Space, Time, and the Articulation of a Place in the World: The Philosophical Context

Abstract

The question of space is fundamentally a question of orientation: to take up space is to have a location facing toward or away from other places. Space is, in that sense, relative to a place, a location from which and toward which it is. In this directedness toward another place, every location is a place contingent to another. The contingency of place is twofold: the orientation from this place and not another, the priority therefore of this place as the location orientated toward other places, is the result of historically accountable, but specific, reasons; and, second, the place is contingent in the sense of touching upon (contingere) another place in relation to which it is. To be in place is to be in this place rather than that place, to be in this time not another possible time, and in consequence to be in a time and a space that is both contingent and inescapable. Such emplacement is a being within articulations of space and time. Again the twofold meaning of this term is helpful: space and time are articulated in place in the sense that the latter appears as separated into joints, as structured according to differences that constitute continuities of space, space as places; second, these joints make up the divisions, the boundaries of space that are marked by names, but also by remembrances and haunting presences of past events and of future hopes and fears.