Outside the political division of space, White distinguishes three currents of thought concerning place: the mythology of place (genius loci), the religion of place (sacred sites) and the metaphysics of place (topology of being). Finding them inappropriate to the present context, he traces a quest for place in the works of certain investigatory poets of late modernity: Segalen, Hölderlin, Rilke and Trakl, before going into the field of what he calls ‘geopoetics’.