistance," and most powerfully "Choosing the Margin as a Space way, I can only say please continue to read. Perhaps you will find
of Radical Openness," hooks recomposes our lived spaces of repre- more in my explorations of Thirdspace and hooks's marginality as a
sentation as potentially nurturing places of resistance, real-and- space of radical openness than immediately meets your skeptical
imagined, material-and-metaphorical meeting grounds for struggles eye.
over all forms of oppression, wherever they are found. I use hooks
(more on this "use" in a moment) to exemplify the contemporary 4 Increasing the Openness of Thirdspace
leadership of cultural studies scholars, especially radical women of
color, in the creative exploration of Thirdspace and to implant their After exploring the spaces that difference makes with bell hooks in
spatial awareness in the strategic margins of an explicitly but criti- chapter 3 and as a means of preventing the formulations of the first
cally postmodern cultural politics, filled with an expanding roster of three chapters from solidifying into rigid dogma, chapter 4 charts
struggles based not just on race, gender, and class but also on sexual- out additional pathways for increasing the openness of Thirdspace
ity, age, nation, region, nature, empire, and colony. and redefining its meanings. With the uncanny assistance of Barbara
In the particular ways she chooses marginality as a space of radi- Hooper, who has tried with some success to control my impulses to
cal openness, hooks builds upon but also reconstitutes and recontex- tweak a few of the feminist geographers who seemed to dismiss my
tualizes the Thirdspace insights of Lefebvre and Foucault. Chapter 3 admittedly gender-biased Postmodern Geographies as masculinist pos-
thus serves to initiate another journey of exploration, filling in many ing tout court, I explore and try to learn from the rich spatial feminist
of the voids and silences contained in the first two chapters, and I literature. While appreciating the pioneering efforts of earlier mod-
might also add in Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in ernist spatial feminists in developing a rigorous critique of urbanism
Critical Social Theory (1989), my earlier attempt to reconceptualize the and the gendering of cityspace (work that I should have recognized
geographical imagination. I have chosen to foreground bell hooks in more centrally in my 1989 book), and learning a great deal from the
beginning this new exploration for several reasons. First of all, I have most recent work of feminist geographers such as Gillian Rose, I
focus my primary attention on the extraordinary discourse that has

been developing among those spatially attuned feminists who feel 5 Heterotopologies: Foucault and the Geohistory of
most comfortable, like bell hooks, with being described as radical or Otherness
critical postmodernists. After this most contemporary re-opening, Thirdspace is reconceptu-
What distinguishes this literature for me and what makes it an alized again in chapter 5 through a glance backwards in time to
unusually enlightening terrain for developing new ways to think review Foucault's original conception of "heterotopology" and "het-
about Thirdspace has been the active engagement of postmodern erotopia." Drawing almost entirely on a short lecture on space he
spatial feminist writers, poets, artists, film critics, photographers, prepared for a group of architects, but never published, I try to show
philosophers, and others in creatively rethinking and retheorizing some of the similarities and differences between Foucault and
spatiality not just in conjunction with gender and patriarchy but also Lefebvre in their coinciding and parallel discoveries of Thirdspace
in a more polycentric mix of other forms of oppression, exploitation, before and after the upheavals of May 1968 in Paris. Like Lefebvre,
and subjection. For much too long, radical and progressive politics Foucault begins his explorations with a thirding, a sympathetic cri-
has been tightly channeled in social movements that have not only tique of the bicameralized spatial imagination that leads us to Other
remained relatively unaware of the politics of space but have also spaces quite similar, yet teasingly different, when compared to
found it difficult to forge significant and lasting alliances across Lefebvre's lived spaces of representation. Foucault called these
channels and between movements. The work of postmodern spatial spaces "heterotopias" and described them as "the space in which we
feminists has taken the lead in reconceptualizing the new cultural live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our
politics and in making a radical consciousness of the spatiality of lives, our time and our history occurs." Like Lefebvre, but with even
human life a foundation and homeground for creating cross-cutting greater tenacity and success, he also filled these heterogeneous sites
alliances and communities of resistance to contend with those with the trialectics of space, knowledge, and power, what Derek
"complexities" of the (post)modern world. I rush through this Gregory, whose Geographical Imaginations (1994) features promi-
work much too quickly in the first half of chapter 4, leaving too nently in this chapter and is returned to in many other places, called
much unexplored in what may indeed be the richest vein of innova- Foucault's distinctive "discursive triangle." I go over Foucault's
tive contemporary writing on what I have conceptualized as uncharacteristically explicit and didactic discussion of the "princi-
Thirdspace. ples of heterotopology" and attempt through these formulations to
Moving on, however, I re-emphasize the significance of the stretch Thirdspace in new and different directions.
postmodern spatial feminist critiques by elaborating further on the But what is most interesting to me about Foucault's pathway to
''border work" being done by postcolonial feminists such as Gloria thinking differently about the powers of space and spatiality - and
Anzaldua, Maria Lugones, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Here, in perhaps his most important contribution to the conceptualization of
the overlapping borderlands of feminist and postcolonial cultural Thirdspace - was the explicitness and insight of his treatment en
criticism is a particulary fertile meeting ground for initiating new route of the relations between space and time, between the spatial
pathways for exploring Thirdspace and also for the later journeys and the historical imaginations. Amplifying on what I had written
to a real-and-imagined Los Angeles. In all too brief sketches, I earlier in Postmodern Geographies, I re-present Foucault's critique of
present first a cluster of imaginative spatial insights emanating historicism as a vital part of understanding why thinking differently
from Chicana and Chicano artists and scholars, highlighting about space and spatiality has been so difficult for at least the past
Anzaldua, Lugones, and Guillermo G6mez-Peii.a. This is followed by 150 years. In_~EE..Q13_!_~':'_~ be~~.PJ12raphically echoed repeatedly
the spatial "reworldings" of Spivak and Edward Said, using both to in contemporary discussions of space, Foucault as:Kea- wny l.SltThat
introduce a critical awareness of the space-blinkering effects of time has. ..tendeci-l:obere-ca-::-a: u;:u:--es-re-c-n:--,---~-----~--------:-"
. ............ L.a.e. s _________hrt....~.........u .di:ty.:,__ bfe,.diale.c.ti.c
historicism that will be built upon in later chapters. Finally, a more while iJ1 __cgp_tra.U~~--he.r?... neg!l..l):pi_cally~-s.een_as_:~the..dead.,_.the
lengthy excursion is taken through the writings of Homi Bhabha, fixed, the un_c:l_~~~-~ticab_the immghHC.He answers his question by
who develops his own version of what he called "the Third Space," referring to a persistent overprivileging of the powers of the histori-
also a space of radical openness and "hybridity," his term for the cal imagination and the traditions of critical historiography, and the
spaces of resistance being opened at the margins of the new cultural degree to which this privileging of historicality has silenced or sub-
politics. sumed the potentially equivalent powers of critical spatial thought.
\ Breaking down the controlling effects of this particular form of\
1
/historicism becomes a key step in radically opening up the spatial consciousness and his consciousness of history to task not for com-
'imagination and in rebalancing the trialectics of historicality-social- pletely ignoring spatiality but for unconsciously subordinating and
\ity-spatiality; in other words, to exploring both theoretically and subsuming it under history's sui generis "burden." And in "Hayden
practically the lifeworlds, the heterotopias, of Thirdspace. White meets Henri Lefebvre," based on White's recent revealing
This critique of historicism is so crucial and so easily misunder- review of The Production of Space, I show why the failure of this most
stood that it is worthwhile clarifying immediately what it does and thoughtful, open-minded, and imaginative theoretician of history to
does not imply. It _!~_llot a @e~tion of the proven powers ()i_th~ his- understand or even recognize the need to spatialize his story beyond
torical imagination, nor is it a substi1i:itiol1--6f aspatialism for histori- mere Braudelian references may be the strongest reason for continu-
a
cisilLiti~;)l1Stead recogrution that hlstoricaJity and historiography ing to press the ~~aLcritiq.ue._oLhistoticism throughout the con-
are not enough, and a plea for opening up the historical and tightly temporary human sciences.
interwoven sociological imaginations to a deeper appreciation for
the spatiality of human life. This wisperhaps not so problematic
whenthe spatial imagination remained tightly encased in its bicam- Inside and Outside Los Angeles
eral compartments, either fixed on the forms and patternings of
"real" material life or involved with mental and ideational worlds of Part II consists of a cluster of chapters that begin to apply contextu-
abstract or "imagined" spaces. Such knowledges could easily be ally the ideas and theoretical arguments contained in Part I. Here
absorbed and subsumed by the free-flowing and infinitely expand- our journeys take a ~mpiri<;;iJ.Lan.d":Y-isgaLturn, first into the
able historical imagination, as "things" and "thoughts" that can be mel_!lgrabki@gr_"S.~!.l~.!t:!.l!l_(?_(Jh~.h::iY.!"'_CenteLQf the_<=:ity of Los
best understood by putting them into their historical context, into a Angel~s and then to the galactic outer spaces of Orange County, the
narrative, a sequential story. But the times are changing. A new per- virtually unbounded ~xtremes of urban centeredness and decen-
spective is not only beginning to recompose the spatial or geographi- tere~!les.sL E,n_dg:rgJis)llld_.E?s:2i2:9fi;. l~"ili~s~ ~~tip~des ofGr~at~~ Los
cal imagination, it is entering disruptively, if still located on the Angeles core and periphery, city and suburb, seem to be imploding
margins, into the ways we think about historicality and sociality, and exploding simultaneously, turning everyday urban life inside-
demanding an equivalent empowering voice, no more but no less. out and outside-in at the same time and in the same places. This
We return then to the premises contained in the first paragraphs of widening gyre confounds conventional narrative interpretations of
this Introduction/Itinerary /Overture. urban spatiality, for we are too aware of what is cutting across the
s~oryline laterally, of how the local and the particular are becoming
6 Re-Presenting the Spatial Critique of Historicism simultaneously global and generalizable. Increasingly unconven-
tional modes of exploring Los Angeles are needed to make practical
The spatial critique of historicism underpins the middle chapters of and theoretical sense of contemporary urban realities - and hyper-
Thirdspace. It begins in chapter 4 with Gayatri Spivak's reworldings realities.
and Edward Said's far-reaching critique of "Orientalism," rooting For extrinsic insight, a diverting third tour is taken to the Centrum
historicism in Western, Eurocentric, masculinist, modernist, and and regional periphery of Amsterdam, spiraling us into another
imperialist intellectual traditions, even when promulgated with rev- stimulating itinerary. It is at once a celebration of intimate locality
olutionary intentions. It flows through chapter 5 and the efforts of and a re-routing of our journeys into worldwide contexts of urban
Foucault to construct a different "geohistory of otherness" despite development and global restructuring. This contemporary compari-
his Eurocentrism; and becomes the central focus in chapter 6. Here I son of Amsterdam and Los Angeles - themselves the provocative
foreground the writings of Hayden White, one of the contemporary antipodes of urbanism as a way of life - triggers an appreciation for
world's finest and most open-minded "metahistorians." the complex compositeness of difference and similarity, the intricate
White approaches historicality with much the same e:q.thusiasm interweaving of the unique and the general, the local and the global.
and critical drive I try to generate with respect to spatiality; and he It also renews our understanding of the dynamics of uneven devel-
attempts to open the borders of the historical imagination against a opment over space and time, and especially of what Lefebvre was to
perceived external threat to subsume its power in ways that seem to describe as the simultaneous tendencies toward homogenization,
echo, in reverse, the spatial critique of historicism. In demonstrating differentiation, and hierarchical ordering that thread through the
"why loving maps is not enough," I take White's history of specific geographies of the modern world.
Each of these three chapters takes the form of a ~l_p_!!!_i!l~Q

8 Inside Exopolis: Everyday Life in the Postmodern World
r~~envisioning tour of lived ~p~c~s. They present very different
perspective~ yet running through them there is much that is the Ten scenes from the galaxy of sites that comprise the astral Exopolis,
same. the starry-eyed "city-without-cityness" of Orange County define
another tour. Jean Baudrillard rather than Foucault enables this tour
7 Remembrances: A Heterotopo/ogy of the Citadei-LA to take off and to be defined as a journey to the "hyperreality" of
everyday life. For Baudrillard and for many of the inhabitants of
The first chapter of Part II continues the spatial critique of histori- Orange County and other exopolises around the world, everyday
cism through a Foucauldian stroll through an exhibition I helped living has become increasingly embroiled in the "precession of simu-
organize at UCLA commemorating the bicentennial of the French lacra," in exact copies or representations of everyday reality that
Revolution and evoking memories of the sy11chro~c t:~?()_~':l;nces somehow substitute for the real itself. We no longer have to pay to
between Paris and Los Angeles- in the period 1789--,19_89. It both con- enter these worlds of the "real fake" for they are already with us in
cluaes the sequence of chapters dealing specifically with the rela- the normal course of our daily lives, in our homes and workplaces,
tions between spatiality and historicality and opens new ways of in how we choose to be informed and entertained, in how we are
looking at and understanding the g_eohistcn:y__of L~E...c!?E~ clothed and erotically aroused, in who and what we vote for, and
Two heteroto~l~~L~_Ea_c~-~-r-~~onate together in this real-and- what pathways we take to survive.
imagined journey. -The first is a rectangular chunk of downtown Los The Exopolis itself is a simulacrum: an exact copy of a city that has
Angeles that today contains one of the most formidable agglomera- never existed. And it is being copied over and over again all over the
tions of the sites of governmental power and surveillance anywhere place. At its best, the Exopolis is infinitely enchanting; at its worst it
in the US. The second space represents the first in a small gallery and transforms our cities and our lives into spin-doctored "scamscapes,"
connected places in the UCLA building that housed the exhibition. places where the real and the imagined, fact and fiction, become
f:verything is seen as a simultaneously historical-social-spatial spectacularly confused, impossible to tell apart. In many ways,
palimpsest, Thirdspace sites in which inextricably intertwined tem- Orange County is the paradigmatic Exopolis, a simulated county-
poral, social, and spatial relations are being constantly reinscribed, city-state of mind that is infused with and diffuses ever-encompass-
erased, and reinscribed again. ing ideological hyperrealities such as "small government is good
Here, in the Citadel-LA of Southern California, the "little city" of government," "the taxpayers' revolt," "the magic of the market,"
gigantic powers, I use specific sites and sights as memory aids, geo- "electronic democracy," "the end of history," "the triumph of capi-
graphical madeleines for a remembrance of things past and passed: talism." The tour begins with a quote from The Wizard of Oz: "Toto,
the historical presence of African-Americans in downtown Los I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." But then again,
Angeles from the original siting of the city in 1781 to the violence neither is Kansas.
and unrest of 1992; the even more impressive presence of a Mexican This tour cannot be done on foot. It requires other forms of mobil-
city etched into the history of El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina ity to experience and comprehend. Despite many amusing diver-
de Los Angeles; a recollection of the lifeworlds of Bunker Hill, now a sions, however, the tour must be taken seriously for, whether we like
truncated acropolis of culture waiting to be crowned again in a new it or not, Orange County offers glimpses into everyday life every-
concert hall designed by Frank Gehry for the Walt Disney family; a where in the contemporary world. And brought up to date with the
look back to the debates that have raged nearby around that citadel still fulminating financial bankruptcy of this arch-Republican bastion
of postmodern cultural studies, the Bonaventure Hotel, perhaps the of real-and-imagined fiscal populism, we can begin to see the accu-
first preservation-worthy historical monument of postmodernity; mulating signs of an emerging global crisis of postmodernity.
re-nd finally, a glimpse at the "eye of power" to be seen in the prison- Beginning in 1989 with the staged disappearance of the Cold War,
fadjacent The New World, a sculptured forum visibly and invisibly exploding most notably in Los Angeles with the so-called Rodney
'celebrating anarchism and sexual freedom in the middle of an King riots of 1992, and now continuing indefinitely into our futures,
\uptight building complex that serves the US federal government. All a thirty-year cycle of restructuring and postmodernization, deto-
is present within walking distance: the past, the present, the future. nated by the crises of the 1960s, is beginning to generate its own
internal explosions. Much more will be said of this restructuring- understanding the city-as-a-whole, or what Lefebvre described as
generated crisis of postmodernity in Postmetropolis, the forthcoming the "urban reality." Macrospatial perspectives are too often labeled
companion volume to Thirdspace. For now, our tour inside the taboo by those more attuned to fliinerie, by critics who see in the view
Exopolis of Orange County provides only a preview. from on high only a dominating masculinist voyeurism, and by what
might be called vulgar voluntarists romancing the unconstrainable
9 The Stimulus of a Little Confusion powers and intentions of human agency against any form of struc-
tural analysis or determination In chapter 9 I try to "third" this
Part II concludes with a contemporary comparison of Los Angeles debate by exploring an-Other way to approach the micro-macro,
and Amsterdam and with, following Henry James, the stimulus of a local-global, agency-structure oppositions, drawing selectively from
little confusion In chapter 9, which in some ways combines the both spheres as best I can while pointing toward new directions that
microspatial tour of the citadel of downtown Los Angeles and the transcend any simple additive combination or strict either I or choice.
macrospatial excursion into the Exopolis of Orange County, I report Again, I may not be entirely successful in doing this, but it is useful
from my own experiences living for a short period in the Centrum of to make my intentions clear.
Amsterdam, the largest and most creatively preserved 17th-century Also clarifying my intentions is a second postscript that serves
"old town" in Europe. I use my impressions of life on and off both to conclude this volume and to preview its forthcoming exten-
Spuistraat, my home street in Amsterdam, to both wrap up our jour- sions in Postmetropolis. Postmetropolis is a composite term I use to
neys to real-and-imagined places and to open them up again. describe (a) the new urbanization processes that have reshaped the
Several of my friends who do not live in either Los Angeles or metropolitan cityscape and everyday urban life over the past thirty
Amsterdam have told me that the original essay upon which this years; and (b) the new modes of urban analysis that have been
chapter is based was the best interpretive writing I have ever done. developing in the wake of this profound metropolitan restructuring
Why then do I continue to be uneasy about this compliment? I loved and postmodernization The original manuscript for Thirdspace con-
living in Amsterdam and discovering that, in its own secretive way, tained a lengthy Part III that explored at much greater depth and
it was keeping alive the utopian dreams of democratic and detail this restructuring and postmodernization of the perceived,
humanely scaled urbanism better than any other place I know. conceived, and lived spaces of the exemplary postmetropolis of Los
Perhaps the excitement of this discovery and my directly personal Angeles. Here is a brief outline of its contents.
reflections on it were the explanation. The first of the three chapters that comprised Part III, "Exploring
Yet, I continue to wonder. Was the praise being generated because the Postmetropolis," placed the "conurbation" of Los Angeles -
I was writing about a place other than Los Angeles (but Los Angeles using this almost forgotten term as both a noun and a verb - within
was certainly there too)? Was it because I was speaking personally, a larger geohistorical context that relates the evolution of urban form
without leaning too hard on one or another French philosopher to two other spatialized timelines: the crisis-filled periodization of
(although Lefebvre was very much with me in this essay)? Or was it capitalist development and the associated "succession of moderni-
because, after working primarily at a macro-geographical scale for so ties" that have together helped to shape and reshape the perceived
many years, I was becoming more of a micro-geographer, a bit of the (First)spatialities and spatial practices of urbanism over the past
jliineur, that romantic poet-of-the-streets whose intimate urban three centuries. A panoramic satellite photograph of sprawling "Los
insights had become so privileged in much of the current literature, Angeles- From Space" initiates the discussion of how this particular
especially over (or is it under) the view from on high that Michel de conurbation developed over space and time.
Certeau, among others, showed to be so limited and misleading? If The second chapter shifted the interpretive focus to Secondspace,
this last point of view is the source of the essay's perceived quality, to the conceptual representations of urban spatiality, and more
then I must add something more to its re-introduction here. specifically to the "situated" urban imaginary that has consolidated
As noted in a postscript to chapter 9, my "contemporary compari- over the past ten years into what some have called a Los Angeles
son" of Amsterdam and Los Angeles was (and is) intended, in part, "school" of urban analysis. At the core of this discussion are six dis-
to add some stimulating confusion to a growing tendency in post- courses on the postmetropolis that represent Los Angeles as:
modern critical urban studies to overprivilege the local- the body, (1) Flexcity, a productively postfordist industrial metropolis;
the streetscape, psychogeographies, erotic subjectivities, the micro- (2) Cosmopolis, a globalized and "glocalized" world city; (3) Exopolis,
worlds of everyday life and intimate community- at the expense of a cityscape turned inside-out and outside-in through the radical
restructuring of urban form; (4) Polaricity, a social mosaic of increas- stem not from the many different events that marked the end of the
ing inequalities and polarization; (5) Carceral City, a fortressed archi- long postwar economic boom and initiated in the late 1960s a still
pelago where police substitutes for polis; and (6) Simcity, a hyperreal continuing period of restructuring; but from what has seemed to so
scamscape of simulations and simulacra. Taking heed of Lefebvre's many to be the most successful examples of economic, political, and
warning that these Secondspatial representations tend to become urban restructuring and postmodernization in recent times. In other
hegemonically powerful, I disrupt each of the above discourses with words, our cities and all our lived spaces have been shifting from a
contrapuntal critiques and the "stimulus of a little confusion" to period of crisis-generated restructuring to the onset of a new era of
keep them open to continued rethinking and re-evaluation. restructuring-generated crisis, a crisis deeply imbricated in the post-
The third and erstwhile concluding chapter was infused primarily modernization of the contemporary world. As with all times of cri-
with a Thirdspace perspective, selectively encompassing the other sis, there are both new dangers and new opportunities unleashed by
two spheres of the spatial imagination to open up a distinctive new the multiplicity of confusing and often brutal events that have been
interpretive realm. Focused on a critical re-envisioning of a singular shaking the world since 1989, from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
yet global event, the Los Angeles uprising of April-May 1992, it ends collapse of the Soviet Union, to the repercussions of what happened
with the same words used to conclude the second postscript to in Tienanmen Square and in the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, to
Thirdspace: TO BE CONTINUED ... current developments in Bosnia and in the Republican Revolution in
the United States. The ultimate goal of Thirdspace and the continued
journeys to the Postmetropolis is to contribute to the progressive reso-
lution of at least some of the problems associated with this contem-
porary restructuring-generated crisis.
Before moving on, a few last introductory words are in order. As the
reader will soon no doubt realize, the radical openness and limitless
scope of what is presented here as a Thirdspace perspective can pro-
vide daunting challenges to practical understanding and application.
Exploring Thirdspace therefore requires a strategic and flexible way
of thinking that is guided by a particular motivating project, a set of
clear practical objectives and preferred pathways that will help to
keep each individual journey on track while still allowing for lateral
excursions to other spaces, times, and social situations. If Firstspace
is explored primarily through its readable texts and contexts, and
Secondspace through its prevailing representational discourses, then
the exploration of Thirdspace must be additionally guided by some
form of potentially emancipatory praxis, the translation of knowl-
edge into action in a conscious - and consciously spatial - effort to
improve the world in some significant way.
The praxis that guides our journeys to Los Angeles and other real-
and-imagined places is organized around the search for practical
solutions to the problems of race, class, gender, and other, often
closely associated, forms of human inequality and oppression, espe-
cially those that are arising from, or being aggravated by, the dra-
matic changes that have become associated with global economic
and political restructuring and the related postmodernization of
urban life and society. Hovering in the background of all the chap-
ters that will follow is an awareness of the possibility that the con-
temporary world has entered a new round of turbulent crises that
PART I
DISCOVERING THIRDSPAC
Extraordinary Voyages of Henri Lefebvre 27
fatuous fires. It is certainly because of that metamorphic quality that I

rely in this book on the narrative figure of allegory to describe certain
trends in postmodern sensibility. For allegory ... represents a continu-
ous movement toward an unattainable origin, a movement marked by
the awareness of a loss that it attempts to compensate with a baroque
1 saturation and the obsessive reiteration of fragmented memories ...
like the myriad experiences of a long journey to a mythic homeland.
(Celeste Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, 1992: xx-xxi)
The Extraordinary Voyages of
In a hospital at Pau, not far from his Occitanian birthplace of
Henri Lefebvre Hagetmau and even closer to his long-time summer home in the
Pyrenean village of Navarrenx, Henri Lefebvre died some time dur-
ing the night of June 28-9, 1991, after months of rumors that he had
mysteriously "disappeared." Parisians and others were confused by
his existential absence in the spring of 1991, for they had become
accustomed to his always being there (etre-la) at that time, ever
watchful from his observation post above the Beaubourg (Pompidou
Center) in an apartment on the rue Rambuteau that he shared with
Catherine Regulier-Lefebvre.
The spring of 1991 was a time of great expectations. Lefebvre's
The experience of the traveller consisting of a series of moves in space 69th book, Elements de rythmanalyse, written with significant contri-
produces a phenomenon of a new order, one by which geography butions from his wife Catherine, was being prepared for
overtakes knowledge. "Our geography invades the planet. This is the publication} developing an idea that he suggested would "put the
second voyage, the reappropriation through knowledge. Geography is
finishing touches to the exposition of the production of space"
nothing else, its birth is there, at the moment at which knowledge
Lefebvre had begun in the early 1970s (1991, 405). Also soon to
becomes universal, in spatial terms and not by virtue of any right."
Space makes an inventory of the adventures of knowledge, omitting appear were the long-awaited English translations of La Production
nothing; knowledge traces a cartography of known lands, omitting de l' espace (1974) and Critique de la vie quotidienne I: Introduction
nothing. The minute filling in of terrestrial reaches and the exhaustive (1947), reflecting, after decades of remarkable neglect, a rapidly
account of cycles of knowledge are one and the same operation and growing interest in Lefebvre's work in the English-speaking world.
permit The Extraordinary Voyages to establish the difficult relationship There was also a smaller re-awakening of interest in France. A
between the spatial or geographic model and the model of knowledge new edition of Lefebvre's impassioned doctoral dissertation, La
as encyclopedia. The (re)emergence of this language of paths, routes, Vallee de Campan - Etude de sociologie rurale, originally published in
movements, planes, and maps, this spatial language of the writing of 1963, was scheduled to appear, as was Conversation avec Henri
the world (geo-graphy), marks the moment of passage toward a new Lefebvre, a small book prepared by Patricia Latour and Francis
epistemology .... To read and to journey are one and the same act. Combes from their conversations with Lefebvre during the week fol-
(Michel Serres commenting on Jules Verne's The Extraordinary
lowing New Year's Day at his home in Navarrenx. In the previous
Voyages in Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, 1982: xxi)
year, new editions had been issued of La Somme et Ia reste (1959),
Allegory: Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject Lefebvre's personal discussions of his in-and-out relations with the
of aptly suggestive resemblance; an extended metaphor.
(Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) 1 Henri Lefebvre, Elements de rythmanalyse: Introduction a Ia connaissance des
rythmes, Paris: Edition;; Syllepse, 1992. Also contained here is Henri Lefebvre and
It is perhaps to the disconcerting quality of postmodernism's continu- Catherine Regulier, "Elements de rythmanalyse des uilles mediterraneennes," reprinted
ous transformation of time into space, emptiness into saturation, body from Peuples mediterraneens 37, 1986. For their first published essay on rhythmanaly-
sis, see "Le Projet rythmanalytique," Communications 41, 1985. What was probably
into electronics, and absence into presence that one can attribute the Lefebvre's 68th book, Du Contrat de citoyenneti, written in collaboration with le
premature claim of postmodernism's demise and explain why, like groupe dJ? Nauarrenx, was published in 1991 by Editions Syllepse in the same collec-
the phoenix, it always emerges stronger from the ashes of such tion as Elements de rythmanalyse.
28 Discovering Thirdspace Extraordinary Voyages of Henri Lefebvre 29
French Communist Party, and Le Materialisme dialectique (1939), his brances of Henri Lefebvre. This overture serves multiple purposes: it
most powerful critique of Stalinist reductionism. And on his desk, is an Acknowledgement, an appreciative Dedication, and an inspir-
awaiting future publication, was a new manuscript for a book he ing Travelguide for a long and continuing journey that seeks to
had announced plans for several years earlier, enticingly titled La make theoretical and practical sense of the steamy historical geogra-
Decouverte et le secret. phies of the 20th century. Without ever using the specific term,
Seemingly taking his presence for granted, few were aware that Lefebvre was probably the first to discover, describe, and insight-
his absence from Paris was sparked not just by illness and perhaps a fully explore Thirdspace as a radically different way of looking at,
premonitory urge to return home to Navarrenx, but also by another interpreting, and acting to change the embracing spatiality of human
act of displacement and alienation, a subject that had always fasci- life. A few others ventured along similar paths and many today,
nated, activated, and enraged Lefebvre. He and Catherine had been thanks to these pioneering efforts, are exploring Thirdspace with
forced out of their wonderfully ramshackle old dwelling place on the great insight and political sensibility. But no one has, with such peri-
rue Rambuteau by the machinations of the Parisian property market, patetic persistence, shown the way so clearly to the long hidden life-
closing forever the windows through which Lefebvre so brilliantly worlds of what Lefebvre expansively called l' espace vecu, lived space.
viewed the rhythms of everyday life.2 But then again, Lefebvre never As a first approximation of these routes and roots to Thirdspace, I
stayed very long in the same place. He was always moving on, from will "travel" through Lefebvre's biography as an explicitly geo-
moment to moment to moment, even as he entered his tenth decade. graphical expedition, seeking in this initial journey to real-and-imag-
The records state that Lefebvre had turned 90 a few weeks before ined places a way to reconstitute his life as a restless and allegorical
his death, but he was always playful about his age, frustrating his voyage of discovery. In this "extended metaphor," I will be purpose-
chroniclers with teasing intimations of a different lived time. During fully selective and, some might say, manipulative in representing
his stay as visiting professor at the University of California in Santa Lefebvre's spatialized biography in too heroic a light, omitting his
Cruz in 1983-4, organized by Fredric Jameson and the History of weaknesses and critical failures, never capturing the essence of his
Consciousness Program, it was rumored tha:t his passport had a being and becoming. But this is not a traditional "historical" biogra-
birthdate of 1896; while after one of his visits to the UCLA Graduate phy; it is instead a voyage, a journey, an exploration, a specifically
School of Architecture and Urban Planning, little paste-ons appeared spatial search Much will be left out and I may seem to pack into the
in the card catalogue of the research library "correcting" his date of journey much more than what was actually there. Those who read
birth from 1901 to 1905. He preferred 1901, however, and he is best his life as that of a sociologist or critical philosopher or historical
remembered as entering the world in the first year of the century materialist will no doubt be disappointed. But as I hope will become
that both defined his adventurous life and, in many different ways, clearer, there is no better place to begin to comprehend the multiple
came to be defined by it. Henri Lefebvre never quite made it to a full meanings of Thirdspace.
hundred years, but I know it would please him if I too played with
time a little to suggest that it may have been the 20th century itself,
not Henri Lefebvre, that quietly "disappeared" in 1991.3 His pres- Origins
ence/ absence will no doubt be felt for many years to come - and will
appear again and again in every chapter of this book However vague he may have been about his birthdate and history,
I have chosen to open Thirdspace with some brief personal remem- Lefebvre was always forthright about his birthplace and geographi-
cal origins. "Je suis Occitan, c' est-a-dire peripherique - et mondial," he
wrote in his autobiographical Le Temps des meprises. 4 "I am
'See "Vu de Ia fenetre," chapter 3 in Elements de rythmanalyse, 1992. This revealing Occitanian, that is to say peripheral- and global." He goes into fur-
v1ewhas recently been translated as "Seen from the Window," in Writings on Cities/
Henn Lefebvre, selected, translated and introduced by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth ther detail (and I translate freely, with my own emphasis added):
Lebas, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996. I try to take a similar
"view from the window" of everyday life in the Centrum of Amsterdam in chapter 9. I enjoy my life between the centers and the peripheries; I am at
3
The most comprehensive recent biography of Lefebvre describes his life as "the
~dventure of the century." See Remi Hess, Henri Lefebvre et I' aventure du siecle, Paris:
the same time peripheral and central, but I take sides with the
Editions A.M. Metailie, 1988. In an intriguing coincidence, Eric Hobsbawm, one of periphery ... I have known life in peasant communities, among
the world's leading radical historians, recently selected 1991 as the endpoint of the
"short" 20th century in The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, New 4
York: Pantheon, 1994. Henri Lefebvre, Le Temps des meprises, Paris: Stock, 1975: 60.
the mountain people, the shephards ... [but] Parisianism, with possibilities.5 Two terms are never enough, he would repeatedly
all its sophistications, is no stranger to me. (1975: 134) write. II y a toujours l' Autre. There is always the Other, a third term
that disrupts, disorders, and begins to reconstitute the conventional
Paris is my fascination. I have always lived there, yet I am not binary opposition into an-Other that comprehends but is more than
Parisian. If I count up the years, I have lived much longer in just the sum of two parts.6 I will return to this critical strategy of
Paris than in the Pyrenees; but in so far as I have roots, a home "thirding-as-Othering" in the next chapter, for it is a keystone to an
base, it is in Occitania, where I get my bearings, my sensuality, understanding of both Lefebvre's (meta)philosophy and the concep-
my appreciation for use values, my nourishment and love .... tualization of Thirdspace that evolves within it.
And then there is the other pole, Paris: detested, admired, fasci- The "prodigiously stimulating" dialectics of center:-periphery and
nating, the abstraction, the elitism, the unbearable elitism of the conceived-lived were concretely re-enacted every year for decades
left, the explosive, the city fermenting with clans and cliques, in Lefebvre's oscillations between Paris and his home in Navarrenx,
with a political life that is most odious and most exciting .... where his part-Basque mother was born, a site filled with the pas-
These are contradictions, but they are prodigiously stimulating sions and memories of radical regional resistance to centralized state
ones. (1975: 133-4) power. From these regenerative movements, practically all of
Lefebvre's achievements and inspirations can be drawn. And here
Lefebvre always maintained a deeply peripheral consciousness, exis- too, I suggest - and will elaborate further in chapter 2 - can be
tentially heretical and contracentric, a spatial consciousness and geo- located other defining qualities of Thirdspace: a knowable and
graphical imagination shaped in the regions of resistance beyond the unknowable, real and imagined lifeworld of experiences, emotions,
established centers of power. Yet it was also, simultaneously, a con- events, and political choices that is existentially shaped by the gener-
sciousness and imagination peculiarly able to comprehend the inner- ative and problematic interplay between centers and peripheries, the
most workings of the power centers, to know their perils and abstract and concrete, the impassioned spaces of the conceptual and
possibilities, to dwell within them with the critical ambidexterity of the lived, marked out materially and metaphorically in spatial praxis,
the resident alien: the insider who purposefully chooses to remain the transformation of (spatial) knowledge into (spatial) action in a
outside. This simultaneous embrace of centrality and peripheralness field of unevenly developed (spatial) power.
made him more evocatively global, worldly, open in his vision, per- Power is ontologically embedded in the center-periphery relation
sistently dialectical in his theory and practice - and often irksomely and, hence, also in the ontology of Thirdspace. The presence/
incomprehensible to those positioned more steadfastly at one or the absence of power, however, is not neatly defined or delimited:
other pole.
The center-periphery relation echoed another dialectic that Power, the power to maintain the relations of dependence and
threads simultaneously through Lefebvre's life and writings. This exploitation, does not keep to a defined "front" at the strategic
was the relation between the "conceived" (con~u) and the "lived" level, like a frontier on the map or a line of trenches on the
(vecu), or as he would later describe it, between the "representations ground. Power is everywhere; it is omnipresent, assigned to
of space" and the "spaces of representation." For Lefebvre, lived Being. It is everywhere in space. It is in everyday discourse and
spaces were passionate, "hot," and teeming with sensual intimacies. commonplace notions, as well as in police batons and armoured
Conceived spaces were intellectual, abstract, "cool," distanciating. cars. It is in objets d'art as well as in missiles. It is in the diffuse
They too inflamed passions, but these were centered more in preponderance of the "visual," as well as in institutions such as
the mind than in the body. He saw these two dialectical pairings school or parliament. It is in things as well as in signs (the signs
(center-periphery, conceived-lived) as homologous, arising from
5
the same sources, and often mapped them directly on one another in I say "not always successfully" because, at times, much of Lefebvre's writing
seems to revolve around binaries and dualisms that remain uninterrogated or too
the contexts of his own personal life. But even here, although not simply composed. This includes not only mind/body but also man/woman and
always successfully, he tried to avoid the rigidity of categorical Western/non-Western, each a focal point for contemporary critiques of Lefebvre, as
equivalence (body= hot= periphery, mind = cool= center), for this well as Fredric Jameson, Michel Foucault, and others. I thank Barbara Hooper for
reeked of what he saw as the deadening of dialectical reasoning in her critical remarks on this point and many others in my initial treatment of
Lefebvre.
conceptual dualisms, in the construction of compelling binary 6
From Lefebvre, La Presence et /'absence: Contribution a Ia thiorie des representations,
oppositions that are categorically closed to new, unanticipated Paris: Casterman, 1980: 143.
of objects and object-signs). Everywhere, and therefore and contradiction-filled interplay between the development of the
nowhere.... [P]ower has extended its domain right into the forces of production (knowledge, labor power, technology) and the
interior of each individual, to the roots of consciousness, to the social relations that are organized around production and, simulta-
"topias" hidden in the folds of subjectivity? neously, around their own continued reproduction and renewal. The
problematic interplay between social production and reproduction is
Few, including Foucault, ever made this super-charged relationship insistently present in all of his works. But this insistence was never
between space, knowledge, and power so explicit and far-reaching. more (or less) than a point of departure, an explicitly Marxian home
base from which to begin a longer, more meandering and endless
journey to still unexplored Other spaces (while never forgetting that
there was always a place to return home when necessary, for nour-
Pathways ishment, identity, insight, and political choice). 8
For Lefebvre, the centered peripheral, the "refined barbarian," as
The complex interplay of centrality and peripheralness defined he called himself, a nomadic Marxism provided pathways into a
Lefebvre's distinctive brand of Marxism: constantly open and flexi- space of radical openness/ a vast territory of infinite possibilities and
ble, always reactive to dogmatic closure, never content with any per- perils. This space was not located simply "in between" his bi-polar
manent construct or fixed totalization. His was a restless, passionate, worlds of centers and peripheries, or in some additive combination
nomadic Marxism that was both at the center of things and yet dis- of them. It lay "beyond," in a (third)world that could be entered and
tinctly marginal: the better to see the entire terrain, to be receptive to explored through metaphilosophy, Lefebvre's summative description
new ideas from every potential source, to miss nothing. It was also, of his unsettled and unsettling methodology. Infused with this criti-
for some of the same reasons, both a modern and a postmodern cal sense of moving beyond, he can perhaps be best described not as
Marxism right from the beginning, another eccentric simultaneity a Marxist but as a meta-Marxist. Let us explore further this signifi-
that confounds all those who dwell in neater, more categorical intel- cant prefixing.
lectual and political worlds. Lefebvre chose his Marxism as a mod- In Greek, meta- carries the meaning of both something beyond or
ernist, always "taking sides" with the periphery and the after (akin to the Latin post-), and also (related to the Latin trans-) a
peripheralized; but he practiced his Marxism as a postmodernist, change of place or nature, i.e. to transport and/ or transcend (as in
departing from the tight constraints of the either I or to explore, as a the roots to the word "metaphor"). 10 Lefebvre describes his use of
consciously political strategy, the combinatorial openness of the meta- in La Presence et I' absence: Contribution a Ia theorie des representa-
both/ and also .... tions (1980: 89-90, my translation).
Lefebvre hated what he called les chapelles, the "suffocating" (1975:
162) cliques and schools that have always dominated intellectual life The term: "meta ... " has many meanings: transgression, a
in Paris, especially on the Left. Being global and peripheral meant going beyond, an excess, etc. Meta-physics did not imply at
always being open, non-exclusive, available to all those interested in first a negation or denial of the physical; it took on this sense
the same project and interested in the potential use value of every- only after the long and eventful development of [modern]
thing. Some have suggested that the cost of such eclectic flexibility
and radical openness was relative isolation from the hegemonic
8
"grand houses" of Western Marxism and Continental Philosophy. In my first meeting with Lefebvre in 1978 I clumsily asked him, "Are you an anar-
chist?" He responded politely,"No. Not now." "Well then," I said, "what are you
But this was an intentional and propitious isolation that protected now?" He smiled. "A Marxist, of course ... so that we can all be anarchists some
and enhanced Lefebvre's peripheral and global vision, and at the time in the future."
9
same time sustained his central position as one of the most original A phrase I have purposefully borrowed from bell hooks, whose revisioning of
Thirdspace will be explored more fully in chapter 3.
critical philosophers of the 20th century. 10
Were it not for the Greco-Roman impurity, the term "postmodernity" (and
For Lefebvre, critical thinking about the world always began by related usages) might better be translated as "metamodernity" to capture the more
looking at that fundamental dynamic of all social life, the complex complex meanings of the Greek versus the Latin prefix: not simply coming after but
moving beyond, in the sense of transporting and transcending, moving modernity
to a different place, nature, and meaning. It is this wider sense of "post-" that under-
7
From Lefebvre, The Survival of Capitalism, tr. F. Bryant, London: Allison and Busby, lies my postmodernism and my approach to a critical understanding of postmoder-
1976: 86-7. nity and the "postmodern condition" throughout this book.
philosophy. Similarly, meta-language does not signify the spaceY In Le Manifeste diffirentialiste (1971), another of his attempts
abolition of language; it conveys the meaning of a "discourse on to reconstitute his metaphilosophical project, Lefebvre opposed the
discourse". . . . The term meta-philosophy then is not the heterogenizing "differential" to the homogenizing "repetitive" and
abolition of philosophy. To the contrary, it opens up a sphere of connected this relation to a series of innovative concepts and cri-
reflexion and meditation in which philosophy appears in all its tiques of what he called everyday life in the modern world, the
fullness but also with all its limitations.... Meta-philosophy urban condition and consumer society (la societe bureaucratique de
differs from philosophy most notably in its acceptance of the consommation dirigee), and, especially, the growing power of the State
world of representations. It analyzes representations as such, as and what he assertively described as a "state mode of production,"
internal to their world, and from this analysis comes the in part to emphasize his own differences from more orthodox
critique of representations. . . . The great illusion of philo- Marxism and also from the prevailing currents of continental philos-
sophy [arises from the belief that it can completely] transcend ophy and critical theory in both of which a spatial theorization of the
representations to reach a more concrete and complex state and its powers was notably absent.
Truth. Following up on his idea of le droit ala ville, the right to the city, he
argued for a need to struggle on a wider terrain for le droit a la dif-
This commentary on the meanings of meta- positions the "critique of ference, the right to difference, to be different, against the increasing
representations" at the heart of Lefebvre's metaphilosophy and, as forces of homogenization, fragmentation, and hierarchically orga-
we will soon see, at the source of his conceptualization of the (social) nized power (another of his innovative interpretive triads) that
production of (social) space. It also serves not only as a critique of defined the specific geography of capitalism. He located these strug-
modern philosophy but also as an implicit critique of modern gles for the right to be different at many levels, beginning signifi-
Marxism. Lefebvre's meta-Marxism is an important precursor to cantly with the body and sexuality and extending through built
what some contemporary critics have begun to call "post-Marxism," forms and architectural design to the spatiality of the household and
a "sphere of reflexion and meditation" in which Marxism appears monumental building, the urban neighborhood, the city, the cultural
"in all its fullness but also with all its limitations." This is an impor- region, and national liberation movements, to more global responses
tant point, especially for those contemporary readers of Lefebvre to geographically uneven development and underdevelopment. He
who are either uncomfortable with and/or dismissive of the embedded these multi-tiered struggles for the right to difference in
Marxism that infuses all his writings; or who, often equally blindly, the contextualized dialectics of centers and peripheries, the con-
celebrate his apparent constancy and commitment to modern ceived and the lived, the material and the metaphorical; and from
Marxist traditions and orthodoxies. Neither of these interpretations these concatenated dialectics of uneven development and differenti-
adequately comprehend Lefebvre's metaphilosophy or, more impor- ation he opened up a new domain, a space of collective resistance, a
tant for the present argument, his transgressive conceptualization of Thirdspace of political choice that is also a meeting place for all periph-
lived space as an-Other world, a meta-space of radical openness eralized or marginalized "subjects" wherever they may be located.
where everything can be found, where the possibilities for new dis- In this politically charged space, a radically new and different form
coveries and political strategies are endless, but where one must of citizenship (citoyennete) can be defined and realized.
always be restlessly and self-critically moving on to new sites and Another imbricated mapping is added to the emerging domain of
insights, never confined by past journeys and accomplishments, 11
Lefebvre intentionally chose the term spatia-analyse for its echoing of an alterna-
always searching for differences, an Otherness, a strategic and tive to the psycho-analyse, or psychoanalysis, that featured so prominently in French
heretical space "beyond" what is presently known and taken for philosophical discourse, especially through the influence of Freud and/or Lacan. As
granted. another possible choice, he suggested spatiology in obvious reference to sociology,
Lefebvre was one of the first to theorize difference and otherness in although he was uncomfortable with its intimations of a too narrow "science" of
space. Lefebvre did not use either of these terms very often. They appear only when
explicitly spatial terms and he linked this spatial theorization he is searching for new ways to demonstrate to others less spatially inclined the
directly to his meta-Marxist critique of the "representations of transdisciplinary comprehensiveness and philosophical centrality of his arguments
power" and the "power of representations." He did so by insisting about space and spatiality. What to call this alternative approach to spatiality
remains an open question. As will be discussed in chapter 5, Foucault called it "het-
that difference be contextualized in social and political practices erotopology." My "postmodern geographies" was another attempt to capture its
that are linked to spatia-analyse, the analysis, or better, the radical alterity and distinctiveness, an attempt which I am reconstituting here in the
knowledge (connaissance) of the (social) production of (social) notion of Thirds pace.
Thirdspace in Lefebvre's theorization of difference, from the "geog- Introduced to Hegel through his association with Andre Breton,
raphy closest in" (to use Adrienne Rich's description of the body) a key figure in the Surrealist movement, Lefebvre helped to shape
across many other spatial scales to the global divisions of labor and the early development of Hegelianized Marxism in France and
the macrographies of power embedded in a capitalist world of cen- would become, with such works as Le Materialisme dialectique (1939)
ters, peripheries, and semiperipheries. This nested layering of and his most popular book, Le Marxisme (1948), the mid-century's
"regional" scales and differences is itself socially produced and leading Marxist theoreticianP Although authoritatively positioned
reproduced over time and across space. As with Thirdspace, it is within the French Communist Party and often criticized for his
always embroiled in modes of production and reproduction, making unbending authoritativeness, Lefebvre was at the same time
Marxism a particularly revealing point of departure- but never the heretical and original from the start, a precursory meta-Marxist, vig-
exclusive route to understanding and praxis, even with regard to the orously resisting any form of dogmatic closure or essentialism,
specific geography of capitalism. always making sure to keep Marxism radically open to creative
Lefebvre's radical openness instilled Marxism (and instills renewal. 14
Thirdspace) with dimensions that most Marxists (and most spatial At the same time, the peripatetic Lefebvre was always ready to
analysts) never dreamed were there. He made Marxism (and move on from even his most compelling discoveries. Michel
Thirdspace) intentionally incomplete, endlessly explorable, resistant Trebitsch captures this purposeful ambiguity and nomadism well in
to closure or easy categorical definition, but persistently faithful in his Preface to the English translation of Lefebvre's Critique of
spirit and intent to Marx. He never permitted the formation of a Everyday Life. 15
Lefebvrean "school." He was instead one of the most Marx-ist and
least Marxist of all 20th-century radical scholars. It is this nomadic Lefebvre has something of the brilliant amateur craftsman
and inspirited meta-Marxism that opens Thirdspace to an about him, unable to cash in on his own inventions; something
understanding of difference and otherness and so much more as capricious, like a sower who casts his seeds to the wind without
well. worrying about whether they will germinate. Or is it because of
Lefebvre's style, between flexibility and vagueness, where
thinking is like strolling, where thinking is rhapsodic, as
Approximations opposed to more permanent constructions, with their mono-
lithic, reinforced, reassuring arguments, painstakingly built
Lefebvre's sinuous path to Thirdspace can be traced back to his earli- upon structures and models? His thought processes are like a
est writings on alienation and the mystification of consciousness,
beginning with La Conscience mystifiie (1936), written with his close 13
Le Matirialisme dialectique, Paris: Alcan, 1939; this original edition was destroyed
friend, Norbert Guterman. 12 Upset at what he saw among Marxists in 1940, but the book was reprinted many times, beginning with Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1947. Translations were published in Spanish (1948),
as an underappreciation for the power of the "conceived" world of Italian (1949) German (1964), English-UK (1968), Japanese (1971), Dutch (1972),
ideas and ideology over the "lived" world of material social rela- Portuguese (1972), English-US (1973). Le Marxisme was published by Presses
tions, he persistently sought to transcend, via his inclusive dialectical Universitaires de France in 1948 as part of its Que sais-je? series, with translations in
Indonesian (1953), Portuguese-Sao Paulo (1958), Greek (1960), Italian (1960), Spanish
or, better, trialectical materialism, the stubborn bi-polarity and (1961), Japanese (1962), Dutch (1969), Swedish (1971), Danish (1973), Arabic (1973),
dualism that had developed between Marx's historical materialism German (1975), Portuguese-Lisbon (1975), Serbo-Croatian (1975), Turkish (1977),
and Hegel's philosophical idealism. Stimulated by his attachments to Albanian (1977), Korean (1987). An English translation is notably absent. The most
useful bibliographic guides to Lefebvre's work are the biography by Remi Hess (see
the Surrealist movement and its revisioning of the worlds of note 3) and what is described as "The Complete Lefebvre Bibliography" in Rob
representation, Lefebvre set out at once to carve an alternative path, Shields, "Body, Spirit, and Production: The Geographical Legacies of Henri
a third way that draws on and encompasses both materialism and Lefebvre," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American
idealism, Marx and Hegel, simultaneously, yet remains open to Geographers, Atlanta, 1993.
14
To categorize Lefebvre as an "unwavering marxist" or as "standing in the shad-
much more than their simple combination. After all, il y a toujours ows of the totalizing drive of Hegelian Marxism," as Derek Gregory does in his
l'Autre. Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994, 353-4),
is thus both superficially accurate and a serious misreading of Lefebvre's project.
15
Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life - Volume I, tr. J. Moore with a Preface by
12
Henri Lefebvre and Norbert Guterman, La Conscience mystifiee, Paris: Gallimard, Michel Trebitsch, London and New York: Verso, 1991 (from Critique de Ia vie quotidi-
1936 (new edition, Paris: Le Sycamore, 1979). enne I: Introduction, Paris: Grasset, 1947; 2nd ed. Paris: L' Arche, 1958).
limestone landscape with underground rivers which only and the new cultural politics of identity and difference, subjects that
become visible when they burst forth on the surface. will be explored in subsequent chapters.
(1991b: ix) Lefebvre's postwar approximations can be captured by weaving
together the titles of his most path breaking books. I present them in
Alienation and the mystification of consciousness 16 are ever-present diachronological order, but they are best interpreted synchronically,
themes in Lefebvre's writings (and in the conceptualization of as stopovers on a nomadic journey, each providing a different inflec-
Thirdspace), but he considered them only to be the first in a series of tion on the same developing themes.
what he called "approximations" of his metaphilosophical project.
He saw these approximations both as an evolving series and also as 1947 Critique de la vie quotidienne I: Introduction, Paris: Grasset;
always there, immanent in a metaphilosophical and libertarian meta- second edition Paris: L' Arche, 1958. Translations in Japanese
Marxism, waiting to be discovered. In each approximation, Lefebvre (1968), German (1974), Italian (1977), and most recently as
both deconstructs and reconstitutes his neverending project, putting Critique of Everyday Life - Volume I: Introduction (tr. John
it together in new and different ways without ever breaking entirely Moore, with a Preface by Michel Trebitsch, London and New
from his past journeys. York: Verso, 1991).
After La Conscience mystifiie, Lefebvre would write the majority of 1962 Critique de la vie quotidienne II: Fondement d'une sociologie de la
his books to defend Marxism against any form of closure or confine- quotidiennete, Paris: L' Arche. Translations in Japanese (1972),
ment from within or without, beginning with the rise of Soviet German (1975), and Italian (1977).
economism and German fascism in the interwar years; moving on in 1968 Le Droit a la ville, Paris: Anthropos. Translations in Spanish
the postwar decades to the reductionism he saw in Sartrean existen- (1968), Portuguese (1968), Japanese (1969), Italian (1970),
tialism, Althusserian structuralism, and continental philosophy's German (1972), Greek (1976).
often flagrantly apolitical infatuation with language, discourse, and 1968 La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne, Paris: Gallimard.
texts; and most recently against the widespread abandonment of Translations in Portuguese (1969), English (1971 - Every-
Marxism in an era of postmodern global capitalism, with its growing day Life in the Modern World, Harmondsworth: Penguin
ash pile of "the end ofs." 17 Amidst these defensive efforts, often writ- and New York: Harper and Row; tr. Sacha Rabinovich),
ten with exceptional clarity and directness, he simultaneously Spanish (1972), German (1972), Italian (1979), Albanian
moved his own creative project forward along a nomadic and rhap- (1980).
sodic path that, in so many ways, would prefigure the later develop- 1970 La Revolution urbaine, Paris: Gallimard. Translations in
ment of critical postmodernism, spatial feminism, post-Marxism, German (1972), Spanish (1972), Italian (1973), Serbo-Croatian
and much of what has now come to be called critical cultural studies (1975), Portuguese (Brazil-1988).
1971 Le Manifeste differentialiste, Paris: Gallimard. Translations in
16
Although there are some similarities between Lefebvre's notion of /a conscience Spanish (1972), Italian (1980).
mystifiee and the powerful arguments about "false consciousness" associated with 1973 La Survie du capitalisme: la reproduction des rapports de produc-
Lukacs' codifications of Marx, there were very significant differences. For Lefebvre, tion, Paris: Anthropos. Translations in English (1976 - The
mystified consciousness, especially within the working class, was an integral part of
material reality and everyday life, and needed to be treated as such both theoreti- Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production,
cally and politically. In ways that will become clearer in later chapters, Lefebvre's London: Allison and Busby, tr. Frank Bryant), German (1974),
treatment of /a conscience mystifiie anticipated the more recent development of the Spanish (1974), Portuguese (1974), Greek (1975), Italian (1975),
concept of hyperreality and its wrappings in simulations and simulacra, especially as Serbo-Croatian (1975).
defined in the writings of Jean Baudrillard, a former student and colleague of
Lefebvre. 1974 La Production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos; third edition
17
For a recent example of Lefebvre's vigilant defense of Marx and (his) Marxism see 1986. Translations in Italian (1975), Japanese (1975), and at
Une Pensee devenue monde ... Faut-il abandonner Marx? (A Thought Becomes World last in English (1991 - The Production of Space, Oxford UK
... Must We Now Abandon Marx?), Paris: Fayard (1980). He dedicates this book to
Catherine Regulier ("from whom it derives whatever force and ardor it may have") and Cambridge US: Blackwell, tr. Donald Nicholson-
and answers the question posed in the subtitle with a forceful "no." It is useful to Smith).
see this reaffirmation in conjunction with an earlier book he wrote with Regulier, 1977 De l'Etat III: Le mode de production etatique, Paris: UGE collec-
then a young militant member of the French Communist Party, La Revolutipn n' est
plus ce qu'elle ltait (The Revolution is No Longer What It Used to Be), Paris: Editions tion 10/18. Translations in Italian (1978), Spanish (1979),
Libres-Hallier (1978). Portuguese (1979), Serbo-Croatian (1982).
1980 La Presence et I' absence: Contribution a la theorie des representa- The remarkable way in which modern techniques have pene-
tions, Paris: Casterman. Translations in Spanish (1981) and trated everyday life has thus introduced into this backward sec-
Greek (1982). tor the uneven development which characterizes every aspect of
1981 Critique de la vie quotidienne III: De la modernite au modernisme our era .... These advances, along with their consequences, are
(Pour une metaphilosophie du quotidien), Paris: L' Arche. provoking new structural conflicts within the concrete life of
society. The same period which has witnessed a breathtaking
Each of these "bursts" to the surface adds to the complexity and development in the applications of techniques [to] everyday life
openness of Lefebvre's eventual conceptualization of Thirdspace. As has also witnessed the no-less-breathtaking degradation of
he moves from one to the other, there is never a complete abandon- everyday life for large masses of human beings ....
ment. Instead, the journey is one of creative refocusing and reconsti- Everyday life with all the superior mod cons takes on the dis-
tution, a neverending cumulative adventure of exploring new tance and remoteness and familiar strangeness of a dream. The
horizons, of moving beyond. display of luxury to be seen in so many films, most of them
Perhaps the best known of Lefebvre's itinerary of approximations mediocre, takes on an almost fascinating character, and the
is his critique of everyday life, a critical understanding of daily life in spectator is uprooted from his everyday world by an everyday
lived space that would occupy Lefebvre throughout all his life. 18 In world other than his own. Escape into this illusory but present
the initial volume of his trilogy on everyday life (1947, 1962, 1981), everyday world ... explains the momentary success these films
written in the postwar flush of French liberation, Lefebvre optimisti- enjoy. (1991: 8-10) 19
cally saw the critique of everyday life as a means of connecting
Marxism more closely with the discourses of continental philosophy For Marxists, the strategic implications of Lefebvre's critique were
as well as injecting philosophy with a new appreciation for the con- clear and powerful, if not so easy to understand and accept.
crete, the immediate, the routine, the seemingly trivial events of Everyday life was presented and represented as the place where
everyday living. alienation and mystification were played out, enacted, concretely
Lefebvre's critique of everyday life responded not just to the pres- inscribed. It was also, therefore, the place where the struggles to
ence of alienation and mystification in capitalist societies but also to demystify human consciousness, erase alienation, and achieve true
their presumed absence in the "actually practiced" socialism of the liberation must be located. What Lefebvre was doing was substitut-
Soviet Union under Stalinism. The everyday world was everywhere ing everyday life for the workplace as the primary locus of exploitation,
being colonized, infiltrated, by a technological rationality that was domination, and struggle; and redefining social transformation and
extending its effects well beyond the market and the workplace into revolution as intrinsically more socio-cultural (and less economistic)
the family, the home, the school, the street, the local community; into processes and goals. What Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt
the private spaces of consumption, reproduction, leisure, and enter- School had begun, Lefebvre expanded and developed more fully at a
tainment. This endemic colonization was filtered through the state time when his influence within Western Marxism was still at its
and its bureaucracy in an expanding process that Lefebvre would peak. But this was just the beginning of Lefebvre's radical reconcep-
later call spatial planning, a broader term than even the rich French tualization and critique.
phrase for urban and regional planning, l'amenagement de territoire. In In Volume II (1962, subtitled "A Foundation for a Sociology of
a long Foreword to the second edition of the Critique, published in Everydayness") and in the new Foreword written for the first vol-
1958 (and included in the 1991 English translation), Lefebvre makes ume, Lefebvre moved on from his initial formulations. Depressed by
some provocative connections: what he saw as the increasing penetration and control of everyday
life by the state and its surveillant bureaucracy, he began focusing
more specifically on the state and on the sociological aspects of
18
Lefebvre rarely used the concept of "place" in his writings, largely because its
richest meaning is effectively captured in his combined use of "everyday life" and
"lived space." Many cultural geographers, in particular, have persistently attempted 19
Lefebvre immediately follows this statement with a more positive one: "Happily,
to separate the concepts of place and space and to give place greater concreteness, contemporary cinema and theatre have other works to offer which reveal a truth
immediacy, and cultural affect, while space is deemed to be abstract, distanced, about everyday life," a "truth" he sees as a source of resistance and a "critique of
ethereal. As Lefebvre's work demonstrates, this is an unnecessary and misleading everyday life from within." He then goes on to a stimulating, nearly 20-page romp
separation/ distinction that reduces the meaningfulness of both space and place. through the films of Charlie Chaplin and the plays of Bertold Brecht.
Marxism.2 By 1962, Lefebvre had become a professor of sociology in to hoist Lefebvre with his own petard, redolent of the ideological
Strasbourg, after having served two years earlier as director of mystification, reification, and false consciousness he had so roundly
research for the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS), attackedY Despite the important role Lefebvre's ideas played in
a state institution that would play a key role in the development of Paris's short-lived attempt at urban revolution in 1968- and perhaps
Marxist urban sociology in France and one that he had been also because of it- Lefebvre's heretical geographical journeys came
involved with since 1948, after his years in the French resistance to be seen as going too far from the primacy of the social and the
movement. materialist critique of history, and too close to what his critics saw as
Lefebvre's sociological approximation was short-lived (if, unfortu- the fetishism of the spatial.
nately, long-lasting). Already in the second volume of the critique of Thus began a long period in which Lefebvre seemed to recede into
everyday life, and then even more forcefully in Everyday Life in the the shadows of Parisian intellectual life, especially within French
Modern World, published in French in 1968, Lefebvre became con- Marxism. His presumed excesses and unbridled spontaneity were
cerned over what he saw as an emerging "sociologism," filled with blamed by many on the Left for nearly all the failures of the May
the pretensions of scientism, and began regrounding his critique of 1968 uprising, as a new generation of chapelles was formed to revive
everyday life and alienation in what he called the urban condition and (or to rationalize the total abandonment of) the revolutionary pro-
in an accompanying discourse on modernity. Flanked by colleagues ject. Little was heard of Lefebvre in the English-speaking world
and students such as Alain Touraine, Hemi Raymond, Jean except through the critical eyes of those who had, often quite
Baudrillard, Manuel Castells, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit after his move respectfully, pushed him into the shadows. Of the nearly 30 books
to the University of Nanterre in Paris in 1965, Lefebvre initiated a he published between 1970 and 1990, including his autobiographical
new journey that would take him, especially after the events of May Le Temps des meprises and several critical attacks on the new hege-
1968, from sociology to the encompassing specificity of the urban. mony of Althusserian structuralism on the Left and the rising cyber-
Lefebvre's preliminary expositions on such themes as the shift netic State Technocracy on the Right, only two were translated into
"from the rural to the urban," his forceful promotion of "the right to English: the exegetical Marxist Thought and the City (1974) and the
the city" and the necessity for an "urban revolution" (each phrase exuberant The Survival of Capitalism (1976), an insightful but confus-
the title of a book-length treatment) took many by surprise. To ing preview of The Production of Space that was difficult to compre-
Marxists, and even the Marxist urban sociologists deeply inspired by hend without reference to the latter book's more effectively
Lefebvre's writings and teachings, this apparent redefinition of pro- elaborated critique.
letarian revolution and social struggle as intrinsically urban in both With exquisite irony, when viewed from the present, this may
spirit and substance was not only unacceptably heretical, it seemed have been his most creatively productive period with respect to the
20
conceptualization of spatiality in general and Thirdspace in particu-
Lefebvre summarized this sociological phase of his approximations most purely
in Sociologie de Marx (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966), with translations
lar. Moving on from his "urban" approximation, wherein he tried
in Italian (1968), Spanish (1969), Portuguese (Brazil 1969), Japanese (1970), Swedish against all odds to project the urban condition as an appropriately
(1970), German (1972), Danish (1972), Dutch (1973), Greek (1980), and, most signifi- grounded metaphor for the specific and by now global
cantly, in English (both in London: Penguin Books and New York: Pantheon, 1968). geography I spatiality of capitalism, he reached an overlapping
So much is significant- and insignificant- about this book. No other book written
by Lefebvre (except La Survie du capitalisme, 1973; tr. 1976) was translated into moment when, as he described it, "tout converge dans le probleme de
English more quickly, and none except Le Matlrialisme dialectique (1939) and Le l'espace" (1975: 223) -when "it all came together in the problem of
Marxisme (1948) were translated into more languages. Of all the path breaking books space." In "The Discovery," the opening chapter to The Survival of
listed previously (and it should be noted that Sociologie de Marx is not among them),
only La Survie du capitalisme and La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne were trans- Capitalism, Lefebvre contextualized this convergence in a profound
lated into English before Lefebvre's death. The Sociology of Marx, therefore, has had transformation - and spatialization- of dialectical reasoning.
an extraordinary influence on how Lefebvre was seen and understood in the
English-speaking world. Taking nothing away from its contributions to radicalizing 21
See, for example, the treatment of Lefebvre in Manuel Castells, La Question
North American and British sociology and from Lefebvre's identity as a sociologist, urbaine, Paris: Maspero, 1972, translated in English as The Urban Question, London:
the book is notably outside the story-line being followed in this chapter. It contains Edward Arnold, 1977; and in David Harvey, Social Justice and the City, Baltimore:
little of Lefebvre's critique of everyday life and contains only one passing reference Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Both Harvey and Castells, while drawing
to space (28), and that only to herald the philosophical privileging of time and his- sympathetically from Lefebvre's writings, were unable to accept his assertion of the
tory. It is not surprising then how incomprehensible and, indeed, invisible centrality of urban-cum-spatial revolution in their varying structuralist-Marxist
Lefebvre's pronounced spatial tum was to anglophones unable to read French or to interpretations of urbanism at that time. Both have subsequently softened their
more fluent francophones who saw Lefebvre only as a sociologist. structuralisms and their attitudes toward Lefebvre.
The dialectic is back on the agenda. But it is no longer Marx's the most cryptic yet most revealing of all his works on the spatiality
dialectic, just as Marx's was no longer Hegel's .... The dialectic of social life.
today no longer clings to historicity and historical time, or to a In the last chapter of La Production de l' espace, translated as
temporal mechanism such as "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" or "Openings and Conclusions," Lefebvre explicitly grounds and acti-
"affirmation-negation-negation of the negation." ... This, then, vates his metaphilosophical project around what he insisted on call-
is what is new and paradoxical: the dialectic is no longer attached to ing a "knowledge" (connaissance) of space. 22
temporality. Therefore, refutations of historical materialism or of
hegelian historicity cannot function as critiques of the dialectic. Space is becoming the principal stake of goal-directed actions
To recognise space, to recognise what "takes place" there and and struggles. It has of course always been the reservoir of
what it is used for, is to resume the dialectic; analysis will reveal resources, and the medium in which strategies are applied, but
the contradictions of space ... in the route from mental space to it has now become something more than the theatre, the disin-
social space ... [in the] specific contradictions ... between cen- terested stage or setting, of action. Space does not eliminate the
tres and peripheries ... in political economy, in political science, other materials or resources that play a part in the socio-politi-
in the theory of urban reality, and in the analysis of all social cal arena, be they raw materials or the most finished of prod-
and mental processes .... We are not speaking of a science of space, ucts, be they businesses or "culture". Rather, it brings them all
but of a knowledge (a theory) of the production of space ... this most together and then in a sense substitutes itself for each factor sep-
general of products. (1976: 14, 17-18) arately by enveloping it. The result is a vast movement in terms
of which space can no longer be looked upon as an "essence",
After 1968, Lefebvre began what in retrospect may turn out to be as an object distinct from the point of view of (or as compared
one of the most significant critical philosophical projects in the 20th with) "subjects", as answering to a logic of its own. Nor can it
century, a radical recasting of critical thought itself, from ontology be treated as result or resultant, as an empirically verifiable
and epistemology to emancipatory social practice, around a "knowl- effect of a past, a history, or a society. Is space indeed a
edge," a practical theorization, of the production of space. Over the medium? A milieu? An intermediary? It is doubtless all of
previous hundred years at least, critical theory and philosophy had these, but its role is less and less neutral, more and more active,
been creatively grounded in the interplay of historicality and social- both as instrument and as goal, as means and as end. Confining
ity, in the dynamic relations between the socially conscious and will- it to so narrow a category as that of "medium" is consequently
full making of history and the historically conscious constitution and woefully inadequate. (1991a: 410-11, emphasis added)
reproduction of social relations and social practices. The spatiality of
history and social life was, for the most part, frozen into the back- Space, "this most general of products," thus accrues to itself all that
ground as an "external" container, stage, or environment for social has been formerly and familiarly attached to the social production of
action. Lefebvre's project, which remained almost invisible until the time as history or social historicality. Space is simultaneously objec-
1990s, was to inject a third dimension to the dually privileged tive and subjective, material and metaphorical, a medium and out-
dynamics of historicality and sociality: an encompassing and prob- come of social life; actively both an immediate milieu and an
lematic spatiality that demanded at least equivalent attention in criti- originating presupposition, empirical and theorizable, instrumental,
cal theory and praxis. strategic, essential. In his rebalanced trialectic of spatiality-historical-
Lefebvre proceeded to fuse a spatial problematic into all his writ- ity-sociality, Lefebvre makes another provocative connection which
ings: on everyday life, alienation, the urban condition; in his "differ- creatively inverted (and profoundly spatialized) one of the founda-
entialist manifesto" and theorization of the right to difference; in his tional assumptions of historical materialism.
development of a critical theory of representations and semiology; in There is one question which has remained open in the past
his interpretation of the survival of capitalism and its venue, the because it has never been asked: what exactly is the mode of
reproduction of the social relations of production in space; in his
analysis of the State and its growing control over space, knowledge, 22
Lefebvre always preferred the term connaissance, with its more practical connota-
and power; in his forays into the debates on modernity and mod- tion of "understanding," to the synonymous savoir, which often suggests a more
ernism, and later, postmodernity and postmodernism. Synthesizing scholarly and formal notion of "learning." For Lefebvre, this semantic distinction
had significant political meaning. It would shape his respon.se to Michel Foucault's
this whirlwind of spatialization was La Production de l'espace (1974), emphasis on savoir/pouvoir or knowledge/power, as I note bnefly m chapter 5.
existence of social relationships? Are they substantial? natural? the historical and sociological imaginations with a long-neglected or
or formally abstract? The study of space offers an answer persistently subordinated critical approach to spatiality, an explicitly
according to which the social relations of production have a spatial problematic. No one before or since has so forcefully asserted
social existence to the extent that they have a spatial existence; they the significance of space and spatial knowledge in all realms of criti-
project themselves into a space, becoming inscribed there, and cal social theory and philosophy.
in the process producing the space itself. Failing this, these rela-
tions would remain in the realm of "pure" abstraction- that is
to say, in the realm of representations and hence of ideology: Arrivals
the realm of verbalism, verbiage and empty words.
(1991a: 129; emphasis added) How did Lefebvre himself explain his provocative spatial turn, his
metaphilosophical "convergence" on the spatial problematic? Again,
The message is clear, but few on the Left have been willing to accept I translate freely from Le Temps des miprises.
its powerful connotations: that all social relations become real and
concrete, a part of our lived social existence, only when they are spa- Among those who were sympathetic to me, there was great sur-
tially "inscribed" - that is, concretely represented - in the social pro- prise when I started to occupy myself with these questions,
duction of social space. Social reality is not just coincidentally speaking of architecture, urbanism, the organization of
spatial, existing "in" space, it is presuppositionally and ontologically space .... But this research on space started for me in childhood.
spatial. There is no unspatialized social reality. There are no aspatial I could not comprehend the philosophical separation of subject
social processes. Even in the realm of pure abstraction, ideology, and and object, the body and the world. The boundary between
representation, there is a pervasive and pertinent, if often hidden, them did not seem so clear and clean. The inner world, was it
spatial dimension. not also cosmic? The mental and the spatial were splitting
These are complex passages that present the production of space European philosophy apart at the seams .... In my sinuous line
as an all-encompassing worldview and praxis consciously chosen of development ... through marxist thought ... I arrived at the
(among other alternatives) for its particular acuity in enabling social questions concerning space. (1975: 217)
and political action to change the world. Lefebvre's argument may
seem crudely overstated, especially to those who cling to the emanci- Some saw in this "discovery" a new geography, others a new sociol-
patory privileging of historicality and/ or sociality. But it is no more ogy, still others a new history or philosophy. For Lefebvre, it was all
(or less) than an assertion that critical thinking about the spatiality of these things and much more. He cautiously called his spatial per-
human life is at least comparable to the more familiar, all-encom- spective transdisciplinary as a strategy to prevent spatial knowledge
passing world view that has centered around the "making of history" and praxis from being fragmented and compartmentalized (again) as
and the critical historical-cum-sociological imagination. That "every- a disciplinary specialty. Space was too important to be left only to
thing" occurs in time and is inherently historical, that our actions the specialized spatial disciplines (Geography, Architecture, Urban
always play a part (amidst significant constraints) in constructing Studies) or merely added on as a gap-filler or factual background for
sequential temporality and making histories, in the construction of historians, social scientists, or Marxist sociologists. The spatiality of
individual and societal 'biographies," seems unremarkably true, human life, like its historicality and sociality, infused every disci-
even if frequently outside of our conscious awareness or submerged pline and discourse.
in enfolding ideologies. What Lefebvre is arguing for is a similar
action-oriented and politicized ontology and epistemology for space: Some chose other ways to thread through the complexities of
"everything" also occurs in space, not merely incidentally but as a the modern world, for example, through literature or the
vital part of lived experience, as part of the (social) production of unconscious or language. I chose space. Consistent with the
(social) space, the construction of individual and societal spatialities. method I have followed, I ploughed into (creuser) the concept
It is important to note, for it is so easily misunderstood, that this and tried to see all its implications. (1975: 218)
reconnection of spatiality to historicality and sociality was not meant
to deny the political and theoretical significance of critical histori- He would contend with these "other ways to thread through the
ography or sociology. It was instead an effort to open up and enrich complexities of the modern world" more directly in The Production of
Space, explaining thereby his abiding choice of space. On what today in a brief discussion of the old philosophical debates on absolute ver-
would be called discourse theory, for example, he writes: sus relational space (a favorite source of philosophical legitimacy for
more contemporary theorists of space). And then he returns home
The strategy of centring knowledge on discourse avoids the again to describe his most immediate and personal discovery of the
particularly scabrous topic of the relationship between knowl- importance of space in the context of the French state's programs for
edge and power. It is also incapable of supplying reflective regional development and spatial planning (l' amenagement de terri-
thought with a satisfactory answer to a theoretical question that toire) in the period between 1960 and 1970.
it itself raises: do sets of non-verbal signs and symbols, whether
coded or not, systematized or not, fall into the same category as Near a village I had passed through many times in my youth
verbal sets, or are they rather irreducible to them? Among non- one could see being built a new town, Lacq, petroleum, natural
verbal signifying sets must be included music, painting, sculp- gas, sulfur . . . the bulldozers moving through the forest, the
ture, architecture, and certainly theatre, which in addition to a first building stones set down. It became for me a small labora-
text or pretext embraces gesture, masks, costume, a stage, a tory. I started to study urban questions in vivo, in statu
mise-en-scene - in short, a space. Non-verbal sets are character- nascendi .. .. I suspected that this irruption of the urban in a
ized by a spatiality which is in fact irreducible to the mental traditional peasant reality was not simply a local hazard but
realm. There is even a sense in which landscapes, both rural was linked to more global phenomena of urbanization and
and urban, fall under this head. To underestimate, ignore and industrialization. Elsewhere in the region, at the same time,
diminish space amounts to the overestimation of texts, written there were great changes taking place in agriculture ... a
matter, and writing systems, along with the readable and the transformation of the countryside. I followed these events
visible, to the point of assigning to these a monopoly on intelli- extremely closely, with the idea of telling a story about the birth
gibility. (1991a: 62) of a city.
At about that time, I began travelling all over the world
In this critique of discourse theory and other comments on alterna- studying the urban question in New York, Montreal, Teheran,
tive critical theoretical perspectives, Lefebvre appears to be harshly Tokyo, Osaka ... I perceived the global problem to be deeply
dismissive. His aim, however, is not to reject but to spatialize, to involved in a complete restructuring of social space.
make sure that a spatial problematic is recognized whatever the the- (1975: 222-3)
oretical emphasis employed, and to show how such spatialization
works against theoretical closure and reductionism whatever inter- It is at this point that he writes tout converge dans le probleme de
pretive pathway is chosen. For Lefebvre, spatial knowledge is a l' espace . .. [dans] I' urbanisation del' espace entier.
source and stimulus for radical openness and creativity. Also in Le Temps des meprises, Lefebvre emotionally recalls his
In keeping with his resistance to singular causality, Lefebvre postwar encounters with the situationist movement as still another
ambles on to other routes and roots to his discovery of an encom- source of his spatial turn. He discusses in detail his controversial
passing ontological spatiality, never prioritizing one route/root over relations with Guy Debord, whose best-known work, The Society of
the other. Thinking back again to Marx, he reasserts the triad of the Spectacle/ 3 he dismissed as "impregnated with sociologism,"
Land, Labor, and Capital against the tendencies to reduce Marx's cri- devoid of attention to the spatial politics and policies of the State,
tique of capitalism to the categorical binaries of capital-labor, bour- and unaware of the increasing power of globalized capital.
geoisie-proletariat, profit-wages, binaries which too often lead to an Detaching himself from Debord's version of the Situationist
estrangement of the critique from nature, the soil, the earth, the pro- International, Lefebvre remembers more warmly his earlier
duction of space. Restoring the capitalist triad by reasserting the sig-
nificance of Land, "emiches the analysis considerably, for it is not a 23 Guy Debord, La Societe du spectacle, Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967, and Editions
question of a binary opposition but an incomparably more complex Champ Libre, 1971. Translated as The Society of the Spectacle, Detroit: Black and Red,
relation across three terms" (1975: 220). 1977. An unpublished translation (1990) was also made by Donald Nicholson-Smith,
He connects this "trialectical" restoration first to his own largely the translator of Lefebvre's La Production de l'espace (1974, tr. 1991). For a recent look
at Debord and the situationists, see Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture: The
unpublished work on ground rent and the agrarian question in Situationist International in a Postmodern Age, London and New York: Routledge,
France, about which he was always exceedingly proud. He extends it 1992.
encounters with the Amsterdam utopian architect and painter reconstructed." "This task," he adds, "will be carried out in (spatial)
Constant Nieuwenhuis and the COBRA movement, named for the social practice" (1991a: 414). 24
home cities of its major protagonists (Copenhagen, Brussels, and The primary focus of his last original writings was on "rhythm
Amsterdam). analysis," which, as noted in the beginning of this chapter, he
COBRA was a neo-surrealist movement of poets, painters, musi- described as "an idea that may be expected to put the finishing
cians, and urban theorists that focused its revolutionary tactics of touches to the exposition of the production of space" (1991a: 405).
"situationism" on architecture and the social production of the built Again anticipating what would become a key issue in contemporary
environment The Amsterdam group in particular was influenced critical cultural studies, Lefebvre turned to the spatia-temporal
and inspired by Lefebvre's first volume of The Critique of Everyday rhythms of the body, elevating the body to a central position in his
Life, published in 1947. Although COBRA was disbanded in the early metaphilosophy. In many ways his concluding comments on the
1950s, its remnants continued to be active in Amsterdam, stimulat- body begin a deconstruction and reconstitution of all the preceding
ing the Provos (disbanded in 1967) and then the Kabouter (Orange chapters of The Production of Space.
Free State) movements that were to reshape urban life in Amsterdam
in ways we are only beginning to recognize today (I pick up these The whole of (social) space proceeds from the body, even
themes again in chapter 9). Lefebvre visited Amsterdam many times though it so metamorphizes the body that it may forget it alto-
between 1958 and 1968 and his look back helps to explain the very gether- even though it may separate itself so radically from the
special relationships he has had with architects and architecture ever body as to kill it. The genesis of a far-away order [the state? the
since the 1950s. global?] can be accounted for only on the basis of the order that
is nearest to us - namely, the order of the body. Within the
Around 1953, Nieuwenhuis began his projects for a "New body itself, spatially considered, the successive levels consti-
Babylon." For him, feelings of emotion (ambience affective) are tuted by the senses (from the sense of smell to sight, treated as
not external to space, nor is space indifferent to emotional feel- different within a differentiated field) prefigure the layers of
ings. He was able to recapture and elevate a concept from the social space and their interconnections. The passive body (the
grand architectural tradition in which space creates something senses) and the active body (labour) converge in space. The
such as a gathering together, a joy, a sadness, a submission; in analysis of rhythms must serve the necessary and inevitable
short, space is active .... This is what Constant called an archi- restoration of the total body. This is what makes "rhythm
tecture of ambiance ... the creation of situations ... the con- analysis" so important. (1991a: 405)
struction of spaces that are the creators of ambiance, emotion,
situation, what I called a theory of moments. I find myself in He goes further in his review and preview:
accord with situationists when situationism puts to the fore-
front such ideas of creation, of the production of new Western philosophy has betrayed the body; it has actively partic-
situations. (1975: 157) ipated in the great process of metaphorization that has aban-
,doned the body; and it has denied the body. The living body,
Lefebvre's 20th-century adventures did not end with the spatial being at once "subject" and "object", cannot tolerate such con-
approximation he consolidated in La Production de l'espace (1974). ceptual division, and consequently philosophical concepts fall
Over the last decade of his life, he continued to explore new dimen- into the category of the "signs of non-body". Under the reign of
sions of spatiality, pushing its frontiers beyond the known. He sig- King Logos, the reign of true space, the mental and the social
naled some of these new explorations in the last chapter of La were sundered, as were the directly lived and the conceived,
Production ... , translatable as "Openings and Conclusions." "Today," and the subject and the object. New attempts were forever
he wrote, "our concern must be with space on a world scale ... as being made to reduce the external to the internal, or the social
well as with all the spaces subsidiary to it, at every possible level" to the mental, by means of one ingenious typology or another.
(1991a: 412). This globalization process creates a "new situation" in
which all places and spatiality itself have "undergone metamor- 24
These restructuring processes and their impact on urbanization and urban studies
phoses," such radical changes and restructurings that our "lan- will be examined in much greater detail in Postmetropolis, the forthcoming compan-
ion volume to Thirdspace. Lefebvre's brief comment here is suitably precocious and
guages and linguistic systems need to be dismantled and epigraphic.
52 Discovering Thirdspace
Net result? Complete failure! Abstract spatiality and practical

