Abstract
This chapter provides a systematic discussion of urban space and its narrative possibilities, and an outline of the structure of the collection of essays. We proceed from the assumption that the city is one of the crucial topoi in the reflection of human experience in contemporary culture. Through the immediate encounter of various cultural and class backgrounds the city is the central location for negotiating and articulating different identities and interests. These articulations constitute performative acts that take part in the semantic formation of urban space and at the same time open it up to constant redefinition. Accordingly, this chapter explores the theoretical implications of the narrative construction of the city through conflicting narrative versions of the same city.
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Notes
- 1.
Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” in Collected Works of Oscar Wilde (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997), 919–943 (937).
- 2.
Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books (London: Panther, 1984), 243.
- 3.
For instance, Ben Highmore’s Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) as well as, more recently, Robin Smith’s and Kevin Hetherington’s collection Urban Rhythms: Mobilities, Space and Interaction in the Contemporary City (Malden, Mass: Wiley, 2013). Both work with Lefebvre’s idea of a “rhythmanalysis” of urban life.
- 4.
See for instance the Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature, ed. Kevin R. McNamara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
- 5.
Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg and Anastasia Christou, eds., Narrating the City: History, Space and the Everyday (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
- 6.
Sophie Wolfrum, ed., Performative Urbanism: Generating and Designing Urban Space (Berlin: Jovis, 2015).
- 7.
Such as The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Berlin, ed. Andrew J. Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Michael Cronin’s Osaka modern: The City in the Japanese Imaginary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), and Barbara Thornburg’s and Evelyn Schulz’s collection Tokyo: Memory, Imagination and the City (Langham: Lexington Books, 2018).
- 8.
Ernst Cassirer, “Mythischer, ästhetischer und theoretischer Raum,” [1931] in Ernst Cassirer, Symbol, Technik, Sprache: Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1927–1933, ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth and John Michael Krois (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995), 93–119.
- 9.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22–27.
- 10.
Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989), 39. Earlier in the same book Soja also ascribes a “precursory spatial turn” to Michel Foucault (16).
- 11.
E.g., in “Vom ‘Zeitgeist’ zum ‘Raumgeist’: New Twists on the Spatial Turn,” in Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften, ed. Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008), 241–262.
- 12.
The origin and subsequent history of the term is traced by Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann, in “Einleitung: Was lesen wir im Raume? Der Spatial Turn und das geheime Wissen der Geographen,” Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften, ed. Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008), 7–45 (7–9).
- 13.
Soja, Postmodern Geographies 39–42.
- 14.
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Towards a Historical Poetics,” in Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84–258.
- 15.
Yuri M. Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977); Culture and Explosion (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009); Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London: Tauris, 1990); Semiosfera (Saint Petersburg: Iskustvo-SPB, 2010).
- 16.
Roland Barthes, “Semiology and the Urban,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 2004), 166–172.
- 17.
Umberto Eco, “Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,” Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 2004), 182–202.
- 18.
For instance by Michel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 97.
- 19.
Lefebvre, Production, 7, 17–18, and 269–270. For Lefebvre’s own historical account of urban space in relation to the history of capitalism, see Henri Lefebvre, “Right to the City,” in Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, ed. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 61–181.
- 20.
David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012), xv.
- 21.
As can be seen in a recent special issue of Frontiers of Narrative Studies: Geographical Narratology, ed. Gerald Prince, special issue of Frontiers of Narrative Studies 4, no. 2 (2018): 175–392.
- 22.
See Marie-Laure Ryan, “Space,” in The Living Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter Hühn et al. (Hamburg: Hamburg University), created 13. January 2012, revised 22. April 2014. https://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/55.html (accessed July 10, 2018); Katrin Dennerlein, Narratologie des Raumes (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 59–67.
- 23.
Gérard Genette, “La littérature et l’espace,” in Gérard Genette, Figures II (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), 43–48.
- 24.
Lotman, Structure, 217–231.
- 25.
The origins of these two contending concepts of space are explained in: Martina Löw, Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001), 17–68. (In 2016, Löw’s book has been published in an English translation by Palgrave Macmillan as The Sociology of Space: Materiality, Social Structures, and Action, trans. Donald Goodwin.)
- 26.
De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 97–98.
- 27.
Eco, “Function and Sign,” 187.
- 28.
Eco, “Function and Sign,” 182–183.
