c Presence and absence and the structures of binary thought

"The so-called 'postmodern' thesis that changes are taking place in the structure of spatial understandings is by now widely known but vague ... [and] a thesis of a revolutionary coupure does not f i t with our everyday experiences of contemporary life ... Specific changes in the spatialisation of presence and absence can be demonstrated empirically, but the continuity of other aspects of Western spatial understanding is equally clear. It is the difference in the spatialisation of presence and absence that justifies making a distinction between m odernity and postmodernity."

(Rob Shields, A truant proximity: presence and absence in the space of modernity, 1992:181)

Since Aristotle Western understandings of being {ousia) have been defined in relation to the concept of presence {parousia). For those in the West, a central dualism of

presence and absence has come to define commonsense understandings of both being and

reality. In everyday life being is given as that which is present, or 'here'. It defines through negation an oppositional world of absence, a distant space of the Other (Shields, 1992).

This dualism provides the grounding metaphor for a wider system of binary

thought within which subjects are defined through a series of oppositions {black & white,

distinction (of class, for example). Crucially, it has also become tied to a number of spatial oppositions through which interpersonal relations are understood, and identity itself defined (cf Reichert, 1992). These oppositions gained primacy with the development of Cartesian thought, but a number of examples can also be traced in everyday life, ranging from here & there, inside & outside, us & them.

These dualisms, and the grounding opposition of inclusion & exclusion, are clearly not the same and have been held apart in other historical moments and places. For example, other cultures offer a quite different understanding of personal subjectivity and the relationship between subjectivity, the body and that space 'outside' (Geertz, 1973; Loy, 1992). Their form may also vary dramatically according to the scale of spatial analysis (Smith, 1993). 'National' identity, for example, often works through a hierarchy of geographical identities within which any individual may claim identification with different places at different times. In Britain, a person may variously hold a London, Southern, English or British identity, either simultaneously (in opposition to another nationality) or singularly, as each is positioned in opposition to the others.

But, since at least the Enlightenment, these oppositions have tended to become

conflated, such that a distinction between presence and absence has come to form the basis

of modern identity (Giddens, 1991). Freudian psychoanalysis, for example, locates the formation of the ego at that point at which the infant begins to differentiate between a position of near and far, an understanding taken to its limits in the school of Object Relations (cf Frosh, 19911?). These structures delineate a system of identity that is always defined from the centre (and in relation to a peripheral Other), though the precise character of this central position will vary historically according to material relations. This understanding is crucial because it moves systems of identity beyond the realm of the symbolic, and allows us to understand how the unequal social relations they articulate will always be defined by those in the position of most power. The exact form of individual oppositions can thus vary (Cresswell, 1993), as the characteristics of this peripheral Other are defined, according to need, and in relation to a wider set of power relations, by those at the centre. Though this can allow for a powerful system of oppression (Said, 1978), recognition of the fluidity of these systems also gives space to a more radical form of resistance, one that moves around a notion of positional mobility (Rose, 1993).

Where identity is understood as inevitably spatial it is easier to relate processes of spatial restructuring to the disruption of traditional systems of identity. A global television network, for example, has bought a previously distant Other into the everyday spaces of the familiar. These developments strike at the heart of the traditional

relationship between presence and absence, and thus at the very centre of Western binary thought. These developments are by no means new (cf chapter 2.1.a). At least as early as the Middle Ages a local social world was periodically 'invaded' by the products and peoples of distant and 'exotic' climes, most usually with the arrival of the local carnival (Featherstone, 1992). The carnivalesque has always been understood as a space of

transgression (Bahktin, 1984) within which the reigning social order, and those spatial

oppositions through which it is constructed, are placed in temporary abeyance. More generally, metropolitan life itself has always moved around the transgressive figure of the 'Stranger', someone who is physically near, whilst remaining spiritually remote (Simmel, 1908). But, until now such transgressions have tended to remain either temporally or spatially delimited, often consigned to a particular 'liminal zone' (Shields, 1991). Only in the contemporary period has "the philosopher's paradox of presence and absence ... [become]... part of everyday life" (Shields, 1992:195). The potential of such developments is clear. As they undermine a traditional set of spatial oppositions "a synthetic union of distance and presence, of the foreign and the intimate, becomes conceivable and practicable" (Shields, 1992:195).

It is also not difficult to relate these developments to the emergence of new epistemologies. It is exactly the transgression of these ordering discourses that is proposed by systems of postmodern thought. Derrida (1976), for example, argues that any presence always articulates its own absence, such that being can only be located in the play of différance (cf Massey, 1993a; and see chapter 2.1b). Rather than accept a discourse of centre and margin as universal and inevitable, deconstruction attempts to reveal the power relations that lie behind any claims for the 'centre' (Seldon, 1985). It is this act of 'excavation' that has driven a number of those accounts that have challenged the silencing of other subject positions explored in a feminist or post-colonial literature (see chapter 1.2).

