Residuals, Persistance and Illusions: the Political Failure of Globalism

Abstract

Starting from the analysis of the relationship between law, territory and the so called “global space”, the essay examines and discusses the “spatial” crisis of the age of rights, in view of the urban specificity of the European space and of the persistence of the States as main political actors, entertaining functional or tense relations with the indirect powers of financial capitalism. In particular, the author puts into question the existence of a credible alternative to the political concrete universals. Against the imposition of a postdemocratic and decostitutionalized character of the space, the author proposes an analysis that aims at recovering the political product of social and democratic constitutionalism, revitalizing its emancipatory character and present-day importance. For the author this operation is possible only by considering the risk of moving among (twentieth century) remains, (modern) conceptual persistences and (globalist) illusions.