‘The Gate Is Open, Madmen Escape’: Reconstructing Urban Spatial Experiences into Experienced Spaces of ‘Other’

Abstract

The meaning of ‘Spaces’ has adapted a more abstract notion in the course of time rather than being the simple tools for sensing the empirical data. Today, it extends beyond the physical boundaries to include social and psychic factors which are momentous to sustain lives and maintain order among men. Efforts to make sense of geographic spaces, especially, its politics in urban spaces/cities represented in literature are many. Apart from the politics of the cities, it is interesting to note that the stability of these well-planned cities is brittle. The spaces which are familiar to us through our daily interaction changes along with the changing attitudes of humankind and it changes drastically when we are hit in the face by adversity. Not just the structures of physical spaces, but the social system of laws and the meanings of institutions also crumble in such circumstances. This paper is an effort to understand how human attitudes are when the experienced spaces regresses into experienced spaces of ‘Other’ and social institutions crumble after getting affected by the pandemic, as depicted in the dystopic novel Blindness by Jose Saramago. It applies the concept of ‘experienced space’, ‘experienced space of ‘Other’’ by Lefebvre and ‘third space’ of Edward Soja to explore the nature of spaces and the interactions involved, when individuals lose their societal roles and are reduced to a status of mere animals.