Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis: (13) 'No Country for Old Men' - Or Women?

City

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 266-278

  Catterall, Bob ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 50049119158     PISSN: 13604813     EISSN: 14703629     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13604810802319512     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men (NCFOM) Miramax DVD.
2. Farber, Y. (2008) Molora. London: Oberon Books, p.7. The production to which I refer subsequently was by Oxford Playhouse in association with The Farber Foundry Production. It was a touring production that moved during April to June 2008 from Oxford, to the Barbican in London Kingston's Rose Theatre, and to Newcastle's Northern Stage
3. Catterall, B. (2004a) 'Is it all coming together? Further thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis: (2) What time is this space?' City 8(2), p. 24
4. McCarthy, C. (2005), NCFOM. London: Picador, p. 271.
5. Cineaste, XXXIII (3), p. 10.
6. Ibid., p. 12.
7. Farber (2008), pp. 7-8.
8. Ibid., p. 56.
9. Ibid., p. 83.
10. Ibid., p.2.
11. Ibid., p. 87.
12. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx New York: Routledge, p.xv.
13. Of the nine contributors, excluding Derrida, to Sprinker, M., ed. (1999) Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, London/New York: Verso, only Fredric Jameson comments on Derrida's 'series of interventions on South Africa' and their importance as part of the political dimension of his work - see p. 29.
14. NCFOM, p. 249.
15. Symptomatic of the direction in which Mbeki has since taken South Africa is his recent (summer of 2008) 'diplomacy' in relation to fellow one-time 'revolutionary' Mugabe's campaign of intimidation and murder during the elections in Zimbabwe. Much of the current commentary treats the intimidation and the diplomacy as though they are new phenomena. But R. W. Johnson, for one, noted the same pattern when Mugabe lost the 2000 constitutional referendum. Johnson, R.W.(2004) South Africa: The First Man, The Last Nation London: Phoenix, pp. 221-222.
16. Ibid. p. 210.
17. Ibid., p. 210.
18. For a necessarily complex account of the TRC written from a perspective that explores the nature of social drama, see the final chapter of Loren Kruger's (2004) Post-Imperial Brecht: Politics and performance in East and South, Cambridge University Press, pp. 282-337.
19. Ibid., p.216.
20. Farber, p. 86.
21. Catterall, B. (2005) 'Is it all coming together? Further thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis (6): Modernity and Muslims, militants and mediators' City 9(3), p.405.
22. Gilligan, C.(2003) The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love, London: Vintage.
23. Young-Bruehl, E. (2006) Why Arendt Matters, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp. 119-120.
24. 'Word spy', a web site devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases'.
25. For discussion of Dizzee Rascal, see Catterall, B. (2003) 'Is it all coming together? Further thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis:(1) Spaces and meanings', City 7(3) pp423-32
26. and Catterall, B (2004a), pp. 311-313.
27. See Mendieta, E. (2004) 'Imperial geographies and topographies of nihilism', City 8(1), pp. 5-28.
28. See, Catterall, B. (2004b) 'Like a silent war...', City, 8(1), pp 149-151 for a review of the exhibition. (See also the editorial to that issue.) The exhibition was at the Photofusion Gallery, Brixton, London, January-March, 2004. My thanks to Ian Teh for several discussions of his exhibition and in particular for the information on which the captions are based that I reproduce here from my original review.
29. The Three Gorges Dam project involved the destruction of 13 cities, 400 towns and 1,352 villages. Even by 2004, it was estimated by Zheng Jianchao of the Academy of Engineering in China, that in order to achieve the required boost to China's power capacity in 20 years there would be required 'an additional supply equivalent to four more Three Gorges hydroelectric dams...' (This is not all. Also required would be '26 Yazhou coalmines, 6 Daqing oilfields... 20 nuclear plants', etc, etc.) Sources are given, with further discussion, in Catterall, B. (2004a), pp. 319-320.
30. But for how long will a carrot remain a carrot? How far can it be commodified away from its earthbound origin and nature? June Jordan has applied these questions to devastating effect in her poem, 'From Sea to Shining Sea', to the display of pomegranates in a commodified context in which they - and much else, including ourselves/our selves - are presented as part of a new 'natural order.' The poem begins: 'Natural order is being restored Natural means you take a pomegranate that encapsulated plastic looking orb complete with its little top/a childproof cap that you can neither twist nor turn and you keep the pomegranate stacked inside a wobbly pyramid compose by 103 additional megranates next to a sign saying 89 cents each...' The poem is in Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles (eds), The Collected Poems of June Jordan, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2005, pp. 321-325. The poem was selected and read by Angela Davis for an event in honour of Jordan's work at the San Francisco Public Library in 2005.
31. My thanks to Kurt Iveson for comments on a draft of this endpiece in which, emphasising the importance of the notion of the right to the city, despite the small amount of space devoted to it here, he notes: 'In response to the vanishings and displacements, the city will be a key terrain for the formation of alternatives to nihilism, and the right to the city is crucial in this context.' To be continued...