Mythe et géographies

Abstract

Plutôt que le rôle de l'espace dans le récit mythique, les géographes ont intérêt à comprendre si et comment la pensée mythique influence les pratiques spatiales. Tout en s'inspirant du programme platonicien, cet essai en modifie en quelque sorte la visée. Il se base en fait sur une conception assez stricte du mythe et avance l'idée que la pensée mythique est un outil crucial pour comprendre la géographie en tant que construction humaine. Cet essai met en lumière l'appauvrissement théorique et méthodologique qui découle de l'éviction du mythe du référentiel explicatif des processus territoriaux par la science géographique « occidentale », en particulier lors du tournant historique qu'a constitué l'institutionnalisation de cette discipline. Il souligne enfin tout l'intérêt que la discipline géographique actuelle aurait à réintroduire la raison mythique dans les interprétations de la territorialité au sein des grands processus qui animent la scène internationale.Geographers are interested in understanding how mythical thought influences spatial practices rather than how it plays a role in mythical narrative structure. Starting from the platonian perspective, this article ends up modifying the latter's perspective. In fact, it is based on a strict conception of myth and it claims that mythical thought is a fundamental tool for understanding geography as a useful human construct. It draws attention to the loss of theoretical and methodological meaning which arises from the withdrawal of myth from the explanation of territorial processes in Western Geography, especially at the particular turning point of its history when the discipline was institutionalized. Finally, the article underlines the benefits to contemporary geography coming from the rediscovery of mythical thought for interpreting territoriality in the context of the great processes at work on the international scène

History and philosophy of geography: discipline and discourse, 2001 2002

“…Indeed, as Baker ( 2002) points out in relation to historical geography and geohistory, the variety of past geographies that have developed in different places in different circumstances provides a rich legacy and resource from which geographers can draw, in their teaching (Sack, 2002) as well as research, in order to produce new forms of knowledge and understanding of the world. We might thus heed the call of Italian geographer Angelo Turco, who argues that mythical thought, displaced from geography when it was institutionalized as a discipline, needs to be recentred within contemporary geographical understanding (Turco, 2001). A related argument is made by Paul Claval who considers the relationship between myth and scientific knowledge in geographical thought (Claval, 2001) and urges geographers to develop innovative critical perspectives in regard of modern geographical epistemology.…”