Three Perspectives of Foreign Marxist Spatial Critical Theory

The synchronic logic of modernity emphasizes the discursive status of space. As global capital crises and local contradictions intensify, space not only supports the reproduction of capitalist relations of production but also plays an important role in distributing social wealth and adjusting and regulating the social relations of subjects. Accordingly, reflection and critique of spatiality have become a common concern of left-wing scholars. Theorists represented by Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Edward Soja oppose historical narratives that prioritize time. Through meta-theoretical reflection on “space” and “production,” they have reoriented the open domain of emancipatory politics and initiated a contemporary revival of radical theory. Broadly speaking, spatial critical theory appears in the logical evolution of classical Western Marxism, neo-Marxism, and post-Marxism. Its development within these three theoretical traditions exhibits common features such as shifts in historical epistemology, the unveiling of social space, and a focus on urban issues, while also displaying differences in perspective based on the debate between modernity and postmodernity. It centrally demonstrates the deconstructivist predicament faced by left-wing theoretical circles in the aftermath of the May 1968 events [1]1 The May 1968 events refer to a series of protests, strikes, and occupations in France, primarily by students and workers, which challenged capitalist society and the state, leading to a major political crisis., as well as the efforts of spatial theorists to capture the transformations of capital through “micro-themes,” constituting a microcosm of the complex transformation of foreign Marxism.

现代性的共时态逻辑强调空间的话语地位，随着全球资本危机和地方性矛盾的加剧，空间不仅支撑资本主义生产关系的再生产，在分配社会财富、调试和规范主体社会关系的过程中也发挥着重要作用。据此，空间性的反思和批判成为左翼学者的共同关注，以亨利·列斐伏尔、大卫·哈维和爱德华·索亚为代表的理论家反对以时间为优先的历史叙事，通过对“空间”与“生产”的元理论反思，重新定向了解放政治的开放性论域，开启了激进理论的当代复兴。大体而言，空间批判理论在经典西方马克思主义、新马克思主义、后马克思主义的逻辑演进中皆有现身，它在这三种理论传统中的发展既体现出在历史认识论转换、解蔽社会空间、聚焦都市问题等方面的共性特征，也存在基于现代性与后现代性之争的视域分野，集中展示了“五月风暴”后期左翼理论界面临的解构主义困境，以及空间论者试图以“微观主题”捕捉资本变迁的努力，构成了国外马克思主义复杂转型的缩影。

Lefebvre: The Spatial Presentation of a Humanist Total Conception

列斐伏尔：人本主义总体观的空间呈现

As far as the spatial critical theory of classical Western Marxism is concerned, Lefebvre’s research is exemplary. Perry Anderson once said: “Henri Lefebvre is the oldest surviving member of the Western Marxist tradition I have discussed.” [2]2 Perry Anderson, *Considerations on Western Marxism* (London: New Left Books, 1976), p. 28. The so-called “Western Marxist tradition” refers to the academic tradition in which Western scholars with a Marxist orientation, in the process of exploring indigenous revolutionary paths, emphasized the critical and practical character of Marxist philosophy. In the view of classical Western Marxists, Soviet-Russian Marxism adhered to the standpoint of modern rationalist philosophy, which neither revealed the essence of Marx’s philosophical revolution nor blunted its critical value. To reaffirm the critical value dimension of Marxist philosophy, classical Western Marxism emphasized theoretical interpretation based on the dual rupture with modern philosophy and old materialist philosophy, forming two interpretive paths: humanism and scientism. Lefebvre largely followed the humanist path. In his early theoretical program, Lefebvre attempted to reveal the mysterious nature of capital ideology through the young Marx’s theory of alienation and economic fetishism, “opening a path for a sincere humanism, for a humanism that believes humanity knows itself through humanism.” [3]3 Henri Lefebvre, *Critique of Everyday Life*, Volume 1, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1991), p. 250. However, his intention was not to reproduce Marx’s theory of humanity, nor even to revive Lukács’s dialectic of totality, but rather to make an ontological change of course, or more precisely, a micro-perspective on trivial matters. This meant that only by breaking free from the suppression of individuality and indulgence in materiality under the enslavement of “small things” could one return to the “total movement” that “has been split by action and thought.” [4]4 Henri Lefebvre, *Dialectical Materialism*, trans. John Sturrock (London: Jonathan Cape, 1968), p. 161. Accordingly, Lefebvre substituted the liberation demands of the class subject with an individualized pursuit of freedom, because in his view, “the total man is the free individual in the free collective. It is the fully developed individuality among the infinite variety of possible individualities.” [5]5 Henri Lefebvre, *Dialectical Materialism*, p. 162. This clearly ignores the macroscopic perspective of Marx’s critique of alienation and the historical standpoint that overlooks the lifeworld. Even if it retains a radical aspiration for totality, it can only be a utopian imagination based on a “lowercase subject.”

就经典西方马克思主义空间批判理论而言，列斐伏尔的研究具有典型性。佩里·安德森说过：“亨利·列斐弗尔是我探讨过的西方马克思主义传统在世人物中最老的幸存者。”所谓“西方马克思主义传统”，是指西方具有马克思主义倾向的学者在探索本土革命路径过程中形成的注重马克思主义哲学的批判性和现实性的学术传统。在经典西方马克思主义者看来，苏俄马克思主义拘泥于近代理性主义哲学立场，既无法揭示马克思哲学变革的实质，也钝化了其批判价值。为重申马克思主义哲学的批判价值向度，经典西方马克思主义强调立足近代哲学和旧唯物主义哲学的双重断裂点上展开理论阐释，形成了人本主义和科学主义两种解释路径。列斐伏尔大体延续了其中的人本主义路径。在其早期理论规划中，列斐伏尔试图通过青年马克思的异化理论和经济拜物教思想揭示资本意识形态的神秘性质，“为真诚的人本主义，为相信人类因为人本主义而认识它的人本主义开辟出一条路来”。但他的意图并非复现马克思的人学思想，甚至不是对卢卡奇的总体性辩证法的旧事重提，而是存在论意义上的改弦更张，或者说，是一种针对琐碎事务的微观透视，意味着只有挣脱“小事情”奴役下的个性压抑和物性沉湎，才能复归“已被行动和思想所分裂”的“总体运动”。据此，列斐伏尔用个体化的自由追求偷换了阶级主体的解放诉求，因为在他看来，“总体的人是自由集体中自由的个人。它是在差别无穷的各种可能的个性中充分发展的个性”。这显然忽视了马克思异化批判的宏观视域以及俯瞰生活世界的历史主义高度，纵然保有总体性的激进渴望，也只能是基于“小写主体”的乌托邦想象。

In his later period, Lefebvre turned his attention to spatial issues, forming a spatial critical theory centered on the production of space, spatial dialectics, and the right to the city. Regarding this shift, there are two completely different evaluations in academia. For example, Stuart Elden argues that “space” is inherent in the theme of the “critique of everyday life” and, together with “rhythmanalysis,” constitutes Lefebvre’s diagnosis of the spatiotemporal dimension of modernity. Soja, on the other hand, regards spatial critique as Lefebvre’s theoretical peak, emphasizing that it not only guides postmodern radical claims through the “triple dialectic” of spatiality but also breaks the long-standing opposition between critical theory and empirical science through a “spatial ontology,” expanding the theoretical space of left-wing politics through the dialectical interaction of philosophy, architecture, urban sociology, and geography. In fact, “space” has always been related to “everyday life.” It is both a theoretical perspective embedded in the critique of everyday life and “another important theoretical contribution to classical Western Marxist theory.” [6]6 Henri Lefebvre, *The Production of Space*, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 4. Its relative independence is limited to the methodological level. That is, Lefebvre drew on the synchronic research method of structuralism (although Lefebvre regarded Louis Althusser as his arch-enemy, he still declared that “structuralism has discovered many truths” [7]7 Henri Lefebvre, *The Survival of Capitalism*, trans. Frank Bryant (London: Allison & Busby, 1976), p. 15.), advancing the “urban society” as the situational context of everyday life into the realm of meta-philosophy. In the process of elucidating the relational attributes and reproduction mechanisms of “space,” he revealed the disciplinary control of subjects and the representational intentions of relations of production concealed by the production of space. Lefebvre emphasized: “Everyday life and the city are inseparably linked… This analysis is based on the totality of social practices, because these practices are entangled in the complex space of the urban and everyday life, until at a certain point they can ensure the reproduction of the relations of production (social relations).” [8]8 Henri Lefebvre, *The Urban Revolution*, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 15. In short, capital gains respite by producing and occupying space; space leaves its imprint on the colonization of the lifeworld through the power of capital. At the micro level, it induces subjects to sink into the abstract space constructed by symbols through urban codes and architectural ideology; at the macro level, it exercises total social power through synchronic spatial structures, “enframing” the lifeworld as a desiring machine where production and need are externally related to each other. These two levels are mutually reinforcing and complicit, jointly enacting the logic of subject alienation in the context of urban spatial production.

列斐伏尔后期关注空间问题，形成了以空间生产、空间辩证法和城市权利为核心的空间批判理论。对于上述转换，学界存在两种截然不同的评价，例如，斯图尔特·埃尔登认为，“空间”内在于“日常生活批判”主题，它与“节奏”分析共同构成列斐伏尔诊断现代性的时空之维；索亚则将空间批判看作列斐伏尔的理论高峰，强调它不仅通过空间性的“三重辩证法”导引了后现代的激进主张，也凭借“空间本体论”打破批判理论与实证科学素不往来的对立现状，通过哲学、建筑学、城市社会学和地理学的辩证互动，拓展了左翼政治的理论空间。实际上，“空间”与“日常生活”素来相关，它既是内嵌于日常生活批判的理论视野，也是对“经典西方马克思主义理论的又一重要的理论贡献”。其相对独立性只限于方法论层面，即列斐伏尔借鉴结构主义的共时态研究方法（尽管列斐伏尔将路易·阿尔都塞看作头号敌人，但仍宣称“结构主义已经发现了许多真理”），将作为日常生活之现身情境的“都市社会”推进至元哲学领域，并在阐发“空间”的关系属性和再生产机制的过程中，揭示了空间生产遮蔽的主体规训和生产关系的表征意图。列斐伏尔强调：“日常生活与城市，是不可分割的联系在一起的……这一分析建立在社会实践活动的总体之上，因为这些活动在都市的、日常生活的复杂空间中纠缠在一起，直到在某一点上能够确保生产关系（社会关系）的再生产。”简言之，资本凭借生产和占有空间得以喘息，空间因资本的权力在殖民生活世界留下铭记，在微观层面以都市编码和建筑意识形态诱导主体沉沦于符号营造的抽象空间；在宏观层面通过共时态空间结构行使总体性社会权力，将生活世界“座架”为生产和需要互为外在的欲望机器，二者互为表里、彼此共谋，共同演绎都市空间生产语境中的主体异化逻辑。

To explain the above issues, Lefebvre begins with the concept of space, emphasizing that two misunderstandings should first be avoided: the “absolute conception of space” and the “transcendental conception of space.” Specifically, the former adheres to the substantive framework of the mechanical system, favors an empiricist cognitive model, and was ultimately extended by 18th-century French materialism into an ontological hypothesis of the material world. The latter regards space as a transcendental abstraction based on human geometric thinking, attempting to replace the theological teleological hypothesis with an explanation of the relationship between space and mind. However, its strong subjectivist tendency makes it difficult to escape the constraints of metaphysics. To eliminate these differences, Lefebvre incorporates space into the logical category of production, arguing that “the analysis of production shows that we have moved from the production of things in space to the production of space itself.” [9]9 Henri Lefebvre, *The Production of Space*, p. 36. The so-called “production of space itself” is neither a passive accumulation of matter nor a vulgar abstraction of sensation, but rather a concrete representation of social relations. It “originates from the growth of the productive forces themselves” and “in dialectical interaction designates space, while taking space as its precondition.” [10]10 Henri Lefebvre, *The Production of Space*, p. 37. This clearly replaces the sensuous essence of the subject’s externalization with the mutual reference of space. In Marx’s words, it is the inversion of social relations into “the social relations between things, which exist outside the producers.” [11]11 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Volume 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 165.

为说明上述问题，列斐伏尔从空间概念入手，强调首先应避免“绝对空间观”和“先验空间观”两种误认。具体来说，前者拘泥于力学体系的实体框架，偏好经验主义认知模式，最终被18世纪法国唯物主义引申为物质世界的本体论假设；后者将空间视为基于人类几何思维的先验抽象物，试图以空间和心灵的关系论阐释替换神学目的论假说，但浓厚的主观主义倾向却难以逃离形而上学的束缚。为消除分歧，列斐伏尔将空间纳入生产的逻辑范畴，主张“对生产的分析显示我们已经由空间中事物的生产转向空间本身的生产”。所谓“空间本身的生产”，既不是消极无为的质料堆砌，也非流俗的感觉抽象，而是社会关系的具象表征，它“源于生产力自身的成长”，且在“辩证性的互动里指定了空间，又以空间为其前提条件”。这显然是以空间的相互指涉取代了主体外化的感性本质，用马克思的话说，便是社会关系颠倒为“生产者之外的物与物之间的社会关系”。

If Marx’s conception of space possesses a perceptual, existential character, Henri Lefebvre regards it as a productive concept containing relational attributes—a totalizing category that is simultaneously process and result, basis and derivation, means and end. On the one hand, this indicates that space is a deliberately produced “concrete abstraction,” akin to what Marx describes as “a thing that is perceptible and supersensible.” The “concrete” refers to space’s tangible, “ready-to-hand” reality, which can be fragmented into functional units for exchange; the “abstract” refers to the homogenizing logic that continuously permeates and suppresses differential spatial production, causing space to “make the same claim as commodities, money, and capital, and to be situated in the same global process.” On the other hand, it emphasizes that space inversely dominates the subject’s thought pathways and even behavioral logic, analogous to Althusser’s “ideological state apparatus” or Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “field.” Through urban planning or landscape construction, space can manifest the disciplinary intent of capital’s power schema at an explicit level, thereby laying the biopolitical foundation for capital’s transcendental order of domination in the process of subsuming the subject’s primordial life experience. Lefebvre specifically points out that capital shifts “from the production of space to the consumption of space,” causing the built environment to degenerate into a restless world where desires are guided. This not only engenders alienated subjects catering to capital’s production of surplus value but also “sets up a certain opposition between the status of space and the status of the ‘subject,’ between the cogito and the cogitatum.” It restricts the subject’s spatial perception, mistakenly treating material space and its exchange value as what “ought to be,” thereby obscuring the will to power, reproductive worship, and fetishistic consciousness transmitted by capital’s spatial production. Lefebvre’s strategy of resistance appeals to difference, much as he relied on “the effusion of individuality” in his period of critique of everyday life, arguing that “a socialist space will be a space of difference,” and that differential spatial production requires granting subjects the right to the city.

如果说马克思眼中的空间具有感性的生存论特质，列斐伏尔则视其为内含关系属性的生产性概念，一个兼具过程和结果、基础和派生、目的和手段的总体性范畴。它一方面说明，空间是被刻意生产出来的“具体的抽象物”，类似马克思描述的“可感觉而又超感觉之物”；所谓“具体”，就是指空间具有“上手”的真实性，而且可以被切割为用以交换的功能性碎片；所谓“抽象”，则是指持续渗透的均质化逻辑压抑了差异性的空间生产，使空间“与商品、货币和资本一样有相同的宣称，而且处于相同的全球性过程之中”。另一方面，它强调，空间反向支配主体的思维路径乃至行为逻辑，类似阿尔都塞的“意识形态国家机器”或皮埃尔·布尔迪厄的“场域”概念，能够凭借都市规划或景观打造，将资本权力图式的规训意图表征于显性层面，从而在统摄主体原初生命体验的过程中，奠定资本先验统治秩序的生命政治基础。列斐伏尔特别指出，资本由“生产的空间转移到空间的消费”，导致建成环境沦为欲望被引导的躁动世界，不仅催生了迎合资本剩余价值生产的异化主体，也“在空间的地位与‘主体’的地位之间、在我思与所思之间，设置起了某种对立”。它限制了主体的空间感知力，并错把物性空间及其交换价值视作“应然”，从而遮蔽了资本空间生产传递的权力意志、生殖崇拜和拜物教意识。列斐伏尔的抵抗策略是诉诸差异性，亦如其在日常生活批判时期倚重的“个性洋溢”那样，认为“社会主义的空间将会是一个差异的空间”，而差异性的空间生产则需要赋予主体进入都市的权利。

In his later period, Lefebvre continued to cultivate the fertile theoretical ground of the critique of everyday life, constructing a humanist liberation strategy centered on “the right to the city.” He points out: “The right to the city refers to a totality that is yet to be realized.” Or, this right refers to “the right to urban life, as the center of social life and so-called cultural activities.” Specifically, first, urban spatial production involves the perceptual transformation of the subject’s essence—an objectifying result of “actively and realistically duplicating oneself in a twofold manner”—rather than a field of alienation dominated by capital. Second, breaking the subordination of space’s use value to exchange value is both the logical prerequisite for sublating capital’s fragmented spatial production and a spatial strategy for resisting capital’s micro-governance techniques. Third, it emphasizes a differential totality, or what Lefebvre calls “an all-encompassing total existence.” Lefebvre often presents himself with the vacillating image of a postmodernist, but from the perspective of the consistent logic of “everyday life–space,” the differential totality is not the marginal narratives or self-referential linguistic signs favored by deconstructionism; rather, it seeks, in the context of a “decentered” urban society, to dismantle capital’s abstract space and its violent homogenization, thereby returning to the political imaginary of “appropriative space” dominated by use value.

