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“An Opening Toward the Possible”: Assembly

Politics and Henri Lefebvre's Theory of the Event

Ari Jerrems

To cite this article: Ari Jerrems (2019): “An Opening Toward the Possible”: Assembly Politics and
Henri Lefebvre's Theory of the Event, Global Society, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2019.1695585

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GLOBAL SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2019.1695585

“An Opening Toward the Possible”: Assembly Politics and

Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Event
Ari Jerrems
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this article, I outline how Henri Lefebve’s theory of the event helps Received 2 June 2019
conceptualise the emergence of recent assembly movements. Accepted 15 November 2019
Scholars of time and temporality have critiqued conventional
framings of events, instead often understanding these as ruptures
in temporal narratives. Moving beyond the deconstruction of
framings of events, several scholars have begun to engage with
the contested forms of timing and rhythm emerging from them.
Lefebvre’s theory provides tools to build on this approach in order
to conceptualise the event of assembly politics. Lefebvre’s theory
furthers the turn to timing by highlighting the interrelationship
between space and time and engaging with the complex
“totality” from which movements emerge. Lefebvre’s theory
provides a framework to track how seemingly micropolitical
phenomena emerges from and reverberates on a worldwide scale.
The insights gained from Lefebvre’s theory are illustrated through
an analysis of the emergence of the 15M movement in Spain.

Introduction
Literature on time and temporality in International Relations1 has successfully challenged
conventional understandings of world events. The term event is used in the literature to
refer to occurrences interpreted as interrupting the course of history, pushing inter-
national politics in different directions. Scholars illustrate how such events are attributed
meaning as they become integrated into historical narratives. Instead they endeavour to
grasp their “heterotemporality”. Following Kimberley Hutchings, a heterotemporal
account recognises that politics is not composed of “one present nor many presents,
but a mutual contamination of ‘nows’ that participate in a variety of temporal trajec-
tories”.2 Events are experienced and can be represented in a multiplicity of different
ways. Building on this insight, scholars highlight the ethical and political ramifications

CONTACT Ari Jerrems ari.jerrems@monash.edu @AriJerrems

1
See for example Anna Agathangelou and Kyle Killian eds., Time, Temporality and Violence in International Relations: (De)Fa-
talizing the Present, Forging Radical Alternatives (New York: Routledge, 2016); Andrew Hom, “The Hegemonic Metronome:
The Ascendency of Western Standard Time”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2010), pp. 1145–1170; Kim-
berley Hutchings, Time and World Politics: Thinking the Present (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008); Cristo-
pher McIntosh, “Theory Across Time: The Privileging of Time-Less Theory in International Relations”, International Theory,
Vol. 7, No. 3 (2015), pp. 464–500; Tom Lundborg, Politics of the Event: Time, Movement, Becoming (London: Routledge,
2012); Ty Solomon, “Time and Subjectivity in World Politics”, International Studies Quarterly Vol. 58 (2014), pp. 671–681.
2
Hutchings, Time and World Politics, op. cit., p. 166.
© 2019 University of Kent
2 A. JERREMS

of representing events. Some favour radically open accounts that accentuate the diversity
of experiences for this reason. Radically open accounts are employed to disturb dominant
narratives, undermining interpretations that legitimate repressive acts.
When interrogating the emergence of social movements whose radical openness is the
source of claims of novelty and rupture, the critical potential of such a move is limited.
Recent assembly movements3 actively claiming to be composed of a multiplicity of experi-
ences and trajectories, such as the Arab Spring, the 15M in Spain, the Aganaktismenoi in
Greece, Occupy globally and Nuit Debout in France constitute an important challenge for
this reason. Representing these movements as radically open means replicating the claims
made by the movements themselves, denying the possibility of critical insight. In a recent
article4, Andrew Hom notes two important problems with such accounts that are particu-
larly relevant in this regard; they fail to identify emerging power relations or appreciate the
importance of positionality in how events are experienced. With regards to assembly
movements, this critique highlights how claims of radical openness do not lead to the
absence of power relations between participants. Power imbalances shape experiences
meaning that the spaces constituted are not necessarily experienced as radically open by
all.
Building on this critique, Hom challenges scholars to move beyond the study of “con-
cepts and predicates of time” and instead explore “the dynamic, practical activity of
timing”.5 He suggests that more critical insight can be gained by focusing on how political
actors engage in contested forms of “timing”. With regards to the study of events, this
move requires less of a focus on the temporal narratives framing events and more atten-
tion to the contested rhythms producing and emerging from them. Scholars have begun to
analyse the rhythmical processes of grassroots political movements along these lines. Ty
Solomon has recently outlined how rhythm sheds light on the emergent practices and rou-
tines of collective action of such movements.6
In this article, I build on the turn to timing and rhythm, developing a theoretical frame-
work to conceptualise the ‘time-spaces’7 constituted by assembly movements. I seek to
move beyond an appreciation of the multiplicity of experiences entwined in these
events, to conceptualise the contested time-spaces emerging from them. I draw on the
work of Henri Lefebvre and particularly his theory of the event in order to do so.8
Lefebvre’s theory is particularly useful for studying the interventions of assembly move-
ments as it was formulated to account for the emergence of horizontal grassroots move-
ments whose forms resonate with those of contemporary movements. I illustrate the

3
See Judith Bulter, Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Michael
Hardt and Toni Negri, Assembly (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
4
Andrew Hom, “Silent Order: The Temporal Turn in Critical International Relations”, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (2018), pp. 303–330.
5
Andrew Hom, “Timing is Everything: Toward a Better Understanding of Time and International Politics”, International
Studies Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 1 (2018), pp. 69–79, 71.
6
Ty Solomon, “Rhythm and Moblization in International Relations”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. X, No. X (2019), pp.
X–XX.
7
Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005).
8
Lefebvre’s theory of the event is developed in most detail in his untranslated study of the Paris Commune. See Henri
Lefebvre, La Proclamation de la Commune, 26 Mars 1871 (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). Lefebvre’s oeuvre, whilst somewhat
neglected in International Relations, has received increased attention in recent years. See for example Matt Davies,
“Everyday Life as Critique: Revisiting the Everyday in IPE with Henri Lefebvre and Postcolonialism”, International Political
Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2016), pp. 22–38, Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory”,
International Political Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2009), pp. 353–377.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 3

insights offered through an analysis of the emergence of the 15M Movement in Madrid,
Spain, often referred to as the Indignados in the Anglosphere. The movement has pro-
voked much academic excitement and has been framed as a laboratory of political inno-
vation9 defined by its “radical inclusivity”.10 It swept across Spain in 2011 in the wake of
the Global Financial Crisis, developing forms of assembly politics firstly in central squares
and then in neighbourhood space. Engaging with the time-spaces constituted by the
movement avoids the reproduction of claims of radical inclusivity. Instead, engagement
with specific time-spaces provides a framework to engage with emerging power relations
and the importance of positionality in how these are experienced. Assembly movements
are neither symptomatic of the conditions of the present nor a moment of rupture break-
ing with these. They make concrete interventions in defined circumstances creating ten-
sions, complexities and possibilities.
Engagement with Lefebvre’s theory helps expand on the turn to timing and rhythm in
two key ways. Lefebvre points to the interrelationship between timing and emerging
spatial frames and practices. Whilst IR scholars have theorised the relationship between
space and time11, space is sometimes overlooked in the turn to time and temporality.
In Hom’s timing theory, for example, considerations of space are marginalised in the
effort to highlight the importance of time. The interconnected relationship has been cap-
tured by human geographers via concepts such as “Timespace”12 or “time-space”.13 Time-
spaces are constituted and contested through the dialectical relationship between con-
ceptions of space and time and the practices that implement, undermine and contest
them. Doreen Massey explores the constitution of time-spaces via studies of the labora-
tories and homes of high-tech scientist in the UK. These time-spaces are constituted by
the spatial arrangement of each, that shape and are shaped by rhythms of everyday life.
Following Massey, time-spaces are continually produced and negotiated in relation to a
broader series of processes that are mitigated through degrees of openness and
closure.14 The notion of time-space highlights how assembly politics is not enclosed
within a particular temporal narrative, nor solely a rupture breaking with this. Rather
the time-spaces of assembly politics are constituted by both openings and closures.
Lefebvre’s attentiveness to the relationship between time and space is connected to his
effort to conceptualise the event as a contradictory “totality” ‒ deriving from his reading of
dialectical materialism.15 Lefebvre’s account of the emerging time-spaces of horizontal
grassroots movements are given sense in relation to the complex, contradictory circum-
stances from which they emerge. Hom argues that timing theory situates specific interven-
tions as part of a “totality-in-multiplicity”.16 Nevertheless, he does not expand on this

9
Alberto Corsín and Adolfo Estalella, “#spanishrevolution”, Anthropology Today, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2011), pp. 19–23.
10
Alberto Medina, “De flujos, lugares y peceras: Mutaciones y permutaciones del ‘cualquiera’ en el 15M”, Journal of Spanish
Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2015), pp. 293–216, 293.
11
See for example Anna Agathangelou, “Making Anew an Arab Regional Order? On Poetry, Sex, and Revolution”, Globaliza-
tions, Vol. 8, No. 5 (2011), pp. 581–594, Anna Agathangelou, “The Living and Being of the Streets: Fanon and the Arab
Uprisings”, Globalizations, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2013), pp. 451–466, Vivienne Jabri, The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/Gov-
erning Others in Late Modernity (London: Routledge, 2013).
12
Jon May and Nigel Thrift, Timespace: Geographies of Temporality (London: Routledge, 2001).
13
Massey, op. cit. For a critical interrogation of this work see Peter Merriman, “Human geography without Time-Space”,
Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2012), pp. 13–27.
14
Massey, For Space, op. cit., pp. 177–179
15
See Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism (London: Cape Editions, 1968)
16
Hom, “Timing is Everything”, op. cit., p. 75.
4 A. JERREMS

point in any detail. Lefebvre’s theory provides a framework to do so, illustrating how
specific time-spaces are interconnected with the broader totality from which they
emerge. As such, Lefebvre’s theory provides tools to engage with heterotemporality as
more than just a “provocative metaphor”.17 The simultaneous attention to time and
space, the macro and micro in Lefebvre’s theory, helps conceptualise the time-spaces con-
stituted by the 15M movement as concrete interventions emerging in specific circum-
stances with possibilities, tensions and limitations.
In the following section, I review the literature on time and temporality outlining how
it sheds light on the heterotemporality of world events and reveals the ethical and pol-
itical ramifications of representing them. I highlight the importance of accounting for the
contested time-spaces emerging from events — particularly for recent assembly move-
ments. In the third section, I go on to explore how Lefebvre’s theory elucidates the
time-spaces emerging from grassroots political mobilisations. In the final section, I illus-
trate how Lefebvre’s theory provides insight into the contested time-spaces of recent
mobilisations with a discussion of the 15M movement. I argue that focusing on emerging
time-spaces in conjunction with their conditions of possibility, as Lefebvre does, helps
make sense of tensions arising as the time-spaces emerging come into contact with
diverse experiences of these, drawing attention to power relations and the importance
of positionality.

Rethinking the event

The literature on time and temporality has provided a powerful critique of conventional
understandings of world events. Whilst events are seen to interrupt the continuity of
time by revealing contingency,18 scholars illustrate how they are given meaning as aca-
demics, journalists and policy makers incorporate them into historical narratives. In the
wake of the Cold War, Kimberly Hutchings notes the appearance of “a range of diag-
noses of these ‘new’ times that we are in”.19 Hom shows how such diagnoses provide
a way of comprehending “discordant changes in an intelligible and useful way”.20 By
situating events in accordance with particular narratives they are rendered “more intel-
ligible and secure”.21 In the process events are transformed into what Tom Lundborg
refers to as “historical events”. Historical events draw a “border in time” that serves to
create a before and after and a coherent interpretation of history.22 Particular events
may be seen to inaugurate a new époque23 or be demonstrative of repetition, progress,
or decline.24
Historical narratives close off interpretation and naturalise particular understandings.
Richard Devetak notes that stories told about events serve to construct political worlds.
Histories of international politics revolve around major events, whilst historical narratives
17
Hom, “Silent Order”, op. cit., p. 319–320.
18
Antoine Bousquet, “Time Zero: Hiroshima, September 11 and Apocalyptic Revelations in Historical Consciousness”, Mil-
lennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2006), pp. 739–764, 740–741.
19
Hutchings, Time and World Politics, op. cit., p. 14.
20
Andrew Hom, “Angst Springs Eternal: Dangerous Times and the Dangers of Timing the ‘Arab Spring’”, Security Dialogue,
Vol. 47, No. 2 (2016), pp. 165–183, 168.
21
Ibid., 166.
22
Lundborg, Politics of the Event, op. cit., p. 1.
23
Hom, “Angst Springs Eternal”, op. cit., p. 174.
24
Hutchings, Time and World Politics, op. cit., p. 9.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 5

make events legible by relating them to each other.25 Antoine Bousquet illustrates how
emerging narratives tend to rehash previous assumptions and interpretations.26 Hom
argues that historical narratives discourage “scholars from taking surprising events on
their own terms”.27 Situated within defined narratives, events appear as known phenom-
ena whose complexities require little specific attention. In his study of the Arab Spring,
Hom notes how emerging narratives cast, “the ‘Arab Spring’ as a novel problem with
security implications”.28 Lundborg similarly explores how 9/11 was articulated as a
border in time inaugurating “an uncertain future full of potential and unknowable
threats and enemies”.29 The framing of 9/11 as a border in time made particular forms
of action appear necessary and natural.30
To counter closed framings of events, scholars underline their heterotemporality.
Nevertheless, they are often hesitant to integrate heterotemporality into alternative nar-
ratives. In his discussion of the Arab Spring, Hom offers only brief considerations about
what an alternative account may look like. He appears to favour his final option of
“explicitly refus[ing] to draw conclusions about events still unfolding in real time”.31
Such a commitment refuses to make judgements about the “present meaning, future con-
sequences, and security repercussions”32 of the event. Similarly, Jenny Edkins, after
exploring a number of ways of reacting to the trauma of 9/11, favours politicising the
event by refusing to “insert it into prewritten stories but demanding that it be accepted
on its own terms”.33 Bousquet highlights the potential of politicising the event in this
way in order to open “discourse and conceptual apparatuses to reconfiguration”34
noting “the powerful aesthetic and symbolic experience of the events” that reveals “a
fluidity of the socio-political milieu, allowing for radically new policies to be imagined
and/or implemented”.35
Lundborg proposes avoiding the reduction of events to historical narratives for this
reason, instead advocating for the search for alternative encounters that allow for some-
thing “completely different” to be opened up.36 Lundborg, similar to Edkins, is primarily
concerned with the political and ethical ramifications of representing events.37 He advo-
cates experimenting with representation in order “to encounter the ambiguities of the pure
event in a more productive and creative way, without reinforcing practices of security and
violent forms of response”.38 He explores alternative depictions of 9/11 as the basis for a
25
Richard Devetak, “After the Event: Don DeLillo’s White Noise and September 11 narratives”, Review of International Studies,
Vol. 35 (2009), pp. 795–815.
26
Bousquet, op. cit., 763.
27
Hom, “Angst Springs Eternal”, op. cit., p. 178.
28
Ibid., p. 166.
29
Lundborg, Politics of the Event, op. cit., p. 61.
30
Ibid.
31
Hom, “Angst Springs Eternal”, op. cit., pp. 178–179. Hom also briefly touches on the possibility of exploring how the event
challenges common understandings of time and how the event may offer the possibility for creating new temporal prac-
tices and understandings of time.
32
Ibid., p. 179.
33
Jenny Edkins, “Forget Trauma? Responses to September 11”, International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2002), pp. 243–256,
253.
34
Bousquet, “Time Zero”, op. cit., 763.
35
Ibid.
36
Lundborg, Politics of the Event, op. cit., p. 87.
37
A similar concern with the ethical repercussions of representing events is found in Bernando Teles Fazendeiro, “Narrating
Events and Imputing Those Responsible: Reflexivity and the Temporal Basis of Retrospective Responsibility”, Review of
International Studies (2018), pp. 1–20.
38
Lundborg, Politics of the Event, op. cit., p. 88.
6 A. JERREMS

