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SUMMARY:City Seminar: Nicholas Simcik Arese - Nicholas Simcik Arese\, Univ
 ersity of Cambridge
DTSTART:20181106T173000Z
DTEND:20181106T190000Z
UID:TALK114178@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tanvi
DESCRIPTION:*Dreams and Illusions of the Suburban Self: Variations on Prop
 ertied Autonomy in Cairo's First Affordable Gated Community*\nNicholas Sim
 cik Arese\, University of Cambridge\n\nIn Cairo’s first “affordable 
 ” gated community\, new homeowners aim to realise middle class aspiratio
 ns through the promise of US-style propertied spatial norms. This presenta
 tion offers an ethnographic account of how homeowners’ interpret the wor
 d “freedom” to describe the isolation of suburban life\, at once a “
 dream” (premised on imaginations of an "internal emigration\,” outward
 s and into the future) and an “illusion” (premised on memories of hist
 oric Cairo\, backwards and into the past). Recent work by anthropologist T
 alal Asad on post-revolutionary Egypt identifies tension between a “libe
 ral incitement to individual autonomy” and autochthonous notions of free
 dom – self-realisation through modes of mutuality – resulting in a mas
 s “subjectivization of morality” (2015). I situate these observations 
 in the context of everyday property disputes in a private development for 
 the poorest demographic to benefit from Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian ne
 oliberalism. Soon after moving in\, many homeowners’ dreams of severing 
 cumbersome sociality become indivisible from nightmares of extreme subject
 ivization\, at once legible in their physical surroundings: the same garde
 n walls that are embellished for privacy are seen to provoke moral disarra
 y otherwise attributed to inner-city life. Confronting this paradox\, some
  homeowners feel compelled to creatively re-define the relationship betwee
 n “freedom” and property beyond the paradigms of liberal autonomy and 
 nostalgia.\n\nThe City Seminar\, co-convened by the Department of Geograph
 y along with the Department of Architecture\, explores the theme of ‘Inf
 rastructures of Memory’ this year. A diverse line-up of speakers – inc
 luding geographers\, anthropologists\, architects\, artists and activists 
 – will examine the various techniques\, technologies\, rituals\, perform
 ances and materialities of memory and remembrance\, and how they reinforce
  or subvert prevailing power relations.
LOCATION:Lecture Room 1\, Department of Architecture\, 1-5 Scroope Terrace
 \, Cambridge
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