Post-City: Space and Ontological Models of Imagination

Post-City: Space and Ontological Models of Imagination


Zamyatin D.N.,

principal researcher, Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism, National Research University Higher School of Economics, metageogr@mail.ru


elibrary_id: 125719 |


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2018.03.10

For citation:

Zamyatin D.N. Post-City: Space and Ontological Models of Imagination. – Polis. Political Studies. 2018. No. 3. P. 147-165. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2018.03.10



Abstract

The article explores the notions of post-city and post-city studies in the imaginal-ontological context and outlines the basic ontological models that help us imagine a large city of Modern and describe its radical spatial transformations. The author introduces the concept of co-spatiality, which determines the prospects for phenomenological studies of post-urban realities, and discusses the importance of the phenomena of borderlineness and post-nomadism in the formation of the post-urbanism and non-urban forms of settlement. The urban space ceases to be a city space in the traditional sense; it is rather divided into numerous “fractals” coexisting with space, constantly updated local situational events that can be interpreted ontologically and semantically in a variety of ways. The space of a big city, a megalopolis of the mature Modernity, is primarily an apophatic negativity of the growing and expanding movement, as if it denies that it grows parallel to the phenomenology of complete and local dissociation. The phenomenon of co-spatialitiy(ies) can be considered as the key discourse, taking into account the ontological point of view when analyzing the concept of post-city / post-metropolis. At the same time, the dynamic development of large cities of late Modernity led to the emergence and development of the phenomenon of interdimensionality. On the one hand, the physical representation of the urban environment is some sort of a “bait”, a manifestation of the sociocultural and communicative appeal of large cities; on the other hand, they indicate, as a rule, a meta-visualization of emptiness, dis-communication and the formation of powerful ontological zones of “invisibility”, which can occur parallel to coexisting communication flows, boundaries, nodes and places. Post-urbanism, apparently, should act, for the most part, as a boundary concept that describes and characterizes the boundary worlds of the accompanying spaces, only touching upon, but not intruding deeply into the dominant visual, sound and verbal affects of the physical reality of cities.

Keywords
post-city; ontology; imagination; Modernity; co-spatiality; post-nomadism; city environment; borderlineness; space revolution; post-urbanism.


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Content No. 3, 2018

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