Introduction

Housing is one of the contemporary global crises. Almost regardless of location, the issues of availability, quality, and most of all the affordability of housing dominate the headlines and constitute the real concerns of hard-working, financially disadvantaged citizens. There are of course a number of possible approaches to resolving these issues, such as economic measures, material science developments, or architectural techniques. In this essay, however, I’m more interested in what insights looking at the primarily exclusionary basis of the property right itself (the right being that which commences ownership of housing space and shapes the boundaries of that state and, arguably, the boundaries of thought and feeling within society about what is possible in relation to spatial dynamics) might provide for future thought, social attitudes, government policy, and potential reform regarding housing policies.

Key questions in many debates concerning housing reform often include: how to get those who already own such enclosed spaces (and more importantly those who can perhaps even afford to own more) to contemplate voting against policies which they believe are solely in their immediate and long-term best interests? How to get them to vote against what many believe is the best approach for their own personal (in the psychological sense of a ‘self’) integrity and bodily well-being? How, instead, can they be persuaded to vote in favour of what might be for the broader public interest (including of course their own, although perhaps to a lesser individualised degree and with a more dissolved, long-term impact)? Such questions do not, I believe, ignore the socio-economic and historic context surrounding links between housing policy and any propensity towards a desire to exclusively own a space within which to house oneself.Footnote 1 They are in fact a direct consequence of a clear historical progression towards advocating for a very particular—and largely unregulated—type of home ownership in capitalistic societies. Offer citizens the opportunity to own and inevitably the subject position of then ‘becoming (or being)-an-owner’ emerges as both viable and desirable—especially if alternatives no longer exist. My efforts in this paper are not to universalise subjects or subjectivity in relation to ownership and suggest that all will or must desire to own in this way; but it is naïve to suggest that once having been offered and advocated for, the majority will not come to manifest this subject position of being-an-owner, given the relative power and freedom such ownership creates for the individual. It is exactly this particular type of impulse towards hoarding individual power this essay is attempting to leaven, given the obvious absence of support for alternative options. As such, many will not vote to either make more relative or change that subject position.

In addition, the position of this essay is not that subjectivity per se and exclusion are inevitably interconnected; rather that exclusion comes to dominate in spatial relations as a result of a particular type of subjectivity itself dominating. Neither dominance is an inevitability; nor is their connection. Thus, my acceptance of the need for a certain level of ownership; my larger concern is with the imbalance of interests, with the clear lack of valuing a counter-principle to balance the aggressive stance towards exclusion and private space above all other interests.

Potentially challenging reforms regarding housing,Footnote 2 I argue, are therefore felt by many people as attacks less on a general libertyFootnote 3 and more so specifically on their belief in their legitimate ability to control space; their belief in their legitimate ability to enclose it as a realm of purely individualised sovereignty.Footnote 4 More fundamentally and importantly, they are felt as an attack on the possibility or state of ‘being a person’, because for many people being a person equals primarily this ability to control (ever more) space.Footnote 5 This makes even the mere existence of such reform concepts extraordinarily difficult to contemplate, let alone their enactment. Especially since, once given, control is difficult to relinquish; if anything, it often persuades the holder to try to obtain more.

One possible way to encourage contemplation, a kind way, understanding of the human need and impulse towards exclusion and the benefits of moderate exclusion,Footnote 6 is to try to persuade such owners that their best interests are in fact not only tied up in their exclusionary rights; nor, indeed, is their entire ability to ‘be a person’ only tied to the ability to keep others at bay or engage with them only as a controller of space. A way to encourage such contemplation is to try to persuade them, rather, that an epistemological otherworld exists, one admittedly difficult to conceive of and access due to its (seemingly) alien character and the boundaries constructed by the ego-centred self, but yet with an extraordinarily expansive emancipatory atmosphere.

This otherworld has a rich past, both practically and conceptually. Space constraints within this essay do not permit a comprehensive intellectual history of the notion of the public, or the not necessarily excessively exclusive, space. In England alone, however, if we consider the period prior to the infamous Enclosure movement (and the feelings of those most negatively affected by it) we see a clear epistemological otherworld of complicated and relative spatial relations towards land and the concept of exclusive spatial enclosure.

This was a world where a rich tapestry of laws created and allowed the enforcement of a particular type of spatial inter-personal dynamics concerning land, and which arguably represented the existence of very different subject positions. As an example, Kerridge writes of the ‘common field’ that,

a common field is one in which various parts or parcels of land (or the use of them) belong to individual proprietors, who exercise sole proprietary rights when the land is in crop but leave them in abeyance when it is not, so that when not in crop, the land is under the general management of all the proprietors in common and by common agreement. Thus a common field is alternately closed for cropping and thrown open to all the commoners, that is, to all the owners of common rights. (1992, p. 1)

Reid writes that while copyhold, one of the peculiar rights existing at the time (long since abandoned in the wake of enclosure), “was a sort of inferior estate that existed within a manor held in fee simple by a lord”, it did appear also that.

the lord’s interest in the manor could co-exist with the copyholder’s interest in his estate because the two estates were grounded ultimately in different systems of law. The lord, regardless of the nature of his tenure, held by the common law, while the copyholder held in virtue of customary law. (1995, p. 248)

Such legal diversity arguably represents a diversity of being or subjecthood. The concept of the tragedy of the commons is well known, and one of the oft used justifications for enclosure of the commons—but what of the tragedy of the (excessive) enclosure, once an understanding of common fields and common rights are abandoned?

This ancient system of utilisation of land and spatial relations—with its understanding of use value as a counterpoint to exchange value only, and the impact of that on people of all kinds—was explicitly targeted for radical change by the Enclosure movement so as to serve ‘improvement’, a nebulous term much in vogue at the time which meant at various points either (perhaps most generously) a technological innovation in land use and ecology (see Fitzherbert 1523a; 1523b) or, (perhaps less generously but more accurately) a shift in social dynamics imposed from the top down to expropriate land for exclusive benefit and exchange value. In the Discourse of the Common Weal (1549), not long after enclosures had started in earnest, much space is given over to the discussion of the problems already emerging from the practice of enclosing land. In the second dialogue, as Chalk writes ‘the Doctor says the solution of the problem of the conversion of arable to pasture land lies in providing a sufficient profit incentive to induce the greater cultivation of land. Thus he argues that, whenever people “find more proffitt by pasture then by tillage, they will still inclose, and turne arrable landes to pasture”‘ (Chalk, 1951, p. 334).

