Beneath the Ordinary

This paper employs the work of John Dewey (along with Stanley Cavell and Ralph Waldo Emerson) in order to develop and apply an aesthetic theory of place to a specific bridge in Edmonton, Alberta that has peculiar significance in the wake of colonialism. In it, the paper complicates the traditional reading of Dewey on aesthetics that focuses on meliorism, instead exploring a more critical edge within his thought. As a result, I argue that the significance of the bridge has less to do with developing a coherent or unified community, but that it disrupts the sense of the ordinary upon which our home is built.