Critical Spatial Literacy

This paper argues that there is a growing need for scholars and their students to actively engage in post-disciplinary ventures in order to adequately study much of today’s phenomenon (social, economic, cultural, environmental or political); all of which require consideration of the complexity and inherent fluid dynamism of everyday life, no matter the scale of activity and level of analysis. Furthermore it is posited that taking such a radical and all-embracing approach to research, necessitates a form of “teaching to transgress” (hooks, 1994) that includes a reflexive praxis of nurturing within oneself, and in others, an ability to cross beyond the boundaries around and within given epistemological and ontological borders. Additionally, it requires a “mestiza or border consciousness” (Anzaldua, 1987) to engage in the co-construction of knowledges from, within and on the many contested in-betweens, so full of promise and ambiguity. This paper also suggests that such praxis must be in accordance with the growing recognition of the utility of spatially-oriented analytical concepts; thus, perhaps then also contributing to the various curriculum discourses (Pinar et al, 1996); in this case by developing an understanding of curriculum as a spatial text. Most importantly, a post-disciplinary approach also demands our becoming “revolutionary educators” (McLaren, 2001) who engage the world with a conscious positionality and are dedicated to transforming knowledge through epistemological critique that nurtures “decoloniality of thinking and being” (Mignolo & Tlostanova, 2006).

This article analyzes Heb 13, particularly vv. 7–19, applying the methods of spatial analysis. Of specific interest is the space described as “outside the camp” in Heb 13:11–13. As the term seems to allude to three different spaces in time, namely, the spaces outside the desert camp, outside Jerusalem, and outside Rome (the addressees’ location as generally assumed), a practice of overlapping maps can be observed, in which the first shapes all subsequent maps. This first map points to Sinai, where the ritual related to Yom Kippur was introduced. As Sinai is also the location where Israel’s leader Moses, to whom Jesus in Hebrews is compared, left the camp due to its defilement, the primary intertext underlying Heb 13 is identified in Exod 33, particularly in vv. 7–11. A detailed spatial analysis of the Sinai narrative adopting Edward W. Soja’s trialectic of Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace, together with additional readings from various Targumim as well as Philo of Alexandria, results in a useful model that seems to have served the author of Hebrews to interpret the spaces, bodies, and actions in ch. 13. This analysis not only sheds new interpretative light on a chapter widely considered to be a crux interpretum but also strengthens the position that this chapter is an integral part of the preceding text in Hebrews.

This presentation makes a case for an urgent praxis of critical spatial literacy (CSL), especially for African women. It does so by providing an analysis of fifteen Asante women's negotiation of the politics of urban space; hence, demonstrating how they critically read the postmodern world in order to make place within it. Basically, the presentation discusses key findings that reveal contemporary Asante women's critical perceptions and responses to the significant socio-spatial effects of akwantu, anibuei ne sikasem (travel, ‘civilization,’ and money matters).

The presentation also shows how the utilization of CSL as a theoretical framework for researching Asante women’s lives means that we cannot take the women’s everyday practices for granted, as they assert ownership over the contemporary spaces that change dynamic ‘traditional’ ways of living. Instead, a dialogue is necessary to discuss the consequences and implications of the transformative power of contemporary space—such as Accra’s urbanity—on African women’s subjectivities. In doing so, an analysis is made of how the continued dismantling of traditional notions of spatiality affect conceptions of identity, and social practices, as women pit against the racial, gender, and class-based terms of Western capitalist architectural designs and ideologies for contemporary living.

The presentation also elaborates on how this study is the development of a feminist, ‘renegade’ architectural project; in that, as feminist practice, it acknowledges and comprehends transnational cultural flows (linked to the movement of capitalist social relations) so as to understand the material conditions that structure women’s lives in different locations. This is in order to plan effective opposition to the capitalist economic and cultural hegemonies that are taking new global forms, and revealing themselves in gendered spatial relations. This presentation describes this important feminist pedagogical process of spatial literacy, which is further presented in the book, Spatial Literacy: Contemporary Asante Women’s Place-making.

In this course, students will be introduced to various spatially-oriented counter-narratives that contest normative notions of development as a linear process of modernization, the nation state as its nexus, and the presumption of gendered hierarchies of individuals subject to performing within such a progress narrative. More specifically we will look at the significance of the multiply-identified migrating “body,” as agent, interacting in various networks of relationships (and things) within, and beyond, developing societies. We will utilize conceptual frameworks, derived from critical social theory, de-colonial thinking and being, feminisms, and geography to discuss questions such as: How does a spatially-oriented critical reading of the “developing” world inform our social construction of knowledge(s) on it? What is the relationship between spatiality, knowledge and power? How does (hegemonic) knowledge production arise as a consequence of struggles over (academic) place? How is the researcher implicated in appropriating, re-constructing and/or dismantling existing knowledge structures?