It’s no surprise that enclosure occurred almost in parallel with the dissolution of the monasteries in England; in many ways the shift towards enclosure was a process of sacrificing whatever was somewhat attractive or meaningful in terms of value emerging from an (admittedly) often-restrictive religious influence on society. Feudalism and religious morality had many ills, many of which required and deserved reform—but one thing that was tossed away almost haphazardly without any real regard for its significance was the idea of responsibility toward the land (from the landowner) and responsibility toward those who suffered, the poor, and those under hardship. Thomistic ethics compelled people to give equal weight to these issues. Chalk quotes Tawney in his introduction to the 1925 reprint of Discourse on Usury (1572) by Thomas Wilson, privy counsellor and secretary of state to Elizabeth 1st as writing of the common business man of the era that.

A century before he had practiced extortion and been told that it was wrong: for it was contrary to the law of God. A century later he was to practice it and be told that it was right: for it was in accordance with the law of nature. (p. 338)

A good Protestant Englishman, now unfettered by rules from Rome or any interest or responsibility towards his fellow citizens, however, might eventually exclaim against anti-enclosure laws (as Raleigh did in Parliament in 1601) and state on the matter ‘I think the best course is to set it at liberty, and leave every man free, which is the desire of a true English man’ (D’Ewes 1693, cited in Reid 1995, p. 256). One person’s liberty is, of course, (often dependent upon) another’s misery.

Equally, during more ancient periods, the public was prized as a necessary element of civic society. In The Ancient City, De Coulanges identifies the role of the in-between had for the Romans, as manifested in their worship of the Lares and the ubiquitous Lararium contained within each domestic sphere (1980). Siedentrop notes that in the early Roman city.

Urban houses…could not be contiguous or joined—some space, however slight had to separate them. At Rome the law fixed two feet and a half as the width of the free space, which was always to separate two houses, and this space was consecrated to the “god of the enclosure.” (2017, p. 13)

Such regulation would be unthinkable in many contemporary cities, as much a consequence of a belief in the new gods of excessive exclusion (and maximisation of exchange value) as to any abandonment of gods of the enclosure and their due sacrifice that honors the enclosure in the first place, sanctifies it as literally a place of (the) living.

In this conceptual otherworldFootnote 7 their sense of integrity and well-being might be even better served—or at least further served—by becoming part of a version of personal integrity and well-being that is also relationally defined as well as (only) individually defined—as is shown by the historical examples above. It is an otherworld wherein integrity and well-being are not exclusively connected to ownership over enclosed space, to the protection of the boundaries of a sovereign and sacred space. An otherworld where being a person is not exclusively defined by such control over space, because persons are respected in and of themselves and honoured by society and government as such. And where a benefit for the many is not seen as an individual limit, a sacrifice, but instead as a boon for all.

In order to start this process of persuasion, I suggest the exclusionary basis of the property right—such exclusion subsequently allowing and encouraging extreme distinctions of only others out there, and only myself in here in relation to space—must first be addressed.Footnote 8

Property as Exclusion

The legal property right that allows, defines, and demarcates ownership of space is, arguably, itself defined primarily by its exclusionary quality; its ability, if adequately enforced, to keep others out of certain spaces.Footnote 9 Legal theorists have written that.

the right to exclude others is more than just one of the most essential” constituents of property—it is the sine qua non. Give someone the right to exclude others from a valued resource i.e. a resource that is scarce relative to the human demand for it and you give them property. Deny someone the exclusion right and they do not have property. (Merrill 1998, p. 730)

This exclusionary quality is without regard to the private, public, or other nature of the right—such definitions only really point to the character of the holder of the right, whether it be individual, government, or other state entity etc. Governments want the ability to exclude others from their spaces just as much as private individuals do, and property rights allow them to do just that, simply over enclosed space that might be theoretically held for the public benefit but which of course is still controlled in daily use by individual state entities (run themselves by individuals, often with impulsively and excessively exclusionary individual feelings).

There is, of course, debate and disagreement about the degree of centrality the exclusionary aspect of a property right takes up in the property conceptualisation, although arguably most laypeople would ‘feel’ this necessity of exclusionary force as a key aspect of what it is to have property rights.Footnote 10 Within legal theory, the bundle of rights perspective, first seriously developed by Wesley Hohfeld, offers perhaps the best classical critique of this idea of property as primarily exclusionary (See 1913, 1917). Yet, however Hohfeld phrases it, especially in the examples he gives as regards land, the end point is the same.Footnote 11 Some can access spaces, others can’t. Whether X has a privilege of entering a space or a duty to stay off of one, or whether what is at issue is scope and scale—rights against a few versus rights against many—the dynamic or ‘tenor’ (to use Hohfeld’s own word) of much contemporary human activity in relation to space is one of access and restriction, exclusion and inclusion. In contemporary society, and more importantly when maximally enacted, these impulses and subsequent demarcations have become qualitative distinctions, with the included (regardless of what ‘it’ is they are actually included within) clearly prioritised. Rights relating to space ultimately follow this dynamic of opposer and defender, the game always centred around the ultimate aim of an established and controlling presence in space(s).

Other legal theorists have developed different positions that prioritise, for example, the concept of belonging and the spatial in understanding the property right or the plurality of often incommensurable values within such rights. Keenan, for example, writes that her analysis of property is consistent with ‘a spatial one, focusing more on the networks in which the subject is embedded than on the subject itself’, and thus is centred on how a renewed property right can aid the individual to locate or position themselves within such networks in the context of encouraging belonging or, presumably, barring abandonment (See 2015). The principles of the so-called Progressive Property movement (Alexander et al. 2009), most aptly presented in a succinct two page original statement for the most part simply restate normative facts about property rights: that they ‘confer power’; that property ‘implicates plural and incommensurable values’; that some of these values promote individual ‘wants, needs, desires and preferences’, some promote ‘social interests, such as environmental stewardship, civic responsibility and aggregate wealth’, and others ‘govern human interaction to ensure that people relate to each other with respect and dignity’. The critical element of this statement does, notably, single out ‘the common conception of property as protection of individual control over valued resources’ (such expression of this idea sometimes focused on ‘the right to exclude others’; sometimes on the ‘free use of what one owns’) for consideration: ‘internal tensions within this conception and the inevitable impact of one person’s property rights on other’s make it inadequate as the sole basis for resolving property disputes or designing property institutions’.

