Of Stones, Angels and Humans
Michel Serres and the Global City
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4386963 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marcel Henaff, Anne-Marie Feenberg |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 59 |
| Publication date | 1997-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3684696 |
| OpenAlex | W2331180042 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 1 |
The cover of Atlas reproduces a Winkel projection of a planisphere; it shows a nocturnal view of the orbis terrarum (fictive since night is not simultaneous around the planet), where the oecumene appears, like an upside down sky, as an immense galaxy made of all the lights of the cities of the world. The inhabited space is now dominated by urban megalopolises; increasingly, the human species seems to be concentrated in cities. Global space appears as the archipelago of the cities of the earth. The planet becomes a city. Arnold Toynbee already had a foreboding that this was the major event of current civilization since the Industrial Revolution. He called this planetary megalopolis Oecumenopolis. However, Toynbee's vision still belonged to the nineteenth century, inasmuch as he saw this extension as a proliferation of the industrial city and its metamorphoses, and of the infinite and boring suburbs that today surround these metropolises everywhere or indeed actually constitute most of them. In reality, in this invasion of the urban form, there is more at stake than the city; this transformation of the ways of inhabiting the city is not simply about the extension of the built environment and population management. Something very different is happening on multiple levels. This is what Michel Serres helps us to understand. He does so without having written explicitly about the urban question, not even in Rome, the Book of Foundations. Nevertheless, it is present in his work everywhere, but in the context of numerous other questions. One of the chapters of Angels, a Modern Myth is called Angeles. It contains no analysis of the urban problems of the Californian metropolis; rather it is the extension of a reflection on global space as a worldwide network of messages, as a space filled with angels, figures of a plural Hermes. The journey from Rome to Los Angeles is in fact a journey that goes from questions of foundations to questions of relations, both being intertwined. These are important questions, which include many others, and pervade all of Serres's work: the relations between local and global, be
Geography · Michel foucault · Political science · Augustinian Studies and Theology · Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton · Law · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,32 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2022 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |