Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 Journal of Global Cultural Studies

3 | 2007 Global Cities

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/126 DOI : 10.4000/transtexts.126 ISSN : 2105-2549

Éditeur Gregory B. Lee

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 septembre 2007 ISSN : 1771-2084

Référence électronique Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化, 3 | 2007, « Global Cities » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 31 août 2009, consulté le 24 septembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/126 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.126

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 24 septembre 2020.

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SOMMAIRE

Global Cities: Introduction English version Lawrence Phillips

Global Cities: Introduction Version française Lawrence Phillips

Pékin, ville spectacle: la construction controversée d’une métropole Olympique Anne-Marie Broudehoux

New York dans le polar métaphysique : la ville totale Delphine Carron

空间 、 身体 、女权: 中国都市女性写作 Shelley Chan (陈颖)

Schizophrenic Hong Kong: Postcolonial Identity Crisis in the Infernal Affairs Trilogy Howard Y.F. Choy

Exploding Johannesburg: Driving in a Worldly City James Graham

Short Stories against Barcelona’s Urban Transformation Edgar Illas

Delineating the Urban: The Global City and the Logics of Dissolution Jarrad Keyes

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror: Colonial Italy Reflects on Tianjin Maurizio Marinelli

Global Cities as Centers of Cultural Influence: A Focus on Istanbul, Turkey Michael McAdams

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Global Cities: Introduction English version

Lawrence Phillips

1 Is the 'global' city an age-old historical phenomenon associated with economic, cultural, and imperial power (Rome, Athens, Beijing, Istanbul), or a consequence of the industrial revolution? Is it a product of the media age or a continuation of the power and influence of the imperial metropolis? In the nineteenth and for much of the twentieth century it would have been claimed as a Western imperialist phenomenon (London, Paris, New York) or cities and countries that consciously emulated western imperialism (Tokyo). This conception – if ever actually true – certainly cannot be supported today. The European and north American cities now vie with the booming cities of Asian Tigers (Mumbai, Shanghai, Seoul), and the great developing cities (Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Bahía Blanca, Lagos), as well as regional expressions like the 'Pacific Rim' cities.

2 What is the essence of the 'global' city and how has it been represented? Is it a modern phenomenon or an ancient practice? How do we define global – is globalism a consequence of mass urbanisation or does globalisation create the conditions for the emergence of the global city. How do the global cities of the twentieth century resemble or differ in form and function those of the past and, based on present trends, the future? In the 21st century more people than even will be living in urban environments: «Over the next thirty years, the world's urban population could double from 2.6 billion in 1995 to 5.2 billion in 2025. Most of this growth will take place in developing countries, where some 4 billion people (over half of the total) could be living in cities by 2025, compared with 1.5 billion (37%) in the early 1990s».1 How will this impact on how we imagine the city and issues of migration, diaspora, and existing geopolitical inequalities – not all global cities are equal in these terms. What have been and will be the consequences of such global economic and technological inequalities?

3 Such questions are of course as open ended as the phenomenon to which they respond. If there is a problem of definition, the potential ways in which the «global» city might be represented and discussed are as equally plural. The issue recalls James Donald’s observation that «by calling this diversity «the city», we ascribe to it a coherence or integrity». If even the basic notion of the city requires a strategy to contain its diversity

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and create a «textual» illusion of integrity, what of the global city surely an even vaster construct? Donald proceeds to draw a comparison between Benedict Anderson’s notion of the nation as an imagined community and the way we conceive of a construct an abstract notion of the city as imagined environment.2 This approach runs the risk of implying that the city is a psychological construct and cultural process as purely discursive space rather than lived experience, as Henri Lefebvre warns: «this mental space then becomes the locus a «theoretical practice» which is separated from social practice and which sets itself up as the axis, pivot or central reference point of knowledge».3 However, Donald is surely right to argue that the city is as much a psychological construct as material/social space. The global city is also part of an even greater imagined environment that implies a unity brought about by world-wide communications networks and a certain homogenization of the physical fabric of the city, particularly in the developed world but increasingly around the globe.

4 The conference at Liverpool Hope University in the UK in 2006 which generated this special issue of Transtext(e)s Transcultures on global cities, provided a forum whereby scholars from a variety of backgrounds shared techniques and insights on selected cities from the developed and developing world, North and South, the brash and new to ancient and care worn, from North America, Africa, the Near and the Far East. It is hoped that the selection herein captures something of the spirit of shared insight and debate into the phenomenon of the global city.

NOTES

1. Michel Andrieu, «The City in the Global Village», OECD Observer, no 217-218 Summer 1999. 2. James Donald, «Metropolis: The City as Text», in R. Bocock and K. Thompson (eds), Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992, p. 427. 3. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1997, p. 6.

AUTHOR

LAWRENCE PHILLIPS Lawrence Phillips is Reader in English and Divisional Leader for Media, English and Culture at the University of Northampton. He is the editor of the peer-reviewed academic e-journal Literary London: Interdisciplinary studies in the representation of London (www.literarylondon.org), academic director of the annual international conference of the same name, and secretary of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His most recent publication is an edited collection

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entitled A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke: Victorian and Edwardian Representations of London (Rodopi: 2007). He is also the author of London Narratives: Post-war Fiction and the City (Continuum: 2006), and the editor of a further collection entitled The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Literary Representations of London (Rodopi, 2004).

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Global Cities: Introduction Version française

Lawrence Phillips

1 La ville globale est-elle un phénomène séculaire associé au pouvoir économique, culturel et impérial (Rome, Athènes, Beijing, Istanbul), ou une conséquence de la révolution industrielle ? Est-elle un produit de l’ère médiatique ou le prolongement du pouvoir et de l’influence de la métropole impériale ? Au dix-neuvième siècle et pendant la plus grande partie du vingtième, elle était revendiquée en tant que phénomène impérialiste occidental (Londres, Paris, New York) ou de villes et de pays qui émulaient consciemment ce même impérialisme (Tokyo). Cette conception – si elle fut jamais exacte – ne peut plus être défendue désormais. Les villes d’Europe et d’Amérique du Nord rivalisent de nos jours avec celles florissantes des Tigres asiatiques (Mumbai, Shanghai, Séoul), ainsi qu’avec les grandes cités en voie de développement (Mexico, Sao Paulo, Bahía Blanca, Lagos) et celles d’expression régionale telles les villes de la ‘Ceinture du Pacifique’.

2 Quelle est l’essence de la ville ‘globale ‘ et comment a-t-elle été représentée ? Est-ce un phénomène moderne ou une pratique ancienne ? Comment définissons-nous global – le globalisme est-il une conséquence de l’urbanisation de masse ou crée-t-il les conditions de l’émergence de la ville globale ? En quoi les villes globales du vingtième siècle ressemblent-elles ou diffèrent-elles dans leur forme et dans leur fonction de celles du passé et, en se basant sur les tendances actuelles, du futur ? Au vingt-et-unième siècle, les hommes habiteront plus que jamais auparavant dans des environnements urbains : « Pendant les trente années à venir, la population urbaine mondiale pourrait doubler passant de 2.6 à 5.2 milliards en 2025. Le plus gros de cette croissance s’opérera dans les pays en voie de développement, où près de 4 milliards de personnes (plus de la moitié du total) pourraient vivre dans des villes en 2025, comparés à 1.5 milliard (37%) au début des années 1990. »1 Quelle influence cela aura-t-il sur notre manière d’imaginer la ville et sur les questions d’immigration, de diaspora et d’inégalités géopolitiques existantes – car toutes les villes globales ne sont pas égales en ces termes. Quelles ont été et quelles seront les conséquences de telles inégalités économiques et technologiques ?

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3 Ces questions sont bien entendu aussi vastes que le phénomène dont elles découlent. S’il y a un problème de définition, les manières potentielles dont la ville « globale » peut être représentée et discutée sont elles aussi plurielles. Ceci est illustré par James Donald quand il remarque qu’« en appelant cette diversité « la ville », nous lui attribuons une cohérence ou une intégrité ». Si même la notion de base de ville nécessite une stratégie pour contenir sa diversité et créer une illusion « textuelle » d’intégrité, que dire de la ville globale, concept ô combien plus vaste ? Donald continue en comparant la notion énoncée par Benedict Anderson de nation en tant que communauté imaginée avec la manière dont nous concevons l’idée d’une notion abstraite de la ville en tant qu’environnement imaginé.2 Cette approche présente cependant le risque d’impliquer que la ville soit un concept psychologique et un processus culturel purement discursif au lieu d’une expérience vécue. Cependant, Donald a certainement raison quand il affirme que la ville est autant un concept psychologique qu’un espace matériel/social. La ville globale fait partie d’un environnement imaginé beaucoup plus vaste qui implique une unité engendrée par les réseaux de communication mondiaux et une certaine homogénéisation du tissu physique de la ville, en particulier dans le monde en voie de développement, mais également et de manière accrue, dans le monde entier.

4 La conférence sur les villes globales qui se déroula à l’Université de Liverpool Hope en 2006 et d’où est issu ce numéro spécial de Transtext(e)s-Transcultures, a fourni un forum où des intellectuels de différents horizons ont échangé leurs techniques et leurs visions de certaines villes du monde développé et en voie de développement, du Nord et du Sud, villes nouvelles, pleines d’audace mais aussi anciennes et usées, villes d’Amérique du Nord, d’Afrique, du Proche-Orient et d’Asie. Nous souhaitons que la sélection d’articles proposée illustre bien l’esprit d’échange et de débat au cœur du phénomène de la ville globale.

NOTES

1. Michel Andrieu, « The City in the Global Village », OECD Observer, n° 217-218 Summer 1999. 2. James Donald, « Metropolis : The City as Text”, in R. Bocock et K. Thompson (dir.), Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, p. 427.

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AUTEUR

LAWRENCE PHILLIPS Lawrence Phillips is Reader in English and Divisional Leader for Media, English and Culture at the University of Northampton. He is the editor of the peer-reviewed academic e-journal Literary London: Interdisciplinary studies in the representation of London (www.literarylondon.org), academic director of the annual international conference of the same name, and secretary of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His most recent publication is an edited collection entitled A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke: Victorian and Edwardian Representations of London (Rodopi: 2007). He is also the author of London Narratives: Post-war Fiction and the City (Continuum: 2006), and the editor of a further collection entitled The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Literary Representations of London (Rodopi, 2004).

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Pékin, ville spectacle: la construction controversée d’une métropole Olympique1

Anne-Marie Broudehoux

Introduction

1 Le situationniste Guy Debord avait prévu dès les années 1960 que le spectacle allait dominer la société de la fin du XXe siècle.2 Alors que l’expérience du quotidien est aujourd’hui envahie par le mercantilisme et les médias de masse, la ville elle-même s’est transformée en un simple espace de représentation, centré sur l’étalage des symboles et des biens de consommation. Le spectacle est désormais essentiel à la survie de nombreuses villes post-industrielles à travers le monde. Jadis centres de production reconvertis en centres de consommation, ces villes doivent aujourd’hui se repositionner sur la scène internationale afin d’attirer les investisseurs, les entreprises, les talents étrangers et les touristes. Pour se distinguer sur le marché mondial et rivaliser avec d’autres destinations de tourisme et d’affaires, ces grands centres urbains doivent se doter d’une image propre par un travail considérable de marketing urbain, de mise en marque (branding) et même d’imagineering3.

2 Le spectacle est tellement présent dans la nouvelle économie qu’un des moyens les plus efficaces pour les villes d’améliorer leur image internationale est la mise en scène d’événements de marque tels que les expositions universelles, les conférences internationales et des compétitions sportives comme la coupe du monde de football ou les jeux Olympiques. Accueillir des événements de prestige ne contribue pas seulement à accroître la visibilité de la ville sur le plan mondial, cela sert également, sur le plan local, à légitimer des transformations urbaines de grande envergure, ce qui fournit au gouvernement local l’occasion de revoir ses priorités dans les projets urbains tout en favorisant le concours d’investisseurs privés.4

3 La Chine a rapidement assimilé l’idéologie du spectacle qui domine aujourd’hui la société mondiale. Après avoir obtenu l’honneur de présenter les XIXes Olympiques à

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Pékin en 2008, l’État chinois a lancé une série de grands projets destinés à transformer le paysage de la ville ainsi que son image à l’étranger. Pour symboliser la stature internationale de la Chine et pour confirmer l’accession de sa capitale au statut de ville mondiale, l’État a promis les meilleurs Jeux de toute l’histoire. Si l’on en juge par la progression de l’ambitieux plan de construction et de rénovation, il paraît évident que les Jeux de 2008 seront les plus spectaculaires jamais tenus ; ils bénéficient d’investissements de plus de 40 milliards de dollars, soit trois fois la somme dépensée par Athènes et plus que le total des coûts de tous les Jeux d’été depuis 1984.5

4 Mais Guy Debord avait mis en garde contre l’effet anesthésiant du spectacle et son pouvoir de dépolitisation ; il peut servir d’instrument de pacification en altérant le sens critique de la population et en affaiblissant sa résistance et sa capacité de réaction. En Chine, le consumérisme joue un rôle politique important en provoquant une fascination pour l’enrichissement personnel et la consommation. Cette nouvelle idéologie dominante séduit la population et la distrait des préoccupations politiques et des revendications démocratiques. La conviction des gens que la consommation peut satisfaire leur désir de liberté et de bonheur a effectivement détourné leur attention des grands enjeux politiques auxquels leur société est confrontée.

5 Le spectacle offert par les préparatifs olympiques à Pékin a ainsi contribué à masquer les défaillances du passage accéléré de la Chine à une économie de marché, un passage accompagné de spéculation foncière, de corruption et d’une forte hausse des inégalités sociales. L’image renouvelée de la ville de Pékin qui en ressort incarne aujourd’hui l’émergence d’une Chine nouvelle, où la monotonie égalitariste du socialisme d’antan a fait place à l’éclatante inégalité du capitalisme d’État.

La grande transformation

6 La transformation olympique de Pékin a coïncidé avec un boom immobilier qui a modifié le paysage chinois à un rythme inégalé dans l’histoire de l’humanité.6 Au cours des années 2000, le taux d’accroissement de l’urbanisation en Chine s’est maintenu autour de 15 % ; les villes chinoises ont connu un développement effréné qui augmente la dépendance de la Chine envers les nations étrangères pour ses approvisionnements en matériaux de construction et en énergie. Cette révolution urbaine absorbe aujourd’hui plus de la moitié de la production mondiale de béton et le tiers de l’acier transformé, ce qui a fait grimper les cours mondiaux au point que des mines de fer fermées depuis longtemps ont été réouvertes.7

7 Même si elle les surpasse en importance, la métamorphose actuelle de Pékin n’est pas sans rappeler les périodes de construction intensive qui ont régulièrement transformé le paysage de la ville au cours du XXe siècle. Ainsi, dans les années 1950, Mao ordonna la construction d’une série de monuments d’inspiration soviétique pour marquer le dixième anniversaire de la fondation de la nouvelle république socialiste ; de même, à la fin des années 1980, le maire Chen Xitong tenta de renforcer le caractère distinct de la capitale en imposant une architecture néo-traditionnelle chinoise à toute nouvelle construction à Pékin.8 Le nouveau cycle de construction lancé par le président Jiang Zemin en vue des jeux Olympiques témoigne de l’émergence de la Chine en tant que nation autoritaire vouée au capitalisme. Il marque le point culminant d’une génération de libéralisation accélérée et de développement inégal, accompagné d’une polarisation socio-spatiale marquée, d’une spéculation foncière endémique, d’une explosion des

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partenariats publics-privés et de la transformation du paysage urbain en objet de spectacle.

8 Dans sa quête du statut de ville mondiale et son souci de faire date dans l’histoire olympique, Pékin suit les traces d’autres métropoles émergentes, en exploitant le pouvoir emblématique de l’architecture comme capital culturel.9 Longtemps utilisée comme marque de distinction permettant aux villes de devancer leurs rivales sur le plan sémiotique, l’architecture de marque, portant la signature d’architectes de grande renommée, joue aujourd’hui un rôle capital dans la nouvelle économie politique dominée par le signe. À l’exemple de Bilbao, cette ville du pays basque espagnol qui a connu une véritable renaissance grâce à la construction du grandiose musée Guggenheim par l’architecte vedette Frank O. Gehry, à la fin des années 1990, les villes qui nourrissent des aspirations mondiales rivalisent aujourd’hui dans la construction des structures les plus hautes, les plus audacieuses et les plus avancées sur le plan technologique afin d’attirer l’attention générale. Cette architecture spectaculaire, qui fait étalage d’une volonté de se démarquer par l’innovation et l’ostentation, est aujourd’hui appréciée non seulement pour son pouvoir publicitaire et sa capacité de marquer la ville du sceau d’un architecte de renom, mais aussi comme moteur de l’économie locale.10

9 La mise en scène des jeux Olympiques est devenue, de toute évidence, la principale compétition de ces jeux ; chaque ville hôtesse cherche à surpasser celles qui l’ont précédée par la création de monuments et de spectacles plus éblouissants les uns que les autres. Même si plusieurs autres villes ont élevé des monuments aux jeux Olympiques, les méga-projets lancés par Pékin sont sans précédent. Dès qu’elle eut obtenu les Jeux en 2001, Pékin commanda aux plus grands designers du monde une série de projets iconiques ayant pour dénominateurs communs des proportions gigantesques, une image avant-gardiste et des coûts hors de l’ordinaire.

10 Le premier grand projet lié à l’obtention des Jeux est le théâtre national ; il fut construit à l’initiative de Jiang Zemin comme un monument à son propre leadership. Le concours d’architecture fut remporté par Paul Andreu, spécialiste français des aérogares. La construction de cette gigantesque bulle de titane posée sur un plan d’eau a connu de nombreux retards en raison d’une opposition farouche de groupes populaires, de son design futuriste inadapté à la culture et au climat de la Chine, de l’origine étrangère de son concepteur et de sa localisation proche de la place Tiananmen, lieu hautement symbolique pour toute la nation. Les pires critiques portent sur son coût qui s’élève à 350 millions de dollars, ce qui représente dix fois la somme que l’État chinois consacre chaque année à la lutte contre la pauvreté.11

11 Faisant fi de la controverse, Pékin annonça une nouvelle série de concours internationaux pour le design des principaux équipements olympiques. Pour le stade, la soumission de Jacques Herzog et Pierre de Meuron, architectes suisses de renommée mondiale, fut retenue. Surnommé le « nid d’oiseau », le stade sera fait de cinquante mille tonnes de poutres d’acier géantes, entrecroisées dans un assemblage irrégulier d’apparence parfaitement aléatoire. Il a été dessiné avec l’intention d’en faire l’un des principaux symboles de la Chine contemporaine ; la plus grande prouesse de cette structure de 400 millions de dollars est de ne reposer sur aucun pilier vertical.12

12 À l’instar des autres projets olympiques, le stade a été conçu comme un instrument du spectacle. Comme la majeure partie des revenus des Jeux proviennent de leur diffusion mondiale sur les écrans de télévision, le stade et les autres équipements olympiques ont

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été dessinés en collaboration avec les réseaux de télévision, de manière à faciliter les prises de vue et à donner une image attrayante des Jeux aux millions de téléspectateurs à travers le monde. Il a été conçu pour être vu du ciel, en hélicoptère, et de près, par le biais d’un écran de télévision. Ce type d’architecture médiatique est très souvent condamné à une obsolescence accélérée, tant du point de vue matériel que symbolique, du fait que sa fonctionnalité et sa durabilité sont sacrifiées à son potentiel publicitaire. 13

13 Le centre national de natation, conçu par la firme australienne PTW, est un autre projet olympique spectaculaire. La structure cubique, d’apparence très simple, sera recouverte d’une membrane transparente en téflon assemblée en coussins irréguliers et l’ensemble rappellera la structure des bulles d’eau savonneuse. Cette enveloppe servira de support à la projection d’images et de créations lumineuses destinées à créer une expérience visuelle et sensorielle unique, partagée par des millions de téléspectateurs à travers le monde. Avec un coût de construction d’à peine 100 millions de dollars, ce « cube d’eau » de 50 000 mètres carrés constitue un des projets olympiques les moins onéreux.

14 Un quatrième projet olympique est le centre culturel et sportif Wukesong, conçu par la firme suisse Burckhardt and Partners. Décrit comme étant à la fois un stade de basket- ball, un hôtel, un centre commercial et un écran de télévision haut de 10 étages, l’édifice projeté est l’incarnation la plus totale du spectacle. Ses quatre façades, faites d’écrans LED géants, serviront à la diffusion en direct d’événements en cours dans le stade ou ailleurs, ainsi qu’à l’affichage de messages publicitaires.

15 Un autre projet olympique important en cours de construction est le troisième terminal de l’aéroport international de Pékin, œuvre de l’architecte britannique Sir Norman Foster. Ce portail ultra moderne de la capitale nationale chinoise sera érigé au coût exorbitant de 1,9 milliard de dollars ; il constitue la seconde rénovation de l’aéroport international depuis 1999, année où fut construit le second terminal. Ayant la forme d’un dragon d’un kilomètre de long, ce bâtiment est considéré comme le plus grand au monde. Une armée de plus de 35 000 ouvriers travaille sans relâche, jour et nuit et sept jours par semaine, afin d’assurer que le terminal soit prêt pour l’inauguration des Jeux.

16 Un dernier projet olympique, hautement controversé, est le nouveau quartier général de la CCTV, la chaîne de télévision centrale de Chine ; il a été dessiné par Rem Koolhaas, le concepteur hollandais passé maître dans l’art du branding architectural. Cette boucle trapézoïdale, construite au coût de 600 millions de dollars, défie la gravité ; il abritera l’organe de propagande principal de l’État chinois et promet d’être l’un des bâtiments les plus complexes du monde.14 En plus de ces projets et d’autres équipements construits ou rénovés pour les Jeux, la ville de Pékin consacrera près de 7 milliards de dollars à la construction d’autoroutes, à l’extension des lignes du monorail et du métro et à l’amélioration des rues et des parcs de la ville.

17 En transformant une capitale socialiste conservatrice en vitrine de l’avant-garde architecturale, ces projets spectaculaires réussiront à modifier l’image internationale de la ville et à garder Pékin dans la mire du monde entier. Certains projets semblent même avoir été commandés dans un but purement publicitaire. En 2003, Pékin a choqué la communauté internationale en sollicitant d’Albert Speer, fils de l’architecte préféré d’Adolf Hitler, une proposition pour la rénovation de l’axe symbolique de la ville. Comme on pouvait s’y attendre, cet événement ne passa pas inaperçu dans les

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médias internationaux, particulièrement en Allemagne où la nouvelle réveilla certains fantômes du passé.

Le prix de la gloire olympique

18 On ne manquera pas de se demander comment le gouvernement chinois peut avoir les moyens de s’offrir un tel potlach olympique alors que le revenu annuel moyen par habitant vient à peine d’atteindre les mille dollars.15 La majeure partie des revenus olympiques proviendra de la vente des droits de commandite et de diffusion des Jeux. Comme les Olympiques représentent une chance unique pour les compagnies à travers le monde de se donner une grande visibilité et plus encore de percer sur le marché chinois en pleine expansion, la compétition pour être désigné commanditaire officiel des Jeux est féroce et on s’attend à ce que les Jeux de Pékin génèrent les revenus les plus importants de toute l’histoire.16

19 Toutefois, même avec de tels revenus, l’État devra faire appel au secteur privé pour réaliser plusieurs projets, par le biais d’un transfert de responsabilité dans la construction et l’exploitation des édifices ; l’investisseur privé chargé de superviser la réalisation d’un projet deviendra par la suite son gestionnaire pour une période contractuelle de trente ans.17 En d’autres termes, bien que la construction soit en grande partie financée par l’État, plusieurs équipements olympiques seront privatisés et exploités commercialement après les Jeux. Plusieurs de ces projets ont donc été conçus de manière à s’adapter à leur fonction post-olympique. Ainsi le centre national de natation deviendra un royaume de l’hédonisme, avec piscine à vagues, plage artificielle, patinoire, club d’entraînement, cinéma, restaurants et boutiques. D’autres équipements olympiques seront convertis en stades pour le sport professionnel et en clubs sportifs privés ou encore en centres de loisirs pour les mieux nantis.18

20 La plupart des Pékinois ignorent qu’une grande partie des équipements olympiques qui sont construits sur les ruines de leur ancien quartier ne sera pas accessible au grand public après les Jeux ; ils seront plutôt convertis en luxueux clubs privés à l’usage exclusif de l’élite émergente et des touristes étrangers. De plus, l’utilisation de partenariats publics-privés ne garantit en aucun cas le succès financier des Jeux. Si d’un côté la construction des grands projets représente pour l’État une occasion rêvée d’occuper les surplus de main d’œuvre et d’apaiser les esprits dans une période d’instabilité liée au sous-emploi, de l’autre côté ces projets sont pour une bonne part financés à perte et comportent d’importants risques financiers. Si le retour sur ces investissements ne se concrétise pas dans un délai raisonnable, l’État chinois pourrait faire face à une importante crise fiscale.19 Le destin des Jeux de Pékin pourrait même ressembler à celui d’autres villes olympiques pour qui l’héritage le plus durable des Jeux a consisté en hausses de taxes, inflation, majoration des loyers ainsi qu’en une lourde dette qui a compromis les investissements dans les services sociaux. Comme ailleurs, les bénéfices des investissements publics dans les Jeux se feront au profit des investisseurs privés alors que les coûts, tant sociaux que financiers, seront supportés par les plus démunis.20

21 Mais ce qui rend la transformation olympique de Pékin tout à fait extraordinaire, c’est le fait que malgré des déboursés énormes les coûts de construction de la plupart des projets ne représentent qu’une faible partie de ce qu’ils auraient été ailleurs dans le monde.21 Un des facteurs ayant permis à Pékin de s’offrir une telle collection de projets

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d’envergure est le fait que le terrain sur lequel ils sont réalisés a été acquis à une fraction du coût du marché et cela grâce à la capacité qu’a l’État chinois de confisquer des terres au nom du bien commun.22 Le statut paradoxal de la Chine comme économie de marché sous la tutelle d’un État autoritaire a ainsi facilité la démolition de quartiers entiers et l’éviction massive de leurs résidants en vue des jeux Olympiques. Le Center on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE), basé à Genève, estime qu’en 2004 plus de 300 000 résidants du centre-ville de Pékin avaient déjà été délogés et leurs maisons rasées pour faire place à des projets d’équipement et d’infrastructures olympiques.23 La majorité des résidants n’ont eu droit qu’à un mois de préavis et ont obtenu un dédommagement équivalant à une fraction seulement de la valeur de leur maison.

22 Alors que de nombreuses victimes des évictions forcées acceptent leur sort comme un sacrifice nécessaire à la modernisation de la ville, d’autres ont tenté de résister à cette dépossession. Mais confrontés à la force, parfois même à la violence, ils n’ont souvent eu d’autre choix que celui de se soumettre. Les compagnies de démolition engagées par les entrepreneurs immobiliers pour nettoyer le site avant sa reconstruction embauchent des équipes d’éviction pour forcer les résidants récalcitrants (les «clous têtus» dans le jargon local) à libérer les lieux. Certaines de leurs tactiques incluent le débranchement des services publics ou l’endommagement délibéré des parties habitables de la maison. Les résidants qui résistent sont parfois menacés physiquement, voire battus, par les équipes d’éviction. Dans certains cas, des raids nocturnes sont organisés ; on chasse les gens de leur logis et la maison est démolie avec tous les effets personnels demeurés à l’intérieur.24 Le rapport annuel d’Amnistie Internationale pour 2004 témoigne de la fréquence de ces abus, qu’elle qualifie d’« embarras en matière de droits humains pour le gouvernement chinois ».25

23 Tous les jours, des groupes de Pékinois en colère se rassemblent pour exiger réparation de la part du gouvernement et des milliers d’entre eux ont intenté des poursuites judiciaires contre les entrepreneurs privés. Mais dans le système légal actuellement en vigueur, les intérêts de ces résidants sont fréquemment subordonnés à ceux des plus fortunés et des amis du pouvoir. Les poursuites sont rarement entendues en cour et les contestataires sont souvent soumis à diverses formes d’intimidation ou de harcèlement, à la détention et à la surveillance policière, ce qui les dissuade de se plaindre aux autorités ou de contacter les médias. Au cours des derniers mois, plusieurs avocats défendant la cause de victimes d’évincement ont été arrêtés et incarcérés pour des motifs aussi obscurs que le vol de secrets d’État.26

24 Le sentiment d’impuissance et le déchirement ressentis par les victimes de ces démolitions injustifiées, de même que l’effet psychologique de la peur constante de l’éviction, commencent à peser sur les Pékinois, surtout dans la population plus âgée. Outre le traumatisme psychologique lié au déracinement brutal, les populations déplacées subissent souvent des contrecoups économiques puisqu’elles doivent affronter une élévation du coût de la vie et une relocalisation loin des écoles, des sources d’emploi et des services publics. L’urbanisation olympique aura également provoqué une hausse considérable du coût des loyers, ce qui réduit la possibilité de se loger à proximité du centre-ville. La douleur d’avoir perdu l’héritage familial et un voisinage familier s’ajoute au sentiment de détresse et d’impuissance devant le destin. Après des tentatives infructueuses pour sauver leur demeure ou obtenir un dédommagement acceptable, certaines personnes se sont même tournées vers une forme de spectacle comme ultime moyen de crier leur désespoir. Dans les derniers

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mois, plusieurs ont ainsi tenté de se suicider afin d’attirer l’attention sur leur cause, souvent en s’immolant de façon spectaculaire sur la place publique.27

25 Un cas bien documenté est celui des frères Ye qui s’opposaient à la démolition de leur demeure et de leur restaurant, principale source de revenu de leur famille. Pour protester contre sa démolition imminente, le 1er octobre 2003, jour de la fête nationale chinoise, Ye Guoqiang tenta de se suicider en se jetant d’un pont dans la Cité Interdite, sous les yeux de milliers de visiteurs effarés. Ye survécut à sa chute mais il fut condamné à deux ans de prison pour avoir perturbé l’ordre public. Son frère, Ye Guozhu fut également incarcéré brièvement et leur père de 80 ans fut, selon ses dires, rudoyé par la police. Ayant perdu son domicile et sa seule source de revenus, la famille s’installa sous un viaduc et sollicita le secours d’un avocat pour obtenir gain de cause. Alors que Ye Guozhu œuvrait à organiser les résidants locaux pour combattre les évictions illégitimes, sa famille continuait de subir le harcèlement des policiers qui s’efforçaient de convaincre Ye de lâcher prise. En août 2004, après avoir demandé un permis pour tenir une manifestation publique contre les évictions forcées, Ye Guozhu, trouvé coupable de « chercher querelle et d’inciter au trouble », fut condamné à quatre ans de prison.28

26 Ce qui est le plus regrettable, c’est que ces pratiques brutales en rénovation urbaine n’auront probablement pas les résultats escomptés. En détruisant le tissu historique de la ville de Pékin et en oblitérant un paysage culturel unique, ces tactiques de modernisation urbaine anéantissent les principaux avantages de la ville de Pékin face à ses rivales et effacent à tout jamais les particularités qui donnaient à Pékin son caractère distinct.

Des étrangers dans la ville

27 Un autre facteur permettant de comprendre comment Pékin a pu se payer plus d’une dizaine de bâtiments ayant valeur d’icônes à l’occasion des jeux Olympiques et permettre aux plus grands architectes du monde de réaliser leurs projets les plus fous, c’est l’exploitation d’une vaste réserve d’ouvriers dociles et facilement remplaçables. Les coûts de construction sont réputés être parmi les plus bas au monde, grâce à la présence d’une véritable armée de travailleurs migrants provenant des provinces chinoises (leur nombre est estimé à 94 millions, une des plus importantes migrations de l’histoire, selon les experts); ils ne jouissent que de peu de droits dans la métropole et sont facilement exploités par des entrepreneurs peu scrupuleux.29 Payés en moyenne cinq dollars par jour, ils travaillent sans relâche, sept jours par semaine, dans des conditions aliénantes, vivant dans des baraquements sur le chantier ou campant dans des parties du bâtiment en construction. Privés du plein droit de citoyenneté dans la ville, ils n’ont aucun accès au logement subventionné ni à l’éducation publique pour leurs enfants.30 Il n’est pas rare d’entendre parler de cas où les ouvriers n’ont pas été payés depuis plus d’un an ou ont subi un accident de travail sans recevoir d’indemnité. 31 Le boom immobilier chinois a généré un fouillis de dettes entre entrepreneurs, adjudicataires et sous-contractants et la conséquence la plus courante en est le défaut de paiement du salaire des ouvriers. Le gouvernement chinois évalue les salaires impayés, pour l’année 2003 seulement, au total incroyable de 12,1 milliards de dollars.32

28 À Pékin, la frénésie olympique n’a pas amélioré les conditions de travail des ouvriers et la violence envers les supérieurs, la destruction intentionnelle de matériel et les

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manifestations massives de travailleurs migrants sont de plus en plus fréquentes.33 Au cours des dernières années, Pékin a connu une vague de suicides spectaculaires ; des ouvriers non-payés se jettent du sommet des édifices qu’ils construisent, dans un effort désespéré pour attirer l’attention sur leur situation intolérable. Ce phénomène est devenu si commun qu’on lui doit une expression chinoise désormais consacrée: «tiao lou xiu», littéralement «sauter d’un édifice pour témoigner».34

29 La transformation olympique de Pékin révèle donc au grand jour le paradoxe du miracle économique chinois, basé sur un régime d’exploitation inégalé dans l’histoire. Alors que la prospérité et l’image moderne de Pékin sont le produit du labeur des ouvriers migrants, ceux-ci demeurent les principales victimes de la modernisation accélérée de la Chine. En effet, les efforts en vue d’améliorer l’image de Pékin ne se sont pas limités à l’embellissement physique du paysage urbain ; ils ont également pris la forme de programmes sociaux visant à réformer les résidants de la ville. Une soi-disant campagne «civilisatrice» a été entreprise dans la capitale nationale en vue d’encourager sa population à se conformer à l’image de la Chine construite pour les Jeux. En effet, tous les éléments du branding olympique, y compris les slogans, les logos et les mascottes, conspirent à faire la propagande constante d’une image civilisée, éternelle, progressive et amicale de la Chine.35 Les programmes de réforme sociale se concentrent sur l’hygiène, le civisme et l’attitude générale envers les touristes. Ils prennent la forme de messages d’intérêt public dans la presse, sur les panneaux publicitaires et à la télévision. Ils enseignent aux gens à utiliser les toilettes publiques et les encouragent à sourire, à apprendre l’anglais, à éviter de cracher et de jeter des ordures ainsi qu’à garder leur chemise sur eux durant les grandes chaleurs estivales.36

30 De toute évidence, les cibles principales de ces campagnes civilisatrices sont les ouvriers migrants, qui sont décrits dans le discours officiel comme la principale entrave à l’image de modernité et de civilisation conçue pour les Jeux. Leurs manières grossières et leur hygiène déficiente, qui résulte souvent de leur indigence et de l’exploitation dont ils sont victimes, sont perçues comme la preuve de la nécessité de les réformer. La construction idéologique du migrant comme un être barbare, dangereux et en mauvaise santé a donc contribué à rendre acceptable leur exploitation et à dévaluer leur travail ; elle justifie les abus dont ils sont l’objet et légitime leur exclusion du plein droit de citoyenneté à Pékin.37

31 Exclus de la représentation officielle comme membres estimés de la société chinoise dans toute la propagande olympique et les revues de marketing, les travailleurs itinérants se verront probablement refuser toute participation aux célébrations olympiques, même comme simples spectateurs. Par le passé, lors des grands événements ayant lieu dans la capitale nationale, ils ont été renvoyés de force dans leurs villages ou bannis du centre-ville.38 L’image de criminels dont les ont affublés les médias officiels a contribué à créer une psychose autour de leur présence ; elle pourra justifier leur expulsion avant les Jeux, au nom de la « sécurité ».

Le grand écart

32 Le régime d’exploitation qui aura facilité la reconstruction de Pékin en vue des jeux Olympiques est symptomatique des grandes divisions sociales qui caractérisent la société chinoise au tournant du XXIe siècle. Jadis égalitariste, la Chine est devenue au cours des vingt dernières années une des sociétés les plus polarisées du monde.39 Alors

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que le libéralisme économique a contribué à l’enrichissement de la Chine, les bénéfices des réformes économiques n’ont pas été partagés équitablement et la croissance économique est allée de pair avec la hausse des prix, l’inflation et la baisse du niveau de vie des plus démunis. L’écart entre les revenus des populations urbaines aisées et ceux des paysans pauvres dépasse aujourd’hui celui qui existait avant la révolution de 1949 et les disparités sociales seraient comparables à celles qu’on retrouve dans les nations africaines les plus pauvres.40 La polarisation sociale risque de devenir l’un des problèmes les plus explosifs que la Chine doive affronter au XXIe siècle.

33 Partout en Chine, le mécontentement se fait sentir chez les millions de gens qui ont perdu foyer, travail, assurance-maladie et pension. Les récentes allégations de corruption chez les officiels chinois responsables des constructions olympiques, à propos de l’appropriation de fonds destinés à la préparation des Jeux, ont porté l’exaspération publique à son comble. Selon un rapport officiel, 3,76 millions de Chinois auraient pris part en 2004 à 74 000 « incidents de masse », une moyenne de 203 par jour, soit 10 fois plus qu’au cours de la décennie précédente. Alors que les tensions portant sur l’écart entre les revenus, la disparition des services sociaux et les alliances douteuses entre membres du parti et gens d’affaires ne cessent de croître, la cause principale de la récente explosion du nombre de manifestations publiques réside dans les conflits sur la propriété terrienne.41

34 Les travaux incessants associés à la transformation olympique de Pékin ont exacerbé les inégalités sociales et les autorités chinoises sont visiblement soucieuses des conséquences possibles d’une rénovation urbaine incontrôlée sur la stabilité nationale. À travers la Chine, les conflits portant sur la confiscation des terres et les évictions ont mené à des affrontements violents qui dégénèrent parfois en insurrections locales.42 Le ministère chinois de la construction a récemment admis avoir reçu trois fois plus de plaintes au cours des trois premiers mois de 2004 que pendant la même période l’année précédente : à la fin de juin, 4 000 groupes et plus de 18 600 individus à travers la Chine avaient déposé des pétitions portant sur le transfert illicite de propriétés.43

35 Le fait que la propriété se retrouve au cœur des conflits n’est pas accidentel. La redistribution des terres était l’un des principaux dogmes de la révolution communiste. La conscience grandissante que la richesse et la corruption sont intimement liées au développement immobilier et à la spéculation, aux dépens des pauvres le plus souvent, a entraîné un mouvement de révolte et de revendication pour un minimum de justice distributive.44

36 Ce mécontentement populaire n’est pas seulement lié à la perte d’un domicile et d’une source de revenus, il est également dû au sentiment partagé qu’un droit citoyen fondamental a été violé. Jadis protecteur des droits des travailleurs dans la lutte contre l’exploitation capitaliste, le parti communiste est devenu aujourd’hui l’allié des capitalistes dans leur lutte contre les ouvriers.45 Et les terres des riches propriétaires terriens, autrefois saisies pour être redistribuées aux pauvres, sont aujourd’hui confisquées aux plus démunis afin d’être remises entre les mains d’entrepreneurs privés et de gestionnaires municipaux sans scrupules. Pour de nombreux citoyens chinois, ces transactions représentent une rupture du contrat social qui les liait au parti communiste depuis 1949. Le sentiment grandissant que l’État n’est plus en mesure d’honorer ses responsabilités morales ou n’en a tout simplement plus la volonté, aura bientôt raison du peu de faveur que le parti communiste a pu conserver parmi les plus démunis.

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Contenir le chaos

37 De toute évidence, l’État chinois redoute que l’agitation sociale et l’insatisfaction populaire entraînent des risques pour le développement économique et la stabilité sociale du pays et qu’elles menacent ainsi le monopole du Parti sur le pouvoir. Un éditorial publié en novembre 2004 par l’agence de presse chinoise officielle suggérait que la nation était arrivée à un « carrefour social » pouvant mener à l’«âge d’or de son développement » ou à une « ère de contradiction et de chaos ».46 La candeur d’une telle déclaration témoigne des importants changements qui ont eu lieu chez les dirigeants chinois en septembre 2004 lorsque Hu Jintao assuma pour la première fois les pleins pouvoirs, après que Jiang Zemin eût remis sa démission comme chef de l’armée chinoise.

38 Décrit comme un populiste pragmatique et intègre, Hu a pris sur-le-champ une série de mesures en vue de calmer les tensions et d’apaiser le mécontentement social. L’État s’engagea publiquement à ralentir la confiscation de terres et à réduire les démolitions. Il imposa même un moratoire sur la conversion de terres agricoles en terrains voués au développement industriel.47 Pour étouffer les critiques à l’égard du programme olympique et atténuer la grogne que provoquaient les dépenses publiques consacrées à la réalisation de projets frivoles dans la capitale, l’administration Hu ordonna une réévaluation immédiate des préparatifs olympiques. Ce décret fut passé quelques jours à peine après l’annonce que les Jeux d’Athènes avaient dépassé de 30% le budget prévu. Plusieurs projets olympiques furent donc revus pour en réduire les coûts et les échéances de construction furent repoussées de plus d’un an. Toutefois, il apparut bientôt que ces initiatives hautement publicisées n’étaient que des gestes purement symboliques destinés à dissiper la colère et le ressentiment. En vérité, la plupart des changements apportés aux projets olympiques furent superficiels et semblent avoir été motivés plus par le souci d’apaiser l’opinion publique que par un véritable engagement en faveur d’une gestion responsable des fonds de l’État. Aucune des modifications apportées aux divers projets n’a eu d’effet marquant et les travaux de construction ont repris peu après.48

39 Ces mesures d’austérité allaient de pair avec un changement de ton dans la rhétorique officielle à propos des jeux Olympiques. L’État commença à parler de « Jeux frugaux et prudents » et il s’efforça de d’attirer la faveur populaire en présentant l’événement comme « les Jeux du peuple ».49 Dans l’espoir de détourner l’attention des grands problèmes nationaux, le gouvernement Hu se mit à utiliser les Jeux comme un outil de propagande pour promouvoir l’unité nationale et rassembler autour d’un projet commun une population de plus en plus divisée. L’État présenta donc les Jeux comme une entreprise patriotique ; il mit de l’avant la fierté nationale chinoise et le statut enfin retrouvé de puissance mondiale. Ce faisant, il pensait décourager toute opposition au projet olympique.

40 Toutefois, ces tactiques de diversion et d’apaisement n’ont pas suffi à redonner à l’État le contrôle sur l’opinion publique. Des exemples récents de répression contre des journalistes trop diserts, des internautes dissidents, des écrivains critiques, des intellectuels libéraux, des activistes ouvriers et des avocats socialement engagés semblent motivés par un désir d’instiller un climat de peur à travers la Chine, d’intimider les contestataires éventuels et d’encourager l’autocensure. Alors que se

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rapproche la date d’ouverture des Jeux, l’État chinois redoute que divers groupes d’intérêt ne profitent de la présence des médias étrangers pour faire entendre leurs doléances. Les dirigeants sont conscients du fait que des manifestations violentes porteraient atteinte à l’organisation des Jeux, comme ce fut le cas à Mexico en 1968 et à Séoul en 1988, lorsque des étudiants avaient profité de la proximité des Olympiques pour organiser d’importantes manifestations.50 Sachant fort bien que des Jeux sans incident provoqueraient dans l’opinion internationale un revirement favorable à la Chine, l’État n’ignore pas non plus que toute violence associée aux Olympiques pourrait attirer une attention médiatique aux effets négatifs et compromettre le laborieux travail entrepris pour redorer l’image de la Chine.

41 Le défi pourrait bien venir plus tôt que prévu. En effet, un décret municipal exige la fermeture de tous chantiers de construction dans la ville de Pékin avant la fin de l’année 2007 afin de laisser retomber la poussière avant le début des Jeux en août 2008. On peut penser que plusieurs milliers d’ouvriers iront travailler sur des chantiers dans d’autres villes chinoises et que quelques centaines retourneront volontairement dans leurs villages ; en revanche, la présence de nombreux ouvriers mécontents et sans emploi, traînant dans les rues de la ville à l’approche des Jeux, ne manquera pas d’inquiéter. Le temps seul dira si l’État chinois résistera à la tentation d’utiliser la violence dont il a le monopole pour réprimer toute tentative de révolte.

Conclusion

42 Les jeux Olympiques auront joué un rôle important dans la transformation, tant matérielle que politique, du Pékin post-socialiste. Comme moteur du développement justifiant des transformations urbaines d’envergure, les Jeux ont véritablement exacerbé les inégalités entraînées par le passage rapide de la Chine à une économie de marché. L’image nationale de prospérité et de modernité construite pour les Jeux s’est faite sur le dos des pauvres, qui ont été taxés autant par le détournement de fonds publics au profit de projets monumentaux que par l’exploitation directe et les mesures d’éviction qu’ils ont eu à subir. De fait, ceux qui auront payé pour les Jeux par leurs sacrifices et par les coupures de l’aide sociale n’en seront pas les premiers bénéficiaires. Les principales retombées olympiques auxquelles peut s’attendre la population seront l’inflation, l’augmentation des taxes, la restriction des libertés civiles et la ségrégation socio-spatiale. Par désespoir, ceux qui ont été marginalisés par la reconstruction olympique de Pékin se sont parfois tournés vers le spectacle pour attirer l’attention sur leurs épreuves, en tenant des manifestations publiques, en se jetant en bas de certains édifices ou en s’immolant par le feu ; mais cet étalage de misère et de désolation ne pourra pas faire contrepoids à la majesté du spectacle olympique.

