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

Mon Jul 4 12:17:43 CEST 2011

Ken has a new book on the situationists, which you may want to check out,

will be book of the week soon on the p2p blog,

Michel

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:17 AM, Geo Scripcariu <geo.scripcariu at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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>>>>>> to register to the group
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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
>>>> Lake Oswego, OR 97034
>>>> 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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>
>
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