Habitability

From Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life

(Excerpt from Credible things and memorable things: habitability, pp.105-6)

By a paradox that is only apparent, the discourse that makes people believe is the one that takes away what it urges them to believe in, or never delivers what it promises. Far from expressing a void or describing a lack, it creates such. It makes room for a void. In that way, it opens up clearings; it “allows” a certain play within a system of defined places. It “authorizes” the production of an area of free play (Spielraum) on a checkerboard that analyzes and classifies identities. It makes places habitable.