Nocturnal perceptions, the weight of the gaze as a tool structuring public space

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My paper is part of my thesis research that deals with cities’ dark interstices and the emotions they generate. Using my research field in the city of Nantes, in the west of France, whose nights I have been exploring for the past 4 years, this presentation will focus on identifying the extent to which nocturnal public spaces are shaped by a socially and culturally construct visibility regime supported by the influence of the gaze. Thus, it demonstrates the importance of questioning a consent to darkness as it challenges the reason and practice of geography. The research is based on a nocturnal fieldwork that brings a night owl’s gaze at the night of the metropolis of Nantes. Exploring the night leads to a sensitive reasoning that requires a renewal of methods of research as well as a metamorphosis of the categories of perception. The urban landscape is a creation of the gaze, a spatialized gaze, based on a system of socially constructed values. Then, to see and to be seen remains a main issue that determines socio-urban phenomenas and differentiated appropriation of public space. In fact, the law of the dark is to annihilate the imperial power of the gaze: evolving in darkness puts in a state of vigilance that induces a bias in the representation of the night. In fact, without visual acuity, the sense of vulnerability may increase but the knowledge of space is enriched. A cultural conditioning associating over several millennia light with good and life and dark with evil and death, promotes discomfort at the arrival of nightime. Then, understanding the articulations of the different modes of perception allows a release which contributes to overcome fear. Getting out of the habit of thinking about space in visual terms can eventually help to reach a consent to darkness.