DOCSLIB.ORG

Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds ENVISIONING LANDSCAPES, MAKING WORLDS The past decade has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in the intellectual interplay between geography and the humanities in both academic and public circles. The metaphors and concepts of geography now permeate literature, philosophy, and the arts. Concepts such as space, place, landscape, mapping and territory have become pervasive as conceptual frame- works and core metaphors in recent publications by humanities scholars and well-known writers. Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds contains over 25 contributions from leading scholars who have engaged this vital intellectual project from various perspectives, both inside and outside of the fi eld of geography. The book is divided into four sections representing different modes of examining the depth and complexity of human meaning invested in maps, attached to landscapes, and embedded in the spaces and places of modern life. The topics covered range widely and include interpretations of space, place, and landscape in literature and the visual arts, philosophical refl ections on geographical knowledge, cultural imagination in scientifi c exploration and travel accounts, and expanded geographical understanding through digital and participatory methodologies. The clashing and blending of cultures caused by globaliza- tion and the new technologies that profoundly alter human environmental experience suggest new geographical narratives and representations that are explored here by a multidisciplinary group of authors. This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and interested general readers seeking to understand the new synergies and creative interplay emerging from this broad intellectual engagement with meaning and geographic experience. Stephen Daniels is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Nottingham, UK. Dydia DeLyser is Associate Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University, USA. J. Nicholas Entrikin is Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Douglas Richardson is Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers, USA. “This book provides powerful evidence of geography’s intellectual and moral affi liations with the humanities. It boasts an impressive cast of contributors, with elegant and compelling essays that show why creativity, imagination and refl ection matter to geographers, and why the insights of geography matter to the humanities as never before.” Professor Felix Driver, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. “For geography, this book vigorously promotes the signifi cance of the powers of spatial and visual representation in evoking landscapes and places. For the humani- ties, it elegantly maps the variety of ways in which geographical concepts are helping respond to the so-called crisis of representation by grounding texts, performances, and visual art in landscapes and places.” Professor John Agnew, UCLA, USA. ENVISIONING LANDSCAPES, MAKING WORLDS Geography and the humanities Edited by Stephen Daniels, Dydia DeLyser, J. Nicholas Entrikin and Douglas Richardson First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Selection and editorial matter, Association of American Geographers; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the Association of American Geographers to be identifi ed as authors of the editorial material and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Envisioning landscapes, making worlds/Association of American Geographers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Human geography. 2. Landscape assessment. I. Association of American Geographers. GF41.E556 2010 304.2ʹ3–dc22 2010028082 ISBN: 978-0-415-58977-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-58978-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-83928-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk CONTENTS List of illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of contributors xii Foreword xix Converging worlds: geography and the humanities Douglas Richardson Prologue xxii Geography within the humanities Denis Cosgrove Introduction xxvi Envisioning landscapes, making worlds Stephen Daniels, Dydia DeLyser, J. Nicholas Entrikin and Douglas Richardson PART I Mapping 1 1 Why America is called America 3 Franco Farinelli 2 Above the dead cities 12 Derek Gregory 3 Digital cartographies and medieval geographies 25 Keith D. Lilley vi Contents 4 Mapping the taboo 34 Gunnar Olsson 5 Choros, chora and the question of landscape 44 Kenneth R. Olwig 6 Thematic cartography and the study of American history 55 Susan Schulten PART II Refl ecting 63 7 Do places have edges? a geo-philosophical inquiry 65 Edward S. Casey 8 Race, mobility and the humanities: a geosophical approach 74 Tim Cresswell 9 The world in plain view 84 J. Nicholas Entrikin 10 Courtly geography: nature, authority and civility in early eighteenth-century France 94 Michael Heffernan 11 Darwinian landscapes 106 David Livingstone 12 Travel and the domination of space in the European imagination 118 Anthony Pagden 13 The good inherit the earth 127 Yi-Fu Tuan PART III Representing 141 14 Putting Pablo Neruda’s Alturas de Macchu Picchu in its places 143 Jim Cocola Contents vii 15 Great balls of fi re: envisioning the brilliant meteor of 1783 155 Stephen Daniels 16 Reading landscapes and telling stories: geography, the humanities and environmental history 170 