Abstract

The discourse on escaping is primarily directed towards the who of escape. The question of what and how of escaping in its cultural-anthropological significance is usually neglected. The present paper claims to overcome this inadequacy by exploring escape eo ipso and as a spatial-theoretical phenomenon. For this purpose, it is necessary to rethink escape as a triple articulated phenomenological topology based on three vectors: escape as a start, escape as a transition and escape as a destination/refuge. The escape-vectors play the role of symbolic and basic structures which are connected with linguistic and cognitive paradigms. Among the basic figures of escaping, this paper examines escape as a separation, as a non-place and as a fugue; these correspond in turn to the environmental metaphors, first, of the earth as exile, secondly, of the sea and the desert, and finally of the earth as asylum. The multilayered topology of escaping is reconstructed in the interdisciplinary field of spatial theory, of etymology, literature and political philosophy. By examining its spatial-philosophical characteristics, escape emerges as a dynamic phenomenon that can reshape essential concepts and inverse traditional categories of politics. For that reason, escaping determines a philosophically “inverted world” and consequently constitutes an essential source for the future development of cultural-political systems.