I loved this!! And bizarrely resonant too. I had so many of these EXACT SAME THOUGHTS as I went to the library to do some work (instead of just going WFH, which I usually do.) And I noticed that libraries are distinctly chaotic: the storytime like you say, but also the people from all walks - genuinely all walks, including a man with Tourette's and teenagers and people playing music out loud on their phones - bustling about. For a second I caught myself thinking "if only we could just have the good parts of this community..." but once you get into that line of thinking you're no longer cultivating a real community as much as a club or a shop or what have you. Cafes are nice but almost never will a stranger come up to me to ask the time or muse about the weather outside or equally yell some insane profanity. Cafes are peaceful and peace also entails a certain isolation.
if you want community you must also be OK with some amount of chaos!! is your vision of a third space another exclusionary utopia (built on someone elses dystopia) or is it a space for true communal emergence?
(and my last tangential gripe - a network is not a fucking community!! a hub for self-actualisation that costs $300 to join is not a fucking community!! it is yet another echo chamber of the self)
thank you so much for these well articulated thoughts!!
adored this. especially the part about the fantasy library and everyone existing next to each other but not *with* each other. it made me think of how the term “parallel play” gets used lots these days, its original meaning being two children playing with different toys in the same space, but now sometimes meaning two adults in a room both scrolling on their phones instead of interacting. i’ve been fantasising about opening a bookshop cafe with rosa recently lol and this has made me evaluate a lot of my own thoughts too!
A great article! Have you read China Miéville’s introduction to the Verso edition of More’s ‘Utopia’? He distinguishes reactionary arcadias from truly progressive utopias. Your piece here reads as an excellent update to his essay!
your comparison between AI-generated images and the online fantasy of public spaces is so apt -- it all resonates as usual! i always think about the posts you mention that crop up AGAINST walkable cities... 'my car is more comfortable! i don't have to see people or think about public safety/comfort!' seems like a similar anti-humanist sentiment
as a 19 year old queer person who doesn’t enjoy the nightlife scene and would have CERTAINLY liked that queer cafe tweet, this was challenging in a great way. i think there is certainly something to be said about the closing down of in-person queer spaces and the impact of the pandemic upon how young people view issues like kink at pride and queer nightlife. but i also think that having a first seat to this extreme conservative scapegoating of trans and queer people often makes us feel oversexualised in bodies we haven’t necessarily even had sexual experiences in yet. this longing for “queer cafes” of such could just be translated into a longing to be seen and accepted in our totality - to be able to simultaneously revel in our youth and naivety as well as our queerness? food for thought
your description of your library’s children’s section is so visceral haha. Reminds me of my local library’s children’s section: a loud, messy, colorful area completely under a glass roof. I was always burning up in there!
The fantasy library reminds me of the "lo-fi beats to chill and relax to" animation lol. Definitely very cozy and aesthetic but ultimately in someone's home.
I'd like if libraries were cuter but I also think about when I was younger, I went to the library to have access to internet and I shared that space with people who needed escape; not just from extroverts or urban noise but from sleeping on the street, from cops, from abusive homes. I'm sure they also desire a warm and peaceful space to relax into but then would they be welcomed?
Interesting to think about the interlink between the 'queer respectability of the fantasy library' and spaces that still have a somewhat unspoken enforcement of gender roles.
The element of nostalgia that you talk about really plays into a more patriarchal view of invisible labour - the unseen woman who works in the coffee shop (a traditional 'safe space' for women to congregate and socialise - but not too much! - in public) and the unseen janitor, as you mentioned, in a traditional elite male space such as the library.
Probably a generalisation - but, in that sense, perhaps the 'queer respectability' of these twee utopias comes from the fact that they were traditionally sex-segregated spaces anyway? In that, queer bodies (being 'close enough') are just barely more respectable?
"We all have fantasies, and I’d rather yours is a cosy library than, say, eugenics." loved it! I'm not sure that the fantasy library utopia (idea that I adore) is a middle-class concept. Maybe it is and I don't see it, happy to be challenged! anyway, libraries are one of the only places, along with parks, that are free. The activity you do at a library comes at no cost for the public, making it accessible to all.
