Perspectives on Mobility [1 ed.] 9789401209649, 9789042037083

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Perspectives on Mobility

Spatial Practices

An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature

17

General Editors:

Christoph Ehland (Universität Paderborn) Chris Thurgar-Dawson (Teesside University) Editorial Board:

Christine Berberich Catrin Gersdorf Jan Hewitt Peter Merriman Ralph Pordzik Merle Tönnies Founding Editors:

Robert Burden Stephan Kohl

Perspectives on Mobility

Edited by

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISSN: 1871-689X ISBN: 978-90-420-3708-3 E-book ISBN: 978-94-012-0964-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013 Printed in the Netherlands

The Spatial Practices Series The series Spatial Practices belongs to the topographical turn in cultural studies and aims to publish new work in the study of spaces and places which have been appropriated for cultural meanings: symbolic landscapes and urban places which have specific cultural meanings that construct, maintain, and circulate myths of a unified national or regional culture and their histories, or whose visible ironies deconstruct those myths. Taking up the lessons of the new cultural geography, papers are invited which attempt to build bridges between the disciplines of cultural history, literary and cultural studies, and geography. Spatial Practices aims to promote a new interdisciplinary kind of cultural history drawing on constructivist approaches to questions RIFXOWXUHDQGLGHQWLW\WKDWLQVLVWWKDWFXOWXUDO³UHDOLWLHV´DUHWKHHIIHFW of discourses, but also that cultural objects and their histories and geographies are read as texts, with formal and generic rules, tropes and topographies. Robert Burden Stephan Kohl Founding Editors

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland Movement and Mobility: An Introduction

9

11

Part One Movement and the Making of Space Christian Huck The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective

31

Renate Brosch Mapping Movement: Reimagining Cartography in The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

49

Chris Thurgar-Dawson Reality Mining and Meaningful Motion Patterns: A Critical GIS for Literary Studies

69

Klaus Benesch 3ODFHVRI%HJLQQLQJ7RSRJUDSK\DQG5HQHZDOLQ7KRUHDX¶V Walden DQG'RXJODVV¶VNarrative

89

Anna Beck Subjective Spaces - Spatial Subjectivities: Movement and 0RELOLW\LQ0RQLFD$OL¶V Brick Lane DQG,DQ0F(ZDQ¶V Saturday

107

Part Two Conceptual Spaces Birgit Neumann Patterns of Global Mobility in Early Modern English Literature: Fictions of the Sea

127

Philipp Erchinger Mobility, Movement, Method and Life in G.H. Lewes

151

Peter Merriman Unpicking Time-Space: Towards New Apprehensions of Movement-Space

177

Sven Strasen, Timo Lothmann, and Peter Wenzel On the Move: Discursive Integration of New Mobility Technologies through Poetry

193

Timo Lothmann and Antje Schumacher Automobility in Poetry: A Conceptual Metaphor Approach

213

Notes on Contributors Index

227 231

Acknowledgements This volume of essays has long been in the making. It combines contributions from two conferences which focused on different aspects of the cultural phenomena of movement and mobility. The editors are therefore particularly grateful to the contributors for their patience and their collaborative spirit. Our thanks go out to Stephan Kohl and Robert Burden who initiated the series of Spatial Practices and whose pioneer work has set us an inspiring example. Furthermore, we want to express our gratitude to the many diligent minds and hands that have helped in the process of editing this book. Naturally, we must thank Elke Demant at Würzburg University who has been as treasured a support as always. At Paderborn University we must thank Cornelia Wächter for her ceaseless work on the book as well as Christoph Singer and Roy Pinkerton for their help. Special thanks go to our team of research students who dedicated their time and effort to proofreading the typescript: Christina Da Silva Ferreira, Andreas Galler, Marian Krüger, Thoralf Lohse and Eliza Richter. Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

Movement and Mobility: An Introduction Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland 1. Literature, Culture, and Mobility Literature as cultural discourse has courted PRELOLW\ )URP +RPHU¶V DQG9LUJLO¶VGHSLFWLRQVRIWKHLUKHURHV¶QRPDGLFZDQGHULQJVDIWHUWKH Trojan wars through the adventures of the medieval knight-errants to the travellers of modern times, movement and mobility have been constitutive elements of story-telling. Protagonists have been travelling, wandering, running, chasing, roving, roaming, shifting, drifting through fictional and less fictional universes. Their movements have made them travellers, wanderers, runners, explorers, adventurers, rovers, trekkers, tourists. Despite its constitutive role in literature and culture, movement represents a challenge for literary and cultural studies. Theories of movement and concepts of mobility come from many disciplines. Both philosophy and the natural sciences have tried conceptualising its HVVHQFH ,Q IDFW +HLVHQEHUJ¶V XQFHUWDLQW\ Srinciple in quantum mechanics acknowledges a paradox of movement similar to that which concerned Aristotle in his philosophy. The problem is summarised by Norbert Herold: Bewegung im eigentlichen Sinne ist nicht definierbar oder begrifflich exakt faßbar. Charakteristisch für jeden Versuch einer Begriffsbestimmung ist die Paradoxie, daß einerseits feste Grenzen gezogen werden sollen, andererseits aber Bewegung gerade Vollzug und somit Verneinung jedes Statischen ist. Movement in the original sense cannot be defined or exactly categorised. Any attempt at conceptualising it is characterised by the paradox that on the one hand movement requires the establishment of fixed margins but on the other it is simply transformation and thus denies any static explanation. (1973: 209; my translation)

12

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

,I$ULVWRWOH¶VPHWDSK\VLFVforce him to introduce the idea of the Prime Mover to come to terms with the fact that movement means fundamental changeability, Heisenberg in the 1920s concedes that it is impossible to establish exactly both the position and the momentum of any one particle at one and the same time. However, realising the conceptual problem does not mean giving up on movement. On the FRQWUDU\ +HUROG IRUPXODWHV WKLV DV DQ LPSHUDWLYH ³'HU %HZHJXQJVbegriff muss sich gleichsam bewegen, um dem Bewegungsvollzug QDFK]XNRPPHQ´ µThe concept of movement must move itself in order to compUHKHQGPRYHPHQW¶ (1973: 209; my translation). There can be little doubt that this applies to cultural conceptions of movement as much as to scientific or philosophical ones. Even if it holds true that the representation of movement in literature does not need to be too worried about scientific limitations ± in VFLHQFHILFWLRQWKHµZDUSGULYH¶RUµEHDPLQJ¶RYHUFRPHVWKHSK\VLFDO restrictions on movement ± the fundamental relationship between movement and space which physics and philosophy have pointed out also defines discursive premises for literary discourse. The findings of science and philosophy may not relate directly to the problems encountered in the literary realm; in fact, it may appear merely playful to draw a connection here, but their experimental results can alert one to significant aspects of the representation of movement in literature by ZD\ RI DQDORJ\ +HLVHQEHUJ¶V TXDQWXP PHFKDQLFDO QRWLRQ RI WKH µHLWKHURU¶ ZLWK UHJDUG WR WKH UHODWLRQVKLS RI VSDFH DQG PRYHPHQW LI applied cautiously to the realm of cultural and literary concepts of mobility, accentuates a similarly inevitable differentiation in the literary realm: even in literature the depiction of movement cannot be realised without having a bearing on the simultaneous portrayal of the environment in which this movement takes place. Often this may boil down to a question of narrative focus, but at times writers may embrace the problem and depict the consecutive relationship between space and movement. Famously, E.M. Forster in +RZDUG¶V (QG (1910) represents the effects of mechanised mobility on his protagoQLVWV¶SHUFHSWLRQRIWKHVXUURXQGLQJVWDWLFZRUOG The chauffeur could not travel as quickly as he had hoped, for the Great North Road was full of Easter traffic. But he went quite quick enough for Margaret, a poor-spirited creature, who had chickens and children on the brain.

Movement and Mobility

13

³7KH\¶UH DOO ULJKW´ VDLG 0U :LOFR[ ³7KH\¶OO OHDUQ ± like the swallows and the telegraph-ZLUHV´ ³D@QQLKLODWLRQRIVSDFH DQGWLPH´ $WWKHVDPHWLPHLWLOOXVWUDWHVWKHHQWURSLFTXDOity of the experience of mobility which was not only aesthetically embraced by modernism but willingly accepted as an essential part, if not actually an obligation, of the modernist project in the arts (cf. Kohl 2000: 144). As the above example shows, experience resulting from movement oscillates between the fascination for ever more accelerated forms of mobility and the fear of its alienating and distorting effects on the perception of the world (cf. Kohl 2000: 141). Since writers have begun to explore the experiential dimension of movement their texts have opened up to the essential changeability and instability of µPRELOH ZRUOGV¶ FI 8UU\ ). In this sense literature reflects and processes the transformative force of movement on the perception of the world and is part of the broader cultural discourses of mobility. In fact, literature in its representation of mobility simultaneously aims both to mirror and to grasp the phenomenon. In doing so it highlights its experiential dimension and offers a language for what is a practice as well as a force that impacts on human understanding. In the recent past the growing attention which the phenomena of movement and mobility have received from a variety of academic disciplines has also served to inform and enhance their understanding in literary and cultural studies. Scholars in these fields have therefore increasingly been able to focus more closely on the interdependence between cultural, social and ecological layers of meaning in the literary representation of mobility. In this context specialised accounts of

14

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

technological transportation systems, such as the railway (cf. Schivelbusch 1986) or the automobile (cf. Couley and McLaren 2009), have been as much of interest as studies concerned with movement and the environment (cf. Guggenheim and Söderström 2010) or society at large (cf. Kaufmann 2002). The interdisciplinary echo of these approaches can be heard in recent contributions on the topic in literary and cultural studies (cf. Berensmeyer, Ehland and Grabes 2012; Urry 2011). However, rather than turning this into an exhaustive introduction to the wide-ranging theories on movement and mobility it may be more useful to step in medias res and begin with a SURPLQHQWH[DPSOHRIPRGHUQLW\¶VIDVFLQDWLRQZLWKVSHHGDQGPRYHment.

2. Movement and Modernity: Night Mail Night Mail (1936),1 %DVLO:ULJKWDQG+DUU\:DWW¶VHSLFFRQWULEXWLRQ to the British documentary movement of the 1930s, epitomises the astounding semantic radiance of movement and mobility and serves to LOOXVWUDWHVWKHIDFWWKDW³WKHYLVXDOVSHFWDFOHRIPRELOLW\>@RIIHUVQHZ perception [...] and inspires new ways of knowing and experiencing WKH ZRUOG´ 6SDOGLQJ    This concise film of only 23.2 minutes depicts the operations of the postal delivery service between /RQGRQ DQG 6FRWODQG (YHQ LI IURP WRGD\¶V VWDQGSRLQW WKH ORJLVWLF organisation of the General Post Office (GPO) may not precisely seem WKHPRVWKHURLFRIVXEMHFWPDWWHUVWKHILOP¶VVWDWXVDs a classic relies on the fact that it succeeds in celebrating a sublime modernist example of techno-human machinery. Speed and movement become its unifying principles incorporating man and place in its semantic processes. Ian Aitken summarises the modernist fascination of the film as follows:

1

The official screen credits of Night Mail are notoriously controversial and confusing about the directors and producers of the film: e.g. despite the fact that the official credits identify Basil Wright and Harry Watt as the producers of the film, they actually were the directors of the film whereas John Grierson produced it (cf. Anthony 2007: 96). Alberto Cavalcanti had the sound direction assisted by W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten.

Movement and Mobility

15

The film also channels representations of modern technology and institutional practice away from an account of the industry of postal delivery, and into a study of the train as a powerful symbol of modernity, in its natural element speeding into the countryside. (2003: n.p.)

Paradigmatically, Night Mail displays a modernist ideology of mobility. It combines the enthusiastic experimentalism of a young art form with the fascination for technology and movement. Thus shots of movement and moving shots are in swift exchange. This is already obvious at the beginning of the film: after a departure notice has been communicated through the Euston telegraph office, the postal train is shown from the air on its way out of London. A voiceover begins to explain the operation: 8:30 PM. Weekdays and Sundays. The Down Postal Special leaves Euston for Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The Postal Special is a fast express but it carries no passengers. It is manned by forty Post Office workers. Half a million letters are sorted, picked up or dropped at full speed during the night or carried on for the morning delivery in Scotland. (Night Mail 1936)

$VWKHFDPHUDµIOLHV¶DORQJZLWKWKHWUDLQRQLWVOLQHDUFRXUVHWKURXJK the meandering and crisscrossing rail tracks the technical air of John *ULHUVRQ¶VQDUUDWLRQVHHPVWRFRLQFLGHZHOOZLWKWKHXQHUULQJIRUZDUG movement of the machine in a world seemingly made of steel, steam, and speed. 7KH ILOP¶V DHVWKHWLFV DQG LWV QDUUDWLYH Whrust depend on a pointed contrast between the depiction of static and dynamic elements. This contrast, however, does not simply create a differentiation beWZHHQ VWDVLV DQG PRYHPHQW WKH ILOP¶V DHVWKHWLFV UHO\ RQ D FDUHIXO montage of scenes set in the rural and industrial landscapes through which the train moves and on captions that represent the motion of the PDFKLQHLWVHOI7KHYLHZHU¶VH[SHULHQFHRIERWKWKHODQGVFDSHVDQGWKH WUDLQUHO\YLWDOO\RQWKHFDPHUD¶VFKDQJLQJIRFDOLVDWLRQWKHILOPDOWHUnates between stationary shots of the moving train against the scenery, a moving camera perspective that follows the train (frequently from the air), sideways glances from the train at the passing landscape or forward views along the side of the train or the engine. Where stationary perspectives emphasise motion in space and turn the viewer into a passive witness, moving perspectives subordinate the landscape to the

16

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

velocity of the train but serve to draw the viewer actively into the experience of mobility (cf. Schubert 2009: 76ff.). With regard to the strategies by which the train is embedded in its spatial context one can see that the ILOP¶V dramaturgy gradually shifts: if at the beginning the train is predominantly seen as an object that passes through places along the railway line, such scenes are later more frequently replaced by shots in which the landscape is seen from the train itself. Though subtle and slow, the change in the way train and landscape are related to each other is significant. The early scenes tend to show the train approaching and then passing a specific place such as a signal box, a plate-laying site, or a farmyard by the line. In these cases the location shown is allowed its own spatial identity through which the passing train is subsequently envisioned. Later, the perspective is turned around and places are often only seen from the train as it passes by. In these scenes the intervention of the narrative voice is necessary to attach names to the swiftly passing scenery and thereby provide spatial identity. The abstract logic of this is compelling: at the beginning the train still represents a moving object in a stationary environment. Increasingly, however, the subject/object order is inversed and the maFKLQH¶V YHORFLW\ LV HQGRZHG ZLWK new ontological status so that the landscape becomes the momentary object of its ceaseless progression. ,Q3DXO9LULOLR¶VWHUPLQRORJ\WKLVPHDQVWKDWWKHILOPVKLIWVLWVDWWHQtion from the stroboscopic principle of perception to the dromoscopic principle and thus is levelling out the immediate contexts of the moving train (cf. Virilio 2007: 105-06). As the film increasingly urges the YLHZHUWRH[SORUHLWVVXEMHFWPDWWHUWKURXJKWKHWUDLQ¶VPRYHPHQWRQH can see that the representation of speed dominates the ways the environment can be depicted and perceived. With regard to the representation of place the impact of this shift is profound and has a direct bearing on the argument that unfolds RQYDULRXVOHYHOVRIWKHILOP¶VVSDWLDOVHPDQWLFV7KH*32ILOPXnit, which was established by John Grierson in 1933, aimed at propagating the national significance of the postal services. In Night Mail the WUDLQ¶V MRXUQH\ H[HPSOLILHV DV $LWNHQ SXWV LW ³QDWLRQDO FRPPXQLFDWLRQDQGLQWHJUDWLRQ´2003: n.p.). Ranging from London to Scotland the operation encompasses the whole country and thus stresses the national significance of the route. Implicitly, this emphasis under-

Movement and Mobility

17

mines a binary opposition between the metropolitan centre(s) and the periphery. In fact London is almost ignored in the film; it is only hinted at by the name of a station (Euston) and the depiction of a nondescript office as well as a meandering system of rail tracks. This, however, does not automatically mean that the attention is focused more closely on the regional aspect, as is sometimes inferred.2 Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen may be presented towards the end of the film with picture postcard images in the early morning sun, but RQH FDQQRW LJQRUH WKH IDFW WKDW LW LV WKH WUDLQ¶V PRYHPHQW DQG URXWH which is centre stage. Movement becomes the string that holds together the locations on the passage north just like the pearls of a QHFNODFH7KHWUDLQ¶VMRXUQH\GUDZVDQLPSOLFLWPDSRIGHSHQGHQFLHV and hierarchies. On closer observation, however, it becomes clear that these hierarchies are not established among the places along the route but between movement and the perception of place itself. Movement is egalitarian and even democratising in its effect3 but it dictates the mode of representation. Often places are identified only by the odd name attached to what is mostly an interchangeable imagery of a rural or industrial µDQ\ZKHUH¶'HVSLWHDOOSURIHVVHGIDFWXDOLW\WKHGLUHFWRUV¶EUXVKZRUN as it were, is often impressionist rather than realist. Onomatopoetic elements need to provide individuality where the passing train blurs distinctions, as for example in the case of the sound of hammering when the train passes the shadowy outlines of what is identified by the narrator as the machine shops of Preston, or a siren that stands in for the mines at Wigan, or a clanging noise that is meant to signify the steelworks of Warrington. Long lists of connecting trains are given by the narrator as the express train sweeps through the countryside or stops at logistic cen2

3

In this context Aitken assuPHV ³[a]lthough the narrative is concerned with issues of national communication and integration, the thematic centre of the film is more closely linked to representations of the regional environment. This elevation of the regional above the national is reinforced by the portrayal of the railway as separate from tKH PHWURSROLWDQ HQYLURQPHQW >«@´ (2003: n.p.). :LWK UHJDUG WR 9LULOLR¶V DQDO\VLV RI WKH ZLGHU VRFLDO DQG SROLWLFDO LPSDFW RI WHFKQRORJLHVRIPRELOLW\6FRWW0F4XLUHLQIHUVWKDW³WKHSROLWLFDOUevolution of PRGHUQLW\ FRXOG LWVHOI EH XQGHUVWRRG LQ WHUPV RI LQFUHDVLQJ PRELOL]DWLRQ´ (2000: 144).

18

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

tres such as Crewe. For instance an aerial shot of the train is given UHJLRQDO VLJQLILFDQFH E\ WKH QDUUDWRU ³7UDLQV IURP /LQFROQVKLUH DQG Derbyshire ± connect at Tamworth. Trains from Warwickshire and Leicestershire ± FRQQHFW DW 5XJE\´ Night Mail 1936). Although the scarcity and technicality of the information correlates with the minimalist aesthetics of the swift cuts and contrasting scenes in the film, the commentary fulfils an important function: technical information compensates for the generaOHIIHFWRIDOLHQDWLRQFUHDWHGE\WKHWUDLQ¶V progression. The fascination of Night Mail lies in its ability to blot out rather than to create distinctions. The overall aesthetics of the documentary rely on the conjunction between pictures, sounds and words for its objective of demonVWUDWLQJWKHWUDLQ¶VPRYHPHQWDVDVSDWLDOSUDFWLFHRILQGXVWULDORUJDQLsation. At no point does this become more vividly clear than in the famous last minutes of Night Mail where pictures, soundtrack and commentary form an astonishing panaesthetic union. Here the film makes condensed use of the representational techniques by which train and landscape have previously been related to each other. From stationary shots of the moving train to the view from the engine of the passing scenery the film frames the final stage of the journey in a surge of pictures, sounds and words. Accompanied by the sound of the whistling wind a long sweeping turn of the camera shows a Scottish glen when in the distance the cloud of steam from the train becomes visible. As the camera slowly follows the lines of barren hills, the GUXPVRI%HQMDPLQ%ULWWHQ¶VVRXQGWUDFNLPLWDWHWKHSRXQGLQJQRLVHRI the locomotive slowly climbing up the pass. When a moment later :+$XGHQ¶VSRHPPDNHVLWVDSSHDUDQFH, the marching rhythm of its KHURLF FRXSOHWV PLPLFV WKH µFOLFNHW\-FODFN¶ RI WKH WUDLQ¶V ZKHHOV RQ the joints in the rails (cf. Watt 2007: 7): This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. (Auden 1976: 1-4)

The poem focuses the attention on the letter as the object at the centre of the whole techno-human operation. But it is its rhythm which is the most compelling and absorbing aspect of the poetic intervention in the documentary: movement becomes words and words movement. The

Movement and Mobility

19

music and the poetry accompany a montage of short cuts and varying perspectives which depicts the last stages of the journey. As if in anticipation of its final destination the camera now frequently takes the GULYHU¶VSHUVSHFWLYHDQGORRNVIRUZDUGDORQJWKHERLOHURIWKHHQJLQH Almost symbolically, however, the view of what lies ahead is largely obscured by the steam and smoke of the locomotive so that hardly anything other than movement itself is shown. Other shots show the ODQGVFDSHWKURXJKZKLFKWKHWUDLQPRYHVDQGLOOXVWUDWHZKDW$XGHQ¶V poem talks about. It is ironic that the poem, which was originally an afterthought in the process of making the film (cf. Morrison 2007: 1) and commissioned to add something human 4 to its rather technocratic DLU LV DFWXDOO\ VHHQ QRW RQO\ µWR EORW RXW¶ WKH ZRUNHUV DV SDUW RI WKH RSHUDWLRQ EXW DOVR DFFRUGLQJ WR 5DLQHU (PLJ LQ $XGHQ¶V OLQHV ³WKH machine seems to dominate completely the tiny world of the human EHLQJV´(PLJ 7KHDQWKURSRPRUSKLFSUHVHQFHRIWKHWUDLQ subordinates the natural environment and its inhabitants to its progress: Birds turn their head as she approaches Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches. Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes, But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes. (Auden 1976: 11-16)

Once again one can observe the inversion of the subject/object order noted earlier. Auden will eventually shift his attention to the hopes and dreams of a sleeping country waiting for the letters the postal express is bringing to Scotland. Metrically, however, the listing of types of letters ± ³/HWWHUVRIWKDQNVOHWWHUVIURPEDQks,/Letters of joy IURPWKHJLUODQGWKHER\>@´$XGHQ76: 25-26) ± integrates with the driving rhythm mimicking the noise of the train and thus ± in essence ± is shown as part of the machinery. This and the fact that the poem closes with imagining ³D TXLFNHQLQJ RI WKH KHDUW´ ZKHQ WKH postman delivers the letter is, on closer inspection, disconcerting since 4

Morrison relates that Grierson objected to an early version of the film and FRPPLVVLRQHG$XGHQ¶VSRHPIRULWVILQDOVHTXHQFHWRFRPSHQVDWHIRUZKDWKH saw to be a lack of human emotion (2007: 3).

20

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

in the final instance human emotion has become dependent on the complex yet prosaic procedures of the night train.5 The sheer fascination of technology, speed and movement means that man is only a subordinate factor, compared with the showcasing of the precision of the logistical operation. The inclusion of the workers heightens rather than counters this impression since it shows man as if he were a naturalised component in a well-oiled industrial system. As they turn their KHDGVLQWKHLUDFNQRZOHGJPHQWRIWKHWUDLQ¶VSURJUHVVLRQWKLV VWDQGV as an iconic marker for this notion. Night Mail exemplifies in a nutshell that the challenge of mobility lies not only in its technical detail but in its wider cultural and WKXVVHPDQWLFUDGLDQFH7KHILOP¶VVWDWXVDVDQDUFKHW\SHRIWKHGRFXmentary movement rests with the fact that the movement of the train EHFRPHVWKHXQLI\LQJSULQFLSOHEHKLQG:DWW¶VSLFWXUHV$XGHQ¶VSRHP DQG%ULWWHQ¶VPXVLF6 $QWKRQ\¶VGHVFULSWLRQRIWKHILQDOVWDJHVRIWKH film as D³FDFRSKRQ\´), however, alerts one to the fact that what is generally praised as a panaesthetic union is actually produced by inconsistencies and tensions. The aspect of the human element in the documentary is a case in point. John Grierson, as producer of Night Mail and the defining force behind the GPO Film Unit, aimed in his work at social education (cf. Anthony 2007: 10-11). His utilitarianism deILQHVWKHILOP¶VLQWHUHVWLQWKHZRUNHUVRQWKHH[SUHVVWUDLQ,Q the finale his missionary zeal is taken up by the human touch of :DWW¶V SLFWXUHV RI WKH ODERXULQJ WUDLQ GULYHUV 7KLV VRUW RI ³IXQGDPHQWDOURPDQWLFLVP´ KRZHYHUZDVDSWWRFODVKZLWK the avantgarde techniques of Wright and Alberto Cavalcanti: &DYDOFDQWLDQG:ULJKWVDZWKHEOHQGRIWKHWUDLQGULYHU¶VHIIRUWZLWK dawn-soaked images of lush Scottish countryside somewhat differ5

6

(PLJ REVHUYHV ³7KH VHFXULW\ RI EHORQJLQJ VR FHQWUDO LQ $XGHQ¶V SRHPV LV here dependent on mechanistic forces. Even though the machinery is apparently the harmless night train to Scotland, this introduces an inkling of a dehumanised aesthetic that is, indeed, not very different from the superhuman PHFKDQLVWLFLPDJHVXVHGE\FODVVLFDOPRGHUQLVWV´  'RQDOG 0LWFKHOO ZULWHV DERXW %ULWWHQ¶V FROODERUDWLRQ RQ WKH SURMHFW ³Night Mail (1936) has established itself as a locus classicus, on account of both $XGHQ¶V PDUYHOORXV WH[W DQG %ULWWHQ¶V LQYHQWLRQ RI µUDLOZD\ VRXQG¶ DOPRVW indistinguishable from reality but in fact produced by an eccentric ensemble RI µLQVWUXPHQWV¶ LQFOXGLQJ VDQGSDSHU DQG D ZLQG PDFKLQH >@´  Preface).

Movement and Mobility

21

ently. For them, the wet-eyed emotion of Watt and Grierson was just another element to be superimposed in a delirious rush of speed, steam, sound effects and contemporary poetry. They were not attempting to identify with working-class life but to employ modernist techniques to mythologise it. (Anthony 2007: 51)

Given this aesthetic rift it is astonishing that Night Mail is not torn DSDUWE\LW4XLWHRQWKHFRQWUDU\WKHWHQVLRQEHWZHHQWKHILOP¶VVRFLDO engagement and its avant-gardism produces those subtle fissures that would define its success. In fact, as these different aesthetic concepts are made subsidiary to the celebration of technology one encounters a modernity that embraces mobility as one of its defining paradigms. Although the pictures of the steam train are today seasoned with a pinch of nostalgia the fascination of Night Mail is still alive. The film documents the fact that the project of locomotion is largely facilitated by the work and effort of engineers and technicians. At the same time, however, it is a prime example of the fact that the fascination of speed and movement requires and fosters diverse strategies of cultural repreVHQWDWLRQ:KHQRQHFRQVLGHUVWKHIDFWWKDWRQHRIWKHILOP¶VGLUHFWRUV Watt, admitted that for the making of Night Mail WKH\ KDG WR XVH ³D mixWXUH RI IDNH DQG UHDOLW\´ (2007: 7) it becomes clear that the technology of mobility is subject to the writing of the text of modernity. In Night Mail it is movement itself that provides the aesthetic grammar for this writing process. Mobility studies have come a long way in their endeavour to account for the cultural radiance of movement. Be it the invention of ships, trains, cars, or the virtualisation of mobility by communication technologies, any new form of mobility has always become a testingground for the cultural modes available for its representation. AlWKRXJK UDLOZD\V DUH µWKH QLQHWHHQWK FHQWXU\¶V FHQWUDO V\PERO RI PRGHUQLW\¶FI&DUWHU DQGPD\VHHPVOLJKWO\GDWHGIURPWRGD\¶V perspective the train shares the experiential paradigm of all mobility. Hans-Ulrich Seeber has pinpointed the perceptive challenge which the experience of movement means to the poetic imagination: ³3O|W]OLFKkeit, Verfremdung, Fragmentierung, Entgrenzung, Einebnung von +LHUDUFKLHQ5HLKXQJGLVSDUDWHU(LQGUFNH´ µSuddenness, alienation, fragmentation, delimitation, levelling of hierarchies, sequentialisation RI GLVSDUDWH LPSUHVVLRQV¶ (Seeber 1989: 430; my translation). Although Seeber speaks about the nineteenth century there can be little

22

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

doubt that the acceleration of the means of transportation has aggravated this challenge rather than erased it. Studying mobility, as has been stated at the outset, means first of all coming to terms with the changeable, the fleeting, the alienating LQRQH¶VXQGHUVWDQGLQJRIFXOWXUHDQGVRFLHW\2QHKas to accept that PRYHPHQW DV D FRQGLWLRQ RI PRGHUQLW\ LQHYLWDEO\ µPHWDPRUSKRVHs DSSHDUDQFHV¶FI9LULOLR). With regard to this literature as part of the cultural discourse of modernity has long been a record and a medium of reflection of processes of modernisation and/as mobility.

3. The Essays The contributors to this volume reflect in their essays the essential transformative capacity of movement as they explore the cultural impact mobility has had on the human experience and production of space. Given the extent of the temporal and cultural territory covered by the essays, the book approaches its subject matter in two parts. The FRQWULEXWLRQV LQ WKH ILUVW SDUW ³Movement and the Making of Space´ look at the representational strategies by which movement and mobility function in literary texts. The essays in the second part of the ERRN ³&RQFHSWXDO 6SDFHV´ H[SORUH PHWDSKRULFDO FRQFHSWLRQV RI movement. Reaching as far back in time as the early modern encounter with the sea in Elizabethan England and as far into the present as postmodern subversions of the geographical practice of mapping, the contributions in both parts share an acute eye for the literary and cultural representations of mobility as a force that shapes and facilitates the image and understanding of a mobilised world. In fact, since fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes began roaming the streets and back alleys of London and other cities in the second half of the nineteenth century the detective has become the epitome of mobile man. &KULVWLDQ+XFNLQYHVWLJDWHVLQKLVHVVD\³7KH7RWDO0RELOLW\RI WKH'LPH1RYHO'HWHFWLYH´WKHSKHQRPHQRQRIWKHGHWHFWLYHQRYHOLQ the wider context of social and cultural mobility. In particular he focuses on the relationship between the mobility of a medium and the simultaneous mobilisation of its subject matter. Observing the paradigmatic simultaneity between the rise of the novel and the improve-

Movement and Mobility

23

ments of the means of transportation in eighteenth-century Britain he then crosses the Atlantic and shows how the expansion of the railway system in nineteenth-century America also fostered the success of the American Dime Novel. One of its more prominent protagonists, Nick Carter, is shaped by the mobility of the medium for which he is conceived as well as by the requirements of plots for which movement is a necessity. If Nick Carter as a pulp fiction protagonist is the embodiment of a strategic featurelessness in and for an increasingly mobilised world, the spatial practices which Renate Brosch investigates seemingly attempt the opposite since they create rather than dissolve features. In ³0DSSLQJ 0RYHPHnt: Reimagining Cartography in The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet´ Brosch discusses cultural discourses of mapping LQ 5HLI /DUVHQ¶V SRSXODU QRYHO ,Q WKLV WH[W WKH SURWDJRQLVW¶V PDSfilled notebooks reveal mapping as a cultural practice that is subversive and individualist rather than rational and ordering. In this way the experiential dimension of space and mobility are foregrounded and positivist accumulations of geographical meaning questioned. Chris Thurgar-'DZVRQ¶V FKDSWHU ³5HDOLW\ 0LQLQJ DQG 0HDQingful Motion Patterns: A Critical GIS for Literary Studies´UDLVHVWKH question of how the rapid development of new technologies that RUJDQLVHDQGJXLGHRQH¶VVWHSVLQVSDFHVXFKDV*36WUDFNLQJGHYLFHV on tablet computers, smartphones etc., inevitably influence concepts of movement and mobility. With regard to this he discusses the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for the analysis of literary texts. In doing so he points out that the rise of such techniques as geoparsing and georeferencing will leave traces in the narrative representation and visualisation of space and movement. In this context he not only reviews and contemplates the impact of digital cartography on the human experience of movement in space but also investigates its bearing on the perception of the spatial practices as depicted in literature. Looking at recent novels by Don DeLillo and Ian McEwan, Thurgar-Dawson argues for what he calls a geo-smart reading practice. Such an approach entails a critical study of the metaphors used in the context of GIS analysis and pays close attention to the spatial sensitivities visible in fictional topographies. The semantics of geographical space also feature in Klaus %HQHVFK¶V GLVFXVVLRQ RI WKH V\PEROLF DOLJQPHQWV EHWZHHQ QDWXUDO

24

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

places and American national mythologies. In his FRQWULEXWLRQ³3ODFHV of BeginniQJ 7RSRJUDSK\ DQG 5HQHZDO LQ 7KRUHDX¶V Walden and 'RXJODVV¶VNarrative´ he looks at literary constructions of place during the American Renaissance which are meant to mobilise, as it were, the national imagination. In this respect the essay discusses how specific localities such as +HQU\ 7KRUHDX¶V :DOGHQ 3RQG RU WKH ZRRGV along TuFNDKRH &UHHN RU &KHVDSHDNH %D\ LQ )UHGHULFN 'RXJODVV¶V autobiographical writings are rendered into spaces of individual and national beginnings. Benesch points to the subtle ambiguity in what KDVFRPHWREHFDOOHGµDQWL-JHRJUDSKLHV¶LQWKHZD\7KRUHDXFRQQHFWV the fixtures of particular places with the abstract notion of a progressive and regenerative newness. Where Benesch focuses on a rather concealed and indirect form of mobility $QQD %HFN¶V FKDSWHU ³Subjective Spaces - Spatial 6XEMHFWLYLWLHV 0RYHPHQW DQG 0RELOLW\ LQ 0RQLFD $OL¶V Brick Lane DQG ,DQ 0F(ZDQ¶V Saturday´ LV FRQFHUQHG ZLWK WKH VLJQLILFDQFH RI movement for constructions of space and subjectivity in the literary VSDFH $V RSSRVHG WR VWDWLF QRWLRQV RI WKH µVHWWLQJ¶ %HFN DSSOLHV relational and dynamic concepWLRQV RI VSDFH WR 0RQLFD $OL¶V Brick Lane DQG ,DQ 0F(ZDQ¶V Saturday in order to capture how the character-subjects are shaped by but also shape culturally charged VSDFHV 6SDFH WKH VXEMHFW¶V PRYHPHQW LQ VSDFH DQG WKH VXEMHFW¶V mobility, i.e. the ability to move, are examined in relation to each other on the level of story as well as discourse. Beck uses the two exemplary London novels in order to analyse charDFWHUV¶SHUFHSWLRQRI space, their ability and willingness to move and their actual movements as they are enabled and/or restricted by their cultural environment within the parameters of class, race and gender. The second part of the book opens with BirgLW1HXPDQQ¶VFRQtribution ³Patterns of Global Mobility in Early Modern English Literature: Fictions of the Sea.´ Drawing upon works by Shakespeare, Marvell, Milton and others, Neumann explores the rhetorical strategies by which the actual experience of maritime mobility is incorporated in a semantic of colonialism. In this context she reads seventeenth-century metaphors of the sea in their ideologically charged function in the process of naturalising and legitimising the phenomenon of globalised trade and colonial expansion.

Movement and Mobility

25

The metaphorical side of spatial practices is also the concern of Philipp (UFKLQJHU¶V HVVD\³Mobility, Movement, Method and Life in G.H. Lewes´ZKLFK explores Victorian conceptualisations of mobility DVPDQLIHVWHGLQ*+/HZHV¶VZRUN(UFKLQJHULGHQWLILHVLQ/HZHV¶V Studies in Animal Life and his Sea-Side Studies a form of epistemological writing that escapes the establishment of fixed taxonomies and reflects an inherent mobility. Erchinger traces the mobility emerging from the contact between the naturalist and his often elusive subject, a mobility that results in a perpetually changing representation of the 9LFWRULDQ UHVHDUFKHU KLPVHOI 7KH DUWLFOH LGHQWLILHV /HZHV¶V H[SHULmental philosophy as being responsible for the spatial and epistemological mobility found in his writing. In ³8QSLFNLQJ 7LPH-Space: Towards New Apprehensions of Movement-6SDFH´ 3HWHU 0HUULPDQ FKDOOHQJHV WKH SUHGRPLQDQFH RI conceptions of space which read it as inextricably intertwined with the experience of time and which postulate both as the prime ontological parameters. Firstly, 0HUULPDQ¶V essay provides a succinct overview of prevalent time-space and space-time conceptions in Anglophone geography, such as /HIHEYUH¶V H[DPLQDWLRQ RI WLPH VSDFH DQG HQHUJ\ 'RUHHQ0DVVH\¶Vtime-space RU1LJHO7KULIW¶VTimeSpace. The second chapter moves beyond geographic time-space theory to examine timespace conceptions emerging from post-structuralist work, challenging the a priori status of time-space in the mapping of events. Deleuze, for instance, albeit being one of the ³theorists of timespace par excellence,´ DGGLWLRQDOO\ UHFRJQLVHG WKH UHOHYDQFH RI ³affective atmospheres, rhythmic movements and emergent sensibilities of the world [...]´0HUULPDQ183). Merriman takes the cue from these supplementary aspects of the ontology of time-space to propose movement-space as a more comprehensive model. The essay ³On the Move: Discursive Integration of New Mobility Technologies through Poetry´ by Sven Strasen, Timo Lothmann and Peter Wenzel builds a bridge between the abstract conceptions of mobility and its literary representation. Using conceptual metaphor theory, following Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, and Mark Turner, as a base, the collaborators examine the effect of the increasing means and scope of mobility on human cognition ± an effect which transcends those of other types of technical innovation. Taking their examples from a selection of poems, the authors study the shared images or topoi that were utilised and modified in order to

26

Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph Ehland

comprehend the wealth of new physical, sensory experiences connected to and deriving from the railway, the automobile, and the aeroplane. More specifically, the authors trace the three main stages of the cultural assimilation of these new mobility technologies. In considering the function of metaphors for the cultural production of meaning, Strasen, Lothmann and Wenzel moreover point out the significance of ambiguity inherent in metaphor. It can allow metaphors based on the same source domains to be deployed to argue for diametrically opposed causes, for instance serving to illustrate either the benefits or the problems of technical progress. The final essay continues the interest of the preceding contributors in the metaphorical potential of movement. Timo Lothmann and Antje Schumacher examine the cultural processing of advances in mobility and the experience of mobility by applying conceptual metaphor theory to a selection of poems by Filippo Marinetti and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Paradigmatically, the examination of these texts serves to illustrate how metaphors constitute key cultural mechanisms of making sense of new experiences and phenomena - in this case new possibilities and experiences of (auto)mobility. The concept further helps to illuminate the transformation of space by technological advances and the resultant revolution of mobility. It thus DOLJQV LWVHOI ZLWK 9LULOLR¶V QRWLRQ RI WKH WUDQVIRUPDWLYH RU HYHQ µPHWDPRUSKLF¶SRWHQWLDORImobility.

Movement and Mobility

27

Works Cited

Primary References Auden, Wynstan Hugh (1976  ³1LJKW 0DLO´ 1935. Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. London: Faber and Faber. 113-4. Forster, Edward Morgan (2000): Howards End. 1910. London: Penguin.

Secondary References Aitken, Ian (2003): Night Mail (1936). 17 Sep. 2012. . Anthony, Scott (2007): Night Mail. London: British Film Institute. Berensmeyer, Ingo, Christoph Ehland and Herbert Grabes (eds.) (2012): Mobility in English and American Literature and Culture, 1500-1900. REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Tübingen: Narr. Carter, Ian (2001): Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Couley, Jim, and Arlene Tigar McLaren (eds.) (2009): Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Auto-Mobility. Farnham: Ashgate. Emig, Rainer (2000): W.H. Auden: Towards a Postmodern Poetics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Guggenheim, Michael, and Ola Söderström (eds.) (2010): Re-Shaping Cities: How global mobility transforms architecture and urban form. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Herold, Norbert (1973): ³%HZHJXQJ´Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, Bd. 1. Eds. Hermann Krings, Hans Michael Baumgarnter and Christoph Wild. München: Kösel. 209-20. Kaufmann, Vincent (2002): Re-Thinking Mobility: Contemporary Sociology. Farnham: Ashgate. Kohl, Stephan (2000): ³(LJHQ]HLWXQG(LJHQKHLPDW=XU.RPSHQVDWLRQGHUPRGHUQLsierten Zeit im britischen Roman des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts.´ Modernisierung und Literatur: Festschrift für Hans Ulrich Seeber zum 60. Geburtstag. Eds. Walter Göbel, Stephan Kohl and Hubert Zapf. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 139-48. McQuire 6FRWW   ³%OLQGHG E\ WKH 6SHHG RI /LJKW.´ Paul Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond. Ed. John Armitage. London: Sage. 143-60. Mitchell, Donald (2000): Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936. 1981. London: Faber and Faber. Morrison %ODNH   ³1LJKW 0DLO´ Night Mail. London: British Film Institute. 1-4.

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Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (1986): The Railway Journey: The Industrialisation of Time and Space in the 19th Century. 1977. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Schubert, Christoph (2009): Raumkonstitution durch Sprache: Blickführung, Bildschemata und Kohäsion in Deskriptionssequenzen englischer Texte. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Seeber, Hans Ulrich. 1989. "'The Country Swims with Motion:' Poetische Eisenbahnfahrten in England." Literatur in einer industriellen Kultur. Eds. Götz Grossklaus and Eberhard Lämmert. Stuttgart: Cotta: 407-30. Spalding 6WHYHQ '   ³.LOOHU 7UDLQV DQG 7KULOOLQJ 7UDYHOV 7KH Spectacle of 0RELOLW\ LQ =ROD DQG 3URXVW´, in: Steven D. Spalding and Benjamin Fraser (eds.): Trains, Literature, and Culture: Reading and Writing the Rails. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Urry, John (2011): Mobilities. 2007. Cambridge: Polity Press. Virilio, Paul (2007): Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy. 1984. London: Continuum. Watt, Harry (20  ³'RQ¶W /RRN DW WKH &DPHUD´ Night Mail. Ed. Blake Morrison. London: British Film Institute. 5-9.

PART ONE MOVEMENT AND THE MAKING OF SPACE

The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective Christian Huck Abstract The text seeks to examine the relation between writing, travel and the figure of the detective. The first part looks back at the origins of narrative prose writing in England and claims that the rise of the novel is closely entangled with improvements in transportation. In the second part, a similar connection is found between the establishment of the railway system in the USA and the rise of the dime novel. Finally, the figure of the detective becomes a prosopopoeia for the total mobility of the dime novel. Key names and concepts: Nick Carter, novels, dime novels, transportation, travel, money, detective fiction.

1. Britain and the Novel After travelling through Britain in the 1770s, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg thought he had found the reason why England had given birth to the new literary genre of the novel ± and why Germany failed in producing anything alike: Unsere Lebensart ist nun so simpel geworden, und all unsere Gebräuche so wenig mystisch; unsere Städte sind meistens so klein, das Land so offen, alles ist sich so einfältig treu, daß ein Mann, der einen deutschen Roman schreiben will, fast nicht weiß, wie er Leute zusammen bringen, oder Knoten schürzen soll. Our way of life has become so simple now, and all our customs so free of mystery; most of the time, our cities are so small, the country so wide, everything stays so much the same, that a man who wants to write a German novel hardly knows how to bring people together, or tie knots. (1817: 56)

In Germany, Lichtenberg reasons, the lack of urbanity and the sparsely populated provinces do not allow for those heterogeneous

32

Christian Huck

encounters between strangers that set in motion the contingent plot of a novel. The novel, here, is less a medium for individual self-reflection within the close confines of the mind, but a public space where the double contingency of modern life can be observed. In a modern, mobile society people have to find ways of dealing with others whose origins, thoughts and habits they do not know ± and the novel helps the reader to come to terms with this modern condition. For Lichtenberg, the lack of experienceable contingency in Germany, and consequently the lack of possible plotlines, is determined, first of all, by a lack of spatial mobility: )U¶VHUVWHZHQQHLQ0lGFKHQPLWLKUHP /LHEKDEHUDXV /RQGRQGHV Abends durchgeht, so kann sie in Frankreich sein, ehe der Vater aufwacht, oder in Schottland, ehe er mit seinen Verwandten zum Schluß kommt; daher ein Schriftsteller weder Feen, noch Zauberer, noch Talismane nöthig hat, um die Verliebten in Sicherheit zu bringen; denn wenn er sie nur bis nach Charingcroß oder Hydepark-Corner bringen kann, so sind sie [...] sicher [...]. Hingegen in Deutschland, wenn auch der Vater den Verlust seiner Tochter erst den dritten Tag gewahr würde, wenn er nur weiß, daß sie mit der Post gegangen ist, so kann er sie zu Pferde immer noch auf der dritten Station wieder kriegen. Firstly, when a maid and her lover run away from London in the evening, they could be in France before the father awakes, or in Scotland before their relatives understand what happened; therefore, a writer needs neither fairies, nor magicians nor any lucky charms to bring the lovers to safety; because if he can only get them to Charing &URVVRU+\GHSDUN&RUQHUWKH\DUH>«@VDIH>«@,Q*HUPDQ\KRZever, even if the father would only realize the loss of his daughter on the third day, it would be enough to know that they took the stagecoach in order to catch them by horse at the third station. (59)

While in Germany, apparently, everyone stayed close to home and everything the same, it is the superior English system of stagecoaches and other forms of transportation that, according to Lichtenberg, opened the space of and for the novel and that made possible those unforeseen disappearances and encounters which are necessary for a plot to evolve. Where German writers still had to resort to otherworldly fairies and magic to bring about change, British writers could rely on new technologies and networks of transport to represent contingency.

The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective

33

On the basis of this account by Lichtenberg, Deidre Shauna Lynch (2005), in her recent revision of the emergence of the novel in eighteenth-century Britain, has emphasised that not only the protagonists of the novels were constantly on the road (Tom Jones, Roderick Random, Moll Flanders etc.), but that the books themselves became mobile entities, distributed through the postal system and carried around in pockets and bags. The emergence of the novel, she claims, is connected to the emergence of a mobile society: people travel and meet yet-unknown people and situations ± and if people do not travel, books bring yet-unknown characters and situations to wherever people are. In novels, and through novels, people could learn how to come to terms with strangers and other unforeseeable situations. Books were surely not the only, and probably not the most important goods circulating through Britain in the eighteenth century. Improvements in transportation, through the construction of canals, turnpike trusts and similar devices, played an important role in the process of industrialisation, bringing raw materials to manufacturers and goods to consumers: even more than people, goods were travelling. Novel writers were very much alert to these developments, and they even used these new consumer goods as protagonists for their novels. These so-called it-narratives featured waistcoats, pins, corkVFUHZV FRDFKHV DQG VLPLODU JRRGV DV WKHLU FHQWUDO ³FKDUDFWHUV´ (Blackwell 2007: 10). The goods changed hands frequently and were put to new uses over and over again; novels report of these ever-new encounters and processes of adaptation to new circumstances. Most importantly, goods are present when humans feel unobserved, and FRQVHTXHQWO\ WKH\ FDQ WUDQVFHQG WKH ³VRFLDO LQWUDQVSDUHQF\´ +H\O 2004: 258) that is typical for a modern society blighted with double contingency: goods can go where no human would be allowed, e.g. private closets, and are allowed to overhear conversations that where meant to remain private. It-narratives gave a narrative form to the new mobility of modern society ± and they managed to overcome the contingency that comes with this new mobility. However, not only human protagonists were still limited in their mobility (geographical, social and otherwise), but also the mobility of a waistcoat or some other consumer good was restricted due to barriers erected by gender, class, race, religion, profession and politics, as well as regionally differing modes and customs, and finally also individual preferences. But while the mobility of people and goods might

34

Christian Huck

have been restricted in various ways, there was, however, one thing that could move freely and unrestricted through social and geographical space, one thing that no one would reject, nowhere ± one thing WKDW ZRXOG EH LQYLWHG WR RQH¶V KRPH E\ HYHU\RQH DQG ORYHG (YHU\ rank, every gender, creed or ethnicity in every British region accepted coins. Since the establishment of the Bank of England at the end of the seventeenth century, money was able go everywhere, visit everyone, and be exchanged for everything. The mobility of a coin, consequently, was almost total. Consequently, the coin could report from every home and every street in Britain and beyRQG7KH³$GYHQWXUHV RID*XLQHD´DVWKH\DUHGHVFULEHGLQDPLG-eighteenth-century novel, therefore, are without any limits, as the title claims: Chrysal: Or, the Adventures of a Guinea. Wherein Are Exhibited Views of Several Striking Scenes, with Curious and Interesting Anecdotes of the Most Noted Persons in Every Rank of Life, Whose Hands It Passed through, in America, England, Holland, Germany and Portugal (Johnstone 1760). With money, mobility (geographical, social and otherwise) becomes total. However, whereas printed money became more and more widespread, printed stories about money did never catch on. Novels, it appears, could not match the total mobility of money. Or could they?

2. The USA and the Dime Novel About a hundred years after Lichtenberg had travelled through Britain by coach, the USA established its own system of transportation. In 1869, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific completed the first transcontinental railway link at Promontory Summit. From then on, the whole of the USA was connected by a network of railroads. While the old, British means of transportation had enabled new storylines, as I explained above, the new, American mobility made reading a necesVDU\ DFWLYLW\ ³7UDYHOHUV RI WKH HLJKWHHQWK FHQWXU\´ :ROIJDQJ Schivelbusch wrote in his paradigmatic study of the cultural impact of WKH UDLOURDG ³IRUPHG VPDOO JURXSV WKDW IRU WKH GXUDWLRQ of the journey, were characterisHGE\LQWHQVLYHFRQYHUVDWLRQDQGLQWHUDFWLRQ>«@ The travellers in the train compartment did not know what to do with HDFK RWKHU DQG UHDGLQJ EHFDPH D VXUURJDWH IRU >«@ FRPPXQLFDWLRQ >«@´

The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective

35

Once again, a change in transport technology coincides with the emergence of a new literary genre. If the stagecoach had brought about the novel in Britain, then the railway has made possible the emergence of the dime novel in the USA. In 1860 publisher Irwin P. Beadle began issuing a series he called %HDGOH¶V'LPH1RYHOV. These were paper-covered booklets, issued at regular intervals (every two weeks or so), and numbered in sequence. (Cox 2007: ix)

7KH GLPH QRYHO¶V VXFFHVV ZDV LPPHGLDWH DQG XQSUHFHGHQWHG DV D FRQWHPSRUDU\ REVHUYHU QRWHV ³$ GLPH QRYHO LV LVVXHG HYHU\ PRQWK and the series has undoubtedly obtained greater popularity than any other series of works RIILFWLRQSXEOLVKHGLQ$PHULFD´(YHUHWW  $FFRUGLQJWRDVWXG\E\0LFKDHO'HQQLQJ³%HDGOHDQG$GDPV had published four million dime novels by 1865; sales of individual WLWOHVUDQJHGIURPWR´ 7KHGLPHQRYHOFRQsequenWO\ PHDQW ELJ PRQH\ ³1HYHU EHIRUH RU VLQFH KDV ERRN-pubOLVKLQJKHOGDODUJHUVKDUHRIWKHJURVVQDWLRQDOSURGXFW´%OHLOHU vii).1 In the late nineteenth century, when the railway had become the most dominant means of transport, literature, also, had reached the peak of its popularity: dime novels became available to almost everyone, everywhere, anytime. By the 1870s, the dime novel had become a generic term: ³3RSXODUO\ WKH WHUP KDG OLWWOH UHIHUHQFH WR WKH SULFH DW ZKLFK WKH booklets were sold, but it was applied especially to any sensational detective or blood-and-WKXQGHU QRYHO LQ SDPSKOHW IRUP´ -RKDQQVen 1950: 3). Nonetheless, the dime novel became a genre defined by its monetary and spatial availability: Technological advances in printing methods and papermaking made possible the mass production of reading material, while the development of communication and transportation systems made possible the distribution of cheap publications to newsstands in cities and towns or by subscription through the mail. (Cox 2007: ix)

Whereas in eighteenth-century Britain the stagecoach brought together people (from different regions and sections) and novels, the railway in the USA brought together migrants from all over the world and cheap, 1

Bleiler does not provide any form of prove for this claim, however.

