Panoptic Geography: Humans and Nature under Surveillance

Written by Sotiris Lycourghiotis and George Poulados, originally published in Natures and Energies beyond the Shadow of the State, vol. 3 (2021)

In recent decades, we have witnessed the rapid growth of satellite and geographic technologies. A series of new satellite and air (altimetric) techniques have emerged radically improving the accuracy of digital maps and enabling the development of multi-level geographic information systems (GIS). Initially, these techniques were developed by militaries and security organizations for espionage and the navigation of the new ‘smart weapons’. However, these technologies have rapidly expanded to use by civilians, promising new research fields and technical soluoions for a range of problems such as ship, plane and car navigation; traffic control; town planning studies; climate and weather studies; forest protection; protection of the sea; disease prevention and control; and innumerable others. This chapter explores the fundamental question of human autonomy and nature in the light of new electronic and satellite cartography techniques (GIS, GNSS, etc.).

An in-depth presentation of the new geolocation techniques and GIS will highlight the dangers that their possession might constitute. Taking these circumstances into consideration, is there space to develop independent social and ecological action within this framework? Can the new forms of panoptic cartography be used to protect nature and humans? What ethical and political questions does the possession of mega data from governments and global organizations pose? Contrary to current practice, the free dissemination of geographic information can trigger a new critique of dominion policies on the planet. What arguments does the modern image of the world give us through the eyes of the satellites that can advocate for an ecological, egalitarian, self-managed humanity?

In this chapter we will attempt a historical overview of the technological innovations of geography, we will try to analyse the military and non-military uses of satellite geography, and we will reflect on the political and ethical questions posed by the new era of geolocation. Is there a different perspective for the future? Are there any answers for the future from an anarchist, ecological perspective?

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

On 4 October 1957, the USSR launched the first satellite Sputnik into Earth’s orbit. Although Sputnik was carrying only a simple radio transmitter, it caused a delirium of excitement in the countries in the East, and at the same time an unprecedented freeze in the West. The reason for these dichotomous reactions was obvious. The ability to put a technical object in orbit around the Earth provided unlimited ability to monitor one’s opponent, while at the same time, making it theoretically possible to launch an attack from space. Efforts in the West to fill the gap in technologies with the USSR inaugurated the new satellite or ‘space wars’ era.

The space race continued with the construction of satellites for two different uses. The first purpose was the aim of monitoring people and the environment using photographic techniques and, the second was for the purpose of creating a global navigation system. The former had a clear military purpose for the United States and the USSR – the rivals sought to gain precise knowledge of the opponent’s geospatial, their terrain and morphology, military and transport facilities and so on. Since ancient times, this geophysical knowledge has the most important information of war, and that is why wars have triggered the art and development of cartography. The use of orthophotographic techniques (Thrower and Jensen 1976), that is, taking multiple images of the landscape from different angles during the course of the satellite, has enabled the creation of three-dimensional imaging with the use of satellite images.

In the past, the creation of three-dimensional maps and ground models was made possible only by multiple terrestrial measurements using the traditional instruments of topography. The use of orthophotographic techniques is based on basic geometry concepts and can be understood by the way human eyes function. Since humans have two eyes, we are afforded a better understanding of the threedime sional shape of an object. Nowadays, the technique of orthophotography is known to us by Google Earth (Patterson 2007). The three-dimensional images that we are provided with are the result of this technique. Along with orthophotography techniques, an attempt has been made to construct altimetric satellites (Smith 1997) that could, by means of an electromagnetic wave, calculate, for each position of the satellite, its exact distance from the ground. Thus, satellites could create threedimensional maps from simple two-dimensional photos. The basic principle of the altimeter (McGill et al. 2013) used by modern planes is based on the simple use of the gravimeter. As the atmospheric pressure decreases linearly with respect to the height from the ground surface, a barometer measuring atmospheric pressure can calculate the height. However, this could not help the satellites much because, on the one hand, the height to be measured would be the barometric height, that is the height relative to the surface of the sea, and on the other hand, the accuracy of such an instrument was not satisfactory. Thus, an effort was made to use distance measurement technology with electromagnetic waves (electronic distance measurement – EDM) in order to calculate the distance of the satellite from the ground surface or the surface of the sea. The basic function of the EDM (Rüeger 2012) is based on the measurement of the time needed for an electromagnetic signal to return to a satellite, once sent from it, travelling through the atmosphere and reflecting on the surface of the Earth. If we know precisely the time needed for the signal to make this route and divide it by two and multiply it by the speed of light, we have the distance from the satellite to the ground surface. This measurement is presented with several problems. On the one hand, high-precision clocks are required, and on the other hand, the velocity of the electromagnetic waves when travelling through the atmosphere decreases according to the climatic conditions and, therefore, must also be taken into account when correcting the final result. Altimetric satellites with substantial accuracy became a reality only in the early 1990s with the TOPEX/Poseidon (1992), Jason-1 (2001), and Jason-2 (2008) NASA satellites (Masters et al. 2012).

We have already mentioned that the second objective of the space era and the arms race of the Cold War was to create a global navigation system. The fundamental aim of such a system was, initially, the precise navigation of ships and transatlantic submarines, as well as the guidance of ballistic missiles in the future. It is no accident that the US Navy made these basic efforts because until the Second World War, the calculation of the position of a ship at sea was made with the traditional use of the astrolabe. The navigator would have to go to the deck, measure the angular distance of some stars or the moon, and then use his or her clock and some tables to figure out their position. This knowledge that had emerged from the attempts of the royal astronomers of the British Empire in previous centuries contributed to the world domination of the British Empire. However, for the needs of the modern era, these techniques became obsolete since its accuracy was small, and it was very dangerous, especially for submarines that had to emerge to find their position constantly. During the Cold War, submarines had become the primary weapon of the first assault, since they could carry nuclear-powered missiles into the opponent’s backyard without being noticed.

During the Second World War, the British Navy had developed terrestrial radio navigation systems, such as the LORAN (long-range navigation) and the Decca Navigator System, based upon the operation of land-based stations of a known position emitting radio waves (Samaddar 1979). By calculating the distance of at least two or three such stations, the navigator of the vessel at sea was able to locate his position accurately, by means of an intersection. However, the use of this radarlike system was li ited to distances relatively close to the shores and could not be extended to oceans due to the curvature of the Earth. In advancing this technology, an important step was made due to an almost random incident. To prove that the launch of Sputnik was true, the Soviet Union claimed that anyone could hear the transmitter broadcasting from the satellite anywhere on Earth. Two American physicists at Johns Hopkins University working in the Applied Physics Laboratory, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, began capturing Sputnik’s signal. They soon realized that because of the Doppler effect (Dicke 1953) they could locate the position of the satellite. The following spring, the two physicists explored and solved the inverse problem: how to locate the user’s position, if the satellite has a given position. By solving this problem, a series of satellites were launched leading to the well-known Global Positioning System (GPS) (Schenewerk 2003). Overcoming the limitations of the previous systems of the 1960s, the GPS had twenty-four satellites in 1973. The basic principle of GPS is simple to capture. Based on the dispersion of the satellites, the terrestrial user can have visibility of at least four satellites at a time. So, if one can figure out the location of a handheld receiver from four satellites, for which one knows his/her position, then one can accurately calculate his/ her position using a geometric intersection in space. It is the same principle applied by a terrestrial system, such as the LORAN. It is the same principle of triangulation applied by a topographer from antiquity to the present day. The only difference is that our position is not calculated as the intersection of two or three circles but of four spheres. Thus, one can find the location of a place not only on a plane but also in three-dimensional space. With the GPS, the world’s first three-dimensional georeferencing system was launched. To understand how we track our position with GPS and other satellite techniques, we can think of the way dolphins and other animals track the position of objects in space through delayed sounds, essentially using a sonar system that is similar to the ones we humans have on ships. Animals use sound waves while satellites make use of electromagnetic waves.

Today we know the GPS because of its usage policies, which we will discuss further in this chapter. Only a few of its capabilities are accessible by the public, as many of the system’s capabilities are exclusively for military use. The Soviet Union did not stay out of this race. In 1976, the country initiated its own system, also known as GLONASS, and since the early 1980s there has been a massive launch of satellites. GLONASS is based on the same principles as the GPS, and its basic difference is that it does not cover all regions of the globe with the same accuracy, as the main concern of the Soviet Union, and then the Russian Federation, was to cover its country. Other states have developed similar technologies, which for users provides the opportunity to combine systems and technologies so the user of a receiver can have access to information from many satellites of different systems and thus improve his accuracy. The current combination of these systems is called Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and includes GPS (USA), GLONASS (Russia), Galileo (European Union), QZSS (Japan) and BeiDou (China).

