2016
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Will Straw, « Penser la nuit urbaine », HAL-SHS : sciences politiques, ID : 10670/1.ebr877
Some of my earliest memories, then, are of nocturnal experiences which were both natural and profoundly cultural. If these experiences were not, in any respect, urban in character, they nevertheless presided over my subsequent transformation into a confirmed city-dweller, fascinated by the enchanting capacities of the night and by its capacity to re-order social andcultural relations. Years later, as I passed through university, writing a mémoire de maîtrise on the American film noir and a doctoral thesis on popular dance music of the period 1975-1985, I pursued a fascination with the night without recognizing it as such. One of these experiences was the spectacle of the Aurora Borealis in the Canadian province of Manitoba. My second transformative encounter was with the book whose new edition you hold in your hands (or read on your screen.) On a trip to Paris in the mid 2000s, I purchased a copy of Luc Gwiazdzinski’s La nuit: dernière frontière de la ville. On the first inside page of this book I find, written in pen, 7/2007, an indication of the month in which I finished reading it. On almost ever page, I find the marks in pencil which instruct me to copy out those important passages which I wish to copy and preserve for further use. In the years before reading this book, I had integrated discussion of the urban night within my teaching, drawing on the scattered materials available in English (many of them, like the works of Wolfgang Schivelbusch or Joachim Schlor, translated from the German.) Luc’s book (sadly, as of yet, not translated into English) introduced me to the rich French vein of thinking on les temporalités urbaines, which set the concerns of the earlier Manchester event within a densely theorized account of the rhythms and cycles of urban life. I have spent much of the last decade acquainting myself with this body of thought and analysis, finding within it significant inspiration for my own work.