3. Theoretical Framework

A. The Metaphysical Mapping of Landscape as a Cosmogeography

The concept of the metaphysical mapping of landscape is understood as the perception and interpretation of landscape in metaphysical terms. The physical structure of the landscape and its evocative qualities become a stimulus to conceptualizing the landscape in terms of a cosmology. The landscape, therefore, acts as a means of grounding a metaphysical vision by creating a relationship between this vision and a unified body of geographical formations that is perceived as revealing or embodying this cosmology. An interpretation of landscape along these lines is described as cosmogeographic because it correlates a cosmographic as well as a geographical description of phenomena. It embodies a cosmography because in it constitution of a conception of cosmic order understood in metaphysical and cosmological terms. It is geographic in its employment of geographical forms as a primary mode of embodying these ideas. In embodying cosmological conceptions through geographical forms, it is, therefore, described as cosmogeographic2.

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2 These concepts bear some relationship to conceptions on the interpretation of space developed in archeology and philosophy which emphasize the character of space as a subjectively realized rather than as an objective form. Notable examples of these are Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994)which emphasizes the imaginative reworking of intimate, particularly domestic spaces, Christopher Tilley, The Phenomenology of Landscape(Oxford: Berg, 1994) which, like his other works, builds on phenomenology and hermeneutics, particularly Heidegerrean,in developing a conception of relationships with landscape as dialectical processes in which geographical forms and the organicity of the human being are mutually implicated, Paul Deveroux, The Sacred Place: The Ancient Origin of Holy and Mystical Sites (London:Cassell,2000)which develops the concept of mind-mapping in explaining the mind as assimilating newly encountered spaces into already internalized geographies, a process that integrates an innate sensitivity to places that manifest peculiar atmospheres that inspires their categorization as sacred; Wendy Ashmore and Bernard Knapp,Ed.,Archeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives(Oxford:Blackwell,1999)constructs a continuum representing modes of investment of meaning in landscape, as “ideational”-embodying discursive forms and could therefore be “conceptualized”- embodying symbolic meaning but unmarked by human engineering and “constructed”-created through human engineering. These categories open up into further conceptualizations of “landscape as memory”- encoding a society’s developing cosmological and historical consciousness, “landscape as identity”- indicating relationships between spatial cognition and sociocultural identity, “landscape as social order”-central to the dynamics of inter-personal relations within society and “landscape as transformation”-the fundamental reconstitution over time of the interpretive frameworks that give meaning to landscapes.