Culture, Nature, Animal(ity)



Seeing a citys ugly apperiance starts with exposing its unseen view. When Paris’s boulevards uncovered with bulldozers[1], its exposed that how unpleasant the little streets are. The roads that makes Paris’s gorgeous view had been interrupted by street corners and their fitly smell started to make people unconfortable. This anxiousness is all about exposition between unseen to seen. This demolitions took us to the point of unseen. This effects reaction created a fact that has no comebacks. Paris is naked from now on.

 

A sample of this exposition had been experienced at Tarlabaşı Boulevard in İstanbul but i would rather pass this subject as an anekdot.



The main reference point here is the subject occurs parallely with the nudity issue in Derrida’s article. In this article the cat (animal) looked to Derrida like we (humans) are looking to Paris. At the beginning Paris had that gorgeous view but it was olso dirty and it felt ashamed. In the same way that a human is wise enough to feel shame for his nudity. And Paris hid itself as long as a couple of bulldozers took out its clothes. And until we humans started to see its real face and stare. At that moment Paris was naked as never been before. The only difference is the existence of human as subject here instead of the cat. Destruction and exposition of a city at this scale lefts behind a fact that we still argue about. That is at least as thought provoking as Derrida’s cat. At first perception a city can be seen unnatural. But the city itself was created with a natural way before humans made it much more bigger, taller or busy. The word ‘City’ is olso name that humans created afterwards. This is why we still have ‘old town’ or ‘city texture’ concepts at the present. This places are natural and naked that humans stare at them and olso tourists come to cities expecially for seeing them. On the other hand i recognize the natural concept here has some problems. Without drawing a certain Culture - Nature line, i want to take excessively cultured ones with the first arised ones both considered as a natural concept.

 

This event is not just about seen, showed or appeared. It olso contains facts that are exposed to change and meanings forced to change -Just as i put nature concept to a hierarchical form- If we dwell upon the conceptical changes as Terry Eagleton wrote about in his first article, we have to get out of the French geograph. Because French people had slipped of this by prefering ‘Civilization’ word instead of ‘Culture’. The concept i want to dwell upon here is exactly the ‘Culture’. But for that period its obvious that France is not the only country which exposed to fast urbanization.



At Germany (which showed a fast industrial growt), rise of the urbanization and the exposition difference between citizen and none citizen became the most important factor that triggers conceptual change.[2] From now on cities started a tendency to abandon human formed shape and my ‘natural concept’. And differences like boundarys and like being a citizen or not, started to be related with how humans live with nudity and glitter.

 

This is the main point from the beginning of my rp, words and places reacts each other. This is why we only have to talk about the languages which show a geographical change. Im not talking about every language contains many dialects which can change with geographical locations. If we consider that the words have a colonial configuration like humans, I am talking about their semantical changes, what do they get from other life forms and how did they understood. Today, if we talk to a german or an englishman and say “culture” as a word, they will surely understand something but it would be a miracle that they understand the same thing with us.

At this point i would like to mention about borders. And i will do this with the “jalouise” example. As everyone know with the modernity theres a wonderful French invention which saves us from old and dirty curtains; Jaluzi. Its dictoanory meaning is jealousy as Baurdillard examined and wrote about, it became a great seperation tool between jealous and being jealoused of. If you look trough a Jaluzi you see the one being jeslous. If he pushes hard he can see you too. But the spaces between jaluzi are on your side so you can see outside, the ones which are exceptional and the others without being watched. It makes such a great seperation that seperation itself becomes the main function. Just like art and culture. They are both jaluzis. The facts that which materials they contain and how thin, sensitive, rough, dusty, open or closed they are all depend the same seperation made for the function at the end. It is for sure that the function here can take us to delightfull usages of the modern society and unsocial society creations with excluded political pronunciations.

 

Besides jaluzi makes someone an insider while leaving the others outside. But it’s not like a certain wall. It wont tell you that you are in a prison cell. It wont shout or scream, it just misleads you but İt still makes you a outsider or insider. I think, Derrida’s boundary issue is just infront of our eyes but olso related with the constitutions that have no meanings. We are not complaining about the jaluzis that make bounderies because of they are permeable and we think they don’t hinder us. The thing that breaks the clearness and alternation of the difference is olso the amount of the jaluzis that puts us to different cells and basically the excessiveness of the captivity that puts us into the same prison. However like the Russian Matruskas, being the deepest one within it, is about how contained we are to the outside and how much we are aware of that. If in any case one difference we believe that made us an A or A’, how hard and difficult will it be to understand that we became a D set? Besides after we became A or A’, we will be okay to live with it without needing a D role.



As result, inside space and time perception, our interests and thoughts about how that the meanings and boundaries divide and combine us will be left inside of the jaluzis. This thougt makes me think that if we kill all different voices in our own restricted world, our point of view to the society will die with it.

 

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[1] After 1870 Baron Hausmann created a huge demolition in order to suppress the rebellions in Paris and to carry poor citizens to outskirts of the city. For that day it caused a destruction for five of the most famous boulevards of Paris in order to stop the rebellions from making a defensive line by using the little streets. However this demolition caused many unexpected results.

[2] As a Turk i come from a nation that didn’t experienced these changes and i think, the concepts obtained by creations or references from a couple of linguists, can be extended like a gum even today makes this meaning changes ununderstandable. When we try to make our way in Urban and semantic evolution steps that we try to climb forward by taking two or three steps at a time, we pass the effect between this two facts. And by using the short way we are importing the words and meanings.