ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the position of the individual subject in the city, by mainly close reading Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Balloon.” This story revolves around the juxtaposition of a rigid spatiality and concomitant subjectivity, on the one hand, and on the other hand an alternative spatiality and liberation-through-losing-oneself for the subject. The chapter argues that this configuration can be understood using Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. The story can thus be read as a means of thinking how spatiality and discursivity are intertwined. Via Lefebvre’s concept of lived space, the story – along with an added consideration of Paul Auster’s novel City of Glass – can be read as argument for a rebalancing of spatial thought towards foregrounding subjectivity and spatiality as they emerge from everyday practices, from concrete interactions between people and the city.
