Book Review: The meaning of Europe: geography and geopolitics

Abstract

a western female stoicism. All three, she argues, conceptualize identity detached from firm territorial referents. In the epilogue, Comer reflects that an ethic of transnationalist, postmodern, female solidarity may foster justice – but that there are no sureties. Comer writes clearly, avoiding the stylistic complexities of much postmodern analysis. She admits that some of her readings are against the grain of other critical works, but makes a convincing case for her interpretations. I am struck, however, by Comer’s adherence to the conventions of literary criticism and her limited use of geographers’ work, given the book’s title and themes. She does not consistently delve into and represent the landscape and spatial themes that she claims are central to her arguments, nor is it always clear how she sees landscape connecting space and place. She notes that her predecessors writing on the west relied heavily on ‘perceptual geography’ from the 1970s (Bowden, Lowenthal, Meinig, Tuan) but her references to recent geographic works relate to postmodernism, space and place (Harvey, Soja, Massey) and she does not engage with contemporary cultural geographic writing on landscape (other than work by Stephen Daniels who is identified as an art critic), or with US feminist geographers. Despite these reservations, I value the book for bringing attention to the collective importance of these women’s writings and for offering an original interpretation of the place of the contemporary west in American geographical imaginations.