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ABSTRACT
I analyze the Salt Lake City Main Public Library (SLCMPL) through archival work, textual analysis, and field methods. Through attention to the site’s mechanisms of emergence, its relationship to the city’s Public Safety Building, and movements through the building in the present, I argue the SLCMPL materializes a neoliberal orientation to commonplaces through a dual emphasis on order and visibility. The building’s design and meanings invite heterogeneous visitors to become watchful subjects, utilizing the architecture to ensure the production of an orderly public space. In making this argument, I contribute to the study of neoliberal geographies, commonplaces, and rhetorical methods.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dr. Dickinson and the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough engagement and close readings of the essay, as well as Danielle Endres, Meg Nomura, and members of the author’s Spring 2018 COMM 7000: Rhetorical Methods course at the University of Utah for commenting on the manuscript as it developed.
Notes
1. The Salt Lake City Public Library System, “The City Library: A New Main Library for Salt Lake City Open February 8, 2003” (informational booklet, Salt Lake City, 2003).
2. Danielle Endres and Samantha Senda-Cook, “Location Matters: The Rhetoric of Place in Protest,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 3 (2011): 257–82.
3. As will be explained later, “the event” refers to the moment a “negative” tendency (in the case of neoliberalism, publicity) becomes unmanageable and thus subjected to intervention. See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–1978 (New York: Picador, 2004).
4. David Fleming, City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009).
5. Ibid., 34.
6. Ibid., 16.
7. In critical geography, see Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism,’” Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 349–79. Examples that consider the materialization of neoliberal sensibilities in urban environments within communication studies include Giorgia Aiello, “From Wound to Enclave: The Visual-Material Performance of Urban Renewal in Bologna’s Manifattura delle Arti,” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 4 (2011): 341–66; Greg Dickinson and Brian Ott, “Neoliberal Capitalism, Globalization, and Lines of Flight: Vectors and Velocities at the 16th Street Mall,” Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies 13, no. 6 (2013): 529–35; Richard G. Jones, Jr., and Christina R. Foust, “Staging and Enforcing Consumerism in the City: The Performance of Othering on the 16th Street Mall,” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4, no. 1 (2008): 1–28; Mary E. Triece, “Constructing the Antiracial City: City Planning and Antiracialism in the 21st Century,” Western Journal of Communication 82, no. 8 (2018): 613–30. My approach combines attention to the material force of the building in the present with a historical analysis of the practices (including nonhumans) that facilitated its emergence. I also contribute to this literature through a specific focus on neoliberal commonplaces.
8. Explicit attention to commonplaces buttresses existing analyses of neoliberal architecture. See Douglas Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
9. Fleming, City of Rhetoric.
10. Ibid., 13–4.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Ibid., 26.
13. Robert Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere, and a Public Good,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 103, no. 4 (2017): 329–49; Löic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
14. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 17; on vocabularies of the economy and the significant amount of state intervention required to uphold markets, see Doreen Massey, “Vocabularies of the Economy,” in After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto, eds. Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey, and Michael Rustin (London: Lawrence & Wishart), 24–36.
15. Krystle Maki, “Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients Under the Watchful Eye of Ontario Works,” Surveillance & Society 9, nos. 1 and 2 (2011): 50. The practice of constituting and surveying deviants has its roots in disciplinary practices. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). The prime characteristic of a neoliberal deviant is a lack of proper participation in the totalizing nature of economic life, ranging from homelessness to welfare recipience and protest.
16. Wacquant, Punishing the Poor, 19.
17. Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Malden, MA: Polity), 137.
18. Ibid., 137.
19. On suburbs and privatized civic centers, see Greg Dickinson, Suburban Dreams: Imagining and Building the Good Life (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2015). On the constant threat of “urban disorders,” see Wacquant, Punishing, xii.
20. Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 136.
21. Simon Springer, “Violence, Democracy, and Neoliberal ‘Order:’ The Contestation of Public Space in Posttransitional Cambodia,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99, no. 1 (2009): 141.
22. Wacquant, Punishing; on “lateral surveillance” and its relationship to neoliberalism, see Joshua Reeves, “If You See Something, Say Something: Lateral Surveillance and the Uses of Responsibility,” Surveillance & Society 10, nos. 3 and 4 (2012): 235–48.
23. Asen, “Neoliberalism”.
24. Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 142.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 142.
27. Ibid., 150.
28. Ibid.
29. Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). On “technologies of visibility,” see Michael Lechuga, “Coding Intensive Movement with Technologies of Visibility,” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry 1, no. 1 (2017): 83–97.
30. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 6.
31. Manuel DeLanda and Graham Harman, The Rise of Realism (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017): 14–5. The cited quotations come from DeLanda, but the text from which they are drawn is a conversation between DeLanda and Harman.
32. DeLanda and Harman, The Rise of Realism, 78–9.
33. See Triece, “Constructing the Antiracial City”.
34. Greg Dickinson, Brian Ott, and Eric Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering or Forgetting: The Reverent Eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3, no. 1 (2006): 29.
35. Dickinson, Ott, and Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering,” 29.
36. Carole Blair and Neil Michel, “Commemorating in the Theme Park Zone: Reading the Astronauts Memorial,” in At the Intersection: Cultural Studies and Rhetorical Studies, ed. Thomas Rosteck (New York: Guilford Press, 1999): 29–83.
