Tim Cresswell
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226604114
- eISBN:
- 9780226604398
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226604398.003.0002
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
Part Two is a long hybrid essay about the 100 year history of the area surrounding the Maxwell Street market in Chicago. Using a juxtaposition of original passages, archival material, and secondary ...
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Part Two is a long hybrid essay about the 100 year history of the area surrounding the Maxwell Street market in Chicago. Using a juxtaposition of original passages, archival material, and secondary sources, the essay accounts for the origins, history, and demise of the market, the many attempts of writers to grapple with the area (novelists, journalists, researchers, planners etc.), the long history of photographing the market (documentary, street, and art photography), the (de)valuing of the area through urban renewal and tax increment financing, the fascination with waste, the use of lists, the multi-sensory experience of the market, the heterogeneous performance and practice of the market, and other tangents which cumulatively provide an account of a particular place. The point is to both provide an account of a place in all its cumulative messiness and to demonstrate the value of a paratactic and montage-based approach to place-writing.Less
Part Two is a long hybrid essay about the 100 year history of the area surrounding the Maxwell Street market in Chicago. Using a juxtaposition of original passages, archival material, and secondary sources, the essay accounts for the origins, history, and demise of the market, the many attempts of writers to grapple with the area (novelists, journalists, researchers, planners etc.), the long history of photographing the market (documentary, street, and art photography), the (de)valuing of the area through urban renewal and tax increment financing, the fascination with waste, the use of lists, the multi-sensory experience of the market, the heterogeneous performance and practice of the market, and other tangents which cumulatively provide an account of a particular place. The point is to both provide an account of a place in all its cumulative messiness and to demonstrate the value of a paratactic and montage-based approach to place-writing.
Tim Cresswell
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226604114
- eISBN:
- 9780226604398
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226604398.001.0001
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
The book is an exercise in thinking about and writing about a particular place - the Maxwell Street area of Chicago. It is divided into three sections which address the process of writing about ...
More
The book is an exercise in thinking about and writing about a particular place - the Maxwell Street area of Chicago. It is divided into three sections which address the process of writing about place, the history of the area surrounding Maxwell Street market in Chicago, and the theorization of place. The book adopts a hybrid writing technique informed by montage and contemporary cross-overs between poetry and prose in order to more fully and accurately reflect the nature of being in, and thinking about, place. The first section explores the process and practice of writing a place and outlines the thinking behind the form that the book takes. The second, and largest, section is a sustained engagement with the 100 year history of Maxwell Street. Along the way a number of key tangents are explored including such themes as value, materiality, practice, meaning, waste, the senses, forms of writing, urban renewal, photography, ethnography, tax increment financing, lists, and the urban novel. The third section offers a meso-theory of place drawing on the lessons from Maxwell Street. The book is thus both an exploration of a particular place and an exercise in developing ways to think and write about place that draws on both the deep history of place-writing and place-theory in geography (and beyond) and more recent attempts at experimental writing.Less
The book is an exercise in thinking about and writing about a particular place - the Maxwell Street area of Chicago. It is divided into three sections which address the process of writing about place, the history of the area surrounding Maxwell Street market in Chicago, and the theorization of place. The book adopts a hybrid writing technique informed by montage and contemporary cross-overs between poetry and prose in order to more fully and accurately reflect the nature of being in, and thinking about, place. The first section explores the process and practice of writing a place and outlines the thinking behind the form that the book takes. The second, and largest, section is a sustained engagement with the 100 year history of Maxwell Street. Along the way a number of key tangents are explored including such themes as value, materiality, practice, meaning, waste, the senses, forms of writing, urban renewal, photography, ethnography, tax increment financing, lists, and the urban novel. The third section offers a meso-theory of place drawing on the lessons from Maxwell Street. The book is thus both an exploration of a particular place and an exercise in developing ways to think and write about place that draws on both the deep history of place-writing and place-theory in geography (and beyond) and more recent attempts at experimental writing.
