Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Space And Culture, cilt.0, 2019 (SSCI)
This study is based on an empirical research to understand the production of nongovernmental spatial practices and representations with a counterformation to an authority, as well as an ontological discussion on the relations between public space and power. In this respect, the study is constructed on an alternative spatial reading of counterspaces (LGBTI-friendly spaces, political spaces, and resistance spaces) in the capital of Turkey, Ankara, benefiting from Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of space and The Situationist International’s mapping techniques. It is realized that these public spaces appropriated or occupied by marginalized groups in society because of their gender, sexual orientation, beliefs, or ethnicity have a strong socio-spatial network in the city as a result of ontological approximation as the necessity of solidarity, which is defined as a habitat of the public assembly of otherness. The existence of different identities in the same area of the city for the same spatial practices is a manifestation of similar subjective formations and spatial representations of vulnerability within power relations. In this context, the aim of this study is the mapping of counterspaces in Ankara within a theoretical ground to contemplate the relationship between subject, power, and space. This article, thereby, analyzes the ontological basis of this psychogeography by questioning the reasons for the spatial proximity or superimposition of spaces used to socialize, organize, and resist the power of the other.