36

Christian Huck

easy-to-read dime novels. The railway enabled circulation along its networks as much as distribution through station bookstalls. Most of DOO KRZHYHU WKH UDLOURDG EHFDPH D SODFH WR UHDG ³5HDGLQJ ZKLOH WUDYHOLQJ EHFDPH DOPRVW REOLJDWRU\´ 6FKLYHOEXVFK   FRQFOXGHV While the British novel taught its readers to imagine a possible past of an unknown vis-à-vis, the American dime novel taught its readers to forget about this past and concentrate on the future. Money became WKHGLPHQRYHO¶VPRGHOWRGRVR 2.1. The Dime The mobility of the dime novel was matched only by its eponym. Like WKH%ULWLVKµSHQQ\GUHDGIXOV¶WKHGLPHQRYHO received its name from a coin. With the Coinage Act of 1792 a national currency was estabOLVKHGLQWKH86DQGRQHVSHFLHWREHXVHGZDVWKHVRFDOOHG³GLVPHV each to be of the value of one tenth of a dollar or unit, and to contain 37 2/16 grains of pureRUJUDLQVRIVWDQGDUGVLOYHU´+LFNFR[ 1861: 328). From then on, money was to have a standard value all over the United States and could be used for every economic transaction within the USA, anyplace, anytime ± and by anyone. Money, as we all know, plays a decisive role in the formation of modern economy. Before the introduction of money, people were H[FKDQJLQJ JRRGV DQG VHUYLFHV $ORQJ WKH $PHULFDQ µIURQWLHU¶ WKLV apparently natural state based on subsistence economy and the direct exchange of goods gained a new life that had long disappeared in Europe. However, with new cities and new factories, with new ports and ships, and, most importantly, with the establishment of a railroad network, so much more and diverse goods were circulating that it, quite obviously, became less and less likely that one would find someone who has exactly that which one wants and wants what one has to give. One would, indeed, have to travel up and down the country to find the right person to exchange goods with. That this is hardly practical is obvious, and the problem of exchange in a more diversified and at the same time more connected society became the focus of a whole array of publications explaining the use and worth of money to the American public ± just at the time when the dime novel began to rise.

The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective

37

$WWKHEHJLQQLQJRIZKDWLVVRPHWLPHVFDOOHGDµ6HFRQG,QGXVWULDO 5HYROXWLRQ¶ EXW ZKLFK ZDV DW OHDVW DV PXFK D ILQDQFLDO UHYROXtion, a text simply entitled Money (1863) informs the reader: A correct appreciation of the functions of money and of the natural laws that govern it, is of vast importance to humanity, from its universal use in the exchanges of commodities and services; exchanges becoming each day more numerous and indispensable in consequence of the constantly increasing division of labor. (Moran 1863: 7)

In modern economy, only one party receives the good she or he wants ± the other party gets only money to buy what she or he wants at a later stage. However, and this is the important part, the gratification of RQH¶V QHHGV DQG ZLVKHV LV QRW RQO\ deferred in the process of exchange; more importantly, money transforms the personal relation one may have formed to a certain good ± for H[DPSOHWKURXJKRQH¶VODERur LQYHVWHGRUWKHREMHFW¶VSODFHDQGWLPHRIRULJLQ± into a multitude of possible acquisitions. In order to do so, money has to erase the differences between goods of different origins and make them comparable and exchangeable: money, consequently, is de-personalising, de-contextualising and de-historicising (cf. Luhmann 1988: 18). For a payment to open those future possibilities that compensate the seller for relinquishing a good, money is free of all connotations formerly attached to a good. Money, consequently, is open to all, irrespective of the social or regional background of the goods they are supposed to represent; money, therefore, forms the basis for a mobile modernity. At the time when the modern novel first emerged, Daniel Defoe, in his paradigmatic conduct book for the Complete English Tradesman, has ingeniously described how a new form of writing had to be found to supplement the work of money and make trans-regional and trans-communal exchange (of goods) possible. Advising on how to write a letter to a business partner, he instructs the aspiring tradesman: If any man were to ask me, what I would suppose to be a perfect style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five hundred people, all of common and various capacities, should be understood by them all. (Defoe 2007: 19)

38

Christian Huck

The dime novel, like the dime, manages exactly this: to speak to a great amount of people, all of common and various capacities, and be understood by all of them. A common language, free of the specialised lingo of organisations and function systems and understandable to migrants from various, but often low social backgrounds, is a necessary condition for the popularity ± and that means great regional and social diffusion ± of the (dime) novel. It is, however, not sufficient. The easily accessible language of popular literature can only explain why many could read these texts, not why they should decide to actually do so. The British novel invented ever-new characters from Robinson Crusoe and Pamela to David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, with which readers could identify, to make people read stories and learn how to plot life-stories. Without such innovative characters, novels found it hard to succeed. The dime novel, finally, invented an ingenious character that could be used again and again: the detective.

2.2. The Detective The it-narratives of the eighteenth century, as mentioned above, had only little success. The reason for this lack of popularity, I assume, is the fact that while they managed to achieve the mobility that is necessary for a plot, they failed in providing a character one would want to follow through various encounters. The more successful novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century managed to create characters that readers loved to follow; however, as the characters were regionally and/or socially situated, the potential readership was often limited along similar lines. And even if the characters were universally popular, their specificity meant that they could only be used once; sequels DUHUDUHO\VXFFHVVIXODVWKHFKDUDFWHU¶VSotential is usually fully realised at the end of a story. Other than money, novel characters cannot leave behind their social and geographical origins. The dime novel, however, succeeded in creating a character like a coin: a human that knows no limits, the prosopopoeia of total mobility. This character is the dime novel detective, appealing to an audience without social or regional limitations. Following the success of the free-ranging and wholly independent cowboys and adventurers of earlier tales, the detective became the most important protagonist of the dime novel until its demise towards the end of the century (Harvey

The Total Mobility of the Dime Novel Detective

39

1907: 41; Johannsen 1950: 3-4) ± when the car and the cinema started to dominate culture and transportation. The dime novel detectives not only investigate various cases of stolen money, they behave like money themselves. The adaptiveness of money, necessary for its mobility, finds its equivalent in the detecWLYH¶VPDVWHU\RIGLVJXLVH,QWKLVUHVSHFWDSDUDGLJPDWLFH[DPSOHRI the dime novel detective is Nick Carter (cf. Hoppenstand 1982: 4; Sampson 1983: 85). In what is probably his first appearance, the detective is introduced as follows: 2OG6LP&DUWHU>1LFN&DUWHU¶VIDWKHU&+@KDVPDGHWKHSK\VLFDOGHvelopment of his son one of the studies of his life. Only one of the VWXGLHV KRZHYHU «@VPLOHGZLWK JHQXLQH DSSURYDO>«@ VKRZLQJWKDW 1LFN KDG EHHQ VXFFHVVIXO LQ KLV first venture. (1892: 4)

Like the dime, the dime novel detective can go anywhere and be transformed into anyone ± barriers of language, class, race or gender do seem not to exist for money and detective. As a contemporary observer notes: He is great in disguises, and on the front page of the volumes describing his adventures are pictures of himself as he appears variously gotten up as a Chinaman, a dude, an old woman, a young man, a rural hayseed, a tough an a negro. (Bache 1893: n.p.)

Although disguises are central to most dime novels (cf. Söndgerath 1985: 196), and indeed many forms of literature, Carter is probably the first to appear almost exclusively in disguise: Nick Carter was at home when the inspector called, and he received him as he would have received no other man in the whole city of new «@$QGSUHWW\ HDUO\RQ,ZDQWHGWKHUHDGHUWRNQRZ,FDQ¶WVNLSWKHPDUJLQV (2009b: 10)

As a result, the presence of maps in the text undermines, rather than improves, an illusion of the fictional world. In terms of enabling the reader to imagine the fictional world, the novel is flat and shallow, lacking great powers of illusion. But this lack of spatial depth is probably a deliberate effect, serving to highlight its concept of mapping. Maps, because of their claim to indexical truth, make the demand on the viewer to take in as much of their content as possible at once and to distribute attention more equally than in other visual images, since in contrast to paintings or illustrative pictures, maps are supposed to be non-KLHUDUFKLFDO 7KH µPDSV¶ LQ Spivet also demand a relational reading where the relations on the material page of the book are paramount.10 Maps basically transform linear, sequential information into a two-dimensional space. An indexical spatial representation has the propensity to ignore, negate and suppress alternative relations, other than the ones presented as coterminous. Such an overemphasis on pattern, which may be cute in a novel like Spivet, may prove deceptive as a conceptXDO SUHIHUHQFH VLQFH LW FRQILUPV WKH ³UHGXF-tionist ontolRJ\RIVSDWLDOLVP´3LFNOHV 1995: 18). According to Wood, maps ask us to assent to the proposition that the things linked in the map belong WRJHWKHU WKH GHVFULSWLRQ ³VLPXOWDQHRXVO\ VWRUHV UHLILHV and projects WKHDFWRIELQGLQJ´2010: 2). To avoid this fixating effect, the various

10

Interestingly, Hallet compares the experience of multi-modality to that of global navigation systems like GPS (Global Positioning System) or dynamic electronic atlases like Google Earth. These technologies have made more or less common the integration of physical movement into the reading of visualisLQJV\VWHPVLQHYHU\GD\OLIH³:KLOHZHGULYHDFDUDQGH[SHULHQFHLWV forward movement physically and sensually as well as visually, we simultaneously make use of a topographical system that represents ourselves DQG RXU PRYHPHQW RQ WKH G\QDPLF PDS RI WKH FDU¶V QDYLJDWLRQ V\VWHP´ 6LPLODUO\ZKLOH³WKHQDUUDWRUQDUUDWHVDQGUHIOHFWVXSRQKLVPRYHPHQWVLQWKH main (verbal) text, the routes and maps in the margins allow the reader (and the narrator) to navigate the textual world of the novel by relating the QDUUDWLYHGLVFRXUVHWRWKHLQGH[LFDOLQIRUPDWLRQRIWKHPDS´Hallet 2011: 19).

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Renate Brosch

maps in Spivet contradict, elaborate and modify each other, and the dominating image is the record of mobility. Since Spivet inscribes an ongoing performance of the self into a postmodern idea of recording, mapping is associated with shifting coordinates and moving functions, records of no less than the graphic and discursive formation of subjectivity. The visual elements transform the map from a system of notation of structure to a mobile system of recording agency. In other words, the pictorial material called mapping in Spivet represents an effort to imagine identity changes which were traditionally narrated in a temporal order implying a causal order. In conceptualising maps as the record of agency, as the novel Spivet does, either the structural properties of the map are negated; or the idea of different individual phases is transferred to an atemporal spatial imaginary. Mapping in Spivet, as in our current cultural discourses, is haunted by paradox: the concept has become a duck-rabbit or Kippfigur, referring to two quite contradictory engagements with spatial representation. 7KH\HDUVVLQFHWKHVSDWLDOWXUQKDYHEHHQ³boom years for carWRJUDSKLFPHWDSKRUV´6PLWK and Katz 1993:  7KHVVDZ³DUguably the greatest explosion in mapping, and perhaps the greatest UHFRQVLGHUDWLRQRIVSDFHLQHYHU\VHQVHRIWKDWZRUG´+DOO 1993: 8). Stephen S. Hall suggested in 1993 that in answer to the spatial revolution we broaden our conception of maps and mapping (8). Since then the meaning has been expanded to include an imprecise semantic field ZKHUHWKHWHUPµPDSSLQJ¶WKULYHVRQDVZHOODVSHUSHWXDWHV³VOLSSHU\ fluid and unsWDEOH FRQFHSWXDOL]DWLRQV´ 3KLOOLSV 1997: 14).11 At the VDPH WLPH D UHVLGXH RI DQ ³DXUD RI NQRZOHGJH´ UHPDLQV 0DSV DQG PDSSLQJVWLOOUHWDLQDQG³H[XGHDXWKRULW\´DQDXWKRULW\GHULYHGIURP their ability to circumscribe geography, to enclose, define, code, orient, structure and control space in the special case when the cartographic map is used to represent geographic space (Phillips 1997: 14). Thus, in cultural discourse, critics are hoping that the concept contains D SURGXFWLYH GLFKRWRP\ ³$OWKRXJK PDSV >@DUH JHQHUDOO\ µDXWKRUL11

+DQV*XPEUHFKW¶VUHFHSWLRQKLVWRU\RI%HQMDPLQ¶VZRUNMapping Benjamin) may serve as an example for the use of the term: he maintains that it DGHTXDWHO\ H[SUHVVHV WKH ZLVK WR FKDUW D ³]LJ-zag of ideas [...] in which KHWHURJHQHRXVYRLFHVLQWHUDFW´DQGWRPDNHVWDWHPHQWVWKDWDUH³GLVFRQWLQXRXV DQGFHUWDLQO\QRWGHILQLWLYH´DQG³LQWULQVLFDOO\LQFRQFOXVLYH´[YL 

Mapping Movement

65

WDULDQLPDJHV¶WKDWµUHLQIRUFHDQGOHJLWLPDWHWKHstatus quo¶WKH\DOVR RSHQFRQFHSWXDOVSDFHIRUPRUHFULWLFDOSROLWLFV´3KLOOLSV1997: 19). But the metaphor of the map for a personality development demonstrates the benefits and the losses involved in the reconceptualisation. On the one hand, the idea of paying respect to the corporal and cognitive aspects of movement is a productive expansion of the meaning of mapping; on the other, it can be a limiting idea because the meWDSKRU¶VYHKLFOHXVHVRQHRIWKHODVW³flat WHFKQRORJLHV´ with its two-dimensional surface for imagining complex processes.12 The ingenuous demand to be read in a relational, non-hierarchical way, a demand maps have in common with all diagrammatic representations, SURGXFHV D ³GLDJUDPPDWLF UHGXFWLRQ RI WKRXJKW´ WR DGDSW D SKUDVH from Foucault about the eighteenth century (1973: 64). This spatial reduction causes difficulties in dealing with the information provided analytically and politically. When process and progress are consistently imagined as two-dimensional space, the temporal, chronologically linear aspect is decreased and the urge to locate precisely in history subverted. Yet, the resulting spatial imaginary also contains a potential for counter-hegemonic action in deliberate attempts to refine on observation. Mapping can depict a fractured, multiple identity without the need for closure where conflicts are harmonised or solved; such representation of identity avoids the desire for homogenised unity since it is already imagined within the framework of the map. The pervasive adoption of the metaphor of mapping reflects the current priority of spatial imagination and rhizomic mobility.13 At the same time, the nostalgia generated by the feeling of loss of the historically authentic seems to favour such combinations of the technologically advanced with the ideologically retrogressive which characterisH/DUVHQ¶VQRYHO

12

13

As Pile and Thrift note, the metaphor of mapping appears to tell us a great deal but actually also hides relationships (1995: 4). Cf. Jos de Mul for the argument that our prominent means of communication arHXQGHUPLQLQJWKHLGHDRIOLQHDUSURJUHVVLRQ$FFRUGLQJWRGH0XO³ZHwill see another, post-historic understanding of time, influenced by information WHFKQRORJ\ERWKLQWKHVFLHQFHVDQGLQHYHU\GD\H[SHULHQFH´ 

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Renate Brosch

Works Cited

Primary References Larsen, Reif (2009a): The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet: A Novel. London: Harvill Secker.

Secondary References Baker, Phil (2009): Rev. of Larsen 2009. The Sunday Times. 17 May 2009. 6 Sep. 2010. . Benjamin, Walter (1983): ³3DULV +DXSWVWDGW GHV  -DKUKXQGHUWV´ Das PassagenWerk. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 45-59. Brinckerhoff-Jackson, John (1984): Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: Yale UP. Brosch, Renate (2008): ³9LFWRULDQ &KDOOHQJHV WR :D\V RI 6HHLQJ (YHU\GD\ /LIH Entertainment, Images, and Illusions.´ Victorian Visual Culture. Ed. Renate Brosch and Rebecca Pohl. Heidelberg: Winter. 21-63. Certeau, Michel de (1984): ³:DONLQJ LQ WKH City.´ The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Stephen Rendall. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P. 91-110. Charles, Ron (2009): ³1RWHV IURP WKH 0DUJLQV RI D %R\¶V Life.´ The Washington Post. 6 May 2009. 6 Sep. 2010. . Crampton, Jeremy W. (2010): Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS. Chichester: Wiley. Debord, Guy (1996): ³Theory of the Dérive.´ 1956. Theory of the Dérive and other Situationist Writings on the City. Ed. Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa. Barcelona: Museum of Contemporary Art. 22-27. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1988): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone. Ermarth, Elizabeth Deeds (1983): Realism and Consensus in the English Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP. Foucault, Michel (1973): The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1970. Trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. New York: Vintage. Goodman, Nelson (1978): Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Grossberg, Lawrence (1996): ³,GHQWLW\DQG&XOWXUDO6WXGLHV± Is That All There Is?´ Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London: Sage. 87-108. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, and Michael Marrinan (2003): Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford UP. Hall, Stephen S. (1993): Mapping the Next Millennium: How Computer-Driven Cartography Is Revolutionizing the Face of Science. New York: Vintage.

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Hallet, Wolfgang (201  ³Visual Images of Space, Movement and Mobility in the Multimodal Novel.´ Moving Images ± Mobile Viewers: 20th Century Visuality. Ed. Renate Brosch. Berlin: Lit. 227-47. Harley, John B. ( ³Deconstructing the Map.´ Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text, and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. Ed. Trevor Barnes and James Duncan. London: Routledge: 231-47. Jameson, Fredric (1991): Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP. Larsen, Reif E  ³,QWHUYLHZ ZLWK &KULVWRSKHU /\GRQ´ Radio Open Source. 8 May 2009. Cambridge, MA. 17 June 2010. . Lotman, Jurij M. (1977): The Structure of the Artistic Text. Trans. Gail Lenhoff and Ronald Vroon. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. MacEachren, Alan M. (2004): How Maps Work. Representation, Visualization, and Design. New York: Guilford. Mul, Jos de (2005): ³)URP0RELOH2QWRORJLHVWR0RELOHAesthetics.´ Contemporary Aesthetics. Special vol. 1. 06. Sep. 2010. . Perkins, Chris (2003): ³&DUWRJUDSK\0DSSLQJTheory.´ Progress in Human Geography 27.3: 341-51. Peters, John Durham ( ³Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon.´ Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. Ed. Joanne Morra and Marquard Smith. Vol. 3. London: Routledge. 141-60. Phillips, Richard (1997): Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure. London: Routledge. Pickles, John (1995): Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems. New York: Guilford. ±± (2004): A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-Coded World. London: Routledge. Pile, Steve, and Norman J. Thrift (1995): Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation. London: Routledge. Pratt, Mary Louise (1992): Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge. Reaves, Gerri (2001): Mapping the Private Geography: Autobiography, Identity, and America. Jefferson: McFarland. Smith, Neil, and Cindi Katz (1993): ³*URXQGLQJ 0HWDSKRU: Towards a Spatialized Politics´ Place and the Politics of Identity. Ed. Michael Keith and Steve Pile. London: Routledge. 66-81. Thacker, Andrew (2003): Moving Through Modernity: Space and Geography in Modernism. Manchester: Manchester UP. Wood, Denis (1992): The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford. ±± (2010): Rethinking the Power of Maps. New York: Guilford.

Reality Mining and Meaningful Motion Patterns: A Critical GIS for Literary Studies Chris Thurgar-Dawson Abstract This chapter investigates the idea that Geographical Information Systems (GIS) might be used in the construction of a critical reading practice for literary studies. It argues that while recent advances in digital cartography have made mapping the literary text a reality in a number of ways, the full benefit of such an application can only be DFKLHYHG YLD D ³JHR-VPDUW´ RU FXOWXUDOO\ LQWHJUDWHG LQWHUSUHWLYH SUDFWLFH 7ZR UHFHQW novels, Solar (2010) by Ian McEwan and Point Omega (2010) by Don DeLillo are used as running examples to see how this might realistically be achieved. The chapter outlines four possible approaches in pursuit of this argument and examines some of the difficulties faced by recent interdisciplinary projects in the field. My first claim is WKDWGHVSLWHFHUWDLQPHWKRGRORJLFDO ZHDNQHVVHV*,6 FDQLQGHHGDLGWKHUHDGHU¶VGHcoding of the spatial practices of the text, and my second claim is that a geo-smart reading not only augments our textual analysis but also refines and renews our general spatial intelligence. Key names and concepts: Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan; geographical information systems, cartography, chorology, cultural geography, geo-smart, geo-tagging, GIS, literary studies, mapping, place, proxemics, reality mining, space, spatial practice.

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Chris Thurgar-Dawson DZULWHU¶VFLW\@KDVDQ\FRXQWHUSDUWLQWKHFLWLHVRIWKHHDUWKLVWR rob it half of its charm >«@ Woolf (1986)

When questions relating to space and mobility are asked in the twenty-first century, there is one discourse that holds sway over others and this is the meta-discourse of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the home of geo-spatial informatics and the open-source platform for computer-based encoding of spatial intelligence. The question of relating GIS to literary studies, while a minority interest for many years, is not in fact a new one and has been running in the background of both disciplines for roughly twenty-five years. However, the GIS which concerned us in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a very different proposition to that which faces us now. At that time the technology was, for non-military applications at least, based primarily around static, motionless displays with computer terra-mapping and computer-aided cartography simply taking the place of paper-based products. While it is true that university departments which led the field in time geography (Chicago, Lund, MIT) had more advanced technology, the software required to run such early applications was not only complex but still expensive and therefore not readily available to the public domain. It would be years before a fully functional GIS joined forces with GPS and affordable geo-smart software to create real-time, digital cartographies so that ordinary everyday users could enjoy the beneILWV RI 1DYWHT¶V VDWHOOLWH QDYLJDWLRQ RI *RRJOH 0DSV¶V 6WUHHW 9LHZ DQG RI 0LFURVRIW¶V )OLJKW 6LPXODWRU 7KH WUDQVformation that has taken place, then, is essentially from static, nonautomated GISs to automated, non-static GISs whereby individual data points, lines and areas on maps which were once fixed for display, have become interactive and updatable data points in real time capable of showing the viewer meaningful motion patterns as they happen second by second. Today this is done via multiple, live data feeds which present themselves on the digital map in layers which can be toggled on and off manually by the user, or as often, automatically

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by the server every few seconds. If an institution has the resources, the number of applications for these high quality data feeds in digital cartography are far reaching, with everything from Icelandic volcanoes and Haitian earthquake warnings to BP oil spills and the South African World Cup covered in detail and scale. The two leading users of such information are the US military via an imposing body known DVWKH³1DWLRQDO*HRVSDWLDO,QWHOOLJHQFH$JHQF\´DQGJOREDOFDSLWDOism itself, in which companies like Veriplace increasingly challenge the boundaries of national data-protection laws by using real-time maps of market data to target and individuate consumer preference. I want to return to this later. Running alongside is the news media industry, from CNN and Al Jazeera to Reuters and the BBC, who not only maintain live GIS feeds for meteorology, crisis hotspots, and the location and display of breaking news stories, but who have the ideological power to geo-leverage such displays in one political direction or another, thus returning us to familiar socio-spatial territory in the recognition of the power of maps. Finally, let us not forget the global WHOHFRPV LQGXVWU\ ZKLFK LQ $PHULFD DORQH LV ³JHQHUDWLQJ VRPHWKLQJ like 600 billion geo-VSDWLDOO\ WDJJHG WUDQVDFWLRQV SHU GD\´ -RQDV 2009), and the satellite navigation industry, which uses military-grade, laser-guided technology capable of delivering over 1.5 million geocoordinates a second around a moving vehicle in order to deliver textured, three-dimensional, photo-realistic images in HD and high-resolution video. So in this chapter, which falls into two parts, I want first to argue for three types of GIS which despite their methodological weaknesses nevertheless have something to offer if English Studies is to remain properly alive to developments in cultural geography, and then in the second part I shall be making the case for a final (fourth) practice which proffers a genuinely viable application of GIS for our discipline in the future. Throughout I will refer to two texts to exemplify WKHIRXUSRVLWLRQVDQGWKHVHDUH,DQ0F(ZDQ¶VQRYHO Solar, and Don 'H/LOOR¶V QRYHOOD Point Omega, both published in early 2010, and both excellent candidates for what I am proposing, ultimately, to call a ³JHR-VPDUW´UHDGLQJRIWKHOLWHUDU\WH[W

72

Chris Thurgar-Dawson

1. The Literary Text as GIS Display Working in reverse order, then, with what seems to me the most questionable of the four applications of GIS to literary studies, the first possibility is to consider the text itself a GIS output device. Under this rubric, the literary text functions as the final visual display, the final output raster in a process of geographical information gathering that has been undertaken by the authors or producers of the text. This first position is not quite as oblique as it sounds, however. In the most obvious case, some literary texts do indeed take the form of, or are supported by, actual maps of one dimension or another. Slightly less obvious are those texts which are perhaps interactive narratives requiring the reader to map their own way through the story. Still further, there are those texts which display socio-geographical information accompanied by photographs of geo-spatial locations and which utilise techniques of information layering and found data gathering not unfamiliar to geo-information systems. In each of these cases the text might be said to be functioning as a visual display for geo-information and it is not difficult to see that many postmodern texts certainly lend themselves to analysis in this light. Novels by David Mitchell, W. G. Sebald, Cormac McCarthy, Stieg Larsson, Simon Mawer, and Reif Larsen1 for instance, use a combination of real and imaginary geographies which could rightly be labelled GIS displays of an older analogue or cognitive variety, not to mention metropolitan texts from Charles 'LFNHQV¶VDQGJoseph &RQUDG¶V/RQGRQWRW. B. EHFDXVH@KHLVRQO\QRWVHHQ´-39).

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readings of concrete geographical places involved a constant deferral of the limitations imposed upon the place-bound individual and, simultaneously, a synecdochic extension of singular places into the multitudinous meanings of space. Hence, in many of the classic American novels of the nineteenth century natural landscapes frequently figure as vast resources of symbolic images that drive both the narrative plot and the progressive establishment of America as one µQHZ¶ QDWLRQ 1RW VXUSULVLQJO\ WKH narrative patterns that organise such foundatLRQDOQRYHOVDV&RRSHU¶VLeatherstocking Tales, Herman 0HOYLOOH¶V Moby-Dick RU 1RUULV¶ The Octopus pivot on the ideological inscription of open spaces rather than of constricted places (Buell 1995; Bercovitch and Jehlen 1986). There are, however, notable exceptions. In what follows I want to juxtapose two exemplary texts that stand out from the bulk of antebellum literature because of the way they struggle to negotiate tenVLRQVEHWZHHQSODFHVSDFHDQGVHOI7KRUHDX¶V Walden and Frederick 'RXJODVV¶V IDPRXs first autobiography Narrative of an American Slave. In both texts places carry special meaning with respect to the issue of beginnings, of new forms of perception and, ultimately, a new life itself. Moreover, by drawing our attention to the act of grounding experience in a particular environment they not only reconfigure our sense of place, they also push for more encompassing readings of $PHULFD¶V DQG E\ H[WHQVLRQ PRGHUQLW\¶V  IRXQGDWLRQDO OLWHUature. If such readings emphasise the representational strategies by which µQDWXUDO¶VXUURXQGVDUHIUHTXHQWO\ZHGGHGWRVSHFLILFFXOWXUDOQHHGVLQ nineteenth-century American literature, they also take note of how QDWXUH LV WUDQVIRUPHG LQWRIRUPV RI µFRXQWHU QDWXUH¶RI KRZ JHRJUDphy turns into anti-geography (LQ7KRUHDX¶V Walden) and into both a non-place and a setting for action and development (in the fugitive slave narrative).

