Geographical Imaginations is at once a profound nd peneticting read ng of geography as a discipline and a discourse, and also an imaginative ond sustoined attomp! to sitvote that discourte within the fabric of contemporary social theory. lis focus is on understanding the ways in which social life is variously embedded in place, space, and londscope. In the fulllment of this objective, historical imagination, tex tual exegesis, philosophical scrutiny, sociological interpretotion, ond geographical sensitvly ore interwoven in such 0 way os fo move spatial discourse to new levels of soptistication and subilly Jn mopping human geography inlo contemporary social theory, the cuthor addresses, reinlerprets and questions key theoretical debatos ond issues—postcolonialism, stucluation theory, feminism, deconstution, posimodemism, and posistucturalism, and explores the crucial connec- tion between space, power, and knowledge. Defily argued and illustrated throughout with pointed examples, Geographical Imaginations is both a lucid critique of contemporary social theory and o fundamental contribution to the undersianding of social fe and its intrinsic spatial. Derek Gregory was bom in England in 1951. He grew up in Ken, received his undergraduate and posigraduate education at the University of Cambridge where he was a fellow of Sidney Sussex College and University Lecturer in Geography until 1989, Since then he has been Professor of Geogrophy al the University of British Columbia, His pre vious books include Ideology, Science, and Human Geography (1978), cond Regional Transformation and Industrial Revolution {1982} (Cover design: il Bretborh ’ Cover iusroton: Leopold Suvoge,Vilefanche sur mer, 1915, ‘eproduced by kind pemision of Cente Georges Pompidou, Farts: © ADAGP, Faris ond DACS, london, 1993. ‘ m8 18B-N-0-631~18931-0 12 547 $19.95 GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGIN 17/94 BLACKWELL a amide 1A 6 Od UR ¥ *(auos118351U" CEO Tic IMAGINATIONSGEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS For Angela, Ben, Katherine and Jaimie DEREK GREGORY BLACKWELLCopyright © Derek Gregory 199% “The sight of Derek Gregory tobe idoued a author ofthis work has been atered in accordance withthe Copycght, Designs and Patent Act 1988, Fest poled 1994 Blac Pelee 238 Main Sree (Cambsdge, Massachusees 02142, USA Oxford O84 {JF, UK {All rights served, Except for the qvoson of shore pasages for the purposes of| ‘tice and review, no par may be reproduce, toed ina seuseal stem, of ‘eum, in any form or by any meats secon, mechanical, otocopyog, resorting or otherwise, without the poe permission of the publisher ecept in the Usted Suter of Ametice thie han eet coher sh comin thar ictal no, by way of tad or otherwise, be lent, el, hied ont, or otherize ‘culated witout the pubher’s prior consent in any form of binding ce cove other than tha in which itt published aad thous salar condition inctding this ‘ondton Being impored on he subsecpent purse Library of Cons Cabling Potion Dats Gregor, Date, 1951 “Geoqeapical imaginations / Decek Gregory pcm Inclades bibliogrphical references ond index ISBN 04651-18329.9 (An) OG31-1331-0 (pb) 1. Geography—Philesopy. Culeral studies. [. Tid gn.cr. 1995 s3.ssot 910'01—aea0 ar Brith Labrary Ct in Pabtin Dots ‘ACIP catlogee record for tie book i aalble om the Besh Libary, “Typctt in Gasaioad on 105/12 pe by Pare Tech Comporaton, Pondichery, Ladle Printed inthe United State of America “This book is pint on acre paper Contents Preface PART I STRANGE LESSONS IN DEEP SPACE Introduction Maps of the intellectual Iandscare ‘Travelling theory Geography and the world-as-exhibition Visualization Cook’s Tour: anthropology and geography Borders: sociology and geography Frontiers: economics and geogrphy Geography and the cartographic anxiety Descartes and deconstruction ‘Marks: politcal economy and haman geography Signs: social theory and human geography ‘Traces: cultural studies and human geography Imaginative geographies and geographical imaginations PART IL CAPITAL CITIES Intsoduetion City/commodity/culture: spatiality and the polities of representation Maps of modecnity ‘The literary diver: David Harvey and Second Empite Patis Passages: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project ‘The Vega cap: Allan Pred and fin-de-siécle Stockholm Archives and archacologies 106 133 203 209 214 214 217 227 241 254ae vi Contents 4 Chinatown, Past Three? Uncovering postmodern geographies Pastiche ‘A bistory of the present Learning fam Los Angeles Watching the detectives PART II] BETWEEN TWO CONTINENTS Introduction American dream Dreams of unity 8 Dream of Liberty? Cover version Imagining liberty Representing power Dream of Liberty Tie cancion of postmodemty 6 Modernity and the production of space May 68 and Harvey 69 Hegel’s ghost ‘A history of space The eye of power Dreams of liberty and wings of desise Select bibliography Name Index Subject Indéx 257 257 258. 290 312 37 318 322, 327 327 329 334 337 343 348. 349) 354 368 395 a5 47 425 432 1 Figures Maps of an intellectual landscape. 2 Joseph Banks surrounded by trophies from u 2 3 14 15 16 7 18 19 21 2 23 24 28 26 28 3a the voyage of the Endeaour Foucault's archaeology of the human sciences Interior with a Gaographer. Reclus’s proposed Great Globe at the Place d’Alme, Pais. Lasch’s “solid-state” landscape. Tensions in Harvey's landscape of capitalism, Social steucture and spatial structure. Marxism and post-Marxiso ‘The duality of structure “Time-space selations and structuration theory. “The web model of time-geography. “Time-space distanciation and time-space compression. Jan van dex Struct’s America "The Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles. ‘The Maitatsine movement, Kano City, December 1980, ‘The Hausmannization of Paris. ‘The triangulation of Pats. Passage de Opéra, Galerie du Barométre, Pasis. Benjamin’s dialectical image. ‘The daily path of Sérmlands-Nisse ‘Montage: the time-geogtaphy of Sormlands-Nisse Soja’ flight over Los Angeles. Dream of Liberty. ‘The Statue of Liberty on the Rue de Chazclles, Pats, Beaux-Arts Ball, New York, 1931. Lefebvee’s urban revolution. “The production of abstract space. Spatiality, capitalism, and modernity in carly twentieth-century Europe. ‘The eye of power. Transitions in late ewentieth-century capitalism. 28 38 38 57 92 95 101 413 15 116 121 130 155 202 218 223 232 237 251 252 300 328 333 336 a7 383. 399 401 412Acknowledgements Tam gratefol to the following for permission to reproduce material: William Heinemann, Led., and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., for the epigraph from Antoine de Sain-Exupéry, Wind, sand, and stars (teanslated by Lewis Gallantiéze); Blackwell Publishes for the epigraph from Neil Smith, Uneven desclopment: Nature, capital and the production of space; FaxperCollins for the epigraph from Michel Tournies, Friday or The Other Islnd Pion, Led., for the epigraph from Rosalyn Destsche, “Boys town”; Penguin Books for the cpigsaph from William Boyd, An Icecream War; Blackwell Publishers for the epigraph from Peter Haggett, The gugrapher's art, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for the epigraph from Italo Calvino, Invisible cites; Pion, Led, for the epigraph from Allen Scott and Edward Soja, “Los Angeles: Capital of the late twentieth century”; the Association of American Geographers for the epigraph from Pierce Lewis, “Beyond description”; Hamish Hamil- ton, Ltd., for the eplgeaph from Raymond Chandler, The High window, Random House for the epigraph from Elizabeth Wilson, Hadluinations: Life in the postmader city, Heinemann Publishing for the epigraph from Graham Swife, Waterland the Association of American Geographers for the epigraph from Carl Saues, “Foreword to historical geography”; Random House and Jonathan Cape for the epig-aph from James Joyce, Ubsses, Blackwell Publishers for the epigeaph frcm David Harvey, Tbe condition of postmadernity: An enquiry inte te origins of eubural change, Penguin Books for the epigraph from Emile Zola, L'Assommoir (translated by L. W. Tancock) the University of Minnesota Press for the cpigraph from Kristin Ross, The emergence of socal space: Rimband and the Pais Commune. ‘Chapter 3 is @ revised and extended version of an essay that fitst appeared in Strategies: A journal of teor, cuter, and polities, Chapter 4 is a revised and extended version of an essay that first appeared in Gengryfisha Annaler. 1 am grateful to the editors and publishers for allowing me to use that ‘material here. Tam also indebted to my good friends Michael Dear, Allan Pred, Edward Soja, and Michael Watts for permission to reproduce illustrations from their own work, Preface When I left the University of Cambsidge in 1989 to come to the University of British Columbia, I had in my baggage the manuscript of a book which I had called The Geegraphical Imagination, and since that book was very different from this one an explaration of how I came to abendon that daft (I threw it away at the end of my first term) and to write Geegiaphical Imaginations might help 20 make sense of what follows. I now realize — and writing tis book has helped me realize ~ that moving to Canada required me to think about three issues which, if 1 thought about them at all in Enghnd, [ had never foregrounded, and yet L now had to come to terms with them not as purely intellectual concerns but as matters of everyday practice. In the first place, I had to confront 1 colonial legacy that faced in two directions. On the one side was the Continuing pieseme of Euupeus pasts: he Cayed tes, wow xo sult cultural as political or economic, waich bind Anglophone Canada to Britain and Francophone Canada to France, and also the tangled braids that cxisscross the border between Canada and the United States. On the other side was the inscription of Europecn power and knowledge (and ignorance) con the lives and lands of native peoples. In the second place, I found myself living in an avowedly multicultural society — with its share of racial tensions, prejudices, and discriminations as well as its enrichments, vibraneies, and differences — and teaching at a university where many people could trace their roots to quite other continents, and most often to an Asia that could not be reduced to Europe's Other. And in the third place, I was working at 2 university where ques:ions of gender and sexuality were taken more seriously than I had been accustomed, and in the wake of the hideous massacce of womea students at the Ecole Polyoschnique in Montréal those questions took on a new and agonizing seriousness. All of these things have helped to make me aware of my own “other: ness,” troublingly and imperfectly. and in many ways the essays ia this book represent an attempt to think these issues through, to come to terms. ‘with my transplantation from Europe to North America and to understandx Preface the continuing importance of 1 European horizon of meaning in my own work. These are not purely perional preoccupations, for in this increasingly interconnected world the predicamene of culture, as James Clifford calls it, touches all of us in myriad ways. If I think it has a special salience in geogtaphy, it is because I have started to understand my own situatedness and to think about its implica:ions in a discipline that has had as one of its central concerns an understanding of other people and other places. “Discipline” is a double-edged erm, of course, and it cuts in two directions: by this T mean to imply not a set of sovereign concepts, still less any rigorous policing operation, but instead a more diffuse (though nonetheless deep-seated) acknowledgment of the importance of place and space that shapes the ways many of us azproach our work and our lives, This habit Of mind is rooted in all sorts of experienecs, inside and outside the academy, and it grows in different ways in different places. But such a metaphor is also duplicitous, for it usually grafts geography onto the classical tee of knowledge ~ systematic, hierarchical, grounded ~ so that its cultivators can. scrutinize its fruit, fuss over its pruning, and worry about its felling, But it may be more appropriate to think instead of the nomadic tracks and multiplicities of the thizome (and here I borrow from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattar): 0 open up ocr geogephies to interruptions and displace ments, f0 attend to other wavs of traveling, and to follow new lines of flight. In this connection I have been fortunate in being able to join a remarkably talented and worderfully diverse group of geographers in Vancouver. It is a pleasute to thank the colleagues, graduate students, and friends who have sustained me on this journey (and to note how often those colleagues and graduate students err good friends). I owe a particular and continuing debt to Trevor Barnes, Nick Blomley, Alison Blunt, Michael Brown, Noel Castree, Danie! Clayton, Robyn Dowling, Cole Harris, Marwan Hassan, Daniel Hiebert, Brian Klinkenberg, David Ley, Terry McGee, Cathy ‘Nesmith, Tim Oke, Geraldine Pratt, Olav Slaymaker, Matthew Sparke, Lynn Stewart, Bruce Willems-Braun, Jonathan Wills, and Graeme Wyn. In thinking about the predieiment of positionality in this crossroads city, have become aware of many weiters who insist that it is both impossible and illegitimate to speak for or even about others; but as a teacher of geography I believe I have 2 esponsibility to enlarge the horizons of the classtoom and the seminar. I know that I eannot claim to do so from some Archimedian promontory; I know, too, that there are dangers in doing so ~ of being invasive, appropriative — and I do not pretend to have any answers to these anxieties But the consequences of not doing so, of locking ourselves in our own worlds, seem to me far more troubling, 1 pat the problem in pedagogic teems because I have always done research in order to teach. I know there will be readers who will wonder at the “relevance” of these concerns, particularly those who have a rather different view of research and its rewards, but my hope is that the ideas I discuss Preface xi here — and the practices of evtical inquiry I seek to foster ~ might inform not only the conduet of research but also the practice of teaching, T have organized this book as a set of essays that consider diverse geo- graphical imaginations, not “the” geographical imagination — a distinction for which I will be eternally grateful to Denis Cosgeove — but they do nonetheless spiral around common set of themes dealing with power, knowledge, and spatiality. The phrasing is Michel Foucault's, but it is obvious to me how much my interest in these questions owes to David Harvey, whose work is centrally present in every one of these essays and to whom I owe more than I can adequately express. His Socal justice and the city was published at the end of my frst year as a postgraduate student, which was also the start of my fins year as @ lecturer at Cambridge. I can still remember the shock. This was the first book in geography that I knew T didn’t understand. Trained in spatial science, I was accustomed to technical difficulty, but conceptual difficulty was an’ altogether different order of things, particulasly when it required an engagement with social theory and 4 recognition of ethical and political responsibility. It was in that, book, too, that Harvey first wrote about his “geographical imagination” and registered a series of claims above the importance of place and space in the conduct and constitution of social life. Those ideas have continued to guide ~ and on occasion to provoke ~ my own work; they still scom to me some of the most creative interventions in the discourse of geography. But I am acutely aware of another thematic that is present only in the margins of this book. I am conscious of the question of “nature” ~ living in this vast, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying land, how could T not be? = but for the most part I have concerned myself with the politics of spatiality. This is not because I think environmental questions are unim- portant, and I welcome the contemporary interest in political ecology. But, rather like the outsider in Richard Rorcy’s Pbilorophy and the Mirror