Doreen Massey: For Space (2005)

“In this book, Doreen Massey makes an impassioned argument for revitalising our imagination of space. She takes on some well-established assumptions from philosophy, and some familiar ways of characterising the twenty-first century world, and shows how they restrain our understanding of both the challenge and the potential of space.

The way we think about space matters. It inflects our understandings of the world, our attitudes to others, our politics. It affects, for instance, the way we understand globalisation, the way we approach cities, the way we develop, and practice, a sense of place. If time is the dimension of change then space is the dimension of the social: the contemporaneous co-existence of others. That is its challenge, and one that has been persistently evaded. For Space pursues its argument through philosophical and theoretical engagement, and through telling personal and political reflection. Doreen Massey asks questions such as how best to characterise these so-called spatial times, how it is that implicit spatial assumptions inflect our politics, and how we might develop a responsibility for place beyond place.

This book is “for space” in that it argues for a reinvigoration of the spatiality of our implicit cosmologies. For Space is essential reading for anyone interested in space and the spatial turn in the social sciences and humanities. Serious, and sometimes irreverent, it is a compelling manifesto: for re-imagining spaces for these times and facing up to their challenge.”

Publisher Sage, 2005
ISBN 1412903610, 9781412903615
222 pages

Review: Matthew Sparke (Progress in Human Geography).
Commentary: Ben Anderson.

Publisher

PDF (no OCR, updated on 2021-1-25)

George Kubler: The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (1962–) [EN, ES, IT, PT]

“When it was released in 1962, The Shape of Time presented a radically new approach to the study of art history. Drawing upon new insights in fields such as anthropology and linguistics, George Kubler replaced the notion of style with the idea of a linked succession of works distributed in time as recognizably early and late versions of the same action. The result was a view of historical sequence aligned on continuous change more than upon the concept of style–the then usual basis for histories of art.”

Publisher Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1962
ISBN 0300001444, 9780300001440
xii+136 pages

Reviews: Priscilla Colt (Art Journal 1963), John Howland Rowe (American Anthropologist 1963), Jan Bialostocki (Art Bulletin 1965).
Commentary: Robert Smithson (Arts Magazine 1966), Pamela M. Lee (Grey Room 2001), Mary Miller (Art Journal 2009), Jarrett Earnest (Brooklyn Rail 2014).

Wikipedia
Publisher (2008 Edition)

The Shape of Time (English, 1962, 7 MB, updated on 2013-9-13, OCR’d version via mutewar)
La configuración del tiempo (Spanish, trans. Jorge Lujan Muñoz, 1975, 43 MB, added on 2015-12-10)
La forma del tempo (Italian, trans. Giuseppe Casatello, 1976, added on 2015-12-10)
A forma do tempo (Portuguese, 1990, 11 MB, added on 2015-12-10)

See also The Shape of Time. Reconsidered, 1982.

Samuel Madden, Liam Gillick: Memoirs of the Twentieth Century; Prevision. Should the Future Help the Past? (1733/1999/2010)

Written in 1733, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is widely regarded to contain the earliest known conception of time-travel and, in particular, the first cognitive leap that would allow for a historicized image of the present as seen from the point of view of a distant future. Intriguingly, it is the text itself which is claimed to have traveled back in time and Madden has used this conceit to satirize his own period – tracing out its bureaucratic absurdities into a strange yet pointed vision of the late 20th century: a world politically fraught, overwhelmed with corruption and struggling to reconcile religious faith with scientific discovery.

The mysterious publishing history of the book imparts a certain weight to its claims. Printed anonymously in an edition of 1000, all but 10 copies were immediately destroyed for unknown reasons. It would only be printed once more in 1972 and until now Memoirs… has been extremely scarce – resulting in disappointingly little scholarship. This new edition includes Liam Gillick’s Prevision. Should the Future Help the Past first published in 1999, the very year when Memoirs… leaves off. Gillick explores the socio-political implications inherent in strategic attitudes towards the future with a critical eye to the ‘scenario planning’ of late capitalism. It provides a prescient framework for reconsidering Madden’s text now, just over ten years on since its fictive origination and apocalyptic conclusion.

Madden’s book first printed in 1733
Gillick’s essay first published by ARC Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1999
Publisher Halmos
ISBN 9780615387390
306 pages

commentary on Madden’s book (Paul Alkon, Science Fiction Studies)
Madden at Wikipedia

publisher

PDF
PDF (Alt link, from the publisher)
View Gillick’s essay online (HTML)