The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture

Theory in Forms

by AbdouMaliq Simone

In The Surrounds renowned urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone offers a new theorization of the interface of the urban and the political. Working at the intersection of Black studies, urban theory, and decolonial and Islamic thought, Simone centers the surrounds —those urban spaces beyond control and capture that exist as a locus of rebellion and invention. He shows that even in clearly defined city environments, whether industrial, carceral, administrative, or domestic, residents use spaces for purposes they were not designed for: schools become housing, markets turn into classrooms, tax offices transform into repair shops. The surrounds, Simone contends, are where nothing fits according to design. They are where forgotten and marginalized populations invent new relations and ways of living and being, continuously reshaping what individuals and collectives can do. Focusing less on what new worlds may come to be and more on what people are creating now, Simone shows how the surrounds are an integral part of the expansiveness of urban imagination.

176 pages, Hardcover

Published June 10, 2022

Reviews

[n · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I dream the sails of the project from the eastern shore. plywood sails the city island past the enclave mirror till the bricks arise. at the fugitive bar the food be tasting good. kitchenette’s my cabin and flesh be burning in the hold. I love the way you smell. your cry enjoys me. let me taste the way you think. let me do this one more time while the project repeats me.." - Fred Moten, the gramsci monument

[Burc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forms a companion book to Tadiar's Remaindered Life.

I like that the book defines the urban surround as an infrastructural effect. There's also a sustained effort to engage Black radical thinkers like Hartman, Fanon, McKittrick. Also Moten's influence is all over the book. Given such a background you'd think I would love the book. And it was good! But like Tadiar's book it felt a little unsituated. I sometimes didn't have a sustained context or stakes that ties together the book.

[Iñaki Iriarte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had the pleasure to see Simone. First academic I have met with palpable street cred and invoking the jealousy of the entire academic faculty. Does he know what he's writing about? Should he capture the "surrounds" with film rather than writing, probably...