DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-119

Lund University, Sweden

gunnar.sandin@arkitektur.lth.se

Abstract

In this paper the democratic dilemma of community members’ participation in the creation of urban space is discussed, in reflection of the political, i.e. change-promoting capacity of semiotic theory. The discussion departs in a reflection on recent thoughts on democracy as a matter of subjectivity-formation (Mouffe 1993; Rancière 2010a). In relation to a case of urban transformation in Malmö, Sweden, and in a theoretical discussion of the possibilities for un-authorized (Sassen 2002) and self-organised (Purcell 2010) democratic subjects to make their voice heard, an attempt is made here to render spatial decision-making as a matter of delegated agency. This extended analysis is basically emanating from the actantial semiotics of Greimas (1987) that was to be taken further specifically into space and architecture by Hammad in the late 1980es (2002), and partly appropriated into the sociology of objects (Latour 1992). Here, in this paper, a clustering of mainly architecture-associated agency is regarded as representing governmental wills that confront citizens on an everyday basis. It is suggested that spatial decision-making generally, and municipal, regional, national and corporeal urban planning procedures in particular, apart from occasionally being scrutinised by socially liable architects, by legalised public consultation, and by mass media coverage, are usually a quite concealed and “un-public” matter, that could benefit from viewpoints grounded in critical agency analysis.

1. Introduction: the semiotics of societal change

The subject of democracy is generally today seen as a topic that belongs primarily to political science because it addresses the empirical matters of national states, real world conditions and elective mechanisms. The communicational features of democracy, relating for instance to how citizens are addressed, is therefore rather seldom seen as a case for semiotics, the discipline supposed to be concerned more with general forms for meaning-production. However, this division of labour has of course not hindered “semiotic” writers from dealing critically with the political power of messages, as seen for instance in the stream of thought following Roland Barthes’ presentation of the idea of a “mythological plane” of signification implicating that everyday popular culture has a hidden political agenda, or in interrogations of existential and ethical unjustness, to be found in the currently expanding field of social semiotics. Nor did any academic division stop the Bari-Lecce school of semiotics from developing the thoughts of Rossi-Landi about the strong materiality but also changeability of societies, into a program that include for instance the following thesis:

Semiotics is a critical science not only in Kant’s sense, that is, in the sense that it investigates its own conditions of possibility […]. Semiotics is a critical science in the sense that it interrogates the human world today on the assumption that it is not the only possible world, not the definitive world as established by some conservative ideology. Critical semiotics looks at the world as a possible world, one among many possible worlds, therefore a world subject to confutation (Petrilli 2007).

In what follows, this text deals to a large extent with the possibility to change matters. It does so basically in reflection of “agency” in semiotic theories, however a departure is made in a brief reflection on contemporary philosophy and political science, and as a whole, the text stays quite close to recent critical theories about citizens’ representation in environmental decision-making.

In contemporary philosophical critique of current hegemonies of political practice, and the effects of deliberative democracies, the idea of a contested space that allows emancipatory wills to emerge has been forwarded as describing the basic idea of what constitutes a democracy. Democracy, as it were, is a collection of a manifold of radically differing voices and wishes. This idea, of contestation, or discrepancy, has been expressed through notions such as “dissensus” (Ranciere 2010b) or “agony” (Mouffe 2008). Partly in line with these ideas, albeit with some notes also on the pragmatic side of societal participation, this paper regards urban space, and the mediation thereof as crucial for our sense of democracy, i.e. the sharing of society.

2. Democracy, dissensus and space

In recent critical theories, democracy is regarded as a form for societal existence as much as an organisational principle for governing. The critique is directed towards the ways in which the world is mediated and explained by strong parts in the actual political realm, and the driving force of the critique of this reigning definition and self-proclaimed representation of democratic systems is the blunt existence of real, often “dirty” but also beautiful, circumstances in everyday life that inevitably escape the framework of those democrcies, i.e. realities that regardless of their belonging to a supposedly ideal representative state system, or instead to those states along “the axes of evil” (described as such by the American Administration after the terror attacks in September 2001), that lack proper deliberative orders. The remedy to the discrepant views of what constitutes democracy, from the point of view of critical philosophy, is to acknowledge, further and foster a thinking in terms of dissensus, i.e. promoting the mutual existence of more than one view, thus confronting what is taken for granted as agreement, or compromised will, in ruling and decision-making.

Whether the critique emanates from the perspective of political theory and history, such as in Chantal Mouffe’s (1993: 62) conception of a “radical or plural democracy” or from a discourse more in reference to philosophy’s division between polis and politics, such as Jacques Rancière’s (2010b: 42) this critical field argues for a democratic model based in an acknowledgment of the co-existence of conflicting perspectives, and the rights of several subjectivities. Emancipatory subjectivities are thought of as demonstrating, altering or subverting the failures of dominating political paradigms. These subjectivities may appear on the one hand through a partial acceptance of traditional (liberal/deliberative) democratic systems, by way of acting both with and against existing hegemonies and reigning political worldviews (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 189). But such alternative political subjectivity is also produced, more fundamentally according to Rancière (2010b), through the idiosyncratic actions, redistributions and standpoints that we actualise whenever we assign ourselves a partition of social space alternative to the one proclaimed by current “regimes” (Rancière 2005: 13). Mouffe as well as Rancière view artistic activity as a possibility to construct (visualise) the new types of subjectivities that are needed to conquer the conservative menu of possible subjective roles such as consumers, owners or experiencers. Artistic activity could in their view therefore make a real difference – not as per se standing out from the non-artistic rest in society – but as showing in one instance more than one perspective and presenting new identities and spatial realities. Rancière, more than Mouffe, takes pains (as a writer in the tradition of aesthetics) to try to figure out what kind of art can actually produce real dissensus. Mouffe is more content with a general activist potential in art as an “agonistic” possibility of making emancipatory space in the world. Both Rancière and Mouffe discuss the spatial features of public artistic action that make visible, or take place in, contemporary urban milieu. More seldom however, do these two major proponents for a production of alternative subjectivities refer explicitly to architecture or architectural practice, which is strange because of the absolute (physical) impact that architecture has on space, thus on the governmental as well as the emancipatory politics of spatial division. Furthermore, the becoming of architecture is a procedure that changes communal comprehension of their surrounding life-worlds, and introduces divisions of time-space. It thus works as a fundamental divider also of societal rights. For architecture and urban planning, the problem of democratic inclusion of several wills appears in processes of public consultation, formalised in many countries as Environmental Impact Assessments, therefore also bearing the marks and variation of national political history and procedures. These wills are however often isolated in the processes themselves and needs, from a democratic perspective, to be put more clearly in relation to procedural elements such as: the division of city planning labour, the material impact of long building construction processes, and the visual rhetoric and timeliness of architectural proposal-making. A recognition of such major and minor actors, including human operations but also the legal, visual and material circumstances (Hammad 2002; Latour 2005; Yaneva 2012), are fundamental for a mapping of the politics of marginalization. Actantial (or agency) approaches has appeared as the basic idea in a number of interpretations and applications, such as in research domains associated with Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). In agency oriented theory, major and minor human actors are viewed as forming situational agency in connection with material, legal and other “silent” or “objective” circumstances. Such agency-oriented approaches could also support a differentiation between types of authorisation that are not sufficiently transparent in everyday planning practice (Sandin 2002). Authorization, as a key attribution to the members of a democratic society, can be more fully categorised, so as to increase transparency into decision-making and help capturing otherwise marginalised voices (Sassen 2002).

3. Preference and Pretence in Democracy

In a meditation on Plato’s view on democracy, Rancière renders democracy as the seventh “right to rule,” a conditional and hazardous right beside the six natural or unquestionable rights that follow a governmental principle of strength already at work in life: the wealthy over the poor, the elderly over the young, parents over children, master over slaves, nobles over villains, and the learned over the ignorant (2010a: 51). Rancière acknowledges, with Plato, these six “rights predicated on a natural difference” as established from a common sense or tribal point of view, i.e. a view where no externally constructed elements are taken into account in decisions about what has governmental value. Rancière follows the Platonian model to the extent that he sees in the seventh right, which is the democratic one, the possibility that those who are ruled over, rather than being rulers themselves, are given a supplementary chance. Plato nominated this right hazardous or more precisely a “drawing of lots,” since the implementation of this right includes individuals and wills that may destabilise the system itself.

One could of course in our times, when societal roles are more frequently re-evaluated and re-constructed, have good reasons to say that there are no natural rules of power, or at least no essential ones, only hegemonies that include them as taken for granted. Instead of “natural”, which is a term that often blurs the difference between “habitual”, “ordinary”, and “biological,” it is probably more fruitful to make the distinction here as that between “conventional” and “motivated” grounds for human action, which is also what seems to be at steak in Rancière’s (and originally Plato’s) discussion.[1] The rights, all seven of them, then become rights that could be discussed in terms of having for the moment either motivated or conventional grounds. And democracy, as the seventh “right to rule,” could then be viewed as conditioned by a preferential choice (of political system, of persons to lead, etc.), since preference implies a motivated selection process.[2]

4. The multiple agency of spatial will

In order to get closer to the mechanisms of marginalisation in urban planning, we then need to discuss where marginalisation occurs, and on what level democratic authorization is given to a citizen. A penetrating insight into the organisation of authority can be made through the notion of “delegation” (Latour 1992), i.e. the capacity of material, legal and ritualized bearers of architectural space to hold agency. That lets us view planning as a contested space where “architecture and the social mutually define themselves.”(Yaneva 2012: 46) Hence, a more vivid critical reflection is possible of contemporary trends in physical planning and architecture, where multi-agent forms of exploitation, branding and privatisation are part of everyday practice. Crucial for an agency-based understanding of contemporary spatial and architectural landscapes are the moments of authorization and delegation (Latour 1992; Hammad 2002; Sandin 2009). An important principle of division was made in an experiment by Hammad (2002) revealing different types of authorization such as affiliated positions, temporary delegation, written laws and etiquette. Empirically, Hammad’s analysis concerned primarily interior spatial divison, but his observation of “actantial roles” is applicable, as here, also to urban space and matters of planning. Hammad’s investigation bear the traits of a structuralist desire for a general validity, but contains also reasoning and comments under ways, about specific societal issues such as ownership of sight in cultures where veiling is used, and the importance of dividing time to achieve spatial and social change.

Recent approaches in political space theory have considered the agency potential of otherwise marginalised interest groups by pointing to the necessity to differentiate and articulate collaborative action possibilities. In this vein, Saskia Sassen (2002) recognizes a form of citizenship where the disadvantaged can be seen as “lacking power but counting as actor,” and so possess “presence.” Sassen (2002: 22) exemplifies with two types of civil identity: on the one hand “unauthorised yet recognized” subjects, like the undocumented immigrants that show involvedness and loyalty towards their new location “while legislation as a citizen may continue to evade them”; and on the other “authorised yet unrecognized” actors like those “housewives and mothers” that have an attributed position in the societal structure, but lack symbolic governmental part, or simply fall into a traditionalist reason of categorization.

Alliances between otherwise incompatible groups and NGOs may rise collective agency, gain authorization but also “build equivalence” (Purcell 2008: 175) enough to become a network and a communicational actor that can be recognized as a counter-part to the neo-liberal forces where land use is business on a daily basis, usually negotiated only amongst a few economically and politically strong actors. Already existing associations and organisations that possess a certain measure of societal authority could contribute to the work of more spontaneously emerged but well formulated activist groups. Even if groups such as homeowners associations in some instances can be judged as conservative and contrary to the interests of radical activists, or even ignorant in matters like race and immigration, collaborative efforts from these actors may have an influence not only as a united emancipatory force, but also on the level of political awareness within the groups themselves (Purcell 2008: 180-181).

