Remoteness, islands and islandness

Abstract

Through an explorative overview of a number of approaches to what remoteness is, in terms of language, discourse, and fantasy, how it is established spatially and temporally by movements and perspectives, by how connections are set up, and by how boundaries are drawn and crossed, this paper argues that remoteness is a) produced rather than discovered; b) an asymmetric relation between two parties from which emanates certain features, practices, and affective modes; c) a category to think with rather than an object for such thinking; d) a device that frames and structures the positioning and experiencing of time and place; and e) a part of the logic that organises the world in terms of power and control. Of longstanding concern in island studies is what constitutes ‘the island’. Much of the discussion is built on an undertheorised and broadly accepted dichotomisation between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’ understandings of islands. What the overview suggests is a third position: ‘the island’ as an intensively multirelational phenomenon constituted by the constant sliding between islands as physical places and all the figures of thought attached to such places.