The Obsession

“The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its real preponderance of dead men, and the menacing glaciation of the world... The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space.”

- O * It wasn't a fascination or an interest but an obsession, an obsession, a stalking- in this case of the past. What comes to mind is the extensive knowledge that came in the twentieth century-with the continuation of the obsession-specifically following the decoding of the Rosetta Stone, Howard Carter's famous exploration, and this fascination with the past is all too familiar to the heterotopia of the cinema (though in this case there is an interesting compilation/juxtaposition of the imagination of the film industry and the "literal" type of exploration/adventure that would take place). In this time the ArchaeoAnthrological-Historian was the master of the sphere of knowledge. What knowledge couldn't be obtained through history? What could it predict about the future? Does history, in fact, repeat itself? This question has carried far beyond the obsession of the nineteenth century for it is still a question we look to today. **Here there are questions of the space/time conundrum, moving linearly through time, while looking back at different times in order to make up for current predicaments. At a time when it seemed as though all history had been recounted and the burning desire of the honeymoon period burnt itself out, the world looked to the elements of space and the future; never a focus on the present. We use the code of actions (specifically of those discussed above), logic (that follows the linear perspective), and new code (my own "creation") of historical perspective and linear-flow to designate the beginnings of the obsession and the interests/importance of the heterotopias to designate the in-betweens, the places of time of the past, and space of the future.