Kuala Lumpur

Community, Infrastructure and Urban Inclusivity

Marek Kozlowski, Asma Mehan, Krzysztof Nawratek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781315462394
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate the aims of this programme—predominantly to unify the Malaysian society—and how these objectives resonate in the daily spatial practices of the city's residents.

This book argues that elements of urban infrastructure could work as an essential mediator 'beyond community', allowing inclusive social structures to be built, despite cultural and religious tensions existing within the city. It builds on the premise of an empirical study which explores the ways in which different communities use the same spaces, supported through the implementation of a theoretical framework which looks at both Western and Islamic conceptualisations of the notion of community. Through the analysis of Kuala Lumpur, this book contributes towards the creation of more inclusive places in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious communities across the world.

1 Towards radical inclusivity–community, Ummah and beyond

Introduction

As the subject of the book suggests the purpose of the analysis is to determine how different religious and ethnic communities utilise space/urban infrastructure in Kuala Lumpur (KL). This chapter introduces the idea of radical inclusivity as a significant effort to create a universal ontological framework that supersedes religious, national, economic or ethnic divisions. The aim is to test the hypothesis that the city produces non-consensual social structures—a kind of ‘community of a higher order’ which is not defined by a collective identity, but rather through co-dependence and co-living. The Malaysian conceptualisations of the notion of ‘community’, critically comparing its Western traditions, Anglo-Saxon colonial practices and legacy with the Islamic idea of the Ummah and Islamic approaches to non-Muslim communities are all analysed. This book focuses on the theory of an intellectual tool used to conduct research and guide the outcome of the empirical study. The purpose of this chapter is to define a theoretical context framing the investigation that follows.

The first part of the chapter explains in detail the notion of radical inclusivity and the Ummah as the Islamic notion of social unity.

Radical inclusivity

Radical inclusivity assumes an infinity of the universe; it assumes progress and constant change—also a change of hierarchies. There is a horizon of the whole, but there is no process of unification. In the urban scale, the city is the best environment to test the notion of radical inclusivity, since its space is ‘naturally’ used by a diverse range of people. Moreover, as a spatial entity, the city allows different (even contradictory) activities to happen at the same time. This section aims to explore the theoretical frameworks of the idea of ‘Radical Inclusivity’ to put the main argument in urban debates.

Radical or Absolute inclusivity has its roots in the Christian and Islamic Universalism (or in fact in any religion claiming the existence of Absolute); however, to have roots, it does not mean that radical inclusivity is exclusive to any religion. Focusing on the idea of ‘inclusion’, Carl Schmitt believes that “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy”. In this sense, the central argument of Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Political’ posits its juxtaposition in the dichotomy of friend versus enemy (Schmitt, 2007, p. 26). Jane Jacobs argues that definitions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ are building blocks for hierarchies of spatial power (Jacobs, 2002, p. 4). Focusing on the politics of identity enacted in urban space, Jacobs finds them as ‘the struggles that produce promiscuous geographies of dwelling in place in which the categories of Self and Other, here and there, past and present, constantly solicit one another’ (Jacobs, 2002, p. 5). The notion of inclusion can be rendered in Jacques Rancière’s works as the inside-out dichotomy. He uses the concept of ‘le partage du sensible’ to describe the act of dividing between legitimate and illegitimate persons and forms of activity (Rancière, 2010, p. 60). In this definition, the sensible is precisely what can be thought, said, felt or perceived/the perceptible, the visible, etc. Rancière defines the urban space as a form of visibility that can serve as interruptions of the given partition of the sensible.

However, this dichotomy of friend and enemy is neither derived nor linked to another antithesis; instead, this binary grouping is independent and only corresponds to these other antitheses. As Torgovnick emphasised, we make sense of our world ‘in the act of defining the other’ (Torgovnick, 1999, p. 11). Similarly, Morton clarified that “western philosophy has traditionally defined ‘the other’” as an object of consciousness for the western subject. This reductive definition has effectively destroyed the singular alterity of the other” (Morton, 2003, p. 37).’ Focusing on Schmitt’s concept of the political, Strauss argues that “the political – the grouping of humanity into friends and enemies – owes it legitimation to the seriousness of the question of what is right” (Strauss, 2007, p. 118).

On the other hand, Chinese philosopher Tingyang Zhao rejects Schmitt perspective on politics based on the distinction between a friend and a foe as a “…the typical wrong in western political consciousness, or subconsciousness, in which political impulse divides and breaks up the world” (Zhao, 2006, p. 34). Zhao believes that the Chinese system based on families differs fundamentally from the Western system based on individuals. Chinese political thinking is often criticised for its neglect of the individual as well as individual rights, but this is a misunderstanding of the Chinese Philosophy and a poor understanding of political society (Zhao, 2006, p. 33). He questions the value of focusing on an individual while discussing politics:

There is no Chinese denial of the value of the individual, but rather a denial of the individual to be a political foundation or starting point, because the political makes sense only when it deals with ‘relations’ rather than ‘individuals’, and the political is meant to speak for co-existence rather than a single existence.

