Reimagining the unimagined subjects of racial capitalism

Marques Vestal

Environment and Planning C, 2025, vol. 43, issue 2, 283-287

Abstract: Marxian and Foucauldian models of power fail to fully imagine all subjects of domination, in particular, water. In this commentary, I use a brief historical sketch of turn twentieth-century Skid Row in Los Angeles, California to reveal the possible hidden history obscured by our assessment of “neglected†land. This commentary explores how the flow of water and water infrastructure influenced the trajectory of private land enclosure. I argue that historic water flows of the Los Angeles River and the prior construction of communal water irrigation infrastructure provided the opportunity for the accumulation of communal land use, attenuating the total enclosure of private property as an urban subdivision. The sketch calls on critical housing studies scholars to reimagine the possible unimagined subjects of racial capitalism.

Keywords: Racial capitalism; skid row; commons; black marxism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23996544241298754 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:43:y:2025:i:2:p:283-287

DOI: 10.1177/23996544241298754

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().