晚期列斐伏尔依旧深耕日常生活批判的理论沃土，围绕“都市权利”建构起面向人本主义的解放策略。他指出：“进入都市的权利所指的，就是一种有待实现的总体性。”或者说，这一权利是指“拥有作为社会生活与所谓的文化活动等之重心的都市生活的权利”。具体而言，首先，都市空间生产涉及主体本质的感性转换，即“能动地、现实地使自己二重化”的对象性结果，而非资本支配的异化场域；其次，破除空间使用价值从属于交换价值，这既是扬弃资本碎片化空间生产的逻辑前提，也是抵抗资本微观治理术的空间策略；最后，强调差异性总体，或列斐伏尔所言“包罗万象的总体性存在”。列斐伏尔惯常以后现代主义的摇摆形象示人，但若从“日常生活—空间”的一致性逻辑来看，差异性总体并非解构主义偏好的边缘叙事或语言符号的自我指涉，而是力图在“去中心化”的都市社会语境中，瓦解资本的抽象空间及其同一性暴力，从而回归使用价值主导的“取用性空间”的政治想象。

II. Harvey: Uneven Spatial Production and Its Emancipatory Purport

二、哈维：不平衡的空间生产及其解放旨趣

If Lefebvre’s spatial theory was merely a “faint echo” of the waning classical Western Marxism of the May 1968 movement, then in the 1970s, when deconstructionism was rampant, space, through its affinity with structuralist (and post-structuralist) methods, unfolded more theoretical possibilities. Within leftist intellectual circles, focusing on issues such as capitalist globalization, postmodernism, and emancipatory politics, David Harvey and other neo-Marxists strove to avoid pluralist standpoints and the cult of contingency in their narratives, emphasizing that the operational logic of capital had not departed from the critical framework of Marxism. Issues such as flexible accumulation, immaterial labor, and spatial production were merely strategic shifts of capital in the post-industrial and global context. The political-economic analysis of the labor process and the alternative planning of modes of production remained the core issues of emancipatory politics.

如果说列斐伏尔的空间理论只是“五月风暴”中式微的经典西方马克思主义的“微弱回响”的话，那么在解构主义泛滥的20世纪70年代，空间以其与结构（后结构）主义方法的亲缘性演绎了更多理论可能。就左翼思想界而言，围绕资本全球化、后现代主义和解放政治等议题，哈维等新马克思主义者着力避免叙事中的多元立场和偶然性崇拜，强调资本的运作逻辑尚未脱离马克思主义的批判性框架，诸如弹性积累、非物质劳动、空间生产等问题，不过是资本面向后工业和全球性语境的策略转换，针对劳动过程的政治经济学透视以及生产方式的替代性规划依旧是解放政治的核心议题。

Within the camp of spatial critical theory, Harvey’s perspective is relatively distinctive. He transforms Lefebvre’s meta-philosophy of space into the construction of a geographical historical materialism. On the one hand, he reveals that the global power relations dominated by capital are spatial representations of the intertwined interaction between the territorial logic of power and the logic of capital, aiming to expose the essence of the crisis of overaccumulation. On the other hand, based on an explanatory theory of the relationship between spatial production, capital accumulation, and geopolitical confrontation, he argues that global financial crises, urban destruction, ecological crises, and post-colonial issues are in fact geographical consequences of capital’s attempt to discipline spaces of different scales. However, the forced coupling of space inevitably leads to “the geographical organization of capitalism internalizing these contradictions within the value form. This is precisely the meaning of the concept of capitalism’s unavoidable uneven geographical development.” Harvey keenly observes that uneven development is in fact the spatial symptom of neoliberal accumulation strategies, i.e., sacrificing underdeveloped regions to “reconstruct the conditions for capital accumulation and restore the power of economic elites.” Yet this speculative developmental behavior not only fails to reduce the adverse effects of destabilizing factors but instead exacerbates crises, giving rise to problems such as frequent vicious urban redevelopment, welfare cuts, and ecological crises. It can be said that in the process of examining the historical geography of capitalism, Harvey systematically articulates the operational mechanisms of capital’s spatialization and its inherent contradictions, providing methodological guidance for constructing an emancipatory agenda compatible with postmodern conditions.

在空间批判理论阵营中，哈维的视角较为独特。他将列斐伏尔关于空间的元哲学转化为地理学历史唯物主义的建构，一方面揭示了资本主导的全球权力关系乃是权力的领土逻辑和资本逻辑交织互动的空间表征，目的在于揭示积累过剩危机的实质；另一方面立足空间生产、资本积累与地缘政治对抗之间的关系论阐释，主张全球性金融危机、城市破坏以及生态危机、后殖民等问题实际上是资本试图规训不同尺度空间的地理学后果，但空间的强制耦合必然导致“资本主义的地理组织把这些矛盾内化到了价值形式当中。这正是资本主义无可避免的不均衡地理发展这个概念的含义”。哈维敏锐地发现，不平衡发展实则是新自由主义积累策略的空间症候，即以牺牲欠发达地区为代价，“重建资本积累的条件并恢复经济精英的权力”。然而，这种投机性的发展行为不仅不会降低动荡性因素的不利影响，反而会加剧危机，引发诸如城市频繁恶性改造、福利削减、生态危机等问题。可以说，正是在审视资本主义历史地理状况的过程中，哈维系统表述了资本空间化的运作机理及其内在矛盾，为建构一种兼容后现代状况的解放议程提供了方法论指引。

In Harvey’s view, neoliberalism’s accumulation by dispossession is the direct cause of capitalism’s uneven geographical development, meaning that capital can resolve the problem of overaccumulation and maintain the reproduction of surplus value through spatial production. So-called accumulation by dispossession is essentially a crisis-shifting behavior in which capital releases capital surpluses and labor surpluses during geographical expansion and spatial restructuring. It is equivalent to recreating, through capital’s spatial production, an opportunity for the combination of means of production and labor, analogous to Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation. However, in the era of spatial production, accumulation by dispossession has been internalized throughout the entire process of capital’s operation, rather than merely being “the prehistory of the mode of production corresponding to it” as in Marx’s account. In this regard, Harvey focuses on explaining two aspects: the global deployment of capital’s power relations and the “creative destruction” of cities. As for the former, capitalist globalization is not only the explicit manifestation of the disorderly expansion of commodity exchange logic and monetary hegemony but also a spatial tactic for incorporating different countries and regions into capital’s political-economic system. Through financial manipulation, debt traps, and ideological export, capital encroaches on emerging consumer regions and labor markets, producing a power space that perpetuates the legitimacy of its rule. As for the latter, the city, as a valorization field nested within capital’s spatial production process, is both a spatiotemporal node of “flexible accumulation” and “an important channel for absorbing surplus capital.” However, the long-term nature of urban investment recovery often means that capital does not confine itself to a single geographical scale; rather, “it establishes a geographical landscape in one place over a period of time to facilitate its activities; at another time, capitalism is forced to destroy this geographical landscape and build a completely different one elsewhere.” Harvey specifically cites the urban renewal of New York and London, as well as Bavaria replacing the Ruhr and Tuscany replacing Turin, as examples to illustrate that “creative destruction,” oscillating between demolition and reconstruction, “has been written into the actual historical geography of capital accumulation.”

