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David Howarth*
105
106 Space, Subjectivity, and Politics
who in their different ways play down or are critical of the val-
orization of space.18
This basic division is characteristic of much reflection on space.
Indeed, the dichotomy is often inscribed into the very accounts of
space themselves. It is evident, for example, in the work of both
Massey and Kohn. In these conceptions, the category of space is
split between a stronger set of claims in which space is conceded
“emergent properties” and “causal powers” that bring about social
and political effects, and a much weaker position in which space
refers to the specific “spatial contexts” and “spatial conjunctures”
(or better, social contexts or structures) wherein social and politi-
cal processes simply take place.
Exemplary in this regard is Kohn’s intervention, which moves
us directly to the political and normative/ethical aspects of space.
On one side, her book is replete with claims about the determining
power and function of space and spatial forms: “Space affects how
individuals and groups perceive their place in the order of things.
Spatial configurations naturalize social relations by transforming con-
tingent forms into a permanent landscape that appears as im-
mutable rather than open to contestation. By providing a shared
background, spatial forms serve the function of integrating indi-
viduals into a shared conception of reality.”19 And Kohn goes on to
isolate a number of distinctive, positive properties of space, which
include the function “to initiate, maintain, or interrupt inter-
action”; to “encourage or inhibit contact between people”; and to
“determine the form and scope of contact.”20 These reflections cul-
minate in the advocacy of what she calls “a spatial heuristic,” which
“can illuminate domains of political experience that have hitherto
remained obscured in a culture that emphasizes visual and linguis-
tic knowledges.”21
In other statements, space is simply the site or place wherein
processes and practices take place. In this much weaker version of
the argument, space is depicted as “a terrain of struggle for control
over bodies, movement, labour, meaning and sociability,” and the
radical democratic project is enriched by looking “at the diverse
places where politics takes place: festivals, town squares, chambers of
labour, mutual aid societies, union halls, night schools, coopera-
tives, houses of the people.” What is of interest in this version is a
relational connection or “pattern of interaction” between space
and social practice.22
One significant implication of this undecidability and lack of con-
ceptual clarity is that while the alleged benefits of connecting space
to questions about politics, subjectivity, and ethics are frequently
alluded to, they are never properly explored and accomplished.
110 Space, Subjectivity, and Politics
Theorizing Space
In this view, then, to use terms borrowed from the early Heidegger,
space is an ontological category that characterizes all social struc-
tures and any system of social relations, and not an ontical category
that refers to particular sorts of space, which are informed by an
underlying set of ontological assumptions.30
More precisely, space is defined as “any repetition that is gov-
erned by a structural law of successions,” whereas temporality
refers to the “pure effect of dislocation,” that is, the “ultimate fail-
ure of all hegemonization,” so that “only the dislocation of the
structure, only a maladjustment which is spatially unrepresentable,
is an event.”31 Time is thus equated with an irreducible negativity
and conceptualized as dislocation; and by weaving the dimensions
of space and time together, while rejecting the possibility of a final
dialectical overcoming, Laclau adumbrates the concept of an “in-
complete ordering” that articulates the spatial and the temporal in
a new conceptual infrastructure. Thus it is in the interplay between
112 Space, Subjectivity, and Politics
he calls “the Fourfold,” that is, the articulation of “the thing” in the
gathering of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities.48 In Heidegger’s
conception, classical dimensions of space, such as “interval,” “dis-
tance,” “measurement,” and so on, are simply internal components
of particular modes of disclosing things in certain locations. Places
are thus spaces with a name and an identity, and these names and
identities are shaped by a specific set of meaningful practices. Such
practices are in turn informed by a particular conception of Being:
the specific modes through which beings are disclosed in the
world. In most contemporary societies, any concretely articulated
social space will thus be composed of a variety of different types of
place, which have various and contested meanings for subjects.
They include sacred places such as churches, mosques, and syna-
gogues; commercial locations such as banks and markets; political
spaces such as parliaments, international organizations, monu-
ments, and palaces; as well as private places such as homes, clubs,
and associations. The key ethical and political questions are how
these places are related to one another; which places are permitted;
and which (if any) are not. But these questions bring us directly to
the ethical and political implications of space, and this requires a
little further conceptual clarification.
Heterogeneous Subjectivity
It is beyond the scope of this article to set out the necessary and
sufficient conditions for the realization of such (cosmopolitan)
spaces, let alone enumerate the various normative criteria for their
identification. Instead, I want to conclude by focusing on one
important condition for their construction, which is to envisage
and then embody a form of subjectivity that is compatible with,
and indeed engenders, such heterogeneity. How are we to conceive
a subject that can respond positively and actively to difference and
multiplicity, but can do so without falling either into a cynical indif-
ference (mere tolerance of the other, for instance) or into a retreat
from political engagement altogether? How can we articulate an
active politics of decision and action, with the possibility of “letting
go” and releasing towards difference?
