"Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the political domain of the classic city would agree with the equation of walls with law and order. According to Arendt, the p

"Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the political domain of the classic city would agree with the equation of walls with law and order. According to Arendt, the political realm is guaranteed by two kinds of walls (or wall like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. The almost palindromic linguistic structure of law/wall helps to further bind these two structures in an interdependency that equates built and legal fabric. The unwalling of the wall invariably becomes the undoing of the law." "The breaching of the physical, visual and conceptual border/wall exposes new domains to political power, and thus draws the clearest physical diagram to the concept of the ‘state of exception’." "Future military operations in urban terrain will increasingly be dedicated to the use of technologies developed for the purpose of the ‘unwalling of the wall’. This is the architect’s response to the logic of ‘smart weapons’. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments where they cannot be used without endangering, injuring or killing civilians. The imagined benefits of ‘smart destruction’ and attempts to perform ‘sophisticated’ swarming thus bring more destruction over the long term than ‘traditional’ strategies ever did, because these ever more deadly methods combined with the highly manipulative and euphoric theoretical rhetoric used to promulgate them have induced decision makers to authorize their frequent use. Here another use of ‘theory’ as the ultimate ‘smart weapon’ becomes apparent. The military’s seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, sterile, easy, quick, intellectual, exciting and even economic (from their own point of view). Violence can thus be projected as tolerable, and the public encouraged to support it." Eyal Weizman Lethal Theory http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf