2.1 Space
Based on the previous one, it can be noted that the end of the modern
era can be linked to a new interpretation of the concept of space,
started by Foucault (1967) and Lefevre (1968), and given geographical
form by Harvey (1969) and Soja (1973). At the beginning of this brief
introduction to Foucault’s geography, we have to go back to two
concepts. The first relates to the geographic understanding of space and
its historical and evolutionary development.
Space as a term has a long tradition of use, from ancient cosmogonic
plays (Aristotle) to the new century-old as sound of scientific
thinking. That ascent began with ”methodical suspicion” (Descartes), and
continued to strongly contradict the two concepts. The first is the
absolute space, advocated by Newton (space as a ”container” for objects,
defined by coordinates x, y, z), and the second is a relative space,
advocated by Leibnitz (he denies the reality of a space independent of
the mind, i.e. considers it the result of the relationship between
things). The overcoming of this dichotomy, temporarily, will be overcome
through the transcendental aesthetic of space and its metaphysical
testing (Kant) i.e. what implies Kantianism as the concept of space.
(Mutabdzija, 2020: 16)
From a handful of Foucault’s works11Other places,
Questions to M. Foucault on geography , two lectures from January
1976., Archaeology of knowledge. emerge the core theoretical
issues of geographical development in which the question of space is a
central thread. This was also a light-motif recognized in the
books22Discipline and punish, The Birth of a Clinic, A
History of Madness in the age of classicism. that depicts the
initial set or ”Bachelard’s poetics of space”33In this we see an
analogy with other authors, e.g. for G. Deleuze is cartography and
topology, for F. Braudel it is a cascading hypsometric layout, for E.
Said it is borders, and for P. Matvejevic it is bays or scenes, ports
or events. in which Foucault ”will place positioning, topographical
layout, cartographically depict the dramaturgy of an individual scene –
dramaturgy of a scene/event that is always spatially located”. For
Foucault, it’s a space:
”which may even be shrouded in phantasm; the space of our primary
perception, of our dreams, of our passions melted in itself by the
qualities that are almost inherent in it: it is a space light, ethereal,
transparent, or a space dark, rough, crowded; it is a space of heights,
a space of peaks, or on the contrary a space of bottoms, mud, a space
that flows like spring water, a space that can be motionless, strong
like stone or crystal” (Foucault, 2005: 30-31).
According to Foucault (Ibidem, 31) ”it is possible that our lives are
again governed by a number of untouchable contradictions, which
institutions and practices do not have the courage to strike”, and he
recognizes them as ”the opposition between public and private space,
between family and social space, between cultural and utilitarian space,
between leisure space and work space; they are all instigated for the
sake of a covert sacralization. ” In book Discipline and Punish(2010), Foucault emphasizes “socio-space and the ways in which time,
space, and architecture are intertwined in the interrelationships of
practice and truth”. In essence, the book deals with the reform of the
system of punishment at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the
19th century. in France, when there are major changes in the traditional
judiciary in Europe, which is a kind of genealogy44For Foucault,
it is layered knowledge that represents the unity of erudite knowledge
and local memory, and Huxley defines it as a method for discovering
exercises of power, involved in setting certain regimes of truth and
valorization of subordinate knowledge. More about this concept in
Chapter 4. of today’s scientific-judicial system on which the
criminal government relies. Through the functionally connected four
chapters of the book (Public torture, Punishment, Discipline, Prison),
Foucault explored changes in punitive methods and explained the specific
way of subjugating the individual55A broader review of the
interpretation of space, see: G. Mutabdzija, Premodern Geophilosophy
(2020), which led to man becoming a cognitive subject of scientific
discourse. We wonder what is geographical in the description of the
content of this book and what is its significance for the theoretical
issues of geography? The answer lies in defining what is described as a
”spatial turn” in the social sciences, and what lies in Foucault’s other
works. According to Marinovic and Ristic (2016: 42), this was achieved
through the scene / space in which the obedient penitentiary body is
located, which identifies with the place. The ”practice of the brutality
of public punishment and execution” is deeply ingrained in him. It is
the body / place into which the epoch will immerse its gloomy
”dramaturgy of the ritual of punishment.” This body is at the same time
a space (now it is also a political-geographical framework) in which the
royal body expresses its sovereignty over an individual subordinate
body.
In the book The Birth of the Clinic , space is presented through
the concepts of language and death, where ”space is ruled by a view of
bodies and disease”, which will be transformed into knowledge and
medical practice. It is “space / view; space / language; space /
death”. In this new (clinical) scenography, a new type of space was
born in which the dramaturgy of the sick body is located. But that space
is at the same time a historical point where ”the old type of
classifying medicine, the old nosology, will be broken.” In theHistory of Madness , the new scenography is a dramaturgical scene
of insanity, which is connected with the painting Ship of Madmen ,
by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. For a long time, madness was not
treated in Europe, and patients were placed in ”hydrographic
scenography, in the geography of rivers and the topography of their
flows through which a mindless load floats and wanders, from city to
city”. It is a burden with which Europe, on the eve of the
Enlightenment, did not know what to do, except to push it further, to
another place. That is why Foucault (Ibidem, 79) said that probably
European cities often saw the docking of these lunatic ships.
Diagram 1: Geographical evolution of the concept of space