Thomas Mouton, Diasporic Spatial Literacy

Mapping
Second Lines

New Orleans Second Line parades are one of the most visible expressions of a larger cultural ecosystem rooted in the city’s Social Aid and Pleasure Club tradition. This project uses GIS mapping and archival research to spatially analyze Second Line parade routes as a distinctly social-spatial cultural development, one that operates according to its own autonomous logic, perpendicular to the hegemonic structures of urban planning.

The interactive map archive documents 132 parade routes from 46 Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs across New Orleans, drawn from archival flyers held at the Historic New Orleans Collection. This is an ongoing research project.

Explore the Map →
What is DSL

Diasporic Spatial Literacy

Diasporic Spatial Literacy (DSL) is a conceptual framework for analyzing how diaspora communities produce autonomous spatial knowledge outside sanctioned architectural and planning frameworks. DSL extends VèVè A. Clark’s concept of diasporic literacy into spatial analysis, synthesizing the work of AbdouMaliq Simone, Édouard Glissant, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Katherine McKittrick.

Where postcolonial spatial studies often frame divergent spatial developments as rebellious or temporary reclamations of space, DSL reveals something different: continuous, self-sustaining spatial formations that generate their own ordering principles. These formations do not exist in opposition to hegemonic structures, they operate perpendicular to them, using the same streets, intersections, and built environment as raw material for cultural production organized according to entirely different principles.

Second Line parades in New Orleans serve as the empirical foundation for this framework, offering a richly documented case of autonomous spatial logic operating across five decades in one of America’s most culturally complex cities.

Theoretical Framework

The Three Dimensions of DSL

I
Autonomous Cultural Logic
Spatial organization driven by cultural principles rather than property values or planning rationalities. Routes, stops, and networks follow criteria of cultural viability, community reception, and ritual significance, generating spatial orders that operate perpendicular to hegemonic urban structures.
II
Rhizomatic Resilience
Decentralized network structure in which multiple equivalent nodes enable adaptation without hierarchical collapse. No single venue commands more than 22% of route stops across the full dataset. When institutions close, the network reconfigures rather than collapses.
III
Perpetual Creolization
Continuous spatial generation through encounter with constraints. Context, urban development, gentrification, infrastructural violence, becomes generative material rather than barrier. Each adaptive response produces new spatial formations, sustaining the network’s autonomous development over time.
Ongoing Research

A Living Archive

This map is part of an ongoing research project extending DSL analysis across New Orleans processional culture. The Second Line dataset represents the first phase of a broader spatial analysis that will include Bounce music’s sonic geography and the city’s broader social-spatial cultural ecosystem.

The archive currently documents 132 digitized parade routes from 136 archival flyers spanning 1980 to 2025, with stop data capturing venue types, operational status, and address information. This infrastructure enables spatiotemporal analysis of cultural persistence, tracking which venues survive, which close, and how the network adapts across five decades of urban change.

Future phases will extend this methodology to Bounce music spatial analysis, building toward a digital platform for DSL as a research and pedagogical tool.

Open the Map Archive →
132
Mapped Routes
46
Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs
45
Years Documented
136
Archival Flyers