Beyond boundaries : A philosophical mapping of the pre-modern city of the Levant

Beyond boundaries : A philosophical mapping of the pre-modern city of the Levant

Islamic city, Arab city, urban culture, urban space, philosophy, pre-modern city

Understanding the pre-modern Muslim-Arab city of the Levant within our embodied modern framework of reference and in the absence of classical texts explaining urban theory within its culture highlights epistemological differences, which endemically produce cultural projections and misrepresentations. Therefore, this dissertation provides a conceptual framework for comprehending the city through an intertwined process of examining key conceptual and historical aspects of the city from within its indigenous culture while, simultaneously, critiquing our modern frameworks for conceptualizing it as currently epitomized in French poststructuralist philosophy. The dissertation undertakes this project through the investigation of the foundational notion of structure and boundaries as defined by dichotomous epistemology in modern Western thinking and by complementary duality in traditional Muslim-Arab epistemology. It reconstitutes the discourse of the city according to these terms by arguing that the latter defines Muslim-Arab worldviews and culture including, most notably, the semantic and phonetic structure of Arabic words. Through an analysis of key architectural and urban terms within a culturally-specific hermeneutical framework, the dissertation shows that compositions of any structural unit as complementary dualities intermediated by liminal mechanisms in order to create a horizontal hierarchy of autonomy and interrelativity are at the basis of the particular concepts of identity, difference, and dimensionality which ground Muslim-Arab ontology. These concepts underlie the intertwined conceptual, spatial, and social orders of the city and frame its urban culture. In comparison to this framework, it demonstrates the limitations of Derrida‘s deconstructionist model of interplay of opposites in overcoming the structuralist, dichotomous, and essentialist notions in understanding the urban order. It also shows the inability of the Foucauldian power discourse on centrality and marginality to break away from its structuralist and dichotomous presuppositions. Finally, the dissertation exposes Deleuze‘s critique of identity and hierarchy as engendering the dichotomous thinking its author had endeavoured to escape. As an alternative, the dissertation proposes a framework indigenous to the Muslim-Arab city based on complementary dualities resulting in a hierarchy of diverse unity. This hierarchy is horizontal, polycentric, and relational relative to another vertical, centric, and metaphysical hierarchy. The meeting of both hierarchies occurs through human agency and defines moral spaces of freedom as the foundation of the cultural values and spatial order of the Muslim-Arab city.

Hallak, Mahmoud Essam

McGill University

2010

Castro, Ricardo L. Supervisor

en

Thesis

http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=92233&silo_library=GEN01

http://lallier.msh-vdl.fr/theses/items/show/920

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