The demise and spectral return of consciousness in landscape research

In this chapter, I analyse the changing conceptions of consciousness within landscape research from the late 20th century to the present. The 1980s and 1990s mark a critical shift in the framing of consciousness away from psychological, perceptual, or experiential perspectives towards an ontology of consciousness as an ungrounded linguistic signifier and an ideological trope. These perspectives do not attempt to problematise consciousness so much as disqualify it from discussion. In this way they can be characterised as anti-subjectivist or post subjectivist. I draw out the theoretical and critical foundations of these anti-subjectivist approaches (particularly Derrida's influence) as well as the subsequent opening out of the landscape idea in more recent discussion. While consciousness and subjectivity have, in various ways, been re-insinuated within more recent discussion, it remains nebulous and poorly theorised. Hence consciousness occupies a spectral presence in the landscape of landscape research. I use one of my own paintings, Dalek in Landscape, to presage the discussion and draw out the tensions at play between subjectivity, ideology and the landscape idea. Given the broader sway of antisubjectivist tendencies within the late 20th century cultural turn, landscape provides a useful point of comparison for thinking about the changing conceptions of consciousness and subjectivity in many other cognate fields and creative disciplines.