Heart Of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions).epub
Kody Coste
Is there a dilemma? An impasse? Yes and no. Yes, there is anobstacle, or if one wants another metaphor, a hole is dug. No. Oneshould be able to cross the obstacle because there is a quite recentpractice which already spills over the speculative problem, or thepartial facts of the real problem, and which tends to become global bygathering all the facts of experience and knowledge, namely, planning.What is involved here is nor a philosophical view on praxis, but theface that so-called planning thought becomes practice at a global level.For a few years now planning has gone beyond partial techniques andapplications (regulation and administration of built space) to becomea social practice concerning and of interest to the whole of society. The critical examination of this social practice (the focus being on critique) cannot not allow theory to resolve a theoretical difficulty arising from a theory which has separated itself from practice.
During each critical period, when the spontaneous growth of the citystagnates and when urban development oriented and characterized byhitherto dominant social relations ends, then appears a planningthought. This is more a symptom of change than of a continuouslymounting rationality or of an internal harmony (although illusions onthese points regularly reproduce themselves), as this thinking mergesthe philosophy of the city in search of a with the divisive schemes forurban space. To confuse this anxiety with rationality and organizationit is the ideology previously denounced. Concepts and theories makea difficult path through this ideology.
There are unquestionably strong tendencies in all countries opposingsegregationist tendencies. One cannot state that the segregation ofgroups, ethnic groups, social strata and classes comes from a constantand uniform strategy of the powers, nor that one should see in it theefficient projection of institutions or the will of political leaders.Moreover, there exist the will and organized actions to combat it. Andyet, even where separation of social groups does not seem to bepatently evident on the ground, such a pressure and traces of segregationappear under examination. The extreme case, the last instance,the ghetto. We can observe that there are several types of ghetto: thoseof Jews and the blacks, and also those of intellectuals or workers. Intheir own way residential areas are also ghettos; high status peoplebecause of wealth or power isolate themselves in ghettos of wealth.Leisure has its ghettos. Wherever an organized action has attemptedto mix social strata and classes, a spontaneous decantation soonfollows. The phenomenon of segregation must be analysed accordingto various indices and criteria: ecological (shanty towns, slums, the rotin the heart of the city), formal (the deterioration of signs andmeanings of the city, the degradation of the urban by the dislocationof its architectural elements), and sociological (standards of living andlife styles, ethnic groups, cultures and sub-cultures, etc.)
We have here therefore before us, projected separately on theground, groups, ethnic groups, ages and sexes, activities, tasks andfunctions, knowledge. Here is all that is necessary to create a world,an urban society, or the developed urban. But this world is absent, thissociety is before us only in a state of virtuality. It may perish in thebud. Under existing conditions, it dies before being born. The conditionswhich give rise to possibilities can also sustain them in a virtualstate, in presence-absence. Would this not be the root of this drama,the point of emergence of nostalgia? The urban obsesses those wholive in need, in poverty, in the frustration of possibilities which remainonly possibilities. Thus the integration and participation obsess thenon-participants, the non-integrated, those who survive among thefragments of a possible society and the ruins of the past: excludedfrom the city, at the gates of the urban. The road travelled is stakedout with contradictions between the total (global) and the partial,between analysis and synthesis. Here is a new one which reveals itself,high and deep. It does interest theory but practice. The same social practice, that of society today (in France, in the second half of thetwentieth century) offers to critical analysis a double character whichcannot be reduced to a significant opposition, although it signifies.