A world of difference : Christiania as a freespace in a global age

Abstract

In this thesis I explore the role of the Freetown of Christiania as a freespace at different scales. Starting in the experience-near and local I show how the community of Christiania is constituted around the perception of anomalous and oppositional subjectivity. Building on ideas of autonomy and self-reliance, Christiania establishes an alternative ordering of daily that seeks to undermine the field of dominant biopower. In Chapter 3, I study Christiania in the context of the neoliberal city and state. Here I address the detrimental effects of the close cooperation between private interests and public government, focusing on the emergence of spectacular large-scale property development projects, the manipulation of imaginings, and social polarization. I show how the state attempts to initiate a bureaucratic colonization of the Freetown, by deploying registration and mapping schemes that seek to establish private property and expropriate the Common of Christiania. Cultural Heritage discourses are also used by the state to legitimize a sanitation of Christiania. In the fourth, and final, chapter I study Christiania, as a physical and symbolic freespace, during the COP15 Climate Summit Meeting. I show how global elites achieve and maintain a position of power in this global forum, and exclude countries and delegates from the global South from decision making processes. In addition I study the marketing campaign called Hopenhagen, which espouses a utopian vision of the future from the center of global power. During the COP15 the police force was used as an instrument to silence oppositional voices, yet I will show how the alterglobalization movement(s) stands up to face global sovereign power and gives voice to the globally marginalized.

In this thesis I explore the role of the Freetown of Christiania as a freespace at different scales. Starting in the experience-near and local I show how the community of Christiania is constituted around the perception of anomalous and oppositional subjectivity. Building on ideas of autonomy and self-reliance, Christiania establishes an alternative ordering of daily that seeks to undermine the field of dominant biopower. In Chapter 3, I study Christiania in the context of the neoliberal city and state. Here I address the detrimental effects of the close cooperation between private interests and public government, focusing on the emergence of spectacular large-scale property development projects, the manipulation of imaginings, and social polarization. I show how the state attempts to initiate a bureaucratic colonization of the Freetown, by deploying registration and mapping schemes that seek to establish private property and expropriate the Common of Christiania. Cultural Heritage discourses are also used by the state to legitimize a sanitation of Christiania. In the fourth, and final, chapter I study Christiania, as a physical and symbolic freespace, during the COP15 Climate Summit Meeting. I show how global elites achieve and maintain a position of power in this global forum, and exclude countries and delegates from the global South from decision making processes. In addition I study the marketing campaign called Hopenhagen, which espouses a utopian vision of the future from the center of global power. During the COP15 the police force was used as an instrument to silence oppositional voices, yet I will show how the alterglobalization movement(s) stands up to face global sovereign power and gives voice to the globally marginalized.