[Un]Grounding: Post-Foundational Geographies 9783839450734

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Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl, Nikolai Roskamm (eds.) [Un]Grounding

Social and Cultural Geography  | Volume 34

Friederike Landau (Dr.), born in 1989, is Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography at Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She works on modes of political agency and (self-)organization in the field of arts and culture. Her dissertation »Agonistic Articulations in the »Creative« City – On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural politics« (Routledge 2019) provides a post-foundational analysis of the emergence of a new political actor. Lucas Pohl (Dr.), born in 1989, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geography Department of the Humboldt University Berlin. He works on the interstices between human geography, philosophy, and psychoanalysis with a focus on spatial theory, built environments, and political action. Nikolai Roskamm (Dr.), born in 1967, is a professor for planning theory, history of urban planning, and urban design at the University of Applied Sciences, Erfurt. In his work, he mingles political theory and philosophy, history of ideas, and urban phenomena.

Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl, Nikolai Roskamm (eds.)

[Un]Grounding Post-Foundational Geographies

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de © 2021 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Nikolai Roskamm Cover illustration: Hichem Dahes Proofread by Merryn Hook Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5073-0 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5073-4 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839450734 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Introduction Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl and Nikolai Roskamm ................................. 9

Theoretical (Re)Positionings The World and the Real: Space and the Political after Lacan Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw................................................... 43

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity Or, Ungrounding the Ground Itself Jens Kaae Fisker................................................................... 63

On Shaky Ground: Thinking Lefebvre Nikolai Roskamm.................................................................... 81

Institution and Dislocation: Philosophical Roots of Laclau’s Discourse Theory of Space and Antagonism Oliver Marchart..................................................................... 99

Badiou as a Post-Foundationalist Matthew G. Hannah................................................................. 117

Spacing Rancière’s Politics Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson .................................................... 133

[Un]Grounding Geographies [Un]Grounding Agonistic Public Space: Approaching Mouffe’s Spatial Theory via Museums Friederike Landau ................................................................. 153

Always Geographize! Fredric Jameson and Political Space Clint Burnham..................................................................... 175

The Most Sublime Geographer: Žižek with Place, Distance, and Scale Lucas Pohl and Paul Kingsbury .....................................................197

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure: Theory Triangulation between Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis and Relational Sociology Tomas Marttila ..................................................................... 217

Post-Foundationalism in the City (Non)Building Alliances: Approaching Urban Politics through Siegfried Kracauer’s Concept of Nonsolution Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik ..................................................... 243

Politicizing Air: On the Political Effects of Spatial Imagination Anneleen Kenis and Matthias Lievens .............................................. 261

Materialization of Antidiscipline: Small-Scale Post-Foundationalism Using Michel de Certeau’s Clash of Strategies and Tactics Sören Groth ....................................................................... 279

How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilities for Spatial Alternatives? Mohamed Saleh ................................................................... 301

A Post-Foundational Conception of Politics and Space: Henri Lefebvre and Jacques Rancière revisited in Resisting Athens Daniel Mullis ...................................................................... 323

Authors ......................................................................... 343

Introduction Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl and Nikolai Roskamm

Post-foundational thinking claims that – within the realm of the social – absolute reasons are not possible. This assumption further entails that no ultimate foundation really exists, on which social and historical entities are built: no God, no biological law or genetic code, no market, no anthropological essence, no relations of production. Nothing, this is the post-foundational credo, determines the final course of history with certainty or necessity. In addition, post-foundational theory states that precisely this impossibility constitutes the (absent) ground for all social, political and historical events. This axiom is just as important as the first one. The impossibility of final grounds and the necessity of contingency, only when taken into consideration together, create the post-foundational momentum. It is this combination of rejecting the possibility of final reasons, and considering this rejection as ontological necessity for anything to exist, that leads post-foundationalism to emerge as radical social, political and, as this book explores, spatial theory. Post-foundational thinking occurs in many political and social theories. Engagements with post-foundationalism can be traced in the writings of thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as well as Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Claude Lefort, Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek. In such reflections, different recurring topics circulate. To start with, there is a focus on the dynamics of how foundations and reasons are instituted. Notably, post-foundational thinking does not abandon the search for reason(s). On the contrary, this quest becomes the very core of post-foundational exploration. The inner structure of reasons, their rationale, goal, direction, and most importantly, their immanent failure – this is post-foundational territory. Post-foundational foundations are always deliberately paradoxical and precariously constructed. It is precisely the fluctuating construction of every foundation, which reveals the curious nature of post-foundational thinking.

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The aim of this volume is to bring together post-foundational thinking and the field of knowledge and practice that constitutes and is constituted by spatial and urban matters, such as human geography, urban studies, urban planning, or architecture. The relations between such spatial sciences and political theory influenced by Marxism, post-Marxism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and other related theoretical approaches are intricate and contested. Especially French theory has left a strong footprint on spatial theory from the 1980s onwards, with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Henri Lefebvre. In this context, several contributions in the social sciences and humanities increasingly focus on ‘space’, diversifying the places and disciplines where space is debated. This attention towards space, which appears in many different variations and from various perspectives, is often referred to as ‘spatial turn’ (cf. Döring/Thielmann 2008; Soja 1989; Warf/Arias 2009). In this book, we aim to extend that turn or field of knowledge with a contribution situated in post-foundational theory. Accordingly, we understand the project of this book not as narrowly confined to the disciplinary realm of geography, but one of multiply situated geographies that are constituted by conflict and contingency. Briefly, our book investigates the multiple connections, folds and twists between politics and spatiality to discuss a post-foundational approach to space. Based on the assumption that connections between political theories of conflict and those of space already linger in post-foundational thought, we set out to make these (dis)connects visible, to potentially create new formations that interlink spatial politics, political space, or the politics of space. Following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s (2001: 111) claim that an “irresoluble interiority/exteriority tension” is “the condition of any social practice” (ibid.), we advocate to conceptualize the increasingly blurry lines between the internal and the external, the inside and outside, in or out by carefully attending to the implications of conflict, contingency and ontological lack or negativity. It is our conviction that confronting post-foundational theory with assumptions about space unlocks critical potential for both sides: On the one hand, we encounter post-foundational theory, even political theory in general, as saturated with spatial metaphors about spheres, stages, places, planes, horizons, worlds, etc. To approach these theoretical ‘language games’, as Wittgenstein would call them, from a geographical standpoint means to take seriously what kinds of spaces are mobilized. On the other hand, spatial and urban analyses often engage with things, people and places becoming more or less political, policed, politicized. Since post-foundational thinking

Introduction

entails one of the most radical ways of thinking ‘the political’, it promises fruitful perspectives for (political) geographers. In a nutshell, we argue that connections between spatial theory and post-foundational thinking are already there, yet these links need to be studied in more detail with regards to their ontological underpinnings and implications. We depart from the assumption that grounds are not merely absent or gone, but constantly inscribed in already-constructed spaces, which carry traces of contingent decisions of the past, having led to social sediments of power and meaning as results of processes of hegemonic articulation. In this context, we seek to substantiate the post-foundational trope of [un]grounding. This term points to the continuously ambivalent relations between movements of place-making, -taking and -disappearing, absence and presence, inside and outside, order and chaos. Practices of grounding (i.e., taking, claiming or imagining grounds) and ungrounding (i.e., challenging, uprooting or occluding grounds) go back and forth between critiquing and ma(r)king grounds as messy. Practices of grounding and ungrounding are necessarily complex, contingent and conflictual undertakings. To disentangle, yet also reconnect the manifold relations between politics and space, we discuss their ontological, epistemological as well as practical, bodily, mundane and temporary expressions, places and agents. This book aims to carefully approach the lacking grounds and the ultimate ungroundedness of space (and politics) as something that takes place in the face of radical absence, lack and conflict. This introduction intends to pave the way for an exploration of post-foundational spatial thinking. It is structured as follows: In the first section, we explore the terminological roots of the term ‘post-foundational’ in the works of Stephen Crook and Oliver Marchart. Next, we dive into the intellectual depths of post-foundationalism by engaging with Martin Heidegger and consider some of the key elements of his philosophy such as ontological difference, the difference between grounds and abysses as well as contingency and conflict as crucial terms of the post-foundational conceptual toolkit. We then outline the basic premises of corresponding spatial thought and introduce some general contours of post-foundational geographies. Subsequently, we shed light on several blind spots of this volume, and post-foundationalism more generally, but also point to the alliance-making potential of post-foundationalism we hope to initiate before we conclude with a short overview on the dramaturgic structure of the three sections of the book.

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Did Somebody Say Post-Foundationalism? The Australian sociologist Stephen Crook was probably the first social theorist who explicitly introduced the term ‘post-foundational’ into the field of radical social theory. In his monograph Modernist Radicalism and its Aftermath: Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Radical Social Theory (1991), Crook addresses the relation between radical modernist projects such as Marx’ Historical Materialism and Durkheim’s sociology on the one hand, and the influence of French theory on leftist Anglophone discourses since the 1980s on the other. Crook reconstructs the modernist idea of a radical social theory and engages with the assumption of ‘autonomous’ social reality (i.e., society exists and progresses on its own accord based on internal laws and within its selfdefined historical regularities). Crook refers to the various doubts concerning notions of autonomy, particularly gesturing towards postmodern interventions and critiques, which however, as Crook insists, are ultimately unhelpful in finding a way out of the modernist hypothesis. In light of both modernist foundationalism and poststructuralist antifoundationalism, Crook proposes a renewed engagement with foundationalism as the ‘contrabass’ or backbone of social theory. He addresses foundational instances such as claims to Origin, Autonomy or Ground, which nevertheless lie at the heart of all pathologies in modernist radicalism and in its postmodern replies. While modernist radicalism or foundationalism seek to construct foundations (i.e., historical regularities, social and economic laws or prohibitions), postmodernist critiques are mainly concerned with deconstructing these foundations, yet revealing similarly dogmatic approaches to definitively eliminate any ground for such social norms. In searching for an alternative approach, Crook proposes dismissing both foundational and antifoundational perspectives, and rejects foundationalism as a symptom rather than a cure to produce any kind of Truth. The term ‘post-foundational’ is introduced as a proposition to conceptualize disclosure, which functions as an alternative to a foundationalist attempt at closure. Post-foundationalism therefore tries “to explore precisely those gaps and paradoxes in the ‘instances’ and ‘modes’ … which foundationalist approaches require to efface” (ibid. 190). Notably, the exploration of gaps is not the same as denying them. Exploring is an open-ended process. Exploring means to grasp gaps and paradoxes, to challenge them and to work with, in or on them, rather than wholly against them. In sum, what Crook calls ‘post-foundational radicalism’ is a way to sharpen modernist radical theory, not to annihilate it.

Introduction

In the reservoir of post-foundational radicalism, Crook presents four constitutive elements: irony, contingency, reflexivity, and judgement. First, irony, or “an awareness of the possibilities for ironic outcomes”, is a necessary ingredient in any post-foundational activity or performance (ibid. 197). Post-foundational thinkers should act as ironists because they are “never quite able to take themselves seriously because always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change” (ibid. 196). Irony, in short, would make post-foundationalists (at least partly) immune to temptations of dogmatism. Second, ideally, post-foundationalists are “always aware of the contingency and frailty of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves” (ibid.). This modernist takeover appeals to the always-changeable nature of political positions, power and places. Here, Crook’s post-foundational thinking is loyal to its modernist roots. Third, Crook proposes reflexivity as a radical demand and theoretical position, flickerung within its own precarious status. Postfoundational thinking needs to continuously question itself with the risk (but maybe also the desire) to undermine itself at some point. In post-foundational theory, the impossibility of one’s own foundations is one’s own foundation; without this strong dose of self-reflexivity, post-foundational thinking might not be possible, or at least not post-foundational. Fourth, Crook stresses the post-foundational potential for renewing debates on values and judgments. Here, Crook (ibid. 208) positions post-foundationalism in line with postmodernist efforts to overcome the agenda of the ‘Good-God-Gold standards’ of modernism. Post-foundational radicalism avoids any superior principle and focuses on language games without being tempted to accept any final certainties. Nevertheless, values and judgements are relevant for post-foundational debate as outcomes of discourses. By deconstructing assertions of final reasons and values, yet engaging with the traces they leave, post-foundational thinking could open up both discursive and physical spaces to start discussions about (penultimate) reasons, foundations or grounds. Altogether, Crook synthesizes the two general lines of modernist radicalism (including grand, foundational narratives and a firm belief in social progress) and deconstructive or anti-foundational postmodern approaches into post-foundational radicalism as a third way. While Crook might appear as one of the founding figures of the term and paradigm of post-foundationalism, we note that almost 30 years after publication of Crook’s work, he has received little attention and been little referenced in subsequent scholarship revolving around political ontologies of post-foundationalism as well as post-Marxism. While Crook’s work is well-

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discussed in Australia, other theoretical engagements with post-foundationalism from the 1990s onwards hardly take note of Crook in their engagement with post-foundationalism. Although there are some dispersed, yet curious and interesting references to post-foundationalism,1 a coherent body of work around post-foundationalism arose only in the early 2000s with the significant contribution made by Vienna-based political theorist Oliver Marchart. About a decade after Crook’s intervention, Marchart developed his notion of post-foundational political thought. First elaborated in his PhD thesis (Marchart 2003), he published PostFoundational Political Thought (2007) and Thinking Antagonism (2018), as well as two German monographs on political difference (2010) and the impossible object of society (2013). All together, these writings orbit the idea of postfoundational political thinking. Similar to Crook, Marchart argues that foundationalism is paramount to theories that are grounded in undeniable principles, stable expectations, unequivocal narratives, and a strong belief in social progress. This is modernity’s faith: confidence in a more advanced society and brighter future, the persuasion that a better world is possible, desirable and reachable. Post-foundational social theory is not too far off such modernist spirit and thus “shares the same horizon with foundationalism” (Marchart 2007: 12). Such thinking believes in the possibility of social progress, even if it proposes a very different notion of progress, far from original causes or causality to achieve a particular, potentially exclusive type of progress or future. What is at stake is “an ontological weakening of the status of foundation without doing away with foundations entirely” (ibid. 14). Post-foundational thinking introduces a new paradigmatic direction, a “‘disruption’ of foundationalism from within” (ibid. 16), notably situated within traditions of postmodern and poststructuralist theory, not against them. Infused by French theory, yet determined to radicalize the latter, post-foundationalism wrestles with foundations and foundationalisms, and benefits from an intense engagement with, and internal subversion of, modern and postmodern theory.

1

For example, practical theology differentiates between diverging ways of coping with the Truth (Greer 2003); in comparative and international education studies, post-foundationalism is used to challenge “traditional fundamental principles in Western ideas of modernity, society and development” (https://postfoundational.weebly.com/what-i s-post-foundational.html).

Introduction

Marchart (ibid. 33) addresses the prefix ‘post’ of post-foundational as follows: “the prefix ‘post’ in post-foundationalism does not refer to the latest moment of a temporal sequence, but, by showing a distance from both foundationalism and anti-foundationalism.” The not-only-temporal aspect of the ‘post’ is thus a crucial feature in the decision not to abandon the conceptual figure of post-foundationalism. ‘Post’ does neither just mean ‘after’ nor ‘against.’ To be more precise, it means both but not only that and not in a singular way. An understanding of, for instance, postmodernism as simply a period after modernity is not helpful. The post of postmodernism indicates a strong relation to modernism; it declares a going through, a deep affinity and closeness to the latter. The most convincing interpretations of postmodernism locate postmodernity exactly in the core of modernity itself (cf. Luhmann 2006: 42; Marchart 2013: 32). Post-foundational theory has the same intention. Post-foundationalism not only interlinks the important conceptual elements of ‘foundationalism’ and ‘post’, but positions foundationalism after the ‘post’; the foundational replacing and specifying both the general ‘modern’ of postmodernity and the narrower term of ‘structural’ in poststructuralism.2 Ultimately, the post in Marchart’s post-foundational approach indicates another relation: its attachment to post-Marxism. Reminded of Crook’s forth criterion, post-foundational thinking is not least about values and moral judgement. Post-foundational political thinking therefore positions itself as a leftist social theory. Put briefly, the reference to post-Marxism is a commitment to thinking and acting in a Marxian tradition. Here, postfoundational theory follows Derrida and Laclau as well as Badiou and Žižek in their respective acknowledgements of Marxist analysis and its commitment against inequality, exclusion, famine, or economic oppression in the sense of a structural and radical critique of capitalist society. Post-foundationalism 2

Post-foundational and poststructuralist thinking share some references regarding the constructedness of socio-spatial realities. One possibility to (dis)connect poststructuralist and post-foundational theory is to position the latter as a variation of the former (i.e., post-foundationalism as successor of poststructuralism). The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism (Dillet et al. 2013: 508) summarizes that, recently, poststructuralist philosophy “appears to have lost its critical edge” and that poststructuralism has “been superseded by a range of positions that set themselves against, in part, the poststructuralist canon.” Here, post-foundationalism is regarded as an attempt to advance the poststructuralist agenda. Similarly, Paul Bowman (2013: 466) suggests postfoundationalism as “a less overburdened term than ‘poststructuralism’” which might be helpful to address legacies of modern and postmodern theory.

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emerges as an explicitly leftist theory, committed to Marxist theory and practice, but at the same time transcending the structuralist primacy of the class struggle.3 Post-foundational post-Marxism is a “Marxist rupture of Marxism” (Marchart 2013: 301), which works as Marxism, yet has gotten rid of a certain foundationalism with the help of left-Heideggerian thinking.

Heideggerian Differences Marchart (2007) builds the post-foundational moment on a ‘left-Heideggerianism’, as he calls it with reference to Dominique Janicaud (2015). From a leftist perspective, Heidegger is always a problematic reference, because he was an openly conservative and anti-Semitic thinker as well as an active supporter of the rise of the Nazi regime, and in many regards, his philosophy cannot be considered separately from his political standpoint. In radical geography and critical urban studies, the possibility of left-Heideggerianism is therefore partly rejected (cf. Waite 2008). However, Heidegger’s thinking plays a crucial role in leftist political theory, ranging from Lefebvre and Foucault to Derrida and Laclau (to name but a few). Similarly, in Marchart’s (2007: 18) approach, Heidegger is an indispensable building bloc, functioning “as one of the main ‘founders’ of post-foundationalism.” To conceptualize post-foundational thinking, it is therefore helpful to take a closer look at Heidegger’s world of thought. Here, we enter the realm of ontology. A key element of post-foundational thinking as left-Heideggerianism is Heidegger’s notion of the ontological difference. For Heidegger, ontology is the only possible and valid form of philosophy. While being (das Sein) is the ontological concern and matter of philosophical investigations, beings (das Seiende) refer to the ontic realm of any particular form of matter, anything that exists. As Heidegger (1988: 17) puts it:

3

Žižek is a special kind of post-Marxist as he abolishes the concept of ‘class struggle’ as socio-historical condition, but simultaneously remains faithful to the concept by turning the latter into an ontological impossibility. Žižek (2005: 293) argues that class struggle bars reality from grounding itself ‘as a whole’: “The consequent thinking through of this concept compels us to admit that there is no class struggle ‘in reality’: ‘class struggle’ designates the very antagonism that prevents the objective (social) reality from constituting itself as a self-enclosed whole.”

Introduction

We said that ontology is the science of being. But being is always the being of a being. Being is essentially different from a being, from beings…This distinction is not arbitrary; rather, it is the one by which the theme of ontology and thus of philosophy itself is first of all attained. It is a distinction which is first and foremost constitutive for ontology. We call it the ontological difference – the differentiation between being and beings. Ontological difference, in Heidegger’s view, positions the question of difference as the first and ultimate ground of philosophical thought. In this operation, the ground changes its ontological status from identity to difference. French theory from the 1960s onwards has been fascinated by Heidegger, and has drawn on his work extensively – first, with regards to the replacement of identity with difference, and second, in acknowledgement of a new way of thinking beyond the classical search for Truth. For Heidegger (2002: 47), the being of difference needs to be thought of as “difference as difference”, which means that difference is the result of a subtraction. Being minus beings equals, as the remaining rest of the subtraction, ontological difference. This is Heidegger’s abyssal ontological ground of things and thinking. With ‘political difference’, Marchart (2007) creates a post-foundational extension of ontological difference. Political difference transposes the distinction between ontological and ontic into the ontological realm of ‘the political’ and the ontic realm of ‘politics’. Political difference surfaces a political ontology of difference: politics, as in Realpolitik with its apparatuses, institutions, laws, regulations, prohibitions and routines; and ‘the political’ appealing to the wider, broader, larger realm of practices of protest, disruption, resistance, mobilization, claims-making, critique, in short, counter-hegemony. In Heideggerian terms, ‘politics’ is situated in the ontic realm of beings, meanwhile ‘the political’ resides in the ontological sphere of being. In such political difference, the complexity of Heidegger’s ontological difference becomes effective. Political difference is not a simple dichotomy, but rather unravels difference as difference, which means that politics and the political permanently interpenetrate. Marchart (ibid. 5) calls it “the ‘grounding question’ of post-foundational political thought”; the “founding difference” that prevents the social “from closure and from becoming identical with itself.” In sum, the shift from ontological difference to political difference transposes Heidegger’s ‘being’ to ‘the political.’ Difference as difference remains in action at all times, constantly modifying the character of both ontology and politics, henceforth laying bare the constantly contingent and conflictual nature of all political, social and

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historical events and identities. Recognition is given to the contingency of human history and social processes as one of the main efforts of post-foundational investment. The acknowledgment of contingency is situated in the attempt to try to understand and explain what is happening with, without and around us. At the same time, contingency is a crucial component for the construction and development of post-foundational theory, particularly, in its radical – or necessary – form. Radical contingency thus implies that “being neither impossible nor necessary is itself necessary for all identity” (ibid. 28). In sum, the claim that contingency is necessary serves not only to object to the possibility of a foundational final ground, but jumpstarts empirical and conceptual experiments with foundations, absences and grounds this book sets out to accomplish. Another feature of post-foundational thought – anchored in Heidegger’s theory and emerging from thinking the ontological difference – is the concept of the ground itself. In a lecture called Basic Concepts, given in Freiburg in 1941, Heidegger (1993: 53) openly relates the ontological question of being with the (im)possibility of thinking the ground: Being thus appears as the groundless, as something that continually gives way, offers no support, and denies every ground and basis. Being is the refusal of every expectation that it could serve as a ground. Being everywhere turns out to be the non-ground. The translation of Abgrund with “non-ground” is problematic. Notably, the German term Abgrund means abyss, not the lack or absence of a ground. Heidegger’s language game Grund/Ab-grund is difficult to translate into English, yet it would fall short to let being mutate into a non-ground – which would be an anti-foundational leap – because Heidegger turns being into abyss. Elsewhere, Heidegger (2012: 25) explicitly argues that “the grounding grounds as abyss.” This captures the post-foundational idea that – via acts of grounding – the ground does not disappear completely; the ground is still necessary but altered profoundly from an assumedly stable ground into an inscrutable abyss. Laclau (2014: 119) picks up on Heidegger’s trope of grounding and abyss as follows: The central category here is Abgrund – a ground that is, at the same time, an abyss. In the place of the ground there is an abyss; or, to be more precise, the abyss itself is the ground. To say that the abyss itself is the ground does not purely and simply mean the absence of a ground, which would be just

Introduction

an absence, but is rather to assert the presence of an absence. And this absence, being present, needs to be represented. A simple absence does not require any type of representation, but if the absence as such is present within the structure, it requires access to the field of representation. This representation, however, cannot be a direct one, because what is represented is an absence; so it can only be represented as a process of de-grounding. De-grounding, or ungrounding, as we refer to it in this book, points to representations of the abyss as a lacking ground (instead of a fundamental lack of a ground). It determines what Alain Badiou refers to via the differentiation between ‘nothing’ and ‘void’: while ‘nothing’ would mean the pure absence of anything, “the not-of-the-whole” (Badiou 2005: 56), the ‘void’ indicates the occurrence of something that cannot be counted, and thus appears as nothing, the presence of an absence or the ‘negation of negation’, to put it in Hegelian terms. Furthermore, Laclau (2014: 119) considers the process of de-grounding, which results from the recognition of present-absences, in reference to the term ‘post-foundationalism’: This de-grounding operation is not merely negative, for it has a positive side: given that there is no ultimate ground, neither is there ultimate fixation of meaning; but because this moment of non-fixation has to be represented, it opens the way to partial fixations – that is, to fixations showing the traces of the contingency penetrating them. They are the only means of discursively showing the abyss present in place of the ground. In other words, the distortion – partial fixation – is the only means of representing that which is constitutively non-representable. This – in words of Marchart – is the location of the distinction between ‘antifoundationalism’ and ‘post-foundationalism.’ ‘Anti-foundationalism’ would be the pure and simple absence of a ground, which could only be expressed through a proliferation of ontic identities. ‘Postfoundationalism’ means something different: the ground does not disappear, but is penetrated by a dimension of absence or contingency that renders impossible any reduction of the ontological to the ontic. Borrowing from Heidegger, the ground transforms into abyss and changes its state from presence to absence, or more precisely, to the presence of absence. In this transformation, the abyss somehow remains a ground, but simultaneously is different from a foundational or definitive ground. Certainly, the abyss as presence-absence cannot directly be (re)presented, hence, the abyss is articulated as de-grounding or ungrounding. This demonstrates the paradox

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of radical contingency: the impossibility (the ungroundability, so to speak) of grounding as ground and the necessity of grounding via ungrounding or degrounding. Again, the ungroundability of final ground does not suggest the impossibility of any grounds. On the contrary, the ungroundability of a final ground enables the possibility of instituting a variety of contingent grounds. Laclau and Mouffe (2001: 95–96) argue that one must not only “consider the openness of the social as the constitutive ground or ‘negative essence’ of the existing” but at the same time acknowledge “the diverse ‘social orders’ as precarious and ultimately failed attempts to domesticate the field of differences.” This is precisely what ‘the grounding grounds as abyss’ means: abolishing every final ground without abolishing the process of grounding as such. Whereas one single and absolute ground would block the polyphony of grounds, a post-foundational understanding of ground as abyss brings forth various ways of establishing “contingent foundations” (Butler 1992). In sum, Heidegger’s thinking fluctuates between a “fascist-foundational self-misconception and a post-foundational position” (Marchart 2013: 361). On the one hand, he was involved in the Nazi Grund-und-Boden doctrine and its deep bond with a mystically-charged ground. On the other hand, he transforms that ground by pulling the rug out from under that foundation, and reconfigures the ontological ground as abyss. In this regard, post-foundational thinking does not leave the “metaphysical terrain of grounding” (ibid. 364), but continuously works on its “political elaboration and redefinition.” Postfoundational thinking constitutes a political project of remembering and reactivating the paradox of the un-grounded abyss. The title of our book marks this ongoing paradox. Succinctly, it is the “realization of the groundlessness of any particular discourse, which has come to define the emerging post-foundationalist constellation” (Marchart 2007: 33). At last, post-foundational thinking unceasingly revolves around the necessary groundlessness of grounds, and the consequently contingent efforts of permanent [un]grounding.

Post-Foundational Propellants: Contingency and Conflict The conceptual bedrocks of post-foundational thinking are built upon the principle of radical contingency and conflict. This implies, first, that necessity is impossible; and that this very impossibility is necessary. However, contingency needs to be unpacked along the following lines: while the impossibilityof-foundation axiom belongs to the realm of the social – or what post-foun-

Introduction

dationalists call ‘politics’ – the impossibility-is-necessary axiom resides in the ontological realm, considered by post-foundational thinkers as the field of ‘the political.’ The second crucial dimension at play in post-foundational thinking is the necessity of conflict. This basic tenet of post-foundational theory assumes that conflicts, in many different forms, intensities, durations and places, are founding forces of political life. Contingency and conflict are directly related because things could always be different; there are always alternatives. As there are always alternatives, things, positions, or grounds of politics and space are necessarily contested: Which alternative view, measure, decision, policy etc. should be chosen? Will this decision gain traction or legitimacy in processes of political power and meaning, or which other one would? Via processes of negotiation for hegemonic power, positions of that power, eliciting seemingly valid grounds, become established (or not). In any case, however, the irreducible state of contingency causes conflict. Both forces of conflict and contingency influence and determine the course of history, as well as the emergence or disappearance of grounds. Post-foundationalism departs from the assumption that all that is empirically evident, experiential and tangible (everything that is) is articulated and permeated by both contingency and conflict. Briefly, we are living in a conflictual and contingent world, based on conflictual and contingent grounds. Marchart (2018: 171-172) argues: whatever comes to serve as a substitute for the absent ground will emerge from a political struggle. In the last instance, all these fraudulent grounds result from a political act of institution: no God without the hegemonic power of the church; no Reason without the struggle of bourgeois enlightenment; no blind Market forces without the forces of their blind ideologists; and no believe [sic] in the determining role of the human Genome without the life sciences being made the authoritative model of social explanation. Grounds emerge from hegemonic paradigm shifts. Contingency and conflict bring to the fore the shift in social theory that postfoundationalism sets in motion: prescribed notions of society or the social are not key drivers to articulate history, but contingency and conflict. In short, society emerges from contingency and conflict (not vice versa). Contingency and conflict are the propellants of post-foundationalism, which constitute society and its political and symbolical spaces, and, at the same time, contingency and conflict hinder society from ever being complete, whole, or full.

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The assertion of the omnipresent possibility of different positions evokes another phenomenon: positions can be irreconcilable, or are always, to some degree, not reconcilable. It is possible that position A and position B co-exist, although they contradict each other. This is one of the lessons of Immanuel Kant’s antinomies: two theses, both valid, but the one is not possible besides the other. These antinomies also open the backdoor to bring in the concept of negativity, highly relevant for post-foundational thought and its ontological registers. Negativity, as Ernesto Laclau (1990: 18) emphasizes, is a necessary part of every identity (and as we will see later, of every space, too). Every identity is based on the necessity of irreconcilability and lack. Negativity constitutes every social identity (as all identities are social). The post-foundational strategy cherishes “the principle of negativity to radicalize it and to unleash its ontological potential” (Marchart 2013: 276). Negativity is thus turned into an ontological principle of ‘the political’; it is a necessary component of all social events, prior to any articulation of history, society or space. Post-foundational analysis is always concerned with revealing the immanent negativity in and of politics and its subsequent occurrences. Its goal is to capture, address, lay bare and wrestle with the dimension of negativity in concrete conflicts. In order to shift from a “foundational to a political ontology” (Paipais 2017: 7), post-foundational theory understands ‘reality’ or ‘the world’ not as something stable and solid, but rather as something always receding, always emerging from a fundamental void or absence of grounds. Put differently, if post-foundationalists have one thing in common, it is their mutual insistence on the crucial importance of ontological negativity and conflict. In post-foundational terms, conflict is conceptualized within parameters of antagonism. Antagonism is the “ungroundable ‘ground’” (Marchart 2018: 47), a kind of inverted horizon, in relation to which every social and political foundation is built. Originally, antagonism was the Marxist term for the contradiction between the proletariat and the owning, bourgeois class, conquerable only through revolution. Political theorists situated in the field of post-Marxist thinking imported this concept and transformed it into the final, absent ground of thinking: “the Universal ‘as such’ is the site of an unbearable antagonism, self-contradiction, and (the multitude of) its particular species are ultimately nothing but so many attempts to obfuscate/reconcile/master this antagonism” (Žižek 2006: 34–35). Accordingly, antagonism captures the political ontology of post-foundational thinking in one word. However, antagonism is usually inherent in social and political identities, and needs to be (re)activated by post-foundational analysis and activism. The advantage of the

Introduction

‘antagonism-formula’ vis-à-vis other post-foundational conceptualizations of contingency as ‘event’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘hybridity’ or ‘undecidability’, according to Marchart (2013: 360), is not only the inherent link to the absence of the last ground, but also the interwovenness with conflict as mode of any social articulation.

Post-Foundational Spatial Thinking After digging into some of the foundations, grounds and abysses of postfoundational thinking, we now turn to the possibilities of a spatial account of post-foundationalism. Let us set out to imagine the contours of post-foundational geographies. So far, space maintains a crucial, albeit somewhat unclear and untheorized position within post-foundational thinking. Again, we take Heidegger’s ontological difference as our starting point. In his Freiburg lectures, Heidegger (1993: 41) introduces the distinction between being and beings through an interesting remark on space: This distinction between beings and being holds the differentia apart from one another, and this apartness is in it-self an extension and an expanse that we must recognize as the space of all spaces – so far as we may still use this name “space” at all here, which indeed means only a particular type of apartness. According to Heidegger, ontological difference is organized spatially. It opens up a certain space, or more precisely, the space between beings and being opens up the most elementary space of all, ‘the space of all spaces’, because it interrelates the two foundational coordinates of the ontological realm of being and the ontic realm of beings. However, Heidegger remains somewhat skeptical about his own spatial approach when he asks whether we can refer to the space of ontological difference as space at all. Heidegger’s hesitation against granting space such a foundational position (perhaps also being cautious to think about the ‘being of space’) is neither accidental nor unique. This is worth mentioning, particularly with regards to the historical context of his lecture, as Heidegger held it in Nazi Germany during World War II, a time when German expansionism was saturated with a deeply ideological notion of nationalistic space (cf. Roskamm 2011). The combination of being and space was very popular in Nazi planning ideology, and in geography, but also amongst philosophers and political theorists such as Heidegger.

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Another good example is Carl Schmitt, also a highly problematic thinker, who was equally involved in thinking ‘the political’. In his self-conception, Schmitt was not only a political theorist, but also a theoretician of space, Lebensraum and Raumordnung, spatial order. In a text from 1939, Schmitt states that space and ‘the political’ cannot be separated from each other. He explicitly places himself in line with Karl Haushofer’s geopolitics, which in turn creates a direct legacy with Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography (1923) and Anthropogeography (1891). Schmitt constructs an idea of Lebensraum as the mystical urge of the Nation, combining the desire for space with the craving for a Nation. The aim of theory would then be to find the “concept of a concrete spatial order” which would do justice to “our new concepts of state and people.” That could only be the “concept of the Reich” as a “greater spatial order dominated by certain ideological ideas and principles”, whose “guarantor and guardian is a people that is equal to this task” (Schmitt 1939: 86). At this point, the political idea for Central and Eastern Europe appears, in which “many peoples and ethnic groups live, but – apart from the Jews – not foreign to each other” (ibid. 64). From this, Schmitt continues, arises the “inevitability for future spatial planning.” Surprisingly (or not), Heidegger was not very interested in thinking Lebensraum. In his Black Notebooks, written during WWII, he mentions: “The basic error: that a people might create for itself a ‘life’-space through ‘spaces’” (Heidegger 2017a: 102). Heidegger clearly distances himself from the geographical Nazi doctrine.4 In a different paragraph, Heidegger’s (2017b: 218) position becomes even more clear, noting: “What does it then signify if for a people ‘geography’ steps into the place of thoughtful questioning (i.e., into the place of philosophy)?” Heidegger was notably not a geographer, hence, his thinking of ontological difference – including the naming of this difference as the ‘space of all spaces’ – maintains distance to ideological narratives of geographical space, dominant at that time. Particularly for this reason, Heidegger’s remark on ontological difference as the ‘space of all spaces’ is worthwhile in post-foundational geographic reflections because it makes allowance to treat space as difference. Furthermore, this difference-oriented thinking enables or mobilizes a concept of space that goes beyond any notion of space as a container or purely physical space. Space, for Heidegger, does not exist in itself, but only within the interplay of being and beings, which also means stripping away every essentialist connotation or 4

Of course, such skepticism about space does in no way excuse Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi regime nor his anti-Semitic thoughts, particularly in the Black Notebooks.

Introduction

expectation towards space. Space indeed turns out as relational rather than physical concept, the former appearing as always-already situated between two poles of ‘beings’ and ‘being’, or even between ‘politics’ and ‘the political.’ But what exactly is the nature of this space? As we will elaborate in the following, one of the conceptual anchoring points of post-foundational spatial thinking is to leave this question strategically open. When studying the works of post-foundational thinkers such as Badiou, Laclau, Mouffe, Rancière or Žižek, one will sooner or later stumble across the rather obvious fact that they all make use of spatial metaphors to situate their theoretical enterprises. Clive Barnett (2017: 176) proposes that there is an “explicit geographical turn in recent political theory.” We argue that post-foundationalism is one of the cornerstones of this turn, because it considers political theory in geographical terms. When Laclau (1990: 18), for instance, argues that every discourse, identity, system or society refers to a “radical outside” that is responsible for both providing meaning to what is inside and for intervening and disturbing this inside, one can reasonably state that there is a geographical consciousness at work here (cf. Roskamm 2015). In addition, when Claude Lefort (1988: 17) argues that “the revolutionary and unprecedented feature of democracy” is that democracy is contingently founded on an “empty place” of power, geography is also lurking in this assumption. Following Badiou (2005: 432), one of the main tasks of political theory (and practice) is “the localization of the void” as a way of localizing the unlocalizable point at the very heart of a spatial and equally political situation (cf. Pohl 2021). Against this background, it is reasonable to ask: “Where is the political?” (Swyngedouw 2014, our emphasis), because this implies that ‘the political’, and with it, political theory, is neither something that simply ‘exists’ nor something that ‘does not exist’, but rather something that takes place or does not take place. As Joronen and Häkli (2017: 572) put it: “Politics takes place in relation to the place where its state of affairs is ontologically settled.” One could say that the post-foundational theoretical project is therefore driven by the desire to localize the abyss as a way of [un]grounding every grounding operation, to situate the conflictual and contingent features of any abyss. Drawing this to a close, we dare say that post-foundational theory functions, more or less directly, in spatial terms. However, critics of post-foundationalism have called into question whether the spaces of post-foundational thinking are to be taken seriously or whether space is merely treated as metaphor or allegory. When Rancière (1999: 30), for instance, argues that the true political moment “manifest[s] in

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a series of actions that reconfigure the space where parties, parts, or lack of parts have been defined”, he seems to not give a clear answer as to whether he talks about a literal space or not. And when Hannah Arendt (1998: 199) relates the political domain to a “space of appearance” as the moment when people come “together in the manner of speech and action”, she also does not seem to clarify whether this space really appears as space (i.e., result of political struggle) or whether it is solely meant in metaphorical terms. While there might be enough substance to criticize the use of spatial vocabulary in post-foundational thinking, Mustafa Dikeç (2012: 670) highlights the blind spots of such a reading of space as merely metaphorical: The critiques of the use of space ‘merely as metaphor’ are all fine, but they do not help us in uncovering first, why these thinkers are using the metaphors in the ways they do, second, what kind of conceptual job space does for them. We agree with Dikeç’s reading and argue that there is still a lot of work to be done to carefully study the spatial implications of post-foundational theory in particular, and maybe even political theory more generally. This edited volume might provoke a series of questions, yet it will not assume to answer them all. Rather, we aim to address them as starting points for further critical investigation. So, what follows from post-foundational assumptions (about) space? In what ways can post-foundational thinking influence and potentially advance geographic thought? Respectively, how can a more spatially conscious approach advance post-foundational political theory and praxis? Which thinkers are representative of a post-foundational thinking of space? What role does space play with regards to central postfoundational categories such as negativity, contingency or conflict? How can post-foundational approaches inspire empirical analysis and political action with(in) space? These approximations are necessarily contingent, thus not whole or necessarily satisfactory answers, but dance around the abyss of an [un]groundable notion of space. In an early attempt to call for a post-foundational geography, Matthew Sparke (2005: xii) stated that many post-foundational theories would dismiss what he calls the “inherently unfinished and multilayered ‘graphing of the geo’” in favor of taking into account how geographical processes of destabilization, de-centering, and dissemination transform spatial figurations such as the nation state. Careful not to lapse into such an anti-foundational approach, a post-foundational geography should ‘think the outside in’ (Strathausen 2009), which means to insist that processes of destabilization,

Introduction

de-centering, and dissemination – processes of ungrounding, in our terms – never merely exist in and of themselves, for themselves, but are alwaysalready contaminated and co-constituted by processes of grounding. A properly post-foundational reading of geography thus takes the difference between the ground and abyss seriously. The bracket [] captures this irreducible link between the searches for grounds and its concurrent impossibilities, its attempts to ground spaces on the one hand, and its struggles to unground spaces on the other. In some way, we do understand the ‘ground’, quite literally, as that matter which should exist under our feet, a precondition for attaining somehow stable positions or postures, a safe point of departure from which we can start intellectual adventures and activities. Every building, every construct, every edifice has a ground or base. Accordingly, grounding means to explain, order, defend and legitimize a particular or ontic spatial setting. Grounding is motivated by reaching fixation, by establishing sedimentations of power and place. By adding [un] to the trope of grounding, we urge readers, scholars, students, practitioners of post-foundationalism to also look to the other side(s) of stabilizations, sedimentations, grounds. With the trope of [un]grounding, we are trying to push the allegorical use of spatial metaphors further and aim to substantiate those terms with pointing to the presence of absences, ma(r)king the void or staring into the abyss. The apposition of [un] not only challenges the binary or clear-cut opposition between grounding and ungrounding (because a radical ungrounding would only result in another anti-foundationalism). It also opens the view for what happens in the cracks, crumples and folds between grounding and ungrounding, in a permanent limbo of [un]grounding. It forges a bridge between sedimentation and dislocation, between disorder and order, absence and presence. [Un]grounding directs us towards the gaps and abysses of post-foundational spatial thought which might make us experience the not-so-far distance, or absent presence of both stability and chaos, system and freedom, present and future.

Limitations and Alliances Post-foundational thinking has been repeatedly criticized for its strong emphasis on the theoretical and philosophical implications of political theory while neglecting the empirical or more practical realms of political action (cf. McNay 2014). While post-foundationalism appears as an analytically po-

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tent theory to critique the political foundations of society, this critique begs the question of why human geographers as well as other spatial scholars such as urban sociologists, urban planners, architects, designers, anthropologists would need the framework of post-foundationalism. Equally important, why should urban activists, fighting for access to public spaces, racial, environmental and gender-related justice, even consider post-foundationalism in their everyday struggles with neoliberal urban governance, exclusionary housing policies, illegitimate carding of Black people, or the criminalization of sex work and graffiti? To put it in the most inconvenient, but most relevant question raised in academia: why should they care about post-foundationalism? To address these questions, it is again crucial to insist that the whole wager of post-foundational thinking lies in its intersecting spheres of political ontology: the ontological realm of the political is not separate from the ontic realm of political practice, because both of these configurations only exist as difference. Yet, one cannot exist without the other. Put differently, postfoundationalism is entrenched in the crumbling certainties about realities, necessities or objectivity, and by far confronts the absence of any last ground beyond the ‘ivory tower’, to pull out this exhausted metaphor. Instead, postfoundationalism has inevitably practical, and thus political, implications, as Marchart (2018: 29) insists: Hence, practical stakes are involved in a post-foundational ontology of the political. At stake is the very way in which the social world is imagined – practically as much as theoretically. Do we consider our world to be built on irrevocable principles, necessary functional processes, rational calculations of interest, prophetic tasks, holy books, anthropological constants, genetic predispositions, economic laws – or, do we think of our world as being built on contingent political acts of institution, which must always be renewed, can be constantly questioned and are therefore essentially contested? Evidently, our answer will have practical implications. Post-foundational thinking can inform political action, and vice versa. Put briefly, in a post-foundational mindset, political actions, or activisms, are conscious of their own precarious legitimations, their contingent rationale and their potential to dismantle, disarticulate and displace hegemony. Amidst this interrelated alliance between political theory and political praxis, we are also aware of some of the limitations of this edited volume. However, we are committed to and invested in initializing further conversations about post-foundational coalitions across disciplines, continents and

Introduction

languages, which might be supported with the help of the present volume, and would hopefully culminate in future research and political collaborations. One of the aims of this volume is to strengthen the interdisciplinary dialogue between different approaches drawing on post-foundational thought. Human geography is a great host for such an endeavor because human geography – as we conceive of it – is a discipline that is self-reflexive (or ironic, as Crook might have put it) about its own precarious foundations. Within recent debates, human geography has proven to be a relatively open discipline, which gains strength from incorporating knowledge from other disciplines. Studying human geography, and being a human geographer today, generally implies to study, at least in parts, other disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, architecture, etc. Human geography today is in itself an interdisciplinary creature, which does not work without figures such as Marx, Lefebvre, Deleuze or Latour, even though it might also not exclusively work with only them. In light of this [un]grounded understanding of contemporary human geography, we hope to initialize further conversations with scholars from disciplinary fields such as gender studies and queer theory, border studies, performance and theatre studies, critical heritage and museum studies, ruin studies, social movement research and many other academic discourses that engage with the critical making and unmaking of places. With this, we strive to increase the scope and leverage of post-foundationalism across and within spatial thought, and hope to reinforce the interdisciplinary foundations of post-foundational geographies. In addition, this volume seeks to encourage alliance-building between well-established and early-career or emerging scholars interested in postfoundational thought. While many of the thinkers discussed in this book are well-known and influential figures in political and social theory, the range of authors in this volume unpacks a variety of perspectives and positionalities that includes full professors as well as PhD candidates. Especially by giving voice to a next generation of post-foundational scholars and practitioners, we have been motivated to experiment with and potentially radicalize the theoretical tenets of post-foundationalism itself. While we have aimed to shed light on post-foundational geographies with a diverse range of perspectives, we acknowledge one of the most glaring limitations of this volume, namely the lack of representation of female (i.e., including many gender representations of femininity and womanhood) theorists, both as writing authors and thinkers to be discussed. It does not take much to identify that the intellec-

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tual lineage of post-foundationalism relies for the most part – but maybe only until this point – on the intellectual production of white, cis-gendered, highly educated males. The difficult intellectual baggage of post-foundationalism itself is that, from its early origins, it has mostly been a men’s club. As this volume somewhat reproduces, and in the worst case, perpetuates this overrepresentation of cis, male-identified authors (and editors) who discuss ten male, but only three female post-foundational theorists, we acknowledge that this volume has provided only a small contribution to diversifying post-foundationalism as political theory and practice which challenges or ungrounds this form of exclusive knowledge production. Lastly, this book presents, and again potentially re-inscribes, a rather Western-centric epistemology of post-foundationalism. As a school of thought mainly established by continental European thinkers, post-foundationalism might (implicitly) reproduce Eurocentrism. While some chapters focus on spatial experiences, perspectives and conceptualizations from the global South (cf. Saleh and Landau in this volume), and others draw our attention to Indigenous knowledge as emergences of a subaltern hinged on post-foundational concepts (cf. Burnham in this volume), we are committed to unground future iterations of the [un]grounding project beyond its own intellectual roots (e.g., Purakayastha 2014). In other words, while we believe it is important to (re)position the foundations of post-foundationalism, the future development, enactment and theorization of post-foundational concepts can only flourish if we engage with and learn from non-Western epistemologies and ontologies. It will be necessary to push and squeeze the boundaries of post-foundationalism to incorporate queer-feminist and post-colonial approaches, including positions and theoretical perspectives from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and ALANA (African, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Native American) scholars and activists to discover novel ways of understanding whether, how and where notions of contingency and conflict play out in situated processes of identity-formation and place-making. While post-foundationalism is committed to an anti-essentialist stance, post-foundational alliance-building also needs to consider identity makers such as gender, class, age, mother tongue, bodily ability or sexual orientation to grasp contingent and conflictual ways to inhabit this [un]grounded world. Ultimately, the future of post-foundational political theory and practice might only be possible when we recognize scholars and activists interconnected in recognition of

Introduction

contingency and conflict not as problematic or pathological, but as crucial drivers for political change.

Dramaturgy of the Book The first section, Theoretical (Re)Positionings, investigates the potential to increase the scope of post-foundational theory through the general field of knowledge engaging with spatial and geographical matters. The main aim of this section is to demonstrate how a spatial lens on post-foundational thinking applies to the overall agenda of post-foundational theory. The wager of this section is twofold: on the one hand, it seeks to demonstrate that there are spatial considerations underlying the works of thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Lacan, Ernesto Laclau or Jacques Rancière that often remain neglected when the latter are read by (and as) political theorists. On the other hand, this section calls for a re-reading of spatial theorists to investigate the implicit post-foundational lessons lurking within human geography. Through the works of JK Gibson-Graham and Henri Lefebvre, the section addresses two prominent figures that have influenced human geography in recent decades, but who have not yet been read as post-foundational thinkers. In The World and the Real: Space and the Political After Lacan, Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw provide an introductory overview on some of the basic concepts of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Based on the assumption that ‘left-Heideggerianism’ is not the only starting point from which postfoundationalism can be turned into a consistent approach, but that the ‘Lacanian left’ offers an equally fruitful point of departure, Pohl and Swyngedouw retrace the roots of Lacanian political theory. Investigating the Lacanian distinction between ‘the world’ as the realm of the socio-symbolic order and ‘the Real’ as the realm repressed by this order, they develop a spatial approach that aims to address how Lacanian theory contributes to post-foundational political as well as spatial thinking. Jens Kaae Fisker’s chapter Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. GibsonGraham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity, Or, Ungrounding the Ground Itself approaches JK Gibson-Graham, the feminist Marxist geographer persona consisting of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, as post-foundational (spatial) theorists. Fisker presents Gibson-Graham’s ‘space of pregnant negativity’ as a notion of (spatial) lack, foregrounds negative ‘place’ as opposed to ‘space’ as a means to disrupt absolutistic conceptions of space and demonstrates

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that negativity impregnates place with an absence or lack, which ungrounds ungroundable grounds. In On Shaky Ground: Thinking Lefebvre, Nikolai Roskamm proposes a reading of Henri Lefebvre’s social theory as thoroughly saturated by post-foundationalism. Lefebvre’s considerations, this is Roskamm’s suggestion, offer an elaborated post-foundational approach that is crucial for his later work on the right to the city, the production of space or planetary urbanization. To revisit some essentials of Lefebvre’s social theory and to uncover its postfoundational priming are interventions firmly invested in the [un]grounding project. To venture into some of the crucial passages of Lefebvre’s early writings of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is to (re)visit the ground (i.e., Lefebvre’s social theory) of the ground (i.e., Lefebvre’s urban theory) of critical urban studies. Oliver Marchart’s Institution and Dislocation: Philosophical Roots of Laclau’s Discourse Theory of Space and Antagonism, is a reprint of article in Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory (2014). Marchart examines the main philosophical sources and the spatial underpinnings of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of space and antagonism and its concepts of sedimentation, reactivation and dislocation. Borrowing from Husserl’s phenomenology and critique of objectivism, Marchart reviews Laclau’s differentiation between time and space and the limits of spatialization. Moreover, Marchart explores some of the misunderstandings of earlier debates between critical geography and post-foundational or post-Marxist discourse theory, suggesting time and space as necessarily intertwined and articulated from negativity. In his chapter Badiou as a Post-Foundationalist, Matthew G. Hannah critically evaluates Marchart’s reading of French philosopher Alain Badiou, arguing that there is more post-foundationalism in Badiou than Marchart, or even Badiou himself, would admit. Engaging with Badiou’s later work Logics of Worlds, which had not yet been discussed in post-foundational terms, Hannah highlights the wider potential use of Badiou for geographical analysis by pointing out how Badiou’s engagement with an autumn scene in the French countryside outweighs Marchart’s assumption that Badiou would only be interested rare and exceptional events and would not have anything to say about everyday landscapes. In Spacing Rancière’s Politics, Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson introduce Jacques Rancière as a post-foundational geographer by revisiting his conception of la police, embodied in the complex of the police, subdued to an order of counting, and la politique as deviation from normalized orders, or leveraging

Introduction

a logic of (mis)counting, which possibly creates new formations of dissensus. The authors shed light on the spatial implications of ‘politics’ through the police order, yet show how politics also exceeds the stage of police. By developing Rancière’s notion of political community as a result of (mis)counting and inclusion, Davidson and Iveson ultimately propose Rancière’s as a disruptive spatial and political thinker, a post-foundationalist par excellence, and provide a justice-oriented lens to study urban inequalities and protest. The second part of this volume, [Un]Grounding Geographies, tackles questions of post-foundational concepts and vocabularies in geographic knowledge as well as post-foundational practices of place-making, place-taking, and other forms of spatial intervention to advance the development of postfoundational spatial terminology. Drawing on empirical case studies from places such as Canada and India as well as theoretical engagements with geographic concepts, this section attempts to both ground and unground settled notions of space. By drawing attention to further theorists that have been dealing with ontological negativity and the politics of space, this section further advances the agenda of [un]grounding to de-essentialize notions of space. Instead, the individual chapters advance the post-foundational project by sharpening the meaning of relational terms such as public space, place, scale, market and the unconscious as entrenched by conflict and absence. In [Un]Grounding Agonistic Public Space: Approaching Mouffe’s Spatial Theory via Museums, Friederike Landau critically re-reads Chantal Mouffe’s notion of ‘agonistic public space.’ By taking a look at the Conflictorium – Museum of Conflict in Ahmedabad, India, as one such potentially agonistic public space, in which conflicts are (re)presented, negotiated, sensed, Landau argues that agonistic public spaces are articulated from radical absence into precarious constitutive outsides (and insides). Moreover, Landau highlights that agonistic public spaces are spatialized by, for and with temporary and contingent publics in preliminary attempts at [un]grounding conflicts in space. Always Geographize! Fredric Jameson and Political Space by Clint Burnham engages with political theorist Fredric Jameson and discusses the interrelated tensions between a geographic unconscious, cognitive mapping and Indigenous knowledge at the example of Survivors of the oppressive system of residential schools in Canada, aiming to reeducate Indigenous children. Burnham proposes the geographic unconscious as a lens to understand capitalism alongside colonialism lingering in ongoing repression of Canada’s settlercolonial present. Read as acts of ungrounding, residential school Survivors’

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reappropriations of hegemonic notions of space replace the former with acts of decolonial cognitive mapping. In their chapter The Most Sublime Geographer: Žižek with Place, Distance, and Scale, Lucas Pohl and Paul Kingsbury engage with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Based on the premise that spatial thinking is key to Žižek’s project, Pohl and Kingsbury highlight how Žižek seriously engages the spatial entanglements of the political, cultural, social and emotional realm, and illustrate how his works draw on and contribute to geographic understandings of place, distance and scale. While political theorists have criticized Žižek for developing an a-spatial theory of the political, Pohl and Kingsbury end up highlighting that Žižek’s notion of the political ultimately leads towards a post-foundational approach of space. Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure: Theory Triangulation between Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis and Relational Sociology by Tomas Marttila takes a relational sociological perspective to discuss the being of social spaces, and markets more concretely. Marttila proceeds via theory triangulation of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), Social Network Analysis (SNA) and post-foundational discourse analysis (PDA) to illustrate these approaches’ potentials and shortcomings for a radical conception of ‘the market.’ Marttila proposes a relational regime approach to social, cultural and economic networks and markets, which articulate multi-modal structures resulting from hegemonic discourses that encompass material, symbolic and social elements. The third part of the volume, Post-Foundationalism in the City, grounds post-foundational thinking in contested urban politics and spaces. In recent years, the city, or more precisely, the realm of the urban, has already played a crucial role in relating post-foundational thinking and spatial theory (cf. Dikeç/Swyngedouw 2017; Landau 2019; Pernegger 2020; Roskamm 2017; Swyngedouw 2007; 2009; 2018). No other spatial setting has been more prominently referred to and discussed in critical human geography, urban studies, and planning theory than ‘the city’, while the recent announcement that we live in an age of ever-expanding urbanization, coined as ‘planetary urbanization’ (Brenner/Schmid 2012; Brenner 2018), has recently re-ignited scholarly controversy about what ‘the city’ is (cf. Ruddick et al. 2017; Oswin 2018). While the city can therefore be understood as a suitable arena for exploring the meaning of [un]grounding, the chapters collected in this section further investigate how urban practices of protest and gathering [un]ground a notion of the city as a space that interrelates processes of constructing

Introduction

order, orientation and normative rule (i.e., grounding) and processes of articulating disorder, disruption and rage (i.e., ungrounding). In (Non)Building Alliances: Approaching Urban Politics through Siegfried Kracauer’s Concept of Nonsolution, Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik depart from Red Vienna’s (1919-1934) radical democratic implications on social housing to reflect on post-foundational urbanism and architectural praxis. They retrieve the political potency of cultural theorist and film critic Siegfried Kracauer by engaging with his term ‘nonsolution’, which presents neither a solution nor not a solution. Kracauer assists Heindl and Robnik in outlining their greater concerns with the problematic nature of planners’ or architects’ ‘solutions’, which are never as clear-cut or unequivocal as they may be presented. Anneleen Kenis and Matthias Lievens discuss the strange object and complex spatial imaginary of air and air pollution in their chapter Politicizing Air: On the Political Effects of Spatial Imagination. They show that the politicization of air is a crucially spatial phenomenon by emphasizing how the distribution of pollution ‘here’ and ‘there’ brings everyday pollution close(r) to home. To conceptualize the localization of global climate struggles in people’s everyday life, Kenis and Lievens draw on recent anti-pollution activism in London. Encouraging us to look beyond rather abstract discourse-theoretical conceptualizations of antagonism, Kenis and Lievens propose Jean-Paul Sartre’s praxis-oriented understanding of political action to detect the concrete distributions and locations of us and them, here and there to understand processes of politicization. In Materialization of Antidiscipline: Small-Scale Post-Foundationalism Using Michel de Certeau’s Clash of Strategies and Tactics, Sören Groth transports concerns for absence, contingency and conflict into the field of critical infrastructure studies. Drawing on an example of agonistic place-making in Frankfurt, Germany, Groth exemplifies what post-foundational takings to the street can look like. Groth grounds practices of everyday mobility, including acts of walking and riding public transport, in the conflict-oriented framework of post-foundationalism. By putting to work de Certeau’s framing of tactics and strategies, Groth proposes the latter as both conceptual and practical tools to advance a post-foundational notion of urban space. How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilities for Spatial Alternatives? by Mohamed Saleh draws on empirical fieldwork collected in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, to develop a post-foundational notion of the term ‘interface’. In his quest to carve out a hopeful approach to urban power and protest, Saleh argues that a lopsided idea of hope about the present possibilities for

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radical urban change has inhibited more radical approaches to urban politics saturated with hope. By looking at relations of proximity and distance, hope and discouragement, Saleh develops a more political, maybe even post-foundational approach to hope, which might help us better understand the messy mo(ve)ments of ‘the political’ in everyday life. In A Post-Foundational Conception of Politics and Space: Henri Lefebvre and Jacques Rancière revisited in Resisting Athens, Daniel Mullis sheds light on the anti-austerity protests in Athens, Greece. Mullis focuses on post-foundational politics as a term for concrete social action and space in the tradition of radical geographic thought. Drawing on writings by Rancière and Lefebvre, Mullis argues that politics and the production of space are deeply interwoven processes. According to him, conflict between social orders is always a conflict between different modes of producing space and a struggle for the right to do so. From his qualitative fieldwork in resisting Athens, Mullis concludes that the politics of space occur in a two-fold way: namely, via the politicization through space and the political production of space. After having provided a brief introduction of what is awaiting the readers of this volume, we hope that this book will start conversations of many kinds and in many places. At last, we hope to tickle the reading subject into a mode of political thinking and practice to advance an understanding that politics is actually all around.

References Arendt, Hannah (1998): The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Badiou, Alain (2005): Being and Event, London: Continuum. Barnett, Clive (2017): The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory, Athens: University of Georgia Press. Bowman, Paul (2013): “The Receptions of Poststructuralism.” In: Dillet. Benoît/MacKenzie, Iain/Porter, Robert (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 445470. Brenner, Neil (2018): “Debating planetary urbanization: For an engaged pluralism.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36/3, pp. 570-590.

Introduction

Brenner, Neil/Schmid, Christian (2012): “Planetary urbanization. In: Gandy, Matthew (ed.), Urban Constellations, Berlin: Jovis, pp. 10-13. Butler, Judith (1992): “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism’.” In: Butler, Judith/Scott, Joan Wallach (eds.), Feminists Theorize the Political, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 3-21. Crook, Stephen (1991): Modernist Radicalism and its Aftermath: Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Radical Social Theory, London and New York: Routledge. Dikeç, Mustafa (2012): “Space as a mode of political thinking.” In: Geoforum 43/4, pp. 669-676. Dikeç, Mustafa/Swyngedouw, Erik (2017): “Theorizing The Politicizing City.” In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41/1, pp. 1-18. Dillet, Benoît/MacKenzie, Iain/Porter, Robert (2013): “Conclusion: Poststructuralism Today?” In: Benoît Dillet/MacKenzie, Iain/Porter, Robert (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 507-526. Döring, Jörg/Thielmann, Tristan (2008): Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, Bielefeld: transcript. Greer, Robert C. (2003): Mapping Postmodernism: A Survey of Christian options, InterVarsity Press. Heidegger, Martin (1988): The Basic Problems Of Phenomenology, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin (1993): Basic Concepts, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin (2002): Identity and Difference, New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin (2012): Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin (2017a): Ponderings XII-XV: Black Notebooks 1939-1941, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin (2017b): Ponderings VII-XI: Black Notebooks 1938-1939, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Janicaud, Dominique (2015): Heidegger in France, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Joronen, Mikko/Häkli, Jouni (2017): “Politicizing Ontology.” In: Progress in Human Geography 41/5, pp. 561-579. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London and New York: Verso.

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Laclau, Ernesto (2014): The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, London and New York: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (2001): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Landau, Friederike (2019): Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City: On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics, London and New York: Routledge. Lefort, Claude (1988): Democracy and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Luhmann, Niklas (2006): Beobachtungen der Moderne, Wiesbaden: VSVerlag. Marchart, Oliver (2003): Politics and the Political: An inquiry into PostFoundational Political Thought. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Essex. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marchart, Oliver (2010): Die politische Differenz. Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2018): Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology After Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McNay, Lois (2014): The Misguided Search for the Political, Cambridge: Polity Press. Oswin, Natalie (2018): “Planetary urbanization: A view from outside.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36/3, pp. 540-546. Paipais, Vassilios (2017): Political Ontology and International Political Thought: Voiding a Pluralist World. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Pernegger, Li (2020): The Agonistic City? State-society Strife in Johannesburg. Zed Books. Pohl, Lucas (2021): “Localizing the Void: From Material to Immaterial Materialism.” In: Kingsbury, Paul/Secor, Anna J. (eds.), A Place More Void, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Purakayastha, Anindya Sekhar (2014): ”Postcolonial Agonistic Demo-crazy: Artivism and Mestiza Pluralism as the Dissensual Politics of the Governed.” In: Parallax 20/2, pp. 49-60.

Introduction

Rancière, Jacques (1999): Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Ratzel, Friedrich (1891): Anthropogeographie. Teil 2: Die geographische Verbreitung des Menschen, Stuttgart: Verlag von J. Engelhorn. Ratzel, Friedrich (1923): Politische Geographie. Dritte Auflage, München und Berlin: R. Oldenburg. Roskamm, Nikolai (2011): Dichte: Eine transdisziplinäre Dekonstruktion, Bielefeld: transcript. Roskamm, Nikolai (2015): “On the other side of ‘agonism’: ‘The enemy,’ the ‘outside,’ and the role of antagonism.” In: Planning Theory 14/4, pp. 384403. Roskamm, Nikolai (2017): Die unbesetzte Stadt: Postfundamentalistisches Denken und das urbanistische Feld, Basel: Birkhäuser. Ruddick, Sue/Peake, Linda/Tanyildiz, Gökbörü S./Patrick, Darren (2017): “Planetary urbanization: An urban theory for our time?” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36/3, pp. 387-404. Schmitt, Carl (1939): Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte, Berlin-Wien: Deutscher Rechtsverlag. Soja, Edward (1989): Postmodern Geographies, New York and London: Verso. Sparke, Matthew (2005): In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation-State, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Strathausen, Carsten (2009): “Introduction: Thinking Outside In.” In: Strathausen, Carsten (ed.), A Leftist Ontology: Beyond Relativism and Identity Politics, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. xix-xlvi. Swyngedouw, Erik (2007): “The Post-Political City.” In: BAVO (ed.), Urban Politics Now: Re-imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, pp. 58-76. Swyngedouw, Erik (2009): “The Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: In Search of a Democratic Politics of Environmental Production.” In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33/3, pp. 601-620. Swyngedouw, Erik (2014): “Where is the Political? Insurgent Mobilisations and the Incipient ‘Return of the Political.’” In: Space and Polity 18/2, pp. 122136. Swyngedouw, Erik (2018): Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a PostPolitical Environment, Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Waite, Geoffrey (2008): “Lefebvre without Heidegger: ‘Left-Heideggerianism’ qua contradictio in adiecto.” In: Goonewardena, Kanishka/Kipfer, Stefan/Milgrom, Richard/Schmid, Christian (eds.), Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 94-114. Warf, Barney/Arias, Santa (eds.) (2009): The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge. Žižek, Slavoj (2005): Interrogating the Real, London: Continuum. Žižek, Slavoj (2006): The Parallax View, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Theoretical (Re)Positionings

The World and the Real: Space and the Political after Lacan Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw

Don’t expect anything more subversive in my discourse than that I do not claim to have a solution. (Lacan 2007: 70)

Lacan and the Ontological Turn The irreducible difference between la politique (politics) and le politique (the political) is central to post-foundational thought (Marchart 2007; cf. Swyngedouw 2014). For post-foundational thinkers, ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ signify radically different and non-symmetrical instances of political life. Politics refers to the contingent and always incomplete attempt to ground a particular set of power relations and particular forms of social organization on an ultimately absent foundation. It is through politics that society comes into ‘being’, gains a certain coherence, takes a functional form, distributes a sociospatial order of people, things, and activities, held together through particular modes of institutionalization, representation and symbolization of the social order, and routinized or ritualized practices of encounter and relating (Swyngedouw 2011). The political, however, is nothing but the name for the empty core of politics. The political arises because of the absent ground of the social. In other words, it is based on the fact that there ‘is’ no ontological foundation (such as ethnicity, nationality, class, religion, or whatever) that grounds the social, and on which a political community or ‘people’ can be founded. This ineradicable presence of absence, of non-ground, un-ground, continually undermines politics and the social order constructed upon it, always holding open the possibility of radical change (albeit not always in progressive ways). To put it simply, the political is the signifier of an indelible emptiness at the core of any social order. While politics stands for the fullness/wholeness of

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society with everyone and everything (ac)counted (for), the political stands for the utterly contingent and exclusive basis upon which this (ac)counting is done.1 In his extensive attempt of grounding post-foundational thought, Oliver Marchart (2007) argues that the theoretical origin of post-foundationalism can be traced back to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In particular Heidegger’s difference between the ontic realm of particular beings and the ontological realm of being ‘as such’ constitutes, for Marchart, the ‘grounding question’ that marks every post-foundational approach. It is only through Heidegger’s ‘ontological difference’ that ‘political difference’ holds. Just as for Heidegger, ontology belongs to a realm of being that exceeds its ontic beingthere in the world, the political is not limited to the ordinary realm of politics. What is most crucial, however, about the way Heidegger inflects postfoundational thinking is that he not only allows post-foundational thinkers to differentiate between ‘ontic politics’ and the ‘ontology of the political’, but also to understand the specific logic of this difference. To avoid any “layer-cake interpretation” (Barnett 2017: 101) of the difference between politics and the political that would transform the ontology of the political into a level that is both prior to and autonomous from the ontic layer of everyday politics, Marchart emphasizes that the two do not exist apart from each other but only as difference. We cannot think the ontology of the political without engaging with the ontic realm of politics (and vice versa), because both are mutually intertwined and dependent on each other, even though they are not reducible to each other. Against this background, Marchart (2018: 13–14) states “that in the recent ontological turn in political thought the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ are silently modelled upon the later Heidegger’s notion of an onticoontological difference.” While we do not question the importance of Heidegger for every political theory that openly addresses the need for a political ontology, we argue that it is Jacques Lacan who allows us to reach the truly radical implications of post-foundational political thought. Lacanian psychoanalysis is more than a

1

Counting is, in fact, the most crucial operation through which ‘the state’ (politics) is organized, as Alain Badiou (2005: 99) emphasizes: “Once counted as one in a situation, a multiple finds itself presented therein. If it is also counted as one by the metastructure, or state of the situation, then it is appropriate to say that it is represented.” Only those, who are counted are represented in a situation.

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side effect in contemporary political theory. If there is one thinker, who substantively shaped the thinking of the political in the same way as Heidegger, it is certainly Lacan. It is precisely between Heidegger and Lacan, as Bruno Bosteels (2011: 47) points out, where “we can situate those authors whose writings dominate most discussions arising out of the ‘ontological turn’ in political thought today.” It is therefore not surprising that the same authors subsumed by Marchart (2007) under the umbrella of a “Heideggerian Left” can also be categorized as part of “the Lacanian Left” (Stavrakakis 2007). Philosophers like Alain Badiou, Ernesto Laclau, Claude Lefort, Jacques Rancière, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Žižek are not only influenced by Heidegger’s philosophy, but also, and maybe more importantly, by Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Of course, the question arises whether (and if so, where) there is a dividing line that separates the Heideggerian from the Lacanian Left, and where to situate such line. Throughout his engagement with the political ontology of Laclau, Marchart (2018: 149–150) argues that psychoanalytic ontology has to be separated from political ontology with regard to the role of the subject: Laclau seems to suggest the subject (as lack) is in fact primordial… This, however, would compel us to formulate a psychoanalytic ontology – an ontology of the subject rather than antagonism. An ontology of the political, on the other side, would suggest that it is the subject that results from the antagonistic structure of all identity and all social meaning. This is not an exalted chicken-or-egg question. It makes a practical difference, in terms of what we look for in empirical analysis, whether one starts with an ontology of the political or with anthropology or psychoanalysis. Calling into question whether the particular realm of ‘the subject’ or the universal realm of ‘the political’ receives ontological priority, Marchart abandons the Lacanian primordiality of the subject, which he conceives as underlying Laclau’s ontology. Such a dismissal of psychoanalysis, as a theory that considers every kind of (political) struggle as a side-effect of the subject, resembles a common misconception of psychoanalysis, in particular in the way it was promoted by Lacan. Philosopher Alenka Zupančič (2008: 3) argues: Psychoanalysis, as he [Lacan] saw it, is not here to help us come to terms with ‘our’ problems (in relation to society, for example) or to help us cultivate the ideal of our personal treasure and singularity. It has an intrinsically social, objective, and critical dimension. It is never simply about the individuals and their (more or less intimate) problems – these are inscribed, from the very

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outset, into the socio-symbolic field that Lacan calls ‘the Other.’ Lacanian psychoanalysis thus never resigned itself to the therapeutic purpose of enabling successful social adaptation…This was, and still is, in sharp contrast with the position of many psychoanalysts (and non-psychoanalysts) who believe that psychoanalytic theory can only be a theory of this or that particular subject, or case, and that any other, more universalistic conceptualisations can only lead to highly problematic metaphysical waters. While Marchart is, of course, not one of those, who consider ‘more universalistic conceptualisations’ of, for example, antagonism, as leading to ‘problematic metaphysical waters’, he indeed seems to perceive psychoanalytic theory, in contrast to political theory, as a theory of particular subjects and not of antagonism as such.2 Lacanian philosophers such as Zupančič, however, insist that it is not the subject but ‘the socio-symbolic field’, which lies at the heart of psychoanalysis. The ultimate target of psychoanalysis is the social space, in which the subject is inscribed ‘from the very outset’, which is also why psychoanalysis is relevant geographically.3 Psychoanalysis assumes that ‘our’ problems are never simply ‘our’ problems, but that they are strictly speaking also the problems of the Other. It is not only the subject that is permeated by antinomies, but already the Other, who lacks completeness, so that the ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to traverse every fantasy of a non-lacking Other: “It is true that psychoanalysis is placed entirely under the sign of the Other, but only to discover that the Other doesn’t exist, that it is itself lacking” (Dolar 1998: 91).4 The ‘grounding question’ of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis does therefore not aim to make a distinction between the subject on the one hand and the social

2

3

4

Marchart’s position with regards to psychoanalysis remains ambiguous, since he also speaks of Freud as someone who “pursued a very similar project” as Heidegger (2013: 38, own translation) and engages with Lacan’s concept of the object a in order to unfold his post-foundational approach of society (cf. 2013: 193-198; 318-321). In recent years, more and more geographers have started to engage with Lacan as a spatial thinker and it is fair to say that Lacan is the most influential pioneer of psychoanalytic geographies today (cf. Kingsbury/Pile 2014; Kapoor 2018; for a recent overview, Pohl 2020a). Slavoj Žižek draws the most radical conclusion from thinking psychoanalytic ontology as an ontology of antagonism by transposing “back into nature not subjectivity as such but the very gap that separates subjectivity from objective reality” (2014: 12; cf. Pohl/Kingsbury in this volume).

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reality on the other. It rather conceives both as equally marked by antagonism. Against all those who accuse psychoanalysis of grasping everything as “internal, already given by the condition of the subject” and, through this, leading “in the direction of idealism” and making us blind to “conflict, struggle, even the exploitation of man by man”, Lacan (1998: 53) defended an utterly materialist understanding of psychoanalysis that takes not only conflict and struggle, but also the limits of subjectivity as the kernel of its theory. Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ can therefore also be read as a return to the most radical dimensions of Freudian psychoanalysis, captured aptly by Theodor W. Adorno (1962: 137, own translation) in a comment, where he states that it was already the “greatness of Freud” to “reveal the antagonistic character of social reality” and to not pretend any “systematic harmony” for something that is itself “broke” (zerrissen). It is precisely this tradition of psychoanalysis that Lacan has pushed to its limits. While a psychoanalytic perspective indeed departs from a theory of the subject, this theory only unfolds against the backdrop of a theory of social reality, which, in turn, entails a theory of the political, a theory of antagonism, as we will demonstrate in the following. Against this background, our chapter pursues the argument that it does indeed not make a difference whether one starts with political ontology or with psychoanalysis, because both encompass an ontology that is fundamentally out of joint.