43 À mesure que se rapproche l’échéance olympique, une nouvelle ville émerge des cratères des chantiers. Pour une partie de la population, cette nouvelle ville de Pékin est une ville aux possibilités infinies offrant la promesse d’un avenir prospère ; un paradis d’occasions d’affaires, de créativité, et de style. Mais pour ceux qui résistent à la domination du spectacle, cette ville nouvelle apparaît comme un enfer d’égocentrisme délirant, d’opportunisme et de promesses non tenues ; une ville sans urbanité, où des architectures mégalomanes sans aucun lien entre elles émergent des cendres à peine refroidies de quartiers anciens jadis très animés. Cette nouvelle métropole est le miroir de la société qui l’habite aujourd’hui, une société individualiste qui a renoncé, et sans

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aucun remords, à la cohésion sociale et la solidarité et qui laisse une élite prédatrice faite d’entrepreneurs privés, de technocrates et d’amis du Parti faire le sacrifice d’une population vulnérable et marginalisée. Alors que l’image olympique de Pékin se présente comme la réalisation du vieux rêve de rendre à la Chine sa fierté nationale, pour ceux qui en sont exclus le rêve prend l’allure d’un cauchemar fait d’espoirs trahis, d’injustices et de désespoir.51 L’avenir dira si la résistance au spectacle est possible ou si l’émergence de cette nouvelle métropole réussira à mystifier les citoyens chinois et à détourner leurs regards des tragédies humaines qui se jouent à l’ombre de ses plus hautes tours.

NOTES

1. Une version antérieure de cet article est publiée en langue anglaise sous le titre «Delirious Beijing: The Conspicuous Construction of an Olympic Metropolis», in Mike Davis et Bertrand Monk (dir.), Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism, New York, The New Press, 2007. 2. Guy Debord, La société du spectacle, Paris, Gallimard, 1992 (1967); Guy Debord, Commentaires sur la société du spectacle. Paris, Gallimard, 1992 (1988). 3. L’imagineering est une pratique développée par la corporation Disney dans la réalisation d’environnements artificiels de divertissement en vue de créer des paysages spectaculaires suggérant un état festif permanent. Il mélange imagination créative et savoir-faire technique dans la thématisation des biens, des services et des lieux. C’est un concept de design total englobant tous les aspects du design de l’environnement dans le but de créer une ambiance particulière, d’un réalisme calculé et rassurant, à mi-chemin entre l’illusion et la réalité. On retrouve dans le succès des espaces de Disney une ambiance carnavalesque propre à éloigner le consommateur de la routine du quotidien, sur un mode exaltant mais sécuritaire. (voir Hannigan, 1998 ; Sorkin, 1990) (Holcomb 1999 ; Frieden et Sagalyn, 1990 ; Kotler, 1993) 4. Sur l’importance des événements de marque et de la mise en marché des villes, voir John D. Horne et Wolfram Manzenreiter, «Accounting for Mega-Events», International Review for the Sociology of Sports, vol. 39, no2, 2004, pp.187-203; Harry H. Hiller, «Mega-events, Urban Boosterism and growth strategies: An Analysis of the Objectives and Legitimations of the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid», International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 24, no2, June 2000, pp. 439-458; David Whitson and Donald Macintosh, «The Global Circus: International Sport, Tourism and the Marketing of Cities», Journal of Sport and Social Issues,vol. 20, no3, August 1996, pp.278-295; Matthew Burbank, Olympic Dreams: The Impact of Mega-Events on Local Politics, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001. 5. Alan Abrahamson, «Built-In Commitment — Beijing has become a huge construction site in order to stage the 2008 Olympics», Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2005, D-5; Alan Abrahamson, «Games Bring In $9.6 Million», Los Angeles Times, 13 May 2005, p.D-5. 6. Les experts estiment qu’un milliard de pieds carrés d’espaces destinés aux bureaux, aux commerces et au logement seront construits à Pékin entre 2006 et 2008, soit l’équivalent de trois Manhattan ; leur coût s’élèvera à 160 milliards de dollars. William Mellor and Allen Cheng, «Beijing home to $160b worth of construction», Vancouver Sun,4 March2006. 7. Deyan Sudjic, «The city that ate the world»,The Guardian, 16 October 2005.

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8. Anne-Marie Broudehoux, «Learning from Chinatown: The Search for a Modern Architectural Identity, 1911-1998», in Nezar Alsayyad (dir), Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, Westport, London, Praeger, 2001, pp.156-180. 9. Pour plus d’information sur le rôle joué par l’architecture dans la nouvelle économie politique du signe, voir Steve Miles et Malcolm Miles, Consuming Cities, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp.45-201; Darrel Crilley, «Architecture as Advertising: Constructing the Image of Redevelopment» in Gerry Kearns et Chris Philo (dir), Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1993; Graeme Evans, «Hard-Branding the Cultural City— From Prado to Prada», International journal of urban and regional research, vol. 27, no2, June 2003, pp.417-440. 10. Guy Julier, «Urban Designscapes and the Production of Aesthetic Consent», Urban Studies, vol. 42, no5-6, May 2005, pp.869-887. 11. Pour une description complète de la saga du théâtre national, voir Anne-Marie Broudehoux, The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing, London and New York, Routledge, 2004, pp.225-31. 12. Pour une description détaillée des différents projets olympiques, voir Kieran Long, «The greatest show on earth», The Guardian, 12 January 2004; «Beijing Readies facilities plans», China Daily, 12 July 2003, p.5; Zheng Shiling, «History comes crashing down: Foreign architectural designs are swallowing up China’s history and culture», Beijing Review, 31 August 2004; Susan Jakes, «Soaring ambitions. The world's most visionary architects are rebuilding China», Times Asia. 26 April 2004; « Beijing's Olympic Gateway», Straits Times (Singapore) 18 November 2003; Lu Xiaojing and Jeremy Goldhorn. «What the future holds for Beijing's architecture», China Daily, 8 May 2004; Mark Magnier, «China's great leap upward», Los Angeles Times, 2 January, 2005, p.E-1. 13. Par le passé, les équipements olympiques conçus pour accueillir un type précis de compétition n’ont pu être reconvertis en équipements communautaires qu’au prix de nombreuses difficultés, en raison de leur taille et de leur design très spécifique. L’exemple du stade olympique de Montréal montre bien que ces bâtiments peuvent devenir à la longue une lourde charge financière pour les villes qui doivent en assurer l’entretien. En 2006, trente ans après les Jeux de 1976, Montréal a effectué le dernier paiement pour un stade qui a perdu presque tout usage, sinon celui d’être un symbole. L’équipe professionnelle de baseball, qui l’avait longtemps utilisé, l’a quitté en 2005 en raison notamment de son design inapproprié ; aujourd’hui, le stade abrite à l’occasion des foires commerciales, des salons de l’auto ou des compétitions canines ; même les concerts de rock lui préfèrent le nouveau stade de hockey jugé mieux adapté à cet usage. Malgré de faibles revenus et des coûts d’entretien élevés, la ville ne peut prendre à sa charge les 250 millions de dollars que coûterait sa démolition. David Whitson and Donald Macintosh, «The Global Circus: International Sport, Tourism and the Marketing of Cities», Journal of Sport and Social Issues,vol. 20, no3, August 1996, pp.278-295. 14. «Kool enough for Beijing», China Daily, 2 March 2004; «Koolhaas as seen by the architectural world», China Daily, 2 March 2004, p.13; Chistopher Hawthorne, «China Pulls Up the Drawbridge», New York Times, 19 September 2004; Clifford Coonan, «Empire building», South China Morning Post, 22 October 2004, p. 5; Joseph Kahn, «A Glass Bubble That's Bringing Beijing to a Boil», New York Times, 15 June 2004 , p.A1. 15. Le revenu annuel brut moyen a atteint les 1 090 dollars en 2003. Li Yongyan, «China’s Economic Miracle Hasn’t Reached the Poor», Asia Times, 26 August 2004. 16. Les compagnies devront débourser 62 millions de dollars pour le seul droit d’être partenaire officiel des Jeux de 2008. À elle seule, Coca Cola devrait verser un milliard de dollars au comité olympique en tant que commanditaire officiel, le double de ce qu’elle dépense habituellement. Mark Godfrey, Going for Gold, www.sinomedia.net/eurobiz/v200406/story0406.html, June 2004. 17. , Pour la construction du stade olympique par exemple, le groupe CITIC, conglomérat transnational, déboursera 42% des coûts de construction, tandis que 58% seront payés par le gouvernement municipal de Pékin, par le biais de la Compagnie d’État de la Gestion des Biens. Les

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deux compagnies formeront un partenariat sous le nom de Compagnie du Stade National, qui sera responsable des investissements, du design, de la construction, du fonctionnement et de la gestion du stade pendant les Jeux. Cette compagnie détiendra ensuite les droits d’exploitation du stade pour une période de 30 ans. Voir «Consortium wins bid for National Stadium», China Daily, 11 August 2003. 18. Autres exemples : le centre équestre olympique sera transformé en club de golf ; le village olympique sera converti en quartier résidentiel et commercial, avec des équipements privatisés comme un centre de divertissement, un palais des congrès et une école internationale. Ryan Ong, «New Beijing, Great Olympics: Beijing and its Unfolding Legacy», Stanford Journal of East-Asian Affairs, vol. 14, no2, 2004, pp.35-49. 19. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p.132. 20. Voir David Whitson et Donald Macintosh, «The Global Circus: International Sport, Tourism and the Marketing of Cities», Journal of Sport and Social Issues, vol.20, no3, August 1996, pp.278-295; John D. Horne et Wolfram Manzenreiter. «Accounting for Mega-Events», International Review for the sociology of sports, vol. 39, no2, 2004, pp.187-203; Matthew Burbank, Olympic Dreams: the Impact of Mega-Events on Local Politics, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001. 21. On estime que ces coûts auraient été 10 fois plus élevés dans la plupart des villes du monde industrialisé et près de 14 fois plus à New York ou Londres. 22. Ke Fang and Yan Zhang, «Plan and market mismatch: Urban redevelopment in Beijing during a period of transition», Asia Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 44, no2, August 2003, pp.149-162. 23. http://www.cohre.org. Voir aussi Freda Wan, «Rights group urges eviction safeguards», South China Morning Post, 25 March 2004, p.8. 24. Louisa Lim, «China detains demolition gang», BBC News, 31 October 2003, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3229583.stm; Louisa Lim, «China to defuse property unrest», BBC News, 15 June, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia- pacific/3807627.stm. 25. Jane Macartney, «Thousands of homes destroyed to make way for Olympic tourists», Times Online, 26 May 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1628199,00.html 26. Sam Howe Verhovek, «Rebellion of the Displaced», Los Angeles Times, 5 September 2003, p.A-1; Francis Markus, «Chinese eviction lawyer jailed», BBC News, 28 October 2003, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3220643.stm. 27. Jehangir Pocha, «Demolitions Straining Families in China», Boston Globe, 9 July 2004, p.A6. 28. «China eviction protester jailed», BBC News, 18 December 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/asia-pacific/4107609.stm. 29. J. Yardley, «In a Tidal wave, China’s masses pour from Farm to City», New York Times, 12 September 2004, p.6. 30. Il y aurait près de 3 millions de travailleurs migrants à Pékin, ville qui compte 15 millions d’habitants. Les chiffres officiels situent le nombre de ces ouvriers employés sur les chantiers olympiques à 35 000. Charles Hutzler, Associated Press, 28 March 2006. 31. Mary-Anne Toy, «New China Rises on the Backs of Unpaid Migrant Workers», The Age, 30 January 2006; J. Kahn et J. Yardley, «Amid China’s boom, no helping hand for young Qingming», New York Times, 1 August 2004, p.A1 and p.A4. 32. Ces chiffres, fournis par l’État chinois bien connu pour ses statistiques douteuses, doivent être considérés comme inférieurs à la réalité. Mark Magnier «China's Migrant Workers Ask for Little and Receive Nothing», Los Angeles Times, 21 January, 2004, p.A-4. 33. Par exemple, en octobre 2005, Wang Binyu a été exécuté pour avoir tué quatre personnes dans une altercation portant sur un salaire impayé. Mary-Anne Toy, «New China Rises on the Backs of Unpaid Migrant Workers», The Age, 30 January 2006. 34. Radio Free Asia, «Chinese Workers Jump to Death for Unpaid Wages», 2004, http:// www.rfa.org/english/news/social/2004/05/25/136809/.

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35. Par exemple, la mascotte olympique est constituée de cinq adorables créatures en peluche, les «cinq amis» dont les noms respectifs, Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini, forment la phrase «Pékin vous souhaite la bienvenue». Ces mascottes illustrent le désir de la Chine d’adoucir son image d’État autoritaire et dictatorial en se présentant plutôt comme une grande puissance amicale. L’évolution du slogan olympique évoque de son côté les changements de priorités dans la mise en marché des Jeux, en passant de «New Beijing, Great Olympics» qui annonçait à l’origine les changements à venir, à «Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics» qui révélait le désir d’actualiser l’image de la ville ; en juin 2005, un nouveau slogan «One World, one Dream» proclamait enfin les ambitions mondiales de la Chine. 36. Pour en savoir plus sur les campagnes civilisatrices à Pékin, ainsi que sur la soi-disant « révolution des toilettes », lire Anne-Marie Broudehoux, The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing, London and New York, Routledge, 2004, pp.174-188. 37. Ann Anagnost, «The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi)», Public Culture, vol. 16, no2, 2004, pp. 189-208. 38. C’est ce qui s’est passé, par exemple, à l’occasion des jeux Asiatiques, en 1990. Anne-Marie Broudehoux, The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing, London and New York, Routledge, 2004, pp. 152-155. 39. En fait, le socialisme chinois n’a jamais véritablement éradiqué les inégalités sociales et la société socialiste était gérée par un système de citoyenneté inégale entre résidants ruraux et urbains. 40. En juin 2005, les leaders chinois annonçaient que le taux de pauvreté avait augmenté pour la première fois depuis 1978. Les citoyens les plus riches représentant 10% de la population détenaient 45% de la richesse totale du pays, tandis que les 10% les plus pauvres s’en partageaient moins de 1%. Xinhua News Agency, in Peter S. Goodman, «Rural Poor Aren't Sharing in Spoils of China's Changes», Washington Post, 12 July 2005, p.A1; Caolin Gu and Jianafa Shen, «Transformation of urban socio-spatial structure in socialist market economies: the case of Beijing», Habitat International, 27, 2003, pp.107-122. K. Bradsher, «Now, a Great Leap Forward in Luxury», New York Times, 19 June 2004, p.C1 and p.C6. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p.144. Wang Hui, China’s New Order: Society, Politics and Economy in Transition, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2003. 41. Mark Magnier, «Letting Passions Burn May Backfire on China» , Los Angeles Times, 25 April 2005, p.A-1. Jehangir S. Pocha, «China's inequities energize New Left», San Francisco Chronicle, 19 June 2005, p.F1; Robert Marquand, «In China, stresses spill over into riots», Christian Science Monitor, 22 November 2004, World, p.1. 42. Les fermiers dont les terres sont confisquées par des promoteurs immobiliers pour le développement résidentiel et l’expansion urbaine manifestent de plus en plus souvent dans les rues. En août 2004, par exemple, des centaines de fermiers en colère ont bloqué les rues d’une banlieue de Pékin avec leurs charrettes et leurs bicyclettes pour protester contre la saisie de terres aux abords de la ville.En décembre 2005, la police a tué 20 contestataires près de Hong Kong ; ils revendiquaient des indemnités justes pour la perte de leurs terres à l’occasion de la construction d’une centrale électrique. Edward Cody, «China's Land Grabs Raise Specter of Popular Unrest», Washington Post, 5 October 2004, p.A1; Sam Crane, «In China, It’s powerlessness to the people», Los Angeles Times, 18 December 2005. 43. Elaine Kurtenbach, «Chinese Lose Homes, Farms in New Land Grab», Los Angeles Times, 6 March 2005, p.A-3; Edward Cody, «China's Land Grabs Raise Specter of Popular Unrest», Washington Post, 5 October 2004, p.A1. 44. Le magazine Forbes a publié la liste des cent personnes les plus riches de Chine ; près de la moitié d’entre elles se retrouvent dans le domaine immobilier. De plus, une étude récente des 20 000 individus les plus riches de Chine révèle que moins de 5% d’entre eux auraient fait fortune grâce à leur mérite uniquement et que plus de 90% seraient liés à des membres en vue du

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gouvernement ou à des personnalités influentes du Parti. Minxin Pei. «The Dark Side of China’s Rise», Foreign Policy, March-April, 2006 ; Jehangir S. Pocha, «China's inequities energize New Left — Failures of reform buoy new thinking», San Francisco Chronicle, 19 June 2005, p.F1.; Peter S. Goodman, «Rural Poor Aren't Sharing In Spoils of China's Changes», Washington Post, 12 July 2005, p.A1. 45. Voir David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 150. 46. Robert Marquand, «In China, stresses spill over into riots», Christian Science Monitor, 22 November 2004, World, p.1. 47. Le parlement chinois annonça également son intention d’abolir la taxe agricole, mettant ainsi fin à une pratique imposée aux paysans chinois depuis près de 2 600 ans. Le comité central du parti communiste chinois punit également de nombreux bureaucrates impliqués dans des transactions immobilières illégales et expulsa le ministre des Terres et Ressources pour avoir accepté plus de 600 000 dollars en pots-de-vin. Edward Cody, «China's Land Grabs Raise Specter of Popular Unrest», Washington Post, 5 October 2004, p.A1. See also Elaine Kurtenbach, «Chinese Lose Homes, Farms in New Land Grab», Los Angeles Times, 6 March 2005, p.A-3. 48. Par exemple, les architectes du stade olympique ont dû réduire la quantité d’acier utilisée dans la construction et éliminer la toiture rétractable afin de réduire les coûts ; mais dans son ensemble, le projet a subi peu de modifications importantes. 49. Chistopher Hawthorne, «China Pulls Up the Drawbridge», New York Times, 19 September 2004;Chen Wen, «Dear Prudence: Beijing Olympic planners discussing financing and the long- term goals of 2008», Beijing Review, http://www.bjreview.com.cn/200436/Cover-200436(C).htm; Jonathan Watts, «Beijing-baiting is latest sport as Olympic focus shifts to China», Guardian Weekly, 3-9 September 2004, p. 28 ; Li Gang, «Beijing tries to rein in costs for 2008», CRI News.31 August 2004; Ulf Meyer, «Will the 2008 Olympics be a boon or boondoggle for Beijing?», San Francisco Chronicle, 28August 2004; David Fang, «Tight grip on the budget; 'Frugal Games' is guiding principle for planners who decide that 'less is more'», South China Morning Post, 1 September 2004, p. 10. 50. Quelques semaines avant les Jeux de Mexico, des milliers d’étudiants envahirent les rues pour protester contre le détournement au profit des célébrations olympiques de fonds publics destinés à la sécurité sociale. Atterré à l’idée que les Jeux pourraient être annulés, le gouvernement mexicain réagit par une violente répression connue aujourd’hui sous le nom de massacre de Tlatelolco ; des centaines de protestataires y perdirent la vie. Les Jeux eurent lieu comme prévu, sans aucune intervention de la communauté internationale. À Séoul, les étudiants sud-coréens et des groupes d’opposition utilisèrent la présence des médias étrangers attirés par les Olympiques pour amorcer la fragile transition d’une dictature militaire vers une démocratie pluraliste. En juin 1987, une mobilisation populaire massive s’étendit à toute la Corée du Sud, poussant la communauté internationale à faire pression pour que les Jeux aient lieu dans un autre pays si l’affaire n’était pas réglée rapidement. Sous cette pression internationale, le gouvernement sud-coréen acquiesça aux demandes des protestataires et lança une série de réformes démocratiques qui forcèrent finalement le général Chun à se retirer ; les premières élections présidentielles en seize ans eurent lieu en décembre 1987. John M. Hoberman, The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order. Austin, University of Texas, 1986; Larson, James F. et Heung-Soo Park, Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympic Games. Boulder, Westview Press, 1993; Pieter de Lange, The Games Cities Play. Pretoria, Sigma Press, 1998. 51. Ironiquement, le thème du rêve figure au centre de la propagande olympique, dont le slogan officiel est : «One World, One Dream».

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RÉSUMÉS

In July 2001, the international Olympic Committee announced that Beijing had won its bid to host the 2008 summer Olympic Games. From that moment, the city began working on a major overhaul that would deeply transform both its social and physical landscapes, to construct and project a new image of China to the world. The Chinese government commissioned the world’s most renowned « starchitects » to build a series of iconic architectural projects that would reflects the leadership’s ambition to reclaim China’s position as a world leader. Beijing’s Olympic makeover recalls earlier cycles of intensive state-sponsored architectural production that periodically transformed its landscape throughout the 20th century in response to shifts in ideology, but one that departs radically from previous attempts to reinvent its image. Drawing upon technological prowess, incommensurable scale, and avant-garde design, these projects present a radically new world image of China and epitomize a new Chinese reality, where the monotonous equality of socialism has been replaced by the spectacular inequalities of capitalism. This paper examines the physical and rhetorical construction of this image through a study of Beijing’s pre-Olympic metamorphosis. It presents this last round of conspicuous construction as symptomatic of new changes taking place in Chinese society. By examining public debates surrounding this new phase of urban transformation, as well as global influences and grassroots resistance to this process, this paper suggests that this new image may be counterproductive as a long-term strategy of urban distinction because it annihilates the city’s competitive advantage by sacrificing its historical urban fabric, and disrupts the social landscape that had given Beijing its distinctive urban culture.

AUTEUR

ANNE-MARIE BROUDEHOUX Anne-Marie Broudehoux is an assistant professor at the School of Design of the University of Quebec at Montreal. She is the author of The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing (Routledge 2004), which was awarded the 2004-2005 International Planning History Society (IPHS) book prize in 2006. She is currently working on a new book on the socio-spatial impacts of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

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New York dans le polar métaphysique : la ville totale

Delphine Carron

1 New York City est le cadre choisi par de nombreux auteurs, américains ou non. Plusieurs anthologies consacrent de même la ville comme un élément central du champ littéraire américain, et de la littérature en général. Si l’on considère plus particulièrement le genre du polar, on constate que la ville y joue là aussi un rôle prépondérant. Nos sociétés contemporaines, majoritairement urbaines, ont amené ce genre à de profondes mutations vers un univers de plus en plus incertain, où le doute s’est installé quant à l’aptitude du détective à évoluer et à conclure son enquête dans un cadre aussi éprouvant. Il remplissait jusqu’alors le rôle de héros rassurant face à un univers urbain rendu de plus en plus hostile après les stigmates laissés par la seconde guerre mondiale, puis la guerre froide et le conflit au Vietnam. Ces évènements ont ouvert une période caractérisée par la mondialisation, la montée du terrorisme et une peur fondamentale encore attisée par le traumatisme du 11 septembre 2001.

2 Dans ce contexte, le polar américain évolue globalement vers plus de noirceur à travers le ‘thriller’ ou le ‘noir’. Dans le même temps, une nouvelle voie s’est créée au sein du polar en alliant les motifs du polar à un questionnement métaphysique et introspectif sur la société contemporaine et la place de l’individu au cœur de celle-ci. Cette branche nouvelle prend le nom de polar métaphysique ou ‘metaphysical detective fiction’ et réunit des auteurs très différents, tels les trois retenus ici : Paul Auster, auteur de The New York Trilogy et de Squeeze Play, un polar paru sous le pseudonyme de Paul Benjamin, Jerome Charyn et sa série de polars consacrée au détective récurrent Isaac Sidel, et Jonathan Lethem avec les romans Motherless Brooklyn et Gun, with Occasional Music. Ces trois auteurs partagent la même volonté d’apporter un renouveau au polar – notamment par le biais de la bande dessinée – et le même attachement à New York. La ville est en effet le personnage principal de leurs récits ; omniprésente et toute- puissante, New York joue un rôle clé dans la redéfinition du polar et incarne la figure urbaine par excellence.

3 On trouve au fil des polars métaphysiques de Paul Auster, Jerome Charyn et Jonathan Lethem de nombreuses occurrences de l’expression «This is New York». Nul besoin d’en

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dire plus, cette simple phrase clôt tout débat sur la possibilité d’appréhender la ville, de la comprendre : rien ne sert de chercher à trouver un sens à ce qui se passe à New York, les choses sont ainsi parce qu’il s’agit de New York, ville insaisissable qui résiste à toute tentative de normalisation. Jerome Charyn la présente ainsi dans une discussion entre Isaac Sidel, candidat réticent à la mairie de New York, Rebecca Karp, l’actuelle maire, et Mario, son secrétaire particulier qui pousse Isaac à se présenter : “And all you’ll ask is that I save a room for Rebecca at the mansion.” “That’s about it. Rebecca would rather have her Isaac than some pol who’s been stabbing her in the back … the town loves you. You’ll have to get used to that.” “But will it love me when I can’t deliver?” Rebecca started to crackle in her rocking chair. “I told you he’s a klutz … Isaac, this is New York. Nobody can deliver.”1

4 Les mots de Rebecca sont lourds de sous-entendu : le maire comme tout autre habitant reste soumis à la ville. Cette fatalité urbaine détermine l’existence de chacun de ses habitants et du détective en particulier qui, dans sa volonté d’aller au devant de la vérité, se trouve seul face à l’implacable puissance de la ville.

5 Celle-ci prend alors des allures de véritable personnage, à la fois personnifiée et déshumanisante, qui semble drainer ses habitants de leurs attributs humains pour les accaparer et les faire siens, comme le souligne Jean-Noël Blanc dans Polarville : «Ville impitoyable. Ville enfin devenue personnage : hostile, menaçante, c’est elle qui engendre la peur, comme un être doté de personnalité. … C’est donc accorder autant d’importance aux tirades consacrées à la ville qu’aux faits et gestes des autres acteurs.»2

6 Cette représentation symbolique de New York tend vers une figure mythique et impitoyable, souvent féminine, qui incarne une menace et non plus un havre pour l’individu. On trouve une telle représentation de la ville à l’ouverture du roman graphique de Jerome Charyn Margot Queen of the Night qui montre une Margot transformée par son arrivée à New York et la vie extrêmement dure qu’elle y mène ensuite:3

7 Endurcie, devenue impitoyable pour ses ennemis, Margot a quitté l’apparence de la jeune fille provinciale pour devenir une femme urbaine qui a construit son image extérieure telle une carapace de protection contre la dureté de la ville, qu’elle finit par incarner. Le dessin en légère contre-plongée, le regard dur et les cheveux courts transforment Margot en meneuse d’équipe implacable dont la mission est de détruire. Celle-ci lui est imposée par la ville, dont les lois s’apparentent à celles d’une véritable jungle urbaine : si Margot ne domine pas, alors elle sera dominée.

8 Dans le cadre du polar métaphysique et de sa distorsion des éléments du polar traditionnel, New York s’apparente alors au personnage conventionnel de la femme fatale, à laquelle on ne peut résister mais qui se révèle être un piège inéluctable. Jean- Noël Blanc intitule d’ailleurs un passage de Polarville «Ville perverse, femme fatale». Le détective de polar métaphysique a dû apprendre à se méfier, aussi lorsque dans Gun, with Occasional Music le détective Conrad Metcalf décrit la ville comme une femme fatale, il se doute du piège qu’elle lui tend sans pour autant l’éviter: «I was stupid enough to think there was something wrong with the silence that had fallen like a gloved hand onto the bare throat of the city».4 Une nouvelle fois, la ville se fait l’écho des personnages: Metcalf, confronté aux avances douteuses de l’attirante Celeste Stanhunt, accède en se tournant vers la vue de la ville par la fenêtre à une prise de conscience du danger que représente Celeste et parvient à la repousser.

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9 Toutefois le polar va plus loin que la représentation de la ville comme force castratrice opposée au détective. En effet, la ville est le plus souvent asexuée, et surtout inhumaine. Aliénante et dominatrice, elle prend des allures de monstre urbain et ses éléments caractéristiques, les gratte-ciels, prennent vie. A l’inverse, la vie de ses habitants se fige et se minéralise. L’adaptation en bande dessinée Paul Auster’s City of Glass illustre cette double tendance en représentant Quinn littéralement avalé par le mur de briques tandis que le gratte-ciel prend vie sous forme de monstre de pierre:5

10 Jerome Charyn reprend aussi cette image dans son essai sur New York, Metropolis,et cite Lewis Mumford: «New York had little more to give than «shapeless giantism» and «megalopolitan growth». It was a «Plutonian world, in which living forms became frozen into metal». Mumford offered us an entire schema, «A Brief Outline of Hell».6A l’origine une entreprise humaine, l’espace urbain a pris le dessus et inversé les rôles. New York est alors désignée par Jonathan Lethem par l’expression «Manhattan’s dinosaur spine» ou bien «the whole watery mouth of the city» et évoque ainsi un véritable monstre urbain, à la fois gigantesque et effrayant.7 Jerome Charyn reste le plus prolixe en matière de représentation monstrueuse de New York ; dans Metropolis il définit la ville comme «…a python lurking around. … New York was the dream that dreamt itself, a monster out of the Old World that could never rest, spitting ideals like fireworks — liberty, brotherhood, and zero-coupon bonds».8La monstruosité de la ville est surtout évoquée par ses gratte-ciels, que Charyn qualifie de «brick teeth», et par ses structures les plus imposantes, en particuliers le Brooklyn Bridge: «Isaac … walked off the Brooklyn Bridge, into the belly of Manhattan. … The bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge reminded Isaac of the flattened belly of a monster snail».9 Les habitants constituent la matière première qui la nourrit : insignifiante, leur foule se reconstitue sans discontinuer par les incessants apports de l’immigration: «Like the Irish before us, and the Italians, we scraped our character upon the surface of the City, and inside its bowels».10Jonathan Lethem reprend cette image dépréciée de New York comme ‘melting pot’ dans l’entretien qu’il m’a accordé en novembre 2004: «The immigrant civilization remains in a permanent state of delirious confusion in New York. The city is the place where you come to transform yourself into an American. If you succeed, you move away into the suburbs, or to some other state. If you fail, you become a New Yorker — often a Brooklynite, instead. The citiy is addicted to the energy and strife of discordant populations attempting to negotiate a peaceful existence side-by-side in close proximity. … At the same time, the result is deeply sinister, futuristic, and dystopian. New York is a city of alienation and fear — and if you underestimate this, you’ll fail to survive. »11

11 La ville d’ordinaire définie comme lieu d’intégration est ici vue comme un monstre engloutissant l’immense variété des populations qui la composent pour en produire des individus à son image qui ne quitteront plus la ville. Car si New York n’étanche jamais son besoin d’absorber l’énergie de ses habitants, ces derniers, une fois fondus dans le moule new-yorkais, dépendent trop d’elle pour la quitter. L’addiction est donc à double tranchant. Isaac Sidel lui-même ne peut vivre hors de New York: «What could I do in Seattle ? I’d miss the cockroaches. I’d go woolly without the street».12 Cette addiction est même associée à la folie chez Jerome Charyn, à la fois «schizophrenia» et «lunacy»:13 «Inside that winnowing town, a murderous city that ate its population to bits, we possessed those lunatic ideals, a laundryman’s faith in the immigrant … that the murderous city was also a city of marvels. … New York loved and killed, both were part of its fabric and constitution, its uniqueness among all other cities, because no other city in the world had ever defined itself by the numbers of immigrants it

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could raise as its very own children. … The city is their companion and their mother, their schoolmaster and executioner. »14

12 Les plus grandes puissances se voient dominées par la loi implacable de la ville, comme le rappelle Woody Haut dans Neon Noir: «In the end, Isaac knows that no one can control the city. Says Charyn, It’s too powerful a beast … It doesn’t matter if it’s the Mafia or the FBI, they’re all eaten up by the city».15Jerome Charyn replace alors New York dans la thématique mythique et la compare tout au long de Little Angel Street au Léviathan, tout comme d’ailleurs Paul Auster dans le roman du même nom. Monstre aquatique à plusieurs têtes dans la Bible, le livre d’Enoch le présente comme une créature monstrueuse féminine régnant sur les abysses et le monde aquatique en général. Reprise par Thomas Hobbes au XVIIème siècle, l’allégorie du Léviathan désigne cette fois le pouvoir absolu d’une entité souveraine établie par un contrat social entre les hommes pour faire cesser la discorde.

13 Dans le polar contemporain, c’est la ville qui incarne cette entité monstrueuse et autoritaire contre laquelle les habitants ne peuvent se retourner pour les raisons suivantes : ils ont choisi et créé la ville en premier lieu et surtout, la ville les a isolés les uns des autres. Fondamentalement seuls, ils luttent sans espoir de parvenir à se détacher de l’emprise de la ville: «We’re living inside a Leviathan. I can’t change things» constate Isaac Sidel.16 Le monstre ronge la structure même de New York, «the City [that] never sleeps».17L’autorité municipale reste impuissante face à la dureté de la ville et doit trouver l’argent qui lui fait cruellement défaut en sacrifiant ses propres employés: «Nicholas attacked the Leviathan of New York City, chopped off whole departments, shuffled men and women around. But Isaac would start to dream whenever he had to examine the City’s books. He wasn’t like Nicholas. He couldn’t fight the Leviathan, claw by claw. The king had too many details inside his skull. … There would be a shortfall in fiscal eighty-six unless Nicholas continued to chop and chop. »18

14 L’utopie humaine de la grande ville vitrine de la puissance de l’homme n’est plus de mise. On assiste même à des ébauches de dystopies urbaines, tel cet exemple tiré du Geek de New York de Jerome Charyn : «Elle voyait des voiturettes. Des milliers. Une centaine de milliers de wagons de glaces. Qui dirigeaient la ville. Qui avaient placé Manhattan sous la loi martiale. Qui vous renversaient si vous tentiez de traverser la rue».19 Le rythme fragmenté évoque la frénésie qui s’est emparée de l’univers urbain ; l’œuvre s’est retournée contre son créateur à une époque où l’homme lui-même s’est majoritairement détourné de tout dieu. La ville défiante des puissances supérieures, la Babel moderne, se change en construction menaçante, écrasante. New York présente alors son pire visage : Gotham, «the ultimate triumph of the grid».20

15 Gotham, terme utilisé pour la première fois par Washington Irving en 1807 pour désigner New York, fait référence à une légende anglaise du XIIIème siècle selon laquelle les habitants du village de Gotham, mécontents d’apprendre que le roi souhaitait acheter une de leurs terres, se seraient comportés en fous lors de sa visite au village pour l’en dissuader. L’allusion d’Irving est donc ironique : New York s’apparente à un lieu où le désordre règne à double titre — folie et insubordination — et demeure donc impossible à cerner et à maîtriser. Gotham reste de nos jours surtout associée à la violence et l’insécurité mises en avant dans les nombreux épisodes de Batman. Cette image d’une ville peu sûre, terrifiante, est rendue par la démesure des dimensions urbaines, l’infinité horizontale et surtout l’explosion verticale que l’on trouve dans

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toute la bande dessinée urbaine contemporaine : «Exagération des perspectives, torsion des plans, déformation des lignes de fuite, désarticulation des angles de vue, brisures systématiques des droites et autres artifices composent un espace véhément et discordant qui exprime l’inquiétude d’un univers oppressant».21 Les polars graphiques de Jerome Charyn répondent à cette tendance et y ajoutent d’autres procédés de représentation de la ville sous un angle qui écrase et menace l’individu. Ainsi dans Margot in Badtown, le sommet des gratte-ciels inhumains et froids dépasse-t-il les limites de la case tandis que The Magician’s Wife présente une vue plongeante de Manhattan où les angles de vues se trouvent légèrement déformés pour procurer une sensation de puissance et de domination:22 « Plus loin, les arbres de Central Park prennent des allures de piliers d’église ; la nuit et la solitude du personnage dans un tel lieu renforcent l’aspect terrifiant de cette case. »23

16 Le protagoniste se trouve en effet toujours menacé, en passe d’être englouti ou mis à mal par l’univers urbain. New York enserre donc ses habitants, les étouffe. Cette représentation littéraire de la ville ne semble pas si éloignée de la réalité à en juger par les propos de Paul Auster dans La Solitude du labyrinthe, lui-même soumis à une influence ambiguë de la part de la ville : «Je ne sais pas pourquoi mais tous les gens que je connais se plaignent de cela. Tout le monde est très occupé. La vie quotidienne à New York est dure. Et cela prend beaucoup de temps simplement pour exister. … J’aime énormément New York. C’est une source d’inspiration et de pensées. Aucune autre ville ne lui ressemble. Dans le même temps, je déteste cette ville si difficile, tout en reconnaissant que je dois sans doute avoir besoin de cette difficulté — un peu comme ce studio de travail difficile car inconfortable. New York est une ville inconfortable.»24

17 Auster est aussi l’auteur d’un guide intitulé The Gotham Handbook à l’attention de l’artiste Sophie Calle, preuve que la vie new-yorkaise nécessite une adaptation, une initiation. Dans cet ensemble de pierre, de verre et de métal, les perspectives sont réduites et l’atmosphère oppressante. Le poids de la réalité urbaine partout écrase, on ne semble pouvoir s’évader : «La ville est là. Indiscutable. Donnée. Présente au même titre qu’une réalité minérale. C’est une réalité lourde. Massive. Ecrasante. Pas d’échappée. Pas de ciel. Pas de vastes avenues débouchant sur un ailleurs un peu plus riant. Toutes les perspectives sont bouchées.»25

18 Autant le personnage ne parvient pas à se détacher de la ville, autant, lorsqu’il en est séparé, naît en lui un profond malaise ; il ne reconnaît plus l’environnement urbain, il ne se reconnaît plus lui-même. C’est le cas du narrateur de The Locked Room de Paul Auster : «The sky was more present than in New York, its whims more fragile. I found myself drawn to it, and for the first day or two I watched it constantly — sitting in my hotel room and studying the clouds, waiting for something to happen. … The Paris sky has its own laws, and they function independently of the city below. … This was an old world city, and it had nothing to do with New York — with its slow skies and chaotic streets, its bland clouds and aggressive buildings. I had been displaced, and it made me suddenly unsure of myself. »26

19 L’agressivité de la ville pèse sur ses habitants et exerce sa pression par l’entremise des gratte-ciels, véritables colosses dépourvus d’humanité érigés là en envahisseurs de l’espace urbain, et parmi eux le plus terrifiant, le World Trade Center, décrit par Jerome Charyn dans Metropolis: «…the World Trade Center : Rockefeller’s Folly. No pair of twins

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had ever assaulted New York in such a manner. Ruinous monoliths, they were without romance or play. They seized the sky like some hangman’s dream of the twentieth century».27Face à ces instruments de coercition, il ne reste à l’individu que deux alternatives: se plier et perdre tout libre arbitre dans son existence au sein de la cité, ou bien la défier: «Aggressiveness is a way of life in New York. One has to be an outlaw to survive. We’re all gangsters over here, anonymous in that dark outline of the City, no matter what hearths we have».28Le détective se positionne alors difficilement par rapport à cet état particulier de hors-la-loi puisqu’il ne s’agit ici que de se placer à l’écart de la loi imposée par la ville, et non de la loi telle que l’entend le polar habituellement. Si l’on effectue un rapide survol, les détectives des polars de Paul Auster, Jerome Charyn et Jonathan Lethem vont au devant des lois implacables de la cité dans le cadre de leurs enquêtes mais finissent pour la plupart dans l’échec de leur mission et/ou dans un trouble intérieur aux séquelles irréversibles.

La ville monochrome

20 La représentation de la dureté de la ville offre alors, aussi bien dans les descriptions romanesques que graphiques, un espace urbain défini essentiellement par le noir et blanc et toute la déclinaison des gris : il n’y a presque plus de place pour la couleur. La ville monochrome reflète son implacabilité, l’impossibilité de s’en échapper. Elle durcit les angles, démultiplie les hauteurs et place le personnage tour à tour dans l’aveuglement de la lumière crue ou dans l’oubli des ombres obscures. La taille démesurée des immeubles masque le soleil, creuse d’immenses zones d’ombre et prive les habitants de la lumière vitale, comme le montre cet extrait de « Access Fantasy » de Jonathan Lethem: «a sliver of morning sun that shone across the middle of the block, benefit of a chink in the canyon of towers that surrounded them».29 Les gratte-ciels forment ainsi un paysage sauvage et abrupt tandis que leurs matériaux unis, durs et froids chassent la couleur de l’espace urbain: «La ville du polar répugne à la lumière franche. Sa palette est avare. Elle préfère les couleurs rares, pauvres, éteintes, lorsqu’elle ne va pas jusqu’à ne retenir que le noir et blanc et leur opposition violemment contrastée».30 C’est de cette manière que les concepteurs de Paul Auster’s City of Glass ont présenté New York visuellement. La couleur en est absente et les dernières pages entièrement noires semblent happer le héros:31

21 La dichotomie entre noir et blanc souligne en effet le paradoxe du détective qui cherche à percer le mystère urbain, à faire la lumière sur ses secrets, mais qui, si la ville lui laisse entrevoir un de ses pans cachés, en reste aveuglé. Outre le duel entre obscurité et clarté, l’opposition noir/blanc évoque aussi la lutte entre le bien et le mal, l’innocence et la connaissance, et par extension la thématique religieuse.

Utopies urbaines

22 Dans une société contemporaine globalement post-religieuse, New York s’élève telle un défi aux dieux et aux hommes, et évoque une Babel moderne. Dans Squeeze Play la comparaison entre New York et Babel est d’ailleurs clairement établie, Max Klein passe de longs moments à contempler les neuf reproductions de la Toren Van Babel de Brueghel qu’il a accrochées dans son bureau:

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«The picture shows the nearly finished tower reaching up towards the sky and scores of tiny workers and animals toiling away at the construction, diligently laboring over the most colossal monument to human presumption ever built. The painting never failed to make me think of New York, and it helped to remind me how our sweat and agony will always come to nothing in the end. It was my way of keeping things in perspective.»32

23 Cette volonté d’élévation démesurée se présente, à l’instar de la Tour de Babel, comme un nouveau défi aux dieux, un symbole d’affranchissement du pouvoir divin. En revanche, au contraire de l’épisode original, ce ne sont pas les habitants qui défient l’autorité implacable des dieux mais la ville, qui affirme son indépendance vis-à-vis des dieux mais aussi vis-à-vis des hommes : elle clame ainsi sa toute-puissance. Face à cette réalité qui ne laisse place à aucun autre choix, City of Glass présente la renaissance de Babel comme paradis terrestre, l’espoir d’un retour au divin et à la concorde entre les langues et entre les hommes ainsi que l’expose Stillman dans son pamphlet : «In the year 1960, he stated confidently, the new Babel would begin to go up, its very shape aspiring toward the heavens, a symbol of the resurrection of the human spirit. History would be written in reverse. What had fallen would be raised up; what had been broken would be made whole. Once completed, the Tower would be large enough to hold every inhabitant in the New World. There would be a room for each person, and once he entered that room, he would forget everything he knew. After forty days and forty nights, he would emerge a new man, speaking God’s language, prepared to inhabit the second, everlasting paradise.»33

24 L’utopie de Stillman montre sa volonté de changer la ville telle qu’elle est : fragmentée, individualiste, incompréhensible, invivable. Il aspire à l’exact opposé : un espace de partage, de communauté. Cet idéal ressemble précisément à celui qui a, à l’origine, motivé la construction des grands centres urbains. Or ce retour à l’idée d’origine n’est plus possible et la théorie de Stillman ne se concrétise que dans sa folie. Elle appartient définitivement au domaine de l’utopie malgré les efforts de Stillman pour lui donner une apparence scientifique.

25 On trouve aussi un modèle de ville idéale dans le roman graphique de Jerome Charyn, Margot Queen of the Night. Il s’agit cette fois d’un projet immobilier, une enclave circulaire et protégée dans le labyrinthe rectiligne et délabré du nord de Manhattan:34

26 Ce prétendu paradis architectural n’est qu’un simulacre d’utopie : son immense enceinte de béton gris et sa taille gigantesque semblent écraser les quartiers voisins ; l’alternative à la ville implacable n’est pas viable, ce n’est qu’un refuge destiné aux plus riches, pour ne plus voir la ville dans sa dure réalité, mais elle ne permet pas de la quitter. Nul ne semble donc pouvoir s’évader de l’emprise urbaine ; la dureté de la réalité urbaine passe par le crime et l’absence de rédemption.

Echapper à la ville

27 Polarville dresse un bilan pessimiste de la ville qui définit tout particulièrement les polars de Paul Auster, Jerome Charyn et Jonathan Lethem : un espace qui influence l’individu, le pousse à fuir mais l’en empêche, lui donne l’illusion d’avancer — à travers l’enquête — mais suspend tout aboutissement : «Or cette ville résume l’existence. Elle est le monde à elle seule. Rien ou presque ne se passe au dehors. Quelques rares évocations de la nature, peu de relations entre métropoles, presque pas de territoire national : l’espace du polar se borne à la ville. … Nulle part c’est ici, pour toujours. Ailleurs n’existe qu’en rêve. Rêve impossible,

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rêve fou : la ville rêvée n’est pas la ville. Seule existe la ville réelle, d’où l’on ne s’échappe jamais véritablement, et où l’on meurt.»35

28 La dureté urbaine semble alors inéluctable et les alternatives peu nombreuses pour éviter la chute consécutive : chacun sombre dans la spirale de la perte. Le protagoniste y perd son identité, son foyer, ses relations, son argent et bien souvent on ne sait ce qu’il advient de lui ; la fin du roman nous ôte bien souvent tout espoir de dénouement. Jerome Charyn expose ainsi dans Family Man cette vision cauchemardesque de la ville, où le héros, Charles, est un prêtre qui travaille pour la police, parcourant les rues terrifiantes de New York en soutane et revolver. Son frère, Alonso, n’est autre que le dernier membre en fuite d’une famille mafieuse. Charyn présente la police comme seule entité salvatrice dans un espace où la pauvreté a poussé la plupart au crime. L’autorité et la justice divines se voient supplantées par une force policière expéditive et corrompue. Family Man ne présente donc pas d’échappée à la ville invivable, même le sacré se trouve sali car mêlé à la dureté de la ville. Toute idée de justice se trouve balayée par une police qui intervient masquée et violente les plus faibles ; c’est paradoxalement Alonso, le frère maudit de Charles, qui met en péril son anonymat pour prendre leur défense et faire régner un semblant de justice.

Constats d’échec

29 Les romans de Jerome Charyn reflètent aussi ce paradoxe : ce sont les malfrats qui perpétuent les usages de l’honneur et de la solidarité, ne laissant jamais un des leurs dans le besoin ; les puissants ne font rien pour sauver la ville, ou bien s’avouent vaincus. C’est le cas en particulier pour Isaac Sidel, d’abord ‘Police Commissionner’ de New York puis Maire et enfin Président des Etats-Unis, qui multiplie les aveux d’impuissance : «No one could really police New York. … He had no humor or real compassion or awareness of what could ever save the City», admet-il dans The Good Policeman.36 Dans Little Angel Street, le bilan est encore plus amer, la chute inévitable : «Soon we’ll all be homeless. The City is a cesspool. The plague is upon us, Isaac».37Citizen Sidel clôt la série sur une note particulièrement noire: «Manhattan doesn’t breed regular guys».38La norme n’est pas de mise à New York: tout est poussé à l’extrême par la dureté de la ville. Le crime, toujours considéré comme un aspect marginal de la vie urbaine, devient ici la norme, une nécessité, un parcours obligé pour survivre dans un tel contexte. Tous y sont plongés, les riches par peur de voir leur statut menacé, les pauvres pour survivre ; le crime deviennent endémique, comme l’analyse Michael Woolf dans «Exploding the Genre»: «The genre offers the potential for the development of an urban fiction which has as its real concern the texture of contemporary experience, that uses crime and criminality as metaphors for a reality in which social disorder, even evil, is a perceived norm. Within that structure, it is also appropriate that the detective should be a failed figure, precisely because his struggle is not so much with the criminal but with a prevailing notion of reality. He achieves, at best, a temporary illusion of control beneath which chaos prevails. … Isaac’s failure is assured precisely because he seeks to find answers to the unanswerable. … He both perceives the futile madness of the surrounding world, and defies it, operating within a sense of universal psychosis and, simultaneously, outside it, groping blindly toward some version of God’s grace. … He is a “hero” because he both recognises his own impotence within the prevailing psychosis, and struggles against it in massively futile persistence. »39

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30 L’impuissance reste un élément crucial du polar métaphysique: la ville se dresse toute- puissante face au héros qui ne la défie que parce qu’il ne peut accepter une telle situation de déchéance. Malgré tout, il ne possède pas le pouvoir suffisant pour inverser la tendance: il ne peut que rétablir la justice ça et là, de manière fragmentée, tout comme les indices qu’il collecte ne forment finalement jamais un tout qui conduit à la résolution de l’enquête. L’accès à une forme de rédemption, à une compréhension globale de la ville ne peut être atteint, le héros ne se bat que pour des fragments de vérité et de justice : la ville maintient son contrôle sur tout le reste. L’impuissance d’Isaac Sidel s’accompagne d’une ascension de l’échelle sociale jusqu’au poste le plus prestigieux : président des Etats-Unis. Au contraire des héros de The New York Trilogy il ne disparaît pas dans un abîme insondable et indéterminé, il ne chute pas. Cependant la ville l’affaiblit malgré tout par le paradoxe entre les hautes fonctions qu’il occupe et le peu de pouvoir qu’il détient sur la ville. Cette impuissance le laisse tout comme les personnages de Paul Auster — Quinn, Blue et Fanshawe — marqué par d’irrémédiables séquelles psychiques et une solitude totale face à l’ampleur de sa tâche et son incapacité à l’exécuter. Jean-Noël Blanc emploie l’expression «ville-système» pour désigner une telle spirale urbaine d’où aucune évasion ne semble possible.40 Ce terme semble en effet s’appliquer à la ville du polar métaphysique.

Dystopie

31 Si l’on considère Lionel Essrog et Conrad Metcalf chez Jonathan Lethem et Max Klein chez Paul Auster, leur principal point commun est d’avoir réussi à conclure leur enquête: la vérité éclate, le coupable est connu. Toutefois les détectives n’en retirent aucun bénéfice: leur succès s’accompagne d’un lourd tribut, celui de leur exclusion du système urbain. Evoluant jusqu’ici à sa marge, ils en sont désormais bannis sans pouvoir accéder à un éventuel ailleurs tant leur dépendance à la cité reste forte. Sans logement, argent ou profession, Metcalf replonge dans la drogue et se livre volontairement à une nouvelle peine de cryogénisation. Le répit procuré par le succès de son enquête est de courte durée: «I drove the car up into the hills until I found a view I liked. Then I got out and looked at it. There was a wind coming up off the bay, and it brought with it a smell of salt. It made me think of the ocean, and I entertained a brief fantasy of taking the car and driving down the peninsula to find a beach where I could throw my make and the stuff that looked like money and maybe even my seventy-five points of karma into the surf and then stretch out on the sand and wait to see what happened. I played with it the way you can when you know you’ll never do it.» (Lethem, 1994, 220-221)41

32 L’ailleurs, un instant présenté comme possible, s’évanouit définitivement, de même que l’idée de disparaître à la manière des détectives de The New York Trilogy. La nécessité de réintégrer le système urbain qu’il a toujours connu l’emporte, même si pour cela il doit accepter la place la plus marginale de ce cercle, celle de détenu. Dans Motherless Brooklyn, Essrog échappe lui aussi momentanément à New York quand son enquête le conduit dans un port du Maine. L’expérience hors de la ville le perturbe extrêmement, il ne peut la quitter sans se sentir totalement perdu : «It was as I zipped and turned to see the ocean that the vertigo hit me. I’d found an edge, all right. Waves, sky, trees, Essrog — I was off the page now, away from the grammar of skyscrapers and pavement. I experienced it precisely as a loss of

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language, a great sucking-away of the word-laden walls that I needed around me, that I touched everywhere, leaned on for support, cribbed from when I ticced aloud. Those walls of language had always been in place, I understood now, audible to me until the sky of Maine deafened them with a shout of silence. I staggered, put one hand on the rocks to steady myself. I needed to reply in some new tongue, to find a way to assert a self that had become tenuous, shrunk to a shred of Brooklyn stumbling on the coastal void: Orphan meets ocean. »42

33 Essrog réintègre lui aussi sa place dans le système new-yorkais en adoptant une profession tout à fait légale désormais. Il reste néanmoins en marge de la société de par son handicap et son absence de repères. Il compare d’ailleurs à plusieurs reprises New York à sa maladie, le syndrome de Tourette, pour en souligner la fatalité commune, l’absence de répit qu’elles engendrent avec cet exemple de l’addiction aux jeux de hasard: «The docility was heart-breaking. The games were over almost before they started, the foil scraped off the tickets with a key or a dime, the contrived near-misses underneath bared. (New York is a Tourettic city, and this great communal scratching and counting and tearing is a definite symptom.) The sidewalk just outside the Casino was strewn with discarded tickets, the chaff of wasted hope. »43

34 S’évader de la dureté de la ville passe donc par de petites choses : l’espoir de gagner un peu d’argent par le jeu, ou bien le réconfort d’un repas, tel le «chicken shwarma, … one of the great secret sandwiches of New York, redemption for a whole soulless airport».44 L’ironie est bien sûr présente dans ces pathétiques moments de répit pris sur la ville, car éphémères et ancrés dans la ville malgré tout. Dans «Access Fantasy», Jonathan Lethem présente aussi la ville comme système, un système d’où l’on ne s’échappe pas. La ville sépare nantis et démunis de chaque côté d’une frontière nommée «the One-Way Permeable Barrier».45 Les plus pauvres restent invisibles des plus riches. Une raison inconnue — l’implacabilité de la ville ? — les a poussés à réunir quelques biens et prendre leur voiture pour fuir. Toutefois cette fuite n’a pu se concrétiser : la masse des véhicules se trouve bloquée dans un gigantesque embouteillage urbain dont le début et la fin restent indéfinis, rappelant une fois encore le rhizome. Il est impossible de quitter la ville, chacun attend le providentiel «start-up» qui débloquera la circulation.46 Or cet espoir s’amenuise à mesure que le temps passe: «There was a start-up about a half mile ahead the day before, a fever of distant engines and horns honking as others signalled their excitement — a chance to move! — and so he’d spent the day jammed behind the wheel, living in his Apartment on Tape, waiting for that chance, listening under the drone of distant helicopters to hear the start-up make its way downtown. But the wave of revving engines stalled before reaching his street. He never even saw a car move, just heard them. Perhaps the start-up was only a panic begun by someone warming their motor, reviving their battery. … Rumors had it Welfare Helicopters had been sighted … and a lot of people had left their cars, drifted down that way, looking for easy cash. Which was one reason the start-up died, it occurred to him — too many empty cars. Along with the cars that wouldn’t start anymore.»47

35 La fuite hors de la ville qui semblait possible en prenant simplement sa voiture devient désormais tout à fait improbable. La ville tient malgré tout ses habitants prisonniers. C’est alors au tour de Max Klein de dresser le bilan d’une société régie par la loi urbaine: «People are wrong to say this is a preview of the end of civilization. It is the essence of civilization, the exact price we pay for being what we are and wanting what we want».48L’ambition démesurée de l’homme, son désir de bâtir une cité à l’image de ses désirs les plus fous se voient punis par un retournement inattendu de pouvoir: la

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création prend le pas sur son créateur et inverse les rapports d’autorité dans une relecture du mythe du golem.

La ville totale

36 Ebranlé dans ses repères et forcé de retrouver sa simple condition d’homme soumis à des forces supérieures, l’individu doit affronter l’épreuve qui lui est imposée sans possibilité de s’en détacher, mais en conservant malgré tout l’espoir d’une éventuelle rédemption. Michael Woolf souligne d’ailleurs «the profoundest of paradoxes, the persistence of a notion of redemption in an ostensibly doomed and damned world» qui se traduit chez l’individu par «the heroic nature of flawed humanity as it crawls towards some bizarre version of spiritual salvation».49Les termes de rédemption et de salut sont issus du champ lexical religieux mais revêtent plutôt dans le polar contemporain une valeur spirituelle. Dans ce cadre urbain étouffant, le détective ne fuit pas ; il n’y parvient pas car il est fait de la ville, elle fait partie de lui autant qu’il fait partie d’elle. Il y reste jusqu’à ce qu’elle ait usé toutes ses résistances physiques et mentales et qu’il ne soit plus en mesure de poursuivre la mission qu’il s’est fixée, souvent à contre-courant de la société qui l’entoure : ne pas se résigner face au crime, symbole même de la ville implacable. Dans le chapitre intitulé «Lutter, quand même», Jean-Noël Blanc soulève une question cruciale: «pourquoi se battre contre la ville?» et y suggère une réponse : «La réponse est simple : par respect des valeurs humaines. La ville gagnera toujours, mais ou bien on abandonne, et alors c’est la mort de l’humain dans l’homme tout comme il y a le cadavre de l’urbanité dans l’urbain de ces villes-là, ou bien on lutte, au moins par souci de maintenir l’honneur. Par scrupule moral.»50

37 Le détective est en effet avant tout un homme. Si le polar traditionnel en avait fait un héros aux capacités et à l’héroïsme presque surhumains, le polar métaphysique le ramène à sa condition première, celle qui est la cause de ses échecs et de ses faiblesses — il n’est qu’un homme — mais qui motive aussi sa démarche de tenir bon et de conserver un sens moral. Cette lourde mission aux connotations là aussi teintées de religieux, ce que Blanc nomme «la robe de bure du missionnaire urbain» reste celle endossée par les détectives vulnérables de Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem et Jerome Charyn, aux rangs desquels figure Isaac Sidel, qui déclare dans Citizen Sidel: «I wanna help New York» dans une tentative de réaffirmation du rôle de l’individu au sein de la ville.51

NOTES

1. Jerome Charyn, Montezuma’s Man, New York, Mysterious Press, 1993, p.130. 2. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, Lyon, Presses Universitaires, 1991, pp.42-43 3. Jerome Charyn and Massimo Frezzato, Margot Queen of the Night, New York, Heavy Metal, 1995, p.1.

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4. Jonathan Letham, Gun, with Occasional Music, New York: Tor Books, 1994, p.130. 5. Paul Auster, Paul Karsik, David Mazzucchelli, and Art Spiegelman, Paul Auster’s City of Glass, New York, Avon Books, 1994, p.101. 6. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, New York, Putnam, 1986, p.39. 7. Jonathan Letham, The Fortress of Solitude, New York, Doubleday, 2003, p.79 et p.239. 8. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.132 and p.217. 9. Charyn, Metropolis, p.234. Jerome Charyn, Gun, with Occasional Music, p.93 and p.101. 10. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.267. 11. Jonathan Lethem, «Access Fantasy», in Men and Cartoons, New York: Doubleday, 2004. 12. Jerome Charyn, The Isaac Quartet (1974-1978), New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002, p.306. 13. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.23 and p.209. 14. Charyn, Metropolis, p.252. 15. Woody Haut, Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction, London, Serpent’s Tail, 1999, p. 199. 16. Jerome Charyn, Little Angel Street, New York, Mysterious Press, 1994, p.8. 17. Jerome Charyn, El Bronx, New York, Mysterious Press, 1997, p158. 18. Jerome Charyn, Little Angel Street, pp.209-10 19. Jerome Charyn et Michel Martens, Geek de New York, Paris, Gallimard, 1995, p.139. 20. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.236. 21. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.50. 22. Jerome Charyn et Francois Boucq, The Magician’s Wife, New York, Catalan Communications, 1987, p.39; Jerome Charyn et Massimo Frezzato, Margot Queen of the Night, New York, Heavy Metal, 1995, p.12. 23. Jerome Charyn et Francois Boucq, The Magician’s Wife, p.64. 24. Paul Auster et Gerard de Cortanze, La Solitude du labyrinthe, Paris, Babel, 2004, p.195 and p.198. 25. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.57. 26. Paul Auster, «The Locked Room», The New York Trilogy (1985-1986), New York, Penguin Books, 1990, p.338. 27. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.245. 28. Jerome Charyn, Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace, and Magical Land, p.269. 29. Jonathan Letham, «Access Fantasy», p.28. 30. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.51. 31. Paul Auster, Paul Karsik, David Mazzucchelli, et Art Spiegelman, Paul Auster’s City of Glass, pp132-33. 32. Paul Auster (sous le pseudonyme de Paul Benjamin), Squeeze Play (1982), New York, Penguin Books Crime, 1990, p.18. 33. Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (1985-1986). New York, Penguin Books, 1990, p.59. 34. Jerome Charyn et Massimo Frezzato, Margot Queen of the Night, p.29. 35. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.80 et p.83. 36. Jerome Charyn, The Good Policeman, New York, The Mysterious Press, 199, p.106. 37. Jerome Charyn, Little Angel Street, p.134. 38. Jerome Charyn, Citizen Sidel, New York, Mysterious Press, 1999, p.18. 39. Mike Woolf, «Exploding the Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn», in Brian Docherty (dir), American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre, , New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1988, p.132 and p. 138. 40. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.112. 41. Jonathan Letham, Gun, with Occasional Music, pp.220-21. 42. Jonathan Letham, Motherless Brooklyn, New York, Faber & Faber, 2000, p.113.

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43. Jonathan Letham, Motherless Brooklyn, p.113. 44. Jonathan Letham, Motherless Brooklyn, p.311. 45. Jonathan Letham, «Access Fantasy», p.24. 46. Jonathan Letham, «Access Fantasy», p.23. 47. Jonathan Letham, «Access Fantasy», p.24. 48. Paul Auster (under the pseudonym of Paul Benjamin), Squeeze Play (1982), p.53. 49. Mike Woolf, «Exploding the Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn», p.142. 50. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville — Images de la ville dans le roman policier, p.126. 51. Jean Noël Blanc, Polarville, p.156 ; Jerome Charyn, Citizen Sidel, p.104.

RÉSUMÉS

Thousands of writers have set their novels in New York City and several anthologies of New York writings have been published recently, establishing the city as a central element in American literature. Considering the particular genre of detective fiction, this is also the case, so to speak. Our contemporary world, mostly urban, has led to a major shift in the genre towards increasing uncertainty and doubt about the traditional detective hero’s ability to cope with such a harsh environment. He used to stand as a reassuring heroic figure against the historic background inherited after WWII and then the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Then followed an era of increasing terrorism, globalization and generalized scare; September 11 came as the ultimate manifestation of this threat. In this context, detective fiction mostly evolved towards a much darker path - thriller or noir – whereas other authors created a new branch of the genre by mixing detective fiction patterns with a metaphysical questioning of our contemporary existence - metaphysical detective fiction - which can be illustrated by writers from very different horizons, such as Paul Auster in his New York Trilogy, Jerome Charyn and his Isaac Sidel series or Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn. All three have in common their renewal of the detective genre and their deep attachment to New York. The city is the main protagonist of their detective fiction: omnipresent and omnipotent, New York plays a capital role in the narration and stands as a genuine participant in the plot.

AUTEUR

DELPHINE CARRON Delphine Carron is a PhD student at Denis Diderot University, Paris, France.

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空间 、 身体 、女权: 中国都市女性 写作

Shelley Chan (陈颖)

1 二十世纪八十年代冒起的王朔，以一副小混蛋、坏男孩的面目出现，大肆调侃正统 意识形态而引起文坛震动。尽管褒贬不一，但足以让文坛兴奋了好一阵子，形成了 名噪一时的“王朔现象”。至上世纪末，中国文坛变成了“坏女孩作家”或曰“美女作 家”的天下。她们的开山祖师是上海女子棉棉与卫慧，前者以其《糖》等自传体小说 引起注意，后者赖以成名的《上海宝贝》也是自传小说。后来又出现了九丹的《乌 鸦》与春树的《北京娃娃》等。再后来，更有木子美的网上日记《遗情书》。如果 说王朔小说里的犬儒还有正统作衬托，美女作家的作品根本就不屑顾及正统意识形 态。她们关心的只是自己的身体与个人经历，呈现在读者面前的是赤裸裸的颓废。

2 后毛时代的中国女性文学变化速度惊人。回顾文革刚结束之际，张洁的短篇小说 《爱，是不能忘记的》之所以能够惊世骇俗，是因为篇中描写了当时的大忌：爱 情，而且还是婚外情，更有甚者，是两个共产党员的婚外情。故事的男女主角相爱 廿多栽，但因男方是有妇之夫而不得结合，尽管他的婚姻是建筑在责任而非爱情之 上的。作者大胆地挑战传统观念，提出了婚姻应该以爱情为基础这一命题，指出女 性宁可独身也不要为没有爱情的婚姻所困，更无须顾忌旁人的闲言碎语。然而，尽 管此篇小说在当时可谓震聋发愦，但在描写上始终没有打破身体禁忌。男女主人公 二十多年来单独在一起的时间加起来不到二十四小时，两人连手都没有碰过。他们 的爱情注定是一场柏拉图式的精神恋爱。

3 二十多年来，女性写作一再令读者觉得耳目一新，同时也屡屡引起争议，主要原因 是她们对身体禁忌的挑战。二十世纪八十年代，王安亿就以其“三恋”（“荒山之 恋”，“小城之恋”，“锦绣谷之恋”）中的大胆描写而轰动一时，成为女作家里敢于打 破禁忌的先锋人物。到了九十年代，林白和陈染进一步细腻地描述女性的身体觉醒 和性心理，甚至还勇敢挑战传统，开发了女同性恋文学这一新领域。陈染的《私人 生活》中倪拗拗这一角色，在成长的过程中经历了异性与同性爱，最后似乎更能认 同的是后者。在《私人生活》以及客居英国的作家虹影的《背叛之夏》中，都涉及 了革命与性这一命题，而且不约而同地写的都是1989年夏天的北京民运。虽然读者 和评论家对她们的作品有争议，但是这些小说始终没有跨越严肃文学的范畴。

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4 棉棉与卫慧的出现，标志着新一代女性作家的崛起。她们的作品里充斥着大量的性 爱，毒品，妓女，自杀等等，形成了一幅世纪末颓废图。王安亿、林白、陈染等人 探讨的是女性的身体经验于她们成长经验中的重要作用，而那一批“坏女孩”作家则 流于完全为性而性，为颓废而颓废了。《糖》写的是摇滚乐手的另类生活与精神世 界，里面不乏滥交、吸毒的场面。《上海宝贝》的女主角在爱着性无能男友的同 时，也享受着与德国情人的性爱，全书充满了物质主义甚至后殖民主义的痕迹。九 丹的《乌鸦》讲述在新加坡的女中国留学生不顾一切地想办法留在新加坡，甚至不 惜沦为暗娼的故事。春树写《北京娃娃》时只有十八岁，书中直露地讲述了一群与 作者同龄的另类青少年的生活，特别是他们对待性的随便态度。时至2003年夏，广 州某杂志编辑木子美更上一层楼，在其博客上以日记的形式公开自己的一夜情经 验，成为全国的热点话题，据说她的博客达到了一千万的日点击量纪录。后来她更 把那些日记印刷成书，题为《遗情书》。假如从广义上看待写作／创作，原广州中 山大学讲师竹影青瞳也应归入这一组坏女孩当中——她在网上公开展露自己的裸照从 而一夜成名。当然后来更有雨后春笋般涌现的各式“美女”，例如安尼宝贝，芙蓉姐 姐，流氓燕等等，数不胜数。

5 评论家彼得·布鲁克斯认为：“色情的身体既激活了社会，同时也分裂了社会。”1 坏女 孩作品中充满欲望的身体正好引证了此一观点。“坏女孩现象”出现以来，批评界乃 至公众的反应分歧甚大。认同她们的人称赞她们为女性解放的先锋，女权主义的身 体力行者，因为她们勇于宣扬女性的身体欲望，占据了一贯以来由男性占主导的空 间，例如出版和科技领域。过去中国文学史上也有对身体的描写，例如《金瓶梅》 及《肉蒲团》等，但那都是由男性作家来描写女性身体的，现在则是女性对自身的 展现。 但另一方面，她们的反对者则从捍卫道德的角度出发谴责她们，称她们为妓 女作家、文学慰安妇、拥有哈佛学位的潘金莲等等 。本文拟以空间和身体写作的角 度为出发点，探讨“坏女孩现象”究竟是否女性主义在男权传统根深蒂固的中国打的 一场胜仗。

6 后毛时代的男作家，特别是寻根作家，往往通过描写乡野生活来寻找民族之根，表 表者如莫言、刘恒、韩少功、贾平凹等，而女性作家则多注目于都市或城镇。城市 里孤立、疏离的有限生存空间，为她们提供了叙述现代女性身体经验、展示身体欲 望的良好舞台。陈染的《私人生活》就是一个很好的例子。主角倪妞妞的成长故 事， 她的异性爱与同性爱，基本上都在她居住的公寓楼或别的室内空间里发生。到 最后，极端孤寂的她陷入自闭状态，完全与世隔绝，普通的家居空间于她来说已经 过大，她干脆搬进了浴缸里生活。只有在浴缸狭窄的空间里她才有安全感，因为浴 缸的四壁让她感到重归母体。

7 本文讨论的几位美女作家无一例外，都来自大城市。城市里人际关系的疏离，一方 面造成了人与人之间的隔漠，另一方面又让人的隐私成为可能，但同时也刺激了对 于他人隐私的好奇心，培养了一种偷窥欲。彼得·布鲁克斯指出： 小说的兴起与隐私这一概念的诞生密切关联，……而隐私的概念又与现代化城市 的崛起有不可分割的联系……。家庭内部的建筑结构，从中世纪群居部落式的生 活、进食和睡眠的空间转化为十八世纪上层社会与中产阶级定界分明的私人公 寓、闺房、内室、壁橱等，在在反映出隐私观念的强化。……与早期的文艺表演 不同，小说不需要观众的参与。小说的读者只为自己默读，这本身就包含着一种 隐私的价值观。

8 他还指出：“小说一开始就把私人生活和私人经验作为经常描写的题材。”2 可以说， 小说本身就是一个吊诡：小说的兴起强化了隐私观，而小说题材对私人生活的兴趣 及披露，却又削弱了、甚至侵犯了私人空间。

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9 美女作家的写作，在中国社会这一特殊文本中造成了一次有趣的空间互换。众所周 知，在毛时代，私人空间是被公共空间无限侵占的。准确地说，那时根本就没有什 么私人空间存在。个人的所有活动都在政府的监管范围内，像结婚、离婚这样纯粹 个人的事情，也要得到组织的批准才合法。此种对私人空间的侵略在文化大革命中 尤其严重。那时，对毛的个人崇拜及革命狂热达到了登峰造极的地步，毛的肖像、 语录，以及各式各样的宣传海报成为每一个家庭不可或缺、也是唯一允许的装饰 品。就像我们在张艺谋导演的电影《活着》中看到的，在文革中举行的婚礼上，所 有来宾的礼品无一例外是红宝书或毛画像，以至这些对新人未来生活毫无实用价值 的东西堆积如山，但又不能像其他垃圾一样丢弃，因为这不但会惹出麻烦，严重时 甚至会招致杀身之祸。婚礼上的全家福合照以毛的画像为背景；新郎新娘以及来宾 在婚礼上齐声高歌“天大地大不如党的恩情大，爹亲娘亲不如毛主席亲。”新人一生 中最重要的大日子完全被无处不在的公共空间意识形态所控制。另外，人们的日常 娱乐生活也全被革命样板戏、革命歌曲以及有限的几部革命故事片霸占，以至人人 耳熟能详，到了能够统一人们生活步骤的地步。例如，《东方红》变成了早上叫人 起床的闹钟，《大海航行靠舵手》宣告会议结束，而《国际歌》则标志着一天的完 结。毛话语的极度渗透使公共空间对私人空间的侵犯达到极至。

10 二十世纪末以来坏女孩们的所作所为正好相反。她们的写作把最私隐的变为最公开 的，以她们的私人空间进驻甚或侵扰公共空间。棉棉、卫慧、春树等人的作品，都 是自传或半自传性质的，比起“如有雷同，实属巧合”的小说，她们书写中的自我参 照成分，使所有含糊的能指都有了确定的所指，也就是说，女主角的身体欲望及其 私生活的公开，清晰地指向作者本人，使读者的想像有了一个无须假设的聚焦点。 到了木子美的网上一夜情日记，以及竹影青瞳的自拍裸照，干脆就把作者本人的身 体以文字或影像的方式公开示众。以把最不可见的转化为可见的这样一种方式，这 批坏女孩一方面满足了大众的偷窥欲，另一方面也把自己的私人空间向公共空间扩 张了，模糊了两者之间的界线。当有人谴责她们对公共空间的污染时，她们则认为 是她们的领地被侵犯了，因为她们把包括互联网在内的公众范畴视为自己扩大了的 私人领域。木子美在其《遗情书》的序里就有以下看法： 如果不是因为木子美在 Blogcn 的私人日记《遗情书》引发意外事件，我会随心 所欲地按照自己的方式生活下去，这种生活由伤害与被伤害、自立与不自制、幻 想与真实组成，在有限的年纪经历极限，在日常化中戏剧化，在个体生命中分裂 多重角色是我的追求。但是，我被干扰了。卷入道德是非、价值判断甚至男权女 权的讨论中。本来，任何标签对我都是无意义的。3

11 干扰与被干扰的界定，其实就是对空间的争夺。如果说革命时代公共空间对私人空 间的占有是单向的，是一方面强加于另一方面的，那么后毛时代的反方向侵占，则 是双向的。美女作家肆意向公共空间扩展自己私人领域的同时，作为公共空间组成 部分的大众也起了推波助澜的作用。读者及网民受到公开邀请涉足作者的私人空 间，窥望作者的隐私，强烈的好奇心竟然如此轻易地得到满足，于是人人趋之若 鹜，使作品的销量和博客的点击量直线上升，无形中帮助了私人空间对公共空间的 侵略。有人会认为，读者或网民只要不购买那些书籍，不浏览那些网页，其实就等 于选择不被干扰。然而，经历了极度禁闭的革命时代的中国大众，正惊喜地体验着 西方世界传过来的各种新奇事物，例如性开放、互联网等。这种前所未有的缤纷繁 杂，渗透力丝毫不比毛话语弱，而诱惑力又绝对比毛话语大。换句话说，完全不被 干扰的可能性几乎等于零。

12 在传统的男权社会中，公共空间一般都被视作男性话语权所主宰的领域。中国自五 四运动以来，妇女地位的确得到了很大的提高，毛泽东“妇女能顶半边天”的理论， 更使1949年以后的中国妇女在很大的程度上向男性看齐。然而，传统男性中心的观

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念依然顽强，毛的名言“时代不同了，男女都一样。男同志能办到的事，女同志也能 办得到”，4 归根结底还是以男性的标准作为衡量女性的准则。上至女性中央委员的 姓名后要冠以一“女”字，下至“女作家”、“女医生”、“女工程师”之类的称谓，都充满 着潜意识中的性别歧视。所谓男女平等，往往只停留在女性婚姻自主、经济独立、 有同等权利接受教育等较为表面的层次上，虽然这些权利已经来之不易。女性意识 及其身体欲望，基本上还是被忽视，甚至被压抑的。女性的身体，自古以来都只是 传宗接代以及供男性享乐的工具。女性从来都被剥夺了性的权利，不可以理直气壮 地坦言自己的身体感受，否则便会被贴上“淫荡”的标签。从此一角度看，一代坏女 孩的崛起，尤其是以木子美为代表的女性博客写作，似乎为此空间带来了女性的声 音，或可视为女权对男权空间的占领。相对于传统道德规范而言，“坏”本身就是一 种越轨，一种挑战，一种颠覆。

13 究竟这些坏女孩的行为是颠覆了男权高高在上的性别金字塔，使千百年来饱受歧视 的中国女性扬眉吐气，抑或是根本就掉进了男权意识的窠臼里，有意地把女性身体 商业化与物化，使其成为男性欲望的目标？ 以发表裸照一炮而红的竹影青瞳这样评 价自己：“我视自己的裸体为大自然的一件作品。”5 她还说：“为什么我要觉得羞 耻？我自拍裸照是出于一种不可抗拒的冲动。我想看看自己可爱的外形，也让别人 看看我。”6 木子美也有惊人名言：“要采访我，必须先和我上床；在床上能用多长时 间，我就给你多长时间的采访。”7 她更在其博客上自曝与某著名歌手的某次性爱狂 欢，并公开歌手的名字。象她们这样坦然面对自己的身体，公开点评男性身体，的 确挑战了传统加于女性身上的行为准则，置换甚至颠覆了男女的传统位置。

14 有论者这样认为： 一直以来女性文学在女权主义中占有及其重要的位置，很多时候我们都将女性写 作作为考量女权主义发展的参照系，所以女性主义文学很自然地从女性写作跳入 了女性话语圈中。在中国，人们对女性文学的关注甚至超过了女性主义本身。大 多数情况下，人们往往从女性创作的文本中来审视中国女性逐渐清晰与不断增强 的女性意识。从张洁、谌容到王安亿再到林白、陈染、海男再到卫慧、绵绵［棉 棉］以及在网络新环境下出现的诸如安尼宝贝、木子美等女性写手，虽然写作情 境、写作内容和写作方式都孑然不同，但是她们在特定文化语境下写就的作品， 无疑都成为女性主义的文化符号，在之其中，女性写手们试图营造一种话语体系 来不断强调自己的文化性别与精神性别。8

15 网络社会就是实际社会的翻版，从各种游戏到色情网页，在在都反映出性别歧视。 有鉴于此，此位论者特别强调了网络与女性主义的关系：“从网络女性主义传播的角 度来看，‘木子美们’极其技巧地利用了网络媒体这一平台，发出了属于女性自我的声 音。”9 同一位论者还有以下的看法： 就博客这一网络空间来看，它属于公共领域与私人领域的交集。……在女权主义 对现存各种意识形态的批判中，有一种被她们称为“领域划分”意识形态，……这 一意识形态认为，公共领域是男人的活动领域；而私人领域才是女人的活动领 域。……不少人认为男性在网络空间中占据了主导地位，包括网络的技术性、娱 乐性都证明网络是更适合男性的公共领域。但是博客改变了这一状况，它为那些 原本在现实社会中处于男权制困禁下而不愿发出声音，但同时又具有话语叙说欲 望的女性提供了倾诉的话语场。……女性借助于博客“私人化”的特性，丢掉了原 有的束搏和拘谨，使自己的话语在公共领域得到了前所未有的广泛传播。10

16 彼得·布鲁克斯相信：“身体是社会和语言的建构。”11 在围绕着坏女孩作家及其作品 的辩论中，身体是一不容置疑的中心点。九十年代林白、陈染等作家对女性心理、 生理成长的书写，就被贴上了“私人化”及“身体写作”的标签。到了坏女孩们，“身体 写作”更是评论家口中频频出现的词汇，更有甚者，是“器官写作”、“下体写作”，不 一而足。在西方文学以及文学批评的领域里，“身体”是非常重要的概念。“把身体纳 入写作自始至终是文学的基本考虑；相反地，把写作赋予身体是把物质的身体转化

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为具有象征意义的身体的尝试。”12 对精神分析学家来说，身体是符号象征的本源、 原始自恋意识的对象，也是婴儿发展求知愿望最原始的探索园地。13 女性主义者着重 的是身体对女性主体意识的重要意义。巴赫汀的狂欢理论则强调世俗身体在颠覆中 世纪黑暗的神权统治的中心意义与作用。14 然而，“身体”一词在中国文化这一文本中 从来都被强迫扮演不那么光彩的角色，这是由于身体与性有密切的关系，而在中国 人传统的思维里，身体似乎仅仅与性有关。既然性在中国从古到今都是一大禁忌， 身体也就自然地带上一层暧昧、色情的色彩。不论是儒家“男女授受不亲”的教条， 还是革命时代禁欲的意识形态，性与身体都是讳莫如深的。至于很多人提及的身体 写作，就是在对身体的这一理解层面中衍生而成的，其实是对西方文学批评及女性 主义意义上身体写作的误解。后毛时代的中国，传统孔教以及毛话语对身体的禁忌 都逐渐淡化，随之而来的是身体在急剧变化的社会中被赋予的新意义，这种新意义 带有浓厚资本主义消费文化的色彩。

17 表面看来，女性的身体由女性来阐述，是赋予了身体一种自主权，把身体从男性话 语中拯救出来了。问题在于，女性在此过程中究竟是获得了还是丢失了自我？坏女 孩们的自白也许能给我们提供答案。九丹就有这样的宣言：“要夸奖一个女人，莫过 于说她是妓女。”“宁当‘妓女作家’，不做‘美女作家。”15 当九丹被问及是否把自己当 作“美女作家”时，她有以下的回答： 至于一个女人长得好看不好看，除了她自己和她的同性有个基本的评价之外，更 多的要靠男人去评价。因此够不够美女的标准，就由那些见过她们的和与她们打 过交道的甚至和她们睡过的男人去评价吧。16

18 木子美也宣称：“我的‘邪’表现在我老去诱发男人的邪恶。”17 妓女是以身体为商品的 职业。当一位女性以自己的身体被男性消费为荣，当一位女性美貌与否必须由男性 来判断，又或者当一位女性的某种特质必须与男性的同一特质并存才能显示的时 候，这位女性无疑是男权主义的附属品、牺牲品。一旦她们把对自我的发掘与显现 置放于以男性意识为依皈的性别结构中，女性意识即丧失殆尽，自我也就不可能获 得，而只会迷失在男性的价值判断系统中。

19 任何写作，包括女性写作，都应该放在社会现实的文本中检视。正如论者所指出 的：“假如我们要获得对女性创作充分而真实的认知，就必须把她们的写作放在社会 的文本中阅读及理解。”18 改革开放，使中国对西方敞开大门，计划经济逐步转型为 市场经济，无论是中国社会还是中国人的生活方式、思维方式以及行为模式都发生 了翻天覆地的变化，过去越穷越光荣的理论早已过时，当今中国社会是极度追求经 济消费的社会。在这种特定的社会环境中身体与消费所产生的关联，使“所谓美女不 是物理性的，而恰恰是经济性的。”19 在今天的中国，经济几乎成了万事万物的决定 因素。同时，传统对身体的禁忌也被汹涌而至的西方文化，尤其是荷里活电影动摇 了根基。看准了这一大好时机，坏女孩们抓紧机会，促销身体，从中谋取名利。正 如论者他爱批评的那样： 美女作家惯于以自己的身体做广告，努力开发自己的身体，源源不断地吸纳外部 资金才是她们真正的追求，而文学成了她们谋求一夜扬名从而终身暴富的手段， 文坛成了她们战旗猎猎的赛马场。她们以自身那几乎荡然无存的廉耻为代价，以 身体为赌注举行着异常激烈的赌博，以文学的名义叫卖身体。20

20 以身体为卖点，这些美女作家确实把握了市场的命脉。这群作家中年龄最小的春树 对性有这样的看法：“用一个口号来说吧，就是要性高潮不要性骚扰。”21 卫慧也宣 称： 我们的生活哲学由此而得以体现，那就是简简单单的物质消费，无拘无束的精神 游戏，任何时候都相信内心冲动，服从灵魂深处的燃烧，对即兴的疯狂不作抵 抗，对各种欲望顶礼膜拜，尽兴地交流各种生命狂喜包括性高潮的奥秘，⋯⋯22

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21 在中国，恐怕没有什么比年轻女作家公开谈论性高潮更刺激神经、更蛊惑人心的 了。不难想像，她们轻易地拥有了大批读者，达到了无论是书的销售量还是博客的 点击量都十分可观的目的。

22 总而言之，近十年来的中国都市是女声喧哗的十年。坏女孩或曰美女作家既引起了 社会的不安，也赢得了掌声。她们的写作本来具有挑战传统性别权力、复兴被压抑 的女性声音的革命意义，有潜力成为新女性意识的代表。然而，急功近利的投机心 态使她们的身体写作沦为资本主义消费文化的产品，以至身体、私人空间及女性意 识都完全地商业化。女性身体非但没有获得真正意义上的自主，反而再一次而且更 深地被物化，成为男权消费的对象。诚然，这批美女作家的出现，正如著名社会学 家李银河所指出的，标志着“在中国这样一个传统道德根深蒂固的社会中，人们的行 为模式发生了剧烈的变迁”，“中国社会已经开始向第三阶段过渡了（不仅男性享有 性自由，女人也将享有。”23 但是， 综上所述，坏女孩的出现以及其作品的流行，与 其说是西方女权主义在东方打胜了一仗，毋宁说她们更标志着资本主义消费文化已 成功入侵共产主义中国，并在其红色土壤上成为主流。

NOTES

1. 彼得·布鲁克斯(Peter Brooks)著，《身体作品：现代叙述里的欲望对象》［Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative］，剑桥， 麻萨诸瑟州：哈佛大学出版社，1993年，页 六。 2. 参看彼得·布鲁克斯，《身体作品：现代叙述里的欲望对象》，页28－30。 3. 木子美著，《遗情书》“自序”。南昌：二十一世纪出版社，2003年，页1 。 4. 《毛泽东主席论妇女》， 页18。 5. 参看网页www.ing7.net/inf/2004/feb/21/text/inf_3-1-p.htm。原文为英文。 6. 参看网页http://english.people.com.cn/。 原文为英文。 7. 参看网页http://biz.icxo.com/develop/mzm.jsp。 8. 陈佳，“从‘木子美’现象看博客网对女性话语空间的拓展”，www.blogchina.com/new/ display/28296.html, 页2。 9. 同上，页1。 10. 同上，页4。 11. 彼得·布鲁克斯，《身体作品：现代叙述里的欲望对象》，页7。 12. 同上，页1。 13. 参看梅莲莉·克拉恩（Melanie Klein) 著, “俄狄蒲斯冲突的初级阶段” [Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflicts] ，收于对精神分析学的贡献，1921－1945 [Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1921-1945], 伦敦：赫格斯出版社， 1950年, 202-226. 14. 参看米哈尔·巴赫汀著，拉伯雷和他的世界［Rabelais and His World]. 布鲁明顿：印地安那 大学出版社，1984。 15. 以上两句引言均出自www.women.sohu.com/58/22/blank215572258.shtml, 页1，页2。 16. 九丹著，“一本关于罪恶的书（代序）”，乌鸦：我的另类留学生活，长江文艺出版社， 2001年，页6。 17. 同上，页2。 18. 安·露丝琳·琼斯（Ann Rosalind Jones) 著， “书写身体：对女性文学的理解”［Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding ofl'écriture féminine], 收于女性主义：文学理论与批评文集

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[Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism], 纽布林斯威克：鲁爵斯大学出版社, 1991年, 页367. 19. 孙健敏，“从身体解放的尽头重新出发”［Starting again from the End of Body Liberation］，刊于花城 [Floral City]，2004年第6期，页184。 20. 他爱著，十美女作家批判书，华龄出版社，2005年，页4。 21. 参看www.women.sohu.com/58/22/blank215572258.shtml, 页4。 22. 同上，页3。 23. 同上，页2。

RÉSUMÉS

Chinese women have been continuous hits in mass media throughout the past decade. While names such as Mian Mian and Wei Hui have caught the attention of readers with their fin de siècle decadent writings, or , “genital writingd” as labeled by some critics, Mu Zimei, Zhuying Qingtong and Sister Lotus have excited netizens with their online sex diaries, hawking details of one-night stands, nude self-portraits, and pictures of flirtatious gestures respectively, which have caused far greater disturbances in China. On top of investigating whether these writers have bravely subverted the sexual hierarchy and avenged traditionally oppressed Chinese women or if they have willingly commercialized and objectified the female body, this article pays special attention to the notion of privacy and its relationship to the rise of the modern city and examines the complexity of privacy and publicity intruding upon one another in literary space. It proposes that contemporary Chinese literature has experienced a metamorphosis from an invasion of the private space by public space, specifically Maoist discourse, during the revolutionary periods to an intrusion of the public space by private space with the help of the Internet in capitalistic-communist China. This article also suggests that what the bad girl writers and bloggers have done would have been a revolution to celebrate the renaissance of the hidden and suppressed body in the traditionally male-orientated Chinese culture and a new representation of feminine consciousness of Chinese women. However, the body, intentionally used as the selling point of the works, has been objectified, marketized, and thus turned into a production of capitalist consumerism. As a result, instead of discovering the feminine consciousness, the female body serves to signify a re- entrapment of femininity by male chauvinism.

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Schizophrenic Hong Kong: Postcolonial Identity Crisis in the Infernal Affairs Trilogy

Howard Y.F. Choy

Chineseness/Britishness: Return and Depart

1 Michel Foucault avers: “One should totally and absolutely suspect anything that claims to be a return. . . . there is in fact no such thing as a return”.1 It was, however, in rigid irredentist claims of a «return» that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) took over Hong Kong from Great Britain in 1997. Such a «return», or huigui, is at bottom no more than a reversion to sovereignty, and of course sovereign power in this case belongs to the great «motherland» that possesses the Chinese territory, not to the people who actually live there. To the autochthons of the small Hong Kong, this postcolonial (re)turn is actually more a recolonization than a decolonization of the capitalist Cantonese city by the mainland Mandarin master. They find themselves helplessly trapped in the juxtaposition of the dual identities of «overseas» British (as classified and parenthesized in their passports), who have no right of abode in their adopted country, and Chinese nationals, who have no choice in determining their own nationality. For them, the reunification with China as a national integration produces but a nervous breakdown. Being adherents to, or more precisely, abandonees of the fallen British Empire and denizens of the rising People’s Republic, how could they possibly redeem Chineseness to reinvent their ethnic identity when the tribal appellation Heung-gong yan, or «Hong Konger», no longer demands a mere cultural identity but also a political subjectivity and social entity?2

2 The concept of Chineseness, however, is problematic. Chinese American neo-Confucian Tu Wei-ming (1994: 13-15) has argued that it is the diasporic Chinese individuals who truly understand China, inasmuch as they inherit and disseminate its culture from a critical distance.3 Accordingly, Chineseness lies elsewhere than China proper. Tu’s analysis assumes that a Chinese identity is to be forged by searching for «Chineseness»,

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not to be taken for granted simply by living in the «motherland». He defines the idea of cultural China in terms of what he calls «three symbolic universes», to wit, the Chinese societies of the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore; diasporic Chinese communities, including all Chinatowns throughout the world; and individual ethnic Chinese as well as non-Chinese outside of China, who try to intellectually understand Chinese culture and promote it. Tu admits that his overarching tripartite division is problematic as «Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore have much more in common with the Chinese diaspora than they do with mainland China», and yet «they are grouped together with mainland China as the first symbolic universe because the life orientation in these societies is based on Chinese culture».

3 I find Tu’s argument more convenient than convincing, for it neglects the geopolitical marginality and cultural hybridity of Hong Kong. An island off of the mainland and longi temporis possessio of a Western hegemony, Hong Kong is actually, as Tu acknowledges it, «at least in spirit, part of the Chinese diaspora».4 The diasporized Hong Kong people are neither part of the majority living in the mainland — in the bosom of a supposedly «authentic» Chinese culture, nor are they one of the «minority nationalities» (shaoshu minzu) categorized by the government, who are ethnically different from the Han. Hong Kong people are in-between, both local and global; they are somehow children of a Sino-genetic mother and a foreign foster mother. What makes Hong Kong unique are its at once diasporic mentality within the Chinese cultural world and eccentric «Chineseness» without the modern nation-state known as China — be it the Republic of China or the People’s Republic of China, but no longer the Qing empire. I am not suggesting that mainland Chineseness is always fixed (in fact it is already forfeited according to Tu’s neo-Confucianist and anti-communist agenda) but that the quest(ion)of «Chineseness» in Hong Kong is further complicated by the postcolonial position of the periphery.

