Explosions of Stupidity: Notes for an Urbanist Pedagogy

In this article, Derek R. Ford develops an urbanist pedagogy, a particular mode of educational praxis that arises out of — and, more importantly, is oriented toward — the creation of the urban, a praxis that is internal to and constitutive of urban revolt. Ford does so with the help of two thinkers who are seldom theorized together: Henri Lefebvre and Jean‐François Lyotard. Taken together, Lefebvre and Lyotard allow him to advance a conception of the urban not as an object, thing, or distinct space (like the city), but as an incommunicable process that entails two distinct and interrelated creative educational elements: explosive confrontation and stupor. At the end of the article, Ford reads this urbanist pedagogy through a set of protest movements in West Germany.