Philosophy of the city through video games. How our fictional spaces speak by us

From 19-21 November, there will take place in California the congress “philosophy of the city” . City, as any other human work, is available for philosophical thinking. Nevertheless, cities are like individuals, which means, each one has its own rhythm, its own life, and each one is different to other. But every thing could be like individuals (we could remind aristotle’s thesis about individuals). So, how could we make a generalization from city in order to reach a philosophical account?

The answer is quite simple: we can not. It is impossible to think the city from outside because cities are equivalent to world, that hermeneutically is, the immanent horizon of comprehension. If you have the pleasure to know many cities, your experience is enriched, and that just means that you have to carry on with more cities. A very good example is provided by George Simmel. He was an excellent sociologist and philosopher. He really loved Italian cities and he wrote about them. Also, when he redacted his major work, “Individual and Society”, he could not avoid the influence from this cities in his analysis of modern human sociability. Simmel is just an example of our thesis, namely, cities are our immediate representation of hermeneutical category of world. But going over orthodox philosophical tradition, we can say, according to Heidegger, that  world is:

“… therefore something 'wherein' Dasein as an entity already was, and if in any manner it explicitly comes away from anything, it can never do more than come back to the world” (Heidegger, Being and Time, § 16)

To say it again, in our concrete account, cities develop that role. So the question of the philosophy of the city aims to a hermeneutic of city, in other words, how we deal with our comprehension of the cities. It is a matter of fact that there is not just one city. Mundialization makes similar, almost identical, many cities; however, by the way of compensation, our fictional cities gain their own identity as hermeneutical horizon of comprehension. By this way, real cities are enriched by fictional cities. 

 

Google maps version of GTA V

Thus, what we think as illogical, comes a social reality: our comprehension of our own city is more fictional than empirical. This thesis, what I have read originally in Alain Musset, could be explain by a quick example: the more we know from our own city, the more we get its symbols. That means, it depends more of “media”, of “symbols” than our own stay in the city. Take a look of any travel agency, you can find there, with reasonable research, a fast characterization of many cities: windy city, liberty city, south American Athens, etc. Even when you have visited any city, your understanding of this city is just a view. If you want to know really a city, you should visit it many times, live there, share with its habitants and walk along its streets. But you are not even close to know the city as a whole. So our question releases again: how could we make a philosophy of the city?

Hermeneutical think is an accurate tool for this purpose, but it is not enough. I think that here is relevant the theoretical thinking of Alain Musset about Geofiction, that means, analysis of fictional spaces. According to Musset:

“Para las ciencias sociales, ningún objeto es a priori más legítimo que otro: es la cuestión planteada la que le da un sentido. Por consiguiente, no importa que la ciudad sea real o imaginaria, siempre y cuando la investigación permita poner en tela de juicio nuestras herramientas de análisis e iniciar una reflexión sobre nuestras civilizaciones… El paso entre geohistoria y geoficción permite, pues, plantear claramente el problema de la representación en las ciencias sociales, es decir: la relación entre el signo y la cosa…” (Alain Musset, ¿Geohistoria o geoficción? Ciudades vulnerables y justicia espacial”, p. xxiii).

His work about it is insightful and inspiring, but his categories are widespread across his work. I am going to try put an order in this categories from a hermeneutical point of view. Hermeneutics deals with a correlation between human being and world. Meaning is the concrete form of this correlation, and it is philosophically known as an “event” (Ereignis). In this order of ideas, we may ask us how to link Geofiction and Hermeneutics.

We have say that main point is it just between relation symbol-thing. The case of the city is such particular, as you can figure the Borges’ example (Baudrillard refers it again): imagine a map as big as the city, which it is represented on it. The map becomes a “simulacrum” of city. Something like that should we have on mind. In order to make clear our ideas, I shall offer an outline of this link (between symbol-thing and geofiction-hermeneutics inspired by videogames.

The only way to read a map is into a hermeneutical one; therefore, our map consists in a hermeneutical view of the city. Maps are too many, but I want to consider (certain) videogames as maps. If you drive a car in liberty city, across a big  Park, or you just drive away through a Bridge in Los Santos, you can identify cities. Former, New York, latter, San Francisco. But you are playing, so you have a simulation in front, not a real city. But if you could mix in the same city both symbols, Central Park and Golden Gate, what kind of map would be that?

You begin a game in simcity or cities skyline. As big thing, you can “import” monuments from different cities, for instance, you can build the Eiffel Tower besides Roman Coliseum (just like a

Travel agency poster). So, we can say, you have taken one from Paris, one from Rome. But why did you take this building instead another? Can you simply choose any home, any street, any construction? No, you cannot. And the main reason is what Allain Musset calls the “symbol-ruin”, that is, these things that you could recognize, as belonging to a city, without the rest of the city. That is quite important in postapocalyptical imagination, from planet of the apes to Home. In other words, if the city ends catastrophically, you could recognize which city was for the sake of this building. In this case, symbol and thing are one. It is impossible separate each from another. And we can say same about geofiction and hermeneutics. The real thing becomes just into its meaning, becomes, in a certain way, just into fiction, but its fictional hermeneutical character is its own reality. I will go deeper in this thoughts in other posts.

“La arquitectura consiste sin duda en trabajar sobre un fondo de decostrucción del espacio”

Jean Baudrillard

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