Hawai‘i as captured by geography: the utopian space of Mark Twain
Through the paradigm of Hawai‘i and Mark Twain, this paper intends to analyse the relations between literary images and geographicity. Literature, which is rarely touched by geography, could become a powerful machine for manufacturing spatial differentiation, converting the entire surface of the globe into signs, into places made meaningful through the imaginary, which may take the shape of literature. The latter is a medium for organizing the world and, in return, serves to transform it. Mark Twain, in this way, expanded upon some of the images manufactured by the explorers and also provided new ones, which have complicated the palimpsest that makes Hawai‘i such a desirable location in the American imagination.