Space, Place and the Subject

Exploring Three Approaches

PAOLO FURIA

Abstract
This paper aims to show the connection between space, place and subjectivity.
According to how we conceive space, place and their relations, it is possible to
affirm a certain understanding of what has been called “the subject” in the
framework of Cartesian, Kantian and Husserlian legacies. Quantitative geog-
raphy takes the transcendental subject—characterized by a methodical de-
tachment from its environment, constituted as an opposite object—for granted.
Many and various reactions to this subject-object model can be traced within
the social sciences (and within human geography in particular) in the last four
decades. In this paper I propose an overview of these reactions and then provide
a new conceptual articulation for them, based on the kind of subjectivity they
assume. I have identified three overarching patterns, or meta-theories: one on-
tological, one critical and one phenomenological.

PLACES AND THE SUBJECT: A PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

Space and place have become highly significant for social theory over
the last few decades. A theoretical enrichment of these concepts has
been pursued not only by geographers, but also by architects, so-
ciologists, anthropologists, planners, political theorists, historians,
economists and philosophers. While efforts to collect many of these
contributions have been made,1 less attention was given to how, and to
what extent, the transdisciplinary debate on the notions of space and
place is of significance to philosophy. In the nineteenth and twentieth
century, philosophical inquiry was more focused on human finitude
and mortality, on time and temporality, than on the concepts of space
and place.2 According to the influential American geographer Edward

70
Soja, both philosophy and the social sciences have tended to focus on
time at the expense of space and place.3
The debate on the concepts of space and place is of major impor-
tance for the philosophical understanding of subjectivity. It is arguable
that the twentieth-century crisis of the Cartesian cogito and of the uni-
versal dream of the Enlightenment resulted in a new interest for the
situatedness of the human being.4 It is well known that the crisis of
the cogito has been widely discussed both within philosophy and the
human sciences. Existentialism and philosophical hermeneutics, on
the one hand, and structuralism and quantitative studies on the other,
have consolidated the crisis of the subject as it was conceived in the
Cartesian-Kantian tradition. Though different conceptions of what is
“the human” result have resulted from the outbreak of the modern uni-
versal subjectivity, all of them share a distrust towards what Lyotard
has called “the grand narratives” of modernity. A distrust concerning
especially the idea of an indefinite progress led by the ever-increasing
awareness and moral growth of humanity as a whole. The decline of
the idea of unlimited moral progress seems to be more widely shared
than the crisis of instrumental reason, whose shortcomings have been
pointed out only by post-structural or postmodern critics, but which is
playing a preponderant role in our “post-industrial” society. In one way
or another, twentieth-century philosophy and social science had to face
the problem of how time actually works. New concepts, drawn from
the analysis of contemporary changes such as post-history5 or super-
modernity,6 began to emerge, challenging the modern conception of
history as an ordered and oriented progress towards an intelligible end.
In a globalized world, temporality appears, at the same time, highly
accelerated and devoid of any historical, intelligible direction. Globali-
zation has been charged with both the disintegration of local commu-
nities and a guilty dismissal of the sense of memory. With the crisis of
the trust in moral progress, resistance against global homogenization is
mainly undertaken in the name of the locale. It is the very crisis of the
modern conception of a universal subject related to a universal history
that triggers a new concern for the concepts of space and place.
It seems a very important task, then, to make explicit the largely im-
plicit conceptions of place implied in common discourses. There are still
many underlying assumptions, in the current use of the words “place”

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 71

 and “space”, that require better conceptual explications and clarifica-
tion. Misunderstandings about the ways these concepts are used nec-
essarily lead to misunderstandings about the kind of subjectivity one
is supporting when making claims about the situatedness of human
beings and standing against standardisation. The age we live in raises
anew the question of the subject: if the universal, rational, transcen-
dental subject of modernity is not defensible any more, which kind of
subjectivity is then advocated against the homogenization triggered by
globalization? In other words, how should we properly understand the
situatedness of existence against the rootlessness of the global world?

SUBJECT AND SPACE. QUANTITATIVE GEOGRAPHY

First, it is critical to decide whether place should be considered with
respect to its ties to the social relations and the human agencies that
interact with it, or as an annex of space, understood as the neutral, ob-
jective dimension of extension. Of course, this is a central debate for
human geography.
In the 1950s and 1960s, space was widely considered as the neutral
backdrop for a wide range of human activities. The account of dimen-
sional space ushered in the rise of quantitative geography.7 According
to Fotheringam, Brunson and Charlton, quantitative geography deals
with the following activities: “the analysis of numerical spatial data;
the development of spatial theory; and the construction and testing
of mathematical models of spatial processes.”8 Through a broad appli-
cation of mathematical and statistical tools, graph theory, and, more
recently, sophisticated network analysis (where places are conceived
as “nodes” occupying certain “positions”),9 geography was shaped into
a positivist science looking for the general in the particular. It was a
far different account of geography from the former, more idiographic
one, which could be summed up in Chesterton’s claim that geography
should render the singularity of places through description: “A place is
not an abstraction, but an actuality.”10 Some authors talked of “quanti-
tative revolution” in reaction to the geographical description of singu-
lar places, and welcomed it as a “pivotal moment for human geography,
shaping it theoretically, methodologically and sociologically for many
years afterwards.”11 Within quantitative geography, spatial dynamics

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can be studied using three related concepts: direction, distance and
connection. Models and maps serve as tools providing an objective and
formal account of reality, with no concern for the affective, subjective
aspects, often labelled as non-scientific. This approach has also been
called “spatial separatism.”12
Philosophically, the notion of space as pure dimensionality can be
traced back to Descartes. Space is just where everything that brings the
attribute of extension exists: the bodies and the void. Simply put, space is
the res extensa, i.e. the counterpart of consciousness, the res cogitans.
The modern Cartesian subject, aspiring to master reality by means of
perfect and objective knowledge, entails the notion of absolute space
as its opposite. Cartesian objectivism has deeply influenced the aspira-
tions of positivist science and its basic understanding of space. Graph
theories and network analysis in geography lie on a Cartesian basis.
Philosopher Jeff Malpas, in discussing the Cartesian account of space
and its influence on modern conceptions of space and place, adds that:
“The idea of place as an open but bounded realm that has a character of
its own is hard to give sense to on such an account.”13 The Cartesian-
Newtonian idea of space as a neutral container of objects suits physical
theory, but poorly serves the purpose of understanding the deep inter-
twining of human agency and the state of places and space.
During the 1970s, there was a reaction against the objectivist ap-
proach to geography. It was the beginning of the so-called cultural
turn in social sciences, influenced by poststructuralist approaches.
According to authors such as Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Relph, geomet-
rical or spatial network analysis cannot in principle reflect the sphere
of meanings that structure both singular places and the subjective ex-
periences of these places. This perspective has triggered a multitude
of theories that interpret the nature, extent, modalities and contradic-
tions of this deep intertwining of the spatial and the human. Different
philosophical trends or subdisciplinary fields have affected the social
science theories on space and place, or have directly began to treat the
topic from various perspectives: Marxism, phenomenology, hermeneu-
tics and, more recently, environmental studies, cultural studies, post-
modernism, postcolonial studies, and applied ethics.
The theories inspired by these and other schools or trends share in
the fight against “spatial separatism”. On the one hand, the illusion of

