Visible cities.Saundersian meditations on the concept of collective consumption

Abstract

In his introduction to Cartesian Meditations (1977), Husserl speaks of his phenomenology as almost a neo‐cartesianism, although he rejects nearly all of the Cartesian philosophy as a result of his radical unfolding of Cartesian themes: from cogito ergo sum emerge not only a defiant cogitatum ergo es but even an et tu cogitas. Of course, no resemblance is implied between Descartes and Husserl on the one hand, and Peter Saunders and the present author on the other. There are, though, two minor exceptions. First, out of admiration for Saunder's work I attempt, not an exegesis or a review, but a similar radical unfolding of my own, possibly new or contradictory themes. Second, just like Husserl based his meditations on Cartesianism, not on Descartes (i.e., on the school, not on the person), I view Saunders as an eloquent and orderly spokesman for the ‘new urban sociology’ in its post‐structuralist phase, focussing on its most central proposition (read result or insight: its ‘urbito’ in mock latin): In essence...