----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Hi again everyone,
Just wanting to come back to Adam's comments on the urban vis-a-vis the 'unprecedented expansion of life', tying together the discussions that Davide and Oron bagan. I think this is a very concise way to depict a trajectory of ‘modernity’; a radical unleashing of an expansive energy that explodes out of the 18th century struggles in Europe between ’society’ and the state, all taking place in an already imploding state form. This energy then only begins to be properly realized by the mid nineteenth century in a desperate and violent re-ordering of the entire world—something that has proceeded at an accelerated rate up until the present and today with little reference to any Eurocentric ‘origin’ at this point. The aspect of these expansive energies that I’m interested in tracing is that related to what I call the urban. Neil Brenner is a colleague and friend of mine and we have ongoing discussions about both our different and overlapping understandings of the urban. I think it is safe to say that he and I are both pursuing the question ‘what is urbanization?’. His work is wonderful and I’m very happy that he’s marshaled such a strong group to investigate and represent contemporary or emergent spatial outcomes of ‘planetary urbanization’ so beautifully. And, as you note, Lefebvre’s work is of course fundamental to Brenner’s hypothesis. However, I think it’s here where a certain divergence in approaches can be seen. While I respect Lefebvre’s work tremendously, I see its limitations in attempting to grasp just what the urban is. I’ve written about this in regard to a recent piece of his that was translated by Brenner for Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (see http://societyandspace.com/material/discussion-forum/forum-on-henri-lefebvre-dissolving-city-planetary-metamorphosis/ross-exo-adams-lefebvre-and-urbanization/ ). My argument is (and this is very crudely put) that Lefebvre understands the urban as a social condition—a kind of innate social relation that, for him, bears potential emancipatory capacities. Yet at the same time, the ongoing urbanization of the planet that Lefebvre so powerfully makes visible is also the materialization of capitalist social relations. Of course all of Lefebvre’s discourse hangs on his central thesis about the production of space, where he gives for the first time a spatial history of what had previously been historicized only in social-economic terms. Put simply, my critique of Brenner’s work on planetary urbanization is that, by drawing on Lefebvre’s hypothesis in The Urban Revolution, he, allows the urban to be understood more or less as the materialization of capitalism. And because Lefebvre’s work had exposed the tight relation between 20th century (French) state capitalism and the space of the city, it makes sense that Brenner’s work has focused more on (global) neoliberal capitalism and its spatial reproduction. By making the assumption that the urban, the city, space, etc are all materializations/spatializations of capitalism (which I would not dispute), I feel that paradoxically both he and Lefebvre leave the urban far too untheorized in itself. I won’t rehearse the argument more here as I’ve elaborated on this debate elsewhere (see http://societyandspace.com/material/article-extras/theme-section-a-new-apparatus-technology-government-and-the-resilient-city/ross-exo-adams-the-burden-of-the-present-on-the-concept-of-urbanisation/ ). However, my point I suppose is that the urban as a spatio-political order, can be brought to light by constituting a kind of archeology of spatio-political orders. I argue that it is an authorless spatio-political order which emerged somewhere in the nineteenth century drawing its vitality from the very same expansive socio-techniological energies that were released at the turn of the century and put to work thereafter. By understanding the urban archaeologically, rather than simply as the spatial correlate of capitalism, a whole host of other questions suddenly emerge which link space to (infra)structures of power that ushered in a huge political transformation of the world with the rise of the nation state, civil society, networks of communication, positive law and, yes, capitalism too, all of which constitute the legacy of today’s ongoing and destructive urbanization of the planet. And as we well know by now, the nature of this form of power is one of controlling life. So the expansion of life and the ever greater control of it occur simultaneously through the construction (and expansion—urbanization) of a sophisticated, technologically managed and machinic spatial template that can be reproduced across the surface of the planet. While there’s lots of great work in and around problems of the urban that tend to pronounce the neoliberal, for me it’s not just a problem of neoliberalism, but indeed is one whose understanding needs to be grasped as well outside of the immediate present (as urban studies almost always does) and through a sustained archaeology of spatial order in relation to political form—something that immediately articulates a kind of ‘deep’ history, if that makes sense. Thanks again Adam! Ross Exo Adams, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Architecture College of Design Iowa State University 595 Design 158 College of Design Ames, IA 50011 On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 9:00 PM, <empyre-requ...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> wrote: > > Send empyre mailing list submissions to > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > empyre-requ...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > > You can reach the person managing the list at > empyre-ow...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of empyre digest..." > > > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Mediated Matters and design abjections (Johannes Birringer) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 13:40:43 +0000 > From: Johannes Birringer <johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Mediated Matters and design abjections > Message-ID: > <899F3B65F6A5C8419026D0262D3CECB819730A@v-ex10mb2.academic.windsor> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" > > > dear all > > thanks Adam for going further with your argument & drawing attention to what > you call "eco-technologies" within "spatial-political order predicated on > limitless expansion," and you seem to include "life" ? and not the cosmos of > the unknown John was referring to in response to us - into this province of > the tinkering with limitless expansion. I am not so happy with the > confluences you suggest ; (and thus with the notion that there is a > neoliberal agenda of limitless expansion. National Socialism in the > 1930s/1940 declared such expansion as one of the pursuit of "Lebensraum." > That ideology of expansion, under the "spatial-political order" of fascism, > included severe reduction for lives, in fact it meant, militarily and > organizationally, genocide and scaled eugenics programs for undesirables, it > stood for extermination). > > After reading Davide's complex and fascinating post on datapolitik, I was > waiting for the floods of responses from the list, and Davide's elaboration > of the (invisible, transspatial order) data emitting entities was indeed very > thought-provoking if I understood his ideas on a new predatory regime > correctly ? "dataveillance requires a concrete engagement with technical > objects as autonomous actants in the cynegetic powers of predation -- a > participation of objects, if you will -- including technologies of detection > (i.e., software) and data storage." > > Yes, but it's interesting that you call data presence as a "shedding" that no > longer needs a subject. A subjectless data politics - how does code operate > by itself (algorithms and programming platforms), who uses them, who writes > the code, who takes advantage of the dandruff or installs capture systems > (the police? are they the only subjects? capitalism? profiteering industries? > states? there are no more states, citzens?) was the yes/no voting in > Scotland done subjectless? > > (An analysis of predatory societies, would it not need a political theory of > subjects executing biopolitics? cf. Branden Hookway, Pandemonium: The Rise > of Predatory Locales in the Postwar World. New York: Princeton Architectural > Press, 1999. Would we not need to ask in whose service the data collection > agencies operate?) > > Perhaps I got worried when reading the last paragraph, when you casually > speak of a "culture"of zombies". The zombie as archetype (in Hollywood > movies?). Meaning whom? us here in the West, others in the less > datapolitiked zones, outside the walls of Jericho? Who are these zombies? And > if datapolitik is highly controlled (even if rhizomatic), who builds and > controls the Trojan horses, if we take your reference to the Homeric story of > a war at face value? Who controls the horses of ISIS? > > regards > Johannes Birringer > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > empyre mailing list > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu > > > End of empyre Digest, Vol 118, Issue 14 > *************************************** _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