of Nate ‘who keeps wanting to talk about something else even though the conver- sation has moved on, I still want to talk about spatiality: I do not think its questions have been resolved, and I am convinced that they are connected in profound ways to what is now often called the culture ~ and caltural politics ~ of nature T have implied that this has been a nomadic project, and I have been encouraged in my wanderings by any number of other friends outside Vancouver, including Alan Baker, Mark Billinge, Nicholas Clifford, Stuart Coxbsidge, Michael Dear, Rosalyn Deutsche, Felix Drives, Nick Entikio, ‘Tony Giddens, Peter Gould, Michael Heffernan, Peter Jackson, Ron Johnston, Joba Paul Jones, Gesry Kearns, Doreen Massey, John Langton, Linda McDowell, Gunnar Olsson, Chris Philo, John Pickles, Allan Pred, Gillian Rose, Edward Soja, Susan Smith, David Stoddart, Michael Storper, Nigel ‘Thrift, Dick Walker, and Michael Watts. [am particularly grateful to David Livingstone and Neil Smith, who commented in vigorous and constructivexii Preface detail on a first version of the book, to Paul Jance, who converted my rough sketches into finished diagrams, Stephanie Argeros-Magean, who cdited the manuscript with great skill and sensitivity, and above all to John Davey, who has taken a charceveristically warm and intelligent interest in the project. Derck Gregory ‘Vancouver PART I Strange Lessons in Deep SpaceIntroduction But wat @ strange lesson in secgreply I was given! Guillaume did not teach Sain to me, be made the country my frend... The details that e drew ap from oblivion, from their inconcrable remotes, no geographer bad ben concerned to explore. Becaace it washed the banks of reat cies, the Ebro River svat of interest fo mapvmakers. But vat bed they todo with that brook ring secretly through the watersvecds to he west of Moti, that brook nowising a sen score or t00 of flowers? "areal of that brook: it breaks up the whale fed. Mark it on your map.” AB, I was to remember that sepeat in the grat near Motnil...And those ‘ing valerons sbesp ready to charge mo on the slope of a hilt Lite by lit, under the la, te Spain of my map ica a srt of fyland, The creases I marked to indicate safety zones and trape were s0 meaty buoys and Deans, Pct the fare, she they hep, tbe brook. And, cacy where she stood, I ce a bay to mark the shepbordes forgetten by the geagepbers. ‘Antoine ce Saint-Exupéry, Wind, sand, and stare The twentieth century bas ushered ix tbe discovery of deep space, or at least its social construction, and yet it is only as the century draws to a clase that ‘his fndamental discovery ts becoming apparent... Deep space is quintessentially sial space; itis physical extent iynsed with roial intent Neil Smith, Uneven development ‘When T began to draft the essays in Part I, my intention was to introduce the history of geography to readers outside the discipline and, at the same ‘ime, to call into question some of the ways in which that history had been swritten by those inside the discipline. As I worked on this material, however, the distinction became increasingly problematic, Traces of the origi purpose ste probably still present, but I now think of these essays as interventions in a discourse rather than a discipline. They sketch out two narratives.4 Strange Lessons in Degp Space ‘The first concerns what one might call the “socialization” of human geography (and T hope the inevitable distortions of such 2 shorthand will be forgiven). In one sense, clearly, human geogeaphy has always been socialized. Even the rigid nataraism of environmental determinism or the unyielding physicalism of spaial science was 2 social construction. But it is only recently, I think, that many of its practitioners have come to reflect, ccitically and systematically, on the connections between social practice and human geography. In doing s0, they (Wwe) have learned “strange lessons”: insights into human life on earth which, on occasion, soar into the sky like the aviator in Saint-Exupéry’s novella (and I will have more to say about these acrial views in due course) but which are also as often grounded in the profoundly existential significance of place, space, and landscape to people like Guillamet and the anonymous shepherdess (forgotten in more ‘ways than one). ‘The second narrative approaches from a different direction. Many of those working in the other humanities and social sciences have also become interested in questions of place, space, and landscape ~ in the ontological significance of what Neil Smith calls “deep space.” Their stadies have multiple origins, but they treat the production of social space, of human spatialty, ia new and immensely productive ways. In philosophy, for example, I think of various rereadings of Martin Heidegger's texts and the geographies written into many of Michel Foucaul’s histories of the present; in historical materialism, I think of the work of Fredsic Jameson and Hensi Lefebvre; in feminism and roststrueturalism, of bell hooks and Donna Haraway; and in cultural studes and posteolonialism, of Edward Said and Gayatsi Chakravorty Spivak. The list is incomplete and heteroclite, like the “Chinese encyclopedia” with which Foucault opens The order of things, and I do not mean to imply that any of these proposals should be accepted uuneritically. But the startling juxtapositions in a brief roll call like. this conjure up a sense of political and intellectual ebullition that is, T think, unprecedented, It is out of tae fusion between these two narratives that the discourse I have in mind is generated." T can peshaps describe this in another way. At the opening of the last decade, Clifford Geerte spoke of a “efiguration of social thought” in which the boundaries between formal intellectual inguity and imaginative writing were becoming blurred. As the “closet physicists” of social science were rerumed to the closet, Geertz declared, so social life was increasingly conceived as a game, a drama, or a tex. And, as usual, he had no doubt what this meant: “All this fiddling around with the properties of composition, inquiry, " Ge Rdamunds Buakse,“Saine-Eauptr'sgeogrphy leon: Att and scence inthe cteston and culeaion of landscape values," Anal ye Asano Amen Gopyahss 80 (1980) pp, 96-108: [at Smith, “Aferword: The beginning of geography,” ie his Ue dpm Nate! ond se pducon of te (Onfords Bhckwall Publishers, 2nd ed, 1990) pp. 160-78 Introduction 5 and explanation represents, of course, a radical alteration in the sociological imagination.” So it does. But what Geertz failed to notice (or did not think significand) was that all three metaphors concern constructed spaces in which human aetion literally takes plac. I hold no brief for any of these particular ways of thinking about social life, let me say, but I do think it highly unlikely that those spatial implications would have been unremarked by the end of that decade. For these “strange lessons in deep space” have ‘more than metaphorical significance. Indeed, one of the most compelling aims of the project that Smith describes is to transcend the partitions between “metaphorical space” and “material space.” And since I have used two metaphors — mapping and traveling ~ to think about much of what follows, I want to establish their materiality before I set out. ‘Maps of the intellectual landscape In Chapters 1 and 2 1 consteuct a “map” of the intellectual landscape by following the path shown in figure 1, on which I have plotted the relations between human geography and a nunber of other disciplines in the humanities and the social seiences, In the first essay I move down the lefthand side currumac stoves t 181. 