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 73

 a transcendental subject, the clear eye of impersonal and exact knowl-
edge, undergoes a crisis; on the other hand, the multiple reactions
against “spatial separatism” seem to bring the agency of human sub-
jects to the fore, in order to achieve a richer understanding of space and
place. The very definitions of space and place will include a reference
to human subjects, just as the definition of human subjects will contain
a reference to place and space. However, the way the co-implication of
humankind, space and place is conceived heavily depends on the ad-
opted philosophical perspective. It is my opinion that, beyond the mul-
tiple individual perspectives on the intertwining of human, place and
space, there are some overarching patterns. There are meta-theories
that draw from a few basic philosophical assumptions, both in the
sense that the relevant philosophical standpoint has actually inspired
a certain number of theories, and that a number of theories can be sub-
sumed under a few philosophical statements or conceptions.
Considering that it is not easy to subsume the many theories pro-
vided by geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers
under a limited set of labels’, it would be appropriate to consider the
meta-theories I am going to outline as a set of philosophical ideal-types
that help to articulate the rich polysemy and pronounced contradictions
of the terms space, place and subject. The meta-theories I am putting
forward are the following: ontological, critical, and phenomenological.

THE ONTOLOGICAL PATTERN: BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

AND BELONGING
The ontological pattern has the following characteristics:

• Human subjects are conceived as “being-in” the world.

• Subjectivity is founded on place.
• Space as pure dimensionality is an abstraction serving technical
purposes, but it does not accurately represent the ontological
co-implication of human beings and places.

Martin Heideggerʼs Building Dwelling Thinking can be considered the

seminal text for the ontological pattern. The scope of its influence
ranges from architecture to human geography (with authors such as

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Tuan, Relph, Buttimer) and philosophy (with representatives such as
Casey and Malpas). Whereas architects have focused mostly on the
above-mentioned text, human geographers and philosophers have
extended their interest to the phenomenological work of the younger
Heidegger, underlining the importance of Husserlʼs legacy. Heidegger
has been considered as the first to pave the way for a phenomenological
account of space and place, against “spatial separatism”:

Heidegger supposed the Being of entities to be fundamentally bound

up with both their actual distance away from human beings who might
use them, and their perceived distance (as in Buberʼs existentialism)
away from human beings who might have a concern for them. Under-
stood in this light, Heideggerʼs philosophy challenges us to rethink
the whole of human geography in a manner that sees space, place
and environment as profoundly implicated in the biggest philosophi-
cal questions about the very Being of both human beings and every-
thing else accessible to human thoughts and actions.14

Heideggerʼs notion of Dasein, and his hermeneutic understanding

of the Enlightenment’s autonomous subject as an always rooted being-
in-the-world, have inspired many geographers looking for a definition
of spatiality that is not associated with mere measurable extension.
Heidegger developed this idea within an ontological framework, a fact
that remains under-discussed by many. Malpas maintains that only
the ontological perspective has the capacity to foster an “elucidation
of what place itself might be.”15 The same author also takes the view
that the ontological pattern is significantly different from other phe-
nomenological frames, such as Tuanʼs, considered to be too subjec-
tivist and emotivist, or Caseyʼs, claimed to be too indefinite. Malpas
offers a deeper insight into the meaning of Heideggerʼs expression
“being-in-the-world”:

To find ourselves always already in the world is to find our existence

always already given before us in the very encounter with ourselves,
with others, and with things, as that occurs in the place in which we
are. This being placed is identical with our existence; it is also that
which provokes the most fundamental mode of questioning—the

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 75

 mode of questioning that is the very opening up of possibility that is
the opening of the world.16

Place is taken to be a pivotal notion for understanding subjectivity, as

there is no subject without place. There is neither thinking nor ques-
tioning without place: it is place that provides us with the constitutive
limits of our thought. According to Malpas: “.  .  .  the idea of place is
the idea of an open and yet bounded realm that has a character of its
own . . . and that is structured in terms of the interconnection between
the elements that are found within it.”17 Human subjects are simply an
element of this interconnection, albeit a highly unique element, due
to Daseinʼs power of questioning and understanding. Still, no accent is
put on the proactive part subjects can play in order to change the na-
ture of the single place of their existence. Human agency is not denied
in Heidegger texts, nor in Malpasʼs: but the source of every possible
human thought and action remains its situatedness: “The sort of realm
at issue here is not dependent on the existence of subject, but is rather
a structure within and with respect to which subjectivity is itself es-
tablished.”18 The main difference between the ontological framework
and other phenomenological approaches is that, according to a broader
phenomenological tendency, experience gives structure to and is struc-
tured by place, in a mutual and dialectical interplay, whereas, according
to the ontological pattern, place gives structure to the subject to a far
greater degree than the contrary. In other words, I regard the ontologi-
cal pattern as the one where the emphasis is on the dependency of men
from the place they dwell in. As we shall see, the theories I shall collect
under the label “phenomenological” tend to emphasize both the pas-
sivity and the agency of the subject.
The gap between ontological dependency and phenomenologi-
cal interplay becomes more explicit in Heideggerʼs Building Dwelling
Thinking. This text successfully represents the ontological ideal-type
under consideration. What matters here is that this account accords
to the notion of authentic dwelling a priority over the creative acts of
building, priority which is a distinctive aspect of the ontological pat-
tern. Three central theses are expressed here: dwelling involves the in-
terplay of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals, what Heidegger calls the
“fourfold”; building follows and depends on dwelling, therefore it must

