“Between the ‘private’ worlds of intimacy and the family and the ‘public’ worlds of sociability or the market economy.”[1]
Jeff Weintraub discusses the complex spectrum of human interactions and participation around the two opposing yet contributing concepts of Public and Private spaces; in the chapter The theory and Politics of the Public/ Private Distinction, part of a collection included in the book Public and Private in Thought and Practice, Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy. The concepts discussed in the referenced reading are particularly pertinent in understanding how they could inform concepts of heterotopia to monopolize on historically abrasive zones. These ‘places of otherness’ are defined more or less by the spectrum of private verses public spaces. In most cases through the reading, there are clear distinctions between what is private from what is public. Weintraub most clearing defines this model between that which is hidden from what is revealed, and what is individual verses what is collective.
This may be a valid definition for most people in their day-to-day lives. However, looking in our own backyard at San Francisco’s homeless population, there is a clear fusion between public and private spaces. Those which most people deem domestic, personal and territory of the home are carried forth visible to the collective. There is a constant tension between those interacting with “their” public sphere and those attempting to sustain “their” sense of privacy. Some may call this diversity, and a greater sense of the urban collective, however, in contrary the argument could be made that there is even less interaction because of it. The encampments take root in outcast areas across the city in an ‘us’ verse ‘them’ mentality. In the reading, Aristotle argues that participation in a community doesn’t always equate to citizenship. A citizen according to Aristotle is defined by “one who is capable both of ruling and being ruled.” [2] In which case, despite being visible and physically present in the public realm, the participation in the community falls short from both parties. The forced interaction with the collective is where one source of friction originates. One reflection of this concept by Philip Slater “is the possibility that the emotional ‘overloading’ of the domain of intimate relations will develop in tandem with the increasing emotional emptiness and isolation of an inhospitable ‘public’ domain.”[3] This concept resonates currently as the wealth of public modern life intensifies, the significance of private life increases respectively –and so the public sphere becomes more and more impersonal and the split grows greater.
Weintraub, Jeff (1997). The Theory and Politics of the Public/ Private Distinction. Jeff Weintraub & Krishan Kumar Edditors, The Public and Private in Thought and Practice (pp. 1-38). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
[1] Weintraub: 2.
[2] Weintraub: 12.
[3] Weintraub: 22.