4 Criticizing Tu’s conception of cultural China for projecting «a de-centered center» on the periphery, Australian cultural scholar Ien Ang (2000: 287, 282-283) proposes a diasporic paradigm, in which Chineseness «as an open and indeterminate signifier whose meanings are constantly renegotiated and rearticulated» should indicate «many different Chinese identities, not one».5 While Rey Chow questions whether the problem can «be resolved simply by way of the act of pluralizing» Chineseness into «so many kinds of Chineseness-es»,6 Hong Kong cultural critic Lo Kwai-Cheung points out that Tu’s reversal of center-periphery hierarchy «may only help to make the cultural and national ideology of Chineseness [a] more powerful, oppressive, and dominating» master code concealing its emptiness and «the void of subjectivity». Instead of putting Hong Kong on a par with mainland China as «the first symbolic universe», Lo sees Hong Kong’s position «both inside and outside of China», hence often shifting toward its Chineseness. His idea of «Hong Kong-styled Chineseness» is worth citing at some length: «Hong Kong culture itself is by no means fixed. It is instead a process of becoming, generated by various national forces and interests rather than by a single origin. . . . The post-1997 subjectivization of the Hong Kong people as Chinese nationals demonstrates that a different notion of Chineseness can always gratify new demands and that the return of the colony to its motherland might present a challenging perspective from which to examine the supposedly incontestable status of national identity.»7

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5 The process of becoming, in my view, is paradoxically also one of departing. Only after a departure from an origin would a transformation be possible; departing is prerequisite to all claims of (be)coming or returning. Departing is distancing, and without a distance perspectives are impossible. It is also, to cite Ang’s words once again, «a departure from the mode of demarcating Chineseness through an absolutist oppositioning of authentic and inauthentic, pure and impure, real and fake».8 Colonization is a process of departing. Before it was colonized by the British and thus forced to depart from China, Hong Kong had never pondered upon the problem of its Chineseness. And now, when departing from Britain, the issue of becoming Chinese again, or re-Sinicization, cannot be discussed without reference to its Britishness. While Chinese cultural conventions have been well preserved in the enclave, British colonial legacies are ubiquitous: parliamentary democracy in political debates, a legal system symbolized by the Victorian-style Supreme Court, financial services iconized by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, everyday practice of afternoon tea with milk, the fascination with Princess Diana, streets named after British princes (e.g., Connaught) or governors (Hennessy, Nathan), and the list goes on. Hong Kongers, to borrow Aihwa Ong’s description of overseas Chinese images in the West, are «internal outsiders» in China, whose «deterritorialized modern consciousness», in my view, would never produce a pure Chineseness.9 It is in such sense that I would agree with Lo that for Hong Kong the Sino-British clash is not an external difference between contending civilizations but an internal affair within a culture, and that «the city is actually struggling with itself».10

6 This existential agony is deftly cinematized as a neurotic symptom in the Infernal Affairs trilogy, produced by Media Asia, under the veneer of an action thriller. Co-directed by Andrew Wai Keung Lau and Alan Siu Fai Mak with the latter’s and Felix Man Keung Chong’s screenplay, the 2002 blockbuster and its 2003 prequel and sequel tell a story about a mafia mole infiltrating the Hong Kong police force and his counterpart, an undercover cop planted in the triads. A crisis of consciousness arises from both the former’s struggle to become a real policeman and the latter’s desire to regain his true identity or at least, in his own words, «an identity as a normal man». They are, as the title of Martin Scorsese’s remake of the film suggests, «the departed» — departing from where they belong to, from who they are, and from what they want to be.11 Striving to end their lives as rats, the spies suffer from schizophrenia as a result of their double espionage agency. The identity crisis is not only about split personality between good and evil, but also political tensions between the colonizer and the colonized, as well as unfulfilled reconciliation between Chineseness and Britishness. The schizophrenic anxious return from being the United Kingdom’s «crown jewel» to becoming the Middle Kingdom’s Special Administrative Region before and after the fin de siècle changeover characterizes a collective failure of resuming a single, clear-cut identity for a postcolonial global city.

Internal Struggling/Infernal Suffering

7 In his review of the cinema of the colonial city with regard to local identity formation, Leung Ping-kwan, a veteran Hong Kong cultural critic and creative writer, once regretfully concluded: «It would be difficult to claim any conscious postcolonial awareness in films produced before and after 1997, especially because Hong Kong

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cinema has always been commercial in nature with less emphasis on scripts with social concern».12 Infernal Affairs, however, conceals the question of a postcolonial Hong Kong identity in the twists and turns of a thriller tradition. Inspired by the schizoid story of identity exchange in John Woo’s Face/Off (1997), it begins with respective recruitments of secret agents by drug lord Sam Hon (played by Eric Tsang) and police superintendent Wong Chi Shing (Anthony Wong). While Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau) becomes a fake detective in Wong’s team, Chan Wing Yan (Tony Leung) has been an undercover operative inside Sam’s crime squad. The parallel fates of Lau and Chan make them mirror images of one another: where the former attempts unscrupulously to cover up his original identity, the latter makes every endeavor to bring himself to light.13 Even their student identification numbers at the police training school, 4927 (Lau) and 27149 (Chan), are almost simple reversions of each other.14 The two men are one another’s double, both having desperate desire to gain a legitimate and eternal identity.

8 With the plot twisting back and forth between Chan and Lau, the viewer is encouraged to shift ground between the two characters’ positions. On the one hand, Chan negotiates with his police handler Wong to end his ten-year masquerade; on the other, Lau is promoted to head the Criminal Intelligence Bureau and transferred to Internal Affairs (pun on the title Infernal Affairs) to ferret out the drug dealer Sam’s infiltrator, that is, ironically, himself. As they race to uncover each other, particularly in the back- street scene, it is as if they are chasing after their own identities in an inextricable maze. After Wong has been brutally killed by Sam’s underlings, Lau is able to pick up the connection with Chan by using the mobile phone left behind by Wong. The criminal mole and police snitcher co-operate by air, with the aid of Morse code, to capture Sam. Out of a crisis of consciousness rather than conscience, Lau means to renounce his unlawful past as he guns down his mob boss. Yet his illicit background is accidentally discovered when he finally encounters his counterpart in his office.

9 The most intriguing scene of the crime thriller is when Lau realizes that his secret history is uncovered by Chan. Instead of taking his life, Lau determines to erase Chan’s computer file, thus permanently deleting his police identity. Here, as in the plans and counter-plans of the operations on Sam’s cocaine deal with a Thai gang earlier in the film, bloody gunfights yield to psychic tensions.15 The psychic tension, to be further developed in the third part of the series, becomes a high-concept presentation of identity crisis. Such psychosis arises from the double life of being cat and mouse at the same time. Lau believes that the best way to annihilate Chan is to strip him of his real identity. What he does not understand is: his enemy is but his other, reversed self. Chan makes the same mistake, only more fatally so. He wants his identity back, but will not let Lau go with impunity. It ends up in a tragedy as the «gangster» contrives to arrest the «police». The former is shot dead on the spot by inspector Billy (Gordon Lam), who in turn is slain by Lau immediately after revealing that he used to be Sam’s informer, too. As more and more eyes and ears unexpectedly emerge from both camps along the plotline, we realize that the morbidity of the identity illness is so high that it becomes a collective crisis. Chan’s failure in his identity readjustment and justification in the final rooftop scene allegorically implies the impossibility of a return to the «original» identity of the Chinese population in Hong Kong prior to the Opium War (1839-42), the Sino-British drug war that resulted in the cession of the harbor. The double identity that disturbs the secret police throughout his life is indicated cinematographically by

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the close-up image of his corpse and its reflection on the metallic wall inside the elevator, whose dark shaft reappearing in the trilogy is evocative of the infernal motif.

10 Compared with Chan’s destiny, Lau’s is rather ambiguous as it generates two endings. In the Hong Kong version, when he walks out from the elevator, he finally announces to his fellows: «I’m a cop». As he appears to have overcome his identity crisis, his fear is only temporarily suppressed and will reemerge as identity neurosis in Infernal Affairs III, which I shall discuss below. An alternate ending is given in the Malaysian/mainland Chinese version, in which inspector Cheung (Ng Ting Yip) has detected Lau’s criminal identity and arrests him right outside of the elevator.16 Film critic Ma Chi attributes the discrepancy to the difference in geocultural background, namely, the pursuits of entertainment and commercial value in Hong Kong and the emphases of ideology and didactic function in the mainland.17 While the Mandarin denouement may be a result of official censorship and moral standards, according to which the evil should never prevail over the good, the Cantonese coda goes beyond the cliché that every bad deed has its just reward to the possibility of an open identity, an identity that is flexible rather than fixable. With his double endings, Lau’s identity is not fixed, but mixed. Moreover, Lau’s survival only renders Chan’s sacrifice senseless and his obsession with a consistent, authentic identity inopportune in the face of rapidly changing realities.

11 Chan’s police identity is not proved until six months after his death, when his appointed psychiatrist Lee Sum Yee (Kelly Chen) finds his file among the personal effects of the deceased headmaster of the cadet. Chan has once revealed his secret to Dr. Lee, who nevertheless thought that he was just kidding. Now, in the last scene of the cop drama, standing in front of Chan’s grave, Lee makes farewells to her patient: «How are you, Mr. Policeman?» The woman psychologist’s role as Chan’s mental mirror cannot be overemphasized. It is during her treatment that Chan wonders whether he is suffering from schizophrenia, and it is she who ultimately recovers his lost identity — though it is too late for him to be reinstated to his original post. In fact, her clinic, the only place he can fall asleep, has become his spiritual home or haven. In like vein, another female character, Mary (Sammi Cheng), also provides her fiancé, Lau, with a new hearth and home. Mary is writing a novel, in which she creates a man with multiple personalities, but she fails to finish it, especially after she learns about Lau’s espionage. Both female fringe figures enrich the masculine mafia movie in two profound ways: first, they open up a therapeutic feminine space in the midst of the manic male-dominated mise en scène; second, they compose a metanarrative that foregrounds the problem of identity.

12 In contrast with the female figures, the father figures Wong and Sam are responsible for the fates of Chan and Lau — that is, the fate of the colonized — suggestive of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that predetermines the city’s future. If Wong, father of the former Royal Hong Kong Police Force, represents the remnant British authorities, Sam symbolizes the pre-1997 domestic influence that stays in power in the new age. After Wong as the agent of the colonizer has been undone by Sam, the diametrically opposed moles Lau and Chan work together to get rid of the local villain, dreaming to walk out of their fathers’ shadows and recovering their own agencies.

13 Although the deaths of the dads signify the end of a period of colonization, the aspirations for rebirth into real Chinese at the turn of the century prove to be apocalyptic anxieties. There is no reincarnation, only boundless suffering in the infinite inferno, which the film’s title refers to in its epigraph invoked from verse nineteen of

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the Buddhist classic Nirvana Sutra: «The worst of the Eight Hells is called Continuous Hell. It has the meaning of Continuous Suffering». The Avinci or Continuous Hell is not a purgatory, where the fallen souls can possibly be purified through suffering; it is an abyss of incessant sufferings from kalpas to kalpas, which will never relieve one from the burden of guilt notwithstanding. The concept is reiterated in the prequel and sequel with more canonical citations that depict the infernal site as timeless, placeless, and with no exit.

14 Such is the situation of Hong Kong. In one and a half centuries, the colony has changed from a fishing village to an industrial town to an international city, and has shifted from an identity vacuum of its precolonial past to the identity disorder of its postcolonial present. Yet its colonial identity remains, and will ever be, unfixed. In an interview of the screenwriters, while Chong observes that the multiple rolesHong Kong people have to play in the post-British period are again doubled, Mak asserts, «Hong Kong is a place allowing no hero».18And if there is one, it can only be — to use the description of Andy Lau’s role by German film critic Dan Fainaru — a «dark, shady, ambiguous hero».19 Truly, it is as dark as the absolute hell, as shady as the characters’ personalities, and as ambiguous as the normative citizenship.

Double Identity/Troubled Genealogy

15 Set from 1991 to 1997, Infernal Affairs II picks up the storyline from the first part’s opening flashback, when young Lau (Shawn Yue) and Chan (Edison Chen) are cadet classmates at the police academy, whereas Sam and Wong are collaborators in manipulating the underground. Lau is infatuated with Sam’s wife, also called Mary (Carina Lau), who instructs him to murder Sam’s triad chief Ngai Kwun (Joe Cheung) at Wong’s behest. Again, the female figure is at the center of gravity. Being the woman of the two father figures and admired by young Lau, Mary plays politics between the hostile underworld and police forces. At first, she appears to be a common ground where different identities have a share of their own interests, but when she bluntly refuses Lau’s affection and shows ultimate loyalty to her endangered husband, she is betrayed to the Ngai family by Lau. Lau regards Mary’s rejection as a denial of his status and thereafter makes up his mind to change it. It is after the unlawful death of the Chinese godmother in a traffic «accident» and under a standard portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the British mother figure, that the criminal-turned-constable provocatively proclaims his careerism in response to the promotion board led by the British officers: «I guess we will have to start all over again».

16 The prequel traces the first part’s development of double identity back to a troubled genealogy. Young Chan finds himself an abandoned and illegitimate child of the assassinated gangland guru. The desertion is redolent of the three abandonments of Hong Kong in its colonial history: first in 1841, when Hong Kong Island was ceded by the Manchu government; then in 1941, when the British surrendered to the Japanese; and lastly in 1997, when London handed her crown colony over to Beijing. Thus, in Hong Kong as in other parts of the world, colonization is a continuous multi-hegemonic operation that takes place neither once nor twice, but thrice or more. It amounts to a heterogeneous genealogy, a lineage of nonidentity. Resisting his illicit identity, Chan is determined to cut off his consanguinity with the triad family by taking the surname of his mother — though she is absent in the film — and becoming a policeman to arrest

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the Ngai’s. Unfortunately, he is expelled from the school after his family background is unveiled. To negotiate his cadetship, Wong offers an indecent proposal: in order to disengage himself from the underworld, he must first engage in it; that is, to serve as a mole among the Ngai’s, so as to sever himself from them. So, he has to start his life all over again as a gangster cast into a hell-like prison. While Wong plans to resign and leave Hong Kong after Ngai’s case, Chan wishes to «return» (not as a criminal, but as a cop) and have his own desk in the police department, yet their enduring duties drag them on till their tragic deaths.

17 Chan is not alone in suffering from the obsession with identity. His half brother, Ngai Wing Hau (Francis Ng), who manages to ascend to the top seat in the triads with his cruelty and mercilessness, also desires to wipe out the blemish in his family history. The new godfather strives to become a political consultative candidate, hoping to rewrite the family saga on the threshold of dynastic change. He seizes the eve of the «liberation» as prime time to fix his identity, unaware of Chan’s double-cross. Despite their individual purposes, the two brothers represent a collective consciousness of the need to change from what Indian Hong Kong scholar Ackbar Abbas describes as «a «floating» identity that has served Hong Kong so well in the past» to a «definite identity» to be established for «current political exigencies».20 Like the dismissal of Chan from the police school, Ngai’s candidacy turns out to be a Cinderella dance at the ceremonial dinner on 30th June 1997, deadline of the Hong Kong dream. The playwrights choose the historical moment of «reunification», a time fraught with convivial tension, when Wong suddenly shows up at the banquet and presents an arrest warrant to the gangland kingpin. As invitations to celebration are withdrawn from him, Ngai’s candidacy is revoked by the PRC’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office. Finally, when he kidnaps Sam who is willing to serve as witness against him, he is shot dead by Wong.

18 The mastermind’s tragedy lies in his misunderstanding of the political «transition» (guodu) as not only a change of the sovereign power, but also his chance for a renewed identity. He misrecognizes the end of British jurisdiction to be an expiration of colonial control and, more mortally, a return to stainless strain at what he believes to be the best of times. The theme of the return is now presented as an anxiety of time in the tragic heroes’ search of a lost — or, more precisely, an imagined — origin. Only before and after Sam’s narrow escape from Ngai’s killers in Thailand do Mary and Sam realize respectively that they have «passed the point of no return». The point of no return is dramatically documented at the end of the film, when all policemen and women change the emblems on their hats and in their station as the British flag is replaced by the PRC flag at the rainy handover midnight. Then the intense darkness of the night on 1st July 1997 is decorated by dazzling fireworks to celebrate the «return».

Hong Kong/Xianggang

19 The identity crisis finally leads to schizophrenia in Infernal Affairs III, a sequel made up of multiple parallel cuts between flashbacks and flashforwards with obsessive interest in dates indicating temporal disorientation. Reining up the usual excesses of bloody violence of the Hollywood-style action genre, this last installment of the police epic is more of a psychodrama — with an ending evocative of the stunning schizy scenes of the overwhelming wall-postings in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Laetitia

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Colombani’s He Loves Me . . . He Loves Me Not (2002) — and almost a ghost story. A year after Chan’s death, Lau has been cleared of any charges in the case and starts to investigate the secret ties between chief inspector Yeung Kam Wing (Leon Lai), another rising star in the police force, and Shen Cheng (Chen Daoming), a mainland arms trafficker who wanted to build up a smuggling network with Sam three years ago. As the intricate plot develops, Lau, still obsessed by the proclamation «I’m a cop» and feeling insecure and paranoid about his career, gradually pushes himself into an abyss of mental disorder. He experiences a delusion of meeting with the departed Chan and Wong and an auditory hallucination of a phone call from Chan. When he looks at himself in the mirror and sees Chan’s image instead, he smiles approvingly. Apparently, he is possessed by the spirit of Chan and projects his past self on Yeung; in other words, he is haunted by history and pursues his present self as the past other. However, in Dr. Lee’s clinic, where both Chan and Lau confess the truth during hypnotherapy, yesterday and today, self and other all collapse into an identity black hole.

20 The film reaches its climax and complex when Lau leads his team to arrest Yeung. As the former shows evidence that only proves his previous collusion with Sam, he is actually acting as Chan to bust himself. But when Yeung announces himself to be a cop, Lau recalls the same self-identification by Chan a year ago. He suddenly turns around, counterclaiming that he himself is also a cop while shooting down Yeung. However, Lau kills not only Yeung, but also Lau’s alter ego and his memory of Chan as well. As Shen fires at Lau, we see Yeung, Chan (in black and white), and Lau falling to the ground one after another. Lau’s last bullet shot suicidally through his own upper jaw seriously damages his brain, leaving him in dementia. The penultimate scene has Lau unconsciously taping Morse code on his wheelchair in a hospital.

21 While the small or lower-case other comes from fission within oneself, there is also a capital or upper-case Other that imposes a total identity anew. When the mysterious limper Shen reveals his real capacity as an undercover commissioner from the mainland but still conceals his name symbolically as Shadow, he immediately poses himself to be the new father figure overshadowing the powerful Wong, Sam, and Ngai all at once. It is his pistol that gets Lau under control, meaning that he settles the unsettled forcibly. Representing the domiNation, the mainlander demands that his Hong Kong partners speak Mandarin, commands his Hong Kong subordinates to cuff Lau, and at the end, in front of Chan’s and Yeung’s graves under the national and regional flags, recommends Hong Kongers to recommence: «Let bygones be bygones. Tomorrow is another day». A neocolonial cliché, this last statement urges the listener to turn over a new leaf of history from English colonization to Mandarin recolonization. It echoes Chan’s hope that «everything’ll be OK after tomorrow», which is frequently repeated by Chan himself and his other self, Lau. Yet tomorrow is another tomb to follow.

22 The close-up of the five-star red flag highlights the fact that the China in question refers neither to an ethnical nation nor to a historical imagination, but to a political reality, an institutional entity known as the People’s Republic of China. The banner of national identity and the sacrifices to group loyalty signify a Party endorsed patriotism that declares the state to be adequate to every individual’s identity by easily simplifying the identity complex in the valance of fixed territoriality, sovereignty, and nationality. However, the strong Cantonese accent among native Hong Kong Chinese will preclude all closures of the cleavage between Hong Kong and Xianggang, just like

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the ever-existing colonial rift between Hong Kong and Heung-gong. Here, identity disorder manifests itself as language disorder, wherein Mandarin is less an official language for national unification than part of a lingua franca of the port city. For the people who speak Cantonese as their first language, Mandarin, like English, means a barrier of identification, a practice of discrimination (by the colonizer), before it becomes a (blockaded) bridge for communication. One wonders since Mandarin has never been their mother tongue, how come the mainland is their motherland. Indeed, it is in the «dialectic» (both linguistically and philosophically) sense that the colonial city Hong Kong goes global, and Xianggang goes postcolonial, whereas Heung-gong is unrecognizable.

One Country/Two Systems: Heterotopia and Schizophrenia

23 Noteworthy are the cemetery scenes in all three installments of the trilogy. It is in the cemetery, the entrance to hades, that young Chan submits evidence of his brother’s crimes to Wong and requests a normalization of his identity (Infernal Affairs II), that Chan’s police identity is recognized only after his death (Infernal Affairs), and that the mainland master inculcates his Hong Kong subject with the need to bury the past (Infernal Affairs III). The burial ground is so symbolic that Foucault used it as an example of «heterotopias» in a 1967 lecture. 21Foucault formulates the concept by employing the mirror metaphor: on the one hand, the mirror is a utopia, reflecting the image of oneself in a placeless place behind the surface where one is visibly absent; on the other, it is also a heterotopia, a counter-site existing physically in reality, where one’s self is reconstituted by seeing one’s own gaze from the other side of the glass. Foucault suggests: «The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there».22 Accordingly, the modern cemetery appears as «the other city», a «dark resting place» for «the dead body, which is ultimately the only trace of our existence in the world and in language».23

24 I would like to add that it is between the real and the unreal, between the living (present) and the dead (past), and between the metropolitan language (whether it be English or Chinese) and the local dialect that «I» is torn apart. The heterotopia reveals our heterogeneity by exposing the otherness within. In effect, the heterotopic inhabitants are always preferably schizophrenic: half of a Chinese Hong Konger is British. This postcolonial psychological condition has been observed by Tu Wei-ming: «For the majority of Hong Kong residents, being Chinese as a British subject is, in human terms, arguably superior to being Chinese as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China».24 Yet they cannot identify themselves with the Chinese or the British; they must be identified by their colonizers. Indeed, Hong Kong, be it a British colonial outpost or Chinese special administrative region, is a heterotopia rather than a «homogeneous society» as British scholar Matthew Turner believes it to be.25 Foucault describes a colony as a compensational heterotopia, a perfect and well-arranged space created as a contrast to the messy and ill-constructed metropolis.26 The Asian trading center serves as a model for the declining British economy and now the other system

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under the so-called «one country, two systems» for the booming Chinese market. Nonetheless, being a colonial heterotopia, it deserves but heteronomy, because it would not have become the lustrous Pearl of the Orient had it not been cultured by the Orientalist hegemony, and now it can only maintain its glorious globality as a «Chinese» city without appealing for declaration of independence.

25 Furthermore, we must not forget that the film per se as a fantasmatic projection of reality also gives rise to a heterotopic space, namely, the cinema. It is through the reflection of their transnational filmic images on the screen that Hong Kong people at last discover themselves. Thus, the movie serves as a mirror of the split mind, whereas the theater is a schizo-scenic site of delusions and hallucinations. The film is a hallucinogen that at once precipitates and treats schizophrenia. It triggers the madness from the shattered minds of the moviegoers, symptomizes/cinematizes it, so that they can recognize and manage it in their stressful urban life.

26 Deng Xiaoping’s architecture of «one country, two systems» may be a great invention in bridging the macro gap between communism and capitalism, but it does not address the micro fissure of identity cleft, because the concept itself is schizophrenic in nature. There is still a long distance between Hong Kongers’ Chinese identity and their identification with China. The Infernal Affairs trilogy raises the issue of identity politics under the commercial camouflage of cops-and-robbers thriller. The personal and collective quest for a legitimate Chinese identity is perhaps desirable, yet doomed to failure because of betrayal. Such betrayal, as suggested by the moles’ job nature, is derived from a duplicity that unsettles any monolithic identity. Since the former British colony has been denounced by Beijing as an «anti-communist base» for its protests against and annual vigils in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the identity duplicity is translated into potential treason to the party-state. The central government, so phobic about the historical humiliation and recent resistance brought by Hong Kong (reminiscent of Shen’s comment on his handicap caused by Chan in their gun battle), has pressed the local administration to legislate with a new internal security law. The Hong Kong-mainland relation, as the cooperation between Sam and Shen suggests is a suspicious and cautious one.

27 This explains why film critic Li Cheuk-to cites the series as a major example in his review of the political messages of Hong Kong’s late movies: «The former colony’s recent cinema continues to reflect its uneasy relationship with Mainland China and its uncertain future».27 The future is certainly uncertain as long as there is a continuous process of in-between mixture of colonialism and globalism and in-itself breakdown of nationality and identity. It is in such schizophrenic sense of identity that Hong Kong is transforming into a postcolonial global city.

NOTES

1. Paul Rabinow, «Space, Knowledge, and Power: Interview of Michel Foucault», trans. Christian Hubert, Skyline, vol. 20, no7, March 1982, p.20.

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2. British scholar Matthew Turner (1995: 22-23, 31, 33n26) has aptly argued that Heung-gong yan as “an identity of life-style” is “an ambiguous construction that was more than a ‘resident’, less than a ‘people,’” but on his agenda Hong Kong people must claim themselves “as a ‘people’, an ethno-cultural sub-group.” 3. Tu Wei-ming, 1994. «Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center», in Tu Wei-ming, ed., The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp.13-15. 4. Tu Wei-ming, p.15. 5. Ien Ang, «Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm», in Rey Chow, ed., Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field, , Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, pp.281-300. 6. Rey Chow, «Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem», in Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, p.18. 7. Lo Kwai-Cheung, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005, pp.2-18. 8. Ien Ang, «Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm», p. 283. 9. Aihwa Ong, «On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora», Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol.1, no3, Winter, p.770. 10. Lo Kwai-Cheung, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong, p.20. 11. The first film of the trilogy was so successful on the domestic and international markets that Hollywood has produced a remake, The Departed (2006), which won the Academy Awards of Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing in 2007. Directed by Martin Scorsese and rewritten by William Monahan, The Departed has the story setting shifted from Hong Kong to Boston. While a full-fledged discussion of the new version will have to be taken up on a different occasion, I want to point out here that the American reproduction is very Hollywoodish with only more violent and sexual scenes but a less convincing and profound plot of identity, not to mention its stereotyped and shoddy image of sinister Chinese smugglers employed by the PRC government, the USA’s post-cold-war hypothetical foe. Film critic Brian Hu (2006) has observed the Hollywood makers’ Sinophobe complex and their attempt to disassociate their adaptation from the original: “By denying the influence of Infernal Affairs, The Departed denies its non-American roots and cultural hybridity.” Yet is not the denial also a schizophrenic symptom signifying an American anxiety of Asian influence in the age of globalization? 12. Leung Ping-kwan, «Urban Cinema and the Cultural Identity of Hong Kong», in Poshek Fu and David Desser, eds., The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p249. 13. Critics have indicated that the innovation of Infernal Affairs in the subject of espionage lies in the counterpoint between the two protagonists. See, for example, Ling 2003: C8. 14. This is not a coincidence as Chan’s number was originally 36877 in the first three drafts of the script. See Mak Siu Fai and Chong Man Keung, Wujiandao qianzhuan: Juben, bianju Iunshu (Infernal Affairs: screenplay with scriptwriters’ commentary), 2003, pp.167-169. 15. It is untypical of action movies that the first gunfight does not occur until after the middle of the film (sc. 35E) and lasts for only 30 seconds. The climax also reworks Hollywood conventions by replacing actions with a face-off, turning the final confrontation into a conscious contemplation. 16. The Hong Kong version is the original design according to the first draft of the script. 17. Ma Chi, «Wenhua chayi yu chuangzuo jiqiao —Tan Wujiandao Xianggang neidi liang ge jieju» («Cultural Difference and Artistic Technique: On the Two Endings of Infernal Affairs in Hong Kong and the Mainland», Wenwei po, 28th February, 2003, C8.

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18. Mak Siu Fai and Chong Man Keung, Wujiandao qianzhuan: Juben, bianju Iunshu (Infernal Affairs: screenplay with scriptwriters’ commentary), p.34. 19. Dan Fainaru, «Review of Infernal Affairs», at Screenplay.com (http://www.secreenplay.com/ story.asp?storyid=11260), 2003. 20. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p.4. 21. Michel Foucault, «Of Other Spaces», trans. Jay Miskowiec, vol.16, no1, p.25. 22. Michel Foucault, p.24. 23. Michel Foucault, p.25 24. Tu Wei-ming, «Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center», in Tu Wei-ming, ed., The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, , Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, p.11. 25. Matthew Turner, «Hong Kong Sixties/Nineties: Dissolving the People», in Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan, eds, Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995, p.24. 26. Michel Foucault, «Of Other Spaces», p.27. 27. Li Cheuk-to, «Journal: Hong Kong», Film Society of Lincoln Center (http://www.filmlinc/fcm/ 9-10-2004/hongkongjournal.htm), 2004.

ABSTRACTS

Michel Foucault avers: «one should totally and absolutely suspect anything that claims to be a return. . . . there is in fact no such thing as a return.» It is, however, in rigid irredentist claims of the return that Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese rule in 1997. To the natives of Hong Kong, this postcolonial turn is actually less a decolonization than a recolonization of the capitalist Cantonese city by the mainland Mandarin master. They find themselves helplessly trapped in the dual nationality of overseas British and Chinese nationals. This existential agony is deftly cinematized in the Infernal Affairs trilogy under the disguise of a police epic. The 2002 box- office success and its 2003 prequel and sequel tell a story about an undercover cop and a mafia mole. A crisis of consciousness arises from both the former’s desire to regain his true identity and the latter’s struggle to become a real cop. The identity crisis is not only about, as critics suggest, split personalities between good and evil, but also political tensions between the colonized and colonizers. This paper argues that the collective failure of identity change before and after the fin de siècle changeover characterizesthe Special Administrative Region’s schizophrenic return.

AUTHOR

HOWARD Y.F. CHOY Howard Y.F. Choy is assistant professor at Wittenberg University. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Colorado and taught at Stanford University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. His dissertation, “Remapping the Past: Fictions of History in Deng’s China, 1979-97,” will be published by Brill. He is the assistant author of The Illustrated

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Encyclopedia of Confucianism. His recent publications also include“Historiographic Alternatives for China: Tibet in Contemporary Fiction by Tashi Dawa, Alai, and Ge Fei,” American Journal of Chinese Studies 12.1 (2005) and “‘To Construct an Unknown China’: Ethnoreligious Historiography in Zhang Chengzhi’s Islamic Fiction,” positions 14.3 (2006). He is working on political jokes and popular culture in post-Mao China and postcolonial Hong Kong.

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Exploding Johannesburg: Driving in a Worldly City

James Graham

Introduction

1 Ivan Vladislavić’s The Exploded View (2004) takes us on a series of journeys through Johannesburg, sub-Saharan Africa’s most globalized city. Split into four subtly interconnected narratives, the text reproduces the fractured form of the city as the four main protagonists forge their lives on the fault-lines of post-apartheid society. With good humor Vladislavić ironizes their sanguine attempts to get on in the new South Africa. In different ways the Johannesburg they travel around and through is home to them; but it often also proves unhomely. The stories are marked by transient and often uncomfortable encounters. The impression conveyed is that discrete spaces, experiences and memories within the city are only virtually reconcilable. As opposed to the totalizing functionalist vision of political bodies and urban planners, the only form of representation adequate to this evasive multiplicity is provisional and potential: the ambiguous meaning of a graphic designer’s «exploded view». And so in The Exploded View Vladislavić crafts an intimate relationship between the semiotic fabric of the built material world – of urban planning, architecture and advertising — and the everyday lives of people who live in and create those spaces. In this paper I explore how these literary meditations on this sprawling, dissolute city intervene in current debates about what constitutes its “globality”, paying particular attention to questions of spatial practice and mobilitythat often frame them.

2 Though only described as a minor or “gamma” world city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC)1, this economist and first-worldist classification does not reflect Johannesburg’s importance as a cultural as well as socio- economic hub of sub-Saharan Africa (cf. Simone 1998, 2002, Robinson 2003). Against this reductionist trend the University of Witwatersrand Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser), based in the city, is leading the way in qualitative research projects, arguing that embodied spatial practices and transnational migrancy create a

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singularly fluid and «elusive» metropolitan identity (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 347).2 However, to date comparatively little work has been done by these or other researchers on the importance of automobility — of driving in the city. This presents something of a critical aporia, I argue in this paper, given the manifold importance of what John Urry (2000, 2004) has termed the “system of automobility” to the evolution of Johannesburg’s global personality. In what follows I draw on debates in these fields and the writing of Ivan Vladislavić to illustrate the ways in which driving through rather than walking in the city are increasingly important yet overlooked aspects of social experience and cultural representation in Johannesburg, and potentially also other ‘global cities’ of the developing South.

Representing the city: global, worldly and literary

3 I want to suggest that Vladislavić’s literary Johannesburg resembles what Loren Kruger, in articles on theatre (2001) and film (2006) produced in and about Johannesburg, describes as the “edge city”. Her conceptualization steers a sensible course between heated debates about “Johannesburg’s formal global status” and its “informal worldliness”: “Calling Johannesburg an edgy city captures in the first instance its uneasy collocation of unevenly linked and possibly incompatible urban, sub-urban, and ex- urban forms as well as the urbanity or its lack that may derive from these forms. Johannesburg may not appear on strictly defined lists of global cities, but it shares the global characteristics of transnational flows of capital and people, and the concentration of high-tech and high-touch nodes of social and economic exchange, made visible in the built environment of the high-rise office tower, as well as the concentration of cultural diversity on the street.” (2006: 142).

4 The “edge city” thus collapses the macro-economic concerns of the global cities model into the informal networks and practices of the street. In Vladislavić’s Johannesburg the two are intimately connected. Despite the gargantuan disparities between the automobilized denizens of the affluent northern suburbs and the immigrant street- hawkers on the roadsides and in the inner-city, they are two sides of the same coin: Johannesburg’s social and economic worldliness. But in case this formulation appears either trite or uncritical, the «edge city» also indicates the profound social anxieties that pervade the city’s divided spaces and experiences. It is at this point in Kruger’s argument, however, that we see recourse to a received set of ideas about the intrinsic relationship between pedestrian mobility and the liberation of urban space. If the “edge city” “connotes a pervasive nervousness about unpredictable transgressions of the edges between districts and classes”, then the edge also “marks the site of new modes of «mobilizing» the previously “immobilized” spaces of apartheid, as urbanist Jennifer Robinson has it or, as Michel De Certeau writes of “pedestrian enunciations” of a “newly animated city” whose mobility “insinuates itself into the planned and readable city.” (2006: 144)

5 Vladislavić’s Johannesburg resembles this pedestrian “edge city”, but it also more concretely displays the different forms of mobility with which the city’s diverse inhabitants negotiate their quotidian anxieties and aspirations. Before discussing these in more detail, it is important to note the extent to which Michel De Certeau’s (1984) model of pedestrian spatial practice dominates in recent studies of Johannesburg (cf. Du Plessis 2004, Kruger 2001, 2006, Manase 2005, Nuttall 2004a, Simone 2004).

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6 There are sound historical and political reasons for De Certeau’s popularity in South Africa. The recent growth of interdisciplinary approaches in literary/cultural studies and the social sciences find common ground in De Certeau’s conflation of urban spatial practice and the (manifold) politics of representation. His work suggests that the unconscious everyday activity of city-dwellers, walking in the rationalized, commodified city-space, resists the forms of panoptical power exercised by the state and capital. These people partake in a radical form of consumption, one that does not “manifest itself through its own products, but rather through its ways of using the products imposed by a dominant economic order.” (1984: xiii) It is from this understanding of consumption as a subversive «way of operating» (1984: xiv) that Sarah Nuttall (2004b) is able to talk positively of the «Y Generation» in Johannesburg “stylising the self” through consumerism, and Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall (2004) lament that the “city’s fabric has been described as a structure in need of radical transformation and only rarely as an aesthetic vision.” (353) The vocabulary of “style” and «aesthetics» indicates that in this conception pedestrian mobility is essentially poetic (which coming from its Greek root of poesis also implies creative or in some radical sense productive): at once readable (like a text) and yet inscrutable (to panoptical power, because it features all the indeterminacies of a text): the “modalities of pedestrian enunciation which a plane representation on a map brings out could be analysed …[yet they] are of an unlimited diversity. They therefore cannot be reduced to their graphic trail” (1984: 99).

7 For De Certeau as for these critics, urban pedestrian mobility — “walking in the city” — thus constitutes an unwitting form of representational politics, of resistance and agency. But while it describes a material condition Meaghan Morris (1998) has referred to as ‘evasive everydayness,’ it still hovers in a tension “between a practice-based model of often illicit “behaviour” founded on enunciative speech-acts and a text-based model of «representation» which fuels functional social systems.” (Thrift 2004: 43) Given the peculiar relationship between linguistic and social “texts” described here, these issues are often explored through cultural and especially literary representations of the city and the spatial practices that form it. As a result of this, and given Johannesburg’s turbulent political history, the analytical paradigm of «walking in the city» has arguably assumed a disproportionate burden of representation in literary and cultural discussions.

8 The major promise of post-apartheid urban regeneration was for the liberation of space. In turn this demanded the concomitant liberation of mobility. Those academics trying to account for the ongoing — and in cases the increasing — discontinuities of everyday mobility in South African cities, find succour in the idea that there nonetheless exists a form of subaltern agency among those who still find themselves on the wrong side of the wall (see, for example, Bremner 2004b: 464-465). Sarah Nuttall (2004) exemplifies this in “City Forms and Writing the ‘Now’ in South Africa”, when she writes that “De Certeau responded to Foucault’s panopticon by arguing that people do have agency, can walk forward, unsurveyed” (748). To give a (rightly) celebrated example of this paradigm in practice, Nuttall suggests that Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to our Hillbrow (2001) transliterates a poetic mobility specific to the immigrant milieu of Hillbrow. Revealing De Certeau’s “ways of operating”, the second-person narrative guides the reader through what Lefebvre (1991: 39) would call the “representational” space of the inner-city:3

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“Mpe offers a revised inventory of the city, comprising a path along its streets, both tracking and breaching historical constructions of city space. Built sites along the streets symbolise specific practices, demarcate racial identities in particular ways and in turn determine how one walks. Thus one might feel oneself to be at the «edge of the city», «enclosed within the lane», «walking alongside», or «facing west», depending on where one is – a complex combination of built structure and felt identity.” (743)

9 Combined with a focus on immigrantexperience, this evocation of “felt identity” in Mpe’s novella gives us a sense of inner-city Johannesburg as a distinctly worldly and especially African metropolitan social-space — an insight into what Abdoumaliq Simone (2004) calls “people as infrastructure”.

10 The problem with these discussions is that this attempt to redeem the everyday life of the city’s marginalized inhabitants overlooks the fundamental importance of the system of automobility to the overarching analysis; not least in the variable attention paid to the complex factors that determine mobility “choice” (be it walking, taking a mini-bus taxi or car-driving).4 By contrast, we find that in The Exploded View the encounters and relationships of three of the four protagonists are almost wholly contingent on their use of cars and related technologies. Budlender, the first of the text’s white, middle-class and male car-drivers trawls Midrand and the northern suburbs as a statistician compiling the 2001 census. His interest in the demographic form of the city is mirrored by Egan, a sanitation designer who gets caught up in the intrigues of municipal urban planning, and Gordon Duffy, a billboard erector responsible for advertising the Kitsch suburban developments that Budlender gets lost in, and confronts his car-jackers in the book’s final tableau. These characters all drive through rather than walk in the worldly city. Their everyday lives are completely dependant on cars — but what does it mean to say that they this makes them part of the system of automobility?

11 In societies that have developed around the car, however unevenly, one cannot escape the social and cultural consequences of it. As Mike Featherstone (2004) glosses: “For Urry [2004] automobility should be seen as a “self-organizing autopoetic, nonlinear system” which links together cars, car-drivers, roads, petroleum supplies and other “novel objects, technologies and signs”, in an expanding relatively stable system which generates unintended consequences. Social life has become locked into the modes of mobility that automobility generates and presupposes.” (2)

12 What, then, is the effect of this relationship in post-apartheid Johannesburg – a city irrevocably marked by its legacy of segregated and immobilized spaces?

Driving, walking — “choices” and assumptions

13 “Driving, always driving” (Exploded View: 6)5 Budlender remarks nonchalantly — but to be a car-driver or even passenger in post-apartheid Johannesburg is to occupy a position of privilege dependant on a variety of circumstances. In a study commissioned by the City of Johannesburg, Mirjam Van Donk (2004) draws on the findings of the 2001 census — Budlender’s findings — to reveal some stark figures about the distribution of mobility. In 2001, African men and women made up 86 per cent of those people traveling to work or school on foot, whereas white men and women constituted 62 per cent of those using a car for the same journeys.6 Of this last group, 62 per cent of white men and 55 per cent of white women drive a car to work or school, yet the same applies

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to only 4 per cent of African women and 13 per cent of Colored women (29). The steady growth of a black middle-class in recent years does not as yet seem to be effecting this compound disparity, especially for black women. This is reflected in other recent fictions of the city. Despite her antipathy to “the older paradigms” of “race class and power” (2004a: 738), for example, Nuttall remarks on the acute differences in literary representations of the northern suburbs “between those who walk — some children, many black adults — and those who do not. As these suburbs deracialise, it is still the case that many in the middle classes seldom walk, at least not in suburban streets” (746). In a contrast to the intimate yet cosmopolitan social networks of the inner-city streets that Simone (1998, 2004) discusses — the “felt identity” we have glimpses of in Welcome To Our Hillbrow — through its representation of automobility The Exploded View highlights discontinuities in everyday life that speak directly to these “older paradigms”. It also suggests another form of poesis, however, a mobility and mode of observation that “consumes” and so re-creates the city in the radical sense proposed by De Certeau, but is not necessarily limited to a pedestrian perspective.

14 Vladislavić reveals this to the reader by filtering the social observations of his characters through playful narrative jokes. Despite his pedantic disposition, for example, Budlender is drawn from the first to that which resists measurement — to what we might call, following Achille Mbembe (2004), Johannesburg’s “superfluity”. His car journeys around Johannesburg, intended to map its changing formal demographics, best express its burgeoning informality. Queuing to get off the freeway one day he is assailed by hawkers: “Every street corner in Johannesburg was turning into a flea market. Informal sector employment” — he ponders — “(as a percentage of the total): 30 per cent. More?” (EV: 5) Immigrants are perplexing to the statistician. Having been given “a crash course on ethnography” by a friend over a pint, he embraces the era of political correctness by learning the physiological “signs” of their difference: “he was starting to see Nigerians everywhere. He had started to see Mozambicans too, and Somalis. It was the opposite of the old stereotype: they all looked different to him. Foreigners on every side. Could the aliens have outstripped the indigenes? Was it possible? There were no reliable statistics.” (EV: 4)

15 Budlender’s latent xenophobia is brought to the surface through these encounters and observations.7 Here as elsewhere in the text, Vladislavić deftly satirises those coming to terms, somewhat uneasily, with former prejudices. In particular, he chooses those people who remain isolated in their daily movements by the constraints of car travel; those who are left increasingly out of touch with the multiplicity of city-life. Yet, despite their disconnection, the characters are fascinated by this otherness. They seem to exist in a state of perpetual observation, gazing at those people living on the edge of their experience, consuming and so re-imagining their half-glimpsed lives.

16 Similar observations are more self-consciously evident in Vladislavić’s “Joburg”, an autobiographical sketch published in Granta in 2005.8 The anecdotal fragments that make up the article show how the evolving form of the inner-city, or its “involution” as Mike Watts (2005: 183) describes it, has outmoded his own cognitive map; his monthly trips to the Carlton Centre in the CBD to meet his brother; a trip to the Public Library — in both cases he finds that the increasing reliance on cars by others forces him to take new routes and develop new ways of moving in the inner-city. Not only is he defamiliarized in what was once a very familiar locality, he also begins to feel the creeping isolation we find in the car journeys of his characters through the northern suburbs in The Exploded View. But where he tries to open himself to these changes, for

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them it has more severe consequences and reveals a different level of abjection for the city’s immobile inhabitants. The Exploded View emphasizes how the system of automobility contributes to, creates even, the discontinuity of experience at these conurbanedges.

17 The inauspicious fate of Gordon Duffy in the final narrative of The Exploded View, “Crocodile Lodge”, provides a cautionary parable. Shuttling around the freeways his world is suspended between the radio traffic reports that guide his journeys and the cellphone conversations that coordinate them. In terms of his relationships with others, he lives in a bubble of virtual experience. But like other characters he also reveals the worldly or informal city through his fleeting perceptions from the car window. He is accosted in a jam at the off-ramp as Budlender is. Momentarily, he contemplates the street-vendors’ wares: “A slave ship, mass produced, he supposed, by children in a sweatshop somewhere in Hong Kong or Karachi or Doornfontein” (EV: 162). In an instant he reads a story of transnational exploitation in their ironic merchandise, but actually encountering the marginalized, improvised life behind this story entails leaving his car and facing the perceived threat of crime that his everyday life has been structured to avoid. The roadside constitutes the edge of his experience and becomes the site where his deepest anxieties and fantasies are played out.

18 In her book Johannesburg: One City, Colliding Worlds, Lindsay Bremner (2004) notes the evolving ambiguity of the roadside in this respect: “During apartheid roads became symbols of oppression and sites of resistance. Forced removals, the movement of troops and armoured vehicles, marches, road blocks, running street battles: the culture of the street was a highly politicised one. As apartheid ended and the road was liberated, it became, for many, synonymous with anxiety. It brought strangers in to our midst and those strangers were distrusted, feared and often armed and dangerous. A new landscape of razor wire, electric fencing, motorised gates, road closures, sentries and security patrols turned the road into a paramilitary zone … Simultaneously, it was claimed by a myriad small time traders, domestic workers and informal institutions, as a site of conviviality, livelihood and leisure, and extension of their homes. Its liberation brought new freedom of movement between rural and urban areas and new migration across national boundaries.” (108-109)

19 The self-contained world of the automobile prevents the transmission of the pedestrian “conviviality” Bremner talks of. Duffy’s narrative is interrupted five times by radio traffic reports, and losing his cellphone creates a crisis that leads him back to the “Crocodile Lodge” development site, where he is attacked. His is a life where social experience is irrevocably mediated by automotive technology. The narrative begins: “A truck has lost its load on the R24, that’s opposite Eastgate. Traffic lights are out of order on Jan Smuts Avenue at Bompas, in Roodeport at Main Reef and Nywerheid, in Rivonia Road at 12th Street, in Sandown at Grayston Drive and Daisy. The cadences of the traffic report were as familiar as liturgy. Usually it was reassuring, this invocation of rises and dips and the states associated with them, a map of sensations keyed into his own body, to the ball of his foot pressing on the accelerator pedal and the palm of his hand lazing on the gear lever. It would soothe him to hear that each of the named intersections had become the hub of a failed mechanism, the end point of an incomplete trajectory, and that he was implicated in none of it, he was still on course. But this afternoon, caught in the rush hour and sensing trouble up ahead, the measured words fell on him like a judgment.” (EV: 159-160)

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20 What is described is nothing short of a phenomenology of the “car-driver hybrid” (Sheller and Urry 2000). The relationship between driver, car, technology and the transport infrastructure is both sensuous and rhythmic. Vladislavić’s skill as a writer is to convey these “cadences” through the rhythms of the text. The traffic-report interruptions jar against the mellifluous prose but also provide a structure for the free- floating perceptions of an “automobilized person” (Katz 2000). This representation of driving reveals and revels in a programmed comportment, but like literary representations of «walking in the city», it also discloses resistance. There is a certain etiquette to handling tailbacks, for example, that becomes a pleasurable, shared conspiracy when the traffic laws are contravened: “Someone buffeted by on the left. When the system fails, the rules are there to be broken. He nosed out of the traffic and followed the offender along the emergency lane to the off-ramp” (EV: 161-162). Like the walker in the city, the car-driver hybrid on the freeway has developed its own subtle language, insinuating itself into the “system”, breaking the rules by “nosing out” of a traffic-jam. Such an enunciation provides fuel for those automobility theorists who argue that “”cars” are not just machines whose meanings are stamped out by “culture” but have their own qualities which increasingly approximate the anthropological spaces that de Certeau is so concerned to foster and protect” (Thrift 2004: 49).9 The point being made in The Exploded View, however,is that in Johannesburg this phenomenon is socially deleterious.

