in theory

One of the primary things I'm interested in here is how we as humans respond to our landscapes. I still haven't fully hammered out my working definition of "landscape," but primarily what I mean is the physical geography and geology of our lived environment. Certainly larger ecological and meteorological factors are part of this, but mostly as forces which have come to shape and give texture (or not) to the land itself. As such, it should be apparent that all humans (all animals) are always confronted with landscapes, and have always had to define themselves and their lives in and against these environments. The diet and lifestyles of a people are determined by the land, of course, but so are their cosmologies and worldviews, their individual and communal identities. Yi-Fu Tuan (one of the founders of "human geography") often uses the example of the Congo Pygmies, who live their lives entirely within a lush rainforest environment. This is a sheltered landscape, one that allows neither vistas nor horizons. As such, linguistically and culturally, the Pygmies have no real concept of distance or literal perspective (near/far). In addition, they have no need or even basis upon which to construct cosmologies based on the skies above (whether that be astrological or based on an abstract concept of "heaven"). In direct contrast, though, there are the various Pueblo Indians of what is now the American Southwest, whose lives--literal and spiritual--are determined by the seemingly infinite distances that surround them in every direction. Direction and location are linguistically and culturally dominant, and their cosmologies are centered on concepts of here/there/above/below.

These are brief and oversimplified examples, to be sure, but I use them to give some sense of the importance of landscape in human identity and culture. Yet I do not intend to argue for some sort of geographical determinism here, but rather to show that landscapes--whether open or enclosed, built or natural, flat or mountainous, landmarked or not, etc.--are and always have been a central part of how we define ourselves as individuals, as communities, as nations. We are meaning-making animals, and we segment our world by attributing value to what we perceive. So it is with place.

Here we return to the distinction of "place" and "space" that I made in an earlier post. From my perspective, "place" is the location of constructed value that humans impose on undelimited space. It can be literal shelter, or it can be something far more abstract, such as locations we deem sacred (or profane, or blighted, etc.). "Space," then, is the open, undefined, unknown territory--terra incognita, the beyond. Both are necessary to our conceptions of the world, and both can be positive and negative. Space presents the terror of the unknown and the (as yet) uncontrollable. But it is also freedom and potential. Place is shelter, security, known--home. But it is also the locus of established rules and roles--"closed." At the same time, though, concepts of human "progress" and "civilization" have historically been based on the movement from space to place, on the process of what I've come to call placing (My working title is "Placing the West"). That is, the history of humanity has been one of movement into space, into new and unknown lands, and then of making of those spaces a home, a place. Physically, culturally, spiritually, psychologically--there are many forms and ways of placing. We build, we plant, we map, we name. We break up the land and own it. We "tame" the land and adapt it to our needs. We spill blood to lay claim and maintain that claim. We establish our institutions of law, divine and mundane. But most importantly: we tell stories. We create for ourselves a history and an identity as a people of the place, and we mythologize the land and its "home-grown" heroes. We tell ourselves (and those on the Outside) who we are (and aren't); we say, this is what we do and what has happened here.

This process of placing is necessary to human identity, but it always also serves ideological functions. The creation of place from space is an act of imposing order and meaning, and as a result it determines what is "not place," what doesn't belong, what is not of value. Place is always in part determined in opposition to an Other, to an Outside--an Outside which is too often always-already on the Inside. As such, there are always partially repressed counter-narratives (counter-places) that serve as reminders of the ideological construction of place. Other voices, non-monuments, palimpsest pasts. These alternative places are always pressing up from within, and are part of what never allows concepts and definitions of place to become static. Much as history is constantly retold from the perspective (and from the ideological needs) of the present (and this is a nod to the guru Christian Kiefer and his work on this subject), place is constantly remade, re-placed. There are always re-tellings and recovered histories, each with its own host of benefits and problems, its own victors and victims.

And not always are these re-tellings controlled from within. Often they can be imposed from without. By deploying our constructed definitions of place through the stories we tell, we hand those who live not by the constant flux and complexity of the place a postcard-image, a static snapshot. And that can become the real and functional definition we find ourselves (as Insiders) trying to live up--or down--to. From defining, we become defined. No longer a real, lived place, our "home" becomes what Edward Said has called "imaginative geography." Our place is no longer a product of our here, but of their there. And so the process goes: from constructed place to official place to imposed place to performed place.

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So, that's pretty messy and reductive. But it gives (I hope) some sense of the theory behind what I'm working on (or, rather, what is working on me). So many details and questions remain. I know some of them, but I'm hoping you'll raise others. And in the meantime, please stay tuned: Some day I may actually answer the question of what makes this an English dissertation...

in dependent west

It's been a while since I posted, and I'm afraid this will not be a very substantial one. I've been working to finish off the quarter, giving exams and grading papers and...all that teaching stuff that seems so fun until it starts to keep us from our "real work." But I've kept on reading, and I've got one more book to go (which is a completely arbitrary choice on my part...but what else is this academia thing but a whole series of arbitrary choices?) before I start pulling my notes together into something more coherent. My dissertation chair has given me a July 1st deadline for a draft of my prospectus (and, believe me, the word "rough" in front of "draft" is definitely implied), so I'm hoping to make some more substatial posts here over the next few weeks as I start putting things together.