Yet neither Keenan’s focus on belonging and the spatial itself—exciting and refreshing as it is—nor the equally refreshing normative pragmatism of the progressive property school question or consider the possibility or nature of otherworldly conceptualisations of space that can or could occur primarily within the (type of) subject and which then can or could impact property conceptualisations. Indeed, belonging is doubly problematic when we understand the exclusionary ability embedded within that concept, and the use of ‘belonging’ as the basis for a justification of the exclusivity of a property right must be accommodated, if at all, very carefully indeed.

While an exclusive focus on the subject in property discourse is admittedly often unhelpful, it is indeed the subject’s (and the type of subject’s) understanding of space—and therefore the spatial understanding emerging from a certain type of subjectivity and spatial epistemology—that determines spatial ethics and what they could be. The difficulty, as I see it, is that the subject often wants something ultimately uncertain and indefinable from space in the real world, something related to an equally real yet equally uncertain internal dilemma. Real world spatial dynamics are the material realisation of our uncertain internal struggles regards orientation of the self, creation of the self, and spatial conceptualisation, such elements emerging from our knowledge and feelings about space as a certain type of subject.

Neither Keenan, nor the progressive property theorists, attempt to identify or unpick the role that this certain type of subjectivity has on spatial and subsequent property relations, nor suggest the clear existence of, or a role for, alternative subjectivities.

Thus while we can debate the exact positioning of the exclusionary right in the property right concept, and whether property rights should or do focus on subject relations, spatial relations or object relations or mixtures of all three, we cannot ignore the existence or (even if relative) importance of the primal exclusionary impulse and its connection to a particular form of subjectivity, especially in terms of how people feel about property rights as applied to space, or even just space itself. The fundamental question must therefore be asked: Why is exclusion so relevant to spatial ethics, and is it a particular subjectivity that is involved in the phenomena of exclusionary impulses? (An important subsequent question emerging from this is: If this particular subjectivity shifted or was supplemented, what impact would that have on exclusionary impulses and property right conceptualisations?) Even an inclusive concept such as belonging involves judgements about who does or doesn’t belong within a set space (Who determines who belongs? And what happens to those who are told by X that they do not belong, regardless of their own feelings on the matter?). The tenor of spatial regulation currently appears to more often than not point towards an enclosure of space favouring control in the hands of a limited number of individuals, regardless of whether this favours individuals or networks of belonging.

It is this feeling of having (to have) an entirely exclusionary space, a private realm of sovereignty or control, that is of most concern—and most especially when such a feeling comes to see no limit or counterweight to its expression in society.

Exclusion Dominance

What happens, then, when this feeling of the impossibility of not mostly excluding others—this feeling of the impossibility of not aiming at the creation of fully sacred zones, wherein individual autonomy and sovereignty are felt to be fully safeguarded and eternally guaranteed—comes to dominate desire, and bleeds into the general atmosphere of desire in a society? What happens when it bleeds into spaces that for either historic, economic, cultural, or simply practically necessary reasons are more open and inclusive and where spatial engagements and feelings are by definition more relational and mostly non-prioritised—the street, for example?

We can see examples of such a dominance in exclusionary thinking in housing markets; from landlords who control the simple innocent objects that can be present in a tenant’s garage simply because they don’t like to see them,Footnote 12 for example, to the ever decreasing proportions set aside for affordable or more accessible housing on land redevelopment projects, regardless of initial targets and supposed conditions.Footnote 13

This is the exclusionary aspect of the property right given effect in the extreme. Such an extreme enactment of the exclusionary epistemology overtakes the thinking and feeling of a society because, in the first instance, of the deferential focus the ordinary exclusionary epistemology concentrates on the individual, and because of the subsequent diminishment of any counter-principle, e.g. any need to include or definitional inclusionary aspect (counter-principles being diminished because in this instance they involve a degree of individual sacrifice, a little sacrificing of the sovereign self; just as exclusion requires a little reduction in the common weal, somehow more easily accommodated).

In relation to space, not just the enclosed space of housing but also the enclosed spaces of the ‘nation’, the ‘region’, the body and other identifiers, this shift to extreme exclusion is gaining momentum. The desire is for absoluteness regarding what is out and what is in; extreme demarcation, absolute zones of discretion. While such debates often have specific legitimate substantive concerns, the deeper conflict is ultimately often simply one regarding control over space and involves particular conceptualisations of space, or spatial epistemologies.Footnote 14 It is those who hold and control space absolutely (or who at least who believe it to be held, and capable of being held, absolutely), even internal concepts of space, regardless of the specific form, who are seen to dominate. And it is those who are seen to dominate, so we seem to believe, who win. Control over space—and such winning—will of course be the best and only option for those who feel their very existence is threatened by certain others, but in the context of the issue of enclosure-as-shelter the radical reform proposals do not threaten a complete destruction of existence, merely a reduction of relative exclusionary power.

Property ≠ Person

The real danger of the historic conception of the property right as primarily exclusionary is not, therefore, that it has us convinced that shelter and private space are essential to well-being and a basic human right (this is unarguable, and now seems in fact oddly unrelated to any idea of property rightsFootnote 15) but that ‘being a person’ is now inextricably linked to a freedom only defined in relation to oneself, a form of freedom which the property right manifests and perpetuates as an exclusionary right.

This is not a new idea. ‘Not until he has a property does a person exist as reason’, Hegel argued in The Philosophy of Right (1991 [1821], p. 73). He adds that the concept of the right.

is primarily that immediate existence…which freedom gives itself in an immediate way…as possession, which is property; freedom here is the freedom of the abstract will in general, or, by the same token, the freedom of an individual person who relates only to himself. (ibid, p. 70)

He goes on to argue that persons only have existence for each other as owners of property, adding ‘their identity in themselves acquires existence…through the transference of the property of the one to the other by common will and with due respect of the rights of both’ (ibid, p. 70). Finally, he notes, with relevance to our desires for exclusive sacred spatial zones: ‘the person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as an idea’ (ibid, p. 73).