Michael Walzer suggests one possible response to these ques-
tions, when he distinguishes between a “thick” and “thin” self, both
of which are rooted in the idea of a “divided self.” He argues that
one manifestation of this differentiation is that the “self speaks with
David Howarth 125
more than one moral voice,” and is thus capable “of self-criticism
and prone to doubt, anguish and uncertainty.”64 In explicating the
latter, Walzer contrasts different modalities of self-criticism (and
indeed of the self) with a view to establishing a “fit” between the lat-
ter and his advocacy of radical pluralism and complex equality.65
More particularly, he contrasts what might be termed thin and thick
models of self-criticism, where the former, evident in (Freud’s con-
ception of) psychoanalysis and (Western) philosophical reflection,
suggest “a simple linear and hierarchical arrangement of the self,
with a single critical ‘I’ at the top and a single line of criticism.”66
However, although these models do to some extent capture the feel-
ings of guilt in cases of obvious transgression, when we commit a
clear wrong for instance, “they are most plausible and persuasive
when they represent our minimalist morality.”67 This is because they
miss our instinctive and immediate critical responses, untutored by
rational reflection, as well as “those moments of doubt and division
when it is radically unclear which part is our best part, which roles,
identities, or values are fundamental,” the “hierarchical view re-
quires a thick, pluralist, and democratic correction.”68
Walzer thus advocates a thick mode of self-criticism that is
accepting of a deep and perhaps irreducible plurality of values,
competing drives, and self-critics in the self (which in turn makes
possible and feasible his project of complex equality). In this
model, where the self is the continuous “subject and object of self-
criticism,” “I am not, nor is any one of my self-critics, the sovereign
director of these critical wars. The critics that crowd around, speak-
ing for different values, representing different roles and identities
have not been chosen by me. They are me but this ‘me’ is socially as
well as personally constructed; it is a complex, maximalist whole.”69
And rather than the self, perhaps with the help of the analyst or a
philosophical consciousness, seeking to impose a single rational
solution on these competing drives and internal conflicts, thus
removing the sources of discomfort and restoring order, Walzer
proposes a solution without linearity and hierarchy. Instead,
Conclusion
thinkers like Lacan and Z̆iz̆ek, this involves the idea of a split or
divided subject, which is “grounded” ultimately on the idea of the
void that is constitutive of any social space. What I call “heteroge-
neous subjectivity” consists of acknowledging the hold or grip of
“the Thing” or object that turns individuals subjects—that makes
them the subjects they are—and then coming to terms with such
identifications. An ethical subject in this conception involves a
releasement or “letting go” towards others, but such a relation is in
turn predicated on the mutual recognition of the ontological or
generalized character of such subjective identifications.
Notes
59. Foucault, note 56, p. 354; see Kevin Hetherington, The Badlands of
Modernity (London: Routledge, 1997); Harvey, note 15, p. 184.
60. Foucault, note 56, p. 353.
61. Harvey, note 16.
62. Kohn, note 8, p. 91.
63. Kathleen Arnold, Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2004), p. 147.
64. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1994), p. 85.
65. Ibid., p. 101. The argument for complex equality is developed in
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
66. Walzer, note 64, p. 91.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., p. 92.
69. Ibid., pp. 86, 96.
70. Ibid., pp. 98–99.
71. Ibid., p. 100.
72. Ibid., p. 101.
73. Jason Glynos, “Self-transgression and Freedom,” Critical Review of
International Social and Political Philosophy 6, no. 2 (2003): 1–20; Slavoj Z̆iz̆ek,
For They Know Not What They Do (London: Verso, 1991).
74. Walzer, note 59, p. 88.
75. Slavoj Z̆iz̆ek, Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), p. 214.
76. I draw inspiration here from Rudi Visker’s seminal readings of
Heidegger, Foucault, and Levinas. See Rudi Visker, Truth and Singularity
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999).
77. Z̆iz̆ek cited in Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political (London:
Routledge, 1999), p. 109. In the language of Heidegger, this approach taps
into his different ways of relating to, and coming to terms with, the noth-
ingness or contingency at the heart of Being. In Being and Time nothing-
ness is met with the idea of an authentic resolution and decision in the
face of an all-pervasive nihilism, whereas in his later writings the negotia-
tion of nothingness consists of a “releasement towards things” and an
ethos of “dwelling,” which is predicated on a transcendence into the plen-
itude of Being. Both are, nevertheless, expressions of the ultimate contin-
gency at the heart of our experience of Being and may be seen to repre-
sent different modalities of our negotiation of absence. In Being and Time,
to be human is nothing else but to experience the “da” of “sein”—the
“there” of “Being”: its “thrownness” or “facticity”—and it is only through
its attachments to something, and its “being-held” so, that the “da” can
turn into something approximating a subject (even though Heidegger
avoids the latter because of its Cartesian and transcendental connota-
tions). See David Howarth, “Towards a Heideggerian Social Science: Hei-
degger, Kisiel and Wiener on the Limits of Anthropological Discourse,”
Anthropological Theory 4, no. 2 (2004): 229–247.
78. See Slavoj Z̆iz̆ek, Looking Awry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991),
pp. 154–169.
79. Glyn Daly, “Introduction: Risking the Impossible, in Slavoj Z̆iz̆ek
and Glyn Daly, eds., Conversations with Z̆iz̆ek (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2004),
pp. 18–19.
80. Walzer, note 64, p. 102.
81. Ibid.
134 Space, Subjectivity, and Politics