The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

Plate 3 5 Dynasty versus the map: the Ditchley Portrait of .Queen Elizabetempha;izing the power of dynasty over individual and natwn as representeby the Renaissance mapTime and space of the Enlightenment project 249after all, Colbert, in the age of French Absolutism, who encouragedthe French Academy of Sciences (set up in 1666) and the first of thegreat map-making family, Jean Dominique Cassini, to produce acoherent and well-ordered map of France.The Renaissance revolution in concepts of space and time laid theconceptual foundations in many respects for the Enlightenment project.What many now look upon as the first great surge of modernistthinking, took the domination of nature as a necessary condition ofhuman emancipation. Since space is a 'fact' of nature, this meant thatthe conquest and rational ordering of space became an integral partof the modernizing project. The difference this time was that spaceand time had to be organized not to reflect the glory of God, but tocelebrate and facilitate the liberation of 'Man' as a free and activeindividual, endowed with consciousness and wilL It was in thisimage that a new landscape was to emerge. The twisting perspectivesand intense force fields constructed to the glory of God in baroquearchitecture had to give way to the rationalized structures of anarchitect like Boulee (whose project, see plate 3.6, for a cenotaphfor Isaac Newton is a visionary piece of modernism). There is acontinuous thread of thought from Voltaire's concern with rationalcity planning through to Saint-Simon's vision of associated capitalsunifying the earth by way of vast investments in transport andcommunications, and Goethe's heroic invocation in Faust - 'let meopen spaces for many millions/ to dwell in, though not secure, yetactive and free' - and the ultimate realization of exactly such projectsas part and parcel of the capitalist modernization process in thenineteenth century. Enlightenment thinkers similarly looked to commandover the future through powers of scientific prediction, throughsocial engineering and rational planning, and the institutionalizationof rational systems of social regulation and controL They in effectappropriated and pushed Renaissance conceptions of space and timeto their limit in the search to construct a new, more democratic,healthier, and more affluent society. Accurate maps and chronometerswere essential tools within the Enlightenment vision of how theworld should be organized.Maps, stripped of all elements of fantasy and religious belief, aswell as of any sign of the experiences involved in their production,had become abstract and strictly functional systems for the factualordering of phenomena in space. The science of map projection, andtechniques of cadastral surveying, made them mathematically rigorousdepictions. They defined property rights in land, territorial boundaries,domains of administration and social control, communicationroutes, etc. with increasing accuracy. They also allowed the whole