Solitude: the voice from the desert
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/estgeogr.2022107.107Keywords:
Cultural geography, Solitude, Desert, Lost, Reference, ConfinementAbstract
Space and solitude relationship has historically been related to the concept of the desert. Desert’s physical and natural factors have helped to motivate a collective fear to vacuum in contrast to the refuge feeling in the ecumene. However, this apparent duality encloses on the one hand the desert and solitude as a cultural construct that have served to reinforce social forms of coexistence. Therefore, desert and solitude both conceptually and because of its dependency linkage, they would be an intrinsic part of the same ecumene. On the other hand far from fear, the desert appears as a vehicle to achieve individual liberation, rethinking our complex societies.
In this conceptual article we will first introduce the meaning and construction of the relationship between the desert and solitude in the Western cultural context. Secondly, we will focus on the development of the social fear of emptiness with opposed to a vision of coexistence with solitude, focusing on isolation in our over-informed postmodern societies. Finally, we will conclude with a consideration on the need for solitude as a way of recovering our view of the world.
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