spatiality contemplated one another from afar, in thrall to the
visual realm. (1991a: 407)
Hopeful and confident as ever, Lefebvre asserts that "today the body 2
is establishing itself firmly" beyond philosophy, discourse, and the
theory of discourse. A new critical theory and metaphilosophy is
"carrying reflexion on the subject and the object beyond the old con- The Trialectics of Spatiality
cepts," and "has re-embraced the body along with space, in space,
and as the generator (or producer) of space" (1991a: 407).
Here we have both a conclusion and an opening. Lefebvre's
assertive spatialization of philosophy and praxis became an integral
part of a significant redirection of the mainstreams of modernist
thought and action in the last decades of the 20th century. It was a
redirection that would lead circuitously to the irruption of a new cul-
tural politics of identity and difference, a new transdisciplinary field
of critical cultural studies, and a radical postmodernism of resis-
tance, all of which revolve today, more than any modern movement
of the past century, around the multiplicitous spatialities of social
life. The "imaginary." This word becomes (or better: becomes again) magi-
cal. It fills the empty spaces of thought, much like the "unconscious"
and "culture." ...
. . . After all, since two terms are not sufficient, it becomes neces-
sary to introduce a third term .... The third term is the other, with all
that this term implies (alterity, the relation between the present/ absent
other, alteration-alienation).
Reflexive thought and hence philosophy has for a long time accentu-
ated dyads. Those of the dry and the humid, the large and the small,
the finite and the infinite, as in Greek antiquity. Then those that consti-
tuted the Western philosophical paradigm: subject-object, continu-
ity-discontinuity, open-closed, etc. Finally, in the modern era there
are the binary oppositions between signifier and signified, knowledge
and non-knowledge, center and periphery .... [But] is there ever a
relation only between two terms ... ? One always has Three. There is
always the Other.
(Hemi Lefebvre, La Presence et /'absence, 1980:225 and 143)
The recent English translation of The Production of Space, and the

revived interest in Lefebvre's writings and ideas it has stimulated,
presents new opportunities to reconsider Lefebvre's contributions to
present-day debates on the theorization of space and social spatial-
ity. In this chapter, I purposefully reappropriate The Production of
Space to pull from its expansive depths a clearer understanding of
the meaning and critical scope of what I have chosen to define as
Thirdspace.
The Trialectics of Spatiality 55
woman he loved. He soon meets a friend, Carlos Argentino Daneri,
Envisioning Thirdspace Through "The Aleph" who excitedly tells him that in Daneri's cellar under the dining room
there was an Aleph, "one of the points in space that contains all
After re-reading The Production of Space, I find myself drawn once
other points." His friend had discovered it as a child and was now
more to "The Aleph," a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, whose dis-
anxious to share his discovery, for the house which contained the
tinctive version of the rich Latin-American tradition of "magical real-
Aleph was scheduled for demolition, part of the burgeoning growth
ism" resounds so well with Lefebvre's fascination with concrete
of the "pernicious metropolis" of Argentina, the critical urban set-
abstractions, his paradoxically materialist idealism, and his adven-
turous explorations into the simultaneous worlds of the real-and-
..
I
ting of "The Aleph."
imagined.1 In Postmodern Geographies/ I used Borges' brilliant
"One day when no one was home I started down in secret, but I
evocation of the Aleph as the place "where all places are" to provoke
stumbled and fell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."
new ways of looking at and understanding contemporary Los
"The Aleph?" I repeated.
Angeles. For the present work, its eye-opening perspective continues
"Yes, the only place on earth where all places are- seen from
to serve a similar purpose, as an introduction and stimulus to the
every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or
urban essays contained in chapters 7 through 9, each of which
blending. I kept the discovery to myself and went back every
defines and redefines Los Angeles in different ways. Here I will use
chance I got ..."
the Aleph again as a point of departure, or better, as a first "approxi-
I tried to reason with him. "But isn't the cellar very dark?" I
mation" from which to reinterpret The Production of Space and recom-
said.
pose its imbricated conceptualizations of Thirdspace.
"Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the
"The Aleph" was published in Spanish in 1945 and appears in
universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of
English as the first entry to The Aleph and Other Stories: 1933-1969,
light are in it too."
which also contains an autobiographical essay and commentaries by
"You wait there. I'll be right over to see it."
Borges on each story. On "The Aleph," Borges writes:
":"hat eternity is to time, the Aleph is to space. In eternity, all Then I saw the Aleph.
time- past, present, and future- coexists simultaneously. In the
Aleph, the sum total of the spatial universe is to be found in a I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins
tiny shining sphere barely over an inch across. (Borges 1971: my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose
189) I use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I
translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering
Borges introduces "The Aleph" with two classical quotations to mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same
amplify his intentions: problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one
Persian speaks of a bird that is somehow all birds; Alanus de
0 God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumfer-
King of infinite space. (Hamlet, II, 2) ence is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and
But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in
Present Time, a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it); which neither vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some
they, nor any else understand, no more than they would a Hic- relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a simi-
stans for an Infinite greatness of Place. (Leviathan, IV, 46) lar metaphor, but then this account would become contami-
nated by literature, by fiction. Really what I want to do is
The story begins with the narrator (clearly Borges himself) strolling impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be
along the streets of Buenos Aires, reminiscing about the death of a infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of
acts both delightful and awful; not one of them amazed me
1
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Aleph," in The Aleph and Other Stories: 1933-1969, New more that the fact that all of them occupied the same point in
York: Bantam Books, 1971: 3-17. space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes
2
Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will
Theory, London and New York: Verso, 1989.
56 Discovering Thirdspace The Trialectics of Spatiality 57
be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll scious, the disciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and
try to recollect what I can. unending history. Anything which fragments Thirdspace into sepa-
rate specialized know ledges or exclusive domains- even on the pre-
... I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable bril- text of handling its infinite complexity - destroys its meaning and
liance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realized that openness. There is a close connection between this conceptualization
this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it of Thirdspace and Lefebvre's nomadic meta-Marxism. Each envi-
bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than sions a complex totality of potential knowledges but rejects any
an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each totalization that finitely encloses knowledge production in "perma-
thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I dis- nent structures" or specialized compartments/ disciplines. For
tinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teem- Lefebvre (and for Borges), spatial knowledge, as a means "to thread
ing sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of through the complexities of the modern world," is achievable only
America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black through approximations, a constant search to move beyond (meta-)
pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, what is known. As Lefebvre notes, others have chosen alternative
close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mir- transdisciplinary perspectives -language and discourse theory, psy-
ror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected choanalysis and the window of the unconscious, literature and criti-
me; ... I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, loads of metal, cal historiography- to thread through these complexities. Lefebvre,
steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their however, was the first to explicitly do so through space, or more
grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness that I shall never specifically the (social) production of (social) spatiality.
forget; ... I saw a ring of baked mud on a sidewalk, where This all-inclusive simultaneity opens up endless worlds to explore
before there had been a tree; ... I saw my empty bedroom; I and, at the same time, presents daunting challenges. Any attempt to
saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mir- capture this all-encompassing space in words and texts, for example,
rors that multiplied it endlessly; ... I saw the coupling of love invokes an immediate sense of impossibility, a despair that the
and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point sequentiality of language and writing, of the narrative form and his-
and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the tory-telling, can never do more than scratch the surface of
Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my Thirdspace' s extraordinary simultaneities. The Production of Space is
own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my filled with Aleph-like references to the incapacity of language, texts,
eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is discourses, geographies and historiographies to capture fully the
common to all men but which no man has looked upon - the meanings of human spatiality, or what Borges, quoting from
unimaginable universe. (1971: 10-14) Leviathan, describes as "an Infinite greatness of Place." On the strug-
gle to develop a rigorously analytical "science of space" to meet this
"The Aleph" is an invitation to exuberant adventure as well as a daunting task, Lefebvre forcefully expressed his dissatisfaction and
humbling and cautionary tale, an allegory on the infinite complexi- despair:
ties of space and time. Attaching its meanings to Lefebvre's concep-
tualization of the production of space detonates the scope of spatial To date, work in this area has produced either mere descrip-
knowledge and reinforces the radical openness of what I am trying tions which never achieve analytical, much less theoretical,
to convey as Thirdspace: the space where all places are, capable of status, or else fragments and cross-sections of space. There are
being seen from every angle, each standing clear; but also a secret plenty of reasons for thinking that descriptions and cross-
and conjectured object, filled with illusions and allusions, a space sections of this kind, though they may well supply inventories
that is common to all of us yet never able to be completely seen and of what exists in space, or even generate a discourse on space,
understood, an "unimaginable universe," or as Lefebvre would put cannot ever give rise to a knowledge of space. And, without such
it, "the most general of products." a knowledge, we are bound to transfer onto the level of dis-
Everything comes together in Thirdspace: subjectivity and objectiv- course, of language per se - i.e. the level of mental space - a
ity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the large portion of the attributes and "properties" of what is actu-
knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, ally social space.
structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the uncon- ... When codes worked up from literary texts are applied to
spaces - to urban spaces, say - we remain, as may easily be what has gone before. Certain concepts clearly defined at one point
shown, on the purely descriptive level. Any attempt to use such either seem to disappear or become confusingly redefined in another
codes as a means of deciphering social space must surely way elsewhere.5 The narrative is distinctly unruly, punctuated with
reduce that space itself to the status of a message, and the inhab- seemingly spontaneous riffs on a range of subjects that is bound to
iting of it to the status of a reading. This is to evade both history offend the narrow specialist with its quick generalities while chal-
and practice .... lenging even the most perspicacious polymath with its endless scope
As for the above-mentioned sections and fragments, they and specificity.
range from the ill-defined to the undefined - and thence, for Like Borges's Aleph, Lefebvre's composition on the production of
that matter, to the undefinable. Indeed, talk of cross-sectioning, space, that most general of products, "recollects" a dizzying array of
suggesting as it does a scientific technique (or "theoretical prac- different kinds of spaces. In a recent appreciation of Lefebvre as a
tice") designed to help clarify and distinguish "elements" forerunner of critical postmodernism, Michael Dear lists these spaces
within the chaotic flux of phenomena, merely adds to the mud- alphabetically. 6 With many of my own additions, they include
dle. (1991a: 7-8)3 absolute, abstract, appropriated, architectonic, architectural, behav-
ioral, body, capitalist, conceived, concrete, contradictory, cultural,
The Production of Space is, of course, itself a text, a sequential narra- differentiated, dominated, dramatized, epistemological, familial,
tive subject to all the constraints of language and writing and, still fragmented, fresh, geometrical, global, hierarchical, historical, homo-
further, to the unexpected aporia arising from its translation from geneous, ideological, imagined, impossible, institutional, instrumen-
French to English. It too is a "reading" rather than an "inhabiting," a tal, leisure, lived, masculine, mental, natural, neutral, new, opaque,
"discourse" rather than a practical "knowledge" of space. Like organic, original, perceived, physical, plural, political, possible, pure,
Borges, Lefebvre had to contend with the successive constraints of real, "real," representational, repressive, sensory, social, socialist,
writing about simultaneities, about the repetitive and the differen- socialized, state, traditional, transparent, true, urban, utopian, and
tial the known and the unknowable, at the same time. How then did women's space.
Lef~bvre attempt to defy some of these discursive inhibitions and to What then harmonizes this cacophony of spaces? What gives his
express the multifaceted inclusiveness and simultaneities of lived composition its thematic structure? What moves The Production of
social space, the term that comes closest to conveying the meanings Space beyond the string of eclectic recollections in Borges's Aleph?
of Thirdspace? After contemplating this question and remembering First of all, I suggest, there is Lefebvre's nomadic meta-Marxism and
his love of music, the rhapsodic, I have become convinced that the explicit political and theoretical project - and choice - it engen-
Lefebvre wrote The Production of Space in the form of a fugue, a poly- ders.
phonic composition based on distinct themes which are harmonized
through counterpoint and introduced over and over again in differ- The path I shall be outlining here is thus bound up with a
ent ways through the use of various contrapuntal devices. Read in strategic hypothesis - that is to say, with a long range theoreti-
this way, every one of the seven chapters is both a repetition and a cal and practical project. Are we talking about a political pro-
distinctively different elaboration of the others. As if to emphasize ject? Yes and no. It certainly embodies a politics of space, but at
the (counter)point, the fugue ends with "Conclusions" that are also the same time goes beyond politics inasmuch as it presupposes
"Openings" or Ouvertures. 4 a critical analysis of all spatial politics as of all politics in gen-
This makes The Production of Space very difficult to comprehend as eral. By seeking to point the way towards a different space,
a conventional text. The ideas are not developed in a straight-
forward sequential or linear fashion. If one misses the emphatic 5
In his recent review essay on The Production of Space, Andy Merrifield makes a
themes of the first chapter in particular, everything that follows similar argument and suggests that Lefebvre, reflecting the strong influence of
seems to float independently or else seems to contradict erratically Nietzsche on his work, actwi1ly tries to subvert the coherence of the introductory
chapter. "To my mind, he goes out of his way not to follow the "Plan" since he is
3 wary of pinning himself down." See Merrifield, "Lefebvre, Anti-Logos and
Unless otherwise noted, all quoted material is taken from Lefebvre, The Production
Nietzsche: An Alternative Reading of The Production of Space," Antipode 27 (1995),
ofSpace, 1991. . . 294-303.
' The chapters are, in sequence, Plan of the Present Work, So_Clal Space, Spatial 6
Michael Dear, "Postmodem Bloodlines," in G. Benko and U. Strohmayer, eds,
Architectonics, From Absolute Space to Abstract Space, Contradictory Space, From Space and Social Theory: Geographic Interpretations of Postmodernity, Cambridge, MA,
the Contradictions of Space to Differential Space, Openings and Conclusions.
and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996.
Hegel or Marx, which is too predicated on the completeness and
towards the space of a different (social) life and of a different
temporal sequencing of thesis/ antithesis/ synthesis. Thirding intro-
mode of production, this project straddles the breach between
?uces a critical "oti:er-than" choice that speaks and critiques through
science and utopia, reality and ideality, conceived and lived. It
Its otherness. That IS to say, it does not derive simply from an addi-
aspires to surmount these oppositions by exploring the dialecti-
tive combination of its binary antecedents but rather from a disor-
cal relationship between "possible" and "impossible," and this
dering, deconstruction, and tentative reconstitution of their
both objectively and subjectively. (1991a: 60)
presumed totalization producing an open alternative that is both
similar and strikingly different. Thirding recomposes the dialectic
This project fixes Lefebvre in the present, no matter how far into the
through an intrusive disruption that explicitly spatializes dialectical
past he roams; and grounds his spatial politics even more inextrica-
reasoning ~lo~g the. lines. of Lefebvre's observation quoted in chapter
?ly in the social processes of production and reproduction, in the
mcessant theme that is summarily captured and intoned in that
! Th~ spatiahzed dialectic "no longer clings to historicity and histor-
Ical time, or to a temporal mechanism such as thesis-antithesis-syn-
repeated phrase: the social production of social space.
thesis or affirmation-negation-negation of the negation." Thirding
But recognizing Lefebvre's theoretical and political project is not
produces what might best be called a cumulative trialectics that is
enough to comprehend the conceptualization of Thirdspace that
radically open to additional othernesses, to a continuing expansion
flows through the pages of his contrapuntal text. To be sure, every
of spatial knowledge.
chapter. offers bits of sweet music to the ears of those (the present
. State~ differently, asserting the third-as-Other begins an expand-
author mcluded) who share a similar political project; and the force
mg cham of heuristic disruptions, strengthening defenses against
of his c~~mitment helps to keep the text on track, giving its unruly
totalizing closure and all "permanent constructions." Each thirding
composition and florescent detours a semblance of order and disci-
and each trialectic is thus an "approximation" that builds cumula-
pline amidst its radical openness and polyphony. To proceed further
tively on earlier approximations, producing a certain practical conti-
into a practical and theoretical understanding of Thirdspace, how-
nuity of knowledge production that is an antidote to the
ever, requires the exposition of an additional theme, one that is
hyperrelativism and "anything goes" philosophy often associated
embedded deeply in The Production of Space but never systematically
with such radical epistemological openness. The "third" term - and
extrapolated for the reader. I call this, for want of a better term, a
Thirdspace as a concept - is not sanctified in and of itself. The cri-
critical strategy of thirding-as-Othering, and suggest that it provides
tiq~e is not meant to stop at three, to construct a holy trinity, but to
the keynote to Lefebvre's politicized fugue on the meanings and
build further, to move on, to continuously expand the production of
know ledges of Thirdspace.
knowledge beyond what is presently known. Lefebvre organizes The
Production of Space around just such a thirding of his own longstand-
ing interest in the dialectic of the lived and the conceived, the "real"
Thirding-as-Othering
and the "imagined," thematerial world and our thoughts about it.
He produces from this a trialectics of spatiality that at the same time
For Lefebvre, reductionism in all its forms, including Marxist ver-
is his most creative contribution to an understanding of social space
~ions, begins with the lure of binarism, the compacting of meaning
and the source of an often bewildering confusion on the part of even
mto a closed either I or opposition between two terms, concepts, or
his most sympathetic interpreters. I refer specifically here to the
elen:ents. .Whenever faced with such binarized categories
"conce~tual triad" that "emerges" in the first chapter of The
(su_bJect-obJect, mental-material, natural-social, bourgeoisie-prole-
Productzon of Space: SPATIAL PRACTICE, REPRESENTATIONS OF SPACE, and SPACES
tanat, local-global, center-periphery, agency-structure), Lefebvre
OF REPRESENTATION (a better term than the "representational spaces"
persistently sought to crack them open by introducing an-Other
thatis used in the English translation).
term, a third possibility or "moment" that partakes of the original
Lefebvre begins this provocative thirding-as-Othering with a dif-
~airing but is not just a simple combination or an "in between" posi-
,ferent triad of "fields" that he describes as usually "apprehended
tion alo~g ~orne al!-inclusive continuum. This critical thirding-
separately, just as molecular, electromagnetic, and gravitational
as-Otherm~ IS the first and most important step in transforming
forces are in physics." This triad of fields is presented twice in one
the categoncal and closed logic of either/or to the dialectically open
paragraph, in a (deliberately?) non-corresponding order, to suggest
logic of both/ and also ....
the possibility of constructing a "unitary theory" from the "mere bits
Thirding-as-Othering is much more than a dialectical synthesis aIa
and pieces of knowledge," the fragments into which spatial knowl- cipline of Geography since its origins. Without describing it as such,
edge has historically been broken. I too was involved in a thirding-as-Othering that was similarly
designed to break down and disorder a rigid dichotomy and create a
The fields we are concerned with are, first, the physical- nature, Thirdspace, an alternative "postmodern geography" of political
the Cosmos; secondly, the mental, including logical and formal choice and radical openness attuned to making practical sense of the
abstractions; and thirdly, the social. In other words, we are con- contemporary world. Lefebvre's critique, however, is much broader
cerned with logico-epistemological space, the space of social and far-ranging. It is useful to examine his treatment of the double
practice, the space occupied by sensory phenomena, including illusion in greater detail.
products of the imagination such as projects and projections, The illusion of transparency, for Lefebvre, makes space appear
symbols, and utopias. (1991a: 11-12)? "luminous," completely intelligible, open to the free play of human
agency, willfulness, and imagination. It also appears innocent, free
After this perplexing introduction, Lefebvre proceeds to fuse (objec- of traps or secret places, with nothing hidden or dissimulated,
tive) physical and (subjective) mental space into social space through always capable of being "taken in by a single glance from that
a critique of what he called a "double illusion." This powerful attack mental eye which illuminates whatever it contemplates"
on reductionism in spatial thinking is a vital part of the thirding (1991a: 28).
process, working to break down the rigid object-subject binarism
that has defined and confined the spatial imagination for centuries, What happens in space lends a miraculous quality to thought,
while simultaneously maintaining the useful knowledges of space which becomes incarnate by means of a design (in both senses of
derived from both of these binary "fields." In this first round of the word). The design serves as a mediator - itself of great
thirding, social space takes on two different qualities. It serves both as fidelity -between mental activity (invention) and social activity
a separable field, distinguishable from physical and mental space, (realization); and it is deployed in space. (1991a: 27-8)
andfalso as an approximation for an all-encompassing mode of spa-
tial thinking. Lefebvre continued to use social space in both ways Approached this way, social space comes to be seen entirely as men-
throughout the text. Thirdspace, as I have been defining it, retains tal space, an "encrypted reality" that is decipherable in thoughts and
the multiple meanings Lefebvre persistently ascribed to social space. utterances, speech and writing, in literature and language, in dis-
It is both a space that is distinguishable from other spaces (physical courses and texts, in logical and epistemological ideation. Reality is
and mental, or First and Second) and a transcending composite of all confined to "thought things" (res cogito) and comprehended entirely
spaces (Thirdspace as Aleph). through its representations. What is kept at a distance, unseen and
In Postmodern Geographies, I simplified Lefebvre's critique of the untouched by this form of reductionism except through the medium
double illusion into one of myopia (nearsightedness, seeing only of subjective "design," are actual social and spatial practices, the
what is right before your eyes and no further) and hypermetropia immediate material world of experience and realization.
(farsightedness, seeing so far into the distance that what is immedi- This overly abstracted "transcendental" illusion is traceable
ately before you disappears); and then used these illusions to criti- throughout the entire history of philosophical idealism and post-
cize the epistemological dualism of objectivist-materialist and Enlightenment rationalism. In many ways, it resembles what
subjectivist-idealist approaches that has dominated the modern dis- Marxists describe as fetishism, an obsessive fixation on ideas and
ideation emanating from the presumably infinite powers of the
7
One of the confusions arising from this passage is the possibility that the last Cartesian cogito or the Hegelian Spirit/Mind. It is also present in the
phrase, beginning with "including products of the imagination ... " is attached visionary and creative arts among all those who see an immanent
directly to "the space occupied by sensory phenomena"- or what Lefebvre called
spatial practice and l'espace per~u. The original French is somewhat clearer. Rather telos or "design" waiting to be discovered. Everything, including
than implying that "l'imaginaire, Ies projets et projections, les symboles, les utopzes" spatial knowledge, is condensed in communicable representations
(listed quite differently from the English translation) are "included" within the and re-presentations of the real world to the point that the represen-
space occupied by sensory phenomena ("celui qu'occupent les phenomenes sensibles"),
the original seems to be saying that all three of these spaces together should not
tations substitute for the real world itself, the "incommunicable hav-
exclude ("sans exclure") these elements. In other words, all spaces should be seen as ing no existence beyond that of an ever-pursued residual." Such
filled with the products of the imagination, with political projects and utopian subjectivism reduces spatial knowledge to a discourse on discourse
dreams, with both sensory and symbolic realities. that is rich in potential insights but at the same time filled with illu-
sive presumptions that what is imagined/represented defines the thinking about space, each "field" of human spatiality- the physical,
reality of social space. the mental, the social- be seen as simultaneously real and imagined,
In contrast, the realistic illusion oversubstantiates the world in a nat- concrete and abstract, material and metaphorical. No one mode of
uralistic or mechanistic materialism or empiricism, in which objective spatial thinking is inherently privileged or intrinsically "better" than
"things" have more reality than "thoughts." This illusion of "opac- the others as long as each remains open to the re-combinations and
ity," the disinclination to see much beyond the surface of things, fills simultaneities of the "real-and-imagined." This rebalanced and non-
the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy and science. illusive trialectics of spatiality, however, is for Lefebvre more an
Social space tends to be seen as either natural and naively given (the anticipated and desired state than an achieved one. For the present
space of the sculptor or architect "working with nature," the space of moment, a temporary strategic privileging is necessary to break the
the environmental or design determinist); or it is, equally naively, hammerlock of binarist logic and to prevent any form of reduction-
objectively and concretely there to be fully measured and accurately ism from constraining the free play of the creative spatial imagina-
described (the space of the "geometer," the spatial systems analyst,8 tion. Lefebvre thus begins his critical thirding-as-Othering by
the empirical scientist, the determinedly scientific socialist or social focusing attention on social space, first as a distinctively different way
scientist, the idiographic historian or geographer). of thinking about space that has long been obscured by exclusive fix-
The "real" in this realist illusion is reduced only to material or nat- ations on illusive materialist and/ or idealist interpretations; and sec-
ural objects and their directly sensed relations; the "imagined" is ond, as an all-inclusive and radically open mode of defining the
unseen, unmeasurable, and therefore unknowable. For Marxists, limitlessly expandable scope of the spatial imagination: the envision-
who are themselves particularly prone to this illusion of opacity as ing of social space as Aleph.
historical materialists, this resonates with what Marx described as As I think of ways to make this crucial thirding clearer to readers
reification, the reduction of the real solely to material objects, to familiar with the epistemology of Marxism, I find it useful to recall
things in themselves. Here, too, one can trace these illusionary ten- that old shibboleth that asks: "Is it consciousness that produces the
dencies of empiricism, naturalism, economism, environmental and material world or the material world that produces consciousness?"
other more social and historical forms of material determinism The answer implied in Lefebvre's trialectics is "yes" to both alterna-
throughout the fabric of Western philosophy and social theory. tives, and/ also something more: a combinatorial and unconfinable
In their purest expression, then, the illusions of transparency and third choice that is radically open to the accumulation of new
opacity coincide respectively with deterministic forms of subjec- insights, an alternative that goes beyond (meta) the mere acceptance
tivism-idealism and objectivism-materialism. Lefebvre, however, of the dualized interrogative. This choice of an-Other alternative is
goes on to argue that the double illusion is not always composed in strategically, not presuppositionally, privileged as a means of resist-
such rigidly antagonistic opposition, "after the fashion of philosoph- ing binary closures. It is a thirding that invites further expansion and
ical systems, which armour themselves like battleships and seek to extension, beyond not just the binary but beyond the third term as
destroy one another." On the contrary, he argues that each illusion well.
often embodies and nourishes the other. The critique of the illusions of transparency and opacity lays the
groundwork for the thematic trialectic that is so central to a re-
The shifting back and forth between the two, and the flickering reading of The Production of Space, tha't which inter-relates in a
or oscillatory effect that it produces, are thus just as important dialectically linked triad:
as either of the illusions considered in isolation .... The rational
is thus naturalized, while nature cloaks itself in nostalgias Spatial Practice (espace pen;u, perceived space);
which supplant rationality. (1991a: 30) Representations of Space (espace conru, conceived space);
Spaces of Representation (espace vecu, lived space).
Through his critical attack on the double illusion, Lefebvre opens
the way to a trialectics of spatiality, always insisting that each mode of These "three moments of social space" are described twice in the
introductory chapter, "Plan of the Present Work," both times as a
8
The trenchantly unsystematic Lefebvre was particularly adamant about avoiding numbered list with underlined emphasis. As always, Lefebvre modi-
the use of systems analysis in thinking about spatiality and the production of social
space. The last sentence of the book is quite clear: "And we are concerned with fies his descriptions as he moves along, and in subsequent chapters
nothing that even remotely resembles a system" (199la: 423). seems either to ignore his earlier formulations or to push them to
('decoupeurs' et 'agenceurs'), as of a certain type of artist with a scien-
their limits, ever ready to move on to something else.9 I will try to tific bent- all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived
capture the meanings of at least his first chapter approximations of with what is conceived." This conceived space is also tied to the rela-
this thematic trialectic, referring back to the original French text tions of production and, especially, to the order or design that they
whenever I think this will help. impose. Such order is constituted via control over knowledge, signs,
and codes: over the means of deciphering spatial practice and hence
(1) Spatial practice is defined as producing a spatiality that over the production of spatial knowledge.
"embraces production and reproduction, and the particular locations For Lefebvre, "this is the dominant space in any society (or mode
(lieux specifies) and spatial sets (ensembles) characteristic of each social of production)," a storehouse of epistemological power. This con-
formation." It "ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion" and ceived space tends, with certain exceptions "towards a system of
"implies a guaranteed level of competence and a specific level of per- verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs," again refer-
formance" (terms he borrows from linguistics but warns should not ring to language, discourse, texts, logos: the written and spoken
be seen as subordinating the knowledge of space to its disciplinary word. In these "dominating" spaces of regulatory and "ruly" dis-
hegemony). The spatial practice of a society "secretes that society's course, these mental spaces, are thus the representations of power
space; it propounds (le pose) and presupposes it (le suppose), in a and ideology, of control and surveillance. This Secondspace, as I
dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters term it, is also the primary space of utopian thought and vision, of
and appropriates it." Spatial practice, as the process of producing the the semiotician or decoder, and of the purely creative imagination of
material form of social spatiality, is thus presented as both medium some artists and poets.
and outcome of human activity, behavior, and experience. In a twist that would confuse (or be forgotten by) many readers,
"From an analytical standpoint C4 I' analyse), the spatial practice of Lefebvre did not define the "dominated" space as that of material
a society is revealed (se decouvre) through the deciphering of its spatial practices. Instead, he turned to the third space of his triad to
space." To illustrate how this deciphering changes over time, exemplify the controlling powers of conceived space.
Lefebvre adds a whole paragraph on "Modern" spatial practice
under capitalism, which he links to the repetitive routines of every- (3) Spaces of representation are seen by Lefebvre both as distinct
day life (la realite quotidienne); and to the routes, networks, work- from the other two spaces and as encompassing them, following his
places, private life, and leisure enjoyments of the urban (la realite strategic use of social space in his preliminary thirding. Spaces of
urbaine). This materialized, socially produced, empirical space is representation embody "complex symbolisms, sometimes coded,
described as perceived space, directly sensible and open, within lim- sometimes not." They are linked to the "cla,pdestine or underground
its, to accurate measurement and description. It is the traditional side of social life" and also to art, which Lefebvre described as a cod-
focus of attention in all the spatial disciplines and the material ing not of space more generally but specifically of the spaces of rep-
grounding for what I redescribe as Firstspace. resentation. Clearly an attempt is being made here to retain, if not
emphasize, the partial unknowability, the mystery and secretiveness,
(2) Representations of space define a "conceptualized space, the space the non-verbal subliminality, of spaces of representation; and to fore-
of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers ground the potential insightfulness of art versus science (or, for that
9
This habitual nomadism has led many of the most sympathetic interpreters of matter, moral philosophy or semiotics), a key pillar of Lefebvre's
Lefebvre to fix on other examples of the multitude of spaces he addresses in The
Production of Space, often to the neglect of the keynote trialectic that encompasses
metaphilosophy.
them. Especially attractive, it appears, has been Lefebvre's discussion of absolute, Here then is space as directly lived, with all its intractability intact,
relative (or relational), and abstract (or analogical) spaces and their developmental a space that stretches across the images and symbols that accompany
periodization in the history of capitalism ...rn Derek. Gregol)''s. Geograp~zcal it, the space of "inhabitants" and "users." But it is also, Lefebvre
Imaginations (1994), these spaces are listed spec1f1cally and m combmahon are giVen
34 page references in the Subject Index. Spatial practices, representations of space, takes care to note, inhabited and used by artists, writers, and
and spaces of representation (or representational spaces) do not appear at all in ~he philosophers- to which he would later add ethnologists, anthropol-
index, although they are mentioned on p. 403 and frame the much more extensive ogists, psychoanalysts, and other "students of such representational
discussion of Abstract Space and Concrete Space that Gregory diagrams on p. 401.
See also Neil Smith and Cindi Katz, "Grounding Metaphor: Toward a Spahahzed spaces"- who seek only to describe rather than decipher and actively
Politics," in M. Keith and S. Pile, eds, Place and the Politics of Identity, London and transform the worlds we live in. He follows these references with
New York: Routledge, 1993: 67-83, for a similar emphasis on Lefebvre's historiogra- two key points. First: "this is the dominated - and hence passively
phy of absolute, relative, and abstract space at the expense of the keynote triad.
experienced (subi) or subjected -space which the imagination (ver- Representational space is alive: it speaks. It has an affective ker-
bal but especially non-verbal) seeks to change and appropriate. It nel (noyau) or centre: Ego, bed, bedroom, dwelling, house; or:
overlays (recouvre) physical space, making symbolic use of its square, church, graveyard. It embraces the loci of passion, of
objects" and tends towards "more or less coherent systems of non- action, of lived situations, and this immediately implies time.
verbal symbols and signs." Second: here we can find not just the spa- Consequently it may be qualified in various ways: it may be
tial representations of power but the imposing and operational directional, situational or relational, because it is essentially
power of spatial representations. Combining the real and the imag- qualitative, fluid and dynamic. (199la: 42)
ined, things and thought on equal terms, or at least not privileging
one over the other a priori, these lived spaces of representation are Spaces of representation contain all other real and imagined spaces
thus the terrain for the generation of "counterspaces," spaces of simultaneously. In different ways, appropriately understood, so too
resistance to the dominant order arising precisely from their subor- do spatial practices and representations of space, but only in so far as
dinate, peripheral or marginalized positioning. With its foreground- one can escape from the double illusion of objectivism and subjec-
ing of relations of dominance, subordination, and resistance; its tivism that weakens their insights into the workings of power. 10
subliminal mystery and limited knowability; its radical openness Lefebvre never made explicit his strategic "preference" for the
and teeming imagery, this third space of Lefebvre closely approxi- spaces of representation, in part, I believe, because he either
mates what I am defining as Thirdspace. assumed it would be implicitly understood; or avoided an explicit
recognition of it for fear that it would be construed as unchallenge-
Both Thirdspace and Lefebvre's most encompassing notion of ably fixed, a complete answer, a permanent construction that would
social space are comprised of all three spatialities - perceived, con- divert too much attention away from other modes of spatial thinking
ceived, and lived - with no one inherently privileged a priori. And (the more likely explanation).
yet, there is an implied preference in all of Lefebvre's (and my) spa- Lefebvre was always preparing himself to move on, and move on
tial trialectics and thirdings that derives not from ontological privi- he did after 1974, never again elaborating his spatial approximation
lege or priority but from that political choice that is so central to so thoroughly yet keeping it alive in promises of further adventures,
Lefebvre's spatial imagination. It is political choice, the impetus of such as the rhythmanalyse that he proposed would complete his
an explicit political project, that gives special attention and particular exposition on the production of space. In La Presence et l' absence
contemporary relevance to the spaces of representation, to lived space (1980), however, Lefebvre's most extensive discussion and critique
as a strategic location from which to encompass, understand, and of the theory of representations, there are not only further
potentially transform all spaces simultaneously. Lived social space, explanations for his emphasis on the power-filled spaces of
more than any other, is Lefebvre's limitless Aleph, the space of all representation but also a veritable fountain of triplicities similar to
inclusive simultaneities, perils as well as possibilities: the space of that described for social space. In what he called a Tableau des
radical openness, the space of social struggle. Triades (associees), he divides his list of triads into Libido and
For Lefebvre, the spaces of representation teem with symbols, Pensee, and separates them with a mediating row described as
hence the tendency of some to see him primarily as a semiologist Representant-Represente-Representation, or roughly Representing-
and to describe lived space as "symbolic" space. These spaces are Represented-Representation, a triad (or trialectic) that is close to
also vitally filled with politics and ideology, with the real and the signifier-signified-signification, with the third term different yet
imagined intertwined, and with capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and encompassing and partially dependent upon the other two. Lefebvre
other material spatial practices that concretize the social relations of refused to tabularize his triads into neat First, Second, and Third
production, reproduction, exploitation, domination, and subjection. columns or to present them in triangular form, but instead lists them
They are the "dominated spaces," the spaces of the peripheries, the vertically. The following is a translated selection from the Tableau.
margins and the marginalized, the "Third Worlds" that can be found Each one can be read as a model of trialectical thirding - and as a
at all scales, in the corpo-reality of the body and mind, in sexuality summation of most of the arguments presented in this chapter.
and subjectivity, in individual and collective identities from the most
local to the most global. They are the chosen spaces for struggle, lib-
eration, emancipation. 10
How these spaces of representation are echoed in the heterotopias and hetero-
topology of Michel Foucault is discussed in chapter 5.
TOTALITY CENTRALITY DISPLACEMENT HOMOGENEITY
CONTRADICTION PERIPHERY SUBSTITUTION FRAGMENTATION
POSSIBILITY MEDIATION REPRESENTATION HIERARCHY
THING-chose PRESENCE SUBJECT IDENTITY

PRODUCT-produit ABSENCE OBJECT CONTRADICTION
WORK-oeuvre REPRESENTATION UNITY DIFFERENCE
FIRST NATURE HISTORY MELODY PHILOSOPHY

SECOND NATURE SPACE RHYTHM SCIENTISM etc.
PRODUCTION GLOBALITY HARMONY METAPHILOSOPHY
Discomforted by this table (a form he rarely used), Lefebvre immedi-

ately follows with one of the many poems to life, death, love, and his
nomadic travels that are sprinkled throughout the book (which
begins with a long unsent letter to Octavio Paz).
His discomfort aside, Lefebvre's trialectics are infused with
increasing power in this galaxy of triads, each with its strategic pref-
erence for the third term but always as a transcending inclusion of
the o~her two. The thir~ term never stands alone, totally separate
from Its precedents or giVen absolute precedence on its own. This is
the key point of Lefebvre's "dialectics of triplicity" and of what I
Although primarily an ontological assertion, the trialectics of
have chosen to describe as trialectical thinking and, more specifi-
Spatiality, Historicality, and Sociality (summary terms for the social
cally, the trialectics of spatiality.
production of Space, Time, and Being-in-the-world) apply at all levels
of _k:r:owledge_ ~ormation, from ontology to epistemology, theory
bmldmg, empmcal analysis, and social practice. At all these levels,
Summarizing Again/Before Moving On
however, there has been a persistent tendency during at least the past
cent~ry to over-privilege, in another "double illusion," the dynamic
T~nking trialectically is a necessary part of understanding
relations between the "making" of Historicality and the "constitu-
Thudspace as a limitless composition of lifeworlds that are radically
tion" of social practices or Sociality. Built into the arguments of The
open and openly radicalizable; that are all-inclusive and transdisci-
Produc:tion of S~ace as I have excavated them is a critical thirding-as-
pli~ary in scope yet politically focused and susceptible to strategic
Othenng that mvolves the reassertion of Spatiality against this pro-
choice; that are never completely knowable but whose knowledge
nounced tendency in Western philosophy, science, historiography,
none the less guides our search for emancipatory change and free-
and social theory (including its most critical variants) to bifocalize on
dom from domination. Trialectical thinking is difficult, for it chal-
the interactive Historicality and Sociality of beingY
lenges all conventional modes of thought and taken-for-granted
When the Trialectics of Being is reduced to the relations between
epistemologies. It is disorderly, unruly, constantly evolving, unfixed,
Historicality and Sociality, Spatiality tends to be peripheralized into
never presentable in permanent constructions.
the background as reflection, container, stage, environment, or exter-
With these warnings in mind, the first two chapters of Thirdspace
nal constraint upon human behavior and social action. Muted efforts
can be graphically summarized around two simplified diagrams
to reactivate space more centrally can be found in the writings of
that serve as convenient road maps to all the journeys that will
many critical philosophers, from Kant and Hegel to Heidegger and
follow. The first presents an ontological trialectic, a statement of
Sartre; and in the work of critical social theorists (Simmel, Kracauer,
what the world must be like in order for us to have knowledge
Benjamin, Giddens, Harvey, to name only a few). But no one has so
of it. It is a crude picture of the nature of social being, of human
existence, and also of the search for practical knowledge and under-
11
standing. Chapter 6 contains a more detailed discussion of this over-privileging of
Historicality and Sociality.
forcefully and successfully activated Spatiality and rebalanced the revolutionary power of social will and political consciousness (freed
trialectic as Henri Lefebvre. from spatial or environmental constraints) that enveloped both the
Applying Lefebvre's critique, the Historicality-Sociality, or more liberal social sciences and radical scientific socialism beginning in the
simply, history-society link has too often been conceptualized in the last half of the 19th century. 12
form of an all-inclusive ontological and epistemological dyad, with All excursions into Thirdspace begin with this ontological restruc-
the "shifting back and forth between the two" and the "flickering turing, with the presupposition that being-in-the-world, Heidegger's
effect" that this produces creating often illusory knowledges that Dasein, Sartre's etre-la, is existentially definable as being simultane-
"embody" and "nourish" each other. In the wake of this circum- ously historical, social, and spatial. We are first and always histori-
scribed oscillation, Spatiality in nearly all its forms is unproblemati- cal-social-spatial beings, actively participating individually and
cally silenced, pushed to the periphery, to the margins of critical collectively in the construction/production - the "becoming" - of
intellectual inquiry. With a profound voice from the periphery, histories, geographies, societies. Our essential historicity and social-
Lefebvre deconstructs the dualism with an-Other term, and in so ity have long been recognized in all the human sciences. The project
doing reconstitutes a social ontology that is radically opened to begun by Lefebvre in the 1960s, and only now beginning to be
Spatiality in at least two ways: through what I once called the "soda- understood and realized, was nothing less than to reassert the
spatial dialectic" (Spatiality-Sociality) and through the problematic equally existential spatiality of life in a balanced trialectic that ranges
interplay between space and time, the making of historical geogra- from ontology through to a consciousness and praxis that are also
phies or geohistories (Spatiality-Historicality). simultaneously and presuppositionally social, historical, and spatialY
In the first opening, the social and the spatial are seen as mutually A second diagram (triagram?), building off the first, moves us fur-
constructed, with neither deterministically privileged a priori. ther into the multiple meanings of Thirdspace. Here the emphasis
Sociality, both routinely and problematically, produces spatiality, shifts from an existential ontology (statements about what the world
and vice versa, putting to the forefront of critical inquiry a dynamic must be like in order for us to exist as social beings) to a more spe-
socio-spatial dialectic that by definition is also intrinsically historical. cific discussion of the epistemology of space (how we can obtain
A similar trialectical logic infuses the spatio-temporal structuration accurate and practicable knowledge of our existential spatiality).
of Sociality. Historicality and Spatiality, or more familiarly history Again, for at least the past century, there has been a "double illu-
and geography, intertwine in a simultaneously routine and problem- sion" bracketing the accumulation of spatial knowledge within the
filled relation that evokes another crucial field of inquiry and inter-
pretation in the spatia-temporal or geohistorical dialectic. The 12
Still the best treatment of the origins of the liberal (or "bourgeois") social sciences
Trialectics of Being thus generates three ontological fields of knowl- is H. S. Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reconstruction of European Thought,
edge formation from what for so long has only been one 1890-1930, New York: Knopf, 1958.
13
(Historicality-Sociality). Much of the contemporary literature interpreting Lefebvre's work seems inca-
pable of engaging in this balanced form of trialectical thinking. Instead, one form or
The three moments of the ontological trialectic thus contain each another of rigidly categorical logic is applied to argue that Lefebvre was fundamen-
other; they cannot successfully be understood in isolation or episte- tally a sociologist or a geographer or a historian. In their recent reappropriation of
mologically privileged separately, although they are all too fre- Lefebvre as an urban sociologist, for example, Kofman and Lebas distinguish his
Writings on Cities from his more "purely spatial" theorizing, missing in this miscon-
quently studied and conceptualized this way, in compartmentalized strual not only Lefebvre's presuppositional definition of the urban as spatial but
disciplines and discourses. Here again, however, the third term, also his insistence that space should never be theorized purely, apart from its histor-
Spatiality, obtains a strategic positioning to defend against any form icality and sociality (and so too for history and sociology). Similarly, they take his
sensitivity to time and history as a sign of his supposedly deeper prioritization of
of binary reductionism or totalization. The assertion of Spatiality historicality versus spatiality and chide me and other "Anglo-American geogra-
opens the Historicality and Sociality of human lifeworlds to interpre- phers" for falsely appropriating Lefebvre to "dethrone" history and "crown" geog-
tations and knowledges that many of its most disciplined observers raphy as the master discipline, "at the expense of an impoverished historical
never imagined, while simultaneously maintaining the rich insights understanding and simplification of the richness of temporalities and their signifi-
cance for lived experience" (1996: 47-8). Derek Gregory, in his Geographical
they provide for understanding the production of lived space. It is in Imaginations (1994: 359-60), goes even further to label Lefebvre a "historicist," a
this sense that Lefebvre's trialectics contains a deep, if indirect, cri- secretive Hegelian using spatial tropes to construct a determinative "history of the
tique of historicism (the excessive confinement in knowledge pro- present." This sort of categorical labelling and construction of neat either I or opposi-
tions between spatiality, historicality, and sociality seriously distorts Lefebvre's
duction that arises from interpreting the world only through its nomadic metaphilosophy of approximations and his assiduously historical and
Historicality); and the similar overemphasis on the evolutionary and social interpretation of the production of space.
concrete and mappable geographies of our lifeworlds, ranging from
the emotional and behavioral space "bubbles" which invisibly sur-
r?und our bodies to the complex spatial organization of social prac-
tic~s that shape .our "action spaces" in households, buildings,
neighborhoods, VIllages, cities, regions, nations, states, the world
economy, and global geopolitics.
Firstspace epistemologies tend to privilege objectivity and materi-
ality, and to aim toward a formal science of space. The human occu-
pance of the surface of the earth, the relations between society and
nature, the architectonics and resultant geographies of the human
"built environment," provide the almost naively given sources for
the accumulation of (First)spatial knowledge. Spatiality thus takes
on the qualities of a substantial text to be carefully read, digested,
and understood in all its details. As an empirical text, Firstspace is
conventionally read at two different levels, one which concentrates
on the accurate description of surface appearances (an indigenous
mode of spatial analysis), and the other which searches for spatial
explanation in primarily exogenous social, psychological, and bio-
physical processes.
Over the years, various schemas have been indigenously devised
in the spatial disciplines to describe the virtually limitless factual
oscillation between two contrasting epistemes, two distinctive
scope and "scape" of Firstspace knowledge. One that I remember
modes of producing spatial knowledge. Lefebvre's trialectics help us
fr~m my own education as a geographer consisted of two matrices,
to b~eak oper: this dualism to a third alternative, to other ways of
with the rows of both representing locations or places. In the first
makmg practical sense of the spatiality of social life.
matrix, the columns itemized a potentially endless list of "attrib-
Figure 2b is, of course, deceptively simplified. As with the onto-
utes;" while the columns of the second matrix contained an also
logical trialectic in figure 2a, each term appropriately contains the
potentially endless list of "interactions" or flows connecting different
other two, although each is distinguishable and can be studied in
places. Spatial analysis would then consist of quantitative measure-
splendidly ~pec~alized is?la.tion. No one of the three forms of spatial
ment, pattern recognition, and correlative modeling of the row and
knowledge IS given a pnon or ontological privilege, but again there
column variables and their "regional" configurations. Another mem-
is a strategic privileging of the third term, in this case Thirdspace, as
orable schema for Firstspatial analysis defined five nested tiers of
a means of combating the longstanding tendency to confine spatial
patte~n findi~g, from the flowing "movements" of people, goods,
knowledge to Firstspace and Secondspace epistemologies and their
and mformation, to the formation of regular "networks" of such
associated theorizations, empirical analyses, and social practices. At
movements, to the growth of "nodes" in these networks, to the hier-
the ~isk of oversimplification, each of these modes of accumulating
archical patterning of these nodes of different sizes and functions,
spatial knowledge and what might be called their characteristic
and finally to composite "surfaces" that summarize the uneven
"mentalities" can now be briefly and tentatively described.
development over space of all these patternings together.
Firstspace epistemologies and ways of thinking have dominated the
In the field of Geography, these and other schemas coagulated to
acc~mulation of spatial knowledge for centuries. They can be
form the conceptual foundation for a fundamentally positivist "spa-
defined as focusing their primary attention on the "analytical deci-
tial science" based primarily on the quantitative and mathematical
phering" of what Lefebvre called Spatial Practice or perceived space,
description of these spatial data patternings of Firstspace.
a material and materialized "physical" spatiality that is directly com-
Mathematical functions were "fit" into the point patterns of settle-
prehended in empirically measurable configurations: in the absolute
ment nodes to explain their distributional configuration; a form of
and relative locations of things and activities, sites and situations; in
"social physics" based on the gravity model and other measures of
patterns of distribution, designs, and the differentiation of a multi-
the "friction of distance" was used to describe human interactions
tude of materialized phenomena across spaces and places; in the
over space and the concentric zoning of land uses in cities and
around markets; graph theory and mathematical topology was tion shifts away from these surface plottings themselves to an
inquiry into how they are socially produced. A rich tradition of his-
applied to measure accessibility levels in transportation and commu-
nications networks; multivariate statistical ecologies were employed torical geography, for example, relocates the sources of geographical
understanding and explanation from positivist science to the powers
to describe complex urban and regional geographies; two- and three-
of the historical imagination and narrative historiography. The social
dimensional languages and shape grammars were developed to
prod~ction of Firstspace is treated as a historical unfolding, an
describe all sorts of spatial forms, structures, and designs. 14
evolvmg sequence of changing geographies that result from the
Today, spatial science is being increasingly focused on
dynamic relations between human beings and their constructed as
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing by
well as natural environments.
satellite photography to collect and organize massive data banks
describing the empirical content of Firstspace. Many of these tech- Relatively n:w.~elds of ~ehavioral and/or critical human geogra-
phy - often sigmficantly mfluenced by the varied forms of struc-
niques have proved useful in such fields as architecture and urban
turalism that have developed in the 20th century- seek their sources
planning, archeology and anthropology, petroleum geology and mil-
o~ understanding the social production of Firstspace either in indi-
itary science. What these techniques provide are more sophisticated
and objectively accurate ways to do what most geographers, spatial VIdual and collective psychologies or, more directly, in the social
analysts, and, for that matter, the colonial adventurers and cartogra- processes an~ practices presumed to be underlying and structuring
t~e production of material spatialities. Marxist geographers of
phers in the Age of Exploration, had been doing all along: accumu-
Fustspace, for example, explain the material worlds of human geog-
lating and mapping what was presumed to be increasingly accurate
"factual" knowledge about places and the relations between places raphy and ~eographically uneven development through appeals to
ov.er the surface of the earth. The key difference brought about by class analysis, .the labor theory of value, and the evolving historical
this so-called quantitative "revolution" in geography was the pre- effects of the mterplay between social relations of production and
sumption that these increasingly accurate empirical descriptions of the development of the productive forces. The normal operations of
geographical "reality" also contained the intrinsic sources of spatial the ma.r~et,. ~acked by ~he presumption of rational profit-seeking or
cost-mm~mizmg be~av10r, are used by other economic geographers
theory.
and spatial economists to explain the same spatial outcomes; while
When captivated by such realist illusions and impelled by the pre-
sumptions of scientism, Firstspace epistemologies become fixated on more humanistic cultural geographers, drawing upon phenomeno-
~ogy a1_1d h~rmeneutics, seek to root the material patternings of space
the material form of things in space: with human spatiality seen pri-
marily as outcome or product. Explanation and theory-building in m the Impnnt of cultural beliefs and commitments and the free play
of human nature.
turn derived essentially from the material form and covariation of
spatial patterns, with one or more "independent" geographical con- In these and other attempts to study and understand the produc-
figurations "explaining" the "dependent" configuration or outcome tion of Firstspace exogenously, explanation and theory-building tend
in increasingly complex equations and causal chains. In Geography to derive from presumably non-spatial variables, behaviors, and
as well as in the more scientific approaches to other spatial disci- social activity such as historical development, class consciousness,
plines, this positivist epistemology, in one form or another, contin- cultural preferences, and rational economic choice. The flow of
ues to dominate mainstream spatial thinking and analysis. causality in this epistemology thus tends to run primarily in one
direction, from historicality and sociality to the spatial practices and
Responding to the epistemological confinement of spatial science,
more advanced (and less illusory) forms of Firstspace analysis have configurations. This has resulted in an increasingly rigorous and
developed well beyond such descriptive matrices to explore the his- insightful understanding of how Firstspace is socially produced, as
toricality and sociality of spatial forms. In this more exogenous well as a welcome exploration by geographers and other spatial ana-
mode of Firstspatial analysis, human spatiality continues to be lysts of a wide range of "non-spatial" disciplines and ideas.
defined primarily by and in its material configurations, but explana- For many different reasons, however, relatively little attention is
given to the causal flow in the other direction, that is, to how mater-
14
My own doctoral dissertation was inspired by this spatial science and its ial geographies and spatial practices shape and affect subjectivity,
enhancements of more traditional approaches to geographical research. See Edward consciousness, rationality, historicality, and sociality. The impact of
W. Sop, The Geography of Modernization in Kenya, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Firstspace on history and society in the broadest sense has either
Press, 1968.
been ignored by those who seek "external" and presumably
non-spatial explanations of material spatial configurations; or else it that spatial knowledge is primarily produced though discursively
is consciously avoided for fear that Firstspatial analysis will fall prey devised representations of space, through the spatial workings of the
to the presumed dangers of environmental or spatial determinism. mind. In its purest form, Secondspace is entirely ideational, made up
Such Firstspace determinisms were rampant within the spatial disci- of projections into the empirical world from conceived or imagined
plines in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and played an important geographies. This does not mean that there is no material reality, no
role in the formation of the liberal social sciences and Marxian Firstspace, but rather that the knowledge of this material reality is
scientific socialism (as well as related critical theories of history and comprehended essentially through thought, as res cogito, literally
society) that were explicitly constructed to free social will and social "thought things." In so empowering the mind, explanation becomes
consciousness from such "external" Firstspatial determinations. more reflexive, subjective, introspective, philosophical, and individ-
Although various forms of spatial causality with regard to the social- ualized.
ity and historicality of life are suggestively implied in more contem- Secondspace is the interpretive locale of the creative artist and art-
porary Firstspatial analyses, there continues to be a prevalent ful architect, visually or literally re-presenting the world in the
inhibition that constrains attempts to explore the trialectics of spa- image of their subjective imaginaries; the utopian urbanist seeking
tiality-historicality-sociality in its fullest complexity and interdepen- social and spatial justice through the application of better ideas,
dency. This ontological confinement is only one of the reasons why good intentions, and improved social learning; the philosophical
Firstspace epistemologies, despite their broad purview and impres- geographer contemplating the world through the visionary power of
sive accumulation of accurate spatial knowledge, are fundamentally scientific epistemologies or the Kantian envisioning of geography as
incomplete and partial. way of thinking or the more imaginative "poetics" of space; the spa-
In the long history of spatial thinking, Secondspace epistemologies tial semiologist reconstituting Secondspace as "Symbolic" space, a
have tended to arise in reaction to the excessive closure and enforced world of rationally interpretable signification; the design theorist
objectivity of mainstream Firstspace analysis, pitting the artist versus seeking to capture the meanings of spatial form in abstract mental
the scientist or engineer, the idealist versus the materialist, the sub- concepts. Also located here are the grand debates about the
jective versus the objective interpretation. In P?rt through these "essence" of space, whether it is "absolute" or "relative" and "rela-
ideational and epistemological critiques of Firstspace approaches, tional," abstract or concrete, a way of thinking or a material reality.
the boundaries between First- and Secondspace knowledge have However its essence is defined, in Secondspace the imagined
become increasingly blurred, especially with the intermixing of posi- geography tends to become the "real" geography, with the image or
tivist, structuralist, poststructuralist, existential, phenomenological, representation coming to define and order the reality. Actual mater-
and hermeneutic ideas and methods. Firstspace analysts now fre- ial forms recede into the distance as fixed, dead signifiers emitting
quently adopt Secondspace epistemologies for their purposes, and signals that are processed, and thus understood and explained when
Secondspace interpretations often extend themselves specifically to deemed necessary, through the rational (and at times irrational)
address actual material spatial forms. workings of the human mind. Here too, as with Firstspace, there are
Using Lefebvre's words again, there are times when these two at least two levels of conceptualization, one introverted and indige-
epistemological worlds "armour themselves like battleships and nous and the other more extroverted and exogenous in its perspec-
seek to destroy one another;" but there are also times when each tive.
"embodies and nourishes the other," with shiftings back and forth The more internal or indigenous approaches to Secondspace
marking the historical relations between Firstspace and knowledge -ranging from the egocentric, self-explanatory genius of
Secondspace. Buried beneath these oscillations, however, has been a the "starchitect" as masterful creator of spaces to the mental map-
presumption of epistemological completeness that channels the pers of human spatial cognition and the epistemological referees
accumulation of spatial knowledge into two main streams or some enforcing their control over spatial knowledge production- are par-
selective combination of both. Little room is left for a lateral glance ticularly subject to illusory insights. To illustrate, I remember an
beyond the long-established parameters and perimeters that map the intense flurry of interest in Geography over the elucidation of "cog-
overlapping terrains of Firstspace and Secondspace. nitive maps," mental images of space that we all carry with us in our
Despite these overlappings, Secondspace epistemologies are daily lives. Many studies were done to elicit such mental maps
immediately distinguishable by their explanatory concentration on across gender, race, and class lines by asking individuals to draw
conceived rather than perceived space and their implicit assumption maps of the city in which they lived. Various techniques were used
to summarize these imagined urban depictions and the resultant precursor to these more recent developments, which will be
composite mappings were then compared. explored at greater length in later chapters.
Often, some very interesting insights about human spatiality were Thirdspace epistemologies can now be briefly re-described as arising
produced. But equally often the interpretation abruptly ended with from the sympathetic deconstruction and heuristic reconstitution of
naive categorical idealizations, such as "men's mental maps are the Firstspace-Secondspace duality, another example of what I have
extensive, detailed, and relatively accurate" while women's were called thirding-as-Othering. Such thirding is designed not just to cri-
"domicentric" (centered on the home), more compact, and less accu- tique Firstspace and Secondspace modes of thought, but also to rein-
rate in terms of urban details; or, the poor have highly localized vigorate their approaches to spatial knowledge with new
mental maps in contrast to the wealthy, whose mental maps come possibilities heretofore unthought of inside the traditional spatial
close to reproducing a good road map from the gas station. Readers disciplines. Thirdspace becomes not only the limitless Aleph but also
were left with the impression that the conceived space defined an what Lefebvre once called the city, a "possibilities machine;" or,
urban reality on its own terms, the mental defined and indeed pro- recasting Proust, a madeleine for a recherche des espaces perdus, a
duced and explained the material and social worlds better than pre- remembrance-rethinking-recovery of spaces lost ... or never sighted
cise empirical descriptions. In such illusions of transparency, as at ali.l 5
Lefebvre called them, Firstspace collapses entirely into Secondspace. The starting-point for this strategic re-opening and rethinking of
The difference between them disappears. Even more significantly, new possibilities is the provocative shift back from epistemology to
also lost in the transparency of space are its fundamental historical- ontology and specifically to the ontological trialectic of
ity and sociality, any real sense of how these cognitive imageries are Spatiality-Historicality-Sociality. This ontological rebalancing act
themselves socially produced and implicated in the relations induces a radical skepticism toward all established epistemologies,
between space, power, and knowledge. all traditional ways of confidently obtaining knowledge of the
The more advanced and exogenous approaches to Secondspace world. Many, especially in the explicitly postmodern discourse, have
derive either directly from idealist philosophies (e.g. Hegelianism) or reacted to this epistemological crisis by unleashing a free-wheeling
from what might be called the idealization of epistemology, its confi- anything-goes eclecticism or hyperrelativism, almost always without
dent representation as a masterful and complete ordering of reality. addressing the new ontological issues being raised. Addressing them
Lefebvre was particularly concerned with the hegemonic power directly, seeking to rebalance the ontological foundations of knowl-
often ascribed to (and by) this idealized and elevated spatial episte- edge formation, however, makes a significant difference. Such onto-
mology. More than anything else, it made the Representations of logical restructuring, at least for the present moment, re-centers
(Second)Space what he called the dominant space, surveying and
controlling both spatial practices and the lived spaces of representa- 15
The reference to Proust brings to mind an interesting passage in Joseph Frank's
tion. "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," originally published in 1945 (Sewanee Review
Looking back over the past three decades, this seemingly over- 53) and reissued in The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers
drawn concentration on the power of epistemology and on the University Press, 1991). Against the grain of most literary treatments of Proust as
infatuated with time per se, Frank writes:
"dominance" of Secondspace explanatory perspectives (which in so
many other ways were much less important in the spatial disciplines To experience the passage of time, Proust had learned, it was necessary to rise
than was Firstspace analysis) makes much more sense. Here was the above it and to grasp both past and present simultaneously in a moment of
what he called "pure time." But "pure time," obviously, is not time at all- it is
most powerful blockage to the creative rethinking of spatiality, to perception in a moment of time, that is to say, space. And by the discontinu-
the trialectical reassertion of Spatiality in ontological conjunction ous presentation of character Proust forces the reader to juxtapose disparate
with Sociality and Historicality, to the struggle against all forms of images spatially, in a moment of time, so that the experience of time's passage
is communicated directly to his sensibility. Ramon Fernandez has acutely
spatial reductionism and disciplinary fragmentation. The broader stressed this point in some remarks on Proust and Bergson. "Much attention
philosophical hegemony of what I will call modernist epistemologies has been given to the importance of time in Proust's work ... but perhaps it
and their tacit silencing of other knowledges would become the pri- has not been sufficiently noted that he gives time the value and characteristics
of space .... [T]he reactions of his intelligence on his sensibility, which deter-
mary focus for a series of post-prefixed (postmodern, poststructural- mine the trajectory of his work, would orient him rather toward a spatialisation
ist, post-Marxist, postcolonial) and related feminist critiques of of time and memory." (1991: 26-7)
modernism more generally. Lefebvre's targeting of Secondspace Remember these words, for their meaning will re-appear in a different guise in
epistemologies as dominant and dominating was thus an important chapter 6.
knowledge formation first around the long-submerged and subordi-

nated spatiality of existential being and becoming, and then in the
spatialization of historicality and sociality in theory-formation,
empirical analysis, critical inquiry, and social practice.
This far-reaching spatialization, I believe, was Lefebvre's primary 3
intent in The Production of Space. As he persistently demonstrated,
such knowledge is not obtained in permanent constructions confi-
dently built around formalized and closed epistemologies, but
through an endless series of theoretical and practical approxima-
Exploring the Spaces that
tions, a critical and inquisitive nomadism in which the journeying to Difference Makes: Notes on the
new ground never ceases. Accordingly, I leave the discussion of
Thirdspace epistemologies radically open. We must always be mov- Margin
ing on to new possibilities and places.
iI.
\
Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space

where ties are severed or it can provide the occasion for new and var-
ied forms of bonding. To some extent, ruptures, surfaces, contextual-
ity, and a host of other happenings create gaps that make space for
oppositional practices which no longer require intellectuals to be con-
fined to narrow separate spheres with no meaningful connection to
the world of the everyday ... 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.
(bell hooks, Yearning, 1990: 31)
Distinctive features of the new cultural politics of difference are o

trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the name of diversity, mul-
tiplicity, and heterogeneity; to reject the abstract, general and univer-
sal in light of the concrete, specific and particular; and to historicize,
contextualize and pluralize by highlighting the contingent, provi-
sional, variable, tentative, shifting and changing.... [T]hese gestures
are not new in the history of criticism ... yet what makes them novel-
along with the cultural politics they produce - is how and what con-
stitutes difference, the weight and gravity it is given in representation
and the way in which highlighting issues like exterminism, empire,
class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, nation, nature, and region
at this historical moment acknowledges some discontinuity and dis-
ruption from previous forms of cultural critique. To put it bluntly, the
new cultural politics of difference consists of creative responses tot ~
84 Discovering Thirdspace The Spaces that Difference Makes 85
precise circumstances of our present moment ... in order to empower the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify
and enable social action. the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision. . . . For
(Cornel West, "The New Cultural Politics of Difference," 1990: 19-20) many of us, that movement requires pushing against oppres-
sive boundaries set by race, sex, and class domination. Initially,
These introductory remarks from bell hooks and Cornel West re- then, it is a defiant political gesture. (1990, 145) .... For me this
open the exploration of Thirdspace with voices from the community space of radical openness is a margin - a profound edge.
that has generated some of its most intrepid and insightful contem- Locating oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a "safe"
porary adventurers: African-American cultural critics, writers, and place. One is always at risk One needs a community of resis-
philosophers; and more broadly, people (especially women) of color. tance. (1990: 149)
The pathways into Thirdspace taken by these itinerant explorers lead
us to the specific terrain of postmodern culture and into discussions Hear also Cornel West describing bell hooks in their dialogue,
of the new cultural politics of difference and identity that is re-awak- Breaking Bread. 2
ening the contemporary world to the powerfully symbolic spaces of
representation, to struggles over the right to be different, to a new bell hooks's bold project locates her on the margins of the
politics of location and a radical spatial subjectivity and praxis that is academy and the Black community - in search of a beloved
postmodern from the start. The pathways chosen move forward community whose members will come from these very same
many of the journeys begun by Hemi Lefebvre, re-routing and re- margins. Her kind of Black feminism - or womanism - puts a
rooting them in the experienced immediacy of the present. premium on reconstructing new communities of Black people
Both bell hooks and Cornel West are primarily concerned with (of whatever gender, sexual orientation, and class) and progres-
reconceptualizing radical African-American subjectivity in a way sives (of whatever race) regulated by thoroughly decolonized
that retains and enhances the emancipatory power of blackness, but visions, analyses and practices. (Hooks and West, 1991: 61)
is at the same time innovatively open to the formation of multiple
communities of resistance, polyvocal political movements capable of Their politics of location concentrates on the de-colonizing role of the
linking together many radical subjectivities and creating new "meet- African-American intellectual (as cultural critic and philosopher) in
ing places" and real-and-imagined "spaces" for diverse oppositional the search for wider spheres of participation in the "world of the
practices. As Black intellectuals, hooks and West have been multiply everyday" and in the enablement of radical social action everywhere
marginalized, made peripheral to the mainstreams of American in the world, from the personal to the planetary. It is a politics and
political, intellectual, and everyday life; but they have also con- spatial positioning that is explicitly but cautiously and critically
sciously chosen to envelop and develop this marginality, as hooks postmodern. In her essay on "Postmodern Blackness," hooks pre-
puts it, as a space of radical openness, a context from which to build sents a powerful critique of conventional postmodern discourse for
communities of resistance and renewal that cross the boundaries and its white male exclusivity and especially its persistent separation of a
double-cross the binaries of race, gender, class, and all oppressively generalized "politics of difference" from the more specified and
Othering categories. Like Lefebvre, they obtain a particular centrality lived "politics of racism." But hooks follows her critique by reassert-
- and an abiding globality - in their purposeful peripheralness, a ing, with no regrets, her own commitment to radical postmod-
strategic positioning that disorders, disrupts, and transgresses the ernism.
center-periphery relationship itself.
Hear bell hooks in Yearning: 1 The overall impact of postmodernism is that many other groups
now share with black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair,
As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, "the politics of uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding even if it is not
location" necessarily calls those of us who would participate in
1 2
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Boston, MA: South End bell hooks and Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life, Boston:
Press, 1990. See also hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1991. See also West, "The New Cultural Politics of Difference," in
South End Press, 1981; Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Boston: South End R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-ha and C. West, eds, Out There: Marginalization
Press, 1984; Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Boston, MA: South End and Contemporary Cultures, Cambridge MA: MIT Press and New York: The New
Press, 1989; and Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, New York and London: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990; and Race Matters, New York: Vintage Books,
Routledge, 1994. 1994.
informed by shared circumstance. Radical postmodernism calls from its workings - is contextualized and made concrete, like all
attention to those shared sensibilities which cross the bound- social relations, in the (social) production of (social) space. As Michel
aries of class, race, gender, etc., that could be fertile ground for Foucault has argued, these links between space, knowledge, power,
the construction of empathy - ties that would promote recogni- and cultural politics must be seen as both oppressive and enabling,
tion of common commitments, and serve as a base for solidarity filled not only with authoritarian perils but also with possibilities for
and coalition .... To change the exclusionary practice of post- community, resistance, and emancipatory change.
modern critical discourse is to enact a postmodernism of resis- The multisidedness of power and its relation to a cultural politics
tance. (1990: 27 and 30) of difference and identity is often simplified into hegemonic and
counter-hegemonic categories. Hegemonic power, wielded by those
She concludes with the passage selected to begin this chapter, on in positions of authority, does not merely manipulate naively given
"postmodern culture" as a (Third) space of political choice. differences between individuals and social groups, it actively pro-
I will continue to draw upon bell hooks for the remainder of this duces and reproduces difference as a key strategy to create and maintain
chapter (and beyond), for her voice more than any other I have modes of social and spatial division that are advantageous to its con-
heard brings to Thirdspace a creatively postmodern conceptualiza- tinued empowerment and authority. "We" and "they" are dichoto-
tion of the cultural politics of difference, a radically open and openly mously spatialized and enclosed in an imposed territoriality of
radical critique that infuses Thirdspace with explicit attention to the apartheids, ghettos, barrios, reservations, colonies, fortresses,
multiplicity of spaces that difference makes around the "issues" metropoles, citadels, and other trappings that emanate from the cen-
listed earlier by Cornel West: exterminism, empire, class, race, gen- ter-periphery relation. In this sense, hegemonic power universalizes
der, sexual orientation, age, nation, nature, and region. and contains difference in real and imagined spaces and places.
Those who are territorially subjugated by the workings of hege-
monic power have two inherent choices: either accept their imposed
On the Differences that Postmodernity Makes differentiation and division, making the best of it; or mobilize to
resist, drawing upon their putative positioning, their assigned "oth-
The paths to the new cultural politics, to a radically open postmod- erness," to struggle against this power-filled imposition. These
ernism of resistance, and to the multiplicitous Thirdspaces of bell choices are inherently spatial responses, individual and collective
hooks start off by covering some old ground. We must pass again, reactions to the ordered workings of power in perceived, conceived,
for example, through the trialectical critique of modernist binarisms and lived spaces.
and explore, in a different way, the representations of power and the The outcomes of this socio-spatial differentiation, division, con-
power of representations that were charted out by Lefebvre. What tainment, and struggle are cumulatively concretized and conceptual-
we will get to eventually in the new cultural politics is that familiar ized in spatial practices, in representations of space, and in the
intersection of space/knowledge/power that defines the context of spaces of representation, for all three are always being profoundly
postmodern radical spatial subjectivity and praxis.3 shaped by the workings of power. It is useful to see these presuppo-
sitions, processes of social production, and outcomes of the work-
On the Workings of Power ings of power as conflated, historically and geographically, in uneven
development: the composite and dynamic spatia-temporal patterning
The cultural politics of difference, whether labeled old or new, arise of socially constructed differences at many different spatial scales,
primarily from the workings of power in society and on space in from the body and the home to the nation and the world economy.
their simultaneously perceived, conceived, and lived worlds. In As Lefebvre has creatively argued, geohistorically uneven develop-
other words, power - and the specifically cultural politics that arise ment has become increasingly fragmented, homogenized, and hier-
archically structured in capitalist societies, making the simple
3
For much of what follows in this chapter and the next, I owe a great deal to division between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic power, centers
Barbara Hooper, who co-authored the essay from which these two chapters are pri-
marily drawn and who deserves, perhaps more than any other, my deep apprecia-
and peripheries, more and more complex and difficult to decipher.
tion for the students who have taught me. See Edward Soja and Barbara Hooper, Pushed one step further, this leads us to the conditions of post-
'The Spaces That Difference Makes: Some Notes on the Geographical Margins of modernity as they are being expressed in the contemporary world.
the New Cultural Politics," in Michael Keith and Steve Pile, eds, Place and the Politics
But we jump too quickly ahead.
of Identity, London and New York: Routledge, 1993, 183-205.
Returning to Foucault for the moment, the struggles against (and modernism. It has traditionally based its opposition on the assertion
for) hegemonic power can be seen to operate in three overlapping of universal principles of equality, human rights, and democracy,
are(n)as, around what he termed subjection, domination, and seeking to reduce to a minimum the negative effects of difference,
exploitation. Subjection, the least well studied and understood he whatever their origins. A second form of counter-hegemonic politics,
claimed, has two expressions, reflecting the double meaning of the not always completely separable from the first, arises from more
word subject: subject to control by and dependency on someone else, radical contestation over the many axes along which socially con-
usually implying some form of submission; and subject as asserted structed power differentials have historically and geographically
identity and self-knowledge, i.e. individual or collective subjectivity. polarized. Rather than aiming above all to erase differences or to
Struggles against subjection are thus struggles over subjectivity and "even things out," it uses difference as a basis for community, iden-
submission, over who defines the individual or collective subject. tity, and struggle against the existing power relations at their source.
Foucault argued that "nowadays, the struggle against the forms of Without excluding the liberal alternative entirely, what is defined
subjection - against the submission of subjectivity - is becoming here as the modernist cultural politics of difference and identity refers
more and more important," although he hastened to add that strug- primarily to this tradition of more radical subjectivity and resistance
gles against domination (ethnic, social, religious) and exploitation as it has developed since the mid-19th century around such cate-
(against alienation, the socio-spatial relations that separate individu- gories of cultural consciousness as class, race, ethnicity, nationality,
als from what they produce) continue to prevail as primary targets colonial status, sexuality, and gender. More particularized and frag-
of resistance. 4 Cultural politics broadly defined include all three mented than the universal humanism of the liberal alternative, mod-
forms of resistance struggle, but in the "new" cultural politics of dif- ernist cultural politics usually preserve inter-categorical distinctions
ference and identity, subjection has assumed a much more central while seeking to eliminate differences in power along each "inter-
role, especially with regard to gender, race, and the far-reaching rela- nal'' axis.
tion between the "colonizer" and the "colonized." Even when rejecting Marxian categories and explicitly revolution-
Growing out of this view of power, differences that are ascribed to ary ideology, modernist cultural politics and the various social and
gender, sexual practice, race, class, region, nation, etc., and their cultural movements associated with it have often tended to develop
expression in social space and geohistorically uneven development, along the lines initiated more than a century ago with respect to the
are appropriately seen as "brute fashionings." 5 Like social space formation of anti-capitalist class consciousness and the revolutionary
itself, they are neither transhistorical nor "natural" (in the sense of struggle against economic exploitation. While varying greatly in
being naively or existentially given, as in "human nature"). This their specificities, these modern movements have generally followed
brute fashioning, as the social and spatial production (and strategic analogous trajectories based on a similar praxis of refusal and resis-
reproduction) of difference, becomes the catalyst and the contested tance that parallels the bipolar logic of class struggle: capital versus
space for both hegemonic (conservative, order-maintaining) and labor, bourgeoisie versus proletariat: a struggle defined around a
counter-hegemonic (resistant, order-transforming) cultural and iden- deep structural dichotomy that "orders" differential power into two
tity politics: the most general form of the center-periphery relation primary social categories, one dominant and the other subordinate.6
defined (and deconstructed) by Lefebvre. Each separate sphere of modernist cultural politics has typically
mobilized its version of radical subjectivity around a fundamentally
On Radical Subjectivities
6
These observations must not be taken as privileging class struggle as paradigmatic
or as a model which other forms of modernist resistance simply mimicked. Such
Counter-hegemonic cultural politics, as it has conventionally been privileging is largely the result of Eurocentric and masculinist interpretations of
defined, has typically followed one of two paths, at least within social reality, opposition, and resistance as they developed (and became hegemonic
Western capitalist societies. The first and most "acceptable" is rooted as "Marxist") in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is precisely this essentialist privileg-
in the post-Enlightenment development of liberal humanism and ing of the working class, the radical (male) intellectual, and later the Party as the
agents "making history" - and the attendant deployment of Marxism as an all-
inclusive, self-sufficient grand narrative of social revolution- that radical postmod-
4
Michel Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power," in H. Dreyfus and P. emism and the new identity politics (as well, it might be added, as some
Rabinow, eds, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago: 19th-century feminisms and anti-racisms) have worked to deconstruct. Even draw-
University of Chicago Press, 1982, 208-26. ing parallels and analogies must be done with care, for the emphasis on exploitation
5
Joan Cocks, The Oppositional Imagination: Feminism, Critique and Political Theory, that is so central to class struggle is significantly different from the emphasis on sub-
London: Routledge (1989), 20. jection and domination that motivates most other forms of cultural politics.
epistemological critique of the binary ordering of difference that is form of complex multiple subjectivities, with and without overlap-
particular to it: capital/labor, self/other, subject/object, colonizer/ ping), becomes an endemic problem in modernist cultural politics,
colonized, white/black, man/woman, majority /minority, heterosex- especially for those social movements which theorize either a univer-
ual/homosexual. This critique of knowledge formation is aimed at salist encompassing of other radical subjectivities (e.g. substituting
"denaturalizing" the origins of the binary ordering to reveal its "woman" for all women, or asserting the transcendental unity of the
social and spatial construction of difference as a means of producing "workers of the world" to encompass multiracial, rnultiethnic, and
and reproducing systematic patterns of domination, exploitation, otherwise diverse men and women workers); or alternatively, recog-
and subjection. As socially constructed, context-specific "technolo- nize differences but none the less theorize and strategize from the
gies" of power (to use another Foucauldian term), these binary struc- assumed primacy and privileging of one or another set of agents in
tures become subject to social and cultural transformation via a the process of radical social change. In the extreme case, as with
politics of identity and a radical subjectivity that builds upon the most orthodox forms of modern Marxism and some forms of radical
empowerment of the "subaltern" against the "hegemon" (to use the feminism and black nationalism, these essentialist tendencies present
most general terms covering the various oppositional forms of the a barrier to cross-cutting alliances of political significance by attribut-
cultural politics of difference)? ing "false consciousness" or subordinate identity to all radical sub-
Each major social movement within modernist cultural politics jectivities other than that emanating from the privileged bipolarity.9
characteristically projects its particular radical subjectivity, defined When the primacy of one binary opposition is viewed as compet-
within its own oppressive binary structure, as overarchingly (and ing with the privileging of another, the prospects for flexible and
often universally) significant. Whether or not this (bounded) tohiliza- cooperative alliance and "empathy" (a key term for bell hooks) are
tion and essentialism is actually believed, its powerful mobilizing likely to be dim. While there have been many fruitful dialogues
effect is used strategically in attempts to consolidate and intensify between various radical movements (between Marxism and femi-
counter-hegemonic consciousness "for itself" and on its identified nism, for example, and between both and those struggling against
"horne ground." In both theory and practice, therefore, a significant _ racism and colonial oppression), the deeply engrained essentialisrns
degree of closure and exclusiveness is embedded within the strate- of modernist identity politics have tended to create a competitive
gies and tactics of modernist cultural politics. Even when one exclusivity that resists, even rejects, seeing a "real" world populated
counter-hegemonic movement avows its openness to alliance with by multiple subjects with many (often changeable) identities located
others, it is usually open only on the former's terms and under its in varying (and also changeable) subject positions. Hence, modernist
primary strategic guidance. The result has been the production of cultural politics, in its fear and rejection of a fragmented reality, has
parallel, analogous, and segregated channels of radical political con- often tended to create and intensify political divisiveness rather than
sciousness and subjectivity, each designed and primed to change its working toward a multiple, pluralized, and yet still radical concep-
own discrete binarized world of difference. 8 tualization of agency and identity.
Under these ordered conditions, fragmentation (in the very real Modernist identity politics has always had to face both a forceful
reactionary resistance from those in power and the temptations of
7
The generalized bipolarity of the relation between hegemon and subaltern is reformist liberal diversion and co-optation. Over the past two
directly comparable to the relation between core (or center) and periphery (or mar- decades, however, new theoretical and philosophical critiques (espe-
gin). In both, the binary ordering of difference is socially constructed (not natural or cially of taken-for-granted epistemologies and, in particular, the
transhistorical) and arises from the workings of power in a complex process of geo-
historically uneven development. The homology (rather than mere analogy) of these politically-divisive tendencies toward master-narrative essentialism
two expressions of binary ordering is another important stimulus to the conceptual and binary totalization) and actual political events (ranging from the
and practiced spatialization of the cultural politics of difference that has been occur- global restructurings of capital, labor, and ideology to the apparent
ring over the past several decades. . .
8 Here is where the universalist politics of liberal humanism (and its attendant mdi-
vidualism) frequently complicates the theory and. prax!s of r~dical i.dentity p~litics 9
Further intensifying this tendency to fragmentation (and expanding the role of the
by providing an alluring all-embracing alternative VIewpomt. This categoncally
epistemological police) is an internal competition for primacy, driven by the same
simplified choice, occupy only one "radical" channel or "liberally" choose them all,
"urge to unity" that pervades modernist identity politics. Here we find the effort to
especially when backed by the similar categorical binarism of "if you are not our
exclude, to separate the pure from the impure, the deviation from the essence: a
friend you are our enemy," imposes a rigid logic whic~ intensifi':'s the nee? for an demarcation of categorical distinctions between znszde and outszde that actively
"epistemological police" to guard boundaries and purush deviation, especially for
represses difference and otherness. For a similar view on the inside-outside relation,
those who seek a different set of choices. see the work of Diana Fuss (1991) cited in the next chapter (p. 118, see footnote 12).
defeat and retreat of governments inspired by modernist Marxism- Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - a polyvocal postmodernism
Leninism and its dominant form of identity politics) have ushered in that maintains a political commitment to radical social change while
an extraordinary period of deep questioning that strikes more dis- continuing to draw (selectively, but sympathetically) from the most
ruptively than ever before at the very foundations of modernist powerful critical foundations of modernist cultural politics. The
political practices -and simultaneously opens up new possibilities intent behind these radical postmodernisms of resistance and redi-
for radical resistance to all forms of hegemonic subordination. I am rection is to deconstruct (not to destroy) the ebbing tide of modernist
speaking, in particular, of the critiques that have been associated radical politics, to renew its strengths and shed its weaknesses, and
with the development of a radically open and openly radical post- to reconstitute an explicitly postmodern radical politics, a new cul-
modernism, from Lefebvre and Foucault to bell hooks and Cornel tural politics of difference and identity that moves toward empower-
West, with all their similarities and differences. ing a multiplicity of resistances rather than searching for that one
"great refusal/' the singular transformation that somehow must pre-
On the Disordering of Difference cede and guide all others.
The disordering of difference from its persistent binary structuring
Postmodernism lives. Legions of detractors and years of intel- and the reconstitution of difference as the basis for a new cultural
lectual debate have done nothing to arrest its expansion or politics of multiplicity and strategic alliance among all who are
reduce its impact, and scores of usurpers have failed miserably peripheralized, marginalized, and subordinated by the social con-
in stultifying its scope. Despite or because of being profanely struction of difference (especially in its strictly dichotomized forms)
ambivalent and ambiguous, rejoicing in consumption and cele- are key processes in the development of radical postmodern subjec-
brating obsessions, ignoring consistency and avoiding stability, tivity. Whether this revisioning of radical subjectivity requires a
favoring illusions and pleasure, postmodernism is the only pos- major transformation or merely a significant reform of modernist
sible contemporary answer to a century worn out by the rise identity politics is still being contested. But it is clear that politics as
and fall of modern ideologies, the pervasion of capitalism, and usual can no longer be practiced as it was in the past, at least among
an unprecedented sense of personal responsibility and individ- those who take seriously the conditioning effects of postmodernity. 10
ual impotence. In the wake of this continuing debate, a new breed of radical anti-
Whether one likes it or not, postmodernism is a state of postmodernists has emerged in force to "spin-doctor" the critical
things. It is primarily determined by an extremely rapid and discourse toward either reformist or "total" revolutionary solutions,
freewheeling exchange to which most responses are faltering, and away from any deep but sympathetic deconstruction and recon-
impulsive, and contradictory. What is at stake is the very consti- stitution of modernist traditions. Given the intellectual elitism, mas-
tution of being- the ways we perceive ourselves and others, the culinism, racism, and neoconservative politics that have dominated
modes of experience that are available to us, the women so much of the postmodernist discourse, there is ample ammunition
and men whose sensibilities are shaped by urban expo- for the radical anti-postmodernist project. After alt the deconstruc-
sure. (Olalquiaga, 1992: xi) tive challenge raised by postmodernism often sounds suspiciously
like the old hegemonic strategies of opposition, co-optation, and
There is no doubt that some who hasten to proclaim the death of diversion; and the affirmedly prefixed "post-" seems too literally to
modernism and announce the emergence of a new postmodern era signal the irrevocable "end of" all progressive modernist projects
from its ashes are motivated by the same old impulses of hegemonic rather than their potentially advantageous reconstitution and
reempowerment and/or liberal diversion. More will be said of this renewal. Moreover, to most radical modernist critics, the multiplicity
reactionary postmodernism in later chapters. But there is also emerg- of resistances continues to be seen as inevitably leading to a
ing - in the postmodern blackness and post-colonialist critiques of 10
It is important to note the emergence of an increasingly powerful reactionary
bell hooks, Cornel West, Celeste Olalquiaga, Gayatri Spivak, Arjun form of postmodern politics that also engages in a "disordering of difference" and
Appadurai, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Edward Said, Chandra Mohanty, has learned effectively how to create political advantage from fragmentation, rup-
tures, discontinuities, and the apparent disorganization of capitalist (and formerly
Homi Bhabha; in the increasingly spatialized postmodern feminisms socialist) political economies and cultures. In many ways, the hegemon has learned
of Iris Marion Young, Jane Flax, Judith Butler, Diana Fuss, Meaghan to adapt to the conditions of postmodernity more rapidly and creatively than the
Morris, Rosalyn Deutsche, Donna Haraway; and in the anti-essen- subaltern, especially when the latter remains frozen between modernist and post-
tialist critiques of various postmodern Marxist scholars such as modernist radical subjectivities.
politically debilitating fragmentation and the abandonment of long- deconstruction of modernist political theory. And the most powerful
established forms of counter-hegemonic struggle. Under these pre- exposition of this difference in ways of thinking about politics has
sumed circumstances, the promise of eventual emancipatory come from feminism. In their introduction to Feminists Theorize the
reconstitution rings hollow, if not cruelly deceptive, especially at a PoliticalP Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott "open up a political imagi-
time when nearly all radical modern movements are either in crisis nary for feminism" that is situated in what they call a postructuralist
or massive retreat. critique of "positionings," an unsettling critique that deconstructs all
The tendency to homogenize postmodernism and to generalize presumptions of cognitive "mastery." Their comments effectively
(i.e. ascribe to all postmodernisms) certain negative and oppressive summarize what has been described here as the postmodern disor-
political practices associated with postmodernity, makes the con- dering of difference.
struction of a radical postmodern alternative even more difficultY
Theoretically suggestive aphorisms arising from the postmodern Poststructuralism is not, strictly speaking, a position, but rather a
and related poststructuralist critiques ("there is no reality outside the critical interrogation of the exclusionary operations by which
text," "the death of the subject," "anything goes") are now routinely "positions" are established. In this sense, a feminist poststruc-
set up as straw-objects to demonstrate that all postmodern politics turalism does not designate a position from which one operates,
are abstract and immaterial, umelated to everyday life, inherently a point of view or standpoint which might be usefully com-
reactionary - and hence, immanently nihilistic with respect to "real" pared with other "positions" within the theoretical field. This is,
radical politics. A forbidding wall of categorical totems and taboos of course, the conventional grammar of political debate: "I am
has thus been raised to hide the very possibility of radical postmod- an , and I believe _ _ ." And surely there are strategic
ernism, making it all but invisible to outsiders, especially on the Left. occasions when precisely that kind of grammar is important to
This forbidding wall has, however, tended to materialize around evoke. But the questions raised in this volume concern the
the same modernist conditioning and rigid either I or logic that has orchestration of that kind of position taking, not simply within
become so central a target for contemporary cultural criticism and academic discourse, but within feminist political discourse.
proponents of the new politics of difference: the infatuation with What are the political operations that constrain and constitute
clean and orderly binary oppositions; the intolerance of ambiguity, the field within which positions emerge? What exclusions effec-
disordering, multiplicity, fragmentation; the urge to unity enforced tively constitute and naturalize that field? Through what means
by epistemological closure and essentialism. The arguments that are women positioned within law, history, political debates on
have been outlined as a critique of modernist identity politics are abortion and rape, contexts of racism, colonization, postcolo-
thus also a critique of the flourishing new anti-postmodernism. It is a niality? Who qualifies as a "subject" of history, a "claimant"
critique that calls for a new way of looking at and making practical before the law, a "citizen"? Indeed, what qualifies as "reality,"
political sense of what Cornel West described as "the precise circum- "experience" and "agency." ... Through what differential and
stances of our present moment," drawing insight from the realiza- exclusionary means are such "foundational" notions consti-
tion that postmodernity has made more significant differences to our tuted? And how does a radical contestation of these "founda-
real and imagined political worlds than it has reinforced repressive tions" expose the silent violence of these concepts as they have
continuities with the past. operated not merely to marginalize certain groups, but to erase
Perhaps the most significantly revealing difference arising from and exclude them from the notion of "community" altogether,
radical postmodernism (as a critical metaphilosophy) and poststruc- indeed, to establish exclusion as the very condition and possi-
turalism (as its primary methodological support) has been a pro- bility of "community"? (Butler and Scott, 1992: xiv)
foundly introspective ontological, epistemological, and discursive
Butler and Scott are quick to point out that this interrogation of the
11
One might argue as well that a similar tendency can be found in my e_arlier c:i- primary terms of conventional political discourse, or what I have
tique of modernist identity politics. I hope tha~ I have not ~ee~ so ~ategoncally drs- called modernist cultural politics, is in no sense intended "to censor
missive of modernisms and have not homogeruzed moderrust rdenhty pohhcs to the
degree that is present in the contemporary radical backlash against postmodemism.
their usage, negate them, or to announce their anachronicity. On the
I recognize, however, that there is a widespread tendency to be simplisticall~ a_nd
categorically anti-modernist (more specifically, anti-Marxist and anh-femrrust) 12
Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, eds, Feminists Theorize the Political, New York and
among many who proclaim themselves to be postmodem. London: Routledge, 1992.
contrary, this kind of analysis requires that these terms be reused and Choosing Marginality
rethought, exposed as strategic instruments and effects, and sub-
jected to a critical reinscription and redeployment." Hooks finds her place, positions herself, first of all as an African-
These interrogations turn what has been a primarily deconstruc- American woman and then by the simultaneously political and geo-
tive critique of modernism into a more constructive program for a graphical act of choosing marginality. This positioning of identity and
radical postmodernist cultural politics that revolves around disor- subjectivity is purposefully detached from the "narrow cultural
dering difference and empowering multiplicity. To situate the nationalism masking continued fascination with the power of the
debate within Thirdspace, however, requires a return to other white [and/or male] hegemonic order." The latter identification,
sources. hooks suggests, would not be choosing marginality but accepting its
imposition by the more powerful, binary Other, a submission to the
dominant, order-producing, and unremittingly modernist ideology
In Thirdspace with bell hooks and epistemology of difference. Instead of totally ignoring cultural
nationalisms, however, such an assertion of recentered identity "is
In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, and particularly in the evoked as a stage in a process wherein one constructs radical black
chapters on "Postmodern Blackness" and "Choosing the Margin as a subjectivity" (or what she has more recently called "wildness")Y By
Space of Radical Openness," bell hooks attempts to move beyond extension and adjustment, choosing marginality becomes a critical
modernist binary oppositions of race, gender, and class into the mul- turning-point in the construction of other forms of counter-
tiplicity of other spaces that difference makes; into a re-visioned spa- hegemonic or subaltern identity and more embracing communities
tiality that creates from difference new sites for struggle and for the of resistance.
construction of interconnected and non-exclusionary communities of As an initial stage, categorical identity as subaltern is crucial and
resistance. In so doing, she opens up in these real-and-imagined necessary. But hooks's construction of radical black subjectivity
other spaces a Thirdspace of possibilities for a new cultural politics pushes the process of identity formation beyond exclusionary strug-
of difference and identity that is both radically postmodern and con- gles against white racism and on to a new terrain, a "space of radical
sciously spatialized from the beginning. openness" where the key question of who we can be and still be black
This creative spatialization involves more than wrapping texts in can be politically re-imagined and practiced. "Assimilation, imita-
appealing spatial metaphors. It is a vital discursive turn that both tion, or assuming the role of rebellious exotic are not the only
contextualizes the new cultural politics and facilitates its conceptual options and never have been," hooks notes in rejecting the conven-
re-visioning around the empowerment of multiplicity, the construc- tional choices that liberal modernist discourse has frequently
tion of combinatorial rather than competitively fragmented and sep- imposed upon the activist black subject. Instead, she chooses a space
arated communities of resistance. It also leads to a new spatial that is simultaneously central and marginal (and purely neither at
conception of social justice based on the politics of location and the the same time), a difficult and risky place on the edge, filled with
right to difference within the revised situational contexts of post- contradictions and ambiguities, with perils but also with new possi-
modernity. bilities: a Thirdspace of political choice.
Early work on the spatialization of cultural politics can be found "Fundamental to this process of decentering the oppressive other and
in the writings of Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, Frantz claiming our right to subjectivity," she writes, "is the insistence that
Fanon and Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault and Henri we must determine how we will be and not rely on colonizing
Lefebvre. In addition, there has developed over the past decade a responses to determine our legitimacy." In a similar avowal,
substantial body of literature that has been specifically concerned Pratibha Parmar argues that creating identities as black women is
with disordering modernist binaries and promoting a new and radi- not done "'in relation to,' 'in opposition to,' or 'as a corrective
cal cultural politics. In bell hooks's writings, there has been a partic- to,' ... but in and for ourselves. Such a narrative thwarts that binary
ularly lucid, expressive, and accessible convergence of these hierarchy of centre and margin: the margin refuses its authoritative
discourses, both old and new, making her Yearnings an especially
useful place from which tore-explore Thirdspace. 13
bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992. All
the other quoted references to bell hooks are taken from "Choosing the Margin as a
Space of Radical Openness," in Yearning, 1990: 145-53.
The Spaces that Difference Makes 99
In choosing marginality as a space of radical openness, hooks con-
emplacement as 'Other'." Significantly, hooks cites Parmar in
"Choosing the Margin" to confirm their shared presupposition of the tributes significantly to a powerful revisioning not only of the cul-
political significance of spatiality. After stating that spaces "can be tural politics of difference but also of our conceptualization of
human geographies, of what we mean by the politics of location and
real and imagined ... can tell stories and unfold histories . . . can be
interrupted, appropriated, and transformed," hooks adds: "As geohistorically uneven development, of how we creatively combine
spatial metaphor and spatial materiality in an assertively spatial
Pratibha Parma[r] notes, 'The appropriation and use of space are
praxis. By recontextualizing spatiality, she engages in a cognitive
political acts.' " 14
remapping of our many real-and-imagined worlds - from the most
This evocative process of choosing marginality reconceptualizes
local confines of the body, the geography closest in, to the nested
the problematic of subjection by deconstructing and disordering
geographical worlds that are repeated again and again in an expand-
both margin and center. In those restructured and recentered mar-
ing sequence of scales reaching from the "little tactics of the habitat"
gins, new spaces of opportunity and action are created, the new
to the "great strategies" of global geopolitics. 15
spaces that difference makes. For hooks, and by extension and invi-
For hooks, the political project is to occupy the (real-and-imag-
tation, all others involved in this spatial disordering of difference,
ined) spaces on the margins, to reclaim these lived spaces as loca-
there is a "definite distinction between the marginality which is
imposed by oppressive structure and that marginality one chooses tions of radical openness and possibility, and to make within them
the sites where one's radical subjectivity can be activated and prac-
as site of resistance, as location of radical openness and possibility."
ticed in conjunction with the radical subjectivities of others. It is thus
She adds, more extensively:
a spatiality of inclusion rather than exclusion, a spatiality where rad-
It was this marginality that I was naming as a central location ical subjectivities can multiply, connect, and combine in polycentric
for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse that is not communities of identity and resistance; where "fragmentation" is no
just found in words but in habits of being and the way one longer a political weakness but a potential strength: the spatiality
lives. As such, I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes searched for but never effectively discovered in modernist identity
to lose, to give up, but rather as a site one stays in, clings to politics.
even, because it nourishes one's capacity to resist. It offers the Hooks first makes her Thirdspace consciousness explicit in the
possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, Preface to Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Like Lefebvre's,
to imagine alternatives, new worlds .... hooks's consciousness is rooted in the everyday life experiences of
Understanding marginality as position and place of resis- youth, home, and family.
tance is crucial for oppressed, exploited, colonized people. If we
only view the margin as a sign, marking the condition of our To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the
pain and deprivation, then certain hopelessness and despair, a main body. As black Americans living in a small Kentucky town,
deep nihilism penetrates in a destructive way .... I want to say the railroad tracks were a daily reminder of our marginality.
that these margins have been both sites of repression and sites Across those tracks were paved streets, stores we could not enter,
of resistance... . (1990: 149-51) restaurants we could not eat in, and people we could not look
She concludes with a resounding invitation: directly in the face. Across these tracks was a world we could
work in as maids, as janitors, as prostitutes, as long as it was in a
This is an intervention. A message from that space in the mar- service capacity. We could enter that world but we could not live
gin that is a site of creativity and power, that inclusive space there. We had always to return to the margin, to cross the tracks,
where we recover ourselves, where we move in solidarity to to shacks and abandoned houses on the edge of town.
erase the category colonizer I colonized. Marginality is the space
of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there. Enter that 15
The full quote from Foucault comes from "The Eye of Power," reprinted in
space. We greet you as liberators. (1990: 152) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, C. Gordon, ed.,
New York: Pantheon, 1980: 149. Foucault writes: "A whole history remains to be
written of spaces -which would at the same time be the history of powers (both terms
in the plural) - from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics of the habi-
14
Pratibha Parmar, "Black Feminism: The Politics of Articulation," in J. Rutherford,
tat." The same quote reappears as the lead-in to Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces,
ed., Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991:
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
101.
There were laws to ensure our return. To not return was to housing - the way racial segregation in a capitalist society meant
risk being punished. Living as we did - on the edge -we devel- that black folks were discriminated against when seeking places to
oped a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the live .... Mama reminds her family that black people survived the
outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the holocaust of slavery because they had oppositional ways of thinking,
center as well as on the margin. We understood both. This mode of ones that were different from the structures of domination determin-
seeing reminded us of the existence of a whole universe, a main ing so much of their lives" (1990: 1-2).
body made up of both margin and center. Our survival Hooks goes on in this chapter to criticize more conventional black
depended on an ongoing public awareness of the separation cultural criticism for focusing too narrowly on black "images" in the
between margin and center and an ongoing private acknowl- media and failing to draw upon the counter-hegemonic cultural
edgement that we were a necessary, vital part of that whole. criticism "honed and developed in black living rooms, kitchens,
This sense of wholeness, impressed upon our consciousness barber shops, and beauty parlors" (1990: 4). "Replaced by an ethic
by the structure of our daily lives, provided us an oppositional in complete contradiction to those values stressed by Mama in
world view- a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppres- A Raisin in the Sun, the emphasis was on finding work for black
sors, that sustained us, aided us in our struggle to transcend folks in the culture industry" (1990: 5). Hooks concludes:
poverty and despair, strengthened our sense of self and our "Cultural critics who are committed to a radical cultural politics
solidarity. (1984: ix; emphasis added) (especially those of us who teach students from exploited and
oppressed groups) must offer theoretical paradigms in a manner that
The familiar "other side of the tracks" story is here transformed in a connects them to contextualized political strategies" (1990: 8; emphasis
trialectical twist, a thirding that constructs an Other world from the added).
simple binary opposition of center and periphery, inside and out- Hooks turns next to "The Politics of Radical Black Subjectivity,"
side. Hidden from the view of the oppressor, this third-world of declaring the inspiration she draws from the work of Paulo Freire
political choice ensures the survival of the oppressed, nurtures resis- and positioning herself more clearly on the margin, in a "home-
tance, and provides openings "on the edge," in the chosen context of place" that is much more than ghetto or shantytown.
marginality, to build larger communities of survival and resistance.
This Thirdspace on the margin is hooks's point of departure for a Perhaps the most fascinating constructions of black subjectivity
sympathetic critique of feminist theory and the exclusionary prac- (and critical thinking about the same) emerge from writers,
tices and liberal individualism that often emerge from its white cultural critics, and artists who are poised on the margins of
mainstreams. It is also an invitation to all progressive women and various endeavors. I locate myself within this group, imagining
men to be themselves- and at the same time be black feminists, par- I reside there with a wild crowd of known and unknown folks.
ticipating inhabitants of that radically open and openly radical We share commitment to left politics (yes, we critique capital-
world on the margin. ism and explore the revolutionary possibilities of socialism); we
are concerned with ending domination in all its forms; we are
The Margin as a Space of Radical Difference into reading and deeply concerned with aesthetics (I mean, I
have my own bumper sticker firmly stuck on my heart: "I die
In Feminist Theory, there is little else in the text that is explicitly spa- for style"); we are into all kinds of culture and do not fear los-
tial, but everything follows from the evocations of Thirdspace in the ing our blackness; we see ourselves as one of the people, while
subtitle and the Preface. In Yearning, however, hooks is resplen- simultaneously acknowledging our privileges, whatever they
dently spatial, not only in her use of metaphors but in her imagina- may be. . . . The ground we stand on is shifting, fragile, and
tive material grounding of the powerful force of black cultural unstable. We are avant-garde only to the extent that we eschew
criticism. The introductory chapter on "Liberation Scenes" begins essentialist notions of identity, and fashion selves that emerge
with a comment on Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, as from the meeting of diverse epistemologies, habits of being,
a "counter-hegemonic cultural production" which interrogates and concrete class locations, and radical political commitments. We
challenges the fear of black people that "being out of our place" (not believe in solidarity and are working to make spaces where
conforming to the rules of white supremacy) would lead to destruc- black women and men can dialogue about everything, spaces
tion, even death. "On a basic level," hooks adds, "the play was about where we can engage in critical dissent without violating one
The Spaces that Difference Makes 103
another. We are concerned with black culture and black up in a segregated small town, living in a marginal space where
identity. (1990: 19) black people (though contained) exercised power, where we were
truly caring and supportive of one another, was very different from
She criticizes more hard-line leftist, black nationalist, white feminist, the nationalism I would learn about in black studies classes or from
and even some postcolonial deconstructionist perspectives in her the Black Muslims selling papers at Stanford University my first year
espousal of an inclusive- and flexible- politics of "relocation." there" (1990: 35). Special attention is reserved for the homeplace and
its social construction and nurturing, especially by women, as a
Cultural identity has become an uncool issue in some circles. "community of resistance."
One of the very crowd I mentioned earlier suggests "the
emphasis on culture is a sign of political defeat," whereas it Throughout our history, African-Americans have recognized
seems to me a practical gesture to shift the scene of action if in the subversive value of homeplace, of having access to private
fact the location of one's political practice does not enable space where we do not directly encounter white racist aggres-
change. We return to "identity" and "culture" for relocation, sion. Whatever the shape and direction of black liberation
linked to political practice - identity that is not informed by a struggle (civil rights reform or black power movement), domes-
narrow cultural nationalism masking continued fascination tic space has been a crucial site for organizing, for forming
with the power of the white hegemonic other. (1990: 20) political solidarity. Homeplace has been a site of resis-
tance. (1990: 47)
Often when black subjects give expression to multiple aspects
of our identity, which emerge from a different location, we may Hooks carries these arguments forward in a wonderful essay on "An
be seen by white others as "spectacle." For example, when I Aesthetic of Blackness: Strange and Oppositional." The essay begins
give an academic talk without reading a paper, using a popular, and ends with a story about the house in which she grew up.
performative, black story-telling mode, I risk being seen by the
dominating white other as unprepared, as just entertainment. This is the story of a house. It has been lived in by many people. Our
Yet their mode of seeing cannot be the factor which determines grandmother, Baba, made this house a living space. She was certain
style of representation or the content of one's work. that the way we lived was shaped by objects, the way we looked at
Fundamental to the process of decentering the oppressive other them, the way they were placed around us. She was certain that we
and claiming our right to subjectivity is the insistence that we were shaped by space. From her I learn about aesthetics, the yearning
must determine how we will be and not rely on colonizing for beauty that she tells me is the predicament of heart that makes ~ur
responses to determine our legitimacy. We are not looking to passion real. A quiltmaker, she teaches me about color. Her house zs a
that Other for recognition.... [Much more than with a critical place where I am learning to look at things, where I am learning how
confrontation with "texts"], I am moved by that confrontation to belong in space. In rooms full of objects, crowded with things, I am
with difference which takes place on new ground, in that learning to recognize myself. She hands me a mirror, showing me how
counter-hegemonic marginal space where radical black subjec- to look. The color of wine she has made in my cup, the beauty of the
tivity is seen, not overseen by any authoritative Other claiming everyday. Surrounded by fields of tobacco, the leaves braided l~ke hair,
to know us better than we know ourselves. (1990: 22) circles and circles of smoke fill the air. We string red peppers fiery hot,
with thread that will not be seen. They will hang in front of a lace cur-
Hooks follows her discussion of radical black subjectivity with a tain to catch the sun. Look, she tells me, what the light does to color!
chapter on "Postmodern Blackness," the last paragraph of which is Do you believe that space can give life, or take it away, that space has
the source for the richly Thirdspatial quotation that opens the pre- power? These are the questions she asks which frighten me. Baba dies
sent essay and helps us in our efforts "to enact a postmodernism of an old woman, out of place. Her funeral is also a place to see things, to
resistance." The next two chapters, "The Chitlin Circuit: On Black recognize myself. How can I be sad in the face of death, surrounded by
Community," and "Homeplace: A Site of Resistance," further so much beauty? Death, hidden in a field of tulips, wearing my face
explore the particularities of African-American Thirdspace, the and calling my name. Baba can make them grow. Red, yellow, they
world of "Southern, rural, black growing up ... a world where we surround her body like lovers in a swoon, tulips everywhere. Here a
had a history." "For me," hooks says, "this experience, of growing soul on fire with beauty burns and passes, a soul touched by flame. We
see her leave. She has taught me how to look at the world and see at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1984 and the gather-
beauty. She has taught me "we must learn to see." ing of spatial thinkers at a conference organized in his honor by Fred
(1990: 103; italics in the original) Jameson and the History of Consciousness Program - which I at the
time thought might be renamed, at least temporarily in honor of
One of my five sisters wants to know how it is I come to think Lefebvre's presence, the Spatiality of Consciousness Program. She
about these things, about houses, and space. She does not smiled at the thought and spoke freely of the spatialization of her
remember long conversations with Baba. She remembers her own consciousness in the homeplaces of her youth, her interests in
house as an ugly place, crowded with objects. My memories design and architecture, and in those spaces of representation
fascinate her. She listens with astonishment as I describe the screened through films and television. And she joked about a new
shadows in Baba's house and what they meant to me, the way demand on her time: invitations from Geography and Architecture
the mood entered an upstairs window and created new ways departments to speak about space.
for me to see dark and light. After reading Tanizaki's essay on The last paragraph in "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical
aesthetics "In Praise of Shadows," I tell this sister in a late night Openness," perhaps the most Lefebvrean of the essays in Yearning,
conversation that I am learning to think about blackness in a provides an apt conclusion to this brief journey into Thirdspace with
new way. Tanizaki speaks of seeing beauty in darkness and bell hooks - and another point of departure for further and future
shares this moment of insight: "The quality we call beauty, explorations.
however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our
ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to dis- I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction
cover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows toward between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive struc-
beauty's end." My sister has skin darker than mine. We think tures and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance - as
about our skin as a dark room, a place of shadows. We talk location of radical openness and possibility. This site of resis-
often about color politics and the ways racism has created an tance is continually formed in that segregated culture of opposi-
aesthetic that wounds us, a way of thinking about beauty that tion that is our critical response to domination. We come to this
hurts. In the shadows of late night, we talk about the need to space through suffering and pain, through struggle. We know
see darkness differently, to talk about it in a new way. In that struggle to be that which pleasures, delights, and fulfills desire.
space of shadows we long for an aesthetic of blackness - We are transformed, individually, collectively, as we make radi-
strange and oppositional. (1990: 113) cal creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity,
which gives us a new location from which to articulate our
There are few writings anywhere in which life's intimate spatiality is sense ofthe world. (1990: 153)
made so explicitly and brilliantly revealing. Throughout Yearning,
more so than in any of her writings before or since, hooks creatively
and consistently grounds her work in what I have described as the
trialectics of spatiality, an alternative mode of understanding space
as a transdisciplinary standpoint or location from which to see and
to be seen, to give voice and assert radical subjectivity, and to strug-
gle over making both theoretical and practical sense of the world.
Hooks makes no direct reference to Henri Lefebvre anywhere in
Yearning, but his inspiration is tacitly there in so many places. In a
hotel by the beach in Santa Monica, I had breakfast once with bell
hooks and we spoke about Lefebvre. She easily admitted his influ-
ence on her thinking about space and warmly remembered his stay
Increasing the Openness of Thi rdspace 107
their particular formulations and journeys. Thirdspace must always

be kept radically open (and yes, openly radical) for its interpretive
insights and strategic power to be grasped and practiced. Although
hooks and Lefebvre provide significant points of departure and des~
4 tination, other openings, pathways, and practices must be mapped
in advance of our peripatetic journeys to Los Angeles and other geo-
graphically real-and-imagined places.
Increasing the Openness of Two rather expansive and heterogeneous literatures are explored
here for their particular-and-general contributions to a constantly
Thirdspace evolving conceptualization of Thirdspace. The first is feminist, and
so too, in a significant way, is a major segment of the second, what is
described today as the postcolonial discourse. My particular selec-
tions from these two literatures are guided by the accomplished
journeys of Lefebvre and hooks. What is foregrounded, therefore, is
a critical scholarship that is (1) explicitly, if not assertively, spatial in
its modes of thinking, writing, and interpretation; (2) in some recog-
nizable way attuned to the rebalanced trialectics of
Spatiality-Historicality-Sociality (and not, therefore, historicist or
deterministically- versus strategically- spatialist); and (3) is at least
moving toward a Thirdspace perspective and away from the nar-
Lefebvre's analysis of the spatial exercise of power as a construction rowed channels of Firstspace and Secondspace modes of knowledge
and conquest of difference, although it is thoroughly grounded in formation.
Marxist thought, rejects economism and predictability, opening up This foregrounding carries with it an unsettling epistemological
possibilities for advancing analysis of spatial politics into realms of and theoretical critique that revolves around disruptions and disor-
feminist and anti-colonialist discourse and into the theorization of derings: of difference, of confidently centered identities, and of all
radical democracy. More successfully than anyone of whom I am forms of binary categorization. It seeks instead a multiplicitous
aware, Lefebvre has specified the operations of space as ideology and
"alterity," a transgressive "third way" that is more than just the sum
built the foundation for cultural critiques of spatial design as a tool of
social control.
or combination of an originary dualism. At its best, such critical spa-
(Rosalyn Deutsche, "Uneven Development," 1988: 122) tial thinking seeks to undermine its own authority by a form of tex-
tual and political practice that privileges uncertainties, rejects
The West is painfully made to realize the existence of a Third World in authoritative and paradigmatic structures that suggest permanence
the First World, and vice versa. or inviolability, invites contestation, and thereby keeps open the spa-
(Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 1989: 98) tial debate to new and different possibilities.
I want to end by asking for a geography that acknowledges that the

grounds of its knowledge are unstable, shifting, uncertain and, above The Spatial Feminist Critique
all, contested.
(Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography, 1993: 160)
There is a long heritage of critical feminist analysis of the social pro-
duction of space, and especially of the social space of the city, that
Bell hooks has not been alone in choosing Thirdspace, or something has only recently been critically un-silenced and given voice in the
very much like it, as a strategic location for exploring postmodern canons and corridors of Western social and cultural theory and
culture and seeking political community among all those oppres- philosophy. As far back as The Book of the City of Ladies, for example,
sively peripheralized by their race, class, gender, erotic preference, written by Christine de Pizan, a Frenchwoman born in Venice in
age, nation, region, and colonial status. And both hooks and 1364, an explicitly and strategically spatial perspective was applied
Lefebvre would be the last to give permanence and essentiality to to an allegoric idealization of the medieval city both to reveal its
108 Discovering Thirdspace Increasing the Openness of Thirdspace 109
oppressive gendering and to imagine new sites and spaces of resis- to a more feminist future in housing, work, and family life; to a more
tance from which to redesign cityspace for women. 1 recent concern for the "power of place" in preserving urban memo-
With the development and diffusion of capitalism, the most radi- ries of social resistance and creative achievement among those sub-
cal feminist critiques increasingly shifted away from the city and ordinated by class, race, and gender. Raised again in the
spatiality to that encompassing web defined by the relatively space- retrospective and prospective specificity of Hayden's work is the old
less dialectic between history and society (writ large as Historicality question posed by Christine de Pizan: "What would a non-sexist city
and Sociality). A rich tradition of socialist feminism emerged, not look like?" 2
only in the mainstreams of Marxist historical materialism but also, Hayden was not alone. Beginning in the late 1970s, a broadly
even more creatively, within the evolving traditions of utopian and based feminist urban critique arose from within the spatial disci-
libertarian (anarchist) socialism, where issues of space, gender, and plines (Architecture, Urban Planning, Geography), producing wide-
nature were more openly addressed. Just how spatial this socialist ranging contemporary analyses of gendered spaces and the
feminism was is difficult to ascertain, in part because this question reproduction of this masculinist and phallocentric gendering
has rarely been asked in the historiography of socialist thought. through the contextualizing effects of patriarchy on the built
In the more contemporary reinterpretations of the history of environment of the city.3 For the most part, this early round of criti-
explicitly spatial feminism, class analysis and the socialist critique of cal spatial feminism remained characteristically modernist, in the
capitalism continue to be relevant. But the center of attention has sense of channeling its critical power and emancipatory objectives
shifted back to urbanism, to everyday life within the built (socially around the gendered binary Man/Woman. Little was said about the
produced) environment of the city, and to the philosophy, episte- theorization of space itself, except to promote a spatial perspective as
mology, and cultural politics of spatiality. Indeed, the language and a useful way of historically unraveling the impact of oppressive
critical scholarship of feminism - especially among women who social processes and practices.
experience multiple sources of oppression and marginalization and Urban spatiality was seen as oppressively gendered in much the
explicitly accept the possibility, if not the necessity, of a radical post- same way that the cityscape was shown to be structured by the
modernist politics - have become more thoroughly, creatively, and exploitative class relations of capitalism and the discriminatory geo-
strategically spatialized than those of any other comparable group of graphical effects of racism, the two other major channels of radical
critical scholars. And from this prolific spatialization new terrains modernist urban critique developing over the same period in the
and itineraries are being opened for the exploration of Thirdspace. spatial disciplines. Another important project, however, was begun
in these writings and made more explicit by the spatial feminists
Gendering Cityspace: The Feminist Critique of Urbanism
2
The last question is the title of a chapter in Women and the American City, Catherine
An appropriate starting-point for discussing the contemporary Stimpson, Else Dixler, Martha Nelson, and Kathryn Yatrakis, eds, Chicago:
development of a feminist critique of urban life and citybuilding is University of Chicago Press, 1980: 167-84. See also Hayden's Seven American Utopias:
The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism (1790-1975), Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
the work of the architectural and urban historian, Dolores Hayden. 1976; The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American
Hayden's writings, significantly influenced by Lefebvre's critique of Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1982; Redesigning the
everyday life, critically explore the historical geography of the built American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life, Cambridge MA: MIT
Press, 1984; and, most recently, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History,
environment in the United States. Their subject matter ranges from Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995. I will return to Hayden's work on The Power of
the imprint of 19th- and early 20th-century material feminists on the Place in chapter 7.
3
design of American homes, neighborhoods, and cities; to the gender- A sampling of this literature would include Dolores Hayden and Gwendolyn
Wright, "Architecture and Urban Planning," Signs: A journal of Women m Cultureand
ing of space and daily life in experimental American utopian social- Society, 1 (1976), 923-33; the special issue of Signs on "Women and the Amencan
ist communities; to redesigning the "American Dream" with regard City," 5 (1980); Gerde Werkele, Rebecca Peterson, and David Morley, New Space for
Women, Boulder: Westview Press, 1980; Dolores Hayden: The Grand Domestzc
Revolution, cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1982; Shirley Ardener, ed., Women and Space:
1
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, tr. E. J. Richards, New York: Ground Rules and Social Maps, New York: StMartin's Press, 1981; Mary Ellen Mazey
Persea Books, 1982. For a tracing of the feminist critique of urbanism and the "gen- and David R. Lee, eds, Her Space, Her Place: A Geography of Women, Washington,
dering" of the capitalist city (and of urban and regional planning theory), see D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1983; Matrix Collective, Making Space:
Barbara Hooper, " 'Split at the Roots': A Critique of the Philosophical and Political Women and the Man-Made Environment, London: Pluto Press, 1984; Women and
Sources of Modern Planning Doctrine," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studzes 13 Geography Study Group of the Institute of British Geographers, ed., Geography and
(1992), 45-80. Gender: An Introduction to Feminist Geography, London: Hutchinson, 1984.
110 Discovering Thirdspace Increasing the Openness of Thirds pace 111
than by the radical urban critics focusing on race and class. It aimed The Postmodern Spatial Feminist Critique
at an active and intentional "remapping" of the city as a space of
radical openness, a space where, as in hooks's margin, ties are sev- Postmodern spatial feminism brings us into a more encompassing
ered and subjection abounds but also, at the same time, a strategic theorization and politics of difference and identity built on the open-
location for recovery and resistance, a meeting place where new and ing of new spaces for critical exchange and creative radical responses
radical happenings can occur beyond the centered domain of the "to the precise circumstances of our present moment." It relocates us
patriarchal urban order. not in the past or in the tacitly built environment of the city, but in
The spatialization of patriarchal power, or what can be termed the the marginality and overlapping psychological, social, and cultural
specific geography of patriarchy, was seen not only in the design borderlands of contemporary lived spaces, and particularly in those
of buildings (the home, the office, the factory, the school, the public chosen spaces of radical openness where difference is critically
monument, the skyscraper) but in the very fabric of urbanism and disordered in a deconstruction and reconstitution of both modernist
everyday life in the city. Suburbanization and urban sprawl became binary oppositions and the universalist principles of liberal
materially symbolic of the marginalization or, as it came to be called, democracy.
the "entrapment" of women, their purposefully designed isolation In contrast to the earlier modernist critiques, postmodern spatial
from the workplace and public life in gadgeted homes and modern feminism is no longer so bound up with the Man/Woman binary.
lifestyles that facilitated subservience to the male breadwinner and Gillian Rose, drawing upon the work of Teresa de Lauretis, captures
his cohorts. More broadly, what urban theorists described as urban the meanings of this unbinding of "the subject of feminism." 4
morphology, the presumably innocent if not "natural" geographical
Teresa de Lauretis insists that, in order to break out of the mas-
patterning of urban land uses, was critically reinterpreted by spatial
culinist field of knowledge, feminism must think beyond sexual
feminists as a veiled cartography of power and exploitation, not
difference: in order to challenge the patriarchal claim that the
just in conjunction with class and race but also with respect to
field of Man/Woman is exhaustive, the subject of feminism
gender. The social production of cityspace and the institutionalized
must be positioned in relation to social relations other than gen-
citybuilding processes that drive it thus became contested terrain,
der. The subject of feminism is thus constituted "not by sexual
filled with new spaces and places of community, resistance, and difference alone, but rather across languages and cultural repre-
critique. sentations; a subject en-gendered in the experiencing of race
More recently, primarily through the development of an openly and class, as well as sexual, relations; a subject, therefore, not
postmodern feminism, new directions are being taken that expand unified but rather multiple, and not so much divided as contra-
the earlier feminist urban critique and its revealing recognition that dicted.
space makes a difference into a creative exploration of the prolific
multiplicity of spaces that difference makes. What is new about this Rose quotes other key passages from de Lauretis.
development, that is, how the postmodern feminist critique of urban
spatiality can be distinguished from its more modernist forms, is It is the elsewhere of discourse here and now, the blind spots or
represented well in Cornel West's observations at the beginning of the space-off, of its representations. I think of it as spaces in the
chapter 3. Along with the cultural politics it produces, what is novel margins of hegemonic discourses, social spaces carved in the
is the emphasis given not to space or gender per se, or simply to interstices of institutions and in the chinks and cracks of the
(Firstspace) spatial practices and (Secondspace) spatial representa- power-knowledge apparati.
tions, but to "how and what constitutes difference, the weight and
It is a movement between the (represented) and what the repre-
gravity it is given in representation," especially in what Lefebvre
sentation leaves out or, more pointedly, makes unrepresentable.
called the lived spaces of representation, and I describe as
Thirdspace. In short, there was a shift from an equality to a difference
4
model, and along with it a shift from an emphasis on material spatial Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge,
forms to a more real-and-imagined urban spatiality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993, 138-40. The passages from de Lauretis are from
Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction, London: Macmillan, 1987:2,
25, 26. Neither Rose nor de Lauretis, I suspect, would feel entirely comfortable with
being called postmodern feminists. Their observations are acutely relevant here
none the less.
It is a movement between the (represented) discursive space of of sweat and blood and pleasure and death." 6 Cityspace is no longer
the positions made available by hegemonic discourses and the just dichotomously gendered or sexed, it is literally and figuratively
space-off, the elsewhere, of those discourses. . . . These two transgressed with an abundance of sexual possibilities and plea-
kinds of spaces are neither in opposition to one another or sures, dangers and opportunities, that are always both personal and
strung along a chain of signification, but they coexist concur- political and, ultimately, never completely knowable from any sin-
rently and in contradiction. The movement between them, gular discursive standpoint.
therefore, is not that of a dialectic, of integration, of a combina- Lesbians can be said to have taken the lead in exploring the "queer
tory, or of differance, but is the tension of contradiction, multi- spaces" of the city, but, as Golding so effectively notes, even the term
plicity, and heteronomy. "lesbian" or "gay" denotes too narrow and exclusive a view of erotic
preferences and identity. The key point being raised by Golding and
As illustrated in these passages, the movement between modern and others is that identity, sexual or otherwise, is unstable, shifting, mul-
postmodern feminism is being pointedly expressed in spatial terms tiplicitous, situational, refractory, hybridizable, always being negoti-
and tropes. This is not merely a metaphorical ploy but rather a con- ated and contested, never static or fixed. In an ironic twist, Golding
sciously political grounding of critique and resistance in the spatial- makes analogies to quantum physics in her pungent essay on
ity of social life. Today, more so than ever in the past, the spatial "Quantum Philosophy" and "Impossible Geographies."
problematic has become increasingly transdisciplinary, extending
well beyond the traditionally spatial disciplines. And in the widen- To put this slightly differently, we have now before us not only
ing orbit of such critical spatial thought and praxis, a more openly a fluid (and yet discrete) concept of time, but also a dynamic
postmodern feminism has played a particularly forceful and recon- concept of space, a concept, to be even more precise, that
stitutive role. debunks any notion of an "eternally infinite" spatiality, while
In this growing spatial feminist literature,5 many different ways of simultaneously refusing its uniqueness as if only geographi-
looking at and experiencing urban spatiality are being explored. At cally "singular", that is to say, "closed", "totalized", "homoge-
the core of these explorations has been a revived interest in the body neous" and there-with, always-already, "fixed". We have here,
as the most intimate of personal-a!l_~_::po_!!!!s_~!,,;;;J?_~~s, an affective in other words, "space-time", an imaginary, but real, and
microcosm for all other spatiaiTties. The spatiality and sensuality of utterly dynamic fourth dimension. (1993: 211)
the body ~~_i::~~!l~_gi~~"l_l.~~~<:~!!~!J?<?:?it.ig~:ogjn the critical ~te:preta
tion of the real-and-Imagmed geographies of everyday hfe m and On a more broadly political palette, Barbara Hooper brilliantly
outside the city. In Elizabeth Grosz's words, "the city is made and elaborates on Lefebvre's insistent argument that "the whole of
\made over into the simulac;rum of the body, and the body, in its (social) space proceeds from the body." In her ongoing project on
)turn, is transformed, 'citified,' urbanized as a distinctively metropoli- "Bodies, Cities, Texts," Hooper takes this elaboration directly into a
~tan body" (in Colomina, 1992: 242). thirdspatial journey to contemporary Los Angeles?
Through this material and symbolic embodiment, urban spatiality
has become recharged with multiple sexualities, eroticisms, and
desires - what Sue Golding described as "the whole damn business 6
Sue Golding, "Quantum Philosophy, Impossible Geographies and a Few Small
Points About Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sex (All in the Name of Democracy),"
5
In 1992, for example, at least four notable (and very different) books appeared in Keith and Pile, eds, Place and the Politics of Identity, 1993: 206-19. The preceding
from US publishers exploring the spaces that difference makes. Daphne Spain, in quote is from p. 212.
7
Gendered Spaces, (see footnote 15, p. 99), critically synthesizes the modernist feminist The unpage-referenced quotes that follow are taken from Barbara Hooper,
literature and develops further the strategy of degendering spaces in dwellings, "Bodies, Cities, Texts: The Case of Citizen Rodney King," unpublished manuscript,
schools, and workplaces. Sexuality and Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina, Princeton: February 1994, 80 pp. A preliminary version of this manuscript was presented at the
Princeton Papers on Architecture, 1992, foregrounds sexuality and the body in the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers in Atlanta, 1992; and
postmodern politics of space; while Celeste Olalquiaga, in Megalopolis: Contemporary much more extensive extracts will appear in the final chapter of Edward W. Soja,
Cultural Sensibilities, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992, infuses the Postmetropolis, the forthcoming companion volume to Thirdspace. Hooper's work on
"culturescapes" and "cyberspaces" of the city with wildly postmodem (and post- Rodney King is part of a larger dissertation/book project under the general title
colonial) sensibilities. Finally, Leslie Kanes Weisman explores "bodyscape as land- Bodies, Cities, Texts, in which she also explores these interlocked themes in the
scape" and urban spatiality as a "patriarchal symbolic universe," in Discrimi~ation Athenian polis and nineteenth-century Paris. On the latter, see Hooper, "The Poem
by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made EnVIronment, Urbana and Chtcago: of Male Desires: Female Bodies, Modernity, and 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth
University of Illinois Press, 1992. Century'," Planning Theory 13, 1995: 105-29.
Henri Lefebvre suggests that power survives by producing as segregation and separation.
space; Michel Foucault suggests that power survives by disci-
plining space; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari suggest that to She continues her unruly border work to set the stage for an inter-
reproduce social control the state must reproduce spatial con- pretation of "The Case of Citizen Rodney King" and the events of
trol. What I hope to suggest is that the space of the human body spring 1992 in Los Angeles. After citing Foucault's observation that,
is perhaps the most critical site to watch the production and "in the first instance, discipline proceeds from the distribution of
reproduction of power. individuals in space," she writes:
Hooper inscribes the body-city-text in what she calls the order in In times of social crisis- when centers and peripheries will not
place and the representational practice of somatography, or body-writ- hold - collective and individual anxiety rise and the politics of
ing, "a hierarchical differentiating of flesh that began millennia ago difference become especially significant. The instability of the
with the division of body and mind and that, like geography, earth- borders heightens and concern with either their transgression or
writing, orders ambiguous substances of matter as political mean- maintenance is magnified. When borders are crossed, disturbed,
ings and territories." The human body here becomes more than just contested, and so become a threat to order, hegemonic power
a product of culture or the creation of biology. acts to reinforce them: the boundaries around territory, nation,
It is a concrete physical space of flesh and bone, of chemistries and ethnicity, race, gender, sex, class, erotic practice, are trotted out
electricities; it is a highly mediated space, a space transformed by and vigorously disciplined. At the same time, counter-hegemons
cultural interpretations and representations; it is a lived space, a are working to harness the disorder ... for political use. In these ~
volatile space of conscious and unconscious desires and motiva- periods, bodies, cities, and texts become key sites of hegemonic?'
tions- a body/self, a subject, an identity: it is, in sum, a social and counter-hegemonic contestations.... In the late twentieth
space, a complexity involving the workings of power and knowl- century, it is the global megacity with its restless (teeming,
edge and the workings of the body's lived unpredictabilities. breeding) populations, and (in the US) the sensationalized,
demonized bodies of black males and urban gangs who have
In her forays into the production of citizen-bodies in classical taken on the role of representing social disorder and pathology.
Athens, nineteenth-century Paris, and especially contemporary Los
Angeles (through a critical reading of the political emanations from Moving circuitously outward from the body without ever losing
the body of Citizen Rodney King), Hooper acts spatially to disorder touch with it, the alternative spaces of the visual, kinetic, and aes-
the (b)orderlands of bodies, cities, texts. thetic imagination - in films, photography, advertising, fashion,
museum exhibitions, murals, poems, novels, but also in shopping
Body and the body politic, body and social body, body and city, malls and beaches, factories and streets, motels and theme parks -
body and citizen-body, are intimately linked productions .... are being creatively evoked by other spatial feminists as ways of
The practice of using the individual body as a metaphor for the seeing, hearing, feeling, interpreting, and changing the city. In the
social body, of deploying it as a sign of the health or disease of works of such urban cultural critics as Rosalyn Deutsche, Meaghan
the social body, develops in the Athenian polis with ideas of Morris, and Elizabeth Wilson, the construction of these spaces (as
democracy and reason and continues into the present. Body oeuvres, works of art, as well as produits, manufactured ~ "fash-
and city are the persistent subjects of a social/ civic discourse, of ioned" products of a culture industry) is connected directlyto'the
an imaginary obsessed with the fear of unruly and dangerous material dynamics of geohistorically uneven development and the
elements and the equally obsessive desire to bring them under political economy of contemporary capitalism, bringing culture per-
control: fears of pollution, contagions, disease, things out of formatively into the realm of class politics. 8
place [for the ancient Greeks, the definition of "pollution"];
desires for controlling and mastering that [become] the spatial 8 Rosalyn Deutsche, "Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City," October
practice of enclosing unruly elements within carefully guarded 47 (1988) and "Alternative Space," in If You Lived Here: The City in Art, Theory, and
Social Activism, B. Wallis, ed., Seattle: Bay Press, 1991. Meaghan Morris, "At Henry
spaces. These acts of differentiation, separation, and enclosure Parkes Motel," Cultural Studies 2 (1988) and 'Things to Do with Shopping Centres,"
involve material, symbolic, and lived spaces ... bodies and in Grafts: Feminist Cultural Criticism, S. Sheridan, ed., London: Verso, 1988. Elizabeth
cities and texts ... and are practiced as a politics of difference, Wilson, The Sphinx and the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women,
London: Virago Press, 1991.
Across another spatial plane, Iris Marion Young and Nancy In her spatial critique of everyday urban life in the postmodern
Fraser, among others, have engaged effectively in deconstructing world, Anne Friedberg goes Window Shopping to explore the specta-
and reconstituting the ideology of urban community and the old cles and "spectatorship" of Thirdspace in the arcades of Paris, the
modernist binary of public versus private space in an explicitly radi- oldest and newest theme parks, world exhibitions and fairs, the
cal postmodern and feminist politics of difference; while Donna department store, and the shopping mall (through which she wan-
Haraway has added nature and cybernetic high technology to this ders as a self-conscious flaneuse du mall, a postmodern feminist
ideological deconstruction and reconstitution. 9 In their wake, city- recomposition of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin). Friedberg's
space is remapped around "unassimilated otherness," "fractured flanerie focuses on those "machines of virtual transport" that break
scenes," and "deprivileged spaces" rather than the overvalorized us out of our constraining spatia-temporal containers, starting with
category of shared community identity and its exaggerated privileg- the panorama and the diorama and ending with the "virtual
ing of face-to-face communications. tourism" provided by cinema and its extensions, most notably the
Donna Haraway describes this critical remapping as a process of television and the VCR. 10 With her, we enter an engrossing world of
"diffraction" in her cartographic essay, "The Promises of Monsters." urban hyperreality, always there in the past but now teeming with the
new perils and possibilities of postmodernity.
Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, Of particular importance, here and now, in these "other" spaces
reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map and different geographies being opened up by the postmodern femi-
where differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of nist cultural critics of spatiality, is the insight provided on how frag-
differences appear. Tropically, for the promises of monsters, the mentation, ruptures, deviation, displacements, and discontinuities
first invites the illusion of essential, fixed position, while the can be politically transformed from liability and weakness to a
second trains us to a more subtle vision. (1992: 300) potential source of opportunity and strength, a project which helps
define again the boundary between adaptive late modernism and
She ends with a call to confront the "scary issues" of racism, sexism, creatively critical postmodernism. In the new postmodern cultural
historical tragedy, and technoscience with a remapping of possibil- and geographical politics of difference, as hooks has passionately
ity: "an inescapable possibility for changing maps of the world, for shown us, we position ourselves first by subjectively choosing for
building new collectives" (1992: 327). ourselves our primary "marginal" identities as feminist, black, social-
In these postmodern recontextualizations of contemporary life, the ist, anti-colonialist, gay and lesbian activist, and so on. But we do not
great modernist narratives that connected "fixed" community remain rigidly confined by this "territorial" choice, as was usually
(whether identified by class, race-ethnicity, gender, or mere propin- the case in modernist identity politics. We seek instead to find more
quity) with emancipation (if not revolution) are shattered. Another flexible ways of being other than we are while still being ourselves,
spatiality is recognized, one which cannot be so neatly categorized of becoming open to coalitions and coalescences of radical subjectivi-
and mapped, where the very distinction between mind and body, ties, to a multiplicity of communities of resistance, to what Trinh T.
private and public space, and between who is inside or outside the Minh-ha has called "the anarchy of difference." 11
boundaries of community, is obliterated and diffracted in a new and Trinh develops a strategy of displacement (as opposed to a strategy
different cultural politics of real-and-imagined everyday life. In of reversal) that adds significantly to hooks's reconceptualization of
place of the community ideal, for example, Young advocates a radi- marginality and Hooper's disorderly notion of border work.
cal democratic cultural pluralism that makes spatiality itself a pri- "Without a certain work of displacement," she writes, "the margins
mary field of struggle against all forms of oppression, wherever they can easily recomfort the center in goodwill and liberalism." The mar-
may be located. gins are "our fighting grounds" but also "their site for pilgrimage ...
9
Iris Marion Young, "The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference," in
10
Feminism/Postmodernism, L. J. Nicholson, ed., London and New York: Routledge Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, Berkeley and Los
(1990); Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Friedberg locates many of her contem-
of Actually Existing Democracy," Social Text 25/26 (1990); Donna Haraway, Simians, porary examples in the Los Angeles region, where she currently lives.
11
Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London and New York: Routledge Trinh T. Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural
(1991) and "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Politics, New York and London: Routledge, 1991: 120. See also her Woman, Native,
Others," in Cultural Studies, L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, and P. Treichler, eds, New Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
York and London: Routledge, 1992: 295-337. 1989.
while we turn around and claim them as our exclusive territory, they figurative) grounds of feminist theorizing, just as it does many
happily approve, for the divisions between margins and center other forms of Western philosophy. If one takes some of its cen-
should be preserved, and as clearly demarcated as possible, if the tral ideas seriously, even while resisting or rejecting others,
two positions are to remain intact in their power relations." By postmodernism is bound to induce a profound uneasiness, or
actively displacing and disordering difference, by insisting that there threatened identity, especially among white Western intellectu-
are "no master territories," one struggles to prevent "this classifying als, whose consciousness and positions are among its primary
world" from exerting its ordered, binary, categorical power. subjects of critical analysis. (1992: 447)
Diana Fuss adds further insight to the caution needed and dangers
involved in choosing marginality, and helps to defend this strategic Emerging from these postmodern spatial (and some not so spatial)
choice against those who feel uneasy when persons of substantial feminist critiques is a further elaboration and exploration of a
power and status subjectively position themselves in the marginsY Thirdspace perspective on the complex contextuality of human exis-
Fuss returns us to the tensions of being both inside and outside at tence. The brief selections reviewed here have been coming primar-
the same time, and to the necessity for deconstruction and reconsti- ily from radical women of color, from gay and lesbian activists, from
tution, for disordering difference, for bell hooks's "wildness" and artists, architects, urbanists, writers, poets, literary critics, film critics,
Lefebvre's anarchically centered peripheralness. photographers, philosophers, and critical journalists. I turn next to
put a different light on the spatial feminist critique that has devel-
Does inhabiting the inside always imply cooptation? ... And oped in the field I know best: Geography.
does inhabiting the outside always and everywhere guarantee
radicality? The problem, of course, with the inside/ outside The Paradoxical Space of Feminism and Geography
rhetoric, if it remains undeconstructed, is that such polemics
disguise the fact that most of us are both inside and outside at Despite the development of a vigorous feminist movement and the
the same time. Any displaced nostalgia for or romanticization centrality of space in the discipline, there have been relatively few
of the outside as a privileged site of radicality immediately contributions by geographers to what I have described as the post-
gives us away, for in order to realize the outside we must modern spatial feminist critique. This may be partially explained by
already be, to some degree, comfortably on the inside. We the peculiar institutional and intellectual history of the modern disci-
really only have the leisure to idealize the subversive potential pline of Geography, its insular isolation on the margins of academia,
of the power of the marginal when our place of enunciation is and especially the related absence, until quite recently, of a strong
quite central. (1991: 5) critical-theoretical tradition. When a critical human geography did
arise, after decades of concentration on just-the-facts descriptions, it
What Trinh, Fuss, hooks, and other feminist critics are capturing was deeply shaped by a Marxism that had for a hundred years
here are the political and personal tensions inherent in choosing excluded spatiality (as well as gender) from its most incisive critical
marginality as a strategic standpoint, and even more so with adopt- perspectives.
ing a postmodernist perspective in so doing. As Jane Flax notes in There were two primary arenas of critical debate for feminist geo-
her essay, "The End of Innocence": 13 graphers. The first was centered on the institutional and professional
makeup of Geography itself, that is, on the entrenchment of mas-
Postmodernism, especially when combined with certain aspects culinist authority in the definition and production of geographical
of psychoanalysis, necessarily destabilizes the (literal and knowledge and in the gender composition of the profession and its
leading figures. This introspective critique of modern Geography
mobilized a strong equity politics aimed at affirmative action for
12
Di~na Fuss, "Inside/Out," in Diana Fuss, ed., Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay women, paralleling similar movements in other disciplines. It was
Theones, New York and London: Routledge, 1991: 5. As Fuss makes clear, there will expressed, in particular, in arguments that women have been
al"':'ays be significant tensions and dangers in choosing marginality as a space of
res1stance, not the least of which 1s the temptation toward "romancing the margins," silenced or "left out" of the geographical "project," an allusion to the
assummg the margins to be the sole "authentic" location for the voices of truth and Marxist or socialist approaches that had become so influential in
justice. That the dangers exist even after deconstruction must also be recognized. Geography in the 1970s.
13
Jane Flax, "The End of Innocence," in Feminists Theorize the Political, Butler and
Scott, eds, New York and London: Routledge, 1992: 445-63. The second arena of struggle was similarly modernist in its
concentration on equity politics and affirmative action, but here the raphers became frozen into an ambiguous middle-ground, unable or
focus was on empirical research and theory-building. A growing body unwilling to take sides between defending the long-established
of feminist research on such issues as male versus female differentials modernist traditions and adopting the seemingly faddist attractions
in work, wages, and social status and their patterning across urban of postmodernism. For feminists, the dilemma was particularly
and regional spaces as well as within the social and spatial divisions of acute. It had become increasingly clear that modern Geography was
labor in both First World and Third World contexts, reflected the pre- intrinsically and perhaps indelibly masculinist, as was being demon-
vailing political economy approach to radical geography. It also strated for other modernist disciplines. But at the same time, the new
linked up to the growing importance within the discipline of the sub- postmodern Geography as it was developing appeared only to con-
fields of economic and industrial geography, where the spatial tinue the domination of powerful white males drawing on other,
restructuring of Fordism and the rise of what has come to be called a mostly French, white males for their theoretical inspiration.
"postfordist regime of flexible accumulation" have become a primary A temptation grew among feminist geographers, especially in
nexus for geographical theory-building and rigorous empirical analy- Great Britain, to declare a pox on both the old and the new houses of
sis. As participants in these debates, feminist economic geographers Geography and their leading proponents. 15 In "Flexible Sexism,"
have contributed significantly to understanding the embeddedness of Doreen Massey (1991: 33) led the attack by packaging her critical
gender and sexism in the material forms emerging from this local, review of David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989) and
urban, regional, national, and global restructuring process.14 my Postmodern Geographies (1989) in the assertion that "the nature of
For the most part, feminist geographical research on the political the response to the crisis [of modern Geography] is such as to find,
economy of urbanization and regional and international develop- somehow, a way of hanging on to the intellectual hegemony, or at
ment, as well as in other branches of the new critical human geogra- least of not letting anyone else have it." Similarly, Linda McDowell
phy, was essentially modernist in the sense that it revolved (1992: 65) adds: "displacement from the center [among other post-
primarily around the Man/Woman dualism and its partitioning of structuralist strategies] allows those with power to counter the
gendered spaces. More pertinent to the present argument, it also increasingly insistent challenge from those at the margins;" and Liz
tended to remain tightly cocooned within the discipline of Bondi (1990: 5) concludes: "postmodernism may be understood as a
Geography, especially within its traditional oscillation between crisis in the experience of modernity among white, western men,
Firstspace and Secondspace perspectives. Feminist geographers and as a response centred on that experience." 16 More recently,
worked effectively to describe and explain the objective material
expressions of gender, sexism, patriarchy, and women's discrimina- 15
In the US, the response among feminist geographers to the postmodern debate
tory oppression in (First)space; and to unmask the deep imprint of was much less antagonistic than in Great Britain. The research and writings of Cindi
masculinism in subjective geographical thinking and in the represen- Katz, Sallie Marston, Margaret FitzSimmons, Susan Christopherson, among others,
tations of (Second)space that filled the writings of male (and some while often critical of the excesses of postmodernism, has for the most part been sym-
pathetic and supportive of the radical postmodernist critique in and outside
female) geographers. But, until very recently, there was little attempt Geography. Why such a difference arose between the US and Great Britain is difficult
to contribute to the development of feminist theory and criticism to explain. Was it due to the significantly different political situations and cultures?
outside the discipline by introducing directly to it the feminist geog- Was more at stake in Britain, where Geography is a more prestigious and prominent
rapher's own critical geographical imagination. field than in the US? Is British Geography more pervasively masculinist? It is per-
haps best to leave the question open for more careful analysis, although I might add
When the powerful epistemological critique of modernism and the that it is interesting that the four American feminist geographers I mentioned have
assertion of postmodern critical perspectives entered Geography, not been employed exclusively in university departments of Geography but rather in
most feminist (as well as non-feminist) geographers seemed to be positions with close contact with other spatial disciplines such as urban planning.
16
Doreen Massey, "Flexible Sexism," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
taken aback. As would happen in other spatial disciplines such as 9 (1991), 31-57; Linda McDowell, "Multiple Voices: Speaking From Inside and
architecture and urban planning, many of the most prominent geog- Outside 'the Project,' "Antipode 24 (1992), 56-72; Liz Bondi, "On Gender Tourism in
the Space Age: A Feminist Response to Postmodern Geographies," paper presented at
14
the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Toronto, 1990,
The most prominent figure in these developments has been Doreen Massey, a quoted in Massey, 1991: 33. In addition to my Postmodern Geographies, the major
longtime professor at the Open University in the UK. Her best-known work is focus for these feminist geographical critiques was David Harvey, The Condition of
Spatial Divisions of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of Production, London: Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Cambridge, MA, and
Macmillan, 1985. For a collection of her earlier writings as well as her more recent Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989. I note in passing that the feminist critique so domi-
ventures into feminist critical theory, see Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Oxford nated the reaction to Postmodern Geographies in the UK that to my knowledge not
and Cambridge, UK: Blackwell and Polity Press, 1994. one major British geographical journal ever published a specific review of the book.
122 Discovering Thirdspace Increasing the Openness of Third space 123
Patricia Price-Chalita reasserts a similar critical position in her against her will, I will try, with admiration and respect, to link
attempt to explore the possible compatibility of feminist and post- Feminism and Geography to the evolving explorations of Thirdspace.
modern geographical approachesY As she writes in the Introduction, "this is not a book about the
geography of gender but about the gender of geography." (1993:
It appears that some scholars have embarked on a wholly patri-
4-5) In the first six chapters, Rose explores the masculinism of
archal attempt to "spatialize," and I argue, to thus know and
Geography and the limits it imposes on geographical knowledge
control, the Other-that-is woman. This presents feminist geog-
more incisively and creatively than anyone else before her. In her
raphers with yet another interestingly spatial gesture, one that
narrative, one can see more clearly the build-up of intellectual, politi-
negates rather than sets in motion the liberating possibility
cal, professional, and personal frustrations that angrily exploded in
inherent in so-called postmodern work Thus in spite of their
the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially among British feminist geo-
claim to work within some sort of postmodern framework, a
graphers facing what they understandably saw, in the new literature
great many scholars continue to deny the voices of
on postmodemity, as yet another new, and if not masculinist then
difference. (1994: 245)
certainly not feminist, twist on the internal trajectory of modern
All these responses to the postmodernization of Geography raise Geography.
cogent criticisms of the style and substance contained in the first In the final chapter, however, Rose moves out of the disciplinary
round of writings about geography and postmodernism.18 But at the cocoon to explore "the politics of paradoxical space" in a wonderful
same time, it is important to note that this forceful critique signifi- meandering tour through the spatial feminist critique that has been
cantly deflected the impact of the postmodern spatial feminist writ- lying beyond the geographer's disciplinary pale. With one minor
ings that were developing outside Geography and delayed the exception, no geographer, male or female, is referenced in the more
creation of an alternative feminist approach to the critical retheoriza- than 90 footnotes to this chapter. Instead, Rose ventures into the very
tion of space from within the discipline. The long-established disci- best of feminist spatial scholarship: Teresa de Lauretis on
plinary hold of the Firstspace-Secondspace dualism continued to be Technologies of Gender and "eccentric subjects," Adrienne Rich on
virtually unseen and unquestioned, severely constraining the explo- Blood, Bread and Poetry and the body as "the geography closest in,"
ration of Thirdspace perspectives and the participation of geogra- Chandra Mohanty on Third World women and the "cartographies of
phers in the wider cultural studies debates on spatiality. struggle," Diana Fuss's Inside/Out; Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories,
In the past few years, however, the once rigid anti-postmodernist Virginia Woolf on having A Room of One's Own, Gloria Anzaldua's
stance has softened significantly and a different feminist geography spiraling borderlands and consciousness of the mestiza, Donna
has begun to emerge, not yet avowedly postmodern but clearly more Haraway's remappings and "reinvention of nature," Marilyn Frye's
open to alternative critical spatial perspectives. In my view, the best angry "domestic geographies," Iris Marion Young breaking out from
statement of this repositioning is Feminism and Geography: The Limits conventional spatial confinements, Trinh T. Minh-ha Writing
of Geographical Knowledge (1993), written by Gillian Rose. Rose's book Postcoloniality and Feminism, Elspeth Probyn's embodiment of geo-
maintains the British tradition of almost entirely dismissing the con- graphies, the Combahee River Collective's "Black feminist state-
tributions of authoritative male geographers (perhaps to make them ment" and the empowering Black Feminist Thought of Patricia Hill
understand better how it feels to be left out of the project). But it also Collins and Pratibha Parmar, and ultimately, with particular appre-
breaks important new ground in the debates on geography and spa- ciation, bell hooks's Yearning for a "space of radical openness."
tiality, and on what I have called the trialectics of space- En route, Rose charts out a project in her own words.
power-knowledge. At the risk of appearing to appropriate her work
I want to explore the possibility of a space which does not repli-
17
cate the exclusions of the Same and the Other. I examine a spa-
Patricia Price-Chalita, "Spatial Metaphor and the Politics of Empowerment:
Mapping a Place for Feminism and Postrnodernisrn in Geography?" Antipode 26 tiality imagined by some feminists which can acknowledge the
(1994), 236-54. difference of others. . . . I want to end this book by arguing,
18
I might add that the most insightful and constructive critiques of this first round then, that the spatial images which structure one kind of femi-
of writings carne from outside the discipline of Geography. See, especially, Rosalyn
Deutsche, "Boys Town," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9 (1991), nist imagination offer us one new way of thinking geography.
5-30; and Meaghan Morris, 'The Man in the Mirror: David Harvey's 'Condition' of They offer a new kind of geography which refuses the exclu-
Postrnodernity," Theory, Culture and Society 9 (1992), 253-79. sions of the old .... Feminism, I think, through its awareness of
the politics of the everyday, has always had a very keen aware- space through which difference is tolerated rather than
ness of the intersection of space and power - and knowledge. erased. (1993: 155)
As de Lauretis says, there is "the epistemological priority which
feminism has located in the personal, the subjective, the body, Rose concludes the chapter with the exemplary work of two femi-
the symptomatic, the quotidian, as the very site of material nists "who invoke this [paradoxical] geography in their own under-
inscription of the ideological." (1993: 137, 141, 142) standings of their lives in order to think about a politics of
resistance." The choice is itself paradoxical: two American women
On the "geometries of difference and contradiction:" from the South, one (Minnie Bruce Platt) a white Christian lesbian,
the other bell hooks, writing about "Choosing the Margin as a Space
Social space can no longer be imagined simply in terms of a ter- of Radical Openness." Rose dwells primarily on hooks's interpreta-
ritory of gender. The geography of the master subject and the tions of "home" as a paradoxical geography, but also travels with
feminism complicit with him has been ruptured by the diverse her very close to the Thirdspace I have evoked from her writings in
spatialities of different women. So, a geographical imagination the previous chapter.
is emerging in feminism which, in order to indicate the com- No geographer, male or female, who has read Feminism and
plexity of the subject of feminism, articulates a "plurilocality." Geography will look at the discipline in the same way they may have
In this recognition of difference, two-dimensional social maps before. What is still missing from this critical rethinking of
are inadequate. Instead, spaces structured over many dimen- Geography, however, is an appreciation for the wider range of other-
sions are necessary. (1993: 151) nesses and marginalities found in those polycentric coalitional com-
munities of resistance that hooks speaks about as a vital part of the
On "the paradox of being within the Same/Other and also else- new cultural politics. Geography and critical human geographers
where," Rose enters bell hooks's space of radical openness: have an opportunity to play a significant role in these communities of
resistance, drawing on the discipline's continued peripheralization
The manipulation of the field of the Same/Other, being both within the long-established academic and intellectual division of
separate and connected, the simultaneous occupation of both labor. Here there is another chance to strategically choose this mar-
the centre and the margin, being at once inside and outside: all ginality as a space of radical openness, a place for critical rethinking,
these discursive spaces depend on a sense of an "elsewhere" for re-envisioning, and more effective resistance to all forms of subordi-
their resistance. The subject of feminism has to feel that there is nation and oppression both inside and outside the academy. I am not
something beyond patriarchy in order to adopt these strategies saying that identity as a "marginalized" geographer is the same thing
of subversion. Thus the paradoxes described in the previous as identity defined along gender, race, or class lines, but it must not
subsection themselves depend on a paradoxical space which be entirely overlooked as a "home" for a community of critical schol-
straddles the spaces of representation and unrepresentability. arship and spatial praxis that reaches out to join with other such com-
This space of unrepresentability can acknowledge the possibil- munities in the new cultural politics of postmodernity.
ity of radical difference. (1993: 154)
The Postcolonial Critique 19
The subject of feminism, then, depends on a paradoxical geog-
raphy in order to acknowledge both the power of hegemonic As has already been indicated, there is a significant overlapping of
discourses and to insist on the possibility of resistance. This the spatial feminist debate into the postcolonial critique that has
geography describes that subjectivity as that of both prisoner
and exile; it allows the subject of feminism to occupy both the 19
The tense ambiguity of the tenn "postcolonial," as opposed to the, at first
centre and the margin, the inside and the outside. It is a geogra- thought, clearer "anti-colonial" is worthwhile preserving for several reasons. First,
phy structured by the dynamic tension between such poles, and the critique is not simply anti-colonial, for colonization is, like Foucault's notion of
power,. both oppressive and enabling at the same time, a complex fonn of govern-
it is also a multidimensional geography structured by the mentality (or govern mentality). The use of "post-" also resonates with connections
simultaneous contradictory diversity of social relations. It is a to the postmodern and postmodernism. In this sense, the postcolonial critique is a
geography which is as multiple and contradictory and different move beyond modernist anti-colonialism and an adaptive ajustment to the particu-
as the subjectivity imagining it . . . [it is] a different kind of lar circumstances of the present moment.
Increasing the Openness of Thirdspace 127
been developing equally rapidly over the past 20 years. The post- understanding the new cultural politics of difference, identity, and
colonial critique has many connections with the "postmodern black- radical subjectivity. As is also true with the preceding discussions, I
ness" described by bell hooks and other explorations of open and draw for the most part on those interpretations that are most rele-
multi-layered radical subjectivities. Although emerging from a simi- vant for our eventual journeys to the real-and-imagined spaces of
lar rootedness in the intertwining questions of race, gender, and Los Angeles.
class, the postcolonial critics tend also to give particular attention to
several additional issues from Cornel West's list: to exterminism, The Borderlands of Gloria Anzaldua
empire, nation, nature, and region. Foregrounded in all these con-
texts is an emphasis on colonization and the relations between the A special place within the overlapping spheres of the spatial feminist
colonizer and the colonized, another variation on the themes of sub- and postcolonial critiques is occupied by Gloria Anzaldua, whose
jection and marginalization. And in contrast to the urban-focused major works, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Making
feminist critique, the postcolonial critics roam more globally in the Face/Making Soul: Hacienda Caras, explore the poetics of the "border-
spaces created by the workings of geohistorically uneven develop- lands" as a space of radical openness, a Thirdspace filled with the
ment. perils and possibilities that infiltrate the chosen marginality of bell
I find it useful to understand the postcolonial critique as a product hooks. 20
of still another critical thirding-as-Othering, an assertively different
and intentionally disruptive way of (re)interpreting the relation The actual physical borderland that I'm dealing with ... is the
between the colonizer and the colonized, the center and the periph- Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border. The psychological bor-
ery, Firstworlds and Thirdworlds. More specifically, the critique derlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands
addresses two metanarratives that have overarchingly dominated are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the Borderlands are
the Firstworld discourse on coloniality: a fundamentally capitalist physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each
metanarrative of development that wraps world history in the neces- other, where people of different races occupy the same territory,
sity for continuous progress and modernization; and a predomi- where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the
nantly Marxist or socialist metanarrative of social justice that requires space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.
radical if not revolutionary transformation for social justice to be I am a border woman, I grew up between two cultures, the
achieved. Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a
In the best of the postcolonial critiques, neither of these two member of a colonized people in our own territory). I have been
encompassing historical metanarratives is dismissed entirely. straddling that tejas-Mexican border, and others, all my life. It's
Instead, both are creatively interrogated to expose first of all their not a comfortable territory to live in, this place of contradic-
totalizing and persistently Eurocentric co-hegemony and their tions. Hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features
equally persistent silencing of peripheral voices and alternative of this landscape.
points of view. Allowing the "subaltern" to speak, to assert an-Other However, there have been compensations for this mestiza,
voice, pushes the discourse on to a different plane and into a recre- and certain joys. Living on borders and in margins, keeping
ative space of radical openness where both development and social intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like
justice can be revisioned together, along with their histories and geo- trying to swim in a new element, an "alien" element ... [that]
graphies, not as an either I or choice but in the limitless expansion of has become familiar - never comfortable, not with society's
the both/and also ... As with Thirdspace, the critique does not come clamor to uphold the old, to rejoin the flock, to go with the
to a full stop at this third way; nor is it a simple additive or "in- herd. No, not comfortable but home. (1987: unpaged preface)
between" positioning that can be marked with dogmatic assurity. It
is instead an invitation to continuous deconstruction and reconstitu-
0
tion, to a constant effort to move beyond the established limits of our ' Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco:
Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1987; and Making Face/Making Soul: Hacienda Caras, Gloria
understanding of the world. Anzaldua, ed., San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1990. Anzaldua was also co-edi-
What follows are rather hurried glimpses of five variations on the tor, with Cherrfe Moraga, of an influential collection of writings that helped define
critical theme of postcoloniality chosen for their rich and varied con- feminism as practiced by radical women of color in the US: This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color
tributions to a specifically postmodern and Thirdspatial approach to Press, 1981.
Anzaldua positions herself in The Homeland, Aztlan, El otro Mexico, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is the
the "other" Mexico, "una herida abierta where the Third World grates queer of me in all races.) ... I am an act of kneading, of uniting and
against the First and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a
again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of
a border culture." (1987: 3) She shapes this culture with a poem. light and dark and gives them new meanings" (1987: 80-1). In the
(1987: 2-3) postrnodem culture of the borderlands, with its "decentered sub-
jects," space is created for "oppositional practices," for "critical
I press my hand to the steel curtain- exchange," for "resistance struggle," for "new and radical happen-
chainlink fence crowned with rolled barbed wire- ings" (I am now quoting hooks). Anzaldua offers her own spatializa-
rippling from the sea where Tijuana touches San Diego tion in the Preface to Making Face . ...
unrolling over mountains
and plains We need theories that will rewrite history using race, class, gen-
and deserts, der and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross
this "Tortilla Curtain" turning into el no Grande borders, that blur boundaries.... Because we are not allowed to
flowing down to the flatlands enter discourse, because we are often disqualified or excluded
of the Magic Valley of South Texas from it, because what passes for theory these days is forbidden
its mouth emptying into the Gulf. territory for us, it is vital that we occupy theorizing space, that
we not allow white men and women solely to occupy it. By
1,950 mile-long open wound bringing in our own approaches and methodologies, we trans-
dividing a pueblo, a culture, form that theorizing space ....
running down the length of my body, We are articulating new positions in these in-between,
staking fence rods in my flesh, Borderland worlds of ethnic communities and academies, femi-
splits me splits me nist and job worlds. In our literature, social issues such as race,
me ra;a me raja class and sexual difference are intertwined with the narrative
and poetic elements of a text, elements in which theory is
This is my horne embedded. (1990: xxv-xxvi)
this thin edge of
barbwire.
Chicanisma/Chicanismo: Reworlding the Border
But the skin of the earth is seamless.
The sea cannot be fenced, While Anzaldua may be the leading spatial theoretician of the border-
el mar does not stop at borders. lands and mestizaje, there has been developing over the past ten years
To show the white man what she thought of his a remarkable Chicana/ a-Latina/ o literature that has opened the space
arrogance, of the US-Mexico border to innovative new forms of (Third)spatial
Yemaya blew that wire fence down. interpretation. 21 Chicana feminists such as Norma Alarcon, Sandra
Cisneros, Terri de la Pefta, and Maria Lugones, to name but a few,
This land was Mexican once, expand our understanding of the intersections of space and language,
was Indian always sitios y lenguas, the production of space and the production of texts by
and is. exploring in novels, poetry, and cultural criticism the multiple mean-
And will be again.
In the borderlands is born( e) a new consciousness, the consciousness 21

