http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~fr70a/
http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/australia/boyle1.html
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~mnunes/smooth.html
There are plenty of ordinary metaphorical uses of the idea of space (as in the "field" -- or the French "champ"? -- of literature or history). But usually they aren't obnoxious in calling attention to themselves as metaphors, unlike the "the space of .... this" or "the space of ... that" applied to some new concept.
If you find a bunch of people arguing about things, don't refer to the situation (a word based on space, by the way) as an argument; call it a "space of contestation." That way people will really know that you MEAN TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY as an academic. And since you believe that "everything is a text" (which is not true, and is NOT the same thing as simply saying that language is important), never refer to people as being in the situation. Always insist that they are "inscribed" in (i.e., written into) the "space" of it.
Now, of course, if people are having an argument, they are using language. But it might be a little too obvious to say that.
I blame it all on Martin Heidegger.
Here's a quote from the last link above:
" I've just completed a first read-through of Michael Joyce's _Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics_ (U of Mich Press 1995), in which he suggests: "Against the word and world fully mapped as logos, Deleuze and Guattari propose that we write ourselves in the gap of *nomos*, the nomadic. They pose wondering against the word, being-for space against being-in space. We are in the water, inscribing and inscribed by the flow in our sailing. We write ourselves in oscillation between the smooth space of being for-time (what happens to us as we go as well as what happens to the space in which we do so) and the striated space of in-time (what happens outside the space and us). Interactive electronic art seems to offer a paradigm for just such an oscillation, a constant becomingness as a way out of what we are in, a way in where we are put out. Interactive art gives way to giving ways: Things could have been different." (207)"
-- Peter Kosenko
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:43:03 -0500
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>>
>>> Two unrelated questions:
>>>
>>> 1) When did the use of "space" illustrated in the quote below become
>>> common? Is it a techie word originally?
>>>
>>> >"If desktop processors were our only problem we would be
>>> >close to forecasts. What's driving our problem is that it is
>>> >spreading into the server space as well."
>>> >
>>> >--Intel CFO Andy Bryant, explaining the company's newly
>>> >downgraded profit forecast.
>>
>>Doug, the OED devotes 15 columns to _space_. Much too long to
>>pore through it, but I would guess that probably the word has
>>been so used for several centuries any how. Someone must have
>>somewhere written something like "the practice has spread from
>>industrial to cultural space." And so on and so forth.
>
>Well, I've been alive for 48 years, speaking English for a few less
>than that, and it's only in the last year or two that I started
>hearing stock touts and CEOs talking about "chip space" and "server
>space." Is that usage in the OED? I don't have my copy at the office.
>
>Doug
>