ARCHITECTURE & PHILOSOPHY _ Architectural Violence and Creative Resistance

[Architecture Elective _ Semester 2, 2011]

This is a place where participants in an ongoing seminar called Architecture+Philosophy can discuss concepts, arguments, practices and projects between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy. The seminar is linked to the architecture+philosophy public lecture series, which has been runninsince 2005 under the curation of Hélène Frichot and Esther Anatolitis

VIOLENCE AND ARCHITECTURE COLOURING-IN BOOK

Week 1 - Eyal Weisman, ‘Lethal Theory’ in Log 7Week 2 - Michael Sorkin, ‘Introduction: Up Against the Wall’ in Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to PeaceWeek 3 - Giorgio Agamben, ‘Beyond Human Rights’ in Means Without EndsWeek 4 - giorgio Agamben, ‘The Camp as the ‘Nomos’ of the Modern’, in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare LifeWeek 5 - Lieven De Cauter, ‘The Capsule and the Network: Notes for a General Theory’ in The Capsular CivilizationWeek 6 - David Harvey, ‘Right to the City’Week 7 - Peter Sloterdijk, ‘Foam-City,’ in Log 9Week 8 - Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’ in PowerWeek 9 - Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’ in ReflectionsWeek 10 - Jacques Derrida, ‘On Cosmopolitanism’ in On Cosmopolitanism and ForgivenessWeek 11 - Isabelle Stengers, ‘The Cosmopolitical Proposal’, in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds. Making Things Public: Atmospheres of DemocracyWeek 12 - Slavov Zizek, ‘Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance’ in Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Joel Lee Shou Sheng _ s 3169834

Week 1 - Eyal Weisman, ‘Lethal Theory’ in Log 7

Within cities, lie walls over walls over walls. Each encasing and holding up families, businesses, structures of social hierarchy and order. The very order of the city relies on the fantasy of a wall as stable, solid and fixed (Weizman, p75). As Weizman’s “Lethal Theory” suggests, the way in which the Israeli army through their tactics have used this very innate notion that we all hold in their military exploits, the destruction that urban warfare brings along with it has now been raised to new heights. He expounds on the basis of walls as protectors of the private realm, a realm separate and respected as detached from the very nature of war which traditionally happens on the streets or in the public realm. As the tactics of the Israeli Defence Forces now bring this private realm to become part of the battlefield - or rather the primary battlefield – the order that has been determined and understood by society is disrupted psychologically.

One might argue that this very act or shift in the way the urban landscape is understood and dealt with as part of a military campaign brings about a more severe effect on society as compared to a traditional approach within the public realm. Weizman (p62) describes war as a linear movement, or at least that’s how society understands it. By bringing the progression of the military through houses and breaking down domestic walls, it is not just the enemy that is taken off guard but the collateral residents as well. This unexpected penetration of war into the private domain of the home has been experienced by civilians in Palestine, just like in Iraq, as the most profound form of trauma and humiliation (Weizman, p58).

Reasons why psychological warfare is said to be much more detrimental than typical physical urban warfare is because of the long term effects of it, as well as the range of different social groups that it affects. In trauma, that is, the outside has gone inside without and medication (Caruth 1993). Trauma therefore seems to be the deadlier effect of urban warfare because of the nature of it being that experience that remains unresolved within and individual, a haunting reminder of that which had occurred. As Weizman (2006) describes, seeing military personal burst through a living area within a suburban house, shouting orders and carrying equipment foreign to daily routine, then being locked up in a room for a long duration of time, as extremely haunting to one’s experience. Most of these people are barely harmed and rarely are there any casualties – or so it seems – but this unnatural experience of being brought out from your privately conceived space into the progression of war brings out a sociological resistance, rendering one traumatised.

Week 2 - Michael Sorkin, ‘Introduction: Up Against the Wall’ in Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace

While walls represent protection and shelter, they can also be icons of discrimination, regulations, restrictions, division or even segregation. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the wall that is being erected along the West Bank is a wall that is being built to physically separate Israel from Palestine; a Palestine the wall also seeks to define (Sorkin 2005). However, it would not be farfetched for one to speculate that there are underlying agendas to this massive construction; agendas pertaining to more than just a method to define territorially the boundaries between Israel and Palestine and its border.

