Spatial Sovereignties in Squatted “Excess Spaces”

Abstract

AbstractThis paper proposes the concept of “spatial sovereignties” to understand the governance of squatted spaces, using the case study of Hamburg's autonomous Rote Flora. Referring very loosely to theories of the “excess flesh” of the homo sacer in the state of exception, the paper then inverts these classic theories by instead interrogating a situation where non‐state actors establish their own states of banishment and political exception. These “excess spaces” are not created when the “excess flesh” of the banned subject is stripped of sovereignty, but rather when radical actors, possessing full agency and privilege, intentionally establish their own biopolitical self‐administration. This ultimately constitutes what I posit as a new form of “spatial sovereignty”, wherein self‐banned subjects refuse the social contract to instead carve out alternative forms of sovereignty grounded in squatted excess spaces, which ultimately also develop autonomous forms of self‐governance, justice, and self‐surveillance within sites of alternative citizenship.