Revisiting Time and Space after COVID-19

If space can give individual or collective identity a certain immobility, time obliges it to take into account not only the movement and the change which it supposes, but also and above all the finitude which in particular characterizes life, human or otherwise. Regardless of what I am, here (space), I will not be, forever (time). Identity is therefore projected in time and comes from space, and vice versa. Identity thus expresses itself in two different orders which, like its individual and collective dimensions, are neither separate nor assimilated. On the contrary, transcendence and contingency complement each other and are interdependent.

The transcendent identity emerges from the questioning of the individual's very nature, and his belonging to the natural environment which human consciousness seems to isolate it from. Human beings think of nature as an element that can be controlled through advances and developments in knowledge. The modern individual represents a rupture in historical consciousness, characterized by a desire to complete the reign of all spirituality. However, present times seem yet to acknowledge the return to it in most identity debates.

Having said that, contingent identity is constructed from this awareness and this power to transform nature, and develop culture as its original product. The world therefore appears under the domination of human beings who, being self-permitted to appropriate it, will also seek to dominate fellow humans through the exchange of material possessions, among other things. Social relations are equally present in these economic relationships through collectively shaped and expanded (to some degree) systems of exchanges and transactions.