Crusoe's island and the human estate
Defoe's existential geography
pp. 363-388
in: Gary Backhaus, John Murungi (eds), Symbolic landscapes, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
This chapter explores the geographicity of the human condition, of the existential structures of being-in-the-world. The geographical turn is exemplified in the author's interpretation of Defoe's famous novel. Existential structures such as thrownness and anxiety are given spatial illustration. But, these illustrations, in turn, further provide us with spatial existential structurings such as the "tame" and the "wild," which involves establishing modes of comportment that consider qualitative differences in the range of circumspection. What is insightful is that a work of art providing a geography of the imagination can provide profound insight into the spatial existentialities of the human condition and geographies of the actual.