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Symbolic landscapes
Book
2009
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Symbolic Landscapes presents a definitive collection of landscape/place studies that explores symbolic, cultural levels of geographical meanings. Essays written by philosophers, geographers, architects, social scientists, art historians, and literati, bring specific modes of expertise and perspectives to this transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary study of the symbolic level human existential spatiality. Placing emphasis on the pre-cognitive genesis of symbolic meaning, as well as embodied, experiential (lived) geography, the volume offers a fresh, quasi-phenomenological approach.

The editors articulate the epistemological doctrine that perception and imagination form a continuum in which both are always implicated as complements. This approach makes a case for the interrelation of the geography of perception and the geography of imagination, which means that human/cultural geography offers only an abstraction if indeed an aesthetic geography is constituted merely as a sub-field. Human/cultural geography can only approach spatial reality through recognizing the intimate interrelative dialectic between the imaginative and perceptual meanings of our landscapes/place-worlds. This volume reinvigorates the importance of the topic of symbolism in human/cultural geography, landscape studies, philosophy of place, architecture and planning, and will stand among the classics in the field.

- (Springer Publishing)

Symbolic Landscapes presents a definitive collection of landscape/place studies that explores symbolic and cultural levels of geographical meanings. The book contributes to a widely-respected, but under-published area of human/cultural geography.

- (Springer Publishing)

