At the moment, everyone is talking about the Willkommensstadt (welcoming city). It means how we receive the other. But what or who is this “we” of the city? What is it made of? In the context of this inquiry, the seminar is an attempt to work out the indications of a possible theory of the social qualities of the city in relation to the theoretical works of Michel Foucault. The more influential contributions of Foucault's concept of space describe space as a relational structure in which bearing or placement is “defined by the relationships of neighborhood between points and elements.” Space takes the status changes of the extensio (extension) to the intensitas (intensity), within which the political category of power shifts to that of an enabling positive. However, such a change implies that we cannot really talk about space alone. Space is subject to antigonal negotiation and production. It is the place of the potentiality of transition, and speaks of an affirmative and pragmatically pronounced form of criticism: the crossing of justification and intentionality in which action intervenes in normative structures — it uses, it transforms. Which method — to use Foucault, which technologies of the self — do the subjects require in order to articulate and realize the desire to be different? What does ‘different’ mean in relation to “we”? And how can the disposition of self approach the location-related conditions? What behavior, regarding the self and others, calls for the adoption of a produced awareness of space?
5 CP
Kick-Off 04/04/2016
Mondays 14.15 – 15.45 h
Room 2.104
Approximately 1.7 million people currently live in Hamburg. 31% of these Hamburg residents statistically have a background of migration. In addition, in 2013, 5.8 million tourists entered the city, 325,000 people commute to Hamburg in a day-to-day basis, and there is also a growing number of refugees waiting in cramped lodgings for the outcome of their asylum proceedings. Who is where and when a …