Place-in-space / space-in-place

theories of the border

pp. 16-39

in: Richard Robinson, Narratives of the European border, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

This chapter traces the influence and recurrence of Heidegger's idea of dwelling-in-place, which he explores in his essay "Building Dwelling Thinking". Although Heideggerian place has been influential in defining a post-war theoretical dialectic between place and space, the dominance of the spatial mode in much academic thought and discourse has required an opposition to Heidegger. This is perhaps most obvious in David Harvey's notion of post-national "becoming", rather than national "being", as an escape from the globalised economy. In that branch of postcolonial theory animated by post-structuralism, perhaps best represented by Homi K. Bhabha, the trope of the border (and its cognates of liminality, marginality and in-betweenness) is used as a spatial and not a "platial" figure.¹ Both Harvey and Bhabha make use of Heidegger, but in different ways.