IMAGES OF EARTH: CONCEPTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION IN DENIS COSGROVE’S CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

«Географическое воображение» – это странное терминологическое сочетание. Оно может вызвать подозрение у академически респектабельной географии вследствие тех эпистемологических опасностей, которые оно, предположительно, несет. В статье анализируется понятие географического воображения в работах выдающегося британского культурного географа и историка картографии Дениса Косгроува (1948–2008). У Косгроува нет развернутой и систематической теории географического воображения, но оно является основной темой его многочисленных исследований. Вопрос о географическом воображении для Косгроува фундаментальный, так как воображение становится у него едва ли не «трансцендентальным условием» любого возможного географического акта как акта представимости Земли или отдельных ее частей в географических образах (картах, живописных полотнах, ландшафтах, фотографиях, городских планировках и парках, цифровых репрезентациях). В статье рассмотрено несколько основных характеристик географического воображения и обширного поля географической образности у Косгроува. Географические образы – это не некие сущности, спонтанно производимые «продуктивной способностью воображения» во внутреннем интерьере «картезианского театра» и остающиеся замкнутыми в границах его сцены. Географическое воображение – имя какого-то сложного механизма, работу которого нам трудно (если вообще возможно) понять и описать, в котором оказываются задействованы глаза, руки, мышление, технологии, и этот механизм порождает экстерналии (образы Земли). Географические образы формируют новые (эмпирически нереализуемые) горизонты наглядности, видимости и интеллигибельности. Например, карта, по словам Кристиана Жакоба, «представляет схему, визуальную и одновременно интеллектуальную, которая занимает место невозможного сенсорного видения». Географические образы – это одно из «привилегированных мест» (но и выражений) графических экспериментов, экспериментов воображения, в ходе которых отрабатывались и продолжают отрабатываться все новые условия видимости, представимости и мыслимости Земли. Географическое воображение – работа по визуальному представлению не только эмпирического порядка, но и концептуальных структур. Географический образ не может быть сведен к чистому и нейтральному представлению пространственных (географических) фактов. По отношению к уровню «фактов» он всегда демонстрирует смысловую и визуальную избыточность. Для Косгроува история географического воображения – это еще и история «инвестиций», которые сделали и продолжают делать в географическую образность людские желания, страхи, надежды, метафизические спекуляции, религиозные искания и моральная чувствительность. Рассмотренная в целом исследовательская работа Косгроува, центрированная на теме географического воображения, является одним большим актом онтологической, эпистемологической, культурной и даже этической реабилитации образов. “Geographical imagination” is a very strange terminological combination. It might arouse suspicion in academically respectable geography as a consequence of epistemological dangers it presumably posed. The article examines the concept of geographical imagination in the research works of the distinguished British cultural geographer and historian of cartography Denis Cosgrove (1948–2008). Cosgrove has no advanced and systematic theory of geographical imagination, but it is the main focus of his studies. For Cosgrove, the question about geographical imagination is fundamental since, in his cultural geography, imagination becomes virtually a “transcendental condition” of every geographical act as an act of representing Earth and its parts in various geographical images (maps, paintings, landscapes, photographs, urban plans and city parks, digital representations). The article considers some basic characteristics of geographical imagination and the rich field of geographical image in Cosgrove’s cultural geography. 1. Geographical images are not some entities, spontaneously generated by the “productive capacity of imagination” in the interior of the “Cartesian Theater” and remaining closed within the borders of its scene. Geographical imagination is a name of a complex mechanism, whose work we find so hard to understand and describe (if this is even possible). In this work, hands, eyes, minds, and technologies are involved. The mechanism of imagination generates externalia (images of Earth). 2. Geographical images create new (empirically unimplementable) horizons of visibility, conspicuity, and intelligibility. For example, according to Christian Jacob, “the map presents a schema, visual as well as intellectual, that takes the place of an impossible sensorial vision”. 3. Geographical images are one of the “privileged places”, and also expressions, of graphic experiments, experiments of imagination, during which new ways of seeing and thinking Earth have been tested and are being investigated further. Geographical imagination is work on visual representations of not only the empirical order, but also conceptual structures. 4. Geographical images cannot be reduced to pure and neutral representations of geographic facts. In relation to the “factual” level, it demonstrates visual and semantic redundancy. For Cosgrove, the history of geographical imagination is also the history of “investment” in geographical images that human fears, hopes, desires, metaphysical speculations, religious pursuits, and moral sensitivity make. Considered as a whole, Cosgrove’s research in the field of cultural geography is one big act of an ontological, epistemological, cultural, and even moral rehabilitation of images.

