[P2P-F] [P2P-URBANISM WA] Postmodern / post-structuralist philosophers and P2P Urbanism

Sun Jul 3 22:17:29 CEST 2011

Thanks a lot Michel and Audun. Great suggestions to research further,
excellent links! I read partly, some time ago, "The Society of the
Spectacle" and I felt (*avant la lettre*, before embarking in this PhD,
that) Debord is the kind of thinker that has a lot to do with my own
interpretation of Open Source / P2P Urbanism.

Best,

Geo

2011/7/3 Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

> Dear Ken,
>
> is your new book on the situationists dealing with this topic?
>
> Michel
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Audun Engh <audun.engh at gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [P2P-URBANISM WA] Postmodern / post-structuralist philosophers
> and P2P Urbanism
> To: p2p-urbanism-world-atlas at googlegroups.com
>
>
> I suggest the french writer  Guy Debord - 1931 - 1994
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord ,
>
> and the Situationist International movement that he was part of. SI  had an
> important role in initiating the May 68 rebellion in Paris.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
>
> Guy Debord and other Siuatinists were among the first to criticise le
> Corbusier and modernist planning, and hail the uncontrolable diversity of
> historic  cities, from a radical, anti-authoritaran perspective.
>
> See for example "*Nine Situationist  theses on traffic"*, from 1959,
> *
> FULL TEXT BELOW
>
> -----
> *
> *Psychogeography* was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord>as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical
> environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of
> individuals.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography
>
> ------
>
> *The Situationist City*, book published 1999
>
>
> http://books.google.com/books/about/The_situationist_city.html?id=lR_MiZPhT64C
>
> --
>
> Early Situationist critique of le Corbusier:
> See page 157 of this book:
>
>
> http://books.google.no/books?id=bREQibN9i-sC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=guy+debord+corbusier&source=bl&ots=OpizpIvHm8&sig=Raiw0fhYgciq6B-xdBwl2GZ24lA&hl=no&ei=qVgQTrHtGoWcOsCawaML&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=guy%20debord%20corbusier&f=false
>
> ----
>
> *Video*:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftL-hHPttQ
>
> Society of the Spectacle, part 1
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV6k_SKkHKQ&feature=related
>
> Parts 2 - 8, and other Situationist films,  - see the menu
>
> ----------
>  *Guy Debord* Situationist Theses on Traffic (1959)
>
> http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Guy_Debord__Situationist_Theses_on_Traffic.html
>
> 1
>
> A mistake made by all the city planners is to consider the private
> automobile (and its by-products, such as the motorcycle) as essentially a
> means of transportation. In reality, it is the most notable material symbol
> of the notion of happiness that developed capitalism tends to spread
> throughout the society. The automobile is at the center of this general
> propaganda, both as supreme good of an alienated life and as essential
> product of the capitalist market: It is generally being said this year that
> American economic prosperity is soon going to depend on the success of the
> slogan “Two cars per family.”
>
> 2
>
> Commuting time, as Le Corbusier rightly noted, is a surplus labor which
> correspondingly reduces the amount of “free” time.
>
> 3
>
> We must replace travel as an adjunct to work with travel as a pleasure.
>
> 4
>
> To want to redesign architecture to accord with the needs of the present
> massive and parasitical existence of private automobiles reflects the most
> unrealistic misapprehension of where the real problems lie. Instead,
> architecture must be transformed to accord with the whole development of the
> society, criticizing all the transitory values linked to obsolete forms of
> social relationships (in the first rank of which is the family).
>
> 5
>
> Even if, during a transitional period, we temporarily accept a rigid
> division between work zones and residence zones, we must at least envisage a
> third sphere: that of life itself (the sphere of freedom and leisure — the
> essence of life). Unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to
> form an integrated human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or
> public/private will finally be dissolved. But before this is possible, the
> minimum action of unitary urbanism is to extend the terrain of play to all
> desirable constructions. This terrain will be at the level of complexity of
> an old city.
>
> 6
>
> It is not a matter of opposing the automobile as an evil in itself. It is
> its extreme concentration in the cities that has led to the negation of its
> function. Urbanism should certainly not ignore the automobile, but even less
> should it accept it as its central theme. It should reckon on gradually
> phasing it out. In any case, we can envision the banning of auto traffic
> from the central areas of certain new complexes, as well as from a few old
> cities.
>
> 7
>
> Those who believe that the automobile is eternal are not thinking, even
> from a strictly technological standpoint, of other future forms of
> transportation. For example, certain models of one-man helicopters currently
> being tested by the US Army will probably have spread to the general public
