P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O F S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S . . . 1 6 5
Elżbieta Rybicka
From a Poetics of Space to a Politics of Place:
The Topographical Turn in Literary Studies1
DOI:10.18318/td.2016.en.1.10
Sp atial Turn or Topographical Turn?
The overabundance o f so-called “turns” in the hum anities today m ay lead rapidly to a kind o f in flation or, as som e suggest, to tread in g w ater, or to sim p ly ending up back w h ere w e started. W ith th ose m o st recen t sh ifts - the cultural turn, the iconographic turn, the perform ance turn - w e are d ealin g n o t so m uch w ith tem p o rary su cces
sors as w e are w ith sim u ltaneity and m utual influences.
O f these, the m ost problem atic in the Polish context ap p ears to be the spatial/topograph ical turn. In fact, n e i
ther o f those tw o varian ts has been firm ly established or even attem pted w idely yet in Polish term inology, and the
1 This article is p art o f a larger p ro ject called Geopoetics:Space and Place in Contem porary Literary Theory and Practice, w h e re ideas sim ply n o ted in p assin g here are d eveloped in detail, such a s th e h isto ry and evolution o f th e field as w ell a s th e problem o f the n ew regionalism , th e relationship b etw een literature and g e o g raphy, and th e q u estio n o f sp a c e in th eo ries o f gen der. It w a s also printed b efore, in From Modern Theory to a Poetics of Experience:
Polish Studies in Literary History and Theory, ed . G rzegorz G ro
chow ski and Ryszard Nycz (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014).
Elżbieta Rybicka - works a t the Faculty o f Polish Studies o f the Jagiellonian University. Her publications include The Forms o f the Labyrinth in the Polish Prose in the Twentieth Century (2000), Modernizing the City. Introduction to Urban Problematics in Modern Polish Literature(2003), Geopoetics.
Space and Place in Contemporary Theories and Literary Practices(2014). She specializes in the cultural and literary geography, urban culture and cultural memory.
i66 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
status o f the turn itse lf could be called into question. M agdalena M arszałek, for exam ple, finds the notion o f a topographical turn debatable:
The question of the extent to which interest in geography and topo- and cartographical techniques creates a new paradigm in history, sociology, or cultural studies (the topographical turn) is debatable, w hile un der
standing geographic space in term s of cultural practices of the construc
tio n o f territories, identity, and m em ory, is w id ely agreed upon across the disciplines.2
I f w e understand the spatial/topographical turn as a p arad igm shift, then in deed doubts m ay be w arranted. Labeling a trend in scholarship a “tu rn ” does carry w ith it, how ever, the suggestion o f som ething else, nam ely, a dynam ic o f action, a state in progress, a turning point, a reorien tation. A n d I believe this is the case, as w ell, w ith the spatial turn: there is m ore dislocation than stabilization in it for now.3 It is w orth pointing out at the outset that this “turn”
has its in stitutional anchoring in B ritish and A m erican “place studies;” it has its trade journals here (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment;
Gender, Place and Culture, etc.), and its asso ciation s (Institut Internation al de G éopoétique, A sso ciatio n for the Study o f Literature and the Environm ent, etc.). A sign al o f the parad igm atization o f the spatial turn is also the p ro lif
eration o f sub -disciplin es from hum an ist geography and cultural geography to anthropology o f place and space, geocriticism , and geopoetics.4
T h ese in stitu tion al factors ob viously stabilize the reorien tation, though at the sam e tim e th ey m ay constitute a kind o f com m ons for exchange and fu rther circulation. In term s o f w h y the so -ca lle d tu rn se em s so attractive to literary studies, w h at appears m o st p ertin en t is the p oten tial contained w ithin a new language and lexicon, as w ell as the influx of concepts associated
2 M agdalena M arszałek, "Pamięć, meteorologia oraz urojenia: środkow oeuropejska geo - p oetyka Andrzeja Stasiu k a,” in Literatura, kultura i język polski w kontekstach i kontaktach światowych. III Kongres Polonistyki Zagranicznej, ed. M ałgorzata Czerm ińska, Katarzyna Meller, Piotr Fliciński, Poznań 2007. This is th e only article I am aw are o f dealing directly w ith th e issue o f th e to po graphical turn in th e co n te x t o f Polish literature.
3 It took until 2008 for th ere to be an a n th o lo g y o f te x ts from differen t d isciplines (anthro
pology, sociolo gy, political scien ce, religious stu d ies, cultural studies), nam ely, The Sp a
tial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Barney Worf, San ta Arias (N ew York: Routledge, 2008).
4 The Anthropology o f Space and Place. Locating Culture, ed. S eth a M. Low, Denise Law- rence-Zuniga (M alden: Blackw ell Publishing 2003); La Geocritique: mode d'emploi, ed.
Bertrand W estphal (Lim oges: PULIM, 2000).
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O f S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S . . 167
w ith the sp atial turn. T h at is w h y I am in terested less in the p ragm atics o f it and m ore in the dyn am ic o f con tem p orary recon figu ration s o f a spatial, them atic, and d isciplinary nature; the trajectories o f dislocations; as w ell as the active developm ent o f this area o f interest. The spatial/topographical turn not only looks into con tem p orary space in m ovem ent, b ut is its e lf subject to ceaseless dislocations.
The question I w an t to focus on is also this problem o f nom enclature and the question o f w hether this reorientation ought to be called a “spatial turn”
or rather a “topograph ical turn.” A s sim ilar as th eir m ean in gs are, th e y are different in term s o f territorial custom . T hey also cover distinct geographical territories, since “sp atial tu rn ” is em ployed m ostly in A n gloph on e regions, w h ich ob viously lends it an ad dition al pow er, w h ile “topographical tu rn ” is m ore com m on in G erm anlanguage contexts.5
Yet particular territorial u sage s are less im p o rtan t th an the pragm atics o f gen eral use in the con tem porary context. “T opographical tu rn ” has a d e
cidedly greater and m ore attractive sem antic potential, particularly for liter
ary studies. Etym ologically, topography as toposgraphos - the description of space - has a m ore solid b asis in the field o f literary studies, not only w ith respect to a rich and long rhetorical tradition. In the contem porary conceptual landscape topography harm onizes w ith the conviction o f literary and cultural shaping o f space. It resonates perfectly, as w ell, w ith other related concepts - heterotopias and topotropography,6 toponym and topology, atopia, utopia and dystopia, the atopic subject and atopiation.
For these reasons, I am in clined to consider the topograph ical turn a lo cal, and p erh ap s p osition al, varian t o f the sp atial turn, local m ean in g h a v in g to do w ith the dom ain o f graphein, w h ere a lin guistic approach to space is con sid ered a valuable one. M ean w h ile the sp atial turn I treat as a usefu l form ula h aving to do w ith the con tem porary rise in in terest in space in the different disciplines and artistic practices. T hese concepts can obviously be used interchangeably, provided, however, that it is understood that they come from different fields and have been tools o f different d isciplinary languages, w hich m eans that the relationship betw een them is currently one o f a ch ias
m atic nature.
The trajectories determ ined by the topographical turn lead to a range of a r
eas o f w ritin g and literary research. O f the exam ples o f direction that interest can take, regionalism is especially im portant, and in particular, the so-called
5 The foundational te x t is Sigrid W eigel's article ”Zum 'topographical turn:' kartographie, topograph ie und raum kon zepte in den ku ltu rw issen sch aften ,” KulturPoetik 2 (2002).
6 This term is taken from Josep h Hillis Miller, Topograhies (Berkely: Stanford University Press, Stan ford, 1995).
i68 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
n ew regionalism . Them atic spatiology as a traditional field (spatial topics in the hom e, yard , h ills, d eserts, etc.) is rein terpreted and n o w read m o st o f
ten from the perspective o f gender, p ostcolonial studies, ethnic studies, or in conjunction w ith the construction o f nation al identity. T h at latter deserves its ow n note - as it creates an extensive section o f ideological literary lan d scapes (this is m ost actively pursued in B ritish “place studies”) and directing attention tow ard m odern dislocations o f space and identity.7 This direction o f study results from the conviction that literature creates and tran sm its n a tio n al land scapes and id eo logical p laces; Poland is an excellent exam ple of this, having created in the nineteenth century a national spatial repertoire of topoi founded in the opposition betw een city and country.8
The fact that spatial categories m ight be attractive analytical instrum ents in researching the relationships b etw een nation al id en tity and literature - even on a scale as large as centu ries-old Portuguese literature - is confirm ed by Ew a Lukaszyk's book Terytorium a świat. Wyobrażeniowe konfiguracje przestrzeni w literaturze portugalskiej od schyłku średniow iecza do współczesności [Territory and World: Imagining the Configurations o f Space in Portuguese Literaturefrom the Late Middle Ages to Modernity].9 Lukaszyk's book traces the developm ental dyn am ics o f Portuguese con ceptualizations o f space, evolvin g from the n otion o f national territory as a space that had to be ceaselessly expanded by the pow er o f the religious m yth (legitim izing im perial conquest) through the collapse o f that visio n and ultim ately tw en tieth -cen tu ry nom adism . N ational m ythic geograph y is in terpreted as an in stru m en t servin g to con firm the sen se o f id en tity in connection w ith a given territory. Lukaszyk's p ro po sed co n cep tual toolbox (territory, border, itinerary, nom adism , diaspora, “m ythic g e o g rap h y”) can be treated as its ow n m odern repertoire o f topoi, loci communis that form a com m ons o f w riting, literary history, ethnic studies, and national mythology.
The issue o f the relationship betw een place and literature is com plex and linked to m any other realm s in a va riety o f different w ays. It m ay have to do
7 Bernard Sh arrat, "W riting Britains,” in British Cultural Studies: Geography, Nationality, and Identity, ed. David M orley and Kevin Robins (Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 2001).
8 I w ro te m ore a b o u t this in th e book Modernizowanie miasta. Zarys problematyki urban
istycznej w nowoczesnej literaturze polskiej (Kraków: Universitas 2003), 48-53. S e e Ewa Ihnatow icz "Kiedy kam ienica je s t a kiedy nie je s t dom em polskim ,” in Obraz domu w kul
turach słowiańskich, ed. Teresa D ąbek-W irgowa, Andrzej Z. M akow iecki (W arszawa:
W ydaw nictw o U n iw ersytetu W arszaw skiego, W ydział Polonistyki, 1997).
9 Ewa Łukaszyk, Terytorium a świat. Wyobrażeniowe konfiguracje przestrzeni w literaturze portugalskiej od schyłku średniowiecza do w spółczesności (Kraków: W ydaw nictw o Uni
w e rsy te tu Jagielloń skiego, 2003).
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. . 1 6 9
w ith the relationships o f w riters to concrete places, such as fam ilial places or those visited on trips. The connections b etw een th ese places and literature can be described, as Robert Packard describes them , in term s o f “refraction”
- a term borrow ed from optics - if one assum es that literature is a prism that transform s authentic loci into literary places.10 That relationship can also be understood, how ever, from the perspective o f a geography o f literary milieux, where concrete places becom e a creative space enabling literary or artistic ac
tivity. A n im pressive exam ple of this approach is Shari Benstock's Women o f the Left Bank - a fascinating tale o f h ow Left Bank Paris becam e the birthplace of an alternate version o f m odernism in the early part o f the tw entieth century.11 In the m ost general term s, it is n ow com m only accepted that literature and geographical place are not m utually exclusive but are rather com plem entary, engaged in ceaseless negotiations w ith one another.12
M eanw hile, research on the city in literature is still actively being devel
oped, pow ered now b y new ideas from postcolonial studies and the n ew liter
ary geography. There are innum erable exam ples, but the m ost representative o f the current literary p hase o f u rban studies seem to be texts dealing w ith the specifics o f today's cultural situation in form er colonial m etropolises, and in particular, London. P ostcolon ial Lon don is an esp ec ially acute problem in m uch critically acclaim ed literature (N aipaul, Rushdie, Sm ith , K ureishi, M alkam i), w hich tends to show w ith photographic clarity the contem porary stratifications and ethnic, national, religious, gender-based, and cultural shifts there13 - w hich is w h y it is w orth dedicating a little m ore space to this p h e nom enon now. W hen exam in ed from the perspective o f n e w spatial recon figurations, the question o f the old dichotom ous and h ierarchical relations b etw een m etropolis and colonies com e to the fore, this b eing the foundation for colonial and p ostcolonial discourse and contributing to the next evalu a
tive oppositions b ased on dom ination and subordination (center-periphery,
10 S e e for exam p le R obert Packard, Refractions: Writers and Places (N ew York: Carroll & Graf, 1990), 3.
11 Shari B en stock, Women o f the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Austin: U niversity o f Texas Press, 1987).
