The ascetic body

Abstract

This article follows a trajectory of studies on urban planning and critical design. More precisely, it deals with the tensions that currently cross the disciplines dealing with urban transformation, attempting to create a pathway through various aspects of contemporary urban discourse. These aspects are linked to significant concepts with a rich history: risk, protection, pastoral power, somatic body, biopolitics. They originate from outside our fields, but they have influenced and continue to influence them, albeit in different ways. Their interest lies I this gap, in this distance with the use that has been made of it in the past.