POLITICAL AND MILITARY USE OF SATELLITE GEOGRAPHY IN OUR TIMES

After the end of the Cold War, there was a gradual release of the navigational systems we discussed previously for more general use such as for research and politics. As a result, there has been a development of a series of applications that we can see in our everyday lives. The release of these technologies combined with the development of third industrial revolution applications, satellite geography technology has become accessible to a range of applications, in fields that no one until now had imagined. The combination of geographic techniques with the internet, and through it with mobile phones and social media, has created hundreds of new approaches that have substantially changed the field of modern geography, but at the same time created several ethical questions for geographers in the field of anarchist studies and political ecology. At the same time, military applications have not declined in number, but on the contrary have expanded in civilian–military fields such as preventive repression and political control. Also, the number of strictly military applications of unmanned aircraft and ‘smart weapons’ has increased. All these have created a new era that is interesting to examine in detail.

During the Cold War, a major focus for both the United States and the Soviet Union was the acquisition of the precise knowledge and mapping of the geospace. This goal was not only about the geometric form of cartography, that is, the creation of high accuracy maps, but also to gain qualitative information. Thus, what is sought is not only the precise knowledge of the three dimensions of the landscape of the opponent but also where facilities are located, what they contain, how many people are in an area, what jobs they do and so on. The underlying logic of these levels of information is also the basic logic of most modern geographic applications used by civilians, which is reduced, among other things, to the concept of the GIS. However, before we begin this discussion it is important to provide a brief overview of how GIS as a technology has been used.

The release of a GPS frequency for civilian use by the US government gave a huge boost to geographic and topographical research. Even though the US Army technically limited the precision pr vided by GPS for civilian use, a series of applications have been developed. The first and foremost application had to do with navigation. Airplanes, ships, in the air and at sea, vehicles and travellers (such as climbers) on land have been able to calculate their position with significant accuracy. Significant bugs and difficulties in calculating a position with the traditional methods have become virtually obsolete. For example, the fishermen of the open seas could now mark the exact coordinates of one good catch and thus improve their chances of catching even more fish while small boats without a radar could navigate safely near the shores under challenging visibility conditions or at the ocean. Those responsible for removing millions of tons of debris from World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks had GPS receivers placed on the trucks to direct drivers so as not to disturb the traffic flow of the city, although the job lasted several months.

A second set of applications is related to classical topography. The low accuracy of GPS measur ments, which ranged from a few centimetres to tens of metres, was overridden by using two tec niques. The first had to do with the number of measurements, a technique of precision improvement known since antiquity. A coordinate can be defined with greater accuracy, the more times it is measured, since the errors follow the normal distribution (Taylor 1997). The second technique has to do with the use of a second identical and stable GPS receiver in an area near the first receiver. Since the uncertainty of GPS measurements comes from ‘noise’ that is added from the Earth’s atmosphere, two identical receivers that record simultaneously at almost the same point, and thus receive a signal from the same satellites, will have approximately the same noise. However, if one of the two is at a fixed point, then it will only record ‘noise’. Thus, with the new technique we can remove this noise from the original receiver and ‘clear’ the signal increasing. The accuracy for GPS was achieved and therefore suitable for classical topography.

The main advantage of satellite topography over terrestrial areas is that the former no longer needs to reduce the points of a local measurement to a reference system, local or global. Using satellites, the position is immediately defined in a global datum/global geodetic reference system (Grafared and Okeke 1998). The mapping of a road no longer requires complicated computations for engineers, but only a GPS receiver. At the same time, monitoring natural phenomena, such as landslides, became much easier. The GPS also revolutionized geophysical research. Earth tectonic movements, the mov ments caused by an earthquake or the ‘bloating’ of a volcano were challenging to study before the introduction of the GPS since it was not possible to determine a fixed point that was not affected by the geophysical phenomenon, and from that point to measure the relative movement of the rest. There was no unaffected point of reference. However, with a satellite system, the reference system is outside the surface, and so the movements of the Earth can be calculated with precision. Thus, the movements that are induced by an earthquake on the surface of the Earth, the form of the deformation of an inverse rupture that causes a tsunami or the detection of the magma’s movement in a volcano could now be studied (Puglisi and Bonforte 2004; Blewitt et al. 2006). The various systems recording ocean waves using floating GPS beacons (Watson et al. 2008) can be considered as another important application, whose data can be used to predict and highlight dangerous conditions for navigation, provide instructions for the routes of the ships and to record tsunami waves, as they are generated, and to give time for coastal evacuation through a tsunami early warning system (TEWS). With the gradual improvement in the accuracy and frequency of sampling of the GPS, steady progress has been made on the phenomenon of oscillation and small movements (Psimoulis and Stiros 2008), such as the winding of a bridge, the oscillation of a skyscraper. Also, the phenomenon of an earthquake could be completely recorded for the first time. These applications directly link geolocational techniques with ecology and can help in preventing disasters and protecting the natural environment and humans.