12 S e e on e o f th e m o st recen t an th o log ies dedicated to this topic: Literature and Place 1800
2000, ed. Peter Brown, M ichael Irwin (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006).
13 Kevin Robins, "Endnote: To London: The City beyond th e N ation,” in British Cultural Stud
ies, ed. David M orley and Kevin Robins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Peter Brooker, Modernity and Metropolis: Writing, Film and Urban Form ations (London: Palgrave, 2002); Sław o m ir Kuźnicki, "Miasto widzialne, lecz nie widziane. Londyn w Szatańskich wer
setach Salm ana R ushdiego,” in Miasto. Przestrzeń, topos, człowiek, ed. Adrian Gleń, Jacek Gutorow , Irena Jokiel (Opole: U n iw ersytet Opolski - In stytu t Filologii Polskiej, 2005).
170
m e m o r y a n d p l a c eE ast-W est and in the u rban structure o f cities: o rd er-ch ao s). U nm ediated con tact b etw e e n in h ab itan ts o f the m etrop olis and the colon ies in the co lo n ial era le d eith er to the p ro clam a tio n an d co n firm a tio n o f “ stron g,”
“pure,” an d e sse n tial id en tities (e.g. Jean R h ys' Voyage in the Dark), or - as in V.S. N aipau l (The Mimic Men) - to the im itatio n o f the im p e ria l cultural pattern.
The fall o f the em pire is succeeded on the one hand b y the decentraliza
tion o f the m etropolis b y the influx o f im m igrants from the periphery, un der
m in in g the system from w ith in and tran sform in g the old hierarch ies w hile also creating a qualitatively n e w “th ird sp a ce ” o f cultural hyb ridization (in H om i Bhabha's u nderstanding). The process o f dism antling that opposition, however, is accom panied by the appearance o f the next one: the reproduced m etropolis-colon ies relationship now exists w ith in the m etropolis itself, in the gu ise o f the opposition b etw een center and the suburbs that, in Europe, condem n their residents to m arginalization14 (exam ples include H anif Kurei- shi's The Buddha o f Suburbia or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth). A s a consequence o f these processes, the space o f the city, the form er m etropolis, becom es a te r
ritory o f struggle, conflict, and violence against an eth no-religious backdrop (e.g. Kureishi's BlackAlbum and Londonistan by G au tam M alkam i), and the old cultural and ethnic difference betw een m etropolis and colony - w hich once served as the origins of dom ination - n ow becom es an object of consum ption and m ulticultural fashion, its e lf som etim es interpreted as n eocolonialism . From the poin t o f v ie w o f literary scholarship, the fact that the spatial re la
tions and their reconfiguration launch a new analytical lexicon in research on colonial and postcolonial literature (culture), including categories o f ethnicity, race, class, geography, the problem s of globalization, transculturation, hybridi
zation, and the politics o f represen tation is also im portant.
Ecocriticism leads in y e t another direction, and although its connection w ith the topograph ical turn m a y be debatable, th e y do both share the cat
egory o f place. The m o st concise defin ition o f ecocriticsm is th at it p rio r
itizes research on the relationship b etw een literature and the environm ent, nature and culture.15 The repertoire o f questions asked b y ecocriticism goes som ething like this:
14 S e e Cities on the Margin, on the Margin o f Cities: Representations o f Urban Space in Con
temporary Irish and British Fiction, ed. Philippe Laplace, Éric Tabuteau (Paris: P resses Uni
versita ires de Fran ch e-C o m té, 2003).
15 This is, o f cou rse, o n e o f m any definitions o f ecocriticism , featu red in Cheryll Glotfelty,
"Introduction: Literary S tu d ies in an A ge o f Environm ental Crisis,” in The Ecocriticism Reader. Landm arks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll G lo tfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens, GA: The U niversity o f G eorgia Press, 1996), XVIII.
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O F S P A C E E L ż B I E T A R Y B I c K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S . 171
How is nature represented in this sonnet? W hat role does the physical setting play in the plot of this novel? A re the values expressed in this play consistent w ith ecological w isdom ? H ow do our m etaphors of the land influence the w ay w e treat it? H ow can w e characterize nature w riting as a genre? In addition to race, class, and gender, should p l a c e becom e a new critical category? Do men write about nature differently than w om en do? In what w ays has literacy itself affected humankind's relationship to the natural world? H ow has the concept of w ilderness changed over time? In w hat w ays and to what effect is the environmental crisis seeping into contem porary literature and popular culture? W hat view of nature inform s U.S. G overnm ent reports, corporate advertising, and televised nature documentaries, and to what rhetorical effect? W hat bearing might the science o f ecology have on literary studies? H ow is science itself open to literary analysis? W hat cross-fertilization is possible between literary studies and environmental discourse in related disciplines such as history, philosophy, psychology, art, history, and ethics?16
The close relationship w ith the topographical turn is also the result o f the fact that ecocriticism - as a n e w discipline, therefore seeking an anchor for itse lf in the past and in trad ition - has included in its territory terrain s that have long b een explored. The question o f literary representations o f nature, for instance, is that sort o f traditional arena o f inquiry.
The questions above, as form ulated b y Cheryll G lotfelty in her introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader, are a terrific exam ple o f the characteristic features of m odern tran s-d iscip lin ary thinking. This n ew orientation in literary studies is, after all, a response to the processes and phenom ena o f the w orld (in p a r
ticular, the ecological crisis), w ithout, how ever, straying too far from its own backyard: that is, w hat is specific to literary studies. It is skillfully in dialogue w ith the trad itio n o f its ow n discipline and y e t sim u ltan eo u sly un afraid o f opening up to n ew ideas and disciplines not strictly literary.
T h ese traje cto rie s m ay so m e tim e s appear to sim p ly b e retu rn s to old, fam iliar p laces. H ow ever, the m o d ern cu ltural co n text le n d s th e m n ew m ean in g. So it is, for exam ple, w ith the case o f re g io n alism , w h o se re v i
sion and re -en visio n in g w e ow e to p ostm odern culture. R egion al literature w as treated as a secondary p h e-n o m en o n u n til the 19 70 s and 19 8 0 s, and it w a s on ly its risin g p o p u larity from the 19 6 0 s on in the U nited Sta te s that n e w w a y s o f in terpretin g and evalu atin g it cam e into bein g. The re latio n ship w ith postm od ern ism is, in this case, also quite com plicated - n e w re gio n alism appeared in literature alongside p o stm od ern ism , and both they
16 Ibid., XIX.
172 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
shared a critique o f elitist m odern ism , e sp ecially its u n iv ersa list usurping.
