Hoffman Lisa M. - Spaces of danger: culture and power in the everyday

Spaces of Danger

GEOGRAPHIES OF JUSTICE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

SERIES EDITORS

Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto

Nik Heynen, University of Georgia

Melissa W. Wright, Pennsylvania State University

ADVISORY BOARD

Mathew Coleman, Ohio State University

Sapana Doshi, University of Arizona

Zeynep Gambetti, Boazii University

Geoff Mann, Simon Fraser University

James McCarthy, Clark University

Beverly Mullings, Queens University

Harvey Neo, National University of Singapore

Geraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia

Ananya Roy, University of California, Berkeley

Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, CUNY Graduate Center

Jamie Winders, Syracuse University

Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore

Spaces of Danger

CULTURE AND POWER IN THE EVERYDAY

EDITED BY

HEATHER MERRILL

LISA M. HOFFMAN

With a Foreword by Paul Rabinow

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS

Athens & London

2015 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spaces of danger : culture and power in the everyday / edited by Heather Merrill, Lisa M. Hoffman. First Edition. pages cm. (Geographies of justice and social transformation ; 26)

ISBN 978-0-8203-4876-6 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-8203-4877-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8203-4875-9 (ebook)

1. Liberty. 2. Mass media and culture. 3. Terrorism and mass media.

I. Merrill, Heather, editor. II. Hoffman, Lisa M., editor.

HM1266.s73 2015

302.23dc23

2015013483

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

In loving memory of Allan Pred,

we dedicate this book to the future

the next generation of scholars

The Anglophone necrophilia that surrounds certain European thinkers is distressing. I experience this daily in the way the work and person of Michel Foucault is taken up. The result is nothing short of obscene. The cultism is a betrayal of the entire form of life of these thinkers. But I also know how hard it is, what kind of burden it imposes, to work and live in the wake of the scattering of twentieth-century thinkers by whom ones life is challenged at times to the point of humiliating despair as well as opened up to horizons and illuminations beyond the bureaucracies, conformities, status games, and petty disciplines of the academic world.

When Allan Pred approached me many years ago to co-teach, I was flattered but a bit reticent. I was flattered because Pred was already a widely published scholar, admirably thoughtful and serious, with broad historical and comparative reach. I felt I could learn a great deal from his commanding understanding of macrostructures of capitalism at historical periods close at hand as well as a bit farther back, archaeologically speaking. And I did. It always amazed me how much Pred knew about technical issues of finance, markets, and the like. The man knew what he was talking about. He wore it lightly.

Yet I was also reticent in that it seemed clear that one reason for Pred wanting to co-teach with me was my engagements and involvement with French and German traditions of critical thought as well as their (then) current manifestations. Although the Anglophone cult of Foucault or Deleuze was just taking shape in the early 1980s, the mania for Walter Benjamin was fully tumescent. The obligatory vaguely German pronunciation of his last name (but not his first) invariably set off surface immune responses on my part.

I soon discovered, to my pleasure and immense benefit, that Allan Pred as a scholar, a thinker, a teacher, and a person was neither pretentious nor trendy. Although I continue to draw little nourishment or solace from the works of Walter Benjamin, I did learn a great deal from Pred about the nourishment and solace that might well be drawn from this quirky, unorthodox, and basically idiosyncratic thinker.

Actually the thing I most cherish from my years of accompanying Allan Pred in discussions, seminars, coffees, and the like was the meaningor better, the possibilityof friendship. Leaving the autobiographical in the shadows where it belongs, Pred showed me elements of what philosophic friendship in the broadest sense of the term could be. I think of the overflowing joy that Allan displayed when discussing his encounters with Gunnar Olsson. More to the point here: Allan treated Walter Benjamin as a friend. He cherished and protected their encounters. He respected the learning and critical insights of this man so different from himself. He sympathized with the cost of the horrifying struggles of the interwar years that Benjamin had to endure and cope with in one manner or another. He understood that big labels did not help much in a friendship: after all one Frankfurt Marxist, Adorno (as well as Horkheimer), had engaged in savage and destructive criticism of Benjamins most cherished project. He showed us that having predecessors was invaluable and yet that the key to loyalty was not to mimic them. He struggled with the limits and flaws of things he held dearSweden in his case.

Dame Fortune smiled on me when she sent Allan Pred my way. I am forever in her debt. The glimmers of hope in these dark times continue to emanate from those rare friends, not just their magnificent work, but the way they livedthe way they patiently, unobtrusively, caringly, and thoughtfully taught us how to live.

Paul Rabinow

This volume is the result of the collective support and labor of a number of individuals. We began envisioning a book inspired by the ingenious and path-breaking work of Allan Pred, one of the leading human critical geographers of the twentieth century, several years ago. With Rebecca Dolhinow we organized a double session, Passages of Pred, at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) meeting in 2008. Allan had recently passed after battling cancer, and as his students we found ourselves grieving and yet inspired by the time we had with him. The project gained momentum when Heather presented an earlier version of her chapter included here at Colgate University, and it took shape as a book proposal when we formally gathered contributors in 2010. The Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Series at the University of Georgia Press recognized the value of a Predian approachone that draws on a cultural Marxist tradition, but is also decidedly about pushing boundaries and being un-disciplinedand offered a home for this collection.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the original AAG session: Caroline Desbiens, Rebecca Dolhinow, James Freeman, Marta Gutman, Cary Karacas, Katharyne Mitchell, Damani Partridge, Jessica Zacher, and Andrea Zemgulys, as well as others in our graduate cohort that moved between anthropology, urban studies, and geography at UC Berkeley, and indeed, our other advisors there who encouraged such transdisciplinary work (Aihwa Ong, Paul Rabinow, William Shack, Ruth Wilson Gilmore). Heather would like to express a special gratitude to Geraldine Pratt for her inspiration by suggesting that we put such a volume in motion and for her continuous generosity throughout the journey. This volume would not have been realized without her. We would also like to express great appreciation to Michael Watts for his unwavering guidance and support.