Via Derek Gregory at geographicalimaginations, I’ve just come across a short essay at Adbusters from Andrew Merrifield diagnosing the ‘spatial’ lessons of Occupy, which he presents in terms of the challenge of linking a clear and adequate Marxist theory of capitalism to the rather elusive practical challenge of doing politics in light of that sort of analysis. I guess the ‘engima’ that Andrew identifies might not be so puzzling if one did not imagine that the theory was quite so adequate, and if one did not suppose that ‘revolt’ was the only plausible model for thinking about politics. Oh well.

The essay does contain a nice description of what’s ‘public’ about occupied spaces, one that punctures the romance of ‘real’ spaces of assembly – publicness turns out to be about both situated encounters as well as catching the attention of more dispersed, disseminated audiences. A nice image, certainly, developed more fully in John Parkinson’s recent book which I mentioned a while back, for example, or in Kurt Ivesen’s work on spaces of public address , or various other places in which a stretched-out notion of public space is developed . It’s not really a terribly ‘revolting’ idea at all.