The Boundaries of Reason: The World, the Homeland, and Edward Said

Abstract

The revival of social and cultural geography has tended to prefer the local and the metropolitan scale, and a number of obstacles lie between it and a recovery of the globe as a field of inquiry. In this paper some of these obstacles are reviewed, namely Eurocentrism and antihumanism which are not usually acknowledged by those who would lay claim to the globe. The recent writings of Edward Said are then considered for clues to an adequate position from which to investigate the world. Said's idea of a regime of essentializations, his continued commitment to a humanism which acknowledges its extra-European dimensions, and his call for a closer geographical imagination of homeland and nation together suggest a possible way forward. The paper ends with suggestions of how recent theories of justice might give the geography of nation a more critical normative edge.

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