Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces: Threshold Experiences

Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces: Threshold Experiences uses the term threshold as a means to understand the relationship between Self and Other, as well as relationships between different cultures. The concept of threshold defines the relationship between inside and outside not in oppositional terms, but as complementaries. This book discusses the cultural and social border areas of modernity, which are to be understood not as zones in a territorial sense, but as spaces in between in which different languages and cultures operate. The essays in Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces identify the dimension in urban topographies and political spaces where we are able to locate paradigmatic experiences of thresholds. Because these spaces are characterized by contradictions, conflicts, and aporias, we propose to rethink those hermeneutic categories that imply a sharp opposition between inside and outside. This means that the theoretical definition of threshold put forward in these essays-whether applied to history, philosophy, law, art, or cultural studies-embodies new juridical and political stances.