by Luka Jonker
While reading the current edition of MONU magazine, on “Inclusive Urbanism”, I happened to be writing my philosophy bachelor’s thesis during this same period as well. The thesis focuses on a close reading of Heidegger’s famous 1951 essay, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, which, combined with more recent readings of Heidegger, discusses the contemporary conditions for architecture to be inhabited. In this essay, Heidegger draws the act of building, through an etymological reflection of the words building and dwelling, into the domain of Being. He asks whether residential buildings, even though they might meet all the functional requirements, hold any guarantee for dwelling to occur in them.[1] After finishing the magazine, I was surprised by how well many of the articles relate to the question I discuss in my thesis. Not only was their relevance surprising, but the diverse range of academic sources they managed to draw from also stood out.In the footnotes I encountered multiple philosophers familiar from my philosophy degree, think for example Hélène Frichot, Achille Mbembe, Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe. Although the magazine is focused on urbanism, and most of the sources are obviously directly related to this, I must say that the additional sources from outside this field add a welcome depth to the magazine, making it possible to engage with the complexities a topic such as inclusivity has to offer. It is for this reason that reading MONU#38 provided a new perspective on the question I was working on: what does it mean to provide the possibility to inhabit a space?
Radical Democracy
Among the philosophers I encountered in this edition of MONU magazine, Chantal Mouffe’s philosophy stood out in particular. In a recent course, Visual Philosophy, we read an interview with her where she discusses the political dimensions of the visual arts, and how they contribute to, and reproduce, a certain order. This view emerges from her idea of politics as something which is always necessarily about a temporarily constructed hegemony and because of this necessarily open to contestation. This makes art, for Mouffe, by definition political as well, because it either challenges this hegemony, or further establishes it. Central to this way of thinking is her concept of radical democracy, where continuous development and conflict drive the democratic processes.[2]
It is exactly this tension that Doina Petrescu discusses in her article featured in MONU#38, titled Civic Line – Participative Architecture between Agonism and Nonsolution. Petrescu opens her text by addressing the declining trust in democracy that is crumbling under the weight of climate change, geopolitical conflict and the rise of authoritarian and fascist thought. It is in light of this decline that she argues for a more participatory model which allows us to combat the pressure on these democratic processes. Here she borrows from Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy that offers an alternative to the top-down solutions usual to governmental and capital power. Within urban development, the open-ended nature of conflict leads to a more inclusive design because of this possibility for participation. For those who have read the previous edition, MONU#37, conflict will not be a term that is unfamiliar, and I think it is also in this respect that MONU#38 feels like a natural continuation of the last edition.
“This means embracing protest, contestation, confrontation, and spatial tension – not smoothing them over. Architecture becomes not just a response to conflict, but a medium for it” [4]
That conflict is central to any attempt of moving towards a more inclusive society is affirmed by Marco Addona in his article, Is Paris Still Burning? Rethinking Boystown, Returning to the Ballroom. Addona highlights how efforts to create a designated gay neighborhood, formerly known as Boystown, failed to incorporate the Black, Latinx, trans and poor queer people into its design. It shows just how easy the logic of oppression is reproduced, even when the intention is of an inclusive nature. This is what Boystown clearly showed, even though some part of the queer community was incorporated, it still led to the same sanitized and homogenized conditions it once wished to abolish. Addona comes with a promising proposition that aims to move beyond these fixed and normative standards we often find in architecture. Here he draws from the ballroom, being of particular interest due to the fact that it is not bound by any predetermined program or aesthetic, but is rather shaped by those who inhabit them. This idea very much resonates with Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy too, where the indeterminacy allows for productive conflict to appear, leaving room for contest and adjustment.
“Designing for fluid or oblique space, then means making room for such unsettling presences: spaces that resist commodification and remain open to multiple, even conflicting ways of inhabiting the city” [5]
Politics of Visibility
Another philosopher that, like Mouffe, thinks of politics and aesthetics as inherently related, and who could just as well be referred to in MONU#38, is Jacques Rancière. He was also part of the course literature for Visual Philosophy, and when reading the magazine I was reminded of him multiple times. In the course we read about what he calls, the distribution of the sensible, a theory which I think is especially interesting to the topic of this MONU issue on inclusivity. In this theory Rancière describes politics as resistance to what he calls “the system”, a political form of oppression where inequality is built into its very structure. One of the ways in which this inequality is enforced is through the forms of visibility and invisibility, i.e. who is foregrounded, who remains invisible or unacknowledged, whose world and work can appear in the right light, and whose can’t.[6] Similar to Mouffe, Rancière believes that politics happens when this system is challenged, in this case by coming up with new forms of visibility. It is precisely this, challenging the conventional forms of visibility that is, in my opinion, one of the key themes discussed in the articles of MONU#38.
