SIROCCO TERM 2022 | MARCH 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27
We have always been told that the state is here to tame the excesses of the market. But whenever the state abandons and displaces, we find the market right there as saviour, acting like the god that won’t fail us.
Curiously, it is in the latter script that one actually sees clearly the geopolitical ontologies of space and place. Far from being in opposition, markets and states are engaged in a constant act of mutual production: markets evoke states to enforce colonizing claims; states construct markets to appropriate surplus at a distance. The narrative and cartography of such acts of co-creation of subjects and their lifeworlds can be found in places that mediate between markets and states, thinking in particular of extraction of labor and resources, surveillance, exchange, the postcolonial city, and neo-nationalist narratives of conservation and isolation that have become salvific in the midst of the pandemic.
Taught by Sami Chohan and Daniel Neilson, summoning the history and theory of architecture, cartography, and political economy together, the course follows, among other guides and companions such as Easterling, Hamilton, Chuang, Quan, Steyerl, and more, Elizabeth Povinelli’s tip to explore the “urban intensions of geontopower,” and the imperative to bring the history of the state and the history of the market together to understand lifeworlds in a way that challenges both the condescending secular and salvationist narrative in relation to subjects , as well as the uncritical relation to geopolitical narratives of empire and sovereignty as counter to neoliberalism.
Sami Chohan is an architect, urbanist, and educator invested in orienting the processes of conceptualizing and constructing space towards addressing broader issues of place and time: political, social, economic, cultural, technological, and/or environmental. With a keen interest in critical urban theory and environmental studies, he is a strong advocate of combining interdisciplinary and philosophical modes of thinking with creative yet contextually appropriate frameworks of making – a synthesis he terms imperative if we are to arrive at more just, equitable and sustainable urban environments for all. Before joining the School of Architecture & Environment, University of Oregon, as Visiting Faculty Fellow in Design for Spatial Justice and Stott Visiting Assistant Professor, Sami was Assistant Professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi where he led the undergraduate architecture program from 2015 to 2019, managed and co-taught the design thesis studio, and taught various seminars, including a graduate seminar on the impact of neoliberal policies on socio-spatial fabrics of major cities across the global south. In 2018, he curated Pakistan’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Titled as The Fold, the pavilion was an expression of the complex and often contradictory relationships between the physical and social dimensions of the many informal settlements of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city with a population nearing 16 million. He holds a Master of Arts in Interior Architectural Design from Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart with an exchange semester at İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.
Daniel H. Neilson is a writer and teacher based in Western Massachusetts. He is faculty in Social Studies at Simon’s Rock. Dan is the author of Minsky, a reading of the works of the theorist of financial crisis. He also writes Soon Parted, a newsletter about central banking, monetary theory, and fintech. Dan teaches economics classes that touch on money and banking, debt, international finance, China’s financial system, economic transition and the construction of authority. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a B.A. in mathematics and music from Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Dan is a user of Arch Linux, an opponent of closed platforms, and, in general, a minimalist. Dan is also a founding faculty and oversees finance and sustainable planning of GCAS-Jəhān.