Jerusalem as a paradigm

Can Jerusalem be considered a paradigm in urban studies and urban theory? Widening the debate over the ‘contested’ and the ‘ordinary’, this paper tries to address such questions whilst engaging with Giorgio Agamben’s powerful concept of paradigms. Considering Jerusalem a super, hyper-exceptional case trapped in the tension between particularism and exceptionalism, the paper reflects on Agamben’s approach to examples—or paradigms—which deeply engage the powers of analogy, enabling discernment between previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. The paper suggests a possible new concept, ‘whatever urbanism’, to disentangle the apparent dichotomy between ‘ordinary’ and ‘contested’ as urban labels.