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respect the normative implications of good dwelling; modern rational-
ism has forgotten what good dwelling is.
Dwelling is properly defined as: “the way in which you are and I am,
the manner in which we humans are on the earth. . . . To be a human
being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell.”19 Scha-
low and Denker sum up Heideggerʼs claim as follows: “People may only
dwell if there is a place where they can be at home. Heidegger formally
indicates this abode as the fourfold.”20 The land we belong to, our
home, is the singular accomplishment of the “oneness”21 of the four:
the earth, the sky, the divinities, the mortals.22 The earth is “serving
bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising
up into plant and animal.”23 The sky is “the vaulting path of the sun,
the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the
yearʼs seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom
and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather.”24
The divinities are “the beckoning messengers of the godhead” and the
mortals are “the human beings. They are called mortals because they
can die. To die means to be capable of death as death.”25 Heidegger
maintains that human beings are in the fourfold by their dwelling. The
place we dwell in is the peculiar accomplishment of the fourfold that
implicates and encompasses mortals.26 To dwell implies the actions of
“sparing and preserving”: the land which gives birth to men must be
respected and preserved by human actions.27 Through this deep re-
spect, human beings acknowledge their debt to and dependence from
the land they belong with. Heideggerʼs conception does not neglect
human agency, but in the end, genuine and legitimate action consists
in a recognition and not in a transformation.
It follows that the only possible ontological notion of space is not
the absolute space standing opposite man, but the room needed for the
accomplishment of place, or location.

Spaces, and with them space as such, always provided for already with-
in the stay of mortals. Spaces open up by the fact that they are let into
the dwelling of man. To say that mortals are is to say that in dwelling
they persist through spaces by virtue of their stay among things and
locations. And only because mortals pervade, persist through, spaces
by their very nature are they able to go through spaces.28

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 77

 The ontological foreground of place, made up of particular “things and
locations”, over empty and absolute space, is established. The way for
the phenomenological priority of place over space, expressly stated in
Casey, is paved. However, once again, the ontological priority states
something more than a mere phenomenological priority. Within the
phenomenological framework, an epistemological priority is fixed, as
long as the bounded realm of what encompasses our experience is put
before the intellectual abstraction of space as pure dimension. This does
not necessarily entail a normative and axiological attitude, or at least
not to the same extent as in Heideggerʼs conception. At the beginning
of his text, he asks: “todayʼs houses may even be well planned, easy to
keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun, but—do the houses
in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them?”29 He
seems to imply that the answer is no, when he says, at the end:

However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening

the lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does not
lie merely in a lack of houses. The real plight of dwelling is in-
deed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also
than the increase of the earthʼs population and the condition of
the industrial workers. The real dwelling plight lies in this, that
mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they
must ever learn to dwell.30

According to Heideggerʼs conception of the history of Being as the his-

tory of its forgetting, and that late modernity still belongs to it, it is
arguable that in every phase of human history there is a forgetting of
Being: this is why “they must ever learn to dwell.” Heidegger gives the
following illustration of good dwelling:

Building accomplishes its nature in the raising of locations by the join-

ing of their spaces. Only if we are capable of dwellling, only then can
we build. Let us think for a while of a farmhouse in the Black Forest,
which was built some two hundred years ago by the dwelling of peas-
ants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and heaven,
divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things, ordered
the house.31

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As long as it embodies good dwelling, the old farmhouse in the Black
Forest, built in accordance with the characteristics of the land, does
not belong to the detached realm of substitutable buildings. It is incor-
porated into the very nature of Being: it is not possible to separate the
human construction from the natural landscape. The surrounding land-
scape is manifested, presented, revealed through the building itself.
Two final consequences can be drawn from Heideggerʼs perspective.
The first one is that here human agency is understood as ontologically
dependent on its pre-given context. Since good dwelling entails good
building which “preserves and spares” the landscape itself, it does not
seem correct to talk about either symbolic interactionism or enactiv-
ism in this case. The variations humans can apply to their birth context
seem to be limited. A pre-given context sets the boundaries of thinking
and action. The second consequence is that the determination of the
past has a heavier influence than the open possibilities of the future.
Place seems to be more of a destiny construct than a precarious con-
struct open to change. Though not expressly excluded by Heideggerʼs
theory, change is not even addressed. Sometimes, as said above, these
consequences of the ontological pattern have been overlooked. Refer-
ences to Heidegger abound, especially among those theorists whose
principal aim is to defend a place, a culture and a way of life from the
threat of the “planetary age.” But resistance to global space made in
the name of a bounded, traditional and unique place seems question-
able, as it adopts an ontological view that is not explicitly discussed.
This does not mean that one is obliged to choose between local identity
conceived in an essentialist way or the global standardisation of places.
Other conceptions of the interaction between human beings, space and
place can be formulated.

THE CRITICAL PATTERN: SPACE, PLACE AND IDEOLOGY

The critical framework has the following characteristics:

• space is constructed; therefore, it cannot be considered alone, with

no reference to social practices.
• Economic, political and cultural established powers fix the predomi-
nant maps of the meanings of lived space.

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 79

 • Theory can unveil the ideological constitution of pre-given space and
nurture social praxis of contestation and re-invention.

A wide range of theories can be ascribed to this category. I am not inter-

ested here in listing all of them; rather, I shall identify some conceptual
aspects that allow us to focus on the kind of subjectivity that is usually
implied within the critical framework.
Critical approaches typically maintain that space is a constructed
reality. Critical theories can be distinguished according to the kind of
constructivism they claim. Marxist constructivism, for instance, has
different characteristics than other constructivist theories. Marxism
represented an alternative explanatory frame to predominant quan-
titative trends in geography during the 1960s and until the 1980s.32
The Marxist departure from mainstream social science was, first and
foremost, epistemological: space and its diverse portions are part of a
“socio-spatial dialectic.”33 David Harvey provided a Marxist explana-
tion of how the socio-spatial dialectic unfolds: social practices create
spaces and “these spaces, in turn, constrain, enable and alter those
practices and processes.”34 However, the interaction between the social
and the spatial is not symmetrical. The spatial is, in the first instance,
determined by social processes; then, spatial elements are charged with
an “active moment”35 that can interfere with social processes, for ex-
ample when physical investments of the past hinder or bias the implan-
tation of new businesses. In addition, social processes are subsumed
into the economic system. Capitalism gives structure to social patterns
and practices that, in turn, shape spaces and places. Capitalism reflects
the modern tendency to emphasise temporality over spatiality, since it
is essentially defined by temporal features:

[T]he circulation of capital makes time the fundamental dimension of

human affairs. Under capitalism, after all, it is socially necessary labor
time that forms the substance of value, surplus labor time that lies at the
origin of profit, and the ratio of surplus labor time to socially necessary
turnover time that defines the rate of profit and, ultimately, the average
rate of interest . . . . Under capitalism, therefore, the meaning of space
and the impulse to create new spatial configurations of human affairs
can be understood only in relation to such temporal requirements.36

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Marxist approaches generally focus on economic actors more so than
political or cultural ones. The focus on economic structure seemed to
better suit an outline of a solid theoretical account against mainstream
geography. As the anthropologist and geographer Neil Smith affirmed:

Whereas liberal policy responses to the various social crises of the

time emphasized the discreteness of particular social issues, iso-
lating them into separate, supposedly manageable technocratic
‘problems,’ the radical critique searched instead for the ways in
which different social problems were not only systematically related
but emanated from common roots in the multifarious structures of
contemporary society.37

A Marxist conception of the social production of space is an alterna-

tive to both spatial separatism and the ontological pattern, since the
first hypostatizes absolute space and the second hypostatizes place as
something inherently fixed with a distinct identity. In both cases, the
idea that very different spaces are shaped by the same structural pro-
cesses was not an option: therefore, they were inadequate for the pur-
pose of unveiling the hidden mechanisms which govern the production
of space. As spaces, places and landscapes are similarly dependent on
the laws governing capitalist economy, Marxist geography does not em-
brace any distinct account of place. Malpasʼ philosophical perspective,
representative of the ontological pattern, is reversed on this point.
The emphasis placed on economic drivers hints at an epistemologi-
cal feature of the Marxist approach that will later be overcome by post-
structuralism and cultural studies. This feature is the stubborn trust
in overarching explanatory theories. According to the critical thinker
Derek Kerr, for instance, Harveyʼs work defines theory first, by devel-
oping its internal laws, and then identifies the social struggles it implies
and the subjects that are implicated: “it is not clear what constitutes
that class struggle nor where it has come from in order to be able to
‘enter into’ and ‘fight against’ the effects of these laws.”38 A similar cri-
tique against the traditional Marxist trend was commonplace among a
younger generation of intellectuals, largely influenced by Michel Fou-
cault, including geographer Ed Soja, feminist thinker Bell Hooks, post-
colonial thinker Gayatri Spivak and cultural theorist Stuart Hall. These

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 81

 authors, belonging to the so-called “cultural turn” in spatial theory,
considered broader forms of causality than the merely economic. They
aimed to combine the typically postmodern emphasis on representa-
tions with the emancipatory longing of the radical tradition in the so-
cial sciences. The idea that capitalism determines, in the first instance,
symbols and images became outmoded within the postmodern frame;
it was replaced by the claim that images have the power to create and
re-create habitable worlds and spaces and places where people can rec-
ognise themselves.39 Through images and visual elements, ideologies
can be established as well.40 Ideologies of race and gender influence
people’s beliefs and cognitions as much as their social and economic
background. Forms of hegemonic knowledge are now addressed as
ethnocentric, heteronormative, masculinist, white-centred. Spaces are
shaped according to prevailing cultural values and norms, which always
imply a separation between insiders and outsiders. Different kinds of
spatial organisation are not only the products of gender or race ideolo-
gies, but in turn, according to the socio-spatial dialectic inaugurated by
Harvey, they have consequences for the survival and the reproduction
of the same ideologies over time. Constructed spaces, in fact, always
enable certain social performances by certain subjects, while imposing
constraints and prohibitions on others. It is remarkable that, within
this framework, Heideggerʼs house in the Black Forest, which was the
paradigmatic example of good dwelling within the ontological pattern,
would certainly be regarded as the medium through which to impose
and reproduce the traditional patriarchal manner of dwelling.41
Within post-structuralism, the issue of uneven distribution of power
comes to the foreground. It was precisely the question of power that
supported the transition of a number of originally Marxist authors to-
wards a broadening of their theories and a reinterpretation of the criti-
cal pattern. Take, for example, the prominent Spanish-French political
thinker Manuel Castells. He was originally inspired by Althusserʼs non-
empirical and anti-idiographic approach,42 and developed a Marxist-
structuralist urban theory that placed no emphasis on the “surface”
phenomena.43 Later on, the advent of the Internet and of digitaliza-
tion, a specific surface phenomenon with tremendous consequences
on spaces and places on the global scale, imposed a broadening of the
former, strictly structuralist, explanatory frame.44 New technological

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powers anticipate and work within people’s motivations, cognitions
and perceptions. It is no longer about preserving a long-term adhe-
sion to some ideological claims from quite a homogeneous dominant
class, as it was in the industrial society’s paradigm of conflict. A global
communication society facilitates endless competition amongst those
holding financial power, according to certain structural rules.45 By tak-
ing into account surface phenomena, Castells had to give up on the
more orthodox explanatory patterns of former years.
The overcoming of economic reductivism and the raising of the
issue of power bring with them the question of the subject. The old
Marxist issue of the revolutionary subject and its agency became prob-
lematic within the structuralist accounts of Marxism. Althusser explic-
itly rejected the supposedly idealistic conception of the subject (both
individual and collective) as a centre of initiatives, responsible for their
actions. The subjects exist insofar as they are subjected to the ideologi-
cal apparatus of interpellation.46 When Marxist thinkers claimed that
spaces are socially constructed and produced, they do not necessarily
imply a claim about the subjects’ agency. The picture grows in complex-
ity with the cultural turn. Generally speaking, poststructuralist, postco-
lonial and feminist geography inherit misgivings about the very notion
of subject as settled within a humanistic background from their refer-
ences to philosophers and social theorists, such as Foucault, Derrida,
and Butler. Thanks to radical theorists, outsiders and subalterns come
into the spotlight and their right to speak for themselves is claimed.
This would seem to be a recovery of subjectivity and agency. However,
questions remain about who these outsiders and subaltern really are.
Gayatri Spivak deconstructs the very idea of the “authentic inhabitants
of the margin.”47 This is a romantic conception, based on the authorial
prejudice of Western modernity, that projects a “one-dimensional ex-
perience of marginality”48 onto the Other. What can be found in these
fields has manifold and sometimes contradictory features and con-
flicting aspects that an oversimplifying look does not consider. What
poststructuralist theories discover, by overcoming totalising explana-
tions, is not subjectivity and its unpredictable right to act, react and
enact, but multiplicity, flow, and difference. Arjun Appadurai integrates
this awareness in his speculative reflections on the methodology of
anthropology:

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 83

 . . . it becomes difficult to say who really speaks for whom. But the
problem of voice is a problem of multiplicity as well as a problem of
representation. How many voices are concealed beneath the gener-
alizations of reported speech in much ethnography? And how many
voices clamor beneath the enquiries and interests of the single ethnog-
rapher? How can we construct our voices so that they can represent
the diversity of voices we hear in the field? How can we construct in
anthropology a dialogue that captures the encounter of our own many
voices with the voices we hear and purport to represent? The problem
of voice (“speaking for” and “speaking to”) intersects with the problem
of place (speaking “from” and speaking “of”).49

Appaduraiʼs noteworthy interest for the issue of space and place is de-
rived from the blunt fact that “for ethnographers it is difficult to dis-
cuss place or space in a way that does not confine the inhabitants.”50
It appears that ethnography implicitly adopts an ontological notion of
place because of its methodological construction. The very definition
of the field, with its inherent borders, entails a notion of place as “a lo-
cale that imprisons natives.”51 “Place-natives-culture” is the traditional
triptych of idiographic ethnography that post-structuralism intends to
deconstruct.
It is arguable that the status of subjectivity and agency remains
problematic for all critical pattern of space and place. Both structuralist
and poststructuralist theories undertake a relentless deconstruction of
subjectivity and agency. But, whereas the former does so in order to dis-
cover the structural laws lying beneath the surface phenomena, the lat-
ter pursues the goal of revealing the fundamental layer of multiplicity
and hybridation. If structuralism hypothesizes the structural laws lying
beneath the spatial, post-structuralism fights against every attempt at
abstraction: of macroeconomic laws, of place as a stronghold for cul-
tural identity, and also of human agency and free will. The systematic
deconstruction of the illusion of “place-natives-culture” triptych con-
sidered as an organic whole is not pursued for the sake of a return of
the idealistic illusion of individuals (or groups) freely shaping spaces
and symbols. Critical approaches at large emphasize the task of decon-
structing, dis-ordering,52 problematizing, without providing a theory
of the subject and its positive ties with the living places. This negative

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character of the critical pattern has been noted several times, giving
rise to various criticisms. For instance, Castells “devotes insufficient
attention to how structure is established: it is taken as a given rather
than as an ongoing achievement.”53 More generally, one can agree with
the statement that the critical pattern fulfils the goal of providing rich
and ground-breaking diagnoses, more so than to foster a utopian per-
spective of the world.54 By giving up on any reference to an active and
responsible subject, in fact, there is the risk of losing the possibility for
social movements and actors to actually challenge the pre-given spatial
and symbolic order.
Within my exposition, I have drawn from many different authors,
but I am mindful that I largely passed over the evolution of their com-
plex works over time. But this gap can be tolerated if one considers that
my announced task was to establish and problematize some general
characteristics of the critical framework, in order to distinguish it from
the ontological and the phenomenological ones. Among these charac-
teristics, we have encountered a certain mistrust towards the subject
understood in a humanistic sense as endowed with free will and re-
sponsibility. Another characteristic of the critical pattern is its focus
on the constructed nature of space, which implies a certain down-
sizing of the role of place. Place, generically understood as a bounded
portion of space characterized by cultural specificity and uniqueness,
is seen as a sort of ideological expression, for it expresses, and in the
meantime conceals the actual productive dynamics that give shape to
lived spaces. In this respect, the critical pattern is the perfect reversal
of the ontological pattern: whereas, in this latter, place is the primary
and original source of human existence, in the critical pattern place is
an outcome of the processes of social construction, or worse, the ar-
tificial reality depending on an ideological gaze. However, on closer
inspection, this contraposition between the two patterns hides a deep-
seated similarity, for, in both cases, human subjectivity is of a passive
rather than active nature. In any case, the subject is fashioned: by the
ontological character of place, by the structural dynamics of economy
and power relationships, by the established and predominant cultural
representations. What is missing, within this picture, is a conception of
lived place (and space), according to which place and the subject give
shape to each other through an ongoing and ever-unfinished process

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 85

 of reciprocal fashioning. This notion has been elaborated in the frame-
work of the phenomenological pattern.

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PATTERN:

EXPERIENCE AND AGENCY
The phenomenological pattern has the following characteristics:

• It gives importance to the category of experience, as the original

dimension of the senses human beings attribute to places and spaces,
over scientific, general theories.
• It considers experience both in its active and passive aspects: a place
communicates its pre-given meanings to people, and people, by expe-
riencing place, reproduce and reinterpret those meanings, making
social-spatial transformation possible.
• It focuses on human agency and understands it in terms of orienta-
tion within the lifeworld. It implicates the capacity of human agents
to trigger modifications to inherited places.

Phenomenology began to influence spatial theory as a reaction against

positivism, quantitative revolution and spatial separatism during the
1960s. Some scholars have included phenomenology among a wide set
of approaches converging under the label of “humanistic approaches”:

Partly propelled by 1960s research in behavioural geography and

environmental perception, humanistic geography incorporated a wide
range of philosophical approaches that included phenomenology,
existentialism, idealism, pragmatism, grounded theory, and symbol-
ic interactionism (Ley & Samuels 1978). In the meantime, it is also a
claim for human geography with the human being at its very centre, a
people’s geography and about the real people for the people’s develop-
ment as human being for all.55

There is no question that all the trends mentioned above have inspired
many geographers seeking a new basis for their non-positivist geo-
graphical theories and practices. And it is also true that “humanistic
geography” is an existing label used by important theorists such as

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Yi-Fu Tuan56 or Derek Gregory.57 But it is my view that these kinds of
broad definitions, albeit less philosophically challenging, risk causing
confusion and attract equally generic, or even ungenerous, criticism.
Phenomenology is not whatever kind of humanism. Pickles has
argued that geographers did not take phenomenology seriously even
when they purported to be inspired by it: “Husserl’s entire project [was]
treated only in caricature form and thus to the empiricist seems to make
no sense.”58 For his part, Pickles maintained that phenomenology, fo-
cusing on experience, does not consist in either subjectivism or a Sar-
trian type of existentialism. Phenomenology is, rather, the thought of
the “in-between”: an intellectual effort to grasp the original interaction
where both the subject and the object emerge. David Seamon has main-
tained that the phenomenological approach “asks the significance of
people’s inescapable immersion in a geographical world.”59 This im-
mersion is first physical-perceptive and second symbolic-axiological,
but it is not understood as a deterministic framework erasing human
agency. The subject, or, as Seamon says, “body-subject”, interacts with
the surrounding environment by reacting to its stimulations in ways
that are not entirely predictable. The actions and reactions of human
beings can be seen as non-mechanical movements (this is why Seamon
adopts the metaphor of dance). Quite a similar conception has been ex-
pressed by Michel de Certeauʼs analysis of the practice of walking in
the city (flâner). When we walk, de Certeau states, we reinterpret and
practice the places we live in or we move through. We have this capac-
ity since we are not deterministically shaped by our geographical and
symbolic context. This is why, in de Certeau’s terms, walking is a poem:

The long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations, no

matter how panoptic they may be: it is neither foreign to them (it can
take place only within them) nor in conformity with them (it does not
receive its identity from them). It creates shadows and ambiguities
within them. It inserts its multitudinous references and citations
into them (social models, cultural mores, personal factors). Within
them it is itself the effect of successive encounters and occasions that
constantly alter it and make it the others’ blazon: in other words, it is
like a peddler carrying something surprising, transverse or attractive
compared with the usual choice.60

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 87

 Of course, in time we develop reassuring routes and customary paths
which allow us to walk safely without troubles. However, habits and
customary behaviours are outcomes of the reduction of the broad
realm of open possibilities to a narrower set of beaten paths. This re-
duction is necessary since, otherwise, the lifeworld would offer so many
stimuli that it would be hard, for human beings, to even find a path to
beat. Prioritizing “experience” means affirming the need to transform
naturalised perspectives and habits. To put experience first implies, in
principle, highlighting the possibility of change over the actuality of
acquired customs.
It is my view that it is important to distinguish between the onto-
logical perspective and the phenomenological one. The former reduces
human agency to the necessity of recognising human limits and invites
people to behave accordingly; the second stresses the original mobility
of the lifeworld over the tendency to consider the pre-given context as
natural. Many theorists (Relph, Buttimer) have indiscriminately built
their conceptions on Husserl, Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty. In particu-
lar, the last two have been taken on equal terms as corrections of Hus-
serlʼs approach, largely, but superficially, thought to be too idealistic.
The phenomenological claim that experience is always embodied61
results in an ontological reduction of body and world to the continuity
of the flesh: “the ‘flesh of the world’ is a whole . . . in relation to which
discontinuities can only be momentary fissures within its encompass-
ing embrace.”62 Whereas the ontological pattern mostly focuses on the
“encompassing embrace” of the world, the phenomenological pattern,
without denying this encompassing dimension, articulates it alongside
the “discontinuities” actors can operate on. This focus on discontinu-
ities is of critical importance for a correct understanding of the phe-
nomenological pattern. Once again, Michel de Certeau can be seen to
support this argument by reversing the current meanings attributed to
the words “space” and “place” in human geography. As we have seen,
space is associated with scientific abstraction, while place is a bounded
portion of space always filled with meanings and symbols. De Certeau
argues that, within a place, meanings and symbols are arranged accord-
ing to a fixed order that will determine and, at the same time, narrow
the range of possible experiences.63 Jeff Malpas claimed that place is an
“open but bounded realm,” but what the ontological pattern fails to do

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is articulate this openness with human agency. What remains is simply
the boundaries. This insight has led geographer Paul Harrison to aban-
don a Heideggerian framework for a perspective inspired by Levinasian
ethics. Harrison uses Levinas to argue for a conception of place as in-
trinsically open to the other, in contrast to Heideggerʼs place which is
coupled with an enclosed figure of being-in-the-world.64
The emphasis on subjectivity and human agency suggests a pos-
sible outcome in terms of the critique of inherited orders. The fixed
order of material things and symbolic values that characterize place
can be challenged by everyday spatial tactics (de Certeau), or even by
new architectural projects in accord with the needs and demands of in-
habitants or specific groups (ethnic groups, religious minorities, social
classes, migrants, different generations). A phenomenological insight
about the relation between dwelling and building is provided by Paul
Ricoeur in Architecture and Narrativity, the text of a 1996 lecture de-
livered to a class of architects in Paris. It is undeniable that Ricoeur, as
a phenomenologist and a scholar in hermeneutics, devoted much of
his efforts to the issue of time. His application of the temporal dialectic
of narrativity, developed in Time and Narrative, to the architectural
question of dwelling and building offers a phenomenological alterna-
tive to the ontological pattern proposed by Heidegger in his 1951 text.
First, Ricoeur summarizes the main characteristics of each stage of the
temporal dialectic of narrativity: prefiguration, configuration,s and re-
figuration. Prefiguration is represented by the lifeworld of the narra-
tor, coming before the act of narration. It encompasses the narrator’s
experience and it is the unavoidable source of his motives and ideas.
Configuration is the stage in which the text emerges from the lifeworld
of the narrator as a distinct product, characterised by the temporal syn-
thesis of heterogeneous elements. Refiguration, lastly, is the stage in
which the reader, receiving a configurated text, contributes to accom-
plish its meaning through interpretation. By switching from narrative
to space, prefiguration represents the stage of inherited dwelling:

The parallelism, at this level of pre-comprehension, between the prac-

tice of time and that of space is quite remarkable. Before any archi-
tectural project, humankind has built because it has inhabited. In this
respect, it is pointless to ask oneself if inhabiting precedes building. At

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 89

 first there is a need for building, we might say, which comes hand-in-
hand with the vital need to inhabit.65

The lifeworld of prefiguration consists in an already lived and experi-

enced environment, characterized by a distinct style of dwelling and
building. This pre-given dimension is what is “already there” for every
subjectivity. It can also be called “tradition”.
Ricoeur does not simply argue for the priority of dwelling in archi-
tectural projects, something Heidegger also argued for. He considers
configuration, understood as the inscription of a new building in an al-
ready built and inhabited place, as the affirmation of a relative freedom
of the architect in respect to the pre-given:

