A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Heidegger, event and the ontological politics of the site
Authors: Joronen Mikko
Publication year: 2013
Journal: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Number in series: 4
Volume: 38
Issue: 4
First page : 627
Last page: 638
Number of pages: 12
ISSN: 0020-2754
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00550.x
Web address : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00550.x/abstract
Abstract
This paper scrutinises the possibilities Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘the event of revealing’ (Ereignis) poses for spatial theory. It shows how Heidegger’s work on ‘the event’ and its ‘fourfold’ constitution (between earth, sky, mortals and divinities) affords a spatial understanding of ontology as a site revealed around the assemblage of things. Accordingly, spatial ontologies do not grow from the multiplicity of human constructions and social relations, but from the radical ontological finitude constitutive for the revealing of the material site of the thing. Through such post-human understanding of the event, it becomes possible to think spatiality, not just in accordance with the influence Heidegger’s thought could have on the material understanding of spatiality, but in accordance with the rich understanding we could gain by exploring the politics of finite ontologies, the politics intrinsic for the different happenings of revealing.
This paper scrutinises the possibilities Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘the event of revealing’ (Ereignis) poses for spatial theory. It shows how Heidegger’s work on ‘the event’ and its ‘fourfold’ constitution (between earth, sky, mortals and divinities) affords a spatial understanding of ontology as a site revealed around the assemblage of things. Accordingly, spatial ontologies do not grow from the multiplicity of human constructions and social relations, but from the radical ontological finitude constitutive for the revealing of the material site of the thing. Through such post-human understanding of the event, it becomes possible to think spatiality, not just in accordance with the influence Heidegger’s thought could have on the material understanding of spatiality, but in accordance with the rich understanding we could gain by exploring the politics of finite ontologies, the politics intrinsic for the different happenings of revealing.
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