different politics and ethics.39 He draws on two films on 9/11: the collaborative documen-
tary 7 days in September and another short film by Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu in order to
do so. For Lundborg, the power of 7 days in September is that it does not impose “a unity”
or “tell us who was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but rather highlights ‘a sense of ambiguity as well as
heterogeneity’”.40 Gonzales Iñárritu’s film is similarly praised for presenting “only a series
of cutting and sequencing, of images and sounds, which through their irregularity disrupt
the very notion of a whole”.41 The focus on composing a representation of heterogeneity is
also found in James Der Derian’s virtual theory that advocates for composing a collage of
the event that “is thin on explanation and thick on description”.42
Nevertheless, the critical potential of such a move is limited when addressing the emer-
gence of social movements claiming radical openness. Mobilisations over the last decade
constitute an important challenge as they appear to embody the political and ethical ideals
outlined by these scholars. The movements openly avoided establishing ideals, instead
inviting people to participate in action and decision making.43 In Spain during the 15M
protests, for example, individuals were encouraged to identify as “persons” rather than
associate with predefined political categories. Amador Fernández-Savater argues that
this was done to avoid closing the movement off — avoiding divisions caused by identifi-
cation with movements and identities.44 Raúl Sánchez Cedillo suggests that the 15M was a
“prototype” toward the foundation of a new political order of “whatever people (personas
cualesquiera)”45 for this reason. The radical openness of these movements has been used to
situate them on the same temporal plane, as symptomatic of the present or as a sign of a
politics yet to come. Zygmunt Bauman, for example, interprets the movements as symp-
tomatic of “liquid modernity”, whilst Luis Moreno-Caballud argues that they are con-
structing an emerging “culture of anyone” challenging the established “hierarchical
cultural system”.46 Situated on the same temporal plane, the forms of politics developed
by the movements become known phenomena whose radical openness can simply be
described. It results from the conditions of the present or the politics of the future.
Enclosed within temporal narratives, tensions and complexities emerging that contradict
these narratives are overlooked.
In a recent interrogation of the literature, Hom offers an important critique of the ideal-
isation of rupture and underlines the need to engage with emerging forms of timing. Two
aspects of this critique are particularly relevant for highlighting the limitations of
approaching the mobilisations over the last decade in this way. On the one hand, Hom
notes how the valuation of radical openness is underpinned by an assumption that it
leads to better outcomes, overlooking “forms of harm and radical evil” that may also

39
Ibid., p. 88.
40
Ibid., p. 89.
41
Ibid., p. 90, emphasis in original.
42
James Der Derian, “Global Events, National Security, and Virtual Theory”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.
30, No. 3 (2001), pp. 669–690, 684.
43
Amador Fernández-Savater, “El nacimiento de un nuevo poder social”, Hispanic Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (2012), pp. 667–681,
677.
44
Ibid., p. 678.
45
Raúl Sánchez Cedillo, “15-M: Something Constituent This Way Comes”, South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 113, No. 3 (2012), pp.
573–584, 574, emphasis in original.
46
Zygmunt Bauman, “Social Media are a Trap.” Interview with Ricardo de Querol, El País, available: <https://elpais.com/
elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html> (accessed 19 February 2019); Luis Moreno-Caballud, Cultures
of Anyone: Studies on Cultural Democratization in the Spanish Neoliberal Crisis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2015), p. 3.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 7

emerge.47 As I have noted above, describing assembly movements as radically open means
that tensions and complexities emerging around the forms of politics developed and par-
ticularly power imbalances between participants can be overlooked. On the other hand,
Hom highlights the importance of positionality, suggesting that “[b]reaks in the smooth
flow of time look very different depending on where you stand, who you are, and what
you pursue”.48 As feminist scholars have illustrated, the claims of radical openness
made by recent movements do not necessarily mean that they have been experienced in
this way by all. This is in part due to emerging power relations amongst participants.49
As I will illustrate below, an interrogation of the time-spaces constituted by the move-
ments provides a basis to critically assess such tensions and complexities emerging
around claims of radical openness. To remain cognisant of the differential impact of
the event of assembly politics and emerging power relations, engagement with the
nascent time-spaces and diverse experiences of these, becomes necessary.

The time-spaces of horizontal politics

In this section, I build on the turn to timing and rhythm to develop a theoretical framework
to engage with the time-spaces constituted by assembly politics. I draw on Lefebvre’s theory
of the event in order to do so. Lefebvre’s theory avoids reading the event as the necessary
result of the conditions of the present or a complete rupture breaking with these. Instead
the horizontal political movements Lefebvre studies make specific interventions in space
and time, reshaping the broader conditions from which they emerge in the process.
Hom’s timing theory provides a useful starting point to move beyond the binary between
closed/open accounts and engage with dynamic, politically contested forms of timing.
Timing theory sets out to interrogate how diverse political actors impose timing standards
on life. For Hom, timing is always political, positional and contested.50 Importantly, there is
no outside of timing. As such, moments of rupture instantiate new modes of timing. For this
reason, proclamations of the “dawn of a new era” by revolutionary movements are not
moments of rupture, but rather attempts to retime society.51 Following Hom’s theory,
the claims of radical openness of social movements cannot simply be described, instead
engagement with the contested forms of timing emerging from them is necessary. Ty Solo-
mon’s recent theorisation of rhythm provides tools to engage specifically with time-spaces
constituted by horizontal political movements. Along these lines, Solomon engages with
rhythm to explore “practices, habits and routines” emerging from collective action. In hori-
zontal political action, Solomon argues that rhythms “intensify collective emotions, gener-
ate emergent identities and subjectivities, and (re)construct social meanings of public
spaces”.52 The focus on rhythms emerging from horizontal political movements resonates
with recent interest in the self-organising processes of these.53
47
Hom, “Silent Order”, op. cit., p. 323.
48
Ibid., p. 324.
49
For example Marisa Ruiz Trejo, “Reflexiones autoetnogáficas: luchas desde la diferencia crítica y luchas por lo común”,
Revista de Antropología Experimental, Vol. 13 (2013), pp. 23–40.
50
Hom, “Timing is Everything”, op. cit., p. 73.
51
Ibid., p. 72.
52
Solomon, “Rhythm and Mobilization”, op. cit., p. 3.
53
Connolly, William. 2013. “The ‘New Materialism’ and the Fragility of Things.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies,
Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 399–412, 405.
8 A. JERREMS

