Time and Space in the Modern Era

Unit: Cultural Identities in Texts 212 - Implications of Modernity
Week 3 Reading Notes (250 word limit)

This article argues that concepts of Time and Space have changed over time, with current uses put in place by the “Enlightenment Project.” Harvey makes reference to the 'time-space compression' concept. By this, Harvey means to make a point of the 'shrinking world,' or the fact that it takes less time to go further.

To demonstrate this compression of the world (vastly through the evolution of telecommunications) Harvey makes reference to the evolution of maps and the art of cartography from the medieval period, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period, to the present (post-modern). He notes that in medieval times, the external spaces of the maps were seen to be heavenly spaces inhabited by the external authorities.

The Renaissance period and the new voyages of exploration saw that map-making now included the wider world, and began to indicate a finite globe, as opposed to a medieval concept of an infinite and flat existence.

Later maps had their fantastical and artistic values removed, and were instead replaces with “fact.” Maps were to provide and understanding of property rights, territory boundaries, etc.

Time came to be understood through the construction of the chronometer, which could measure the flow of time. With this comes the concepts of interest rates, hourly wages and all those things which are crucial to the capitalist system. Clearly, new ideas concerning our place (both spatially and time-relative) are vastly important to the modern (capitalist) way of life. As the ideas evolved throughout the Enlightenment's modernisation project, the reordering of time and space meant that it no longer reflected God's glory, but human liberation as a free and active individual.

Reading
Harvey, David. "The Time and Space of the Enlightenment Project" The Condition of Post-modernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. 240-259