I really like this essay and I'm interested in its sensibility, but I do think there is a lot of basically idolizing of "engagement" and dealing with and being open to "trouble" the way someone like Judith Butler might talk about "trouble" or "troubling" something. Isn't that just encouraging people to seek out and tolerate conflict, at a certain point?
I’m interested in this - please do expand more if you have the chance to as I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read Butler. I suppose my feelings reflect a kind of agonist philosophy, that conflict and difficult encounters (within reason, of course) are vital forces and suppressing them can limit the way we envision the political - that we do have to tolerate conflict as it is a fundamental feature of political life, but should not unduly seek it out. & thank you for reading and engaging!
This definitely deserves more like, interrogation, than I'm about to give it here, but the way you have talked about social engagement and difficulty here reminds me a lot of the way that my professors in my undergraduate education (as a political scientist) talked about engagement, basically, with reactionaries. So as much as I agree with what you've said, and your framing, I'm interested in how this is like a double-edged sword, because it seems hard to differentiate at scale between healthy engagement with the other, with ideas and people that might seem unfamiliar or threatening, and being basically guilt-tripped into tolerating bigotry. I am really trying to make this simpler than I feel it is just to give you an idea of what I'm thinking and why, but I was excited to see you responded. Really great piece :)
Yeh, you’re definitely right - I think it’s something we have to navigate if we have a commitment to a more radical politics of democracy. Thank you for raising it! (& what would be the point of posting about engagement & productive discourse and not replying - that’s one of the nicer things about substack I find ❤️)
I loved this!! And bizarrely resonant too. I had so many of these EXACT SAME THOUGHTS as I went to the library to do some work (instead of just going WFH, which I usually do.) And I noticed that libraries are distinctly chaotic: the storytime like you say, but also the people from all walks - genuinely all walks, including a man with Tourette's and teenagers and people playing music out loud on their phones - bustling about. For a second I caught myself thinking "if only we could just have the good parts of this community..." but once you get into that line of thinking you're no longer cultivating a real community as much as a club or a shop or what have you. Cafes are nice but almost never will a stranger come up to me to ask the time or muse about the weather outside or equally yell some insane profanity. Cafes are peaceful and peace also entails a certain isolation.
if you want community you must also be OK with some amount of chaos!! is your vision of a third space another exclusionary utopia (built on someone elses dystopia) or is it a space for true communal emergence?
(and my last tangential gripe - a network is not a fucking community!! a hub for self-actualisation that costs $300 to join is not a fucking community!! it is yet another echo chamber of the self)
thank you so much for these well articulated thoughts!!
Absolutely!! Especially that last little gripe - I hadn’t even thought of that and entirely agree. Thanks for reading and the comment 💖
adored this. especially the part about the fantasy library and everyone existing next to each other but not *with* each other. it made me think of how the term “parallel play” gets used lots these days, its original meaning being two children playing with different toys in the same space, but now sometimes meaning two adults in a room both scrolling on their phones instead of interacting. i’ve been fantasising about opening a bookshop cafe with rosa recently lol and this has made me evaluate a lot of my own thoughts too!
This is what grad school is for: take a break, then come back with a banger! Coin a new term, no less. Well done!
Thank you!! Too kind.
so, so good.
💗💗
I loved this and All Things are Too Small, a book that more people should be talking about.
Isn’t it - been shocked not to see more responses to Rothfeld’s work. And thank you.
A great article! Have you read China Miéville’s introduction to the Verso edition of More’s ‘Utopia’? He distinguishes reactionary arcadias from truly progressive utopias. Your piece here reads as an excellent update to his essay!
I haven’t! I’ll have to try and find a copy.
I'm sure I have a scanned copy somewhere. I'm at a conference until Thursday, but I will try and find it for you. Feel free to remind me if I forget!
