While these disparate meanings of “to fix” appear contradictory, they are all internally
related by the idea that something (a thing, a problem, a craving) can be pinned down and
secured. In my own use of the term, the contradictory meanings can be played out to reveal
something important about the geographical dynamics of capitalism and the crisis
tendencies that attach thereto. In particular, I use it to focus on the particular problem of
“fixity” (in the first sense of being secured in place) versus motion and mobility of capital.
I note, for example, that capitalism has to fix space (in immoveable structures of transport
and communication nets, as well as in built environments of factories, roads, houses, water
supplies, and other physical infrastructures) in order to overcome space (achieve a liberty
of movement through low transport and communication costs). This leads to one of the
central contradictions of capital: that it has to build a fixed space (or “landscape”)
necessary for its own functioning at a certain point in its history only to have to destroy
that space (and devalue much of the capital invested therein) at a later point in order to
make way for a new “spatial fix” (openings for fresh accumulation in new spaces and
territories) at a later point in its history.
T