Alex Vasudevan
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 144648 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Alex Vasudevan |
| PRENOMES | Alex |
| SOBRENOME | Vasudevan |
| ASSINATURA | VASUDEVAN A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9550-3676 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 564 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Consequential theory, consequential geography
Three theses on informal housing in Europe
This editorial introduction to the Special Issue ‘The rules, institutions and politics of housing informality in Europe’ argues for a more holistic interpretation to housing informality in Europe as a critical heuristic for re-thinking the dynamics of informality in the global North. In so doing, it offers three modest theses. First, housing informality is an endogenous phenomenon in the development of European cities, closely connected to the lo…
Spatial grammars and the urban political
Critical geographies of occupation, trespass and squatting
At the heart of this Special Feature is a commitment to re-thinking the geographies of occupation, trespass and squatting. The interventions gathered below place particular emphasis on the importance of thinking with squatters, and how they, ultimately, seek to re-make the city on their own terms and with their own needs and desires in mind. At stake here, we argue, is a modest experimental form of ‘concept-work’ that is consonant with recent cal…
Tenant Trouble
At the heart of this article is a detailed reconstruction of the complex history of activism in the Märkisches Viertel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The satellite estate on the outskirts of West Berlin was the largest housing project in West Germany in the 1960s and, for many residents, a space of increasing marginality and insecurity. During the same period, the neighborhood became a new "front" for student activists, who collaborated with …
Celluloid Critique
This is a paper about radical filmmaking and housing justice in the Märkisches Viertel in the 1970s. The satellite estate on the outskirts of West Berlin was one of the largest housing projects in West Germany and, for many residents, a space of increasing marginality and insecurity. As this paper argues, it was also a site of experimental filmmaking that documented the conditions faced by residents living in the Märkisches Viertel. The paper foc…
Between appropriation and occupation
At the heart of this paper is a detailed reconstruction of the relatively unknown history of illegal occupation in East Berlin otherwise known as Schwarzwohnen. The paper explores the relationship between Schwarzwohnen and the articulation of alternative forms of dwelling and occupation that challenged official state priorities. To do so, it argues that the rise of Schwarzwohnen was part of a growing body of informal practices used by citizens in…
Vacancy at the edges of the precarious city
Natura Urbana
Lawton et al. 2019, Natura Urbana, AAG Review of Books, 3(7), p. 214-227
Society and Space editorial team changes
Geographies of Forced Eviction
This book offers a close look at forced evictions, drawing on empirical studies and conceptual frameworks from both the Global North and South. It draws attention to arenas where multiple logics of ur
Living precariously
In this paper we examine the precarious everyday geographies of property guardianship in the United Kingdom. Temporary property guardianship is a relatively new form of insecure urban dwelling existing in the grey area between informal occupation, the security industry and housing. Young individuals, usually in precarious employment, apply to intermediary companies to become temporary ‘guardians’ in metropolitan centres, most notably in London. T…
Metropolitan Preoccupations
The autonomous city
This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. …
The makeshift city
This paper introduces a set of analytical frames that explore the possibilities of conceiving, researching and writing a global geography of squatting. The paper argues that it is possible to detect, in the most tenuous of urban settings, ways of thinking about and living urban life that have the potential to reanimate the city as a key site of geographical inquiry. The paper develops a modest theory of 'urban combats' to account for the complexi…
Rethinking Enclosure
While concepts of "enclosure" and the "commons" are becoming increasingly popular in critical geography, there have been few attempts to think them together. This paper sets out a dialectic of enclosure-commons as a means for thinking through contemporary processes of exclusion, violence and alterity. We examine what is at stake through a geographical reading of enclosure, that is, the processes through which neoliberalism works through-and summo…
Dramaturgies of dissent
This paper builds on an emergent scholarly interest in the political geography of the contemporary city. If recent struggles over the meaning of urban space testify to the interarticulation of neo-liberal norms with an increasingly revanchist approach to local governance, the main aim of the paper is to acknowledge various attempts to contest these developments. More specifically, it seeks to highlight the role and significance of the German Haus…
Photography and Mindedness