(Zhao, 2006, p. 33)

As Giddens clarified the modern western political theory is based on the system of nation/states (Giddens, 1985), while the Chinese most significant political unit is the framework of world/society. In the book by Krzysztof Nawratek titled Total Urban Mobilisation the author emphasised that Zhao’s idea of All-under-Heaven as a political project allows us to see the cities (and also fragments of cities) as socio-spatial and temporal beings while reaching the ultimate horizon of the world-ness (Nawratek, 2019, p. 88). Nawratek added, “the city exists because there is ‘another dimension’ (the commons, the public) putting private domains in a broader context and allowing them to interact” (Nawratek, 2019, p. 83).

Within the context of contemporary politics, there are different logics (or tendencies) to define radical inclusivity. Following Ernesto Laclau’s definition, radical inclusion can be considered as the populist logic of inclusion that employs a liberal universalist conception of inclusivity in which “the 99 per cent” is a taken-for-granted category and understood to exist in itself (Laclau, 2005). Some other scholars believe that the radical politics of inclusion are enacted through anti-oppressive practices in which ideals of inclusivity are understood as a process and a struggle. In the recent occupy movements, inclusivity is not just about the general participation in the movement, but also inherently tied to the procedures and practices through which decisions were made (Maharawal, 2013, p. 179). According to Gerald Raunig, radical inclusion means “to sustain and affirm the differences, and within them continue to differentiate, multiply, in a continuous expansion of multiplicity” (Raunig, 2014, p. 34). Moreover, radical inclusion involves the “reterritorialization of space and time”, allowing for “a fundamentally inclusive territory without doors or thresholds, not surrounded or traversed from the outset by borders” (Raunig, 2014, p. 33). In this sense, radical inclusion recognises “a need for invention, innovation and multiplication of revolutionary practices and narratives” (Raunig, 2014, p. 34).

‘Community’ as a sociocultural paradigm

Robert Esposito, in his seminal book ‘Communitas’, defines a foundation of a community as an absence. He doesn’t reject the communitarian understanding of its notion—as based on shared identity and values; but Esposito focuses his attention on a violent process of becoming a member of the community. The very act of birth violently puts a human being in specific social structures—family, nation, class. After that, every decision to join any community is grounded by a particular rite of passage—to become a part of a community one must change (or/and paid a specific price). Community imposes on us liabilities of obligations—even if belonging to the community is seen as a gift. Esposito writes about the ‘gift’ of Eucharist, through which Catholics become part of the church, defined as the mystical body of Christ—the same body that had been tortured and killed. What’s more, this inclusion is something as alien as ‘the body of God’ tears us violently from our own individual identity. What Esposito ignores in his analysis is the fact that the Eucharist is a kind of mechanism/infrastructure that exists outside members of the community allowing them to ‘plug in’ to the Absolute (Esposito, 2010).

The Islamic sociopolitical Philosopher—Abu Nasr Farabi—envisioned an ideal or perfect city, under a philosopher–king for humankind to attain happiness through living in an entirely guided city. Besides, Farabi believes that humans cannot reach the perfection they are destined to outside the framework of political societies. According to Farabi, this political understanding of the concept of the city has always entangled into the theological concepts (Mehan, 2016, p. 311).

Agamben in his book ‘The Coming Community’ emphasised that the coming community finds its place in a profound present and within the potentiality of change and transformation to open up a reflection on the idea of ‘radical change’ (Agamben, 1993, p. 222). For Agamben, the advanced capitalism produces a high accumulation of ‘dispositivi’ extending its paranoid forms of control with mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion, while politics has disappeared, supporting the governmental machine (Agamben, 1998). In Agamben’s definitions, the term ‘dispositivi’ suggests a reflection on the sovereignty of life and governmentality (Agamben, 2009). In this interpretation, Jean Luc Nancy defined the community through the political nature of its resistance against immanent power (Nancy, 1991).

Similarly, Krzysztof Nawratek, in his book ‘City as a political idea’ created a notion of a-androgyne, who can interact with the world/other people because of its incompleteness (Nawratek, 2011). The problem with the community lies in its totality and unification—the community assumes a standard set of features that distinguish membe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Towards radical inclusivity–community, Ummah and beyond
• 2 From strategy to tactic
• 3 National unity and urban segregation
• 4 The spatial dynamics of Kuala Lumpur
• 5 Urban and social infrastructure
• 6 Spatial practices—dividing and connecting
• Concluding notes
• Index