LAS MÓNADAS LUNARES

Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ exploration of the notion of buen vivir is particularly fruitful for application to the city and urban (re)development context through his focus on the potential the notion carries for intercultural dialogue.157 _{This focus sets his discussion of buen} vivir apart from the work of other theorists who have at times been critical of how buen vivir has and is currently applied by the governments of countries such as Bolivia and, particularly,

154 _{Ibid at 445. See e.g. Ute Lehrer & Thorben Wieditz, “Condominium Development and Gentrification: The}

Relationship Between Policies, Building Activities and Socio-Economic Development in Toronto” 18:1 (2009) Can J Urban Research 10; Ute Lehrer & Andrea Winkler, “Public or Private? The Pope Squat and Housing Struggles in Toronto” (2006) 33:3 Social Justice 142; Ute Lehrer & Jennifer Laidley. “Old Mega-Projects Newly Packaged? Waterfront Redevelopment in Toronto” (2008) 32:4 Intl J Urban & Regional Research 786; Sophia Labadi, “The Impacts of Culture and Heritage-Led Development Programmes: The Cases of Liverpool (UK) and Lille (France)” in Sophia Labadi & William Logan, eds, Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability (London, UK: Routledge, 2016) 137.

155 _{Gudynas, ‘Today’s Tomorrow”, supra note 42 at 445.} 156 _{Ibid at 441; Gudynas, “Buen Vivir, supra note 42 at 201-202.}

157 _{See e.g. Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at 212-13. See also Gloria Alicia Caudillo Felix, “El Buen Vivir:}

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Ecuador in a manner that distorts buen vivir’s original roots in the ancestral knowledge, memory, and practices of indigenous and afro-descendent communities of these same countries.158

While my application of the notion of buen vivir follows in the vein of Santos’ discussion, my decision not to include an in-depth assessment of all of the facets of the present and historical social context of buen vivir is not in any way intended to diminish or ignore it, but rather to focus on shifting the scale of application of buen vivir in order to suggest an important way of

rethinking and approaching development at the municipal urban redevelopment level through a humanistic, use-value-centric approach rather than one primarily focused on economic

progress.159 As those critical of current applications of buen vivir remind us, frameworks like buen vivir are not immune to co-option, misappropriation, harmful hybridization, and a reestablishment of hierarchies of dominance; nor are they immune to the symptoms of an overdeveloped focus on the economic aspects of development, even when the essence of buen vivir sought to deconstruct these same hierarchies and focuses.160

But these critiques also clarify that it is unhelpful to reify or crystallize a particular understanding of buen vivir as it must remain a dynamic site of resistance, transformation, transgression, and contestation.161 Additionally, these critiques stem from a different application of the notion buen vivir than the one applied in the present project, which, drawing on Santos, focuses on the transformative and radical positive potential buen vivir may have as a basis for

158 _{Catherine Walsh, “Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)colonial Entanglements”}

(2010) 53:1 Development 15; Gudynas, “Necesario”, supra note 139 at 45-46.See also Felix, supra note 155 at 356-

59, 362-63.

159 _{Walsh, supra note 158 at 16. Walsh also warns that adapting and hybridizing the notion of buen vivir may speak}

more to “notions of integral human development” that originate from “alternative visions of development emerging from the Western world,” which may cause buen vivir to “lose some of its radical force” (ibid at 19-20). See also Valverde, Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19, 21), where a narrowing in on local municipal lawmaking and regulatory frameworks can reveal “law’s contradictory internal dynamics.”

160 _{See e.g. Walsh supra note 158 at 19-20.}

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equitable intercultural dialogue in order to think about new approaches to municipal-scale (re)development projects.162

Santos proposes an epistemology upon which to build a world more focused on equitably acknowledging and valorizing the diverse ways of knowing that exist, notably those of

marginalized and subaltern groups and individuals.163 Santos argues for a displacement of the current dominant epistemologies that structure approaches to development. That which Eurocentric, Western, and dominant governance structures perceive as knowledge must be displaced in order to allow for, and welcome, other ways of knowing and living—those from the other side of the “abyssal line”—to be free to rise to shape a new present and a vision for a better future.164 Santos describes the abyssal line as an invisible distinction and radical line that

separates

social reality into two realms, the realm of “this side of the line” and the realm of “the other side of the line.” The division is such that “the other side of the line” vanishes as reality, becomes nonexistent, and is indeed produced as nonexistent. Nonexistent means not existing in any relevant or comprehensible way of being. Whatever is produced as nonexistent is radically excluded because it lies beyond the realm of what the accepted conception of inclusion considers to be its other.165

Santos’ description of the knowledges and movements threatened by the epistemicide against which buen vivir is situated is expansive and welcoming to diversity since the planes of the struggles Santos describes can take many shapes and arise in many places. While Santos

162 _{See e.g. Alberto Acosta, “El Buen Vivir, una oportunidad por construer” (2008) 75 Ecuador Debate 33. See also}

Quijano, supra note 141 at 62; Felix, supra note 155 at 362-63; Gudynas, “Necesario”, supra note 139 at 45, 46; Valverde, Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19, 21-22.

