Subterranean geographies: fantasy underworlds as spatial hinges of power

This article reads the fantasy underworld as a politically charged narrative space in which histories of power, identity, and memory are spatially negotiated. Through a comparative analysis of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, I examine how distinct configurations of descent – labyrinthine architecture, oceanic depth, and subterranean extraction – reorganize authority in different ways. Grounded in literary geography [Hones, Sheila. 2022. Literary geography. Routledge] and Madomitsu’s spatio-political-aesthetic concept [Madomitsu, Mon. 2024. “Unraveling the Spatio-Political-Aesthetic Relationship: A Literary Geographical Approach”. Literary Geographies 10 (2): 155–159], I contend that these underworlds act as spatial hinges where fictional and material worlds mutually constitute meaning. Descent into the underworld in Piranesi stages a struggle over knowledge and reason. Descent in The Whale Rider reaffirms Indigenous sovereignty and relational resurgence. Descent into the underworld in The Hobbit excavates imperial anxieties to reimagine heroism. These underworld spaces expose submerged geographies of coloniality, extraction, and epistemic conflict. Taken together, they contribute to cultural geography and geohumanities discussions of narrative space-making and political imaginaries.