A Post-Foundational Theory of the Subject In one of the classic introductions to Lacan’s theory of the subject, Bruce Fink (1995: 52) states: “Lack in Lacan’s work has, to a certain extent, an ontological status.” In the following, we take lack as our point of departure to provide an introduction to Lacan’s thinking and to demonstrate how it inflects a postfoundational theory of the subject. The way psychoanalysis engages with the lack of the subject is through ‘castration’ – an operation that cuts off something, loses something. Castration is a pivotal aspect to enter the debates about the ontological status of the lack in Lacan (2017: 289): Castration is an essential feature, if we consider it in the way it has been promoted by analytic experience and analytic theory, and by Freud, and from the start. Let’s now work out if we can see what it means. Prior to being fear, prior to being lived, prior to being psychologizable, what does castration mean? Castration is not actual castration. It’s linked to a desire…

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While castration is ‘foundational’ for psychoanalysis, Lacan insists that it has absolutely nothing to do with a literal loss of the penis. For psychoanalysis in general, and for Lacan in particular, castration is nothing the subject would be able to avoid or prevent; it is rather the inaugural moment or point from which the subject is able to perceive itself as ‘I’, irrespective of sexual identity. To lose one’s ‘best piece’ is not an irrational fear, but the very mechanism through which the subject comes into existence. Castration is the Urgrund, the initial and ultimate ground of subjectivity. However, what is crucial about this ground is that it is characterized by an ultimate groundlessness, an Ungrund. Lacan insists that every subject is castrated, “lacking in being” (Copjec 1994: 182), and thus at the same time a subject of desire. This desire is animated by the always-failing attempts to suture, to fill out the lack, to become complete or full (again). The subject is ontologically incomplete and circulates around lack and an unconscious desire for fulfilment. Although the subject has never experienced a moment when ‘things were fully alright’, it evolves around the fantasy of a pre-castrated state, where the subject was presumed to be ‘whole’ or complete. For Lacan, this presumed wholeness (only imagined and imaginable after becoming a subject), through which humans are born into the world, becomes forever shattered when the infant enters the symbolic order (i.e., language), the process through which she or he experiences the separation from the mother or other primary caretakers, brought about by the process of socialization as a traumatic event. This rupture is retroactively experienced as a ‘lost’ wholeness or fullness. Although this loss is a trauma beyond (phenomenological) experience, the ‘loss of the mother’ is productive in the sense that it functions as the ultimate cause of desire. The mOther is “the prehistoric, unforgettable, Other” (Lacan 1992: 53), whom Lacan calls ‘the Thing’ (das Ding), and desire originates precisely as this yearning for the Thing and the always failing attempt to recapture the lost enjoyment (jouissance) promised by the (lost) unity with it. For Lacan, desire is therefore always the desire of the (m)Other, drawing the subject into a constant process of asking Che vuoi? – “what do you want?” (Lacan 2006: 690), so that the lost unity would be restored. While desire is structured around a lack, a gap, a void, the insistent and incessant, but ultimately always-failing attempts to satisfy desire is what Lacan names ‘drive’ or ‘death drive’ (or what Freud named ‘libido’). While desire is oriented toward the lost Thing qua “loss of jouissance” (Chiesa 2007: 169), drive is the force that both constitutes and moves the subject toward (partial) satisfaction; drive is the other side of desire, the name for what moves us

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forward in our always failing attempt to become ‘One’ again. The drive does not strive for the ultimate satisfaction promised by the inaccessible Thing, but rather turns this inaccessibility into all it takes to gain (partial) satisfaction. While drive, too, originates in the void, the emptiness that turns us into desiring subjects, is not rooted in the possibility of reaching its goal, but in circulating around it. As Lacan (1998: 179) puts it: “its aim is simply this return into circuit.” The void, gap, or nothingness that structures both desire and drive becomes stained with a spectral presence, which Lacan calls ‘object a’. Since the subject is incapable of facing the Thing-in-itself, because it functions as a purely negative reference point to the subject, the only possibility of engaging with it is by raising another object “to the dignity of the Thing” (Lacan 1992: 112). These objects, which Lacan denotes as ‘object a’, are crucial, because they allow the subject to ‘give body’ to the lack that perpetuates its existence. While the Thing is purely absent, the object a is a sort of ‘present-absence’, it is “athing” (Lacan 2007: 159) which functions as a rem(a)inder of the lost enjoyment the subject strives for (cf. Pohl 2019). Since this function does not originate from the object itself, but from the subject’s fantasy, the object a has to remain ultimately inaccessible to the subject, it is always “not it” (Lacan 1999: 126). As soon as the subject comes too close to it, the supposed rem(a)inder of the Thing loses its function as an object-cause of desire. Since lack is ontological for Lacan, because the whole structure of subjectivity qua desire is based on it, such a ‘lack of the lack’ is disturbing. In his tenth seminar, Lacan (2014) argues that the object a is therefore not only related to desire but also to anxiety: “Anxiety emerges when at the place of the lack one encounters a certain object, which perturbs the fantasy frame through which the subject assessed reality” (Saleci 2004: 15; cf. Pohl 2020b).

The World and the Real After this all too brief introduction to Lacan’s theory of the subject, we now shift focus to a consideration of the social space, in which the subject is embedded. Let us start with a quotation from an interview Lacan gave in 1974, offering a minimal definition of psychoanalysis by stating that the latter is primarily concerned with ‘what does not work in a world’ (2013: 61–62):

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I don’t know if you are aware of this, but psychoanalysis is concerned especially with what doesn’t work. Because of this, it concerns itself with what we must call by its name – I must say that I am still the only one who has called it by this name – the real. The real is the difference between what works and what doesn’t work. What works is the world. The real is what doesn’t work. The world goes on, it goes round – that’s its function as a world. To perceive that there is no such thing as a world – namely, that there are things that only imbeciles believe to be in the world – it suffices to note that there are things that make it such that the world is revolting, so to speak. This is what analysts deal with, such that, despite what one may think, they are confronted with the real far more than even scientists are. Analysts deal with nothing but that. It is vital, of course, to grasp precisely what Lacan means when he speaks of a world. For Lacan, ‘world’ does not refer to Planet Earth, but to the assessed reality of the subject. Such a logical, or rather, topological notion of the world is not bound to a particular physical reality, but refers to a certain socio-spatial order ‘that works’ for the subject.5 This order is, for Lacan, established by the Symbolic (and the Imaginary). One of the key passages where Lacan surpasses Freud, while staying faithful to his original insights and contributions, was his move to understand the subject and society through language: “The structures of society are symbolic”, Lacan (2006: 108) states with reference to Marcel Mauss, and “the unconscious is structured like a language” (Lacan 1998: 203) he proclaims with reference to Claude Lévi-Strauss. While for Freud, there was still a biological foundation to his understanding of the psychic and social apparatus, for Lacan, the structuring of (social) life operates through the symbolic order. However, just as much as Lacan (1991a: 29) insists that “[e]verything which is human has to be ordained within a universe constituted by the symbolic function”, he insists on the impasses of language. For Lacan, the world of the symbolic order, like the subject, is always lacking, marked by antagonism. It is an unstable, shifting and necessarily incomplete register, which is why Lacan ends up stating ‘that there is no such thing as a world.’ Reality does not exist as a whole, because there is always something ‘revolting’ against it, and it is

5

We thus follow Paul Kingsbury’s (2011: 721) claim that “Lacan’s reference to a ‘world’ is not merely metaphoric.”

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precisely this revolt (i.e., that what does not work in the world) which psychoanalysis puts into focus. Psychoanalysis, for Lacan, is nothing but a rigorous insistence on the not-wholeness, the ‘not-all’, of the world. There is always excess, a rem(a)inder, which cannot be symbolized or represented; a hard kernel that sticks to the world like a fishbone in the throat and exerts an unalienable scratch. This is what Lacan (1991b: 66) calls the Real, a complex, shifting spectral presence that “resists symbolisation absolutely.” Like an eel, the Real slips through the net of words each time one believes you have a firm grip. Proceeding from this, Zupančič (2017: 43) grasps the psychoanalytic legacy with regard to the ‘ontological turn’ that classifies political thought today: Lacan is led to establish a difference between being and the Real. The Real is not a being, or a substance, but its deadlock, the point of its impossibility. It is inseparable from being, yet it is not being. One could say that for psychoanalysis, there is no being independent of language (or discourse) – which is why it often seems compatible with contemporary forms of nominalism. All being is symbolic; it is being in the Other. But with a crucial addition, which could be formulated as follows: there is only being in the symbolic – except that there is the Real. There “is” the Real, but this Real is no being. Yet it is not simply the outside of being; it is not something besides being, it is a convulsion, a stumbling block of the space of being. It exists only as the inherent contradiction of (symbolic) being. For psychoanalysis, the very foundation of being starts by a sort of disguise. ‘To be’ means, at the same time, ‘not to be’. Lacan (1999) also speaks of “parabeing”, to demonstrate that being is always-already out of its own place. It is therefore not so much being itself as the impossibility of being that determines the psychoanalytic operation, and the Real is Lacan’s name to refer to this impossibility – to that which disturbs being from being ‘fully’ itself.6 Within this slippery and inconsistent configuration of being, the Imaginary provides an illusionary promise of unity, coherence, or completeness of the world. It operates through a performative fantasy that permits life to be lived in an illusion of coherence and fulfilment. The Imaginary operates through

6

Laclau (1990: 44) was well aware of this insight of Lacanian psychoanalysis when he states: “To understand social reality, then, is not to understand what society is, but what prevents it from being” and also Lefebvre (2002: 183) incorporates a similar logic when he argues: “Only when a totality has been achieved does it become apparent that it is not a totality at all”.

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fantasy, the potent operator that makes us experience life as full and somehow meaningful. Of course, for fantasy to integrate the individual successfully into an illusion of wholeness, it must deny, that means to repress, disavow, or foreclose, the Real, covering up ‘the revolt’, locking it into the unconscious. Nonetheless, it is precisely drive – or the lack, gap, excess – that will animate the Imaginary and fuel fantasy, that keeps on insisting on fulfilment, but invariably is displaced into the register of jouissance, the insatiable (because impossible) search for satisfaction articulated around object a, the ‘little piece of the Real’ that sets desire (and anxiety) into motion, as it promises to fill the void that Lacan (1992: 52) sees as structuring the social reality: The world of our experience, the Freudian world, assumes that it [the object a] is this object, das Ding, as the absolute Other of the subject, that one is supposed to find again. Reality or world, for Lacan, is structurally bound to the fantasy of reaching wholeness promised by the object a. However, instead of understanding fantasy as something that takes place solely ‘within our mind’, the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy abandons the standard opposition of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’. While fantasy is not objective in the sense that it exists independently of the subject’s perception, it is also not reducible to the subject’s conscious experience (Žižek 2004: 94). Rather, fantasy is constitutively involved in the production of reality, as the subject only experiences its world through fantasy: “[T]he world is merely the fantasy through which thought sustains itself – ‘reality’ no doubt, but to be understood as a grimace of the real” (Lacan 1990: 6). Reality, in sum, is precisely the terrain through which the repressing, foreclosing, or disavowing of the Real is effectuated. Yet, in doing so, it launches the subject into an abyssal terrain that will invariably return in the form of, among others, anxiety, pain, insecurity, depression, or melancholia. This is precisely why the crucial aim of psychoanalysis, for Lacan, is to ‘traverse the fantasy’ and to ‘encounter the Real’ (Lacan 1998: 52, 273).

Politics of Reality and the Political of the Real The above cursory review provides the framework through which a Lacanian reading of politics and the political can be articulated. The social bond propels the three registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real not solely onto the subject, but also onto the terrain of everyday social, cultural, and politi-

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cal life. Politics operates in and through the Imaginary and the Symbolic. The Symbolic stands for the assemblage of institutions, laws, rules, regulations, and actors that constitute politics as a fully closed configuration. It quilts a chain of signifiers, such as democracy, state, cohesion, nation, choice, freedom, etc. into a discourse that sustains the order and assigns everyone and everything a certain place within the social edifice. In other words, the symbolic order, in which we dwell and through which we understand our (and everyone else’s) place in society, is the basic starting point for instituting a ‘world’. It constitutes the Law (or the big Other) that prescribes, prohibits, entices, lures, punishes, or rewards. Politics (as an instituted symbolic order) invokes and constructs a community, a whole, a One, that becomes (re)presented in the interplay between political forces, programs, parties, and the like. There are a variety of possible ways through which the social community becomes instituted in the symbolic framing of politics. In the present configuration, the symbolic order constitutes the pluralist representative institutions of government, the formal and informal rules and regulations that order social bonds, mechanisms and arrangements, which organize universalized commodity exchange as the mode of social production and reproduction. Of course, as implied above, this is a symbolic representation of something that is neither unified nor coherent, but utterly contingent. The Imaginary, in the present political context, can be identified with the widely held view that pluralist liberal democracy as the idealized political form and capitalism, as the preferred form of organizing production, and reproduction is the only workable, realistic, inclusive, and quasi-naturalised social order beyond questioning – one without excess, remainder, or gap. There is no alternative Imaginary possible. The Imaginary is the terrain of ideology, of giving meaning, of providing a sense of coherence or wholeness. It is constituted through seductive and alluring images, often providing an illusionary sense of unity and transparency, which Yannis Stavrakakis (2009: 160) subsumes as “promising fullness, integration, and harmony.” It is what makes the Symbolic sensible; it offers a way through which things and relations are seen and understood as common sense and self-evident (structured around signifiers like nation, whiteness, solidarity, the invisible hand of the market that produces the common good, and so on). The Imaginary invariably covers up or conceals the gap, the void, the abyss between the Real and the Symbolic. Fantasy becomes the mechanism through which the gap that marks their inconsistency is contained. It operates through the promise of enjoyment (jouis-

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sance) for the subject by providing meaning, context, purpose, and a sense of desire. So, fantasy not only tells us what to desire but, more importantly, how to desire, and how to achieve it. In today’s neoliberal consumer culture, for example, the imperative ‘Enjoy!’ (Jouis!) – go shopping, pursue pleasure, exercise consumer choice and be who you want to be – has become a key driving force of the superego (cf. Lacan 1999: 3). However, you cannot simply enjoy in any way you want. In this regard, the question of ‘sustainability’ has become one of the most prominent debates that structure the fantasies of how to desire in today’s neoliberal consumer culture (cf. Swyngedouw 2018: 81–89). While it is impossible to specify what exactly sustainability is all about (except in the most general or generic of terms), it implies a series of fantasies, stories and imaginaries that try to bridge the constitutive gap between the indeterminacies of nature on the one hand (and the associated fear of the continuous return of the Real of nature in the guise of ecological disasters like global warming, droughts, hurricanes, floods) and on the other hand, the alwaysfrustrated desire for some sort of harmonious and equitable socio-ecological living. This socio-ecological living disavows the absence of a foundation for the social in a Nature that, after all, does not exist. Sustainability functions as an object a, the thing around which desire revolves (i.e., to enjoy through eco-friendly consumption or off-setting our carbon footprint), yet simultaneously stands in for the disavowed Real, the repressed core, the state of the situation (i.e., the recognition that the world is a mess and needs drastic and dramatic, revolutionary, action). The fantasy of eternal life meets the Real of its premature end. The uncanny feeling of anxiety that arises from the apocalyptic imaginaries that keep gnawing, despite all the talk of sustainability, is sublimated and objectified in the object a, the horrifying thing around which both anxiety and desire are articulated (cf. Swyngedouw 2010a); an anxiety that is vested in an outsider that threatens the coherence and unity of our life-world. Since ultimate enjoyment is never fully attainable, a fantasy screen permits us to displace the lack of satisfaction onto something or someone else who has ‘it’. Even though “the lack (‘castration’) is originary, enjoyment constitutes itself as ‘stolen’” (Žižek 1993: 203; cf. Proudfoot 2019). As divisions and conflicts cannot be erased, an imaginary displacement takes place whereby a part of ‘the community’ becomes scripted as ‘constitutive outsider’ (i.e., the object-cause of disruption, conflict, and the pervasive presence of a divided society). Of course, anything or anyone can take the symbolic place of “an alien

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intruder” (Stavrakakis 1999: 108), which shatters the myth of unity: The strange similarity between ‘the Jew’ in Nazi-Germany and ‘the Refugee’ in the European Union, to name only two prominent examples, is that both function as figurations of supernumerary excess, standing in the way of ‘our’ enjoyment. They both profit from ‘our’ social security (because they are lazy) and steal ‘our’ jobs (because they want to work too hard). They are the bone (of contention) that sticks out and undermines the myth or fantasy of a homogeneous and organic whole.7 There is always a gap, a void, a lack, or excess that resists; a hard kernel that is not (ac)counted (for) in the social order of politics. This remainder or surplus, the Real (i.e., that which cannot be symbolized by the existing interplay of political forces) disrupts, destabilizes, and stands as guarantor for the possible return of the political. The political is nothing else, therefore, but the symptomatic manifestation of the Real, an immanent appearance of something that disturbs, interrupts and shakes the instituted (symbolic) order. It is the manifestation of an excess, the ‘part of no part’, as Jacques Rancière (1998) would put it. A Lacanian perspective indeed holds that the political signals the empty ground of the social, the inherently split condition of being that prevents a being-together to emerge outside of a properly constituted symbolic order. However, the Real qua the political is not more or less important than the Symbolic and Imaginary qua politics. Every instituted order (whether fascist, post-democratic, liberal pluralist, ethno-nationalist, or whatever) makes a rhetorical (fantastical) appeal to the common good, to the People. But by doing so, it always leaves out the ‘part of no part’, a supernumerary element that escapes the count, an element that is left out, excluded. For example, when democracy became institutionalized in France after the French Revolution on the basis of the principle of universal equality among equal citizens, this symbolization negated the existence of the majority of non-citizens, deprived of any political rights. This excluded part would, in the 19th century, constitute itself as the proletarian political subject, whose struggle unfolded in some 7

Another prominent figure of the alien intruder that emerged during the months that this chapter was completed is the coronavirus, which has recently shattered our myth of freedom and currently prevents us from reaching enjoyment. The striking difference, however, between the virus and other figures of the alien intruder is that in the case of the virus ‘we all’ agree that it has ‘stolen’ our enjoyment, so that no one would call into question that it is a good idea to declare “war against the virus“. Probably more than any other alien intruder in recent history, the coronavirus therefore functions as a unifying obstacle.

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measure exactly around intruding into this symbolically constituted order to which they were the unnamed and non-symbolized excess, the supernumerary. They demanded the right to be part of the order; they demanded rights as declared in the constitution, yet, denied in the everyday reality of politics. The Real becomes symptomatically discernible, for example, when undocumented migrants stand up and state ‘we are here, therefore we are from here’; they demonstrate that the predominant imaginary and symbolic framing excludes them from egalitarian democratic inclusion. Or when Rosa Parks, in 1955, sat down on a whites-only seat on the bus in segregated Alabama, she demonstrated the inegalitarian and racist configuration of a constitutional order that nonetheless proclaimed the principled equality of everyone. The Lacanian political is therefore nothing else than the manifestation of the Real,8 an unassimilated and unsymbolized presence that symptomatically demonstrates its presence. In doing so, it interrupts or disrupts the social reality as that which cannot be symbolized without changing the very co-ordinates of this reality.

Conclusion In Thinking Antagonism, Marchart (2018: 11) tackles the question of whether the insistence on political ontology is “making a political rather than a scientific claim.” Straightforwardly, he states that, of course, no political ontology can claim exemption from the political. Every political ontology revolves around a political standpoint, an “implicating oneself in the matter of one’s thought” (ibid.). Something similar can be stated with regard to psychoanalytic ontology. There is no neutral view or external observer in psychoanalysis, not simply because we always engage with reality from our particular subjective 8

The impossible (i.e., unacceptable and unauthorized and therefore unassimilable) “NO” vote in Greece 2015 during the financial crisis is another example of the ‘encounter with the Real’, a moment that destabilizes the existing order and exposes it for what it ‘really’ is (i.e., an institutional form that negates the very foundation of what it asserts to be, namely a democracy that is politically founded on the egalitarian right to express disagreement). However, if this hard kernel is negated, as in the present consensual post-democratic order (cf. Wilson/Swyngedouw 2014), the ‘encounter with the Real’ is displaced from the political to either the domain of moral outrage or compassion, ethical concern for the subaltern ‘other’, or to the ultra-political domain of unmediated exclusion and violence (Kaika 2017; cf. Swyngedouw 2018).

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standpoints, but because of the Real that prevents us from making reality whole. The Real is the ultimate realm in which the subject qua lack is implicated in the matter of reality. Both political and psychoanalytic ontology, therefore, follow what Žižek calls an “universalized perspectivism” (Žižek/Daly 2004: 97) that does not allow us to distinguish the world from the subjects engaging with it. Or, to put it in Lacanian terms, in both cases, “there is no such thing as a metalanguage” (Lacan 2017: 66). Subsequently, we conclude with a political claim underlying our short walk through Lacanian theory. The political, and not merely scientific, aim of every Lacanian investigation is to localize the Real as that which has no place in a world. Such a (utterly geographic) reading of Lacan allows us to traverse every fantasy of fullness, integration, and harmony and instead points to the excess, remainder and surplus that renders every social reality incomplete (cf. Pohl 2020c). There is an urgent need for such an endeavor, since the current situation is, more than ever, marked by the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, the separation between those who are part and those who are not (Swyngedouw 2010b). In our world of global capitalism and liberal democracy, Badiou (2016: 36) states, the majority of people are ‘inexistent’ as “they are counted for nothing by capital, meaning that from the point of view of the structural development of the world, they are nothing, and that therefore, strictly speaking, they should not exist.” In Lacanian terms, one could say that our world is a world where those who do ‘not work’ within the parameters of this world ‘resist symbolisation absolutely’. It is an evental moment when the inexistent, those who are inherently “out of place” (Badiou 2005: 77), as they cannot be properly (ac)counted (for) within the world, announce and stage the transformation of the state of the situation (cf. Swyngedouw 2018). A political event is thus marked by enunciating demands that lie outside the order that structures a social world; demands that cannot be symbolized within its frame of reference and therefore would necessitate a transformation in and of the symbolic order. Yet, these demands are eminently sensible and feasible when the frame of the social reality is shifted, when the parallax gap between what is (the constituted symbolic order) and what can be (the reconstituted symbolic order made possible through an often minimal shift in vantage points, one that starts from the partisan universalizing principle of equality). This is the political process through which equality is asserted and that requires a geographic transformation of socio-physical space and the institution of a radically different partition of the sensible. It is the sort of parallax gap that may initiate the restructuring of “the entire social space” (Žižek 1999: 208).

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Such demands, scandalous in the representational order, yet eminently realizable, are like those formulated in the last chapter of The Communist Manifesto (universal and free education, universal and free care for the elderly, universal and equitable political rights, universal and free health care, collective organization of the commons of life). When these demands were formulated in 1848, they were scandalous, deeply disruptive and rejected out of hand as impossible by the symbolic order. Yet, four of these five demands were realized in one form or another in most of Western Europe during the 20th century. This “passion for the Real” (Badiou 2007), which is the knowledge that these demands are really possible and not merely utopian, fuelled the passage to the act that instituted them. This constitutes a genuine political sequence, one that can be thought and practiced irrespective of any substantive social theorization or abstract normative-utopian models of a world-to-come – it is the political in itself at work. Today’s world is anything but static. On the contrary, we are used to the fact that everyone and everything changes to an extent that change itself becomes the status quo. But if everything always changes, then nothing changes at all. This is why Žižek (2010: 401) speaks of the change today as a “false activity” of some sort. Similar to the obsessive neurotic, who is frantically active in order to prevent something unpredictable from happening, our world goes on in order to avoid any real change to come. While the function of the world is to keep going, “to go round” (Lacan 2013: 61), the function of the Real is to force the world to a standstill. Against the world’s constantly moving forward, the Real blocks the path and fixates a moment of resistance in the world. A first step towards the political qua the Real, for Lacan, therefore, has to be a negative gesture. ‘To not having a solution’, as cited in the opening quote to this chapter, means to stop and think.9 It opens the path toward a mode of thinking, namely, the thinking of the irrecoverable antagonism, the Real, that haunts the realities we live in.

9

Žižek makes a similar point by vehemently repeating Bartleby’s modest, yet radically transgressive, reply to his Master: ‘I would prefer not to’. This is, for Žižek (2006: 342), “the necessary first step which, as it were, clears the ground, opens up the place, for true activity, for an act that will actually change the coordinates of the constellation”.

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References Adorno, Theodor W. (1962): “Die revidierte Psychoanalyse.” In: Horkheimer, Max/Adorno, Theodor W. (eds.), Sociologica II: Reden und Vorträge, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, pp. 119-138. Badiou, Alain (2005): Being and Event, London: Continuum. Badiou, Alain (2007): The Century, Cambridge: Polity. Badiou, Alain (2016): Our Wound is Not so Recent: Thinking the Paris Killings of 13 November, Cambridge: Polity. Barnett, Clive (2017): The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory, Athens: University of Georgia Press. Bosteels, Bruno (2011): The Actuality of Communism, New York: Verso. Chiesa, Lorenzo (2007): Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan, Cambridge: MIT Press. Copjec, Joan (1994): Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists, Cambridge: MIT Press. Dolar, Mladen (1998): “Where Does Power Come From?” In: New Formations 3, pp. 79-92. Fink, Bruce (1995): The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kaika, Maria (2017): “Between Compassion and Racism: How the Biopolitics of Neoliberal Welfare turns Citizens into Affective ‘Idiots’.” In: European Planning Studies 25/8, pp. 1275-1291. Kapoor, Ilan (2018) (ed.): Psychoanalysis and the GlObal, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kingsbury, Paul (2011): “The World Cup and the National Thing on Commercial Drive, Vancouver.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29/4, pp. 716-737. Kingsbury, Paul/Pile, Steve (2014) (eds.): Psychoanalytic Geographies, Farnham: Ashgate. Lacan, Jacques (1990): Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (1991a): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (1991b): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc.

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Lacan, Jacques (1992): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (1998): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (1999): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XX. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (2006): Ecrits, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (2007): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII. The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (2013): The Triumph of Religion, Cambridge: Polity. Lacan, Jacques (2014): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book X. Anxiety, Cambridge: Polity. Lacan, Jacques (2017): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book V. Formations of the Unconscious, Cambridge: Polity. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London and New York: Verso. Lefebvre, Henri (2002): Critique of Everyday Life Volume 2: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, London and New York: Verso. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2018): Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology After Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pohl, Lucas (2019): “The Sublime Object of Detroit.” In: Social & Cultural Geography, online first. Pohl, Lucas (2020a): “Psychoanalysis.” In: Kobayashi, Audrey (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. 2nd edition. Volume 11, Elsevier, pp. 61-64. Pohl, Lucas (2020b): “Object-Disoriented Geographies: The Ghost Tower of Bangkok and the Topology of Anxiety.” In: Cultural Geographies 27/1, pp. 71-84. Pohl, Lucas (2020c): “Ruins of Gaia: Towards a Feminine Ontology of the Anthropocene.” In: Theory, Culture & Society, 37/6, pp. 67-86.

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Proudfoot, Jesse (2019): “The Libidinal Economy of Revanchism: Illicit Drugs, Harm Reduction, and the Problem of Enjoyment.” In: Progress in Human Geography 43/2, pp. 214-234. Rancière, Jacques (1998): Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Saleci, Renata (2004): On Anxiety, London: Routledge. Stavrakakis, Yannis (1999): Lacan and the Political, London: Routledge. Stavrakakis, Yannis (2007): The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stavrakakis, Yannis (2009): “Psychoanalysis and Ideology: Comments on R.D. Hinshelwood.” In: Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 14/2, pp. 149-163. Swyngedouw, Erik (2010a): “Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change.” In: Theory, Culture & Society 27/2-3, pp. 213-232. Swyngedouw, Erik (2010b): “The Communist Hypothesis and Revolutionary Capitalisms: Exploring the Idea of Communist Geographies for the Twenty-first Century.” In: Antipode 41, pp. 298-319. Swyngedouw, Erik (2011): “Interrogating Post-Democratization: Reclaiming Egalitarian Political Spaces.” In: Political Geography 30/7, pp. 270-280. Swyngedouw, Erik (2014): “Where Is The Political? Insurgent Mobilisations and the Incipient ‘Return of the Political.’” In: Space and Polity 18/2, pp. 122-136. Swyngedouw, Erik (2018): Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a PostPolitical Environment, Cambridge: MIT Press. Wilson, Japhy/Swyngedouw, Erik (2014): “Seeds of Dystopia: Post-Politics and the Return of the Political.” In: Wilson, Japhy/Swyngedouw, Erik (eds.), The Post-Political and its Discontents: Spaces of Depoliticization, Specters of Radical Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 1-24. Žižek, Slavoj (1993): Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology, Durham: Duke University Press. Žižek, Slavoj (1999): The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2004): Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences, New York: Routledge. Žižek, Slavoj (2006): The Parallax View, Cambridge: MIT Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2010): Living in the End Times, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj/Daly, Glyn (2004): Conversations with Žižek, Cambridge: Polity.

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Zupančič, Alenka (2008): Why Psychoanalysis? Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Zupančič, Alenka (2017): What is Sex? Cambridge: MIT Press.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity Or, Ungrounding the Ground Itself Jens Kaae Fisker

Introduction At the time of her announced birth in 1993, J.K. Gibson-Graham was already an experienced economic geographer, feminist thinker, activist, and postfoundationalist. Or rather, she was all of the above in the plural. Only her two mothers – Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham1 – may testify to the exact time and circumstances of her original conception. In any case, the pregnancy came on public display in a paper published by Graham in Antipode in 1992. It included a map drawn by Gibson to playfully represent Graham’s vision of academic geography as a heterogeneous landscape of ideas. In Gibson’s (2014: 284) own words: “Clearly, the joint authorial persona of JK Gibson-Graham, still a few months from birth, was flexing her playful, some might say sacrilegious thinking muscles, in utero, so to speak.” The map, reproduced in Figure 1, neatly embodies the distinct style and spirit that was to flow through subsequent work published under the Gibson-Graham pen name, beginning with a paper in Rethinking Marxism in 1993 and arguably cul-

1

Graham passed away in 2010, but Gibson has kept the Gibson-Graham persona alive. I have sought not to make any distinction between pre- and post-2010 texts and have opted for the singular ’she’ instead of the plural ’they’ when referring to the shared persona (her own writing practice differs between – sometimes even within – texts on this point).

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minating in the two books The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) from 1996 and A Postcapitalist Politics from 2006.2

Figure 1: Playful ‘unreal’ cartography by a prenatal Gibson-Graham (source: Graham 1992: 144)

The metaphor of pregnancy employed above is no coincidence. Besides mimicking the Gibson-Graham style, I am also alluding to her distinct version of post-foundational thought which always seems to proceed from what is best characterized as a space of pregnant negativity. To be sure, GibsonGraham has never actually referred to herself as a post-foundationalist – preferring the term anti-essentialist Marxist – but, as I shall soon convey, her kinship to post-foundationalism is so obvious that it is hardly problematic to read her work as a post-foundational endeavor. It does mean, however, that a 2

Both books partially consist of chapters previously published as journal articles. Whenever relevant, I have consulted both versions, but for the purpose of bibliographical brevity all quotes and references are to the book chapter versions.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

few dots remain to be connected, something I attempt to do in the course of this chapter. Most notably, the ontic-ontological distinction between politics and the political, which has been central to much post-foundational political thought, is absent as an explicit topic of discussion in Gibson-Graham. While I can only make qualified guesses in regard to her own thoughts on this, I do believe that important lessons can be drawn from her political praxis. I also make a connection between this praxis and her deconstructive critique of ‘grounding’ as habitual spatial metaphor. By doing so I seek to challenge my own post-foundationalist position by asking what would happen if we were to unground the metaphor of grounding itself. Part of that exercise is to question what kinds of political praxis a post-foundational stance may enable or disable. Above all, what Gibson-Graham interjects is an enriching and emboldening cross-fertilization between feminist theory and the array of thinkers – Laclau, Mouffe, Lacan, Derrida, etc. – that have been formative in postfoundational thought. The chapter is structured around four key themes that encapsulate her whole body of work – to the extent that this is possible – with each theme providing directions toward post-foundational theories of space. Implicit in the first two sections, questions of space and place become more prominent and explicit in the second half of the chapter. The four themes are weak theory, deconstructing capitalism, the space of pregnant negativity, and ethical becoming.

(Un)knowing the World with Weak Theory Humility is a thread that weaves through all of Gibson-Graham’s work. It comes to the fore emphatically in her promotion of ‘weak’ theory, defined against the ‘strong’ theories that dominate foundationalism and essentialism. In contrast to strong theory’s totalizing claims to truth, she describes weak theory as “little more than description” and positions it as a deliberate way of “refusing to know too much” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 8). The term entered her vocabulary in A Postcapitalist Politics (ibid.) as a new way of explaining the approach to anti-essentialist theorizing that she had already practiced for some time. It was borrowed from Eve Sedgwick (2003) - who in turn appropriated it from Silvan Tomkins (2008 [1963]) - as “a means of getting theory to yield something new” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 7). The positioning of weak against strong theory can be viewed as a complementary parallel to the Deleuzian mi-

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nor/major distinction3 , especially as developed by Cindi Katz (1996: 496), who argued for theory to become ‘minor’, thus allowing it to set up “an imbricated or interstitial politics; a way of negotiating and reworking a space of betweenness to produce something new.” In Gibson-Graham’s (2008: 619) words, this translates into three techniques for practicing weak theory: (1) “ontological reframing to produce the ground of possibility”, (2) “re-reading to uncover or excavate the possible”, and (3) “creativity to generate actual possibilities where none formerly existed.” In post-foundational terminology, these steps might help us trace a route from (un)grounding towards (re)grounding.4 What is at stake in weak theorizing, then, is the ‘setting free’ of objects, subjects, and categories that are often taken for granted. As Gibson-Graham (2006: xxxi) put it: “Reading for contingency rather than necessity situates essentialized and universalized forms of being like ‘the market’ or ‘the selfinterested subject’ in specific geographical and historical locations, releasing them from an ontology of structure or essence.” Yet, her enrollment of weak theory does not amount to a blanket rejection of strong theory5 , only a revalorization of its truth claims and an increased awareness of its performative implications: “Strong theory definitively establishes what is, but pays no heed to what it does. While it affords the pleasures of recognition, of capture, of intellectually subduing that one last thing, it offers no relief or exit to a place beyond” (ibid. 4). Weak theorization eschews such symptoms of paranoia (cf. Sedgwick 2003) by resisting the temptation to “extend explanation too widely

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Deleuze & Guattari (1987: 364) give the example of Archimedian geometry: “a projective and descriptive geometry defined as a minor science, more a mathegraphy than a matheology. … One does not represent, one engenders and traverses.” The distinction between weak and strong theory, however, does not lead directly to the divide between foundationalism and post-foundationalism. Laclau and Mouffe’s work on hegemony, for instance, is posited by Gibson-Graham (2006: 212) as “a strong theory that does not involve reduction, but rather the constitution of a totality (hegemony) that is never finally fixed.” As such, it is held up as an example of how strong theories can be helpful tools, in this case “for understanding the dominance of capitalist economic discourse without getting drawn toward a paranoid affective stance”. The intricate relations between weak and strong theory may be worthwhile of further work, not least with a view to how they interdigitate in post-foundational thought. Here, Tomkins (2008: 449) distinguished four types of interrelation: monopolistic, intrusion, competition, and integration. These may be useful, especially if brought into dialogue with Katz’ (1996) reflections on the similar relation between minor and major theory.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

or too deeply” (Gibson-Graham 2008: 619), favoring an approach in which theory merely marks an entry point rather than a rigid, encompassing frame. A theoretical ground is needed but only as a place to start from, not as a safe haven where everything is always-already more-or-less known. This means that an initial theoretical grounding may be performed by stripping strong theory of its universalizing truth claims, humbling and bringing it down to earth.6 The key advantage of weak theory is that it embodies an academic politics of possibility, where surprise is invited rather than precluded: [W]eak theory can be undertaken with a reparative motive that welcomes surprise, entertains hope, makes connection, tolerates coexistence and offers care for the new. As the impulse to judge or discredit other theoretical agendas arises, one can practice making room for others, imagining a terrain on which the success of one project need not come at the expense of another (Gibson-Graham 2006: 8). Weak theory thus becomes a constructive companion to the post-foundational inclination towards deconstruction. It works as a reminder that whenever we deconstruct something, we need to (re)construct something else,7 yet without claiming that the reconstructed ground is in any way ‘more final’ than the one it replaces. But weak theory also works to ensure that the empirical world is encountered with a mind attuned to possibility rather than to impossibility: “As we teach ourselves to come back with a beginner’s mind to possibilities, we can begin to explore the multiple forms of power, their spatialities and temporalities, their modes of transmission, reach and (in)effectivity” (ibid.). Whereas the paranoia of strong theory teaches us to always be suspicious about power, the deliberate naivety of weak theory asks us to be curious (which, to be sure, is not the same thing as being uncritical). In this way, “weak theory allows us to de-exoticize power, accepting it as our mundane, pervasive, uneven milieu” (ibid.). Curiously, the quest for possibility is enabled precisely by the recognition of ontological impossibility. If complete

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An example is the rethinking of class that Gibson-Graham has pursued in collaboration with Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, where an anti-essentialist rereading of Marxian class theory is used as a weak theoretical entry point for generating an overdetermined class concept (Gibson-Graham et al. 2000; 2001; Resnick/Wolff 1987). Or, as Oliver Marchart (2007: 9) puts it: “the quest for grounds is not abandoned … but is accepted as a both impossible and indispensable enterprise.”

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objects (Marchart 2013) and totalities (Laclau 1996) are impossible8 , then we are effectively bound off from a closure or ground in a final sense, leaving us in a radically open terrain where we cannot take refuge in the (in)famous last instance. Ontological impossibility, then, may become an enabler of creativity and hope if used as a means to furnish an always expansive space of possibility, not in the sense that ‘everything goes’, but by eliminating the possibility of a final suture, to borrow a phrase from Laclau and Mouffe (2001: 111). What sets Gibson-Graham apart from most other thinkers, who share this ontological stance is her turn to weak theory. For instance, as Tomas Marttila (2015) has pointed out, post-foundational discourse theory relies on strong theory to make its key claims, including the reduction of politics to antagonist relations (cf. Marttila in this volume). Now, the claim of ontological impossibility is itself an instance of strong theory: Laclau and Mouffe follow through on this by clinging on to a strong mode of theorization, whereas Gibson-Graham uses it as an invitation for a weaker mode. I make this point not to arbitrate between the two, but rather to say not only that both are legitimate but also that postfoundational thought may benefit from letting them complement each other.

Getting out of this Capitalist Place My intent is to help create the discursive conditions under which socialist or other noncapitalist construction becomes a ‘realistic’ present activity rather than a ludicrous or utopian future goal. I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces. I must make its unity a fantasy, visible as a denial of diversity and change. (Gibson-Graham 1996: 263-4). As a feminist Marxist economic geographer, Gibson-Graham perceived the need for what she would later identify as the weak theoretical stance, as discussed above, in the crisis of the Left in general, and of Marxism in particular, as it confronted her in the early 1990s. She noted how “Marxism has contributed to the socialist absence through the very ways it has theorized the capitalist presence” (ibid. 252) and argued that as long as “capitalism is represented as a monolith and noncapitalism as an insufficiency or absence,

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The primary object or totality that both Laclau and Marchart have in mind is ‘society’, but in both cases it is also clear that the claim of impossibility has the status of an ontological argument.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

the economy is not a plural space, a place of difference and struggle” (GibsonGraham 1995: 278). In other words, if the Left continues to imagine capitalism as coextensive with the social, as having no outside, then it also evacuates the very terrain in which alternatives could otherwise be created: “It is legitimate to theorize capitalist hegemony only if such hegemony is delineated in a theoretical field that allows for the possibility of the full coexistence of noncapitalist economic forms” (Gibson-Graham 1996: 262). To “get out of this capitalist place” (Gibson-Graham 1995: 278), she performed a number of deconstructive post-foundational moves. First, she turned to post-Althusserian overdetermination of the kind advanced by Resnick and Wolff (1987): “With an overdeterminist strategy we may empty capitalism of its universal attributes and evacuate the essential and invariant logics that allow it to hegemonize the economic and social terrain” (GibsonGraham 1996: 45). This strategy allowed her to metaphorically9 conceive of capitalism as “a set of practices scattered over a landscape”, practices that may be interconnected, but which are not presumptuously assigned systemic functions. This way they are allowed to coexist and interdigitate with non-capitalist economic practices on a more level playing field. Second, she performed a similar move aimed at “queering the body of capitalism” by establishing an analogy between prevalent narratives of economic globalization and what Sharon Marcus (1992) had depicted as ‘the rape script’: “The globalization script normalizes an act of non-reciprocal penetration. Capitalist social and economic relations are scripted as penetrating ‘other’ social and economic relations but not vice versa” (Gibson-Graham 1996: 125). Substituting this for a queered capitalist body, one that may penetrate and be penetrated, she argues, “a space can be made for thinking globalization as many, as other to itself, as inscribing different developmental paths and economic identities” (ibid. 146). Finally, she enrolls Derrida’s deconstructive figure of the ‘specter’ to embody non-capitalist becomings, not just as something to be created in the future, but as something already present; indeed, as something that has been with us for a long time, assumed dead by most and yet still walking in our midst. She notes “the possibility of ontologizing

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It is worth remembering here that conceptualization, like language, is inherently metaphorical. Gibson-Graham’s creative use of metaphor affirms Paul Riceour’s (1977: 233) reflection that ”the power of metaphor would be to break an old categorization, in order to establish new logical frontiers on the ruins of their forerunners” (cf. Fisker 2019).

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the specter” as a “ready option afforded by language” for drawing “a blackboard image of something other than capitalism existing and thriving on the contemporary economic scene” (ibid. 250). Hauntology appears here as one way of producing weak theory by introducing linguistic dislocations where familiar orderings are deliberately pushed out of joint. The purpose of such an act is performative rather than constative; it proposes no new truth about its object, but through its deconstructive effects it prepares the ground for subsequent acts of reconstruction. Deconstruction may be a rewarding and satisfying academic practice, but taken in isolation it is of limited political import, because it rarely reconstructs anything on the ruins of what it has deconstructed. In Gibson-Graham, we see precisely that movement from de- to reconstruction in her practice of action research.10 Here, the haunting (from the future) of capitalism is not just observed,11 but deliberately enacted in the guise of diverse and community economies. In doing so, she has also broached something of key import to post-foundational political thinking and associated research practices: the ontic-ontological distinction between politics and the political (i.e., the political difference). To make myself clear, I think her practice can be considered in the light of Marchart’s (2007: 174) observation that “nobody has ever encountered the realm of the ‘ontopolitical’ as such, except in the cracks and fissures of the social which become filled, expanded or closed by … politics.” Hence, in order to allow the play of the political difference to come alive in academic practice, we may want to actively pry open such cracks and fissures in the fabric of the social. Without philosophizing on the intricacies of the political difference, Gibson-Graham has, in my view, shown a way – though not necessarily the only one – for post-foundationalists by courageously enacting political difference through her action research. Crudely put, it has opened a route from the ontological to the ontic, and possibly, back again.

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Conducted through various research collaborations in different locations: Pioneer Valley, USA; Latrobe Valley, Australia; Hong Kong, China; Jagna and Linamon, the Philippines (cf. Gibson-Graham 2006: xv-xvi). Although she also continued to conduct non-capitalocentric analyses of alternative economic forms and practices, such as the Basque Mondragon cooperative (GibsonGraham 2003b) and of how non-capitalisms haunt even quintessential capitalist institutions such as the multinational enterprise (cf. O’Neill/Gibson-Graham 2001).

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

Placing the Space of Pregnant Negativity As an ontological enterprise, our thinking practices are negatively grounded, starting in the space of nonbeing that is the wellspring of becoming. For us this is the space of politics, and its shadowy denizens are the ‘subject’ and ‘place’ – pregnant absences that have become core elements in our political imaginary. (Gibson-Graham 2006: xxxiii). Her space of pregnant negativity thus evokes a direct association with the Lacanian subject of lack (cf. Pohl/Swyngedouw in this volume)12 as well as with Laclau’s notions of contingent universals and dislocations (cf. Marchart in this volume). Together, these post-foundational references allow her to first bury the subject and then resurrect it as subjectivation – which is to say, as a spectral rather than an absolute presence; in motion rather than fixed; under continual transformation rather than stable. But she also adds a spatial inflection that was not present in either Lacan nor Laclau (or at least only latently so). This is where place joins the subject: Place is the ‘event in space’, operating as a ‘dislocation’ with respect to familiar structures and narratives. It is the eruption of the Lacanian ‘real’, a disruptive materiality. It is the unmapped and unmoored that allows for new moorings and mappings. Place, like the subject, is the site of becoming, the opening for politics. (Gibson-Graham 2004: 32–33). As moving targets, place and subject come to stand for the absent grounds of politics. Hence, her reluctance to pin them down, to fix place in space and the subject in identity.13 Following the deconstructive exercises presented in The End of Capitalism, her engagement in action research became instrumental for the gradual emergence in her work of a politics of place based on these,

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Bruce Fink’s (1995: 52) reflections are instructive here: “Lack in Lacan’s work has, to a certain extent, an ontological status: it is the first step beyond nothingness. To qualify something as empty is to use a spatial metaphor implying that it could alternatively be full, that it has some sort of existence above and beyond its being full or empty.” To invoke lack, then, is to impregnate nothingness and prepare it for habitation (cf. Lacan 1995). There is of course much more to be said about how Gibson-Graham deals with the subject and subject positions, but given the theme of the book, I am focusing on her treatment of place.

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and other, contingent groundings14 , a politics whose spatiality is “ubiquitous, punctiform, scattered, connected semiotically” while “its temporality is of the everyday and the continuum” (Gibson-Graham 2004: 32). In presenting and arguing her case, she has repeatedly positioned the politics of place in opposition to the kind of politics engendered and endorsed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (2000). She argued that the politics of empire and the politics of place rely on … two different visions of political space. In one, there is organized or ‘blanket’ control over space (so every place is a place within or under); space is the continuous space of dominion (Empire). In the other, places are scattered and control may or may not successfully enrol and harness them; space is both complexly differentiated and discontinuous. (Gibson-Graham 2004: 33). It should be clear enough that Hardt and Negri are cast here as new exemplars of the totalizing, paranoid stance – i.e., of strong theory – that continues to flourish in Left political thought. Against this, Gibson-Graham uses place as a device to unsettle, disrupt and unground that totalizing conception of space in which there can be no place for nurturing the new, no actionable space outside of Empire’s reach. But place is also used to contingently ground space anew: “In the place-based spatialization, every place is to some extent ‘outside’ the various spaces of control; places change imitatively, partially, multidirectionally, sequentially; space is transformed via changes in place” (ibid.). Such a grounding of space in place could easily be misconstrued as a regression into parochialism, a simple reversal of the relation between local and global. However, this is not the case: “Place is not a local specificity (or not that alone) but the aspect of potentiality, and the subject is not an identity but the space of identification” (ibid., own emphasis). And with that we have arrived at the shortest possible version of how Gibson-Graham has placed her space of pregnant negativity: a space consisting of “disarticulated places and empty subjects” where “the practice of politics involves articulation and subjectivation” and where politics is “an ethical practice of becoming” (ibid.).

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Including her own analyses of the Mondragon coop (O’Neill & Gibson-Graham 2001) and a Society for International Development project entitled “Women and the Politics of Place” (Gibson-Graham 2004).

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

Before taking these points a bit further, it is worthwhile to note how they resonate with Edward Casey’s (1997) broader call for a primacy of place15 , rather than of space or time. I find it crucial that a post-foundational ‘jump into space’ be made ‘through place’, because in contrast with the universalizing aspirations of ‘space’ and ‘time’, ‘place’ is already a post-foundational concept. Of course, this is true only insofar as place is conceived along the lines suggested by the likes of Casey (1993; 1997) or Massey (2005). These conceptions emphasize the eventmental character of place which is to be seen simultaneously as “an undelimited, detotalized expansiveness” (Casey 1997: 201) and as collections of stories-so-far (Massey 2005: 130). By asserting the primacy of place, we may avert the risk of constructing putative final grounds, because “place is not entitative - as a foundation has to be - but eventmental, something in process, something unconfinable to a thing. Or to a simple location” (Casey 1997: 337). As event, place not only locates, but situates. Where Gibson-Graham goes further than Casey and Massey is in specifying place as a pregnant negativity, thus endowing it with Lacanian lack (i.e., a lack that makes room for becoming, a constitutive lack). And it is on this basis that post-foundational interventions in space would be well-advised to make place, as ungrounded grounding, their point of departure.16

Making Ethical Decisions in Undecidable Terrains For Gibson-Graham, the impossibility of a final ground is an invitation for ethical commitment(s): “If politics involves taking transformative decisions in an undecidable terrain, ethics is the continual exercising of a choice to be/act/or think in certain ways” (Gibson-Graham 2008: 618). From an Ethics of the Local (Gibson-Graham 2003a) to An Economic Ethics for the Anthropocene 15

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Casey’s (1997: 337) arguments have a clear post-foundational ring to them: “The new bases of any putative primacy of place are themselves multiple: bodily certainly, but also psychical, nomadological, architectural, institutional, and sexual. Since there is no single basis of the primacy of place, there is no monolithic foundation on which this primacy could be built.” Another, simpler, way of schematizing all this is to say that space, like the political, operates at the ontological level, whereas place, like politics, belongs to the ontic. But this may easily be too crude, or too neat, a way of portraying something very messy and complicated. It has an odor of binary thinking which does not sit well with postfoundationalism, tempting as it may be.

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(Gibson-Graham/Roelvink 2010), she has responded to this invitation. The turn to ethics may, at first sight, be considered controversial. Oliver Marchart (2007), for instance, has been a vocal critic of the ‘ethicism’ he considers to be the principal danger of a post-foundational stance. What Marchart (2007: 129) critiqued, however, was the particular kind of ethicism found in Alain Badiou, “a danger not hidden in ethics as such, but in the subsumption of politics and of the political under the ethical.” With Badiou, then, “political action becomes an ethical, even quasi-religious effort at remaining faithful to a specific event through one’s thinking and acting.” In other words, the danger lies in a treacherous slippage where the ethical slides in to play the part of first philosophy, thus creating an unassailable, final ground and completing the regression into foundationalism. Gibson-Graham’s turn to ethics, however, could not be further removed from this: Instead of remaining faithful to a single event à la Badiou, her ethical practice is about being affected by every event, however ordinary they may be, taking in their potentiality for becoming rather than using them as affirmation of a being already decided upon. Her ethics are never pre-formed, but emerge from journeys into the space of pregnant negativity (i.e., they arise out of engagement with the absent fullness of places and subjects). Or, to put it in terms more familiar to post-foundational thought, her ethics is produced in staging the impossible encounter between the ontic and the ontological. Once again, then, we need to turn to her practice of action research, since this is where that negative grounding takes place and the ontic-ontological encounter is staged. Here, it may be beneficial to see the kind of action research favored by Gibson-Graham as phronetic17 , in the sense forwarded by Olav Eikeland (2006: 34): Phrónêsis does not try to manipulate, or merely persuade, but must present its own thinking and reasons for deciding and acting in certain ways as openly as possible to the mindful judgement of others, trying to show, and convince, making them see, but still respecting their autonomy.

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This suggested connection might be too much of a stretch, since “action research cannot be just phrónêsis. Nothing can be merely phrónêsis, since phrónêsis is the ultimate, practical perfection of the other virtues – ethical and intellectual” (Eikeland 2006: 48). What I want to emphasize is how Gibson-Graham’s empirical research practice seems to seek alignment with a phronetic ideal.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

This is as precise a description as any given by Gibson-Graham herself of the interaction with participants in her action research (cf. Cameron/Gibson 2005). Clearly, we are dealing with a deliberative process that has suspended with the pretense that all participating actors should, can, or ought to be equals; a practice that embodies the recognition of power as a mundane, uneven milieu. In this sense, “what really distinguishes phrónêsis from other deliberative processes…is its ethical content and its immanence to praxis” (Eikeland 2006: 34). Again, this means that ethical decisions are not ready-made but emerge from praxis. The role of the academic researcher is to provide a new language, a different way of thinking and talking about local issues to enable and enact openings that engender moments of ethical becoming. In this way, ‘making them see’ is not so much about seeing what ‘we’ already knew, but rather about providing ways of seeing something new, of seeing something assumedly familiar in unfamiliar ways. Crucially, this goes for researchers and researched alike. It is an approach to action research that acts out in situ, and with research participants, the back-and-forth of ungrounding and grounding. The ethical moments thus produced, however, hold within them the moment of the political as potentiality only.18 In reflecting on her own action research, Gibson-Graham (2003a: 68) makes a connection to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy which can be seen to form a key part of her research ethics: “Rather than convening people on the basis of presumed or constructed similarities, our projects seemed to foster communities of ‘compearance’ in which being together, or being-in-common, was both the ground and fullness of community.” She takes Nancy’s notion of being-in-common as a minimal definition of community which becomes an (almost) empty concept, an emptiness that nevertheless “points to an ethical and political space of decision” (Gibson-Graham 2005: 121). Indeed, she argues that without such minimal definitions and nearly empty concepts or signifiers – without weak theory – “the opportunity to cultivate ethical praxis” may be closed off (Gibson-Graham 2006: 98). Rather than aiming to construct and consolidate ethical ideals (however abstract or concrete), then, her concern is to furnish a space where ethical practice is possible and where ethical decisions are seen to matter, to possess real effectivity. In acting this out, her preferred target continues to be ‘the economy’: “Opening up the economy to a diversity of practices and to the possibility of ethical rather than 18

Cf. Sharpe (2014) for a detailed discussion of the play between potentiality and impotentiality in Gibson-Graham.

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structural dynamics producing economic transformation has performative effects” (Gibson-Graham 2015: 57). But prying open such an ethical decision space is hard work that requires us – with a phrase borrowed from Bruno Latour (2004) – to learn to be affected, “an ethical process in which bodies and worlds are co-constituted” (Gibson-Graham/Roelvink 2010: 323). In this way, her work on ethics has taken a gradual turn toward both the bodily and the emotional, with the notion of affect tying the two together. With this in mind, we may return to the space of pregnant negativity equipped with an enhanced sense of the arduous bodily and emotional work needed to enact such an affective space. What may seem relatively straightforward in the secluded safety of writing ontological treatises quickly becomes a quagmire of methodological challenges once real people and places of flesh and blood, soil and air enter the equation with all the messy force of a real world.

Towards Renegade Cartographies of Post-Foundational Space Renegade cartographies, rooted in experience and wrought of ‘involvement’, struggle to name a different spatiality and chart the politics to produce it. … Embodied, situated, and messy, these nonlinear productions of knowledge alter the terrain of theory and practice; they pry apart conventional geographies not by dismantling ‘major theory’, but by situating minor theory in its midst (Katz 1996: 498). More than anything, I see Gibson-Graham as a renegade cartographer in the above sense of the term19 . She has charted (economic) geographies which stood no chance of gaining visibility within the rigid confines of foundationalism, and she has put her own version of post-foundational political thought to work in her search for a politics of possibility. She has also instantiated a renewed attention to ethics, and in this, her work is suggestive of a way forward for post-foundational thinking and doing: to continue to ontologically unground the political while simultaneously pursuing ethical groundings of politics on the ontic level. What flows into her practice of action research are various ways of ungrounding the political at an ontological level, but what 19

A cartography, to be sure, which has been unmoored from Cartesian and Euclidean sensibilities; a cartography, which situates rather than locates, maps places rather than mere sites. The ‘unreal’ map shown in the introduction to the chapter is exemplary (Figure 1).

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

flows from that practice are ethical becomings formed at the ontic level of politics. In other words, she has enabled the creative construction of an ontically grounded ethics of ontological ungrounding. Gibson-Graham thus embodies Laclau’s (1994: 2) wishful forecast of “a radicalized pragmatism” that would “join forces with a historicist deconstructivism.” The post-foundational spatial imagination is haunted by its own heritage. Take, for instance, Laclau’s (1990: 68) claim that “politics and space are antinomic terms. Politics only exist insofar as the spatial eludes us.” In the context of developing post-foundational theories of space, it is stifling to insist that “temporality must be conceived as the exact opposite of space” (ibid. 41). Here, we should heed Massey’s (1993: 153) counterclaim that “space is not static, nor time spaceless. Of course, spatiality and temporality are different from each other but neither can be conceptualized as the absence of the other.” And this is where Gibson-Graham has provided an important opening by enrolling place as the space that is pregnant with negativity. Whereas, for Laclau (1990: 69), “spatiality means coexistence within a structure that establishes the positive nature of all its terms”, Gibson-Graham (2004: 32) positions place as “that which is not fully yoked into a system of meaning.” Where Laclau associates ‘dislocation’ with temporality, Gibson-Graham associates it with place and thereby situates the possibility of politics. In a nutshell, politics arise in time for Laclau, in place for Gibson-Graham; remembering, all the while, that an eventmental place is already spatio-temporal. In this sense, they agree that any kind of spatial closure is ultimately impossible, but Gibson-Graham aids us by grounding that impossibility not just in time, but also in place. This, at the very least, is a fruitful starting point for generating post-foundational spatial theory. In Gibson-Graham’s own words: “Our thinking strives to render a world with an ever-replenishing sense of room to move, air to breathe, and space and time to act – a space of pregnant negativity.” Post-foundational thinking has been marked by a curious silence on - and a seeming lack of engagement with - feminist and queer theory, even where it shares key post-foundational tenets in all but name. Gibson-Graham is just one of many examples, several of which would have been equally pertinent with regards to spatial theory. I have already mentioned Cindi Katz’ (1996; 2001) work on minor theory, renegade cartography and counter-topography. In addition, Gillian Rose’s (1993) notion of the paradoxical spaces of feminist geography and Gillian Hart’s (2016) approach to relational comparison are just as relevant for a feminist take on post-foundational spatial theory. Indeed, these strands of thought are intertwined in ways that I cannot even begin to

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account for here. All I can do is to reassert that there are many ways of being a post-foundationalist and that I think we would do well to draw on a wider range of them, including not least the one represented in this chapter by J.K. Gibson-Graham.

References Cameron, Jenny/Gibson, Katherine (2005): “Participatory Action Research in a Poststructuralist Vein”. In: Geoforum 36, pp. 315-331. Casey, Edward (1997): The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press. Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Felix (1987): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Scizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eikeland, Olav (2006): “Phrónêsis, Aristotle, and Action Research.” In: International Journal of Action Research 2/1, pp. 5-53. Fink, Bruce (1995): The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fisker, Jens (2019): “Terrains and Landscapes of Urban Politics.” In: Fisker, Jens Kaae/Chiappini, Letizia/Pugalis, Lee/Bruzzese, Antonella (eds.), Enabling Urban Alternatives: Crises, Contestation, and Cooperation, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-64. Gibson, Katherine (2014): “Thinking Around What a Radical Geography ‘Must Be’.” In: Dialogues in Human Geography 4/3, pp. 283-287. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1995): “Identity and Economic Plurality: Rethinking Capitalism and ’Capitalist Hegemony’.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, pp. 275-282. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996): The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003a): “An Ethics of the Local.” In: Rethinking Marxism 15/1, pp. 49-74. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003b): “Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class.” In: Critical Sociology 29/2, pp. 123-161. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2004): “The Violence of Development: Two Political Imaginaries.” In: Development 47/1, pp. 27-34. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2005): “Traversing the Fantasy of Sufficiency.” In: Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 26/2, pp. 119-126.

Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s Space of Pregnant Negativity

Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006): A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2008): “Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for ‘Other Worlds’.” In: Progress in Human Geography 32/5, pp. 613-632. Gibson-Graham, J.K./Roelvink, Gerda (2010): “An Economic Ethics for the Anthropocene.” In: Antipode 41/1, pp. 320-346. Graham, Julie (1992): “Anti-Essentialism and Overdetermination: A Response to Dick Peet.” In: Antipode 24/2, pp. 141-156. Hardt, Michael/Negri, Antonio (2000): Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hart, Gillian (2016): “Relational Comparison Revisited: Marxist Postcolonial Geographies in Practice.” In: Progress in Human Geography 42/3, pp. 371394. Katz, Cindi (1996): “Towards Minor Theory.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, pp. 487-499. Katz, Cindi (2001): “On the Grounds of Globalization: A Topography for Feminist Political Engagement”. In: Sign. 26/4, pp. 1213-1234. Lacan, Jacques (1995): “Position of the Unconscious.” In: Feldstein, Richard, Fink, Bruce, Jaanus, Maire (eds.), Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 259-282. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (1994): Introduction. In: Laclau, Ernesto (ed.), The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso, pp. 1-11. Latour, Bruno (2004): “How To Talk About The Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies.” In: Body and Society 10, pp. 205-229. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das Unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marcus, Sharon (1992): “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention.” In: Butler, Judith/Scott, Joan Wallach (eds.), Feminists Theorize the Political, London: Routledge, pp. 385-403. Marttila, Tomas (2015): Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Massey, Doreen (1993): “Politics and Space/Time.” In: Keith, Michael/Pile, Steve (eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity, London: Routledge, pp. 139-159. Massey, Doreen (1997): “A Feminist Critique of Political Economy.” In: City 2/7, pp. 156-162. Massey, Doreen (2005): For Space, London: Sage. O’Neill, Philip/Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1999): “Enterprise Discourse and Executive Talk: Stories that Destabilize the Company.” In: Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers 24, pp. 11-22. Resnick, Stephen/Wolff, Richard (1987): Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Riceour, Paul (1977): The Rule of Metaphor. The Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Czerny, Robert/McLaughlin, Kathleen/Castello, John. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rose, Gillian (1993): Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Cambridge: Polity Press. Sedgwick, Eve (2003): Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham: Duke University Press. Sharpe, Scott (2014): “Potentiality and Impotentiality in J.K. Gibson-Graham.” In: Rethinking Marxism 26/1, pp. 27-43. Tomkins, Silvan (2008): Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition, New York: Springer. Turbayne, Collin (1971): The Myth of Metaphor: Revised Edition, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

On Shaky Ground: Thinking Lefebvre Nikolai Roskamm

Henri Lefebvre is a post-foundational thinker – that is the principal thesis of my chapter. Such announcement might come as a surprise. In previous encounters of post-foundational thinking with urban studies or critical geography, Lefebvre’s theory is not present as a possible connector (cf. Beveridge/Koch 2017; Karaliotas/Swyngedouw 2019; Knierbein/Viderman 2018; Penny 2019; Swyngedouw 2017; Wilson/Swyngedouw 2014). Prior reviews of Lefebvre’s work tried rather to present him as postmodern geographer, as urban Marxist or maybe as a vague culturalist. In my chapter, I propose a different reading. I show how and why Lefebvre’s social theory – that precedes his influential work on urbanity and space – is thoroughly post-foundationally saturated. Lefebvre’s writings, this is my suggestion, offer an elaborated post-foundational thinking that is crucial for his later work on the right to the city, the production of space or planetary urbanization. I will try to point out why Lefebvre’s considerations are deeply involved in post-foundational political thought and how this thinking shaped his urban theory. To present Lefebvre as a post-foundational scholar is tricky, because – for urban studies – his work is foundational. Without any doubt, Lefebvre is one of the most important references in the field. It would probably be correct to denote Lefebvre’s writings on cities as the grounding texts of critical urban theory. If this is true, the plan to revisit some principles of Lefebvre’s social theory – which is my undertaken in the following pages – and to uncover its post-foundational priming, is a firmly (un)grounding intervention. To venture into some crucial passages from Lefebvre’s early texts of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is to visit the ground (i.e., Lefebvre’s social theory) of the ground (i.e., Lefebvre’s urban theory) of critical urban studies. My endavour has at least three objectives: to offer a fresh interpretation of Lefebvre’s theory; to remember some ontological traces in urban theory;

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and, perhaps, to unsettle some of urban studies’ embosomed conventions and narratives. Hereby, I present Lefebvre as a thinker, who thinks in a post-foundational manner. This means thinking as an ontological engagement, which visits and challenges the grounds of its own foundations. Thinking Lefebvre therefore seeks to reconstruct the reflexive and critical investigation of the French scholar with the haunting urban studies’ essentials and to explore “the place where we find ourselves” (Marchart 2018: 182). My approach is as follows: First step, I consider Lefebvre’s 1950s and 1960s writings, in which he elaborates his social theory in thinking the question of totality. Lefebvre makes two points: He explains, why totality is a necessary goal, and he states, why it is not possible to achieve totality fully. Lefebvre implements that paradoxical stimulus as an unstoppable and endless force for all social activities. My contribution is to expose why we can name these reflections post-foundational and how they correspond with actual considerations in political thought of that type. In a second step, I investigate Lefebvre’s early attempt at thinking the being of the city. In a rarely discussed paragraph of his 1940s Critique of Everyday Live, Lefebvre drafted an essay about the nature of the modern city, linking it with a reflection on concentration camps and particularly Auschwitz. This is, I argue, the uncomfortable starting point for Lefebvre’s famous writing on cities. In a third section, I bring this hypothesis up for debate with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the ‘exceptional state’ as the inner logic and structure of the political space of modernity. I discuss to what extent Lefebvre’s speculations can benefit from Agamben’s topological consideration. In the last section, I close with discussing Lefebvre’s later urban theory as post-foundational urban ontology.1

Lefebvre Post-Foundational In the late 1950s, Lefebvre was in conflict with the French Communist Party, which excluded him in 1957 (Merrifield 2006; Wark 2011). The collateral dispute provoked an intensive creative period in Lefebvre’s career. In Problèmes actuels du marxisme (1971 [1958]) – the book which caused his party expulsion and which has not been translated into English until today – and in the second volume of Critique of Everyday Live (2002 [1961]), he elaborates the theoretical framework of his entire thinking. Interestingly, Lefebvre’s theoretical heyday 1

For longer versions of my argument, cf. Roskamm (2017) and (2019).

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coincides with in a foundational strife with his political home base. What we can see here is, on the one hand, an example of the productive and political capacity of negation and thinking; to be a political intervention, thinking “must consist in the negation of the given” (Marchart 2018: 34). On the other hand, the object of dispute is illuminating. Lefebvre intervenes into the doxa of dogmatic Marxism, but – and this is crucial – without dismissing Marxian ideas. What Lefebvre does – not unlike what Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau did 30 years later – is conducting a rigorous critique of a dogmatic variant of Marxism and, at the same time, creating a kind of post-foundational reconstruction.2 Lefebvre is aiming at the notion of totality. Totality is, according to him, a necessary target for thinking and acting. However, this claim is cognizant that efforts for totality need a perspective, which is aware that totality is – in the last instance – not possible. To claim totality without regarding its impossibility is nothing but dogmatism. Both are necessary: the pursuit of totality and the consideration of the impossibility of its fulfilment. Urge and drive to totality are the very forces that put the social in motion to constitute society. Moreover, the drive is not only a drive; it is a fight, a permanent, unstoppable struggle for meaning and truth. The fight is unstoppable because the target (i.e., totality) is not to be achieved. Again, to position one’s own totality as the only truth, is nothing but dogmatism. Facing this impasse, Lefebvre (2002: 182) proposes the notion of ‘immanent failure’: “The moment it becomes totalized is also the moment when its immanent failure is revealed. The structure contains within itself the seeds of its own negation: the beginning of destructuring.” Failure and negativity become ontological elements in this thinking; they determine the reality of being and prevent history from coming to an end. Lefebvre (ibid. 184) states: “Only when a totality has been achieved does it become apparent that it is not a totality at all.” With his theoretical endeavours, Lefebvre wishes to escape Marxist dogmatism, which appears particularly in the form of economism. He consid-

2

Laclau and Mouffe, as Marchart (2018: 40) reports, “not simply abandoned the Marxist legacy”, but particularly Laclau was “one most loyal to the conflictual ontology of Marxism.” This is true for Lefebvre as well.

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ers dogmatism as a specific feature of contemporary Marxism3 , but also as a general problematique. According to Lefebvre, the whole world is haunted by different shades of dogmatism. Dogmatism exists, as he puts it, less in “assertions without evidence” (Lefebvre 1971: 33), but more in cases of asserting something without the capability to prove it. In many cases, even a supposedly absolute proven assertion masquerades itself as absolute truth and leads to an inertia of thought. Precisely the faith in the possibility of perfect evidence and reasoning in final terms creates dogmatic positions. An allegation without any reference to the condition of relativity is impossible; no statement is able to bring ultimate proof (ibid. 30). Nevertheless, according to Lefebvre, every serious theoretical reflection needs the notion of totality. Theory needs totality as reference point. Without the idea of totality, every thought (and the entire world) crumbles into particularities that lack any meaning or power. Thinking of totality is necessary for providing reasoning, providing possible directions of thought and action. Without thinking totality, each consideration loses the capability of having a destination and tends to take (and to leave) things as they are. This is crucial, especially for political action. Politics that consider only particularities will stop seeing the bigger picture. Only with the imagination of a totality (an alternative totality), can a true political demand or claim become possible. This also resonates with the description of the “post-political condition” and its overarching consensus (Michel/Roskamm 2013; Rancière 1999; Swyngedouw 2009; Žižek 1999). Without the presence of totality, there will be no alternative to consider. The same counts for the sciences and their quest for knowledge: “Without this initial option – the will for totality – there can be no action and no attempt to achieve knowledge” (Lefebvre 2002: 187). The sole focus on particularities destroys the search for recognition from inside. Without addressing totality, research tilts to pure acceptance and repetition of the given.4 3

4

Lefebvre does not accuse Marx himself of dogmatism; rather, he assures that the latter did not operate with simplistic or schematic hypotheses. The conception of Marx, this is Lefebvre’s persuasion, has always considered deviancies and divergences of social processes. Lefebvre’s addressing of totality is similar to what Marchart has recently elaborated as a crucial feature of his intended ontology of the political: the process of ‘going macro’. Marchart (2018: 124) indicates a “passage from the social (the field of micro-politics) to politics (the field of macro-politics) ‘mediated’ by the emergence of a third term: the political in the form of antagonism”.

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Moreover, Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life introduces a new, quite poetically social-theoretical supplement, namely the “theory of moments” (1971: 340). Lefebvre creates a multiple-layered paradox with this theory, a temporal spatial unity that fades so quickly that it may still exist. The moment is temporal; it is elevation, stimulation, ecstasy. At the same time, however, it can also be of long duration, when it remains as the remaining moment. “Through all change,” as Lefebvre puts it, “something remains” (ibid. 342), and this is: the moment. Ultimately, the moment is also spatial. It can be spatially localized, namely in that in-between which spreads between the absolute and the individual. It is a spatial as well as a temporal intermediate (‘please wait a moment’), it is not one or the other, it is actually not a relation, it is rather the period of time, in which a mediation takes place (or does not take place), it is the context of the relation, the plasma of difference. The moment is the ‘anti-thing’, it works in the opposite direction to reification or Verdinglichung and plays on the keyboard of emancipation, possibility and liberation. Lefebvre gives various examples of what can be called a moment, for example: love, play, rest, knowledge; a list that can be supplemented at will (ibid. 344). The moment serves two opposing demands: on the one hand, it becomes a category of contingency; on the other hand, it is a carrier of continuity. For Lefebvre, the moment is the instance whose task it is to mediate between a higher unity and arbitrariness, a variation on the difference between totality and particularity. At the same time, “every moment becomes an absolute”, it can and must set itself as absolute, it strives for and thus “the moment proposes itself as the impossible” (ibid. 346). We can see here the same forces at work in Lefebvre’s battle with totality. The moment prevents the absolute and yet drifts in its direction. Finally, the theory of moments includes the crucial feature of negativity. Negativity as a post-foundational concept corresponds with Lefebvre’s remarks. The moment processes the instance of the negative, it has its very “specific negativity” (ibid. 347). Through the moment, “negativity operates at the heart of whatever tries to structure and constitute itself into a definitive whole” (ibid.). The moment, too, has a variation of the reflections on totality, it is finally also the “instant of failure” (ibid. 351) and “its fulfilment is its loss” (ibid. 352). We should capture the moment(s) before it (they) has (have) passed away again: the moment as the negative force that, in the mode of tragedy, allows two things to merge: on the one hand, the necessity and on the other hand, the possibility that it could also be different. Once again, this

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is how Lefebvre (ibid.) puts it, “we are faced with the dialectical movement of ‘totalization/ negativity’.” In his 1958 book, Lefebvre engages in another post-foundational intervention, by bringing forth the idea of materialism and matter (matière). His conception is to define matter as a variable: “The matter is a sort of x (something unknown) that we have to set (or to refuse) in our assertions” (ibid. 105). Matter becomes an infinite (and infinity-destroying) thing, a theoretical chameleon, and a subversive wildcard. Lefebvre (ibid. 106) argues: The notion of matter, considered as dialectic targeted x, determines every insight and knowledge. Every limited, approximate and relative finding (finite in his nature and already on the way to its abolition, already negated through the infinite progress of thinking), is related to that dialectic x. With the conception of matter as necessarily unknown x, Lefebvre opens his post-Marxist theory for a psychoanalytic perspective and anticipates a central play on words of post-structuralism. Lefebvre’s variable x is quasi-constructed and designed as the “objet petit a”, which Jacques Lacan puts at the very center of his psychoanalytic social theory in his 1960s seminars (cf. Pohl/Swyngedouw in this volume; Hillier/Gunder 2004; Pohl 2020). Lacan relates his object a with “the function of the remnant” (Lacan 2014: 213), an irreducible rest as residual waste of every subjective process and outside of any possible objectivity. It is an object “affected by desire” (Lefebvre 1971: 25), the impossible real, the unreachable target of lust and becomes the very force of social action (Marchart 2013: 295). It constitutes the space of the social with its unattainable nature. If object a would be accessible, all social process would cease (ibid. 320). The similarity to Lefebvre’s variable x is striking. Lacan’s object a relates to the whole in the same way as Lefebvre’s x; as well as its disappearance when it reaches supposed completeness. Lefebvre’s x and Lacan’s a both follow the logic of an impossible object and are both built on paradoxical grounds, oscillating between totality and relativity, targeting completeness and absoluteness within particularities, going through infiniteness, impossibility and unattainability. Lacan deals with the remaining rest of the subject, Lefebvre intervenes into the abundant rest of systems and structures (of every system and every structure). Both lines of thought coalesce in the construction of ‘the rest’ as subversion of totality and impetus of social activity. Both concepts come together in the question of matter. Lefebvre proclaims his x as matter itself, Lacan attributes object a to a material nature, although a haunted form

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of materiality, which always sways back and forth between presence and absence. Lefebvre’s x (matter) is not only similar with Lacan’s a, but it is finally a variant of the basic and constitutive idea of post-foundational thinking. Written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lefebvre’s remarks on totality, moments and materiality are post-foundational theory at its best. The similarities to recent post-foundational political thought lie not only in the shared insistence on the impossibilities of last reasons or grounds, but also in the appeal to constantly deal with, and challenge categories such as totality or necessity. Far from stating that everything is random and arbitrary, Lefebvre’s aim is to re-enact categories of totality in order to fight the permanent struggle to explain why the last reason and the final totality are not possible and what follows from such lack of finality.

[Un]Grounding Urban Theory What is the relation between Lefebvre’s social ontology and his concept of the city? What does Lefebvrian post-foundational urban theory look like? The framework of [un]grounding proposed in this volume is a possible way to find some answers to those questions. However, in visiting the ground in Lefebvre’s urban theory, we have to trace back further in his writings. Of particular interest, is the first part of his Critique of Everyday Life (1991 [1947]).5 Here, we can find an early and obviously ontological attempt to elaborate on the nature of the city, which is an almost forgotten starting point of his urban writings. Lefebvre starts with an approach that, at first glance, seems not to be so spectacular: He compares the city with a text. Our cities, he writes, can be “read like a book” (1991: 233), although the comparison is “not completely exact”, since a book “signifies”, whereas the cities “’are’ what they signify.” From today’s perspective and in view of Lefebvre’s importance for the development of critical urban research, this statement is, at a second glance, still more explosive than it initially seems. On the one hand, it becomes apparent that at the beginning of Lefebvre’s urban thinking, there is a turn towards a linguistic-structuralist perspective and an affirmation that the city belongs to the symbolic order. On the other hand, from the point of view of critical urban research, Lefebvre’s statement (i.e., that cities are what they signify) 5

The book was published 1947, but the text had already been written in AugustDecember 1945.

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makes people prick up their ears. Here, the aversion of urban studies to essentialist reifications and hypostatisations could be activated – an aversion that arises from the confrontation with the problematic history of one’s own field of knowledge and the determinisms of nature and space that constitute it. Determinism, essentialism and classical ontology (the question of being) of urbanism and geography merged at the beginning of last century into an ominous spatial turn (cf. Rabinow 1989). Lefebvre’s statement of cities-are-whatthey-signify forces us to deal with this problematique. Lefebvre suggests an ontology of the city, but that is bearable because he developed and took a theoretical position beforehand, the foundation of which (as elaborated in the previous section) is the awareness of contingency of all social and historical factors. Only such an awareness makes it possible to think about the ‘being’ of things (and of ‘the city’) without immediately entering the waters of ‘vulgar materialistic’ reductionisms. The ontological reflection itself is unavoidable because the world is made up – consciously or not – based on ontological assumptions of whatever kind. The consciousness of contingency turns out to be the actual demarcation line between fundamentalist determinism and social theory. The second Lefebvrian point – under the heading of ‘what is possible’ – is more complicated, more confusing and darker. Lefebvre again (or still) asks about the being of the city. Lefebvre (ibid. 239–240) writes that, in addition to the investigation of conflict and solidarity in everyday life of the modern city, another, even more “moving question” arises: that of “urban life, the life of the people, the life on industrial housing estates [cités industrielles].” He poses the question, “where, how and in what experiences can its essence be discovered?” Lefebvre begins his exploration – without any transition and in this suddenness all the more impressive – with a longer reflection on Auschwitz. Here, too, Lefebvre (ibid. 241) asks about being: “What is the camp of Auschwitz?” He does not give a quick answer to his question, but first quotes in detail from various reports by survivors of the concentration camps, such as Vingt Mois à Auschwitz by Pelagia Lewinska. Lefebvre’s thesis is that the true meaning of the concentration camps has not yet been revealed. The “brute, objective facts”, according to Lefebvre (ibid. 242), were not identical with their “full meaning.” Lefebvre (1946, quoted/translated in ibid. 242) consults David Rousset, survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, who writes in L’Univers concentrationnaire:

On Shaky Ground

It is a universe apart. This intense life of the camps has its laws and its raisons d’être. This people of concentrationists has motivations of its own which have little in common with the existence of a man in Paris or Toulouse, New York or Tbilisi. But the fact that this universe of the concentration camp exists is not unimportant for the meaning of the universe of ordinary people. Lefebvre accepts this thesis and expands it. In the connection of the absurd and the reason manifest in the camps, Lefebvre works to establish an explanatory approach. He asks suggestively whether these Kafkaesque impressions, which “pushed to crisis point in the ‘universe of the concentration camp’”, were unknown to us, “to us men of Paris or Toulouse, New York or Tbilisi? Are they not precisely the most constant of all the feelings underlying everyday life, its very bedrock?” (1946: 243). These questions are followed (a colon reinforces the connection) from another description (1945, quoted/translated in ibid. 245) from Pelagia Lewinska: If the material conditions of the camp improved it was the upper strata which benefited: the women who had all the wealth – what they had plundered from the slaves. The capitalist principle prevails in the camps’ absurd rational barbarity. Lefebvre argues (ibid.) that the concentration camps …had other meanings – that they satisfied Hitlerian sadism, that they collected millions of potential hostages, etc. – is doubtless true. But the dominant, essential meaning seems to be this: if Fascism represents the most extreme form of capitalism, the concentration camp is the most extreme and paroxysmal form of a modern housing estate, or of an industrial town [de la cité modern, de la ville industrielle]6 The essence of the modern city, according to Lefebvre, reveals itself in its extreme case. This borderline case is the concentration camp. The description of Lefebvre and his questions, which are fragmentarily lined up one after the other (this also contributes to strengthening the effect of the oppressive content), culminate in the statement: “Et voilá Auschwitz, cité capitaliste” (1947: 236). The English translation “And here is Auschwitz, capitalist housing estate” (1991: 245) is misleading, I guess, at least if the purpose is to show Lefebvre’s

6

The English translation of “cité moderne” is “housing estate”, “la ville industrielle” (1947: 237) is “industrial town.”

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ontological conception of ‘the city’. A housing estate is only a part of the city, it is a particularity; la cité moderne encompasses the city as a whole, as a totality.

Agamben’s State of Exception For understanding Lefebvre’s effort to theorize the ‘being of the city’, it is helpful to consult Giorgio Agamben’s theory on the state of exception. Fifty years after Lefebvre, Agamben – another thinker related to post-foundational thought – deals with the significance of concentration camps in his Homo Sacer project. Agamben (1998: 160) poses the same ontological question as Lefebvre: “What is a camp?” He considers the same sources (such as David Rousset) and the same narratives (especially Kafka’s doorkeeper parable from Before the Law), and he has a similar thesis: For Agamben (2002: 160; 1998: 163), the camp, on the one hand, is “the nomos of the Modern” and, on the other, the “paradigm of political space.” Modernity and its political space both are constituted by Auschwitz; this is the radical thesis of Agamben.7 Agamben speaks against the verdict of the ‘unspeakable’, against classifying the Nazi camps as ‘inexplicable’ and putting it aside. Why, Agamben (1999: 32) asks, “confer on extermination the prestige of the mystical”? Agamben (1998: 160) postulates that the “specific juridical-political structure” had been omitted from consideration of the camp; it would be necessary not to consider the camp as a historical fact and an anomaly belonging to the past (even if still verifiable) but in some way as the hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we are still living. Agamben’s main approach to the essence of the camp – and this is much more explicit than in Lefebvre’s approach – is the state of exception. This state is the actual mode of today’s society, which “comes more and more to the foreground as the fundamental political structure and ultimately begins to become the rule” (1998: 19). A state of exception is a legal concept and means that a state or sovereign can override the constitution or parts of it. The famous definition in Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology (1934 [1922]) reads that the “sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception”. Especially in the 7

Marchart (2010: 227) criticizes Agamben’s thesis, because Auschwitz would become a “paradigm of everything.” However, it is also not implausible to think that Auschwitz is indeed an omnipresent experience of modernity.

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Weimar Republic, it had become common practice to declare a state of exception – whether against external or internal threats of the state (e.g., declared wars, conspiracies, revolts) or as protection against currency crises. The most famous example of a permanent state of exception is the German National Socialist state, which – with the Enabling Act – was in a state of exception without interruption from 1933 until 1945. However, even today, the state of exception is no exception.8 Agamben reports that, in the existing constitutions, two approaches have to be distinguished: the regulated and the unregulated state of exception. Agamben is primarily investigating the first variant. This case, Agamben (2005: 33; cf. 2015: 264) argues is a paradox “for what must be inscribed within the law is something that is essentially exterior to it”. The central point Agamben works from is precisely this logical structure. The state of exception, as Agamben (2005: 23) puts it, stands “neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and the problem of defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other”. More generally, he argues (ibid. 35), that the exceptional state represents “a space that is neither outside nor inside”. The similarity of the construction to Lefebvre’s social philosophy is already evident here. The state of exception is a concept – much like Lefebvre’s matter x – that stands outside the usual distinction of an inside and an outside. It is a concept that uncovers the limits of this distinction. The state of exception overrides what forms itself. The “suspension of the norm” – that is what it is when the state of exception is declared – in Agamben’s reading (ibid. 23), however, does not mean “its abolition; and the zone of anomie that it establishes it is not (or at least claims not to be) unrelated to the juridical order”. This reference does not only occur when the state of exception is declared. Already the possibility has an effect. With the possibility of the state of exception, something external becomes internalized. This import, in turn, does not leave the inside untouched. The constitutionally regulated state of exception is the “inscription of an outside of the law within the law” (ibid. 33) and infects this law deeply. The possibility of overriding oneself is, after all, not least one’s own insecurity. The imported outside changes the inside and reformats it. We have to examine this change more closely. Agamben argues (ibid. 23): “The simple topographical opposition (inside/outside) … seems insufficient to 8

I wrote this chapter before the COVID-19-crisis in 2020. I think, in these days, the actuality of considering theories about the state of exception are ever more pressing.

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account for the phenomenon that it should explain.” Such inadequacy, however, is exactly what must be sought out in order to understand the state of exception. Agamben (ibid.) writes: “In any case, to understand the problem of the state of exception, one must first correctly determine its localization (or illocalization)”. The state of emergency is a norm of law, which is constitutively located outside of from where it originates. Agamben continues (ibid. 35) “Being-outside, and yet belonging: this is the topological structure of the state of exception”. It is neither outside nor inside. Then, where is it? Agamben’s (ibid. 31) answer is: The state of emergency is in a gap, namely in a gap that “is not within the law,” but that concerns the “relation to reality, the very possibility of its application”. It is significant how Agamben describes this strange place of the gap. The state of exception, he (2005: 86) sums up, is what the “’ark’ of power contains at its center”; the site of the state of exception is “essentially an empty space, in which a human action with no relation to law stands before a norm with no relation to life”. The state of exception, in order to return to the starting point of my recourse to Agamben, materialized itself in the camp – so far the thesis. Agamben spatializes the exceptional case by explicating its theoretical figure once again in the topology of the camp. The camp obeys the same logic as the state of exception; it is the state of exception. The camp (such as that of Guantanamo, which is also exterritorial) entertains a unique relationship to the normal case and to the legal order. The camp occupies its own zone, which still belongs both to the outside and to the inside. In the interior view of the camp, it is an area outside (of everyday life, of rules and conventions, of the city) in which rules are suspended. However, the camp also not only has local effects, but also beyond, it is a “dislocating localization” (1998: 177). Through its existence, it inspires the interior of society and politics. This effect, this is how Agamben’s thesis unfolds, is not only partially significant, but generally decisive. The camp is the “hidden matrix of the politics” (ibid.) and ultimately constitutes society and modernity. From Agamben’s topological point of view, the extermination camps of the Nazis are simply a case of the greatest purity of this structure; they are a result of the attempt was made “to grant the unlocalizable a permanent and visible localization” (ibid. 21). For Agamben (1999: 148), Auschwitz is “the devastating experience in which the impossible is forced into the real. Auschwitz is the existence of the impossible, the most radical negation of contingency; it is, therefore, absolute necessity”. Agamben (1998: 176) thus finally confirms Lefebvre’s thesis and calls the “birth of

On Shaky Ground

the camp in our time” the event that “decisively signals the political space of modernity itself.” Between Lefebvre’s early approach to the essence of the city and Agamben’s definition of the camp as the paradigm of the political space of modernity, there are in fact many astonishing similarities: the centrally posed question of the ‘essence of the camp’; the insistence on using the Shoah and Auschwitz as objects of analysis, thus bringing these objects out of their exile of ineffability; the focus on the spatialization manifested in the camp; the subsumption of the historical events of the camp under the concept of the ‘possible’; and finally, the ontological question of the essence itself (i.e., the foundation of power, law, state, city) and its location in the borderline, the thinking of the exceptional case as constitutive normality. Agamben’s analysis focuses on the structure of a displaced place that cannot be entirely assigned to the outside or the inside. It is remarkable that this idea is so close to the structure of Lefebvre’s social theory. Agamben not only concretizes Lefebvre’s allusions to the camp as the paradigm of the modern city (which has hardly been noticed so far in the extensive Lefebvre reception by urban studies) into a detailed reflection on the human condition, but also does so in a way that corresponds to Lefebvre’s theory in detail. Starting from the same questions, embedded in the same way of thinking, Agamben has made a provocative and much-noticed attempt to develop a topological explanation of modernity through the borderline case of the state of exception and the camp. The fact that ‘the city’ obtains no explicit role for Agamben is of secondary importance at this point. On the one hand, the city is implicitly present in the analysis – if the state of exception permeates/represents/formats the legal order, then it is not far off to assume a similar relationship between the camp and the city. On the other hand, it is not the aim here to foist an urban theory on Agamben. Rather, my reading of Agamben aims to again reveal the postfoundational essences of Lefebvre’s urban theory. Lefebvre leaves us with a disturbing end to the first part of his Critique of Everyday Life, which is at the same time an astonishing beginning of his turn towards the city. This is what it is all about: the beginning of a continuous reflection on the city that has occupied Lefebvre throughout his life. Lefebvre’s attention to the city, which he pursued from the end of the 1960s, and which is a starting point of explicit critical urban studies, has at least three different origins. One of these – the favorite narrative of the “Lefebvre industry” (Waite 2008: 103) – is the tête-à-tête with the Situationists and Guy

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Debord (Merrifield 2005; 2006; Shields 1999; Wark 2011). A second – the most stable and substantial – is Marxism, from which Lefebvre draws much of his thinking and to which he has remained faithful throughout his life (i.e., by wanting to change it). The third origin is the predecessor to the theory of the ‘city’, the critique of everyday life, therein bringing together Auschwitz with the modern city. The first detailed involvement with the notion of the city in Lefebvre’s long-term project leads, in any case, to the borderline case of concentration camps, and thus becomes the inception for his confrontation with the urban. The significance of this finding is not diminished by the fact that Lefebvre suggests his thesis more than he executes it. Lefebvre’s early reflection on the nature of the city does not create a solid foundation from which a theory of the city can unfold. There is no solemn starting signal for the project called ‘critical urban studies’, no kettledrums and trumpets, but unsteady, uncertain, uncomfortable, ungrounded fragments. Lefebvre’s critical theory of the city begins with and in this very moment. It is an unstable, unfinished and slippery foundation on shaky ground.

Thinking Urban Ontologies I close with a short glance at Lefebvre’s work on urbanity. In his writings, Lefebvre was ever skeptical to any approach to the city using only empirical instruments. In Right to the City, his main purpose (1996a: 86) is bringing back the urban question to the level of philosophy, as “project of synthesis and totality”. Lefebvre aligns his urban theory with the social theory of his early writings and his thesis is that only philosophical thinking would offer access to totality. The city, Lefebvre tells us, is only understandable and accessible as total phenomenon, as phenomenon of totality; this would be necessary to grasp the city and the urban beyond analytical fragmentation in any particularities. According to Lefebvre, the urban can never be present in its entirety, but precisely this feature makes it a privileged object of philosophical consideration. He argues: “More than any another object, it [the urban] possesses a very complex quality of totality in act and potential the object of research gradually uncovered, and which will be either slowly or never exhausted” (1996a: 153). Because the urban as object of research never allows a complete and definite grasp, its consideration necessarily needs a pluralist set of perspectives. In The Urban Revolution, his second main book about ‘the city´, Lefebvre draws

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the famous planetary line from 0 % to 100 % urbanization (2003: 7). Urbanized society is Lefebvre’s renewed model of a total phenomenon. He adds (1996b: 187): “this total and planetary revolution – economic, demographic, psychic, cultural, etc., is today par excellence the impossible-possible (that is, possibility, necessity and impossibility)!” The (im)possibility of an executed planetary urbanization is Lefebvre’s main approach to the diffused nature of the city. What the city is and what the urban is – both are permanent questions in his thinking. However, we have to discuss whether it is acceptable to name Lefebvre’s proposals ‘urban ontologies’. Ontology and Lefebvre – urban studies would for a long time have regarded this pair as a contradiction. On the one hand, such interpretation (as a contradiction) is – at least partly – correct. It is surely justified to mention that Lefebvre had “a persistent reluctance to ontologize space, time, or anything else”, hence, we can label Lefebvre’s work as “anti-ontological Marxism” (Kipfer et al. 2008: 9; 11). On the other hand, even an anti-ontology is an ontology. This is crucial. An understanding of Lefebvre’s anti-ontological ontology is what post-foundational political theory can offer. At stake is another understanding of ontology: a post-foundational ontology of the political. Such ontology is not about essential, fixed, unchangeable, and pre-empiric features grounded in any kind of mystic metaphysics. It is not because it is post-foundational. Post-foundational means: calling into question one’s own foundations; wrestling with the imperative of totality; locating one’s own being in strange places (as interior/exterior or empty spaces); activating the contested and conflictual forces on any ground; focusing on radical negativity in the center of any historical formation; transforming ontologies of the present into hauntologies of the absent.9 In a post-foundational ontology, as Marchart (2018: 171) puts it, “the ultimately abyssal nature of all grounds is affirmed” and the “traditional ontology is both transformed and politicized”. This is what we can find in Lefebvre’s social theory and this is the ground for his interventions in urbanity and space. Following such interventions means “to accept the wager of thinking, that is, of ‘reasoning’ in a non-epistemological mode: a mode of political ontology” (ibid. 158). Lefebvre’s controversy with totality, his theory of the (failed) moment, his addition of x to prevent a whole, the unsettling start of his urban turn with identifying the modern

9

Interestingly, Lefebvre proposes in Right to the City a “spectral analysis of the city” (1996a: 139), which is close to Derrida’s idea of “hauntology” (1994: 10; cf. Roskamm 2019: 10).

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city in Auschwitz – all these interventions are, in the final instance, variants in thinking a post-Marxist, post-foundational ontology of the political.

References Agamben, Giorgio (1998): Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio (1999): Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, New York: Zone Books. Agamben, Giorgio (2005): State of Exception, The University of Chicago Press. Agamben, Giorgio (2015): The Use of Bodies, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beveridge, Ross/Koch, Philippe (2017): “The Post-Political Trap? Reflections on Politics, Agency and the City”. In: Urban Studies 54/1, pp. 31-43. Derrida, Jacques (1994): Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, New York and London: Routledge. Hillier, Jean/Gunder, Michael (2004): “Not Over Your Dead Bodies! A Lacanian Interpretation of Urban Planning Discourse and Practice”. In: Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space 37/6, pp. 1049-1066. Karaliotas, Lazaros/Swyngedouw, Erik (2019): “Exploring Insurgent Urban Mobilizations: From Urban Social Movements to Urban Political Movements?” In: Schwanen, Tim/van Kempen, Ronald (eds.), Handbook of Urban Geography, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 369-382. Kipfer Stefan/Goonewardena, Kanishka/Schmid, Christian/Milgrom, Richard (2008): “On the Production of Henri Lefebvre”. In: Goonewardena, Kanishka/Kipfer, Stefan/Milgrom, Richard/Schmid, Christian (eds.), Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 1-23. Knierbein, Sabine/Viderman, Tihomir (2018): “Space, Emancipation and PostPolitical Urbanization”. In: Knierbein, Sabine/Viderman, Tihomir (eds.) Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition, New York: Routledge, pp. 3-19. Lacan, Jacques (2014): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book X. Anxiety, Cambridge: Polity. Lefebvre, Henri (1947): Critique de la vie quotidienne (introduction), Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset.

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Lefebvre, Henri (1991) [1947]: Critique of Everyday Live: Volume 1, London and New York: Verso. Lefebvre, Henri (1971) [1958]: Probleme des Marxismus, heute, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lefebvre, Henri (2002) [1961]: Critique of Everyday Live: Volume 2, London and New York: Verso. Lefebvre Henri (1996a) [1968]: “The Right to the City”. In: Kofmann, Eleonore/Lebas, Elizabeth (eds.), Writings on Cities, Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, Henri (2003) [1970]: The Urban Revolution, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Lefebvre, Henri (1996b) [1973]: “Space and Politics”. In: Kofmann, Eleonore/Lebas, Elizabeth (eds.), Writings on Cities, Oxford: Blackwell. Marchart, Oliver (2010): Die Politische Differenz: Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2018): Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology After Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Merrifield, Andy (2005): Guy Debord, London: Reaktion. Merrifield, Andy (2006): Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction, New York and London: Routledge. Michel, Boris/Roskamm, Nikolai (2013): “Einführung: Die postpolitische Stadt“. In: sub\urban 1/2, pp. 9-16. Penny, Joe (2019): “Post-Political City”. In: Leitner, Helga/Peck, Jamie/Sheppard, Eric (eds.), Urban Studies Inside/Out: Theory, Method and Practice, London: Sage, pp. 290-192. Pohl, Lucas (2020): “Object-Disoriented Geographies: The Ghost Tower of Bangkok and the Topology of Anxiety”. In: cultural geographies 27/1, pp. 71-84. Rabinow, Paul (1989): French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Rancière, Jacques (1999): Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Roskamm, Nikolai (2017): Die unbesetzte Stadt: Postfundamentalistisches Denken und das urbanistische Feld, Basel: Birkhäuser.

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Roskamm, Nikolai (2019): “The Constitutive Outside of Planetary Urbanization: A Post-foundational Reading”. In: online publication, www.nikolairoskamm.de. Schmitt, Carl [1922] (1934): Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, München and Leipzig: Duncker&Humblot. Shields, Rob (1999): Lefebvre, Love & Struggle, New York and London: Routledge. Swyngedouw, Erik (2009): “The Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: In Search of a Democratic Politics of Environmental Production”. In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33/3, pp. 601-620. Swyngedouw, Erik (2017): “Unlocking the Mind-Trap: Politicising Urban Theory and Practice”. In: Urban Studies 54/1, pp. 55-61. Waite, Geoffrey (2008): “Lefebvre without Heidegger: ‘Left-Heideggerianism’ qua contradictio in adiecto”. In: Goonewardena, Kanishka/Kipfer, Stefan/Milgrom, Richard/Schmid, Christian (eds.), Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 94-114. Wark, McKenzie (2011): The Beach Beneath the Street, London and New York: Verso. Wilson, Japhy/Swyngedouw, Erik (2014): “Seeds of Dystopia: Post-Politics and the Return of the Political”. In: Wilson, Japhy /Swyngedouw, Erik (eds.), The Post-Political and Its Discontents: Spaces of Depoliticisation, Spectres of Radical Politics, Edingburgh: Edingburgh University Press, pp. 1-24. Žižek, Slavoj (1999): The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, London and New York: Verso.

Institution and Dislocation: Philosophical Roots of Laclau’s Discourse Theory of Space and Antagonism1 Oliver Marchart

Space – Active or Passive? There is an underlying metaphysical current to many concepts which tend to be employed quite thoughtlessly in the social sciences. Rather than ignoring this metaphysical current, as purely nominalistic or empiricist approaches would do, it is of utmost importance to be conscious of the philosophical implications of our discourses, as otherwise our arguments tend to be carried away in a stream of unreflected metaphysical assumptions. Discourse or hegemony theory, as it was developed by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe (Laclau/Mouffe 1985), and the so-called Essex School approach (Townshend 2003), provides us with an alternative as it brings into balance empirical analysis and philosophical considerations. To illustrate this, I propose to investigate to the main philosophical sources of – and theoretical controversies around – Laclau’s theory of space and antagonism. Discourse theory has left its mark on many disciplines adjacent to the discipline of post- structural political theory, among them human geography. In the second half of the 1990s, a rather controversial debate unfolded around Laclau’s concept of space (Glasze 2007; 2009; Glasze/Mattissek 2009; Howarth 1993; Marchart 1999; Massey 1992; Miles 1997; Reid 1994; Stavrakakis 2008), in which Laclau was charged by Doreen Massey of holding on to an outmoded notion of space. As Massey recounts the history of critical geography, it was the canonical slogan of the 1970s – supposedly still defended by Laclau in his 1

This chapter is a reprint of an article in Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory (2014, 15:3, pp. 271-282), reprinted with permission by the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://w ww.tandfonline.com

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book New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1990) – that space is to be conceived as socially constructed. According to this view, space is not seen as an unchanging substance or foundation on which society rests; rather, the specific structure of space is taken to be the result of social, economic, and political processes – a perspective nicely captured by Timothy Luke: “[s]pace does not exist as such; it too must be fabricated continuously in the production and reproduction of society” (Luke 1996: 120). In this sense spatial theories underwent the same constructivist turn that other social sciences had experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. However, from the 1980s onwards, according to Massey, this approach was radicalized to the point of nearly being inverted. Not only was space now seen as socially constructed, the general understanding was, inversely, that the social sphere was also spatially constructed. And, it was claimed, the spatial institution of the social sphere affects the way in which society works, as the latter will continuously be transformed through processes of spatialization. While in the earlier account space was still conceptualized, in the traditional metaphysical sense, as an entirely passive entity, i.e., as the outcome of processes of social construction, in today’s post-metaphysical view it is space itself which assumes the role of a social agent. As Doreen Massey (2005) claims in For Space, space must be conceptualized as something open, multiple, and heterogeneous by nature; not only is it constantly being made and remade, there is also a certain disruptive quality to it. Only in a second step is this disrupting and constantly changing force of space tamed and ossified, for instance, through mappings and other forms of representation. Laclau is criticized by Massey for remaining firmly within the first paradigm, thus misconstruing space as a realm of stasis.2 Therefore the debate largely turned around the question of whether or not, or to what extent, a moment of productivity or agency can be attributed to space rather than time. I have recounted this debate not so much in order once more to rehearse an argument of the 1990s, but to remind us of the important role philosophical arguments play, acknowledged or unacknowledged, for debates in the social sciences. One tends to forget, and Massey’s as well as Laclau’s works are central in reminding us of the underlying philosophical current in social theory. I shall illuminate this point by showing how much Laclau’s theory of space 2

The reason being that Laclau positions the category of space in binary opposition visà-vis the category of time, thus reproducing an old philosophical narrative where it is temporality which plays the part of agency, not space.

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relies on Husserl’s phenomenology and his critique of (social) objectivism. This will provide the basis for a more extensive discussion of the intrinsic relation between Laclau’s theory of space and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and political theory. I will end with a plea to take account of the, again, philosophical implications of Laclau’s differentiation between space and time, or the social and the political, by arguing that both are different (if not selfdifferencing) aspects of one and the same phenomenon: antagonism.

The Phenomenological Critique of Objectivism: Husserl and Laclau Massey’s criticism of the ideology of static space may be understood as a contemporary attack against social objectivism. By social objectivism we can understand the presupposition of a social substance which can be read from the social in form of positive facts. Dis- course theory too, as developed within the Essex School paradigm, has as one of its most central theoretical goals the development of a non-objectivist conceptualization of the social. Apart from post-analytic philosophy and post-structuralism, it thereby draws on the philosophical resources of the phenomenological tradition. As Laclau partly relies, in his theory of space, on Husserl’s Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, it is advisable to return for a moment to the Husserlian critique of objectivism. According to Husserl, all modern positive science is dominated by the idea of objectivity as originally developed in the natural sciences. The objectivism of natural sciences is traced back by Husserl to its original institution (Urstiftung) of science by Galilei, by which nature came to be mathematically idealized. But such mathematization and, eventually, technicization of the natural sciences came at a price. As long as only the mathematically idealized entities were taken for real, it was ignored that even the ancient discipline of geometry did possess a foundation in the sensual realm of the life-world. Objectivism started by taking “for true being what is method” (Husserl 1962: 52), while the most important questions of mankind were banished from the scientific realm: the doxa appertaining to the life- world was devaluated by scientific episteme. This process implied that relativity and subjectivity, as rooted in the life-world, were also devaluated in the course of objectivism increasingly gaining hegemony. Husserl claims that the history of modern philosophy is marked by a constitutive tension between the two conflicting currents of objectivism and transcendentalism. By transcendentalism Husserl understands

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a process of returning to the last source and ground of all cognition: pre-scientific subjectivity. Priority should not be granted to the being of the world, but to subjectivity as the instance which, in all scientific and pre-scientific modes, gives meaning to the world (Weltgeltung). A non-objectivist, i.e., transcendentalist, approach to the world would then have to take the inward road towards a subject who unfolds him-/herself onto the world. Such approach can be traced back historically to the instituting moment of Descartes who not only invented modern objectivist rationalism (as it presents itself in the dualism of res cogitans and res extensa), but also modern transcendentalism with his idea of the ego cogito as the fundamentum inconcussum of all cognition. This ego cogito, actually and more primordially an ego dubito (‘I doubt therefore I am’), turns out to be a distant forerunner of the phenom- enological epoché and Husserl’s project of a transcendental ‘egology’. For this reason Husserlian phenomenology does not entirely succeed in abandoning the foundational terrain of modern metaphysics. Despite his critique of objectivist foundationalism, Husserl does not manage to deconstruct the other side of the foundational doublecurrent: subjectivism. While from today’s post-foundational perspective one would of course be critical of Husserl’s subjectivism, his own critique of modern objectivism turned out to be fruitful for Laclau’s spatial theory. Objectivism is criticized by Laclau with his discussion of social processes of spatialization, but he also develops a notion of the social which to a certain degree relies on aspects of Husserl’s theory of the life-world. In particular, Laclau relies on the Husserlian distinction between sedimentation on the one hand, and original institution/reactivation on the other, whereby the former is associated by Laclau (1990: 34) with the realm of the social and the latter is determined as the moment of the political: For Husserl the practice of any scientific discipline entails a routinization in which the results of previous scientific investigation tend to be taken for granted and reduced to a simple manipulation, with the result that the original intuition which gave rise to them is completely forgotten. At the end of his life, Husserl saw the crisis of European science as the consequence of a growing separation between the ossified practice of the sciences and the vital primary terrain in which the original or constitutive intuitions of those sciences were rooted. The task of transcendental phenomenology consisted of recovering those original institutions. Husserl called the routinization and

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forgetting of origins ‘sedimentation’, and the recovery of the ‘constitutive’ activity of thought ‘reactivation’. Thus, Laclau proposes to think of the social as the terrain of sedimented discursive practices, while the political by contrast is defined as the moment of the institution of the social as well as the moment of the reactivation of the contingent nature of every institution. Sedimented social practices – no matter whether they manifest themselves in rituals, in cultural identities, or in functionally predetermined rules and institutions – gain objectivity because they can be anticipated on the basis of their repetitive nature. What constitutes an institution is the high degree to which operational sequences are sedimented. The life-world examples used by Laclau are telling: the post being delivered every morning, buying a cinema ticket, having dinner at a restaurant, going to a concert. In all these cases it can be anticipated, to a large degree, what is going to happen. Even though sedimented practices like these may allow for some degree of variation, we will still expect the postman to deliver the post, we will expect the concert taking place in accordance with the schedule, and we will expect being served in the restaurant where we have reserved a table. All this might, under particular circumstances, very well not happen, yet the social would be an unliveable place without such institutionalized sequences with a relatively low degree of variance and high degree of predictability. This is what constitutes the sedimented layer of social objectivity. Now, Laclau argues that to be able to anticipate an event within a given sequence implies a certain reduction of the temporality of the event. Practices which can be predicted because of their repetitive structure are by nature spatial. To the extent to which differences (differential practices) are sedimented into a relational, articulated structure their sedimentations can undergo a cartographic mapping. Sedimented routines, for instance, within a given institution can be spatialized into an institutional organogram. If differences, in an entirely unstructured state, would be subject to a continuous flow, they enter a process of sedimentation as soon as they are fixated spatially into positive structural moments. Social objectivity emerges from the articulation of differences into relational positivities, whereby they are synchronized into a structure. What Laclau calls ‘space’ is precisely the outcome of differences arranged into a relational whole: “As we know, spatiality means coexistence within a structure that establishes the positive nature of all its terms” (Laclau 1990: 69). Every form of relationality – even the relation of successive temporal

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moments – produces space, spatializes time. It follows that social objectivity is by nature spatial. Yet Laclau (ibid. 41–42) warns us that this claim should in no way be understood as metaphorical, since: Any repetition that is governed by a structural law of successions is space. If physical space is also space, it is because it participates in this general form of spatiality. The representation of time as a cyclical succession, common in peasant communities, is in this sense a reduction of time to space. Any teleological conception of change is therefore also essentially spatialist.

Space and Original Institution This conception of the social as a space of sedimented practices has to be relativized in two respects. First, social sedimentations can be traced back to the moment of an ‘original institution’ or ‘Urstiftung’ – herein Laclau follows the Husserlian terminology. This original institution can only assume a grounding function with regard to later sedimentations because equally available alternatives – i.e., alternative fixations and positivizations of social differences – have been suppressed in the first place. For this reason, every sedimentation (and every space) is based on a moment of exclusion which, in the course of the sedimentation process, sinks into oblivion. Insofar as an act of institution has been successful, a ‘forgetting of the origins’ tends to occur; the system of possible alternatives tends to vanish and the traces of the original contingency to fade. In this way, the instituted tends to assume the form of a mere objective presence. This is the moment of sedimentation. It is important to realize that this fading entails a concealment. If objectivity is based on exclusion, the traces of that exclusion will always be somehow present. What happens is that the sedimentation can be so complete … that the contingent nature of that influence, its original dimension of power, do not prove immediately visible. Objectivity is thus constituted merely as presence. (ibid. 34) Since every sedimented layer of the social came into the world through an original moment of exclusion, social objectivity could have been constructed differently. In other words, social sedimentations are contingent, because they could have been instituted in a dis- similar form. At the same time, however, it is not every logical alternative that is excluded in the moment of original

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institution, it is the set of historically available and politically articulated alternatives: ‘rejected alternatives do not mean everything that is logically possible, but those alternatives which were in fact attempted, which thus represented antagonistic alternatives’ (ibid.). Furthermore, we can only explain why it was this and not another alternative that came to be excluded by taking into account the struggle that raged over this question and the power resources employed to decide it on an unevenly structured terrain. Thus we arrive at three criteria of the social: contingency, historicity, and power. It is through processes of sedimentation that the contingent, historical, and power-based nature of the original institution falls into oblivion. What is more, we tend to forget not only the concrete historical alternatives once available, we also forget the aspect of radical negativity at the ground of all social relations: their antagonistic character (what we referred to as the struggle raging over the question as to which alternative should in a given moment be ruled out). We will come back to Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of ‘antagonism’ in more detail; for the moment it may suffice to say that in an antagonistic situation an equivalential chain is articulated between discursive differences; yet it is not an intrinsic propensity or a common positive content which binds these positions together. The only, as Laclau and Mouffe put it, ‘identical something’ that holds the chain together is a common orientation towards ‘what it is not’: its negative, threatening outside. In the extreme case of complete antagonization, the identity has become purely negative (in a relation of complete equivalence, the differential positivity of all elements is dissolved) and thus can no longer be rep- resented or symbolized – except through the very failure of symbolization as such: ‘This is precisely the formula of antagonism’, Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 128) hold, “which thus establishes itself as the limit of the social”.3

3

This limit is further characterized, perhaps paradoxically, as being internal to the social, for if it were simply separating two territories in the form of an external limit it would constitute a new difference: “Society never manages fully to be society because everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself as an objective reality” (Laclau/Mouffe 1985: 127). Speaking in discourse-analytic terms, the boundary of a given signifying system cannot be signified, but can only manifest itself in the form of an interruption or breakdown of the process of signification. The function of the excluding boundary, being both condition of possibility and condition of impossibility of meaning, thus consists in introducing an essential ambivalence into every system of difference constituted by the very same boundary.

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Nevertheless, and this is why this picture has to be relativized, the moment of radical negativity attached to the original institution cannot be completely erased from the social field of sedimentations. Social positivity will always be tainted by traces of original negativity – traces of contingency, historicity, power, and antagonism – as total sedimentation (a world without any remainder of negativity) would be a logical impossibility. A world consisting of repetitive practices without any room for deviations would be a machinery or perpetuum mobile, not a social sphere. No institution can be total. This at the same time implies that every ‘original’ institution will necessarily be somewhat less than original, as it will occur within a context of already sedimented practices. This is where every ‘institutional voluntarism’ will encounter its limit. Just as the moment of the ‘last instance’, for Louis Althusser, never arrives, for Laclau nothing can be traced back to a primordial ‘original institution’. Every first institution has already begun as a secondary institution, or, to put it in Husserl’s terminology: every ‘absolute original institution’ (absolute Urstiftung) presents itself to us as a ‘relative original institution’ (relative Urstiftung) (Husserl 1993: 421).4 This implies that the so-called original institution will never serve as a firm ground of the social, it can never be reached as such, and is only present in its effects: the sedimented layers of social sedimentation.

Temporality and Reactivation This leads us to the second relativization of the argument. For as long as a trace of original negativity (contingency and antagonization) will always remain, latently at least, within the sphere of social objectivity, it will always be possible to remind ourselves of it. Laclau denotes this moment with Husserl’s notion of reactivation. For Husserl, it is the philosophers’ obligation – as ‘functionaries of mankind’– to return to the moment of original institution and its variations within later institutions and reactivate them by questioning their sedimented forms (Husserl 1962: 72). For Laclau, though, what is to be reactivated is not so much the original instituting moment as such (as we said, this would be impossible). What can be reactivated are the concrete historical alternatives once available but now gone forever; it is the contingent and 4

To return to an absolute institution is rendered impossible by the dimension of unsurpassable historicity.

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antagonistic character of social sedimentations. What is thereby reactivated is the groundless nature of the social through newly emerging antagonisms: “Reactivation does not therefore consist of returning to the original situation, but merely of rediscovering, through the emergence of new antagonisms, the contingent nature of so-called ‘objectivity’” (Laclau 1990: 34–35). Only on the basis of newly emerging antagonisms can we become conscious of the range of alternatives available: “In turn, however, this rediscovery can reactivate the historical understanding of the original acts of institution insofar as stagnant forms that were simply considered as objectivity and taken for granted are now revealed as contingent and project that contingency to the ‘origins’ themselves” (ibid. 35). It is through the collision of antagonistic forces that we become aware of the contingent nature of sedimented routines. Only then do we become conscious of the fact that things could be different (historically and in the future).5 At this point Laclau’s theory of space turns into a theory of temporality. As it was said, his spatial theory is based on the assumption that spatialization and sedimentation emerge from the repetition of an original moment of institution. Repetition creates space. However, Laclau, an attentive reader of Derrida, is very well aware of the fact that mere repetition of the identical is quite simply impossible (Derrida 1988). Within the field of the discursive – the order of differences – there will never be a return of exactly the same differential position, since every iteration will be characterized by aberrations and displacements of the very element iterated. Laclau aims at this idea with his concept of dislocation – a term that refers to the Latin locus, and thus to a place within a topographical structure that has been pushed ‘out of place’. As the French architectural theorist Benoit Goetz has pointed out, according to biblical mythology, mankind’s history begins with a dislocation. The expulsion of man from paradise effectively means that a principle of distinction between an inside and an outside was introduced into an otherwise perfectly homogeneous space. Within the non-differentiated space of paradise, dislocation was impossible since every place in fact was interchangeable with every other place. We imagine paradise as a space undisturbed by heterogeneity or alterity, that is to say, without border or limit (Goetz 2002: 27). If we map such a utopian idea of space onto our notion of the social, what will emerge is the phantasmatic picture of a society fully identical with itself, a society 5

It should be stressed, however, that this is not a cognitive act, it is a political act; and political theory assumes, with Laclau, the role traditionally ascribed to epistemology.

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freed from all negativity and all differentiation. Yet the story continues, and after being expelled from paradise mankind found itself within a space full of distinctions and differ- entiations. Dislocation therefore turned into something of the order of an existential: “existence is dis-location. The dislocation is our essential dispersion; we are scattered, spread, derailed through multiple spaces” (ibid. 30).6 So, according to Goetz, it is our existential condition to be spatially dispersed. Architecture, which according to Goetz is essentially about nothing other than the differentiation and deferral of places, has to come to grips with the phenomenon of dislocation, since architectural space is composed of, precisely, dislocations. Therefore there is nothing intrinsically destructive to dislocation. Since the dislocation of places ‘does not stop taking place’, there is no place without dislocation. Dislocation therefore is turned by Goetz into a quasi-transcendental notion: it is now seen as the very possibility of any ‘location’, while at the same time it undermines and subverts every ‘location’. Laclau would certainly agree with such a deconstructive definition of dislocation, as it is clear to him that “every identity is dislocated insofar as it depends on an outside which both denies that identity and provides its condition of possibility at the same time” (Laclau 1990: 39). Social identity emerges from a necessary passage of every differentially constructed identity through the order of radical negativity. In other words, dislocation is both precondition and result of the antagonistic construction of social identity.

Antagonism This theory of antagonism, which directly relates to the concept of dislocation, was initially developed by Laclau and Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) and later on synthesized by Laclau in his important article ‘Why do empty signifiers matter to politics?’, included in his book Emancipation(s) (1996). Without being able to present every detail of the argument, I would like to give at least an abbreviated account which might suffice for our purpose.

6

For this reason Goetz (2002: 31) speaks about the constitutive plurality and fluctuation of spaces: “’Dislocation’, this means that there are always places but also other spaces as places, space between places, and that, therefore, places move, float, do not remain stable.”

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The Laclauian theory of antagonism – in its more technical version – is developed along the following line of reasoning: Assuming with Saussure that meaning can only emerge from a system of differences, Laclau takes as his starting- point that a minimal degree of systematization (of differences) is necessary within every signifying process (otherwise we would have a pure dispersal of differences, something which would amount to a state of social psychosis).7 Systematization, though, demands negation. Differences can only assume some degree of equivalence within a signifying system if this equivalence is stabilized vis-à-vis a common outside. This outside, or the border towards this outside, cannot be just another ‘positive’ difference, however. For in this case, it would simply be part of the inside, the realm of differences. It has to be of a radically different nature: different from all other differences. Hence, the differences within the signifying system can only be united vis-àvis something which negates them and threatens their very differential nature (their ‘positive’ identity). It is the negatory function of the outside of the system which exerts a certain systematizing effect on the realm of differences, and Laclau proposes to call this negatory dimension, involved in all forms of signification, antagonism. This antagonism serves as the condition of possibility of all social systems to the extent to which they are symbolically structured. Yet at the very same time, and this is a truly deconstructive turn, antagonism also renders impossible the final closure of a signifying system. Precisely because the instance of antagonism is effective only as a threat to the differences and their ‘positive’ content, it also dislocates social space. Dislocation therefore must be seen as a result of antagonization. As Laclau (1990: 39) describes the double nature of the effects of dislocation: “If on the one hand, they threaten identities, on the other, they are the foundation on which new identities are constructed”. How does the discourse-theoretical argument translate into our earlier discussion of spatial sedimentation and temporal reactivation? Seen from the perspective of the sedimented structures of the social, every dislocation is perceived as an event that cannot immediately be integrated into the horizon of expectations: it is something we did not expect and which therefore threatens the sedimented routines and processes of social institutions. To the extent that the sedimented nature of the social is spatial, this event cannot be of a spatial nature, it must be ‘ontologically’ different from space. 7

If by topography in the broadest sense we understand, literally, the writing of a topos, then this suggests an understanding of the social structuring of space through practices of signification.

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This consideration leads Laclau to his definition of dislocation as the true form of temporality. Only an event which is of essentially temporal nature will dislocate the spatial arrangements of the social. The temporal aspect of the event will get eliminated to the extent to which it is inscribed into the repetitive processes of sedimentation. Laclau exemplifies this point with the fort/da game Freud (1999: 12–13) observed with a little child who aimed to come to grips with the absence of his mother through inventing a repetitive practice. In this way repetition allows for the synchronization of a structure by inscribing absence into the space of presence: This synchronicity of the successive means that the succession is in fact a total structure, a space for symbolic representation and constitution. The spatialization of the event’s temporality takes place through repetition, through the reduction of its variation to an invariable nucleus which is an internal moment of the pre-given structure. (Laclau 1990: 41) At the end of the day it is, of course, impossible fully to spatialize time: the result would be a total structure, and the social would be ossified into the figure of society as a self- enclosed totality. Everything would be reduced to pure repetition, all social practices would be fully institutionalized, leaving no room for variation or innovation – the dimension of temporality would have disappeared. If it is impossible to overcome temporality completely, if the event cannot be fully spatialized (with the exception of the mythical space of paradise), the possibility of ‘society’ and the plausibility of the idea of fully established social structures or institutions start to vanish. With these considerations we return full circle to Husserl’s critique of objectivism. An entirely objectivized social space would simply amount to a space governed by repetitive practices only; as Laclau puts it: ‘If society had an ultimate objectivity, then social practices, even the most innovative ones, would essentially be repetitive: they would only be the explication or reiteration of something that was there from the beginning’ (ibid. 183–184). But if, as Derrida would argue, pure repetition is impossible, then social objectivity is impossible too.8

8

Of course, this line of reasoning has moved away from Husserl’s critique of objectivism in so far as it is not any longer concerned with rehabilitating the instance of transcendental subjectivity as opposed to objectivist scientism. From a more deconstructive or discourse-theoretical perspective, what disappears together with the idea of social objectivity is the possibility of an egological alternative to objectivism as it was defended by Husserl and his pupils in social phenomenology, such as Alfred Schütz.

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We can therefore define space à la Laclau as a relationally articulated system whose original institution resulted from an act of radical negativity (i.e., antagonism) which later became forgotten but in any moment can be reactivated through an experience of dislocation, i.e., time.

The Social and the Political: Difference Given this definition, it may seem at first sight that Massey was correct in her criticism of Laclau’s ‘passive’ concept of space; yet at the same time one may also suspect that space and time are not conceived as binary opposites by Laclau. Their relation is much more complex, and I am prepared to defend the following interpretation of Laclau’s spatial theory: Contrary to the simplified picture of space/time, passivity/activity, or closedness/ openness that – wrongly in my view – might be attributed to Laclau, we have to come to an understanding of time and space as something entirely intertwined, as indeed the same thing in a different mode. And what is this ‘thing’ which can appear in the two modes of time and space? I submit that it is precisely that which we have named antagonism. Certainly, Laclau himself does not go that far in his spatial theory, yet I would claim that it follows from his assumptions if we are prepared to take them seriously and work out their radical consequences. We just have to remind ourselves of the central place that is attributed to the concept of antagonism in discourse theory: It is antagonism which serves as the condition of possibility for every signifying system (without recourse to a radically negative outside, systemic differences will not be able to enter an equivalential chain). Translated into spatial theory, antagonism lies at the very moment of original institution of the social. It is only because the sedimented practices of the social are not the opposite of their instituting moment but simply this very institution in a state of oblivion that they can be reactivated at any time through, again, antagonization. For this reason, the nature of the social consists in nothing other than antagonism, if only in a ‘sleeping mode’. We become conscious of its antagonistic nature as soon as social sedimentations become reactivated through antagonism. This will not be a singularly rare event (as in the case of revolutions), but it will happen constantly in different degrees: we are never entirely oblivious of the antagonistic nature of our life-world, and therefore space is always to some degree dislocated (temporalized). Space is

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constantly ‘on the move’, every topography is constantly done and undone, just as Massey claims. The reason for this will be immediately evident if it is understood that the relation between the political and the social (or politics in the ordinary sense) is not constructed as a binary opposition but modelled along the line of the Heideggerian ‘ontological difference’: the difference between being and beingness as difference (Marchart 2004; 2007). According to the Laclauian lexicon, the moment of antagonism, where the contingent, ungrounded nature of social objectivity becomes fully visible, constitutes the field of ‘the political’ (Laclau 1990: 35), while the sedimented forms of objectivity, as we said, make up the field of ‘the social’. But if we refer this position back to Heidegger’s thought, then it is not the nature of being or the nature of beingness which is at issue (as it always was in the history of metaphysics), but this very difference as difference (the necessity, that is, to differentiate between an ontological and an ontic dimension of being in the first place). In the case of Laclau, what is at issue is not so much the way we define the political (as temporality) or the social (as space), but the very difference between them. In Laclau’s (1990: 35) words “social relations are constituted by the very distinction between the social and the political”. And he goes on, saying that (ibid.): If, on the one hand, a society from which the political has been completely eliminated is inconceivable – it would mean a closed universe merely reproducing itself through repetitive practices – on the other, an act of unmediated political institution is also impossible: any political construction takes place against the background of a range of sedimented practices. The ultimate instance in which all social reality might be political is one that is not only not feasible but also one which, if reached, would blur any distinction between the social and the political. This is because a total political institution of the social can only be the result of an absolute omnipotent will, in which case the contingency of what has been instituted – and hence its political nature – would disappear. The distinction between the social and the political is thus ontologically constitutive of social relations. We have to conclude that there is an unsurpassable ontological difference between space and time, between the sedimented layers of the social (including politics in the systemic sense) and the moment of institution and reactiva-

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tion via the political.9 This difference, of course, is only perceivable from a philosophical point of observation; from the viewpoint of the social sciences it would be either nonsensical or irrelevant. Some of the misunderstandings of earlier debates between critical geography and discourse theory, I suppose, had to do with the fact that the philosophical underpinnings of Laclau’s theory of discourse have not been recognized. Unfortunately, I suspect, some of the philosophical underpinnings of Laclau’s theory have not been realized by Laclau himself – which again might have contributed to some misunderstandings in the debate with critical geography. As I said in the beginning, what Massey criticized was the dualism she perceived between Laclau’s notions of space and time. As a matter of fact, when Laclau speaks about social relations being “constituted by the very distinction between the social and the political” (Laclau 1990: 30), the term ‘distinction’ appears to me a misnomer. It is obvious that what he wants to stress with that term is that there can be no complete overlapping between the social and the political. However, in terms of the ontological difference Heidegger makes clear that the grounding question does not aim at the distinction between the ontic and the ontological (that would be the classical metaphysical way of framing the ontological difference) but at their difference-as-difference. So while it is correct to claim, from a Heideggerian point of view, that on the one hand there can clearly be no total overlapping between the social and the political, on the other hand, there is constant intertwining, one side constantly passing over to the other. This seems to be exactly what follows from Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of antagonism. If a given system of topography does not manage fully to constitute itself as a totality because it is always traversed by its antagonistic limits and therefore will always be dislocated, then the conclusion seems to be evident that dislocation, just as temporality, will be a necessary outcome of any process of building a particular signifying system or a particular social topography – simply because the very construction of such topography relies on the construction of a limit which can only be drawn in a more or less antagonistic fashion as it relies on an outside of pure negativity. In other words: there exists no dichotomy between sedimentation and institution/reactivation, between social construction and political dislocation, between space and time: every attempt at constructing and reconstructing the social will necessarily 9

As to the difference between politics, the political, and police, see also Dikeç (2005, 2007) in a more Rancièrian vein, and more critically with respect to Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of the political Featherstone (2008).

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produce effects of dis- location – because in any case it will to some extent have to rely on the articulation of antagonistic frontiers. In this sense, Massey might be right after all, in an ironic sense. Because space and time, the social and the political, are not two separate things; we have to think of them as two modes of one and the same thing, a thing which might be called antagonism. Even if this point is granted, it could be argued that it remains on a purely abstract, philosophical level and cannot be translated into empirical research. While I would be prepared to concede that it will never be possible to operationalize philosophical claims in an immediate or direct way, they may provide us with a different outlook and perspective that will influence our empirical research. If discourse theory of space is taken seriously, any given topography starts to appear in a particular light, and one will have to study the contingent, historical, and power-based moments of its original institution. What is more, our view will shift towards the dislocatory struggles that are taking place constantly around the shaping and reshaping of the social. In this sense, the category of antagonism – as it presents itself in the two modes of the social and the political – may prove to be as much of philosophical as of analytical value.

References Derrida, Jacques (1988): Limited Inc, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Dikeç, Mustafa (2005): “Space, Politics, and the Political.” In: Environment and Planning. Society and Space 23/2, pp. 171-188. Dikeç, Mustafa (2007): Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban Policy, London: Blackwell. Featherstone, David (2008): Resistance, Space & Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global Networks, London: Blackwell. Freud, Sigmund (1999): “Jenseits des Lustprinzips.” In: Freud, Anna/Bibring, Edward/Hoffer, Willi/Kris, Ernst/Isakower, Otto (eds.), Gesammelte Werke: Volume XIII, Frankfurt: Fischer. Glasze, Georg (2007): “The Discursive Constitution of a World Spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: The Case of Francophonia.” In: Geopolitics 12/4, pp. 656-679. Glasze, Georg (2009): “Der Raumbegriff bei Laclau: auf dem Weg zu einem politischen Konzept von Räumen.” In: Glasze, Georg/Mattissek, Annika

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(eds.), Handbuch Diskurs und Raum: Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung, Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 213-218. Glasze, Georg/Mattissek, Annika (2009): “Die Hegemonie- und Diskurstheorie von Laclau und Mouffe”. In: Glasze, Georg/Mattissek, Annika (eds.), Handbuch Diskurs und Raum: Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung, Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 153-181. Goetz, Benoît (2002): La dislocation: Architecture et philosophie. Paris: Les Éditions de la Passion. Howarth, David (1993): “Reflections on the Politics of Space and Time.” In: Angelaki 1/1, pp. 43-57. Husserl, Edmund (1962): Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Volume 6, Husserliana, Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund (1993): Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlaß 1934-1937. Volume XXIX, Husserliana, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhof. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (1996): Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (1985): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Luke, Timothy W. (1996): “Identity, Meaning and Globalization: Detraditionalization in Postmodern Space-time Compression”. In: Heelas, Paul/Lash, Scott/Morris, Paul (eds.), Detraditionalization, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 109133. Marchart, Oliver (1999): “Art, Space and the Public Spheres. Some basic observations on the difficult relation of public art, urbanism and political theory”. http://www.eipcp.net/ transversal/0102/marchart/en. Marchart, Oliver (2004): “Politics and the Ontological Difference: On the ‘strictly philosophical’ in Ernesto Laclau’s work”. In: Critchley, Simon/Marchart, Oliver (eds.), Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 54-72. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-foundational Political Thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Massey, Doreen (1992): “Politics and Space/Time”. In: New Left Review 196, pp. 65-84. Massey, Doreen (2005): For Space, Los Angeles: Sage. Miles, Malcom (1997): Art Space and the City: Public art and urban futures, London: Routledge. Reid, Michael (1994): “The Aims of Radicalism: A Reply to David Howarth.” In: Angelaki 3/1, pp. 181-184. Stavrakakis, Yannis (2008): “Antinomies of Space: From the Representation of Politics to a Topology of the Political.” In: BAVO (eds.), Urban politics now: Re-imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, pp. 143-161. Townshend, Jules (2003): “Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: A new paradigm from the Essex School?” In: British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1/5, pp. 129-142.

Badiou as a Post-Foundationalist Matthew G. Hannah

Oliver Marchart’s arguments for a post-foundationalist political ontology are immensely helpful in explaining important transformations in critical political theory of recent decades. The foundationalist idea of an ultimate grounding of social reality has been in crisis for many decades now, but those who cling to this idea often do so on the misguided belief that the only alternative would be an “anything goes” anti-foundationalism tirelessly dedicated to deconstructing any and every form of stability. Marchart’s (2010: 16-17)1 persuasive thesis is that our situation is most accurately described not as antibut rather as post-foundationalist. From a post-foundationalist perspective, what is disputed is the possibility of ultimate grounding, not the necessity of partial and always only provisional attempts at grounding... Not all social foundations have evaporated into thin air, so the post-foundationalist thesis, rather, the validity claim of every foundation is contested and in principle open to debate [steht prinzipiell zur Disposition]. It can only emerge from the inescapable play of competing attempts at grounding. Thus, the dimension of grounding remains present even where an ultimate ground is absent. It must even be said, with a turn typical of post-foundationalist thought: only under the necessary condition of the absence of an ultimate ground are plural and partial attempts at grounding even possible. Against a nominalist reading, Marchart argues that the absence of a final ground is ontological or “quasi-transcendental”, not historical and contingent, even though the relation between this absence and all attempts to fill

1

References to Marchart (2010) are to the “revised and significantly extended” German version of his 2007 book Post-Foundational Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (2007). All translations from the German by author.

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it can only be recognized and theorized within some specific historical discourse (ibid. 74). Post-foundationalist thinking is anchored in the “certainty of uncertainty”, the necessity of contingency (ibid. 17). According to Marchart (ibid. 27), the telltale mark and common denominator of the post-foundational perspectives of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, Lefort, Badiou, Rancière, Laclau, Mouffe, and Agamben is the postulation of a distinction between, on the one hand, “the political” in the sense of struggle and change that point directly to the ontological problem of foundations, and on the other hand, the everyday, ontic business of “politics” as management of the status quo. It is first through this conceptual differentiation, so our thesis, that it is possible to capture the curious situation that new foundations are necessary but that final foundations are all the same impossible, that the play between politics and the political cannot be halted. In other words, that neither the day of “mere politics” nor the day of a “purely political” will ever come. In Marchart’s view, the formulation of this symptomatic “political difference” by so many recent philosophers represents a real advance. Post-foundationalist thought points toward a historical shift in the relations between political ontology and philosophy more generally. Political ontology, Marchart asserts, has ascended from its former status as one regional ontology among others in the wider discourse of philosophy – to become the discipline capable of giving sense to metaphysics per se (ibid. 258). This is because “[o]nly a politically institutionalizing decision, itself unfoundable, can supplement the absent ground and provisionally overcome the radical undecidability of the social” (ibid. 259). This ineradicable undecidability of the social is the occasion of – and the necessary counterpart to – the ascendancy of political ontology to its new position. Society as the “impossible” but necessary object of social theory forms the central theme of Marchart’s follow-up volume, which he terms a “prequel” (Marchart 2013: 14). Post-foundationalist thought thus faces more clearly and reflexively than other approaches the “quasi-transcendental” character of all founding discourses, including its own (Marchart 2010: 74). In this sense, identifying the deepest ontological level as inherently political is itself an admirably self-consistent decision (ibid. 276): The decision to attribute to political ontology - and not to aesthetics, ethics or any other discipline – the role of a first philosophy, nevertheless cannot be a “philosophical” decision that would be based exclusively upon grounds

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of reason. It can itself only be an intrinsically political decision: a contingent intervention from the side of politics in the depoliticized field of philosophy. Despite the indisputable value of post-foundationalist political philosophy, Marchart argues that it harbors a recurring danger. Exemplified especially in the writings of Badiou and Agamben, political difference carries with it a temptation to absolutize the distinction between grubby “politics” and the everyday, on the one hand, and “the purely political” on the other, such that only the latter – for Badiou, in the form of an “event” – is given any legitimacy at all. Marchart finds the total denigration of everyday politics insupportable, a form of “ethicism” or “philosophism” (ibid. 173), that loses track of the historically conditioned nature of any assertion of “the political” within an “antagonistic” field characterized by concrete projects. Such projects strive – within specific historical contexts – to “become majoritarian” through “strategy”, “organization”, and the construction of “collectivity” (ibid. 301–322). In what follows, I will take Marchart’s critical reading of Badiou as the chief point of orientation, briefly arguing three points. First, I support and extend Marchart’s critique of Badiou’s confinement of the political to only one of four “conditions” of philosophy. To do this, I highlight the politics of contingent grounding as it appears in Badiou’s explanation of the role of axiomatics and postulation in mathematics. Second, however, while Marchart is right to criticize the fact that for Badiou, “‘true politics’ remains limited to rare moments” (ibid. 175, Note 11), I argue that Badiou’s account of rare and exceptional political events itself has an “everyday” dimension that explicitly engages with issues of context, strategy and the construction of collectivities. Even in the purportedly pure ontology of Being and Event the question is not simply about the abstract nature of events but about how events irrupt into specific situations (Badiou 2006). Put differently, everyday “politics” cannot simply be ignored or dismissed, as it forms the matrix for the emergence of “the political”. This concern with how an event appears in a world is deepened, fleshed out and rendered more consistent in Logics of Worlds, the second volume of his magnum opus (Badiou 2009). There, Badiou supplements his “intrinsic” ontology of events with an “extrinsic”, phenomenological, and relational account that works with degrees of appearance. As a consequence, not only the relation between “the political” and “politics”, but also the relation between historically significant “sites” (cf. Shaw 2010) and everyday landscapes can no longer be understood in terms of strict distinctions between the meaningful and the

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meaningless. Indeed, Badiou’s phenomenological method opens up a virtually unlimited range of possibilities for investigating everyday geographies. Marchart’s assertion that “for the Lacanian Badiou, the politics of the Real cannot be placed in relation to empirical facts or social data” (Marchart 2010: 159) is made primarily in relation to Being and Event. Yet, especially when Logics of Worlds is brought into the picture, this claim is insupportable. In Badiou’s thought, the “politics of the Real” is brought into relation with the empirical, and “empirical facts and social data” can be analyzed quite flexibly. In short, the argument in the present chapter is that Badiou is more of a postfoundationalist than he himself might want to admit, more of a “good” postfoundationalist than Marchart might want to admit, and of wider potential use to geographical analysis than hitherto recognized.

Badiou’s Politics of Mathematics Badiou’s work has been discussed in human geography in terms of its implications for concepts of subjectivity (Dewsbury 2007), space (Madarasz 2009), and in connection with his notion of the event (Bassett 2008; Shaw 2010, 2012; Hannah 2016). Few pieces engage in a sustained way with his use of mathematics (cf. Mackenzie 2012; Plotnitsky 2012). A key way in which Badiou is more post-foundationalist than he himself would admit is indicated in passing by Marchart. In the introductory chapter of his book on post-foundationalism, he notes that Badiou accords politics a specific and limited place in his philosophy as one of four “conditions” – alongside love, art and science – in relation to which the task of philosophy is to discern “truth procedures”. These conditions are universal to human social life, though the forms in which they appear and the experiences they engender may vary (Badiou 2011: 20–21). However, Marchart notes, if political ontology has become universally relevant due to the ultimate ungroundability of society, “[a]ll dimensions of society (including the fields of ‘love’, ‘art’ and ‘science’ in Badiou) will therefore remain subordinate to the constant play of grounding/ungrounding” (Marchart 2010: 29). Marchart does not develop this line of argument in his more detailed critical reading of Badiou, but it is important to show that it is valid even for Badiou’s use of mathematics. Indeed, I want to argue that Badiou’s mathematical argumentation embodies “the political” in its purest form. Although in historical terms we could localize mathematics within the category of “science”, one of Badiou’s four conditions of philosophy, it functions

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for him as a universal medium of thought. One of the key assertions founding his later philosophical works is that mathematics – most clearly in the form of axiomatic set theory as developed by Cantor, Cohen and others – is ontology, “the science ... of everything that is, insofar as it is” (Badiou 2006: 4, 7). The italicized part here is important. For Badiou, in conscious contrast to Heideggerian “ontologies of presence”, ontology is minimal or, as he puts it, “subtractive”: “when the ‘there is’ is divested of all the qualitative predicates which make of it a singular thing (or what we will later call an object) and is reduced to its mere being, it may be thought of as a pure multiplicity” (Badiou 2011: 28). At this most basic level, being can be described as composed entirely of multiples. Each component or element of a multiple is itself a multiple. The most basic building block of any multiple as mere multiple – instead of, for example, as a tree with all its additional qualitative specifics – is the empty set or the void (Badiou 2006: 28, 55). Based ultimately upon the empty set, ontology does not have a substantive “object” but rather is purely formal, it “presents nothing” (ibid. 7). Ontology proper is embodied not in philosophy but in axiomatic set theory (ibid. 13–14). Leaving aside the deeper intricacies of this perspective, it is clear already that it could hardly stand in sharper contrast to the many current perspectives in critical social thought that understand the ontological as the realm of inexpressible excess of qualitative differentiation and becoming over and beyond any of our attempts to comprehend, capture or fix it in languages (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Badiou’s goal in identifying ontology with set theory is to obtain a precise language for describing the irruption of “truths” into specific historical contexts. Truths can emerge in love, art and science as well as politics. In all cases, they transcend their immediate contexts: “created without any God, out of the particular materials of a world, truths are nonetheless eternal. We must, therefore, rationally account for nothing less than the appearance of eternity in time” (Badiou 2011: 27). Truths emerge as ephemeral events from the formation of generic collectivities out of elements present but unrepresented in a given situation (Badiou 2006: 16–17). Their status as truths is borne out through the establishment of unshakeable fidelity to such events, and historical subjectivity worthy of the name is a result, not a precondition, of such fidelity. There are two ways to argue – as I wish to do here – that politics is fundamental to Badiou’s use of set theory. One is to demonstrate that he develops all of the key concepts and “mathemes” of his ontology of rare and momentous events (as opposed to business-as-usual) in relation to the political realm, not

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in relation to art, science or love. This is clear especially in Part II of Being and Event but in subsequent sections as well (Badiou 2006). Badiou treats art, science and love as equally graspable in terms of set theory, but the chief raw materials for the development of his mathematical argument are clearly political. A related argument is put forward by Bruno Bosteels (2011: 39), who argues that militant political activism forms an unacknowledged source for some of Badiou’s purportedly mathematical definitions. Still, though, such circumstantial points fall short of showing that Badiou’s use of mathematics is inherently political. To do that, it is necessary to dwell at more length upon the political character of axiomatics and postulation. Marchart also notes the centrality of axioms for Badiou’s argument, yet he takes axiomatization primarily as a symptom of Badiou’s purported avoidance of all founding reference to empirical realities (Marchart 2010: 157; see below). I would like to read Badiou’s axiomatics somewhat differently. The “character of the decision of thought which establishes” mathematical rationality (Badiou 2006: 3), and more specifically, modern set theory, is condensed in the terms “axiom” and “postulate”. If being is composed of nothing but multiples, multiple being is in and of itself not consistent. For set theory as ontology to grasp multiple-being, the latter must be made consistent, and this is accomplished through the postulation of systems of axioms (ibid. 30). “An axiomatic presentation consists, on the basis of non-defined terms, in prescribing the rule for their manipulation” (ibid. 29). In Being and Event as in his treatise on number theory, Number and Numbers (Badiou 2008), Badiou points out that the specific axioms of set theory are incapable of establishing that any multiple exists. Zermelo’s axiom of separation, one of the key starting points for Badiou’s analysis of politics, states that, for a given multiple, it is possible to separate out a subset or part of it according to some rule (Badiou 2006: 46). But this axiom by itself cannot establish whether any particular multiple is in fact given. Set theory would have poor prospects as an ontology if it could not be supposed that there are any multiples at all in this transcendent realm whose being it describes. As noted earlier, the most basic starting point or building block for Badiou’s set theoretic ontology is the empty set or void. Thus he argues that it is necessary simply to postulate the existence of the empty set, to take its existence as an axiom. Similarly, he concludes that it is necessary to postulate the existence of infinity, in order to affirm the adequacy of mathematical formulations to the richness of being, or, as he puts it, to affirm “that number is the measure of every situation” (Badiou 2008: 57). He explains (ibid. 44)

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the Axiom of the Empty Set founds zero, and, as a result of this, the finite cardinals exist. The Axiom of Infinity founds the existence of the infinite ordinals, and from there we can return to the existence of finite ordinals. The challenges posed to the moderns by the thinking of number cannot be met through a deduction but only through a decision. And what subtends this decision, as to its veridicality, relates neither to intuition nor to proof. Here, the inherently political character of axiomatization is very close to the surface: the language of decision is not coincidentally strongly reminiscent of Carl Schmitt’s (and, following Schmitt in many respects, Giorgio Agamben’s) characterization of non-deducible or exceptional decision as the very core of the political (Agamben 1998; Schmitt 2015). In fact, I would argue that the postulation of axioms is the purest form of the political movement of quasi-transcendental grounding. On the one hand, like all other human creations, mathematical axioms and the deductive structures that can be built upon them are and can only be posited by concrete living human beings within specific historical contexts, using specific, available conceptual and linguistic tools. On the other hand, though – more than any other product of modernity – they constitute the ultimate, most pared down assertions of universal validity. What makes axiomatics the ”purest” form of politics is thus the maximal distance between the specific, human contingency of their origins and the extreme non-contingent validity – cleansed of any dependency on human specifics – claimed for the logical structures they establish.

Everyday Politics as Matrix of Truths If Badiou’s understanding of mathematics is inherently political, and he understands it as applicable to all areas of life (including art, science and love), then Marchart’s “political difference” is more pervasive than Badiou would like to admit. At the same time, Badiou is not as Manichean or absolutist in his handling of the everyday and of everyday politics as Marchart claims he is. This is because transcendental truth-events do not simply appear in a fully inexplicable manner “out of nowhere” but rather, one could say, truths appear “out of ‘nothing’, but somewhere”. The latter formulation – above all, the term “somewhere” – implies a relation to an existing world (and as I will argue in the third and final section, opens up wider possibilities for using Badiou’s

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approach in geographical research). Even in Being and Event, there are indications of how truth-events emerge into concrete situations, for example, in Badiou’s distinction between “normal” terms, “excrescences” and “singularities”, only the latter being potential sources of real events (Badiou 2006: 99), or in his discussions of the “sites” of events (ibid. 173–177). Ian Shaw argues that Badiou’s analysis of evental sites in Being and Event is a useful tool in political geographic analyses of radical programmes of change (Shaw 2009). Potentially, transcendental politics can only be assembled out of and in relation to the materials of the historical everyday. A good illustration of this is to be found in his scenario of a “singular” (that is, “presented” but not “represented”) individual living clandestinely in an otherwise “normal” (presented and represented) family (Badiou 2006: 174). Nevertheless, such indications remain underdeveloped, and beg the question of how being – especially the being of whatever is not a truth – relates to appearing. To this extent, there is certainly a basis for Marchart’s Manichean interpretation (cf. Hannah 2016, where I have made a related argument). However, Being and Event was not Badiou’s final word on these issues. Just as Marchart’s figure of post-foundationalism would lead us to expect, axiomatic groundings, like all other contingent groundings, are inherently contestable and will eventually be challenged. Indeed, critical commentary by the mathematically-trained French philosopher Jean-Toussaint Desanti on L’être et l’événement shortly after its original publication in France in 1988 – long before its translation into English as Being and Event – already challenged the adequacy of Badiou’s ontology, and called into question his claim that set theory constitutes the most adequate universal mathematical language (Bartlett/Ling 2014: 8–10). An alternative proposed in this critique was category theory. Developed in the 1940s, category theory came to be seen as a rival to set theory for the title of universal foundation of mathematics. Whereas set theory defines and analyzes its primary objects (sets) “intrinsically”, in terms of their content or components, category theory approaches objects “extrinsically”, in terms of their degrees of relatedness to other objects (and to themselves) within a given situation or “world” (Badiou 2014: 13; Goldblatt 1984; Lawvere/Schanuel 2009). Badiou was already aware of category theory and , in the same breath, mentioned it with set theory in the introduction to Being and Event (Badiou 2006: 11). Yet for him, set theory as ontology was initially paramount. However, after the publication of Being and Event and the critique by Desanti, he deepened his engagement with category theory and came to see this intrin-

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sic-extrinsic distinction as the basis for complementing his (intrinsic) ontology with an (extrinsic) phenomenology he came to recognize had been lacking (Bartlett/Ling 2014: 8–10). The basic motivating insight of Logics of Worlds (originally published in 2006 as Logiques des Mondes) is that “truths not only are, they appear” (Badiou 2009: 9). This idea was already central to Being and Event, but remained a fundamental assumption, not subjected to systematic examination. The undeveloped character of his account regarding the contexts out of which truths emerge in the earlier volume, and the overly stark dismissal of everyday politics – diagnosed by Marchart – were the result of his not having adequately distinguished between logics of being and logics of appearing. Set theory, to put it differently, was not well suited to explain how and why rare, historical truths emerge where and when they do. In Logics of Worlds, Badiou by no means abandons his axiomatic way of proceeding. Indeed, the assertion that truths “not only are, they appear” is extended, in the truly breathtaking audacity of what Badiou calls the “postulate of materialism”, to include all “atoms” or minimal units of appearing, whether they are related to truths or not. The postulate of materialism asserts that “every atom of appearing is real” (ibid. 218). It is “a speculative decision, for which there is no transcendental deduction. This decision excludes that appearing may be rooted in something virtual. In effect it requires that an actual dimension of the multiple (of ontological composition) be involved in the identification of every unit of appearing” (ibid. 219). Badiou avoids the traditional language of “correspondence”, which is, among other things, far too simple for what he has in mind. But in positing an infinity of “quilting points” between the realm of pure being and the realm of phenomenal appearances, he admits that the postulate of materialism involves a “certain type of correlation” between the two realms (ibid. 222). The range of empirical examples Badiou conjures up in Logics of Worlds is impressive, taking in such diverse “worlds” as a rural French landscape on an autumn eveing, a demonstration in Paris, pre-historic cave art, a painting by Hubert Robert, the slave revolt led by Spartacus, an opera by Pierre Boulez, or urban planning in Brasilia. All of these worlds are analyzed in great detail, and with a combination of mathematical precision and descriptive delicacy that lends a kind of inductive plausibility to Badiou’s project. In all cases, the issue is no longer which elements belong to and/or are included in which sets, but rather how the different phenomena appearing in a world derive their greater or lesser degrees of appearance – and of self-identity – from their relations

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with other apparent phenomena. For each of the worlds mentioned above, Badiou thus parses out a rigorous relational anatomy. The central framework for this relational anatomy is the “transcendental”. A transcendental is Badiou’s name for the underlying order-structure that defines a basic set of order-relations (differentiation of phenomena, identity, non-appearing, comparisons of more, less an equal). Every world or “situated relational network” (ibid. 118) has a characteristic transcendental, completely independent of any experiencing subject in the Kantian or Husserlian senses (ibid. 120). At the heart of the analysis of transcendentals is the comparison of degrees of appearance (which Badiou equates to “existence”) and identity. The “logic” of a world defines any being in it in terms of “a variable degree of identity (and consequently of difference) to the other beings of the same world” (ibid. 119). A transcendental is thus “that which, in any situation, serves as the domain for the evaluation of identities and differences in appearing...[It] authorizes the arrangement, on its basis, of the values (the degrees) of identity between the multiples which belong to the situation” (Badiou 2014: 167–168). Appearance, again, is fundamentally a relational issue. And the existence of something that appears is also a matter of its identity: “For what does it mean for a multiple ε ‘to exist’? It means to appear in a situation as identifiable in it. And thus: being transcendentally evaluated in the situation on the basis of its identity to itself” (ibid. 168). Crucially for the argument here, change, too, is a phenomenon that can be placed and analyzed within the framework of a transcendental, and thus as a matter of degrees of appearance. “There is no reason to suppose that we are dealing with a fixed universe of objects and relations, from which we would have to separate out modifications. Rather, we are dealing with modifications themselves, situating the object as a multiplicity – including a temporal one – in the world and setting out the relations of this object with all the others” (Badiou 2009: 358–359). This already points to the way in which Logics of Worlds moves beyond the kind of simple, stark dualism between ”the political” and everday “politics,” for which Marchart had criticized Badiou. Badiou’s focus in the later volume is still upon truth-events and the “sites” at which they may occur. An evental site is still defined first of all in settheoretic terms as a “singularity”, a multiple that “figures among its own elements” (ibid. 363, 360), a “reflexive multiplicity, which belongs to itself and thereby transgresses the laws of being” (ibid. 369). But this paradoxical selfbelonging is then articulated in terms of appearance in a world: a site is a multiple which “makes itself, in the world, the being-there of its own being.

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Among other consequences, the site endows itself with an intensity of existence” (ibid. 363). As an example, Badiou (ibid. 365) takes the Paris Commune of 1871, in the context of which the day “March 18” can be identified as an evental site: March 18 is a site because, besides everything else that appears wihin it under the evasive transcendental of the world ‘Paris in Spring 1871’, it too appears, as the fulminant and entirely unpredictable beginning of a break with the very thing that regulates its appearance [that is, of the transcendental]. The form taken by this “entirely unpredictable beginning” is “the appearance of worker-being – up until then a social symptom, the brute force of uprisings or a theoretical threat – in the space of political and governmental capacity” (ibid.; cf. Bassett 2008). It is crucial here to note that supplementing ontological terms with phenomenological ones introduces a new dimension to the notion of the event. The possibility of an event, of something appearing within the transcendental of a world that disrupts the ordering of that world, is now governed not just by the ontological character of a site (as singularity), but also by the variable intensity of appearance of change. Intensity of appearance, again, is a relational question: like everything else that appears in a given world, the intensity of appearance of a site necessarily depends in part on its relations to other phenomena of that world. This basic insight leads Badiou in Logics of Worlds to distinguish a nested series of different intensities of change. First, within the general becoming characteristic of a world, it is possible to distinguish between mere “modification” or everyday change and “sites”, which make possible real change. However, real change is only possible, not necessary, and thus the category of “sites” can be further differentiated into “facts”, or sites with “non-maximal existence” within a transcendental, and “singularities”. Finally, singularities themselves may have consequences of greater or lesser intensity. Those with non-maximal consequences would then be “weak singularities” and only those with maximal consequences would be “events” in the proper sense (Badiou 2009: 374). The differences between these forms of change depend crucially on the relative success or failure of nascent generic collectivities in strategically asserting and expanding the intensity of their existence and attracting fidelity in concrete empirical contexts. Badiou illustrates the difference by comparing March 18 of the Paris Commune with September 4, 1870, when the Second French Republic collapses and the Third Republic is inaugurated. The latter

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is a “weak singularity” because, although the Third Republic was to last 70 years, it was “hijacked by bourgeois politicians, especially anxious to re-establish the order of property-owners” (ibid. 375). March 18, while it did not establish a lasting workers’ commune in Paris, would remain a maximally intense focus of fidelity in communist revolutions around the world throughout the subsequent century.

