Postmodern City Texts: Toronto, Montreal and Taipei
2007 Spring
Final Exam: Part II
Part I. Close Analysis
II. General Essay Questions:
1. City Concepts:
Here are some of the theories about modern and postmodern city discussed
in class (and also covered in our textbook). Although they are just covered
briefly, we can still respond to them with our understanding of the fictional
texts and our own experience in a city. Please choose one from the list
below to --
-- explain what the theorists' ideas are,
-- whether you agree with them, and
-- support your ideas with one text from our class OR from your own life.
a. de-gentrification vs. articulation of elite culture (in Toronto, and
as discussed by 夏鑄九.
b. human distance and indifference in a city (Wirth's theory of human
segmentation and Simmel's theory of the blase.
c. walking and strolling in a city (Michel de Certeau's walking in a city
as a narrative; Baudelaire's and Benjamin's theories of the flaneur).
2. Lived City vs. Concept City: Power Structure vs. People on
the Margins
a. Please compare "Blossom" and "I'm Running for My Life"
and discuss the protagonists' ways of survival, use of Toronto's spaces,
and their response to the power structure.
b. How are authorities and children presented respectively in 〈系統的多重關係〉and
〈公寓導遊〉?
3. History: How do postmodern city texts and spaces
present the histories of Taipei, Toronto and Montreal? By mixing different
"stories" or various signs of the past? Or by showing an interaction
between the past and the present? Or both?
Either choose two fictional texts from our class, or one fictional text
from class and one spatial text (e.g. 228 Park or Chungshan North Rd.)
to analyze. As a conclusion, you can choose to comment on the role of
history in a postmodern city. Is a city oblivious of its past?
4. City Vision and Reading a City Text:
How do we look at a city? How do we read a city text? What determines
the ways we view it (e.g. our social and physical position, means of transportation
and viewing)? Do you particularly go for (or believe in) a certain way
of viewing a city, OR reading a city text? Please first choose
a text from our class as the examples of viewing/reading a city, and then
explain your own method(s).
5. Lived City:
a. Urbanism as a Way of Life
Urbanism, Louis Wirth claims, is a way of life which is characterized
by efficiency,
heterogeneity on the one hand, and anonymity,
segmentation, as well as superficial and
transitory personal relations (or a shift away from primary relationships
to secondary relationships)
on the other. Do you agree that human relations in a city are superficial,
transitory, and more marked by their secondary roles than the primary
roles?
Use two of the texts we have discussed in class and your own experience
to illustrate your points.
(Possible Choices: Vive l'amour, Love Go Go, 〈公寓導遊〉, 7-11 & 〈7-11之戀〉,
The Personals, Eldorado, Cosmos, Exotica, Prey, etc.)
b. Lived City: Spaces of Flows and Chance Encounter.
Choose two short texts to analyze their treatments of flows and
the spaces of flows. How do the city texts we have read present the rapid
flows (of people,
commodities, information, virus, capital, etc.), the spaces (streets,
subway station, department
stores, restaurants, hotels, strip bar, concert hall, empty apartment
building and homes)
where these flows happen, and the ways people use the space to relate
to each other?
* The possible choices are all those listed above.
However, the difference is that here you need to discuss both the nature
of the spaces and the characters' spatial practice in them.)
