If a dark forest seems to breathe a menacing atmosphere, or, conversely, a charming house projects conviviality and safety, this divergence is to be situated on the level of affective space. While we no longer pay much attention to the emotions that spaces stir up, they were particularly significant from a mythical (or ‘primitive’) perspective and possessed explanatory power. This is so because, from a mythical point of view, emotions did not originate from the person experiencing them; they were instead magical spirits taking pos- session of this person as well as certain objects or places. This is why trees, amulets and fetishes, for instance, were seen as truly animate entities. From a mythical angle, the world is not so much ‘a reality of things, of mere objects, but … a kind of presence of living subjects’ (1965: 62). Cassirer refers to this as the perception of a ‘thou’ rather than an ‘it’, an animated rather than an objective reality (1965: 63).2 As long as no distance is
introduced between perceiver and perceived, the subject does not distinguish itself from an environment of objects yet and perceives living subjects (spirits) rather than dead objects (inanimate matter). The mythical way to make sense of the world is thus in terms of magical presence. What strikes as meaningful from this perspective, is what is experi- enced as extraordinary: some spirit or magical force seems to be at work and directly affects the perceiver. Cassirer writes that ‘what seems to remain as the relatively solid core’ of the mythical ‘is simply the impression of the extraordinary, the unusual, the uncommon’ (1955: 77).
And this way of sense-making persists into the representational space of the mythical mind. Concrete objects and places are viewed in terms of the presence or absence of mag- ical forces. Along the lines of this distinction, the environment is moulded into mythical representations. Some things and places manifest themselves to mythical consciousness with such extraordinary force that they seem magical or sacred, and their significant meaning makes them seem detached from their indifferent surroundings. As such, spatial representation distinguishes between enchanted, affectively charged, extraordinary places, on the one hand, and indifferent, profane ones, on the other: ‘All reality and all events are projected into the fundamental opposition of the sacred and the profane’ (1955: 75). Places that are considered to be sacred and magical are singled out from their profane surroundings as ‘inside’ spaces that are different from ‘the outside’. Cassirer writes that ‘[h]allowing begins when a specific zone is detached from space as a whole, when it is distinguished from other zones and … religiously hedged around’ (1955: 99). As such, mythical perception is characterised by a logic of ‘inside and outside’, ‘inward and out- ward’ (1955: 99).
It goes without saying that the affective experience of living spirits and the representation of magic inside spaces, which are both so typical for myth, ceased to make sense a long time ago. It is interesting to see what remains of them in a present-day, secular format, however. On the affective level, we need to invoke the persistence of what Cassirer calls an ‘expressive’ or ‘physiognomic’ understanding of places and landscapes, while, on the representational level, extraordinary inside spaces mostly persist in an aesthetic variant of the magical-religious original.
As regards the affective experience of space, Cassirer points out that while we do not believe in spirits anymore, we still spontaneously tend to ‘read’ the atmosphere of a spe- cific place as a so-called ‘physiognomic character’ (1965: 68), a facial expression.3 Even
though we do not believe inanimate objects to be inhabited by spirits, we still subcon- sciously endow them with animate characteristics: we suspect something like a soul in what is mere dead matter. As physiognomers determined the characteristics of a person’s character or soul from the outside reality of their face, we are inclined to see inanimate objects as inspired and living when they stir certain emotions in us. For instance, we read a charming landscape as the expression of an inherent kindness, as if it, by nature, had a friendly soul. In response, we feel safe in the landscape, just as we would in the presence of a smiling face. In other words, the atmosphere seems to emanate from the place itself. This is why Cassirer speaks of affective ‘expressions’ rather than ‘impressions’: the affect indeed seems to spring from the perceived space rather than from its observer. Tellingly enough, common parlance tends to express violent emotions as springing from the outside world: one is ‘overcome by despair’, ‘engulfed by fear’ and ‘overwhelmed with happi- ness’. Likewise, in The Architects, protagonist Julia is affected by what seems to be the character or soul of World Peace Road, the project she is working on with her colleagues of the City Architects’ Bureau of Berlin:
The vista … was astonishing … the road stretched, wide, handsome … Julia, who had seen it often enough … never failed to be moved. There was poetry in the sight; … not poetry you could put into words; but a poetry that converted itself from stone and space directly into emotion … she pointed at the old slums to the left and on either side of the Road, the half-destroyed, grimy fac- tory buildings, the bombed-out tenements that were waiting to be torn down. ‘It was all like that,’ she said. (Heym 102-103)
The impression of a certain poetry emanating from the place itself (‘stone and space’), and subsequently ‘converting itself into emotion’ is indeed an example of an expressive recep- tion of space.
