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12/03/2019





MICHEL DE CERTEAU MAKES THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN “SPACE” OR ESPACE AND “PLACE” OR LIEU. ︎

“Thus,” he says, “space is composed of intersections of mobile elements,” that is, directions, velocities, and time. Although both terms, according to de Certeau’s usage, do differentiate between two different perceived fields or areas, both “space” and “place” may refer to one particularity, though focus in on two different aspects of the same thing, where “place” refers to a location and “space” refers to what de Certeau calls a “practiced place.” What lies before you, then, is both and neither, which is what Merleau-Ponty presumably referred to by asserting that “space is existential” and “existence is spatial.”
“This experience is a relation to the world; in dreams and in perception, and because it probably precedes their differentiation, it expresses ‘the same essential structure of our being as a being situated in relationship to a milieu’—being situated by a desire, indissociable from a ‘direction of existence’ and implanted in the space of a landscape.”  ︎ 
“From this point of view ‘there are as many spaces as there are distinct spatial experiences.’ The perspective is determined by a ‘phenomenology’ of existing in the world.” 3

NOTHING IN THIS BOOK IS TRUE