A third set of applications has to do with the interconnection of the information provided by the GNSS (GPS) with internet applications, mobile phones and social media. The changes that have occurred over the past decade in this category of applications have a direct and rapid impact on our lives and give us the feeling of a technological revolution. The applications are many, and therefore we will only be able to discuss some examples. Car traffic in urban areas is still one of the most important problems, which has been quite difficult to study. The reason is that it was impossible for researchers to place devices and sensors that would measure traffic load, traffic density and speed at many points in an urban network. Therefore, the studies were time-consuming, costly and focused only on certain points.

However, with the use of GNSS in mobile phones today, a Google traffic app can identify the key traffic sizes at every point of an urban network at any given time (Zhou 2014) and thus inform its users of the route time and traffic status. Every moving mobile phone is converted, without the user knowing it, into an independent traffic researcher. The utilization of this information from an integrated Intelligent Transport System (ITS) can guide urban traffic at all times and overcome severe traffic congestion (Barceló et al. 2005). An extension of these applications is the various bus and taxi management systems operating in conjunction with mobile phone applications facilitating the movement of people and services in cities, as well as dozens of applications being used for the management of transport of all modes (air, sea, rail), whether passenger or freight. Similarly, some applications can record and can accurately predict traffic and user habits through the recording of their purchases. Thus, in conjunction with the data from various social media, profiles of both consumer and wider social behaviour can be created. It is important here to emphasize that such applications are not interested in full registration among all users, as even data concerning a small percentage of the population (up to 5 per cent) can give an accurate picture of the whole population. At an experimental level, there are several models of predicting not only the consumer but also social–political behaviour. If such apps proliferate, they may raise many ethical questions about using them, as we will discuss subsequently. For example, if an authoritarian power seeks to control and foresee every movement of its citizens, and through this predi tion guide behaviour, so that citizens think they are free to make decisions, while in reality they are being guided, we will have an Orwellian state. We must pay more attention to these dangers and mobilize people so as to prevent the development of such phenomena.

An app which is quite interesting has to do with the use of these technologies in blocking the development of epidemics (Albert et al. 2003). By recording the path of the last days of people suffering from an epidemic disease, when they are identified as ill (e.g., in a hospital), a geographic view of the paths of many patients is formed, so that common starting points of the disease can be identified. These points are quarantined, and the spread of the disease is confined.

Unmanned robotic vehicles, helicopters and airplanes are a category that combines GNSS with data transfer over the internet, and a whole class of applications has been created in recent years. In these applications, we can organize transport and product classification either within logistics or between the company and the buyer. Amazon is considered as a pioneer in these applications and conducts significant research into both the robotic organization of its supplies and the creation of postal services using drones (Bamburry 2015). Another important category of these systems is the possibility of live geographic recording and tracking of the terrain from above. For example, forest maps can easily be created, burning fires can rapidly be traced, future disasters can be foreseen, forest deforestations and other environmental disasters can be identified (Fedra 1999).

On the other hand, many repression and control applications have been identified. By using multiple geo-referenced data (i.e., information referring to a particular geographic location) deriving from monitoring drones, the internet, traditional archival data or from the social media, police authorities create predictive combinatorial algorithms and can construct maps of potential crime. So, they can focus their repression on specific locations (Chainey and Ratcliffe 2013). Despite their relative accuracy, we observe that these systems have a major problem, they tend to confirm the ‘biases’ of their data. For instance, in some US cities, these systems have shown a greater possibility of crimes being committed in areas where people of colour live, leading to an even more selective racist policing, resulting in community reaction. With the use of thermal cameras for drones, border surveillance systems and recording of irregular migratory flows have also advanced.

Another application that has to do with repression is the GNSS system bracelets applicable to suspects and prisoners who are on leave (Patil 2014). These systems can operate indoors even where there is no satellite visibility, since they locate the position of a person with the combined use of a satellite system and the signal from mobile phone antennas. Thus, when such a receiver is in an enclosed space, its geographical position can be determined with relative accuracy from the known coordinates of the locations of the mobile antennas from which it receives a signal. By the same reasoning, the interse tion of the cycles we analysed earlier for the GPS, the geographical position can be spotted with this signal as well. This application has been used on young children in Great Britain (due to abductions), and a new application on watches measures many biometric characteristics of humans which can be applied to almost all population groups, generating new ethical dilemmas (Michael et al. 2006).

Before discussing the political and ethical dilemmas of the new age of georeferencing, it is important not to forget the many military applications that are being created. The best-known application is that of the ‘smart weapons’. In the past two decades, we have seen them appear in the wars against terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. It has been an unprecedented upgrading of the ballistic navigation systems. With the use of a GNSS receiver and an accelerometer with three degrees of freedom, a missile can permanently correct its position in the air and hit its target with very high accuracy (Kaplan 2006). With the combined use of unmanned tracking aircraft and the use of spy satellites that provide live images of very high precision of less than 1 metre, the conduct of the war by the armies holding this technology becomes almost virtual, as they can hit targets with great accuracy from a long distance, without being involved locally, and at the same time, watch live the result of their actions. With military access to a plethora of data from e-mails and social media (whose companies provide access to the army), targeted surveillance and strikes against suspects are also possible in any part of the world. Many troops throughout the world (United States, Russia, Great Britain, etc.) are currently developing robotic unmanned armored vehicles that will be able to conduct wars on battlefields without soldiers. The basic idea of all the military applications is to reduce the risk of human cost for the army that owns these applications.

ETHICAL AND POLITICAL QUESTIONS IN THE ERA OF GEO-LOCALIZATION (GEO-REFERENCE)

The examples outlined in this chapter support the view that we have entered a new age of geo-referencing. More and more information, more and more humans, movements, actions and thoughts are recorded. With the use of mobile phones and social media on a daily basis, each person produces a number of megabytes of georeferenced information. The data generated and accumulated, the so-called mega data, increases at immense rates, creating new multi-level geography. This complex new condition has generated a series of ethical and political issues.

The use of heterogeneous geographic information provided by users today can help a number of applications solve major technical problems of cities such as traffic. However, the question is: who owns and who manages the mega data? To date, their management is done by giant monopolies such as Google or Facebook. These companies own data volumes whose economic wealth is valued at tens of billions of dollars while their potential political power may be ten times as much. Or, as a newspaper had written a few years back, ‘data is the oil of the future’.1 Thus, the determination of the US government to create an access agreement to the data of those companies for its federal agencies cannot be considered as an accident. The protection of the users’ private data – who they are, where they are, what they do, how they work, with whom they communicate and what they say – is guaranteed only against other users and not the state. Similar ‘indiscretion’ has recently been demonstrated by the Chinese government when it decided that it would have access to the data of the users of a social media application. The use of mega data by governments and large monopolies does not only imply the end of privacy but can potentially have detrimental effects. In a global community where only Facebook users are 2.5 billion (2017 figures) and the total interconnected users of all networks that collect geo-referenced data are more than half the world’s population, the possession of data that has to do with loc tion, traffic, preferences, privacy, consumer habits, beliefs and so on by a single power raises many questions. Knowing the profile, movement and behaviour of each person create the ability to control, define and guide behaviour to the fullest extent. This knowledge may, in the future, create a model of governance that may well exceed Orwell’s literary projections. Such knowledge will be identified with power, just as Michel Foucault predicted. In such an environment, the notion of human freedom should be re-examined.

The concept that we would like to introduce here is that of the geo-referenced existence. This concept consists of a new form of the subject, for which its position (in its first stage) and its actions (to a lesser extent) are known by the visible or invisible panoptic eye of authority. Each position at a known time creates a condition of objectification of the subject, which is closely associated with a reification process. Thus, the subject-person is gradually transformed into an object and a thing. Here, not only do we have the classical Marxian concept of alienation, the person alienated by the product of his work, but we have an even deeper and qualitatively superior reification.

