Differences of Scale & Sociality by risa
by Christian Bertelsen.
There is something different about Yellowknife. Having come from Montreal, one immediately notices it. The difference in scale is just one of those things that stands out. However that which initially drew my attention was, more precisely, the peculiarity of Yellowknife’s alleys. Indeed, their peculiarity can be said to operate on both of the noun’s semantic foundations. On one level these alleys seem, to an outsider from a more concentrated urban space, strange or unusual in their excessive width and perceptibility. And on another level, these alleys are peculiar by dint of this distinctiveness, for they differ from our general conception of what an alley normally is. I am reminded of Foucault’s concepts of the panopticon (circumambient surveillance) and heterotopia (somewhat dystopian spaces of resistance). Their relationship with the peculiarity of these alleys is such that I feel the need to ask: how might these concepts (panopticon, heterotopia) serve to articulate the peculiarity that I feel these alleys have about them? In fact, both Yellowknife’s alleys and Foucault’s concept of heterotopia have, in their own right, goaded me to think of them—long after they were out of sight. Which is to say that I have, in some sense, been haunted by both of them.
The alley between 49th and 48th Street. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.
II
And yet from another angle, these alleys can be said to defer insofar as they constitute spaces of delay. Spaces of loitering, unproductivity or prolonged congregation. Indeed, these spaces actively postpone. They put certain social norms in abeyance. The alley is a space that affords socially unacceptable forms of behavior: drunkenness, drug consumption, lewd acts, illicit transactions. Acts which, in the openness and inherently public space of the street, would normally warrant reprisals.
The remnants of time spent in the alley. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.
III
Part of what makes these alleys so very peculiar is that they are all part of Yellowknife’s downtown core. They are, on some level, a product of urban planning. And to this end I am reminded of an insight that Walter Benjamin shares in The Arcades Project when explains how:
The true goal of Haussmann’s projects was to secure the city against civil war. He wanted to make the erection of barricades in the streets of Paris impossible for all time. With the same end in mind, Louis Philippe had already introduced wooden paving. Nevertheless, barricades had played a considerable role in the February Revolution. Engels studied the tactics of barricade fighting. Haussmann seeks to forestall such combat in two ways. Widening the streets will make the erection of barricades impossible, and new streets will connect the barracks in straight lines with the workers’ districts. Contemporaries christened the operation “strategic embellishment.” (23)
What kind of prescience lies behind these alleys? Was their peculiar width and perceptibility deliberate or simply contingent? What does the distinct quality of these alleys bespeak? What can the history of Yellowknife’s urban development tell us?
The alley between 49th and 48th Street—looking towards Le Frolic. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.
IV
Space is productive. A geographic location can have a formative influence. The north, by virtue of its remoteness, begs a particular awareness to things. And energy consumption is just one of those things that people from the north pay more attention to. They have to, it’s a precious resource. One might call it a geographically derived sensibility. Moreover, one can also remark a distinct interest in energy-saving technologies.
The recent completion of the new federal building on Franklin street (in downtown Yellowknife?) attests to this. Writes Lisa Scotts:
John Droog, PCL Constructors area manager, pointed out the $2 million south-facing solar wall will provide 10 per cent of the building’s energy needs.
The wall is only one of many features that will make it easy on the environment and a pleasant place to work as well.
Low volume air circulation will provide more consistent temperatures, natural light through windows that actually open will also be utilized.
[…] Grey water collected on the roof and ground water will flush it toilets. (Internet)
Knowing that we tend to respond to our environments in some way or another, I wonder what kind of response Yellowknife’s alleys elicit?
Suspension. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 23 Oct, 2005.
V
Many of the people who find their way to these alleys are of aboriginal descent. And so the blurring—or utter collapse—between metaphor and empirical reality seems provocatively peculiar here. For within these back alley interstices, in these viewable margins, many people consort. In these in-between spaces or amid these peripheral zones members of the First Nations have, in the history of the city of Yellowknife, both socially and traditionally found themselves. This bespeaks a problematic perpetuation: a recursively skewed social anlage.
I want to investigate how it is that social hierarchies tend to be reproduced in Yellowknife’s urban spaces. It seems important to retrace the lines that extend from a society’s ills to its social services. How do Yellowknife’s social services relate (in a per capita comparison) with those of other urban centers? What insights might there be to glean from such figures and forms of governmental response?
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.
Foucault, Michel. “Space, Knowledge and Power [1982].” Power. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: New Press, 1998. 349-64.
—. “Different Spaces [1984].” Trans. Robert Hurley. Power. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: New Press, 1998. 175-85. [Also known as “Of Other Spaces”]
Genocchio, Benjamin. “Discourse, Discontinuity, Difference.” Postmodern Cities and Spaces. Eds. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.
Raven, Andrew. “Solar Panels Could Reduce Power Costs.” Northern News Services September 16 2005: Internet.
Scott, Lisa. “Building Breaks Northern Frontiers.” Northern News Services June 17 2005: Internet.