Considering the history between these two nations, the wall stands as a label to citizens of both the countries that are involved, as well as the international society. With a cloak of being the supposed response to the problem of terrorism, this wall proposes the single argument of being that which will become the solution to this problem (Sorkin 2005). Sorkin implies the degrading label that is placed onto Palestine by the wall as well as the threat that Palestine represents in the way that he describes the wall as an agent that is “corralling” the Palestine population. This seemingly crude description can’t be ignored seeing that the way the wall is being constructed puts forward this very point. Back and forth, these two nations wrestle with each other, trying to ascertain their own stand and reign over the political and territorial rights. As such, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on the insistence by one people that they can define the nationality of the other (Sorkin 2005). It then seeks to separate these two nationalities, treating one as superior to the other, and the other as if it were a constant threat to the safety and security of the other. This label, built in stone and blood and sweat is therefore slowly becoming that which the world will identify with when referring to these two nations.

An edifice that towers over the city, the wall becomes that symbol of a constant presence watching over the Palestinian people. The way that the Israeli Defence Force has tackled the urban warfare system is to become in itself the constant and omnipresent observer. From the wall to the invasion of houses by the armed forces, these tactics that are being deployed bring about, as Sorkin (2005) describes it, “privacy degree zero”. It seeks to shrink the perception of Palestinian inhabitation, mobility and security, hence creating a fear and implication that one is constantly under surveillance. In many ways, the wall is possibly just another system to condition a nation to adhere to another nation’s intention.

Week 3 - Giorgio Agamben, ‘Beyond Human Rights’ in Means Without Ends

“Adonai Nathan veadonai lakach, baruch shem adonai” – the Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. The utterance of this phrase in the face of death is a grim reminder of the futility of the efforts that we humans take in order to sustain life and the reality of it, considering one believed in the Creator in the first place. The weight of this phrase is lost however in the midst of consequence among some of the refugees in the world (Arendt p.72). It seems like a lost state of existence, one that is unfortunate, one that proves little hope, one that deprives one’s self the very ability to exist as a human being with a sense of individuality or belonging. It is a state and a status that one is forced into that at times, removes the ability of being and individual on society.

By being robbed of this very value of a human life, some have felt that they have lost the very essence of being alive. Even more depressing to this is the very fact that, as a result of the prolonging of this uncertain and volatile state, some have come to their own conclusion that death is no more that worst outcome of it (Arendt p.71). Life and death therefore goes from something that amazed one’s mind and brought fourth great thought and insight from thinkers and theologians and philosophers, to become meaningless babble. Death, in this situation has been tamed in the light of these refugees; not because of the certainty in their minds of knowing what lies ahead in the afterlife, but rather a certainty in knowing that that will be the ultimate end of what their existence has come to be – conventional and meaningless as Arendt (p71) has described.

Within this state of lucidity or limbo, the morality used to deal with this human condition is put into question. There has been a distinction made among these displaced people that has started to blur the line between the position of being and belonging. Taking it a step further, it is an issue that to some, they have been convinced that there is a difference between the two. The question is therefore; should there be any distinction in the first place? It becomes apparent however, that as one tried to navigate his / her way through this forest of terms and labels, that one also negates the matter of one’s being. People are therefore made out to become statistics rather than individuals (Agamben 1998). It is this very fact that one still holds on to their nationality, most of the time unintentionally, as in the light of their current situation, which might be the only thing that gives them the ability of being.

Week 4 - giorgio Agamben, ‘The Camp as the ‘Nomos’ of the Modern’, in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

“Stable exception” as some would call it. A state defined by place, time and a group of individuals. It is an ambiguous moment of being that at seems to elude the ability to be defined as to what it is but rather presents itself as a blurry figure, unclassifiable by any humanitarian standards. It then makes more sense to rule out as to what it is not rather than what it is.

It is not an institution. Without having any background or basis in which places such as the concentration camps if the Nazi’s SS era were founded on, there is no institutional link to its foundations (Agamben 1998). There are no concepts or constitutions or models that those who created these premises referred to as to ascertain how to run a proper and functional “concentration camp” well.

It is not an order. Unlike institutions of systems and process and determined outcomes, these concentration camps had no order. They became merely a predefined spatial arrangement of individuals who did not know as to how they were to behave or conduct themselves in these places. Unlike a structured society or community with ethics and notions of a social conduct, that order diminished the instant they entered these camps.

