tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post8016698082932176450..comments2024-02-14T20:13:10.431+00:00Comments on OtherAberdeen: Up the Stairs to an Understanding of Topography #03Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-3781278018002871052011-08-25T12:48:50.353+01:002011-08-25T12:48:50.353+01:00Slums are zoos. Separated from participation in th...Slums <i>are</i> zoos. Separated from participation in the mainstream, the denizens (literally 'den'izens of Upper Denburn and Hardwierd) were an out-group within the city itself. <br /><br />Ghettos and slums are necessary within our <i>society of the spectacle</i>, because they are required for the educational representation of poverty and ignorance and thuggery and barbarism; they are required to demonstrate to the mainstream what the lowest possible platform in our society of demonstrably hierarchised wealth looks like. Thus slums serve the function of both an educational warning and a didactic safetyblanket: The consequences of failure to work 'hard enough' are dangled before us in a diorama, but also the slums allow the mainstream to feel all the better about itself for having risen above such a lowly condition - comforting. The viaducts of the Victorians merely made literal this metaphor.<br /><br />Should ghetto-dwellers, or shanty-livers, or slum-denizens dare to approach the condition of the mainstream, by 'aspiring' and playing by 'the rules' which 'decent, ordinary' people adhere to, then they find that the pitch is queered. The closer they approach the mainstream condition of prosperous affluence, then the farther away the mainstream itself moves, for the mainstream is a moveable feast. <br />Per Debord:<br /><i><b>...they come to see that this prosperity is not a fixed state but an endless ladder. The higher they climb, the farther they get from the top, because they start off disadvantaged, because they are less qualified and thus more numerous among the unemployed, and finally because the hierarchy that crushes them is not based on economic buying power alone: they are also treated as inherently inferior in every area of daily life by the customs and prejudices of a society in which all human power is based on buying power... </b></i><br /><br />Because of this hierarchical organisation, slums are relative and the 'pets corner' full of the poor will always be with us, to finger-waggingly admonish us (as we notionally admonish them for their own victim status) and inspire us on to work harder and conform all the closer to our bosses orders, lest we fall from the parapet into the bear-pit below. <br /><br />Our society has no gulags or purgatories, it does not need them while it has the spectacle of slums and ghettoes below, to catch us when we fall.Key Stakeholderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06797437057257512040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-89834710935991051632011-08-25T11:37:34.016+01:002011-08-25T11:37:34.016+01:00Great stuff, very much what I'm trying to do i...Great stuff, very much what I'm trying to do in Hidden Aberdeen, revive the hidden city; thanks again for a fresh insight, esp the idea of turning the slums into a sort of human zoo!!Fiona-Jane Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246900525619336561noreply@blogger.com