Analysis of a Landscape The foregoing account of political change in Logics of Worlds can only be extremely abbreviated and indicative. Nevertheless, it points to a much more variegated, less dualistic field of possibilities than that which Marchart discerns in Being and Event. It should not be surprising, then, that it also opens up a wider range of possibilities for analysis of geographical phenomena not limited to the rare category of evental sites. To get a sense for how Badiou’s phenomenology might be used in geographical analysis of the everyday, I turn, finally, to his discussion of a rural French landscape on an autumn evening. Badiou uses this landscape to begin to illustrate degrees of co-appearance. A transcendental order structure involves the following features: a minimal degree of appearing, variable degrees of conjunction, and relations of synthesis, envelopment or “smallest superiority” between different degrees (ibid. 596–597). It can be shown, additionally, that transcendental orders involve a maximum degree of appearance, “analytic” relations of “greatest inferiority” (GI), that is, the possibility of fixing a greatest degree of intensity below that of a given degree (Badiou 2014: 135), and a “reverse” of any particular degree of appearing. A reverse is defined by all the elements of a world having a zero or minimal degree of commonality with a given degree. The appearance of items within the French autumn landscape is ordered in terms of their respective degrees of conjunction with each other, that is, “the intensity of the appearance of the ‘common’ part of the two beings” (Badiou 2009: 125). Badiou starts with “the red leafage of ivy upon a wall in autumn” as a specific apparent that can co-appear with other elements of the scene in three basic constellations: as closely connected or mutually implicated with these other elements, as partially connected or sharing some coappearance with a third element, or as disjoined, such that the ivy and another element appear “independently” of one another. In the first case, the red leafage itself is intimately related to, even consitutive of, the appearance

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of the ivy, it “carries” the ivy’s “apparent identity” (ibid.). The second case is exemplified by the the relation between the red leafage, the wall the ivy adorns, and the house of which the wall is a part. Badiou writes (ibid. 125–126): Thus, this country house in the autumn evening and the blood-red leafage of the ivy have ‘in common’ the stony band which is visible near the roof as the ponderous matter of architecture, but also as the intermittent ground for the plant that creeps upon it. One will then say that the wall of the façade is what maximally conjoins the general appearing of the ivy with the appearing, made of tiles and stones, of the house . The third case illustrates how two beings can be “situated in a single world, without the ‘common’ of their appearance itself being identifiable within appearing”, that is, sharing nothing in common other than their existence within the world in question. “Such is the case with the red leaf there before me in the setting light of day and suddenly – behind me, on the path – the deafening noise of a motorcycle skidding on the gravel” (ibid. 126). The “regional stability” of a world, its “consistency”, has to do with whether all the intensities appearing within it can be enveloped or synthesized. Without some enveloping, synthetic degree of appearance, the “world” of the autumnal French countryside scene would not hold together. In the more familiar Husserlian and post-Husserlian tradition of phenomenology, this synthetic function is carried by an embodied subject and its integrating acts of comprehension. By contrast, Badiou attributes envelopment in this case to “the orientation of the space” itself (ibid. 129). The sudden noise of the motorcycle, does not rip the world apart or signal a clash of different worlds, but is simply an apparent within the world of the autumnal countryside that has a zero degree of commonality with the appearance of many other things in it. For example, it has zero conjunction with the red ivy, and thus can be thought of as belonging to its “reverse”. The conjunction between the motorcycle noise and the glow of the ivy is nil, but this minimal degree of conjunction still, as Badiou (ibid.) asserts: takes place in an infinite fragment of this world which dominates the two terms, as well as many others: this corner of the country in autumn, with the house, the path, the hills and the sky, which the disjunction between the motor and the pure red is powerless to separate from the clouds. While an observing subject is there in the scene as well (“my gaze (or body)”), it is not the source of synthetic unity (ibid.). This role is reserved for the en-

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velope. In this synthetic envelope, or “smallest superior” degree, Badiou (ibid. 130) finds: the transcendental order contains a degree superior or equal to all the degrees in the collection (it subsumes them all), which is also the smallest degree to enjoy this property (it ‘grips’, as closely as possible, the collection of degrees assigned to the different beings-there of the part in question) . This brief sketch of Badiou’s illustrative analysis may suggest an interesting approach to the question of how to analyze intensities in landscape geography. Notions of intensity and intensivity adapted from Deleuze and Guattari and others have played a prominent role in non-representational work in this area (cf. Thrift 2004; Wylie 2005; 2006). Of course they are closely associated with affect, and affect strongly implies a role for forms of human embodiment. The degree to which Badiou’s analyses – notwithstanding his claims to the contrary – presuppose an embodied observer-position is an important question. And the range of senses of “intensity” at work in these different writings needs to be examined. However, one need not abjure located embodiment, nor swallow the entire mathematical edifice Badiou sets forth, in order to be able to appreciate the attempt to bring more rigor into the analysis of relations of co-appearance. His notions of conjunction, synthesis, degrees of maximal and minimal appearance may lend some additional precision to the way we think about intensities as features of landscapes.

Conclusion: A less Manichean, more useful Badiou The foregoing arguments have attempted to lend credence to the following claims: (1) Badiou’s mature thought does indeed place what Marchart calls the political difference between “the political” and “politics” at the heart of all areas of social life. This is because the mathematical axioms and postulates that ground his thinking about all areas of life are fundamentally political; (2) nevertheless, Marchart’s portrayal of Badiou’s politics as Manichean in its dualism, and as having no interest whatsoever in everyday, empirical politics, is inaccurate, especially when Logics of Worlds is taken into account; therefore, (3) the broad and flexible tools of phenomenological analysis Badiou develops in this later work may be more useful than previously supposed for geographical analyses of landscape that do not have any necessary connection with the rare evental sites at which historical truths appear.

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References Agamben, Giorgio (1998): Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Badiou, Alain (2006): Being and Event, London: Continuum. Badiou, Alain (2008): Number and Numbers, Cambridge: Polity. Badiou, Alain (2009): Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II, London: Continuum. Badiou, Alain (2011): Second Manifesto for Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity. Badiou, Alain (2014): Mathematics of the Transcendental, London: Bloomsbury. Bartlett, AJ/Ling, Alex (2014): Translators’ Introduction. In: Alain Badiou, Mathematics of the Transcendental, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 1-10. Bassett, Keith (2008): “Thinking the Event: Badiou’s Philosophy of the Event and the Example of the Paris Commune.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26/5, pp. 895-910. Bosteels, Bruno (2011): Badiou and Politics, Durham: Duke University Press. Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Felix (1987): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Volume 2, Cambridge: MIT Press. Dewsbury, JD (2007): “Unthinking Subjects: Alain Badiou and the Event of Thought in Thinking Politics.” In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32/4, pp. 443-459. Goldblatt, Robert (1984): Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic, Mineola: Dover. Hannah, Matthew (2016): “State Knowledge and Recurring Patterns of State Phobia: From Fascism to Post-Politics.” In: Progress in Human Geography 40/4, pp. 476-494. Lawvere, F. William/Schanuel, Stephen H. (2009): Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mackenzie, Adrian (2012): “More Parts Than Elements: How Databases Multiply.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30/2, pp. 335-350. Madarasz, Norman (2009): “The Regularity of Non-Being: Space and Form in Alain Badiou’s System.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27/5, pp. 796-822. Marchart, Oliver (2010): Die politische Differenz: Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp.

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Plotnitsky, Arkady (2012): “Experimenting with Ontologies: Sets, Spaces, and Topoi with Badiou and Grothendieck.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30/2, pp. 351-368. Schmitt, Carl (2015): Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. Shaw, Ian Graham Ronald (2010): “Sites, Truths and Logics of Worlds: Alain Badiou and Human Geography.” In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35/3, pp. 431-442. Shaw, Ian Graham Ronald (2012): “Towards an Evental Geography.” In: Progress in Human Geography 36/5, pp. 613-627. Thrift, Nigel (2004): “Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect.” In: Geografiska Annaler Series B 86/1, pp. 57-78. Wylie, John (2005): “A Single Day’s Walking: Narrating Self and Landscape on the South West Coast Path.” In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30/2, pp. 234-247. Wylie, John (2006): “Depths and Folds: On Landscape and The Gazing Subject.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24/4, pp. 519-535.

Spacing Rancière’s Politics Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson

The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air — raids, the shops were mostly shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of coal, sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gipsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (2018 [1938]: 7) Orwell had originally intended to write newspaper articles when he travelled to Barcelona in December 1936. On arrival, he immediately found himself enrolled into the moment and, seemingly by happenstance, joined POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), a Trotskyist, anti-Stalinist militia group. This decision would soon make Orwell an enemy of both the Soviets and Franco’s fascists. Orwell quickly realized the risks of his enrollment. Writing about the atmosphere in Barcelona at the tumultuous time, Orwell illustrated a key political distinction. Amid the social disintegration and instability – food and fuel shortages – he describes a scene that seemingly transcends the dire material circumstances. He tells us that “belief in the revolution and the future” not only held together Barcelona but sustained the city’s embattled attempt to overcome existing wrongs. Utility therefore mattered little in politics. Orwell had become involved in a deadly fight for justice that could not be comprehended in utilitarian terms.

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Jacques Rancière (1999) begins his masterful political work Disagreement on exactly this point. Rancière’s re-reading of political philosophy proceeds by distinguishing between harm and injustice. Pleasure and pain, Jeremy Bentham’s ‘sovereign masters’, are dismissed by Rancière as the ‘stuff’ of politics. Criticizing the utilitarian position, Rancière writes: “The political begins precisely when one stops balancing profits and losses and worries instead about distributing common lots and evening out communal shares and entitlements to these shares, the axiai entitling one to community” (ibid. 5). Rancière is here setting out the argument that politics must be about something more than distributing resources and allocating profit and loss. Orwell’s account of Barcelona therefore anticipates something we later find in Rancière. Orwell found Catalonia gripped by an attempt to rework community and fighting to realize equality. This fight was worthy enough for Orwell to risk his own life since, as he says, it offered a route for people to “behave like human beings” (ibid. 7) and reject the instrumental roles assigned to them under capitalism. Jacques Rancière is a significant post-foundational thinker, and one of the 21st century’s most influential political theorists, precisely because he provides us with a theoretical framework to understand the political distinctions that seemed so apparent to Orwell in Barcelona. Beyond the formalities of his political theory, Rancière can also be read as an important geographical theorist. Throughout Rancière’s work, geography constantly appears. This is partly explained by the fact that Rancière is a post-foundational thinker. By definition, politics are always contingent for Rancière. However, whether it is Ancient Rome or the American South, politics are also always placed. But this placing is not always explicitly theorized by Rancière. The trick to reading Rancière as a geographical thinker is therefore to move across these archetypes, excavating how space operates within his political theory.

Rancière’s Political Theory Why do people like Orwell believe in revolutions and fight for abstract ideas like equality and freedom? Rancière answers this question by claiming that politics are based on a miscount. This miscount is not the result of some distributional mistake, what Rancière (ibid. 6) describes as a problem of “arithmetical equality.” Politics cannot therefore be sedated by the application of utilitarian calculus. Looking to the origins of political philosophy in the classical Greek dialogues of Plato and Aristotle, Rancière (ibid.) argues that politics

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begin when we assess how the individual parts of a community are understood: For political philosophy to exist, the order of political idealities must be linked to some construction of city ‘parts’ … What the ‘classics’ teach us first and foremost is that politics is not a matter of ties between individuals or of relationships between individuals and the community. Politics arise from a count of community ‘parts,’ which is always a false count, a double count, or a miscount. What is notably dismissed as politics here are ties and relations between individuals and the community. Politics can never simply be about how individuals or groups associate with society. Rather, Rancière (2001: n.p.) defines politics “as a deviation from this normal order of things.” In other words, politics occur in those moments where existing orders are challenged by the existence of miscount. This gives Rancière a very particular interpretation of how politics produces social inclusion. Inclusion becomes more than just an attempt to incorporate marginalized groups within an existing society. When a miscount emerges, the very society within which inclusion is aimed towards becomes problematized. Simple inclusion of a marginalized group into a community suggests the ‘parts’ of the city are already known. But Rancière argues that politics begin when there is disagreement over what the parts of the city are. Politics concern the false or miscount. A demand for social inclusion therefore becomes political when the act of inclusion transforms the society within which the excluded group is being included (i.e., the conditions for exclusion are themselves removed in the act of inclusion). So, for Rancière (ibid., emphasis in original), ‘the political’ is to be found where existing methods of counting (i.e., the police) are brought into conflict with new – more democratic – modes of accounting: Whether this part exists is the political issue and it is the object of political litigation. Political struggle is not a conflict between well-defined interest groups; it is an opposition of logics that count the parties and parts of the community in different ways. But does Rancière’s suggestion of a ‘miscount’ require some foundational position on legitimate accounting? Rancière’s (1999: 7) answer is, if we use Marchart’s (2007) definition, an exemplar of post-foundational thought:

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This is where the fundamental miscount rears its head. First, the freedom of the demos is not a determinable property but a pure invention: behind ‘autochthony,’ the myth of origins revendicated by the demos of Athens, the brute fact that makes democracy a scandalous theoretical object impinges. Our criteria for the miscount, the very basis of politics, is here acknowledged as a social construct, a founding myth. The idea of demos is both a historical artifact and the basis of politics. Rancière (1999: 8) writes “[T]he demos attributes to itself as its proper lot the equality that belongs to all citizens.” Democracy therefore supersedes the old arithmetic orders, whereby political power could be ‘equally’ distributed according to hierarchies of wealth, ancestry and/or religious orders. Democracy, as an idea, demands geometric equality: that political authority is distributed across individuals/parts equally. Democracy therefore emerges as the political idea for Rancière. The classical dialogues allow us to see how pre-modern orders struggled to make sense of this revolutionary idea. When Rancière (ibid. 11–12) defines politics, he identifies it with the transcending of traditional orders and the traumatic injunctions of democratic reasoning: Politics exists when the natural order of domination is interrupted by the institutions of a part of those who have no part. The institution is the whole of politics as a specific form of connection. It defines the common of the community as a political community, in other words, as divided, as based on a wrong that escapes the arithmetic of exchange and reparation. Beyond this set-up there is no politics. There is only the order of domination or the disorder of revolt. Moving away from a utilitarian understanding of politics leaves Rancière with a narrow definition of politics. Politics pivot around moments of democratic failure, where a miscount makes a lie of claims to universality and inclusion in an existing order. Without foundations, where “no social order is based on nature” (ibid. 16), politics occur when society is reminded that human equality is all there is. For Rancière, equality is evident in speech. He argues that speech acts rely on an assumption of equality; that both inoculators can perform this distinctly human act. Deriving his assumption of equality from language, Rancière (ibid.) makes the concomitant claim that “equality gnaws away at any natural order.” Politics are therefore latent in emergent social orders. As inequality emerges – hierarchies form, subservience performed, oppressions

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cemented – the question of democracy is always waiting to be asked. But, crucially, it is not inevitably asked. Rancière (ibid. 17) claims politics “actually happens very little or rarely.” Politics only occur when the existing social order is stopped in its tracks by “the presupposition of the equality of anyone and everyone” (ibid.). What seemed like legitimate or natural organization is suddenly questioned by those who disagree; those who see a miscounting. When politics happen, it acts on the police. Rancière, acknowledging the term ‘police’ to be problematic, uses it to describe innumerable social ordering processes. Importantly, police and policing are nonpejorative referring to “first an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying, and sees that those bodies are assigned by name to a particular place and task” (ibid. 29). The police is the ‘social law’ that regulates individual and collective action, and politics occur when this law is demonstrated to be operating without geometric equality. As Rancière (ibid. 33) succinctly writes: “Politics acts on the police.” Throughout his writings, Rancière provides numerous examples of this political operation. In Disagreement, he concisely illustrates politics via an example of female liberation: “The unseemly appearance of a woman on the electoral stage transforms into a mode of exposure of a wrong, in the logical sense, the republican topos of laws and morals that binds police logic up in the definition of politics” (ibid. 42). The figure of the female politician is presented by Rancière as an act of revealing the miscount. Although this miscount was always present, with women being assigned to private/domestic space, the articulation of political citizenship results in a clear representation of geometric inequality: ‘What is this woman doing on the stage?’ is the complaint from the presiding police order. Existing forms of citizenship are, in this very question, revealed to contradict the premise of the democratic idea. Rancière’s political theory therefore moves us away from understanding politics as social conflict and compromise. Politics are engaged with far more than distribution and utility. As Orwell sensed in Barcelona, politics concern the affirmation of individual human dignity via an acknowledgment and enactment of equality. What is common between us all is, for Rancière, our ability to engage in the relational act of speech. Existing social orders, the police, have been consistently haunted by this equality since the demos was birthed by its founding myth. For politics to exist, we must constantly revisit the democratic story. The question for us here is thus: How does this Rancièreian version of politics play out across space? We think three geographical dimensions of Ran-

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cière’s thought are critical to understanding him as a post-foundational political and spatial theorist. First, the police should be understood as a sociospatial order. Policing assigns social roles and geographical space. Second, politics must occur somewhere and that somewhere usually takes the form of a stage. In order to understand how certain speech acts become political demands, we have to understand the power of space to contextualize. Third, politics act on community; a community of unequals is restructured (again and again) into a democratic community of equals. This community must always be appreciated and assessed in its geographical dimensions.

The Police as Socio-Spatial Order The most obviously geographical component of Rancière’s political theory is his idea of the police order. This is an idea to which Rancière owes something to Foucault. Both Rancière and Foucault see societies as policed in an extensive sense; beyond the uniformed police we see on the streets to encompass a general ordering of society. Yet for Foucault, this general ordering is predominantly repressive, tied to the systemic operation of power. Rancière’s emphasis differs, with policing seen as constitutive of society, something that is required for social structures to exist (cf. Dikeç 2007). For Rancière, the police order is thus a social structure with a geographical form in which people and practices are ‘put in their place’ (cf. Davidson/Iveson 2014; 2015; Dikeç 2007). The police order is literally inscribed across space, with this inscription serving to associate various social parts with specific geographical spaces. Rancière (2001: 20) often uses the term “partition of the sensible” to describe this socio-spatial arrangement: The essence of the police is neither repression nor even control over the living. Its essence is a certain manner of partitioning the sensible. We will call ‘partition of the sensible’ a general law that defines the forms of part-taking by first defining the modes of perception in which they are inscribed. The partition of the sensible is the cutting-up of the world and of ‘world;’ it is the nemeïn upon which the nomoi of the community are founded. The partition of the sensible therefore prescribes the ways things are, and the way they are meant to be. This process of normalization enables us to see when things are ‘out of place’ in order for them to be put back ‘in their place’. If society is divided into parts, we can therefore expect certain social parts to

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be allocated to particular geographical areas (cf. Davidson/Iveson 2014; Swyngedouw 2009). The sweeping breadth of Rancière’s partition of the sensible concept means that we must see it operating in multiple forms. For example, we might think about it in terms of mental maps (cf. Lynch 1964) that we use to negotiate urban space. These cognitive devices enable us to navigate and mediate our engagement with the city, but also mobilize a concurrently personal and social understandings about where we, and others, should be. We might also think about the partition of the sensible in terms of the way certain vocabularies are used to describe urban spaces. We often use terms such as ‘urban’ and ‘inner city’ to explain, as well as describe, events (cf. DeLeon 2012; Mele 2000). The term ‘inner city’ comes with social expectations about inhabitants, crime and housing. So much so that a news story about violent crime might only become noteworthy when it occurs outside of these environments. Mustafa Dikeç (2007) has used the idea of the police order being a geographical phenomenon to explain the 2005 revolts in Paris’ suburbs. Mirroring similar events in the 1970s, the autumn of 2005 witnessed violent unrest and protest in Paris’ banlieues. Over three weeks, riots involving African migrants were instigated after a police investigation resulted in two youth being fatally electrocuted. The police had been looking to interrogate migrant youths in association with a building-site break in. In response to attempted questioning and arrests, many youths ran from police to avoid being enrolled in the investigations. Three of these youth hid in an electricity substation and two were killed. The fear of being enrolled in police inquiries that caused the youth to hide was subsequently linked to a longstanding history of police intimidation and suppression. During the riots, more than 8,000 vehicles were burnt out and nearly 3,000 people arrested. Such dramatic events represented a dual problem for the French state. First, the state had to provide an explanation for the unrest. Second, it had to develop a remedial program to dampen broad social concern about what was happening in the poor suburban communities. Thus, a new round of urban policy programming started. Dikeç (ibid. 5), drawing on Rancière, theorizes “urban policy as a particular regime of representation that consolidates a certain spatial order though descriptive names, spatial designations, categorizations, definitions, mappings and statistics.” The urban policies that followed the 2005 banlieue riots are critically examined by Dikeç and are shown to have reinforced the existing police order. Urban policy thus is seen by Dikeç (ibid.

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172) to have consolidated “a certain spatial order through various practices of articulation.” The result being that the banlieues are (re)presented “as spaces that somehow do not fit, excluded, dangerous, deviant…in other words, a form of exteriority that menaces the integrity of ‘the republic’” (ibid.). Dikeç’s use of Rancière’s political theory to interpret the French state’s response to the 2005 riots vividly illustrated how space plays an important role in assigning social roles and maintaining associated hierarchies. Yet, it is important to reiterate how Rancière sees police ordering as necessary. It is not that ordering and spatial allocation is de facto wrong. Rather, these processes of ordering and allocation are both the opposite of, and also the condition for, democratic politics. This highlights the second geographical dimension of Rancière’s (1999: 33) theory of policing, namely, that “politics acts on the police order.” If politics pivot around the miscount, then they likely involve a related misplacement. The existing police order becomes problematized when one of its constituent parts is demonstrated to be unequal, thus giving lie to the idea that the democratic community is, in fact, democratic. So Rancière (2001: 8) states: The principal function of politics is the configuration of its proper space. It is to disclose the world of its subjects and its operations. The essence of politics is the manifestation of dissensus, as the presence of two worlds in one. If politics serves to reconfigure space, politics must always be examined as both a social and geographical phenomenon. Rancière’s notion of ‘two worlds in one’ is well illustrated by Dikeç’s problematization of the French state’s response to the 2005 banlieue riots. His criticisms point to the choice involved in political events. On the one hand, the riots could have been interpreted as a cry for help from an oppressed and marginalized community. Left with few other ways to voice their concerns about inadequate education, low employment rates and oppressive policing, the rioters protested in the only way they could. Such an interpretation would radically transform the meaning of the banlieues. Yet, on the other hand, there is the option to interpret the events using existing understandings. This is what Dikeç (2007: 174) claims the French state chose: Thus, while French urban policy has not become a means for producing competitive spaces, it has become more and more concerned with containing certain spaces and populations seen to be problematic, reflecting the con-

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temporary transformations of the French state along more authoritarian and exclusionary lines. Banlieue rioters were therefore presented as deviant characters in deviant neighborhoods by a state resistant to political change. Bad things happen in bad neighborhoods. The riots therefore ended up serving no immediate political purpose, with existing social roles and geographical placement being reinscribed. If each police order has its own geographical configuration, political claims can therefore serve to question the democratic legitimacy of the configuration. As the banlieue example illustrates, this does not necessarily mean any change will take place. How political claims work out is always subject to contingency. Politics involves the conflict between two competing understandings with the outcome being unpredictable: “So nothing is political in itself. But anything may become political if it gives rise to a meeting of these two logics. The same thing – an election, a strike, a demonstration – can give rise to politics or not give rise to politics” (Rancière 1999: 32). This competition can be staged in a multitude of ways, from the dramatic singular instance to the prolonged battle. Rancière (ibid. 32–33) uses women’s liberation from the domestic sphere has an example of the latter: “The domestic household has been turned into a political space not through the simple fact that power relationships are at work in it but because it was the subject of argument in a dispute over the capacity of women in the community.” The disruptive presence of an argument about the place of women in public life is therefore a continued source of disruption, becoming “political when it reconfigures the relationships that determine the workplace in its relation to the community” (ibid. 32). Rancière’s conceptualization of society as being a “police order” that is concurrently social and geographical informs post-foundational social theory in a multitude of ways. Two are particularly important to note and develop further. First, the police order provides the context upon which the question of democracy is posed. This has the effect of making politics a potentiality across space since all social roles and geographical placements are always potentially the target of the democratic injunction of equality. Second, it asks us to think differently about how political community functions. For Rancière, we must reconfigure many of the ways we have thought about community, publics and political actors. This reconfiguration forces us to think in new ways about how something like the city operates as a democratic public.

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Politics as a Potentiality without a Predefined Geography The second geographical component of Rancière’s work relates directly to the first. If Rancière’s police is a normalized allocation of places that is always potentially a target for injunctions of equality, such injunctions must themselves be geographical. In Rancière’s terms, they involve the production of a ‘stage’ on which the world as it is (with its hierarchies and miscounts) is confronted with the world as it should be (premised on the equality of each with all). Here, the ‘stage’ is a space through which this confrontation takes place. Where might we find such stages? Our received accounts of the political have tended to locate politics in particular, privileged places. We might expect to find demands to be staged in the public spaces of the square and the street, in the public sphere of the media, and/or in the hallowed political spaces of the town hall and the parliament. Of course, critical political theory has frequently refused the confinement of politics to such locations – for instance, Marxist and anarchist theory have insisted that the workplace is a site for politics, just as feminist political theory has insisted that the private sphere is a site for politics. Building on such critiques, a corollary of Rancière’s conception of the police and the political is that the egalitarian political injunction, with its confrontation of worlds, has no proper place. Indeed, any attempt to allocate politics to a particular place, and/or to deny the potential for politics in a particular place, is part of the very police order that politics seeks to transform. To ‘stage’ politics, then, is not simply a matter of occupying a particular place which is already recognized as a place where political claims are made (cf. Davidson/Iveson 2018). ‘Stages’ do not pre-exist politics in this sense, rather, they are produced through politics. For Rancière (1999: 27): Politics is primarily conflict over the existence of a common stage and over the existence and status of those present on it. It must first be established that the stage exists for the use of an interlocutor who can’t see it and who can’t see it for good reason because it doesn’t exist. If we survey Rancière’s writings on these stagings of politics and their spatiality, we find two kinds of argument being made. First, we find Rancière critiquing the policing of spaces in ways that restrict the potential for stagings of politics. An oft-quoted passage about the policing of roads, which Rancière (2001: 8) considers to be ‘public spaces’ that have frequently been deployed as

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sites for the staging of political injunctions and demands, is illustrative of this concern: “Move along! There is nothing to see here!” The police says that there is nothing to see on a road, that there is nothing to do but move along. It asserts that the space of circulating is nothing other than the space of circulation. Politics, in contrast, consists in transforming this space of ‘moving-along’ into a space for the appearance of a subject: i.e., the people, the workers, the citizens: It consists in refiguring the space, of what there is to do there, what is to be seen or named therein. We can read this passage as lending support to the broader literature on the ‘end of public space’ – a literature that has documented the ways in which the public spaces of cities have become increasingly inhospitable to politics through privatization, commercialization, surveillance, and other police processes of closure (cf. Garrett 2017). However, as quotable as this passage on the anti-political policing of roads might be, it should not be read only for its conformity with arguments against the privatization of public space. It can also be read in another, more disruptive way. We could also substitute any place for the ‘road’ in this passage. Indeed, across Rancière’s writings, we see a second argument about the geographies of politics – one which locates stagings of the egalitarian injunction in all manner of places and contexts, not only those conventionally defined as ‘public spaces’: “Political activity is whatever shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place’s destination” (Rancière 1999: 30). The plebs in Ancient Rome did not occupy the place of assembly to stage their political claim – they staged a walk out from the city, refusing to return from the Aventine Hill until the patricians came to meet them and to hear their demands (ibid.). And while the civil rights movement in the United States frequently occupied the streets in staging their demands for equality, Rancière (2005) also sees politics being staged on a bus when Rosa Parks refused to relinquish a seat reserved for white passengers. This emphasis on the dynamic geographies of political action is clearly influenced by more ‘procedural’ accounts of public space which refuse to confine politics to a pre-defined topography (Iveson 2007). Hannah Arendt, for instance, argued in The Human Condition (1958: 198) that “action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost any time and anywhere.” Putting together Rancière’s critique of policing and his diverse examples of staging, we might say that while ‘public space’ is essential for the staging

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of politics in Rancière’s thought, the geography of such public space is contingent and emergent. Declarations of equality both assume and create the existence of a public space: “I declare, I demonstrate: something appears in a public space and constructs a specific public space by so appearing” (Rancière 2016: 122). Perhaps we can see an exemplification of the two sides of Rancière’s thinking on the spatiality of staging democratic politics in the 2019 protests in Hong Kong against a bill proposing to give the Chinese government powers to extradite accused criminals to China. On several occasions, that movement has mobilized millions of people to march on major roads that are conventionally devoted to the circulation of traffic, in order to stage their five demands – for the withdrawal of the proposed Extradition Bill, a commission of enquiry into police brutality, a retraction of the classification of protesters as ‘rioters’, amnesty for protesters, and universal suffrage for the city’s Chief Executive and Legislative Council. On the surface, such protests may appear to confirm the significance of ‘the street’ as a privileged space of politics. And certainly, the movement has had to confront vigorous police reaction, with uniformed officers attacking protests using countless volleys of tear gas and baton charges. But to focus only on those particular marches would be to miss other spatial manifestations of this movement. It would be to miss the ways in which digital platforms have been utilized for discussion and debate about the actual demands that are being staged. And it would also be to miss the very fluid geographies of this movement across the physical spaces of the city – as well as marching through the city’s central streets, people have staged their demands in blockades of the airport, in the subway, in the shopping malls, and in other peripheral spaces not conventionally associated with politics (cf. Dapiran 2020). A motto of the movement is to ‘be water.’ Its participants are very consciously refusing to be contained to any ‘proper place’ for the articulation of their demands for democratic self-determination.

Politics and the Demos So far, then, we have examined two of the geographical dimensions of Rancière’s thought – the spatial dimensions of the police order on which egalitarian politics acts, and the spatiality of the staging of an egalitarian politics in confrontations between the world as it is and the world as it should be. We

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now turn to our third geographical dimension, which pertains to the disruptive spatiality of the demos. As John Keane (2019) has recently pointed out, from our contemporary standpoint, it has become an entrenched common sense to associate democracy with a bounded territory – what he calls a ‘territorial mentality.’ As he points out, the idea that “democracy by definition can only exist in territorial state form” (ibid. 29) is coming apart at the seams today, thanks to the crossborder comings and goings of ideas, capital, commodities, people, and ecological processes that do not seem to respect territorial boundaries. But we should note that this is not a new condition of politics, nor one that can be fixed by simply ‘re-scaling’ territorial boundaries to operate at a more appropriate scale. In the opening pages of On the Shores of Politics, Rancière (1990) sees Plato’s attempt to tame the political as an attempt to ground governance in a bounded territory – which in the case of Ancient Athens, necessitates a futile attempt to exclude the comings and goings of its port that sustain the city itself. This effort to situate politics through ‘enclosure instead of the open sea’ is a hopeless one, he says (ibid. 2): The almuron, the tang of brine, is always too close. The sea smells bad. This is not because of the mud, however. The sea smells of sailors, it smells of democracy. His point is that political injunctions are not simply the demands of marginalized members of a pre-existing population that resides within a given political territory – be it a city-state or a nation-state. Rather, politics can function to define both the political community and its territories. Politics are moments where not only equality gets enacted, but particular geographies get (re)made. Once again, this point is not always easy to discern in Rancière’s writing. As we have noted above, because, for Rancière, politics is always embedded in place, his writing is replete with discussions of various examples across time and space. Places from Ancient Athens and Ancient Rome to revolutionary Paris and the United States of the civil rights era are furnish examples of police and politics in action. Yet it is vital that we also understand that such places are not to be taken-for-granted as containers of politics. The people, as demos, is not to be understood in Rancière’s (2001: n.p.) work as a “race or a population”, but as “subjects inscribed as a supplement to the count of the parts of society, a specific figure of ‘the part of those who have no-part.’” So, just as the very idea of a properly public space for staging political claims is disrupted in Rancière’s political thought, so, too the very idea of a

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territorially-defined ‘demos’ as a container in which politics might be enacted is identified with the police order. In other words, the territorially defined idea of a ‘people’ is in Rancière’s thought something that a politics of dissensus acts upon. It is not therefore something that provides a foundation for politics as it does in so much mainstream political thought. This makes Rancière a distinctly post-foundational spatial theorist, someone who sees politics as operating geographically but without any predefined or allocated spaces. The multitude of globalization processes identified by recent geographical scholarship (Dicken 2015) have only served to reinforce the importance of the third geographical dimension of Ranciere’s political theory. Globalization, whether it be in the form of international just-in-time manufacturing or the formation of multi-national media conglomerates, has demonstrated the emergence of new social groupings. In other words, globalization has made it very clear that national territories say little about many types of social relations. How then are we to judge these social relations? Should they become subject to democratic evaluation? Geographers such as Doreen Massey have made the case that globalization has, indeed, generated the necessity to rethink our social and, by extension, political obligations. Proximity has often been the fulcrum around which political communities are understood. Repeatedly the Russian doll analogy is used to capture the ways in which proximity and political community relate, with us having closer political ties to those immediately proximate. In this formulation, we might only want to be asking democratic questions about the communities we immediately engage with. But, when we identify expanding and more complex social relations, should this imaginary persist? Massey (2004) urged us to question whether it should. In a world where the local and global are now intimately co-constituted, the spatial composition of the demos has become subject to much reconsideration. As Massey (ibid. 14–15) wrote: Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the dimension we call ‘space’ is that it is the dimension of multiplicity, of the more-than-one (Massey, 1999). One vital element that this insight gives us is the insistence, even within globalization, on the plurality of positionalities. Included within that, and crucial to the dynamics of the production of inequality, is the recognition that not all places are ‘victims’ and that not all of them, in their present form, are worth defending. … Indeed, it is precisely taking responsibility for challenging them that should be a political priority.

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Massey is here making the argument that Western consumers should be taking responsibility for the processes they actively take part in and facilitate. This means taking the position that the relations we have with people working in distant factories producing the shirts and smartphones should be considered on democratic terms. By including these workers within our social purview – for example, by recognizing them as equals deserving the same rights and protections as those who purchase the fruits of their labors – we engage in an act of political and geographical remaking. New demos, new geography. We can read this geographical debate back into Rancière’s work. Massey’s (2004) call for us to see the ‘geographies of responsibility’ is an act social reworking, a forceful request for us to redefine who is part of the political community. Or, as Rancière (1999: 39) puts it, “Quite simply, parties do not exist prior to the declaration of wrong.” When we engage with this process, we reject the idea that our political territories are democratically representative. Any consensus that political territory is congruent with democratic community can be dismantled. In Rancière’s (ibid. 116) words, What indeed is consensus if not the presupposition of inclusion of all parties and their problems that prohibits the political subjectification of a part of those who have no part, of a count of the uncounted? Everyone is included in advance, every individual is the nucleus and image of a community of opinions that are equal to parties, of problems that are reducible to shortages, and of rights that are identical to energies. Our third geographical dimension of Rancière’s politics is therefore wrapped up with the ongoing and very difficult task of defining and redefining political community. Expanding our ideas about political community – the demos – has become a geographical problem. Today, questions about who is included in proscribed labor rights and/or environmental regulations are commonly posed across different types of political bodies and social organizations. Should, as Orwell did when he fought in Catalonia, we stand beside people of far-away lands because we find ourselves fundamentally part of the same processes of social (re)production? We cannot avoid the question in Rancière’s political theory.

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Conclusions: The Geographical Lessons of Rancière Reading Rancière’s political thought for its geography presents us with three arguments. First, politics acts on the police order. The latter is, of course, manifest geographically. When Rancière describes politics as a (re)inscription of equality, this should therefore be read in both social and spatial terms. Second, Rancière’s theory of politics sets up the idea of a staged conflict, where voices of consensus and discontent meet. One potential reading of this is familiar: the parliament, congress or debating chamber where conflicting opinions compete. However, Rancière sees democratic potentially operating more globally. The undemocratic miscount can be staged almost anywhere. Politics do not rely on the formalized political stage. Instead, political potentiality, that ability to articulate the miscount, can be found across space. Third, and finally, we read Rancière’s political theory as geographically disruptive. For Rancière, politics always act on a society. This makes us ask the following question: What is the geographical form and extent of the polity? Politics, by its necessity to define the boundaries and contours of a miscounted society, is always potentially redefining social geography. So, what kind of geographical thinker does this make Rancière? Certainly, Rancière is a constructivist whose thought denaturalizes existing geographies. Rancière is a democrat who thinks democracies cannot be stable; thus, neither can the geographies that humans make for themselves. Across democratic societies, disruptive potential – that ability for the miscount to emerge and the political demand be made – is omnipresent. We are always meant to be asking ‘Who are we?’ and “Are we all equal?’ This sets up continually operating processes of geographical making and unmaking. Police orders are established, yet always being modified by the human innovation of all types. When these orders become subject to politics, they get remade to align with the democratic values. Examining Rancière as a geographical thinker can therefore be valuable in two distinctive ways. First, and this is the more commonly appreciated view (cf. Dikeç 2007), his thought gives us a fruitful framework to think about politics as de facto geographical. If politics acts on the police order, and the police order is always written geographically, our attention is directed towards how social understandings and divisions are installed and maintained across space. In other words, Rancière does not allow space to be viewed as an apolitical medium. Second, and perhaps less appreciated, Rancière’s work delivers a modest normative framework to evaluate geographical change. He

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makes us ask whether social conflict is political by evaluating it according to whether it concerns democratic ordering. By extension, we can know if proposed changes embrace the same democratic demands. Orwell’s commentaries from Catalonia powerfully demonstrate the importance of such frameworks. The miseries of inequality are often painfully apparent. No urbanite can be innocent of them. Yet, the normative – what to do? – is rarely uncontroversial. To be sure, Rancière does not resolve all these issues. His normative input is not prescriptive. Rather, it concerns the prioritization of values. As such, his thought reflects the normative emphasis found in Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. When Orwell writes about the feelings he experienced on the streets of revolutionary Barcelona, he is commenting on the priorities of the people he encountered. The most obvious observation being the apparent joy of democratic association despite material hardship. This is Orwell at his best, drawing up a contrast between conflicting desires. He is asking his reader: Do you want material prosperity or democratic equality? When we sketch out how Rancière’s thought contains geographical insights, we are never left in any doubt about how to answer the question. Perhaps this is the greatest geographical contribution of his work; that he helps geographical thought be democratic to the core.

References Arendt, Hannah (1958): The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dapiran, Antony (2020): City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong, Melbourne: Scribe. Davidson, Mark/Iveson, Kurt (2014): “Occupations, Mediations, Subjectifications: Fabricating Politics.” In: Space and Polity 18/2, pp. 137-152. Davidson, Mark/Iveson, Kurt (2015): “Recovering the Politics of the City: From the ‘Post-Political City’ to a ‘Method of Equality’ for Critical Urban Geography.” In: Progress in Human Geography 39/5, pp. 543-559. Davidson, Mark/Iveson, Kurt (2018): “Presupposing Democracy: Placing Politics in the Urban.” In: Enright, Theresa/Rossi, Ugo (eds.), The Urban Political: Ambivalent Spaces of Late Neoliberalism, London: Palgrave McMillian, pp. 27-43.

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DeLeon, Abraham P. (2012): “’A Perverse Kind of Sense’: Urban Spaces, Ghetto Places and the Discourse of School Shootings.” In: The Urban Review 44/1, pp. 152-169. Dicken, Peter (2015): Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy. 7th Edition, New York: The Guilford Press. Dikeç, Mustafa (2007): Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban Policy, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Garrett, Bradley L. (2017): “Squares for Sale! Cashing Out on Public Space.” In: Verso (ed.), The Right to the City: A Verso Report, London: Verso, pp. 80-102. Iveson, Kurt (2007): Publics and the City. Oxford: Blackwell. Keane, John (2019): “Democracy, Diaspora and the Territorial Mentality.” In: Olga Oleinikova/Jumana Bayeh (eds.), Democracy, Diaspora, Territory: Europe and Cross-Border Politics, London: Routledge, pp. 25-42. Lynch, Kevin (1960): The Image of the City, Cambridge: MIT Press. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Massey, Doreen (2004): “Geographies of Responsibility.” In: Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 86/1, pp. 5-18. Mele, Christopher (2000): “The Materiality of Urban Discourse: Rational Planning in the Restructuring of the Early Twentieth-Century Ghetto.” In: Urban Affairs Review 35/5, pp. 628-648. Orwell, George (2018 [1938]): Homage to Catalonia, S.l.: Bibliotech Press. Rancière, Jacques (1999): Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, Jacques (2001): “Ten Theses on Politics.” In: Theory & Event 5/3. Rancière, Jacques (2005): The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, London: Continuum. Rancière, Jacques (2016): The Method of Equality: Interviews with Laurent Jeanpierre and Dork Zabunyan, Oxford: Wiley. Swyngedouw, Erik (2009): “The Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: In Search of a Democratic Politics of Environmental Production.” In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33/3, pp. 601-620.

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[Un]Grounding Agonistic Public Space: Approaching Mouffe’s Spatial Theory via Museums Friederike Landau

Ungrounding Mouffe’s Theory of Agonistic Public Space In this chapter, I examine the conceptual linkages between Chantal Mouffe’s understanding of agonism and her elaborations on (public) space. With the objective to [un]ground her concept of ‘agonistic public space’, I set out to discuss Mouffe’s more or less implicit notions of the ontology and conflictuality of space for critical geographies. While Mouffe’s proclamation of the importance of agonism in public spaces has been paramount in her discussion about the (re)vitalization of pluralist democracies (cf. Mouffe 2005a; 2007), I argue that she has not sufficiently examined the diversely interrelated, power-inflected relations between agonism/antagonism, space/place and publicness. In other words, I subject Mouffe’s widely referenced term of ‘agonistic public space’ (Tong 2015; Kastrissianakis/Galati 2010) to a comprehensive analysis of her understanding of space proper. In two sub-sections, I examine the interpenetrating connections between agonism and space (Section: A+S) and publicness and space (Section: P+S). I discuss manifest and latent interdependencies to ask what these adjectivized qualifications of space actually do for postfoundational theories of space. Subsequently, I turn to the spatial form of the museum to examine one concrete making or unmaking of agonistic public space in the Conflictorium, Museum of Conflict, in Ahmedabad, India. Based on the hypothesis that museums, or more precisely, radically democratic museums (Sternfeld 2018), could be agonistic public space in situ, I review existing accounts of activist museums (e.g., making museum space open and public for activists, making agonism public, agonizing museum publics etc.) and aim to draw attention to museums as critical urban infrastructures. I conclude by summarizing what critical geographers, urbanists and museum scholars can take away from Mouffe’s notion of agonistic public space. In sum, the chapter

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is a two-tiered exploration of both conceptually ungrounding and empirically grounding Mouffe’s post-foundational spatial theory. Mouffe (2007) has undoubtedly coined the term ‘agonistic public space’ in discourses on critical artistic practice, participatory art, public art and art in public space(s), thus appealing to an interdisciplinary community of researchers and practitioners from the fields of art history, curatorial and exhibition studies as well as practicing artists. However, at a closer look, Mouffe is not really clear about how such agonistic public spaces come into being, who makes them agonistic (or not), which resources and preconditions are necessary to realize agonistic public spaces, and ultimately, what complicates and conditions the persistence or disappearance of such public spaces. In search for a however imperfect and contingent analytical framework, the seemingly inseparable trio of agonism, publicness, and spatiality is to be temporarily unpacked to understand the different spatial practices, features and intensities that lead to agonistic public spaces. Although both agonism and publicness appear to be constitutive of the spatialization of agonistic democracy, or the publicizing of agonism, we lack knowledge about how and where they interrelate. Slightly counter-intuitive to the messy endeavour to disentangle agonism, publicness and space, Mouffe provides a seemingly straightforward suggestion for political conceptions of space, stating that “a wrong understanding of the notion of spatiality can lead to a mistaken form of politics” (Kastrissianakis/Galati 2010: 7). For one, the normative indication of a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ conception of space (or politics, for that matter) might discourage the analytical advancement of theory. Moreover, the statement implicitly reifies the ‘right’ or ‘good’ notion of space. In a similar vein, Mouffe (ibid. 8) continues: “We will always find ourselves within geometries of power, but some geometries of power will be more democratic, more progressive than others.” While these introductory quotations indicate a normatively entrenched approach to spatial politics, or political conceptions of space, my goal is to tease out these gradually changing, asymmetrically interrelated ‘geometries of power’, which can emerge from and arise within agonistic public spaces. In reference to Mouffe’s understanding of critical artistic practice as counter-hegemonic or radical democratic tools, art historian Grant Kester (2012) argues somewhat bluntly: “what is strangely absent from this veritable orgy of unmasking and disruption [of consensus; FL] … is any meaningful account of the actual reception of the initial revelatory gesture.” In opposition to Kester, I do not call into question the general meaningfulness of Mouffe’s

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theoretical oeuvre, but do wonder about that ‘strange absence’ which lingers in Mouffe’s engagement with space, or spatial politics. How public is agonistic space? What kind of public(s) are agonistic public spaces designed for? How do places change when we embrace agonism in public? What are specific spatial features of agonistic public spaces, what do they look and feel like? To dig into the processes of articulating space as agonistic and public, I examine what Mouffe has to say about artists’ spatial or place-making practices. By turning one facet of the three-dimensional prism of agonistic public space to the front, I shed some light on its respective specific discursive-material features. From this [un]grounding exercise, I extract some of the dynamic interrelations between agonism, space and public(ness) that feed into a theorization of post-foundational spatial theory or ontology.

Agonism + Space: Articulating Outsides in the Face of Absence Mouffe’s conception of agonism proposes political life, or politics, as inherently conflictual, contingent and result of processes of articulation (Mouffe 2005a; 2009). Departing from Carl Schmitt’s notion of antagonism, suggesting a logic of annihilation and confrontation between friends and enemies, Mouffe develops her own account of agonism as political encounters between legitimate adversaries. These non-destructive competitors agree on basic principles of ‘equality’ and ‘liberty for all’, while remaining in disagreement about the interpretation of these very terms. While it offers a perspective of vivid debate to democratic theory, the conception of agonism has been subject to scholarly criticism: Roskamm (2015) and Kester (2012) have called into question whether Mouffe ‘kills off’ the radical potential of antagonism by taming it. Knops (2007) has cautioned that Mouffe herself might fall into a ‘trap’ of deliberative and consensus-oriented democracy. Amidst these problematizations of the status of agonism in Mouffe’s political theory, I wonder where and how Mouffe’s work could inspire dialogues between political and spatial theories on the politics of space. Following Doreen Massey’s (1995: 284) appreciation of Mouffe’s work as “provocative of new thinking” to consider identify formation, politics, and space as mutually co-constitutive, I proceed by sketching the spatialization of agonistic agency. I draw on the concept of articulation, which aims to both produce and contest hegemony. By looking at articulations and disarticulations of space, we might understand how agonistic power contributes to agonistic place-making.

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The concept of articulation has been crucial to approach the emergence of new political subjectivities and agency (Laclau 1990; Landau 2019). As defined by Mouffe (2007: 3): The articulatory practices through which a certain order is established and the meaning of social institutions is fixed are ‘hegemonic practices’. Every hegemonic order is susceptible of being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices, i.e. practices which will attempt to disarticulate the existing order so as to install another form of hegemony. In the context of reflecting on the [un]grounding dynamics of agonistic public spaces, this definition of articulation crucially misses a spatial dimension: How do articulatory practices spatialize ‘a certain order’? In what ways can counter-hegemonic practices intervene in existing material or built forms or places? How and where does the ‘installment of another form of hegemony’ take place? Which articulations constitute which kinds of spaces, and are these spaces automatically agonistic? Besides the political potential of articulatory practice to dismantle existing hegemonic orders, the spatial implications of articulation are less clear. While the above questions might provoke further thinking about the architectural and design features of public spaces (and what makes them agonistic or not), these concerns might exceed the scope of this chapter, which seeks to [un]ground the notion of agonistic public space from Mouffe’s own theory. However, other activist scholars already engage with these important questions, for example, via architectural practice (cf. Heindl/Drehli in this volume). Let us turn to some of the space-makers or agents who articulate spaces that are possibly agonistic and public. These spatial agents are certainly multiple, ranging from the usual suspects such as architects, planners, and engineers, but also more informal actors such as wild campers, homeless individuals, acrobats on the streets, hotdog vendors, sleeping dogs, hiding children, tree trunks, protesting youth. Articulation as I understand it – as a means to confirm and reproduce (i.e., ground) and challenge (i.e., unground) spatial hegemonic orders – all these human and non-human agents can contribute to space-making. But not all appropriations of space are necessarily agonistic. So, then, what makes the occupation, usage, designation, or design of a space attuned to conflict? Here, post-foundational terminology about the making of new political identities lends useful conceptual vocabulary to study the emergence of new collective formations (Laclau 1994). Especially the notion of the ‘constitutive outside’ (i.e., the necessary externality to constitute or

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articulate an identity, which is not the outside, but a however heterogeneous inside, contributing to identity formation) might be applicable to agonistic space-making. A constitutive outside simultaneously blocks and enables the constitution of collective identities. Revolving around always-temporary and always-precarious formations of ‘us’ and ‘them’, constitutive outsides maintain antagonism, but also situate those invested in a radical democratic course (i.e., the inside/us) against those who defy this model of democracy (i.e., the outside/them). The conflict is again primarily described as a political cleavage and contains no further information where this outside or inside is located. However, the politics of insides and outsides are necessarily spatial (for further discussion, cf. Roskamm in this volume). Are ‘we’ close together (i.e., touching on the interrelations between spatial proximity and the enactment of radical democracy)? How far away is the (constitutive) outside, does it move, is it grounded? How can we reach it and how do we rearrange the insides and outsides for new instalments of hegemony? Hence, in radical democracy-making, somebody attempts the articulation of new forms of hegemony in practice, stressing the agentic dimension of articulation (cf. Landau 2019: 52–55). This is an important offering from Mouffe and Laclau’s post-Marxist discourse theory in contrast to more structuralist accounts that have not attended to the mutual, dynamic interrelations between structures and agencies. However, the spatial dimension of articulation, possibly alleviated via the drawing of constitutive outsides and insides, remains somewhat underdeveloped. Put differently, besides the who of articulation, it matters how/where the constitutive outside is spatially marked, or simply, where it begins (and ends, or if that ever happens). In other words, with regards to those agents who can articulate agonistic public space, temporary exclusions, or markings of outside gain traction in understanding the making of agonistic public spaces. If an outside is necessary to constitute an inside, the dividing line(s) are external to the inside. Yet not everybody might be able to articulate an inside. Based on the spatial split between inside and outside, is agonistic public space necessarily located on the inside, or can it be on the outside, too? Briefly, how does counter-hegemonic articulation take place within the making of constitutive outsides? In all these questions, which are expressive of the longing to comprehend how to spatialize ‘us’ and the constitutive ‘them’, Mouffe does not offer an illustration of where to draw any lines, and how to imagine agonistic collective or individual subjects in space. In summary, the tipping points between agonistic and notso-agonistic or not-at-all agonistic spaces are not definitively locatable. Out-

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rightly antagonistic spaces, which police or violently remove unwanted subjects from public space, are even less to be spatially imagined. While Mouffe alludes to the exclusion of some demands from the agonistic public sphere, “because some demands would put into question the very existence of agonistic politics” (Kastrissianakis/Galati 2010: 3), the analytical contours of this exclusion-inclusion-dynamic remain rather unsubstantiated in the notion of agonistic public space (I will address the concerns of excluded demands in Section P+S). With regards to the spatial ramifications of agonism, it is striking to note that Mouffe (2013a: 104) ascribes great potential to agonistic public space to “contribute to the creation of a multiplicity of sites where the dominant hegemony can be questioned.” This ‘multiplicity of sites’ of counter-hegemonic interventions – be it public parks, park benches, parliaments, public transit, unplanned dances, unannounced political debates or coffee stands in public places – evokes images of radical democratic democracy as expansive, diverse and potent to arise from anywhere. While it might be good news that counterhegemonic resistance can emerge from many places, we do not learn much about the concrete locations, scope, or limitations of this multiplicity. The evocation of spatial diversity and mobility remains intangible. Interestingly, the phrase ‘where dominant hegemony can be questioned’ points to a spatial origin from where counter-hegemonic articulations can be initialized, but this origin is not further conceptualized. Situated in post-foundational thought, it is highly unlikely that Mouffe means to suggest that there is such a thing as one origin of either hegemony or counter-hegemony in an ontological sense (because that would presume essentialized preconditions for agonistic public space), however, the lack of any origin or ground for that agonistic public space to emerge is also not stated. However, to flag the theoretical importance of the absence of any definitive or final ground for social, political or spatial order (Marchart 2013), it is crucial to consider the ontological lack rather than abundance as point of departure to think about space in post-foundational terms (Tønder/Thomassen 2005). To substantiate her somewhat indirectly [un]grounded, anti-essentialist approach of spatial theory, Mouffe (2005b: 158, own emphasis) claims: For the agonistic model, on the contrary, the public space is the battleground where different hegemonic projects are confronted, without any possibility of final reconciliation … While there is no underlying principle of unity, no predetermined centre to this diversity of spaces, there always exist diverse forms

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of articulation among them and we are not faced with the kind of dispersion envisaged by some postmodernist thinkers … Public spaces are always striated and hegemonically structured. A given hegemony results from a specific articulation of a diversity of spaces and this means that the hegemonic struggle also consists of the attempt to create a different form of articulation among public spaces. Apart from Mouffe’s admittedly categorical critique of ‘the postmodernist thinkers’, likely including Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari and Hardt/Negri, who promote ‘dispersion’ or rhizomatic, expansionist thinking of space, she reiterates the absence of any ‘predetermined centre.’ Again, and paradoxically, the reference to ‘specific articulations’ is not filled with any conceptual or exemplary content. In her later work in Agonistics, Mouffe states (2013a: 91, own modifications): From the point of the theory of hegemony, artistic practices play a role in the constitution and maintenance of a given symbolic spatial order, or in this challenging, and this is why they necessarily have a political dimension. The political, for its part, concerns the symbolical spatial ordering of social relations, and this is where its aesthetic dimension resides. I have modified this quotation to experiment with highlighting the connections between symbolical, political, and spatial orders. While they are certainly not the same, a spatial order necessarily bears a politico-symbolical dimension, and vice versa. From the above quotation, the careful post-foundational reader might be reminded of Lefort’s (1988) elaboration on the ‘empty place of power’, as Mouffe indirectly references the absence of a central place of power, or the impossibility of a final reconciliation of spatial orders. However, to assume absence as the starting point for theorizations of space proves crucial for the development of a conflict-oriented framework of space. A spatial ontology that departs from a lack of foundation stands in strong contrast with models of (public) space, which might assume public space as a given, dubbed the ‘container’ notion of space. In these notions of public space, consensus rather than conflict, contention or difference might prevail, which problematically excludes marginalized voices (cf. Mitchell 1995). To counter this, the agonistic approach to public space seeks foreground the value of difference and dissent. Hence, in search for post-foundational geographies, I draw out a first component for such spatial thinking:

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[Un]Grounding Extraction 1: Agonistic public spaces are articulated from spatially diverse, temporarily locatable positions of constitutive insides-outsidesrelations. These acts of [un]grounding arise from radical ontological and spatial absence. However ironic it may seem – absence and emptiness gaining a ‘central’ place in articulatory practices of producing space – this preliminary suggestion might attenuate the somewhat unsatisfying status quo of Mouffe’s spatial thought. On the one hand, she claims ‘diverse forms of articulation’ that make public space agonistic, on the other hand, she urges that ‘specific articulations of a diversity of spaces’ are necessary to produce variations of hegemony. In summing up this arguably dissonant logic, in this section, I mobilized a bulk of questions rather than answers to express a concern for the spatial implications of constitutive outsides and articulations for public space-making. To delve deeper into the complicated excluding-including character of agonistic spaces, let us investigate the kind and degree of publicness of such spaces.

Publicness + Space: Spatializing Marks of Exclusion It becomes apparent that the boundaries between inside(s) and outside(s) are generally unsettled, ungrounded, possibly also unsettling for scholars who study them, and people who live and work in and between these insides and outsides. Having touched on the spatial dimensions of articulatory practices, which can dislocate existing hegemonies and seek to institute new forms of hegemony, the conditions of these inclusions and exclusions in agonistic place-making beg the following questions: How are exclusions spatialized? Where do the (temporarily) excluded go? Are the margins of hegemonic spaces mere leftovers, or are these fringes central for counter-hegemonic articulation? Are marginalized actors or ‘counter-publics’ (Fraser 1990) spatially closer, or in any way more likely to enact agonism in public spaces? Which spatial features facilitate rather than inhibit agonistic exchange, negotiation and dwelling in public? In light of these acts of boundary-making, or articulations, I am interested in the dimensions of the public, publics, or publicness in the agonistic conception of space. Reactivating the discussed concepts of constitutive outsides, articulations and inclusions-exclusions, Marchart’s (2002) early question remains highly relevant: “What is public about the public space, and – vice versa – what is spatial about the public sphere?” Following Marchart, my

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discussion revolves not so much around the overlapping meanings and potentials of participatory art, public art or not-so-public art, which are still controversially debated (Hildebrandt 2012; O’Kelly 2007; Schrag 2015), but instead on museums which might foster agonistic public space. Since Mouffe (2013a: 100) has argued that museums and art institutions could “be transformed into agonistic public spaces where [this] hegemony is openly contested”, and very similarly (2013b: 74), that these institutions “could make a decisive contribution to the proliferation of new public spaces fomenting agonistic forms of participation where radical democratic alternatives to neoliberalism could be imagined and cultivated”, I discuss museums as physical, discursive and affective spaces, locations, and places to foster and protect agonistic democracy. ‘The museum belongs to us all’, Nora Sternfeld (2018) provocatively argues in her conceptual effort to radicalize understanding of museums as public spaces. Following Sternfeld’s project to challenge the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within museums, I extend this claim to look at museums’ physical locations and spatialities as places of in- and exclusion. It is most certainly beyond the scope of this chapter, and my expertise, to assess whether and in what ways the over 55,000 museums worldwide physically and pedagogically live up to enable openness, accessibility and publicness (or fail to do so). Nonetheless, imbricated in these aspirations are the political urgency and relative successes to realize these goals. In other words, while openness and accessibility mean very different things to very different people, who are more or less likely to attend museums, it is important to theorize the openings and closings of opportunities to attempt openness, inclusion and radical democracy in museums. In the context of agonistic public space, theoretical access to museum space does not automatically create publicness, and vice versa, publicness is not inevitably created via granting access. This is further complicated by the role and room of agonism in creating access and/or publicness. Considering the museum as a possible space to [un]ground agonistic public space, Sternfeld (2018: 21, own translation) argues that the radical democratic museum promises the opportunity to ask who ‘everybody’ is, and who remains excluded from that, to engage with what happened, to negotiate what that means for the present and how to imagine a future departing from that, which is more than just an extension of the present. While the imperative to create inclusion and participation in art projects, museum education, or mediation as uncontroversial and universal remedy has

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been criticized (Bishop 2012; Miessen 2012), the question of ‘who everybody is and who remains excluded’ stays relevant for critical museum scholarship and practice. Sternfeld (2018: 21, own translation) argues that radical democratic museums should be considered as public institutions or infrastructures “which [are] related to the street as a space for protest and the parliament as a space for gathering … as contact zone, platform, arena and place of gathering.” To explore the features of these gathering places, the public dimension of agonism needs to be clarified. Who is part of an agonistic public, and who is not? How does one enter into, or exit, an agonistic public, is it by choice or force? Is agonism inside or outside of public space, and where and for how long does agonism linger in public? To address the conceptual conundrum of public(ness), I follow Sheikh’s (2004) notion of ‘public’ as “audience, community, constituency or potentiality.” This definition transcends the ‘public’ as a collective, agentic group or audience in the classical sense of a temporarily defined unit of spectators of an event. In addition, and more importantly for this reflection, ‘public’ is also a spatial unit “consisting of a number of spaces and/or formations that sometimes connect, sometimes close off, and that are in conflictual and contradictory relations to each other” (ibid.). Taking public space as neither totalized, or enclosed space nor as purely discursive construction, but as space of contestation and contingency, museums could function as places between the concrete, materialized ‘being’ public (i.e., architectural constructions, majestic ‘starchitecture’) and its ‘becoming’ public (i.e., mobile or digital museum events, cooperations with local and international partners from academia, science, business, education etc.). While Mouffe (2016: 2) is critical of the managerialization and spectacularization of museums, she ascribes to them the potential to radicalize democracy, and thus politics: Transformed into agonistic public spaces, museums would facilitate the expression of dissent, helping people to better understand the contradictions of the world in which they are living and allowing them to see things from different points of view. In an earlier discussion of the radical democratic construction of political power via agonistic artistic strategies, Mouffe (1999: 2) speaks of “traces of exclusion”, which influence and govern the institution and destitution of social objectivity. Traces of exclusion (or power) are mentioned again and again

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in Mouffe’s descriptions about the oscillating articulatory dynamics to install or dismantle hegemony and are inherently spatial. Hints, ambivalences and transgressions of inside-outside-distinctions or we-they-dynamics make the spatialization of agonistic agency certainly complicated, messy, overall difficult to grasp or ‘place.’ However, within and beyond the uncertainties traces of exclusion might unravel, we also see and experience places in everyday situations whose traces of exclusions have been eradicated: market squares, public parks, transit or waiting areas, shopping malls that are patrolled by private security firms. While some of these spaces are technically public, they are matter-of-factly clean(ed), sanitized, policed, privatized, deprived of their original absence of any meaning or hegemony about how to use the space, or who it is for. Through acts of spatializing inclusion and exclusion, these places are overwritten with concrete meanings and allowed, civil or legitimate functions of space (i.e., ‘proper’ conduct or usage of the designated space). As Jones (2014: 19) points out, “objectivity is never pure as it always contains trace elements of the excluded ‘other’.” The same might be true for agonistic public space. In short, traces of exclusion, and subsequently, traces of antagonism, of the ‘excluded other’ are always-already in space. The pressing question is whether and how these traces are made intelligible, experiential and (re)negotiable, and how their visibility is considered and problematized as political. Digital media scholar Tong (2015: 2) understands the agonistic public sphere as a space “in which plural and even conflicting interests are expressed, presented and contested…The formation of an agonistic public sphere democratizes communication processes, opens spaces for public participation and gives voice to the public who would otherwise remain silent.” In addition, Tong points to the ‘prominence of emotions’ that help to make agonism in public spaces tangible. In sum, exclusions, and traces thereof, are irreducible, yet constitutive, of any public space endeavor. What makes agonism, which is inherent in any space, public is the open thematization and experience of these traces, rather than their omission or suppression. Marchart (in this volume, pp. 102-3) elaborates on Laclau’s account of sedimentations and dislocations as orders of power to differentiate between the social as the terrain of sedimented discursive practices, while the political by contrast is defined as the moment of the institution of the social as well as the moment of the reactivation of the contingent nature of every institution.

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Taking note of the last part of this quotation – the ‘reactivation of the contingent nature of every institution’ – we might gain a clearer understanding of how agonism in space can be made public. Space usually appears as sedimented terrain, negating or suppressing the contingent nature or ungrounded ground of their own spatiality. Public institutions and places of power such as parliaments, administrative complexes, cemeteries, prisons, and maybe museums, too, demonstrate security, reliability, possibly immobility and slowness. They have a bearing of being, just sitting there. If, in return, these spaces would display their undeniably contingent ‘sedimentedness’ or origins, they could engage in contesting or dislocating their own spatially instituted hegemony – to open, rather than suppress non-conforming, unexpected, or agonistic publics and uses. Mouffe (Kastrissianakis/Galati 2010: 1) explicitly cautions against the suppression of agonism: [I]f you don’t adopt an agonistic form of politics, if you don’t take the responsibility for different conflicts and struggles to take a political form of expression, then, when these conflicts erupt, they erupt in violent form. Notably, the above quotation could be equally convincing if the references to ‘politics’ and ‘political’ were replaced with references to ‘space’ and ‘spatial.’ Mouffe’s warning about the ‘eruption’ of conflict mobilizes more questions about space, such as the destination, spatial form, and affective experience of erupted conflicts (cf. Bargetz 2018). Mouffe (2006: 324) has stressed the importance of emotions and ‘passions’ for vivid public spheres or spaces, urging “not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. It is, rather, to attempt to mobilize those passions towards democratic designs.” Again, what the ‘mobilization of passions’ in public feels, tastes or looks like remains unknown, but underscores the necessity to further study the affective dimensions of agonistic public spaces. To conclude, I have identified attempts at establishing relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’, insides and outsides of agonism and power as constitutive criteria of agonistic public spaces. Similar to the constitutive outsides of political identities, whose full constitution is simultaneously enabled and blocked by insides, the spatial dynamics of agonistic public spaces reveal themselves as neither fully interior, nor wholly exterior to the other of space. In sum, both the ‘in’ and ‘out’ of agonistic public spaces are precarious and porous (leaving aside even more unsettled issues of when, why, and how long and how violently these in- and exclusions may take place). To address this contingency

[Un]Grounding Geographies

of any space, hegemonic or not, we cannot gloss over the politics of its indeterminate traces of power. The unmarkedness of traces of exclusion at worst reinforces exclusion as invisible and thus perpetuates structural segregation. Instead of reproducing the seeming immutability of positions and places of power, the public enactment of agonism could drive a wedge into, and disturb, processes of sedimentation. Briefly, by constantly (un)marking place as ontologically lacking and contingent, agonism might long-lastingly hover in [un]grounded agonistic public spaces. [Un]Grounding Extraction 2: Agonistic public spaces are spatialized by, for and with temporary and contingent publics. Publicness is not per se agonistic, but can become agonistic via the markings of the contingent origins and traces of exclusion that any place bears. These markings of contingency both temporarily ground the radical ungroundedness of space (i.e., sedimentation) and challenge existing notions and usages of space (i.e., dislocation).

Grounding Agonistic Public Space: Radical Museums To ground my two [un]grounding hypotheses, I turn to the interdisciplinary study of museums as radical institutions, and zoom into a unique museum that engages explicitly and exclusively with the matter of conflict. Steiner and Esche’s (2007) overview of ‘possible museums’ provides a detailed historical account of experimental contemporary art museums in Denmark, Brazil, Poland, Slovenia, Germany, the United States and Spain. These museums work with and in unusual spatial and architectural models, influencing curatorial and collection-oriented decisions. With regards to what makes a museum a possible museum, or what makes a possible museum possible, Steiner and Esche (2007: 201) consider the latter as ‘spaces of societal negotiation’, specifying that “possible museums are thinkable museums, which we can imagine, especially also as alternatives to existing practices.” Highlighting the potentially counter-hegemonic or agonistic character of possible museums, they (ibid. 206) argue that in agonistic museums, “rivalizing attitudes, opinions and postures move closer together, next to or also against each other, each take up their own space.” Agonism is thus part of the museum’s exhibition context and institutional form. Couching agonism into the broader framework of antagonism, Jorge Ribalta (2004: 229), curator of MACBA, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, organizer of the exhibition Antagonisms. Case

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Studies and Documentary Processes. Testimonial Image, Subalternity and the Public Sphere (2001), states: “our contribution to a radically democratic public sphere is, quite simple, to be self-critical and open to debates.” Steiner and Esche (2007: 214) add that the possible museum “has to be as open as possible about its re-invention, and willing to accept its abolition when better models are offered”, alluding to the general lack of ultimate grounds, absence or radical [un]groundedness of any museum. Mouffe (2016: 2) argues that, To envisage the museum in an agonistic way, it is necessary to acknowledge that what is at stake in cultural institutions is an [sic] hegemonic struggle about the definition of the common sense and the construction of the social imaginary. According to this, museums are part of the (re)construction of socio-political, maybe also socio-spatial imaginaries. With her understanding that critical artistic practice can enable counter-hegemonic forces to contest neoliberalism, global capitalism, and the commercialization of the art world, Mouffe has inspired ongoing discourses about the interrelations between art and politics in critical curatorial and art theoretical discussions. Mouffe-inflected art scholars have brought forth insights into museums’ self-renewal or new institutionalisms (Ekeberg 2003; Kolb et al. 2014) and investigations into so-called ‘radical museology’ (Bishop/Perjovschi 2014; Bishop 2004). Discussing concrete cases such as Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, NL, Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain, and Muzej sodobne umetnosti Metelkova in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Bishop (2014: 56) sees these radical museums as interconnected in their curatorial, visual and spatial attempts to be anti- or counter-hegemonic. Sternfeld (2018: 64) takes up the idea of museums’ radical (democratic) self-reflexivity and pushes the notion of museums as museums, proposing the ‘para-museum’ as a material-discursive infrastructure that challenges itself with its own means. To engage with these conceptual reflections on conflict and critique, I briefly introduce the Conflictorium, Museum of Conflict, in Ahmedabad, India, as a potentially agonistic public space.

The Conflictorium, Ahmedabad – Agonistic Museum in situ? The Conflictorium opened in 2013 in the neighborhood of Mirzapur in Ahmedabad, India’s fifth-largest city with a population of over five million people. Designated number 14 of the 35 fastest-growing cities in India, Ahmedabad is

[Un]Grounding Geographies

situated in the Western province of Gujarat (Walk through India 2019). The city is known to be prone to natural disasters such as droughts and earthquakes, making the city spatially unsettled in its exposure to natural forces. The social fabric of Ahmedabad is striated by political and religious upheaval, home to a population of about 82 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims, who have, throughout history, been in severe conflict with each other. In 2002, religious uprisings between radical Hindus and Muslims erupted violently, causing over one thousand deaths (Bobbio 2015; Miklian/Birkvad 2016). When Avni Sethi, then 27, recent graduate of the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, about 1,400 kilometers south of Ahmedabad, wanted to realize her final study project, she was curiously drawn back to her hometown Ahmedabad. Wanting to create a temporary social space for arts and culture in a politically divided city, Avni found the so-called Gool Lodge, located east of the Sabarmati river, to activate such a space. Located in the historicpartofAhmedabad, or Old City, India’s first World Heritage Site since 2017, the two-story-building was formerly home to Ahmedabad’s first female-run professional hair salon. Surrounded by the Hindu Temple Mata Mandir, Rani Sipri mosque, the Sunni Muslim Wakf Committee, which initiates and supports social and educational projects, CNI Christ Church Mirzapur and RC College of Commerce, Gool Lodge was previously used as a storage space by the NGO JanVikas, which supports social justice initiatives. Driven by a diffuse anger about the city’s violent past, in interview, Avni (2019) describes her motivation to acquire a cultural space as follows: I was trying to figure out where this anger was coming from, because it seems that I had been witness to something that has been happening within the city and the state, but I could not really pinpoint it as my experience. I know it did not happen to me, but something happened. Hence, Avni was in eager contact with JanVikas to take over Gool Lodge. The NGO trusted in Avni’s passionate vision and helped to let the space become a museum, which takes into consideration the “proper geopolitics of the space”, as Avni (ibid.) puts it. But what makes Conflictorium an agonistic public space? There are many stories to be told to explain what the Museum of Conflict means to whom. To distill some conceptual understandings of the connections between agonism, space and publicness to be found therein, I stress three aspects in the Conflictorium’s museum practice: First, it is striking how the museum acts from a structural absence or lack. The Gool Lodge was never built or designed as a

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museum but is being articulated as such by Avni and other museum staff, volunteers, funders, visitors, objects, and researchers. The space is articulated as a museum without assuming any preconceived or essentialized function of the space – or a definition of what a museum is – prior to these spatial articulations. Strictly speaking, the Conflictorium does not comply with the definitional criteria of museums of the International Council of Museums – collection, display, organization, research, and mediation (cf. Landau 2020). However, as the Conflictorium “identifies as a museum” (Rajendran 2016: 362), precisely because it does not fit into this (narrow) conception, the Conflictorium might transcend the discursive-symbolical and material-spatial notions of what museums are. Second, the Conflictorium actively displays conflict as museal matter and materiality in ways that enable and embrace agonism, rather than fueling antagonism. Instead of recreating schemes of an evil ‘them’ against a morally superior ‘us’, the museum allows ample physical room and intellectual space to express diverse and possibly contradicting opinions. The institution “stands for the in-between, beyond the black and white, where the shades of grey are acknowledged and celebrated for the cause of peace” (Conflictorium 2019). This acknowledgement of shades of grey, which could be re-interpreted as traces of black and white, or of inclusions and exclusions, remind of the forgotten, sedimented origins of spaces. In addition, the Conflictorium actively engages in dialogue and mediation formats to foster the transformation of antagonism into agonism. In interview, Avni (2019) reports of a project with a Kashmiri school, in which she carefully questioned her “fraught status” as Indian colonizer and requested that “there will have to be many more Kashmiri people as staff, and then, maybe, let the Conflictorium in as a small resource which can give a small consultancy.” Both in collaborative activities and exhibitions with other cultural initiatives in India and internationally, the Conflictorium is almost exclusively made by the people who work there, many of them students, recent University graduates or artist-curators. Third, the Conflictorium enables agonism in that it lets people appropriate the space for non-museum usages. The space is left to ‘the public’, regardless of who or how many they are, and what they do with it. The museum space is intentionally, yet accidentally transformed into a gathering space for elderly people to nap, or local children to gather and play. While adult local residents have been described by Avni (ibid.) as “skeptical” to drop by the museum and visit the exhibitions, kids from the neighborhood “have walked into the building with a kind of ownership. So, they will walk up to me, or anybody

[Un]Grounding Geographies

in the museum and say: ‘We have decided that next Sunday, we want to do a performance, so open the Auditorium!’” Similarly, Nayan Patel (2019), a social worker from the NGO JanVikas, who grants the museum its space, describes the Conflictorium as an “alive creature”, indicating the ever-changing nature of the museum. Acknowledging its own in-betweenness, its ‘shades of grey’ and the ongoing, constantly re-articulating movements of the museum creature, the Conflictorium hovers as an agonistic institution and public space that [un]grounds itself by default.

Outlook: The Feel of Agonistic Public Spaces Having revisited Mouffe’s somewhat scattered and scarce statements about the connections between public space, agonism and publicness, I suggest adjusting the equation of agonistic public space to add awareness about absence, inclusion/exclusion, and sense of spatial location. By stirring up traces of the past, of contingency, of exclusion, power, and being other, agonism might enter into effect as a necessary component of agonistic public spaces. In the specific spatial setting of museums, agonistic confrontation and space can be provided as constant iteration of [un]groundedness. These ‘para-museums’, as Sternfeld (2018: 62) calls them, fold insides and outsides at the same time, enabling parasitic relations with themselves. To think about the spatial implications of articulation has directed my endeavour to advance post-foundational spatial theories or geographies to an ontology of radical absence, contingency and antagonism. However, there still is no definitive checklist for what makes public spaces agonistic, or what makes agonistic spaces public. Agonistic spaces do arise from an absence that cannot be overcome by tradition, prestige, or market pressure. This radical, ontological, antagonistic absence cannot be overbuilt by brick and mortar, private funding, or unrelenting museum directors who are allergic against innovation and cultural equity. However, spatialized sedimentations of power need to be (un)marked to become negotiable again and become open and welcoming to unexpected and unknown audiences, co-producers, and dwellers. As Rosalyn Deutsche (1992: 51) puts it in reference to Lefort’s empty place of power, “power becomes and remains democratic when it proves to belong to no one ... it is then from a negativity that the public space comes into being.” In other words, it is because places like the Conflictorium do not belong to anybody (in the narrower sense of ownership, or even authorship of some of the

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collectively produced exhibitions), that they can possibly enact agonistic public spaces. The [un]grounding of public spaces, discussed at the example of a museum, seeks to speak to spatial theorists, practitioners and activists from realms of political philosophy, geography, urban planning, architecture, urban studies as well as political science, sociology, curatorial and museum practice, who are interested in creating public spaces for agonistic encounters. To delve into this knowingly risky, yet exciting space, I wonder what these agonistic public spaces could feel like. Maybe, they smell of sweet cardamom and spicy ginger; maybe, they host homeless people using public electricity next to businesspeople working away on mobile devices. Maybe, agonistic public spaces feel soft and furry like a sun-bathing cat, or sleek and versatile like a shiny laptop. Maybe, they feel like spaces where one can finally be a bit private, in public. Regardless of their smell, touch, taste, concrete location, and spatial form – agonistic public spaces will hopefully remind us that only polyphonic places will leave open the possibility to evoke the political in space anywhere, anytime.

