The marketplace for the senses: asyndeton in action.

Westwood village  in Los Angeles hosts a farmers’ market on Thursdays from 12 to 6 pm. Ever since I arrived in this city, I have been a regular to this marketplace. It is small-occupies a part of Bronxton avenue – it is clearly marked and there is a variety of fresh produce(fruit and vegetables, honey and nuts, cakes and food- on- the- go) as well as pieces of  art (paintings) and  apparel available to customers. The group of sellers is either  enhanced, as new sellers join in, or “shrinks” when sellers move out of the group. It is definitely smaller than the Santa Monica one, which extends to two avenues and in which there is a bigger variety of products on display.

I keep observing this place as I walk past all stands and record all sorts of interactions that happen within the limits of the marketplace. For one, this is a temporarily transformed place, there are indices to it and there is a set of relations to be understood, if one interprets these indices-marks of the farmers’ market.

I shall return to these in due time. For the time being, I am most interested in what the title of this post conveys: the marketplace for the senses. This means that there is an offer and acceptance of things and invited interactions that appeal to peoples’ senses. And it is exactly this offer that guides peoples’ footsteps to specific stands instead of others.  Let us recall M. de Certeau and his rhetoric of walking once again (pp101-102). One of the two fundamental  stylistic features of walking is asyndeton.  Asyndeton means that in walking, man selects and fragments the space traversed; it skips over links and whole parts that it omits. Asyndeton creates a “less”, opens gaps in the  spatial continuum, and retains only selected parts of it that amount almost to relics. Asyndeton cuts out:  it undoes continuity and undercuts its plausibility. A space  treated in this way and shaped by practices is transformed into enlarged singularities and separate islands. Asyndeton is, according to him, a rhetorical operation, like a turn of phrase.

Fruit sellers cause this asyndeton just by employing a quite simple technique: there is a sample to taste free to everyone and this is a small table placed on a different line than the one which sellers follow.  This table thus  stands out- I would take it as an index of this gap in the spatial continuum-  and works as honey to bees: people are attracted, stop, take a close look, grab a toothpick or small fork-  select and taste.  Some of them walk to the stand to buy  fruit they had tasted. Others just keep walking along the marketplace or walk away from it. I must say that it is a colorful spectacle-and tasteful one, even though I have never indulged in it.

Such people select this part and omit all other stands from their perspective. They chose to respond to the call for a bite. In this case, the “separate island” that de Certeau refers to, is the particular table (thus rendered a symbolic representation of the gap) at which sellers and buyers successfully meet. The gap in the spatial continuum is not just physical presence and walking: it is  a result of mutual agreement, an acceptance of the offer. It is not the walker who chooses his way independently of any variables, as de Certeau allows us to understand. It is rather, a response to the call for the pleasure of senses. And this is but one of the meanings of the marketplace for the senses….