tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3854365304195678528..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Blurred BoundariesCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-5489570144658972362007-08-10T07:37:00.000-04:002007-08-10T07:37:00.000-04:00I was rereading Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology t...I was rereading Sara Ahmed's <EM>Queer Phenomenology</EM> this morning for a different project, and these lines struck me for their resonance with this discussion:<BR/><BR/>"Orientations, then, are about the intimacy of bodies and their dwelling places ... The work of inhabitance involves orientation devices; ways of extending bodies into spaces that create new folds, or new contours of what we could call livable or inhabitable space. If orientation is about making the strange familiar through the extension of bodies into space, then the disorientation occurs when that extension fails. Or we could say some spaces extend certain bodies and simply do not leave room for others." (9, 11)<BR/><BR/>What a different system Asa and Heather have described: not one that excludes others, but rather one that through trajectories vagrant or all too wide ends up bringing the others and selves into very uncomfortable proximity.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71567784667338409602007-08-09T23:32:00.000-04:002007-08-09T23:32:00.000-04:00Joining the discussion a bit late, and also withou...Joining the discussion a bit late, and also without having read Blurton (orals reading is in high gear, I fear, and my copy has yet to come in at Butler) I wanted to jump in to comment on something you said, ASM -- <I>I think you are likely right that the audience would not have such a map in mind, and did not really think of the world in terms of top-view maps, as we do. Rather, geography, at least locally, would have consisted of landmarks and topography, which are rarely as linear and organized as modern maps.</I><BR/><BR/>First -- it's a fascinating exercise, as we've discussed via email awhile back, attempting to map the wonders. Back when I was writing a paper on the topic (something I one day hope to get past the seminar paper format and into print), I found a term used <I>Landscapes of Desire</I> (Overing/Osborne) quite helpful. <BR/><BR/>In their introduction they use what they call a “conceptual map” to plot the epic poem Beowulf. “Conceptual maps,” they explain, “usually offer the point of view of someone who dwells in a place and projects his or her idea of this home place as opposed to other places.” By their definition, conceptual maps project a relationship, one of a specified home-place to the wider world around it. <BR/><BR/>I think, in a sense (and I'm sorry for the disjointedness of this comment, I was trying to cut and paste part of my introduction and then revise to make it a suitable comment), it's precisely the "conceptual geography" that's at stake. Your post raises an interesting question as regards that idea of a conceptual geography -- how can any concept of a "human identity" survive in a world where what should be "out there" or "far away" is only "in a certain land" which remains -- moreover, what happens when your monsters and wonders are, as in Wonders of the East, not only constantly referred to as "people" (I don't have the precise wording) but are also "thought to be men"? <BR/><BR/>I think I'm only rephrasing your questions -- but perhaps the distinction of conceptual geography might be a helpful one. Fascinating discussion....MKHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11773335756057041042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-59765194545756348712007-08-09T18:35:00.000-04:002007-08-09T18:35:00.000-04:00JJC -- Yes, I'd agree absolutely that this exercis...JJC -- Yes, I'd agree absolutely that this exercise is "risky." I will be using this self-consciously absurd mapping of the journey in the new book to show that Anglo-Saxons didn't conceive of geography in these terms, at all. I think you are likely right that the audience would not have such a map in mind, and did not really think of the world in terms of top-view maps, as we do. Rather, geography, at least locally, would have consisted of landmarks and topography, which are rarely as linear and organized as modern maps.ASMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11435943511202521086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-56237712285521744132007-08-09T09:34:00.000-04:002007-08-09T09:34:00.000-04:00Asa, that map alone is reason enough to praise you...Asa, that map alone is reason enough to praise you once again. The crazy trajectories, the teleportative travels, the disorienting emplacement ... well, the choice of vivid pink to mark it all seems exactly right. The map thus brought to life reminds me of the much later, insane cartographies of <A HREF="http://wuhuwuh.gotdns.com/main.php?g2_itemId=7652" REL="nofollow">Opicinus de Canistris</A>, where borders are likewise violated and maps are indistinguishable from bodies.<BR/><BR/>And <EM> that</EM> makes me wonder: how risky is to to employ, say, the Cotton Map as a heuristic for organizing the imagined world? That is, do you think that the audience for Andreas or Wonders of the East would carry such a geographical organization in their heads already, or is geography more likely be the creation of the text they encounter rather than an exteriorized knowledge?<BR/><BR/>Really what I'm underscoring is my ignorance when it comes to early mappaemundi like the Cotton Map, and my wondering if they are one cultural intervention among many to organize world space, or can even the earliest one be seen as encoding an established world view? Would a reader have to have the Cotton Map at hand in order to recreate the trajectories you have superimposed upon it? Or is reading Wonders of the East the textual analogue of Opicinus, a kind of uninhibited play with place and meaning, one that generates space more than traverses a pre-existing geography?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com