Radical Space: Building the House of the People

by Margaret Kohn

Epoch-making political events are often remembered for their spatial the fall of the Berlin Wall, the storming of the Bastille, the occupation of Tiananmen Square. Until recently, however, political theory has overlooked the power of place. In Radical Space , Margaret Kohn puts space at the center of democratic theory. Kohn examines different sites of working-class mobilization in Europe and explains how these sites destabilized the existing patterns of social life, economic activity, and political participation. Her approach suggests new ways to understand the popular public sphere of the early twentieth century. This book imaginatively integrates a range of sources, including critical theory, social history, and spatial analysis. Drawing on the historical record of cooperatives, houses of the people, and chambers of labor, Kohn shows how the built environment shaped people's actions, identities, and political behavior. She illustrates how the symbolic and social dimensions of these places were mobilized as resources for resisting oppressive political relations. The author shows that while many such sites of resistance were destroyed under fascism, they created geographies of popular power that endure to the present.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communist pizza! as horizon of socialist pretzels?

the irony of Habermas: his Enlightenment "public sphere" was largely behind closed doors (30)

"municipalism was the institutional achievement of the popular public sphere" (43)

checks the wisdom that intense organizing flowed from the factory work floor given that it was a largely regulated/disciplinary space: "The political conclusion of the subaltern classes was...the result of a war of position in which the fortifications were places such as cooperatives, socialist circles, union halls, and workers' recreational associations" (63)

[Sam Bledsoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good look at the history of communal spaces for socialist organization.