Writing Place

I believe the concept of place as the ‘origin’ of personal, religious, ethnic, political or even cultural identities is fundamentally flawed. This opinion has evolved substantially over the weeks, but has gained much clarity from this week’s readings and class discussions. The issues I have with place initially resonated closely with ideas suggested by Roberto Dainotto, in the introduction to his book ‘Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities,” in which he heavily criticizes the return to ‘place,’ because, in his opinion, “to claim that culture springs from a place means, after all, to naturalize a process of historical formation, and along with history to negate the historical struggles, and tensions that made culture what it is.” (p.2) He connects place with the ideology of Regionalism, which he argues can conceptualize specific places or areas as having some continual and non-fluctuating cultural traditions which are deeply rooted in the past. There is a sense that the values deriving from these traditions are somewhat more natural and authentic, and furthermore that such communities are more unified, or have greater “truth” to them. There is also a concept that within place, tradition can survive and be honored, and that within ‘place’ culture can find refuge and solace. The inside of a region is thus perceived and constructed as a homogenous whole, which is not divided within.

My issues with such notions of place seemed to find validation within the article “Ecological Nationalism: Claiming Nature for Making History” by K. Sivaramakrishnan and G. Cederlöf. One comes to see, that through applying a framework of “ecological nationalism” to concepts of place, it can be understood that place is not simply something from which notions of identity are derived, and that associations with nature are not necessarily part of an unchanging traditional culture, but rather that these notions of place-connectedness can be created and used as a battleground for regional or national political agendas. The authors of this article argue that the discourse of nature intimacy, which links cultural identity to the environment, are perhaps new political performatives, which merely are part of an aim to secure land for reasons of territoriality, resources and the desire to maintain subsistence livelihoods. Of course, these are all perfectly justifiable claims, for they secure for the individual basic human requirements of food and shelter. However, as Sivaramakrishnan and Cederlof describe, while references to “tradition” are made, these “should not necessarily be understood as reactionary visions of golden pasts or as the objects of nostalgic yearnings.” (p.9) Rather, the invocation of such discourses arise according to a political, historical situation which calls for some form of legitimization to the claiming of certain rights, which in this case are land based. Place is thus historically constructed, it is not the origin of identity, but rather the product of human processes. One could argue, that it is not ‘place’ which is contested here, but rather, the rights to place.

The theme of the ‘construction’ of place is echoed in the chapter “Constructing Geographies: “race”, place and the marking of Sydney’s Aboriginal Redfern,” by Kay J. Anderson. In order for Aboriginal groups within Sydney to create a place of their own, where they could “secure greater control over the conditions of (their) existence,” (p.85) a very purposefully constructed political strategy was implemented from which an ideology of Aboriginality, attached to notions of a need for territory, was used to gain land. A group of Aboriginals of very diverse origins were homogenized so that there seemed to be a “pan-aboriginal” struggle against “white” Australia.” (p.86) As Anderson states, “the referent for this campaign was not some permanent foundation of Aboriginal Identity- a stable heritage handed from the past-but instead a cultural and political invention invoked to serve contemporary purposes.” (p.86) Again, identity is manipulated or altered in order to stake claims on land, and place is constructed through historical occurrences.

“Constructions of reality inform the making and transformation of real-world geographies.” (Anderson, p.97) One should not take for granted the legitimacy of place-derived identities. While people’s association to land, be it territorial, resource-based, or identity-driven, is an extremely powerful and important aspect of humanity, I do not believe this attachment is derived from the place itself. Place is historically constructed and must be viewed critically.
References:

Anderson, Kay J., ‘Constructing Geographies: “Race”, Place and the Making of Sydney’s Aboriginal Redfern’, in Peter Jackson and Jan Penrose (eds), Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, University College London Press, London, 1993, 81-99.

Sivaramakrishnan, K, and Gunnel Cederlof, eds, ‘ Introduction, Ecological Nationalism: Claiming Nature for Marking History,’ in Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelhoods, and Identities in South Asia, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2006, pp. 1-10, 29-40

Dainotto, Roberto M, ‘Introduction: The literature of Place and Region,’ in Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2000, p.1-33