How to remain Human in the Wrong Space? A comment on a dialog by Carl Schmitt

Accessible on the site of Critical Inquiry
To become aware of the depth of the ecological mutation, one has to criticize the notion of abstract space. It turns out that, in many of his works, Carl Schmitt has found ways to politicize the production of neutral depoliticized space. This is especially true in “Dialogue on New Space.” The dialogue summarizes Schmitt’s earlier works, but it also tries to relate, audaciously, the character of being human with the different conceptions of space entertained by each protagonist of the dialogue. Especially important in the plot is the interpretation of the expression of “unencumbered technology” that Schmitt associates with the destiny of liberalism and the sort of spatial domination ad infinitum that it implies. The final point of the dialogue is that you cannot be really human in the wrong space. The article does not pretend to make Schmitt a thinker of ecology but to extract from his highly peculiar critique of space something that could be useful to help criticize a depoliticized notion of green space.