Trialectics

From Geography

Trialectics is a concept invented by Lefebvre (dialectics of triplicety) and further developed by Soja(trialectics).

Lefebvre

'The imaginary'. This word becomes (or better: becomes again) magical. It fills the empty spaces of thought, much like the 'unconscious and culture'. ... After all, since two terms are not sufficient, it becomes necessary to introduce a third term.. The third term sit he other, with all that this term implies (alterity, the relation between the present/absent other, alteration-alienation).

Reflexive thought and hence philosophy has for a long time accentuated dyads. Those of dry and humid, the large and the small. the finite and the infinite, as in Greek antiquity. Then those that constituted the western philosophical paradigm. subject-object, continuity –discontinuity, open - closed, etc. Finally, in the modern era there are the binary oppositions between signifier and signified, knowledge and non-knowledge, centre and periphery... [But] is there ever a relation only between two terms...? One always had Three. There is always the Other.

Soja

The third term never stands alone, totally separate from its precedents or given absolute precedence on its own. This is the key point to lefebvre dialectics of triplicety and of what I have chosen to describe as trialectical thinking and.

Trialectical thinking is difficult, for it challenges all conventional modes of thought and taken-for-granted epistemologies. It is disorderly, unruly, constantly evolving, unfixed, never presentable in permanent constructions.

References

• Henri Lefebvre, La presence et l'absence, 1980:225 and 143 in Soja, E.W. (1996). The extraordinary voyages of Henri Lefebvre; The trialectics of spatiality. In Thirdspace: Journeys to los Angeles and other real-and-imagined place.[Electronic version] Blackwell, Oxford.
• Soja, E.W. (1996). The extraordinary voyages of Henri Lefebvre; The trialectics of spatiality. In Thirdspace: Journeys to los Angeles and other real-and-imagined place.[Electronic version] Blackwell, Oxford.