Spatialisation of Power/Knowledge/Discourse

Abstract

This study focuses on the problem of the reconstruction of urban space through discursive representations. Understanding how discourse is spatialised will provide a conceptual ground for the discussion of the problem. The evaluation of knowledge, power, and representation in spatial terms becomes the fundamental premise in the study. Urban space is the space where discursive representations have a social and spatial existence. Here, urban space is approached as an archival space that renders spatial-social-political information visible. The problem is studied in reference to the Sultanahmet district in Istanbul. The Sultanahmet district is an urban palimpset whose archival structure has been made through discursive representations, each constructed on the proceding one.

An Anthropology of Crosslocations

“…Geographically distributed between the territories that are today described as Europe on the one side and Asia on the other, Istanbul is Türkiye's largest economic centre and its most densely populated city (Keyder 2005;Keyman and Koyuncu 2005). Cut through by the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Aegean and Black seas via the Sea of Marmara, the city's distinctive topography has been a strategic geopolitical asset for centuries, contributing towards the area's key position as the capital of three empires-Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman (Gür 2002;İnalcık 1969.…”

Lugares ambivalentes: el espacio vivido de las juventudes urbanas en ciudades fronterizas

“…Sin embargo, es importante tomar en cuenta que los espacios de vida no son arbitrarios. Ellos responden a un orden o disposición de la vida urbana y, a la vez, ayudan a estructurarla, lo que hace posible que el cuerpo espacial devenga social, y a la vez la construcción de la ciudad como un lugar donde cobran existencia las representaciones discursivas del poder (Gür, 2002). Por tanto, las redes topológicas y los lugares que las integran, como ámbitos diversos de interacción social, no son espacios neutros, se construyen de manera desigual en cuanto al género, la clase social, la edad, entre otras coordenadas sociales de los sujetos (Horschelmann & van Blerk, 2011;Ortiz, 2021;Páramo & Burbano, 2010;Rojo & Hidalgo, 2021).…”

Genealogy of the Other and Practices of Spatialization

“…This surely does not mean that we should neglect geography or reject it as an old paradigm of spatialization, because geography itself transformed into understanding a new comprehension of space (Crang & Thrift 2003;Elden 2001;Gupta and Ferguson, 1997;Harvey 1992;Lefebvre 2007;Pickles 2009;Soja 1980;Soja 1989). Like Michel Foucault (1986) demonstrated, without any pretension of systematization in the study of geography, in this field of geo-epistemology we recognize knowledge, power (power/ knowledge), discursive creation, view, episteme… a system of an organized scatteredness (Foucault 1980a;Gür 2002). Although the geography of scatteredness is a concept from physical geography, where it signifies the lack of connection between spatial entities, we use it in a metaphorical sense as a concept of "political geography", that is, as "a space of scatteredness; an open field of relations which, undoubtedly, can be described infinitely" (Foucault 1994a: 676).…”