As a matter of fact, the concept of “non-place” remains operative in approaching the shifting or marginal character of certain spaces and specific zones because of their peripheral location or their untypical nature, function, or material arrangement. The introduction of the concept of non-place in Antiquity and beyond requires questioning the criteria and perspectives according to which physical spaces or territories, with the symbolic meaning they convey, can be qualified as non-places. Although the conceptualization and categorization of non-places can be ambiguous if perceived with the criteria of functionality, territorial and aesthetic centrality, and positivity, they nonetheless represent critical spaces with regard to this centrality and its grounding processes and institutions. In this sense, they can serve as alternative spaces to perceive, understand, and reconfigure “places” in their physical and symbolical dimensions, as well as in their interactions.
A zone with fervently debated geographical boundaries and fragmented in geopolitical terms, the Caribbean is often presented as a sort of non-place or, perhaps, an out-of-place in contexts of hegemonic discourse. Historically and culturally, Caribbean countries and territories appear mostly disconnected from one another, as some kind of peripheral appendages of former or current colonial powers. Combined with fragmentary islandic geography and limited autonomy for most of its components, this geopolitical marginality may explain, at least in part, why classical and Mediterranean studies are relatively underrepresented in the area as if conditions in the Caribbean were not favourable for knowledge to flourish in the same way as in purportedly steady political, economic, and cultural environments in “mother countries”. Reflecting on non-places from a Caribbean ubication, thus, constitutes much more than merely an academic exercise. Instead, it is a question of investigating what an approach to an ancient perception of space from an allegedly marginal geopolitical area can reveal about non-places, and about the cultural and geopolitical strategies tacitly at work in the subject, concept, and methods of the study of Classical Civilization and its Mediterranean context, from the great civilizations of the Levant in the first millennium BCE to Classical Islam and the early medieval/Byzantine period (7th c. BCE – 7th c. CE).
Did the ancients consider non-places – and how? The question invites a fresh approach to Greek and Roman definitions of place and the representation of different living spaces: houses; the agora/forum with all its functions; temples; shops; theatres and amphitheaters; places that accommodated political processes, e.g., an assembly meeting; the gymnasium; the harbour; the city itself; fields and rural areas; other cities; the cosmos; as well as more specific places, like a particular person’s house or specific rooms within a house. Judging from the importance ascribed to the concept of limit in Antiquity (peras in Greece, limes, terminus, and finis in the Roman world) and some of their physical manifestations like the boundary stones (horoi), we need to examine if liminal areas with blurred boundaries and humdrum functions are close to non-places, as well as frontier zones or common, panhellenic zones, extraterritorial, or intermediate zones. For instance, is the area between Kolonos and Athens in Sophocles’ play Oidipous at Kolonos a non-place – and how does the response alter our understanding of the play and perceptions of space in Antiquity? In the same vein, Cynics questioned the legitimacy of central civic places, like the theatre and the agora: did their strong criticism turn these places into non-places, at least for the perception of a group of people? What about the status of the “cities in speech” Plato - and Aristophanes? - proposes: are these controversial “utopias” to be understood as non-places, or are they instead constructs aimed at better understanding and reforming actual places? The extra-muros wilderness and the sea may also be seen as non-places, counterparts to the city as a place of institutions aimed at educating men and turning them into citizens. But, rather, could wild zones and the sea be understood as “places”?
In Rome, some spaces, peoples, and institutions related to extraterritorial, transitional, or hazy “places”. If, in its early, polis-like stages, rituals (mundus), trade (portus), and Law (ius gentium) provide many examples of such blurred spaces, the universal and eternal empire was theoretically sine fines, but practically confined within de facto frontier zones and borderlands where contact, transit, and trade abounded. In Late Antiquity, continuities, changes, and migrations formed new kinds of “places” and imbued new meanings and uses to previous ones. Advancing otherworldliness with the advent of Christianity and Neoplatonism was only one way to transform places, especially those considered “in-between”, such as thresholds, entrances, and enclosures (like the earlier mundus and Janus) and/or non-places. Basilicas, porticoes, mosques, city streets and walls, necropoleis of all faiths and their new location within the urban grid, and military buildings, were only a few of the marks of new arrangements in urban planning that call to question the difference between places and non-places. Beyond the city, investigations on monasteries, hermit coves and stelai, remote farms, forests, and deserts invite a novel appreciation of the conceptual terms our models apply.
