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.
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.
posted by TRM at 1:31 PM
1 Comments:
That's all true, but it's also material that has been picked over by academics already. I think one of the keys to your project here is to nod toward the idea of myth in the American West and then jump off into new stuff (whatever that turns out to be). In other words: What are you going to do with this stuff (the myth stuff) that hasn't already been done?
(This is, incidentally, the question that I've been asking myself for months--nay--years!)
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