‘Räumen ist Freigabe von Orten’ Place, Calculation and Politics in Hemming’s Postmodernity’s Transcending

Abstract

The epigraph to this book is a quote from Martin Heidegger: ‘Räumen ist Freigabe von Orten’ (p. v). It comes from one of Heidegger’s last essays, ‘Art and Space’, delivered in 1969, and can be rendered as ‘making space is the release of places’. Alternatively it might be seen as ‘rooming is the freeing up of places’. The placing of this quotation is perhaps deliberately enigmatic, with neither a translation or explanation. What might be meant by this? It seems to me to be well-placed, as there are a number of themes in it that relate to Hemming’s book...