- 29.
Pierre Bourdieu, “Site Effects,” Pierre Bourdieu et al. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 123–129.
- 30.
For instance, in Rudolf Maresch and Niels Werber, “Permanenzen des Raums,” in Raum—Wissen—Macht, ed. Rudolf Maresch and Niels Werber (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002), 7–30 (27); Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2006), 284.
- 31.
For emplotment, see Hayden White’s, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 7. For narrativity as the (necessary) production of meaning, see also his The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 1–25.
- 32.
Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur und andere kulturtheoretische Schriften, introd. Alfred Lorenzer and Bernard Görlich (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2004), 29–108 (37).
- 33.
De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 91–110.
Bibliography
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Barthes, Roland. “Semiology and the Urban.” In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach. London: Routledge, 2004. 166–172.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Site Effects.” In Pierre Bourdieu et al. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. 123–129.
Cassirer, Ernst. “Mythischer, ästhetischer und theoretischer Raum.” [1931] Symbol, Technik, Sprache: Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1927–1933, edited by Ernst Wolfgang Orth and John Michael Krois. Hamburg: Meiner, 1995. 93–119.
Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Cronin, Michael. Osaka Modern: The City in the Japanese Imaginary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Dennerlein, Katrin. Narratologie des Raumes. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009.
Döring, Jörg, and Tristan Thielmann. “Einleitung: Was lesen wir im Raume? Der Spatial Turn und das geheime Wissen der Geographen.” In Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften, edited by Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008. 7–45.
Eco, Umberto. “Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture.” In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach. London: Routledge, 2004. 182–202.
Fischer-Nebmaier, Wladimir, Matthew P. Berg, and Anastasia Christou, eds., Narrating the City: History, Space and the Everyday. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.
Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22–27.
Freud, Sigmund. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Sigmund Freud. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur und andere kulturtheoretische Schriften. Introd. Alfred Lorenzer and Bernard Görlich. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2004. 29–108.
Genette, Gérard. “La littérature et l’espace,” In Gérard Genette. Figures II. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969. 43–48.
Gray, Alasdair. Lanark: A Life in Four Books. London: Panther, 1984.
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso, 2012.
Highmore, Ben. Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
———. “Right to the City.” In Henri Lefebvre. Writings on Cities, edited by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Malden: Blackwell, 1996. 61–181.
Lotman, Yuri M. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977.
———. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London: Tauris, 1990.
———. Culture and Explosion. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009.
———. Semiosfera. Saint Peterburg: Iskustvo-SPB, 2010.
Löw, Martina. Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001.
———. The Sociology of Space: Materiality, Social Structures, and Action. Translated by Donald Goodwin. New York: Palgrave, 2016.
Maresch, Rudolf, and Niels Werber. “Permanenzen des Raums.” In Raum—Wissen—Macht, edited by Rudolf Maresch and Niels Werber. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002. 7–30.
McNamara, Kevin R., ed., Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Prince, Gerald, ed., Geographical Narratology. Special issue of Frontiers of Narrative Studies 4, no. 2 (2018): 175–392.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Space.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al. Hamburg: Hamburg University, created 13. January 2012, revised 22. April 2014. https://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/55.html. (Accessed July 10, 2018).
Smith, Robin, and Kevin Hetherington, eds., Urban Rhythms: Mobilities, Space and Interaction in the Contemporary City. Malden, MA: Wiley, 2013.
Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989.
———. “Vom ‘Zeitgeist’ zum ‘Raumgeist’: New Twists on the Spatial Turn.” In Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften, edited by Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008. 241–262.
Thornburg, Barbara, and Evelyn Schulz, eds., Tokyo: Memory, Imagination and the City. Langham: Lexington Books, 2018.
Webber, Andrew J., ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Berlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
———. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Wilde, Oscar. “The Decay of Lying.” In Oscar Wilde. Collected Works of Oscar Wilde. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997. 919–943.
Wolfrum, Sophie, ed., Performative Urbanism: Generating and Designing Urban Space. Berlin: Jovis, 2015.
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Rohleder, R., Kindermann, M. (2020). Introduction: Exploring the Spatiality of the City Across Cultural Texts. In: Kindermann, M., Rohleder, R. (eds) Exploring the Spatiality of the City across Cultural Texts. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55269-5_1
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