See the forthcoming dissertation by Mary Pat Brady, Re-Mapping the Terrain of
of the mestiza. "As a mestiza," Anzaldua writes, "I have no country, Power: Capitalism, Spatiality and Cultural Response in Chicana and Chicano Cultural
Production, English, UCLA. I wish to thank Mary Pat for making me aware of this
my homeland casts me out; yet all countries are mine because I am literature and its creative extensions of the new theorizations of spatiality, and for
every woman's sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, her very constructive and stimulating critique of earlier drafts of chapters 3 and 4.
tion ... are "world-travelers" as a matter of necessity and sur-
ings of Ia linea- the line, the border, the boundary- as lived space. 22 I
vival. ... Those of us who are "world" -travelers have the dis-
cannot hope to capture the richness of this literature here, but a few
tinct experience of being different in different "worlds" and
passages from Maria Lugones's "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and
ourselves in them .... The shift from being one person to being
Loving Perception" are indicative. a different person is what I call "travel.... "
When considering the value of "world" -traveling and
The paper describes the experience of "outsiders" to the main-
whether playfulness is the loving attitude to have while travel-
stream White/ Anglo organization of life in the U.S., and
ing, I recognized the agonistic attitude as inimical to traveling
stresses a particular feature of the outsider's existence: the
across "worlds." The agonistic traveler is a conqueror, an impe-
acquired flexibility in shifting from the mainstream construc- rialist. Given the agonistic attitude one cannot travel across
tion of life to other constructions of life where she is more or "worlds," though (one) can kill other "worlds" with it. ...
less "at home." This flexibility is necessary for the outsider but
So for people who are interested in crossing racial and ethnic
it can also be willfully exercised by those who are at ease in the
boundaries, an arrogant western man's construction of playful-
mainstream. I recommend this willful exercise which I call ness is deadly. One needs to give up such an attitude if one
"world" -traveling and I also recommend that the willful exer-
wants to travel. Huizinga in his classic book on play [Homo
cise be animated by a playful attitude.... Ludens, 1968], interprets Western civilization as play. That is an
I can explain some of what I mean by a "world." I do not
interesting thing for Third World people to think about.
want the fixity of a definition because I think the term is sugges-
Western civilization has been interpreted by a white western
tive and I do not want to lose this. A "world" has to be
man as play in the agonistic sense of play: he reviews western
presently inhabited by flesh and blood people. That is why it law, art, and many other aspects of western culture and sees
cannot be a utopia. It may also be inhabited by some imaginary agon, contest, in all of them. (1990: 390, 395, 396, 400)
people. It may be inhabited by people who are dead or people
that the inhabitants of this "world" met in some other "world" Lugones's "worlds" are artfully lived spaces, metaphorical and
and now have this "world" in imagination ...
material, real and imagined, contested and loving, dangerous and
A "world" may be incomplete.... Giv~n lesbian fe~i~!sm, playful, local and global, knowable and incomplete, necessary f~r
the construction of "lesbian" in "lesbian commumty (a survival yet often still "up in the air," as limitless as Borges's magi-
"world" in my sense) is purposefully and _healt~ily sti~l up in cally real Aleph yet intimate and comforting at the same time. Here
the air, in the process of becoming. To be Hispamc m thi~ coun- we have another version of a space of radical openness, a space filled
try is, in a dominant Anglo construction, purpo~efupy mc~m with the representations of power and the power of representations.
plete. Thus one cannot really answer questions hke 'Wha~ IS a Even more playful in his "world" -travels is Guillermo Gomez-
Hispanic?" "Who counts as . a. Hispan~c?" "Are Latmos, Perra, a writer (as he is known in Mexico, his homeland) and perfor-
Chicanos, Hispanos, black Domimcans, white Cubans, Korean-
mance artist (as he is known in the US and Europe). In his
Columbians, Italian-Argentinians Hispanic?" What it m~a~s ~o performances as a "Warrior for Gringostroika," G6mez-Pefta, a self-
be a "Hispanic" in the varied so-called Hispanic co:nmumhes m
described "interdisciplinary troublemaker," explores the border, Ia
the U.S. is also up in the air. We have not yet decided whether
linea, within the dynamic of deterritorialization-reterritorialization,
there are any "Hispanics" in our varied "worlds...." as a zone of crossing, alterity, opposition, symbiosis, fissure, suture,
One can "travel" between these "worlds" and one can inhabit
permanent exile, a way of life, a mode of expression, a br_oken line~ a
more than one of these "worlds" at the very same time. I think
political esthetic, a performance laboratory, a commumty of resis-
that most of us who are outside the mainstream U.S. construe-
tance.D Under "Involuntary Postmodernism," he describes Mexico
2
2 Norma Alarcon, "The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Ba.ck and
Anglo-American Feminism," in Criticism in the Borderlands, Hector Calderon and 23
Guillermo G6mez-Pena, Warrior for Gringostroika: Essays, Performance Texts, and
Jose David Saldivar, eds, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1991: 28-39; Sandra Poetry, St Paul MN: Graywolf Press, 1993; Introduction by Roge_r Barra, Douglas
Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek, New York: Random House, 1991, and The House on Keiller Associate Editor. While a Master's student in Urban Planmng at UCLA and
Mango Street, Houston TX: Arte Publico Press, 1993; Terri de la Pena, Margms, sufferi~g through some of my earlier lectures on Thirdspace, Doug Keiller insisted
Seattle WA: Seal Press, 1992; Marfa Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and that I take a look at the creatively spatial work of G6mez-Pena and lent to me h1s per-
Loving Perception," in Making Face, Making Soul, Gloria Anzaldua, ed., San sonal copy of this book. Thank you, Doug. I hope I remember to return your book.
Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1990: 390-402.
City as "the 'postmodem' city par excellence," a "mega-pastiche" between art and society, legalidad and illegality, English and
filled with "a vernacular postmodem sensibility," "cross-cultural espanol, male and female, North and South, self and other; and
fusion," "dualities ... perceived ... as overlapping realities," mesti- subverting these relationships ... to speak from the crevasse,
zaje (1993: 18). In a brief performance poem entitled "Punctured Tire desde acc1, desde el medio. The border is the juncture, not the
(Highway 5, California, 1988)" (1993: 167), he describes life across edge, and monoculturalism has been expelled to the margins ...
the border: it also means glasnost, not government censorship ... to ana-
lyze critically all that lies on the current table of debates: multi-
I am stuck in the middle of the journey culturalism, the Latino "boom," "ethnic art," controversial art,
a highway without human activity even border culture ... to question and transgress border cul-
a text without visible structure ture [for what] today is powerful and necessary, tomorrow is
life on this side of the border arcane and ridiculous; what today is border culture, tomorrow
on your side ... is institutional art, not vice versa ... But it also means to look at
I no longer know who I am the past and the future at the same time. 1492 was the begin-
but I like it ning of a genocidal era. 1992 will mark the beginning of a new
era: America post-Colombina, Arteamerica sin fronteras. Soon a
In "The Border Is ... (A Manifesto)" (1993: 43-4) G6mez-Pefla new internationalism will have to gravitate around the spinal
engages in descriptions of 'border culture" that resound with bril- cord of this continent- not Europe, not just the North, not just
liant evocations of Borges's Aleph. I recompose his performance text white, not only you, compaflero del otro lado de la frontera, el
as a selective listing: lenguaje y el oceano.
BORDER CULTURE IS a polysemantic term . . . [it] means An excerpt from the performance poetry of "Border Bru jo" (1993: 71)
boycott, complot, ilegalidad, clandestinidad, transgresion ... amplifies Ia linea in another way:
hybrid art forms for new contents-in-gestation: spray mural,
techno-altar, poetry-in-tongues, audio graffiti, punkarachi, standing on the corner of Broadway & Hell
video corrido, anti-bolero, anti-todo ... to be fluid in English, where English meets Spanish
Spanish, Spanglish, and Ingleflol . . . transcultural friendship & Death performs the last striptease of the day
and collaboration among races, sexes, and generations ... cre- El Johnny longs for his inner carnales
ative appropriation, expropriation, and subversion of dominant al Sueflo lo torcieron
cultural forms ... a new cartography: a brand-new map to host al Misterioso lo balacearon
the new project; the democratization of the East; the socializa- & a Susy la Sad Girl
tion of the West; the Third-Worldization of the North and the la trituraron los medias de informacion
First-Worldization of the South ... a multiplicity of voices away "Mexico is sinking
from the center, different geo-cultural relations among more California is on fire
cultural akin regions: Tepito-San Diejuana, San Pancho- & we are all getting burned
Nuyorrico, Miami-Quebec, San Antonio-Berlin, your home aren't we? we're just
town and mine, digamos, a new internationalism ex centris .. . a bunch of burning myths!"
to return and depart again [for] to arrive is just an illusion ... a -he begins to yell at the gringos-
new terminology for new hybrid identities and metiers con- "but what if suddenly
stantly metamorphosing: sudaca, not sudaca; Chicarrican, not the continent is turned upside down?
Hispanic; mestizaje, not miscegenation; social thinker, not what if the U.S. was Mexico?
bohemian; accionista, not performer; intercultural, not post- what if 200,000 Anglosaxicans
modem ... to develop new models to interpret the world-in-cri- were to cross the border each month
sis, the only world we know ... to push the borders of countries to work as gardeners, waiters
and languages or, better said, to find new languages to express musicians, movie extras
the fluctuating borders . . . experimenting with the fringes bouncers, babysitters, chauffeurs
syndicated cartoons, featherweight
in the center. 25 She goes on reworlding marginality in her own per-
boxers, fruit-pickers & anonymous poets?
sonal act of displacement.
what if they were called waspanos,
waspitos, wasperos or wasp backs?
I find the demand on me to be marginal always amusing....
what if we were the top dogs?
I'm tired of dining out on being an exile because that has been a
what if literature was life?
long tradition and it is not one I want to identify myself
what if yo were you
with.... In a certain sense, I think there is nothing that is cen-
& tU fueras I, Mister?"
tral. The centre is always constituted in terms of its own mar-
ginality. However, having said that, in terms of the hegemonic
G6mez-Pena is the bard of the borderlands, a maestro of mestizaje, a
historical narrative, certain peoples have always been asked to
playfully serious poet-lineate whose "tangential" attitude and post-
cathect the margins so others can be defined as central. ... In
modern stance cries out for the "borderization of the world" and a
that kind of situation the only strategic thing to do is to
continual rethinking of Thirdspace.
absolutely present oneself at the centre .... [W]hy not take the
centre when I'm being asked to be marginal? I'm never defined
The Reworldings of Gayatri Spivak
as marginal in India, I can assure you. (1990: 40-1)
Also deserving a special place among the postcolonial critics and
Thinking synchronically, in the precise (spatial) circumstances of the
those, like bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua and Guillermo G6mez-Pena,
present (postmodern) moment, Spivak repositions herself as a
who are revisioning Thirdspace from the regional borderlands
bricoleur, a preserver of discontinuities, an interruptive critic of the
defined by both the micro-workings of power and the macrogeogra-
categorical logic of colonizer-colonized, elite-subaltern, global-local,
phies of uneven development, is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. A
center-periphery, First World-Third World.
major translator and (re)interpreter of Jacques Derrida, Spivak is the
hard-hitting Derridean theoretician of postcoloniality. Her geo-
If I have learned anything it is that one must not go in the direc-
graphical imagination sparkles occasionally, but it rarely becomes
tion of a Unification Church, which is too deeply marked by the
the self-conscious center of attention. Nevertheless, she too adds new
moment of colonialist influence, creating global solutions that
dimensions to a specifically global understanding of Thirdspace.
are coherent. On the other hand, it seems to me that one must
Spivak faces directly, in her writings, the challenges of choosing
also avoid as much as possible, in the interests of practical effec-
marginality and asserting the radical alterity of subaltern voices. Her
tiveness, a sort of continuist definition of differences, so that all
discursive practice of a locational politics of difference is filled with
you get is hostility. (1990: 15)
acts of deconstruction, subversion, displacement, and repositioning.
Spivak and other key figures in postcolonial studies also move
Spivak's emphasis on discontinuities pushes us away from the sim-
beyond theoretical deconstruction and regional repositioning to
ple celebration of pluralism and multiculturalism that has attracted
begin another remapping of explicitly global proportions. This
so many contemporary liberal scholars; but at the same time sets
remapping for Spivak, is not just an opening up of the texts of Marx
clear limits upon her desired preservation of the discourses of femi-
to non-Eurocentric readings, it is a move "beyond a homogeneous
nism and marxism. What must be preserved, Spivak argues, is not
internationalism, to the persistent recognition of heterogeneity," to a
the continuist definition of differences embedded in the coherent
new "worlding of the world." 24 She encapsules the difficulty of this
modernist discourses, the unified parochialism that responds to
task in what she describes as the slow and careful labor of "un-learn-
"others" only with hostility; but rather a "radical acceptance of vul-
ing our privilege as our loss," of behaving "as if you are part of the
nerability" immersed in a deconstructive pratique sauvage, a "wild
margin" but doing so by relinquishing the privileges that attach to
practice," a "practical politics of the open end" in which cho?sing
choosing marginality as a space of radical resistance from a position
marginality becomes an invitingly anarchic, centerless, act of mclu-
24
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historio- sion (1990: 18, 54, 105).
graphy," in Selected Subaltern Studies, R. Guha and G. C. Spivak, eds, ~ew York:
Oxford University Press, 1988: 20. See also Spivak's In Other Worlds: Essay m Cultural 25
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies,
Politics, New York and London: Routledge, 1988.
Dialogues, S. Harasym, ed., New York: Routledge, 1990: 9 and 30.
Spivak's remapping-as-reworlding- she once named her project Said's work, with its insistence on the historical narrative and at
"Feminism" both to preclude other namings and to recognize the the same time- theoretically and biographically- informed by
most numerous gendered subjects in the margins of the periphery - the importance of space, the struggle over the land and against
disrupts the coherent spatiality of territorial imperialism, military occupation, engages explicitly in the project of a radical
Eurocentrism, and spatial science, as well as the spatiality of reconstruction, around the issue of geography, of the ascendant
modernist feminism and Marxism. And she does so with a strategic linear narrative of history led masterfully from the center.
twist that she describes as bringing "hegemonic historiography Colonialism and the national liberation struggles waged against
to crisis," a critique of Western historicism that becomes a vital its controlling influence articulate not just a temporal sequence,
turn in her reworlding project and in the progressive spatialization but a critical re-elaboration of geopolitical spatial arrangements
of the new cultural politics of difference. Spivak engages in this and the politics of place, what Soja presents - even if with a
counter-hegemonic critique of what Lefebvre metaphilosophic- residual Eurocentric bias - as the "conjunction between peri-
ally called the "world of representations" primarily via a de- odization and spatialization" (1989, 64). This politics of place
constructive analysis of "texts" rather than of "spaces." But as I must be critically decentered, further sited and re-read around a
hope will become clearer in subsequent chapters, this direct rethinking of the history of nationalism, Said maintains, and
critique of Western historicism and "hegemonic historiography" is located institutionally as well as territorially. 26
another important, if only indirectly spatial, pathway into
Thirdspace, one which is given very little critical attention by Said grounds his deconstruction of the various binaries of
Lefebvre or hooks. Orientalism in the impositioning of "imaginative geographies,"
Spivak's critique of hegemonic historiography is too often side- dominating conventional representations of space as well as material
tracked by the need to defend her neo-Derridean methods against spatial practices. In these real-and-imagined Orientalist geographies,
the barrage of attacks, usually from those most to blame for the the center is constructed as powerful, articulate, surveillant, the sub-
excesses of historicism, claiming that her project is anti-historical, ject making history; while the periphery is defeated, silenced, subor-
that it is out to destroy rather than deconstruct critical historical rea- dinated, subjected without a history of its own. Through a critique of
soning itself. Although there is an abundance of spatial metaphors the spatial practices of colonialism and its formidable representa-
and references in her work, the reactive attack of the historicists and tions of space, knowledge, and power, Said also opens up the post-
more innocently disciplined historians has prevented Spivak from colonial spaces (and powers) of representation to an alternative
directly confronting the problematic interplay between space and geohistorical revisioning. In doing so, he enters Thirdspace through
time, geography and history, that is imbricated in the crisis of hege- a side door and begins engaging in a critical debate that brings him
monic historiography, or what might be termed the historicist "sub- close to the paths taken by hooks and Lefebvre.
alterning" of critical spatial thinking. To explore this debate and its That this is a simultaneously historical and geographical critique is
relevance to the conceptualization of Thirdspace, one must turn to brought out very clearly in a recent article by the historical geogra-
the far-reaching critique of "Orientalism" contained in the works of pher Derek Gregory, amplifying on his extensive treatment of Said
Ed ward Said. in Geographical Imaginations (1994). Gregory begins with a quote from
Said's Culture and Imperialism (1993).
The Imaginative Geographies of Edward Said Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is
completely free from the struggle over geography. That strug-
Said moves the critique of historicism and hegemonic historiography gle is complex and interesting because it is not only about sol-
towards the possibility of constructing a critical geohistory of diers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about
uneven development at a global scale, a project advanced by images and imaginings.
Lefebvre and others but often constrained by an insufficiently self-
critical Eurocentrism. In "The Palestinian Intellectual and the
26
Liberation of the Academy," Barbara Harlow describes Said's project Barbara Harlow, 'The Palestinian Intellectual and the Liberation of the
Academy," in Edward Said: A Critical Reader, M. Sprinker, ed, Cambridge, MA, and
in explicitly spatial terms. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1992: 173-93. The quote is from pp. 19D-l. See also Edward
Said, Orienta/ism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
"What I find myself doing," Gregory cites Said further, "is rethink- no attention is given to those cultural practices, like Orientalism
ing geography ... charting the changing constellations of power, or ethnography [he later adds masculinism and patriarchy],
knowledge, and geography." 27 affiliated with imperialism, which in genealogical fact fathered
In "Orientalism Reconsidered," 28 Said also demonstrates that he world history itself. (1985: 11)
was at the same time rethinking history.
To advance his critique of historicism, Said also encourages a certain
So far as Orientalism in particular and European knowledge of "wildness" and radical openness, a persistent crossing of boundaries
other societies in general have been concerned, historicism that is tethered only by one's political project. He calls for "fragment-
meant that one human history uniting humanity either culmi- ing, dissociating, dislocating and decentring the experiential terrain
nated in or was observed from the vantage point of Europe, or covered at present by universalising historicism" and a push beyond
the West. What was neither observed by Europe nor docu- the "polarities and binary oppositions of Marxist-historicist thought
mented by it was, therefore, "lost" until, at some later date, it (voluntarisms versus determinism, Asiatic versus western society,
too could be incorporated by the new sciences of anthropology, change versus stasis) in order to create a new type of analysis of
political economics and linguistics. It is out of this later recuper- plural, as opposed to single, objects." (1985: 11) Historicism, and
ation of what Eric Wolf has called people without history, that a especially its most radical variants, must be struggled against,
still later disciplinary step was taken: the foundation of the sci- deconstructed, and redeployed into radically different projects that
ence of world history, whose major practitioners include are consciously marginal, oppositional, libertarian, against the grain
Braude!, Wallerstein, Perry Anderson and Wolf himself. of history itself. With Said's critique we come full circle again, back
(1985: 10) to the daunting challenges of exploring Thirdspace-as-Aleph. But we
have also broken open new terrain, in the problematic interplay of
What has never taken place is an epistemological critique of the Historicality and Spatiality, that must be kept in mind as we move
connection between the development of a historicism which has on.
expanded and developed enough to include antithetical atti-
tudes such as ideologies of western imperialism and critiques of The Third Space of Homi Bhabha
imperialism, on the one hand [referring back to the world histo-
ries of Braudel, Wallerstein, Anderson, and Wolf], and, on the One last excursion must be noted before concluding this selective
other, the actual practice of imperialism by which accumulation tour of the postcolonial literature. Homi Bhabha's writings, drawing
of territories and population, the control of economies, and the heavily on Said, Frantz Fanon, and Jacques Lacan, perceptively
incorporation and homogenization of histories are main- explore the nature of cultural difference or what he calls the
tained .... In the methodological assumptions and practice of "location" of culture. 29 He locates his particular postcolonial project
world history - which is ideologically anti-imperialist- little or in this way: "With the notion of cultural difference, I try to place
myself in that position of liminality, in that productive space of the
construction of culture as difference, in the spirit of alterity or
27
Derek Gregory, "Imaginitive Geographies," Progress in Human Geography 19 otherness" (1990a: 209). This "productive space" is quite distinct
(1995), 447-85. In celebrating Said's geographical imagination, however, Gregory,
ever the monitor of the intellectual affinities of others, dims Said's formidable cri- from liberal relativist perspectives on "cultural diversity" and
tiques of both historicism and Orientalism's "imaginative geographies" by stripping
Said of his multiplicity of identities. While Gregory insightfully attaches Foucault 29
and Gramsci to Said's intellectual genealogy, he has more trouble in dealing with The key works that will be discussed here are Homi K. Bhabha, "The Third Space:
Said's irrepressible both/and also recombinations, if not thirdings, of such binaries Interview with Homi Bhabha," in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, J.
as materialism/idealism, modernism/postmodernism, Marxism/anti-Marxism, Rutherford, ed., London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990a: 207-21; "The Other
humanism/ structuralism, historicism/ spatialism, and indeed Orientalism/ Question: Difference, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism," in Out
Occidentalism. With his categorizing pen and unique brand of geohistoricism, There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, R. Ferguson eta!., eds, Cambridge,
Gregory comes close to wiping out the radical openness and polyphonic flexibility MA: MIT Press and New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990b: 71-88;
of Said's Thirdspatial imagination. "Postcolonial Authority and Postmodem Guilt," in Cultural Studies, L. Grossberg et
28
Edward Sa~d, "Orientalism Reconsidered," Race & Class: A Journal for Black and a!., eds, New York and London, Routledge, 1992: 56-68; and The Location of Culture,
Thzrd World Lzberatwn 27 (1985), 1-15. Slightly different versions of this article were London and New York: Routledge, 1994. See also Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and
published in Europe and Its Others, F. Barker et a!., eds, Colchester: University of Narration, London and New York: Routledge, 1990c, especially his own concluding
Essex, 1985; and in Cultural Critique 1 (1985), 89-107. chapter, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modem Nation."
"multiculturalism," which form another discursive space. In that As he notes in another context, the Third Space - inspired by his
space "Western connoisseurship" locates cultures "in a kind of musee deep involvement with the Third Cinema30 - is located in the mar-
imaginaire," in a grid of its own choosing, wherein the urge to uni-
gins, and "it is from the affective experience of social marginality
versalize and historicize readily acknowledges the social and histori- that we must conceive a political strategy of empowerment and
cal diversity of cultures but at the same time transcends them and articulation" (1992: 56). He also firmly roots the Third Space,
renders them transparent, illusive. Speaking in particular of Great assertively capitalized again, in the experience of postcoloniality.
Britain, Bhabha describes the liberal "entertainment and encourage-
ment of cultural diversity" as a form of control and "containment": It is significant that the productive capacities of the Third Space
have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to
A transparent norm is constituted, a norm given by the host descend into that alien territory - where I have led you - may
society or dominant culture, which says that "these other cul- reveal that the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enun-
tures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our
ciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international
own grid". This is what I mean by a creation of cultural diversity culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the
and a containment of cultural difference. (1990a: 208) diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of
culture's hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is
For Bhabha, the difference of cultures cannot be contained within the the "inter" -the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the
universalist framework of liberal democracy, or for that matter in-between space - that carries the burden of the meaning of cul-
Marxist-historicism, for these different cultures are often incommen- ture ... And by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the
surable, not neatly categorized, a triggering observation for identify-
politics of polarity and emerge as others of our selves. (1994:
ing a "third space" of alternative enunciation. This argument 38-9)
connects to his critique of colonial discourse and Orientalism, whose
"predominant function is the creation of a space for a 'subject peo- Along with other key figures such as Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy,
ples' through the production of knowledges in terms of which sur- Bhabha adds his voice to a particularly black British tradition of
veillance is exercised and a complex form of pleasure/unpleasure 1s postcolonial debate that connects with, yet is distinct from, the North
incited" (1990b: 75). American tradition exemplified by hooks, West, Said, Spivak,
Against this "containment of cultural difference," he introduces Anzaldua, G6mez-Pefia, and most of the postmodern spatial femi-
the notion of hybridity and locates it in another example of trialectical nists I have highlighted. 31 Setting these (cultural?) differences aside,
thirding-as-Othering. Denying the essentialism that comes from the project that is shared across the Black Atlantic (a title of one of
either the genealogical tracing of cultural origins or the representa- Gilroy's recent books) is the exploration of new identities that build
tional act of cultural "translation" (a term he borrows from Walter alternatives to a "double illusion" created, on the one side, by a cul-
Benjamin), Bhabha posits a third space that echoes the chosen mar- tural essentialism that promotes such polarizing exclusivities as
ginality of bell hooks and, like Spivak and Said, explicitly challenges black nationalism; and on the other, by an unlimited cultural rela-
hegemonic historiography. tivism that dissolves black subjectivity in a universalist melting pot
or a pluralist jumble of equals.
all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity. But The Third Space of Homi Bhabha is occasionally teasingly on the
for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two edge of being a spatially ungrounded literary trope, a floating
original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybrid-
ity to me is the "third space" which enables other positions to 30
See Questions of Third Cinema, J. Pines and P. Willamen, eds, London: British Film
emerge. This third space displaces the histories that constitute Institute, 1989. In his chapter, "The Commitment to Theory," Bhabha, for the first
it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initia- time I have been able to find, uses the term "Third Space" as an intervention, an
tives, which are inadequately understood through received wis- alternative space of enunciation, an "alien territory" that "carries t_he burden of the
meaning of culture." A revised version of this chapter appears m Bhabha, 1994:
dom. . . . The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to 19-39.
something different, something new and unrecognisable, a new 31
For an interesting extension of this British debate to geography, see Steve Pile,
area of negotiation of meaning and representation. "Masculinism, the Use of Dualistic Epistemologies and Third Spaces," Antipode 26
(1990a: 211) (1994), 255-77. It will be interesting to see if Bhabha's British hybridities will change
after his recent appointment to teach and write at the University of Chicago.
metaphor for a critical historical consciousness that inadvertently The move away from the singularities of "class" or "gender"
masks a continued privileging of temporality over spatiality?2 as primary conceptual and organizational categories, has
Nevertheless, Bhabha effectively consolidates in The Location of resulted in an awareness of the subject positions- of race, gen-
Culture a strategic envisioning of the cultural politics of Thirdspace der, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual
that helps to dislodge its entrapment in hegemonic historiography orientation- that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern
and historicism. Several passages from this book also serve as a tran- world. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial,
sitional summary, linking where we have been to where we are is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial
going next. subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that
The introductory chapter, "Locations of culture," begins with a are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These
quote from Heidegger: "A boundary is not that at which something "in-between" spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strate-
stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which gies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new
something begins its presenting." Bhabha then moves to "Border Lives: signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and con-
The Art of the Present." The following passages summarize his testation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.
synchronic synthesis. The social articulation of difference, from the minority per-
spective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to autho-
It is the trope of our times to locate the question of culture in rize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical
the realm of the beyond. At the century's edge, we are less exer- transformation. The "right" to signify from the periphery of
cised by annihilation- the death of the author- or epiphany- authorized power and privilege does not depend on the persis-
the birth of the "subject." Our existence today is marked by a tence of tradition; it is resourced by the power of tradition to be
tenebrious sense of survival, living on the borderlines of the reinscribed through the conditions of contingency and contra-
"present," for which there seems to be no proper name other dictoriness that attend upon the lives of those who are "in the
than the current and controversial shiftiness of the prefix minority." (1994: 1-2)
"post": postmodernism, postcolonialism, postfeminism . ...
The "beyond" ["meta"?] is neither a new horizon, nor a leav- He elaborates further on the notion of "going beyond."
ing behind of the past .... [I]n the fin de siecle, we find ourselves
in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce "Beyond" signifies spatial distance, marks progress, promises
complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, the future; but our intimations of exceeding the barrier or
inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense boundary - the very act of going beyond - are unknowable,
of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, in the "beyond": an unrepresentable, without a return to the "present" which, in the
exploratory, restless movement caught so well in the French process of repetition, becomes disjunct and displaced. The
rendition of the words au-dela - here and there, on all sides, imaginary of spatial distance - to live somehow beyond the bor-
fortfda, hither and thither, back and forth. der of our times- throws into relief the temporal, social differ-
ences that interrupt our collusive sense of cultural
32
Bhabha opens The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, with this very contemporaneity.... If the jargon of our times- postmodernity,
representative quote from Frantz Fanon's Black Skins/White Masks: "The architecture
of this work is rooted in the temporal. Every human problem must be considered postcoloniality, postfeminism- has any meaning at all, it does
from the standpoint of time" (1994: xiv). Although Bhabha tries creatively to spatial- not lie in the popular use of the "post" to indicate sequentiality
ize temporality, the Fanonian dictum remains central and Bhabha never directly -after feminism; or polarity- antimodernism. These terms that
confronts the problematic interplay between temporality and spatiality or between
history and geography. At critical moments throughout the text, his assertive spa- insistently gesture to the beyond, only embody its restless
tializations are abruptly diluted by a historical relabeling. What makes Bhabha's and revisionary energy if they transform the present into
privileging of the historical imagination more ironic are the gruff critiques of his an expanded and excentric site of experience and empower-
work as ahistorical, relentlessly timeless, ignorant of postcolonial historicity. One
such critique appears in Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the
ment. ... If the interest in postmodernism is limited to a celebra-
West, London and New York: Routledge, 1990: 146. Following Young's blindly tion of the fragmentation of the "grand narratives" of
unspatialized historicism, Derek Gregory, who should know better, chooses not to postenlightenment rationalism then, for all its intellectual
discuss Bhabha's work in his Geographical Imaginations (1994) because of Bhabha's excitement, it remains a profoundly parochial enter-
"apparently relentless setting aside of historicity" (Gregory, 1994: 167-8). Perhaps
Gregory should look beyond appearances. prise. (1994: 4)
Being in the "beyond", then, is to inhabit an intervening space,

as any dictionary will tell you. But to dwell"in the beyond" is
also, as I have shown, to be part of a revisionary time, a return
to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to
reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future
on its hither side. In that sense, then, the intervening space
5
"beyond" becomes a space of intervention in the here and
now. (1994: 7)
Heterotopologies: Foucault and
the Geohistory of Otherness
It is surprising how long the problem of space took to emerge as a his-

torico-political problem.
(Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 1980: 149)
Foucault's writing is perfect in that the very movement of the text

gives an admirable account of what it proposes: on one hand, a pow-
erful generating spiral that is no longer a despotic architecture but a
filiation en abime, a coil and strophe without origin (without catas-
trophe either), unfolding ever more widely and rigorously; but on the
other hand, an interstitial flowing of power (where the relations of
power and seduction are inextricably entangled). All this reads directly
in Foucault's discourse (which is also a discourse on power). It flows,
it invests and saturates, the entire space it opens.
(Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, 1987: 9)
A Second Discovery
Hidden in the underbrush of the Thirdspaces explored in the previ-

ous chapters is the body and mind of Michel Foucault. Bringing into
full view his spiraling excursions into human spatiality saturates
Thirdspace in what Baudrillard described as "an interstitial flowing
of power."
146 Discovering Thirdspace Heterotopologies 147
Crossing Paths: Lefebvre and Foucault Thirdspace in the mid-1960s, at about the same time a spatial prob-
lematic was recentering the work of Lefebvre. In the five years lead-
Little is known and much less written about the relations between ing up to the events in Paris in May 1968, Lefebvre and Foucault
Foucault and Henri Lefebvre, although they were clearly aware of crossed paths in many different ways. In addition to three major
each other and Lefebvre, at least, takes an occasional potshot at the books, Foucault produced a series of essays on Nietzsche, Freud,
more ambiguous politics and the "psychologism" he saw arising Marx, Sartre, the art historian Irwin Panofsky, the writing of history,
from Foucault's writings. Lefebvre argued that Foucault's enrap- philosophy and psychology, and, in the journal Critique, on "dis-
tured individualism failed to explore the "collective subject," that his tance, aspect, origin" (1963) and "the language of space" (1964),
frequent use of floating spatial metaphors obscured the ~olitical con- themes and subjects that directly paralleled Lefebvre's interests. 1
creteness of social spatiality, and that the manysidedness_ of Foucault also became increasingly engaged with architects and archi-
Foucault's conceptualization of power/knowledge took too httle tecture during this period, reflecting in part his growing interest in
note of "the antagonism between a knowledge [savoir] which serves medicine, clinical psychology, institutional design, urban planning, and
power and a form of knowing [connaissance] which refuses to the (spatial) order of things. He accepted an invitation from a group of
acknowledge power." architects to do "a study of space" and on March 14, 1967, presented a
These comments, extracted from the first ten pages of The lecture in Paris entitled "Des Espaces autres" ("Of Other Spaces"), alec-
Production of Space, refer particularly to Foucault's The Archeo!ogy ' ture which I will excavate in great detail later in this chapter.2 In 1967,
Knowledge, published in French in 1969. Lefebvre's ra~her ~Ippant interestingly enough, Foucault was under consideration for an appoint-
critique revolved around what he saw as Foucault s failure to ment in psychology at the University of Nanterre in Paris, where
"bridge the gap" between "the theoretical (efistemological) realm Lefebvre was then professor of Sociology and where the earliest sparks
and the practical one, between mental and sooal, betwee_n the spa~e of the "irruptions" of May 1968 would take place. Lefebvre apparently
of the philosophers and the space of peopl~ who_ deal _with matenal supported the appointment and an offer was made. Foucault, however,
things." In short, Foucault seemed to be distancmg hnn_s:I too . ~ turned it down to take up a position at the newly created suburban
from the Marxian critique of capitalism and from an exphcitly pohh- University of Vincennes as chair of Philosophy.
cized history and geography of the present. In contrast to Lefebvre, Foucault never developed his conceptual-
Lefebvre's "centered peripheralness" made him particularly con- izations of space in great self-conscious detail and rarely translated
cerned with the political implications of what he saw as Foucault's his spatial politics into clearly defined programs for social action. It
parochial preoccupation with the periphery. can nevertheless be argued (and Foucault would, when prompted,
The issue of prisons, of psychiatric hospitals and antipsychiatry, agree) that a comprehensive and critical understanding of spatiality
of various converging repressions, has a considerable impor- was at the center of all his writings, from Folie et deraison: Histoire de
tance in the critique of power. And yet this tactic, which con- la folie al'age classique (1961) to the multivolume work on the history
centrates on the peripheries, simply ends up with a lot of
1
pinprick operations which are separated from each other in The three books were Naissance de Ia c/inique. Une archiologie du regard medical,
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963, tr. A. S. Smith as The Birth of the Clinic:
time and space. It neglects the centers and centrality; it neglects An Archeology of Medical Perception, New York: Pantheon, 1973; Raymond Roussel,
the global. (Lefebvre, 1976: 116) Paris: Gallimard, 1963, tr. C. Ruas as Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond
Roussel, New York: Doubleday, 1986; and Les Mots et /es chases. Une archiologie des
Lefebvre's views reinforced a similar reaction to Foucault's puncti- sciences humaines, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, tr. as The Order of Things: An Archeology of
form micropolitics of disruption that was developing throughout the Human Sciences, New York: Pantheon, 1971. For the full references of the journal
articles of Foucault, see the excellent bibliography at the back of James Bernauer and
Western Marxism, driven by the fear of fragmentation and localism David Rasmussen, eds, The Final Foucault, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: MIT
that had for so long been seen as divisive and diversionary within Press, 1988. During the same period, 1963-8, Lefebvre published 11 books: Karl
the larger, revolutionary political project. Within Marxist geography, Marx. Oeuvres choisies (with Norbert Guterman, 2 vols 1963-4); La Vallie de Campan.
Etude de sociologie rurale (1963); Marx (1964); Mitaphilosophie (1965); La Proclamation de
especially among those most influenced by Lefebvre, such as David Ia Commune (1965); Sociologie de Marx (1966); Le Lang age et Ia societe (1966); Position:
Harvey and Neil Smith, these reactions to Foucault seemed to put contre /es technocrates (1967); Le Droit ii Ia ville (1968); L'Irruption de Nanterre au sommet
his rethinking of human spatiality off limits as politically incorrect. (1968); and La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne (1968). Lefebvre rested in 1969,
It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that Foucault began when Foucault's L'Archiologie de savoir (Paris: Gallimard) appeared.
1
The lecture was published in Architecture-Mouvement-Continuiti 5 (1986), 46-9; and
developing his own conceptualization of something very much like in English as "Of Other Spaces," tr. Jay Miskowiec, in Diacritics 16 (1986), 22-7.
of sexuality published in English translation shortly before (and Yes. Space is fundamental in any form of communal life; space
after) his death in 1984.3 And, even without prompting, he would is fundamental in any exercise of power. To make a parentheti-
infuse a spatial politics into these writings that ranged from "the cal remark, I recall having been invited, in 1966, by a group of
great strategies of geopolitics" played out on a global scale to "the architects to do a study of space, of something that I called at
little tactics of the habitat," his own preferred milieu (1980: 149). that time "heterotopias," those singular spaces to be found in
Foucault's commitment to a spatial problematic and a spatial some given social Spaces whose functions are different or even
praxis can be most easily traced through his interviews with geogra- the opposite of others. The architects worked on this, and at the
phers, architects, and anthropologists. In an interview with a group end of the study someone spoke up - a Sartrean psychologist-
of French geographers in 1976, after a playful evasion ("I must admit who firebombed me, saying that space is reactionary and capi-
I thought you were demanding a place for geography like those talist, but history and becoming are revolutionary. This absurd
teachers who protest when an education reform is proposed, discourse was not at all unusual at the time. Today everyone
because the number of hours of natural science or music is being would be convulsed with laughter at such a pronouncement,
cut"), Foucault readily acknowledged that "Geography acted as the but not then. (1982: 20)
support, the condition of possibility for the passage between a series
of factors I tried to relate," adding "Geography must indeed lie at I reprieve and emphasize this "firebombing" of Foucault, for it cen-
the heart of my concerns." 4 In the same interview he commented on ters our attention around not just the problematic of space but, in
his "obsession" with space: "People have often reproached me for particular, the thick ideological layers that have built up over the
these spatial obsessions, which have indeed been obsessions for me. past century concerning the relationships between Spatiality and
But I think through them I did come to what I had basically been Historicality. I will return again and again to Foucault's creative
looking for: the relations that are possible between power and recasting of this relationship in this and the next chapter.
knowledge" (1980: 69). The power-knowledge link is acknowledged
by every Foucauldian scholar, but for Foucault himself the relation- Other Crossings
ship was embedded in a trialectic of power, knowledge, and space.
The third term should never be forgotten. The spatial feminist and postcolonial critiques discussed earlier have
In another interview, with the anthropologist Paul Rabinow, been deeply influenced by Foucault, much more so than by Lefebvre,
Foucault follows up on this trialectic of space-knowledge-power to who is rarely even mentioned except in some of the early modernist
specifically embrace two other spatial disciplines, Architecture and feminist urban critiques, and then primarily for his critique of every-
Urban Planning.5 It is worth quoting one of his responses in full, for day life in the modern world. For most of the present generation of
it provides another epigrammatic introduction to this chapter: postmodern cultural critics who take space seriously, and, for that
3
Folie et diraison: Histoire de Ia folie a l'lige classique, Paris: Pion, 1961; in English as
matter, most of those who do not, Foucault is a primary catalyst. As
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, New York: such, he draws particularly intense critical attention, both positive
Pantheon, 1965. Foucault's three-volume Histoire de Ia sexualiti (The History of and negative, generating around his writings an ever widening swirl
Sexuality) has been translated by R. Hurley as I: An Introduction, New York: of publications and treatises ranging from inspirational puffery to
Pantheon, 1978; II: The Use of Pleasure, New York: Pantheon, 1985; and III: The Care of
the Self, New York: Pantheon, 1985. aggressive dismissal. Whatever one's position on his achievement,
4
"Questions on Geography," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other however, every contemporary discourse and debate on postmodern
Writings, 1972-1977, tr. C. Gordon, New York: Pantheon, 1980: 63-77. The quote culture, and I will add on the conceptualization of Thirdspace, must
cited appears on the last page. The original interview was published as "Questions a
Michel Foucault sur Ia giographie," in the first issue of the radical geography journal, at one time or another pass through Foucault.
Hirodote (a name claiming Herodotus, usually considered one of the first critical his- In his Geographical Imaginations (1994), Derek Gregory provides an
torians, as the first radical geographer), 1 (January-March 1976), 71-85. Subsequent extraordinarily comprehensive tour of Foucault's filiations into
issues of Hirodote contained questions from Foucault to the geographers, "Des ques-
tions de Michel Foucault aHirodote (July-September 1976), 9-10; and the responses to
almost every nook and cranny of contemporary critical discourse.
them (April-June 1977), 7-30. Although there is no special section of the book devoted to Foucault,
5
Paul Rabinow, "Space, Knowledge, and Power. Interview: Michel Foucault," he appears as a reference point on nearly every page of Gregory's
Skyline (March 1982), 16-20; also in Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader, New York: labyrinthine "Chinese Encyclopedia" of geographical thinking.
Pantheon, 1984, 239-56. The interview in Skyline was preceded by a short essay by
Gwendolyn Wright and Paul Rabinow, "Spatialization of Power: A Discussion of Foucault is introduced centrally, for example, to weave together the
the Work of Michel Foucault," 1982: 14-15. first chapter, "Geography and the World-as-exhibition," a heady
gambol through the powers of visualization and the disciplinary his "quite contrary ability to deliberately make strange our other-
borderlands between geography and sociology, anthropology, and wise familiar fictions of the past, and in so doing to raise urgent and
economics. unsettling questions about the construction of subjectivities and dif-
ferences that escape these textualities" (1994: 150). Foucault's hetero-
Foucault seems to suggest that a dispersed and anonymous sys- topias - as "marginal sites of modernity, constantly threatening to
tem of spatial sciences emerged in the eighteenth century - disrupt its closures and certainties" (1994: 151) - are then used to
quite apart from the "bibliographic dinosaurs" that haunt the introduce the next section, on "Postmodern cartographies and spa-
pages of the usual histories of geography - as part of a general- tialities," a trip that ultimately takes us to Fredric Jameson and the
ized medico-administrative system of knowledge that was Bonaventure Hotel (sites to which we will return, with Gregory, in
deeply implicated in the formation of a disciplinary society of chapter 7).
surveillance, regulation, and control. Its characteristic figure is Foucault is foregrounded again in Gregory's exceptional excursion
the Panopticon, from which Foucault observes: into the postcolonial literatures, especially in conjunction with his
"Our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under multi-sided presentation of the work of Gayatri Spivak I condense
the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the his treatment of Spivak but try to retain the shifting quality of the
great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, Gregorian critique in the following excerpts:
concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication
are the supports of an accumulation and centralization of In her later essays Spivak shows an acute sensitivity to the terri-
knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it toriality (or more generally, the spatiality) of subject-construc-
is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, tion.... Following Foucault ... one might see this as charting
repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the indi- what he called "the insurrection of subjugated knowledges."
vidual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole tech- But Spivak is plainly interested in mapping more than the con-
nique of forces and bodies." (1994: 62-3) tours of so many local knowledges- and here the term is again
Foucault's ... -because she wants to identify what could be
Gregory sums up the Foucauldian view of geography's disciplinary called (and perhaps should be called) a "global localism," the
history - and, I would add, Foucault's particular envisioning of universalizing claim of Eurocentrism. . . . [I]t is, in fact,
Thirdspace - in a brief passage that cracks open the old stories of Foucault's problematic that is a special concern, and when she
Geography's past to the more contemporary spatial critiques of urges the realization of "space-specific subject-production" -
Mark Poster, Donna Haraway, William Gibson, Giovanni Vattimo, and the phrase is hers, not mine - she is drawing attention to
and Jean Baudrillard. the European provenance of postructuralism....
She explains what she means in a brief but revealing critique
The construction of this discursive triangle between power, of Foucault. ... One of Foucault's most imaginative contribu-
knowledge, and spatiality effected a colonization of the life- tions has been his critique of the repressive hypothesis, and his
world in which "space" was given both metaphorical and mate- (contrary) claim that power is productive, constitutively
rial resonance: as Foucault declared, "Space is fundamental in involved in the double process of assujettissement: subjection
any exercise of power." (1994: 63) and "subjectification." But Foucault concedes that his attempts
to elucidate the productive capacities of power have had
Gregory then moves with Foucault along "a trans-disciplinary voy- recourse to "the metaphor of the point which progressively irra-
age into 'deep space'" that takes us into the next chapter, diates its surroundings." Spivak's concern is that, without great
"Geography and the Cartographic Anxiety," a stunning 135-page care, "that radiating point, animating an affectively heliocentric
tour de force into the post-prefixation of the geographical imagina- discourse, fills the empty place of the agent with the historical
tion. After moving through the landscapes of the new cultural sun of theory, the Subject of Europe (my emphasis). In her view,
Geography (represented by the Kandy of James Duncan) and the such a possibility is ever-present in the architecture of
thick ethnographies of Clifford Geertz's Balinese cockfights, which Foucault's project. "Foucault is a brilliant thinker of power-in-
aim to make the strange and exotic familiar and textually inter- spacing," she declares, but he tacitly confines those spaces to
pretable, Gregory asks us to "think for a moment of Foucault," and particular maps. "The awareness of the topographical
inscription of imperialism does not inform his presupposi- seems to have overlooked. This connection moves us back again to
tions," and in consequence his "self-contained version of the the African-American cultural critique and helps to guide our
West ... [ignores] its production by the imperial project." upcoming journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined
Revealed here, with great clarity, is Spivak's ability to posi- places.
tion herself in an ambivalent relation to the theoretical method To begin, consider Cornel West's comments on Foucault in "The
that is being deployed and to use that position, as Young says, Dilemma of the Black Intellectual," another chapter in his and bell
"so as to disconcert and disorient the reader from the familiar hooks's Breaking Bread? West passes through three particularly
politico-theoretical structures which it seems to promise" ... attractive "models" for the activist black intellectual: as Humanist
[But], in a close reading of Foucault's The Order of Things (the Bourgeois Model); as Revolutionary (the Marxist Model); and as
Bhabha ... argued that the colonial and postcolonial are indeed Postmodern Skeptic (the Foucauldian Model). On the latter he
present in the margins of the closing essay, and he concludes writes:
that this implies and imposes the need to reinscribe Foucault's
perspective ... "in the supplementary spaces of the colonial and The Foucaultian [sic] model and project are attractive to Black
slave world." (1994: 190-3) intellectuals primarily because they speak to the Black post-
modern predicament, defined by the rampant xenophobia of
One final quote from Gregory on Foucault is particularly useful in bourgeois humanism predominant in the whole academy, the
moving us forward. It pops up in chapter 6, a lengthy critical review waning attraction to orthodox reductionist and scientific ver-
of my Postmodern Geographies, along with a companion quote from sions of Marxism, and the need for reconceptualization regard-
Donald Lowe's History of Bourgeois Perception. 6 From Foucault: ing the specificity and complexity of Afro-American
oppression. Foucault's deep anti-bourgeois sentiments, explicit
post-Marxist convictions, and profound preoccupations with
"Metaphorizing the transformation of discourse in a vocabulary
of time necessarily leads to the utilization of the model of indi- those viewed as radically "other" by dominant discourses and
vidual consciousness with its intrinsic temporality. traditions are quite seductive for politicized Black intellectuals
Endeavoring on the other hand to decipher discourse through wary of antiquated panaceas for Black liberation. . . . The
the use of spatial, strategic metaphors enables one to grasp pre- Foucaultian model promotes a leftist form of postmodern skep-
cisely the points at which discourses are transformed in, ticism; that is, it encourages an intense and incessant interroga-
through and on the basis of relations of power." tion of power-laden discourses in the service of neither
(1994: 261; from Foucault, 1980: 69-70) restoration, reformation, nor revolution, but rather of
revolt. (hooks and West, 1991: 142-3)
From Lowe: West states that black intellectuals can learn much from each of these
models but, learning from the Postmodern Skeptic, he argues that no
"In bourgeois society, development-in-time despatialized histo- one of them should be uncritically adopted, especially since each
riography. With the extension of the historical landscape, time fails to speak to the "uniqueness" of the Black cultural predicament.
now possessed a depth and diversity which it previously Instead he argues for an Insurgency Model, for the black intellectual
lacked .... [B]ourgeois society discovered the concept of histori- as Critical Organic Catalyst, drawing upon "the Black Christian tra-
cism." (1994: 262; from Lowe, 1982: 43) dition of preachment," the "Black musical tradition of performance,"
and the "kinetic orality and emotional physicality, the rhythmic syn-
There are many more passages to mine from Geographical copation, the protean improvisation, and the religious, rhetorical,
Imaginations on Foucault's infiltration of contemporary cultural criti- and antiphonal elements of Afro-American life" (1991: 136, 144).
cism and critical theory. At this point, however, I will venture briefly I cite West's observations both as an invitation to learn from
into one corner of the Foucauldian world of influence that Gregory Foucault and as a warning against the uncritical adaptation of any
7
6
Donald Lowe, History of Bourgeois Perception, Chicago: University of Chicago Cornel West, "The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual," in hooks and West, Breaking
Press, 1982. Bread, Boston: South End Press, 1991: 131-46.
single conceptualization of Thirdspace, whether from Foucault or

Lefebvre, Spivak or Said, bell hooks or Cornel West. I must also Utopias and Heterotopias
include my own appropriations and representations of their work "Of Other Spaces" begins with a brief history of space that sets space
and ideas, for I too cannot speak to the uniquenesses of your subject against time and against history itself, culminating in an assertion
position; nor can I simply mimic its specific cultural and political that "the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no
identity as if it were my own. But I can attempt to keep Thirdspace doubt a great deal more than with time" (1986: 23).8 I used
open to limitless reinterpretation by following Foucault and his post- Foucault's opening paragraph in the first chapter of Postmodern
modern skepticism; and to seek, with West, the opportunities that Geographies (1989) as a springboard for a critique of a prevailing his-
might arise from this reinterpretation to mobilize and stimulate a toricism in modernist critical thinking, a blinkering of perspective
radical and postmodern politics of (spatial) resistance that redraws that has persistently constrained our ability to think critically about
the boundaries of identity and struggle. space and the spatiality of human life in the same ways we have
learned to think critically about time and the "making of history." I
will return with Foucault to this critique of historicism in the next
In Thirdspace with Michel Foucault chapter, but it is useful now to reflect again the opening words to
"Of Other Spaces."
Just before his death in June 1984, an old batch of lecture notes pre-
pared by Foucault in 1967 was released into the public domain for an The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know,
exhibition in Berlin. These notes were never reviewed for publication history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of
by Foucault and were not recognized as part of the official body of crisis and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its
his works until their appearance in 1984, under the title "Des Espaces great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation
autres," in the French journal Architecture-Mouvement-Continuite. of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mytho-
They were subsequently published under the title "Of Other Spaces" logical resources in the second principle of thermodynamics.
in the Texts/Contexts section of Diacritics (Spring, 1986) and in the The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space.
architectural journal Lotus in the same year. Still ignored by most We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of jux-
Foucauldian scholars, "Of Other Spaces" provides a rough and taposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of
patchy picture of Foucault's conception of a new approach to space the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experi-
and spatial thinking that he called heterotopology and described in ence of the world is less that of a long life developing through
ways that resemble what is being described here as Thirdspace. time than that of a network that connects points and intersects
One can derive a richer and more detailed picture of Foucault's with its own skein. One could perhaps say that certain ideologi-
version of Thirdspace from the larger body of his works and in a few cal conflicts animating present-day polemics oppose the pious
interviews where he speaks specifically about space and geography. descendants of time and the determined inhabitants of space.
But this is not only beyond what I will try to do here but is a some- Structuralism, or at least that which is grouped under this
what risky venture, for Foucault only rarely addressed the "spatial slightly too general name, is the effort to establish, between ele-
problematic" directly and explicitly in his major writings. Only in ments that could have been connected on a temporal axis, an
"Of Other Spaces" does he, with some fleeting attempt at systematic ensemble of relations that makes them appear as juxtaposed, set
directness, present his particular views about space and, as more off against one another, implicated by each other - that makes
than an aside, about the relations between space and time. them appear, in short, as a sort of configuration. Actually, struc-
There is, of course, another risk in focusing on "Of Other Spaces." turalism does not entail a denial of time; it does involve a cer-
It was never published by Foucault and may be seen as just an early, tain manner of dealing with what we call time and what we call
preliminary sketch that was forgotten and discarded as he moved on history. (1986: 22)
to other projects. I am willing to take that risk and to extract from
"Of Other Spaces" a collection of insights that add significantly to a This epochal foregrounding of space over time, spatiality over his-
practical and theoretical understanding of Thirdspace - and also to toricality, sets the stage and tone for Foucault's ruminations on
what might be called the geohistory of otherness.
8
All quotes and page references are from Diacritics, 1986.
Heterotopologies 157
quantities and qualities and "perhaps thoroughly fantasmic as well."
~'other spaces." It is immediately followed by a "very rough" retrac-
But these analyses of "the space of our primary perception, the space
mg of the "history of space" from the Middle Ages (dominated by
"the space of emplacement," a hierarchic ensemble of places: sacred
?f our dreams and that of our passions," though unquestionably
Important and fundamental, are concerned primarily with "internal
a:r:d prof~ne, protected and open, urban and rural); then, starting
space" rather than what Foucault defines as "external space."
with Gahleo and the 17th century, an "opening up" of this space of
emplacement into an infinitely open space of "extension" rather than
The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in
"localization;" and finally to a contemporary moment when "the
which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs,
site" as a new form of localization has been substituted for extension.
the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a hetero-
Thi~ is an especially crucial point in the lecture, for it swings our
geneous space. In other words, we do not live inside a void
inside which we could place individuals and things. We do no~
attention to a spatiality of sites. "The site is defined by relations of
proximity between points or elements," formally as series, networks,
live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of
or grids (as in computers or traffic systems) or "more concrete" in
light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which
terms of "demography" ("the human site or living space"). Today,
are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimpos-
he co:r:cludes, "space takes for us the form of relations among sites." The
able on one another. (1986: 23)
centerm~ of contemporary spatiality on sites and the spatial relations
among sites (or what might alternatively be called the "situatedness"
I~ his own way, Foucault is setting aside, with appropriate apprecia-
of sites) is a distinctive feature of Foucault's conceptualization of het-
tion, _both th~ "luminous" illusion of transparency that Lefebvre
erotopology. Although less infused with allusions to the production
associated with "conceived space," with representations of space
process, the sites and situations of Foucault take on insights that
that ten~, to s~e_sp~tiali~y entirely ~sa dematerialized mental space;
reflect Lefebvre's critique of everyday life in the modern world and
and the realistic Illusion of opaoty and oversubstantiation, which
his trialectic of the perceived, the conceived, and the lived.
reduc~s spatial reality to empirically definable spatial practices,
Following up on this in-sitedness, Foucault takes us through various
matenal or natural objects, to the geometry of things in themselves.
pathways to understa~ding contemporary spatiality that also strik-
In the context of a sympathetic critique of this "double illusion," as
mgl_y re~emble the tnalectics and thirdings of Lefebvre, although
Lefebvre termed it, Foucault opens his search for "other spaces" and
aga~n without the assertive foregrounding of an explicit political
"o~her_ sites,". espe~ially those that "have the curious property of
project.
bemg m relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to sus-
Foucault first notes that our lives are still governed by "sanctified"
pect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to des-
(mo?ernist?) o_rpositions (e.g. between private and public space,
Ignate, mirror, or reflect." Here is another example of what I have
family and social space, cultural and useful space, leisure and work
called a critical thirding-as-Othering.
space) "nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred." Whereas
The first of these "curious" sites, linked to all others but contradict-
history, he interjects, was detached from the sacred in the 19th cen-
ing the~ as ~ell, ~re utopias, "sites with no real place ... [that] pre-
tury and a certain theoretical desanctification of space occurred after
sent society Itself m a perfected form, or else society turned upside
Galileo,_ :'w~ may still not have reached the point of a practical down ... fundamentally unreal places." More "real" are what
des~nchfication of space." Much remains hidden in our lived spaces,
Foucault defines as heterotopias in a conceptualization that resonates
buned in these "oppositions" that "our institutions and practices
with what might be called th~ micro- or site geography of Thirdspace.
have not yet dared to break down," that we continue to regard as
"simple givens." Capitalism is not mentioned, but its intonations are
There are also, probably in e'l(ery culture, in every civilization,
ther~ i~ the post-Galile?, "space of extension" and in that "menacing
real pl_aces- pla~es that d~ exi~t and that are formed in the very
glaciation of the world Foucault associates with the 19th century's
foundmg of society - which a/re something like counter-sites, a
"great obsession" with history.
kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the
For guidance into the hidden worlds of what Lefebvre would call
other real sites that can be found in the culture, are simultane-
the spaces of representation, Foucault turns to the "monumental
ously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind
work" of Gaston Bachelard (author of The Poetics of Space) and the
are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to
"descriptions" of phenomenologists. They help us to know that we
indicate their location in reality. (1986: 24; emphasis added)
do not live in an empty or homogeneous space, but one filled with
Real places that contain all other places, represented, contested,

The Principles of Heterotopology
inverted in all their lived simultaneities and juxtapositions, each
standing clear, "absolutely different from all the sites they reflect In the remainder of his lecture, Foucault attempts "a sort of system-
and speak about" -Foucault too has seen the Aleph of Thirdspace.9 atic description" of heterotopias, or what he says, with some amuse-
Reflecting on the relations between utopias and heterotopias, ment at its faddishness, might be called a symptomatic "reading" of
Foucault raises that favorite device of the surrealists, Lacanian psy- these other, different, spaces. Didactic and anti-didactic at the same
choanalysts, and Althusserian structuralists: the mirror. time, Foucault romps through the "principles" of heterotopology
with unsystematic autobiographical enjoyment and disorderly irre-
The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In
sponsibility. I will let him speak for himself, with little comment or
the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, vir-
critique other than to warn the reader against seeking in these princi-
tual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there,
ples any "ordered surfaces" or axiomatic neatness.
there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visi-
First: heterotopias are found in all cultures, every human group,
bility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am
although they take varied forms and have no absolutely universal
absent: such is the utopia of the mirror ....
model. However, two main categories of heterotopias are identified,
He then adds to this virtual space a (more?) material reality: one of "crisis" and the other of "deviation." Whether these cover all
heterotopias is left unclear.
But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in real-
The crisis heterotopias are associated with "so-called primitive
ity, where it exerts a sort of counteraction to the position that I
societies" and are reserved for individuals who, with respect to the
occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence
society and human environment in which they live, are in a state or
from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting
stage of personal crisis: "adolescents, menstruating women, preg-
from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the
nant women, the elderly, etc." These are privileged or sacred or for-
ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I
bidden places and sites that have been persistently disappearing in
come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward
"our society," although a few remnants can still be found, usually in
myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror
association with a preferred location, outside the home, for, say, an
functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I
individual's first sexual experience. The examples given for young
occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once
men are the 19th-century boarding school and military service, and
absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and
for young women the "honeymoon trip" in trains and hotels- any-
absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass
where other than the still-sanctified homeplace.
through this virtual pointwhichis over there. (1986: 24)
The crisis heterotopia, Foucault claims, is today being rapidly
These brief ontological musings on subjectification, objectification, replaced by the more modern heterotopia of deviation, spaces in
and emplacement open up interesting avenues for discussion of the which those whose behavior is deviant from "required" norms are
existential spatiality of Being and Becoming, presence and absence, placed. These include rest homes and psychiatric hospitals, "and of
the inside and the outside. But I shall leave these ontological excur- course prisons." Tracing the transition from heterotopias of crisis to
sions aside to move on with Foucault's nomadic wanderings those of deviation and exploring the social and personal meaning of
through his other spaces. the multiplication of deviant or "carceral" spaces has, of course, been
9
central to nearly all of Foucault's life work. 10
In The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Pantheon,
1971: xv, published soon after the preparation of "Des Espaces autres," Foucault looks
10
to another of Borges's Aleph-like creations, the "Chinese encyclopedia," in which In Madness and Civilization (1967)- note the date- Foucault speaks of the "geogra-
"strange categorizations" of knowledge seemingly shatter "familiar landmarks of phy of haunted places," those institutional sites beyond the pale, outside the spaces
thought." Elsewhere, Foucault refers to Borges's description of the "Library of of civil society, where the "deviant" are emplaced, incarcerated. It is also interesting
Babel," that impossible-to-comprehend "infinite Hexagon" of language and litera- to note that The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception (1973: ix; origi-
ture (Borges, in Ficciones, New York: Grove Press, 1962). The intent in all these nal French publication in 1963) begins with the statement "this book is about space";
Borgesian allusions is to disorder the presumed orderliness of knowledge, "to break while Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977: 141; in French, 1975)
up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to expounds upon the central thesis that "discipline proceeds from the distribution of
tame the wild profusion of existing things." See also Borges's temptingly titled col- individuals in space." For a good overview of Foucault's persistent and insightful
lection, Labyrinths, D. A. Yates and J. E. Irby, eds, New York: Modem Library, 1983, engagement with space, see Chris Philo, "Foucault's Geography," Environment and
first edn 1964. Planning D: Society and Space, 10 (1992), 137-61.
Second: heterotopias can change in function and meaning over fairgrounds, the vacation or leisure village. In a foresighting of a
time, according to the particular "synchrony" of the culture in which more disneyed world, Foucault sees both forms increasingly con-
they are found. The only example given is the cemetery, a "strange verging in compressed, packaged, "invented" environments that
heterotopia" that inspires two paragraphs of locational analysis and seem both to abolish and preserve time and culture, that appear
synchronic genealogy. Until the late 18th century, Foucault notes, somehow to be both temporary and permanent.
cemeteries (with charnel houses, tombstones, mausoleums defining Fifth: heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and
a hierarchy of sites) were placed at the "heart" of the city in or next closing that simultaneously makes them both isolated and penetra-
to the church, and were still deeply associated with sacred resurrec- ble, different from what is usually conceived of as more freely acces-
tion and the immortality of the soul. Later, cemeteries were removed sible public space. Entry and exit are regulated in many different
to the suburbs in a "bourgeois appropriation" aimed at improved ways: through rituals of religious purification (the Muslim ham-
health, with death becoming closely associated with "illness;" and mam) or hygienic cleansing (the Scandinavian sauna); but also
the individualization of the dead, with each family possessing its through more subtle enactments, such as the illusions of freedom
dark resting place in "the other city," located in sites and spaces and openness that hide closure and isolation (the "famous" bed-
specifically designed and designated for the socially Othered. 11 rooms that once existed on "the great farms of Brazil" to welcome
Third: the heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in one real place the uninvited traveler for a night's sleep or the equally "famous"
several different spaces, "several sites that are in themselves incom- American motel rooms "where illicit sex is both absolutely sheltered
patible" or foreign to one another. Here Foucault looks at places and absolutely hidden") and other forms of boundary maintenance
where many different spaces converge and become entangled, jum- and discipline unmentioned by Foucault.
bled together, using as his model the rectangular stage of the theatre Through such forms of spatial regulation the heterotopia takes on
or the cinema screen as well as the oriental garden, the smallest par~ the qualities of human territoriality, with its conscious and subcon-
eel of the world that has, since antiquity, been designed to represent scious surveillance of presence and absence, entry and exit; its
the terrestrial totality. Foucault compares the oriental garden with demarcation of behaviors and boundaries; its protective yet selec-
the carpet or rug: "the garden is a rug onto which the whole world tively enabling definition of what is the inside and the outside and
comes to enact its symbolic perfection, and the rug is a sort of garden who may partake of the inherent pleasures. Although not mentioned
that can move across space." These little Alephs were modernized explicitly in "Of Other Spaces," implicit in this heterotopian regula-
first into sprawling zoological gardens and later into "other spaces" tion of opening and closing are the workings of power, of what
that contain all places and spaces (with unstated allusions ranging Foucault would later describe as "disciplinary technologies" that
from Parisian arcades to world's fairs and exhibitions and ultimately operate through the social control of space, time, and otherness to
to Disney World). produce a certain kind of "normalization."12
Fourth: heterotopias are typically linked to slices of time, which Last: heterotopias have an even more comprehensive function, in
"for the sake of symmetry" Foucault calls heterochronies. This inter- relation to all the space that remains outside of them. This "exter-
section and phasing of space and time (Thirdspace and Thirdtime?) nal," almost wraparound function is described as unfolding between
allows the heterotopia "to function at full capacity" based on an abil- two extreme poles:
ity to arrive at an "absolute break" with traditional experiences of
time and temporality. In the modern world, many specialized sites Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes
exist to record these crossroads of space and time. "First of all, there every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is parti-
are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time," such as muse- tioned, as still more illusory (perhaps that is the role that was
ums and libraries, where "time never stops building up" in an played by those famous brothels of which we are now
attempt to establish a "general archive," a "place of all times that is deprived). Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space
itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages." that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as
In opposition to these heterotopias are those more fleeting, well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.
transitory, precarious spaces of time. Noted are the festival site, the
12
In Discipline and Punish (1977) and elsewhere, Foucault explores the consummate
heterotopia of surveillance and disciplinary power that is embodied in Bentham's
11
Can we read into this the emergence of more contemporary forms of urban spa- Panopticon prison to illustrate his provocative point, noted earlier, that "discipline
tial segregation and Othering- the ghetto, the barrio, the gang turf? I think so. proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space" (1977: 141).
This latter type would be the heterotopia, not of illusion, but of anthropologists, sociologists, feminists, postcolonial critics) have
compensation, and I wonder if certain colonies have not func- looked to Foucault and/ or Lefebvre for intellectual, philosophical,
tioned in this manner. In certain cases, they have played, on the and political legitimization of either their distinctive and longstand-
level of the general organization of terrestrial space, the role of ing spatial perspectives or their newfound discoveries of the impor-
heterotopias. (1986: 27) tance of space. Such celebratory attachments have played a major
role in the contemporary reassertion of a critical spatial perspective
The colonies mentioned as heterotopias of compensation are first, and geographical imagination throughout all of the human sciences.
the Puritan societies of 17th-century America ("absolutely perfect As a further elaboration on the meanings of Thirdspace, however, I
other places"); and then, in a more elaborate exultation, the "mar- want to suggest that these celebrations have missed the central point
velous, absolutely regulated colonies in which human perfection that Lefebvre and Foucault were making in their different yet similar
was effectively achieved:" the Jesuit villages of Paraguay and else- conceptualizations of spatiality: that the assertion of an alternative envi-
where in South America. Foucault ends his lecture with an exem- sioning of spatiality (as illustrated in the heterotopologies of Foucault, the
plary tribute to the boat, the "heterotopia par excellence." The boat is trialectics and thirdings of Lefebvre, the marginality and radical openness of
a place without a place, a floating piece of space that exists by itself bell hooks, the hybridities of Homi Bhabha) directly challenges (and is
yet is the greatest reserve of the footloose imagination: "given over intended to challengingly deconstruct) all conventional modes of spatial
to the infinity of the sea," floating from port to port, tack to tack, thinking. They are not just "other spaces" to be added on to the geo-
brothel to brothel, "as far as the colonies in search of the most pre- graphical imagination, they are also "other than" the established
cious treasures they conceal in their gardens." "In civilizations with- ways of thinking spatially. They are meant to detonate, to decon-
out boats," Foucault concludes, "dreams dry up, espionage takes the struct, not to be comfortably poured back into old containers.
place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." This intentional disordering and disruption of the geographical
imaginations and spatial sciences and philosophies that have
The Heterotopology of Thirdspace evolved to the present is a necessary first step en route to under-
standing Thirdspace. Without this recognition of the constraints and
Foucault's heterotopologies are frustratingly incomplete, inconsis- illusions of conventional spatial discourses, the meanings of
tent, incoherent. They seem narrowly focused on peculiar microgeo- Thirdspace cannot be comprehended and the works of Foucault and
graphies, nearsighted and near-sited, deviant and deviously the others become little more than a self-nourishing smorgasbord for
apolitical. Yet they are also the marvelous incunabula of another spatial thinkers who see nothing wrong with their taken-for-granted
fruitful journey into Thirdspace, into the spaces that difference perspectives. Because they have been so deeply socialized and disci-
makes, into the geohistories of otherness. Are they similar or are plined to think spatially in particular ways, such fields as Geography
they different from the Thirdspace of Lefebvre, bell hooks or Homi and Architecture - often singled out as "privileged" viewpoints in
Bhabha? The answer, to both questions, is yes. And it is this inten- the postmodern literature - may find it more difficult to enter and
tional ambiguity that keeps Thirdspace open and inclusive rather explore Thirdspace than others less traditionally constrained and
than confined and securely bounded by authoritative protocols. spatially focused.
In "Of Other Spaces" is encapsuled the sites of Foucault's unend-
ing engagement with spatiality, with a fundamentally spatial prob-
lematic of knowledge and power. In so many ways, space was as
central to Foucault as it was to Lefebvre, the former inflecting pri-
marily through the nexus of power what the latter persistently
parsed through the meanings of social production. They both also
shared another parallel positioning that has been obscured in the
interpretations of even their most fervent followers, and it is to this
peculiar obfuscation that I wish to devote a few closing (and open-
ing) remarks.
In recent years, many in the most spatial disciplines (Geography,
Architecture, Urban Studies) and others (social theorists, historians,
The Spatial Critique of Historicism 165
displacements, mutual interactions, and their links with the spatial

