Space and Time in a Global World

It is a common place in the large literature on globalisation that concepts of the 'space', 'time' and 'self' have radically changed in the last decades, during the process of globalisation. My lecture offers an analysis of a few topics, using these words metaphorically. At first, my analysis will be focused on Manuel Castells' famous terms 'space of flow' and 'timeless time', and on a more classical term, Hannah Arendt's selflessness'. By analysing the uses of these terms in writings of the mentioned authors and their followers, I will try to demonstrate: (1) these terms are too obscure, ones to use them as scholar concepts, and they are acceptable ones in a mere metaphoric sense only: (2) they are not the special terms of the globalisation, being rooted in a well-known discourse of the literature of the classical modernity. The last author analysed in my lecture is a 19(th) century Scottish professor Andrew Ure. He is a part of the discourse of the classical modernity, using the vocabulary for describing his world that is similar to that of Castells' and Arendt's mentioned terms, with a radically different evaluation.