The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning
The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning
250 The experience of space and timeIPlate 3.6 Boulee's eighteenth-century design for Newton's Cenotaphpioneered the rational and ordered sense of architectural space later taken upby modernism.population of the earth, for the first time in human history, to belocated within a single spatial frame (see plate 3.7). The grid that thePtolemaic system had provided as a means to absorb the inflow ofnew information had by now been corrected and filled out, so that along line of thinkers, from Montesquieu to Rousseau, could begin tospeculate on the material and rational principles that might order thedistribution of populations, ways of life, and political systems on thesurface of the globe. It was within the confines of such a totalizingvision of the globe that environmental determinism and a certainconception of 'otherness' could be admitted, even flourish. The diversityof peoples could be appreciated and analysed in the secureknowledge that their 'place' in the spatial order was unambiguouslyknown. In exactly the same way that Enlightenment thinkers believedthat translation from one language to another was always possiblewithout destroying the integrity of either language, so the totalizingvision of the map allowed strong senses of national, local, andpersonal identities to be constructed in the midst of geographicaldifferences. Were not the latter after all entirely compatible with thedivision of labour, commerce, and other forms of exchange? Werethey not also explicable in terms of different environmental conditions?I do not want to idealize the qualities of thought that
252 The experience of space and timeresulted. The environmentalist explanations of difference put forwardby Montesquieu and Rousseau hardly appear enlightened, while thesordid facts of the slave trade and the subjugation of women passedEnlightenment thinkers by with hardly a murmur of protest. Nevertheless,I do want to insist that the problem with Enlightenmentthought was not that it had no conception of 'the other' but that itperceived 'the other' as necessarily having (and sometimes 'keepingto') a specific place in a spatial order that was ethnocentricallyconceived to have homogeneous and absolute qualities., The recording of time by the chronometer was no less totalizing in\ its implication for thought and action. Increasingly seen as a mech, anical division fixed by the swing of the pendulum, time's arrow wasconceived to be linear both forwards and backwards. The conceptionof past and future as linearly connected by the ticking away of theclock allowed all manner of scientific and historical conceptions toflourish. On such a temporal schema it was possible to see retrodictionand prediction as symmetrical propositions, and to formulatea strong sense of potentiality to control the future. And even thoughit took many years for geological and evolutionary time scales to beaccepted, there is a sense in which such time scales were alreadyimplicit in the very acceptance of the chronometer as the way oftelling time. Even more important, perhaps, was the significance ofsuch a conception of homogeneous and universal time to conceptionsof the rate of profit (return on stock of capital over time, said AdamSmith), the rate of interest, the hourly wage, and other magnitudesfundamental to capitalist decision-making. What all this adds up to isthe by now well accepted fact that Enlightenment thought operatedwithin the confines of a rather mechanical 'Newtonian' vision of theuniverse, in which the presumed absolutes of homogeneous time andspace formed limiting containers to thought and action. The breakdownin these absolute conceptions under the stress of time-spacecompression was the central story of the birth of nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century forms of modernism.I think it useful, however, to pave the path to understanding thebreak into modernist ways of seeing after 1848 with a considerationof the tensions that lay within Enlightenment conceptions of space.The theoretical, representational, and practical dilemmas are alsoinstructive in interpreting the subsequent move towards postmodernism.Consider, as a starting point, de Certeau's contemporary critiqueof the map as a 'totalizing device.' The application of mathematicalprinciples produces 'a formal ensemble of abstract places' and 'collateson the same plane heterogeneous places, some received fromTime and space of the Enlightenment project 253tradition and others produced by observation.' The map is, in effect,a homogenization and reification of the rich diversity of spatialitineraries and spatial stories. It 'eliminates little by little' all traces of'the practices that produce it.' While the tactile qualities of themediaeval map preserved such traces, the mathematically rigorousmaps of the Enlightenment were of quite different qualities. Bourdieu'sarguments also apply. Since any system of representation is itself afixed spatial construct, it automatically converts the fluid, confused,but nonetheless objective spaces and time of work and social reproductioninto a fixed schema. 'Just as the map replaces the discontinuouspatchy space of practical paths by the homogeneous, continuousspace of geometry, so the calendar substitutes a linear, homogeneous,continuous time for practical time, which is made up ofincommensurable islands of duration each with its own rhythm.' Theanalyst, Bourdieu continues, may win 'the privilege of totalization'and secure 'the means for apprehending the logic of the systemwhich a partial or discrete view would miss,' but there is also'every likelihood that he will overlook the change in status to whichhe is subjecting practice and its product,' and consequently 'insist ontrying to answer questions which are not and cannot be questionsfor practice.' By treating certain idealized conceptions of space andtime as real, Enlightenment thinkers ran the danger of confining thefree flow of human experience and practice to rationalized configurations.It is in these terms that Foucault detects the repressiveturn in Enlightenment practices towards surveillance and controLThis provides a useful insight into 'postmodernist' criticism of the'totalizing qualities' of Enlightenment thought and the 'tyranny' ofperspectivism. It also highlights a recurring problem. If social life isto be rationally planned and controlled so as to promote socialequality and the welfare of all, then how can production, consumption,and social interaction be planned and efficiently organized exceptthrough the incorporation of the ideal abstractions of space and timeas given in the map, the chronometer, and the calendar? Beyond thisthere lies another problem. If perspectivism, for all its mathematicalrig our, constructs the world from a given individual viewpoint, thenfrom whose perspective is the physical landscape to be shaped? Thearchitect, designer, planner could not preserve the tactile sense ofmediaeval representations. Even when not directly dominated byclass interests, the producer of space could only produce 'alien art'from the standpoint of its inhabitants. Insofar as the social planningof high modernism reincorporated these elements into its practicalapplications, it likewise stood to be accused of the 'totalizing vision'of space and time to which Enlightenment thinking was heir. The
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- Page 105 and 106: 12IntroductionMarshall Berman (1982
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250 <strong>The</strong> experience <strong>of</strong> space and timeIPlate 3.6 Boulee's eighteenth-century design for Newton's Cenotaphpioneered the rational and ordered sense <strong>of</strong> architectural space later taken upby modernism.population <strong>of</strong> the earth, for the first time in human history, to belocated within a single spatial frame (see plate 3.7). <strong>The</strong> grid that thePtolemaic system had provided as a means to absorb the inflow <strong>of</strong>new information had by now been corrected and filled out, so that along line <strong>of</strong> thinkers, from Montesquieu to Rousseau, could begin tospeculate on the material and rational principles that might order thedistribution <strong>of</strong> populations, ways <strong>of</strong> life, and political systems on thesurface <strong>of</strong> the globe. It was within the confines <strong>of</strong> such a totalizingvision <strong>of</strong> the globe that environmental determinism and a certainconception <strong>of</strong> 'otherness' could be admitted, even flourish. <strong>The</strong> diversity<strong>of</strong> peoples could be appreciated and analysed in the secureknowledge that their 'place' in the spatial order was unambiguouslyknown. In exactly the same way that Enlightenment thinkers believedthat translation from one language to another was always possiblewithout destroying the integrity <strong>of</strong> either language, so the totalizingvision <strong>of</strong> the map allowed strong senses <strong>of</strong> national, local, andpersonal identities to be constructed in the midst <strong>of</strong> geographicaldifferences. Were not the latter after all entirely compatible with thedivision <strong>of</strong> labour, commerce, and other forms <strong>of</strong> exchange? Werethey not also explicable in terms <strong>of</strong> different environmental conditions?I do not want to idealize the qualities <strong>of</strong> thought that
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