Icarian Leap

Michel de Certeau, standing on the 110th floor of the World Trade Centre in NYC, observes that to view a city in its totality is an ecstasy of reading - and we've all been atop tall buildings or hills or in a hot air balloon - well, I haven't done the last, but I want to. And certainly, there is a distinctly pleasurable moment in one's ascent when the city, the streets, the corners where you smoke a fag or the alley that cats pee in, all of this mess and smell, become a clean map, a diagram on which lovers point out their little window on an autumn day. I used to love making maps myself as a kid (should have been a warning to my parents) and would spend hours detailing the metro stops and squares of cities built in my head. Not only those, also side cut-out schemata of things such as submarines, commercial space-jets, underground French fortifications (with homoerotic showers included in the complicated structure. Actually, same with the submarines, not the space-jet though) and naturally whole countries with felt-tip-pen-blue rivers and strictly enforced border controls. A fetish perhaps of some sort is revealed in this child's play, fetishism of the eye above, God, the observer, the narrator-creator. It is also a fatally flawed position, one which tempts plans and grids out of our organic brains, where the space of planning is born, where the misery of thousands is formed, where lives are erased to be put into a quantifiable mould. (read this!)

And what is it that bothers me about it? Well, for one the way in which de Certeau calls going back to street level an 'Icarian Fall', a descent from lofty heights to the squalor and chaos of our ant-farm cities. But I do want to believe that on the contrary, it's exactly this sort of Icarian Leap that we need as thinkers and humans, a voluntary and pleasant descent into that which escapes the total view of the plan, the cat pee and the graffiti, the unplanned, unconscious and unexpected that makes life as a cog bearable. I myself have been unable to complete this leap and still derive pleasure from maps and diagrams, but perhaps thinking about it will foster some sense of humility and familiarity with the street level city and not its abstract cousin.

In a sense, this is a nod to another of de Certeau's legacies - the belief that living everyday lives can profoundly change our society as a tool of resistance; while this thinking may have its appeal, especially to the non-revolutionary young adults of today who participate in social change by liking it on Facebook, it is also problematic. While its efficacy can perhaps be defended in the long term (who knows, maybe using canvas bags really will banish unfairness), it is also partly to blame for the acquiescence with the status quo, providing a comforting reassurance that big action is not necessary, that a critical mass of people using the tiniest forms of resistance can successfully challenge the hidden oppression in our society. But as the recent clearing-out of Occupy XYZ encampments shows, the police and the repressive apparatus of the state-capital still crack down on open, engaged opposition - perhaps this is due to the possibility of its success, which is a good reason to leave the house. And on that note, where are my keys?