19m centre p— ANTHROPOLOGY — ritzocweny || Feconomes- I. poLrricas Economy Figure 1 Maps of a intlleteal landespe of the diagram, because I think that in many ways modern human geography has been defined through a seties of strategic encounters with anthropology in the eighteenth certury, sociology at the tutn of the nine teenth and twentieth centuries, and economies in the middle of the twentieth century. I pay particular attention to three episodes which, taken together, bear directly on a specifically modern constellation of power, knowledge, and spatiality in which visualization occupies a central place — what I call “geography and the world-as-exhibition.” In the second essay I move up the * Ciford Geers, “Blared genres: The reigaraton of social thought” ia his Loud hve for exe 0 arprve stip (New You Basic Books, 1983) pp. 19-35; che esay wes fst, bled in 19806 Strange Lessons in Deep Space righthand side of the figure and suggest that the critique of modern spatial science in the closing decades of the ewenticth century has involved reactivation of the preceding dialogues in reverse order, from political ‘economy through social theory to cultural studies. In doing so, the assump- tions and privileges that inkece within the woeld-as-exhibition have been called into question, s0 it seems to me, and the complexity and contingency ‘of human spatiality has produced what I describe as “geography and the cartographic anxiety.” This is by no means a cisinterested representation. History is nevet innocent; it is always “history-for,” and intellectual histories are no differ- ‘ent. They aze ways of locating claims within traditions that seek to establish them as authoritative and legitimate, and also ways of positioning claims in opposition to other traditions and so establishing their own authority and legitimacy by negation. { don’t think it much matters whether these stories are the metanarratives that excite Lyotard’s postmodern rage or the more modest pets ricits that he endorses: All of them function as hetotical devices. They ate all strategies that seek to persuade readers of the cogency of their leading propositions. The same is true of my “tap.” Its objectivity is a serious fiction that represents a particular intellectual landscape from 4 particular point of view. As Felix Driver puts it: Representing geography’s past inevitably an act of the present, however much wwe attempt fo commune with the past. Indeed, the idea of mapping the historical landscape depends on the constuction of perspective, a view from the presen, acound which the panoramas aie made to revolve’ 1 imagine it is hardly necessary to add that in confessing all this 1 have not once abandoned the rhetorical field; after all, the confessional has its own poetics of persuasion. And yet, as T have implied, the metaphoric of mapping — of panorama and perspective ~ is itself problematic. According to two critics, ‘This notion of map-able space involves a specific epistemic topography: a land: scape, a form of knowing or secing which denies its structuring by the gaze of ‘white male bourgeois knowers on Other knowns. It limits the possibility of exitique by refusing to acknowledge other kinds of space.* But I wane to ask: Always? Everywhere? I understand (and share in) this cartographic anxiety, but when these objections are put in this particular 2 Flix Driver, “Geography's empire: histories of geographical knowledge,” Ennoeswar end Plasng D: Sxl end Span 10 (1992) pp. 2-0 the guotaion is fre p36. e Sephen Pile and Gillan Rove, “Al oe noting? Poller and exsgae in the moderssm/pose modernism debate” Emin oed Faming D: Sct and pu 10 (1992) pp. 123-36; the quotation ie from p. 13 Inireduction 1 form they seem to me to accept cartography’s own historiography even as they contest it. It is perfectly truc that historians have usually presented cartography as the Survey of Reason, 2 narrative journey of progress from darkness to enlightenment, in the course of which maps become supposedly more “accurate” and more “objectve.” But itis also true that there is now a ctitical historiography, which las established the implication of maps in the constitution of systems of power-knowiedge and, through the work of Brian Harley in parcculac, has suggested ways of deconstructing their technologies fof power! In doing s0, it has become apparent that mapping is necessatily situated, embodied, partial: Ake all othr practices of riprsetaton, This swakes it misleading to counterpose metaphors of mapping that supposedly always and everywhere “refuse to acknowledge other kinds of space” with other metaphors that somehow ineluctably do, There is no reason to suppose that “location,” for example, automatically challenges the supremacy of the kaowing male gaze {and the history of location theory and spatial science provides « compelling argument for exactly the opposite). Given these critical historiographies, itis surely presumptuous to claim that “images of maps, landscapes, and spaces” are always advanced as “unproblematic” by those who use them, while images of location, position, and geomerry ~ all of which are advanced in the essay fiom which I draw these admonitions ~ are not, What entitles the critics t0 asscrt their own privilege in this way? My point is that all metaphors are problematic and chat “translation terms” like these ~ scemingly general tems sed in strategic and contingent ways, as James Clifford calls them — get us a certain distance and fall apact® For my part, I believe it is possible to use images of maps, landscapes, and spaces aid alto images of location, position, and geometry in ways that challenge the Archimedian view of knowiedge, in ways that insist chat geographies of knowing make a difference. But these art not absolutes, and the differences that chey are able wo make depend on the specific ways in which they are used. Not oly ean conventional cartographic discourse be tumed against itself, for example; not only can the mapping, metaphoric be ised ironically or pacodically; but itis also possible to envisage other more open forms of cartographic discourse.” 5 J Brian Hace, “taps, knowedge ad yes” ia Denia Cngrve and Stephen Danis (ds, Te iaspuly of lndnge (Coody Cambigs University Tees, 1988) pp 277-125 tn, “Deconswocing the mp in Trevor Barner and James Duncen (Cs), Whig serie Dos, nd mln thereon of nape (Londo: Rowe 192 pp. 231-1 3 Fame Cfo, “aveling cles” n Lawrence Grong, Cay Neon and Paula Teicher (eis), Calin! tb (New Yorks Rowe 1992) pp. 9-112 Gaaham Lgesn, "Decslnising the mp: Porton, possunctraisn and he cao zap venetian 20 (9B) pp 115-31. Hogan ts he psy of more open dco tt aopaphy more coy than I woud wh w te plug, veining dericsabing “anogapy” of Giles Delece and Fae Gama, A oti lars Cin ad hp (innerpul: Uiveiy of Ninseon Pst 187) hi wae fist pushed io rane in 1580.8 Sirange Lessons in Deep Space Tn constructing and reacing my map, I need to identify both the “internal” and the “external” coordinates of human geography. The first Of these tasks is scazecly ucusual. There are many internalist histories of geography that focus on the individuals, schools, and traditions that are supposed to have played a part in the making of che discipline. Buc most Of these assume that a discussive space was already reserved for geography; that one simply had to wait for the explorers, surveyors and settlers 0 appear and convert that immanent claim into a palpable reality. Such a procedure does litele justice to the complexities of disciplinary emergence, and when I insist on the importance of the “internal” I do not mean to imply that the history of human geography can be reduced to a series of purely intellectual arguments (On the contrary, geograpay (like cartography) has always been a thor~ oughly practical and deeply politicized discourse, and it continues to be marked by its origins. But I do think that its. philosophico-theoretical contours need to be drawn with considerable care, because the topographies of human geography cannot be interpolated as so many responses to changes in the “zeal.” To do so would be to make the same mistake as internelist histories, only ia reverse: to think of geography as a discipline: in-waiting, whose formation is determined not so much by the internal logic of intellectual inguity as the imperatives of an “external” reality. If the ctitique of realism has taught us anything, it is surely that the process of representation is constructive not mimetic, that it results in “something made,” a “fiction” in the otiginal sense of the word. One does not have to endorse