Writing Place

APPROACHING PLACE
An interdisciplinary subject, the history of place, as we concluded in this week’s seminar, may be considered from a variety of methodologies and perspectives. Be it micro, macro, environmental, cultural or political, historians have analyzed the history of places through a great range of approaches. In our review of articles written by historians Tom Griffiths, Dolores Hayden, Judith Walkowitz, Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna, we explored five unique interpretation of place history. It is my belief that there exists no superior approach among them and that each account retains its own purpose and provides its own insight. In his approach to Aboriginal history, Mark McKenna writes, “We should try to understand, but we should also accept that there are some things we do not understand.”(McKenna, p8). This applies to all accounts of place history for it is only when we consider places from different historical perspectives and recognize their differences, do we glean a perception as to their significance.

METHODOLOGIES
In maintaining their own unique methodologies, each of the five authors we studied this week challenges our understanding of place history. While Tom Griffiths in Forests of Ash: An Environmental History, traces the origins of the historical study of the environment in an attempt to define it, Judith Walkowitz in Curriculum Vitae traces the transformation of the urban landscape of Central London in order to demonstrate its evolution. In comparing these two articles alone, a great discrepancy between Griffith’s sweeping social science analysis and Walkowitz’s detailed cultural geographic account is evident. Historian Dolores Hayden adopts both a micro and macrocosmic approach to place history in chapter three of her book entitled, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Focusing on place memory and preservation, Hayden presents several examples of community-based public history projects in an attempt to demonstrate how communities everywhere “can reclaim history and recover memory.” (Hayden, p52). In their works entitled, In Spite of It All The Garden Still Stands and Looking for Blackfellas’ Point, both Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna explore what the land reveals about specific groups in early Australian society. While Holmes identifies gender roles and limitations by comparing the personal accounts of two Australian women and their experiences working the land, McKenna seeks to portray the “true stories of human contact” on the frontier in southeastern New South Whales by comparing the stories of settlers with those of the indigenous peoples (McKenna, p7).

CHANGING PLACE
Fundamental to the study of place history is the acknowledgement of place transformation – that is, the realization that places inevitably change throughout history, taking on various meanings to various groups of people. While at one point in history the southern part of a small island in North America was the site of a sacred burial ground designated for an enslaved African community, a century later that same place has transformed into multicultural center of American wealth and commerce. Considering this example alone, a great variety of methodologies may be adopted in relation to its study. A delineative or evolutionary approach such as those employed by Tom Griffiths and Judith Walkowitz may be used to trace the meaning of sacred space throughout history and the transformation of a sacred space to that of an urban center. While the application of a ‘micro methodology’ would allow for perhaps an in depth understanding of the history of the African community to whom the burial belonged, a ‘macro methodology’ might allow for broader exploration as to why the burial ground ceased to exist or whether the transformation of the burial ground site speaks to general patterns with regards American place history. Methodologies similar to those of Katie Holmes and Mark McKenna would allow for a consideration of how the meaning of the land changed over time through comparative analysis of African and American accounts. Of course, many other approaches including archaeological and political analyses exist and may be implemented to explore further elements of place history.

UNDERSTANDING PLACE
Depending on their motive or purpose for writing about a specific place in history, historian’s methodologies vary. It thus remains the reader’s responsibility, when studying place history, to consider the historian’s methodology and recognize any limitations, biases, advantages or insights that transpire as a result. While all forms of place history seek to identify a place in time, each interpretation maintains a unique approach and provides its readers with a specific understanding of a certain place. Whether or it is necessary to actually visit a place in order to understand it, as we discovered in this week’s seminar, may be contested however, the consideration of a place and its history from various perspectives is essential to gaining a full understanding of it. As McKenna so adequately puts it, we may not always understand the various perspectives and interpretations of place history, but we as students we must consider them if we are to comprehend the significance of a place.

Reflecting on week three's reading which pursue place, I found myself trying to make sense of them categorically: Environmental History, Social History, Cultural History, Urban History and so on. Convinced that all histories belong to a clear-cut category, that historians employed a specific methodology, and that all historians aimed for an objective history, I was surprised to find that categorising them was far from a simple task. I found myself asking why do disciplines blur, and where do sub-disciplines start and finish?

