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İKİNCİ DOĞAYI ÜRETMEK: KENTSEL ALGIDA KÜLTÜREL POLİTİKALARIN ELEŞTİRİSİNE DOĞRU / ABD BAĞLAMI, 1850-1940

MAKING THE SECOND NATURE: TOWARDS A CRITIQUE OF CULTURAL POLITICS IN URBAN PERCEPTION - THE USA CONTEXT, 1850-1940s

Journal Name:

Publication Year:

DOI: 
10.4305
Author NameUniversity of Author
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).
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.
147-164

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