ABSTRACT
Addressing the need for trespass to ensure the right to landscape from the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass to Occupy! and Black Lives Matter, this essay is updated and expanded from the edited collection Defining Landscape Democracy (2018). Where landscapes become political and where they gain symbolism beyond that of grand abstractions such as ‘escape’ or ‘wildness’ is when landscape may be accessed. A political landscape imaginary must include the possibility of passage, occupation, and/or inhabitation in order to have maximum power. The possibilities of landscape imaginaries benefit from being tested in physical places by human bodies and their constructions. This testing often takes place in acts of transgression such as the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in England’s Peak District in 1932 or of the contemporary actions of the Occupy! movement. Passage and occupation are both situated qualities of human bodies in landscapes. This essay argues that a situated understanding is foundational to any meaningful conception of democratic society. Trespass forces access and forces politics back from the space of abstraction into real landscape place. Trespass is a constant necessity for the enactment of democracy.
