Spinoza and Urban Cannibalism as the Promise of the City

Abstract

In this paper, I introduce the idea of urban cannibalism and the promise of the city as a concept in relation to Spinoza’s relational ontology. As philosophy of the city emerges as a unique subfield in philosophy, I intend to draw an approximation between Spinoza’s immanent philosophy and urban cannibalism as a metaphorical signification that celebrates life in the urban environment. In this sense, I turn to the city which presents itself both as a promise and an illusion upon closer inspection. This is revealed by looking at the city and its determinations by invoking the dichotomy between culture-nature where the former tends to divorce itself from the latter. Here, Spinoza’s philosophy offers a way to transform this thought by looking at culture and nature in terms of immanence, and that the idea of urban cannibalism disturbs the characteristics we ascribe to the culture as artificial and nature as harmonic. Ultimately, I argue that in terms of using the notion of urban cannibalism as a device in perceiving the city, its illusions transform into a promise in realizing that as city-dwellers, we participate in the ongoing affective transformation of a city which brings about its teleological determinations.