space is really hot
While researching Foucault, I came across this article in Bad Subjects, an online academic journal whose purpose is to provide “political education for everyday life,” in which Charlie Bertsch and Jonathan Sterne offer a few words concerning the geography of cultural studies. Although the arguments found in this introduction to Issue 17 of the journal have been dramatically expanded over the last decade, certain salient points ring true.
In 1994, Bertsch and Sterne stumbled across a new section in San Francisco’s City Lights Books, entitled “Topographies.” This section kept subjects like gender studies and virtual reality studies. Both subjects have their own sections in many bookstores, both mainstream and independent (I love the computer/technology section at the Strand – my favorite bookstore – here in New York), but what did it take to get there? “What books [in these sections] all have in common is a desire to ‘map’, some aspect of contemporary life, whether literally or metaphorically.” I wonder if there is any aspect of contemporary life I would like to map; the possible end product makes the process seem so exciting. Upon studying the gay rights movement and the historical events that put us on the political map during my ethnography in 2005, I realized there needed to be told a different version than what was already disjointed in the “history books.” I wasn’t quite sure what that version would be, but I still feel compelled to take the torch and carry on the historical research, to uncover valuable shards from the past.
Bertsch and Sterne continue by asking the question, “why is space hot?” I’d like to explore how “time is losing its war with space,” as Foucault might say. Might the gay identity be inherently political, at least for now? Could the relationship between these smaller “geographies” and the larger one we know be similar to that of the spatial relationship between collective social identity and those identities found in various subcultures? If gay culture at some point were more seemlessly integrated into the mainstream, would we be doomed to repeated a grim history of repression?Foucault’s theories of power suggest the possibility.
I’m off to the Frick Museum on 70th Street with a friend to check out the new exhibition: Domenico Tiepolo. Perhaps I’ll have something interesting to add here later.
Urban Molecule observes developing trends in society, science and technology to better understand the emerging 
