On Geography as a Visual Discipline

Felix Driver
Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK; F.Driver@rhbnc.ac.uk

The idea that geography is a peculiarly visual discipline has a long history. It isnt simply the product of heightened anxiety about the politics of vision in recent cultural theory. A longer history of speculation around the visuality of geography stretches back through the 20th century, encompassing the writings of numerous educationalists, academics and fieldworkers drawn to visual metaphors and techniques of one kind or another (Matless 1992, 1996). This perspective takes in the writings of notable geographers like Halford Mackinder and his celebrated description of the discipline as a special form of visualisation ( Tuathail 1996; Ryan 1994a). Reaching further back, it also draws our attention to the ways in which geographers have deployed a variety of visual technologies, from lantern slides and globes to maps and charts (Edney 1997; Godlewska 1999; Schwartz 1996). For centuries, indeed, practitioners of the art of geography have been engaged in developing languages and techniques to capture what the eye could or should see in a landscape. Thinking about what to observe and how to observeindeed, the status of observation itself has long been integral to the theory and practice of geographical knowledge (Driver 2001). It is important to register this basic point about the longevity and diversity of geographers concerns with the visual, because otherwise we risk reiterating a history that depends on some distinctly questionable assumptions about the sheer naivet of our predecessors. Accentuating their blind spots has the effect of throwing into sharp relief our insight, as if we could in a trice (or the twinkling of an eye?) simply shake off this ocularcentrism once and for all. The superficiality of such a critique stems from its failure really to investigate the depth and effects of geographys enchantment with the visual. What is needed instead, as Gillian Rose puts it, is careful empirical work that can acknowledge the varied modalities taken by the visual in the discipline. There is a danger here of underestimating the extent of the work which has been donenot simply over the last ten years, but over a much longer periodin unpicking and, indeed, speculating
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upon the relationship between geographical knowledge and visualisation. The visual has, in fact, long been scrutinised by geographers and others interested in the history and forms of geographical knowledge. Rose suggests that much of this work (on, say, mapping, landscape or photography) is concerned with geographys predisciplinary past (in other words, with geographical knowledge prior to the 20th century). In a straightforward chronological sense, this point carries some weight, though in many cases the sort of work being done is not defined simply by chronology. Yet we shouldnt underestimate the contributions of those working on visual aspects of the 20th-century history of geographical education, mapping, fieldwork and theorising in many parts of the world (for further examples of recent work, see Ploszajska 1999; Schulten 2001; Withers 2001). But this is really a question of emphasis. The fundamental point here is the need to devote closer attention to the visual, less as a foil for doing something else (such as sensory geographies of sound, touch and smell) than as a subject of inquiry in its own rightand one, moreover, that necessarily and absolutely involves thinking about the relationship between the visual and other senses. This argument also requires, in my view, a different way of thinking about representation itselfnot as something to be counterposed to something else called practice or performance, but as an effect produced through practices and performances. That, of course, is what historians of the visual such as Crary (1990) and Poole (1997) encourage us to do for the 18th and 19th centuries; and there is, as Rose shows, no reason why this cannot be done for the 20th and 21st. This brings me to Roses discussion of the projection of slides. This is an interesting theme, not simply because it highlights some distinctive aspects of the contemporary practice of geography as a university discipline, but also because it, too, has a highly significant history. Rose refers to the genealogy of the slide lecture in art history provided by Nelson (2000), suggesting that geographers might consider the role of slides in their own foundational methodologies. In fact, we know that the role of visual technologies in geographical teaching and research has long been a major preoccupation of geographers in Britain and elsewhere. For example, the origins of the Geographical Association, founded in Britain in 1893, lay in a lantern-slide exchange scheme amongst geography school teachers (Balchin 1993:3). The use of slidesand visual technologies more generallywas a major subject of discussion within geographical circles in the late 19th century, and during the early decades of the 20th century this concern was further developed in the pages of geographical journals such as the Geographical Teacher in Britain and its equivalents elsewhere. The work of James Ryan (1994b:243247) and Teresa Ploszajska (1999:137180) has shown the extent to which the debate over lantern

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slides and their subsequent use by geographers was central to geographical thought and teaching in Britain during this period. The anxiety over the relationship between the magic lantern in popular entertainment and the slide projector in the scientific context clearly shaped the ways in which the technology was regarded at the end of the 19th century and, arguably, since. Similarly, the use of lantern slides as vehicles for political agitation, missionary propaganda or popular entertainment (Cullen 2002; Grant 2001) had implications for the ways in which geographers could and did respond to the use of slides in an educational context. When Rose writes that academics, too, are seduced by the slide show, she reiterates an anxiety that would have been familiar to the most conservative members of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in the late 19th century, who feared the popular associations of the lantern slide, and also to the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, who represented the slide projector (at the start of Tristes Tropiques) as a machine for retailing travellers tales to a passive audience (Driver 2001). Interestingly, both conservative Victorians and disenchanted moderns like Lvi-Strauss associated the lantern slide with the vulgarisation of expertise and the substitution of sensation for science: slideshows, after all, were for women and children. While Roses emphasis on the performative aspects of the slide show highlights the ways in which the projector lends authority to the speaker, more attention might be paid to the ambivalence of the situation. The anxieties over showmanship and sensationalism that attended the introduction of slide lectures into scholarly societies like the RGS linger today, though frequently they provide licence for humour. Whether this sort of humour (which in my experienceand not just mine!frequently accompanies the use of any mechanical or electronic technology in the lecture theatre) enhances or undermines the authority of the lecturer is a moot point. It might be useful here to distinguish between different sorts of authority and different sorts of lecture.1 Roses emphasis on the need to pay more attention to the spaces in which geographical knowledge is performed echoes many recent calls to consider the spatiality of geographical knowledge-making, especially in the field, but also in the lecture theatre, the department and the laboratory, for example (for recent examples, see Livingstone 2000; Lorimer and Spedding 2002). What distinguishes Roses essay is its suggestive attention to the interaction between particular technologies, spaces and audiences: the spaces here are not mute or inert, but enter into the performance in decisive ways.2 Most classroom teachers today, of course, are encouraged to break up their hour-long lectures into smaller fragments and to divide the class into smaller groups whenever possible: the principles of active learning have changed the ways in which the spaces of lecture theatres are now used.

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In concluding this brief comment, I would like to reflect on a broader theme raised by Roses account, which concerns the ways in which we might connect thinking about the history of geography to thinking about contemporary geographical practice. One implication of Roses argument is that although there has been much work on the prehistory of geography as a visual discipline, it hasnt connected much with the analysis of the visual practices of contemporary geography. Whether this is the case or not, I do think that sometimes we have written the history of geography as though it were something quite exotic but harmless, consigned, at the very least, to the last century, if not to oblivion: from our lofty positions as postmoderns, postcolonials or whatever, we detach ourselves from our predecessors without so much as a backward glance. Isnt it about time we took a more modest view? Perhaps that history which we want to transcend is precisely what makes our own geographies possible? Now theres a thought.

Endnotes
1 The rise of the term presentation, incidentally, denotes something quite self-conscious and staged in which the artifice of the occasion is evident to all parties. A presentation is a very special kind of talk, requiring training and skills that are increasingly taught to geography students. We might think further about what this does to the authority of the lecturer and the role of visual aids, including slides. 2 On the subject of single slide projectors, though, I am not sure how hegemonic they actually are in the discipline, or to what extent, say, the viewer of stereoscopic aerial photographs is participating in anything less hegemonic.

References
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