From basement to de-basement? A probing response to opacity

“The opaque is not the obscure” (Glissant 1997: 191). So begins Fran Martínez’ text on basements, which he approaches as spaces of opacity that can nonetheless be entered ethnographically. The apparent paradox that Martíez sets up appears to be a problem with relations of power, wrapped up in the expressly visual coding of “observer” and “observed”. As inherently dark places, basements present a particularly fertile ground for exploring and reversing these relations, and – I suggest – for c...