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M. Maicher:
"Spaces of Intensity";
Talk: Space and Place. Exploring Critical Issues, Oxford, Mansfield College; 2013-09-09 - 2013-09-12.

`Do we know the place of pain?´ is a question from Ludwig Wittgenstein that challenges us to rethink our conceptualization of space and place. The question indicates that there are certain states of intensities that lie beyond actualized spatial relations. In this paper I argue that Deleuze´s and Guattari´s ontology of 'becoming' as having extensive and intensive properties offers new ways of not only thinking space but also experiencing it differently. The paper begins with a short discussion on how human infants develop from a state of pure intensities to a stratified organism and relational being. The process of stratification and Deleuze´s and Guattari´s concept of smooth and striated spaces will be enriched by Lefèbvre's analysis of the production of abstract urban space and the abstract subject. The critique of abstract urban space serves as an argument for thinking urban space beyond its extensive actualization and in terms of potentialities for social transformation that are to be found in intensities and smooth spaces.

Space and place, smooth space, abstract space, extensive and intensive, becoming, affectivity, Lefèbvre, Deleuze and Guattari