University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series (Jun 2016)
The Construction of Ethical Subject and Heterotopias in Paul Auster’s City of Glass
Abstract
The initial stimulus for this article came from my observation of the widespread fixation on the crisis of the city in recent urban studies and urban fiction. It is a space that looms large and monstrous over the urban individual who is either relegated to the position of an observant walker or who assumes assimilation to the environment of image.1 Paul Auster’s City of Glass allows me to take issue with the common discourse on cities as homogenized, sinister and culturally uniform spaces and the subjects as victimized and passivized entities.2 In fact, Auster’s urban space deals with a wider range of issues beyond those of contemporary urban crisis. Embedded in Auster’s urban novel are provocative theoretical perspectives on how the characters defy the traditional view of power as a centralized force and resistance only in oppositional terms, as that which is mounted from outside and against those who hold power. Within the framework of Foucault’s notions of heteretopia and power, it will be argued that the spaces of power and resistance are intricately connected and power is enabling as it enables the emergence of resistance (heterotopias of deviation) and alternative ways of becoming otherwise. Accordingly, this article investigates how spaces are power-ridden and contested sites and how it is possible to ‘ethicalize’ spaces by a participatory and relational enactment of neglected and underimagined city spaces and denizens. Eventually, it will be argued that City of Glass to some extent creates an urban vision which highlights the always emergent, processual and progressive spaces that enable the construction of a subjectivity that is transgressive and moral (responsive and responsible) as well as a space that is ethical (inclusive and democratic).
