007 ON METHOD – complex approaches to complex phenomena, and their exclusion

from "Subjectivities in Investigations of the Urban" (segment 3)

Lefebvre’s recognition of an irreducible oeuvre resonates with the sense of totality of the urban, with that same, inexhaustible, much, much more. Lévi-Strauss argued for the need to uncompromisingly address complex, total social act, while best strategists of production of urban space, such as Alexander and Jacobs, also aim at the elusive, ideal, whole of the urban. For de Certeau, the city is the most immoderate of human texts, one that would pose the ultimate challenge for Hélène Cixous’ way of reading, which focuses “not on a strategically selected detail but on the text in its entirety” (Andermatt Conley, 1992; my italics).

The latest developments in life sciences confirm the necessity to deal with complex situation in their entirety. Complex realities need intellectual apparatus of matching complexity as, in order “to begin to understand many aspects of our complex world … we need to expand our conceptual frameworks to accommodate contingency, dynamic robustness, and deep uncertainty” (Mitchell, 2012). While quantifiable dimensions of life matter enormously, they cannot cover the overall, synthetic totality. Contribution of the numerical remains invaluable when it comes to many aspects of the investigated phenomena, to a degree defined by concrete purpose, and within the constraints of unstable hierarchies of instrumentalised facts. As we have seen in the example of Majewski’s lovers, facts alone are not sufficient when it comes to capturing the defining quality of a single human being, let alone that of the collective socio-cultural “being”. Cities are always in, and of a particular place, in and of a particular time. Such double contextualisation makes their realities enormously dynamic and complex. The complexity itself and the groundedness in concrete, unique situations are the key aspects of being urban.

Until recently, much of sciences were unable to deal with complexity of their fields of investigation, as they, “especially prior to the letter part of the twentieth century, adopted strategies involving reductive explanations designed to simplify the many complexities of nature, in order to understand them” (ibid.). An interesting illustration of the emergence of reductionism in science may be found in transformation of pharmacy in the 18^th century France. Rather than seeking general laws, traditional chemists such as Gabriel-François Rouelle, the “task was to analyse … peculiarities and generate individual facts”. Training the senses was crucial to the process and purpose of chemistry … Once trained, the eyes, nose, ears, hands, and tongue of the chemist would guide him through the richly heterogeneous world of nature, delineating substances by their sensibly observable characteristics and effects” (Roberts, 2005). Such was the case with many traditional medical systems, including the rich lineages of Chinese zhōng yī. The advancement has, gradually, taken the personal and sensual out of science. Bringing the latest knowledge in evolved into an absolute exclusivity of the new way of looking at the world. Dramatic change, for good and for bad, came with Lavoisier and introduction of precision, quantitative measurements and the idea of modernity, not only as different, but as decidedly superior to previous epistemological frameworks. His enormous opus has “constructed a completely new language that rhetorically organized the world in keeping with those (new) views, and set out to convert others to their program … Lavoisier rhetorically linked theory, experiment, and instrument into an indissoluble whole. Acceptance of his instruments implied acceptance of how he structured chemical investigations generally” (ibid.). Previous knowledges were totally excluded, the singular replaced the plural in order to enthrone a new, “pure” epistemological framework, an exclusive paradigm of modernity. The emphasis started to move from cumulative and evolutionary, towards futuristic and revolutionary. In the world of science, “where Rouelle engaged the senses in a search for qualitative distinctions, Lavoisier looked largely to measurement for experimental determinations that supported his theoretical claims” (ibid.).

Life sciences find such limitations too restrictive and unsustainable. The problem is even more pronounced in the studies of built environments, as they include the complexities of both ecological systems and those of human and social power relations, where exactly the latter produce crucial quality, the layer that makes that human text of the urban so amazingly immoderate. Approaching those realities “requires, in many cases, a more explicit and detailed analysis of the many roles context plays in shaping (natural) phenomena. It means that conditions often relegated to the status of ‘accidents’ or ‘boundary conditions’ be elevated to the subject of scientific study” (Mitchell, 2012). If we allow ourselves to lose sight of the complexity of urban phenomena, of the marginal and liminal, if we agree to reduce our understanding of, and our interaction with cities, if we narrow them to utilitarian sets of fragments and fragmentary solutions, we will inevitably lose ability to think, to make, and to live the urban. We will lose complexity, as one of the key urban features in itself. We will lose urbanity (which cannot be fragmented) and, ultimately, human dimension of our habitat.

In that sense, the complexity of approaches needed to address the urban means precisely (re)discovery of fully human ways of thinking and making cities as good, profoundly humane urban environments.

            ON EXCLUSION – and what gets taken out from urban research

It is interesting to see which urban dimensions tend to be left out, or proclaimed irrelevant by standard research practice.

Favouring the factual and numerical over the elusive and textual, the guardians of the ruling paradigm carefully identify what can not fit the existing power structures (of knowledge). That includes various non-measurable, non-scientific, bottom-up, subjective and sensual knowledges - in short, the untamable and thus proscribed. We could call such ostracized practices heretic, remembering the etymological roots of that term, Greek hairetikos, which referred to those who were “able to choose”. All power structures (which include those of knowledge) tend to restrict choices. That tends to apply to practices with potential to undermine the ruling value system. Umberto Eco usefully explained how the usage of the term heretic evolved, from meaning those who can chose the way they think, to those who think differently, only to end up meaning those who think differently, and therefore – wrongly.