在哈维看来，新自由主义的剥夺性积累是资本主义不平衡地理发展的直接原因，意味着资本能够通过空间生产，解决过剩积累问题并维持剩余价值再生产。所谓剥夺性积累，实际上是资本在地理扩张和空间重组过程中，释放资本盈余和劳动盈余的危机转嫁行为。它相当于通过资本的空间生产，再造了一个生产资料和劳动力结合的机会，类似马克思的原始积累概念，只不过在空间生产时代，剥夺性积累已经内化于资本运作的全过程，而非仅仅是马克思笔下“与之相适应的生产方式的前史”。对此，哈维着重从资本权力关系的全球布展和城市的“创造性破坏”两个方面展开说明。就前者而言，资本全球化不仅是商品交换逻辑和货币霸权无序扩张的显性表征，也是将不同国家和地区纳入资本政治经济体系的空间伎俩。资本通过金融操控、债务陷阱和意识形态输出，侵蚀新兴消费区域和劳动力市场，生产着延续统治合法性的权力空间。从后者来看，城市作为嵌套于资本空间生产过程的增殖场域，既是“灵活积累”的时空节点，也是“吸收过剩资本的重要途径之一”。但城市投资回收的长期性往往使资本不会拘泥于单一地理尺度，而是“在一段时间内，在一个地方建立一种地理学景观来便利其行为；而在另一段时间，资本主义又不得不将这一地理学景观破坏，并在另外一个地方建立一种完全不同的地理学景观”。哈维特别以纽约、伦敦的城市更新，以及巴伐利亚取代鲁尔、托斯卡纳取代都灵为例，说明摇摆于拆毁与重建之间的“创造性破坏”，已经“被写入了资本积累真实的历史地理学景观之中”。

While dispossessionary accumulation seeks to shift crises and entrench power relations at the global and local levels, it also injects the logic of uneven development into the historical-geographical condition of capital. Marx pointed out in the *Grundrisse*: “The really difficult point to discuss is how relations of production develop unevenly as legal relations.” If Marx’s problematic arose from the non-linear structure of historical dialectics, aiming to incorporate “unevenness” as a geographical concept into the horizon of political economy, Harvey attempts to show that “geographical reorganizations and restructurings, spatial strategies and geopolitical considerations, uneven geographical developments, etc., have been and remain key aspects of the dynamics of capital accumulation and class struggle.” This means that uneven geographical development is not only the spatial result of capital’s quest for competitive advantage and the alleviation of accumulation crises, but also the geographical precondition for the continued existence of capital. At the level of capital accumulation, it intervenes in the spatial production of capital as a dynamic process, shaping a “center-periphery” binary structure, replacing the diverse qualities of space itself with the sectoral differences of capital, thereby “opening vast profit-making spaces for overaccumulated capital.” At the level of class struggle, uneven geographical development excludes universal value and shared benefits; through trade barriers, geopolitical conflicts, and other forms, it reproduces the contradictory relationship between the limited scale of space and the malignant expansion of capital. Yet the spatial sensitivity it nurtures also “helps to redefine the possible field of political action.”

剥夺性积累在全球和地方层面寻求危机转嫁、拓殖权力关系的同时，也为资本的历史地理状况注入了不平衡发展逻辑。马克思在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中指出：“真正困难之点是：生产关系作为法的关系怎样进入了不平衡的发展。”如果说马克思的问题意识缘于历史辩证法的非线性结构，目的是将作为地理学概念的“不平衡”纳入政治经济学视域，哈维则试图说明“无论是历史还是今天，地理的重新安排和重构、空间策略和地理政治因素、不平衡地理发展等，都是资本积累和阶级斗争动态的关键方面”。它意味着，不平衡地理发展不仅代表着资本谋求竞争优势和缓解积累危机的空间结果，更是维持资本存续的地理学前提。从资本积累层面看，其以动态的过程形式介入资本的空间生产，通过塑造“中心—边缘”的二元结构，以资本的部类差异取代空间自身的多元特质，“为过度积累的资本打开了广阔的赢利空间”；从阶级斗争层面看，不平衡地理发展排除了价值普惠和利益均沾，它以贸易壁垒、地缘冲突等形式，再现了空间的有限规模与资本恶性增殖的矛盾关系，但其孕育的空间敏感性也“有助于重新定义政治行动的可能领域”。

Harvey’s liberation politics embodies a class-political stance. Facing the social context of the post-industrial era, Harvey argues that the changes in late capitalism “are by no means novel, and the latest ideas are certainly within the grasp of historical-materialist inquiry.” On the one hand, with a radical optimism, he reconstructs the utopian tradition within left-wing narrative, providing stable meta-theoretical support for exploring progressive politics. On the other hand, by expanding a universalist class politics, he draws a clear line with deconstructionists, preventing uneven geographical development from being exiled by contingency and making it a spatial fulcrum “connecting political action across various geographical scales.” In elaborating the utopian ideal, Harvey particularly emphasizes the importance of understanding complex social processes and their interactions, because “at any moment, the status of process takes priority over things and systems.” That is, we cannot grasp capital’s shaping of landscape only at the material level; rather, we must seek a path for constructing a “possible world” within a relational interpretation that involves spatial processes.

哈维的解放政治学体现了阶级政治立场。面对后工业时代的社会语境，哈维提出，晚期资本主义的变化“决不新颖，它最新的观点肯定在历史唯物主义探究的掌握之中”。他一方面以激进的乐观主义态度，重构了左翼叙事中的乌托邦传统，为探索进步政治学提供了稳定的元理论支撑；另一方面通过扩展普遍主义的阶级政治，与解构主义者划清了界限，使不平衡地理发展避免因偶然性而遭到放逐，并成为“连接各种地理规模上政治行动”的空间支点。在阐发乌托邦理想的过程中，哈维特别强调理解复杂社会过程及其相互作用的重要性，因为“在任何时候，过程地位都优先于物和系统”。即是说，我们不能只从物性层面把握资本的景观塑造，而应当在涉及空间过程的关系论阐释中，寻求“可能的世界”的建构路径。

In *Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference*, Harvey emphasizes the advantages of processual dialectics in describing the movement, change, and interconnection of things, arguing that the intervention of “process” helps strengthen the totalizing efficacy of dialectics in integrating fragments of thought. This can both ensure a return to the “interior” of the capital production process (distinct from post-Marxism’s external “articulation”) to reveal synchronic contradictions, and endow the opposing sides of reified contradictions with openness and fluidity, so that “no moment lacks the impetus for transformative action—a new imagination… every moment is full of transformative potential.” Accordingly, he agrees with Marx’s conceptualization of capital as a process or relation, believing this not only avoids the linear schema in historical hermeneutics but also enriches the dialectical concept of the unity of opposites. Drawing on the views of Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, and Alfred North Whitehead, Harvey critiques the Cartesian atomistic causal model, arguing that this fervent rationalism, while laying the narrative foundation of classical physics, excludes process and history, leading to methodological individualism, or what Marx called “abstract and ideological notions.” Therefore, only by following the guidance of processual dialectics, excavating and integrating the “militant particularism” hidden within capital’s spatial configuration, can one revive the banner of utopia and consolidate alternative political imagination in the post-revolutionary atmosphere saturated with deconstructionist overtones.

哈维在《正义、自然和差异地理学》中强调过程辩证法在描述事物的运动、变化、联系等方面的优势，认为“过程”的介入有助于强化辩证法在整合思想碎片方面的总体性功效，既可确保回归资本生产过程“内部”（区别于后马克思主义的外部“链接”）来揭示共时态矛盾，亦能赋予实体化的矛盾双方以开放性、流动性的特质，从而使“任何环节都不缺乏改造行动动力——一种新的想象……每一环节都充满了变革潜力”。据此，他赞同马克思把资本概念化为一种过程或关系的做法，认为这不仅避免了历史解释学中的线性图式，也丰富了对立统一的辩证法理念。哈维借助理查德·莱文斯和理查德·莱温廷以及阿尔弗雷德·怀特海的观点，批判了笛卡尔原子主义的因果模型，认为这种狂热的理性主义虽然奠定了经典物理学的叙事基础，却由于排除了过程和历史而导致方法论个人主义，或马克思所说的“抽象的和意识形态的观念”。因此，只有遵循过程辩证法的指引，挖掘并整合隐匿于资本空间构型的“战斗的特殊主义”，方能在氤氲解构主义气息的后革命氛围中，重振乌托邦旗鼓，凝聚替代性政治想象。

Harvey specifically takes ecological issues as a concrete concern of the utopian agenda, attempting “to establish a friendly relationship between ecological/environmentalist politics and socialist politics.” In his view, space, as a representation of social relations, encompasses social and environmental dimensions, while capital globalization has caused ecological problems more severe than in any previous era. Leftists adhering to different ecological values, with uneasy hearts, either indulge in the practical dilemmas of idealism or fall into the elitist politics of authoritarianism, overlooking the fact that transgressive behaviors embedded in ecosystems are often the logical result of capital’s spatial production. Therefore, Harvey opposes abstract value preaching and instead pins his hopes on establishing a “dialectical spatiotemporal utopia” within the “web of life.” The web of life “presupposes a dialectics that can openly and directly articulate spatiotemporal dynamics, and can also describe the multiple intersecting material processes that bind us so tightly into the delicate web of contemporary socio-ecological life.” By breaking capital’s full dominance over spatial production, the “dialectical spatiotemporal utopia” can accommodate elements such as nature, environment, and the Other, allowing the fragmented society and environment to interact and dialectically interpret each other, thereby organizing localized resistance into a universal struggle against the logic of capital. In Harvey’s words, “all proposals concerning ‘the environment’ are necessarily proposals for social change, and actions directed at them always need to be concretely exemplified by the ‘nature’ of some evaluative system.” It can be said that the spatiotemporal utopia, as an alternative scheme, embodies the ideal of ecological socialism. On the one hand, it shows that establishing a socialist system means that the relationship between humans and nature has been extricated from the universal alienated state of capital; on the other hand, it also demonstrates to us the ecological sensitivity of “historical-geographical” materialism and its critical significance for revealing the paradoxes of capital’s space.