163 _{See e.g. Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at 175}

164 _{Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at ch 4ff. This approach, also visible within new social movements,}

subversively centers what to the “dominant world-view has appeared to be marginal” and resonates with deconstructive philosophy Margaret Davies, Asking the Law Question: The Dissolution of Legal Theory, 2nd ed (Sydney: Lawbook Co, 2002) at 337. See also Joel F Handler, “Postmodernism, Protest, and the New Social Movements” (1992) 26 Law & Soc’y Rev 697.

165 _{Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at 118. This approach, also visible within new social movements,}

subversively centers what to the “dominant world-view has appeared to be marginal” and resonates with Derrida- esque deconstructive philosophy.

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emphasizes a macro-context of global binaries, his call for a decentering of dominant Eurocentric and Western epistemologies is also relevant at the city-level. As globalization embeds itself in the realities of city life and the migratory, mobile, and diverse demographics of urban-dwellers grows, many pockets, layers, and permutations of knowledges, cultures, and cultural practices are transported and transplanted. The reality of the terrain where struggles play out, where social movements arise, and where cultures and knowledges are negotiated on a daily basis is within the spaces of cities.166 Where many of the city redevelopment and gentrifying processes

underway within the urban cores of our cities are seen as a form of recolonization of the city,167 then the emergence of buen vivir approaches “as expressions of decolonial efforts” also resonates in the city context,” especially where buen vivir “is not a static concept, but an idea that is

continually being created.”168

On the ground, struggles against epistemicide on the streets and in the spaces of cities are exemplified within a number of legal geography oriented projects underway in Canadian cities like Vancouver and Toronto, which critically document unconventional cultural spaces—like those used during unconventional times such as spaces of nighttime culture.169 Here, these

166 _{Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck & Eric S Sheppard, “Preface” in Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck & Eric S Sheppard, eds,}

Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007) vi at ix.

167 _{Miles & Miles, supra note 71 at 62, 64; Robert J Foster, Karen Kain & Jim Prentice, Creative Capital Gains: An}

Action Plan for Toronto (2011), online <www.torontoartscouncil.org>; Ute Lehrer, Roger Keil & Stefan Kipfer,

“Reurbanization in Toronto: Condominium Boom and Social Housing Revitalization” (2010) 46:180 disP: Planning Rev 81 at 82; Laura Levin, “Performing Toronto: Enacting Creative Labour in the Neoliberal City” in Nicholas Whybrow, ed, Performing Cities (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) 159 at 172-73 (in terms of the colonization of night spaces, in particular); Talbot, supra note 74 at 132-33; Blomley, Unsettling, supra note 74 at 92. See also generally, Rowland Atkinson & Gary Bridge, eds, Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban

Colonialism (London, UK: Routledge, 2005).

168 _{Gudynas, “Today’s Tomorrow”, supra note 42 at 443.}

169 _{See e.g. Blomley, Unsettling, supra note 74 at 76; Valverde, “Land Use”, supra note 74; Valverde, Everyday,}

supra note 8. Valverde’s focus on space and use within rights discourse, rather than the individual, also resonates

with the principles of buen vivir where the notion of an acceptable quality of life displaces the centrality of the individual in order to more significantly account for social context, space, and the extended community within which individuals are located and operate (cf Gudynas, “Today’s Tomorrow”, supra note 42 at 441, Gudynas, “Buen Vivir”, supra note 42 at 202).

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struggles are also revealed as “geograph[ies] of injustice and oppression.”170 _{In these}

geographies, a hierarchy of valuation places the plurality of interests and values of marginalized or subaltern knowledges or ways of knowing on a lower rung than other interests and values traditionally associated with dominant society.171 Santos suggests that cognitive injustice serves as the basis for this social injustice.172

In order for city governance structures to more meaningfully engage with and equally treat different iterations of culture in the city, and to truly embrace the diversities of culture and cultural practices and spaces, buen vivir provides an approach through which law can undergo the “deep process of revision” that it requires.173 _{Similar to globalization and international} development, the struggle to become a global city and the responding strategies deployed, can ultimately marginalize or silence certain groups and individuals. But if cities can carefully construct and monitor the effects of their growth strategy towards global status, the city can also be a site of resistance and struggle and “places in which progressive alternative visions are being forged both beyond and outside the restricted modalities of neoliberalism.”174

VIII. THEORIES OF HERITAGE, PROPERTY, USE, AND SPACE, AND

SUBALTERN COSMOPOLITANISM TO ACHIEVE MORE EQUITABLE TREATMENT FOR PEOPLE IN THE CITY*

170 _{Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at 4; Hae, supra note 7 at 5; Talbot, supra note 74 at 85, 132-33;}

Chatterton & Hollands, supra note 60 at 235.

171 _{Santos, Epistemologies, supra note 17 at ix. Gudynas, “Today’s Tomorrow”, supra note 42 at 445.}

172 _{Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South” (2012) 37:1 Africa Development}

43 at 57.

173 _{Santos, “Beyond Neoliberal Governance”, supra note 138 at 60.} 174 _{Leitner, Peck & Sheppard, supra note 166 at ix.}

* _{© Sara Ross. Parts of Section VIII were previously published in: Sara Ross, “Buen Vivir and Subaltern}

Cosmopolitan Legality in Urban Cultural Governance and Redevelopment Frameworks: The Equitable Right to Diverse Iterations of Culture in the City and a New Urban Legal Anthropological Approach” (2015) 5:1 City University of Hong Kong Law Review 55.

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