I found this reading to be quite difficult to grasp, but overall I came to the conclusion that WJT Mitchell’s piece “Imperial Landscape” is attempting to redefine and decontextualize different meanings of landscape. Specifically, Mitchell is concerned with a more realistic, almost pessimistic (he refers to it as the “darkside of landscape”) of landscape. Mitchell says: “this dark side is not merely mythic, not merely a feature of the regressive, instinctual drives associated with nonhuman ‘nature’ but a moral, ideological, and political darkness that covers itself with innocent idealism” (166). I find this quote the most intriguing and I believe it summarizes many of the main ideas covered in this piece very well. The reading continues later on to reference that a problematic notion exists that landscape painting is uniquely Western and modern, and contradicts this notion by alluding to the antiquity of Chinese landscape painting. Not only has Chinese landscape painting existed before\u00a0modern western thought, but it has played a crucial role in the formation and development of English landscape aesthetics. This subversion is pertinent because it speaks to the immorality that exists within the modern discourse of landscape. The burial of this deep history of landscape representation is indicative of the power structures at work and not only the literal imperialism (land) of the English\/European\/Western world, but the imperialism of knowledge as well. Imperialism has manifested itself into discourse of imperialism, and this cycle has reinforced an uneven structure of power within the global systems of both land and knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found this reading to be quite difficult to grasp, but overall I came to the conclusion that WJT Mitchell’s piece “Imperial Landscape” is attempting to redefine and decontextualize different meanings of landscape. Specifically, Mitchell is concerned with a more realistic, almost pessimistic (he refers to it as the “darkside of landscape”) of landscape. Mitchell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5637,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}