Re-visioning space, justice and belonging in the capital city of Pretoria/Tshwane

Abstract

n Herbeskouing van Ruimte, Geregtigheid en Tuiste in Pretoria/Tshwane as Hoofstad Die hoofoogmerk van hierdie artikel is om tentatief te besin oor die moontlikhede van ’n herbeskouiïng van ruimte, geregtigheid en tuiste in Pretoria/Tshwane as hoofstad. Ten einde hierdie oogmerk aan te spreek fokus ek op drie kwessies: eerstens die nodigheid vir ’n teoretiese omgaan en intervensie in die proses van herskouiïng. Die opvatting soos geformuleer deur Henri Lefebvre, naamlik die ‘reg op die stad’ is sentraal tot meeste werk aangande die stad en onderlê al vier artikels wat volg op hierdie een. Tweedens beskou ek die benaderings van Hannah Arendt en Jacques Ranciere ten einde die reg op die stad te herbedink en derdens betrek ek idees aangaande herbeskouiïng, herbetowering en die verbeelding. Hierdie artikel asook die vier artikels wat hierop volg is navorsing voortvloeiend uit die “Capital Cities” Institusionele Navorsings Tema van die Universiteit van Pretoria.

The main aim of my contribution is to reflect tentatively on the possibilities of a re-visioning of space, justice and belonging in the capital city of Pretoria/Tshwane as set out by the other four papers. In order to address the main aim as stated above I address three different issues: firstly the need for theoretical engagements and interventions in the process of revisioning space, justice and belonging. For the purposes of research on spatial justice in the capital city of Pretoria/Tshwane I highlight the notion of the “right to the city” that stands central to most engagements with spatiality and that in a sense underpins all four other contributions. Secondly, flowing from the first I address two theoretical approaches in order to rethink the right to the city; and thirdly I engage briefly with ideas on re-visioning, re-enchantment and the imagination. I start off by focussing on certain dichotomies and themes that are central to some of the interventions in the city of Pretoria/Tshwane as presented in this volume as background. I then turn Henri Lefebvre’s notion of “the right to the city”. I want to tentatively consider the notion of “the right to the city” through two other theoretical interventions, Hannah Arendt’s posing of the most important right as the “right to have rights” and then Jacques Ranciere’s response to Arendt’s notion and his insistence on “staging dissensus”. I conclude by drawing on work done on the legal imagination and particularly the (im)possibility of the imagination to respond to the state of disenchantment by re-visioning and re-enchantment.