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1. Can we think temporality without also thinking the spatial? Might not the thinking of temporality always implicate the thinking of the spatial along with it? It might be thought that this question is already answered in modern physics by the notion, appearing in Minkowski et al (1923), but also present, for instance, in Samuel Alexander (1920), of space and time as a continuum, as space-time. My interest here is not merely with the thinking of space and time as they occur as formal elements within physical theory, however, but rather with a more fundamental understanding of these concepts as they belong to the very framework of experience. What is at issue is not merely a question concerning the nature of the temporal alone, but of the unity of time with space, and so also of the character of event, action, and performance, and of these as spacings no less than timings. The idea of the unity of time with space, expressed in the notion of "timespace' (Zeitraum), is a central idea in the development of Martin Heidegger's thinking as it moves away from the problematic treatment of time and space that is evident in Being and Time.¹ On this account, there is no temporality that does not bring spatiality along with it, and no spatiality that does not bring temporality also. Understanding the unity of timespace is to understand the unity of place. Indeed, it is only in and through that unity, which is also always a working out of plurality, that there is any possibility of the transcendence that is so often associated with art and performance, as well as with philosophy.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137410276_2

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