It is at the heart of this act of inscription that the relation between

innovation and tradition comes into play. In the same way that every
writer writes “after”, “according to” or “against”, every architect makes
up his mind with regards to an established tradition . . . the new “con-
figurative” act plans new ways to inhabit.66

In this possibility for the architect to detach his work from the accepted
and dominant standards, Ricoeur introduces one possible notion of
agency that makes peace with the modern claim for the free subject.
However, the decisive move, in this sense, occurs with refiguration: the
stage in which inhabitants “read” the spaces they live in and judge them
according to their needs and demands. This is the kind of agency a phe-
nomenological approach advocates: not the self-transparent agency of
a rational actor that is called to operate on an irrational background,
but the embodied agency of an experiencing subject. Here, Ricoeurʼs
phenomenological account of agency matches the poststructuralist
claim for multiplicity against overall explanatory theories:

it is time to talk of inhabiting as a response, even as an answer to

building, on the model of the agonistic act of reading, because it will
not suffice for an architectural project to be well thought-out, or even
for it to be held to be rational for it to be understood and accepted.
All planners ought to learn that an abyss can separate the rules of
the rationality of a project—that is true for all politics, moreover—

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 from the rules of acceptability to a public. We must therefore learn
to consider the act of inhabiting as a focus not only of needs, but
of expectations.67

Inhabitants are therefore charged with a critical potential and a utopian

drive rooted in everyday longings and aspirations. This idea echoes
Henri Lefebvreʼs challenge to modernist architects’ self-understanding
as “demiurges” of the passive matter of space:

This role of architect as demiurge is part of urban mythology

and/or ideology, which are hard to separate. . . . Can this situation
be reversed? The possible is today impossible, bound up with trans-
formative actions within society. It is not for the architect to define
“a new conception of life”, to enable the individual to develop on
a higher level by relieving him of the weight of the everyday. . . .
It is for a new conception of life to make possible the work of the
architect, who will continue to act as a “social condenser”, not of
capitalist social relations and the commanding order that reflects
them, but of relations in motion and new relations in the process
of development.68

According to de Certeau, Lefebvre and Ricoeur, in what is felt by individu-

als and groups, motives and drives can be found that are not necessar-
ily shaped by an invisible order (ontological, economical or otherwise).
Within this discrepancy between imposed meanings and people’s feel-
ings, the subject emerges, struggling for self-accomplishment.

CONCLUSION
My purpose was to discover the relevance of the concepts of space and
place for the philosophical understanding of subjectivity. I can agree
with Jeff Malpasʼs claim that place has a “central significance . . . in any
understanding of human being and experience.”69 Therefore, I feel that
the recent ubiquity of space and place in the social sciences requires
new philosophical assessments of the issue of the subject. Its fate has
been taken for granted within the postmodern turn by a huge number
of authors, trends and schools. In the light of the above overview on

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 91

 space and place, it is possible to deduce that at least four notions of
subjectivity are at stake:

• The Cartesian, detached and neuter subjectivity, the pure eye of

objective knowledge, implicated by quantitative geography and
positivist approaches. Here, place consists in a physical site in space,
conceived as an empty container of bodies and phenomena;
• The “being-in-the-world”, entwined with place (“emplaced”), which is
understood as an open but bounded realm providing the subject with
its unavoidable limits. Here, space as an empty container is nothing
else than an abstraction;
• The culturally and socially determined subjectivity, or, to put it
bluntly, the human agent who is always constructed by a predomi-
nant gaze. The subject, here, is paralleled by an equally constructed
and determined notion/idea of space. The very idea of place as a
guardian of identity and symbols embraced by a community is sus-
pected of being an ideological veil of the power dynamics that give
structure to both subjectivity and space;
• The phenomenological agent, understood in both its continuities and
discontinuities with its places and capable of triggering processes
of active reinterpretation and modification of the pre-given. Here,
place is at the same time a pre-given environment and the never-
completed outcome of a relentless process of constitution. Space can
be understood as the dialectical “other” of place: not only the empty
abstraction where place is put, but the challenging openness in which
place is always immersed and which maintains it into the flux of the
transformative process.

However, the question arises as to how to respond to the manifold

processes involving the places we live in: migrations, global trade and
communication, identity struggles, new enclosures and new paradigms
of inclusion and exclusion, struggles for recognition, environmental is-
sues. It is likely that the answer to this question will also depend on
what meta-theory is adopted among those aforementioned. This is why
highlighting the theoretical implications of discourses relating to this
theme is neither useless nor meaningless. My threefold model can con-
tribute to a deeper understanding of these implications.

92 ENVIRONMENT, SPACE, PLACE / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 2 / 2019

PAOLO FURIA is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of philoso-
phy and education sciences at the University of Turin. His research
starts from the social and aesthetic thought of late Ricoeur and focuses
on ties between hermeneutics and social sciences, especially human
geography. He has been a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced
Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles.

NOTES
1. Good examples of recent works whose purpose is to guide the researcher into the
jungle of contributions and statements on space and place are Phil Hubbard and
Rob Kitchin, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2011); for
what concerns inquiries in French, see Aline Brochot and Martin de la Soudière,
eds. “Autour du lieu,” Communications 87 (2010).
2. Ed Casey speaks of an “obscuration of place” within philosophy, due to “the univer-
salism inherent in Western culture from the beginning.” Ed Casey, The Fate of Place
(Oakland, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997). Michel Foucault acknowl-
edged that nineteenth-century culture was obsessed with history, while the late
twentieth century should be considered as “the epoch of space.” Michel Foucault,
“Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader
in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (New York: Routledge, 1997), 331.
3. In a recent interview, Soja spoke in terms of a “resurgence of interest in space
and spatial thinking” in the last decades, and tellingly added, “For many
disciplines—outside geography, architecture and urbanism—spatial think-
ing is very new.” (Edward W. Soja, Frédéric Dufaux, Philippe Gervais-Lambony,
Chloé Buire, Henri Desbois. Spatial Justice and the Right to the City: an Inter-
view with Edward Soja. Justice spatiale—Spatial justice, Université Paris Ouest
Nanterre La Défense, UMR LAVUE 7218, Laboratoire Mosaïques, 2011, Gender,
sexual identities and spatial justice, http://www.jssj.org/article/la-justice-spatiale
-et-le-droit-a-la-ville-un-entretien-avec-edward-soja/.
4. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund
Jephcott (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002).
5. Arnold Gehlen, “Ende der Geschichte?” Einblicke (Frankfurt, Ger.: Klostermann,
1975), 115–33.
6. Marc Augé, Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans.
John Howe (London: Verso, 2008).
7. Cf. Trevor Barnes, “Critical Notes on Economic Geography from an Aging Radical.
Or Radical Notes on Economic Geography from a Critical Age,” ACME: An Interna-
tional Journal for Critical Geographies 1 (2002): 8–14.
8. Stewart Fotheringam, Chris Brunsdon, and Martin Charlton, Quantitative Geogra-
phy: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis (Los Angeles: Sage, 2000), 11.
9. Cf. Marc Barthelemy, Morphogenesis of Spatial Networks (New York: Springer,
2018).