A busca pela força-motriz na Geografia:

Esta resenha analisa a obra de Daniel Gade Curiosity, Inquiry and the Geographical Imagination (2011). Esta obra, de profunda importância para Geógrafos e pesquisadores, aborda a questão da curiosidade e da investigação na imaginação geográfica. O autor utiliza-se de exemplos históricos de trajetórias profissionais e de pesquisa de geógrafos importantes e realiza um comparativo com as teorias da psicanálise e da filosofia.

Introduction

The chapter introduces readers to the geographic and chronological extent of British military expansion in the eastern Mediterranean that is assessed in the book. It further explores changing definitions of the Levant and Levantine and explains why they are an appropriate appellation for this imperial project. It critiques predominant explanations of British military expansion and contraction in the region and sets forth an alternative model for how the geographical imagination of soldiers and statesmen informed policy making. It then outlines the sources that research for the book is centred on—namely the letters, diaries, and memoirs of British servicemen, alongside official state documents—and explores how these been read and utilized in literature on the First World War. Finally, it provides an overview of the structure of the book.

Will the Future Be Aquatic? Underwater Cartography, Verticality and Leonardo’s Submarine by Hito Steyerl

This text explores the uses of water metaphors in the discourse of digital media on the example of Leonardo’s Submarine, a three-channel AI-generated video work by the artist and writer Hito Steyerl, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2019, as well as its subsequent installation in a purposefully built virtual reality underwater gallery in winter 2020/2021. The two venues for staging the work are discussed in the context of Steyerl’s writings on the change of the European geographical imagination from the Renaissance up to the present day and the role played in this change by digital technologies. Steyerl’s ideas about the shift from the horizontal to vertical perspective and the present condition of groundlessness are “submerged” in a watery context of the ocean to test how verticality and groundlessness behave in an underwater environment. Drawing on selected concepts developed in the field of blue humanities, this text seeks to investigate Steyerl’s practice as an artist and new media theorist to show how it employs water metaphors to challenge rather than perpetuate our habitual thinking about the ocean and the media used to represent it.

Literature and Geography

This article proposes to treat literature as a template of the collective imagination. The basis for discussion is Polish prose from 1986–2016, with the main thesis being that Polish culture has reached the limits of geographical imagination. This is the result of Poland withdrawing from the larger structures to which it once belonged or to which it aspired (its diminishing presence in the European Union, the disappearance of Central Europe, delayed efforts to pursue the Scandinavian model of the state and civic culture, the destruction of relations with Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine). Weakening or breaking ties with neighboring countries has led to isolation from all four sides. In order to get out of this impasse, it is necessary to develop new narratives that would link Poland with the neighboring cultures and would once again put our country back on the European map.

Mobility Perspective in Anthropology of Policy: Case Studies Urban Policy in Indonesia

This article explores anthropological perspectives in public policy by using the central concept of policy mobility. Through this concept, we will show how policy resulting from the accumulation of knowledge, strength, and geographical imagination moves from one territory to another. The emphasis on forming policy ideas is different from policy studies from another perspective that looks at governance to shape the behavior of the people. We take the case of forming creative city ideas in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan to show mutation and hybridization of policies. We use ethnographic methods to collect data, supplemented by literature reviews on creative city policies. For decades, Balikpapan has been known as an extractive industrial city, especially in the mining and forestry sectors. Due to pressure from national and global environmentalists, exploration of natural resources must be limited, reducing urban productivity. Policymakers see the creative city as an opportunity to improve the city's economic life while maintaining the sustainability of the local natural and cultural environment.