Expert answer:challenge to dualism
Expert answer:This assignment is to challenge to dualism. Your job will be to detect a dualism that is organizing some aspect of your personal practice, to devise a strategy to refine, unseat, or otherwise challenge that dualism in practice (note: for the rest of this document, we’ll refer to these attempts as disruptions). Then, thoughtfully document what you learn from the effort.I have attached the details and reading below.
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Assignment #2: Challenge a Dualism
This assignment is a challenge to dualism. Your job will be to detect a dualism that is
organizing some aspect of your personal practice, to devise a strategy to refine, unseat, or
otherwise challenge that dualism in practice (note: for the rest of this document, we’ll refer to
these attempts as disruptions). Then, thoughtfully document what you learn from the effort.
What is a dualism? Here is a working definition:
• The practice of conceptually splitting some aspect of the world into two opposing
entities or objects
• Sometimes called a dichotomy
If you’re having trouble coming up with a dualism to challenge, consider the following
examples (also see lecture slides from Week 7):
Present-Future Success-Failure
Humanities-Sciences
East-West
Emotional-Rational
Body-Mind
Life-Death
Peaceful-Aggressive
Nature-Culture
Happiness-Grief Beginning-Ending
Anthropologist-Tourist
Us-Them
Mother-Father
Strong-Weak
Known-Unknown Civilian-Military
Fast-Slow
Armed-Unarmed Big-Small
Sick-Well
Female-Male
Empathy-Observation
Organized-Disorganized
Mother-Father
Son-Daughter
Alien-Local
Ally-Enemy
High culture-Low culture Manager-Worker
School-Real Life Reality-Fiction
Truth-Lie
This assignment is meant for us to explore ways that dualisms function to influence situated
practice in terms of our attention, intention, (non)participation, and (in)action and how they
operate in relation to organizing dualisms. Questions we can ask include but are not limited to
the following:
• What is rendered invisible?
• What are the situated practices for maintaining this dualism and how is that labor distributed?
• What kinds of actions begin to make logical sense? What kinds of actions become illogical or
misaligned with the situation?
• How can we trace the history or cultural-history of a present dualism?
• What makes dualisms so resilient?
The Task
Identify a dualism that you can “encounter” in your daily lived experience. Complete each of
the following tasks:
a. Describe the dualism by naming it and attempting to define its meaning and scope (e.g.
Where and when does it matter? How do you know?).
b. Generate a list of contexts in which you are likely to encounter this dualism.
c. Go in search of opportunities to document this dualism at work in real time.
d. Devise a strategy and attempt to disrupt the dualism at least 3 times. Minor attempts to
disrupt will do the job. Notice where your selected activity begins, how it resolves, and what
maneuvers are made (or not made) to restore the dualism in play.
e. WHAT TO TURN IN: Document the result of your efforts and include your reflection on
the experience in a memo. This can include visual aids and written text. Your memo
should not exceed 3 double-spaced pages.
a. Your memo should include the following:
i. Your selected dualism defined and your sense of its scope of influence
ii. A description of your planned disruption and why you think it may be
effective.
iii. A reflection on what you see as situated practices relevant to the dualism
and what you’ve learned in the process of observing and attempting to
disrupt the dualism in practice. Draw on course themes to enhance your
discussion.
On Writing
A strong assignment will have a memo that clearly explains the situated practices to a reader
who wasn’t there. Your planned disruption will reflect a nuanced analysis of situated practices
that sustain the dualism. You will describe your disruptive attempts carefully and descriptively.
If you perceive your disruptive strategy to be “unsuccessful,” your memo will address why that
might have been the case. A strong assignment will connect your claims to evidence &
support, both through observations and the course texts.
The Racialization of Space and the
Spatialization of Race
Theorizing the Hidden Architecture of Landscape
ABSTRACT A primary goal of landscape architects and other
citizens concerned with the built environment should be to disassemble the fatal links that connect race, place, and power.
