Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. Spatial Justice

8/10/2019 Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. Spatial Justice.

1/25

Spatial Justice

There can be no justice that is not spatial. Against a recent tendency todespatialise law, matter, bodies and even space itself, this book insists onspatialising them, arguing that there can be neither law nor justice that arenot articulated through and in space.

Spatial Justice presents a new theory and a radical application of thematerial connection between space in the geographical as well associological and philosophical sense and the law in the broadest sensethat includes written and oral law, but also embodied social and politicalnorms. More specifically, it argues that spatial justice is the struggle of

various bodies human, natural, non-organic, technological to occupy acertain space at a certain time. Seen in this way, spatial justice is the most radical offspring of the spatial turn, since, as this book demonstrates,spatial justice can be found at the core of most contemporary legal andpolitical issues issues such as geopolitical conflicts, environmental issues,animality, colonisation, droning, the cyberspace and so on. In order toargue this, the book employs the lawscape , as the tautology between law andspace, and the con cept of atmosphere in its geological, political, aesthetic,legal and biological dimension.

Written by a leading theorist in the area, Spatial Justice: Body, Lawscape,Atmosphere forges a new interdisciplinary understanding of space and law,

while offering a fresh approach to current geopolitical, spatiolegal and

ecological issues.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is Professor of Law & Theory at Westminster University, London

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page i


2/25


3/25

Spatial Justice

Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page iii


4/25

First published 2015by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RNand by Routledge711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

a GlassHouse Book

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

The right of Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos to be identified asauthor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproducedor utilised 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 inwriting from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks orregistered trademarks, and are used only for identification andexplanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPhilippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas, author.Spatial justice : body, lawscape, atmosphere / Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos.pages cm. -- (Space, materiality, and the normative)

Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-138-01738-2 -- ISBN 978-1-315-78052-8 1. Justice. 2. Justice, Administration of--Philosophy. 3. Space perception. 4. Geographicalperception. I. Title.K240.P45 2015340'.114--dc232014020910

ISBN: 978-1-138-01738-2 (hbk)ISBN: 978-1-315-78052-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Baskerville byFish Books

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page iv


5/25

To Elias (the other author)

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page v


6/25

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page vi


7/25

Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 Laws spatial turn 151.1 Points of turning 15 1.2 False turns 23 1.3 Abstractions beyond metaphors 29

2 Welcome to the lawscape 38

2.1 Emerging spaces, emerging bodies, emerging law 39 2.2 Posthuman epistemology 59 2.3 The lawscape 65 2.4 Posthuman, immanent, fractal: one lawscape 80 2.5 The repeated time of the lawscape 88 2.6 Walking the lawscape 94

3 From lawscape to atmosphere: affects, bodies, air 1073.1 Affects: senses, emotions, symbols 110 3.2 Atmosphere 122 3.3 Engineering and perpetuating an atmosphere 139 3.4 Coda: back in the room 145

4 A change of air: the posthuman atmosphere 1514.1 The Earth that moves 153 4.2 Ruptures in the service of atmosphere 163 4.3 I dont know 166

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page vii


8/25

5 The rupture of spatial justice 1745.1 An aspatial spatial justice 175

5.2 The desire to move, the desire to stand still 184 5.3 A rupture in the continuum 192 5.4 Withdrawal 198

6 The islands 2206.1 The first island 2216.2 Are we there yet? The second island 228 6.3 Repetition: The double island 232

Bibliography 237Index 259

viii Contents

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page viii


9/25


10/25

me because they pierce my skin in unsettling yet tremendously decisive ways. These encounters, some long some short, some continuing some

singular, but all of them deeply affecting, I would like to list and thankhere. My first thanks, appropriately, go to the spaces of writing: Venice andCaff Braslia by the Fenice; Copenhagen and Riccos at Nrrebro; Sydney and Lot 19 at Elizabeth Bay; London and the Bethnal Green caf culture;Suffolk and Tonys horse farm; Thessaloniki and its quiet folds. I would alsolike to thank Roswitha Gerlitz and Tony Macintosh for the space to think;the Department of Politics, Management and Philosophy at CopenhagenBusiness School for their always thorough engagement with my work andfinancial and personal support; the Department of Planning and ComplexEnvironments at the IUAV University in Venice for funding a part of thisproject and inviting me as Guest Professor; the School of Law, University of Technology Sydney for their generous invitation as Distinguished ResearchFellow and for facilitating my work in most gentle ways; the Melbourne Law School, Criminology Department, and the Institute of International Law and the Humanities, University of Melbourne, for exposing me to so many new ways of thinking about space; and above all my own institution, the

Westminster Law School, for their unfaltering support and even toleranceof my off the wall ideas.