Diana K. Davis 17 Participatory historical geography? Shaping and failing to shape social memory at an Oklahoma monument 177 Dydia DeLyser 18 Still-life, after-life, nature morte : W.G. Sebald and the demands of landscape 188 Jessica Dubow 19 The texture of space: desire and displacement in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the dunes 198 Matthew Gandy 20 Restoration: synoptic refl ections 209 David Lowenthal 21 Overlapping ambiguities, disciplinary perspectives, and metaphors of looking: refl ections on a landscape photograph 227 Joan M. Schwartz PART IV Performing 237 22 Inverting perspective: icons’ performative geographies 239 Veronica della Dora 23 Literary geography: the novel as a spatial event 247 Sheila Hones 24 Materializing vision: performing a high-rise view 256 Jane M. Jacobs, Stephen Cairns, and Ignaz Strebel 25 Technician of light: Patrick Geddes and the optic of geography 269 Fraser MacDonald viii Contents 26 Deserted places, remote voices: performing landscape 280 Mike Pearson 27 Photography and its circulations 287 Gillian Rose 28 Beyond the power of art to represent? Narratives and performances of the Arctic in the 1630s 293 Julie Sanders 29 Navigating the Northwest Passage 299 Kathryn Yusoff Index 311 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 10.1 Title page of the Cours . 97 10.2 Jean Audran’s image of Louis XV in the Cours . 101 15.1 Track of the Meteor of 18 August 1783 and Main Sites of Observation. 157 15.2a Henry Robinson, An Accurate Representation of the Meteor which was seen on Aug 18, 1783 (1783). 158 15.2b The Meteor of Aug. 18th, 1783, as it appeared from the NE Terrace, at Windsor Castle (1783). 159 17.1 The completed statue of Nannita Daisey, Leaping into History showing her mythic jump from the cowcatcher, here with petticoats fl ying. 179 19.1 Woman of the dunes [Suna no onna], 1964. 200 19.2 Woman of the dunes [Suna no onna], 1964. 202 19.3 Woman of the dunes [Suna no onna], 1964. 204 21.1 The Wigwam, a Canadian Scene at Penllergare. 231 24.1 The Red Road estate, Glasgow. 257 24.2 William Ross, then Secretary of State for Scotland, and his wife at a Red Road window. 261 24.3 The talking and showing of a Red Road view. 264 25.1 The Outlook Tower, Castlehill, Edinburgh. 270 25.2 Geddesian Sociology, Le Play’s “place-work-folk” triad, 1976. 276 29.1 National Ice Core Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado 2007. 304 x List of illustrations Colour Plates (Between pp. 160-161) I RAF zone map of Dresden. II RAF target map. III Dresden , elin o’Hara slavick, 1945. IV (a) Britain mapped in National Grid coordinate space, (b) Gough Map distortion grid derived using Euclidean trans- formation, (c) Gough Map distortion grid clipped coastline. V New towns of Edward I compared. VI Le Sahara, by Gustave Guillaumet, 1867. VII Au Pays de la soif, by Eugène Fromentin, 1869. VIII “Icons stare back”. Icon of the Panaghia Theosképaste-, Holy Monastery Panaghias Theoskepástou, Sochos, Greece. IX Sacred space is confi gured and enacted through perform- ance. Icon of the Mother of God, Holy Monastery of Docheiariou, Mount Athos. X The “wrapping effect” of icons’ inverse perspective. Katholikón of Docheiariou Monastery, Mount Athos, 1568. XI The “transfi gured” and “transfi guring” landscape. Katholikón of Docheiariou Monastery, Mount Athos,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Geography and Atmospheric Science 1
    Geography and Atmospheric Science 1 Undergraduate Research Center is another great resource. The center Geography and aids undergraduates interested in doing research, offers funding opportunities, and provides step-by-step workshops which provide Atmospheric Science students the skills necessary to explore, investigate, and excel. Atmospheric Science labs include a Meteorology and Climate Hub Geography as an academic discipline studies the spatial dimensions of, (MACH) with state-of-the-art AWIPS II software used by the National and links between, culture, society, and environmental processes. The Weather Service and computer lab and collaborative space dedicated study of Atmospheric Science involves weather and climate and how to students doing research. Students also get hands-on experience, those affect human activity and life on earth. At the University of Kansas, from forecasting and providing reports to university radio (KJHK 90.7 our department's programs work to understand human activity and the FM) and television (KUJH-TV) to research project opportunities through physical world. our department and the University of Kansas Undergraduate Research Center. Why study geography? . Because people, places, and environments interact and evolve in a changing world. From conservation to soil science to the power of Undergraduate Programs geographic information science data and more, the study of geography at the University of Kansas prepares future leaders. The study of geography Geography encompasses landscape and physical features of the planet and human activity, the environment and resources, migration, and more. Our Geography integrates information from a variety of sources to study program (http://geog.ku.edu/degrees/) has a unique cross-disciplinary the nature of culture areas, the emergence of physical and human nature with pathway options (http://geog.ku.edu/geography-pathways/) landscapes, and problems of interaction between people and the and diverse faculty (http://geog.ku.edu/faculty/) who are passionate about environment.