Hegel’s attitude towards the exclusivity of the property right must of course be understood in the context of his broader philosophical mission—the development of individual freedom as an expression of the ‘Absolute Spirit’. To own, for Hegel, is a manifestation of.

individual will operating upon an object, the basic instance being the act of the first taker in appropriating something not previously owned, with corollaries in the right of alienation and the right to acquire by contract, which derives its force from the operation of two wills. (Kelly 1992, p. 335)

Regardless of the transcendental aspect of Hegel’s philosophical project—the movement through a constant dialectic, toward freedom and self-fulfilment via participation in the determinations and manifestation of the individual will—one can see this as a project mired in a distinct lack of relativistic understanding of human desires and their precarity in relation to other human desires. Kelly writes, quoting Sabine, that, ‘despite the sacredness which he imputed to the (ethical) state’ Hegel was, ‘before everything else a good bourgeois, with rather more than the usual bourgeois respect for stability and security’ (ibid, p. 334). In addition, I am unconvinced that personhood is expressed most aptly through expression of the will or ‘Absolute Spirit’ so masterfully delineated by Hegel in the context of his project. Nor am I convinced that property as exclusionist right is the only way to give expression to a more nuanced notion of individual freedom qua will.

The personhood perspective is, as Radin writes, simply a belief ‘that to achieve proper self-development—to be a person—an individual needs some control over resources in the external environment. The necessary assurances of control take the form of property rights’ (1982, p. 957). Of course in moderation these principles have great truth and value. But when they are not counter weighted currently by anything approaching an equal value? What manifests in society then?Footnote 16 When people come to sell their houses, they ultimately feel as if they are selling themselves, their particular personality manifested in the character of the enclosed space and a high price is the only real emotional consequence of such a feeling embodied in space. Selling in this instance feels like the separation of self, undoubtedly difficult to do without extracting a high price.

Such extreme exclusionary dynamics ferment the drive toward only property equalling personhood, because those excluded are increasingly felt to be and deemed non-persons,Footnote 17 and thus come to see ownership over space as the only route to being—and so the vicious cycle continues. In addition, space—and more importantly control and exclusivity regarding it—are also seen as the only way to allow for exclusively individualised thought, which has also come to equal being.Footnote 18

Always Enclosed?

This referencing of extreme enclosure and subsequent demarcation into preferred or excluded groups is not how it has always been—one only needs to look at the history of state-imposed enclosure to see a before and an after, and a later focus on creating an extreme distinction between those who have access to, control over, and those who do not. Such created distinctions have often been methods of simple power concentration. My own background and specific interests encourage a particular look at Ireland, specifically the region of Ulster which experienced one of the most systemic and planned forms of modern colonial activity.

Developing on ideas of enclosure of commons land and improvement—which were already key in encouraging the shift from feudalism to systemic capitalism in England, albeit with less violence and requirement of an extreme othering—the English viewed Ulster as a laboratory for more radical experimentation with forms of social and property relations for the production of profit and embarked on one of their first colonies, the Ulster Plantation.

Developments from the Ulster experiments later drove the English global colonial project and the development of global capitalism. In Ulster, the new colonial settlements became primarily defensive structures built to support the ‘escheatment’ of land from those living in the region and to sever land from historic modes of transhumance such as boolying, historic modes that did not always rely on clearly explicitly exclusionary practices. Property—in an explicitly English legal sense—was nonetheless created and enforced: ‘Land had to be free from customs and rights which interfered with the most productive use. Land had to become Property’ (Jones 2019, p. 189). Other types of use and possession were outlawed and suppressed. A distinction was created amongst people between the included and the excluded and a troubling (pun absolutely intended) psychological legacy was created, a distinction between one and an other.

The Practice of Distinction

Have such distinctions, however—of an outer and an inner type or place—not simply always been the case? Perhaps, but perhaps they have not always been so strictly interpreted. Mostly at play here is the question of what a whole or legitimate being is, physically, yes, but also psychically, emotionally, ideologically. For in the act of enclosure or exclusion, a sense of wholeness-in-being is being attempted; or a judgment on unwholesomeness is made, however impossible or imperfect. The rights of exclusion simply prop up this move towards a supposed wholeness or move away from what is deemed potentially or in fact unwholesome.

This wholeness concept subsequently requires its opposite to prop up the quality of being seen as whole (since wholeness is in fact impossible), much in the way that disability theorists argue an ableist ontology requires a disability concept to maintain the illusion of actual ability, which in reality does not exist as a pure concept (Campbell 2001).

Watermayer—discussing disability, which has much relevance for this concept of the whole or legitimate being—writes that:

Before the nineteenth century emergence of “the normal”, no such concept was evident in western culture; indeed, the English word appeared only as late as 1840. Prior to this conceptual shift, the dominant schema of human value centred on the idea of “the ideal”; an unattainable, divine quality and prowess, before which one was gladly humbled. All, consequently, were positioned along a continuum of shared imperfection, without the clear delineations of deviance afforded by the normal curve. Later, the homogenisation of bodies coincided with the rise of nationalism, the standardisation of languages, and the emergence of “national types”. (2009, p. 156)

How does the enclosure of space, in real and conceptual terms, relate to this? Well, arguably, all are born lacking in a deeper sense, and therefore arguably may feel a spatial gap within them, a loss, diminishment or sense of exclusion, a sense of something missing. How does the concept of a lack relate to spatial epistemology? There is an important topological aspect to Lacan’s thought; the idea that the symbolic order and the consequences of either submitting to it indefinitely or finding ways to re-interpret it are in fact territorial issues. Lacan himself became obsessed by the concept of the Klein bottle as a manifestation of the idea that distinctions of external/internal space could be changed towards an idea of space as one continuous whole (itself somewhat indebt to the Hegelian attitude of life as manifestation of the ‘Absolute Spirit’). The Lacanian project was concerned with using these manifestations to illustrate the beneficial psychoanalytic opportunities for the individual—a move beyond the position of viewing existence as a winner/loser zero-sum scenario, with all its implicit elements of territorial gain and loss, to one where desire has no particular final state or term, and instead circles around itself without reclaiming or defending spatial elements. An engagement with this type of desire may be of some use in considering any reconceptualisation of exclusionary impulses manifested in property rights.

Lacan would argue that this coming to terms with loss or lack is an important part of entering the social world as an ethical being—the symbolic order of socialisation—leaving one’s own private sphere of meaning and accepting a resultant loss of jouissance. But this is not satisfactory to some, they cannot accept (admitting here that of course practical material differences do exist) the psychological lack implicit or the possibility that the lack is itself a or the constituent of true being, the idea that there is no spatial winning or losing, if the subject traverses the fantasy of loss introduced by the Other and re-asserts true subjective responsibility, disavowing the idea of an Other who has taken something from them. They believe something has been taken from them, or something will be, and always act accordingly (Zizek 1990, p. 90).

On the issue of being, therefore, a distinction has been psychologically also felt necessary, the creation of an included and excluded group—we only need to look at the marginalisation of certain groups considered other, but this phenomenon happens in all our lives, to various degrees, some systemic, some not. Over time, however, this has arguably created an unnaturally taxonomic or categoric approach to being—but again, this has not always been the case.

Different Perspectives, Different Subjects

The emergence and subsequent dominance of the individualised (or linear) perspective also bears some, I believe, responsibility for this increased taxonomic approach to being, for this move from a synedochalism (a sense of being that involves incorporation into something other and larger than oneself) towards a semiotics in being or subjectivity. It is no accident that systemic and state sponsored enclosure movements gained momentum exactly as the shift towards linear perspective was occurring during the early Renaissance; individuals now saw the world represented from a perspective that prioritised the individual, and this leaked into spatial desire in real life. Exclusion often initially appears at the level of what is (or is not) seen, and so it is no accident that we turn now to look at the developments in perceptible visual representation for some guidance on exclusionary thought.

Linear perspective now appears universal and true; but this is not entirely the case, and nor as it always been so. Linear perspective favours a view of the world ‘from the standpoint of the seeing eye of the individual’ (Harvey 1991, p. 244). As Harvey continues,

the connection between individualism and perspectivism is important…objectivity in spatial representation became a valued attribute because accuracy in navigation, the determination of property rights in land (as opposed to the confused system of legal rights and obligations that characterized feudalism) political boundaries, rights of passage and of transportation became economically and politically imperative. (ibid)

But what, for example, of other perspectives: oblique perspective, for example, in which context individualised humanity is not necessarily the main measure of all things. Such other visual perspectives, such as the oblique or the reverse perspective, now so alien and unreal to the contemporary eye, are arguably less faithful to appearance but, on the other hand, are ‘as legitimate a representation of experience of, under appropriate circumstances, space, as is the convergent perspective’ (Deregowski and Parker 1992, p. 445). One can argue that such divergent perspectives are perhaps even more faithful to fact as they show things nearly as they are known to the mind; all things are represented as being the same distance away and the eye of the spectator is everywhere at once. Is this not more faithful to the experience of visual perspective as it relates to the experience of being? As Scolari writes ‘this form of interpenetration was not possible with the “eye of the body” but only with the “inner eye”‘, such reference to inner eye here meaning, in a sense, ‘the nous, the intellect, and through it the universal soul’ (2015, p. 16). We will return to the nous later as a manifestation of the metaphorical heart of being, but it is telling that it emerges here as a focus of unusual perspectives of space. Scolari notes the distinctive contribution of Plotinus to the historic arguments of earlier mystics and theologians regarding such divergent perspectives and their purposes and the purposes of images generally, writing that the claims of Plotinus ‘implied that the space between the observer and the object was annulled, and thus the point of view’. This echoes the earlier thoughts of Plotinus: ‘there is no point at which one can fix one’s own limits and say: this is as far as I am up to here…to see, it is necessary to lose consciousness of one’s own being, it is necessary in some way to stop seeing’ (ibid, p. 17). Scolari argues that post the emergence of linear perspective, representation, ‘freed of its fixed mysticism and the symbolic insularity of painting, moved to become the place of exact knowledge, where measurement shatters the seduction of the gaze’ (ibid).

The later emergence and subsequent dominance of this linear perspective, therefore, only prioritised a certain form of subjectivity, it did not prove its essentialism and it encouraged the discarding of this element of sight and representation that inspired a deeper insight into being. Regardless, such ubiquity of linear perspective did give it the sheen of the same universal quality that now makes oblique perspective appear utterly unreal. This shift in perspective emphasis arguably continued the prioritisation of a certain excessively individualised subjectivism, a subjectivism that required a certain manifestation of spatial demarcation in the real world and control of space as a result.

A New Subject Possible?

How, therefore could a new or more refreshing form of subjectivity, which attempts to sidestep the distinguishing character of the individualised human being, emerge, be cultivated, used, and championed in the field of spatial ethics, epistemology, and property relations? A subjectivity which at the very least offers a challenge to the notion of the person which appears to require extreme exclusion, ownership, autonomy, and sovereignty in relation to space?

The idea of a more relational subjectivity offers the first possibility here; one in which the subject gains identity not through individualised thought and action but rather through a subjectivity that apprehends the asymmetry of difference within space to reflect and act in a way that constantly regenerates subjectivity from context and from other subjects themselves.

The late French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard most aptly expressed this position, in line with a view on visual perspective. Asked by American TV host Dick Cavett why he had the style of ‘being more interested in the spaces between the people than the people themselves’, Godard reflects on this for a moment then responds that ‘yes’, because communication is ‘being between’, which is a beautiful way to view it, this sense of two subjectivities being on either side of true presence or communication (Godard 1980). Thus the only way to go ‘to the people’ for Godard in his perspective as a film-maker is to ‘be between’—here individualised subjectivity is abandoned or transfigured from a purely oppositional perspective into something relational. For Godard, to start from ‘one point’—one perspective or position—is ‘too strong’, perhaps in the sense that it acts already as an exclusion or enclosure of the subjects, preparing already for opposition rather than simply being in space and letting being continue to occur. As he notes poignantly, ‘space is the time you need to go to someone else’.

Or might this new subjectivity be instead an artificial or differently organic subjectivity? What might the implications of such seemingly alien subjectivities be for ideas around exclusion, the rights that regulate ownership of enclosed space, and for conceptualisations of space and property itself? Here we might consider first the field and concept of the posthuman, the idea that there remains possible the continual reconceptualisation of the human, including implicitly, the subjectivities involved in ‘being human’. I see in the posthuman already a reflection of abandonment of ableist ontologies, already so deeply involved in framing human subjectivities with a template of the common or standard body or mind. Where posthuman theory and practice takes us is mostly unknown, but these artificial or differently organic subjectivities might emerge from this field.

These artificial or differently organic subjectivities might also be manifested in other ways. Pharmacological methods might play a role in reshaping neurological pathways. Alternatively, new technological advances in the field of extended (X), augmented (A) and virtual (V) realities (R) promise heretofore inaccessible or unimagined spaces within which new possible realities might unfold or supplement off-line space. It is, however, saddening to see such current experiments with XR, AR and VR really only try to approximate existing spatial and exclusionary dynamics with their so-called new universes, when they could attempt to experiment with what an artificial subjectivity could be or might itself imagine. Life as it is already currently negotiated primarily through the smart phone (whereby timings, location, proximity are all constantly monitored accurately and the phone becomes a necessary facet of encounter with the world, required to be attended to at all times) is arguably already a new kind of subjectivity, though what it is and what the consequences of it might be for exclusion and boundaries are not yet known. There is, though, clearly a qualitative difference between, for example, waiting for a taxi ordered without tracking it on a phone, without truly knowing where it is and waiting knowing its location every step of the way. Similarly, with an app like Uber, the arrival of the taxi is constantly monitored and measured, rather than simply experienced with an element of unknowability.

