Dear Tom Dine and all
'Phatic' literally means 'spoken' or perhaps better 'uttered' - not in
relation to complex ideas but rather about everyday social exchanges. I'm
at a conference at the moment and I don't have the relevant books with me
othewise i would quote the relevant passages for you - but roughly; de
Certeau draws an analogy between the way knowledge and experience and
desires (and he speaks of very everyday common or garden aspects of these
things) are understood and conveyed socially in language, and the way we
understand and use space. He makes a number of distinct analogies - but the
most relevant are that these things both have the nature of units which are
assembled in sequences of statements. We practice this analogy not only in
moving through space but (tellingly) in giving directions. Go out the door;
turn right; first left; carry straight on to the next major intersection;
and its right there. Our colleagues in London would now be at the Tottenham
Court Road tube station. It's not metres that count, but incidents in the
'spatial story'.
As far as subjective experience is concerned, when it comes to the links
between ss and experience then surely the structure / agency debate is
relevant. I think I agree with Steve Pile (Human agency and geography in
Transactions of the Intitute of British Geographers in about 1993 I think)
that the linkage between the two is recoverable through (and only through)
psychology. So shouldn't we be reading Freud, Lacan, and some
psycho-spatial stuff. I don't know this field too well (Bachalard, Tuan
perhaps, Buttimer perhaps, some of the stuff by Nigel Thrift on space and
time is interesting) and some of the French anti-philosophy philosophers,
ho-hum sorry to mention them again, Lefebvre and de Certeau. Or - I've just
been listening to Michael Muller speaking about Benjamin - what about
Walter Benjamin's 'expression analysis'?? It's about aesthetics anyway and
can't ignore the changability of the relationship (historically and between
persons) we have with our environment. Ss has to do with the
non-discursive, (which may cross over with the subjective /intersubjective
- but will not tell you everything about that particular
intersubjectivity). The reason I keep on banging on about the experience of
the structure of the city as emerging from place and its conjugation is
because I think this is an example of an experience which is founded in
non-discursivity. There are others but this is the one I am working on and
for which for me space syntax is a powerful analytic/theoretical tool. The
whole structure / agency thing is pretty tortured so I think its not
surprising we have some difficulty with it and its a matter of finding not
just an interesting question to ask but also to find one which is in some
degree answerable with the limited tools at hand. This leads on to my other
point that we should be using ss as a tool building instrument - we are but
we call them techniques when really I think we need more concepts. This
takes us onto more risky ground as far as 'scientific method' is concerned
- and into areas which cross over with the normative and all sorts of value
concerns. Obviously I think we should bite the bullet and go for it. Some
of this has been done - vis 'intelligibility', 'virtual community', but its
difficult to relate these (as techniques) to intelligibility and community
as they are spoken about over the drawing board - as they are spoken about
over the drawing board they contain masses of hidden value laden
assumptions - and I think we are in a position to address some of these
conceptions and popular misconceptions. Its extraordinary how this idea of
community eg has influenced the shapes of our cities - and that on the
basis of some very simplistic misconceptions about its nature!! It is a
very topical issue with Leon Krier and the American new (sub)urbanists at
the moment.
Stephen Read
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