This dissertation aims to position train surfing as a visual spectacle that is practised by Sowetan train surfers within the context of post-authoritarian Johannesburg. The author argues that train surfing is a visual and spatial phenomenon that is theoretically under-researched. As such, this study aims to decode seven train surfing videos to establish what train surfing looks like, where train surfing occurs and why individuals participate in such a high risk activity. This study, furthermore, aims to frame train surfing as a spectacle by investigating the similarities between train surfing and rites of passage (initiation rites). The author also regards train surfing as a very specific form of storytelling. The narratives conveyed in the seven videos are, therefore, interpreted to establish that train surfing is practised to ‘voice’ fatalistic feelings, societal as well as individual crises. After establishing the visual aspects of train surfing, the author focuses on the spatial context of train surfing. Johannesburg is described as both an authoritarian and post-authoritarian construct by tracing the spatial and political history of the city. When the discussion turns to the post-authoritarian city, townships and squatter settlements are analysed as being both marginal and hybrid spaces. It is argued that townships are marginal spaces due to their location, they are inhabited by the underclass and they are formed by processes of capitalism and urbanisation, and as a result of these factors, township residents might have fatalistic mindsets (Gulick 1989). The author, however, contends that township space is an ambivalent construct, and as such, it can also be read as hybrid space. Here, hybrid space is interpreted as a platform from which township residents can resist oppressing spatial and political ideologies. In this context, train surfing is regarded as one way in which train surfers use hybrid space to express tactics of resistance. After establishing the spatial context of train surfing, the socio-economic and material living conditions of train surfers are investigated. The discussion firstly, explores the underclass, as theorised by Jencks and Peterson (1990), and thereafter highlights why train surfers can be classified as being part of this sub-category. It is, furthermore, argued that Sowetan train surfers are part of a new lost generation due to high unemployment rates, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and bleak future outlooks. The author aims to establish that, as a result of their socio-economic status and material living conditions, train surfers are fatalistic, and practice an extreme activity to exert control over one area of their lives, namely their bodies. Lastly, the dissertation aims to explore train surfing as being both a risk-taking activity and a new spatial practice. The dynamics of adolescent risk-taking behaviour is explored by emphasising the psychological motivations behind high risk activities. The author argues that alienating space can be regarded as an additional factor that usher adolescents into risk-taking activities. As such, the place(s) and space(s) inhabited by train surfers, namely Johannesburg, Soweto and township train stations, are discussed as alienating spaces. Moreover, it is argued that alienating spaces create opportunities for resistance (following the power-resistance dialectic inherent to space), and as such, train surfing is interpreted as a de-alienating spatial practice that enables the marginalised train surfer to exert control over his surroundings. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

Ce mémoire interroge le rôle des initiatives alimentaires communautaires dans l’expression du droit à la ville, tel qu’énoncé par Henri Lefebvre en 1968. Une étude de cas portant sur Notre Quartier Nourricier (NQN) (Centre-Sud, Montréal) a été conduite afin de vérifier en quoi ce projet, articulé autour du droit à l’alimentation, permet aux participant/es de se (ré)approprier leur quartier et de participer davantage à la vie communautaire. Notre collecte de données, basée sur 17 entretiens semi-dirigés et plus de 100 heures d’observation, révèle qu’en cherchant à récupérer une certaine prise sur le système alimentaire local, NQN crée des lieux hétérotopiques articulés autour de la production, de la distribution et de la transformation des aliments. Ces lieux deviennent ensuite le support de relations sociales riches, en dehors des valeurs capitalistes. Le sentiment d’appartenance au quartier est ainsi renforcé, voire créé, ce qui suscite