O'Callaghan, Cian (2012) Lightness and Weight: (Re)Reading Urban Potentialities Through Photographs. In: Anniversary Essays: Forty Years of Geography in Maynooth. National University of Ireland Maynooth, pp. 356-369. ISBN 9780992746605

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Abstract

For Serres, the city is an imperfect citation perpetually reproducing and transforming itself. No matter how deep we dig into its historical layers ‘...another point always interpolates itself iteratively, in front of it. One city demands another city, one history requires another; but we do not really know how time flows’ (Serres 1991:39, in Crang and Travlou 2001:174). Time and space, for Serres, are ‘pleated’ in that other temporalities and spatialities are always suggested in any given moment in any given place. Thus, the city always escapes from the net of totalising narratives that seek to encapsulate it, wriggles free of the ‘Gods-eye’ view, eludes the orderly vision of what de Certeau (1984) calls the ‘concept city’. Cities exist in a state of relational tension between attempts to represent them and their inherent multiplicity. As such, the city is a constantly shifting spasm of relations, writhing in and out of the flows of movement and stasis, which can be apprehended in moments of (perceived) unitary meaning before again dissolving into the ether of urban flux.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	First published in Area (2012), 44(2), 200-207
Keywords:	Lightness; Weight; Urban Potentialities; Photographs; Anniversary Essays; Geography; Maynooth;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography
Item ID:	5600
Depositing User:	IR Editor
Date Deposited:	05 Dec 2014 15:31
Publisher:	National University of Ireland Maynooth
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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