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Table of Contents

Preface v
Contributors xv
List of Figures xvii
Part One: Places—Worlds
Introduction I: The Problematic of Grounding the Significance of Symbolic Landscapes
3
Gary Backhaus
I.1 Symbol — Landscapes — Symbolic Landscapes
3
I.1.1 Semiotics: The Problematic of Defining 'Symbol'
4
I.1.2 Geographical Literature and Symbolic Landscapes
7
I.1.3 The Problematic of Defining 'Landscape'
11
I.2 Toward the Geographicity of Symbolic Landscapes: A Phenomenological Grounding
12
I.2.1 The Leading Clue: Merleau-Ponty's Gestural Theory of Language
14
I.2.2 Human Behavior: The Field of Meanings that is the Ontological Source for Symbolism
17
I.2.3 Spatiality
20
I.2.4 The Spatiality of Sensation as a Gestural Expression
22
I.2.5 Symbolic Landscapes
23
I.2.6 New Trends in Cultural Geography
25
I.3 Conclusion
25
I.4 Overview of Part One
26
1 The Road to Indian Wells: Symbolic Landscapes in the California Desert
33
Alex Zukas
1.1 Introduction: Symbolic Landscapes
33
1.2 Confronting Postmodern Symbolic Landscapes in California's Coachella Valley
37
1.3 Confronting Pre-Modern Symbolic Landscapes in the Coachella Valley
47
1.4 Two Ways of Being and Becoming in the California Desert
53
1.5 Conclusion: Thinking About Landscape
54
2 Wilderness as Axis Mandl: Spiritual Journeys on the Appalachian Trail
65
Kip Redick
2.1 Introduction
65
2.2 Defining Wilderness
66
2.3 The Rise of Wilderness as Symbol in the Intertwining of Lived-Body and Milieu of the Shepherd Nomad
67
2.4 Wilderness as Axis Mundi in Judaic and Christian Scripture
68
2.5 Wilderness and the American Milieu
72
2.6 Wilderness and the Sojourner
74
2.7 Appalachian Trail as a Place of Spiritual Journey
76
2.7.1 Historical Background
76
2.7.2 A Pathway through the Wilderness
76
2.7.3 A Work of Art with Religious Implications
77
2.7.4 The Experiential Spirituality of the Appalachian Trail
80
2.7.5 Pilgrims on the Appalachian Trail
80
2.7.6 Communitas and Liminality in the Intertwining of Lived Body and Milieu
82
2.7.7 Time
85
2.8 Conclusion
86
3 Pu'u Kohola: Spatial Genealogy of a Hawaiian Symbolic Landscape
91
RDK Herman
3.1 Introduction
91
3.2 Tides of Time
93
3.3 Layers of Space, Time, and Meaning
94
3.3.1 Physical Geography
95
3.3.2 Conquest
96
3.3.3 The Hawaiian Kingdom and Westernization
98
3.3.4 American Colonization
99
3.3.5 The Harbor
100
3.4 Embodying Transformation
101
3.5 Navigating the Present
105
4 Mythological Landscape and Landscape of Myth: Circulating Visions of Pre-Christian Athos
109
Veronica della Dora
4.1 Introduction
109
4.2 Xerxes' Canal
113
4.3 Alexander's Mountain
116
4.4 From Emblem to Field
119
4.5 Conclusion
125
4.6 Coda
126
5 At Home on the Midway: Carnival Conventions and Yard Space in Gibsonton, Florida
133
Charlie Hailey
5.1 Introduction
133
5.2 Mediated Yard Spaces
134
5.3 Gibsonton's Boot: Ready-to-Wear Signs and Other Systems of Symbolism
136
5.4 Siting Gibsonton
138
5.5 Clearing Space: Town as Midway
140
5.6 Remaking Yard Space as Carnival Midway
142
5.7 Breaking Camp: Gibsonton as 'Lived Symbol' Between Arriving and Departing
147
5.8 Speculative Spaces: At Home in the Front Yard
151
6 Crossing the Verge: Roadside Memorial—Perth, Western Australia
161
Dennis Wood
6.1 Introduction
161
6.2 Location: The Geography of Roadside Memorial Sites
162
6.3 Excavating the Sites
163
6.4 Historical Perspective and the Meaning of Memorials
164
6.5 Ritual and Rite of Passage
166
6.6 Spontaneity of the Sites
169
7 Life on "The Avenue": An Allegory of the Street in Early Twenty-First-Century Suburban America
173
John Srygley
7.1 Introduction
173
7.2 From Main Street to Lifestyle Retail Development
174
7.3 An Allegory of the Street
178
7.3.1 City Monumentality and Urban Amnesia
180
7.3.2 Suburban Idealization: The Paradox of Private Public Space
182
8 Metaphor, Environmental Receptivity, and Architectural Design
185
Brook Muller
8.1 Introduction
185
8.2 Metaphor: Redesigning Design and Its Culture
187
8.3 Organism As Bauplan For Architecture
192
8.4 Furnishing Our Primary Inhabitation
194
8.5 Design as Hinge: The Architectonic of the Intraworldly
197
8.5.1 Extending and Compounding Green Metaphors: Watermark
198
8.5.2 Entertaining New Vocabularies: Edge/Corridor Effects
199
8.6 Conclusion
199
Part Two: Geographical Sensibilities in the Arts
Introduction II: An Apology Concerning the Importance of the Geography of Imagination
205
Gary Backhaus
II.1 Sensibility, Geography, and the Arts
205
II.2 Geographies of the Imagination and Science
207
II.3 The Cartesian Paradigm: Banishing the Imagination from Scientia
210
II.4 The Relevance of the Geographies of the Imagination
212
II.5 Merleau-Ponty's Doctrine of the Imagination
214
II.6 The Artwork
215
II.6.1 Literature
216
II.6.2 Painting
217
II.7 Spacings and Human Creativity
218
II.8 Overview of Part Two
222
9 Semblance of Sovereignty: Cartographic Possession in Map Cartouches and Atlas Frontispieces of Early Modern Europe
227
Christine M. Petto
9.1 Introduction
227
9.2 The Meaning of Maps
229
9.3 Colonial Possessions
230
9.4 Martial Activities in Europe
233
9.5 Jurisdictional Control
238
9.6 Conclusion
245
10 Symbolism and the Interaction of the Real and the Ideal: Scenery in Early-Modern Netherlandish Graphic Art
251
Anat Gilboa
10.1 The Prevailing View in the Art-Historical Research: The Exploration of Realism in Early-Modern Art
251
10.2 Imitation and Invention of Nature in Early-Modern Art
253
10.3 The Real and the Transitory in Early-Modern Landscape Views
255
10.4 Local and Foreign Settings
257
10.5 Cartographic Ambiguities
259
10.6 Conclusion
261
11 Traversing One's Space: Photography and the feminine
265
Panizza Allmark
11.1 Introduction
265
11.2 Theoretics and Approaches to Photography
267
11.3 Examples of My Photographic Project
273
11.4 Conclusion
276
12 The Philadelphia Flower Show and its Dangerous Sensibilities
283
Gary Backhaus
12.1 Experiential Therapeutics
283
12.2 Symbolizing Experiences of Springtime
285
12.3 Experiential Structure of the Symbolizing Experience
287
12.3.1 The Dangerous Sensibility
288
12.4 The Physical Layout
289
12.5 The Major Exhibitors: Symbolizing Ideal Landscapes
290
12.6 Characterizing the Artificiality of Place-Worlds
294
12.6.1 Genius Loci
295
12.6.2 The Commerciality of Place-Worlds
297
12.6.3 The Instant Environment Machine
299
12.7 Concluding Remarks
301
13 Gardening at a Japanese Garden
305
John Murungi
13.1 Introduction
305
13.2 The Subjective Path
306
13.3 The Objective Path
307
13.4 The Right Path
308
13.5 The Double Pre-Understanding
309
13.6 Face to Face
310
13.7 Handwork—Bodywork
312
13.8 Spatial Activity as Identity
314
13.9 Japaneseness
315
13.10 Concluding Remarks
320
14 Symbolic Space: Memory, Narrative, Writing
323
Arndt Niebisch
14.1 Introduction
323
14.2 Space in Ancient Mnemonics
324
14.3 Narrative (Kleist: "Das Erdbeben von Chili")
328
14.4 Writing Space
331
15 Vienna's Musical Deathscape
339
Linda Ardito
15.1 Introduction
340
15.2 Joseph Haydn
342
15.3 Overtones of the Deathscape in Documents
343
15.4 The Church and Redemptive Death
344
15.5 Nature's Role in the Deathscape Phenomenon
346
15.6 Vienna and the Question of Suicide
347
15.7 Redemptive Versus Nihilistic Death
351
15.8 Death's Inspiration
352
15.9 The Deaths of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
354
15.10 Conclusion
356
16 Crusoe's Island and the Human Estate: Defoe's Existential Geography
363
Dennis E. Skocz
16.1 Introduction
363
16.2 Robinson Crusoe: Map and Allegory
363
16.3 Are We All Castaways?
365
16.4 Remaking the Land
369
16.5 Ready-to-Hand and One's Own
371
16.6 Of Empire and Technology
373
16.7 Deciphering Crusoe's Geo-Scripting
375
16.8 Enter the Nameless Other
378
16.9 Enter Friday
381
16.10 Defoe's Symbolism: What It Says and How It Works
382
Index 389

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