Streetnotes

Cover for Streetnotes 21 featuring cover image: Megan Kathleen Blake. Sui Wo Court Public Housing Estate, "Fo Tan, Shatin, NT. ©2013"

front matter and table of contents for Streetnotes 21

This photo-essay focuses on the everyday spaces of Hong Kong. In particular it views an alternative landscape of Hong Kong peopled by poor who seek to make-do and get on with few resources. The focus is on hawking and market space. The photo-essay seeks to reveal the vibrancy in spaces that are not dominated by neoliberal idologies.  In doing so, it also seeks to illustrate the violence that is done to urban space and to the poor in particular when neoliberal ideologies are given full reign.

Poems

What scholars think of as gentrification is often associated with more expensive and aesthetically elegant cafes, restaurants, and boutiques that appeal to the high-class consumers’ tastes.  Yet, as I have discussed, it also means the displacement of working class residents and their stores.  There happened to a bakery in the south part of Park Slope, a place where coffee cost less than a dollar, but the rent jumped up from four thousand dollars a month to a whopping five thousand dollars a month. So, what might be the real face of this transition?  Perhaps the one of Signora Enrica, one of two old Sicilian sisters that used to own an old-fashion Italian Bakery.  In the photo (See Figure 1, Seeing the neighborhood change) it is the last day their store will be open and she is there, working as always, behind the counter.

poetry

This text aims to entertain a dialogue with the modern pathos as evidenced by two poets, separated by eras but nevertheless close in their effort to understand the new experiences offered by life in big modern cities: Charles Baudelaire, in France, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, in Brazil. Bearing in mind especially the writings of Walter Benjamin, for whom the transitory character of the present in vivid experience could liquefy individual expectations and models of uniqueness, we put forth the thesis that the verses of these poets are able to offer a privileged literary image - for both their newness and their beauty. Ultimately, Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence is called upon, as the reiteration of commodification and the modus vivendi bourgeois can lead to the emergence of a critical subjectivity which is therefore immanent.

poem