There can be no justice that is not spatial. Against a recent tendency to despatialise law, matter, bodies and even space itself, this book insists on spatialising them, arguing that there can be neither law nor justice that are not articulated through and in space. Spatial Justice presents a new theory and a radical application of the material connection between space – in the geographical as well as sociological and philosophical sense – and the law – in the broadest sense (...) that includes written and oral law, but also embodied social and political norms. More specifically, it argues that spatial justice is the struggle of various bodies – human, natural, non-organic, technological – to occupy a certain 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 in the core of most contemporary legal and political issues – issues such as geopolitical conflicts, environmental issues, animality, colonisation, droning, the cyberspace and so on. In order to ague this, the book employs the _lawscape_, as the tautology between law and space, and the concept 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. (shrink)

Autopoietic theory is increasingly seen as a candidate for a radical theory of law, both in relation to its theoretical credentials and its relevance in terms of new and emerging forms of law. An aspect of the theory that has remained less developed, however, is its material side, and more concretely the theory’s accommodation of bodies, space, objects and their claim to legal agency. The present article reads Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems in a radical and material manner, linking it (...) on the one hand to current post-structural theorisations of law and society, and on the other hand extending its ambit to accommodate the influx of material considerations that have been working their way through various other disciplines. The latter comprises both a materialisation of the theory itself and ways of conceptualising the legal system as material through and through. This I do by further developing what I have called Critical Autopoiesis, namely an acentric, topological, post-ecological and posthuman understanding of Luhmann’s theory, that draws on Deleuzian thought, feminist theory, geography, non-representational theory, and new material and object-oriented ontologies. These are combined with some well-rehearsed autopoietic concepts, such as distinction, environment and boundaries; Luhmann’s earlier work on materiality continuum; more recent work on bodies and space; as well as his work on form and medium in relation to art. The article concludes with five suggestions for an understanding of what critical autopoietic materiality might mean for law. (shrink)

This is the beginning of an exploration of before as the thesis ‘before’ (temporally) and ‘be-fore’ (spatially) difference. Before denotes the origin and the desired destination. Before (in the double sense of ‘before’ and ‚be-in-the-fore’) opens up a space of pre-difference, of origin and of forgotten memory, as well as a space of desire, objective, illusion of teleology, unity, completion. Applied to the two domains of Human Rights and Sex/Gender, the space of ‘before’ yields two slightly different vistas: in human (...) rights, a premodern, functionally undifferentiated society which had to invent human rights as its safeguards of functional differentiation. In Sex/Gender, ‘before’ brings a self-referential construction: that of ipseity, as the form of identity beyond comparison that does not play with id but with ipsum. Ipseity is inoperable but not useless. It is inoperable because it cannot be observed from anywhere without suffering rupture. It is not useless because it offers a ground for the reconceptualisation of difference, both through awe and desire. (shrink)

Anosmia, or the absence of smell, is not just a subjective experience but, as I argue in this text, an ontological affect. Anosmia in the form of deodorisation and hygienisation, is the aim for many institutions, indeed often societies as a whole, that try to direct individual affects along prefabricated targets of racial, ethnic and class discrimination, rampant consumerism and unconscious participation in atmospheric engineering. Odours consist of what I would like to call the olflow, the incessant flow of odours (...) in which human and nonhuman bodies are agents of odour generation and consumption. Odour engineering directs the olflow and reinforces olfactory discrimination. I conclude with a call against the threat of what I call ‘ontological anosmia’, namely the flattening of multiplicity of desire and the engineering of emergence as spontaneity. (shrink)

The water’s voice is tetchy, angry even. It is something to do with measurements and enclosures. Or perhaps with humanity in general. The water speaks to no one in particular. A gargling monologue about vastness and death, its exoplanetary itineraries and its chthonic hideaways, its elements and qualities, even its lack of voice. Even so, the water’s voice enters a subaquatic communication with two other bodies, genderless, formless, in constant becoming. These are both human and non-human bodies, their ways of (...) touching require no skin, moving along primordial confluences and elemental conflicts. (shrink)

Three movements that trace a certain understanding of law, from textual to spatial/material to spectacularised. The passages between the three movements are performed with the help of a visualisation that keeps on evolving, following the narrative of the legal understanding. This is accompanied by a thick description of instances from various iterations of an art performance/participatory game I have been performing in the past few years at various art and law institutions called _escaping the lawscape_. These hermeneutic tools help me (...) situation the law from a critique of Habermasian rationality to a critique of Luhmannian functionality, only to arrive to a full aestheticisation of contemporary law as a spectacle that needs to prove its validity through social media and other techniques of packaging. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 18, Issue 4, Page 165-177, December 2013.