I decided that the only satisfactory division I could apply to histories pursuing place was that historians either use place as a method for writing a history, or used as the subject matter of a history. For example, in Katie Holmes’ “In Spite Of It All, The Garden Still Stands” she pursues the place of two unique gardens as a method of writing a Cultural History of women in Australian society. Graeme Davison, however, pursues the place of Melbourne in his book “The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne” as the subject matter of history, in other words, he writes a history of a specific place.

The nature of ‘place’ as essentially subjective is explored by various historians, directly and indirectly. Stephen Pynes explains in Tom Griffiths’ “Forest of Ash: An Environmental History” that place is subjective because “place without people is an abstract concept”, and as a result, all place has been experienced by people, and is essentially defined by that experience. Indeed, it is this very subjectivity of ‘place’ that makes it a valuable subject matter and method for writing history. Holmes claims that the gardens are sites of meaning, as they are expressions of individual and cultural aspirations. Edward Casey claims that place is a container of experience, thus memory is connected with place, and is almost place orientated. Furthermore that place memory connects with the built and natural environments, thus a “Cultural Landscape” is formed.

However, the subjectivity of place makes problematical the very basis of history as a discipline: Its objectivity. In Mark McKenna’s introduction to “Looking for Blackfellas Point: An Australian History of Place” he explains overtly that he “does not believe that [his] view of the past can be detached from [his] personal life”, and is even pleased to say that he will not loose the ability to convey his deep attachment to Eureka and Blackfellas point! It seems that historians claim to be subject to inescapable subjectivity when they pursue place. It is perhaps a far fetched claim, but I believe that it is even resulting in an increase in narrative forms of history, or at least, their acceptance in the discipline of history. Dolores Hayden states that social memory relies on storytelling, which can be triggered by the urban landscape, Powell refers to being “committed to narrative” in Environmental history, and William Cronon says that historical wisdom usually comes in the form of parables, not policy recommendations or certainties.

If Historians have been using place as method and subject matter for writing history for as long as the discipline has existed, why are we only seeing in recent times such a shift in the attitudes of historians towards place? Graeme Davison first published “The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne” in 1970’s, and in the preface to his second edition in 2004, he admits regretting not including more sights and sounds, smells and textures of the city of Melbourne. Davison has gone on to publish tour books of Melbourne, focusing on walks through the city that highlight Melbourne as experienced. Holmes argues that this recent increase in historian’s interest in place partly results from “the influence of post-colonial and poststructural ideas on the discipline of history”. Hayden argues further that the growing desire of historians to engage with place results from a more grass roots level, that people feel a lack of their own social history in their everyday environment. We may not know the reasons behind the increasing interest historians are having in pursuing place, but we do know that it is having interesting results in both the history that it produces, as well as the challenges it creates to the discipline of history.

What gives a place a sense?
By Maria Dogin

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
The very term ‘place’ is a very difficult term to dissect. The meaning is so common sense to us but to articulate it in words proves a highly complex and ambiguous process. As demonstrated in the seminar regarding this topic, it is very easy to get lost in a world of theory, boundaries and definitions. My initial thoughts before starting the readings were about the movie Blood Diamond and the conflict over Israel. I thought of Blood Diamond because of the way that Africa was spoken about in the movie. One of the references that lingered in my mind is the reference to the red colour of the earth as being due to the bloodshed that occurred there throughout history. This is a reference that beautifully summarises my idea of sense of place as being a collective consciousness that connects people to aesthetics directly in a cause and effect relationship. I also thought of Israel because it is one of the most infamous examples of how important place can be, so important in fact that we are willing to kill for it. The way that we describe our place and other places is inseparable from our identity. Edward Relph article ‘Senses of Place’ in Susan Hanson, ed, Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World, seems to follow this view when discussing the general opinion of geographers such as himself: ‘they see sense of place as a thread that ties each of us to our surroundings, and as a learned way for understanding somewhere on its own terms.’(Relph, p 208)

