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Please note this is a slightly amended version of the first
call.
There has been a good deal of very promising interest expressed
in this. Please join in!!!
RGS-IBG Annual Conference,
Second Call for Papers: Geography and Memory
Co-sponsored by the History and Philosophy of Geography
Research Group and the Social & Cultural Geography Research Group
Convened by Owain Jones (CCRI)
PLEASE CIRCULTE TO ANYONE YOU FEEL MIGHT BE
INTESRED!!!
Session Abstract
Much is made of the (present) moment in recent non-representational geographies
- that is the ever-moving front of becoming in actuation - with all of its
possibility, material, embodied, relational, affective, performative richness.
This session seeks to fold (individual) memory more fully into this
understanding of becoming. Damasio states that affective becoming does make us transient entities, and yet,
at the same time, we have an ‘autobiographical self’- ‘a
nontransient collection of unique facts and ways of being of systemised
memory’. Memory is a fundamental aspect of becoming, intimately entwined
with space, affect, emotion, imagination and identify, yet also a
hyper-complex, mostly unknown, and unknowable set of processes. ‘People
[are] rather ill-defined constellations [ ] “not confined to particular
spatio-temporal coordinates, but consist of a spread of biographical events and
memories of events, and a dispersed category of material objects, traces, and
leavings”’ (Thrift/Gell). This session seeks work
(academic/literary/artistic/therapeutic) which explores memories of geographies
and/or the geographies of memories, and how these (help) generate the present.
Work is sought which focuses on personal, private memories (of self or others) rather
than more frequently studied popular, collective memories, and which considers
memory in relation to space, affect, emotion (love/loss), materiality, age,
embodiment, displacement, belonging (nationality) and more besides.
Longer Version
We are present creatures, always in place, always in the moment. Yet we
are also creatures of spatial-temporal remains - made of memories,
(forgettings), and other traces of one kind or another of past places and
moments. Most of what we are, is what, where and how we have been. Memory is
one of the fundamental processes of becoming and is intimately entwined with
affect, emotion, imagination and identify. Damasio (1999) makes it clear that
affective becoming (and the self /consciousness unfolding in that becoming)
makes us transient entities of the moment; but he stresses that we are also at
the same time ‘a nontransient
collection of unique facts and ways of being [ ] of systemised memory’
which forms the ‘autobiographical self’.
Memory processes seem under-‘represented’ in the affective
turn and non-representational approaches. Compare the attention given to affect
and emotion in Thrift’s fullest elaboration of non-representational
theory (2008) with that given to memory. Personal
memory is also absent, in certain ways, in recent, otherwise highly
illuminating, writings about landscape and nature.(e.g. Macfarlane, 2007;
Sebald, 1998; Wylie, 2003, 2005). The tendency seems to be to write
about visits (walks, climbs, stays) where there is little evidence of past
personal attachment to, or engagement with, the landscape in question. This
distance – to travel as a stranger - may well be necessary for their
projects. When Schama writes of Landscape
and Memory, the memories are predominately historical and cultural
rather than personal. How different
understandings, feelings and practices become when there are depths of past
time and practice and affective states (and memory thereof), enfolded into
present becomings of landscape and place. (I suggest that notions of landscape
and place are generally memory heavy - but can be otherwise).
Memory is a hyper-complex, mostly unknown, and unknowable set of
processes. (Dreams testify to the complexity and spatiality of memory).Thus
far, perhaps because of this complexity and unknowableness, memory, in the way
considered here, has been very much a minority interest in human geography.
(Some notable examples of work in this area are:- Graham Rowles’s work on
geographies of aging (see on line cv) , Philo, 2003; Daniels and Nash, 2004;
Lorimer 2006). Thrift (2008) does
raise the importance of memory, citing Gell, and does so in a way that is very
much in the spirit of what I am interested in exploring, seeing ‘people
as rather ill-defined constellations [ ] which “are not confined to
particular spatio-temporal coordinates, but consist of a spread of biographical
events and memories of events, and a dispersed category of material objects,
traces, and leavings which can be attributed to a person”’ (Thrift
2008, citing Gell, 1998). This messy scrambling of time, space, events,
materiality and self is key to what we are, yet highly challenging to
map.
A clear distinction between community/cultural/popular memory and
personal memory is probably untenable, but a lot of memory studies operate on, or within, large, grand (terrible) frames,
notably holocaust studies and exile/displacement/postcolonial/migration
experiences. There has been more sustained interest in geographies of popular memories in these kinds of terms,
which focus upon contested politics of history, place, race, monuments,
heritage and so on. Rather than ‘collective’, ‘cultural’
‘historical’, ‘popular’ memory, I am interested in more
specific, private memories, perhaps barely known/felt/sensed, fleeting, ghostly
- of past everyday, lived geographies - personal histories of ‘smaller’
events/histories of self or others.
As well as being a key theme of literature (e.g. Proust), explorations
of the past geographies embedded in us all are to be found in a range of
academic writing. In Theatre and Performance Studies Deirdre Heddon (2008)
explores a number of autobiographical performances which delve into
past-self-in-place. (Heddon coins the term ‘autotopography’ to
label this work). There are other notable attempts to explore the stretched-out
strange entanglements of embodied becoming over time and space: Benjamin, Berlin Childhood; Robinson, My Time in Space; Dillion, In a Dark Room; Kuhn and McAllister; Locating Memory, and in film, Maddin, My Winnipeg.
I call for papers (or other forms of presentation) on any aspect
of geography/memory, memory geography which stress the personal (self or other)
in terms of past experience and how it shapes the present. How memories are
materialised - or entangled with the material (photographs,
objects, places) is of particular interest.
Abstract by 23 January 2009 (250 words)
Initial questions and expressions of interest are
welcomed.
Please include the following information when
submitting your abstract:
Name:
Affiliation:
Contact email:
Title of proposed paper:
Any technical requirements (video, data projector,
sound, etc.):
Dr Owain Jones
Research Fellow
Countryside & Community Research Institute
Dunholme Villa, The Park
office: 01242 715315
home: 01761 472908
Fax: 01242 714395
Dr Owain Jones
Research Fellow
Countryside & Community Research Institute
Dunholme Villa, The Park
office: 01242 715315
Fax: 01242 714395