The performative role of the body is central to such processes of mediation as Brian Massumi relates in an example of a ball in a football game.28 The ball moving around the ield arranges the players in space: ‘The ball is the subject of the play. … The player is the object of the ball.’ In the kicking of the ball, ‘human physicality transduces into the insubstantiality of an event, releasing a potential that reorganises the entire ield of potential movement.’29This way of thinking the relationships between the ball, the players and the ield conceptualises reality in lux, a ield of potentialities. ‘The player’s subjectivity is disconnected as he enters the ield of
potential in and as sensation. … Sensation is the mode in which potential is present in the perceiving body.’30 This example takes the notion of agency described above as an assemblage of relations and places the 28 Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Afect, Sensation.
29 Ibid., 73–74. 30 Ibid., 75.
body at its centre. Thus it is not the individual will of the subject played out through social structures, but the afective body and its sensations that allow us to access the ield of potentiality. The spatial practices I refer to in this book try to capture some of this quality of the body as
transducer, converting physicality into events or the modiication of spatio-temporalities.
If diasporic agencies reside in the inhabitations of space and in the ways of doing, then the question of representation takes on a crucial role. How to capture these modes in which diasporic bodies function? In recent years, mapping has emerged as an important representational practice within architecture, referred to in the adjective to denote a process over a inished product. These mapping practices acknowledge the dynamic nature of the world in which we live and the critical changes that cities are undergoing. They attempt to deal with such complexities through showing the same situation or space from many diferent perspectives and
representing those aspects not previously thought important. Mapping as practice is described as ‘the conceptual glue linking the tangible world of buildings, cities and landscapes with the intangible world of social
networks and electronic communications.’31It is in this sense described by Abrams and Hall that I am using mapping as a way of working with
diasporic agencies. In this newly emerging practice of mapping there is a diferent focus from traditional cartographic practices; rather than re- presenting an already ‘known’ situation, contemporary maps are taking on
31 Abrams and Hall, Else/Where: Mapping New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, 12.
new agencies, they are more propositional in nature, imagine other possibilities and play mediatory roles.32
In my own mapping practice I develop ‘diasporic diagrams’ that ask what might be the essential elements of a practice of mapping that does not place primary importance on buildings, streets and developments but instead on the constitution of diasporic agency. How might such modes of representation afect the way in which we conceive cities, beyond
essentialised notions of property and land ownership? As will hopefully emerge over the course of this book, a way of mapping the city that foregrounds diasporic agencies, brings with it also new concerns for architecture and urbanism. Rather than walls, buildings, pavements and city blocks, we might consider trans-localities, networks, bodily gestures and postures, borders and territories. Whilst not eliding the former, these do emerge as the primary elements in a diferent practice of architecture. In trying to map beyond the solely physical, I have used techniques that are not associated with traditional cartography and I have attempted always to make situated maps that are embodied and performed. Practices such as walking, speaking and drawing have been used,
sometimes alone and sometimes together to try to articulate beyond the dominant and easily visible modes of inhabiting space. Here maps are used as a way of uncovering another narrative in order to understand how diasporic agencies emerge in the city.
The mappings have exposed layers of diasporic spatiality, which include the political, religious, ethnic, gendered and economic all working in parallel, creating frictions as well as connections on a personal and 32 For a full discussion on this see the chapter, Mapping Otherwise.
collective level. The negotiations and playing out of these sometimes conlicting positions is what I try to map in the following chapters. It is the process of space-making through subjectivation, which embodies the ‘agonistic’ dimension that Chantal Moufe has called for.33 These mappings also foreground a particular way of thinking about place that Doreen Massey has described as moments of ‘intersecting social relations, nets of which have over time been constructed, laid down, interacted with one another, decayed and renewed.’34 The points of intersection, the ‘nodes’ at certain moments in time constitute place. The temporal nature and sheer number of relations is what gives places their multiple and layered
character and deines their history as a layering of these complex relations. Since these relations do not always remain within the
geographical bounds of any particular place, such a conceptualisation breaks down essential categories for a more open and inviting way of thinking place. Here globalisation, which is often seen as a homogenising force, helps to create the speciicity of a place through the intersection of local and global relations. For diasporic subjects such a networked
understanding of place is almost intuitive, we feel it in the way we inhabit the world. To make faithful representations of such ways of inhabiting and apprehending cities is one of the main challenges this book has attempted to tackle. Thus the maps and writings describe here ask the question; within the networked, global condition of the diasporic citizen, what objects, subjects and processes can play the role of mediation that is required between here and there, or between the layers of this multiple subject? Language, personal idioms and gestures all play an important role, are subject to translations and can become mediators. I have carried 33 Moufe, “Some Relections on an Agonistic Approach to the Public.”
out my research through mapping small-scale, localised examples of such conditions in the everyday diasporic inhabitation of the city.