    [Show full text]
  • The Empirics of New Economic Geography ∗
    The Empirics of New Economic Geography ∗ Stephen J Redding LSE, Yale School of Management and CEPR y February 28, 2009 Abstract Although a rich and extensive body of theoretical research on new economic geography has emerged, empirical research remains comparatively less well developed. This paper reviews the existing empirical literature on the predictions of new economic geography models for the distribution of income and production across space. The discussion highlights connections with other research in regional and urban economics, identification issues, potential alternative explanations and possible areas for further research. Keywords: New economic geography, market access, industrial location, multiple equilibria JEL: F12, F14, O10 ∗This paper was produced as part of the Globalization Programme of the ESRC-funded Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Financial support under the European Union Research Training grant MRTN-CT-2006-035873 is also gratefully acknowledged. I am grateful to a number of co-authors and colleagues for insight, discussion and comments, including in particular Tony Venables and Gilles Duranton, and also Guy Michaels, Henry Overman, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Peter Schott, Daniel Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf. I bear sole responsibility for the opinions expressed and any errors. yDepartment of Economics, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom. Tel: + 44 20 7955 7483, Fax: + 44 20 7955 7595, Email: s:j:redding@lse:ac:uk. Web: http : ==econ:lse:ac:uk=staff=sredding=. 1 1 Introduction Over the last two decades, the uneven distribution of economic activity across space has received re- newed attention with the emergence of the “new economic geography” literature following Krugman (1991a).
    [Show full text]
  • Geography Introduction
    Geography Student Handbook CSUS Geography, Fall 2005 Geography Student Handbook contents ONE WELCOME TO GEOGRAPHY Part Welcome Geography Students 1 Reception 2 Keeping the Department Informed 2 Faculty Profiles and Contact Information 3 Maps 4 Campus 4 Bizzini Hall (Classroom Building) 2nd Floor 5 GIS Lab 6 Bio-Ag 7 TWO WHAT IS GEOGRAPHY? 8 Definitions 8 Areas of Geographic Study 9 General Readings in Geography and Teaching 10 THREE YOUR PROGRAM 11 Advising 11 Registration 12 Geography Courses (from Catalog) 13 BA Geography Worksheet (regular tract) 14 BA Geography with Applied Concentration Worksheet 15 Geography Minor Worksheet 16 Liberal Studies with Geography Concentration Worksheet 17 Social Science with Geography Concentration Worksheet 17 General Education Worksheet 18 Plagerism and Academic Dishonesty 19 Readings – Coping with Classes 20 Internships 21 FOUR GEOGRAPHY’S FACILITIES 22 Laboratories 22 The Field 22 GIS Lab 23 Bio-Ag 23 The Bridge 24 Study Abroad 25 Other Facilities 26 FIVE LIFE AFTER CSUS 27 Occupations 27 Graduate School 28 Letter of Reference 29 1 one - welcome to geography “Of all the disciplines, it is geography that has captured the vision of the earth as a whole.” Kenneth Boulding WELCOME GEOGRAPHY STUDENTS! This student handbook provides a way for you to track your degree progress and helps you navigate a path, not only to complete your degree, but to seek a profession in geography or attend graduate school. It serves as a convenient source for general information about the discipline of geography, department and campus resources, and who to contact with various questions. This handbook does not replace the personal one-to-one contact between yourself and your advisor.
