Evictions: Contemporary art, urbanism, and spatial politics.
Item
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Title
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Evictions: Contemporary art, urbanism, and spatial politics.
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Identifier
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AAI9732912
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identifier
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9732912
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Creator
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Deutsche, Rosalyn.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Linda Nochlin
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Architecture | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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Since the 1980s a great deal has been written about the relationship between contemporary aesthetic practices such as art, architecture, and design, on the one hand, and the city, public space, or social space, on the other. Evictions investigates this urban-aesthetic interdisciplinary discourse--its various forms, its historical precedents, and, most importantly, its political functions.;My inquiry unfolds in three stages. The first three chapters explore the mutually supportive relationship that developed in the 1980s between aesthetic ideologies and an oppressive program of urban restructuring--a relationship manifested in growing attention to public art. These chapters draw on critical urban theory to challenge mainstream and conservative rhetoric about art, the city, and public space. I also compare critiques of space in urban studies with critical treatments of space in contemporary art. Chapter 4 examines an influential alliance that has formed between urban and cultural scholars who use critical spatial theory for a different purpose--to ground an account of postmodern culture that defends traditional leftist political projects against challenges posed by new kinds of radical political philosophies, social movements, and aesthetic practices, including new feminist theories. Responding to this alliance, which is exemplifed by the work of Fredric Jameson and David Harvey, I rearticulate the interdisciplinary field: while earlier I adopted the concept of "the politics of space" from Marxist urban studies to contest mainstream aesthetic assumptions, I now reinterpret "the politics of space," using aesthetic ideas about visual representation to dispute leftist urban-aesthetic thought. Chapter 5 expands this reinterpretation, returning to the issue of public art raised at the beginning of the dissertation. This final chapter explores contemporary aesthetic and urban debates about the meaning of the term public. Arguing that critics on both the left and the right frequently deploy this term to authoritarian ends, I rethink the question of public space from the feminist and radical democratic perspectives introduced in the preceding chapter.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
