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Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places by EDWARD W. SOJA, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1996, xii + 334 pp. Cloth US$69.95 (ISBN 1155786-674-0); paper US$20.95 (ISBN 1-55786-675-9)
Edward Soja's Thirdspace is, without a doubt, a challenging book. In it we are taken on a series of 'journeys' in the geographical imagination: from an exploration and excavation of Lefebvre's thoughts on spatiality and social space to arrive at what Soja terms 'Thirdspace' (the lived spaces of representation that coexist with material space (termed 'Firstspace') and spaces of representation ('Secondspace')) through to meanderings through, and critical comparison of, expressions of these spaces in the urban landscapes of Los Angeles and Amsterdam. These excursions are at once insightful, provocative, confusing, frustrating, and inspiring: as indeterminate and open-ended as Soja urges us to be in rethinking urban spatiality, change, and resistance.
Perhaps especially in the 'information age', it is rare to find a book that leaves an imprint on the imaginations of its readers. Thirdspace does just that: unsettling and displacing the rationalist social scientific gaze through shifting, admittedly partial, and sometimes poetic musings on the spaces of urban life, oppression and resistance. Even if one isn't prepared to embrace this restless gaze in its entirety, it continues to tease and haunt the critical imagination - reminding us in particular of the need to resist closure in our interpretations and categorial ways of thinking ('either/or') that often put simultaneity in social events, processes, and spaces beyond the reach of our critical gazes. As Soja expresses it, there is always an-Other path of interpretation and possibilities of multiple and overlapping processes of change that 'and also' propositions help to capture.
A related achievement of Thirdspace is the way it succeeds in drawing us into these other spaces and perspectives, forcing us to confront the limits to our grasp of real-and-imagined spaces and places of urban life. Soja uses the material - represented and lived landscapes and spaces of Los Angeles and Amsterdam - to bring us 'inside' (and onside?) a critical postmodern geographic exploration of multiple urban realms. We journey from macro to micro scales of urban space and back again, from the material realities of industrial restructuring and economic polarization in Los Angeles and later...