Moreover, the reference to a poetic experience is not without significance and brings us to consider the secularised variants of mythical inside spaces. Cassirer pointed to the fact that in the largely disenchanted context of modern societies, aesthetic experiences seem to have adopted the role that magic used to play (see O’Toole 1996): beauty still enchants. As profane remnants of animist powers, aesthetic stimuli seem to cast their spell so as to create extraordinary inside spaces that detach themselves from a banal and disenchanted world of technological functionalism and cold, utilitarian rationality. The aesthetic is at the basis of a new polarity between the sacred and the profane, between enchantment and disenchantment. While aesthetic contemplation evidently implies more distance from what is perceived than the mythical consciousness was able to take, it still evokes a direct affect of the extraordinary and, with it, an inside/outside contrast. While the mythical mind, to repeat Cassirer’s expression, ‘religiously hedged around’ spaces that were expe- rienced as being out of the ordinary, the modern mind can be said to aesthetically hedge them around. In the quote above, for instance, it is clear that, to Julia, the ‘astonishing’
and ‘handsome’ beauty of the road differs from its surroundings as day from night. Its extraordinarily beautiful appearance makes it stand apart from the rest of the space, which is filled with ‘old slums’, ‘grimy factory buildings’ and ‘bombed-out tenements’. In Duteurtre’s The Happy City, we similarly find an inside sphere that appears as immune to the ordinary outside: Town Park is described as a ‘magical enclave, protected from the misery of the world’ (230).4 The longer the protagonist (who remains unnamed) lives in
the Park, the happier he is with his decision:
(He is increasingly convinced that he made) the right choice staying in Town Park, as news coming from ‘the outside’ continues to worsen. Out there … it is always the same litany of bankruptcy, refuse collectors being on strike, and crime-ridden districts. Behind our metal gates, we inhabit an enclave in the heart of chaos. (87)
Radiating the reassuring affective qualities of safety and security, Town Park appears as a place that is disconnected from the ordinary outside world and its problems. With a term from Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity (2000), we could call it one of those ‘purified’ places that late modern public space is so abundant in, according to Bauman, and that is to provide a response to the widespread feeling of discomfort and the irrational fear of ‘stalked streets’ (93). In order to exorcise (rather than confront and negotiate) otherness, they commonly rely on two strategies that Claude Lévi-Strauss described in his Tristes tropiques (1955) and that are employed in Town Park. The first kind of measure to create purified spaces is called ‘anthropoemic’ by Lévi-Strauss. It aims to bar strangers that are felt to be others.5 For this purpose, the Park is ‘protected by metal gates and surveillance
cameras’ (Duteurtre 25). It is conceived as a ‘semi-autonomous territory, managed directly by the Company. All entrances (are) barred by security gates, so as to eradicate crime’, which is on the rise elsewhere in the city; ‘the only obligation (consists) of wearing one’s badge, as an employee or a resident’ (34). All of this in order to keep out ‘the outside, the crowd of indigents and vagrants’ (231).6
The Park, secondly, remains uncontaminated thanks to an anthropophagic strategy: one that consists of stripping strangers of their otherness as soon as they penetrate into the inside.7 To this end, the Company has ‘animators’ posted on every corner of the street,
‘not … only to inform the clientele, but also to supervise the townies who, for every par- ticipation in a costumed intervention, have points added to their electronic counter. They can also report offences by those who violate the regulations.’ (Duteurtre 90) The anima- tors are aided in their task by the surveillance cameras, which equally fulfil the anthro- pophagic role of monitoring the inhabitants’ and employees’ behaviour. When the latter take to the streets because of the deterioration of working conditions, for instance, ‘(t)he spontaneous gathering (…) (is) harshly crushed by the security forces … under the pretext of protecting the people from terrorist threat’, and the strikers are duly reminded that ‘inte- rior regulations … forbid demonstrations on the public highway’ (232). But the Com- pany’s most effective means of controlling and homogenising behaviour is probably their own competitive version of a social system. A scoring system converts every contribution
to the smooth running of things into points. Their accumulation leads to preferential treat- ment by the Company’s branches, which range from the only supermarket chain in town to health services. While the protagonist is critical of the ‘rampant totalitarianism’ of ‘per- manent monitoring’ (12), he is nevertheless grateful that, thanks to such measures, ‘we enjoy exceptional conveniences and security in Town Park’ (12).
In brief, the positive affects the Park manages to convey issue from the closed character of space – in this case guaranteed by a disciplinary system of power that insulates the real- ity of the Park from ordinary shortcomings. The Park is a reassuringly predictable and manageable little world in itself, cut off from a volatile and dangerous outside world. It is no accident that Mikhail Bakhtin, who was unmistakably inspired by Cassirer (see Poole 1998), showed great interest for such enclosed spaces generating a reassuring regularity under the heading of ‘idyllic chronotopes’ in the book-length essay ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’ (1982: 84-258). In this text, Bakhtin underlined that the enclosed space of the idyll can only be maintained by a regular, cyclical time rhythm (the cycles of the seasons, day and night, sowing and harvesting, death and rebirth). More gen- erally, it is his conviction that the spatiotemporal organisation of the literary world is not incidental, but rather exerts a direct influence on scenes and events as well as, we may add, on their affects. Similarly, the regularity of time patterns in the Park is a part of the aesthetic, affective experience that it generates, just like the enclosure of space is, and both are inextricably bound up with one another. Affectivity of literary space is, in other words, closely connected with specific time-space structures. Spaces are isolated enclaves because their spatiotemporal framework contrasts with ordinary time-space, and thus pro- duces a place that is other. Foucault seems to have understood as much: according to the fourth principle of his proposed ‘heterotopology’, heterotopias, as spaces that are other than the ones we daily traverse (cemeteries, cruise ships, cinemas, certain colonial cities, libraries), are ‘most often linked to slices in time (…) they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies.’ (26) Heterotopia being merely an ‘effectively enacted utopia in which (…) all the other sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (24), both hetero- and utopia are marked by an inside/outside effect of contestation and inversion that, for Foucault, is also as much a matter of time as it is of space. However, this issue would merit an in-depth development that falls outside the scope of this article.