Mesopolitical interests: Rotterdam skillcity as rhizomatic, ecosophical, reflactive event

This paper finds its inspiration in the philosophical analyses of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari. Their pragmatic perspective offers a conceptual framework for Rotterdam Skillcity, a systematic and long-term urban strategy that intervenes in pedagogical and societal practices in socio-economically deprived neighborhoods in the Southern neighborhoods of Rotterdam. It is argued and shown that although the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari cannot be applied as a theory to this practice, yet, their concepts are adequate tools to analyze current urban problems in order to design policies that handle these problems more adequately than the ones that have been applied the past decades. So the topic of this contribution is mesopolitical emancipation in the 21st century. This mesopolitical focus deals with the ways how power can be redistributed in and by groups that self-consciously and interdependently reflect and act in a society that is politico-economically and socio-ecologically challenged to change its way of life. The DeleuzoGuattarian perspective offers an ecosophy as the core of a relational philosophy the crucial concept of which is inter-esse or a being in between. Once we reconceptualize urban policies focused on a transition to a politically more democratic and ecologically more integrated world, it becomes clear that DeleuzoGuattarian schizoanalysis envelops an emancipatory practice. Part 1 consists of a survey of the adopted key concepts and how these are adapted in order to construct a conceptual 'war machine' that provides tools for an urban intervention. In Part 2 the concrete tactics and operational trajectories of Rotterdam Skillcity are sketched.