Geographies of the night
From Firenze University Press Journal: Bollettino della Società Geografica
Luc Gwiazdzinski, Laboratoire Pacte, Université Grenoble Alpes, France
Marco Maggioli, Dipartimento di studi umanistici, Università IULM, Italia
Will Straw, Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University, Canada
«The night edge of thought is the anabis of infinity, awaiting the welcome»
Geneviève Clancy
Like the human organism, cities and territories exist within the rhythms of alternation of day and night. While the geography of the day is known and studied, less attention is paid to the nocturnal dimension. We might neglect this particular dimension on the pretext that the true “night” (when the world is asleep) often represents no more than a quarter of the day in its entirety. In many regions, nevertheless, the “non-day”, that period in which lighting is necessary, may reach — if only in winter — two thirds of the daily cycle. At the same time, there is quite clearly a life in our cities after the setting of the sun. The progressive colonization of darkness by artificial light, and the ongoing pursuit of work and leisure during the night have made this space-time attractive to geographers and scholars in the social sciences.
Our project here is one of a reflection “on” and “with” the night, one which is not restricted to geographers exclusively, but open to those other disciplines possessed of a geographical inclination, which have taken up the topic at different levels, from differ-ent angles, and in different contexts. Conversely, this is also a reflection “on “and” “for” geography from the perspective of the night. Geography has much to say to the night, and the reverse, as well, is true. This is one of the hypothèses to be explored here, with our plural approach both to nights and to geographies.
Geography is to be understood here as both “the object of this science, the space of societies” (as in “geographical space)”) and the “science whose object is the space of societies, the spatial dimensions of the social” (Levy, Lussault, 2003). By night, we designate both the “duration unfolding between the setting and the rising of the sun, and during which the latter is not visible” (Larousse) and the space-time of societies which “inhabit” it, in Eric Dardel’s sense of a (1952) “manner of knowing the world” and of those “affective relations [which are] far from an abstract or technocratic approach to space”.We will explore geographies of the night and the investigative methods used by the geography of the night, posing the question of what might be the epistemological value of the night for the discipline and for our societies.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.13128/bsgi.v1i2.515
Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/bsgi/article/view/515
