Supplementary reading material:
Part I: The Construction and Critique of Standardized Time & Space
Of Other Spaces (Michel Foucault)
Outlines the historical shift from a medieval understanding of space as a hierarchical emplacement to modern relational sites.
Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps (Peter Galison)
Traces the late 19th-century push for clock synchronization, illustrating how Einstein's critique of absolute time was influenced by the electro-coordinated clocks of his era.
Time and Free Will - Chapter II (Henri Bergson)
Argues that our common conception of time is corrupted by spatial imagery, distinguishing between measurable, homogeneous time and pure duration, which is an indivisible succession of qualitative changes.
Science and Linguistics (Benjamin Lee Whorf)
Introduces linguistic relativity, arguing that native languages dictate how humans dissect the universe. It contrasts English objectification with Hopi duration-based classification to challenge the universality of standardized time.
The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language (Benjamin Lee Whorf)
Demonstrates how Western languages artificially objectify time as a measurable quantity in imaginary space. This is contrasted with Hopi tensors, which express continuous duration and intensity without spatial metaphors.
Close Up at a Distance (Laura Kurgan)
Analyzes the shift from true spatial representations to virtual satellite mosaics, emphasizing that maps are non-neutral interpretations and describing GPS as a machine that upends absolute time.
People Manipulate Objects (but Cultivate Fields) (Helen Couclelis)
Reframes the GIS debate between raster and vector formats as a cognitive conflict between viewing space as discrete objects versus continuous fields, relevant for translating physical realities into digital maps.
Part II: Environmental Imaginaries & Celestial Logics
The Origin of the anwa' in Arab Tradition (Daniel Martin Varisco)
Investigates the pre-Islamic anwa system of asterisms used to mark seasonal transitions, arguing that the formalized 28 lunar stations were an external system overlaid onto authentic indigenous Arab star-lore.
Rising Star Paradigms (Danielle Adams)
Explores how ancient Arabic rhymed prose encoded seasonal forecasting based on the heliacal rising of stars, arguing that these stars function as celestial chronotopes blending spatial, biological, and social meaning.
Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope (Mikhail Bakhtin/Pieter Bemong)
Establishes the chronotope as the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships, explaining how time and space become charged and sedimented within cultural narratives.