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Abstract
This paper aims to present several of the most important aspects concerning political spatiality and its various dimensions, such as the physical, symbolic and charismatized aspects. This analysis will serve a two-fold purpose: 1) depicting the main types of spatiality, while concentrating more on the difficulty in defining and categorising sacred space; 2) how the use of spatiality can aid in the creation of ideological hegemony, of social homogeneity and, ultimately, of a distinct ideological narrative which may legitimize communities, as well as modern ideocratic regimes.
Keywords: spatiality, hegemony, regime, charismatization, legitimacy
This paper aims to systematically depict the main types of spatiality, as well as analysing how the use of spatiality can aid in the creation of ideological hegemony, of social homogeneity and, ultimately, of a distinct teleological narrative which may legitimize communities as well as modern ideocratic regimes. Spaces, landscapes and their political dimensions may be interpreted in three broad ways. Firstly, they are physical reminders of a regime's power and permanence as well as its ability to discipline, to organize its subjects towards common goals. Secondly, they are temporal indices of recreated pasts and desired futures. Finally, they are symbolic expressions of different notions, ranging from community, sacrifice, liberty or apotheosis. The typologies of spatiality can fluctuate according to the objectives of the regime in question and according to the traditions typical of the dominant culture or of its political elite. Thus, a festival meant to promote openness or internationalist sentiments, such as World Youth Day or Labour Day will, at least in certain aspects, be performed and interpreted very differently in a liberal democracy in comparison to a totalist1 state, even though they will likely maintain common means of representation and aesthetics. In asserting that the state possesses a " simultaneously invisible and omnipresent conceptual location", Adam T. Smith describes a feature which "provides an effective mask for political practices precisely because it obscures the inherently spatial operations of power 'as an apparatus of domination' and legitimacy 'as a representation of that apparatus'".2 To this could be added that spatiality, in its representation of power, authority and of common endeavour, is one of the fundamental aspects in any authority-system which we may call ideocratic regimes. Indeed, it is among...