Journal Article Photography and Mindedness Get access Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before ( Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2008), 90 b&w illns, 70 colour plates, 410 pp., colour, hardback ISBN 9780300136845, £30. Alex Vasudevan Alex Vasudevan [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Oxford Art Journal, Volume 33, Issue 2, June 2010, Pages …
A Negative Dialectics of the Arts
Journal Article A Negative Dialectics of the Arts Get access Frederic J. Schwartz: Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-century Germany ( Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2005), 93 b&w illns, 300 pp., hardback ISBN 978-0-300-10829-3, £30. Andrew Benjamin (ed.): Walter Benjamin and Art ( Continuum: London, 2005), 272 pp., paperback ISBN 082646730X, £ 22.99. Alex Vasudevan Alex Vasudevan alexander.vasudevan@nottingh…
Introduction
Spaces of enclosure
Guest Editors' Introduction
This article introduces the dossier of responses to the RETORT collective's Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2005). We seek to ground this text in its political and theoretical context, identifying its relevance to scholars and activists alike. We introduce the four commentaries, which collectively provide a challenging set of observations concerning RETORT'S analysis of the contemporary geopolitical moment, focusing i…
Geographies of Experiment
Symptomatic Acts, Experimental Embodiments
The author builds on recent geographical approaches to the investigation of scientific experimentation. While a number of studies have explored the various sites of scientific practice and the role of space in the constitution of experimental matters of fact, far less attention has been directed toward the cultural geographies of experimental science and the extrascientific zones in which modes of experimental practice were themselves developed a…
The photographer of modern life
In this article I explore the work of the Canadian artist Jeff Wall whose innovative photographic methods have come to challenge the traditional pictorial protocols linking the photographic image with its referent. Wall uses large format images enlarged on transparent synthetic film and mounted in lightboxes as a medium to explore various aspects of everyday life in capitalism. My main purpose is to reflect on the historical specificity and ontol…
The makeshift city
This paper introduces a set of analytical frames that explore the possibilities of conceiving, researching and writing a global geography of squatting. The paper argues that it is possible to detect, in the most tenuous of urban settings, ways of thinking about and living urban life that have the potential to reanimate the city as a key site of geographical inquiry. The paper develops a modest theory of 'urban combats' to account for the complexi…
Rethinking Enclosure
While concepts of "enclosure" and the "commons" are becoming increasingly popular in critical geography, there have been few attempts to think them together. This paper sets out a dialectic of enclosure-commons as a means for thinking through contemporary processes of exclusion, violence and alterity. We examine what is at stake through a geographical reading of enclosure, that is, the processes through which neoliberalism works through-and summo…
The autonomous city
This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. …
Spaces of enclosure
Living precariously
In this paper we examine the precarious everyday geographies of property guardianship in the United Kingdom. Temporary property guardianship is a relatively new form of insecure urban dwelling existing in the grey area between informal occupation, the security industry and housing. Young individuals, usually in precarious employment, apply to intermediary companies to become temporary ‘guardians’ in metropolitan centres, most notably in London. T…
Geographies of Experiment
Dramaturgies of dissent
This paper builds on an emergent scholarly interest in the political geography of the contemporary city. If recent struggles over the meaning of urban space testify to the interarticulation of neo-liberal norms with an increasingly revanchist approach to local governance, the main aim of the paper is to acknowledge various attempts to contest these developments. More specifically, it seeks to highlight the role and significance of the German Haus…
Vacancy at the edges of the precarious city
The photographer of modern life
In this article I explore the work of the Canadian artist Jeff Wall whose innovative photographic methods have come to challenge the traditional pictorial protocols linking the photographic image with its referent. Wall uses large format images enlarged on transparent synthetic film and mounted in lightboxes as a medium to explore various aspects of everyday life in capitalism. My main purpose is to reflect on the historical specificity and ontol…
Tenant Trouble
At the heart of this article is a detailed reconstruction of the complex history of activism in the Märkisches Viertel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The satellite estate on the outskirts of West Berlin was the largest housing project in West Germany in the 1960s and, for many residents, a space of increasing marginality and insecurity. During the same period, the neighborhood became a new "front" for student activists, who collaborated with …
