Without and Within - Essays on Territory and the Interior

In the United States in the nineteenth century, the territorialisation of the American West–– enormous, conceptually empty, potentially redemptive––established an ‘American space’ that in the twenty-first century remains the scene that situates, defines and relates the full array of infrastructures, buildings and interiors that are the settings for public and private life. Developments of the new American city articulated implicit aspects of Jefferson’s ideology and its instruments, and nurtured the mythology of American nature. The American city also borrowed and adapted innovations from the industrialised European metropolis, whose proposed relations between technology, display, spectacle and the public all had an enormous impact on its fiercely individualistic and competitive counterpart. The characteristics of the American city of the post-war period––dispersed over huge regions, figured with motorway networks, automobiles, tract houses, shopping malls, regional corporate offices, derelict downtowns and their corresponding interiorised networks and spectacles––can all be seen as part of an ideological and historical continuum. All of its constituents are interdependent, deeply embedded in the American consciousness.