哈维特别将生态问题作为乌托邦议程的具体关切，试图“在生态/环境主义者和社会主义政治之间建立某种友好关系”。在他看来，作为社会关系表征的空间包含社会和环境维度，而资本全球化造成了比以往任何时期都要严重的生态问题，秉承不同生态价值观的左翼人士怀着惴惴不安的心情，要么耽于理想主义的实践困境，要么陷入独裁主义的精英政治，忽视了嵌入生态系统的越轨行为往往是资本空间生产的逻辑使然。因此，哈维反对抽象的价值观说教，而是寄希望于在“生命之网”中建立“辩证的时空乌托邦”。生命之网“假定一个辩证法能够公开而直接地阐明时空动态，还能够描述把我们如此紧密地束缚在当代社会—生态生活这个精致罗网中的多重交叉的物质过程”。由于破除了资本之于空间生产的全权主导，“辩证的时空乌托邦”能够容纳自然、环境、他者等要素，使分裂的社会与环境彼此互动、辩证互释，从而将地方性的反抗行为组织化为批判资本逻辑的普遍斗争，用哈维的话说，“全部有关‘环境’的提议都必然是社会变迁的提议，针对他们的行动总是需要用某种评价体制的‘自然’来做具体的例证”。可以说，作为替代性方案的时空乌托邦体现了生态社会主义理想，它一方面表明，确立社会主义制度意味着人与自然的关系已经从资本普遍的异化状态中剥离出来，另一方面也向我们展示了“历史—地理”唯物主义的生态敏感性及其对于揭示资本空间悖论的关键意义。

III. Soja: Marginal Narratives and Radical Retreat in the Context of Spatial Justice

三、索亚：空间正义语境中的边缘叙事与激进退守

In the later period of the “May 1968 Movement” [13]13 The “May 1968 Movement” (五月风暴) refers to a series of student and worker protests and general strikes that erupted in France in May 1968, challenging capitalist society, state authority, and traditional leftist politics, and significantly influencing subsequent Western Marxist and post-Marxist thought., the technological paradigm shift in capital production, together with the fragmentation of the left-wing camp, gave rise to post-Marxist thought. Following the interpretive logic of postmodernism, this current of thought rejects essentialist and universalist liberation demands, asserting that class politics has been replaced by discourse revolution and micro-narratives, and that only by linking heterogeneous subjects through a “theory of articulation” can the real possibility of liberation be realized. Soja, the standard-bearer of the Los Angeles School, building on this line of reasoning and synthesizing Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, Nicos Poulantzas’s theory of synchronic social relations, and Harvey’s processual dialectics, expanded on Lefebvre’s later propositions of difference, proposing a postmodern geography with an anti-capitalist tendency. This provided a radical guide for reconstructing the theory of spatial justice, but it also came at the cost of over-interpretation.

“五月风暴”后期，资本生产的技术范式变迁连同左翼阵营的分化催生了后马克思主义思潮。该思潮遵循后现代主义的阐释逻辑，拒斥本质主义和普遍主义解放诉求，断言阶级政治已被话语革命和微观叙事取代，唯有以“接合理论”链接异质性主体，才能落实解放的现实可能性。洛杉矶学派的旗手人物索亚基于上述理路，在综合吸收让-保罗·萨特的现象学本体论、尼科斯·普兰查斯的共时态社会关系理论以及哈维的过程辩证法的基础上，扩展了晚期列斐伏尔的差异性主张，提出具有反对资本主义倾向的后现代地理学，为重构空间正义理论提供了激进指引，但也付出了过度诠释的代价。

In the process of theoretical elaboration, Soja fully displays his hostility toward Marxism’s “excessive historicization.” In his view, historical critique that has “dulled” spatial sensitivity is in fact a deterministic, a priori discourse; it assumes that any event can be explained only within historical totality, not only neglecting the radical purport of spatial content but also “distorting our epistemology, theory, empirical analysis, and social practice.” Soja endorses Lefebvre’s concept of space, holding that space should not be understood as an inert physical entity or background category, but rather as a concrete representation of social relations, a synchronic image capable of reflecting discursive conflicts, ideological disputes, and even shifts in power relations. In other words, what obscures the revolutionary impulse of the present is not the “advantage” of capital’s modernity, but the spatial structure of power. Because this structure weakens the possibility of the world proletariat uniting on a geographical level, it induces a fatigue in workers’ revolutionary consciousness while simultaneously highlighting the geographical significance of “various social processes hierarchically constituted by basic relations of production” for breaking the hegemonic logic that governs the evolution of urban configurations and the global division of labor. The problem is that the “relations of production” Soja invokes are not economic relations based on the labor process of production, but rather power-struggle relations used in a generalized sense. In his own words, “spatial structures … represent a dialectically elaborated component of the general relations of production, which are at the same time social relations and spatial relations.” Their content points to the production and reproduction of unjust geographies; the focus of contention settles on the right to redefine “place”; and the practice relies on a “chain of signifiers” embedded in numerous “rebel terrains” and the geographical force they coalesce against capitalism. Soja specifically cites the “labor-community-university” alliance entrenched in Los Angeles and its urban renewal movement as an example, arguing for the positive role of maintaining the openness of action subjects and movement modes in cultivating rebellious consciousness and even advancing toward radical spatial practice in the post-Fordist, post-metropolitan era swept by globalization and informatization.

在理论阐发过程中，索亚充分表现出对马克思主义“过分历史语境化”的敌意。在他看来，“钝化”了空间敏感性的历史批判，实则是决定论式的先验话语，它假定任何事件只有在历史总体性中方可解释，不仅忽视了空间内涵的激进旨趣，也“歪曲了我们的认识论、理论、实证分析和社会实践”。索亚赞同列斐伏尔的空间概念，认为空间不应被理解为惰性的物理实体或背景范畴，而是社会关系的具象表征，一种能够反映话语冲突、意识形态争端乃至权力关系变迁的共时态图像。换句话说，遮蔽当下革命冲动的，不是资本的现代性“优势”，而是空间性的权力结构，由于这一结构削弱了世界无产阶级在地理层面联合的可能性，在导致劳动者革命意识倦怠的同时，也突出了“由各种基本的生产关系等级性建构的各种社会过程”对于破除支配城市构型演化、全球劳动分工布局的霸权逻辑的地理学意义。问题是，索亚提及的“生产关系”并非基于劳动生产过程的经济关系，而是被泛化使用的权力斗争关系。用他自己的话说，“空间结构……表征了各种一般生产关系的一种业已得到辩证阐释的成分，这些生产关系也同时是社会关系和空间关系”。其内容指向不公正的地理的生产和再生产，争夺焦点落脚于重新定义“地方”的权利，实践所依托的则是嵌入诸多“反叛地形”的“能指链条”及其凝聚起的反对资本主义的地理学合力。索亚特别以盘踞在洛杉矶的“劳工—社区—大学”联盟及其主张的城市更新运动为例，论证了在后福特主义普遍降临、全球化和信息化浪潮席卷而来的后大都市时代，保持行动主体和运动模式的开放性，在培育反叛意识乃至迈向激进空间实践方面的积极作用。

In a direct sense, Soja’s shift from “given geography” to “becoming geography” reflects a common cognition among left-wing spatial theorists. But his excessive “reassertion” of space not only misses the political-economic domain opened up by Lefebvre and Harvey, but also proves unable to reveal the private-property relations that are the root cause, shrinking instead into the historical surface of unjust geographical production to assert the liberatory potential of his so-called “spatial justice.” However, a geographical strategy divorced from the class context has nothing to do with “justice” and nothing to do with “liberation”; at most it adds a radical hue to the motley landscape of post-Marxism. It is worth noting that postmodern geography has pluralistic, open characteristics and a clear stance: besides supporting the cross-penetration of various marginal forces, it also touches on the meta-theoretical level of political imagination. This postmodern “demand of modernity” is narratively identical to the liberatory expectation of “the presence of absence”; on the surface it is a product of the post-industrial context, but in reality it is a radical retreat after the absence of historical laws. This means that social revolution has degenerated from a total project pursuing human liberation into a discursive politics of “radical democracy” expressed by a handful of academic intellectuals. Compared with the methodological revaluation emphasized by classical Western Marxism, spatial critical theorists are more keen on meta-theoretical exploration. Although they rarely speak as decisively as Jacques Derrida or François Lyotard, they still attempt “to construct a critical materialist understanding of space, place, and environment, and to make this understanding the thorough foundation of cultural and social theory.” But no matter how exquisite the meta-theoretical design, it cannot conceal the impotence of political intervention. Just as the later Frankfurt School settled for an “ethical turn,” Soja likewise advocates seeking the re-radicalization of critical theory in the name of “spatial justice.”

