Abstract
AbstractIn this article, I rethink the genre of urban biographies and argue that it can be given new potency when remodelled to become a means of reinvigorating the critical public. In the first part, I reflect upon some of the recent biographies of cities in the Czech Republic. In the second part, I discuss promising strategies, drawn from a sample of innovative urban biographies. In the final part, I outline the guiding principles of an adapted model for urban biographies. I propose that the cities must be repoliticized and recentred in the biographies, which entails adopting a political concept of the city, a deconstructive approach, utilization of the urban presence and a more urban-sensitive treatment of time.
Highlights
In this article, I aim to rethink the genre of urban biographies, which are understood here as printed volumes that provide a comprehensive historical depiction of a city
In this article, I rethink the genre of urban biographies and argue that it can be given new potency when remodelled to become a means of reinvigorating the critical public
I propose that the cities must be repoliticized and recentred in the biographies, which entails adopting a political concept of the city, a deconstructive approach, utilization of the urban presence and a more urban-sensitive treatment of time
Summary
Far from being an outmoded genre, the early decades of the twenty-first century saw a flourishing of urban biographies in the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries. The systematic analysis of the interactions between local urban spaces and large social processes, the agenda suggested a few decades ago by Charles Tilly, remains unexploited in urban biographies, though it would be instructive in making clear to the local public that ‘big history’ does not affect their city, as if from outside, but that it is co-created there This approach is reinforced by periodizations that mostly follow phases of Czech political history, chapters on spatial development and architecture sometimes deviate from this pattern. On the meso-level, the tight nexus between the cities as public bodies and the biographies co-funded by them is hardly unique for the Czech Republic, but the point is to interrogate the structural barrier this may create for more critical stances to a city’s history Another deadlock is a structural blindness toward the social sciences, the legacy of disciplinary boundary making, which is reflected in the absence of authors who would be willing and capable of addressing the present.
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