Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2026
This chapter opens to the possibility of human emancipation through a rethinking of space: space considered both as a concrete social reality (city, house, public space, territory) and as a form, a pattern, which is employed, along with other forms, to reproduce the contested meanings of social reality. What makes space a means to control both the shared experiences and their representations, is what gives space the power to shape possible experiences. The capacity to produce spaces and to think through spaces is a human ability which, as language, is never reducible to concrete social realities. This capacity corresponds to a potentiality that transcends any actual social reality. Central to this chapter is an approach to the potentialization of space as a way to develop commoning practices with an emancipatory power and prefigurative characteristics
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