Kennedy, Liam. Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.
In many ways an elaboration on his earlier work, Urban Space and Representation, co-edited with Maria Balshaw, Kennedy, in this book, looks specifically at white/black racial relations and representations, suggesting that the “generative relations between space, race, and representations” in America create a framework that renders the city as “a readable and visible entity” (2). Proceeding from this assumption, Kennedy explores both the ways in which race has been cast as an urban “problem” by white and upper-/middle-class black Americans, and how it has alternately been presented as a “lived experience” in the work of many African-American artists (2). Kennedy’s primary focus lies in analyses of film, literature, and journalism produced by white and black authors/auteurs within that last fifteen years. He begins this piece with discussion of “racialised postmodern urbanism,” which he suggests is characterized by a racially-based anxiety and depiction of racial conflict. In his subsequent chapters, Kennedy examines representations of the city and of race and the implications therein. Ultimately, Kennedy posits that urban space is the arena within which racial power relations are simultaneously naturalized and propagated. [E. White]