It is therefore not covered by law. According to Agamben (1998), the “protection” of freedom that is at issue in Schutzhaft is, ironically, protection against the suspension of law that characterizes the emergency. In an odd way, the very law that has been created to protect the people has now been deemed as a threat and therefore becomes ambiguous within these camps. As a result the guides as to how humans should treat other human beings exist no more, creating an ambiguity as to the limits of human interaction.

It does not define its people. This group or cluster of individuals, slowly but surely, becomes one of a generalised public. It degenerates the individuality of what makes a people ‘a people’ as it does not acknowledge any fact or character of an individual external to the immediate situation of that camp. One moves in a zone in which the distinction between life and politics, between questions of fact and questions of law, has literally no more meaning (Agamben 1998).

To take things a step further, it is not even a people. By definition of a people, it would be one that defines and recognizes one’s being. The segregation between zoe and bios leaves no room to recognize the fact that one is therefore confronting the very essence of the ‘pure life’ without and prior judgement (Agamben 1998). One does not then just lose ones freedom of expression or conduct, but one’s right to be present to life as well. Your right of ‘being’ and personal liberty is therefore suspended while you await the next step to your status.

It is not a home. It is merely a dwelling. A temporary residence. A transitional state. One does not build a house in the “state of exception”. One does not raise a family in the “state of exception”. You would not build a business in the “state of exception” or create a social network there.

The camp, understood as the state of exception, therefore puts into question the very society that we live in today in terms of our very personal liberties. With the depletion of personal rights and the freedom of expression as well as the prejudices that ride the very media that outs forward the political powers that rule the nations today. Are we therefore living in that very state today?

Week 5 - Lieven De Cauter, ‘The Capsule and the Network: Notes for a General Theory’ in The Capsular Civilization

Ignorance is bliss. At least that’s what society had led us to believe. That’s the way that society has structured the way that we have been encapsulated into a framework that determines what we’re supposedly comfortable with and what does not sit well with us in term of our social conduct. It is a framework that has thus created an environment, the environment that we live in today. A lot of what we’ve been brought up in and taught in at school becomes the very tools in which are used to mould us to fit a “type” of society or standard. Ever since a young age, we are being introduced to a way of life known to our parents, school teachers and even policemen. More and more, society is being contained to individual pockets of society that have a particular and distinct way of life. Anyone who does not fit or adapt into that particular way of life therefore has no place in it. To a certain extent young children are slowly being raised more in a way that makes them ignorant to differences around us. Furthermore, these differences are implied to be unacceptable to “us” as a people group. We become insulated from what is put out to be an “unsafe and uncontrolled territory” beyond (De Cauter 2004).

The media represents the ideals and notions from multiple sources - positions on matter pertaining to poverty, the international society, racial identity and many other essential world views. It sets trends, it gives opinions, and it provides filtered down and concise information about various issues. It therefore places you in a space, mentally and visually, that is far away from the actual space in which you sit in (de Cauter 2004). The media or technological visual appliances are hence essential and vital elements in creating these mental “capsules” that encompass us in our judgements of what is happening around us. Not that it becomes our only influence for our decisions and judgements, but it provides a vital source for which those judgements are based on. People are then moulded by propaganda and notions put forward by politicians or bodies of the public that divide or bring us together as a people, encapsulated by a common pool of opinions, sometimes defiant to that which would beckon to challenge those very opinions that we hold.

However, the logic of the capsule is to exclude the hardship of the hostile environment (de Caurer 2004). We are constantly met with hyper realities or representations rather than the actual facts of our surroundings. This very active and intentional action of inclusion and exclusion may end up changing the world into an archipelago of insular entities – fortresses, gated communities, enclosed complexes, enclaves, envelopes, cacoons – in short, capsules in a sea of chaos (de Cauter 2004)

JL

Week 6 - David Harvey, ‘Right to the City’

There is always an insistent need for man to seek to improve ourselves; to achieve a higher form of existence or “being” in more ways than one. Maybe it is a result of us as the determined “higher species” on earth as we know it. The cities therefore become our building blocks. Symbols of power, strength and wealth, defined not necessarily by politicians or authority figures, but rather by the rich and affluent. As Robert Park (1067) puts it:

The city is “man’s most successful attempts to remake the work he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the work which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without and clear sense of the nature of the task, in making the city man remade himself”

No amount of achievement can quench this endless thirst for that step further forward in the way that we live out our daily lives. Harvey (2008) reiterates this point in elaborating on our insatiable appetite for innovations and how by achieving these new innovations, we in turn create a new set of needs and wants. This vicious cycle of consumerism is what binds us into this endless grappling to the right to engage the city and to call the city your own as we are constantly attempting to make our mark in an ever changing society.

In direct effect of this, we are constantly trying to grasp on to every single tangible entity in the world around us in order to satisfy our cravings for outlets to demonstrate our affluence. Harvey (2008) talks about the war on Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States and the building of infrastructure in Europe by Haussmann in the 1800s as a relentless reaching for reasons and outlets to outplay the need to establish a right to the city or in some cases, a country on an international level.

Somehow, somewhere along the line of this, we cannot deny the fact that there will always be a party, or in many cases a “people” that will be impacted in the negative way. Urbanisation has always been, therefore, a class phenomenon, since surpluses are extracted from somewhere and from somebody, while control over their disbursement typically lies in a few hands (Harvey 2008). Harvey elaborates on this in the light of Carlos Slim from Mexico in the year of 2006. In the very same time frame that he was deemed as the world’s richest man, Mexico and its social poverty level either maintained at its low estate, or diminished further into the realms of extreme poverty in the world today. This great divide between the upper “rich” class of people and the lower class therefore will keep growing in leaps and bounds if we as a people in this day and age keep raping society and the world of its commodities and as a result, its rights to exist. The more we create these social barriers that create a class of the ‘elite’, the more we diminish the very value of those who can’t afford to make a name for themselves, not because they don’t exist in numbers, but rather because they aren’t given a voice. The third world, the homeless, the negatively stereotyped, the old the slum dwellers, the refugee, all of them lose their right to the city.

Week 7 - Peter Sloterdijk, ‘Foam-City,’ in Log 9

There is an obvious power in numbers. With numbers comes a voice, with numbers, movements are initiated, legislations are passed, nations are created. Peter Sloterdijk, in his essay “Foam City”, takes this notion and breaks it down in terms of the context that we live in today. In the age that we live in today, we live in a society that is highly individualistic in terms in interaction and opinions. The agencies of social synthesis are engaged in producing the comprehensive forms under which these insulated individuals can be integrated into interactive wholes (Sloterdijk 2007). He therefore questions the notion of society and its prevalence in the world today.

Sloterdijk speaks of the issue of what people describe today as a “revolution”. He discusses this issue as the insistent urge for people to break free from a past that in turn, can’t be escaped from. In the light of a revolution, there is the underlining agenda and need for a people to get rid of almost every trace of the past, to establish the right of one as an individual in the midst of society. Sloterdijk explains that in this very place, the people (each with individual motivations) then form a united front, creating this notion of ‘the masses’. In relation to this phenomenon that exists in the social context of today, architecture is therefore confronted with the challenge of creating spatial conditions that enable both the isolation of individuals, and the concentration of isolated collective ensembles of cooperation and contemplation (Sloterdijk 2007).

Taking then this notion of gathering and accommodating the masses, there has to be a place or location where this gathering can occur. Sloterdijk (2007) explains that there is a sense of sovereignty in the ability for these assemblies of people and motivations to meet ad hoc and in a non pre-determined location. In many ways, these locations, architecturally speaking are not even spaces designed for that particular assembly of the masses. It is, however, through the unintentional and unexpected use of a particular venue for an ulterior motive that makes a particular movement revolutionary. Through this notion of meeting in itself, the purpose of a space is redefined. As Sloterdijk (2007) mentions, “one can make the observation that the revolution built virtually nothing, but renamed almost everything”. One should then question the possibility of this external imposition as a form of architectural violence.

Could we then start to reflect upon the possibility that this spectacle of the masses – elaborated by Sloterdijk’s “foam theory” and labelled as a revolution by others – is an ever present occurrence? In the world we live in today of constant claims of the “right to assembly” and “freedom of speech” and “the voice of the people”, are we not at an epoch of revolutions, each bringing its own notion of architectural violence?

