Stevphen Shukaitis Space. Imagination // Rupture: The Cognitive Architecture of Utopian Political Thought in the Global Justice Movement University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 8 (2005) Space. Imagination // Rupture: The Cognitive Architecture of Utopian Political Thought in the Global Justice Movement 1 Stevphen Shukaitis University of Leicester, Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy (Leicester, Great Britain) Abstract: From 1994 to 2004 the global justice movement (GJM) has developed a multitude of forms of organization and practices of social resistance. The various strands of ‘the movement of movements’ have taken the space of the global sphere not as something to be achieved, but rather as the assumed starting point and terrain of contestation. Unlike older forms of social movement internationalism, the interwoven threads of the GJM do not have a fixed point or center, or location from which they are controlled or decisions imposed. Rather, ideas and practices are created, communicated, and diffused through multiple lateral networks and connections formed and maintained through forums, encuentros, and gatherings around actions that blur and redefine the nature of political involvement. This paper will look at these various spaces, networks, forms of organization, and processes of collective deliberation that have emerged within the GJM against a sociological backdrop framed by the ideas of Karl Mannheim and Max Weber. From this perspective, it will explore the formation of these spaces and the production of utopian thought within them, drawing from this analysis the beginnings of a framework for a dynamic comparison of how such spaces can be understood in relation to each other and the social environments in which they are situated. Keywords: global justice movement, networks, utopia Utopia is on the horizon: I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking. Eduardo Galeano Over the past ten years, from 1994 to 2004, there has been a veritable explosion in the multitude of forms of social resistance and radical political organizing in many parts of the world. From the Zapatista National Liberation Army of Chiapas to the No Border camps throughout Europe, from the World Social Forum as a gathering of the forces of an emergent international civil society to the glocalized politics of neighborhood assemblies, from the barrios of Argentina to the streets of New York, these years have borne witness to the emergence of a movement of many movements that take the space of the global sphere as an understood starting point of resistance, rather than the something to be achieved. Whether one is considering immigrant and labor organizing in the US, the landless farmers of Brazil, insurrectionary street parties from London to Genoa, or the truly massive outpourings of voices opposing the invasion of Iraq on several days of global action, these practices of social resistance function in a fluid and networked manner that requires a rethinking of concepts of space and utopian politics in relation to how these movements function. It is this relation, one that might be called the cognitive architecture of utopian political thought in the global justice movement (GJM), that this intervention will begin to explore.