1. Thoreau The synecdochic conflation of foundational practices in America with $PHULFD LWVHOI KDV OHG WR XVH 5REHUW $EUDPV¶s terP IRU 7KRUHDX¶V OLWHUDU\ ODQGVFDSHV WR DQ $PHULFDQ µ$QWL-*HRJUDSK\¶ ³:KDW FDUWRJUDSKLFDO UHSUHVHQWDWLRQ DSSHDUV WR IL[ DQG WR IUHH]H´ $EUDPV UHmarks,

94

Klaus Benesch or what the Currier and Ives engraving would stabilise and stereotype into a classic, finished scene universally perceived in the same standard way, Thoreau would exSRVH DV µYRODWLOH WUXWK¶ >Thoreau 2000a: 325] that alters and shifts. (2004: 261-62)

,Q7KRUHDX¶VOLWHUDU\UHSUHVHQWDWLRQRIQDWXUDOODQGVFDSHVZHWKXVHQcounter a fundamental ambiguity of place, a lingering tension between appearance and being, between the seemingly stable topography and WKH³YRODWLOHWUXWK´RIWKHEHWZL[W-and-between spaces as envisaged by the poet. By frequently invoking a gap between our spiritual needs and the material environments in which we are embedded, Thoreau adds to an ongoing discourse on the forces of alienation and fragmentation in modern society. If the blatant materialism of Jacksonian democracy conflates PDWHULDO PHDQV ZLWK VSLULWXDO HQGV 7KRUHDX¶V OLWHUary imagination RIIHUVDYLDEOHDOWHUQDWLYH,QWKHSRVWKXPRXVO\SXEOLVKHGHVVD\³/LIH :LWKRXW 3ULQFLSOH´ KH DWWDFNV WKH VKDP IUDXGXOHQW FKDUDFWHU RI FRQWHPSRUDU\VRFLHW\E\XVLQJDVWULNLQJPHWDSKRU³*RGJDYHWKHULJKWeous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile RI WKH VDPH LQ *RG¶V FRIIHUV DQG appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has VHHQ´7KRUHDXEHPSKDVLVDGGHG µ)DFVLPLOH¶µDSSURSULDWLRQ¶ µV\VWHPV RI FRXQWHUIHLWLQJ¶ ± 7KRUHDX¶V ZRUGLQJ SRLQWV WR DQ acute awareness of the artificial fabrication of our modern lives, of the lack of authenticity (and thus authority) concomitant with the rampant utilitarianism of contemporary society. It also suggests an encompassing system of appearances and false values, which makes it increasingly difficult to tell right from wrong. 7KRUHDX¶VSUREOHPWKHQOLNHPRGHUQLW\¶VDWODUJHLVEDVLFDOO\ epistemological: how can we distinguish mere surfaces from that which lies hidden within, how separate the original, that which is innate to human nature, from the facsimile, the unrighteous appropriation of nature by the cultures of commerce and capitalism? His personal solution to this problem was, for one, an uncompromising, monkish attitude towards any kind of material desire. For the other, it consisted in an astounding attention to place, an awareness of the lessons to be learned from the natural environment and, more specifi-

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cally, from concrete, familiar places such as the Concord and Maine ZRRGV³$JUDLQRIJROGZLOOJLOGDJUHDWVXUIDFH´KHZULWHVLQ³/LIH :LWKRXW3ULQFLSOH´³EXWQRWVRPXFKDVDJUDLQRIZLVGRP´7KRUHDX 2000b: 755). This intriguing imagery appears towards the end of a discussion of the foolishness of those involved in the California gold UXVK ZKRVH ODERUV DUH ZDVWHG RQ D IXWLOH XQULJKWHRXV DFWLYLW\ ³'LG God direct us so to get our living, digging where we QHYHUSODQWHG"´ (ibid. 754), Thoreau asks, thereby denying any form of accretion of wealth outside the organic cycles of insemination and reaping that ELQG ERWK PDQ DQG QDWXUH LQ D PXWXDO DQG TXLQWHVVHQWLDOO\ µSODWLDO¶ relationship. ThoreaX¶V ZULWLQJV DUH VXIIXVHG ZLWKUHIHUHQFHV WR SODFHVDQG his own attachment to them), to forms of being-at-homeness that he believes are crucial for any serious philosophical investigation. As readers of Walden NQRZ ZHOOQRWDOO IRUPV RI µGLJJLQJ¶ IDOO SUey to 7KRUHDX¶VVFDWKLQJFULWLFLVPZKDWKHRXWULJKWGHQRXQFHVLVWRFRQIXVH means with ends. In the case of the Californian gold miner, the earth is EXW D PHDQV WRDQ XQLPSURYHG HQG DQ HQGWRUHWRRO 7KRUHDX¶V RZQ IDPRXV SKUDVLQJ ³ZKLFK LW ZDV DOUHDG\ EXW WRR HDV\ WR DUULYH DW´ D KLP@LQDQJHU´  Previous to this decisive incident Douglass had spent day and night in the woods on his own, trying to escape the irascible slave GULYHU7KHUHKHHQFRXQWHUHGDQROGHUVODYHZKRWROGKLPWRJR³LQWR another part of the woods, where there was a certain root, which, if [he] would take some of it with [him], carrying it always on [his] right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white PDQWRZKLS>KLP@´ 7KHµURRW¶PHWDSKRUDQGLWVDVVRFLDWLRQZLWK botanical knowledge and an intimate relation to the natural world FOHDUO\ DGG WR WKH WH[W¶V WRSRJUDSKLFDO RULHQWDWLRQ DQG LWV IUHTXHQW symbolism of place. To Douglass places (e.g., the Chesapeake Bay, 'RXJODVV¶V KLGH-RXW LQ WKH ZRRGV WKH µ1RUWK¶ HWF  DUH KLJKOy symbolical in that they carry meaning with respect to his ultimate 12

³You move PHUULO\ EHIRUH WKH JHQWOH JDOH´ Douglass muses while standing DORQH RQ WKH ³ORIW\ EDQNV RI WKDW QREOH ED\´ ³and I sadly before the bloody ZKLS´ (74-75).

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deliverance from slavery and his transformation from beast to man. More than being merely instrumental in bringing to an end his life as a slave, they echo a conflation of places and beginnings that can be frequently found in the classic texts of the formative period of American literature and culture. In his study of American life as an ongoing cycle of creative destruction and renewal, Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction3KLOLS)LVKHUDUJXHVWKDW³DVDORcation [America] was made up of many environments, and could properly be the home to a collection of nations, as Europe was, but not to one [...] American geography rules out a single nation in any tradiWLRQDO VHQVH´ 34). What has been new in America and what has allowed Americans, according to Fisher, to forge a kind of surrogate national identity is the ensuing creation of a unified democratic social space. Informed as well as constantly reinforced by the homogenising practices of free enterprise capitalism, this new space successfully sublated the geographical particularisation and atomisation of Americans by providing a common identity that was not primarily religious, ideological, culturDO KLVWRULFDO RU OLQJXLVW EXW ³ILHUFHO\ economic and, in the end, profoundly dependent upon the mass SURGXFWLRQ DQG EURDG GLVWULEXWLRQ WKDW FDSLWDOLVP FUHDWHG´ )LVKHU 1999: 38). If the need to overcome particularisation and the lack of a common origin, culture, or language is reflected in many of the classic American texts of the nineteenth century, the struggle to negotiate tensions between place and space, between the attachment to a particular region or place and the embracing of open spaces as a door to the future and an emblem of a common national identity, has affected American literature in equally important ways. As we have seen in Thoreau and Douglass, to immerse oneself in a particular natural surround can have opposite effects depending on whether that person is a New England sage or a runaway slave. And yet, both Thoreau and Douglass struggled to wrest from the obvious limitations of places such as Walden Pond or the woods on a southern slave plantation, universal meaning. Their ambiguous or, LQ'RXJODVV¶VFDVHHYHQDGversarial qualities notwithstanding, these places spelled out for both writers the promise of a new beginning, a new life. In thus becoming a symbolic repository of the utopian desire for regeneration and renewal, the natural environment, as I have tried to argue here, appears

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to be DQ\WKLQJEXWµQDWXUDO¶,GHDOLVed as a space beyond history and society, where the modern antagonism between place and space, between the individual and the universe, has been resolved, nature, in these and many other texts of the American Renaissance, turns into a NLQGRIµDQWL-ODQGVFDSH¶DGLVWRUWHGLPDJHQRWRILWVHOIEXWRIKXPDQ imagination and mediation.

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Works Cited

Primary References Douglass, Frederick (1993): Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. 1845. Ed. David W. Blight. Boston and 1HZ0@RELOLW\LVQRWDJRRGWKDWWHQGVWREHHTXDOO\ distributed among people; rather, it tends to UHIOHFWSRZHUGLIIHUHQFHV´ (250). The conceptual distinction is crucial for the analysis of literary texts. For example, if a character does not move, she or he is not necessarily immobile. To assess the significance of why a character does not move, we also have to take into accounWWKHFKDUDFWHU¶VDELOLW\WR move. Does she or he not move by choice or is she or he forced to stay in a certain place due to social or financial reasons? Similarly, if characters move from one place to another, it is also worth asking what their choices are ± can they deliberately choose the places they go to and the means of transport they use (and if so, what are the reasons for their choices?), or are they socially or financially constrained from movement or forced to change places? The central question of course is how then these possible freedoms or restrictions can be linked back to categories like gender, class, ethnicity or sexuality.

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4. Brick Lane Brick Lane (2004)3 LVDV6XNKGHY6DQGKXSRLQWVRXW³WKHILUVWQRYHO to focus almost exclusively on the lives of Bangladeshi women in 7RZHU+DPOHWV´WU\LQJ³WRWDNHXVEH\RQGWKH\HOORZLQJQHWFXUWDLQV of their cramped tower-block flats, and into their living rooms and EHGURRPV´6DQGKX %XWLQIDFWBrick Lane goes far beyond an essentialist notion of culture that such a strict distinction between µWKHLU¶ DQG µRXU¶ VSDFH HYRNHV 7KURXJK IRFXVLQJ RQ WKH SURWDJRQLVW 1D]QHHQ¶V VWUXJJOH IRU PRUH PRELOLW\ DQG UHODWLQJ KHU HPDQFLSDWLRQ process to the struggle between different social and ethnic groups over the East End, Brick Lane questions conventional constructions of English and immigrant identities and functionalises the representation of space as a relational and dynamic construction to plead for more open, pluralistic concepts of culture. In the first part of the novel Nazneen is often portrayed as looking longingly out of the window. This well-established spatial image traditionally used to reflect upon the position of women in the domestic sphere (cf. Gymnich 2008: 222; cf., e.g., Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)) gives the reader the impression that, being dependent on and subjected to her husband, Nazneen lives under prison-like conditions (cf. BL 54). In fact, the entire space of the estate is presented to function like a Panopticon (cf. Foucault 1977), forcing its inhabitants to conform to unwritten rules because they are afraid of social sanctions. In a conversation with Nazneen, her husband Chanu tries to justify himself for forbidding Nazneen to leave the estate on her own: ,I \RX JR RXW WHQ SHRSOH ZLOO VD\ µ, VDZ KHU ZDONLQJ RQ WKH VWUHHW¶ $QG,ZLOOORRNOLNHDIRRO3HUVRQDOO\,GRQ¶WPLQGLI\RXJRRXWEXW WKHVHSHRSOHDUHVRLJQRUDQW:KDWFDQ\RXGR">«@$QGDQ\ZD\LI you were in Bangladesh you would not go out. Coming here you are not missing anything. (BL 46-47)

This quote shows that Chanu is caught up in the very same cultural GLVFRXUVHV KH KHOSV WR SHUSHWXDWH 1D]QHHQ¶V LPPRELOLW\ LV WKXV SUHsented not as an individual choice or the result of an individual 3

Brick Lane was first published in 2003. In the following, I will cite from the 2004 Black Swan edition and abbreviate the title of the novel as BL.

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authoritarian husband, but as the product of her inferior subject position as a woman in Bangladeshi society. The boundary between these two spaces, however, is dynamic and permeable, and eventually its cultural constructedness comes to the fore. Bit by bit, Nazneen pushes back the boundary and extends µKHU ZRUOG¶ $IWHU KDYLQJ IRXQG D IULHQG LQ KHU QHLJKERXU 5D]LD Nazneen begins to move around the entire estate on her own. Later in the novel, while her struggle against the rules imposed on her by Bangladeshi society is already apparent, she leaves the estate on her own and strolls around Brick Lane and the surrounding streets. Finally, the scene which establishes her as an emancipated woman (in which she realises that she can live without a husband in England) is set in Covent Garden, in the centre of London. Speaking with Lotman, the normative order of the fictional world has been challenged and WUDQVIRUPHG WKURXJK 1D]QHHQ¶V ERUGHU FURVVLQJV %XW QRW RQO\ WKH normative RUGHURIWKHILFWLRQDOZRUOGKDVFKDQJHG1D]QHHQ¶VVXEMHFW position has changed as well. It seems that she has been able to create a third space (cf. Bhabha 1990) which has helped her debunk binary VWUXFWXUHV RI SRZHU E\ LQWURGXFLQJ D µWKLUG¶ DOWHUQDWLYH of living inbetween English and Bangladeshi society. The novel concludes with a very optimistic note on the power of individual agency in constituting DQGWUDQVIRUPLQJVRFLDODQGFXOWXUDOVSDFHHQGLQJZLWK5D]LD¶VZRUGV ³µ7KLVLV(QJODQG>«@«@´ (BL 113). Cf. also, e.g., &KDQX¶V FRPPHQW ³All this money, money, money everywhere. Ten yeDUV DJR WKHUH ZDV QR PRQH\ KHUH´ (BL 253) and his anxious checking of the prices in the new shops and cafés (³Seventy-five SRXQGV IRU WKDW OLWWOH EDJ >«@. Two pounds ninety for large coffee with ZKLSSHGFUHDP´ (ibid.)), which shows how concerned he is about the change of the area, fearing he and his family might no longer be able to afford living there.

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in making Brick Lane not just the story of an individual woman finding her place in-between English and Bangladeshi society, but also a plea for a transcultural society that abandons essentialist notions in favour of more fluid conceptualisations of culture.

5. Saturday Saturday6 is set on 15 February 2003, and hence against the backdrop of global terrorism, the impending war in Iraq and, more generally, contemporary big city life and its inequalities. The novel, rather than EHLQJD³K\PQWRWKHFRQWHQWHGFRQWHPSRUDU\PDQ´6KUHYH DV it has been acclaimed by many critics, is a poignant critique of the present condition of England (cf. Ross 2008: 75), as the protagonist +HQU\3HURZQH¶VSULYLOHJHGDQGVHFOXGHGOLIHVW\OH³EULQJVXVIDFHWR IDFHZLWKRXURZQFRPSOLFLW\FROOXVLRQDQGJXLOW´6FKRHQH  towards the social and political developments in England and the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This effect is partly achieved by the construction of spatial relations in the novel which are marked by a sharp contrast and rigid borders between inside and outside spaces which are both expressions of and symbols for +HQU\3HURZQH¶VGHWDFKPHQWIURPWKHZRUOG From the opening scene of the novel on, in which Perowne stands on the window of his Fitzrovian townhouse, watches a burning plane flying across the sky and immediately thinks of a terrorist attack, the atmosphere of the novel is loaded with an unspecific feeling of looming threat. The world, it seems, is out of joint and largely be\RQG 3HURZQH¶V FRQWURO +H PLVVHV D WLPH ZKHQ VRFLHW\ ZDV KLHUDUFKLFDOO\ RUJDQLVHG DQG HYHU\RQH µNQHZ WKHLU SODFH¶ LQ WKH JUDQGHU VFKHPHRIWKLQJV³+RZUHVWIXOLWPXVWRQFHKDYHEHHQLQDQRWKHUDJH to be prosperous and believe that an all-knowing supernatural force KDGDOORWWHGSHRSOHWRWKHLUVWDWLRQVLQOLIH´SAT 74). In former times, when social hierarchies had still been rigid, it is implied, Perowne would not have had to worry about people who challenge and threaten his privileged social position. But in present-day London, he worries about his status almost constantly. As a consequence, the boundaries 6

Saturday was first published in 2005. In the following, I will cite from the 2006 Vintage edition and abbreviate the title of the novel as SAT.

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between his private sphere and the world outside are heavily protected to restrict access. This is illustrated by the way the two central indoor VSDFHVWKHKRVSLWDODQG3HURZQH¶VKRXVHDUHUHSUHVHQWHGLQWKHQRYel (cf. SAT 244; 36 f.): the hospital is protected by security guards; 3HURZQH¶V KRXVH LV VHFXUHG E\ several locks and an elaborate alarm system. Longing for privacy, Perowne ponders at one point: ,VQ¶W LW SRVVLEOH WR HQMR\ DQ KRXU¶V UHFUHDWLRQ ZLWKRXW WKis invasion, WKLV LQIHFWLRQ IURP WKH SXEOLF GRPDLQ" >«@ +H KDV D ULJKW QRZ DQG then ± everyone has it ± not to be disturbed by world events, or even street events. (SAT 108)

While Perowne ± in contrast to Nazneen ± has the freedom and the means to move freely through the city, he chooses to rest confined to the familiar indoor spaces of his family home or the hospital. Perowne is portrayed as suffering from an anxiety of social and cultural influence (cf. Frank 2006).7 7KHQHJDWLYHUHIHUHQFHWR³ZRUOG evenWV´DQG³VWUHHWHYHQWV´LQWKHDERYHTXRWHLVRQO\RQHLQVWDQFHRI WKH FRQVLVWHQW HPSKDVLV RQ 3HURZQH¶V DZDUHQHVV RI WKH FLW\¶V SURElems and the political aftermath of 9/11 despite his pretended distance WKURXJKRXWWKHZKROHQRYHOµ6WUHHWHYHQWV¶LQWKHcontext of the novel concretely refer to the large demonstration against the invasion in Iraq on the day the novel is set, 15 February 2003. Larger social and political problems have nothing to do with Perowne, it would seem, or to be more precise: there is nothing he can do about them. But the rigid boundaries and material borders of his house and the hospital not only serve to protect him, they also give these places a stability Perowne 7

While Michael C. Frank (2006) borrows the term anxiety of influence from Harold Bloom, he underlines that his use of the term has little to do with the original concept (Frank 2006: 15). Frank uses the term anxiety of cultural influence (Kulturelle Einflussangst) to refer to the growing anxiety of white European travellers and settlers in the nineteenth century of being mentally and physically affected by their contact with the indigenous people of the colonial tropics. Frank argues that nineteenth-century travel literature conceptualises colonial space as a field of cross-cultural encounters with clear-FXW ERXQGDULHV EHWZHHQ µVHOI¶ DQG µRWKHU¶ ZKLFK VHUYH WR SUHYHQW transgressions. According to Frank, the representation of space in these texts functions both as a reflection and as a construction of the anxiety of cultural influence. As a matter of fact, a broad concept of µanxiety of influence¶ can contribute to understanding the representation of space and subjectivity in contemporary literature.

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needs to establish a stable subject position as a husband, father or surgeon.8 Thus, in Saturday, subject constitution comes into focus as the result of constant delineations between self and other which Perowne expresses spatially to assert his position. In this context one must note, however, that the security measures of both places imply that their boundaries must constantly be reinforced by their owners, which implicitly problematises the dependency of decisions about inclusion and exclusion on questions of social and financial power. 3HURZQH¶V DYRLGDQFH RI FRQWDFW Zith the public sphere is reflected in the means of transport he chooses when he leaves the house that Saturday morning. Instead of taking the tube, as one might expect of a Londoner, he travels by car, but not just any car: Perowne owns a ³VLOYHU 0HUFHGHV 6 ZLWK FUHDP XSKROVWHU\´ SAT 75) ± a luxury limousine. Driving this car affects his perception of the city. It offers Perowne a way of moving through the public space while avoiding contact both with people and the material realities of his surroundings. ,QWKHSULYDWHEXEEOHRIKLVFDUWKHFLW\EHFRPHVDPHUH³YLVXDOVSHFWDFOH´*867 WKDW3HURZQHDVWKHQDUUDWRUGHVFULEHVZLWKDKLQW RILURQ\³DOZD\VHQMR\V>«@IURPLQVLGHKLVFDUZKHUHWKHDLULVILOtered and hi-fi music confers pathos on WKH KXPEOHVW GHWDLOV´ SAT  3HURZQH¶VFRQVWLWXWLRQRIWKHFLW\VSDFHE\PRYLQJDURXQGLQKLV car is just one instance which reflects his emotional detachment from KLV VXUURXQGLQJV DQG WKH ³MXQNLHV´ DQG ³EHJJDUV´ SAT 77), and recalls the beginning of the novel when he observes the people on the square in front of his house from his heightened position on the window, reducing them to moving organisms and thus robbing them of their human traits. 3HURZQHLVIRUFHGWROHDYHWKLVPRELOHµSULYDWHEXEEOH¶Dfter an accident with the car of a man called Baxter. This is the first time that he actually crosses the boundary between the private and the public and finds himself confronted with the outside world. This is also the first instance in a series of real and metaphorical border crossings that drive the plot from that moment on. Publicly confronting Baxter, who VXIIHUV IURP +XQWLQJWRQ¶V GLVHDVH ZLWK KLV PHGLFDO FRQGLWLRQ 3HURZQHLQWUXGHVLQWR%D[WHU¶VSULYDWHVSKHUH%D[WHULQDQDWWHPSWWR restore his dignity, then repays Perowne by intruding into his house 8

Another example in Saturday for such a place is the squash court where Perowne regularly meets his colleague Jay Strauss for a game (cf. SAT 102ff.).

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and threatening his family. After having overthrown Baxter who is VHYHUHO\ KXUW LQ WKH SURFHVV 3HURZQH SHUIRUPV VXUJHU\ RQ %D[WHU¶V EUDLQWKHUHE\YLRODWLQJWKHSK\VLFDOERXQGDULHVRI%D[WHU¶VERG\DQd assuming power over his physical and mental health. By the end of the QRYHO ZKHQ 3HURZQH WKLQNV DERXW KLV PRWKHU¶V PHQWDO GHFOLQH LW LV again Baxter who intrudes into his thoughts and lets differences beWZHHQ 3HURZQH¶V IDPLO\ DQG %D[WHU WKH SULYDWH Dnd the public, colODSVH FI +LOODUG   7RJHWKHU ZLWK WKH LQWHUOLQNLQJ RI ³+HQU\¶V )LW]URYLD´DQG³6DGGDP¶V%DJKGDG´6FKRHQH RQDEURDGHU thematic level of the story these border crossings connect various real and imagined spaces and finally question the justification of clear-cut borders as constructed by Perowne. The return to the original order of things at the end of the novel DQG LPSOLHG FRQILUPDWLRQ RI 3HURZQH¶V VWDWXV KDV EHHQ RQH RI WKH major objections to Saturday by John Banville, ³RQH RI 0F(ZDQ¶V PRVW VNHZHULQJ FULWLFV´ +LOODUG    %DQYLOOH ULGLFXOHV WKH DSSDUHQWO\EDQDOSORWDQGFULWLFLVHVWKHIDFWWKDW3HURZQH¶VSULYLOHJHG SRVLWLRQ KDG QHYHU UHDOO\ EHHQ FKDOOHQJHG ³+HQU\ KDV HYHU\WKLQJ and, as in all good fairy tales, he gets to keep it, after getting rid of the WUROO ZKR KDG VRXJKW WR FKDOOHQJH KLV ULJKW RI RZQHUVKLS´ %DQYLOOH  2QHRI%DQYLOOH¶VUHSURDFKHVWRWKHQRYHOLVWKDWWKH³FOR\LQJ VHOIUHJDUG´RIWKHSURWDJRQLVW³LVDSSDUHQWO\ZLWKRXWDWUDFHRIDXWKRULDOLURQ\´LELG 7KHSUREOHP%DQYLOOHVHHPVWRKDYHZLWKSaturday LV WKDW DSSDUHQWO\ 3HURZQH¶V LJQRUDQFH WRZDUGV WKH OHVV SULYLOHJHG which borders on arrogance, is neither indirectly criticised by narratorial irony nor met with poetic justice and thus seems to be presented as an acceptable attitude by the narrative. If we consider the story only, Banville seems to have a valid SRLQW,QGHHG3HURZQH¶VFRQWHPSODWLRQDWWKHHQGRIWKHQRYHOWKDW a time will come when they find they no longer have the strength for the square, the junkies and the traffic din and dust. Perhaps a bomb in the cause of jihad will drive them out with all the other faint-hearts into the suburbs, or deeper into the country, or the chateau (SAT 276)

WHVWLILHVWRWKHIDFWWKDW3HURZQH¶VDWWLWXGHWRZDUGVWKHµRWKHU¶DQGKLV anxiety of influence have not changed at all. If we look at the construction of space in the above quote, we witness an imagined re-construction of the dLVWDQFHEHWZHHQ3HURZQHDQGWKHµRWKHU.¶,QVWHDGRI

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opening up to the outside world, Perowne seeks to further the distance between himself and the unpredictable spaces of the city by escaping to the country, or even to the chateau of his father-in-law in France. It is significant that he already thinks of different scales of distance between him and the city (suburbs, country, chateau), which implies that he is quite aware that his attempts to detach himself might be in vain again. This representation of sSDFH KRZHYHU FKDOOHQJHV %DQYLOOH¶V assumption that Saturday LV D IDLU\ WDOH LQ ZKLFK WKH µWUROO¶ KDV VXFcessfully been chased away, as Perowne is portrayed as being on a FRQWLQXRXVEXWLQWKHHQGIXWLOHIOLJKWIURPWKHµRWKHU.¶7RJHWKHUZLWK the UHSUHVHQWDWLRQ RI 3HURZQH¶V KRXVH DV D IRUWUHVV DQG KLV DOPRVW FKLOGLVKHIIRUWVWRNHHS³ZRUOGHYHQWV´DQG³VWUHHWHYHQWV´SAT 108) out of his life, spatial relations in the novel thus question and to some GHJUHHHYHQULGLFXOH3HURZQH¶V³FOR\LQJVHOIUHJDUG´%DQYLOOH  DQGKLVHIIRUWVWRHVFDSHKLVUHVSRQVLELOLWLHV,QWKHHQG³+HQU\FDQQRW stop his life being implicated in, and in fact determined by, an ongoLQJLUUHSUHVVLEOHDPDOJDPDWLRQRIWKHORFDOZLWKWKHJOREDO´6FKRHQH 2009: 61). This leaves us, the readers, who are statistically very likely to identify with white middle-class Perowne,9 with a bitter after taste and some uncomfortable questions: how much Perowne is there in each of us? Do we really face up to the implication of our local everyday life with the global, and our responsibility for the less privileged, or do we in fact prefer to hide behind our books and desks and pretend we can live happily ever after in our own little private bubble, too?