Experimental Urbanisms
That the historical geography of the modern city is intertwined with the practice of biopolitics has in recent years gained wide currency. In this paper I seek to deepen and complicate this perspective by focusing on Weimar Berlin (1919-33) and on the active role of the experimental life sciences in manufacturing a new habitus for a rapidly modernising metropolis. To do so, I investigate the ways in which contemporary psychiatric theories and exp…
Natura Urbana
Lawton et al. 2019, Natura Urbana, AAG Review of Books, 3(7), p. 214-227
Writing the Asphalt Jungle
In this paper I explore the textual performance of Berlin in the early 20th century, focusing on the multiple spaces of classical German modernity (1900-33) as they are described and reinvented within the poetics of a rapidly modernizing metropolis. It is argued that writing Berlin cannot offer a unifying text or conceptual system which arranges the city ipso facto into a single territory, a generalise space of selected indices and icons. Alterna…
Between appropriation and occupation
At the heart of this paper is a detailed reconstruction of the relatively unknown history of illegal occupation in East Berlin otherwise known as Schwarzwohnen. The paper explores the relationship between Schwarzwohnen and the articulation of alternative forms of dwelling and occupation that challenged official state priorities. To do so, it argues that the rise of Schwarzwohnen was part of a growing body of informal practices used by citizens in…
Critical geographies of occupation, trespass and squatting
At the heart of this Special Feature is a commitment to re-thinking the geographies of occupation, trespass and squatting. The interventions gathered below place particular emphasis on the importance of thinking with squatters, and how they, ultimately, seek to re-make the city on their own terms and with their own needs and desires in mind. At stake here, we argue, is a modest experimental form of ‘concept-work’ that is consonant with recent cal…
Introduction
Guest Editors' Introduction
This article introduces the dossier of responses to the RETORT collective's Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2005). We seek to ground this text in its political and theoretical context, identifying its relevance to scholars and activists alike. We introduce the four commentaries, which collectively provide a challenging set of observations concerning RETORT'S analysis of the contemporary geopolitical moment, focusing i…
Symptomatic Acts, Experimental Embodiments
The author builds on recent geographical approaches to the investigation of scientific experimentation. While a number of studies have explored the various sites of scientific practice and the role of space in the constitution of experimental matters of fact, far less attention has been directed toward the cultural geographies of experimental science and the extrascientific zones in which modes of experimental practice were themselves developed a…
Consequential theory, consequential geography
Capital Culture
Writing the Asphalt Jungle
In this paper I explore the textual performance of Berlin in the early 20th century, focusing on the multiple spaces of classical German modernity (1900-33) as they are described and reinvented within the poetics of a rapidly modernizing metropolis. It is argued that writing Berlin cannot offer a unifying text or conceptual system which arranges the city ipso facto into a single territory, a generalise space of selected indices and icons. Alterna…
Experimental Urbanisms
That the historical geography of the modern city is intertwined with the practice of biopolitics has in recent years gained wide currency. In this paper I seek to deepen and complicate this perspective by focusing on Weimar Berlin (1919-33) and on the active role of the experimental life sciences in manufacturing a new habitus for a rapidly modernising metropolis. To do so, I investigate the ways in which contemporary psychiatric theories and exp…
Geographies of Experiment
Symptomatic Acts, Experimental Embodiments
The author builds on recent geographical approaches to the investigation of scientific experimentation. While a number of studies have explored the various sites of scientific practice and the role of space in the constitution of experimental matters of fact, far less attention has been directed toward the cultural geographies of experimental science and the extrascientific zones in which modes of experimental practice were themselves developed a…
The photographer of modern life
In this article I explore the work of the Canadian artist Jeff Wall whose innovative photographic methods have come to challenge the traditional pictorial protocols linking the photographic image with its referent. Wall uses large format images enlarged on transparent synthetic film and mounted in lightboxes as a medium to explore various aspects of everyday life in capitalism. My main purpose is to reflect on the historical specificity and ontol…
A Negative Dialectics of the Arts
