Activist performances on edge: spatial politics after the end of public space

Abstract

ABSTRACT Analyses of the shifting dynamics of public space often give way to nostalgic desires to return to former iterations imagined as universally accessible and egalitarian. Instead of lamenting the end of public space, I propose that the contradictions and impossibilities embedded within the colonial concept of publicness might be cause to embrace such an ending. I first introduce the idea of false publics by lingering in a Detroit alleyway to unveil how popular esthetics and discourses of community can obfuscate the violence of structural oppressions. Rather than use this example to argue for a return to truly public space, I instead turn to a series of activist performances to suggest that their embodied acts seek something other than recuperation. By working against prevailing norms about how to act in public, I suggest that these performances challenge the colonial formation of public space and make possible more radical spatial politics.