Page 22 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

16 CULTURAL STUDIES

acknowledge partial and changing membership; contingent insiderness;
uncertainty, loss and absence. This is a concern shared in the diverse theoretical
endeavours of (to cite just three authors) Bhabha (1994), Deutsche (1995) and
Nancy (1991), all of whom argue that the violent consequences of spatially
articulated epistemic closure are predicated on a refusal of such notions of lack.
In this article, I have tried to suggest that both of the spatialities through which
a group of community arts workers map their two understandings of ‘community’
can be interpreted as spatialities of lack. However, the politics of this lack vary,
according to community arts workers, depending on whether the absence is
disavowed or acknowledged; and the spatialities in which a ‘communty’ can be
mapped are symptomatic of that difference. Power produces its margins as its
Other, and refuses to give its Other whatever it needs, including even the
resources to articulate an identity. The consequences for those so marginalized
can be dire. They lack; they are made for and as nothing: ‘the kids are told
they’ll never get a job’; they are refused recognition. In the other ‘community’
imagined by community arts workers, however, lack is acknowledged. This
other spatiality is predicated on the acknowledgement of contingency, partiality
and absence. Its nodes and connections are contingent, their links connecting
differences and spanning absences. The network is fragile with gaps,
interruptions and absence. Its web-like form is an unstable, fluid matrix. Yet this
network is constructed by community arts workers as enabling those silenced by
their marginalization to speak for a while as collectives. By focusing people’s
energy they offer a collective articulation of ‘community’, the content of which
is never pre-given. Perhaps this latter spatiality of a mobile ‘community’, the
articulation of which is not the expression of an essence but another process of
‘communifying’, may also be a spatiality in which a new and more tolerant
‘community’ can be placed.

Acknowledgements
The research on which this article is based was funded by the Economic and
Social Research Council, grant number RR 000235698. Thanks to all the
interviewees for their time and enthusiasm, to Sue Lilley for her transcrip-tion
skills, and to Doreen Massey.

References

Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and
Spread of Nationalisms, London: Verso.
Bell, David and Valentine, Gill (1995) ‘Introduction: orientations’, in David Bell and Gill
Valentine (1995) Mapping Desire, London: Routledge.
Berrigan, Frances J. (ed.) (1977) Access: Some Western Models of Community Media,
Paris: UNESCO.