New York – Postmodern Space and Postmodern Identity

7/30/2019 New York Postmodern Space and Postmodern Identity

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New York Postmodern Space and Postmodern Identity

Short Analysis of Competing Discourses in the Construction of

New York City

Topic assigned: Using at least two texts from the course and a third text of your own

choosing (either from or outside the course), discuss the construction of New York City

according to ideas of discursive conflicts and Foucaults concept of the heterotopia (from

Campbell & Keans The American City).

Course:New York, New York, The Big Apple in American Popular Culture

Student: Elena-Larisa Stanciu,

Exam. No. 312079


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New York is the thi ng t hat for med me,

New York is the thi ng that deformed me,

New York is th e thing that perver ted me,

New York is the thi ng th at conver ted me

Pat t i Smi t h

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to discuss the process of discursive construction of New York.

Having a starting point Michel Foucaults concept of heterotopia, I will try and investigate

instances of how the city is composed of apparently incompatible elements, but can still be

perceived as a totality. The paper is divided in two parts; in the first section I will draw

attention to some theoretical core ideas regarding the discursive elements that build the city;

in terms of key concepts and main ideas, I will discuss the construction of the city and

representations of it as a physical, political and symbolic space, the relation between space

and time, visual elements and symbolic power, urban environment and urban individual

experience, construction of subjectivity in a postmodern urban landscape and, not the least,

the relation between space and language. All these have as a red thread the idea of having the

urban order follow the order of discourse, representation becoming reality, and the question

of visibility and legibility. The theoretical aspects will be analyzed in the second section,

focusing on several works that made New York the main character. Either literary works of

fiction (City of Glass, Paul Auster, Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos), or visual

representations of the city (Manhattan, Woody Allen, Manhatta, Strand and Sheeler,

Metropolis, Fritz Lang), they all offer examples of how interpretation and signification

occur as closely related phenomena with the daily experience in a modern and postmodern

urban environment. I will analyze these texts focusing on what I believe to be the main

characteristic of the urban space: the meta-discursive structure of difference. In other words,

all discourses that may construct the city are in essence competing against each other, and it


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is in this very contradiction and constant friction between them that the urban experience is

formed.

Modern and Postmodern Urban Experience Short Theoretical Overview

Urban space is signification. It is a process, revealing its own dense material and symbolic

presence, and the impact of this presence upon itself and upon those who reflect their

existence in the city they inhabit. Urban space is interpretation of values, of moods and

desires, image and projection of what has been and what is to come. Urban space is as fluid

as time, flowing between compact structures of concrete and steel, glass and mirrors; a

liquid (Bauman, 2000) entity floating among individuals, witnessing and inspiring their

bonds. All these manners of perceiving and further understanding the city are legitimate

insofar as an ample, panoramic vision of the city is used, stepping above the street-level and

even beyond the mighty skyscrapers and try and define the city as it is produced at the

crossroads between social, political, cultural, psychological, and not least, cartographic

influences. Historically, there is little doubt that cities in and by themselves could not have

existed; take, for instance, the ancient city-states the polis, incumbent upon it to foster the

first traces of democracy; millennial notions of citizenship and discourse appeared within the

confinements of these archetypal free cities, influencing in their own right the very

architecture of the city the Agora, the place of gathering and democratic, free debate soon

became a definitive part of the city structure, setting for centuries to come, the foundation for

analyzing the relation between physical space and its cartographic representation, and the

political space, rich in symbols that could at almost any time, materialize into powerful social

and cultural structures. Nevertheless, the question of whether physical structures follow

political structures, or the other way around (Daylight, 2008) has been and still is a good


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place of inquiry, when investigating the forces that might participate in the production of

urban space. The relationship between community, as a main consequence of political

relations, and the space to foster it is a rich and enlightening one; for one, it leads to a

distinction between the structure of the city and the function the urban environment has.

Acknowledging the unmovable feature of the former, one realizes the fluidity of the latter;

however, this dichotomy still leaves room for discussion are we to see the city as portrayed

by a the cartographic representation streets and neighborhoods, buildings and parks, alleys

and sidewalks, all meandering and creating an independent entity, devoid of human element,

or, on the contrary, is the city to be seen as created through the walks people take on the

streets, the stories they created around buildings, the views they treasure and places they visit

most? It seems that this is not an either-or type of situation, and a way of really

understanding the city and how it is constructed is to find the middle ground between the two

spheres of perception the relation between the city and its inhabitants, the point of meeting

between two probably equally important forces.