EXPLAINING ATMOSPHERE
Another way to approach this subject is to examine how an ‘atmosphere’ is developed (as I feel that this is the essence of a place). In this case I looked at Bondi Beach as a case study. This beach is not that spectacular looking however it remains one of the most famous beaches in the world attracting thousands of tourists each year. The collective consciousness of the multicultural laid back crowd featuring a few stylish locals is what makes Bondi the beach it is. Atmosphere or a sense of a place has less to do with aesthetics than it does the way that the inhabitants act or define it. In this respect perception is reality. This perspective leans toward that of Gabriella Gahlia Modans in Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity and the Politics of Place who employs a sociological discipline to gain an understanding of a place by collecting ethnographic research in Mount Pleasant. Modans feels that the way that people talk about the places that we live have material implications for how those places develop and change. (Modans p 5)

PLACE AND BELONGING
Edward Casey in Getting back Into Place: Towards a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World proposes that as human beings we have an innate physical and psychological need to move places and fill emptiness both in mind and space. On the other hand, the feeling of long term displacement or emptiness can lead to disorientation and depression. In this sense it seems that while humans need to travel and ‘spread their wings’ they also need a place to call their own- to come home to. How then can we explain those that consider themselves ‘citizens of the world’ and travel from place to place without a base or sense of belonging to any particular area or culture? Or on the flip side, how can some people be born into a small village and never attempt to leave as the sense of belonging is what keeps them feeling secure and safe from the unknown world? The answers can be found in Tim Creswell’s Place: A Short Introduction (which happens to be my favourite of all the readings). The difference between the two extreme examples is how these people decide to define their place in relation to the ‘other’ places. On an individual level, our place in the world can be widened or narrowed by altering the way that we look at it. By concentrating on similarities between say Sydney and Moscow, we can widen our sense of place, however if we look only to the differences we tend to narrow our perspective, concreting the concept of sense of place. Furthermore (as an almost relevant aside) place making activities occur on both macro and micro levels and can result in tension, such as the tension between a homeless man settling in for a sleep outside a grocery and the shopkeeper that owns it. It all goes back to how we define the boundaries of place.

POPULAR DISCOURSE: MODERNISM AND POST-MODERNISM
A neat way of understanding the sense of place is by looking at popular discourse over time. Relph compares the modern and post- modern attitudes towards place. It seems to me that the aim of the social theory modernity was to widen sense of place through the practice of standardisation across the globe. Ley agrees with this idea in his article ‘Modernism, Postmodernism and the Struggle for Place’ saying it created ‘spaces not places’.(Ley p47) Thus without the differences that result from historical and cultural reference each individual will see sense place as almost a redundant concept as all they see is sameness. Interestingly enough modernity is also criticised by Relph as dehumanising process. Therefore no place means no identity.

Post-modernism was a direct response to the ‘void’ left by modernism. Post-modernism sees a return to individualistic structures through celebration of the past and difference. Relph criticises this theory for having an unauthentic property to it. The example that I feel best summarises this is that of the historically inaccurate placement of the fake settlement towns that try to capture the atmosphere of the olden day towns. These places are simply marketed as an image by recreating the look of those towns without any real connection or root to the place they were replicating.

Sense of place in my opinion is the organic progressive connection between inhabitants to their land. This is what creates vital uniqueness which becomes the essence of the place. There is no given formula for creating or understanding it!

I recently picked up a book of Ian Abdulla’s paintings of the Murray Riverland, a region in the north-eastern corner of South Australia. Abdulla is an indigenous artist who grew up in the Riverland in the 1950s and 1960s and lives there still. He’s been an artist for more than eighteen years now. The book, Ian W Abdulla: Elvis Has Entered the Building (2003), is intended at a retrospective look at his work.

(Riverland Suite #5, acrylic on canvas, 61x91cm, courtesy of the artist and Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide).

I hadn’t heard of Abdulla before I stumbled across the book. Nor had I seen his work. And I admit that looking at it at first, I was struck by little more than its simplicity. Abdulla paints in the naïve style, with vivid flat surfaces, childishly-drawn figures, and often misspelt text. This style is apt when it’s used to evoke childhood memories, as do plenty of Abdulla’s works. He paints and writes of fishing by the Murray, of bathing in it, and of the hard life his family led on the Gerard Mission when he was young. But he doesn't just depict childhood memories. There are abundant adult memories in his paintings. The flatness of his works also makes them like maps - the kind of affective maps that Kent Ryder is so keen about in Mapping the Invisible Landscape (1993). There are 'maps' of bridges, paddocks and fishing-spots in his paintings, maps of particular bends in the river at particular moments in time. And this urge to map his own landscape makes it clear that there is nothing childish about his project. The fetishisation of memory in Abdulla's work, the drive to capture the past and to weave it consciously into the present, is something that only comes with an awareness that childhood has passed away.

