In 1960s French thought, spatial analysis was dismissed as reactionary while history was revolutionary

Evidence

I recall having been invited in 1966, by a group of architects, to do a study of space, of something that I called at the time ‘heterotopias,’ those singular spaces to be found in some given social spaces whose functions are different or even the opposite of others. The architects worked on this, and at the end of the study someone spoke up - a Sartrean psychologist - who firebombed me, saying that space is reactionary and capitalist but history and becoming are revolutionary. This absurd discourse was not at all unusual at the time. Today everyone would be convulsed with laughter at such a pronouncement, but not then. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1924

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Jameson’s periodization of postmodernism and the space-vs-time debate central to reader’s project comparing rival accounts. — connects to: Postwar French thought shifted from three Hs to three masters of suspicion — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 296

Broader Connections

• Postwar French thought shifted from three Hs to three masters of suspicion #expands (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 296