十九世紀晚期以來,居於主導地位之現代性與現代主義的特殊形式,尤其是在批判理論與論述的場域中,具有犧牲空間性,而偏重歷史性和社會性喲傾向。如此一來,人類生活中空間性、歷史性與社會性三者互為辯證的關係就被扭曲了,而且阻撓了在現代運動中,藉由“地理學的創造”所可能獲致的具批判性與潛在的解放洞見的能力,可是,另一方面,現代運動卻成功地促成了“歷史的創造”,並刻意地重塑了社會秩序。 當代有關後現代性、後現代化和後現代主義的論戰,已經開始將空間性重新安置在批判性的思考與實踐之中,並且因此平衡了上個世紀以來對歷史性的偏重。我認為重新安放空間性的核心工作,乃是對本體論的與理論的歷史主義提出批判。然而,我的意圖不是要將歷史主義換成空間主義,而是要達成空間性、歷史性與社會性這三者的適切平衡,不讓任何一方有詮釋上的先驗優勢。
The particular forms of modernity and modernism that became dominant in the late 19th century, especially in the realms of critical theory and discourse, tended to privilege historicity and sociality at the expense of spatiality, thus distorting the trialectic of spatiality, historicity, and sociality of human life, and inhibiting the ability of modern movements to gain critical and potentially emancipatory insight from the ”making of geographies” in the same way they successfully did for the ”making of history” and the intentional remaking of the social order. The contemporary debates on postmodernity, postmodernization, and postmodernism have initiated the reassertion of spatiality in critical thought and practice, thereby helping to rebalance the peculiar skewness of critical thought over the past century. Central to this reassertion of spatiality is the critique of a persistent ontological and theoretical historicism. My intention is not to replace historicism with spatialism., but to achieve a more appropriate trialectical balance in which neither spatiality, historicity, or sociality is interpretively privileged a priori.