On the way to Nonlinear Literature: Space

Space and time are the parameters of life that humans have ever discovered; intended to measure; organized their thinking harmoniously. There have been theories that space is not only a dimension but also a tool to remember, perceive, and visualize knowledge as in the method of loci or theatre of memory, which both are technics to spatialize activities and thoughts. These methods often reflect themselves in nonlinear narrations to teleport a personage from one place to another. While the method of loci is a crucial element in Sherlock Holmes books, for example, to allocate characters in overlapping stories, Nolan's film Interstellar combines the theatre of memory with quantum theory to locate and administer all human concepts, everything which exists in the whole world.1


A piece of music: Voyager's Golden Record- Dark was the Night- Blind Willie Johnson


“animals are divided into (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off” look like flies”.

Derived from this passage of Borges, Michael Foucault elaborates on the term heterotopia, where multiple orders can co-exist. He asks; ''where could they ever meet, except in the immaterial sound of the voice pronouncing their enumeration, or on the page transcribing it? Where else could they be juxtaposed except in the non-place of language? Yet, though language can spread them before us, it can do so only in an unthinkable space.''2

Deleuze and Guattari were the others who have spoken of space. In their writing, they distinguish ''smooth space'' as heterogeneous, fluid, and nomadic, while ''striated space'' homogenous, state-oriented and static. 

1 http://socks-studio.com/2019/03/03/spatializing-knowledge-giulio-camillos-theatre-of-memory-1519-1544/

2 https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.orderOfThings.en/

https://web.colby.edu/cogblog/2014/11/17/the-method-of-loci-and-learning-through-headphones-a-powerful-and-overlooked-learning-method/

https://nooshinesmaeili.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/sep-25-the-smooth-and-the-striated-deleuze-and-guattari/

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