Oldal 15 [15]
Orientation: Approaches to Place in Northern Irish Poetry ] 13
is a major shift in approach. The spatial turn does not represent a full swing of
the pendulum from the total hegemony of time to that of space but rather a re¬
balancing attempt that acknowledges the significance of space in the interpre¬
tation of experience. Taking Michel Foucault as his guide, Edward Soja traces
the respective understanding of space and time since the 19" century, empha¬
sising the essentially antithetical interpretation of the two, with space seen
as “fixed, dead, undialectical”™ and time as “richness, life, dialectic”.'” Writing
in the 1980s, Soja would point out the consequent movement, perhaps even a
shift, towards an emphatic position of geography in critical theory for a syn¬
optic handling of space and time, with the prospect of “a more balanced criti¬
cal theory that re-entwines the making of history with the social production
of space.”!? What necessitates such a shift is the predominantly physical view
of space which “tended to imbue all things spatial with a lingering sense of
primordiality and physical composition, an aura of objectivity, inevitability,
and reification.” The result of such an approach is essentially a misconstrued
epistemology that does not and cannot regard space as a social construct:
Space as a physical context has generated broad philosophical interest and
lengthy discussions of its absolute and relative properties (a long debate
which goes back to Leibniz and beyond), its objectifiable geometry, and its
phenomenological essences. But this physical space has been a misleading
epistemological foundation upon which to analyse the concrete and sub¬
jective meaning of human spatiality. Space in itself may be primordially
given, but the organisation, and meaning of space is a product of social
translation, transformation, and experience.”
This argument, together with Soja’s use of the phrase “production of space” al¬
ludes to the ideas set forth by Henri Lefebvre, proposing a “science of space”
that could account for a more comprehensive understanding of space from its
mathematical implications to its realisation as part of the social context of exist¬
ence." The proposed theory would represent a realisation of unity between
fields that Lefebvre terms physical, mental and social space. By physical space
he refers to “nature, the Cosmos”,”” by mental various “logical and formal ab¬
stractions”,'® whereas in dealing with social space “we are concerned with logi¬
co-epistemological space, the space of social practice, the space occupied by
sensory phenomena, including products of the imagination such as projects
11
Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London:
Verso, 1989), 11
Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 11
Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 11
Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 79
Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 79-80
16 cf. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell,
1991), 8-9
17 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 11
18 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 11
12
13
14
15