[marginalium]
Seeing like a state
25 Oct 2022
Seeing like a state. The start is most thought provoking—the difference between the local legibility needs (this road is Durham Road, because it goes to Durham) and state legibility needs (this road is Route 77 because lots of roads go to Durham). Where once we just went by given names, because everyone knew everyone, we now have at least two so the state can keep track of all the Sarahs and Peters. And so on. These legibility needs have most interesting consequences:
The quest for legibility, when joined to state power, is not merely an “observation.” … it has the capacity the change the world it observes. The window and door tax established in France … Peasant dwellings were subsequently designed … so as to have as few apertures as possible … the effects on the long term health of the rural population lasted for than a century … The window and door tax illustrates something else about “state optics”; they achieve their formidable power of resolution by a kind of tunnel vision that brings into sharp focus a single aspect of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality … making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation
Finishes with an off-beat example—the development and consequences of monocropped ‘production’ forests.
Anthologies: Betterment, Collective Architecture, Accidental Civilisation, On Culture, On Leadership, On Politics and Power