206 <strong>The</strong> experience <strong>of</strong> space and timea spatial form. Painters, sculptors, poets, and writers <strong>of</strong> all sorts dono less. Even the written word abstracts properties from the flux <strong>of</strong>experience and fixes them in spatial form. '<strong>The</strong> invention <strong>of</strong> printingembedded the word in space,' it has been said, and writing - a 'set <strong>of</strong>tiny marks marching in neat line, like armies <strong>of</strong> insects, across pagesand pages <strong>of</strong> white paper' - is, therefore, a definite spatialization(quoted in McHale, 1987, 179-81). Any system <strong>of</strong> representation, infact, is a spatialization <strong>of</strong> sorts which automatically freezes the flow<strong>of</strong> experience and in so doing distorts what it strives to represent.'Writing,' says Bourdieu (1977, 156) 'tears practice and discourse out<strong>of</strong> the flow <strong>of</strong> time.' For this reason, Bergson, the great theorist <strong>of</strong>becoming, <strong>of</strong> time as flux, was incensed that it took the spatializations<strong>of</strong> the clock to tell the time.<strong>The</strong> philosopher Karsten Harries (1982, 59-69) makes mch <strong>of</strong>this idea. Architecture, he maintains, is not only about domesticatingspace, wresting and shaping a liveable place from space. It is also adeep defence against 'the terror <strong>of</strong> time'. <strong>The</strong> 'language <strong>of</strong> beauty' is'the language <strong>of</strong> a timeless reality.' To create a beautiful object 'is tolink time and eternity' in such a way as to redeem us from time'styranny. <strong>The</strong> urge to 'devaluate time' reappears as the artist's will toredeem through the creation <strong>of</strong> a work 'strong enough to still time.'Much <strong>of</strong> the aesthetic thrust <strong>of</strong> modernism, we saw in Part I, is tostrive for this sense <strong>of</strong> eternity in the midst <strong>of</strong> flux. But in leaning tothe eternal side <strong>of</strong> Baudelaire's formulation, this emphasizes spacerather than time. <strong>The</strong> aim <strong>of</strong> spatial constructs is 'not to illuminatetemporal reality so that [we] might feel more at home in it, but to berelieved <strong>of</strong> it: to abolish time within time, if only for a time.' Harrieshere echoes those famous modernist formulations <strong>of</strong> Baudelaire, 'onecan only forget time by making use <strong>of</strong> it,' and T. S. Eliot, 'onlythrough time, time is conquered.'But here arises the paradox. We learn our ways <strong>of</strong> thinking andconceptualizing from active grappling with the spatializations <strong>of</strong> thewritten word, the study and production <strong>of</strong> maps, graphs, diagrams,photographs, models, paintings, mathematical symbols, and the like.How adequate are such modes <strong>of</strong> thought and such conceptions inthe face <strong>of</strong> the flow <strong>of</strong> human experience and strong processes <strong>of</strong>social change? On the other side <strong>of</strong> the coin, how can spatializationsin general, and aesthetic practices in particular, represent flux andchange, particular!y if these latter are held essential truths to beconveyed? This was the dilemma that plagued Bergson. It became acentral problem for both futurist and Dada art. Eutur-ism- soughc tosh _ape space in ways that could represent speed and motion. padaistsIntroduction 207yiewed art as ephemeral and, renouncing any permanent spatialization,sought eternity by embedding their happenings in revolutionaryaction. It was perhaps in response to this conundrum that WalterPater argued that 'all art aspires to the condition <strong>of</strong> music' - music,after all, contains its aesthetic effect precisely through its temporalmovement. But the most obvious means <strong>of</strong> representation <strong>of</strong> timewaS the film. <strong>The</strong> young Sartre was particularly impressed by itspossibilities. 'It is an art which reflects civilization in our time,' hesaid; it 'will teach you about the beauty <strong>of</strong> the world you live in, thepoetry <strong>of</strong> speed, machines, and the inhuman splendid inevitability <strong>of</strong>industry' (Cohen-Solal, 1987). <strong>The</strong> combination <strong>of</strong> film and musicprovides a powerful antidote to the spatial passivity <strong>of</strong> art andarchitecture. Yet the very confinement <strong>of</strong> the film to a depthlessscren and a theatre is a reminder that it, too, is space-bound in somecunous way.<strong>The</strong>re is much to be learned from aesthetic theory about howdifferent forms <strong>of</strong> spatialization inhibit or facilitate processes <strong>of</strong>social change. Conversely, there is much to be learned from socialtheory concerning th flux and change with which aesthetic theoryhas to cope. By playmg these two currents <strong>of</strong> thought <strong>of</strong>f against. each other, we can, perhaps, better understand the ways in whichpolitical- economic change informs cultural practices.But let me first illustrate where the political significance <strong>of</strong> such anarg ment might lie. In so doing, I shall revert to that conceptionwhlCh Kant advanced (see above, p. 19), <strong>of</strong> aesthetic judgement as apotential mediator between the worlds <strong>of</strong> objective science and <strong>of</strong>subjective moral judgement (without necessarily conceding either thetripartite division <strong>of</strong> knowledge that Kant proposed or the entirelydisinterested . satisfaction with which his concept <strong>of</strong> beauty is associated).Aesthetic judgements (as well as 'redemptive' artistic practices)have entered in as powerful criteria <strong>of</strong> political, and hence <strong>of</strong> socialand economic, action. If aesthetic judgement prioritizes space overtime, then it follows that spatial practices and concepts can, undercertain circumstances, become central to social action.In this regard, the German philosopher Heidegger is an intriguingfigure . .Rejecting the Kantian dichotomies <strong>of</strong> subject and object, heproclaImed the permanence <strong>of</strong> Being over the transitoriness <strong>of</strong> Becoming(Metaphysics, 202). His investigations <strong>of</strong> Being led him awayfrom the universals <strong>of</strong> modernism and <strong>of</strong> the Judaeo-Christian tradition,.and back to the intense and creative nationalism <strong>of</strong> preSocratlc Greek thought. All metaphysics and philosophy, he declared,are given their meaning only in relation to the destiny <strong>of</strong> the people
208 <strong>The</strong> experience <strong>of</strong> space and time(Blitz, 1981). <strong>The</strong> geopolitical position <strong>of</strong> Germany in the inter-waryears - squeezed in a
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