Space-body-ritual
Subtitle: performativity in the city
By: Reena Tiwari
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Lanham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 157
ISBN-13: 9780739128572; 9780739147634
Description: "Performing the rhythms of life requires paying close attention to the relation between body and space. The emphasis on ritual as a means of searching out this relation is important and makes for a vibrant and rewarding book."--Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick.

"Space-Body-Ritual is a pioneering book that explores the relationship between architectural space and the body in addition to examining performativity in India's holy city of Varanasi. The sacrality of space and time, functionality of the lifeways, and spatiality of architectural places are vividly illustrated with theoretical constructs, spatial models, and narratives of the ongoing ritual dramas that converge into the making of ̀place ballet.' This book is a tour de force."--Rana P.B. Singh, Banaras Hindu University.

Set against the contemporary thinking of the city as a spectacle, Space-Body-Ritual: Performativity in the City establishes everyday life in the city as a ground for authentic experience. Reena Tiwari emphasizes the city as a space of lived experience--an intricately layered space giving people a poetic experience, responding to their memories and desires. She also explores the conflict between two ideas: the idea of the "city as text," to be read and understood from a distance, and the "city as body," where the body, after writing the text through its performance, achieves the capacity to read and understand it. Space-Body-Ritual demonstrates that the abstract "seeing" embedded in the "city as a text" is underwritten by the idea of power and control of city visionaries that tends to dominate the hidden power operating at deeper levels in the city. This hidden power is the power of the user's body in space. Tiwari also proposes that an understanding of the "city as body" through lived experience--through rhythmanalysis, where rhythms of everyday and extra-everyday practices are understood--leads to the design of an environment that is evocative and is able to generate a bodily response from the user. To understand the rhythms, it becomes essential to know the way users inhabit, understand, and map or present the city spaces by their bodies. Space-Body-Ritual will compel its readership to think of the parameters of spatial design as cultural generator. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.