Enlivening the ‘open city’

• Verfasst von: Becker-Topkara, Elisabeth [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Enlivening the ‘open city’
• Titelzusatz: from a politics of divisibility to the making of Muslim cityzens in Berlin
• Verf.angabe: Elisabeth Becker
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: 16 Jan 2024
• Umfang: 21 S.
• Fussnoten: Gesehen am 21.02.2024
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Patterns of prejudice
• Ort Quelle: London [u.a.] Taylor & Francis : [Verlag nicht ermittelbar], 1967
• Jahr Quelle: 2023
• Band/Heft Quelle: 57(2023), 1/2, Seite 17-37
• ISSN Quelle: 1461-7331
• DOI: doi:10.1080/0031322X.2023.2246296
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Sach-SW: Berlin
• Sach-SW: Muslims
• Sach-SW: open city
• Sach-SW: placemaking
• Sach-SW: urban space
• K10plus-PPN: 1881339343

Abstract

In this piece, Becker explores how, in facing the failure of national belonging, specifically a politics of divisibility that sets them negatively apart from the German mainstream, Muslim Berliners enliven ‘cityzenship’: that is, they turn to the city itself as a place of identification and self-articulation. They do so by engaging with and shaping what Richard Sennett calls ‘the open city’, a city that is open to pluralism and plural encounters at the grounded level. Grappling with the histories of their parents and grandparents as guestworkers to Germany, experiencing long-term limbo in terms of belonging, they root themselves primarily in the urban terrain through critical encounters both with others and with the city itself. What emerges, in mosque life, slam poetry, Jewish-Muslim encounters and political protests alike, is a proactively self-driven articulation of Muslim placemaking in the present that contests past exclusions while ultimately looking towards, and shaping, a more open and inclusive future in the German capital.