δArchitecture is the learned game, correct and magni�cent, of

forms assembled in the light. I prefer drawing to talking. Draw-ing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects. The

home should be the treasure chest of living. Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep. “A house is a machine for living in. A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe. The most beautiful bridge in the world. so pure, so resolute, so regular that here, �nally, steel architecture seems to laugh. Our own epoch is

determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it. Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan -

that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds. Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. But mom, I am one of the greatest architects of all times, I'm the

founder of modern architecture, I can't do a traditional house for y... Aouch! Okay, okay.. Architecture is the masterly, correct and magni�cent play of masses brought together in light. Our

eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres,.. It is a question of building which

is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution. The object of this edict is to enlighten the present and future citizens of Chandigarh about the basic concepts of

planning of the city so that they become its guardians and save it from whims. Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new

kind of plan, both for the house and the city. Vehicular tra�c is completely forbidden in the green strips, where tranquility shall

reign and the curse of noise shall not penetrate. The age of personal statues is gone. No personal statues shall be erected in

the city or parks of Chandigarh. The city is planned to breathe the new sublimated spirit of art. Commemoration of..

δArchitecture is the learned game, correct and magni�cent, of

forms assembled in the light. I prefer drawing to talking. Draw-ing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects. The

home should be the treasure chest of living. Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep. “A house is a machine for living in. A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe. The most beautiful bridge in the world. so pure, so resolute, so regular that here, �nally, steel architecture seems to laugh. Our own epoch is

determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it. Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan -

that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds. Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. But mom, I am one of the greatest architects of all times, I'm the

founder of modern architecture, I can't do a traditional house for y... Aouch! Okay, okay.. Architecture is the masterly, correct and magni�cent play of masses brought together in light. Our

eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres,.. It is a question of building which

is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution. The object of this edict is to enlighten the present and future citizens of Chandigarh about the basic concepts of

planning of the city so that they become its guardians and save it from whims. Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new

kind of plan, both for the house and the city. Vehicular tra�c is completely forbidden in the green strips, where tranquility shall

reign and the curse of noise shall not penetrate. The age of personal statues is gone. No personal statues shall be erected in

the city or parks of Chandigarh. The city is planned to breathe the new sublimated spirit of art. Commemoration of..

Week 8 - Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’ in Power

Foucault (2000) quotes a Sartrean psychologist who mentioned that “space is reactionary and capitalist, but history and becoming are revolutionary” and then explains that this very notion is absurd in today’s architectural understanding. In his text, “Space, Knowledge and Power”, Foucault attempts to locate architecture and its arrangement of space in relation to power and elaborates on the effect one has on another.

In the interview the Foucault (2000) highlighted these issues, he discusses fairly bluntly on the lack or even absence, and of power that architecture held over an individual.

“One must take him (the architect) – his mentality, his attitude – into account as well as his projects, in order to understand a certain number of the techniques of power that are invested in architecture”

An architect in this context therefore is stripped of his direct and total control of individuals or circumstances. Rather, Foucault places the architect as the person who isn’t totally removed from the system but rather becomes the instigator to potential outcomes of his architecture and its effect on organization, the implementation and all the techniques of power that are exercised in society (Foucault 2000). There is still the right and freedom that falls on the user as an individual to redefine or reconstruct that which the architect deems as an ideal built form.

Instead of the actual built forms and cities that are erected by architects, Foucault put forward the notion that it is actually those who dictate and create the links and territories around and between these cities that hold what can be described as power. It is the engineers and builders of bridges, roads, viaducts, railways as well as the polytechnicians – those are the people who thought out space (Foucault 2000). This quintessential element that could possibly define the scope of power however then becomes the very cause of architectural violence. As discussed briefly in the conversation, the railroads became the veins in which vessels and weapons of war flowed down between Germany and France. Railroads, electricity as well as the efficiency of communication, made war easier to wage (Foucault 2000).

Is architecture therefore powerless in this war against violence? Has the architect been so far removed from the system that it loses grasp on its ability to impose power upon society and cities? Or can architecture be in itself revolutionary rather than reactionary? Architecture is not, and must not become a constant.

Week 9 - Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’ in Reflections

As part of a larger society that is constantly confronted with different types of violence and issues relating to the justification of law and law-making, we are still unable (till today) to ascertain as to a way in which we can justify violence, or define a violence that is “right” in the eyes of the law and society. We are still confronted with the very question, “is any non violent resolution of conflict possible?” (Benjamin 1978).

Walter Benjamin defines violence as a type of means to achieve a predetermined just ends. He discusses violence as part of a process that is necessary and instrumental to achieve this ends. There is no defined “type” of violence that Benjamin discusses. Rather, he looks at the types of “laws” or “ends” that we as society aim to achieve as a way in which to create a discourse as to the validity of the initiated violence.

