Another layer of compost...
Many of the messages on this subject seem to me to implicitly subscribe to
an idea of 'cultiviation' and thus quiet and assured control. I don't know
much about gardening, but isn't there a flip side to this coin where 'the
garden' (in a euro-western sense) is an image of transgression and
disruption, of 'priapic' discourses (for example I'm thinking of one of
Hamlet's speeches to his
mother, 'rank weeds' etc)? Or, again, the garden as a 'hidden' space where
'evil' both occurs and is 'secreted' (think the Jordache saga in
Brookside)? I'm sure that Simon Schama touches on these sort of ideas in
the final chapter of 'Landscape and Memory'.
john wylie (dept. of geog, univ. of bristol)
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