Essay on the “epistemicide” of space in modernity and the epistemological reconstruction of this category based on the philosophy of praxis (metaphilosophy)

Abstract

The perception of spatial development, the colonization of the world of life and the instrumentalisation of subjects in modernity are associated with the ways of perceiving the spatiality of social relations by the positivist philosophies and sciences constituted in modernity and by the state, indissociably. In modern society, abstract space - a homogeneous, fragmented, hierarchical space - dominated the social space, or the integrated space of social communion, and the latter’s own production potential was itself attenuated. Therefore, a conception of space has developed as neutral and without contradictions, configuring itself as a strategy that practices an “epistemic murder” of space by ignoring, intentionally, the praxis in the social space. This article analyzes the complementarity of the praxis philosophy of Antonio Gramsci and the metaphilosophy of Henri Lefebvre in the process of epistemological renewal of the space category and the ruptures with the positivist epistemological assumptions about this category.