A s m uch as literary p ostm od ern ism w a s geared tow ard form al exp erim en tation, how ever, and u n interested in geography and topography, so n e w re gion alism did opt for realist techniques, placing location at the fore in a very clear way. T h is is also w h y it ten d ed to be treated b y the critics as a re a c tion to postm odern confusion or a w ay o f escapin g the chaos o f postm odern culture.17
Now, how ever, n ew regionalism is m ost indebted to m in ority discourses, and especially to theories o f postcoloniality. Local and regional narratives are treated as a kind o f em ancipatory strategy and a critical response to the Great N ation al Sto ries on the one h an d w h ile, on the other, as a reaction to g lo balizing atopias and n on -places. N ew regionalism also enters into a curious relationship w ith the surregional, th at is, w ith w h a t is n o w the global. S a l
m an Rushdie provides an apt and succinct su m m ary o f th is in a novel that is both reg io n al and cosm opolitan , about both K ash m ir and Los A n g eles:
every place, he argues, is p art o f all other places.™ Finally, n e w re g io n a l
ism is n o t m erely a varie ty o f literature about concrete places, or located in such p laces; it is also “an attem pt to fin d a n e w place from w h ich to study literature.”™
The spatial turn, as I w rote above, is connected w ith other turns: cultural, iconographic, perform an ce. The m o st sign ifican t w a s d efinitely the cu ltur
al turn, w h ich lent literature and literary studies (as w e ll as h u m an ities as a w hole) placem ent and displacem ent at once. Placing or situating research is n o t on ly a m etaph or: m ore and m ore im p ortan ce is given to the fact o f the geographical “position ” o f the researcher (often an im m igrant) as w e ll as to the place that p erson has com e from , as w ell as the place that p erson w ent w hen he or she did leave. The biographies o f Edw ard Said, A rju n A ppadurai, G ayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and m any others that are either em bedded in the introductions to their b ooks or contained in separate texts are am ple d em onstration o f this. C iting and publicizing th eir b iograp h ical con text is not, in their case, sim ply an elem ent o f self-represen tation, but rather a strategy o f self-p lacin g, thanks to w h ich their lives actually act as testam en ts to the tran s-position ality o f the theories they advocate. Roberto M. D ainotto w rites interestingly o f the new position o f the in tellectual in today's world:
17 S e e Jerzy Durczak, ”19 6 0 -19 8 0 : n o w y regionalizm ,” in Historia literatury am erykańskiej XX wieku, vol. 2, ed. A gnieszka Salska (Kraków: U niversitas, 2003), 372.
18 Salm an Rushdie, Sh alim arthe Clown (N ew York: Random House, 2006).
19 Roberto D ainotto, Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Com m unities (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U niversity P ress, 2000), 4.
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O f S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S . . 173
If the old m odernist intellectual, fundam entally a deraciné, saw literature as a “strategy of perm anent exile” and fundam ental displacement [...] the new intellectual rather likes to pose as a topologist: S/he speaks f r o m one specific place of cultural production and a b o u t a localized “geogra
phy of the im agination” within w hose borders a given literary utterance may remain significant, relevant, and even intelligible. “Positionality” [ . ] is the m agic word, and you'd better take it literally.20
Place and p osition, let us recall, play a double role here: that o f geographical location and that o f research m ethod.
The relation sh ip b etw e e n the sp atial turn and the cultural turn cannot, how ever, be un derstood as one o f c a u se -an d -e ffe ct nor as a relationsh ip of successors. M ore apt is a m etaphor o f circulation, w hich is also the conclusion to w hich w e are led in the rem arks on the significance o f geography for culture in Introduction to Cultural Studies:
One in creasingly im portant aspect o f cultural studies is w h at can be called the geographies (or, indeed, topographies) of culture: the w ays in w hich m atters o f m eaning are bound up w ith spaces, places and lan d scapes. One sign o f this is that the language of cultural studies is full of spatial m etaphors [ . ] Yet there is m ore to this than just language since there is also a sense that culture - particularly when it is understood as som ething that is plural, fragm ented and contested - cannot be under
stood outside the spaces that it m arks out (like national boundaries or gang territories), the places that it makes m eaningful [...] the landscapes that it creates (from “England's green and pleasant land” to the suburban shopping mall).21
The m ost im portant consequence o f the cultural turn for topographical m eth
ods does appear to be the reconfiguration o f the relationship betw een litera
ture (and literary studies) and geography.
Culture, Literature, G eography: Flow s and R econfigurations
S h iftin g in te re st fro m the p o e tic s o f im a g in a ry sp a ce s to th e in te ra c tio n s b etw een literature and real sp aces n ece ssarily creates opportu nities
20 Ibid., 3.
21 Brian Longhurst, e t al., "Topographies o f Culture: Geography, Meaning, and Power,” in Intro
ducing Cultural Studies (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2008), 130.
174 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
to renegotiate the lim its b etw een literary studies and geography, especially since over the course o f recent years both partners in that tran s-d iscip lin ary dialogue have changed.
The door w as in itially opened by h um an ist geography, w h ich w a s devel
oped in the 19 70 s as a form o f resistance to the quantitative m ethodology that then dom inated the field. H um anist geographers, then, treated polem ically the idea of space as form ulated b y the hard sciences and subsequently adapted for a geography w ith pseudo-scien tific am bitions, opposing to it approaches especially interested in its anthropological and cultural dimension.22 Space, along w ith the subject experien cin g it, thus becam e a com m on s w h ere g e ography and other areas o f study - such as sociology (to invoke but Florian Z naniecki's “hum anities coefficient”) and anthropology - interm ingled. But it w a sn 't only those areas, because both the object o f study (place as e x p e rienced b y m an, cultural land scape), as w e ll as the n e w h erm eneu tics (em p hasis placed on understanding, and not explaining) also brought hum anist geography ever nearer literary studies.