References Bargetz, Brigitte (2018): “Longing for Agency: New Materialisms’ Wrestling With Despair.” In: European Journal of Women’s Studies 10/2, pp. 1-14. Bishop, Claire (2004): “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.” In: OCTOBER Magazine 110, pp. 51-79. Bishop, Claire (2012): Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, New York: Verso. Bishop, Claire/Perjovschi, Dan (2014): Radical Museology or, “What’s Contemporary” in Museums of Contemporary Art? London: Koenig. Bobbio, Tommaso (2015): Urbanisation, Citizenship and Conflict in India. Ahmedabad 1900-2000, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Conflictorium (2019): Our Vision. https://www.conflictorium.org/ Deutsche, Rosalyn (1992): “Art and Public Space: Questions of Democracy.” In: Social Text 33, pp. 34-53. Ekeberg, Jonas (2003): New Institutionalism, Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway. Fraser, Nancy (1990): “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In: Social Text 25/26, pp. 56-80.

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Hildebrandt, Paula-Marie (2012): „Urbane Kunst.“ In: Frank Eckardt (ed.), Handbuch Stadtsoziologie, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 721-744. Interview transcript, Avni Sethi (2019): June 11, via Skype, Berlin. Interview transcript, Nayan Patel (2019): July 11, via Skype, Berlin. Jones, Matthew (2014): “Chantal Mouffe’s Agonistic Project: Passions and Participation.” In: Parallax 20/2, pp. 14-30. Kastrissianakis, Konstantin/Galati, Gia (2010): “Chantal Mouffe: From Antagonistic Politics to an Agonistic Public Space. In: Re-public.gr, pp. 1-8. Kester, Grant H. (2012): “The Sound of Breaking Glass, Part II: Agonism and the Taming of Dissent.” In: e-flux 31, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/31/ 68221/the-sound-of-breaking-glass-part-ii-agonism-and-the-taming-of -dissent/. Knops, Andrew (2007): “Debate. Agonism as Deliberation? On Mouffe’s Theory of Democracy.” In: Journal of Political Philosophy 15/1, pp. 115-126. Kolb, Lucie/Flückiger, Gabriel/ Bik, Liesbeth/Ekeberg, Jonas/Esche, Charles (2014): (New) Institution(alism), Zürich: Oncurating.org 21. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London and New York: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (ed.) (1994): The Making of Political Identities: Workshop on Identities and Political Identification, London: Verso. Landau, Friederike (2019): Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City: On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics, London: Routledge. Landau, Friederike (2020): “Konfliktraum Museum: Überlegungen für Museumstheorie und -praxis.” In: Mohr, Henning/Modarressi-Tehrani, Diana (eds.), Das Museum der Zukunft: Trends und Herausforderungen eines innovationsorientierten Kulturmanagements, Bielefeld: transcript, pp. n/a. Lefort, Claude (1988): Democracy and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity. Marchart, Oliver (2002): “Art, Space and the Public Sphere(s): Some Basic Observations on the Difficult Relation of Public Art, Urbanism and Political Theory.” http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/marchart/en. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt: Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Massey, Doreen (1995): “Thinking Radical Democracy Spatially”. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, pp. 283-288. Miessen, Markus (2012): Albtraum Partizipation, Berlin: Merve.

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Miklian, Jason/Birkvad, Ida Roland (2016): “Religion, Poverty and Conflict in a Garbage Slum of Ahmedabad.” In: International Area Studies Review 19/1, pp. 60-75. Mitchell, Don (1995): “The End of Public Space? People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy” In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85/1, pp. 108-133. Mouffe, Chantal (1999): “For a Politics of Democratic Identity. Antagonisms Case Studies.” In: MACBA Globalization and Cultural Differentiation Seminar, pp. 1-6. Mouffe, Chantal (2005a): On the Political, London and New York: Routledge. Mouffe, Chantal (2005b): “Which Public Space for Critical Artistic Practices?” In: Cork Caucus, International Symposium June 20 – July 11, pp. 149-171. Mouffe, Chantal (2006): “Religion, Liberal Democracy, and Citizenship.” In: Hent de Vries/Lawrence E. Sullivan (eds.), Political Theologies: Fordham University Press, pp. 318-326. Mouffe, Chantal (2007): “Art as an Agonistic Intervention in Public Space: Art as a Public Issue.” In: Art and Democracy 14, pp. 1-7. Mouffe, Chantal (2013a): Agonistics: Thinking The World Politically, London and New York: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal (2013b): “Institutions as Sites of Agonistic Intervention” In: Pascal Gielen (ed.), Institutional Attitudes, Amsterdam: valiz antennae, pp. 63-74. Mouffe, Chantal (2016): “An Agonistic Conception of the Museum.” In: MUSEO. Un proyecto de Es Baluard http://proyectomuseu.org/an-agoni stic-conception-of-the-museum/?doing_wp_cron=1556633518.3612339496 612548828125. O’Kelly, Mick (2007): Urban Negotiation, Art and the Production of Public Space. In: artigos e ensaios - revista de pesquisa em arquitetura e urbanismo, pp. 99-112. Rajendran, Anushka (2016): “The Museum of Conflict: An Alternative Model of Social Engagement.” In: Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 12/3, pp. 347-368. Ribalta, Jorge (2004): ”Mediation and Construction of Publics. The MACBA Experience.” In: transversal texts, https://transversal.at/transversal/0504/ ribalta/en. Roskamm, Nikolai (2015): “On the Other Side of ‘Agonism’. ‘The Enemy,’ the ‘Outside,’ and the Role of Antagonism.” In: Planning Theory 14/4, pp. 384403.

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Schrag, Anthony Gordon (2015): Agonistic Tendencies: The Role of Conflict within Institutionally Supported Participatory Practices. Practice-Based Doctorate of Philosophy. Sheihk, Simon (2004): “Public Spheres and the Functions of Progressive Art Institutions.” In: eipcp http://eipcp.net/transversal/0504/sheikh/en. Steiner, Barbar/Esche, Charles (eds.) (2007): Mögliche Museen, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Sternfeld, Nora (2018): Das radikaldemokratische Museum, Berlin: De Gruyter. Tønder, Lars/Thomassen, Lasse (2005): Radical Democracy. Politics between Abundance and Lack, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tong, Jingrong (2015): “The Formation of an Agonistic Public Sphere: Emotions, the Internet and News Media in China.” In: China Information 29/3, pp. 333-351. Walk Through India (2019): “Top 35 Fastest Developing and Emerging Cities of India.” http://www.walkthroughindia.com/offbeat/top-35-fastest-deve loping-and-emerging-cities-of-india/.

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Always Geographize! Fredric Jameson and Political Space Clint Burnham

Introduction This chapter adapts its title from Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious (2002 [1981]), in which he argued that the Marxist study of culture should take as its motto “always historicize!” What does it mean to shift from historicize to geographize? I answer this question in two different ways: through a genealogy of Jameson’s ideas of space, and then, through considerations or challenges to those ideas via Indigenous theory and geographies. I trace a genealogy of two Jamesonian concepts of space: first, the geographic unconscious, Jameson’s notion of the unconscious, which he frames in specifically spatial terms, as an underside, and indeed as a notion in which everyday life today is dominated by categories of space which can only be understood with his unique fusion of Marxist theory with psychoanalysis. Second, cognitive mapping, which he considers as a spatial form of knowledge or ideology, and draws from the urban geography theory of Kevin Lynch. But here, again, there is an unconscious at work, for in Lynch, we find an unexpected (and rarely commented upon) turn to Indigenous forms of mapping. To better understand those forms, I then read the Indigenous geography and mapping theory of Mishuana Goeman (2013), which again demands that we pay attention to the spatial dimensions of psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious. Goeman’s call for an unsettling and multiscalar mapping both is and is not an “ungrounding” in the senses offered in this volume. It un-grounds mapping from colonial technologies (from an imperial visual gaze, an extractivism) even as it re-grounds mapping in a land-based epistemology (an Indigenous paying of attention to the geographies of land, water, flora and fauna). I then find this [un]grounding, this unsettling, in two case studies from Canadian Indigenous spaces: a geographic unconscious in residential schools, and a de-

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colonizing of that geographic unconscious via the humblest of scales, that of berries. A tension or contradiction thus runs throughout this essay. First, that between a geographic unconscious, or the notion that not only is there a spatial dimension to psychoanalytic concepts of the unconscious, of what we simultaneously know and do not know, but also that there is an unconscious element of the geographic, something that resists present-day calls for empirical or data-driven approaches. That dialectic then is answered by an antagonism proper to cognitive mapping: Is this theory a matter of cognitive science or, again, an empirical account for how we think and spatially map (for Jameson it most assuredly is not) or, again, is that mapping a matter of actual documents, texts we can account for and archive? The next level of contradiction in this chapter lies between the geographic unconscious and cognitive mapping: Which is to take priority – that which is spatial and unknown, or that which is mapped and known? Or does cognitive mapping turn out to be unconscious, and does the geographic unconscious turn out to be a map? We can offer the beginning of a theory with a semiotic rectangle:

Figure 1: Diagram (source: author)

This figure – which has the advantage, for the present chapter, of offering a spatial way of thinking – then takes two key concepts from this introductory discussion: that which is known, and that which is spatial, and sets them

Always Geographize!

up as antinomies, the better to determine how such ideas work or recombine (the rectangle owes its provenance to the semiotic theory of A.J. Greimas: see Jameson’s foreward to that work [Greimas 1987 [1970]: vi-xxii]). The four terms (known and unknown, spatial and not-spatial) then combine to generate four specific semantemes, or units of conceptual meaning. What is known and spatial, then, is cognitive mapping, while what is spatial but unknown is the geographic unconscious. On the left side, what is known but not spatial – this coheres, we will see in the following section, with how Jameson characterizes the unconscious in such non-spatial terms as the non-dit, or the impensé (the unsaid and the unthought, respectively). Then, the bottom of the diagram, what is neither known nor spatial – for now, we can use “Indigenous knowledge” as a placeholder, for we will see how any question of Indigenizing theory, or geography, will always contain its own resistance to knowledge (or “ethnographic refusal,” as Audra Simpson and others term it – Joly et al. 2018). But these are only opening remarks – and I will return to the spatial reasoning, the semiotic rectangle, in this chapter’s conclusion.

Geographic Unconscious It may seem that Fredric Jameson’s most signalling statements on the role space plays in contemporary thought and theory lie perhaps in his masterpiece of the 1980s (and published on the cusp of the next decade), Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), where he wrote “We now inhabit the synchronic rather than the diachronic, and I think it is at least empirically arguable that our daily life, our psychic experience, our cultural languages, are today dominated by categories of space rather than categories of time, as in the preceding period of high modernism” (ibid. 16). He proceeds to demarcate spatial logics of posh hotels and of the city, of postmodern architecture (as if his own private taste had become a corporate hegemony, an irony for the dialectician) and, in a move that will be continued in later volumes, film. This notion of the spatiality of thought and planet should be read as a bracing corrective to the historical monomyth that often underlies Marxist thought (which fetishizes Marx on history but ignores Marx and Engels on the role of the world in the spread of capitalism). This argument, telegraphed in The Communist Manifesto, S.S. Prawer (2011 [1976]) has argued, originates as much in Goethe’s concept of world literature (Weltliteratur), and thus is both an aesthetics and a geography. We can trace a genealogy of the world (or even

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the worlding, to allude to Heidegger) in Marxism in two strains: first, through that aesthetics of world literature in the recent work of Franco Moretti (2000); second, in the concepts of uneven and combined development in the book of the same name by the Warwick Research Collective. But I would rather trace the spatial elsewhere in Jameson’s work, more fruitfully, I argue, in the ways in which he conceptualizes his “political unconscious” in the 1981 book of that same name. There, by way of developing a political notion of what underwrites cultural texts (the sharp-eyed reader will have already noted the spatial connotations of “underlie”), he notes that a text’s “structure … tilts powerfully into the underside or impensé or non-dit, in short, into the very political unconscious of the text, such that the latter’s dispersed semes … then insistently direct us to the informing power of forces or contradictions which the text seeks in vain wholly to master” (Jameson 2002 [1981]: 33–34). Later extending this critique to rival hermeneutics, Jameson, writing in the era of high theory, the 1970s and 80s, famously declares that Marxist criticism must assert its methodological superiority to other forms of cultural criticism: “[e]very universalizing approach,” he argues, “whether the phenomenological or semiotic, will from the dialectical point of view be found to conceal its own contradictions and repress its own historicity by strategically framing its perspective so as to omit the negative, absence, contradiction, repression, the non-dit or the impensé” (ibid. 96).1 In all of these formulations, be they from Postmodernism or The Political Unconscious, however, we must note a certain dialectic in turn, one that is troubling for a geographic clue-hunter looking for theoretical validity in this master thinker (in Lacanese, our transferential relation to the sujet supposé de savoir): for, on the one hand, surely Jameson’s turn to the spatial, or his use of spatial figures, is itself motivated, he admits, by a historicist approach: if we are now dominated by spatial categories, as he argues in Postmodernism, this is in opposition to the temporal or historical categories of an earlier period, that of high Modernism. Too, the spatial distortions – the underside, the impensé or non-dit – turn out to be ways in which a text or its interpretations repress their own historicity. So, perhaps, the correct way in which to read Jameson is not to find, to our relief, validation of the geographic hermeneutic, but instead in a site for the dialectical contradiction of the spatial and the temporal, the geographic

1

I comment on this first example in Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street (Burnham 2016: 48).

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and the historical: one that neither represses the historical nor disavows the geographic.2 Indeed, even the “spatial turn” turns out itself to be a temporal figure, almost doomed to assert its rival, history, as is narrativizes its own ascendancy, as seen in this typical opening to a handbook on the spatial turn, where, following an epigraph from David Harvey (“The geographic imagination is far too pervasive and important a fact of intellectual life to be left alone to geographers” – a rather passive-aggressive slight for geographers, one imagines), the editors declare that “Human geography over the past two decades has undergone a profound conceptual and methodological renaissance [and] other disciplines have increasingly come to regard space as an important dimension to their own areas of inquiry” (Warf/Arias 2009: 1; own emphasis). It is as if, in the very moment of disciplinary triumph (at last, David Harvey is paying attention to our methods! – wait, did he say geography is too important to be left in our hands?), the erstwhile geographer must needs locate same in a chronological or historical period. One wonders, indeed, which of Freud’s “four Ver-” as Žižek (2012) puts it, Verwerfung, Verdrängung, Verneinung, Verleugnung (i.e., foreclosure, repression, denial, or disavowal, in decreasing levels of exclusion), is operant in the various sites of struggle between the geographic and the historical. It depends, I suppose, on where the text believes it lies. It is worthwhile, then, to pay attention to specific forms of space that Jameson theorizes: thus, in The Political Unconscious, he draws attention to how a text’s political unconscious is the result of its tilt or cant into an underneath, an underside. This is an assertion he then juxtaposes, when describing a minor character in a Conrad novel, “Gentleman Brown, in whom ‘villainy’ no longer expresses the dark underside of industrial capitalism, but rather the strange no-man’s-land between the core countries of the advanced capitalist world and those archaic social formations that they seek to penetrate” (Jameson 2002 [1981]: 175). This is followed, in the very last pages of The Political Unconscious, by Jameson’s remark on Benjamin’s aphorism that there is no document of civilization that is not at one and the same time a document of barbarism, reminding us that “the painful recollection of the dark underside of even the most seemingly innocent and ‘life-enhancing’ masterpieces of the canon” should prompt us to play our part in political praxis (ibid. 290). 2

Thus, we can add to our remark above that Jameson was writing not simply during the high theory moment but also in a space or geography: the movement of theory from its Franco-German ‘origins’ to Anglo-American elaborations.

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The spatial tropes in Jameson’s formulations here are akin to grounding and ungrounding: the spaces between core and periphery, and back to a “dark underside,” can help us in thinking capitalism (or modernism) alongside colonialism (or the spatialization of difference), where the one turns out to be the geographic unconscious of the other. This colonial sense of a geographic unconscious can be best glimpsed when we pursue more closely the etiology of a more focused concept in Jameson’s toolbox: that of “cognitive mapping.”

Kevin Lynch (as read by Mishuana Goeman) While Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping derives, he tells us, from Kevin Lynch’s (1990 [1960]) Image of the City, he draws on that text mostly in an allegorical way, discussing neither “cognitive” in relation to neurosciences, for example, or “mapping” in any recognizably geographic sense. The article in which he develops the concept (which began as a talk at a 1983 conference in the American Midwest), however, tells us much about how a Marxist geographic unconscious might be conceived. For Jameson, “cognitive mapping” has initially to do with pedagogy, and then, with notions of representation. For the first, “the pedagogical function of a work of art seems…to have been an inescapable parameter of any conceivable Marxist aesthetic,” he remarks, going on to refer to the “cognitive art” of Bertolt Brecht, where “the cognitive becomes in and of itself the immediate source of profound aesthetic delight” (Jameson 1988: 347–348). So much for the “cognitive,” and “mapping” is to be found, Jameson adds, in terms of representation itself, a term (representation) that, in the heyday of post-structuralism, he felt it necessary to defend: noting that he means by “the charged word ‘representation’,” not the “synonym of some bad ideological and organic realism or mirage of realistic unification,” but instead as the synonym of ‘figuration’ itself, irrespective of the latter’s historical and ideological form” (ibid.). Jameson then proceeds to sketch out a history of how capitalism has deformed space: classical or market capitalism in terms of the grid; imperialism with modern, decentred space; and postmodernism with Lefebvre’s ‘abstract space’ (ibid. 349–351). This last concept, he illustrates with a case study, a history of black radicalism in Detroit in the 1960s, reveals a “narrative of defeat which sometimes, even more effectively, causes the whole architectonic of postmodern global space to rise up in ghostly profile behind itself, as some ultimate dialectical barrier or invisible limit, which might be read as a summation of the project of cognitive

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mapping (ibid. 352–353). This is the point at which Jameson turns to Lynch’s project, arguing that Lynch’s conception of the “imageability” of the city is a non-Marxist form of Althusser’s definition of ideology, as “the imaginary representation of a real contradiction.” Jameson takes Lynch’s notion of the everyday maps of our city or town that we carry around in our heads (I turn left from my house to go to the bus stop, right to go to a coffee shop, for instance) and maps it onto a social dislocation between the individual experience and the global forms of capitalism, and so “[i]t follows that an aesthetic of cognitive mapping in this sense is an integral part of any socialist political project” (ibid. 353). While it is well-known that Jameson’s point of origin lies in Lynch’s study, less discussed is latter’s appendix, providing “some references to orientation” (Lynch 1990 [1960]: 123–139), in which Lynch offers a survey of “environmental images” from “literatures ancient and modern … books of travel or exploration … or in … anthropological studies” (ibid. 123). He stresses the identification socalled primitive people have with land, quoting a Tikopia (Polynesian) utterance: “The land stands, but man dies; he weakens and is buried down below. We dwell for but a little while, but the land stands in its abiding-place” (ibid.); Lynch adds, in a way that anticipates our next geographer (Goeman), that “[t]he environmental image has its original function in permitting purposeful mobility” (ibid. 124, own emphasis). “Way-finding,” Lynch (ibid. 125–126) declares, “is the original function of the environmental image,” but it can also serve “as a general reference within which the individual can act, or to which he can attach his knowledge.” In a geographic epistemology that has lately been claimed for the battle against climate change,3 Lynch argues that “distinguishing and patterning the environment may be a basis for ordering knowledge (ibid. 126).

Goeman: Ungrounding and Unsettling It may seem that I am shifting away from the “geographic unconscious” floated earlier, but what is important to keep in mind is the mnemonic from Donald Rumsfeld: the unconscious is the unknown known, it is that which we did not know we knew. And we do not know that we have this Indigenous or traditional knowledge. But this may not satisfy all readers. Evidently, this 3

Cf. “How Language and Climate Connect” (Luu 2019).

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reading of Lynch’s text should be supplemented, or perhaps superseded, by more direct accounts from Indigenous scholars themselves. One such recent text is Mishuana Goeman’s Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping our Nations, which reads literary texts via a combination of contemporary Indigenous discourse (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Gloria Bird, Winona La Duke) and feminist and racialized geographies (Doreen Massey, Katherine McKittrick) to construct a “remapping” or “unsettling” of colonial maps in a way that asserts a “multiscalar” (McKittrick) mobility.4 Echoing aboriginal critic Irene Watson, Goeman asks: “‘Are we free to roam?’ and if so, ‘do I remain the unsettled native, left to unsettle the settled spaces of empire?” (Goeman 2013: 11–12). In a move that echoes Jameson, Goeman (ibid. 2) also asserts the importance of reading literary texts in order to demolish myths of Terra Nullius: “Native literature I discuss reorganizes a space that was never blank or fixed in time or space,” adding: the literary (as opposed to other forms of discourse, such as journalism, BIA/field reports, Indian agents’ diaries, etc., in which Native women are continually a shadow presence) tenders an avenue for the ‘imaginative’ creation of new possibilities, which must happen through imaginative modes precisely because the ‘real’ of settler colonial society is built on the violent erasures of alternative modes of mapping and geographic understandings. This latter assertion of Goeman’s – the epistemic value of literature – echoes a statement made by Jameson after his original lecture on cognitive mapping, when he was asked a question by Nancy Fraser. Asserting that she sympathetic to “a critical social science that would be as total and explanatorily powerful as possible,” Fraser wondered “why you assume that cognitive mapping is the task of the aesthetic? Why wouldn’t that be a task for critical social science?”, to which Jameson (1988: 358) replied: It is increasingly hard for people to put [a critical view of the world] together with their own experience as individual psychological subjects, in daily life. The social sciences can rarely do that, and when they try (as in ethnomethodology), they do it only by a mutation in the discourse of social science, or they do it at the moment that a social science becomes an ideology; but then we

4

Goeman’s use of “multiscalar” inverts McKittrick’s, who develops the concept as a way of theorising relations between the African American body, the slave auction block, and the geographies of slave plantations (McKittrick 2006: 75–83).

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are back into the aesthetic. Aesthetics is something that addresses individual experience rather than something that conceptualizes the real in a more abstract way.5 Now, it may seem that Jameson is in agreement with Goeman in his answer to Fraser: Unlike the social sciences, which would draw on Goeman’s “journalism, BIA [US Bureau of Indian Affairs]/field reports, Indian agents’ diaries”, the aesthetic “addresses individual experience” in a more critical fashion – as indeed is Goeman’s wager when she anchors her book with anecdotes and narratives from her upbringing, thereby rooting her conceptions of remapping, unsettling, mobility, the multiscalar as much in her own lived experience (as a Seneca Indigenous person who lives, during her childhood, both on the reservation and off) as in the critical methodologies of embodied geographies. But there is a moment in Goeman’s text that allows us, I think, to question both her and Jameson’s argument, and to do so in a way that furthers the conception of a Marxist theory of space (or perhaps indigenizes it). This occurs when Goeman (2013: 2) asserts that in those official discourses, Native women are merely a “shadow presence”. Or, more accurately, they are “continually a shadow presence” (ibid. own emphasis). This continual, shadow presence, I argue, is precisely what Jameson means when he argues for a geographic unconscious. Goeman’s reading of the fiction of well-known Indigenous (Mohawk/Haudenosaunee) poet Pauline Johnson, for example, begins with this assertion: “Johnson’s fiction doesn’t directly refer to the Indian Act, but it certainly haunts the political and social landscape of her stories, just as it continues to haunt Canada’s continued First Nation and aboriginal policies)” (ibid. 44). Further, Goeman asserts, Johnson’s turn to rights-based politicking around gender freedom, while conflicting with traditional Haudenosaunee land-based sovereignty, took place on a “new terrain of a geopolitical system based on the spatialized practices of gender, race, and class inequities” (ibid. 45). That the Indian Act, a major piece of 19th century colonial legislation in Canada (which is still in effect today), “haunts” (Goeman’s expression) Johnson’s literary text is surely another example of the geographic unconscious at work in Goeman’s reading of literature, one that then makes its effects

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I am grateful to PhD. student Ed Graham (SFU Department of English), who develops these ideas with respect to cognitive mapping in a recent field exam. See also Graham (2019).

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known in the split of rights-based versus land-based discourses. This is to argue, then, that Goeman’s turn to an embodied geography cognizant of colonial and feminist epistemologies can be read, fruitfully, as an extension or engagement with the unconscious and cognitive mapping strategies to be found in Jameson.

Psychoanalytic Dialectics But we perhaps have to develop more explicitly the question of where or how we are reading Jameson’s political unconscious as also a geographic unconscious. In my 2018 book on Slavoj Žižek, I devote a chapter to demarcating the similarities and differences between the unconscious as theorized by Freud, Lacan, and Jameson (Burnham 2018). There, I concentrate both on digital aspects and the spatial. Freud’s unconscious, I update by reference to police procedurals, such as Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s Nemesis (2008): “in Nemesis, the detective Harry Hole receives emails accusing him of being present at a murder (which he was), and he pays an old friend to follow the trail of the emails to a server to Egypt, and thence back to his own cell phone, an updating, perhaps, of the 1979 horror film When a Stranger Calls” (Burnham 2018: 11). The Freudian model of the email as return of the repressed here, we can see, is doing its own bit of cognitive mapping, in no doubt a multiscalar fashion (from Norway to Egypt, but also from a server to a cell phone). Then, this geopolitical flavor, if it seems too far from Goeman’s Indigenous mobility, we can re-center with Lacan’s offhand remark, in Seminar XI, in which he refers to “the bed of the unconscious reserve – to be understood in the sense of an Indian reserve – within the social network” (Lacan 1998 [1973]: 68). The spatiality of the unconscious, for Lacan (and it is also, and always social, not merely within the individual – so, multiscalar), then is necessarily, or at the very least, possibly colonial. And so, as geographers have noted (cf. Kingsbury/Pile 2014; Kapoor 2018; Proudfoot 2017), reference to spatial structures abound in Lacan’s work, from the aforementioned inversion of the internal/external known as “extimité” to the topological models of his late work. In particular, as I argue elsewhere, Lacan works through the logic of the unconscious in terms of such references as a cave, with “an entrance one can only reach just as it closes … it is the closing of the unconscious which provides the key to its space – namely, the impropriety of trying to turn it into an inside” (Lacan 2006 [1966]: 711; cf. Burnham

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2018: 15). To return to Freud, he refers to the unconscious as a Vorratskammer (pantry): “there is a comfortable feeling that one has only to reach into one’s storerooms to take out what is needed” (Freud 1985a: 276) – Vorratskammer is also translated as larder, cupboard; elsewhere, he compares the unconscious to a large room, with a watchman guarding the entrance to a smaller, more narrow room (Freud 1985b: 294). But Freud also thinks of the unconscious desires and antipathies in terms of scale (or even the multiscalar). For example, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, he discusses “the narcissism of minor differences”: The evidence of psycho-analysis shows that almost every intimate emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time - marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children - contains a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which only escapes perception as a result of repression. This is less disguised in the common wrangles between business partners or in the grumbles of a subordinate at his superior. The same thing happens when men come together in larger units. Every time two families become connected by a marriage, each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth than the other. Of two neighbouring towns each is the other’s most jealous rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt. Closely related races keep one another at arm’s length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon the Scot, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese. We are no longer astonished that greater differences should lead to an almost insuperable repugnance, such as the Gallic people feel for the German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the white races for the coloured (Freud 1985c: 101). And so, exploring the spatial in Lacan and Freud brings us back to the racial and colonial unconscious.

Residential Schools and the Unconscious At this point, I would like to discuss two specific case studies from Canadian geographic struggles as a way of working out more of the contradictions at work here. First, I turn to Canada’s Indian Residential Schools in terms of a Jamesonian concept of the geographic unconscious; second, I follow Indigenous claims with respect to the land, down to the most intimate scale of berries and other foodstuffs. With respect to a geographic unconscious I

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make three claims: (1), the residential schools are Canada’s unconscious, in the Freudian (or even Rumsfeldian) sense that they were not widely known (the impensé), that former students (“Survivors”) would often not talk about them (the non-dit), that there was no discourse available: they were the “dark” or “obscene” underside to colonial law, or what, following Fanon, we can call a “colonial unconscious” (Hudson 2013); (2), the locations of residential schools in Canada constitute a “spatial unconscious” whereby their placement was both “too close” (sometimes located in urban centres, such as the Assiniboia school in Winnipeg) and, more often, in remote locations; these locations have been resistant to mapping because of the disavowal of that geography/history, but also must be met by the spatial interiority of the schools/buildings, which have been both primal scenes of sexual abuse and horror and the site for reclamation more recently (see, for example, the 2013 “residential school horror film” Rhymes for Young Ghouls [dir. Jeff Barnaby]). We further see these spatial dimensions illustrated below in the account of a residential school Survivor, Garnet Angeconeb, and (3), residential schools continue to function in a repressed, disavowed, or even foreclosed manner for even as testimony and histories have circulated thanks to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the TRC: a quasi-government agency in Canada akin to TRCs in South Africa, Chile, Argentina), there is still that which cannot be spoken, be it the spectre of aboriginal-on-aboriginal violence or the legacy of intergenerational trauma. This last aspect, for example, rarely finds its way into official state documents, and is instead to be found either in Indigenous literary forms (the novels and poetry of Jordan Abel 2016, Eden Robinson 2018, and Tanya Tagaq 2018) or in popular digital forms such as Indigenous memes (Monkman 2018). Some readers of this chapter may be unfamiliar with the historical context that I describe – the era of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools – and so a brief contextualization may be necessary. But this is also a theoretical argument: that is, first, our accounts of this history constitute a literary document; second, that they provide an insight into a geographic unconscious. Like other settler-colonial societies, Canada from the mid-19th century until the very late 20th century, operated schools for Aboriginal students that sought to educate them in Western, Christian formations. The public statements of Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, could not be clearer: When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply

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a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that the Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men. (Hansard 1883: n.p.). Key already, then, in this too-explicit declaration, is the spatial or geographic element of the colonial impulse: to remove children from their land. While a few residential schools predate Confederation (1867) – the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, operated from 1834 to 1970 – most scholars see the establishment of Industrial Schools in the North-West in 1883, and the final closure of schools in 1996 (when there were still eleven schools operating in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Québec, and Ontario) as constituting the start and end dates. Schools were usually operated by churches (predominantly the Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, and United churches); over 150,000 students attended the schools, with 86,000 still alive in the early 21st century. Attendance was compulsory, and there are many accounts of police or Indian Agents arriving unannounced to remove children from their families. Conditions at schools were uniformly poor, with inadequate buildings, poorly trained staff, and minimal budgets for food, supplies, and operation. These structural conditions, accompanying condescending attitudes towards students’ Indigenous heritage, beliefs, and rights, contributed not only to prejudicial conduct but also, perhaps most (in)famously, on the one hand, children being punished for speaking or writing their own languages, and, on the other, forms of punishment and abuse that range from emotional abuse and student-on-student bullying to the most grievous forms of sexual predation, abuse, and rape. Finally, health conditions of students suffered under such conditions to the extent that mortality rates approached 60%, and there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of unmarked children’s graves on the sites of former residential schools. Beginning in the 1980s, Survivors of residential schools were meeting and agitating for greater public awareness of the history and abuse. Key to this timeline was the phenomenon of Survivors acknowledging publicly their abuse at the schools: Phil Fontaine, then head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, talked frankly about his abuse in a 1990 television interview, calling specifically for an inquiry which would document the students’ experiences. A memoir by a Survivor, Garnet Angeconeb (2012) accomplishes what Goeman calls a “remapping,” “unsettling” colonial spatiality through multiscalar

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mobility, and thereby delineating the geographic unconscious of colonial capitalism. Angeconeb, who suffered sexual and physical abuse at the Pelican Indian Residential School, begins his account telling how, as an adult, he avoided dealing with his own trauma through drink: “On a wickedly cold January night when I was twenty years old, I sat in a local bar wasting my pay cheque on booze for me and my drinking buddies. A bunch of former residential school students sat at my table guzzling bottle after bottle of beer” (ibid. 14). He then describes his nadir of denial, when, in a “drunken stupor,” he takes his brother’s snowmobile and “set off at top speed into the cold winter night for Keesic Bay on the Lac Seul First Nation traditional territory where my parents lived” (ibid. 15). Angecob comes dangerously close to losing his limbs to frostbite and amputation. This was in the 1970s, but it is only after Fontaine’s public declaration, fifteen years later, that Angeconeb is able to come to terms with his own abuse; again, the geography and spaces and scale are remarked upon: Understanding first began to develop on October 31st , 1990 when I was set on a path that I continue to this day. I was on a business trip to Ottawa. That morning, I got up, showered, dressed, and headed downstairs to meet a colleague for breakfast in the Toulouse restaurant. He was already sipping his third cup of coffee by the time I got to the breakfast table. ‘Hey look at this front-page article about the residential school issue,’ he said as he sipped his coffee. (ibid. 21) The article described Fontaine’s disclosure of his own abuse, and Angeconeb broke down crying, as he for the first time disclosed “that as a little boy I had been sexually abused at residential school” (ibid. 20). Here we see the scales of the body, the bar and the coffee shop, the Indigenous community and the nation (Ottawa is Canada’s capital city); here we see a mobility, an unsettling mobility – the snowmobile journey – that almost kills Angecob, when another mobility – to Ottawa – sets Angecob “on a path”, on, as he declares in the title of his memoir, a “journey to reconciliation.” An Indigenous cognitive mapping, a theory of multiscalar mobility, allows us to see such metaphors not merely as self-help truisms, but transcodings into the text of a decolonial body. Angecob’s multiscalar mobility, then, I assert, is a cognitive mapping for how it brings to light the geographic unconscious, the impensé or non-dit of the Canadian polity. By the early 2000s, Canada’s largest class-action lawsuit sought recompense for Survivors, the settlement of which led to the estab-

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lishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which itself undertook an unsettling, a multiscalar mobility. The TRC toured the country from 2009 to 2015, visiting major cities and tiny hamlets, taking testimony from over 6,000 Survivors, and publishing a six-volume report in 2015. It is one volume from that report, The Survivors Speak, from which I take a brief excerpt in the following section of this chapter.

Sovereignty at the Scale of Berries It will be remembered that Jameson argues for conceiving of cognitive mapping in terms of Althusser’s “imaginary resolution of a real contradiction,” going on to add that this comparison has the advantage of “stressing the gap between the local positioning of the individual subject and the totality of class structures in which he or she is situated, a gap between phenomenological perception and a reality that transcends all individual thinking or experience; but this ideology, as such, attempts to span or coordinate, to map, by means of conscious and unconscious representations” (Jameson 1988: 353). Here, I would like to refer to a more recent theoretical adjustment and then provide Indigenous examples of precisely the same geographic unconscious: an Indigenous version, perhaps, of Jameson’s scandalous notion of conspiracy as a poor person’s cognitive mapping (ibid. 356). In a forthcoming study, Matthew Flisfeder draws our attention to the role of cognitive mapping as an intervention into the Lacanian Imaginary and Real, via the third term, the Symbolic, or the organization of knowledge (Flisfeder forthcoming: 10–11; cf. Jameson 1991: 52–53). We can see, then, this Symbolic intervention in two Indigenous assertions of territory, or land sovereignty, that focus on what appear to be the humblest of food stuffs: berries. In her testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Daisy Diamond (2010) remarks: “When I was going to Shingawauk [residential school], the food didn’t taste very good, because we didn’t have our traditional food there, our moose meat, our bannock, and our berries. Those where the things that we had back home, and we were very lonely without those berries.” At first glance, this reference to what is also called “country food” (hunting, fishing, gathering berries) might seem like nostalgia, post-colonial melancholy, but we should pay attention, again, to

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the scale here.6 For an earlier text, a presentation by Indigenous leaders 100 years earlier, provides a way to read such assertions as instead the resurgence of decolonial geographic unconscious. On August 25, 1910, on the occasion of a politicking train procession by then-Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, Indigenous leaders from the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, and Syilx Nations met in the Western town of Kamloops to present their critique of colonial policies to Laurier. Their document, since called the “Laurier Memorial,” a historian’s note tells us, “came on the heels of Interior Peoples’ [the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, and Syilx] escalating dispossession at the hands of settlers and the [government] policies that sanctioned them,” and a recent report which “acknowledged that B.C.’s Aboriginal Peoples had been unfairly and illegally dispossessed since time immemorial” (Laurier 2010: n.p.). In the memorial proper, the chiefs provided Laurier with a history lesson that was also a geography lesson. Describing when European settlers arrived in the area in the mid-19th century: When they first came among us there were only Indians here. They found the people of each tribe supreme in their own territory, and having tribal boundaries known and recognized by all. The country of each tribe was the same as a very large farm or ranch (belonging to all the people of the tribe) from which they gathered their food and clothing, etc., fish which they got in plenty for food, grass and vegetation on which their horses grazed and the game lived, and much of which furnished materials for manufactures, etc., stone which furnished pipes, utensils, and tools, etc., trees which furnished firewood, materials for houses and utensils, plants, roots, seeds, nuts and berries which grew abundantly and were gathered in their season just the same as crops on a ranch, and used for food; minerals, shells, etc., which were used for ornament and for plants, etc., water which was free to all (ibid., own emphasis). The chiefs go on to decry the seizure of land, fencing of private property, and restrictions of their constituents to Indian reserves. But there are two further points that require discussion here. The first has to do with the economic basis of this, what I am calling an Indigenous cognitive mapping; the second has to do with questions of Jameson’s and Goeman’s preference for the aesthetic. The first italicized passage above is a stark assertion of a communal system of property – indeed, elsewhere in the document, they refer to “wage slavery” and to different justice systems for rich whites, poor whites, and Indigenous 6

Cf. Burnham (2019b) for more discussion of the role of food in decolonial contexts.

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people – evidently the chiefs possess a keen sense of economic justice, and an awareness of the different system of property being imposed on their territory. Their cognitive mapping here draws our attention to capital – it does that work of the symbolic that Flisfeder and Jameson assert. It puts the lie to (or at least rebukes) a conclusion of the Canadian geographer Cole Harris (2004), who, while acknowledging that the “the momentum to dispossess derived from the interest of capital in profit” ended up stressing how “the management of dispossession rested with a set of disciplinary technologies of which the maps, numbers, law, and the geography of resettlement were the most important” (Goeman 2013: 20). What the Laurier Memorial, what the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, and Syilx chiefs show us, instead, is that mapping, an [un]grounding or cognitive mapping, is rather an intervention into epistemologies, bringing a world view that is very much cognizant, indeed insisting upon, a critique of capital.7

Conclusion: from Always Geographize! to Decolonize the Geographic Unconscious! The Laurier Memorial is a state document; the testimonial from Daisy Diamond also comes from a quasi-government commission: Do these documents not contradict Goeman’s and Jameson’s stated preference for the aesthetic, for literature? I argue elsewhere that the testimony before the TRC ought itself to be read as literature (cf. Burnham 2019a), but I would like, by way of conclusion, also to return to my opening remarks with respect to contradictions or antagonisms in Jameson’s theory of space. There, I noted the dialectics of the geographic unconscious (that which is spatial, but also unknown) versus cognitive mapping (a methodology that attempts to know the spatial). But what does it mean if, after looking at our forays into Indigenous remapping, or unsettling, or multiscalar mobility, as I have used Goeman to read residential school and Indigenous resistance? What does it mean to decolonize the geographic unconscious, or cognitive mapping? A final remark: While the revolving of the semiotic rectangle (cf. Figure 2) has left some positions relatively untouched (e.g. cognitive mapping becomes re-mapping, the geographic unconscious becomes its instantiations 7

Cf. Feltes (2015) for a discussion of the memorial in terms of anthropological concepts of reciprocity, relationality, and “guesthood.”

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Figure 2: Diagram (source: author)

as the reserve or the residential school), the positions of “geographic refusal” and “multiscalar mobility” call for more elaboration. Who or what is doing the refusing: the land, perhaps? This will seem to be a far way from Jameson’s theory, and yet, is not such a refusal itself similar to his characterization of the unconscious as the non-dit, the impensé? And just as what is not said can be productive, as in Lacan’s figure of the cave, with “an entrance one can only reach just as it closes … it is the closing of the unconscious which provides the key to its space – namely, the impropriety of trying to turn it into an inside” (Lacan 2006 [1966]: 711), so, too, have theorists recently thought of refusal as generative (Joly et al. 2018; McGanahan 2016). And what about multiscalar mobility: If such a tracing of the mobile may lapse into spontaneity, the greater danger, I think, would be to follow a hegemonic trend in today’s theory towards flat ontologies of the various new materialisms, and merely see the different scales that are mobilized in Indigenous cognitive mapping as sheer difference? The scales of the body, the bar or the coffee house, the berry or the nation would rather, to be faithful to Jameson’s Marxist theory, be sites of contradiction and antagonism: scales of dialectic.

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References Abel, Jordan (2016): Injun, Vancouver: Talon. Angeconeb, Garnet (2012): “Speaking My Truth: The Journey to Reconciliation.” In: Speaking My Truth: Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential School, Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, pp. 9-32. Burnham, Clint (2016): Fredric Jameson and the Wolf of Wall Street, London: Bloomsbury. Burnham, Clint (2018): Does the Internet have an Unconscious? Slavoj Žižek and Digital Culture, London: Bloomsbury. Burnham, Clint (2019a): “Is the TRC a Text?” In: McLeod, Katharine/Camlot, Jason (eds.), Canlit across Media, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, pp. 252-278. Burnham, Clint (2019b): “‘We Were Very Lonely Without Those Berries’: Gastronomic Colonialism in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.” In: Gladwin, Derek (ed.), Gastro-Modernism: Food, Literature, Culture, Clemson: Clemson University Press, pp. 155-166. Diamond, Daisy (2010): Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: SC110. Feltes, Emma (2015): “Research as Guesthood: The Memorial to Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Resolving Indigenous–Settler Relations in British Columbia.” In: Anthropologica, 57/2, pp. 469-480. Flisfeder, Matthew (forthcoming): Algorithmic Desire: Towards a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Freud, Sigmund (1985a): The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904, Cambridge: The Belknap Press. Freud, Sigmund (1985b): The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XVI. Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis Part III, London: The Hogarth Press. Freud, Sigmund (1985c): The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XVIII. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology, and other Works, London: The Hogarth Press. Goeman, Mishuana (2013): Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Graham, Ed (2019): “The Figure of Adorno in the Utopian Politics of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek.” In: IJŽS 13/1, pp. 57-82.

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Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1987 [1970]): On Meaning, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hansard (1883): Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, 9 May 1883, pp. 1107-1108. Harris, Cole (2004): “How Did Colonialism Dispossess: From the Edges of Empire,” In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94/1, pp. 165182. Hudson, Peter (2013): “The State and the Colonial Unconscious.” In: Social Dynamics 39/2, pp. 263-277. Jameson, Fredric (1988): “Cognitive Mapping.” In: Nelson, Cary/Grossberg, Lawrence (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: MacMillan, pp. 347-360. Jameson, Fredric (1991): Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press. Jameson, Fredric (2002 [1981]): The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, London: Routledge. Joly, Tara/Longley, Hereward/Wells, Carmen/Gerbrandt, Jenny (2018): “Ethnographic Refusal in Traditional Land Use Mapping: Consultation, Impact Assessment, and Sovereignty in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region.” In: The Extractive Industries and Society 5/2, pp. 335-343. Kapoor, Ilan (ed.) (2018): Psychoanalysis and the GlObal, Lincoln: Nebraska University Press. Kingsbury, Paul/Pile, Steve (eds.) (2014): Psychoanalytic Geographies, Farnham: Ashgate. Lacan, Jacques (2006 [1966]): Écrits, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lacan, Jacques (1998 [1973]): The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Laurier Memorial (2010 [1910]): http://www.kanakabarband.ca/downloads/m emorial-to-sir-wilfred-laurier.pdf. Luu, Chi (2019): “How Language and Climate Connect”, July 10, https://daily. jstor.org/how-language-and-climate-connect/. Lynch, Kevin (1990 [1960]): The Image of the City, Cambridge: MIT Press. McGranahan, Carole (2016): “Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction.” In: Cultural Anthropology 31/3, pp. 319-325. McKittrick, Katherine (2006): Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Monkman, Leonard (2018): “Indigenous Meme Creators Point Out Harsh Truths With Dark Humour,” September 19, https://www.cbc.ca/news/in digenous/indigenous-meme-creators-instagram-1.4828555. Moretti, Franco (2000): “Conjectures on World Literature.” In: New Left Review 1, pp. 54-68. Nesbø, Jo (2008 [2002]): Nemesis, London: Harvill Secker. Prawer, Siegbert Salomon (2011 [1976]): Karl Marx and World Literature, London: Verso. Proudfoot, Jesse (2017): “The Libidinal Economy of Revanchism: Illicit Drugs, Harm Reduction, and the Problem of Enjoyment.” In: Progress in Human Geography 43/2, pp. 214-234. Robinson, Eden (2018): Trickster Drift, Toronto: Penguin. Tagaq, Tanya (2018): Split Tooth, Toronto: Penguin. The Survivors Speak (2015): www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Survivors_ Speak_2015_05_30_web_o.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015a): Final Report, Vol. 1, The History, Part 1: Origins to 1939. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015b): Final Report, Vol. 1, The History, Part 2: 1939 to 2000. Warf, Barney/Arias, Santa (eds.) (2009): The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: Routledge. Žižek, Slavoj (2012): Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, London and New York: Verso.

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The Most Sublime Geographer: Žižek with Place, Distance, and Scale Lucas Pohl and Paul Kingsbury

Introduction Slavoj Žižek is sometimes characterized as the ‘most dangerous philosopher in the West’. No matter if one agrees with this portrayal or not, it bears witness to his far-reaching influence. While philosophy is frequently called into question by critical geographers with regard to its usefulness for initiating change, Žižek’s philosophy has an intrinsic potential to change the coordinates of how we understand the world we live in today. Perhaps, this is what makes him so ‘dangerous’. While his project is based on a joint reading of German Idealism (primarily Hegel, but also Kant and Schelling), Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, and Quantum Physics, probably the greatest legacy of Žižek’s philosophy so far is to offer one of the most comprehensive adaptations of psychoanalysis. According to Alain Badiou, Žižek is the first person who “proposed to psychoanalyze our whole world” (Badiou/Miller 2005: 41). His sprawling corpus – around fifty books so far – is underpinned by an unrelenting drive to take the insights of Sigmund Freud, and especially attempts by Jacques Lacan to re-radicalize Freud (cf. Pohl/Swyngedouw in this volume), and transpose them from their clinical background into every nook and cranny of our everyday lives. Žižek makes it possible, even necessary, for his readers to take psychoanalysis seriously as a way to understand the world of today. As geographers, Žižek alerts us to how psychoanalysis is spelt psychoanalysis and not psychicanalysis or psycheanalysis. A reminder of how the quiet, yet ineradicable ‘o’ marks the outline of an orb – an earth writing or geo-graphia – wherein the ‘o’ also signifies ‘of’ the world (Kingsbury 2008: 53). Despite this worldly inductiveness, especially with regard to post-foundational political thinking, critics have questioned whether Žižek has more to

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say about our world than to ultimately reject it. Oliver Marchart (2007; 2018: 137-140), for instance, criticizes Žižek’s Lacanian notion of the “radical act” as an anti-foundational way of treating the political. Žižek would therefore ‘purify’ the political by understanding the act as being completely detached from the realm of the socio-spatial order. Subsequently, Yannis Stavrakakis (2011: 305) calls for a “spatial critique” of Žižek wherein the political follows “a gnostic-style rejection of our world in toto, as the (spatial) kingdom of an evil creator (capitalism).” In addition, Stavrakakis (2011: 308) suggests that such a rejection falls foul of a fetishization of “the millenarian need for an apocalyptic act of pure desire fully transcending it.” While “space” for Žižek would therefore appear “necessarily conservative” (Stavrakakis 2007: 143), Stavrakakis proposes a topological account of the political as a way to go beyond Žižek. In both of these critiques, Žižek is rendered as a thinker who remains indifferent, if not ignorant about the world as it is – someone who solely fetishizes the single moments where “the existing space of the state is completely negated” and who, in the same breath, treats this space as “a homogeneous and self-sufficient block” (Marchart 2007: 103), or, to put it in more Heideggerian terms, Žižek becomes a thinker of the “ontological level of the political” who “tends to ignore the ontic level of politics and acting altogether” (ibid.). What is striking in both of these post-foundational critiques is that they vehemently insist on Žižek’s “disavowal of space” (Stavrakakis 2011: 313) and the way he would fetishize the political “as if it were to be realized in a vacuum” (Marchart 2018: 139) without making any reference to Žižek’s numerous accounts of topology. Taking a closer look at the spatiality of Žižek’s project, Anna J. Secor (2008) refers to Parallax View (Žižek 2006), a work that remains absent in Marchart’s and Stavrakakis’ critique. Secor notes that this work highlights the topological figure of the Möbius strip, which helps to grasp Žižek’s spatial dialectics as being structured around an immanent impossibility. The Möbius strip, a topological structure, which Lacan referred to throughout his teaching, is a double-sided spiral strip that makes it impossible to clearly distinguish between its inside and outside, because one side of the strip merges smoothly into the other. While this strip has been used by psychoanalytic geographers to understand how people, events, and places, that are seemingly separated in time and space, can be situated in the same place (cf. Blum/Secor 2011, 2014; Secor 2013), it has also allowed an understanding of how our innermost affects and emotions can be extremely alien or outside to us (cf. Kingsbury 2007). As becomes increasingly clear in later works such as Less than nothing (Žižek 2012) or Sex and the Failed Absolute (Žižek

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2020), topology, and in particular the Möbius strip, is key for Žižek because it paves the way towards the dialectic from which a truly radical materialism is possible. Following the Möbius strip, reality is in-itself already ‘out of itself’. As such, Žižek’s use of topology confronts us with “the utter groundlessness of our existence: there is no firm foundation, a place of retreat, on which one can safely count” (Žižek 2007, n.p.). For Žižek (2010: 370), this absence of a proper ground finds its ultimate expression in Lacan’s declaration that ‘the big Other does not exist’: “There is no ‘big Other’ guaranteeing the consistency of the symbolic space within which we dwell.” It is crucial to insist on the ontological value of this statement. While the inexistence of the big Other allows to grasp the space of culture as being structurally inconsistent and incomplete, it also leads to a rejection of the space of nature as a stable background of culture, because the “idea of Nature as a big Mother is just another image of the divine big Other” (Žižek 2016: 31). Therefore, Žižek states that Freud’s famous notion of an “uneasiness in culture” has to be supplemented by an “uneasiness in nature” (Žižek 2008: 420). Accordingly, both nature and culture turn out to be fundamentally out of joint (cf. Pohl 2020). Instead of grounding reality, Žižek’s topology can therefore be read as an attempt to radically unsettle or unground reality, to face “the ontological incompleteness of reality itself” (Žižek 2009: 90), so that the ultimate Grund (ground) geht zugrunde (falls apart), as he repeatedly states with reference to Hegel (cf. Žižek 2014: 4). Adrian Johnston (2014: 139) is therefore right in attributing Žižek’s materialism to an end of ‘last grounds’ by underlining his project with: an interpretation according to which the ultimate Grund hypothesized at the level of ontology should be envisioned as a lone inconsistent immanence riddled with gaps and deprived of the wholeness provided by such Others as the theological idea of God or the cosmological idea of Nature-with-acapital-N. While a significant number of geographers are familiar with Žižek’s topological ungrounding of reality, there is still a lingering question regarding the extent to which Žižek can help us explore the grounding of reality, and thus withstand the critique raised by Marchart and Stavrakakis. The main aim of our chapter is to illustrate how the perspicacity of Žižek’s work is not only dependent upon its reliance on several key concepts in human geography, but also how his reworking of these concepts can further our theorizations of the social space as it is (instead of simply fetishizing its negation). Through three concepts – place, distance, and scale – we engage with Žižek’s geogra-

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phies as a way of [un]grounding the ontic realm of social space. What unifies these three geographical concepts is Žižek’s sustained engagement with the sublime, which is marked by a fundamental emptiness and unfathomability. Following Lacan’s (2007: 35) characterization of Hegel as “the most sublime of hysterics,” we contend that Žižek is the “most sublime geographer” because the geographical thinking that permeates his corpus is intimately bound up with the notion of the sublime.1 In terms of place, we emphasize Žižek’s assertion that place logically precedes every object that occupies it, so that it is not a substantial order of objects, but an empty place around which social space is produced. Secondly, we illustrate how Žižek’s conceptualization of distance informs his understanding of the relationship between the subject and the socio-political qua the big Other in terms of inherent transgression and the empty gesture. Finally, we consider Žižek’s treatment of scale in terms of his rethinking of the universal/global and particular/local binary via the notion of concrete universality. We conclude by addressing how Žižek’s understanding of the political informs his post-foundational conceptualization of space.

The Empty Place of the Thing If Fredric Jameson (1977: 393–394) is right to state that “it is precisely to a Lacanian inspiration that we owe the first new...conception of the nature of ideology since Marx and Nietzsche,” then, we argue, it is to a Žižekian inspiration that this conception entered the field of social theory.2 In his early masterpiece, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek develops a Lacanian concept of ideology that abandons the standard Marxist notion of ideology as a ‘false consciousness’. While ideology is usually considered as distorting our view of how ‘things really are’, Žižek postulates that ideology is a necessary precondition for something like reality to emerge in the first place: “The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel”

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Our chapter’s title also references Žižek’s 1988 doctoral thesis, which was directed by the psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller (Lacan’s son-in-law) and written in French under the title Le plus sublime des hystériques. Hegel avec Lacan. While Louis Althusser’s famous essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (2001) from 1970 certainly paved the way towards such a Lacanian concept of ideology, Žižek also highlights where Althusser was not Lacanian enough (Žižek 1989).

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(Žižek 1989: 45). The general aim of ideology critique is thus not to find an exit from ideology, but rather to follow the inherent gaps that render ideology/reality incomplete. The Lacanian name Žižek adopts for the domain that marks the limits of ideology is ‘the Thing’, or das Ding. The Thing marks a mythic ‘enjoyment’ or jouissance that is structurally located outside the space of social reality, ‘in the Real’. In order to understand why ideology is not a simple distortion of external reality and yet founded on a domain outside of it, we should take a closer look at the way Žižek (1989: 150) conceptualizes the ‘place’ of the Thing: [T]he process of historicization implies an empty place, a non-historical kernel around which the symbolic network is articulated. In other words, human history differs from animal evolution precisely by its reference to this nonhistorical place, a place which cannot be symbolized, although it is retroactively produced by the symbolization itself: as soon as ‘brute’, pre-symbolic reality is symbolized/historicized, it ‘secretes’, it isolates the empty, ‘indigestible’ place of the Thing. To capture the peculiarity of the place of the Thing, we should not confuse it with a physical location. What Žižek has in mind here is not place in a topographical sense of the term, but rather something that is inherently ‘out of place’. The place of the Thing is profoundly topological. Like the outer side of the Moebius strip, the Thing is bound to our social reality, but nevertheless separated from it – as a sort of ‘non-place’ that marks a limit within the space of the social.3 To illustrate this non-place, let us take as an example the experience of nostalgia (cf. Pohl 2019).4 Often, nostalgia is considered in

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This non-place should not be confused with the concept of non-places introduced by Marc Augé (1995). The reader will certainly notice that our chapter takes a lot of its strength from examples, in particular, as it becomes clear further below, Žižek’s own examples. This aspect is crucial because we believe that Žižek’s approach can only be properly understood if we take the examples seriously: “Žižek’s theory is a philosophy that proceeds through examples. This philosophy has its turning points and finds its crucial highlights in elements such as the Rabinovitch jokes, the Hitchcockian McGuffin or the obscenities exchanged between soldiers of the former Yugoslav people’s army,” as Robert Pfaller (2017: 68) aptly puts it. Since we consider Žižek’s philosophical thinking as a thinking through (concrete) examples, we propose that a Žižekian geography takes its point of departure from these examples, which is another way of saying that we aim to highlight the attention towards the ontic in Žižek’s work.

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temporal terms, as a longing towards a lost and idealized moment in history, when things were better. From a Žižekian perspective, however, we can state that nostalgia is not so much a longing for a different time as for a different place – the place of the Thing. Crucially, this place is ‘pre-symbolic’ and ‘nonhistorical’ in the sense that it is structurally out of reach. There is no way to access it because it is structurally lost. Now, while nostalgia usually tends to substantialize this lost place of the Thing to suffer from its absence or to fantasize about the possibilities to ‘realize’ it in the future, Žižek emphasizes the purely formal structure of this loss. The place of nostalgia that we long for cannot be reached, not because it is so incredibly different from the troubling reality we deal with every day, but because it is a retroactive product of this reality and never existed in the first place. Elsewhere in the Sublime Object, Žižek (1989: 243) therefore writes that “the Thing-in-itself is found in its Truth through the loss of its immediacy.” Another important aspect of Žižek’s concept of place is its structural ‘emptiness’. While place is usually distinguished from space wherein the former is aligned with concreteness and the latter with abstraction, Žižek’s place of the Thing points to the opposite direction. Place, for Žižek, is a purely abstract or formal category. There is no ‘sense of place’ with regard to the Thing,5 because it is nothing but a structural void that allows reality to merge with the fantasy space of the subject. Against this background, Žižek (1989: 221) defends a certain spatial fetishism in order to understand, how objects of our social reality are able to turn into ‘sublime objects’, that is, objects which radiate jouissance and incite people’s desire, by obtaining the place of the Thing: [T]he place logically precedes objects which occupy it: what the objects, in their given positivity, are masking is not some other, more substantial order of objects but simply the emptiness, the void they are filling out…The sublime object is ‘an object elevated to the level of das Ding’. It is its structural place – the fact that it occupies the sacred/forbidden place of jouissance – and not its intrinsic qualities that confers on it its sublimity. (italics in original) To understand why certain objects obtain a special place with regard to the subject, or to put it differently, why some things matter more than others, there has to be a place for them before they even exist. Some-Thing must first 5

The concept of a ‘sense of place’ has a long tradition within human geographies (cf. Tuan 1977).

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be lost, and subsequently leave open an empty place to instill an object that reminds one of that primary loss. This, then, is ultimately why ‘the place logically precedes objects which occupy it’. However, if there would be no empty place of the Thing, no mythic jouissance, there would be not only no possibility of an ordinary object to turn into a sublime object, there would be also no subject and therefore no social reality. The place of the Thing is structurally unattainable precisely because it is the place of the subject par excellence, as Žižek (1997a: 61) insists: Jouissance is thus the ‘place’ of the subject – one is tempted to say: his ‘impossible’ Being-there, Da-Sein; and, for that very reason, the subject is alwaysalready displaced, out of joint, with regard to it…Jouissance is that notorious heimliche which is simultaneously the most unheimliche, always-already here and, precisely as such, always-already lost. From here, it is only a small step to formulate a critique of a certain status quo that dominates most critical geographic standpoints. Geographers often insist that the aim of critical geography is to show that space is not simply given but socially and materially produced.6 Following Žižek, however, what is more crucial than the production of space itself is a certain waste or byproduct excluded in the course of this production, some-Thing that despite our attempts does not and cannot fit into the coordinates of (produced) social space. As a sort of immanent transcendence, the Thing not only allows us to avoid the anti-foundational trap of reducing “social space to the relations that fill it” (Copjec 1994: 7), it also enables to introduce a notion of place that traverses the boundaries of every spatial production. Why? Because the place of the Thing ultimately renders any production of space ontologically incomplete.

Distance and the Big Other Lacan’s concept of the big Other, which refers to the rules and conventions that comprise the symbolic order, is another important facet of Žižek’s theorizations about ideological objects, relations, and practices. According to Žižek (2005: 367), the big Other concerns:

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The ultimate forerunner of this tendency is, of course, Henri Lefebvre (1991).

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a set of unwritten rules that effectively regulate our speech and acts, the ultimate guarantee of Truth to which we have to refer even when lying or trying to deceive our partners in communication, precisely in order to be successful in our deceit. The designation of “big,” much like Lacan’s notion of the “little other,” which refers to a counterpart or another person encountered on the imaginary, again evinces how spatiality is inherent in Lacan’s conceptual vocabulary. While “big” and “small” primarily relate to scale, which we discuss below, in this section, we consider how Žižek’s uses of the big Other are fundamentally articulated through the issue of distance. We elaborate on how Žižek distinguishes two types of distanciation that mediate the subject’s relationships towards the big Other: “inherent transgression” and the “empty gesture” (cf. Kingsbury 2017). While the big Other is a crucial locus that regulates and knots together psychical and social space, it is neither monolithic nor all-powerful insofar as it does not determine these spaces. Žižek (following Lacan) tells us over and over again that the big Other is demarcated by a fundamental lack and does not exist. The big Other, then, is ultimately a fiction and exists only insofar as people believe in it. Žižek (1998) introduced his idea of “inherent transgression” to theorize two interrelated points about ideological inscription and identification. First, to highlight the extent to which ideological identifications and social practices are informed not only by unwritten rules that tell people when they can break explicit social rules, but also by injunctions that tell them when it is necessary to break such rules. For Žižek, such ideological inscriptions are particularly important for the efficient functioning of institutions, bureaucracies, and communities. Second, to demonstrate how the above transgressions are ultimately animated by and reliant on social bonds of enjoyment. Whilst every good Foucauldian knows about the importance of transgression in terms of the apparatuses’ canalizations of power via the production of docile bodies and regimes of surveillance, such an approach to transgression fails to sufficiently take into account the role of unconscious libidinal enjoyment. As Žižek (2006: 28) notes: The deepest identification that holds a community together is not so much an identification with the Law that regulates its ‘normal’ everyday rhythms, but rather identification with the specific form of transgression of the Law, of its suspension (in psychoanalytic terms, with the specific form of enjoyment).

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The classic example of the importance of enjoyment in Žižek’s corpus is the Code Red rule wherein libidinal enjoyment binds together the community of US marines (neatly illustrated in Rob Reiner’s film, A Few Good Men (1992) that mandates the covert nighttime assaults of any fellow Marine who breaks an “ethical” convention of the group). Although Code Red is officially “illegal,” it nonetheless reinforces group identification and thus the overall unity of the military community. Although Code Red “must remain under cover of night, unacknowledged, unutterable” (Žižek 1994: 54) and thus does not officially exist, obedience to this unwritten law generates strong libidinal bonds among its participants. Another prominent example in Žižek’s writings include Ku Klux Klan lynching and the rape and murder of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. What strikes us, as geographers, is that Žižek considers these instances of violence in terms of space via the notion of an “obscene underside” (own emphasis) of enjoyment. Such an “underside” is obscene because it emanates from the superego’s cruel injunction to “enjoy!” that serves to supplement and support what could be called the upperside or official public functioning of these contexts. What is important here is that the “under” and the “upper” are not topographically opposed or disconnected. Rather, they are topologically structured wherein the obscene underside (like the unconscious) is actually ‘hidden in plain sight,’ that is, ‘out there’ in material landscapes and practices rather than buried deep in the basement of our minds (cf. Žižek 1992: 69, 76). We now turn to the second mode of distanciation: the empty gesture. Žižek (1997a: 27) defines the empty gesture as “an offer – which is meant to be rejected: what the empty gesture offers is the opportunity to choose the impossible, that which inevitably will not happen.” One of Žižek’s (ibid. 28) most notable examples of such a gesture concerns a situation wherein: after being engaged in fierce competition for a promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to withdraw, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer—this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved … What we have here is the symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected; the point, the ‘magic’ of the symbolic exchange, is that although in the end we are back where we were at the beginning, the overall result of the operation is not zero but a distinct gain for both parties, the pact of solidarity. To confer symbolic “magic” onto its participants, the empty gesture requires a great deal of negotiation. That is to say, the participants must be able to comfortably present, reject, or accept each other’s offerings as part of sym-

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bolic exchange. In other words, the participants must situate themselves as a pact by navigating the expected and appropriate distanciations toward the big Other, which all the while “tacitly steers” their “cognition and comportment” (Johnston 2008: 113). Such a steering, however, is a mucky and precarious affair insofar as the participants are never fully in control of their speech, thoughts, and actions. For they are always “spoken for” by this fictitious and impersonal big Other. The empty gesture’s signifying practices of speaking, reading, writing, listening, and so on frequently misfire and lead to screwups. And this is partly why the big Other is Other not because of its imposing structure or scale but rather because of a diminutive though explosive “bug [the unconscious] that keeps derailing it. The bug is the anomaly of the Other, its face of inconsistency, that which defies regularity and law” (Dolar 2012: n.p.). Law, of course, is central to issues of normative behavior and the performative aspects of psychopathology in everyday life. As Žižek (2006a: 13) writes: The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that ‘many human acts are performed…for the sake of the interaction itself’ [Morton 2004: 51]. In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically matches the standard commonsense notion of language as a purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. Furthermore, Žižek (2006a: 14) asserts that the performative dimension of the empty gesture ultimately means that: every choice we confront in language is a meta-choice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants me to strike a deal; what he tells me is basically: ‘Please, I really love you. If we get it together here, I will be totally dedicated to you! But beware! If you reject me, I may lose control and make your life a misery!’ The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of the message undermines the first part – somebody who is ready to damage me if I say no to him cannot really love me and be devoted to my happiness, as he claims.

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The various negotiations that attend empty gestures are fraught with difficulty in terms of the mistakes, misreadings, and misrecognitions that permeate intersubjective relationships. Ultimately, the distance that demarcates the empty gesture in terms of the subjects’ relationships to the big Other is best understood as sublime, but in a strict Žižekian sense. That is to say, such a distance does not demarcate the Kantian sublime in terms of phenomena that are boundless, transcendent, and awe-inspiring. Rather, such a distance is sublime in a Lacano-Hegelian sense insofar as it instantiates phenomena that are empty, unfathomable, and marked by the negativities of the impossible, unwritten, and unspoken. Moreover, for Žižek, the distanciations towards the big Other that demarcate the empty gesture and inherent transgression not only define the parameters of the symbolic order and ensuing ideological identifications, they are ideology at its purest.

Scales of Fantasy In terms of scale, geographic thinking today ranks between two rather incompatible positions, which one could consider as foundational and anti-foundational understandings of scale. In his entry for the International Encyclopedia of Geography, titled “scale and anti-scale”, John Paul Jones III (2017: 1) highlights that scale is either considered as “foundational to social explanation more generally” or understood as a merely epistemological category that has more to do with spatial imaginaries of researchers than with “scale’s ontological – and therefore casually grounded – foundation” (ibid. 7). While the former position is often related to an orthodox Marxism that relates to scale as the product of capitalist social relations, the latter draws its strengths from post-structuralism and non-hierarchical ontologies promoted by thinkers like Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari or Bruno Latour. So, where does Žižek fit in with these approaches? In the final part of our overview of Žižekian geography, we want to highlight that there is a postfoundational notion of scale lurking within Žižek’s writings that is not limited to either foundational or anti-foundational understandings of scale that characterize human geography today. One possible entry point is Žižek’s insistence on the role of fantasy and the Real qua parallax gaps or disproportionality between insides and outsides. In Looking Awry, Žižek (1992: 15-16) observes the following central characteristic that defines architecture in the work of Franz Kafka:

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what appears from the outside a modest house changes miraculously into an endless maze of staircases and halls once we enter it… As soon as we wall [sic] or fence in a certain space, we experience more of it “inside” than appears possible to the outside view. Continuity, proportion is not possible because the disproportion (the surplus of the “inside” in relation to the “outside”) is a necessary, structural effect of the very barrier separating inside from outside. Subsequently, Žižek (ibid. 16) asks, “Why, then, does the inside surpass the outside in scale? In what does this surplus of the inside consist?” For him, the answer is all about fantasy space. Fantasy space primarily concerns the coordination of desire, organization of enjoyment, and the covering up of a certain threatening lack. In addition, if scale is about the ratio of distance on a map compared to the corresponding distance on the ground, then fantasy space disturbs any neat correspondence. Žižek (1999a: n.p.) is well aware of this when he writes that “we are not dealing simply with real geography, but with an imaginary mapping which projects onto real landscapes shadowy, often unacknowledged ideological antagonisms.” Another of Žižek’s examples here concerns the threatening “Spectre of Balkan”, which is encountered via the fantasy space of scale in terms of the uncertainty of the Balkans’ local, regional, and international frontiers. He writes (ibid.): Its [Balkan] geographic delimitation was never precise. It is as if one can never receive a definitive answer to the question, “Where does it begin?” For Serbs, it begins down there in Kosovo or Bosnia, and they defend the Christian civilization against this Europe’s Other. For Croats, it begins with the Orthodox, despotic, Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia defends the values of democratic Western civilization. For Slovenes, it begins with Croatia, and we Slovenes are the last outpost of the peaceful Mitteleuropa. For Italians and Austrians, it begins with Slovenia, where the reign of the Slavic hordes starts…up to the extreme case of some conservative anti-EuropeanUnion Englishmen for whom, in an implicit way, it is ultimately the whole of continental Europe itself that functions as a kind of Balkan Turkish global empire with Brussels as the new Constantinople, the capricious despotic center threatening English freedom and sovereignty. So Balkan is always the Other: it lies somewhere else, always a little bit more to the southeast, with the paradox that, when we reach the very bottom of the Balkan peninsula, we again magically escape Balkan. Greece is no longer Balkan proper, but the cradle of our Western civilization.

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What we have here is a Žižekian geopolitics that brings to the fore what Freud (1961: 114) called the “narcissism of minor differences.”. Depending on where we are, respectively, on how our fantasy space is constituted, the Balkan changes in terms of scale. Moving on from nationalism and geopolitics, we can examine the centrality of scale in Žižek’s critiques of post-structural and anti-foundational theory, which affirms local relativism over global universalism. Žižek’s way of avoiding any relativism does not lead him to understand the Balkan as a Kantian “thing-in-itself” that exists beyond any perspective. His point is a more radical one and internalizes the step from Kant to Hegel (via Lacan). According to this, the Balkan does not simply exist beyond every subjective standpoint, but more precisely, consists as that which resists symbolization absolutely. Another example Žižek brings up to demonstrate this point stems from Claude Lévi-Strauss. Referring to a village of the Winnebago tribe that once settled on the Great Lakes, Lévi-Strauss (1963) describes how the two main groups of the tribe (who considered themselves as those who are ‘from above’ and those who are ‘from below’) were asked to draw the ground plan of the village, which eventually led to two structurally different and incompatible perspectives on the spatial disposition of buildings located on their territory. One is tempted to read this case as a classic example for proving the good old social constructivist idea that there is nothing beyond our particular perspectives on things, that reality consists only of relative standpoints. However, for Žižek, the lesson from the Winnebago tribe is not a relativist one as it points to the fact that, similar to the ‘spectre of the Balkan,’ these different perspectives share the same deadlock. Žižek writes (2003: 75): the very splitting into the two “relative” perceptions implies a hidden reference to a constant – not the objective, “actual” disposition of buildings but a traumatic kernel, a fundamental antagonism the inhabitants of the village were unable to symbolize, to account for, to “internalize,” to come to terms with, an imbalance in social relations that prevented the community from stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole. The two perceptions of the ground-plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavors to cope with this traumatic antagonism, to heal its wound by means of the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure. For Žižek, the reason why none of the ground plans properly represented the village was not because the two groups simply had two relative perceptions, but rather that their reality was itself marked by inconsistency and antago-

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nism. The ground plans show that “the Ground is in itself ontologically hindered” (Žižek 1997b: 6), to paraphrase a formulation of Žižek in respect to Schelling. Taking the fantasy space seriously, which makes it equally impossible for each of the two standpoints to suitably symbolize the Real, a Žižekian approach of scale therefore allows us to defend a particular idea of universality against both brutal universalism and cultural relativism. The antagonistic deadlock that is at work in these examples – from Kafka’s architecture to the Winnebago village – can be at best described through the Hegelian notion of “concrete universality.” Žižek (2000: 316) notoriously uses this term to describe how every particular/local position, to articulate itself, relates to its own notion of universality/globality: each particularity involves its own universality, its own notion of the Whole and its own part within it, there is no ‘neutral’ universality that would serve as the medium for these particular positions. With regard to the standard opposition between the global and the local scale, one could say that while from a Žižekian perspective, the global does not exist in-itself, for itself, it still has an effect on the constitution of the local making it impossible that the local can exist solely in-itself, for itself. This short-circuit is also central to the ways in which scale is used to defend the notion of the Real against charges of brutal and indifferent universalism. The global qua the Real is nothing located vertically above the local/particular fantasy space; however, it is at the same time the ultimate barrier for paving the way towards a flat ontology. Again, we are dealing here with the step from Kant to Hegel, whereas the gap that separates different scales is transposed into the Thing itself (e.g., the Balkan). The global is inscribed into the local itself as its own inherent limitation, so that, to put it in Lacanian terms, scale is ultimately not a symbolic construct, but pertains to the Real insofar as it refers to the deadlocks and impasses that adhere with the Symbolic.7

7

From here it is only a small step to reach the kernel of Žižek’s (post-foundational) materialism that neither proclaims that everything exists nor that nothing exists, but rather questions “the impossibility for X to be(come) ‘fully itself’” (Žižek 2012: 380), and which is at best expressed through the Möbius strip, as pointed out in the introduction. Such a materialism thus contradicts with the ‘all-or-nothing’ logic that Marchart (2007) assigns to Žižek’s ontology.

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And so on, and so on… We want to conclude by coming back to the political implications of a Žižekian geography with which we entered this chapter. In their well-known debate together with Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler (2000: 13) accuses Žižek of implementing a brute foundationalism, which refers to the political (qua the Real) in a way that reduces every particular historical struggle to being “nothing other than a vain effort to displace a founding limit that is structural in status”. Following Butler, Žižek grounds every struggle within the same structural antagonism what would make him, especially from a geographical standpoint, an unacceptable companion. A thinker who lets “the subject always meets its limit in the selfsame place” (ibid.) cannot contribute anything fruitful to a spatially inflected discipline like geography. Such a reading neglects the very post-foundational lesson to be drawn from Žižek’s political thinking, which we propose in this chapter. To clarify this point, let us take a look at The Ticklish Subject, where Žižek (1999b: 130) sides with Badiou by elaborating the French Revolution as an Event in the proper philosophical sense of the term: In this precise sense, the Event emerges ex nihilo: if it cannot be accounted for in terms of the situation, this does not mean that it is simply an intervention from Outside or Beyond – it attaches itself precisely to the Void of every situation, to its inherent inconsistency and/ or its excess. The Event is the Truth of the situation that makes visible/legible what the ‘official’ situation had to ‘repress’, but it is also always localized – that is to say, the Truth is always the Truth of a specific situation. While there is certainly a universal notion of antagonism taking place in the way Žižek relates to particular struggles (e.g., the Winnebago case), his take on the French Revolution shows that the “founding limit” of these struggles is not always met “in the selfsame place”, as Butler proclaims. On the contrary, what is crucial for Žižek is that every particular/local political situation evolves around its own transcendental/global limitation. In every political situation, there is a symptomatic place, or rather non-place, which functions as a concrete universal Truth of this situation by demonstrating that no political situation is capable of completely covering up the antagonistic structure, the crumbling ground, on which this situation is founded. This brings us back to the post-foundational critiques we referred to in the introduction to our chapter, according to which Žižek relies on an anti-

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foundational ontology of the political (Marchart), as well as an apolitical notion of space (Stavrakakis). After going through some of the basic principles of Žižekian geographic thought, we have no difficulty in rejecting the first assumption and insisting that Žižek’s notion of the political is deeply postfoundational. While concepts like the act or event certainly imply an emblematic break with the symbolic order, this break is not realized within a vacuum, but localized within particular political situations. The political changes “the very parameters of what is considered possible in the existing constellation” (Žižek 1999b: 199, own emphasis); it therefore confronts us with a particular impossibility, which we can only properly understand from the standpoint of the situation in which it occurs. However, far from solely fetishizing the rare moments in which we can face the political in its ‘purity’, Žižek is much more concerned with the situation, or space, in which the political appears (or not). This is why he has spent more pages than any other philosopher on writing about mundane issues like dirty jokes, Hollywood blockbusters or other pop cultural phenomena, because he wants to force his readers to workthrough the most basic everyday situations as a way of traversing its ideological fantasies and encircling its structural inconsistencies. Against this background, Žižek turns out to be not an opponent, but rather a perfect example of a thinker who insists on the “tensional relation between the ontic and the ontological, between the politico-historical situation in which we act and the quasi-transcendental conditions of all acting” (Marchart 2007: 107-108).8 With regard to the second part of the critique according to which Žižek’s thinking relies on an apolitical notion of space, we emphasize that Žižek indeed relates to space primarily through understanding the structurally inconsistent functioning of a certain situation. The political is something that cannot be properly addressed within the parameters of social space, it is ‘nonspatial’, as it marks the ontological incompleteness of a certain socio-spatial setting. However, this non-spatiality of the political does not mean that it simply takes place outside of the realm of social space, but rather that it disturbs this space from within. The political is ‘repressed’ in the narrow, psychoanalytic sense of the term, which means it is part of the socio-spatial situation, but without being counted as such. Žižek (2017: 245) therefore states that the political relates to: 8

While a similar post-foundational critique has been raised against Alain Badiou, Matthew G. Hannah demonstrates that this critique is equally questionable (cf. Hannah in this volume).