21 In the fractured vision of The Exploded View, the city’s edges are policed by unequal access to automobility. But Vladislavić does not directly protest this; his technique is discreetly ironic. Back in Duffy’s bakkie: “There has been an accident involving three vehicles on the N1 South before the Buccleuch interchange. Emergency vehicles – Knew it! Must be the third time this month. How many accidents are there in Johannesburg on any given day? The radio reports capture just a fraction, those that call attention to themselves by happening in the rush hour, but there must be dozens more. How many drivers are speeding at this moment towards death or worse, towards a lifetime of walking with a stick, disabilities that will necessitate new hobbies, scars that will demand a new wardrobe? Accidents.” (EV: 160)

22 In this instance the radio report confirms Duffy’s hostage to the system. His hybridized consciousness is locked in to the automobile matrix — “Knew it!” — but, again, he also displays resistance to it, a form of self-consciousness that is stimulated by reflecting on the insidious ubiquity of traffic accidents. Speeding car-drivers live on the edge of death or worse, the edge ofmobility. This is a selfish way of thinking about accidents – selfish but indubitably honest. It reveals a cutting irony: what of others? what of those affected by the accident?

23 In Duffy’s view the ubiquity of speeding cars and accidents have made them banal. This banality is in fact a quite lethal aspect of everyday life in Johannesburg. Car-drivers are oblivious to or in denial of their affects on pedestrians.10 In Lizeka Mda’s article for blank____Architecture: apartheid and after (1998),she interviews an elderly black lady, a muti-seller eking out a living beside Faraday station who earlier in the day saw a man knocked down by a car right in front of her, but “she hardly pays any attention to the cars speeding past this open air hyperpharmacy” (D10). This ethnographic snapshot of an improvised “way of operating” on the roadside inadvertently expresses the appalling reality of road-safety in South African cities.

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24 According to Roger Behrens’ (2005) research, around 11,000 people die on South Africa’s roads and roadsides every year, and roughly half of that total is pedestrians – some of the worst statistics in the developing world. His paper suggests that in urban areas pedestrians are more likely to be the victim of road-fatalities than car-drivers (174).11 So not only does unequal access to automobility reveal class, racial and gendered dynamics of affluence and exclusion, it also manifests an asymmetry of roadside safety. The tragic irony here is that the car is the preferred choice of mobility for those that can afford it — not only for its relative luxury and as a vital status symbol, but also, due to perceptions of crime associated with walking in the city, for its perceived safety (178)12. But what can be done? Alongside the venerable minicab-taxi, walking is and for the foreseeable future looks likely to remain the principal mobility of the majority. This often leaves them stranded — immobilized — in certain areas of the city. How can the immobilized access and explore mobilities without feeding the system of automobility — without, that is, producing more immobility?

25 Duffy’s morbid reflection on the intimacy of mobility and immobility opens the narrative to ethical concerns that are central to Vladislavić’s literary project (cf. Helgesson 2004, Marais 2002). In The Exploded View the system of automobility contributes to a discontinuous city but also to a discontinuous community: it precipitates in frustrated liaisons, unsettling encounters and, ultimately, an act of violence. It also feeds a certain paradox. Where Jennifer Robinson (1998) calls for new ways of imagining the mobilization of immobilized spaces, the liberatory logic behind this premise arguably does not take into sufficient account the dominance of automobility in the way it connects areas of the worldly city and manages the speed and viscosity of flows between them. Drawing on Paul Virilio’s (1997) philosophy of speed and inertia, Jörg Beckmann (2004) argues, somewhat bleakly, that “mobility relies on immobility; it is precisely because certain subjects and objects are immobilized that others can travel. Rather than seeing modernity as a continual process of ‘setting free’ and ‘letting go’, as traditional modernization theory suggests, one should see it as equally immobilizing.” (84)

26 Despite the negative overtones of this formulation, If in Johannesburg social life “has become locked into the modes of mobility that automobility generates and presupposes” (Featherstone 2004: 2), then one must at least consider the retrogressive dangers of championing these circumscribed modes. This is a radical view – but not one meant to stymie the urgent task of re-thinking mobility and space in the city. I agree with Robinson and Kruger (2001) that new mobilizations need to be imagined and existing improvisations recognized. The point is that the relation of these mobilities to the system of automobility needs to be thoroughly analyzed in order to counteract the potentially retardant logic that inheres in received assumptions about freeing mobility. Without this they may very well perpetuate the “metanarrative of urbanization, modernization and crisis” that Mbembe and Nuttall (2004) decry in contemporary «ways of seeing and reading the contemporary African city» (353).

Exploding the view

27 Robinson (1998) argues with some force that “while planners and government officials try to find ways to rearrange the city, or to encourage reconnection and integration, ordinary people are reusing and remaking urban space at a rapid rate” (D7). This is the

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same vein of thought that calls for Johannesburg’s fluid and dynamic worldliness to be viewed against its economic and functional globality. Learning from the resourceful and imaginative practices of “ordinary people” is clearly desirable, but it threatens to collapse into a romanticized vision of “walking in the city” unless accompanied by more detailed research into the interdependency of mobilities. Behrens (2005) takes a more pragmatic approach to finding a solution. He begins by historicizing the infrastructure of automobility.

28 In the 1970s-80s, he tells us, urban planning in South Africa drew from British and American models predicated on “introverted public facility and amenity provision developed in the 1920s and 1930s”, and “ideas about functional road hierarchies and through-traffic elimination developed in the 1940s and 1960s” (166). As a consequence a series of erroneous assumptions were made. The major assumption was the “ultimate inevitability of majority, if not universal, private car ownership and use, and the availability of financial and environmental resources to continually match the demand growth in private car use places on road space with roadway construction and cheap fuel supply. These practices did not actively seek to reduce the use of motor cars in favour of public transport modes or to encourage nonmotorised modes for longer distance travel—they sought just to manage motor- car traffic more efficiently, safely and cost effectively.” (168)

29 Quite simply, the urban transport infrastructure was developed to meet the needs of the system of automobility, not mobility per se. At the same time the apartheid state was intent on immobilizing the black majority by controlling what spaces they could move to and in and economically delimiting their access to automobility. The assumption thus reveals a terminal contradiction in the socio-spatial engineering of apartheid. Like the South African economy in general, the transport infrastructure could not survive solely on immobile cheap labor. It needed mass automobility in order to sustain its modernization trajectory. Despite the nominal liberation of mobility in the post-apartheid era, the asymmetries of mobility and safety that mark this period express the enduring legacy of this automobile-centered planning. From the perspective of a historically conscious urban planner, then, the most progressive practical means of addressing this legacy entails ‘rearranging’ the city in ways that Robinson and many others are critical of: “The development of better [planning] practices will not therefore involve the selection of one network type over another, but involve the development of a sufficiently flexible and multi-layered multi-modal network able both to manage vehicular traffic and to prioritise walking and public transport.” (Behrens 2005: 176)

30 This is the point where Vladislavić’s literary Johannesburg becomes instructive. Where levels of literary irony and ambiguity in The Exploded View give vertiginous life to the text’s seemingly immutable portrait of Johannesburg, so too might a similarly “exploded” view of transport infrastructure planning democratize mobility by reflecting different ways of experiencing, using and creating space in the city — especially the overlooked relationship between car-driver and pedestrian forms of imaginative spatial practice.

31 Driving his bakkie through the suburbs, moving yet immobile in his seat — motile13 — Duffy’s imagination wanders. He remembers the American magazines he used to read as a child — it is here that we learn about the graphic designer’s “exploded view”, a two-dimensional representation of disordered three-dimensional space. It is the book’s

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“unifying” metaphor, but as such it is ironic, a forsaken promise. As Duffy remarks, “It was no longer even clear to the insightful observer how things were made or how they worked. The simplest devices were full of components no one could see, processes no one could fathom” (EV: 190). Such is the predicament of the car-bound observer — or, indeed, the urban planner — trying to fathom the worldly city of Johannesburg. But the magazine reverie also gestures toward a familiar redemption. Its pages are full of “household tips and handyman’s hints, objects put to new purposes or put in to new relationships with one another, improvements, adaptations, customizations.” (EV: 178) In a typically oblique allegory, these images mirror the kind of imaginative improvisations and appropriations of city-space — poesis —championed by Kruger, Nuttall and Robinson. But in this instance there remains a world of difference between Duffy’s car-borne dreams of an Americanized consumer society and the daily reality of the street-dwellers who interrupt his reverie, demanding that he hand over his car. Vladislavić’s Johannesburg is an aesthetic project but also remainsa space of division.14

Conclusion

32 The economic imperatives of globalization presuppose new forms and increased levels of mobility. But they do not necessarily recognize the existence of improvised ways of using and so re-creating the built and imagined spaces of unevenly developed cities. In a compelling rebuttal to Ed Soja’s (1997) critique of the romanticization of “the street” in urban theory, Kruger (2001) reminds us of the need to focus on pedestrian models of spatial practice in order to counter the «neoliberal view from the top that mistakes the “orderly city plan» for the messy reality below” (248). The problem is that when Kruger, like many others, talks about the streets, the roads and the roadsides, she neglects to reflect on the complex ways that Johannesburg’s different urban mobilities remain circumscribed by the system of automobility. And as The Exploded View shows us, this system is more than simply a structure of domination. Although it invariably expresses — and, I would add, protests — the abject social discontinuities of the city, the car-driver hybrid or automobilized person is also an embodied spatial practice. It is another way of moving, observing and being in the city, of consuming and re-imagining the ever-changing social landscape. Where the challenge for urban planning in a “global city” is to reconcile these different mobilities within a compromised, functionalist brief, The Exploded View paves the way in the cultural re-visioning of urban spatial-practices in Johannesburg. The challenge for literary and cultural critics and social scientists alike is to use these kinds of representations to explore, question and critique the “global city” in a progressive manner — to explode the view.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Accone, Darryl. ‘Poet of Social Change,’ review of Ivan Vladislavić’s Portrait of Keys: Joburgand What-What, Mail & Guardian 28/6/2006, http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2006/2006jul/060728- keys.html.

Beckmann, Jörg. ‘Mobility and Safety,’ Theory, Culture & Society 21:4/5 (2004), pp. 81-100.

Behrens, Roger. ‘Accommodating Walking as a Travel Mode in South African Cities: Towards Improved Neighbourhood Movement Network Design Practices,’ Planning, Practice and Research 20:2 (2005), pp. 163-182.

Bremner, Lindsay. ‘Crime and the emerging landscape of post-apartheid Johannesburg,’ in Hilton Judin and Ivan Vladislavić, eds. blank___:Architecture, Apartheid and After (Rotterdam: Rai publishers, 1998), B2.

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Bremner, Lindsay. ‘Bounded Spaces: Demographic Anxieties in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg,’ Social Identities 10:4 (2004b), pp. 455-468.

Carroll, Rory. ‘How I never quite fell for South Africa,’ G2 15/8/06, pp.13-15.

Census 2001: Primary Tables Gauteng, Census ’96 and 2001 Compared (Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, 2004).

Clarkson, Carrol. ‘Fever and AIDS: teaching Bleak House in South Africa’, awaiting publication (2006).

De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

Du Plessis, Irma. ‘Living in “Jan Bom”: Making and Imagining Lives after Apartheid in a Council Housing Scheme in Johannesburg,’ Current Sociology 52:5 (2004), pp. 879-908.

Helgesson, Stefan. ‘“Minority Disorders”: Ivan Vladislavić and the Devolution of South African English,’ Journal of Southern African Studies 30:4 (2004), pp. 777-787.

Katz, J. How Emotions Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

Kruger, Loren. ‘Theatre, Crime and the Edge City in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg,’ Theatre Journal 53 (2001), pp. 223-252.

Kruger, Loren. ‘Filming the Edge City,’ Research in African Literatures 37:2 (2006), pp. 141-163.

Latour, Bruno. Quoted in Beckmann (2004), ‘Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts,’ in T.P. Hughes and T.J. Pinch, eds. The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992)

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991

Manase, Irikidzayi. ‘Making Memory: Stories from Staffrider Magazine and ‘Testing’ the Popular Imagination,’ African Studies 64:1 (2005), pp. 55-72.

Marais, Mike. ‘Visions of Excess: Closure, Irony and the Thought of Community in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket,’ English in Africa 29:2 (2002), pp.

Mbembe, Achille. ‘The Aesthetics of Superfluity,’ Public Culture 16:3 (2004), pp. 373-405.

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Mda, Lizeka. ‘City Quarters: Civic Spine, Faraday Station, KwaMayiMayi and Ponte City,’ in Hilton Judin and Ivan Vladislavić, eds. blank___:Architecture, apartheid and after (Rotterdam: Rai publishers, 1998), D10.

Mpe, Phaswane. Welcome To Our Hillbrow (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001).

Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).

Nuttall, Sarah and Achille Mbembe. ‘Writing the World from an African Metropolis,’ Public Culture 16:3 (2004), pp. 347-372.

Nuttall, Sarah. ‘City Forms and Writing the ‘Now’ in South Africa,’ Journal of Southern African Studies 30:4 (2004a), pp. 731-748.

Nuttall, Sarah. ‘Stylizing the Self: the Y Generation in Rosebank, Johannesburg,’ Public Culture 16:3 (2004b), pp. 430-452.

Pendock, Neil. ‘Leaping Lazard,’ review of Ivan Vladislavić’s Portrait of Keys: Joburg and What-What, Financial Mail 18/08/2006, http://free.financialmail.co.za/06/0818/leisure/dbooks.htm.

Robinson, Jennifer. ‘(Im)mobilizing spaces, Dreaming of Change,’ in Hilton Judin and Ivan Vladislavić, eds. blank___:Architecture, Apartheid and After (Rotterdam: Rai publishers, 1998), D7.

Robinson, Jennifer. ‘Johannesburg’s Futures: Beyond Developmentalism and Global Success,’ in Richard Tomlinson, Robert A. Beaurigard, Lindsay Bremner and Xolela Mangcu, eds. Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Post-Apartheid City (London: Routlege, 2003), pp. 259-280.

Sheller, Mimi and John Urry. ‘The City and the Car,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24:4 (2000), pp.37–57.

Simone, Abdoumaliq. ‘Globalization and the identity of African urban practices,’ in Hilton Judin and Ivan Vladislavić, eds. blank___:Architecture, Apartheid and After (Rotterdam: Rai publishers, 1998), pp. D8.

Simone, Abdoumaliq. ‘People as infrastructure: intersecting fragments in Johannesburg,’ Public Culture 16:3 (2004), pp.407-429.

Soja, Edward. ‘Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis,’ in Sally Westwood and John Williams, eds. Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Memories (London: Routlege, 1997).

Thrift, Nigel. ‘Driving in the City,’ Theory, Culture & Society 21:4/5 (2004), pp.41-59.

Urry, John. Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty First Century (London: Routlege, 2000).

Urry, John. ‘The “System” of Automobility,’ Theory, Culture & Society 21:4/5 (2004), pp.25-39.

Van Donk, Mirjam. ‘Women in the City of Johannesburg,’ Study commissioned by the Office of the City Manager, City of Johannesburg, 2000.

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Vladislavić, Ivan. ‘Joburg,’ Granta 92 (2005), pp. 127-151.

Vladislavić, Ivan. Portrait with Keys: Joburg and What-What (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2006).

Watts, Mike. ‘Baudelaire over Berea, Simmel over Sandton?’ Public Culture 17:1 (2005), pp. 181-192.

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NOTES

1. See website, http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc. 2. See, for examples, the special issue of Public Culture 16:4 (2004) edited by Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall and the Wiser archive of events and publications, http://wiserweb.wits.ac.za. 3. Written in the second person, as Carol Clarkson (2006) notes, “Mpe’s representation of the walk has the effect of taking the reader on a guided tour” (6). 4. This article focuses on only two of these inter-related mobilities: walking and car-driving. More work needs to be done on a) the role of the minibus taxi industry in this debate, and b) critical reflection on the translation of automobility studies into ‘developing world’ contexts, especially for a city as unevenly developed as Johannesburg. 5. Further references to this text will be abbreviated and cited in the body of the text as (EV). 6. These figures are all the more startling when the relative total size of these demographics is accounted for: 6.5 million Africans compared to 1.8 whites (Census 2001, 2004: 18). 7. As are, at a more academic level, the inadequacies of quantitative modes of analysing or ‘reading’ the city. 8. ‘Joburg’ is part of a larger collection of writings, published in South Africa as Portrait of Keys: Joburg and What-What (Umuzi, 2006), and with a more playful subtitle in the UK, as Portrait of Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked (Portabello Books, 2006). Recent reviews by Pendock (2006) and Accone (2006) follow the ‘pedestrian’ trend of academic criticism by emphasising street-side observations and describing Vladislavić as the pre-eminent literary flâneur of Johannesburg. 9. Following Beckmann (2004) there is a sense in which they become a Latourian ‘delegate’: the car has turned into such an anthropomorphic entity in three senses: ‘first, it has been made by humans; second, it substitutes for the actions of people and is a delegate that permanently occupies the position of a human; and third, it shapes human action by prescribing back’ (Latour 1992: 235) where to go, how fast to get there, which road to choose or how safe to be.” (88) 10. This banality can also be read in terms of popular denial of automobility’s dominance: automobility “works”, Beckmann (2004) surmises, “because its accidents are denied. Collective denial enables individual mobility”(94). Gordon Duffy’s lack of concern for others is symptomatic of this denial, but also of the individual’s overriding need for mobility. 11. Behrens does not give figures for non-fatal accidents. These would no doubt be equally alarming. 12. The journalist Rory Carroll (2006) has recently written about what many see as a catch-22 scenario: “I was mugged again. It was midnight and I was on foot. A car stopped, two guys jumped out, pointed a gun at my nose and took my wallet, phone, keys and shoes. I was left wandering the streets barefoot and shaken. Walking had been a deliberate choice to root myself in my surroundings but I vowed henceforth to use my car even for short journeys.” (14) 13. For an illuminating discussion of the relationship between mobility, motility and the car- driver hybrid, see Beckmann (2004) 14. This point emphasises the way that Vladislavić’s fiction disrupts received ways of seeing and reading the city. For example, when discussing the academic literature on Johannesburg’s urban formation, Mbembe and Nuttall (2004) suggest that in “their attempt to sort out the link between industrialization and urbanization, these accounts envision the city not as an aesthetic project but as a space of division.” (357)

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ABSTRACTS

This article argues for the importance of the «system of automobility» to critical cultural studies of Johannesburg, sub-Saharan Africa’s most globalized city. Using Ivan Vladislavić’s 2004 experimental novella The Exploded View as a primary example, it takes issue with the tendency for cultural studies of the city to focus on pedestrian mobility, or «walking in the city», as being an inherently liberatory practice. Without downplaying the «everyday evasiveness» of walking in the city, this article nonetheless points to the different ways in which pedestrian mobility is invariably circumscribed in a city built around the car. In Vladislavić’s novella, for example, characters drive through rather than walk in the city, and this corresponds to an overlooked form of poetics and power relations that are fundamental to what might be described as Johannesburg’s ‘worldly’ personality.

AUTHOR

JAMES GRAHAM James Graham teaches part-time in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, and for the London Studies programme in the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published on Southern African and contemporary British literature and culture.

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Short Stories against Barcelona’s Urban Transformation

Edgar Illas

1 In preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games, Barcelona experienced during the 1980s a deep process of urban transformation. Barcelona’s urban fabric had been terribly affected by indiscriminate construction and real estate speculation in the previous decades, under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. After the dictator’s death in 1975, democracy came to Spain, Catalonia recuperated its autonomous government of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and Barcelona elected a socialist city government. In this context, architect Oriol Bohigas became in 1980 the urban designer of Barcelona’s city council and launched a plan to rebuild a city that had been torn apart by busy highways and intense urban sprawling.

2 Bohigas, who exposed in various books his program to foster urban compactness and multifunctionality, proclaimed a precise slogan that summarized his plan: ‹‹ens cal higienitzar el centre i monumentalitzar la perifèria›› [‹‹we must clean up the center and monumentalize the periphery››].1 On the one hand, his project stipulated minimal but conscientious interventions that would ‹‹esponjar›› the city, that is, that would sponge the urban fabric and open up public spaces in densely populated areas. No overall demolition was necessary — only a sensitive intervention in concrete points. On the other hand, to monumentalize the periphery referred to two specific things. First, high-speed roads and expressways had to be integrated into the city fabric instead of letting them tear it up and alienate entire neighborhoods. Second, landmarks were necessary to give a distinctive personality to streets and neighborhoods. Hence, public sculptures by internationally recognized figures were placed in the less glamorous areas of the city. Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Ellsworth Kelly, Eduardo Chillida, Bryan Hunt, Jannis Kounellis, Jaume Plensa, Rebecca Horn, Frank Gehry, Fernando Botero, Antoni Tàpies, or Joan Brossa, among many others, provided works at unusually reasonable prices because of the public and revitalizing function they would fulfill.2

3 Bohigas’ plan aimed to create new and diversified centers throughout the city. The strategic re-equipment of specific spaces intended to have ‹‹efectes osmòtics››

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[‹‹osmotic effects››] over larger areas.3 New parks, museums, restored monuments, street sculptures, renovated old squares, and, most notably, pristine beaches were devised to regenerate degraded zones, provide more public spaces, and help citizens map the city easily. These centers, or also called ‹‹areas of new centrality››, would divide the city in well-defined, understandable sections most of which would coincide with the limits of historical neighborhoods. Thus, the plan intended to bring back a sense of place or, as Mayor Pasqual Maragall put it, to help the city recover itself.4 The transformation would make the city more distinctive, more compact, more public, easier to read, and, not least, prettier, to quote the municipal slogan advertising the renewal ‹‹Barcelona, posa’t guapa›› [‹‹Barcelona, make yourself pretty››]. And, according to the amount of attention and awards that the city received, among them the Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1999, the municipal government did achieve the goals of Bohigas’ plan, which soon became known as ‹‹the Barcelona model›› of urban transformation.

4 Generally, when a deep process of urban change occurs, many fictional narratives quickly come out eager to retrieve the spaces on the verge of disappearing and the collective memory embodied in them. These narratives often function as compensatory devices for the momentary sense of loss and disorientation caused by the new urban landscape. Even if their representation of a collective memory might seem to contest the urban change, they rather reinforce the new state of things, as these narratives reassure everyone that the past may be erased from the streets but it will be preserved in their pages.5

5 But in the relation between Barcelona and Quim Monzó, one of the most popular Catalan writers of the 1980s and 90s, we encounter the opposite. Monzó’s short stories not only do not allude to any past times but in fact they hardly refer to Barcelona. Unlike any other writer before him, Monzó depicts Barcelona as a dehistoricized city made of a series of standard and anonymous settings. His Barcelonais a spectral city with atemporal places where citizens are identifiable only as grammatical traces, clothing brands, or social stereotypes.

6 Only a few arbitrary signs allow the reader to identify Monzó’s urban landscape as Barcelona’s.L’illa de Maians [The Maians Island] is the enigmatic title of a 1985 short stories collection that refers to an island that up until the fifteenth century existed as a barrier between Barcelona and the Mediterranean.6 Later, layers of sedimentation incorporated the island into the current extension of the old quarter and the island became a spectral reference to a forgotten past. Also, this collection is divided in three parts titled with oblique allusions to Barcelona: ‹‹Carrer dels dies feiners›› [‹‹Working Days Street››], an extinct popular designation of a Barcelona street; ‹‹A handkerchief or neckerchief of soft twilled silk››, which is one of the meanings of the word ‹‹Barcelona›› according to the Oxford English Dictionary; and ‹‹La Casa de la Estilográfica››, a reference to a disappeared office supplies store.7 The thirty stories of another collection, El perquè de tot plegat [The Reason of Everything],8 do not contain any location mark except for one, a “cafeteria a la Diagonal” — a cafeteria in one of the avenues of Barcelona’s Eixample, where two characters have a drink. Finally, there is not a single reference to Barcelona in the last collection of short stories that I will examine. The title of this collection, Guadalajara (1996), although inspired by the well-known Mariachi song, even enigmatically alludes to two other cities, the homonymous cities in Spain and Mexico.

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7 In Monzó’s stories, spaces are simply designated as a generic apartment, a hotel room, a bar, a street, a highway, or a hospital. In the few cases in which spaces are described, the specifications consist of a plain list of the — serialized — objects contained in them. For example, a hotel room: ‹‹Els donen una habitació amb dos llits individuals, dues tauletes de nit, una taula per escriure (hi ha sobres i paper de carta amb la capçalera de l’hotel, en una carpeta), una cadira i un minibar amb un televisor al damunt.››9 [They assign them a room with two twin beds, two bedside tables, a desk (there are envelopes and sheets with letterheads from the hotel, in a folder), a chair and a minibar with a TV on top.]

8 This hotel is just located in an unnamed ‹‹ciutat llunyana›› [‹‹far-away city››]. And, although occasionally we find references to real cities, regions, and states, there is never a detailed description or implied justification of why these cities are mentioned.10

9 In another story, a man is in a woman’s apartment, the location of which is never specified. He even acknowledges the difficulty of describing the place: ‹‹Eren a ca la noia, i si li haguessin demanat de descriure-la, no hauria sabut com fer-ho. De cua d’ull va mirar el llarg moble de fusta clara, envernissat; va veure-hi un plat de ceràmica brillant, un tambó marroquí, un tub d’aspirines, tres llibres i una pipa blanca holandesa.›› 11 [They were at her house, and if he had been asked to describe it, he would not have known how to do it. He looked obliquely at the light-colored, varnished large piece of furniture; on it he could see a shiny pottery plate, a Moroccan drum, an aspirin tube, three books and a white Dutch pipe.]

10 Characters are also designated by generic labels. In most cases they are simply a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl. Further specifications consist of a color, such as ‹‹l’home blau›› [‹‹the blue man››] and ‹‹l’home magenta›› [‹‹the magenta man››]; an adjective, as in ‹‹la dona fatal›› [“the femme fatale”] and ‹‹l’home irresistible›› [‹‹the irresistible man››]; or an unutterable, agrammatical name, such as ‹‹Grmpf›› and ‹‹Pti››.12 These labels depict the characters as empty stereotypes lacking what is conventionally known as personality or an inner self. They visibly embody the three features that Fredric Jameson finds in postmodern cultural artifacts: flatness or depthlessness, a deathly quality, and the waning of affect.13 These characters are both superficial and unfathomable, offering no access to any individual inside or to any supposedly ‹‹personal feelings.››14

11 This disidentification with any particular location or historical context contrasts with a manifest feature of Monzó’s stories, namely the fact that they are written in Catalan. As a minority and stateless language, Catalan is immediately associated with an actual region, a distinct community, and even with Catalan nationalism. The Catalan language can hardly be detached from a very specific territory and political history. Thus, this inherent tension between the unidentified characters and spaces and the highly particularizing language of the stories can be interpreted as an attempt to create an imaginary of Barcelona and Catalonia as fully globalized places that still maintain a vernacular language. In this sense, Monzó’s standard, easily transportable and even universalizable characters and urban spaces would denote an eagerness to avoid provincialism and the association of Catalan culture with tradition, folklore, or the countryside. In other words, he deals with this underlying anxiety of a minority culture in front of globalization by precisely portraying and endorsing, in Catalan, the

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homogenizing global forces. This way he implicitly attests that Catalan can function in this new context too.

12 The stories can also be inscribed in the context of transitional Spain. From this viewpoint, Monzó’s stereotypical and unidentified spaces and characters aim to create a literary representation compliant with the pacto del olvido of the post-dictatorship transition. This tacit pact emerged from the will to quickly forget Spain’s Francoist years and the aspiration to abandon the country’s ancestral semi peripheral condition. In this context, Monzó’s stories provided an appealing and timely imaginary for Catalans to begin perceiving themselves and their territory in accordance with the homogeneous appearance of the new global world — which maybe helps explain the stories’ widespread success.

13 But there is one fundamental component of the stories that must be understood in relation to the new urban reality of Barcelona rather than in relation to their Catalan and Spanish contexts. This component is the circular plots, the claustrophobic spaces, the Moebius strips from which characters of the stories cannot escape. In Monzó’s fiction, circular enclosures are omnipresent at all levels, from the plots to the spaces they inhabit. For instance, in ‹‹L’amor›› [‹‹Love››]15 an archivist treats with disdain and coldness the soccer player she is dating. He is madly in love with her and keeps insisting that she should not be afraid of expressing her true feelings for him. When, after months of treating him cruelly, she finally gives herself over to him and proposes to move in together, he cannot help reacting with coldness and disdain. Or, in ‹‹Halitosi›› [‹‹Halitosis››],16 a man’s breath is so bad-smelling that he has to isolate himself from society until nobody is able to tell him that his breath has just stopped smelling bad. Or the Kafkian ‹‹Gregor›› is the story of a bug that wakes up one morning transformed into a human being whose first human act is to smash three disgusting bugs that he finds in the closet.17

14 These characters are trapped in worlds, and specifically in urban worlds, that are oppressively closed but also painlessly flat. Monzó’s world is tragic but does not produce any romantic wreckages; it is hopeless but without any modernist seclusions, absurd but with no existentialist Sisyphean chains. In this sense, the stories’ verbs in the present tense must be understood as the temporal correspondence of these spatial enclosures. This predominant present tense suggests that the characters inhabit a perpetual present with no sense of the past or the future, with neither unsettled traumas nor secret longings.

15 At the beginning of the illustrative story ‹‹La força centrípeta›› [‹‹The Centripetal Force››], a man is unable to leave his apartment because when he opens the outside door he encounters the same hall he is trying to leave. Then, two firemen go to rescue him but get stuck in the same circle. At this point, the man can successfully leave the apartment. The firemen can also leave the apartment but not the building, as the stairs begin to reproduce themselves endlessly. Meanwhile, a neighbor is killed and, after some panic and screams, the other neighbors in the building attribute the crime to the firemen, who cannot offer a plausible alibi in their defense. The story ends with the hearse that carries the coffin with the dead neighbor and his family driving around the city in circles unable to find the cemetery. The city is totally unrecognizable: ‹‹Són en una zona de la ciutat plena de magatzems. Són illes i illes de cases amb naus industrials i camions (enormes) aparcats. Els carrers tenen noms desconeguts per la majoria de ciutadants, ells inclosos. ››18 [They are in an area of the city full of warehouses. There are blocks and blocks of

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houses with industrial plants and (enormous) trucks parked. The streets’ names are unknown to most of the citizens, including them.]

16 In the end, the hearse driver finally admits that he does not know where they are and tries to go back to their starting point, ‹‹Però no hi ha manera d’arribar-hi i es troben, de cop, en una plaça quadrada. És una plaça que du el nom d’un general de fa un parell de segles, amb un gran arbre de tronc retorçat al bell mig, al damunt del qual dos nens juguen a fer caure l’altre, i on no va a parar cap carrer tret d’aquell del qual vénen.››19 [But there is no way of getting there and they suddenly find themselves in a square. It is a square that bears the name of a general from a couple of centuries ago, with a big, twisted tree in its center, on top of which two kids are playing to make the other fall, and where no street ends except for the one they come from.]

17 In this claustrophobic metropolis, houses, streets and neighbors are totally unidentified. Most citizens do not recognize the street names, or the name of the square referring to an also unnamed historic general does not help the characters locate themselves either.

18 The same urban traits can be found in the story ‹‹Casa amb jardí›› [‹‹House with Garden››], set in a claustrophobic and homogeneous residential suburb. In this story, a man leaves work and returns to his home, a two-story, single-family house in a suburban villa. The dog and the woman welcome him, he licks his hand, she kisses his lips. Then he sits on the couch to work on a crossword while she begins to watch TV. But, all of a sudden, he realizes that the woman sitting next to him is not his wife, that he has never owned a pet, and that that is not his house. Astounded, he wonders how he could possibly miss these changes and why the strange woman is acting so normal as if she was his wife. He knows that he is not suffering amnesia, because he can perfectly remember his real wife. He notices that the house is identical to his, like each one in that villa. He looks out the window and sees the same landscape he would see from his house. He knows he could leave or at least check the house number, but ‹‹fer-ho li fa por: ignora per què, però no sent cap desig de comprovar què passa››, [‹‹he is afraid of doing it: he does not know why, but he does not feel like checking out what is going on››.] In the end, he imagines when he and the woman will go to bed together later, and ‹‹[a]quest pensament li produeix, de forma immediata, una erecció ››, [‹‹This thought produces in him an immediate erection. ››]20

19 This relatively happy ending provides a twist that opens up the possibility of escaping this dystopia: the possibility of enjoying the very indeterminacy and interchangeability of this urban landscape. Sexual excitement represents here the acceptance of the current hopeless circumstances but also points at the beginning of a potential journey of discovery and new exchanges. Sex, a ubiquitous theme in Monzó’s stories, seems to provide one of the few ways to cope with the inexorability of this dystopian situation.

20 However, a later story cancels out even this possibility. In ‹‹La gelosia” [‹‹Jealousy››], a man enjoys how a woman is praising, touching and licking his penis. But she does it so insistently and obsessively that the situation begins to distress him. He finally asks her whether his penis is the only thing in which she is interested, and suddenly all her devotion turns into anger. She calls him crazy, gets dressed and leaves, while he ‹‹s’asseu al llit, es posa la mà dreta sota el membre, flàccid, l’alça una mica i el contempla, entre furiós i encuriosit››, [‹‹he sits on the bed, puts his right hand under his flaccid penis, lifts it and contemplates it with fury and curiosity››.]21 Thus, while in ‹‹Casa amb jardí›› the final erection opened a certain possibility to establish new

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relations and live new experiences, here the flaccid member, despite awakening curiosity to his possessor, becomes a mere remainder of a thwarted relation, a burdensome piece that objectifies the subject who holds it. The penis stands as an impediment to establish any subjective — let alone collective — connection.

21 In his study of Barcelona’s cultural production of the 1980s and 90s, La ciutat interrompuda, Julià Guillamon remarks that Monzó’s fiction paradigmatically portrays Barcelona as an “interrupted city,” that is, as a city with an erased sense of the past and with no historical memory. In relation to Monzó’s short stories, however, this suggestive concept of the ‹‹interrupted city›› must be expanded and unfolded in at least two ways.22

22 On the one hand, Monzó’s depiction of an ‹‹interrupted›› Barcelona — or of what remains of Barcelona in the scattered and oblique location marks contained in his short stories — contrasts with the official transformation of the city during the 1980s, which involved an overall and unprecedented restoration of its historical and architectural heritage. Monzó’s dehistoricized Barcelona coincides with the period when the city began to be most aware and most fond of its past. On the other hand, in Monzó this temporal interruption comes with precisely the opposite in spatial terms: the presence of an uninterrupted city, a city that has spread everywhere leaving no space for any — rural, natural, non-urban— outside. Such a representation of Barcelona as an uninterrupted and disidentified city thus contrasts with the official re-imagining and re-building of it as an idiosyncratic and highly appealing place.

23 David Harvey, in his The Condition of Postmodernity, explains how, since in postmodern times the extraction of surplus-profits comes from the productivity of multinational companies and the competition between them rather than from territorial natural differences, now territories must compete among themselves to attract investments from transnational capital. Cities, regions, or states must make themselves attractive in order to bring into their territory those headquarters, tourists, manufacturers, conventions, or services which, given their mobile nature, can potentially be placed anywhere. Harvey defines these strategies of differentiation of spaces as an ‹‹active production of places with special qualities››.23 This production fabricates and advertises the characteristics that make a place peculiar and idiosyncratic.

24 So, if the production of city identity is part of the strategies to attract investments from transnational capital, then does Monzó’s uninterrupted and dystopian city not embody the uninterrupted flows of global capital that determine the territorial transformations in late capitalism? In the same way that the forces of highly mobile capital run beneath the configuration of the world as a series of ‹‹special places, Monzó’s dystopian city reveals the real material changes that have taken place beneath Barcelona’s acclaimed urban transformation.

25 Another significant story is titled ‹‹Barcelona››, although it does not contain any further element that links it to the real city. In it, a man and a woman talk. She complains that he is not listening to her. She says that both nights they have spent together he has only talked about himself and has never asked about her, about who she is or what she does. After some moments of perplexity, he eventually reacts and apologizes. He says that he had never realized how self-centered he could be and that he cannot stand egotistic people. He says that he needs her to help him find out why and when he behaves this way. In the end, he says,

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‹‹… voldria saber què, o quin seguit de coses han fet de mi un egotista. ... m’agradaria deixar de ser així amb tu … Perquè m’interesses molt. Per això necessito que m’ajudis a descobrir en quines ocasions em comporto Aixa … I perquè ho faig. M’agradaria que en parléssim.››24 [I’d like to know what, or what sort of things have made me an egotistic person. ... I would like to stop being this way with you … Because I’m interested in you. That’s why I need you to help me find out when I behave this way, and why I do it. I would like to talk about it with you.]

26 The fact that Monzó titled this story ‹‹Barcelona›› can be simply interpreted as a boutade about the typical egotism of Barcelonans — the same that is often said about New Yorkers or Parisians. But there is also another possibility, namely that Barcelona is an egotistic city talking all the time about itself. If the ‹‹active production of places with special qualities›› involves the fabrication and advertising of the characteristics that make a place peculiar, does this egotistic character not symptomatize Barcelona’s new investment in its own self-absorbed differentiation as an identifiable place? That is, Monzó’s character reveals how the competition among cities to attract global capital produces the effect that, like the man of the story, cities are always talking about themselves. The cities’ official promotion as cosmopolitan and receptive places — and Barcelona has intensely used these labels to characterize itself through its politics of creation of public spaces — ultimately reveals, not a will to open themselves to whichever others, but a strategy to advertise themselves and attract global capital, in the same way that the man is interested in the woman only to keep being wrapped up around himself.

27 This necessity of cities and territories to produce their own differential qualities indicates precisely a structural homogenization caused by this very production. Territories are manufactured, serialized and sold like any other commodity. They are expressed as exchange values and therefore the presumed singularity they might contain is dissolved in the structural generality of the market. Once again, the paradox is that, in the postmodern context, the production of a sense of place and of spatial identity causes the standardization and the dedifferentiation of that very place.

28 This is the truth that Monzó’s short stories reveal about Barcelona: its renovation and the rehabilitation of its historical past has standardized and commodified the city rather than returning it to its people. In the stories, all the specificity that is left of Barcelona is some scattered location markers. The stories’ unrecognizable urban landscapes can thus be interpreted as the dystopian counter-image of the bright and charming images associated with the new Barcelona. These uninterrupted but also self- enclosed landscapes unveil the ongoing process of commodification of spaces and territories, which, in their turn, interpellate the people who inhabit them as equally generic individuals with no possible singular personalities. These totally commodified urban spaces incorporate people as serialized figures and stereotypes and they ultimately commodify them altogether.

29 The destabilizing effects that the expansion of commodification causes over people’s lives can be seen in another story, titled ‹‹La inestabilitat›› [‹‹Instability››]. In it, a man has his car radio stolen continuously, so he decides to carry it with him every time he leaves the car. Then they call him from a television contest to ask him a couple of questions for the show. He answers them correctly and he is awarded a beach apartment, where he meets a neighbor whose husband suddenly dies. Then he marries

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her, they have two children and the story ends enigmatically one morning while he is getting in his car: ‹‹Encaixa la ràdio a lloc, l’engega, sintonitza una emisora, es cobreix la cara amb les dues mans i, amb totes les forces de què és capaç, intenta plorar, però no se’n surt mai.››25 [He returns the radio to its place, turns it on, tunes into a radio station, covers his face with both of his hands and, with maximum effort, he tries to cry, but he never can.]

30 This fast-paced story, also set in a series of standardized urban spaces, describes the life of a contemporary man as ruled by an unpredictable game of chance — a symbolic correspondence of the constantly changing world as dominated by mobile capital and infinite commodity exchange.

31 Despite full commodification, in the end this postmodern man struggles against the waning of his affect by attempting to cry. And, even if he cannot do it, his attempt reveals a moment of recognition of the real conditions of his situation. Even if the possibility of retrieving the waned affect proves to be impossible, or precisely because of it, this final act uncovers the totally commodified space that surrounds and also constitutes him. It is to the extent that he fails in his attempt to cry, which confirms that commodification has occupied his very inner self, which he succeeds in disrupting this commofidifying process. His failure to cry corroborates the expansion of commodification and at the same time tears it apart. It proves it to be both inexorable and false. The dry tears, like the flaccid penis of ‹‹La gelosia››, are the final remnants that attest the impossibility of a non-commodified existence or a non-objectified exchange. But, in their very constitution as residues, they set, if not an outside, at least an internal limit to commodification, which consequently uncovers it as a historical — not inexorable or inescapable — process.

32 But there is still another limit to commodification. By portraying it as a thorough and unmitigated phenomenon, Monzó’s stories raise the question of whether they are themselves a commodified product, in the function of, for instance, a cultural representation serving in some way the marketing of Barcelona, or whether they escape to a certain extent the inexorability of their context and their content. But these two options entail a paradox. On the one hand, if the stories are commodified artifacts, then they cannot be accurate and comprehensive accounts of full commodification-- they would be merely reproducing its internal logic, with no potential to distance themselves from it, let alone disrupt it or oppose it. On the other hand, if the narratives remain outside commodification, then they are also inaccurate accounts, as they constitute the proof that commodification is not absolute. However, what really escapes the foreclosure of full commodification is precisely this paradox, that is, the stories’ unspoken oscillation between the two possibilities. The undecidability contained in them asserts the impossibility of escaping commodification but also posits an internal and contradictory limit to it represented by the very existence of the stories. Their very presence subverts the inexorability of the process that they describe. Their depiction of the city as a totally enclosed space, with no past, no future, and no outside, undermines the very inevitability of this dystopian but all too real state of things. Therefore, the process of commodification is uncovered as a historical one — an absolute one but nonetheless historical. Which, logically, opens up the possibility of a different historical situation: the possibility of a non-commodified space beyond the current conditions of production. The stories’ portrait of Barcelona as an

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unrecognizable city subsumed to a global homogenizing logic of production, paradoxically offers us a glimpse of the possibility of an undetermined, yet radically different future.

33 In this sense, Monzó’s Barcelona corresponds to what architect Rem Koolhaas has called “the Generic City” to describe the inescapable homogenization of spaces in contemporary cities. According to him, the restoration of historical buildings and the production of city identity are two of the main agents of the homogenizing Generic, as it is precisely through ‹‹... the relentless conversion of utilitarian space into “public” space, pedestrianization, the creation of new parks, planting, bridging, exposing, the systematic restoring of historic mediocrity, [that] all authenticity is relentlessly evacuated.››

34 Remarkably, Koolhaas mentions Barcelona as an exemplary case of this process: ‹‹Sometimes an old, singular city, like Barcelona, by oversimplifying its identity, turns Generic. It becomes transparent, like a logo. The reverse never happens … at least not yet.››26

35 The transformation of a generic or commodified space into a singular one ‹‹never happens … at least not yet.›› But let’s hope that the detection of the hidden structural logics of a process of urban change, and the search for an internal limit to their commodifying effects, as found in Monzó’s fiction, constitutes a first step to help future singularity occur.

NOTES

1. Oriol Bohigas, Reconstrucció de Barcelona, Bacelona: Edicions 62, 1985, p. 65. 2. For a full list of the artists and sculptors and their works, see Subirós, Pep, El vol de la fletxa: Barcelona 92: Crònica de la reinvenció de la ciutat, Barcelona: CCCB/Electra, 1993, pp. 128-131. 3. Oriol Bohigas, Reconstrucció de Barcelona, p. 101. 4. See Pasqual Maragall, La ciutat retrobada, Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1991. 5. In Barcelona, we can find two representative examples of these narratives in Francisco Casavella’s novel El triunfo, Barcelona: Anagrama, 1990, which portrays the disappeared street gangs of the old neighborhood of the Raval, or in Juan Marsé’s Ronda del Guinardó, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1990, which similarly portrays the miserable life of a family who lives at the outskirts of the city during the decades previous to the Olympic transformation. 6. Quim Monzó, L’illa de Maians, Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1985. 7. Julià Guillamon deciphers these oblique allusions in La ciutat interrompuda: de la contracultura a la Barcelona postolímpica, Barcelona: La Magrana, 2001, pp. 188-9. 8. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, Barcelona, Quaderns Crema, 1992. 9. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, p. 21. 10. Some of the mentioned cities are, among others, the Italian Castagnaro, Casteggio, Voguera, Alessandria, Piacenza (1985: 48), and Bergamo, Marseille, Milano, Bordeaux, Lyon, Bilbao, Toulouse, Strasbourg (1985: 53), Aberdeen (1992: 30), Florence, Pisa (1992: 43) or Birmingham (1996: 165). Perhaps the fact that all these cities are, like Barcelona, European and not state

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capitals is not arbitrary. But we can also find Brussels (1985: 53), Rome (1992: 56), Paris (1996: 161), or Berlin (1996: 169); and the regions of New Scotland (1992: 49), Mallorca (1992: 87), the Aegean Islands (1996:167), or Hawaii (1996:168); and the states Laos, Cambodia, Thailand (1996: 163), Chile, or Japan (1996: 168). 11. Quim Monzó, L’illa de Maians, p. 12. 12. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, pp. 55, 49, 27. 13. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1991, pp. 9-11 14. An extreme and amusing example of the depiction of characters as stereotypes is the series of random traits used to describe a ‹‹man›› in the story ‹‹L’eufòria dels troians›› (1992: 83-97). Along the story, he is characterized as: ‹‹L’home que durant la infantesa havia tingut una certa fe religiosa››; ‹‹l’home que a la infantesa s’havia interessat per la matemàtica››; ‹‹l’home que a la infantesa havia tingut problemes d’inadaptació››; ‹‹l’home que va tenir de noi una caçadora de pell de la qual encara es recorda›› ‹‹l’home que de noi va anar a Mallorca de viatge de fi de curs l’últim any de batxillerat››; ‹‹l’home que d’adolescent s’emprovava davant del mirall de l’armari els sostenidors de sa mare››; ‹‹l’home que va tenir la primera nòvia als quinze anys››; etc. [“The man who during his childhood had a certain religious faith;” ‹‹the man who during his childhood was interested in mathematics››; ‹‹the man who during his childhood had adaptation problems››; ‹‹the man who as a teenager had a leather jacket that he still remembers››; ‹‹the man who traveled to Mallorca in his last year of high school››; ‹‹the man who as a teenager would try on his mother’s bra in front of the mirror››; ‹‹the man who had his first girlfriend when he was fifteen››; etc.] The evident effect is that his whole biography consists of a succession of random stereotypical features. 15. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, pp. 17-20. 16. Quim Monzó, L’illa de Maians, pp. 105-119 17. Quim Monzó, Guadalajara, Barcelona, Quaderns Crema, 1996, pp. 49-57. 18. Quim Monzó, p.124 19. Quim Monzó, p. 127 20. Quim Monzó, L’illa de Maians, pp. 19, 21 21. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, p.61. Erections have a nuclear function in much of Monzó's fiction. His novel La magnitud de la tragèdia (1989) narrates the story of a man who suffers a deadly disease that gives him a permanent erection. For a gender studies critique of Monzó’s representation of males in crisis, see Josep-Anton Fernàndez, ‹‹Magnituds comparades: Els destrets de la masculinitat i la crisi de l’autoria a dues novel les de Quim Monzó››, Calçasses, gallines i maricons, eds. Josep-Anton Fernàndez and Adrià Chavarria, Barcelona: Angle, 2003, pp. 34-57. 22. Julià Guillamon, La ciutat interrompuda, p. 188. 23. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p. 295. 24. Quim Monzó, L’illa de Maians, p. 14. 25. Quim Monzó, El perqué de tot plegat, p. 76 26. Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Jennifer Sigler, and Hans Werlemann, Small, Medium, Large, Extra- large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau, New York: Monacelli Press, 1995, p.1249 and p.1250. Koolhaas often refers to the conspicuous commercialization of contemporary Barcelona. In ‹‹Junkspace››, where he looks at the different forms through which spaces have become commodified and serialized, he mentions the city: ‹‹Through Junkspace old aura is transfused with new luster to spawn sudden commercial viability: Barcelona amalgamated with the Olympics [...]››, in Judy Chung, Chuihua, and Sze Tsung Leong, eds, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Köln: Taschen, 2001, p.416. Or, in ‹‹Miestakes››, in Hubert-Jan Henket and Hilde Henen, eds, Back From Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement, Rotterdam: OIO Publishers, 2002, pp. 238-251, he refers to the reconstruction in 1985-87 of Mies van der

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Rohe’s German Pavilion, directed by architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici, and Fernando Ramos, as an example of modernism commodified by urban marketing.

