tage point which is supposedly beyond the world of nationhood. A nation
can be viewed from afar as a cultural construct of a particular historical con-
text, a construct which embodies both virtue and evil. Such a position is not
real, yet it is not unreal; it is a discourse, a possibility of enunciating in a new
way, a possibility created as we are approaching the end of the twentieth cen-
tury.

Taking Siam, the former name of Thailand, as its case, this book examines
how nationhood has been arbitrarily and artificially created by a very well
known science-- namely, geography and its prime technology of knowing,
mapping--through various moments of confrontation and displacement of
discourses. Even the most concrete identification of a nation, such as its terri-
tory, and its related values and practices, all of which I term the "geo-body,"
was discursively created. The introduction addresses the issue of the signifi-
cance of nationhood in an unusual way: by questioning the identity of the
Thai nation through the eyes of one of its own nationals, a supposedly
"inside" view instead of an Orientalist one, as Edward Said might call it. It
sets up the main questions and aims of the study with its basic concept and
methods.

Chapter 1 then explores several indigenous conceptions of space, both the
cosmographic or religious notions and the profane or worldly ones. It estab-
lishes that premodern societies never lacked the knowledge and technology to
conceive space. Chapter 2 lays out the modality in which the transition of
geographical knowledge could take place. By studying the early Siamese text-
books on geography, this chapter looks at the displacement of knowledge
through a semiological operation. Then a great moment of transition is
explained in similar terms.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 study the displacement of the geographical knowledge
in three major conceptual and practical arenas: boundary, territorial sover-
eignty, and margin. In these arenas, modern geography pushed out the indig-
enous conceptions and asserted itself as a new legitimate "true" knowledge
in different ways involving diverse issues on every frontier of Siam. In all
cases, the semio-political operations were never simply intellectual or aca-
demic. The displacements always took place in diplomatic and political prac-
tices, in wars and interstate relations, even in papers of correspondence as
well as on the earth's surface. Chapter 6 describes how mapping has played a
decisive role in the creation of a new kind of Siam. Operating in tandem with
military force, mapping both anticipated and executed what Siam should be.
The geo-body of a nation emerged.

Chapters 7 and 8 discuss how the discourse of the geo-body has shaped
knowledge of Siam in a particular way that serves its own existence. Focus-

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