Place and Experience

by Jeff E. Malpas

The first edition of Place and Experience established Jeff Malpas as one of the leading philosophers and thinkers of place and space and provided a creative and refreshing alternative to prevailing post-structuralist and postmodern theories of place. It is a foundational and ground-breaking book in its attempt to lay out a sustained and rigorous account of place and its significance. The main argument of Place and Experience has three first, that human being is inextricably bound to place; second, that place encompasses subjectivity and objectivity, being reducible to neither but foundational to both; and third that place, which is distinct from, but also related to space and time, is methodologically and ontologically fundamental. The development of this argument involves considerations concerning the nature of place and its relation to space and time; the character of that mode of philosophical investigation that is oriented to place and that is referred to as ‘philosophical topography’; the nature of subjectivity and objectivity as inter-related concepts that also connect with intersubjectivity; and the way place is tied to memory, identity, and the self. Malpas draws on a rich array of writers and philosophers, including Wordsworth, Kant, Proust, Heidegger and Donald Davidson. This second edition is revised throughout, including a new chapter on place and technological modernity, especially the seeming loss of place in the contemporary world, and a new Foreword by Edward Casey. It also includes a new set of additional features, such as illustrations, annotated further reading, and a glossary, which make this second edition more useful to teachers and students alike.

Genres: Philosophy, Geography

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 1999

About the author

Jeff Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Latrobe University. He is the author of Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World and Heidegger and the Thinking of Place: Explorations in the Topology of Being, both published by the MIT Press.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

J.E. Malpas explores "Proust's Principle" of "the place-bound identity of persons" in this academic and philosophical study of the connections between humans and human culture on the one hand, and place and space on the other. As humans are physical beings, he argues that "place is integral to the very structure and possibility of experience," and he draws upon multiple disciplines and genres, in his exploration of the idea...

Here is another book, much like John Wylie's 2007 Landscape , that I might never have picked up, had I not been writing a paper for my children's literature masters, on the use and significance of place and landscape in two children's novels - Eilís Dillon's The Island of Ghosts and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island . Malpas' book is definitely outside of the areas of study with which I normally concern myself, and it didn't end up being that germane to my work, as I decided to use the topos idea, found in Jane Suzanne Carroll's Landscape in Children's Literature , in the aforementioned paper. That said, I did find it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me think about place and space in ways I had not hitherto. I have not read a number of the philosophers the author quotes, but that did not detract from the sense of Malpas' argument in any significant way. This is a rather specialized book, and probably will not have much interest outside of certain academic circles. Recommended largely to those readers interested in the academic study of the idea of place.

[Andrew]

A difficult, demanding read that draws heavily on philosophers I've never read (Strawson, Davidson) with the noble goal of fixing the philosophical endeavor in space. As impressed as I am with Malpas' efforts and rigor, I so often find that works like this-- works which so emphasize the role of ontology versus that of epistemology-- to be utterly alienating, and it's like there's a little [angel or devil, not sure which] on my shoulder whispering "you know it's all bullshit and nothing means anything, don't you?"

[Mon · Rating 4 out of 5]

More philosophy than architecture, but if you're looking for a more theoretical argument for an insane unpractical gravity defying design it might just work. Malpas is better at criticising the contradiction of allocentric and egocentric space of other theorists than coming up with his own original idea. There is a copious amount of quotes and literary discussion of Proust and architecture - what's not to like?