ABSTRACT
In Arabic, the word faḍāʾ فضاء is mostly used to designate a material space. However, it is also a descriptive term for a field of action or thought, such as faḍāʾ siyāsī فضاء سياسي (a political space), and non-tangible or amorphous spaces such as faḍāʾ ibdāʿī فضاء إبداعي (creative spaces). As a performance term, it refers to the space of the performance. It can be used to refer to both the material space and the aesthetic space of a performance. In contrast to the more common term makān مكان (location/place), faḍāʾ has a rich significance that embraces anything that exits within the boundaries of the performance. In that sense, faḍāʾ is a term that provides a linguistic and intellectual richness to express a perspective toward performance wherein the material and non-material spaces (of thought, aesthetics and emotions) are present and interwoven beyond the restrictive term of makān, which only refers to a material and physical location/place. Open and often undefined, faḍāʾ, “space,” becomes a practised makān, “place,” when humans attach meaning to it. Makān is therefore highly individualized, but it is also a recognizable cultural construct of symbolic exchanges and interpretive conventions. It is construed in complex relationships between gaze and object within cultural expectations. Both faḍāʾ and makān are elusive and difficult to define, for they reflect the surging, shifting and inchoate character of life itself as a dynamic performative experience. In Derridean terms, space is very much like a cinder, “something that erases itself totally, radically, while presenting itself” (Derrida 1987, 177). In a related context, Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) also reminds us that
space is a practiced place. Thus, the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space produced by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted by a system of signs.
(de Certeau 1984, 117) Therefore, faḍāʾ and makān can be continuously interconnected and interpreted in relation to the practices produced within/around them.