Jerusalem as a paradigm

Abstract

Can Jerusalem be considered a paradigm in urban studies and urban theory? Widening the debate over the ‘contested’ and the ‘ordinary’, this paper tries to address such questions whilst engaging with Giorgio Agamben’s powerful concept of paradigms. Considering Jerusalem a super, hyper-exceptional case trapped in the tension between particularism and exceptionalism, the paper reflects on Agamben’s approach to examples—or paradigms—which deeply engage the powers of analogy, enabling discernment between previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. The paper suggests a possible new concept, ‘whatever urbanism’, to disentangle the apparent dichotomy between ‘ordinary’ and ‘contested’ as urban labels.

Key words:

• Jerusalem
• Agamben
• whatever
• paradigm
• contested urbanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Lira was originally the line that separates and divides the city from something else a non-city. De-lirare—which in Italian gives the origin to the delirium—create the urban experience of the civitas, the result of a process.

2 The Panoption origin lay in Jeremy Bentham's design first proposed in 1787, for a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well that would allow inmates to be observed at all times. The British parliament accepted Bentham's design to be built at Millbank, in London in 1794, but when it was finally completed in 1816 the plan was no longer his.

3 This statement attracted a massive amount of commentary from different perspective due to the bold assertive dimension of the present exceptionality and the widespread diffusion of a form-like spatiality of the global govermentality, but also attracted more specific reflection on his ‘method’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camillo Boano

Camillo Boano is Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London.