For th is reason , too, literature b ecam e an im p o rtan t p oin t o f reference for h u m an ist geographers, im p ortan t in sofar as it m ay constitute ju stifica tion for and confirm ation o f their theories o f place. Literary representations o f lan d scap es read b y geograph ers m ay in fact reveal b oth the sp ecifics o f in d ivid u al exp erien ce and in terp retatio n s o f space as w e ll as the cultural fram ew ork for th at type o f reading. A Polish exam ple o f th is is D o b iesław Jędrzejczyk d iscussin g the significance o f landscape in the prose o f G u staw H erling-G rudziński:
For the description of landscape, for the w riter as well as for anyone else set in said landscape, the construction o f m eanings, and seeing is the lending of sense to looking, reaching all the w ay down into hidden, in vis
ible dim ensions of reality [...] In other words, there is in the description something that the landscape itself does not contain and that is exclusive
ly the product and property of the vision of the person watching [...] From the perspective o f hum anist geography, everything H erling-Grudziński inscribes into his landscapes is im portant - that is, w hat in the descrip
tion of landscape is the beginning of new m eanings.23
22 S e e K rzyszto f H. W ojciechow ski, "K on cepcje przestrzen i geografii h um an istyczn ej,” in Przestrzeń w nauce współczesnej, ed. Stefan Sym otiuka and G rzegorz Nowaka (Lublin:
U n iw ersytet Marii C u rie-Skło d o w ska, 1998).
23 D o b iesław Jędrzejczyk, "Krajobraz kulturow y jako m etafora b ytu ,” in Kultura jako przedm i
ot badań geograficznych. Studia teoretyczne i regionalne, ed. Elżbieta O rłowska (W rocław:
Polskie T ow arzystw o G eograficzn e, 2002), 21, 22.
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. 175
For h u m an ist geograp h ers, literature is also im p o rtan t as a source o f e x am p les o f genius loci th at m igh t escape the gra sp o f other, m ore scien tific m eth od s, as w e ll as w a y s o f exp e rie n cin g space an d len d in g it affective hues.24 In other w ords, literature p ro vid es the language for un derstan din g
“m ute” and “anon ym ous” territories, and it is thanks to this that they are able to signify.
A n d n ow com es the question o f w hether or not the relationship betw een the d iscip lin es also w orked in the other d irection - th at is, w a s hu m an ist geography also a source o f in spiration for literary sch olars? C ertain ly som e m em bers o f that school, especially Y i-F u Tuan and Edw ard T. Hall, did inspire scholars o f literature, and distinguishing b etw een place and space h as b e n efited a variety o f disciplines.
Beata Tarnowska's Geografia poetycka w powojennej twórczości Czesława Miłosza [Poetic Geography in Czesław Miłosz'sPostwar Work] is an im portant and extrem e
ly thorough b ook w ith in Polish literary criticism .25 Its object is M iłoszean topographies, poetic descriptions o f A m erican landscapes, as w ell as Lith u
anian and French landscapes, considered along tw o axes: the geographic and the m etaphysical. Place, th at is, the fu n d am en tal category draw n from the discourse o f hum an ist geography, attains a dual status and is both a concrete place on Earth, experienced and interpreted, as w ell as Place, w ith its symbolic m eaning.
The need to renegotiate betw een literary scholarship and geography does result from a series o f n e w challenges, since w h at acts n o w as the principle im pulse to bringing them closer together is the cultural turn, w hich has tran s
form ed both d iscip lin es - opening th em up to one anoth er and providing a repertoire o f shared questions, problem s, and ideas. O f course th is process affected all o f the hum anities in delineating a new m ap - though it ought im m ediately to be stipulated that the m etaphors o f m aps and m appin g that ap pear m ore and m ore frequently are too static to reflect the dynam ic and quite tran sversal nature o f these tran sform ation s. If w e are sticking w ith visu al- spatial m etaphors, then m ore apt m ight be the m ulti-dim en sion al m etaphor o f the m ap o f m igrations and trajectories o f w andering concepts, m ovem ents, and displacem ents, w here established borders undergo dislocations, and the spatial dim en sion - albeit against C artesian logic - m ust be supplem ented w ith the historical.
24 Hanna Libura, "G eografia i literatura,” Przegląd Zagranicznej Literatury Geograficznej 4 (1990): 10 7 -114 .
25 Beata Tarnow ska, Geografia poetycka w powojennej twórczości Czesław a M iłosza (Olsz
tyn: W yższa Szkoła P sychologiczna, 1996).
176 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
The evolution o f hum an ist geograph y into cultural geography w as a con
sequence o f the cultural turn w ith in the field o f geography,26 the latter being linked to the fo rm er b y the reco g n itio n o f cultural m ed iatio n as the b asic fram e w o rk for the e xp erien ce o f space, b u t it is d iffe re n t in its d ecid ed ly greater em phasis on the question - to invoke today's m antra - of race, class, and gender, se n sitiv ity to issu es o f pow er and sym bo lic violen ce as w e ll as the politics o f represen tation.
W h at, th en , u n ite s b o th d isc ip lin e s after the cu ltural tu rn ? T he link seem s to be the rejection o f th ose d efin ition s o f culture th at tre a t it as the product o f an intellectual elite, the recognition o f its positionality, the situ ation o f it w ith in lo cal param eters, research into p op ular culture, an e m p h asis on cultural pluralism , and the id ea th at culture is a b attlefield . For exam p le, Peter Jackson , one sch olar asso ciate d w ith cu ltural geography, d efin es culture in a m an n er cle arly b o rro w ed from B ritish cultural stu d ies, as “a dom ain in w h ich econo m ic and p olitical con tradiction s are co n tested and resolved,”27 although o f course, as he im m e d ia te ly adds, it c a n n o t be reduced to th o se econo m ic and p o litical con tradiction s. T h e fu n dam en tal qu estio n p o se d b y the n e w cu ltural ge o gra p h y o f h o w culture len d s m ean in g to p laces and sp ace s also ap p lies to litera ry p ractices and research.
The flow o f cultural and geographical concepts into literary research leads, m eanw hile, to the next reconfigurations - to literary geography being more open th an it once w a s to the “p o sitio n a l” d im en sio n s o f lite ra ry texts. A s m uch as literary geography in the Polish context is com m only thought to be an auxiliary area for the research o f the spatial location and activity o f liter
ary life,28 other con ceptions e xist w ithin, for exam ple, A n gloph one literary geography. B eginn ing w ith the obvious, that is, research into the interaction betw een literary representations o f authentic geographical places and those
26 Chris Philo, "M ore W ords, M ore W ords, R eflection s on th e «Cultural Turn» and Human G e ography,” in Cultural Turns/ Geographical Turns: Perspectives on Cultural Geography, ed. Ian Cook, e t al. (Upper Sad d le River: Prentice Hall, 2000). For a co m p re h e n siv e introduction to th e p ro b lem atics o f cultural geo g ra p h y s e e Mike Crang's Cultural Geography (London, N ew York: R outledge, 1998).