To build on the turn to timing and rhythm I engage with Lefebvre’s theory of the event.
Lefebvre’s theory is particularly useful to conceptualise the time-spaces constituted by
assembly politics as it was developed through the study of horizontal grassroots move-
ments resonating with assembly politics. Lefebvre’s studies of events, on the Paris
Commune and the May 1968 revolt, seek to identify the conditions of possibility and pro-
cesses through which forms of self-management, or autogestion have emerged. Autoges-
tion is a key feature of Lefebvre’s political project. The term was employed amongst
leftist circles in France during the 1960s and 70s. It was used to describe a diverse array
of initiatives, from the self-management of factories by workers to political experiments
in Yugoslavia and Algeria.54 For Lefebvre, autogestion offers a radically democratic
means of organising the spatial frames and rhythms of everyday life. Lefebvre’s theoris-
ation of everyday life is key in this regard. For Lefebvre, everyday life takes historically
specific forms. As Matt Davies notes, “[i]t emerges in a particular time and space and oper-
ates through particular spatialities and temporalities”.55 Lefebvre argues that, in his time,
everyday life had become subordinated to hierarchical forms of government. At the same
time, alternatives are imagined at this scale. Lefebvre interprets the Paris Commune and
May 1968 as experiments in autogestion that challenged the government of everyday life,
reconfiguring its spatial frames and rhythms in specific circumstances.
For Lefebvre, transformations are achieved through the inauguration of alternative
rhythms, “for there to be change, a social group, a class or a caste must intervene by
imprinting a rhythm on an era, be it through force or in an insinuating manner … its
acts must inscribe themselves on reality”.56 In his study of May 1968, Lefebvre notes
that the “revolutionary process begins by shaking up the condition of everyday life and
ends by restoring it”.57 Negative contestation and rupture lead to an unfolding process
and the emergence of alternative spatial frames and rhythms. The notion of rhythm high-
lights the connection between time and space, rhythms are shaped by and shape spatial
frames. Importantly, in the case of horizonal political movements, the rhythms of a mul-
tiplicity of participants emerge through their interactions in space.
In his study of the Paris Commune, due to the confluence of diverse contradictory
elements, Lefebvre suggests that the event only makes sense as a dynamic unfolding
process. He uses the notion of “style” to capture the unfolding lived experience of the
event, localised in space and time.58 For Lefebvre, style is identifiable in social practice,
“[e]very human community has a quality or style”.59 He uses the notion of the festival
(la fête) to capture the emerging style of the Commune.60 The notion of the festival cap-
tures how the event interrupts the rhythms of everyday life and posits new forms of inter-
action, creating new styles of everyday life in the process. The overarching style of the
event is the fulcrum around which diverse trajectories converge in an unfolding

54
Weill, Claudie. 1999. “La Revue Autogestion Comme Observatoire des Mouvements D’émancipation”, L’Homme et la
Societé, Vol. 132, No. 2, pp. 29–36.
55
Davies, “Everyday Life as Critique”, op. cit., p. 28.
56
Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 14, emphasis in original.
57
Henri Lefebvre, The Explosion: Marxism and the French Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), p. 88.
58
Lefebvre, La Proclamation de la Commune, op. cit., p. 17.
59
Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, op. cit., p. 163.
60
Lefebvre, La Proclamation de la Commune, op. cit., pp. 21–22. Stuart Elden provides a helpful contextualisation of the
notion of festival and its interrelationship with style. Elden notes how Lefebvre contrasted rural festivals with the
rhythms of everyday life. The festival was a momentary interruption in these rhythms. Stuart Elden, Understanding
Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 118.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 9

process, positing time-spaces. Around the overarching style of the event, Lefebvre tracks
emerging spatial practices, forms of political organisation and political consciousness.
Drawing on Lefebvre’s work, Solomon, both alone and in his work with Brent Steele,
highlights the relationship between time and space by engaging with rhythm. Steele and
Solomon explore the emergence of time-spaces in their “micropolitical” account of
Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. They focus on the interrelationship between
space, time and affect to outline rhythms emerging from a multiplicity of trajectories.61
Steele and Solomon suggest that during these mobilisations, the “interwoven micropolitics
of space, affect, bodies and discourse fuse[d] to generate collective power and forms of
resistance to dominant arrangements”.62 Solomon highlights how the social meaning of
space is constructed through rhythm, illustrating how the rhythms of the Arab Spring
served to “both contest and (re)construct space” as well as “broader power relations”.63
Steele and Solomon similarly note how the Occupy movement temporarily reconstructed
the global significance of New York’s Zuccoti Park and London’s St. Paul’s cathedral.64
The experiential dimensions of space, affect and bodies fed broader political refrains
and slogans that “became common invocations at encampments and protests globally”.65
Whilst Solomon and Steele allude to the broader conditions of possibility from which
these time-spaces emerge, they are primarily concerned with how collective action is pro-
duced through micropolitical interventions. In this sense, Lefebvre’s theory of the event
resonates more strongly with Vivienne Jabri and Anna Agathangelou’s theorisations of
the conditions of possibility from which political subjects emerge or William Connolly’s
situation of micropolitics in relation to the macro and the ‘planetary’.66 For Lefebvre,
the emerging time-spaces of autogestion only make sense against the complex circum-
stances from which they arise. The possibility of autogestion is shaped by concrete circum-
stances, “autogestion requires a set of circumstances, a privileged place”67 and tends to
emerge “in the weak points of existing society”.68 As such, he underlines the need to
understand emerging time-spaces in relation to the complex conditions of possibility
from which they emerge. They emerge against the backdrop of a particular totality-in-mul-
tiplicity that give them sense. Lefebvre’s account contrasts with Solomon and Steele’s
micropolitical account in this regard. Solomon and Steele relate the distinction between
the macro and the micro to debates in IR regarding levels-of-analysis. They seek to
show the value of focusing on the micro by inverting the traditional focus on the macro-
political.69 Lefebvre underlines the need to understand micropolitical interventions as
emerging from the broader historical context, the “totality” of the event. At the same
time, seemingly micropolitical initiatives hold the potential to impact on a much
broader field of temporal trajectories. Matt Davies makes a similar point, drawing on
Lefebvre, in his theorisation of the everyday. For Davies the everyday cannot be