Oh please do! That’s v kind.
your comparison between AI-generated images and the online fantasy of public spaces is so apt -- it all resonates as usual! i always think about the posts you mention that crop up AGAINST walkable cities... 'my car is more comfortable! i don't have to see people or think about public safety/comfort!' seems like a similar anti-humanist sentiment
as a 19 year old queer person who doesn’t enjoy the nightlife scene and would have CERTAINLY liked that queer cafe tweet, this was challenging in a great way. i think there is certainly something to be said about the closing down of in-person queer spaces and the impact of the pandemic upon how young people view issues like kink at pride and queer nightlife. but i also think that having a first seat to this extreme conservative scapegoating of trans and queer people often makes us feel oversexualised in bodies we haven’t necessarily even had sexual experiences in yet. this longing for “queer cafes” of such could just be translated into a longing to be seen and accepted in our totality - to be able to simultaneously revel in our youth and naivety as well as our queerness? food for thought
i mean obviously this scapegoating isn’t ‘new’ just exacerbated by the internet. i think anyway
your description of your library’s children’s section is so visceral haha. Reminds me of my local library’s children’s section: a loud, messy, colorful area completely under a glass roof. I was always burning up in there!
The fantasy library reminds me of the "lo-fi beats to chill and relax to" animation lol. Definitely very cozy and aesthetic but ultimately in someone's home.
I'd like if libraries were cuter but I also think about when I was younger, I went to the library to have access to internet and I shared that space with people who needed escape; not just from extroverts or urban noise but from sleeping on the street, from cops, from abusive homes. I'm sure they also desire a warm and peaceful space to relax into but then would they be welcomed?
Fantastic article, as always!
Interesting to think about the interlink between the 'queer respectability of the fantasy library' and spaces that still have a somewhat unspoken enforcement of gender roles.
The element of nostalgia that you talk about really plays into a more patriarchal view of invisible labour - the unseen woman who works in the coffee shop (a traditional 'safe space' for women to congregate and socialise - but not too much! - in public) and the unseen janitor, as you mentioned, in a traditional elite male space such as the library.
Probably a generalisation - but, in that sense, perhaps the 'queer respectability' of these twee utopias comes from the fact that they were traditionally sex-segregated spaces anyway? In that, queer bodies (being 'close enough') are just barely more respectable?
"We all have fantasies, and I’d rather yours is a cosy library than, say, eugenics." loved it! I'm not sure that the fantasy library utopia (idea that I adore) is a middle-class concept. Maybe it is and I don't see it, happy to be challenged! anyway, libraries are one of the only places, along with parks, that are free. The activity you do at a library comes at no cost for the public, making it accessible to all.
I really like this essay and I'm interested in its sensibility, but I do think there is a lot of basically idolizing of "engagement" and dealing with and being open to "trouble" the way someone like Judith Butler might talk about "trouble" or "troubling" something. Isn't that just encouraging people to seek out and tolerate conflict, at a certain point?
I’m interested in this - please do expand more if you have the chance to as I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read Butler. I suppose my feelings reflect a kind of agonist philosophy, that conflict and difficult encounters (within reason, of course) are vital forces and suppressing them can limit the way we envision the political - that we do have to tolerate conflict as it is a fundamental feature of political life, but should not unduly seek it out. & thank you for reading and engaging!
This definitely deserves more like, interrogation, than I'm about to give it here, but the way you have talked about social engagement and difficulty here reminds me a lot of the way that my professors in my undergraduate education (as a political scientist) talked about engagement, basically, with reactionaries. So as much as I agree with what you've said, and your framing, I'm interested in how this is like a double-edged sword, because it seems hard to differentiate at scale between healthy engagement with the other, with ideas and people that might seem unfamiliar or threatening, and being basically guilt-tripped into tolerating bigotry. I am really trying to make this simpler than I feel it is just to give you an idea of what I'm thinking and why, but I was excited to see you responded. Really great piece :)
Yeh, you’re definitely right - I think it’s something we have to navigate if we have a commitment to a more radical politics of democracy. Thank you for raising it! (& what would be the point of posting about engagement & productive discourse and not replying - that’s one of the nicer things about substack I find ❤️)