Steps. The anthropologist updates the theory on spaces of transience, where they are now worlds that are a negative of the other
In airports, train stations, supermarkets and plenty of misery, tourism and migration
few years ago, I used the term "non-places" to designate those areas of the circulation, consumption and communication that are spreading and multiplying across the planet's surface. To my eyes, they were not places of temporary space and the transition spaces through which they could not decipher nor social nor shared histories, nor signs of collective belonging. In other words were the opposite of traditional African villages that I studied previously and where the rules of residence, the division into halves or quarters, religious altars delimited space and allowed to grasp the essentials in their relations among residents. This definition of non-places, however, has two limitations. On the one hand, it is clear that some form of social bond can emerge anywhere, young people who meet regularly in a supermarket, for example, can make it a point to meet and come up with such a place. There are no sites or non-places in an absolute sense. The place may be the non-place of some of the other and vice versa. Virtual spaces of communication, then, allowing people to exchange messages, get in touch with each other, can not be defined non-places. It is, in this case, to question the nature of the relationship that is established through certain communication technologies to also ask how possible that in this world called "relational" individuals feel so alone.
images that are presented give a first answer to this question, or more specifically let reworded to cast a harsh light on the dark side of globalization and at the same time, reveal another dimension of non-places. What allows us to discover, in fact, is not the anonymity of these spaces in which only passes the loneliness of the traveler in transit or temporary freedom alienated the average consumer in the supermarket departments, but the clash of two worlds, each of which is presented as the negative of the other. Those fleeing the poverty, hunger or tyranny, the violence of nature and history, and are thrown into the sea at times endangering their own lives, living in a logic of all or nothing, the "every man for himself", and cut every bond with the place of origin, even if they act in the hope of later helping those who have left home. The army messy exile of the survivors landed on the beaches of the corpses have littered the sea has rgettato: strange heaven, that which usually takes the form of internment camps.
The other world, the one that would like to access and which continues to elude him, can never reach it. It remains a mirage, even for those who enter them illegally. There is nothing more tragic fate of these individuals trapped between two negatives: the origin and the present, but condemned to hope, however, or rather to repeat, to escape the total nonsense. Finite
then postponed until later, the subtle distinctions between empirical and non-places non-places theoretical considerations on the various nuanced relationship that you may have with different spaces. The images that we have under our eyes show us first of all individuals who have lost their place without having found another, individuals assigned to the doubly non-places, in a sense. Often the Africans fleeing tear their identity documents to prevent, once taken, to be returned to their country of origin: as non-persons have a greater chance to grab a bit 'longer than the non-places on which went aground. Moreover, it is precisely those two worlds collide: a world to which we must survive and escape to a world that does everything to repel this invasion of poverty, build walls to contain the attacks, is border patrol police , refine the methods of inquiry and open fields to park those who have succeeded in spite of everything coming. On the one hand, therefore, the abundance non-places (airports, highways, supermarkets). Second, the non-places of misery: shelter, sometimes (when welcome, as is the case in Africa, the masses fleeing because of mssacri and repression), and prison (when you imprison those who have finally set foot on the Promised Land). Also, at the same time, a refuge and a prison, objects at the same time, the policing and humanitarian assistance.
What do they have in common these two types of non-places? More than meets the eye, perhaps. Why is obviously their points of contact and move from one world to another - the airports, major roads, ports - that are put in place mechanisms of defense. They are also the means of transport characteristic of our age (the planes and their landing gear, large trucks and their containers) to provide a vehicle and an underground hideout. Airports have their detention and expulsion of salt are loaded onto airliners or charter. The crossing points have a strategic importance. And 'that unfold beyond the means of monitoring more sophisticated, but it's always there, at the junction of both worlds, passing tourists. Drawn from the exoticism, sand, sun and sex, there will flock to travel to the countries that migrants seeking to leave. These two movements going in the opposite direction (tourism and migration) meet and are ignored. E 'but think, looking at a couple under an umbrella lying west, intent on relaxing at the sea a few steps away from a corpse run aground on the beach, the image is emblematic of our age.
Written by Marc Auge, 'In vino veritas
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