Description
Book SynopsisThe essays collected in this volume unfold a panorama of urban phenomena of resistance that reach from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, thus revealing the essential vulnerability of urban space to all forms of subversion. Taking their readers to diverse places and moments in history, the contributions remind us of the struggles over the concrete as well as the imaginary space we call the city. The collection maps the various challenges experienced by urban communities, ranging from the unmistakably hegemonic claim of civic festivities in early modern London to the perceived threat posed by newly created parks in the Restoration period and from the dangers of criminality and riots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the transformation of the Berlin Wall into souvenirs scattered around the globe. Contributors: Ingo Berensmeyer, Christoph Ehland, Pascal Fischer, Blake Fitzpatrick, Kerstin Frank, Jens Martin Gurr, Bernd Hirsch, Marie Hologa, Mihaela Irimia, Stephan Kohl, Norbert Lennartz, Catharina Löffler, Margaret Olin, István Rácz, Gerd Stratmann.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors General Introduction Christoph Ehland and Pascal Fischer Introduction: Challenging Urban Space Christoph Ehland and Pascal Fischer Part 1: Contested Civic Spaces in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 1 Civic Subversion in London’s Public Rituals in the Seventeenth Century Christoph Ehland 2 The Earl of Rochester: Sexual Politics, Riots and the Chaos of the Carnivalesque Norbert Lennartz 3 Rus in Urbe: Parks in Eighteenth-Century Cities Mihaela Irimia 4 The Slippery Slope to the Gallows: Crime and Punishment in Early Eighteenth-Century London Kerstin Frank Part 2: Urban Rioting in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 5 Giving Meaning to Anarchy: Contemporary Interpretations of Rioting in 18th-Century Britain Gerd Stratmann 6 Blending Spaces: The Gordon Riots in Literature Pascal Fischer 7 The “Capital of Discontent”: Urban Resistance in Manchester Bernd Hirsch Part 3: Reimagining Urban Space 8 Creating Situationist Ambiences: Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography Stephan Kohl 9 Reshaping the City: The Eruv as Stealth Architecture Margaret Olin 10 Challenging Urban Realities in Recent London Writing: Iain Sinclair’s Ghost Milk and John Lanchester’s Capital Ingo Berensmeyer and Catharina Löffler Part 4: Creative Transformations of the City 11 Critical Urban Studies and/in “Right to the City” Movements: The Politics of Form in Activist Cultural Production Jens Martin Gurr 12 Street Art as Reclaiming the Streets Marie Hologa 13 Graffiti as a Place of Resistance in British Poetry István D. Rácz 14 The Berlin Wall as Mobile Ruin Blake Fitzpatrick Index
