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Отношения и киборги: публичное и приватное в городской коммуне
The article presents ethnographic research of one of about a dozen communes of St. Petersburg, based on cohabitation and common housing by people who are not blood or family related to each other in large apartments (once communal flats or dormitories). I consider the problem of the interrelation between private and public in a situation of uncertainty (transparency) of the boundaries between them, which is characteristic of communal life in the context, the importance of things as actors within this transparent space and dividual agency within it. Studies devoted to this kind of uncertainty either do not discuss the transparency of the boundaries of public and private, explaining the uncertainty in a different way (for example, through transitional spheres or performativity), or only state its existence without clarifying its structure. As an alternative analytical tool, I turn to Marilyn Strathearn’s concept of relationships, which identifies two forms of dividual agency relevant to the realities of the commune I am exploring: 1) mutuality and 2) cyborg relations. The former presupposes an agency of actors in which an action is performed with an eye to and from the Other, while within the latter, some actors act as representatives of others. The mutuality relationship in the commune involves intermediaries. More often it is sounds or things. The connection with these intermediaries connects different people’s private spaces and the public space of the commune. In turn, cyborgs, which include representatives of ex-residents of the commune — other people, ex-residents’ belongings and rental liens — make it possible for these ex-residents to return to the commune space and, thus, connect the public space outside it and its private sphere. The permeability of a commune’s space is determined and structured in different ways by localized forms of dividual agency within it.