MAPPING BODIES IN CONTEMPORARY CITY SPACEalae Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SEI 4AB www.rowmanintemational.com Rowman & Littlefield Intemational Ld. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA ‘With additional offices in Boulder. New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2018 by Debra Benita Shaw All rights reserved. No part of this book may Be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book‘ls available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978+1-7834-8079-1 PB 978-1-7834-8080-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-1-78348-079-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-78348-080-7 (paperback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-78348-081-4 (electronic) ©" The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences ~ Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSUNISO 239.48-1992, ee Printed in the United States of AmericaContents eographies ds a Posthuman Cartography of Urban Space 121 137 139 153 167 181 187 191 207 221eer 145 in squatted house. Hackney, East London, 2010 158 na South London housing estate 2015 170 MFO! train passing through abandoned {ugo station on line 2 of the Paris 176Preface recognised fact of globalisation that cities by now have singly homogenised, it is also true that conditions at street f global nisable arcl Weuures of wealth are comfortably similar wherever they are found, cultures of economic deprivation are expressed differently according to local conditions. These are the places where the effects of climate change and perpetual war are most keenly felt. It is therefore difficult to write about cities and urban cultures from within one of the most privileged spaces of the affluent West without being uncomfortably aware that the city in the abstract tends to co Me up ideas drawn from the global cities that feature most often e, These are representations which, for the most part, erase retyday life and favour the singular and spectacular over the ybal wealth, They are thus the spaces from which inequali- d where urban change, perhaps, needs 10 begin. They are ingly marked ai nd where global conflicts come home to roost in the form of pomelesshey and trauma. They are also, of course, the colonial centres that termined the map of modernity. yondon is, more often than not, my exemplary city, not only ¢ of the capitals of modernity and postmodernity but because it is where I live and can write with the confidence of first-hand experience. My hope is that the situations that I describe will be recognisable as part experience and that the ideas I derive from them will ss diverse urban contexts. Also, although it may appear that ‘urban’ and “city’ somewhat interchangeably, my intention ixx Preface ¢ is that ‘urban’ should be taken fo refer to the culture of cities both historical and contemporary, and that the ‘city’ is the abstract idea which refers to the imagined metropolis and can stand for cities both real and fictional — past, present and future. } At the same time, many of my examples are drawn from science fiction (SF) novels and films as well as new, hybrid forms of fantasy literature. This is because, when I am not writing and reading about urban cultures, | am reading, writing about and watching SF to the point where 1 find it difficult to distinguish between the real city and its fictional counterpart. This is not as crazy as it sounds. We are all, I would contend, living an city, and many of its images are drawn from SE. At the same time, although architects and urban planners deal in futurity and often in utopias, SF, oddly enough, does not. SF cities of the future, even the utopias, are often dire warn- ings about what will happen if we do not fight for urban change and what might happen if we do but do not take systemic asymmetries into account, More recent forms, where the distinction between SF and. fantasy seems to have collapsed, are grappling with precisely the dilemma of subject formation in contemporary urban space that propels my argument here. As Donna Har- away reminds us, “The boundary between science fiction and ‘social reality is an optical illusion’ (1991, 149). Finally, my experiences as an activist over many years: have informed my case studies in chapters 5 and 6. For the most part, this has been as a participant in the social centres movement which has involved s juatting and adapting abandoned buildings for use as community spaces ening them to the public for events, political meetings and do-it-yourself (DIY) culture. ‘These activities hover on the edge of legality and involve often violent confrontations with authority. Nothing can be achieved without a group of people working towards the same aims and with the same | of commit- ment. Being part of these collectives has helped me to retail ith in direct action as a tactic for change and has helped me conside sb developing the ideas that have culminated in this book. Therefore, there are many people, too numerous to mention, who deserve my thanks. If they are Teading this book, they know who they are. As ever, many other people have been involved in the development of this book, not least my colleagues and students at the University of East London (UEL), in particular my fellow members of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research. Many thanks to them and to the many students who have contributed to discussions which have informed my ideas, not only at UEL but also at Open School East and the various social centres where I have led reading groups and taught cultural studies outside the university. Thanks also to David Roden, Stefan Sorgner, Dimitris Papadopoulos and, in particular, Rosi Braidotti for their friendship and inspiration. SinesPreface lent images. I would also like to extend gratitude to ing editor Martina O’Sullivan and Holly Tyler who h the final stages. Finally, my sincere thanks and encouragement to get it finished. S ~ Debra Benita Shaw, May 2017AND CITIESIntroduction ‘As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, we are reaching a tipping point, beyond which the majority of the world’s population will live in cities. At the same time, we are witnessing extremes of wealth and poverty with attendant rising levels of homelessness and other depriyations no longer alleviated by a shrinking welfare state. Distrustful populations thrown together by the effects of war and poverty and prone to volatility are easy prey for ideologies which divide along the lines of race, class, sexuality and religion. Neoliberal economies has created global clites without personal investment in neighbourhoods or communities. Under the terms of what Stephen Graham calls the ‘new military urbanism’ (Graham 2010, 65), cities are “battlespace’ (31), designated problem areas by military theorists who propagate the idea that cities ier by their very nature, a breeding ground for violent insurgency. ‘The overused and somewhat meaningless term ‘radicalisation’ encodes a yf anti-state agitators embedded within seemingly ‘normal’ family homes iis has the effect of recasting the notion of privacy as a lack of transpareney, Hence, the increased surveillance capacities of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) supported by anti terror legislation which has the effect of bringing everyone who inhabits urban space under sus- picion, At the same time, police forces, equipped with enhanced powers and the weaponry to enact them, increasingly take on the character of occupying armies, ‘In the absence of a uniform-wearing enemy’, writes Graham, ‘urban publics themselyes become the prime enemy’ (Graham 2010, 96). A study. by The Guardian found that 1,134 people were killed by U.S. police officers in 2015, a disproportionate number being young African ‘American males between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four.! Under these conditions, we need to question anew how we conceive of ideas like civilisa- tion, community and human rights. We need to conceive a politics of urban 3