This is an essay on the ‘conditions of possibility’ (Kant) for thinking about the seemingly bizarre spaces of a grandly chaotic city. It is concerned with the possibility of distinctively different, contradictory (therefore incompatible) yet coexisting general modes of thinking—epistemes or discursive formations (Foucault)—and with the possible processes of their production. I begin with those spaces themselves and with their contested social production (Lefebvre), what they appear to show and what they seem to mask. Then, in the second part of the paper, the task is to explore the conditions that might underlie the remembering of many things and the forgetting of many things (Anderson), in the myriad decisions and actions that account for the production of such spaces. The third part is concerned with what these spaces might themselves tell us about deeper origins, the society itself, and its possible trajectory. A brief final part addresses the most problematic of issues: how is self-aware, self-critical discourse to arise in (against?) an episteme that eschews the articulation of criticism?
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