based on ideas developed during a presentation at an RC21/International Sociological Association Conference in São Paulo, Brazil (2009). The presentation’s title was “The December 2008 Youth Uprising in Athens: Glimpses of a Possible City of Thresholds.” A version of this chapter can also be found in the e-journal Spatial Justice/Justicespatiale no. 2, available online at http://issi.org/06.php.
Chapter 9, “Squares in Movement,” originally appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly 111(3), Summer 2012. Special thanks to Michael Hardt for granting permission to publish it here.
Chapter 10 is based on the afterword to conference proceedings I wrote for Crisis-Scapes: Athens and Beyond, May 9–10, 2014.
Chapter 11 is a revised version of “On Urban Commoning” in Make_Shift City: Renegotiating the Urban Commons (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2014). Special thanks to the editor and publisher for their permission to include this essay here.
The book’s main ideas were and are still being tested in both academic and activist environments. I owe a lot to my students in the postgraduate course “Experience, Representation and Meaning of Space” that I have been organizing for the last eight years. The remarks and criticisms of my students have always been inspiring.
A lot of people have also contributed to the “city of thresholds” idea by commenting on lectures given in the context of specific urban initiatives in various neighborhoods in Athens.
My participation in the interdisciplinary Critical Research Methodology group in Athens—which combines engaged social criticism with a truly collaborative dialogue on social science methods beyond academic formalities—has had a tremendous influence on my research. Sotiris Dimitriou, the soul of this open group—who also inspired so much of my work over many years—unfortunately passed away in 2016. I feel that his existence as an engaged, generous, and antihierarchical intellectual has left its deep mark on my research and thinking.
Eftichios Bitsakis, Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Oliver Clemens, Karen Franck, Costas Gavroglou, John Holloway, Sabine Horlitz, Demetres Karydas, Maria Kopanari, Jenny Robinson, Quentin Stevens, Fereniki Vatavali, the late Annie Vrychea, and Andrew Wernick have in different times and places expressed stimulating opinions and offered helpful suggestions on the ideas elaborated in the book’s original chapters.
Brighenti has also generously and consistently supported this work from the very beginning, meticulously and creatively commenting on the final draft.
Anna Holloway has translated the texts on which chapters 5, 6, and 7 are based.
Special thanks to Alexandria Publications for granting permission to use material from the published book Suspended Spaces of Alterity.
Evgenia Michalopoulou has always been inspiring in her caring criticism and in her insistence on the power of collective dreams. She and Zoe Stavrides Michalopoulou had to once again face the alternating disappointments and enthusiasms that always accompany my attempts to think and write. I really appreciate their patience and their unlimited support. I cannot promise them, I am afraid, that it will be easier next time.
Unless otherwise specified, all pictures were taken by the author. Special thanks to John Davis, Babis Louizidis, Stamatia Papadimitriou, and Ioannis Papagiannakis for allowing the reproduction of their works.
Since its initial publication, Towards the City of Thresholds has traveled to many activist and academic venues and met with encouraging criticism and suggestions for which I am really thankful. Its translation into Turkish and Spanish helped me clarify some thoughts and their expression. I am thankful to the corresponding translators and editors for that.
For this expanded edition, I chose not to rewrite parts of the book or to update the references to literature. A different choice might mean writing a new book on thresholds in light of my recent research adventures.
Accommodating this choice, Malav Kanuga of Common Notions kindly suggested the inclusion of the three texts of Part IV in the book. It was a very good idea and I thank him for that. I also thank him for his enthusiastic support of this project and Erika Biddle-Stavrakos for her careful editing of the text.
Preface to the US edition
Critical thinking seems to be an obvious task in current times of cynicism and phobic individualism. It becomes even more urgently needed as the discontent of those who suffer from predatory policies and aggressive privatization of public resources is dangerously courted by religions fundamentalisms and racist mentalities. If critical thinking has any meaning in such difficult times, it is to be found in attempts to show that another future, one based on solidarity, equality, and justice, is possible.
There have been times when utopian visions seemed the most appropriate way to illustrate a radically different future. And surely, criticism of the present was their propelling force. Realism and pragmatism have always been extremely strong opponents of utopian thinking, and their power to convince people that the experienced reality is the only one possible is always augmented by the ruling elites.
Moving forward we need something more than visions. We may argue that concrete critical ideas for an equalitarian future will provide a realist alternative to the utopian nightmares of pervasive capitalism. We can dream of a different future by constructing it in, against, and beyond the unjust societies we live in.
This book is meant to be a modest contribution to the study of existing struggles that gesture towards an emancipated and emancipatory society. It combines critical thought with concrete experiences, the power of political imagination with the inspiring thrust of acts that produce new relations between people. A large part of it is focused on criticizing obsessive efforts to defend identities which, more often than not, trap people in roles and habits that prolong their attachment to the dominant values of individualization. The core argument of the book is developed around the issue of otherness: how do we deal with otherness in ways that produce exchanges and encounters without effacing differences and without merely establishing tolerance?
By carefully studying the inventiveness of people in struggle, as well as the potentialities hidden in many everyday routines and habits, this book suggests that experiences and symbolizations of space play a crucial role in the construction of bridges towards otherness. Differences that are either augmented in order to be exploited (as the differences between locals and immigrants) or effaced so that possible resistances are eliminated (such as the differences between “Western” and Indigenous value systems) need to be offered the possibility to negotiate on an equal basis in the search for a shared world.
This is where the idea of the city of thresholds becomes not just one more smart term for something but an emblematic condensation of a different social world of human emancipation. Thresholds unite as they separate. Thresholds mark areas of potential change. Thresholds create areas of communication out of differences that do not cancel each other.
Today’s important struggles arise out of collective experiences of deprivation and poverty as well as of stigmatization and discrimination. Indigenous peoples’ struggles; struggles for collective and individual dignity in work, education, and health; struggles in support of different forms of sexuality, belief, and culture; struggles
