Diagrammatics of Spatial Justice: Neoliberalisation, Normativity, and the Production of Space

Abstract This article focuses on the concept of “spatial justice” and argues for its analytical significance in a critical comprehension of a series of phenomena, from processes of neoliberalisation, socio‐geographic composition and the production of urban space to how space and justice are conceived. Being an expression of social theory’s spatial turn, the concept has served to enrich apperceptions of social justice. Nonetheless, the article adopts the contention that neither the concept’s more disturbing implications nor its radical potential have been fully attended. After contextualising the relevant theoretical problematic through an analysis of neoliberal urbanism, this radical potency is foregrounded by a Deleuzian‐inspired conceptualisation, which conceives spatial justice as a contentious process of territorialising and deterritorialising assemblages that operate and unfold diagrammatically. This conceptualisation, it will be argued, allows theory to move beyond the distributive paradigm and its anthropocentric bias, which continue to prevail in the relevant theoretical and political discourses.