Once I could see past the spelling mistakes (God I curse my pedantic obsession with spelling sometimes), an upwelling of feeling came to me as I looked at Abdulla’s paintings. The intensity of its interconnection of memory and love for the Riverland was like standing in front a burning surface and feeling the heat-waves rippling from it. You don’t get this feeling from looking at one of his paintings alone. (I’ve only included a single image here, alas, but you can see plenty more on the Greenaway Art Gallery’s website at http://www.greenaway.com.au/artists/AbdullaI/AbdullaWrk.htm). You get it when you look at his work en masse, taking in the sheer volume of his Riverland images, the repetition and almost antic specificity they involve. Looking at all those paintings gave me a sense of awe at something outside my own experience. It also gave me a vicarious sense of connection to the Riverland, so that the place took on a value and a significance to me that it did not have before. And because of this, the after-images of his paintings have stayed in my own memory for weeks, half-flickering at moments when I shut my eyes.

Rockwell Gray tells us that for everyone there are certain places that stand out as ‘the “hot points” of our affective life’. There are places in which important things happened for us, he says, or which acquire a special meaning to us, for whatever reason. These places become absolutely central to our sense of individual identity. Perhaps this is why Abdulla’s paintings have such a candescent feeling about them. All of his works are depictions of hot points in his emotional life. That’s what you feel when you look at them. You think: this is someone with an extraordinarily powerful sense of who he is. But what does this mean, I wonder, for people who don’t have the same drive as Abdulla to recapture the key places of their past? Do such people have less of a sense of personal identity (as Rockwell Gray appears to suggest)? Or do they just have a very different one?

I ask this question because it's easy to feel jealous for the kind of attachment to place that Abdulla feels, the intensity of self which he so obviously feels, and to long for the same thing oneself. So much writing about 'sense of place' is infected with this jealousy. Rockwell Gray owns himself as an middle-class American, for example, who has moved so much he 'hardly know[s] where home is any longer'. He laments 'the lack of deep connection to a place and its traditions' in his own life and culture, and insists that in its stead it is necessary to cultivate one's own sense of past sacred places.

In his work, Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership (2000), the Australian historian Peter Read explores the sense-of-place envy that so many non-indigenous people seem to feel. What are the rights and wrongs, he asks, of longing for the kind of deep connection to place often associated with indigenous cultures? Is a 'deep belonging' to place and the sense of identity it brings just one other thing that white people want to take from indigenous people? Is it ethical to wish for a deep connection to the Australian country and its 'traditions' as a non-indigenous person?

Read is right to ask this question, I think, although I'm not entirely sure of my own answer to it. Certainly I agree that Ian Abdulla's sense of place is both culturally and individually specific. As someone born to a Ngarrindjeri mother, who spent formative years at the Gerard mission, he grew up with a different cultural understanding of place to me, as a non-indigenous Australian. The fact that he makes a fetish of memory is also informed by his awareness of the history of indigenous experience in Australia. Memory and place are even more important to those who have an experience of displacement; to those whose connections to family and country have been forcefully severed over time. So I do think that there's something misplaced or presumptuous about wanting to feel the way he does about the Riverland. Perhaps, then, it's better just to be thankful for the glimpse into the furnace one gets from his work. It's a good thing to feel the heat it gives off, and to feel something of a vicarious love for the Riverland as a result. But it's also a good thing not to want to claim that feeling as one's own.

A warm welcome to all of you joining Writing Place this week. We'll have our first seminar on Wednesday (12-2pm, Rm MR116 Brennan). You'll need to come along to sign up as a joint contributor on this blog, collect the unit outline and two of next week's readings. And, of course, the class will give us an opportunity to meet and discuss the coming semester. Don't forget that the unit outline is also available on-line if you ever misplace your copy: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/history/docs/3651outline07.pdf.

Looking forward to meeting you all.