The Pedagogy of Empires

Interchange: Here There Be Dragons: Part 2 of The State Made Visible

Marie Louise Berneri’s Journey Through Utopia, written in 1950, opens with a dissection of the reactionary authoritarianism of Plato’s Republic in which the State must create a mythology of divinity and purity in its Guardian class to mystify the masses. Berneri writes: "Throughout history one sees that the existence of a State implies the division of society into classes, but that the ruling class does not necessarily owe its power to its economic wealth but to an ideology which clothes it with a superior power, maintained by the use of armed forces." In our 3-part series with Rasul Mowatt about his book The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence, it’s our goal to demystify the State - which is not a tangible entity but a fiction, like Plato’s Guardians, designed to allow a ruling elite to maintain power. The focus in this episode is on the history of the city as it evolved from the 16th century to the present, beginning with the Spanish Empire in Mexico City. It’s in the city where we can most readily perceive the mechanisms of power maintenance - from the design of streets into grids and the creation of a central plaza to the labeling of physical traits as identifiers of types of people and the spaces where they are allowed to live - thus solidifying and “naturalizing” those identifications such as Indios, Negros, and Mestizos.