But, connecting a re-organisation in the traditional relations of presence and absence to a destabilization of the unequal structures of binary thought may be premature. We need to recognize that those arenas within which the diverse processes of time-space compression are negotiated may themselves give space to the continuing deployment of quite traditional cultural understandings. Already, for example, doubts have been raised over the transgressive potential of a new 'commodification of Otherness'. In other arenas these transgressions may be even more unlikely. Often, for example, contact with these alternative spaces of Otherness only comes through the distancing gaze of television, and as Bauman (1988) understands:

"The frame of a cinema or TV screen staves off the danger of spillage more effectively still than tourist hotels and fenced-off camping sites; the one-sidedness

of communication further entrenches the Strangers on the screen as, essentially,

incommunicado''

(Bauman, 1988, quoted in Shields, 1992:193, his emphasis)

These technologies do not determine such a gaze (cf Bech, 1992). It is important, however, to recognize not only that the present re-organisation of presence and absence may already be 'framed' by a wider set of unequal power relations, but also that the form in which such restructuring is experienced may encourage those relations. Elsewhere, too, traditional systems of spatial understanding (and cultural exclusion) co-exist with new relations of presence and absence. The current rise in xenophobia clarifies how the traditional exclusions of national identity may even have been promoted by these new relations.

The strength of Shields's analysis is that he clarifies the connections between a period of spatial restructuring and challenges to the traditional structures of identity. Instead of attempting to explain these connections through the intangible experience of

place, he positions issues of identity within those more sophisticated understandings of

space and spatial relations recently emergent within geography (Gregory & Urry, 1985; Soja, 1980, 1985; Smith, 1984). The central opposition of presence and absence gains its power as space itself is filled with social meaning. The structures of binary thought are in effect inevitably 'spatialised' and, far from mystical, this process can be explained in reference to a familiar set of mechanisms provided in Lefebvre's analysis of a materially produced socio-spatialisation (Lefebvre, 1991; Shields, 1991).^ At the same time Shields draws attention to the fact that the current re-organisations of presence and absence have not, or not yet, led to the complete dismantlement of other systems of cultural exclusion, as they are themselves always negotiated within an older set of (spatial) understandings. But, beyond the fact that, like Harvey and Massey, Shields's argument has yet to be opened to empirical study, there are a number of problems with his analysis. Curiously, for example, despite drawing upon these more sophisticated models of space. Shields fails to understand how the same social actor might negotiate the re-organisations of presence and absence within quite different, though mutually constitutive, worlds. These worlds are undoubtedly connected to those different arenas within which such processes are experienced. Using a fax machine, for example, is qualitatively different from physically undertaking an act of embodied travel. Where the first traverses

^ These relations are formed within the interstices of spatial practice, representations of space, and spaces of representation, all three being collapsed into that 'material abstraction' that makes up a Western spatial consciousness. See Shields (1989, 1991).

'imaginary space' the second moves one materially across space (though one equally filled with imagination). Within these different spaces individuals might negotiate the relations of presence and absence, and thus their connections with a traditional set of cultural understandings, rather differently - just as the business trip and holiday may afford rather different experiences of the same place. Where Shields himself has recognized space as fluid, multiple and laden with meaning(s) (Shields, 1989,1991,1992), this conceptualization needs to be carried to an understanding of the re-organisations of presence and absence.

Further, though drawing attention to the unequal social relations inherent to a re­ organisation of presence and absence (in the continued framing of a televisual Other, for example). Shields fails to distinguish how different social actors might be rather differently positioned in relation to these processes within the space of the 'centre' itself. Attention needs to be drawn, for example, to the differentiated power relations that communication technology itself articulates (Livingstone, 1990) and a wider sociology of these processes constructed across all experiential arenas. It is this task that the current thesis undertakes (chapter 1.3).

Crucially, however. Shields does recognize that any change in the relations of presence and absence also necessitates a shift in traditional understandings of time and temporality (Shields, 1992). This is vital because it is those connections that a thesis of time-space compression makes between processes of spatial restructuring, a changing sense of time, and the impact of these changes on traditional understandings of identity that is the most radical aspect of the thesis.

Whilst presence is 'spatial' (in the sense of proximity) it is also temporal, designating a sense of 'nowness'. Within a traditional understanding of presence and absence a movement from one space to another also necessitated a movement through

time. This model in turn necessitated an atomistic understanding of time within which

time could be divided into a discrete sense of the 'past', 'present' and 'future'.^ But, with

the sim ultaneity of the contemporary world this relationship may have been irrevocably

undermined. For example, where communication technologies can now reach

^ Though this relationship too has been subject to a critique similar to Derrida's call for

différance. Lyotard, for example, has argued that any understanding of the 'present' inevitably draws upon the simultaneous recognition of that moment's 'past' (and 'future'). For Lyotard et al

(1988), in this sense a traditional understanding of time as a series of continually passing 'nows' always draws attention to that absence (the past) conceived of in the 'present', and this destabilizes traditional understandings of time. The critique is in fact an old one, and it is exactly these sorts of issues that concerned a number of thinkers at the turn of the last century (Kem, 1983) driven by the processes of time-space compression (see below).

instantaneously across the divisions of space-time they can also put one in contact with a time different from one's own. These developments may have rendered a commonsense understanding of time's linear structure unstable, and if so are liable to have an impact upon self identity beyond even those traced with processes of 'spatial' restructuring (the two in reality being inseparable).

Since few geographers have looked at these issues in any detail, I shall consider these 'temporal' aspects of time-space compression at some length. And because geographers may be rather less familiar with arguments concerning the nature of time than those associated with concepts of space, I have prefigured my discussion with a broad introduction that explores both the importance of these issues in general (section 2.2a), and introduces some of the key theoretical debates around the nature of time itself (section 2.2b).

PART 2