He speaks natural law as a natural element in which violence is the outcome. Violence is a product of nature, as if it were a raw material, the use of which is in no way problematical, unless force if misused for unjust ends (Benjamin 1978). Violence that is a natural product of this type of law therefore can be seen as an appropriate means in which violence can be exercised. However, there is the question of this view as not being fully encompassing in its application. Benjamin (1978) proposes that the issue of it is that there is a lack in a standpoint to determine if natural law actually defines the legitimacy of its uses rather that just its evaluation as just.

Another type of violence that Walter Benjamin states is the police. He views them as an arm of the law in which violence is made known. However, in the embodiment of the police, he proposes that in this very light, violence loses its objectivity in the light of achieving a just ends. Benjamin (1978) compares the structure of the police in the light of an absolute monarchy in where the executive and legislative supreme authority are united becoming a form of degenerative violence. It therefore becomes a violence that, at times, becomes driven by its very own makers in order to attain their own personal satisfaction or notion of justice.

Walter Benjamin finally discusses on the notion of divine law. In the Ten Commandments, we are given a list of ideals that precede the deed. The injunction becomes inapplicable, incommensurable once the deed is accomplished (Benjamin 1978). In understanding the way that the commandments work in terms of the law, it acts as a preventive measure in the light of avoiding the deed to be carried out. It (commandments) exists not as a criterion of judgment, but as a guideline for the actions of person or communities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and in exceptional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it (Benjamin 1978). Could this therefore be the defining law that balances the notion of violence in a just manner? Walter Benjamin questions if this divine violence could essentially be called sovereign violence as long as it is never the means of sacred execution.

The question still yet remains – is any nonviolent resolution of conflict possible?

Week 10 - Jacques Derrida, ‘On Cosmopolitanism’ in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness

Jacques Derrida places us – as being in the present – within a timeframe where cities of refuge are virtually inexistent amongst society or within the state. We live in a world where the issues such as the right of asylum and the right of hospitality are merely topics of discussion. They only present themselves as that which we discuss trivially as aspects that are removed and unable to be incorporated into society as we know it today.

Derrida seems to therefore place this notion of the “city of refuge” in two places in reference to our timeline of the present. He first describes it first as a notion of the past. He states that, in reviving the traditional meaning of an expression, we have been eager to propose simultaneously, beyond the old word, an original concept of hospitality, of the duty of hospitality, and of the right to hospitality (Derrida 2002). He describes this notion of the invitation to those in need of refuge as an essential extension of the city and an essential part of its beginnings. This therefore beckons the notion of violence that a city would reject from entering its gates, while providing a way out for those who are trying to escape the very violence that pursues them. There is therefore a notion of sanctuary and shelter that cities were meant to essentially provide, not just to those that the state deems as citizens by place, but citizens by bios. It is expounded as an unconditional law therefore that borders are to be open to each and every one, to every other, to all who might come, without question or without their even having to identify who they are or whence they came (Derrida 2002). One would and should be treated as a guest based on the Hebraic tradition of old where people, and all people were viewed as fellow citizens with God’s people, members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19-20). The transition from the society depicted in biblical times however seems foreign however to that of the present – or so Derrida argues.

Is this notion of the existence of cities of refuge therefore a utopian notion? One that will only be realised in the distant future, or worse, will and can never be realised? Derrida quotes Arendt in the statement that this idea is one that transcends the present sphere of international law which still operates in terms of reciprocal agreements and treaties between sovereign states and, for the time being, a sphere that is above the nations does not exist. It places the ability for violence to be arrested on the level in terms of cities opposing it as a whole as a distant notion. The extent in which society needs to be transformed to create a greater sovereignty involves an establishment of new right or a form of utopia, created in the context of a new politic structure and outlook. Derrida (2002) however sheds a positive light on this possibility in insisting that in doing so we will open up new horizons of possibility previously undreamt of by our international state law.

A lost hope or an unattainable vision, are cities of refuge able to exist in the present?

