Selected Institutions
For example, a Womens’ bookstore (Libreria delle donne)
For example, a prison ward
For example, a cinema
“Following directly from my primary thesis, my primary conclusion is that, while still respecting the private/public demarcations (I do not believe that property is theft), we’d best try cutting the world up in different ways socially and rearranging it so that we may benefit from the resultant social relationships. For decades the governing cry of our cities has been “Never speak to strangers.” I propose that in a democratic city it is imperative that we speak to strangers, live next to them, and learn how to relate to them on many levels, from the political to the sexual. City venues must be designed to allow these multiple interactions to occur easily, with a minimum of danger, comfortably, and conveniently. This is what politics—the way of living in the polis, in the city—is about.” (Samuel Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue 193.)
The conventions, habits, and normalities, the locality, trust, and heterogeneity which gay men collectively sustained and inherited in the nooks of 42nd Street were cleared away under the Times Square Development Project. Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue consists of two attempts to transmit the experience of this institution, to articulate and hand on what this disparate and largely anonymous collective had learned and what it had taught.
For example, a rose
Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies.
Ashes, Ashes. We all fall down. (North American version)
Not all games are chess and not all regularities are “rules.” Wittgenstein gives round dances as a language game. A round of “Ring Around the Rosie” is easy to start and easy to learn. Years later, you learn what was in it: history. The roses were once our plague welts. “Ashes, ashes,” we made death ours, we held it together and, falling, became “We”.
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