The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

204 The experience of space and timetime, space, and time-space in physics has, in fact, been marked bystrong epistemological breaks and reconstructions. The conclusionwe should draw is simply that neither time nor space can be assignedobjective meanings independently of material processes, and that it isonly through investigation of the latter that we can properly groundour concepts of the former. This is not, of.course, a new conclusion.It confirms the general thrust of several earlier thinkers, of whom-Dilthey and Durkheim are the most prominent.From this materialist perspective we can then argue that objectiveconceptions of time and space are necessarily created through materialpractices and processes which serve to reproduce social life. ThePlains Indians or the African Nuer ojectify qualities of time andspace that are as separate from each other as they are distant fromthose ingrained within a capitalist mode of production. The objectivityof time and space is given in each case by the material practices of\ social reproduction, and to the degree that these latter vary geographicallyand historically, so we find that social time and socialspace are differentially constructed. Each distinctive mode of productionor social formation will, in short, embody a distinctivebundle of time and space practices and concepts.Since capitalism has been (and continues to be) a revolutionarymode of production in which the material practices and processes ofsocial reproduction are always changing, it follows that the objectivequalities as well as the meanings of space and time also change. Onthe other hand, if advance of knowledge (scientific, technical, administrative,bureaucratic, and rational) is vital to the progress ofcapitalist production and consumption, then changes in our conceptualapparatus (including representations of space and time) can havematerial consequences for the ordering of daily life. When, for example,a planner-architect like Le Corbusier, or an administrator likeHaussmann, creates a built environment in which the tyranny of thestraight line predominates, then we must perforce adjust our dailypractices.This does not mean that practices are determined by built form (nomatter how hard the planners may try); for they have the awkwardhabit of escaping their moorings in any fixed schema of representation.New meanings can be found for older materializations of space andtime. We appropriate ancient space __ in very modern ways, treat timeand hiStory-as' something to create rather than to accept. The sameconcept of, say, 'community' (as a social entity created in spacethrough time) can disguise radical differences in meaning because theprocesses of community production themselves diverge remarkablyaccording to group capacities and interests. Yet the treatment ofIntroduction 205communities as if they are comparable (by, say, a planning agency)has material implications to which the social practices of people wholive in them have to respond.Beneath the veneer of common-sense and seemingly 'natural' ideasabout space and time, there lie hidden terrains of ambiguity, contradiction,and struggle. Conflicts arise not merely out of admittedly Idiverse subjective appreciations, but because different objective imaterial qualities of time and space are deemed relevant to social lifein different situations. Important battles likewise occur in the realmsof scientific, social, and aesthetic theory, as well as in practice. Howwe represent space and time in theory matters, because it affects howwe and others interpret and then act with respect to the world.Consider, for example, one of the more startling schisms in ourintellectual heritage concerning conceptions of time and space. Socialtheories (and I here think of traditions emanating from Marx, Weber,Adam Smith, and Marshall) typically privilege time over space intheir formulations. They broadly assume either the existence of somepre-existing spatial order within which temporal processes operate,or that spatial barriers have been so reduced as to render space acontingent rather than fundamental aspect to human action. Aesthetictheory, on the other hand, is deeply concerned with 'the spatializationof time.'It is a tribute to the compartmentalizations in Western thoughtthat this disjunction has for so long passed largely unremarked. Onthe surface, the difference is not too hard to understand. Socialtheory _b.as.--'ll W_