9

This argument is backed up by the raving and for the most part uncritical reviews the novel received from literary critics (cf. Driscoll 2009 for a poignant analysis of the intertwinement of literature, literary criticism, and class in general and in relation to Saturday). Though it is true that McEwan JRHVWRJUHDWOHQJWKVWRHPSKDVLVH3HURZQH¶V(QJOLVKQHVVFI6FKRHQH  and the novel thus offers a concrete critique on the condition of England at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Perowne stands, at the same time, for the typical, quintessential, privileged Westerner ± enthusiastic reviews in the US press have testified to that ± which means that the implications of the novel are relevant well beyond the specific English context.

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6. Concluding Remarks Both in Brick Lane and Saturday the constitution of space and spatial relations on story as well as discourse level have important functions for the understanding of the novels as a whole. Through the reflection RI 1D]QHHQ¶V HPDQFLSDWLRQ LQ KHU FKDQJLQJ H[SHULHQFH RI Vpace and her increasing mobility, space emerges in a relational and dynamic fashion. While also addressing issues of racism and marginalisation, Brick Lane resonates primarily with belief in the power of the subMHFW¶V DJHQF\ LQ RYHUFRPLQJ VRFLDO DQG FXOWXral barriers and transgressing spatial boundaries. In Saturday, both the functions of spaces for subject formation and the link between spatial structures and power play a role. Even though the spatial structure in Saturday does not remain unchallenged, in contrast to Brick Lane it has not changed significantly by the end of the novel ± order is restored. What is made FOHDU KRZHYHU LV WKDW WKLV LV RQO\ SRVVLEOH WKURXJK 3HURZQH¶V KDUG DQGXQFHDVLQJHIIRUWVWRPDLQWDLQERXQGDULHV³$UEHLWDQGHU*UHQ]H´ (Frank 2006: 37)). In Saturday and Brick Lane, space is presented as a dynamic, mobile, volatile site of disputes where otherwise hidden or latent social and ethnic struggles become visible. Furthermore, space and movement have real as well as symbolic significance in both novels. In Brick Lane1D]QHHQ¶VIHHOLQJRI LPSULVRQPHQWLQ&KDQX¶VIODWDQGKHUFRQILQHPHQWWRWKHVSDFHRIWKH estate are metaphors for her submission to the patriarchal order. But at the same time, the representation of space in the novel highlights that WKH VSDFH VKH OLYHV LQ KDV D YHU\ WDQJLEOH HIIHFW RQ 1D]QHHQ¶V SUDFtices: the tiny and crammed living room reduces her mobility within the room to a minimum, and the gender conventions of the estate prevent her from going out. In Saturday, too, space is presented as having real implications for the characters and metaphorical dimensions at the VDPH WLPH WKH VHFXULW\ PHDVXUHV RI 3HURZQH¶V KRXVH IRU H[DPSOH testify to the very real threat of burglars in the inner city. Yet, the well-keSW ERUGHUV RI 3HURZQH¶V KRXVH DOVR SRLQW WR KLV IHDU WKDW WKH privileged social position he can inhabit as a white middle-class male LV WKUHDWHQHG E\ µZRUOG HYHQWV¶ OLNH  DQG WKH JURZLQJ VRFLDO LQequality in his own country. Focusing on the significance of space and movement for subject formation in these novels shows that literary spaces are not just settings, i.e. mere static backgrounds for the dynamic actions of protago-

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nists. Rather, literary spaces are reflectors of the productive dimensions of real spaces: they reveal how the material and symbolic dimensions of space mould, but also reflect subject practices and the understanding of subjects in relation to the world. Bachmann-Medick PDLQWDLQV WKDW ³>D@OWKRXJK literary studies is principally and literally concerned with texts and not primarily with practices, it is precisely the µSUDFWLFHV carried out in WKH WH[WV¶ (Turk 2003: 282 qtd. in Bachmann-Medick) WKDW FRXOG EH H[DPLQHG LQ PXFK JUHDWHU GHSWK´ (Bachmann-Medick 2012: 106) in culturally-oriented literary studies. As a matter of fact, as pointed out by Horst Turk, it is precisely in literary texts that we find the representation and thematisation of the discursive and pragmatic routines with whose help both the differences and the similarities in and between cultures are borne out. (2003: 282; translation in Bachmann-Medick 2012: 106)

Adapting relational and dynamic concepts of space for the analysis of literary space illustrates how spatial practices in literature interact with discursive and pragmatic routines and how they contribute to the construction of differences and similarities within and between (a) culture(s).

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Works Cited

Primary References Ali, Monica (2004): Brick Lane. 2003. London: Black Swan. Austen, Jane (2011): Pride and Prejudice. 1813. London: Penguin. Brontë, Emily (2011): Wuthering Heights. 1847. London: Penguin. McEwan, Ian (2006): Saturday. 2005. London: Vintage.

Secondary References Bachmann-Medick, Doris (2006): Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften. Reinbek: Rowohlt. ² (2012 ³&XOWXUHDV7H[W5HDGLQJDQG,QWHUSUHWLQJ&XOWXUHV´Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture. Ed. Ansgar Nünning and Birgit Neumann. Berlin: de Gruyter. 99-118. %DNKWLQ 0LNKDLO 0   ³)RUPV RI 7LPH DQG Chronotope in the Novel. Notes 7RZDUGV D +LVWRULFDO 3RHWLFV´ -38. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin and London: U of Texas P. 4-258. %DQYLOOH -RKQ   ³$ 'D\ LQ WKH /LIH´ 5HY RI 0F(ZDQ   New York Review of Books 52.9. 26 May 2005. . %DUWKHV 5RODQG   ³7KH 5HDOLW\ (IIHFW´ French Literary Theory Today: A Reader. Ed. Tzvetan Todorov. London and Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 11-17. Bergmann, Sigurd, Thomas Hoff, and Tore Sager, eds. (2008): Spaces of Mobility: Essays on the Planning, Ethics, Engineering and Religion of Human Motion. London and Oakville: Equinox. %KDEKD+RPL. ³7KH7KLUG6SDFH,QWHUYLHZZLWK+RPL%KDEKD´Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence. 207-21. Böhme, Hartmut (2005): ³(LQOHLWXQJ5DXP± Bewegung ± 7RSRJUDSKLH´Topographien der Literatur. Ed. Hartmut Böhme. Stuttgart: Metzler. IX-XXIII. &DVVLUHU (UQVW   ³0\WKLVFKHU lVWKHWLVFKHU XQG WKHRUHWLVFKHU 5DXP´  Raumtheorie: Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Ed. Jörg Dünne and Stephan Günzel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 485-500. Certeau, Michel de (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life. 1980. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P. Döring, Jörg, and Tristan Thielmann, eds. (2008): Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Bielefeld: Transcript. Driscoll, Lawrence (2009): Evading Class in Contemporary English Literature. London: Palgrave. Foucault, Michel (1977): Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. London: Allen Lane.

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Frank, Michael C. (2006): Kulturelle Einflussangst: Inszenierungen der Grenze in der Reiseliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Bielefeld: Transcript. ²   ³'LH /LWHUDWXUZLVVHQVFKDIWHQ XQG GHU µspatial turn¶: Ansätze bei Jurij /RWPDQXQG0LFKDLO%DFKWLQ´Hallet (2009): 53-80. GenetWH*pUDUG ³%RXQGDULHVRI1DUUDWLYH´New Literary History 8.1: 1-13. GUST (Ghent Urban Studies Team: Dirk Meyer, Kristiaan Versluys, Kristiaan Borret, Bart Eeckhout, Steven Jacobs, Bart Keunen) (1999): The Urban Condition: Space, Community and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis. Rotterdam: 010 Pulishers. *\PQLFK 0DULRQ   ³9R\DJHV 2XW ± Voyages In: Travelling and Individual Development in Novels by Nineteenth-&HQWXU\ %ULWLVK :RPHQ :ULWHUV´ Points of Arrival: Travels in Time, Space, and Self. Ed. Marion Gymnich et al. Tübingen: Francke. 221-38. +DOOHW :ROIJDQJ   ³)LFWLRQV RI 6SDFH =HLWJHQ|VVLVFKH 5RPDQH DOV ILNWLRQDOH 0RGHOOH VHPLRWLVFKHU 5DXPNRQVWLWXWLRQ³ +DOOHW DQG 1HXPDQQ D  113. Hallet, Wolfgang, and Birgit Neumann (2009a): Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur. Bielefeld: Transcript. ² E  ³5DXP XQG %HZHJXQJ LQ GHU /LWHUDWXU´ Introduction. Hallet and Neumann (2009a). 11-32. +LOODUG 0ROO\ &ODUN   ³µ:KHQ 'HVHUW $UPLHV 6WDQG 5HDG\ WR )LJKW¶ 5H5HDGLQJ0F(ZDQ¶VSaturday DQG$UQROG¶Vµ'RYHU%HDFK¶´Partial Answers 6.1: 181-206. Hoffmann, Gerhard (1978): Raum, Situation, erzählte Wirklichkeit: Poetologische und historische Studien zum englischen und amerikanischen Roman. Stuttgart: Metzler. Hubbard, Phil et al. (2005): Thinking Geographically. 2002. London and New York: Continuum. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. 1974. Oxford: Blackwell. Lotman, Yuri M. (1977): The Structure of the Artistic Text. 1971. Trans. Gail Lenhoff and Ronald Vroon. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Michigan Slavic Contributions 7. ² (1990): Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Trans. Ann Shukman, London and New York: Tauris. ²  ³7KH6RFLDO&RQVWUXFWLRQRI6SDFHDQG*HQGHU´7rans. Paul Knowlton. 12 Dec. 2010. . ² (2009): Culture and Explosion. Trans. Wilma Clark. Ed. Marina Grishakova. New York and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Semiotics, Communication and Cognition 1. Lotman, Yuri M., and Löw, Martina (2001): Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 5RVV 0LFKDHO /   ³2Q D 'DUNOLQJ 3ODQHW ,DQ 0F(ZDQ¶V Saturday and the &RQGLWLRQRI(QJODQG´Twentieth Century Literature 54.1: 75-96. 6DJHU 7RUH   ³)UHHdom as Mobility: Implications of the Distinction between $FWXDODQG3RWHQWLDO7UDYHOOLQJ´%HUJPDQQ+RIIDQG6DJHU -67.

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6DQGKX 6XNGKHY   ³&RPH +XQJU\ /HDYH (GJ\´ 5HY RI Brick Lane, by Monica Ali. London Review of Books 25.19. 9 Oct. 2003. 12 Dec. 2010. . Schoene, Berthold (2009): The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. 6KUHYH $QLWD   ³'D\ 7ULSSHU´ Boston Globe. 20 Mar. 2005. 20 July 2011. . 6LPPHO*HRUJ ³'HU5DXPXQGGLHUlXPOLFKHQ2UGQXQJHQGHU*HVHOOVFKDIW´ 1908. Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe (11). Ed. Otthein Rammstedt. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 687-98. Sizemore-Wick, Christine (1989): A Female Vision of the City: London in the Novels of Five British Women. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P. Soja, Edward W. (1989): Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London and New York: Verso. ² (1996): Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell. Turk, Horst (2003): Philologische Grenzgänge: Zum Cultural Turn in der Literatur. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Walz, Angela (2005): Erzählstimmen verstehen: narrative Subjektivität im Spannungsfeld von Trans/Differenz am Beispiel zeitgenössischer englischer Schriftstellerinnen. Münster: LIT. :RUSROH .HQ   ³0RWKHU WR /HJHQG RU *RLQJ 8QGHUJURXQG  7KH /RQGRQ 1RYHO´Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe. Ed. Ian A. Bell. Cardiff: U of Wales P. 18193.

PART TWO CONCEPTUAL SPACES

Patterns of Global Mobility in Early Modern English Literature: Fictions of the Sea Birgit Neumann Abstract As Britain expanded its overseas spheres of influence in the course of the seventeenth century, the complex dynamics of territorial expansion and global mobility became a central topic of cultural negotiation. Imaginatively circumnavigating the world, numerous poems, plays and travelogues evoke powerful ideological tropes to give specific historical meaning to the complex experience of global mobility and territorial expaQVLRQ)UHTXHQWO\WKLV³H[SDQVLRQLVWIDQWDV\´%URZQ UHYROYHVDURXQG the figure of the sea, which becomes a paradigm of imperial capitalism and territorial desire. Yet the sea figures not merely as a symbol of imperial progress and maritime capitalism; rather it is imagined as an agent of change itself, an agent that sets up global trading networks, connects waterways and impels the English along an inevitable and predestined course. The present article traces some of the literary and rhetorical strategies by which the sea is made an agent of expansion (sans violence) and is thus translated into spatial practice. It is argued that the trope of the sea makes manifest a set of claims about political and commercial power, legitimising imperialism as an inevitable, vigorous and yet highly precarious development. By effortlessly forging transatlantic links between metropolitan Britain and territorial peripheries, the trope of the sea depicts imperialism as a natural extension of space and a progressive development in history.1 Key names and concepts: John Denham, Michael Drayton, Richard Hakluyt, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, William Shakespeare, William Strachey, Edmund Waller; empire of the sea, imaginative geographies, patterns of mobility, imperial fate, contingency.

1

The essay at hand is an extended version of my contribution ³Imperial Fate? Patterns of Global Mobility in Early Modern English Literature´ (2011).

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,QWURGXFWLRQ³7KH6HUYLFHVRIWKH6HD$UH,QQXPHUDEOH´ ,Q  MXVW RQH \HDU DIWHU &ROXPEXV¶V UHWXUQ WR (XURSH 6HEDVWLDQ %UDQW¶V Narrenschiff, the stultifera navis or Ship of Fools, was published. The design of the book was to identify all manifestations of human folly with the natural element, that is, according to Brant, as fickle, unpredictable, and treacherous as any man without reason (cf. .OHLQ 7KHPDGVKLSDFWVDV³DIORDWLQJERG\XVHGWRVHFOXGH lunatics, who were thus committed to the element that was in keeping ZLWKWKHLUXQSUHGLFWDEOHWHPSHUDPHQW´&RUELQ ³2XUEDUJH´ $OH[DQGHU %DUFOD\ WUDQVODWHV %UDQW LQ  ³>O@\NH DV D P\UURXU dothe represent agayne / the fourme and fygure of mannes counteQDXQFH´IROU /LWWOHZRQGHUWKDWWKHVKLSRIIRROVHPEDUNV RQ D YR\DJH ZLWK QR FOHDU GHVWLQDWLRQ ³:H NHSH WKH VWUHPH DQG WRXFKHQDWWKHVKRUH,Q&\WHQRULQ&RXUWZHGDUHQDWZHOODXHQWHU´ (ibid.). It seems that only a cultural imagination that still conceived of the ocean as an inherently repulsive realm of unfinished matter and primeval chaos was amenable to associating the sea with the complete ORVV RI FRQWURO ³,Q D FXOWXUH VWLOO VWHHSHG LQ ERWK WKH &KULVWLDQ GHmonization of the sea DQGWKHDQWLTXHQRWLRQRINHHSLQJZLWKLQOLPLWV´ (Kinzel 2002: 28), the ocean signified a marginal reality beyond a horizon that delimited the known, the secure and the governable. Some one hundred years later ± after circumnavigation had furnished evidence that all the seas of the world were really just one huge navigable ocean ± the sea was no longer the symbolic habitat of madness but a space that could be seized, appropriated and controlled (Klein and Mackenthun 2004: 2). In 1613, Samuel Purchas could famously make the sea the centrepiece of his claims to a vision of global mobility, exchange and prosperity: >7@KHVHUYLFHVRIWKH6HD>«@DUHLQQXPHUDEOHLWLVWKHJUHDW3XUYH\RU of the Worlds Commodities to our use, Conveyor of the Excesse of Rivers, Uniter by Traffique of al Nations; [I]t is an open field for Merchandize in Peace. (Purchas 1625: 28)

Here the sea is animated with a distinctive autonomy as it moves, flows and glides to bring along the desired change. The notion of the ocean as a deeply rational agent of cultural mobility, laying claim to the whole world, is a persistent constituent of the cultural imagination

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of the age. We see it further developed and extended in, for instance, -RKQ 'HQKDP¶V SRHP ³&RRSHU¶V +LOO´   7KH VHD DFFording to the poem, Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours; )LQGVZHDOWKZKHUH¶WLVEHVWRZVLWZKHUHLWZDQWV Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants. So that to us no thing, no place is strange :KLOHKLVIDLUERVRPLVWKHZRUOG¶VH[FKDQJH (Denham 1709: 184-88)

It is difficult to imagine a greater conceptual difference between the VSLULW RIWKLV TXRWDWLRQDQG %UDQW¶VLPDJH RI D PDG VHD GHILQHG E\ D lack of purpose, structure, and direction. For Denham, as for many other writers of the early seventeenth century, the sea was not the symbol of madness and disorderly anti-civilisation, but a force of unlimited expansion, a technically manageable but socially sensitive space, an arena for the exercise of global power. It is the sea that enables, even enforces global expansion, that serves as an agent of WUDQVQDWLRQDOOLQNVDQGWKDWIRUJHV³WKHLPDJLQDWLYHWUDQVLWLRQIURPDQ LQVXODUWRDQLPSHULDOLVWSROLWLFV´%URZQ 0RUe than merely a symbol of imperial progress, the sea, in these writings, becomes the agent of change itself, an agent that sets up a global trading network, connects waterways, supports conduits and thus advances imperial capitalism (cf. ibid.). Of course, what these tropes of the sea repress, GLVDYRZ RU GLVVLPXODWH LV WKH µJXLOW\¶ NQRZOHGJH WKDW WKH REYHUVH RI LPSHULDO SURJUHVV DQG DOVR WKH EDVHV RI %ULWDLQ¶V SURVSHULW\ ZDV transatlantic slavery and slave trade.2 It is this context that helps us understaQG 3DXO *LOUR\¶V   QRWLRQ RI WKH Black Atlantic, which he conceptualisHVDVD³FRXQWHUFXOWXUHRIPRGHUQLW\´LELG  DesignHG DV D FRPSOH[ WUDQVFXOWXUDO FKURQRWRSH WKH ³UKL]RPRUSKLF IUDFWDOVWUXFWXUH´LELG 4) of the Black Atlantic evokes the fate of the millions of Africans who were transported across the continents and released into the diasporic existence of slavery. 2

The modern sea, from Columbus onwards, was a highly contested contact zone WR XVH 0DU\ /RXLVH 3UDWW¶V WHUP  D VRFLDO VSDFH ³ZKHUH GLVSDUDWH FXOWXUHV meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination ± like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths DVWKH\DUHOLYHGRXWDFURVVWKHJOREHWRGD\´Pratt 1992: 4).

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This observation leads me to my thesis: as Britain expanded its overseas spheres of influence and control in the course of the seventeenth century, the complex dynamics of territorial expansion and global mobility became a central topic of cultural contemplation (cf. Brown 2001: 57). Imaginatively circumnavigating the world, numerous poems, plays and travelogues of the age conjure up powerful ideological tropes to give specific historical meaning to the experience of global mobility and dislocation. As Laura Brown (2001) has shown for the eighteenth century, this expansionist fantasy is frequently structured around the figure of the sea. Imagined as a force in its own right, at once calm, obedient, controllable, and overwhelmingly powerful, the sea seems to drive the English along an irresistible and unpredictable course towards an (imperial) end beyond their agency and control (cf. ibid.: 55). By depicting it as a fluid entity, the sea comes to figure as an evocative emblePRI(QJODQG¶VLPSHULDOIXWXUH The sea appears as a force in motion, whose amplitude and potency reflect the power of the imperial endeavour itself (cf. ibid.: 56). As a ³UHDO-and-LPDJLQHGSODFH´6RMD WKHVHDKDVDPDWHULDOLW\WKDWLV deeply implicated in the imperial imaginary of the time, i.e., in orders of knowledge, norms, and values suitable to the various imperial projects. The sea might indeed be seen as something like the dreamwork (cf. Freud 1999) of imperialism, unfolding its own movement in time and space from a central point of origin and folding back on itself to disclose both utopian fantasies of an unbounded imperial appropriation and fractured images of unresolved ambivalences. In the present article, my project is to trace a number of literary strategies by which the sea is made an agent of imperial expansion and is thus translated into imperial practice, a practice which connects England to overseas territories. It will be my central premise that representations of the sea can help us to understand how the English FRQFHLYHGRISDWWHUQVRIPRELOLW\DQG³RIWKHUDQJHDQGWKHOLPLWVRI human agency within larger religious, cosmological, philosophical, DQG HYHQ VFLHQWLILF ZRUOGYLHZV´ *XPEUHFKW    &UXFLDO questions for my analysis are the following:  What are the mechanisms at work that set off cultural mobility and who or what is regarded as the driving force of mobility?  How do local actors accommodate, resist or adjust to challenges posed by outside movement?

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How is mobility experienced, and how does literature give shape to the frequently undirected contingency of oceanic transgression?

2. The Spatial Imaginary and the Empire of the Sea Representations of mobility are of course no mere descriptions of what is there, simply, positively, naturally. They are always to some extent political, a form of aesthetic and imaginative land claim, adequate to the demands of a rising imperial nation. Spatial practices in literature, the exploration of space through movement, ultimately yield imaginative geographies that are furnished with a performative dimension (cf. Neumann 2009). In providing a conceptual paradigm for the mental organisation of spatial relations and concomitant notions of distance and closeness, centre and periphery, difference and identity, patterns of mobility emerge as crucial sites of cultural intervention.3 Spatial practices and the enactment of place are implicated in a politics of relational connectivity, by means of which exchange and networking between cultures are organised (cf. Bærenholdt and Granås 2008: 3), typically in asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination (cf. Pratt 1992: 4). Patterns of mobility are therefore not only vital to (the re-invention of) cultural identity, but also to its constant displacements, diffusions, and disjunctures, i.e. to the travelling and translation of cultures. Cultures, these patterns of mobility indicate, must indeed be understood in terms of their routes, not their roots (cf. Gilroy 1993: 133). The fluid and dynamic nature of spatial orderings suggests that space and related patterns of mobility are always only provisionally conceptualised in texts and other media, that our representations of them are experimental in kind and that they warrant the sustained critical attention to their changing cultural signification and function. The concern with oceanic transgression in Early Modern culture is a distinctive development of the age ± an age which is frequently FUHGLWHGZLWKWKH(XURSHDQ³GLVFRYHU\RIWKHVHD´3DUU\ 6KLS3

Cf. Henri /HIHEYUH ZKR SRLQWV RXW ³6RFLDO VSDFH ZLOO EH UHYHDOHG LQ LWV particularity to the extent that it ceases to be indistinguishable from mental VSDFH>«@RQWKHRQHKDQGDQGSK\VLFDOVSDFH>«@RQWKHRWKHU´ (2004: 27).

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ping in the early sixteenth century was still chiefly sailing along the coastline ± costeggiare DV WKH ,WDOLDQV FDOOHGLWµKXJJLQJ WKH VKRUH¶ Sailing out onto the open sea thus signified a fundamental change (cf. Kinzel 2002: 31). In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English merchants, colonial prospectors and military leaders developed, in sometimes faltering but increasingly successful ways, the ship-building and navigational expertise that enabled them to sail the world (cf. Kaul 2009: 6-7). Daring sea-voyagers, such as Francis Drake, Humphrey Gilbert, and Walter Raleigh as well as thousands of XQQDPHG VHDIDUHUV FURVVHG WKH ZDWHU KRSLQJ WR H[SDQG (QJODQG¶V SRZHU RYHU WKH HQWLUH JOREH ³7KH RULJLQDWLQJ DJHQWV RI HPSLUH´ David Armitage contends, were the Elizabethan sea-GRJV*ORULDQD¶VVDLORU-heroes who had cirFXPQDYLJDWHGWKHJOREHVLQJHGWKH.LQJRI6SDLQ¶VEHDUGVZHSWWKH oceans of pirates and Catholics, and thereby opened up the sea-routes across which English migrants would travel, and English trade would flow. (2000: 100)

In the course of the seventeenth century England began to control the North Atlantic trading network, which included, most prominently, the colonial settlements along the North American coast and in the Caribbean.4 Yet it is also true that England ± compared to the imperial powers of Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands ± was a notorious latecomer. Several attempts to establish colonies had been unsuccessful and numerous sea-voyages had foundered (cf. Hulme 1986: 90). In the light of these failures a collective vision of a world open to exploration by the English was indeed necessary. These material developments need to be seen in the context of conceptual changes in the spatial imaginary. The sixteenth- and early seventeenth century is the age for which Carl Schmitt (1950) has identified a space revolution on a global scale, yielding a new world order based on the fundamental division between the spatial entities of ODQG DQG VHD ³)RU WKH ILUVW WLPH LQ KXPDQ KLVWRU\´ 6FKPLWW FODLPV VRPHZKDWWRRVZHHSLQJO\³WKHFRQWUDVWEHWZHHQland and sea serves 4

(QJODQG¶V HYHQWXDO WUDQVLWLRQ IURP WKH VWDVLV RI WHUULWRULDO FRQWDLQPHQW WR WKH dynamics of exchange is powerfully reflected in the Navigations Acts (1651), which regulated transatlantic trade between England and the colonies (cf. Hill 1986: 157).

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as the all-HQFRPSDVVLQJEDVLVRIDJOREDOODZRIQDWLRQV´LELG my translation). Only now, Schmitt maintains, were land and sea fully understood as different kinds of spaces, characterised by fundamentally different features (2008: 16). Whereas the land can be divided up into legally defined spheres which can be possessed by specific states, the sea is exterritorial and belongs to no one. England, Schmitt continues, was the first and only nation to fully exploit the maritime energies of the new spatial order, subsequently emerging as the most influential global player (Schmitt 1950: 19). This transition from an army of shepherds and farmers to a navy of seafarers, pirates, and admirals was still unimaginable at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Yet, in Elizabethan times, it had long begun to mould the cultural imagination (cf. Klein 2004: 96), eventually giving rise to the belief WKDW %ULWDLQ ZDV GHVWLQHG WR EXLOG µDQ HPSLUH RI WKH VHD¶DQHPSLUH which was of course, firmly conjoined with the empire of conquest (cf. Wilson 2004: 13)). The myth of an empire of the sea was reassuring and enduring because it helped to distinguish the British Empire from the territorial empires of antiquity (especially from the Roman Empire), as well as from contemporary land-empires such as the Holy Roman Empire or WKH 6SDQLVK 0RQDUFK\¶V SRVVHVVLRQV LQ WKH $PHULFDV $Q HPSLUH RI the seas would not run the risk of overextension and military dictatorship which had propelled the collapse of the Roman Empire, nor would it bring the tyranny and impoverishment which ultimately hastened the decline of Spain. The British empire of the sea was considHUHGDVERWKKLVWRULFDOO\QRYHODQGSROLWLFDOO\EHQLJQ³LWFRXOGWKHUHfore escape the compulsions that destroyed all previous land-based, and hence obviously military, empires. In short, it could be an empire IRUOLEHUW\´$UPLWDJH ,IWKHUKHWRULFRIHPSLUHUHOLHGRQD spatial discourse that marked both natural borders and overseas connections, then the figure of the sea did indeed perform a key service to the ideology of imperialism. The sea, imagined as a centrifugal force, acted as a protector of the nation and the enabler of the empire, establishing the necessary link between diverse geographical regions, between the territorial periphery and British society. The geographical IDFWRI%ULWDLQ¶VLQVXODULW\VXJJHVWHGWKDWLWZDVGHVWLQHGWREHFRPHD maritime power, at once clearly distinct from continental Europe and linked oceanically to overseas territories (cf. Wilson 2004: 13).

