Bronwyn Davies

(In)Scribing Body/Landscape Relations

This book troubles the separation of bodies and landscapes. It develops a theory of body/landscape relations in which bodies are understood as taking up their material existence within landscapes, and as landscape. Landscapes are understood as bodies and as co-extensive with bodies. The concept of (in)scription is developed as texts written on the deep/surfaces of the body/landscape, not in the sense of scarifying, but in the sense of bringing the subject into being. That being is understood in terms of process, rather than in terms of essence, and as such is motile, fluid, open to change. The dominant means through which we know body/landscapes is discourse—this does not deny the materiality of bodies, it simply recognises that unmediated access to the material body is rare. Discourse (with all its fluidity, contradictions, mutiplicity and explosive power) is a major constitutive force in the (in)scription of bodies. The power of discourse in its double sense of subjecting and at the same time constituting speaking/writing subjects who can move beyond the terms of their own subjection, is explored throughout this book—through the work of fiction writers in Australia and Japan, through the experiences of environmentalists in Australia and Japan, and through the development of strategies of writing throughout the book generally, but in particular in the work of collective biography with both Australian and Japanese participants.

(In)scribing Body/landscape Relations, written by Bronwyn Davies, was published in the U.S. by Alta/Mira Press in 2000

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