The Zone and Zones - Radical Spatiality in our Times

The cartographer’s dream is that of a perfect map: a map that perfectly represents a territory, a dream of Divine knowledge; a map that has haunted the ideology of representation throughout history; a map so detailed that it coincides with real space. In a short parable, ‘Museum, on Exactitude in Science’, Borges describes the mysterious gild of cartographers which charts such a map. Although Borges’ narrative finishes with a nostalgic conclusion about a superfluous and forgotten discipline, the cartographer’s dream of a perfect map has never ceased: it has merely varied throughout history. For medieval cartographers the perfect map included the physical cosmos and the spiritual one. In Dante’s time the European ‘mappa mundi’ depicted one single landmass, the Northern Hemisphere, with Jerusalem in the middle and the world is variously shown as dominated or held by God. In the Psalter mappa mundi, which is surmounted by an illustration of the Last Judgement, God holds a little dark red ...

Netko je u dvorištu, pomisli Anne. Njišu se grane cedra. Ptice se razbježe prhnuvši s hranilica. Bježe kardinali, plave šojke i domaći vrapci i kroz veliki prozor dnevne sobe bacaju svoje sjene. Tamni obrisi njihovih krila kratko se zadržavaju na baršunastom prekrivaču na Anninim nogama. Ona pritišće dugme s jedne strane svog bolničkog kreveta, a gornji dio naprave počinje zujati i dizati se sve dok se Anne ne uspravi. Krevet joj je kupio sin u trgovini medicinskom opremom i smjestio ga ispred prozora u dnevnoj sobi, tako da može promatrati svoje ptice na hranilicama. Pritisak dugmeta izaziva joj bol duboko u kostima ruke. Tablete koje svaki dan uzima ne pomažu. Zbog njih Anne se osjeća omamljeno i odvojeno od vlastitog tijela, ali lijek sprečava da bol postane nepodnošljiva. Kako napreduje njezin artritis, tako se i bol širi i postaje sve jača. Čini se da sada dolazi iz same moždine, kao da se ona žuta spužvasta tvar iznutra suši i pretvara u prašinu poput starog spužvastog jastuka. A...

Sveta Katarina Bolonjska, rođena u Ferrari 1413. Bila je opatica bolonjskog samostana klarisa. Na Božić 1456. primila je malenog Isusa iz Bogorodičinih ruku. Posvetila je život pomaganju siromaha i vršenju Božje volje. Umrla je 1463.Dolaze trojica, u koloni, putem uz rub ceste. Tamom skrivena tijela jedva da se naziru u skromnoj svjetlosti farova kamiona, autobusa i automobila što proriču zoru. Koračaju. Visoko suho šipražje dodiruje nogavice njihovih hlača.To su otac, sin i mladić kojeg znaju iz viđenja. Okuražen govori: Već deset godina idem pješice; zbog besparice pri kraju mjeseca. Odlučio im se pridružiti.Otac vozi kombi za jednog autoprijevoznika u Limau.Dječak ima deset-jedanaest godina, iako se zbog krhke građe doima mnogo mlađim. Trenutno ne ide u školu. Prodaje hot-dog ispred firme u kojoj mu radi otac – s kečapom ili majonezom – i Coca-Colu. Noću čuva kombi u dvorištu firme, čuvari ga drže na oku. Kad naraste, sanja, nestat će iz Brazila i postati vozač kamiona.

It is time to radically rethink the question of the political – is how contemporary theorist Enrique Dussel explained the motive to write his Twenty (20) Theses on Politics [20 Tesis de política], almost six years ago. In one of his theses he stated that the radical transmutation of the political system is actually a “response to new interventions by the oppressed and excluded” (Dussel 112), or in other words, that it relies on other spaces and impulses of the political, namely on those which are dedicated to engaging in critical, that is, liberating actions. A year ago, in a joint public conversation between two leading feminist theorists – Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – organized by the Centre for Postcolonial Theory in Frankfurt in May 2011 and devoted to critique today, the main meaning of critique was expressed neither as a method nor as a theoretical position, rather as its potency to explore “how it may be possible to think”; namely, the way “in which we pose the...

Shurina soba miriše po njoj, miriše tmasto i na mladost. Kad je dignem iz kreveta, obraz joj je naslonjen na moje rame, ali pridigne glavu i natjera se otvoriti oči, bojeći se da nešto ne propusti. „Mama, igramo se nešto?“„Da, milo, igramo novu igru.“ Pitam se može li osjetiti miris viskija na meni. Malo sam omamljena, ali nekako sam i bistra kao voda. Nosim Shuru iz njene sobe u kuhinju, tijelo joj je opušteno i toplo u mom naručju. „Moraš popiti ovaj vilinski napitak, dušo, a onda ćemo prileći.“„Na pod?“„Da, ljubavi, tu na pod. Vidiš, napravila sam nam udoban krevet.“Dodajem joj čašu i ona polako guta; stisnula je usne na gorki okus, ali pristaje na igru, smjestivši se na jastuk koji sam stavila na pokrivač na pločicama. „Laku noć, mamili“, kaže Shura, njezine zadnje riječi. Odem do štednjaka i sve plamenike otvorim na najjače, zatim legnem kraj nje. Put u Irsku je dobro prošao. Unajmili smo auto u Dublinu – zlo, smrdljivo mjesto – i krenuli na zapad prolazeći kroz jedan ružni grad z...

On the basis of ever-mounting evidence, amongst which is the “zone” problematic of the Zadar conference that occassioned these notes, it can be concluded that the spatial turn has insinuated itself as an all-pervading heuristic tool throughout the humanities and the social sciences. The extent to which space and spatiality have usurped the central stage in the various branches of reasearch can be gauged by admonishments that what we are witnessing is a new fundamentalism that has simply inverted the terms of the dualism of time and space (May and Thrift 2001: “Introduction”). According to Michael Dear the sway of space is manifested in multifold ways: in the ubiquity of spatial analysis in social theories and practices; in the explosion of publications devoted to the exploration of the interface of the social and the spatial; in the reintegration of human geography into various domains of knowledge; in the focus given to difference and the consequent diversification of theoretical and ...