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the element in the social space which lacks a proper place and is as such a stand-in for universality among the elements. The minimal definition of radical politics is thus that the “part of no-part”, the excremental element, occupies the hegemonic place – or, to quote the line from “The Internationale,” that those who are nothing (excrement) become all... (own emphasis) While the political renders the social space incomplete by addressing a certain excess that cannot take place within this space, Žižek’s notions of place, distance, and scale help us to understand how the space of the social is constituted, or grounded, as a way of repressing the non-spatialized political. While place refers to a Thing that is ultimately lost but triggers a desire for fulfillment and mythic enjoyment, distance relates to the fraught fictions and beliefs concerning the big Other, and scale ultimately structures the ways in which fantasy space is articulated through references to a concrete universality. As such, Žižek’s engagements with place, distance, and scale are inherently marked by an attempt to understand the influence of ideology qua fantasy on the very constitution of socio-spatial realities in order to traverse these realities from within. This is post-foundationalism avant la lettre.

References Althusser, Louis (2001): Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, New York: Monthly Review Press. Augé, Marc (1995): Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, London and New York: Verso. Badiou, Alain/Miller, Alain S. (2005): “An Interview with Alain Badiou ‘Universal Truths and the Question of Religion’’.’” In: Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 3/1, pp. 38-42. Blum, Virginia/Secor Anna J. (2011): “Psychotopologies: Closing the Circuit between Psychic and Material Space.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29/6, pp. 1030-1047. Blum, Virginia/Secor Anna J. (2014): “Mapping Trauma: Topography to Topology.” In: Kingsbury, Paul/Pile, Steve (eds.), Psychoanalytic Geographies, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 103–116. Butler, Judith (2000): “Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism.” In: Butler, Judith/Laclau, Ernesto/Žižek, Slavoj (eds.), Con-

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tingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London and New York: Verso: pp. 11-43. Copjec, Joan (1994): Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists, Cambridge: MIT Press. Dolar, Mladen (2012): “One Divides into Two.” In: e-flux Journal 33/3, http://w ww.e-flux.com/journal/33/68295/one-divides-into-two/. Freud, Sigmund (1961): The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XXI. The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and other Works, London: The Hogarth Press. Jameson, Fredric (1977): “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and the Problem of the Subject.” In: Yale French Studies 55/56, pp. 338-395. Johnston, Adrian (2008): Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Johnston, Adrian (2014): Adventures in Transcendental Materialism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Jones, John Paul III (2017): “Scale and Anti-Scale.” In: Richardson, Douglas/Castree, Noel/Goodchild, Michael F./Kobayashi, Audrey/Liu, Weidong/Marston Richard A. (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, Hoboken: Wiley, pp. 1-9. Kingsbury, Paul (2007): “The Extimacy of Space.” In: Social & Cultural Geography 8/2, pp. 235-258. Kingsbury, Paul (2008): “Did Somebody Say Jouissance? On Slavoj Žižek, Consumption, and Nationalism.” In: Emotion, Space and Society 1, pp. 48-55. Kingsbury, Paul (2017): “Uneasiness in Culture, or Negotiating the Sublime Distances towards the Big Other.” In: Geography Compass 11/6, pp. 1-11. Lacan, Jacques (2007): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII. The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space, Malden: Blackwell. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963): Structural Anthropology, New York: Basic Books. Marchart, Oliver (2007): “Acting and the Act: On Slavoj Žižek’s Political Ontology.” In: Bowman, Paul/Stamp, Richard (eds.), The Truth of Žižek, London: Continuum, pp. 99-116. Marchart, Oliver (2018): Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology After Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Morton, Adam (2004): On Evil, New York: Routledge.

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Pfaller, Robert (2017): Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pohl, Lucas (2019): “The Sublime Object of Detroit.” In: Social & Cultural Geography, online first. Pohl, Lucas (2020): “Ruins of Gaia: Towards a Feminine Ontology of the Anthropocene.” In: Theory, Culture & Society, 37/6, pp. 67-86. Secor, Anna J. (2008): “Žižek’s Dialectics of Difference and the Problem of Space.” In: Environment and Planning A 40/11, pp. 2623-2630. Secor, Anna J. (2013): “Topological City.” In: Urban Geography 34/4, pp. 430444. Stavrakakis, Yannis (2007): The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stavrakakis, Yannis (2011): “The Radical Act: Towards a Spatial Critique.” In: Planning Theory 10/4, pp. 301-324. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977): Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Žižek, Slavoj (1989): The Sublime Object of Ideology, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (1992): Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, Cambridge: MIT Press. Žižek, Slavoj (1994): The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (1997a): The Plague of Fantasies, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (1997b): “The Abyss of Freedom.” In: Žižek, Slavoj/Schelling, F W J (eds.), The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press: pp. 1-104. Žižek, Slavoj (1998): “The Inherent Transgression.” In: Journal for Cultural Research 2/1, pp. 1-17. Žižek, Slavoj (1999a): “The Spectre of Balkan.” In: The Journal of the International Institute 6/2, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.4750978.0006.202. Žižek, Slavoj (1999b): The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, London and New York: Verso Žižek, Slavoj (2000): “Holding the Place.” In: Judith Butler/Laclau, Ernesto/Žižek, Slavoj (eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London and New York: Verso, pp. 308-329. Žižek, Slavoj (2003): The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Žižek, Slavoj (2006): The Parallax View, Cambridge: MIT Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2007): “Censorship Today: Violence, or Ecology as a New Opium for the Masses,” http://www.lacan.com/zizecology1.htm. Žižek, Slavoj (2008): In Defense of Lost Causes, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2009): The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? Cambridge: MIT Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2010): Interrogating the Real, London and New York: Continuum. Žižek, Slavoj (2012): Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2014): Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism, London and New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2016): Disparities, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Žižek, Slavoj (2017): Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels, Cambridge: MIT Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2020): Sex and the Failed Absolute, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure: Theory Triangulation between Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis and Relational Sociology Tomas Marttila

Introduction Reflecting the “spatial turn”, which the social sciences have experienced since the late 1960s (Roskamm 2012), sociologists have started to investigate the socio-spatial coordinates and outcomes of social interaction. Critical geographers’ (e.g., Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey) infusion of geographical concepts and categories into sociology has inspired sociologists to formulate how social interactions generate socio-spatial structures. Committed to de-essentialization of social space, sociologists have problematized earlier scholarship that reduced social interactions into outcomes of presumably natural socio-spatial containers (e.g., nation states; cf. Jessop et al. 2008; Sparke 2005). Critical scholars of social space have not only deconstructed – or “ungrounded” – spatial containers, but they have also applied constructivist social theories to provide new insights into socio-spatial structures that direct social interactions and result from them. With a few exceptions (cf. Sparke 2005), post-foundational discourse theory (PDT)1 affiliated scholars have failed to demonstrate how their implicit notion of social space as a temporal set of discursively constructed social relationships can advance empirical analysis of socio-spatial structures. This chapter is an attempt to overcome PDT’s “spatial lack”. I posit that this spatial lack results from two conceptual shortcomings. Firstly, post-foundational scholars have restricted their focus to “spatial politics”, i.e., the political construction of spatial concepts, categories and identities. Secondly, post-foundational scholars conceive of spatial politics taking

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PDT was developed in the pioneering works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

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place in the form of linguistic interactions. Even though Marchart (2007: 139) has argued that social spaces are made up of complex “social topographies” of relations, post-foundational scholars have not delved deeper into the multidimensional and polymorphic organization of social space. This chapter will attempt to solve the aforementioned spatial lack by seeking assistance from sociological approaches of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA), which share PDT’s core assumption that socio-spatial entities consist of socially constructed and objectively non-necessary bundles of relationships (Marttila/Schmidt-Wellenburg 2020: 1). The dialogue between PDT, ANT and SNA is carried out in the form of theory triangulation. Sociologists recognize in theory triangulation a viable method to compare and complement germane scientific approaches (Marttila and Schmidt-Wellenburg 2020). Theory triangulation also enhances the capacity to do empirical research because it can create a more comprehensive understanding of “how the social universe operates” (Turner 1990: 38). In order to reduce its degree of abstraction and manifest its practical value for empirical research, this paper’s theory triangulation is focused on markets as specific types of socio-spatial structures. Before proceeding to theory triangulation, the following section motivates for the comparison between ANT, PDT and SNA by showing that they depart from the same relational ontology.

Bridging Post-Foundational Discourse Theory and Relational Sociology The theory triangulation of ANT, PDT and SNA pursued in this chapter is motivated by their common ontological foundations, which are also characteristic of the wider field of relational sociology. Basically, the conception that the social reality consists of objectively non-necessary relations bears witness to the influence of Heidegger’s (1967) post-phenomenological ontology. According to Heidegger there cannot be any “absolute answer” to the question on the being of the social space (ibid. 26). The recent “relational turn” (Fuhse 2009) in sociology has embraced Heidegger’s ontological position. Instead of assuming an essentialist perspective on social space and linking it with a whole set of objectively existing “things”, relational sociologists presume that it is not essences, but rather “dynamic, continuous, and processual” relations that constitute socio-spatial structures (Emirbayer 1997: 281).

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Relational sociology comprises several approaches that take a relational epistemological perspective and “investigate[s] social life by studying social relations” (Powell/Dépelteau 2013: 1). Consequently, relational sociologists recognize also that the meaningfulness attached to social entities is “contingent on the relational contexts, in which [these entities] … are embedded” (Emirbayer 1997: 287). Relational sociologists assume that “the social world … is made up of constellations of things each of which is [not] defined by its particular (and essential) substances” (Kirchner/Mohr 2010: 556). This logic of relational structuration of the social life is commensurate with PDT’s notion of discourse as a bundle of signifying relations (Laclau/Mouffe 2001: 108). Powell and Dépelteau (2013: 3) identify in relational sociology “differing positions on fundamental questions about what social relations are, how they can be known, and what they tell us about the world.” These differing positions are epitomized by dissonant conceptualizations of the research object as actor network, social network, discourse, assemblage, etc. (Marttila/SchmidtWellenburg 2020). One of the main differences between various approaches to relational sociology concerns their different weighting of ontological stipulation and empirical analysis. Most relational sociologists have taken an interest in ontology only when it has served to refine and develop their methodological capacities to make sense of the empirically observable social world. In contrast, scholars affiliated with PDT have treated ontological stipulation as an end in itself. Moreover, Glynos and Howarth (2007: 117) have treated the social as “an ontological rather than an ontical category.” In his turn, Marchart (2007: 2) has argued that post-foundational scholarship is naturally riveted to “constant interrogation of metaphysical figures of foundation – such as totality, universality, essence, and ground.” Simply put, while scholars affiliated with PDT have mainly focused on the impact that the absence of external and objective “groundings” has for social coordination of socio-spatial relations, relational sociologists have taken particular interest in theoretical modelling and empirical analysis of socio-spatial structures that come into being as a result of the ontologically caused objective groundlessness. As a result of this ontological state of groundlessness, socio-spatial structures can never attain the status of objectivity. Consequently, neither the concepts and categories used to represent social space (e.g., nation state, Europe, the West), nor the meanings attached to them can independently prevail over them imposing and reproducing socio-spatial interactions. These socio-spatial interactions do not take place in the empty place of the social, but they are to some extent influenced by prevailing socio-spatially specific “modes of Being” (Heidegger

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1967: 27). Sociologists of social space have referred to such “modes of Being” as particular socio-spatial structures, including political systems, cultural formations and systems of economic production (Jessop et al. 2008; Roskamm 2012). Scholars affiliated with PDT have not managed to conceptualize sociospatial modes of being from a post-foundational perspective. To address this spatial lack in PDT, I follow Aspers and Kohl’s (2013: 488) argument according to which “ontological questions on what there is can hardly be separated from epistemological and methodological questions (on how to approach what there is).” Accordingly, post-foundational scholars must conceptualize socio-spatial structures in accordance with their specific ontology of the social space. PDT affiliated scholars have grasped socio-spatial structures by conceiving them to result from spatial concepts, categories and identity producing discursive practices. Unfortunately, and as is characteristic of discourse research in general, post-foundational discourse analysts have reduced discourses to linguistically produced meanings about social space. In those few cases that discourse analysts have moved beyond linguistic analysis, Mertel (2017: 3) accuses them of having “take[n] for granted the reified and ultimately ontic conceptions of the social or of society from their rivals – positivism, systems theory, classical Marxism, etc.” Indeed, the question of how the social space appears beyond linguistic representations of it has only recently been raised by Marttila and Schmidt-Wellenburg (2020). I argue that PDT’s spatial lack can be overcome by seeking advice from ANT and SNA: two more empirically-oriented approaches to relational sociology. Following this guidance, the aim of theory triangulation is not just to compare these three scientific approaches, but to use their differences and similarities to equip PDT with the still missing conceptualization of social space as a realm consisting of multi-dimensional configurations of social relations.

Actor Network Theory: Mono-modality of Economic Action ANT provides a radically constructivist and performative understanding of economic phenomena. As Callon (1999: 192) puts it, economic interactions, identities and interests are not naturally provided because they emerge from ongoing “disentanglement, framing, internalization and externalization” of social relations. ANT assigns economic experts a particularly important role

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in shaping economic actions. Economic experts act as knowledge brokers that validate economic theories and translate typical abstract scholastic ideals into normatively charged prescripts for economic action. Economic models function as reality shaping scholarly fictions because they install particular objects of knowledge, including profit, capital, investment, market, competition, and management, but also particular relationships between these objects, as presupposedly self-evidential constituents of the economic world (Aspers 2005: 34). For example, Callon (1999: 185) argues that the role model of Homo Oeconomicus, which has strongly influenced modern economic behavior, has its origins in self-evidential and undisputed neoclassical and neoliberal economic theories. Instead of referring the Homo Oeconomicus to a particular entity, Callon applies an analytical strategy of deconstruction characteristic of ANT to show that Homo Oeconomicus is “entangled in a web of relations and connections” (ibid.) that exist and are retained as a result of their continuous re-appropriation in economic actions. By this token, ANT assumes a radically decentered conception of economic actors because they are formed in accordance “with the morphology of ... [their] relationships” (Callon 1998: 9). The radical decentering of the economic actor entails that the conception of individual “authorhood” characterizing neoclassical economic theory must be replaced by that of collective “co-authorship”, because “one’s action is rarely one’s own” (Burkitt 2016: 336). The fact that economic agency is the contingent outcome of “multiple bonds” to the social context can only but imply that economic actions are “always already co-authored” (ibid.). ANT postulates that not only individual subjects but all socially meaningful entities obtain their specific meanings, purposes and functions by being embedded within relational “assemblages” that entwine “human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, material and abstract and affective” entities (Fox/Alldred 2015: 406). Such assemblages of relations are structured by the principle of relational symmetry. Broadly speaking, relational symmetry comes in four different shapes. Firstly, ANT considers it impossible to differentiate between human/non-human actors and symbolic/material objects (Orlikowski/Scott 2008: 438). This refusal to distinguish between different types of elements bears witness to a “flat ontology.” DeLanda (2004: 47) distinguishes between “vertical” and “flat” ontologies and states that, while the first is “based on relations between general types and particular instances …, each level representing a different ontological category (organism, species, genera)”, the latter conceives of the social world “in terms of interacting parts and emergent wholes.” Even though flat ontology does not impede the pos-

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sibility that entities can be of different kinds, it nevertheless rejects the possibility that these differences are determined on the ontological level. Flat ontology impedes the possibility of subdividing actor networks into configurations of essentially and fundamentally different elements (Çaliskan/Callon 2010: 3; Latour 1996: 374). Secondly, ANT also excludes the existence of asymmetrical relationships between a particular actor network and its wider sociospatial context. Latour (1996: 376) argues that the presence or organization of a particular actor network cannot be explained with reference to some external factors. Latour (2005: 53) reminds us that scholars affiliated to ANT are “not permitted to say: ‘No one mentions it. I have no proof, but I know there is some hidden actor at work behind the scene’.” Basically, there cannot be any social reality outside actor networks because “realities are not real outside the chains of practices that perform them” (Law 1999: 242). Therefore, researchers cannot “jump outside a network to add an explanation” (Latour 1996: 376). For example, a particular market cannot be explained with reference to so-called external and independent political decisions, legislation or technological innovations because these are already constituent parts of the actor network in question (Law 1999: 242). Recurring to the epistemological premise of relational symmetry, actor network scholars engage in a strictly empirical reconstruction of the totality of relations that interlink economic actors (e.g., accountants, investors, managers), practices (e.g., competition, calculation, investment, production), and resources (e.g., money, time, natural resources, goods) into an assemblage that is sustained by ongoing economic interactions (Callon 1998: 19). Thirdly, ANT considers it improper to assume that entities belonging to a particular actor network are interlinked by asymmetrical relationships or that they are mutually more or less dominant or independent. Amongst other things, this internal symmetry ensures that actor network scholars cannot distinguish between different levels of actor networks (e.g., local and global markets). Whether a particular entity is referred to as constituent of a wider actor network or a relational configuration of entities is a matter of our analytical perspective (Law 2002: 93). While it is possible to refer the European Central Bank to a singular organizational entity within the global economy, it is equally viable to argue that it is itself made of a network “of human agents such as analysts, economists, office clerks and cooks, but also of material things such as gold reserve, the algorithms to compute inflation, the computer system” (Müller 2012: 382). By the same token, Law (2002: 93) argues that a naval vessel can be referred to as a relational configuration of “hull,

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure

spars, sails, ropes, guns, food stores, sleeping quarters and crew” or an entity within a wider “imperial system … with its ports, vessels, military dispositions, markets and merchants.” Fourthly, the aforementioned three principles of relational symmetry see to it that actor-network scholars cannot offer any causal explanations to the phenomena under scrutiny (Latour 1996: 376). Instead, the analytical aim is to constitute the actor network that embeds a particular entity and lends it its specific meaning, purpose and function. This empiricist methodological standpoint also makes sure that scholars must refrain from theoretically biased perspectives on actor networks and describe them in accordance with their immediate empirically observable characteristics (Law 2004: 102). Therefore, Roberts (2012: 14) argues that researchers must “stay only at the contingent-concrete level of observation”. To sum up, ANT offers a powerful analytical tool to break up taken-forgranted conceptions of economic phenomena and reveal the performative impact that, in particular, economic experts and theories exert upon economic behavior. However, the aforementioned principles of epistemological symmetry imply that actor network scholars reconstruct in actu existing assemblages of relations without being capable of explaining their historically contingent origins or revealing asymmetric relationships. Moreover, ANT is based on a strictly empiricist methodological standpoint according to which research must avoid any epistemic bias caused by theoretical preconceptions. As Law (2004: 102) puts it: “[w]hat there is and how it is divided up should not be assumed beforehand.” Consequently, researchers must refrain from using theoretical concepts and categories that cause distorted and epistemically biased conceptions of the research object. It is thus hardly surprising that actor network scholars conceive of “thick description” as the appropriate scientific method (Pellandini-Simanyi 2016: 570). As far as markets are concerned, ANT considers it improper to apply a theoretically biased concept of market that runs the risk of influencing subsequent empirical observations of economic behavior. Therefore, market can only have the function of a descriptive concept providing an epistemically neutral conceptualization of a particular assemblage as a “market”. Figure 1 visualizes ANT’s conception of markets that not only refuses to distinguish between different spatial scales (e.g., local/global) and types of actants (e.g., symbolic/material, human/non-human), but also loses sight of diachronic processes that established assemblages of actants typical of a particular market. Moreover, actor network scholars are not willing to reveal asym-

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metrical relationships, including power relations, which give rise to economic identities, interests and interactions.

Figure 1: The Model of Market as Actor Network (source: author).

Social Network Analysis: Dialogical Embeddedness of Economic Action SNA follows the example of ANT and emphasizes the relational logic of structuration of the social world. In contrast to ANT’s concept of actor network, SNA does not treat a social network as a nominal, but rather as a theoretical concept, which capacitates researchers to reveal concealed and socially unreflected network structures. Moreover, SNA does not share ANT’s atheoretical and empiricist methodological position but argues instead that social networks constitute subjectively unreflected social structures. As White et al. (2007: 186) put it: “[i]ndividual and collective identities emerge and evolve according to positions and movements among networks of social ties.” In other words, social network is a theoretical concept that enables researchers to explain social behavior. However, SNA rejects the individualist and structuralist epistemological perspectives and assumes instead a praxeological standpoint stating that social networks structure ongoing social interactions and are themselves structured by them.

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure

SNA conceives social interactions as being located in and shaped by relationships interlinking social subjects which, on the aggregate level, constitute relatively permanent social networks. Generally speaking, a social network is made up of two types of entities: “socially relevant nodes”, such as individual persons or social roles, and the “relations” interlinking these nodes (Marin/Wellman 2018: 2). Reflecting the impact social networks exert upon social actions, network analysts have explained popular cultural (Crossley 2008; 2011), economic (de Nooy 2003) and artistic (Basov 2018) behavior with reference to the structural organization of social networks. The recent cultural turn in SNA has directed researchers’ focus to dialogical relationships between social and cultural networks. According to this dialogical perspective, social and cultural networks are not regarded as “autonomous systems”, but are instead conceived as constituting mutually “intertwined and interdependent sets of social formations” (Godart/White 2010: 581). Such a dialogical relationship between social and cultural networks ensures that social capital (e.g., contacts) and cultural resources (e.g., knowledge, values, preferences) condition each other. For example, a high number of social contacts in general – and access to so-called knowledge-brokers in particular – are crucial for disseminating and accumulating cultural resources because they capacitate subjects “to appreciate and enjoy cultural objects that they might not otherwise ‘get’” (Crossley 2013: 129). In contrast, the possession of diverse cultural resources improves one’s social status and opens up the possibility of getting access to and influencing numerous other social subjects. The dialogical relationship between social and cultural networks is empirically manifested in Crossley’s analysis of the punk rock subculture in England in the late 1970s. Crossley (2008) observed that social subjects’ access to cultural influence as managers, fashion trendsetters, producers, musicians and club owners, was structured by social capital (e.g., contacts, sympathy, solidarity), which they obtained as a result of their embeddedness in various social networks. Moreover, popularization of the punk rock movement would have been unthinkable without the already existing mutual interpersonal (e.g., friendship, love affairs), cognitive (e.g., mutual recognition) and affective (e.g., sympathy, trust) social ties between the main protagonists of punk rock subculture. These different types of social ties generated a collective cultural identity (Crossley 2011: 97). SNA posits also that individual identities are shaped by dialogical relationships between social and cultural networks. SNA posits that individual identities, interests and practices “make

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sense only as indexical expressions of context” (White 2008: 337). However, social subjects are not only embedded in various socio-cultural contexts, but this embeddedness remains mostly subjectively unreflected. In stark contrast to the empiricist methodology promoted in ANT, SNA argues that networks forming social subjectivities are “not directly observable, neither for the researcher, nor for the other actors in a network” (Fuhse 2009: 68). Instead, positions and relations in social networks and affiliations with cultural networks can become self-evident to such an extent that they are constitutive of social subjects’ habitualized life worlds. Reflecting this socially embedded nature of subjectivity, social behavior must be explained with reference to “the matrices of relations, the relational contexts, within which they are constituted” (Emirbayer/Johnson 2008: 5). Moreover, referring to social structures that are only partially recognized and known by social subjects, social and cultural networks are empirically accessible only in the form of social subjects’ practices of social and cultural self-positioning. Reflecting the aforementioned epistemological premises, research on economic behavior and markets affiliated with SNA focuses on intersubjectively shared and conducted patterns of social and cultural practice. In a cultural regard, economic actors belong to the same market if they identify themselves with the same “quality order” and accept and adhere to categories, classification, values and norms constituting that order (White 2000: 16). Such collective quality orders become empirically visible in the form of “shared frame[s] of perceptions” (ibid. 1). In a social regard, markets consist of configurations of social relations interlinking subjects that operate on the same market. Market-specific social relations are embedded in and motivated against the background of cultural networks. For example, economic actors apply specific cultural frames to identify their competitors, locate possible cooperation partners and recognize their potential customers. The more coherent social and cultural networks guiding economic behavior are, the more likely are economic actors to act in similar fashion. However, SNA relativizes the homogeneity of economic behavior by assuming that economic actors are embedded in several social and cultural networks at the same time. As Fuhse (2009: 65) puts it: “[t]ightly bounded groups with homogeneous culture are the exception, rather than the rule” and that we therefore “witness a conglomerate of different netdoms with overlaps, fluid boundaries, and hybrid cultures in between.” Socio-cultural multi-positionality entails that economic actors can accept and adhere to the same economic quality order, yet employ deviant interpretations about and practical implementations of that order. Basically,

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socio-cultural multi-positionality shows that social practices are regulated by socio-spatially unbounded socio-cultural structures. The logic of multi-positionality sees to it that structural embeddedness does not turn economic actors into monolithic and static entities because they are “embedded in stilllarger contexts in diverse ways” (White et al. 2007: 199). Figure 2 shows SNA’s socio-spatial image of the market as a dialogical configuration of social and cultural networks. Dialogical relationships can either stabilize and/or destabilize prevailing social and cultural networks. Moreover, the aforementioned logic of multi-positionality implies that social subjects are embedded in and switch between different social and cultural networks (Godart/White 2010: 570). Culture-specific meanings – including economic quality orders – are not objective facts. Instead, they result from social subjects’ multiple relations to objectively non-necessary social and cultural networks. Arguably, this manifests the ontological ungrounding of social and economic behavior.

Figure 2: The Model of Market as a Two-Mode Network (source: author).

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Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis: Market as Hegemonic Discourse ANT and SNA have developed their respective socio-spatial models of market in a dialogue between theoretical debate and empirical research. In contrast, discourse analysts affiliated with PDT have not conceived of markets in spatial terms. Actually, only a few researchers affiliated with PDT have analyzed economic phenomena at all. Therefore, Torfing’s (2005: 25) critique still holds true claiming that discourse analysts are primarily interested in soft issues of “gender, ethnicity, and social movements.”2 These conceptual and analytical shortcomings are unfortunate because in PDT, the concept of discourses “cover[s] all social phenomena” (ibid. 8). Therefore, the realm of discursively constructed phenomena is “coterminous with the social as such” (ibid.). PDT claims that “the concept of discourse” must be “creatively misappl[ied]” because it “encompass[es] all dimensions of social reality and not just the usual practices of speaking, writing and communicating” (Howarth 2004: 265). Hypothetically, at least, all aspects of markets ranging from linguistic interaction, non-linguistic systems of signs, market places, economic infrastructure, practices of demand and supply, social roles of producers, suppliers, investors and buyers, and so forth, are constitutive parts of an overarching socio-spatial structure. However, discourse analysts have not explored discourses as multidimensional socio-spatial structures any further. For PDT, constitutive relational ontology implies that discourses consist of relational arrangements of discursive elements, within which a particular element obtains a specific meaning as a result of its relations to other elements (Cederström/Spicer 2014: 187). The logic of relationality also entails that distinctive spatial realms of social action – such as politics, economy and academia – cannot possess any natural limits. Instead, the conceivably natural and legitimate location of specific interests and practices is constantly shaped and reshaped in ongoing discursive articulations (Marttila 2015: 130). The idea that meanings are the contingent outcomes of meaning-conveying relations does not only imply that all meanings are objectively non-necessary, but it also offers a powerful tool for critical inquiry to reveal the contingent origins of any socially taken-for-granted meanings. For example, PDT can be used to reveal why, by whom and under what circumstances economic values 2

For example, neither Critchley and Marchart (2004) nor Glynos and Howarth (2007) provide an entry for “market” in their indexes of post-foundational terminology.

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of profitability, efficiency and effectiveness have turned to guiding norms in everyday life. Notwithstanding its critical potential, PDT is hampered by several conceptual and analytical shortcomings that must be overcome before it can constitute a viable tool for analyzing different types of socio-spatial structures. For example, discourse analysts have assigned hegemonic actors analytical primacy over these actors embedding socio-spatial structures. When applied to the study of markets, this analytical bias results in an idealist cul-de-sac according to which a particular market exists because there is a particular discourse on that market. Even though Laclau (1996: 43) described that hegemonic discourses are structured by the “unevenness of the social”, i.e., the prevailing socio-spatial circumstances, this sociospatial dimension is excluded from empirical analysis. This socio-spatial lack burdens also Glynos and Howarth’s (2007; 2008) “logics” approach to PDT. Glynos and Howarth distinguish between three types of “political”, “social” and “fantasmatic” logics. “Social logic” denotes a routine pattern of everyday behaviour that was established and legitimized by a particular hegemonic discourse. In the case of markets, social logics encompass routinely enacted economic practices, economic roles and symbolic, social and material objects. Social logics are taken for granted to such an extent that subjects cease to ponder on their meaningfulness. Social logics originate from political logics, which Glynos and Howarth (2008: 12) describe as hegemonic practices involved in the “collective mobilization” on behalf of a particular discourse. Basically, all social logics have their origins in some political logics, and therefore the primary aim of the logics approach is to render visible a relatively narrow set of hegemonic articulations that succeeded in establishing and reproducing an equally specific set of social practices. There is also a third type of “fantasmatic logics” referring to as affectual foundations of social and political logics. However, fantasmatic logics are of limited relevance in empirical discourse analysis (Marttila 2015: 121). The epistemological primacy of political logics implies that discourse analysis is limited to identifying political practices that gave rise to a specific pattern of social practice (i.e., social logic). For example, discourse analysts have problematized neoliberal de-regulation of the economy by detecting its contingent origins in liberal-conservative governments articulating New Right ideologies (Howarth 2013: 42). Levinson (2004: 157) has shown that a mythical depiction of unregulated competition was the pivotal source of hegemonization of neoliberal cultural norms of economic freedom, self-determination

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and self-employment. Glynos and Howarth (2007; 2008) argue that takenfor-granted ideals of academic competition, objectification of scientific quality and value-for-money logic of scientific research were hegemonized with reference to presupposedly objective images of international economic competition and economic globalization, as articulated by the New Labour government. Many accounts of PDT suffer also from an analytical macro-bias. This macro-bias entails that socio-spatially narrow phenomena – including particular subjectivities and practices – are explained with reference to hegemonic discourses that provide images of the perfect society. For example, Laclau (2007) argued that the radical transformation of everyday lives in post1989 Eastern Europe was caused by the introduction of neoliberal economic discourses. Kenny and Scriver’s (2012) analysis revealed that economic discourses propagated by an alliance of politicians and economic experts gave rise to new types of entrepreneurial preferences and activities. Hopkinson and Aman (2017) argued that sets of actors and activities typical of a market are contingent outcomes of specific political ideologies. The aforementioned analytical macro-bias also applies to the empirical analysis of particular discourses. More closely, discourse analysts assume that a particular discourse is organized around nodal points that symbolize the overarching identity of that particular discourse. Nodal point refers to a generic concept “that symbolize[s] the overarching identity of a discourse and, by doing so, make[s] it possible to conceive of the logic of a commonality that binds [particular objects] … together” (Marttila 2015: 49). In other words, nodal points integrate otherwise dissonant concepts into a coherent semantic field. Moreover, nodal points are essential for hegemonic discourses because they are articulated to embody visions of the ideal social order (e.g., knowledge-based economy, open competition, liberal democracy). The primary task of hegemonic articulations (see: political logics) is to select nodal points as symbolic representatives of the social order and compile the adjacent semantic field of concepts. For example, Marttila (2013) discovered that in many neoliberal discourses the concept of entrepreneur plays the role of a nodal point that binds together a semantic field of international economic competitiveness, knowledge-based economy, human capital, creativity and self-employment. Provided that hegemonic articulations are recognized as legitimate representations of the social world; they give rise to recurrent patterns of social practice. Basically, discourse analysts prove the relationship between (a) hege-

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monic articulations and (b) recurrent patterns of practice by manifesting their mutual homogeneity. In other words, empirical analysis is limited to identifying similarities between social practices. Moreover, discourse analysts do not concern themselves with the general structural organization of discourse but are content with focusing on discourse-specific nodal points. For example, Glynos et al. (2015) have studied the “nodal framework” that political actors applied in the UK to “apprehend[s] the banking service chain” and which motivated them to implement banking reforms. Mosemghvdlishvili and Jansz (2020) analyzed the nodal points used by Google Inc. and Free Software Foundation Europe to contest Android’s stake in the global market for mobile operating systems. Nonhoff’s (2018) analysis of the political economy in postwar West Germany has shown how the nodal point of “social market economy” was used by leading political actors to assert the limits of economically rational political regulation of economy. The aforementioned approaches to post-foundational discourse analysis display three conceptual shortcomings that limit PDT’s analytical applicability. Firstly, analytical primacy of political logics over social logics underestimates the extent to which hegemonic articulations about the economy are structured by existing economic discourses. Secondly, analytical prioritization of hegemonic discourses installing practices loses sight of the fact that these practices are subject to influence from wider socio-spatial factors. Thirdly, epistemological primacy of political logics has seen to it that discourse analysts have geared their focus to typically “political” actors, such as governments, political parties and political movements, while other social groups are considered to be of limited analytical relevance. In sum, these three conceptual shortcomings entail that discourse analysts operate within an analytical framework that directs their focus to political construction of hegemonic discourses (Figure 3). As a consequence, discourse analysts can neither grasp the socio-spatial embeddedness of hegemonic discourses nor visualize the multidimensional socio-spatial structures that originate from hegemonic articulations. As a consequence, PDT cannot provide a socio-spatial model of markets.

The Market as a Relational Regime Among the three aforementioned theoretical approaches, ANT provides the most consistently relational view of social space. In contrast to SNA and PDT, ANT does not distinguish between different levels of relations, explain a spe-

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Figure 3: The Processual Model of Market (source: author).

cific assemblage with reference to some causal relations, or distinguish between phenomenally different elements. However, these epistemological limitations result in an undifferentiated image of social space. In contrast, SNA distinguishes between social and cultural modalities of relationality and assumes these modalities to be interwoven by complex dialogical relationships. While SNA is mostly focused on describing network structures, it is less interested in their diachronic transformation and underlying power relations. PDT’s main concerns are the “political” origins of hegemonic discourses. In contrast to ANT and SNA, discourse analysts have mostly focused on discourses’ linguistic aspects. As a combined outcome of these conceptual shortcomings, with PDT affiliated discourse analysts, one can analyze discursive construction of socio-spatial structures, but not explore their multi-dimensional socio-spatial outcomes. To solve this spatial lack, Marttila and Schmidt-Wellenburg (2020) advocated for a combination of theoretical insights from ANT, PDT and SNA. These three approaches (witnessing their common relational ontology) assume that socio-spatial structures constituting social relations are temporally instable because they originate from objectively non-necessary practices that interlink different linguistic and non-linguistic elements into specific socio-spatial

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure

configurations. To begin with, practices, which establish similar types of relations between similar elements, build a “regime of practice” (Glynos/Howarth 2007: 10). To further conceptualize from regimes of practice resulting in socio-spatial structures, Marttila and Schmidt-Wellenburg (2020) argue that it is primarily linguistic hegemonic discourses that are subject to three types of sedimentation: “materialization”, “hegemonization” and “subjectivation.” “Materialization” implies that earlier explicit meanings (e.g., business plans, contracts, joint ventures) are transformed into corresponding material structures accepted as taken-for-granted objects (e.g., offices, machines, software). Being parts of the reified material reality, subjects routinely deal with material objects and cease to reflect upon their meanings and wider social consequences. “Hegemonization” encompasses a process of decoupling between meanings that signify and legitimize particular objects, practices and subjectivities and the subsequent meanings, which subjects have attached to these entities. As a result of hegemonization, subjects become unable to recognize and problematize the contingent nature of the prevailing social order. “Subjectivation” refers to a process in which subjects identify themselves with worldviews, beliefs, role models and norms provided by a hegemonic discourse. Subjects’ identifications with a discourse are mediated and enforced by “actor fictions”, which Marttila (2015: 81) refers to as configurations of social roles, ethical ideals and routine practices. These three types of discursive sedimentation mean that according to a description by Glynos and Howarth (2007; 2008), social logics can no longer be constrained to consist only of linguistic interactions. Instead, hegemonic discourses give rise to regimes of practice that encompass linguistic (i.e., speaking, writing), social (i.e., cooperation, communication, solidarity), material (i.e., manufacturing) and affective-cognitive (i.e., love, hate, admiration) practices. Moreover, materialization, hegemonization and subjectivation generate multi-modal “relational regimes” that encompass configurations of material, symbolic and social elements (Marttila/Schmidt-Wellenburg 2020), and which constitute distinctive types of socio-spatial structures, such as nation states, political regimes, markets and production systems. The aforementioned types of discursive sedimentation entail relational regimes that are multi-dimensional structures that interlink: hegemonization results in taken-for-granted conceptual networks, materialization results in material networks in the form of infrastructures, artefacts and technologies and subjectivation results in so-

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cial roles internalized and incorporated by subjects as well as different social roles interlinking social networks. Figure 4 portrays a relational regime that serves as a heuristic framework that facilitates empirical research by guiding discourse analysts to use appropriate methods to make relational regimes’ different phenomenal aspects empirically visible.

Figure 4: Relational Regime (source: author).

Research on relational regimes evolves in two analytical stages. The aforementioned post-foundational ontology entails that relational regimes can neither prevail nor be observed independent of sets of practices that structure them. Therefore, the first stage focuses on regimes of practice that produce and reproduce relational regimes. The relative homogeneity of social practices shows that they belong to the same regime of practice and articulate the same discourse. The second stage has as its aim to identify the multi-dimensional relational regime, which is entangled with and conditioned by social practices. Reflecting that relational regimes consist of material, social and symbolic networks and their dialogical relationships, empirical analysis must move beyond traditional language-centered discourse analysis and make use of a combination of different scientific methods.

Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure

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Emirbayer, Mustafa (1997): “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” In: American Journal of Sociology 103/2, pp. 281-317. Emirbayer, Mustafa/Johnson, Victoria (2008): “Bourdieu and Organizational Analysis.” In: Theory & Society 37, pp. 1-44.  Fox, Nick J./Alldred, Pam (2015): “New Materialist Social Inquiry: Designs, Methods and the Research-Assemblage.” In: International Journal of Social Research Methodology 18/4, pp. 399-414. Fuhse, Jan A. (2009): “The Meaning Structure of Social Networks.” In: Sociological Theory 27/1, pp. 51-73. Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007): Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge. Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2008): “Critical Explanation in Social Science: A Logics Approach.” In: Swiss Journal of Sociology 54/1, pp. 5-35. Glynos, Jason/Howarth, David (2018): “The Retroductive Cycle: The Research Process in Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis.” In: Marttila, Tomas (ed.), Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 105-126 Glynos, Jason/Klimecki, Robin/Willmott, Hugh (2015): “Logics in Policy and Practice: A Critical Nodal Analysis of the UK Banking Reform Process.” In: Critical Policy Studies 9/4, pp. 393-415, Godart, Frédéric C./White, Harrison C. (2010): “Switchings Under Uncertainty: The Coming and Becoming of Meanings.” In: Poetics 38/6, pp. 567586. Heidegger, Martin (1967): Being and Time, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hopkinson, Gillian/Aman, Asad (2017): “Women Entrepreneurs: How Power Operates in Bottom of the Pyramid-Marketing Discourse.” In: Marketing Theory 17/3, pp. 305-321. Howarth, David (2004): “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and Radical Democracy.” In: Critchley, Simon/Marchart, Oliver (eds.), Laclau: A Critical Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 256-276. Howarth, David (2013): Poststructuralism and After: Structure, Subjectivity and Power, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jessop, Bob/Brenner, Neil/Jones, Martin (2007): “Theorizing Sociospatial Relations.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, pp. 389-401. Kenny, Kate/Scriver, Stacey (2012): “Dangerously empty? Hegemony and the construction of the Irish entrepreneur.” In: Organization 19/5, pp. 615-633.

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Kirchner, Corinne/Mohr, John. W. (2010): “Meanings and Relations: An Introduction to The Study of Language, Discourse and Networks.” In: Poetics 38/6, pp. 555-566. Laclau, Ernesto (2007): Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (1990): “Post-Marxism Without Apologies”. In: Ernesto Laclau (ed.), New Reflections of The Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso, pp. 97-132. Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (2001): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Latour, Bruno (1996): “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47/4, pp. 369-381. Latour, Bruno (2005): Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, John (1994): Organizing Modernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Law, John (1999): “After ANT: Complexity, Naming and Topology.” In: The Sociological Review 47/1, pp. 1-14 Law, John (2002): “Objects and Spaces.” In: Theory, Culture and Society 19/5, pp. 91-105. Law, John (2004): After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, London: Routledge. Levinson, Brett (2004): Market and Thought: Meditations on the Political and Biopolitical, Fordham: Fordham University Press. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marin, Alexandra/Wellman, Barry (2014): “Social Network Analysis: An Introduction.” In: Scott, John/Carrington, Peter J. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, London: Sage, pp. 11-25. Marttila, Tomas (2013): The Culture of Enterprise in Neoliberalism: The Specters of Entrepreneurship, New York: Routledge. Marttila, Tomas (2015): Post-foundational Discourse Analysis: From Political Difference to Empirical Research, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Marttila, Tomas/Schmidt-Wellenburg, Christian (2020): “An Invitation to Relational Discourse Analysis.” Unpublished manuscript. Mertel, Kurt C.M. (2017): “Two Ways of Being a Left-Heideggerian: The Crossroads Between Political and Social Ontology.” In: Philosophy & Social Criticism 43/9, pp. 966-84.

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Mosemghvdlishvili, Lela/Jansz, Jeroen (2020): “Free Your ‘Most Open’ Android: A Comparative Discourse Analysis on Android.” In: Critical Discourse Studies 17/1, pp-56-71. Müller, Martin (2012): “Opening the Black Box of Organization: Socio-material Practices of Geopolitical Ordering.” In: Political Geography 31/6, pp. 379388. Nonhoff, Martin (2018): “Hegemony Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Research Practice.” In: Marttila, Tomas (ed.), Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 63-104. Pellandini-Simanyi, Lena (2016): “Non-marketizing Agents in the Study of Markets: Competing legacies of Performativity and Actor-Network Theory in the Marketization Research Program.” In: Journal of Cultural Economy 9/6, pp. 570-586. Powell, Christopher/Dépelteau, François (2013): “Introduction.” In : Powell, Christopher/Dépelteau, François (eds.), Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187-207. Roberts, John Michael (2012): “Poststructuralism Against Poststructuralism: Actor-Network Theory, Organizations and Economic Markets.” In: European Journal of Social Theory 15/1, pp. 35-53. Roskamm, Nikolai (2012): Das Reden vom Raum: Zur Aktualität des Spatial Turn – Programmatik, Determinismus und sozial konstruierter Raum. In: Peripherie 126-127/32, pp. 171-189. Sparke, Matthew (2005): In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation State, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. Torfing, Jacob (2005): “Discourse Theory: Achievements, Arguments and Challenges.” In: Howarth, David/Torfing, Jacob (eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-32. Turner, Jonathan H. (1990): “Misuse and Use of Metatheory.” In: Sociological Forum 5/1, pp. 37-53. White, Harrison C. (2000): “Modeling Discourse in and Around Markets.” In: Poetics 27, pp. 117-133. White, Harrison C. (2008): Identity & Control: How Social Formations Emerge, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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White, Harrison C./Godart, Frédéric C./Corona, Victor P. (2007): “Mobilizing Identities: Uncertainty and Control in Strategy.” In: Theory, Culture & Society 24/7-8, pp. 181-202.

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Post-Foundationalism in the City

(Non)Building Alliances: Approaching Urban Politics through Siegfried Kracauer’s Concept of Nonsolution Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik

Escalating economic injustice, climate crisis, migration crisis, crisis of institutional political representation, housing crisis and deterioration of urban public spaces, etc. ‘We’ are confronted with burning questions and pressing problems, which is why ‘we’ urgently need solutions. The urgency of the matter, however, should not keep us from asking questions about these questions and from problematizing these problems: who is the ‘we’ that senses the urgency? Who identifies the problems and prescribes the terms to formulate them? Let us rephrase these objections, shifting the focus from emphasising subjects and actors to a more conceptual point relating to political investments of architecture, urban planning and practice. The problems listed above differ in their very nature according to their respective articulations, and thus call for different solutions: is the urgent problem of economic injustice the gap between rich and poor (global) populations’ shares of the common wealth? Or is the problem seen to lie in the fact that not only ‘hard-working citizens’, but also migrants receive social security benefits? The latter understanding, of course, corresponds to the way in which today’s nationalist populist Right tries to appropriate justice-oriented criticisms of capitalist inequality, turning equality’s universalism on its head through increased, resentment-driven discrimination. When we say ‘climate crisis’, are we talking about the rule of industrial capital over ecological agendas? Or are we celebrating the down-to-earth local origins of national food production with chauvinist overtones? A key consideration is the fact that problems preconfigure their own solutions. In 1966, Gilles Deleuze (1988: 15–17) points out that a traditional, paternalistic conception of thought has us believe that the thought´s creative

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agency is in finding solutions – while it is, in fact, in the posing of problems that thought makes a difference. This point should not be mistaken for the commonplace statement according to which one wants to ‘raise questions rather than give answers’. A problem is much more than a question: it maps out a field of possible moves in thought and action. Also, Deleuze’s argument is not about denigrating solutions or the impulse of arriving at solutions; rather, the critical evaluation of the way in which a problem is articulated already implies the terms of the solution. Briefly put: solutions do not make problems disappear. At the same time, problems do not present themselves without at least an orientation towards – or a longing for – solutions. This mutual hauntedness of problems and solutions is one possible conceptual approach to the paradoxical entanglement designated by the term [un]grounding – and to the field of politics where it, shall we say, belongs.

Partial Foundations Deleuze’s argument may appear to be tailor-made for debates over creativity in philosophy. However, his critique of solutions is an instance of thought placed in affinity with power relations in society. In this context, Deleuze (ibid. 16) quotes Karl Marx’s expression that “Humanity only sets itself problems that it is capable of solving.” This clearly indicates that, on a conceptual level, too, the problem of problems, and that of solutions and their relationship keeps us closely linked to a political history of struggles (which is what this Marxian bonmot on humanity is all about). Employing a different vocabulary, shortly after (and independently from) Deleuze, during the 1970s, two prominent Marxist architects and theorists voiced their respective criticisms on how architecture focuses on solutions for problems that were predetermined by hegemonic social and discursive powers. Both Giancarlo De Carlo and Manfredo Tafuri take aim at attempts at problem-solving through planning and building that, in their view, thwarts the socio-political agenda they are supposed to serve. With regard to standards for an existential minimum in housing, formally proposed by modernist architects at the 1929 Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Frankfurt, devoted to ‘Minimum Housing’, De Carlo (2005 [1970]: 8) highlights the energy and creativity that architects put into offering innovative solutions to the problem of how administrations, investors and homeowners could squeeze ever smaller apartments and ever more of

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these into housing blocks. His criticism is directed at a context-blind and politically insensitive approach by modernist planners: Even if well-meaning, they work on how to questions instead of asking who would actually benefit from their architectural solutions (e.g. low minimum standards and floorplan size of living space) and at which larger social context their efforts were directed. One might need to caution against ‘joining the game’ (of exploitation) in De Carlo’s argument. A point similar to his is made in Tafuri’s (1980) critique of Red Vienna’s urban planning and housing politics, which governed the city between 1919 and 1934 under Social Democratic rule. According to Tafuri, the Social Democrats were, in an overall reformist policy framework as well as with regards to housing for the wage-working masses, all too eager to remain within the confines of capitalism. From his perspective, instead of maintaining the goal of overall radical change, Red Vienna with its many Gemeindebau social housing super-blocks offered the proletariat homes with a cozy style. To Tafuri, the utopian aspect of Austro Marxist politics and its potential for radical change were sacrificed in favor of stable placements within the capitalist world. In this context, planning and architecture ‘just’ worked on solutions for housing crises (and issues of urban infrastructure) and failed to address more structural problems of mass exploitation. It could be argued that the effects of pacification and bourgeoisization caused by Red Vienna’s giving homes to the exploited might not have been as grave as Tafuri states, given that the organized proletariat of Vienna was the one risking an – unsuccessful – armed uprising against a Fascist take-over of the country.1 But we would rather point to the resonance of these critiques in present contexts before we return to our conceptual take on solutions in urban and spatial planning. De Carlo’s critique of solutions for architectures of existential minima gains traction in today’s multiple housing crises. Today, creative models of “tiny living” for low-income people not only helps to make room in cities for the space-consuming rampages of investment capital, but also sells such spatial self-restrictions as a hip urban lifestyle. Coming back to Red Vienna, fostered by its 2019 centennial, Red Vienna´s urbanist and housing strategies as well as the policies of Vienna´s 2010-2020 Social DemocraticGreen administration are today often cited as a best case example for social housing, restricting the capitalization and privatization of urban space. It is 1

One could say that during the short 1934 civil war, parts of Vienna’s (or Linz’s) working masses felt that with their Gemeindebau and cultural infrastructures, they had something to lose to fascism, yet also something to rely on in their armed struggle.

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ironic that Vienna´s ongoing measures to keep rents affordable are perceived in other cities as radical, almost utopian (e.g. in Berlin, London, Vancouver). Has the antiutopianism that Tafuri once attacked now taken the structural position of Utopia?2 A politics of history has to ‘critically inherit’, highlighting unrealized futures hidden in it, rather than simply transferring what was once present. This approach clings to moments and ideas that constituted the politically emancipatory potential during Red Vienna, but were never realized or hegemonic.3 It clings especially to dispersed articulations of popular self-empowerment and egalitarian universalism running counter to the paternalism and anti-migrant selectivism also manifest in Vienna’s housing policies then and now.4 And yet, the necessity to remain alert towards historical and current instances of racist exclusion and centralist authoritarianism in this model case should not blind us to the fact – and the grandness of the fact – that Red Vienna manifests an instituted and shaped articulation of power wrested away from capital and ‘bourgeois’ ideologies.5 To say it bluntly, one should not be afraid of acknowledging traits of a ‘realized’ counterhegemony.6 With all the very well-justified criticism of building totalities and laying stable foundations – in planning, in politics, in planning politics – the problem of totalities and founding procedures nevertheless remains with us, and remains to be tackled and is still left to be addressed. This is, of course, one of the central points to be made in a theoretical approach to politics that is post-foundationalist rather than foundationalist (i.e., 2

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The same would go for the social reforms of 1970s Social-Democratic governments: seen from our present of neoliberalism allied with nationalism, these projects look daring and radical. Fisher (2014) makes a similar point with respect to unrealized futures, going beyond white heteronormative middle-class subjectivity, inherent in progressive cultural practices of Britain’s 1970s welfare state institutions. We mean the restrictions of access for migrants to Vienna’s social housing, once directed at Slavic immigrants from Eastern Europe, today under the name of Wien-Bonus directed at global refugees and immigrants (cf. Heindl 2020 on the critical inheritance of Red Vienna and the role of radical democracy for planning). The term ideology is somewhat vague – given the Austrian Right´s circa 1930 amalgam of Catholicism, monarchism, Germanic nationalism, corporatism and revanchist militarism, glued together by anti-socialism and anti-Semitism, in the process of shaping themselves in a would-be allencompassing Fascist mode specific to Austria. Our quotation marks and emphases are a way to maintain a distance from identitarian phantasms that accompany conceptions of something fully realized, wholly present.

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oriented towards, or defending the givenness of foundations) or outright antifoundationalist (i.e., seeing every moment of ground gained, form given, definition made as a fall from utopian grace) (Marchart 2010: 59–84). Post-foundational arguments rather come up with statements of the ‘yes, but not really, not fully’ type. For example, saying yes to the realization of socialist planning politics on a city scale, but without embracing the fullness of planning power promised in top-down master plans. Such an emphasis on ‘partiality’ (as distinct from totality) could be construed as weakness. But then, a certain weakness is deliberately played out in post-foundational thought, in opposition to conceptual images of fully embodied strength – or to a macho heroism of going all the way, remaining faithful to Truths at all costs. While undenied weakness, and also the good old notion of self-criticism, mark the ethical aspect of post-foundational understandings of power, subjectivity and togetherness, the entanglements of possibility and impossibility point toward its ontological register. The latter is the level at which the impossibility of founding – for example, an ‘egalitarian city’ – is the same as, or the verso to the recto of the possibility of founding – for example, a Red city as island, a Rebel City as a localized “No” to austerity agendas, a Sanctuary City as welcoming those whom Fortress Europe wants to see vanishing in the sea or in prison-camps. Something´s impossibility is at the same time its possibility – this, of course, is a paradox. This foundational paradox can, however, be rephrased as the full versus the partial, so that the impossibility of full and stable foundations makes for the possibility of ever new partial and provisional foundations. It is this latter provisionality and precariousness which, in a political register, can be reformulated as being ‘in dispute’: a provisional ground is arrived at through struggling over it - it remains disputable by others with a different idea of how to establish this grounding or founding. Being challenged by one´s opposition is not a value in itself in politics, just as building something unstable is not an aim in itself in architecture. Nevertheless, leaving room for unexpected others to pursue their projects and attempts at foundation is a necessity of such conflictual politics. It is insofar that such a politics can be democratic. Which, briefly said, means acknowledging the non-identity of its own formation as well as that of others (ibid. 329–363). And it is radical-democratic insofar as it not just accepts, but deepens, unfolds, potentializes this living politically with non-identities – bearing in mind, however, the democratic, emancipatory value of provisional reliance on identity politics, especially on the part of excluded groups. Just as with foundations, the fact that identities are not

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stably given does not mean one does not have to tackle the concept of identity politically – otherwise, non-identity would achieve its full identity. And, generally, for post-foundationalism, the fact that something does not exist means, more urgently, that you have to live with it.7 So, a post-foundationalist theoretical take on radical democracy is as much about weighing off as counter-balancing. Put in spatial terms, it is about taking positions and then making room for the questioning of these very positions. It involves an unfolding in which extensions – for example, a socialist city plus the critique of its paternalism – become legible as an actualization of its potential. Briefly put, regarding our example of Red Vienna: radical democracy asks one to face, rather than deny historical Red Vienna´s paternalism as well as the singular practices contesting it, and to re-evaluate both of them today. Generally, it asks for a pragmatics of working on solutions in fidelity to problems, not betraying them in favor of solutions – and not betraying them in favor of a super-cool position that can do without solutions.8

Nonsolution: Paradoxes of Nonfulfillment Politics Complimentary to the post-foundational coupling of necessity with impossibility, we want to introduce the quasi-term nonsolution, which condenses much of what we have said so far on the politics of grounding/founding in spite of its impossibility, and the irreducibility of problems to solutions. A word not used often, nonsolution comes up in a para-conceptual role in 1960s writings of Frankfurt-born sociologist, theorist of history and film critic Siegfried Kracauer (cf. Robnik 2014; 2019). With Kracauer – who had studied and briefly practiced architecture, maintaining his interest in buildings throughout his fifty years of writings – we want to discuss a thinker who is compatible in interesting ways with the (different) post-Marxisms mentioned before: 1970s critiques of architectural ‘solutionism’ and post-foundationalist 7 8

The latter is a chief point of Derrida’s (2012 [1993]) hauntology: learning to live with those not present. Sticking to merely technical solutions, claiming they do not relate to politics, is a selfdeception: For architecture, remaining outside the game of democratic politics, with its points of contact with movements and institutions, means joining the ranks of those who are currently winning in terms of submitting cities to profits and countries to nationalism.

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democratic theory.9 The currently predominant theories situate Kracauer at the fringes of critical theory, reclaiming him as a founding figure for cultural studies, or rather, their German-language would-be counterpart of Kulturwissenschaften. This results in an underestimation of the political and theoretical dimensions of his writings. Our unpacking of some of his engagements with the term nonsolution aims at regaining some of the political Kracauer – or Kracauers, given the many fields, in which he wrote before and after his escape from Nazi Germany to Paris in 1933, and subsequent immigration to New York in 1941. In his last two books, Kracauer implicitly connects nonsolution to a long line of conceptual scenarios pointing in this direction: a solution that is one by not being one – neither a solution nor not-a-solution, but a nonsolution. The wide expansion of meanings, opening up a terrain for arguments of the postfoundational kind, is what turns this word into something akin to a concept. In Kracauer’s 1960 Theory of Film, nonsolution appears in the sub-heading of a work on early U.S. film director D.W. Griffith, who was infamous for his apology for racism in his 1915 Birth of a Nation. It is, however, as an innovator of cinematic mise-en-scene, who standardized montage patterns (still employed today), that Kracauer approaches him and his “admirable nonsolution”. This is how Kracauer (1960: 231) labels Griffith’s practice of “establishing dramatic continuity” while, at the same time, “invariably insert[ing] images which do not just serve to further the action...but retain a degree of independence of the intrigue.” Kracauer (1969: 129) makes the same statement in his 1969 History. This book places film and history – the process and the field of research – in affinity with each other as modes of experience adequate to contingency in social and temporal formations, and to the incommensurability of micro and macro levels of social reality. In order to explain this latter interrelatedness of singular occurrences and overall frameworks in its problematic, yet interminable nature, Kracauer compares it to a “paradoxical relation” between

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With regards to the Left-Socialist non-orthodoxy of Red Vienna´s Austro-Marxism, Kracauer’s conceptual exchanges with his long-time Communist friend philosopher Ernst Bloch – discussing possibilities of a non-economistic Marxism that values non-simultaneity and heterogeneity– could serve as a bridge to Max Adler’s Austro-Marxist position. Around 1930, Adler steered a revolutionary conceptual course between Bolshevism and Social Democracy, with their respective beliefs in the uniformity and irrelevance of revolutions.

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context-oriented images and individuating close-ups in film (ibid. 126). This paradox is what he labels as nonsolution.10 To explore what a nonsolution is and does, Kracauer specifically references a scene from Griffith’s 1917 film Intolerance, with the alternation between a long shot of a courtroom and a close-up of the clasped hands of the worried heroine in the trial´s audience. In the eyes of most viewers, this construction will appear as far from ‘paradoxical’ or exemplifying a nonsolution. Such an alternation of general overviews with particularities within it is an instance of the most normalized mode of organizing cinematic montage. It is, however, this very epitome of a stable form relating parts to a whole, which Kracauer, almost insistently, approaches as something highly precarious, as something on the verge of falling apart under the pressure of internal tensions. What he calls nonsolution is a way of maintaining – in his post-messianic terminology: redeeming – contingency. The latter is non-necessity: the potentiality of being otherwise, in the face of even the most normalized formations. The intrinsically conflictual nature of filmic constructions is carried over from his film theory into his book on history, on the temporality of societies. History, in Kracauer’s approach, is contingency; dealing with it is the bread and butter business of politics. One does not get rid of conflict and internal tensions. Nonsolution tells us this, and more: it also does not get rid of that, a shaped, livable formation in which conflict takes place, which is social, cinematic, architectonic, political. In this respect, it is telling how Kracauer´s nonsolution in film and history was translated into German, namely as “Verzicht auf eine Lösung” – literally “renunciation of a solution”.11 This wording implies that someone, for whatever reason, abstains from a solution to a problem. If we turn to history, where nonsolution is the paradoxical relation of particularities to generalities, the idea that historians, or history itself, would abstain from such relating produces an even stranger result. Seeing nonsolution as abstaining from solutions (as the translation suggests) amounts to claiming that no forms are shaped, no relationships established, no foundations attempted. This would manifest a radical ethics of opting out. In contrast, we propose to concede to nonsolution´s paradoxical, ultimately political aspect. Thus, nonsolution becomes a name for the fact that tension (which is always already there) and conflict (which is 10 11

Self-quoted in History as “non-solution”; we prefer the non-hyphenated way. Only once is nonsolution rendered as Nichtlösung, a word even rarer in German than nonsolution is in English.

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sometimes acute, yet always latent) are the very things that keep particulars and generalities related to each other, keep them from separation, indifference – or from freezing into harmony (which would be the end of history). Conflict enables form(s), or rather, formations. Note that these forms are not about artworks and styles, they are about social matters: cities, architecture and planning, political projects, and movies. Instead of a solution made fully present, but also instead of the absence of a solution (two easy ways out of problems, as it were), Kracauer suggests going for two things at the same time. Nonsolution means to think and tentatively practice both a solution and its non, the fact that it is one by being none. To make this less abstract, and to address political stakes of architecture via nonsolution, it is helpful that Kracauer used similar concepts in connection with building(s), in his Weimar German writings around 1930. There is the strange ‘non’-word Nichterfüllungspolitik (nonfulfillment politics), with which he, as a newspaper reviewer, describes the activities of a clown troupe as they are building a bridge onstage. The clowns´ performance mocks rather than fulfils conventions of work. In Kracauer´s approach, their nonfulfillment is deciphered as an entire politics: a thwarting of norms of rationalized productivity that suggests a different – less exploitative – reality of cooperation. So, there is a sense of a solution in this – the clowns are really building something – but also a nonsolution because they do so nonsensically. Are we then confronted with a performance that short-circuits work and play? This would be a romanticist, easy way out; one which Kracauer blocks by addressing the clowns’ rationality as logics of nonsense: a “strange logic” amounting to practices with names as complicated as “nonfulfillment politics” (Kracauer 2011a [1932]; on nonsense cf. Deleuze 1993 [1969]). Kracauer’s most condensed ‘non’-formulations directly designate the simultaneity of doing and non-doing something, acting and non-acting. In an early Frankfurt essay, before his newspaper writing turned to social criticism, he suggests that intellectuals take a position of “silent waiting and the nondoing of contemplation” –“stille[s] Warten und [das] Nichttun der Einkehr” (Kracauer 2011b [1922]: 371). What interests us about this phrase is not its religious overtone. Spirituality subtracted, this quote is not about quietism, but about a critique of modes of action. Rather than contemplation, the standard translation of Einkehr, Kracauer advocates a turn, a Kehre (albeit a nonHeideggerian one) – specifically, a turn from interiority (in this case: German-idealist interiority) to a perceptive opening up to outside reality. What Kracauer’s early 1920s talk of non-doing and emphatic waiting amounts to (1922 in the now-

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canonic “Those Who Wait”; Kracauer 2011c) is confronting, not disavowing, social contingency. His best-known name for this is realism. Kracauer (1969: 84) states: “Waiting in this sense amounts to a sort of active passivity...”. When he later takes up this motif as the categorical historical attitude towards reality past and present, active passivity becomes his term for not dissolving reality (history) into homogenizing narratives (defining solutions). He advocates for taking positions from which it becomes possible to value that which is heterogeneous in reality. This does not mean embracing anything goes (let alone neo-fascist pseudo-oppositions to neoliberalism): this is made clear by the frequent references to Marx and massempowering social struggles in Kracauer’s History. Also, along with nonsolution, his usage of nondoing, waiting, and active passivity does not amount to a program of doing nothing and letting things be (as exploitative, sexist, racist as they are). Especially Kracauer’s active passivity is often misinterpreted as if he championed ‘passive passivity’. In contrast, active passivity implies a paradox that can be temporalized as a process: a passivity turns out to be active; a surprising activity manifests itself where we would normally expect nothing but passivity. So, in ultimate conceptual condensation, active passivity suggests taking a second look at distributions of power and agency, subordination and possible insubordination, in a given field, be this a way of thinking, a social situation, a historical moment, a political constellation.12 Waiting and nonsolution maintain this grasping of contingency within hierarchy in the other direction, as it were: here, the temporal process is one of things being done, solutions being worked on, to the point at which one stumbles upon something that is not just there, but also not just. A kind of passivity shows up in activity – not as paralysis, rather as waiting, Einkehr, turning one’s head to look twice. One

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Looking at insubordination as well as ‘non’-terms in Kracauer’s writings: In History (Kracauer 1969: 211) he quotes a condensed distinction made by late 19th century historian Jacob Burckhardt: “History is coordinating and hence non-philosophy, philosophy subordinating and hence non-history.” (Burckhardt’s original German wording is – without hyphen – “Nichtphilosophie” and “Nichtgeschichte”). Kracauer’s writing generally sides with history, against the subordination he associates with principle-driven, ahistorical philosophies. His proto-political non-philosophy of history maintains that every subordinating formation contains, however latent, a coordinating dynamic which, when activated, places in a side-by-side relationship (next to each other, on equal footing) that which is and those who are normally separated by hierarchy. Placing coordination against subordination amounts to advocating – less soberly put – insubordination (On these Kracauerian concepts, cf. Robnik 2019).

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looks, for instance, at presuppositions of one´s doing, at the violence inflicted by hegemonic powers and what to do about that. Perhaps by attaching a non to a solution. In this way, one arrives at the mapping of dilemmas rather than finding easy ways out.

Nonsolution in Practice: Well-Planned Nonbuilding We experienced this kind of active passivity in 2014, when GABU Heindl Architecture took the commission to contribute a project of public art, Kunst am Bau, to a short-term prison in the Austrian small town of Krems (cf. Heindl 2017). One could argue that cooperating with the regime of punitive incarceration is in itself something to be rejected politically. Choosing, however, to enter into the process of working with – and in – a problematic coercive institution, doing so as an architectural office within the framework of an art project, you find yourself poised between at least two possible solutions a) contribute to ever so slightly improving some living conditions of inmates, which could end up in beautification that exudes an unequivocal Yes to imprisonment; or b) produce a gesture of criticism, perhaps refusal, that runs a high risk of remaining indifferent to the lived reality of those who spend months in there. In the end, the project Draußen im Gefängnis – Out in Prison was a ‘nonsolutional’ attempt to do and undo, ground and unground both approaches. Within the prison´s tiny, empty walking yard, a bambini type soccer field was built, with a soft floor with field lines adequate for several sports activities, however, extending up the wall on one side to highlight the fact that this yard is, with or without soccer field, too small for people to move. Nothing is changed about the specific violence inflicted on inmates´ bodies, materialized by the smallness of the yard (sticking to some cruel notion of existential minimum), and yet, something is changed, because the project makes the yard a little more usable for passing the day (or the much shorter duration of daily yard time allowed for prisoners). Briefly put, the project represented a case of working on improvements of a hegemonic constellation and formulating counter-positions to that very constellation. Instead of self-congratulation for the best nonsolution – which would be a selfcontradiction– the prison yard project should be seen as exemplifying the founding paradox of post-foundational political theory: you cannot, therefore you must. Less pathetically, less individual-ethically, put: grounding a project (architectural or otherwise) in a politicized, thus disputed field is at once im-

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possible and unavoidable. Which, needless to say, does not prescribe this or that specific way of grounding, this or that provisional positioning. It does not tell you what your contribution to a Kunst am Bau project in a prison should be like. It does not even tell you if you should contribute to it or not. Any decision remains as disputable as the concrete shape it takes. What the postfoundational nonsolution orientation rules out, however, is an approach in which you would, ultimately, claim the following: architectural work making inmates’ lives less unlivable would only justify the system submitting them to these conditions; a project displaying the utter unliveability of the situation would be preferable; consequently, there should be no soccer field, only full exposure of the yard’s dismal qualities. Such a position is not far-fetched. A comparable logic is implicit in Tafuri´s criticism of Red Vienna’s bourgeoisization of potentially revolutionary masses by giving them nice housing blocks. This argument could easily be re-phrased as a formula in which edgy, non-cozy architecture equals consciousness of one’s being the wretched of the earth. In terms of this logic, edgy buildings would advance revolutionary politics. This, however, is an aestheticist and ‘maximalist’ short-circuit that has you look out for the Big Break to come, or for Art to lead the way, a way paved with frustration. This is familiar from avant-garde understandings of politics that are not too keen on grappling with uneven, contingent realities, be they their own realities or those of others.13 Kracauer voiced a similar critique of modernist architecture in his 1927 review of an exhibition on Das Neue Bauen (‘The New Construction’), a companion piece to his contemporary famous essay called Mass Ornament. Just like the fragmentized formations of mass culture in rationalized capitalism, the breaking up of once cozy private spaces into functionalist housing was, according to Kracauer (2011d: 638–639), an “ambiguous” phenomenon. It was decipherable as an anticipation of a new, collectivist social order – or as a belated keeping up of everyday culture with the move towards standardized

13

Or those realities that make someone one of the others, or that assemble all the others within someone. Not to mention that people who make such claims on behalf of others, whose environments they find too cozy, tend to spend their own lives in super-beautified environments. If they like their houses, cultural centers and restaurants rough and edgy, then, this is a matter of sophisticated taste from which nothing follows politically (except the need, politely put, to keep their classist contempt for other people’s senses of beauty to themselves).

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anonymity in Taylorized regimes of work and leisure. To Kracauer, modernized architecture, even if it broke with a bourgeois tradition of self-enclosed privacy, carried no guarantee for advancing egalitarian politics. What connects his take on functionalist architecture with his nonsolution theorem is the notion of mourning: the building’s façades, polished by chopping off the decorations should be read as signs of mourning over an enforced asceticism. This very mourning, he continues, should be understood as the negative testimonial to a utopian plenitude to come: an emancipated society, in which decorations would be adequate rather than class demarcations. Around 1930, Kracauer also uses this ‘mourning as utopian testimonial’ concept with respect to the problem of social justice. Progressing from observations in a dismal employment office as well as from his immanent reading of white-collar workers’ habitus (Kracauer 1998 [1930]: 106), he writes that, in the present situation, collectivity mostly manifests as something uniformed, forgetful of the individual in her or his vulnerability and mortality – especially in Socialist mass movements. And yet, a kind of justice geared to collectivity is absolutely preferable to the hegemonic conception of justice tailor-made for the individual in his (mostly his) bourgeois aggregate as the proprietor of a tough, normalized self. Kracauer (2011e [1930]) – himself a renowned staff-writer of a liberal newspaper – calls for solidarity with an existing collective political project that struggles for a less exclusive justice. And yet, this solidarity is framed by mourning, which is the signature of collective justice´s provisional character (ibid.). Such a solidarity with the masses in uniforms is as mandatory as it is in mourning, thus pointing at a selfhood beyond property. This also is a trait of Kracauerian nonsolution. Let us once more place this in affinity with practical experiences in the politics of planning and architecture. In 2014, as a result of a competition run by Vienna’s city administration who were searching for guidelines to the development of the inner-city riverbanks of the Donaukanal, the Danube Channel, GABU Heindl Architecture together with architect Susan Kraupp drew up a nonbuilding plan (Nichtbebauungsplan).14 The purpose of the peculiarly named plan was to ease the pressure exerted by investors upon the public space of

14

The rare German wording Nichtbebauung, Nichtbauen immediately seems to carry over into political struggles over planning: Katrin Lompscher, Berlin’s Left-wing Senator for Urban Development and Housing, is polemically labelled “Nichtbausenatorin” by opponents close to investors and houseowners afraid of lower rent limits. (Baumann 2019: 32)

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Donaukanal, which during the last fifteen years had turned from wasteland into a hip subcultural, and then massified recreational area with numerous restaurants and ‘urban beaches’. The nonbuilding plan was written to restrict capitalist expansionism, protecting the remaining non-commercialized inner-city riverbanks. An architectural plan for not building is the first aspect of nonsolution in this ongoing project; it hints at nonfulfillment politics. Its second nonsolution aspect is the insertion of hesitation into an otherwise free-ranging process of investors appropriating this area and expelling people with low purchase power. This hesitation, as passivity, involves buying time for others´ activity, for counter-hegemonic forces to become articulated. Which is exactly what happened: in 2015, Donaucanale für Alle, a protest movement defending the last remaining horizontal inner-city meadows against a restaurant project, referred to the nonbuilding plan as supporting their agenda (i.e., keeping that area for people sitting, lying, playing for free). Schematically put, in this political constellation, with the character of a chance encounter, the conflictual, radical democratic potential of the plan was actualized après coup. The plan could have remained an administrative technical tool15 , but it was politicized through the popular agency of a situated movement. Two final nonsolutional, post-foundational points. Obviously, it makes a difference whether a plan supports investors in taking over urban space or tries to block such a kind of takeover; up to the degree that there is a sort of hinge in the plan that hopes and calls for its activation by urban social movements. Radical democratic architectural practice intends to provide for contact zones with urban social movements, or to work in alliance with them. Also, the fact that there is a precise plan in the first place – the nonbuilding plan was drawn as precise as one resulting in buildings – has a proto-political dimension in our times of neoliberal flexibilism. Think of how plans and publicly defined generalizing laws are targeted by deregulation propaganda, which describes them as unsuited to the needs of a lively capitalist economy, thus strangling the tender blossoms of investment.16 A clearly defined, publicized plan, on the other hand, positions itself as an object – and a site – for

15 16

Vienna authorities (who partly had expected a more investor-friendly plan) merely formally “acknowledged” it, thus limiting its legally binding power. The deregulation-happy non-plan movement in 1970s anti-masterplan architecture would be one of the starting points of this process of neoliberalization (which, for that matter, is quickly making its peace with neofascist and nationalist-populist politics bent on hollowing out human and civil rights).

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dispute. It maintains, through and beyond the sphere of law, a contact zone with issues of universal egalitarian justice at a time when ethics of capital and governments are to ‘get things done quickly’, which means wanting to get rid of them. Architecture and planning take their positions in this context along the lines of the double meaning of just architecture. On the one hand, architecture tries to maintain a relationship with justice as a political category: not because architecture mistakes itself for an expert discipline in moral philosophy, but because it takes part in the questioning of the hegemonic order in the face of massive injustices (in wealth distribution, gender relationships, global economics, etc.).17 On the other hand – and countering the pathos of the claim just made – architecture is, of course, ‘just’ architecture, only architecture. In matters of politics, it definitely is nothing close to everything, and it has in most cases rightly given up its pretensions to grandeur in grounding or shaping the whole of social life. But then again, architecture is, in political matters, also not nothing; and it certainly is not something in itself. This means that architecture should not bother too much about its ‘interiority’, or whatever label one applies to quests for the discipline’s identity. If there is something like a self-questioning of architecture today, then such an ethical gesture should not result in the solutionism of happily regained ‘fundamentals’ or essentials. Rather – along Kracauer’s lines of Einkehr as a turn towards outside reality – it should pose the problem of how to take a position in contingent realities: how to remain sensitive to their ‘histories’ past and present, and how to turn political chance encounters into strategic alliances. In the 1923 newspaper article The Architects’ Trade in Distress, Kracauer gives us a wonderfully condensed, oddly dynamic version of the double meaning of just architecture with its affinity for nonsolution. He writes (2011f: 567; own translation): architects are not so much mediators between things as, for instance, the tradesman [Kaufmann] is. Rather, they think in the things themselves and put their efforts into their shaping. Their activity does not immediately found [stiftet] relationships between people, but it amounts to creating the spaces that people live in, and it establishes the relationships that prove to be necessary between one space und the other [zwischen Raum und Raum].

