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Abstract
Where is the planet in much of the work on ‘planetary urbanisation’? Largely off-stage, it has to be said. This instalment seeks - drawing from some of the material introduced in this series, notably Patrick Keiller's film, Robinson in Ruins and David Abram's book, Becoming Animal, as well as from Adrian Atkinson's contribution in this issue, ‘Readjusting to reality 2 Transition?’, Andy Merrifield's recent book, The Politics of the Encounter: Urban theory and protest under planetary urbanisation, and pointing towards Marx's late agrarian-inclined work—to indicate some of the gaps and silences in the academic field, and to provide some necessary infilling and new/old orientations, developing a transdisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary, approach
Notes
1 This ad hoc endpiece, as part now of the series, includes elements of a forthcoming standalone paper,‘ Where are the planet and the city in ‘planetary urbanisation’?
2 Doreen Massey, some of whose relevant work is considered in this series, has asked (personal conversation) why I do not extend the application of sentience to ‘inanimate nature’, such as rocks (as perhaps implied by Abram's passage above)—a similar question seems to arise from Patrick Keiller's film, Robinson in Ruins, discussion of which has been a principal focus in this series so far. I can see the logic of the claim that sentience has, in a sense, to be there as a feature of planetary existence from the beginning rather than a later development but I remain at best an agnostic in relation to this claim.
3 Catterall (Citation2012a). A probable cause of the self-immolation of Tsering Kyi, the daughter of Tibetan nomadic farmers, was discussed briefly on pp. 256–7. Abram refers to ‘the thrumming of frogs’ in a kind of self-penned epigraph to his book, that begins the first chapter, p.1. The storm refers to Asu Aksoy's (Citation2012) powerful (and, in a sense, almost prophetic) paper “Riding the storm: ‘New Istanbul’”.
4 Quoted in Catterall (Citation2012a), p. 261; in Abram (Citation2010), p. 10
5 Such an approach could be relevant to an epigraph from Bruno Latour in Jennifer Robinson's article, ‘Between Marx and Deleuze: Discourses of capitalism's urban future’ (in Urban Constellations, edited by Matthew Gandy, Berlin: Jovis, 2011). Latour's claim, as quoted, is: ‘In order to understand domination we have to turn away from an exclusive concern with social relations and weave them into a fabric that includes non–human actants’ . However, the posited wider concern in much ‘assemblage’—oriented work seems to exclude plant and animal actants. Such a limitation may seem a rational one for urbanists. However, I argue that we have reached a stage in urbanisation, planetary urbanisation, in which the grasping of a paradox becomes necessary: ‘understanding urbanism and acting on/against planetary urbanism can no longer be advanced by exclusively urban studies, or, put more extremely: to understand the urban, include the rural.’ See Catterall (Citation2013a), p. 422 and Catterall (Citation2013b) p. 574.
6 It should be acknowledged that Merrifield refers in his preface to my being ‘unfailing in my friendship and support for [his] work, even if we have sometimes fought over its meaning.’ That ‘struggle for the truth’ continues here.
7 Some readers, observing casually, ‘No, I didn't see Robinson in Ruins’, show an apparent faith in the enlightened nature of film distribution despite its predominantly commercial imperative. And, it would seem, a relatively short attention span, even as readers of the first episode of the first series , where (four pages in)it was stated that this film was a major innovation in research with university and scholarly collaboration (notably the involvement of Doreen Massey), partly as an attempt to get round the commercial imperative. (see Catterall Citation2012a, pp. 257 and, for an account of the film as research, Catterall Citation2012b, pp. 612–614) The ‘trade’ description (see previous page) of the dvd and details of its availability are helpful.
8 Abram, pp. 309–10.
9 Abourahme added a footnote to his article, ‘This article is an early conceptual response to the Egyptian events of June 30th, and part of an ongoing reading of the larger historical moment in the the Arab world…’) See also Catterall (Citation2013b).
Additional information
Bob Catterall is the Editor-in-Chief of City. Email: [email protected]