在直接的意义上，索亚从“给定的地理”转向“生成的地理”，体现了左翼空间论者的共性认知。但他过犹不及的空间“重申”不仅错失了列斐伏尔和哈维打开的政治经济学论域，更无力揭示作为个中根源的私有制关系，只能蜷缩于不公正地理生产的历史表象，伸张其所谓“空间正义”的解放潜能。然而，远离阶级语境的地理策略既与“正义”无涉，也和“解放”无缘，至多是为繁杂的后马克思主义景观增添了一抹激进的色彩。值得关注的是，后现代地理学具有多元、开放的特质，且立场鲜明，除支持各色边缘势力交叉互渗外，还触及了政治想象的元理论层面。这种后现代的“现代性诉求”在叙事上与“不在场之在场”的解放期许如出一辙，表面上是后工业社会的语境使然，实则是历史法则缺场后的激进退守。这意味着，社会革命已经从追求人类解放的总体性事业，沦为少数学院派知识分子表达“彻底民主”的话语政治。较之于经典西方马克思主义强调的方法论重估，空间批判理论家更热衷元理论探索，虽然他们很少像雅克·德里达或弗朗索瓦·利奥塔那样言辞决绝，却也试图“建构一种对空间、地方和环境的批判的唯物主义理解，并且将这种理解作为文化和社会理论的彻底基础”。但不论多么精巧的元理论设计，都不能掩盖政治介入的无能，正如法兰克福学派后期偏安于“伦理转向”，索亚亦主张以“空间正义”之名寻求批判理论的再激进化。

In Soja’s view, “all social relations … unless they are specifically spatialized, i.e., enter into material and symbolic spatial relations, remain abstract and unfounded.” Therefore, only by starting from meta-theory and decoding the capital-power relations concealed by urban culture and architectural symbols can one escape “the current crisis of Marxism.” If, following Soja, so-called meta-theory is “seeking an appropriate ontological and epistemological spatial positioning,” then from Lefebvre’s “production of space” and Harvey’s “historical-geographical” materialism to Soja’s “trialectics,” the sustained flourishing of meta-theory is far from exhausted by the term “spatial turn.” It is an overall revaluation of dialectics, political economy, radical geography, and emancipatory politics; theoretically it is an overreaction to the widespread questioning of historical determinism, and practically it manifests as a tendency to define subject positions outside the logic of commodity production. On a deeper level, it attempts, by amplifying a subject-setting based on relational interpretation (relations of production—social relations—discourse), to break through the theoretical impasse in which the radical left cannot confirm itself within historical narrative, yet in the process of generalizing the appellation of the subject, it breaks free from the “strong program” of class narrative. In this regard, Lefebvre’s “everyday life,” Harvey’s “web of life,” and Soja’s “political topography” all share this intent: on the one hand, to define the subject within an urban situation wholly enveloped by the logic of fetishism; on the other, to accommodate difference in a struggle context rife with pluralism. Earlier class consciousness, aesthetics, new sensibility, and even the “Great Refusal” are all inadequate for this task. Spatial theorists attempt to reduce social relations to spatial structures, thereby seeking radical theoretical resources outside historical narrative, but the linguistic affinity with structuralism instead provides an entry point for “discourse,” leading to the replacement of the self-enlightenment of the “big Subject” (class consciousness) by the external linkage of the “small subject” (discourse); the irresolvable contradiction between capital and labor is also reduced to “antagonistic hypotheses” such as “totality-fragment” (Lefebvre), “global-local” (Harvey), and “center-periphery” (Soja). It is this non-essentialist “antagonism” that causes later spatial critical theory to constantly open toward the margins. Yet the best result of this “hypothesis” is nothing more than the discursive liberation of minorities; a performative posture of non-compromise replaces the political project of sublating capitalism.

在索亚看来，“所有社会关系……只要没有特别地空间化，即没有进入物质与符号的空间关系，它们就还只是抽象的，未被奠基的”。因此，只有从元理论出发，解码都市文化和建筑符号所遮蔽的资本权力关系，才能走出“马克思主义在时下的危机”。如果按照索亚的说法，所谓元理论，就是“寻求一种恰切的本体论和认识论上的空间性定位”，那么从列斐伏尔的“空间生产”、哈维的“历史—地理”唯物主义，到索亚的“三元辩证法”，元理论的持续勃兴就绝非“空间转向”这一术语可一言蔽之的。它是对辩证法、政治经济学、激进地理学以及解放政治学的整体重估，在理论上是对历史决定论遭遇普遍质疑的过度反应，实践上则表现为在商品生产逻辑之外界定主体位置的行为趋向。在深层意义上，它试图通过放大基于关系论阐释的主体设定（生产关系—社会关系—话语），破除激进左翼无法在历史叙事中确证自身的理论困局，却又在泛化主体称谓的过程中，挣脱了阶级叙事的“强纲领”。就此而言，列斐伏尔的“日常生活”、哈维的“生命之网”以及索亚的“政治地形”皆有此意：一方面是在被拜物教逻辑全面笼罩的都市局面下界定主体，另一方面是在多元主义泛滥的斗争语境中兼容差异，早期的阶级意识、审美、新感性乃至“大拒绝”都难当此任。空间论者试图将社会关系还原为空间结构，进而寻求历史叙事之外的激进理论资源，但结构主义的语言亲缘性反倒提供了“话语”的介入契机，导致“大写主体”的自我启蒙（阶级意识）被“小写主体”的外部链接（话语）所取代；资本主义不可消除的劳资矛盾，亦矮化为“总体—碎片”（列斐伏尔）、“全球—地方”（哈维）、“中心—边缘”（索亚）的“对抗性假设”。正是这种非本质主义的“对抗性”，使后期的空间批判理论不断向边缘敞开。然而，这种“假设”的最好结果，也不过是少数派的话语解放，表演性的不妥协姿态取代了扬弃资本主义的政治主张。

To ensure the openness of theory, Soja chooses the concept of “spatiality” rather than “space” for elaboration. He holds that, compared with “space,” “spatiality” not only better reflects the synchronic coexistence of “movement and change, tension and conflict, politics and ideology, passion and desire,” but also facilitates broadening the meaningful boundaries of social critical theory on the basis of a balanced interpretation of “space-time-society.” For example, capital’s ceaseless spatial shaping and landscape renewal are both the geographical result of a deliberately plotted power ideology and, at the level of presupposition, define the injustice of capital’s spatial production. This requires, while breaking the taboo of geographical determinism, exploring dynamically rather than statically how space is incorporated into the logical unfolding of urban problems, “helping us to understand, with better theoretical and practical consciousness, how social justice is produced and maintained.” In other words, spatial justice in Soja’s eyes is not merely an ideal-typical order reconstruction, but also represents a reflection on the process of forming “injustice” from a geographical level and a radical practice of sublating spatial hegemony; it is more like a value-integrating process or a signifier of “solidarity that respects difference and diversity,” capable of driving local actions to embed themselves in deeper geographical networks and assembling alliances of actors resisting unequal relations.

为保证理论的开放性，索亚选择“空间性”而非“空间”概念予以展开说明。他认为，较之于“空间”，“空间性”不仅更能反映共时态并存的“运动和变化、张力和冲突、政治和意识形态、激情和欲望”，也有利于在“空间—时间—社会”的平衡性阐释的基础上，进一步拓宽社会批判理论的意义边界。例如，资本无休止的空间形塑与景观更新，既是权力意识形态刻意谋划的地理学结果，也在前提层面规定了资本空间生产的不正义性，这就需要在破除地理决定论禁忌的同时，动态而非静态地探讨空间如何被纳入都市问题的逻辑展开过程，“帮助我们以更好的理论与实践意识，理解社会正义何以产生与维持”。换句话说，索亚眼中的空间正义，不只是理想状态下的秩序重建，更代表了从地理层面对“不正义”形成过程的反思和扬弃空间霸权的激进实践；它更像是一个价值整合过程或“尊重差异和多元化的团结一致”的能指符号，能够推动地方性行为嵌入深层次的地理脉络，集结反抗不平等关系的行动者联盟。

In the process of the spatialization of justice, Soja departs from Lefebvre and Harvey’s practice of tracing spatial justice back to social justice, instead treating space as an equivalent category to history and society, emphasizing that justice can only be justice under specific spatiotemporal conditions, and that its representational forms shift with changes in time and space. At the same time, space possesses a social character; the anomie of social relations is spatial injustice, and spatial injustice in turn supports and reproduces anomic social relations. In Soja’s own words, “the spatiality of (in)justice affects society and social life just as much as the social processes of life shape the spatiality or specific geography of (in)justice.” [n] Soja accordingly criticizes John Rawls’s universalist conception of justice, arguing that the latter’s overemphasis on the compensation principle, while seemingly upholding the “good” of the community, in fact subjectively generalizes a distributional model specific to a given spatiotemporal condition. This not only suppresses theoretical diversity across different spatiotemporal contexts but also fails to touch the processual mechanism of “how space actively participates in the formation and maintenance of inequality, injustice, economic exploitation, racial discrimination, sexism, and other events of oppression or discrimination.” Soja cites Iris Marion Young’s claim that “a critical theory of social justice must consider not only the distributive paradigm but also the processes and relations that produce and reproduce these paradigms,” and argues that the urgent task is to integrate the “trialectics” of spatiality, historicity, and sociality into the identification and construction of justice, pushing for a transformation from a universalist conception of justice to a generative, open theory of justice. Only in this way, he contends, can one break through the fog of consequence-oriented distribution and launch a radical practice of spatial justice.