This article shows that the national spatial imaginary is racially
marked, and that segregation serves as a crucible for creating the
emphasis on exclusion and augmented exchange value that has
guided the contemporary ideal of the properly-ordered, prosperous private home. For aggrieved communities of color and other
non-normative populations, on the other hand, a different spatial imaginary exists. This perspective on space revolves around
solidarities within, between, and across spaces. It views space as
valuable and finite, as a public responsibility for which all must
take stewardship. Privileging the public good over private interests, this spatial imaginary envisions the costs of environmental
protection, efficient transportation, affordable housing, public
education, and universal medical care as common responsibilities to be shared rather than as onerous burdens to be avoided.
This paper argues for a two-part strategy that entails first, a frontal attack on all the mechanisms that prevent people of color
from equal opportunities to accumulate assets that appreciate
in value and that can be passed down across generations, and
second, the embrace of a spatial imaginary based on privileging
use value over exchange value, sociality over selfishness, and
inclusion over exclusion.
KEYWORDS Defensive localism, hostile privatism, racialization, black spatial imaginary
L
ate in June 2005, eighty-two-year-old Allison “Tootie”
Montana stood before the New Orleans City Council and spoke his mind. Montana complained to the
council about the brutal force used by police officers in
dispersing a gathering at the corner of Lasalle Street and
Washington Avenue earlier that year. The crowd consisted of Mardi Gras Indian tribes—social clubs of black
men who masquerade as Plains Indians and parade
through their neighborhoods in flamboyant costumes
twice a year, on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph’s Day.
The officers contended that the group was rowdy, boisterous, and loud, that the participants had no permit to
assemble at the intersection, and that some members
of the group appeared inebriated and potentially violent. Montana saw things differently.
Speaking from his perspective as a resident of the
Seventh Ward, the oldest continuous free black neighborhood in the United States, as a black worker whose
labor as a lather had helped build houses throughout
the city of New Orleans, and as a respected elder—Chief
of the Yellow Pocahontas Tribe and reigning “Chief of
Chiefs” of all the Mardi Gras Indian tribes—Montana
contended that those assembled posed no threat to
civic order and that the Indians had never needed a permit before though their organizations have been parading every St. Joseph’s Day for more than a century.
Montana identified the incident as only the latest insult in a long history of struggles, going back to
the 1940s, over space in New Orleans. He described
incident after incident of police surveillance, harassment, and provocation. He pointed to the importance
of the corner of Lasalle and Washington in the context
of the constant destruction of key neighborhood sites
by urban renewal projects, freeway construction, and
displacement of local residents. He affirmed the right
of the Indians to assemble and complained about official suppression of that right over five decades. Montana told the council members solemnly, “I want this to
stop.” He then paused, collapsed, and fell to the floor
(Reckdahl 2005, 1).
As city officials called for an ambulance, police
officers surrounded the fallen chief and administered
CPR. City Council President Oliver Thomas adjourned
the meeting and asked those present to pray. The Indians in the room began to sing “Indian Red,” a song
that serves as a prayer traditionally voiced to honor the
tribal chief. Montana died later that night at Charity
Hospital.
Tootie Montana passed away while championing
the right of black people in New Orleans to occupy and
traverse urban space. His final words—“I want this to
stop”—speak volumes about the seriousness that lies
beneath the surface spectacle of the Indians’ colorful
hand-made costumes, intricate language and lore, festive dances, and celebratory songs (Lipsitz 1990, 233–
253; 1994, 71–77). In New Orleans, where decades of
housing discrimination, environmental racism, urban
renewal, and police harassment have relegated different races to different spaces, the ferocious theatricality
and aggressive festivity of the Mardi Gras Indians holds
Landscape Journal 26:1–07 ISSN 0277-2426
© 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
George Lipsitz
great significance for the politics of place. Indian imagery evokes a history of heroic self-defense by non-white
people against the theft of their lands. Montana’s Yellow Pocahontas tribe, like all Mardi Gras Indian groups,
comes from a specific neighborhood and speaks for it.
The corner of Lasalle and Washington is not just any
corner. It is a place where Indians have congregated for
more than a century, and it is the location of the Dew
Drop Inn, a venerable hotel, rhythm and blues nightclub, and performance venue famous for its flamboyant
transvestite entertainers.
