Steve Shaughnessy – Arch 751 – Professor Arijit Sen, PhD
The concept of ‘public’ seems simple: of the people, for the community, unrestricted, free, open, anti-private; what the word implies, and moreover the evolution of how it has been instituted and governed is much more complex. In such, the notions of Public Space and Public Realm have conjured a dedicated field of research, with as many distinct theoretical, disciplinary, and methodological positions as there are public spaces to weigh them against. To consider and discuss some of these positions, from various sources and noted authors then becomes another way to understand and analyze public space. As each subsequent position further challenges the doxa of the time, a new epistemological position can be developed, especially as each position builds greater dissonance on the topic, one is forced to choose a position, pick a side, and build one’s own beliefs upon the foundation of knowledge built by other researchers.
Creative dissonance is a concept that unlike ‘public’ is much more complicated at first, but builds itself into a much more streamlined idea. Dissonance here can be defined as conflict or incongruity, especially regarding differences between actions and beliefs. This definition then modified by the word creative implies intent or a purposeful break from doxa, the world as taken for granted, the status quo. In and of itself, this becomes a powerful concept. Further refined in a yet unpublished prospectus, Arijit Sen writes: “Creative dissonance is a representational strategy. The term refers to the use of signs, images and symbols that are well understood (and often stereotypical) in order to represent ones identity and culture. Yet their [immigrants] renditions are not entirely accurate. Slight inaccuracies, seemingly unimportant, are of great importance in the production of immigrant worlds.” He shortly follows that statement with: “Creative dissonance is also an experiential and communicative strategy.” For the purpose of this exercise, creative dissonance is an exploration of making a break from doxa for the purpose of accepting outside opinions and forming ideas and building a position as an amalgam of varied sources, as they relate to the public realm.
Nancy Fraser is the first source to explore, and the primary developer of the concept of the public sphere insofar as this writing is concerned. Her “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” is an analysis and critique of Jürgen Habermas exploration of the same concept in his 1962 book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The core of her argument is that “the bourgeois conception of the public sphere, as described by Habermas, is not adequate for the critique of the limits of actually existing democracy in late capitalist societies.” (Fraser 77) Public sphere in this case takes on the guise of the state, the official economy of paid employment, and also arenas of public discourse. Primarily the lattermost definition, public sphere is a theater for political deliberation, both in terms of literal public space, and figurative arenas of discussion, more applicable now than on the date of her writing, given the communications advances in the 17 years since the publication of this writing.
Through analyzing and rebutting Habermas’ assumptions, Frasier concludes several things regarding the inadequacies of the concept of the bourgeois public sphere: Bracketing of social difference is not enough, social inequality must be eliminated for politics and social discourse to be held on an even field. A multiplicity of public spheres is superior to singularity. Differences between majority and minority are exacerbated in a single socio-political arena. To reduce arena size and increase their number produces multiple speaking floors upon which smaller voices are more easily heard. Private concerns must be made admissible in public arena. To dismiss them and force a separation between public and private issues is to place power in the hands of the majority, who can more easily decide what they wish to be a public concern and quell other desires. Parliamentary bodies then are a step forward in allowing ‘weak publics’ (those with opinion but no legal force) to become ‘strong publics’ (those with opinion, and ability to enforce their opinion into legality).
These conclusions expose the limitations of democracy currently implemented in capitalist society. Nancy Fraser’s position is about changing the status quo. She wishes to modify the doxa of society regarding its implementation of government. To provide an even more democratic incarnation of western government is to modify some of the most important public spaces humanity has created for itself, those designed with the purpose of allowing public discourse into the direction society will head, the rules and freedoms society is allowed, and those who are allowed to represent the voices of the millions who could not literally fit into these spaces all at once.
