The absence of place

Photo by Flickr user stevec77 and made available under Creative Commons

In Alan Garner’s novel Thursbitch (Garner, 2004) the reader becomes acquainted with the life story of the valley of the same name and the powerful affects it has on those who dwell in it or visit it. The book evocatively interweaves the stories of two temporally distinct moments in the valley’s past and vividly captures the way that the narrative of an individual life, or of an entire community, is not only temporal but is also marked out in respect to particular places.

One of the novel’s two temporal strands is set in late 18th century rural England, and these parts of the narrative revolve around the life of Jack Turner, a ‘jagger’, or packman, who brings back to his family and community the foods, gifts and ideas that he has encountered upon his travels. After arriving back from one of these many jags, Jack is informed by his father that whilst he had been away the mysterious ‘land man’ had made an appearance. The land man, “one of the best of the worser kind of folk”, had been about with an eye for certain “improvements”, namely, the enclosure of the land, “walling right up Tors”, and using the sacred high stones as field lines and gates. What is worse, the ‘land man’ has an eye for improving the valley of Thursbitch itself, the very centre of Jack’s world, and to “make it a farm and build a house there.” Jack’s response to this threat is a blend of grief, fear and anger, and what he says is telling:

“He can’t, Father. Never. He can’t. If he does, it’ll be a land of great absence.” (my emphasis)

Despite his status as a wanderer, as one who travels far from home from county to county buying and selling goods, the disturbing thought of losing that home, that centre, drives him into blind panic. It may be that, for an outside observer, the valley’s physical presence may remain relatively unaltered- but for him, and his community, this desecration of a place is tantamount to replacing this place (with all its richness, its meaningfulness) with a ‘great absence’.

We all know that the loss of a home-place, or of any place known well, can be traumatic and harrowing. If places are, as Proust wrote, “like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality” then is it any wonder that the thought of the loss of a place can fill us with as much fear and anxiety as the loss of a loved one? Of course, there are always exceptions, in some cases it may be that the loss of a home-place is experienced as a relief, as liberating, or even exhilarating. But even so, this latter prospect is surely more likely to occur when an individual has voluntarily left a still-existing home place; that this experience can be liberating is without doubt as anyone who has ever left their parental home well knows! But it is harder to imagine anyone being invigorated by the thought of their homeplace having being obliterated utterly and completely. The more sudden the severance of people from place, the harder it is to come to terms with. Places are indeed rather like people in this respect. The philosopher Edward Casey writes that “we mourn places as well as people, and as part of the process we must decathect from both.” (Casey, 1993: 198)

As it is for individuals and communities so it may be for humanity at large. Novalis once wisely stated that philosophy is “really homesickness, the urge to be at home everywhere in the world.” Humans strive to be at home wherever they may be. The prospect of complete separation from history and nature, of being lost, rootless and without a true home is, for all but the most Abrahamically minded individuals, like some terrible nightmare. As we have seen in previous posts, most philosophers (and geographers) have been more like Odysseus than Abraham. The object has been to place human beings; to discover their place, their home, in the great scheme of things. For example, Tim Creswell names Yi-Fu Tuan as one geographer for whom the discipline is all about studying Earth as the home of people and David Seamon as one for whom the home is an intimate place of rest away from the hustle of the outside world. (Creswell, 2004) In this blog, these are ideas that I will keep returning too.

References
Casey, E. (1993) Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Cresswell, T. (2004) Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Garner, A. (2004) Thursbitch. London: Vintage