practice of the particular society or mode of production under
consideration.
(Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 1991a: 42)
6
A New Introduction
Re-Presenting the Spatial A general critique of "hegemonic historiography" and Eurocentric
Critique of Historicism historicism has been central to the postcolonial discourse, and with a
few postcolonial critics such as Spivak and Said the critique became
specifically attached to unsilencing the hidden importance of real-
and-imagined geographies and spatialities. As noted by Dick
Hebdige, a similar space-opening critique occurred within the
broader realms of cultural studies, creating an often explicitly post-
modern discourse that committed itself to the belief that, at least in
the contemporary world, it is space more than time that "hides con-
sequences" from us, that provides the most revealing critical per-
spective for. making practical and theoretical sense of the present.
Historicism works on the new and the different to diminish newness
This interpretive privileging of space over time in contemporary
and mitigate difference.... The new is made comfortable by being cultural criticism has many sources. The phrase about hiding conse-
made familiar. quences, for example, comes from the English radical critic of art and
(Rosalind Krause, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," in visual representation, John Berger, whose work, as much as anyone's
Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic, 1983: 31) since Walter Benjamin, deserves to be described as infused with the
"trialectics of seeing." 1 With great constancy over the past three
A growing skepticism concerning older explanatory models based in
decades, Berger has infiltrated his cultural criticism, novel-writing,
history has led to renewed interest in the relatively neglected, "under-
theorized" dimension of space .... It has become less and less com- poetry, photography, and other "ways of seeing" with the triadic
mon in social and cultural theory for space to be represented as interplay of spatiality, historicality, and sociality. In politicizing the
neutral, continuous, transparent or for critics to oppose "dead ... fixed "look of things," however, Berger strategically tilts his trialectics of
. . . undialectical ... immobile" space against the "richness, fecundity, seeing to focus on the particular importance of space and spatiality .
life, dialectics" of time, conceived as the privileged medium for the In an essay on modern portrait painting, Berger took a sideward
transmission of the "messages" of history. [viz. Foucault, 1980] glance to speak about the crisis of the modern novel, a crisis which
Instead spatial relations are seen to be no less complex and contradic- he associated with a dramatic change in the "mode of narration." It
tory than historical processes, and space itself refigured as inhabited is no longer possible, he argued, to tell a straight story sequentially
and heterogeneous, as a moving cluster of points of intersection for unfolding in time, for today we are too aware of what continually
manifold axes of power which cannot be reduced to a unified plane or cuts across the storyline laterally, of the "simultaneity and extension
organized into a single narrative.
of events and possibilities." He then states:
(Dick Hebdige, "Subjects in Space," inN ew Formations,
11, 1990: vi-vii) There are many reasons why this should be so: the range of
If this distinction [between Representations of Space and Spaces of modern means of communications: the scale of modern power:
Representation] were generally applied, we should have to look at
1
history itself in a new light. We should have to study not only the his- John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London and Harmondsworth: BBC and Penguin
tory of space, but also the history of representations, along with that Books, 1972; The Look of Things, New York: Viking, 1974; About Looking, New York:
Pantheon, 1980; And Our Faces, My Heart, as Brief as Photos, New York: Pantheon,
of their relationships - with each other, with practice, and with 1984. My description of Berger enlarges on the excellent book on Walter Benjamin
ideology. History would have to take in not only the genesis of these by Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project,
spaces but also, and especially, their interconnections, distortions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
166 Discovering Thirdspace The Spatial Critique of Historicism 167
the degree of personal political responsibility that must be 19th-century obsession with history: "with its themes of develop-
accepted for events all over the world: the fact that the world ment and of suspension, of crisis and cycle ... of the ever-accumulat-
has become indivisible; the unevenness of economic developing past ... and the menacing glaciation of the world." Out of this
ment within that world; the scale of exploitation. All these play infatuation with evolution, revolution, development, and the "great
a part. Prophecy now involves a geographical rather than his- transformation" from traditional to modern societies unfolding in
torical projection; it is space not time that hides consequences the spread of industrial capitalism came a deep historicization of
from us. . . . Any contemporary narrative which ignores the critical consciousness that permeated all the "grand houses" of
urgency of this dimension is incomplete and acquires the over- Western social and cultural theory and philosophy by the end of the
simplified character of a fable. (1974: 40) "long" 19th century (1789-1914).
Of particular importance was the emergence over this long cen-
Within the American tradition of critical cultural studies, the most tury of a new division of labor in the practice of modern historiogra-
powerful voice proclaiming a similar ascendency of the spatial has phy, built around a split between "idiographic" and "nomothetic"
been that of Fredric Jameson. Influenced by Lefebvre's "conception approaches. A specialized discipline of "History proper" defined
of space as the fundamental category of politics and of the dialectic itself increasingly around the accurate and detailed description and
itself," Jameson inflected his self-acknowledged historicism to recog- interpretation of particular events, backed by a distinctive historio-
nize the postmodern "weakening of historicity" and the concomitant graphical research method designed above all for textual objectivity
rise of an effulgent spatial problematic in his well-known article, and empirical accuracy. Within this now capitalized and institution-
"Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" (1984). alized modern discipline of "History," a particular form of histori-
He stated emphatically that "we cannot return to aesthetic practices cism was embraced, internalized, and almost intrinsically taken for
elaborated on the basis of historical situations and dilemmas which granted. After all, wielding the sophisticated objectivity and
are no longer ours," to which he added that "a model of political cul- interpretive power of the modernized historical imagination was the
ture appropriate to our own situation will necessarily have to raise designated (and unquestionable) task of the proper professional
spatial issues as its fundamental organizing concern." 2 As he would historian.
later elaborate in a book carrying the same title, "our daily life, our In contrast, a more theoretically ambitious, generalization-seeking,
psychic experience, our cultural languages are today dominated by and transdisciplinary "philosophy of history" also took shape at the
categories of space rather than by categories of time." same time around various grand figures of continental European
What is missing from the works of Berger and Jameson, and also critical philosophy. This more nomothetic approach to history, pre-
from the assertive spatiality of Lefebvre and so many others, is a sumed to be following ancient traditions, deeply affected two other
deeper critique of historicism's inhibiting hold on the critical spatial 19th-century developments: the formation of the specialized social
imagination. It may be true that, in the postmodern world of today, sciences (Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Psychology,
space more than time hides consequences from us and geographical Anthropology, etc.) and the emergence of scientific socialism,
issues are more fundamental in contemporary politics and daily life primarily around the assertively historical materialism of Marx and
than historical ones. But cloaking these observations and assertions Engels. This enabled the critical historical imagination, and along
is a residual historicism that continues to constitute and historicize with it an almost presuppositional leaning toward many different
the new spatial critique along traditional lines, smothering it with forms of historicism, to diffuse throughout the human sciences and
unselfconscious historical (mis)understanding. into most critical and theoretical interpretations of society and
For the most forceful and direct critique of the genealogy and con- sociality.
temporary persistence of this particular form of space-blinkering his- Prior to this 19th-century division, history and geography were
toricism, one must turn again to Foucault. The outlines of his almost inextricably connected. I would even go as far as to suggest
explicitly spatial critique of historicism have already been drawn. It that there were no "pure" historians or geographers prior to 1800.
began with Foucault's recognition, in "Of Other Spaces," of the The labelings of Herodotus or Eratosthenes, or even Kant and Hegel,
as true historian or geographer are figments of 20th-century discipli-
2
Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New nary and disciplined imaginations seeking historical roots and legiti-
Left Review 146 (1984), 88-9. The same title was used for a subsequent book by macy. If any of these eminent figures were to be asked, "are you a
Jameson, Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. historian or a geographer?", I strongly suspect the answer would be
168 Discovering Th irdspace The Spatial Critique of Historicism 169
"both/and also." After 1900, however, History and Geography occu- ical sciences, had and continues to have its own respected historians,
pied very separate intellectual niches. The seeds of this separation very few have recognized a need for resident geographers to explore
may have been planted by Kant in his identification of time and the substantive and conceptual significance of spatiality and/ or
space, history and geography, as generic ways of thinking, all- nature within the disciplinary fold.
encompassing and synthesizing schemata for understanding every- In a closely related development, the city and urbanism became
thing in the empirical world. The historical and geographical peripheralized as important (nomothetic) subjects in the philosophy
imaginations together thus filled, as Kant put it, "the entire circum- of history, in the mainstreams of historical materialism, and in the
ference of our perception." In contrast, the "substantive" and more evolution of Western social theory. The city and the specificities of
analytical disciplines were set in more specialized compartments of urban life became increasingly conceptualized as mere background
knowledge formation. or container for the dynamics of human and societal development,
Something happened in the late 19th century to reconstitute the happenstantial settings that had some influence on history and soci-
more spatia-temporally balanced Kantian inheritance. In each of the ety but only by coincidence and/ or incidental reflection, not by any
three major realms of socialist, idealist, and empiricist thought (often inherent social or historical qualities that made the spatialities of
attached most closely with, respectively, French, German, and social life important subjects for study in themselves. Much more
British intellectual traditions), putting phenomena in a temporal important were the general and generalizable social processes, social
sequence (Kant's nacheinander) somehow came to be seen as more relations, and social subjectivities that could be abstracted from the
significant and critically revealing than putting them beside or next particularities of specific times and places. 3
to each other in a spatial configuration (Kant's nebeneinander). Time The recent development of just such a transdisciplinary philo-
and History thus absconded with the dynamics of human and soci- sophy (or metaphilosophy) of geography, spatiality, and critical
etal development- agency, evolution, revolution, change, modern- urbanism is a recurrent theme in Thirdspace and may, in retrospect,
ization, biography, the entire ontological storyline of the "becoming" be one of the most important philosophical and intellectual develop-
of being and sociality -while the empirical dead weight of space and ments of the 20th century. But however this spatial turn is eventually
geography was shuttled into the background as extra-social environ- interpreted, it is useful to go back again with Foucault to that critical
ment, a stage for the real action of making history. turning-point in the 19th century and to see it with him as a key
A new field of Modern Geography also took shape during the element in the emergence of a new modernism that would take hold
same period. Like History, it was deeply influenced by the mainly in the fin de siecle and persist, with only minor modifications, up to
German debates about idiographic and nomothetic approaches to the present.
knowledge. But there were several significant differences. The disci- Foucault noticed a perplexing side effect rooted in the disciplinary
pline of "Geography proper," paralleling History proper, defined origins of History proper and, especially, of the new philosophy of
itself primarily around idiographic descriptions of areal or spatial history. "Did it start with Bergson or before?" he asked, referring to
variations on the surface of the earth (geo-graphy, literally earth- the French philosopher who perhaps more than any other infused
writing). Geography, however, maintained both a physical and a history with transdisciplinary e1an. Why is it that while time was
human-social perspective, while History jettisoned nearly all of its treated as richly filled with life, with agency and collective action
direct concerns with physical and biological processes except as their and social will, with the dynamics of societal development, with
outcomes might possibly affect the course of human events or, more contradictions and crises that carried all human beings along the
broadly, human "society." rhythmic paths of an "ever-accumulating past," space was treated as
But it was what happened outside Geography proper that was something fixed, lifeless, immobile, a mere background or stage for
most revealing. With very few exceptions, a complementary nomo- the human drama, an external and eternal complication not of our
thetic and critical "philosophy of geography" or of human spatiality, own choosing? History was socially produced. Geography was
comparable to the philosophy of history, did not develop until the naively given.
late 20th century. With this much weaker transdisciplinary diffusion
of the geographical imagination, what often passed for a philosophy
3
of geography or a history of geographic thought was little more than This is what made Lefebvre's emphasis on the urban and especially his argument
that social relations become concrete only in their spatialization so bewildering -
an introverted institutional and disciplinary history of interest only and unacceptable- to urbanists, Marxists, historians, sociologists, philosophers, and
to "proper" geographers. While every discipline, including the phys- others.
This peculiar ontological, epistemological, and theoretical back- Many of the post-prefixed critics (Jameson comes immediately to
grounding of space seemed absurd to Foucault, who was always mind) enthusiastically added a spatial emphasis to their writings but
committed to disordering and disrupting disciplinarity wherever he protected their radical historicizing from the most disruptive effects
found it. He reminisced about the "Sartrean psychologist" who "fire- of the spatial critique. And a few critical human geographers and
bombed" him in the 1960s. "Space is reactionary and capitalist," the social theorists, especially those with established historical and/or
critic exclaimed; "history" and "becoming" are revolutionary. cultural leanings (Derek Gregory and Anthony Giddens, for exam-
Making this radical privileging of time over space, historicality over ple), espoused a "historico-geographical materialism," a "new cul-
spatiality, even more absurd for Foucault was his conviction that tural geography," or a "spatio-temporal sociology" that propounded
"the present epoch" was becoming "above all the epoch of space." a balanced integration of spatiality and historicality but either failed
Those who stubbornly adhered to the 19th-century obsession were to achieve this balance, or dialectic, in their writings or, more signifi-
described as the "pious descendants of time," and their pieties, if cantly, failed to see the fundamental ontological and epistemological
expressed today, he thought, would convulse us all with laughter. problems involved in combining the historical and spatial imagina-
It is important to emphasize, however, that Foucault did not see tions. Space and geography may have been foregrounded, but an
space as replacing time in some new hegemonic spatiology. Instead, unquestioned historicism lurked offstage to confuse and constrain
he saw as necessary the breakdown/ deconstruction of a space-blink- the spatialization of historical discourse.
ered historicism and the reconstitution of an-Other history and histo- Before turning to a few illustrations of how the spatial critique of
riography that revolved around the trialectic of space/ historicism was either dissipated in confusion or disregarded
knowledge/power, with some variant of structuralism playing a key entirely, it may be useful to state clearly what the spatial critique is
role in rethinking "what we call time and what we call history." To not. First of all, it is not an anti-history, an intemperate rejection of
affirm this trialectic, he proclaimed that "a whole history remains to critical historiography or the emancipatory powers of the historical
be written of spaces - which would at the same time be the history of imagination. Rather than anti-history, it can best be described as an
powers (both these terms in the plural)- from the great strategies of attempt to restore the ontological trialectic of sociality-historicality-
geopolitics to the little tactics of the habitat" (1980: 149). For spatiality, with all three operating together at full throttle at every
Foucault, the "other" history was geohistory, an inseparable combina- level of knowledge formation. Every history that is not merely a
tion of heterotopologies and heterochronies that explicitly focused chronicle or a fable must presume to be intrinsically spatial, to be
on the spatio-temporal interpretation of the power-knowledge rela- about spatiality, in much the same way that history is presumed to
tion. be intrinsically social, about the sociality of human life. But while the
The spatialization of time and history did not occur as Foucault parenthetical (social) is normally taken for granted by historians, the
(and Lefebvre) presumed it would. A vigorous and significantly parenthetical (spatial) must be insistently asserted - as geohistory or
feminist postmodernist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critique spatia-temporality, never history or temporality alone - as a
was waged against "hegemonic historiography" to expose all its consciousness-raising aide-memoire.
silencings, including the critical importance of space. But the explic- The spatial critique should also not be construed as an assertion of
itly spatial critique of historicism was blunted in several different a deterministic spatialism or a hegemonic new form of critical think-
ways. Historians sympathetic to the cultural critiques of historiogra- ing, even if we accept the epochal arguments made by Foucault,
phy embraced attractive ideas from cultural studies and postmod- Berger, and others about the history and geography of the present.
ernism but either, like Hayden White, ignored the spatial critique or Any privileging of spatiality - or of Thirdspace - has to be under-
worked to construct a "new historicism" that was equally oblivious stood as temporary, a strategic foregrounding of the weakest part of
to the contemporary retheorization of space. 4 As Rosalind Krause the ontological triad designed to restore a more balanced trialectic. It
notes in the epigraph to this chapter, the constant aim of the acade- must be remembered, therefore, that every geography, every journey
mic historicist is to work on "the new and the different" to make into real-and-imagined Thirdspaces, is also filled with historicality
them fit the familiarly historical and hence to avoid any necessity to and sociality, with historica! and social as well as spatial "determina-
think differently about the past, the present, and the future. tions." To say that space today provides a more revealing critical
4
perspective than time is thus not a statement of eternal hegemony
For a particularly glaring example, see Brook Thomas, The New Historicism,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991; especially chapter 2, "The New but of strategic sensibility. History and critical historiography con-
Historicism in a Postmodem Age." tinue to be of central importance in making sense of the contempo-
rary world, especially when they are radically open to "other" criti- were significant, earlier attempts at something similar in the writings
cal perspectives. of Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Baudelaire, the surrealists,
I must also add that all the problems associated with historicism Kracauer, Simmel, and especially Walter Benjamin.6 To move for-
are not the fault of historians or philosophers of history alone. They ward the present narrative, I will briefly address only the last-men-
can be found in nearly every department of the intellectual division tioned of these significant historical sources.
of labor, including those labeled postmodernist or those occupied by Benjamin was particularly concerned with the alluring and illusive
the traditional spatial disciplines. They can probably be found in my "narcotic of the narrative," the discursive and non-discursive con-
own discourse and, if Derek Gregory is correct, they weave their straints imposed by narrativity on the writing as well as the making
way through all of Lefebvre's writings. A historicism that limits the of history. He saw this addiction to the narrative form, with its com-
scope of critical spatial thinking has not disappeared, Foucault's pulsion toward linear, sequential, progressive, homogeniz_ing con-
expectations notwithstanding. It remains even today stubbornly ceptions of history, as requiring a withdrawal strategy that mvolv~d
transdisciplinary. . "blasting" the embedded historical subject out of its temporal matnx
Finally, I must explain why the spatialization of ~story or of di~ and into a more visual, imagistic, and spatial contextualization.
course or of critical thinking is not simply a declarative matter, nor IS Derek Gregory, in Geographical Imaginations, incisively captures
it enough just to add spatial metaphors, geographical descriptions, Benjamin's spatializing blast.
and a few good maps while intoning that "geography matters" and
"space makes a difference." Spatialization r~quires mor~ than such Benjamin sought to interrupt this process [of homogenizing his-
incidental recognition and declarative commitment. And It must also tory through narrativity] by calling into question its endless
go beyond the "additive" mode that characterizes, for example, the suppression of difference beneath repetition. What was distinc-
effusively geographical historiography of Fernand Braude! a~d the tive about his attempt to do so was that it went beyond disclo-
Annales school, often perceived as being about as geographical as sure of the logic of capital to assault the modalities of
historians can get. representation. A concern with what Wolin [1982: 100] calls the
The Braudelian model is much better than space-blinkered histori- "image-character" of truth became a vital moment in
cism, but such "spatialization by adjacency" 5 renders spatiality rela- Benjamin's work ... "for in this way he sought to confer equal
tively unproblematic and merely supplemental. Spatiality and rank to the spatial aspect of truth and thereby do justice to the
human geographies represent no major challenge to the historian's moment of representation that is obscured once truth is viewed
task other than the accumulation of more and more geographical solely as a logical phenomenon." In other words, Benjamin
information and supplementary insights. Moreover, the spatiality effectively "spatialized" time, supplanting the narrative encod-
that is conventionally addressed is either that of an externalized ing of history through a textual practice that disrupted the his-
physical environment frozen into the background of the longue duree toriographical chain in which moments were clipped together
or else an incidental Firstspace tableau of geographical sites and situ- like magnets. (1994: 234)
ations that impinge upon, or perhaps at times deeply influence, his-
torical evi:nements and mentalites. The complex and problematic With Benjamin's blasting in mind, I turn next to Hayden White, one
spatialities of Lefebvre or Foucault, not to mention hooks and of the contemporary world's leading critical historians and a
Bhabha, Anzaldua and Olalquiaga, Spivak and Said, Rose and
Gregory (despite some residual historicism), are rendered essentially 6
If I were more of a traditional historian, I would feel compelled to trace back each
invisible. of these historical sources to unravel their distinctive approaches to the space-time,
Another level of spatialization must be reached for and explored, geography-history dialogue, a project_w~ich, once begur:, would no ?oubt J?USh me
back further in time, through Kant, Le1bmz, Spmoza, Gahleo, Copermcus, V1truvms,
one that critically problematizes the interplay of spatiality and his- Aristotle, Plato, Eratosthenes, and so on. What would severely hinder such an
toricality and sees in this problematic geohistory or spatia-temporal- archeology, however, is the almost complete absence of a second~ry literature that e~plzc
ity the necessity to rethink them together as co-equal modes of itly and perceptively addresses the problematic relation between hzstoncalzty and spatzalzty
presumed to be embedded in these sources. B_efore Lefebvre and Foucault and espe-
representation, empirical inquiry, and (social) theorization. This was cially after the mid-19th century, such questions were rarely ra1sed; and up to the
the project Lefebvre and Foucault initiated in the 1960s, and there present there are still very few attempts to excavate the past debates on t~s arc~ne
problematic. This represents an enormous. challenge to contemporary tnalectlcal
5 scholarship, for it will entail a radical rewntmg and remterpetatlon of the ~1story of
I want to thank Beverley Pitman for suggesting this phrase to me.
philosophy and the philosophy of history, geography, and all the human sc1ences.
Discovering Thirdspace The Spatial Critique of Historicism 175
174
stunning exemplar of the persistence of an "underspatialized" become something more than their mere combination. It creates a
historicism. metahistoricality that is filled with multiplicities, many different
planes of social time, as well as with hidden experiences, undeci-
pherable codings, unexplainable events.
The Persistence of Historicism Yet, for all these parallels and echoes, there is a peculiar blockage
in White's work to exploring the dialectics of spatiality-historicality
Why Loving Maps is Not Enough and the implications of the spatial critique of historicism for critical
historiography and narrative discourse. Take, for example, White's
In such books as Metahistory (1973), The Tropics of Discourse (1978), extensive use of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy of time and
and especially The Content of the Form (1987), Hayden White deve- the narrative. 8 Although Ricoeur's ideas about space and geography
lops an argument about historicality and narrative discourse that so barely budged from the Bergsonian, he filled his approach to narra-
closely parallels my earlier writings on spatiality and critical human tivity with subtly double-coded terms and concepts which, in French
geography that I am tempted to recompose his writings under the and English, resound with ambivalent spatial and temporal mean-
mimetic title Postmodern Historiographies: The Reassertion of ing: plot, emplotment, configuration, context, world, trope, trajec-
Historicality in Contemporary Critical Theory? As a "metahistorian," tory, peripeteia, time-span, story-line. Whereas I would like to believe
White brilliantly exposes both the lasting strengths and the persis- that Ricoeur was aware of the pronounced spatiality of time that
tent weaknesses of the historical imagination through a deconstruc- rings in these terms and concepts, there is almost no spatial content
tion and reconstitution of the narrative form and a rethinking of "the to White's narrative form or tropics of discourse (to use additional
value of narrativity in the representation of reality" and "the politics double-coded terms).
of historical interpretation" (the titles of two essays in The Content of In his calculated embrace of the contemporary postructuralist,
the Form, henceforth COF). postmodernist, and postcolonial literatures, White devotes a chapter
For White, history is about "the real world as it evolves in time," each in COF to Fredric Jameson and his "redemption of the narra-
but as he also notes "it does not matter whether the world is con- tive" and to Michel Foucault's "historiography of anti-humanism."
ceived to be real or only imagined; the manner of making sense of it There are also long discussions here and in Tropics of Discourse of the
is the same." (1978: 98) In this way, White opens historiography and varied structuralisms of Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Piaget, Althusser,
the narrative discourse to "fictionalization," to a poetics of interpre- Derrida, and others. In all this, there is almost no mention of the
tation that draws from literature and literary criticism to represent a forceful spatializations promoted in these literatures. This omission
real world that is always simultaneously real-and-imagined. In his is especially pronounced in the discussions of Jameson and Foucault.
retheorization of narrativity, White dissolves the old dichotomy Foucault's agonistic commentaries on the "intensification of his-
between "realist" and "imagined" or "fictional" narratives, between torical consciousness" in the 19th century are seen by White as fun-
"scientific" and "poetic" historiography, and seeks instead a recom- damentally mistaken. Far from a cause for alarm, this emerging
binant third way of looking at history that returns to narrativity as historicism was for White what Foucault stated it certainly was not:
one of its "enabling assumptions," a commitment that he laterally "an advance in learning, a progressive movement in the history of
attaches in the preface to COF to "cultural critics, Marxist and non- thought caused by the realization of the 'error' contained in the ear-
Marxist alike" and to "a whole cultural movement in the arts, gener- lier conception of knowledge" (1987: 124-5). What was this "error"?
ally gathered under the name postmodernism" (1987: xi). Hinting that it had something to do with a privileging of space,
White also speaks of "lived time" in ways that echo Lefebvre's White argues that "the Classical age had no place for time in its epis-
lived space of representations, suggesting for historicality something teme ... that it had purchased its certitude at the expense of any
very much like the trialectics of spatiality. Lived time (Thirdtime?) awareness of the reality of time, of the finitude of existence." White
transcends the "scientific" historiography of atomistic "events" and thus uses Foucault to explain why time came to be assertively
the poetic and metaphorical representations of historicality to treated as richness, fecundity, life, dialectic, in the 19th century, but
ignores him to accept implicitly the accompanying de-intensification
7
The full titles are Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century
Europe (1973); Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (1978); and The Content 8
of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1987). All three are pub- See Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 3 vols, tr. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988).
lished in Baltimore by Johns Hopkins University Press.
of spatial consciousness, the relegation of space into the background time between two definite points, events, etc .... 2. Time, leisure, or
of history: fixed, dead, undialectical, immobile, quantifiably homo- opportunity for doing something.... 3a. The amount or extent of
geneous: what Marx, ever the historical materialist, would tren- time comprised or contained in a specified period .... b. The amount
chantly describe as the annihilation of space by time. of time already specified or indicated, or otherwise determined ....
Jameson's spatializations are similarly ignored if not miscon- 4. A period or interval of time.
strued. In a sentence which offers abundant opportunities to spatial- Moving on, why is it that White in particular is so oblivious to the
ize, White sees only historicization and the celebration of spatial critique or even to the addable geography that is contextual-
historicism: ized in history? The easiest answer is that White is a historian and,
after all, every cobbler prefers his or her own leather. White's subject
Jameson's tack is to grant that Marxism can never be a finished was narrative discourse and historical representation, certainly not
creed, but always a system in evolution, the vitality of which postmodern geographies or Thirdspace. Geography and spatiality
consists in its capacity to "narrativize" its own development, to are the subjects of other specialized discourses and disciplines, not
"situate" its successive incarnations within the context of their the job of the proper historian. But White's approach to time, history,
formulations, and to uncover the "plot" in which they play their and the narrative is intentionally much more inclusive than such
parts and contribute to the articulation of their unifying "property" reasoning implies. His purpose has been to break open
"theme." (1987: 155) historiography to other perspectives and discourses, to erase the dis-
tinction between disciplinary history and the philosophy of history
"His rule," White adds, "good historicist that he is, is 'contextualize, by developing a metahistory that makes historicality and the narra-
always contextualize."'9 White's spatially unconscious narrative tive form truly transdisciplinary. In such a radically open historical-
reaches its peak shortly after this distorted claim in a comment on ity, there must be other reasons for White's exclusion of the spatial
"the fact that the artwork [referring to the Marxist notion of the para- critique.
dox of art] 'reflects' the conditions of the time and place of its pro- A second possible explanation, not entirely divorced from the first,
duction," but at the same time becomes generalizable beyond its has to do with White's not uncommon envisioning of contemporary
specific contextualization. The first part of the paradox, White casu- historiography and the narrative as being in crisis and under siege
ally adds, means that the production of art and knowledge are there- from nearly all quarters. It must be defended to survive. In such
fore to be regarded as "timebound," ignoring what the postcolonial essays as "The Burden of History" and "The Absurdist Moment in
critics would latch on to with regard to hegemonic historiography, Contemporary Literary Theory," from The Tropics of Discourse, and
that the production of art and knowledge is also placebound, rooted 'The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory"
in the "where" as well as the "when" (1987: 156). (chapter 2 in COF), White seems almost paranoically to line up most
This reflexively conditioned collapsing of space into time is the critics of the narrative form as "time bandits" (my term, pace the
hallmark of historicism's stranglehold on the historical imagination. Monty Python film) determined to push history and historiography
It has pervaded even the best of critical historiography for more than deeper into crisis with their absurdist literary critiques or structural-
a century. Seek it out when you read histories, for it is nearly always ist and poststructuralist narrative-bashing.
there. The problematic spatiality of human life is either swallowed "Certain semiologically oriented literary theorists and philo-
whole into history, without a trace, or it is metaphorized into some- sophers," including Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, and Eco
thing else and then subsumed as context, situation, content, culture, (Said is also peripherally mentioned), are presented as not just view-
community, milieu, environment. So pervasive is this subordination ing the narrative as only one of many more or less useful discursive
of space to time that time's conquest infiltrates the dictionary. codes but as attacking the narrative as "an instrument of ideology ...
Looking up "space" in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, one the very paradigm of ideologizing discourse in general" (1987: 33).
finds the primary definition to be "Denoting time or duration," Braude! and the Annalistes, described as "certain social scientifically
exemplified further as follows: 1. Without article: Lapse or extent of oriented historians," are seen as regarding "narrative historiography
as a nonscientific, even ideological representational strategy, the
9
Ironically, the injunction which Jameson actually uses at the beginning of The extirpation of which was necessary for the transformation of histori-
Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University cal studies into a genuine science" (1987: 31). A special category is
Press, 1981, 9) is "Always historicize" rather than "contextualize." That White cannot
quite tell the difference is telling indeed. set aside for "historians who can be said to belong to no particular
philosophical or methodological persuasion but speak from the

standpoint of the doxa of the profession, as defenders of the craft of Hayden White Meets Henri Lefebvre
historical studies" (1987: 31). They care little about theory or theo- A new opportunity to illustrate further the implications of White's
retical reflection and absolve themselves from the debates in eclectic, occluded spatial vision serendipitously presented itself in a recent
but dangerous, isolation. review by White of Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space, pub-
As for historicism, White conflates the differences between "a prop- lished in the History and Theory section of a special issue of Design
erly historical and a historicist approach to history" with the conven- Book Review. 10 Most of the issue was devoted to the theme of
tional distinctions between idiographic historiography and the more "Orientalism," featuring articles by Edward Said, Barbara
nomothetic philosophy of history. Both these longstanding distinc- Harlow, Janet Abu-Lughod, Michael Watts, and others. The richly
tions "obscure more than they illuminate of the true nature of visual editors of this excellent journal of architecture, urbanism,
historical representation." Every historical representation, White landscape, and design announced White's review on the front
goes on to note, contains most of the elements of what conventional page next to an Escher drawing and playfully enlivened the
theory calls "historicism" (1978: 101-2). Historicism thus becomes as actual text with three pictures captioned: (1) "Anomalous space in
impregnable to attack as the narrative form itself. William Hogarth's print, Perspectival Absurdities, for a 1754 textbook
White valiantly defends his more flexible and open narrative his- (From Art and Illusion)"; (2) "In Saul Silverberg's 1954 drawing for
toriography against any and all presumed attackers. Amidst this tour The New Yorker, a single line changes function and meaning in a
de force, it is no wonder that the spatial critique of historicism, if it series of spaces (From Art and Illusion)"; and (3) "Worm's-eye axono-
was recognized at all by White, was relegated to a minor position of metric of the Nofamily House; Lars Lerup, 1978-82 (From Planned
peripheral peskiness, merely another form of anti-history and anti- Assaults)."
narrativity. Spatiality always remains in its proper place, subservient The review itself is a sincere and occasionally insightful attempt to
to the historicality of social life. This subservient positioning brings capture what White calls Lefebvre's "revisionist-Marxist theory of
up still another way of explaining White's geographical myopia. postindustrial space." But there is a fascinating subtext which
Every good historian, White certainly included, usually considers devours Lefebvre's spatiality into the bowels of time and history.
him/herself to be a good geographer as well (just as every good geo- The challenges to historiography presented by Lefebvre are brought
grapher is also, to some degree, a good historian). With little prod- to the surface of the text, but they are left dangling in the air, with no
ding, the good historian will proudly state "I love maps" and easily real substance or grounding, to be easily swatted away, when the
agree that "geography matters" in history, even that it is somehow time comes, by any good historian. The review demands its own
becoming more important in contemporary historiography. But this critical re-review.
is a geography and a spatiality defined on the historian's own terms The first paragraph carefully locates Lefebvre in time, as "one of
and turt oblivious not only to the new spatial critique of historicism the last representatives of the fading social class of 'intellectuals"'
but to the lively recent developments and restructurings in all the who have witnessed "most of the historically significant events of
spatial disciplines. this century." He is said to write on such "arcane" subjects as
White's writings are symptomatic of the persistence and power of metaphilosophy and "the end of history." His birthdate is noted, but
a fundamentally underspatialized historicism not only in history not his birthplace. That he is French seems enough to contextualize
proper but in all branches of contemporary critical theory. That even him, to put him in his place.
the most far-reaching, open-minded, and imaginative theoretician of Lefebvre is described in the second paragraph as one of the great
history should be blind to the need to spatialize historicality, espe- French interpreters of Marxist thought whose "relentlessly dialecti-
cially given his presentist attachment to cultural self-understanding, cal" social criticism allows Marx to be revised "in the light of chang-
to creative responses to the precise circumstances of our present ing historical circumstances" and not just "limited to consideration
moment (remembering West's phrase), and to the configurative real- of the experience of his time." White next fixes on Lefebvre's "peri-
and-imagined tropics of discourse, is the strongest argument possi- odizations/' tracing over time the rise of what White calls, following
ble for continuing to press the spatial and spatializing critique of La Revolution urbaine (1970) rather than La Production de l'espace (care-
historicism.
10
Hayden White, review of The Production of Space, by Henri Lefebvre, Design Book
Review 29/30 (Summer/Falll993), 90-3.
able distance. Lefebvre's lengthy discussion of the transition from
fully noted as being originally published in 1974), an "urban" mode
"absolute" to "abstract" space, which is both a brilliant exposition on
of production (a phrase nowhere to be found in the book being
the emerging specific geography of capitalism and one of Lefebvre's
reviewed)Y
most historicist moments, is glossed over by White as a shift from
The third paragraph begins promisingly. "Lefebvre views space ~s
"natural" space to that of mathematicians and philosophers, another
a dimension of human practice, which is experienced in so many dif-
example of how "history displays the human capacity to substitute
ferent ways that it resists analysis." At this point the subplot thick-
'culture'- products of its own labor power- for 'nature."' Lefebvre's
ens. Such a view of space, White notes, "resembles that other
"conceptualization of history" as a "sedimentation of diff~rent ~in~s
dimension of human existence- time- similarly difficult to contem-
of socially organized space" is immediately compared with Mikhail
plate without anomaly." He then proceeds to read Lefebvre as a
Bakhtin's conception of the "chronotope"- Bakhtin being one of the
philosopher of history:
most attractive quasi-spatializers of history and the narrative form.
There is no mention of Benjamin.
Yet, according to Lefebvre, space is ultimately more important
Everything builds toward what might seem to be the ultim~te
than time, because it is spatial arrangements that determine the
denouement of Lefebvre's postindustrial-urban-global theory of his-
rhythms and periodicities of time. Indeed, he argues,. space
tory: the increasing irrelevance of "older social systems" and the his-
rather than time provides a basis for the understandmg of
torical past itself. Quoting Lefebvre, White writes:
human history. The notion that the "content" or deep meaning
of history is time or temporality (as Paul Ricoeur, author of
So irrelevant are the older (even early 20th-century) rules of
Time and Narrative, has recently argued) is, in Lefebvre's view, a
political maneuver to the real forces shaping the new social
typically idealist mystification. The fundamental subject matter
space that the older notions of history, historicity, and the deter-
of history is space ... the secret of history's meaning.
minisms associated with these temporal notions lose their mean-
ing.
Rather than refuting this "Marxist ... but also post-Marxist"
position, White kindly but clumsily goes on in the next three
This is indeed a very powerful statement, with significant
paragraphs to assure the reader that Lefebvre is speaking about a
ramifications not only in the spatial critique of historicism but also
very special kind of "social" space, "~he space created by_ human
in every one of the post-prefixed critiques of mo~ernism. It retu~ns
groups in specific locales, using specific mod:s of ~roduchon,_ ~nd
us to the beginning of this chapter, to Rosalmd Krause, Dick
engaging in collective exertions of an economic, ~,oCial, and pol~hcal
Hebdige and John Berger, to the arguments that challenge history's
kind, to achieve purposes more or less human. Is that a sm~ger
lasting hegemony in interpreting the "real forces" that shape our
I hear? A "succession" of these "local" spaces, from "ancient
lives. How does White respond? Not with a vigorous counter-
Egypt, Greece, Rome, the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance,
argument - why bother? - but with a seri:s of asi~es politely
the 18th century, and so on," lead up to the "modern era" where
addressed to his presumed audience of architects, designers, and
"the historical significance of our time" is captured in Lefebvre's
urbanists.
critique of a "new hegemonic social space" that has emerged in
First, White rightly criticizes Lefebvre for his romanticizing of the
the wake of the "urban revolution," a now global space "produced
medieval and Renaissance town, whose organicism and good life
... as a commodity," the only space "we humans can experience or
have always been exaggerated by Lefebvre. But White also
know."
exaggerates Lefebvre's urbanism, imposing on him. the p~o
In paragraph after paragraph White continues to historicize
clamation of a new "urban" mode of production, with
Lefebvre's spatiality, not as part of a dialectic but as a subordinate
"urbanization" as "its process" and an "urbanized" social space "its
duality, thereby always keeping Lefebvre's challenges at a comfort-
product." This leads logically to a summary depiction of the book as
"not a history of the city or of urbanization" but rather "a philoso-
11 phy of the history of the city and urbanization," comparable to the
White describes Lefebvre's dating of this epochal transition, "as disruptive as that
wrought by the transition from agrarian to industr~al society during the 19th c~n key works of Lewis Mumford, which, White notes, are not
tury," to the period after World War II. Lefebvre himself usually dated the begm- mentioned. Historicizing the urbanization of Lefebvre thus seems
ning of this radical change in the relations between society and space to around complete.
1910.
But in the same paragraph there is another opening, a larger pro- tory of radical openness. To make this work, a simple exercise is
ject defined by Lefebvre for which White says "A historical material- helpful: whenever you read or write a sentence that empowers his-
ist consideration of the history of space will provide an answer." In tory, historicality, or the historical narrative, substitute space, spa-
the only lengthy quote from the book, White almost innocently pre- tiality, or geography and think about the consequences.
sents one of Lefebvre's most explosive and challenging assertions,
which I have quoted in chapter 1, that "the social relations of pro-
duction have a social existence to the extent that they have a spatial
existence; they project themselves into space, becoming inscribed
there, and in the process producing the space itself." This provoca-
tive challenge to all traditional modes of theorizing historicality and
sociality, and historical materialism in particular, is reduced by
White to a tired whimper from a fading and now anachronistic intel-
lectual.
"As one can see from a passage such as this," the short penulti-
mate paragraph begins, "Lefebvre's book is an example of what our
British colleagues disparagingly call 'grand theory."' With one swipe
of his pen, White absolves himself from directly dismissing
Lefebvre's work, leaving it all to "our British colleagues," who
I might add probably include the most notoriously historicist
and francophobic critics writing in English. Protected from
having his reading of Lefebvre have any effect whatsoever on
his own thinking, White meekly concludes by obviously straining to
discover something, anything, that might interest those reading his
review.
"I kept asking, what are the practical implications of this revision-
ist-Marxist theory of postindustrial space for anyone having to work
with what are essentially spatial forms and relationships?" What he
finds is simply, but not insignificantly, a weakness in "architectural
and urbanistic criticism" having to do with an improper identifica-
tion of "their object of study, which is space rather than the material
objects and the relations between them that appear to 'inhabit'
space." Lefebvre can help these critics, White offers, "to imagine
'social space' as the possible artwork it might yet become." And so
ends the review.
I have chosen to deconstruct White's historicist tropics of dis-
course not because he is wicked or ignorant, but because he is so
good at what he does. That the editors of the Design Book Review
chose an eminent historian to review this important critical and theo-
retical book about space, rather than an architect, urbanist, or geog-
rapher, is significant in itself, for it illustrates again the subtle
hegemony of critical historiography and historicism even within the
spatial disciplines. It is time for an-Other History to be created, one
that is comfortable with a decentering of the historical imagination
and, to paraphrase Spivak and hooks, works to un-learn its privilege
and behave as if it were part of the margin, in a space-time or geohis-
PART II
INSIDE AND
LOS ANGELES
Remembrances 187
and tried to compress within the exhibition space-time a 200-year

visual geohistory of the present urban scene.
Remembering the events and the particular sites and sights of the
exhibition provides an opportunity to begin grounding Thirdspace
7 in the specificities of the urban, at least as these specificities reverber-
ate through the space-time of Paris and Los Angeles, 1789 to 1989. In
the absence of a written catalogue for the exhibition, I will try to cap-
Remembrances: ture its sites and sights in a present-tensed stroll through my per-
sonal remembrances of things passed ... and things still to come,
A Heterotopology of the adding a few more twists and turns to my original memories. 1
Citadei-LA
Pictured at an Exhibition
The Preliminary Discourse
Leading up to the exhibition's opening was a series of public lectures

that centered on urban evolution and revolution in Paris.
Geography is nothing but history in space .... Geography is not an

James Leith (Queen's University, Canada), "La Bastille and Paris:
immutable thing. It is made, it is remade every day; at each instant, it 1789 to 1989"
is modified by men's [and women's] actions. Dora Weiner (UCLA), "Sacred and Secular Space:
(Elisee Reclus, 1905-8; quoted in Kristin Ross, Transformations of Religious into Medical Buildings, 1789 to
The Emergence of Social Space, 1988: 91) 1820"
Jean Baudrillard (University of Paris IX), "Revolution and the End
The city exists as a series of doubles; it has official and hidden cul- of Utopia"
tures, it is a real place and a site of imagination. Its elaborate network Josef W. Konvitz (Michigan State University), "Spatial Change
of streets, housing, public buildings, transport systems, parks, and and the Centralization of Power: Paris Before and After the
shops is paralleled by a complex of attitudes, habits, customs, Revolution"
expectancies, and hopes that reside in us as urban subjects. We dis-
cover that urban "reality" is not single but multiple, that inside the
This was followed by a Colloquium that introduced the exhibition's
city there is always another city.
(lain Chambers, Popular Culture: central theme.
The Metropolitan Experience, 1986: 183)
Richard Lehan (UCLA), "The City and Literature: Pre-modern
In the Spring of 1989, I helped to organize an exhibition within the Paris and Post-modern Los Angeles, Cities at the End of Time"
spaces of Perloff Hall, then the home of the Graduate School of James Leith, "Planning for the Louvre: A Case for the Longue
Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA, where I have been teach- Duree"
ing for more than two decades. The exhibition was part of a multi- Dolores Hayden (UCLA), "The Power of Place Project: Planning
year celebration on campus of the bicentennial of the French for the Preservation of the Urban History of Los Angeles"
Revolution. Paris followed many of UCLA's organizational initia- 1
What follows is a substantially expanded and revised version of Edward W. Soja,
tives and major events were simultaneously videoscreened at Royce "Heterotopologies: A Remembrance of Other Spaces in the Citadel-LA," Strategies:
Hall, on campus, and at the Arc de Triomphe and other symbolic A Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics 3 (1990), Special Issue: In the City, 6-39. The
sites in the French capital. For our part in this multi-media and cross- journal is a publication of the Strategies Collective of the University of California,
Los Angeles. The first part of this article dealt with Foucault's concept of hetero-
disciplinary extravaganza of global simultaneities, we chose the topology and formed the basis for another expansion and revision that appears as
theme 1789/1989 -Paris/Los Angeles -The City and Historical Change chapter 5 above.
188 Inside and Outside Los Angeles
Edward Soja (UCLA), "Taking Los Angeles Apart: Fragments of a

Postmodern Geography"
Jean Baudrillard, "From Beaubourg to the Arche de la Defense:
Architecture, Urban Space, and the Power of Simulacra: A
Commentary"
Some memories of these discursive events linger on as we move,

along the preferred route, into the exhibition itself.
Getting to Biddy Mason's Place
We enter the building from the courtyard and garden. To the right is
a hallway wall embedded with a great rectangular chunk of Louis
Sullivan's masterful ornamental facade of the old Gage building in
Chicago, donated to the School by Sullivan's family. It is now a per-
manent part of Perloff Hall. Opposite the facade chunk to the left is
the first entry to the more temporary exhibition, a glassed-in display
cabinet containing a mini-exhibit arranged by "The Power of Place,"
the name and restorative aim of a non-profit, design-oriented, mem-
ory preserving organization that was initiated by Dolores Hayden,
one of the speakers at the Colloquium and a leading architectural
historian and spatial feminist. 2
Through photos, maps, and texts, the visual display, curated by
Donna Graves (then assistant director for the project) is a recreation
of Biddy Mason's symbolic Place in the history and geography of
Los Angeles. It is a tribute to the work of Hayden, Graves, artist and
graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, artist Susan King, and
sculptor Betye Saar, who together reshaped an asphalt parking lot
near the famous Bradbury Building into a cruciform pedestrian park
off Broadway with an opening to Spring. It is also a launching pad
for remembering the evolution of Black power and presence in the
urban landscape, and the submergence of this heritage under the
veils of popular imagery and hegemonic urban historiography.
Biddy Mason (1818-91) arrived in Los Angeles as a slave owned
by a Mormon master who had trekked from Mississippi to Utah and
on to Southern California in the turbulent years following the
American conquest and California statehood. With the assistance of
several local Black residents, Biddy and her family were freed in
2
For an introduction to the aims of this organization, see Dolores Hayden, "The
Power of Place: A Proposal for Los Angeles," The Public Historian 10 (1988), 15-18.
More recently, the Biddy Mason project served as the centerpiece for Hayden's new
book, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Cambridge, MA and
London, UK: MIT Press, 1995. See chapters 5 and 6, "The View from Grandma
Mason's Place" and "Rediscovering an African American Homestead," for ela bo-
rated stories of Grandma Mason's life and its artistic simulation in downtown Los
Angeles.
190 Inside and Outside Los Angeles Remembrances 191
January 1856. Ten years later, the first African-American woman to walk-through mews tucked away from the busy streetscape of
own substantial property in the city established her horne at 331 downtown Los Angeles; the second is in the boxed-in mementos and
South Spring Street on the North-South street that would later inscriptions of the display case in Perloff Hall. In both sites and
become the city's prime financial corridor, the "Wall Street of the sights, the successful intentions of The Power of Place to affect the
West." From her horne, Grandma Mason - given the name Grandma real-and-imagined urban scene are recreated and made clear. The
as a token of respect and admiration - practiced as a midwife and actual and the simulated sitings are similarly provocative, not just of
nurse, educator, nurturer, and entrepreneur, a forceful figure memories of Black Los Angeles and the forgotten role of African-
engraining an assertive Black presence in Los Angeles. American women, but also of broader questions having to do with
Among the many emanations from Biddy Mason's horneplace was the intentional preservation of the historicality and spatiality of the
the founding (in 1872) of that most famous of local Black religious city.
institutions, the First African Methodist Episcopal (FAME) church, The restoration of Grandma Mason's Place lies at the crossroads of
originally located at Eighth and Towne, where a plaque today hon- several movements shaping the looks of downtown Los Angeles as
ors Biddy Mason as founder. Over the years, the church would well as other American cities. The Art in Public Places Program, an
become a nurturing ground for many future generations of Black organization linked to the Community Redevelopment Agency
leaders, including longtime mayor, Torn Bradley. Most recently, the (CRA)4 and subsidized from public and private redevelopment
church's power of place was felt around the world during the events sources, has contributed significantly to the dense sprinkling of pub-
of April-May 1992 as the televised site for converging countercur- lic art in downtown LA and provided much of the funding for
rents of political opinion and debates about the future of the burnt Grandma Mason's Place. The now well-established movements to
out city. One particularly memorable televised moment presented preserve the historical and cultural heritage of the city, especially the
the stunned face and stumbling voice of newscaster Ted Koppel as Los Angeles Conservancy, helped to empower the project. And the
he unexpectedly listened to gang leaders from the Crips and Bloods wider struggle for more visible representation of the under-repre-
present their sophisticated plans for rebuilding Los Angeles. "You sented (mainly workers, women, minorities) has given the project its
speak very well," he mumbled in clumsy surprise, evoking many force and direction.
other memories. In contemplating The Power of Place and its projects today, two
There is a long history of placernaking at and around the site of strings of questions come to mind. First: Whose history is to be pre-
Biddy Mason's horne. In 1905, the Tuskegee Institute (forerunner of served in these designs for commemoration? In what places is this
the Urban League) proposed to commemorate Mason with a six- heritage most appropriately encased? What forms shall the memo-
storey building at the horne site designed to house a community cen- ries take? How can choosing a past to preserve help us to construct a
ter to train Black youths to find employment. Various other better future? Does choosing sites also mean choosing sides?
proposals, such as for a Biddy Mason Museum and Community Through preserving urban history, can we improve our understand-
Center, were made by the Black community for the original site of ing of the current geography and political economy of the city- and
the First African Methodist Episcopalian church at Eighth and work better to change it in significantly beneficial ways? And sec-
Towne. All these sites were celebrated in 1976 as part of the wider ond: By redesigning the built environment can we, must we, reinter-
celebrations of the bicentennial of the American Revolution/ and in pret the past and not take it for granted? Given what Foucault called
1988 a spiritual filled ceremony recornrnernorated Mason's grave at the synchrony of culture, is what we construct today destined to be a
the Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. misleading representation of history, a simulation that accrues to
Through the efforts of The Power of Place, Grandma Mason's itself only its own immediate contemporary meaning? Can we ever
positioning in time and space has been rethought as a designated recapture and preserve a historical site when its set of relations to
urban mnemonic, remembered in 1989 in two places at once. The 4
The CRA is a state agency established in 1949 to help redevelop "blighted" areas.
first is concretely close to the original homesite on Spring Street in a After declaring most of downtown Los Angeles blighted, it became the central city's
master planner and heritage preserver-destroyer, the primary referee deciding on
3
For this event, see Donna Mungen, The Life and Times of Biddy Mason: From Slavery what is remembered from the past and what is obliterated. In an ironic juxtaposition
to Wealthy California Landowner, Los Angeles: no publisher, 1976. Also see the pam- of sites, the CRA headquarters is presently located in the Banco Popular building, at
phlet displayed at the exhibition, The Power of Place: Los Angeles, by Dolores Hayden, 354 South Spring Street, just across the way from the Grandma Mason memorial.
Gail Dubrow, and Carolyn Flynn, Graduate School of Architecture and Urban The building, a Beaux Arts tower constructed in 1903, was for many years consid-
Planning, UCLA; and Hayden, 1995. ered the city's finest office building.
other real sites has been erased by time? Would not a deeper under- historical preservation can diminish the real-and-imagined power of
standing of the contemporary dynamics and political economies of lived spaces as I move through the rest of the exhibition.
urban design and development serve us better than recovering the
past in constructing a better future? Is it space more so than time that Remembering the Bastille: 1789-1989
hides consequences from us?
At first sight, it would seem that The Power of Place has appropri- We tum the corner from the glassed case into the building's central
ately responded to both sets of questions. Yet I have a nagging feel- hallway. Here a long illuminated wall guides the viewer along a
ing that something is being missed in this well-intentioned attempt chronological corridor picturing the richly heterotopic site of the
to re-orient urban histories to cultural geographies and popular spa- Place de la Bastille, from its revolutionary storming in 1789 through
tial struggles over gender, race, and ethnicity. Is it the relative the many attempts over the years to reconfigure its symbolic mean-
absence of a more radical perspective on class and the political econ- ing (including pictorial recreations of the papier-mache elephant of
omy of the cityscape? Or is it a blindspot for the countervailing pow- gargantuan proportions that was once set into the Place) to a picture
ers of place to co-opt and oppress rather than reveal or emancipate? of the newly completed Opera House that set off its own stormy con-
Or perhaps it is the unquestioned acceptance that the binary division troversy and symbolic dissonance at the time of the revolutionary
of space into public and private still exists as a "contested terrain" bicentennial. The visual and aural stimulation is intense.
for contemporary struggles in Los Angeles? Each of these points can The photo-narrated walkthrough peaks at a spectacular video-
be argued against The Power of Place, especially as represented in taped presentation auteur-ed by Robert Manaquis, the director of the
Hayden (1995). But something else is more troublesome to me. It has UCLA Bicentennial celebrations and co-organizer with me of the
to do with different ways of looking at places and spaces, at history 1789/1989 urban exhibition. As we look at the Opera House and the
and geography, at the past and the present. And it makes me return video screen, behind us is a huge hanging satellite reproduction of
to the two strings of questions raised in the paragraph above. "Los Angeles- From Space," a semi-permanent fixture in the central
Answers to the first string of questions are typically informed by open enclosure of the building, floating in the so-called "two-storey
an emancipatory sense of the power of history and an emplotment space" where architects hold their juries and crits. It is a heady walk
within a meaningful historical narrative, a sequential archeology or along this bridge of sights, from that translucent moment when the
genealogy, or, as Hayden (1995) describes it, in "storytelling with the 14th-century fortress of the Bastille disappeared brick by brick in the
shapes of time." The past is searched through as a potentional means fervor of revolution, through its many different preservational reap-
of empowering the present. As Hayden quotes Kevin Lynch: pearances and simulations, each selectively trying in various ways to
"Choosing a past helps us to construct a future" (1995: 226). By recapture the past in the confines of the insistent present-day power
recovering and preserving the history of places and spaces, we can of place.
recover and preserve our collective selves much better than if we for- In this present-day, all the memories boggle as a freshly commodi-
get the past and repeat our mistakes and injustices. Here history fied fortress of culture replaces and reconstitutes the historical site of
defines the power of place. the Bastille as one of several spectacular bicentennial emplacements
Answers to the second string lead in a different direction. They are into the space of Paris: the intrusively imposing Arche de la Defense
derived from an emancipatory sense of the cartography and hetero- that Jean Baudrillard examined in his colloquium presentation; the
topology of power, from an emplotment within a meaningful inter- wackily postmodern Pare de la Villette with its planned garden
pretive geography. Here, in a kind of role reversal, the present is designed jointly by Peter Eisenman and Jacques Derrida amidst red
researched both for its insights in reinterpreting the past and for the archi-follies by Bernard Tschoumi; and the Pei-emplaced pyramid
sites from which to act to recontextualize the future. Both can be puncturing the heart of the Louvre, another subject of symposium
described as spatia-temporal perspectives, but the first (and most discussion. 5 Will Paris - or the French Revolution - ever be the
familiar) works primarily to historicize and preserve fixed geogra- same? The question hangs in the air.
phies, while the second (more difficult to grasp) works in the On the video screen, the images provide both immediacy and
opposite direction, to spatialize history and historiography. Too transition, juxtaposing in one place several sights and sites that are
often, the first perspective's power and confidence renders the 5
One also recalls American bicentennial-like intrusions on the urban landscape: the
second invisible. Recalling the discussion in chapter 6, I continue to Statue of Liberty spectaculars in New York City, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles
think about this spatial reductionism and how memory and (three years after its official200th birthday), and more.
themselves incompatible. Nostalgic music plays as the just-seen We arrive now at the
photo-narrative blends into old cinematic representations of the rev- most central place of
olutionary Bastille, complete with a hell-hag Madame Defarge the exhibition, the
mouthing her words as the fortress burns. What we see is a transfor- center of centers, site
mation of historical memory into heroic (and anti-heroic) modernist of many sites, a small
(mainly Hollywood) imagery. Then, as we listen to the fulsome con- gallery located just
temporary debates over the construction of the Opera House and the beyond the video
power plays among its promoters - and see what is happening else- monitor showing
where around the Place- we suddenly begin to realize that even the films of the French
familiar modernist images are themselves being displaced by an Revolution. At the
entirely new set of time-eroding simulacra, forcing the past, against entrance is a spotlit
its will, into the heterochrony of the present. bird of paradise, the
As the videotape ends and prepares itself to begin again, I am City of Los Angeles's
reminded once more of Foucault. "The heterotopia," he wrote, official flower, in a
"begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of vase atop a gray
absolute break with their traditional time." Perhaps this is what has wooden box. The
been happening to the Place de la Bastille and to "other spaces" in flower is doubly
the historical city. The power of place is being first neutralized and appropriate, since the
then inverted. New places of power emerge, writ larger, as the his- time of the exhibition
tory of modernity is forcefully collapsed into contemporary conserv- coincided almost
ative postmodern geographies. To continue interpreting them from exactly with Florea[,
modernist perspectives is to miss the point. the eighth month of
the Revolutionary
(Republican) Calendar, extending from April20 to May 19. From the
The Main Event: Symbolizing the Civic Center 6 temporality of the previous sites we enter present-day Los Angeles
and, at this point, the narrative breaks down into a cluster of revealing
This is the end of art "as we know it." It is the end of the art of emplotments imitating the splintered labyrinth of the city before us.
art history. It is the end of urban art with its dialectical strug-
gles. Today this simulated art takes place in cities that are also Entrancement
doubles of themselves, cities that only exist as nostalgic refer-
ences to the idea of the city and to the ideas of communication Entrancement comes first. To tell you where you have been as well
and social intercourse. These simulated cities are placed around as to introduce you to where you are going is a massive sculptural
the globe more or less exactly where the old cities were, but form that dominates the gallery space and powerfully catches your
they no longer fulfill the function of the old cities. They are no eye. Half of it rises earthily from a billowy base of matted brown
longer centers; they only serve to simulate the phenomenon of butcher paper to the crenellated turrets of a simulated Bastille. The
the center. And within these simulated centers, usually exactly other half sits on top of a slightly cracked bunker of grey concrete
at their very heart, is where this simulated art activity takes upholding the gleaming bronzed-glass towers of a simulated
place, an activity itself nostalgic for the reality of activity in art. Bonaventure Hotel, the symbolic microcosmos of postmodernized
(Peter Halley, "Notes on Nostalgia," in Collected Essays, 1987) Los Angeles. The two sides of the soaring sculpture blend into one
another in brilliantly executed adjacencies that highlight the epochal
transition between crumbling old fortress and resurgent new citadel,
and other transitions as well. With its twinned peaks, it is called the
"Bastaventure." 7
6
Many people helped to put together this portion of the exhibition, but there from 7
the beginning to the end were Taina Rikala and lain Borden. The artful architects of the Basta venture are Ali Barar and James Kaylor.
The twinning is intentional. The Bonaventure Hotel, until recently

owned by the Japanese and struggling with bankruptcy, symbolizes
and simulates the geographical experience of postmodernity just as
the BastiJle and its memorializations symbolize and simulate the his-
torical experience of the French Revolution. Despite the quibbling of
experts on the "true" qualities of the Bonaventure/ Bastille, their
intentional twinning is made clearer when we follow Foucault and
view them together as contemporary heterotopias, evocative
"counter-sites" in which all other (and absolutely different) real sites
within the synchronous culture are "simultaneously represented,
contested, and inverted ."
These specialized Aleph-sites function at full capacity within a
specifically periodized slice of time- and after a break with deeply
entrenched historical traditions. Idiographic historians might not
think the Bastille was that much of a prison for revolutionaries,
noting its use as a restful and relatively luxurious place of incarcer-
ation for the wealthy. And the architectural stylists will always cat-
egorize the Bonaventure as, at the very be~_t, _Late Modern and
insist that it must be read as such. But seen and read as real-and-
imagined heterotopias, lived spaces of representation, (partially)
decodable social and cultural hieroglyphs, they take on n:ew
meanings.
Fredric Jameson, in a now memorable article published in the
same year (1984) as the Los Angeles Olympics and Foucault's death,
and just after Henri Lefebvre's most extended stay in California, was
the first to begin reading the Bonaventure Hotel (which he originally
called the Bonaventura) heterotopologically.8 For Jameson, this
"populist insertion into the city fabric'' has become a "hyperspace"
of both illusion and compensation, a new kind of cultural colony and
brothel (my combining of Foucault's separate allusions) that exposes
many of the archetypal "performative" conditions of contemporary
postmodernity: depthlessness, fragmentation, the reduction of his-
tory to nostalgia, and, underlying it all, the programmatic decenter-
ing of the subordinated subject and the rattling awareness that the
individual human body has been losing the capacity "to locate itself,
to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cogni-
tively map its position within a mappable external world" (1984: 83).
While Jameson presents these unsettling conditions as indicative
8 Fredric Jameson, "Post modernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New
Left Review 146 (1984), 53-92. In 1984, while the article was in press, Jameson,
Lefebvre, and I wandered through the Bonaventure, rode its glass-encased eleva-
tors, and had some refreshments in the rooftop revolving restaurant overlooking
downtown. In 1989, J took much the same trip with Robert Manaquis and Jean
Baudrillard, when BaudriUard was participating in the revolutionary bicentennial.
of a new schizophrenia, Celeste Olalquiaga, in Megalopolis, describes edly, beyond to the growing incapacity of our minds to cognitively
this postmodern syndrome more aptly, as a special kind of urban map not just the city but also "the great global multinational and
psychasthenia: 9 decentered communicational network in which we find ourselves
Defined as a disturbance in the relation between self and sur- caught as individual subjects." As John Berger saw, space seems
rounding territory, psychasthenia is a state in which the space more so than time to hide consequences from us at every scale of
defined by the coordinates of the organism's own body is con- experience.
fused with represented space. Incapable of demarcating the limits I covered some similar tracks in depicting the Bonaventure:
of its own body, lost in the immense area that circumscribes it,
the psychasthenic organism proceeds to abandon its own iden- Like many other Portman-teaus which dot the eyes of urban
tity to embrace the space beyond. It does so by camouflaging citadels in New York and San Francisco, Atlanta and Detroit,
itself into the milieu. This simulation effects a double usurpa- the Bonaventure has become a concentrated representation of
tion: while the organism successfully reproduces those ele- the restructured spatiality of the late capitalist city [what I now
ments it could not otherwise apprehend, in the process it is prefer to call the postmetropolis]: fragmented and fragmenting,
swallowed up by them, vanishing as a differentiated homogeneous and homogenizing, divertingly packaged yet
entity. (1992: 1-2; emphasis added) curiously incomprehensible, seemingly open in presenting itself
Olalquiaga's psychasthenia helps us situate the Bonaventure more to view but constantly pressing to enclose, to compartmentalize,
clearly in the trialectics of spatiality, at a place where the power of to circumscribe, to incarcerate. Everything imaginable appears
Secondspace representations is opening up new ways to reproduce to be available in the micro-urb but real places are difficult to
its dominance, not just over the perceived space of daily practices find, its spaces confuse an effective cognitive mapping, its pas-
but over the whole of lived space and its primary sites, especially in tiche of superficial reflections bewilder coordination and
the increasingly "camouflaged" human body. encourage submission instead .... Once inside ... it becomes
Directly experiencing the Bonaventure, with all its very real plea- daunting to get out again without bureaucratic assistance.
sures, is like entering a mutated cityscape of seductive simulations, (Soja, 1989: 243-4)
a Blade Runner-built environment that uncannily makes an esthetic
= anesthetic, enticing both the subject and object of history and Jameson's intentionally spatializing interpretation of the
geography beneath a numbing amnesiac blanket of exact copies for Bonaventure Hotel (and, I might add, of postmodern historicality)
which no original ever really existed. In the bunkered and beaconed has occupied the eye of a still-unsettled storm of reaction and criti-
fortress of the Bonaventure- if you will excuse my playful reference cism that vividly illustrates those present-day conflicts Foucault pre-
to the site of the hotel on Bunker Hill, which Jameson originally dicted would arise between "the pious descendants of time and the
incorrectly called Beacon Hill - entrance (entrancement?) and exit determined inhabitants of space," or, remembering my earlier refer-
ways are curiously unmarked at many different levels, as if, ence, between the historicizers of geography and the spatializers of
Jameson says, "some new category of closure [was] governing the history. Given the continuing role of hegemonic historiography in
inner space of the hotel itself." Inside and out, one is lost in a contemporary critical studies, even sympathetic critics of Jameson's
"placeless dissociation," an "alarming disjunction between the body first significant attempt to spatialize his own well-established histori-
and the built environment" that Jameson compares (and attempts to cism have been decidedly perplexed by Jameson's Bonaventure-ous
link) to the experience of Los Angeles itself and, even more point- moment. For one group of critics, Jameson's new agenda for history
9
and criticism, revolving as it does around his slippery notion of cog-
Celeste Olalquiaga, Megalopolis: Contemporary Cultural Sensibilities, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992. This use of the term psychasthenia originates
nitive mapping, seems to slide too blithely into ahistorical or, worse,
with Roger Caillois, an important figure (along with the better known Georges anti-historical discourse. Characteristically, the response of these
Bataille) in the dissident surrealist movement that emerged in Paris just before critics is an almost nostalgic defense of the 19th-century privileges of
World War II and influenced the spatial thinking of both Walter Benjamin and historicism.
Henri Lefebvre. Caillois called it "legendary psychasthenia"; see "Mimicry and
Legendary Psychasthenia," tr. John Shepley, October 31 (1984), 1&-32. Olalquiaga Thus Mike Davis, in an otherwise illuminating interpretation of
gives this historical reference an explicitly spatial twist. Note: in Modern Greek, psy- the "decadent tropes" of modernism to be found in Los Angeles,
chasthenia is the general term used for mental disorder. berates Jameson for presenting a geography "deprived of historical
coordinates." 10 To find these coordinates, Davis seeks what he calls Davis, the Bonaventure of the present must be properly narrativized
the "true temporalities" that can be read from the spatial text of in a politicizable sequential skein of past events unfolding over time
Bunker Hill and the Bonaventure Hotel, and excavates them in a at the site in question: a typical form of historicizing geographies.
sequenced saga of urban renewal as urban removal of the poor to With the present so unproblematically a product of the past, the pos-
make way for the shining monuments of global capitalism. sibility that postmodernity poses new challenges to radical discourse
Jameson's explicit attempt at establishing historical coordinates and politics, that it marks in some way a break, or at least a signifi-
from the Marxist heterochronies of Ernest Mandel's long waves is cant deflection, of that "menacing glaciation" of the past, virtually
dutifully (and accurately, I think) criticized by Davis for faulty peri- disappearsY
odization and getting its dates wrong. 11 What Davis was primarily Donald Preziosi, an art historian who, like Davis, is a long-time
concerned with was not that Jameson was being confined by resident in Los Angeles, approaches Jameson's Bonaventure from
his Marxism but that he, Jameson, was misapprehending the politi- an entirely different point of view in "La Vi(ll)e en Rose: Reading
cally correct meaning of the urban "renaissance" of downtown Jameson Mapping Space." 13 Turning Davis's critique upside down
Los Angeles as seen from an avowedly historical materialist and inside out, he criticizes Jameson for not escaping far enough
perspective. from historicism, for being "supremely historical," for never mov-
Davis's alternative reading is brilliantly executed and much more ing outside "that grand master narrative plot," that "commonplace,
prescriptively, informatively, and confidently political. But it totalizing historicism central to art historical discourse since the
remains straitjacketed none the less (or should I say all the more) by nineteenth century institutionalizations on both sides of the
a lingering diachronomania that draws too uncritically from that most Atlantic." These observations emanate from an important critical
historicist of epistemological fallacies: post hoc, ergo propter hoc, after stream in the field of art history that has been deeply concerned
this, therefore because of this. No lateral or synchronic connections with the stranglehold of historicism on the vision of the discipline
are allowed except for the insidious impact of global capitalism. For since the 1920s. Preziosi, representing this critical stream, sees the
same visionary dangers in Jameson's narrative tour of the
Bonaventure.
10
Mike Davis, "Urban Renaissance and the Spirit of Postrnodernism," New Left
Review 151 (1985), 53--92. See also his "Chinatown, Part Two? The For Jameson, his version of Marxism is a place coextensive with
'Internationalization' of Downtown Los Angeles," New Left Review 164 (1987), 65-86. the space of History. To arrive in that space, it is necessary to
11
But not, it should be noted, for wrapping his critique too tightly with Marxism, a
position fiercely taken by Derek Gregory in his attempt at "Mapping Jameson" "pass through" texts, and above all the texts and hyperspaces of
(using Mike Davis) in his Geographical Imaginations, 1994: 278-82. The chapter in postmodernism, in order to grasp the latter's "absent causes":
which Gregory's dismissal of Jameson as a manipulative Marxist historicist appears their History. (1988: 91)
is entitled "Chinatown, Part Three? Uncovering Postrnodern Geographies," a title
that references the original film about Los Angeles as well as Davis's earlier article
and my book, which was the primary focus for this lengthy chapter-as-book review. Captivated, perhaps inadvertently, by the phrase "the space of
Gregory seems blind to tarring the equally deserving Davis with the same anti- History," Preziosi unfortunately ventures too far beyond his insight-
Marxist anti-historicist brush he applies to Jameson. This blindness blunts and dis- ful critique of historicism to demand that we "position ourselves out-
torts his critique. By foregrounding and romancing Davis's historical materialism,
Gregory obscures the possibility of interpreting Jameson's commentary on the
Bonaventure as a discursive turning-point, a crude beginning in a personal attempt 12
Davis's more recent work, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles,
to spatialize his well-established historicism in the face of the contemporary London: Verso, 1990, is more sensitive to the spatial critique of historicism and to
moment. Rather than moving into Jameson's more recent writings (from which an the need to critically spatialize the historical (materialist) narrative. The growing
argument can be made that he has certainly not advanced his spatializing project tension between his residual historicism and his emerging spatializations is one of
very far), Gregory looks backwards to Jameson's The Political Unconscious: Narrative the most interesting features of this remarkable book.
as a Socially Symbolic Act, which begins with an injunction to "Always historicize!" 13
In the inaugural issue of the UCLA students' journal Strategies: A Journal ofTheory,
and is filled with the same space-blinkered historicism I criticized earlier regarding Culture and Politics 1 (1988), 82-99. The third issue of Strategies (1990), under the title
Hayden White. The implication here appears to be: "once a historicist, always a his- "In the City," contained not only another brief statement by Preziosi ("Oublier La
toricist," a logic that reeks with the worst of historicism's overdeterminations. Citta") and a reprinting of Rosalyn Deutsche's "Men in Space," but also the
Perhaps Gregory was uncomfortable himself with these tactics. An otherwise care- extended critique of Postmodern Geographies by Derek Gregory ("Chinatown, Part
ful reference bibliographer, Gregory leaves out the date of publication for The Three?'') that would appear revised as chapter 4 in his Geographical Imaginations
Political Unconscious (1981) in the appropriate footnote (1994: 278) and omits the (1994), and my "Heterotopologies: A Remembrance of Other Spaces in the Citadel-
book entirely from the Select Bibliography (which contains seven other works by LA" (1990). See also Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditation on a Coy
Jameson). But I must cut short this footnote, lest it become Chinatown, Part Four. Science, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
side or beyond not simply 'postmodernism' itself, but outside of has been replaced by geography, stories by maps, memories by
time, space, and history." Rather than Jameson's "rhetorical over- scenarios. We no longer perceive ourselves as continuity but as
complications of the relatively simplistic Bonaventure Hotel," we are location. . . . It is no longer possible to be rooted in history.
ultimately guided toward a "metacommentary on architectonic rep- Instead, we are connected to the topography of computer
resentation itself," wherein all the devilish faults of the "historical screens and video monitors. These give us the language and 1
canon(s)" have already been sublimely exorcised. History, the pri- images that we require to reach others and see ourselves. (1992:
mary target, is thus stripped of its problematics and becomes little 93)
more than what Baudrillard once called it: "an immense toy."
Unwittingly perhaps, it is made to appear that spatiality is also dis- Following this quote, Gregory adds:
pensed with in the process, except in the form of an ungrounded and
unlived "meta commentary" on architectonic representation. In such circumstances, if we even approximately recognize our-
In his more recent outsider's grand tour of the Jameson- selves in the description, a passionate appeal to history is
Bonaventure debates, Derek Gregory displays a critical style that is unlikely to be enough. Olalquiaga presents two options: either
characteristic of his Geographical Imaginations. He begins by present- contemporary identity "can opt for a psychasthenic dissolution
ing Jameson's views from the Bonaventure in a sympathetic light, into space," affixing itself to any scenario by a change of cos-
but then proceeds to dim the lights by undermining Jameson in an tume, or "it can profit from the crossing of boundaries, turning
eclectic barrage-collage of critiques that leaves the reader a little the psychasthenic process around before its final thrust into
more confused than enlightened. In the ten pages of text in which emptiness, benefitting from its expanded boundaries."
Jameson's Bonaventure is the fulcrum (1994: 150-60), Gregory (Gregory, 1994: 160; emphasis added to quote from
amasses an army of attack that draws upon Davis, Preziosi, Olalquiaga, 1992: 17)
Olalquiaga, Lefebvre, Soja, Jacques Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari, the
architectural critics Peter Eisenman and Michael Sorkin, the geogra- Moving in completely opposite directions, Davis and Preziosi
pher Michael Dear (whose sharp photograph of the Bonaventure is missed the budding Thirdspace perspective that can be excavated
included), Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, the philosopher from Jameson's cognitive remapping of the Bonaventure. By recen-
Gillian Rose, the sociologist Sharon Zukin, and ultimately Donna tering his critique of Jameson's accomplishments around the
Haraway. avowedly radical and assertively spatial postmodernism of
As footnoted earlier (note 11), a prime target for Gregory is Olalquiaga, and in following this with effective excursions through
Jameson's (and indirectly Soja's and Zukin's but, significantly, not the feminist and postcolonial literatures, Gregory begins building his
Davis's) categorically Marxist-historicist armor. Only Gregory and a own version of Thirdspace. The trouble with the Gregorian version,
few chosen others are apparently able to move freely into and out of and the reason why I have not excavated it at greater depth in
Marxism and historicism without being cal.lght in their sticky web Thirdspace, is that it is buried under such a thick mesh of criss-cross-
of overdeterminisms. Even Lefebvre, constructed by Gregory as an ing omni-directional critiques, points and counterpoints moving in
unwavering Hegelian Marxist and therefore ineluctably historicist, so many different directions at once, that it is difficult to tell where
is eventually thrown into the same basket as Jameson. In a much Gregory stands- and whether there is anyone else left standing with
more cogent critique, however, Gregory builds on Olalquiaga and him.
towards Haraway, thereby effectively exposing the more crucial In the end, what is missing from Davis, Preziosi, and Gregory is
weaknesses in Jameson's work with respect to gender, sexuality, a critically balanced sense of the ontological trialectic of
postcolonial strategies of resistance, and that most originary spatial- spatiality-historicality-sociality and a deeper appreciation of
ity, the body. The spatial psychasthenia induced by such postmod- Lefebvre's trialectic of perceived-conceived-lived space. In their
ern places as the Bonaventure thus becomes a more powerful very different unhingings of this trialectical balance, spatiality and
personal-and-political concept than even Jameson imagined. As postmodernity are represented in ways that can too easily be total-
Olalquiaga states: ized as unequivocally evil forces infecting contemporary lifeworlds.
This was not necessarily the intent of any of these scholars, but the
Bodies are becoming like cities, their temporal coordinates impressions they leave behind in their treatments of the
transformed into spatial ones. In a poetic condensation, history Bonaventure are susceptible to just such an interpretation, and espe-
cially to reversions to one or another of the trialectical extremes: an building footprints- gold for government sites, bright red orange for
over-idealized and over-empowered historicism, spatialism, or the sites of high culture, beaux arts colors I am told - a boldly writ-
socialism. ten placard announces another reading of the spatial text of down-
To conclude this lengthy sidetrack from the exhibition, I return town Los Angeles.
again to Jameson's original (bon)adventure. With the benefit of hind-
sight, it seems now that in entering, and indeed stimulating, the
debate on "Postmodernism and the City," Jameson stumbled into a The first cities appeared with the simultaneous concentration
new and different project that he may not have been fully aware he of commanding symbolic forms, CIVIC CENTERS designed
had entered. Neither a total denial of the usefulness of critical histo- to announce, ceremonialize, administer, acculturate, disci-
riography nor a fulsome celebration of historicism, the project pline, and control. In and around the institutionalized locale
opened up in the windowed reflections of the Bonaventure pointed of the CITADEL (literally, a "little city") adhered people and
toward a more balanced and critically problematic trialectic of spa- their spatially focussed social relations, creating a CIVIL
tiality, historicality, and sociality rooted experientially rather than SOCIETY and an accordingly built environment.
just materially or metaphorically in Lefebvre's real-and-imagined The city continues to be organized through two interactive
lived spaces of representation. processes, surveillance and adherence, looking out from and
Jameson's brief exploration of Thirdspace was tentative and in towards the citadel and its panoptic eye of POWER. To be
clumsy. It was constrained by a historicism and a historical materi- urbanized means to adhere, to be made an adherent, a
alism that filled postmodern spatiality too deterministically with believer in a collective ideology and culture rooted in the
the menacing glaciation of capitalism. It was thus too little extensions of polis (politics, policy, polity, police) and civitas
informed by the emerging postmodern feminist, post-Marxist, and (civil, civic, civilian, citizen, civilization)
postcolonial critiques. More specifically, it also depended too much
on Kevin Lynch's limiting conception of cognitive mapping and
urban design rather than on the more profound, and more familiar,
inspiration of Henri Lefebvre, who was with Jameson at the time This representation of the CITADEL-LA seems rather presumptu-
he was preparing the 1984 article for publication. After all, it was ous, especially for those who are familiar with the actual sites
Lefebvre more than anyone else who made the author of The depicted on the cartographic wall. The Civic Center of Los Angeles
Political Unconscious (1981) begin considering the need to change is, at first glance, rather unremarkable: a rectangular band of more-
his demand to "always historicize" as the "one absolute and ... than-usually dull buildings, with a few annexed extensions, stretch-
'transhistorical' imperative of all dialectical thought," to an-Other ing across the top of Bunker Hill, a few minutes away from the
version: always spatialize as you historicize sociality! Jameson may not Elysian fields to the north, where the city was born; 14 and a stone's
have continued to practice this strategic spatialization in all his throw away from the glassy Bonaventure, nestled in the skyscrap-
subsequent writings, but his brief encounter with Thirdspace ered financial center to the south, where the city, it seems, is being
should not be buried under the hypercriticism- or the hyperpraise born again. Surely the commanding powers described in the procla-
- his work has received. But we have lingered long enough. It is mations above no longer apply here, of all places, in the world's
time to move on to other spaces.
14
At the North Broadway entrance to Elysian Park, a monument marks the first
white siting of Los Angeles, the place where Gaspar de Portola and Father Juan
CITADEL-LA Crespi made camp on August 2, 1769, during the first European expedition through
California. By the time of the French Revolution, the indigenous Yang-Na had virtu-
ally disappeared without a trace of commemoration in what were once their pri-
Returning to our tour we can look beyond the entrancement with the mary hunting grounds. Nearly two centuries later, the nearby Chavez Ravine was
Bastaventure to the heterotopological symbols that are concentrated also cleared of its inhabitants- many of whom were rebellious descendants of the
in and around the CITADEL-LA, the "little city" that defines the old Californios and other poor "natives"- to make room for Dodger Stadium, one
of the most profitable sports sites in the world. Elysian Park today also contains
power-filled "civic center" of the polynucleated Los Angeles region. California's first botanic garden, filled with exotics from every continent, and the
The CITADEL-LA is colorfully mapped right before you, on the much more domestic Los Angeles Police Academy, where young recruits are taught
gridded main wall of the gallery. Amidst the dense clustering of more contemporary hunting and gathering skills.
most symbolic space of urban decenteredness, of dissociated neigh-

borhoods, of the ex-centric idiocy of urban life. 15
Yet, the power-filled centrality of the citadel is astounding in Los
Angeles. Even as things fall apart, the center holds firmly, and, lest
we forget, it has done so for more than 200 years, in part as a histori-
cal residual from the first siting but also as an imposing contempo-
rary accretion of the commanding powers associated with newer
modes of urban surveillance and adherence, discipline and control,
what Foucault specifically calls governmentality. Nowhere else out-
side the federal citadel in Washington, D.C., is there a larger concen-
tration of government offices, employees, and authority. Looking at
the map represented in Illustration 7, the commanding sites of
power cascade from west to east, occasionally lapping over the for-
mal borders defined by Temple and 1st Streets from the Harbor
Freeway to Alameda Street. Let us walk through the sites. 16
(1) At the western edge, the County Health Building and the County
Health Department Headquarters sit adjacent to the enormous
Harbor-Pasadena and Hollywood-Santa Ana Freeway interchange,
one of the earliest and most dazzling of "spaghetti junctions," where
many feel the ultimate test of healthy freeway driving can be found
in crossing eight lanes of traffic from right to left to exit the
Harbor and join the Hollywood. The view is both frightening and
exhilarating.
(2) The Department of Water and Power Building comes next, the
headquarters for the largest public utility in the US. It glows at night
as an electrified beacon and is surrounded by a moat of gushing
water (drought permitting) that also serves the building's air condi-
tioning system. One can write an entire history of Southern the south is the site of the still-being-built, Frank Gehry-designed
California around the terms Water and Power .... Disney Concert Hall (3a), and just across from that space sits the
(3) The next block, between Hope and Gran~, houses the Ahmanson low-rising, pyramid-topped, red sandstone-clad Museum of
Theater, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Contemporary Art (MOCA), designed by Arata Isozaki as a massing
which together comprise the Music Center, a white marble acropolis of solids and voids, with the main gallery underground (3b). Above
for the performing arts, LA's version of NY's Lincoln Center. Just to ground, from the surface of MOCA's plaza, the view eastward is
blocked by a wall of high-rise condominiums that aggressively sepa-
15
rates the old downtown below from the cultural acropolis and the
Such idiocy derives from the Greek root idios, one's own, private, separate, apart,
as in idiosyncratic, describing someone who acts in a way peculiar to him- or her- citadel.
self; and also idiographic, literally writing in just such a way, emphasizing the pecu- (4) The big block stretching between Grand and Hill (and terminat-
liarity and particularity of things and events. The original Greek meaning of ing Olive Street in its coverage) contains the administrative head-
"idiocy" was unlearned in the way of the traditional polis, displaying rural versus quarters of the County of Los Angeles, the County Offices and Hall
urban traits and behavior; hence Marx's use of the term in "the idiocy of rural life."
That "idiot" (from idiotes, private person) has come to mean someone who is "so of Administration in one building, the massive County Courthouse
deficient mentally as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning or rational conduct; a in another. The County Board of Supervisors deliberates over a con-
blockhead, and utter fool" is testimony to the peculiar hold of the polis, the political stituency of more than 9 million people, by far the largest local gov-
city, on Western consciousness, ideology, and language. I have been helped in my
understanding of Greek by Antonis Ricos and Cos tis Hadjimichalis. ernment unit in the country. A powerful fiefdom of five white males
16
The numbers below are keyed to the map. for most of its existence, the Board of Supervisors has, grudgingly,
begun to change its colors and gender in recent years. The County revealing inscriptions can be read from the facade of City Hall. One
Courthouse and the nearby Criminal Courts Building are reputed to reads: THE CITY CAME INTO BEING TO PRESERVE LIFE, IT
be the busiest anywhere, churning incessantly, day and night, to EXISTS FOR THE GOOD LIFE. In the hopes that such promises can
fe2d the country's largest urban prison system, with more inmates be delivered today, bands of homeless people regularly squat on the
than New York City and Cook County (Chicago) combined. south-facing grass apron, waiting.
(5) Across the 101 Freeway to the north, near where the Grand (9) Beyond the extensions of City Hall to the east lies Parker Center,
A venue axis meets Sunset Boulevard, is the headquarters of the LA headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), named
City's Board of Education, serving a student population that is after the police chief who so insensitively bungled the police response
approaching New York City's in size. Once called Charity Street to to the Watts riots of 1965 with his racism. Teeming with black-and-
follow up on adjacent Hope (there never was a Faith, it seems), whites, the Parker Center makes up for the relatively limited man-
Grand A venue has become the main cultural axis cutting through power of the LAPD with an arsenal of crack-house ramming tanks, a
Bunker Hill. large air force of sight-trap-and-shoot helicopters, and a barrage of
(6) East of Grand and still just north of the Freeway, the land slopes other specialized armaments that builds on the region's vast high-
up to Fort Moore Hill, an almost forgotten historical site where what technology defensive and offensive war industries. Not surprisingly,
has been called "the most spectacular man-made waterfall in the but often missed in the media blitz and glitz, the Parker Center was
US," built by the Department of Water and Power, marks the white the first target of attack for the public demonstrations that began the
Pioneer Memorial. An inscription in the ceramic glaze reads, "May April 1992 uprisings. Other buildings in the citadel followed.
those who live in our naturally arid land be thankful for the vision (10) Directly across Temple from City Hall is the Federal
and good works of the pioneer leaders of Los Angeles, and may all Courthouse, abutting on to the freeway channel that separates the
ir. their time ever provide for its citizens water and power for life contemporary citadel from its ancestral home now contained in El
and energy." Downslope from the waterfall, which rarely if ever Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Park. But before the main Federal
flows these days, is the residential Chinatown and, stretching out Complex is entered, there is an entertaining buffer consisting of the
everywhere else, Chinatown the movie. touch and playful Children's Museum and the multi-level Los
(7) Back inside the citadel proper we encounter more of the county's Angeles Mall (lOa). Hall and Mall meet in the Triforium, a reinforced
expanding power. Continuing what was originally designed as a concrete, glass, and steel sculpture electronically programmed to
Beaux Arts, City Beautiful plaza and promenade, the rather seedy synchronize lights and sounds and to serve as the site of noontime
hidden core of the grand County complex extends over Hill Street concerts for children, office workers, and the homeless of downtown.
(in what is called the Paseo de los Pobladores) to append the Hall of (11) The federal climax of the citadel is found in its easternmost
Records (neatly designed by Richard Neutra), the Law Library, and, wing. Here a new center is rising around Roybal Plaza, out of sight
across Broadway, the Criminal Courts Building (7a), home to the for nearly all residents of Los Angeles (even downtown office work-
Municipal Court of the Los Angeles Judicial District, County of Los ers) yet already screened in glimpses shown around the world as the
Angeles and State of California, built in 1925. Across Temple from site of the second trial of the police officers responsible for the
the Courts is the fourteen-storey Hall of Justice, now abandoned and Rodney King beatings. An older building, housing the US Federal
ready for demolition (7b). During the infamous 0. J. Simpson trial, a Courthouse, now faces the new Metropolitan Detention Center (lla)
makeshift media city occupied one of the courtly parking lots to pro- that is featured, from a very different perspective, on the cover of
ject the local scene around the world. Mike Davis's City of Quartz. Next to it are the gleaming Roybal
(8) City Hall, with the City Hall East and City Hall South buildings Center Office Building and the just completed Veterans'
just next door, is in many ways the capstone of the governmental Administration Outpatient Clinic. In the midst of all this is a rather
citadel. Administering the country's second largest city, its all- bizarre plaza with a rotunda designed by the artist, Tom Otterness,
American pastiche of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Italianate and an entranceway, within sight of Parker Center, punctuated by
designs is symbolically LA Gotham, projecting the city's Dragnet- Jonathon Borofsky's 30-foot-high Molecule Men, a burnished steel
nair imagery televisually all over the world. Topped by a local inter- sculpture of four interconnected male silhouettes covered from head
pretation of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, its 27 to 28 storeys was to toe with a swiss cheese of (bullet?) holes (llb). The sculpture has
the only exception allowed to break the 13-storey height limit that already been dubbed "the drive-by." We will have to return here for
was maintained by the city until 1957. If one looks hard enough, a closer look later on.
(12) The citadel proper laps over southward, across First Street, in Little Tokyo just to the south of First Street (16a). In a seedy parking
several additional extensions. Two huge building blocks straddle lot to the north, across from the Parker Center, sits the Frank Gehry-
Broadway just before it enters the citadel. On one side is the Junipero designed warehouses of the Temporary Contemporary Museum
Serra Building and just south of it the Civic Center Law Building. On closed after the permanent establishment of the new Museum of
the other side of Broadway is the headquarters of the Fourth Estate, Contemporary Art but now re-opened. And just outside the
Times-Mirror Square, where our times are mirrored daily by one of Alameda boundary to the east, within sight of the Federal Detention
the most regionally dominant and influential urban newspapers in Center, is a new Central District Headquarters for the Department of
the world. As its self-advertisement once proclaimed, "It all comes Water and Power, matching its bookending of the citadel to the west.
together in the Times." Whether it is an annex of the Civic Center, or Water and Power are everywhere inside and outside the citadel.
vice versa, is an interesting question. (17) Sitting above all this is the old citadel of El Pueblo de Nuestra
(13) An extended governmental axis exists along Main Street. First, Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, centered around a celebratory
there are the old offices of Caltrans, the California Department of gazebo and the adjacent La Placita church and Olvera Street tourist
Transportation, now absorbed into the Metropolitan Transit arcade. Nearby is Union Station and, above and beyond that, Los
Authority (MTA). It serves as the electronic nerve center for control- Angeles County Jail (17a), one of the largest incarceration centers in
ling traffic operations along the county's 527 miles of freeways. In a the country.
windowless room, an advanced computer system connected to a
huge illuminated freeway map provides sophisticated surveillance The tour of the CITADEL-LA is thus completed. But its heterotopo-
of millions of freeway drivers every day in what one wag called the logical exploration has just begun.
Orwellian Ministry of Traffic. Seeing everywhere without ever being
seen, it reminds you again of Bentham's Pantopticon as seen by Cultural Crown
Foucault.
(14) Further south on Main is the Ronald Reagan State Office We move back to the Cultural Crown, symbolically displayed for us
Building (no comment) and the Southern California Rapid Transit in what the architects call a massing model for the newest crown
District Headquarters. The SCRTD has recently been absorbed, with jewel being added rnetonyrnically to the CITADEL-LA: the Walt
the LACTC (Los Angeles County Transportation Commission), into Disney Concert Hall competitively designed by the current king of
a new MT A (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) charged with California architects, Frank Gehry. In the background is posted a col-
spending as much as $180 in public funds (mainly federal and lection of working drawings and promotional text dreaming the
almost surely not forthcoming) over the next 30 years for mass tran- tomorrows of the contemporary Acropolis, the "topmost city" of the
sit, the latest round of federal subsidization of Los Angeles's devel- CITADEL-LA, the fortress of fine arts that has put the crest of cut-
opment, hopefully filling the voids left by the post-Cold War decay down-to-size Bunker Hill squarely in the center of the mental map of
of the Defense industry. American urban irnagineering.
(15) Off to the east side of Main is St Vibiana's Cathedral, a com- Compared to the intrusive new Opera House in the Place de la
manding power over more than 4 million adherents in what is Bastille, the Disney Hall (future headquarters of the Los Angeles
reputed to be the world's largest Catholic archdiocese. This modest Philharmonic) was originally designed to be primordially indige-
bastion of the churchly First Estate presses up against Skid Row, the nous, Cali-casually informal, a kind of vegetative climax perfectly
absolute inversion of citadellian empowerment, horne to what many adapted to local conditions, a celebration of home-grown inhabitants
say is the largest homeless encampment in the US. When the pope and heroes. The glassed-in foyer is described in front of you as "the
visited St Vibiana's, the streets were cleared and cleansed to make city's living room" open to the mixed use of the masses. The sprawl-
Skid Row invisible. Plans are currently under way to rebuild St ing plazas are seen as the "culmination" of the city's public space.
Vibiana to increase this invisibility and further obliterate the The plants and trees celebrate the locale: no exotics here. Gehry's
unsightly surroundings. Pritzker-prized competitors, the outsiders Bohrn of Cologne, Hollein
(16) A few more outposts might be noted. Inside the rectangle of the of Vienna, and Stirling of London, didn't stand a chance.
citadel, in the extreme southeast corner, is the small Japanese- A more symbolic pairing than Gehry and Disney is scarcely imag-
American National Museum, commemorating the erosion of the old inable. Together, their dreamworlds will aptly complete the decon-
Little Tokyo and the rise of the Big Tokyo-induced and -designed struction and reconstitution of Bunker Hill, its transformation from
the "old town, lost town, crook town" described by Raymond to make the government stop allowing surplus milk to be poured
Chandler to what the archly anarchic architect Arthur Erickson pre- down the storm drains to keep the price up." 18
dicts will be the "center of centers of the western world." A brief
aside is useful here to commemorate what has been truncated from [Hay remembered] "This was a dramatic scene! Women were
Bunker Hill. I will draw primarily from a recent essay by Anastasia grabbing and shielding their children, and every so often you
Loukaitou-Sideris and Gail Sansbury (1996) on the "Lost Streets of would see someone go down with a bloody head. The police
Bunker Hill." Both are based in the Department of Urban Planning at were being absolutely brutal, without provocation. I think they
UCLA and they call their very interesting work "didactic street wanted to incite a riot so they could clear the crowd."
biographies." 17 With his hands behind him, Harry backed up to the open
Bunker Hill is the southernmost extension of a string of hills door of a bookstore, where stacks of newspapers were held
(Elysian Park, Fort Moore, Bunker) paralleling the Los Angeles down by bricks. He found his hand resting on a brick. "I made
River as it cuts through a pass between the Santa Monica and San no conscious decision, I just found myself heaving it and catch-
Gabriel Mountains. The hills were an area of great significance to ing a policeman right in the temple. He slid off his horse and a
the indigenous Gabrilieno Indians and in the lower-lying wedge hundred faces turned to me in amazement. No one was more
between the hills and the river, El Pueblo de Los Angeles was born, amazed than I. Always before, I had been the one who threw
burned, and recycled southward from Elysian Park to its present the ball like a sissy. This 'bull' was my first bull's-eye ever!"
memorial site around La Plaza. The first significant Anglo occupa- Sympathizers murmuring in Yiddish, Portuguese, and
tion of Bunker Hill began in the 1870s and over the next several English grabbed him. He heard, "We've got to hide this kid
decades it became a highly fashionable suburb, with "carpenter before the cops get him." Hands led him backward through a
Gothic" and "Queen Anne-Victorian" buildings (still visible today building connected to other buildings - a network of 1880s ten-
only in the artfully preserved Carroll Street and adjacent areas in ements that formed an interconnected casbah on the slopes of
Angelino Heights nearby). In the 1920s and 1930s, the wealthy the sprawling old Bunker Hill quarter. He was pushed through
moved further away from the center and the building stock on the rooms that immigrant women and children rarely left,
Bunker Hill was subdivided into rooming houses for rent, mainly to across catwalks and planks, up, up, hearing occasional reassur-
single, elderly men. Some tenements were also -built, as the area ance, "Everything's fine. Just don't look down." Once out of the
became a densely populated pocket of working class life and liveli- structure, near the top of the hill, he was hustled to a large
ness, perhaps the closest any neighborhood in Los Angeles came to Victorian house where he found himself standing, dizzy and
Manhattan's Lower East Side. disoriented, in a living room full of men drinking coffee. In the
Between 1904 and 1944, the funicular Angel's Flight, above and center, cutting a cake, was a soft-featured man in woman's
parallel to the Third Street Tunnel, carried hundreds of people daily attire. The man gestured theatrically when he spoke, and every-
up the slope from Hill Street at its base. Old films, photographs, nov- one addressed him as Clarabelle and referred to him as her ....
els, and memoirs depict a vibrant streetlife and cityscape on Bunker Harry had heard of Clarabelle as one of the most powerful of
Hill throughout this period. John Fante writes about it in his 1939 the "Queen Mothers" who traditionally oversaw the tempera-
novel, Ask the Dust, and in Dreams from Bunker Hill. Life on the mental comings and goings in the districts of town where they
streets of Bunker Hill in the 1930s also features strategically in the lived; Harry felt that such figures formed a regional network of
spatial biography of Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society salons among some pre-Stonewall gays. "Clarabelle controlled
and a key figure in the development of the gay movement in the US. Bunker Hill and had at least a dozen 'lieutenants' covering sta-
Hay is described by his biographer, Stuart Timmons, as he attempts tions, one called the Fruit Tank -that was our nickname for the
to escape from the police, with the help of Bunker Hill residents, jail cell for queers ...." She ordered Harry to be- hidden in her
after participating in a "Milk Strike," called in 1933 in the shadow of
the newly built City Hall by "mothers of the poor and unemployed 18 Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement
- A Biography, Boston: Alyson Publications, 1990. This book was brought to the
17
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Gail Sansbury, "Lost Streets of Bunker Hill," attention of Loukaitou-Sideris and Sansbury by Moira Kenney. See Kenney's far-
California History 74, 1996: 146--62. I particularly want to thank Gail Sansbury for ranging analysis of the spatial struggles of gay and lesbian activists, Strategic
commenting on chapter 7 and letting me read some of her own writings on "read- Visibility: Gay and Lesbian Place-Claiming in Los Angeles, 1970-1994, unpublished doc-
ing/ working" in downtown Los Angeles. toral dissertation, Urban Planning, UCLA, 1994.
~w~,
basement, and a lieutenant led him down five flights of stairs to off and a cap put on the use of tax increment funds, but the CRA still
a room storing Persian rugs, concealed him in a carpeted cave, functions by milking cash from the cow of the earliest redevelop-
and promised him coffee and a fried-egg sandwich in due ments on Bunker Hill. And they continue to promise that Angel's
time. (Timmons, 1990: 65-7) Flight will be reconstructed to commemorate ... what? I think they
have forgotten.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the "blightedness" of Bunker Hill became a Back in the exhibition, a series of placards attached to the future
matter of widespread civic scorn and frenzied public campaigns, site of Disney Hall on the citadel wall traces the transformation of
largely because it was in the way of downtown development. Led by Bunker Hill in other ways. First there is the already noted vision of
the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), which began opera-
tions in 1949, and the Los Angeles Times, a public-private partnership
I Raymond Chandler from The High Window (1942):
was formed to declare Bunker Hill a blot on the landscape of the Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, crook town.... In the tall
burgeoning modern city center, an unhealthy canker that must be
removed before it spreads. And removed it was. By the end of the
I rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the
wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shadows into
1960s, all 396 buildings were destroyed, 11,000 residents were dis- the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like
placed, local resistance was defeated, the hill was flattened out, the lost battles .... Out of the apartment houses come women who
maze of property ownership was packaged into large lots by the should be young but have faces like stale beer, men with
CRA and sold for a song to the superdevelopers. The cut-off hilltop pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over
was crowned by the Music Center, some expensive condominiums behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; who look
were added later with some cheaper apartments for the elderly like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even
(although not cheap enough for most of the elderly displaced), and a men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when
New Downtown began to grow rapidly further southward. the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on
In the sheer slope down from Temple Street to about Eighth Street, them.
between Hill Street and the Harbor Freeway, the New Downtown
Central Business District erected its skyline of office buildings: Erasing this past, literally shearing it off, has been an avalanche of
Atlantic Richfield (Arco) Plaza, Bank of America Tower, Bank of specifically cultural redevelopment rolling down Grand Avenue
California Headquarters, California Plaza, Citicorp Plaza, City (nee Charity Street), from the Music Center complex that first
National Bank, the Figueroa at Wilshire Building, First Interstate injected culture into the rectangular CITADEL-LA in the 1960s; to
Bank Building, First Interstate World Center (the tallest building the vast mixed-use and still-being-completed California Plaza project
west of the Mississippi), Los Angeles Hilton Hotel and Tower, Los that now contains the celebrated MOCA, skyscraping almost trompe
Angeles World Trade Center, Manulife Plaza, MCI Center, One l'oeil office towers, pock-ettes of good and bad (appropriately capi-
Wilshire Building, the Pacific Stock Exchange, Seventh Market Place, talized) Public Art, and the site of the future Disney-Gehry extrava-
Sheraton Grande Hotel, Union Bank Building, Unocal Center, Wells ganza of performance spaces.
Fargo Center, 444 Building on Hope, 777 Tower on Figueroa, and, of The largest "performance plaza" imagined in the original plans
course, in its full and proper name, the Westin-Bonaventure Hotel was to span the last block of Olive Street before it ended in the Civic
and Gallery. Center. A giant water fountain was to be designed by W.E.T., the
As the CRA was funded by tax-increment financing, which meant company responsible for the water fantasies of both Disneyland and
that the rise in property values on land that they controlled could be Walt Disney World. It would "dialogue" with the public, at times
tapped for their continued operations, the so-called Central Business flooding the plaza with its watery tricks, at other times parching it to
District Project promised to be an almost unimaginable windfall. At permit spectacular displays of local ethnic artistry. Today, it seems,
one time in the 1970s, before the property tax revolt and the passage such W.E.T. dreams have dried up, although they may rise again in
of Proposition 13, a bill temporarily passed in the City Council that the future.
would have potentially made the redevelopment of downtown Los The longer-term dreams of the Cultural Crown continue, however,
Angeles under the CRA the largest public works project in human as seen in a placarded extract from a popular pictorial cognitive map
history, rivaling, in the scale of public resources invested, the build- of downtown Los Angeles produced by the firm Unique Media
ing of the pyramids. This huge moneygusher was eventually turned Incorporated.
The Music Center is the cultural crown of Southern California,

reigning over orchestral music, vocal performance, opera, the-
atre and dance... . It tops Bunker Hill like a contemporary
Acropolis, one which has dominated civil-cultural life since it
was inaugurated in 1964.
Gehry designed Disney Hall to capture the axis of the old Music
Center building across First Street and then to bend it directly
towards MOCA, architect Arata Isozaki's understated, low-ridered,
Hollywood bonsai.
A third placard reads:
[MOCA is] a temple ... in which the gods cavort, amuse, and
delight, even as they inspire.... [Itsl ambience invokes tbe
power and wonder of the Roman Pantheon, though Isozaki
replaced cylinder and dome with cube and pyramid. The result
is an equally uplifting space whose awesome splendor invites
contemplation and joy ... Isozaki's design embodies the exquis-
ite shape and proportion of Marilyn Monroe - classic, volup-
tuous, and sensuously draped to enhance and tantalize ... [just
as) Frank Gehry's Temporary Contemporary proclaims the
inimitable bone structure of Katherine Hepburn, magnificently
lean and rugged yet indisputably regal, even in work
clothes.... Two goddesses of a very different sort - yet both
cast an aura that transcends mere physical presence and hovers
somewhere closer to the realm of pure energy.19
The last one returns to the words of the architect, Arthur Erickson.
California Plaza on Bunker Hill will become the center for all
these other centers [of culture, government, commerce, ethnic
life] ... Los Angeles [can thus] express what is unique about
itself and at the same time begin to fulfill its future role as a cen-
ter of centers of the western world.
Looking behind you, after squinting at the placards on the citadel

wall, you can see again the original massing model and drawings of
Gehry's Disney Hall, now being called "the Eiffel Tower of Los
19 This fulsome quote from Sherry Geldin, MOCA's Associate Director at the time,
is taken from an unpublished doctoral djssertation by the critical art historian, Jo-
Anne Berelowitz, and from her "A New Jerusalem: Utopias, MOCA, and the
Redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles," Strategies 3 (1990), 202-26, a cutting cri
tique of the utopian phallocentrism of LA's cultural mandarinate. I have not read
the original Geldin article, "One Very Lucky Museum," Individuals: A Stlecterl
History of Contemporary Art, H. Singerman, ed., New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.
:..:'.."~....
~~
r '
,~, .. cr~"

I Remembrances 219
Angeles." 20 In subsequent deconstructive design readjustments, 1789: Paris The French Revolution, storming of the Bastille, aboli-
Gehry has soared in his unifying eclecticism to produce a vision of tion of feudal system, Declaration of the Rights of Man, nationaliza-
Los Angeles that simultaneously appears as a "galleon in full sail/' tion of church property (also: first US Congress meets in New York,
"a pile of pottery shards from an archeological dig/' "a stack of bro- Washington inaugurated as President, Belgium declares indepen-
ken crockery," "the cracked open pieces of a fortune cookie," and, dence from Austria).
increasingly to my eyes, an artform abstractly referenced -intention- El Pueblo Located somewhat to the north of the present-day site,
ally or not, it is difficult to tell - to the cardboard boxes and other life El Pueblo is a successful agricultural settlement and trading post, with
paraphernalia of the homeless on Skid Row. an appointed mayor (a Christianized Indian) and a powerful Zanjero,
Looking up, a floating sky of chicken wire can be seen linking up keeper of the irrigation ditch constructed to tap the Porciuncula (Los
the entire exhibition space. From it dangles a collection of volun- Angeles) River. Enclosed by a rough earthen wall are almost 30 adobe
teered symbols of Los Angeles 1989: surfboards, palm tree silhou- residences clustered around an open plaza. A small chapel had
ettes, bumper stickers, simulated plates of sushi, movie cameras and recently been constructed and the rancho system had begun, with sol-
clickboards, the Hollywood sign, traffic signals, insignia from past diers being given grazing permits for the lands outside the wall.
Olympics, signposts saying "Trespassers Will Be Shot," and other sig- The first Spanish explorers had come 20 years earlier, to be greeted
natures on the contemporary landscape donated for commemoration by the local inhabitants of Yang-Na village (near present-day City
by architecture and urban planning faculty and students. The cloud Hall) and by several small earthquakes, one of which Father Crespi
of symbols infects the space with a tensely hovering sense of ersatz described as "half as long as an ave maria." In 1781, 44 settlers
unity that is at the same time temporary and contemporary, revealing arrived, more than half with some African blood: 11 men, 11 women,
and concealing, up-to-the-moment and hopelessly out-of-date. and 22 children, mainly from Sinaloa and Sonoma. Of the men, 2
were white Spaniards; the others were Indian (4), mestizo (1),
Palimpsest African (2), and mulatto (2). All the women were either mulatto or
Indian. By 1789, the population had reached nearly 140. The pueblo
Another wall in the exhibition space has been created to carry the here would be destroyed by a flood in 1815, relocated, destroyed
burden of history on its surface. Hidden behind it is an area that has again by flood in 1824-5, and relocated again to the present-day site.
yet to be explored, for the wall is actually a partitioning of the
gallery constructed purposefully to conceal (like history itself). On 1830: Paris Revolution again on the streets of Paris, Charles X
its surface, facing what we have already seen, is painted a giant abdicates as king of France, Louis Philippe - the Citizen King -
replica of the French tricolor, flag of the revolution, tall columns of becomes King of the French, France captures Algeria, the anarchist
blue, white, and red, on which a thickening black time line is drawn geographer Elisee Reclus is born (also: social unrest in Brussels and
to move Los Angeles eventfully along a path defined by nine turn- Warsaw, Ecuador secedes from Gran Colombia, religious society of
ing-point dates in the history and geography of Paris: 1789- 1830- Mormons established by Joseph Smith).
1848 -1871 -1889-1914-1940 -1968-1989. El Pueblo Excluding Indians, the population reaches about 770.
The historical display runs from right to left, synchronically and In the period since 1789, the Indian population of California drops
diachronically reconnecting Paris and Los Angeles via the particular from 300,000 to 150,000. Locally, a major venereal disease epidemic
story of El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, the decimated the Gabrilieno in the period around 1805, the date of the
UR-ban birthplace of the regional metropolis that has taken (part of) first American visitor to El Pueblo. In 1830, the era of the Californios,
its name. At each of these crucial dates for Paris, little spatial histo- resolutely Mexican Los Angeles, is in its full glory, dominated by
ries are told in words and pictures for the specific site of El Pueblo. those with such family names as Pico, Carillo, Lugo, and Sepulveda.
Let me try with hindsight to recapture these moments. The settlement is the center of sprawling ranchos and a major
springboard for the secularization of the missions, such as those at
20
See Diane Haithman, "$50-Million Cost Hike May Delay Disney Hall Opening," San Gabriel, established in 1771, and San Fernando, built in 1797.
Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1994. The article describes the rising costs of construc- Secularization had many advantages. It opened new land for cattle
tion for the Hall and the county-financed parking garage, especially after Gehry's
redesigns and the earthquake that caused other rumblings earlier in the year. Costs ranching and provided a growing supply of cheap, quasi-slave labor
are now estimated at around $260 million and may force postponement of the -as long as the supply of Indians would last.
planned opening well beyond 1997. Twelve years after the French Revolution-inspired Mexican
Revolution of 1810, all of California had become part of the Republic Pico, his brother, former Governor Pio Pico, and most of the other
of Mexico. In the same year (1822) a new Catholic Church was built leaders of the California rebellion were pardoned; and for this and
next to what would become the central Plaza a few years later. The the next few years what would become Los Angeles County experi-
oldest building still standing today is the Avila Adobe, built in 1818. enced only modest changes, especially when compared with the
El Pueblo and the Mexican-mulatto-mestizo Californios were thriv- flood of 40,000 Yankees that turned the "miserable village" of Yerba
ing in 1830. The pueblo would be officially declared a city (ciudad) Buena into the new metropolis of San Francisco to the north. By
five years later by the Mexican Congress, and in the census of 1850, the new county counted a total population of 3,530, many of
1836, the city was shown to have grown to 2,230: 605 men, 421 them "domesticated Indians." The city of Los Angeles, with a little
women, 651 children, 553 Indians. Of this total, 50 were described as over 1,600 inhabitants, was predominantly California and would
"foreigners." remain so for the next two decades.
1848: Paris Another revolutionary period, worker upnsmgs, 1871:. Paris The Paris Commune, two months of popular rule in
Louis Philippe abdicates, Louis Napoleon elected President of the the citadel after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and
French Republic, The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels circu- William I, King of Prussia was declared German Emperor in
lates on the streets, as do the more "positivist" ideas of Auguste Versailles; two French workers compose "L'Internationale" (also:
Comte (also: revolutions and uprisings in Vienna, Venice, Berlin, labor unions legalized in Britain, Carroll publishes Through the
Milan, Parma, Prague, Rome, Budapest; the Treaty of Guadalupe Looking Glass, Darwin's The Descent of Man appears, Stanley meets
Hidalgo ends US-Mexico War, ceding California to the US, along Livingstone at Ujiji).
with present-day Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and El Pueblo Los Angeles enters the world's consciousness for the
parts of Colorado and Wyoming). first time in the Chinese Massacre. In October, a vigilante band of
El Pueblo For the first time, El Pueblo resonates with the radical Yankees (with a few Mexicans and several police officers) go on a
changes taking place in Paris. Los Angeles had been made the capital vicious racial rampage in El Pueblo, killing at least 20 Chinese (out of
of Mexican California three years earlier and ever since the a total resident population of 200) and looting Chinese stores and
Californios had become embroiled in major power struggles - homes in response to the accidental death of an Anglo man making a
among themselves, with Mexican thugs (cholos) and bandits, with citizen's arrest of someone he assumed was involved in a tong feud
Yankee looters and thieves, and with the US army. The cattle along the notorious Calle de los Negros (Nigger Alley).
ranches boomed in 1848, supplying beef to the adventurers in the The event culminated two decades of extraordinary violence, law-
north drawn by the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort early in the lessness, and interracial conflict in "Hell Town," as Los Angeles was
year. As El Pueblo churned with invasion, rebellion, and new com- called during the period following the American conquest. During
mercial wealth, the era of the Californios had clearly reached a cru- most of these years, a murder occurred every day on the average, as
cial turning-point. Mexican bandits, revolutionaries, and cholos, Yankee hustlers, cattle
The US declared war on Mexico in 1846 and resistance fighting thieves, and desperadoes, and a few remaining Indian rebels fought
immediately began in and around El Pueblo. After some significant against lynch mobs, hispanophobic vigilante groups, the armed Los
initial victories, the Californios were defeated in the "Battle of Los Angeles "Rangers," and the official American government. The Wild
Angeles" in early 1847 and Commodore Stockton led his marching West flavor of these times would be remembered forever. That it
troops triumphantly down present-day Alameda Street, Aliso Street, was also a period of such intense "Anglo-Americanization" that it
and Los Angeles Street directly into La Plaza, the heart of the could be labeled "ethnic cleansing" has been intentionally forgotten.
California citadel. Stockton occupied the Avila Adobe and made it The Chinese Massacre was an international embarrassment. New
his war headquarters, while "Military Commandant" John C. public and private coalitions were formed in 1871 to erase the
Fremont and his freebooting troops settled into the area near pre- images of racism and violence, and to imaginatively "rebuild LA"
sent-day Universal Studios to negotiate the Treaty of Cahuenga, along different lines. A railroad had already been constructed from
which effectively ended the war in Los Angeles. the city center to the port of San Pedro; a small real estate boom had
By the February 1848 signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, begun the subdivision of the rancho lands and consequent urban
El Pueblo had already begun to adjust to the Yankee conquest. The sprawl; and in a few years a rail link would be completed between
Californios were promised equal rights with US citizens; Andres Los Angeles and San Francisco, opening up the region to mass immi-
gration and rapid urban growth. For the historic El Pueblo, 1871 was over the preceding decade, US Marines occupy Vera Cruz, forcing
a major turning-point, the beginning of a long period of decay and Mexican President to resign).
neglect, as the American city turned its back on the old Plaza and its El Pueblo The population of booming Los Angeles is fast
embarrassing memories to construct a new center on its southern approaching half a million and it will soon surpass San Francisco as
flank. Ironically, Paris too turns away from the sites and sights of the California's largest city. The world's largest urban mass transit sys-
Paris Commune to rebuild the city in very different directions. tem connects the new downtown, already gridlocked with automo-
biles, to a sea of sprawling suburbs occupied primarily by Iowans,
1889: Paris Celebrations of the centennial of the French Nebraskans, and other "middle-class, middle-brow, mid-western-
Revolution, the Eiffel Tower (the world's tallest structure) is built for ers," as the Anglo-Americanization of Los Angeles is nearly com-
the Paris World Exhibition, May Day celebrated for the first time, la plete. The total population of Mexicans, Blacks and Asians (now
belle epoque is in its fullest glory (also: the Austrian Crown Prince mainly Japanese) is probably close to the smallest proportion it has
commits suicide at Mayerling, the Dakotas, Montana, and ever been - or will ever be - in the whitened Protestant city and
Washington become states, London dock strike, Brazil declared a county of Los Angeles.
republic, Hitler and Heidegger born). The sprawl is built in fields of citrus, grapevines, and vegetables
El Pueblo The City population reaches nearly 50,000, but the (with L.A. County now the richest agricultural area in the country);
belle epoque of El Pueblo is clearly over. None the less, the Plaza on scattered oil deposits (with the county's "black gold" suburbs
remains an important gathering-point and political rostrum for also leading the country in petroleum production); to serve the
Mexican migrant workers, political exiles, and revolutionaries, as growing motion picture industry (Hollywood is annexed in 1910 and
well as for Mexican and American labor organizers, who had suc- Charlie Chaplin appears in his first Mack Sennett comedy in 1914);
cessfully held the first strike in Los Angeles in 1883, against Colonel and to enjoy the beach (although Abbott Kinney's dream of creating
Otis and the Times (which began publishing two years earlier during an Italianate city of culture at Venice-by-the-Pacific had died by 1914
the centennial of the founding of El Pueblo). A new Chinatown, and most of its canals would soon afterward be filled in). The Los
housing the city's main vegetable growers and sellers, is taking Angeles Aqueduct had been opened the year before to William
shape in the Garnier Block near the Plaza; and the first well-estab- Mulholland's stirring words: "There it is! Take it!" and a budding
lished Black neighborhood has developed along Los Angeles Street aircraft industry would soon boom during the war years.
(a southern extension of the former Calle de los Negros), with Biddy Back in El Pueblo, there were other stirrings. After public oratory
Mason's Place close by on Spring. had been banned throughout Los Angeles several years earlier, two
The earlier era of the missions and the "domestication" of Indian rostrums "for free speech" are built in 1914, grudgingly acknowledg-
life is experiencing a romantic revival and reconstruction after the ing and commemorating the Plaza's significant role as a political
enormous popular success of Helen Hunt Jackson's idyllic Ramona rallying-point for more than a century. In many ways, this marks the
(published in 1884). A new urban mythology for Los Angeles is in end of the Progressive Era in Los Angeles, a decade and a half in
full bloom, sifting through the past to erase discomforting racial which the Plaza and the area around it had been one of the most
memories and to recreate Los Angeles as the first truly (white) lively centers of radical democratic activity in North America. The
American city, freed from the ties to both California and European new CITADEL-LA just to the south played a key role in the govern-
urban traditions. In 1889, while the French were celebrating their mental reform movements that brought California the initiative, the
revolution's centennial and a new county of Orange was carved out referendum, and the recall. Using the Plaza as its meeting place and
in Southern California, Mexican Los Angeles was historically recre- revolutionary staging ground, the exiled Partido Liberal Mexicano
ated as a reliquary museum, with the encasing of El Pueblo as the (PLM) published the newspaper Regeneracion and waged its struggle
city's first "historical park" by the newly established Parks and against the Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Two of its leaders, the
Recreation (sic!) Department. Magnon brothers, were tried and convicted of breaking US neutral-
ity laws in the huge Court House nearby, as thousands of Mexicans
1914: Paris The beginning of World War I, the pacifist socialist flocked to the trial from the crowded Sonoratown and Chavez
Jean Jaures murdered, British troops land in France, Germans Ravine barrios to the north of El Pueblo. And then there was the
occupy Lille and Rheims (also: Panama Canal opened, more than 10 labor movement.
million immigrants enter the US from southern and eastern Europe In addition to the 1910-12 trial of the Magnon brothers (who were
~"'
I
! Remembrances 225
224 Inside and Outside Los Angeles I
helped by the International Workers of the World and the local has been "theme-parked" as a "picturesque Mexican market place"
Socialist Party), another major trial received widespread attention and tourist attraction, a product of the work, a decade earlier, of
during the same period. It involved the alleged "anarchic unionists" Christine Sterling, Plaza de Los Angeles, Inc., the Times (of course)
who, it was claimed, were responsible for the explosion of the down- and a gang of prison laborers provided by the city. These public-
town offices of the Los Angeles Times, which killed 20 people. Milling private Anglofications recreate El Pueblo as an Americanized
around the Court House during the 1911 trial, called by labor leaders monument to the founding of Los Angeles. The principle of historic
the new "Battle for Los Angeles," were such national luminaries as preservation is established and at least the shells of many of the old
Clarence Darrow (who agreed to defend the accused), Lincoln buildings are en route to being preserved: Avila Adobe (built in
Steffens, Louis Brandeis, and Samuel Gompers. 1818), Pelanconi House (1855), Sepulveda House (1887), Masonic
At issue was more than the guilt or innocence of the accused Temple (1858), Merced Theatre (1870), Pico House (1869), the Old
McNamara brothers. For the local Socialist Party and its national Firehouse (1884), the Garnier Block (1890). The opening of Union
supporters, at a time when the party seemed almost sure of winning Station in 1939, however, forces the relocation of Chinatown to a
the next mayoral election, it was the culmination of a long struggle new site just north of El Pueblo.
against the "open shop" and particularly against its most powerful The only building continuing to function in its original capacity is
supporters, General Otis and Harry Chandler of the Times newspa- the Plaza Church-La Placita, Church of Our Lady the Queen of
per empire and the equally powerful Merchants and Manufacturers Angels. It will continue to do so up to the present. The free speech
Association. The political battle was led by the local labor leader Job rostrums seem to have disappeared, but the Plaza still is an impor-
Harriman, who was also the Socialist Party candidate for mayor. It tant gathering place for Mexicans trying, against all odds, to main-
was felt by many that the entire socialist movement in America tain their cultural heritage. This makes the Plaza a prime target for
would hinge around what happened in Los Angeles in 1911. What hispanophobia, such as the "repatriation movement" that flourished
happened was the utter defeat of the Socialist Party and the struggle during the Great Depression and aimed at deporting everyone of
against the open shop. Mexican ancestry. Another round of nativist hysteria and violence
By 1914 and the onset of the war, Los Angeles had begun fading would occur during the war years against the pachuco gangs, leading
into the periphery of American struggles for radical democracy. Job up to the Zoot Suit riots of 1943. And in 1941, Executive Order
Harriman moved in 1914 into the high desert well to the north of the 9066 begins the relocation of Japanese-Americans to concentration
CIT AD EL-LA to help found a small socialist community called camps and the legal looting of Japanese assets, especially in the
Llano del Rio, later to be called by Mike Davis in his City of Quartz, neighborhoods adjacent to El Pueblo, a more sophisticated and
"Open Shop Los Angeles's utopian antipode." But on the horizon nationally supported version of the Chinese Massacre of 1871.
was a new centering on Los Angeles, the beginning of the creation During the war, a USO canteen is established near the Plaza and
here of the world's most powerful war machine. It would trigger the becomes a haven for US servicemen, who play a key role in the racial
greatest industrial and population boom of any city in the 20th cen- rioting bubbling out from El Pueblo.
tury.
1968: Paris The streets and universities explode in student riots
1940: Paris World War II, Germans enter Paris in June, Petain and demonstrations aimed at attaining le droit ala ville -the right to
signs armistice, de Gaulle leads Free French resistance, Lascaux the city, unrest brings back memories of the Paris Commune,
caves are discovered (also: Trotsky assassinated in Mexico, Richard Lefebvre and the situationists achieve widespread popularity, de
Wright's Native Son and Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely are Gaulle demands vote of confidence (also: the invasion of
published, US population reaches 132 million after slowest decade of Czechoslovakia, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and, in Los
growth in the history of the census). Angeles, Robert Kennedy, riots in Chicago, Mexico City hosts
El Pueblo The first freeway opens, connecting downtown to Olympic Games, Nixon elected President).
Pasadena. The census reports a City population of more than 1.5 mil- El Pueblo The streets of Los Angeles have already exploded in
lion and a County population of 2.8 million, after Los Angeles coun- the most violent urban uprising in 20th-century American history.
tercyclically expands during the Great Depression. And El Pueblo The Watts rebellion and riots of 1965 result in 35 deaths, 4,000
takes on a radically different look. arrests, $40 million in property damage, and the renaming of Central
A filthy alley running with sewage in the late 1920s, Olvera Street Avenue south of downtown "Charcoal Alley." By 1968, the Black
population of Los Angeles had grown to more than 600,000, eight

times the 75,000 who were living here in 1940, a product of one of
the largest city-focused migrations of a single racial-ethnic group
ever to occur anywhere. In 1970, Los Angeles would explode again
in the anti-Vietnam War Chicano Moratorium, the biggest Latino
demonstration in US history. Los Angeles was deeply unsettled in
1968, as were most American cities.
By this time, El Pueblo had become a State Historic Park The
Music Center complex had just been completed across the 101
Freeway, which had effectively cut off the Plaza from the new Civic
Center. Boxed in by the freeway on the south, Union Station on the
east, Chinatown on the north, and Fort Moore Hill on the west, the
shrunken El Pueblo had become reduced to the Olvera Street tourist
strip, a cluster of old buildings being slowly restored, a Plaza used
primarily for tourist services and occasional Mexican-American cele-
brations (such as Cinco de Mayo and the blessing of the animals at
Easter), and the still functioning La Placita church. The heterotopo-
logical qualities of the site, however, maintained its sustaining sig-
nificance as the symbolic center of Latino life and culture in Los
Angeles, almost entirely unseen as such by the Anglo majority.
1989: The time line runs out into the present, with an arrow point-
ing to the citadel wall and a faint picture of the old Avila Adobe
floating above and almost out of sight. The year of the exhibition is
an active one, however, as control of El Pueblo Historic Park shifts
from a complex city, county, and state administration to the newly
renamed (putting recreation first) Recreation and Parks Department
of the City of Los Angeles, celebrating its own centennial during this
French bicentennial year. As reported in the local press, perfor-
mances are staged in the Plaza by the Asian-American Ballet, the
Xipe Totec Aztec Indian dancers, and Somebody Special, Inc., "a
drill team of teen-age girls who boogie to Motown sounds." And a
time capsule is buried under Olvera Street containing representative
ethnic arts and crafts, feathers from the endangered California con-
dor, a preserved grunion, and park-sponsored T-shirts.
In the years following these celebrations, El Pueblo has entered still

another round of possible deconstruction and reconstitution. For
some, it remains in the way of downtown expansion, an anomalous
and anachronistic piece of eminently developable land in the heart of
a now "world class" city. For others, it is the signifying site of the
contemporary region's spectacular multiculturalism. For many, it is
the irrevocable heart and soul of Mexican-Chicano/Chicana Los
Angeles or, at least, an important Latino commercial and cultural
stronghold worth preserving and enhancing. This renewed struggle
'lll~.)1.':.r:
I'
over time and space will certainly be worth watching in the future. ity squeezed into the eastern edge of the CIT A DEL-LA near the old
Looking back, El Pueblo has been the primordial PALIMPSEST of Federal Building and the US Courthouse, just across the freeway
the City of Angels, prepared from its origins to be written upon and from El Pueblo.
erased over and over again in the evolution of urban consciousness At about this time, a contest was held to design a symbolic "gate-
and civic imagination. In Foucauldian terms, it has also become a way" extravaganza for Los Angeles to commemorate its surpassing
"new kind of temporal heterotopia," one which combines the fleet- role as an immigration entrepot: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis
ing time of the festival site or vacation spot with the indefinitely Island rolled into one. The winning plan proposed a "steel cloud"
accumulating time of the museum or library. As such, like its disney- grill-work surmounting the freeway at this very spot, filled with
Bed descendants, it simultaneously serves to abolish histories and restaurants, museums, gift shops, and aquaria (with live sharks)
cultures and to discover them anew in "other spaces." floating above the traffic below and between the prison and El
Pueblo. It remains unbuilt. Across the way to the south of the federal
prison sits a more complementary landmark: the LAPD headquar-
Panopticon ters in Parker Center.
Dominating the interior space at the gallery is a giant, eerily
Our final stop in the exhibition need not take long, for its rudiments beautiful picture of the east face of the Federal Detention Center
have already been sighted, sited, and cited. It represents an attempt to photographed at night by Robert Morrow. The same shot would
evoke in a more direct way the career a[ city that underlies all urban his- later appear on the cover of Mike Davis's City of Quartz (1990).
tories and geographies, that everywhere projects the citadel's powers (Mike also helped with the exhibition.) The evening shades of this
of surveillance and adherence while reflecting also the powers of Bastille-like frontage are broken only by a bright red light staring
resistance and defiance. We enter this space through a narrow pas- from atop the roof (and mimicked by the bare bulb hanging in the
sageway at the end of the time line wall as it perpendicularly room). This jewel of a jail looks like a modernized castle keep, with
approaches the eastern end of the plotted and mapped CIT AD EL-LA slitted openings that allow the inmates the mock freedom to reach
At this juncture, the wall map extends inward from roughly the site of one arm through and wave and shout at passersby. The only visi-
El Pueblo to display a sector of enclosures opening eastward from the ble bars are hung on the outside of the building in a perfect dissim-
citadel. Contained here is the largest urban prison population in North ulation of the carceral enclosure, feigning not to have what it most
America in sites which violently intrude on the unbarred barrio of East certainly has.
Los Angeles, where another form of spatial enclosure in practiced. In my first visit to the actual site, I waved back to the incarcerated
A takeaway fact sheet provides you with some information: 18,000 prisoners, after entering a fern-filled atrium just to the right of the
inmates fill four county jails, including Men's Central and Sybil main entrance. Out of nowhere, armed guards appeared to shoo me
Brand, the nation's largest women's prison. In 1988, another 23,000 away from such open communication with the one-armed inhabi-
"non-threatening" prisoners were released early to free up space, tants. The building, it seems, is not meant to be seen. Despite its loca-
provoking then Governor Deukmejian, in his determination to build tion and its involvement in such sensitive local issues as immigration
still more prisons in this downtown wedge, to proclaim that crimi- control, insider dealing, and financial fraud (I think Michael Milken,
nals are Los Angeles's "principal export." A newspaper headline of junk-bond fame, spent some time here), the Metropolitan
tells of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan terrorism within Men's Central Detention Center was built with remarkably little local awareness.
aimed at intimidating Black deputies and inmates alike with cross- Even today, few law-abiding downtown workers or visitors know of
burnings, gang-baiting taunts, and Nazi memorabilia. The message its existence.
is clear: one is never free from the legacy of racism in Los Angeles, A more recent visit to the new federal complex that has grown
even when behind bars. between the old Federal Building and the Metropolitan Detention
By now, you have entered a dark, cell-like room lit by a bare red Center introduces another dimension to our journey in the
bulb. The chicken wire cloud that floats Gehryshly over the rest of CIT A DEL-LA It is well worth a little contemporary detour. To guide
the gallery spills into the enclosure and tightly meshes an interior you, I extract from a photographic essay by Dora Epstein, my
wall (the backside of the time line). On all sides are ominous pho- Research Associate in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA,
tographs of the newest addition to the carceral city of Los Angeles, prepared in early 1994 after her first visit to the peculiar sites of
the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal "administrative" facil- Roybal Plaza.
I needed directions to the Roybal Building, so I called a build- In the middle column, at viewer's eye level, an angry bronze
ing maintenance manager listed in the phonebook. She told me female squats in her cave. Knife in hand but shackled as well,
to park in an empty lot on Temple Street, and walk over to the she viciously guards "the new world" in the fountain of mist
plaza. She told me to keep walking past the police station, past before her. In the middle of the fountain is a dazed nude baby
the "drive-by," and toward the jail [the Metropolitan Detention in bronze lying on her back, staring up at the globe in her hand.
Center]. I thought, is this LA, or is this war? When Otterness' The New World was installed in the Roybal
Between the police station and the jail lies Roybal Plaza. Plaza, it carne as part and parcel to the unveiling of the slick
Looming largely next to the street is Jonathon Borofsky's new federal building and jail. Obviously, it had passed the
Molecule Men, a burnished steel sculpture of four intercon- GSA (federal Government Services Administration) stipulation
nected two-dimensional male (?) figures. Throughout their that public art should "reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor,
flattened bodies is a Swiss cheese of holes, so that the LA sun- and stability of the American National Government." In fact, it
light reflects harshly off their substance, while passing peace- had been unanimously approved by the GSA Art-in-
fully through their lack. They stand about 30 feet high, and Architecture panel. However, when a judge from the federal
although it may represent the particles of our being, the vio- court building next door declared that the works were, due to
lence of the image is clear. They look as if they've been shot. the two nude bronze figures, obscene, the GSA quickly
Molecule Men was, indeed, the "drive-by" the manager had removed the statues from the plaza. Why any of the hundreds
mentioned. of nude figures in the frieze were not considered obscene
I looked at the Molecule Men from one angle, and I saw escapes me, but what seemed to bother this judge, and later
through their bodies the street where police car after police car Roybal himself [Roybal was the first Mexican American from
cruised past. I looked again from another angle, and this time it Los Angeles to serve in the US Congress], was the genitalia of
was the jail, concrete and fortress-like. For a second, I was the baby. I imagine that these two men were, like many people,
caught, feeling as if I was the one who had done the shooting. I torn between the titillation that women's genitalia often cause,
was presumed guilty, trapped by an environment of surveil- and the revulsion that they felt by being titillated. Certainly,
lance, discipline, and punish. female genitalia, unlike symbolic and real representations of
I ascended the plaza stairs to the courtyard. Rimming the male genitalia, are unusual, if not hidden, to the Western gaze.
courtyard, just at the boundary of the jail, is the pleasant neo- To see them then so prominently "displayed" caused many of
Classical frieze, The New World, by Torn Otterness. In the shape these men to match the rise in their pants with a rise in their
of a semi-oval with a circular fountain in the center, The New anger. After all, if they felt so base, surely a "real" pervert
World is reminiscent of a Roman colonnade, imitated through- would threaten to deface their beautiful monument to "democ-
out the centuries in stately gardens and monuments. Like its racy." The two bronze nudes were removed until a compro-
predecessors, The New World tells its "story" in the elaborate mise was reached to partly obscure the figures- the woman
cornices above the columns. On opposite ends of the frieze, would squat behind a rosebush, the mist around the baby
small dough-like figures "help" each other "climb" the columns would be raised.
from the level of the plaza to the cornice. The women are on one What was missed, in this brief attention, was the fact that the
side of the frieze, the men on the other; all are laden with geo- artwork, in its entirety, was designed to obscure something
metric objects. Beginning at the outermost cornice from the cen- much more obscene: the boundary of the jail. If one looks care-
ter of the frieze, the figures seem to march towards the center. fully between the columns, razor-like barbed wire can be seen.
The women come from the sea, and carry globes and books as If one steps away from the frieze and dares look up, the con-
they march. The men elect a king, and escort him in a car. At crete mask of the jail merges in the eye with the whiteness of
the center, chaos reigns, as the king is overthrown. The "palace" the columns. There is a purposeful architectural fit between the
is toppled, the car is overturned, and the king is taken hostage, two disparate objects. We accept the pleasance of the colon-
shackled, crushed by an elephant, and finally, dismembered. nade, because it allows us to disregard its imposing mate.
[ES: The king's remains can be seen floating separately near the As spectators and employees on lunch go gawking by, they
center of the frieze: a crown, two arms, two legs, a heart, and a take delight in the whimsy of Otterness' work. The dough-
penis.] like figures are playful, rounded, human Ewoks, like the
Pillsbury dough boy or roly-poly Gumbys. Except for the architecture. Foucault came upon Bentham's 1787 plan while
bronzes (and this may be another reason why the bronzes studying reforms in eighteenth-century hospital and prison
were rejected), they smile in a goofy "Have a nice day!" way. architecture, and took it as the paradigmatic example of the
Often described in newspapers as a battle between the sexes, I interworkings of SPACE, POWER and KNOWLEDGE in dis-
cannot help but feel that the whimsy of the figures made the ciplinary society. The P ANOPTICON is the "diagram of a
media miss the point. The "sexes" do not battle. They merely mechanism reduced to its ideal form," a combination of
come from opposite sides of the frieze. Although it may seem abstract schematization and very concrete applications.
that women have "won" out in the end (the bronze figures
again; maybe that also offended the eminent judges), both Think of the bold-faced implications. Amidst its multiplicity of
sexes seem to actively topple the king. The New World, then, is expressions, every city is to some degree a panopticon, a collection
not about a gender-driven madness, but rather a happy revo- of surveillant nodes designed to impose and maintain a particular
lution. The king's demise is the center of the story, the new model of conduct and disciplined adherence on its inhabitants.
generation after the king its culmination. Thus, while we are Those who do not, or actively threaten not to, adhere are in one
goaded into the delight of the figures and the dismissal of the way or another incarcerated in specialized enclosures, be they asy-
site, we are also being called upon to question the authority, lums and prisons or ghettoes and Skid Rows. This agglomeration
to sum up the power and the resources to come together to of the spatial means of social control, the geographical centers of
create a new world - between the police station, the courts, power, lies at the very origins of urbanization, at the generative
and the jails .... source both of the most ancient hydraulic civilizations as well as
I remembered the [second, federally charged] Rodney King the institutional regulation that made possible the proletarian cities
beating trial and the news conferences which had taken place in of industrial capitalism. The spatial concentration of power for
that plaza, but I could not recall ever seeing the frieze before. I social production and reproduction was what the first cities were
asked a security officer at the metal detector inside the Roybal primarily for. It has remained central to urban life ever since, even
Building where the news conferences had taken place. He told as new functions were added. Such commanding geographical
me that they had moved to the left of the fountain, on the steps. presence differentiates the urban from the rural, adherents from
Why? The mist arising from the fountain kept getting on the the not yet adherent, polites (citizens) from idiotes (hicks, rubes, the
camera lenses. uncivilized).
These origins should never be forgotten. But this does not mean
Back in the room, another placard is spotlighted and written in bold- that the carceral city operates simply and directly along the extended
faced lettering. It is adapted from Gwendolyn Wright and Paul visual lines of Bentham's original Panopticon or that its disciplinary
Rabinow, "Spatialization of Power: A Discussion of the Work of technologies and heterotopologies remain constant over time. Too
Michel Foucault," published in Skyline (1982). It helps us understand much happens in the city for this to be true. But then again, the
where we are. major transformations of modern society, especially the growing role
of the centralized state in maintaining surveillance and adherence
For Foucault, SPACE is where the discourses about POWER via national citizenship and institutionalized identity politics, should
and KNOWLEDGE are transformed into actual relations of not obscure the continuing power of the city and citadel.
power. Here, the knowledge in the forefront is that of aesthet- City and State participate together in the more invisible processes
ics, of an architectural profession, of a science of planning. of "normalization" that pervade and sustain patriotic allegiance and
But these "disciplines" never constitute an isolated field. representative (as opposed to participatory) democracy. The power
They are of interest only when one looks to see how they of the citadel is not just expressed in face-to-face sociality but also in
mesh with economics, politics, or institutions. Then both the more abstract, less visible, psychogeographical realm of the
architecture and urban planning offer privileged instances for authoritative social "system." I emphasize this point because mod-
understanding how power operates. ern political theory and critical social science too quickly abandoned
The P ANOPTICON, Jeremy Bentham's proposal for radi- their roots in the polis and in what might be called the specificities of
ally planned institutional buildings, is by now the most the urban. In the modernist mainstreams, the city was virtually dis-
famous instance of a concretization of power applied through carded as a central object of knowledge and theory-building for such
abstract (and usually de-spatialized) notions as the role of the state,

social relations of production and class struggle, nationalism, market
competition, the social system, the philosophy of history. Discourses
on the sociality and historicality of human life continued to acknowl-
edge that social and political processes took place in cities, but this 8
was seen as an unavoidable coincidence rather than a consequential
relation or determination. There was relatively little that mattered, at
least in the new age of 20th-century-modernity, that was specifically Inside Exopolis: Everyday Life in
of cities, directly imbricated in the real or imagined realms of the
urban. For at least the past century, the urban has become epiphe-
the Postmodern World
nomenal to mainstream theorization of the constitution of modern
societies and the making of modern histories.
Today, with the reassertion of spatiality in critical thought and
theory, the specificity of the urban is receiving greater attention than
it has been given for a century and a half. A new field of critical urban
studies is taking shape around the trialectical nexus of space, knowl-
edge, and power and the interpretation of urban sites and spaces as
simultaneously perceived, conceived, and lived. More is being dis-
covered in the urban than even the staunchest urbanists of the past
ever dreamed was there.
The postrnodern confusion of time and space, in which temporal con-
tinuity collapses into extension and spatial dimension is lost to dupli-
Back to the Beginning cation, transforms urban culture into a gigantic hologram capable of
producing any image within an apparent void. In this process, time
After this long tour of the CIT AD EL-LA seen through the "eye of and space are transformed into icons of themselves and consequently
power," we are back to the beginning, to the postmodern reassertion rendered into scenarios.
of space (and the city) in critical social theory, to the spatial critique (Celeste Olalqui~ga in Megalopolis, 1992, 19)
of historicism and despatialized social science, to the pathbreaking
It's a theme park- a seven hundred and eighty-six square mile theme
voyages of Lefebvre, Foucault, and hooks, to the cultural critiques of
park - and the theme is "you can have anything you want."
the silencing of gender and race in modernist epistemologies, to a It's the most California-looking of all the Californias: the most
new ontology of spatiality, to the radical openness of Thirdspace, like the movies, the most like the stories, the most like the dream.
and to new kinds of remembrances. Orar,lge County is Tomorrow land and Frontierland, merged and
inseparable. 18th century mission. 1930s art colony. 1980s corporate
headquarters.
There's history everywhere: navigators, conquistadors, padres,
rancheros, prospectors, wildcatters. But there's so much Now, the
Then is hard to find. The houses are new. The cars are new. The stores,
the streets, the schools, the city halls - even the land and the ocean
themselves look new.
The temperature today will be in the low SO's. There's a slight
offshore breeze. Another just-like-yesterday day in paradise.
Corne to Orange County. It's no place like horne.
(From an advertisement for The Californias,
California Office of Tourism)
238 Inside and Outside Los Angeles Inside Exopolis 239
longer what the city used to be. Ex-centrically perched beyond the
"Toto, I've Got a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Any vortex of the old agglomerative nodes, the Exopolis spins new whorls
More" of its own, turning the city inside-out and outside-in at the same time,
As the spin-doctoring wizards of the California Office of Tourism unraveling in its paths the memories of more familiar urban fabrics,
proclaim, you can have anything you want in iconic Orange County, even where such older fabrics never existed in the first place.
where every day seems just like yesterday but where the ever- The metropolitan forms we have become used to -with dominat-
present Now-ness of tomorrowland makes the Then hard to find; ing downtowns and elevated Central Business Districts, definable
where every place is off-center, breathlessly on the edge, but always zones of residential and other land uses concentrically and sectorally
right in the middle of things, smack on the frontier, nowhere yet radiating outward from the tightly packed inner city to sleepy dor-
now /here like home. To its avid promoters, Orange County is a mitory suburbs, population density gradients neatly declining from
theme park-themed paradise where the American Dream is repeti- core to periphery- are now seemingly in the midst of a profound
tively renewed and made infinitely available: as much like the socio-spatial deconstruction and reconstitution. The new metropolis
movies as real-reel life can get. This resplendent bazaar of repack- is exploding and coalescing in multitudes of EPCOTs (experimental
aged times and spaces allows all that is contemporary (including his- prototypical communities of tomorrow), in improbable cities where
tories and geographies) to be encountered and consumed with an centrality is virtually ubiquitous and the solid familiarity of what we
almost Edenic simultaneity. once knew as urban melts into air.
Orange County represents itself as a foretaste of the future, a gen- We're certainly not in Kansas any more, but neither are we in old
uine phenomenological recreation of everyday life in a brilliantly New York or Chicago- or even modern Los Angeles, the centrifugal
recombinant postmodern world, beyond Oz, beyond even the utopic ur-Exopolis that is now being left behind in the wake of its endlessly
late-modernisms of Disney. The most "California-looking" of all the repetitive contemporary simulations. We are now inside Exopolis,
different Californias, Orange County leads the way in the very con- and as we tour its postmodern geographies I will lead you along
temporary competition to identify the Happiest Place on Earth. If with some old (ca. 1984--90) and a few more recent news-clippings
any other place is still in the running, it is purely through faithful from my files, to add a little sense of history. But before we begin, I
simulations of the original. And every day more simulations of will also introduce another guide to our Thirdspace entourage, a late
Orange County are springing up- around Boston, New York, San addition who carries with him his own distinctive maps and clip-
Francisco, Chicago, Washington, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, Atlanta pings of the territory being explored.
-propelling what is fast becoming the most spectacular transforma-
tion of urban landscapes, and of the language we use to describe Re-imaged-in-LA: A Little Bit of Baudrillard
them, since the industrial city first took shape in the 19th century.
It is almost as if the urban is being reinvented in places like Jean Baudrillard has already made his presence felt in earlier chap-
Orange County to celebrate the end of the millennium. And you are ters. His work, however, takes on particular significance inside
there whether you like it or not, looking at the coming attractions Exopolis, for he, more than anyone else I can think of, has effectively
being screened well beyond modernity's urban fringe. Suspend dis- mapped out one of its essential qualities, the infusion and diffusion
belief for the moment, control the cynical sneers, and enjoy the of hyperreality into everyday life, an interpellation that Baudrillard
strangely familiar ride into paradigmatic postmodernity. It will soon describes as emanating from "the precession of simulacra."
be coming to your neighborhood. Hyperreality and the precession of simulacra- exact copies of origi-
nals that no longer exist or perhaps never really existed in the first
Introducing Exopolis place - represent contemporary elaborations upon what I have
described as the simultaneously "real-and-imagined." Instead of the
Some have called these amorphous implosions of archaic suburbia combinatory hyphens, Baudrillard collapses the terms on to each
"Outer Cities" or "Edge Cities"; others dub them "Technopoles," other, suggesting a growing incap<:Icity to distinguish between them:
'Technoburbs," "Silicon Landscapes," "Postsuburbia," "Metroplex." real-imagined as re-imaged-in-LA.
I will name them, collectively, Exopolis, the city without, to stress As our ability to tell the difference between what is real and what
their oxymoronic ambiguity, their city-full non-cityness. These are is imagined weakens, another kind of reality- a hyperreality- flour-
not only exo-cities, orbiting outside; they are ex-cities as well, no ishes and increasingly flows into everyday life. It is not the hard
empirical reality of materialist science or Marxism; nor is it quite the could tell the difference between an idea and its referent, a
simultaneously real-and-imagined. It is something different and, if representation and what is represented, the image and the real-
not new, then certainly more prominent and affective in the contem- ity. But now the two things are hopelessly confused, says Baud-
porary world than ever before. Baudrillard has not been alone in rillard .... Take the most important of his concepts: that of
drawing our attention to the fact that reality is no longer what it simulation ("feigning to have what one hasn't"). Simulation,
used to be. Here, too, there has been a flurry of neologistic invention you might think, consists in pretending that something is not
aimed at capturing the meaning and growing significance of hyper- what it in fact is; this does not alarm us because we feel that we
reality, especially in connection with the electronic media that so know how to tell the pretence from reality. Baudrillard's
effectively carry its messages. The two terms which come most simulation is not like that, however; it effaces the very differ-
quickly to mind are "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" (with the latter ence between the categories true and false, real and imaginary.
spawning such specialized variations as "cyburbia" and "cyberia"). We no longer have any means of testing pretence against
I am also reminded of Celeste Olalquiaga's descriptions of an reality, or know which is which. Nor is there any exit from this
endemic urban psychasthenia, "a disturbance in the relation between quandary. To report the change involved, we must say that
self and surrounding territory." One's own body/self is "lost in the "from now on" the "relationship has been reversed", that the
immense area that circumscribes it," abandoning its own identity "to map, as it were, precedes the territory, or the sign the thing. Yet
embrace the space beyond ... camouflaging itself into the milieu," such talk is itself illegitimate, for with simulation rampant, even
into "represented space." Bodies become like cities in what she calls the words that we use "feign to have what they haven't",
a "poetic condensation." History is replaced by geography, stories ie, meanings or referents. In fact we do not know the difference
by maps, memories by scenarios, with everything connected to "the between the map and the territory, and would not know it even
topography of computer screens and video monitors" (see chapter 7). if we had our noses pressed up against the thing itself.
These variations and extensions can be wrapped into the summa-
tive concept of hyperreality and used to open up new opportunities Forewarned to avoid the no-exit extremes of contemporary
(and new dangers) in the challenging task of making theoretical and Baudrillardism, we can begin to unpack and repackage Baudrillard's
practical sense of the contemporary world, of Thirdspace, and, more earlier journeys to add to our understanding of Thirdspace and to
particularly, of everyday life in Exopolis, for it is inside the outer assist in our excursions through the looking glass of the Orange
core regions of Exopolis that hyperreality and its accompanying psy- County Exopolis.
chasthenias have become most heavily condensed. Other travels in There are many ways to connect B<J.udrillard to Thirdspace. He,
hyperreality will eventually be noted, but it is Baudrillard who will, more than anyone else, has taken an intellectual path that creatively
initially at least, lead the way. interweaves Lefebvre and Foucault with strands of Nietzsche, surre-
In following Baudrillard, however, we must be careful to avoid alism, and situationism. Although he never explicitly chose space as
the dangers of "disappearing into the desert" with him, for he has his revealing medium and repeatedly disavowed any lasting theoret-
pushed his contemporary critique to ridiculous extremes of political ical influence from either Lefebvre or Foucault, Baudrillard can nev-
immobility. As a caveat against the numbing politics of Baudrillard's ertheless be seen as a heterotopological metaphilosopher of
political projections from the precession of simulacra and, peculiarly everyday life, driven by questions of material production and the
enough, as a useful clarification of his central arguments, I extract thickening veils of la conscience mystifrle, the mystification of collec-
from a critical review of Baudrillard's travels in the hyperreality of tive consciousness. He too has been a nomadic metaphilosopher,
America (1988), written by Zygmunt Bauman, the leading moralist of erasing many of his own constructs as he moves on to different hori-
postmodernism. 1 zons of inquiry and critique.
What I want to capture here, however, and bring with us as we
The world in which we once confidently spoke of change and enter the Exopolis in Orange County are some gleanings from "The
renewal, of trends and directions, was a solid one in which we Precession of Simulacra," the first half of a small book called
Simulations, published in 1983. 2 In his rambling prose, Baudrillard
1
Zygmunt Bauman, "Disappearing into the Desert," Times Literary Supplement,
December 16-22, 1988; and Jean Baudrillard, America, London and New York:
Verso, 1988. See also Bauman's Postmodern Ethics, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: 2
Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," in Simulations, tr. P. Foss,
Blackwell, 1993. P. Patton, and P. Beitchman, New York: Semiotext(e), 1983, 1-80.
presents a remarkably clear picture of the epistemology of hyperreal- thought the sensible "reflections" from the real empirical world,
ity amidst a text that quickly becomes filled with a "Moebius- sorting out the accurate, good, useful information from the accom-
Spiralling Negativity" that threatens to devour his own intentions panying noise and distortion. This is essentially the epistemology of
(1983: 30). The text begins with a passage from Ecclesiastes, remind- modern science and the scientific method. It continues in force to
ing us of the ancient roots of the term simulacrum: ''The simulacrum this day in the human, biological, and physical sciences as the domi-
is never that which conceals the truth- it is the truth which conceals nant epistemology, and is still recognizable, despite its detractors,
that there is none. The simulacrum is true." Baudrillard turns, as an important foundation for critical, emancipatory thought and
appropriately enough, next to Borges. practice, that is, making practical sense of the world in order to
change it for the better.
If we are able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the A second critical episteme was developed most systematically in
Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a the 19th century, although, as for the first, ancestors can be found
map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory much earlier. Its metaphorical embodiment was not the mirror but
(but where the decline of the Empire sees this map become the mask, a belief that the "good" reflections potentially receivable
frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the from the empirical world of the real are blocked by a deceptive
deserts . . . [a] ruined abstraction . . . rotting like a carcass, shroud of false or counterfeit appearances. In Baudrillard's words,
returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double the directly mirrored image "masks and perverts a basic reality"
ends up being confused with the real thing) -then this fable has (1983: 11). Practical knowledge and critical understanding thus
come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete require an unmasking, a demystification of surface appearances, a
charm of second order simulacra. digging for insight beneath the empirical world of directly measur-
Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, able reflections. The systematic exposition of this mode of critical
the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a terri- discourse is closely related to the development of various forms of
tory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by structuralism, from Marx, Freud, and de Saussure, to more contem-
models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The terri- porary cultural criticism in art, literature, and esthetics (where some
tory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it might say that an untheorized form of exploring what is hidden
is the map that precedes the territory- PRECESSION OF SIM- behind appearances has always existed). This alternative episteme
ULACRA - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we significantly shaped the discourse on modernity in the fin de siecle
were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose and has probably been the dominant counter-epistemology for
shreds are slowly rotting across the map, whose vestiges subsist explicitly critical theory and practice throughout the 20th century.
here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the For Baudrillard, a third episteme emerges alongside the others in
Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself. (1983: 1-2) the late 20th century, ushering in a new critical - and poststruc-
turalist - epistemology metaphorized around the simulacrum. Here
As always, Baudrillard flamboyantly overstates his point to drive the image begins to mask "the absence of a basic reality," indicative
home the importance of his underlying argument, that something of a transition from "dissimulation" (feigning not to have what one
unusual is happening today in the relation between the real and the really has, the "evil" lies derived from the appearance of things) to
imaginary, reality and its representations. How this has come about the increasing "liquidation of all referentials," the substitution of
is eventually condensed in what he calls "the successive phases of signs or representations of the real for the real itself; in other
the image," an epistemological timeline that I consider one of words, to "simulations" (feigning to have what one hasn't). The
Baudrillard's most significant achievements. These phases can be precession of simulacra threatens the very existence of a difference
interpreted, for our purposes, as a sequence of critical epistemes in (and hence of our ability to differentiate) between the true and the
the development of post-Enlightenment Western modernity, or false, the real and the imaginary, the signifier and the signified.
more simply, different models for making practical sense of the Like the Exopolis, things seem to be turning inside-out and out-
world. side-in at the same time, erasing or at least blurring all familiar cat-
The first critical episteme is captured in the metaphor of the mirror, egorical boundaries.
with the image being "the reflection of a basic reality." Practical The increasing empowerment of simulations and simulacra in the
knowledge is derived from our ability to comprehend in rational contemporary world has generated many of the epistemological
stances associated with the so-called "postmodern condition": the

deconstructive attack on all inherited modernist epistemologies and
the rise of a more flexible, recombinant, and broadly poststructural-
ist critical theory; the resort to relativism, radical pluralism, eclecti-
cism, and pastiche in an effort to avoid totalizing or essentialist
metanarratives; the recognition of an invasive hyperreality that dis-
locates and decenters the subject and its (especially his) referents;
the crisis of representation and the radical negation of the sign as
value; the opening up to and disordering of difference and other-
ness; the substantive attention to the media and to popular culture
as affective and revealing locations for the production of hyperreal-
ity; the search for tactical and strategic niches of resistance rather
than universal programs for emancipatory social action. All spring,
in one way or another, from the realization that postmodern reality
is no longer what it used to be.
Baudrillard, however, goes one step further, arguing that we have
already moved into a fourth phase, one in which the image "bears
no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum."
As he adds, "the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer
anything but a gigantic simulacrum- not unreal, but a simulacrum,
never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in
an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference (1983:
10-11).
At this point, we must suspend our acceptance of the
Baudrillardian progression, for it leads us to little else but the
nihilistic "ecstasy" or bovine immobility that he seems to recom-
mend as a response to the total conquest of hypersimulation. But
whether Baudrillard himself believes we have irresistibly entered
this holistic new age or is instead strategically challenging us with Scene 1: A Mythology of Origins
exaggerated signals of its impending total absorption is still open to
question. What is clearer, however, from this little bit of We begin with the words of the economic geographer, Allen Scott,
Baudrillard, is the wholesale intrusion of everyday life by an efful- who has pioneered the exploration of Orange County's Firstspace?
gent hyperreality that is redefining what we mean by the real-and-
We may take Orange County as a paradigmatic example of the
imagined. With this awareness in mind, we can now enter. the
new patterns of industrialization and urbanization that are now
Exopolis of Orange County and more effectively explore its post-
being laid down on the American economic landscape. In par-
modern scenarios.
ticular, Orange County epitomizes with great clarity the basic
geographical character of new growth centers in the Sunbelt,
with their transaction-intensive economies, their deeply seg-
mented local labor markets and regressive labor relations, and
Scenes from Orange County and a Little Beyond
their high-technology production systems geared intimately to
federal defense and space expenditures....
The following scenes from the Orange County Exopolis are wrapped
around newspaper clippings and a few more academic references
3
Allen J. Scott, "New Frontiers of Industrial-Urban Development: The Rise of the
Orange County High Technology Complex, 1955-1984," chapter 9 in Metropolis:
from other travelers in and through its hyperrealities. To guide you, From the Division of Labor to Urban Form, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
here is a map of the territory. California Press, 1988.
~.""'"'
[
246 Inside and Outside Los Angeles I Inside Exopolis 247
In the mid-1950s, Orange County was in essence a quiet back- Towns in America. To the north, Anaheim and Fullerton stake out
water given over to agricultural pursuits with some modest another, older complex, while several other hardworking clusters of
industrial production.... The population was small, and resi- industrial activity lie scattered about, each a pointillist focus in the
dential activity was mainly confined to a few communities in urbanizing landscape.
the northern half of the county and along the coast. Some sub- To call this densely knit assemblage of manufacturers and their
urban tract development was beginning to make itself evident, subcontracted servants simply "postindustrial" is surely to miss the
however, as the Los Angeles built-up area expanded point. And just as surely the area is no longer "sub" urban. Orange
southward .... The uncluttered landscape of the county, County may have no dominant city in the traditional sense, no easily
together with its abundant recreational facilities and varied nat- identifiable center or skylined downtown to signal the Modernist
ural environments, offered ideal living conditions for its rising citadel and CBD, but it is a metropolis none the less, a Standard
middle-class population, and its conservative political inclina- Metropolitan Statistical Area of around 2.6 million inhabitants, an
tions (then as now) made it an attractive place for business .... industrial capitalist city of a new kind, a city whose "flexible accu-
Sometime in the 1960s . . . Orange County manufacturers mulation" of wealth and power is indicative of a restructured politi-
began to draw together into a complex in the true sense, i.e., a cal economy. Industrialization thus concretely sets the basic reality
congeries of interlinked industries sharing a common pool of of the exopolitan scene.
labor and various infrastructural services .... By the early 1970s, Scott, attached to the pre-postmodern vision of urban dynamics
the high-technology complex had become as tightly organized that has dominated the (First)spatial analysis of industrial restructur-
in geographical space as it apparently was in economic ing, searches for a rational order in the bubbling postmodern
space.... [Today,] the loose subsystem of plants around complexity. He calculates the geographical "center of gravity" for
Anaheim and Fullerton remains a strong element of the overall the whole Orange County industrial flywheel and imposes hypo-
industrial pattern of the county. In addition, the subsystem in thetical concentric patternings around the weighty center of indus-
and around Irvine has developed into an extraordinarily dense trial production and employment in the hope of discovering more
and tightly knit assemblage of manufacturers. This latter sub- of those distance-frictioned regularities on which indigenous
system is now the dominant focus of the county's proliferating spatial science so heavily depends. Some fuzzy sets of statistical
electronic components, computer, and instrument indus- concentricities emerge to satisfy the scientific search, but what is
tries. (1988: 160, 166, 167-71) most revealing about this exercise is what it inadvertently shows
about the inner circle itself. The center of gravity of the Orange
The exopolis here is depicted first of all as industrial and industri- County industrial complex is itself almost empty of high-technology
ous, a transactional tapestry efficiently knotted into a series of flexi- industry, forming a curious doughnut-hole of maximum accessi-
ble manufacturing and service complexes, great swarms of bility that pivots the propulsive subsystems around an apparently
businesses tied up in hive-like clusters to capture the new "scope" hollow core. How exquisitely exopolitan for the middle to be miss-
e:onomi:s of postfordist technology. No longer bound by the rigid ing, for the center to be gravely defined by the weight of its produc-
hierarchical demands of mass production and assembly lines, a tive periphery.
ne"";, kind o~ in~ustrialization was begetting a new kind of "periph- But there is more to this seemingly empty inner circle than first
eral urbamzahon, an offset urban form. This tightly manufactured meets the eye. Contained within it are some of the peak population
landscape of flexible economic specialization backed by hypercon- densities of Orange County and a large chunk of the Latino barrio of
servative local politics is the seedbed of Exopolis, not only in Santa Ana, the county's choice pool of cheap labor and a prime
Orange County but around nearly every other major American stopover site for thousands of undocumented immigrants who cross
metropolis. over the Mexican border just one county away. There is also, close to
Scott's mapping shows clusters of symbols representing high-tech- the intricate interchange of three freeways and the concrete cut of the
nology plants multiplying like weeds over the siliconed landscape of Santa Ana River, a large shopping mall semaphorically named 'The
this latest reflowering of the garden city. The densest and busiest of City." A small stuccoed prison and a vast new hospital complex line
these industrial parklands is the Irvine "subsystem," the master- such streets as City Drive and Metropolitan Avenue, further signaling
planned field of operations of the Irvine Company, owner of one- this citadellian ambition. And then, rearing up in all its translucent-
sixth of the land of Orange County and packager of the largest New pomposity, is the Crystal Cathedral of Garden Grove, the Philip
Inside Exopolis 249
Extraordinary sites, capitals of fiction become reality. Sublime,

transpolitical sites of extraterritoriality, combining as they do
the earth's undamaged geological grandeur with a sophisti-
cated, nuclear, orbital, computer technology.
(Baudrillard, 1988: 4)
All the signifiers are here in this inner circle to begin a different map-
ping of the origins of Exopolis. From its vantage point, we begin to
see beyond the industrial base of Orange County and recognize
other spaces to explore. We should never lose sight of that industrial
basic reality, for it concretely undergirds every Exopolis. But we
must move on to the softer cities of illusion and aspiration.
Scene 2: Iconic Emplacements
Spiraling outward from the industrial nucleations that mark the

exopolitan frontier is an extraordinary galaxy of locales. Place by
place, they too provide paradigmatic reflections of the orbital
Exopolis. Umberto Eco introduces our immanent tour of these
spaces of representation in his own Travels in Hyperreality. 4
At Buena Park, California, in the Movieland Wax Museum, Jean

Harlow is lying on a divan; on the table there are copies of mag-
azines of the period. On the walls of the room inhabited by
Charlie Chaplin there are turn-of-the-century posters. The
scenes unfold in a full continuum, in total darkness, so there are
no gaps between the niches occupied by the waxworks, but
rather a kind of connective decor that enhances the sensation.
As a rule there are mirrors ... duplicated by an astute play of
corners, curves, and perspective, until it is hard to decide which
side is reality and which illusion. Sometimes you approach an
especially seductive scene, a shadowy character is outlined
against the background of an old cemetery, then you discover
that this character is you ....
But when it comes to spiritual emotions nothing can equal
what you feel at the Palace of Living Arts in Buena Park. ... It is
next to the Movieland Wax Museum and is in the form of a
Chinese pagoda. . . . The Palace of Living Arts is different,
because it doesn't confine itself - except for some statues - to
presenting reasonably faithful copies. The Palace reproduces in
Johnson-designed white-steel-and-silver-glass extravaganza of tele- wax, in three dimensions, life-size and, obviously, in full color,
visual prayer, with its spiky tower soaring to 124 feet, to compete the great masterpieces of painting of all time. Over there you
with nearby Disneyland's Matterhorn for peak visibility on the see Leonardo, painting the portrait of a lady seated facing him:
lowflung Orange County skyline. Perhaps this is the center of cen-
ters after all .... 4
Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, tr. W. Weaver, San Diego: Harcourt, 1986.
She is Mona Lisa, complete with chair, feet, and back. Leonardo by its more subtly modern corporate neighbor, Disneyland. Our
has an easel beside him, and on the easel there is a two-dimen- semiological journeyman describes this extraordinary site, this
sional copy of La Gioconda: What else did you expect? brightly coded semeion (Greek for both sign and specific location in
(1986: 13, 18) space, a coincidence, by the way, that makes all semiotics inherently
spatial):
I must interrupt Eco's travels to point out that the Palace of Living
Arts (today no longer in existence) was itself an imitation of a far a "degenerate utopia" ... an ideology realized in the form of a
more impressive and technologically advanced display of lively sim- myth ... presented as at once absolutely realistic and absolutely
ulations, the Pageant of the Masters, held each summer at Laguna fantastic ... a disguised supermarket, where you buy obses-
Beach, on the other side of Orange County. There the masterpieces sively, believing that you are still playing ... more hyperrealis-
are painted - with acrylics to deflect the stage lighting and with tic than the wax museum, precisely because the latter still tries
shadows and form-fitting indentations - so that live models can slip to make us believe that what we are seeing reproduces reality
in to pose immobile for the required one and a half minutes in "mag- absolutely, whereas Disneyland makes it clear that within its
ical tableaux" that still attract over 100,000 visitors every year. The magic enclosure it is fantasy that is being absolutely
1990 pageant, for example, featured 23 "live recreations" of paint- reproduced .... But once the "total fake" is admitted, in order to
ings (culminating, by tradition, with The Last Supper) and various be enjoyed it must seem totally real ... Disneyland tells us that
"living versions" of such objects as a gold ornament, a carved faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream
wooden altar piece, a butterfly brooch, Japanese dolls, and Jules demands ... that technology can give us more reality than
Charet posters. Here "still life" is radically redefined. nature can ... here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we
Let us now return to Eco. also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and
afterwards reality will always be inferior to it. (1986: 43-6)
The theme of our trip ... is the Absolute Fake; and therefore we Thus, on entering his cathedrals of iconic reassurance, the
are interested only in absolutely fake cities ... with cities that visitor will remain uncertain whether his final destiny is hell or
imitate a city, just as wax museums imitate painting.... There is heaven, and so will consume new promises. (1986: 58)
an embarrassment of riches to choose from .... But we'll stick to
the Western myth and take as a sample city the Knott's Berry Eco's tour unveils the symbolic birthplaces of first-wave hyperreality
Farm of Buena Park. ... Here the whole trick seems to be and opens up these primordial sites to Secondspatial interpretation
exposed; the surrounding city context and the iron fencing (as as representations and re-presentations of reality. But too often the
well as the admission ticket) warn us that we are entering not a semiotic observer and other postmodern passers-by stop here, in the
real city but a toy city. But as we begin walking down the first county's cannily crystalized cathedrals of iconic reassurance, going
streets, the studied illusion takes over . . . the realism of the J further than these first-wave reference points and their screaming
reconstruction ... life size and executed with absolute fidelity rmbols. This is a mistake, for there has been a second wave that has
. . . the customer finds himself participating in the fantasy carried hyperreality out of its tightly localized manufactory enclo-
because of his own authenticity as a consumer. (1986: 40-1) sures in the old theme parks and into the geographies and biogra-
phies of everyday life, into the very fabric and fabrication of the
Knott's Berry Farm bills itself as the oldest themed amusement park lived spaces in Exopolis.
in the world, an entertainment enclosure that celebrates the "whole- Today the artful simulations of Disneyland seem almost folkloric,
some aspects of an idealized and simpler America." Its founding crusty residuals of a passing era. Now you do not just choose to visit
father's conservative family values set the fundamentalist tone for these hyperreality factories at your leisure, hyperreality visits you
"old" Orange County's fervently right-wing political traditions and every day wherever you choose to be. The original simulacra are
the entrepreneurial dreams that fed not only the theme-parking of being simulated again, to ever higher powers and lengthening
Exopolis but also its postfordist industrialization. Today, the family chains, all over the map. And the new map that is appearing is one
values that control the park descend not from Knott but from Robert that resists conventional modes of cognitive understanding. It
Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society. resembles those maps in shopping malls that tell you exactly where
Although it is still popular, Knott's simpler America was eclipsed you are with little directive arrows. Only now the map is filled with
an infinite number of arrows, each telling the onlooker YOU ARE nous trees and bushes, Buck pointed to the difficult-to-find subter-
HERE. Every place, every where, is being affected by the transcend- ranean library, which had earlier stirred some controversy over
ing diffusion of hyperreality. whether it would be opened to anyone who might find anything in
it critical of Nixon. It was later decided that this would be impossi-
ble. We were also shown around the Birthplace, a $400,000 simula-
Scene 3: The Diversions of Yorba Linda tion of the original home built by Nixon's father from a $300 Sears
Roebuck kit. Buck smiled as Nixon's deep voice piped in to remi-
There are engines and anchors in every country, and they nisce about his first nine years in Yorba Linda amidst all kinds of
change over time. When I was born in Yorba Linda, the area reproduced memorabilia, including the humble family piano that
was an anchor- an agricultural region and something of a play- Dick's mother often whipped him into playing, and the mnemonic
land. It is now the engine of progress in America, an area where sound of a passing train to recreate a sense of history. Could it all be
entrepreneurs are gathering to drive the American dream for- real? You bet!
ward. Look at the educational infrastructure, the corporate The biggest enclosure was the audiovisual museum sitting atop
infrastructure, the political leadership, and you see America's the Library, tracing some chosen episodes of the Nixon career. From
future. It is a dynamic, forward-looking place. Its peoples and the grand entranceway, lined with Time magazine covers, one could
products are changing America. . . . [Its political leaders] are march through his packaged political biography in a series of magi-
responsible for the peaceful revolution of the East Bloc. Some of cal tableaux as real as those of the Pageant of the Masters. Buck took
my old friends ... will remain stalwarts of freedom. We owe us quickly past the early years, through Mrs Nixon's Passage (filled
them a great deal of thanks for their patient support of a sound mainly with old dresses) to the dimly lit Watergate Room. There we
defense that helped bring about global change. Others are new, listened to snippets from the (remaining) famous tapes and simulta-
shining stars . . . among the most talented additions to the neously read the rnatchlng_transcripts,_ as_if th_e _CQrresponde:oce of _
United States Congress in the last twenty-five years. In time, sight and sound would somehow add authenticity. After viewing a
with seniority's assist, they will become superstars.... Far from photomontage of Nixon's last day in the White House and a large
being out of step, all these leaders and others are actually play- picture of his emotional two-fingers-raised helicopter farewell, we
ing the tune. entered the Presidential Forum. Here the spectator can have what
the information sheets call a "conversation" or a "dramatic interac-
Thus spake Richard Milhous Nixon. 5 The same tune continued to tion" with the 37th president via a "touchscreen" video system. Buck
be played at the grand opening of the Nixon Library and Birthplace buttoned in one of the more than 400 canned questions and we
in the first of his hometowns, Yorba Linda, once a Quaker settlement watched another representation of a representation of a representa-
and now a large-lot, zoned-for-horses, almost lily-white municipality tion, like a set of infinite mirrors.
that advertises itself as the "Land of Gracious Living" tucked away By far the most fascinating site was the World Leaders Sculpture
in the northern reaches of Orange County; Public television had a Room, where Nixon, Reagan, Ford, and Bush arrayed themselves
sniggering segment covering the celebration. On the show, bicoastal amid "bronze-tone" life-size figures of what were described as "ten
Buck Henry hosted an essentially East Coast view of the spectacle, of the century's greatest political leaders," from Churchill to Mao,
with its thousands of red, white, and blue balloons; Tom Brokaw posed in "characteristic wardrobe and stances." All the figures
interviewing Richard Milhous himself, and all kinds of Republican looked so real, but you are warned not to touch them for fear that
presidents present for a make-believe summit. Only Jimmy Carter, they would topple over.
who was supposed to be in Ethiopia, was not there among the The television segment ended with appropriate Eastern smugness,
allegedly living American presidents. showing the Park A venue building that rejected Nixon's attempt to
From the peaceful garden court, filled with (transplanted) indige- find a new home in New York City. The intention was clearly to dis-
tance New York not only from Nixon but also from the hyperreality
of Southern California, the incomprehensibility of it all. The
5
Interview with Richard Milhous Nixon, Orange Coast, July 1990: 77. Orange Coast is videosimulation of the event, filled with snide detachment, seemed
one of those boosterish urban glossies that have proliferated in recent years. The at the end to close off much more than it illuminated. I wondered
same issue contained the information mentioned earlier about that year's Pageant of
the Masters at Laguna Beach. what Baudrillard would make of it.
Watergate. Same scenario as Disneyland (an imaginary effect progress, from the self-absorbed concentration of the first
concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the years of study to the wider circle of the world beyond the
bounds of the artificial perimeter) ... concealing that there is no campus.
difference between the facts and their denunciation. While the late architect's master plan was bold, the buildings
(1983: 26-7) he fleshed it out with in the 1960s and 1970s were, in the view
of many observers, overscaled and boringly detailed. Campus
Another TV show completes our visit to Yorba Linda. Many broad- wags dubbed the modernist concrete boxes that enclose UCI's
casts of it were seen all over the world in April, 1994, shortly after inner ring mall "a bunch of giant cheese graters."
Nixon's death and the apartheid-ending elections in South Africa, Now all this is changing ....6
nearly two years to the day after the incendiary explosions of the
Los Angeles riots and rebellion. The simultaneities and juxtaposi-
Prehistory all over again: the ring-within-a-ring representing
tionings were amazing, as Nixon was re-simulated by the media
progress and modernity, disenchantment flourishing when the outer
and a veritable army of spin-doctors, with TV maps showing the
limits are reached, the urban memories of old progressive dreams
world how to get to Yorba Linda. Everyone offered their everlast-
falling apart in the orange sunlight. Now modernity itself is being
ing sound-bites and sites: Ben Stein, the inventive speechwriter,
displaced by deliberately postmodern architectonics, by a new kind
plugging his book on the "real" Richard Nixon; the still-not-a-
of campus (field, plain, level space) designed amidst the empty hills,
crook Spiro Agnew looking longingly at four ex-presidents stand-
leveling off, evening out, offering transplanted heartlands, a new
ing Mt Rushmore-like in chiseled profile by the Sears catalogue
and different destiny, an enveloping hypersimulation of unlimited
boyhood house; Colson, Liddy, and the rest of the Watergate crew
expansion, reconcentration, recentering. A new urban space takes
revising history again, blaming Stockman for it all; Julie
shape as the inner rings are left behind as stale plots from a departed
Eisenhower being given a furled flag while the background sound
past.
piped in Taps, prerecorded earlier. Interviewers stopped passers-
The story begins with the Irvine Ranch-cum-Company, landed
by, including the pilots of the fly-by planes, to collect one-phrase
benefactor to the University of California branch-ranch that bears its
summaries of the essential Nixon legacy. It was, in its terminating
name. Exemplary promoter of the manufactured landscapes of
way, a surpassing orgy of recreative hypersimulation conducted by
Exopolis, the Irvine Company is hard at work filling in the missing
some of the world's leading experts. Every other memory seemed
middles, creating its own ex-centric bundles of urban identity.
to disappear.
Under the supervision of campus architect David Neuman, UCI

has inaugurated a $350-million expansion that, by 1992, will
Scene 4: UC/ -A Campus by Design feature more than 20 major new complexes designed by some
of the best U.S. and international architects. "UCI is growing
Looking out over the empty hills of the Irvine Ranch almost 30 years up," Neuman explained. "Its character is changing from a sub-
ago, planner William Pereira searched his mind for a powerful urban college into an urbane campus with an ambition to be
metaphor to match the UC campus he envisioned. academically and architecturally first-rate.
Pereira's aim ... was "to establish a heart and a sense of place" Orange County's sleepy second-rate sub-urban conglomerations are
that would offer the first students a feeling for "the destiny of growing up into a whirled series of dreamily dispersed semi-urbane
the campus."
The plan became a strong symbolic presence for Irvine
Ranch, then a dry rolling wilderness under hot white skies.
At the heart of the campus was a series of concentric rings-
the innermost containing undergraduate facilities, the outer
6
one housing graduate and research buildings. This ring- This and subsequent quotations are from Leon Whiteson, "Campus by Design-
UC Irvine Hopes to A void Boring, Boxy Buildings and Add a Degree of
within-a-ring metaphor was intended to express a student's Sophistication As It Expands," Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1988.
gatherings. 7 The county abounds with these synthetic identities, with Elsewhere, more playfulness abounds. To the south, quirky, raw-
what Baudrillard called "artificial paradises" in which "space lends a looking fabrications by Frank Gehry and Eric Owen Moss present
sense of grandeur even to the insipidity of the suburbs ... a miracle images of children toying with giant building blocks. On the west, a
of total availability, of the transparency of all functions" (Whiteson, "Food Satellite Center" designed by Morphosis to serve the
1988: 8). The transformation is nowhere better signaled than in Humanities Department "mocks solemnity with a row of free-stand-
microcosmic UCI, which some have translated as "Under ing columns that will have the air of an instant architectural ruin."
Construction Indefinitely," and which has become a virtual architec- Across the mall to the west, a pop-postmodern science library by
tural theme park, with a building each from a covey of the world's James Stirling is banded in multi-colored stucco. To the north of the
trendiest architects. library, a folksy, red-tiled, Fine Arts Village by Robert Stern; and to
On the eastern quadrant, Whiteson writes, "Charles Moore's the south, a horizontally striped green glass and plastic Biological
Italianate Alumni House and Extension classroom complex - Sciences Unit by Arthur Erickson, commentator on the centeredness
described by one critic as a stage set for an opera by Puccini - plays of the CIT AD EL-LA. Whiteson goes on:
off a colonnaded Graduate School of Management by New York-
based Venturi, Rauch, Scott-Brown." Actually, the playfulness of In the view of national magazines such as Progressive
Moore's Extension Building, located where UCI's specialized spoke Architecture, several lesser-known designers, many from
for the social sciences "extends" to the outside world, is less operatic California, have contributed some of their best work to UCI's
than it is televisual. Moore himself saw it as the piazza of some expansion.
imagined Italo-Spanish-Califorriian town, bounded by three Baroque Among them is L.A.-based Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond's boldly
church-fronts and a rancho style verandah, into which, on some dark Cubist Student Services Building near the administration cen-
night, a swarded Zarro might ride and slash his Z in the dust. Sure ter. Project architect Kate Diamond said designing for the cam-
enough, during the dedication ceremonies, a masked man dressed in pus presents a special challenge. "At present (UCI) tends to lack
black swooped out of the shadows, presented a plaque to establish identity, so it needs buildings that are very sculptural and
authenticity, bowed with a smile beneath his penciled mustache, and strongly modeled to provide a real sense of place."
cut the air with three swipes of his sword. This instant memory, fan- In Stern's view, the "basic blandness" of the early Modernist
tastically faked, made all the necessary reel-world connections. buildings can work in the designer's favor, providing "a kind of
blank canvas on which the architect can paint a more artful and
resonant picture."
7
I can't resist thinking of Sartre, who had something (or Other) to say about such
terms as "series," "gatherings," "identity," and "field": Reactions to this orbital and exceptionally contemporary ringstrasse,
and to UCI's attendant search for identity (or what Sartre footnot-
Through this opposition between the Other and the same in the milieu of the
Other, alterity becomes this paradoxical structure: the identity of everyone as edly defined earlier (note 7) as "the sheer absurdity of meaningless
everyone's action of serial interiority on the Other. In the same way, identity dispersal") have been mixed. From a student-user of Gehry's new
(as the sheer absurdity of meaningless dispersal) becomes synthetic: everyone facility: "Looks like a hardware store." Gehry's deconstructive
is identical with the Other in so far as the others make him an Other acting on
the Others; the formal, universal structures of alterity produce the formula of
response: "The engineers who occupy my building are interested in
the series (Ia raison de Ia serie). how things are put together. So I gave them an architectural
metaphor that takes its clues from the assembly of components you
He goes on (and on), in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (the Verso paperback, 1982: might find in a machine. You can see how the whole thing functions
264) to add:
because it is broken down into its major pieces, then reassembled as
In the formal, strictly practical, and limited case that we have been examining, a working complex." As he would say later, after winning the inter-
the adoption of the serial mode remains a mere convenience, with no special national competition to design Walt Disney Concert Hall atop
influence on the individuals. But this simple example has the advantage of
showing the emergence of new pratico-inert [sic- it should be "practico-inert" Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, "I feel you work with what
of course] characteristics: it reveals two characteristics of the inactive human you have and like it. You take your clues from your surroundings,
gathering. The visible unity, in this case, in the time of the gathering ... is only and rejoice."
an appearance; its origin for every observer to whom this totality is revealed,
[however,] is integral to praxis in so far as it is a perpetual organisation of its
The UCI Chancellor responded more coyly: "I don't have to like it,
own dialectical field [Latin= campus]. but it draws attention, and it's important that people come to see
us." Conservative members of the County Board of Supervisors modeling school owner who just happened to be Miss
worry, however, that the new architecture might upstage the "un- California/USA 1981, third runner-up for Miss USA in the
remarkable buildings" that dominate the neighboring City of Irvine same year, and voted by her cohorts as Miss Congeniality and
and create too much traffic, with all those people coming to see UCI, Most Photogenic.
Orange County's dizzy-kneed University of Californialand. Charles What's a barkeep to do when faced with such an opportu-
Moore (tongue in cheek?) concludes Whiteson's review with a ques- nity? Holechek sold the Wharf, married Kerby and went on an
tion: "Who would imagine that a campus seemingly stamped for- extended honeymoon in the Caribbean ... collecting ideas for
ever with the curse of architectural mediocrity would raise a phoenix the proposed pub. . . . The product of all that honeymoon
of fine design from the ashes of dullness?" research was ... a Honduran mahogany bar and back bar to
suggest "manliness," Holechek said, marble-topped tables, ceil-
Scene 5: Spotting the Spotless in the City of Irvine ing fans, palm trees and primary colors for a "feminine" touch. 8
Lying just outside, in the exocampus of UCI, the Irvine Company is Why did it take so long for Irvine to get a bar like the Trocadero, the
busy manufacturing other centers and nodes, ceaselessly creating story asks? The answers are illuminating. They speak of the grand
more absolutely real fakes in order to simulate the appearance of existential dilemmas facing the makers of Exopolis. "First, there's the
urbanity. Here we enter another but related scene. history problem. Irvine doesn't have one." This "history problem"
exists everywhere in Orange County, where, we have been told,
Throw out those visions of pool tables and dart boards. Forget even the land and the ocean look new. As the mayor said, "One
about pickled eggs and older waitresses who call you "hon." thing I've learned is that you cannot telescope the evolution of an
The city of Irvine [now with around 100,000 inhabitants] just urban community into a matter of years. These things take time. You
got its very first bar, and none of the above are anywhere to be talk about Venice or Los Angeles, it's 100 years of history [at least!].
seen. Here, history in a municipal sense is 20 years old."
For the Trocadero - not surprisingly - is Irvine incarnate, a Then, there is the "Irvine Company problem." Company represen-
so-Southern California watering hole located across the street tatives explained the delay as "a question of place and time: 1988
from UC Irvine and characterized by its owners as "an upscale, and Campus Drive are the right ones; any earlier and anywhere else
traditional Jamaican plantation." are the wrong ones." The mayor added: "when you own most of the
... as the very first real bar in Irvine history, the Trocadero is developable real estate, you can pretty much proceed at your own
as much a symbol as it is a saloon. The Trocadero's owners and pace and discretion." Obviously, the place and time were right.
site were both hand-picked by the Irvine Co., which controls "When we went before the Planning Commission to tell them our
50% of the city's retail space and has spent decades carefully idea," Cindy Holechek said, "they gave us a standing ovation, they
molding the retail mix in this spotless [the perfect spatial adjec- were so pleased to finally have a bar here."
tive] suburb. The scrupulous planning has been so successful
that enterprises such as dive bars and massage parlors can only Scene 6: Roots and Wings
be found on the wrong side of the city's boundaries ....
. . . As owners Mark and Cindy Holechek [pronounced Swinging over to the west bank of the UCI campus, we find another
whole-check?] say of their latest endeavor, [it is] a bar where gathering of masterplanned spaces of a different sort cloistered in a
patrons can graze on appetizers including fresh oysters injected corridor running along the Newport Freeway from Santa Ana and
with Stolichnaya and topped with orange hollandaise [of Tustin to Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. This is the Grand Axis-
course] .... Mundi of exopolitan Orange County, a true Champs Elysees of com-
About a year and a half ago, the development company mercial development. An appropriate tour guide is provided by an
approached Mark Holechek to design and run this bar-to-be old copy of the Airport Business Journal, a thick monthly serving the
and its very trendy kitchen. Holechek, at the time, was co-
owner, along with brother-in-law Chuck Norris of action-film 8
Maria L. La Ganga, "Mixing It Up In Irvine- City's First Bar Carries the Official
fame, of a successful Newport Beach bar called Woody's Wharf. Stamp of Approval for Style, Location, Appeal," Los Angeles Times, November 5,
Holechek was also engaged to the former Cindy Kerby, a 1988.
huddled masses next to John Wayne International AirporC thing more than just a large office complex with a tunnel effect
and a concrete jungle. (1984: 20)
It's been said before, but we'll say it again - the MacArthur
Corridor is, development-wise, booming- at a mind-boggling The article goes on to identify "The Creme" of MacArthur Corridor's
rate. We all get tired of the millennia of urbanized cities and business parks. The billion dollar Koll Centers (one North and
communities staking their claim that they are the place to be. another South), the Jamboree Center and MacArthur Court (both
Developers along the MacArthur Corridor need only to sit back developed by the Irvine Company) anchor the still growing Irvine
and let their projects speak for themselves. (1984: 6) Business Complex just east of John Wayne Airport. The complex is
confined on its other side by UCI and its vast Wildlife Preserve, forc-
You can add your own comments on this wondrously phenomeno- ing growth to slash diagonally and vertically from the Tustin Marine
logical introduction to the making of histories and geographies. The Corps Helicopter Station (with its huge blimp hangar) into Newport
hype goes on: Beach.
Just south of the airport cluster, almost overlooking Newport
Not since 1849 have Californians witnessed anything quite like Harbor, the Civic Plaza, Pacific Mutual Plaza, an art museum and a
it: a massive stampede of fortune seekers eagerly laying claim country club occupy the shores of the massive Fashion Island shop-
to any piece of land they can lay their hands on, their eyes fired ping mall. All together, they comprise the Newport Center business
with a burning hunger, crawling all over each other for a complex, another circular site masterplanned by William Pereira and
chance to cash in on untold riches. the Irvine Company, and now being constantly reconstructed.
Only this time it isn't gold they're breaking ground for - it's Together, the overlapping Newport and Irvine complexes, should
office buildings. MacArthur Boulevard, once a two-lane asphalt they ever reach their maximum planned development, promise to
path running through orange groves and tomato patches, has contain upwards of 100 million square feet of office space.
widened like a flooded river, its waters rich in development This loaded zone is fantastically reproduced in miniature in the
dollars and its banks giving root to towering office complexes. Irvine Exhibit, formerly housed at the Jamboree Center. I vividly
If you think Orange County has grown in the last 20 years, remember my first and only visit, accompanied by Allen Scott and a
wait until you see what's going to happen in the next ten, for all group of Scandanavian geographers and planners from the Nordic
signs point to this section of the County ... becoming the major Institute. To get to the exhibit you must pass through a colonnade of
financial center in the county, and perhaps California, and per- transplanted palm trees and a set of revolving doors to an imposing
haps the United States. (1984: 18) security desk, where you are asked to leave your cameras behind
(for iconic reassurance?). Disarmed, you are led to the plush seats of
The showpieces of many of the mixed-use projects taking root in the a small theater that vibrates with anticipatory technologies.
rich floodwaters seeping outward from the MacArthur Corridor are The whole front wall is a split-screen panorama upon which is
fake lakes. A project manager bubbles over on these veritable pools soon projected a dazzling array of scenes- of birds and babies, sun-
of urbanity. sets and shorelines, family outings and businessmen's lunches,
clouds and lakes (always lakes) and cuddly animals - all set to
People are attracted to water. Orange County's becoming very stereophonic music and soothing voices announcing the supralimi-
urban- it's evolved from a rural area very quickly. The people nal messages that appear, in resolutely capitalized words, on the
of Orange County like a sense of openness and they like the brochure clutched in your hands:
romance and the ambiance that water brings. We felt it was a
good investment to have that water. The community certainly THERE ARE ONLY TWO LASTING THINGS WE CAN GIVE
likes it, we do have a residential population here. On any given OUR CHILDREN. ONE IS ROOTS. THE OTHER IS WINGS ....
evening there are joggers around the lake, people walking their ROOTS AND WINGS .... BOTH IN THE COMMUNITY AND
dogs -we've managed to create a park-like setting that is some- THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, A BALANCE MUST BE
ES ~ABLISHED IF THE INTEGRITY OF THE SYSTEM IS TO
9
"Boom Town" (Editorial) and "The Sky's the Limit! Steel and Concrete Fly as REMAIN SECURE .... A CONSTELLATION OF TECHNOL-
Developments Boom," Airport Business Journal, September 1984, 18. OGY AND BUSINESS .... ADVENTURES FOR THE MIND ....
A GIFT OF TIME. A GIFT OF FAMILY .... THE IRVINE unbounded vitality, springing not from rootedness, but from
EXHIBIT .... WE HAVE THE DREAM. WE HAVE THE PLACE the lack of roots, a metabolic vitality ... in work and in buying
WHERE WE CAN PUT DOWN ROOTS. WHERE OUR LIVES and selling. Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological
CAN TAKE WING. refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces
which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive
The air is almost drugged with an effort to make you believe, to society. The fascinating thing is to travel through it as though it
make you want to consume new promises. But suddenly the flashing were the primitive society of the future, a society of complexity,
pictures stop and the screen-wall becomes transparent, a shimmer- hybridity, and the greatest intermingling, of a ritualism that is
ing gossamer film behind which a secret room appears. Still in your ferocious but whose superficial diversity lends it beauty ...
seat, the music still throbbing in your ears, you realize that the whole whose immanence is breathtaking, yet lacking a past through
floor of the secret room is moving, tilting up before your eyes, com- which to reflect on this. (1988: 7)
ing at you slowly to fill up the wall with a portentous overview of
Irvine Earth, an exact model of the real world of ROOTS AND Scene 7: It's a Mall World After All
WINGS. You gather your belongings and move toward the alluring
model as it slowly, seductively, tilts back to receive you, to embrace On the other side of John Wayne Airport, mainly in the city of Costa
you in person. It is a fascinating site, detailed down to lane markers Mesa, the Irvine empire has its chief competitor, an offside super-
on the freeways and the loose dust where new homes and offices are center with ferocious intimations of becoming the true upscale
being built. downtown simulacrum of Orange County. Here one finds the rest of
But this totalizing "area model" is not'enough. After a brief lec- the business parks: South Coast Metro Center, Center Tower, Home
ture, a guide takes you through marbled halls and up steel capsule Ranch, Town Center - the names virtually reek with anticipatory
lifts to another floor, where the model is itself reproduced in pro- pretensions. And there is more here - in what is collectively called
gressively larger-scaled closeups. You are moved, room by room, "South Coast Metro ... the shape of the future"- than merely intima-
closer and closer to the ultimate one-to-one correspondence between tions of urbanity. Its immanence, too, is breathtaking.
representation and reality, the map and the territory. The final stop
is a space almost entirely filled with a giant structure very much like When America gets around to culture, the pioneers used to say,
the building you are in, exact in nearly every detail, offices lit and America will make culture hum. Except for places like Texas,
filled with miniature accouterments, including little people and tiny there's nowhere the frontier spirit hums better than in affluent
framed pictures on the walls (made by computers, you are proudly Orange County, which finally has symphony, opera, ballet,
told). You feel like peeking into the second floor to see if you too can Broadway musicals, you name it, in a $73-million Orange
be seen there, peeking into the second floor .... County Performing Arts Center, known by its awful acronym
The experience is finally capped when the beaming guide pushes OCPAC. Victory over any barbarian past is signified by a
a button and an apparently solid outside wall disappears, revealing mighty triumphal arch. .
a huge window on to the palm-colonnaded entranceway and the But this isn't imperial Rome. It's the nebulous, non-urban
surrounding buildings and grounds of the Irvine Business Complex. realm of Orange County. The arch doesn't command intense
It is a beautiful sight, so much bigger than its replica behind you, so life at the Forum, but at South Coast Plaza, the vast shopping
much more beautiful than your actual memories of having seen it on mall and high-rise office development owned by Henry T.
the ground just an hour ago. You thank the guides, walk back to the Segerstrom and his family, along the San Diego Freeway at
security desk, retrieve your camera, and exit, noting how disappoint- Costa Mesa.
ing and dull the real columns of palm trees look in comparison to Never mind that the arch is a structural fake. Its reddish
their artful imitations. granite cladding is pure veneer, covering a trussed inner frame,
I could not help but think of Jean Baudrillard's reflections on all angles and squares, that has nothing to do with a rounded
California, when he too stopped off at Irvine. form. The great forward wall is nothing more than a free-stand-
ing screen, an enormous advertisement, cut open in the shape of
Still, there is a violent contrast here ... between the growing anarch.
abstractness of a nuclear universe and a primary, visceral, Yet the superficial effect is grand ... the great symbolic portal
-which turns out to be not a real entrance at all- swells majes- plazas and mesas of the coastal plain in the distance from this extra-
tically across the front of Segerstrom Hall, the 3,000-seat audito- ordinary site.
rium that is OCP AC's pride and joy. At night, when the Just around the corner, quietly hidden, stands "the remarkable
building is lit, the arch acts as a monumental proscenium for glass and steel gates by Los Angeles artist Claire Falkenstein that
the social drama attending the performance, revealing open ter- lead to Segerstrom's most exalted public gift to the environment,"
races that are crowded on warm evenings, glittering and mir- Isamu Noguchi's "California Scenario," a spectacularly calm stone
rored spaces within- spectacularly walled in glass - through and water garden nestled nonchalantly in an eerie scene that both
which a colossal "Firebird" sculpture by Richard Lippold mirrors and hides from the buildings around it.
crashes outward into the void, flashing brightly colored metal
plumage. Noguchi set himself the super-human task of fusing time and
There could be no better emblem for Orange County, crash- space into an art that makes Stonehenge modern and subsumes
ing through provincialism to the big-time world of music and the idea of modernism to man's most primitive impulses, deliv-
art. ... Despite many architectural flaws, Segerstrom Hall is, ering him back - truly civilized - to the endless cycled rhythms
functionally, the finest multipurpose facility of its kind in the of natureY
country. 10
Noguchi's California Scenario is a piece-full urban oasis where civi-
So too, one might say, is all of Orange County: a structural fake, an lized nature is preserved in fabricated stone and water. I was once
enormous advertisement, yet functionally the finest multipurpose shown around it by a younger son of Segerstrom, whose primary,
facility of its kind in the country, the "primitive society" of our visceral, unbounded vitality was indeed breathtaking. He had
future. How did it grow? The Swedish Segerstroms came to Orange worked personally with Noguchi to shape the scenario, to seek that
County nearly a century ago to farm, and they claim to still be the balance between the "human community" and the "natural environ-
world's largest lima bean producers. But it is culture without the ment" that secures "the integrity of the system" and makes it soar to
agri that the sons of Segerstrom dig today. Henry T., for one, is now new heights - using much the same words as the ROOTS AND
"building a city" where anything you want can be found along the WINGS-themed Irvine Exhibit. Dressed tightly in Italian silk, he
orange brick road that winds its way through the "phalanx of showy coolly spoke of family and farming in the blistering heat as he
department stores" and "many-arched portals" of the "curiously explained to me the symbolism of the various sculpted forms. As we
insubstantial" South Coast Plaza, California's largest and most prof- approached one of my favorite spots, a pile of large fairly regularly-
itable shopping mall, with nearly 3 million square feet of space and shaped grey-green stones turned orange by the late afternoon sun,
almost 10,000 parking places, Nordstroms, Mayco, Sears, Bullocks, he recounted how each stone was carefully cut and shaped in a par-
Saks Fifth Avenue, Robinsons, the Broadway, over 200 other "spe- ticular Japanese village that specialized in making natural-looking
cialty" stores and boutiques, and more than a half billion dollars of objects from Nature so that no one can tell the difference. He
taxable retail sales. Around and inside the C. J. Segerstrom and Sons watched Noguchi assemble these stony simulacra- perfect copies of
office buildings and the tall South Coast Plaza Westin Hotel are non-existent originals- into a stimulating pile that would eventually
sculptures by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Joan Mir6. Nearly at be named in his family's honor: Ode to the Lima BeanY
the intersection of Town Center and Park Center Drives and not far "I want to excentre myself," says Baudrillard in America (1988: 28),
from the Center Tower and Town Center office complexes (centers "to become eccentric, but I want to do so in a place that is the centre
growing everywhere), just next to "the charming little South Coast of the world." Perhaps here, in the illusive calm of the California
Repertory Theatre [that] perks up to the right" looms, "like the Scenario, one comes as close as possible to the center of the contem-
ascent to a shrine," the ceremonial ramp of OCP AC, rising toward porary world, the "highest astral point," the "finest orbital space."
the brightly lit auto pavilion drop-off point and "lofty, glass- 11
William Wilson, "Trail of Ageless Art is Noguchi's Legacy," Los Angeles Times,
enclosed lobby where the 'Firebird' flies outward above the broad January 2, 1989, written soon after Noguchi's death.
12
terrace" of Segerstrom Hall itself. There is a superb view of the Sitting at the base of Ode to the Lima Bean, I introduced Orange County to a
wider audience in a film produced by Vic Lockwood and the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) for the Open University series, "Understanding Modern
10
Allen Temko, "The Fine Sound and Flawed Design of a Grand Orange County Societies". See, in the most visual sense, "L.A.: City of the Future," London: BBC
OCPAC" Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1987. (1992).
Inside Exopolis 267
super-dormitories of the southern half of Orange County, another

vast zone of re-centering.
Mission Viejo - swim capital of the world, mecca for medalists,

home of the perfect 10 high dive, three competition swimming
pools but only one public library - is nestled alongside a free-
way in the rolling hills of south Orange County.
Billed by its developer as "The California Promise," it has
emerged as the epitome of the American Dream.
During the [1984] Olympic Games, 200 of the world's
best bicycle racers pedaled for the gold here past neat lawns,
$1-million lake-front homes, a private gated community and
200,000 cheering fans.
Swimmers and divers trained here before reaping a harvest
of Olympic medals, nine gold, two silver and one bronze -
more medals than were won by France or Britain or, for that
matter, 133 of the 140 nations taking part in the Games ....
The world-famous Nadadores swim and diving teams train
here, and are subsidized by the Mission Viejo Co., the devel-
oper. But there also are three wading pools, four hydrotherapy
pools, a 25-meter Olympic diving pool, 19 lighted tennis courts,
12 handball and racquetball courts, five volleyball courts, two
outdoor basketball courts, men's and women's saunas, two
weight rooms, four outdoor playgrounds, a multipurpose gym,
19 improved parks, four recreation centers, a 125-acre man-
made lake, two golf courses, and three competition pools (one a
50-meter Olympic pool), and more- all built or donated, some
still owned and operated, by the companyY
A local real-estate saleswoman and Municipal Advisory Council

member summed it up: "It's a community that offers a great life
style - a house in the suburbs, and your children kept busy. I think
this is an area that people will flock to." Another member of the
Council asks, "How can anybody from the East have anything but
desire to move out here with us? I guess you'll just have to excuse us
gloating about it. I couldn't speak too highly of the community- I'm
in love with it." Some, however, are less sanguine. A forty-year-old
housewife feels "out of step."
"It's just a status thing here," she explained. "You must

Scene 8: Cities That Are Doubles of Themse!'.les be happy, you must be well-rounded and must have children
who do a lot of things. If you don't jog or walk or bike, people
Thus far we have concentrated on the breathtaking industrial-
cum-commercial-cum-cultural core landscapes of Exopolis, only
13
hinting at the existence of residential populations. It is time now for Mark Landesbaum and Heidi Evans, "Mission Viejo: Winning is the Only Game
in Town," Los Angeles Times, August 22,1984.
another spin outward, to the sleeping margins of Exopolis, the
wonder if you have diabetes or some other disabling disease." Imitations and analogs of the corporate New Town of Mission
"I think it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the chil- Viejo (itself an imitation of the corporate New Town of Irvine) are
dren," she said. "We need a little more Huck Finn around here filling up the frontierlands of south Orange County, lining the
... more time to kick tin cans down the street." Saddleback Valley and other areas with a sprawl of coalescing
She later asked a reporter not to identify her because her urblets. Like the originals, they reach out for specialized residential
comments could create friction for her husband with his busi- niche markets and tightly package the local environment and life
ness and golfing friends, who, she said, "are very Mission Viejo." style, to the point of prescribing the colors you may paint your
house, what may be done to the provided decor, whether you may
Mission Viejo speaks for itself through the ventriloquy of the hang an American (or other) flag outside your front door, and how
Mission Viejo Company, since the late 1970s part of the gargantuan best to keep up with the residential theme (Spanish Colonial, Greek
empire of Philip Morris Inc., but with deeper roots going ba.::k to the Island, Cervantes' Spain, Capri Villa, Uniquely American).
large landholding families that continue to dominate the present-day Everything is spelled out in lengthy contracts with the developer,
political economy, even under new corporate umbrellas. The crafty which some claim venture too close to private sector socialism for
corporate connections, however, are worth contemplating, for they their tastes. Housing struggles focus around permissions and excep-
too deal in illusion. tions. May I construct a basketball hoop? May I line my pool with
With its purchases first of General Foods and then Kraft Foods black tile? Do I dare to paint it peach?
some years ago, the Philip Morris company has become one of the Mission Viejo is now cloning itself toward the beach in the new
largest corporate conglomerates in America. Mission Viejo's staple- development of Aliso Viejo, while just inland there is an even bigger,
mates now include not only the coughless Marlboro man and the 5,000-acre New Town Urban Village in the works, billing itself as
tastes-good/less-filling Miller Lite beer drinker but also the good-to- Rancho Santa Margarita, " ... where the west begins. Again." "The
the-last-drop coffee spouses of Maxwell House, the wish-I-were-an First Frontier of the 21st Century." Just across the way, where the
Oscar Meyer wiener, the Velveeta and Miracle Whip team of bread- 1984 Olympic Games Pentathlon was held, Arvida Disney (along
spreads, and the Kool-Aided and Tang-flaked babies - a cradle-to- with Chevron and City Federal Savings and Loan) initiated the devel-
grave conglomeration if there ever was one. And General Foods opment of the upscale "resort and residential community" of Coto de
bolsters the list with even more mimetic products: Pop-Rocks, Caza, building upon its pre-existing facilities for riders of horses and
Shake'n Bake, Dream Whip, Stove Top stuffing, Jell-0, Cool Whip, hunters of pheasant, partridge, dove, quail, and clay pigeons. It con-
and an array of brands that make it the largest coffee seller in the tinues to grow today under new corporate roots and wings.
world: Maxwell House, Yuban, Sanka, Brim, Maxim, Mellow Roast Along the coast at Monarch Beach, Tokyo-based Nippon Shinpan
(a "grain-extended product"), and the sugar-laden International Company, which owns Japan's largest credit-card service, purchased
Coffees. some years ago from an Australian subsidiary firm a 231-acre bite
Kraft's "foods" are still more specialized and further removed out of the last large stretch of undeveloped coastal property in
from the real things. Kraft has always concentrated on manufactur- Southern California. A new planned development was designed
ing ersatz dairy products. Some years ago, they marketed an "engi- around a "world class" golf course not far from the very world class
neered" cheese made with vegetable oil instead of butterfat. This Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a reminder (if any is needed) of the growing
cheese "analog," as it was officially classified -it was to be called internationalization of Exopolis. The local is becoming global with
Golden Image - caused some problems with the National Cheese blinding speed.
Institute. Since processed cheese is an imitation cheese to begin with, Also an integral part of the residential panorama are two Elderly
what do you call an imitation of an imitation? The National Cheese New Towns, aging rather nicely in Orange County. Leisure World,
Institute suggested that perhaps the category should be identified as the gated retirement community in the Laguna Hills, is considered
"Golana," because "it is pleasant sounding ... and is analog spelled the largest retirement community in America. Around it has devel-
backwards." 14 No one, it seems, suggested "Murcalumis." oped another specialized orbital landscape.
14
This "cheese" story has been adapted from M. Moskowitz, M. Katz, and R.
The one-time bean fields outside Leisure World ... have
Lovering, eds, Everybody's Business- The Irreverent Guide to Corporate America, New sprouted at least nine securities brokerage houses, five banks,
York: Harper and Row, 1980:52. 12 savings institutions and numerous other money handlers.
The institutions have turned a five-block area outside Leisure As he swept over a tiny railroad whistle-stop called El Toro,
World's main gate off El Toro Road and Paseo de Valencia into Fox spotted a sprawling plot of land covered with bean fields
a supermarket of financial services. And many more brokers, and orange groves.
bankers and lenders are a short distance away. It was perfect: few and far-away neighbors; close to the ocean
Retirement communities attracting brokers is not unusual. so pilots could practice carrier landings; within range of desert
For instance, [the parent company of one local securities fran- bombing ranges, and near Camp Pendleton, the Corps' then-
chise is] based in the nation's premier retirement city, St. new 125,000-acre troop-training base in northern San Diego
Petersburg, Fla. But Leisure World, which opened in County.
September, 1964, is different. The development has an intense "Orange County was an ideal place for military bases," Fox,
concentration of money and is located in a growing part of an now 92 and a retired brigadier general, recalled .... "It was all
affluent county .... open country .... There was hardly anyone living there."
"It's the largest growth of upper wealth in the county" .... Today, that Orange County airfield - the El Toro Marine
About 21,000 mostly retired people (the average age is 76 years Corps Air Station - is under a siege Fox could not have imag-
old) live in 12,736 units on 2,095 acres. Their homes, from apart- ined 46 years ago. Tightly packed housing tracts have brought
ment cooperatives to single-family dwellings, range in price tens of thousands of neighbors creeping closer and closer to the
from $40,000 to $400,000 - and the price does not include the base fences. High-rise buildings, shopping centers and indus-
land, which is owned by three Leisure World housing corpora- trial parks are popping up around the airfield. A stone's throw
tions .... from the base, long lines of automobiles, motorcycles and
The five bank branches in the mini-financial center outside trucks stream through the "El Toro Y" -the southern intersec-
the main gate of Leisure World [where one of the first major tion of two of Southern California's busiest freeways, Interstates
buildings was called Taj Mahal] collectively reported total 5 and 405.
deposits of more than $343.1 million [in 1985] .... With the advance of urban development have come the vol-
The residents often were captains of industry - retired corpo- leys of complaints about the thunderous screams of low flying
rate executives, bank executives, publishing executives and suc- Marine Corps jets.
cessful doctors, dentists, and lawyers. At least three retired The peacetime assault on El Toro is not unique. Base com-
Army generals and two Navy admirals, along with a retired manders from Boston to San Diego and Seattle to Jacksonville
German U-boat captain from World War I, live in Leisure Fla., are defending their ground against well-organized com-
World.15 munity groups, environmental activists, land-hungry develop-
ers and demanding local political leaders .... The Navy now
The generals and admirals that live in this targeted El(derly) Dorado reports that base neighbors have affected some kind of training
of Leisure World bring to mind another fitful presence in the Exo- or maneuvers at every one of its 65 air stations in the United
polis, a more secretive series of theme parks being exposed with the States ....
in-fill of the outer spaces. Although the military could not provide exact figures on how
much it spends annually in its battle against what it terms
encroachment by civilians, the amount runs well into millions
Scene 9: On the Little Tactics of the Habitat of dollars. The Air Force, for example, ... has more than 100
Marine Lt. Col. William J. Fox was still angry about the people nationwide who deal with the problem daily. In addi-
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as he flew over the wide open tion, the Air Force has spent $65 million for land alone to
farmlands of Orange County. It was 1942 and Fox was search- increase buffer areas around air bases. 16
ing for "just the right place" for a mainland airfield where
Marine Corps aviators could be trained for the campaign to The battlelines drawn here identify most of the collective actors
regain the Pacific. struggling for territorial security and recentered identity in the outer
16
15 . George Frank, "Urban Sprawl: A New Foe Surrounds the Military," Los Angeles
James S. Granelli, "Brokerages Find a Gold Mine in Leisure World," Los Angeles
Times, February 2, 1986. Tzmes, December 24, 1988.
core regions of the Exopolis. Together these actors and their actions County when a worker opened a valve at the wrong time, offi-
provide an apt introduction to the peculiar postmodern politics of cials said .... With the vacuum chamber contaminated by
the exopolitan borderlands. In no particular order they include: (1) smoke and debris, officials said it is impossible to conduct
platoons of besieged military commanders and weapons-testers experiments in which the laser beam would be produced and
"defending their ground" against the peacetime assault on their once tested in space-like conditionsY
pristine fortresses, deeply disturbed at being discovered but willing
to enter into preliminary negotiations to maintain their footholds; (2) "SONGS of Silence"
"well organized community groups" and homeowners' associations In a special way, the people of San Clemente are a microcosm of
fighting, privately and publicly, for their property rights and values today's American psyche, reflecting the complacency and occa-
against all outside encroachments upon the premises and promises sional concern about the nation's problems.... Three nuclear
they have so faithfully purchased; (3) "land-hungry developers" and reactors are now being used to generate ... electricity at the
self-proclaimed "community builders" hunting for new room to largest and, potentially, the most dangerous nuclear power
accumulate and construct their spectacular capitals of fiction at all plant west of the Mississippi .... The plant represents one of the
costs, a few under the guise of public-spiritedness and family values; most terrifying threats imaginable, short of full-scale war, yet
(4) small clusters of "environmental activists" desperately searching people seldom speak of that. They live in the "Basic Emergency
for sanctuaries to protect the many endangered species of the Planning Zone," with its questionable promise that, in the event
Exopolis; (5) "demanding local political leaders," seeming to be of something untoward, there will be a sure and hasty evacua-
stunned by it all, attempting impartially to turn every which way to tion of everyone. The people hereabouts depend on that, even
profitably serve their fractious constituencies and maintain their as they depend on assurances that it won't ever be needed ....
own positions; and (6) the consultant media and imagineering spe- What will it take to arouse them? ... I have told some people
cialists who selectively inform while performing as geopolitical spin- that a single reactor meltdown at [SONGS - the San Onofre
doctors to it all, shaping the vantage points and defining the Nuclear Generating Station] could cause 130,000 early deaths,
battlelines of nearly all the little exopolitan wars. 300,000 latent cancers, and the evacuation of 10 million peo-
This hexagonal contest for socio-spatial control (with its notable ple .... They listen, but they cannot allow themselves to con-
absence of alien ethnicities and the voices of the well-barricaded resi- sciously accept such grim processes. They choose not to live in
dential poor) effectively describes the recentered local politics of fear. 18
Orange County and other Outer Cities. Everything here seems to
revolve around emplacement and positioning, or what Michel "Tern, Tern, Tern"
Foucault once described as "the little tactics of the habitat" and the [Camp] Pendleton, located almost midway between the fast
"micro-technologies of power." In the peculiar political geometry of growing areas of Orange and San Diego counties, has ...
Orange County, where every point in space lays special claim to become the last sanctuary for many endangered species.
being the central place, these six-sided local wars over habitat and Pendleton troops engaged in field warfare training must be
turf - or what might be called the "habitactics" of the Exopolis - careful to avoid the nesting areas of the lightfooted clapper rail,
occasionally assume a grander, more global, scope. A few more the Belding's Savannah sparrow or the California least tern....
newspaper clippings arising specifically from the military presence At Camp Pendleton, a chain reaction wreck ... on busy
in the late 1980s illustrate this globalization. Let me suggest for each Interstate 5 occurred after a cloud of dust from maneuvering
an appropriate musical accompaniment, just to keep you humming. tanks blanketed the highway, cutting visibility to near zero. Just
to the north, Irvine community leaders became alarmed in 1986
"Up a Laser River" over safety when a CH-53E Super Stallion transport helicopter
A flash fire at a test facility near San Juan Capistrano will delay based in Tustin came down for an emergency landing near a
indefinitely the final testing of the missile-killing Alpha laser
[capable also of obliterating whole cities if necessary], a key
component of President Reagan's "Star Wars" defense initia- 17
Richard Beene and John Broder, "Fire at TRW Delays Final Testing of Alpha
tive, the Pentagon disclosed .... The fire broke out ... at the Laser, Key 'Star Wars' Weapon," Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1988.
18
Fred Grumm, "Make-Believe Sunshine in the Shadows of San Onofre," Los
sprawling 2,700 acre TRW Inc. plant in southern Orange Angeles Times, October 11, 1987.
residential area. And earlier this year, an out-of-control Navy F- We begin, appropriately enough, in the heterotopia of the boiler room.
14 returning to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego crashed
at a suburban airport near the base, killing one and injuring Orange County holds the dubious title of "the fraud capital of
four others seriously.... "The West Coast is right now in the the world," according to U.S. Postal Service inspectors. Five
lead as far as these encroachment problems go," [a Marine inspectors working out of the Santa Ana post office will handle
Colonel] said. 19 mail-fraud complaints involving as many as 10,000 victims this
year, said ... the inspector who heads the team. [He] estimated
It was recently announced that the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, that Orange County suffers losses of $250 million a year in
as part of the military cutbacks of the 1990s, would be shut d?:Vn fraud .... Orange County's affluence and the large number of
completely in the near future, setting off. a frenzy of ~ompebbve retired people living here combine to make the area a favorite
ideas for its re-use. Still scheduled to surviVe, however, IS the huge of con men ....
Camp Pendleton, which has continued to stir up new habitactical Postal inspectors say the hottest current schemes involve pre-
wars, including one over refuge-seeking undocumented migrants cious-metal futures. Underground boiler room operations typi-
squatting on Camp grounds to evade the m~st authorita~ive c~eck cally convince investors they can reap huge profits and then
point along the California coast, sym~olized ~n freeway signs ':Ith a spend their money on parties, drugs, and cars .... The operators
silhouette of a Latino mother and child rushmg across to avmd the usually disappear about the time the investors become suspi-
murderous traffic. cious.
Another popular scam, envelope-stuffing, is difficult to trace
Scene 10: Scamscapes: The Capitals of Fiction Become Reality because victims who send in money to learn how to participate
are usually too embarrassed to admit they've been had. 20
Every day, life in Orange County seems to move one step beyond
Eco's early vision of Disneyland as "a degenerate utopia ... an ideol- More than 200 boiler rooms - named for the intensity of activity in the
ogy realized in the form of a myth ... presented as at once absolutely barest of spaces- now punctuate the scamscape of Orange County,
realistic and absolutely fantastic," and deeper into Baudrillard's reportedly generating activities that gross over $1 billion a year. The
world of hypersimulation, where "it is no longer a question of a false typical boiler room is, at its base, a telemarketing business serving to
representation (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is collect money for charities, public television stations, credit card and
no longer real." Perhaps more than any other place, more than the loan applications, as well as for promoting investment schemes
desert, more than either New York or Los Angeles, Orange County promising quick and easy profits. The basic work is done by "whole-
verifies Baudrillard's iconoclastic vision of the anesthetic enchant- some youth" on telephones with high-tech "confidencers" used to sift
ments of hyperreality. It is the generative utopia, a make-believe par- out all background noise. Often starting out their employment careers,
adise that successfully makes you believe in make-believing, the :he youthful telemarketers are trained by experts who instill confi-
most irresistably California-looking of all the Californias, the most dence and entrepreneurship with promises of advancement to higher
like the movies and TV "situation comedies," the most like the levels of take-home pay (much of it tax-free, it is hinted). The densest
promised American Dream. agglomeration of boiler rooms is probably in and around Newport
Under these transcendental conditions, it is no surprise that image Beach, one fraud inspector said, "simply because it sounds classier
and reality become spectacularly confused, that the difference over the phone than, say, Pomona."
between true and false, fact and fiction, not only disappears but Competition in this telephonic cyberspace is intense and prof-
becomes totally and preternaturally irrelevant. In this final scene itable, especially when dealing with "investment opportunities" that
from the inventive Exopolis of Orange County, another postmodern are promoted by young telemarketers reading from prepared scripts
geography is explored and brought up to date. It represents the infused with the habitactics of make-believe. According to authori-
landscape of hyperreality as a fraudulent or better, metafraudulent ties, the average boiler room fraud victim loses between $40,000 and
scamscape, an ecstatic playground for the habitactics of make-believe. $50,000. One was reported to have invested $400,000 based on a sin-
gle telephone call, and another, a 90-year-old widow in Nebraska,
19
George Frank, "Urban Sprawl: A New Foe Surrounds the Military," see footnote
16, p. 271. 20
Untitled article in the Los Angeles Daily News, March 24, 1987.
sent off $750,000 to a young man who told her he was "a native Other variations on the recurrent theme of fraud involve bank-
Nebraska boy brought up with high morals" and was working his ruptcy and foreclosure scams, stockswindling (junk bonds were
way through college. It is not uncommon for some of the boiler invented over the county border in Beverly Hills), computer crimes,
rooms to have a gross take of $3 million a month, certainly'competi- environmental regulation crimes, real estate cons, many types of
tive with narcotics and, it would seem, infinitely more wholesome. insurance fraud (including a particularly serious problem, fed by a
During one police raid, a placard was found on a salesman's desk. small army of what are called "capper lawyers," who stage automo-
Effectively capturing the sincerely duplicitous honesties of the boiler bile accidents and occupational injuries to obtain their percentages),
room, another of the magical enclosures of the Exopolis, it proudly Medicare and Medicaid fraud, and an amazing variety of other
proclaimed: WE CHEAT THE OTHER GUY AND PASS THE SAV- scams and cons that densely layer everyday life with the ideologic of
INGS ON TO YOU. hyperreality. But these are small change compared to two explosions
But the boiler room is only one of the many indications that the that have hit the scamscape in the past decade. Some sort of mythic
"seven hundred and eighty-six square mile theme park," the place peak of financial fraud was reached in the late 1980s in the Savings
where "you can have anything you want," has become the most and Loan industry debacle. Symbolizing this meltdown was a
active scamscape on earth. The Defense Criminal Investigative "thrift" headquartered in Irvine but connected all over the US, and
Service office in Laguna Niguel, investigating fraud in the defense especially to the junk-bond empires that continue to rise and fall in
industry, is the largest in the country, befitting Southern California's Southern California. So costly were the unregulated scams of
world leadership in the devastating production of offensive Charles H. Keating's unthrifty Lincoln Savings and Loan company
weaponry. In the late 1980s, before the defense industry bum-down that its sincerely duplicitous honesties and the larger riot of S&L fail-
in Southern California, the DCIS filed nearly 100 indictments and ures it connected with will probably cost taxpayers as much as $500
recovered more than $50 million from local cases involving much billion to cover up and repair. Keating and most of the other S&L
more imaginative practices than the famous examples of the $640 criminals insisted that they did nothing wrong, they played the
toilet-seat and the even more costly screwdriver. In highly special- deregulated financial games the way the law said they should be
ized Orange County, the key frauds involved product substitution played. In this financial crisis, the scamscape surpassed itself, trans-
and the falsification of test results. Its most controversial case forced forming mere fraud into metafraud, and "false representation" into a
the bankruptcy and closure of a local firm that produced "fuzes" for ceremonial concealment of the fact, as Baudrillard says, "that the real
the warheads of Phoenix air-to-air missiles - the weapons of choice is no longer real."
for "Top Gun" Navy jet pilots. The fuze's frightening function is In December, 1994, the scamscape exploded again as the entire
appropriately ambivalent: it both detonates the warhead and pre- Orange County government declared bankruptcy after it was found
vents it from detonating prematurely. Local workers confidently that the public sector ran its finances very much like the bankrupt
boasted of their prowess on embossed metal signs that said: THE Savings and Loan companies, with a touch of the boiler room added
BEST DAMNED FUZES IN THE WORLD ARE MANUFACTURED for good measure. Just as Keating and his companies had come to
BEHIND THIS DOOR and hinted that this made thorough testing symbolize a new entrepreneurial model of people-oriented invest-
unnecessary and superfluous. Pentagon procurers and DCIS offi- ment in the mid-1980s, the Orange County investment fund, run by
cials, however, worried that the difference between the two func- a folksy tax collector with the almost dementedly appropriate name
tions of detonation and antidetonation was being insufficiently of Citron, had become a nationally known model of the "new fiscal
attended to on the factory floor. To this day, no one really knows populism," artfully playing the profitable financial games of the
which viewpoint was correct. 21 1990s. Constrained by the tax-revolt metafraud of Proposition 13,
passed in 1978 as a deceptive simulation of popular democracy,22 all
21
Such duplicitous honesties continue today throughout Southern California, still local governments in California were forced to be fiscally innovative
"the nation's capital for defense fraud," even with the significant reductions in fed-
to make up for the downsizing of property tax revenues. Citron-led
eral expenditures. It was reported in 1995 that 75 percent of all criminal fines col-
lected across the country in the previous four years came from Southern California,
the most serious case being the bypassing of required inspections and the falsifica- 22
For an excellent analysis of the California tax revolt and the passage of
tion of test records in the Lucas Aerospace plant in the City of Industry. It was Proposition 13, with its massive shift of resources from the public to the private sec-
alleged that a faulty gearbox produced at the plant was responsible for the crash of tor, see Clarence Y. H. Lo, Small Property versus Big Government: Social Origins of the
a $40 million F-18 jet fighter during the 1991 Gulf War. See Ralph Vartabedian, Property Tax Revolt, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990
"Cases of Defense Fraud Boom Amid Cutbacks," Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1995. (paperback with new preface and epilogue, 1995).
Orange County, with almost no supervision from the elected Board The Exopolis stretches our imaginations and critical sensibilities in
of Supervisors (as usual a faux governmental body filled with retired much the same way it has stretched the tissues of the modern
colonels and other amateur political simulacra), leapt head on into metropolis: beyond the older tolerances, past the point of being able
the magical realism of the new bond market, with its lush deriva- to spring back to its earlier shape. For those who choose to struggle
tives, reverse repos, and inverse floaters. Using local government's against its alluring and illusive embrace, stubbornly modernist
main comparative advantange- its (significantly reduced post-Prop modes of resistance are certainly not enough. New tactics and strate-
13) ability to raise tax revenues and issue municipal and "general gies must come into being which draw upon an assertively radical
obligation" bonds- the Orange County Investment Fund gambled and postmodern subjectivity to take us beyond the Baudrillardian
the county's well-being on the bond market and on the continuing message and messenger to a new cultural politics of identity I differ-
drop in interest rates. By early 1994, the fund had reached at least $7 ence/resistance, to a radical and creatively postmodern spatial
billion; by the end of the year it was $1.7 billion shorter and what has praxis that recognizes the hyperreality of everyday life in the inter-
been described as America's richest and most highly educated (and twinings of the Inner and Outer City, and seeks to transform the
Republican) county was forced into the largest municipal bank- real-and-imagined by forcefully spin-doctoring alternative images,
ruptcy in US history. strategic simulacra that subvert from within and work toward trans-
forming our lived spaces of representation.
Unmasking the corruption, deceit, greed, emptiness, the tinseled
Finale: The Precession of Exopolis superficialities and exploitative social relations of our contemporary
lifeworlds, is still useful. Indeed, much of this chapter is just such a
It is not just in Orange County where everything is possible and critical unmasking of what seems to lie behind the radiant surface of
nothing is real. Creatively erosive postmodern urban geographies the Exopolis. What has been revealed, however, is that practically
are being invented at a furious pace in every region of the country. everything discoverable beneath the surface is also another mask. To
The simpler worlds of the artificial theme parks are no longer the dig even deeper will bring us back to the surface, to an Orange County
only places where the disappearance of the real is revealingly con- that continues to function symbolically as an exceedingly attractive
cealed. This ecstatic disappearance permeates everyday life, enabling lived space, undemystifiable because its (hyper)reality is mystifica-
the hyperreal to increasingly influence not only what we wear and tion itself. What the journey through the Exopolis of Orange County
what we eat and how we choose to entertain ourselves; but also begins to suggest to those seeking an end to exploitation, domina-
where and how we choose to live, who and what we vote for, how tion, and subjection is that we need not only to declaim and demys-
government is run, and also how we might be agitated to take more tify but also, from a critical space of radical openness, to reclaim and
direct political action not just against the precession of simulacra but remystify hyperreality in a determined continuation of progressive
within it as well. political projects. To do otherwise verges on both anachronism and
Simulations increasingly dominate contemporary politics at the anachorism (inappropriate location in space).
local, state, national, and international levels. Reality is spin-doc-
tored for us by a new caste of specialists who determine exactly what
will be revealed and what will be concealed. Pollsters take the tem-
perature of this fickle body politic as sim-citizens march together to
the fine-tuning of such metafrauds as "the taxpayers revolt," "small
government is good government," "the magic of the market," "tele-
phonic democracy," "the end of history," and "the triumph of capi-
talism." A new mode of regulation seems to be emerging spon-
taneously from this diffusion of hyperreality, plugging us into the
new economic machinery of virtual reality and cyberspace, protected
by elaborately carceral systems of social control and leading us to the
promised lands of postmodern re-enchantment, where tax cuts for
the rich magically benefit the poor and social spending for the poor
is seen as hurting those that receive it.
The Stimulus of a Little Confusion 281
On Spuistraat
In Amsterdam in 1990, I dwelt for a time on Spuistraat, a border
street on the western flank of the oldest part of the Inner City.
9 Squeezed in between the busy Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal (literally,
on the "new side" of the original settlement, in front of the old city
wall) and the Singel (or "girdle," the first protective canal moat built
The Stimulus of a Little just beyond the wall), Spuistraat runs roughly North-South starting
Confusion: A Contemporary near the old port and the teeming Stationsplein, where the Central
Railway Station sits blocking the seaview, pumping thousands of
Comparison of Amsterdam and visitors daily into the historic urban core. At half its length,
Spuistraat is cut by Raadhuisstraat, the start of the main western
Los Angeles 1 boulevard axis branching off from the nearby Royal Palace (once the
Town Hall or raadhuis) and tourist-crammed Dam Square, where the
city was born more than 700 years ago in a portentous act of regula-
tory tolerance (granting the local settlers toll-free use of the new dam
across the Amstel River, Amstelledamme becoming Amsterdam).
Recalling my stay in Amsterdam provides another opportunity to
explore other urban spaces of representation.
After passing the old canal house where I lived, the street ends in
All these elements of the general spectacle in this entertaining country what is simply called Spui, or "sluice," once a control channel con-
at least give one's regular habits of thought the stimulus of a little connecting the Amstel and the older inner city canal system with the
fusion and make one feel that one is dealing with an original genius. great bib of concentric canals that ring the outer crescent of the Inner
(Henry James, experiencing the Netherlands in City, or as it is popularly called, the Centrum. The Spui (pronounced
Transatlantic Sketches, 1875: 384)
somewhere in between "spay" and "spy") is now a short broad
boulevard lined with bookstores, cafes, a university building, the
What, then, is the Dutch culture offered here? An allegiance that was
fashioned as the consequence, not the cause, of freedom, and that was occasional open-air art fair, and the entranceways to several popular
defined by common habits rather than legislated by institutions. It tourist attractions, ranging from the banal (Madame Tussaud's) to
was a manner of sharing a peculiar - very peculiar - space at a the enchanting (the Begijnhof and just beyond, the Amsterdam
particular time ... the product of the encounter between fresh histori- Historical Museum). The "city museum" offers the most organized
cal experience and the constraints of geography. introduction to the historical geography of Amsterdam, with rooms-
(Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation ful of splendid imagery bringing to life what you see first upon
of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, 1988: xi) entering, a panoramic model that sequentially lights up the city's ter-
ritorial expansion in stages from 1275 to the present. Just as effective,
however, as a starting-point for an interpretive stroll through
1
Amsterdam's Centrum is the Begijnhof, or Beguine Court.
The original version of this chapter was published by the Centrum voor
Grootstedelijk Onderzoek (Center for Metropolitan Research) of the University of The Begijnhof is a small window on to the urban imaginary of con-
Amsterdam in 1991 as part of its series of "Texts of a Special Lecture." Sponsored by temporary Amsterdam. It is filled with that bewildering Dutch mix
the city of Amsterdam, the CGO supports a program of visiting professors on urban of the familiar and the incomprehensible that so attracted Henry
research. I was a visiting professor in the Spring of 1990 and presented a lecture on
'The Changing Relations of City and Suburb in Los Angeles and Amsterdam," from James in 1874 and later inspired Simon Schama's brilliant interpreta-
which the first publication derived. The essay was subsequently reprinted (without tion of the "moralizing geography" of Dutch culture in its 17th-cen-
its footnotes) in M. P. Smith, ed., After Modernism: Global Restructuring and the tury Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches.2 One enters the
Changing Boundaries of City life, New Brunswick, NJ and London, UK: Transaction
Publishers, 1992: 17-38; and, in full, in Leon Deben, Willem Heinemeijer and Dick
van der Vaart, eds, Understanding Amsterdam, Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1993. I 2
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
have reworked the essay to fit this chapter of Thirdspace. Golden Age, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.
282 Inside and Outside Los Angeles The Stimulus of a Little Confusion 283
Begijnhof through an arched oak door off Spui square, an innocently "monuments" to the Golden Age that are packed into the sustaining
unmarked opening to an enticing microcosm of civic refuge and Centrum, the largest and most successfully reproduced historic
peaceful respite in a cosmopolitan Dutch world of ever-so-slightly inner city in Europe. With a frontage that seemed no wider than my
repressive tolerance. Before you is a neat quadrangle of lawn sur- driveway back home in Los Angeles, the building, like nearly all the
rounded by beautifully preserved and reconstructed 17th- and 18th- others in the Centrum, rose four storeys to a gabled peak embedded
century alms-houses, nearly every one fronted with flower-filled with a startling metal hook designed for moving furniture and bulky
gardens. A restored wooden house dates back to the 15th century, items by ropes in through the wide windows. Given my sizeable
one of two survivors of the many fires which burned down the old bulk (I stand nearly two meters high and weigh more than an eighth
city (and the original Begijnhof) before the more substantial Golden of a ton), I had visions of having to be hoisted up and in myself
Age. The other survivor is located in a different kind of refuge zone when I first saw the steep narrow stairwell (trappenhuis) to the first
along the Zeedijk, today known as the "boulevard of junkies," the floor. But I quickly learned to bow my head and sidle in the door-
tolerated and planned resting place for the city's residential corps of way.
aging hard-drug addicts. Golden Age taxation systems encouraged physical narrowness
There are also two small churches in the Begijnhof, one dating and relatively uniform building facades up front, squeezing living
back to 1392 but built again in 1607 and known since as either space (and stimulating expansive creativity in interior design)
English Reformed or Scottish Presbyterian. Here the fleeing English upward and inward from the tiny street- or canal-side openings. The
Pilgrim Fathers prayed before setting sail on the Mayflower, comfort- patient preservation yet modernization of these monuments reflects
able in their temporary but dependable Dutch haven. On one of my that "original genius" of the Dutch to make the most of little spaces,
visits, the church was filled with the concerted voices of the Loyola to literally produce an enriching and communal urban spatiality
College choir from New Orleans, singing American spirituals to the through aggressive social intervention and imaginative grass-roots
passers-by. The other church, a clandestine construction in 1655, was planning. In many ways, the preservative modernization of the
originally a refuge for Catholic sisters escaping post-Reformation cityscape of the Centrum has been an adaptive feat on a par with the
Calvinist religious purges. One of its stained-glass windows com- Dutch conquest of the sea.
memorates the epochal "wafer miracle" of 1345, an event that Simon Schama roots Dutch culture in this moral geography of
boosted Amsterdam into becoming a major medieval pilgrimage adaptation, an uncanny skill in working against the prevailing tides
center and began its still continuing and far reaching international- and times to create spaces and places that reinforce collective self-
ization.3 recognition, identity, and freedom. "Dutchness," he writes, "was
The Beguine Court was originally founded one year after the mira- often equated with the transformation, under divine guidance, of
cle as a sanctuary for the Beguines, a Dutch lay sisterhood that catastrophe into good fortune, infirmity into strength, water into dry
sought a convent-like life but with the freedom to leave and marry if land, mud into gold" (1988: 25). In Amsterdam, perhaps more so
they wished, an early marker of the many Dutch experiments with than in any other Dutch city, these earthy efforts to "moralize mate-
what might be called engagingly flexible inflexibility. Today, the rialism" moved out from the polderlands to become evocatively
Begijnhof continues to be home to ongehuwde dames (unmarrie~ urban, not through divine guidance so much as through secularized
ladies) who pay a nominal rent to live very comfortably around the spatial planning, enlightened scientific management, and an extraor-
!awned quadrangle and proffer their services to the ill and the dinarily committed civic consciousness that persists to the present.
elderly. Despite the flocking tourists, it remains a remarkably peace- The canal house simulates this rootedness, enabling one to experi-
ful spot, a reflective urban retreat that succeeds in being both open ence within it the very essence of a liveable city, the agglomeration
and closed at the same time, just like so many other paradoxical of individuals into socially constructed lifespaces that are always
spaces and places in the refugee-filled Amsterdam Centrum. open to new possibilities even as they tightly enclose and constrain.
I lived just around the corner in another of these artfully preserved The lived spaces of the Centrum are popularly designed to make
places and spaces, a relatively modest variant of the more than 6,000 density beautiful as well as accommodating, to flexibly enculturate
3
and socialize without imprisoning, to make the strange familiar, and
The "miracle" apparently occurred when a sick man, unable to swallow the com-
munion bread, spit it into a fireplace where it remained whole and unbumt. The site
to add somehow to one's regular habits of thought that entertaining
of this holy event is commemorated under a small glass window embedded into the stimulus of a little confusion.
sidewalk near where the 14th-century Chapel of the Holy City formerly stood. To live in a canal house is to encounter Amsterdam immediately
and precipitously, as my kind hosts from the University of

