THE TROPING OF (THE) LANDSCAPE Nature and the Politics of Representation

This paper examines the legislation of ’nature ’ and the formation of the sub-ject within the discourses of political philosophy and landscape represen-tation. Focusing on the transition from Classical to Modern epistemology, it discusses the treatment of discursive excess in the constitution of the subject of government and the subject of landscape. In the Classical subject, the ex-cess represented by the corporeal body and its physical surroundings was strictly controlled; in landscape representation, the body was confined to a single viewing position through the operation of linear perspective, while in civil society, brute corporeality was subordinated to the individual’s metaphorical position within the social unit. These relationships are reconfig-ured under Modern epistemology, which recognizes discursive excess as a process of the subject. No longer ontologically dependent upon physical Nature, landscape and civil society release their hold on the corporeal body, addressing instead the individual imagination