The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

246 The experience of space and timePlate 3.4 The rational ordering of space in the renaissance maps of Englandplayed an important role in affirming the position of individuals in relationto territory: John Speed's map of the Isle of Wight, 1616.The connection with perspectivism lay in this: .that .in designigthe grid in which to locate places, Ptolemy had Ima llled h?f t elobe as a whole would look to a human eye looklllg .at It mutside. A number of implications then follow. The firs IS an abIh yto see the globe as a knowable totality. As Ptole y hImself Pft 'the goal 'of chorography is to deal separately with a part o .t .ewhole ' whereas 'the task of geography is to survey the whole III ItS'ust'roportion.' Geography rather than chorography ecame a .kenafssance mission. A second implication is that mathemancal pnnciles could be applied, as in optics, to the whle problem f represetingthe globe on a flat surface. As a resul:, It seemed as If space!though infinite, was conquerable and contalllab .le fo : R urp ses .0human occupancy and action. It could be apropnated lll Im .aglllatonaccording to mathematical principles. Ad It was exacty .III suc acontext that the revolution in natural phIlosophy, .so bnlhan ly describedby Koyre (1957), which went from CopernIcus to Gahleo andultimately to Newton, was to occur.. 'Perspectivisg! had reverberations in all aspects of socIal lIfe an IIId .Time and space of the Enlightenment project 247all fields of representation. In architecture, for example, it allowedthe replacement of Gothic structures 'spun from arcane geometricalformulae jealously guarded by the lodge' with a building conceivedof and built 'on a unitary plan drawn to measure' (Kostof, 1985,405). This way of thinking could be extended to encompass thepla llning and construction of whole cities (like Ferrara) according toa similar unitary plan. Perspectivism could be elaborated upon ininnumerable ways, as, for example, in the baroque architecture of theseventeenth century which expressed 'a common fascination with theidea of the infinite, of movement and force, and the all-embracingbut expansive unity of things.' While still religious in ambition andintent, such architecture would have been 'unthinkable in the earlier,simpler days before projective geometry, calculus, precision clocks,and Newtonian optics' (Kostof, 1985, 523). Baroque architecture andBach fugues are both expressive of those concepts of infinite spaceand time which post-Renaissance science elaborated upon with suchzeal. The extraordinary strength of spatial and temporal imagery inthe English literature of the Renaissance likewise testifies to theimpact of this new sense of space and time on literary modes ofrepresentation. The language of Shakespeare, or of poets like JohnDonne and Andrew Marvell, is rife with such imagery. It is intriguingto note, furthermore, how the image of the world as a theatre ('allthe world's a stage' played in a theatre called 'The Globe') wasreciprocated in the titles commonly given to atlases and maps (suchas John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain and theFrench atlas, Theatre franrais of 1594). The construction of landscapes(both rural and urban) according to principles of theatricaldesign soon followed suit.If spatial and temporal experiences are primary vehicles for thecoding and reproduction of social relations (as Bourdieu suggests),then a change in the way the former get represented will almostcertainly generate some kind of shift in the latter. This principlehelps explain the support that the Renaissance maps of Englandsupplied to individualism, nationalism, and parliamentary democracyat the expense of dynastic privilege (see plate 3.5). But, as Helgersonpoints out, maps could just as easily function 'in untroubled supportof a strongly centralized monarchic regime,' though Philip II ofSpain thought his maps sufficiently subversive to keep them underlock and key as a state secret. Colbert's plans for a rational spatialintegration of the French nation state (focused as much upon theenhancement of trade and commerce as upon administrative efficiency)are typical of the deployment of the 'cold rationality' of maps usedfor instrumental ends in support of centralized state power. It was,