Yi-Fu Tuan – Space and Place. The perspective of Experience

“Space and place are basic components of the lived world; we take them for granted. When we think about them, however, they may assume unexpected meanings and raise questions we have not thought to ask.” (Tuan 1977: 3)

Yi-Fu Tuan’s baanbrekende boek over ruimtelijke ervaring (Space and Place 1977) onderzoekt in wezen de menselijke capaciteit tot symboliseren. Net als het dier neemt de mens de wereld waar, maar de mens “is capped by an exceptionally refined capacity for symbolization” (5). Zijn centrale vraag is de volgende: “Given the human endowment, in what ways do people attach meaning to and organize space and place?” (5) Hij merkt op dat in literatuur, filosofie, antropologie, … deze ervaringen op een complexe manier worden neergeschreven.

Citaten van Jorge Louis Borges

“A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.”

Uit het essay “A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw”