Sunday, October 11, 2009
Walking in the City's Existence
Michel de Certeau's "Walking in the City" incorporates several of his ideas and theories by using a prose that is descriptive and clear; one which makes the read feel as though their own eyes were walking through New York City. The "sea within a sea" that Certeau describes in this work grows and moves with time, and is constantly changing "from hour to hour." The term Apocalypse can be used to describe either a great revelation, or the complete destruction and annihilation of something. This piece writes New York City as a city which has crumbled and re-built itself over and over again, not one which has built itself on top of itself and progressed thusly. Michel de Certeauwrites as though he has been sitting atop the World Trade Center for hundreds of years, watching New York move from thriving to destroying itself, and then back to thriving. He asserts his idea that a city simply remains just that; a collection of buildings and architecture, roads and lights, which canonly be transformed with the addition of people. It is the walking people that make New York City what it is. He states that to walk is to lack a place, which goes along with his theory that city space does not exist unless there are people there to define it. As people move throughout the city, their location or place is ever-changing, and since the space which they are moving through cannot exist without them, it is as though when people move, the city block behind them and the sidewalk beneath them would disappear, fade away, and dissipate. As they progress and leave non-existence behind them, they create new city blocks and space to walk through. Just as de Certeau can omnisciently view everyone walking through the "wave of verticals" and the many streets of New York, we are alsoable to sit above "Walking in the City" and watch it progress before our eyes. Without de Certeau, the ideas and space that "Walking in the City" creates wouldn't exist for us to read.
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A city is not merely its collection of buildings. I once saw a cover of a computer game that featured the Statue of Liberty in Egypt with its creation seems to be that of Ancient Egypt. The symbol that is so dear to the United States is not the same if it was created somewhere else under different conditions. It is the stories and people of a city that gives it its meaning. If I saw a warehouse that contained mini replicas of New York (all of its buildings and monuments) I would not say that this is New York just because it has all of its structural features, I would say that the replica looks like New York. This concept is part of the mysticism that Las Vegas presents. All of the imitated works in the city are known as pieces that pay homage to the originals, the Eiffel tower, the Sphinx in Egypt and so on. The objects in Las Vegas connect with people because we know the story of these objects. A city needs meaning; and in order to have meaning there must be some being there to give it meaning. Such is the case as a dog recognizing the person that gives it food as master, or the person the gives a paycheck as a boss. An object is not merely an object because of its existence. An object is an object because of its meaning. The city of New Orleans is the shared stories of a community, Katrina, the floods, the parades and celebrations, and its food. A Disney theme park which features New Orleans oriented buildings is not New Orleans, but a piece of a house from New Orleans is. A city is not merely a group of buildings or a group of people; it is all of them and the stories and legacy that they have and carry on.
ReplyDeleteMolly, when you say that de Certeau's text "makes the read feel as though their own eyes were walking through New York City"—yes, this is exactly his point: a city is readable like words on a page are readable...this requires a specific scalar relationship to space and the things happening in front of one's eyes. Maybe that's an "apocalypse" in a revelatory sense—or maybe that means that apocalyptic thinking is a certain zoning out, a certain way of seeing how people move in patterns across time rather than in isolated states or moments?
ReplyDeleteJoe, when you mention Las Vegas, this is where the word 'postmodern' can in fact be helpful. Las Vegas is held up as *the* 'postmodern' city: it is a pastiche of other signifiers and references. It's meaning is derived from self-conscious artificiality. You claim: "The objects in Las Vegas connect with people because we know the story of these objects." Well, yes and no. The objects in Las Vegas (e.g., 'The Eiffel Tower') are not really the *real* objects—they are simulacra, and thus they orient travelers in fact to the *wrong* place. You aren't in Paris, you're in Vegas! So a city doesn't just "need meaning"—it can also involve meanings-out-of-place, or misrecognitions. The city's stories are wrested out of other contexts and plopped into a (almost arbitrary) space. It isn't as simple as the people and stories and a legacy—it's also a lot of things that *don't* fit, and things are forced from the outside, that can disorient the city walker. Those things are an integral part of the 'postmodern' city, too. Does that make sense?
This blog/series of comments calls to mind the movie "Synecdoche, New York," a reeling two hours in which a dying actor decides that his last work will be one in which he creates a replica of New York inside a warehouse and assign people to play the parts of the people he knows, with confusing and sometimes relatively catastrophic results. In this movie, though, nothing is quite catastrophe, because the whole population is trapped in an inaccurate signifier, lending an aura of artificiality to any emotion expressed. For anyone who's enjoying the implications of the above conversation, I recommend the movie.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, we talk a lot about the readings of cities. What do we, as a culture, see as the most significant piece of the city-work...to what can we assign plot, symbolism, rising action, theme? Can a city and a novel or movie mirror each other truly? Does the type of reading differ?