MAKING THE SECOND NATURE: TOWARDS A CRITIQUE OF CULTURAL POLITICS IN URBAN PERCEPTION - THE USA CONTEXT, 1850-1940s
Journal Name:
- Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi
Keywords (Original Language):
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Abstract (2. Language):
As manifested in the original Marxian tradition, environmental
transformation is a complex process that necessitates a symbiotic
metamorphosis of nature and society (1). It is therefore a social process;
and the agencies’ interaction with nature, their mental conceptions
and such perceptive experiences are shadowed under politics (Sargın,
2000) Politics is the most assertive realm of change, being thoroughly
instrumental in nature’s formations, deformations and its spatial and
cognitive displacements. It can be said that politics, as a meta-narrative
and ideology and the legitimizing apparatus of such narrations, not only
transforms nature, but also fabricates the cultural sphere within which such
transformations become publicly possible, making the whole processes
either significantly legal and recognized, or illegitimate and discrete. The
mode of urbanism of the early 1900s in North America in this context
deserves special attention, as the state’s desire for modernization presents
a similar cultural sphere by which urban programs and their spatiality
reflect an environment of revolution in relation to the nation’s ideological
choices. The idyllic constructions, the emerging industrial capitalism and
the related urban utopias demystify how the state, as well as the national
bourgeoisie, drew out their ideological mappings and conceived nature in
their imagined inventions.
The Arcadian vision and industrial urbanism have together developed a
basic cultural premise and produced the most outstanding results since the
late nineteenth century – the Arcadian view established a strong sentiment
towards nature, while progressive urbanism represented a peculiar
transition from laissez faire to industrial capitalism; and the continuous
clash between the two became a powerful metaphor for social change
that symbolized the ideal city and the vast open countryside, the liberty
of urbanism and the virtue of rural spirit, and the revolutionary power of
modernity and the tradition of frontier culture. The transformation of bare
landscape into a metropolis had always been an important process that
also represented an intellectual debate. In this rivalry, however, space was
regarded in the acceptance of the dichotomy of the city and countryside
not as a conclusion, but as a point of departure for the development of a
political strategy of reconciliation (Cronon, 1992). There, it was first the
frontier culture that was identified with the boundless immensity and
emptiness, or ahistorical character of the New World, the New World in
the Puritan belief represented nothing but wild, raw nature, a cultural
vacancy untouched by history that was waiting to be cultivated. Secondly,
it was the primitivist culture that created a nature-oriented aesthetic form
in which wilderness was believed to be the center of life- it was indeed
an unsystematic critique of organized society, in particular of industrial
capitalism. The final core was the pastoral version, which was favored
by a much larger population as a battlefield for nature and culture. The
hundred-year contrast between the two worlds -one identified with the
simple mode of countryside and rural peace, the other with the power
of urban life, sophistication and chaos- became the dominant intellectual
mode in creating a symbolic landscape, believed to be a delicate blend of
myth and reality (Marx, 1967).
In Jefferson’s notes, the New World as a Virgilian pasture was believed
to have provided an ethical sphere that was built upon a philosophy of
nature, and taming the wilderness was a significant dimension of this,
closely associated with the true American identity. The family farm
provided the images, and agriculture was to guarantee the properties
of American morality in the new republic. Jefferson’s political syntax
attempted to find a precise central point between the old European
regime and the new egalitarianism, and the rural virtue was certainly
the moral locus for the creation of a democratic society with economic
self-sufficiency. As Beard argues, “in spite of all the difficulties and
discouragement confronting the American people, land is the real
basis of democracy, the only genuine and enduring basis ... it stands
on an independent foundation” (1949, 347). Rural life and the rights of
individual property as a moral seed could overcome the problems of
industrial capitalism and a market-regulated society. It was an attempt
at ideal governance, as the capitalist city had been deemed undesirable
in urban industrial life in the Old World where it was believed to have
been the real cause of both environmental and social ruin, i.e., the landed
interests of course formed the overwhelming majority: “it is not so evident
that ... Jefferson, so cordially cherished the laboring interests of the
cities. On the contrary, Jefferson repeatedly and with great deliberation,
declared … a profound distrust of the working-classes of the great cities”
(Beard, 1949, 421). The distrust of the working class and commerce, and
the romantic devotion to a pastoral myth, in particular to the role of
agriculture, resulted in an ideological position between agrarianism and
capitalism. The developing pressure of American industry, however,
created a fundamental conflict between capitalistic and agrarian interests,
and industrial development soon triggered enormous growth in the
economy. As a result, the continental landscape was slowly turning
into a garden imagined with a massive industrial wealth. The gradual
dominance of capitalism also changed the modes of urbanism; however,
it was not so radical that the traditional agrarian town suddenly became
an urban-industrial metropolis – being rather slow and competitive. As
a spokesperson of American Transcendentalism, for instance, Emerson
combined capitalism with a romantic love of nature, blending popular
American pastoralism with post-Kantian philosophy. He made a clear
distinction between the two faculties of the mind: understanding and
reason, in which city life was a perfect environment for understanding,
and reason required a rural scene. According to Emerson, the advance of
civilization can technically teach human beings to understand the factual
aspects of life; but it is in the countryside that they can grasp the sublime.
The countryside was a center from which the moral sphere could emerge,
and it was the cities that could degenerate the rural virtue. Henry Thoreau
followed a similar line, withdrawing from the practices of industrial
society in the direction of nature. In the late-nineteenth century, Thoreau
increasingly influenced the biocentric, Arcadian view. Being a romantic
naturalist of his time, he defended biocentrism in which non-human
natural objects were recognized as having intrinsic value, independent of
human consideration (Miller, 1981)(2).
