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The space of the dream: a case of mis‐taken identity?
Author(s) -
Cater Erlet
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/1475-4762.00007
Subject(s) - dream , identity (music) , compromise , diversity (politics) , space (punctuation) , paradise , tourism , natural (archaeology) , horizon , aesthetics , sociology , history , computer science , philosophy , anthropology , psychology , archaeology , social science , art history , mathematics , geometry , neuroscience , operating system
This paper examines the inherent contradictions presented by locating ‘the space of the dream’. In this case it is the fictitious lamasery of Shangri‐La described by James Hilton in the novel Lost Horizon, claimed to have been inspired by a monastery to the north of Zhongdian in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Whilst some of the idyllic attributes of Hilton’s vision of paradise on Earth are grounded in the natural and cultural diversity of the entire region, contingencies of place were bound to compromise any attempt to promote any one location as such for the purposes of international tourism. If it is a case of mis‐taken identity, however, does it matter? The tourists may internalize their expectations and build a composite image of their diverse and disparate experiences which they take back home.