| One can hardly begin to think about the concept of space without already unwittingly taking sides in an ancient philosophical debate. The discussion of space and its relationship to other philosophical, social, and political concepts is rooted in a philosophical tradition that has long contested the very limits of what we can ask about it. For Aristotle, space could be contrasted explicitly with knowable "concepts;" Kant would continue this tradition, discussing space primarily as a prerequisite for our understanding of concepts rather than as a concept that can be understood in itself. Others considered space a more or less settled and uninteresting object of consideration: in all of the exhaustive Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions space only briefly, and primarily as an analogy for understanding the more complex issue of time. And as space is denied any position as an object of debate or even of philosophical consideration, the ideologies and methodologies based upon it (such as topography and even anthropology) become cemented in an aura of clarity. In order to challenge the dominant understanding of space assumed by Western tradition, and the hierarchy of metropolis and periphery that it implies, non-Western (and non-metropolitan) intellectuals have sought ways of tearing down and reconstructing space. This project looks at the construction of space, and of spatial and topographical metaphors, as a way of confronting hegemonic ideology, specifically in early-to-mid twentieth-century Japan and Latin America. It traces attempts to invert the established hierarchical relationship of the European metropolis to its periphery, and the ways in which those attempts inevitably fall short of a coherent call for thoroughgoing change; it then moves on to those "peripheral" authors who attempt to challenge the very paradigm of center and periphery, and to explore the paradoxes and aporias that challenge entails. |
