Arkography

A Grand Tour through the Taken-for-Granted

Gunnar Olsson (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

228 Seiten

2020
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
978-1-4962-2029-5 (ISBN)

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In 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 today—nothing 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 them—hence the term “arkography,” a word hinting at an as-yet-unrecognized discipline.

In Arkography Olsson strips bare the governing techniques of self-declared authorities, including those of the God of the Old Testament and countless dictators, the latter supported by a horde of lackeys often disguised as elected representatives and governmental functionaries. From beginning to end, Arkography is an illustration of how every creation epic is a variation on the theme of chaos turning into cosmic order. A palimpsest of layered meanings, a play of things and relations, identity and difference. One and many, you and me.

Gunnar Olsson is an internationally acclaimed and highly distinguished Swedish geographer. He is professor emeritus at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Olsson is the author of Birds in Egg/Eggs in Bird, Lines of Power/Limits of Language, and Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason.

Preface: 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

Erscheinungsdatum	21.03.2020
Reihe/Serie	Cultural Geographies + Rewriting the Earth
Zusatzinfo	8 photographs, 25 illustrations, 11 charts, 1 index
Verlagsort	Lincoln
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
ISBN-10	1-4962-2029-3 / 1496220293
ISBN-13	978-1-4962-2029-5 / 9781496220295
Zustand	Neuware