Before this discussion about architectural space and democracy continues in a theoretical reflection and conclusion about the agency and rights of those in the margin of decision-making, we will look into a case of physical planning and follow the recent history of the remaking of a square, typical for contemporary urban densification and architectonic infill.

5. Governmental taking-over of space

In 2012 a new 12-storey building was erected as part of renewal of a square in Malmö, Sweden. During the slow progression of this renewal, from a first presentation of ideas in 2002 until the erection of the building in 2012, there was a lack of interest from the major authorizers in listening to what types of place-specific needs and activities that could actually have been contributing to this act of urban renewal (Sandin 2013). Answers to the formalised public consultation showed a large number (approximately 330) of officially delivered written petitions with protests concerning the local consequences in regard to height, location and function. The new square, whether functioning as programmed or not in the future, as a housing and as a node in a commercial web, must therefore be seen as a case of spatial domination, rather than as a creative co-operation with existing local wills. And given the fact that people were also driven away from the area (Sandin 2013) the future potential for “newcomers” (Rancière 2010a: 59) must be regarded as very restricted.

Figure 1. Material agency: fence. Photograph by author.

In the phase when the new building contractor was awaiting a decision on the building permit application for the project, an existing single-story brick building was demolished. For a period of approximately four years, between the approval of the development plans and the actual start of the new construction, the site was cordoned off in various ways, for example in order to protect an occasional soil-quality test, or to accommodate containers filled with equipment. This was done by delegation of spatial obstruction to material forms for agency, communicating to the public that this is no longer their area, and was in practice done through digging activities, placing containers for long periods of time, prohibiting insight through the erecting of fences with signposts, and boards with information about consultants, constructors. In one end of the area physical obstruction was realised by way of blocks of stone (Fig.1 and Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Material agency: blocks of stone. Photograph by author.

Thus, temporally conditioned agency, in connection with the usage of time itself, i.e. delays caused by keeping land free while waiting for decisions and economical solutions. The temporal actors were: letting possible ideas fade out, both from the public, but also through deliberate oblivion the original municipal idea of having rentable apartments; time for scattering and grouping of opinions; waiting out relocation of groups and shop owners in the area, etc. (Sandin 2013).

In the first phases of the project the sketches showed a low enough building to be accepted, and in the second part the building’s height was emphasized to give the impression of a landmark and a building offering apartments with an outlook (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Material agency: building. Photograph by author.

It could be assumed that the big number of written protests to the project was partially an effect of the fact that the majority of protesters were a quite solid economical group, owners of apartments the aesthetic and economic values of which they wanted to protect. These citizens were speaking with a certain measure of authority, capable of formulating quite elaborated reflections, and devoted enough to pursue a formal response procedure. But there were also protesters less familiar with how to raise a voice, and there were also homeless people that resided in the area with no voice at all, not recognized as concerned by the project leaders, nor by the municipality, and neglected also by the neighbouring community.

In the Slussplan case there was no clear-cut global actor in the sense a geographically distanced and financially obscure exploiter, however one could say that the global city is nevertheless present: the new building looks generically “international” in contrast to the immediate neighbourhood of early modern and classical styles. The plan was generated by local actors: politicians, exploiters, financers and planners, in an attempt to symbolically manifest a local feature (the name of a well-known Swedish film actor), made with a declared ambition by the City Planning Office to create land marks addressing a global receiver, in the sense an anonymous visitor to the centre of Malmö. But precisely because of this locally generated “globalisation”, the control of the renewal became even more manifest, and more hidden from the public, allowing nothing of what Sassen (2002) regards as a paradoxically positive feature of globalisation towards the local, namely that it may provide opportunities for disadvantaged individuals and groups, who can gain presence as a collective actor both “in engagement with power but also vis-a-vis each other” (Sassen 2002: 21).

