ABSTRACT
Langston Hughes ends his well-known poem, A Dream Deferred, with an ominous question. After passing through the possibilities of what happens to a dream never materialized-a desire never symbolized into words, music, art or action-he famously wonders, “or does it explode?” Suppressed dreams (or unsublimated desires) as Hughes, psychoanalysts and others tell us, lead to all sorts of violence (whether to one’s own psyche and body, or to society) and to aggressions that can be physical, emotional or ideological. We see Hughes’ “explosions” in cities as urban residents’ searches for expressivity manifest themselves in occurrences that range from violent and destructive to artistic and reparative, causing both radical interruptions and subtle shifts across the urban landscape. If cities are, as geographer Nigel Thrift (2004: 57) writes, “roiling maelstroms of affect,” the geographies of these urban sublimations and frustrations become significant on multiple planes.
