Walking in the City, Space, and Resistance

“Escaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye, the everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible. Within this ensemble, I shall try to locate the practices that are foreign to the ‘geometrical’ or ‘geographical’ space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions”(Michel de Certeau 93). We talked about this quotation a lot in class and discussed the ways that there is no totalizing theory of the everyday. What I find really fascinating about de Certeau’s theorization of the everyday is the concept of “strangeness” and foreign practices within a laid out geographical space. What I take from this portion of the book is that the disruptions of everyday places, the negotiation of space, is not necessarily where resistance occurs, but it is where we see the negotiations of power within the everyday, and where we see the interesting facets of the everyday in general. I was recently told about the MTV Video Music Awards and Kanye West’s disruptive performance, in attempting to usurp Taylor Swift’s win for her video. I feel like this is an interesting site of understanding disruptions of spaces. While this may not be a “common man’s” everyday space, this is an everyday “pop cultural” space that the public is privy to. So this display caused a lot of controversy and Kanye West was referred to as a jerk for stating his opinion and disrupting the space of the Video Music Awards. I do not necessarily want to place a value judgment on this situation because what I found most interesting in this moment were the power relations that were playing out in this disruptive moment not my own opinion on the situation. At a surface level Kanye West appeared to just be a jerk that ruined Taylor Swift’s moment of glory. However, going beneath the surface level we can see the power relations at play between a semi-powerful black man and a young white woman. While Kanye was advocating for Beyoncé, a black woman, it was not Beyoncé asserting her power upon Taylor Swift. How interesting to think about the intersections of race and gender in this situation. While Kanye is male he is also black and thus, seen as a threat and marginalized. Taylor Swift while white, is also female. In the historical relationships between black men and white women black men are seen as the ultimate threat to white women and their sexuality. Thus, Swift was portrayed as a victim of black male violence. While an unfair characterization of West, he definitely seemed to hold power by being able to speak his mind, while Swift seemed stunned, small, and voice-less. Kanye was not thrown off stage (the fact he made it onstage seemed strange to me), and while some booed him, others cheered him on. But by the very nature of her whiteness and normative, Swift was not powerless, or a simple victim. What also is interesting about this situation, especially in a de Certeauian sense, is that in this moment we can see below the visible to see the disruptions of the everyday. While there is some panoptic surveillance happening in this situation, there is no one theory or one way to view this moment. It is disorderly and thus a moment in the everyday. It was a moment of improvisation that complicated the everyday. It may have been a moment of resistance but really it was a negotiation of power, thus, making it an interesting site of meaning making. Here is the video http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/435995/taylor-swift-wins-best-female-video.jhtml