Personal Space II:

The Wall

A collection of resources that deconstruct and

challenge the structural systems that limit, divide
or destroy personal space as a fully-realized,
joyful human right.

Compiled & annotated by November 2021

E. Charlton
 PERSONAL SPACE II: THE WALL

In March of 2020, I lost my job of six years as
a bartender and found myself confined to a studio
apartment in Toronto with my partner, also
suddenly out of work, along with huge numbers
of others performing low wage labor across the
entire world. Although the confusion and terrible
loss of the pandemic weighed heavily along with
financial anxiety, my overwhelming feeling in
those early days was distinctly one of relief.
My great privilege in having a strong immune
system, access to the CERB and virtually no
responsibilities other than myself must be noted
here. But, scouring the newly exclusively digital
social environment daily, as we all were, I began to
notice others articulating a certain gratitude for
this great pause and the space that followed it. It’s
as if we had been tossing and turning in the same
fever dream, suddenly sitting bolt upright in bed
to discover a strange, quiet room. The clock ticked
from some shadowy far wall.
I began to think about the connection between
agency and space. If we all have the right to bodily
autonomy, and bodies definitively require a space
with certain assets and characteristics in order to
flourish, surely we then have a right to a certain kind
of personal space; the spaces we occupy most play
a central role in defining our lives.
What should be included in this definition of
personal space?
Where exactly do we determine what spaces are
no longer a right, and instead a privilege?
Who has decided what our current definition is,
and why?

We noticed the clock, for sure. We noticed our

walls, our windows, our backyards—or lack thereof.
We noticed our nieghbours. We noticed those
who were forced to continue to provide ‘essential’
labor in spaces deemed too dangerous for the
rest of us were very often not those with bigger
houses, bigger yards.

2 3

/Primary Resources
Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Directed by Benh Zeitlin,
performances by Quvenzhané
Wallis and Dwight Henry,
Fox Searchlight Pictures,
2012.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pvqZzSMIZa0.
This poignant and fierce film is a celebration
of life at the end of the world. Quvenzhané Wallis
stars as Hushpuppy, a 6 year old force of nature
who lives in the Bathtub – a marshland commu-
nity in the Louisiana bayou – with her father. As
worsening floods and weather conditions threaten
the community’s way of life, ancient beasts called
Aurochs are freed from the melting glacier ice
and begin to make their way towards the Bathtub.
Hushpuppy tries to stand up for her father and
her community while searching for her missing
mother. Space manifests as the beloved and
unorthodox places we call home, what kinds of
spaces are deemed worthy for saving, people that
are displaced as a result of climate change, and
the journey to find your own place of belonging.
“The whole universe depends on everything
fitting together just right. If one piece busts,
even the smallest piece... the entire universe
will get busted.”
4 5
“Chapter 3: Housing First.”
According to Need,
99% Invisible
from PRX,
8 December 2020,
https://99percentinvisible.org/
episode/according-to-need-
chapter-3-housing-first/.
‘Housing First’ is an episode within the documentary
series According to Need that examines what
structures exist in the United States to assist people
in finding housing, and the limitations of these. In
this episode, Sam Tsemberis is interviewed about his
involvement in organizing what was a completely
new way of addressing homelessness in the 1980s.
Rather than continuing to make rounds to those
living on the street, bringing people struggling with
mental illness or drug addiction to the hospital
whether they consented or not, Tsemberis believed
that people should have control over their own
medical care. This belief in autonomy as a human
right led Tsemberis to opening a drop-in center
called Choices Unlimited that focused on connecting
people with the specific kinds of help they asked
for - including rehab, medication, housing - rather
than determining these things on their behalf.
This podcast connects the idea of personal agency
as a fundamental property of personal space,
and pushes back against rhetoric that demonizes
homelessness and functions to sharpen and main-
tain class divide.
“To Sam, the [system] felt frustratingly
paternalistic. When he heard housing readiness,
it sounded more like housing worthiness.”
Davis, Angela.
“Racialized Punishment and
Prison Abolition.”
The Anglela Davis Reader, 1998,
pp. 96-107.
http://www.usprisonculture.
com/blog/wp-content/up-
loads/2011/03/Racialized-Pun-
ishment.pdf.
If we are interested in dissecting barriers to
personal space, this piece reveals a pattern of
continued violence and oppression that has
shaped the spaces of our modern world with
devastating effects. Angela Davis presents a
focused and piercing critique of Michel Foucault
(and others) to illustrate the integral role that
slavery and continued structural racism plays in
the acceptance of punishment and incarceration
in the US an beyond. Where others had failed to
recognize historical and constitutional details
baked into the creation of the prison system that
acted as a continuation of the denial of rights
to Black Americans, Davis follows these threads
to reveal the role that anti-racism could play in
effective abolitionist theory.
“...I want to argue for a serious consideration of
abolitionist strategies to dismantle the prison
system in its present role as an institution which
preserves existing structures of racism as well
as creates more complicated modes of racism
in US society. This strategy, I argue, is no more
outlandish than the fact that race and economic
status play more prominent roles in shaping the
practices of social punishment than does crime,
which is always assumed to be the basis for
punishment in this society.”
PERSONAL SPACE II: THE WALL
“Fear and Loathing in Homer
and Rockville.”
This American Life
from WBEZ, 21 July 2017,
https://www.thisamericanlife.
orgw/621/fear-and-loathing-in-
homer-and-rockville.
During the Trump administration, the municipality
of Homer, Alaska erupts in heated dispute when the
town puts forth a resolution stating that Homer
welcomes immigrants. The majority of townspeople
were adamant in their belief on both sides, either
resolutely for or against the declaration, seemingly
except for one man. The episode follows as Ben
attempts to ‘do his own research’ in order to come to
his own conclusion based on fact. After his decision,
Ben asks reporter Brian Reed to help him fact-check
his research, much of which turns out to be based in
misleading and biased material.
The episode’s inclusion of voices spewing intense
xenophobia and decision to give even a second of
extra air time to Ann Coulter is surely debatable.
However, to the purpose of trying to communicate
across an intensely divided population and bring to
light the reality that immigrants face, the episode
shows the difficulty in navigating both community
prejudice and the media landscape. Who is welcome
into our spaces and how this is determined is
brought into focus.
“Lots of people are afraid for different reasons at
the same time.”

