1988b; 1991b; Keith and Pile, 1993; Back and
Keith, 1999). This work focuses on the way that
those areas of London ‘associated with’ the
Afro-British community have been racialized in
different ways by Afro-Britons and the police.
Keith pays particular attention to the multiple
symbolism of ‘front lines’ (that is, those streets,
such as Railton Road in Brixton, that are seen to
be at the front line in the conflict between the
police and black people). These locations are
analysed as being subject to metaphoric,
metonymic and syntagmatic interpretation. We
will elucidate Keith’s argument by looking at
each of these forms of meaning in turn.
Front lines, such as Railton Road, he explains,
‘can be seen as metaphorically linked. They are not
precise replications of each other, but in terms of
the sign system involved they are almost mutually
interchangeable’ (1993: 165). Keith then proceeds
to explain the difference between the metonymic
and syntagmatic meaning of front lines. He sug-
gests that ‘black people’ understand police action
in front line areas from a historical vantage point;
police action connotes (metonymically) a history
of racism and police brutality. The police, on the
other hand, possess a historically shallow perspec-
tive; the front line connotes (syntagmatically)
day-to-day operational burdens. Thus,[B]lack perceptions are constructed as a form of ‘local
knowledge’ and are fundamentally metonymic in the
reading of the social world; the police action is seen as
part of a historical whole, invoking a 20 to 30 year
history of Black experience in a particular ‘place’. For
the police, operational goals have priority and ‘place’ as
a sign is read syntagmatically; the action is part of an
expected sequence, an anticipated repertoire of behav-
iour that occurs wholly in the present ... It is this very
structure of police practice in such areas which guaran-
tees that the policing institution acts as a ‘machine for
the suppression of time’ – history is lost. (1993: 166)The symbolic processes at work within the
racialization of place and space lend themselves
to the vocabulary of semiotics. Yet the latter tra-
dition is open to a variety of theoretical interpre-
tations. In particular, it draws on and overlaps
with the categories of repression and displace-
ment made familiar by Freud and his followers.
The potential of this latter approach has been
indicated in a recent paper by Heidi Nast (2000).
Nast offers a psychoanalytical analysis of the
patterns of black spatial containment, white
‘flight’ and urban renewal apparent within
Chicago. Thus, for example, she explains the
‘sociospatial repression of black bodies, places
and life’ (2000: 232) by reference to the role of
‘[r]acist imaginary-symbolic renderings of black
men as rapists’ (2000: 231) within the whitepsyche. More generally, her concern is with the
way ‘exteriorized landscapes and interiorized
psyches have historically structured one another’
(2000: 219). One of the most productive aspects
of Nast’s paper is that it situates itself within a
traditionof psychoanalytically informed studies
of spatial racialization. In particular, she dis-
cusses and draws on the attempts by White
(1972) to provide a historical geographical trans-
lation and critique of Freud’s non-historical and
non-geographical account of the formation of the
psyche. Central to White’s analysis is the claim
that the psyche was a product of the colonial con-
struction and interiorization of the figure of the
‘wild man’. In a passage cited by Nast (2000:
223), White notes that as ‘wilderness was
brought under control, the idea of the Wild Man
was progressively despatialized. This despatiali-
zation was attended by a compensatory process
of psychic interiorization.’
Such explicit use of psychoanalysis provides a
useful challenge to the contemporary tendency to
employ the language of repression and displace-
ment without ever giving serious consideration
to the psyche or, more specifically, the uncon-
scious, as terrains in which the dilemmas of
racialization are played out. Whether such a
focus produces different conclusions on the
material consequence and enactment of socio-
spatial racialization is, however, far less clear.
Certainly, much recent work on what Anderson
calls ‘the interlocking semiotic and material
processes’ (1993a: 85) behind the racialization of
urban space has managed to provide portraits of
landscapes fraught with contradictory desires
and processes without recourse to images of the
archetypal psyche. Anderson’s work is itself a
good example. Anderson’s (1987; 1988; 1991)
earlier studies focus on constructions of
Chinatown. More specifically, she provides a his-
torical study of the different and dynamic urban
constituencies which have helped shape the
‘racial’ boundaries and meanings associated with
Vancouver’s Chinatown. The ‘space of knowl-
edge called Chinatown’, she explains, ‘grew out
of, and came to structure, a politically divisive
system of racial discourse that justified domina-
tion over people of Chinese origin’ (1988: 146).
In some of her more recent studies Anderson
(1993a; 1993b) has focused on the development
of ‘racial’ meanings in the ‘Aboriginal suburb’
of Redfern in Sydney. ‘Aboriginal Redfern,’
Anderson comments, ‘was constructed out of
multiple and contradictory discourses and prac-
tices, the deconstruction of which clears the way
for a non-essentialized theorisation of not only
Aboriginal identity but also the place “Redfern”’
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