VACANT AND DUMPING GROUND: RECURRING TOPOI IN THE URBAN FICTION OF THE PERIPHERY

This paper showcases the vacant ground and dumping ground’s significance in the symbolic texture of the urban fiction. Ubiquitous topic of this type of prose, from the early 20th century till today, the vacant ground, a part of that “diffuse space”, as periphery is named by Joachim Vossen, reveals itself as an antisocial institution, where social conventions and laws are abolished. On the other hand, dumping grounds, waste ground’s close relatives, embody the principles of life and regeneration, in spite of their usual negative, depressing image, pictured in bleak colours in the reportages, as well as fiction of the interwar years. Vital energies compete with the hostile and the malefic of the wasteland, in the case of both topoi, and the present article looks into this ambivalence.