This is not a landscape: (This a way of seeing): Intercourse with the landscape

This paper will investigate notions of identity and place in landscape painting. Positing the landscape as a dialectical construct I will apply interpretative strategies to question the idea that a Nationalist identity and singular inherent truth lays in-wait to be discovered within the land. Investigating landscape representation in painting and genre conventions I seek to expose and challenge an hierarchy of such convention. Is there a core truth of identity inherent in the land or is identity fragmented and layered upon an inert geography? The paper explores capitalism as a framing device for landscape as a \ncoercive presence on the framing of land, place and identity. Using Jacques Derrida's concept of erasure (sous rature), the presence of the absent is allowed access to the 'text', questioning the univocity of meaning. This questioning exemplifying the multi-coded discourse of a dialectically constructed landscape and identity. The final section adventures into personal inscription and graffiti as a way of being-in-place. An action of negating sociogeographical exclusion whilst inscribing our own emotions and identity in place? Through intertextual theory and multi-authoring the frameworks of singular perception are challenged and propose a symbiotic participatory nomadic hybrid identity of people and place.