17

In this respect, nonsolutional critique echoes in the reference to justice as deconstruction of power regimes in Derrida’s (2012 [1993]) ‘spectral’ post-Marxism.

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At first, this passage reads as if it cautioned against self-misunderstandings: architects are not politicians or social/economic engineers whose activity founds the whole of social relationships; rather, architects establish spaces and spatial relationships of society. But then, this is an innocently phrased paradox, in which the political agenda expelled through the front door reenters through the back door of spatial relationships: how do you work on relationships between people’s spaces without working on relationships between people? In Kracauer’s time when state-communist and fascist politics, and also capitalist rationalization, began to show their firm grip upon populations, his proposition is one of architectural politics, however one without maximalist pretensions, and also distinct from the ‘market’ (the ‘tradesman’ or -woman). Architecture “thinks in things”, neither marketing nor subsuming them.18 Politically, it acts indirectly, and in a radical democratic perspective, it does so in alliances with other groups, movements, activities – and, yes, sometimes in cooperation with political institutions (e.g., trade unions, city governments, party initiatives), as long as they adhere to democratic standards and allow for planning and building that helps, however gradually, to expand egalitarian room for play. Instead of being so purist as to insist on never working with institutions, we opt for nonsolutions. Not least, the problem of institutions is also how to institutionalize, put on a somewhat regular basis, the alliance of architects with social and political movements. In our planning work during recent years for counter-hegemonic collective housing initiatives in Vienna – an intersectional one-kitchen-house for LGBTQ people with and without wheelchairs, with and without migration backgrounds; a rebuilding for LGBTQ cultural and housing center Türkis Rosa Lila Villa; a housing and working area for anarchist/communist Baugruppe SchloR – one issue becomes salient: the radical democratic and nonsolutional impossibility to fully occupy or ground, but also to fully avoid or unground, the position of the architect as knowing expert. This brings up, once more, an ambiguous ethics of self-estrangement. One has to question the identity one is assigned by existing hierarchies, and, at the same time, face the limits of such questioning. And it is one of the cases that show that architecture is just (only) architecture and that it is connected to an outside; which does not eo ipso mean that it is in alliances. Architecture’s affinities with politics, especially radical

18

This is an early formulation of Kracauer’s idea that thinking reality historically (i.e., politically), means “to think through things, not above them.” (1969: 192; cf. Heindl 2018)

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democratic politics, remains contingent, without guarantees, ungrounded. This is why one has to work on them even more.

References Baumann, Birgit (2019): “Linke Ostfrau lehrt Vermieter das Fürchten.” In: Der Standard 32. De Carlo, Giancarlo (2005) [1970]: “Architecture’s public.” In: Blundell-Jones, Peter/Petrescu, Doina/Till, Jeremy (eds.), Architecture and Participation, New York: Spon Press, pp. 3-18. Deleuze, Gilles (1988) [1966]: Bergsonism, New York: Zone. Deleuze, Gilles (1993) [1969]: The Logic of Sense, New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques (2012) [1993]: Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, London and New York: Routledge. Fisher, Mark (2014): Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Hants: Zero. Heindl, Gabu (2017): “Out in Prison: Taking the Case of Spatial Rights to a Prison Court(yard).” In: Petrescu, Doina/Trogal, Kim (eds.), Social (Re)Production of Architecture, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 67-73. Heindl, Gabu (2018): “Zwischen Raum und Raum: Mit Siegfried Kracauer über gleichwertige Dinge, alltägliche Architektur und Kino als demokratische Öffentlichkeit.” In: Groß, Bernhard/Öhner, Vrääth/Robnik, Drehli (eds.), Film und Gesellschaft denken mit Siegfried Kracauer, Vienna and Berlin: Turia + Kant, pp. 62-69. Heindl, Gabu (2020): Stadtkonflikte: Radikale Demokratie in Architektur und Stadtplanung, Vienna: Mandelbaum. Kracauer, Siegfried (1960): Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Princeton and New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Kracauer, Siegfried (1969): History: The Last Things Before the Last, New York: Oxford University Press. Kracauer, Siegfried (1998) [1930]: The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, London and New York: Verso. Kracauer, Siegfried (2011a) [1932]: “Akrobat – schöön.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.4, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 244-249.

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Kracauer, Siegfried (2011b) [1922]: “Deutscher Geist und deutsche Wirklichkeit.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.1, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 363-372. Kracauer, Siegfried (2011c) [1922]: “Die Wartenden.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.1, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 383-394. Kracauer, Siegfried (2011d) [1927]: “Das neue Bauen. Zur Stuttgarter Werkbund-Ausstellung ‘Die Wohnung’.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.2, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 632-639. Kracauer, Siegfried (2011e) [1930]: “Über Arbeitsnachweise: Konstruktion eines Raumes.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.3, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 249-257. Kracauer, Siegfried (2011f) [1923]: “Die Notlage des Architektenstandes.” In: Kracauer: Werke 5.1, Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 565-571. Marchart, Oliver (2010): Die politische Differenz: Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Robnik, Drehli (2014): “Reading/Reclaiming/Recovering Kracauer’s Film Thinking of Nonsolution within Postfoundationalist Political Theory.” Paper at Conference Where Is Frankfurt Now? Critical Theory and Media Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt. www.academia.edu/9816237. Robnik, Drehli (2019): “DemoKRACy: Siegfried Kracauers Film-Theorie als Politik der nonsolution.” In: Biebl, Sabine/Lethen, Helmut/von Moltke, Johannes (eds.), Siegfried Kracauers Grenzgänge: Zur Rettung des Realen, Frankfurt and New York: Campus, pp. 203-216. Tafuri, Manfredo (1980): Vienna rossa: La politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista 1919-1930, Milan: Electa.

Politicizing Air: On the Political Effects of Spatial Imagination Anneleen Kenis and Matthias Lievens

Introduction: “The Whole Thing Moves Around”1 Air is invisible, though it has very real effects on our health and on the natural and built environment. Air is intangible, but that does not mean it is immaterial. Air’s components and pollutants are situated on the microscale, though effects can be observed on a macroscale. Air (and its pollution) are both natural and human-made. Air is hybrid, but its hybridity does not speak to us immediately. Air is untouchable though we are touched by it all the time. Air is often forgotten in social or academic discourse (Buzzelli 2008; Heynen 2013), though we cannot live for longer than a few minutes without it. Air is seldom the direct object of planning and policy decisions. Still, the latter can have decisive consequences for the composition of air. Air’s components interact and create new substances producing effects up to thousands of kilometers away from where they were initially formed. Air is extremely mobile and transgresses national borders. Bad air’s effects are often as invisible as its causes. Adverse health outcomes appear suddenly, as a result of the invisible build-up of exposure over time. Air does not differentiate between rich and poor, black, and white, men and women. Yet, “unequal power relations are as likely to be ‘inscribed’ in the air…as they are to be ‘embedded’ in the land” (Bryant 1998: 89). In other words, air is a strange object. Air pollution is represented as composed of layers of natural and human-made pollution issuing from transboundary, national, urban and street level origins. It emerges from sources

1

Quotes are taken from in-depth interviews we conducted with 30 campaigners, policy makers and atmospheric scientists in London in Spring 2017.

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as variable as agriculture, traffic, industry, building works and heating. Pollutants behave in a wide variety of ways: mixing, (re)activating or deactivating each other, dispersing or finding (through sedimentation) – more or less easily – their way to the ground again. Interestingly, popular discourse on air pollution is very much built around its chemical components and therefore appears to stay remarkably close to a scientific understanding of air. However, this should not blind us to the discursive process that inevitably takes place in the translation from chemical composition to political construct. Air pollution does not put itself on the political agenda. A whole range of actors, from atmospheric scientists to policy makers, air pollution activists and physicians, are involved in giving air and its pollution tangibility or visibility (Kenis 2020). However, popular understandings of air often fail to take heed of this translation and the inclusions and exclusions that it involves. What we are left with are artefacts like Particulate Matter (PM) or Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ) around which citizens are mobilized. This chapter investigates how these artefacts operate in political discourse, unpacking the meanings and imaginaries attached to these constructs, analyzing the strategies through which they are mobilized, and emphasizing the spatial dimensions of their construction. The focus is on how specific ways of spatially imagining air contribute to its (de)politicization. In his article ‘Space as a mode of political thinking’ Mustafa Dikeç (2012) argues that “different spatial imaginaries inform different understandings of politics.” This chapter reframes the question and asks what kind of spatial imaginaries facilitate processes of (de)politicization, focusing on the construction of bad air and its mobilization in London in 2014-2018, a period when the issue was particularly salient in the city (Kenis/Barratt forthcoming). In the first instance, we outline the theoretical rationale for this question, showing the limits of Laclau’s framework for understanding the role of the spatial in politicizing air, and exploring Sartre’s social and political theory for adequate conceptual tools. Subsequently, we illustrate our argument by exploring the shift in focus, amongst campaign groups, from climate change to urban air pollution in London in the period 2014-2018. Victories in the air pollution struggle, it was conjectured, would not only be easier to achieve, they would also indirectly benefit the climate struggle. Our argument is that the successful dynamics of mobilization and politicization around air pollution in London can at least partly be explained by the specific ways in which air pollution was spatially imagined or represented. The empirical argument is

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based on participant observation in the work of atmospheric scientists, indepth interviews with air pollution campaigners, scientists and policy makers, focus groups with primary school kids and teachers, and participation in dozens of seminars, conferences and debates.

Politicizing What Escapes Us Inspired by the work of Husserl (1970), Laclau developed an understanding of the social as grounded in acts of political institution whose very contingency can be forgotten as a result of processes of sedimentation and routinization (Laclau 1990; 1994; 1996). The key question then becomes how the original moment of political institution can be reactivated. Marchart (2018) underlines that this requires new struggles. That does not mean that old fault lines and antagonisms are simply reproduced: new fault lines can reopen the contingent and political nature of the social and repoliticize it as they make the lack of ultimate ground of the social visible. Importantly, in this approach, the social, as sedimented, is understood as discourse, a complex structure of relations between elements which acquire meaning as a result of these relations. Because of this particular understanding of the social, it is possible to cartographically map it, Marchart has argued: “social objectivity is by nature spatial” (cf. Marchart in this volume). As he writes in Thinking Antagonism (2018: 95): the social can…be defined as a relationally articulated spatial structure whose original institution resulted from an act of radical negativity (i.e. antagonism) which later became forgotten, but in any moment can be reactivated through the experience of dislocation, i.e. time. The resulting ‘maps’ are spatial representations of discourse or discursive structure. The reactivation of the moment of political institution through new forms of antagonism can also be represented in spatial terms: us ‘here’ versus them ‘there’. In his analysis of populism, for example, Laclau (2005) provides a series of spatially configured ‘mappings’ of relations of equivalence and difference between the relevant discursive elements. Laclau is adamant that the institution of the social cannot be reactivated as a whole at once. Politicization requires the construction of a kind of relief in the social, which can be understood in spatial terms. Laclau’s notion of the equivalential chain is key in this regard: it demarcates a rupture in the social space.

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This chapter investigates to what extent the differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ requires certain forms of spatial imagination. Whereas Marchart argues that the social is a structure that can be cartographically mapped, we will investigate how cartographical mapping or imagination facilitates processes of politicization. The complex relation between air, the political and space, however, confronts us with certain limits of the discourse-theoretical approach of Laclau, Mouffe, and Marchart (originally formulated in Laclau/Mouffe 2001). The very generic and formal mode of conceptualization of discourse theory does not provide sufficiently precise conceptual tools to understand the specific challenges which the politicization of air entails. Admittedly, the social structures causing air pollution can be understood as politically instituted and sedimented. However, ‘bad’ air as such is a different matter. Air pollution is at best an unintended consequence of processes of institution and sedimentation. There is a spatiality of air pollution and its distribution which seems to escape the spatiality of discourse. This confronts us with the need to look beyond Laclau, Mouffe and Marchart, for an alternative or amended account of ‘institution’. Sartre’s analysis of how human praxis constitutes the social (Sartre 2004; 2006), which, like Laclau’s account, has its roots in a creative appropriation of Husserl, provides a fruitful starting point. Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason can be read as an early formulation of post-foundational insights. Sartre theorizes the social through the concept of the ‘practico-inert’, which is the complex structure of worked matter, from the built environment to modes of production, from ideological discourses to political institutions. Sartre understands this concept both spatially and temporally. The practico-inert is a strange kind of structure, because it appears to be moving, it is characterized by divergent temporalities, and includes forms of worked matter (machines, economic systems etc.) which appear as quasianimated: they can absorb or even dominate human freedom. The practicoinert is produced through individual and collective praxis, and praxis establishes an antagonism (potentially only latent) as a result of scarcity. In a finite world, each appropriation and transformation of matter can affect others, even far away, and this effect can be deadly, Sartre stresses. This implies that no praxis can remain innocent. We thus arrive at a theorization of antagonism which is more ‘material’ than the model of discursive exclusion which Laclau and others operate within. Whereas for Laclau every act of institution of the social excludes alternative possibilities and might thus generate antagonisms, for Sartre, every act in principle affects others in a finite, material world, which can thus become an arena of potentially violent antagonism.

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What distinguishes Sartre most significantly from a Laclauian post-foundationalism, however, is his analysis of how the establishment of meaningful social objectivity through praxis can turn against its agent. The social object can get lost or escape us and be transformed into something else: its social meaning can be altered, alienated or lost. Sartre develops a range of concepts to analyse such processes, the most relevant of which in this context is counter-finality (Sartre 2004; Turner 2014). This notion refers to unintended consequences of recurrent acts, which, inscribed in matter, turn against their agents, and thereby undermine their original finality or intention. This counter-finality can have a peculiar spatial dynamic of its own: a praxis on a specific place can have effects somewhere else, for example, and dealing with them then requires specific spatial strategies. Interestingly, Sartre illustrates his argument with a discussion on air pollution. Bad air arguably affects both employers and workers, Sartre suggests: it has an impact on both classes’ health, and represents costs, also for the bourgeoisie. Yet, Sartre analyses how the bourgeoisie refuses “to constitute this effect of industrialisation as a universal counter-finality” and tries to evade it (Sartre 2004: 195). In other words, counter-finality can be interpreted, discursively constructed, and acted upon in different ways: as a threat that affects all people ‘universally’, or as something which certain groups of people can evade through specific strategies, while others cannot. These strategies, Sartre argues, are inherently spatial. The bourgeoisie can go and live outside of polluted neighbourhoods, limiting their exposure to pollution as “the employers merely pass through it” whereas workers live amidst the pollution. It is even through such strategies, Sartre contends, that the bourgeoisie became constituted as a class. Because of its different spatial insertion in society in relation to air pollution, this class became visible as a “special group” (ibid. 195). In combination with the work of Laclau and Marchart, this analysis contains operative tools to analyse the specificity of the strange object that air is, and how it can be politicized. Sartre’s political analysis crucially turns around spatial notions: in daily life, when we are separated from others (Sartre calls this type of social relation the ‘series’), we experience ourselves as in the grips of an anonymous ‘elsewhere’. The emergence of collective struggles (or what we call ‘politicization’) can change this experience and turn this ungraspable ‘elsewhere’ into an identifiable ‘here’ or ‘there’. The power of the state, for example, is ‘there’. It is a visible, and therefore contestable locus of political action. The power of the group (which is Sartre’s term for collective action), in turn, is ‘everywhere’

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(Jameson 1971; Sartre 2004). In an authentic collective action, every individual is empowered, and a specific spatial dynamic emerges whereby everybody appears as the centre of the action. The dynamic of politicization is rooted in such spatial transformations whereby spatial anonymity is overcome and political agents or powers acquire an identifiable location. For example, it is because “the centre of a market is always elsewhere” that the market affects us without us being able to struggle against it and politicize it (ibid. 287). Politicization requires that we can turn this elsewhere into a there: that bank, these multinationals are to blame for our predicament, for example. This transformation of our spatial experience, we contend, requires a process of political discourse construction. The politicization of air certainly involves the re-actualization of the original, contingent moment of the political institution of the social through the staging of new antagonisms. But conceptually framing the issue in such discourse-theoretical terms gives us only part of the answer to the question of how this process of politicization actually happens and what role space plays in this context. Sartre helps us to move towards a more refined understanding. Deciphering the meaning that counter-finality might have for us requires a contingent process of interpretation, which also includes a spatial rearticulation. Is polluted air a ‘universal’ counter-finality which affects us all? Or should we construct it as socially and spatially differentiated, affecting some more than others? Because counter-finality is experienced as not precisely localizable, each attempt to politicize it requires a spatial construction. Making the invisible visible is a question of turning the anonymous ‘elsewhere’ into an identifiable ‘there’. The question, then, is to what extent particular constructions produce a visible opponent.

A Global Thermostat? Climate change comes to us as a series of artefacts: CO2 , 350 ppm (parts per million), 2 degrees Celsius. From 350.org to the 10.10.10 campaign: climate change initiatives tend to put chemical compositions, figures and numbers central in their campaigns. More than ever before, scientific discourse has found its way into broader society. Never was the chemical so close to us. When such representations enter society, they are imprinted with a whole set of meanings and imaginaries. Part of this meaning relates to spatial characteristics, the places where these pollutants have been emitted, how they dis-

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perse, where and on which scales their effects will be experienced, the spatial injustices following from this, and the spatial nature of the struggles to address them. It is our contention that this spatiality is a crucial though often overlooked key to the (de)politicization of environmental questions. The past decade has produced a burgeoning literature on the depoliticization of climate change (cf. Bond et al. 2018; Kenis 2019; Machin 2013; Maeseele 2015; Swyngedouw 2010). This depoliticization is attributed to a whole range of discursive constructions, most importantly the externalization of the enemy in slogans calling us to ‘act on CO2 ’ (Swyngedouw 2010). In such a discourse, ‘we’, humanity as a whole, come to stand against a disembodied and socially externalized enemy. This representation is underpinned by yet another construction, namely the artefact of a global temperature which would be the result of the build-up of a global excess of CO2 (Hulme 2014). In this way, climate change is represented as a global problem, arising from global sources, having global effects and in need of global solutions. However, in actual fact, a global temperature does not exist. This artefact is but the (imperfect) result of a complex calculation of a large number of local temperatures. Moreover, what matters to human beings is not global temperature but local weather phenomena. The lived risk of climate change cannot be grasped through a scientifically constructed number but entails very localized floods, droughts and hurricanes. In other words, an insufficiently understood or theorized aspect of the depoliticization of climate change is that it is precisely the lack of spatial differentiation in the imagination of the issue which leads to the homogenization that informs a typical ‘all together in the struggle against CO2 ’ discourse (Swyngedouw 2010). In the period 2014-2018, we observed a shift of focus amongst environmental campaigners from Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ) causing climate change, to Particulate Matter (PM), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2 ) and to a lesser extent Ozon (O3 ). We contend this is at least partly the result of this experienced failure to generate sufficient political passion and indignation around climate change. Several of our interviewees explained how their pivot to urban air pollution was the result of a strategic search for a focus that could more easily trigger public engagement. Furthermore, the wager was that measures taken to tackle urban air pollution would at once help the struggle against climate change. As a campaigner enthusiastically proclaimed: “It’s much more relevant, it’s happening now, it’s people, it’s much more relevant to talk about.” A spokesperson of another campaign group clarified that

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climate change sometimes seems very abstract, it seems to be what is happing at the polar caps, but air pollution is happening ‘here’ and ‘now’ and you can feel the impacts, and people are concerned about health. So, it is an air pollution campaign, but it is…a climate change campaign for us as well. In the period 2014-2019, an unprecedented mobilization around air pollution took place in London. A variety of action committees – from primary school teachers to nurses and doctors, community workers, parents and business representatives – sprang up like mushrooms, and air pollution was put centrally on the political agenda. While many campaigners, scientists and policy makers explain their success in terms of discursively connecting the issue to personal health, we argue that a subtle spatial dimension has been key to the force of their discourse and the related strategies for mobilization. Uncovering this spatial strategy is crucial to understanding the process of politicization which took place. Importantly, very specific set of pollutants and chemical artefacts, especially PM and NO2 and to a lesser extent O3 and a number of other substances, constituted the focal point of this politicizing dynamic. A typical feature of these pollutants is that their distribution is characterized by specific patterns of spatial differentiation.

Mapping Air The air in London has been bad for decades, but it is only relatively recently that a process of politicization took place which turned bad air into the high stakes of a media-driven political debate (Kenis/Barratt forthcoming), including an intense, agonistic conflict, pitting action groups, civil society organizations and scientists against the government. As an atmospheric scientist, interviewed in spring 2017, verified: “air pollution has had a much higher profile in the last two or three years than…in my whole career. Now, air pollution is big news, especially in London.” Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, there does not seem to be a direct or unilinear link between how bad air quality is and the extent to which people mobilize around the topic. Because of its largely invisible and intangible character, the air can be bad but need not be immediately experienced that way. Furthermore, having legitimate concerns is often not enough to generate a dynamic of politicization. What was it then that turned air into a topic of contention and debate? The discourse theory defended by Laclau, Mouffe and Marchart provides an ontological argument

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showing that new antagonisms can reactivate the original moment of political institution. But the ‘ontic’ question remains: why now, and how precisely? As we will argue, spatial imaginations have played a crucial role in this process. Air pollution, its forms and shapes, its spatial distribution and uneven effects, can be seen as the contingent product, the unforeseeable counter-finality, of human praxis. The power relations “inscribed in the air” (Bryant 1998: 89) have become invisible, however: the temporal and spatial link between originating praxes and resulting bad air has been severed. The reactivation of antagonism therefore requires a work of interpretation and reconstruction, and in relation to air pollution, mapping exercises appear to play a crucial role in this regard. In the period 2014-2018, thousands of citizens have engaged in mapping polluted air in London. Armed with diffusion tubes, they colored London’s street maps with green, yellow and red dots. The importance of these activities is not only, or primarily, that these activities have enabled the production of a more refined picture of the air by involving large groups of citizens in data collection, exemplifying the quick rise of citizen science initiatives during the last decade (Cooper/Lewenstein 2016). Through these activities, participants also started to experience the environment they live in differently, unfortunately mostly in a negative way. As the people we interviewed or spoke with explained, their immediate environment started to appear to them as filthy, unhealthy, bad or something to be avoided. They started to worry about walking along the roadside, about cycling or scootering to work or school, about taking the bus or the underground, and in the end even about exercising or playing in London’s greenery. Some described how they started to observe bodily experiences like coughing and an itching nose, which they did not notice before. As one interviewee described: “I was actually thinking OMG I know this is now breaching the blood-brain barrier and my sinusitis, I can see them going swelling up, which is what NOx does … I made that link much more because I knew what it was doing to my body”. The more involved people became, the more this worry started to make place for feelings of anxiety, anger, frustration and indignation. As we will show in the detailed description that follows, the activity of massively mapping bad air, and all the emotions it triggered, have been key to mobilization. Previous attempts to politicize the air, such as the European Environmental Agency (EEA)’s discursive framing of bad air in terms of the absolute number of deaths per year in Europe and the loss of life expectancy per European citizen, had limited effects. As an atmospheric scientist recalls:

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For a long time, the health community would only support a statement of an average loss of life over the population, and the number was around 6 months and people tended to say ‘well, that doesn’t sound too much, I don’t care about that’. But since…came up with a report that said ‘well for some people it could mean 10 years or whatever, and others may not lose anything at all …’ that changed. Only, the difficulty is we don’t know who they are [laughs]. It was only when the focus shifted to bad air’s differentiated and uneven distribution, and especially to how this distribution could be spatially visualized, that a process of politicization took place. First, the focus shifted from the European to the national and urban scale. London showed up on maps as one of the most polluted cities in the UK. The calculation that 40,000 people would die prematurely because of air pollution in the UK, (9,500 of which in London) attracted a lot of media attention (Kenis/Barratt forthcoming). But the figures did not immediately lead to mobilizations or collective action. As a health advocate explained, the trouble is that “[air pollution] is an invisible killer. It is something that people don’t see happening. You never will have air pollution on your death certificate.” In the years after, the differentiated effects of air pollution came more visibly to the fore. First, awareness grew on how air pollution affects people’s health across a lifespan: from lower birth weight to smaller lung development, from an increased prevalence of asthma to reduced cognitive abilities, from diabetes to dementia, from lung problems to heart failure. Air pollution was no longer about a vague, not clearly identifiable number of deaths, an undefinable elsewhere. It seemed to be ‘everywhere’, in people’s lungs, brains and blood, and ‘everyone’ seemed to be affected by it in a wide variety of ways. Stressing the need for urgent action, an interviewee called out: “can you imagine what that is doing to us?” On the question “do you know someone who died because of air pollution?” the answer was increasingly: “we are all and continuously dying because of air pollution in a certain way.” The spatial imagination of air pollution shifted: from ‘nowhere’ to ‘elsewhere’ to ‘everywhere’. Meanwhile, the question who was affected by air pollution was also answered in a different way. Maps indicated some neighbourhoods were particularly harshly affected. A significant correlation between pollution and deprivation came to the fore (Brook/King 2017). From this point onwards, two tendencies can be distinguished: on the one hand, attempts were made to politicize air pollution along the lines of class

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and race. As Black Lives Matter activists protested during an action blocking London’s City Airport in September 2016, “black people aren’t the first to fly, but they are the first to die.” On the other hand, with an increasing focus on the microlevel of individual streets, buildings and bodies, the mapping of the air became always more refined. The publication of the yearly NO2 values for all primary schools in London in The Guardian in Spring 2017 was crucial in this regard. A wide range of action committees were set up following this revelation. When a nine-year-old girl’s fatal asthma attack was directly linked to local spikes in NO2 and PM10 air pollution’s face became clear (Marshall 2018). Both tendencies mixed up in a dynamic process of mobilization and debate. Figures were published showing how many of the schools exposed to badly polluted air were located in deprived neighbourhoods or areas with a mainly BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) or deprived population (Vaughan 2016). The nine-year-old girl Ella, who died from a fatal asthma attack, lived in one of London’s poor neighbourhoods close to the South Circular road which she walked almost every day. Air pollution was increasingly ‘mapped’ in a socially and spatially highly differentiated way. A double process seemed to be at play. On the one hand, polluted air was everywhere. One could hardly escape from it. It moved around in a barely graspable, yet uneven way. As one interviewee called out angrily: “It’s everywhere. You can’t escape it. Even in the residential areas the pollution is really high.” ‘Background pollution’ became part of the urban dictionary and symbolized the polluted air urban dwellers were trapped in. On the other hand, this ‘everywhere’ was increasingly translated into many different ‘here’s’ and ‘there’s’. By taking sidewalks and avoiding the big streets, particular crossing points or neighbourhoods, people regained at least a little bit of control. Public information campaigns recommended keeping a distance from the street side and transporting babies in a carrier instead of a pushchair to avoid proximity to the exhaust emissions of cars. In this way, the problem was increasingly constructed on the microscale. At the same time, the air became mentally portrayed as multi-layered and differentiated, both horizontally and vertically, in often complex and sometimes surprising and unpredictable ways. New studies showed how trees, that are assumed to purify the air, could actually prevent the pollution from dispersing (DEFRA 2018). Others investigated how pollution levels vary between the ground level, first, second and third floor (Wong 2019). Researchers actively disseminated this growing body of scientific evidence through press releases,

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public lectures and YouTube videos. The highly movable nature of air and the main sources of pollution (most importantly cars), made the picture even more intricate. What was a pollution hotspot one day, was not necessarily so badly affected the next day. As the movement of air can barely be controlled, policy measures were directed at the movement of people. Smog alerts were issued and especially vulnerable people were advised to stay inside. Such measures were not received without controversy. As a campaigner stated: “I think…it is symptomatic…that we have reached the state where people are told not to stay outside. There is a school in Tower Hamlets where during the high pollution episodes the children were told not to go outside and play, you know…it’s absolutely unacceptable when that is what we have to do.” At the same time, the very invisible nature of the ‘ghost’ everyone was talking about started to haunt the public imagination. Who could be trusted in translating the socio-natural artefact of air into a tangible object of debate? The dependence on numbers and figures, or, more broadly, on scientific expertise, models and monitoring devices became contentious. Did the models give an adequate representation of what is in the air? An atmospheric scientist testified how “people claimed that the government deliberately put official monitoring stations in locations that weren’t the most polluted.” Another scientist called such opinions “absurd”, firmly arguing that the science was untinged by politics. It did not make a difference: citizens wanted to see the state of the air with their own eyes. Armed with diffusion tubes, thousands of people took the mapping of bad air into their own hands. New black spots came to the fore, triggering indignation about how the government, or even scientists, had been wrong or misleading. But did these maps, developed through citizen science initiatives, really bring people closer to the truth? Other problems with the ‘data’ came up as well. The initial epidemiological studies were based on correlations between air pollution levels and average morbidity and mortality figures. However, these studies made abstraction from the fact that people do not stay in one place. To understand the problem of air pollution, it was necessary to investigate how and where the movements of people and bad air come together in disadvantageous ways. Spatiality was increasingly understood in a mobile, changing way. Experiments with personal monitoring devices showed how individuals were moving through varying layers of bad air. Coupled with GPS systems, a wide variety of people, including office workers, ambulance drivers, cycle couriers, nursery kids and primary school pupils were tracked 24 hours/day (Barratt 2013).

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Interestingly, whereas citizens understood these projects as producing a more accurate scientific account of air pollution, atmospheric scientists tended to frame these experiments in a more political way: We actually know by now where the air pollution problems are in London. We actually don’t need any more detail and information about air quality, we need to improve it. But it’s engaging, it’s pretty, it’s exciting, so it has its uses, but it must not distract us from the main thing that needs to be done. The possibility to monitor one’s personal exposure opened up new ways of engaging with the air for an increasingly varied range of actors. “Air quality is now so much in the public domain that people see it as a business opportunity rather than a public health challenge”, an atmospheric scientist worried. He explained how “tech companies” were developing personal monitoring devices under the slogan “let’s work together to improve air quality”, while actually these devices do not do much good in this regard. According to him, these instruments merely present an illusion of accuracy. Yet, such warnings did not gain a foothold amongst the public. The devices sold well and helped people – at least imaginarily – to navigate their way through bad air. Avoiding high pollution hot spots was no longer an issue of mere ‘mental’ mapping, the behaviour of NO2 could be artificially tracked, cartographically mapped. At the same time, attempting to navigate bad air, worried citizens got in trouble with the very mobility of air. “The whole thing moves around”, one interviewee called out. Mapping the air is crucial when one aims to make air pollution tangible. Still, the exercise is ultimately impossible and bound to fail. It is an attempt to create a ‘here’, an identifiable spatial entity that always remains contingent, as a map is and will always be an artefact that merely provides a momentary picture. It surely helps to mobilize citizens’ energy, passion and indignation, but it is not without downsides. Citizens got overly concerned with the microscale, the spatially differentiated and partly artificial ‘there’. The mailboxes of health charities and atmospheric scientists started to overflow with emails of anxious citizens. A health campaigner recalls how “a few schools contacted them asking whether they should buy a face mask for the whole group of children.” Even though he was happy that the topic, his life project, was finally on the public agenda, an atmospheric scientists worried: “in the last few months…it just got crazy and it is so high up on the agenda that actually there is a danger of it becoming too alarmist, I think”. As he worried: because of this alarmist appeal there is a risk that

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“actions are taken which are not necessarily scientifically robust … if a lot of time, money and energy is spent on air quality sensors or paint that scrubs the pollution out of the air or bus stops that suck up pollution, that might distract from the really necessary steps about cleaning up effectively.” Furthermore, in this construction of bad air as spatially differentiated, the role of background pollution and of less spatially differentiated pollutants like PM was increasingly ignored. This happens despite the fact that the health effects of PM are scientifically much better known. As a health advocate admitted, it makes sense to focus on NO2 …but we are very aware that the research isn’t as strong on NO2 in terms of the health effects. The PM links are actually much worse for health and the research is just wider and there is more evidence. Yet, it seems that rational, scientific arguments did not matter anymore. PM, O3 and especially NO2 had acquired a social life of their own. As a much more localizable substance, NO2 had become the key pollutant in the public eye, and was increasingly made into a ‘there’, a localizable object of concern. In contrast, PM was perceived as ‘everywhere’, while O3 – a rather unstable and reactive pollutant – was, probably partly because of its ambiguous nature, largely downplayed in public discourse. It is no coincidence that the interest in acquiring a spatially differentiated picture of air pollution went hand in hand with a focus on NO2 . The link was made very explicit in a widely spread citizen-funded advertising campaign with big billboards carrying slogans like ‘Location location lung disease’, ‘The neighbourhood’s gone to the docs’, ‘These houses cost an arm, leg and a lung’, stimulating future house occupants to first check the NO2 levels before they decide to buy or rent a house. As a result of this focus on NO2 , the key culprit was easily identified. NO2 is foremost a by-product of diesel combustion, and what are diesel cars otherwise than highly specific, localizable and moving objects which can be relatively easily banned from the urban space? Whereas London’s engaged citizens were first under the spell of an anonymous ‘elsewhere’, with a focus on diesel cars this became a very localizable ‘there’. In a rearticulation of the spatial imagination of the air, the enemy was no longer elusive but socially internalized: it was no longer an abstract chemical substance somewhere out there, escaping us.

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In principle, agriculture, petrol cars, coal power stations, building works, wood burning or could also have been targets for air pollution campaigns. This shows how politicization remains based on a contingent social construction, although the choice is never completely arbitrary. The point is that some social constructs facilitate processes of politicization and citizen mobilization more easily than others. Spatially locating identifiable sources which generate clear ‘us/them’ distinctions helps a great deal: from ‘Doctors against diesel’ to ‘Mums for lungs’, from ‘Stop Killing Londoners’ to ‘Living streets’, a number of groups took to the streets to demand the banning of diesel, even though targeting diesel cars hardly solves the entire problem, and paradoxically might be even counterproductive in terms of one of the initial goals of many campaigners, namely tackling climate change as well.

Concluding Discussion When confronted with counter-finalities, different attempts to indicate and depict the ‘enemy’ can be more or less successful. They can lead to or hinder processes of politicisation. To use Laclauian terminology, if the social is a spatial structure of relations, politicization is a specific intervention in this spatial structure. In this context, we argue, it is important to distinguish between an abstract conception of the enemy and a concrete dynamic of politicization. A discourse against CO2 as an externalized and abstract enemy does not reconfigure the space of the social in terms which can lead to politicizing us/them distinctions. Mobilization occurs when a discourse establishes socially relevant spatial differentiations, giving ‘a place’ to counter-finality. It is a question of making the invisible visible: the anonymous ‘elsewhere’ should be turned into a ‘here’ or ‘there’. The mobilizations around air pollution made visible that the urban environment is the sedimented result of contingent political choices, and that alternative possibilities exist. As Laclau underlines, politicization means the establishment of discursive relations of equivalence. The crucial question is where to establish the equivalence, in other words, which us and them to construct, where to put the dividing line. With regards to questions relating to air this is difficult, as in principle almost all human activities lead directly or indirectly to the emission of pollutants like CO2 and PM. NO2 is a bit of an exception here as approximately half of the NO2 in the air is the direct result of combustion processes in diesel cars. Furthermore, its spatio-temporal characteristics imply

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that its presence can be mapped very visibly in a spatially differentiated way. Our contention is that the politicization process foregrounded NO2 precisely because the latter can more easily be localized and represented in spatially differentiated ways. In earlier work, we have shown the indeterminacy characterizing the politicization of climate change (Kenis/Lievens 2014). Deciding whether and where to draw dividing lines is not evident. As Laclau and Marchart show, the potential for social conflictuality is ubiquitous and involves contingent processes of construction. Still, the contingent choice of a particular enemy, a particular fault line, a particular us/them distinction is not arbitrary. Moreover, not every attempted construction of a fault line will be successful. Spatial dynamics and imaginations matter in this context. The indications found in Sartre’s work certainly need further elaboration and refinement, but they were helpful in indicating ways to refine our post-foundational understanding of politicization.

References Air pollution information system (2019): Nitrogen Oxides (NOx ), http://www. apis.ac.uk/overview/pollutants/overview_NOx.htm Barratt, Benjamin (2013): “Insights Into Personal Exposure to Air Pollution”. London Air Quality Network Conference, 21st June 2013. Bond, Sophie/Diprose, Gradon/Thomas/Amanda C. (2018): “Contesting Deep Sea Oil: Politicisation – Depoliticisation – Repoliticisation.” In: Environment and Planning C 37/3, pp. 519-538. Brook, Rosie/King, Katie (2017): Updated Analysis of Air Pollution Exposure in London. Report to Greater London Authority. Oxford: Aether. Bryant, Raymond L. (1998): “Power, Knowledge and Political Ecology in the Third World: a Review” In: Progress in Physical Geography 22/1, pp. 79-94. Buzzelli, Michael (2008): “A Political Ecology of Scale in Urban Air Pollution Monitoring”. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33/4, pp. 502-517. Cooper, Caren B./Lewenstein Bruce V. (2016): “Two meanings of citizen science.” In: Cavalier, Darlene (ed.), The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, A series by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Arizona: Arizona State University Press, pp. 51-62.

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Defra (2018): “Impacts of Vegetation on Urban Air Pollution.” https://uk-air.d efra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat09/1807251306_180509_Effects _of_vegetation_on_urban_air_pollution_v12_final.pdf. Dikeç, Mustafa (2012): “Space as a Mode of Political Thinking”. In: Geoforum 43/4, pp. 669-676. European Environment Agency (EEA) (2016): “Air Quality in Europe—2016 Report.” EEA Report No 28. Copenhagen: EEA. Heynen, Nick (2013): “Urban Political Ecology I: The Urban Century.” In: Progress in Human Geography 38/4, pp. 598-604. Hulme, Mike (2014): Can Science Fix Climate Change? A Case Against Climate Engineering, Cambridge: Polity Press. Husserl, Edmund (1970): The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Jameson, Fredric (1971): Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kenis, Anneleen (2019): “Post-politics Contested: Why Multiple Voices on Climate Change do not equal Politicisation”. In: Environment and Planning C 37/5, pp. 831-848. Kenis, Anneleen (2020): “Science, Citizens and Air Pollution: Constructing Environmental (In)justice”. In: Davies, Thom/Mah, Alice (eds.), Toxic Truths: Environmental Justice and Citizen Science in a Post-Truth Age, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 282-300. Kenis, Anneleen/Barratt, Benjamin (forthcoming): “The Role of the Media in Staging Air Pollution: The Controversy on Extreme Air Pollution Along Oxford Street and Other Debates on Poor Air in London.” In: Environment and Planning C, pp. n/a. Kenis, Anneleen/Lievens, Matthias (2014): “Searching for ‘the Political’ in Environmental Politics.” In: Environmental Politics 23/4, pp. 531-548. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (1994): The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (1996): Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (2001): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2005): On Populist Reason, London: Verso. Machin, Amanda (2013): Negotiating Climate Change: Radical Democracy and the Illusion of Consensus, London: Zed Books.

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Maeseele, Pieter (2015): “Beyond the Post-Political Zeitgeist.” In: Hansen, Anders/Cox, Robert (eds.), A Handbook of Environment and Communication, New York: Routledge, pp. 429-443. Marchart, Oliver (2018): Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology after Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marshall, Claire (2018): “Illegal levels of air pollution linked to child’s death.” In: BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-4461264 2. Sartre, Jean-Paul (2004): Critique of Dialectical Reason. Volume 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles, London: Verso. Sartre, Jean-Paul (2006): Critique of Dialectial Reason. Volume II (Unfinished), London: Verso. Swyngedouw, Erik (2010): “Apocalypse forever? Post-Political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change” In: Theory, Culture & Society 27/2-3, pp. 213232. Turner, Christopher (2014): “The Return of Stolen Praxis: Counter-Finality in Sartre’s ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’”. In: Sartre Studies International 20/1, pp. 36-44. Vaughan, Adam (2016): “London’s Black Communities Disproportionately Exposed to Air Pollution – Study.” In: The Guardian, 10 October 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/10/londons-b lack-communities-disproportionately-exposed-to-air-pollution-study. Wong, Paulina et al. (2019): “Vertical Monitoring of Traffic-Related Air Pollution (TRAP) in Urban Street Canyons of Hong Kong.” In: Science of The Total Environment 670, pp. 696-703.

Materialization of Antidiscipline: Small-Scale Post-Foundationalism Using Michel de Certeau’s Clash of Strategies and Tactics Sören Groth

Post-Foundationalism meets Michel de Certeau By the end of the 20th century, Michel de Certeau had already advanced to a “small-scale mantra in geographical writings” (Crang 2000: 136). In the following, a re-reading of de Certeau’s much-noticed spatial assumptions with its underlying terminology – mainly the terms regarding strategies/tactics and place/space – is intended to enrich the vocabulary of post-foundational thinking in respect of his specific spatial understanding. The integration of de Certeau’s spatial thinking into post-foundationalism succeeds with regard to the implicit agreement on the existence of a pluralization of grounds – with the help of thinkers such as Butler (1994) and Marchart (2007; 2010) defined as “contingent” – according to which the ontological status of hegemonic social and political foundations is constantly challenged (see introduction of this volume). Post-foundational thinking – and this is perfectly in line with de Certeau – is fervently opposed to those hegemonic foundational theories that claim that society and politics can be grounded on stable foundations that are indisputable and immune to any revision. At the beginning of the 1990s, Fukuyama (1992) prominently proclaimed “the end of history”, thus predicting the ubiquitous implementation of a capitalist, liberal Western democracy in comparison to the collapse of the planning economist, socialist states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. In the 1980s, the pioneers of neoliberal politics had already engaged with this idea of a world without antagonisms: “There is no alternative” by Thatcher was one of the most powerful slogans of that era to

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proclaim a world without contingency, where henceforth everything would be grounded solely on the Iron Law of the Market. Since the turn of the millennium, however, the post-foundational argument has become visible again with regard to the “renaissance of revolt” (Nachtwey 2018: 163), according to which political foundations, values and principles, on which societies are grounded, become fragile in a world of contingent interests: Worldwide Occupy movements against neoliberal politics and the dismantling of the welfare state, protests against the G20 in Hamburg in 2017, Fridays for Future protests against non-sustainable ways of fossil fuel-based production and living, worldwide solidarity protests against racism and police violence, uprisings against gentrification in large cities and so on. As specific as the demands associated with all these protests of individualized societies with pluralized values may appear, every protest is politicized once it is universally regarded in a “metaphoric condensation” (Žižek 1999: 204) as opposition to the ontological status of hegemonic, foundations. Grounds underlying the hegemonic foundations seem to be more and more rejected. According to Heidegger (1974: 211-213), this means an insufficient ’ratio’, i.e., that these foundations, which are for instance based on the exploitation of nature and human beings, can no longer be well justified in their present form. In this sense, all these new protest movements express the contingent and conflictual character of societies and represent a moment of ungrounding (i.e., challenging, destabilizing, disrupting, disordering and shattering the status quo) with the aim of weakening and/or renegotiating the established hegemonic foundations. Taking this as a starting point, I argue that de Certeau’s spatial considerations of contingency and conflict can further enrich post-foundational thinking. However, his intellectual interests are less focused on the directly visible forms of protest than on the complexly entangled, conflict-laden everyday practices of people. These, however, allow a fleeting reference to the above-mentioned protests. De Certeau (1988) sees manifold everyday practices, which deviate from hegemonic functionalist rationality of the modern world with its inherent prescribed behavioural norms and which elude the mechanisms of discipline. In critical sympathy with Foucault’s explanations in Discipline and Punish (1995 [1975]), de Certeau explains one of his motivations for his work as follows: “If it is true that the grid of ‘discipline’ is everywhere becoming clearer and more extensive, it is all the more urgent to discover how an entire society resists being reduced to it, what popular procedures (also ‘miniscule’ and quotidian) manipulate the mechanisms of

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discipline and conform to them only in order to evade them …” (de Certeau 1988: xiv). In this respect, his focus is decidedly on the tricks, feints and guiles of an “Everyman [sic]” and “Nobody”, an “anti-hero” (ibid. 2) in his/her mundane moments of everyday life. Post-foundationalism should not be averse to this micro-political notion as long as the idea of the political is not overstretched (e.g., by conceptualizing every single behaviour as being political). In order to precisely avoid this problem, de Certeau differentiates between profane ‘practices’ in a general sense and those ‘tactical’ forms of practice as “antidiscipline” (ibid. xv), which always inheres ungrounding moments of transcendence. The following re-reading of de Certeau’s spatial concept has two aims: First, I want to raise awareness of political antagonism in the mundane everyday practices of people and, in so doing, enrich post-foundational thinking with de Certeau’s terminology. Second, I want to illustrate that political antagonism is materialized on a small scale and from there becomes permanent. For this purpose, we return to de Certeaus’s theoretical considerations, and subsequently draw on two empirical case studies from mobility research, which is then reflected in the mirror of post-foundationalism.

Grounding de Certeau’s Spatial Considerations: Strategies and Tactics in Places and Spaces (La/le Politique) The re-reading of de Certeau’s spatial-theoretical considerations in the context of post-foundational thinking refers to only a small excerpt of his œuvre. In the following, I concentrate on his conceptual pairings of ‘strategy/tactics’ and ‘place/space’, which can be found in his main work The Practice of Everyday Life (1988), among others. With this narrowing, an overflowing text exegesis is circumvented; above all, de Certeau did not leave behind a coherent and self-contained ensemble of texts that build on each other and could be assigned to one certain discipline. His texts can rather be understood as figures of thought, which he developed as someone who crosses intellectual frontiers between disciplines (Chartier 1997: 39–40). Stylistically, his working method corresponded to a “deconstructivist ré-écriture” (Füssel 2018: 17) or a “ré-emploi” (Burke 2002: 28); a working style that resembles the “bricolage” by Lévi-Strauss (2000 [1968]), which means solving any problem by means of just available resources instead of the procurement of materials specially designed for the certain problem. De Certeau consistently produced his writings

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– usually in combination with an empirical basis – in critical appreciation of other thinkers, working (or playing) with and within the writings of others. Even in this spirit of disciplinary transcendence, the entry of his reflections into post-foundationalism strikes a harmonious chord. What is prominently discussed in post-foundationalism in terms of ‘political difference’ (Marchart 2007; 2010) – the distinction between politics and the political, or in French la and le politique – exists in de Certeau’s terminology in the distinction between ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ as two forms of spatial practice (1988: 34). While the concept of politics is often associated with powerful efforts to stabilize and establish functional social systems, the political is subject to ungrounding moments, in which fixed institutionalized positions and established foundations are challenged and disturbed. In order to conceptualize such a conflicting field of tension in people’s immediate everyday lives, de Certeau draws on the vocabulary of military science, adapting the distinction between tactics and strategy, introduced by von Clausewitz (1976 [1832]), re-interpreting it for his own purposes, and finally linking it to his spatial-theoretical understanding of place and space. De Certeau understands strategy as “the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution …) can be isolated” (de Certeau 1988: 35–36). He connects this notion of strategy directly with the term place: “[The strategy] postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed.” (ibid.) For de Certeau, the strategy is thus a spatial practice that produces its own place and imposes it on others through an underlying set of rules. This is achieved through the materialized arrangement of manifold elements that are related to each other, delimiting one’s own place in relation to the external surroundings and anticipating particular behaviours (ibid. 117). De Certeau sees the concept of place as a constellation of fixed points that are – in line with a post-foundational understanding of politics – designed for stability. To ensure that the prescribed behaviours are practiced according to the established regulations, place is subject to the panoptic principle of disciplining in reference to Foucault (1995 [1975]: 202–203): “Foucault discerns … the miniscule and ubiquitously reproduced move of ‘gridding’ (quadriller) a visible space in such a way as to make its occupants available for observation and ‘information’” (de Certeau 1988: 46–47) The strategy as a panoptical

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practice ensures that external forces are transformed into objects that can be observed, measured, controlled and incorporated into one’s own perspective. The strategy has the power to make history by placing the social body under the law of its writing – in the sense of a scriptural order – and in this way to steer social directions into certain rational and functional paths (Zmy 2014: 17–22). De Certeau is not generally concerned with showing how, according to Foucault’s view, a disciplining technology inscribes itself into people’s everyday lives, but rather with bringing to light the everyday, ungrounding practices of trickery that form the network of “antidiscipline” (de Certeau 1988: xv). To this end, de Certeau – in a distanced closeness to Bourdieu’s (2010 [1977]) ethnological studies on hierarchical Kabyle society – de Certeau (1988: 50–60) contrasts the concept of strategy with tactics. For him, tactics are “an art of the weak” (ibid. 37); an everyday action based on calculation, “a calculus which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (ibid. xix). De Certeau states: “The space of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus, it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by law of a foreign power” (ibid. 37). In this case, each place is subject to an infinite range of different tactics. Tactics penetrate the place of the other without being able to fully grasp it and without being able to keep it at a distance. Tactical practices are based on feints and tricks and can only be realized in appropriate opportunities. Concerning this, de Certeau (ibid. xvii) states: In the technocratically constructed, written and functionalized space in which consumers move about, their trajectories form unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths across a space. Although they are composed with the vocabularies of established languages … and although they remain subordinated to the prescribed syntactical forms …, the trajectories trace out the ruses of other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop. In order to be able to take such tactical practices into account within spatialtheoretical mobilities, de Certeau positions space against place and its stabilizing order. Space – arising in the moment of action – stands in contrast to the temporal and destabilizing moment of the elements of a place (ibid. 117). While strategies are primarily aimed at establishing order within place, space encompasses all forms of activities that can be observed on the spot, whereby

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tactics represent a subtle antagonism in the mundane moments of everyday life, an ungrounding practice of the status quo.

(Un)Grounding Spatial Strategies and Tactics: Hegemonic Transport Systems and Tactical Mobility Practices In the following section, I will illustrate de Certeau’s reflections on the being of the spatial clash of strategies (as practices of grounding) and tactics (as practices of ungrounding) by means of two empirical case studies. In this way, on the one hand, de Certeau’s abstract terminologies can be made concrete with regard to non-institutionalized political conflicts in everyday life. On the other hand, the case studies help to sharpen awareness of the small-scale processes of the materialization of non-institutionalized political conflict, which otherwise often remain invisible in the reception of de Certeau. The two case studies have been selected to make evident that the direction of the materialization of political antagonism into the powerfully initiated structures is never one-dimensional, but rather oscillates between strategy and tactics in the political field of tension. I refer to case studies from mobility research – a discipline that is shaped by the “new mobilities paradigm” (Sheller/Urry 2006) and cannot be conceived without the “spatial turn” (Sheller 2017) – in which I am going to explore situations in the field of tension between hegemonic transport systems and tactically driven everyday mobilities of people through the eyes of Certeau and which align with post-foundationalism’s contingent foundations: first, a political (non-institutionalized) clash of strategically organized acceleration practices of cars at the moment of deceleration tactics by walking in the place of the automobile; second, a political (non-institutionalized) clash of strategically organized payment mechanisms for the use of public transport at the moment of tactical fare dodging.

The Art of Walking inside the Place of the Automobile In the first case study, I focus on tactical mobilities of walking in the place of the automobile at a crossroads in Frankfurt/Main, which forced the city to create adaptive planning processes after 2015. An area of tension exists within the metaphorical condensation of this micro-political event, since social-ecologically driven protests are calling for a move away from hegemonic automo-

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bility, which has devastating effects on humans and the environment due to its fossil fuel input and output (e.g., wars over oil, resource shortages, global warming, local air pollution and noise). Given this background of contingent foundations, hegemonic automobility is constantly being challenged, especially with regard to its own place: the car street. In order to illustrate this conflict-laden field of tension de Certeau’s spatial-theoretical assumptions, I proceed as follows: first, by denaturalizing the strategically conceptualized ubiquitous car street, which is grounded on powerful social, economic and political interests; second, by describing ungrounded micro-political tactics at street level using an example in Frankfurt/Main, which illustrates the relevance of contingent foundations in the mondane moments of everyday life; and third, by describing a materialization process of this political antagonism through an adaptive planning reaction of the municipal traffic authority, which reacted to a self-painted zebra crossing. The Car Street: A strategically-initiated Place of the Automobile Drawing on de Certeau, the car street as the place of the automobile can be understood as a historical product of powerful strategies and is not a law of nature. Until the 20th century, the street was a place of various different usages. In addition to many different forms of traffic, the street provided an additional living space for the often-restricted housing conditions or served as a public arena for dialogue, trade and crafts. However, the concept of mixed use was gradually called into question with the emergence of the private automobile at the end of the 19th century. In the beginning, it was a luxury product and was rather perceived as a threat to other types of street use (with regard to the transition process, cf. Geels 2005). However, by the 1920s, and in Germany a bit later, the private automobile began to develop its grounding hegemonic strategy in the context of mass motorization. Here, it was stylized as a central element of democratization and a catalyst for individualization processes (Manderscheid 2014), has hitherto remained an ideal capitalist product of private profit accumulation and capital interests (Wolf 1996) and is – concerning the individual level – strongly stimulates the feelings of its users (Sheller 2004). Against this background, the concept of the street as a mixed-use environment was soon abandoned in order to give the automobile its own place. The central thinkers of functional planning were strongly influenced by the dynamic developments in automobility. They integrated it into their concept

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of the functional city and radically propagated the break with the street as living space. As Le Corbusier (2013 [1925]: 117–125) puts it: Where do all these motors go? To the centre! But there is no proper superficial area available for traffic in the centre. It will have to be created. The existing centres must come down. … We must create another type of street. Henceforth, the ubiquitous highway was supposed to physically connect all small areas of the large city region. In view of the functionally structured, dispersed and distance-intensive settlement structures that are now planned, the private automobile was thus almost granted a sphere of no alternative. For the planned functionally structured, scattered and distance-intensive settlement structures, the automobile was thus provided with a sphere without alternatives: a street where automobiles can circulate unhindered as on a conveyor belt. From now on, guiding principles and traffic laws protected the automobile place from other usages (Manderscheid 2014). The System of Automobility (Urry 2004) expresses the notion of the private automobile as the hegemonic transport mode and mobile backbone of modern living and production practices. Alternatives to private automobility became recessive, were explicitly subordinated to the now dominant role of the automobile and were banned from the streets in order to achieve greater automobility. Everyday Tactics inside the Place of the Automobile Such a coherent narrative regarding the strategic conception of the street neglects the fact that different mobilities are produced in it every day, which – as de Certeau put it in reference to Fernand Deligny – behave like “wandering lines” (1988: 34) in the functionalist rationality of the hierarchically organized street. The conflict in the place of the car with the recessively conceptualized everyday mobilities can be illustrated by using the example of the tactical practices of walking in the car street ‘Hansaallee’ in Frankfurt/Main (Figure 1). While the car street, as the place of the automobile, primarily aims at fixing order, space now includes the tactical practices of walking that can be observed on and across the street outside the prescribed framework of order: After the University of Frankfurt moved from its old campus in the district of Bockenheim to the Westend in the early 2000s, Hansaallee is crossed by the majority of the university’s students and staff every day. On weekdays, during the main lecture periods, approximately 1,000 students commute between the nearest underground station and the campus location within an hour and mostly do not use the prescribed crossings. In doing so, they break the law of the place by

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crossing the car street and thus undermine the strategy of place. Although a traffic light system also exists in the immediate vicinity, its use would involve a counter-intuitive detour so that only a fraction of the pedestrians actually use it. As a result, the automobile mobilities are inevitably brought to a stop, resulting in heavy traffic jams. Due to the large number of pedestrians making their way through the hierarchically organized place, the phenomenon was problematized by the university management, local politicians and the press. While Germany’s highest-circulation daily newspaper spoke in hegemonic terms about a “collapse of traffic” (Schlagenhaufer 2013), the tactically unexpected mobility actually created a moment of political antagonism here. The conflict between hegemonic transport systems and tactically-driven everyday mobilities of pedestrians becomes particularly obvious here because the tactics do not occur singularly or erratically, but in the shape of a rhythm (i.e., repetitively and collectively, thus permanently undermining the strategy). Here, the understanding of tactics according to de Certeau has certain proximities to the rhythm analysis according to Lefebvre (2013 [1992]): While a direct reading of de Certeau refers foremost to the art of individual action, collective and repetitive practice plays a role in this example. For Lefebvre, it is important that rhythms have a temporality and are integrated into existing systems of order by creating – like de Certeau’s tactics – leeway in the place of the other. What is special about this, however, is that it focuses on the everyday constitution of collective mobilities and encompasses a memory that expresses itself in cyclic repetitions. With regard to the case study, it is therefore quite appropriate to speak of a rhythmic tactic. Due to its regularity and the masses of people, this rhythmic tactic – in comparison to individual and unique tactics – has an increased potential to be seen and perceived. In addition, the power of pedestrians arises from their mass, which inevitably brings the automobiles to a stop. A Red Carpet in Honour of Antidiscipline During the main lecture period in the summer of 2015, pedestrians used chalk to create a self-painted zebra crossing at the spot where most people crossed the street. The action was initiated by the project group led by Sören Groth, Jakob Hebsaker and Lucas Pohl (Goth et al. 2017) with the aim of visualizing the conflict on the physical surface of the street and to materialize temporarily the rhythmic tactics of the pedestrians. To this end, pedestrians were informed with flyers – at a greater distance from the crossing – about their role in the action. The chalk was then handed over to the participants a few metres before the designated street

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Figure 1: Rhythmic mobilities on ‘Hansaallee’ in Frankfurt/Main (source: Groth et al. 2017: 261; © 123rf.com)

crossing itself. The positions were chosen in such a way that they could go along both the detour via the traffic light and the direct way across the street. With this temporal materialization of rhythmic tactics, the pedestrians left behind enormous painted traces that increased the visibility and perceptibility of what happens on this street every day (Figure 2). The local press reported on the action and the precarious conditions on Hansaallee so that the Frankfurt Traffic Department reacted with an adaptive planning project at this hot spot in the same year: Initially, a ‘checkerboard pattern’ and later a ‘red carpet’ (two red coloured areas marked on the street) were put in place of the chalk lines to provide information about the possible crossing of pedestrians and thus politically relax the situation (Figure 3). However, this planning act of the city seems rather provocative in that it is subject to an immediate post-foundational gesture that recognizes the conflict between cars and pedestrians on site by making it permanent: Since Aeschylus’ Oresteia in ancient Greece until today, red carpets have been rolled out in honour of political representatives. In the present case the honor goes to the pedestrians inside the place of the car street.

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Figure 2: Zebra crossing made of chalk at Hansaallee in Frankfurt/Main (source: Groth et al. 2017: 262)

Fare-Dodging: The Non-Paying Ghost inside the Place of Public Transportation In the second case study, I explore the political clash between conceptualized mobilities in public transportation (PT), where a fee is prescribed, on the one hand, and tactical mobilities of fare-dodging are practiced, on the other. In the metaphorical condensation of these tactics lies a political antagonism, which is directed against capitalistically organized payment systems and which perhaps even contains a radical counter-concept to them. The formation of this connection is provocative because PT enjoys a mainly positive reputation in hegemonic discourse: PT is directly associated with concepts such as the “Sustainable Mobility Paradigm” (Banister 2008) and, in this sense, is considered to be highly resource-efficient and is a legal requirement in Germany for the equal participation in society on the basis of mobility for everyone. However, since the 1990s, the scriptural order, on which PT is grounded according to welfare state principles, has been replaced by an increasingly neoliberal terminology according to which public infrastruc-

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Figure 3: Adaptive planning ‘red carpet’ at“Hansaallee” in Frankfurt/Main (source: author)

tures should increasingly be secured in public-private partnerships (Folkers 2017). As a consequence, socially and spatially selective supply structures are emerging (Graham/Marvin 2001), which, under control and supervision, are primarily intended to appeal to a financially potent group of recipients, but subsequently forcing social exclusion on the basis of material possibilities for everyday mobility (Lucas 2012). By using de Certeau’s spatial-theoretical assumptions, I explore this second conflict-laden field of tension as follows: first, by processually outlining the grounding modifications of the scriptural order underlying the organization of PT; second, by describing the ungrounding micro-political tactics of fare-dodging for any German city with an extended public transport system by means of vignettes that we generated from situationist practices of

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“la dérive”1 ; and third, by briefly outlining forms of materialization of this conflict that have been applied in recent years in Germany. Towards Profit Maximization Strategies in Public Transportation The place of PT is materialized in a network of railway tracks, stations and stops, the different vehicles (bus/train), marshalling yards and various other elements which are built into it and whose everyday usage is based on a recursively organized set of rules and resources which assume linear mobilities of everyday life. The prescribed use of public transport is – with the exception of some fare-free geographies (Kębłowski 2019) – by purchasing a ticket. In Germany, since the 1960s, ticket ownership for mobilities within the place of PT has usually been ensured by means of a proof-of-payment approach (i.e., a random inspection of tickets at train stations or inside vehicles in openly accessible service structures). The script underlying this place of the PT was always subject to programmatic changes over the course of time. The railway in passenger transport emerged in the course of industrialization and was the necessary mobile prerequisite for the expansion of urban space (Schiller et al. 2010: 26-29). Initially, the capitalistically organized railway operators arranged passenger transport, especially between the expanding cities and the new industrial areas, to transport the masses of workers. Meanwhile, concessions for rail transport in the expanding cities were also granted – initially for simple horse-drawn carriages, for example, and later for electrified transport vehicles – to link the city centres with the suburbs. A nationalisation of the diverse transport companies in the German urban-regional context took place in the 20th century when private profits could hardly be made with the railway and private capital shifted to investments in the private automobile (Wolf 1996: 91–105). Transport companies were merged to form urban-regional transport associations, which meant that from the user’s point of view a coherent network of routes was henceforth available and could be used by buying one single ticket for all modes: the place of PT. In the course

1

Dérive originates from the Situationist context of the 1950s and 1960s and was introduced by the writings of Guy Debord (2009 [1956]). Dérive is a conscious exploration of psycho-geographical effects of urban environments and their hitherto undiscovered possibilities (i.e., the ability to master psycho-geographical variations by understanding and calculating their possibilities). Dérive differs from a simple passive strolling in that it actively explores appropriation processes of the surrounding urban environment within the framework of a constructive play behavior.

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of German post-war modernism, PT was offered under the umbrella of the municipal Daseinsvorsorge – a public service conceptually composed of Dasein (existence) and Vorsorge (provision) – which is still legally secured today by the Social State Principle in the German Grundgesetz (constitutional law). With this scriptural order, an affordable, ubiquitous PT service was supposed to be provided detached from market mechanisms and based on financial subsidies (Gegner/Schwedes 2014). Since the 1990s, however, representatives of neoliberal policies have held the view that state administration of the social state is unable to fulfil the extensive tasks of general well-being and that private companies can perform the tasks of the previously state-run enterprises much more efficiently. This led to the neoliberal correction of the scriptural order that still persists today, which was intended in two respects to modify the contours of the place of PT. First, non-profitable elements were excised. The privatization of Deutsche Bahn in 1998 as a former state-owned company is a prominent example of this development. Following privatization the company was then less committed to following social state principles and looked to maximize profits, which resulted in closing stations and entire track sections. For example, the excision affected the InterRegio network in 2006, which connected the low-frequency regions and medium-sized cities below the mainline services (e.g., ICE, Intercity Express) (Ronneberger et al. 1999: 94–104). Second, ticket prices were substantially increased. In the period from 2000 to 2018, for example, PT at regional level showed with a 79 percent rise the biggest price increases compared to other modes of transport (Statistisches Bundesamt 2018). Efforts to make public transportation market-compliant in the medium term without state subsidies may be one of the main reasons for this. At the same time, critical authors see in this neoliberal corrective a modern rationality, which educates state and soul equally to correspondingly market-conform subjects (cf. Brown 2017: 37–41). The numerous posters in the place of PT with their references to increased fines and the criminal offence of fare-dodging activate those disciplining educational mechanisms by referring to the random possibility of ticket inspection. In addition, panoptical effects are created by the random controls of ticket inspectors who record the personal identity of non-paying delinquents in front of the accompanying audience. As a consequence, however, statistical analyses assume that for many people, especially the socially marginalized, public transportation is increasingly being lost as a mode option (Groth 2019).

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Fare dodging with de Certeau in the carry-on luggage Tactical fare evasion negates the above mentioned statistically derived notions of option losses. With regard to this methodology, de Certeau (1988: xviii) stated that “[s]tatistical investigation remains virtually ignorant” of any deviations. Thus, the assumption of a loss of mode options seems to suggest a sense of unconsciousness towards the ideological price increases, which – as long as this is not uncontrolled, but tactical in the sense of de Certeau – is contradicted in the act of fare dodging. In this spirit, Schwerdtfeger (2019) can find the micropolitical character of fare dodging in direct conversation with fare dodgers in at least two ways: First – passively –, according to which fare dodging is often practiced by socially marginalized persons because of their financial predicament; e.g., in order to be able to satisfy their basic needs within the distance-intensive settlement structures (ibid. 109–110). Second – actively –, according to which fare evasion is often practiced independently of one’s financial liquidity because the high prices are no longer accepted (ibid. 113–115). At this point, discreet references to the above-mentioned larger protest forms arise. The resistance against the capitalist payment systems underlying public transport use through tactical fare dodging is reflected in calculations of the “geometric factor” (von Clausewitz 1976 [1832]: 214) within the place of public transportation. Here, tactics of fare dodging appear as a network of anti-discipline: S/he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, tries to resist the constraints of power; s/he is aware of his/her tactical calculation; s/he becomes the principle of his/her own productivity. This refers to the best possible self-positioning of the fare dodger’s own body within the arrangement of the place-constituting elements and its panoptic mechanisms. This can be exemplified in different phases of the use of public transport as follows: First, mental mobilities in the place of public transportation occur before physical mobilities. Thus, the fare dodging subject is aware of density factors within this place, according to which the crowds at stations, cars of trains or buses varies. This means, for example, that on weekdays within the distanceintensive, functional settlement structures, a high density of people can be observed in cyclical rhythms along the lines from residential areas to workplaces, commuting back and forth. Such moments of mass mobilities might be wisely anticipated. In these moments fare dodgers literally becomes invisible, because it is nearly impossible to control passengers in the densely filled carriages (Figure 4). In the words of de Certeau (1988: 34), fare dodgers appear like “the snowy waves of a sea slipping in among the rocks and defiles into the labyrinths of the established order”.

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Second, the tactical performance of fare dodging is started when directly entering the place of public transportation, for example, a train station or a platform. In many German cities, entering the platform requires the purchase of a ticket and is already subject to the panoptical gesture of the transport companies (e.g., cameras, control personnel). However, here it seems that particularly deviant behaviours are subject to the control and disciplinary mechanisms (this includes mainly homeless people, drug addicts, youth groups). At this stage, the fare dodger appears as an invisible and inconspicuous subject who can make his/her first calculations: S/he creates a spatial overview on the platform by arranging his/her body in this foreign place. Usually, s/he is positioned a little bit to one side; in such a way that s/he can easily spot any control elements (e.g., ticket inspectors in small groups, often uniformed and carrying ticket machines): On the one hand on the platform, on the other in all carriages of the arriving train. Third, inside the train begins the most challenging stage for the fare dodging subject, in which he/she must draw on an extensive repertoire of tactics: S/he arranges her/his body in such a way that the best possible overview of all access points to the transport medium is guaranteed, without certain body twists appearing suspicious to the trained ticket inspectors and which would lead to an immediate check; against the direction of travel of the train in the front compartment of the first carriage behind the first entrance door in order to be able to view all entrances at a good angle and to be able to exit quickly (Figure 5). Without wanting to exhaustively sketch the extensive tactical repertoire of tricks and lists of fare dodging (which is certainly not the aim of this Section), it can be finally emphasized that fare dodgers have accomplices, who in turn act tactically. De Certeau (1988: 25) was aware of the existence of allies. Drawing on the example of factory workers, he identified actions in solidarity in order to “defeat the competition that the factory tries to instil in them” (ibid. 26). Similar scenarios can be observed in the place of PT, for example, where certain groups of people with valid tickets delay control processes by leisurely starting to search for their valid tickets only after being asked to do so. Also, quickly walking away when ticket inspectors appear is practiced by ticket holders in order to provoke a reflex-like control process by the inspectors, which in turn ends up with the delayed presentation of a valid ticket. In this way, getting to the next stop comes closer with each delay. This act of solidarity may seem counter-intuitive, since it is initially incomprehensible why paying passengers should protect non-paying passengers. However,

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it becomes more understandable when privileged groups such as students or employees benefit from low-cost tickets such as semester tickets or job tickets, which in turn are not accessible to socially marginalized groups (homeless people, social welfare recipients, people in precarious employment, etc.).

Figure 4: Tactical Fare-Dodging I: High density carriage (fare dodger coloured black) (source: Paul Helmrich & Sören Groth)

Figure 5: Tactical Fare-Dodging II: Self-positioning of the fare dodger (coloured black) (source: Paul Helmrich & Sören Groth)

Towards closed places of public transportation? The materialization of the spatial clash between the prescribed, normed mobilities and tactical mobilities of fare-dodging within the place of PT seems to be proceeding in the course of neoliberalization policies. Here, however, – unlike in the first case study – it seems that there are hardly any concessions to tactics. On the one hand, many transport associations have increased their fines from €40 to €60 in recent years, which can be seen by the numerous warning stickers and posters as disciplinary measures within the transport modes. In addition to these ’soft’

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materializations, however, there are also signs of a ‘harder’ restructuring of PT in German cities, according to which, for example, the entrances for faredodgers have been closed. In the Hamburg metropolitan region, for example, the obligation to show bus drivers a valid ticket was introduced in 2012. A large sticker with corresponding information was attached to the back door, which is now closed for boarding passengers. As a result, the transport association was praised by the public media for increasing its annual fare revenues by around €6 million (BILD GmbH 2012). Also, the material implementation of platform closures, as found in the repressive systems of cities such as Paris, London, New York, etc. are repeatedly discussed by neoliberalists in German cities, but have not yet found enough support to act upon.

Lessons learnt: Towards Small-Scale Materializations of Political Antagonism In post-foundational thinking, societies find themselves in a permanent “chiaroscuro” (Marchart 2010: 8) – a twilight of certainty and doubt – according to which societal principles, values, foundations are constantly being reinvented, defended, abandoned and (un)grounded in political conflict. What is prominently discussed in post-foundationalism as political difference (la/le politique) exists in de Certeau’s work in the field of tension between strategies and tactics and is discharged spatially on a small, micro-political scale within the framework of everyday practices. In a post-foundational re-reading of de Certeau’s work, strategies can be understood as practices of grounding aimed at stabilization, certainty and order, which powerfully materializes one’s own place with an underlying disciplining set of rules and resources that anticipate certain behaviour. By contrast, tactics form a subtle counterforce. They are spatially produced and represent ungrounding everyday practices. Tactics are soft expressions of political antagonisms that raise doubts, de-fixate prescribed routines, scrutinize traditional positions and thwart consolidated assumptions. Their field of action is the strategically initiated place of the ‘other’. The tactic is the small-scale disruption to which a political moment of transgression, disorder and disruption is inherent, which refers to alternative interests and which, in metaphorical condensation, refers in fleeting proximity to other excluded and rejected foundations of another society.

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The case studies presented exemplify the existence of contingent foundations in the everyday spatial clash of strategies as powerful practices of grounding on the one hand and tactics as subtle practices of ungrounding from the network of antidiscipline on the other. However, a further observation can be made from the case studies: The political antagonism in the mondane moments of everyday life is being materialized as a trace in the place of hegemonic order. It wafts in the background but does not determine the rules of the place. Nonetheless, it perpetuates the conflict with the subtle reference to other interests (and offers insiders a situational reference point for its continuation). However, the case studies show that the directions of micro-political materializations oscillate in the field of tension between strategies and tactics. This is not trivial: On the one hand, the strategy as the practice of grounding could be even more strongly oriented towards enforcing prescribed mobilities underlying the scriptural order more repressively in its own place. For example, the successive closure of entrances into the place of public transportation, including the pervasive warnings of increased sanctions (e.g., by means of notices in all vehicles), which are all material, represent disciplinary measures guided by neoliberal thinking against non-conformist tactics of fare evasion. However, this foundational gesture of harsh material suppression of social alternatives by the representatives of the strategy runs the risk that the once tactically realized forms of protest could turn into violent protests; which are directed not least against the repressive elements within the place of the other (walls, barriers, posters …). On the other hand, the strategy can also move towards the intended tactics as practices of ungrounding. The case study at the crossroads in Frankfurt/Main shows how the everyday conflict-ridden negotiation of street spaces materializes through planning and becomes persistent in the conception of a street. Although the strategy of the street as a place of the automobile is not interrupted here, the planning act, initiated by the intervention, contains the beginnings of a paradigm shift: a subversive detachment from car-centrism, which recognizes, uncovers and permits conflicts between different movements in street space – a quite post-foundational gesture.