As such, the notion of urbanism (Daylight, 2008), consists of three dimensions: a physical

structure, a system of social organization, and a set of attitudes and ideas. Nevertheless, while

these elements may seem to be converging at a point, thus offering a unifying perspective of

the city, there is consistent literature that provides us with a clear cut view of the city as made

out of different, antithetical, and divergent elements. Rather than focusing on the whole of the

city as a result of a coming-together and complete merger of such elements, scholars invite us

to focus on the urban experience (Daylight, 2008) as a process, a continuous struggle for

meaning and progress (Campbell & Keane, 1997). This struggle for meaning lies

underneath a deeper ontological and epistemological sphere, namely the construction of the

city through discourse. This idea, bred at the school of post-structuralism, inspires the

reading of the city (Campbell & Keane, 1997); approaching the city as a text implies the


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search for meaning, for narrative as inherent to the urban experience. As a working

definition, we are to understand the notion of discourse as the manner through which the

city is represented to us in language and related frames of reference and definition

(Campbell & Keane, 1997). Such discourses have, the authors suggest, the role to regulate

the perspective the viewers have of the city, employing the discursive act as a device of

creating the urban reality, beyond its mere description. The American community created by

the English colonists in the seventeenth century was seen to become a City upon a Hill

(Campbell & Keane, 1997), an absolute perfect place (Foucault, 1997); in other words,

made visible in the light of its flawless existence, a vision of urban perfectibility, root of

representations and screen surface for projections. Moreover, the new-born city was to be

made a story and a by-word through the world (Campbell &Keane, 1997), constructed

through both its narrative and various processes of interpretation. Despite its creation founded

on a prescribed logic of visibility and legibility, the city grew into a kind of entity with no

precise grammar, a narrative with no plot, a self-reflexive story more and more difficult to

contain within the frames of epistemic capacities of individuals (as social subjects). Thus, the

city was to be defined, just as the post-structuralist tradition would imply, by its fragmented

characteristics, dissociative structures and a certain predisposition to deconstruction, as a

consequence of the lack (or loss, thereof) of a unity of meaning and existence. This leads us

to Michel Foucaults notion of heterotopia, which has the power of juxtaposing in a single

real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other (Foucault,

1997). It is in this process that we can observe the gradual transformation of space into a

place, a physical entity endowed with a certain locality which becomes a common ground for

inner space and exterior space, and manages, despite its apparent discordance, to foster

community, insofar as it provides the space for self-expression and the possibility for

dialogue (Campbell & Keane, 1997). Depending on the time frame associated with different


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attempts to understand this ontological multiplicity described in connection to the city, we

encounter several stands towards the idea of dislocated space within a single place; for

instance, during early and late modernity, along with the acknowledgment of the

fragmentation and dislocation of the urban landscape came a concomitant attempt at finding

the unifying element, the one that would glue together the collage that is the urban space.

This discourse of difference (Stuart Hall) paved the way for post-modernity and the

consequent postmodernism as a subjective experience of living in postmodernity (Daylight,

2008); of course, among several others levels, this postmodern experience relates also to

space, which becomes a hyperspace (Daylight, 2008), a highly unknown and utterly

unknowable space. Again, the dilemma surrounding the chain of processes arises is the

urban space constructed through experience discursive experience) or individuals experience

their surroundings and themselves as subjects according to a specific, predetermined urban

environment? According to Bourdieus concept of social praxis, people engage in

reflexive ways with complex social and semiotics systems even though they are unable to

grasp the totality of those systems. (Woodwardet. al., 2000). Following this particular idea,

we can assume that individuals are able to internalize the urban experience, have a subjective

take on the city as a social and semiotic construction, but are not completely aware of urban

environment in itself, as an objective entity. Looking at fiction and non-fiction literary (or

visual) works on New York, for instance, this is underlined by the specificity of experiences,

according to the localization, that is, dependent on the socio-economical area of residence:

slum, ghetto, Manhattan and so on. Although it leaves room for classification and further

analysis, this idea suggests, not wrongly, I believe, that the urban experience is just as

fragmented, localized, disrupted, and decentered as the city itself, and the two are in a

continuous dialogic relation. As Mike Featherstone put it, postmodernism in the city implies

a no-place-space of consumer and leisure sites in which urban identities can be eclectically


