Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces: Threshold Experiences uses the term "threshold" as a means to understand the relationship between Self and Other, as well as relationships between different cultures. The concept of "threshold" defines the relationship between inside and outside not in oppositional terms, but as complementaries. This book discusses the cultural and social "border areas" of modernity, which are to be understood not as "zones" in a territorial sense, but as "spaces in between" in which different languages and cultures operate. The essays in Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces identify the dimension in urban topographies and political spaces where we are able to locate paradigmatic experiences of thresholds. Because these spaces are characterized by contradictions, conflicts, and aporias, we propose to rethink those hermeneutic categories that imply a sharp opposition between inside and outside. This means that the theoretical definition of threshold put forward in these essays-whether applied to history, philosophy, law, art, or cultural studies-embodies new juridical and political stances.

Drawing on the writings of composers from Beethoven to Brahms to Stravinsky, British composer Harvey seeks to understand the common and yet elusive thread between the works of these masters. In discussions that move from the factual to the inspirational and from the general to the precise, this study describes the role that inspiration, whatever its source--the unconscious, life experiences, audiences, religious or philosophical conviction--has played in the creation of some of the great musical masterpieces of the last few centuries. "Indagando en las escrituras de numerosos compositores desde Beethoven hasta Brahms y Stravinsky, el compositor britanico Harvey busca entender el inaprensible hilo en comun entre las obras de estos maestros. En discusiones que alternan entre facticos e inspiradores y desde lo general hasta lo preciso, este estudio describe el papel que la inspiracion, sea cual sea su fuente--el inconsciente, las experiencias de vida, las audiencias, las convicciones religiosas o filosoficas--ha desempenado en la composicion de algunas de las mas importantes obras maestras musicales en los ultimos siglos."