Obsolescence des Ruines : Essai Philosophique sur les Gravats by Bruce Bégout, and: La Ville d’Après : Détroit, une Enquête Narrative by Raphaëlle Guidée (review)

The Ruins of Ruins

Post-industrial capitalism operates as a regime of disposability and recyclability. Instead of embedding the timeworn into a framework of reuse and renewal that preserves its identity, contemporary capitalism produces commodities that are obsolete from the outset, prone to be replaced by new ones.¹ This devaluation of the old introduces new ways of addressing temporality and materiality within urban spaces, prompting a reconsideration of the concept of ruins. Two recently published French books—Bruce Bégout’s Obsolescence des Ruines: Essai Philosophique sur les Gravats (The Obsolescence of Ruins: An Essay on Rubble) and Raphaëlle Guidée’s La Ville d’Après: Détroit, une Enquête Narrative (The After-City: Detroit, a Narrative Investigation)—explore this reimagining of ruins in the context of a cultural economy that generates only disposable debris.