element, environment, intensiology, measure, morphogenesis, social manifolds, visibility

The Elemental Forms of Social Life

translucent-concrete-2Out now in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Abstract. The notion of elemental reality is parsed here as instrumental to a renewal of the understanding of social formations, orders, processes, events, and, more generally, social life. An attempt is made to revisit the element notion drawing insights from the classical imagination, so as to develop an ‘elementalism’ that does not imply a simple return to atomism, but rather retrieves some important insights from the Aristotelian tradition. Elementalism, it is suggested, enables us to see the limitations of both individualist and collectivist takes on social life, allowing for a more ‘environmentalist’ idea of what constitutes society. In an attempt to analyze how an elemental reality can be said to be at play, the category of ‘the visible’ is considered, so as to evince some of its constitutive dimensions, properties, and moments.

Keywords: social theory; medium theory; social environment; elemental reality; the visible

Link to OA article : https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1168

Also here

publicness, territories, territoriology, urban

A New Index for Public Space

(with Tali Hatuka)

9781032555836

Out in April 2025 – Now announced at : https://www.routledge.com/A-New-Index-for-Public-Space-After-Distancing/Hatuka-Brighenti/p/book/9781032555836

With three generous endorsements from:

 

“This erudite and provocative book melds social and political theory with design thinking to produce a new set of terms to understand both the nature and the phenomenology of publicness. Inspired by the challenges of physical distancing that accompanied the global pandemic, the authors show the durability of the public realm while offering new ways to interpret and produce a range of disordered, agonistic, and spatially-situated interactions that will continue to make public spaces the lifeblood of cities.”

Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Harvard Graduate School of Design

“How can we talk about public space and make sense of its continuous mutations in contemporary cities? As the authors suggest, we need to explore patterns of experience and affect along with efforts to conceptualize sociospatial crises. This book is an inventive and highly successful experiment in analyzing publicness that offers to city dwellers and planners alike an index of terms to be used in thinking about city life as a multifarious set of realities and possibilities.”

Stavros Stavrides, Professor of Architectural Design and Theory, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens

“Triggered by the contemporary challenges and appreciation of the post-pandemic future of urban space the authors continue the quest to understand and assess public space. Through a new index they introduce us to a series of fresh and inspiring methods and prompts that traverse disciplinary boundaries and help explore the experiential and phenomenological dimensions of public space. The book is a welcome addition that introduces researchers, teachers, and students in the built environment and social science disciplines to innovative ways of examining the future of public space and eventually to show new ways to “read” the city.”

Vikas Mehta, Fruth/Gemini Chair, Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design, and Professor of Urban Design, University of Cincinnati

 

Alex Langer, animals, body, commonality, environment, geo, life, measure, the vegetative stratum, value

On Bioabilities. A new approach for ecological thinking and action

(with Carlo Brentari and Federico Comollo)

Abstract. We propose the notion of bioability as the subjective correlate to biodiversity. Bioability entails the capacity to maximize the forms and patterns of life within given ecosystems. Cutting across the natural and social sciences, the bioability approach opens up a field for research and intervention, which focuses on the imaginational and aspirational dimensions of terrestrial politics. In the context of increased awareness of climate tipping points, developing bioabilities help advancing experimental practices in ecological conversion.

Draft available upon request.

 

territoriology

Zone

…

Tu es seul le matin va venir
Les laitiers font tinter leurs bidons dans les rues

La nuit s’eloigne ainsi qu’une belle Métive
C’est Ferdine la fausse ou Léa 1′attentive

Et tu bois cet alcool brulant comme ta vie
Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie

Tu marches vers Auteuil tu veux aller chez toi à pied
Dormir parmi tes fetiches d’Océanie et de Guinée
ils sont des Christ d’une autre forme et d’une autre croyance
Ce sont les Christ inférieurs des obscures ésperances

Adieu Adieu

Soleil cou coupé

 

Apollinaire, Alcools (1913)

 

body

…as a rope and a branch…

The womb accepts the seed which has fallen into it and protects it as it takes root – for first the navel grows in the womb, as Democritus says, as an anchorage against rolling and drifting, as a rope and a branch for the fruit which is being generated and coming to be.

Plutarch

crystals, Georg Simmel, life, magic

Adventure

The adventurer, in a word, treats the incalculable element in life in the way we ordinarily treat only what we think is by definition calculable. (For this reason, the philosopher is the adventurer of the spirit. He makes the hopeless, but not therefore meaningless, attempt to form into conceptual knowledge an attitude of the soul, its mood toward itself, the world, God. He treats this insoluble problem as if it were soluble.)

Georg Simmel

atmoculture, territoriology, urban

Public Space and the Study of Urban Territories

An online seminar to be given  on Thursday 07 December 2023 Time: 12:30-13:30 (UTC+00:00 – Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.)

Abstract:         

In this lecture, Professor Brighenti seeks to introduce territoriology as a research approach and a sensitivity that can be applied to the study of public space. He explores the intersection between social theory, ethnography, human geography and design as helpful to study territorial productions in the making. Each territory is shaped by imaginational and figurational forces of social life as they get incorporated into a set of materials. Starting from this assumption, he would like to illustrate a few cases and possible applications in the field of urban studies.

To get the Zoom link, pls contact ARCHI Research <ARCHI-research@cardiff.ac.uk>

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