Rana Göksu
Colour 229 x 152 mm | Perfect Bound on White w/Matte Laminate | 298 pages | Paperback ISBN 978-1-910761-27-4 | E-book (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-910761-28-1 | 8 January 2024
Geo-Materializing the Legal Imaginary is available from online bookshops internationally at a recommended retail price of GBP 15.00 (Paperback). UK, US, and AUS residents can purchase the book directly from our distributor.
Geo-Materializing the Legal Imaginary examines how land once rendered ‘null’ was later claimed as ‘full’, and how these transformations continue to shape our imaginaries on political authority, identity, societal organization, governing systems, and the ways we conceive of land. Rana Göksu traces the juridical geographies of nullification and dispossession through a geohistorical connection between British colonial dispossession in Australia and the Australian state’s territorial claims to 42% of Antarctica, exploring the role of geospatial techniques and their ideological geo-graphing in producing these imaginaries. Building on Lefebvre’s theory of space production and engaging Povinelli, Yusoff, and Fanon, Göksu reframes ecological ‘destruction’, ‘crisis’, and ‘death’ as ontological resistance to colonial and capitalist imaginaries and their ideologically produced geographies, arguing that the political power of geo-materialities and their capacities for world- and system-making do not seek liberal emancipatory resolution, yet decisively correspond to it.
Scholars and advanced students in critical legal theory, political geography, postcolonial studies, and environmental humanities; researchers with interests in settler colonialism, Antarctic governance, and spatial theory.
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Foreword
1. Introduction
1.1 Core Arguments and Concerns
1.2 Organization of the Book
1.3 Methodological Commitments
1.3.1 Legal Geography to Spatialize Law
1.3.2 Law as Situated in Both Concepts and Materials
1.4 Clarifying Key Concepts of the Book
1.4.1 Space Production
1.4.2 Imaginary
1.4.3 Geopolitics
2. The Colonial Imaginary of Land Transformation: Nullification
2.1 Resetting the Golden Spike for Colonial Land Transformation
2.2 The Lockean Roots of the Denial of Land Possession
2.2.1 The Identity–Property Nexus
2.2.2 The Nexus between Labour, Waste Land, and Societal Transition
2.2.3 Dispossession through Agriculture, Valorization, and Possession without Consent
2.3 A Brief Background: The Nullification of Australia and Aboriginals
2.3.1 Justifications for Sovereignty Acquisition: Civilization and Humanitarianism
2.3.2 Australia as Terra Nullius
2.3.3 The System of Land Transfer: The Torrens Title System
2.4 Reconfigured Australia: Afterlives of Nullification
3. A Spatial Analysis of Antarctic Land Transformation
3.1 Hinging on Lefebvrian Space Production
3.2 Producing Antarctica: From Frozen Land to National Territories
3.2.1 The Spatio-Legal Status of Antarctica: Is Antarctica a Reconfiguration of Terra Nullius?
3.2.2 Terra Nullius in Question: Early Antarctic Explorations
3.2.3 Terra Nullius in Question: The Antarctic Treaty
3.3 The Nexus between States’ Antarctic Claims and Emperors’ Colonial Techniques
3.4 How Spatial Is Antarctic Imperialism?
3.5 Techniques of Antarctic Imperialism: The Australian State Mode of Antarctic Space Production
3.5.1 Symbolic Space
3.5.2 Built Environments
3.5.3 Geopolitics and Legal Territorialities
3.5.3.1 Components of Antarctic Geopolitics
3.5.3.1.1 Antarctica As Resource Space
3.5.3.1.2 Antarctica as National Space
3.5.3.2 Geopolitics Meets Territoriality: Is Antarctica Contested or Shared?
4. Geo-Materializing the Legal Imaginary
4.1 The Non-Geographical Legal Imaginary
4.2 Lefebvrian Thinking of Capitalist State Space
4.2.1 Introducing Dominant Space
4.2.2 Australia and Antarctica as Dominant Space
4.2.3 Abstract Space as the Capitalist Dominant Space
4.3 Capitalist State Space: Homogenized and Quantified Geography
4.3.1 The State as an Arbiter of Value Relations within Geopower
4.3.2 Capitalist Value Relations in State Space
4.3.3 The Delivery of Geography: Spatial Alienation
4.3.3.1 Arendt’s Alienation in Conjunction with Lefebvre’s Loss of Originality
4.3.3.2 The Dispossession of Antarctica
4.4 Capitalist State Space’s Promise: Differential Space
4.4.1 The Actualization of Land Users through Lived Space
4.4.2 Antarctica: Geo-material Force of Capitalist Value Relations
4.5 Revisiting Geopower: Does ‘Melting’ Antarctica Interrupt the Colonial Imaginary?
5. Conclusion: Layers of Connections
5.1 Connections of the First Layer: Geohistories and Geo-Graphing
5.1.1 Australia–Antarctica: Connections in Geohistories
5.1.2 Conceptual–Material Geography: Connections in Geo-Graphing
5.2 Connections of the Second Layer: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Liberalism
5.2.1 Colonial Legacies through Space Production
5.2.2 Capitalism through Space Production
5.2.3 Liberalism through Space Production
Bibliography
Rana Göksu is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of critical legal theory, geography, and materiality, specializing in legal geography and spatial theory. Göksu holds a PhD in law from the University of Kassel (Germany, 2025) and is a lawyer admitted to the Istanbul Bar Association.
Footnote/Endnote:
Rana Göksu, Geo-Materializing the Legal Imaginary: The Cycle of Produced and Producing Geography (Coventry: Counterpress, 2026).
Bibliography:
Rana Göksu.Geo-Materializing the Legal Imaginary: The Cycle of Produced and Producing Geography (Coventry: Counterpress, 2026).