In Chapter 5 of Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, there is a section called Geography as Text that talks about how the representation of geography can be used to manipulate or form people’s perception of geography or places – just like how the representation of an idea through words can be manipulated or formed to change people’s perceptions of the idea.
This section of the chapter was most memorable to me because the many parallels between geography and text on paper intrigued me greatly, and I found connections between this idea and the books we read in class very easily. For example, the Stratosphere and glamorous signs in Las Vegas were the “texts” that reflected an image of Las Vegas in D’Agata’s About A Mountain; Bechdel’s father used house decorations and designs to create a false image that covered up his secret about his homosexuality.
The theme of appearance and reality is not uncommon, but what made this part of Interdisciplinarity intriguing for me was that the theme was applied to a “science”. Usually society treats science as facts, as reality. What appears to be in science must be real. There is no need for a distinction between appearance and reality. Except…that is not true, as Moran proves.
One does not need to delve into deep literature to come across misconceptions of certain places that are caused by inaccurate or biased portrayals of those places. For example, pretty much everyone from my home (Hong Kong) thinks that New York state equals New York City. On the other hand, some people in the States do not know how liberal Hong Kong is and think that it is as conservative as mainland China.