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How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilities for Spatial Alternatives? Mohamed Saleh

Introduction Transforming existing systems of domination and instigating their emancipatory potential lies at the core of critical urban scholarship. This transformation should ultimately benefit subaltern groups and identities, whose voices are absent, silenced or unrecognized with regard to matters of the polis. However, the potential of critical urban scholarship to offer these communities practicable alternatives for change is yet to be realized. Critical urban theory simultaneously scrutinizes uneven systems of domination and uncovers possibilities for change within these systems, which could lead to radically emancipatory futures (Brenner 2009). These reflections produce a myriad of theoretical innovations in the form of new vantage points to analyze the world critically, circulating and growing within academic debates on the urban world. Practicable alternatives are those that concretize such theoretical innovations into tangible directions for how to intervene within existing urban conditions with the goal of enhancing the critiqued systems. The shift from diagnostic “into prognostic mode capable of elucidating other possible ways forward” (Fisker et al. 2019: 10) is undeniably a daunting task. This chapter postulates that a lopsided idea of hope about present possibilities for emancipatory urban change is a key barrier for precisely realizing this shift. For example, Swyngedouw (2018) strictly associates the ‘promise’ of potential transformation with the subjects of radical social change. These counter-hegemonic agents or movements, and the insurgent sites they forge, are expected to ground emancipatory struggles in new institutions that rupture and replace the current unequal urban systems. However, the briefness of the ‘moment’ of rupture and the scarcity of counter-hegemonic movements leads to constant disappointment, which then sheds a gloomy

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light on the route to possible ways forward. This inability to find silver linings in the present is a side-effect of an absolutist frame of reference about possible transformation. There is a tendency to lament what is always lacking. A more balanced idea of hope would instead stimulate critical analysis that can locate and nurture what is already unfolding, engaging with the realm of what is contextually possible, and therefore achievable alternatives for emancipatory transformation (Back 2020). Put simply, lopsided hope impedes action, whereas balanced hope might open concrete avenues for political action and change. The introduction of post-foundationalist thought into critical urban scholarship provides theoretical grounds for hope. This lens conceptually emancipates the future from any deterministic assumption that a given dominant social ground could ever go unchallenged (Marchart 2007). In contrast, any ground is always incomplete, cracked (Dikeç/Swyngedouw 2017), and only a ‘temporal fixity’ (Hillier 2005) of meaning and power. Postfoundationalism generates a belief that any radically different alternative is actually within reach. Hence, complementing these arguments with a spatial perspective highlights the tangible whereabouts out of which hopes for potential alternatives might emerge. Such whereabouts are likely to manifest beyond singular ‘moments’ of rupture. Limiting the focus of critical urban analysis to radical forms of ungrounding (e.g., popular protests) contradicts a central post-foundational argument, namely, that ‘the political’ is always happening since it never stops preventing the full realization of any ‘final ground’ (Marchart 2007). If final grounds are unattainable, then where does this latent presence manifest in space beyond radical mobilizations (Grange 2015)? Not being able to answer this question freezes thinking into finding points of departure, which might offer alternatives to established unequal urban conditions, which in turn create barriers to progressive thinking on space. One reason for these thinking barriers is a tendency to maintain strict definitions of the opposing forces of grounding (i.e., politics) and ungrounding (i.e., the political); definitions which may paper over some of the richness of ongoing processes of urban change (Nicholls/Uitermark 2018). Such dualistic thinking reduces the tension between grounding and ungrounding to “a situation of either/or, where there is nothing in-between but a conceptual boundary, no messy practices interrupting this clean sorting principle between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ political practice” (Bylund/Byerley 2015: 140). To counter this sense of ‘analytical hopelessness’ (ibid.), this chapter attempts

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to draw a richer map of the possibilities that lie in-between the opposing forces of grounding and ungrounding. Instead of dualistic thinking, I argue for considering the interface of ground and unground as a third category which generates possibilities for practicable alternatives. Hope for emancipatory alternatives lingers in this generative interface. Discerning these alternatives requires exploring the reciprocal influence between the ‘moment’ of rupture (Swyngedouw 2018) and the messy mo(ve)ments of everyday life (Beveridge/Koch 2019). In particular, public space provides the empirical reference for this exploration, being a key medium for, and a usual site of reinforcing domination or enacting collective alternatives in everyday life. I argue that paying attention to latent possibilities that are already unfolding in public space adds empirical weight to the post-foundational theorizations. Coming to terms with these possibilities and the underexplored category of the interface supports a balanced idea of hope about possible alternatives. The proposition of analytical toolkits for exploring latent possibilities for urban change is the central concern of this chapter. Being able to empirically detect materializations of these possibilities could open the door to critical interventions in urban inequalities. These possibilities refer to existing qualities and capacities of urban spaces that “provide raw materials for growing an alternative” (Harvey 2000: 193). Such materialized possibilities can be seen as signs of future alternatives which are incarnated in the here-andnow (Boudreau 2017), which city-makers could cultivate by shaping sociospatial conditions that augment their existing qualities and capacities (Hillier 2011). Finding these signs supports optimistic city-makers who venture to instigate visionary alternatives which are rooted in present possibilities. This perspective resonates with Harvey’s (2000: 196) ‘spatiotemporal utopianism’, which he suggests as a pragmatic way to revive optimism about the possibility for radically different futures. Forging spatiotemporal utopias, Harvey (2000) explains, requires analytical resources of critique to anchor a sense of hope, while connecting historical path-dependencies with presently available means. Doing that frees our thinking about alternatives from the realms of fantasy (i.e., mirage of radically transformed futures) or nostalgia (i.e., dreaming about the return of past revolutionary glory). Hence, the crucial task becomes knowing where and how to look for the tangible whereabouts out of which hope for alternatives might emerge. The chapter starts by developing suitable analytical vocabulary for discerning the complexity and dynamism of the interface between grounding and ungrounding. As for the ‘where’, drawing on previous empirical research

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in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, the proposed analytics uncover possibilities that unfold in (1) the structural cracks in mechanisms of depoliticization; (2) socio-spatial routines that appear in public space; and (3) encounters between dominant urban boundaries and everyday practices of urban informality. As for the ‘how’, the analytics unpack the interface by focusing on: (1) the non-linear emergence of counter-publics which may include phases of sudden ruptures; (2) the fuzzy overlap between control and self-organization that manifests in everyday routines; and (3) the (un)intentional interventions that animate the becoming of spatial alternatives. Finally, the chapter concludes by recommending three directions for intervention, which could signpost potential alternatives generated through the tension between grounding and ungrounding.

Possibilities of the [Un]Grounded Interface To conceptualize something as ‘interface’ necessarily implies an intermediate zone between significantly different categories. It also involves dynamic interrelations between them. In our case, these categories are dynamic forces which operate in opposing directions, whose influence appears in public space. This perspective avoids dualistic thinking, seeing grounding and ungrounding instead as mutually constitutive forces. As such, I add the bracketed prefix (un) to ground as a way to emphasize this relational view throughout the chapter. On one side, grounding appears through material practices by which a dominant spatial order conditions the possible emergence of alternative orders. By fixating hegemonic functions and institutions in space, these practices establish the boundary between what are licit and illicit usages, and legitimate and illegitimate agents who could alter this boundary. However, attempts at grounding are inherently contingent because a final ground for organizing space is impossible (Marchart 2007). In contrast, ungrounding appears through actions by subaltern groups that open possibilities for alternative spatial orders. By temporarily suspending the established boundary, these actions relentlessly reconfigure and challenge which and whose socio-political practices can manifest in space. Empirically, the (un)grounded interface relates to situations of everyday life in public space. Messy everyday life is always in flux, never fully grounded or ungrounded. The push and pull in the tension field of (un)grounding can be seen as a motor that animates daily processes of urban change. This ten-

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sion keeps urban encounters and routines away from extremes. Instead, they are precariously held at ‘the edge of order and chaos’ (De Roo/Hillier 2016: 152), meaning that they are always moving towards or away from order. To understand the (un)grounded interface, we have to acknowledge the rhythms that characterize such ‘a dynamic world of change’ (De Roo 2018: 28). In this chapter, I focus on the three rhythms of emergence, fuzziness and becoming. Altogether, these rhythms stress the relevance of social practices through which space is constantly (re)produced across time amid the dynamism of everyday life (Massey 2009). Such rhythms are somewhat analogous to the sea currents, indicating a constant back and forth motion between order and chaos. Hence, instigating practicable alternatives requires adequate analytical tools to navigate these currents, so as to ground the expected change in the possibilities that lie dormant in the present. Navigating Possibilities for Alternatives Elucidating the possibilities generated by the (un)grounded interface entails a different idea of spatial alternatives. This difference requires a shift from an ontology of being towards an ontology of becoming (De Roo/Hillier 2016). In an ontology of being, our understanding of alternatives is more likely to be polarized between two extremes. On the one hand, city-makers translate their desired images of a better tomorrow into blueprint visions that should replace a current undesirable situation once implemented. On the other hand, alternatives are anticipated by critical scholars as egalitarian future conditions, in which issues of inequality would finally be transcended, after replacing current hegemonic structures. Both types of alternatives are predefined destinations that, when reached, would ‘solve’ present challenges. This normative understanding of alternatives does not register the ongoing processes of urban change. In contrast, to consider alternatives as processes of becoming allows us to see them not as predefined destinations, but suggestive directions that amplify existing potentials and head towards desirable routes for change (Harvey 2000). They are alternatives-in-motion, anchored in what is already unfolding now. This means that signs of potential alternatives cannot be found at frozen moments in space or time; they are likely to be situated within ongoing processes of discontinuous change (De Roo 2018). Glimmers of potential hope are entangled with the ordinary, scattered, and spontaneous mo(ve)ments of everyday life (Coles 2016), which may gradually provide conditions of possibility for radical mobilizations to emerge (Hou 2020). These mobilizations

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would then manifest as intensified aggregations of such seemingly scattered mo(ve)ments. The diagram of Figure 1 helps visualize the dynamic interrelations between the components of the (un)grounded interface. The top horizontal surface refers to a dominant spatial order which is nevertheless inherently contingent. The cube’s foundation is portrayed as a dotted surface, indicating the radical absence of any final ground for organizing public space. That is due to the inherent omnipresence of ‘the political’. The conjunction between the downward and upward arrows captures the mutually generative interface of (un)grounding forces. The fluctuating surface in-between the arrows represents the dynamic currents of change that animate the messy situations of everyday life. Finally, the floating surface at the bottom illustrates a practicable alternative-in-motion which can be suggested based on a sign of potentiality that unfolds in the present. Following the intention of this chapter to transmit the value of critical theorizations to their potential beneficiaries in practice, this diagram invites urban practitioners (and scholars) who are not familiar with the post-foundational debate to understand its theoretical innovations.

Figure 1: The interrelated components of the (un)grounded interface (source: author)

How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilites for Spatial Alternatives?

To this end, the metaphor to which I appeal is one of city-making as a practice of ‘sailing through possibilities’. The (un)grounded interface is comparable to a sea of possibilities for change, which encompasses both the system-threatening practices, such as “the experimentation during various occupy movements with non-state institutional forms like general assemblies” (Purcell 2016: 395), and the fleeting situations of everyday life, such as urban routines, in which people, for example, unsettle the car-dominated logic of organizing the polis by appropriating a public space to make room for their congregation prayer. Hence, the sailing metaphor is relevant to capture the generative tension of the (un)grounded interface, in which “leaps, shocks and surprises [are] all part of the game, succeeded by periods of temporary stability” (De Roo 2018: 28). Clearly, city-makers cannot tame this sea of discontinuous change, but I argue that they can learn how to navigate its currents using a suitable analytical vocabulary. An invigorated sense of hope about practicable alternatives is a key outcome of this learning. Navigating the generative interface of (un)grounding requires methods that are attuned to the constant emergence, fuzziness, and becoming of socio-spatial mo(ve)ments in public space.

(Un)Grounded Currents: Emergence, Fuzziness and Becoming In this section, three frameworks are proposed for cultivating possibilities for urban transformation by understanding the (un)grounded interface. The frameworks are constructed by enriching the post-foundationalist thinking of Rancière (2009; 2011) with compatible perspectives that relate to the discontinuous nature of urban change. These perspectives encompass non-linear processes of urban self-organization (De Roo 2016); the socio-spatial relations that characterize publicness as a lived experiences (Bourdieu 1996); and the daily influx of urban informality (Bayat 2013). The frameworks shed light on several signs of potential alternatives that unfold in everyday life in Egypt’s public spaces, and which allude to emancipatory patterns that emerged during the revolutionary events of 2011. Applying these frameworks allows for locating signs of potentiality that cause certain spaces to become fields of hope to rekindle emancipatory alternatives. I suggest a threefold approach in order to methodologically detect signs of potentiality which are generated by the currents of (un)grounding. The analysis starts with tracing the processes that have led to present conditions, then

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builds a profound contextual understanding of what is going on in everyday experiences, while keeping an eye on their various trajectories of potential (desirable) futures. This approach draws on Hillier’s (2011) method of ‘strategic navigation’. According to her, four key steps are necessary for operationalizing this method: tracing, mapping, diagramming, and outlining. First, tracing is performed by “looking back retrospectively, often from above, in a systematic manner” (Hillier 2011: 509). The first framework traces the non-linear process through which politicization emerges in the structural cracks of urban systems that actively seek to depoliticize ordinary spaces of urban life. Second, mapping creates a contextual orientation of the forces that might lead to change; and the multiple dimensions through which change may appear and become influential in a given situation. Mapping is adopted in the second and third frameworks. The second framework maps the fuzzy overlap between control and self-organization in urban routines that increases people’s capacity to appropriate public space. The third framework maps the (un)intentional practices that drive the becoming of spatial alternatives through disrupting unjust spatial orders. The outcomes of tracing and mapping are analytical tools that help detect signs of potentiality. Such signs can be seen as anchoring points for certain transformative directions to intervene in urban space. Third, diagramming elucidates a mental picture of the entangled web of generative relations uncovered by tracing and mapping. Diagramming is applied by projecting the outcomes of the three frameworks on the generic diagram of Figure 1. Fourth, outlining explores the potential future trajectories that might emerge out of the forces and relations of the diagram. Outlining is applied by suggesting three practicable alternatives that can enable city-makers to actualize the detected potentials. Non-Linear Emergence of Counter-Publics The (un)grounded interface materializes in the context of urban politics through the tension between practices of depoliticization and politicization. Depoliticization can be roughly defined as dominant systems of governance that condition the possible space for politicization. On the one hand, depoliticization not only forecloses possibilities for alternatives, but also provokes politicization practices to occasionally emerge as ‘insurgent’ counter-responses in public space (Swyngedouw 2018). On the other hand, politicization is not only confined to the rare events of rupture (Grange 2015). Resistance against domination extends beyond rupture, including all practices that invariably disrupt depoliticization in everyday life. Before disruption, practices of politicization develop by going through an in-

How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilites for Spatial Alternatives?

cremental process of experimentation and improvisation (Boudreau 2017). Marginalized citizens gradually learn about the remaining chances for collective actions that lie within the nooks and crannies of their local spatiopolitical context. They develop contingent tactics and strategies, relevant to this specific context (Nicholls/Uitermark 2018). In very rare situations, this process culminates in an event of political rupture during which the political manifests as a systemic disruption. Thus, the rupture event and its buildingup practices in everyday life constitute an ever-present process which constantly emerges across parallel arenas. The exclusionary mechanisms of depoliticization are framed in planning literature using the work of Rancière, who presents ontological categories that view urban politics from an emergent perspective (Boudreau 2017). According to him, the political emerges whenever marginal groups stage their dissent outside the formally designated spaces of politics. This perspective encourages hopes for a persistent return of politicization by pointing out that the political is always active in the ‘friction zones’ (Bylund/Byerley 2015) or ‘rifts and cracks’ (Dikeç/Swyngedouw 2017) of depoliticization. The cracks of depoliticization are constituted by spaces and moments in the gaps of rules in which a range of citizen-led publics manage to escape from state-centered logic of organized politics (Boudreau 2017). These so-called ‘counter-publics’ consist of marginalized social groups who invent alternative modes of oppositional political imaginaries that challenge the status quo (Nicholls/Uitermark 2018: 248). Finding hope in counter-publics requires paying attention to arenas with emancipatory potential that emerge informally beyond the radar of the dominant urban system. However, in Rancière’s (2011) explanation, the political essentially emerges from ‘anywhere’. His ontology does not offer building blocks to dissect the emergence process of the political beyond the rupture event, and does not empirically relate the political to preceding potentialities (Beveridge/Koch 2019). I argue that linking Rancière’s ontology to the notion of self-organization allows for a systematic tracing of the subtle processes of change preceding and following rupture. Urban self-organization, as developed within the complexity theories of cities, offers insights into the structural mechanisms underlying emergent pattern formation (De Roo 2016). Self-organization starts with a mismatch between spaces, places, social interactions on the one hand, and institutional conventions, their structures and functions on the other, resulting in subtle tensions which may trigger a rupture event. The mismatch and rupture are essential pre-conditions for the formation of novel patterns in the cracks of

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dominant structures. First, the mismatch is a small but crucial factor triggering the system to enter a qualitatively different and more dynamic stage of challenging the status quo (De Roo 2016). Hence, the self-organization lens emphasizes that transformative change starts small. This happens when new counter-publics widen an existing crack, transforming it from an ordinary space of social life into a focal site of rejecting the dominant order (Millington 2016). Second, rupture is not understood as an anomaly, but an intrinsic phase of non-linear development (De Roo 2016). The seemingly chaotic state of urban ruptures invigorates the restructuring dynamics in the cracks due to the power vacuum that often accompanies such states (i.e., temporary inefficiency of hegemonic institutions that actively uphold depoliticization). In sum, the aggregate effect of counter-publics that percolate through the cracks may result in a rupture event. Then, the rupture enables the emergence of new political formations which can incrementally transform the system as a whole. In my previous research, self-organization was used as an approach to analytically trace dynamics of urban politics in Egypt from 2002 to 2017. Studying this timeline allowed for situating the political rupture of 2011 in Egypt in its preceding and aftermath conditions that unfolded in the cracks of urban depoliticization (Saleh 2018). The empirical work was conducted to trace the non-linear emergence of counter-publics as they morph into different forms over time, actively shaping and being shaped by local conditions. Before 2011, ‘the political’ did not come from ‘anywhere’; it could be traced back to the crucial factor of advancing the country’s internet connectivity in 2003. The political crystallized in Tahrir square coming out of a period of building potentiality brought about by the spontaneous interactions of marginalized groups within the virtual-urban arena. This arena enabled a re-imagination of how and where politics can be exercised. After 2011, the self-organization lens shows that the political was not limited to the rupture event since the event cascaded into further ‘political sequences’ (Dikeç/Swyngedouw 2017: 10). The continuous efforts of individual citizens to sustain the revolution’s spirit culminated in the emergence of new counter-publics. In particular, a network called Selmyiah illustrates another example of an alternative mode for keeping the political alive by opening up spaces for competing imaginaries to peacefully confront each other. By facilitating situations that emulate the ideals that emerged in Tahrir across their mobile spaces and evolving networks, Selmyiah can (in time) alleviate

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the problems of deep-seated social violence and fragmentation in Egyptian civil society. Fuzziness and Distance in Urban Routines Focusing on the interface implies the absence of ‘pure’ moments, in which grounding or ungrounding can be neatly differentiated. They are simultaneously active, or fuzzy in the lived situations in public space. Fuzziness means it is unrealistic to search for one ‘true’ world that exists out there which can be studied objectively (De Roo 2007). The observable performances and spatial structures together with the intersubjective meanings and stories constitute a comprehensive picture of a given situation. Rancière (2009: 118) affirms this relational perspective by arguing that “it is precisely because things are continuously entangled, because the logic of equality is continuously intertwined with the logic of inequality, that you need criteria to distinguish their principles so as to handle the tangle itself.” For such criteria to handle the simultaneity of (un)grounding in a given context, they should reflect the discontinuous oscillation between order and chaos that characterizes lived situations. Due to this motion, signs of potentialities are likely to be concealed in the intermediate range of mixed manifestations of control and self-organization. Some lived situations in public space are more prone to fuzziness than others. Fuzziness increases when it becomes unclear which meaning of publicness matches what manifests in space. Examples of such situations are urban routines, in which the formal rules are ‘loosened’ (Franck/Stevens 2006) and the boundary between private and public is blurred due to informal practices that alter the official functions of urban spaces. Studying these multivalent situations requires tools that connect the material and immaterial sides of the immediate experience as they manifest in ‘specific situations of action’ (Boudreau 2017), rather than producing generalizable measurements. I argue that the notion of socio-spatial distance is suitable precisely for this task. Distance is understood in a double sense. First, the visible distance between individuated bodies who occupy specific (near and far) locations in space and time (Bourdieu 1996). Second, the invisible distance between social agents who are situated in (inferior or superior) positions that relate them to each other (ibid.). The immediate experience of publicness is both socially constructed and physically performed via distance. That is why the notion of distance is suitable as a relational variable to study the messy dynamics of everyday life, because distance captures the correspondence between the social and spatial dimensions in specific situations of action.

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Spatial distance can be studied by analyzing the visible performances of spontaneous movements of users in public space. This requires exploring how the observable features of space affect the users’ abilities to move in closer or further proximity from each other. Social distance can be studied by analyzing how the behavior of people is shaped by conforming to locally established rules of operation. Conformance-based practices reflect which cultural codes and shared perceptions condition the possible appropriation of space by users. Thus, using the relational notion of socio-spatial distance allows for reflecting on the conjunction between conformance and performance practices, which then illuminate the fuzzy middle between control and self-organization as it becomes visible in everyday life. In my previous research on Cairo’s public spaces, socio-spatial distance proved useful to study the fuzziness of publicness as a lived experience in two prominent urban routines (Saleh et al. forthcoming). The first routine, walking through Tahrir Square, captures the local perception of the distance between the state and its citizens. The second routine, outdoor praying in a narrow street, captures how publicness is experienced when space is informally appropriated for cultural practices. By collecting data in the form of photography and walk-through interviews, it was possible to discern attributes that made the latter routine a fertile ground for potential mo(ve)ments of solidarity and togetherness. In such informal places, the individual actor becomes aware of the possibilities to interact with others in order to form shared conventions, instead of complying with the rules being expressed by formal spaces. However, this routine fosters certain behaviours that shorten the distance between the street’s insiders while increasing distance for outsiders. The moment locals initiate the rituals of prayers, the space is suddenly controlled in a way that estranges outsiders who do not conform​ to certain cultural codes. Thus, the framework of socio-spatial distance illustrates the fuzziness of this urban routine by detecting the simultaneity between self-organization and control. The lens of distance captures how signs of potentiality are concealed in routinized publics that emerge in unexpected spaces in everyday life; spaces that gradually reduce the social and physical barriers between people. This potential was explicitly influential during a decisive day in the Arab Spring events in Egypt: Friday, January 28, 2011. On this day, protesters were able to overcome security agents of the Mubarak regime, ending in the unpredictable occupation of Tahrir. The dedicated activists started to assemble in small groups at fragmented intersections of small streets and alleyways, while being visible to the crowds that fill the streets after Friday’s congregation prayer. In-

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habitants of such narrow spaces are often connected through tight networks of mutual trust and kinship. Hearing the activists chanting revolutionary slogans, neighbors were motivated to join them. The feelings of togetherness and familiarity were empowering, giving protesters confidence to proceed to a larger intersection. Such small groups who were pouring from alleyways gradually aggregated into larger crowds while moving towards Tahrir. (Un)Intentional Becoming of Alternatives The creation of spatial alternatives is not the sole activity of city-makers. The tension between grounding and ungrounding keeps cities in a continuous state of change. This means that alternatives may emerge whether or not city-makers are involved. When citymakers instigate a spatial alternative, they use their intentional creativity: the human capacity to imagine and stimulate ideas for a better reality. Yet, because cities are continuously changing, they acquire a type of immanent creativity (Hillier 2005). That is to say, cities provide immanent opportunities in which an alternative “at least partially, creates itself without purposeful intervention, often developing beyond our control and progressing autonomously despite our intentions” (De Roo 2018: 5). Such autonomously created alternatives are never fully formed in a frozen (present or future) state; they start as unrealized potentials, then progress due to conditions under which some potentials become actualized. Through this lens, it is possible to consider that there are always some alternatives which are already in a state of becoming, implying that hope for change is always around the corner. Hence, by portraying the creation of potential alternatives as something that is already in the making, the logic of becoming invites city-makers to adopt a more humble and nuanced perspective on their creative agency. From this perspective, they may seek to interweave their interventions with alternatives that already unfold as enmeshed parts of present realities. Rancière’s (2011: 6) ‘politics of aesthetics’ help cast a spatial lens on the abstract tension that animates the becoming of alternatives. For him, grounding operates through creating boundaries in public space: “the issue of space has to be thought of in terms of distribution: distribution of places, boundaries of what is in or out, central or peripheral, visible or invisible.” An urban order is dominantly grounded when its spatial boundaries become “the commonsense organization of everyday life” (Dikeç/Swyngedouw 2017: 2). According to Rancière, potential alternatives become actual when these boundaries are radically suspended. During ‘the event’ of the political, citizens make a new common sense visible in public space. This means that hope for alternatives

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is (normatively) expected to be actualized in the future via the ‘extraordinary politics’ that appear during rupture events (ibid.). However, when looking at practices of urban informality in everyday life, one finds that the (un)grounding tension produces situations which continuously oscillate between order and disorder (De Roo 2018), without reaching the extremes of absolute control or rupture. These in-between situations are also part and parcel of alternatives to come. Urban informality fuels the becoming of alternatives. Either in the highly regulated cities of the North or in the post-colonial mega cities of the South, informality is an essential part of urban life which cannot be reduced. Whether through practices of ‘guerilla urbanism’ (Hou 2020) or ‘insurgent urbanism’ (Holston 2009), citizens always find ways to transgress the limits of what is formally allowed to be done in public space. Consequently, some potential alternatives spontaneously emerge due to informal practices by which citizens adjust existing urban orders to suit their daily needs. These practices manifest as atomized encroachments on the dominant boundaries which may seem trivial on their own (Bayat 2013), but their sheer visibility as widespread occurrences create a possibility space that opens up to new alternatives (Lorey 2014). When habitually repeated by many citizens over time, the aggregate effect of these situations appears as normalized patterns of urban informality. Thus, the becoming perspective provides a view of urban informality as a generative field of possibilities for change. On one hand, these patterns keep the possibility space permanently open, providing ample opportunities for the emergence of potential alternatives, some of which may become temporarily actualized during rupture events. On the other hand, city-makers can exert a durable influence by intentionally solidifying ethical potentials which are scattered in everyday life. In my previous research on integrating critical engagements in city-making education, the becoming perspective allowed for developing a framework that helps students critically and creatively engage with issues of urban injustice. The framework enables students to recognize and make use of the possibilities that are constantly generated by urban informality, and how they can exert a justice-aware influence through designed alternatives which are sensitive to the context. Situating the political agency of their interventions in the (un)intentional forces that fuel the becoming trains them to acquire nuanced creativity. Such creativity allows them to balance their desire to transform the future with keen attention to possibilities of change which are already present in the site. The framework integrates the becoming through a stepwise ap-

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proach. It starts with mapping how dominant spatial orders materialize in public spaces as boundary-making practices; then photographing informal encroachments that routinely break these boundaries, and performatively allude to alternative spatial orders. By critically analyzing these maps and photos, students deduce signs of potential alternatives which are opened by practices of urban informality, so they can use them as strategic entry points for their designs. The contextual-relevance of such designs is assured by interweaving the purposeful interventions with emergent alternatives which are starting to materialize as everyday performances. Hence, the framework promotes the education of a generation of conscious city-makers who carefully mind the political implications of their design choices.

Figure 2: The generated possibilities by the (un)grounding currents of change (source: author)

Diagramming The (Un)Grounded Currents The three outlined frameworks represent analytical vectors for anchoring hope for different futures in the tangible signs of potential alternatives that manifest in the here and now; signs that precariously appear in the worldly presence of a wide array of counterpublics, urban routines, and everyday encroachments. These vectors open the door for various productive avenues for delineating concealed potentials in the subtle mo(ve)ments of everyday life; mo(ve)ments through which citizens simultaneously prevent the full closure of dominant spatial orders and enact alternative orders to suit their needs for recognition, assembly and justice.

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The diagram of Figure 2 illustrates how locating the whereabouts of these potentials allows us to navigate the sea of latent possibilities of the (un)grounded interface. Seen through this lens, the proposed frameworks of urban self-organization, socio-spatial distance, and generative urban informality resemble theoretical compasses for exploring this sea of possibilities while being attuned to its emergent, fuzzy and becoming currents of change. In sum, the diagram of Figure 2 supports a balanced idea of hope by providing city-makers with a compass to delineate potential alternatives. This compass can be utilized as a heuristic to productively engage with the (un)grounded interface. Outlining Directions for Alternatives In response to the framework propositions, three spatial alternatives are suggested which provide the conditions of possibility for the potential alternatives to be actualized. First, studying the non-linear emergence of counter-publics in the cracks means that a growing movement is constantly in the making in unexpected spaces of the city. To accommodate these potential movements, city-makers need to create ‘soft spaces’ (Allmendinger 2017: 235), which invite the emergence of publics that celebrate difference or practice non-violent means of expressing dissent. These spaces can take the shape of alternative think-tanks, co-design workshops, or living labs which facilitate community dialogues on the future of their city. Second, studying urban routines through the lens of distance shows that excessive use of order in public space instills the dominance of state-oriented publicness, while public space that allows people (relative) freedom to move and assemble yields situations of people-oriented publicness. Both situations are not mutually exclusive. The problem arises from an imbalance between them. Therefore, city-makers can activate people-oriented publicness by intentionally designing temporal-cultural spaces in which diverse strangers regularly come together around a common interest (e.g., meditation, play, or music). Third, there is a need for a careful empirical understanding of the potentials that lie within practices of urban informality. Based on this understanding, the city-makers’ interventions may lead to promoting potentials that are ethically more acceptable than others. If the informal practices are found to challenge an unjust urban order, city-makers need to amplify the reach of such practices by devising justice-aware interventions that actualize existing possibilities in everyday life.

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Conclusion The interface between grounding and ungrounding was conceptualized as a third category that has remained unexplored in post-foundational debates, and which may renew our hope for the present possibilities that are already unfolding all around us. By unpacking its constitutive components, the (un)grounded interface can be defined as an intermediate zone pregnant with spatio-temporal possibilities, with these possibilities representing alternative futures which are constantly remade from and concealed within situations of everyday life. These latent possibilities offer academic and practical opportunities for enriching the theoretical approaches of post-foundationalism with a spatial perspective. Academically, the two diagrams that illustrate the interrelated components of the (un)grounded interface facilitate scholarship by those who are new to post-foundational thinking; so that they can visually read and benefit from its underlying notions. These diagrams need not be seen as simplifications of reality, but rather as compasses to navigate through possibilities which the (un)grounded interface generates. In turn, this facilitated access may allow the post-foundational debate to branch out and become part of multiple theoretical research agendas. Practically, citymakers can correlate their future visions with signs of alternatives which are rooted and already unfolding in the present (Back 2020). As such, engaging with the latent possibilities of the (un)grounded interface motivates the active pursuit of practicable alternatives. The occurrence of ruptures, breaks, and mismatches is part of the dynamic world of change, in which city-makers are always situated, and to which they desire to contribute positively. These turbulent occurrences are somewhat comparable to the sea storms and tides; their probability cannot be excluded if particular conditions are met. Skilled sailors are always ready with suitable mechanisms to handle them before heading to deep waters. However, unlike sailors, city-makers do not own actual radars to signal incoming turbulence. Instead, this chapter argued that they should take measures to make their interventions strategically ‘go with the flow’ of ongoing processes of change (De Roo/Hillier 2016: 153). Doing so requires city-makers to balance their desire to transform the future with a keen attention to the tensions and rhythms that generate possibilities for change in the present. In particular, this chapter focused on the never-ending tension of (un)grounding, which manifests in public space as tensions between politicization and depoliticization, between self-organization and control, between dominant spatial orders and infor-

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mal practices. These generative nexuses reflect the dynamism and fluidity of meanings that characterize urban life. Accommodating this dynamism in the purposeful interventions of city-makers requires a nuanced empirical understanding of the rhythms through which possibilities for change take shape. By delving into the rhythms of emergence, fuzziness, and becoming, this chapter supports the creative capacity of city-makers to think of alternatives by using an analytical toolkit for cultivating signs of potential alternatives that permeate everyday life. This means that the signs of potential alternatives that unfold in everyday life provide strategic anchoring points for certain directions for intervention that draw on existing possibilities. Interventions that flow with a dynamic world of change are not situations seen in isolation as ‘being’ fully defined, but are coupled with the contextual currents of change and in a state of ‘becoming’. This shift from being to becoming brings at least four ethical responsibilities for progressive city-makers. First, city-making that adopts an ontology of being seeks to steer the possibilities of change to defined alternatives of the ‘good city’ (Allmendinger 2017: 278), whereas the becoming-driven city-making continuously responds to how the city itself is imminently resisting fixation and producing emergent alternatives as a result of people’s self-organization, neverending (un)grounding tensions, and the unfinished boundaries of domination. Second, the lens of becoming keeps us hopeful even when faced with the deadlock of a stable system of inequality. Anchored in the already unfolding possibilities, spatial alternatives can instigate a ‘long frontier’ for change (Harvey 2000: 234). City-makers should not wait or aim for a sudden rupture in the uneven system, but instead intervene with subtle changes that set in motion a steady and gradual transition towards the desired alternatives. Third, to fine-tune the interventions to contextual currents of change, city-makers should analytically observe the subtle ways through which the (un)grounded interface manifests in tangible instances. These instances can be found, for example, in urban pockets of relative autonomy, in which people self-organize to create publics, routines, or patterns of behavior that allude to potential emancipatory alternatives. Fourth, by tracing and mapping the currents of the (un)grounded interface, city-makers can retrospectively analyze conditions in everyday life that catalyzed scattered potentials to be actualized as emancipatory rupture events. Then, city-makers should envision interventions that durably augment these conditions before such temporal political turmoils arise. Such interventions would enable existing possibilities for emancipatory alternatives to gradually culminate in their full potential.

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Put differently, interventions are devised as practicable alternatives which coevolve with the existing possibilities for change. The underlying motivation of this chapter was to raise awareness on the implications of the theoretical lenses we use to view the world through which we have a sense of hope for the future. Taking hope as a departure point in critical urban research leads us to focus not on the power that we do not have, but on the power that we do have. ‘We’ here refers to the optimistic urbanists (Harvey 2000) and pragmatic visionaries (Coles 2016) who dare to think of a radically more emancipatory and just future for cities, but never lose touch with what manifests in the here and now. That is because alternative futures cannot count on abstract notion of an emancipated space (Hillier 2011), but need to be forged by creatively experimenting with actually existing materializations of hope (Back 2020). The future city of hope is constantly remade from and concealed within contingent practices of everyday urban resistance. The good news is that the power that we do have right now, right here is everywhere, if we choose to actively search for it (Purcell 2016), and build analytical tools that enable us to cultivate its overt and covert manifestations. Although this power is always latent as a possibility in everyday pluralism, this chapter opened three avenues for identifying publics, situations and encounters in which hope is materially manifested. Adopting a balanced idea of hope with regard to the present possibilities contributes to progressive thinking on space in two ways. First, that hope is an important social relation, contributing to the constant production of space via practices and routines of everyday life. Signs of alternative futures are always inhibiting the impossible equilibrium and blurred boundaries between the forces of grounding and ungrounding. This is a productive perspective because it opens a door to “a world whose hopefulness lies in its unfinishedness, its openness to improvisation and participation … in which hope is no longer fixed on the future: it becomes an electrifying force in the present” (Solnit 2016: 95). Second, that glimmers of hope are always caught in a negotiation process between forces of domination and emancipation, between grounding and ungrounding; a process imbued with inevitable stages of unpredictable ruptures (De Roo 2018), temporal fixities (Hillier 2011), long frontiers (Harvey 2000) and back and forth oscillations between order and self-organization (Saleh et al. forthcoming). These contributions move the notion of hope from a lopsided position that counts on a spectral return of radical urban change, towards becoming a motivating force for a pragmatically optimistic praxis of cultivating spatial alternatives. To pursue urban transformation by

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this hopeful praxis, city-makers need to develop hybrid frameworks for critique, combining critical reflections with analytical approaches that position uncertainty, ambiguity and multiplicity at the core of understanding our dynamic world of urban change.

References Allmendinger, Philip (2017): Planning Theory, London: Macmillan International Higher Education. Back, Les (2020): “Hope’s Work.” In: Antipode, pp. 1-18. Bayat, Asef (2013): Life As Politics: How Ordinary People Change The Middle East, Stanford University Press. Beveridge, Ross/Koch, Philippe (2019): “Urban Everyday Politics: Politicising Practices and The Transformation of The Here And Now.” In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37/1, pp. 142-157. Boudreau, Julie-Anne (2017): Global Urban Politics: Informalization of The State, Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons. Bourdieu, Pierre (1996): “Physical Space, Social Space and Habitus.” In: Vilhelm Aubert Memorial lecture, Report 10, pp. 87-101. Brenner, Neil (2009): “What Is Critical Urban Theory?” In: City 13/2-3, pp. 198207. Bylund, Jonas/Byerley, Andrew (2015): “Hopeless Postpolitics, Professional Idiots, and The Fate of Public Space in Stockholm Parklife.” In: Metzger, Jonathan/Allmendinger, Philip/Oosterlynck, Stijn (eds.), Planning Against the Political, New York: Routledge, pp. 141-164. Coles, Romand (2016): Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy in Neoliberal Times, Bogard: Duke University Press. De Roo, Gert (2007): “Understanding Fuzziness in Planning.” In: de Roo, Gert/Porter, Geoff (eds.), Fuzzy Planning, New York: Routledge, pp. 127142. De Roo, Gert (2016): “Self-Organization and Spatial Planning: Foundations, Challenges, Constraints and Consequences.” In: de Roo, Gert/Boelens, Luuk (eds.), Spatial Planning in a Complex Unpredictable World of Change, Groningen: InPlanning, pp. 54-96. De Roo, Gert (2018): “Ordering Principles in a Dynamic World of Change: On Social Complexity, Transformation and The Conditions for Balancing Pur-

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poseful Interventions and Spontaneous Change.” In: Progress in Planning 125, pp. 1-32. De Roo, Gert/Hillier, Jean (2016): “Spatial Planning, Complexity and a World ‘out of Equilibrium’: Outline of a Non-Linear Approach to Planning.” In: de Roo, Gert/Hillier, Jean/van Wezemael, Joris (eds.), Complexity and Planning, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 159-194. Dikeç, Mustafa/Swyngedouw, Erik (2017): “Theorizing The Politicizing City.” In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41/1, pp. 1-18. Fisker, Jens Kaae/Chiappini, Letizia/Pugalis, Lee/Bruzzese, Antonella (2019): The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces: An International Dialogue, Routledge. Franck, Karen/Stevens, Quentin (2006): Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, Routledge. Grange, K. (2015): “In Search of The Irreducible Political Moment: Or Why Panning Shouldn’t Be Too Hung up on Conflictuality.” In: Metzger, Jonathan/Allmendinger, Philip/Oosterlynck, Stijn (eds.), Planning Against the Political, New York: Routledge, pp. 67-80. Harvey, David (2000): Spaces of Hope, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hillier, Jean (2005): “Straddling The Post-Structuralist Abyss: Between Transcendence and Immanence?” In: Planning Theory 4/3, pp. 271-299. Hillier, Jean (2011): “Strategic Navigation Across Multiple Planes: Towards a Deleuzean-inspired Methodology for Strategic Spatial Planning.” In: Town Planning Review 82/5, pp. 503-527. Holston, James (2009): “Insurgent Citizenship in an Era of Global Urban Peripheries.” In: City & Society 21/2, pp. 245-267. Hou, Jeffrey (2020): “Guerrilla Urbanism: Urban Design and The Practices of Resistance.” In: Urban Design International 25/2, pp. 117-125. Lorey, Isabell (2014): “The 2011 Occupy Movements: Rancière and The Crisis of Democracy” In: Theory, Culture & Society 31/7-8, pp. 43-65. Marchart, Oliver (2007): Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Massey, Doreen (2009): “Concepts of Space And Power in Theory and in Political Practice.” In: Documents d’anàlisi geogràfica 55, pp. 15-26. Millington, Gareth (2016): “’I Found The Truth in Foot Locker’: London 2011, Urban Culture, and The Post-Political City.” In: Antipode 48/3, pp. 705-723.

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Nicholls, Walter/Uitermark, Justus (2018): “Counter Publics and Counter Spaces.” In: Enright, Theresa/Rossi, Ugo (eds.), The Urban Political, New York: Springer, pp. 247-268. Purcell, Mark (2016): “For democracy: Planning and Publics without The State”, In: Planning Theory 15/4, pp. 386-401. Rancière, Jacques (2009): ”A Few Remarks on The Method of Jacques Rancière”, In: Parallax 15/3, pp. 114-123. Rancière, Jacques (2011): “The Thinking of Dissensus: Politics and Aesthetics”, In: Bowman, Paul/Stamp, Richard (eds.), Reading Rancière, London and New York: Continuum, pp. 1-17. Saleh, Mohamed (2018): “Exploring The Roots of Contested Public Spaces of Cairo: Theorizing Structural Shifts and Increased Complexity”, In: Rokem, Jonathan/Boano, Camillo (eds.): Urban Geopolitics, London: Routledge, pp. 152-186. Saleh, Mohamed/de Roo, Gert/Shim, David (forthcoming): “The Fuzzy Side of Publicness: Visualizing Cairo’s Street Politics Through The Lens of Distance”, In: Space and Culture, pp. n/a. Solnit, Rebecca (2016): Hope in The Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Haymarket Books. Swyngedouw, Erik (2018): Promises of The Political: Insurgent Cities in a PostPolitical Environment, Cambridge: MIT Press.

A Post-Foundational Conception of Politics and Space: Henri Lefebvre and Jacques Rancière revisited in Resisting Athens Daniel Mullis

Introduction At the end of April 2010, the Greek government declared that its public debt was out of control and warned of the immediate threat of bankruptcy. What followed was the implementation of harsh fiscal adjustment programs by the European Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) – generally known as the Troika: the “Shock Doctrine” (Klein 2007), which was implemented for decades in the Global South found its way back ‘home’ to Europe. In response to the austerity measures, a political revolt erupted. The opposition to the programs was articulated in mass demonstrations, dozens of general strikes in the public and the private sector, the occupation of central squares all over the country for several weeks, everyday self-organization of solidarity and the rise of the leftwing party Syriza. The latter came to power in the general elections of January 2015, taking over from a grand coalition between the social democratic PASOK and the conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND), but lost its majority again to ND in July 2019. During the years of mass resistance on the streets from 2010 to 2012, space, and especially the city center of Athens, was produced as a political stage, in and through which spatial practices were contested and new social relations were created (cf. Arampatzi 2017; Hadjimichalis 2013; Kaika/Karaliotas 2014; Mullis 2017; Vradis 2014). In the words of Jacques Rancière, a “break with the tangible configuration” (Rancière 1999: 29) of order was produced, a “political moment” (Rancière 2014) erupted. But the state’s reaction and the

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enforcement of order were also spatial: riot-police units were constantly positioned at neuralgic spots, with the aim of controlling the territory of the city; a racist and anti-leftist narrative of a dangerous and run-down center was spun in order to legitimize the police presence; and, last but not least, the government tried to gain back control over the center in and thorough a planning process, which affected core protest areas (cf. Brekke et al. 2018; Mullis 2017). In order to understand how the revolt unfolded, and in what ways the authorities reacted to the emerging politics, it is of great importance to understand the relation between politics and space – or better political practice and the production of space. In relation to the un-grounding theme of this book, the question is: How do historically produced patterns of space matter for politics, or more specifically, how does grounded political action matter for practices of un-grounding produced order? And to what extent is politics a spatial practice and, therefore, the production of space related to politics? These questions have been addressed not only in geography. Especially the Arab Spring, the European Movement of the Squares – which Greece was part of – and Occupy 2011 led to renewed academic interest in the interrelation of politics and space (cf. Butler 2011; Dikeç 2017; Swyngedouw 2018; Vradis/Dalakoglou 2011; special issues in Environment and Planning A, Uitermark et al. 2012; Geoforum, Featherstone/Korf 2012; and IJURR, Rodgers et al. 2014). Despite earlier controversies over whether a post-foundational conception of the political can and should be related to the concept of space as it is formulated in radical geography (Marchart 2002; Massey 1994), in recent years, attempts have been made to bring these two strands of thought together: not least Mustafa Dikeç (2005; 2012) and Eric Swyngedouw (2009; 2011) have made important contributions. The earlier controversy mainly involved Ernesto Laclau’s concepts of space and time (cf. Marchart in this volume). Laclau (1990: 41-43) defines space as a grounded topography which is un-folded, re-defined and contested in and through practice in time. With space, he refers to order as sedimented politics, with time to the untamable potential to reactivate order through politics and therefore to the political. For Doreen Massey (1994: 253), Laclau’s understanding of space is an example for a common misconception of space whereby it is associated with stasis. Space, she argues, is never stasis, but always in itself political and related to movement and development. Massey (ibid. 254) highlights that in radical geography since the 1980s, it is common sense that “space is socially constructed” but at the same time “the social is spatially constructed too.” Whereas Laclau, from her point of view,

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falls way back behind this consensus, Oliver Marchart (2002) insists that their points of view do not diverge as much as Massey claims and that it is worth bringing them together. With this chapter, having the experiences of protest in Athens1 in mind, I contribute to the debate on the interrelations between space and politics. I will do so by focusing on post-foundational politics as a term for concrete social action and space in the tradition of radical geographic thought. Core references for this endeavor are Rancière and Lefebvre. Before turning back to Athens, where I will deepen the theoretical reflections in and through empirical observations, following Marchart (2010b), I will trace the ontological difference in Rancière’s as well as in Lefebvre’s work (cf. Roskamm and Davidson/Iveson in this volume). I show that politics and the production of space are deeply interwoven processes and highlight that space matters to politics on two levels. Firstly, that the conflict between social orders is always a conflict between different modes of producing space and a struggle for the right to do so; secondly, that politics itself is interwoven with space in a twofold way: politics is affected by space, as I define it, through politicization through space and, in turn, politics creates space through the political production of space.

Post-Foundational Ontological Difference The core argumentation of post-foundational thought is summarized by Martin Saar (2014: 90, own translation) as follows: Nothing exists, neither society nor the subject, “which is in itself un- or pre-political, and politics in addition to it, but it is rather only in the context of conditions that are always also political that something exists, appears, comes to be real and experienceable.” Building on Laclau (1990), Marchart (2010b) continues that everything, from everyday relations to philosophical ontology (the science of being as such, the one thing from which everything derives), is contingent. This does not mean that no reason for society exists at all; it means that society is historically situated and continuously produced in existing power relations (Marchart

1

As part of my PhD project (cf. Mullis 2017), to understand the movement’s history, mobilization, politics and spatial practices, I conducted 19 interviews with political activists as well as city officials in 2013 and 2014 and analyzed English-speaking newspapers like Ekathimerini and Athens News as well as internet resources.

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2010a: 59–84). Contingency here is a core term and has two dimensions: radical openness towards political action, with this openness, at the same time, being restrained by historically produced social order. Marchart (2010b: 147, own translation) argues that contingency is the only thing in post-foundational thought which is a logical necessity: “If no reason is necessary, then contingency of reason is necessary.” This understanding of contingency is the underlying reason for the division of politics into politics and the political, which can be found in the – diverse – post-foundational philosophies (cf. Marchart 2010a: 87-241). To grasp the difference between the two concepts, Marchart refers to Heidegger’s ontological difference. In Heidegger’s work, he argues, the ontological denominates the philosophical materia prima, from which everything derives, while the ontic is the term for actually existing material and social concepts as well as social orders (ibid. 61-74). Just like Marx and Engels, aiming to introduce a materialist dialectic, turned Hegel’s dialectic “off its head, on which it was standing, and placed [it] upon its feet” (Engels 1886 [1994]), Marchart gets rid of the ontological burden of Heidegger and roots ontology itself in practice. The ontological difference turns into a political difference, with politics operating in the realm of the ontic and serving as the term for the concrete material social practice of acting politically. But going beyond Marx and Engels, the political, on the other hand, marks the ontological dimension; it highlights the indelible possibility to act politically and change the allegedly objective order. Politics is detached from necessity and teleology; it is rooted in contingency and the fact that there is no ultimate reason for any type of social relation. Importantly, now the political, instead of philosophical ontology as such, is the materia prima (Marchart 2010b: 150-151).

Politics and Production – Revealing Difference In order to trace the guiding question of this chapter, how historically produced patterns of space matter for politics and to what extent politics is a spatial practice, I now turn to Rancière and Lefebvre and highlight the implications of the ontological difference in their work. I do so by first briefly discussing Rancière and then turning to Lefebvre. Importantly, I do not mean to negate the existing disparities between their epistemologies: Lefebvre is far more Marxist and rooted in historical materialism than Rancière (generally those post-foundational philosophers mentioned above; cf. Mullis 2014:

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117-141; cf. Roskamm in this volume). Nevertheless, in recent years, it has frequently been argued that Lefebvre’s conception of space and his epistemology do have points of reference to post-foundational thought and that it is worthwhile bringing them together (Elden 2004; Merrifield 2013; Mullis 2014; 2017; Roskamm 2017). Nikolai Roskamm (2017: 89, 101), for example, has shown that Lefebvre’s epistemology is post-foundational in the sense that he strictly rejects any kind of totalitarianism, universalism and objectivism, but is constantly searching for the processes and mechanisms striving towards totality, universality and objectivity. From my point of view, it is moreover the strong articulation of practice, which is close to the post-foundational political, production, which can be related to politics (Mullis 2017: 116-120). In addition, I argue that his concept of the possible, which denominates contingency, which open a door to at least bypass the disparities (Mullis 2014: 116-141).

Rancière: The Political, the Police and Politics Rancière develops his reflections on politics (cf. Marchart 2010a: 178–184) between the two terms politics and the police, which are both situated in the realm of the ontic: Politics is a collective social practice that derives from experienced injustices and the pursuit of equality (Rancière 1999), it exists in the collective action of erecting a “political stage” (ibid. 26–27) and the interruption of order. The police, on the other hand, is the “organization of the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution” (ibid. 28), the “order of the visible and the sayable that sees that a particular activity is visible and another is not, that this speech is understood as discourse and another as noise” (ibid. 29). I understand police as a term for institutionalized social order, as a name for actually existing society. For Rancière, politics exists because of a “wrong count of the parts of the whole” (ibid. 10), and it derives from the demand for equality, the demand to be counted as a true member of society. The ontological dimension of politics in Rancière’s thought is limited to the moment in which the police and politics clash when a stage for politics to appear on is erected. The political is the realm of the possible. Importantly, in contrast to Marchart (2010a: 180), I insist that the cry and demand for equality by which politics is driven is not to be understood normatively, restricted to the realm of emancipation. No type of society can actually exist without producing any kind of miscounts’. This means that the demand for equality slumbers in every society and can even manifests itself in a non-emancipa-

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tory manner if equality is framed as a guarantee of privileges. In this manner, Rancière roots the political in concrete social relations as a contingent potential of institutionalized order itself (Mullis 2017: 59–61).

Lefebvre: Practice, Production, and the Possible The point of departure for tracing the ontological difference in Lefebvre’s thought is his understanding of the possible, in which post-foundational contingency becomes apparent. With the possible, he highlights that the potential to change society through action is always given. But that, at the same time, the potential is restrained by what can possibly be thought and desired in the historically given situation (Brenner/Elden 2009: 39). The possible here has similarities with what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985: 95–96) define as the social: “We must…consider the openness of the social as the constitutive ground or ‘negative essence’ of the existing, and the diverse ‘social orders’ as precarious and ultimately failed attempts to domesticate the field of differences.” Marchart (2013: 351, own translation) frames social order or society as “the totality of the social in the condition of its re-ification.” Society can be understood as the ontic side of the ontological social, with the social being the field of differences wherein society can possibly materialize. Importantly, the field itself is not static, but ultimately a product of politics, even if this may be forgotten (Mullis 2017: 44–45). Beyond this notion of contingency and the possible, it is in two distinct terms to describe social action, practice, and production, where from my point of view the ontological difference most clearly appears in Lefebvre’s work. Lefebvre’s (2009 [1939]) early writing Dialectical Materialism is indicative. He aims to generalize the Marxian understanding of practice to all social relations (ibid. 100). Therefore, he expands the Hegelian and later Marxian binary dialectic by a third dimension, which he understands as either désir or spontaneity (cf. Schmid 2005: 106). This third force operates in the realm of the possible and stands for a contingent element in dialectical conflicts. It brings the dialectical dynamic to work but is itself not part of the relation (Lefebvre 2009 [1939]: 92-96). He thereby anticipates a core criticism of antagonism in Marxist thought as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 125) years later: Antagonism, far from being an objective relation, is a relation wherein the limits of every objectivity are shown. … Strictly speaking, antagonisms are

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not internal but external to society; or rather, they constitute the limits of society, the latter’s impossibility of fully constituting itself. Every political practice is based on an aspect of irrationality, which is driven by spontaneous articulations and fueled by the desire towards totality, which is never reached (Roskamm 2017: 95). However, practice in Lefebvre’s work remains highly ambiguous and quite often goes along with the notion of production (cf. Lefebvre 2014: 534–538). Trying to differentiate the two terms by a close reading of The Production of Space (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]), I argue that practice is primarily an abstract concept to denominate movement and the potential to act (ibid. 288), whereas production includes the concrete making of things as well as their re-production. Lefebvre (1971 [1968]: 30–31) states: The term [production] signifies on the one hand ‘spiritual’ production, that is to say creations (including social time and space), and on the other material production or the making of things; it also signifies the self-production of a ‘human being’ in the process of historical self-development, which involves the production of social relations. Finally, taken in its fullest sense, the term embraces re-production. Thus, between production and politics there is one important distinction: politics is by and large creation, it means breaking up institutionalized orders whereas production includes creation, but also re-production and is therefore also the term for the everyday action of stabilizing society. From my point of view, this is a crucial addition to the debates on politics (Mullis 2017: 299–300). Production highlights two aspects: On the one hand, society only exists because of re-production in everyday repetition and is therefore never completely detached from politics. The memory of the initial political action may fade away, but it is constantly maintained in everyday repetition, and that is why Laclau’s (1990: 34) picture of society as a product of sedimentation is misleading. On the other hand, Lefebvre’s production highlights that in political moments itself, when parts of society are exposed to the experience of contingency, other parts remain stable and are re-produced in the very political action itself. There is no such thing as total politics. Only fractions of society are affected, and politics itself is permeated by institutionalized order – therefore, patterns of institutionalized order cannot be restricted to the realm of police, as Rancière suggests. Being aware of the force of re-production helps to better evaluate politics, the quality of the new.

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Politics and Space In The Production of Space, Lefebvre (1991 [1974]: 26) formulates his point of departure as follows: “(Social) space is a (social) product.” Here, social means societal and operates on the level of the ontic and should not be confused with Laclau’s understanding of the social. To reflect on the product of space, Lefebvre adapts his understanding of dialectics and unfolds the production of space between the three poles of spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces (ibid. 38–39). He defines the three as follows: Spatial practice “secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it.” (ibid. 38) The representations of space are dominant and assemble the ruling conceptualizations of space, which exist in the abstract knowledge of planners, architects, technocrats and social engineers. Representational spaces are the lived spaces; they are the countless spaces of the inhabitants and users of space. The dialectical conflict unfolds between the representations of space and representational spaces. It is the conflict between the alienating and the alienated, the heard and the unheard but also between exchange value and use value in a Marxist sense (Belina 2013: 72; Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 352–400). Having the arguments on practice and production by Lefebvre himself as well as Rancière’s distinction between politics, police and the political in mind, I propose that representations of space and representational spaces constitute the antagonism in the realm of the ontic. They are each composed of their own spatial practices – which would better be called production. Practice itself is located on a more abstract ontological level. The conflict between representations of space and representational spaces unfolds between actually existing contradictory worlds, practices and spaces, which are produced and re-produced on both sides of the dialectic relation, while the one world has the power to suppress the other. Both sides of the relation though are not preconfigured or historically determinate. They are produced in social action. Thus, Lefebvre’s understanding of the dialectic between representations of space and representational spaces has much in common with Rancière’s antagonism between politics and police: Both pairs are constituted by a conflict between institutionalized order and the struggle for a more equal society. Production, just like politics, is enabled by contingency. Rancière’s politics though is far more rooted in spontaneity than Lefebvre’s production, which actually already does exist, in contrast to politics, which highlights the possibility for the spontaneous emergence of a

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contesting force. In the following, to denominate the concrete antagonism, I stick to Rancière’s terms. I started this chapter with the question how space and politics are interrelated. It is now possible to approach this question. Roskamm (2017: 105) argues, referring to Marchart (2013), that society is a never really fixed object, a constantly contested totality, which condenses to an order or ground. Lefebvre, he continues, argues similarly for materiality. I add that space in Lefebvre’s work seems to be the name for a specific kind of materiality (Mullis 2017: 303-304): it is the reflection of society on the terrain and therefore space and society operate on the same level of abstraction. Neither can space be subordinated to society, nor society to space; they are interwoven relationally. Space is the term for the material textures of society; it is a product and point of departure of politics as well as of the re-production of society. Just like society, space is not a product among others: both are products of social action striving towards totality but never reaching it. Three dimensions are crucial to a Lefebvrian understanding of space: First, power and rule are processed as well as articulated in and through space; second, space allows every subject to create and experience social relations and order; and third, space never exists in singularities and is always contested: “The form of social space is encounter, assembly, simultaneity” (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 101). Following Massey (1994), I insist that space, as it is formulated in radical geography, is inherently political, and politics are inherently spatial. With respect to the post-foundational conceptualization of politics, the core argument of Lefebvre quoted above, “(Social) space is a (social) product”, can be reformulated: Space is a historical product of political production. But, as space itself is part of social experience and contestation, it is also true that politics is a product of space. In this sense, grounding order is a political practice of producing space; it is always a process of producing discourses, power relations and material textures in which these relations become tangible and evident. Lefebvre argues (1974 [1991]: 53): Any ‘social existence’ aspiring or claiming to be ‘real’, but failing to produce its own space, would be a strange entity, a very peculiar kind of abstraction unable to escape from the ideological or even the ‘cultural’ realm. It would fall to the level of folklore and sooner or later disappear altogether, thereby immediately losing its identity, its denomination and its feeble degree of reality.

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The process of un-grounding is therefore always also the transformation of these material textures. Space and its social production are indissolubly interwoven with the practices of un-grounding. In geographical debates, especially with reference to the urban, it has frequently been stressed that the practices of the police as well as of politics are spatial. Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson (2015: 554), for example, argue that “the city is both a form of police order and a potential stage for politics”. Justus Uitermark and Walter Nicholls (2013: 974–977) define “the city as [a] politicizing machine” and simultaneously, “as [a] policing machine.” More generally, Dikeç (2005: 186) sets forth: “The police and politics…are inherently spatial for they are both concerned with distributions – of activities, authorities, functions, names, individuals or groups, and places.” This understanding is driven by Rancière’s writing itself. He insists that his use of “political stage” (Rancière 1999: 29; 2011: 6) is not to be understood as a mere metaphor. But if the reference to the stage it is not a mere metaphor, it is not enough to highlight that police and politics are spatial, it is also necessary to understand in what sense politics and space are interwoven. I emphasize that space appears in a twofold way in the realm of politics itself: On the one hand, politics is a product of politicization through space, and, on the other hand, politics is inherently a political production of space.

Resisting Athens To deepen the understanding of the two terms politicization through space and political production of space as well as of the spatial dimension of the conflict between politics and police, I now turn to Athens and the political uprising against the governance of the sovereign debt crisis after 2010. I focus especially on the time of the political mass movements on the streets between 2010 and 2012. In the course of the implementation of altogether three fiscal adjustment programs by the Troika between 2010 and 2015, Greece underwent a dramatic shift towards austerity. In return for funds, the programs obliged Greece to increase taxes, including VAT; to exercise budgetary discipline and to cut public spending; as well as to privatize public companies, infrastructure and land (Kazákos 2015: 40). As a result, poverty as well as the rate of unemployment rose dramatically. According to Eurostat, in 2010 11.6 percent of Greeks were considered to be “severely materially deprived”; in 2015, this proportion was

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Map 1: The center of Athens – a contested space (source: author)

22 percent. It is sinking again, but at 15.9 percent in 2019 it is still very high. In the same period, the unemployment rate rose from 12.7 to 24.9 percent, with even higher scores in 2013 and 2014. 17.3 percent were still out of work in 2019. Unemployment among youth was even worse and reached 58.3 percent in 2013 – in 2019, it is still 35.2 percent. The latter led to mass emigration of well-educated young people. Cuts in social security left almost a third without health insurance. In the period from 2009 to 2014, pensions were cut by 45 percent, and in the same time the wage level sank by 38 percent (Solidarity 4 All 2015). Even before anybody could possibly grasp the full extent of the shock to come, people started to rally. Thus, the movement did not come out of the blue; it was rooted in spatialized social experiences of the previous decade: It was a product of politicization through space. The Summer Olympic Games in 2004 were an important starting point for resistance against the neoliberal restructuring of society. In the course of the preparations for the Games, urban planning programs were introduced in order to restructure the city center of Athens. Mass investment in infrastructure was initiated, and there were attempts to privatize public spaces

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and to install surveillance technologies (Hadjimichalis 2013). Chryssanthi Petropoulou (2010: 219) highlights that the center of the city increasingly became a place where especially the youth experienced oppression and exclusion. Importantly, these processes led to the emergence of local initiatives and neighborhood assemblies (Arampatzi 2017). However, the roots of a political understanding of the center of Athens have an even longer tradition and reach back to the partisan warfare against the occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany (1941-1944), the civil war (1944-1949) and the resistance against the military junta (1967-1974). As indicated on the map, in all those years, a political axis was produced. It extends from the Polytechnic, passing the leftist and anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia and ending at Syntagma Square. It was constantly re-produced in the student movements in the post-dictatorship era against the neoliberal restructuring of the (education) system, but also by the still strong trade unions. During the years, the two boulevards connecting Omonia and Syntagma Square, Panepistimiou and Stadiou, became the main axis for all kinds of demonstrations of the left and anarchist movement. On the evening of December 6, 2008, a police officer shot dead the 15year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos in the neighborhood of Exarchia. In response to this, youth all over Greece but especially in Athens rose up. During December, massive riots erupted, hundreds of schools and universities throughout the country were occupied, and new political initiatives emerged. The protests not only addressed the shooting, but also the general lack of perspective, growing unemployment and declining income. It was no coincidence that the political eruption of the days of December unfolded all over Athens but importantly spreading towards the political and economic center of the city and the state. Vaso Makrygianni and Haris Tsavdaroglou (2011: 48) argue: “[It] was a parallel struggle not only for territorial dominance but also for the control over meanings produced by the city space.” The authors highlight that the very spaces, which came to be of importance during December, were the ones where young people would regularly hang out during evenings. Places where they had already been struggling over the right to appear and remain (ibid. 41). The dominant order was directly contested in front of its insignia, squares, buildings and monuments (Vradis/Dalakoglou 2011: 78). When the government in April 2010 declared that the state was at immediate risk of bankruptcy, the center of Athens was already a highly contested space. It was on the one hand the representation of the Greek state, its elites and economic power, and on the other hand the space where crisis hit very ob-

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viously. Homelessness and closed shops as well as racist violence against people conceived of as immigrants characterized the space. Yet, at the same time, the city center became a central stage for the political resistance against the implemented programs (Mullis 2017: 193–196). Over time, the street became the central place of political experiences (Hadjimichalis 2013: 119): a place of repression and oppression, a place of encounter and collectivity. The historical narrative of resistance against oppression which was bound to the center, combined with the everyday experience of being in the city but, at the same time, not being part of what it represents in economic and social terms, was an inherent aspect of legitimizing the revolt of 2008 as well as the resistance against the fiscal adjustment programs. But space – or rather, experience of spatial order – was not only an aspect of politicization. The production of space was equally a mode of political action. In and through the political production of space, a “political stage” (Rancière 1999: 26) was erected and new patterns of re-production mobilized. A major aspect of this production was the process of appropriation, which is reflected in the growing legitimacy of the idea to remain in the center and not to back off: In contrast to the very spontaneous outbursts of December 2008, the direction of political action towards the center during the years of mass resistance against austerity was more conscious and intended. This certainly was a result of a collective learning process. After months of rallying – sometimes very violently – in the center and going home in the evenings, awareness grew that remaining in the center of the city would be a possibility to materialize politics more profoundly. In February 2011, inspired by the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt, a first attempt to occupy Syntagma Square was undertaken, but failed due to the lack of participants. Three months later, at the end of May – the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain in the meanwhile had been occupied – a second attempt was successful. Thousands gathered on the square in front of the parliament and remained. They were to stay for more than two months, even resisting heavy attacks by police forces during mass rallies which were organized by the People’s Assembly of Syntagma Square against the vote on new austerity measures in June. In the first open gathering after the occupation, the Assembly (2011) declared: We are here because we know that the solution to our problems can only come from us. We invite all Athenians, the workers, the unemployed and the youth to Syntagma, and the entire society to fill up the squares and to

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take life into its hands. There, in the squares, we shall co-shape all our demands. We call all workers who will be striking in the coming period to end up and to remain at Syntagma. We will not leave the squares before those who lead us here leave first: Governments, the Troika, Banks, Memorandums and everyone who exploits us. Remaining in the center meant creating a new order, materializing new social relations and opening up a space for discussion and new social practices. During the occupation, the center of Athens was produced as a political space, as a space which belongs to the people, where they have the right to be and to struggle for dignity and democracy. Even though the occupation was not successful in terms of stopping the fiscal adjustment programs, “Syntagma Square produced a model of how people organize and build things”, said Ioannis, an activist from Solidarity 4 all in an Interview (5.12.2013). The occupation produced collective knowledge which could not be denied any more and transformed the modes of subsequent political action. In sum, politicization through space reveals that every politics is always also rooted in spatialized order and its everyday experience. The political production of space highlights that erecting a political stage literally means transforming space and that space is produced in political production. It recalls the fact that a stage is never built in empty space and therefore politics begins with struggling over the right to appear in space. Politics exists before it entirely comes to be visible, even though the process of acting together modifies politics itself. However, in order to ground new order, practice has to shift from production to re-production, and therefore the erection of a stage is not enough. Order has to be stabilized, and following Lefebvre, spatialization is a core aspect of this process. At the very same time, the occupation of Syntagma Square reveals the inherent dimension of re-production in politics. From an analytical point of view, the choice of the square was not self-evident – it could easily have been Omonia Square, which is deeply rooted in popular culture and political experiences. But it was not. On Syntagma Square, the ambivalence of the concrete politics materialized. The political production oscillated between the rejection of the government’s authority and the self-confident claim to take matters that concern all into one’s own as well as the politics of demanding change, asking the government to act in favor of the people.

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Confronting a Movement by Spatial Dominance In and through politics, space was produced, appropriated and redefined. This very fact was instantly addressed through spatialized practices by the agents of police order: on the one hand, by attempts to produce the center as a dangerous place, which then on the other hand was tackled by the state itself by stationing police forces and putting forward an urban planning program. It was no coincidence that the debate around the formation of a “ghetto” in the city center, especially around Omonia Square, as well as discussions on how to deal with it escalated just around the time of the occupation of Syntagma in 2011. It was claimed in the media and by conservative politicians that the state had lost control and was not doing enough against (illegal) immigrants as well as occupiers. This was claimed to be necessary as their presence was viewed as the reason for the urban decline in the center and the shrinking number of international tourists. The social democrat and then-prime minister George Papandreou declared that the government would not waste any more time and aimed to make the streets safe again (Mullis 2017: 196–199). Antonis Samaras (quote from Malkoutzis 2012) from ND, who took office after the election, even claimed during his campaign that “our cities have been taken over by illegal immigrants, we have to reclaim them” – a call which was echoed by the fascist party Golden Dawn (Crisis Scape 2014). It was highlighted by politicians and conservative media that the struggle against crime and “winning the battle of Athens” (Kathimerini 2012) was even more important than solving the economic crisis (Malkoutzis 2012). And so, police forces were massively ramped up and large-scale police sweep operations against people conceived of as immigrants and political activists were carried out (Amnesty International 2014; Human Rights Watch 2013). Stavros Stavrides (quote from Crisis Scape 2014) places this process in a broader context when he argues that the city was seen as a space to be healed from its violent sickness: “[B]ecause violence cannot be controlled through reasoning, it should be controlled through a counter-violence which is legitimate, because it comes from the state.” A state of emergency was declared against the alleged violence (Brekke et al. 2018; Crisis Scape 2014). Besides the growing presence of police forces in the center, the political production of space was also targeted by Rethink Athens, a large-scale urban planning project with the aim of establishing a pedestrian zone on Panepistimiou, control traffic in the area and construct a tram. The project never materialized, but it played an important role between 2010 and 2012. A look

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at the map reveals that the areas affected were exactly the ones that were produced as political stages during the years of resistance against austerity and that are strongly related to the historical identity of the city as a place of resistance and encounter. Officials of Rethink Athens (2014) claimed the intervention would “revive the city center by enhancing its commercial and financial activities, by the environmental and aesthetic upgrade of the public space, the promotion of its historical and cultural heritage and by making the city center more accessible to all citizens.” This despite the fact that the center had already been appropriated by the citizens in and through the collective political action. Therefore, Isaak, an activist from a local neighborhood community in Theatre Embros, argues in an Interview (12.3.2014) that the actual goal of the project is to hide the social fractures in society and win back the power to produce the center as a space of police order and the state. What I have highlighted here is that space indeed is the material texture of police order and that this experience may produce politics; but, at the same time, police order itself is not only a force of re-production, but relies on agents who are capable of mobilizing action to secure the order, and these actions are equally spatial. The struggle over social order, therefore, is always also the struggle over the modes of the production of space and the right to do so. In some ways, politics is the interruption of re-production with the goal to produce new patterns for re-production.

Conclusion In this chapter, I traced how grounded political action matters for practices of un-grounding produced order and to what extent the production of space relates to politics. I have done so by bringing Lefebvre’s ideas on the production of space together with Rancière’s notion of politics. I insist that space operates on the same level of abstraction as society; and that space is relevant to politics as well as to police. But just like society, space is not a product among other products: both are constituted by social action striving towards totality, but equally never likely to achieve it. Therefore, every social order is constituted by its very own production of space; and every mode of producing space is a product of social antagonization and its temporary grounding. To change order, the modes of production of space have to be modified; to change this production, social order has to be transformed in and through politics.

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Asking what these insights mean for the interrelation between politics and space and reflecting on the political movements against austerity in Athens, I underscored two dimensions of how space matters to politics. First, space is part of order – the police – as well as inherent in the practices of contestation – politics. The police is the historical, always also spatial product of political production and is constantly re-produced in and through everyday social action. Politics is rooted in these spatial relations and produces spatial stages to contest these orders. In order to stabilize a potentially new order, new spaces have to be produced and re-produced in and through politics. In the realm of politics itself, space is two-fold: politicization through space and the political production of space. No space is as such pre-destined to be transformed into a political stage. It always has to be thought of in relation to historical processes and the matter being politicized. The creation of the stage is dependent on its subject matter. Ultimately, the places being produced as a stage and the modes of its production tell us something about politics itself. The spaces produced as political stages embrace the political aim and social relations of the movement but also reveal a great deal about the society politics opposes.

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Authors

Clint Burnham is Professor and Chair of Graduate Program, Department of English, Simon Fraser University. He lives in Vancouver and works on psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, Indigenous literature, and digital culture. His most recent book is Does the Internet have an Unconscious? Slavoj Žižek and Digital Culture, (Bloomsbury, 2018), and he is co-editing, with Paul Kingsbury, a collection of essays on Lacan and the Environment for Palgrave. Mark Davidson is an Associate Professor of Geography in the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. He has an international reputation for his research on gentrification, critical urban theory and urban sustainability. He holds a BA (Hons) and PhD in Geography from King’s College London. Jens Kaae Fisker is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Danish Centre for Rural Research at the University of Southern Denmark. With a background in geography, his work spans urban, rural, and regional studies focusing on the micropolitics of place-making. His post-foundational thinking is mainly inspired by feminist theory. Sören Groth, ILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ILS - Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research in Dortmund, Germany, since the end of 2016. He studied at the HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU) and the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) (2005-2012) and received his PhD at the Institute of Human Geography at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main (2016). His research can be localized in transport and mobility research. Based on theories of space, planning and action, he conducts empirical research, in particular in the field of emerging mobility trends (e.g., multimodality).

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Matthew Hannah holds the Chair in Cultural Geography at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. His research interests include the history and politics of statistical knowledge, and critical social theory. Gabu Heindl (PhD), Visiting Professor at Sheffield University and Unit Master at the AA | Architectural Association, London. With her Vienna-based practice GABU Heindl Architecture, the architect, urbanist and activist focuses on public space, public buildings, collective housing and urban justice. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Tokyo University and Princeton University. Recent books: Building Critique. Architecture and its Discontent (eds. G. Heindl, M. Klein, C. Linortner, Leipzig, 2019) and the monograph Stadtkonflikte. Radikale Demokratie in Architektur und Stadtplanung (Vienna, 2020). www.gabuheindl.at Kurt Iveson is Associate Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Sydney. His research explores the relationship between cities and citizenship, with a focus on the public life and public spaces of cities. He has a PhD in Urban Studies from the Australian National University, and Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney. Paul Kingsbury is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Environment at Simon Fraser University. His most recent scholarship draws on psychoanalysis in order to investigate the cultural geographies of paranormal investigations. He is the co-editor of of Psychoanalytic Geographies (2014, Routledge with Steve Pile), A Place More Void (2021, University of Nebraska Press with Anna J. Secor), and Lacan and the Environment (forthcoming, Palgrave with Clint Burnham). Anneleen Kenis is a Senior Research Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) affiliated with the Division of Geography (KU Leuven) and Centre for Sustainable Development (Ghent University). Her current work centers around the study of processes of politicization and depoliticization in relation to climate change, air pollution and genetic engineering. Friederike Landau is currently an Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography at Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests revolve around urban political and spatial theory, as well as modes of political mobilization and institutional critique in the cultural field (esp. artist-led ac-

Authors

tivism and museums). In 2019, Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City – On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics was published with Routledge (Political Sociology). Matthias Lievens is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy in Leuven (Belgium). His research is situated within the field of critical and continental social and political philosophy, especially the work of Sartre, Gramsci, Marx, Mouffe, Lefort, Schmitt, Rancière. Oliver Marchart is Professor for Political Theory at the University of Vienna. His research interests revolve around political and democratic theory, as well as cultural sociology and social movements. He has authored various monographs about post-foundational political theory such as Thinking Antagonism – Political Ontology after Laclau. Tomas Marttila is presently working as an independent researcher. He was Substitute Professor at the Vienna University of Economy and Business in the academic year of 2018/19. His research areas include relational social theory, discourse analysis, historical sociology. Daniel Mullis is a human geographer. His research has been dedicated to the analysis of the political production of space, especially by social movements, urban development and neoliberalizing society. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), where he researches regressive politics and the rise of the far-right in urban settings. Lucas Pohl is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Geography of Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany. He received his PhD at the Department of Human Geography of Goethe University in Frankfurt with a dissertation that elaborates on a psychoanalytic approach of urban ruination. More generally, he works on the interstices between urban geography, psychoanalysis, and philosophy with a focus on social- and spatial theory, built environments, and political action. Drehli Robnik (PhD Amsterdam 2007) is a Vienna-based free-lance philosopher in matters of film, history and politics, also a part-time critic and musicbased edutainer. He has co-edited volumes on David Cronenberg, Siegfried Kracauer and the politics of X-Men movies, and has written German-language

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monographs on anti-Nazi resistance in film/TV, Jacques Rancière, Kontrollhorrorkino and on power relations in pandemic cinema (Ansteckkino, neofelis publishers 2020). He is working on DemoKRACy, a book on Siegfried Kracauer’s conception of politics. Nikolai Roskamm is Professor for planning theory, history of urbanism and urban design at Erfurt University of applied sciences. He is based in Berlin and works at the interface of critical urban studies and political theory. He is author of Dichte. Eine transdisziplinäre Dekonstruktion (transcript, 2011) and Die unbesetzte Stadt. Postfundamentalistisches Denken und das urbanistische Feld (deGruyter 2017). Mohamed Saleh is currently a PhD researcher at the Department of Spatial Planning and Design at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research interests revolve around exploring new frameworks for grasping how people, spaces, affects, networks, and machines are entangled to coproduce urban patterns of change. By studying these dynamic nexuses, his academic and practical work searches for instances and interval spaces that show how hope for alternative urban futures might be concealed and constantly (re)made in everyday spatial practices. Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Human Geography at Manchester University. His intellectual agenda has set the academic agenda in a range of fields, including political ecology, hydro-social conflict, urban governance and urban movements, democracy and political power, and the politics of globalization. Erik was previously Professor of Geography at Oxford University. In 2020, Erik was visiting professor at the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Social and Cultural Studies Ashley J. Bohrer

Marxism and Intersectionality Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism 2019, 280 p., pb. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4160-8 E-Book: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4160-2

Hilkje Charlotte Hänel

What is Rape? Social Theory and Conceptual Analysis 2018, 282 p., hardcover 99,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4434-0 E-Book: 99,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4434-4

Jasper van Buuren

Body and Reality An Examination of the Relationships between the Body Proper, Physical Reality, and the Phenomenal World Starting from Plessner and Merleau-Ponty 2018, 312 p., pb., ill. 39,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4163-9 E-Book: 39,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4163-3

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!

Social and Cultural Studies Sabine Klotz, Heiner Bielefeldt, Martina Schmidhuber, Andreas Frewer (eds.)

Healthcare as a Human Rights Issue Normative Profile, Conflicts and Implementation 2017, 426 p., pb., ill. 39,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4054-0 E-Book: available as free open access publication E-Book: ISBN 978-3-8394-4054-4

Michael Bray

Powers of the Mind Mental and Manual Labor in the Contemporary Political Crisis 2019, 208 p., hardcover 99,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4147-9 E-Book: 99,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4147-3

Iain MacKenzie

Resistance and the Politics of Truth Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou 2018, 148 p., pb. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3907-0 E-Book: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3907-4 EPUB: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-7328-3907-0

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!