Progressive Geographies

Jamie Peck, Department of Geograpy, UBC and Honorary Professor at SEED, University of Manchester, continues his analysis of the on-going restructuring of Detroit and its wider significance for the future of US cities.

Detroit is about to enter a new phase, in its protracted state of financial emergency.  The city’s Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr—who was appointed by Michigan’s Republican Governor in March 2013, following the breakdown of a so-called “consent agreement” with the state, en route to a long-anticipated declaration of municipal bankruptcy—will soon publish his “plan of adjustment.”  This will spell out the details of what will be tantamount to a court-administered structural adjustment of Detroit, implemented by an unelected financial technocrat whose far-reaching powers trump practically all of those of the city’s elected officials, including the Mayor.  It will set the Motor City on a new path, doubtless based on some inventive (but at the same time…

As regards reading, to require that a man shall retain everything he has ever read, is like asking him to carry about with him all he has ever eaten. The one kind of food has given him bodily, and the other mental, nourishment; and it is through these two means that he has grown to be what he is. The body assimilates only that which is like it; and so a man retains in his mind only that which interests him, in other words, that which suits his system of thought or his purposes in life.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any book that is at all important ought to be at once read through twice; partly because, on a second reading, the…

Reassessing Recomposition: 40 Yrs After the Publication of Anti-Oedipus, Bifo

very interesting online magazine well worth checking out other articles there

I have been re-reading Foucault recently, in English translation.  My French is not up to reading the original – sadly… oh if only I’d paid more attention in school! (Perhaps I should add that my school French teacher had a great talent for putting almost everyone off learning anything, so perhaps I can just blame her?!  I can get by reading French if I need to, but complex texts of any great length are problematic.)  In any case, I am sure I’m not alone in finding some of Foucault’s work difficult in terms of language, and so I was interested to see a tweet this morning from Teemu Taira linking to a fascinating article analysing problems with the the translation of Discipline and Punish, and arguing for a new translation to be undertaken: Beyond Discipline and Punish: Is it time for a new translation of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir?