Description
Book SynopsisIn this fascinating text Gunnar Olsson tells the story of an arkographer, who with Pallas Athene's blessings, travels down the Red River Valley, navigates the Kantian Island of Truth, and takes a house-tour through the Crystal Palace, the latter edifice an imagination grown out of Gunnael Jensson's sculpture Mappa Mundi Universalis. This travel story carries the arkographer from the oldest creation epics extant to the power struggles of todaynothing less than a codification of the taken-for-granted, a mapping of the no-man's-land between the five senses of the body and the sixth sense of culture. By constantly asking how we are made so obedient and predictable, the explorer searches for the present-day counterparts to the biblical ark, the chest that held the commandments and the rules of behavior that came with themhence the term arkography, a word hinting at an as-yet-unrecognized discipline. In Arkography Olsson strips bare the governing techniques of self-declared authorities, i
Trade Review“This book is a significant contribution to what might be configured as the meeting points between academic geography, Western philosophy, critical social science, and arts-humanistic experimentation. It is the major reference point, the go-to source, for anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the extraordinarily rich arc of Olsson’s thinking over the past four-plus decades.”—Christopher Philo, professor of geography at the University of Glasgow
“Olsson continues to be an exciting thinker because he situates key problems within the field of geography in the broader contexts of Western humanism. . . . A fun, weird, inspiring, and engaging theoretical work. . . . It is a fascinating contribution that will likely be viewed as the capstone work of a major thinker.”—Keith Woodward, assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Table of ContentsPreface: Who Is Who and What Is What?
I: Red River Wake
Enuma elish
Gilgamesh
Genesis
Exodus
Platopolis
II: Imaginare Necesse Est
Saussurean Bar
The Republic
Edging
Island of Truth
Mappa Mundi Universalis
III: Crystal Palace
Inside
Basement
Prophets’ Hall
Ball Room
Attic
Penthouse
IV: Archives
Travelogue
Notes
Hidden references
Alpha and Omega
Given
Index