61
Ty Solomon and Brent Steele, “Micro-Moves in International Relations Theory”, European Journal of International Relations,
Vol. 23, No. 2 (2017), pp. 267–291, 278.
62
Ibid., p. 280.
63
Solomon, “Rhythm and Mobilization”, op. cit., p. 5.
64
Solomon and Steele, “Micro-Moves in International Relations Theory”, op. cit., p. 281.
65
Ibid.
66
Jabri, The Postcolonial Subject, op. cit.; Agathangelou, “The Living and Being of the Street”, op. cit.; Connolly, “The ‘New
Materialism’”, op. cit., p. 403.
67
Henri Lefebvre, State, Space, World: Selected Essays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), p. 146.
68
Ibid., p. 144.
69
Solomon and Steele, “Micro-Moves in International Relations Theory,” op. cit., p. 268.
10 A. JERREMS

understood separate from the ‘international’. The everyday is both shaped by the inter-
national and a site in which it is negotiated and reconfigured.70
Lefebvre explores in much detail the conditions of possibility of autogestion. In his
study of the Commune, he outlines a range of economic, social and political transform-
ations shaping the spatial frames and rhythms of everyday life in Paris. Uneven develop-
ment is particularly important in Lefebvre’s account. He details economic growth and
industrialisation provoking changes in the structure of society and the city.71 He outlines
how industrialisation coincided with migration and a resulting increase in the number of
proletariats living in precarious conditions in the city.72 At the same time, he details how
the state apparatus expanded in an attempt to shape economic and demographic trans-
formations, negotiating the emerging demands of the bourgeoisie and the working
class.73 According to Lefebvre, contradictions were apparent in the quartiers (neighbour-
hoods) where classes coexisted.74 In addition, he emphasises the importance of unfolding
historical occurrences in making the event possible. Most importantly, the defeat of the
French government by the Prussians left the capital isolated and “reduced to autonomy
de fait”.75 In Lefebvre’s words, “on the night of the 18th to 19th of March 1871, the
state, the army, the police disappear, all that had power over human life evaporates”.76
From these conditions of possibility, a form of autogestion emerged. The time-spaces of
the Commune developed in the vacuum left by the state through the conjugation of het-
erogeneous elements. The Commune built on the social spaces that were already present.
Everyday life was reconstructed around life in the quartiers, the clubs, the batallions and
legions of la garde.77 The time-spaces of the Commune emerged through the confluence of
different groups with different ideas and temporal imaginaries in these spaces.78 The
Commune built on diverse refrains of political action. Lefebvre gives importance to the
influence of historical memories — particularly those of the Paris Communes of the
middle ages and 1792–1795.79 A version of autogestion took form building on ideas
that were already present in the workers movement.80
In his study of May 1968, Lefebvre adds complexity to the “totality” of the event by
including considerations on its mondialité81 (worldliness or worldwide situation). Stuart
Elden notes how Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the worldwide scale was developed to
replace the more philosophical notions of “totality” and “globality”.82 The mondialité of
the event refers to its interconnectedness with other developments on a worldwide
scale. An important aspect of the worldwide dimension, shaping the spatial frames and
rhythms of everyday life in this context, is the spread of what Lefebvre terms abstract
space. For Lefebvre, the spread of the modern state and capitalism impose spatial

70
Davies, op. cit., “Everday Life as Critique.”
71
Lefebvre, La Proclamation de la Commune, op. cit., p. 73.
72
Ibid., p. 75.
73
Ibid., pp. 89–93.
74
Ibid., p. 134.
75
Ibid., p. 207.
76
Ibid., p. 289.
77
Ibid., p. 179.
78
Ibid., p. 138.
79
Ibid., pp. 136–137.
80
Ibid., p. 87.
81
Henri Lefebvre, L’Irruption: De Nanterre au Sommet, (Paris: Anthropos, 1968), p. 101. The mondialité of the event is trans-
lated as “the worldwide situation” in the English version.
82
Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, op. cit., p. 232.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 11

frames and rhythms on social spaces defined by abstractness. Neil Brenner and Stuart
Elden note that for Lefebvre:
Abstract space destroys its (historical) conditions, its own (internal) differences, and any
(emerging) difference, in order to impose an abstract homogeneity … In this way, abstract
space permits continuous, rational economic calculation in the spheres of production and
exchange, as well as comprehensive, encompassing control in the realm of statecraft.83

The spread of abstract space leads to the imposition of alienating structures and routines
on everyday life – Lefebvre often refers to this process as the “colonisation” of everyday
life.84 He argues that in Paris, “[t]he population in the metropolis is regrouped into
ghettos (suburbs, foreigners, factories, students) … the new cities are to some extent remi-
niscent of colonial towns”.85 In the process, everyday life is “organized, neatly subdivided
and programmed to fit a controlled, exact timetable”.86
The May 1968 revolt is understood as a radical critique of these conditions that reconfi-
gures the lines of struggle on a worldwide scale. Moving away from, but not completely
eliminating, cleavages between nations and social classes, Lefebvre argues that the revolt
illustrates that “[n]ew and as yet scarcely visible limits are beginning to demarcate the
centres of power … from their subordinate, semi-colonised dependencies”.87 Lefebvre
notes a changing “image of history lived and absorbed by the Youth” in this context.88
Due to the new cleavages, in the lead up to the event, decolonisation impacts on the
former colonisers “in an unexpected manner”.89 They identify commonalities,
“[r]egions, groups (the youth), sections of classes (workers or peasants) [become] con-
scious of being colonized”90 by centres of decision making. Due to the reconfiguration
of the lines of struggle on a worldwide scale, seemingly local struggles are considered
“in their singularity as prime examples of worlding”.91 These local struggles are points
of experimentation with alternative time-spaces of everyday life, challenging the spread
of abstract space, whose forms circulate on a worldwide scale.
Regardless of whether Lefebvre’s assessment of the new distribution of power was
correct, his engagement with mondialité draws attention to a worldwide horizon of politi-
cal imagination and circumstances informing and shaping the event. Rather than national
or local in scale, the revolt is given sense against unfolding events worldwide. This adds a
layer of complexity to the converging trajectories coinciding in the event. It highlights the
connection between seemingly micropolitical interventions and the worldwide scale.
Micropolitical interventions emerge against and impact on the worldwide scale. With
regards to timing, Lefebvre notes the spread of abstract space, transforming the spatial
frames and rhythms of everyday life across the globe. On the other hand, he points to
interconnected attempts to reimagine these. As such, the notion of mondialité helps

83
Brenner and Elden, “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory”, op. cit., p. 358.
84
See Stefan Kipfer and Kanishka Goonewardena, “Urban Marxism and the Post-Colonial Question: Henri Lefebvre and
‘Colonisation.’” Historical Materialism, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2013), pp. 76–116.
85
Lefebvre, The Explosion, op. cit., p. 92.
86
Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984), p. 59.
87
Lefebvre, The Explosion, op. cit., p. 94.
88
Ibid., p. 92.
89
Ibid.
90
Ibid., p. 92–93.
91
David Madden, “City Becoming World: Nancy, Lefebvre, and the Global-Urban Imagination,” Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, Vol. 30, pp. 772–787, 782.
12 A. JERREMS

conceptualise how both forms of control and the imagination of difference circulate on a
worldwide scale, shaping and contesting the spatial frames and rhythms of everyday life.
Lefebvre seeks to reconstruct the event as a whole, covering concrete transformations in
the city and everyday life, diverse temporal imaginaries informing political action and a
worldwide context and horizon of meaning. Emerging from these conditions of possibility,
the style of the event sheds light on the conjugation of interconnecting, overlapping and
conflicting temporalities. The style of the event can be understood as a fulcrum around
which different experiences and rhythms congregate and interact. From the conjugation
of a multiplicity of trajectories, concrete time-spaces emerge, reshaping the broader con-
ditions of possibility on a worldwide scale. As such, the event is both historically defined
with specificities and peculiarities and an image that is continually remade throughout
history. It constitutes an “opening toward the possible,”92 bringing ideas and forms into
existence that unfold beyond their original context. Due to these reverberations, for
Lefebvre, the event “has a double meaning and a double scope: summary and symbol of
a period now closed, announcement of a period that opens”.93 The time-spaces constituted
emerge through the conjugation of diverse elements from the past and the present, con-
stituting rhythms that reshape the conditions from which they emerge, opening new pos-
sibilities and trajectories in the process.
Lefebvre’s work provides two main insights to build on the turn to timing and rhythm.
Firstly, it illustrates the necessary interrelationship between time and space. Spatial frames
shape rhythms, whilst rhythms posit and reconfigure these spatial frames. Secondly, it
brings into question any distinction between macro and micro dimensions in grasping
emerging time-spaces. For Lefebvre, micropolitical dimensions of affect, space and time
only make sense in relation to the contradictory, fragmented worldwide scale. Like
Massey’s conceptualisation of time-spaces, Lefebvre’s theory highlights how the time-
spaces of horizontal politics are “constructed out of the articulation of trajectories”94
and “interlocking geometries of power”.95 Lefebvre’s theory avoids buying into distinc-
tions between levels-of-analysis but instead attempts to reconstruct the event in its “total-
ity”. It ambitiously attempts to conceptualise how the time-spaces of horizontal politics
emerge from and impact on, not only a specific series of circumstances, but the world
itself. Lefebvre conceptualises both the conditions of possibility shaping the event and
the time-spaces emerging from them. In the following section, I illustrate how Lefebvre’s
formulation allows for an appreciation of the entanglement of a multiplicity of experiences
in recent mobilisations. I argue that reading the forms produced by the event against these
experiences, as Lefebvre does, offers insight into emerging tensions and complexities.