Rorty’s pragmatism (to take a particularly audacious example) to see dhut his shaering of dhe pedestal on whicl: analytical philosophy placed itself as quite literally “the mirror of nature” has a mote general cogency: that discourse is act an unproblematic feflection of the world but i instead an intervention in the world The problem is thus to find some ‘way of blucring the conventional distinctions between the “internal” and the “external,” and at the very least of recognizing that what is thought of 4s internal of external is the product of a reciprocal process of constitution. ‘The predicament is compounded because those distinctions have been blurred in other ways too. The history of modern geography has often * 1 ove the smack co Clifford Gets “Thick desesprion: Toward a interpretive henry of cure” i his Te inept af eae (New Yor Base Books, 1973) pp. 30. His cain is tote percnlar than mine Ethnogrphies, 0 he aay, are "Feions, ia the sense dat they ae “Tomehing cad; “something fshoned”~ the orginal meaning of ftio ~ not that they ace fle, afar, or meri “se” thought xpeineats” (p18). Rice’ Rony, Pipl and te ame of tare (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1980 ‘what mazers Bete is aot 20 much the specifies of Rortys posison ~ about vhich T have -onsietalereerations~ but the wier eqns of salyeal philosophy a che "evra dominant” tf the Western plosophical tadion, Thit i not conBined to Rosy, of course, and a more fomplee survey is provided in Kerneth Bayes, James Bohuin, and Thomas McCarty (ds) ‘Afr Ppl: Eed or ransernation’ (Cazbrige: NIT Press, 1987) pp Invoduction 9 been presented as an intellectual gizetcer. In the eighteenth century geography is supposedly a “Burozean science”; in the aineteenth century distinctive schools of geography are identified with particular national traditions (“the French School,” “the German School”); and in the rwen- tieth century particular places are often used as markers in the intellectual landscape (“the Chicago School,” “the Berkeley School,” and more recently still even “the Los Angeles Schoo?”), Bue the global circulation of information and ideas — with all its inequalities, restrictions, and deformations — has made many of these parocbialisms unusually problematic. No doubt we have retained some of them, and I suspect that we have invented a host of new ones, but there is nevertteless an important sense in which our “local knowledge” simply isn’t local any more. Clifford argues that we now have to make sense of a world wthout stable vantage points; a world in Which the observers and the observed are in ceaseless, Quid, and interactive motion; 2 world where “human ways of life increasingly influence, domia- ate, parody, translate, and subver: one another.” All of this constitutes what he deseribes as the predicament of ethnographic modeznity: We ground things, now, on a moving earth. There is no longer any place of overview (mountaintop) from which t map human ways of life, no Archimedian point from which to represent the word. Mountains are in constant motion. So are Islands: for one cannot occupy, unambiguously, a bounded cultural world fom which to journey out and analyze other culeures.” This is as pressing for intellectual activity as it is For any other sphere of social life, perhape even moro so, and with thic in miad I aloo have to attend to the prospects and perils of “traveling theory.” ‘Traveling theory T have borrowed the phrase from Edward Said, who uses it to draw attention to the sitwateduess of theory: “Theory has to be grasped in the place and time out of which it emerges.” Said also cmphasizes that those situations are always overdetermined and constantly changing, and that 20 theory “exhausts the situation out of which it emerges or to which it is transported.”"' But what “theory”? and which “situation”? I suggest there are two overlapping motifs at work here. The first has been caprured most "© James Ciffod, “Inwodvction: paral wth,” ia James Cilferd and George Marcos (eds, Wrating ie Te ae ard pec of eiagraby (Bethe. Univers of Calferin Prete, 1985) 1226 the quottion from p. 22 '" Edward Sad, “Traveling theory,” in is Te Worl be et ond th cis (London: Faber sd Faber, 1980) pp. 26-47; the quocaton is from pp. 241—42,10 Strange Lessons in Deep Space perceptively by Jonathan Culer in his description of contemporary theory as a genre. He explains it like this: “Theory” is a genre because of the way its works function... {to} exceed the disciplinary framework within which they would normally be evaluated and which ‘would help to identify their solid contributions co knowledge. To put it another ‘way, what distinguishes the members of this genre is their ability fo function not ‘as demonstrations within the pucameters of # discipline but 25 redeseriptions that challenge disciphnary boundaries. The works we allude to as “theory” are those that have had the power to make the strange familiar and to make readers conceive of their ovn thinking, hehavice and institutions in new ways. ‘Though they may rely on familiar techniques of demonstration and argument, their force comes ~ and this is what places them in the genre I am identifying — not from the accepted procedures of a particular discipline bur from the persuasive novelty of theit redescriptions.” Although 1 find the differert arguments of Derrida and Foucault particu- larly compelling, I should say at once that, unlike Culler, my own interest is not circumscribed by poststeucturalism. My focus in what follows will bbe on social theory more generally, which I conceive as a seties of overlap- ping, contending and colliding discourses that seck, in various ways and for various purposes, to reflect explicitly on the constitution of social life and to make social practices intelligible, This is a minimalist definition, of course, and further discrimination is necessary. My particular concern is with the multiple discourses of entical #eop: discourses that seek not only to make social life intelligibe but also to make it beter, This may seein a curiously anemic way of expressing myself, but when I think of the bloody consequences of many more traditional, supposedly disinterested modes of inguiry, I prefer this simple declaration of hope to those pious positivities. Caitical theory is a large and fractured discursive space, by no means confined to the Frankfurt School and its legatees, but it is held in a state of common tension ly the interopaton of ts ovm normativty. And. as past of that concern, many of the discourses of most moment challenge traditional ideas of what “theory” is (or might be), and think of their own function as one of interruption and interventior in the representation and negotiation of social life. Ie is in exactly this sense, too, that Caller thinks of them (and their “persuasive redescriptions”) as transgressive. Coller makes much of the capacity of theory to cross and call into question disciplinary boundaries. Now the intellectual division of labor has always been an untidy affair ~ which is, in part, why there have been so many new disciplines and intesdisciplinary projects brought into being — but it is not completely arbitrary. It is always possible to provide reasons * Jonathan Cull, Ox dancin Thr and rion str arc (London: Rowdee, 1983) Pe Intrdaction i (historical reasons) for the boundasies being drawn this way rather than that, Once those boundaries are esteblished, however, they usually become institutionalized. All the apparatus of the academy is mobilized to mask and, on occasion, to police them. But these divisions do not correspond to any natural breaks in the intellectual landscape; social life does not respect them and ideas flow cross them, Te is this busy cross-border traffic that I have in mind when I talk about social theory as a disrourse. This is not just another word for “conversation,” ‘or if itis then it is conversation in a greatly enlarged sense. For discourse refers to all the ways in which we communicate with one another, to that ‘vast network of signs, symbols, and practices through which we make our ‘world(s) meaningful to ourselves