Andrew Herscher - Böcker

This book poses spatial violence as a constitutive dimension of architecture and its epistemologies, as well as a method for theoretical and historical inquiry intrinsic to architecture; and thereby offers an alternative to predominant readings of spatial violence as a topic, event, fact, or other empirical form that may be illustrated by architecture. Exploring histories of and through architecture at sites across the globe, the chapters in the book blur the purportedly distinctive borders between war and peace, framing violence as a form of social, political, and economic order rather than its exceptional interruption. Regarding space and violence as co-constitutive, the book’s collected essays critique modernization and capitalist accumulation as naturalized modes for the extraction of violence from everyday life. Focusing on the mediation of violence through architectural registers of construction, destruction, design, use, representation, theory, and history, the book suggests that violence is not only something inflicted upon architecture, but also something that architecture inflicts. In keeping with Walter Benjamin’s formulation that there is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism, the book offers "spatial violence" as another name for "architecture" itself. This book was previously published as a special issue of Architectural Theory Review.

In the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, Anishinaabe leaders granted land to a college where their children could be educated. At the time, the colonial settlement of Anishinaabe homelands hardly extended beyond Detroit in what settlers called the “Michigan Territory.” Four days after the Treaty of Fort Meigs was signed, the First College of Michigania was founded to claim the land that the Anishinaabeg had just granted. Four years later, the newly-chartered University of Michigan would claim this land. By the time that the university’s successor moved to Ann Arbor twenty years later, Anishinaabe people had been forced to cede almost all their land in what had become the state of Michigan, now inhabited by almost 200,000 settlers.Under the Campus, the Land narrates the University of Michigan’s place in both Anishinaabe and settler history, tracing the university’s participation in the colonization of Anishinaabe homelands, Anishinaabe efforts to claim their right to an education, and the university’s history of disavowing, marginalizing, and minimizing its responsibilities and obligations to Anishinaabe people. Continuing the public conversations of the same name on U-M’s campus in 2023, Under the Campus, the Land provides a new perspective on the relationship between universities and settler colonialism in the US. Members of the U-M community, scholars of Midwest history, and those interested in Indigenous studies will find this book compelling.

In the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, Anishinaabe leaders granted land to a college where their children could be educated. At the time, the colonial settlement of Anishinaabe homelands hardly extended beyond Detroit in what settlers called the “Michigan Territory.” Four days after the Treaty of Fort Meigs was signed, the First College of Michigania was founded to claim the land that the Anishinaabeg had just granted. Four years later, the newly-chartered University of Michigan would claim this land. By the time that the university’s successor moved to Ann Arbor twenty years later, Anishinaabe people had been forced to cede almost all their land in what had become the state of Michigan, now inhabited by almost 200,000 settlers.Under the Campus, the Land narrates the University of Michigan’s place in both Anishinaabe and settler history, tracing the university’s participation in the colonization of Anishinaabe homelands, Anishinaabe efforts to claim their right to an education, and the university’s history of disavowing, marginalizing, and minimizing its responsibilities and obligations to Anishinaabe people. Continuing the public conversations of the same name on U-M’s campus in 2023, Under the Campus, the Land provides a new perspective on the relationship between universities and settler colonialism in the US. Members of the U-M community, scholars of Midwest history, and those interested in Indigenous studies will find this book compelling.

While the construction of architecture has a place in architectural discourse, its destruction, generally seen as incompatible with the very idea of "culture," has been neglected in theoretical and historical discussion. Responding to this neglect, Herscher examines the case of the former Yugoslavia and in particular, Kosovo, where targeting architecture has been a prominent dimension of political violence. Rather than interpreting violence against architecture as a mere representation of "deeper" social, political, or ideological dynamics, Herscher reveals it to be a form of cultural production, irreducible to its contexts and formative of the identities and agencies that seemingly bear on it as causes. Focusing on the particular sites where violence is inflicted and where its subjects and objects are articulated, the book traces the intersection of violence and architecture from socialist modernization, through ethnic and nationalist conflict, to postwar reconstruction.

While the construction of architecture has a place in architectural discourse, its destruction, generally seen as incompatible with the very idea of "culture," has been neglected in theoretical and historical discussion. Responding to this neglect, Herscher examines the case of the former Yugoslavia and in particular, Kosovo, where targeting architecture has been a prominent dimension of political violence. Rather than interpreting violence against architecture as a mere representation of "deeper" social, political, or ideological dynamics, Herscher reveals it to be a form of cultural production, irreducible to its contexts and formative of the identities and agencies that seemingly bear on it as causes. Focusing on the particular sites where violence is inflicted and where its subjects and objects are articulated, the book traces the intersection of violence and architecture from socialist modernization, through ethnic and nationalist conflict, to postwar reconstruction.

This book poses spatial violence as a constitutive dimension of architecture and its epistemologies, as well as a method for theoretical and historical inquiry intrinsic to architecture; and thereby offers an alternative to predominant readings of spatial violence as a topic, event, fact, or other empirical form that may be illustrated by architecture. Exploring histories of and through architecture at sites across the globe, the chapters in the book blur the purportedly distinctive borders between war and peace, framing violence as a form of social, political, and economic order rather than its exceptional interruption. Regarding space and violence as co-constitutive, the book’s collected essays critique modernization and capitalist accumulation as naturalized modes for the extraction of violence from everyday life. Focusing on the mediation of violence through architectural registers of construction, destruction, design, use, representation, theory, and history, the book suggests that violence is not only something inflicted upon architecture, but also something that architecture inflicts. In keeping with Walter Benjamin’s formulation that there is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism, the book offers "spatial violence" as another name for "architecture" itself. This book was previously published as a special issue of Architectural Theory Review.