Yielding readers a new vision on the city and everyday life, this masterpiece by Michel De Certeua is profound and inspiring. It is the question ‘What is everyday life’ that pivots the article when you read. First, it is about people’s interaction. People are living as a collective in the city. However graceful and glamorous a city is built, it is rendered valueless and colourless without people. It takes citizens to bring life to the city. The three operational concepts, which are the concepts that make a city ideal and vivid, unveil the importance of protecting its inhabitants by having rational organization to ‘repress all the physical, mental and political pollutions that would compromise the city’, having its people to create and break the tradition of the city, as well as having people to give rise to ‘the creation of a universal and anonymous subject which is the city itself’. The city is not only about the urban structure, it needs people to make it not an empty shell. Second, everyday life is unconscious, as we don’t have the ‘all-seeing power’. It reminds us of the significance of making our own interpretation on the city, which is the idea of ‘walking in the city’. The ‘walking’ is crucial as it help people to resist the rules imposed by big organisations on us, giving us the little power to fight back to the big system.
Chan Hiu Yan (3035716244)
A very good summary and reflection of Certeau’s critical commentary!