在正义的空间化过程中，索亚一改列斐伏尔和哈维由空间正义回溯社会正义的做法，而是将空间作为历史和社会的等价范畴，强调正义只能是特定时空条件下的正义，其表征形态会随着时空变迁而转换；同时，空间具有社会性特质，社会关系失范也就是空间不正义，空间不正义也会支持并再生产失范的社会关系。用索亚自己的话说，即“正义/非正义（是正义和非正义一词的结合）的空间性影响社会和社会生活，就像生活过程构成正义/非正义的空间性或者特殊的地理学一样”。索亚据此批评约翰·罗尔斯的普遍主义正义观，认为后者过分渲染的补偿原则看似维护了共同体的“善”，实则主观主义地泛化了特定时空状态下的分配模式，不仅压抑了不同时空语境下的理论多元性，也无法触及“空间何以主动地卷入到形成和维持不平等、不正义、经济剥削、种族歧视、性别歧视和其他压迫或者歧视的事件”的过程机制。索亚引证艾丽斯·杨关于“社会正义的批判理论不仅必须考虑分配范式，还必须考虑生产和复制这些范式的过程与关系”的主张，认为当务之急是将空间性、历史性和社会性的“三元辩证法”融入正义的识别与建构，推动普遍主义正义观向生成性、开放性的正义论转换，唯有如此，方能冲破结果主义导向的分配迷雾，并展开空间正义的激进实践。

At the level of action theory, Soja’s deconstructive approach inclines him toward an open, pluralistic narrative of difference, displaying an uncompromising stance that is grounded in, reliant upon, and even reverent toward the “margin.” Similar to Lefebvre’s persistent differential space or Harvey’s focus on “Edilia,” Soja uses “Thirdspace” to describe a political field that integrates openness, struggle, and emancipation—a ceaseless urban battlefield where race, gender, and class interact playfully without one being elevated over another, and where space, knowledge, and power contend while dialectically interpreting one another. This infinite inclusiveness is precisely the theoretical premise from which Soja proceeds, with optimistic revolutionary expectations, to advance case studies. In Soja’s formulation, “Thirdspace” is like a journey to places both “real” and “imagined.” It begins with Lefebvre’s triad of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational spaces; stops along the way at the “political terrain” occupied by feminism and postcolonialism, the “margin” cherished by bell hooks, and Michel Foucault’s “heterotopia”; and finally returns to a highly inviting “Othering” or “thirding” space. It is a dialectical synthesis (not a unification) of the real “Firstspace” and the imagined “Secondspace”—that is, “a strategic stance, a breaking, shattering, and transcending of the center–margin relation.” This, Soja argues, not only ensures the plurality of resistant subjects, means of struggle, and their goals but is also sufficient to initiate collective action against spatial hegemony. The problem, however, is that theoretical openness does not equal practical possibility. A turn toward the margin can only accomplish the project of returning to the margin. Soja intends to cultivate “spatial consciousness” or a “radical geographical imagination,” prompting “justice to emerge as a unifying force for social activists.” Yet a demand for justice that exceeds the threshold of class remains, in the end, a wishful discourse. Apart from appearing “politically correct” in posture, it provides no explanatory framework with historical interventionary force.

在行动论层面，索亚的解构主义思路使其偏好开放、多元的差异性叙事，展示了一种立足、依靠乃至崇拜“边缘”的不妥协立场。类似列斐伏尔执着的差异性空间，或是哈维关注的“埃迪里亚”，索亚以“第三空间”描述了一个集开放性、斗争性和解放性于一身的政治场域，一个川流不息的都市战场：种族、性别、阶层交互嬉戏而不扬此抑彼，空间、知识、权力各方角逐而又辩证互释，这种无限包容的开放性，正是索亚以乐观的革命预期推进个案研究的理论前置。按照索亚的提法，“第三空间”像是一段通往“真实”和“想象”的地方的旅程，起点是列斐伏尔的空间实践、空间表象和表征性空间的三位一体，中途分别造访女权主义和后殖民主义占据的“政治地形”、贝尔·胡克斯迷恋的“边缘地带”以及米歇尔·福柯的“异托邦”，最终回归极具邀请姿态的“他者化”或“第三化”空间。它是真实的“第一空间”和想象的“第二空间”的辩证综合（而非统一），即一种“战略性的站位，是对中心—边缘关系的打破、粉碎和超越”，不仅能够确保反抗主体、斗争手段及其目标的多元性，也足以开启反抗空间霸权的集体行动。但问题是，理论开放性不等于实践可能性，面向边缘的求解只会成就回归边缘的事业，索亚意图培育“空间意识”或“激进的地理想象”，促使“正义作为一种社会行动主义者的团结力量出现”，但超出阶级阈限的正义诉求终究只是话语上的一厢情愿，除了姿态上显得“政治正确”外，并未提供任何具有历史干预力的解释框架。

IV. Conclusion

四、结语

Spatial critical theory represents a new trend in left-wing intellectual circles. Its meta-theoretical sensitivity has allowed it to flourish through classical Western Marxism, neo-Marxism, and post-Marxism, providing an important academic reference for grasping the overall trajectory of foreign Marxism. In terms of narrative, spatial theorists attribute the left’s predicament to the entanglement of historical determinism and attempt to reconstruct alternative political projects by withdrawing from historical context. Although this offers some novel perspectives, it remains an external reflection mired in empiricism. It can neither generate effective social mobilization to alleviate the anxiety of the subject nor sustain an adversarial social hypothesis once historical imagination is stripped away. In a precise sense, it is a radical retreat that replaces class narrative with marginal positions and usurps total liberation with micropolitics, extending and amplifying the utopian character inherent in foreign Marxism.

空间批判理论代表了左翼思想界的新进动向，其元理论的敏感性使之经历经典西方马克思主义、新马克思主义和后马克思主义而依旧蓬勃发展，为总体把握国外马克思主义的理论走向提供了重要的学术参照。在叙事上，空间论者将左翼困境归咎为历史决定论的纠缠，并试图以撤离历史语境的方式重构替代性政治规划，虽然提供了某些新颖的视角，却是流于经验主义的外在反思，既无法形成有效的社会动员以缓解主体焦虑，也难以在剥离历史想象之余维系对抗性社会假设。在确切的意义上，它是以边缘立场取代阶级叙事、以微观政治僭越总体解放的激进退守，延续并放大了国外马克思主义所固有的乌托邦性质。

