The belief of connectedness to our places (in our blogs) also is relative to Toxic Discourse in that we see our place as we see it, which may not be how it really is (or was). Buell refers to these "images" as powerful because they (re)connect us with something out of sight (72). Buell and Garrard seem to be thinking in lockstep regarding the image(s) of place, and I believe both are utilizing Garrard's term (and definition of) "ecoporn" for us., which reasserts the romance of said place(s).
Sanders starts his essay, "After the Flood," with a romantic and nostalgic attitude:
It was the power of the place, gathering rain and snowmelt, surging through the valley under sun, under ice, under the bellies of fish, and the curled brown boats of sycamore leaves. You will need a good map of Ohio to find the river I am talking about (3)This beginning sets this place up as majestic and secluded, but also secret to outsiders unless they know Sanders. And he is gracious enough to let us in on "the river" he's referring to. Then Sanders dutifully takes us back in time to his childhood and his mysterious and fascinating little river. That is until he kills it off by evil politicians and other do-gooders.
His space dies and we are taken on a short, digressive pity party with a slight hope of revival, but even Sanders, like me, "felt a fool" (9).
But please cough up some bills to see this....
Thank you for your support.
Yet, Sanders quickly says to himself, "everything I knew had been swept away" (11). As the loss of his childhood memories of his place are bitten by the cold steel reality of that guardrail, we realize, as he does that "no fate could be more ordinary" (12). In the loss of his place, apparently, Sanders losses his childhood, but takes us to a sermon about his loss of Walden.
Loyalty to place arises from sources deeper than narcissism. It arises from our need to be at home on the earth. We marry ourselves to the creation by knowing and cherishing a particular place [. . .]. If the marriage is deep, divorce is painful. (13)
Obviously, Sanders is attached to place, which makes me wonder why and how our fascination with a place has such an impact on us.
I'm interested, however, in his last section because he attempts to empathize with the numerous peoples Europeans have displaced from their lands, their memories, their childhoods, their traditions. In doing so, he appears to understand a fraction of that pain, that toxicity, but I don't think he, or I, could ever understand that kind of pain.
As I consider Buell and Sanders, I'm left with the conclusion,
one can never go home again....
Craig,
ReplyDeleteMe too, I’m interested in the last section of Sanders' piece. I have a love-hate relationship with the last part. I appreciate the rhetorical move of associating his own loss with the loss of others; however, I feel that he underestimates my intelligence as a reader. I just don’t like it when writers spell it out for me. I know similar stories of people who lost their land and their identities, but unlike Sanders, for them there is no return.
Nice post. I agree that the overall idea I came to as a reader with Sanders was that people can't go home because our land/past is always only in our memories, regardless of what has or hasn't changed. Nostalgia may bring us home again, but it also always leads to disappointment because things are never just like they were. I agree with Lana that this makes Sanders attempt to link his sense of loss with peoples who have been oppressed and enslaved problematic and troubling; they just aren't even close to the same.
ReplyDeleteWhat do we take from this, that we need to understand environments (places and spaces) as continuously evolving? Do we have a problem in ascribing our past nostalgia to places we currently perceive? Are we swimming upstream against nature by trying to re-create places that we hold in our memories? I see both positive and negative outcomes in this pursuit. Because we are nature ourselves, I think humans inherently know when a balance or imbalance is present in a place. However, dialectic discourse needs to keep this "narcissism" in check, something that eco-composition needs to incorporate.
ReplyDeleteI may be missing something, but I thought that Sanders made it clear that he does not see himself in the same category as the displaced indigenous and Africans. Yet, he does wish to make a connection between the mindset that dams a river needlessly and without regard to the people displaced by it and earlier (continuing?) displacements. I guess I don't think all readers would draw that connection, so he felt the need to make it, but it also is an attempt to make his storytelling less narcissistic.
ReplyDeleteEven so, I would have felt better if he had noted that at times indigenous populations are displaced by environmentalist/conservationist mandates to "preserve wilderness areas."