THE STREET AND THE CAPSULAR SOCIETY

Abstract

The article discusses two urban experiences that currently dispute space in the physical and existential territory of Brazilian cities: the experience of the street and the capsular experience, from the “capsular civilization” concept proposed by the Belgian philosopher Lieven de Cauter. These experiences, however, appear less as antagonistic polarities than overlapped shuffled into an intensity of variations depending on how each subject builds its urban lifestyle in their everyday trajectories, especially on how the subject accepts the standards dictated by the paradigms of financial capital or escapes from its determinations. As a background there is the intention that an immersion in these paradoxes may also contribute to the construction of critical tools and alternative politics to the hegemonic processes of production of urban space.