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and differently composed and recomposed ( Balshaw & Kennedy, 2000). This brings to light

the matter of identities as they come to be formed and influenced by the urban landscape;

with subjectivity, just as with the city in itself, the discussion of the inherent fragmentation

(Campbell & Keane, 1997) applies, and the idea has been as well a theme for literary and

artistic works. In relation to the individuals experience in the city, several main tropes come

to mind, not without being part of a dichotomous relation: individuation and massification

(Suarez, 2002), loss of agency and empowerment (Campbell & Keane, 1997), displacement,

alienation. Physical disorientation is often connected with moral disorientation (Daylight,

2008), as a consequence of the hyperspace, the postmodern type of environment that makes it

difficult if not impossible for the individual to map himself in the city; this loss of traces,

insecurity of what lies ahead and decenteredness of the urban life reflect a sort of urban

intertextuality the city as text intersects with the individual, who internalize their semiotic

existence and project it as social praxis. A meta-narrative, grand narrative, of the city is

thus rejected as an epistemic device, and a multiplicity and mixing of codes and styles

(Campbell & Keane, 1997) are proposed. In terms of layers defining gradual experience (of

Self and the city), it needs to be mentioned that one decisive structure in the setting of subject

city relation is the bodily experience in connection with the urban landscape. Quoting

Fredric Jameson, Russell Daylight discusses the placeless dissociation specific to late

modern and postmodern urban environment, further describing the individuals inability to

map himself this is connected to an alarming disjunctionbetween the body and the built

environment (Daylight, 2008). Given that the construction of identity begins with

individuals relation to their own bodies, it becomes even more relevant within an urban

environment body-sized experience in the big city resembles the mythical story of

Daedalus, who built the labyrinth and eventually could not find his own way out of it. This

theme of disorientation, displacement and perpetual movement within an unknown and


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unknowable environment is used in Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer, a modernist collage

of individual stories of people who the reader gets to know for a short while, but who then

fade into the story, better yet into the city, just like in a labyrinth of their own making. Dos

Passos makes his main character Jimmy a survivor of this alienated world, who manages

to escape the bits and fragments of urban life and go pretty far (Dos Passos, 2000).

Moreover, moving from ones own body to the body of the Other, the urban individual

enriches his experience; aside for it being a feature of spatial duality characteristic of the

postmodern urban setting, it is also the locus for a deconstructionist perspective on the

homogeneity of community, where the traditional understanding of the notion is annulled

by a modified spatial proximity: being together with strangers (Balshaw & Kennedy,

2000), an element that also features in Manhattan Transfer. The short encounters between

characters (and between characters and reader) emphasize this quilt-like (Campbell & Keane,

1997) structure of the city life, drawing on the modernist ethos of trying to unify disjoined

narratives. The process of constructing significance within the urban environment is also

connected to this relation of individuals with the Other; seen as a consequence of the meeting

between oneself and a distinct other, the process of signification is also related to space, the

place that fosters acts of either self-constitution, or fragmentation. (Alford, 1995). The

dialogic feature of the urban experience is again highlighted, a type that turns into a meta-

dialogue, the kind that invite a human subjectivity and urban environment to merge, into a

larger discursive frame that impacts both the city as a social entity, and its inhabitants, as

social subjects. In terms of the discourse of power that might affect creation of identity and

the construction of the city, it is worth noting that, in late modernity and postmodernity,

matters of visibility and legibility, with their dichotomous reverses invisibility and

illegibility are functional parts of the process of representation, as a struggle for power and

identity. The heterotopia mentioned before is reflected at this point in the ambiguity of the


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urban forms as a source of the citys tension, as well as a struggle for interpretation

(Balshaw & Kennedy, 2000). The tension that takes the form of intense experience of

signification (Balshaw & Kennedy) and power struggle are strongly connected to notions of

visibility, Foucaults panopticism and later post-panopticism, social realities that force the

individual to self-assertion, although in a state of displacement and alienation. As such, a

hybrid type of identity formation occurs, one that relates directly to the urban space and

involves the existence of spatial experiences (Balshaw & Kennedy) that, together with late

capitalisms features and symbolic simulacra, transform the process of subjectivity formation.