For the industrial worker, what becomes the object of reification is the body, with the objectification of existence, we have a complete instrumentalization of all aspects of a person, even his thoughts. Consensus about the techniques of the new geography takes place in silence precisely because either we can no longer live without the technical facilities of the new applications, or because these facilitates upgrade several practical aspects of our everyday life. The degree of accuracy and time coverage of the position, the range of control and recording of movement ultimately determine the degree of objectification – reification and can be considered a measure inversely proportional to human freedom. The geo-referenced information systems in their full promise are the ‘utopia’ of every dominating system.

With the new panoptic geography, we can talk about an epistemological superfield, a constructive un fying sphere, seeking to bring together all levels of empirical observation in a single language. This super-field launched by geo-referenced information systems is based on the reduction of heterogeneous information (both qualitative and quantitative, dynamic and static) to a unique reference system. Why is the reduction in such a system? In our opinion, there is a substantial analogy with the market economy. As the market seeks to fully monetize all things, whether material goods and services or other values, for their inclusion through money in the law of supply and demand, so does the new geography seek a full geo-referenced common equivalent. If capitalism perceives everything as an economy, as monetary values that can be bought and sold, power sees everything as geography. The reduction of all subjects to objects strips them from all their qualities and destroys the infinitude of the meanings of each position to a bare objectification. Further if for humans, this objectification coincides with the practical purposes of market life, for nature and the environment this market-based objectification poses greater risks. The reduction of each physical parameter to a geographical and quantitative dimension is the other aspect of the commercialization of nature, or if you prefer, the necessary step for it. It is precisely this reduction that the anarchist worldview is fighting against, seeing every being, not only animals and humans but also nature as a subject and never as an object or a thing. The worldview of anarchism is the one that attempts to reverse this perspective.

WHAT IF WE REVERSED THIS PERSPECTIVE?

Let us think for a while how things would be from a different perspective. What would the image of the world be like if the mega data of the geographic systems were not in the hands of the world’s rulers, but free for every one of us to use? There is, of course, a critical parameter that we should never ignore: there is no such thing as a neutral technology. A scientific idea may bear the scientist’s good intentions, but a technological implementation is always linked to the specific purposes of society. As long as we live in market societies, our technologies are geared towards its goals. A prospect of a free exchange that would not accumulate information in the hands of the powerful could potentially transform the goals of modern geography. From a geography of control and of the market, we could move to critical geography that would reveal the social inequalities as a result of the capitalist mode of production and would bridge the world on the basis of equality and solidarity. We all live on the same planet, and we all share the same natural resources, so a different geography could focus on such an orientation. The modern geography of the world that the satellites and the various information systems reveal to us could, if we read it in the light of another perspective, dissolve many of the reactionary ideas, such as the idea that there are pure races, or that borders are natural phenomena. It can also reveal to us that defending the environment and nature will either be the work of a united and egalitarian humanity, or competition will fatally destroy the environment and people.

CONCLUSION

Knowledge of geospatial has always been the prerequisite for domination. From the ancient empires to the Greek merchants and settlers, from the Romans to the Venetians, from the colonial powers to the modern West, the forms of war and domination may have changed, but the primary parameter has not: the privileged knowledge of space. The eye from the perspective of which most information was and has been known is almost always the eye of the master(s). If the Panopticon that Bentham (1791) envisioned about prison surveillance tends, nowadays, to encompass society as a whole, we ought to, along with the practical benefits of the new era, highlight the dangers that such a perspective may bring. The meaning of freedom can change over the centuries, but some parameters remain unchanged. And perhaps the most basic one is that of self-determination since liberty requires a degree of indeterminacy of the subject in relation to the eye of the authority. If every such indeterminacy, if e ery autonomy is lost, then the future of freedom is dismal.

In the seventeenth century, Descartes formulated the idea of the self-reflecting subject, Cogito. Since then, this concept has defined Western thought. Human beings as a subject ‘should always be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else’ claims Kant in his third formulation of the categorical imperative (2017). At present, it has become clear that the notion of the self-reflecting and the self-determining subject is being challenged is under attack from everywhere, seeking to make it disappear from the face of the Earth. Perhaps a modern anarchist geography should first and foremost preserve this subject.

NOTES

1. This phrase was recently used by Mohammad Al-Gergawi. Its origin, however, is unknown

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October 5, 2024

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