The Mardi Gras Indians and the New Orleans Police Department clashed on March 19 because they
proceeded from diametrically opposed understandings
of space, from distinct spatial imaginaries rooted in the
links between space and race. From the perspective of
the police department, dispersing the Indians was fully
justified. The officers felt their obligations to protect
property values, to keep local thoroughfares open for
commerce, and to assure that tourists would have unimpeded and untroubled access to places where they
might wish to spend their money in and near the scenic
French Quarter, justified the dispersal of the crowd assembled without a permit at the corner of Washington
and Lasalle. These same officers, however, would never
act in the same way toward the crowds of revelers that
routinely congregate near the Louisiana Superdome on
days when the local professional football team plays
its games. The football crowds do not have permits to
assemble; are loud, boisterous, often drunk; and pose
a greater threat to public order than the gatherings of
Mardi Gras Indians. However, they congregate to spend
a large amount of money in a state-authorized (and
subsidized) facility. Their revelry produces profits for
private businesses. Their rituals and traditions are important to wealthy whites.
The Indian tribes, on the other hand, function all
year round in their neighborhoods as mutual aid societies. They help members meet unexpected emergencies,
pay medical bills and funeral expenses, finance urgent
home repairs, and make up for lost wages caused by layoffs, illness, and injuries. These forms of self-help serve
especially important functions because of the price that
black people in New Orleans pay for the racialization
of space and the spatialization of race. Systematic segregation and discrimination prevent them from freely
acquiring assets that appreciate in value, from moving
to desirable neighborhoods with better services and
amenities, and from reaping the rewards of home ownership built into the American tax code. Urban renewal
projects, like the local football stadium and the Convention Center, have dispersed neighbors to far flung destinations, undermined collective and individual equity
in homes and businesses, reduced the political power
of black voters, and disrupted the routines of neighborhood social and support groups.
Like the members of suburban homeowners’ associations and stakeholders in Common Interest Developments, the inner-city residents who mask as Mardi
Gras Indians express a defensive localism. Unlike their
counterparts in the suburbs, who establish private governments that benefit from exclusionary zoning and
tax subsidized privatism, inner-city residents do not
and cannot control the uses to which their neighborhoods are put by the rest of the city, nor can they secure
increases in the exchange value of their homes. Their
only recourse under these circumstances is to increase
the use value of their neighborhoods by turning “segregation into congregation” and fashioning ferocious
attachments to place as a means of producing useful
mechanisms of solidarity (Lewis 1991, 91–2).
Musician Cyril Neville learned about Indian masking from his uncle George Landry, who served as Big
Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas. “We don’t need
your fancy floats,” Neville imagines the Indians saying
to the downtown Mardi Gras. “We don’t need floats at
all. We have our own stories, our own music, our own
drama. We’ll make our own costumes according to our
designs and we’ll design our own parades.” Neville recalls his uncle’s moral authority as being rooted in their
family’s uptown Thirteenth Ward neighborhood, taking
the name of his tribe from the name of a local street,
and masking as an Indian to tell the world, “This is who
I am, this is where I’m from” (Neville et al. 2000, 245).
Lipsitz
11
On the day when the official Mardi Gras parade
enshrines Canal Street as the center of the city, the Indians parade proudly through their neighborhoods,
calling communities into being through performance.
As Cyril Neville explains, “The mythology of the tribes is
based on territorial integrity—this is our plot of ground
where we rule.” He believes Chief Jolly’s sense of selfaffirmation also came from his uptown Thirteenth Ward
neighborhood (Neville et al. 2000, 245).
THE RACIALIZATION OF SPACE AND THE
SPATIALIZATION OF RACE
The different spatial imaginaries of the New Orleans Police Department and the Mardi Gras Indian tribes have
local causes and consequences, but they are part and
parcel of a larger process: the racialization of space and
the spatialization of race. The lived experience of race
has a spatial dimension, and the lived experience of
space has a racial dimension. People of different races
in the United States are relegated to different physical
locations by housing and lending discrimination, by
school district boundaries, by policing practices, by
zoning regulations, and by the design of transit systems.
