Constitutive outsides or hidden abodes? Totality and ideology in critical urban theory

William Conroy
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William Conroy: Harvard University, USA

Urban Studies, 2024, vol. 61, issue 10, 1827-1848

Abstract: In the context of hotly contested debates within critical urban theory, many scholars have recently attempted (both implicitly and explicitly) to move beyond the relational-dialectical concept of ‘totality’, taking up the notion of ‘the constitutive outside’ in its place. With this in view, this article seeks to (1) develop a critique of the ways in which the concept of the constitutive outside is deployed in these debates; and (2) to sketch another path forward – one that understands capitalist urbanisation as a distinctive moment in the evolution of a world-encompassing and internally related socio-spatial totality, while also attending to well-founded concerns among theorists of the constitutive outside regarding the question of difference and ascriptive hierarchisation. More precisely, this article will pursue a close reading of work on the constitutive outside in critical urban theory, suggesting that it effectively re-articulates longstanding and entrenched tenets of capitalist ideology, positing the image of a ‘space-time of the other’. And it will conclude with a revised conceptualisation of totality for critical urban theory, building on Nancy Fraser’s recent work on capitalism’s racialised, gendered, and ecological ‘hidden abodes’.

Keywords: critical urban theory; dialectics; feminism; planetary urbanisation; postcolonial theory; totality; æ‰¹åˆ¤åŸŽå¸‚ç †è®º; è¾©è¯ æ³•; å¥³æ ƒä¸»ä¹‰; æ˜Ÿç ƒåŸŽå¸‚åŒ–; å Žæ®–æ°‘ç †è®º; 整体性 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:10:p:1827-1848

DOI: 10.1177/00420980231217633

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