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3. Mapping the Sea: Imperial Fate? If there is a single utopian moment in the poetry of overseas travel, discovery and colonisation created in early modern England, it might ZHOOEH0LFKDHO'UD\WRQ¶VRGH³7RWKH9LUJLQLDQ9R\DJH´ZULWWHQLQ  5HIOHFWLQJ WHUULWRULDO GHVLUH ³7R WKH 9LUJLQLDQ 9R\DJH´ SURvides a survey of an unpredictable sea that propels the Britons along an irresistible course. However, it appears that this course is at least conditionally ordered by the winds of providence. Mobility is not incidental here. Providential winds are, quite literally, speeding Britons to the New World: Britons >«@ 6ZHOO\RXUVWUHFK¶GVD\OH with vowes as strong, as the winds that blow you. Your course securely steer, West and by south forth keep, Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals, when Eolus scowls, You need not fear, So absolute the deep. (Drayton 1793: 7-18)

The mythical plot of these lines fuses some of the most powerful ideological tropes of early modern imperialism, in particular the westward course of empire, the wishful vision of a maritime calm and an obedient sea and the winds of providence (cf. Kaul 2000: 47). The wind no longer foreshadows a destructive whirl; it promises energy, dynamics, and, most importantly, the directed mode of a route. The invocation of Eolus, the Greco-Roman god of winds, as well as the images of the ³VWUHFK¶GVD\OH´DQGWKHZLQGVVDIHO\GLUHFWLQJWKHVKLSWRZDUGVLWVGLvinely ordained destination project the promise of a calm, even teleological course of imperial expansion. The sense of divine protection invoked here was a recurring element of the early modern discourse surrounding overseas expeditions (cf. Hulme 1986: 96). In The Spanish Masquerado from 1589, Robert *UHHQHXQGHUVWDQGVWKHGHIHDWRIWKH$UPDGDDV*RG¶VVLJQDOWKDWWKH hitherto all too complacent English should finally get moving:

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[S]eeing how secure we slept, careless, reposing ourselves in that our

own strength, for that we were hedged in with the sea, and had a long and peaceable time of quiet: made slothful by these his favors, his Majesty brought in these Spaniards to waken us out of our dreams. (Greene 1964, 5: 256)

The triumph of the sea no longer lies in its role as a secure barrier for the island ± DYLHZIDPRXVO\H[SRXQGHGLQ6KDNHVSHDUH¶VRichard II5 ± but in its power to connect England to the world and to secure naval supremacy. The sea gives England the amplitude, fluency and progress it otherwise lacks (cf. Brown 2001: 71). The wreck of the Armada on the one hand and the triumphant return of Drake, Frobisher, and Cavendish from their American raids on the other hand VKRZDFFRUGLQJWR*UHHQH³WKDWWKH/RUGLVRQRXUVLGHWKDWEULQJHWK XVKRPHVDIH´ *UHHQH¶VYHU\VKort-sightedness about LPSHULDOH[SHGLWLRQVLQGLFDWHV³WKDWPRELOLW\LVRQO\WKHEHJLQQLQJRI what the English imperialist-to-EH PXVW OHDUQ´ .QDSS    Nonetheless, it is, according to Peter Hulme, via such providentialist concepts of mobility that ³(QJODQG ZDV EHJLQQLQJ WR GLVFRYHU LWV PDQLIHVW GHVWLQ\´    7KH P\WK RI WKH EHQLJQ VHD DQG WKH providential winds tell the story of the human desire to reduce to contingency, to supplement and contradict the workings of natural power and to legitimise imperial expansion as an inevitable, progressive development. ,Q 'UD\WRQ¶V SRHP WKH SDVWRUDO SOHQLWXGH RI 9LUJLQLD VXSSOLHV further evidence of this imperial destiny. Unsurprisingly, given the underlying desire to possess and appropriate, the New WRUOG¶VSDUDdisiacal abundance is re-conceptualised as a catalogue of commodiWLHV$VWKHIROORZLQJOLQHVVKRZ'UD\WRQ¶VRGHRQO\GHSLFWVWKHUHwards of faith bestowed on the English in the New World: (DUWK¶VRQO\SDUDGLVH Where nature hath in store Fowl, venison, and fish, $QGWKHIUXLWIXO¶VWVRLO Without your toil, Three harvests more, All greater than your wish. 5

As is well known, John of Gaunt in Richard II UHPLQLVFHV DERXW D ³VFHSWUHG LVOH´ WKDW ZDV ³bound in with the triumphant sea, / Whose rocky shore beats back the enYLRXVVLHJH2IZDWU¶\1HSWXQH´2.1.40, 2.1.61-63).

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Birgit Neumann And the ambitious vine crowns with his purple mass, The cedar reaching high To kiss the sky. (1793: 23-34)

This pastoral scene, a vision of abundance and internalised order, provides an almost static image of the New World, which is superimposed upon the tranquil stream, serving as an emblem of national destiny. The real subject of these lines is not the New World but English LPSHULDO YLVLRQ ³XQGHUVWRRG DV D GLDOHFWLFDO PRYHPHQW WRZDUG ODQGVFDSHXQGHUVWRRGDVWKHQDWXUDOLVWLFUHSUHVHQWDWLRQRIQDWXUH´0LWFKHOO 1994: 19). The images of peace, plenty, and continuity, which in Early Modern discourse had troped the inviolability of the national territory, are employed here to construct an affinity between the domestic English space and the territorial bounds of the colony. According to W.J.T. Mitchell, these semiotic features of landscape, and the historical narratives they generate, are tailor-made for the discourse of imperialism, which conceives itself precisely (and simultaneously) as an expansion of landscape understood as an inevitable, progressive development in history, an expanVLRQ RI µFXOWXUH¶ DQG µFLYLOLVDWLRQ¶ LQWR D µQDWXUDO¶ VSDFH LQ D SURJUHVV WKDW LV LWVHOI QDUUDWHG DV µQDWXUDO¶ (Ppires move RXWZDUGLQVSDFHDVDZD\RIPRYLQJIRUZDUGLQWLPHWKHµSURVSHFW¶ that opens up is not just a spatial scene but a projected future of µGHYHORSPHQW¶DQGH[SORLWDWLRQ. (17)

By translating mobility and fluidity into a highly mythical and VWDWLFVSDFHFXOWXUDOO\FRQWLQJHQWSURFHVVHVDUHDWWULEXWHGWRDµSUHGLVFXUVLYHRULJLQ¶ZKLFKQDWXUDOLVes the imperial expansion and suggests historical continuity (cf. Scholz 2004:   :KLOH VLJQDOOLQJ D ³SURMHFWHG IXWXUH RI µGHYHORSPHQW¶´ WKLV P\WKLFDO VSDFH VLPXOWDQHRXVO\ seems to exist outside time and history, in illo tempore, thus dissimulating the extent to which it bears the traces of contemporary political and historical needs. At the same time, the Edenic nature points to a merciful God, even a divine trader, who makes available to the English the bounty of faraway lands (cf. Kaul 2000: 48). Yet, as Peter Hulme (1986: 94-97) has shown, the belief in *RG¶VZLOOLQPDNLQJthe New World available for English occupation was much discussed because of a series of events in early English

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colonial history. In May 1609, nine ships of colonists sailed from Plymouth to Virginia, and one ± the Sea-Venture, which carried the leader of the expedition, Sir George Somers ± was separated from the others in a hurricane. The Sea-Venture was blown off course to the Bermudas, a small group of islands dreaded for many years by ships that had had to circumnavigate these islands to stay on their northern course. As a consequence, the Bermudas were commonly referred to as the Islands of the Devil. The other ships arrived in Virginia and reported the loss of the Sea-Venture. But as a matter of fact, the crew and passengers of the Sea-Venture managed to reach the Bermudas, where they survived in relative comfort. Here they built two other ships, the Patience and the Deliverance, in which they sailed to Jamestown in May 1610. Critics of the colonial enterprise saw in the presumed loss of the Sea-Venture a sure sign of providential condemnation. It was therefore almost inevitable, when news reached London RI WKH FRORQLVWV¶ VXUYLYDO WKDW WKH 9LUJLQLD &RPSDQ\¶V RIILFLDOV KDVtened to stress that Providence was unquestionably on their side (cf. Hulme 1986: 96). We know about these incidents through an elaborate letter by William Strachey, dated 15 July 1610, and now known as The True Reportory of the Wracke. Strachey, an English gentleman who intended to mend his fortunes in the New World, was aboard the flagship Sea-Venture. He begins his report of the shipwreck by emphasisLQJWKHGHVWUXFWLYHIRUFHRIWKHRFHDQ³:LQGHVDQG6HDV´DFFRUGLQJ WR KLP ³ZHUH DV PDG DV IXU\ DQG UDJH FRXOG PDNH WKHP´ (Strachey 1625: 5). The terrors of the ocean and the storm, the desperate pumping to keep afloat, the onset of despair and the persistent fear ± all are powerfully described to highlight the salvation that ultimately awaits the colonists. It is therefore not surprising that Strachey suggests an allegorical interpretation of the incident (cf. Hulme 1986: 97). Accordingly, these misadventures were part of a divine plan: [S]uch tempests, thunders, and other fearefull objects are seene and heard about them, that they be called commonly, The Devils Islands, and are feared and avoyded of all sea travellers alive, above any other place in the world. Yet it pleased our mercifull God, to make even this hideous and hated place, both the place of our safetie and meanes of our deliverance. (Strachey 1625: 7)

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The conclusion to be drawn from this description was that God ± through his instrument the ocean ± had protected the English so that they could pursue their colonial enterprise and be rewarded with new overseas territories. The relevant trope within the rhetoric of Christian historiography is, as Peter Hulme points out, the felix culpa ³ZKDW seems in the immediate present to be an unmitigated disaster is revealed in the long term to have had its appropriate and necessary place LQ*RG¶VIXOOQDUUDWLYH´ 2Uto put it in spatial terms: what appears as a loss of orientation and direction, an uncontrolled drift, is revealed as an appropriate and necessary step towards a divinely ordained destination. At the same time, however, this movement is represented as involuntary, unplanned, and therefore inevitable. :H ILQG VLPLODU SDWWHUQV RI PRELOLW\ LQ 6KDNHVSHDUH¶V SOD\V particularly in his later plays, such as The Tempest (1611) and Pericles (1609), where the sea figures as both a socially sensitive sphere of political action and an agent of imperial expansion. In Pericles, for example, a tale of shipwreck, storm, dispersal, loss of life, miraculous recovery, and eventual reunion, it is the sea that propels Pericles, the VHDIDUHU ³LQ D FHQWULIXJDO DQG HVVHQWLDOO\ imperial move away from KLVJHQHULFµKRPH¶´.OHLQ ,QDVHHPLQJO\XQFRQWUROOHGEXW ultimately necessary and rational movement the sea guides Pericles to new shores, thus enabling his imperial endeavours. The sea indeed moulds and underwrites PerLFOHV¶V H[LVWHQFHWR VXFKDQ H[WHQW WKDW LW FDQ EH UHJDUGHG DV ³WKH SOD\¶V VHFRQG SURWDJRQLVW IDFLOLWDWRU RI DQG DFWRU LQ 3HUFLOHV¶ LPSHULDO VWRU\´ &RUPDFN    ,Q The Tempest, the sea, which famously manages to fuse the familiar world of the Mediterranean with a sense of the Atlantic ocean beyond (cf. Hulme 1986: 91), also serves to speed the innocent to their ordained destiny in the New World: Prospero and Miranda were cast adrift, DFFRUGLQJWR3URVSHURLQ³DURWWHQFDUFDVHRIDEXWWQRWULJJ¶G, / Nor WDFNOH VDLO RU PDVW´ -47) ± a traditional form of punishment for certain crimes and especially favoured by those who were uncertain about the legitimacy of their actions and hence unwilling to bear the consequences for them. To cast away in such a navis unus pellius, a ship of one skin, as it was called, was a means of freeing the authorities from responsibility: the sea would shelter the innocent and punish the guilty (cf. Hulme 2001: 189). Hence, Prospero can claim that he and Miranda nHHGHG ³3URYLGHQFH GLYLQH´   WR FRPH DVKRUH For Prospero, his survival is therefore a sure sign of his innocence

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and, ultimately, of the legitimacy of his control over the island (and his reaccession to his rightful dukedom). In both plays, then, the loss of orientation and control turns out to be part of a providential design that propels the protagonists towards their ordained destination. %XWOHWXVUHWXUQWR'UD\WRQ¶VSRHP:KLOHDVXSHUILFLDOUHDGLQJ of the early parts of the poem does indeed bear witness to the explanatory power of providential notions of cultural mobility, the poem as a whole reveals some of the strain which that code is under. SignifiFDQWO\ WKH ODVW VWDQ]D RI 'UD\WRQ¶V RGH DGGV WR WKH ROGHU IUDPH RI spiritual patterns of mobility more material arguments for the necessity of English colonial discovery and active exploration. Richard Hakluyt, the famous editor of early English maritime expeditions, is celebrated as a national hero, securing new territories for English expaQVLRQ³7K\YR\DJHVDWWHQG,QGXVWULRXV+DFNOXLW:KRVHUHDGLQJ VKDOOLQIODPH0HQWRVHHNIDPH´'UD\WRQ-71). Hakluyt intended his collection Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) to refute European perceptions of English inaction by highlighting the mobility RIWKH(QJOLVK%\LOOXVWUDWLQJWKDWWKH(QJOLVKKDGEHHQ³PHQIXOORI activity, stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the ZRUOG´    WKH FROOHFWLRQ VRXJKW WR SURSHl new colonial initiatives. Adopting a very generous definition of English, Hakluyt famously managed to compile two thousand two hundred and sixty-one pages of English sea-voyages, arguing that the English had the right to foreign lands through first discovery (cf. Helgerson 2000: 316). AcFRUGLQJ WR +DNOX\W¶V XQULYDOOHG FROOHFWLRQ WKH (QJOLVK YR\DJHV WR $PHULFDEHJLQZLWK³>W@KHPRVWDQFLHQW'LVFRYHU\RIWKH:HVW,QGLHV by Madoc the sonne of Owen Gwyneth Prince of North-wales, in the \HHUH ´ WKXV Vuggesting that Columbus and his 1488 offer to +HQU\ 9,, ZDV DW EHVW ³D GLVWDQW VHFRQG´ +XOPH    +HUH spatial practices are directly translated into imperial practices of discovery and appropriation and thus have a highly performative quality: they are exercises in persuasion adequate to the demands of a rising imperial nation. +HQFHHYHQDVWKH(QJOLVKLQ'UD\WRQ¶VRGHURZGHWHUPLQHGO\ towards their faraway paradise, the poem itself evokes a world much larger than their own, a world made accessible by discovery (cf. Kaul 1999: 48). In this poem, then, we witness a transition that is quite

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typical of many early seventeenth-century texts: while much of the poem symbolises the sea as an instrument through which God rewards the English, it also charts a more secular argument about the necessity of mercantile adventuring and naval conquest. The symbolic, spiritual, and providential concept of mobility is supplemented by the classified and cartographically charted concept of the eighteenth century. As a matter of fact, this transition hints at the extent to which secularising modes of knowledge and action were crucial to the emergence of the modern theory and practice of imperialism (cf. McKeon 1983: 47). The poem thus restores the sea to the dynamics of the historical process, thereby energising it for global exploration, naval conquest and empirical science. This transition from spiritual to empirical concepts of mobility may be seen as well in the outdating of the traditional figure of translatio imperii, a powerful model for understanding cultural mobility. As Michael McKeon has shown, the translatio conceives of empire as VRYHUHLJQW\ DV D UDWKHU ³VWDWLF DQG LQWHJUDO HQWLW\ WKDW LV WUDQVODWHG westward from realm to realm and from culture to culture´  As the empire is gradually brought down to earth and to the concrete contexts of social interaction in the early seventeenth century, it begins to disband as a supra-historical entity. Accordingly, the argument RILWVVPRRWKµWUDQVODWLRQ¶loses not only its force but its very meanLQJ ³2QH UHVXOW LV WKDW KHQFHIRUWKWKHHDV\MXVWLILFDWLRQ RISRZHU E\ UHIHUHQFH WR LQYLVLEOHV ZLOO EH YLHZHG ZLWK LQFUHDVLQJ VFHSWLFLVP´ (ibid.). Significantly, it is again the sea that is evoked to provide the material, albeit fragile justification for British imperial expansion and global supremacy. In an empiricist and imperialist re-definition of Early Modern physico-theology, numerous texts imagine a physical science which explicates the tendency of the sea to fill up the empty space that would otherwise separate the shores of the world from one another. This approach is supplemented by a metaphysical system, situating the characteristics of the natural expansion of the sea in the context of a pervasive providential plan (cf. Brown 2001: 78). Hence, many texts evoke the sea as a material justification for an otherwise immaterial expansiveness of England, thus envisioning an imperial expansion without geographical acquisition (cf. ibid.). In such propaganda as the entertainment of Elvetham (1591) the prophet of the sea, 1HUHXV GHFODUHV WKDW ³ZLWK PH FDPH JROG EUHDVWHG ,QGLD  :KR

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daunted at your sight, leapt to the shore, / And sprinkling endless treasure on this Isle, / Left me with this jewel to present yoXU*UDFH´ (Nichols 1823, 3: 112). The Elvetham entertainment justifies imperial accumulation with the material immediacy and the geographical vastness of the ocean. The sea is imagined as a force in its own right that appropriates new territories and their riches in a seemingly natural way and which produces the movement and energy an imperial nation UHTXLUHV (QJODQG FDQ WKXV FRPPDQG ,QGLD¶V ULFKHV ZLWKRXW WKH English having to travel there. ,Q'HQKDP¶V³&RRSHU¶V+LOO´WKHRFHDQDOVREHFRPHVDVXJJHVtive emblem of territorial desire and the inevitable nature of English expansion. Here, as in other poems of the age, the Thames provides DFFHVVWRWKHZLGHURFHDQWKXVFRQQHFWLQJZKDWJRHVRQµRXWWKHUH¶WR ZKDWJRHVRQµLQKHUH¶FI:LOVRQ  .

My eye, descending from the hill, surveys Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays. 7KDPHVWKHPRVWORYHGRIDOOWKHRFHDQ¶VVRQV By his old sire, to his embraces runs; Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, Like mortal life to meet eternity. (Denham 1709: 159-64)

7KH7KDPHV³WKHPRVWORYHGRIDOOWKHRFHDQ¶VVRQV´SODFHVWKHFKDUacteristics of the natural, fluid, and ever changing world in the context of a providential design, which promises eternal stability. This transformation of instability and flux into eternity has a deeply ethical quality: it projects the promise of a new form of imperialism, namely the benevolent mode of English trade in which the sea spreads prosperity and civilisation wherever it goes (cf. Brown 2001: 65). Thus, the following lines assert: Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, But free and common, as the sea or wind; When he to boast, or to disperse his stores, Full of the tributes of his grateful shores, Visits the world, and in his flying towers Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours. (Denham 1709: 179-84)

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The sea is a complex protagonist in these lines; it is animated with a peculiar autonomy and distinct presence as it moves, flows, glides and visits the world, seemingly a marvellous storehouse that could supply everything that England lacks. The sea is not an interposing space that separates one part of the world from another, but a force that unites them into one peaceful, yet clearly hierarchised (international business) community. Invoking the Early Modern trope of the body, the VHDMXVWOLNHEORRGEHIRUH³VZHHWO\XQLWHVDOOWKHSDUWVRIWKH%RG\IRU WKHFRQVSLUDWLRQRIWKHJRRGRIWKHZKROH´*HRUJH7KRPVRQTWGLQ Paster 1993: 65). Yet, compared to blood, the sea clearly allows for more pervasive mobility: the sea not only unites the different parts of the national body but those of the whole world. The circulation of blood was a widespread trope in early modern England to symbolise all the key structures of exchange and distribution of resources. However, it seems that this trope could not provide for the unlimited mobility central to imperial exchange and the ideology of the pax Britannica because, in the microcosmic body, every part is bound to occupy a given place so that the whole can operate successfully. As soon as blood transgresses the limits of the body it turns into excretion, which contaminates the body and thwarts any form of directed and purposeful agency (cf. Scholz 1998: 471). The sea, on the other hand, is envisioned as a rational force in motion that stretches almost endlessly, that fosters transnational links and appropriates new territories without any cultural contact, thus, so the trope suggests, avoiding WKHULVNRIµFRQWDPLQDWLRQ¶WKURXJKFRQWDFWZLWKFXOWXUDOothers. ,QWKHFRXUVHRILWVH[SDQVLRQ'HQKDP¶VVHDPDNHVWKHZRUOG RYHU LQ LWV LPDJH ³JHQHUDWLQJ IURP LWV RZQ QDWXUH D V\VWHP ZKRVH ORJLF UHIOHFWV H[SODLQV DQG MXVWLILHV WKDW QDWXUH´ %URZQ    The sea, abstracted from social contexts and human endeavours, does WKHµFLYLOLVLQJ¶ZRUNRIHPSLUHFILELG ,WDSSURSULDWHVDOOWKHVKRUHV of the world for England and cultivates them, i.e. subjects them to the same mechanism of commercial, capitalist exchange, a mechanism from which no place can escape and which is imagined as a civilising force (cf. Scholz 1998: 478). Indeed, the ideology of imperial capitalLVPHQGRUVHGE\'HQKDP¶V³&RRSHU¶V+LOO´LVVXIIXVHGZLWKWKHVHQVH of an almost providential distribution of goods, testifying to the intrinsically rational order of the world. The imperial future evoked and enabled by the figure of the ocean therefore entails a deeply ethical proposition, which is based upon conventions of reciprocity: the sea

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distributes wealth, peace, and civilisation in exchange for new territories abroad (cf. Weinbrot 1993: 283). Arguably, the most important function of this trope is to conceal the agency of the acquisitive, travHOOLQJVXEMHFWDQG³WKHXUJHQF\RIDFFXPXODWLRQ´%URZQ  By thus displacing imperial violence, the figure of the sea performs a major service to the ideology of imperialism, precisely because it confirms its claim to impose a peaceful empire on the world (cf. Brown 2001: 80). By this token, the ostensible pacifism of colonial trade could eventually be perceived as a softening of a more assertive imperial expansionism. We find similar conceptions of the ocean as the agent of imperial expansion in a number of other texts of the age. Andrew 0DUYHOO¶V SRHP ³%HUPXGDV´   DQG 'U\GHQ¶V Annus Mirabilis. The Year of Wonder, 1666 (1727) are cases in point. Here too the sea is imagined as a benevolent waterway, a waterway which brings the (QJOLVKWRWKHZRUOGDQGWKHZRUOG¶VULFKHVWR(QJODQGFI.DXO II  0DUYHOO¶V ³%HUPXGDV´ FHOebrates the guiding winds of providence, which securely speeds the exiles to the New World (cf. ibid.): ³:KDW VKRXOG ZH GR EXW VLQJ KLV SUDLVH  7KDW OHG XV WKURXJK WKH ZDW¶U\ PD]H  >«@ +H ODQGV XV RQ D JUDVV\ VWDJH  6DIH IURP WKH VWRUPV DQG SUHODWH¶V UDJH´  -12). What emerges from these LPDJLQDWLYHSDWWHUQVRIPRELOLW\LVDSRZHUIXO³HWKLFVRILQWHUFKDQJH´ (Weinbrot 1993: 283) that defines the benevolent system of British imperial expansion. Controlled movement, safety, serene seas, and effortOHVV DSSURSULDWLRQ DUH WKH UHZDUGV IRU WKDW YLUWXH $V 'U\GHQ¶V Annus Mirabilis ZRXOG KDYH LW ³7KXV WR WKH (DVWHUQ ZHDOWK WKURXJK VWRUPVZHJR´ RQD³%ULWLVK2FHDQ´ Here, the sea has been naturalised to such an extent that it can be fully integrated into domestic spatial orders. The spatial domestication of the sea is a powerful means of legitimising the acquisition of foreign riches, which become naturally British through mere contact with the sea. Of course, we should be wary about constructing a coherent master-narrative about the movement produced by the sea. The optimistic visions of cultural mobility, of a providential, even rational forward movement and of beatific territorial expansion without violence, are set against more ambiguous visions. Representations of cultural mobility and global expansion interact in multiple and even antagonistic ways with the historical contexts they openly or silently

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UHIOHFWFI.OHLQDQG0DFNHQWKXQ ,Q(GPXQG:DOOHU¶VSRHP ³7Ke Battle of the Summer-,VODQG´ IRULQVWDQFHWKHVHDWKDW ³UDJLQJRFHDQ´ WXUQVRXWWREHDQDJHQWRIJUHDWGHVWUXFWLRQ ³WKH ZLOG IXU\ RI WHPSHVWV´ LELG   UHVSRQVLEOH QRW RQO\ IRU EHDFKHG DQG GHDG ZKDOHV EXW DOVR IRU ³WKH IDWH Rf ships, and shipZUHFNHGPHQ´LELG %\WKHHQGRIWKHSRHPWKHSDVWRUDOPRWLIV used to celebrate English imperialism are abandoned completely and the ocean, drenched in blood, becomes a site of cruelty, battle, and fragmentation (cf. Kaul 2000: 52). By turning the figure of the benign, rational waterway into a scene of disorientation and devastation, :DOOHU¶VSRHPUHWULHYHVWKHSK\VLFDODQGRIWHQYLROHQWUHDOLW\RIRYHUseas expeditions from their widespread glorification and reveals ³VRPH RI WKH KXPDQ FRVWV RI WHUULWRULDO H[SDQVLRQ´ .DXO    There is indeed nothing necessary about the course of the English empire. /DWHU LQ WKH FHQWXU\ 0LOWRQ¶V Paradise Lost (1667) envisions the sea as a profoundly irrational and dangerous entity, which belies the idea that mobility and expansion are inevitable, progressive developments. The ocean, in Paradise Lost, is a destructive force, ambiguously linked to the unformed matter from which God created the world but which in itself is envisioned as a deeply anti-vital force (cf. Zwierlein 2002: 49). Most importantly, the sea makes any sense of GLUHFWLRQ LPSRVVLEOH 7KH VHD LV LPDJLQHG DV DQ ³>L@OOLPLWDEOH RFHDQ without bound, / Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth, / And time and place are ORVW´0LOWRQ-4). In his FDSDFLW\ DV D VHDIDUHU 6DWDQ¶V PDLQ HSLVWHPRORJLFDO IXQFWLRQ LV WR foreground the status of the ocean as a repulsive realm of uncontrolODEOHPDWWHU,QFRQWUDVWWRWKHDUFKDQJHO5DSKDHO¶VFRPIRUWDEOHYR\age, there is QRWKLQJ SXUSRVHIXO DQG SUHGLFWDEOH LQ 6DWDQ¶V VHD-voyDJHVDQGKHVWUXJJOHVZLWKKRVWLOHHOHPHQWVWKURXJKRXW6DWDQ³VRPHWLPHV  >«@ VFRXUV WKH ULJKW-hand coast, sometimes the left; / Now VKDYHV ZLWK OHYHO ZLQJ WKH GHHS´UHVHPEOLQJ D IOHHW³E\ HTXLQRFWLal ZLQGV&ORVHVDLOLQJIURP%HQJDOD´LELG-34; 2.637-38). The sea, in Paradise Lost, has little else to offer but frustration, failure and setbacks; its movements are erratic, treacherous, and erroneous; it keeps metamorphosing into different shapes and stands in for dislocation and dissolution. For all the geographical details invoked in Paradise Lost, the concept of space constructed here is not empirical but hermeneutic: space is created through perception, and the uncharted,

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uncontrollable ocean hints at the instability of human knowledge and the inevitable diffusion of English culture (cf. Zwierlein 2002: 63).