and to others. It is pasticularly helpful, 1 think, in clasifying the situatedness of theory: the contexts and easements that Shape our local knowledges, however imperiously global theic claims to know, and the practical consequences of understanding (and indeed being in) the world like this rather than like that. This state of affairs is not peculiar t0 the humanitics and the social sciences. These ideas.also bear directly on the natural sciences and, as Joseph Rowse has shown in a marvelous exposition of their pro:ocols and procedures, even the labor- atory sciences are grounded in specific sites and discursive practices whose various “local knowledges” are progressively and provisionally extended into other sites and other practices, As he also shows, to speak of discourse rather than discipline is not to escape the bonds between power and knowledge. On the contrary, to use this vocabulary is to reflect explicidy fon those constellations and their distinctive regimes of truth.” In much the same way, and for many of the same reasons, I am more interested in the discousses of geography than in the discipline of geography. Geography in this expanded sense is not confined to any one discipline, or even (0 the specialized vocabularies of the academy; it travels instead through social practices at large and is implicated in myraid topogeaphies of power and knowledge. We routinely make sense of places, spaces, and landscapes in four everyeay lives ~ in different ways and for different purposes ~ and these “popular geographies” are as portant to the conduct of social life 45 are our understandings of (say) biography and history.” ® Joseph Rouse, Knead pane: Tne pica php fine (bas Cor Univesity ee, 196, Fthe ermple it not casual cnt. Mill once defined what be cab “Whe social lnagiation” ata sity trv! he maple nvnecsons Setwcen bogephy and Hiory i ost cm present. Bot he mace pin that he not rene ti In ay Sey pry sense Sd tht he bbc of mind ould be found sae the whole Fld of the haowniter end the toca ences See C. Woigh Mil, The mia mease (New Vote Oxford University Pes 185, One of ay own cones 1 big the socslegal agian, i al various ome Io nog with ove “png iagnadons” at abo eae che sea. pny coches2 Strange Lessons in Deep Space But when we are required to think critically and systematically about social life and social space, we usually need to distance ourselves from those commonplace, taken-for-granted assumptions. We can never suspend them altogether, and our reflections will make sense, to ourselves and to other people, only if they zetin some connection with the ordinary meanings that are embedded in the day-to-day negotiations of lifeworlds. Bur we need to interrogat: those “common sense” understandings: We need to make them answer to other questions, to have them speak to other audiences, to make them visible rom other perspectives. And we also need to show how they engage aith one another; how they connect or collide in complexes of action and reaction in place and over space to transform the temulous geographies of modemity "This has become one of the central tasks of social theory, which T insise is not the possession of ary one discipline ~ not sociology, not even the social sciences — but is, rather, chat medium within which anyone who seeks to account for social life must work. I say “must work” because empiricism is not an optica. Tae facts do not and never will speak for themselves, and no one in che humanities or the social sciences can escape working with a medium that seeks to make social life intelligible and to allerge the matter-of-facteess of “the fects.” And I say “working with” because social cheory does aot come ready-made. As I have sai, it provides 4 series of partial, often problematic and ahvays situated knowledges that require constant reworking as they are made to engige with different positions and places. Conecived thus, social theory, like geography, is a eaveling distouise” masked by its vasiows origina and moving fom one site to another. For this reason, T think of working with social theory as spinning a rwliple heemeneutic berween its diferent sites rather than any “double hermencutie” that confines social theory co a single site.” But this is to move coward a second motif and an altogether different sense of traveling and tracsgression that has to do with the globalization of intellectual cultures. The trope of traveling, of tracking “roots” and “routes,” has become an established gente of intellectual inquity ~ and of contemporary writing more generally ~ and ic is one that will occupy central place in what follows. But itis important to understand that in its present form it does not so much redraw our maps of the intellectual Iandscape 28 call the very principles of mapping into question." In many ways modecn social theory still bears the marks of its Enlightenment origins, and its claims to know continue to respond to Kant’s attempt to "5 CE Anthony Giddens, Mar mb of lagi! mitods A pasion eg of prin xis London: Huehinron, 1926) p- 182 ‘eatery Starter, "Or, rather on aot collecting Clifford" Selena Joma of cara end ial pave 29 (399) pp. 89-55 he is 4 tea commen oa James Cliord, Ti pene elas Toscano ep State aed art (Carbeige: Harvard University Pres, 1988). Introduction 3 install reason as the undispoted arbiter in all spheres of socal life: in fcience, morality, and art T sopmose it is a characteite of modern intellectuals — of “vniversal intelleccals” a8 Pogeante once called them ~ co see themselves as legislators: as dealers in generalities rather than brokers in partcuars, uniquely qualified to chatt the coutse of socctyn-genctal or society-8-totality.” The discourses of modern social theory are dtiven by an assertive generality, 50 to spe, in whic, as Habermas putt “he transcendent moment of universality bursts every provincality asunder” He accepts that these discourses aw inevitibly “carters of context-bound eveaydey practice,” embedded in a particular hece and now, but he insists that they also typealy claim to erst all particulates and to tanscird time and space.” It is precisely tis claim Hat the metaphor of traveling calls into question. Bue it docs not fepace it with ts opposite. The objection is not so much that social theories are inescapably context-bound, boc rather that the igi of “traveling theory” need to be serapatoway acknowledged because ie wll always be fteghted with a host of assumptions, often desved from differeat and radically incommensvrabe sites, which may not ~ and asvally should not ~ suevive the journey intact. Traveling thus becomes a way of resisting the imperial ambitions of theory, of making those who wosk with ie accountable for ts movernents, and of challenging what Donaa Haraway calls “the polities of closure.” ‘And yet 2s bell hooks point ou: in a moving reflection on these theres, holding on to the metaphor of travel can also be a way of dinging on (© imperialism: or at any sate, it comes with its own baggage in which, as she says, it is not casy to find room for “the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears, the landing of Chinese immigrants at Els Islnd, the foreed relocation of Japanese-Amecicans, oF the plight of che homeless” For hooks, asa black ‘woman living in the Unived States, “to travel isto eacounter the erroring force of white supremacy. Certainly, to read many of Clifford’s essays is to be ceminded of the privileges that acceue to the elites of Western intellectual culture. The freedom to move, to read, to write that he enjoys is a sitated freedom, a “cosmopolitanisen” that is, like my own, gendered, classed and (jronically) located, T doubt that Clifford is unaware of this. What disturbs him, I take aypmant Bauman, Legian and inten: On modi, prude, ad clea (Cam beige Potty Pres, 1987). TW yicgen Habermas, The plonphia! dinar of mdenity (Camides: Pony Press, 1987) pp, 320-08, "> Donna Haway,“Siasted knowledges: The sience question in feminism and the prviege ‘ot parial perspective” in er Simi, Cys erd Won Tria of mre (London: Rowdee, 199) pp. 183-201 tall hooks, “Repciening witenss in the black