Foucault and the city: Formation of the ‘Other’

Abstract

The city is a space of complexity where power and space intersect in a multitude of ways and, as Michel Foucault identifies, producing a multitude of results. Thus, when the urban fabric is restructured to meet hegemonic ideals, less visible city dwellers come to the fore. This presentation explores the mechanism of power relations in construction of the ‘Other’ by analysing the statehouse communities undergoing gentrification in Glen Innes in Auckland, New Zealand. Foucauldian concepts have been widely deployed in architectural and urban discourses; however, in this paper, we will only focus on the notion of subject in order to argue that spatial configurations facilitate the formation of sense-of-self, or as Foucault calls it, subjectivity. This philosophical concept was important for Foucault specifically in the 1970s-1980s. In Discipline and Punish (1975) and the History of Sexuality, Volume I (1976), he examines the emergence of the modern subject in relation to disciplinary power and later in the lecture course The Hermeneutics of the Subject (1980-1981), he highlights that subjectivity is an act, a performance that is informed by truth and power relations. In this paper, we will focus on these texts to first describe the notion of assujettissement (translated as subjectivation, subjection, or subjugation) and second to show its application in the analysis of the role of architecture and the urban environment in the construction of the ‘Other’. Notably, the literature makes visible the role of hegemonic mechanisms of power in the construction of the Other within the city. In fact, the Other is primarily a socially excluded phenomenon; its otherness is subsequently stabilised by spatial configurations (architectural and urban). This cyclical socio-spatial segregation highlights how the Other is trapped in the discourse of binary oppositions – ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ or ‘hegemony’ vs. ‘deviant’. Foucault, however, suggests that the binary division between ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’ can be challenged because the ‘oppressed’ are opportunely placed to resist. The containers that hold them, the margins, provide the Other a space for subversion, appropriation, and transformation. This paper draws on the existing literature in architectural discourse that is focused on the notion of Other and frames the question, “What are the ways through which spatial configurations facilitate the construction of the Other as a marginalised subject and how can that marginal condition become a creative site for resisting the hegemonic/dominant norms?”. Through this, the paper hopes to understand how urban and spatial relations contributed to the construction of the highly marginalised suburb of Glenn Innes, characterised by low levels of income and education and unemployment and overcrowding and the ways through which this community reconstructs itself using the potential of being the Other.