Given the dataset constraint with A.I. techniques (the fact that algorithms are only as good as the range and depth of the data set they are based on), however, perhaps it is inevitable that an artificial subjectivity simply mirrors our own limited imagination, our denial of an otherworldly property within ourselves. If we find it difficult to expand subjectivities or imagine different subjectivities within ourselves, why can we expect an advanced algorithmic response, modelled primarily on what our own data represents, in this area? It could be, however, that an artificial subjectivity might yet challenge exclusion as the centralising principle (and its extreme manifestations) in relation to our human dynamic with space; it might also be that it is it up to us to gift A.I. that radical thought. An additional important point in relation to this question of artificial subjectivities is would this hypothetical artificial subject have ‘a good (imaginary) heart’ that could guide its ethical considerations? Or, to rephrase the question: do we still have one, in matters of housing-as-shelter?

The Imaginary Heart

Why this mention of an ‘imaginary heart’ at this point?

The imaginary heart is a shorthand created to refer to a number of separate yet connected concepts that see thought as a process deeply intertwined with feeling; thought as a somatic process, not simply abstracted into a purely rational realm. Why might such a different type of thinking be required or useful in thinking about spatial epistemology and subsequent property conceptualisations? These concepts are important because arguably purely rational thought allows for and encourages excessive exclusionary impulses to be unleashed and maximalised in society, emerging from a mode of thinking that is, for want of a better word, heartless and disconnected with the possibility of true concrete universality whereby in feeling oneself as a subject, a pained and living subject, the other is encountered as the living same.

This imaginary heart, therefore, the imaginary organ of humanity, the ur-metaphor,Footnote 19 might aid in encouraging refrain from such excessive distinctions that emerge from making an object of the self to manage pain—and thus coming to see the other as only an (problematic) object. When we employ the metaphor, therefore, when we say, for example, that someone ‘had a good heart’, or when we wish that they had one, what are we really saying? We are saying that we wish that the conceptualisation of space within them (or us) was infinite and without distinction, in such a way so that they would not allocate us into an inner or outer conceptual space, or believe us as having something they had need of—in such a way that they would be without such spatial judgement. This imaginary heart is therefore a completely imaginary organ, then, in the original spirit of Rawls, for whom justice occurred in an infinitely imaginary body, a body without any as yet real organs, to echo Deleuze and Guattari (see 2013 [1972], p. 80),or a body with imaginary organs (or: a body without a real heart, a body with an imaginary heart).

As a point of conceptual access to such a differentiated subjectivity and any resultant new cognition, utilising the metaphor of the imaginary heart allows for a further tentative step towards this fresh perspective on enclosure and space; one that is more porous and less concerned with reclaiming some territory which, it is believed, will return the body (the individual body; the identity body; the body politics) to an essentialised a priori wholeness, an imagined lost capability. Such thinking-with-the-(imaginary)heart encourages a rationality that constantly re-imagines itself in relation to the body and other bodies around it on the basis of what is felt as much as what is (only) thought. The critical difficulty with (only) thought is that it often distances self from the body as a defence mechanism against encounters of pain of being, and such distancing in thought can often encourage making distinctions amongst people and oneself. It is admittedly difficult to clarify this deeply speculative aspect; perhaps these words of Derrida on the death penalty come close to suggesting the relationality possible, speculative and aspirational as it is:

So much so that when I say “my life”, or even my “living present”, here I have already named the other in me, the other greater, younger or older than me, the other of my sex or not, the other who nonetheless lets me be me, the other whose heart is more interior to my heart than my heart itself, which means that I protect my heart, I protest in the name of my heart when I fight [en me battant] so that the heart of the other will continue to beat [batter]—in me before me, after me, or even without me. Where else would I find the strength and the drive and the interest to fight [me batter] and to struggle [me debattre], with my whole heart with the beating [battant] of my heart against the death penalty? I can do it, me, as me, only thanks to the other, by the grace of the other heart that affirms life in me, by the grace of the other who appeals for grace and pardon or appeals the condemnation, and with an appeal to which I must respond, and that is what is called here, even before any correspondence, responsibility. (2014 [2000], p. 257)

Such thinking-with-the-heart is not a new concept and manifests in different cultural traditions in different fashions. In the Chinese tradition, the root of relationality can be argued to emerge itself from the concept of ren (仁), which, while imperfect, can be translated as ‘human-heartedness’Footnote 20; in the classical Greek conception of the body, ‘it is impossible to distinguish and categorically separate between the emotional, sensory and intellectual and rational in the way we do’, and such a lack of definitive separation between thought and being is reflected in the fact that, for example,

there is no one word that means “reason” in Homer. There are several organs or physical force-fields that can be “rational”. The most used words to denote the intellect and rational assessment and will are noos (or nous) and thymos. And these are located in the chest region. (Høystad 2007, p. 37)

Such thinking-with-the heart appears counterintuitive in terms of rationality per se from the perspective of a primarily individualised subjectivity, but the concept opens up immense imaginative possibilities regarding the conceptualisations of space, boundaries, and resultant approaches to loss (exclusion) and gain (inclusion; control). For example, such thinking-with-the-(imaginary)-heart might encourage an emphasis on inclusion as (at the least) equal to exclusion within any spatial epistemology and subsequent property conceptualisations. I’m not suggesting here that this would be an easy development; but it would at least offer new strategies for thinking about enclosed space-as-housing and property rules relating to such space. At the very least I imagine it might encourage a more compassionate approach towards the phenomena of feelings of unwholesomeness, being thought-as-feeling, rather than pure thought; one that could accommodate the vulnerability of our bodies and how we accommodate them and those of others. It has always been a false wholeness that generates—at least in Western ethics—this myth of a (non-existent) fall from a (non-existent) grace. Without these myths unfairly claiming our attention, a refreshingly otherworldly perspective is perhaps possible.