4. Conclusion: Patterns of Mobility, Patterns of Contingency 0RELOLW\VWXGLHV6WHSKHQ*UHHQEODWWKDVUHFHQWO\DUJXHG³DUHHVVHQtially about what medieval theologians called contingentia, the sense that the world as we know it is not necessary. This contingentia´KH continues, is precisely the opposite of the theory of divinely or historically ordained destiny that drove the LPSHULDO >«@ PRGHO RI PRELOLW\ $QG yet, to be fully convincing, mobility studies also need to account for the intense illusion that mobility in one particular direction or another is predestined. They need to account as well for the fact that cultures are experienced again and again ± in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence ± not as contingent at all but as fixed, inevitable, and strangely enduring. (2010: 16)

The cultural definitions enabled by the figure of the sea fuse precisely these opposing patterns of mobility. Together, these definitions represent diverging trajectories of two interlocked historical narratives: the GHVLUHWRYHQWXUHIRUWKDQGWRH[SDQG(QJODQG¶VSRZHURYHUWKHHQWLUH globe and the parallel fear of the diffusion of English culture that such maritime explorations initially set out to maintain, the hope that imperial expansion was divinely or historically ordained and the guilty awareness that there is nothing inevitable or necessary about these patterns of mobility. These opposing patterns established by the figure of the sea dominated English cultural debates and fictions of the sea for many decades to come ± at least up to the late-Victorian age and Joseph Conrad. His novella Heart of Darkness, published in 1902, combines both of these irreconcilable patterns of mobility and by so doing betrays the ambivalences and contradictions of British imperialism. While Marlow recounts how, in an earlier imperial expedition, he struggled to travel the Congo River upstream, he is sitting on the deck of a ship, the Nellie, that is firmly anchored in the Thames EstuDU\ LPPRELOH EHIRUH WKH WLGH ³7KH IORRG KDG PDGH WKH ZLQG ZDV nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come and wait for the turn of the tidH´&RQUDG 7KHVHDLV

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still invested with imperial meaning, and yet at the same time exposed to the ambivalences and contingencies of imperialism. The fusion of these paradoxical patterns of (im-)mobility ± on the one side an imaginary venturing forth into foreign spaces, on the other a static perseverance in familiar places ± are a perfectly fitting expression of the increasing imperial anxiety at the fin de siècle, of the very dislocation of Englishness and the disorientation of values. In this perspective, the representation of a static ocean seems to function like a symptom that indicates a fundamental feeling of loss, an imperial mourning, that is, a shattering of the illusion that mobility in one particular direction or another is predestined or even divinely ordained.

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Works Cited

Primary References Brant, Sebastian (1509): The Ship of Fools. 1494. Trans. Alexander Barclay. London: Pynson. Conrad, Joseph (2007): Heart of Darkness. 1902. London: Penguin. 'HQKDP-RKQ ³&RRSHU¶V+LOO´Poems and Translations. Written by Sir John Denham. London: Tonson. 1-24. 'UD\WRQ 0LFKDHO   ³7R WKH 9LUJLQLDQ 9R\DJH´  The Poetical Works of Michael Drayton. Edinburgh: Mundell. Dryden, John (1727): ³$QQXV0LUDELOLV7KH«@´± (1862: 48) briefly ventures into the life out of doors, it does symptomatically not come any further than the ponds of Wimbledon Common. And having arrived there, it still does not go to work or come to the point, but deFLGHVWR³OLQJHU´LQPHODQFKROLFWKRXJKWVIRUDZKLOHEHfore reminding LWVHOIWKDWLWKDGDFWXDOO\FRPH³RXWWRKXQW´LELG 6RZKHUHYHU and however the text conducts its search for life, it seems to be, as it were, thematically afloat, randomly casting its net for a way of defining animal life in terms of a literary form, a form of writing that can accommodate the sheer unwieldiness of this theme.

2. Hunting, Studying, Rambling ,Q WKLV ZD\ DOO RI /HZHV¶V HVVD\V LQ QDWXUDO KLVWRU\ PD\ EH UHDG DV attempts at committing the act of writing to an experience of profusion and wonder that precedes and exceeds the classificatory logic of propositional thought. But whereas his Studies in Animal Life, after the excessive flourish of the introductory paragraphs, seem to be almost encumbered by the enormous empirical range of their theme, his SeaSide Studies, based on a number of visits to Ilfracombe, the Isles of Scilly and Jersey, strike a more subtly adventurous note throughout. From the beginning, Lewes declares himself to be driven by a vague urge to transcHQGKLVIDPLOLDUWHUULWRU\³DGLPLQVWLQFW´FRPSDUDEOHWR what the birds must feel when the circumstances compel them to go VRXWK³,WRRZDQWHGWRWDNHZLQJ´$XJ .QRZLQJKLP-

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self to be no bird, Lewes immediately adds two more obvious reasons to justify his expedition to the sea, ill-health and ignorance, but it is symptomatic that the very compulsiveness of reason seems to be in TXHVWLRQULJKWIURPWKHVWDUW³:DV,QRWDµUDWLRQDOEHLQJ¶DQGTXLWH DERYHDFWLQJSXUHO\XSRQµEOLQGLQVWLQFW¶"´LELG :KLOHWKHGLVWLQFtion between rationality and instinct is obviously highlighted, it is ± with its terms in quotation marks ± simultaneously called into doubt. Reason seems not sufficient to account for the journey to and along the seaside that is subsequently performed and described by the text. ,QIDFWWKHRQO\DYRZHGUHDVRQIRUWKLVMRXUQH\LVVLJQLILFDQWO\³WKH desire to get well and the desire to become directly acquainted with PDULQH DQLPDOV RI VLPSOH RUJDQL]DWLRQ´ LELG  %XW DSDUW IURm this desire there is no apparent principle or plan controlling the course of /HZHV¶V VWXGLHV DV WKH\ DUH HQDFWHG E\ WKH FRUUHVSRQGLQJ VHULHV RI essays in which they were published in %ODFNZRRG¶V (GLQEXUJK Magazine (1856-1857). At their outset, in otheU ZRUGV /HZHV¶V VWXGLHV RU PRUH SUHcisely, the texts that perform them, do not yet have anything specific to study, so that their defining subject remains to be found as they proceed. Fostered by the medium of serialisation, consequently, the ZULWLQJIUHTXHQWO\GHYHORSVLQWKHVDPH³LGOHUPRRG´E\ZKLFK/HZHV characterisHV KLV FROOHFWLRQ WULSV ³$QRWKHU GD\ LQ LGOHU PRRG ZH ramble along the shore in receipt of windfalls. A bottle is always ready in the pocket, and somHWKLQJLVFHUWDLQWRWXUQXS´-XQH 679). This may be read as a report of Lewes on the prowl for marine life, but also as a self-portrait of the writing act. If the subject is so YDJXHWKDWHYHU\WKLQJLVSRWHQWLDOO\LQWHUHVWLQJ³VRPHWKLQJLVFHUWDLQ WRWXUQXS´LQIOXHQFLQJWKHIXWXUHSDWKRIERWKWKHUDPEOHUDQGWKHWH[W ZKLFKGHVFULEHVKLP³7KHVWHPDQGURRWRIWKDWRDU-weed, for example, is worth an investigating glance, certain as it is of being a colony RI OLIH´ LELG  /HZHV¶V ZULWLQJ LWVHOI enacts the same meandering, drifting, searching act of hunting that it writes about. The represented activity is mirrored in the representing one as both proceed in the mode of rambling or idling. The result is a desultory, unpredictable, volatile group of texts whose choice of theme and direction is always liable to be affected and changed by the appeal of what seems to be QHDUHVWWRWKHVSHDNHU¶VDWWHQWLRQ7KXV± to provide but a brief excerpt RI WKH WH[WV¶ PXOWLIDULRXV FRQWHQWV ± the series hovers incoherently DPRQJVSHFLDOLVWGLVFXVVLRQVRI³WKHSKHQRPHQRQNQRZQDVWKHµDOWHU-

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QDWLRQ RI JHQHUDWLRQ¶´  $XJ   FDVXDO ³UHIOHFWLRQV RQ WKH utterly foolish disposal of time which the majority of sea-side visitors PDNH´$XJ ZRUOGO\-wise aphorisms like the observation WKDW ³6HD-VLFNQHVV LV QRW DQ DJUHHDEOH VHQVDWLRQ´  2FW   long divagations on such subjects as the pitfalls of sending live animals per post; a hilarious report of two hermit-crabs duelling for a shell; speculations on the question whether molluscs feel pain; scholarly disquisitions on how sea anemones digest as well as countless descriptions of found and caught animals and, just as prominently, the strains and difficulties of catching them. Spreading out these conWHQWV /HZHV¶V ZULWLQJ OLNH 8O\VVHV LQ 0LFKHO6HUUHV¶VUHDGLQJRIWKH2G\VVH\LV³QHYHUDQ\WKLQJRWKHUWKDQ VHGXFHGRULQGHILQLWHO\VHGXFLEOH´E\WKHVXUURXQGLQJVDQGGHSWKVRI what, at any moment, may constitute the meaning of the words we read (Serres  ³:KHUHVKDOOZHUDPEOH"$W,OIUDFRPEHWKH TXHVWLRQLVUHDOO\SX]]OLQJEHFDXVHVRPDQ\ORYHO\ZDONVVROLFLW\RX´ (Lewes 1856 Sept.: 324). This makes it fitting that the essays are titled Sea-Side Studies, for the sea, the environment beside which all of the studies unfold, is the epitome of this tendency to be constantly VHGXFHGE\ZKDWLVHOVHZKHUH0RUHEHJXLOLQJO\³WKHVHDLVDSDVVLRQ´ E\LWVHOIDVWKHDXWKRUSXWVLW³,WVIDVcination, like all true fascination, makes us reckless of consequenceV´  2FW   ,W V\PEROLVes, we might say, the invincible allure of the yet unknown that drives and GUDZV/HZHV¶VZULWLQJIRUZDUGVIRUJHWIXORILWVGLUHFWLRQVDQGDLPV ³7KHVHDLVOLNHDZRPDQVKHOXUHVXVDQGZHUXQPDGO\DIWHUKHUVKH ill-uses us, and we adore her; beautiful, capricious, tender, and WHUULEOH´LELG 9LHZHGIURPWKHSHUVSHFWLYHRIWKHQDWXUDOLVWRQWKH shore, the sea is the ultimate outside that can never be fully integrated into the framework of human knowledge. ProfouQGO\ ³P\VWHULRXV´ ³OLIH-DERXQGLQJ´ DQG HQGOHVVO\ VXJJHVWLYH RI KLVWRULFDO VWRULHV DV /HZHVGHVFULEHVKHUDWDQRWKHUSRLQWWKH³SHFXOLDUFKDUP´RIWKHVHD is that the meaning she contains may always be more and other than one thinks, continuously tempting the naturalist to keep exploring the OLIHVKHPD\\LHOG$XJ ³7KHUHLVQRVDWLHW\LQWKLVORYH can WKHUHEHLQWUXHDIIHFWLRQ"´2FW  /HZHV¶V Sea-Side Studies, then, represent a love affair with an elusive subject, instigated by a powerful affection that constantly tends to drag the act of studying away from any topic on which it may hope to settle, diverting and decentring its course. The waywardness

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of the rambling writing is an effect of the uncontrollable attraction exerted by a powerful passion that seems beyond authoritative control because it constantly keeps throwing up fresh aspects of maritime life for the naturalist to pick up or look at, like the sea itself, flinging her FUHDWXUHVRQWRWKHVKRUH³,JRRXWRQWKHVDQGs, and at my feet the sea throws a Calamary (Loligo), with which I rush back to my lodgings in JUHDWJOHH´2FW 7KHIUHTXHQWXVHRIWKHSUHVHQWWHQVHDV in this sentence, reinforces the contingency and unpredictability of the ³WUXHDIIHFWLRQ´ that allegedly governs the loving relationship between the text and its capricious sea-side subject. Moreover, this affection works in two ways. One can have affection for something or receive the affection of something. But more commonly these are mutual causes of each other, as Lewes indicates at the beginning of the second series of instalments, before setting off for the Isles of Scilly. The PDQ³ZKRKDVRQFHWDVWHGRIDQREOHVHDVLGH-SDVVLRQ´ZLOOKHQFHIRUWK feel an enduring passion for the sea in hLPVHOI³7KHGLUHFWLRQRIKLV WKRXJKWV LV FRQVWDQWO\ VHDZDUGV´  -XQH   7KH ZD\ WKH VHD affected him when it was nearest feeds into the way he relates to the VHDHYHQZKHQLWLVIDUDZD\³$WOHDVW´/HZHVVD\V³LWZDVWKXVZLWK PH´LELG  The iodine of the sea-breezes had entered me. I felt that I had 'suffered a sea change' into something zoological and strange. Men came to look like molluscs; and their ways the ways of creatures in a larger rock pool. When forced to endure the conversation of some friend of the family, with well-waxed whiskers and imperturbable shirt-front, I caught myself speculating as to what sort of figure he would make in the vivarium ± not always to his glorification. In a word, it was painfully evident that London wearied me, and that I was troubled in my mind. I had tasted of a new delight; and the hungry soul of man leaps on a new passion to master, or be mastered by it. (1857 June: 670)

7KH DFWXDWLQJ IRUFH WKDW OLHV DW WKH ERWWRP RI /HZHV¶V WUDYHOV DQG studies is notably double-IDFHG,WHPDQDWHVIURPWKHVSHDNHU¶VPLQG causing him to spot aspects of his own vision of life wherever he looks; and yet it is disturbingly beyond his mental control, inciting him to view his familiar world in odd and unfamiliar ways. The cause RI/HZHV¶VDIIHFWLRQWKDWZKLFKPRYHVKLPFDQQRWEHFOHDUO\ORFDWHG ,WLVERWKLQVLGHDQGRXWVLGHRIKLP/HDSLQJRQD³QHZSDVVLRQ´LVWKH VSHDNHU¶VGHOLEHUDWHDFWLRQEXWLWLVDOVRDFKHPLFDOUHDFWLRQWRDVXE-

162

Philipp Erchinger

VWDQFH³LRGLQH´ WKDWKDV³HQWHUHG´KLVUHDVRQIURPHOVHZKHUH7KXV like the quotation from the Tempest that has crept into the text at this SRLQWVR/HZHV¶VZKROHGLVFRXUVHLVLQIRUPHGERWKE\DFXOWXUDOGLFtionary of established wisdom (in this case: Shakespeare) and by ³VRPHWKLQJ ]RRORJLFDO DQG VWUDQJH´ WKDW H[FHHGV WKLV ZLVGRP 7KH writing features not only the intention to master the passion that motivates it, but also the tendency to be mastered by it. The serendipitous explorations performed by these texts may therefore be read as the symptoms of an intellectual restlessness, cast loose by the mobility of an affection that cannot, or not yet, be defined as knowledge. Thus the writing represents not only the biological details that it discovers, but also the sense of elation, marvel, or bewilderment evoked by these details, such as the curious propagation process of some annelids, ³PRUH IDQWDVWLF WKDQ IDEOH´ RU WKH ³ROLYH-JUHHQ EORRG´ RI DQRWKHU ZRUP YDULHW\ ³6LQJXODU LV LW QRW"´  6HSW -  ³'LG \RX ever see anythinJ PRUH H[TXLVLWH"´ ³:KDW D FRTXHWWH LV WKH GDLV\´ ³5HDOO\ WKLV SRRO LV HQFKDQWLQJ´  $XJ    6XFK H[FODPDWLRQVWHVWLI\WRWKHH[SHULHQFHRID³ZRUOGRIZRQGHUV´DQGFXULRVLWLHVWKDWKDYHQRW\HWEHHQVXEVXPHGXQGHUGHILQLWHUXOHV³:HZDON DPLG VXUSULVHV´ DV /HZHVKLPVHOI SXWVLWXQZLWWLQJO\ SURGXFLQJ DQother epigram for the performance of his studies that, indeed, seem always open to have their progress reshuffled according to the nearest surprise (1857 July: 7). /HZHV¶VVWXGLHVZHPay sum up, do not just represent a form of identifiable knowledge, for they also represent how they are performed by the passion to know. This passion cannot be reduced to a particular result or a reproducible text-book item that could be abstracted from the discourse. It rather manifests itself in a process of accumulation, distribution and recombination that could in principle continue as long as the writer lives to perform and be performed ³PDVWHU DQG EH PDVWHUHG´  E\ KLV VWXGLHV ³,I QDWXUH ZHUH QRW more LQH[KDXVWLEOHWKDQPDQ¶VFXULRVLW\ZHVKRXOGFRPHWRWKHHQGRIRXU KXQWLQJSOHDVXUHVLQDIHZ\HDUV´/HZHVZULWHVYHU\HDUO\LQWKHVHULHV³$VLWLVRXUOLIHWLPHLVWRRVKRUW´$XJ $VWKLVVXJgests, any writing which describes a hunt for life cannot reach an end or point that would define its subject in conclusive terms, for if it could it would simultaneously reach the end of its motivation to deVFULEHWKHKXQWLQJ,WZRXOGNLOOLWVHOIEHFDXVHWKH³KXQWLQJSOHDVXUH´ is a pleasure that derives from not yet having what you want. The

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closer such writing approaches its subject, life, the more delightful and insightful it may certainly become. But as soon as it coincides with the knowledge of this subject it will have to be, to use a proverb and book WLWOHE\*HRUJH/HYLQH G\LQJWRNQRZ,QWKLVVHQVH/HZHV¶V writing or hunting never really dies to know because it seems to thrive precisely on never quite knowing what it is ultimately after. This is made symptomatically apparent whenever Lewes deliberately probes the limits of his apparent theme, that is, the limits of life. In one paragraph, for example, he reports on how he cut off the tentacles of a sand worm called Terebella WR DVFHUWDLQ KRZ ORQJ ³WKHVH RUJDQV would live sepaUDWHGIURPWKHERG\´6HSW 3URPSWHGE\ the observation that most of the tentacles kept wriggling on for almost a week, he embarks on a dialectical argument over the defining characteristics of life that eventually leads him to the conclusion that the dismembered parts of a whole are, in principle, still capable of living on their own. The only reason why they do not actually live on their own is that, in the long run, they are dependent on the other parts of the organism to enact this capacity. When, therefore, we look at these arms of the Terebella, which wrigJOHDIWHUDZHHN¶VVHSDUDWLRQIURPWKHERG\ZHVHHWKHPPDQLIHVWDV much of life as they manifested a week since. They would grow, if they had food; unhappily they have lost the power of preparing food, and they die at length from starvation. (1856 Sept.: 320)

0\ SRLQW LV WKDW WKLV FRQFOXVLRQ LV V\PSWRPDWLF RI /HZHV¶V ZKROH method of writing. Motivated by the desire to know the defining principle of life as a whole, his essays actually divide this theme into a proliferating array of separate observations and speculations, all of which are left to survive on their own. Because of the sheer inconcluVLYHQHVVRIWKHWH[W¶VVXEMHFW-matter, in other words, every attempt at defining or limiting this subject-matter ± life ± is likely to produce more text.6 It thus seems indeed impossible to summarise these essays 6

The serial form of publication is particularly congenial to this kind of writing. Moreover, as Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund have shown, during the Victorian period the serial mode was far more than a way of publication, for it implied a concomitant set of writing and reading practices all of which are less geared towards finality than towards ongoing variation. It is probably no coincidence that the serial mode thus, in many respects, corresponds to the nature of evolving life as described by Darwin and others.

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in terms of a final argument or point. Perhaps the only justifiable way of imposing a certain coherence on them is to interpret their performance as an expression of the indefinitely mobile passion for sea-side life by which they are inspired. But this creates the paradox that /HZHV¶V SDVVLRQ IRU OLIH ± which is not only a subjective whim, but also a cultural phenomenon ± must be seen to represent both the motivating ground of his studies and the irritable, seducible affection that warps and distracts these studies, diffusing their theme into a multiSOLFLW\RIGLVMRLQWHGGHWDLOVHUUDWLFDOO\µZULJJOLQJ¶DORQJRQWKHLURZQ What I wDQW WR EULQJ RXW WKHUHIRUH LV WKDW /HZHV¶V Sea-Side Studies represent the paradox of a writing act that passionately enacts a cultural belief in the unity of life while constantly finding that it can only reasonably report about its astonishing diversity. They represent affection in action or on the way to knowledge, performing as they do a learning process. Whatever they say, therefore, is malleable and provisional, full of epistemic traces still waiting to be understood. /HZHV¶VPRELOHGLVFRXUVHLVDV\mptom of its mobile subject. Thus there are fish that fly; fish that climb (Percha scandens); fish that hop, like frogs, using their fins as veritable legs, (Lophius); fish that ruminate (the carp); fish that discharge electricity in sufficient intensity to decompose water; fish that migrate; fish that make nests; fish that incubate and fish that bring forth their young alive. To these, recent researches have added facts even more amazing to the systematic mind; namely, that there are fish which normally are doublesexed, and at least one species which undergoes metamorphoses similar to the metamorphoses of reptiles. (1857 July: 8)

Unsurprisingly, the most frequent textual manifestation of the passion for life as a uniform whole that seems to dominate /HZHV¶VWH[WVLVWKH use of analogy. Not only are there fish that hop like frogs or change WKHLU DSSHDUDQFH OLNH UHSWLOHV 7KHUH DUH DOVR ³VHUSHQW-like fish with WKHKHDGVRIJUH\KRXQGV´-XO\ DPDULQHVSLGHUZLWK³FUDEOLNHQLSSHUV´RQKHUKHDG(1857 June: 679), a mollusc that wears his JLOO³ZLWKWKHMDXQWLQHVVRIDQRVWULFKIHDWKHUGURRSLQJIURPWKHVLGHRI DODG\¶VKHDG´-XO\ D³TXHHUOLWWOHGROSKLQ-OLNHIHOORZ´RID ILVK WKDW ZRXOG ³FXUO KLV WDLO URXQG KLP DV D FDW GRHV ZKHQ PDNLQg KHUVHOIFRPIRUWDEOH´DQGPDQ\RWKHUDQLPDOVWKDWLQRQHZD\RUDQother, are all like each other (1856 Sept.: 316). Such analogical conVWUXFWLRQVDUHW\SLFDOIRU/HZHV¶Vtexts ± not only in that they assume an underlying sameness of all these creatures while actually fore-

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grounding their differences, but also in that they draw attention to the practice of making something indeterminate like something different through which it can be determined or read. Indeed, as I want to argue for the remainder of thLVHVVD\ZKDW/HZHV¶VVWXGLHVUHSUHVHQWLVQRW so much a structure of definite knowledge as a process of modelling and elucidating what cannot yet or no longer be defined as knowledge. Thus, instead of constituting a closed pattern of ideas, these studies rather cultivate an open field of experimentation, out of which ever fresh findings can arise. 0HWKRGLFDO0RELOLW\/HZHV¶V([SHULPHQWDOLVP All of these findings may ± at some point, in some context ± turn into composite pieces of a finished structure, but in the experimental mode of being studied as parts of a provisional series of investigations, they still constitute an emergent subject that is just as changeable and fluid as the sea of possible insights, from which Lewes seeks to extract it. Knowledge unfolds vista after vista, for ever stretching illimitably distant, the horizon moving as we move. New facts connect themselves with new forms; the most casual observation often becomes a spark of inextinguishable thought running along trains of inflammable suggestion. (1857 June: 680)

,QWKLVLQFLSLHQWPRGHWKHµVXEMHFW¶RILQYHVWLJDWLRQ± which may refer to both the investigating person and the investigated matter ± is still ³PXOWLSOHLQVSDFH DQGPRELOHLQWLPH´DVSerres puts it in congenial WHUPV ³XQVWDEOH DQG IOXFWXDWLQJ OLNH D IODPH UHODWLRQDO´    What is to be known, that is to say, is continually changing its outline DQG DSSHDUDQFH LQ UHODWLRQ WR WKH WUDLQV RI ³LQIODPPDEOH VXJJHVWLRQ´ that are likely to be released by it. The process of writing, as an integral part of the process of studying, can therefore not be seen as the representation of stable, preconceived notions and plans, but must rather be conceived as the drawing of lines which mark the boundary between unknown and the known or the potential and the actual, FRQWLQXRXVO\ UHGHILQLQJ WKLV ERXQGDU\ DORQJ DQ HPHUJHQW SDWK ³:H write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the otheU´WRXVHDIRUPXODWLRQE\*LOOHV'HOHX]HZKLFKSURYLGHV

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DQLQDGYHUWHQWJORVVIRUWKHHYROYLQJSUDFWLFHWKURXJKZKLFK/HZHV¶V studies are acted out (1994: XX). For the activity of writing, as it is IHDWXUHVLQDQGWKURXJK/HZHV¶VWH[WVLVQRWDYLFDULRXV way of executing a pattern that is already known in advance, but a method of noting and exploring what is not yet known, gradually translating it into a recognisable form. To this intent the naturalist should always have pencil and note-book on his working table, in which to record every new fact, no matter how trifling it may seem at the moment; the time will come when that and other facts will be the keys to unlock many a casket. (1857 June: 680)

Writing, in short, is the enabling operation which makes the experience of an object as object, as a distinct, re-presentable shape, possible in the first place. It constitutes what it represents, making and unmaking it in the process of inscribing it into a readable surface, rather than just pulling it out of an ideal place in which it already exists, fully-fledged, in a predesigned form. Instead of merely writing out a pattern that is outside of and independent from the process through which it is composed, then, /HZHV¶VVWXGLHVLQWHUYHQHLQZKDW7LP,QJROGFDOOV³WKHILHOGVRIIRUFH DQGFXUUHQWVRIPDWHULDOVZKHUHLQIRUPVDUHJHQHUDWHG´D  literally drawing lines through these fields by taking notice of remarkable things that act as signposts on the way towards more definite ideas. In this way, they sketch out the contours of a coherence which is yet to be established, inviting the reader to accompany the naturalist writer on his journey through the rock pools, cliff holes, sands and fields of Ilfracombe, the Isles of Scilly and Jersey, learning with him rather than from him as he enacts the experimental process of searchLQJ IRUDQG EHFRPLQJ DFTXDLQWHG ZLWK VHD VLGHOLIH ³RIVSDWLDOLVDWLRQ@LVQRWWKHHQFORVHG>«@ point, but the open fold´     6SDFH-time could, therefore, be taken to be a peculiar SURGXFWRIVXFKDFWLRQVZLWK³WKHGLmensions of space-WLPH´ HPHUJLQJ DV ³D VSHFLDO HIIHFW RI IROGLQJ´ (Doel 1999: 182). Spacing, timing, and plDFLQJPD\EHLQWHUSUHWHGDVµVSHFLDOHIIHFWV¶ RI WKH FRQWLQXDO HQIROGLQJ XQIROGLQJ, and refolding of the world, and a Deleuzian geography that traces these folds should focus as much on affective atmospheres, rhythmic movements and emergent sensibilities of the world, as on processes of timing and spacing:4 ³$ concert is being performed tonight. It is the event. Vibrations of sound disperse, periodic movements go through space with their harmonics RU VXEPXOWLSOHV´ 'HOHX]H    7KLV SURFHVVXDO JHRJUaphy foFXVHVRQWKH³SULPDU\PRYHPHQW´RIIROGLQJ:\OLH DQGLW has strong parallels with Merleau-3RQW\¶V SRVW-phenomenological thinking in The Visible and the Invisible (1968), where he traces the interlacing, intertwining, folding, or twisting of self and world as ³IOHVK´ la chair) (Deleuze 1988b: 110-12; Merleau-Ponty 1968; Wylie 2006). Merleau-3RQW\VSHDNVRIWKHQHHGWRUHYLVH³RXURQWRORJ\ >«@ IRU WKH UH-H[DPLQDWLRQ RI WKH QRWLRQV RI µVXEMHFW¶ DQG µREMHFW¶´  -23) and The Visible and the Invisible provides the outlines of an ontology where flesh LVDSSURDFKHGDV³DQµHOHPHQW¶RI Being,´ ³D VRUW RI LQFDUQDWH SULQFLSOH WKDW EULQJV D VW\OH RI EHLQJ ZKHUHYHU WKHUH LV D IUDJPHQW RI EHLQJ´    )ROORZLQJ WKH thinking of Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty and post-phenomenological geographers such as John Wylie, we could approach movement, time, space, sensation, and rhythm as by-products of the enfolding of events and interlacing of self and world, but Merleau-3RQW\¶VWKLQNLQJLVQRt unproblematic, and he too appears to accord time and space a primordial status. For example, Phenomenology of Perception (1962) pre4

After Doel (1999); Deleuze (2006); and Wylie (2006).

