When theatre of the oppressed becomes theatre of the oppressor (original) (raw)
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The City as Theater of Protest
Si nce its explosive growth at the turn of the twentieth century, Berlin has both shared many characteristics with other German, European, and "world cities" (Weltstä dte) and boasted many unique associations. The latter was all the more the case for the two "half-cities" in the post-World War II Germanies, each side representing the last, best bulwark, physical and ideological, against incursions from the Cold War enemy. West Berlin in particular captured the popular imagination of millions, in West Germany and elsewhere, though its formal geopolitical status was entirely anomalous, and though its residents suffered the effects of its peculiar "island" existence, all the more once East German authorities erected the Wall in August 1961. "Front City Berlin" or "Cold War Island Berlin" represented for many young West Germans and others a potential beacon of freedom and democracy-in sharp contrast to its actual circumstances, "hard" in many senses. Though not a capital like Paris or Tokyo, West Berlin shared with those cities the symbolism of a powerful modernity-and postmodernity-and the characteristics of the "new urbanism," with its "electrifying atmosphere." 1 But, beyond this, it represented an especial mutability; indeed, it was largely the imposition of fantasy that made the gray, hardscrabble city seem alive. The physical space of the city was in the postwar era a kaleidoscope of enduring (if competing) symbolisms and open signifiers. From the early 1960s through the early 1980s particularly, protestors drew on that space in its complexity to inform particular forms of activism. Further, activists mapped characteristics and qualities of themselves onto the city's surfaces, and adopted the same in turn from the city. Politics made the space; activists "made" West Berlin; West Berlin in turn made the activists. 2 Its peculiar uprooting from established meanings made it a site particularly accommodating of activists' fantasies.
Paper for the Conflicts in the city Congres: "Cultural centres as mediators for local conflicts"
2014
The urban space in European cities is undergoing deep transformation, through formal and informal initiatives. The gentrification of poor neighbourhoods is often counterbalanced by fast projects of local revitalization fostered by public or private actors which seldom leave time to local population to adapt to those changes. In these processes, previous existing inhabitants face difficulties to accustom themselves to an evolution in the commercial, housing and public space fabric that is targeted to the new wealthier segments of urban dwellers.
Increasingly, urban boosters are promoting the ways artist and activist networks transform public streets into spaces of conviviality, play, and community building through creative interventions. However, such actions frequently undermine the very communities they say they are trying to support. Using the case of Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market, Toronto, we explore the role played by local artists and activists in contributing to local gentrification dynamics, and how their actions reflect broader socio-economic inequities in the city and beyond. Despite community activists' wish to challenge homogenized and corporatized urban redevelopment, and to build vibrant and engaged communities, the activists often unintentionally reinforce values that promote and benefit some members of the community at the expense and exclusion of working-class, immigrant, and racialized others. Les politiques d'exclusion des communautés "créatives": Le cas des dimanches piétonniers de Kensington Market De plus en plus, les promoteurs urbains célèbrent les transformations des rues publiques en espaces de convivialité, de plaisir et de développement communautaire à travers les interventions créatives de réseaux d'artistes et de militants. Toutefois, de telles actions déstabilisent souvent les communautés qui sont objets mêmes de transformation. Prenant le cas des dimanches piétonniers du Kensington Market, à Toronto, nous examinons les contributions des artistes et militants locaux à la dynamique de gentrification, ainsi que la portée de leurs actions sur les inégalités socio-économiques de la ville en général. Malgré les souhaits des militants communautaires d'agir en contestation contre le développement urbain homogénéisé et corporatisé, et de bâtir des communautés animées et engagées, sans le vouloir, ils accentuent souvent les valeurs qui promouvoient et béneficient certains membres de la communauté au détriment et en exclusion de la classe ouvrière, des immigrants et autres racialisés.
Banishment through Branding: From Montréal’s Red Light District to Quartier des Spectacles
Social Sciences
This paper analyzes how the City of Montréal employed tools of urban planning—including a district plan, street redesign, rezoning, selective public consultation, expropriation, policing and surveillance—to spatially banish sex work from its historic district, using the red light symbol as a branding strategy. This coincided with a change in federal law (Bill C-36) and a policy shift to reposition sex workers as passive victims of sex trafficking. Using a case study design, this work explores the state’s refusal to recognize the agency of those engaged in embodied socio-economic exchanges and the safety and solidarity possible in public space. In interviews, sex workers described strategies of collective organizing, resistance and protest to hold the city accountable during this process of displacement. We consider how urban planning might support sex work, sex workers and economic autonomy.