“Learning from Looking: Geographic and Other Writing about the American Landscape” delves into the field of cultural geography. Peirce F. Lewis provides a toolbox of sorts for research into the history of cultural geography, as well as some of its most prominent figures. Beyond this he produces a list of ingredients in which one can use to help “identify some major strengths and some considerable gaps in the recent literature about cultural landscapes.” (Lewis 41) The list, upon which he expounds further than is produced here consists first of six items:
1. Physical environment, the raw material.
2. Knowledge and perception of what the environment is like.
3. Ambitions about how the environments should be ordered and improved.
4. Cultural strictures.
5. Tools that humans use to shape their tangible landscape.
6. The cultural landscape. (Lewis 41)
These he refers to as ingredients, both tangible and intangible forces that create a cultural landscape, and allow a logical historical sequence to reveal itself.
Lewis’ listing of four scholars of cultural geography (Carl Ortwin Sauer, Fred B Kniffen, John Kirkland Wright, and J.B. Jackson) and these ingredients are his offering to the future field of cultural geography. While not a direct analysis of public space, spheres, or cultural landscapes, the excerpt is once again, a challenge on the status quo. It offers no answer, but is a desire for progress and change forwarding his belief that the field is in need of a few more scholars in this and related fields in order to maintain the “intellectual health of American cultural geography.” (Lewis 50)
The third source is an analysis of actual public space, its component parts, its inhabitants, its governance, and how the interaction of each of these challenges the concepts of public, doxa, and brings dissonance to the forefront, although not necessarily creatively. Brenda Yeoh documents within chapter 7 of “Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore” the use of and conflicts centering on the verandahs that flanked the public streets of
The battle (and it did become a battle) was waged over the very definition of public and private, where the boundaries existed between spaces, and who is allowed to occupy what areas. The verandahs in question, or covered sidewalks, were semi-walled extensions to the street-side architecture in
The government of Singapore tried to adopt a definition of public space born from British cities, whereby a public space is “one which is ‘designed, however minimally’; where ‘everyone has the rights of access’; where ‘encounters in it between individual users are unplanned and unexceptional’; and where ‘their behaviour towards each other is subjected to rules none other than those of common norms of social civility’.” (Yeoh 244) This definition either didn’t apply or didn’t sit well with the people and spaces it was being applied to, who had their own definition for how space was properly used. When the former tried to forcibly eclipse the latter, through fines and confiscations affecting livelihoods and the way of life of the citizens on those streets, the friction turned to violence.
This situation was never truly resolved, and the issues continued for decades, fines, restructuring, and widening of roads and sidewalks to accommodate the automobile notwithstanding, the single-mindedness of the intention of the space could not resolve itself with the open-mindedness the architecture supposed and the people accepted.
The situation described by Brenda Yeoh embodies the discussion of doxa, creative dissonance, and questions the very nature of the word ‘public’. The argument over the verandahs questioned the status quo when the government decided it wanted to define and enforce its own definition of the word public. When the public, as people, privatized the public, as space, they were making a conscious and social decision about what they culturally wanted to do with the social and architecture features presented to them. They adopted their environment and structured it creatively to suit their needs. This structuring did not benefit all equally, thus the controversy and the imposition by the government, but clearly, having sparked rioting and significant plebian vs. government conflict, the status quo must have represented the masses.
Taking a position then, as it regards these readings, and the grander notion of public space, involve weaving a socio-spatial tapestry. The threads traveling in one direction represent the public, democracy and the structured notion of free-will most westerners enjoy and take for granted. Crossing these threads and holding them tightly together are the assumptions proposed by the authors here, improvements that must be made in governance, further advances in studying our culture and landscape and their interaction, as well as learning from the mistakes and designing spaces that interact positively in intention and practice. The resulting image displays a perspective on lessons in how to improve what exists in the American multicultural public realm, and guidelines for the creation of public and private space that interact harmoniously on social, cultural, and architectural levels. That is to say, when designing public spaces, one must be concerned not only with the bricks and the sticks, but also the inhabitants both permanent and transient, the landscape, context, and culture of the place.
Sen, Arijit. 2008. “Creative Dissonance: The Politics of World Making.” Unpublished
Manuscript
Fraser,
Lewis, Peirce F.
Yeoh, Brenda. Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford university press, 1996, p. 243-280, Chapter 7
Verandah image: http://www.travelstripe.com/images/kampong-glam-singapore12.JPG
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