Abstract
Inspired by Edward Soja’s theoretical work on spatiality, this chapter looks at Los Angeles fiction between 1985 and 1997, exploring and exposing the nature of the freeway/road network as a means of spatial control and restriction and the means by which this spatial organisation is subverted in pursuit of alternative conceptions of space. Moving through the ideological oppression of urban spatial organisation to the struggle against physical oppression in Pynchon’s Vineland and Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, the chapter demonstrates how a combination of ideological and physical disruption and struggle results in new conceptions of space within the urban environment and the transmission of an alternative spatial organisation.
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Notes
- 1.
I have used illegalism to connote ideas surrounding ‘Propaganda by the Deed.’ For a discussion of illegalism, see Doug Imrie, “The ‘Illegalists,’” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (Fall–Winter, 1994–95). The idea of propaganda by the deed is linked with my thinking regarding the process of writing with the body and draws links between physical activism and writing.
- 2.
It is, of course, worth mentioning that the freeway system in Los Angeles or elsewhere is not inherently repressive despite its restrictive nature. The need to move people around a city requires a great deal of coordination, which the freeways provide, but as stated, require the driver to surrender a great deal of freedom and autonomy in order to move around the city. Banham builds on this point, writing ‘No human eye at windscreen level can unravel the complexities of even a relatively simple intersection…fast enough for a normal human brain moving forward at up to sixty m p h to make the right decision in time, and there is no alternative to complete surrender of will to the instructions on the signs.’ (p. 219) One consequence of this surrender of will, as this chapter discusses, is the potential for this restrictive space to support a wider repressive superstructure, predicated as it is on the surrender of will and autonomy.
References
Banham, Rayner. (1971). Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. London: Lane. Print.
Fine, David M. (2004). Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction (University of Nevada Press pbk ed.). Reno: University of Nevada Press. Print.
Gazi, J. (2016). Pynchon’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Vineland, Film, and the Tragedy of the American Activism of the 1960s. Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 10(1), 27–62.
Lynch, Kevin. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Print.
Pynchon, Thomas. (1996). Vineland. Repr. London: Mandarin. Print.
Soja, Edward W. (2011). Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Print.
Wigger, A. (2016). Anarchism as Emancipatory Theory and Praxis: Implications for Critical Marxist Research. Capital & Class, 40(1), 129–145.
Yamashita, Karen Tei. (1997). Tropic of Orange: A Novel. Minneapolis, MN; Saint Paul, MN: Coffee House Press. Print.
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Bickers, G.F. (2019). ‘This Situation Can Be Duplicated’: Text as Radical Placemaking Tool. In: Fisker, J., Chiappini, L., Pugalis, L., Bruzzese, A. (eds) Enabling Urban Alternatives. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_2
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