Incontinence: the politics and poetics of passage

This essay starts from the premise that the way we think of Australia has been shaped by visual representations, especially those of geographers. It examines the profound influence maps and cartography with their emphasis on outline and boundary have exerted in imagining the continent. Because of the dominance of such representations indebted to cartesian throught, images of Australia have been severely restricted not only visually but conceptually and epistemologically. Carter relates the enclosure acts of such visualisations to the ideologically motivated policng of Australia's (coastal) borders and advocates a more free-flowing, dynamic and relational thinking of space and place. For such a revision of our notions of knowledge production carter offers the figure of the archipelago. Archipelagic thinking would avoid the containment and closure stratedies of conventional definitions and representations and instead favour 'incontinent' thinking in terms of process and passage rather than item and entity which could prove a beneficial new methos and attitude in the humanaties. The essay is meant to be, at the same time, a discursive argument for as well as a demonstration of such a fluid, connective and open style of investigation which responds to complexities instead of trying to reduce them.