/Primary Resources
Harvey, David.
“The Right to the City.”
New Left Review, Sept/Oct
2008, vol. 53.
https://newleftreview.org/
issues/ii53/articles/david-har-
vey-the-right-to-the-city.
Accessed 8 Nov 2021.
If the city is the realization of humankind’s ability
to create their own world, then the people should
have the right to build and rebuild in their interest.
David Harvey outlines the intimate connection
between urbanization and the health of capitalism
in the US and around the world, arguing that this
relationship has robbed the general public of their
right to determine how cities develop. Harvey
discusses the critical boiling point between low-
income neighborhoods suffering the effects of
foreclosures and the predatory practices of banks
whose wallets are perpetually protected and
fattened by federal intervention. Harvey calls for
the need for a unified global opposition to these
developments under the ideological slogan and
practical ideal of the peoples’ right to the city.
“...The metropolis is now the point of massive
collision—dare we call it class struggle?—over the
accumulation by dispossession visited upon the
least well-off and the developmental drive that
seeks to colonize space for the affluent.”
6 7
Inside.
Directed by Bo Burhman,
starring Bo Burham,
Netflix, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=-ybGdoaz53k.
A musical comedy special unlike any other, Inside is
expertly, uncannily crafted to paint a nuanced
psychological reflection of North American pop culture
at the specific moment in time it was released. It
seems to articulate the dawning collective awareness
of the digital fragmentation and disconnection
acutely felt by most in the current political moment,
exacerbated—not caused—by pandemic lockdowns.
Themes concerning mental illness and depression
weave through thoughtful (and often hilarious)
vignettes of various social phenomenon. The bizarre
and disturbing realities we all hold beneath the
surface in order to continue functioning within cruel
and futile systems are brought to the surface
through the lonely perspective of a single person
confined to a single room.
“Stunning 8K resolution meditation app. In honor
of the revolution, it’s half off at the gap. Deadpool’s
self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun.
The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s
just begun.
There it is again, that funny feeling...”
Gay, Lesbian & Straight
Education Network.
“Safe Space Kit.”
Guide to Being an Ally to LGBT
Students, 2016.
https://www.glsen.org/sites/de-
fault/files/GLSEN%20Safe%20
Space%20Kit.pdf
Accessed 6 November 2021.
This instructional document is a print publication
designed to be dispersed to educate middle and
high school teachers on how to be an active ally to
(as they phrase) LGBT students. The manual is
limited in that it does not include the full acronym
(LGBTQIA2s+) and therefore leaves out important
identities including Indigenous Two-Spirit, Intersex
and Asexual orientations. But the actionable use
of a kit of this nature, if properly updated, as a tool to
disseminate knowledge and model methods of
support to teachers could have powerful effects
on the creation of safer spaces for all students.
“We tend to overlook the subtle biases: the
anti-LGBT jokes, the exclusion of LGBT
related-themes in curricula, even anti-LGBT
name-calling. Subtle or not, bias has the
power to hurt and isolate people. Your work
as an ally includes recognizing and challenging
your own anti-LGBT bias.”
PERSONAL SPACE II: THE WALL
Robinson, Dylan.
“Public Writing, Sovereign
Reading: Indigenous Language
Art in Public Space.”
Art Journal, vol. 76, no. 2,
[Taylor & Francis, Ltd., CAA],
2017, pp. 85–99,
http://www.jstor.org/sta-
ble/45142475.
Through case studies, Dylan Robinson explores the
complex role that art objects can have in asserting
Indigenous sovereignty. Because perceptions of
sovereignty and ruling power are often experienced
on a daily level through infrastructure and signage,
objects or art in this environment can have a lasting
influence in reminding settlers of the true owners
of the land currently occupied. These effects are still at
the mercy of subjectivity, as formal characteristics
of an artwork can have complicated associations. The
importance of inserting Indigenous language and
visual culture into public environments is integral to
the process of recognizing the truth: Indigenous
peoples are sovereign peoples.
“...A line cannot be drawn between the animacy of
objects and language, particularly given the Cree
understanding of language as creating the world
as it is spoken, rather than simply reflecting the
world around us.”

