Splendid isolation: 'Philosopher's islands' and the reimagination of space

Abstract

This paper argues that the metaphorical figure of the island plays an important but profoundly ambiguous role in the imagination of social space. The paper argues that 'utopic' islands have historically provided a fictional domain of experimentation that has informed the constitution of 'real' state spaces. From the 16th to 20th centuries this took the form of an increasingly consolidated and 'global' endotopia: a world, exemplified by the 'political' map, full of state spaces constituted as interiors. More recently, islands have served a very different metaphoric function, being used to create and legitimise spaces of exteriority - 'xenospaces' such as the online worlds of the 'metaverse' and the arcane legal/financial spaces of offshore - which in combination constitute an emergent xenotopia. The 'philosopher's island' (Mackay, 2010), therefore, represents a complex and polyvalent spatial form that serves to continuously and expediently redefine the nature of social space. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.