This week, I have been faced with all sorts of challenges to the space I choose to inhabit. As I stood with my family beside a stretcher in a hospital hallway, while one of our number was being wheeled off for surgery, we were approached by someone who seemed to be an administrator of some sort, telling us to clear out the hallway. The nurse pushing the stretcher was clearly offended, and we were just bemused. Who was supposed to be occupying that space, we wondered, if not patients and their families? It was baffling.
The entire place was defined by places one was allowed to enter and places one was barred from. Those who were not medical professionals could approach a line in the hallway, but not go past it. People having procedures done could enter a certain room, but others could not. Many restrictions upon people’s ability to be in various spaces within the facility were, of course, based on safety, but others seemed arbitrary and based on power dynamics. Surgeons, for instance, could freely enter the waiting room where families were gathered. There was no space entirely set aside for families alone.
Prohibitions on entering spaces for safety reasons were enforced within the building, but it was interesting to note that those same safety regulations did not always translate into preserving the safety of people in public spaces, as nurses left the building, and the hospital grounds, in scrubs. When one enters the hospital space as a patient or a family member, it becomes difficult to preserve autonomy. Every action is proscribed by the staff or administration, sometimes to avoid litigation, but most often for the convenience of those who work there. It seems to be in opposition to what one might expect to have happen in a hospital, a place that is sometimes considered public space, as the public funds it, but is, in truth, extremely private.
Being asked to leave the hospital hallway put me in mind of a gypsy punk group I learned about a couple of weeks ago, called Gogol Bordello, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1Ahn0Osjo who were evicted from CBGB’s, the ‘birthplace of punk’. Having watched their video, I don’t wonder that they were evicted, but I have some empathy for them. When we were shooed from the hospital corridor, I wanted to say to the administrator, “I have worked in this space! I belong here!” If you’re not wearing the uniform, though, your identity in that particular place is lost and you can be evicted. This is reminiscent too, of O’Brien and Szeman’s observations about the “ violent dispossession” of Native Americans. In truth, Native peoples did not “possess” the places they inhabited; they just lived in harmony with what was there, without concern about ownership. Many of them still do this, but their space is defined. Place and space, and who can inhabit them seem to be determined by power these days, and not by who is making logical use of them at the time.
3.7.11
Still Working Toward the Dream
This week’s examples of counter- and subcultures illustrate the vast differences between the counterculture movements of the 1960’s and the milder, but still insistent cultural movements of today.
I suspect that, rather than causing society to progress, as those in the movements hoped that they would, ‘60’s counterculture movements have instead brought about a backlash of consumerism and environmental degradation, within mainstream society. As Hebdige points out, subcultures have to find some middle ground between the dominant culture and the parent culture, and both of these were fairly liberal by the end of the ‘60’s. This is not to say that there has not been significant progress among subcultures today, as a result of the groundwork laid by these movements.
Radical environmental subcultures like Earth First! are pushing the boundaries of legal expressions of dissatisfaction , but they have not had the impact upon mainstream consciousness that commune dwellers 40 years ago might have desired. An increased open-mindedness about spirituality, as opposed to a cultural insistence upon religious affiliation, has allowed the expansion of faith practices. The feminist movement, as well, has opened the door for women to pursue careers in most areas, although they must still work harder to succeed than their male counterparts.
With the advent of the Information Age, we, as a society, expect immediate results when we express ourselves politically through counterculture. There isn’t much of that sort of expression here in North America, (although there is some),but it was certainly evident in Egypt earlier this year, when a corrupt government toppled within weeks of a plea on YouTube by Asmaa Mafouz, a dissident Egyptian woman.
Canada is rife with subcultures; groups who want to have the freedom to live without pollution, who choose to have their babies at home, or grassroots organizations who are dissatisfied with the political climate of the country-not necessarily counterculture groups, because Canada is not that radical, but subcultures, all the same, who are trying to secure new freedoms.
I suspect that, rather than causing society to progress, as those in the movements hoped that they would, ‘60’s counterculture movements have instead brought about a backlash of consumerism and environmental degradation, within mainstream society. As Hebdige points out, subcultures have to find some middle ground between the dominant culture and the parent culture, and both of these were fairly liberal by the end of the ‘60’s. This is not to say that there has not been significant progress among subcultures today, as a result of the groundwork laid by these movements.
Radical environmental subcultures like Earth First! are pushing the boundaries of legal expressions of dissatisfaction , but they have not had the impact upon mainstream consciousness that commune dwellers 40 years ago might have desired. An increased open-mindedness about spirituality, as opposed to a cultural insistence upon religious affiliation, has allowed the expansion of faith practices. The feminist movement, as well, has opened the door for women to pursue careers in most areas, although they must still work harder to succeed than their male counterparts.
With the advent of the Information Age, we, as a society, expect immediate results when we express ourselves politically through counterculture. There isn’t much of that sort of expression here in North America, (although there is some),but it was certainly evident in Egypt earlier this year, when a corrupt government toppled within weeks of a plea on YouTube by Asmaa Mafouz, a dissident Egyptian woman.
Canada is rife with subcultures; groups who want to have the freedom to live without pollution, who choose to have their babies at home, or grassroots organizations who are dissatisfied with the political climate of the country-not necessarily counterculture groups, because Canada is not that radical, but subcultures, all the same, who are trying to secure new freedoms.
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