A Letter from the Editors, Spring 2021
This quarter, the pieces that we, as a collective, have worked on range from ideas of isolation during the era of COVID-19 to dealing with urban space and the different factors that affect how we think of cities. This semester has been characterized by a lot of uncertainty. Nonetheless, the collective jumped on a zoom call and made this website a reality. It is definitely a different work environment, but we have all worked very hard to be able to present these submissions across different genres. Despite never meeting each other in person, the collective has developed a special bond and we hope we are able to convey that through the publication of various pieces. Below, we mention just a few of the outstanding pieces in this volume. Themes of isolation, space, and belonging stood out to us not just as the critical interventions made by our authors but as representative concerns of our society broadly. We believe Intersections Volume 1 will help start some of these conversations and we hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed editing!
Signed,
The Editorial Collective
Gia Cruz, Marina Sage Carlstroem, Lia Warner, Francesco Fontana, Xixi Jiang, Nosheen Hossain, Eleanor Doolittle, and David Sugarman
Gia Crus on McKenna Hall
To be part of such an amazing editorial collective has been an absolute pleasure. Having this blog has been a goal that I have had for a long time and I am so glad that this has finally come to fruition. My time at NYU has primarily been characterized by thinking about everything urban and to work with people who have dedicated their time in NYU to similar concepts is an honor. I think the most interesting part of editing is being part of something so personal that tells an individual’s story. Storytelling is an art and as an editor, we get to play an active role in that intimate relationship between the author and their writing. McKenna’s piece touches on her personal experience in the suburbs. She creates a vision of the vibrant neighborhood she grew up in through her lyrical language. The tone radically shifts when she begins speaking about her neighborhood being destroyed by the declaration of her space as a sacrifice zone. She urges for change and a return to a place that was once her oasis.
Lia Warner on Jared Skoro
One piece that vividly illustrates the contours of the liminal reality within which all of us existed during the early months of the pandemic—just over a year ago—is Jared Skoro’s meditations on his experience “Filling Empty Shelves.” Many of us recall waiting in modern day “bread lines” outside grocery stores in April 2020, anxiously awaiting our turn to scurry through the regulated aisle, snatching up bags of dried beans and rolls of toilet paper. Skoro sheds light on the people who worked through the night tending to those shelves: their work, their space, their interiority. Working through the multiple layers of isolation—from New York, from everyday (daytime) society, from family and friends—Skoro reminds us of the toll of socio-spatial fragmentation on the individual and on communities. His account is sure to be deeply instructive to all of us who wish to find commonality and healing through our disparate experiences of COVID-19. As the healing process begins, and we hear murmurs of a return to “normal,” Skoro’s dispatches will be essential in bearing testament to the realities of the pandemic, even as the most opaque scars begin to fade and the oft-overlooked casualties from the margins of society are forgotten altogether.
Francesco Fontana on Xixi Jiang
Xixi’s article speaks of the sudden shifts in our sense of urbanity in the wake of COVID-19, which has lead to a reframing of who and what is “essential” for a city to work — turns out it’s inhumane business models and overworked delivery drivers, these days; but also speaks of the genuine need for affection, at times turned into spectacularization of an inhuman sense of society, or else in a vacuous sense of respect for the workers in lieu of actual remuneration for all kinds of unpaid labor, manual and affective, which have surfaced as the demand for deliveries has skyrocketed, but which still remain unseen. As this particular branch of the service sector grows immensely bigger, this essay warns us of the increasing opacity that envelops the effective labor put in by workers, which has not been paired by shifts in the platforms’ business model nor with a public conception of the inherent inhumanity of such models. It is a much-needed analysis of the material conditions of workers which, yet, are the sole wanderers of our cities’ streets, left alone to navigate an urban landscape that meets them with impossible demands and bizarre cultural conceptions of them.