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Tracing the Path of Power Through the Fluidity of Freedom: the Art Of TRACING THE PATH OF POWER THROUGH THE FLUIDITY OF FREEDOM: THE ART OF PARKOUR IN CHALLENGING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BODY AND RETHINKING THE DISCURSIVE LIMITS OF THE CITY Matthew D. Lamb A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AUGUST, 2011 Committee: Lara Martin Lengel, Advisor Kevin Schempf, Graduate Faculty Representative Radhika Gajjala Alberto González Architecture and the Body ii ABSTRACT Lara Martin Lengel, Advisor This study explores the production of urban architectural space and investigates how the art of parkour attempts to (re)appropriate the spaces of the city. It interrogates the reflexive and continuously (re)negotiated relationship of power and freedom, as defined by Foucault, in and through the corporeal link of the traceur body, the practitioners of parkour, and urban architecture. Parkour forefronts the relations of power through a corporeal connection with architecture. This connection functions to offer more emancipated alternatives both to and within the hegemonic discourses disciplining the space of the city. Traceurs exercise agency as the discourse of the city creates limitations through regulatory norms; however, these limitations create the conditions for action. As a technology and technique of power, architecture’s participation in (re)producing regulatory norms is seen in the ways in which it informs individuals’ interpretations of everyday practices. Architecture embodies particular ideologies which communicate to a body of urban inhabitants. This embodiment communicates as a reflection and reinscription of the social actor’s position within social relations. In being formed by power even as one reworks it, traceurs continuously challenge the reiterative Architecture and the Body iii chains of discourse by inscribing their own truth or counter discourse. Parkour functions ontologically as it is a performance, and functions epistemologically as a performance. This study demonstrates how parkour offers insight into the intersections of the body and architectural space to bring to the fore the emancipatory potentialities therein. To understand the emancipatory power of parkour, epistemology of doing as a critical ethnography is employed as the method for investigation. Epistemology of doing centers on a learning-by-doing approach positioning the researcher as participant in the production of knowledge and experience, in the case of this study, immersed in a community of traceurs during a parkour training seminar at B.A.S.E. Fitness in Noblesville, Indiana. The ethnographic experience allowed for empirical insight into parkour’s relationship in the discursive formation of power and freedom. The experience, and the broader study, reveals insights about the practice of parkour and draws attention to how a traceur’s personal journey elicits emancipatory potential in and through ostensibly freer movement within architectural space. Architecture and the Body iv For Renee, whose meaning in my life not even another dissertation could fully capture. Architecture and the Body v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like thank Drs. Lara Martin Lengel and Scott Martin. Without them none of this is possible. I sincerely thank my dissertation committee for their time and commitment to my academic and professional progress and to helping me complete this project. Above all, I would like to thank each of them for the patience, guidance, and understanding throughout this process. Appreciation goes to my fellow student colleagues, Dr. Lengel, and Dr. David Davidson, Dean of the Studio Arts Center International (SACI) institute in Florence, Italy for the opportunity to lead an engagement applying de Certeau’s notion of bricolage among the historic architectural spaces of this important city. The chance to lead students and faculty in playing with normative spatial modalities in a transnational and intercultural context has added much to my research on architecture and the body. I wish to extend words of gratitude to my family for their unwavering support and encouragement, and for wishing me well on my various journeys through cities near home and abroad. I wish to also extend a debt of gratitude to Architecture and the Body vi the following people: Renee Smith, Cory Hillman, Ryan Anderson, Nick Wiget, and J.P. Staszel. In many ways I owe them my life. Finally, I want to sincerely thank Ayren Steuerwald and the traceurs at B.A.S.E. Fitness in Noblesville, Indiana for welcoming me into their community and teaching me parkour. Architecture and the Body vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. EXPERIENCING THE CITY AS A SPATIAL PRACTICE: WHAT’S ARCHITECTURE GOT TO DO WITH IT? ................................................. 1 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 24 Building Parkour .................................................................................................... 29 Organizing the Study ............................................................................................ 36 A Note on Language .............................................................................................. 38 CHAPTER II. TRACING THE PATH OF POWER: TOWARD A THEORETICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DISCOURSE, SPACE, POWER, AND FREEDOM ............................................................................................................ 40 Power and Freedom .............................................................................................. 41 Discourse and Performativity .............................................................................. 53 Space, Architecture, and the Body....................................................................... 65 Architecture as Communication .......................................................................... 66 CHAPTER III. THROUGH THE FLUIDITY OF FREEDOM: PARKOUR, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE BODY ................................................... 77 Parkour as Communication .................................................................................. 77 A More Disciplined Body ..................................................................................... 89 Architecture and the Body viii Making Tactical Use of Space ............................................................................... 94 Historicizing Parkour .......................................................................................... 102 Parkour, Power, and Freedom ........................................................................... 114 Parkour’s Developing Body of Scholarship ..................................................... 118 Antagonizing Capital .......................................................................................... 119 Subverting Urban Constraints ........................................................................... 121 Codifying Power in Architecture ...................................................................... 124 The Parkour Vision .............................................................................................. 130 CHAPTER IV. A METHOD FOR STUDYING THE ART OF PARKOUR .......... 132 Understanding Ethnography ............................................................................. 133 Troubling Tradition ............................................................................................. 135 Toward a Critical Ethnography ......................................................................... 139 Spatial Awareness ................................................................................................ 146 Situating Knowledge ........................................................................................... 148 An Epistemology of Doing ................................................................................. 150 Describing the Research Site .............................................................................. 155 Interacting with Traceurs .................................................................................... 158 Architecture and the Body ix CHAPTER V. LEARNING BY DOING: THE ART OF PARKOUR IN IN RETHINKING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARHCITEURE AND THE BODY .................................................................................................................. 162 Entering the Community, Entering the Space ................................................... 162 Tracing the Space ................................................................................................... 165 Positioning the Researcher-Traceur .................................................................... 178 Learning Parkour, Learning the Body ................................................................ 183 Tracing the Path of Power through the Fluidity of Freedom .......................... 186 Rethinking the Relationship between Architecture and the Body ................. 199 Doing by not Doing ............................................................................................... 202 Bricolage against Subjectivity .............................................................................. 213 CHAPTER VI. LOOKING BACK AND LEAPING FORWARD ......................... 227 Theoretical and Methodological Implications ................................................... 229 Leaping Forward ..................................................................................................
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