Commuting and the multiple capacities of stillness

Abstract

Developing the ideas of a body of work that has begun to attend to the differentiated powers of stillness, the aims of this chapter are firstly, to unpack commuting stillness in a way that reveals multiple stillnesses; and secondly to unpack the multiple capacities of stillness. To achieve this, the chapter outlines four different ways of understanding the capacities of stillness in relation to commuting: as attritive; as protocological; as transparent; and as volatile. With the assistance of ethnographic fieldwork in Sydney, each of these four articulations of stillness examines the formative capacities of stillness in terms of generating new attachments, new relations, new ways of feeling, and thus new configurations of urban life. In doing so, this chapter moves away from more representational and discursive understandings of stillness towards a more affective, ontological investigation into its constitution. Show more