Week 11 - Isabelle Stengers, ‘The Cosmopolitical Proposal’, in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds. Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy

“Equality does not mean that they all have the same say in the matter but that they all have to be present in the mode that makes the decision as difficult as possible, that precludes any shortcut or simplification, and differentiation a priori between that which counts and that which does not”

Stengers, I

In her piece, The Cosmopolitical Proposal, Isabella Stengers puts forward a series of thoughts that are meant, not to state the status of what things are, nor to mould how things will be in the future, but rather to encourage a moment of pause and reflection in re-evaluating the reality in which we live in – to create an awareness.

However, there is a worth in which the Cosmopolitical Proposal can give into in the realm of politics which Stengers believes has an inseparable nature with one another. In this light, she mentions that one of the only ways in which this proposal could be useful to society is through those who are already engaged and effective to the political realm (although still remaining as two separate discussions).

The idiot is brought about here (as also discussed by Deluze) not as an antagonist to the situation, but rather one that would stand defiant to the norm of society and function. In many ways, the idiot is one who will be an opposition towards the violence that refuses those who don’t subscribe to the general consensus. This proposal therefore endorses the opportunity for the idiot to be given a voice in these situations. It recognises the difference that each member of society brings to a politically driven state but does not necessarily affirm that the difference is equivalent to a solution.

In many ways, this proposal seeks to create a utopian vision of how society could function. In this case, Stengers mentions that “the utopia does not allow is to denounce this world in the name of an ideal; it proposes and interpretation that indicates how a transformation could take place that leaves no one unaffected”. The main point that Stengers seems to stress in all of her examples and instances where this proposal could be birthed into is the fact that it is one that “leaves no one unaffected”. It sparks awareness against the structures placed around us by politicians or shareholders or the supposed “experts in fields” who govern society and at times “bully” it into their frame. As Stengers quotes Deluze, “to think is to resist”. The cosmopolitical proposal is therefore and urge to awareness (not a solution to) that there is a reality that could start to question the violence that confronts us each day.

Week 12 - Slavov Zizek, ‘Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance’ in Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Ending with a quote by Freud, Zizek (2002) states, “if you cannot change the explicit set of ideological rules, you can try to change the underlying set of obscene unwritten rules” This very essay starts to question the very nature of the “real” that we are presented with in our everyday society of today. He first builds a premise as to how we today regard and interact with the Real. Zizek describes the Real as something we, in the twentieth century are experiencing – it in itself a form of extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality. Throughout this reading, we are confronted with the realities that have come to know in contrast to the Real, removed from the facades that society, governments and the media has erected, shielding us from the truth.

In the midst of this large charade of hyper realities, we are placed by Zizek as beings who seek the Real. The Real is that which he describes as that which captivates, fascinates and in many ways sustains our normality. Zizek compares this with the likes of cutters and their impulse to inflict harm onto themselves. Far from being suicidal, far from indicating a desire for self-annihilation, cutting is a radical attempt to (re)gain a hold on reality, or to ground the ego firmly in bodily reality against the unbearable anxiety of perceiving oneself as nonexistent (Zizek 2002). This assertion of reality itself is defiance against the violence of the reality that we are confronted with everyday and from everywhere.

Virtual reality is one of the notions put forward by Zizek (2002) which best describes the world that surrounds us today – one that is deprived of their malignant properties: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol...the doctrine of warfare with no casualties. This very blanket is that which has been thrown over our eyes time after time. With the World Trade Centre and the ruins that settled at Ground Zero, it was verbally conveyed and reinforced of the enormity of this disaster as that which had robbed 3000 people of their lives. However, there was a sense of the fragility of the public that seemed to be perceived by the media, a public unable to be confronted by the visual reality of the carnage and destruction mentioned. Aside from the images of the planes and the collapses and the explosions that (like in every other action movie) the world was being showed, there was a void in the grasp that it gave us on the severity of death that loomed over the city of New York, perhaps in comparison to the bodies shown in the tsunami disaster. In retrospect, reports on disasters such as the poverty and suffering in Africa as well as the genocide that had taken place in major times of war find their ways onto the televisions of families all around the world.

Would one then benefit from adjusting one’s lenses in terms of how one would see the world? There always lies in front of us the tantalising “Hollywood directed”, special effects added realities that are readily and abundantly available, wrapped up in “special” packaging that appeals to the general masses. Or, occasionally, if one chooses and tries hard enough, signs of (what Zizek derives as) the Real emerges from the clutter around us.

It wouldn’t hurt one to question though, would we (as the society of the 20th century) be able to confront the Real face on today?