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All the World's a Stage

The Imaginative Texture of Social Spaces

University of Copenhagen

In this article, Shakespeare’s theatre provides the point of departure for a discussion of social spaces in general. "The social" itself is a performed space, where notions of place, performance time, and coactors play a crucial role in the shaping of individual actions. Most important, it is argued that meaningful action is always partly based on a sense of the plot in which one participates, and thus in anticipation of what will happen next. This sense of plot is closely related to an illusion of a whole already in place but which becomes real only as individuals act on their perceptions of it. Individual agency is thus firmly based in the collectivity and in the imaginatively envisaged future.

Key Words: theatrical spaces • social action • plots

Space and Culture, Vol. 7, No. 2, 223-236 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331203262088


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