This book took a few chunks of my soul, several sleepless nights and copious amounts of chocolate to write. Do come along and help me launch it. There will be book presentations by the inspiring Anne Bottomley, Lindsay Bremner, Peter Fitzpatrick and, if the date fits, Doreen Massey. There will be ‘performance readings’ from artists/thinkers Roswitha Gerlitz, Anish Popli and Anastaziya Tataryn amongst others, and the ever-lovely and enthusiastic Westminster students. Finally, there will be a drinks reception, and the whole thing will be launched by the SSH Dean, Roland Dannreuther. The event also launches the new Routledge series Space, Materiality and the Normative, edited by Christian Borch and me
Friday, 5th of December, 2014, 5-7pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster,
309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
Spatial Justice: 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.
Andreas,
Sorry I can’t be there but have a great event!
Michael