chez les participant/es à NQN une envie de s’engager dans leur communauté. À notre avis, NQN construit ainsi un véritable habiter nourricier favorisant une certaine reconquête des conditions de la vie urbaine. Cet habiter nourricier permet de revendiquer collectivement un plus grand droit à la ville. D’un point de vue théorique, allier le droit à l’alimentation au droit à la ville permet de poser un regard holistique sur la condition urbaine – marquée par l’aliénation et tissée d’histoires de dépossession –, et de mettre en lumière les racines communes de la faim urbaine et de la restructuration constante de l’espace urbain : le capitalisme. / This thesis explores the role of community food initiatives in the expression of the right to the city, as envisioned by Henri Lefebvre in 1968. We conducted a case study on Notre Quartier Nourricier (NQN) (Centre-Sud, Montreal) to verify if this project, articulated around the right to food, allows participants to reclaim their neighbourhood and participate more in community life. Our data collection, based on 17 semi-structured interviews and more than 100 hours of observation, revealing that by seeking to recover a certain reward on the local food system, NQN creates heterotopic places articulated around food production, distribution and transformation. These places become the support of rich social relations, outside of capitalist values. The feeling of belonging to the neighbourhood is thus reinforced, even created, which produces, among the participants in NQN, a desire to take part in neighbourhood life. In our opinion, NQN is thus building a « habiter nourricier », which promotes a certain reappropriation of the conditions of urban life. This « habiter nourricier » makes it possible to collectively claim a greater right to the city. From a theoretical point of view, combining the right to food with the right to the city gives a holistic look at the urban condition – marked by alienation and woven with dispossession stories –, and highlights the common roots of urban hunger and the constant restructuring of the urban space: capitalism.

This dissertation is a study of the architecture of commodity capital: the display window. Taking as a starting point the work of Henri Lefebvre and Goerg Simmel, this dissertation understands the shop window to be a mode of display, what I define as “the logic of the vitrine,” that has shaped the way the world appears. Tracing a genealogy from the Parisian Arcades to the twentieth-century department store, this project explores the relationships between gender, sexuality, race, and architecture. Feminist critiques of commodity desire and display illuminate how the shop window is as important to our understandings of capitalism as is the commodity. Through feminist, queer, postcolonial, and anti-racist readings of material and commodity culture, this dissertation considers the shop window to be a site of subject formation. This dissertation also examines how designers, artists, and architects have explored the display of the shop window through a series of case studies, including Marina Abramovic’s Role Exchange, Gene Moore’s “drag” in Bonwit Teller’s shop windows, the making of a black mannequin, and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s site-specific installation 25 Windows. This dissertation concludes with a consideration of the architectural role reversals of the shop window and the gallery; the work of Silvia Kolbowski and Elmgreen and Dragset’s Prada Marfa ground this analysis. Artists have disrupted the display of the shop window, transforming the architecture of commodity capital into a space for resistance and critique.

When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare's Othello in London in 1930, tickets were in high demand during the production's first week. The critical response, however, was less positive, although the reviews unanimously praised his bass-baritone delivery. When Robeson again played Othello on Broadway thirteen years later, critics praised not only his voice but also his acting, the drama running for 296 performances. My argument concerning Robeson uses elements first noted by Henri Lefebvre in his seminal work, The Production of Space, while I also draw on Paul Connerton's work on commemorative practices. Using spatial and memorial theories as a backdrop for examining his two portrayals, I suggest that Robeson's nascent geopolitical awareness following the 1930 production, combined with his already celebrated musical voice, allowed him to perform the role more dramatically in 1943.

The purpose of this essay has been to attain an in-depth understanding of communicative power struggles within the urban space from a critical urban perspective based on the Right to the City. The project that constitutes the case study for this analysis has been the BID Malmö’s utility box project. The starting point has been that Malmö’s utility boxes function as a communicative medium, an urban public bulletin board, a common whose usage is constrained by projects implemented by entities like BID Malmö. The study is grounded in a theoretical understanding of the city as a social product, marked by power struggles linked to the competitive, postindustrial city. Critical urban theory has been combined with a discourse-oriented ctitical perspective focusing on power, ideology and hegemony, forming the basis for the conducted critical discourse analysis. The findings of the study reveal that art and culture are assigned a central role in the postindustrial city, tasked with transforming urban space. The transformation from a dirty or unsafe current to a safe and attractive futurecity. At the same time, culture is assigned a commitment to fostering participation, even as the same art is used to enclose and restrict certain parts of the public space. / Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att nå fördjupad kunskap om det urbana rummets kommunikativa maktkamper utifrån ett kritiskt urbant perspektiv om Rätten till staden. BID Malmös elskåpsprojekt har utgjort undersökningens fallstudie. Utgångspunkten har varit att Malmös elskåp är ett kommunikativt medium, en urban offentlig anslagstavla, en allmänning. Vars användning begränsas genom olika projekt som genomförs av bland andra BID Malmö. Undersökningen förankras i en teoretisk förståelse för staden som socialt producerad och präglad av maktkamper kopplade till den konkurrerande, postindustriella staden. Den kritiska urbana teorin har kombinerats med ett diskursteoretiskt perspektiv med fokus på makt, ideologi och hegemoni. Vilka tillsammans har lagt grunden för den genomförda kritiska diskursanalysen. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att konsten och kulturen tillskrivs en central roll i den postindustriella staden, vars uppgift är att omskapa rummet till något annat än vad det är idag med fokus på trygghet och stadens attraktivitet. Kulturen tillskrivs ett åtagande att skapa delaktighet, samtidigt som samma kultur används för att inhägna och stänga ner delar av det offentliga rummet och minska rätten till staden.

In geography, maps are a tool of placement which locate both the cartographer and the territory made cartographic. In order to place objects in space, the cartographer inserts his own judgment into the scheme of his design. During the Early Modern period, maps were no longer suspicious icons as they were in the Middle Ages and not yet products of science, but subjects of discourse and works of art. The image of a cartographer’s territory depended on his vision—both the nature and placement of his gaze—and the product reflected that author’s judgment. This is not a study of maps as such but of Early Modern literature, cartographic by nature—the observations of the author were the motif of its design. However, rather than concretize observational judgment through art, the Early Modern literature discussed asserts a reverse relation—the generation of the material which may be observed, the reality, by the views of authors. Spatiality is now an emerging philosophical field of study, taking root in the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari. Using the notion prevalent in both Postmodern and Early Modern spatiality, which makes of perception a collective delusion with its roots in the critique of Kant, this thesis draws a through-line across time, as texts such as Robert Burton’s An Anatomy of Melancholy, Thomas More’s Utopia, and selections from William Shakespeare display a tendency to remove value from the standard of representation, to replace meaning with cognition and prioritize a view of views over an observable world. Only John Milton approaches perception as possibly referential to objective reality, by re-inserting his ability to observe and exist in that reality, in a corpus which becomes less generative simulations of material than concrete signposts to his judgment in the world.

