Spectra of the Urban Phenomenon

Returning critically to the analysis of hegemonic discourses on the city and critical urban thinking, this course aims to propose fundamentals of analysis of the urban phenomenon as a privileged ally of the predatory processes of capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as a place and object of social struggle.

We want to reflect on the possible relationships between economic development, urban development, coloniality and culture today and within the framework of the development of the modern world system.

We seek a multidisciplinary, historical and focused approach to the analysis of urban processes and the proposals of imagination and political potentialities of the urban phenomenon.

Hypotheses on the urban phenomenon

• Going beyond the boundaries of "the city", urbanity as the spatial expression of the modern economic system through the negotiation between Capital and the territories in which it expands.
• The urban phenomenon as the matrix of capitalist development and of internal social struggle of modernity.
• The urban phenomenon as potential, boundaries and horizons of social struggles.

Nancy Garín (Chile, 1972) is an independent journalist, art researcher and curator working in projects related to critical thinking, new pedagogies, archives, memory and decolonialism. She was a member of the Etcetera art group, La Internacional Errorista and the research group Peninsula: Colonial Processes and Artistic and Curatorial Practices. She is a member of the research and production platforms Equipo re and Espectros de lo Urbano.

Antoine Silvestre is an architect and philosopher. After graduating in Architecture from the National School of Architecture in Strasbourg in 2007, he worked as an independent architect until 2013. He earned a master's degree in Citizenship and Human Rights: Ethics and Politics at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Barcelona in 2015. Since then, he has been conducting research into the relationship between city, capitalism and urbanism within the framework inherited from the European world system and modern liberal democracies. He also works in architectural design, stage design and web platform design, teaches workshops and writes critical essays.