Unlocking the mind-trap: Politicising urban theory and practice

This contribution offers a critical engagement with the Critical Commentary paper of Beveridge and Koch (2017) entitled ‘The postpolitical trap? Reflections on politics, agency and the city’. I argue that post-politicisation as a particular form of de-politicisation does not imply the disappearance of politics. On the contrary, it involves the re-ordering of the modalities of politics (contentious or otherwise) and of the possibilities of the political with far-reaching consequences for the modalities of egalitarian and emancipatory urban change. I explore the key contours of the post-politicisation argument and develop the thesis that ‘the political’ can never be foreclosed fully.