Spaces of Critique & Transformation in Bande de filles
space ( cookie-cutter urban and suburban locations of transportation and commerce ), and that of time ( the compulsion to ascribe meaning to every moment ) ( Non-places 40 ).
Excess of space , ironically , leads to one of the most significant attributes of supermodernity : the non-place ( non-lieu ). This concept stands in contradistinction to “ anthropological place ,” which is a site of profound origin , and of active belonging and being that Augé describes as “ one occupied by the indigenous inhabitants who live in it , cultivate it , defend it , mark its strong points and keep its frontiers under surveillance , but who also detect in it the traces of chthonian or celestial powers , ancestors or spirits which populate and animate it private geography ” ( Non-places 42 ). Although places and non-places are “ porous ” and exist more as poles of spectrum than distinct categories ( O ’ Bierne 42 ), non-places are quite different from lieux de mémoire . A property and product of supermodernity , they can include locations as heterogenous as hotel chains , holiday clubs , refugee camps and supermarkets , but they are linked by a dominance of wordless communication and commerce unmediated by personal interaction ( Augé , Non-places 78 ).
Indeed , supermodern non-places are more than “ defined [ ... ] by the words and texts they offer us ”— rather , they displace the personal in favor of an anonymous and anonymizing authority ; they are “ spaces in which individuals are supposed to interact only with texts , whose proponents are not individuals but ‘ moral entities ’ or institutions ” ( Augé , Non-places 96 ). Users of non-places , whom one might more accurately describe as “ passers-through ,” create a shared but anonymous temporary identity , for they are in constant “ contractual relations ” with the non-place ( and , by extension , the powers that govern it ), contracts that can be represented by
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