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?
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?
posted by TRM at 2:02 PM
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