The event of space: geographic allusions in the phenomenological tradition

Abstract

n this essay I analyse the role of space in key texts belonging to the tradition of phenomenology. Starting from the assumption that phenomenology is uniquely positioned to answer the epistemological challenges posed by today's theoretical discourses, works by Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer are examined in light of their respective treatments of space. I assert that much of what passes as phenomenological knowledge is constructed around an unfounded idealisation of the written text and the spatial stability it embodies. In the subsequent development of a spatially open alternative I draw on Heidegger's elaboration of the ‘event’ and attempt to place such thinking within contemporary debates in the human sciences.