The premise of this class is that a critical pedagogy on gender and space (especially the forces involved in the production and reproduction of both) is a necessary condition for a thorough understanding of all societies and the effects (physical, social, economic or cultural) of various development interventions in the quest for modernity. Space is here considered in its multidimensionality, namely physical and socio-cultural spaces and their different dimensions including place, territory, borders and boundaries, mobility, and positionality will be discussed. We will deconstruct widespread understandings of developing societies as being given and set in specific places that are bound by fixed categories such as nation-state; that is, a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We will also look at how gender, another socially constructed category, is highly implicated in these ideological processes. We contrast this with an understanding of space and gender as both a manifestation, as well as a vehicle, of the productive relations of power by various bodies acting on, from and within them. Consequently, we will investigate spatial relations, the making of inclusion and exclusion, centrality versus marginality, difference and similarity within the development context and our academic constructions of it.

This is the abstract for a chapter in a forthcoming anthology entitled “Womanism Rising: Womanist Studies Is Here!” by Layli Maparyan. The anthology is part of the “New Visions in Womanism, Feminism, and Indigeneity” book series published by University of Illinois Press.

This is the PowerPoint presentation for a paper that was presented at the Crossroads Asia Conference in Bonn, Germany, from 27-28 November 2014. The conference was entitled Crossroads Studies: Mobilities, Immobilities and the Issue of Positionality for Rethinking Area Studies.

In the State of the World’s Cities Report 2008/9, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that with more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas, we must define this period as an urban century that heralds many challenges, as well as expectations of rapid and dramatic change. Ironically, urban growth is most rapid in the developing world—with the highest rate of change in urban population being in Africa—where there is often less political stability, economic resources and physical infrastructure to meet these challenges and expectations. Among these millions of migrants to urban centers, are significant numbers of women who come to cities not only to join their spouses and/or other family members, but also increasingly on their own volition due to domestic violence, discrimination, abandonment, stigmatization or a search for economic opportunity. While both men and women are exposed to urban challenges, it is often women who are particularly disadvantaged in these contexts due to cultural and/or religious norms, as well as inequitable access and rights to economic, legal, political and social structures.

The continued growth of cities and female-headed households in the developing world, especially the dramatic increases on the African continent, necessitate an increased development focus on humanitarian architecture and other built environment considerations as part of the global agenda to tackle poverty by addressing issues of gender inequality and women’s empowerment particularly within the urban context. Additionally, it begs for a nuanced approach to policy research on urban development and regeneration, which takes into consideration a gender perspective; including a specific focus on poor women’s spatial experiences. Such an approach would speak to what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also describes, in the report, as the promotion of harmonious urbanization by supporting pro-poor, inclusive and equitable urban development. In further discussing the above, this paper makes a case for the importance of the built environment in any gender and social development agenda that seeks to work towards fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), especially the third goal (MDG3), while simultaneously working towards the fulfillment of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This paper is a brief account and argument for using Built Environment Education Workshops (BEEWs) as a data collection method. The research is based on women of African descent and the connections among their social practices, the spaces that generate them and are generated by them, and the language they use to mediate and/or negotiate those spaces. Feminist popular education models and other relevant feminist perspectives are used to design the BEEWs. The paper notes that the research process and product are "real" and "imagined" effects of chaos theory. Chaos theory has been and will continue to be used as both metaphor and process to capture the dynamic amorphous layered reality of the city's postmodern, geohistoric condition, the "place" of women of African descent within it, the role that building industry professionals play in defining the spaces in which these women live, the empowering possibilities of utilizing popular education to enable critical understanding of spatial politics, the varied critical theoretical frameworks used to illuminate and define the phenomenon, the foregrounding of a peculiar standpoint within this research agenda, the methods used to develop this standpoint and to gather research data, and lastly, the actual way that the final dissertation research results will be presented. The paper uses June Jordan's poetry to move the reader through the academic discourse. This use of both creative writing and academic discourse is an example of the layering effects of chaos theory, in which similar themes can be read in both texts. (Contains 14 notes and 48 references. Appendixes include a BEEW summary and motivational images.)