Imaginative geography

From Geography

Imaginative geography encompasses the created view of what distant lands look like, their people and resources. Such a view is either negative and degenerative or the opposite, more romanticized as the truth, it is however not an actual representation of the truth (Gregory, 2000). It can be used to justify one’s own goals; colonialism; imperialism; independence; cultural cohesion etc.. The created views are conveyed to the people by means of various media including (but not limited to) literature, art, music and theatre.

In order to justify the colonization of the Orient there had to be a sense of cultural cohesion and historical genealogy among the nationals of the imperial nations. This was, among other methods, created through an imaginative geography. By depicting the West as superior to the non-West (in this case the Orient) and simultaneously representing the Orient as a 'once great culture now lost', an ‘empty’ virgin wilderness, it’s people uncultured and in need of ‘guidance’, the act of colonization was made to seem justified; even needed (Gregory, 2000, 317-223).

The Egyptian production of the opera Aina is a clear example of imaginative geography. It is written and directed by Europeans, the actors were Europeans, the spectators were mostly European (even though it was first performed in Cairo) and the costumes and décor were fashioned based on the Description de l’Egypte, the book written by Napoleon’s scholars, who presented Egypt as a lost culture, a now ‘empty’ land without regard for the modern Egyptians of the time.

The imaginative geographies that Said talked about in his book Orientalism however are specific to the Middle East and should not be mistaken to have been identical to imaginative geographies used for colonial and imperial legitimization of other regions in the world such as south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or South America (Gregory, 2000, 311).

References

Gregory, D. (2000) Edward Said’s imaginative geographies. In Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift (eds.) Thinking space. Routledge, London, pp.302-348.

Said; E.W. (1994) Overlapping territories, intertwined histories. Chapter 1 in: Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, London.

Contributors

Published by Robbert Wilmink --RobbertWilmink 10:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)