Discussions that have changed the line of my thought and life (not anexaggeration) I have had with many. With apologies to the ones I forget, I

would like to thank here Anne Bottomley and Nathan Moore for their con -

stant becoming; Andrea Brighenti for pushing and pushing; Olivia Barr forall our mutual folding; Andrea Pavoni for our always frenetic agree ments;Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta, Victoria Brooks, Pravin Jerayaj, Hans vonRettig, Debdatta Chowdhury, Kay Lalor for being so much more than just doctoral students; Chris Butler, Illan Wall and that inspired bunch of exciting people on Strathmore Island, inebriated with the way ideas wereexploding before us; Stewart Williams and another inspiring bunch of people in Tasmania; Jan Hogan and Adam Laurence for showing me what matter can do; Leopold Lambert for showing me the joy of funambulism;Emily Grabham and Rasmus Johnsen for showing me time; Frances

Restuccia for showing me the Messiah; Yoriko Otomo and Ed Mussawir forshowing me animals; Laurent De Sutter and Mark Halsey for showing meDeleuze; Radha dSouza for showing me other geographies; Alison Youngand Peter Rush for showing me space and family and food; Christian Borchand Timon Beyes for showing me atmosphere; Daphne Bidstrup Hjorth forshowing me thought without thesis; Oren Ben Dor for showing me friend -ship; Anna Grear for showing me vulnerability; Amy Kulper for showing meair; Augusto Cusinato for showing me the landscape; Matilda Arvidsson forshowing me garden; Chiara Mazzoleni and Rick Mohr for show ing me city;

Antonio Riello for showing me Sunday happiness; Marlene Klein forshowing me the water in the evening; Adriano Cancellieri and Elena

x Acknowled gements

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page x


11/25

Ostanel for opening up spatial justice to new fields; Penny Adamopoulou,Sirena Chalhoub and Angela Condello for their fearlessly disrupting

theatrics during my talks; my editor-for-life, Colin Perrin, who encouragedme to write this book, saying the rather delightful you do not need theory, you are theory; my sister Christina for being my guru; Elias for writing thisbook in his way as I was writing it in mine; and my students, undergraduateand graduate, who have never stopped making me question what I think Iknow.

My deepest thanks for reading parts or even the whole of this book, andoften for so much more than that, to Sharron FitzGerald, Anna Grear,Miriam Tedeschi and Francesca Anasaloni, Thanos Zarta loudis, HansLindahl, Peter Goodrich, Alison Young, Linda Mulchahy, Andrea Pavoni.This book has been rehearsed in one way or another in various institutionsthat invited me to talk about my work. I would like to thank WestminsterUniversitys School of Architecture and Built Environ ment; the West minsterCentre for the Study of Democracy; and the Westminster Law School;Goldsmiths London; the LSE; UCL; Kings College London; BrunelUniversity; University of Oxford; University of Southampton; University of Sussex; University of Warwick; University of Kent in Canter bury; IUAV

Venice; Ca Foscari Venice; Venice International University; Politecnico diMilano; University of Oslo, Norway; Universitt Bielefeld, Germany;Universit du Sud, Toulon, France; IISL, Onati, Spain; University of Lund,Sweden; Kungliga Tekniska Hgskolan, Stockholm Sweden; University of

Tilburg, the Netherlands; The Berg Institute for Law and History, Tel Aviv,Israel; Al-Quds University, East Jerusalem, Palestinian Occupied Territories;UTAS, Hobart, Tasmania; Univer sity of Technology, Sydney; Griffith Law School, Brisbane; Australian National University, Canberra and specifically Des Manderson for the invitation to speak at one of the most inspiringly buzzing audience I have ever encountered at the Australasian Law andHumanities and Law and Literature Annual Conference.

My thanks finally to the publishers of the following texts, extracts of which have been reworked in this book with permission: Atmospheres of Law: Senses, Affects, Lawscapes in Emotion, Space and Society 7(1), 3544,

2013; Mapping the Lawscape: Spatial Law and the Body, in Z. Bankowskiand M. Del Mar and P. Maharg (eds), The Arts and the Legal Academy: Beyond Text in Legal Education , Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012; Law, Space, Bodies: TheEmergence of Spatial Justice, in L. De Sutter and K. McGee (eds), Deleuze and Law , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012; Laws SpatialTurn: Geography, Justice and a Certain Fear of Space, Law, Culture and Humanities , 7(2), 116, 2011; Spatial Justice: Law and the Geography of

Withdrawal, International Journal of Law in Context , 6(3), 116, 2010.

