Writing Place

Place academia has emerged in response to a myriad of social and cultural movements. For Tom Griffiths it means emphasising the importance of nature as an active historical force. For Dolores Hayden it is central to historical imagination, while for Edward Casey it is the very essence of thought and existence. Place academia can respond to anxieties of displacement brought about by globalisation and modernism, it can grapple with the political specificity of place and it can locate diverse memories and identities linked to distinct places.

Or so some believe…

Yet in this week’s seminar we challenged the very validity and usefulness of place as a tool for uncovering the past and the lived experiences of particular places.

Robert Dainotto presents an antithetical view that situates place (or more specifically literary regionalism) in opposition to history rather than as a method through which history can be discovered. Dainotto argues that place naturalises the process of history, that it ‘negates historical forces, struggles and tensions’. This naturalisation renders void those forces that we see as fundamental to historical and cultural analysis, such as class, religion, economics, race and gender.

One of those forces, and the epistemology to which Dainotto subscribes, is Marxism. Dainotto sees place as a concept that negates exterior forces, that unites all divergent voices (oppressed and oppressor, rich and poor, black and white, man and woman) within the boundaries of a specific place. Place then becomes a homogeneous concept where by necessity internal conflicts must be eradicated so as to explain how history arises naturally from that place. In opposition Marxism allows for the operation of external forces (capitalism, militarism, racism) – all sorts of isms that we know can generate change.

I would however challenge this positioning of Marxism and place as completely antithetical. I think there is room within place-based research (and to work in Dainotto’s field) within regionalist literature, for class conflict. Take for example Thomas Hardy, who as Martha Adams Bohrer points out in her review of Dainotto’s book, is openly concerned with the ‘largely unacknowledged exploitation of agricultural workers’. I know that when I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles over the summer holidays I was struck by the blatant depiction of class-based oppression in a novel I had assumed would be saturated in good upper-middle class English values. It is a strong accusation to make that place academia depoliticises history when, as Bohrer points out, Dainotto’s work itself is void of cultural and historic specificity.

To an extent I agree with Dainotto’s criticisms. I can see how definitions of place are inevitably political and artificial. Place rhetoric can set dangerous perimeters that attempt to unify groups against exterior forces and in doing so operate in reactionary ways. Yet I think that Dainotto has misunderstood place academia. I would argue that place provides another layer of analysis that, when combined with other historical determinants such as class, invigorates rather than stifles history.

Massey offers a useful alternative to Dainotto’s quite limited interpretation of place. Rather than viewing place as a means of producing static, self-absorbed, internalised histories, she suggests that places be characterised as processes. They should not be defined of themselves, but in relation to ‘places beyond’. Massey argues that a ‘global sense of the local’ could open up the concept of place to other historical determinants, to outside forces of economics, culture and politics, and to conflict in general. Thus our attempts to demarcate place are complicated and arguably enriched by locating it within a diffused framework.

However, I agree with the critique raised in class discussion that a global sense of place may be more beneficial to the developed world, those of us with better access to global products and knowledge of international relations. Massey does argue that the globalisation of social relations often accounts for the uneven development of places and thus their uniqueness. Perhaps to assume that those working on place academia from within the developed world have a limited understanding of global forces is dangerous in itself. By making such an assumption we risk validating western research of the developing world above that written from within it. On the contrary, perhaps local historians applying Massey’s framework will have a better understanding of how those global forces directly affect their region even if their access to knowledge of globalisation is not as comprehensive. To me this seems like a dangerous argument from both sides, one that risks becoming somewhat condescending of locally produced history no matter how we look at it.

So while situating place in a more comprehensive framework, and utilising it in conjunction with other modes of research is arguably much more effective than the limited role Dainotto ascribes to place, Massey’s global sense of the local still requires some fine tuning. It is important that all places can be defined by an understanding of how economics, politics and culture flow unevenly and affect different places in disparate ways.

References

Agustin, Laura, ‘Still challenging “Place”: Sex, Money, and Agency in Women’s Migrations’ in Wendy Harcourt and Arturo Escobar, eds, Women and the Politics of Place (Bloomfield, Kumarian Press, 2005), pp. 221 – 233.

Bohrer, Martha Adams, ‘Review of Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities by Robert M. Dainotto’, Modern Philology, Vol. 99. No. 4. (May, 2002), pp. 646 – 650.

Dainotto, Robert M, Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 2000), pp. 1 – 33.

Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (New York, Bantam Books, 1981), first published 1891.

Harvey, David, ‘The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap’, paper first appearing in Harvard Design Magazine in 1997, available http://www/gsd/harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back1harvey.pdf

Massey, Doreen, ‘A Global Sense of Place’, in her Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), pp. 146 – 156.

Meyrowitz, Joshua, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour (New York: Oxford IP, 1985), pp. 115 – 125.