Otherworldly Properties

The imaginary heart thus arguably signifies something otherworldly, in the Husserl tradition of a phenomenology that is alien (See Husserl 1970 [1936]). Unlike the alienworld of the Husserl tradition, however, this otherworld is both somewhat alien in the sense of being other but, I believe, also capable of apprehension. Its otherness comes more so from a difficultly of access than an impossibility of access.

The concept of the otherworld is often better known as a whimsical figure of mythical or mystical thinking. More important for my purposes here is the original, darker significance of the otherworld concept to the truth of living and dying, to our limited presence in the space of our own reality (and our resultant thinking and feeling about space) and our eventual dissolution into another yet-to-be-known space (even if it is a space of nothingness). Such more serious notions of the otherworld often bring forth important points regarding the nature and responsibilities of spatial governance and ethics in this world, alongside the thorny question of peace and the (im)possibility of utopia.

These otherworldly concepts have been concentrated historically ritually via an archaic architectural engagement with space; the creation of imperfect enclosures that attempt to sanctify space, that enact sculpturally the concentration of the significance of our inevitable spatial entanglement—but, importantly, not ever quite completely. The exclusionary aspect is always partial.Footnote 21

This practice of otherworldly architectural enclosure can thus be viewed less as keeping another out or protecting or elevating the status of those within, and more so as a particular action that is intended to demark the area enclosed for transformation and special use, to echo Prendergast (see 2015, p. 96). The space enclosed embodies the symbolic content of the space because it is enclosed, but not for the purpose of enclosure or the demarcation of economic value.

There are of course echoes of the idea of sacredness in this enclosing concept, but this is not to imagine the sacred without its own counter-principle, the sacrifice or cost involved in keeping things or spaces sacred—or rather, as will be outlined, giving them, and the people within them, explicit value in themselves. Here, the sacrifice is clear, and has been clearly referenced throughout the paper: it is the giving up of idea of absoluteness in relation to exclusion or exclusivity, the idea that exclusion can or must be absolute. This is not a Schmittian restatement of law as being ‘nomos’. For Schmitt, indeed, the earth is ‘bound to the law’, containing the law within her, as a ‘reward for labour’, manifesting the law upon herself as ‘fixed boundaries’, and sustaining law above herself, as a ‘public sign of order’ (2006, p. 42).Schmitt re-establishes law as nomos in the sense of it being primarily related to the dynamic between ‘order and orientation’ (ibid, p. 67)—in this respect Schmitt clearly identifies a spatial quality of law, a deep connection to the very earth itself. Yet nomos in this respect is—and first emerged as, as Schmitt outlines—‘an expression and a component of a spatially conceived, concrete measure’ (ibid, p. 68). Thus Schmitt, I believe, offers only a particularly pessimistic interpretation of law—one that primarily emerges from a human impulse to measure and demarcate incessantly. Schmitt is less concerned with laws connection to life and land, to space, in this vital, sacred sense, and more so with laws as they allow for measurement and taxonomy. It’s not a surprise that he ends his work on nomos thus:

To be sure the old nomos has collapsed and with it a whole system of accepted measures, customs and concepts. But what is coming is not therefore boundlessness or a nothingness hostile to nomos. Also in the timorous rings of old and new forces right measures and meaningful proportions can originate.

Also here are gods and rules

Great is their mass. (ibid, p. 355)

Why not a renunciation of extreme binding and boundaries, why not something closer or more connected to nothingness than something? For Schmitt, I read a personal terror within his notion of law as anything other than the measure of all things; one might read his historical assessment of nomos simply as a manifestation his own worldly fears. In this respect he foreshadows the excessive exclusionary impulses we see today. His approach is focused on binding, on measurement, on ‘right’ proportions and being in a terrifyingly controlling way. This is not an imaginative, heart-oriented interpretation of law, but a fearful taxonomic approach. Within the Schmittian framework of nomos as ‘appropriation’, the necessary sacrifice required for integration within the world and the symbolic order of society is viewed inevitably as a loss of territory, or a lack, rather than a re-configuring of space beyond the confines of limited inside/outside determinations. Schmitt offers a fearful view of what law, and society governed by law, can be.

Can we have a re-interpretation of the property right without the sacrifice, without the appropriation, division, and distribution that Schmitt suggests underlies all civilisation and order? This is like asking whether there is any justice possible in the world to alleviate injustices in distribution? One would hope justice is possible, to be clear. One can recognise the sacrifice involved in historic developments and still develop speculative thoughts to consider alleviating the pain of the sacrifice and to avoid the mistakes of the past in relation to spatial epistemology. In this respect, of course recalibrating property rights involves a sacrifice, just as Schmitt’s vision of nomos involves sacrifice; the current state, I argue, also involves a sacrifice, that of a more public oriented element. Sacrifice itself is not necessarily the problem. The very issue is not whether sanctity—or indeed any principle involves sacrifice (this is so obvious as to seem pointless to restate)—but rather what do we prioritise as a society in terms of the sacrifice, what do we value, so that we are happy to give up other things? The sacrifice is implied and occurs regardless of whether or whatever we value.

The transformation of the space within an otherworldly framework is not therefore because others are kept out or those inside are protected. These phenomena occur, no doubt, but they are a by-product of the main purpose, the transformation of the space. The space is made sacred simply for that purpose alone, to sanctify space itself, the space in-between our subjectivities. It is an effort at moving beyond questions of appropriation and the implied loss towards what happens in-between these two extremes. What special use occurs within this enclosed space can thus be seen as an attempt toward a deeper connection with an internal spirit, an otherworld, not nomos as earthy but nomos as precisely unearthly, otherworldly, with the spirit of the axis mundi that ordinary life, the space outside or our ego-limited and individualised subjective perspectives, keeps from us within its tumult.Footnote 22 Here I owe an obvious debt to Rawlsian conception of the just, which requires exactly moving beyond earthly concerns, our material manifestation, to imagine an otherworld in which we might exist, and consider justice within those terms.