Acknowledgements xi

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page xi


12/25

Introduction

There is no outside! But we forget thisHow lovely it is that we forget! 1

I.1 There is no outside

But we need an outside. This is the cry of this book. The cry is spatialised,legalised, rarefied, embodied, ruptured, dissimulated, but under neath allthis, it remains a cry. A particularly echoing one too: in the box of the

Anthro pocene, where humans are both everywhere and decentralised, andin which all material bodies are clustered, breathing space is limited, futureis closing in, human extinction is a possible reality. One stands on ones

toes and looks for the outside.This book does not offer an outside. Instead, it offers small consolations

in the form of ruptures. Since I cannot forget that there is no outside, Idwell fully in the inside. The inside is a continuum. I try to make the best of it by partiotioning it, sometimes even creating illusions of interiors andexteriors. I have previously called these ruptures immanent transcend -ence. 2 You will not find much transcendence in this book, evenimman ently. You will, however, find lots of folds in which to cover up, glassto hide behind, spaces on which to slide back and withdraw, scales of invisi-bilisation to play with, illusions to reflect on. Is this transcendence? Yes, if

transcendence is to take shelter from the violence of immanence. Theultimate purpose of it all is to fight a repeating, constantly reconfiguredand contingent fight, not in order to find an outside but in order toreorient the inside in a way that bodies can fit in better with each other.This is my hope, and the name I have chosen for it is spatial justice . I needto qualify it though: there is nothing grand, apocalyptic or messianic about it. There is nothing of a solution, blueprint, or end goal in it. There isinstead a deep-seated desire to eradicate the desires (it is all about desire

1 Nietzsche, 2005: 175

2 Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2011b

6098 T&F Spatial Justice.qxp_Royal_B 12/09/2014 14:08 Page 1


13/25

against desire) that have placed us central and made us vacuous effigies of human preponderance. Spatial justice emerges as withdrawal, namely a

body's moving away from its desire to carry on with the comfort offered by supposedly free choices, power structures or even by fate. Withdrawalsimultan eously moves away from desire while following another desire forspatial justice. Yet, there is nowhere to withdraw but deeper inside, a littlefurther this or that side. Withdrawal is not an escape but a shaking up of desire in order to orient the legal space differently. To withdraw is to fight.

This fight needs tools, strategies, or even weapons. All of them operateas ruptures , namely cracks of the continuum that allow renegotiation anddifferential movement. The main rupture is withdrawal , which allows forthe emergence of a space of renegotiation and reorientation. This is closely followed by the lawscape , a concept that has haunted my texts for the last few years, reflecting the inherent yet tortuous way in which law and spacecome together. Yet another is dissimulation , itself a rupture but with thespecific result of having bodies presenting themselves in different positionsthan the ones they actually occupy. Another is invisibilisation and visibilisation , a video game of ontological presence rather than phenomenological

visuality that makes the lawscape more or less legal, more or less spatial.Even this is a rupture of sorts, better hidden, indeed better dissimulated.The other weapon is atmosphere , an enclosure of desire that brims with theillusion of spatial justice. Finally, and paradoxically, the last weapon is that of the continuum , which is used in plural forms, multiplying as lawscape or

atmo sphere, both bringing us back from the illusions of rupture andenabling ruptures to take place. Two things need to be clarified: thesenotions ebb and flow, sometimes overlapping, mostly withdrawing from fulldefinition and from each other. Their definitions are never unitary but always contextual, drawing from the assemblage in which they are found.For many of them I offer various definitions, adding or substract ing some -thing from the previous one. The point of this is the desire not to fix things,ethically or otherwise. This is the second thing that I must clarify: whilethere is a strong and I hope obvious ethical direction in this book, I resist falling into easy moralising traps. No concept, practice, or ideology can

claim an a priori ethical orientation. None of them is above strategising,and none guarantees a specific outcome, whether positive or negative not even the main concept of the book, spatial justice. Every thing is correlativeto its assemblage. This does not mean that I subscribe to cultural relativism.Rather, I am sensitised to the way concepts, practices and ideologiesbecome operationalised and fixed in specific spatiolegal conditions that allow them to maintain the illusion of just, fair, proper and so on.

