Yelling ‘Fire’ in a Crowded Occupation: Cynical Fire Hazard Claims and the Technocratic Containment of Dissent

Abstract

While the privatisation of public space has been the subject of considerable research, literature exploring the shifting boundaries between public and private law, and the role of those shifts in the expansion of neo-liberal social relations, has been slower to develop. This article explores the use of fire safety regulations to evict political occupations in the context of these shifts. Two examples from the UK student occupation movement and two from the US Occupy movement demonstrate how discourses and logics of both private and public law are mobilised through fire hazard claims to create the potent image of a neutral containment of dissent on technical grounds in the public interest – an image that proves difficult to contest. However, the recourse to the public interest and to expert opinion that underpins fire hazard claims is inconsistent with principles governing the limited neo-liberal political sphere, which underscores the pragmatic and continually negotiated implementation of neo-liberal ideas. The article sheds light on the complexity of the extending reach of private law, on the resilience of the public sphere and on the significance of occupations as a battleground on which struggles over neo-liberal social relations and subjectivities play out.