Rethinking Space: an Outsider's View of the Spatial Turn
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GeoJournal (2010) 75:29–41 DOI 10.1007/s10708-010-9339-9 Rethinking space: an outsider’s view of the spatial turn Santa Arias Published online: 6 February 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Geographical concerns with space and this example from literary colonial studies, other place have escaped the confines of the discipline of disciplines, therefore, can both draw from and geography. Many humanities scholars now invoke contribute to poststructuralist interpretations of space such conceptions as a means to integrate diverse as a negotiated set of situated practices. sources of information and to understand how broad social processes play out unevenly in different Keywords Historical geography Á locations. The social production of spatiality thus Post-structuralism Á Lima Á Coloniality Á offers a rich opportunity to facilitate interdisciplin- Spatiality Á Interdisciplinarity ary dialogues between different schools of critical theory. Following a brief assessment of the spatial turn in history, history of science, and political I am a Latin Americanist trained in the field of philosophy, this paper explores its implications for literary and cultural studies. In 1996, I began a literary and cultural studies. It invokes a detailed paradigm shift after reading Edward Soja’s Postmod- case study of late 18th century Lima, Peru to ern Geographies (1989), a text that, by rethinking explicate the dynamics of colonialism, the construc- modernity and bringing Henri Lefebvre to the study tion of racial identities, and different power/knowl- of Los Angeles, had a powerful impact on the spatial edge configurations within a particular locale. Space turn in the United States. Critical geographers such as in this example appears as both matter and meaning, David Harvey, Denis Cosgrove, Doreen Massey, and i.e., as simultaneously tangible and intangible, as a Derek Gregory, among many others, started a set of social circumstances and physical landscapes renaissance and renewal of the study of space and and as a constellation of discourses that simulta- spatiality in the humanities and the social sciences. neously reflected, constituted, and at times under- Recent scholarship in these fields has reinvigorated mined, the hegemonic social order. The intent is to their inquiries by engaging spatial praxis across time demonstrate how multidisciplinary and interdisci- and, by doing so, contributed to the interdisciplinary plinary scholarship can be facilitated by paying perspective that has transformed the methodology, attention to the unique of circumstances that define pedagogy, research and university agendas in many places within given historical moments. As seen in countries. Beyond the literal and metaphorical use of key concepts from human geography (e.g., ‘‘space,’’ ‘‘place,’’ and ‘‘mapping’’) to address the spatiality of S. Arias (&) University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA culture and society, ‘‘the spatial turn is much more e-mail: [email protected] substantive, involving a reworking of the very notion 123 30 GeoJournal (2010) 75:29–41 and significance of spatiality to offer a perspective in Critical theory and interdisciplinarity which space is every bit as important as time in the unfolding of human affairs, a view in which geog- A point of convergence between disciplines in the raphy is not relegated to an afterthought of social humanities and social sciences has been provided by relations, but is intimately involved in their construc- critical theory, particularly the ideas of the Frankfurt tion’’ (Warf and Arias 2008). Here I want to argue School, French poststructuralists, and many other that the study of material and discursive forms of philosophers who have sought to show the multiple space and spatiality generates a common ground or meanings of space and the play of social relations place of encounters across the disciplines by provid- across geographic surfaces as they pertain to lan- ing a stronger basis of comparative studies where guage, identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and scholars can study cultures critically.1 At a moment power. Without doubt, critical theory has become when cultural studies and interdisciplinary the backbone of the cross-disciplinary dialogue that approaches are at the forefront of so many agendas, has enriched, diversified, and provided a theoretical the analysis of space and spatiality has strengthened apparatus to academic scholarship. At the forefront of scholarship, built bridges, stimulated debates, and interdisciplinary research are the complexities, provided a more effective and holistic engagement silences, and problematic relationship between inter- with issues of social and political relevance. preters (i.e., readers, artists, viewers), texts, and the Soja’s notion of a socio-spatial dialectic is central worlds they represent. With the works of Lefebvre, to the understanding of space as a social product Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, as interpreted by rooted in practices, disciplinary power and ideology. critical human geographers, the entrance of spatiality His work combines a keen reassessment of critical into other fields has allowed for ‘‘lateral mappings’’ geography that demonstrates that the social sciences that resulted, in my view, of a more nuanced and the humanities have much in common. Scholars understanding of the relationships of history and from both camps read key figures of social thought, geography.2 Spatiality is interdisciplinary by nature particularly poststructuralists thinkers. Soja’s spatial and it has impacted other disciplines beyond history, hermeneutic points to a revision of the historicist such as religion, philosophy, anthropology, sociol- approaches that dominated academic training until ogy, education, media studies, and literature and the 1980s: ‘‘So unbudgeably has been this historicism cultural studies, to name just a few. Critical geogra- of theoretical consciousness that it has tended to phers have provided the tools to challenge historicist occlude a comparable critical sensibility to the approaches that view space as a given entity, inert spatiality of social life, a practical theoretical con- and naturalized, in order to engage in an interpreta- sciousness that sees the life world of being creatively tive human geography. Jonathan Murdoch (2006) located not only in the making of history but also in outlines the important influence of poststructuralism the construction of human geographies, the social in geography in order to understand its focus on production of space and the restless formation and power and social relations and networks and spatial reformation of geographical landscapes: social being entanglements: ‘‘It is a way of shifting spatial actively emplaced in space and time in an explicitly imaginaries so that new forms of geographical historical and geographical contextualization’’ practice come into being. From a post-structuralist (1989,10–11). It is precisely against this historicist perspective, no longer should geographical practitio- framework that I want to outline some key consid- ners be detached from heterogeneity…they should be erations of this renewed interest in space in recent research by humanities and social sciences scholars. I conclude by providing an example from my own research in the field of colonial studies. 2 An important contribution about geography’s vital role in the human and social sciences is Benko and Strohmayer’s Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity 1 As defined by Soja (1985) rethinking Lefebvre’s The (1997) which frames its essays around the spatial contributions Production of Space (1991), spatiality connotes ‘‘socially of theorists such as Foucault, Lacan, Hegel and Lefebvre who produced space, the created forms and relationships of a have contributed to the understanding of spatial aspects of broadly defined human geography.’’. postmodernism. 123 GeoJournal (2010) 75:29–41 31 subsumed within the complexities and multiplicities The history of science has also been influenced by of various kinds’’ (197). the spatial turn and the relational perspective of space In the last two decades, the spatiality of social life, that dominates poststructuralist geography. The past and present, has been addressed in a number of works of geographers such as David Livingstone works that view geography as a central element of (1995, 2003) and Charles Withers (2002) have analysis (Baker 2003; Falkheimer and Jansson 2006; provided an important geo-historical framework for Gieryn 2000; Low and Lawrence-Zu´n˜iga 2003; the study of the history of science during the Gulson and Symes 2007; Corrigan, 2008). The views Enlightenment. More studies abound on its situated of space within and among disciplines, of course, are nature, we must think of the relevance of museums, far from homogeneous: there is an enormous diver- zoos, gardens, laboratories at different moments in sity in how scholars of different disciplines, working history, and the reception and circulation of scientific from within widely different intellectual traditions, knowledge, thus contributing to the historical geog- relying on varying assumptions about ontology and raphy of science.3 epistemology, and foregrounding radically different Yet to a surprising degree, some scholars in fields parts of human activity, approach the significance of such as philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, art the spatial. Space thus comes to have multiple, history, literary criticism, even religious studies, have sometimes contradictory, layers