This is most explicitly present in Vincent van Spaendonk’s text Out of Sight, Out of Place: On Migrant Labor and the Spatial Politics of Exclusion in Tilburg, the Netherlands. In the article he discusses the housing situation of mostly Eastern European migrant labor forces. Their dwellings are most often situated on the outskirts of cities, and which, because of this spatial distribution, prevents them from taking part in public life, rendering them invisible.
Van Spaendonk clearly points out that here the migrant laborers are considered not as persons, but as a labor forces. This perspective then translates into the lifeless, temporary dwellings that are kept as far away from urban life as possible.
“It is a question of urban ethics, of who is allowed to appear in the city as resident and not merely as a resource” [8]
There are however also more indirect ways in which this system of oppression can operate, as becomes clear in the interview The Power to Include and Exclude with Elke Krasny. Her work as a curator of exhibition spaces is particularly relevant to Rancière’s philosophy, since it is a profession that quite literally decides who and what is visible or not. What Krasny emphasizes in the interview is the possibility for curators to make visible those realities, voices and histories usually forgotten or hidden, and thus challenge the predominant narratives. As a feminist cultural theorist, she discusses some examples of such social realities that have historically remained invisible. One example she highlights is how the rooms of maids in modern buildings, together with their entrance, were most often located at the back of the buildings. This shows, according to Krasny, the way in which historically domestic labor has not only been economically devalued but also spatially rendered invisible. Other examples she addresses refer to the way in which we still fail to take into consideration the contribution of female architects and urban planners to the design of the city, or the fact that women are rarely represented in the names of the streets. What Krasny here nicely highlights is the many layers through which these forms of visibility can exclude women from these social realities. But more importantly she also emphasizes through her curatorial work the possibility to envision alternatives that might challenge those narratives currently still in place.
“Even though their work has shaped architecture and cities, it has been rendered invisible, it was silenced in so-called canonical histories” [9]
The Possibility to Inhabit a Space
Reading MONU#38 changed the perspective I had on what it means to provide the architectural conditions that allow for people to inhabit a space. According to Mouffe’s radical democracy, one of the ways in which we can provide these conditions is by embracing conflict and considering it as something productive instead of something that needs to be resolved. Doina Petrescu highlights how through the open-ended nature of conflict participation becomes possible, and by doing so groups otherwise silenced can now make themselves heard. At the same time, it has become clear to me that inclusivity is also closely related to how the design of buildings and cities adds to, what Rancière called, the distribution of the sensible, meaning that certain groups of people have the right to appear in the city, while others are rendered invisible. As shown by Krasny in her interview, these forms of visibility go beyond the literal sense of physically being able to appear, and instead also includes the necessity of feeling that you belong in a place. Therefore, what I have now come to realize is that the question I am working on in my thesis is much more about what it takes to provide the possibility for a person to appear, to be heard, and to feel that they belong in a space than I had beforehand realised. I believe this question might eventually be more important then anything else when discussing the conditions for architecture or cities to be actually inhabited, instead of merely providing the means to survive in them.
Luka Jonker is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a master’s degree in Architecture at the Technical University of Delft He is currently graduating in philosophy on the topic of phenomenology and ontology, with a special emphasis on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Giorgio Agamben. The research focuses on the fringes of the city and what those might have to offer.
Notes:
[1] Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper&Row, 1971), 146.
[2] Chantal Mouffe et al., “Every Form of Art Has a Political Dimension”, Grey Room, no.02 (winter, 2001): 98-125, https://doi.org/10.1162/152638101750173019.
[3] Mouffe, “Every Form of Art Has a Political Dimension”, 118.
[4] Doina Petrescu, “Civic Line – Participative Architecture Between Agonism and Nonsolution,” MONU#38, October 2025, 33.
[5] Marco Addona, “Is Paris Still Burning? Rethinking Boystown, Returning to the Ballroom,” MONU#38, October 2025, 87.
[6] Daniel Herwitz, “The Politics of Visibility: Lurie and Rancière,” in The Political Power of Visual Art: Liberty, Solidarity, and Rights (Bloomsbury, 2021), 29-30.
[7] Herwitz, “The Politics of Visibility: Lurie and Rancière,” 35.
[8] Vincent van Spaendonk, “Out of Sight, Out of Place: On Migrant Labor and the Spatial Politics of Exclusion in Tilburg, The Netherlands,” MONU#38, October 2025, 40.
[9] Elke Krasny, “The Power to Include and Exclude: Interview with Elke Krasny.” Interview by Bernd Upmeyer, MONU#38, October 2025, 57.