Describing peri-urban life

Roughly two centuries ago, Romantic writers (Novalis and Schlegel first come to mind) developed a scientific and aesthetical practice based on the fragment (Schefer 2003: 92), thinking of the world in scattered pieces rather than in the flux of a totalising discourse. Éric Chauvier seems to have inherited this spirit: the author goes against the articulated talk of “those who look at the world in a professional way” and counteracts this attitude with a ‘fragmentary’ philosophy, which does nonetheless base itself upon the same structural principles used by the experts. “To employ keywords to demonstrate authority” and conduct a periurban “investigation”, whose necessity had its origin in the 3135th issue of the “capital’s hebdomadary magazine” (Télérama) decreting the “ugliness” of the suburbia. Read the rest on Articulo – Journal of urban research: in french; in english.