Editorial: Trumped? Some groundings

Abstract

‘On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government -- executive, Congress, the Supreme Court -- in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.’

‘Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand’ (Noam Chomsky, Monday, 14 November 2016)¹

‘[W]e need to think about those two

things together—the rural and the urban—

and we need to think about the ways in

which people do this extraordinary job,.

whether in the countryside or in the vast

informal areas of cities, of making a living,

of sustaining themselves, of getting by to an

extraordinary extent.’ (Timothy Mitchell)²

‘Donald Trump just spoke in New York City, giving what was—aside from his customary ad libs and an extended section, resembling a wedding speech, that involved thanking and complimenting supporters such as Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus—a fairly standard president-elect address about unity.’ (Trump: “It Is Time for Us to Come Together as One United People”, Ben Mathis-Lilley, The Slatest, 9 November 2016)

What, where, when are we to define and ground some commitments and actions that are central to humanity’s future (and to that of life on the planet)? Trump, in his ‘victory’ speech after the November election, saw some commitments and action emerging in a ‘Time for Us to Come Together’ in unity. Professor Mitchell, more than a year earlier, saw the need for us ‘to think two things together – the rural and the urban’ and about the ways in which ‘people do this extraordinary job, whether in the countryside or in the vast informal areas of cities, of making a living…’. Chomsky saw the fate of humanity as now ‘in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history’.

There are, of course, other views, including some recently established academic ones, with a take on what is going on across the planet. What hope do they hold? Not much, it would seem, if one were to judge by the writings of ‘planetary urbanist’ orthodoxies for whom Mitchell’s two ‘things’ seem hardly to exist. What they seem to see are two non-entities: in the form of a non-city condition, one without an outside. Those that might have been effectively opposed to the victors seem, then, to have cut the ground from under their (and our?) feet.

Timothy Mitchell, Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University, thinks differently. Perhaps such a difference is in part a result of the geo-cultural spread of his ‘subject areas’? But is it also a result of his ‘thinking against the concept’ of these two things and bringing them together, across geo-cultural spaces, and grounding them?³ Not only has he been thinking but he has come to what is at least an interim stand.

A situation of extraordinary continuing turmoil can be seen as characteristic of the now concluded but hardly politically and socially concluded US Election and, almost as evident, as still there behind the apparent new normality of the fundamentally troubled Europe of Brexit and of ‘Invasive’ refugees. Or rather still seen as marginal in terms of diagnosis and appropriate action?

Our approach in recent work is moving towards considering these two events (taking the Brexit-refugee interaction as also one set of events – see Dimitris Dalakoglou⁴) as just one. What happens when, as in a series of recent editorials, one applies an apparently only tangential subject of investigation to a mainly inadvertent, unintended collection of articles? Can such an experimental approach contribute, for example, to the development of a political/ideological/grounded⁵ dimension, actual and potential, necessary for deep-seated transition⁶ rather than tokenistic or regime ‘change’?

What time, what places, what situations are to be taken as a high priority, as ‘central’ to, but in need of grounding, such investigations, and interventions? Where, what, how (who/whom), when, why is ‘the centre’ or, with a more diverse and (necessarily) evaluative approach, are ‘the key centres’ to be comprehended so as to contribute to our understanding and effective action? Are they essentially and increasingly ‘urban’ –that non-city condition without an outside - as some suppose? How, alternatively, it might be asked, if cityness⁷ (or some kind of thought-together rurality and urbanity) is still a legitimate and realisable ambition and condition, do people do ‘this extraordinary job’ of making a living, sustaining themselves, getting by ‘to an extraordinary extent’? To expand and refine these questions, what are the meanings (see the titles of the two US papers listed under ‘close-ups’ below) involved in ‘getting by’ and, extending further, in getting on?

These particular emphases inform what might be termed a philosophical and material reading of a wide range of situations, geographic and historical. As the interview in the paper makes clear this is in one sense a think-piece. However, Mitchell’s readings here are based particularly on readings of ‘Middle-Eastern’ and other experience - as his academic title at Columbia University suggests - and he ranges far beyond them. He and authors Abourahme and Jabary-Salamanca are moving ‘against the concepts’ and towards what one might call some kind of sensuous empiricism.

In our ordering of the papers assembled here and the supplementary material included, we refer to five themes and areas of investigations:

1. Garbage City to Skyscrapers

2. Trump Triumphantes?

3. Close-Ups (Norway, Ireland and Spain; New York and Oakland, USA)

4. Vanities and IconiCities. New York and London)

5. Garbage and Urbanity/Rurality: Marx Revisited

Notes

1 ‘Trump in the White House: An Interview With Noam Chomsky’, Monday, 14 November 2016, 00:00. By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout | Interview).

2 Interview, spring 2015.

3 The notion of grounding was explored in our previous editorial: 'Grounding technical democracy and critical urban studies', City, 20 (4), pp. 517–522. This editorial, completed in mid-December, is in a sense both a sequel to that and a prequel to the next one in that it only touches on some topics and groundings referred to before, particularly negative tendencies (perhaps pertaining to fascism) in the USA and elsewhere and on the major environmental topic, climate change, that is the primary concern of the Chomsky interview quoted as an epigraph here.

4 Dimtris Dalakoglou, 2016, 'Europe’s last frontier: The spatialities of the refugee crisis’, City, 20 (2), pp. 180–185.

5 See our previous editorial.

6 We shall be returning to Adrian Atkinson's earlier seminal accounts of the nature and implications of ‘deep-seated transition'.

7 See Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson, 2015, ‘Beyond city limits’, City, 19 (5), pp. 646–664.

8 The captions to the photos used in this article are those provided by the authors in their papers.

9 Some definitions selected from the Shorter English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Sixth edition, 2007.

10 Wikipedia.

11 ‘Trump's takeover of the GOP is now complete. With Romney's capitulation, few of note in the party stand opposed to the president-elect'. By Philip Rucker, The Washington Post (accompanied by a note: 'Sunday's Headlines: … - Trump's emerging Cabinet looking more conventional than many expected; Raw emotions persist as Trump prepares for presidency … ').

12 See, particularly G. Stedman Jones, 2016, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, Allen Lane – see the final chapter, ‘Back to the Future’. This will be discussed in issue 20.6.