n Herbeskouing van Ruimte, Geregtigheid en Tuiste in Pretoria/Tshwane as
Hoofstad
Die hoofoogmerk van hierdie artikel is om tentatief te besin oor die
moontlikhede van ’n herbeskouiïng van ruimte, geregtigheid en tuiste in
Pretoria/Tshwane as hoofstad. Ten einde hierdie oogmerk aan te spreek
fokus ek op drie kwessies: eerstens die nodigheid vir ’n teoretiese omgaan
en intervensie in die proses van herskouiïng. Die opvatting soos
geformuleer deur Henri Lefebvre, naamlik die ‘reg op die stad’ is sentraal
tot meeste werk aangande die stad en onderlê al vier artikels wat volg op
hierdie een. Tweedens beskou ek die benaderings van Hannah Arendt en
Jacques Ranciere ten einde die reg op die stad te herbedink en derdens
betrek ek idees aangaande herbeskouiïng, herbetowering en die
verbeelding. Hierdie artikel asook die vier artikels wat hierop volg is
navorsing voortvloeiend uit die “Capital Cities” Institusionele Navorsings
Tema van die Universiteit van Pretoria.
The main aim of my contribution is to reflect tentatively on the
possibilities of a re-visioning of space, justice and belonging in the capital
city of Pretoria/Tshwane as set out by the other four papers. In order to
address the main aim as stated above I address three different issues:
firstly the need for theoretical engagements and interventions in the
process of revisioning space, justice and belonging. For the purposes of
research on spatial justice in the capital city of Pretoria/Tshwane I
highlight the notion of the “right to the city” that stands central to most engagements with spatiality and that in a sense underpins all four other
contributions. Secondly, flowing from the first I address two theoretical
approaches in order to rethink the right to the city; and thirdly I engage
briefly with ideas on re-visioning, re-enchantment and the imagination.
I start off by focussing on certain dichotomies and themes that are
central to some of the interventions in the city of Pretoria/Tshwane as
presented in this volume as background. I then turn Henri Lefebvre’s
notion of “the right to the city”. I want to tentatively consider the notion
of “the right to the city” through two other theoretical interventions,
Hannah Arendt’s posing of the most important right as the “right to have
rights” and then Jacques Ranciere’s response to Arendt’s notion and his
insistence on “staging dissensus”. I conclude by drawing on work done
on the legal imagination and particularly the (im)possibility of the
imagination to respond to the state of disenchantment by re-visioning
and re-enchantment.
