Politicizing Space

"The logic of representation presupposes a homogeneous space where different subjects can recognize each other when they are different and hence when they are identical" (35)

This space of representation is the three-dimensional space of subjectification, a space that allows for the illusion of stable subjects and objects that exist independently of this space and of temporal duration. In some sense, this concept of space constitutes the bounded liberal subject while disavowing any intrinsic connection to it. In some sense, space is "empty." 

(This gives rise to a question I often had before reading this chapter: how can we know the size or shape of the universe if it may expand and contract within what is seemingly more space, space that should be included in the original measurement?)

Yet for Terranova, subjectified homogeneous space cannot support a mapping of the internet. Citing the influence of geographers, she points out that "one of the most fundamental aspects of communication lies in the ways in which it forms and deforms the fabric of space and time" (40). Thus, space and time are not entities independent of communication technologies, but rather are constituted in relation to them. For example, the precision of the start and end times of our class depends upon the proliferation and (relative) standardization of timekeeping mechanisms. 

In order to aid her formulation of network space, Terranova turns to Henri Bergson:

"For Bergson, by thinking of movement as a linear translation of an object through space we miss a fundamental element: the virtuality of duration, the qualitative change that every movement brings not only to that which moves, but also to the space that it moves in and to the whole into which that space necessarily opens up" (51)

It is precisely the "virtuality of duration" that poses the principal difficulty in mapping the internet. For each packet of information seeks different routes to its destination based upon factors irreducible to three-dimensional concerns; it is not a question of finding the shortest path "as the crow flies" across the terrain of digital space, but of optimizing rates of data transfer between nodes in a network (excuse me if I play fast and loose with technical terms--what I mean to emphasize is the notion of optimizing speed and inter-nodal transfer of information). One cannot drive on the shoulder (or move through other such "empty" spaces) to avoid traffic; rather, it is the traffic itself that engenders networked space. Thus, for Terranova, "information is not simply transmitted from point A to point B: it propagates and by propagation it affects and modifies its milieu" (51). 

Furthermore, duration "implies a qualitative transformation of space and space itself is nothing but an ongoing movement opening onto an unbounded whole" (52). I think that this concept of a space that opens onto an "unbounded whole" poses certain challenges to Terranova's theorization of the internet: what is the whole onto which internet space opens up? I can envision several possible answers: the smooth space of the internet's open architecture, which is founded upon the possibility of adding or removing a (theoretically) unlimited number of other networks or nodes; informational space, the space that is constituted by the transversal movement of information among media (Television, Radio, Internet, etc.); or real space itself, space as such. I don't think that these answers are mutually exclusive; indeed, it seems that all of these spaces are imbricated in but not contained by the internet. I'd like to pursue these interspatial relationships further in class discussion (her discussion on page 71 of Semptember 11th is of interest).

(Furthermore, this question of an unbounded whole brings me back to my speculative question: how do we know the "shape" of the universe? My confusion on this topic--a confusion that most likely persists on certain levels since I don't subscribe to Astrophysics Quarterly--arose because I posited a blank space against which the universe is measured, the background of perspectival representation. Yet, to provide an equally speculative answer, if the universe is just such an ongoing movement opening onto an unbounded whole, the 'shape' of the universe cannot be a transcendent Figure that would stand out against some non-universe background, but is a mobile property immanent to the universe's becoming).

Therefore, if "the linkages established by the tele-command of electronic space . . . do not lead to a single time or space, but to a multiple duration where linkages constitute a fluid dynamic of connection and differentiation," (52) then traditional concepts of politics based upon subjectified, three-dimensional space may become obsolete for a politics of network culture. The question of controlling territory, long a foundation of sovereignty (perhaps even in, e.g., counter-cultural attempts to occupy administrative buildings) seems radically outmoded or at least in need of reconfiguration. Identity politics also comes under fire as individuals are traversed by myriad information flows, becoming decomposable "dividuals." Rather, "the politics of network culture are not only about competing viewpoints, anarchic self-regulation and barriers to access, but also about the pragmatic production of viable topological formations able to persist within an open and fluid milieu" (68). Space is not the neutral "battleground" upon which politics plays out; rather, spaces must be produced so that they may persist within the unstable milieu of internetworks. That is, Terranova's politics are not only a struggle for space that already exists, but practices that produce spaces understood durationally, spaces that can make use of the internet's deterritorializing fluidity without botching the whole project by deterritorializing too wildly (I parse, rather poorly, Deleuze and Guattari's "How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?"). In so doing, network politics may mobilize the virtuality inherent in durational space to challenge the probabilistic political calculus of the possible & the real in favor of heretofore unimagined possibilities.

A Question:

At times it seems that Terranova succumbs to more traditional spatial metaphors of network topology, as when she states that "in order to expand, an open network has to be able to extend both upwards and sideways" (59-60). Do these metaphors undermine her project of mapping a durational networked space? Do they merely aid the reader in understanding? Are the concepts of upwards and sideways incommensurable with her claim that the "problem of global geopolitics . . . [is] more importantly [at the level of] the speed of cultural and informational flows" (72) ?