What are we escaping from? - EXTRACT
Escapism
By Yi-Fu Tuan
Creating our own reality is part of human experience. Escapism is a certainty. But what are we escaping from? What are we escaping to? A cultural geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan turns his surprise enjoyment of his own visit to Disneyland into a profound discussion of escapism and reality, imagination-driven culture, and heaven and hell.
A product of eastern and western cultures, Tuan weaves subtle and intricate stories that spiral into captivating portraits of life, humans, culture, and landscape. He takes advantage of the perspectives of cultural geography, seeing escapism as the outcome of the transformative nature of the interface between the natural and the manmade. Tuan believes that “a human being is an animal who is congenitally indisposed to accept reality as it is,” that humans “see” what is not there.
In his early chapters “Earth,” “Animality,” and “People,”Tuan discusses culture as escape from nature and escape into nature as culture and the use of imagination, language, and the culturally created landscape to escape the essence of being animal and feeling disconnected.Whether of the Chinese who saw the earth and heavens as orderly and their emperor as the ultimate mediator, or of the insecure Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice, or of Renaissance princes who created a theatrical alternative to heaven, “high culture” is escape from “bondage to earth.” Yet imagination can give us both “hell” and “heaven.”
In his final two chapters, Tuan looks at imagination’s distortions, from haunted and satanic worlds, children’s destructiveness, the caste system, Nazi Germany, and sadomasochism, to imagination’s more uplifting, pleasurable, and necessary engagements of enchantment and fantasy: dance, song, and pictures. Is heaven the great escape? Tuan’s reluctance to answer engages us in more escapist activity.
Both a spiritual and a scientific examination of our existence, Escapism encourages us to think about that which is quintessentially us. Tuan’s intimate experience with and understanding of multiple cultures creates a picture that draws from the breadth of history, exemplifying the oneness of the experiences. Exploring our escape from nature into culture simultaneously celebrates and cautions our humanity.
Review by L. Elizabeth Wellman
Source: Field Notes - Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2005
By Yi-Fu Tuan
Creating our own reality is part of human experience. Escapism is a certainty. But what are we escaping from? What are we escaping to? A cultural geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan turns his surprise enjoyment of his own visit to Disneyland into a profound discussion of escapism and reality, imagination-driven culture, and heaven and hell.
A product of eastern and western cultures, Tuan weaves subtle and intricate stories that spiral into captivating portraits of life, humans, culture, and landscape. He takes advantage of the perspectives of cultural geography, seeing escapism as the outcome of the transformative nature of the interface between the natural and the manmade. Tuan believes that “a human being is an animal who is congenitally indisposed to accept reality as it is,” that humans “see” what is not there.
In his early chapters “Earth,” “Animality,” and “People,”Tuan discusses culture as escape from nature and escape into nature as culture and the use of imagination, language, and the culturally created landscape to escape the essence of being animal and feeling disconnected.Whether of the Chinese who saw the earth and heavens as orderly and their emperor as the ultimate mediator, or of the insecure Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice, or of Renaissance princes who created a theatrical alternative to heaven, “high culture” is escape from “bondage to earth.” Yet imagination can give us both “hell” and “heaven.”
In his final two chapters, Tuan looks at imagination’s distortions, from haunted and satanic worlds, children’s destructiveness, the caste system, Nazi Germany, and sadomasochism, to imagination’s more uplifting, pleasurable, and necessary engagements of enchantment and fantasy: dance, song, and pictures. Is heaven the great escape? Tuan’s reluctance to answer engages us in more escapist activity.
Both a spiritual and a scientific examination of our existence, Escapism encourages us to think about that which is quintessentially us. Tuan’s intimate experience with and understanding of multiple cultures creates a picture that draws from the breadth of history, exemplifying the oneness of the experiences. Exploring our escape from nature into culture simultaneously celebrates and cautions our humanity.
Review by L. Elizabeth Wellman
Source: Field Notes - Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2005
posted by David Smith @ 11/08/2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home