27th Sep2012

Representational Power

by melissarogers

Definitions:

Space: that which we create in and around us by virtue of our bodily presence, by virtue of our relationships with other bodies (including objects), and by virtue of practices of representation (digital or otherwise).

Place: those specific spaces to which we are affectively attached, bound, or oriented toward by virtue of meaningful relationships with other bodies (including objects), through embodied practices of power (biopolitics), and through practices of representation, visualization, and mapping.

Identity: the enduring bodily and psychic perception and conception of self across spacetime(s), including the extension of self through cultural tools, technologies, and virtualities.

Questions:

1. I was intrigued and somewhat skeptical of Edward Soja’s conceptualization of justice. Soja extends the definition of justice out from its primarily legal framework to include notions of “fairness” in everyday life and social interaction (20), and although he argues that justice is being sought in new political realms including the spatial, I thought he oversimplified the ways in which multiple visions of and routes to social justice can be contentious and disciplinary. For example, he writes, “Justice in the contemporary world has been developing a political meaning that transcends the defined categories of race, gender, class, nationality, sexual preference, and other forms of homogenous and often exclusive group or community identity” (23). While I understand his point that an abstract or mobile understanding of “justice” has in some senses taken on a life of its own, I wonder if he has not overestimated the extent to which justice can be the “organizational and motivational adhesive” of social movements (24). How, then, might we better historicize “justice” to see the various ways in which social movements have been about access to or the politics of certain forms of space? How might focusing on many and multiple definitions of justice give us insight into the ways individuals and collectives value, define, and practice space?

2. Paglen and Harpold emphasize the extent to which the power of maps relies on an absence/presence binary. If all forms of representation and visualization are to some extent caught in this trap, will alternative forms of representation necessitate alternative conceptualizations of space, via Lefebvre? How might we craft representations of space that get at the ways space is practiced rather than defined from the top-down or from the “God’s-eye” perspective? I think participatory mapping attempts to solve this problem, however it is still beholden to the ways power organizes our understandings of absence and presence.

3. Paglen writes, “blank spots on maps and blacked-out documents announce the fact that there’s something hidden….Blank spots on maps outline the things they seek to conceal” (17). Dovetailing on my previous question, I’m wondering about the subversion or the frustration of surveillance in relationship to absence and presence. Are “absent”, “empty”, “blank”, or “invisible” spaces necessarily unable to be surveilled? Similarly, how might the blind spots of certain forms of power be exploited to hide things in plain view?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *