Liam Kennedy,
Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
ISBN: 0 7486 0952 0 (pb)
Pp 224
£16.95
(Review copy supplied by Edinburgh University Press)
Uploaded 1 December 2001

Race and Urban Space is one in a series of books from Edinburgh UP entitled “Tendencies: identities, texts, and cultures.” The series editor’s introduction explains that successive volumes concentrate on “how the formations of identity are being articulated in contemporary literary and cultural texts” especially in ways that bring together different cultural forms such as writing, photography, and film (xi-xii). Kennedy’s text is a clear example of the goals of the series: his book investigates representations of race and urban spaces in the US by considering the work of filmmakers, photographers, journalists, and novelists. Chapters include discussions of novels such as Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Richard Price’s Clockers (USA 1995), and Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress (USA 1995); films such as Falling Down (USA 1992), Strange Days (USA 1995), and Boyz ‘n’ the hood (USA 1991); as well as photographic collections such as the book and exhibition by Camilo José Varaga, The New American Ghetto. Kennedy moves confidently between these various texts and offers connecting passages that locate his analysis in the debates about contemporary US culture and what he calls the “crisis of urbanity.”

Kennedy’s introduction begins by addressing the ways that US cities have been key sites in the development of a cultural theory that attends to space as an agent in social relations and identity formation. In discussing the breakdown of public space and collective urban identity in American cities (the “crisis of urbanity” mentioned above) Kennedy rejects the simplistic “new urbanism” that would reclaim urban space in the form of “liveable cities,” arguing that such efforts generally promote a kind of “spatial apartheid” in the form of gentrification and social exclusion. Anchoring his thesis is a belief in the continued importance of the city as “a site of intersubjective and collective encounters through which the formation of identity is spatialised” (8). His book addresses the ways in which this kind of urban space, whether figured as utopian, dystopian, or something in-between, remains central to the ways in which race has been understood in US cultural production. Kennedy cites the influential rethinking of space in the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Edward Soja, but rightly points out that all these writers, while radical in their reconceptualization of space as a social product, have nonetheless downplayed the role of representation in the production, maintenance, and critique of urban spatial and social divisions. In his own study, Kennedy wants to concentrate more fully on questions of urban representation and, in particular, on the ways in which race and space are jointly articulated there. In this way, his project is squarely situated in an area of key concern to many recent cultural critics.

Kennedy’s chapters are grouped around four themes: white urban paranoia, the role of memory in the recovery of an urban past, the concept of a racialized urban underclass, and questions of urban crime and justice. Each chapter treats these themes through the examination of a number of key texts. The selection here is broad, and films, books, journalism, and photography are often treated within the same chapters. While all of Kennedy’s texts yield fruitful interpretations, his selection seems odd at times. The first chapter, “White noise,” which considers white paranoia and the notion of urban threat and decay, develops a strong reading of urban dislocation as a drama of white male selfhood through the example of Falling Down. Later in the chapter, Kennedy devotes a scant four pages to the film Strange Days. The imbalance here seems peculiar: Falling Down has received considerable critical attention already for precisely the reasons Kennedy notes (for example, in Carol Clover’s article, “White Noise,” whose title Kennedy appropriates without reference) as well as in other articles by Fred Pfeil, Jude Davies, and John Gabriel; Strange Days, however, has seen considerably less critical attention, yet merits little in Kennedy’s chapter. As a film that is every bit as complex in its representations of race and spatiality and less treated in the critical literature, it would seem to warrant more attention here. Other opportunities are lost too. Chapter three, which focuses on race, crime, and justice, contains a long reading of Walter Mosley’s novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, yet nowhere mentions the 1995 film of the same name. Given Kennedy’s movement back and forth between film and fiction, and considering his later comparison of Richard Price’s novel Clockers with Spike Lee’s film, the lack of even a brief mention of the film is puzzling.

A similar but more troubling question of omission concerns references to other key texts. While the volume is slim, I think there is little excuse for the omission of many key resources. No doubt the series editor’s aim for a volume such as this is to keep things slim and manageable as an introduction for readers new to the field. Yet this places even more responsibility on author and editor to adequately document resources and suggestions for further reading. In the case of Falling Down, the aforementioned Screen articles by Davies and Gabriel are not cited in Kennedy’s index or footnotes; in a long discussion of whiteness in Irish-American fiction, when the author states that there has been much work on constructions of whiteness in immigrant Irish communities, the key work of Noel Ignatiev and Theodore Allen is nowhere in the notes. While I have no objection to Kennedy declining to rehash their arguments again, there should at least be the opportunity for a reader to follow up on this formative work on whiteness. Likewise, his discussion of a racial dimension in Mosley’s hardboiled noir fiction overlooks recent writing on film noir that treats it as an inherently racialized genre (for example, in James Naremore’s book More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts or in Julian Murphet’s Screen article).

These omissions are related to wider concerns I have with the book. While providing very convincing close analysis of his texts, Kennedy never questions the underlying conceptions of race with which he works. There is little attempt to discuss what race might be, other than a “privileged metaphor” in the works he examines. Here the work of theorists like Omi and Winant might be usefully considered. Postcolonial theory has long considered the interplay between race and urban space, and some of this work, by writers like Gail Ching-Liang Low or Jane M. Jacobs may be of interest to Kennedy’s readers too. Finally, Kennedy tends to overlook the role of gender and sexuality in relation to race and urban space. While giving lip service to feminist critiques of Boyz ‘n’ the Hood, for example, there is little attempt to consider how gender and sexuality are often inextricably woven into the racial scenarios that Kennedy considers and, again, important articles by writers like Robyn Wiegman and Paula Massood are not mentioned. Considering how important feminist work has been to theorizations of space and identity, this decision seems ill-considered.

Race and Urban Space is a well-written, engaging, and lucid treatment of a compelling area of representation. But while it manages to convey some of the complexity and force of the intersections between race and urban space, its exclusion of wider texts and contexts restricts its potential impact. Readers who are interested in engaging thoroughly with this fascinating terrain will be forced to look further than Kennedy’s book.

Peter Limbrick