Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

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.

Keywords

planning theory (post)anarchism Lacan revolutionary politics autonomy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abensour

(2011) Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian moment (trans. Blechman

). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Badiou

(2005) Metapolitics (trans. Barker

). London: Verso.

Bakunin

(1953) Political Philosophy (ed. Maximoff

). London: Free Press.

Bey

(1991) T.A.Z: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.

Bookchin

(1982) The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Paolo Alto: Cheshire Books.

Bookchin

(1995) From Urbanization to Cities: Towards a New Politics of Citizenship. London: Cassell.

Bracher

(ed.) (1997) Lacanian Theory of Discourse: subJect, Structure and Society. New York: New York University Press.

Buber

(1996) Paths in Utopia. New York: Syracuse University Press.

Campbell

(2004) Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. London: Routledge.

10.

Castoriadis

(1997) The Imaginary Institution of Society (trans. Blamey

). Cambridge: Polity Press.

11.

Chatterton

(2010) Autonomy: the struggle for survival, self-management and the common. Antipode 42(4): 897–908.

12.

Clark

Martin

(eds) (2004) Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: The Radical Social Thought of Elisée Reclus. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

13.

Connolly

(1991) Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of the Political Paradox. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

14.

Connolly

(1995) The Ethos of Pluralization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

15.

Connolly

(2005) Pluralism. Durham: Duke University Press.

16.

Crouch

Ward

(1997) The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture. Nottingham: Five Leaves.

17.

Day

(2005) Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements. London: Pluto Press.

18.

Dean

(2009) Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.

19.

Dean

(2010) Primer on the Leninist Party. I cite blog (October 11) http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2010/10/primer-on-the-leninist-party.html (accessed 15 April 2011).

20.

Deleuze

Guattari

(2005) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (trans. Massumi

). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

21.

Doel

(1999) Poststructuralist Geographies: the diabolical art of spatial science. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Essential Works, 1954–1984. London: Penguin, 326–48.

22.

Esteva

(2010) The Oaxaca commune and Mexico’s coming insurrection. Antipode: a Journal of Radical Geography 42(4): 978–93.

23.

Foucault

(2002a) Space, knowledge, and power. In: Faubion

(ed.) Power, Volume 3: Essential Works, 1954–1984. London: Penguin, 349–64.

24.

Foucault

(2002b) The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of Freedom, in Rabinow

Hurley

(eds) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Volume 1: Essential Works 1954–1984. London: Penguin, 281–301.

25.

Foucault

(2002c) Truth and power. In: Faubion

(ed.) Power, Volume 3: Essential Works, 1954–1984. London: Penguin, 111–33.

26.

Fuller

Jonas

Lee

(2010) Interrogating Alterity. London: Ashgate.

27.

Geddes

(1927) A great geographer: Elisée Reclus. In: Ishill

(ed.) Reclus and Elie Reclus. In Memoriam NJ: Oriole Press.

28.

Gordon

(2008) Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. London: Pluto Press.

29.

Graeber

(2002) The new anarchists. New Left Review 13 (Jan–Feb): 61–72.

30.

Gramsci

(1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (ed. and trans. Hoare

Nowell Smith

). London: Lawrence and Wishart.

31.

Gunder

(2004) Shaping the planner’s ego-ideal: a Lacanian interpretation of planning education. Journal of Planning Education and Research 23(3): 299–311.

32.

Gunder

(2010) Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space. Planning Theory 9(4): 1–17.

33.

Gunder

Hillier

(2004) Conforming to the expectations of the profession: a Lacanian perspective on planning practice, norms and values. Planning Theory & Practice 5(2): 217–35.

34.

Hall

(1996) Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Blackwell.

35.

Hallward

(2005) The politics of prescription. The South Atlantic Quarterly 104: 769–89.

36.

Hardt

Negri

(2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

37.

Healy

(1997) Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London: Palgrave.

38.

Hillier

(2003) Agon’izing over consensus: why Habermasian ideals cannot ‘real’. Planning Theory 2(1): 37–59.

39.

Hillier

(2008) Plan(e) speaking: a multiplanar theory of spatial planning. Planning Theory 7(1): 24–50.

40.

Holloway

(2010) Crack Capitalism. London: Pluto.

41.

Innes

(2004) Consensus building: clarifications for the critics. Planning Theory 3(1): 5–20.

42.

Innes

Booher

(1999) Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems – A Framework for Evaluating Collaborative Planning. APA Journal, Autumn 1999, 65(4): 412–23.

43.

Innes

Booher

(2004) Reframing public participation: strategies for the 21^st century. Planning Theory 5(4): 419–436.

44.

