[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Though I have long been an admirer of Saskia Sassen, I don't find this particular piece to be very well thought out. Cities by their very nature contain large numbers of people in close proximity and always have. This makes and has always made them both possible centers of insurrection and difficult to control or conquer from without. An enemy entering a city either must come close to destroying it and its population or is likely to face endless surprise, sabotage and reprisal from within. That is why, historically, enemies often besieged cities for years (Granada, Leningrad) in attempts to starve them into submission or destroyed them instead of occupying them (as did the Crusaders and Tamerlane) or in advance of occupation as the Soviets did Berlin near the end of World War II and the US did Tokyo.. Cities have also been frequent sites of insurrection, from the Boston Tea party to the Paris Commune, to the Poznan riots, to Budapest in '56, etc. , etc. . One thing newish about Iraq, which Sassen cites as an example of new forms is that with current levels of public awareness is it is no longer possible to get away with inflicting the human suffering of a siege or near total destruction of a great city. Also the US invaders paid no attention to the well-known difficulties of conquest, instead expecting to be met with flowers. In the first Gulf war, Bush p?re knew or was advised that Baghdad could not be subdued without giant and presumably unacceptable numbers of casualties. Bush fils would have none of that and plunged in. Cities today not only have crowds that assure that large numbers can be killed even by a few terrorists but have media to make sure the terrorist attack gets noticed far more widely than would a similar kind of attack in some more isolated locale. The Mumbai attack was very well suited to drawing such attention, partly because Mumbai is a media center, partly because of the Internet, including Twitter, and partly because of the dramatic unfolding of events rather than being one sudden blast. I am not convinced it has much in common with slum dwellers temporarily taking over sections of Rio. Best, Michael On Dec 3, 2008, at 6:25 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote: [Saskia Sassen wrote:] > The Mumbai attacks of 26-29 November 2008 are part of an emerging type of > urban violence. These were organised, simultaneous frontal assaults with > grenades and machine-guns on ten high-profile sites in or near the > central business and tourism district # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org