The Athenaeum: More Than Just Another London Club

Abstract

ness of the inherent risks that certain lives can fall even further from the city polis into other ambiguous zones of urban precarity. Remarkably, amongst the harsh realism and urban catastrophes, there are also glimpses of political possibilities which do not emanate from unrelenting adversity. The authors in both cities consistently emphasize the role of ‘play’ and of ‘leisure’ in creating new political infrastructures and solidarities. ‘We have been able to unite for leisure, even if it is only for one day, two days’ says Vera Teixeira of Nova Republica in Salvador, and this means ‘to know how to gather to play, to have fun without trouble’. Similarly, Ben Walters in London explains how having ‘fun’, has helped ‘building muscles’ for long campaigns but also to locate, by way of provocation the edges of what is possible. We hear in such comments the echoes of Johan Huizinga’sHomo Ludens. Indeed, there is an abundance of ideas in these commentaries which speak to and overlap with, a broad set of social and political-philosophical pre-occupations which will interest urban theorists and political scientists alike. Overall, what this ‘grassroots’ perspective offers the reader is similar to what the philosopher Giorgio Agambem has argued for, the need to comprehend the making of subjectivities, powers and capacities for political action within the conditions of the contemporary city. It does this with a light-touch of the editors, allowing for these commentaries to stand independently. A greater effort to sketch the relationship between Salvador and London (perhaps from the historic perspective of the Atlantic capitalism) beyond what ubiquitous ‘growing dominance of capital (and specifically finance capital) in the production and experience of urban life’, as articulated in the concluding chapter, may have contextualized this project better.