So, there is no outside. This is the guiding position, indeed the thesis of the book. Faithful to its etymology, the thesis (=position, placement) that negates the outside informs the way bodies, the lawscape, atmosphere, andspatial justice position themselves in relation to each other, in a connection

2 Spat ial Justice



14/25

of movement, yet at the same time withdrawn from each other, ontolog-ically different and never fully present. Emphatically, I am not dwelling on

the negative of the thesis but its positive: there is a continuum that containseverything, including its own ruptures, conflicts, invisibilisations, dissim-ulations. This continuum is not some anything-goes well-wishingculturally-relative flat ontology but a tilted, power-structured surface, on

which bodies move and rest and position themselves, thus affecting the tilt while being affected by it. It is all about how bodies position themselves.This thesis comes from my engagement with the writings of Spinoza,Nietzsche, Deleuze, Luhmann, Grosz, Braidotti, Gatens, Negarestani,Morton, Serres, Guattari, Lyotard, Derrida, object oriented ontologies as

well as environmental and ecological issues, posthumanist feminist theory,embodiment, questions of identity and emplacement, architecture andissues of materiality. While these and other theorists and theories appearbelow, this text does not subscribe to one school of thought. It is neitherDeleuzian (despite appearances), nor Luhmannian, materialist, critical orsociolegal. Nor does it engage in critique, in the sense of appraisingexisting literature and commenting on its shortfalls (with the exception of two instances where I felt I had to do this in order to defend the need formy radically differentiated position). This text flows along the varioustheories, respectfully (but not always) picking up flows of thought andappli cations, without however making a meal out of theoretical loyalty oropposition. If anything, this book attempts to be consistent with itself more

than with any specific theory. Not an easy feat, since the way I understandconsist ency is as a surface of flows and confluences, but also ruptures in theform of contradictions, openings, enclosures, incompleteness, singularitiesthat do not fit in, as well as the concept of continuum that mediateseverything.

The main thrust of the book is the concept and practice of spatial justice .I define spatial justice as the conflict between bodies that are moved by a desire to occupy the same space at the same time . This is neither merely distributive

justice, nor regional democracy, but an embodied desire that presents itself ontologically. My goal is twofold: first, to think of the concept in a spatial,

corporeal, and generally material way. This is a reaction to most current theorisations of spatial justice that, surprisingly, are too aspatial, with theresult that the concept becomes deprived of the radical potential offeredby understandings of space not only in geography but also architecture,philosophy, quantum physics, feminism, ecological thought and so on. Thesecond goal is to think of the concept of spatial justice in a legal context.The majority of theorisations focus on a broad, political understanding of

justice, ignoring its most obvious connection with law. This connect ion, asI show especially in Chapters 5 and 6, contextualises spatial justice as aprocess of legal reorientation rather than solution. I hasten to add that thelaw I employ here is a spatialised law that does not dwell on the textual

Introduction 3



15/25

(that too) but expands on the space and bodies that incorporate it and act it out.

This law is the lawscape . Law and space cannot be separated from eachother. They are constantly conditioned by each other, allowing one toemerge from within its connection to the other. Yet, this connection isparadoxical, interfolding and excessive. It is not a connection of dialecticalinter dependence but, as I show consistently throughout the book, afolding of one into the other, a connection of non-causal enveloping that allows each one to emerge depending on the conditions. The lawscape is the way the ontological tautology between law and space unfolds as difference . Thistakes place as a play of visibilisation and invisibilisation. A no-smoking signin a public space is a visibilisation of the law, but the free, open space of anart gallery performs an invisibilisation of the law. In the first case, spacebecomes a little more obviously regulated and thus cedes priority to the law.In the second, space retains a faade of ambling and seemingly uncon -strained unconstrained movement, free from legal presence. So at variouspoints a lawscape appears more or less legal, or more or less spatial. Thisinterplay is what allows a body to negotiate its position in the lawscape, toaffect the lawscape and ultimately to reorient it. Counter-intuitively,in/visibilisation does not operate on a visual, phenomenological level, nordoes it assume a viewer. In/visibi lisation is the ontological condition of thelawscape, which goes beyond an epistemological/disciplinary connectionbetween law and geography.

In the lawscape, neither law nor space vanish completely. The lawscaperemains both law and space at all times, thus allowing a manoeuvring spacefor the various bodies that constitute the lawscape to affect it in various

ways. Yet at points, the lawscape dissimulates its presence for as long as it can, enlisting every trick in the book in order to do so. At these points, thelawscape becomes atmosphere . Although the difference between lawscapeand atmosphere is a matter of degrees, since both belong to the samespatiolegal continuum, the turning into atmosphere is a spectacular display of smoke and mirrors. A cosy atmosphere at home is about the materiality of bodies coming together around a dinner table, fully dissimulating the

fact that the private remains a lawscape. An oppressive atmosphere in aprison is about the laws intensified presence that directs bodies in corri -dors of movement, fully dissimulating the materiality of the lawscape withits possibilities of resistance and negotiation. In both cases, the lawscapehas become an enclosure that is no longer conditioned by mere in/visibil-isation but by an intense dissimulation . Again, dissimulation is not apheno menological concept but an ontological one. It emerges as a rupturein the continuum of the lawscape and operates on the level of ontological

withdrawal of the lawscape: it is self-dissimulation. It allows the lawscape todissimulate itself and become an atmosphere. Atmosphere is the lawscapes wet dream. Every lawscape wants to become an atmosphere when it grows up.

4 Spat ial Justice



16/25


17/25

Spatial justice emerges from a movement of withdrawal from the atmosphere. Weare all inside atmospheres. We are all part of the earths atmosphere, co-

producing it along other bodies. Yet we are not aware of the atmosphere. An atmosphere is the perfect enclosure. Withdrawing from the atmosphereis a movement that allows a momentary rupture: during the length of aretained, withdrawn breath, the importance of air becomes asphyxiating.

While difficult to withdraw from earths atmosphere, 3 it is only marginally less difficult to withdraw from a legally engineered atmosphere. We are allpart of its emergence. We perpetuate it with our positioning, politicalchoices, legal embodiments, body functions. Bodies desire atmosphere.Think of shopping malls and consumerism. Withdrawing from an atmo -sphere is a withdrawal from the desire of the body itself. Removing thebody from the atmosphere is not enough. One needs to remove ones body from the body of its desire.

Withdrawal from atmosphere does not guarantee spatial justice. It hasonly one possible effect: the re-emergence of the lawscape. Breaking theglass enclosure of the atmosphere at best recalls the lawscape from within.This is better than it sounds: a body cannot negotiate when atmospherically conditioned. Atmospheres are affective events that cannot be fought headlong because there is nowhere from where to fight them. We arealways inside an object. 4 The lawscape, being the negotiation of in/visibil-isation between law and space, allows for a certain amount of corporealmanoeuvring. It is not a matter of consciousness or awareness. Just like

atmosphere, the lawscape is preconscious and posthuman. The lawscapeitself determines its in/visibilisation depending on its self-perpetuatingneeds. Within the lawscapes struggle for self-perpetuation, human agency becomes redefined as material, assemblic agency that is as much about nonhuman bodies as it is about the human bodies that contri bute to theemergence of agency. But at least there is that possibility of manoeuvringspace. In atmosphere, everything is desire for the autopoietic perpetuationof the very same atmosphere.

Spatial justice, therefore, is not a prescribed avenue but merely the possi -ble reorientation of the lawscape according to the bodies that have

withdrawn. The one who withdraws has the power. This is not a passive withdrawal, it has nothing to do with removing oneself from the conflict orsacrificing oneself to a moral priority of the Other. If anything, spatial

justice is a space without the Other. Withdrawal is an arduous ontologicalmovement: a nomadic fight for monadic bodies. It is nomadic because it requires a spatial movement away from existing structures. The bodies of

6 Spat ial Justice

3 Although see Negarestani, 2008, on how we are moving underneath the surface of theearth in a cthuloid movement of the war against the sun; and Colebrook, 2014, on thedeath of the posthuman as the ultimate withdrawal from the atmosphere.

4 Morton, 2013: 17



18/25

its emergence are monadic in the sense that they are ontologically singular yet in a continuum of indistinction. These paradoxical formulations origin -

ate in my reading of autopoietic theory in combination with object oriented ontologies. 5 The crux of this books ontological take is this: whilealways part of assemblages with other bodies, every body withdraws.

Whether this takes place through self-dissimulation, self-in/visibilisation,or strategic planning, it remains an ontological fact and even necessity, as Ishow in Chapter 5. Bodies are Leibnizian monads, houses without windows,autopoietic units that remain ontologically withdrawn. No body everpresents itself fully ontologically. Every body is a vastness, open to the actualand virtual combinations of assemblages, contourless, amoeba-like. A part of the vastness always withdraws. Think of human psychology, a coin, theglobal financial system, your mobile telephone, climate change, life, death.

