1. Gentrification and the Avant-Garde in New York's East Village: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
- Author
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Bowler, Anne and McBurney, Blaine
- Subjects
GENTRIFICATION ,URBAN renewal ,NEIGHBORHOOD change - Abstract
This paper attempts to sort through the confusion of conflicting claims that have surrounded the East Village since its renaissance in the early 1980s. Just what is the aesthetic value and political significance of this scene? Are its artists the agents of gentrification, as some have argued, or are they merely its dupes and victims? Can the East Village be described as an epicenter of the new avant-garde or is it merely its endgame, a simulacrum cannily exploited for marketing purposes? How much of this latest Bohemia is the creation of the culture industry and how much is the expression of genuine revolt against the culture of late capitalism? And finally, to situate this phenomenon in the center of a contemporary heated debate, are these events surrounding the East Village an example of a pernicious anything-goes postmodernism or the confused but important strivings of nascent critical cultural forms? Despite the current fashionable tendency, present among even left cultural critics, to engage in one form, or another of East Village bashing a number of critical and progressive cultural practices are even today surviving in the neighborhood. It is for this reason that we have chosen to highlight the coexistence of disparate, often conflicting elements and forces that make up the cultural politics of the East Village.
- Published
- 1991
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