The city and the philosopher: on the urbanism of phenomenology (original) (raw)

2001, Philosophy & Geography

Philosophy projects a certain understanding of reason that is related to the ways in which the city gures in its imaginary. Conversely, the city is a practice of spatialization that determines the ways in which agents are able, or unable, to live out their social agency. This essay focuses on the ways in which philosophy and the city's spatializing practices and imaginaries inform differential ways of living out social agency. The thrust of the investigation is to discern the ways in which sexism-differential engendering-results from the relationship that exists between philosophy and the city. To illustrate this link between philosophy, the city, and differential engendering, the work turns to a consideration of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology, which is taken as an exemplary illustration of the entwinement between the philosophical imaginary, and the perception and reception of the city. E. MENDIETA not been undertaken. The links between thought and place, thinking and space, remain elusive, if not mutually exclusionary. To think is to be where one is not, and to be, in body and soul, is to focus on the moment, on what is present at hand. Yet, thinking is conditioned by space, just as how a space, a place, in turn, is made accessible by a way of thinking. 3 This paper is about how philosophy thinks, images, and projects space, thus contributing to the consolidation, legitimation, and normalization of certain spatial practices. At the same time, it is also about how certain social practices, once solidi ed and coagulated into topographies and geographies that map social relations, in turn condition the ways space is to be represented, experienced, and lived, i.e., to be thought by philosophy. The central claim of this essay is that philosophy has been most fundamentally determined by the city, and conversely, that the city is related to the project, or production, of philosophy.