Speed as Signifier: McDonald's as a Contested Space

Those who control spaces are able to regulate what moves through them and the speed at which they do so; as such, space has a tendency of being reorganized in favor of those who move more quickly at greater expenditures of energy. This project studies how one population, a small group of elderly Korean immigrants have claimed a space – the seats and tables at a McDonald's restaurant – but are being driven from it for a number of reasons, the one I address in particular being based on the principle that speed is a signifier of difference worthy of consideration alongside and, indeed, intimately connected to race, class, and gender.