What does it mean to live in a dying place? This auto-critical article asks this question in the context of the Windsor/Detroit region, one of the most economically depressed zones in North America. Using the work of Barthes, Benjamin, and Taussig, I ruminate on the psycho-somatic experiences of trying to navigate a world that most writers have already dismissed as haunted and abandoned.
References
[1]
Brandt, D. Now You Care; Coach House Books: Toronto, Canada, 2003.
[2]
Scott, R. Alien. [film], Brandywine Productions, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, 1979.
[3]
Simmel, G. On Individuality and Social Forms; Selected Writings; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, USA, 1971.
[4]
Windsor Hum. Available online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDILKQjJW8 (accessed on 10 November 2013).
[5]
Taussig, M. The Nervous System; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 1992.
[6]
Gary Grosse spent thousands of hours trying to stop the ‘Windsor Hum’. Available online: http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/21/resident-devoted-thousands-of-hours-to-stopping-mysterious-windsor-hum-that-is-loud-enough-to-drive-you-insane/ (accessed on 10 November 2013).
[7]
Barthes, R. Empire of Signs; Hill and Wang: New York, NY, USA, 1982.
Binelli, M. Detroit City is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis; Metropolitan Books: New York, NY, USA, 2012.
[10]
Herron, J. Afterculture: Detroit and the Humiliation of History; Wayne State University Press: Detroit, MI, USA, 1995.
[11]
LeDuff, C. Detroit: An American Autopsy; Penguin: New York, NY, USA, 2013.
[12]
Solnit, R. Detroit Arcadia: Exploring the Post-American Landscape. Harper’s Magazine 2007, 315, 65–73.
[13]
Marchand, Y.; Meffre, R. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre Photography: The Ruins of Detroit. Available online: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/ (accessed on 15 November 2013).
[14]
Boileau, L. Fabulous Ruins of Detroit. Available online: http://detroityes.com/fabulous-ruins-of-detroit/home.php (accessed on 15 November 2013).
[15]
Latour, B. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, New York, NY, USA, 2005.
[16]
Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1999.
[17]
Art in Theory; Wood, P., Ed.; Blackwell: Malden, MA, USA, 2003.
[18]
Musil, R. Posthumous Papers of a Living Author; Archipelago Books: Brooklyn, NY, USA, St. Paul, MN, USA, 2006.
[19]
Derrida, J. Of Grammatology; Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MY, USA, 1976.
[20]
Benjamin, W. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2: 1931–1934; Jennings, M., Smith, G., Eiland, H., Eds.; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2005.
[21]
Belle Isle to 8 Mile: An Insider’s Guide to Detroit; Linn, A., Linn, E., Linn, R., Eds.; Detroit, MI, USA, 2012.
[22]
Farrell, B. USA 2003: Including Coverage of Canada; St. Martin’s Press: New York, NY, USA, 2003.
