Subterranean Subjects: Urban Practice and Embodiment in the New York City Subway
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2017
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
This thesis uses auto-ethnography to study urban practice and its embodiment in the New York City subway. My project proposes the possibility of interpreting our daily rituals as meaningful practices deserving interrogation and agentive exercise. I approach urban practice and embodiment through a broad range of scholarship, using concepts such as heterotopia, civil inattention and interpolation to understand the diverse ways in which urban citizens come to create their social world. Through accounts and encounters on the subway, I interpret a variety of micro-interactions and their cultural significance. I hope to demonstrate the ways in which citizens and the city are mutually responsible towards the creation of unique form of metropolitan subjecthood through their clothes, physicality, and representations in virtual space. I use Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis to help understand the qualities which both enable and inhibit the enactment and eruption of heterotopia in the city. Finally, this thesis hopes to denaturalize cultural significations on the body, and propose the body as an active site for practicing resistance in urban social space.