本論文探討英國劇作家凱洛•邱琪兒之《九重天》以及《頂尖女孩》兩劇中深具顛覆性的時空手法。本論文由五章組成。第一章回顧多年來相關的眾多評論角度。第二章援引巴赫汀(Mikhail Bakhtin)的時空型(chronotope)概念探討兩戲中時空融匯的現象，尤其是劇中人物心理、身體狀態，戲劇時空，以及外在社會文化時空背景，三者之間緊密的互動。兩齣戲各別有著兩個不同的時空型：《九重天》第一幕代表的是性別角色僵化的時空型，第二幕則代表了1979年當時社會上傳統性別角色開放且迅速轉變的狀態；《頂尖女孩》則透過一對姐妹Marlene與Joyce對映出當時兩種不同的女性生活，一個是典型八零年代柴契爾主義的事業女強人，一個則是在此種政經趨勢下卻相對更加弱勢的傳統女性。 第三章則探討兩劇第一幕呈現長久以來隱藏空間當中的性別歧視。透過女性地理學者(feminist geographical theorist)之觀點，筆者分析兩戲當中兩性間不同的空間體驗(spatial experience)，以及公/私領域之分界(private-public distinction)所暗藏性別歧視的空間隱喻(spatial metaphor)。當男性與冒險及旅行等等充滿能動性(mobility)的字眼連結，女性卻總是被動地與家庭空間緊緊連繫。邱琪兒在此揭露空間亦為不公平的性別政治當中之一環。 第四章則著重於分析《九重天》第二幕當中的公園場景，以及《頂尖女孩》第二、三幕的辦公室與廚房場景。首先援引傅柯(Michel Foucault)的異質空間(heterotopia)概念來討論各場景間複雜的鏡像與補償關係。透過空間理論學者昂希．列菲弗爾(Henri Lefebvre)以及抵抗地景(geographies of resistance)的空間生產理論分析邱琪兒如何透過呈現特定社會族群佔領特定空間的手法，企圖激進地改變現實當中此類空間的社會意義。 雖然距兩齣劇作首演的年代已有二十多年，但其中所探討之議題依然常見於現今二十一世紀的社會當中。邱琪兒預見了現今複雜的家庭狀態以及大鳴大放的同性戀運動。即使越來越多女性在政治界或是企業界嶄露頭角，世界上多數的女性依然掙扎於找尋工作與家庭之間的平衡點。 / This thesis is to examine Caryl Churchill’s subversive temporal and spatial devices on stage in Cloud Nine and Top Girls. The chronotopes of the two plays articulate how people’s states of beings interact with the external social and cultural conditions, especially during the 1980s in London. Both plays crystallize the space politics full of gender discriminations in the patriarchal society. In addition, Churchill’s dramatic devices are the subversive spatial practice that transforms the gendered spaces into the sites of resistance in order to manifest her protest and seeks more possibilities for the gender roles in the future. There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter One is an introduction, including the overview of two plays and the review of numerous analyses in the past two and half decades. In Chapter Two, Churchill’s theatrical temporal and spatial devices, including setting, synchronism, and anachronism in Cloud Nine and Top Girls construct chronotopes that lay bare the special social and cultural condition in a certain historical moment. Those chronotopes demonstrate how Churchill unifies people’s internal states of being and the external political structures together. Moreover, by presenting the chronotopes, Churchill criticizes the slowness of the progress in gender politics and the possible backlash about women’s right in the 1980s. In Chapter Three, I analyze how the spatiality of patriarchy constructed by the private-public dichotomy in both Act Ones of Cloud Nine and Top Girls. The spatial experiences between men and women depicted in Act One of Cloud Nine illustrate the stereotypical masculinity and femininity in the Victorian age. The spatial metaphors about movement in Act One of Top Girls expose the strict boundary between the private and the public spaces, and foreshadow the importance of mobility as being a possible strategy to transgress the boundaries. Finally, Chapter Four is the analysis about how Churchill subversively and politically explores the possibility of creating new social spaces in the park space of Cloud Nine and the office space of Top Girls. Her theatrical strategies are potential spatial practices that create the rupture to transgress the unfair restrictions and discriminations in the patriarchal and heterosexual society. The final chapter concludes that Churchill’s dramatic devices about time and space are the subversive strategies to conduct her observations and criticisms about the unfairness in society.