The racial demography of the places where people live,
work, play, shop, and travel exposes them to a sociallyshared system of exclusion and inclusion. Race serves
as a key variable in determining who has the ability to
own homes that appreciate in value and can be passed
down to subsequent generations; in deciding which
children have access to education by experienced and
credentialed teachers in safe buildings with adequate
equipment; and in shaping differential exposure to polluted air, water, food, and land (Allen 1995; Feagin and
McKinney 2003; Oliver and Shapiro 1995; Lipsitz 1998).
Opportunities in this society are both spatialized
and racialized. Inheritance based on home ownership
enables white families to pass on the benefits of past
and present discrimination to succeeding generations.
Putatively race-neutral tax policies subsidize those
forms of income most likely to be secured, in part, from
12
Landscape Journal 26:1–07
discriminatory practices. The home mortgage interest
deduction, the local property tax deduction, and the
favored treatment of income derived from inheritance
and capital gains provide enhanced rewards for racism
and subsidies for segregation. Segregated schools and
neighborhoods provide whites with privileged access
to insider information and personal networks, giving
them advantages in securing the 80 to 90 percent of jobs
in American society that are never openly advertised.
These interconnections among race, place, and
power in the United States have a long history. They
stem from concrete policies and practices: Indian removal in the age of westward expansion; restrictive
covenants during the industrial era; and urban renewal
and urban restructuring in the late industrial and early
post-industrial periods (Rogin 1987; Hirsch 1983; Sugrue 1996). Yet these policies also emanate from shared
cultural ideals and moral geographies based on a romance with pure spaces. This romance fuels allegiances
to defensive localism and hostile privatism. It encourages well-off communities to hoard amenities and resources, exclude allegedly undesirable populations,
and maximize property values in competition with
other communities.
Having a better understanding of differential space,
of the roles played by exclusion, exchange value, and
use value in determining the racial meanings of places,
can help landscape architects and other professionals
whose work shapes the built environment to ameliorate
the racialization of space and the spatialization of race.
It is not yet possible, however, to formulate a valid general theory about race and space across different kinds
of societies and historical eras. Land-use regulations,
racial categories, and culturally-based investments
in landscape vary widely across centuries, countries,
and continents.1 The relationship of race to the Enlightenment—as its always disavowed yet universally
produced product—makes it necessary to struggle in
separate sites to unearth and identify the occluded and
disavowed historical genealogies and ideologies of racialized space particular to specific locations.
Understanding the links between race and place
in the United States starts with an examination of concrete racial and spatial practices. Theoretical writings of
Antonio Gramsci show that great value can be secured
from thinking about large concepts in relation to specific and concrete historical and sociological situations
(Hall 1986, 5–27). Louis Althusser (1971) demonstrates
how this kind of thinking can bring new insights to general theory. Althusser depicts the general Marxist theory
of social totality through a spatial metaphor that likens
society to a house with a material “foundation” and an
ideological “superstructure.” Conceding that the metaphor is descriptive rather than analytic, it enables us to
see how social structure is both material and ideological. Althusser’s argument forms a kind of descriptive
theory because it enables us to view reproduction of
the social order simultaneously as a political, ideological, and economic imperative. The metaphor may become theory if and when it activates a perspective that
enables new relationships to come into view (Althusser
1971, 90–92). Similarly, the idea of racially specific spatial imaginaries is not a theory, but a metaphorical construct that reveals actual social relations.
Donna Haraway builds on Althusser’s emphases
on both metaphor and description to argue for the
superiority of “situated” specific theory over universal
grand theory. Using the metaphor of human and animal vision to show that knowledge is “partial, perspectival, and interested,” Haraway insists on the particularity and embodiment of all vision. She argues for the
value of partial perspective, for seeing from a situated
standpoint. Instead of aspiring to an all-encompassing
“eye of God,” she urges us to accept the inevitable partiality of all perspectives, to build on local and situated
knowledges, and to construct “an earthwide network of
connections, including the ability partially to translate
knowledges among very different—and power differentiated—communities” (Haraway 1988, 580). Haraway’s
aim is not to present knowledge as the private property of incommensurable communities, but neither
is it to subsume the experiences of aggrieved groups
into sweeping generalizations for which no one is accountable. She argues that theories that claim universal
applicability will in practice merely elevate one historically-specific dominant particular over others, assuming universality rather than proving it. Rather tha …
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