I realize looking over what I've already posted here that I've been primarily talking about Western history, historiography, and myth. That's because that's what I've been reading lately. And as I get further into that, I learn much more and it gets harder for me to contextualize all this new information in terms of my own project. I'm being swept along by the new information, a sensation with which many of you are familiar, I'm sure.

But I don't want to give the impression that my project is going to be another monochrome look at the West and at frontier transitions. I really do want to ground this project just as much in concepts of landscape and human responses to it. When I first began reading in earnest for this prospectus, I started with some of the seminal human geography texts (primarily by Yi-Fu Tuan), and though I really only scratched the surface, these have given me much of the skeleton for what I imagine I will do with the West and Western literature. As I start bringing the pieces together this coming week, I'll hopefully be posting more about these theories, and I'd love to get some feedback on any of them (as I know many of you out there are interested in space/place, human ecology, ecocriticism, etc).

And now--having said that--some more notes on the West (I told you...arbitrary):

One of the more fascinating distinctions that I've discovered in the "New History" of the West is that between the ideal/mythic concepts of frontier independence (we all know this one...it's practically taught us in the womb), and the subsidized dependence that actually (and has always) proliferated in the West. We have enshrined our images of the frontiersman (and of ourselves) as entirely independent, cutting a new world from the rough, "unpopulated" terrain of this virgin landscape. These independent pioneers cut all ties with the Old World, turned their backs on the East, and headed off into the wilderness with nothing but their will and their wiles. And this has come to be an archetypal image of the American. Independent. Self-reliant. And the West stands as the museum to that ideal. We in the West continue to enact (and have enacted upon us) the fantasy of the rugged individualist. The lone cowboy on the lone prairie.

But the fact is that those in the frontier (no matter where that might be at any given time) have always been dependent upon outside resources. The very innovations that were necessary to the new lives in the new landscapes of the West were subsidized. The railroad. The "free lands." The reclamation projects that brought water to the arid plains. Even our iconic cowboy depended (and continues to depend) upon grazing rights and access to water on public land. And the entire issue of public land itself highlights this contrast: nearly HALF of all the territory in the trans-Mississippi West is held in trust by the federal government, used as range land, timber country, national forests/parks/monuments. And when that land does not produce--for farmers, mineral workers, ranchers--the government (for better or worse) steps in to pick up the check.

In one way or the other, this has always been the case in the West, and though I haven't quite got a handle on all the implications of this, I find it incredibly interesting that out of one of the most dependent areas springs the archetype of independence and self-reliance.

Random (related) speculation: The American ranching industry--home of the cowboy--is a relatively minor factor in the American economy, yet it is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the nation. Are we paying to maintain our myths?

he does it better than me

If you're reading my posts here, then you should also read the inestimable Christian Kiefer's. Especially this one, the first chunk of the opening chapter of his dissertation. Really good stuff.

on the level we live it

Christian's recent response brings up some points that I've been meaning to take up here. Behind this project is my conviction that what matters most in considering how people responded (and continue to respond) to Western landscapes--or to anything else, really--is what those people see and believe, regardless of "reality." I use the word "myth" a lot when I talk about this project, and though I'm probably very inconsistent with how I use it, it speaks to the core of what I want to do.

Much of the "New History" on the West produced in the last thirty or so years has focused on the ways in which the myth of the West (or of the frontier) was just that -- a myth. There were women and minorities in the West, and they were fundamental in its development. The "frontier" was not some arbitrary line that disappeared in 1890. The "rugged individualism" of the West was often subsidized by the federal government. The great agricultural promises of the West depended more on the fantasy of climate change than on reality. The list goes on and on. The lone cowboy on the equally lone prairie was in many ways a cultural fiction.

And that's fine. In fact, that's great, because by complicating our visions of the West we get closer to a human reality, to a real complexity beyond the white hat/black hat fictions that have defined the "Wild West" for so long. But at the same time, the people who flocked to the West (from all directions, from all countries and backgrounds) came carrying a vision in their heads of what they would find, of what they would see and experience. The promises of the West (in all their various forms) strummed the collective heart strings of many peoples--they spoke to the mythic memories, to the materialistic dreams, to the social hopes. These visions of the West, as we know academically and many of these people came to find out through hard experience, were constructions, manufactured and marketed, conventionalized and simplified (to reference Christian's post). But on the level that people lived their lives, these visions were what mattered. They WERE reality to them, in their fantasies and hopes. And this is what motivated them, what led them to the West, and what ultimately gave shape to the ways they reacted and adapted to the intractable realities they found holding their hopes hostage.

Our worlds and lives--the worlds that we navigate on a daily basis, the lives that we live--are not necessarily (or even often) tied to fact, to proof, to evidence and actuality. We are creatures of hopes and dreams, and the territory of imagination will always seem firmer ground than the dust at our feet.

the stories that we tell; the stories that tell us

Even knowing that I have an assumed audience out there, I'm still having problems forcing myself to sit down and write. But thanks to some of your excellent responses (thanks Darse and Julie), I've been spurred to further action.

The point that Darse makes about film is very valid, and of course I will have to deal with it on some level. As a matter of fact, film--Western films--are a primary example of the ways in which the myths of a landscape have a way of returning to define the definer. The cattle industry in the Great Plains and beyond was an organic response to the landscape. Before 1880 (or so), it was barely possible--if at all--to make a go of farming on the arid plains. Technology had not caught up with the demands of the land, and so the natural lack of water and timber prevented the western advancement of the agrarian frontier beyond the 100th meridian. But there was a hell of a lot of open space, and much of it was covered with the grasses that made the immense herds of buffalo possible. And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to look at a buffalo and think of domestic cattle. And there you go. A man takes to a horse to cover as much ground as possible and to herd the cattle of the open range. Branding became the way to mark ownership of cows in a land where fences were impossible. The lariat--how else to do you catch a runaway cow? The hat, the neckerchief, the six-shooter (ever try and fire a breech-loading rifle from horseback?). They all developed out of necessity, as determined by the environment.

But then along comes The Cowboy. Those in the East and elsewhere hear-tell of these men, working open land on horseback and tending cattle in a way almost completely alien to their stock-farm imaginations. There are few institutions or laws or definitions, because there are few settlements. They seem a completely new breed of exotics--and so close to home! And so the sheen of romance attaches to the lifestyle, and the perception of the West by outsiders becomes tinted with expectations and definitions. Cowboy=West. West=Cowboy. And that's the way it is.

Trace the development of the dime novel, and later of Western films, and you see how the West came to be defined, in all its romantic discourse and dramatic convention. And so the power of imagination takes hold, and the West becomes THAT place, the Wild West. But what of the real cattlemen and their progeny? What have they to do with this image, this definition? And what happens when, with the advent of barbed wire and windmills and other methods of "taming the land" (and you are absoluteley right, Darse...this is gendered in many ways), the so-called Cattle Kingdom is deposed, the "cowboy" no more?

From a way of making due according to the demands of the environment--of making a place in space by adapting to the land--the Cowboy Myth takes off and gains such imaginitive power that it comes to stand in as one version--one vision--of the West. And those who live in this space must contend. On this front, no longer is it an issue of being defined by the landsape, nor of trying to define that landscape for yourself, but rather of being defined by an outside discourse. And if you don't match that image...what then?

from space to place

It's still difficult for me to try and actually SAY what it is I want to do with this project, but I need to start making an attempt. There are a lot of gaps, problems, and generalities here, but I'm hoping that in the process of having these pointed out to me and talking and thinking about them, I'll be able to address them. So, away we go...

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The experience of the West--and in many regards its history--is one of a progression from "space" to "place." Space in this instance stands for the open, unfamiliar, nearly limitless expanse of landscape present in the West, whereas place stands for the sheltered, secure, human-defined locations of "meaning" within and against that space. Space at once represents freedom, movement, and limitless possibility, but at the same time a terrifying emptiness, a vast unfamiliar terrain. Place is the familiar, the defined, the controlled and controllable; it means and represents shelter and security--knowability. On the other hand, it is the cessation of movement, the setting down of boundaries and borders.

In many ways, this can be said to be the progress of "civilization" in any territory, for any people. But what makes the West unique from my perspective is the sheer vastness and newness of that territory for those moving into it. In the East, places were cut out of the space of forested terrain using age-old methods. This was new, but at the same time familiar space. It looked like the landscape of memory and experience, and the tools, methods, and perspectives that were used to confront and tame that landscape were not unfamiliar.

But in the West, that territory beyond the timberline and opening up into the prairies and plains of the land beyond the 100th meridian, the American frontier confronted a landscape that challenged--and in many ways defeated--the familiar, the known, the business-as-usual methods and perspectives of an inherited approach and attitude. The openness, the aridity, the size, the shape--everything about this landscape--demanded new ways of thinking and new methods of living. In short, new adaptations were necessary if the Western spaces were to become American places.

Of course, this process--of turning space into place--is achieved by many means. There are the material means: settling, fencing, farming, building, urbanizing, etc. Each of these approaches to taming and defining the landscape required new approaches and new challenges. But what of the emotional and psychological responses to such openness and unfamiliarity? These required new ways of thinking--new stories. For in the stories we tell--about ourselves, our history, our landscape--we create familiar territories and we construct and define meanings; we impose order on the unfamiliar, and thus make a place for ourselves in the chaos of undefined space.

What I'm most interested in are these stories. The ways in which those in the West strove--and continue to strive--to make a place in these Western spaces through the stories they tell, and which have come to be told about them. There is no straight path through this territory, for these stories are not and never have been static. The needs of individuals and communities change, and so do the stories they tell to meet those needs. And in the West, especially, those stories find a way of taking on a life of their own, once again beyond our efforts to control. We may tell our tales to define a landscape, but the myths of those landscapes can come back to define us.

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That's a completely arbitrary place to stop, and of course I need to say more about what I mean about stories coming back to define us (what would my students say?), but that will have to come another time. But I hope this gives you (and me) some idea of where I'm at and where I want to go.