All these discursive formations gave way to visually rich images,
suggesting that idyllic environments in the age of capitalist development
were still possible; however, this came with all the social conflicts and the
complex systems expected with contradictory interactions and interests,
rather than the harmonies of its culture. Historically, the new republic was
overwhelmingly rural in its first decades and its condition was believed
to be truly American. With industrial development, the city then became
an ideological domain – if rural America was at the center of the Arcadian
ideal, then urbanism was a threat to the moral locus of the American ideal,
through which the industrial urban environment was regarded as a symbol
of the declining agrarianism (Reps, 1989). Nevertheless, the city was an
indispensable part of American capitalism – the advanced factory system
was a necessary feature of technological progress, which in reality needed
a complete shift from the small agrarian workshops to the machine-based
modern factory. For the workshop, as an instrument of rural life, the
factory meant a total transformation; but industrialization and factories,
the very tools of capitalist enterprise, were soon accepted and adopted by
the agrarians in order to combine the power of technology with the art of
nature. Of many works, it was Carl Bridenbaugh (1938) who most broadly
questioned the foundations of American urban life and its transition from
predominantly rural agricultural towns to nineteenth-century industrial
metropolises. In his work, Cities in the Wilderness, the American city was
an expression of the pursuit of economic growth through social equality in
which the progressive social and political organizations largely enjoyed the
benefits of the city. In short, urbanization was an instrument for political
purposes, “when Marx and Engels said that towns saved people from the
idiocy of rural life, they were endorsing the widely accepted correlation
between urbanism and emancipation” (Short, 1991, 43).
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Abstract (Original Language):
Çevresel dönüşüm gerçekte, doğa ve kültür arasında sürekliliği olan
şiddetli bir gerilime işaret eder; bir diğer deyişle, toplumsal fayda adına
birinci doğanın siyasi bir program ve ideolojik araçlar vasıtasıyla üretimi,
bir tür çatışma anlamına gelir ve bu, Marks’ın ikinci doğa tanımıyla
örtüşür. Burada özellikle altı çizilmesi gereken olgu, kentleşmenin, doğa
ve kültür arasında süregelen mücadelenin hem öznesi hem de nesnesi
konumunda olduğudur. Yazımız bu noktada, yukarıda özetlediğimiz
kuramsal çerçeveye bağlı kalarak, İç-savaş ve İkinci Dünya Savaşı arasında,
bu süreci örgütleyen çok özel bir bağlama, Amerikan kentleşme tarihine
bakarak, doğa ve kültür çatışmasının mekan üzerinden okunabilirliğini
sınamaya çalışmaktadır. Kentleşmenin araçsallaştırılmasının
meşrulaştırılması süresince ortaya konulan söylemler ve farklı ideolojik
arkitiplerin iki savaş arasındaki ütopyan tezahürleri, araştırmamızın
örneklemelerini içermektedir.
Doğa ve kültür arasındaki çatışma, temelde Arkadyan bir ideolojik
yapılanma ile, 19. Yüzyılın ikinci yarısından itibaren kendisini tek egemen
üretim modu olarak kabul ettiren endüstriyel-kapitalist olgu arasındadır.
Daha önceleri, neredeyse popüler bir anlatıya dönüşen “öncü kültürü”
(frontier culture), kapitalist üretimin baskın tavrı karşısında yeniden
yapılanarak, alışık olmadık kentleşme söylem ve mekansal uygulamaların
oluşumuna yol açar ve özellikle, endüstrileşmeye paralel gelişen yeni
siyasa, “metropolitan” bir algıyı ve ona takılı kültürel kodları, gündelik
hayat ve üst-kültür alanlarına da taşır. Burada, yeni disipliner yapılanmalar
ile mesleki söylem ve uygulama alanlarının, İkinci Dünya Savaşı başlarına
kadar ne denli etkin olduğunun altı çizilmelidir: Siyasi erkin, doğa ve
kültür çatışmasına ilişkin ideolojik tercih ve yaptırımları, söylemsel ve
yasal olanın çok ötesine taşınmış; mimarlık ve planlama disiplinleri
aracılığı ile neredeyse birer sosyal mühendislik projelerine dönüşmüştür.
Doğa, ilkesel olarak ahlaki bir dayanak; buna karşılık metropolis, egemen
siyasetin ideolojik mekanıdır: Ahlaki dayanak ile ideolojik mekan arasında
süregelen yüzyıllık savaş ise farklı ütopyalar aracılığı ile meşruiyet zemini
elde etme uğraşısındadır.
Bu noktada metin, farklı dönemlerde ileri sürelen, yeri geldiğinde de
siyasi iradenin yaptırımları ile uygulanan söz konusu mekansal ütopyaları
tartışmaktadır. Mekansal ütopyaların, kültür politikaları ile süregelen
ilişkisi çok önemlidir. Sonuçta bilinmesi gereken şey, kültür üzerinden
yürütülen siyasetin, mimarlık ve özellikle kent mimarlığını, üretim
ilişkileri bağlamında doğrudan etkilediğidir. Metinde ileri sürülen sav
da dolayısıyla, bir görüşün bir başka görüşe görece üstünlüğünün çok
ötesindedir: Söylemsel formasyon ve pratikler arasında süregelen çatışma
üzerinden mekan tarihlerinin irdelenmesi, eleştirel bir okuma yapılabilmesi
açısından önemli ipuçları sunmaktadır.
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