Extreme Geography

Extreme human geography is a critique that celebrates odd juxtapositions; it is not to be confused with extreme physical geography, which has its own distinct cabinet of remarkable curiosities. Extreme geography as a recurring subversive idea in the history of geographic thought manifests as fantasy mapping, counterfactual geographies, science fiction spaces/places, and other imaginative social critiques. As an identifiable critical “tradition” in modern Western geographic thought, its convoluted heritage is cross-disciplinary and can [Page 1074]be traced in fits and spurts from Homer, through Diogenes of Sinope, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Athanasias Kircher, to Guy Debord, Ursula K. Le Guin, and recently a conspiratorial core of radical cartographers at Pennsylvania State University, the founders of Globehead! Journal of Extreme Geography.

In March 1994, a graduate student, ...