Landscape and labyrinths

In the endeavour to reveal the politics behind landscape production, cultural geographers often neglect the most fundamental question of landscape, namely the question of how: how does the landscape work as both a visual and material space? How does it 'stick' in the mind and in the world? By relying on concepts such as ideology, hegemony and naturalized discourse, cultural geographers have parried the question by assuming a structural connection between the landscape's appearance in the world and people's everyday consciousness. The goal of this paper is to provide an alternative account of the landscape's existence. I argue that the landscape comes to appear in the world as it is put to task. This means that the landscape's existence is not founded on its capacity to inscribe or normalize consciousness through its appearance in the world but on the landscape's capacity to be called forth through practice. The argument is elaborated through the work of George Bataille whose concept of the labyrinth provides the theoretical groundwork for an alternative understanding of what the landscape is as well as how it can be studied.