Well, there was some conflict between the themes I gathered from reading the text of The Suburbanization of New York and the actual discussion I witnessed last night. On some level, I think I would have appreciated a more specific conversation about what suburbanization actually is (if not the building of suburbs that are "SUBordinate" to urban areas.) I also think more attention to the relationship between suburban culture and urban culture might have been worthwhile. Instead -- and this was something most of the panelists agreed upon -- the terminology seemed to be inexact. What was meant by "suburbanization" was really commercialization or Disney-fication or hyperrealism. In other words, the main problem they were engaging with was: how do we deal with a postmodern New York City?
This is particularly interesting to me because Marshall Berman, one of the panelists, wrote a lot about the modern city in his book All That is Solid Melts Into Air. He discusses it particularly in relation to Charles Baudelaire and how Baudelaire understands the role of the artist in relation to a Haussmannized Paris. One thing Berman notes, especially in his discussion of Baudelaire's poem "The Eyes of the Poor," is that the Haussmannization/modernization of the city makes the poor more visible. Boulevards pave over dilapidated neighborhoods, yes, and they also reveal the poor who have been displaced by these new, wide-open views. So in Berman's interpretation of Baudelaire, one of the major features of the modern city is how visible class is, how difficult it is to ignore urban blight when blight itself becomes part of the spectacular view.
What, then, of the postmodern city? One thing that was noted in the discussion last night was how suburbanization (read: commercialization or Disneyfication) elides class and makes everything appear at least culturally middle class. In other words, the big box stores and the glitzy signs and the H&Ms and Starbuck's on the Lower East Side and Harlem make it seem as if middle class status is not only attainable for everyone, but actually descriptive of everyone. While there may not be an economic basis for this feeling, it still has a blinding power that allows New Yorkers and tourists to imagine that class and poverty are unimportant. Marx might have believed that religion was the opiate of the masses, but Americans know that consumerism -- or, in more crude terms the iPod or the Wii -- is the real narcotic.
So while class and poverty are "disappeared" from New York's landscape as the poor are moved quietly in the night to the outskirts of town, we have to ask ourselves how we inhabit a city that, as Francis Morrone said last night, is "increasingly being conceived as a mall," a simulacrum of what it once was. As I keep saying, New York is turning into a city where the workers need to be bussed in to get things done and bussed out when the workday is over. This isn't really an exaggeration anymore.
Getting back to slumming then, I guess I need to weigh this idea of the modern city as a place that flourishes on the visibility of the poor. It's the poor (the immigrant, the working man or working girl) as curiosity that drives the slummer. So might I say that "slumming" is a function of the modern city? And what is it in the postmodern city? A simulacrum of itself? Yet another performance?
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2 comments:
interesting! this makes me think of the original period of suburbanization in the 40s and 50s and the expansion of highways and interstates (which Margaret Morse wrote about being post-modern and similar to malls - non-spaces)... it might be interesting to look at responses to robert moses construction plans, was that seen as a threat of suburbanization of the city? the threat then was perhaps more of a lifestyle change (not to mention the displacement of thousands!!) as cars became more prominent in the cityscape. but now, as you said, it is a cultural change led by the generation that grew up in the suburbs...
the starbuck's in the LES is the same as the starbucks in redmond, WA. we're filling the city with non-spaces!
hmmm. there's of course the other key way that commodification is eliding class in the postmodern city is the transformation of poverty into a style. I think Greg Tate talks about this somewhere when he discusses the co-option of hip-hop by suburuban kids. Just did a little poking around and found this article: [Poor Chic: The Rational Consumption of Poverty
Karen Bettez Halnon/Current Sociology, Vol. 50, No. 4, 501-515 (2002)
Here's the abstract:
A discussion of Poor Chic, or an array of fads and fashions in popular culture that make recreational or stylish `fun' of poverty, or of traditional symbols of working class and underclass statuses, challenges the reductionism of the view that `lifestyle' consumption has displaced consumption as a means of expressing social status (e.g. race, class, and gender). It is argued that the multiplicity of symbols involved in Poor Chic collectively represent lower class status and have referents in the material realities of poverty. Using numerous examples of Poor Chic in the United States and internationally since the 1980s, this article shows how the rational (controlled, efficient, predictable, and calculable) consumption of poverty symbols distinguishes class boundaries between the wealthy and the poor. Drawing on works by Ritzer, Bauman, Veblen, and others, Poor Chic is explained as the rational consumption of commodified poverty, involving postmodern `tourists' who `conspicuously' vacation in `vagabondage'.)].
Apparently she argues that consumption of poverty leads to starker contrasts between the classes-will have to read and she how she says this happens. It's fascinating to me that the phenomenon might in reality be increasing poverty while at the same time creating an illusion of greater equality...
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