TOGETHER WITH THE STATE, DESPITE THE STATE, AGAINST THE STATE

INSURGENT SPATIAL PRACTICES, ‘MILITANT PARTICULARISM,’ AND MULTISCALARITY

Abstract

The concept of spatial practice is a very important one for the purpose of thinking about the spatial dimension of power. According to neo-Marxist Henri Lefebvre – who, besides Foucault, was one of the philosophers who most profoundly paid attention to the social space – ‘(…) spatial practice consists in a projection onto a spatial field of all aspects, elements and moments of social practice (…).’ Understandably, Lefebvre discussed spatial practices at a very abstract level, as he did also in relation to the production de l’espace as a whole. However, for both the purposes of empirical research and strategic reasoning, it is necessary to specify different types of spatial practice and their particularities. The aim of this paper is to present and analyse some important insurgent spatial practices which have been developed and implemented by emancipatory social movements throughout the world in the framework of globalisation. The text begins with a discussion of the philosophical contributions made by Michel Foucault to the elucidation of the meaning and role of power as heteronomous power; thereafter, I will contrast Foucault’s approach to power to that of Cornelius Castoriadis’ (and secondarily to that of Hannah Arendt’s), in the context of which the possibility of an autonomous power is consistently considered (section 1). The contributions made by Foucault and Lefebvre to the investigation of the connections between power and space, mentioned in several parts of the paper, help in offering a typology and a discussion of insurgent spatial practices (section 2) and an analysis about the limits of these practices (concluding section). I hope this paper can demonstrate the usefulness of both this typology and of a critical discussion of some problems and challenges.