The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

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210 The experience of space and timeHow and why the world's history (the outcome of strugglesbetween classes in Marxian versions) dissolves into geopolitical conflictsoften of a most destructive kind cannot be regarded as, a matterof mere accident. It may have its roots in the political- economicprocesses that force capitalism into configurations of uneven geographicaldevelopment and make it seek out a series of spatial fixes tothe overaccumulation problem. But the aestheticization of politicsthat accompanies this geopolitical turn must likewise be taken seriously.Herein, I think, lies the significance of conjoining aestheticand social theoretic perspectives on the nature and meaning of spaceand time. And it is exactly from this sort of perspective that Eagleton(1987) launches his most virulent polemic against the postmodernismof Lyotard:Modernity for Lyotard would seem nothing but a tale of terroristicreason and Nazism little more than the lethal terminusof totalizing thought. This reckless travesty ignores the fact thatthe death camps were among other things the upshot of abarbarous irrationalism which, like some aspects of postmodernismitself, junked history, refused argumentation, aestheticizedpolitics and staked all on the charisma of those who toldthe stories.13Individual spaces andsocial life.tImes InThe material practices from which our concepts of space and timeflow are as varied as the range of individual and collective experiences.The challenge is to put some overall interpretative frame aroundthem that will bridge the gap between cultural change and the dynamicsof political economy.Let me begin with the simplest descr!ill.- practices as setout in the time geography pioneered bY __ligerstran!!4!Yig.!lal.E here viecLi!LBut.:E0seful agents e!lgilgd in,projeqs,.1l?:t ,t,a. uptime '-d1r9$E_ ,!P.o.,Y.il.l.!illn space: .IndividQi2graphies can ,, \;.tracked as 'lik_p...aJ;hLilUimg:::§p,_e,', beginning with daily-routines ofmovement (from house to factory, to shops, to school, and backhome again), and extending to migratory movements over phases ofa life-span (for example, youth in the country, professional trainingin the large city, marriage and movement to the suburbs, and retirementto the country). Such paths can be portrayed diagrammatically(see figure 3.1). The idea is to study the principles of timespacebehaviour through an examination of such biographies. Finitetime resources and the 'friction of distance' (measured in timeor cost taken to overcome it) constrain daily movement. Time foreating, sleeping, etc. has to be found, and social projects alwaysencounter 'coupling constraints,' specified as the need to have thetime-space paths of two or more individuals intersect to accomplishany social transaction. Such transactions typically occur within ageographical pattern of available 'stations' (places where certain activitieslike working, shopping, etc. occur) and 'domains' where certainsocial interactions prevail.Hagerstrand's schema is a useful descriptor of how the daily life ofindividuals unfolds in space and 'time. But it tells us nothing about.how 'stations' and 'domains' are produced 'ot why the 'friction ofdistaflce" -Varles in 'the way it palpablY- does. It also leaves aside the
212tThe experience of space and timePathBundle=:1IIIIy----j ... _-•DomainStationFigure 3.1 Diagrammatic representation of daily time-space paths accordingto Hiigerstrand (1970).question of how and why certain social projects and their characteristic'coupling constraints' become hegemonic (why, for example,the factory system dominates, or is dominated by dispersed andartisanal forms of production), and it makes no attempt to understandwhy certain social relations dominate others, or how meaninggets assigned to places, spaces, history, and time. Unfortunately,assembling massive empirical data on time- space biographies doesnot get at the answers to these broader questions, even though theIndividual spaces and times in social life 213record of such biographies forms a useful datum for considering thetime-space dimension of social practices.Consider, by way of contrast, the socio-psychological and phenomenologicalapproaches to time and space that have been put forwardby writers such as de Certeau, Bachelard, Bourdieu, andFoucault. The latter treats the space of the body as the irreducibleelement in our social scheme of things, for it is upon that space thatthe forces of repression, socialization, disciplining, and punishing areinflicted. The body exists in space and must either submit to authority(through, for example, incarceration or surveillance in an organizedspace) or carve out particular spaces of resistance and freedom -'heterotopias' - from an otherwise repressive world. That struggle,the centrepiece of social history for Foucault, has no necessarytemporal logic. But Foucault does see particular historical transitionsas important and he pays great attention to the periodization ofexperience. The power of the ancien regime was undermined by theEnlightenment only to be replaced by a new organization of spacededicated to the techniques of social control, surveillance, and repressionof the self and the world of desire. The difference lies in theway state power in the modern era becomes faceless, rational, andtechnocratic (and hence more systematic), rather than personalizedand arbitrary. The irreducibility (for us) of the human body meansthat it is only from that site of power that resistance can be mobilizedin the struggle to liberate human desire. Space, for Foucault, is ametaphor for a site or container of power which usually constrainsbut sometimes liberates processes of Becoming.Foucault's emphasis upon imprisonment within spaces of socialcomrorhas more than a little literal (as opposed to metaphorical)relevance to the way modern social life is organized. The entrapmentof impoverished populations in inner city spaces is ,a theme that has,for example, long captured the attention of urban geographers. ButFoucault's exclusive concentration on the spaces of organized repression(prisons, the 'panopticon,' hospitals, and other institutionsof social control) weakens the generality of his argument. D_Cprovides an interesting corrective. He treats S9ci;!L s2i!£."as more ;? pen to human . c eati ; it y and .. action. Walking, . he s .u ggests, defines alispace of enunCIatIOn. LIke Hagerstand, he begms hIS story at ground Wlevel, but in this case 'with footsteps' in the city. 'Their swarming Imass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined \paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together,' and SO \\create the city through daily activities and movements. 'They are not 'localized; it is rather that they spatialize' (note how different the jsentiment is from that conveyed in Hagerstand's work). The particular
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The Conditionof PostmodernityAn Enq
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PrefaceI cannot remember exactly wh
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Introduction 5theatre, a series of
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8 The passage from modernity to pos
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Postmodernism in the city 85Here we
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Page 105 and 106: 12IntroductionMarshall Berman (1982
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312 The experience of space and tim
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Part IVThe condition of postmoderni
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328 The condition of postmodernityw
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332 The condition of postmodernityC
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21Postmodernism as the mIrror ofmIr
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Table 4.1 Fordist modernity versus
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27Cracks in the mIrrors, fusions at
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ReferencesAglietta, M. (1979): A th
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364 ReferencesJacobs, J. (1961): Th
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Index 369Adorno, T. 13Aglietta, M.
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372IndexSoja, E. 284Sorel, G. 34Spe
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376IndexIndex 377jouissance 57-8, 9
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The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

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