Amsterdam's Center for Metropolitan Research knew well in finding
me such strategically located lodgings. 4 The past is omnipresent in
its narrow nooks and odd-angled passageways, its flower-potted
corners and unscreened windows that both open and close to the
views outside. Everyday life inside becomes a crowded reminder of
at least four rich centuries of urban geohistory being preserved on a
scale and contemporary intensity that is unique to Amsterdam. At
horne, one is invited daily into the creative spatiality of the city's
social life and culture, an invitation that is at the same time embrac-
ingly tolerant and carefully guarded. Not everyone can become an
Arnsterdarnrner, but everyone must at least be given the chance to
try.
The prevailing atmosphere is not that of a museum, however, a
fixed and dead immortalization of the city's culturally built environ-
ment. The history and geography are remarkably alive and filled
with the urban entertainment that makes Amsterdam so attractively
familiar and yet so peculiarly incomprehensible, neat and clean and
regular but curiously tilted, puzzling, an island of mud not quite
entirely turned into gold but transformed enough to make one
believe in the creative alchemy of Amsterdam's modestly democratic
citybuilders. From my vantage point on Spuistraat a moving picture
of contemporary life in the vital center of Amsterdam visually
unfolded, opening my eyes to much more than I ever expected to
see.
The view from my front windows affirmed for me what I continue
to believe is the most extraordinary quality of this city, its relatively
(the Dutch constitutionally refuse all absolutes) successful achieve-
ment of highly regulated urban anarchism, another of the creative
paradoxes (along with the aforementioned and closely related
"repressive tolerance" and "flexible inflexibility") that two-sidedly
filter through the city's historical geography in ways that defy com-
parison with almost any other polis, past or present. This deep and
enduring commitment to libertarian socialist values and participa-
tory spatial democracy is apparent throughout the urban built
environment and in the social practices of urban planning, law
enforcement, popular culture, and everyday life. One senses that
Amsterdam is not just preserving its own Golden Age but is actively
keeping alive the very possibility of a socially just and humanely
scaled urbanism. Still far from perfection itself, as the Dutch never
4
My thanks to Leon De ben, Dick van der Vaart, and Jacques van de Ven, for spon-
soring my stay in Amsterdam, along with the Department of Social Geography of
the University of Amsterdam. Very special thanks also to Pieter Terhorst of the
Department of Social Geography, who more than anyone else warmly and informa-
tively shaped my understanding of Amsterdam.
cease telling you, Amsterdam is none the less packed with conspicu- dents and still poor, although the young man may have been work-
ously anomalous achievements. There is little or no boosterism, no ing at least part-time for he was rarely seen, except in the morning
effort to proclaim the achievements or to present them as a model for and late at night. The woman was obviously pregnant and spent
others to follow. Instead, there is again, pace Schama, an unadver- most of her time at home. Except when the sun was bright and
tised "embarrassment of riches," modestly reproduced as in the past warm, they tended to remain away from the front window and
on the "moral ambiguity of good fortune." never acknowledged anyone outside, for their orientation was deci-
There are many ways to illustrate this peculiar urban genius. For dedly inward. The small top floor, little more than an attic, still had
now, the view through my Spuistraat window will do for a start. plastic sheeting covering the roof. A single male student lived there
Immediately opposite, in a building very much like mine, each floor and nearly always ate his lunch leaning out the front window alone.
is a separate flat and each storey tells a vertical story of subtle and His space made one wonder whether the whole building was still a
creative citybuilding processes. It was almost surely a squatter-occu- "squat" for if he was paying a nominal rent, one would have
pied house in the past and is probably one now, for Spuistraat has expected the roof to have been fixed, in keeping with the negotiated
long been an active scene of the squatter movement. On the ground compromises that have marked what some would call the social
floor is an extension of the garage offices next door. There is a small absorption of the squatter movement in the 1980s. Civic authorities
"No Parking" sign on the window but nearly always a car or two is have actually issued pamphlets on "How to be a Squatter" in
parked in front. Our ground floor, in contrast, is a used book shop, Amsterdam, still another example of creatively regulated tolerance.
one of the many dozens densely packed in this most literate of This vertical transect through the current status of the squatter
Centrums, the place where enlightened scholars from Descartes to movement was matched by an even more dramatic horizontal
Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau first found the freedom to panorama along the east side of Spuistraat, from Paleisstraat (Palace
have their enlightened works published and publicized without cen- Street) to the Spui. To the north (my left, looking out the front win-
sorship. dow) was an informative sequence of symbolic structures, beginning
One cannot avoid noticing that the automobile is an intruder in with a comfortable corner house on Paleisstraat that was recently
the Centrum. Spuistraat, like so many others, is a street designed rehabilitated with neat squatter rentals (another contradiction in
and redesigned primarily for pedestrians and cyclists. Alongside the terms?) above; and below, a series of shops also run by the same
busy bike path there is a narrow one-way car lane and some newly group of rehabilitated and socially absorbed squatter-renters: a well-
indented parking spaces, but this accommodation to the automobile stocked fruit and vegetable market-grocery selling basic staples at
is tension-filled and wittily punctuated. The police are always ready excellent prices, a small beer-tasting store stocked with dozens of
to arrive with those great metal wheel clamps and the spectacle of imported (mainly Belgian) brews and their distinctively matching
their attachment usually draws appreciative, occasionally cheering drinking glasses and mugs, a tiny bookstore and gift shop specializ-
and laughing, crowds of onlookers. Traffic is nearly always jammed, ing in primarily black gay and lesbian literature, a used household
yet (most of the time) the Dutch drivers wait patiently, almost furnishings shop with dozens of chairs and tables set out on the
meekly, for they know they are guilty of intrusion and wish to avoid front sidewalk, and finally, closest to my view, a small hand-crafted
the steel jaws of public disapprobation. I was told that the city pl<)n- woman's cloth hat shop.
ners have accepted the need to construct several large underground This remarkably successful example of gentrification by the youth-
parking garages in the gridlocked Centrum, but only with the provi- ful poor is just a stone's throw away from the Royal Palace on the
sion that for every space constructed below ground, one space above Dam, the focal point for the most demonstrative peaking of the radi-
is taken away. cal squatter movement that blossomed city-wide in conjunction with
On the first floor of the house across the way were the most obvi- the coronation of Queen Beatrix in 1980. A more immediate explana-
ously elegant living quarters, occupied by a woman who had proba- tion of origins, however, is found just next door on Spuistraat, where
bly squatted there as a student but had by now comfortably entered a new office-construction site has replaced former squatter dwellings
the job market. She spent a great deal of time in the front room, fre- in an accomplished give and take trade-off with the urban authori-
quently had guests in for candlelit dinners, and would occasionally ties. And just next door to this site, even closer to my window, was
wave to us across the street, for my wife, Maureen, and I too had our still another paradoxical juxtapositioning, one which signaled the
most comfortable living space just by the front windows. On the continued life of the radical squatter movement in its old "anarchic
floor above there was a young couple. They were probably still stu- colors."
A privately owned building had been recently occupied by con- cafe, where an older clientele sits and glares at the sipping elites
temporary squatters and its facade was brightly repainted, graffi- across the way. The dense territorialities here are invisible to the
toed, and festooned with political banners and symbolic bric-a-brac casual visitor and they may be blurring even for the Dutch, as the
announcing the particular form, function, and focus of the occupa- cosmopolitan mixture of Amsterdam takes over, globalizing the
tion. The absentee owner was caricatured as a fat tourist obviously local street scene.
beached somewhere with sunglasses and tropical drink in hand, Just around the corner are a few of the Centrum's hash coffee
while a white-sheet headline banner bridged the road to connect shops, perhaps the best known of Amsterdam's almost infinite vari-
with a similar squat on my side of the street, also bedecked with ety of meeting-places. Their heady smoke flows out to fill the nostrils
startling colors and slogans and blaring with music from an estab- of passers-by. While living on Spuistraat, I had the good fortune to
lished squatter pub. I was told early in my stay that this was the be taken on an amazing tour of the entire inner Centrum by Adrian
most provocative ongoing squatter settlement in the Centrum. It was Jansen, author of a fascinating analysis of the geography of hash cof-
scheduled to be recaptured by the authorities several days after my fee shops in Amsterdam. 5 Jansen is the Baudelaire of the Centrum, a
arrival, but when I left the situation was unchanged, at least on the geographer-flaneur of the inner spaces of the city. He reads the
surface. Centrum on foot - he reputedly does not even own a bicycle - and
The view south, to my right, on Spuistraat presented another writes on such topics as "Funshopping" and the Dutch taste for
urban trajectory dominated by much more traditional forms of gen- Belgian beer and beer halls. In his treatise on cannabis in Amsterdam,
trification. Some splendid conversion, using fancy wooden shutters, which ranges from Felliniesque poetics to stodgy classical location
modernized gables (no hook here), and vaulted interior designs was theories (e.g. Hotelling's famous "ice-cream vendor" model), Jansen
transforming an old structure for its new inhabitants, who were describes life in Siberia, the name of a hashish coffee shop he took
much more likely to visit the boutiques and gourmet restaurants in me to on our foot-tour.
the vicinity than the shops up the road. The transition quickened in a
little restaurant row that ranged from what was reputed to be the Compared to the "Tweede Kamer," "Siberia" is a much larger
best seafood place in Amsterdam and one of the grandest traditional coffee shop. Not only does it offer a large variety of softdrinks,
centers of Dutch cuisine (called the Five Flies and fed daily by bus- but they also serve excellent coffee. The espresso machine guar-
loads of mainly Japanese and German package-tourists), to a variety antees high quality, as it does in most coffee shops. The table
of smaller cafes, Indonesian restaurants (considered part of Dutch football game is in constant use. Some people come in to play
cuisine), and fast-food emporia selling tasty bags of frites. . cards. Others play a kind of home-made skill game, in which a
By the time you reach the Spui on foot, the street scene is awash bicycle bell sounds if someone is not doing too well. Not every
again with activity and variety. A large bookstore shares one corner visitor buys hashish or marijuana, and not everyone pays. A
with an international news-center, spilling over on to the sidewalk man, clearly on his way home from the beach, orders yoghurt
with newspapers, magazines, and academic journals from around and disappears soon after eating it. Two men from Surinam
the world as well as pamphlets, flyers, and broadsheets announcing enter. One has a story about his jacket being stolen. He asks the
more local events. There are beer pubs nearby, as well as an coffee shop owner for a loan, since he and his friend want a
American-style cocktail bar and several representatives of the aston- smoke. He gets it, but the shopkeeper makes him promise to
ishing variety of specialized Amsterdam cafes. One guidebook lists return the money tomorrow. (I have reason to believe that the
the following cafe types, each with its own internal variations: white, two use hard drugs as well. They are often to be seen at the
brown, and neo-brown; cocktail bars, gay bars, beer cafes, student "Bridge of Pills," a spot near my home where hard drugs
cafes (differentiated by dress codes and academic disciplines), liter- change hands. Their hollow cheeked faces show small inflam-
ary cafes, chess cafes, ping-pong cafes, theatrical cafes, high-tech mations.) Hashish and marijuana are offered here in prepacked
cafes, 8-2 cafes, discotheques, and night pubs. quantities; in small bags worth ten or 25 guilders. The ten
One of the Centrum's best known "white cafes" (just drinks) is guilder bags appear to be the most popular. The shop owner
located where Spuistraat meets the Spui. It is beginning to lose its turns to me and says, "Hey, tell me, what do you think is the
yuppie edge, however, to the stand-up, quick service, "old-style"
cafe next door, much better able to quench the growing thirst for 5
A C M. Jansen, Cannabis in Amsterdam: A Geography of Hashish and Marijuana,
nostalgia. Nearly adjacent but stoically distanced is a famous radical Muiderberg: Coutinho BV, 1991.
best coffee shop around?" A difficult question. (Jansen, 1991: urban restructuring of Amsterdam and Los Angeles over the past 25
14) years becomes appealing at this point, for each has in its own way
been paradigmatic. But I do not wish to leave my Spuistraat van-
My journey with Jansen opened up many spaces I would never have tage-point too quickly, for it continues to be revealing.
seen on my own, or with any other tour-guide. Thank you, Adrian. The contemporary residential renaissance of Amsterdam's
Here's to your health. Centrum, more effectively than any other place I know, illustrates
Back on Spuistraat, the panorama being explored seems to concen- the power of popular control over the social production of urban
trate and distill the spectrum of forces that have creatively rejuve- space. It has been perhaps the most successful enactment of the anar-
nated the residential life of the Centrum and preserved its cho-socialist-environmentalist intentions that inspired the urban
anxiety-inducing overvloed (superabundance, literally overflood) of social movements of the 1960s to recover their "rights to the city," le
urban riches. At the center of this rejuvenation has been the squatter droit a la ville, as it was termed by Henri Lefebvre, who visited
movement, which has probably etched itself more deeply into the Amsterdam many times and whose earlier work on everyday life
urban built environment of Amsterdam than in any other inner city inspired the Amsterdam movements. As mentioned in chapter 1,
in the world. To many of its most radical leaders, the movement Lefebvre was particularly influential in the COBRA (Copenhagen-
today seems to be in retreat, deflected if not co-opted entirely by an Brussels-Amsterdam) movement that formed in 1949 to reject the
embracing civic tolerance. But it has been this slightly repressive tol- arrogantly rational modernization of state planning in the immediate
erance that has kept open the competitive channels for alternative postwar period and to release the pleasure of art in popular culture
housing and counter-cultural lifestyles not only for the student and everyday life. COBRA disbanded in 1951, but its inspiration and
population of today but for other age groups as well. It has also distinctive brand of situationism continued to live on, especially in
shaped, in distinctive ways, the more "acceptable" gentrification Amsterdam.
process and helped to make it contribute to the diversity of the More familiar contemporary paths of urban restructuring can be
Centrum rather than to its homogenization, although this struggle is found in and around Amsterdam, but the Centrum's experience
clearly not yet over. verges on the unique. Uncovering this uniqueness is difficult, for it
This contemporary residential rejuvenation of Amsterdam has been covered over by more conventional wisdoms, right and left,
requires some geohistorical explanation. Decentralization in the that see today only either a continuation of "creatively destructive"
1930s began emptying the inner city of offices and manufacturing decentralization emptying the urban core of its no longer needed
employment, and postwar suburbanization continued the process in economic base (and hence necessitating more drastic forms of urban
a heightened flow of residential out-migration not just to the poly- renewal to fit its new role); or the defeat and co-optation of the most
centered urban fringe but beyond, to such Christallerian new towns radical urban social movements by the governing powers (leading
as Almere and Lelystad, planned and plotted in hexagonal lattices too easily to a sense of popular despair over what now is to be done
on the reclaimed polders of isotropic Flevoland. 6 As has happened in in these once radically open but now closing spaces of resistance).
every century after the Golden Age, the continued life and liveliness Both views can be argued with abundant statistics and effective
of the Centrum was threatened by exogenous forces of moderniza- polemics, but when seen from the outside, in a more comparative
tion. A turning-point, however, was reached in the 1960s, as cities and global perspective on the past 25 years of urban restructuring, a
exploded all over the world in often violent announcements that the third view of Amsterdam emerges.
postwar boom's excesses were no longer tolerable to the under- In 1965, while Watts was burning in Los Angeles, a small group of
classes of urban society. A contrapuntal process of urban restructur- Amsterdammers called the Provos (after their published and pam-
ing was initiated almost everywhere in an effort to control the phleted "provocations") sparked an urban uprising of radical expec-
spreading unrest and to shift economic gears in an attempt to tations and demands that continues to be played out on Spuistraat
recover the expansionary capitalist momentum. A comparison of the and elsewhere in Amsterdam's "magical center" of the world. The
Provos were activated in the previous summer and had rallied their
6
The descriptive terms here - Christallerian, hexagonal, isotropic - refer to the famous "happenings" nearly every Saturday evening around Het
"central place theory" that became so widely espoused by quantitative geographers Lieverdje, a bronze statue of a smiling street urchin that still stands in
in the 1970s and just as widely applied by urban and regional planners all over the
world. The Dutch experiment with such imaginative spatial planning was particu- Spui square. At first the movement focused, with conscious irony, on
larly interesting. an anti-tobacco campaign (the statue had been donated by a local
cigarette manufacturer), but soon the Provos' provocations spread to City Council as representative of perhaps the most radical anarchist-
anti-war, anti-nuclear, and anti-pollution protests. Green party in Europe. A few years ago, when it came time to assign
Their "White Bikes Plan" (whereby publicly provided bicycles a council member to oversee the still-being-negotiated plans to con-
would be available for free use throughout the city) symbolized the struct a luxury office and upscale housing development in the old
growing resistance to automobile traffic in the Centrum that would Oosterdok waterfront - Amsterdam's anticipated version of
far outlive the plan itself? Today, the network of bicycle paths and London's Docklands or New York's Battery Park City- the same
the density of cyclists is probably the highest in any major industrial radical anarchist environmentalist became the obvious choice. No
or even post-industrial city; urban planners routinely publicize their better symbol can be found of the continuing impact of the twen-
distaste for automobile traffic while flexibly accommodating its tysomethings: compromised to be sure, far from having any absolute
inevitability; and the people continue to take free public transport by power, but nevertheless aging with significant virtue, commitment,
simply not paying on the subway, tram, or bus. If the free-riders are and influence.
caught (by characteristically soft enforcers, usually unemployed The final renewal came with the full-scale squatter or kraken move-
youth hired as fare checkers), they make up names, for the Dutch ment, beginning in 1976. The squatters launched their famous "No
were unique in pre-1992 Europe in having no official identification Housing No Coronation" campaign in 1980 and, for a few days,
cards. Driving licenses, the universal stamp and regulator of per- occupied a building near Vondel Park, declaring the site "Vondel
sonal identity in America, are nearly superfluous in the Netherlands Free State." Armed with helmets, iron bars, and stink bombs, the
and certainly not open to easy inspection. Integration into the Vondel state squatters were eventually defeated by an army of 1,200
European Community is today forcing the introduction of identity police, six tanks, a helicopter, several armored cars, and a water can-
cards, but depend on the Dutch to find ways to keep them out of non. After 1980, the movement did not decline so much as become a
sight. more generalized radical pressure group protesting against all forms
The Provos concentrated their eventful happenings in both Dam of oppression contained within what might be called the specific
and Spui squares and managed to win a seat on the City Council, geography of capitalism, from the local to the global scales.
indicative of their arousal of wider public sympathies. Their cre- Squatters, for example, merged into the women's movement, the
ative challenges to hierarchy and authority lasted only for a few anti-nuclear and peace movements, the protests against apartheid (a
years, but they set in motion a generational revolution of the "twen- particularly sensitive issue for the Dutch) and environmental degra-
tysomethings" (my term for the youthful households comprised dation (keeping Amsterdam one of the world's major centers for
mainly of students between the ages of 20 and 30 that today make radical Green politics); as well as against urban speculation, gentrifi-
up nearly a quarter of the Centrum's population) that would domi" cation, factory closures, tourism, and the siting of the Olympic
nate the renewal of the Centrum over the next two and a half games in Amsterdam.
decades. In no other major world city today are young household- The greatest local success of the radical squatter movement was
ers, whether students or young professionals, in such command of ironically also the cause of its apparent decline in intensity and radi-
the city center. calness. This was to keep the right to accessible and affordable hous-
After 1967 the movement was continued by the Kabouters (Sprites ing at the top of the urban political agenda by "convincing the local
or Gnomes), who not only promoted a complete ban on cars in the authorities of the urgency of building more housing for young
Centrum but developed plans for a full-scale greening of households and of prohibiting the destruction of cheap housing in
Amsterdam, with city-based farms, windmill-generated electricity, the central city for economic restructuring, gentrification, or urban
more open-space green belts, and special ministries for the elderly renewal." 8 Nowhere else did so much of the spirit of the 1960s pene-
and the poor. In 1970, the "Orange Free State" was declared as an trate so deeply into the urban planning practices of the 1980s and
alternative popular government rallying around the last Provo city 1990s.
councillor, a key figure in the movement who was named ambas-
sador to the "old state" and who today sits again on the Amsterdam 8
Virginie Mamadouh, "Three Urban Social Movements in Amsterdam: Young
Households in the Political Arena Between 1965 and 1985," revised version
7
(September 1989) of a paper presented at the conference on "The Urban
A pollution-free electric car was also designed by a Provo engineer as another Agglomeration as Political Arena," Amsterdam, June 1989, p. 15. My thanks to Ms
means of raising public consciousness against that smoke-belching symbol of con- Mamadouh for giving me a copy of this informative paper and for chatting with me
sumer society. As far as I can tell, the electric vehicle was never built. about urban social and spatial movements in Amsterdam.
The population of Amsterdam peaked around 1965 at over Amsterdam may be the most self-consciously centered and histori-
860,000. Twenty years later the total had dropped to a little over cally centripetal city in Europe, carefully preserving every one of its
680,000, but the Centrum had already begun to grow again and after golden ages (and also those of other enlightened urban spaces else-
1985 so has the city as a whole. There are many factors that affected where) in a repeatedly modernized Centrum that makes other rem-
this turnaround, but from a comparative perspective none seem nant mercantile capitalist "Old Towns" pale by comparison. Both
more important than that peculiar blend of democratic spatial plan- have downtowns of roughly comparable area, but only 1 of 150
ning and regenerative social anarchism that has preserved the Angelenos live in the City's center, whereas more than 10 percent of
Centrum as a magical center for youth of all ages, a stimulating pos- Amsterdammers are Centrum dwellers.
sibilities machine that is turned on by active popular participation in Many residents of the City of Los Angeles have never been down-
the social construction of urban space. As the prospects for urban town and experience it only vicariously, on television and film. Very
social justice seem to be dimming almost everywhere else today, few now visit it to shop (except for excursions to the garment dis-
there remains in Amsterdam a particularly valuable embarrassment trict's discount stores and the teeming Latino mercados along
of geohistorical riches. Broadway); and surprisingly few tourists take in its local attractions,
at least in comparison to more peripheral sites. Amsterdam's
Centrum receives nearly 8 million tourists a year and is packed daily
with many thousands of shoppers. Amsterdammers may not be
Off Spuistraat
aware of the rest of the city, but they certainly know where the cen-
ter can be found.
Anybody who grows up in Amsterdam invariably finds himself
It has been claimed that nearly three-quarters of the surface space
(sic) in the area of tension between the imprisonment of the ring
of downtown Los Angeles is devoted to the automobile and to the
of canals and the centrifugal escape via the exit roads of the
average Angeleno freedom and freeway are symbolically and often
city. In this area of tension one may not even know major parts
politically intertwined. Here the opposition to Amsterdam's
of the city and still be an Amsterdammer ....
Centrum, second only to floating Venice in auto-prohibition, is
From my very first visit to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, I
almost unparalleled. It is not the car but the bicycle that assumes, for
have had the feeling that the major Dutch cities (with
the Amsterdammer, a similarly obsessive symbolic and political role,
Amsterdam in the lead) deny out of sentimental considerations
but it is an obsession filled not with individualistic expression and
the fact that they are part of a larger whole (an area as large and
automaniacal freedom as much as with a collective urban and envi-
diffuse as Los Angeles) and as such completely ignore a dimen-
ronmental consciousness and commitment. This makes all the con-
sion of an entirely different order from the one which they tra-
trasts even more stark.
ditionally know. (Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, in
Amsterdam's center feels like an open public forum, a daily festi-
Amsterdam: An Architectural Lesson, 1988: 112)
val of spontaneous political and cultural ideas played at a low key,
but all the more effective for its lack of pretense and frenzy. Its often
At first glance, a comparison of Los Angeles and Amsterdam seems erogenously zoned geography is attuned to many different age
as impossible as comparing popcorn and potatoes. These two extra- groups and civically dedicated to the playful conquest of boredom
ordinary cities virtually beg to be described as unique, incompara- and despair in ways that most other cities have forgotten or never
ble, and of course to a great extent they are. But they are also thought possible. Downtown Los Angeles, on the other hand, is
linkable as opposite and apposite extremes of late 20th-century almost pure spectacle, of business and commerce, of extreme wealth
urbanization, informatively positioned antipodes that are almost and poverty, of clashing cultures and rigidly contained ethnicities.
Foucauldian inversions of one another yet are united in a common Boredom is assuaged by overindulgence and the bombardment of
and immediate urban experience. Let me annotate some of the more artificial stimulation; while despair is controlled and contained by
obvious oppositions. the omnipresence of authority and spatial surveillance, the ultimate
Los Angeles epitomizes the sprawling, decentered, polymorphic, in the substitution of police for polis. Young householders are virtu-
and centrifugal metropolis, a nebulous galaxy of urbs in search of ally non-existent. In their place are the homeless, who are coming
the urban, a place where history is repeatedly spun off and close to being half the central city's resident population despite vig-
ephemeralized in aggressively contemporary forms. In contrast, orous attempts at gentrification and dispersal.
In compact Amsterdam, the whole urban fabric, from center to in housing that appears embarrassingly substandard primarily to the
periphery, is clearly readable and explicit. From its prime axis of Dutch.
the Damrak and Rokin (built above the former route of the As noted earlier, the squatter movement was more than just an
Amstel River), the city unfolds in layers like a halved cross-sec- occupation of abandoned offices, factories, warehouses, and some
tion of an onion, first in the "old side" and "new side" (with an residences. It was a fight for the rights to the city itself, and for the
Old Church and New Church appropriately placed and streets right to be different, especially for the young and for the poor.
named by their position inside or outside the old city walls), then Nowhere has this struggle been more successful than in Amsterdam.
in the neat crescents of the ringing canals from the inner to the Nowhere has it been less successful than in Los Angeles. In the
outer Singel girdles, and finally in segments and wedges of inner immediate postwar period, Los Angeles was poised to become the
and outer suburbs, many of which are helpfully named largest recipient of public housing investment in the country, with
Amsterdam North, East, Southeast, South, and West. This mor- much of this scheduled to be constructed in or around downtown. In
phological regularity binds Amsterdammers to traditional con- no other American city did plans for public housing experience such
cepts of urban form and function and encourages its urbanists to a resounding defeat by so ferociously anti-socialist campaigners. The
be somewhat cautious when confronted with new theories of explosion of ethnic insurrections in the 1960s and early 1970s cruelly
urban transformation. accelerated the commercial renewal of downtown at the expense of
In comparison, Los Angeles seems to break every rule of urban its poor residential inhabitants. On the central city's "new side"
readability and regularity, challenging all traditional models of grew a commercial, financial, governmental, and high cultural
what is urban and what is not. One of America's classic old subur- fortress, while the "old side," beyond the skyscraper walls, was left
bias, the San Fernando Valley, is almost wholly within the jig- to be filled with more residual land uses: the tiny remnants of El
sawed boundaries of the monstro-City of Los Angeles, while many Pueblo on the north, the fulsome Skid Row of cardboard tenements
inner city barrios and ghettoes float outside on unincorporated and streetscapes of despair in the center, the Dickensian sweatshops
county land. There is a City of Industry, a City of Commerce, and and discount marts of the expansive Garment District on the south,
even a Universal City, but these are not cities at all. Their combined where immigrants continue to work even today in near-slave-like
populations would be outnumbered by the weekday shoppers on conditions.
the Kalverstraat. Moreover, in an era of what many have called And finally, there is the issue of racism. Amsterdam has been built
post-industrial urbanization, with cities being emptied of their on controlled tolerance and openness to many different "others,"
manufacturing employment, the Los Angeles region continued its from the Huguenots and Jews of the Golden Age to the Surinamese,
century-long boom in industrial growth, in both its core and Turks, Sri Lankans, and Moroccans of today. The Indonesians who
periphery, at least until the past few years. It is no surprise, then, came in large numbers in the mid-century have been almost seam-
that Southern California has become a center for innovative and lessly absorbed into Dutch culture and citizenship. Their numbers
non-traditional urban theory, for there seems little from conven- are uncountable even if there was a population census (which there
tional, established schools of urban analysis that any longer makes is not in the Netherlands, the Dutch being ever vigilant against gov-
sense. ernment intrusion), for there is no "official" way to tell the difference
And then there is that most basic of urban functions, housing. One between and among Dutch citizens of whatever color. To be sure,
of the most interesting features of the success of the squatter move- there remain some significant racial problems in Amsterdam today,
ment in Amsterdam has been the absence of a significant housing especially as large numbers of migrants and refugees from all over
shortage. Although much of the Centrum is privately owned, the the world have recognized the city as a particularly tolerant and safe
rest of the city is a vast checkerboard of public, or social housing, haven. Amsterdam too has become an increasingly Third World city,
giving Amsterdam the distinction of having the highest percentage and this brings with it the multiplication of potential friction points
of public housing stock of any major capitalist city, around 80 per- and situations.
cent (although here too there has been a slight turnaround in recent The comparison with Los Angeles, however, is startling. Los
years). Even what the Dutch planners consider the worst of these Angeles was built on a bedrock of racism and radical segregation. Its
social housing projects, such as the huge Bijlmermeer highrise gar- history is marked by a continuous sequence of public and private
den suburb, has served effectively to accommodate the thousands of sector partnerships which, at least since the Mexican conquest, have
migrants from Surinam and other former colonies during the 1970s directly or indirectly induced the most violent interracial conflagra-
tions that have occurred in any US city. There have also been, in the There are, however, several features of the recent round of
past and the present, significant examples of racial tolerance and polynucleated decentralization that suggest a more profound quali-
peaceful coexistence. But these have been as much exceptions as they tative shift in the patterning of the urban fabric. First, the size and
have been the rule in Amsterdam. scale of cities, or more appropriately of urban regions, has been
The core of my oppositional comparison is thus amply clear. But reaching unprecedented levels. The older notion of "megalopolis"
what of the periphery, or the "larger whole," as Rem Koolhaas called seems increasingly inadequate to describe a Mexico City of 30 mil-
it? Are there comparative dimensions "of an entirely different order" lion inhabitants or a "Mega-York" of nearly 25, stretching from
that are missed when we concentrate only on the antipodal centrali- Connecticut to Pennsylvania. Never before has the focus on the
ties of Amsterdam and Los Angeles? For the remainder of this con- politically defined "central" city become so insubstantial and mis-
temporary comparison, I will set the two cities in a larger, more leading. Complicating the older form still further has been the
generalizable context that focuses on -contemporary processes of emergence of "Outer Cities", amorphous agglomerations of indus-
urban restructuring. Here, the cities follow more similar paths than trial parks, financial service centers and office buildings, massive
might initially seem possible. These similarities are not meant to con- new residential developments, giant shopping malls, and spectacu-
tradict or erase the profound differences that have already been lar entertainment facilities in what was formerly open farmland or a
described, but to supplement and expand upon their emphatic and sprinkling of small dormitory suburbs. Neither city nor suburb, at
extreme particularity. least in the older senses of the terms, these reconcentrated poles of
An evolving literature on contemporary patterns and processes of peripheral urban and (typically "high-tech") industrial and com-
urban restructuring has identified a series of intertwined trends that mercial growth have stimulated the new descriptive vocabulary
have become increasingly apparent not only in Los Angeles but in that was explored in chapter 8 inside the "Exopolis" of Orange
most of the world's major urban regions. Each of these trends takes County.
on different intensities and forms in different cities, reflecting both The urbanization of suburbia and the rural margins of the metrop-
the normality of geographically uneven development (no social olis is part of a recentralization of urban activities that is taking place
process is ever expressed uniformly over space and time) and the at the same time as sprawling decentralization continues. This "con-
social and ecological particularities of place. Every city thus has its centrated deconcentration," to use a phrase associated with the
own specific trajectory through this contemporary urban restructur- literature on "growth poles" and regional planning, reflects the
ing. At the same time, however, there is a correlatable interconnect- changing competitive positions of different areas within the broader
edness that nearly every city shares, a common or collective impact metropolitan region (including not only "greenfield" sites but the
of restructuring that is defining an emergent new mode of urbaniza- inner cities as well) within an increasingly globalized economy. Over
tion in the contemporary world. These "new urbanization" trends the past 25 years, the decentralization of manufacturing and related
will be examined in much greater detail in Postmetropolis, a compan- activities from the core of the older industrial capitalist cities has
ion volume to Thirdspace. Here I will introduce them to provide addi- broken out from its national containment that is, from what were
tional insight to the contemporary comparison of Amsterdam and once regional or national "hinterlands." Jobs and factories continue
Los Angeles. to move to suburban sites or non-metropolitan areas within the
It is appropriate to begin with the geographical recomposition of national economy, but much more than ever before, they also
urban form, for this spatial restructuring process deeply affects the migrate to hitherto non-industrialized regions of the old Third
way we look at the city and interpret the basic meaning of urbaniza- World, creating a new geographical dynamic of growth and decline
tion. As with the other trends, there is a certain continuity with the that has been changing not only the long-established international
past, lending credence to the argument that restructuring is more of division of labor but also the spatial division of labor within urban
an acceleration of existing urban trajectories than a complete break regions.
and redirection. The current geographical recomposition, for exam- This geographical recomposition of the modern metropolis is
ple, is in large part a continuation on a larger scale of the decentral- paradigmatically clear in Greater Los Angeles. Within a radius of
ization and polynucleation of the industrial capitalist city that was 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the "Centrum" of the misshapen City
begun in the last half of the 19th century and became periodically of Los Angeles there is a radically restructured regional metropolis
accelerated as more and more population segments and economic of nearly 15 million people with an economic output and population
sectors left the central city. size roughly equivalent to that of the Netherlands. At this scale, a
new mode of comparing Amsterdam and Los Angeles emerges. years.U Each of the largest cities are struggling to maintain their tra-
Following Rem Koolhaas's "centrifugal escape" via the exit roads of ditional centralities, while some favored peripheral sites blossom
the city, we can define another 100-kilometer circle from into new cities of their own and others remain blissfully rural. Many
Amsterdam's Centrum that cuts through Zeeland well south of the more detailed regional comparisons might be made along these
Hook of Holland, touches the Belgian border near Tilburg, curves lines, but I must leave this task to others. For present purposes, I
past Eindhoven (where Philips is headquartered) to touch the wish only to make one final point about the specifically regional scale
German border not far from Nijmegen, and then arcs through the and scope of urban restructuring.
heart of Friesland to the North Sea. Most of the nearly 15 million Too often, analyses of urban restructuring, even when attempting
Dutch live within this densely urbanized region and its scale and to add a significant cultural dimension to their prevailing political
productivity come remarkably close to matching its Southern economy perspective, are presented almost exclusively as if every-
California counterpart.9 thing that is significant occurs only in the spaces of the central city.
The southwest quadrant of this "Greater Amsterdam" coincides The surrounding metropolitan fringe and the sprawling Outer Cities
rather neatly with the Randstad, which can, with a little stretching, are rendered nearly invisible. A sort of "Manhattanitis" sets in, con-
be seen as the Netherlands' largest Exopolis or Outer City. Here, fining interpretation and more general conclusions to the center
however, the defining central core is neither an old downtown nor alone. Much can be learned from focusing on the Centrum and the
the amorphous urban blobs that characterize Orange County. The CITADEL-LA, but to quote Koolhaas again, we must not deny "out
"center of gravity" of the Randstad, to refer back to Allen Scott's of sentimental considerations" our positioning within a larger whole
analytics at the beginning of chapter 8, is a determinedly pre- and thereby "ignore a dimension of an entirely different order."
served rural and agricultural area known as the "Green Heart" of Moving on in our comparative regionalism, another set of
Holland. 10 Around the Green Heart are clustered the largest cities processes can be identified that is intricately related to the recompo-
of the Netherlands: Amsterdam (700,000), Rotterdam (575,000), sition of urban form. They relate to something already alluded to:
The Hague (445,000), and Utrecht (230,000), each experiencing a the increasing globalization of the regional metropolis and what the
selective redistribution of economic activities between old central literature refers to as "world city formation." Amsterdam in its
city, suburban fringe, and more freestanding peripheral urban Golden Age was the prototypical model of an older world city,
centers. Taken as a whole, the Randstad contains the world's generated primarily from the global reach of mercantile capitalism. It
largest port (Los Angeles-Long Beach is now probably second), has subsequently survived various phases of development and
Europe's fourth largest international financial center (after redevelopment to remain among the higher ranks of the new, con-
London, Zurich, and Frankfurt) and fourth largest international temporary world cities, whether combined in the Randstad or not.
airport (Schiphol, surpassed in traffic only by Frankfurt, Paris, and Los Angeles, of course, is representative only of the newer variety.
London). What distinguishes the global cities of today from those of the past
Like the Greater Los Angeles regional metropolis, this Greater is the scope of internationalization, in terms of both capital and labor.
Amsterdam region has been experiencing a complex and geographi- To the control of world trade (the primary basis of mercantile world
cally uneven decentralization and recentralization over the past 25 cities) and international financial investment by the national state
(the foundation of imperial world cities) has been added the transna-
tional financial management of industrial production and producer
services, allowing the contemporary world city to function at a
global scale across all circuits of capital. First, Second, and Third
9
World economies have become increasingly integrated into a global
In chapter 9 of Postmodern Geographies (1989), I took a bird's-eye tour above the cir-
cumference of the 60-mile (100-kilometer) circle around Los Angeles, discovering an system of production, exchange, and consumption that is sustained
amazing coincidence of military installations and federally owned land along the by an information-intensive and "de-territorialized" hierarchy of
route. I have been told by some Dutch geographers that a similar circumferential
geography of military and other government sites can be found 100 kilometers from
Amsterdam. What can be made of such coincidences is an open question. 11
10 See, for example, Marc de Smidt, "In Pursuit of Deconcentration: The Evolution
There is another strange coincidence here, however, in that the Green Heart is a
of the Dutch Urban System from an Organizational Perspective," Geografiska Annaler
primary source of air and water pollution in the Netherlands. The dangerous efflu-
69B (1987), 133-43; and J. H. T. Kramer, "The Airport of Schiphol: Economic and
ents arise not from factories or automobiles but from the superabundance of live-
Spatial Impact," Tzjdschrift voor Econ. en Soc. Geografie 79 (1988), 297-303.
stock.
world cities, topped today by the triumvirate of Tokyo, New York, "majority minority" city, a true cosmopolis of all the world's popula-
and London. tions. With its long tradition of effectively absorbing diverse immi-
Los Angeles and Amsterdam are in the second tier of the restruc- grant groups and its contemporary socialist and socializing
tured world city hierarchy. Before its recent recession, Los Angeles governance system, Amsterdam appears to have been more success-
had been growing much more rapidly, leading some to predict that ful than Los Angeles in integrating its immigrant populations,
it would join the top three by the end of the century. Amsterdam has socially and spatially, into the urban fabric.
been more stable, maintaining its specialized position in Europe on One achievement is certain: the immigrants are better housed in
the basis of its concentration of Japanese and American banks, the Amsterdam, for Los Angeles is currently experiencing one of the
large number of foreign listings on its Stock Exchange (second in worst housing crises in the developed world. As many as 600,000
the world to London), the strong and long-established export- people, predominantly the Latino working poor, now live in seri-
orientation of Dutch companies, and its control over Dutch pension ously overcrowded conditions in dilapidated apartments, backyard
funds, reputed to be 40 percent of Europe's total. 12 The banking and shacks, tiny hotel and motel rooms, and on the streets. While Dutch
financial services sector remains a key actor in Amsterdam's sociologists argue about whether there are any truly homeless peo-
Centrum, feeding its upscale gentrification and drawing strength ple in Amsterdam (one count I heard of found 12 in 1990; there are
from the information-rich clustering of government offices, univer- many more now I am told), Los Angeles is often called the homeless
sity departments, cultural facilities, and specialized activities in capital of America, with as many as 120,000 people living on the
advertising and publishing. streets for at least a few days in the year.
A characteristic feature of increasing internationalization every- Intertwined with the geographical recomposition and
where has been an erosion of local control over the planning process, internationalization of Los Angeles and Amsterdam has been a
as the powerful exogenous demands of world city formation pene- pervasive industrial restructuring that has come to be described as a
trate deeply into local decision-making. Without a significant tradi- trend toward a "postfordist regime of flexible accumulation" in cities
tion of progressive urban planning, Los Angeles has welcomed and regions throughout the world. A complex mix of both deindus-
foreign investment with few constraints. Its downtown "renais- trialization (especially the decline of large-scale, vertically
sance" was built on foreign capital to such an extent that at one point integrated, often assembly-line, mass production industries) and
almost three-quarters of the prime properties in the Central Business reindustrialization (particularly the rise of small and middle-size
District were either foreign-owned or partially controlled by over- firms flexibly specializing in craft-based and/or high technology
seas firms. Before the current recession, the large number of Japanese facilitated production of diverse goods and services), this restructur-
firms in particular routinely contributed to local political campaigns ing of the organization of production and the labor process has also
and fund-raising cultural activities, and have even made loans to the been associated with a repatterning of urbanization and a new
City government to maintain its pension fund program. The interna- dynamic of geographically uneven development.
tionalization of Amsterdam has been more controlled, as one would A quick picture of the changing postfordist industrial geography
expect, but the continued expansion of the city as a global financial of the contemporary (post)metropolis would consist of several
management center is likely to pose a major threat in the very near characteristic spaces: older industrial areas either in severe decline or
future to many of the "magical" qualities of the Centrum. partially revived through adaptation of more flexible production and
The other side of globalization has been the attraction of large management techniques; new science-based industrial districts or
numbers of foreign workers into almost every segment of the local technopolises typically located in metropolitan peripheries; craft-
labor market, but especially at lower wage and skill levels. Los based manufacturing clusters or networks drawing upon both the
Angeles today has perhaps the largest and most culturally diverse formal and informal economies; concentrated and communications-
immigrant labor force of any major world city, an enriching resource rich producer services districts, especially relating to finance and
not only for its corporate entrepreneurs but also for the cultural life banking but also extending into the entertainment, fashion, and cul-
of the urban region. Amsterdam too is fast approaching becoming a ture industries; and some residual areas, where little has changed. It
would be easy to transpose this typology to Greater Los Angeles, for
much of the research behind it has been conducted there. Although
12
H. W. Ter Hart and J. Piersma, "Direct Representation in International Financial
Markets: The Case of Foreign Banks in Amsterdam," Tijdschrift voor Econ. en Soc. postfordist restructuring has not gone nearly as far in Amsterdam,
Geografie 81 (1990), 82-92. the transposition is also quite revealing.
[
Over the past 30 years, the Centrum has been almost entirely guards, walled boundaries, "neighborhood watches," and explicit
leached of its older, heavier industries and 25 percent of its former signs that announce bluntly: "Trespassers will be shot"; while the
office stock has been lost, primarily to an impressive array of old and new poor either crowd into the expanding immigrant
new subcenters to the southeast, south, and west (e.g. Diemen, enclaves of the Third World City or remain trapped in murderous
Amstelveen, and Sloterdijk) and to the growing airport node at landscapes of despair. In this bifurcating urban geography, all the
Schiphol (15 kilometers away), where more than 35,000 people are edges and turf boundaries become potentially violent battlefronts in
now employed. One might argue, as many Dutch observers do, that the continuing struggle for the rights to the city.
this dispersal represents a sign of major decline in the inner city, due This bleak and foreboding picture of contemporary Los Angeles
in part to a shift from a concentric to a more grid-like pattern of can be inverted to describe a brighter side to urban restructuring, but
office and industrial developmentY Just as convincing, however, is a such a flip-flopping description is too simple and would only dilute
restructuring hypothesis that identifies the Centrum as a flexibly the need to recognize and respond politically to the urgent problems
specialized services district organized around international finance facing this still expansive, and still politically unresponsive, urban
and banking, university education, and diverse aspects of the culture region. Here again, the Amsterdam comparison is both informative
and entertainment industries (fashion, especially for the twen- and ambiguously encouraging, for it too has been experiencing a
tysomethings, television and film, advertising and publishing, soft process of social and economic polarization over the past two
drugs and sex, and, of course, tourism, with perhaps the mo~t. spe- decades and yet it has managed to keep the multiplying sources of
cialized attractions in the world for the young and the poor VISitor). friction under relatively successful social control.
Except for the University of Amsterdam, which is being pr~ssured to The Dutch "Job Machine," for example, shows a similar hollowing
reduce its space in the Centrum, each of these other specialty areas out of the labor market, with the greatest growth occurring in the
has started to reconcentrate in recent years in the increasingly infor- low-paid services sector.14 Official unemployment rates have been
mation-intensive inner city. much higher than in the US, but this difference is made meaningless
Another trend needs to be added, however, before one goes too far by the contrasts in welfare systems and methods of calculating the
in tracing the impact of postfordist industrial restructuring. This is rate itself. Overall job growth over the past 30 years, as in almost
the tendency toward increasing social and economic polarization every other OECD member country, has been much lower than in
that seems to accompany the new urbanization processes. Recent the US and, except for the producer (i.e. mainly financial) services
studies have shown that the economic expansion and restructuring sector, there has been a decline in high-wage employment, thus
of Los Angeles has dramatically increased poverty levels and hol- limiting the size of the executive-professional-managerial "bulge."
lowed out the middle ranks of the labor market, squeezing some job Increasing flexibility in the labor market, however, is clearly evident
growth upward, to a growing executive-professional-managerial in the growth of "temporary" and "part-time" employment, with the
"technocracy" (stocked by the largest urban concentrations in the Netherlands having the largest proportion of part-time workers in
world of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians); and downward, the EC and perhaps the highest rate (more than 50 percent) in the
in much larger numbers, to an explosive mix of the "working poor" Western World for womenY
(primarily Latino and other immigrants, and women, givi~g rise_ to Terhorst and van de Yen have examined the particular forms
an increasing "feminization of poverty") and a domestic (white, taken in Amsterdam by the widespread expansion of low-wage,
African-American, and Mexican-American, or Chicano-Chicana) often temporary and/or part-time services jobs.16 Focusing on the
"urban underclass" surviving on public welfare, part-time employ- revival of personal services, they gently provide evidence of social
ment, and the often illegal opportunities provided by the growing
informal, or underground economy. 14
Pieter A. Boot and Maarten Veraart, "The Dutch Labour Market," Tijdschrift voor
This vertical and sectoral polarization of the division of labor is Econ. en Soc. Geografie 78 (1987), 399-403.
15
Boot and Veraart, "The Dutch Labour Market," see note 14. The labor market par-
reflected in an increasing horizontal and spatial polarization in the ticipation rate for women in the Netherlands (34.5 percent in 1985) is relatively low
residential geography of Los Angeles. Old and new wealth is for Europe and much below the figure for the US. Rates of growth in participation
increasingly concentrated in protected communities with armed have been very high during the 1980s, however, as large numbers of women entered
the labor market for the first time, especially in part-time jobs.
16
Pieter Terhorst and Jacques van de Ven, "The Revival of Personal Services in
13
H. J. Brouwer, "The Spatial Restructuring of the Amsterdam Office Market," Cities: An Expression of Polarization?" Netherlands Journal of Housing and
Netherlands Journal of Housing and Environmental Research 4 (1989), 157-74. Environmental Research 1 (1986), 115-38.
and economic polarization in Amsterdam and link this to restructur- movements in the 1960s in cities all over the world. That this success is
ing processes elsewhere in the world. But again, there is a more far from complete and continues to be constrained and challenged by
human face to this polarization in Amsterdam. Personal services have both internal and external forces takes nothing away from its distinc-
flourished with expanding immigration, the entry of larger numbers tive achievement relative to other urban regions.
of women into the part-time and/ or low-wage workforce, the growth The second distinctive quality of Amsterdam becomes clearer
of the informal economy, and the gentrification of the Centrum, but when conjoined with the first and linked to the current literature on
the downside of this process has been ameliorated by, and indeed flexible specialization and urban-industrial restructuring. Although
made to contribute to, the very special nature of the inner city area. it would require much more empirical analysis to demonstrate con-
With its exceptional concentration of young, educated, often stu- vincingly, there appears to be taking shape in the Centrum of
dent households, high official levels of unemployment, still solid Amsterdam a new kind of specialized agglomeration that is as
social security system, and two distinctive waves of gentrification (one reflective of current trends in the world economy as the technopo-
fed by the high-wage financial services sector and the other by multi- lises of California, the craft-based industrial districts of the "Third
job households typically comprised of former students and squatters Italy," or the concentrated nodes of global financial management
still committed to maintaining the distinctive quality of life in the and control in Lower Manhattan and the City of London. It is pri-
Centrum), an unusual synergy has developed around the personal marily a services agglomeration, although small-scale, technologi-
services sector and between various age and income groups. As cally advanced, design and information intensive industries remain
Terhorst and van de Ven point out, income polarization has been asso- a significant part of the "complex." Producer services, especially in
ciated with a growing complementarity between the higher and lower banking and finance, are also very important, for the Centrum
income groups with respect to the flexible use of time and space, espe- remains the focus for a major world city of global capitalism. The
cially in the specialized provision of such personal services as domes- most intense and decidedly flexible specialization, however, is
tic help and babysitting, late-night shopping, entertainment and locally focused, extraordinarily innovative, and more advanced in
catering, household maintenance and repair, educational courses and Amsterdam than perhaps anywhere else in the developed world. A
therapies, fitness centers, bodycare activities, etc. large part of its innovativeness lies in the simultaneous preservation
Such activities in Amsterdam take place primarily in the under- and modernization of a unique urban heritage and built environ-
ground economy and are not captured very well in official statistics. ment on a lively human scale - no small achievement in this age of
They are also not likely to be a major factor in stimulating rapid the megacity. That it has not yet become a Disneyfied theme park for
recovery from economic stagnation and crisis. But they none the less tourists is another achievement rooted both in the power of geohis-
provide a legitimate and socially valuable "survival strategy" for the torical traditions of participatory democracy and socially responsible
poor and unemployed that has worked effectively to constrain the planning, and in the contemporary influence of several generations
extreme effects of social polarization that one finds in Los Angeles or of vigorous twentysomething activism. This has produced a services
New York City. Moreover, it is a strategy that draws from the pecu- complex of remarkable diversity and interpersonal sensitivity, in
liar urban genius of Amsterdam, its long tradition of grass roots which basic needs take precedence over market demands to a degree
communalism, its sensitive adaptation to locality, its continuing difficult to find almost anywhere else. I have no idea what to call this
commitment to libertarian and participatory social and spatial specialized space, but however it might be categorized it is worthy
democracy, and its unusual contemporary attention to the needs of of much greater attention, analysis, and appreciation.
the twentysomething generation. There is still another restructuring trend that must be mentioned,
There is, of course, a dark side as well to this revival of personal ser- having to do with postmodernization and the recomposing of the cul-
vices in Amsterdam's Centrum and the Dutch analysts are always tural logic and the urban imaginary in the socially polarized, post-
careful to point it out. But here again, the comparative perspective fordist, exopolitan, and increasingly carceral world city. As noted in
produces a different picture. Viewed comparatively, the restructuring earlier chapters, a neo-conservative form of postmodernism, in which
of the Centrum over the past 25 years has produced two reconfigura- "image" replaces reality and simulated and "spin-doctored" repre-
tions of the urban political economy that distinguish Amsterdam from sentations assume increasing political and economic power, has been
other major urban regions. The first arises from what may be the most significantly reshaping popular ideologies and everyday life all over
successful urban implementation of the anarchist, environmentalist, the world and is fast becoming the keystone for a new mode of social
and situationist principles that mobilized the student and other social regulation designed to sustain the development of (and control the
resistance to) the new postfordist and globalized urban economies. introduction to space and politics in the city, Lefebvre presents
After experiencing Amsterdam, where resistance to the imposition of another of his dialectics of triplicity, one that recomposes the
this neo-conservative cultural and ideological restructuring seems micro-macro relationship around a critical third term: what Lefebvre
exceptionally strong (although I hear it is less so in The Hague), it is creatively described as social space and I have redescribed, via the tri-
tempting just to add another polar opposition to the comparison with alectics of spatiality, as Thirdspace.
Los Angeles, where this process is probably more advanced than As Lefebvre always insisted, his theorization of social space
almost anywhere else on earth. But I will leave the issue open for fur- encompassed "on the one hand the critical analysis of urban reality
ther research and reflection, and conclude this stroll Off Spuistraat and on the other that of everyday life," with the former defining the
with the strangely familiar suggestion that perhaps the entire text of urban condition writ large as a concrete abstraction of the macrospa-
this chapter - and all those before it - revolves around the political tiality of social life and the latter a similarly concrete abstraction for
challenges implied in this inconclusive last paragraph. the socialized microspatiality of the urban. Lefebvre saw both every-
day life and urban reality as global concepts and knowledges that
are "indissolubly linked, at one and the same time products and pro-
Postscript 1: On the Views from Above and Below ductiQn." They "occupy a social space generated through them," to
which he added "and inversely" to emphasize that both are also
The journeys On and Off Spuistraat as well as the spiralling tours of shaped by this (socially produced) social space, giving his theoriza-
the Citadel-LA and the Exopolis of Orange County raise interesting tion its characteristic trialectical turn (1996: 185).
questions about the appropriate scale of critical urban analysis and Lefebvre also makes it abundantly clear that this trialectic of criti-
interpretation. For example, do we learn more about Amsterdam or cal urban analysis (everyday life-urban reality-social space) is all-
Los Angeles or any other real-and-imagined cityspace by engaging encompassing and not reducible to a sociology or a history or a
in microgeographies of everyday life and pursuing the local view spatial science. "The analysis is concerned with the whole of practico-
from the city streets; or by seeing the city as a whole, conceptualiz- social activities [my emphasis] as they are entangled in a complex
ing the urban condition on a more comprehensive regional or space, urban and everyday .... The global synthesis is realized
macrospatial scale? By now, I hope the answer to this question is through this actual space, its critique and its knowledge." Also clear
clear. Understanding the city must involve both views, the micro is Lefebvre's assertive choice of (social) space as his transdisciplinary
and the macro, with neither inherently privileged, but only with the focal point, an opening window through which one can thread
accompanying recognition that no city - indeed, no lived space - is through all the complexities of the modern (and postmodern) world.
ever completely knowable no matter what perspective we take, just His urban trialectic provides a way of thinking that explicitly spatial-
as no one's life is ever completely knowable no matter how artful or izes not just the urban per se, but the "whole of practico-social activi-
rigorous the biographer. The appropriate response to the micro vs. ties" that he envelops under his broadened concept of the urban
macro choice is thus an assertive and creative rejection of the condition, at every scale from the most local to the most global. The
either/or for the more open-ended both/and also .... urban thus becomes for Lefebvre something very much like what I
As we approach the conclusion of Thirdspace, it is useful to re- have been describing as Thirdspace: a lived space of radical open-
emphasize this point through another look back to the writings of ness and unlimited scope, where all histories and geographies, all
Henri Lefebvre, for his view of the micro-macro relationship contin- times and places, are immanently presented and represented, a
ues to be pertinent and challenging. I am assisted in this retrospec- strategic space of power and domination, empowerment and resis-
tive glance by the recent translation of Lefebvre's brief introduction tance.
to Espace et politique (1972), a collection of essays that served both as For those who are still uncomfortable with such encompassing
a companion volume to Le Droit a la ville (originaly published in open-ended-ness, I remind you again of how easy it has been to
1968) and as a prelude to La Production de l'espace (1974). 17 In this attach a similarly infinite scope to the historical-cum-sociological
imagination, to see everything that exists in the present or ever
17
See Writings an Cities/Henri Lefebvre, selected, translated and introduced by existed in the past as potentially knowable, at least in large part,
Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell through its embracing historicality and sociality. We are accustomed
Publishers, 1996: 185-202. Kofman and Lebas giv~ the date for Espace et politique as
to grounding political praxis, the efforts to change the world for the
1973, but my copy of the book published by Editions Anthropos, Le Droit a Ia
ville/Espace et politique, is dated 1972. better, in the contexts of making history and transforming society.
That spatiality and the spatial imagination, and how we engage in expressed both in a disdain for more holistic readings of the urban
critical urban analysis and spatial praxis, are similarly scoped is the condition and a tacit, if not exclusive, preference for the "view from
most important conclusion to be gained from Thirdspace and its jour- below," the intimate ethnography-geography of everyday life exem-
neys. plified best in the individual voice of the intensely localized flrineur.
In Espace et politique, Lefebvre applied his critique of the polariza- This is not quite the old division Lefebvre referred to between the
tions that have developed around micro vs. macrospatial analysis architect and the planner, but it is having a similar fragmenting and
specifically to the citybuilding professions, with the architect fixed divisive effect. For many cultural critics of urbanism, macro-viewing
primarily at the micro scale and the planner at the macro. He weaves the city has become tightly associated with a modernist and mas-
into this critique a trenchant attack on the privileged powers of visu- culinist hegemony of the visual, an authoritarian viewpoint that
alization and the urge to achieve legibility (lisibiliti, or readability) allegedly eradicates difference and heterogeneity, silences subaltern
that are rampant in the citybuilding professions. voices, obscures the immediacy and sensuality of urban life, and
works only to reproduce its own academic and intellectual hege-
Legibility [which Lefebvre links to a process of coding-decod- mony.
ing] passes for a great quality, which is true, but one forgets One of the most influential sources for this privileging of the
that all quality has its counterpart and its faults. Whatever the "view from below" against any attempt to conceptualize the city-as-
coding, legibility is bought at a very high price: the loss of part a-whole comes from the work of Michel de Certeau, especially from
of the message, of information or content. This loss is inherent certain passages in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). In his now
in the movement which rescues from the chaos of tangible facts, well-known contemplation of New York City from atop the World
a meaning, a single one. The emergence of this meaning breaks Trade Center, de Certeau brilliantly excoriated the view from above
the network, often very fine and richly disorderly from which as an arrogant voyeurism that homogenizes urban life under the
the elaboration began. It completes its erasure by making another "desire for legibility," the quest for an all-comprehending "signify-
thing. The snare of legibility is therefore everywhere.... ing vision." Like Lefebvre's tracing of the origins of "abstract space,"
(1996: 192) de Certeau looks back to the early historical development of visual
perspective as an archetypal view from above. "The desire to see the
Lefebvre extends his critique of legibility in ways that would be city," he writes, "preceded the means of satisfying it. Medieval or
echoed in more recent writings on everyday life in the city. Renaissance painters represented the city as seen in a perspective
that no eye had yet enjoyed. This fiction already made the medieval
Visual legibility is even more treacherous and better ensnared spectator into a celestial eye." He goes on to emplant this celestial
(more precisely, ensnaring) than graphic legibilitiy, that is, writ- eye/ I in a more contemporary site/ sight.
ing. Every legibility stems from a paucity: from redundance.
The fullness of text and space never go together with legibility. [The view from the World Trade Center] continues to construct
No poetry or art obeys this simple criterion. At best legibility is the fiction that creates readers, makes the complexity of the city
blank, the poorest of texts! (1996: 193) readable, and immobilizes its opaque mobility in a transparent
text. ... To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is
As an alternative to these ensnarements, Lefebvre argued for the to be lifted out of the city's grasp. One's body is no longer
need to "determine the junction, the articulation of these two levels, clasped by the streets ... nor is it possessed, whether as player
of the micro and the macro, the near and far order, neighboring and or played, by the rumble of so many differences .... The city's
communication," for it is at this scale "that nowadays thought can agitation is momentarily arrested by vision. The gigantic mass
intervene and intervention be situated" (1996: 194). is immobilized before the eyes. It is transformed into a texturo-
I resurrect Lefebvre's calls for a trialectical articulation of the micro logy in which extremes coincide .... The ordinary practitioners
and the macro in a critical understanding of the fullness of social of the city live "down below," below the thresholds at which
space because there has begun to develop in the burgeoning new visibility begins .... These practitioners make use of spaces that
field of contemporary critical urban studies, especially among those cannot be seen ... elude visibility.
who take an explicitly postmodern position, a subtle, and at times not His elevation [for this is inherently a male gaze] transfigures
so subtle, privileging of the micro viewpoint. This privileging is him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the
bewitching world by which one was "possessed" into a text that

Postscript II: A Preview of Postmetropolis
lies before one's eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye,
looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic Thirdspace was originally intended to continue on with further jour-
drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a neys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places that would
viewpoint and nothing more. not only extend the discussions of the trialectics of everyday
Is the immense texturology spread out before one's eyes any- life-urban reality-social space but also apply more directly the char-
thing more than a representation, an optical artifact? It is the acteristic approaches of Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace
analogue of the facsimile produced, through a projection that is epistemologies and interpretive perspectives. Three additional chap-
a way of keeping aloof, by the space planner urbanist, city plan- ters were planned, comprising Part III: Exploring the Postmetropolis,
ner or cartographer. The panorama-city is a "theoretical" (that my term for the new concatenations of everyday life and urban real-
is, visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of ity that have been developing in the wake of thirty years of pro-
possibility is an oblivion and a misunderstanding of practices. 18 found urban restructuring and postmodernization.
The first of these chapters, on the "Timelines and Contexts of
In these passages, de Certeau recasts Lefebvre's critique of everyday Urban Restructuring," was to exemplify the richness of a Firstspace
life (from which he occasionally draws insight) into an exaltation of (macro)perspective in analyzing the empirical and geohistorical
the view from below. But he does so at the expense of a more "ele- background to the contemporary postmodernization of Los Angeles,
vated" perspective on urban reality and the fullness of Lefebvre's building upon the brief glimpses of the geohistory of Paris/El
interpretations of social space. He may not have intended to so Pueblo contained in chapter 7. The second, "Representations of Los
polarize the micro-macro relation, but nevertheless De Certeau's Angeles," was aimed at exploring the prevailing discourses that
exaltations have deeply infiltrated the contemporary critical cultural have been locally developed to make practical and theoretical sense
discourse on cities, especially among some feminist urban critics of these urban restructuring processes, an evocation of the conceived
who see a recalcitrant and masculinist voyeurism in nearly all Secondspaces of critical urban theory and an elaboration of the dis-
macro-scale "big pictures" of urban life, preferring instead to focus cussion of urban restructuring introduced earlier in the Off
exclusively the intimacies of the local, the body, the street, the every- Spuistraat comparisons of Los Angeles and Amsterdam. The con-
day. These are powerful and revealing positionings, but at the same cluding chapter focused on the events of 1992 inside and outside Los
time they close off too much, unnecessarily reducing the scope and Angeles and, infused primarily with a Thirdspace perspective,
power of the critical spatial imagination. would selectively encompass the other two spheres of the spatial
We must realize that both the views from above and from below imagination (Firstspace and Secondspace) in an effort to open up a
can be restrictive and revealing, deceptive and determinitive, indul- distinctive new interpretive realm of its own. As Part III expanded
gent and insightful, necessary but wholly insufficient. Each has i~s almost to the length of the preceding nine chapters of Thirdspace, it
voyeurs and arrogant readers, its illusions of transparency and legi- was decided to publish it as the core of a companion volume,
bility. To set them up in antagonistic opposition only constrains criti- Postmetropolis, to appear in early 1997. A brief preview of
cal interpretation and severely limits the possibilities for strategic Postmetropolis thus serves both to close Thirdspace and open it up
intervention and radical spatial praxis. Such binarizations as micro again to further elaboration and reinterpretation.
vs. macro, the view from above vs. the view from below, as Lefebvre At the core of Postmetropolis is an argument that has only been
insisted, are never enough. Il y a toujours l' Autre. There is always an- hinted at in Thirdspace. It explores the possibility that the contempo-
Otherview. rary postmetropolis, exemplified primarily in Los Angeles, has
become the scene of a dramatic and still unfolding transition from
18
the crisis-generated restructuring that began some time in the late
The quoted passages are from Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life,
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984: 91-3. My discussion
1960s-early 1970s, to a restructuring-generated crisis, a crisis rooted in
of de Certeau is informed significantly by an unpublished paper by Lawrence Barth, the new urbanization processes that have been reshaping the spatial-
"Immemorial Visibilities: Seeing the City's Difference," draft copy, March 1995. ity of urban life over the past thirty years. Two explosive moments
Larry also visited me on Spuistraat in Amsterdam during my stay in 1990 and
shared his impressions over drinks at a cafe on the Spui. I would also like to thank
of urban unrest punctuate this argument and provide both a local
Olivier Kramsch for his probings into the work of de Certeau and for his more gen- and global window through which to explore some of the specific
eral research assistance for this book. strengths and weaknesses of the trialectics of spatiality defined in
316 Inside and Outside los Angeles The Stimulus of a little Confusion 317
Thirdspace. The first springs from the Watts Riots of 1965, one of the It's exactly the moment
earliest of the urban uprisings that would spread to dozens of cities when the L.A. uprisings could be something
around the world in the 1960s. The second revolves around the riots else
and insurrection that occurred in Los Angeles in late May-early June than it was seen to be,
1992, after the court decision to acquit the policemen who captured or maybe something
and beat Rodney King. other than it was seen to be.
There are many ways in which the events of 1992 can be seen as a I think when we look at it in twilight
continuation of the same forces and conditions that led to the Watts we learn
Riots of 1965. I trace these continuities, especially with respect to the to ...
long history of racism and racist cultural politics in Los Angeles. But we learn three things:
I also explore and emphasize the significant differences between one, we learn that the hard outlines of what we see in daylight
these two events, the one symbolic of the breakdown of the modern that make it easy for us to order
metropolis after two decades of post-war boom and the other signi- daylight
fying the beginnings of a breakdown of the postmodern metropolis disappear.
after a long period of intensive and extensive restructuring. A simi- So we begin to see its boundaries in a much more faded way.
lar contrast is explored in the postmodern bankruptcy of Orange That fuzziness of twilight
County and the earlier, more characteristically modernist, fiscal allows us to see the intersections
crises that affected New York and many other cities beginning in the of the event with a number of other things that daylight
1960s. obscures for
While the Second Los Angeles Uprising hovers in the background us,
of all the chapters in Thirdspace, it rises to the forefront of Postmetro- to use a paradox.
polis, guiding its exploratory journeys into the perceived, conceived, We have to interpret more in
and lived spaces of Los Angeles. Here too we can be inspired by the twilight,
stimulus of a little confusion to rethink the meaning of what has we have to make ourselves
happened after the so-called Rodney King trial. I thus conclude part of the act,
Thirdspace and begin Postmetropolis with two prose poems that we have to interpret,
respond to the need for a global and local reinterpretation of the we have to project more.
events of Los Angeles: 1992. The first is from Homi Bhabha. 19 The But also the thing itself
second is from my original conclusion to the extended manuscript in twilight
for Thirdspace. challenges us
to
This twilight moment be aware
is an in-between moment. of how we are projecting onto the event itself.
It's the moment of dusk. We are part of
It's the moment of ambivalence producing the event,
and ambiguity whereas, to use the daylight
The inclarity, metaphor,
the enigma, there we somehow think
the ambivalences, the event and its clarity
in what happened in the L.A. as it is presented to us,
uprisings and we have to just react to it.
are precisely what we want to get hold of. Not that we're participating in its clarity:
19
Homi K. Bhabha, "Twilight #1," composed from a telephone conversation with it's more interpretive,
documentary theatre artist Anna Qeveare Smith, in Smith, Twilight - Los Angeles, it's more creative.
1992, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1994: 232-4. * * *
To attempt a conclusion to a "re-telling,

using lain Chambers words/ 0 re-citing
LA 1992 was indeed and re-siting
a "highly charged punctuation of the cosmopolitan script." of what passes for historical and cultural knowledge,"
Like so many other events that have marked to a "re-calling
the geohistory of the world and re-membering
since 1989 of earlier fragments and traces that flare up and flash
(the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War's disappearance, in our present moment of danger,"
the Gulf War, Tienanmen Square, the Salmon Rushdie affair, to "splinters of light that illuminate our journey
the Columbian quincentenary, the rise of the NICs, [to real-and-imagined places]
the rebalkanization of southeastern Europe, while simultaneously casting questioning shadows along the
the fragmented unification of a Europe of the regions, path."
and, most recently,
the downfall of Orange County For bell hooks and so many
and the terrorism of Oklahoma City), Others
the Second Los Angeles Uprising it is an unconventional mode of rethinking race
is igniting and representation,
a "new mode of thinking" the relations between the colonizer
that is "neither fixed and the colonized,
nor stable," and the alternative images that can work to subvert
a mode of thinking instigated the status quo
by "recent apertures in critical thought" and change our world views
and tensely pressured by and lifeworlds
"the return of the repressed, at the same time
the subordinate and in the same
and the forgotten lived spaces.
in 'Third World' musics, It is also about real-and-imagined
literatures, bodies
poverties and populations cities
as they come to occupy the texts
economies, what Barbara Hooper calls the "order in place"
cities, about consciously spatial praxis
institutions, that aims at disordering
media deconstructing
and leisure time reconstituting
of the First World." but not destroying or eliminating difference and reason
To quote Chambers yet again, identity and enlightenment
this new mode of (re)thinking the postmetropolis philosophy and mastery
is "open to the prospect of a continual return to events, It is about border work/la frontera
to their re-elaboration a new cultural politics
and revision," choosing the margin as a space
of radical openness
and hybridity
20
The quoted material is from lain Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity, London: about finding meeting places
Routledge, 1994: 3. where new and radical happenings
can occur
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Name Index 327
Duncan, J., 150 Hebdige, D., 164, 165, 181

Hegel, G., 9, 10, 37, 44, 61, 71, 167, 173
Eco, U., 177,249-51,274 Heidegger, M., 71, 73, 142, 173, 222
Eisenman, P., 193,202 Henry, B., 252-3
Epstein, D., xi, 229-34 Herodotus, 167
Eratosthenes, 167 Hess, R., 28n, 37n
Erickson, A., 212, 216, 257 Hobsbawm, E., 28n
hooks, bell, 12-13,14,83-105, 110, 118,
Name Index Fanon, F., 96, 139, 142n 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 134,
136,137,140,141,153-4,162,172,
Fante, J., 212
FitzSimmons, M., xi, 121n 236,319
Flax, J., 92, 118-19 Hooper, B., xii, 13, 31n, 86n, 108n,
Flynn, C., 190n 113-15, 117, 319
Foucault, M., 5, 11, 12,15-16,32, 35n, Hughes, H. S., 73n
45n,69n,87,88,90,92,96,99n,
114,115,145-63,166-7,169-71, Isozaki, A., 207, 216
172, 173n,175-6,177, 187,191,194,
196,199,206,210,228,234-5,236, James, H., 20,280
241 Jameson, F., 28, 105, 151, 166, 171,
Frank,J., Sin 175-6,196-204
Fraser, N., 116 Jansen, A. C. M., 291-2
Freire, P., 101
Abu-Lughod, J., xii, 179 Brokaw, T., 252 Freud, S., 147,243 Kant, E., 71, 79, 167, 168
Alarcon, N., 129 Buck-Morss, S., 165n Friedberg, A., 117 Katz, C., 66n, 121n
Anderson, P., 138 Butler, J., 92, 95-6 Frye, M., 123 Kaylor, J., 195n
Anzaldua, G., 14, 123, 127-9, 134, 141, Fuss, D., 9ln, 92, 118, 123 Keiler, D., 131
172 Caillois, R., 198n Keith, M., 66n, 86n
Appadurai, A., 92 Castells, M., 42, 43n Geertz, C., 150 Kenney, M., xi, 213
Chambers, 1., 186, 318-19 Gehry,F., 18,207,211,215-18,257 King, S., 188
Bachelard, G., 156 Chandler, R., 212, 215, 224 Geldin, S., 216 Kofman, E., 28n, 73n, 310n
Barar, A., 195n Christopherson, 5., 12ln Gibson, W., 150 Konvitz, J., 187
Barth, L., xi, 314n Cisneros, S., 129 Giddens, A., 71, 171 Koolhas, R., 296,300,302,303
Baudelaire, C., 117, 173 Cocks,J.,88n Gilroy, P ., 141 Koppel, T., 190
Baudrillard, J., 5, 19, 38n, 42, 145, 150, Cohn-Bendit, D., 42 Golding, 5., 112-13 Kracauer, S., 71, 96, 173
187,188,193,196,202,239-44, Collins, P. H., 123 G6mez-Pefia, G., 14, 131-4, 141 Kramsch, 0., xi, 314n
253-4,256,262-3,274,277,279 Colomina, B., 112n Gramsci, A., 41 Krause, R., 164, 170, 181
Bauman, Z., 240-1 Combes, F., 27 Graves, D., 188
Benjamin, W., 71, 96, 117, 140, 165, Gregory, D., 15, 37n, 66n, 73n, 137-8, Lacan, J., 139, 175, 202
173-4, 198n, 202 Davis, M., 199-201, 202, 203, 209, 224, 142n,l49-53,171,172, 173,200n, Laclau, E., 93
Berelowitz, J., 216n 229 20ln,202-3 Latour, P., 27
Berger, J., 165-6, 171, 181, 199 Dear, M., 59, 202 Grosz, E., 112 Lebas, E., 28n, 73n, 310n
Bergson, H., 169 de Beau voir, S., 96 Guattari, F., 114, 202 Lefebvre, H., 6-12, 15, 17, 20,25-82,84,
Bhabha, H., 14, 92, 139-44, 162, 172, Debord, G., 49-50 Guterman, N., 36 86,87,88,92,96,99,104-5,106-7,
316-17 de Bretteville, S. L., 188 114,118,136,137,146-8,154,156,
Bondi, L., 121 De Certeau, M., 20, 313-14 Hadjimichalis, C., xi, 206n 157,162-3,164-5,166, 169n,l70,
Borden, 1., 194n de Ia Pefia, T., 129 Hall, S., 141 172,173n,174,179-83,196, 198n,
Borges, J. L., 8, 54-7, 58, 59, 131, 132, de Lauretis, T., 111-12, 123 Halley, P., 194 202,203,204,236,241,293,310-12
158n, 242 Deleuze, G., 114, 202 Hansberry, L., 100-1 Lehan, R., 187
Borofsky, J., ix, 209, 230-2 de Pizan, C., 107-8, 109 Haraway, D., 92, 116, 123, 150, 202 Leith, J., 187
Bradley, T., 190 Derrida, J., 5, 134, 175, 177, 193 Harlow, B., 136-7, 179 Lo, C. Y. H., 277n
Brady, M.P., xi, 129n Deutsche, R., 92, 106, 115, 122n, 20ln Harvey, D., 43n, 71, 121n, 122n, 146 Loukaitou-Sideris, A., 212-14
Braude!, F., 138, 172, 177 Dreyfus, H., 88n Hay, H., 212-14 Lowe, D., 152
Breton, A., 37 Dubrow, G., 190n Hayden, D., 108-9, 187, 188-92 Lugones, M., 14, 129-31
328 Name Index
Lynch, K., 192, 204 Rose, G., 13, 106, 111-12, 122-5,172
Lyotard, J.-F., 5 Ross, K., 186
Rutherford, J., 98n
McDowell, L., 121 Rikala, T., 194n
Mamadouh, V., 295n
Manaquis, R., 193, 196n Saar, B., 188
Mandel, E., 200 Said,E.,14,16,92,136-9, 140,141,154,
Marston, S., 121n
Marx, K., 9, 10, 44, 48, 61, 147,243
165,172,179
Sansbury, G., xii, 212-14
Subject Index
Mason, B., 188-93, 222 Sartre, J.P., 71, 73,147, 173, 256n
Massey, D., 120n, 121 Schama, S., 280, 281,283, 286
Merrifield, A., 59n Scott, A., 245-7, 251, 302
Minh-Ha, T., 92, 106, 117-18, 123 Scott, J., 95-6
Mohanty, C., 92, 123 Serres, M., 26
Moraga, C., 127n Shields, R., 37n
Morris, M., 92, 115, 122n Simme!, G., 173
Mouffe, C., 93 Smith, A D., 316n
Mumford, L., 181 Smith, N., 66n, 146
Mungen, D., 190n Soja, E., 54, 76n, 137, 152, 187n, 188,
199, 20ln, 202
Nietzsche, F., 9, 59n, 147,173,241 Sorkin, M., 202
Neutra, R., 208 Spain, D., 99n, 112n African-American cultural criticism, binary oppositions, binarism, 5, 7,
Nicholson, L.J., 116n Spivak, G. C., 14, 16, 92, 134-6, 140, 12-13,83-5,96-105,153-4 30-1,36,48,60-2,65,84,86,90,91,
Nicholson-Smith, D., 49n 141,151-2,154,165,172 African-Americans in Los Angeles, 18, 94, 96, 107, 111, 116, 137
Nieuwenhuis, C., 50 188-91,219,228 biography, 2, 7, 29, 46, 168, 212, 251
Nixon, R. M., 252-4 Terhorst, P., 285n, 307-8 "The Aleph" (Borges), 8-9, 65, 68, 81, body,20,35-6,51-2,87,99,112-15,
Noguchi, I., 265 Timmons, S., 212-14 131, 132, 158n, 160, 196; 124,128,198,202,240,314,319
Touraine, A., 42 envisioning Thirdspace as, 54-60, boiler rooms, 275-7
Olalquiaga, C., 27, 92, 112n, 172, 198, Trebitsch, M., 37-8 139,158 Bonaventure Hotel, 18, 151, 195-204,
202-3,237,240 Tschoumi, B., 193 alienation, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 88 205,214
Otterness, T., ix, 209, 230-4 allegory,26-7,29,56 borders, borderlands, border work, 14,
van de Ven, J., 285n, 307-8 Amsterdam, 17,20,28n,50,280-310, 111,114,117,127-34,272,319
Panofsky, I., 147 Vattimo, G., 150 315; squatter movement in, both/and also logic, 5, 7, 11, 32, 60, 65,
Parmar, P., 97-8,123 286-96,298,299 310
Philo, C., 159n Wallerstein, I., 138 Anaheim, 245, 247 Bronx, the, 13
Pile, S., 66n, 86n, 141n Watts, M., 179 anti-postmodernism, 4, 94, 122 Buena Park, 249-50
Plant, S., 49n Weiner, D., 187 approximation(s), 9, 29, 36-47, 54, 57, Buenos Aires, 54-5
Platt, M. B., 125 Weisman, L. K., 112 61,66 Bunker Hill, 18, 198, 200, 205, 211,
Poster, M., 150 West, C., 83-6,92,94, 110, 126, 141, April-May 1992 (Los Angeles riots), 212-18,257
Preziosi, D., 201-2, 203 153-4, 178 18, 19, 22, 115, 190, 209, 254, bureaucratic society of controlled
Price-Chalita, P., 122 White, H., 16-17, 170,173-83 315-20 consumption, 8, 35, 40
Probyn, E., 123 Whiteson, L., 254-8 architecture/Architecture, 10, 12, 47,
Proust, M., 81 Wilson, E., 115 48,50,76, 105,109,147,148,149, Camp Pendleton, 271, 273-4
Wolen, R., 173 162,163,179,181,182,234,312 carceral city, 21, 228-36, 278, 309
Rabinow, P., 88n, 143-9,234-5 Wolf, E., 138 Center for Metropolitan Research
Raymond, H., 42 Woolf, V., 123 Bastaventure, 195-7 (Amsterdam), 280n, 285
Reclus, E., 186, 219 Wright, G., 234-5 Bastille, 187, 193-7, 211,219, 229 centers, center-periphery relation, 7,
Regulier-Lefebvre, C., 27, 28, 38n Beguinhof, 281-2 17, 29-31, 33, 35, 44, 53, 84, 87, 88,
Rich, A., 36, 123 Young, I.M., 92,116, 123 Berlin Wall, 23, 318 90,137,216,247,265,297,298
Ricoeur, P., 175, 181 Young,R., 142n Beau bourg (Pompidou Center), 27, Chicana and Chicano cultural
Ricos, A., viii, xi, 206n; all illustrations, 188 criticism, 14; Chicanisma/
including cover Zukin, S., 202 Biddy Mason's Place, 188-91, 222 Chicanismo, 129-34
330 Subject Index Subject Index 331
citadel, Citadel-LA, 18, 20, 186-236, Walt Disney Concert Hall, 207, Geographical Imaginations (Gregory), 15, identity, 39, 52, 68, 87, 88, 111, 143,203,
247,303,310 211,214-17, 257; Walt Disney 37n,66n,73n, 137-8,142n,149-52, 240,256n,279
citizenship, 35,205 World, 160, 215 173,200n,201n,202-4 illusions, see double illusion
city, 1, 81, 108-10, 112, 169, 181, 186, disordering, 7, 61, 84,92-6, 113-14, Geographical Information Systems imaginative geographies, 136-9
202,204,205,235-6,238,240, 118,158n,163,170,244,319 (GIS), 76 Irvine, California, 246, 258-9, 261;
310-14, 319; right(s) to the city, 8, displacement, 117-18, 135 geographical or spatial imagination, Irvine Company, 247, 255, 258-9,
35,42,225,293,307,310 double illusion, 62-6,69,73,141, 157; 1-3, 7, 8, 10-11, 15, 16, 30, 120, 124, 261; Irvine Ranch, 254-5, 262-3,
cityspace, 13,108-10, 113, 116,283,310 illusion of transparency, 63-4, 157; 134,150,163,168,171,312,314 277
class, 5, 12, 77, 79, 84-5, 88-9, 106, 109, realistic illusion, 64, 157 geography /Geography, 1, 3, 6, 10,
111, 115, 236, 320 11-12,26,47,63,73n,75-7,79-80, Kabouter (Orange Free State)
COBRA movement, 50, 293 either/or logic, 5, 7, 21, 32, 60, 94,310 105, 106, 109, 119-25, 137, 146, 148, movemen~50,294-5
cognitive mapping, 79-80,99, 106, 199, El Pueblo, 18, 211, 218-28, 229, 299, 315 149-50,154,162,163,167-71,177, King, Rodney, 113-15, 209, 234, 316;
203,204,251 El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, 178,182,186,192,199,203,240, Rodney King riots, see April-May
colony, colonialism, 3, 12, 83, 98, 152, 270-1,274 280 1992
319 epistemology, 3-4, 10, 44, 46, 61, 65, 71, geohistory, 18, 72, 137, 154, 170, 171, Knotts Berry Farm, 250-1
community, 20, 103, 116 73,90,124,236,242-4,315;of 172,182,186,285,292,315,318;of knowledge (connaissance), 44-5,47,48,
Community Redevelopment Agency Firstspace, 74-8; of Secondspace, otherness, 15, 16, 145--63 56-7,146,148,311
(CRA), 190,214-15 78-81; of Thirdspace, 81-2 globalization, 1, 17, 29, 30, 50, 303 knowledge formation, 3-4,57, 168,234,
conceived space, 10, 30, 35, 36, 78-81, erotic subjectivities, 20, 107, 112-13 Graduate School of Architecture and 235
157; see also Secondspace and essentialism, 13, 37, 90, 91, 94, 140, 244 Urban Planning-UCLA, xi, 28, 186
representations of space Eurocentrism, 16, 89n, 165 Lacq, 49
consciousness, mystification of, 36-8, everyday life; 7, 19, 20, 36-44, 66, 99, Hagetmau, 27 landscape, 1, 48, 246
40, 41, 241, 279 108,116,117,285,309,310,311, hermeneutics, 77, 78, 175 Leisure World, 269-70
Costa Mesa, 259, 263-5 313-14, 315; in Orange County, heterotopia(&), 15, 16, 69n, 149, 151, locality, 1, 17,
crisis, 11, 19, 22-3,315-16 237-79 157-63,194,196,228 liberal modernism, 4, 88
critical thirding, see thirding-as- existentialism, 38, 73, 78 heterotopology, 11, 15, 18, 35n, 69n, lifeworlds, 3, 16, 70, 319
Othering exopolis/Exopolis, 17, 19-20, 237-79, 145-63,170,241,320;ofthe literary criticism, 6, 57, 174
critical urban studies, 20, 236,310-13, 301,302,309,310 Citadel-LA, 186-236 lived space(s), 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 29, 30,
315 hierarchical ordering, 17, 35,87 34,35,40,65,67-9,74-82,99, 110,
CritiqueofEveryday life (Lefebvre), 27, feminism, 3, 13, 80, 85, 89n, 92,95-6, historical imagination, 2-3,15-16, 111, 114, 130, 131, 156, 196, 204,
37-40,50 100,106,136,142,149,163,170, 46-7,77,167,168,176,311 251,279,283,310,311,319
Crystal Cathedral, 247-9 204, 302, 314; postmodern spatial historical materialism, 29, 36, 45, 64, Los Angeles, 13, 14, 17-23,54, 107, 113,
cultural geography, 40n, 77, 150 feminism, 13-14,38,91, 110-19, 108,167,169,176,182,200,204 114-15, 117n, 127, 153, 186-236,
cultural politics, 12-13, 14,38-9,52, 122, 127-32; feminist geography, historicality /Historicality, 2-3, 6, 10, 239,245,257,259,274,315,316-17;
83-96,108,117,125,127,279,316, 13,119-25 16, 18, 44--{), 47, 71, 77, 80, 108, 139, comparisons with Amsterdam,
319 Firstspace, 6, 10, 21, 22, 66, 74-8, 110, 149, 155, 165, 170, 171, 173n, 175, 280-310
cultural studies, 6, 12, 18, 38-9, 51, 52, 120, 247, 315, 320; see also 178,182,183,199,203,204,236,
122,165,170,174 perceived space and spatial 311 magical realism, 54, 278
cyberspace,240,278 practice historicism, 14, 15-17,72,107,136, margin, marginality, 12-13,32, 111,
Firstspace-Secondspace dualism, 11, 138-9,164-83,200,201,202,204, 117, 125, 134-5, 163, 182; as space
deconstruction, 5, 7, 61, 72, 93, 95, 96, 78, 120,122 236 of radical openness, 12-13, 35, 68,
111, 116, 118, 134, 163, 170,244, fltineur,fltineurie, 20-1,117,291, history/History, 6, 73n, 164-78,191-3, 83-4,97-105,125,319
319 313 199, 201, 202, 203, 217, 236, 239, Marxism/Marxists, 3-5, 7, 9, 32-4,36,
dialectic(s), 9, 10, 15,30-1, 35,43-5, flexible accumulation, 247, 305 240,280,311 37-43,47-8,60,63,64,65,77, 78,
60-1,166,175,179, 180,256n,311 fragmentation, 35, 87, 94, 99, 146 home, homeplace, 1, 12, 33, 87,99-104, 89, 91, 92, 106, 108, 119, 136, 139,
difference, 34--{;, 38-9, 52, 8~6, 90-6, Frankfurt School, 41 108, 110, 125, 159 146,153,167, 169n,l74, 176,179,
110,111,139,140,143,244,279, French Communist Party, 28, 37, 38n homogenization, 17, 35,87 180,201,202,240
319; right to difference, 8, 35, 44, French Revolution, 18, 186-8, 193, 195, hybridity, 14, 140-4, 163, 319 masculinism, 16, 21, 89n, 109, 121, 123,
84; spaces that difference makes, 196,205n hyperreality, 17, 19, 38n, 117,239-44, 313,314
12-13,34-5,83-105,110 249,274,279 mask episteme, 243
discourse, 6, 38, 48,52, 57-8, 6~4, 67, gender,5, 12,13,14,79-80,84-5,87, May 1968, 15, 42, 43, 44, 147
72, 85, 111, 178 88,89,96-105,106,108-25,202, idealism, 36, 63, 64, 65, 80, 168 meta-, 33-4, 57, 65, 142
Disneyland, 215,248,251,254, 274; 236,320
332 Subject Index Subject Index 333
metahistorian(s), 16, 174-7 place,1,40n,57,176,300 real-and-imagined, 3, 6, 10, 11, 12, 16, sociologism, 42, 49
metamodernity, 33 planning, urban and regional, 8, 10, 12, 18, 19, 29, 54, 56, 61, 64, 65, 69, 79, sociology /Sociology, 6, 7, 12, 29, 41,
meta-Marxism, 34, 36, 37, 57, 59 40,76, 108n,109, 147,148,234,283, 96, 99, 107, 112, 116, 127, 131, 153, 42,47,73n, 150, 163,167,169n,311
metaphilosophy, 6, 10, 31, 3~4, 38, 45, 285,286,295,298,301,304,312, 165,171,174,178,193,196,204, Soviet Union, 23, 38,40
47,51,52,94,136,179,241 314; see also spatial planning 236,239,240,279,310,315,319 spaces of representation, 10, 12, 15, 30,
metaphor, 12, 26, 29, 33, 66n, 96, 99, poetics, 79, 156, 174,240 reductionism, 4, 28, 60, 62, 65, 72, 80 61,65,67-9,84,87,105,124,156,
100, 172, 176 postcolonial critique, 14, 80, 92, 125-44, region(s), 1, 12, 83, 88 157, 164, 204,249, 320; see also
metaphysics, 33-4 149,163,165,170,175,202,203, representation(s), 33-4, 36, 44, 46, 63, Jived space(s) and Thirdspace
mirror episteme, 242-3 204 68, 69, 83-4,86-7, 110, 111, 114, space-time relations, 15-16, 54, 56,
Mission Viejo, 267-9 postfordism, 120, 246,305, 309,310 131,136,137,154,173,191,240, 154-8, 164-83
modernism, 3-5, 44, 80, 88-92, 125, post-Marxism, 5, 34, 38, 80, 180, 204 244,274,314,315,319 spatial disciplines, 11, 47, 66, 75, 109,
169,199,244 Postmetropolis, 6, 19, 21-2, 23, 51n, representational space, see spaces of 112, 148, 162, 178, 182
modernity, 44,236 113n,199,300,315-20 representation, spatial imagination, see geographical
modernization, 168, 283, 292 postmodernculture,83-6, 149, 155, representations of space, 10, 30, 61, imagination
Molecule Men (Borofsky), 209, 230-2 199,201n,237,302n 65-7,87,157,164, 198,240,320;see spatial planning, 40, 49,283, 292n, 296
Postmodern Geographies, 12, 13, 15, 35n, also conceived space and spatial practice, 10, 61, 65-6,87, 157,
narrative, 16, 17, 57, 59, 164-6, 173-8, 54,62-3,121,137,152 Secondspace 320; see also perceived space and
180,192,201 postmodernism, 3, 13, 26-7, 44, 80, restructuring, 5, 17, 19,21-2,50-1, 120, Firstspace
nationalism, 97,236 85-6,92,118-19,121,125,131,142, 247,292,293,300-10,315,316 spatialism, 16, 107,204
nature, 12,48,75, 108,116,169,181 170, 174, 175, 201, 212, 204; radical reworlding(s), 14, 16, 129-36 spatiality /Spatiality, 1-3, 6, 8, 10, 11,
Navarrenx, 27, 28, 31 or critical, 3-5, 38, 52, 59, 85-6, 92, rhythmanalysis, 7, 9, 27,51-2, 69 14,15, 16,18,29,35,43-7,48,50,
The New World (Otterness), 18, 209, 93, 96, 108, 117, 154; Roybal Plaza, 209, 229-34 52, 98, 99, 108, 112, 129, 136, 139,
230-4 neoconservative, 4-5, 93, 309, 310 142,146,147,149,151,155,162-3,
New York City, 193n, 199,208,219, postmodernity, 13, 19, 44,86-96, 117, Santa Ana, 247, 259 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172,
238,253,274,295,304,308,313, 196,198,201,203,238,320 Santa Monica, 104 173,175,177,178,183,202,203,
316 postmodernization, 19, 21, 22, 309, 315 scamscapes, 19, 274-8 204,236,285,311,312,315
Newport Beach, 258, 259, 261, 275 poststructuralism, 78, 80, 94-5, 170, schizophrenia, 198 spatialization, 9, 43, 44, 48, 52, 81n, 82,
normalization, 161 175,177,243,244 science of space,57-8, 75-6,136, 163, 105,108,129,137,148,169,170,
power,7, 15,30-2,34-6,48,68-9,86-8, 311 172,175,204,234
Occitania, 7,27,29,30, 89,90,110,114,124,131,134, 137, Secondspace,6, 10,22,78-81,110,120, spatia-analyse, 34-5
ontology, 10, 44, 46, 158, 236; 145, 146, 148, 153, 162, 165, 170, 251, 315, 320; see also conceived spatiology, 35, 170
ontological trialectic, 70-4, 171, 191-3,194,205,234,235,311 space and representations of space specific geographies, 17, 35, 36, 110,
203 praxis,22-3,31,44,46,47,52,73,84, semiology, semiotics, 44, 67, 68, 79, 169, 181, 235
Orange County, 17, 19-20, 222, 237-79, 86,89,99, 112,148,256n,279,311, 177,251 spin-doctoring, 93, 278, 279, 309
301,310,316,318 312,314,319 sexism, 1, 109, 116, 120 Spuistraat, 20, 315; on, 281-96; of,
Orientalism, 16, 136-9 The Production of Space (Lefebvre), sexuality, 12, 35, 68, 88, 89, 107, 148, 296-310
other, othering, otherness, 5-6, 7, 34-5, 8-10,17,27,44-5,47-52,53-82, 202 state, 35, 40, 41, 43, 49, 235-6
53,84,87,96,160n,244,256n;see 146,179-83,310 simulacrum, 19, 112, 188, 239-44, 279, structuralism, 5, 38, 43, 78, 155, 158,
also thirding-as-Othering Provos, 50,293-4 314; precession of simulacra, 19, 170,175,177
psychasthenia,l98,202-3,240 38n, 239-44 subaltern, 90, 97, 126, 313
palimpsest, 18; of El Pueblo, 217-28 psychoanalysis, 6, 34-5, 57, 118, simulation(s), 19, 38n, 191, 194, 198, subject(s), 45, 47, 51, 124-5, 151
panopticon, 161n, 205, 210, 228-36 158 241-3,251,263,274,279,309 subjection, 14, 68, 88, 90
Paris, 7, 11, 15, 18, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 42, psychologism, 146 simultaneity, 8-9, 32, 57, 58, 65, 155, subjectivities, 68, 84, 86, 88-92,97,
43, 113, 114, 117, 147, 160, 186-7, Pyrenees, 7, 30 158, 165, 196 101-2,124-5,126,169
193,218-25,302,315 situationist movement, 49-50, 241, 308 surrealism, 7, 36, 37, 158, 198n,
patriarchy, 14, 68,109-11, 120 quantum physics, 43 social space, see lived space(s) and 241
Pau,27 Thirdspace surveillance,67,205,228,235,297
peripheries, center-periphery relation, race, racism, 1, 3, 5, 68, 79, 84-5, 87, socialism, 3, 40, 108, 169, 204
7,29-31,33,35,44,53,84,87,88, 88,89,93,96-105,106,109,111, sociality /Sociality, 2-3, 6, 10, 16, 44-6, territory /territoriality, 1, 87, 136, 151,
90,137,146,247 116,228,236,299-300,316,319, 47, 71, 77, 80, 108, 165, 167, 168, 161,198,239,242,244
perceived space, 10,65-6,74-8, 157; see 320 171,182,203,204,235,236,311 text(s) /textual practices, 8-9, 38, 48,
also Firstspace and spatial practice radical women of color, 12-13, 83-6, sociological imagination, 2-3, 16, 46-7, 57-8,67,136,150-1,319
phenomenology, 77, 78, 156 96-105 311 "Third Space" (Bhabha), 14, 139-44
334 Subject Index
thirding-as-Othering, 5-6, 10-11, 15, triple dialectic, 6-7, 10

21,31,52,60-70,126,140,156,157,
311 uneven development, 8, 17, 35, 41, 77,
Thirdspace, 1---{), 10-13,15,22-3,29,31, 87,99,115,126,134,166,300,305
35,36,40,43,54,56-7,68,70,73-4, University of California-Irvine (UCI),
81-2,84,86,96,97,99,106-7,108, 254-8
117,125,126,127,134,136,137, University of California-Los Angeles
139,145,146-7,149,154,158, (UCLA), xi, 18, 28, 129n, 131n, 186,
162-3,171,176,187,203,236,239, 187, 193,212,213n,229
240, 241, 311, 312, 315, 320; see also University of California-Santa Cruz
lived space(s) and spaces of (UCSC), 28, 105
representation University ofNanterre,42, 147
Tienanmen Square, 23, 318 urban condition, 7, 42-4
totality, totalization, 32, 72,90 urban reality, 17, 20, 44, 66, 311, 314,
transdisciplinary scope, 3, 5, 6, 35n,47, 315
52,57,70, 112,150,168,169,311 urban revolution, 8, 42, 43n
trialectics, 8-12, 45, 48-9, 53-82, 86, urbanism, 13, 17, 20, 21, 47, 108, 110,
140,156,165,174,203,204,236, 169,179,181,285,313
311,312,315;ofspace- urbanization, 8, 49, 235, 245-6, 300, 315
knowledge-power, 15, 44, 45n, 86, utopia,60,67,157-8,251,274
87, 148,150,170,236;of
spatiality-historicality-sociality, voyeurism, 21, 313, 314
16,44-7,78,107,165,171,203,204,
236; of perceived-conceived- Yearning (hooks), 12, 83,96-105
lived, see Thirdspace Yorba Linda, 252-4

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What are some of the main concepts discussed in the text?

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THIRDSPACE

First published 1996

Blackwell Publishers Inc.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

In Thirdspace with bell hooks 96 Palimpsest 218

Subject Index 329

7 Remembrances: A Heterotopology of the Citadei-LA 186

8 The Cultural Acropolis (Original photo of Disney Hall

9 Pueblo Palimpsest (Image of Avila Adobe from drawing

10 The New World (Photos by Antonis Ricos and Edward Soja;

11 Orange County Sites 245

12 Cathedrals of Iconic Reassurance (Photos by Edward Soja) 248

13 Ex-Centric Centralities (Photos by Edward Soja) 266

2a The Trialectics of Being: Spatiality-Sociality-Historicality 71

4 Biddy Mason's Place (Photo of Biddy Mason and original

5 Floreal Entrancement (Photo courtesy of Garo Ajanian) 195

6 The Bastaventure (Photos courtesy of Garo Ajanian and

7 The Citadel-LA 207

My greatest appreciation is reserved for the graduate students I

significantly improve chapter 7. My thanks also to Gail Sansbury for

10 Discovering Thirdspace Introduction 11

focus my primary attention on the extraordinary discourse that has

Each of these three chapters takes the form of a ~l_p_!!!_i!l~Q

fatuous fires. It is certainly because of that metamorphic quality that I

Net result? Complete failure! Abstract spatiality and practical

The recent English translation of The Production of Space, and the

THING-chose PRESENCE SUBJECT IDENTITY

FIRST NATURE HISTORY MELODY PHILOSOPHY

PRODUCTION GLOBALITY HARMONY METAPHILOSOPHY

Discomforted by this table (a form he rarely used), Lefebvre immedi-

knowledge formation first around the long-submerged and subordi-

Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space

Distinctive features of the new cultural politics of difference are o

their particular formulations and journeys. Thirdspace must always

I want to end by asking for a geography that acknowledges that the

In the borderlands is born( e) a new consciousness, the consciousness 21

Being in the "beyond", then, is to inhabit an intervening space,

It is surprising how long the problem of space took to emerge as a his-

Foucault's writing is perfect in that the very movement of the text

Hidden in the underbrush of the Thirdspaces explored in the previ-

single conceptualization of Thirdspace, whether from Foucault or

Real places that contain all other places, represented, contested,

displacements, mutual interactions, and their links with the spatial

philosophical or methodological persuasion but speak from the

and tried to compress within the exhibition space-time a 200-year

The Preliminary Discourse

Leading up to the exhibition's opening was a series of public lectures

Geography is nothing but history in space .... Geography is not an

Edward Soja (UCLA), "Taking Los Angeles Apart: Fragments of a

Some memories of these discursive events linger on as we move,

Getting to Biddy Mason's Place

The twinning is intentional. The Bonaventure Hotel, until recently

most symbolic space of urban decenteredness, of dissociated neigh-

214 Inside and Outside Los Angeles Remembrances 215