Writing Place

I particularly liked how you highlighted the significance that although we are using the term sacred seemingly liberally, we must acknowledge that it is in the context of, as you said, an increasingly secular society. Perhaps this use of the term sacred when applied to place is exemplary of modern attempts to explain deep emotions that may no longer be explained by religious beliefs. Christianity may explain ones awe of the natural beauty of a river, for example, by claiming that “Gods presence is felt here”. But what happens when that belief structure is taken away? Can the same feelings of awe still be justified as sacred? Is ‘spiritual’ enough to explain these emotions? I also agree that to have a deep emotional response to a place, one would almost certainly have to have had a physical engagement with it. Can a place be sacred to a person before they have experienced it? This raises the question that you highlighted when you mentioned that “the planet is neutral until an individual or group physically interacts with a section of land through worship, thus consecrating the area and making it sacred”. Such a belief doesn’t accommodate other cultural and religious understandings, including beliefs that the Earth itself was created by a deity, or features of a landscape. Perhaps our understanding of a sacred place as an emotional and physical engagement is a western secular one.

Anna, this is an excellent paper. It’s interesting and intellectually astute, obviously the product of a sharp, analytical mind. I particularly liked the wide and interesting vocabulary: “laissez faire usage,” “propinquities,” “numinous”, “homunculus” and “serendipitous” (though Hollywood bastardised that word when they made it the title of a movie starring John Cusack!). I also quite liked the writing-style: for the most part the tone is assured and academic (in the first three quarters of the paper you use ‘I’ sparingly) but you also experiment with the second person in the second paragraph (effectively in my opinion) and the more directly personal and anecdotal style in the last paragraph (though less effectively than second-person experimentation, I think, because it felt a bit gimmicky and out-of-step with the rest of the paper.)

When I started reading this paper, I thought to myself: this is gutsy, she’s making an attempt to define sacred place in the first paragraph. After all our carefully choreographed dancing-around a definition in the seminar that week, you had gone out of a limb and come up with a working definition of sacred place. Even better: the definition you offered, I felt, was persuasive and coherent. As the paper progressed, though, and you continued to expand your definition, I felt you were chickening out. After formulating a definition of sacred place as an emotional and physical response to a place – one that effectively challenged and built upon Peter Read’s definition – you simply went on to recognise the various applications of the term sacred, so that by the end, I didn’t feel I could take anything concrete away from this discussion. Part of the problem, I think, was that you tried to use so many examples, and examples so widely divergent. You move from a discussion of curb-side memorials, to the Statue of St. Peter, to Aboriginal rituals, to Welsh conceptions of place, to the Steve Irwin Wildlife Park. Impressive range, but wow, that’s a lot to take in for a reader!

My other major problem with your paper was the second last paragraph on Read. It’s frank, but I don’t think it’s fair. You write: "Peter Read states that he is 'reluctant to embrace Aboriginal place spirits as if they were our own, unless invited.' This comment irritated me because I thought it was sacrilegious and arrogant." Now I acknowledge that you are speaking personally here and that you are perfectly entitled to have a reaction like this to Read’s work -- because it is, after all, personal. But I think you misunderstand what Read is saying here. You don’t put this quote in context. It also doesn’t help that this paragraph is a little unclear, or at least the connection between your opinion about Read’s work and your argument that we cannot claim sacred respect for places like Uluru, only secondary sacred respect, is unclear. I think what Read is saying comes back to the ‘ethics of belonging’ that Melissa writes about in her entry on Ian Abdulla’s Riverland paintings. Speaking about her response to Abdulla’s work, Melissa writes: “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.” Just as we shouldn’t claim someone else’s deep attachment to the land as our own, we shouldn’t embrace another culture’s place-spirits without someone inviting us to do so. I find this responsible and respectful -- not arrogant and sacrilegious. And given that Read is advocating that we wholeheartedly embrace the spiritual in our non-fiction writings, I can hardly see how he could be charged with being ‘sacrilegious.’ And let’s not forget that Peter Read is the man who coined the term ‘the stolen generations’, the person who brought the term and the tragedy into our historical consciousness. I’d struggle to think of another white historian who has treated indigenous Australians and their culture with less arrogance.

Anna, you began this discussion with a clear argument: sacred places are places appropriated as such through physical interaction. That was great. So were your examples. I loved your choices there: the worn toe of a religious statue, indigenous sites consecrated through ritual, the roadside grave.

Unfortunately, though, you then went on to muddy the waters considerably with what you said about ‘secondary’ sacred places. On the one hand, you suggested that sites appropriated as sacred by a particular group or person may take on a sacredness-by-association for other people. Steve Irwin’s grave is sacred to his family, because they’ve appropriated it as a site of mourning. It might also be sacred-by-association for a wider group of people (you suggest), because of his iconic status. Sites of Aboriginal ritual might also become sacred-by-association to non-indigenous Australians out of a sense of cultural respect. Your example of the home then referred to another kind of secondarily sacred place - a ‘profanely sacred’ place which acquires special meaning because of its connotations of security and belonging.

It thus seemed that although you were clear about the definition of sacred place, you used the idea of ‘secondary sacredness’ to throw in a great number of different possibilities. The end result was that no clear understanding of the overall concept of sacred place was possible, rather defeating the purpose with which you began.

Anna,
I thought your piece was very well written and informed, however, like Luke, I too had problems with the efficient dismissal of Read's statement that he is 'reluctant to embrace Aboriginal place spirits as if they were our own, unless invited'. In terms of what is and isn't sacred, an issue for me on this topic has been whether one must have a personal affinity with a place to be able to define it as sacred to them. I concluded that whilst we can respect the sacredness of a place due to perhaps its historical roots and ties with a peoples, for you or I to claim it as sacred is perhaps illegitimate, as whilst we respect why it may be sacred in one culture, without personal affiliation, i do not think we can claim it as our own.

Anna, your entry is really interesting. I agree with you when you say Peter Read’s perception of sacredness authorised the words laissez-faire usage. I like the idea regarding how the land is neutral until someone worships it. I wonder if there is something specific in some places which lends them to be worshipped over others. Does this preference for some sites over others mean that there is no true neutrality, and that there is a predisposition in some places which lends itself to be more likely worshipped? I admit I question the use of the memorial at the curbside as an example. Although I agree that there is a physical connection and an emotional one at that, I would argue that even to those who are related to those who died there, the site is not sacred but heavily emotionally imbued. I don’t think the site is worshipped as much as it is a physical reminder of loss. For me, loss and that form of memorialisation would be a form of an emotional attachment, but not a spiritual one. Yet I understand the fine line there is when trying to define spirituality, and perhaps it is more subjective and harder to define when not personally involved. I really like your examples of the Welsh language, and how cynefin can denote sacredness in various sites like home, due to the definition. It makes me realise the extent to which culture and language define our perception of place. The popular use of one word can create so much more meaning with so many more levels. Yet at the same time, the way in which Peter Read and our culture uses the term sacred seems to remove and water down the powerful meaning it has. Your entry made me really think the extent to which culture has defined and continues to redefine what is sacred, and how it’s relationship with place is so hard to define for me personally.

Good site! I'll stay reading! Keep improving!