‘Total Gating’: Sociality and the Fortification of Networked Spaces

Abstract

Starting with a description of Wynyard Park in Teesside, a development that combines gated residence, workplace and leisure space, ‘fear of the other’ is identified as a key but underexplored motivating force behind this kind of ‘total gating’, an argument based on existing empirical studies of gated communities. It is argued that a radical reading of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the other can do the explanatory work that would flesh out this allusion to fear: first, by reading the unknowable Levinasian other as repulsive in his/her threat to the individual’s ontological security; and second, by making ontological insecurity fundamental to Levinas’ account of ethical sociality. To conclude, this work is then situated in a mobility/moorings discourse.

Key Words:

• Gating
• ethics
• sociality
• ontological insecurity
• mobility/moorings
• proximity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nick Gane, Rowland Atkinson, Dave Beer, and Vicki Wilkinson for comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, my thanks to Chris Hill and Jenny Hambling for all their help.

Notes

1. All references to Wynyard Park come from the online brochure. Available at http://www.wynyardpark.com/

2. Following Crang et al. (2006, p. 2553) I suggest we understand what is meant by ICT to include telephony, television, computers – and the interaction of these elements together. An understanding of how these technologies are used together will allow us to assess their impact upon the urban environment.

3. Virilio puts the dangers of withdrawal somewhat poetically: ‘the world, the planet, is becoming a blockhouse, a closed house, foreclosed’ (in Virilio & Lotringer, 2002, p. 88).

4. Phillips and Smith (2006, p. 899) also talk of moving in a ‘protective bubble of air’ in their study of urban incivility, demonstrating the intuitive value of the ‘bubbling’ metaphor.

5. See Flusty (1997, p. 48) for an excellent account of what he calls ‘interdictory spaces’: spaces that intercept, repel or filter would-be occupants. See also Bauman (2008b, pp. 98–104) for his account of anthropoemic spaces (spaces that vomit or repel the other, such as fortified places of business) and anthropophagic spaces (spaces that assimilate or make same the other, such as shopping centres). Note: the gated community would be both, repelling others and making same any remaining otherness of the residents through housing agreements.

6. My reading of Levinas on sociality is informed by that of Bauman, who observes: ‘We are not moral thanks to society […]; we live in society, we are society, thanks to being moral. At the heart of sociality is the loneliness of the moral person’ (Bauman, 2009, p. 61). Such a reading highlights the connection between the social and the pre-ontological, ethical movement that allows two ontological distinct entities – the ‘I’ and the other – to engage with one another.