Urban Commoning: An Assessment of Its Aesthetic Dimension
Name
SI 10(1) - Urban Commoning_ An Assessment of Its Aesthetic Dimension.pdf
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907.32 KB
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Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
479ca5dbfab1c8dfc8a824f52ed097e7
Author(s)
Volont, Louis
Date Issued
December 2021
Journal
Social Inclusion
Publisher
Cogitatio
Citation
Volont, Louis. 2021. "Urban Commoning: An Assessment of Its Aesthetic Dimension." Social Inclusion, 10 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The practice of urban commoning continues to tickle the imagination of activists and academics alike. Urban commoning’s aesthetic dimension, yet, has not been fully understood. This contribution seeks to fill such gap and approaches aesthetics in the literal sense: That which presents itself to sense perception. The article thus asks: To what extent may commoning practices that are dedicated to the disclosure of unheard voices (hence having an aesthetic dimension) shift urban power relations? This contribution takes its cue in Jacques Rancière’s theory of aesthetics and has the commoning experiment of Pension Almonde as its central case. Pension Almonde constituted a commons‐based, temporary occupation of a vacant social housing complex in Rotterdam, aimed specifically to undo the subordinate position of urban nomads and orphaned cultural initiatives. The article finally develops the distinction between a particular‐aesthetic dimension (making unheard voices merely perceptible) and a universal‐aesthetic dimension (shifting power relations) of urban commoning. Given the case’s lack of collective agency and external resonance, urban power relations remained in place.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Architecture and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/si.v10i1.4716
