In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

CENTER VS. PERIPHERY 277
Educational Reforms in Europe.'" A large majority of the program's
topics, however, refer to non-European cultures, and are contextualized
by the even more future-oriented theme of the internationalization of
politics: "Dr. James B. Pratt, Williamstown: 'The Nature of Present-Day
Buddhism.' Mr. Rabrindra C. Nag, Calcutta, India: 'The Social and
Political Philosophy of Gandhi.' William R. Shepherd, Ph.D., New York,
N.Y.: 'Friendship between the Americas.' Rev. Ley ton Richards, Birmingham,
England: 'The Heavy Price of World Peace'" (Mount Holyoke,
20-21).
As long as the distinction between Center and Periphery is generally
accepted on both sides, it establishes stable relations of geographic distance
on the map and, as a premise for everyday life, gives people the
impression that they inhabit a homogeneous world space. [see Center =
Periphery (Infinitude)] Such a homogeneous, geometric space is a space
that neither undergoes quantitative changes nor ever interferes with
human actions and behavior. It is under the assumption that people live
in a homogeneous space that the burgeoning of the world's population
generates feelings-partly justified and partly phobic-of collective
claustrophobia and imminent chaos. For example, the mayor of Berlin,
who is politically responsible for one of the most rapidly growing towns
in the world, is obsessed with establishing a normative spatial order by
attributing discrete functions to each of the city'S different neighborhoods:
"Vitally important problems call for a solution ... What matters
is a new division between residential, industrial, and commercial sectors
of the city. The present chaos makes it necessary to overcome such
disorder with a new mapping" (Schrader and Schebera, 140). Immense
urbanization projects that become every architect's dream, high-rise
buildings that develop into virtually independent systems, new traffic
regulations, increasingly complex railway schedules-these are only a
few of the numerous practical responses stimulated by future-oriented
fears of population growth and designed to prevent the ultimate demographic
catastrophe. [see Automobiles, Elevators, Engineers, Railroads]
Geopolitics is the ideologico-political answer to the same set of concerns
and questions. It lies at the point where a Euclidean conception of
world space comes together with a largely mythological notion of history
[see Authenticity vs. Artificiality] and with the realization that the imperialist
process of conquest and distribution has come to an end. Explicitly
acknowledging these three frame-conditions, the Italian government be-