《兩個閒蕩徒弟的懶惰旅行》(The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, 1857) 是一本由查理‧狄更斯(Charles Dickens)與威爾基‧柯林斯(Wilkie Collins)根據他們的旅途見聞再加上各自創作的兩篇短篇故事所集結而成的小說。在過去，許多批評家只單論文本中的兩篇短篇故事，而忽略鑲嵌短篇故事的主架構，把文本切割至互不相連的碎片。本論文主要採取昂希‧列斐伏爾(Henri Lefebvre)對於空間三面向的理論概念來剖析《兩個閒蕩徒弟的懶惰旅行》在文本中反覆出現，並且被不同主體所論述的閒蕩(idleness)一詞，試圖藉由呈現閒蕩的多重意義而把《兩個閒蕩徒弟的懶惰旅行》視為一有機的整體。論文第二章借助空間的再現(representation of space)概念論述看似懶散、不事生產的地景是如何被規劃，最終喪失其神性(deity)。論文的第三章則檢視空間使用者與空間的互動。本章從空間實踐(spatial practice)的角度切入，試圖證明文本中的精神病院(lunatic asylum)、火車站(railway station)與賽馬週(race-week)的空間規劃異化(alienate)了生活在其中的空間居民，而居民無所事事的遊蕩正是此異化的展現。第四章援引再現的空間(space of representation)之概念，試圖證明閒蕩也有其積極面向。藉由檢視故事主人翁法蘭西‧古柴爾德(Francis Goodchild)與湯瑪士‧艾朵(Thomas Idle)既合作又競爭的夥伴關係，閒蕩對於湯瑪士‧艾朵而言，是一種在文本中爭取發言權的手段。至於對缺乏官方實證的怪談野史而言，閒蕩也是一種抵抗大論述收編、並且同時揭露資本主義中金錢對於人性腐蝕的路徑。 / The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices is a travelogue worked in collaboration between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Besides noting down what they observe and encounter during the trip, Dickens and Collins also enclose two gothic tales which is written respectively by them. Nevertheless, when most critics mention The Lazy Tour, they limit their concerns to simply the two interpolated tales, which violates the integrity of The Lazy Tour by dissecting it into disconnected pieces. This thesis proposes to apply Henri Lefebvre’s conceptual triad to analyze the recurring theme, idleness, which is interpreted by different subjects. By presenting the variations of the concept of idleness, this thesis attempts to see The Lazy Tour as an organic whole. Applying the idea of representation of space, Chapter Two explains how the seemingly inoperative landscapes are programmed and designed, which results in the demise of the deity of Nature. With the support of the concept of spatial practice, Chapter Three proposes to demonstrate how the spatial designs of the lunatic asylum, railway station, and the festive occasion, the race-week, respectively alienate the spatial inhabitants. The idleness manifested by these spatial inhabitants is the syndrome of their alienation. Chapter Four analyzes the constructive aspect of the idleness with the assistance of Lefebvre’s idea of space of representation. In terms of Thomas Idle, one of the protagonists, idleness serves as a resistant measure to develop his own narrative. As far as the two interpolated tales are concerned, idleness can be compared to a way to resist the incorporation of the narrative framework of The Lazy Tour, and in the meanwhile discloses the moral corruption brought by Capitalism.

本研究以日常生活為研究範疇，探討使用者的手機新聞接收實踐如何鑲嵌於日常節奏中，並重新釐清該如何理解如此經驗下的新聞。故以液態現代性為基本認識架構，重新詮釋新聞如何液化；接著，再從液態的時間經驗轉向節奏，並從列斐伏爾物的節奏分析中發現「人－技術－日常節奏」的交互關係；最後以關聯性機緣了解節奏的生成，開展本文的分析架構：日常生活脈絡、主動揭露的技術、以及與整體媒介世界的關聯，進一步理解使用者殊異的手機新聞接收實踐。 因此，為了更深入瞭解使用者的個人經驗，以及如何詮釋意義，本研究採取深度訪談法。從中發現，當手機新聞進入使用者的日常生活，為了與原有日常節奏協調，使用者會形成一套調配時間與空間的邏輯，或建立特定接收規則，進而形構如「拿起來看一下」的接收節奏、和「都看討論比較熱烈」的篩選機制；這過程中，手機和接收平台的技術節奏、既有的功能條件、以及技術的社會意涵皆會影響使用者的手機新聞接收實踐；最後我們亦發現，如此接收實踐背後更隱含與整體媒介世界的關聯，且媒介世界的基礎結構亦會作為背景、認識架構滿實使用者自身的新聞接收經驗。 是以，我們不能只討論新聞本身，而需擴大到使新聞顯現的背景脈絡與整體環節，進而提出「新聞體驗」的想法，認為如此體驗是相應關聯下、具明確指向性的個人體驗，且是於世之中，由不斷連續的、當下的直接知覺形構而成，期盼能以新聞體驗的概念重新釐清新聞之於個別使用者的核心價值，這才是新聞不被淘汰的關鍵。 / This study aims at exploring how users’ daily reception of mobile news embedded in their everyday life. In order to clarify the essence of news, the study applies the concept of Liquid Modernity as the research framework, adopting Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis to reframe the interrelationships of “human- technics- daily rhythm”. In response to this question, this study develops three analysis units: contexts of everyday life, self-revealed technics, and the interrelation to the whole media world. In-depth interview is conducted to deeply understand user experience. It is found that, when mobile news