Especes D’espaces

Perec, Georges. Especes D’espaces. Paris 32, rue du Fer-a-Moulin: Editions Galilee, 1974. Print.

Georges Pérec examines different spaces in a concentric way, from the closest to the body outer space, the bed, to the farthest one, the cosmos. In his characteristic approach, almost playing, Pérec questions, or make us question, the way in what we understand the places where we lived. Following his important work on language, he is more interested in the  exercise and the process that occurs in the reading’s side than in proposing responses. Or maybe this is his way to propose solutions.

With apparently simple questions and images, Pérec deconstructs some solid ideas about the use, configuration and possession of different spaces. What is it to live in a room, from which point a place belongs to somebody, what does it mean? How is it that a place can take on different names based only on a change in the furniture within it. Although he is not directly criticizing discourses and practices, his system can be more subversive because he questioned the logic in which these discourses emerge.

Talking about space, this book could be regarded as a work about the idea of the house, but Pérec’s gaze also disarms the basis on which we built our relational network, related with our idea of the home.

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