Society and space

Few 20th-century political philosophers have caused as much of a stir in the early 21st century as the controversial German legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). Notorious for his intellectual and personal entanglements with the Third Reich, Schmitt has gained increasing popularity on both sides of the political spectrum. Whilst the European new right has hailed him as a source of inspiration in their struggle for a pan-European civilisation, the left has applauded his deep comprehension of sovereignty and liberal imperialism. Others, however, have been much more critical as to the theoretical and political purchase of Schmitt’s work. It is within this ongoing debate that we need to situate Claudio Minca and Rory Rowan’s On Schmitt and Space.

Published with the innovative “Interventions” series at Routledge, Minca and Rowan set out to present Carl Schmitt not primarily as a philosopher or legal scholar – but as a spatial thinker. They argue that space is more than just a conceptual theme that Schmitt developed in the later stages of his career, but a crucial interpretive key to Schmitt’s entire oeuvre. This conceptual discussion is cleverly contextualised both with reference to Schmitt’s biography and the political evolution of the German state in which Schmitt lived and wrote.

In developing the argument about the inherent spatiality of Schmitt’s thought, the authors take us on a roughly chronological journey from Schmitt’s earlier work on the concept of the political via his critique of liberalism to his late work on spatial revolutions and the nomos (spatial order). We are informed about the ways in which Schmitt defines sovereignty in relation to the exception, and about the difference between telluric and motorised partisans. We learn about his problematic attempt to legitimate Nazi expansion through his concept of Grossraum (greater space) as well as his inability to comprehend the post-WWII world and his subsequent retreat into theology.

Whilst On Schmitt and Space thus serves as a (very readable) grand tour of Schmitt’s thought, the book offers much more than just an introduction. Firstly, it traces meticulously the recent renaissance of Schmitt in academic circles and highlights some of the fascinating ways in which Schmitt is claimed on different sides of the political spectrum. Secondly, it prompts us to consider Schmitt as a biopolitical thinker. It reveals how he defined the political as a boundary producing practice that functions to form the body politic by including some forms of life and excluding others. In marking this move as biopolitical, Minca and Rowan make it difficult to disassociate the earlier and later parts of Schmitt’s oeuvre from the project of racial annihilation that the Nazis unleashed in the name of the Volk (people). Although much of the book presents Schmitt as a tragic figure whose concepts are either too slippery or too politically tainted to be useful today, Minca and Rowan do note the allure and usefulness of some of his ideas.

Whilst my reactions to this book are thus overall very positive, I would like to share a few critical reactions that arose when reading On Schmitt and Space.

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