What is to be done
spatial analysts: the flowers, birdsong, ‘heroes’ of various kinds, elements that we have so far touched on, and now, additionally, a ‘heroine’ (Vera Pavlovna), a goddess, dreams, a palace, and hints of a civilisation organised on a different basis. ‘What is to be done?’ Vera touched Pavlovna has a dream... The field glimmers with a golden tint; the meadow is covered with flowers; and hundreds upon thousands of blossoms unfold on bushes surrounding the meadows. The forest that rises up behind grows greener, whispers, and is decked out in bright flowers... Birds flutter in the branches of the trees, their thousands of voices float down from above with all the fragrances... ‘At the foot of the mountains, on the outskirts of the forest, amidst the bushes flowering in tall, thick avenues, a palace looms up. (360361) The palace looms up as Vera and a goddess fly towards it. At this point, the curious social or sociospatial scientist/reader may find, if he gets that far, that his ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ somewhat challenged. A dream, flowers, a forest, bird song, mountains, a palace, a goddess flying with the ‘heroine’? At this point, such a reader may find himself running for cover. And that cover is readily available in the increasingly marketised but already threatened palaces of academe where sociology by definition excludes the earth, geography tucks the earth away neatly into a realm inhabited by ‘physical’ practitioners far from that more vocal realm patrolled by ‘human’ practitioners, and both sociologists and geographers (physical and human) largely isolate themselves from the increasingly denuded humanities ( now a luxury, it would seem, like social provision for the sick and poor that ‘we’ can no longer afford). Something more than an interdisciplinary approach is required if we are find a sure path across such a sundered and exploited landscape. There are of course exceptions to such foreshortened understandings and misunderstandings. Lefebvre followed by Merrifield provide a distinguished one, but not one articulating a new paradigm that can enable ‘the marriage of true minds’ across the chasms between these three academic empires. Both Lefebvre and Merrifield make that journey but return together only in this context in the company of the undeniably significant Joyce and the somewhat conveniently myopic (particularly for urbanists) Asimov. But without Chernyshevsky.
From the brief extract quoted above it is apparent that the novel ‘What is to be done?’ presents difficulties for contemporary readers. In his important and influential book All That is Solid Melts into Air Marshall Berman put forward a largely unsympathetic account of What Is To Be Done?, ultimately preferring 186
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