BIBLIOS

Document type
Book chapters


Title
Urban Scenarios: Gone Vacant, Virtual, and Violent

Participants in the publication
G Corrêa (Author)
Dep. História e Filosofia das Ciências
CFCUL

Summary
Drawing on recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape in the field of performance studies, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this paper explores the cityscapes expressed in three fictional works that share a Symbolist/post-Symbolist aesthetic: in the novel Bruges-la-morte (1892) by Belgian Georges Rodenbach, in the novel A Caverna (2000) by Portuguese José Saramago, and in the film Inland Empire (2006) by North-American David Lynch. \nInstead of examining the three fictional cityscapes in terms of the usual modernist/post-modernist, industrial/post-industrial oppositional categories, this presentation adopts a micropolitical and ecophilosophical perspective—in the light of concepts by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jacques Rancière—to demonstrate that there are more aesthetic/political continuities than discontinuities among the three urban scenarios. All three urban fictions are striking examples of how physical space—as a medium of cultural and symbolic production—not only creates and sustains social identity, but also fosters micropolitical imaginaries. The co-existence of the three fictional cityscapes in existing cities suggests a large number of fragmentary possible urban worlds, as well as creative gaps in our understanding of contemporary city space.

Editor(s)
Pedro Gadanho, Susana Oliveira


Institution
CFCUL-Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Where published
Caleidoscópio

Publication Identifiers

Address
Lisboa, Portugal

Organizers
Pedro Gadanho, Susana Oliveira

Publisher
Caleidoscópio



Keywords
Cityscapes Symbolist aesthetics Jacques Rancière Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari ecophilosophy

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