The Invisible City: Exploring the Third Something of Urban Life
journal contribution
posted on 2019-09-26, 11:38 authored by Francisco MartínezWith this article I intend to contribute to the debate about how to study urban life.
Firstly, I argue for the relevance of invisible and silent aspects of cities and inbetween sutures, which I understand to mean a third ‘something’ beyond forms
and flows. Secondly, I explore several examples and draw on arguments from
Wittgenstein and Lefebvre to frame this hypothesis. Thirdly, I use the chess game
as a metaphor to illustrate the multiplicity and unpredictability of engagements of
urban life. Finnally, I propose to approach cities in an open-ended and ordinary
way, paying attention to dialectically interconnected processes and the particular
conditions of possibility for knowledge.
Funding
I want to express my gratitude to Siobhan Kattago, Patrick Laviolette, Franz Krause, Simon Barker and the two reviewers of Culture Unbound for their comments and suggestions. Early drafts of this article have been presented in the conference ‘City and Cinema’, organised by the Baltic Film and Media school in October 2013 and ‘Embodiment, Expressions, Exits: Transforming Experience and Cultural Identity’, organised by the CECT in Tartu in November 2013. Research support has been kindly provided by the project ‘Culturescapes in transformation: towards an integrated theory of meaning making’ (IUT3-2); the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT) through the European Union Development Fund; the Estonian DoRa program; and the Georg Simmel Zentrum of Humboldt University.
History
Citation
Culture Unbound : Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2014, 23 (6), pp. 127-127 (155)Author affiliation
/OrganisationVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Published in
Culture Unbound : Journal of Current Cultural ResearchPublisher
Linköping Universityissn
2000-1525Copyright date
2014Available date
2019-09-26Publisher version
http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v6/a36/cu14v6a36.pdfLanguage
enAdministrator link
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