This picture (credit to Joel Heller) was taken at a table at De Peper, an organic, vegan restaurant at overtoom 301, "a legalised squat with a large performance/rehearsal space, cinema, and gallery with an inspired programme of [sub]cultural activities," according to the De Peper website. What makes this squat a gathering point for all of these cultural (and culinary) activities? I'm going to go out on a limb (following a prudent period of fasting, of course) and try to connect this to de Certeau, by suggesting that this squatting/DIY culture is related to an attempt to restore "habitable" spaces and create new "narratives." That is, it tries to resist enumeration (or regular arrangement) and, you know, to make places more "believable."
<- images credit to Annie Wu
Our synecdoche is the building housing De Peper and this cinema/performance space/gallery; since it collects all of these things, it is a synecdoche for whatever movement might be characterized by them.
2 comments:
Food for thought indeed. This is GRASS ROOTS, if you will pardon the slightly drugged pun. The research question is both capacious and subtle. You should look at the classic Cultural Studies account of subculture as as social formation: winningly titled SUBCULTURE, by Dick Hebdige. It's about clothing in the UK--and happened eons ago, back in the 80s, god help me, but your focus will make a working knowledge of how to discuss subcultures (or countercultures) useful. Another set of case studies is Ken Gelder's SUBCULTURES. Look at some case studies for a conceptual framework.
I've contacted the UW's sociology librarian, cc-ing you. She should be able to provide some directions as well, hopefully on squatting per se.
I wonder about anticonsumerism (do you hear the paradoxical pun at the heart of that, given your interest in food? Non-consumerist consumption.). In fashion, the language of anti-fashion goes hand in glove with the fashion system. This may get to the question of how social movements construct forms of resistance. The connection to de Cetreau does, I think, work. Savor it.
Excellent start!
Thanks, this is a great help!
Yes, "anti-consumerism" isn't entirely opposed to consumption in that sense. And even in the productive sense, that's true (as in how the organic movement gave us Whole Foods (so one way a social movement resists is by modeling the institution it's resisting?)). Still, I don't think that precludes the possibility of a truly non-consumerist food system, even if the end point is still consumption (or it might really be a question of scale, where larger systems need to be organized in this way, but smaller ones don't).
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