Invisible Committee (2009) The Coming Insurrection. New York: Semiotext(e).

45.

Kasnabish

(2010) Zapatistas: Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global. London: Zed Books.

46.

Kropotkin

(1943) The State: Its Historic Role. London: Freedom Press.

47.

Kropotkin

(1985) Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (ed. Ward

). London: Freedom Press.

48.

Lacan

(1977) Écrits: A Selection (trans. Sheridan

). London: Tavistock.

49.

Lacan

(2007) The Other Side of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII, (trans. Grigg

). London: WW Norton & Co.

50.

Latour

(2008) A cautious Prometheus? A few steps toward a philosophy of design: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/112-DESIGN-CORNWALL.pdf

51.

Law

(2005) Ghosts of Geddes: civics as applied sociology. Journal of Generalism and Civics 6 (August): 4–19.

52.

Lefebvre

(1991) The Production of Space (trans. Nicholson-Smith

). Oxford: Blackwell.

53.

Lefebvre

(2008) Critique of Everyday Life. Volume Three: From Modernity to Modernism (trans. Elliot

). London: Verso.

54.

Lenin

(1990) State and Revolution. New York: International Publishers.

55.

Lotringer

Marazzi

(eds) (2007) Autonomia: Post-Political Politics. Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e).

56.

Massey

(2005) For Space. London: Sage.

57.

May

(2010) Contemporary Political Movements and the Thought of Jacques Rancière. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

58.

Merrifield

(2010) The coming of The Coming Insurrection: notes on a politics of neocommunism. Environment and Planning D: Space and Society 28: 202–16.

59.

Miller

J-A

(1996) La suture. Cahiers pour l’Analyse 1–2 (Jan-Apr): 39–51.

60.

Miraftab

(2009) Insurgent planning: situating radical planning in the Global South. Planning Theory 8(1): 32–50.

61.

Mouffe

(2000) The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.

62.

Mouffe

(2005) On the Political. New York: Routledge.

63.

Newman

(2004a) Interrogating the Master: Lacan and radical politics. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 9: 298–314.

64.

Newman

(2004b) New reflections on the theory of power: a Lacanian Perspective, Contemporary Political Theory 3: 148–67.

65.

Newman

(2010a) The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

66.

Newman

(2010b) The horizon of anarchy: anarchism and contemporary radical thought. Theory & Event 13(2).

67.

Perlman

(1983) Against His-story, Against Leviathan. Detroit: Black & Red.

68.

Pile

(2000) Sleepwalking in the modern city: Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud in the world of dreams. In: Bridge

Watson

(eds.) A Companion to the City. Oxford: Blackwell, 75–86.

69.

Pleyers

(2010) Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

70.

Purcell

(2009) Resisting neoliberalization: communicative planning or counter-hegemonic movements? Planning Theory 8(2): 140–65.

71.

Rancière

(1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation (trans. Ross

). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

72.

Rancière

(1999) Disagreement: politics and philosophy (trans. Rose

). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

73.

Sassen

(2008) Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval Assemblages to Global Villages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

74.

Seymour

(2011) Towards a new model commune. Lenin’s tomb blog: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/03/towards-new-model-commune.html (accessed 19 April 2011).

75.

Stavrakakis

(1999) Lacan and the Political. London, New York: Routledge.

76.

Stavrakakis

(2007) The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

77.

Stirner

(1995) The Ego and Its Own (trans. Leopold

). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

78.

Thompson

(1988) William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

79.

Vaneigem

(2006) The Revolution of Everyday Life (trans. Nicholson-Smith

). London: Rebel Press.

80.

Verhaeghe

(1995) From impossibility to inability: Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis 3 (Spring): 91–108.

81.

Ward

(1982) Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press.

82.

Ward

(2000) Anarchy and architecture: a personal record. In: Hughes

Sadler

. Non-Plan: essays on freedom and participation in modern architecture and urbanism. Oxford: Architectural Press.

83.

Ward

(2002) Cotters and Squatters: The Hidden History of Housing. Nottingham: Five Leaves.

84.

White

(2008) Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal. London: Pluto Press.

85.

Wright

(2002) Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism. London: Pluto Press.

86.

Zerzan

(1996) Future Primitive and Other Essays. New York: Semiotext(e).

87.

Žižek

(1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

88.

Žižek

(2000) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.

89.

Žižek

(2001) Repeating Lenin. Lacan.com: http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm

90.

Žižek

(2007) Resistance is surrender. London Review of Books 29(2): 15 November: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/slavoj-zizek/resistance-is-surrender

Postanarchism and space: Revolutionary fantasies and autonomous zones

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References