The main objective of this thesis is to critically understand the conceptual history of axis as it refers to a social spatiality, elucidating its genesis and its becoming through the investigation of the trajectories of its main meanings and functions. Axis as a concept is increasingly relevant to geography and other sciences concerned with social space since it enables a more precise understanding of the relationship between space and circulation. Our research problem is: What are the genesis of the concept of axis and the fundamentals of its historical becoming and what does this becoming point to in terms of possibilities not fully realised. To solve it, we adopt an interlacement between the methods of conceptual history as developed by Reinhart Koselleck and an approach based on the regressive-progressive method applied by Karl Marx and clarified by Henri Lefebvre and Jean-Paul Sartre. Based on such interlacement, our research begins with a reconstitution of the recent uses and meanings of axis, supported by the idea that concepts can present analytical, normative, and practical senses. First, we observe how territorial planning instrumentalises the concept of axis based on the imperative of neoliberalisation and of fluidity. Then we examine the influence that the normative concept of axis has over the scientific field, noticing critical and acritical reproductions of such meanings. However, there have been efforts of resignification, transforming it into an analytical concept. The practical meanings, in their turn, tend to be simpler, usually interpreting the axis as a line or a portion of space linking two localities. After this reconstitution, we proceed with a regressive analysis, searching for the objective conditions that have enabled the genesis of axis and corridor as concepts, both generally referring to the same spatiality. These geneses can be spotted on the conceptualisation and the theorisation of axis developed by Pierre Pottier in 1963, and of corridor by Charles F. J. Whebell in 1969. Finally, we progressively return to the present time, clarifying it with the help from a broader understanding of the conceptual becoming of axis made possible by the research done. Therefore we confirm our thesis as it follows: The concept of axis, in its sense of a social spatiality ―which shall not be unlinked from the concept of corridor―, finds its genesis in the 1960s as an analytical concept dedicated to understand certain spatial expressions of economic development. Its becoming, however, is marked by its significant instrumentalization done by the neoliberal territorial planning, especially from the 1990s onwards, which distorts its original meanings. Since then, the diffusion of the normative meanings has a prevailing influence over the scientific definitions and those of the common sense. Despite that, recent efforts within the analytical field are trying to reframe the concept of axis, strengthening its theoretical basis, something that the recovery of the original senses may assist.