ABSTRACTS

The Olympic Games of 1992 launched Barcelona as one of the most fashionable and appealing cities in the world. In preparation for the Games, the city experienced during the 1980s a deep symbolic, political, and architectural transformation which turned Barcelona into a prosperous global city, but also aimed to reconcile this modernization trend with the recovery of her rich historical past and cultural heritage. Fictional narratives set in cities often relive the spaces, streets or characters that have disappeared because of unremitting processes of urban change. Many narratives struggle in this way against the erasure of spatial and collective memory. My article argues that, in the case of Catalan author Quim Monzó, we encounter exactly the opposite. In his short stories written during 1980s and early 90s, Monzó portrays a standardized, almost unrecognizable Barcelona--a “generic city,” to use Rem Koolhaas’ term,--full of characters with no sense of historical past. His portrait contests the official retrieval of the city’s past as it reveals how this recovery has implied the commodification of history and, in a dialectical move, its ultimate erasure. Through Monzó’s fiction, we can observe how history has become another aspect of the cities´ advertisement of themselves as a differentiated trademark in the global market.

AUTHOR

EDGAR ILLAS Edgar Illas (Ph.D. in Spanish, Duke University, 2007) is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Romance Studies at Duke University. His doctoral project, “The Euphoric Politics of Postmodern Barcelona,” analyzes the links between the transformation of Barcelona during the 1992 Olympic Games and global capitalism. He has published several articles on Catalan literature and is the author of the novel El gel de bany sobre l’esponja (Barcelona: Columna, 2003).

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Delineating the Urban: The Global City and the Logics of Dissolution

Jarrad Keyes

«Eachcity receives its form from the desert it opposes»1 «Compact cities are at the other end of the pole from urban sprawl»2 «[I]n great leprous stains, the suburbs spread out from the outlying districts, polluting the countryside and reducing the outskirts of the town to a miserable and shifting shabbiness»3

Introduction

1 In the face of complex and seemingly relentless changes — commonly deemed «a world of ubiquitous computation» — it is undoubtedly tempting to attempt to reverse the passage of time, and find moment(s) replete with lost certainties.4 With respect to the city, such nostalgia is a pervasive aspect of present inquiry; if there is some semblance of consensus regarding its contemporary «plight», it is that the city has been, at one point or another, a stable signifier. A point, moreover, from which the present marks a critical juncture.5 Frequently, this challenge is posited as the result of increasingly globalized phenomena, in the form of technology. For William Mitchell, «the story of recent urban growth» is one of «network-induced sprawl», such that «the very idea of a city is challenged and must be reconceived», whilst for Manuel Castells it is not so much evolution as degeneration, since «the very existence of cities as communication artefacts … is called into question, in spite of the fact that we live in a predominantly urban world».6 It is in this context that the opposition between the «global city» and the «urban» emerges. This restrictive economy, wherein the epithet «urban» appears as the debased obverse of the cityis considered symptomatic of contemporary readings. Henceforth referred to as the city-urban transaction, this incumbent problematic represents, so this paper contends, the transference of an outdated series of

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epistemological co-ordinates onto incompatible ontological matrices. Critiquing the various formations of identity and disidentity with which readings of the global city are preoccupied, this paper analyzes several of its readings, and their respective models of development, in order to contest the increasingly distended usage of global epithet. Addressing the ramifications of the city’s perceived disintegration, it concludes with a reading of John King’s fiction to provide a tentative sketch of the logics of dissolution as seen in a positive light.

Global & Urban Contexts

2 According to Stephen Graham, the «critical question» presently concerning the city involves determining «the relationship between digital technologies and urban life».7 By way of response, Castells divides the «network society» between the competing imperatives of the «space of flows» (of technological networks) and the «space of places» (arranged around locality) that result in the «opposition between the global and the local».8 Polarized between the spaces of «flows» and «places», the city (equated with the «local») is subject to the «global» effects of digital technologies. Hence, a structural tension involving the conflict between «personality and culture» precipitates «the crisis of the city as a socio-spatial system of cultural communication». 9 Understood as an antagonistic force, this «global» sum of technological networks offsets the local-level «crisis» with the «concept of the global city» as «a spatial form rather than a title of distinction», and laments the former in the name of the latter. As a «spatial form», the global city infers a kind of formless structure whose size and lack of definition countervails the city. In short, technology, in the aggregated forms of «flows», obtrudes the «personality» of the city as a «system of cultural communication». It is important to note distinct uses of the term: the global city refers to a distended physical morphology, whereas the «system of cultural communication» draws upon a political definition. In sum, the distinction involves qualitative and quantitative discriminations. Doubly formed, the city is both a metonym of polity and a component of representation.

3 To return to the critical question concerning technology, Castells critique works on two levels. Firstly, there is a familiar (humanist) response, whereby technology — usually in an unqualified, general sense — infringes upon the sanctity of (human) meaning.10 Thus, the «spaces of flows» impact negatively upon the qualitative definition of the city as a «system of cultural communication». This infraction leads to the second level of critique, the emergence of the urban. Understanding the global city as an oxymoron, it juxtaposes the receding essence of cities with an «urban world» that, as part of the «great urban paradox», constitutes «the crisis of the city».11 A «crisis» inextricably linked to its rationalist origins as a metonym of governmental rationality.12 Its breakdown attests to a particular sense of political failure, codified comparatively in terms of physical deterioration. On this account, challenges to hegemony of rational (political) order are negotiated as a (physical) «urban crisis … characterized by dissolution, fragmentation, and privatization of cities».13 Therefore, the logics of dissolution affecting the city can only be structured negatively in terms of a perceived breakdown in order, socially and physically: ‘Far from being orderly, attractive and well designed’, Richard Rogers notes, «our urban landscape is full of unplanned ruptures». The result: «Cities have lost the connected, dense style that characterized

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them in the past», testaments to the fact that «[a]s social cohesion and informal controls weakens, so our ability to contain disorder and violence declines».14 These are the assumptions out of which the «global city», as a «spatial form», emerge: the loss of rational order can only be represented as social and physical «crisis». Yet that which specifically defines the city, in particular its sense of order, present and past, remains conspicuously absent. For the present to represent «crisis» requires a set of foundational qualities to be, presently, under threat. Yet these assumed qualities have, contrary to the specific latitude of the «network society», long been threatened. «We are slowly losing the humanist conception of the very meaning of the word “city”. Paradoxically we live in a world marked by rampant urbanization — but one that lacks real cities. As the once clearly demarcated cities inherited from the past are devoured by the expandingmetropolis, the city begins to lose its definition and specificity, as well as its function as an authentic arena for community and solidarity.»15

4 This «paradox» besets the city-urban transaction. As metonym, the «humanist conception» of «real cities» retrenches relative to the rise of «rampant urbanisation». The homogenizing force of the «expanding metropolis» devours the «once clearly demarcated cities» of the past, contaminating the inferred originary physical characteristics of «definition and specificity» and eradicating the social functions of «community and solidarity». Prefiguring Castells, Bookchin represents the perceived diminution of qualitative social relations through the quantitative spatial matrix of morphology: the principle of diminishing community registers as the rise of the compromised urban form. This figuration assumes «community» to be indivisible from a particular physical form (the city), and vice-versa. Trapped by this stultified logic, the deployment of the city indeterminately wavers between simultaneous determinations as a rationalist metonym and a positivist concept. As if to confirm this originary indeterminacy, it remains unclear as to which city, moreover which «world», is «marked by rampant urbanization». In the absence of considered response, beyond the vague inferences of foundational autonomy, there is little that specifically defines the city, save its present absence (or self-evident role as «authentic arena»). That these developments take place without explanation suggests the symbolic and ideological system of its conceptual pre-history place the city’s origins (as rational and contiguous) beyond the purview of critical inquiry. The effects of this are as follows: polarized between states of past integrity and present dissolution, and leaving no interstitial «space» (epistemologically or otherwise), this discursive routine pejoratively utilizes the urban as index of a listless present, sine qua non the «global city». Such is the power of the «urban» conviction that the burden of proof lies not with the diagnostician, for which the rigour of self-evidence removes such inconveniences. Instead, it attests, moreover demonstrates, the present (as) «condition». Hence, the typology of «nameless urban constellations» is a euphemism whose spatial inferences parallel the historical connotations of the «urbancrisis».16 Synchronically, the «urban world» signifies an entropic drift of characterless space(s) — space without place, lacking «symbolic meaning» — whilst diachronically the «urban crisis» symbolises the perceived disintegration of the city. Again, prescient questions of the origins and legitimacy of conferred identity are ignored. Such ellipses define the city-urban transaction, for the structural bases of legitimacy are seldom questioned. Whilst tentatively recognizing some form of hermeneutic watershed, the «global city» fails to embrace the full significance of change. Fraught with anxiety, the challenge to the assumed foundational characteristics of the city — as rational, autonomous, and coherent — can

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only be registered in terms of a fundamental breach, for which the undermining of a particular form is codified as a spatial formlessness. The syntagmatic relay between «urban» and «metropolitan» symbolises an historical and spatial rupture, an ontological contamination for which the «process of reconstruction», with its emphases on «restoring functional communication» and « reinstating the city» by focusing «on the preservation, restoration and construction of public space», is an ideology of the return.17 Moreover, the lack of coherence said to beset the global city is, at the selfsame time, applicable to Castells model. Where the «information age» is «marked by the growing gap between splintering networks of instrumentality and segregated places of singular meaning», so these «segregated places» cannot have a «singular meaning» since they are upheld as declining instances of the city.18 In other words, these «places» cannot be singular unless the concept of the city recognises a plurality of definitions — both physical and social — for which there can be no totalizing definition, «crisis» or otherwise. Unable to distinguish places and spaces, let alone concept and re-presentation, what remains is a paradigmatic indolence that confuses epistemological dissolution with ontological disintegration. In this, Castells is not alone.

5 Furthering Castell’s idea of «functional » Mitchell suggests that recent technological developments «change the fundamental mechanics of reference», such that «the very idea of a city needs overhauling».19 In response to Graham’s «critical» question, «the worldwide computer network» gives rise to «the electronic agora», an entity that «subverts, displaces, and radically redefines our notions of gathering place, community, and urban life».20 Unlike Castells, Mitchell suggests such technological developments prompt a qualitative shift in understanding and re-presentation: the ‘electronic agora’ does not result in the «crisis» of the city — far from it. Rather, it provokes a paradigmatic shift, recognizing «a networked, electronically interconnected world» that involves the «the shift from a world structured by boundaries and enclosures to a world increasingly dominated, at every scale, by connections, networks, and flows».21 The urban in this instance refers to the development and dispersal of technological networks. Fundamentally modified by «digital technologies», «urban life» entails that the city must be re-envisioned. Correspondingly, the spread of the «networked city» involves a quantitative change in the city’s morphology and a qualitative change in social relations. Ostensibly anti-essentialist, Mitchell’s account of the city appears flexible and contingent. However, far from re-conceiving «the idea of the city», Mitchell’s account remains steeped in an orthodox series of assumptions.22 For instance, as a metaphor of development, «sprawl» connotes an outgrowth beyond a normative point of identity: digital technologies extend the realm of the urban beyond its previous «fringes». Yet that which constitutes these previous limits remains evasive. If ‘the story of recent urban growth’ details «network induced sprawl at the fringes», leading to a reappraisal of the city, it is only insofar as it was perceived as rationally delimited.23 A crucial difference between Castells and Mitchell rests on their respective interpretation of «urban sprawl» and its effect on the «idea» of city. However, the differences are not so great as first appears. Take, for example, the model of development, for which the choice of metaphor is telling. Alternately described as the «infobahn ecosystem», the «electronic agora» is a «ferociously Darwinian place that produces endless mutations».24 Yet in stark contrast to the evolutionary inferences of the Darwinian metaphor, these «large, decentralised networks that increasingly

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dominate our globalized world», assume a linear — and far from mutable — form, as the «Hertzian landscape».25 «Code is weaving an ever-denser web of complex, inescapable interconnections across space and time. And this is just the beginning; the curve of technological development is snapping into the steep part … Every point on the surface of the earth is now part of the Hertzian landscape … [a] messy but irresistible extension of wireless coverage.»26

6 «Code», an analogue for digital technologies, denotes a «web» of ‘inescapable interconnections’ that contradict suggestions that this «landscape frames a complex geopolitics and political economy of wireless coverage».27 Assuming a teleological character, «technological development» is «just … beginning» its «curve» of ascent — a linear trajectory encompassing «every point» of the earth’s surface. Paradoxically, this nascent «development» is both «messy» — presumably in the sense of uneven patterns of development and dispersal — and constitutes a «sophisticated, well-integrated wireless infrastructure … deployed on a global scale».28 At once emergent and developed, «messy» and «integrated», there is little consistency in Mitchell’s reading, save for its unyielding technological determinism. These networks cannot be both «decentralised» and form part of the «irresistible extension» of the urban. If, for Castells, the global city results in the spread of «nameless urban constellations» and prompts the city’s «crisis», for Mitchell the future is similarly indiscriminate. The city and urban, mutually exclusive terms for Castells, are for Mitchell synonymous. Far from «emerging», in a non-linear, asymmetric sense — this «fundamentally new urban condition» is the teleological goal of development, seamlessly integrated into an undifferentiated future wherein «zones of networked interdependence … grow … in rapid, unbounded fashion …[and] inexorably fuse into a single global system».29 Growth, the process of development, follows a preordained, inviolable path towards the «single global system». Aptly referred to as a «condition», in the singular sense, such totalizing gestures undercut notions of «decentralized», «messy» development. The «networked world» is so distended as to be critically redundant; its scope so totalizing, it becomes impossible to distinguish between technology as metaphysic and as embedded physical infrastructure.

7 A similar determinism operates philosophically, for the model informing this theory of development is not Darwinian: «[t]here is no «law» within the theory of natural selection that would enable one to claim that evolution displays any kind of teleological progressivism».30 On the contrary, it is quasi-Hegelian.31 To suggest that a diverse series of networks comprise a «single global system» belies the manifold contradictions of development, technological or otherwise.32 Far from being «unbounded», development is a political issue, as Mitchell tentatively acknowledges.33 To contend such developments constitute a single, contiguous «system» is to ignore this fact, and at some cost. Mitchell’s determinism is such that, ultimately, technological development assumes the rank of an independent variable, detached from the material contradictions it develops out of. The global city as «electronic agora» is a neo-liberal ideology that elides the material aspects of inequality, a specious urbanism «dissimulating its fundamental features, meanings, and finality».34 Principal amongst these forms of dissimulation is the tendency to concentrate on the «symbolic power» of digital technologies, and so ignore the fact that «[r]ather than ushering in some global democratic utopia, the best global ICT [information and communications technologies] connections are in the hands of the corporate and military world».35 This specious,

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«incorporeal world of the Net» conceives of the urban as a vague and totalizing form, whose lack of differentiation erases the spatial contours and physical traces of «power».36

8 In more speculative terms, Pierre Lévy speaks the «virtual agora» as the product of «the turbulent waters of anthropological mutation».37 Assuming its telos to be an anthropomorphic extension of agency and means of revitalising community, cyberspace is posited as «mankind’s emerging world», an immaterial realm in which «[w]e are no longer in historical time, with its references to writing, the city, the past». 38 On Lévy’s reading, the global city, synonymous with cyberspace, offsets a material world marked by «[e]pidemics of civil war» and «[t]he impossibility of founding cities». Consigned to a (material) past, the city is transposed by an avowedly idealist solution: cyberspace «will not develop within any known geographic territory, institution, or state», and yet will promote «new qualities of being and new ways of fashioning a society».39 For the purposes of this paper, the weaknesses inherent to this reading of «digital utopia» are not of primary importance.40 That said, this is not to dismiss the utility of Lévy’s reading, for its use of the city-urban transaction more fully exposes the negative dynamics of the logics of dissolution. «Circulation devours, covers, obscures, buries, and deafens the city … pierces, tears, and dissects the countryside. The territorial distinction between the city and the country is no longer relevant and gives way to urban life … [which] grows and metastasizes … marked by the detritus left behind by multitudes of intersecting currents; the urban space is a city whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.»41

9 The tendency to contrast a fragmented material domain with the integrity of cyberspace is a pervasive feature of digital narratives: the theme of technological unity is not considered «in isolation, but unity contrasted with multiplicity, particularly as understood pejoratively as fragmentation or disintegration. The fragmentation is either outside the world created by technology or within it».42 Such instances of fragmentation are caused by «circulation», a euphemism for the various forms of technologies aggregated under the «spaces of flows». Whilst broadly similar to Castells reading, Lévy’s point of divergence concerns its probing of the city-country binary. Superficially, the traditional binary epistemology — of nature divorced from culture, as a «territorial distinction» — is under threat. «Circulation» (a metonym for the multifarious forms of technologies that mediate modern life), insofar as it «devours» the city and «dissects» the countryside, heralds the onset of «urban life». Yet this is not seen as a positive step, for the logics of dissolution are negatively exposed through the pejorative inferences of the urban. Consistent with its dominant use within global city narratives, the urban is predominantly symbolic. Structurally polarized between a technological utopia and a fragmented urban present epitomised by «[t]he clamorous Babel of global metropolises», Lévy’s reading makes extensive use of a series of traditional tropes of representation.43

10 Coded as a sprawling edifice devoid of specificity, and heralding an incumbent ontology, the urban space represents one manifestation of a wider contemporary pathology, «urban life, that grows and metastasizes». To better understand the symbolic functions of the urban within the city-urban transaction, this section focuses on several metaphors of development in greater detail. Etymologically related to metastasis, «metastasize» negotiates geographical anxieties through the «symbolic realm» of biology.44 In biological terms, metastasis denotes «the transformation of

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chemical compounds into other compounds in the process of assimilation by an organism».45 Metaphorically, the breakdown of the city/countryside dualism equates to the assimilation of an originary, spatially bounded condition of authenticity («territorial distinction») by an amorphous state of degeneracy («urban space»). The interchangeable use of the urban epithet, diachronically shifting between «-life» and «- space», intimates a wider process of social entropy, gauged by the proximate decline of the city. Consistent with its earlier usage, the city — as symbol of polity and morphology — becomes a metonym of the pathological present, the fragmented status of which contrasts with the «intelligent city», which «should be understood as a moral and political entity rather than a physical place».46 On this reading, digital technologies are both invasive and remedial, creating «urban space» and cyberspace. Yet to accept this reading involves a tacit acceptance of its underlying vision of a two worlds’ ontology, structured around a space (and time) of plenitude — the city, with its inferred holistic integrity and ontological purity — and an «urban world» whose meaning is exclusively negative. Problematically, all three readings assume, to different extents, that the city-urban transaction equates to competing typologies of integrity and dissolution, between which all representation succumbs to a Manichean logic of form and formlessness. The principal difference between each is that Lévy uses a more explicit diction to clarify this ideology of the urban, particularly with its use of biomedical metaphors. In medical terms, metastasis registers «the process by which malignant disease spreads to distant parts of the body, and also to the secondary tumours resulting from this process».47 Figured as a type of cancer, Lévy’s «urban» represents an invasive presence, an outgrowth, from an originary design. The initial appearance of dissolution of relational difference is wrong, since by negatively engendering the logics of dissolution, Lévy affirms the legitimacy of the (by now receding) city-countryside dualism. With suitably terminal overtones, this cancer of recalcitrant urbanisation infers the unruly and malignant growth of «urban life», whose development offsets the waning identity of «Our mammoth cities [that] are no longer cities. World-cities, inflationary megalopolises, black holes strung across the planet, monstrous attractors: Lagos, Calcutta, Cairo, Mexico City, Los Angeles, the unliveable city, city of automobiles, Tokyo, city of chaos.»48

11 Having outgrown their chimerical level, these «monstrous attractors» attain a nebulous definition whose indolence speaks more of a facile ideal than it does of any specific city. By appropriating biological models of development to represent spatial morphology, the typology of «inflationary megalopolises» and its analogues are erroneous because they are predicated upon an unsubstantiated and unqualified paradigm of optimum growth. Concomitantly, Lévy’s urban is an arbitrary concept: deployed at will: afforded the licence of self-justification, it disregards the conventions of conceptual definition. For example, cancer is a «general term used to refer to a malignant tumour, irrespective of the tissue of origin». Its theory of development is mechanistic, based upon a principle of deviation from an original cellular structure that results from the failure of regulatory mechanisms.49 Analogously, the dispersal of the ‘territorial distinction’ registers in symptoms of (spatial) pathology. However, Lévy elides the complex biological issues of cellular development within cancer, and so charges ‘circulation’ with the failure of regulatory mechanisms that result in the «detritus» of «Calcutta» and other such waste elements. In the name of «detritus», so whole swathes of places, replete with individual histories and circumstances, are circumscribed under

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the crass generalization of the urban. Lévy’s global city is an oxymoron synonymous with an occluded topology of power, a term (and terrain) that, in common with Mitchell, glosses over the material dynamics of inequality to present a specious critical framework mounted around the receding identity of the city.

12 And so the broader significance of the biomedical trope becomes evident. That detritus refers to the «wearing away or down by detrition, disintegration, decomposition» and the «matter produced by the detrition … a mass or formation of this nature», indicates its contradictory signification, both as symptomatic (of the erosion process) and illustrative (of the by-product thereof).50 This is the principal conceptual flaw in such readings of the urban, a derisive prefix whose lack of specificity is deemed symptomatic of its pathology, when in fact it signals its uniform lacunae. The city, no more the a priori paragon of authentic definition, is by now the a posteriori index of a retrograde present. This constitutes an immanent tension in the city-urban transaction. The idealized city does not refer to a material form, whilst its present «crisis» has meaning only insofar as the urban is the obverse of an idealized form. Caught within a hermeneutic circle, there is no «room», epistemologically and ontologically, for any interstitial point of reference. As such, the urban corresponds to the third definition of detritus, as the «waste or disintegrated material of any kind; debris».51 Indiscriminately connoting the residual by-product of «circulation» or the «spaces of flows», the «urban world» engenders «world-cities», spatial planes that have somehow outgrown their optimal limits («inflationary megalopolises», «mammoth cities») and so threaten to assimilate all external reference points («black holes»).

13 To recount, the use of the cancer metaphor articulates the anxiety that the city is redundant, or at the very least endangered, because its present state has somehow surpassed an inferred yet unqualified state of nature. Consequently its identity is only conceivable in the negative, amorphous terms attributed to the urban. That said, its metaphorical use is undercut by a fundamental misconception. Typified by «mammoth cities» of «chaos», Lévy’s urban cancer — an elaboration of the city-urban transaction — signifies an ineluctable process whose prognosis requires remedial intervention. To counteract a contaminated material realm the tenuous concept of the virtual world is forwarded.52 Allied to this is a wilful ignorance to the fact that, although traditionally imbued with negative meaning, «It is entirely wrong to see cancer as a single disease entity with a universally poor prognosis». It is a far from uniform condition, with mutable growth patterns and asymmetric morphology.53 In other words, the concept of cancer is very different to its material form. It is not a type of detritus, nor can its form be accorded a generalized pathology, for its becoming is not subject to laws of linear or teleological development. Like the widespread use of the urban as an undifferentiated term that elusively refers to simultaneously localized and globalized processes of homogenization, Lévy’s stilted understanding of oncological concepts is symptomatic of contemporary representations of the city and the urban alike. Warehouses, industrial zones, the forgotten housing development lost between a beet field and an airport, suburbs, new towns, commercial centres, all those places that are no place, unconsecrated, without history, agglomerated by new circuits, will never constitute a city. They are peopled, but we are incapable of inhabiting them54

14 Read as a series of analogues for a listless present, these «agglomerated» places are couched in a rubric of periphery (another timeless and mythical concept), against which the city —replete with history — assumes the rank of centre. This use of place,

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which assumes the past was significant because it contained «real» cities, provides the basis for critical distance, against which the present is «without history» (and so «will never constitute a city»). Yet this city-urban transaction is far from innocuous, for it masks the fact that urbanism, as the institutionalized application — and re- presentation — of a particular rationality, «implies the intervention of power more than understanding».55 Understanding, in terms of qualified definition, is transposed by the application of brutal homogenization. Negotiated through the domain of geographical space, inequalities of the social order are naturalized through the generic typology of «all those places that are no place», «peopled» by a subspecies repudiated at the level of sovereign identity, for «we are incapable of inhabiting them». Collaterally, the switch from the plural («places») to the singular («place») signals essentialist and dehistoricized understandings of place and city alike, whose lack of contingent basis mirrors the timelessness of centre-periphery epistemologies. The «forgotten housing developments» are condemned to a non-historical identity because of their lack of acquiescence with regard to traditional paradigms of city, suburb, or countryside. And so history, in this sanctioned and sanitised form, traduces — in the name of the urban — that which does not accord with its legitimate definitions. As an instance of the logics of dissolution, this urban «detritus» is literally no-where, spatially and temporally, for it languishes in the torpor of conflated idealism and empiricism, conceptually flaccid and materially redundant. It is precisely from within these abject realms of (non-) history that John King’s urban form emerges.

A Different View

15 To date, John King is the author of six texts.56 Perhaps best known for the recently filmed first novel, The Football Factory [2004, dir. Nick Love], King’s oeuvre can be provisionally distinguished thematically, though this is not to suggest a discontinuity. The first two novels, The Football Factory and Headhunters, are set in late twentieth- century working class England, whilst England Away incorporates more diverse geographical settings. Adopting an Irving Welsh-esque brutality of colloquial expression, the trilogy engages themes of identity within the context of football hooliganism. Home to a series of «undesirable» characters, frequently «white, Anglo- Saxon, heterosexual and fed up of being told [they were] shit», their recurrent subject matters — disconcerting perspectives on white working class ethnicity, masculinity, alienation, racism and homophobia, violence and drugs — refuse the platitudes of marginality.57 Set respectively in Slough and the «urban sprawl of the provinces», Human Punk and White Trash extend earlier geographical, historical, and thematic preoccupations to engage an increasingly prevalent political disaffection.58 Continuing King’s concerns with the influence of the media and the effects of post-industrialization on conceptualizations of gender and the city, these texts, far from being «without history», produce a series of counterintuitive perspectives that refuse to be incorporated within orthodox discourses and assumptions. They include perspectives that, for the purposes of this paper, delineate the logics of dissolution affecting the forms of urban representation. «... the spread of houses and factories the same as a plastic model … power grids, industrial ley lines melting down as the sun scorches the earth and the reservoirs boil and sink, slow columns of steel and rubber oozing past concrete blocks, slate terraces fanning out from the train track, car parks and gas tanks … a wood to the

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east, patches of yellow where the fields have died … chemical visions and exhaust hallucinations … concrete cows in a concrete paradise,the black-tarmac snake of the motorway passing through dreamland.»59

16 Viewed through thermal imaging cameras, this «dreamland» registers the ubiquitous presence of, and mediation afforded by, various forms of technologies.60 Framed by technology, it constitutes an urban form extensively re-envisioning nature as part of the shift towards a «fully urbanised ontology» that affects the morphology and content of the urban: its quantitative and qualitative aspects.61 Where post-Cartesian ideologies of nature as dormant matter were symptomatic of the foundational split of modern epistemologies, providing the «cultural sanctions» necessary for its denudation, this «concrete paradise» contends the veracity of the bounded city.62 Displacing the idea of passive nature for the always-already constructed-ness of «chemical visions», the synthetic overtones of the «plastic model» play off the idea of an organic plan. Traditionally associated with nineteenth-century industrial cities, the organicist conceptualization relies on the functional analogy of urban spatial dispersal with the arrangement of human organs.63 Typified by the use of biological metaphors to connote a belief in holistic integrity, this anatomical conception of space deigns cities “healthy” or otherwise according to their similitude with a dehistoricized plan. Yet for King this use of an ideal form is neither desirable nor possible. If the «spread of houses and factories» are «the same as a plastic model», this similitude raises the issue of critical distance. Their likeness does not refer to the proximity of ideal and re/presentation. Instead it recognizes a logic of dissolution, in the first instance regarding the ontological distinction between culture and nature. Forthwith indivisible, the oxymoronic «concrete cows» recognize nature as a «second-order schema» providing insufficient basis for critical distance.64 Subject to recursive appropriation, the «black tarmac snake» of the motorway collapses relational difference: it leaves a thoroughly culturalized-nature whereby the «tropical paradise off the hard shoulder» undercuts dystopian associations of «concrete paradise» by means of oxymoronic juxtaposition.65 Paradise and concrete, two terms not normally associated, become as one in the logic of the urban. Without traducing this «concrete paradise» via the narration of the uncanny, the lack of relational difference creates an environment immeasurable and indefinable by the orthodox referents of «nature», «countryside», or «suburb». The «patches of yellow where the fields have died» signals the dissolution of critical practice couched in an outmoded rubric of autonomous «nature». The «slow columns of steel and rubber oozing past concrete blocks» suggests that nostalgia for an immutable nature — like that of the city — is outmoded.66 Accordingly, the «melting down» of «industrial ley- lines’ plays on the latter defined as the «joining [of] two prominent points in the landscape, thought to be the line of a prehistoric track».67 The conjoining of prehistoric and industrial elements, by refuting a neat discrimination between chronological periods with discrete physical characteristics, serves notice that the trope Raymond Williams takes for granted in recollecting «what seems like an unmediated nature», is no longer — if it ever was — valid.68 Traversed by «power grids», mediated by thermal imaging cameras, and bisected by «train track», the pastoral ideal is negated. Nature is hereon approached by degrees of approximation: an orchard, whilst «not proper countryside», is «good enough».69 In sum, «nature» constitutes an ersatz, polluted backdrop: mired in the violence of inscription and historical appropriation, the decaying vestiges of authenticity, in the guise of «dying fields», are supplanted by the synthetic residuum of industrialization. As an all-encompassing urban form, the

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traditional points of distinction, between centre and periphery, culture and nature, no longer inhere. Rebuking notions of geographical distinction, this «concrete paradise» drifts «out to the satellite towns burning bright on the horizon».70 This leads to the second logic of dissolution. Where steel and rubber tessellates with concrete to supplant the organicity of an «unmediated» nature, so the urban metaphors of this «oozing» entity, fanning out, are without rational telos — it is not hemmed in by countryside or suburbs. As an urban form, it is non-linear, complex, subject to deviation: city and nature assume the rank of an all-inclusive rubric. «Cities have split into the countryside … Britain is a post-industrial society, but the image…is stuck in grainy black-and-white footage ... Heavy industry has been and gone, the green fields of England soaked in insecticide. Protesters travel by coach and the pits have been flooded. The East End has moved out to Essex and the peasants are all tuning into digital TV.»71

17 Contra the emphases upon totality and autonomy characterizing the city-urban transaction, the «long old urban sprawl of the provinces» connotes an urban morphology renouncing the structure of rational organization.72 It is a totally internalized discourse, a figurative and symbolic ‘split’ realigning critical distance. Formed by the (at times forcible) dispersion of the transit-oriented city, this environment consists of the diffusion of communications technologies that indicate different relations with nature and new patterns of mobility. Negotiated by communications networks, the spaces opened by modern technologies are traversed nationally by motorways and, transnationally, via mobile communications and air travel: «The sky’sjammedwithjets queuing to land at Heathrow, suntanned passengers looking down on the glass, bricks, streets of our town».73 Symbolized by «glass» and «brick», the existential horizon of the «satellite towns» becomes the dominant form of experience, unencumbered by the traditional limits of the city.74 Far from being «forgotten», and anything but «nameless», these dispersed elements register a new urban paradigm, reflexively aware of its contingent and arbitrary status as «satellite towns», since the «centre» around which it orbits — London — is perpetually decentred.75 Contrary to associations with centrality and power, London becomes displaced: where the East End spills out into Essex, into «new model estates», so the euphemisms of «urban malaise» are signally absent.76 Typically represented as «squalor» and «uncontrolled sprawl», that which lies beyond the mythic plenitude of the centre is often euphemistically inscribed as the «chaotic growth» of «ever- extending suburban sprawl», with its collateral «deadening impact on our landscape».77

18 Such vitiated rhetoric is uniformly absent within the «great arterial roads to the London country sprawl surrounding the capital» that denote a «low-lying landscape» of «satellite towns» and «new-brick estates connecting villages and junctions, lining the trunk roads».78 Part of «the boom towns and sprawl of Outer London and the Thames Valley», it is not suburbia in any conventional sense, for in no way is this a peripheral postscript to London.79 This «paradise» emerges out of the dispersed East End: released from its typically delimited (assumedly self-evident) location, it drifts without ultimate (teleological or dystopian) ascription. The «great arterial roads» indicate the reciprocity between the «country sprawl» and the «capital», nourishing «the trade routes dipping into the new towns, one-man labs and small businesses flourishing in the back streets of an England the cameras never record».80 An England unrecorded because the «cameras» fail to capture the contingent status of centre and periphery, culture and nature alike. This leads to the third logic of dissolution. No longer

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dissociated from countryside, cities «split», and so the displacement of the East End into Essex prompts a quantitative shift in the morphology of the city and changes in the structure of representation. That Britain is a «post-industrial society» is, on this reading, to contend the lassitude of heritage. The «grainy black-and-white footage» speaks of another moment, steeped in an obsolete iconography of the «rolling fields of England’s green and pleasant land».81 This environment is, in contrast with (and leagues away from) the imperial majesty of «green and pleasant land», saturated in «insecticide». The dissolution of past forms of representation does not, of itself, herald a «truer» picture, but one recognizing the complicity, the specious character, of such contentions. What remains is the attempt to locate urban representation beyond the polarities of the global city, within the contingent and arbitrary interstices of myth and history otherwise known as the M25. «One day this motorway will be lined with concrete, the Thames Valley a solid block of housing estates fed by service-station mini-markets and warehouse superstores, a spread of car parks and shopping malls, multiplex cinemas and fast-food strips. In the old days there were city walls around the ruler’s towers, and now there’s the M25. We’re working to an American model, extending the highways and cutting down on public transport, spreading out, more and more people flushed out of London by the rich.»82

19 The frequent caesurae of motorways, railways, and airports spanning these synthetic backdrops acknowledge that the city — if it is to retain workable definition — must reconcile new relations with nature and mobility that do not fit within older structures of feeling. This image of the Thames Valley recognizes firstly, that the city can no longer be — if, indeed, it ever was — conceived as an elementary form, hygienically bounded by countryside. This «solid block» of housing and trading estates, «lined with concrete», is conventionally immeasurable. Relinquishing positivist assumptions of scale, it does not fit traditional hermeneutics concepts. No longer navigable by the «endless quest» of the detective or flâneur decoding its chaos, this «American model» is extended in perpetuity, a «spread» fundamentally experienced through — and re- presented in terms of — the volition of the automotive or aircraft journey.83 Its scale is indicated by the dissembled perimeter of London, symbolized by the M25, «spreading out» and «fed» by a plethora of consumerist facilities. This leads to the second, and most important, recognition, that London — the city more generally — has, and continues to, reside in myth. «In the old days» — a mythical past, home to authentic forms — the significance of the bounded city was primarily as a physical and semiotic prophylactic «around the rulers towers»; presently «there’s the M25». This present day frontier — a «conceptual ha-ha» — decries the myth of the autonomous and rational city.84 The limits of London, once believed to be physically demonstrable, have waned. Now, «[t]here’s probably more white Londoners outside the M25 than there is in London proper, from Margate to Milton Keynes, Southend to Reading».85 The disingenuous idea of a «London proper» is undermined by its volatility: uncoupled from its traditional moorings of centrality, London drifts interminably. Akin to the displaced East End, and given the instability of that which lies within the M25 — let alone its outer limits — the relations between centre and periphery, urban and suburban, city and countryside, become historically contingent, suggesting these terms to be myths that have — and continue to — perpetuate hegemonic socio-economic structures. Myths of origins, of inclusion and exclusion, rooted in the differential applications of «power»: the extension of highways and diminution of public transport, involving the forcible flushing out «of London by the rich», locates the suppositious «centre» within

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the actions of a privileged minority. Yet its status is far from assured: its links to the «ruler’s towers» denaturalizes the critical, historically and geographically contingent bases of such typologies. Typologies for which this image of the Thames Valley as a «solid block of housing estates» does not fit, neither city, suburb, nor country. It is an irrational, anomalous form, a complex but nevertheless not intangible nor unrepresentable form, for which previous metropolitan and provincial tropes insufficiently discern.

Conclusion

20 To conclude, this is not the global city as it is conventionally figured. Nor, for that matter, is it the urban obverse that typically follows such accounts. It is an ontological terrain that, epistemologically aware of its inherent contingency, can only be partially and transitorily represented. In order to surmount the strictures of relational difference and be represented in a more attenuated manner, the complexities of these urban present/s require logics of dissolution not merely in a negative sense. It is not enough to contend the irrelevance of a «territorial distinction» that «gives way to urban life», if the latter consists of the «detritus» of «all those places that are no place». 86 Equally, the imputed universality of the «Hertzian landscape», for all that it creates a land of fulsomeness and plenitude, is at the same time one of ideal vacuity, a depopulated landscape whose symbolic and ideological system elides the materiality of inequality in the name of an ineluctable «curve of technological development».87 Where the former creates reductive typologies of form and formlessness, the latter eliminates even this crude basis for spatial distinction in its careless reification of «technology». Moreover, diagnoses of the «great urban paradox» do not advance matters, for they re- polarise culture and nature: the quantitative discrimination between city and countryside is transposed by the qualitative distinction between city and urban.88 The dissolution of an outmoded epistemological practice should not be read as heralding a parallel sense of ontological collapse that leads to the homogenization of spatial (and in turn cultural, political, and social) differences, for «no urban place is identical to another».89 The insufficiency of traditional co-ordinates does not mean the present is, or should be, represented pathologically. Far from it. A pensive logics of dissolution, aware of the epistemological problems of representation, of the transience of identity, of the partiality of experience, and of the continuity of change, shuns the obstinacy of the normative; it deals with tendencies and orientations. In the words of King: «The best thing about life is that there’s always something new coming through», a new ontology whose mantra reads «wherever there’s people life blooms».90

NOTES

1. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc, London: Pan Books, 1979, p.18. 2. Richard Rogers and Anne Power, Cities For A Small Country, London: Faber & Faber, 2000, p.281.

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3. Le Corbusier, Concerning Town Planning, trans. Clive Entwistle, London: The Architectural Press, 1947, p.56. 4. William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, & the Infobahn, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1996, p. 107. 5. For example, see Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991. 6. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, p.10; Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», in Stephen Graham, ed., The Cybercities Reader, London: Routledge, 2004, pp.83-93. 7. Stephen Graham, ed., The Cybercities Reader, p.3. Graham ‘s use of «urban life» in place of the «city», is not pejorative. 8. Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.85. 9. Manuel Castells, p.83. 10. One such instance is «the accusation is that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living». See Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York: Vintage Books, 1993, p.xii. 11. Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.86, p.89 and p.90. 12. Originating in the early seventeenth century, this understanding posits the city as «‘the model for the governmental rationality that was to apply to the whole of the territory», such that it became «the matrix for the relations that apply to a whole state». Michel Foucault, «Space, Knowledge, and Power» in James Faubion, ed., Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Vol. 3, trans. Robert Hurley et al, London: Penguin, 2002, p.351. 13. Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.91. For a similarly vague progenitor, see Le Corbusier, Concerning Town Planning. 14. Richard Rogers and Anne Power, Cities For A Small Country, London: Faber & Faber, 2000, p.43 and p.57. 15. Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p.vii. 16. Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.86. 17. Manuel Castells, pp.89-90. The interchangeable use of «metropolitan world» (90) and «urban world» (86, 89, 92) recognizes these epithets as generic typologies, whose status is such that they do not warrant consistent application 18. Manuel Castells, p.92. 19. Manuel Castells, pp.85-6; William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, & the Infobahn, p.120 and p.107 20. William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, & the Infobahn, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1996. p. 8. 21. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.5. 22. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.10. 23. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.10, italics added. 24. William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, & the Infobahn, p.4. 25. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.175, italics added. 26. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.5, p.55, and p.57, italics added. 27. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.55.

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28. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.57. 29. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.112 italics added; and pp. 210-11 30. Keith Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life — Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition, London: Routledge, 1997, p.171. 31. The «grand narrative [of technology] today», Keith Ansell-Pearson (1997: 4) notes, is often that of a «facile quasi-Hegelianism in which the rise of the machine is construed in linear and perfectionist terms»; eith Ansell-Pearson, p.4. 32. On the differences between concept and material development, see Bruno Latour, Aramis or the Love of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. 33. «In September 2001, there was more fibre optic cable under the streets of Manhattan than in all of Africa … [and] the two main telephone switches in the Financial District had more lines than many European nations», William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p. 176. 34. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, trans. Robert Bononno, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p.156. Urbanism — as an ideology of spatial representation and practice — is politically significant, since, «[b]eneath its benign exterior, humanist and technological, it masks capitalist struggle: the control of space…and so on.» 35. Stephen Graham, ed., The Cybercities Reader, p.21. 36. William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, & the Infobahn, p.10. 37. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, trans. Robert Bononno, Cambridge MA: Perseus Books, 1997, p.57. 38. For a similarly humanist reading of technology, see Ollivier Dyens, Metal and Flesh. The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, trans. Evan J. Bibbee & Ollivier Dyens, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. 39. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.xxv. 40. Richard Coyne, Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, London: MIT Press, 1999. 41. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.177. 42. Richard Coyne, Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, p.4. See also Slavoj Zizék, «Is it Possible to Traverse the Fantasy in Cyberspace?», in The Zizék Reader, London: Blackwell, 1999. 43. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.xxv. See Richard Skeates, «The Infinite City» in City 8, pp.6-20; Matthew Gandy, «Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City», International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 29, no1, March 2005, pp.25-49. 44. Peter Stalybrass and Allan White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986, p.3. 45. Oxford English Dictionary, vol. VI, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 387 46. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.70. 47. Gordon Mcpherson, ed., Black’s Medical Dictionary, London: A & C Black, 2002, p.399. 48. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.178. 49. «It is now widely accepted that cancer results from acquired changes in he genetic make-up of a particular cell or group of cells which ultimately lead to a failure of the normal mechanisms regulating their growth», Gordon Mcpherson, ed., Black’s Medical Dictionary, p.94. 50. Oxford English Dictionary, vol. IV, p.557 51. Oxford English Dictionary, vol. IV, p.557 52. As Zizék notes, «the a priori possibility of viruses disintegrating the virtual universe point towards the fact that, in the virtual universe as well, there is no ‘Other of the Other’, that this

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universe is a priori inconsistent, with no final guarantee of its coherent functioning»; Slavoj Zizék, «Is it Possible to Traverse the Fantasy in Cyberspace?», p114. 53. Gordon Mcpherson, ed., Black’s Medical Dictionary, p.94. The morphology of cancer cells reveals that «they may show a lesser degree of differentiation (i.e. they are more ‘primitive’), features indicative of a faster proliferative rate and disorganized alignment in relationship to other cells or blood vessels». 54. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.178. 55. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, p.160. 56. John King, The Football Factory, London: Jonathan Cape, 1996. This edition published London: Vintage, 2004; Headhunters, London: Jonathan Cape, 1997. This edition Vintage, 1998; England Away, London: Jonathan Cape, 1998. This edition London: Vintage, 1999; Human Punk, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000. This edition London: Vintage, 2001; White Trash, London: Jonathan Cape, 2001. This edition London: Vintage 2002; The Prison House, London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. For the purposes of this paper, The Prison House is not referred to 57. John King, The Football Factory, pp.116-117. 58. John King, White Trash, p.9. 59. John King, p.4. 60. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, London: MIT Press, 1999. 61. Richard Skeates ‘The Infinite City’. On the emergence of mechanization and associated ideologies of nature and society, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980; Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race, London: Pluto Press, 1983. See also Robert Romanyshyn, Technology as Symptom and Dream, London: Routledge, 1989; Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: the hidden agenda of modernity,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 62. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, p.2. In the words of Easlea : «Truth would be the means to technological power over nature … It would be a truth that would consist of nature’s hidden «forms» … conceptually transforming «her» [nature] into a lifeless, machine-like entity of mere matter in motion», Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race, p.22. A transformation that, as Lefebvre notes, speciously distinguishes between «nature (physis) and logos (reason)», Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, p.25. 63. See Matthew Gandy, «Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City», pp25-49. 64. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, Hertfordshire: Paladin, 1973, p.131 65. John King, White Trash, p.4. 66. «The pastoral mode, although it viewed nature as benevolent.» Merchant notes, ‘was a model created as an antidote to the pressures of urbanization and mechanization’, Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, p.9. See also Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, London: Hogarth Press 1993, pp.13-34. 67. Collins Concise English Dictionary, p.647. 68. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, p.3. 69. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, p.9; John King, Human Punk, p.41. 70. John King, Headhunters, p.292. 71. John King, Human Punk, p.258 and p.259. 72. John King, White Trash, p.9. 73. John King, Human Punk, p.340. The metonymic view of the city from the train is a recurrent textual motif: see The Football Factory, p.225; England Away, p.129; Human Punk, p.85, p.216, and p. 316.

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74. John King, Headhunters, p.234 75. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, p.178 («forgotten housing development»); Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.86 («nameless urban constellations»). 76. John King, White Trash, p.9; Rogers 2000: 43: ‘As social cohesion and informal controls weakens, so our ability to contain disorder and violence declines’ 77. Richard Rogers and Anne Power, Cities For A Small Country, p.27 and p.72. 78. John King, Human Punk, p.233. 79. John King, p.230. 80. John King, p.248. 81. John King, The Football Factory, p.123. 82. John King, Human Punk, p.257. 83. Anthony Vidler, (): The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, p.4. 84. Iain Sinclair, London Orbital, London: Penguin 2003, p.3. 85. John King, The Football Factory, p.257. 86. Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, pp.177-178 87. William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, p.5 and p.55. 88. Manuel Castells, «Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age», p.89. 89. «In spite of any efforts at homogenization through technology, in spite of … separation and segregation, no urban place is identical to another», Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, p.40. 90. John King, Human Punk, p.258 and p.316.

ABSTRACTS

This paper analyzes the recent critical interest in the global city, and assesses the significance of what it calls the city-urban transaction. This latter term refers to a tendency amongst recent approaches to offset waning city definition the rise of the urban, and lament the former in the name of the latter. The point of departure for this reading concerns the relationship between models of development and the often disparaging figuration of the urban. It rejects the technological determinism of William Mitchell and Pierre Lévy, and the idealism of Manuel Castells, to suggest that, whilst the urban engenders the dissolution of orthodox accounts of the city, it does not entail a correlative sense of ontological degradation. In rejecting the negative, amorphous connotations frequently thrust upon the urban, the paper concludes with a reading of John King’s fiction so as to provide a tentative sketch of the logics of dissolution as seen in a positive light.

AUTHOR

JARRAD KEYES Jarrad Keyes studied Literature at the Universities of Essex and Manchester before undertaking a PhD at Kingston University, studying representations of the city, gender, and technology within

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contemporary British fiction. Researching, amongst others, John King, David Peace, and J.G. Ballard, this work led to a number of conference presentations, most notably at the Literary London and Global Cities conferences. He is presently working on the writing-up phase of the thesis, and preparing an article for publication, reading Henri Lefebvre’s exposition of the urban alongside the recent novels of Niall Griffiths.

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Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror: Colonial Italy Reflects on Tianjin

Maurizio Marinelli

Figure 1. Parmigianino, «Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror».1

Methodology and Objectives

1 As an historian, I am particularly interested in the dismantlement of the old traditional view of history as an «unproblematic, extra-textual and extra-discursive real».2 My intention is to use the selected written sources in a dialogic way in order to expose the

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representation of the Italian concession and elucidate the reasons for what I believe, is a deliberate informative and descriptive selectivity, revealing partisan and often prescriptive overtones. I will argue that, the extremely positive master narrative predominant in the Italian sources is informed by socially encoded and constructed discursive practices. These were generated by varying socio-political and economic interests, and often motivated by precise speculative transactions that were simply justified by the principle of emulation of well established colonial practices. This is demonstrated for example, by Ambassador Giovanni Gallina’s justification of the immediate expropriation of what he referred to as the «filthy Chinese village», arguing that «all the other powers had proceeded to the expropriation as soon as they occupied the area of their concession».3

2 Two interpretive paradigms are particularly useful in the analysis of the Italian concession. The first one is the concept of «re-presentation». The second is the process of construction and deconstruction of «imagined communities». By re-presentation I mean a second or new form of presentation, as expressed for example in the arts.4 For the purpose of this work, I am referring to the idea of ideologically motivated re- presentation, which intrinsically embodies a performative nature and responds to a teleological mechanism.5

3 The first problem with the teleological mechanism of historical re-presentation is the creation of a hegemonic relation of power: teleology is reductive, exclusionary and harmful to those whose stories are erased. Secondly, this kind of re-presentation is based on the concept of time as a linear and progressive notion, which excludes any objective analysis of space. The structural transformation over time of the territory identified as the Italian concession is one of the main themes reflected in the sources that I have collected. However, this transformation is often one-sidedly analysed, leading to the apotheosis of an imported idea of modernity. Therefore, I intend to critique a certain model of ideological re-presentation that demonstrates an instrumental devaluation of spatial thinking, in order to justify the appropriation of the indigenous space, the erasure of its identity and the superimposition of the colonial one.

4 Foucault pointed in the direction of conceptualisation of space as a social process where strategies of power and signification jointly operate.6In the Italian case, the representations produced by colonial narratives and practices have constructed a hagiographic picture of the Italian «civilizing mission», based on the 1890s claim that «Italy’s was a «proletarian» colonialism» and therefore less pernicious than the others; since it would have been «aimed to secure better land and greater prosperity for its indigenous citizens».7 In the last thirty odd years, postcolonial multiple perspectives have overcome colonial elitist views, and discourse analysis, integrated with historical interpretive studies, haschallenged the previous positivist reading habits. But the literature on the Italian concession in Tianjin that has been produced to date does not seem to reflect this new critical approach.

5 The second paradigm that I would like to suggest is the application of the idea coined by Benedict Anderson of «imagined community» to the Italian experience both in terms of the colonizers’ positionality and the colonial discursive practices.8 In his analysis of the concept of nation, Anderson emphasizes the imagined nature of nationalism as a construction created in imagination by printed culture. He argues that before its corresponding political entity — the nation-state — is formed, one must first

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imagine such an entity: «It is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship».9

6 Imagining an entity like the modern nation is a way of building a story uparound us. This process takes the form of a master narrative so that we are defined as characters in that specific national story. I would suggest extending similar interpretive paradigms to the Italian concession in Tianjin, which has the characteristics of a hybrid community. Foreign and Chinese individuals were living in a small area legally defined as a permanent possession, yet it was a community «imagined» according to different schemes of perception and self-perception. Therefore it was represented at times as a settlement, atothers as a colonial space, and at stillothers as a quarter, a sort of village bridging two worlds. Indeed on the level of personal narratives, the reconstruction of the story of the Italian concession by Consul General Vincenzo Fileti (in his text dated 1921), for example, reveals how the dominant story crafted by the Italian state in the colonial period through its agents, contributed to the construction of an imagined community.10 Thus the representative of the colonial state became the embodiment of an alleged success story for the whole nation.

Historical Origins of the Italian Concession

7 With the signature of the «Final Protocol for the Settlement of the Disturbances of 1900» (Xinchou Treaty)on 7th September 1901, following the repression of the Boxer Rebellion, Italy received an allotment of 5.91% of the Boxer indemnity [26,617,005 haiguan taels. 11 This was equal to about 1.55 Chinese national (silver) dollars, or 99,713,769 gold lire]. The country also received extraterritoriality privileges in the Legation Quarter in Beijing, as well as the concession, in perpetuity, of a small zone on the northern bank of the Haihe (Hai River) in Tianjin, situated at 38° 56' latitude north and 117° 58' longitude east, on which to develop an Italian concession. More precisely, the Italian concession was set between the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian concessions, the left bank of the Hai River, the Beijing-Mukden (today’s Shenyang) railway track and the Chinese territory.

8 There is general agreement between Western and Chinese written sources that the concession in Tianjin was ceded to Italy by the Chinese government on 7 September 1901. Almost a year later, on 7 June 1902 it was taken into Italian possession to be administered by the Italian Consul General as representative of the Italian government. In reality, on 21 January 1901, the Italian troops had already proceeded to establish a military occupation of an area near the railway station. This area accommodated the soldiers who had disembarked from the Royal Navy as part of the international expedition to occupy the city. The Foreign Minister Prinetti gave his «authorisation» to the provisional occupation of territory that had been suggested by the Royal Minister in Beijing Giuseppe Salvago Raggi. This coincided with the immediate formal execution of the order so that, in Raggi’s words, «the allotments near the railway station, bordering with those taken by Russia» were occupied.12 Therefore, the often quoted date 7 June 1902 refers more to the convention, which validated the fait accompli.

9 There is no unanimous consent in the sources concerning the Chinese population living in the area at the time of the transfer: 13,704 according to the 1902 census, around 17,000 people according to Fileti’s report, and 16,500 according to Arnaldo Cicchiti-

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Suriani.13 According to a Chinese source, based on the 1922 census, 4,025 Chinese citizens, 62 Italians, and 42 from other nationalities were living in the concession at the time.14 According to Gennaro Pistolese, in 1935 the total population was 6,261, of which 5,725 Chinese and 536 foreigners including 392 Italians.15 F.C. Jones, in the few lines dedicated to the Italian concession, says: «The population in 1937 was 373 foreigners and some 6,500 Chinese».16 Judging from these figures, one can deduct two factors: a significant decrease of the population living in the Italian concession from 16-17,000 (1902) to 4-6,000 (1922-1935) and a predominance of Chinese citizens. Nevertheless, Italian sources tend to obscure the presence of Chinese citizens in the concession, relegating them to the role of subalterns. These sources also reveal a progressive apotheosis of an encomiastic and self-reflexive image that was based on successful infrastructural projects that beautified the area, making it a miniature representation of the alleged success of the Italian nation.

10 Pistolese in particular, when he writes in 1935, argues that, according to more recent estimates, the Italian community in Tianjin would have consisted of about 150 people, instead of 392. But much more than the accuracy of the data, the main point of his article is the emphasis on the fact that «Our concession has a demographic consistency superior to the other concessions in Tien-Tsin». He reports the data of the Japanese concession (5,000 people), British (2,000), and French (1,450). This is one of the many elements used by him and byother writers in the Thirties, in line with the Fascist regime’s attempt to create a narrative of benign colonialism; to emphasise the outstanding success of the Italian spiritual and civilising mission in this «faraway extension» of the motherland.17

11 By 1943 the concession still had a garrison of circa 600 Italian troops, but on 10 September 1943 it was occupied by Japan; since Mussolini's Italian Social Republic (virtually fictitious at that point) relinquished the concession to the Japanese sponsored Chinese National Government (which was neither recognized by the Kingdom of Italy, nor by the Republic of China). On 10 February 1947 it was formally ceded back to China by post-war Italy.

The Value Added of the Concession

12 The symbolic significance of the Boxer Protocol was decisive for Italy in terms of acquisition of national prestige and recognition of Italy’s international status. This is particularly true in retrospect, and in comparison with other foreign powers that had already firmly asserted their presence and influence in the Chinese territory. The analysis of the symbolic capital of the Italian gains points to something well beyond modest territorial conquest. First and foremost, following the Protocol, Italy officially joined the other colonial powers in the extraterritorial privileges they had received in the Legation Quarter in Beijing. Furthermore, Italy obtained the authorisation to use the international quarters in Shanghai and Xiamen, as well as the right to maintain a military garrison at the Legation Quarter in Beijing, and another one at the Shanhaiguan fort during the summer.18 The only condition was the payment of 2,000 lire per year. The Protocol’s military consequences were also particularly significant for Italy. Three factors need to be considered: the recognition of the Italian property of the Dagu anchorage on the estuary of the Beihe, with relevant operations of protection and defence; the semiotic relevance of the names chosen for the garrison houses that Italy

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was authorised to build and maintain, namely «Italy» in Hangzhou, «Savoia» in Tianjin, «Regia Guardia» (Royal Guard) in the Italian legation in Beijing; and, last but not least, the authorisation to use its soldiers to defend churches, missions, railways, and mines, if necessary.

13 As for Tianjin, the agreement clearly stated that: «The Italian Government will exercise full jurisdiction in the same way established for the concessions obtained by the other foreign powers», which corresponded to the acknowledgment of the long sought after «equal» treatment of Italy on the same level of the other colonial powers in China.19 The agreement was signed by the Director of the Chinese Maritime Customs Tang Shaoyi and Count Giovanni Gallina (the successor to Salvago Raggi), and clearly stated that the concession was ceded, «to promote the development of Italian trade in the northern part of China, and in the Zheli (Chi-li) province in particular».20

14 Considering the concession within the context of the previous experience of repeated failures, which had characterised diplomatic relations between Italy and China from the 1866 bilateral Treaty onwards, the acquisition of the concession assumed for Italy the value of an historical nemesis. Numerous accounts regarding the concession clearly show this element of implicit revenge. Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti had defined the former unsuccessful Italian attempt, in the spring 1899, to obtain the official Chinese Government’s recognition of the Sanmun bay as a naval station, and the Italian influence zone in Zhejiang, as «a waste of a few millions (Lire) and a national humiliation».21 Giolitti had harshly criticized the mistakes made from the beginning to the end and strongly recommended the Foreign Minister not to publish the relevant documents. The rejection by the Chinese Government to accept the 1899 Italian request and the ensuing ultimatum, caused a serious wound in the imagined community of the newly created Italian nation. Particularly since the rejection occurred in an historical moment when all the other foreign powers (Great Britain, France, Germany, but also Japan and Russia) were obtaining concessions and settlements in locations that were strategically important for their political presence and economic penetration in the Chinese territory. The wound was even more profound because the 1899 Italian request and ultimatum were not supported by Great Britain: a move that revealed that other foreign powers were not keen on seeing Italy exerting its influence in China.22Cicchiti- Suriani, writing in 1951 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the acquisition of the concession, pointed out that «After the unfortunate prelude of Sanmun, that gesture represented the epilogue of the 1900 international events».23

15 The voices of the advocates of the Italian commercial interests in China had been particularly intense in the decade 1890-1900, both at the academic level, including Prof. Ludovico Nocentini from Rome University who wrote articles to launch petitions from the pages of magazines such as Nuova Antologia, Rivista d’Italia and Rivista Geografica Italiana,and amongst journalists such as Giovanni Vigna del Ferro.24 Even local newspapers, such as the Corriere Mercantile (Mercantile Courier) from Genova, supported this cause, becoming the official voiceof the Genovese ship-owners who were promoting the image of China as a land of opportunity.25

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Figure 2. Map drawn in November 1901 by the coastguard Filippo Vanzini. In Vincenzo Fileti, La Concessione Italiana di Tien-tsin, (Genova: Barabino e Graeve, 1921), p.13.

The Area of the Concession and the Role of Tianjin

16 The majority of the sources state that the area originally ceded to the Italian Government consisted approximately of half a square kilometre.26 Giacomo De Antonellis affirms that it consisted precisely of 447.647 square meters, while a source attributed to the Department of Architecture of Tianjin University refers to 46.26 hectares.27 A Chinese source indicates an area of «714 mu, 722 mu», where one mu corresponds to 0.0667 hectares (therefore, 47.62 ha. or 48.15 ha. respectively).28 Another Chinese source reports the Italian concession at the time of its establishment (1902) as 771 mu (51.42 ha.).29

17 The overall area could be divided into four parts. Proceeding from the south (where the river flows) to the north (where the railway station is located) the territory consisted of four parts: • A higher rising area of approx. 100,000 sqm. used as a salt deposit. Consul Fileti explains that due to the excavation work all around the salt deposit, a series of ditches had been created, which quickly became «stinky (pestilenziale) pools where the village boys used to wash themselves»;30 • The Chinese village, approx. 200,000 sqm., in the centre of the concession area, with approx. one thousand dwelling places (Navy Lieutenant Mario Michelagnoli reports 867 houses) , mainly huts, built by the salt workers.31 The description of these huts offered by Fileti reveals the degree of poverty of the dwellers: «misery», «poverty» and «indigence» are the words used in the paragraphs describing them), 17,000 Chinese approximately.

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• North of the village there was the worst area consisting of wetland, where the water could be as deep as 3-4 metres, completely frozen in the winter. • On the more elevated parts of this wetland the dwellers used to bury their dead, so the place had assumed the aspect of a «vast abandoned and flooded cemetery». Generally, in the Italian descriptions this fourth part is referred to as «the problem of the cemetery».

18 Italian sources reveal a continuous insistence on the negative conditions of the area destined to become the Italian concession. Interestingly, similar descriptions also characterise the other concessions contained in non-Italian sources. In the case of the British and French concessions obtained in 1860, for example, the concessions are described by Alexander Michie, editor of the newspaper Chinese Times as: «… dreary grounds which contained within their areas junk docks, small vegetable gardens, mud heaps, hovels of fishermen, sailors and others, whose wretched groups of squalid huts were divided from each other by narrow tidal ditches which were bordered by meagre and ill-kept footpaths. The sites of the two settlements were foul and noxious swamps, around them, on the dryer ground, were the numerous graves of many generations of the people. »32

19 The description of the French concession also contains a derogatory portrait of the residents: apparently it was «a wretched terrain given up to pools, cabbage gardens, hot pits for storing fruit and vegetables, and a rowdy, sinful, and criminal population». 33 Similar is the description of the American concession, which according to Michie, still had no houses and was mostly occupied by ice pits.34

20 F.C. Jones emphasises the poor conditions of the concessions area, by describing the continuous danger of flood, and the cost of maintaining the high mud banks. He mentions for example, the so-called extra-mural extension in the British concession, which would have required the moving of two hundred million cubic feet of river silt. Jones comes to the conclusion that «the Chinese authorities might well have had cause for satisfaction in having induced the foreigners to agree to accept a lease of territory which was of negligible value».35

21 This recurrent motif sounds instrumental in justifying the occupation of the concession areas on the one hand, and in emphasising the significant achievements of the foreign powers in their relevant areas on the other. It is hard to believe that the Qing Government was so willing to accept the conditions of the 1860 Convention, just because the foreign powers would have occupied territories of so-called «negligible value».The location of Tianjin was strategically important for the commercial penetration of China. Situated in the densely populated and productive North China Plain, on the Haihe at the northern terminus of the Grand Canal, and on the axis Dagu- Tianjin-Beijing axis, Tianjin has traditionally been the port of Beijing, which is only 120 km (72 miles) to the north-west. In some sources, the information relevant to the geopolitical importance of Tianjin refers to the Beihe and not to the Haihe, saying that «the city is situated about 37 miles (60 km) up the Peihao River (Beihe) from the ocean at Taku (Dagu) ».36 The Beihe, the Yongtinghe and other smaller tributaries converge at Tianjin to form the Haihe.Historically, the commercial, military, and ultimately strategic importance of Tianjin can be recognised on two levels. Domestically, Tianjin’s relevance is demonstrated by the construction of the walled city during the reign of Ming Emperor Yongle (1425). Internationally, its significance is revealed by the report of first Dutch Embassy to Beijing (1655), whereby Tianjin is depicted as a locality «very populous and so full of trade, that hardly the like commerce is to be found in any other city in all China; for whatever vessels are bound for Peking from any other part of

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China, most touch here, which occasions an extraordinary traffic for shipping, which lye continually before the city».37 Its original name Tianjinwei can be translated as «the guard of the bridge to heaven» clearly referring to its geopolitical location and its role of protecting Beijing, where the Emperor or «Son of Heaven» (tianzi) was ruling. During the nineteenth century, through cycles of destruction and reconstruction, Tianjin developed from being a vibrant ancient walled Chinese city to becoming arguably the most important commercial city in Northern China. This was mainly due to its strategic location in terms of economic domain, access and transport: Tianjin became not only the hub of the expanding railway network, but also a major international trading city with shipping connections to all parts of Asia.

Concession or Neighbourhood

22 The sources that I have collected and used for this research are texts, images, drawings, photographs, maps, all related to the Italian concession. The first source that I would like to analyse is a recently published exhibition’s catalogue, whose original Italian title could be translated in English as follows: «On the Road to Tianjin: One Thousands years of relations between Italy and China. An Italian neighbourhood in China».38 The Chinese title which accompanies the Italian one on the cover is much more concise and coincides with the subtitle of the Italian one: «Yige Yidali qu zai Tianjin (An Italian Neighbourhood in China)». On the cover of the book appear Japanese children, clearly (and embarrassingly) mistaken for Chinese.

23 The book undoubtedly builds on previous scholarship on the Italian concession, and offers its readers a good collection of photographs and archival documents relating to the Italian concession from 1902 to the 1930s. The historian however, cannot refrain from noticing a continuous attempt to obliterate the idea that Italy, for almost half a century, had a concession (zujie) in Tianjin, and not a neighbourhood. The compound word zujie does not indicate a real colonial status (since «colony» is translated in Chinese as zhimindi, where the verb zhi literally means to breed, to grow, to multiply) or a settlement, I believe it is very important to remember that the compound word zujie still clearly embodies the idea of «leased territory» and includes the concept of demarcating an area.39 Chinese historians emphasise that, from an administrative, juridical, police, and fiscal perspective, the concessions were «states within the state» (guozhongzhiguo).40 The linguistic replacement of «neighbourhood» (e.g. in Chinese the generic «qu» as opposed to zujie), belongs to a typical colonial process of renaming, which implies a modification of the form in order to mystify the content and context. This process produces an edulcorated image of the colonial presence, and is an essential component of what I define as «benign colonialism», which aims at offering an over-positive and often narcissistic image of Italian colonialism. In fact qu, which is here translated as neighbourhood, literally means «area, district, region» (quyu) while the Italian term «quartiere» conveys both the sense of clearly defined residential district and the idea of a community characterized by some forms of vicinity and/or familiarity. It indicates an area or district where the inhabitants share the fact of co- inhabiting a space and, at times, certain habits and customs, or might know or somehow communicate with each other through formal or informal channels. The attempt to show that, in reality, the Italian concession was just a «neighbourhood» seems to be in line with the declared two-fold aim of the project: «to encourage and

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expand the commercial relations between the two countries, and export and diffuse the best image of urban, architectonic, and artistic culture at that point of time to a country so faraway from Italy like China».41

Figure 3. Logo of «2006 The Year of Italy in China», www.yidalinian.org. Retrieved 10 June 2006.

24 The Italian concession «imagined» as an «Italian neighbourhood» allows its representation as «the witness of the implementation of a common work between Italians and Chinese that today, after more than sixty years, is somehow rediscovered and re-evaluated in its value and its own meaning». Two questions which lead me through the reading of these materials point precisely in the direction of their «value» and «meaning». The emphasis on the «common work of Italians and Chinese» when the hybridization is clearly omitted from the Italian sources, allows for the creation of the fictitious representation of a «neighbourhood», that would have been «received» from the Chinese Imperial Government, masking the tones of the Italian colonial experience in China.42 But this approach is in line with the current Chinese official intention to represent the concessions’ time as the beginning of Tianjin’s internationalisation, capitalising on those seeds of global capitalism instead of demonising them. Recently the Tianjin Municipal Government has started a process of renovation of the former Italian concession that is today called «Yi(dali)shi fengqingqu», an expression (whose translation could be «scenic area or neighbourhood of Italian style») that obliterates the colonial past and aims at marketing the former colonial buildings in order to attract foreign capital and domestic customers.43

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Figure 4. Building, renovation and restoration in the former Italian concession. Photograph taken on 25 June 2006.

Figure 5. Building, renovation and creation of the «Yidalishi fengqingqu»,Photograph taken on 25 June 2006.

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The Reorganisation of the Concession

25 The various sources reveal different re-presentations of the area destined to be the Italian concession. The Royal Minister in Beijing, Salvago Raggi, thought it was the best area, clearly indicating prospects for rapid and successful development. The Italian Consule in Tianjin Cavalier Poma did not agree with this re-presentation, since the area consisted of a populous Chinese quarter, a cemetery, and wetlands, which did not seem to be very promising. Apparently, Vessel Lieutenant Valli, commander of the Tianjin garrison, was the person responsible for the military operations and he chose «to occupy the next best thing» (the Italian expression is «quanto restava di meglio»), probably the only one left behind by the other colonial powers. Some of the Italian sources indicate that the British would have reserved for themselves the best area.44 One of the most imminent problems was how to find the financial resources to solve the problem of the cemetery and reclaim the wetland. There were two channels to be explored: public funding and private forms of investment.

26 In 1905 the Italian Foreign Ministry approved the town plan for the Italian concession that was drawn up by lord lieutenant Adolfo Cecchetti. The leveling of the territory was considered a priority, implying both the removal of the cemetery and the drainage of the marshes. On the 5th of July 1908, a public auction programtried to attract potential buyers for the allotments of the Italian concession.45 At the same time, the police regulation were issued, together with the first «Building Code» for the concession (here referred for the first time with the Italian term for «quarter» or «neighborhood»), signed by Consul Da Vella.46 The Building Code clearly indicates the intention to annihilate all the signs of Chinese identity, and replace it with the superimposition of a layout of Western style roads, maximum two-storey houses, and «European style, elegant («signorile» in Italian, lett. gentlemanly) residences». The Building Regulations specified that: «All the buildings facing the Vittorio Emanuele road must be in European style and exclusively occupied by Europeans of good character and standing or by Taotais or other high Chinese Officials who must obtain a permit from the Royal Italian Consulate.»47

27 The other rules regarding the buildings stressed the importance of respecting the foreign or, in other cases, semi-foreign style. They also entrusted the Consul with «full power to order any alteration of any building not put up in accordance with the plan rendered to him for sanction; or order any repair with regard to safety and hygiene». Moreover it is clearly specified that, «The Consul will have full power to have any house or building pulled down» should it not be strictly in accordance with the Building regulations.48 In general, one can observe in the regulations a tendency to associate class status with morality and hygiene; alongside the enforcement of restrictions on the Chinese inhabitants, who also had to obtain sanction «previous to weddings, funerals or any other function» (XXIV, 10). Other examples of the association between morality-hygiene and «modernity» are as follows: «All kinds of public entertainments must be authorised by the police» (XXIV, 13), while a special permission is required to open Chinese theatres (XXIII) and the proprietors must «guarantee the morality of the artists as well as the public safety». Furthermore, it was established that the «Chinese inhabitants on the unexpropriated portion of the concession» must keep their houses clean, including «the portion of the road in front of their houses» (XXIV, 1). Another example of discrimination was the fixed rule

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establishing that «Any native of bad character may be expelled from the concession» (XXIV, 13), which indicates a high level of discretion.

28 The 1908 public auction encountered some difficulties, and it became clear that private sponsorship could only have followed the public investment, and not vice versa. It was only in 1912 that the Italian Government finally decided to allocate 400,000 Lire to promote the development of the Italian concession.49

29 The decade 1912 to 1922 was characterised by the creation of all the streets in the Italian concession, including the building of the Consulate (1912), the conceptualisation and construction of the hospital (1914-22), and the creation of the municipal council building (1919).

Figure 6. Italian Council building (gongbuju).

30 This was a time when the Italian concession became the imagined community that is depicted in extremely positive terms in Italian sources. In their comparison between the past and present of the concession, Italian sources utter in unison the praises of the enlightened city planning intervention that totally transformed what Count Carlo Sforza, among others, described on 22 April 1912 as: «a whole Chinese village, and around it, rotten («putrefascente» in Italian) marshes, and as far as the eye can see layers and mounds of Chinese caskets» into a deeply contrasting image where «the wetland had been reduced to a minimum, and not a single tomb can be found in the concession». The concession assumed «the role of showcase of Italian art, with the import of decorating and building materials from the motherland», especially for «the most representative objects, like the public buildings and the monumental fountain located at the centre for Queen Elena Square».50

31 It was the urban architecture in particular, with the new streets layout and European style houses, which gained unconditional praise. Through the analysis of Italian sources, the often mentioned building hosting the Consulate — described by Sforza as a «grazioso villino (nice small villa)» — as well as the «villino (small villa)», which housed the Italian Council, appear to be the best examples of colonial buildings as symbols of power: they defined a spatial identity and enforced a national discourse in the hyper- colonial space of domination. What tends to be obliterated is the history of the various locations of the Italian Consulate, which was actually a sort of odyssey. Originally the Italian Consular office was hosted in the British concession, later, from 1902 to 1912, the Consulate was lodged first in a Chinese house, then in the military barracks area. This was a building developed by the Navy Command and described as «a perfectly presentable pavillon, considering the current situation of Tianjin, in the provisional

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state of things here, and until the time will allow us to come closer to the way of being of the other Consulates».51

32 The «villino», which housed the Italian Council, was built by the company belonging to the long time resident of Tianjin Egidio Marzoli, in neo-renaissance style.52 It clearly echoed the fifteen century Italian villas and was characterized by square shape, consistent floor plan, and a hip-roof surmounted by a turret. This building was seen as the proper affirmation of the Italian presence in Tianjin. In 1925, the architect Bonetti, a resident of the concession, drew up a plan to expand the building by means of a heated verandah, to be used as a reception room. This building was destroyed around 1990, while the former Italian Consulate building has become the headquarter of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conferenceof Hebei District (中国人民政治协商 会议).

Figure 7. Villas in Italian renaissance style (1908-1916), located around the piazza in the ex-Italian concession, Minzuluand Ziyoulu. (http://www.wayabroad.com/tianjin/gaone/gaone54.htm) Retrieved 3 June 2006.

33 Each concession developed its residential area for the expatriates of the colonial power (and in some cases for wealthy Chinese citizens), using building styles that were reflecting, reproducing and imposing the stylistic traditions of each individual country. In the case of Italy, the export to China of the neo-renaissance style can be interpreted as a way of affirming its prestige and its positioning as a colonial power on the same level of the others. In fact, a self-consciously «Neo-Renaissance» manner had rapidly expanded and become popular throughout Europe, especially between 1840 and 1890. By the end of the XIX century this style was a commonplace sight on the main streets of thousands of towns, large and small around the world. The Italian neo-renaissance style was present also in the French concession: an example is the church of St. Louis, which combined a Florentine neo-renaissance interior with a roman renaissance

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façade. Further examples could be found in the former Zhong Sun Bank and Hua Kua bank. These buildings are both situated today on Jiefangbeilu (North Liberation St.).

34 The creation of the concession as a sort of miniature Italian architectural display, which was so familiar to the other nations, raised the international profile of the newly created Italian nation, both internationally and domestically. Foreign journalist like H.G.W. Woodhead, in 1934, stated: «The German concession … was the most favoured residential area for foreigners of all nationalities. … The British concession and extension contained the most important foreign banks, offices and shops, and a considerable Chinese population …The Italian concession ... was becoming the most popular centre for the palatial residences of retired Chinese militaries and politicians. »53

35 In 1985, with his comparative study of Cape Town and Tianjin, geographer John Weston pointed out that «It did prove somewhat disconcerting on a first visit to a Chinese city to encounter architecture reminiscent of inner Paris, suburban Surrey, or baroque Salzburg in the former concession areas».54 In the literature of Italian colonial period, and even afterwards, the sense of «disconcert» is totally neglected and replaced by an assertive narcissism, especially during the fascist era.55

36 The analysis of an urban image construction and deconstruction process, before and after 1949, is a privileged medium, through which it is possible to understand not only the material transformation that affected a particular area of Tianjin; but also the complex politics of reproduction of space in the Tianjin concessions area. The explicit and implicit values dominating the Italian colonial discourse were also clearly unmasked and revealed through the choice of new names for the concession’s streets. For example, the choice of names such as Matteo Ricci (today’s Guangmingdao, meaning Road of Light — as opposed to darkness), for the road where the barracks, dedicated to national «hero» Ermanno Carlotto, were located, reveals the intention to use all the historical precedents to legitimate the existence of a long term relation between Italy and China.56

37 The process of physical demolition, rehabilitation or historical and political reappropriation of the colonial buildings is particularly significant in the case of Tianjin, as demonstrated also by the renaming of the streets in the concession areas. Some of the most interesting buildings from the concession era are located on what is called today Jiefangbei Lu, which runs parallel to the river. Some of the most fascinating Italian style villas from the period 1908-16 are located in what are called today Minzulu (National Rd.) and Ziyoulu (Freedom Rd.), clearly renamed after 1949. According to the new geography of space embodied by today’s map, the Italian concession is simply the space contained between Beiandao (the Road of the Northern Peace) and Ziyoudao (Liberation Road) on the north, the Haihe on the south, Wujinglu (St. of the Five elements) on the east and Xinglongjie (Flourishing St) and Jinguodao (National Foundation St.) on the northeast. The new names of these streets clearly indicate the reconquest of the former concession’s space in post-1949 China.

Images of Benign Colonialism

38 During the fascist period the hagiographically tinged master narrative of benign colonialism reached its climax, with a particular emphasis on the dichotomy between the bleak prospects of the past and the unique achievements of the present in the

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concession’s territory. The past was always portrayed as backward and hopeless, while the present was represented with all the ingredients of a «modernity» conceived as superimposed progress and self-reflexive improvement. In 1936, in line with the spirit of the Italian fascist regime’s dream of Empire-building, the engineer Rinaldo Luigi Borgnino wrote an enthusiastic and celebratory article where he argued against the possibility of ceding the territory back.57Borgnino believed that the legitimacy of keeping the concession was based on the highly civilizing motivations demonstrated by the Italians, as revealed by the progressive «evolution» of that «small territory». The key adjectives used by Borgnino in his description of that area before the Italian intervention are: miserable, noxious, desolated and sad. But after the Italian acquisition of the area what appears is the image of the Italian concession as a stage display of «Italianness» and as a model of modernity and hygiene. The achievements emphasized by Borgnino are advanced civil engineering and infrastructural projects: large roads, elegant buildings, a modern hospital, the availability of electricity and potable water in all houses, the advanced sewage system, and the public landscaping. Borgnino mentions a local British newspaper which would have defined the newly created Italian concession as «the most pleasant residential neighborhood among all the concessions». 58 He adds that the bordering concessions were stimulated to implement similar measures to improve their overall aspect and conditions. The final aim of Borgnino’s article is unmasked in a closing self-commenting note written by the magazine’s editor who, in his address to the readers, praises Borgnino’s first hand and long term experience in China, and clearly states the following syllogism: «It is necessary to know all the assertions of the homeland, following it everywhere; and the result will certainly be an even stronger pride».59

39 Borgnino clearly had a personal interest in the production of a successful image of the Italian concession, since he was supervisor of the works for the hospital building, which was inaugurated on 21 December 1922, following the drawings of engineer Daniele Ruffinoni. Borgnino was also in charge of the drawings of the Italian Municipal Council building. He conceived these as «creating an example, the most complete, of Italian art, a showcase of thought, technique and materials, a representative building in the most comprehensive sense of the term».60 In his article, Borgnino used most of the information contained in the official report, written by Consul Fileti in 1921, but intentionally decided to shift from Fileti’s emphasis on the economic opportunity for the Italian companies (represented by the penetration in the Chinese «large and virgin market»), to an emphasis on the buildings.61 Since these represented signs of distinction and prestige within the Italian concession, and indicated the success of the «Italian spirit». Considering his personal involvement in the creation of the concession, his tone and selective approach are an indication of a self-congratulatory attitude. The most significant element of Borgnino’s account is, in my opinion, that his attempt to avoid the colonial theme reveals the significant anxieties about Italy’s imperial identity.

40 Another recurring theme of the literature on the Italian concession published during the Fascist regime is the representation of Italy as playing the lead role among the other colonial powers. One of the most significant examples of this narrative tendency is offered by the lesson delivered by Dr. Ugo Bassi on «Italy and China» on 26 April 1927 at the Fascist University of Bologna.62 Rewriting and appropriating the whole history of East and West encounter, Bassi states that:

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«First, even in China, as in every other part of the world are the Italians, who went there for that desire of adventure, for that almost mystical sense of the unknown that in the Middle Ages, pushed the light and well built Italian ships to face new routes, towards Africa or America, searching for the legendary Saint Brandano’s islands or looking for gold. »63

41 Bassi remembers Giovanni da Pian del Carpine (1245-47), Marco Polo (1261-95), and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), and reaches its rhetoric climax with the conclusion: «Magnificent progeny this our Italian one, that has offered to the whole world vast continents and new knowledge, affirming herself always and in every field, first among all the others».64

42 In Bassi’s account, England is praised for opening China up and putting an end to the Chinese superiority complex.65 When he refers to the international military expedition organized to repress the Boxer Rebellion, Bassi portrays the deceased Ermanno Carlotto like a national hero.66 Then, in line with the construction of the predominant narrative of benign colonialism, he emphasises how the Italian soldiers distinguished themselves from the other troops who committed the most tremendous cruelties and created an overwhelming chasm between «white and yellows». According to Bassi: «… the Italians proud as usual of the humanist tradition of their motherland and the Roman civilisation brought to the indigenous people, where they could, aid and rescue».67 The alleged magnanimous behavior of the Italians is contradicted by the primary source offered by the Medical Lieutenant Giuseppe Messerotti Benvenuti (1870-1935). In fifty-eight letters and 400 photographs to the mother he describes the relations between the different military troops, mentioning the killing, the looting and other atrocious excesses, and in the end he sadly recognises that: «If our soldiers did less harm than the other armies it is due to the fact that, even though they (the Italians) always went everywhere, they always arrived there late, when the villages had already been burned and plundered. The few times they arrived on time, they behaved like the others. »68

43 The point that Bassi is reiterating echoes Fileti’s 1921report: Italy could not miss the opportunity to mark off China «as an actor and observer in that world where probably new global destinies were developing».69 His whole description is definitely connotated by a strong sense of patriotism and aims at defining the Italian concession as a showcase of the Italian most remarkable achievements, such as the urban architecture, the hospital, and last but not least the schools. In Bassi’s lecture one can really detect the positive affirmation of the rhetorical trope of «Italianness» (or «Italian spirit»). Thus the concession became the ideal ground for experimentation and reinvention of the collective identity of Italy as a glorious and unified nation. Bassi unconditionally praises the Association of the Italian Missions as «Centres of Italianness», and mentions not only Tianjin, but also the efforts of the Italian missionaries in Hankou, after their forced departure from Nanjing. The metonymic trope of the Italian spirit is embodied, for Bassi, in the Catholic cathedrals: these masculine symbols of conquest of the space between earth and heaven, that «recall the faraway motherland, in the simple but typically Italian style» — even though they might be disconcerting in a foreign cityscape. Bassi praises the «silent apostles» in the Chinese and other foreign lands, who act «in the name of Christ, but also in the name of Italy» and «turn on the vivid human light, Latin, in the lighthouses of the most remote lands».70 At this point of his speech Bassi clearly states, although in parenthesis, what he considers as the most profound motivation of the Italian spirit. This is also the climax of his lecture and the

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most important message that his audience should retain: «It is not possible for an Italian to forget his Nation, unless this Italian is so degenerate to deserve the loss of his nationality as extreme punishment».71 This dream of affirmation of «Italianness» abroad had a fundamental redemptive and self-reflective function: moving from the idea of «motherland» to the «nation» and threatening the loss of «nationality», Bassi reveals the fascist regime’s hegemonic design of highlighting, primarily at the domestic level, the dream of the strong nation on which Mussolini’s Imperial project was founded. The problem here is that the fictitious construction of this defiantly optimistic macro-story of benign colonialism may be unable to repulse an all-to- beguiling narrative of repeated systemic failure, which unmasks the continuous, desperate attempt to catch up with the other imperialist nations.

44 A demonstration of the instrumental self-reflexivity of this benign colonialism is offered by the renaming of the streets. The matrix of names like Fiume, or Trento Trieste, for example, belongs to the rhetoric of Italian nationalistic ideology, since they are explicit references to the process of Italian unification (officialised in 1871), and emphase the reclaiming of the north eastern «just borders» (namely Trento, Trieste, and the Dalmatian coast with the city of Fiume). This was the motivation for the Italian interventionism in the First World War: in order for the country to become complete is was necessary to regain those bordering areas.

45 Within the faraway, idealized borders of the concession, the Italian nationalistic tropes were exported and reinvented, assuming a powerful symbolic value for the Italian audience at home. This is particularly evident from the following representation offered by engineer Borgnino: «Vittorio Emanuele III Boulevard, 24 metres wide, was the main arterial street of our concession. This boulevard, crossed through by a tram line managed by a local company, absorbs all the traffic from the Chinese city to the Tianjin east railway station and the other concessions. Obviously, the public buildings should have been erected on this Boulevard. »72

The Italian Concession in the Chinese Sources

46 The image of Italian benign colonialism stands in sharp contrast with the re- presentation offered by the Chinese sources, at least until the end of the 1980s. The 1926 source Tianjin zujie ji tequ is extremely precise about the nature, the origin and the organisation of the concession.73 In general, in the Chinese historical sources, the Italian concession does not appear to be considered of extreme significance in the studies dedicated to foreign concessions in Tianjin. Most of the time it is mainly remembered for the architectural style, creating another sort of self- orientalism.

47 In the «Short History of Tianjin (Tianjin Jianshi)» three lines are dedicated to the whole history of the Chinese-Italian relations: «On the twentieth year of the reign of Guangxu (1900), Italy with the status of ‘occupying country (zhanlingguo)’ invoked the Italian-Chinese ‘Beijing treaty’ signed by Tongzhi during his fifth year of reign (1866), requested to enjoy the ‘most favoured nation status’, and established a concession in Tianjin. During the twenty- eight year of the reign of Guangxu (1901), the Italian official ambassador in China, Gallina, signed with the Director of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Tang Shaoyi, ‘The Agreement Containing the Rules and Regulations of the Italian Concession in Tianjin’ with assigned an area on the northern bank of the Haihe as Italian concession. The total surface was 771 mu. »74

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48 One of the few significant and detailed articles that I have been able to find on the Italian concession begins with the analysis of the origins of the concession. In the first paragraph, the author Jihua immediately sets the tone of a very different kind of imagined community when compared with the Italian sources. Jihua recognises the Italian role as part of the allied forces and military character of the Italian participation: «In the year 1900 the eight-nation alliance army invaded China, captured Tianjin and Beijing. Italy sent an army to take part into this war of aggression, and the troops were stationed in Tianjin».75 The terms used are all militarily connotated and unanimously convey the idea of aggression and invasion. Moreover, the acquisition of the Italian concession is seen in line with the general trend of the other nations. The author depicts Italy, Belgium and Austria as late-comers in the scramble for concessions, emphasising that they basically imitated the shamefully successful example of the other nations (England, France, United States, Germany and Japan), using military alliances and aggressive warfare (the Chinese expression used here is jiqixiaoyou).

49 After a description of the origin of the concession and its administrative structure, the author mentions a series of important Chinese individuals — like Tianjin Mayors Zhang Tinge, Cheng Ke, and Zhou Longguang for example— who lived in the Italian concession after the creation of the Republic, and in particular between 1917-1933.76 But even these top Chinese officials do not find similar attention in the Italian sources. The article continues, creating a peculiar story of gambling, drug production and use as being common phenomena in the Italian concession. The author also reports a case of rampant speculation, which would have characterised the entrepreneurs operating in the Italian concession, to the extent of creating, in the late thirties, a sort of «paradise on earth (leyuan)» for illegal trafficking and profiteering. The last part of the article delves into the deepening of the Christian influence in the concession, which was perceived as a sign of imperialist penetration.

50 This representation stands in sharp contrast with the positive image which has appeared in the Chinese sources in the last few years, in line with the attempt to re- package the colonial past and sell it as the beginning of the internationalization of Tianjin. The «Year of Italy in China» was celebrated in 2006, and Tianjin tourist maps pointed at the «Italian style scenic streets» (Yishi fengqingjie), while the taxi drivers seemed to know where the former Italian concession was located. Not surprisingly since a major rebuilding process is underway to create a commercial area with a new flavour of «Italianness». It is striking to notice the cycles of destruction-reconstruction where the old buildings are merging with the new ones, creating a paradoxical effect where reality and virtual images, past and present, are so intertwined as to become undistinguishable. But the locale still carries the

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Figure 8. Photograph taken on 24 June 2006 in Minshenglu in the ex-Italian concession.

Figure 9. Photograph taken on 24 June 2006 in Minzulu in the ex-Italian concession.

51 burden of the colonial and post-colonial historical legacy, since this small area is inscribed in a perimeter delimitated by the streets carrying the names of the «three principles of the people», coined in 1924 by the «Father of the Republic» Sun Yatsen: Minzu (Nationalism, by which Sun meant freedom from imperialist domination), Minzhu

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(Democracy, which for Sun represented a Western constitutional government), Minsheng (People's welfare, or livelihood, or «Government for the People»).77

Conclusion

52 The Treaty of Paris signed on 10 February 1947 deprived Italy of its colonies and also of the Tianjin concession.78 In the case of Tianjin, this final act was merely a formality. Four years before, at the beginning of 1943, Italy had already agreed with its then ally Japan to renounce exercising any power on Chinese citizens and transferring the responsibility to the Nanjing Government.

53 Scholars of African colonialism have analysed and emphasised how the Italian ruling class «refused to initiate a serious, organic, broad, definitive debate on the phenomenon of colonialism».79This essay on the only case of Italian colonialism in Asia aims to contribute to this intellectual debate. This endeavour requires a re- conceptualisation of history which de-mystifies its fictive and multidimensional character. The broader scope of my work is strictly speaking methodological: how do we engage with colonial and postcolonial forms of «knowledge» concerning the microcosm of the Italian concession? What can we learn from the investigation of this «reality», which might also be valid for other colonial representations and practices? My intention is to look through the conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception, which tend to affirm the sovereignty of the colonial subject. I seek to unmask the narrative mechanisms which show an all-too- beguiling appreciation of the Italian intervention in Tianjin and capitalise on the absolute depreciation of the pre-existent situation.

