A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two thing being in the same location (place). The law of the 'proper' rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own 'proper' and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the idea that a place is defined by the relationships and positions of its elements, ensuring stability and order.
Michel De Certeau's quote suggests that a place is not merely a physical location but a complex arrangement of elements that coexist in structured relationships. This arrangement defines each element's 'proper' and distinct position and implies a sense of stability that characterizes the nature of the place itself. The notion that two things cannot occupy the same place further highlights the uniqueness and individuality of each element within the configuration, encapsulating a philosophical perspective on spatial relations.
In practice
Discussing urban planning and the importance of order in design.
First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.
The sick man must follow his illness to the place where it is treated... He is set aside in one of the technical and secret zones (hospitals, prisons, refuse dumps) which relieve the living of everything that might hinder the chain of production and consumption, and which repair and select what can be sent back up to the surface of progress.
The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.
The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.
More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.
Insanity is in the eyes of the beholder. So I will continue to live my personal folly.
All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.
What it felt to me was like the dissolution of my idea of myself. I felt like separateness evaporated. I felt this tremendous sense of oneness. I'm quite an erratic thinker, quite an adrenalized person, but through meditation, I found this beautiful serenity and selfless connection. My tendency towards selfishness, I felt that kind of exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective to have. I felt very relaxed, a sense of oneness. I felt love.
Unwinds didn't go out with a bang-they didn't even go out with a whimper. they went out with the silence of a candle flame pinched between two fingers.
Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection
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