In planning procedures like these, the authorities or even individual civil servants have the authorized and delegated right to summarise opinions, and more importantly, to keep voices separated. Despite a quite elaborated public response procedure, pursued in an act of addressing the wills of those concerned by a new establishment, and showing comments of similar kind by several actors, the same procedure allows the authority to treat the totality of voices as scattered, simply by answering the commenters one after another. This means that opinions about for instance the height of the building in this case, opinions raised for reasons of security by the official examiner, and for reasons of increased shading by the neighbours, could have gained a more collective voice had it been collectively judged, or perhaps even stronger, if the separated actors had been able to “build equivalence” (Purcell 2008: 175) enough to become one clear voice during the process of answering.

6. Concluding remarks on delegation of authorization.

A general problem concerning authorisation appears regularly in planning: who is to take decisions and who is to be included in that decision-making? A clearer recognition of the various forms of possible authorizers in the theoretical discourse of planning would help defining an otherwise somewhat blurry domain, a domain in which the role of the architect become more a project disseminator and less a spatial negotiator. The civil servants of city planning offices have become more of admission agents and less of project advisors, but still with the power to categorise responses and opinions raised in legally stated consultation processes. A more profound articulation of the authorizing capacity of affiliated positions, temporary delegation, law-based, or etiquette-based agents (Hammad 2001) would be a way of making clearer the roles of the close, the intermediate, and the distant actors in the becoming of architecture.

In recognition of what Sassen says about authorization (2002: 12-15), and how it actualises social differences as regards citizenship, the case here studied showed also a need to view formal authorization in relation to what in a local community could be recognized as real agency. A tripartition of what has been discussed above shows first the completely unauthorized actors that are officially ignored, such as the homeless or the paperless citizen that lead a social life in the urban fabric suddenly actualised by architectonic proposals; Secondly, the authorised but not fully recognised actor represented by private persons and associations that are in the social position to raise an opinion about architecture via formalised committee consultation processes, but still does not necessarily count in the final official definition of participation, partly because they can both be kept apart and summarised by governmental will; And thirdly, the fully authorised and recognised actors, appearing as the political, entrepreneurial and professional agencies that have the actual ability to decide what a design outcome will comprise.

In the network of actors sketched in principal above, the architect appears traditionally as an actor appearing in the third (and major) authorization category, however as a producer also of visual agency (sketches) that fills a rhetorical function also outside the immediate projective hands of the architects themselves.

The remaking of a public square has here served to exemplify the democratic dilemma of addressing, hearing and acknowledging the voices of those who are concerned in renewal of urban situations. Do the philosophical concepts at hand give us scope enough to cover these complex issues? Is the recognition of agony, dissensus, and resistance to elimination of conflict, applicable when urban planning decisions and architectural creation is to be realised? And is participation even a desired request from members of society: who can actually afford the time it takes, or raise the interest needed to be engaged in physical planning? These are common questions raised as soon as participation is at stake theoretically, or actualised in practice. These dilemmas, addressed not only in everyday special practices but as well in philosophy and political theory as concerning the issue of radical equality, emancipation and pretended consensus, has several implications for how planning procedures and architectural competence could be regarded. In a semiotic perspective, placing agency itself in the centre of analysis, architectural formation of urban futures was here shown as a matter “closed beforehand”, with only minimal adjustment possible during public consultation processes, despite the fact that there can be a unified objection from official as well as private voices.

Acts of pretence and appropriation were here highlighted as important for both individual and common parts of supposedly democratic decision-making. As a way to consider these aspects in theorization about participation, in society in general, but also specifically in the practice of planning, it was suggested that a more profound consideration of the ways in which spatial agency is divided, formalised, delegated and operationalized could be made. Such a division, hence a proliferation of actors at hand, would benefit from an approach where the “close”, “intermediate” and “distant” traditional actors are seen a linked also to the semiotic means at hand, including visual and material objects. Such an articulation, that would necessarily also include the temporary ownership of spatial production has the potential to break with rigid polarisation in theorisation on democracy, but also on an applied level, with static organisation in practice that lacks communicational reciprocity. On a theoretical level, semiotic investigations of what time itself can do as an actor in decision processes, may be taken more into account by acknowledging, as here implicated, cognizable governmental actions such as “fading out”, “oblivion”, “prolongation” and “waiting”.

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