All are bodies, all are withdrawn. Access to a causal explanation, heads ortails, a bank account, a touch-screen, a rainy July, a breath, or a skin cold tothe touch are mere epistemological concessions that offer the illusion of knowing. The more we know about how bodies operate, the less we know about bodies. Withdrawn bodies move and rest, differentiating oneanother on the basis of their speed, nomadically clustering together intemp orary or less temporary assemblages. They associate with each otherand can orchestrate their withdrawal collectively or individually. But a

withdrawal is never an individual move. It always drags the world along.

I.2 Quick dip inside

Withdrawal is multidirectional. Just like all concepts in this book, it doesnot have an a priori moral content but a contextualised, assemblage-related, situated ethical content. 6 I have talked about withdrawal as amovement away from a legally engineered atmosphere, its potential for theemergence of spatial justice, and as an ontological feature of all bodies.The latter has two consequences: first, that the affective desire for spatial

justice is not a cultural phenomenon or an outcome of the recent rathertrendy spatial turn of legal scholarship, but a conative characteristic of the

body. Popularised by Jane Bennett,7

the term comes from Spinoza (who inturn was inspired by Hobbes) and refers to the conatus , namely the will of

Introduction 7

5 This book does not engage with autopoietic theory for the purposes of withdrawal but builds on my previous analyses, 2009 and 2013a.

6 The difference between morality and ethics has been put most clearly by Luhmann,2004 and 1987. For Luhmann, ethics is an internalised, second-order observation of morality that is interested in internal consistency rather than external fitting-in.Morality, on the other hand, has a colonising effect that demands social uniformity. A similar distinction has been made by Spinoza, 2000, for whom ethics is always situatedand yet mediated by the univocal continuum that for Spinoza is god.

7 Bennett, 2001 and 2010



19/25


20/25

adding feminist and ethnographic insights. 14 With such rich offerings, thereis not a great deal I can offer to the continuum except for the following four

points: first, the continuum is one yet several, and often overlapping . This is afeature of most concepts in this book, namely a singularity and a plurality at the same time. Lawscape as continuum means that there is only onelawscape formed by space and law; yet the continuum fractalises into a flat surface of multiple lawscapes, various cities, homes, rooms, jungles, planets,all repeating the mechanism of in/visibilisation. Atmosphere is anothercontin uum which, however, becomes-other atmosphere in the case of rup -ture with the pre vious atmosphere. Finally, bodies are a continuum of indistinction in terms of inherent value or moral importance. Yet, and thisis the second thing I add to existing theoretical continua: each body retains its singularity through and despite its assemblage position . As I have already mentioned, a body is not just relations. Although always in assemblages withother human/non human bodies, a body remains monadic, withdrawn fromthe onto logical continuum, either because of its multiple simultaneouspresence in various assemblages; or because of the contourless nature of thebody that is determined as much by assemblages as by its own power; or by means of identity differentiation in the form of haecceity which is anassemblage singularity as I show in Chapter 2; or finally because the body uses the ontological feature of withdrawal strategically. A body always

withdraws.The third reason for which the present continuum differs is the inclusion

of rupture . Since the continuum has no outside (there is no edge! We cant jump out of the universe 15), ruptures are ontologically included in thecontin uum in the form of folds (that is, connections), in/visibilisations,

withdrawals, atmospheric enclosures that rupture the continuum. Rup turescontribute to the continuity of the continuum by allowing it to gainmomentum and carry on spreading spatially and temporally. But why arethey needed? No outside means a vast inside that cannot be under stood,handled, colonised, manipulated. This inside is untenable for humans andnonhumans alike. The continuum must be ruptured. And so we do: we split it into rooms, property, territories, packs, relations, time. We split it into

human and nonhuman, races and genders, spaces of withdrawal and thoseof visibilisation. These are Spinozan fictions, extensions of imagin ation that are necessary for understanding. 16 We dissimulate the immanence of thecontinuum by hooking on the figurative nails on the wall the Cubists usedto paint on their paintings so that people could under stand them and hookon something when immersed in those over lapping surfaces of fragmen-

Introduction 9

14 Gatens, 1996a and b; but see also Bennett, 2010; Hardt and Negri, 2004.15 Morton, 2013: 17

16 Spinoza, 2009 and 2000



21/25

tation. The continuum is too much. It pushes us to withdraw from ontology and dwell in the relatively comfort of epistemology. 17 We choose to forget

that there is no outside, as Nietzsche sings at the beginning of thisintroduction. Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd refer to it as the capacity to feign. 18 So we construct material and im material boundaries that separate bodies from each other; we elevate skin into a severing screen; weexclude future generations from our present actions; we put distancebetween us and our waste; we cover it up with our hind legs, hastily,patchily, unconvincingly. This is often adequate. We take recourse to what Teresa Brennan calls the foundational fantasy of the difference betweenthe self and the environment, 19 or what Timothy Morton calls the rift between ontology and epistemology. 20 In this way, we carry on with the

