Postanarchism and space: Revolutionary fantasies and autonomous zones

Abstract

In this paper, I call for a re-consideration of anarchism and its alternative ways of conceptualising spaces for radical politics. Here I apply a Lacanian analysis of the social imaginary to explore the utopian fantasies and desires that underpin social spaces, discourses and practices – including planning, and revolutionary politics. I will go on to develop – via Castoriadis and others – a distinctly post-anarchist conception of political space based around the project of autonomy and the re-situation of the political space outside the state. This will have direct consequences for an alternative conception of planning practice and theory.

Resilience, Political Ecology, and Power: Convergences, Divergences, and the Potential for a Postanarchist Geographical Imagination

“…For Newman, like Bookchin, this ordered but emergent space constitutes what might be called a postanarchist geographical imagination. It is a space where the organization of life and resources “emerges spontaneously, and which people determine freely for themselves” along horizontal means (Newman , 347). While their nascent character makes the mechanisms that operate within these spaces indeterminable in themselves, postanarchism serves as a body of critiques meant to expose those discourses which privilege particular forms of authority (Springer ).…”

Towards Enhanced Resilience in City Design: A Proposition

“…Planning theory supports, though presently in a very limited way, a move away from a non-innovative state of mono-rationality [56], which generally conceives of only one way of "good" planning [57] that is dominated by the government, in close association with developers. In order to establish planning without tightening and dictating regulations, current planning practice must be replaced by an alternative, that has been variously described as: post-anarchistic, or autonomous planning creating a disordered order of "becoming" spaces [58]; planning from "outside inward" [59]; informal, insurgent, planning [60]; planning by surprise, making use of coincidental opportunities [61]; or poly-rational unsafe planning [56]. This alternative looms when the fundamental properties of Western planning mono-rationality, namely "playing by the rules", "repeat habitual prior experiences", and "creating a non-innovative status quo" [56], all withstanding self-organization and indirectly resilience, are left behind.…”

The gaps of architectural life: the affective politics of Gordon Matta‐Clark'sConical Intersect

“…Without reducing urban politics to the simple injection or ‘molecularisation’ of macropolitical ideas into the ‘microphysical fabric’ (Deleuze and Guattari , 226), as is arguably the case in political economy accounts on architectural design (see Jacobs and Merriman ), Conical Intersect confronts us with the situated worlds of difference and demands active reflection on the constitution of the affective flows of decisionmaking processes that inform the destructive and constructive forces (un)shaping global cities. This is what political theorist Saul Newman refers to when stating ‘planning, as it is usually conceived, is […] the idea of a certain order of space imposed from above upon pre‐existing social relations by a cadre who claim a superior technical knowledge’ (Newman , 347). Macrological assemblages, through their regulation of participation, delimit the capacity for thorough micrological engagement.…”