27 Peter Jackson, M aps o f Meaning: An Introduction to Cultural Geography (London: Unwin Hyman Ltd, 1989), 1.
28 A m o n g st th e n ew er w o rk s see , for exam ple, Jow ita Kęcińska's Geografia życia literackiego na Pomorzu (Słupsk: In stytu t Kaszubski, 2003). NB: for th e sake o f precision in distin
guishing b etw een th e fields, it m ay indeed be b ette r to refer to this, a s Kęcińska does, as
"geograph y o f literary life.”
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O F S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. . 1 7 7
places,29 and continuing on to such tasks as situating literature in global co n texts. The anthology Geographies o f Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces gives a n um ber o f diverse exam ples o f literary geograph y after the cultural term , reading m odernism after the topographical turn. The rationale for the recon
figuration o f m odernism in term s o f geography and cultural criticism , say the editors o f that volum e, is the fact that our situation in the world, as w ell as our conceptions o f hom e, w ork, travel, inform ation, as w ell as the cultural id en ti
ties th at em erge from those, are the object o f radical change.30 T h at change applies equally to m od ern ism in literature, w h ich should b e review ed from the perspective o f colonial history, at the very least.
A w onderful and inspiring exam ple in Poland o f literary geography is D or
ota Kolodziejczyk's work, w hich com bines an analysis o f the n ew spatial im agination in Anglophone literature w ith the categories of cultural geography.31 W hat is m ore, it sets in m o tio n and d islocates sp atia l m etaph ors, m akin g use, for exam ple, o f Foucault's heterotopias in order to describe postcolonial identity:
Instead of the universalizing historicism of postcolonialism , he proposes a differentiating cartography of subjectivity in which the situating of the subject, its positionality, its internal tension between movement (m igra
tion, travel, uprooting) and staying in place (making a home, establishing roots) show s identity as a heterotopia: a place w here several different, often incom patible or m utually unfam iliar spaces. Using the definition of heterotopias from strictly spatial categories to categories o f identity has a revolutionary effect - it shows the inadequacy of the dichotomy of self/other, indispensable to the analytical goals in constructing a coherent identity but casting the danger of crisis and inward inconsistency safely onto the outside.32
29 Peter Brooker and A n drew Thacker, "Introduction: Locating th e M odern,” in Geographies o f Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces, ed. Peter Brooker and A ndrew Thacker (Rout- ledge: London, N ew York 2005), 2.
30 S e e for exam ple Jeri Joh n son 's "Literary G eograph y: Joyce, W oolf and th e City,” in The Blackwell City Reader, ed. G ary Bridge and Soph ie W atson (M elbourne: Blackw ell 2002).
31 Dorota Kołodziejczyk, "A ntropologiczne fab u lacje - hybryda, tłu m aczen ie, p rzynależn ość w e w sp ó łc z e sn e j pow ieści anglojęzycznej,” in O jczyzny słowa. Narracyjne wym iary kul
tury, ed. W ojciech J. Burszta, W aldem ar Kuligowski (Poznań: Biblioteka Telgte, 2002);
Dorota Kołodziejczyk, "Kolonialne kontury, glob alne przem ieszczen ia. Nowa w yobraźnia przestrzen n a w literaturze i teorii kultury,” Czas Kultury 2 (2002); Dorota Kołodziejczyk,
"T raw ersem przez glob: studia postkolonialne i teoria globalizacji,” Er(r)go 1 (2004).
32 Kołodziejczyk, "T raw ersem przez glob: studia postkolonialne i teoria globalizacji,” 21.
178 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
W hat is N ew in Theories o f Space?
The cu ltural re o rie n tatio n o f both d iscip lin e s re v e a ls th e ir m u ltip le and com p lex con n ection s to p ro ce sse s tran sfo rm in g culture both at a m acro- and a m icro -level - am ongst w h ich m ight be m entioned globalization, the hybridization o f cultures, the developm ent o f new m edia and new com m uni
cation technologies, tourism , ecology, and the environm ental crisis. Theories o f these processes and phenom ena have provided a n e w set o f questions as w e ll as an sw ers, b u t above all, th e y have led to n e w con ception s o f space.
Sim plifying som ewhat, contem porary thought on space after the cultural turn is characterized by the follow ing tendencies:
1. the chiasm atic understanding o f the relationship b etw een space on the one hand and language, literature, and culture on the other;
2. a v ie w o f space that is not essentialist, but rather dynam ic - space as v a ri
able configurations or tran sition al spaces, n on -places;
3. com bination o f spatiality w ith tem porality;
4. a return o f the category o f place, and w ith it the accentuation o f the local and regional, as w ell as other (gender, ethnic, class, cultural) param eters of the scholar, w riter, or artistic practices, in addition to the problem atizing o f local-global oppositions, connected w ith the above;
5. p articular in terest in hybrid spaces, heterotopias, and borderlands;
6. a shift o f perspective from ontology to ideology, from m im esis to the p rag
m atics o f pow er over space, from u n iversal m ythification to sym bolic v io lence, from the poetics o f space to the politics o f place;
7. the idea that literature perform atively invokes, creates, and lends m eaning to space.
The ch iasm atic u n d erstan d in g o f the relatio n sh ip b etw e e n space and language has b ee n m o st aptly form ulated b y E w a R ew ers in her b ook Język i przestrzeń w poststrukturalistycznej filozofii kultury [Language and Space in Poststruc
turalist Cultural Philosophy] w hich w as, incidentally, the harbinger o f the spatial turn in Polish hum anities. The textualization o f space and the spatialization o f discourse as tw o in separable and m utu ally in flu encing pro cesses had as their goal above all the dism antling “the relationship, established in the trad i
tion, especially the philosophical tradition, but im m easurably m ore com plex, b etw een language and space, logos and logosphere, text and environm ent, speech and khora.’’33
If som ething new m ight be added to these findings, it is w orth noting those critics w ho testify to the lim itations o f the “cultural” and anthropocentric con
ception o f space, these critics appearing, am ong other places, in ecocriticism .
33 Ewa Rew ers, Język i przestrzeń w poststrukturalistycznej filozofii kultury (Poznań:
W yd aw nictw o N aukow e 1996), 8.
