Space, meaning, identity, Dasein: spatiality as hermeneutic circle

Without hermeneutic awareness, social theories tend to understand the meaning of space as something that humans “subjectively” ascribe to; in the case of minority identities such as the LGBT community, this meaning is thus understood as an act of social defiance, firming up a “subversive” subjectivity which otherwise will be covered over by mainstream prejudices and pressures that threaten the freedom of aletheia in “coming out”. However, given that Dasein is constitutively projected as being-in-the-world, the spatiality of being is what Dasein is. Temporalised as being-towards-death, Dasein is its own space within its being-in-the-world: the two are hermeneutically inseparable. The understanding of space is bound up with Dasein, yet not by virtue of any “subjective” willing on its part. Space is Dasein; the spatiality of space, Dasein‘s being-in-the-world in its essential mode of dwelling on earth as “being-in”.

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