Radical unknowability: an essay on solidarities and multiform urban life

Abstract

If urban life emerges within a multiplex space, what forms of change are afforded by urban environments? The urban entails a series of relations and detachments that contain popular economies and urban commons. Rather than a system, the urban becomes an amalgamation of multiple forms. Thus, urban change does not follow one-off dramatic interventions, but rather, it results from numerous micro shifts constantly occurring in the urban environment. This kind of change entails lateral movements and movement sideways that add up to structural transformations. A crucial question is what kind of solidarities can deal with the barriers to urban life that people encounter and experience as a sense of impossibility, a ‘cannot’ that prevents their initiatives. Transcending such ‘cannot’ discourse will require discarding the moral looking glass that often taints urban futures imaginations.