    [Show full text]
  • Cryptosphere Catalogue
    J. Wyld, ‘Babylon’ from Geografica Sacra, RGS (IBG) Collection, ref. 1 Simeon Nelson, Loxodrome, CAD drawing, 5 FOREWORD Dr. Rita Gardner, CBE 6 THE ORDER OF THINGYNESS Jordan Kaplan 10 ART, SCIENCE AND FLATLAND Dr. Denis Alexander 15 SCALING, DECORATING, MAPPING Professor Denis Cosgrove 24 REBECCA GELDARD IN CONVERSATION WITH SIMEON NELSON 41 ORNAMENTAL GRIDLOCK Rebecca Geldard 48 GAYHURST COMMUNITY SCHOOL 53 THE INNER SOUND OF SPACE Dr. Alessandro Scafi 63 BIOGRAPHIES Ernst Haeckel, Radiolaria, detail of one of a series of marine Protozoa studies FOREWORD The use of maps to visually represent and interpret our world has been at the heart of geography as a discipline for hundreds of years. From its foundation in ,the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) supported explorers and scholars, many of whom in the nineteenth century recorded places on maps or charts for the first time. Originally, the Society’s involvement in mapping was closely linked to Victorian geographers and explorers traveling out into the world and gathering the new knowledge to fill in to the blanks on their maps. Through the work of individuals such as Livingstone and Stanley, Grant and Speke and many others, the ‘west’ built up a clearer description of our world, with the map a key aspect of that description and an artefact that supported a wide range of colonial endeavours. Alongside such work, the Society also built up one of the world’s great collections of maps, atlases and globes. The Society has also collected, and makes publically available, more than one million sheets of maps – the world’s largest private holding.
    [Show full text]
  • Explains Geography: Why Is Geographic Education Importa
    What is Geography? Geography is the study of places, people, and the natural and built environments they occupy. Although it is true that Geographers may be well trained in the location of many things and may be able to show you those things on a map, the true value of the geographic perspective is found in the Geographer’s ability to explain why things are distributed across space and through time and to use that knowledge to help guide future decisions about how best to explore, manage, and protect our world. Geographers are employed everywhere. We are in schools, government offices, private companies, and non-profit organizations. We are inventors, entrepreneurs, explorers, teachers, and leaders in our communities. Geographers learn to change the world and that begins in your classrooms. Here is an example of What you can do with Geography (video). The National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) explains Geography: Many of our challenges have a spatial dimension or lie at the link between human and environmental systems. Where else are students taught to understand the place in which they live or to ask important questions about why patterns of phenomena exist across space and what the implications are of those patterns? Geography provides essential workforce skills. It enables students to grasp the explanatory power of spatial information. It empowers students to be discerning users of maps and increasingly critical geospatial technologies such as remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and global positioning systems (GPS). Geographic literacy is important for applying these technologies toward good governance, foreign policy, economic development, environmental stewardship and regional and local planning.
