The false democracy of public space Geopolitics, discursive production, and cartographies of power in Latin America

Abstract

In the last twenty years, the concept of public space has become dominant in 
both government and academic discourses, especially in progressive and democratic political regimes in Latin America, and this by the ideological and abstract abitrium of the public, democratic order and modern public opinion, which has been decisive as a legitimizing framework for geopolitical practices and hegemonic discourses that determine a statu quo that has allowed the neoliberal capitalist system to continue to reproduce from urban structures and urban development in contexts of domination and dependence. In this sense, this work seeks to (de)mystify the Western hegemonic formation of the concept of public space (as an area of philosophy and public sphere of political deliberation), from urban critical theory and feminist political theory and how it has found a fertile territory of discursive materialization and spatial anchoring of control and domination of hegemonic countries towards Latin America, reproducing a statu quo of colonization and exploitation associated with progressive forms of theoretical politicization, through a transnationalization of politics, which becomes visible in large urban renewal projects. This work is based on theoretical  reflections, as an analytical framework that has made visible that the use of the concept of public space is not neutral, but this subsumed to a political logic of social legitimacy and the empowerment of hegemonic capital, and that has had spatial consequences, such as greater segregation and socio-spatial fragmentation, under a democratic discourse of “for all” , inclusive and the common good, which has perpetuated the restructuring of new forms of control and domination.