Author: Sharma, Sarah

Source: Cultural Studies , Volume 23, Number 1, January 2009 , pp. 129-148(20)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

In this paper I offer an intervention into two prevailing approaches to the non-place - those spaces of transit that include hotels, airports, theme parks, and refugee camps. The non-place is treated on the one hand as an apolitical space of hypermediated consumption and mobility while, on the other hand, it also figures as exemplary of the biopolitical regulation of life within a 'contemporary camp'. I argue that the non-place must be read, not as spectacle or camp, but as housing a very specific politics of place wherein the logic of the camp and the spectacle collide. What is of interest to me is not so much the camp as the hidden space of modernity, but how it finds a willing alibi in the spectacular media saturated spaces of capital. Within the non-place, the forces of global corporate capital have found an amiable space to both invest (lifestyle) and reduce (bare life) human life to maximize and optimize its own power.

Keywords: non-place; bare life; biopolitics; Dirty Pretty Things; the Camp; consumerism

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502380802016246

Publication date: 2009-01-01

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