    [Show full text]
  • Locati N Theory in Geography and Archaeology
    43 Geography Research Forum Volume 7, 1984: 43-60 LOCATI N THEORY IN GEOGRAPHY AND ARCHAEOLOGY Juval Portugali Tel Aviv University, Israel Submitted November 1982, revised November 1983 Locational analysis of the seventies is marked by expressions of disillusionment and criticism of the "quantitative revolution" of the sixties. "Especially so in the writing and work of some of those who were formerly quite active in the promotion of the spatial analysis theme and quantitative approaches" (King 1969:155). Despite the fact that those writing provide the main source of inspiration for archaeological locational analysis, critical geography of the seventies is utterly ignored in the archaeological literature. Thus, the aims of this paper are to present the geographical criticism of locational analysis and theory, to consider the archaeological implications and to suggest a possible synthesis of location theory in geography and archaeology. " ... Measures and counts now about in a field traditionally devoid of comparative scales: tax­ onometrics ... information indices of structural complexity, economic measures of utility, spatial measures of distribution ... The proper treatment of qualitative and quantitative obser­ vations has introduced a welcome precision and a proper appreciation of error, (and has) facilitated the testing of predictions ... These reinforcing developments ... give added scope to ... explicit model-using ... and the comprehensive theory of systems and cybernetics ... Computer methodology provides an expanding armoury of analog and digital techniques ... whilst all thinking archaeologists must share severe reservations about what has yet been achieved with the aid of these tools, the fault is with the uncertain archaeologist and his shaky concepts, not with the machine ..
    [Show full text]
  • Laura Vaughan
    Mapping From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial Laura Vaughan zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health Mapping inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities. Society The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public Society opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to The Spatial Dimensions physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the of Social Cartography spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full-colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities. Laura Vaughan is Professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In addition to her research into social cartography, she has Vaughan Laura written on many other critical aspects of urbanism today, including her previous book for UCL Press, Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street.
    [Show full text]
  • Program Advising APPLIED GEOGRAPHY Cartography and Geographic Information Systems Certificate
    APPLIED GEOGRAPHY Cartography and Geographic Information Systems Certificate: 184 Total Credits: 21 Catalog Edition: 2017-2018 Program Description Program Advising This certificate curriculum provides training in cartography and geographic information systems. Rockville Enabling the student to develop, construct, and use maps • Prof. Allison and other imagery to solve problems relating to the earth, 240-567-7614 its resources, and its development. These skills are used [email protected] by professionals employed in federal mapping and related agencies in the Washington metropolitan region. Germantown • Prof. Allison Program Outcomes 240-567-7614 [email protected] Upon completion of this program a student will be able to: Takoma Park/Silver Spring •Use various mapping software packages. • Prof. Allison •Apply their enhanced cartographic skills. 240-567-7614 •Use maps as tools. [email protected] •Conduct research and be familiar with the various research resources available, i.e., county, city, and For more information please visit: federal government; the private sector; and online data. http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/appliedgeography •Have gained an appreciation of the various job opportunities available through attending trips to various cartographic facilities. •Integrate other software as appropriate into their mapping projects, e.g., Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and other graphics packages. •Use various techniques that improve their cartographic, GIS, and spatial analytic skills.
    [Show full text]
  • Un Centenario De Geografía Británica Y Geografías De La Modernidad Británica
    Nadir: rev. electron. geogr. austral ISSN: 0718-7130 Año 5, n° 2 agosto -diciembre 2013 Un Centenario de Geografía Británica y Geografías de la Modernidad Británica Hernán Santis Arenas y Mónica Gangas Geisse Doctores en Geografía por la Universidad de Barcelona, España En el inicio y el poco transcurrir del siglo XXI, tanto autores como editores británicos de textos concentrados en la ciencia geográfica, sistemáticamente se interesan en el desarrollo del “pensamiento geográfico” en su ámbito científico- geográfico. Esto es, en medio del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) formado por Inglaterra, Escocia, Gales e Irlanda del Norte (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ) desde mediados del siglo XVIII se vino desarrollando un proceso de institucionalización de la Geografía que bien puede encuadrarse en períodos Clásico, Moderno y Contemporáneo al seguir la línea de pensamiento histórico-geográfico del geógrafo estadounidense Preston E. James (VER: All Possible Worlds. A History of Geographical Ideas; Indianapolis*NewYork, The Odyssey Press a Division of The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. 1972, (622 pages). El período Clásico abarca desde los inicios de la Geografía por miles de años desde los sombríos inicios del pensamiento geográfico de los helenos o griegos hasta las contribuciones de los europeos – alemanes Alexander von Humboldt y Carl Ritter, no más allá de la mitad del siglo XIX. El período Moderno se inicia en la última parte del siglo XIX; es distinguido por el aspecto del campo profesional llamado Geografía - es decir, un campo de estudio en el cual se educó a estudiantes que podría ganar una vida siendo Geógrafos.
