Spaces Of Crisis And Critique

In Of Other Spaces Foucault coined the term “heterotopias” to signify “all the other real sites that can be found within the culture" which "are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first of all spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however these have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline, such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Foucault's essay provokes us to think through how spaces of crisis and critique function to open up disruptive, subversive or minoritarian fields within philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic discourses. This book takes this interdisciplinary and international approach to the spatial, challenging existing borders, boundaries, and horizons; from Claire Colebrook's chapter unpacking the heterotopic spaces of America and Mexico that lie beyond reductive ideological spaces of light and darkness, to a Foucauldian reading of the Zapatista resistance. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies, and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault's call to give us a better understanding of our present cultural epoch.

In Of Other Spaces Foucault coined the term “heterotopias” to signify “all the other real sites that can be found within the culture" which "are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first of all spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however these have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline, such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Foucault's essay provokes us to think through how spaces of crisis and critique function to open up disruptive, subversive or minoritarian fields within philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic discourses. This book takes this interdisciplinary and international approach to the spatial, challenging existing borders, boundaries, and horizons; from Claire Colebrook's chapter unpacking the heterotopic spaces of America and Mexico that lie beyond reductive ideological spaces of light and darkness, to a Foucauldian reading of the Zapatista resistance. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies, and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault's call to give us a better understanding of our present cultural epoch.

Throughout history, innovations in media have had a profound impact on protest and dissent. But while these recent developments in social media have been the subject of intense scholarly attention, there has been little consideration of the wider historical role of media technologies in protest. Drawing on the work of key theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, Crisis and Critique provides a historical analysis of media practices within the context of major economic crises. Through richly detailed case studies of the movements which emerged during three different economic crises – the unemployed workers' movement of the Great Depression, the rent strike movement of the early 1970s and the Occupy Wall Street protests which followed the recession of 2007 – Kaun provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural, economic and social consequences of media technologies, and their role in shaping and facilitating resistance to capitalism.

Fragility is a condition that inhabits the foundations of social life. It remains mostly unnoticed until something breaks and dislocates the sense of completion. In such moments of rupture, the social world reveals the stuff of which it is made and how it actually works; it opens itself to question. Based on this claim, this book reconsiders the place of the notions of crisis and critique as fundamental means to grasp the fragile condition of the social and challenges the normalization and dissolution of these ‘concepts’ in contemporary social theory. It draws on fundamental insights from Hegel, Marx, and Adorno as to recover the importance of the critique of concepts for the critique of society, and engages in a series of studies on the work of Habermas, Koselleck, Arendt, and Foucault as to consider anew the relationship of crisis and critique as immanent to the political and economic forms of modernity. Moving from crisis to critique and from critique to crisis, the book shows that fragility is a price to be paid for accepting the relational constitution of the social world as a human domain without secure foundations, but also for wishing to break free from all attempts at giving closure to social life as an identity without question. This book will engage students of sociology, political theory and social philosophy alike.

This volume returns to the Rivonia courtroom to engage with Mandela’s masterful performance, when he stood before Justice de Wet in Pretoria’s Palace of Justice and delivered one of the most spectacular and liberating statements ever made from a dock. Cutting across a wide-range of critical theories and discourses, contributors reflect on the personal, spatial, temporal, performative and literary dimensions of that constitutive event. By redefining the spaces, institutions and discourses of law, contributors present a fresh perspective that re-sets the margins of what can be thought and said in the courtroom.

Throughout history, innovations in media have had a profound impact on protest and dissent. But while these recent developments in social media have been the subject of intense scholarly attention, there has been little consideration of the wider historical role of media technologies in protest. Drawing on the work of key theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, Crisis and Critique provides a historical analysis of media practices within the context of major economic crises. Through richly detailed case studies of the movements which emerged during three different economic crises – the unemployed workers' movement of the Great Depression, the rent strike movement of the early 1970s and the Occupy Wall Street protests which followed the recession of 2007 – Kaun provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural, economic and social consequences of media technologies, and their role in shaping and facilitating resistance to capitalism.

Un)timely Crises explores how ‘crisis’—as a narrative, concept, grammar, and experience—structures time and space. This collectively written volume extends Bakhtin’s ‘chronotope’ to challenge mobilizations of crisis within neoliberal governmentality. The book explores how contemporary crises can trigger memories and traumas of earlier events as well as foster practices of resistance and alternative visions of the future. Drawing from across disciplines and geographical contexts, (Un)timely Crises reimagines the relation of ‘crisis’ with ‘critique’, proposing future trajectories for thinking and living in and through crisis.

Through a transdisciplinary perspective, this book examines the complex urban dimension, in front of increasing density, soil consumption, abandoned places, and the recent pandemic which proved megacities particularly inadequate to provide healthy psychophysical conditions. Assuming bodily and emotional comfort as a reference horizon, it tends to inspire the design research overcoming a paradoxical binary logic that separates public and private, outside and inside, culture and nature, mind and places. The first part of the work explores built spaces and addresses sustainable strategies not only to overcome an ecologic and systemic crisis but also to improve places liveability in our contemporary city. The second part deals with our perception of aesthetic spaces, welcoming the stimuli coming from neuro-aesthetics studies on affordances and atmosphere and encouraging the intersection between interior architecture and design culture and arts. The third part examines relational spaces and how they influence human behaviour, starting from psychological, anthropological, and philosophical perspectives. The book benefits scholars and practitioners interested in interior architecture and design, as well as researchers involved in the relationship between people and places. The new challenge posed by the recent pandemic requires more than ever to rely on consciousness, culture and creativity to increase the intelligence of our surroundings, allowing our sense of belonging and improving our personal and mutual well-being.