Juxtaprose 6

 

‘Rep’ing’ (representing/ defending) a turf has become increasingly common and a significant proportion of reported killings have been linked to ‘postcode wars’. Gary Hewett, of Community Action Team in East London, told the Working Group that ‘so many young people are afraid of travelling across the borough because there’s so many different territories’, and this has been echoed throughout the Working Group’s hearings. For some inner city young people gang-impacted areas are becoming no-go areas. One 17 year old male from London said: ‘There’s certain places in South London where 100 per cent you can say if you’re not from there you’ll get stabbed.’ Dying to belong, CSJ, 2009.

Perhaps most interesting about the cartography of the nobility is the tendency for members of noble factions to map the city according to lines of hatred, an emotional mapping that complements the moral cartography implicit in the vicinity. When members of the two noble factions testified in court about the emotional context of their violent exchanges, they painted an image of the city and its neighbourhoods as polarized by hatred. In their testimony, the defendants in the trial that followed on the heels of the great battle of 1351 created a mental geography that carefully partitioned the city into territories controlled by the Vivaut and the Jerusalem and by their allies. From testimony given at the inquest, it is clear that the invading Jerusalem were thought to have offended the residential space of the Vivaut. Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary cartographies, 1999.

Previously juxtaprosed.