Interpretation and signification as political, social and epistemic phenomena imply the desire

for legibility (Balshaw & Kennedy) as going together with the representations of the urban

space; the relation between the city and different linguistic processes is best understood if we

are to acknowledge the three dimensions of the urban space production: a material

environment, a visual culture, and a psychic space (Balshaw & Kennedy). All three

dimensions are tackled simultaneously, perhaps a timely feature, and imply great interaction

at the level of discourses characteristic to each of them. Following, in part, Michel Foucault

and his post-structuralist stand, we come to see that urban space is no longer a fixed or non-

dialectical (Balshaw & Kennedy), but a highly dialogical environment, that is not a mere

stage for social relations, but an active part of these relations(Balshaw & Kennedy). As

mentioned before, this dialectical feature develops, with post-modern experience, into a

liquefied social and symbolic reality, and this fluidity is to be seen in the relation of

language and urban landscape as well. Meaning is uncertain, always in progress, hard to

anticipate and difficult to fully grasp. The city may be a text, but its semantics escape human

ability, leading to a semiotic crisis, where signs, separated from objects, receive autonomy of

sense and stand for a virtual reality, impossible, by definition, to fully grasp. As such, identity

is highly unstable, only a casualty of postmodernism (Balshaw & Kennedy), developed


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between and inspired by the urban discontinuity and linguistic despair (Daylight, 2008)

characteristic to postmodern geographies.

New York on meaning and contradiction

When analyzing the urban space, and especially a city like New York, we are naturally drawn

to observe and investigate the disposition the urban landscape has towards fostering

dissociative symbolic and cultural elements, otherwise described as ontological and epistemic

oppositions, which are eventually brought together and defined as heterotopias. These

differences take the form of discourses, frames of representation and reference which guide

urban experiences. One such conflicted discursive setting relative to place and community

refers to the fragmentation and modern disruption of the city, as opposed to the assumption

on the static feature of a place or community (Balshaw & Kennedy). Expecting to experience

a sense of wholeness and totality inside the urban environment clashes with the actuality of

displacement and lack of center manifested in the very routine of the city life. One way to

gain a better understanding of how discourse as such, and other discursive interactions get to

represent, interpret and, by definition, construct the city, is to look at a larger category, one

that would cover all, a meta-discourse, reflexive and self-asserting at all levels, namely the

discourse of difference. Again, following Michel Foucault and his principle of

juxtaposition of incompatible spaces within a heterotopia, we can discuss the construction

of New York through such discourse of difference and disjunction, describing to some extent

of detail several dichotomous relations; I will discuss these pairs of disjunctive elements as

they are visually and textually represented in the works of Woody Allen (Manhattan,

1979), Fritz Lang (Metropolis1927), Paul Auster (City of Glass, 1987), and Sheeler and

Strand (Manhatta, 1921). All these cultural productions (except Metropolis) aim at

involving New York in a nexus of representations that eventually get to define the city, each

participating at laying foundations of meaning and symbolic structure. All these works make


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the city a main character, either as part of a narrative, or as a fragmented entity, presented

without a plot line or narrative aim whatsoever (Manhatta). Nevertheless, the dialogic

tension and conflicted realities are the red thread in all these pieces.

To begin with, the discourse that praises humanity in contrast with the rise of technology in

modern times is a structural element in Langs Metropolis. At its core a film meant to

highlight the dangers of mechanization, by presenting a dystopian future world, Metropolis

uses notions of space, time and labor in visually engaging modes. Centered on the machine as

a threat to the individual, the movie brings forth, and forces a critical discussion of

technology as modifier of human nature: the android is no longer seen as testimony of the

genius of mechanical invention; it rather becomes a nightmare, a threat to human life.

(Huyssen, 1986). Lang is using countless anonymous human bodies walking in an

underworld, an energy core that fuels the city. This metaphor of the unnamed, de-

individualized subject constitutes a profound social criticism, which echoes beyond its own

time. Human bodies move in an apparent order, which turns out to be only a pattern of social

practice (Balshaw & Kennedy), created both by class and labor logic, and a new social

mind mentioned by Campbell and Keane, only in Langs perspective, the individual is not in

control of the city, as it might seem, but a casualty in the citys process of construction.

Annex 1 (Fig.1) of this paper shows an instant of this central theme the human body

morphed according to the machine, exhausted in trying to keep up with the speed and chaotic

rhythm of a device that consumes humanity in the process of production. The disjunction

between the human body and the built environment is reduced, but at the expense of the

individual, who loses personal space in a strange phenomenon of urban space appropriation.