The 15M movement

Focusing on the time-spaces emerging from assembly politics avoids the binary between
closed and open interpretations. The emergence of assembly politics is neither sympto-
matic of the conditions of the present nor simply a moment of rupture breaking with
these. Rather, specific movements make concrete interventions in defined circumstances
92
Henri Lefebvre, State, Space, World: Selected Essays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), p. 150.
93
Lefebvre, La Proclamation de la Commune, op. cit., p. 396.
94
Massey, For Space, op. cit., p. 179.
95
Ibid., p. 180.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 13

creating tensions, complexities and possibilities. In this section, I illustrate the advantages
of engaging with the time-spaces of assembly politics with an analysis of the 15M move-
ment in Madrid, Spain. Scholars have accentuated the innovativeness and radical inclusiv-
ity of the 15M movement, making it a particularly relevant case to demonstrate the
advantages of the framework developed. The time-spaces of the 15M movement are situ-
ated against the totality-in-multiplicity from which they emerge, helping to identify both
their specificity but also how they connect with developments on a worldwide scale.
Reading the emerging time-spaces against the broader conditions of possibility sheds
light on tensions emerging as these come into contact with the complexities of everyday
life.
Scholars have illustrated how the encounter of diverse trajectories in space during the
15M movement led to the emergence of specific time-spaces. Alberto Corsín and Adolfo
Estalella outline how the acampada (encampment) and asamblea (assembly) became fra-
meworks for political innovation.96 In their ethnographical studies of neighbourhood
assemblies, Corsín and Estalella, note how these created atmospheres marked by an
“unhurried temporality”,97 “the ultimate aim [was] not to make decisions but to build con-
sensus”.98 This unhurried temporality constituted the overarching style underpinning
mobilisations, “vamos lentos porque vamos lejos” [we move slowly, because we are
going far] became a key slogan employed by the movement. Around this unhurried tem-
porality, diverse trajectories were brought together and the specific time-spaces of the
acampada and the asamblea took form, firstly in the Puerta del Sol and later in the neigh-
bourhoods. Corsín and Estalella show how spaces of engagement were brought into being
in public squares as “rhythmic arrangements” and “atmospheric installations”99 that
served to assemble “relations, itineraries, and material culture”.100 They were grounded
in the occupation of public space and relied on the creation and maintenance of provi-
sional infrastructures.101
Corsín and Estalella illustrate how the time-spaces of the movement developed from
the convergence of diverse experiences. They argue that “hybrid expertise became a
common feature” as assemblies were often attended by “university professors, school tea-
chers, architects, engineers, or development consultants in a variety of specialized
fields”.102 The knowledge and imaginaries of participants was also shaped by unfolding
developments on a worldwide scale. In this regard, Benjamín Tejerina and Ignacia Perru-
goría, note “the influence of collective action repertories of [the] movements upon each
other”.103 A conceptual map developed by participants highlights the mondialité of the
movement’s imaginary. Influences cited include May 1968, Tiananmen Square, the

96
Corsín and Estalella, “#spanishrevolution”, op. cit., pp. 19–23.
97
Alberto Corsín and Adolfo Estalella, “Assembling Neighbours: The City as Hardware, Method, and ‘a Very Messy Kind of
Archive”, Common Knowledge, vol. 20, No. 1 (2013), pp. 150–171, 156.
98
Ibid.
99
Alberto Corsín and Adolfo Estalella, “The Atmospheric Person: Value, Experiment, and ‘Making Neighbours’ in Madrid’s
Popular Assemblies”, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 3, No. 2 (2013), pp. 119–139, 122.
100
Ibid., p. 133.
101
Corsín and Estalella, “Assembling Neighbours”, op. cit., p. 158.
102
Alberto Corsín and Adolfo Estalella, “Political Exhaustion and the Experiment of the Street: Boyle Meets Hobbes in
Occupy Madrid”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2017), pp. 110–123, 114.
103
Benjamín Tejerina and Ignacia Perugorría, “Beyond Austerity and Indignation: Embodiments, Spaces and Networks in the
15M Movement: An Introduction”, in Benjamím Tejerina and Ignacia Perugorría (eds.), Crisis and Social Mobilization in
Contemporary Spain: The 15M Movement (New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 2.
14 A. JERREMS

Zapatista Movement, Wikileaks, Anonymous as well as mobilisation in Iceland, Egypt,

Tunisia, Portugal and Greece.104 Many accounts of the mobilisations are attentive to
the worldwide scale and have identified common characteristics of assembly politics
across the globe. Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, for example, in their 2012 text Declara-
tion seek to identify features that were common to all mobilisations. They highlight three
overarching features: a strategy of encampment, the internal organisation of the multitude
and the struggle for the common.105
However, memories and refrains grounded in the particular context also played a key
role in shaping the emerging time-spaces of the movement. Cristina Flesher Fominaya
illustrates how forms of assembly politics have been a consistent feature of diverse
social movements in Spain since the late 1970s.106 The neighbourhood assemblies
connect with an emphasis on “the need to work at the local level” that has been “a constant
refrain in autonomous movement circles” over the last decades and most directly with the
activist tradition of neighbourhood associations particularly prevalent in the 1960s and
1970s.107 The key innovation of the 15M movement, following Flesher Fominaya, was
to shift assembly politics into public spaces and ‘the resulting unprecedented intensity
of direct engagement with “ordinary citizens”.108 Precarious infrastructures and forms
of engagement in public space created a meeting point for the diverse participants to
share their experiences.
Nevertheless, whilst interventions in public space aspired to radical openness, the emer-
ging time-spaces of the movement created both experiences of inclusion and exclusion.
Feminist scholar Marisa Ruiz Trejo, in her autoethnographic observations of the 15M pro-
tests, highlights tensions produced by the policy of de-identification in asambleas. Ruiz
Trejo observes the reproduction of gendered and racialized hierarchies amongst partici-
pants, defining which voices and messages were considered legitimate.109 Whilst the emer-
ging time-spaces of assembly politics were shaped by a cacophony of perspectives, some of
these became more dominant than others, reflecting emerging power relations. Avoiding
reading the movement as symptomatic of the conditions or the present or a moment of
rupture with these, but instead engaging with the specific time-spaces constituted, helps
shed light on these emerging tensions and complexities.
Ruiz Trejo’s observations illustrate how the time-spaces constituted look very different
depending on the positionality of those involved. Nancy Wence Partida, in her ethnogra-
phical study of Bolivian migrant activist groups in Madrid, similarly illustrates how the
time-spaces of assembly politics crossed over and entered into conflict with other
rhythms in the city. She recalls discussions amongst Bolivian migrant groups during the
15M protests, noting how the majority opted against participating. As a result, she
argues that the emerging time-spaces had little impact on their daily lives:

104
Una Linea sobre el mar, “Mapa conceptual de la acampada sol en versión bolsillo,” available: <http://www.
unalineasobreelmar.net/mapa-conceptual-de-la-acampada/mapa-conceptual-de-la-acampadasol-en-version-de-bolsillo/>
(accessed 3 December 2018).
105
Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Declaration, available: <https://antonionegriinenglish.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/
93152857-hardt-negri-declaration-2012.pdf> (accessed 6 June 2017).
106
Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “Debunking Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement”, Social Move-
ment Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2015), pp. 142–163, 151.
107
Ibid., p. 149.
108
Ibid., p. 155.
109
Marisa Ruiz Trejo, “Reflexiones autoetnogáficas.” op.cit., pp. 23–40.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 15

Each day as one arrived at the camp, it seemed as if one entered a space at the margins of the
rest of the city: new platforms of virtual communication, new rules in the micro-city … But
when one crossed the Manzanares River and arrived at Usera, one felt the sensation that that
world that seemed to be everything, became foreign and distant.110

Insight into these tensions and complexities around emerging time-spaces can be gained
by situating these within the broader conditions of possibility from which they emerge.
Following Lefebvre, the time-spaces of assembly politics emerge from the broader con-
ditions of possibility, shaped by transformations of the city and everyday life, imaginaries
of political action and a worldwide context and horizon of meaning. They weave together
diverse aspects that are both peculiar to the particular context and interconnected with
developments on a worldwide scale.
Much attention is given to the worldwide situation shaping the emergence of assembly
politics in the literature on these movements. Donatella Della Porta, for example, high-
lights how neoliberal policies shaped the conditions that the movements contested.111
Della Porta argues that austerity policies in particular exacerbated forms of precarity
motivating many to participate in movements.112 Additionally, scholars highlight how
neoliberal globalisation led to a crisis of representative democracy.113 Particularly in the
wake of the GFC, effected states were incapable of dictating economic policy independent
from external impositions — in the Spanish case from the so called Troika (The European
Commission, The European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund).
Lefebvre’s theory provides a framework to move beyond the generalities of the worldwide
situation to focus on the concrete ways that these developments shaped the spatial frames
and rhythms of everyday life in Madrid, creating the conditions of possibility from which
the 15M movement emerged.
Focusing on concrete transformations in Madrid draws attention to the constitution of
contrasting experiences of everyday life marked by varying degrees of precarity. Urban
transformations shaped by real estate speculation and migration play an important role
in producing these experiences. Throughout the 1990s, neoliberal policies saw real
estate speculation become an important generator of wealth. Speculative urbanisation pro-
voked a housing boom and a real-estate bubble.114 Migrants arriving in Madrid contrib-
uted to the boom both as workers and through demand for housing. Emmanuel Rodríguez
López indicates that between 1995 and 2005, the number of people employed in the city
increased by 1,100,000.115 The foreign migrant population jumped from 135,000 in 1999,
to 800,000 in 2006 and continued to rise in the following years.116 The majority of

110
Nancy Wence Partida, “Trincheras transnacionales. Experiencias de luchas urbanas de la población migrante de origen
boliviano”, Phd diss., Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Iztapalapa, 2015, pp. 140–141.
111
Donatella Della Porta, “Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents: An Introduction” in ed. Donatella Della Porta, Late Neo-
liberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis: Comparing Social Movements in the European Periphery (Cham:
Springer International Publishing, 2017).
112
Ibid., p. 25.
113
Pascale Dufour, Héloïse Nez and Marcos Ancelovici, “Introduction; From Indignados to Occupy: Prospects for Compari-
son” in Pascale Dufour, Héloïse Nez and Marcos Ancelovici (eds.), Street Politics in the Age of Austerity: From the Indignados
to Occupy, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 21.
114
Greig Charnock, Thomas Purcell and Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, The Limits of Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European
South (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 103–104.
115
Emmanuel Rodríguez López, “Nuevos diagramas sociales. Renta, explotación y segregación en el Madrid global.” In
Observatorio Metropolitano (ed.), Madrid: ¿La suma de todos? Globalización, Territorio, Desigualdad (Madrid: Traficantes
de sueños, 2007), p. 99.
116
Ibid., p. 125.
16 A. JERREMS

migrants arriving in the city from overseas were incorporated into low wage; low skilled
positions.117 They found work in sectors marked by precarity such as construction, ser-
vices, hospitality, care, domestic work, sales, reception, cleaning, and security.118 Urban
transformations entrenched spatial inequalities. Already fragmented experiences of every-
day life were accentuated with the onset of the GFC. Restrictions on credit stalled real
estate development leading to massive employment loss in construction which eventually
impacted on other sectors and consumption more broadly.119 Many residents had accu-
mulated large amounts of debt to acquire property during the boom period. The combi-
nation of debt and employment loss fuelled an eviction crisis120 disproportionately
effecting the foreign born.121 High levels of unemployment exacerbated the exploitation
of workers, effecting migrants and youth particularly heavily.122 The group Juventud
Sin Futuro (Youth without a future) summarised issues facing many Spanish youth in
these circumstances with the slogan “Sin casa, sin curro, sin pensión, sin miedo”
(Without a house, without a job, without a pension, without fear). At the same time,
there was a proliferation of racially informed police identity checks targeting people of
stereotypical non-European appearance in public places throughout the city.123
Transformations in the city and everyday life shaped the emergence of the movement.
Nevertheless, as Lefebvre’s theory highlights, these conditions do not account for the
emergence of the movement itself. The movement is not the necessary reaction to the con-
ditions of the present. Rather these transformations produce a multiplicity of experiences
and trajectories that meet during the 15M protests. Several key events were necessary to
create the situation in which these trajectories coincided in the same place. Key in this
regard is the protest organised on the 15th of May by the platform Democracia Real
Ya! (Real Democracy Now) and the decision by a group of protestors to stay on and
camp in the Puerta del Sol. Police violence against protestors was also a key factor in
motivating people to return after the initial protest. The time-spaces of the movement
developed as an unfolding process through specific occurrences and the congregation of
diverse experiences and trajectories in Madrid’s central square.
Attention to diverse experiences created by transformations in the city is especially
important when considering tensions around the time-spaces constituted by the move-
ment. Time-spaces constituted in the acampada and asambleas around an unhurried tem-
porality and particular forms of political action were not readily accessible to all. For
racialized migrants whose daily access to public space is shaped by policing practices124
unhurried engagements in central squares or neighbourhood spaces pose a specific risk.

