The wall and the city

Abstract

Walls are material artifacts designed to attain some goals. In most cases, these are spatial goals, such as enclosure and separation. Using a Foucaultian terminology, walls can be described as governmental objects. This means they are part of the larger activity known as government of the population, and – as Foucault (1978/1991: 95) remarked – ‘with government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing things’. Governmentality works by defining positions inside a relational field, which is essentially a territorial field (see lo Squaderno, no. 3)