IS There such thing as SPace/Place duality?
"Cartography is description, not a journey. The door, of course, is not on the continent but in the mind; not a physical place-though it is-but a place in the imagination" Brand 97
Here is my attempt to answer, or rather to ponder upon the rhetorical question whether there is such thing as space/place duality. I thought the quote above would be a good starting point to this discussion as it opens "this door" of possibilities where imagination and reality get superimposed upon each other. Only through this cognitive, or epistemological standpoint, we can grasp a possibility of how space and place become a totality, rather than duality. It sounds complicated, but it is quite simple to understand. We can draw a parallel between the body and the mind and place and space. How can they be separated from each other? It's like saying that arms are something completely opposite from legs. They both belong to the same 'totality' of the body. Another example would be thinking of the mind as something outside the body, which Descartes tried to convince us to do. But again, it makes no sense, as thinking is a process that needs a space to take place in. It is again this totality that makes it possible. Imagine thinking of flying while rock climbing...If you try, the most likely thing to happen is that you are going to fall of a cliff. Mind goes along with the body, and vice versa. It is the same with space and place.
How could we know of space as such without being in some place a priori?! Or how can we come to be in place without space? It is like being on an airplane, a well defined place (a seat, for example), and, yet, being in an indefinable space (airspace). Boundaries of the former are well defined in accordance with the airplane configuration, while boundaries of the latter are limitless. Nevertheless, by being in both we realize what one is, and what the other is not. Even if we try to separate one from another, there is a certain foundational premises that we take for granted as the existence of a place, or an abstraction of space. And yet, by doing so, we can't separate them. It is like trying to separate clouds from the sky.
So, I guess, my argument is that space/place is a totality, a dynamic and complex. Space is different from place, but it does not exist separately and mutually exclusive from it. They both compliment each other. Boundaries between them are fuzzy; sometimes imaginary, sometimes deliberately constructed; sometimes invented; sometimes invisible...People can have as many interpretations as they wish. It is a rhetorical question.
Olga Shugurova