December 12th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
an initial consideration:
it is worth exploring the differential scales of an environment. the disparity of scales (as lived and as perceived) suggests how the same nominal space can be simultaneously multiple places for different people.
further, “scale” suggests how we “territorialize” spaces as such; that is, how we organize the real physical confines of an environment and how we imagine what that space may be, or rather, what it may be able to become.
there is a materiality and a virtual kind of prescription based on both utility and desire, which may really be two obscured aspects of the same drive.
one always (i think) has a sense of scale in relation to an environment that is traversed, inhabited, routinized, and occupied; it’s a way of making one’s ordinary or extraordinary relations in and to that space sufficiently “legible”; a way of making possible and durable the self-administration and management of rupture and recuperation.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
with this being a signal of intent, i wanted to get some intial musings out there and spawn this–a dialogic rhizome (i feel there might be certain offshoots). however, i should note that this signal of intent has already started to leak, bits and pieces have already managed to escape and gain a certain distance from me–for the above has passed through a lens, it has been recodified, meted out ever so carefully, it has been rendered even more other to me than it was when i wrote the first draft (levinas). edited/openess (or edited for openness, as has been argued by some), a stitched distinction i guess.
with regards to “scale,” i want to point out the intended semantics behind its use. i am originally from montreal, a far more concentrated urban centre. as such, my routinized sense of scale emerges from my having been imbricated in that urban space for such a long time. thus, following those lines of logic, yellowknife’s actual scale, in fact, jumps out at me, it impinges upon me by its peculiarity (at least insofar as it relates to my sedimented and subjectivized [actively territorialized] sense “scale”). this links smartly with your incisive comment regarding differentially subjectivized senses of scale. for someone from wekweti, yellowknife’s scale, at least for her/him, might bespeak the “big city.” indeed, these kinds of subjectivities cannot be discounted lest one wish to think on a level of imprecision.
[also, i should underscore that there is of course power in resistance (Sharp, Routledge, Philo & Paddison 2000); this is a line of thought that needs further development of course]
i am operating, and have for quite some time now always seemingly operated, under the assumption that space is to some degree “formative.”
still thinking…
December 15th, 2005 at 11:56 am
heya- thanks christian for poking me on the issue of edited openness- i started writing a reply here and it turned epic so i made it a new post.
which means that here i can take up ideas of scale and movement that have been, as you say, haunting me. (btw- what do you think of this new style we’re doing to mark internal quotes? the grey underline thing.. any thoughts)
Somewhere in “The Songlines” Chatwin proposes that we think of singing the world as an act of triangulation. A triangluation between subject, object and other. Me, You and The World. (i think this was how he broke it down, though now, despite my meticulous (read: sloppy) notes I can’t find the page he makes that map on.)
I can find this, though- it’s a bit from earlier on in the book, before Chatwin’s theory gets mythic.
At this point he’s laying the foundation for the theory that follows with the story of his research into the Songlines, and it reminds me of the First People here in Canada, walking those incredibly long paths across the land, and of the ways people still move through cities now:
And isn’t this a more accurate understanding? Now that we have our own versions of of the world encoded, it becomes possible to see lines and networks where we (or our ancestors) used to only see featureless blocks. (Could we lay this up against how a martial artist looks at a space and understands it’s components in terms of exits, weapons, or items for trade?)
Chatwin wants to look at the nomadic instinct and the settler instinct- and this tension is central to the history of Canada as well. Infact, right at the end, Chatwin pulls out what was for me the most stunning, shivery quote in a book full of mind-bending references, and it happens to be linked to the place we think of as ‘Canadian’:
…
This comment of mine, with these quotes on song and epic memory, is also a reply to your thoughtful comment on my hiphop post, Neil. To the part where you have that quote on music being anti-memory.
It’s a reply to Deleuze and Guattari’s tight, prickly little aphorism on music and memory, actually.
Because I agree with you- I don’t think music is always anti memory- not music that moves in that old ancient way, fundamentally building memory and our relationships to space. Some music breaks down our ability to triangulate, and some music extends that ability across all the detail in the land we traverse. This makes sense to me because whenever i’m hiking i can feel part of me rummaging around inside my memeory for the right song to sing.
Usually, sadly, I can’t find one that feels right- all the songs I know are too simple, too pop-y too circular. Except some hip hop songs that move in a slow, walking pace, and draw in the whole world with their language games, and have choruses that allow me to sing loud. Also: Paul Simon is usually good. I sang Paul Simon songs aloud to myself while hiking in the SanFernando valley seven days and thousands of miles ago.
…
this reminds me of another bit in the songlines- a quote about the rhythm of walking and how it connects to our ability to tell stories. this one connects to my proposal in that new post and to the joking title I gave to our new editorial board- Team Purgatory.
I didn’t reply on that hiphop post because it’s getting slammed thirty times a day with spam and I’d rather not direct our readers there for any real reason.. not sure what to do about that actually. it’s become a hazardous space, too-often full of machine-generated links to sketchy sites.
it does make apparent the necessary nomadism of the internet though- some places will become dangerous or less than loveable and folks will have to move on. Choosing to go somewhere else is also a kind of passive resistance. think about how we move from old email addresses that have become less than efficient. think about how new code languages will rebuild old systems in newer, more portable forms, like basecamp.
lots to think about …
thanks again, christian, for giving me the opportunity to say what i’ve been trying to say for months now about Open Journal.
i’d just like to add, that i think I was unintentionally hard on you during our back and forth edits.
i usually try to remember to lay out everything I love about a piece before going into edits, but in this case i was excited about the work you were doing-
Excited to see someone else taking up this interesting relationship between bits of perspective and questionning and bits of photography; and excited by the steps we’re all taking towards a kind of spatial geometry of inequality, or something like that.
So i went straight into a kind of blinkered brush clearing, looking to make the great writing and great theory stand out as much as i could. there’s more explanation for why i think this is an important element of Open in that new post of mine… but still, sorry about that. i think it’s really important for all of us editors to lay out what we think is good before editing and I didn’t do that in your case and that was a mistake.
anyway,
i hope you and neil will take me up on my proposal (in that new post) and help me do a better job.
keep well,
r