In terms of the main focus in "Subjectivities in Investigations of the Urban", rigorous application of rigid research frameworks excludes many subtleties which make some of the most fragile, most beautiful and most precious dimensions of the urban. Even mentioning beauty in the context of research, came under suspicion as, ultimately, subjective and thus impossible for pedantic processing and classification. The same applies for multisensory experiences, where various hierarchies gradually turned inflexible and reductive, ending with an almost total favouring of the eye.

The loss of experiential depth (Harvey, 1990), which came along with the modernist urge, is favoured and generously supported by the power of Spectacle (Debord, 1994; 1998; Wark, 2013). “The only sense which is fast enough to keep pace with the astounding increase of speed in the technological world is sight” (Pallasmaa, 2005). The only power which was capable to catch up and take over that condition was the unrestrained power of the “free” market Žižek, 2005). The Spectacle cherishes “the world of the eye”, as it is “causing us to live increasingly in a perceptual present, flattened by speed and simultaneity” (ibid.), in which its artificial realities of money and globalized financing operate best. Domination of the optical introduced a particular kind of “hygiene” which fears complexity. “The contemporary city is increasingly the city of the eye” (ibid.). It superseded the “haptic city” of the past (ibid.), producing the shopping-centre-like sterilities, which get confused for the new urban(ism). Culture- and place-specific shadows of Tanizaki (whose tanka enriches urbophilia@substack), Rembrandt or Caravaggio give way and open our realities to pornographic gaze, surveillance, and characterless, industrial lighting.

Since economy has been proclaimed a science, and especially after it became equated with politics, the logic of a single bottom line of the “free” market has conquered the world. Such economy-cum-politics, governed by the Spectacle, ensures power for the few, and provides panem at circenses, enough food and entertainment to its subjects. That power has constructed its own language that has, in that historically proven, Lavoisier’s way, rhetorically (re)organized the world in keeping with its own (new, always new) views, and set out to convert others to their program. The unconverted ones are, of course, heretics.

As Majewski lets Chris explain, and as we all know all too well, the most important dimensions of our reality, its “events and processes are not simply complex in the sense that they are technically difficult to grasp; rather, they are also complex because they necessarily exceed our capacity to know them” (Law, 2004; my italics). When emphasising how the events and processes necessarily exceed our capacity to know them, Law actually stresses the beauty of being in the world, the very existence of the unknowable – the search for which, besides cogito, makes us human. Sentio ergo sum. I feel, therefore I am. Facing the limits of our ability to rationalise demands courage, courage of an even higher order than what is necessary to unveil the truths (or – the “truths”, scientific - or otherwise).

An ability to appreciate, in parallel and in addition to the need to comprehend (and not as an replacement for it), is exactly what has been lost by application of exclusive, progressist methods in addressing the aporias of the urban. That comes from an overall unease of researchers to face situations that can not be tamed and conquered to fit dominant epistemological frameworks. They “direst themselves at that level of the totality over which their discipline claims proprietary rights. Thus the disintegrating spectacle finds itself confronted with fragments of specialized knowledge that cannot but think on the fetishizing terms of the disciplines that birth it (Wark, 2013). Despite the rhetoric, the power which fuels current globalisation has Lavoisierian difficulties to acknowledge even the existence, let alone the importance of tout autre, a true and radical difference (Derrida, 2006). That is because such otherness “cannot be made transparent to the understanding and thereby dominated and controlled” (Hillis Miller, 2001). As any heresy, otherness is seen as subversive and, consequently, labeled highly undesirable. On the other hand, the urban, as an essential theatre of co-presences, is exactly where the otherness of the Other plays a significant role in creating that magic, irrepressible complexity that makes cities. That includes some of the most subversive (urban) rights – such as Lefebvrian droit à la ville, the renewed right to the city, le droit à la difference, the right to difference ie. the right to be empowered and to be different, and rights to (each particular) city and to (each particular) urbanity, as fully-developed local cultures (Radović, 2008).

While the Spectacle leaves false impression that “anything goes” (as long as the markets are “free”), the harsh realities and inequalities it produces tell exactly the opposite. Power which fuels neo-liberal globalisation is very efficient in exterminating ideological opposition. The kind of urban inclusiveness which we advocate here is not some extension of the Post Modern “non-ideological”, banal pastiche. To the contrary, it has to be based on strong values, which revolt against, and are in opposition to the ruling doctrine. This value system rejects its own ossification into a new totalitarising ideology. Getting there demands new kind of thinking and decisive individual responsibility

The urban is inevitably ideological and political. Ideology and politics of the urbane are those of common good. Over the last several decades, the urban has been reduced to banal urbo-economics, in parallel to, and as yet another expression of the reduction of citizens to mere consumers. Therefore, what gets taken out from urban research and action is the fullness of our humanity and the awareness that, in order to reach our individual and social selves we need (to demand) humane environments which can nourish the best we can all give and live.

In what follows we will focus at two dimensions of urban research which have been neglected and ostracized, as they could not fit the insatiable growth machine of the Spectacle – our subjectivities and our sensualities. Subjectivity and sensuality are political and subversive. The Spectacle banalises and reduces sensuality to sexuality, and sexuality to pornography; subjectivity to individualism, and individualism to selfishness. In that way, it reduces everything to the (largely monetary) numerical. The opposing project is in search for the complexity lost.