Contemporary Poetry

environment and space 145

many years ago, the word space had a strictly geometrical meaning:
the idea it evoked, was simply that of an empty area’.^34 Instead,
he wishes to illustrate how ‘(Social) space is a social product’
(p. 26 ):

Social space will be revealed in its particularity to the extent

that it ceases to be indistinguishable from mental space (as

defi ned by the philosophers and the mathematicians) on the

one hand, and physical space (as defi ned by practico-sensory

activity and the perception of ‘nature’) on the other. What I

shall be seeking to demonstrate is that such a social space is

constituted neither by a collection of things or an aggregate

of (sensory) data, nor by a void packed like a parcel with

various contents, and that it is irreducible to a ‘form’ imposed

upon phenomena, upon things, upon physical materiality.

(p. 27 )

Space, according to Lefebvre, is far from being a neutral container
where events ‘happen’, but is always produced by social processes.
His work claims a political practice for space, since it is always
subject to battles for control. Moreover, he adds that one should
not view space as a ‘container of a virtually neutral kind, designed
simply to receive whatever is poured into it’ (p. 94 ). At its most
elemental, space is created by humans, which are in turn affected
by the spaces that they create.
The English translation of The Production of Space in 1991
disseminated Lefebvre’s ideas to a broader audience. Critic Ian
Davidson comments upon the ‘spatial turn’ around this time in
the work of other writers on postmodernism – such as space–time
compression in David Harvey’s The Postmodern Condition and cog-
nitive mapping in Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism.^35 Davidson proposes that the fascination
with spatial relationships, in both the arts and social sciences,
includes the ‘increased visibility of information and communication
technologies that support processes of globalization, rapid move-
ments of international capital, and an increasingly mobile global
population’ (pp. 94 – 5 ). As a consequence, Davidson adds that
there has been ‘an increased anxiety about ideas of identity in the