world, forever taking leave. 21 Ontology and epistemology unfold in parallel while folded together . They remain parallel to each other in the Spinozanmanner of non-connection yet co-emergence and co-development. 22Spinozas concept of parallelism informs a great deal of this book. MoiraGatens and Genevieve Lloyd have put it very clearly: Nothing that happensin the order of thought depends causally on anything that happens in theorder of material things, or vice versa. But the order of thought and theorder of things again precisely because of the status of each as completeexpression of Substance are mapped onto one another in a relation of correspondence. 23 Parallelism, just like folding, is not just togetherness but also distance. In this book, distance can only come through (the necessary

illusion of) rupture. In that sense, epistemology rup tures ontology andbecomes a necessary dissimulation; ontology ruptures epistemology through the eternal return to the continuum (Spinozas substance ). Thismeans only one thing: that there is no difference between illusion andnecessity. All ruptures are necessary; all ruptures are illusionary. I say this infull awareness of the fact that spatial justice has been described here as arupture. This does not denigrate the concept; rather, it makes its inter -

vention even more decisive.In the continuum of this book, there is no space from which a judgment

on these practices can be passed. They are neither wrong nor problematic

as such but can be found so only with regards to their context, their ownruptured continuum, and in relation to the responsibility carried in theparticular situated instance. Nor do they have to be bridged, mended orclosed. They remain excessive. In that sense, I am not claiming that my

10 S patial Jus tice

17 Hubbard, 201218 Gatens and Lloyd, 1999: 3419 Brennan, 200420 Morton, 201321 Rilke, 1995: 38122 Spinoza, 2000

23 Gatens and Lloyd, 1999: 3



22/25

ontology is better than yours. My access to the ontological plane is not greater than anyone elses. 24 I can only fold into it my own epistemological

ruptures and see how they work, how their excess affects the rest of theplane, and how the plane becomes-other through my ruptures. At the sametime, the continuum is not the same as a flat ontology. The continuumruptures because of its excessive production. Excess is politically important and cannot be accommodated by a neutral, seemingly egalitarian flat continuum. Ruptures give rise to excess. Current posthuman discoursesoften situate themselves in an unproblematically flat surface, rupture-less,

without withdrawals, enclosures, dissimulations. Whether this is the life of vitalist writing, embodiment of posthuman corporeality, flatness of new ontology, the earth of new ecologies, flow and movement of Deleuzians,even Gaia in Latours recent work or Sloterdijks glasshouse, none of thesecontinua allows for rupture, conflict, partitioning, distance, withdrawal.

With this, we reach the final point of difference, to which I have already referred: this continuum is tilted , its flatness leaning sideways. Flat horizon-tality cannot miraculously flatten political distinctions, unequalspatiotemporal conditions, power imbalances. Moving beyond dialecticsdoes not guarantee flat ontology. This is something bodies still have to fight for, and the fight is not levelled. Some bodies are stonger than others,

weigh more, pull that side of the surface down and make other, weakerbodies circulate in predetermined ways. Humans and farmed animals, apack of wolves and an unarmed human, global warming and low-lying

islands, drought and bamboos, capitalist finance and the urban poor:encounters between unequal bodies in terms of power cannot be resolvedthrough a normative flatness, but a strategic rupture. This is the point of

withdrawal as a tool for spatial justice.

I.3 The chapters

The book follows a straightforward structure: the first two chapters are onlaw and space, with a description, explanation and empirical case on thelawscape. Chapters 3 and 4 follow the same pattern but for atmosphere.

And Chapters 5 and 6 do the same but this time for spatial justice. It is a bit of an internal joke the fact that, although I keep on saying that spatial justice is not a messianic or transcendental justice, and does not demand waiting, the chapter order actually makes the reader wait. Indeed, at least explicitly, spatial justice only emerges in the last two chapters. However, the

journey is precipitous, the spaces are continuous and the moves carry throughout the pages of the book. Spatial justice can only take place as a

withdrawal from an atmosphere, and atmosphere is the way the lawscapedissimulates itself. At the same time, spatial justice can only emerge from

Introduction 11

24 Hubbard, 2012



23/25

within the lawscape. It is a full, yet excessive, circle. Interspersed in the text are discussions on the spatial responsibility of indistinction that take the

form of situatedness, which is particularly evident in the warped temp -orality and spatiality of the Anthropocene. There are also discussions ontime and repetition, objects as bodies, dissimulation as strategy, and theposthuman as reality. All these emerge within the ruptured continuum of this book.

