ABSTRACT
This chapter expands understanding emancipation beyond the confines of political philosophy and positions it as a critical concept in urban studies. The first part focuses on whose emancipation is addressed by outlining distinctions between political and social emancipation, whereas the following sections introduce relations between emancipation and the city, and emancipation and urbanization. After a critique of the colonizing features of emancipation in modern discourses, debates on emancipation will be situated in relation to debates on the post-political condition. Thereafter, emancipation is analyzed per its current use in post-foundational thought, thus constructing a conceptual frame to situate the subsequent book sections and chapters.