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. . 1 7 9
Secondly, it is also w orth nothing that the current understanding o f language points m ore and m ore frequently to its ideological and political dim ension.34 One o f the localizations (and dislocations) o f culture consists in the fact that there is no w a y to p o in t up essen tialist, u n iv ersal con ceptions and d e fin i
tions o f space and place.35 It is thus w orthw hile to recall T im Edensor's book National Identity, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life, extrem ely valuable not only in term s o f its original characterization o f the eponym ous issue, but also b e cause it is particularly representative for contem porary thought on space and place. It takes into account above all the fact that both our conceptualizations o f space, as w e ll as our cultural spatial practices, including th ose th at come from the sphere o f every life, are a d y n a m i c c o n f i g u r a t i o n undergoing ceaseless transform ations. Edensor does not ask, in other w ords, w h at space is, and he does not com e up w ith any “th eory” o f space, but in draw ing on d i
verse cultural experiences, he does show places as constellations o f variables.
Edensor does em phasize that at the level o f everyday experiences, o f equal im portance is the setting o f that experience w ith in the w orld o f culture (elite and popular), ideology, id eas, and im m e rsio n in p re-reflexiv e and som atic experience. The ability to perceive and to w eave into the scholarly narrative th at private experience, th at appreciation o f a child's p erception o f places, w h ich outlines th at p rim al, n o t y e t p ragm atic, b u t en tertain in g m ap o f the space o f the everyday, allow s the discourse o f contem porary th eory to attain an im p o rtan t counterpoint here. In a w ord, E d en son un derstan ds space as a dynam ic configuration o f ideology, everyday life, and sensuality. 36
A sign ifican t feature o f current spatial research is also its tyin g together spatiality w ith temporality, geography w ith history. This w as how M ichel Fou
cault w as already view in g heterotopias: “H eterotopias are m ost often linked to slices in tim e - w hich is to say that th ey open onto w h at m ight be term ed, for the sake o f sym m etry, heterochronies.”3? From a different perspective h is
to ricity w as set in space b y Pierre N ora w h en he created the con ception o f
34 S e e am o n g o th ers bell hooks' "C h o o sin g th e M argin a s a S p a ce o f Radical O p en n ess,” in From Yearnings: Race, Gender, and Cutural Politics (Brooklyn, NY: South End Press, 1989).
35 Peter Brooker, for exam ple, d o es not defin e place or s p a c e in his G lossary, placing them positionally in w ith differen t co n te m p o rary th eo ries. Peter Brooker, A Glossary o f Cultural Theory (London: Arnold, 2002).
36 Tim Edensor, N ational Identity, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life (N ew York: Berg Publish
ers, 2002). This ty p e o f thinking a b o u t s p a c e s and p laces derives, a t le a st in part, from sp ecific d e velo p m en ts in British cultural stu d ies, w hich a fte r Raym ond W illiam s a cce p t th e broad definition o f culture as "lifestyle.”
37 M ichel Foucault, "O f O ther S p a c e s,” in Architecture/M ouvem ent/Continuite March (1984).
English translation by Jay M iskow iec.
18
o m e m o r y a n d p l a c eplaces o f m em ory (lieux de mémoire). In the social sciences, m eanw hile, David H arvey recognized tim espace com pression as a quality specific to p ostm od ern culture. A lso notew orthy is research on “geohistory,” o f w hich, in Poland, a terrific exam ple is the w ork developed by art historian Piotr Piotrow ski.38
In d iscussing the return o f place in contem porary theories, w e m ust first, o f course, recall the crisis o f the traditional concept o f the place, its erosion, disappearance, or depreciation. U su ally the phenom enon o f placelessness, to use Edw ard Relph's term , is linked to m odernizing processes, w ith societal and econom ic tran sform ation s on the one h and and, on the other, a notion o f n atio n m argin alized b y lo cal and reg io n al values. T he v isu a l testim o n y to those u n iversalist pretensions o f m odernization w as clearly architecture's Internation al Style, w hile further developm ent only strengthen ed m obility (and thus the absence o f belonging to a place) as w ell as the hom ogenization o f the landscape, as Edw ard Relph believes. The problem o f place erosion a f
fects num erous cultural phenom ena significant in superm odernity, according to M arc A u gé.39 H is b ran d o f n o n -p lace s (n on-lieu x) calls attention to the transitive character o f contem porary spaces, the tran sient spheres o f airports and train stations, shopping m alls and am usem ent parks.
But if one w ish ed to address the return o f place now, em phasis w ould be placed on questions o f locality - though it ought to be pointed out at once that this is a locality after the spatial turn, and therefore one undergoing d isloca
tion, reoriented, set in m otion, and understood positionally, and thus in rela
tion prim arily to global processes. Their m utual entanglem ent is em phasized, of course, by theories of glocalization, Doreen M assey's “global sense o f place,”
or A rju n A ppadurai's “glob al production o f locality.”
Nor is it difficult to discern that the spatial turn has been directed particu
larly at certain places on the w orld m ap. A t border regions, sites o f subordina
tion, ancient m etropolises - that is, at wherever space is subject to circulation, dislocations, and sym bolic violence. These are seconded b y theories o f the h y
bridization o f culture and identity, Edw ard Said's “real-an d -im agin ed space,”
G loria A nzaldúa's “n e w m estiza,” and H om i B habha's “third space,” am ong others. A ll o f these dem onstrate the im portance o f th ese frontier territories for con tem porary culture, as w e ll as the im portance o f n e w con ceptualiza
tio n s o f in dividu al and collective identity. O f course, it is difficult to d e te r
m ine to w hat extent the interest in border space is the effect o f contem porary
38 Piotr Piotrow ski, "Drang nach W esten ,” in Sztuka według polityki. Od „M elancholii" do „P as
ji" (Kraków: U niversitas, 2007).
39 M arc A ugé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology o f Superm odernity (London: Ver
so, 1992).
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O f S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. l8l
theories o f hybridization, creolization, and m estization,40 and to w hat extent th ose con cepts originate in the exp erien ces o f such spaces. T h at question w ould, in any case, be a poorly form ulated one - better, ye t again, w ould be the vantage point o f circulation.
The q uestion o f the tran sitio n from poetics o f space to p o litics o f place deserves special attention, because it is the m ost likely to spark controversy.
A s self-evid en t as that tran sition is in the discourse o f the h um an ities in the w est, politics and id eo lo gy rem ain gh osts o f the Polish h um an ities. O n the other hand, the em beddedness o f literary representations o f space in pow er is a self-evident problem , though it ought to be added at once that it is unusually susceptible to trivialization and over-application.
