The Unexplored Legacy of a Reminder

Edward Soja's Socio-Spatial Dialectic and the Simultaneous Unfolding of Time, Space, and Being

Abstract

This article analyzes the still unexplored legacy of Edward Soja's theoretical concept of socio-spatial dialectics. We take into consideration the emphasis he gives to the relationship between dialectics and hermeneutics and the complex ways in which social consciousness develops under the postmodern condition.  The main argument we propose is that Edward Soja represents a conjunctural scholar between the history-driven historical materialism of modernity and the hermeneutical complexity of postmodernity. In this sense, we look at Soja as a unique and original theorist, who was able to continue and expand on Henri Lefebvre’s scholarship in ways that are still widely understudied. Soja’s anti-Cartesian notion of space as a center of struggles defies theoretical categorizations. It continually oscillates between dialectics, or even trialectics, and a Nietzschean understanding of time, cyclical and tragic. This paper ultimately seeks to present and analyze such theoretical positions in order to rediscover the topicality of Soja’s scholarship.