public space

Nowhere is the neontocracy more present than the playground, which is as much an anti-space as it is a space. There is no drinking, no in-depth conversation, no reading of books. There is no consumption of food that hasn’t been cut into tiny pieces and shuttled in tiny containers. There are no adults unattached to a child or children. And, at the same time, in bars and many restaurants and galleries and parties and coffee shops in the U.S. there are no children, there are few parents of young children, and the parents of young children present have put their parenthood on mute. A neonatocracy, I discover shortly after arrival in the U.S., is very spatially segregated