SPACE AND POWER
The aim of the course is to reflect on the relationship between space and power: how space shapes and determines certain forms of power, and how power in turn takes on specific spatial dimensions. The notions of a territory and national boundaries, e.g., which seem so self-evident, are in fact a very specific historical construct, elaborated with precise political aims; they also rest on a particular conception of space and of geometry, without which the notion of a territorial nation-state could not have been invented.
More generally, while philosophy and political science have abundantly reflected on time as a key component of political regimes, they have regularly neglected space as an instrument of power, even though it is no less important in establishing, sustaining and reinforcing law, governance and political control. Space is not an empty, homogenous container: it is a social and political reality, which is the result of social, historical and political power struggles.
The course will consider various figures and aspects of this spatiality of power; in particular, we will look at the importance of geometry in creating the conditions for the modern nation-state, notably through the invention of cartography. It will further show how spatial thinking allows for fresh conceptual approaches to political issues, such as cosmopolitanism, minority rights, property rights or immigration ethics. We will also look at the relationship between space and state violence, as is e.g. manifested by phenomena such as ethnic cleansing or forced population displacements; we will also explore the politics of space, or how given political ideas and values shape and transform space, notably in urban planning.
Reading list (in alphabetical order):
James Akerman, “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases”, Imago Mundi, Vol. 47, 1995, pp. 138-154.
Etienne Balibar, The Nation Form: History and Ideology
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life
Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, Section 2, pp. 68-130.
Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century” in The Arcades Project, pp. 15-21.
Jeremy Bentham, ¨Principles of the Civil Code, Part 1, chap. 8, “Of Property”.
Michael Biggs, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 2, Apr. 1999, pp. 374-405.
Nicholas Blomley, “Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 93, No. 1, Mar. 2003, pp. 121-141.
Jordan Branch, The Cartographic State
Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Princeton UP
Joseph Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders”
Tim Cresswell, In Place/ Out of Place, Minneapolis, Uni. Of Minnesota Press, 1996, Part 1 “The Terrain of Discussion” (ch. 1 and 2)
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, transl. S. Rendall, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1984, ch. VII “Walking in the City”, pp. 91-110.
Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Part II, parag. 1-18.
Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire – The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990, pp.15-36 and 332-340.
Richard Ford, “Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)”, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 4, Feb. 1999, pp. 843-930.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, Colin Gordon (ed.), New York, Pantheon Books, 1980, chap. 8 “The eye of power”.
Anne Godlewska, “Map, Text and Image. The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors: A New Look at the Description de l'Egypte”, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 20, no. 1, 1995, pp. 5-28.
J. B. Harley:
Ø “Deconstructing the Map”, Cartographica, vol. 26, No 2, summer 1989, pp. 1-20.
Ø “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe”, Imago Mundi, 40, 1988, pp. 57-76.
David Harvey,
Ø Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom, NY, Columbia University Press, 2009, chap. 8: “Places, regions, territories”, pp. 166-201.
Ø Rebel Cities
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1871, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990, chap.3, pp. 80-89.
Edmund Husserl, Philosophy and The Crisis of the European Man, 1935.
Tim Ingold, Lines - A Brief History, Routledge, chap.3 “Up, across and along”, pp. 71-90.
Leif Jerram, Streetlife, “No place for a lady?”, pp. 121-140.
Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom – Liberalism and the Modern City, Verso, London 2003, Introduction and chap. 1.
Immanuel Kant,
- Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic, Exposition of Space, pp. 42-49
- Toward Perpetual Peace
Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, ch.IV and V.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, transl. D. Nicholson-Smith, Blackwell, London, 1991, pp. 25-33 (parag. XI to XV)
Liisa Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees”, in Cultural Anthropology, 1992
Doreen Massey, For Space, London, Sage, 2005, chap. 11 pp. 107-117 and chap. 14, 149-161
Mark Neoclous, “Off the Map, On Violence and Cartography”, European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4), 2003, pp. 409-425.
Gregory Nobles, “Straight Lines and Stability: Mapping the Political Order of the Anglo-American Frontier”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 1, Jun. 1993, pp. 9-35.
Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006, pp.255-270.
Ø “Representation and Alienation in the Political Land-scape”, Cultural Geographies, 2005, pp. 19-40.
Ø “The Political Landscape as Polity and Place”, in Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Ricardo Padron, The Spacious Word – Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, Sections III, IV.
John Pickles, “’New Cartographies' and the Decolonization of European Geographies”, in Area, Vol. 37, No. 4, Dec. 2005, pp. 355-364.
Jacques Rancière, Disagreement – Philosophy and Politics
James Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought
Carol Rose, Property and Persuasion, Westview
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract.
Robert Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, chap. 2 “Theory”, pp. 28-44.
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, translated and annotated by G. L. Ulmen, Telos Press, New York 2003, chap. 1 “The first global lines”, pp. 86-100.
Georg Simmel, The Stranger
H. D. Thoreau, Walking
David Turnbull, “Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces”, Imago Mundi, Vol. 48, 1996, pp. 5-24.
J.-P. Vernant, “Geometry and Spherical Astronomy”, in Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, Zone Books, NY, 2006, ch. 7.
Michael Walzer, “Liberalism and the Art of Separation”, Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3, Aug. 1984, pp. 315-330.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped – A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Univ. of Hawaï Press, 1994, pp. 1-19 and 164-174.
Course requirements and evaluation:
Oral participation is actively encouraged.
The evaluation will consist of a final paper. Its object, format and deadline will be given during the first lecture.
Course outline:
Week 1: General Introduction – Why is Space a Problem for Politics?
Why is space consistently absent from political reflection? The importance of the spatiality of power. Looking at politics through the prism of space, understanding “geopolitics” in its original meaning of political geography.
