The Historicity of the Refiguration of Spaces Under the Scrutiny of Pre-COVID-19 São Paulo Homeless Pedestrians1

Abstract

This chapter critically addresses the historicity of the refiguration of spaces by confronting the “increasing mobility” hypothesis of the “refiguration of spaces” approach with the increase of homelessness in São Paulo from the 1980s. I apply a particular dialectical-cum-phenomenological methodology to the historicity implicit in patterns of the spatialization of bodily and materially mediated (non-)verbal interaction. By focusing on specific homeless pedestrians in São Paulo’s pre-COVID-19 downtown streets and squares, I depict what the underlying historicity model discloses about the production of public space in the city. These homeless pedestrians stand out due to their physical immobility therein on workdays amid their own mobility and the mobility of other pedestrians. Hence, what comes to the conceptual forefront is a historically at the very least bitemporal process of dialectical space (re)production. This model transcends the multilinear acceleration that implicitly underpins the refiguration of space and signals three contributions of this chapter to expanding the empirical plausibility of the “refiguration of spaces” approach. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Angela Million, Christian Haid, Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Nina Baur.