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SUMMARY:Assemblage and critical urbanism - Dr Colin McFarlane\, Department
  of Geography\, Durham University
DTSTART:20100526T151500Z
DTEND:20100526T163000Z
UID:TALK25488@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Geography/SPRI Webmaster
DESCRIPTION:This presentation offers a conceptualisation of assemblage as 
 a basis for a distinct form of analysis and orientation to critical urbani
 sm. In particular\, it outlines three sets of contributions that assemblag
 e affords for thinking politically and normatively of the city. First\, ag
 ency: the particular purchase that the distributive and multiple nature of
  agency within assemblage brings to critical urbanism. There are three con
 cerns here that the agency of assemblage calls forth: distribution\, capac
 ities\, and power. Second\, production: the emphasis assemblage brings to 
 emergence and to the labour of maintenance\, which casts light on the cont
 ingent ways in which particular urban assemblages are invested in to the e
 xclusion of alternative ways of imagining and living in the city. The conc
 ern with production entails consideration of a key element in the constitu
 tion of contemporary cities: mobilities\, the increasingly rapid productio
 n of urbanism through travelling policies\, ideas\, goods\, money and peop
 le\, and their attendant inclusions and exclusions. Third\, imaginary: the
  politics at work through the imaginary of assemblage itself\, as collage\
 , composition\, and gathering. I examine two registers of urban imaginary 
 that assemblage sets to work: first\, the image of the cosmopolitan city\,
  as the closest approximation in the social sciences to the assemblage ide
 a\; and\, second\, the concern with gathering as a particular form of gene
 rative critique\, i.e. the production of the city through multiple constit
 uencies\, knowledges and voices.
LOCATION:Room 101\, Hardy Building
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