Eurhythmisation and organisational rites of housing squats in Rome

The paper explores the forms of social reproduction and organisation that punctuate the everyday life of the housing squats that are part of Housing Rights Movements in Rome through the analytical lens offered by Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean cities, with special focus on the concepts ‘eurhythmia’ and ‘rites’. It advances that the spatial transformations, alternative forms of social reproduction and politics envisaged by housing squatters out of necessity can be better understood through the notions of ‘eurhythmisation’ and ‘organisational rites’, that complement/update Lefebvre’s original vocabulary. The analysis is based on empirical materials collected during the author’s activist-ethnography within the Movimento per il Diritto all’Abitare (Movement for the Right to Habitation), focusing on three distinctive features of the housing squats’ habitation in common: the material and immaterial infrastructures of self-defence; the assembly as the time/space of collective habitation and deliberation; the commoning of social reproduction.