enters users’ life, users adjust their thinking patterns of zoning time and space, and restructure the rules of reception for integrating original daily pace. The technical rhythms of the mobiles and the reception platforms, the technical properties, and social affordances of the technics, all are the factors to affect users’ mobile news reception. This study also found that the practices implying the interrelation with the whole media world, and the whole media world would be the background to fulfill user experience of news reception. In conclusion, this study suggests that, ‘News’ is an activity of experience. This personal experience is instituted by continuing direct-perception at a given time. Individual users have been changed from passive acceptance to active experience and restructure the value of news. The concept of ‘news experience’ helps us think the meaning of news for each user; clarify how to ‘experience’ news rather than “reading” news.

Everyware, ubiquitous computing, connexion ambiante, condition hyperconnectée, hypersphère,… Dans la dernière décennie, les chercheurs de tous domaines confondus ont convoqué une série de termes très différents pour évoquer les conséquences de l’introduction des dispositifs mobiles ont engendrés sur notre manière de vivre et habiter l’espace. En poursuivant les réflexions entamées par les chercheurs appartenant au « tournant spatial », cette thèse se propose d’interroger l’imaginaire spatial dans la littérature numérique contemporaine tel que modifié par les nouvelles technologies ainsi que les modalités dont la littérature s’est emparé de ces technologies pour les détourner ou les intégrer en tant qu’éléments poétiques à part entière. Quel est le nouveau rapport à l’espace que dessinent le téléphone intelligent, les réseaux sociaux et la géolocalisation ? Comment la littérature se modifie-t-elle en devenant géolocalisée ? Qu’il soit question de l’espace urbain ou d’autres types d’espaces, cette thèse interroge l’intégration d’outils, de pratiques et de techniques numériques à l’écriture littéraire de l’espace. Au moment où la présence d’une technologie de géolocalisation participe également au processus de redéfinition de notre position dans le monde, en redéfinissant notre rapport à la fois personnel et littéraire à l’espace, comment notre position spatiale devient-elle une donnée partageable, conversationnelle et sémiotique – signifiant et matière poétique à part entière, tout autant que le langage ? / Everyware, ubiquitous computing, ambient connection, hyperconnected condition, hypersphere... In the last decade, researchers from all fields have used a series of very different terms to evoke the consequences of the introduction of mobile devices on our way of living and inhabiting space. By continuing the reflections started by the researchers belonging to the "spatial turn", this thesis proposes to question the spatial imaginary in contemporary digital literature as modified by the new technologies as well as the modalities in which literature has seized these technologies to divert them or integrate them as poetic elements in their own right. What is the new relationship to space that the smart phone, social networks and geolocation draw? How does literature change by becoming geolocated? Whether we are talking about urban space or other types of space, this thesis questions the integration of digital tools, practices and techniques into the literary writing of space. At a time when the presence of geolocation technology also participates in the process of redefining our position in the world, redefining our personal and literary relationship to space, how does our spatial position become a shareable, conversational and semiotic datum - a signifier and poetic material in its own right, as much as language?