Spaces of Activism: Occupy Montreal
Recent events around the world have witnessed a range of proven strategies being reenacted and appropriated to suit our times. The "space of appearance," a metaphor of polis by Hannah Arendt took on a new meaning and imagery within the 21 st century as manifestations of socio-political shifts. The appropriation of public squares with all the practical accoutrements needed for dwelling reappeared as a form of protest in the wake of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements. The power of ordinary people to come together against social discrepancies in a physical public space offers new possibilities for change in the public sphere. Using Occupy Montreal, as a case study I will explore how urban spaces are transformed into sites of resistance through an encampment. From technologically savvy social-media to the use of simple ephemeral techniques such as propagandist imagery, architects, urban-planners and design activists today are in a unique position to use multi-disciplinary multi-prong approaches to appropriate public space in a performative mode, thereby creating spaces for social activism that impact cities phenomenally, socially and politically. Figure 1 "Occupy Montreal -Square Victoria" Photograph -Jean Gagnon ! iii! ! Résumé Les événements récents à travers le monde ont été témoins d'une nouvelle panoplie de stratégie adaptée à notre période. Dans « Space of Appearance », Hannah Arendt utilise la métaphore de la polis, celle-ci prend un sens nouveau dans les manifestations sociopolitiques du XXIe siècle. L'appropriation des espaces publics passe par une occupation physique du site, en tant que manifestation, dans le printemps Arabe et le mouvement Occupy. Le rassemblement de simples citoyens dans la place publique offre de nouvelles possibilités de changement dans la sphère sociale. En utilisant Occupons Montréal comme étude de cas, j'étudie comment les espaces publics deviennent des sites de résistance au moyen de l'occupation. En passant par les médiats sociaux et les interventions éphémères, telles que les images de propagande, les architectes, urbanistes et designers, adoptent une approche pluridisciplinaire pour s'approprier l'espace public.
The struggle for recognition inside the city
Filosofia Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
The urbanization of the world has placed the whole world, in its diversity, more within the realm of the city. Having acknowledged the need to recognize this diversity, the recent debate over the importance, content, political, economic, social and cultural role of the notion of recognition has crystallized around a double challenge: either as a problem of the material redistribution of goods by all subjects (Fraser), or as the active respect for particular identities of sociocultural minorities (Taylor). However, the intensification of the phenomenon of human mobility has created a third invisible social subject in the public space: those excluded from stable and rewarding social relationships such as the homeless, the undocumented or the unemployed. These three types of collective subjects have different objectives and social bases, and the public space is today the scene of multiple «struggles for recognition» (Honneth), respectively, economic struggle, identity struggle and struggle for relationship (Renault). We intend to analyse these three social movements within the dynamics of coexistence in the city and the impacts that they exert
Introduction to the special issue « Whose right to the city ? / Le droit à la ville, pour qui? »
Environnement Urbain, 2016
Now, more than 40 years after the publication of The Right to the City, it is clear that inequalities, conflicts and injustices in public spaces have not declined. An important part of the global urban population, both north and south, continues to be sidelined from urban amenities. Urban production tends to be directed by logics of enclosure and exclusivity (Donzelot, 2004), being fragmented into a multitude of enclaves, hence classifying individuals according to their social status. Some minorities have ever less access to public spaces, whether they are the homeless (Mitchell, 1997; Zeneidi-Henry, 2002), street vendors (Crossa, 2009), prostitutes (Hubbard, 2004) or youth (Malone, 2002). Moreover, the idea of being a citizen has made way for that of being a consumer, as pointed out by Santos (1987). Introduction to the special issue « Whose right to the city ? / Le droit à la...
A City for Itself: A Peripheral Mixed City's Struggle for Cultural Capital
City and Community, 2019
Based on the case study of a Fringe theatre festival in a peripheral city in Israel, this article identifies and analyzes a moment of change in power relations between a peripheral city and the country's central city. It offers an alternative perspective to urban discourse, which analyzes art projects in peripheral cities as duplicating colonial relations. We adapted the Marxist concept of a class in itself and a class for itself, from the socioeconomic realm to the urban realm, by using Bourdieu's field theory as a link between the sociology of art and the urban realm. We argue that by taking control over the festival's productive forces, the city evolved from a city in itself to a city for itself. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and architectural research, the article analyzes four decades of urban dynamics leading to this change and proposes a theoretical and methodological framework for deciphering contemporary urban process.
Exclusion of marginalized people in public spaces has been a recurrent topic of human geography (Smith, 1996, Mitchell, 1997) but explanations mainly refer to macrogeographical and entrepreneurial production of iconic public spaces. In this chapter, by focusing on banal public spaces (Padisson and Sharp, 2007) of a neighborhood in Montreal, we will show that appropriation of public spaces also refer to dwelling practices. They are used as a home for homeless and marginalized people and as an extension of home for residents. Involving contradictory uses of public spaces, these dynamics of appropriation induce conflicts and the dispersal of marginalized people. In fact, “residential normalisation” of public space, through the diffusion of residential values in space, reduces the opportunities to make these public spaces a home for marginalized people. Then, they feel more and more « out of place » (Cresswell, 1996), and they are finally incited to leave or to reduce their own visibility. Therefore, through actions on space and the transformation of the landscape, a new kind of urban exclusion appears: a « soft dispersal » which substitute for « zero tolerance policies ».