Another clarification before I describe briefly the chapters. While I flirt with law and geography, I do not necessarily consider this book to be part of this literature. There are others who have done this much more system-atically than I could ever do. 25 The reason is that my focus is not geography but space . I am not trying to establish a disciplinary dialogue but a post dis-ciplinary questioning, in an era where posthuman, anthropocene,assemblages, objects and bodies have entered the quotidian vocabulary. At the same time, this is not a philosophical work, despite the references andoccasional tenor of the text. The reason is that I am interested in theapplied and empirical side of concepts as much as their conceptualisation.

While what I call empirical here would not dare compare to the realempirical studies on law and space out there, it attempts to ground con -cepts on non-conceptual situations. The empirical fields I use here are theLondon lawscape, the Triveneto shepherd atmospherics, and RobinsonCrusoes literary island. Each field grounds, confirms, occasionally contradicts but always extends the prior conceptual discussion respectively

on the lawscape, atmosphere and spatial justice, and pushes the discussiononto the following step.

Every chapter opens up a different lawscape. Chapter 1 is still in somerespects introductory, and begins with its feet firmly on the ground of current disciplinary attempts to reflect on space and law, but begins to swirldangerously when the question of the laws spatial turn arises. I questionthe ability of the law to turn and what it would mean not just for thediscipline but also for space. I try this out, first by pointing at important micro-turns that have happened in areas connected to law and space, and

which remain a deep inspiration for my work here; I carry on with a brief

critique of some of the existing literature for its rather simplified under -standing of what space is and what spatiality can mean for the law; and thenby thinking about metaphorical uses of space, which although not problem atic in themselves, do not advance a material understanding of either law or space. Materiality, however, is not the opposite of abstraction.In the final section of the chapter, I deal with abstraction as a necessary component of law and space theorisation on the basis of its political andstrategic relevance.


25 Delaney, 2010, is the obvious candidate for this. See also Braverman et al., 2013.



24/25


25/25

steps of engineering an atmosphere and in Section 4, the coda, I turn theroom back into the lawscape.

Chapter 4 finds us in the valleys of Triveneto mountains following thelocal transhumant shepherds and flocks, namely animal/human assem -blages that are fully nomadic without even a semi-permanent base. This isa unique phenomenon in the world and the perfect site for extending thediscussion on atmosphere. The assemblage moves while standing still,creat ing its own atmospherics of pause, dissimulation and withdrawal,removed from the intense local regulatory regime of private and publicproperty, zoning, highways, as well as other flocks. In Section 2, I discussthis atmospheric withdrawal while looking at issues of space, territory,property and identity. In Section 3, the possibility of plural atmospherics isdiscussed, namely whether atmospheres can come into conflict with eachother. The final fourth section focuses, focuses on how an atmosphere canbe at the same time an engineered event and an emergence between andthrough bodies, and the answer is, once again, dissimulation.

Chapter 5 begins with a rather banal instance of imaginary conflict inthe space of a concert hall. In the context, the concept of spatial justice isdefined as the question behind the desire that makes bodies occupy aparticular space at a particular time. Before that, Section 1 looks into someof the current literature on spatial justice and offers a critique on the basisof its aspatiality. Section 2 builds on the discussions on spatiality in thisbook in order to sketch movement and pause as a non-dialectical fold in

which spatial justice emerges. Section 3 describes spatial justice as a rupturein the continuum and looks into ways in which this rupture takes place,notably as collectivity, as well as illusion or conative necessity. Section 4 goesthrough the motions of spatial justice as withdrawal (always a rupture) andreturns to the lawscape of the concert hall.

Chapter 6 is a cluster of superimposed islands: initially RobinsonCrusoes, then Fridays and finally an elementary, solar island. For thischapter I am reading Michel Tourniers novel Vendredi , which is a rewritingof Defoes Robinson Crusoe. I am putting it together with a text Deleuze

wrote on this very novel. From these two texts, I extract a lawscape that

keeps on becoming reorientated by the various bodies populating theisland. The first section looks at the obsessive lawscaping of the newly shipwrecked Robinson. Section 2 stays briefly on the second island that isgenerated by a strange turn in the events. Section 3 begins the repetitionof the island as difference, leading to a withdrawal which leads to spatial

justice, but also a withdrawal of spatial justice for another, elementary,meteoric justice.



Documents

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. Spatial Justice