/Primary Resources
Shammas, V.L., Holen, T.B.
“One Giant Leap for Capitalist-
kind: Private Enterprise in Outer
Space.”
Palgrave Communications vol. 5,
no. 10, 2019,
https://www.nature.com/
articles/s41599-019-0218-9 mutual-aid-can-do-during-a-
Accessed 6 November 2021.
If OldSpace was the slow race of states towards
space exploration, NewSpace is the dissolution
of space as a commonly shared frontier whose
resources should be approached in the interest
of all of humanity, replaced with the domination of
the wildly affluent in the exploitation of space
towards the first multi trillion-dollar industry and
beyond. This article reveals the way the front-
running corporations of NewSpace rely on the
‘spectacle’ of space in order to maintain public
support of their otherwise blatant capitalization
of space. It is not ‘Gattungswesen’­­or the shared
essence of humanity that spreads its roots to
outer space, but instead ‘capitalistkind.’
“... The trope of humanity plays a key role in the
rhetoric of the adherents of NewSpace. To fulfill
the objectives of NewSpace, including profit
maximization and the exploitation of celestial
bodies, the symbolic figure of a shared humanity
serves a useful purpose, camouflaging the
conquest of space by capitalism with a dream
of humanity boldly venturing forth into the dark
unknown, thereby also providing the legitimacy
and enthusiasm needed to support bolster the
legitimacy of NewSpace.”
8 9
Tolentino, Jia.
“What Mutual Aid Can Do During
a Pandemic.”
The New York Times,
11 May 2020.
https://www.newyorker.com/
magazine/2020/05/18/what-
pandemic.
Accessed 2 November 2021.
In the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic, Jia
Tolentino writes about the radical organization of
mutual aid and its potentially radicalizing effects.
Building alternative structures of care within local
communities was achieved quickly and often with long-
term vision, with the results bringing to light the lack
of competency of government programs which was
in crisis well before the pandemic hit. Tolentino
speaks to various organizers and activists including
Dean Spade, who points out the tendency of media
coverage of to neglect to cover the failures of
governmental efforts that result in the need for
mutual aid in the first place.
“It will be a loss, Spade told me, if mutual aid
becomes vacated of political meaning at the
moment that it begins to enter the mainstream—if
we lose sight of the fundamental premise that,
within its framework, we meet one another’s needs
not just to fix things in the moment but to identify
and push back on the structures that make those
needs so dire.”
PERSONAL SPACE II: THE WALL
13th.
Directed by Ava DuVernay,
written by Ava DuVernay and
Spencer Averick,
Netflix 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8.
This acclaimed 2016 documentary is an accessible
and comprehensive historical account of 150 years
of systematized oppression of African Americans
from slavery through Jim Crow laws, the ‘War On
Drugs’ and into the prison industrial complex. It
became an important educational tool, spreading on
social media in 2020 during Black Lives Matter and
other groups’ protesting of the murder of George
Floyd, helping to mobilize the number of protesters
showing up to fill the radical spaces of rallies and
demonstrations during the height of the pandemic.
“If you dismiss black complaints of mistreatment
by police as being completely rooted in our modern
context then you’re missing the point completely.
There has never been a period in our history where
the law and order branch of the state has not
operated against the freedoms, the liberties, the
options, the choices that have been available to
the black community, generally speaking.” (Kevin
Gannon)
 PERSONAL SPACE II: THE WALL

/Secondary Resources

Xenia Rubinos, Cinzia Arruzza, Felicia Chiao

Black Terry Cat Tithi Bhattacharya, Sketchbook
Nancy Fraser
A Tribe Called Quest Feminism for the 99% Kat Wilson
We Got It From Here... Thank Habitats
You 4 Your Service Jia Tolentino
Trick Mirror Syrus Marcus Ware
Fiona Apple Radical Love—A digital exhibition
Fetch the Bolt Cutters Prole.Info
Abolish Restaurants: A Worker’s
Terry Uyarak Critique of the Food Service
Nunarjua Isulinginniani Industry
2020
Adrianne Harun
Dirty Projectors A Man Came Out of a Door in the
Lamp Lit Prose Mountian

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