Space and Place in Central Australia

In recent months I’ve noticed the ubiquity of the phrase “in that space” in the public conversation. Sometimes it refers to a conceptual realm in which ideas are teased out, but more often it is used as a generic placeholder, like “at this point in time”, “holding space”, and “going forward”, those verbal tics that infest public language and allow politicians and their ilk to say very little at great length. While contributing nothing in the way of useful communication, these gap-fillers often indicate something about the state of contemporary culture. “In that space” suggests a shift from the abstract— ‘space’ as a lacuna in which ideas and encounters may occur, rather than ‘place’ as a location in which things have happened and will continue to happen. Has Heidegger’s conceptual horizon shed the constraints of philosophical interrogation and found its way into popular culture?

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