The Function of the Interstices between Public and Private Spaces

Abstract

In this essay, interstices will undergo a theoretical analysis as space-time elements between two distinct worlds. The first world is that of work declined on various types of activities. It can be a factory for workers, an office for white-collars, a university for students, but it also contemplates the places of cure and detention: hospitals, prisons, and all the Foucaultian heterotopias that host various types of people with different levels of control. The second world corresponds to the house we live in: it is the world of private affections, of intimacy. Conversely, examples of interstices are public spaces and establishments such as cinemas, theatres, museums, bars, shops, supermarkets, hairdressers, newsstands, streets and squares, sidewalks, urban parks, railway and underground stations, empty spaces. The interstices can correspond to places of transit or consumption, they can constitute confidential places, but also places of improvisation linked to adventures, or they can represent privileged contexts of resistance to the globalization processes. Today as yesterday, it is above all the flâneur who is allowed to explore them and reflect on interstices, interpreting and narrating them. The interstice, however, is not just a rediscovery of the walking city. The interstice is also an excavation in the most disparate private places, even those of detention, where we can hide our secrets. In the end, interstices are a search for ourselves, therefore becoming a fundamental perspective for confirming or rebuilding our identity.