Spatial Ecologies
Urban Sites, State and World-Space in French Cultural Theory
Published on 13. April 2012
Book
Hardback
171 pages
978-1-84631-754-5 (ISBN)
Description
Spatial Ecologies takes a new look at the "spatial turn" in French cultural and critical theory since 1968. Verena Andermatt Conley examines how Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Jean Baudrillard, Marc Auge, Paul Virilio, Bruno Latour and Etienne Balibar reconsider the experience of space in the midst of considerable political and economic turmoil. The book considers why French critical theorists turned away from questions of time and looked instead toward questions of space. It asks what writing about space can tell us about life in late capitalism. Conley links this question to the problematic of habitality, taking us back to Heidegger and showing how it informs much of French theory. Building on the author's acclaimed earlier study Ecopolitics, Spatial Ecologies argues, through the voices of the authors taken up the eight chapters, for recognition of the virtue of spatial theory and its pragmatic applications in the global milieu. It will be required reading for scholars of literary and cultural theory, and twentieth- and twenty-first century French culture.
Reviews / Votes
Reviews'This is a working of wide-ranging and deep scholarship which brings together a range of important French thinkers for the first time within a critical, comparative argument. Spatial Ecologies makes a passionate and lucidly argued case for a renewed ecological thinking and a transformative critical practice.'Ian James 'Spatial Ecologies is a tour de force analysis of all the major theorists/theories of space/spatiality in the contemporary era. It will become the new benchmark for work on space in critical and cultural theory.'
Ian Buchanan 'A novel explanation by a perceptive critic, wherein Conley ponders the 'spatial turn' in French critical theory from 1968 to 2012, and from Henri Lefebvre and Paul Virilio to Etienne Balibar. Assessing the postmodern experience of space and politics, economics and time, this book is an extraordinary reflection on questions of space in the epoch of late capitalism.'
John Armitage, Times Higher Education 'This book should be read by sociologists, philosophers, designers, architects, art historians (and historians), and anyone else intent on bridging the often-yawning gap between theory and practice as regards our existence in a simultaneously expanding and contracting world.'
H-France Review Vol. 14, No. 90
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 163 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-84631-754-5 (9781846317545)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Verena Conley is Visiting Professor of Literature and Comparative Literature and of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, and the author of Ecopolitics: The Environment in French Poststructuralist Thought (Routledge, 1996); and Helene Cixous: Writing the Feminine (University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
Content
Introduction: Space as a Critical Concept
1. Henri Lefebvre: Lived Spaces
2. Michael de Certeau: Anthropological Spaces
3. Jean Baudrillard: Media Places
4. Marc Auge: Non-Places
5. Paul Virilio: Speed Spaces
6. Deleuze and Guattari: Space and Becoming
7. Bruno Latour: Common Spaces
8. Etienne Balibar: Spatial Fictions
Conclusion: Future Spaces
Bibliography
Index
1. Henri Lefebvre: Lived Spaces
2. Michael de Certeau: Anthropological Spaces
3. Jean Baudrillard: Media Places
4. Marc Auge: Non-Places
5. Paul Virilio: Speed Spaces
6. Deleuze and Guattari: Space and Becoming
7. Bruno Latour: Common Spaces
8. Etienne Balibar: Spatial Fictions
Conclusion: Future Spaces
Bibliography
Index