Abstract

Against the background of the historical link between the development of the rural and the urban commons – and the link between the commons, governmentality and heritage – I will raise the question of whether it would be more appropriate to ask how the commons governs us, than how we can govern the commons. I will also ask why it is that the commons as a place is both the product of discourse and a non-discursive place of discourse. The discourse in question is particularly that of the res public concerning the things the res public has as a common heritage. In this connection I will explore why it is that the ecological imaginary and the cultural and artistic imaginary of the commons determines that a true commons cannot be scaled, much as the quality of an artwork cannot be scaled, accord- ing to its size, or justice cannot be scaled according to the number to which it is applied. This, furthermore, is why the commons should be regarded not as a form of scalable space, but rather as chora (also spelled choros) – to use an ancient Greek term meaning something like the political landscape as a heritage, in the aesthetic, social and ecological imagination, of place and polity.

Published in

Title: Heritage as common(s): common(s) as heritage
Publisher: Makadam

SLU Authors

• Olwig, Kenneth

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Human Geography
Social Anthropology
Architecture


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/77687