Inner vs. Outer Territory

Abstract

The notion of a homogeneous, qualitatively indifferent space, viewed as the geometrical locus of reciprocal positioning among objects, which in consequence is unchanging from any point of observation, is an abstraction which is appropriate only to particular fields of analysis. In political activity, and more generally in human relations, however, space — or territory — has hardly ever been viewed as homogeneous. This is so today because, while we are ‘Euclidean’ and rational beings when dealing with problems of geometry or physics, we are not when facing other persons or other political communities. This was even more true in the period which is the subject of this study, when ideas and symbols in official texts found a free application that in modern political documents tends to be less obvious — partly hidden by rewriting in the terms of hegemonic rational thought.¹