117
Ricardo Méndez, “Inmigración y mercados de trabajo urbanos: tendencias recientes en la región metropolitana de
Madrid.” Scripta Nova: Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, Vol., 12, No. 257 (2008)
118
Rodríguez López, “Nuevos diagramas sociales”, op. cit., pp. 103–107.
119
Ricardo Méndez, “Globalización, neoliberalismo y dinámicas metropolitanas en Madrid”, Documentos y aportes en admin-
istración pública y gestión estatal, Vol. 19 (2012), pp. 29–49, 41.
120
Ricardo Méndez and Julio Plaza, “Crisis inmobiliaria y desahucios hipotecarios en España: una perspectiva geográfica”,
Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, Vol. 71 (2016), pp. 99–127, 106.
121
Sophie Gonick,”Interrogating Madrid’s ‘Slum of Shame’: Urban Expansion, Race, and Place-Based Activisms in Cañada
Real Galiana”, Antipode, Vol. 47, No. 5 (2015), pp. 1224–1242, 1231.
122
Ricardo Méndez, Ricardo and José Prada-Trigo, “Crisis, desempleo y vulnerabilidad en Madrid”, Scripta Nova: Revista Elec-
trónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 18, No. 474 (2014).
123
Brigadas Vecinales de Observación de Derechos Humanos. “Controles Racistas en Madrid: Informe de Brigadas Vecinales
de Observación de Derechos Humanos (2010–2011).” available: <http://brigadasvecinales.org/wp-content/uploads/
2011/11/INFORME_BRIGADAS_2011.pdf> (accessed 6 June 6 2017).
124
Ibid
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 17

As Sergio García García notes, checks on migrant communities produce a “neighbourhood

body … crossed by identity borders that make it a fragmented space”125 leading to very
different possibilities of engaging and being visible in public space. As such, whilst the
forms of assembly politics developed attempted to overcome fragmentation and recuper-
ate meaningful spaces for political participation, they cannot be defined as simply radically
open due to tensions around the possibility to engage and the forms of political action
developed. In her observations, Sophie Gonick highlights some of the complexities in
this regard:
In another assembly, one of the most radical in Madrid, a young Senegalese family attended a
stop-evictions meeting and presented their case. The assembly immediately began brain-
storming spectacular acts of disobedience in the family’s local bank branch: blocking the
bank, setting up an encampment, and papering the area with flyers. The family never
returned: the parents, out of work for several years, no longer had legal residency papers,
and such emblematic actions might put them at risk of deportation.126

At the same time, the time-spaces emerging from assembly politics are not completely
closed off but are rather in a constant state of transformation as they are implemented,
challenged and negotiated. As Lefebvre argues, the spatial frames and rhythms of the
event reappear in unpredictable constellations in different places and at different times.
The time-spaces of the 15M movement reverberated beyond their original context, reap-
pearing in new constellations in later mobilisations such as Occupy Wall Street.127 In
domestic politics, the refrains of the 15M movement became increasingly visible in
local government interventions and government funded art initiatives. Perhaps most sig-
nificantly, in 2015, Ahora Madrid, a coalition formed between Podemos, Ganemos
Madrid, Izquierda Unida, Equo and independents was elected to govern the Madrid
City Council. Both Podemos and Ganemos Madrid emerged from the space created by
the 15M protests. Ganemos Madrid in particular built on similar forms of grassroots par-
ticipation, assembly politics and horizontal democracy, adopting the slogan la democracia
empieza por lo cercano (democracy begins up close).
In this section, I have outlined how the concrete time-spaces of the 15M movement
where constituted in defined circumstances. Lefebvre’s theory provides a framework to
identify both the specific features of the event, but also how they connect with develop-
ments on a worldwide scale. Placing the time-spaces of the 15M movement against the
conditions from which they emerge sheds light on the uneven impact of these, highlighting
emerging power relations and the importance of positionality. The broader conditions of
possibility shaping life in the city underline the production of very different experiences of
everyday life. Attention to these diverging experiences serves to illustrate how the unhur-
ried temporality of the movement and the time-spaces constituted were not experienced as
radically open by all. The movement was neither enclosed in the conditions of the present
nor a radically open rupture breaking with these. Rather the actions of the movement

125
Sergio García García, “Dispositivo securitario en un espacio barrial. La práctica policial de los controles de identidad”,
ARBOR: Ciencia, Pensamiento, Cultura, Vol. 188 (2012), pp. 573–590, 585.
126
Sophie Gonick, “Indignation and Inclusion: Activism, Difference, and Emergent Urban Politics in postcrash Madrid”,
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 209–226, 217.
127
Ernesto Castañeda, “The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street”, Social Movement Studies: Journal of
Social, Cultural and Political Protest, Vol. 11, No. 3–4 (2012), pp. 309–319.
18 A. JERREMS

posited emergent forms conjugating diverse experiences and trajectories. These forms
opened possibilities with tensions and limitations.

Conclusion
Whilst accounts emphasising the radical openness of events provide an important critique
of those that enclose them within a defined temporal narrative, they tell us little about the
time-spaces constituted. In the case of recent assembly movements, failing to move
beyond this critique runs the risk of replicating the claims of the movements themselves.
By emphasising rupture and openness, scholars risk situating movements on the same
temporal plane, inadvertently replicating accounts that frame them as symptomatic of
the present or the future in the process of being born. Situating movements within such
narratives makes them known phenomena whose radical openness can be described
rather than interrogated. Drawing on Hom’s critique of the literature, I highlighted two
key risks emerging from a lack of engagement with the specific time-spaces constituted
by assembly politics. The risks of overlooking emerging power relations and the impor-
tance of positionality.
To move beyond the binary between closed/open understandings of the event, I built
on the turn to timing and rhythm. Lefebvre’s theory was employed to conceptualise the
time-spaces constituted by horizontal political movements. Lefebvre’s theory helps
avoid seeing assembly politics as overdetermined by a particular historical moment
or a radical rupture with it. Instead movements constitute unfolding processes emerging
in concrete circumstances creating possibilities with tensions and limitations. Through
engagement with the 15M movement, I have explored the time-spaces constituted by
the movement. These emerge from an entanglement of both local peculiarities and
global circumstances. Whilst emerging in a specific space and time these emerged
from the crystallization of diverse trajectories and reverberated beyond their initial
context. Reading the emerging time-spaces of the 15M movement in this way has
allowed me to conceptualise it as a specific intervention within a greater totality-in-mul-
tiplicity. The time-spaces of the movement did not have a homogeneous impact but
rather provided a fulcrum around which diverse experiences and trajectories congre-
gated. Conceptualising the emerging time-spaces in such a way has allowed me to
make sense of how the radical inclusivity of the movement led to both experiences
of inclusion and exclusion, highlighting the importance of positionality and emerging
power relations.
Two aspects of the framework developed help further the turn to timing and rhythm.
Firstly, timing is shaped by space. Spatial frames are employed to produce rhythms, whilst
rhythms are shaped by and posit specific spatial frames. With the emergence of the 15M
movement, specific rhythms of engagement emerged from the interaction of a multiplicity
of participants in space, positing the time-spaces of the acampada and asambleas in the
process. Secondly, timing interventions are understood in relation to a complex totality.
A worldwide horizon of circumstances and meaning shapes the conditions of possibility
from which particular interventions emerge. This totality is not homogenous but always
lined with discontinuities, contradictions and peculiarities. As such, particular interven-
tions are not overdetermined by the complex totality but rather emerge from it, positing
specific time-spaces in the process.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 19

ORCID
Ari Jerrems http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2376-6637

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Anne McNevin, Stuart Elden and the anonymous reviewers for their
helpful feedback on earlier versions. The ideas developed benefitted from long conversations over
numerous years with colleagues at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, especially José Luis de la
Flor and Marisa Ruiz-Trejo. The article is dedicated to the memory of Francisco Javier Peñas whose
thinking on time and temporality was an important source of inspiration.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Ari Jerrems teaches International Relations at Monash University. His research is at the intersection
of International Relations, Human Geography and Political Theory, focusing primarily on political
space and the spatialities of politics. His earlier work has been published in Relaciones Internacio-
nales and Borderlands.