Spatial Abstraction, Legal Violence and the Promise of Appropriation

Explorations of the social, embodied and imaginary dimensions of space have been a consistent feature of the successive waves of theoretical innovation that have accompanied the spatial, relational and material ‘turns’ in the humanities and social sciences during recent decades. An important background influence for much of this scholarship has been Henri Lefebvre’s account of the abstract constellation of spatial tendencies that characterises contemporary capitalism. This chapter will contribute to the reception of Lefebvre’s work within critical legal theory by identifying the importance of a relational theory of space in framing his account of the inherently political character of the production of space. In doing so, law will be identified as playing a crucial role in the reproduction of forms of spatial abstraction and their associated modes of violence and domination. As an example of a form of struggle which resists law’s concretisation of abstraction, Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city can be understood as operating not only at the level of political contestation, but as also constituting an aesthetic demand for the appropriation of space. This account will prompt a consideration of the implications of Lefebvre’s account for an understanding of the concept of ‘spatial justice’ as a rupture of the imaginary boundary between the possible and the impossible, which reveals prospects for the juridical reassembly of spatial relationships amongst bodies inhabiting and appropriating their own spaces. It will be argued that Lefebvre’s relational theory of space provides a methodological lens through which we may imagine how, what is currently legally and politically impossible, may become a possibility.