Nature,’ Gissen describes, is desirable in a city if it can be easily controlled and is pleasurable for citizens (for example, parks, ‘green belts,’ etc.).* Yet there are many natures that defy management and comfort. Gissen refers to these as ‘subnature’ – that which falls “below” (23) nature and threatens the notion of the modern city as clean, efficient, and safe. This includes things such as dankness, exhaust, dust, mud, weeds, pigeons, and crowds. Experiences with subnatures are explained as “the most fearsome, because it describes the limits in which contemporary life might be staged” (23). The fabrication in ‘Western’ societies that we can control and dominate all aspects of our environment is called into question by the critical acknowledgment of subnatures. Gissen shows that the process of what gets categorized as desirable or marginal is a political one and he hopes that his attention to subnatures will encourage readers to “consider the possibilities of exploiting subnature as a form of agitation or intellectual provocation” (25). Specifically, he urges architects and city planners to engage with subnatures in creative ways in order to expand our thinking on architecture and nature.
Gissen’s approach is valuable, as subnatures that evoke reactions of disgust and discomfort are consistently overlooked. Yet I encountered problems with the style and structure of his book, and connectedly, an under-developed theoretical foundation. His method in each chapter, of moving through historical to contemporary examples of how architects perceive various subnatures becomes repetitive and as one is inundated with examples, the discussion becomes more descriptive than analytic. Although his text is meant to be “somewhere between an exhibition catalog and an architectural theory book” (26), I suggest that it should have been more of a theory text given his goal to instigate innovative understandings of subnatures.
While the highly descriptive chapters provide a strong sense of what is ‘out there,’ I was left with several questions. For example, once a subnatural entity is entered into dialogue through architecture, does it begin to move the subnatural into the natural? Asked differently, do we end up removing subnature from the margins and treating it as though it is a ‘controllable’ and ‘pleasurable’ nature? What are the implications of this? Are subnatures meant to stay in the margins? Or is the goal simply to open up discussions on discomfort and to consider the social norms that influence our perceptions of nature? Gissen remarks that “at the very least, [a building that engages subnatures] enables the constituent features of nature to be understood, debated, and perhaps ultimately transformed, while leaving a record of an earlier struggle” (211). Yet at the end of his book, I still wonder how far we can push ourselves with discomfort in practice. How do we account for reactions of disgust to subnatures, especially the visceral aspect of these experiences of disgust, and the potential of the visceral to shut down engagement (see Kristeva, 1982; Ahmed, 2004)? I also wonder about the tensions of engaging with subnatures in highly governed spaces (building codes, health and safety regulations, etc.) and how these restrictions impact possibilities for activist subnature structures. Gissen argues that it would be undesirable, if not unethical, to embrace subnatures in all situations. Thus ethics must be woven more explicitly into the theoretical analysis that needs to emerge from this book. Overall, the concept of ‘subnature’ is a necessary one, and the value of Gissen’s work is that he initiates a much-needed discussion on several difficult subjects. It is worthwhile though to think further about the fundamental theoretical issues that subnatures compel.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
* ‘Citizens’ is used strategically here. As Gissen makes clear, those deemed lower class or less-than-citizens are perceived to have a very different relationships to subnature – harbourers of disease and dirt, ‘natural’ inhabitants of subnatures, etc.
This was written by Anne Galloway. Posted on Monday, April 12, 2010, at 14:45. Filed under Architecture, Book reviews, Everyday life. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
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