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...
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.
---
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...
posted by TRM at 10:01 AM
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