ABSTRACT

Andrea Cavalletti’s recent book, La città biopolitica, opens with Schmitt’s well-known dictum: ‘there are no political ideas without a spatial referent, just as there are no spaces (or spatial principles) without corresponding political ideas’ (2005: 1).1 The choice is not by chance, for Cavalletti’s work provides what is perhaps the most perceptive investigation of the relationship between Schmitt and the question of spatial ontology. The very notion of a ‘spatial ontology’ is highly controversial. While some authors accept the existence of a distinct Schmittian spatial ontology and subject it to critical analysis (see, for example, Rowan’s contribution to this volume), others seem to deny its very possibility (see Elden 2010; also his chapter in this book). This chapter will not engage directly with that controversy, but will rather reflect on how ‘ontological’ the question of space was for Schmitt, and on how this understanding of space can be of relevance for geography.