At Home on the Midway: Carnival Conventions and Yard Space in Gibsonton, Florida

This chapter affords us a special opportunity to examine the confluence of two embodiments in person and in landscape: carnival freak/local-neighbor and carnival midway/backyard-in-a-neighborhood, which result in the confluence of symbolizations. What appears to be an oxymoron, contradiction, or bizarre overlay is shown to be workable way of life, especially the qualities of mobility and itinerancy against a staid notion of home. Gibsonton is the objectivation of a particular form of lived-experience, symbolizing its ambiguous embodiment and it succeeds due to its enactive participatory process of negotiating symbolic meanings. The author uses Gibsonton as a foil to critically examine New Urbanism. New Urbanism attempts to manufacture life through symbols that are not lived embodiments, because its strategy is to reify and to control behavior by erecting strict building codes that will coerce certain acceptable patternings of life, spatially inscribed through its pre-fabricated symbolizations. Body schemas may not conform with its behavioral modeling and non-resonance with its symbolizations will make the manufacturing of life an unsuccessful venture. Gibsonton allows us to rethink the fundamental significance of home as an adventure in the vernacular—a creative engagement with situational spatialities.