'The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism' explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben's politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben's politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben's oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical èncounter' with architecture's aesthetic-political function

motw/The Ethics of a Potential Urban - Camillo Boano.pdf

Boano, Camillo

Ashgate Publishing Limited

Taylor & Francis Ltd

Gower Publishing Ltd

Taylor and Francis

Design and the built environment, London ; New York, 2017

Design and the built environment series, London, 2016

Design and the Built Environment, Florence, 2016

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

1, 2016-12-16

1, PS, 2016

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 15.0

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Cover 1
Half Title 2
Series Information 5
Title Page 6
Copyright Page 7
Dedication 8
Table of Contents 10
List of Figures 12
Acknowledgements 13
1 Introduction: An architecture inseparable from its form 16
Encounters with Agamben and the Italian theory 18
Agamben’s avventura and the structure of the book 21
A coda 23
Notes 24
Part I Agamben’s burning house 26
2 Tracing the complex encounters between space, architecture and art 28
Agamben’s direct reference to architecture, urban and spatial elements 29
City and polis 33
Agamben’s spatial element par excellence: the camp 36
Agamben’s art and aesthetics 38
Note 42
3 Literal and artistic potential common grounds 43
Exceptionality, the camp and extraterritoriality 44
Thresholds, dispositives and architectural theory 50
Artistic interpretations: the fertile space of ambivalence 54
Notes 60
4 The taking place of possible inoperative encounters 61
Thresholds and indistinctions 61
Profanation, ambivalence and use 68
Opting out: contra-devices and anti-poietic projects 77
Notes 80
Part II Giorgio Agamben’s oeuvre 82
5 Earlier works: The Man Without Content and Stanzas 84
Stanzas: knowledge and the terra incognita of poetry 87
Language and history 88
6 The coming politics and the question of potentiality 96
7 The Homo Sacer project 101
The protagonist: bare life 104
From Homo Sacer to The State of Exception: the central feature of potentiality 108
From the exception to the governmental machine 110
Witnessing and the question of testimony 114
A detour in The Open and the animal vocabulary 115
Form-of-life: Agamben’s central manifesto 117
Homo Sacer pars construens: inversion of life and use 118
Note 124
Part III Towards an inoperative architecture 126
8 Paradigms and dispositives 128
Paradigms 128
Dispositives 130
Notes 136
9 Profanation 137
10 Potentialities 141
11 Inoperativity 150
The origins 151
The theological meaning of inoperativity 153
Paradigms of inoperativity 157
Inoperative operations 162
Notes 164
12 Use 165
13 Abandoning the project: The possibility for a ‘whatever architecture’ 171
Agamben’s philosophy and his ‘pensiero in atto’ 173
Agamben’s life and forms-of-life 174
Agamben’s inoperative politics: ‘just a little bit different’ 177
Agamben’s aesthetics: radical and transformative 178
Philosophy and architecture: the taking place of an encounter 181
Abandoning and reconsidering theory 185
A ‘whatever architecture’ and the ethics of a potential urbanism 186
A coda 187
While writing, things happen 188
References 190
Index 202

'The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism' explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben's politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben's politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben's oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical èncounter' with architecture's aesthetic-political function

The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben s political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben s politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben s oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical encounter with architecture s aesthetic-political function."

2025-10-27