In terms of theoretical effects, spatial critical theory emerged at the waning of classical Western Marxism. Although at its inception it was influenced by existentialism, structuralism, and even positivist sociology, it has always emphasized a return to the radical tradition of Marxism. It can be said that it was Lefebvre and his successors who compelled theorists to clarify the role of space within historical materialism, thereby activating the spatial horizon of the critique of capital. At the same time, the anxiety over class consciousness that originated with Georg Lukács was redescribed by spatial theorists as a crisis of historical consciousness, to the point of reorienting the path of reflection on modernity at the meta-theoretical level. On the surface, this is a thorough refutation of the Second International’s reified conception of history; in reality, it is a radical revision that pulls the rug out from under historical epistemology. Not only does it fall into a spatial fetishism itself, but it also plunges the problem of subjectivity that the left originally faced into a complex terrain of plural heterogeneity. Thus, from the production of space to postmodern geography, together with thematic shifts from ideology to psychoanalysis, from the critique of consumption to symbolic exchange, and from cultural reflection to aesthetic politics, all attest to foreign Marxism’s “powerlessness” in凝聚 subjects and the “failure” of its grand narratives. As for凝聚 subjects, the absence of the subject leads to the decline of class politics. Spatial theorists attempt to strengthen subject identification through contextualization, and in the process of reflection and reaffirmation, they settle on “the urban,” “the local,” or “place.” This highly insightful “geographical imagination” is beneficial for dissolving the positivist bias of human geography and fostering the intellectual atmosphere of post-subject philosophy. Whether appealing to urban power or highlighting “militant particularism,” it is a process in which metaphysical critical thinking approaches the generalization of the subject within social theory. The problem is not the decline of radicalism but the inability of the subject to confirm itself within historical materialism. The sudden rise of “spatial critique” is precisely a resistance to and repair of this problem. In a direct sense, Foucault’s “heterotopia,” Doreen Massey’s “power-geometry,” and Antonio Negri’s “multitude” are both the logical consequence of the shift from the critique of relations of production (commodities) to the critique of cultural ideology (spectacle, symbols) and typical representations of synchronic structure replacing historical process. Their purpose is to confer a radical identity on general resistant forces rather than on class subjects alone. As for narrative, micronarrative is currently the dominant school in radical politics, implying that “emancipation” need not adhere to a macroscopic historical totality or broad institutional arrangements, but rather “carries out revolution in lifestyle, discourse, body, sexuality, communication, etc., thereby providing the preconditions for a new society.” For example, Foucault focuses on the diffusion of power in prisons, hospitals, and schools; Gilles Deleuze attends to the diagram of difference outlined by “rhizomatic space”; and Julia Kristeva emphasizes the emancipatory potential nurtured by “maternal space.” Space is not only the entry point for the critique of power but also the foundation for opening up micropolitics. Its pluralistic, open epistemological demands, while introducing problematics such as ecology, feminism, and race, have also rallied scholars including literary critic Fredric Jameson, postcolonial theorist Edward Said, and proponents of “world-systems theory” such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, and Theotonio Dos Santos, forming a grand spatial critical current both within and outside Marxism.

从理论效应看，空间批判理论兴起于经典西方马克思主义式微之际，虽然在起点上受存在主义、结构主义乃至实证社会学影响，却始终注重对马克思主义激进传统的回溯，可以说，正是列斐伏尔及其后来者倒逼着理论家们去澄清空间在历史唯物主义中的角色定位，从而激活了资本批判的空间视域。与此同时，肇始于格奥尔格·卢卡奇的阶级意识焦虑，被空间论者描述为历史意识危机，以至于在元理论层面重新定向了现代性的反思进路：表面上是对第二国际的物化史观的彻底反驳，实则是对历史认识论釜底抽薪式的修正，不仅自身陷入空间崇拜，也使左翼原本面临的主体性问题跌入多元异质的复杂境地。由此，从空间生产到后现代地理学，连同从意识形态到精神分析、从消费批判到象征交换、从文化反思到审美政治等主题的转换，一道印证了国外马克思主义在凝聚主体方面的“无力”及其宏大叙事的“失效”。就凝聚主体而言，主体缺位导致阶级政治式微，空间论者试图以情境化方式强化主体识别，并在反思与重申过程中落脚于“都市”“地方”或“位置”。这一极富洞察力的“地理学想象”，对消解人文地理学的实证偏好、烘托后主体哲学的知识氛围有所裨益，因为不论是诉诸城市权力，抑或凸显“战斗的特殊主义”，都是形而上的批判致思切近社会理论的主体泛化过程，问题不在于激进性的衰退，而是主体无法在历史唯物主义内部确证自身，“空间批判”异军突起，正是对该问题的抵制与修复。在直接的意义上，福柯的“异托邦”、多琳·马西的“权力几何学”、安东尼奥·内格里的“大同世界”，既是生产关系批判（商品）转向文化意识形态批判（景观、符号）的逻辑使然，也是共时态结构替代历史性过程的典型表征，目的就是赋予一般性反抗力量而不只是阶级主体以激进身份。就叙事来说，微观叙事是当前激进政治中的显学，意味着“解放”无需固守宏观的历史总体或广义的制度安排，而是“在生活风格、话语、躯体、性、交往等方面进行革命，以此为新社会提供先决条件”。例如，福柯聚焦监狱、医院和学校中的权力弥散，吉尔·德勒兹关注“块茎空间”勾勒的差异图式，茱莉亚·克里斯蒂娃强调“母性空间”孕育的解放潜能。空间不仅是权力批判的入口，也是敞开微观政治的基底，其多元、开放的知识论诉求，在引入生态、女权、种族等问题意识的同时，亦集结起文学评论家弗雷德里克·詹姆逊、讨论后殖民主义的爱德华·萨义德，以及主张“世界体系”理论的伊曼纽尔·沃勒斯坦、萨米尔·阿明、特奥托尼奥·多斯桑托斯等学者，在马克思主义内外形成了蔚为大观的空间批判思潮。

From the perspective of theoretical gains and losses, spatial critique, as one of the core threads in the development of foreign Marxism, possesses a radical tendency opposed to capitalism. The topics it addresses—spatial production, urban rights, ecological justice, uneven development, and so forth—not only enrich the empirical perspective of the critique of capital but also provide theoretical growth points for expanding the contemporary horizon of historical materialism. However, we must also recognize that misreading Marxism as an abstract determinism lacking dialectical insight, and introducing difference and plural narratives in the name of a totality dialectics, a negative dialectics, a humanist dialectics, or a dialectics of overdetermination, is a habitual approach among foreign left-wing scholars. This is true of Lefebvre and Soja’s trialectics, and it is equally true of Harvey’s process dialectics. They mistakenly magnify the shift in perspective arising from changes in the times into a supposed deficiency in Marx’s own viewpoint, and then, at the level of meta-theory, they reject “history.” On the surface, this clears the ground for emancipation, but in reality, it falls into the political terrain of deconstruction. Some, like Lefebvre, return to the depths of philosophy, advocating that the opportunity for resistance be nurtured in urban aesthetics; others, like Soja, exile themselves in empirical research, seeking ethical consolation in geographical interpretation. The result is the degradation of a definite agenda of emancipation into a diffuse enterprise where anything is possible. The discursive prosperity generated by fashionable rhetoric is precisely a conspicuous symptom of a defeatist mood. Worth noting is Harvey’s line of thought. Through his critique of the political economy of space, he reveals the historical-geographical trajectory of capital accumulation and its mechanisms of contradiction, thereby not only avoiding abstract reflection based on moral consciousness and good will but also providing a dialectical utopian promise for consolidating an increasingly fragmented consciousness of resistance. However, his vacillation on the question of the priority of space and time ultimately prevents him from escaping the trap of postmodernism. As his revolutionary interest turns toward the production of local knowledge, spatial critique exhausts its potential in a flood of deconstructive rhetoric, degenerating into a synchronic annotation of a “politics of discourse” that favors “posture” or an “attention economy” that competes for “eyeballs.”

从理论得失看，空间批判作为国外马克思主义发展的核心线索之一，具有反对资本主义的激进倾向，其所关注的空间生产、都市权利、生态正义、不平衡发展等论题，既丰富了资本批判的经验性视角，也为拓展历史唯物主义的当代视域提供了理论增长点。但我们也应看到，把马克思主义误读为缺乏辩证眼光的抽象决定论，并以总体性辩证法、否定的辩证法、人学辩证法或多元决定的辩证法之名，引入差异和多元叙事，乃是国外左翼学者的惯有思路，列斐伏尔和索亚的三元辩证法如此，哈维的过程辩证法亦是这样。他们错把源自时代变迁的视域转换放大为马克思的观点缺失，进而在元理论层次拒绝“历史”，表面上是为解放清理地基，实则陷入解构的政治地形。他们要么像列斐伏尔一样重返哲学堂奥，主张在都市审美中孕育反抗契机，要么如索亚一般自我放逐于经验研究，在地理学阐释中寻求伦理慰藉，结果便是将一项确定的解放议程降格为一切皆有可能的散漫事业，时尚的修辞催生出的话语繁荣，正是失败主义情绪的显著表征。值得关注的是哈维的思路，他通过空间政治经济学批判，揭示了资本积累的历史地理轨迹及其矛盾机制，不仅避免了基于道德觉悟和善良意志的抽象反思，也为凝聚日趋涣散的反抗意识提供了辩证的乌托邦期许。然而，在时空优先性问题上的立场摇摆，使其终究未能逃离后现代主义的陷阱，随着其革命旨趣转向地方性知识生产，空间批判也在泛滥的解构性措辞中耗尽了势能，沦为偏好“姿态”的“话语政治”或争夺“眼球”的“流量经济”的共时态注解。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