37. Jessie Stewart and Greg Dickinson, “Enunciating Locality in the Postmodern Suburb: FlatIron Crossing and the Colorado Lifestyle,” Western Journal of Communication 72, no.3 (2008): 286.
38. Elizabeth D. Wilhoit, “Affordances as Material Communication: How the Spatial Environment Communicates to Organize Cyclists in Copenhagen, Denmark,” Western Journal of Communication 82, no. 2 (2018): 220.
39. Michael K. Middleton, Samantha Senda-Cook, and Danielle Endres, “Articulating Rhetorical Field Methods: Challenges and Tensions,” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 4 (2011): 386–406.
40. Brett Hullinger, “Building a Better Library: A Dramatic New Look Proves It’s Not Hip to be Square,” Salt Lake Magazine, September/October 2000, 58–60; Community Building: The Creation of a Modern Public Library, directed by Clayton Farr (Global Artways, 2006). DVD; An Analysis of the disciplining of temporalities at the Vancouver Public Library can be found in Sarah Sharma, In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
41. Community Building.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Moshe Safdie, “On Ethics, Order, and Complexity,” in Moshe Safdie II, ed. Diana Murphy (Victoria: Images Publishing, 2009), 11.
45. Safdie, “On Ethics,” 11.
46. “The Civitas Idea,” Civitas, http://civitasinc.com/ideas/civitas-idea/ (accessed March 21, 2018).
47. Community Building.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Safdie, “On Ethics,” 17–8.
54. Ibid., 16.
55. Ibid., 16.
56. Safdie, “On Ethics,” 10; Moshe Safdie, “Building Uniqueness” (presentation delivered at TED2002, March 2002), https://www.ted.com/talks/moshe_safdie_on_building_uniqueness.
57. Community Building.
58. Ibid.
59. Safdie, “On Ethics,” 22.
60. Salt Lake City Public Library, “Community Shops & Services at Library Square: Available Retail Space” (informational booklet, Salt Lake City, 2002).
61. Salt Lake City Public Library, “Community Shops & Services”.
62. Salt Lake City Public Library, “The Salt Lake City Public Library System Fact Sheet” (document, Salt Lake City, 2002).
63. Safdie, “On Ethics,” 17–8.
64. As Safdie explained, “I think that we found the key here by creating these two city blocks, which are the great park with really two object buildings: the library and the City/County Building. And that acting as a catalyst, then the library becomes sort of a living room for the greater community around it.” Community Building.
65. A plaque at the site details this colonial history of festival. See Daughters of Utah Pioneers, “Pioneer Camping Grounds” (plaque, Salt Lake City County, 1947).
66. The Salt Lake City Public Library System, “The City Library”.
67. Lee Benson, “Remembering a Textbook Case of Courage and Heroism at the Salt Lake City Library,” Desert News (Salt Lake City, Utah). https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865649341/Remembering-a-textbook-case-of-courage-and-heroism-at-the-Salt-Lake-City-Library.html (accessed March 5, 2016).
68. C-SPAN Cities Tour—Salt Lake City: Salt Lake City Public Library (documentary feature, 2014, June 5), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI3zmkw4obo.
69. Alex Wilson, “New Public Safety Building in Salt Lake City a Model of Resilience,” Resilient Design (blog). June 30, 2014, http://www.resilientdesign.org/new-public-safety-building-in-salt-lake-city-a-model-of-resilience/.
70. Wilson, “New Public Safety Building”.
71. Janelle Stecklein, “New Public Safety Building is Not Your Typical Cop Shop,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT). July 8, 2013, http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56509847&itype=CMSID (accessed March 10, 2018).
72. “Community” (informational plaque, Salt Lake City Public Safety Building, 2013).
73. “Public Safety” (informational plaque, Salt Lake City Public Safety Building, 2013); “Police” (informational plaque, Salt Lake City Public Safety Building, 2013).
74. “Buster Simpson, Presence,” Salt Lake City Arts Council, http://saltlakepublicart.org/art/presence-5/ (accessed March 1, 2018).
75. “Alexander Tylevich, Through the Safety Lens,” Salt Lake City Arts Council, http://saltlakepublicart.org/art/through-the-safety-lens-0/ (accessed March 1, 2018).
76. In early 2019, signs that informed visitors it is “unlawful to camp in a non-approved campsite” were posted around the library’s plaza and greenspace. Homeless people were given until February 1st to remove their shelters. This represents a moment when the presence of homeless communities began to fall outside of the “bandwidth of acceptability” as calculated by the neoliberal security apparatus, resulting in police intervention to manage “the event” of deviant publicity.
77. For a related analysis of how buildings invite watchful movements, see Elinor Light, “Visualizing Homeland: Remembering 9/11 and the Production of a Surveilling Flânuer,” Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies 16, no. 6 (2016): 536–47.
78. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 18.
79. Similar to the Vancouver library, the SLCMPL prohibits sleeping at study desks. See Sharma, In the Meantime.
80. Endres and Senda-Cook, “Location Matters,” 272–3.