For the purposes o f cu lturally-oriented literary research, w e can d istin guish several “field s” show ing the effects o f a politics o f place. Firstly, politics of place is a linguistic issue, as w ell as an issue of lexicon and o f the question of to w hat extent pow er over space is articulated in language. A sim ple exam ple is: border or frontier? R ecovered territories or territories obtained?41
Secondly, politics o f place is a sphere o f im agology, or, to em ploy Edw ard Said's term , im aginative geography, and thus a question o f the significance o f the literary represen tation o f space in creating an imaginarium im portant for an im age and/or constructing ethnic, national, social, and gender identities.
A n exam ple could be the problem o f pow er in space from the perspective of gender - from the ideology o f the h earth42 through the dom inance o f public space over private space to the subjugation o f the fem ale b ody in a university building that used to be a barracks.
Third, politics o f place can also definitely be spoken about in a m uch more ru dim en tary way, th at is, in term s o f the creation o f a com m u nity b ased on sim ilar sp atial and geo p o litical exp erien ces. A n exam ple o f th is m igh t be K atharina Raabe's and M on ika Szn ajderm an's Znikająca Europa [Europe Van
ishing], w hich constructs an alternative (and im aginative at once) geography
40 S e e Adam Nobis, "K ategoria hybrydyzacji kultury w dyskusjach , sporach i koncepcjach globalizacji,” in Przegląd Kulturoznawczy 3 (2007), on issu es o f hybridization.
41 S u g g e stiv e ex a m p les o f this ty p e o f linguistic "politics o f p lac e” are provided in th e volum e Kresy - dekonstrukcja, ed. K rzysztof Trybuś, e t al. (Poznań: W ydaw nictw o Poznańskiego Tow arzystw a P rzyjaciół Nauk, 2007). [Translator's n ote: th e qu estio n s in Polish are of
"k resy” or "pogran icza,” and "ziem ie o d zysk an e” or "uzyskan e.” T h e se definitions refer specifically to historical issu e s o f Polish geograph y, th e form er to th e ea stern region s of w h a t is n ow Poland and w h a t is n ow Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, and th e latter refer to fo rm erly Prussian lands, now Polish (again)].
42 S e e Lora Rom ero, "B io-Political R esistan ce in D om estic Ideology and Uncle Tom 's Cabin,”
Am erican Literary History, 1 (4) Winter (1989): 715-734.
182 m e m o r y a n d p l a c e
o f an “other” forgotten European com m unity. It also reveals the perform ative dim ension o f literary representations, creating a new m ap o f Europe.
In Lieu o f Predictions
It can be reasonably expected that the issue of literary space w ill in the near future occupy a place as privileged in poetics as have once - quite recently, in fact - the problem atic o f narrator and narrative situation, the problematic of time, the problem atic o f the m orphology of plot or - very recently indeed - the problem atic of dialogic and dialogism .43
Janusz Sław iński's article, w hich contains the above citation, w as published in 19 7 8 and w a s the in trod u ction to a volum e entitled Przestrzeń i literatura [Space and Literature]. R eadin g b oth h is article and the re st o f the collection alm ost forty years later is conducive to com parisons - historical but not ex
clu sively - as w e ll as to a certain am ou n t o f skepticism . In fact, after that reading, m aking predications on the future o f the topographical turn in Polish literary studies w ould be risky b usiness. N onetheless, I do consider the new areas o f research and spatial concepts valuable in the pursuit o f Polish litera
ture b ecause - and here I quote Sław iń ski again - “the need for an exchange o f languages o f study along w ith its attendant reform ulations o f w ell-kn ow n topics, diagn oses, and th eses is also one o f the m o st b asic driving forces in w ork in the hum anities.”44
T h at typ e o f re v isio n and n e w language is un d ou b ted ly required b y the question o f a regionalism that in Poland has b een reduced to a n ostalgic and escapist variant o f “local patriotism ,” w hile o f course the ideological project o f a hom ogenous n ational culture effacing regional differences and local h isto ries is a problem that both pre- and p ost-d ates W orld W ar II. The concept of an open (and sim ultaneously critical) regionalism developed in B oru ssia did not b ecom e w id e ly kn ow n , b u t it could serve as a startin g poin t for further research. Thus it is perhaps local narratives that are m ost in need o f exam in a
tion from a n ew perspective.45
43 Janusz Sław iń ski, "Przestrzeń w literaturze: ele m en ta rn e rozróżnienia i w stę p n e o cz y w isto ści,” in Przestrzeń i literatura, ed. M ichał G łow iński and A leksandra O kopień- Sław iń ska (W rocław : Zakład N arodow y im. O ssolińskich, 1978), 9.
44 Ibid., 10.
45 S e e Inga Iw asiów , "Inna uległo ść. Trudne początki szczeciń skiej lokalności,” in Narracje po końcu (wielkich) narracji, ed. Hanna G osk (W arszawa: Dom W ydaw niczy ELIPSA, 2007).
P O L i T i C S A N D P O E T i C S O F S P A C E E L Ż B I E T A R Y B I C K A F R O M A P O E T I C S O F S P A C E T O A P O L I T I C S .. . 1 8 3
W ithin the Polish tradition, it w ould be in teresting to take another look at the relationship b etw een literature and geography - obviously in corporat
in g the n in eteen th - cen tu ry w o rk o f W in ce n ty Pol. Sim ilarly, geograph ical discourse analysis and its literary aspects m ight also be incorporated into the analysis o f anthropological w ritin g (e.g., the “painterly geography” o f W acław N ałkow ski).
The question o f the relationship b etw een subject and place (or non-place) is also w orth considering in the n ew topographical lexicon. Spatial categories actually act now as the param eters for com prehending individual subjectivity (hom o geographicus, the atopic entity), as w e ll as collective, local, regional, and cosm opolitan identities.
In any case, the horizon for geopoetics seem s w ide open, all the m ore so since, as I h ave attem pted to dem onstrate, although the term its e lf - to p o graphical/spatial turn - is not really u sed in Poland, m uch existing Polish re search could, in fact, be related to it. These initiatives, scattered over different disciplines, also show that the n ew spatial im aginary is not only the object of research, but also a fact pertainin g to the theoretical and critical aw areness of the scholar, im portant because it leads to a reconfiguration o f the hum anities as a w h ole. The in spiratio n o f the sp atial turn does, h ow ever, require local sen sitivity and global openness.
