No common cause? The spaces of urban collective identity

Abstract

Working from Michael Sorkin’s expansive notions of public space, the article considers the ways in which figurations of the “we” emerge from the structures of mutual witnessing and the coordination of heterogeneities that operationalize multiple publics. Focusing on a relay amongst the Tanah Tinggi district of Jakarta and the estates of Hackney and East London, the problematics and volatilities of such a “we” are explored, particularly against the backdrop of pandemic conditions. Instead of regarding such collective identity to be a matter of settlement, the relays considered offer an opportunity to further conceptualize collective life in motion, as something continuously worked out as the very terrain of the public.