The sanctification of space is therefore more of a sacred unearthly disassociation (thus otherworldly) from this world so as to recognise the presence of the otherworld within us, even if it is an otherworld of nothing, an acknowledgement of non-space (so terrifying to Schmitt), or at least the limited spatial value of either exclusively defending or attacking territories rather than appreciating what is between them. This otherworld opens up a possible broader conceptualisation of space, which in turn offers the potential for more relational subjectivities, a subject defined less by the fear of loss than a re-orientation of inevitable loss or inevitable accommodation of the Other within subjectivity. The disassociation can only occur, arguably, because the otherworld conceptually exists, but we often bar our own entry into it as a realm of new subjective thought because of its fearfully anticipatory quality. Disassociation is also the natural defence of our ego from our (internal; yet extimate) other (worldly) self. It is for this reason that the transformation of enclosed space is necessary, to connect with a less individualised subjective approach to being. The sanctification of space shows the sacredness of bodies; conversely, the sacredness of bodies manifests itself in the sanctification of enclosed space as ultimately a space-as-shelter. Unlike Schmitt, this requires a transformation of space to attempt to discover values that transcend our earthly desire, not an acquiescence to nomos as merely connected to and emerging from them. Schmitt’s conception of nomos is well put together, to be sure, but I find it distinctly lacking in persuasive ability and utterly demeaning of the imaginative (and necessarily) transcendent spirit of nomos per se. A less demeaning conceptualisation of nomos requires or involves a re-statement of individuality exactly as subjects that constantly transcend their human fantasies and re-avow their subjective responsibility to shape the contours of their respective spatial desire in relation to others gracefully, not simply an accommodation of ourselves and others as objects on an earthly plane to be moved by the dry, proportional reason of Schmittian law.

If, however, bodies are seen only as objects, then property itself in turn—or rather the enclosed space that relates to the property conceptualisation—becomes only an object too. Thus it is important not only that a re-sanctification of enclosed space occurs to remind ourselves of the sanctity of being; a concurrent re-sanctification of being must also occur so as to allow for and encourage the re-sanctification of enclosed space beyond mere transactional value. Relational subjectivity and a different mode of thinking that connects with the viscera of being are helpful in this process. In this way the view of enclosed space as a primarily transactional phenomena, requiring property rights not as a method of maintaining the human value of enclosure but as a method of maximising exclusion and value capture, can be avoided. Enclosed space as such a primarily transactional phenomena arguably disconnects the (possibility) of living from the possibility of connection with the self as a living and dying being, subsequently respecting oneself and others through this difficult realisation, and therefore being placed within the larger inevitable process of life and death.

In a way, being reminded of these concepts (through transformation of space via ritualised enclosure) is a call for contemporary society to view the extreme exclusion of others from the space-of-being-housed as in fact a symptom of the de-sanctification of enclosed space as a transformed space, within which life and death are recognised and equally valued. Many such spaces have lost their connection to the story of living and dying and instead have become only instruments for accumulation and speculation, and thus we account less of the need for them, and purpose of them, as enclosures that attempt to care for and include, rather than as only enclosure. Thus, the sacred virtue of an enclosed space, in that it transforms us into human beings, is lost, forgotten. Is this the sad legacy our societies want to leave future generations? We deserve enclosure as a transformed, sanctified space, as a recognition of the value of shelter, which requires a relationship with life and death; not enclosure as only vessel of speculative value that strives towards a mythical eternal life. Such a re-sanctification would cut the act of enclosure off from the future taboo of enclosure as a commodity, from the profanity of purely speculative profit. Enclosure like this would be subject to an almost religious rule against excessive or exclusive speculation i.e. a clear boundary would exist regarding the limits of housing as a marketplace, much in the way that, for example, the traffic of human beings as property—once quite common place—is now absolutely taboo and the mere proposition is (utterly correctly, it goes without saying) considered absolutely morally repugnant.

The concept of the ego is also relevant here, being an apparently important component of traditional subjectivity.Footnote 23 We can however also view it as sometimes problematic boundary or barrier that creates an artificial distinction between thought, feeling and the idea of an otherworld and places us at a distance from space as it is, if only we allowed ourselves to see it. It is the ego (and the pain of its dissolution) we protect ourselves from with extreme spatial distinctions and an utterly individual subjectivity in real world. The ego is an architecture itself, an enclosure, a wall—an enclosure of the self from itself—created perhaps, as with all walls in general, as a defence mechanism from pain. But if pain is understood as a natural aspect of existence and one that will inevitably pass, the wall of the ego is therefore fundamentally problematic if maintained as permanently impassable, and such a character makes difficult the possibility of the emergence of an otherworldly subjectivity that can transcend ego. The construction of the ego can cut us off from a more encompassing spatial presence, and certain acts emerging from an excessively exclusionary ego are simply boundary enforcing at the basic level; closure, however partial.

And, finally, what can this concept of the otherworld—as architectural exclusionary ritual, as disassociation promoted by exclusion, or extreme inclusion—reveal about the central comedy of spatial placement generally, the comedy of requiring one’s own space absolutely or believing one has gotten it in light of the tragedy of living and dying, or the comedy of complete openness, the comedy of any attempt at spatial completion, in either fashion or direction. What further otherworldly properties—meant both literally and in terms of the otherworldly characteristics, beliefs, and conceptualisations that could liberate our sense of property—might this refreshed concept of the otherworld offer, if given room to grow? What otherworldly properties can be introduced to social attitudes regarding our contemporary difficulties with housing, government policy, and potential challenging reform?

Future Steps?

From the largely speculative discussion above, we can therefore extract some more concrete suggestions that would form the basis of a framework for future action in thinking about the problem of housing-as-shelter versus housing-as-commodity. These suggestions still retain some speculative character, admittedly, but I believe they nonetheless offer a helpfully refreshing perspective from which to view the problem of excessively exclusionary attitudes and practices. Non-exhaustive, this framework currently includes:

  1. (1)

    The consideration and development of highly speculative and new subjectivities, particularly emphasising the relational mode of being-a-person, with a view to shedding new light on the concepts of individual versus communal benefit and excessive exclusionary practices in relation to housing.

  2. (2)

    A championing of a mode of rationality that involves thinking-with-the-heart, particularly in relation to the question of shelter, spatial epistemology, and property conceptualisations.

  3. (3)

    The de-objectification of being—it is arguably through the objectification of being into categories of legitimate and illegitimate being that enclosure is also increasingly de-sanctified. As enclosure elevates the value of being, the converse is true; recognition of being not as a non-object but instead as a relational subject requires enclosure as a transformed space that sanctifies being. Purely speculative enclosure demeans and makes an object of the value of being or sees such being as merely tangential in relation to enclosure.

  4. (4)

    An (seemingly) otherwordly re-sanctification of enclosure-as-shelter, involving absolute moral and legal rules or rituals prohibiting clearly excessive speculative action regarding housing; conversely this would include massive national investment and organisational efforts towards housing-as-infrastructure, largely funded and driven by state effort in the same fashion as military organisation and expenditure is currently favoured.Footnote 24