Tim Cresswell, In Place / Out of Place, Minneapolis, Uni. of Minnesota Press, 1996, Part 1 “The Terrain of Discussion” (ch. 1 and 2)
Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power”, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, transl. D. Nicholson-Smith, Blackwell, London, 1991, pp. 25-33 (parag. XI to XV)
Liisa Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees”, Cultural Anthropology, 1992
Weeks 2-3: From the Closed Cosmos to the Infinite Space
Changing conceptions of space: from the Aristotelian notion of space and cosmos, and the Greek Oekumene, to the modern expanse. Space and Place.
Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Part II, parag. 1-18.
Edmund Husserl, Philosophy and the Crisis of the European Man, 1935.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic, Exposition of Space, pp. 42-49
Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, ch. IV and V, pp. 88-124.
J.-P. Vernant, “Geometry and Spherical Astronomy", in Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, Zone Books, NY, 2006, ch. 7.
Week 4: Linear Perspective and the Invention of Cartography
A “miraculous conjunction” of geometry and politics: the concomitant emergence of linear perspective and cartography in early modernity, paving the way for the modern polity. Art and science.
Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, Sections III and IV.
David Turnbull, “Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces”, Imago Mundi, Vol. 48, 1996, pp. 5-24.
Weeks 5-6: The National Territory – the Cartographic State and its Imperialist Expansion
What is the specific spatiality of the territorial nation-state? How did it inaugurate a specific relationship between space, representation of space, and power? The link between territory, cartography and sovereignty. Cartography as a privileged tool of colonial control.
*J. Akerman, “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases”, Imago Mundi, Vol. 47, 1995, pp. 138-154.
*Etienne Balibar, The Nation Form: History and Ideology
*Michael Biggs, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 2, Apr. 1999, pp. 374-405.
*Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution of France.
*Richard Ford, “Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)”, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 4, Feb. 1999, pp. 843-930.
J. B. Harley:
Ø *“Deconstructing the Map”, Cartographica, vol. 26, No 2, summer 1989, pp. 1-20.
Ø “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe”, Imago Mundi, 40, 1988, pp. 57-76.
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1871.
Mark Neoclous, “Off the Map, On Violence and Cartography”, European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4), 2003, pp. 409-425.
Gregory Nobles, “Straight Lines and Stability: Mapping the Political Order of the Anglo-American Frontier”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 1, Jun. 1993, pp. 9-35.
*Robert Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, chap. 2 “Theory”, pp. 28-44.
Michael Walzer, “Liberalism and the Art of Separation”, Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3, Aug. 1984, pp. 315-330.
Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire – The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843
Anne Godlewska, “Map, Text and Image. The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors: A New Look at the Description de l'Egypte”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1995, pp. 5-28.
J.B. Harley, “Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 3, Sep. 1992, pp. 522-536.
Ricardo Padron, The Spacious Word – Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
John Pickles, “’New Cartographies' and the Decolonization of European Geographies”, Area, Vol. 37, No. 4, Dec. 2005, pp. 355-364.
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, translated and annotated by G. L. Ulmen, Telos Press, New York 2003.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped – A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation
Week 7: Applying Spatial Thinking: The Philosophical and Political Problem of Cosmopolitanism, Immigration Ethics
Is it possible to overcome the spatiality of national territoriality and think the conditions of possibility of cosmopolitanism?
Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, pp. 68-130.
Immanuel Kant, Project of Perpetual Peace
Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 2006, pp.255-270.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Cambridge, Harvard University Press
Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Week 8: Odd Spaces: Underground Spaces, Outer Space
Week 9: Visualising Property
The extremely potent spatial power of private property. How private property, the institutionalization of which is one of the main features of the modern nation-state, is based on a particular spatiality.
Jeremy Bentham, “Security and Equality of Property”, in Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions, ed. by B. MacPherson, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1978, pp. 39-58.
Nicholas Blomley, “Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 93, No. 1, Mar. 2003, pp. 121-141.
Andrew McRae, “To Know One's Own: Estate Surveying and the Representation of the Land in Early Modern England”, The Huntington Library Quarterly, University of California Press, 1993, 56, No. 4, pp. 333-357.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Carol Rose
Locke
Waldron
Moby Dick
Rousseau
Week 10: A Political Concept: The Invention of the Landscape
The notion of landscape is a combination of geometry and a very modern notion of the individual and the polity, and embodies a particular relationship between man and the environment. The concept of landscape as a key tool to understanding a new relationship to nature, and to the Anthropocene.
Kenneth Olwig,
Ø “Representation and Alienation in the Political Land-scape”, Cultural Geographies, 2005, pp. 19-40.
Ø “The Political Landscape as Polity and Place”, in Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Week 11: The City. Urban Space
How cities originate from, and are shaped, by specific political ideas. Cities and citizenship. The political meaning of urbanity. Gendered Space.
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, transl. S. Rendall, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1984, ch. VII “Walking in the City”, pp. 91-110.
Leif Jerram, Streetlife – The Untold History of Europe’s Twentieth Century, Oxford U. Press, 2013.
Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom – Liberalism and the Modern City, Verso, London 2003.
Doreen Massey, For Space, London, Sage, 2005, chap. 11 pp. 107-117 and chap. 14, 149-161
Sadia Shirazi, “City, Space, Power: Lahore’s Architecture of In/security”, The Funambulist, Papers 36.
Week 12: Walking.
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life
Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century” in The Arcades Project, pp. 15-21.
Tim Ingold, Lines – A Brief History.
Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, transl. Hong, Princeton Univ. Press.
Thoreau, Walking.
- Enseignant: Anne-christine Habbard