Badiou, Haussmann and Saint-Simon: Opening spaces for the state and planning between 'post-politics' and urban insurgencies.

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Abstract

The post-political literature – which equates ‘the political’ with insurgencies directed against the state – has only limited relevance for planning, focused as it is on the ways in which conflict is displaced from the functioning of the state apparatus. The post-political literature has however neglected a significant change in Alain Badiou’s conceptualisation of the relation between the political and the state: the introduction of a political subject which acts from the within the state – what he calls the state revolutionary. This figure, which makes ‘evental’ planning possible, is fleshed out through a Saint-Simonian reading of Haussmann’s planning practice in his first years as Prefect of the Seine.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)339-358
JournalPlanning Theory
Volume18
Issue number3
Early online date1 Mar 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2019

Keywords

  • Alain Badiou
  • Paris
  • Saint-Simon
  • haussmannisation
  • planning event
  • post-politics
  • the state

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