Lang himself offers, as alternative to these rather negative descriptions, an oasis of hope and

humanity in the midst of despair and desolation (Annex 1, Fig. 2). The main character

introduced from the upper world into the citys underworld represents a different, higher,


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position in class hierarchy, and it is this political distinction that allows him to step outside

the confines of the mechanical, non-human (post-human?) order of labor, which becomes the

order of life. This builds to the discourse of class, also a definitive issue in describing the

urban environment. This opposition of mechanical, almost self-aware parts of the city, and

humanity, which may still be existent in some layers of the social strata, is discussed in

Manhatta. Although produced in a different genre (rather a documentary on the routine in

New York), this short film takes on, more or less, the same issues. With New York as main

character as symbolic structure of a story with no plot, Manhatta describes the city as a

modern megalopolis (Suarez, 2002). The movie is produced around an age characterized by

a more and more present feature of urbanization the rise ofcity planning, the need to make

the urban lay-out both functional and expressive, [involving] citys aspirations and ideal

image of itself (Suarez, 2002). New York becomes a self-asserting, auto-discursive entity,

having the entire urban landscape move independent from human intention (Suarez, 2002).

Just as in Metropolis, in Manhatta, human bodies move according to their work routine, a

daily circle of activities that appear to smother identity and freedom of movement.

Consequently, we can address another dichotomy with regards to the city life: individuation

versus massification in a modern urban landscape. Both Manhatta and Metropolis use a

strong visual way of bringing this point to light groups of individuals walk at the same pace

towards what seems to be a single destination the city as such (fig. 3), or the underworld

landscape of labor (Fig. 4). The crowd becomes a spectacle (Suarez, 2002); faceless and

nameless, modern crowds are characterized by abstraction and geometrical splendor, [they]

replace earlier forms of community (Suarez, 2002). The production of discourse, which

eventually will take part to the construction of the city, is influenced by these forms of social

praxis; individuals assimilate and internalize these perceptions on themselves and further

project themselves and the environment accordingly. Paul Austers character in City of


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Glass walks the New York streets by himself, performing a task individually, and ends up

by losing the sense of coordination, flow of time, and even his own identity. Modern agency

mustbe communal (Suarez, 2002), or risks not being at all. On the other hand, in an opposite

stream of thought, New York, and the modern city in general, is seen as a cocoon of

humanity, a place that fosters imagination, free spirit, and morals; the city is perceived as

wearing an organic cloak over its cold, mechanical structure, and it is this characteristic of

imposing itself as a living organism that leads to the taking of a moral condition (Campbell

& Keane, 1997). However, the ability of acting according to some axiological principals

involves the possibility of a corrupted urban environment, a threat to human morality and

the pathway to faulty morals (Campbell & Keane 1997). This perspective, admittedly within

a romantic frame, allows human nature to take control, organize the wild, and the

individuals to become free agents of their own urban destiny. As Walt Whitman writes

(inserted in Manhatta), New York is a proud and passionate city, allowing individuals to

descend to its pavements, although it is a city of tall facades of marble and iron; New

York is, at the same time, a city of sparkling waters, city nested in bays, although its waters

gain industrial function and perform in the same circle of technical routine. These examples

of the archetypal ambivalence (Campbell & Keane, 1997) of the city suggest the existence

of competing discourses that lead to a sense of contrariety attached to the city. On the same

note, but from a rather contained gender discourse perspective, the male-female dichotomy

can be observed at the level of the urban landscape: urban life is based on the perpetual

struggle between rigid, routinized order and pleasurable anarchy (Campbell & Keane, 1997).

Woody Allens Manhattan follows most of this order of discursive disparities beginning

with a tumultuous monologue of a narrator, a writer in search for the best way to begin a

book on New York, the movie goes on in a black and white display of urban postmodern life.

The initial struggle for finding the best words to represent the city (and individual experience


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in New York) stands proof of the crisis in meaning and the impossibility to fully grasp the

citys truth (Balshaw & Kennedy, 2000). Rather than acknowledging it as a failure, the

movie celebrates the seemingly endless fragmentation of the city the narrator cannot find

his way through the story of New York unless he uses the spoken word to utter these bits and

fragments, some similar, some profoundly different. This may be regarded as yet another

instance of heterotopia difference and incompatibility seem, though, necessary to the very

reality of New York. Representing New York appears to be dependent on the

acknowledgement of the other space (Foucault, 1997), manifested concomitantly, both at a

physical, material level, and at a symbolic, mythical level. The theme of starting all over

again goes together with the issue of morality as understood and internalized in the big city.

