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Violence, the City and the Artefact: A New Arendtian Framework for Critiquing Contemporary Architectural Theory

Part 2 Dissertation 2022
John Mark McIlroy
University of Central Lancashire | UK
The aim of this thesis is to propose a new framework for understanding the ways in which the contemporary city may be read as a terrain of violence. The writings of Hannah Arendt will form the conceptual core of our study, read in dialogue with other theoreticians of violence to create a framework capable of rethinking architecture's relationship to the city as a tool in the pursuit of ideological objectives, and architectural theory as one of the battlegrounds upon which ideological battles are fought.

The framework formulated by this critical discursive analysis will be used to dialectically consider two competing theoretical genealogies, one concerned with critiquing the city as a site of ideological violence, and one concerned with the abolition of such notions altogether. Applying an Arendtian framework for understanding the city to these theoretical genealogies will allow us to produce a coherent position in favour of each, and to arrive at a synthesis through which the violent nature of the contemporary city may be critiqued.

John Mark McIlroy

Tutor(s)
David Hasson
2022
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