    [Show full text]
  • The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY – REVISITED The past is past, but survives in and all around us, indispensable and inescap- able. Three decades after his classic The Past Is a Foreign Country, David Lowenthal re-examines why we love or loathe what seems old or familiar. His new book reveals how we know and remember the past, and the myriad ways – nostalgia or amnesia, restoration, replay, chauvinist celebration or remorseful contrition – we use and misuse it. We transform the past to serve present needs and future hopes, alike in preserving and in discarding what nature and our ancestors have handed down. Whether treasured boon or traumatic bane, the past is the prime source of personal and collective identity. Hence its relics and reminders evoke intense rivalry. Resurgent conflicts over history, memory, and heritage pervade every facet of public culture, making the foreign country of the past ever more our domesticated own. The past in the Internet age has become more intimate yet more remote, readily found but rapidly forgotten. Its range today is stupendous, embracing not just the human but the terrestrial and even the cosmic saga. And it is seen and touched and smelled as well as heard and read about. Traumatic recol- lection and empathetic re-enactment demote traditional history. A clear-cut chronicle certified by experts has become a fragmented congeries of contested relics, remnants and reminiscences. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make Lowenthal’s new book an essential key to the past that we inherit, reshape, and bequeath to the future.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Excerpt More information Introduction The past is everywhere. All around us lie features with more or less familiar antecedents. Relics, histories, memories suffuse human experience. Most past traces ultimately perish, and all that remain are altered. But they are collectively enduring. Noticed or ignored, cherished or spurned, the past is omnipresent. ‘What is once done can never be undone ... Everything remains forever’, wrote Václav Havel, ‘somewhere here’.1 The past is not simply what has been saved; it ‘lives and breathes ...in every corner of the world’, adds a historian.2 A mass of memories and records, of relics and replicas, of monuments and memorabilia, sustains our being. We efface traces of tradition to assert our autonomy and expunge our errors, but the past inheres in all we do and think. Residues of bygone lives and locales ceaselessly enrich and inhibit our own. Awareness of things past comes less from fact finding than from feeling time’s impact on traits and traces, words and deeds of both our precursors and ourselves. To know we are ephemeral lessees of age-old hopes and dreams that have animated generations of endeavour secures our place – now to rejoice, now to regret – in the scheme of things. Ever more of the past, from the exceptional to the ordinary, from remote antiquity to barely yesterday, from the collective to the personal, is nowadays filtered by self- conscious appropriation. Such all-embracing heritage is scarcely distinguishable from past totality.
    [Show full text]
  • Geography and Vision
    Geography and Vision Vision and visual imagery have always played a central role in geographical under- standing, and geographical description has traditionally sought to present its audience with rich and compelling visual images, be they the elaborate cosmo- graphic images of seventeenth century Europe or the computer and satellite imagery of modern geographical information science. Yet the significance of images goes well beyond the mere transcription of spatial and environmental facts and today there is a marked unease among some geographers about their discipline’s association with the pictorial. The expressive authority of visual images has been subverted, shifting attention from the integrity of the image itself towards the expression of truths that lie elsewhere than the surface. In Geography and Vision leading geographer Denis Cosgrove provides a series of personal reflections on the complex connections between seeing, imagining and representing the world geographically. In a series of eloquent and original essays he draws upon pictorial images – including maps, sketches, cartoons, paintings, and photographs – to explore and elaborate upon the many and varied ways in which the vast and varied earth, and at times the heavens beyond, have been both imagined and represented as a place of human habitation. Ranging historically from the sixteenth century to the present day, the essays include reflections upon geographical discovery and Renaissance landscape; urban cartography and utopian visions; ideas of landscape and the shaping of America; widerness and masculinity; conceptions of the Pacific; and the imaginative grip of the Equator. Extensively illustrated, this engaging work reveals the richness and complexity of the geographical imagination as expressed over the past five centuries.
    [Show full text]