The Res Privata Republic

The article aims to expose the unlawful act of the city authorities in coalition with the liberal public sphere fond of the fantasy of progress. The article takes as its starting point the most common misconceptions about Rog, which it then deconstructs and turns against themselves. In its argumentation, the article also gradually returns to the period of Slovenia’s transition, in which Rog took centre stage already 25 years
ago as the object of building the neoliberal doctrine into the planning processes and the conception of public governance or public interest. In seemingly diverse images, this doctrine has continually and clearly led to 19 January 2021. The article also stresses the main points and ways in which the neoliberal doctrine successfully meets the liberal discourse of the local community, which is often declaratively critical of capital and generally accepts humanist aims as the highest values. The general thesis is that, for the success of the neoliberal politics of space in this context, the raw power of capital does not suffice; it must be supported by the idea of public interest (municipality) and liberal ideology (bourgeois public). The demolition of Rog by the City of Ljubljana could thus be understood as a symbolic end of the era in which liberal discourse still had to keep up the appearance of critique in relation to power and capital.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!