The artisan, the State and the binaries of DIY urbanism

This paper deploys the philosophical notion of an ‘artisan-State’ relation to explore the discourses and practices of ‘DIY (Do It Yourself) urbanism’. In their collaborative text A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator, psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, use the term ‘State’ not only to denote an institutional body and hierarchical form of governance, but also a model of Science, a form of urbanism, and indeed, an approach to life more broadly. As part of their invocations of the State and urbanisation, there is a significant, albeit brief reference to the writings of French historian Fernand Braudel. Braudel, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the urban conditions which prompted the spread and success of Capitalism already existed in the pre-industrial world, evident in the tensions between locally-based artisanal market economies and their subjugation by States, guilds and merchant-based labour markets. For them, there is a discernible binary relation between the notions and operations of the State and the artisan – a nomadic figure associated with heterarchical operational processes. DIY urbanism is difficult to define with any precision due to the diversity of project types associated with its ‘nomenclature’ and its limited theorisation to date. However, the notion of an artisan-State conceptual binary strongly resonates with the recent discourses and practices of DIY urbanism. A key debate in these discourses concerns the co-option of its grassroots origins and intentions by State-sanctioned urbanism and commercial development. This debate is particularly evident in discussions about the self-initiated Renew Newcastle (RN) scheme in Newcastle, Australia. Through reference to the philosophical notion of the artisan-State binary, it will nevertheless be argued that the relation of DIY urbanism to State and commercial entities is both productive and core to its theorisation.