Ike seems to take on the possibility of re-writing, words, linguistic structure and fictional

realities, and also states of fact, real life. His writing exercise at the beginning of the movie

stands as a criticism to this idea his sentences are accompanied by images of New York,

either in support of the spoken words, or in contrast to them; nevertheless, the flow of visual

representations does not go back, along with Ikes repeated Let me start over, but move on,

as consequence of the citys autonomy of meaning, architecture and symbolic projected

power. Agency in relation to the city lies only seldom, if at all, with the individuals The

city is really changing, instead of We are really changing the city. However, a certain

romanticized intertextuality can be observed between two scenes of Manhattan (fig.5) and

Manhatta (Fig. 6), as a somehow romantic celebration of New York as mythical, eternal.

The inhabitant of this urban colossus has little choice but to live his own life, in parallel with

that of the city. By the end of the movie, the viewer comes to realize that there is no black

and white in New York City (Lash, 1979), and that low morals and deception (Girus)

constitute the main features of urban human interactions. Another dichotomous pair rises out

of this New York as a mythical place versus the desanctification(Foucault) of the city. If


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in Manhattan Transfer this phenomenon of losing sight of the urban sacredness is evident,

in Woody Allens Manhattan there is a sense of a sacred layer of the urban landscape; in

other words, if some parts of the city manage to corrupt some groups of individuals, thus

losing any sense of mythical experience, the city has a way of escaping the reverse of this

process; drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage exist in the city, but are not of the

city. Unlike Dos Passos Jimmy, Ike refuses to leave New York, fascinated by the very

contrast it actually is. Woody Allens New York does not consume the individual; despite the

moral decay and acute sense of claustrophobia (Girus), the city allows its inhabitants to

move freely, although within a closed labyrinth-like structure of doors, walls, locks, fences,

guards (Girus). Technology does not necessarily modify human bodies and spirit, although

an evident trace of fragmentation and distortion is infused in language itself.

The question of language, and its relation with the urban experience in itself, is one of the

underlying themes in Woody Allens Manhattan. As I already mentioned, the opening of

the movie represents an intense commentary on the eclecticism of the city a random

narrator finds it difficult to describe New York; a constant self-criticism thrives in this scene

words and sentences are weighed against each other and against reality in itself, seeking a

relation of unity between the semiotic signs and the objects they stand for. Thus, some

descriptions are Too corny, or not profound enough, or too preachy, related to several

distinct relationships the relationship between words on New York and reality ofNew

York, the connection the individual has with the city, and the relation between language and

the one who uses it, too corny for my taste. This speaks of a characteristic of the

postmodern urban experience the need to find common ground, to unify experiences, to use

proper linguistic structures, as structure construct representations of the city, and a city

cannot be separated from its representations (Balshaw, Kennedy, 2000). Moreover, the city

is seen as an enormous, larger than life speech act [New York] was a metaphor, for the


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decay of contemporary culture. The city becomes, in this way, strongly connected with the

process of signification, both an end for this process, and a device, a starting point, a method

that enriches experiences and subjectivity. However, the attempt to take the urban

environment and basically put it into words fails; all the interior voices (Girus) seem to

work against each other, in search of a balance, a unified voice, a singular discourse that

would relate to a unified reality. Nevertheless, just as space is highly fragmented, so is speech

what prevails is an insufficiency of words and speech to explain orstructure experiences.

(Girus) What must be noticed here is the double aim that speech has, one of them, namely the

latter, being of high relevance for the idea of the city being constructed through speech.

Moreover, the discourse on the city turns, after several re-writing attempts, into a discourse

on self: He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. The process of representation

shifts to the subject, and his identity, but not out of a strange self-centeredness, but as to

define, in fact, the very reality of the individual in an urban space the city constructs

identity, shapes its inhabitants perspectives and creates a link between individuals and their

experiences that leads to an almost umbilical relationship they have with the city: New York

was his town and it always would be. This is where the narrator stops trying to find the

perfect opening for the book, acknowledging somehow the impossibility to fully grasp the

entire reality of the city, despite the strong relationship and individual may have with his

environment. Another important scene involving a narrator in search for words is the one

showing Ike lying on his sofa, using a tape-recorder while tackling several ideas for a short

story. Again, this attempt slips into self-acknowledgement, and a dialogic monologue,

indicative of a certain kind of alienation and disruption the one to ask questions is the one

to provide with answers, recorded to be heard by the one who will turn them into a literary

work. This split identity is also a mark of postmodern identity, and it is visually represented

in this movie: characters are fragmented, spaces are dark and illegible, the individuals


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discourse on the city is eventually distorted, dislocated out of meaning. This loss of faith in

words and perpetual illegibility of the postmodern city and individual is also one of the main

themes in Paul Auters City of Glass. As the title suggests, New York is to be viewed first

as a city of fluid reality, people and structures mirroring each other, in a constant loop of

creating meaning that eventually turns out to be empty, self-generated and trapped inside a

labyrinth. Loss of identity is a theme that Auster tackles as well, having his character go

through a laborious phenomenon of losing name and self-awareness in the attempt to

appropriate someone elses name. The relation between self andOtheris a distorted one, the

kind that leads to the evaporation of identity and eventually social and mental estrangement

of the individual. The postmodern individual is represented as a semiotic structure, yet

another example of how signs, in this case names are not enough to explain, interpret or

understand reality: In order to begin, I must have a name (Auster, 1987). The quest for

identity is also connected with space the urban landscape, the labyrinth of glass, liquid

structures, never the same, never really there. It is in this uncertain space that onlyfragments

of identity float around, searching for unity and togetherness, but failing to find such things

[in New York] the brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal. The broken people,

the broken things, the broken thoughts (Auster, 1987). Again, a frail attempt to cope with

this displacement is built as around the process of naming: I give them names. I invent new

words that would correspond to the things (Auster, 1987). Naming the unknown is meant to

render it knowable, legible, and less strange, less outside-of-the-body. This process of naming

things gives the whole representation an allure of new beginnings the city as a Garden of

Eden that must be tamed and submitted to mans will. These attempts of individuals to keep

their humanity relates to the ability to map themselves or others in the urban landscape.

This is a strong element in City of Glass Quinn follows Stillman Senior in the city,

drawing maps of his walks, otherwise of his very encounter with the city itself; this process


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seems a fruitful one, when we are told that the movement within the urban space is actually

creating meaning literally. However, the map of Stillmans walks reads Tower of Babel, as

an alarm with regards to the frailty of any process of signification in the urban space. New

Yorks illegibility, or chaotic legibility, pattern empty of actual order (Balshaw&Kennedy)

are thus underlined by this intertextual mention of the Tower of Babel. As the biblical story

goes, the Tower of Babel is the place where meaning in words was first lost, where people

decided to find God and rise above their given horizontality. Without stretching the myth, the

postmodern city may, in fact, be viewed as a version of the Tower the modern

metropolitan milieu (Suarez, 2002) goes through a phenomenon of abandoning the

horizontality of the city for the verticality of the skyscraper, as symbol of a new order. In

City of Glass we are presented with a horizontal experience Quinn follows Stillman on

the streets of New York, but eventually gets lost, trapped inside a sense of homelessness that

becomes natural; walking the streets in search of meaning turns Quinn into a man of the

streets, as a commentary on the fact that understanding the logic and order of the postmodern

environment requires adopting a relevant point of view, rising above street-level, since the

city is no longer only horizontally expanded. The same theme is discussed, mainly visually,

in Manhatta the ant-like existence of pedestrians is highlighted by contrast with the

skyscrapers a form born of social and technological compulsion (Suarez, 2002). The

theme of the little man versus the big city (Suarez, 2002) is also a point the movie makes;

in Annex 1, Fig. 7 this idea is discussed, by contrasting the immensity of the building with

the antlike existence of the individual. The material structure of the city appears as

recognizable, intelligible one would know what building is that and where is it placed, but

the individuals are unknown, anonymous, faceless and nameless, always others, satisfying

their role of walking the streets regardless of their identity. Subjectivity is thus lost in the

crowd, in favor of a seemingly biological regression (Suarez2002) in understanding and


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constructing the crowd as a social group. Figure 7 also highlights the impossibility to capture

the whole, to comprehend the city in its totality (Lash, 1979); buildings and people alike

are fragmented and from a horizontal point, it is impossible to grasp the entirety of the urban

environment Annex 1, Fig. 8; the fact that the only view close to offering a complete,

unified image of the city is from above can be seen as critique: looking from above helps

building a panoramic view of the city, but makes the street-level experiences seem irrelevant

Annex 1, Fig. 9. The relationship between horizontality and verticality builds to the same

ambiguity related to New York. New York is a vertical city, a fluid environment, always

changing, but never expanding, a mix of repetitions and routines, of new people going

through similar experiences, constructing in this manner a somehow unified representation of

an apparent orderless whole, composed of incompatible places. New York constructs an

urban sense of disorientation (Alford, 1995), it provides an inexhaustible possibility for

journeys, despite its finite borders (Alford, 1995). Everybody runs away in Manhattan

(Lash, 1979), but no one seems to know what are they running of or towards what they are

heading. It can be argued that New York is, in fact, a journey in itself, that regardless of

structure, architecture, buildings, or maps, individuals would look at the city exclusively

while walking Walking is to urban space what speech is to language (Alford, 1995);

urban experience is movement, homelessness, signification in the making, failure to grasp

reality, or even ones own body limits. As Quinns story in City of Glass suggests, one

cannot walk and write at the same time, in other words, it is impossible to experience the

citys truth, and rise above yourself, attempting to interpret the experience. What is left to do

is living, and by it interpreting, representing, constructing identity and put meaning where it

seems there is none.


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New York is a fairly incomprehensible urban environment. Highly eclectic, characterized by

a mix of styles and architectural choices, continuous influx of immigrants, the city appears

unknowable to the point of neurosis. One way of coping with alienation, disruptiveness and

disassociation is by acknowledging the fact that competing discourses are employed in

constructing its reality, be it material or symbolic, and it takes just as much eclecticism, of

thought, subjectivity and sensibility, to understand the city.

There is, perhaps, no need of a semiotic or epistemic system that would help to make sense of

New York, because the city is in itself its own language grammar and structure, meaning

and symbols, all in a giant ever moving entity.


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Bibliography

1. Paul Auster, (1987) The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Mackays of Chatham plc,Chatham, Kent

2. Steven E. Alford, (1995), Spaced-out: Signification and Space in Paul Austers The NewYork Trilogy, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 613-632

3. Zygmunt Bauman (2000), Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge4. Maria Balshaw, Liam Kennedy, (2000), Urban Space and Representation, Pluto Press5. Neil Campbell, Alasdair Keane (1997), American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to

American Culture, Routledge

6. Russell Daylight, (2008), The Language of Postmodern Space, Philament HABITS &HABITAT June 2008

7. John Dos Passos (2000), Manhattan Transfer8. Michel Foucault, (1997), Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, Rethinking

Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. Edited by Neil Leach. NYC: Routledge. 1997.

pp.330-336

9. Sam B. Girus, The films of Woody Allen, Cambridge University Press10.Andreas Huyssen, (1986), The Vamp and the Machine: Fritz LangsMetropolis, chapter in

After the Great Divide: Modernism,Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Indiana University Press,

pp. 65 81.

11.Kenneth Lash, (1979), Woody Allen: The Phenom among the Phenomena, The NorthAmerican Review, Vol. 264, No. 3 (Fall, 1979), pp. 10-11

12.Juan A. Suarez, (2002), City Space, Technology, Popular Culture: The Modernism of PaulStrand and Charles Sheeler's"Manhatta", Journal of American Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Apr.,

2002), pp. 85-106

13.Ian Woodwardet al, (2000), Consumerism, disorientation and postmodern space: a modesttest of an immodest theory,British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 2 (June 2000)

pp. 339354

Web resources:

www.youtube.com


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Annex 1

Fig. 1. Screen-shot min. 33:34 Metropolis, F. Lang


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Fig. 2: Screen-shot min.33:53, Metropolis, F. Lang

Fig. 3. Screen shot Manhatta, Strand & Sheeler


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Fig. 4. Metropolis, F. Lang

Fig. 5. Manhattan, W. Allen

Fig. 6. Manhatta


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Fig. 7. Manhatta

Fig. 8. Manhatta


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Fig. 9 Manhatta.

Documents

New York – Postmodern Space and Postmodern Identity