ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I address the problem of walling and its violence-related connotations in modernity following an interpretive path. I analyse and interpret the biblical version of the Babel myth, which I consider an archetypal story relevant for the primeval experiences of the passage from the nomadic to the settled way of life and from village to city. By drawing parallels between the Babel story and Mumford or other anthropological frameworks, I argue that the primeval hubris of arrogance and ambition of building of a wall, a tower and a name was followed by a second form of hubris, which is specific to the modern world: the inversion of the practices of walling and practices of cohesion, which leads to a proliferation of permanently liminal spaces.