> within twenty years.
>
> 8
>
> The breaking up of the dialectic of the human milieu in favor of
> automobiles (the projected freeways in Paris will entail the demolition of
> thousands of houses and apartments although the housing crisis is
> continually worsening) masks its irrationality under pseudopractical
> justifications. But it is practically necessary only in the context of a
> specific social set-up. Those who believe that the particulars of the
> problem are permanent want in fact to believe in the permanence of the
> present society.
>
> 9
>
> Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to the circulation of
> things, or to the circulation of human beings trapped in a world of things.
> They will try to break these topological chains, paving the way with their
> experiments for a human journey through authentic life.
> ----------------
>
> Audun Engh
> INTBAU Scandinavia
> www..intbau.org
>
> ---
>
>
> 2011/7/3 Geo Scripcariu <geo.scripcariu at gmail.com>
>
>> Many thanks to Stefano and Michael for the very interesting comments along
>> my question.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Geo
>>
>>
>>
>> 2011/7/3 Michael Mehaffy <michael.mehaffy at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Dear Geo et al.
>>>
>>> I would point to Virilio as much more related to P2P urbanism, in several
>>> respects. He points out the failures of technology and the role of
>>> competition and conflict between people as a key dimension of urbanism --
>>> and the converse of that is their cooperation, and the strategies they adopt
>>> to mitigate conflicts.  (In his criticism of technology's unintended
>>> consequences he is a bit more related to Ellul too if you know his work.)
>>>
>>> Broadly speaking, and at the extreme risk of over-simplifying, I think
>>> the structuralist project is finally recovering from a period that can best
>>> be characterized as epistemological muddle, that rose up around the central
>>> problem of meaning, and the false positivist expectations that language
>>> could somehow arrive at a clear position outside of external meaning.  As is
>>> implied by Godel and others, this was a misunderstanding of what language is
>>> or how it really works. In this I think Whitehead especially (and Alexander,
>>> who is essentially a Whiteheadean) point the way out of this Kantian muddle.
>>>  (I won't name names, but would include some of the folks you mentioned!)
>>>
>>> I am very interested in this topic and have been nibbling away at it
>>> since grad school days.  Here is a paper I gave recently on it, if you're
>>> interested.  At a conference with Nikos, as a matter of fact.  (I don't
>>> dwell on the latter structuralists (or "post-structuralists" as they are
>>> known more commonly in the States) but I think you will see the
>>> implications....
>>>
>>>
>>> http://athensdialogues.chs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/athensdialogues.woa/wa/dist?dis=47
>>>
>>> Cheers, m
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Stefano Serafini <
>>> stefanonikolaevic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Geo,
>>>>
>>>> it's hard to give an answer to such a question, yet I cannot see any
>>>> relation between p2p urbanism and Derrida and Deleuze. All the other Authors
>>>> you quoted can be in some way related. First of all, Foucault, then
>>>> Baudrilard, and in a traditionally meant "political sense", Zizek. I don't
>>>> know enough the thought of Leach. Would add Henri Lefebvre.
>>>>
>>>> Nevertheles, at the first place I would put Christopher Alexander.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Stefano
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2011/7/2 Geo Scripcariu <geo.scripcariu at gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>
>>>>> Which of the following philosophers have anything to do -- in your
>>>>> opinion -- (and what) with P2P Urbanism?
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Baudrillard
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. Michel Foucault
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. Jacques Derrida
>>>>>
>>>>> 5. Gilles Deleuze
>>>>>
>>>>> 6. Slavoj Zizek
>>>>>
>>>>> 7. Neil Leach
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Geo Scripcariu
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Geo Scripcariu
>>>>> PhD Student / Open Source Urbanism
>>>>> UAUIM Bucharest
>>>>> Mobil: +40745-09.61.91
>>>>> Direct: +4031-401.29.42
>>>>> Tel/Fax: +4021-410.54.15
>>>>> E-mail: geo.scripcariu at gmail.com
>>>>> Str.Sabinelor 123 Bl. 119 Suite 16
>>>>> Bucuresti-5 050854 Romania
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
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>>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Mehaffy
>>> Visiting Faculty, ASU
>>> NEW ADDRESS to July 1, '11:
>>> 4630 S. Lakeshore Dr., #267
>>> Tempe, AZ 85282
>>>
>>> Permanent Address:
>>> 333 S. State Street, Suite V-440
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>>> www.tectics.com
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Geo Scripcariu
>> PhD Student / Open Source Urbanism
>> UAUIM Bucharest
>> Mobil: +40745-09.61.91
>> Direct: +4031-401.29.42
>> Tel/Fax: +4021-410.54.15
>> E-mail: geo.scripcariu at gmail.com
>> Str.Sabinelor 123 Bl. 119 Suite 16
>> Bucuresti-5 050854 Romania
>>
>> --
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>>
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