place
For the Athenians, the nomadic Scythians were aporoi. While the Athenians valued authochthonous birth, the Scythians had absolutely no attachment to any place and were always somewhere else. For the imagination of urban Greeks, nomadism was the indelible mark of the Scythians' distance from civility, the sign and substance of an alien existence, the quintessence of otherness. (see also war machine)
Read MoreFor Marc Augé, a non-place comes into existence when human beings do not recognise themselves in it. (see place / identity) Non-places begin with uprootedeness -- uprooted nineteenth century countrymen, migrants, refugees, etc. They provide the "passive joys of identity loss." While anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places create solitary contractuality. (p.94) Thus a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place, and these non-places are the real measure of our time. (pp.77-79)
Read More"Give place, let the prisoner by; give place." -- the first English use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionnary
In the Physics, esp. book IV, Aristotle proposes a theory of place (topos) that rejects Plato's theory of space. The topos is a place of belonging. It is distinct from the body, which is defined by length, width, and depth. Yet there is a definite relationship of community or conflict between the nature of bodies and the nature of places: every physical element seeks "its" place, the place that belongs and corresponds to it, and it flees from any other opposed to it. For Aristotle "the motions of simple bodies (fire, earth, and so forth) show not only that place is something but that place has some kind of functional significance (potentia also force)" (cf. posture) although this power is not definable (like the forces of attraction and repulsion in modern physics)
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