Hand-overcast

Last week we read Non-Places: From Places to Non-Places by Marc Auge’. The reading describes what a non-place is and how it is actually related to a place. To understand how this relationship works we first need to define a place and a non-pace.

Auge’ defines a place as “relational, historical and concerned with identity.” These places are towns or village centers and lively urban neighborhoods. We feel close and comfortable to our neighbors and history, it’s what we search for in a place. He defines a non-place as “a space that cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity,” also “non-place designates two complementary but distinct realities: space formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces.” Non-places then are airports, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and highways. In these non-places one has a clearer sense if identity, singularity. One does just what they want to do and doesn’t have concerns for other people in the non-place. When one is in a place there is a sense of community, it is what makes the place a place. However, when one is in a non-place movement is overpowering tradition.

Since non-places and places are so different, how then are they related to each other? They are related by the fact that whenever you have a non-place there is always some aspect of a place and vice versa. As Auge’ states “[a place] is formed by individual identities, through complicities of language, local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how; non-place creates the shared identity of passengers, costumers or Sunday drivers.” For example, in an airport everyone is going in their own direction, their own destination but they have shared identities because they all have a destination. Some people’s destinations might be the same (the same gate, airplane or baggage claim), while others is just a destination somewhere (a gate, restaurant, starbucks, ticket counter, etc.) Everyone has a personal identity, but they are all shared in some way. Auge’ also says that “certain places exist only through the words that evoke them, in this sense they are non-places, or rather, imaginary places: banal utopias, clichés.” For example, the signs that lead one to rest stops create the illusion of a place, but in fact it is a non-place because you have all of these people going in their own direction. Yes they are all stopping at the same place to do the same thing, but the only reason this happens is because of the sign that states that the “place” is a rest stop