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Fetishizing Brussels roadscape

par Pelgrims, Claire
Référence T2M Boom, Bust and What After? The Lives of Hub Cities and Their Networks (24-27 octobre 2018: Montréal)
Publication Non publié, 2018-10-26

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

The built environment and skyline of Brussels underwent large transformations to adapt to the increasing automobility (1950-1990). The produced roadscape would have made Brussels the “crossroad” of the Occidental world: the international hub where all roads lead to (Leloutre et Pelgrims 2017). It becomes in modern Brussels the “fetish” of a hegemonic fast mobility imaginary, strongly influenced by the American example, which is further stabilised and reinforced. Building on the example of Brussels - the most American city of Europe -, I propose to discuss automobility theories around the four-point definition of “fetish” as transdisciplinary theorised by Pietz (1985), to better understand the cultural and political significance of the Brussels roadscape. (1) Automobility infrastructure consolidates scientific legitimacy and economical elites of the machinic complex of automobility (Hein 2017), but depends for its meaning on this hybrid social system (Sheller et Urry 2000). The latest includes a dominant culture that assimilates emancipation and individual mobility, erases the political dimension of automobility and naturalises the infrastructure (Furness 2010; Seiler 2008; Flonneau 2010). (2) The aestheticized infrastructure, as vector of attractiveness marginalizing soft mobilities, becomes the “place of communion” of a civilised society of drivers experiencing positive freedom (Chella Rajan 2006) and rotted in the project temporality (Ricœur 1991). (3) It renewly associates emancipation of society and mobility through a snowballing effect mentioned as the “magic circle” of automobile development (Dupuy 1999). This assimilation is achieved through the pleasures of driving: feelings of ubiquity and agility in the management of daily rhythms (Urry 2000) and bodily sensations, including visual ones that overturn the urban monumental expressivity. (4) It constitutes a network directed by technocracy and “experts”, that constrains individuals in their travel, intercorporeality and lifestyle (Urry 2000), accentuating the subversion of critical autonomy of individuals.