54 The African historian Achille Mbembe has poignantly argued for the necessity of analysing the colonial experience in a more lucid way, and has recently launched a proposal that I believe might also be useful for the study of the Italian (and not only) experience in China. 80 Mbembe investigates the attempt of African post-colonial nations to liberate themselvesfromthe symbols of European domination, imagining other ways of organizing the public space. The process of renaming/reclaiming their countries has implied a symbolic re-appropriation of a previously expropriated geopolitical universe and historical capital: by re-christening the cities, some nations have expressed their desire to reclaim the urban landscape. Mbembe argues that: «The memory of colonisation has not always been a happy memory. But going against a tradition rooted in the African consciousness of victimisation, in the colonial work there was not only destruction. Colonisation itself was not only an infernal machinery. It was crossed everywhere by escape lines. The colonial regime consecrated most of its energies both in the attempt of controlling those escapes, and in their use as a constitutive dimension, even decisive, of its self-regulation. It is not possible to understand how the colonial system came into being, and how it disarticulated itself, without understanding these escapes as the form itself assumed by the conflict. »81

55 Based on this argument, Mbembe launches the following proposal: «I hope that in every African country there will be soon a detailed collection of statues and colonial monuments. They should be gathered in one single park, which will function both as a museum for the future generations and as symbolic burial of colonialism on the continent. After the completion of this ritual, it will not be possible for us to use ever again the colonisation as a pretext for our contemporary disgraces. And since we are talking about this, let’s decide that we will not erect any

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statue to anybody anymore. On the contrary, let’s build libraries, theatres, cultural venues: all those things that can nurture cultural creativity for the future. »82

56 From the point of view of the reorganisation of colonial and postcolonial cityscape, the concessions’ area in Tianjin could offer a clearly identifiable base to start from and further implement Mbembe’s cultural project. This possibility, as an alternative to a whole-scale marketization of the area, is the first tentative direction that I would like to suggest in my conclusions.

57 Secondly, this article is also intended as an attempt to create an imaginary dialogue between the sources and, hopefully, open new ways of discourse between Western and Chinese historians. The process of unmasking the different layers of representation has led to the appearance of dialectically contesting images of the Italian concession. What has emerged in fact, is not an illusory objective reconstruction of a unilateral identity of the Italian concession, but more likely two (or more) possibilities of — often competing and contentious — stories. The dialectic between these stories stands as a sign of resistance, and perhaps even analytical subversion, aimed at breaking those unifying and homogenizing tendencies which pretend to make the other invisible, instead of accepting its intrinsic presence within ourselves.

58 The third conclusion that I draw from my research, is that the images of the concession in the Italian sources reveal a sort of historical nemesis, both against the late and unsuccessful start of the Italo-Chinese relations, and, probably even more, towards the other colonial powers present in China at the time. The unilaterally extremely positive representations of the transformation of the territory of the Italian concession, with the consequent erasure of the Chinese village and the superimposition of an hyper- Italian identity, can be interpreted within the conceptual framework of the longing for recovering prestige and legitimacy for the international recognition of Italy as a unified and modern state with equal dignity as the other powers. The expression of colonial agency at the turn of the XX century is the sine qua non for the affirmation of the possibility of being recognised as a «modern nation». Italian sources reveal that the acquisition of the concession is not important so much as it was granted by the Chinese Government, but more so because of its specular value, as it was meant to demonstrate that Italy was also able to assert itself as a colonial power.

59 At the same time, and somehow subjectively exceeding this level of national recognition, the sources analysed demonstrate the effort to portray Italian colonialism as a benign colonialism, as if Italian actions in Tianjin were evidence of a benefactor’s willingness to assist the local community. This fictitious narrative reached its climax during the fascist period when Italian sources provided legendary statements, claiming that Italians were so popular and welcome in China that an esteemed (but not identified) Chinese literati would have even said, «Oh! If our compatriots had trusted Marco Polo! »83 This ambiguous statement was taken at face value, as demonstrative of the deep regret for the «late» Italian intervention in China.

60 This image of Italy as benefactor resonates with the intention to affirm «Italianness», which is packaged and exported to the imagined micro-community of the concession, to legitimize the collective identity of the newly formed unified Italian nation both domestically and internationally. With the advent of Mussolini’s regime, one witnesses the apotheosis of the claimed superiority of the Italian spirit. The Italian concession was then depicted in the typical light of Orientalist self-reflexivity, but exacerbated by the overtones of fascist propaganda. This parable reveals the paradox of a projected

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image, which had grown increasingly apart from the problematic contingencies of the internal situation: «(This) small territorial entity is an eye in the faraway Orient, on which should converge both the attention of all the Italians, and the appreciative thanks for those who held high the name of the homeland. No matter what events unfold in the Chinese social or political compages, the Tien Tsin concession will remain, as Il Duce (Mussolini) defined it, an extremely advanced sentry of Italian civilization. »84

NOTES

1. «Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror» is a 16th century painting by Parmigianino and refers to distortion. See: Parmigianino, Self-Portrait. 1524, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; image courtesy of ArtOnline. http://www.artonline.it/opera.asp?IDOpera=402; retrieved on 20 May 2006. 2. Catherine Belsey, «Making Histories Now and Then. Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V» in F.Barker, P. Hulme, and M. Iversen, eds, Uses of History: Marxism, Postmodernism and the Renaissance, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991, p.26. 3. Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale degli Affari Commericali. Concessione italiana di Tien Tsin, Pro Memoria, in ASMAE, Serie P, pos. 86/37, pac. 429 (1912-1914). 4. Georges Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, University Park: Penn State Press, 2005. Didi-Huberman suggests that art historians should look to Freud’s concept of the «dreamwork» to begin to think of representation as a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction. 5. According to Lyotard teleology and «grand narratives» are eschewed in a post-modern attitude. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 6. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, p.149. 7. Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan, «Memories and legacies of Italian Colonialism», in Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan, eds,Italian Colonialism. Legacy and Memory, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005, p.11. See also Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, eds, Italian Colonialism,London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 8. By positionality, I intend the situated knowledge produced by the colonizer, which can certainly be seen as a form or knowledge/power. 9. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso Books, 1991, p.7. 10. Vincenzo Fileti, La Concessione Italiana di Tien-tsin, Genova: Barabino e Graeve, 1921, pp.8-9. 11. The Boxer Rebellion was directed against foreign influence in areas such as trade, politics, religion and technology. The uprising crumbled on August 4, 1900 when 20,000 foreign troops entered Beijing. See Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001,p. 232. The total amount of the indemnity requested by the foreign powers was 450 million taels/gold, and it was approved with imperial edict on 12 May 1901. In the Final Protocol, we find an indication of the correspondence between tael and the other currency, for example, one tael was equal to 3,75 French francs, and 0,30 pound sterlings. See DD, II, n. 121, p. 64. (DD = Diplomatic

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Documents, in Italian «Documenti Diplomatici sugli avvenimenti di Cina presentati al Parlamento dal Ministro Prinetti», 2. vols, Roma1901, 1902). 12. Quoted in Arnaldo Cicchiti-Suriani, «La Concessione Italiana di Tient Tsin (1901-1951)», in Rassegna Italiana di Politica e Cultura, n. 31, October 1951, 563. 13. V. Fileti, La Concession, p.15. A. Cicchiti-Suriani, «La Concessione », 562. 14. Nankai Daxue zhengzhi xuehui, ed., Tianjin zujie ji tequ, Shizhengfu congshu series, Tianjing: Shangwu yingshuguan faxing, 1926, pp.6-7. 15. Gennaro E. Pistolese, «La Concessione Italiana di Tien-Tsin», in Rassegna Italiana, A. XIII, Special Volume (XLI) «L’Italia e L’Oriente Medio ed Estremo», August-September, 1935, p.306. 16. F.C. Jones, Shanghai and Tientsin, London: Humphrey Milford for Oxford University Press, 1940, p.128. 17. G.E. Pistolese, «La Concessione», pp.305-310. 18. During the twentieth century modern Xiamen was also known with the toponym Amoy. 19. Agreement. Italian text. Translation is mine. Italics added. On the relations between Italy and China in the XIXth century see Giorgio Bocca, Italia e Cina nel Secolo XIX, Milano: Ed. Comunità, 1961. 20. Agreement. Italian text. 21. Giovanni Giolitti, Memorie, vol. I, p.154. Giolitti was the Italian Prime Minister from 1904 to 1914, during the so-called Parliamentary dictatorship. 22. See G. Bocca, Italia e Cina, pp.157-188 ; G. E. Pistolese, «La Concessione», pp.305-306. 23. Cicchiti-Suriani, «La Concessione», p. 562. 24. See Lodovico Nocentini, L’Europa nell’Estremo oriente e gli interessi italiani in Cina, Milano: Hoepli, 1904. Giovanni Vigna del Ferro, «L’Italia nella questione cinese», Rivista politica e letteraria, October 1901. 25. Among the editorials published in the Corriere Mercantile, «La Politica Italiana in Cina», 3 May, 1899, «Partenza delle truppe per la Cina. Entusiastiche dimostrazioni popolari», 20 July, 1900. 26. See: G. E. Pistolese, «La Concessione», p. 306, among others. 27. Giacomo De Antonellis, «L’Italia in Cina nel secolo XX»,Mondo Cinese , no19, July-September, 1977, p.52. Quoted in a source available online,«Nine Concessions in Tianjin», http:// www.wayabroad.com/tianjin/text/text23.htm (accessed 21 April, 2006). 28. Li Wenxin, «Yizujie», in Tianjinshi zhengxie wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui, ed. Tianjin zujie, Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1986, p.135. 29. Tianjin Shehui Kexueyuan Lishi yanjiousuo, Tianjin jianshi, Tianjin: Renmin Chubanshe, 1987, p.209. 30. V. Fileti, La Concessione Italiana, p.14. 31. Reported in Sulla Via di Tianjin: Mille Anni di Relazioni tra Italia e Cina. Un quartiere Italiano in Cina, eds Nicoletta Cardano, Pier Luigi Porzio, Roma: Gangemi, 2004, p.26. 32. Alexander Michie, editor of the Chinese Times, the first newspaper in Tianjin, quoted by O.D. Rasmussen, Tientsin – An Illustrated Outline History, Tientsin: Tientsin Press, 1925, p.37. 33. Alexander Michie. 34. Alexander Michie. 35. F.C. Jones, Shanghai and Tianjin, p.119. 36. http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Plaza/7750/tientsin01.html, retrieved on 2 May, 2006. 37. O.D. Rasmussen, Tientsin,p.9. 38. N. Cardano, P. L. Porzio, eds.,Sulla Via di Tianjin. 39. The term zu means «to rent/lease», jie means «boundary», from the compound guojie (boundaries of a country).

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40. Shan Keqiang, Liu Haiyan, Tianjin: Zujie Zheshui Yanjiu, Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1996, p.1. 41. N. Cardano, P. L. Porzio, eds.,Sulla Via di Tianjin, p.7. 42. N. Cardano, P. L. Porzio, eds.,Sulla Via di Tianjin,p.7. 43. When I discussed the meaning of the compound word fengqingqu with some Chinese colleagues, we were also noticing the strange resonance with the compound hongdengqu which refers to the «red light district». The obliteration of the historical past via renaming it and the attempt to reclaim the colonial space via its commodification can be indeed a form of prostitution. Tianjin Yidali fengqingqu Jianzhu yu zhengxiude lishi yu huigu, Beijing: Ed. Graffiti, 2006. 44. See Roberto Bertinelli, «La Presenza Italiana in Cina dal 1900 al 1905», Rivista di Studi Orientali, vol.57, 1983, p.34. 45. See Royal Italian Consulate, «Tientsin-China. Sale by Auction of land in the Royal Italian Concession in Tientsin, 6 July 1980». 46. See ASD MAE, Serie Politica P Cina 1891-1916 b. 426-427. 47. Royal Italian Concession in Tientsin. Local land Regulations and General Rules, Building Regulations, article 1. Taotai refers to an official at the head of the civil and military affairs of a circuit, which consists of two or more or territorial departments (fu). A possible translation is «Intendant of circuit». Foreign consuls and commissioners associated with taotai as superintendants of trade at the treaty ports are ranked with the taotai. 48. I Royal Italian Concession in Tientsin. Local land Regulations and General Rules, articles III, XI. 49. The Law n. 707 dated 30/06/1912, authorised the advanced payment from the Deposit and Loan Fund. 50. N. Cardano, P. L. Porzio, eds, Sulla Via di Tianjin, p.34. 51. Quoted in Sulla via di Tianjin, p.36. 52. The equivalent of this style in England is the so-called «Renaissance Italian Palazzo», inspired by John Ruskin's panegyrics to architectural wonders of Venice and Florence a shift occurred around 1840 since «the attention of scholars and designers, with their awareness heightened by debate and restoration work», Rosanna Pavoni. Reviving the Renaissance: The Use and Abuse of the Past in Nineteenth-Century Italian Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.73. 53. H.G.W. Woodhead, A Journalist in China, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1934, p.65. 54. John Weston, «Undoing the Colonial City? », in Geographical Review, vol. 75, no 3, July 1985, p. 341. Italics added. 55. See G.E. Pistolese, «La Concessione», pp.305-310; Ugo Bassi, Italia e Cina: Cenni Storici sui rapporti diplomatici e commerciali, Modena: E. Bassi & Nipoti, 1929. 56. Carlotto was the naval lieutenant who had died in Tianjin on 15 June, 1901 while defending, together with a group of navy men, the so-called Italian Consulate. De Antonellis informs us that twelve Italian soldiers died in the military expedition 1900-01. 57. On 9 May, 1936, Benito Mussolini proclaimed the foundation of the Empire. This event occurred three days after the Italian troops, commanded by Marshall Badoglio, had entered Addis Abeba after the eight-month long military occupation campaign of Ethiopia. R. Borgnino in «La «Concessione» Italiana in Cina», Augustea, 1936, pp.363-366. 58. R. Borgnino, p.365. The mystification of the concession as a neighborhood was therefore a colonial rhetorical trope. 59. R. Borgnino, p.366. 60. Quoted in Sulla Via di Tianjin, p.44. 61. «[China] is a vast virgin land for economic exploitation that can be opened to human activity and the effort to overcome the difficulties is well justified … all the nations that feel strength, due to their commercial and industrial development, have always looked with active and growing

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interest to the vast and virgin Chinese market and seized every favourable opportunity to breach the wall enclosing such a treasure, to avoid being second or overpowered in the exploitation of that vast new market.», V. Fileti, La concessione, pp.8-9. 62. Ugo Bassi, Italia e Cina. The same author had previously written on the Italian colonial policy in Africa and the government of the colony in Libia. See Ugo Bassi, I Parlamenti Libici (1924), Cronache di politica coloniale (1928). 63. Ugo Bassi, p.9. 64. Ugo Bassi, p.10. 65. Ugo Bassi, pp.12-13. 66. Ugo Bassi, p.15. 67. Ugo Bassi, p.16. 68. Nicola Lablanca and Giuseppe Messerotti Benvenuti, Un Italiano nella Cina dei Boxer: Lettere (1900-1901), Modena: Associazione G. Panini, 2000. The 400 photographs have been collected and stored at the «Raccolte Fotografiche Modenesi Giuseppe Panini –Collezione Marzio Govoni», Modena, Italy. 69. See footnote 69. V. Fileti, La concessione, pp8-9. Ugo Bassi, pp.20-21. 70. Ugo Bassi, p.29. 71. Ugo Bassi. 72. R. Borgnino, «La ‘Concessione’», p.363. 73. Nankai Daxue zhengzhi xuehui, ed., Tianjin zujie ji tequ, pp.6-7 74. Tianjin Shehui Kexueyuan Lishi Yanjiusuo, Tianjin Jianshi, Tianjin: Renmin Chiubashe, 1987, p. 208. Another reference to Italy in this book is on pages 203-205 when the authors describe the operations of the eight-allied army. The book opens with a calligraphic dedication by Deng Xiaoping: «To educate the people of Tianjin». 75. «Yizujie», p. 134. The Chinese transliteration for «Italy» is still using the character «yi» for justice or righteousness, as opposed to the character «yi» for meaning or intention which is in use today. 76. Yizujie, pp. 137-138. 77. In the case of China, political life should have been ideally combined two «powers»: the power of politics (zhengquyan) with the power of governance (zhiquan). Minsheng can also be translated as socialism, although the government of Chiang Kai-Shek shied away from translating it as such. The concept may be understood as social welfare since Sun divided livelihood into four areas: food, clothing, housing, and transportation. According to Sun, an ideal (Chinese) government should fulfill these duties for its people. See Sun Yat-Sen, San Min Chu I: The Three Principles of the People, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, China: China Committee, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927, pp.189–92, pp201–2, pp.210–11, pp.262–63, p.273, and p.278 78. Section 5 «Special Interests in China», articles 24, 25, 26. 79. Patrizia Palumbo, ed., A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present, Berkeley: University of California Press, p.18. 80. Le Messager di Douala, in Camerun, 29/03/2006, available on line: «Pour une sépulture symbolique au colonialisme», http://www.africultures.com/index.asp? menu=revue_affiche_article&no=4365§ion=rebonds, accessed 2 May 2006. 81. Le Messager di Douala. 82. Le Messager di Douala. 83. See for example: M. Catalano, «La nostra concessione di Tien Tsin», in Le Vie d’Italia e del Mondo, May 1936, reported in Cesare Cesari, La Concessione Italiana di Tien-Tsin, Roma: Istituto Coloniale Fascista, 1937, N. 4, XV (12th of the series), p.23. 84. C. Cesari, «La Concessione », p.23.

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ABSTRACTS

This article focuses on the sole Italian concession (zujie) that existed in China between 1901 and 1947. This is the only example of Italian colonialism in Asia. The concession was located in the Hebei district of the modern municipality of Tianjin. It was established in 1901 as a consequence of the signature of the «Boxer Protocol», since Italian troops had participated in an international military mission, called the eight-nation alliance, which on 14 August 1900 had entered and occupied Beijing, putting an end to the Boxer Rebellion. The article compares the theoretical bases which underpinned the different representations of the Italian concession, as produced by observers, diplomats, and scholars in China and Europe in different time periods. The final objective is to investigate the historical reasons behind the emphasis that was placed on specific socio-economic, institutional, and cultural aspects of the Italian concession. The analysis focuses in particular on the two major themes, which emerge as constant traits from the sources: 1. The history of the concession, its acquisition, socio-spatial organisation, and ultimately its reorganisation as a «laboratory of modernity»; and 2. The notion of shaping the Italian concession as an Italian-style neighbourhood, a miniature Disneyland-style venue of «Italianness» or «Italian spirit» (e.g. according to the rhetoric trope of «Italianità»), constructed especially in terms of spatial re-presentation and cultural superimposition.

AUTHOR

MAURIZIO MARINELLI Maurizio Marinelliis Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol and specialises in contemporary China’s intellectual history. His research investigates how China’s relations with the rest of the world have influenced historical narratives and shaped visual representations within their respective intellectual discourses. His most recent work, the book La Lotta contro la Corruzione in Cina: Tra Mosche e Zanzare, Tigri e Squali(The Struggle against Corruption in China: Between Flies and Mosquitoes, Tigers and Sharks) co-authored with Rogério Diniz Junqueira, has been published in October 2006 by Cafoscarina University Press, Italy. He is currently working on the socio-spatial transformation of Beijing and Tianjin.

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Global Cities as Centers of Cultural Influence: A Focus on Istanbul, Turkey

Michael McAdams

Introduction

1 Cities for over three thousand years have been the centers of culture and creativity. They have been the foci where the human and material resources of civilizations have been concentrated. Artists, musicians, architects, philosophers, scientists and writers have gravitated toward certain cities due to numerous forces such as patrons, community of artists, universities, clients, and a skilled workforce. The elusive environment of certain cites also seem to play a significant factor in drawing creative individuals to them. The urban centers of culture have changed throughout the centuries mostly based on their economic/political strength with the outside world. The cultural impact of Athens, Amsterdam, Rome, Vienna, London, Paris, Madrid, Istanbul (Constantinople), Florence, Venice, Milan, Budapest, Barcelona, Prague and Berlin still resonate in our present world culture. The catalyst in the globalization of culture is the highly sophisticated and fast communication network. This technology appears to be developing at an accelerating rate. Its development is changing world culture and the role of cities that are functioning as cultural transmitters.

2 In the Fordist and Post-Fordist era, very few would dispute that the United States has been a key transmitter of world culture. The cities of New York and Los Angeles have been dominant in developing this culture. London, Paris and Milan have augmented, interacted and contributed to this American dominated global culture. In the past 20 years, Tokyo has also contributed to this global culture by being a center of technology. However, there are some interesting developments due to the increasing interconnection due to the Internet and the emerging digital environment. The voices of many cultures are being felt in an increasingly networked world. Thus, there is a developing global network, but the perception that there may be ‘global command

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centers’ that direct the global economy and likewise global culture as promoted by Sassenmay be simplistic.1 What is more probable is that there is a loose hierarchy of cities contributing to the transmittal and formation of global culture. Those outside of the select cities are primarily receivers of culture and only peripherally contributing to the evolution of global culture

3 Istanbul is presently one of the most populated urban areas in the world.2 Istanbul has aspirations for global city status, but presently could not be classified as primary or secondary global cultural centers. There have been developments such as the potential membership of Turkey to the EU, the emerging economies of Central Asia and Russia and the developing Turkish economy which could be conditions for the reemergence of Istanbul as a major cultural center. Istanbul’s location at a key juncture between Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia would seem to be a crucible for creativity and cultural development. The centrality of Istanbul is the primary reasons that the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire chose this site as of their capital. However, in the first part of the 20th Century, Istanbul lost its status as a major cultural center due to dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the transferal of the capital of the Turkish Republic to Ankara. The marginality of Istanbul was further reinforced by the Cold War. The Communist Block and Turkey’s role in NATO essentially stopped any cultural interchange with countries formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria and those in Central Asia, many of which were closely associated with Turkish culture by language, religion and traditions. Relatively recent developments, as previously mentioned, have the potential to reestablish Istanbul again as a significant contributing cultural center. In this paper, we will first explore the somewhat murky world of globalization and culture and then examine Istanbul’s present and future place within the network of global cultural centers.

Cites as the transmitters of culture and centers of creativity

4 In the past, cultures may have been contained within regions or national borders. With the increasing rate of communication, cultures are being rapidly mixed on a global scale. The influence of music, art, consumer products, architecture, food and other elements of culture are global. Today, Mathews conjectures that the world is a ‘cultural supermarket’ where different individuals across the globe decide what items of other cultures that they want to adopt or reject.3 However, does global cultural formation consist of individuals choosing freely or something extremely more complex?

5 Culture is innately geographical. It emanates from one place or another. Culture may be based in a peripheral area, but is packaged or reformulated by cultural centers for distribution into the global culture. Cities have always been the place where artisans, intellectuals, writers, musicians and philosophers gravitate. Lewis Mumford states that ‹‹The city is both a physical utility for collective living and a symbol of those collective purposes and unanimities that arise under favoring circumstances››.4

6 Hall was one of the first to speculate that certain cities or ‹‹global cities›› dominate the global economy.5 If we consider that economy includes cultural goods, then these would also be the ones that dominate in this field also. The connection between capital accumulation in certain key cites can be linked with the dissemination of cultural goods such music, clothes, film and food. The international film industry is now

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concentrated in a few number of nations. The dominance of Hollywood has resulted in the demise of the film industry in many nations. This is particularly true for the national film industries of Europe. 6

7 There are key world cities that appear to be the major centers of global culture. Beaverstock et al. rank cities into classes of Alpha, Beta and Gamma from a selection of 55 world cities.7 The Alpha cities are : London, Paris, New York and Tokyo The second rank Alpha cities are Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore Are these also the cities that influence global culture? One could say that music is influenced by New York and Los Angeles. World fashion is influenced by Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Milan. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Frankfurt may be financial centers, but they are not known for influencing world culture. World globalization of food types has been mostly spread by corporations based in the United States and Europe. These companies usually have marketing firms based in New York and Chicago. It should be noticed that many of these cities are large cities, but not among the mega- cities, cities over five million population (see Table 1).

Table 1: 2003 World Urban Population Rankings

Rank Urbanızed Population Urban area/City Country

1 34,997,269 Tokyo Japan

2 18,660,221 Mexico City Mexico

3 18,252,339 New York 3 USA

4 17,857,001 Sao Paulo Brazil

5 17,431,305 Mumbai (Bombay) India

6 14,145,956 Delhi India

7 13,805,691 Calcutta India

8 13,047,115 Buenos Aires Argentina

9 12,759,367 Shanghai China

10 12,295,516 Jakarta Indonesia

11 12,018,068 Los Angeles USA

12 11,560,211 Dhaka Bangladesh

13 11,243,853 Osaka-Kobe Japan

14 11,214,126 Rio de Janeiro Brazil

15 11,078,298 Karachi Pakistan

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16 10,847,827 Beijing China

17 10,834,495 Cairo Egypt

18 10,468,743 Moscow Russian Federation

19 10,352,249 Metro Manila Philippines

20 10,103,459 Lagos Nigeria

21 9,794,337 Paris France

22 9,713,757 Seoul South Korea

23 9,371,163 Istanbul Turkey

24 9,271,376 Tianjin China

25 8,567,571 Chicago USA

26 7,898,778 Lima Peru

27 7,619,014 London UK

28 7,289,646 Santa Fe/Bogata Colombia

29 7,190,000 Tehran Iran

30 7,049,175 Hong Kong China, Hong Kong SAR

Note: Alpha cites are noted in bold print; Frankfort’s rank is 538 and Milan is 61 in world urban population. Istanbul’s population rank is noted as number 23. However, the population of Istanbul may be from 10 to 15 million due to the large amount of unreported persons.

8 There could be some speculation that the size of the city is not really important to its global influence. The key difference is the type of workforce and the infrastructure in any given city. This is witnessed by the significant number of mega-cites in the developing world such as Mexico City, Mumbai or Sao Paolo (see Table 1) which have very large populations, but are not cultural transmitters. They may be attracting some of the creative class of a nation or region but at the same time they are attracting a large number of low skilled and low income laborers. The pressing needs of providing adequate infrastructure, housing needs and other problems are hampering these cities’ entry into the hierarchy of main global cultural centers. In a large majority of cases, this intellectual capital is being drawn to the creative centers of North America and Europe.

9 Technology is transforming the role of cities. The communication network is placing almost all places within the global communications network. The cultural centers are the driving force in this network. One of the key elements is the electronic transmittal of information through the Internet. Sassen contends that the digitization of the world economy and culture is lessening the distance for many cities and placing them more with the global economy and culture than the local.8 However, there is still a need for

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personal contact. The agglomeration and the quality of those located at a particular city is the necessary component for a place being a major cultural center.

The cultural economy of cities and creative cities

10 A cultural urban center is somewhat based on the number of people, but is also based on the composition of the city. The driving force for creative cities is the presence of the amount in the ‹‹creative class››. The foremost promoter of the development of the creative class is Richard Florida as presented in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class.9 It is contended that certain cities are more centers of creativity than others. These are based on several criteria. Florida states that cities that are creative growth poles are those that: are more tolerant of various lifestyles; possess numerous cultural/ entertainment attractions, have vibrant economies in other areas (such as high technology) and have other elusive qualities that attractive creative individuals.10

11 Scott details the elements of the cultural economy and its role in cities.11 He like many before him recognizes that the city has always had an influential role in the development of culture. Scott states that there is a convergence of world cities and those that influence the developing global culture. Cultural products he contends can be not only writing, art, music, theater, but can be extended to other industries such as furniture, automobiles, multi-media, computer graphics, book publishing, music recording etc. There are a number of cities that are dominating this New Economy. He asserts that the cultural industries of a city are very important to its future economic welfare.

12 Kotkin looks to the examples of other cities in the past such as Rome, Florence and Venice for a guide for what makes cities cultural centers: ‹‹The greatest competitive advantage of cities, both in the past and today, lies in this creative edge. As cultural, technical, and social concepts collided on the urban stage of meeting houses and marketplaces, cities gave birth to writing, the evolution of art, abstract concepts, and mathematics, thus giving the city a predominant role in the development of world culture. Imperial Rome absorbed from traveling Greeks and Egyptians much of their cultural and technical legacy upon which it built its own brilliant civilization. Similarly, the great trading and artisan cities of the Renaissance such as Florence and Venice are now remembered not chiefly for their business success, but for their enduring legacies of art, literature, and architecture legacies that flowered during the era of their effervescent commercial growth. ››12

13 Kotkin states that global cultural centers are not only major financial centers, but are also mixing places for different ideas. The Renaissance culture that flourished in Florence and Venice was due to these cities being crossroads between the East and the West. Jerusalem which has been the birth place of three major world religions was at the crossroads of several civilizations. However, the legacy that they have left behind is not because of the wealth that they accumulated, but their contribution to world culture.

14 Does the advanced communication network, particularly the Internet, and the development of global city network separating cities into city-states which are disassociating themselves from their regional and national economy? Hartzog states: ‹‹… global cities take on a distinct identity as they disconnect from their regional geography. If this is reflected in cultural reproduction then we can expect to see

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changes in people’s sense of identity. We might find individuals thinking of themselves as New Yorkers first and Americans second, or Parisiennes first and French second. This tension between global and locally inflected forms lies at the heart of digital culture.››13

15 Do these global cultural centers ‹‹just happen››? In several cities around the world, there are incentives to restructure the city to provide more for the cultural industries.

16 There is often a conscious effort to encourage the development of a cultural economy. There are many examples worldwide such as Bilbao, Spain with the Guggenheim museum extension and Cleveland, Ohio, USA with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland is one of a several examples in the U.S., where a ‹‹rust-belt›› city was transformed. However, there are still some features that are perhaps holding Cleveland back from being a cultural center such as the perception that there is another larger city that would provide a better market for artists.In other words, Cleveland is not perceived as ‹‹hot place›› for the arts. Often as in the case of Manchester (UK), these have developed somewhat consciously, but often chaotically. In cities worldwide are vying for the title of cultural center. As pointed out by Leslie, these cities are building museums, conducting market campaigns and other activities in somewhat hazard manner to ‘brand’ themselves as a Creative City. Leslie argues that these top-down actions do not create cultural centers or cultural districts (e.g. Montmartre and Rive Gauche in Paris, SoHo in New York).14

17 In summary, the factors, which make a city a cultural transmitter or receive, are numerous and to some degree nebulous. Some of the key elements that make a city a cultural transmitter are: (1) significant amount of population involved in the cultural economy, (2) an established and well-connected international market for the cultural goods produced; (3) a place where different cultures and ideas vibrantly mix; (4) an urban environment which is encourages interaction; and (5) significant infrastructure (i.e., high speed Internet connections) and highly skilled labor force that would facilitate the creation of cultural goods.

The Role of Istanbul and its potential to be world cultural center

18 Istanbul is certainly an important city with a population of over 10 million. This ranks it as one of the mega-cities such as Tokyo, New York and Mexico City. However, it is not in the rank of cities that are international centers of culture. Like other cites that once greatly influenced world cultures, similar to Vienna and Budapest, it is now a receiver or at least on the margins as being a transmitter of world culture. The fading of its culture and the replacement of culture by that from the West has been occurring since the early 1800s.

19 The history of Istanbul has been one of accession, decline and rebirth. It has been the center of three major world cultures: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman. As the capitol of the Roman Empire, the transition was one to the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire which lasted for over a thousand years was slowly chipped away by the Turks until it lost most of its empire and at the end was only a city-state. The population declined due to the diminished status of the city.15 The Ottomans rebuilt the city and transformed it into their capital adorning it with mosques, palaces and other public buildings. In the early part of the 1800’s, the Ottoman Empire was realizing that they

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were falling behind their Europeans and started to look to the West for cultural/ technical innovation, particularly the French and the Germans.16 Istanbul incorporated many of the emerging European ideas, but did not retransmit them in another form, as later in the case of Japan and Tokyo. The ultimate end of the Empire and of the status of Istanbul as a major world center was the result of the break-up of Empires after WWII.17

20 The watershed for Istanbul was the First World War. At this time, the Ottoman Empire has been greatly diminished. Since the Ottoman Empire was allied with the Prussians and Austro-Hungarian Empire, the like their allies, saw their empire carved up. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kermal (Atatürk), modern Turkey reemerged and the capital of Turkey was relocated to Ankara. For over almost two thousand years, Istanbul (Constantinople) had been the capital of the Roman, Byzantine Empire and then the Ottoman Empire. It was pushed to the backdrop of global cities, while cities such as New York started to ascend to world culture domination. Istanbul was no longer a cultural or economic center in the world. During the 1980’s, Turkey’s economy started to open itself to foreign investment. At this time, Istanbul started to increase in population as it drew people from the rural areas to work in the various new industries. By the end of the century, the population of Istanbul was close to 10 million. However, one could not say that it had entered among the leading global cities network or was influential in world culture.

21 Walker and Taylor state that Istanbul has been relegated to a secondary status due to the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the Cold War: ‹‹For some two millennia, Istanbul (in its various guises) has been one of the great cities of the world. It has owed its success to its location on the Bosphorus where it has been a cultural and economic cross-roads both between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and between Europe and Asia. For some two centuries, Istanbul has been in relative decline as world political changes have not been conducive to cosmopolitan centres in traditional empires. First, the rise of the nation-state created homogenous cultural spaces thus demoting cities as cultural melting pots: in the case of Istanbul, its Ottoman inheritance was replaced by a national Turkish state with the capital far away in Ankara. Second, imperial rivalries culminating in the Cold War created homogenous security spaces thus demoting cities to strategic locations: in the case of Istanbul, Turkey's NATO membership converted much of its hinterland, its Black Sea neighbors and central Asia, into enemy territory. No wonder Istanbul has found it difficult to maintain its historic role as the bridge between East and West. ››18

22 For many years, Istanbul was on the outskirts of global culture. Istanbul aspires to be a global city, but it not quite there yet. Mango states: ‹‹Istanbul aspires to the title of world city. It wants to be classed with New York, London, Paris, Rome. With its 9 million inhabitants at the beginning of the millennium, it has size on its side. It also has history and the monuments to prove it. Its Byzantine walls and churches, Ottoman mosques and palaces, and modern skyscrapers bear witness to its importance since 330 AD, when Constantine the Great chose it as the capital of the Roman empire. Its setting at the junction of Europe and Asia is incomparable. For Turks, ‘the pearl of the Bosphorus’ is a symbol of their glorious past and the embodiment of their present vigor.››19

23 A contrary view was expressed by Orhan Pamuk, one of the few Turkish writers that have international standing. Pamuk states in his recent book, Istanbul: Memories of a City, that Istanbul has a collective melancholy based on its diminished world stature, which is unique to Istanbul and which he terms-hüzün:

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‹‹… in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past and civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept they are, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner-the little arches, fountains and neighborhood mosques inflict heartache on all who live amongst them....But for the city’s more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to the same heights of wealth, power and culture.››20

24 However, one can not state that its hüzün is preventing Istanbul in attempting to transform itself into a major cultural center. There are numerous international festivals and conferences with the express purpose of putting Istanbul into the forefront of the international cultural community. The most effort is the recent nomination of Istanbul as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010.21 Istanbul is also attracting the attention of the world cultural community. Newsweek recently termed Istanbul one of the ‹‹coolest places in the world›› due to the mixing of cultures and the emerging artist community.22 It is too early to tell if these are indicators that Istanbul is starting to emerge as a member of the global cultural transmitters.

25 The cultural economy of Istanbul is very robust with a well developed and sophisticated media industry (publishing, television, movies, music etc.). Those involved in the creative arts are also a part Istanbul. There are numerous venues for original performances (clubs, theaters etc.) It has a world status symphony and opera. The opening of a new Museum of Modern Art is an indication of developing awareness of Turkish modern art. There are numerous firms that are involved in design in fashion, furniture etc. There is a rich culture which mixes elements of Turkish, Middle Eastern and European influences together. Istanbul is also the location of several major Turkish universities. There is more tolerance for expression brought about by the reform of Turkish law in conformance with that of the European Union. However, the cultural economy is largely geared toward Turkey. However, this is not altogether true as there are artists and others who are geared toward the International market.

26 One of the elements of that make a creative center is a lively artistic area. The center of Istanbul culture is Beyoğlu with its main street of Istiklal Caddesi. The area is known for its diversity lined with shops, foreign consulates, churches, a variety of restaurant, cafes. It is also where one will find artists and most of the expatriate community. This area has long been considered the European sector of Istanbul. There is nowhere in Turkey similar to this area or in other places in Istanbul. This area is not the equivalent of creative areas of the past such as Montmartre and Rive Gauche in Paris, SoHo in New York, but shows potential to develop into one.

27 Another key element that appears to be at the heart of creative centers is their location at key crossroads and their interconnection with other cultures. Istanbul’s geographic position is unique in the world as it borders on Europe, the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine, Russia, and the Central Asian republics (see Figure 1.) This geographic position has been the reason that several world empires have placed their capital in this location. As previously mentioned, during most of the 20th Century these areas were cut-off from Turkey due to the Cold War. There are signs that Istanbul is capitalizing on this ‹‹new geography›› as there are developing connections to the Balkans, Central Asia, Russia and the Ukraine. Istanbul is at the core of these connections. Another key element that could aid in Istanbul emergence as a world cultural center is Turkey’s recent talks for ascension for potential membership into the European Union. These

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issued are also discussed by Akyuz, a former resident of Istanbul now residing in Washington, D.C., USA.23

28 There is certainly the nucleus for Istanbul to become a cultural center, albeit not on the scale of New York, Los Angeles, London or Paris. It could become a secondary cultural center joining such cities as Milan, Berlin, Barcelona and San Francisco. Disconcerting to politicians or those in the economic sector is that there is not a series of investments that can be made by the local and national governments to bring this to fruition. It is the right combination of illusive items such as ‹‹the atmosphere or feeling of a place››, a vibrant and interactive intellectual community, aesthetics, and opportunities to interact with the global cultural network. There is the infrastructure and cultural economy to promote it to the classification of cultural transmitter instead of a receiver. As pointed out by Yardimici, Istanbul is a globalized and international city but not a cultural center which is influencing the global cultural network.24

29 Also, cultural centers are developed from the bottom-up and not from the top-down. Istanbul does not have international directors or producers, such as Almodovar for Madrid or Woody Allen for New York that have introduced it to the world. It does have writers such as Orhan Pamuk which has introduced Istanbul to the literary community. The artistic community is not creating the avenues for opening up Istanbul to the world. It does not have the Beatles who made Liverpool and London household names. The only international singer is Tarkan, but it is not known what impact that he is having on bringing Turkey and Istanbul to the forefront of being a global cultural center. Neither does it have a Gaudi or Picasso who internationalized and made Barcelona as cultural center nor a Freda Kalo or Diego Rivera which opened up Mexico and Mexico City to the world. Why is this? Are the leaders in the artistic community in the background waiting to emerge?

30 As a resident of Istanbul, one can see the elements that are pushing it toward a greater role in world culture development. Few would disagree that Istanbul is one of the most intriguing and beautiful cities in the world. While physical attributes of a city does not create a cultural center, it greatly contributes to it. It is also very much connected to the global community. Its citizens are aware that Istanbul is part of Turkey, but also firmly connected to other global centers. The Metropolitan Government of Istanbul, like many cities in the developing world, can not concentrate on revitalizing or restructuring because its recent phenomenal population growth means that it must spend most of its money on infrastructure. Therefore, the development of a cultural economy often is not seriously treated. Yet, the future of Istanbul hinges on its ability to integrate and ‹‹plug-in›› to the global cultural network not just as a participant, but as an influence.

Conclusion

31 The catalysts that make a city a cultural center are somewhat elusive and complex. While it could be said that cultural urban centers are fostered by municipal and national governments, they are also brought about by chaotic conditions. For example, Prague which languished during the Communist Era is one of the most exciting places in Europe. This is due to a number of factors such as its location, architectural heritage, rich history and a vibrant intellectual and artistic community. Overall, Prague’s cultural environment is dynamic because it was once a repressed society which desired

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to be interacting with the world and has found its place in the global cultural network again. This is somewhat the nature of cities that emerge as cultural centers as they are not planned, but spontaneous.

32 The physical environment of cultural centers is what attracts creative people to them. However, it is not the monumental aspect of cities that attract creative people, but those that are on a human scale. It is also not the gentrified historic neighborhoods that attract those that are in the creative arts, but those that are multi-cultural and vibrant. It is also about the networks that artist can establish in an urban area. The city itself also is a backdrop for those in creative media. The establishment of museums, symphonies, art galleries, public sculpture is not what makes up cultural centers. Connectivity to the global network by means of formal and informal means is at the core of cities that are cultural transmitters. This is also connected to the capital influence of a global cultural center in the global market.

33 Can Istanbul emerge into one of the cities that are cultural centers? The elements are there. As with other cities that form the cultural nodes in the global cultural network, it has the basic building blocks. It is combines both aspects of the East and the West. It has a rich fabric for those involved in the creative arts. Istanbul represents the cultural center of Turkey. There are a growing number of persons in the cultural economy in Istanbul. There may be a variety of factors that may propel Istanbul into the role as one of the leading cultural centers. At present, one can see some of the beginnings of this development, but it is not clear exactly its direction.

34 Are there some actions that could transform Istanbul into a global cultural center? It is almost essential that Istanbul looks at means to arrive at this status. The following could be strategies that could accelerate its entry into this status: • Revitalization of the central city; • Encouragement of cultural entrepreneurship; • Development of an outward vision seeing Istanbul as a ‹‹city-state›› connected to global cultural network; • Increased state sponsorship of cultural arts in universities and schools of the arts; • Improvements to telecommunication networks and • Sponsorship (private or public) of artists having exhibitions, galleries concerts in key international locations (i.e., New York, Paris, London, Milan etc.)

35 Of course, the above suggested strategies are not complete. There needs to further study on this matter. Above all, Istanbul has to think about transforming itself into a global cultural center drawing from its rich past and culture and looking toward the future.

NOTES

1. J. Jones, ‹‹The ‹‹Global City›› Misconceived: The Myth of ‹‹Global Management›› in Transnational Service Firms››, Geoforum, vol. 33, 2002, pp. 335-350. S. Sassen, The Global City, Princeton University Press, Woodstock, 2001, p.20.

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2. S. Yardimci, ‹‹Interlockıng Flows: Globalisation, Urbanism, and Culture in Contemporary Istanbul››, presented at Critical Management Conference, 2001, Manchester School of Management UK, http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2001/Papers/Creativity/ Yardimci.pdf, visited 10 September 2006. 3. G. Mathews, Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket, London: Routledge, 2000, p.19. 4. Cited by J. Jones, ‹‹The ‹‹Global City›› Misconceived››, p340. 5. P. Hall, ‹‹Modeling the post-industrial city››, Futures, vol.29, no.4/5, 1999, pp. 311-322. 6. Wikipedia, list of cities containing major movie studios, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_cities_containing_movie_studios, visited 15 October 2009. 7. J.V. Beaverstock, R.G. Smith and P.J. Taylor, ‹‹A Roster of World Cities››, Cities, vol. 16, no6, 1999, pp.445-458 8. S. Sassen, ‹‹Reading the city in a global digital age between topographic representation and spatialized power projects›› in L. Krause (ed.), Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2003, pp.15-30. 9. R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, Basic Books, 2002. 10. R. Florida, ‹‹Cities and the Creative Class››, http://www.creativeclass.org/acrobat/florida.pdf, visited 10 September 2006. 11. A. Scott, ‹‹The cultural economy of cities››, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research vol. 21, no2, pp.323 -39 12. J. Kotkin, ‹‹Creativity and the future of cities››, Davenport Institute Reports, http:// publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenportinstitute/reports/renaissance/renaissance6.html, visited 10 September 2006. 13. P. Hartzog, ‹‹Cities without borders: digital culture and decentralization››, http:// www.mindjack.com/feature/cities.shtml, visited 10 September 2006. 14. D. Leslie, , ‹‹Creative Cities?››, Geoforum, vol. 36, 2005, pp.403. 15. J. Freely, Istanbul: The Imperial City, London: Penguin, 1998, p.173. 16. R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, Basic Books, 2002. 17. D. Leslie, , ‘Creative Cities?’, p.403-405. 18. D.R.F. Walker and P.J. Taylor, ‘Istanbul: gateway between East and West under conditions of contemporary globalization’, Globalization and World Cities Network, http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/ projects/project9.html, visited 10 September 2006. 19. J. Jones, ‹‹The ‹‹Global City›› Misconceived: the Myth of ‹‹Global Management›› in Transnational Service Firms››, Geoforum, vol. 33, 2002, pp.335-350. 20. O. Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories of a Cıty, London: Faber and Faber, 2005, p.91. 21. Turkish Daily News, 14 April, 2006, ‹‹The European Capital of Europe in 2010››, http:// www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=40780, visited 10 September 2006. 22. Newsweek International, 29April 2005, ‹‹Turkish Delight››, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/ 9024840/site/newsweek/, visited 10 September 2006. 23. A. Akyuz, ‹‹Istanbul City of Endless Motion and Energy››, The Globalist, http:// www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4989, visited 10 September 2006. 24. S. Yardimci, ‹‹Interlockıng Flows: Globalisation, Urbanism, and Culture in Contemporary Istanbul››, presented at Critical Management Conference, 2001, Manchester School of Management UK, http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2001/Papers/Creativity/ Yardimci.pdf, visited 10 September 2006.

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ABSTRACTS

In different eras, cities such as Babylon, Athens, Rome, London, Madrid and Paris have been highly influential in the development of world culture. In the Fordist and Post-Fordist periods, the primary global culture transmitters have been centered in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo and London. As the world becomes increasing more connected and different ‘geographies’ develop, it is inevitable that new global cultural centers will surface to challenge, replace or augment these existing centers. Some of the driving forces behind the predominance of global cultural transmittal centers are the existence of a vibrant and substantial cultural economy, the high level of connection with the global cultural network and the character/level of capital accumulation within these cities. A possible candidate for one of these new cultural centers could be Istanbul due to: (1) the recent regional changes in the economic and geo-political climate; and (2) its unique geographical location, being at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. This paper will explore the role of global cultural centers, the importance of a city’s cultural economy, and the position/potential of Istanbul within the evolving global culture.

AUTHOR

MICHAEL MCADAMS Michael McAdams is presently an Assistant Professor at the Geography Department at Fatih University in Istanbul, Turkey teaching graduate and undergraduate classes in urban planning, transportation geography, travel demand modeling, urban morphology, and spatial technologies. He received a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA) in 1995, a Master’s in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Charlottte (USA) in 1992 and a B.S. in Political Science from Francis Marion University (USA) in 1977. Prior to his academic carrer, he was an urban transportation planner for over 10 years. His current research interests are in travel demand forecasting, urban geography, urban planning, urban morphology, watershed management, Geeographic Information Science education, spatial technologies and new approaches to analyze the urban environment such as fractal analysis and urban space syntax analysis. He is also a co-editor of Urbana- an bi-lingual journal concerning urbanism (http://www.tamuk.edu/geo/Urbana)

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