Politics of Space : Notes for a Pragmatic of the Common

Based on an ethnography of political squats in Geneva, this paper explores the spatial dimension of commonalities. It argues that in the political process of ordering a common life, space plays a central role as it constitutes the articulating element between situated experience and the institution of the common. This political dimension of space will be analysed through the comparison between three different squatting experiences. Each of them illustrates a distinct composition of commonalities that can be, to a certain extent, related to Laurent Thévenot regime of commonalities in the plural and, more broadly, to three of the main European political traditions (anarchism, socialism and liberalism). We will in particular show how each of those political regimes of the common are linked to specific forms of every day engagement of the squatters in collective life along contrasted material settings of collective spaces. This exploration will allow us to reflect on the spatial dynamics of a politics of engagement and their role in the emancipatory and oppressive effects each regime of thecommon entails. In the end, more than distinct political and spatial model, the three regimes appear as dynamic counterbalances of each other, accounting for the contradictory dynamics pervading the squatting experience –where emotions, attachments, convictions, intimacy are closely intertwined –and the political attempts to stabilize a lasting common. This dynamic exploration of the building of commonalities will allow us to reflect in the end to the broader epistemological and theoretical stakes of a pragmatic of space and the common.