Introduction: Law as Pharmakon

Urban law is a pharmakon. The concept of ‘pharmakon’ is rarely associated with law and spatial planning or, particularly, the role of these instruments in the production of racialised social spaces. For Derrida, a pharmakon can be defined as a both a remedy and a poison.2 In philosophical terms, a pharmakon goes beyond the medicosocial definition of drugs as having healing and killing properties, depending on how they are administered.

Urban law is a pharmakon. The concept of ‘pharmakon’ is rarely associated with law and spatial planning or, particularly, the role of these instruments in the production of racialised social spaces. For Derrida, a pharmakon can be defined as a both a remedy and a poison.2 In philosophical terms, a pharmakon goes beyond the medicosocial definition of drugs as having healing and killing properties, depending on how they are administered. Instead, a pharmakon captures how all things - all instruments, technologies and knowledges can do good and bad, depending on how they are applied. Bernard Stiegler, in particular, aptly outlines ‘the two-faced character of all pharmaka [...] intoxication and remedy, danger and help’.3 Using the metaphor of a hammer in the hands of a skilled mason to define the concept of a pharmakon.