imagination” ia Lawrence Grosbers, Cry [dion and Pra Trocher (ds), Cafe sniy (New York: Rouledgs, 1992) pp. 335-46 che potas ate frm pp. 384614 Strange Lessons in Deep Space ig, is the assumption that particular classes of people are cosmopolitan (teavelers”) while the rest are merely local (“natives”). He argues that this is merely the ideology of one, extremely powerful “traveling culture,” and that there are indeed numerous other traveling cultures constituted through Force as well as by privilege. And in his later writings in particular Clifford seems to me to provide a way of “traveling with maps” that involves more than redrawing and annotaing them as he goes, his function more than the “sexibe of our scxibblings” patronized and pigeonholed by Paul Rabinow.” For Clifford’s maps call int question their own enabling conventions by traveling: They worry away at their orientation, scale, and grid, their presences tnd absences, in ways that clarify the modalities by means of which, as he puts it himself, “cultural aralysis constitutes its objects ~ societies, trndi- tions, communities, identities — in spatial terms and through specific spatial practices of research.” "These concems are, pethaps, still privileges and luxuries; all spatial metaphors are no doubt compromised and tainted; and acknowledging these restrictions will not issue in an innocent inguity conducted in a state of ‘grace. But reminding oneself of the clinging mud of metaphor, of the mundanity and materiality of intellectual inquiry, is nonetheless a vital critical achievement. ‘This is not the place to attempt a rigorous genealogy of human geo- graphy. What follows is a series of vignettes of, in the terms of my containing metaphors, fixer of position, which trace the emergence of a distinctive tradition of Western intellectual inquiry. I should perhaps make i clear that these do aot constitute even the outlines of an alternative history. Such a project would have to attend much more scrupulously t0 archival matters than is possible here. All I seek to do is make a series of incisions into the conventicnal historiography of geography and show that its strategic episodes can be made to speak to many other histories. It should also be remembered chat “human geography” did not emerge in ‘any institutionalized sense until the closing decades of the nineteenth ‘century; but its development appealed to much older traditions of inquiry through exactly the kind of legitimating devices that 1 mentioned earlier For now, it will be enough to off-centre those appeals and call some of their assumptions into question. 2 card, “Thvebig als! p. 108 Pal Rabeow, “Represents ate soit Mody snd pont moriy an kroplogy” in Cord aed Maras, in cr, pp 234-65 the quotation in fom ps 282 s Camord, Tiavng cles” p. 97; Brace Robin, “Comparsvecoxopoltensn:” Sua Tt 31/32 (982) pp. 102-85. Geogtaphy and the World-as-Exhibition I demand, 1 insist, that everything around me shall bencforth be measured, tested, certified, mathematical, and ratimal. One of my tarks must be to make 4 fill survey of the island, its distanes and its contours, and incorporate all thse details in am acarate sarvepr's map. I should lke every plant.to be bled, evry bird tobe ringed, every animal to be branded. I shall not be contewt sti bis opague and impenetrable plac filed with sere ferments and malignant stirings, Bas been transformed inte a calculated design, visible and intelligible 1 its wry depths! Michel Toutnies, Friday or the other island Distancing, mastering, objectifying — the voyeuristic look exercises control through 1 viewaltation which merges with « vititigation of its objec Rosalya Deutsche, Byys town Visualization In this essay I offer a particular pers2ective on the constitution of modem geography. I have selected three episodes in its history whieh, at fist sight, might seem to have little in common: the eighteenth-century European odyssey in the South Pacific; the celebrated regional geographies of late sineteenth- and early twentieth-century France; and the emergence of spatial science in Anglophone geography in the decades following World War IL ‘The evidence from these episodes is heterogeneous, but when it is brought into the same frame it brings what I want to call the problematic of wswalzation into particularly clear focus. A number of writers have already drawn attention to vision as what Martin Jay calls “the master sense of the modern fem”: to the ubiquity of the visual tropes that (deliberately) stud my preceding sentences and to the gendeting of the gaze that is there in Jay’s16 Siragge Lesions in Deep Space own summary description.’ But these claims assume 2 special significance in geography, because the discipline continued to privilege sight long after many others beeame more — well, circumspect. “Geography,” writes one ‘commentator, “is to such an extent a visual discipline that, uniquely among the social sciences, sight is almost certainly a prerequisite for its pursuit.” This is hyperbole, of couse, but the classical origins of geography are closely identified with the optical practices of cartography and geometry; its interests have often been assumed to lie in the landscape and the particular “way of seeing” that this implies, and its decidedly modern interest in theory invokes visualization ot only covertly, through the Greek thea (outward appearance”, and bora (“to look closely”) of “theory” ise, but also openly, through the display and analysis of spatial structures. None of these individual coordinates are confined to geography, but their joint intersection with its disciplinary trajectory does, T think, intensify and particulatize its ocularcentrism: its charactesistically visual appropriation of the world. In taking “the supremacy of the eye for granted,” declares Tua its practitioners “move with the mainstream of modern culture.” Maybe 05 but the visual thematic of modern culeuse is by n0 means an unerit cone, and I hope to show that it is possible to draw on ideas from art history and the history of seience, from philosophy and critical theory, to interrogate geography’s visual thematic. Cook’s Tour: anthropology and geography 1 cut into the history of modern geogeaphy in the second half of the ‘ighteenth century when, so David Stoddart claims, geography frst emerged sa distinctively modem science. In doing so he is deliberately cweaking, the noses of historians who tave identified much earlier surfaces of emergence. He knows only too well that the standard histories of geography parade Eratosthenes, Strabo, and Ptolemy across theie pages, followed by Hakluyt, Purchas, and Varenius, but he insists that these figures are remote from the concerns of modern resders. “Their contributions have meaning in the contexts only of their own time, not of ours.” Such a dismissal is contentious, of course, anc it is intended to be so. An intesest in these ‘writers does not immediately imply any antiquatianism. * barn Ja, “Scope regimes of mode,” ia Sco Lash and Jonthan Foednan (es) Meir iy Onfork Blache Publis, 1982) pp. 17895. } thee venue are daa orn D. C.D. Pocock, "Sight aed owl” Tanaris of te neo Brits Cag 6 (981 9p. 385-98 and Ys Ths," 9d pete” Gia ‘ager (Sp 415-22 David Stor, "Geography ~ 1 Baropea sees” in his On epi al ny (Oxford: Blawel Pater, 1980) pp. 28-10 Goograply and tbe world-asexbibiton a7 Livingstone has presented a compelling case for the importance of geography to the construction of modernity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On his reading, the Scientific Revolution of the seven teenth century may have depended, in complex but nonetheless crucial ‘ways, on the voyages of discovery. Livingstone argues that these “first-hand encounters with the world” — whic, like Stoddart, he regards as “the very stulf of geography” ~ “brought an immense cognitive and cultural challenge to tradition.” But I suspect Stoddatt’s response, and one which Livingstone anticipates in his own essay, would be to say that those carly geographies just as often confirmed or reinforced the compulsions of tradition. What- ever force it may have had in other