Journal Article A Negative Dialectics of the Arts Get access Frederic J. Schwartz: Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-century Germany ( Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2005), 93 b&w illns, 300 pp., hardback ISBN 978-0-300-10829-3, £30. Andrew Benjamin (ed.): Walter Benjamin and Art ( Continuum: London, 2005), 272 pp., paperback ISBN 082646730X, £ 22.99. Alex Vasudevan Alex Vasudevan alexander.vasudevan@nottingh…
Introduction
Spaces of enclosure
Guest Editors' Introduction
This article introduces the dossier of responses to the RETORT collective's Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2005). We seek to ground this text in its political and theoretical context, identifying its relevance to scholars and activists alike. We introduce the four commentaries, which collectively provide a challenging set of observations concerning RETORT'S analysis of the contemporary geopolitical moment, focusing i…
Photography and Mindedness
Journal Article Photography and Mindedness Get access Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before ( Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2008), 90 b&w illns, 70 colour plates, 410 pp., colour, hardback ISBN 9780300136845, £30. Alex Vasudevan Alex Vasudevan [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Oxford Art Journal, Volume 33, Issue 2, June 2010, Pages …
Rethinking Enclosure
While concepts of "enclosure" and the "commons" are becoming increasingly popular in critical geography, there have been few attempts to think them together. This paper sets out a dialectic of enclosure-commons as a means for thinking through contemporary processes of exclusion, violence and alterity. We examine what is at stake through a geographical reading of enclosure, that is, the processes through which neoliberalism works through-and summo…
Dramaturgies of dissent
This paper builds on an emergent scholarly interest in the political geography of the contemporary city. If recent struggles over the meaning of urban space testify to the interarticulation of neo-liberal norms with an increasingly revanchist approach to local governance, the main aim of the paper is to acknowledge various attempts to contest these developments. More specifically, it seeks to highlight the role and significance of the German Haus…
The autonomous city
This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. …
The makeshift city
This paper introduces a set of analytical frames that explore the possibilities of conceiving, researching and writing a global geography of squatting. The paper argues that it is possible to detect, in the most tenuous of urban settings, ways of thinking about and living urban life that have the potential to reanimate the city as a key site of geographical inquiry. The paper develops a modest theory of 'urban combats' to account for the complexi…
Metropolitan Preoccupations
Living precariously
In this paper we examine the precarious everyday geographies of property guardianship in the United Kingdom. Temporary property guardianship is a relatively new form of insecure urban dwelling existing in the grey area between informal occupation, the security industry and housing. Young individuals, usually in precarious employment, apply to intermediary companies to become temporary ‘guardians’ in metropolitan centres, most notably in London. T…
Geographies of Forced Eviction
This book offers a close look at forced evictions, drawing on empirical studies and conceptual frameworks from both the Global North and South. It draws attention to arenas where multiple logics of ur
Between appropriation and occupation
At the heart of this paper is a detailed reconstruction of the relatively unknown history of illegal occupation in East Berlin otherwise known as Schwarzwohnen. The paper explores the relationship between Schwarzwohnen and the articulation of alternative forms of dwelling and occupation that challenged official state priorities. To do so, it argues that the rise of Schwarzwohnen was part of a growing body of informal practices used by citizens in…
Vacancy at the edges of the precarious city
Natura Urbana
Lawton et al. 2019, Natura Urbana, AAG Review of Books, 3(7), p. 214-227
Society and Space editorial team changes
Celluloid Critique
This is a paper about radical filmmaking and housing justice in the Märkisches Viertel in the 1970s. The satellite estate on the outskirts of West Berlin was one of the largest housing projects in West Germany and, for many residents, a space of increasing marginality and insecurity. As this paper argues, it was also a site of experimental filmmaking that documented the conditions faced by residents living in the Märkisches Viertel. The paper foc…
Tenant Trouble
At the heart of this article is a detailed reconstruction of the complex history of activism in the Märkisches Viertel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The satellite estate on the outskirts of West Berlin was the largest housing project in West Germany in the 1960s and, for many residents, a space of increasing marginality and insecurity. During the same period, the neighborhood became a new "front" for student activists, who collaborated with …
Spatial grammars and the urban political
Sociology (19 obras) · Political science (17 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Urban Planning and Governance (9 obras) · Aesthetics (8 obras) · Geography (8 obras) · Art (7 obras) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (7 obras)