A Politics of Regulation: Haussmann’S Planning Practice and Badiou’S Philosophy
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THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE A Politics of Regulation: Haussmann’s Planning Practice and Badiou’s Philosophy Antoine Michel Paccoud A thesis submitted to the Department of Geography and Environment of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, September 2012 1 DECLARATION I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 103,470 words (including 6,232 words of footnotes, essentially the original French versions of material quoted within the text). 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is concerned with empirically determining whether a particular political sequence can be interpreted through Badiou’s philosophy. It focuses on the public works that transformed Paris in the middle of the 19th century, and more specifically on Haussmann’s planning practice. From an epistolary exchange between property owners, Haussmann and the Minister of the Interior during Haussmann’s first years as Prefect of the Seine, the thesis draws out a political event: the playing out in a singular context of an opposition over a political practice predicated on equality. In this case, the opposition is in the field of planning as regulation: the sanctity of property rights against a planner’s efforts to break the complacency of the planning apparatus towards property owners. The thesis argues that Haussmann was a Saint-Simonian state revolutionary that sought to make property owners contribute to the public works in equal relation to the benefits they extracted from them. In the face of sustained opposition, this planning practice was ultimately sacrificed by the imperial regime. Haussmann’s first years as Prefect are shown to have taken place in the temporality of Badiou’s events, while the commonly invoked process of Haussmannisation best describes the situation that followed the demise of Haussmann’s planning practice. Badiou’s notion of the state revolutionary gives us a way to think through the difficulty and evanescence of regulation. It can help us understand those fleeting moments when political will was used to break hierarchies of power and capital. Badiou’s philosophy is shown to be compatible with a social science that is concerned with isolating and singularising particular political sequences, of which early Haussmann is one. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am lucky to have received such generous support in the drafting of this thesis. I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Murray Low, for his invaluable feedback on my work and for his patience and encouragements over the years. I am also indebted to my review supervisors Prof. Andy Pratt and Dr. Asher Ghertner for their time and comments. I am grateful to Prof. Dennis Rodgers and Dr. Gareth Jones for having supported me in my application to the PhD programme and would also like to thank my examiners Prof. Erik Swyngedouw and Prof. Matthew Gandy for their very helpful comments and a stimulating discussion. I owe much to all who took the time to listen to my presentations or to read parts of my thesis: Prof. Andy Thornley, Dr. Nancy Holman, Dr. Alan Mace, Prof. Richard Sennett, Dr. Fran Tonkiss, Prof. Vic Seidler, NYLON members in London and New York, and my colleagues Jayaraj Sundaresan, Adam Kaasa and Dr. Sabina Uffer. And nothing would have been possible without the support of my family, my parents, Arlette Conzemius and Thierry Paccoud, and especially my wife, Ivana Spirovska Paccoud. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 7 AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT ........................................................................................ 7 THE SPECIFICITY OF BADIOU’S PHILOSOPHY ....................................................................................... 9 THE STRUCTURE OF THIS THESIS ....................................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 1: HAUSSMANN IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES ............................................................................ 21 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 21 AN OVERVIEW OF SCHOLARLY WORK ON HAUSSMANN .................................................................. 21 BETWEEN UNFLINCHING SUPPORT AND LEGISLATIVE DEFEATS ...................................................... 33 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 47 CHAPTER 2: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF AGENCY AND OPPOSITION ......................................... 49 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 49 FROM EMPIRICAL PROBLEMS TO THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS ...................................................... 50 FROM THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS TO AN IDEA OF A SUITABLE FRAMEWORK ............................. 62 BADIOU'S FRAMEWORK: THE SEQUENCE OF THE EVENT ................................................................. 70 SUBJECTIVE FORMALISMS ................................................................................................................. 72 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER 3: BADIOU AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ................................................................................. 80 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 80 BADIOU: AN EVENT WITHIN THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS? ..................................................... 81 FROM EVENT TO ARCHIVE................................................................................................................. 89 FROM ARCHIVES TO ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................ 100 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 109 CHAPTER 4: FROM ARCHITECT TO PLANNER: PRESENTING THE HAUSSMANN EVENT ...................... 111 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 111 THE WORLD OF THE HAUSSMANN EVENT ...................................................................................... 112 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PLANNING BEFORE HAUSSMANN ....................................................... 116 5 A CHANGE IN THE WORLD: HAUSSMANN’S PLANNING PRACTICE ................................................. 122 CONCLUSION: FROM ARCHITECT TO PLANNER .............................................................................. 139 CHAPTER 5: FROM LETTERS TO PRINCIPLES, THROUGH EMOTIONS .................................................. 141 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 141 SUBJECTS, PRINCIPLES, AFFECTS, EMOTIONS ................................................................................. 142 FINDING EMOTIONS AND DETERMINING THEIR JUDGMENT ......................................................... 152 FROM EMOTIONS TO PRINCIPLES ................................................................................................... 162 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 173 CHAPTER 6: SUBJECTIVE FORMALISMS .............................................................................................. 175 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 175 HAUSSMANN AS A STATE REVOLUTIONARY ................................................................................... 176 THE OTHER SUBJECTS OF A POLITICAL EVENT ................................................................................ 190 SUBJECTS, TRUTH AND THE UNFOLDING OF THE EVENT ................................................................ 199 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 205 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 207 ANSWERING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS: BREAK, EQUALITY, TRUTH ............................................ 207 ANSWERING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS: THE TRACE OF AN EVENT ............................................. 209 ANSWERING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS: AN EVALUATION