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 93

 10. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Common Man, (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950),
217.
11. Trevor Barnes, “Retheorising Human Geography: From Quantitative Revolution to
the Cultural Turn,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91 (2001):
546–65.
12. The term has been coined by Robert Sack to indicate and criticize the position ac-
cording to which space can be separated from the social practices that influence
it as much as it influences them. Robert Sack, “The Spatial Separatist Theme in
Geography,” Economic Geography 50/51 (1974): 1–19.
13. Jeff Malpas, “Finding Place: Spatiality, Locality, and Subjectivity,” in Philosophies
of Place, ed. Jonathan Smith and Andrew Light (Lanham, Md.: Roman & Littlefield,
1998), 31.
14. Paul Cloke, Chris Philo, David Sadler, Approaching Human Geography: An Intro-
duction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2003), 80.
15. Jeff Malpas, “Finding Place,” 31.
16. Jeff Malpas, “Putting Space in Place: Philosophical Topography and Relational
Geography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2012): 15.
17. Jeff Malpas, “Finding Place,” 34.
18. Jeff Malpas, “Finding Place,” 35.
19. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 141.
20. Schalow and Denker, Historical Dictionary of Heidegger’s Philosophy (Lanham,
Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 40.
21. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 146.
22. For an overview on the fourfold, see Marlène Zarader, The Unthought Debt:
Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 2006) and Andrew J. Mitchell, The Fourfold: Reading the Late
Heideggar (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2015).
23. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 147.
24. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 147.
25. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 148.
26. “[A] site for the fourfold,” Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 152.
27. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 148.
28. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 155.
29. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 145.
30. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 159.
31. Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 157.
32. Richard J. Peet, “An Introduction to Marxist Geography,” Journal of Geography 84:1
(1985): 5–10.
33. Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social
Theory (New York: Verso, 1989), 78.
34. Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitch, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 237.
35. David Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 3.
36. David Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital, 37.
37. Neil Smith, “Marxism and Geography in the Anglophone World,” Geographische
Revue 2 (2001): 8.

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38. Derek Kerr, “The Theory of Rent: From Crossroads to The Magic Roundabout,”
Capital & Class 20 (1996): 70.
39. Federico Vercellone, Il futuro dellʼimmagine (Bologna, It.: Il Mulino, 2016).
40. Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies (London: Sage, 2001).
41. Gillian Rose, “As if Mirrors Had Bled: Masculine Dwelling, Masculinist Theory and
Feminist Masquerade,” in Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sex-
uality, ed. Nancy Duncan (New York: Routledge, 1996), 56–74.
42. Alan Harding and Talja Blokland, Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power,
Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century (London: Sage, 2014), 41.
43. Manuel Castells, The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach (London: Edward Ar-
nold, 1977).
44. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols. (Ox-
ford: Blackwell, 1996–1998).
45. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
46. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an
Investigation),” trans. Ben Brewster, B. in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971): 85–126.
47. “Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value,” in Literary Theory
Today, ed. Peter Collier and Helga Geyer-Ryan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 224.
48. Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitch, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 389.
49. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory,” Cul-
tural Anthropology 3:1 (1988): 17.
50. Setha Low, “Towards an Anthropological Theory of Space and Place,” Semiotica
175:1/4 (2009): 21.
51. Setha Low, “Towards an Anthropological Theory of Space and Place,” 21.
52. Jonathan Murdoch, Post-structuralist Geography. A Guide to Relational Space (Lon-
don: Sage, 2006).
53. Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitch, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 104.
54. See Trevor Barnes, “Critical Notes on Economic Geography from an Aging Radical.
Or Radical Notes on Economic Geography from a Critical Age.”
55. Kanhaiya Sapkota, “Humanistic Geography: How It Blends with Human Geography
through Methodology,” The Geographical Journal of Nepal 10 (2017): 123.
56. “Humanistic geography reflects upon geographical phenomena with the ultimate
purpose of achieving a better understanding of man and his condition.” Yi-Fu
Tuan, “Humanistic Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geogra-
phers 66:2 (1976): 266.
57. Cf. Derek Gregory, “Humanistic Geography,” in The Dictionary of Human Geogra-
phy, 4th ed., ed. Ron Johnston, Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt et al. (Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell, 2000).
58. John Pickles, Phenomenology, Science, and Geography: Space and the Human Sci-
ences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15.
59. David Seamon, “Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place-Ballets,” in The Hu-
man Experience of Space and Place, ed. Annie Buttimer and David Seamon (Lon-
don: Croom Helm, 1980), 148.
60. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. Steven Rendall
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 212.

PAOLO FURIA / SPACE, PLACE AND THE SUBJECT 95

 61. Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald Landes
(New York: Routledge, 2013).
62. Ed Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1997), 68.
63. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 1, 117.
64. Paul Harrison, “The Space between Us: Opening Remarks on the Concept of Dwell-
ing,” Environment and Planning D: Society Space 25 (2007).
65. Paul Ricoeur, “Architecture and Narrativity” (1996), Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur
Studies 7:2 (2016): 33.
66. Paul Ricoeur, “Architecture and Narrativity,” 37.
67. Paul Ricoeur, “Architecture and Narrativity,” 39.
68. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, trans. Roberto Bononno (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 2003), 124–34.
69. Jeff Malpas, “Finding Place: Spatiality, Locality, and Subjectivity,” 38.

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