directions, geography — like other forms of knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ~ was also deeply implicated in magic and myth, cosmography shaded indiscriminately into astrology, and the shores of empirical science were still distant, blurred. On this reading, the difference berween the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries tums not so much on the distinction between myth and direct observation as on the different sears accorded to information derived from the two, Those “other” knowledges are absent from the standacd histories ‘of geography too, but Stoddart’s point is simply that they have no place in the modmy discipline at all. His diagnostic question is equally simple: “When did inah become our cent criterion?” Ir is not, of course, as simple s all chat, and I will want to suggest considerable caution about absolutizing “Truth” in this way. But what Stoddatt has in mind is the emergence of geogmphy as a quintessentially empirical scene, and T want +o begin by thinking through some of the implications of bis argument. Adventures in natural bistory Stoddart’s history is unorthodox. He dates the transformation of geography {nto an empirical science to 1769, the year in which Cook frst entered the Pacific. The apparent precision of the date is deceptive since in many ways the invocation of Cook is Ggurutive: He is made to stand for a cluster of overlapping intellectual traditions. But in more conventional histories of geography he does not appear at al; or if he does, itis as litle more then 4 bystander whose voyages are used 10 cottect Ptolemy's errors and complete the outlines of the world map, so that they become narrowly empirical in significance rather than way stations en route to an empitical sens, Only in Glacken’s Traces on the Rhodian shore does Cook appeat, as he does in Stoddart’s account, as the superintendent of “a scientife’ underaking, a * David Livingston, “Geoguphy, uation and the sdenterevoltin: An interpretative essy;” Trsecins, li of Bish Caras 15 (1990) pp. 359-73, the quotation is fom p. 36418 Sirange Lessons in Deep Space hhabinger of the ninereenth-ccntury scientific waveling of Humboldt, Daswin, and the Challewger” and as che bearer of a discourse that legitimated itself through “liability in detsil and authenticty.”* "The ostensible purpose of Cook’s first voyage (1768-1771) was 0 participate in an international project to observe the transit of Venus, an fevent that would not take place again until 1874, IF the passage of the planet across the face of the sun could be observed at different stations azound the world, it was hoped that astronomers would be able to calculate the distance between the eaith and the sun, an achievement of considerable importance to both science and the art of navigation. Accordingly, Cook’s inetructions were to sail to Tabiti and set up a temporary observatory, But there was also a substantial interest both within the Royal Society and at court in having Cook explore and chart the South Pacific and, so it was hoped (sill more fervently, I imagine), “discover” the hypothesized great southera continent, fra australis incagita. Such a mission had obvious implications for Britain as a maritime power, and this bricf was duly incorporated into Cook's secret instructions. Shortly before the Budavour set sal, however, a young botanist, Joseph Banks, persuaded the Admiralty to allow him to accompany the expedition, Following the precedent set by Bougainville and other French voyagers, be Drought with him rwo mituralists, both former students of the Swedish botanist Cael von Linné (Linnaeus), and two illustators. Linnacus was the author of Sytema nature (1738), one of the founding texts of natural history, and he soon learned of Banks's intentions. He was informed by one corres- pondent that: No people ever went to sea better fitted our for the purpose of Natural History ‘They have got a five library of Natural History; they have all sorts of machines for catching and preserving ingects; all kinds of nets, wawls, drags and hooks for coral Gshing, they have even a curious contrivance of 2 telescope, by which, put jnto the water, you cin see the botcom at great depth.’ Similar provisions were made for subsequent voyages. Johann Forster and his son George accompanied Cook on his second voyage, while Banks himself became President of the Royal Society and acted 26 the veritable “custodian of the Cook model” for later expeditions.” * carne Glacken, Tato te Radio sare Na ad clay wre eg fo ei ties 1 ted of te gt ety (Bde Unereray oF Calera Pre, 1967 P 50 OC “Beabol, (ody Tv Una of tr Bndesvous, 768-1771 (Cambadge: Cambridge rivesiy Prem 1958) p hs Belo le Lianeor “te igh pet of betel suis” bat pete another meuphoe Donald None scans uch clo tothe mat a deebig in fone of the agents of “he cate of toa” ee hin Nutr ane A ty of ele ier (Corbedge: Cambsdge Unive Pres, 1985) p28 and pee. pani Mackay, eae fC: Epi, sie on ein 1780-180 (Londons Coon Heim, 1985p. 20. Grography and the worldnassechibition 19 Stoddact argues that the work of chese tears of scientists, collectors, and itlustrators displayed three features of decisive significance for the formation of geography as a distinctly modern, avowedly “objective” science: a concern for realism in description, for systematic classification in collection, and for the comparative method in explazation. But Stoddart presses this further. Neither Banks nor the Forsters confined themselves to plants and animals. They also took a keen interest in peoples, and in much the same way. Although Banks participated in many of the practices and rituals of the aboriginal peoples he encountered in Tahiti and elsewhere, he seems to have approached them “as he did any other species”; the Forsters were uninter ested in even Banks's rudimentary attempts at participant observation, and preferred to hold their objects at a distance and attempt “above all else to compase and categorize the cultures they observed.”* Hence what I take to be Stoddart’s central claim: that it was “the extension of [these] scientific methods of observation, classification, and comparison to peoples and societies that made our own subject possible.” ‘This is a revisionist history, as I have already indicated, and Stoddart makes no bones about it - My heroes are not the usual ones ~ the Ritters, Ratzels, Hettners, entombed by conventional wisdom. My geography springs from Forster, Darwin, Huxley: and it wworks.!® Yet one ought not to take this too literally. For all the disclaimers, the traditional pantheon continues to east its shadow over Stoddar’s narrative, “Humboldt was born in the year Cook first saw the Pacific,” he remarks, “Rier in the year he died there." Indeed, Banks and the Forsters are cast ‘as the precursors of @ tradition of field science (rather than “desk-bound ‘scholasticism”) that aviminated in the work of Humboldt, who thus becomes “the inberitor of the great tradiion of exploratory field science of the Enlightenment.”"" Stoddart plainly invokes Cook’s voyage in order 10 "Lyne Wiikey, Voge of dicwene Cate Gok and the eration of te Pasi (New Yor Willan Moweow, 1987) pp. 1-12, 12, 20 Y Stoddart, “Geography” pp. 32-83, 35 i one thing to csim that these development made ‘modecn geoyraphy possible, but quite aneter eo sy that they also made tance from other branches of knowledge, incidiag anthropolgy and sociology (p. 2). 1 do not think this second, stcgager thers can be snened, and ia ht follows I Focus of the fe. Wed, pt Revo thx may bein ony, but in other ways, 8 I wl show in a moment, Stor falls the convention of mainstem hstorography: 4 celebration of heres ot hercnes, sed Exapran bezoes to boot. I foes primasly on tht wosblesme adecte, ba fr « primary “ueuion ofthe gender contraction of mainatzeam htonogrphies see Mona Domoeh, “Toward 4 fist histxiegeaphy of gegrapy,” Thamar, sino Br Coppin 16 (191) pp. 98-10, 1 Sroddert, Or Grp, p35 ter, “Pimbelde andthe emergence of scientific geography 1 have quoted from the ppetipe cans, ws fr a8 its author knows the volume for which the ‘Gary was commitsioned never appeated in >ine