From Preface: The embryonic ideas for this thesis began to form in two seminars I attended in 2000 while studying for a Masters at the University of Chicago. The first of these, W. J. T. Mitchell’s ‘Verbal and Visual Landscapes’, must be given credit for introducing me to a short essay by Martin Heidegger entitled ‘Die Kunst und der Raum’ (‘Art and Space’), which got me thinking about the ‘special character’ of space (Heidegger 1973: 4). In addition, Professor Mitchell’s specific approach to landscape, that it should be considered
as a verb rather than a noun, made me consider the ontological implications of the
relationship between space and power that is witnessed both in and through landscape
when approached as ‘a process by which social and subjective identities are formed’
(Mitchell 1994: 1).