1

Professor Anthony Vidler

HMAN 1971D S01
Contested Spaces/Occupied Places: Spatial Theories in
Practice/Spatial Practices in Theory

Then we will have to seize some of our neighbors land if were to have
enough pasture and plough-land. And wont our neighbors want to seize part
of ours as well, if they too have surrendered themselves to the relentless
acquisition of money and have overstepped the limit of their necessities?
Thats completely inevitable, Socrates.
Then our next step will be war, Glaucon, wont it?
It will.

Plato, The Republic [II.373d-e]

The recent Occupy movements from New York to Istanbul, together
with the more violent confrontations throughout the Middle East, have
re-invigorated discussion over the political uses of space, a hotly
debated subject after the uprisings of 1965 (Los Angeles) and 1968
(Paris). This seminar will provide a framework for thinking through the
implications of spatial interventions both actual and virtual in the
modern period. Following a survey of the development of spatial
thought in the early 20th century, topics will include Guy Debords
Unitary Urbanism; Henri Lefebvres Right to the City; Michel
Foucaults Heterotopias; Deleuze and Guattaris Schizo-Space;
Derridas Cities of Refuge; David Harveys Spaces of Hope; Eyal
Weizmans Border Territories; Mike Daviss Planet of Slums,
Bourdieu and Latours Network Theory. Each topic will be
accompanied by a case study of spatial struggles in the sites of their
production. Students will develop their own research of theory in
practice in a specific context, for a class presentation and final term
paper.
Seminar 1. Jan. 22: Introduction: Living in Interesting Times
Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to Interesting Times, in Zizak,
Living in the End Times (London and New York: Verso,
2011):403-481.
Seminar 2: Jan. 29: Space vs. Time: the idea of space in Western
thought.
David Harvey, Space as a Keyword, in Harvey, Spaces of
Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven
Geographical Development (London and New York: Verso,
2006), 119-148.
Seminar 3. Feb. 5: Theories of Social Space from Simmel to
Kracauer
Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), in
Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds., The Blackwell City
Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002): 11-19; Siegfried
Kracauer, The Hotel Lobby, in The Mass Ornament:

2
Weimar Essays. Trans. and ed. Thomas Y. Levin
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995): 173188.
Case Study: Berlin 1933
No Seminar February 12th
Seminar 4. Feb. 19: Modernist Montage: Alienation and
Representation
Anthony Vidler, Warped Space. Art, Architecture, and
Anxiety in Modern Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
2000): 26-123.
Case Study: Leningrad and Moscow 1914
Seminar 5. Feb. 26: Situationist Spaces: Paris, 1958-1968.
Tom McDonough, Introduction, to McDonough,ed., The
Situationists and the City (London and new York: Verso,
2009):1-31; Gilles Ivain et al, Formulary for the New
urbanism, etc., ibid., 32-48; 68-87.
Case Study: Detroit 1965
Seminar 6. Mar. 5: The Right to the City: Henri Lefebvre and the
Urban Revolution
Henri Lefebvre, Urban Form, in Lefebvre, The Urban
Revolution [La rvolution urbaine, Paris,1970], trans.
Robert Bonono (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota
Press,2003):115-133; Lukasz Stanek, Space as Concrete
Abstraction, in Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space.
Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory
(Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2011):133164.
Case Study: Paris 1968
Seminar 7. Mar. 12: Heterotopic Institutions: Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces [March 1967],
Architecture, Mouvement, Continuit (October 1984). PdF;
The Eye of Power, in Foucault, Colin Gordon, ed.,
Power/Knowledge(New York: Pantheon Books, 1980):146165.
Case Study: The Prison Sit-In Movements and Attica
Seminar 8. March 19: Archipelagoes: Building on the Ruins.
Oswald Matthias Ungers, The City Within the City: Berlin
as Green Archipelago, (Cornell, 1977).
Case Study: Berlin 1951-89.
Mid-Semester Recess
Seminar 9. Apr. 2: From Schizo-Space to Striated Space: Gilles
Deleuze, Guattari
Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, Nomadology: The War
Machine (New York: Semiotext[e]. 2006):1-40;50-90.
Case Study: TBA

3
Seminar 10.
Apr. 9: Cities of Refuge/Sites of Hospitality:
Jacques Derrida.
Jacques Derrida,On Cosmopolitinism, Derrida,
Cosmopolotinism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge,
1997): 3-24.
Case Study: TBA
Seminar 11.
Apr. 16: Postmodern Space, Then and Now
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism (New Left Review 1984); Slavoj Zizek,
The Architectural Parallax, in Zizek, Living in the End
Times,244-273.
Case Study: Los Angeles, 1974-78: John Portman, Frank
Gehry
Seminar 12.
Apr. 23: Territories and Borders
Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (New
York: Zone Books, 2010): 43-72, 107-134; Eyal Weizman,
Hollow Land (New York: Zone Books, 2007): 25-56.
Case Study: Jerusalem, 1917-present