Taking up space

 

Building on my argument from last week about the implicit biases and inequity of public space, I go back to a quote by David Harvey on the political occupation of public space in relation to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“Spreading from city to city, the tactics of Occupy Wall Street are to take a central public space, a park or a square, close to where many of the levers of power are centered, and, by putting human bodies in that place, to convert public space into a political commons-a place for open discussion and debate over what that power is doing and how best to oppose its reach.” 

Harvey’s quote invokes the ancient Roman forums as public places of political discourse. The idea of occupying these spaces begins to challenge the exclusionary attitudes I discussed previously as the marginalised people reclaim their ancient right to spaces of discourse in order to assert their place in discussions of power. The Occupy movement was unsuccessful for a number of reasons, which is truly unfortunate given their noble goals and basic demands for justice, yet this tactic of occupying public space which was so key to their movement that it became the name, is a fascinating and powerful statement of reclaiming one’s identity of and in a space.