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Understanding Place

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Place, Space and Hermeneutics

Part of the book series: Contributions to Hermeneutics ((CONT HERMEN,volume 5))

Abstract

Phenomenological interest in place has been focused most intensely on the claim that human experience is essentially bound to place. The phenomenological approach typically pursues the analysis of the essential or universal structures of our experience as worldly or bodily situated subjects. Place, however, trades in and relies on the particularity and contingency of the life world. This raises the question as to how the orientation toward the universal affects place, and how this relates to an alternative approach that takes place as its point of departure. As an attempt to answer this question I shall introduce an exterophenomenological approach toward understanding place as the grounding structure of experience. The result will be to show how place itself can be used as a methodological framework of understanding, thus as a hermeneutical tool.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cited from the back cover of Malpas’ Experience and Place (1999). Malpas’ book draws on a number of classical conceptions of place in literature and philosophy of which phenomenological conceptions are the most prominent.

  2. 2.

    This question goes back to suggestions for this book project made by Janz. I am grateful for useful comments he made on the first draft of this chapter.

  3. 3.

    See, for instance, Robbins and Aydede (2009; p. 3ff); Gallagher (2009), Adams and Aizawa (2009, 78ff); see also Thompson (2007), Smith and Thomasson (2005), Malpas (1999, 11 ff.) for discussions comparing continental and analytical views.

  4. 4.

    Like Malpas (1999, 15ff, 33; 2006, pp. 3ff) I focus on Heidegger and expand on Malpas’ view by arguing that experience is grounded in but also by place.

  5. 5.

    My understanding of the way these theories treat representation is drawn from Aydede’s (2005, 5–30) discussion. See particularly Tye 1997, 332–333 in Aydede 2005, p. 25.

  6. 6.

    See Malpas 2006, pp. 27 ff.

  7. 7.

    Malpas (1999, 8, 32 ff.) and especially Malpas (2006, 2, 27ff) is justified in arguing that place is the central concept in Heidegger’s thought, at least, what Being and Time is concerned, in contrast to Casey’s view (Casey 1997, 243 ff.) that Heidegger treats place in indirect fashion.

  8. 8.

    See Malpas (1999, 33; 2006, 58ff; 2014, 15 ff.). See also Malpas’ (2006, 19 ff.) defence against criticisms that Heidegger holds a nationalist notion of place qua “Heimat” as “homeland”.

  9. 9.

    The next exposition on townships is based on my analysis in Olivier 2015.

  10. 10.

    See Wheeler 2013, 19 and Dreyfus 1990, 100–102.

  11. 11.

    See Heidegger 1962, 94 ff.

  12. 12.

    Like Inwood (1999, p. 2), I take the English translation “care” to capture the encompassing meaning of the German Sorge.

  13. 13.

    This exposition of “struggle” is a reworked version of my discussion in Olivier 2015. “Struggle” is also the term Swartz (2009: p. 166) uses to describe the dominant mode of being in a township.

  14. 14.

    See Dreyfus (1990), in Wheeler 2013, p. 33.

  15. 15.

    A billion people worldwide are believed to live in shacks, and if Mike Davis in his book Planet of Slums is right, most people will in the future (Davis 2006, 19ff, 24 ff.) See also The Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (Engen and Nyers 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Fort Hare, East London, South Africa

    Abraham Olivier

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  1. Abraham Olivier
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Correspondence to Abraham Olivier .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

    Bruce B. Janz

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Olivier, A. (2017). Understanding Place. In: Janz, B. (eds) Place, Space and Hermeneutics. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52214-2_2

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