Response Paper 1: A Comparison between The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau and The Spaces of the Modern City by Gyan Prakash and Kevin Kruse.
The Spaces of the Modern City and The Practice of Everyday Life are two works dedicated to understanding the modern city. Though both de Certeau and Prakash engage with same ideas, contrasting the ‘imagined’ or constructed vision of the modern city, with the ‘real’ or experienced city (exemplified by the everyday life of its inhabitants), the two authors come up with disparate conclusions as to what constitutes the modern city. These two conflicting visions cause the two authors to engage with the forces changing modern cities (namely globalization and urbanization), differently and lead them to reach different …show more content…
For Prakash, the modern city is a “landscape of modernity”, or a setting where local and transnational actors can meet and interact, as well as transcend boundaries of race, culture and identity. De Certeau’s vision of the city is intrinsically bound up, with the history of a city’s inhabitants and their interactions, past and present, with the city’s buildings, streets and public settings. The “memories” of a “bakery” or the home where an old lady used to live, give a “neighborhood its character”, and thus ‘haunt’ a place; for de Certeau, “haunted places are the only ones people can live in”. Prakash disparages the idea of a modern city, as a home for long-time residents, and a setting for the practice of “civil society”. His view is that this conception of the city was “Never realized in practice”, and is regardless both elitist and unrealistic. Instead Prakash celebrates the disappearance of the “paradigmatic European city”, and welcomes its replacement by the “Generic City, which liberates the city from the captivity of the
The Spaces of the Modern City and The Practice of Everyday Life are two works dedicated to understanding the modern city. Though both de Certeau and Prakash engage with same ideas, contrasting the ‘imagined’ or constructed vision of the modern city, with the ‘real’ or experienced city (exemplified by the everyday life of its inhabitants), the two authors come up with disparate conclusions as to what constitutes the modern city. These two conflicting visions cause the two authors to engage with the forces changing modern cities (namely globalization and urbanization), differently and lead them to reach different …show more content…
For Prakash, the modern city is a “landscape of modernity”, or a setting where local and transnational actors can meet and interact, as well as transcend boundaries of race, culture and identity. De Certeau’s vision of the city is intrinsically bound up, with the history of a city’s inhabitants and their interactions, past and present, with the city’s buildings, streets and public settings. The “memories” of a “bakery” or the home where an old lady used to live, give a “neighborhood its character”, and thus ‘haunt’ a place; for de Certeau, “haunted places are the only ones people can live in”. Prakash disparages the idea of a modern city, as a home for long-time residents, and a setting for the practice of “civil society”. His view is that this conception of the city was “Never realized in practice”, and is regardless both elitist and unrealistic. Instead Prakash celebrates the disappearance of the “paradigmatic European city”, and welcomes its replacement by the “Generic City, which liberates the city from the captivity of the