Non-Place (part 2)

[stilldancer]

We cannot rule out the possibility that the anthropologist, following Freud's example, might care to consider himself as indigenous to his own culture -- a privileged informant so to speak -- and risk a few attempts at ethno-self-analysis.

Mark Augé
I spent a gorgeous Tuesday afernoon and evening lurking about underground in the Brussels metro

Comments

[redbendad]

Very interesting.

I think the couple who always sit together but have never spoken to be the most fascinating. I'm betting they fantasize about each other. I would.

I guess Metro behavior is like elevator behavior, except that people who travel together every day have a common identity.

[dharmagrrrl]

re the freud quote ... just remember that self part of it and that you cannot (should not) assume that everyone follows the same patterns just because you and the people you chose to watch do. are women really envious of the penis and do they find sex a cause for fainting ... or was it only the middle class woman at the time who felt that way, as suggested by Fromm? our views are limited by our selves. they are also expanded by our selves.

two questions:
Why would you talk to someone you did not already know?
Why would you talk to someone you already know?

The detachment and general habitual act that is the subway is not something I can associate with. My time in subways has been spent with friends, on vacation, traveling ... a completely different function than a work/life commute. This makes me wonder how this public space for the personal commute, a time of defragging between home and work and food finding and visiting, compares to the personal space of a car or the partially-personal space of a taxi or the smaller community of a

[kalimotxo]

I like the quote at the end as well. Field anthropology really can teach as much about the individual as the population.

I like the first photo. Really captures the mood of Brussels transit. I remember commuting in Seville & Malaga, and it is more interactive with other passangers. Cultural differences are easy to find behind, but it always seemed to me that because there was more of a dispensity to talking with fellow travellers, the design of the physical spaces somehow actually reflected that. One would think that the architects of transit stations in a way to motivate interactions. But I suppose that would actually make people more uncomfortable.

[kalimotxo]

That first snippet of notes you gave we've discussed before. Remember our discussion during the abortive attempt to get to Bristol from Tottenham Court Rd?

[stilldancer]

yes, yes, it was the same feeling that returned to me when i really tried to immerse myself into the surroundings. Now the Tot. Court Rd. tube stop, and the state we were in, that was WAY more intense...

[kalimotxo]

It was pretty intense, wasn't it.