184

Peter Merriman

VHQWV SKHQRPHQRORJ\ DV DQ DSSURDFK WKDW SURYLGHV ³DQ DFFRXQW RI VSDFH WLPH DQG WKH ZRUOG DV ZH OLYH WKHP´  YLL  Zhile The Visible and the Invisible explains how thoughts, sensations, and being DULVH³DWWKHHQGVRIWKRVHUD\VRIVSDWLDOLW\DQGRIWHPSRUDOLW\HPLWWHG LQWKHVHFUHF\RIP\IOHVK´ $V0HUOHDX-Ponty proceeds to argue: In short, there is no essence, no idea, that does not adhere to a domain of history and of geography. Not that it is confined there and inaccessible for the others, but because, like that of nature, the space or time of culture is not surveyable from above, and because the communication from one constituted culture to another occurs through the wild UHJLRQZKHUHLQWKH\DOOKDYHRULJLQDWHG>«@:HQHYHUKDYHEHIRUHXV pure individuals, indivisible glaciers of beings, nor essences without place and without date. Not that they exist elsewhere, beyond our grasp, but because we are experiences, that is, thoughts that feel behind themselves the weight of the space, the time, the very Being they think, and which therefore do not hold under their gaze a serial space and time nor the pure idea of series, but have about themselves a time and a space that exist by piling up, by proliferation, by encroachment, by promiscuity. (1968: 115)

Merleau-Ponty constructs time and space as relational inter-subjective contexts which condense in and are lived through fleshy bodies, situating them as of a world. So, while Merleau-Ponty, like Deleuze, outlines an ontology of folding and flesh which I want to hold on to, he also accords time and space a special status, and he ultimately fails to push beyond the obsessions of thinkers such as Newton, Kant, Einstein, Bergson, or Whitehead. What about other thinkers who espouse theories of practice and SURFHVV"%UXQR/DWRXU¶VVNHOHWDOVRFLRORJ\RIDVVRFLDWLRQWUDQVODWLRQ, and interaction provides one alterQDWLYH DSSURDFK DV IRU KLP ³IDU from being primitive terms´VSDFHDQGWLPHDUH³consequences of the ZD\VLQZKLFKERGLHVUHODWHWRRQHDQRWKHU´DQGIROORZLQJDUHODWLRQDO /HLEQL]LDQDSSURDFKZHFDQFRQFOXGHWKDW³LQVWHDGRIDVLQJOHVSDFHtime, we will generate as many spaces and times as there are types of UHODWLRQV´/DWRXU /DWRXUIRFXVHVKLVDWWHQWLRQRQWKHSURFHVVHV RI ³VSDFLQJ WLPLQJ DQG DFWLQJ,´ UDWKHU WKDQ VWDWLF SUHILJXUHG spaces, times, and actions, but they are still positioned as the primordial measures of the unfolding of events, even if he refers to the conVWUXFWLRQRIPXOWLSOH³VSDFH-WLPHV´/DWRXU $OWHUQDWLYHO\ WKHUH DUH 6HUUHV¶V HFOHFWLF DQDO\VHV RI VSDFH WLPH, and social and

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material life through Lucretian and Epicurean understandings of turbulence and declination (Serres 1982 and 2000). For Serres, spaces DQGWLPHVDUHIRUPHGWKURXJKWKHWXUEXOHQWXQIROGLQJRIOLIH¶VHYHQWV and what emerges is a processual, prepositional, relational, and topological philosophy that focuses as much, if not more, on the incessant movements, percolation, turbulence, and unfolding of life, as the generation of spaces and times: 'HFOLQDWLRQ LV D SRZHUIXO GLVFRYHU\ RI SK\VLFV DQG PHFKDQLFV >«@ With the declination, what is stable is movement along the path of its IORZ >«@ LW LV WKH FRQGLWLRQ RI D JUHDW V\QWKHVLV EHWZHHQ VWDWLF DQG G\QDPLF >«@ 7KH VWDEOH %HLQJ DW UHVW LV PRYHPHQW: atomic flow, VWUHDPLQJFDVFDGHV>«@0RYHPHQWDQGUHVWDUHMRLQHGLQWXUEXOHQFH FRQVWDQF\DQGYDULDWLRQOLIHDQGGHDWK>«@7KHXQLYHUVHRI(SLFXUXV and Lucretius is a reconciled one in which the science of things and the science of man go hand in hand, in identity. I am a disturbance, a vortex in turbulent nature. (Serres 1982: 119-21)

,Q6HUUHV¶VWUDQV-disciplinary collision of scientific, literary, and philosophical thought we are presented with a turbulent world in which spacing and timing are multiplicitous processes associated with the unfolding and unwinding of events and a pre-positional movement with and towards (Serres and Latour 1995; Serres 2000). Process philosophy and post-phenomenology might provide two ways to rethink the unfolding of events, and to avoid awarding a primordial status to time and space, but other scholars have taken very different approaches, consciously working with concepts which appear less abstract and to facilitate more embodied understandings and descriptions of the spatialities and temporalities of the world (Pickles 1985: 158). Maybe we should avoid using the concepts of time, and particularly space, altogether, writing about duration, site, world, region, locale, RU HQYLURQPHQW" 0DUWLQ +HLGHJJHU¶V ZULWLQJV SRLnt to another way of approaching space and place, with place and region EHLQJ SULRU WR KXPDQ VSDWLDOLW\ DQG ³WLPH-VSDFH´ EHLQJ H[SHULHQFHG ³LQ VSHFLILFDOO\ SODFLDO DQG VSDWLDO ZD\V´ &DVH\   FI DOVR Pickles 1985). While I feel it is important to question the primordial a priori positioning of time and space as central to understanding the unfolding of events, this does not mean that time and space are not useful or important for comprehending specific situations and events, or that we

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need to find alternative spatial or temporal concepts. Rather, what I am suggesting is that other registers and measures ± such as rhythm, movement, force, energy and sensation ± may be important properties for understanding the unfolding of specific ontologies and events, as may space or time in specific situations. In the final section I explore how other registers may emerge as being important for understanding particular ontologies and events, and my attention is focussed on events and ontologies that appear to demonstrate apprehensions of VRPHWKLQJZHPLJKWFDOOµPRYHPHQW-space.¶ 4. Apprehending Movement-Space Before the spectacle of this universal mobility there may be some who ZLOO EH VHL]HG ZLWK GL]]LQHVV >«@ 7KH\ PXVW KDYH µIL[HG¶ SRLQWV WR which they can attach thought and existence. They think that if everything passes, nothing exists; and that if reality is mobility, it has already ceased to exist at the moment one thinks it ± it eludes thought. The material world, they say, is going to disintegrate, and the mind will drown in the torrent-like flow of things. ± Let them be reassured! &KDQJH>«@ZLOOYHU\TXLFNO\DSSHDUWRWKHPWREHWKHPRVWVXEVWDQtial and durable thing possible. Its solidity is infinitely superior to that of a fixity which is only an ephemeral arrangement between mobilities. (Bergson 1992: 150)

As a wide range of poststructuralist and process philosophers have asserted, the world is becoming and shifting, and this sense of movement cannot be stilled or framed without doing violence to the qualitative aspects of movement and change. Now, there are clearly many FKDOOHQJHVZKLFKDULVHIURPDWWHPSWLQJWRUHSODFHD³VHGHQWDULVWPHWDSK\VLFV´ZLWKD³QRPDGLFPHWDSK\VLFV´&UHVVZHOOFIDOVR Kaplan 1996), but many scholars working from different positions have acknowledged the importance of registering the incessant movement and flux of the world.5 This includes Harvey, Massey, and Thrift, who recognise that processual thinking on dynamism, becoming, and movement requires us to rethink our understandings of movement, fixity, permanence, structure, time, space, and boundedness. Taking the relationship between space and mobility, Tim Cresswell (2006) and Massey (2005) have described how human em5

Cf., e.g., Harvey (1996); Thrift (1996); Massey (2005); Cresswell (2006).

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bodied movements appear to be both contained by time and space as contexts and to be productive of social times and social spaces: 0RYHPHQW LV PDGH XS RI WLPH DQG VSDFH >«@ 7LPH DQG VSDFH DV Kant reminded us, are the fundamental axes around which life revolves ± the most basic forms of classification. Certainly any material object has to have coordinates in time and space. Movement, as the displacement of an object from A to B, involves a passage of time and, simultaneously, a traversal of space. Time and space, however, cannot be simply taken for granted in the consideration of movement. 7LPHDQGVSDFHDUHERWKWKHFRQWH[WIRUPRYHPHQW>«@DQGDSURGXFW of movement. (Cresswell 2006: 4)

1RZ &UHVVZHOO¶V LQWHQWLRQ LV WR WDNH XV EH\RQG VXFK DEVROXWLVW GLVcourses which present movement as contained by (and a function of) time and space, but I would go further and challenge the epistemological roots of these very discourses ± which are underpinned by neoEuclidean, neo-Cartesian and neo-Newtonian conceptions of time and space. The alternative would be to learn from a thinker such as Serres, interpreting movement as fundamental to the turbulent interlacing of self and world, the declination of matter, the entwining of flesh.6 Movement is a primary element of the unfolding of events (Wylie  ,WLVQRWVHFRQGDU\WRWLPHRUVSDFH:KDW¶VPRUHWKHXQIROGing of events gives rise to all manner of immaterial and material effects, sensations and affects which cannot be reduced to understandings of timing and spacing, and what emerges is distinctive ontologies and sensations which appear to be more about apprehensions of rhythmic-movements, kinaesthetic sensations, movement-spaces, movement-affect-space-times, than something frequently referred to as space-times. An example of this is provided in recent work by Thrift where he has described how the increasing integration of computing technologies in our everyday environments has resulted in the emergence of ³D QHZ FDOFXODWLYH EDFNJURXQG,´ DFWLYH DQG LQWHOOLJHQW HQYironments WKDW DWWHPSW TXDOLWDWLYH MXGJPHQWV DQG WKH HPHUJHQFH RI ³D PRUH SODVWLFVHQVHRIVSDFHDQGWLPH´DQG³QHZNLQGVRIPRYHPHQW´7KULIW 2004a: 582, 592, 596). As Thrift explains, drawing upon Henri %HUJVRQ¶VCreative Evolution (1911): 6

After Merleau-Ponty (1968); Serres (1982); Deleuze (2006); and Deleuze and Guattari (1988).

188

Peter Merriman we are increaVLQJO\ D SDUW RI D ³PRYHPHQW-VSDFH´ ZKLFK LV UHODWLYH UDWKHU WKDQ DEVROXWH >«@ LQ ZKLFK ³PDWWHU RU PLQG UHDOLW\ KDV DSpeared to us as a perpetual becoming. It makes itself or it unmakes itVHOI EXW LW LV QHYHU VRPHWKLQJ PDGH´ >@ 7KLV PDNLQJ KDV UHWUHated into the background whence it directs more and more operations. We sense it as a different kind of awareness of the world, one in which space itself seems to perform. (Thrift 2004a: 597)

7KULIWDFNQRZOHGJHVWKDW³WKHLGHDRIVSDFHVWKDWIROGDQGIORZ is hardly a QHZRQH´D EXW,ZRXOGJRIXUWKHUDQGDUJXHWKDWWKHUHLVD long history of ontological formations, embodied practices, and eventful unfoldings which reveal an openness to and apprehension of movementspace. One could discuss many examples of embodied practices or actions which do not appear to cultivate sensibilities that are characterised by apprehensions of space-time, but two brief examples will suffice. Firstly, one could point to the many different practices and forms referred to as dance, and here I want to focus on the experimental dance form known as Contact Improvisation which emerged in the US in the early 1970s. In this dancer-FHQWUHG DUW IRUP WKH GDQFHUV ³IRFXV RQ WKH physical sensations of touching, leaning, supporting, counterbalancing, DQGIDOOLQJZLWKRWKHUSHRSOH´1RYDFN DQGWKHFKRUHRJUDSKLF LPSHWXVLVHPHUJHQWIURP³WKHPXWXDOPRPHQWXPZLWKDSDUWQHU¶VWRXFK´ rather than the creative dialogue of dancer and (off-stage) choreographer (Bull 1997: 281). Contact Improvisation was and is a counter-cultural embodied movement practice focused on the kinaesthetic sensibilities, experiences and spatialities of the performance, giving rise to experiences and sensations emergent from the moving-spacing of the dance practice, DVWKHUHDSSHDUHGWREH³DOLWHUDOµJRLQJZLWKWKHIORZ¶RIHYHQWV´1RYDFN 1990: 11; cf. also Merriman 2010). A second example would be experiences and sensations which are associated with practices of driving and the ontologies of the car-driver. As many cultural commentators and academics have remarked, experienced drivers often inhabit their vehicles and drive in a somewhat automatic, detached, and distracted manner (Merriman 2007, 2009 and 2012). As the materialities and spatialities of the vehicle and road become incorporated into the embodied sensibilities and ontologies of the driver, so driving is seen to become a pre-FRJQLWLYH DFWLRQ WKDW LV ³SHUIRUPHG VHPLDXWRPDWLFDOO\LQDGLVWUDFWHGVWDWH´0RUVHFIDOVR7KUift E  :KDW HPHUJHV LV ³DQ RQWRORJ\ RI HYHU\GD\ GLVWUDFWLRQ,´ D QHZ sensibility of seeing-moving, and a distinctive movement-space (or

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spacing-PRYLQJ FKDUDFWHULVHGE\³DSDUWLDOORVVRIWRXFKZLWKWKHKHUHand-QRZ´0RUVH :KLOHVSDFLQJDQd timing frequently emerge DVLPSRUWDQWFRQVWLWXHQWVRIGULYLQJHYHQWVWKHGULYHU¶VRQWRORJ\VHHPVWR be characterised by a kinaesthetic, spatial, and visual sensibility that is HPHUJHQW IURP ZKDW WKH DUFKLWHFW $OLVRQ 6PLWKVRQ KDV FDOOHG ³WKH FDUmoved-seHLQJ´6PLWKVRQ 

5. Conclusions In this chapter I have sought to challenge the contemporary obsession of many Anglophone geographers with short-hand conceptions of spacetime and time-space. While I would not deny that spacing and timing, and experiences of spatiality and temporality, are important processes and ways of thinking about extension, position, and context in the world, we should not position them as the primordial, foundational, a priori concepts for thinking about the unfolding of events. References to spacetime frequently carry absolutist overtones and reveal an inherent structuralism, but likewise an a priori focus on spacing-timing appears to downgrade the importance of other aspects of processuality, emergence, becoming, and the unfolding of events. To echo and extend the remarks of Bunge writing in Theoretical Geography (1966), why not position movement, rhythm, force, energy, or affect as primitives or registers that might be of importance when understanding the unfolding of events, and why approach space and time as privileged measures for conceptualising location, position, and context? While Thrift (1996: 41) has espoused a ³UDGLFDOO\ FRQWH[WXDO´ DSSURDFK LQ ZKLFK PXOWLSOH G\QDPLF SODVWLF space-times emerged from embodied inhabitations of the world, perhaps we should think about how particular events, subjects and collectivities become associated with and positioned in uniquely configured movement-spaces, energetic-times, etc. One example is how particular events and actions have been configured around embodied apprehensions of movement-space; apprehensions which are clearly engineered and possessed by individuals with different social positionings and varying degrees of power (cf. Thrift 2004a). Attempting to locate movementspace or rhythmic-temporalities in terms of time-spaces or space-times may well miss the point, or more accurately ignore the folds and twists by and through which events are manifested and apprehended.

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Works Cited

Bergson, Henri (1911): Creative Evolution. London: Macmillan. ² (1912): Matter and Memory. London: Allen. ² (1992): The Creative Mind. New York: Citadel. ² (1999): Duration and Simultaneity. Manchester: Clinamen. Bull, Cynthia   ³6HQVH 0HDQLQJ DQG 3HUFHSWLRQ LQ 7KUHH 'DQFH &XOWXUHV´ Meaning in Motion. Ed. Jane Desmond. London: Duke UP. 269-87. Bunge, William (1966): Theoretical Geography. Lund: Gleerup. %XWWLPHU $QQH   ³*UDVSLQJ WKH '\QDPLVP RI WKH /LIHZRUOG´ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66: 277-92. Casey, Edward (1989): The Fate of Place. London: U of California P. &OLII$QGUHZDQG-.HLWK2UG ³6SDFH-Time Modelling with an Application WR5HJLRQDO)RUHFDVWLQJ´Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 64: 119-28. Cox, Kevin, and Reginald Golledge (1981): Preface. Behavioral Problems in Geography Revisited. Ed. Kevin Cox and Reginald Golledge. London: Methuen. xiiixxix. Cresswell, Tim (2006): On the Move. London: Routledge. Deleuze, Gilles (1988a): Bergsonism. New York: Zone. ² (1988b): Foucault. London: U of Minnesota P. ² (2006): The Fold. London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1988): A Thousand Plateaus. London: Athlone. Doel, Marcus (1999): Poststructuralist Geographies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. ²   ³8Q-Glunking Geography: Spatial Science after Dr Seuss and Gilles 'HOHX]H´ Thinking Space. Ed. Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift. London: Routledge. 117-35. Giddens, Anthony (1981): The Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism Vol. 1: Power, Property and the State. London: Macmillan. ² (1984): The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity. *UHJRU\'HUHN ³$JHQF\DQG+XPDQ*HRJUDSK\´ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 6: 1-18. ²  ³6SDFH7LPHDQG3ROLWLFVLQ6RFLDO7KHRU\$Q,QWHUYLHZZLWK$QWKRQ\ *LGGHQV´Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2: 123-32. Hägerstrand, Torsten (1953): Innovationsförloppet ur korologisk synpunkt. Lund: Gleerup. ²   ³7KH 'RPDLQ RI +XPDQ *HRJUDSK\´ Directions in Geography. Ed. Richard Chorley. London: Methuen. 67-87. ²   ³6SDFH 7LPH DQG +XPDQ &RQGLWLRQV´ Dynamic Allocation of Urban Space. Ed. Anders Karlqvist, Lars Lundqvist and Folke Snickars. Farnborough: Saxon House. 3-14. Hartshorne, Richard (1939): The Nature of Geography. Lancaster: Association of American Geographers. +DUYH\'DYLG ³0RGHOVRIWKH(YROXWLRQRI6SDWLDO3DWWHUQVLQ+XPDQ*HRJUDSK\´ Models in Geography. Ed. Richard Chorley and Peter Haggett. London: Methuen. 549-608.

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² (1969): Explanation in Geography. London: Arnold. ² (1990): The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. ² (1996): Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Janelle, DonDOG   ³&HQWUDO 3ODFH 'HYHORSPHQW LQ D 7LPH-6SDFH )UDPHZRUN´ The Professional Geographer 20: 5-10. Kaplan, Caren (1996): Questions of Travel. London: Duke UP. /DWRXU %UXQR   ³7UDLQV RI 7KRXJKW 3LDJHW )RUPDOLVP DQG WKH )LIWK 'LPHQVLRQ´Common Knowledge 6: 170-91. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. ² (2004): Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum. 0DVVH\'RUHHQ ³3ROLWLFVDQG6SDFH7LPH´New Left Review 196: 65-84. ² (1999): ³6SDFH-7LPHµ6FLHQFH¶DQGWKH5HODWLRQVKLSEHWZHHQ3K\VLFDO*HRJUDSK\ DQG+XPDQ*HRJUDSK\´Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24: 261-76. ² (2005): For Space. London: Sage. May, Jon, and Nigel Thrift (2001): Introduction. Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. Ed. Jon May and Nigel Thrift. London: Routledge. 1-46. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968): The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern UP. ² (2002): Phenomenology of Perception. 1962. London: Routledge. Merriman, Peter (2007): Driving Spaces. Oxford: Blackwell. ² (  ³$XWRPRELOLW\ DQG WKH *HRJUDSKLHV RI WKH &DU´ Geography Compass 3: 586-99. ²   ³$UFKLWHFWXUH'DQFH &KRUHRJUDSKLQJ DQG ,QKDELWLQJ 6SDFHV ZLWK $QQD DQG/DZUHQFH+DOSULQ´Cultural Geographies 17: 427-49. ² (2012): Mobility, Space and Culture. London: Routledge. 0RUULOO 5LFKDUG   ³7KH 'HYHORSPHQW RI 6SDWLDO 'LVWULEXWLRQV RI 7RZQV LQ Sweden: A Historical-3UHGLFWLYH $SSURDFK´ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 53: 1-14. Morse, Margaret (1998): Virtualities. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Novack, Cynthia (1990): Sharing the Dance. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. Pickles, John (1985): Phenomenology, Science and Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 3UHG $ODQ   ³7KH &KRUHRJUDSK\ RI ([LVWHQFH &RPPHQWV RQ +lJHUVWUDQG¶V Time-*HRJUDSK\DQG,WV8VHIXOQHVV´Economic Geography 53: 207-21. ²   ³6RFLDO 5HSURGXFWLRQ DQG WKH 7LPH-*HRJUDSK\ RI (YHU\GD\ /LIH´ Geografiska Annaler 63b: 5-22. 6DFN 5REHUW   ³7KH 6SDWLDO 6HSDUDWLVW 7KHPH LQ *HRJUDSK\´ Economic Geography 50: 1-19. 6FKDHIHU )UHG   ³([FHSWLRQDOLVP LQ *HRJUDSK\ $ 0HWKRGRORJLFDO ([DPLQDWLRQ´Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43: 226-49. Seamon, David (1979): A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter. London: Croom Helm. Serres, Michel (1982): Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. London: Johns Hopkins UP. ² (2000): The Birth of Physics. Manchester: Clinamen. Serres, Michel, and Bruno Latour (1995): Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P.

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Smithson, Alison (1983): AS in DS: An Eye on the Road. Delft: Delft UP. Soja, Edward (1989): Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso. 7KULIW 1LJHO D  ³7LPH DQG 7KHRU\ LQ +XPDQ *HRJUDSK\ 3DUW ,´ Progress in Human Geography 1: 65-101. ² E  ³7LPH DQG 7KHRU\ LQ +XPDQ *HRJUDSK\ 3DUW ,,´ Progress in Human Geography 1: 413-57. ²  ³2QWKH'HWHUPLQDWLRQRI6RFLDO$FWLRQLQ6SDFHDQG7LPH´Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1: 23-57. ² (1996): Spatial Formations. London: Sage. ² (D  ³0RYHPHQW-Space: The Changing Domain of Thinking Resulting from WKH'HYHORSPHQWRI1HZ.LQGVRI6SDWLDO$ZDUHQHVV´Economy and Society 33: 582-604. ² (E ³Driving LQWKH&LW\´Theory, Culture and Society 21(4-5): 41-59. :\OLH -RKQ   ³'HSWKV DQG )ROGV 2Q /DQGVFDSH DQG WKH *D]LQJ 6XEMHFW´ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24: 519±35.

On the Move: Discursive Integration of New Mobility Technologies through Poetry Sven Strasen, Timo Lothmann, and Peter Wenzel

Abstract Mobility is a physical experience that calls forth strong cognitive responses from every individual. Means of transportation thus lend themselves in an ideal manner to being incorporated into a shared repertoire of images, topoi, and general notions. To illustrate this process, we analyse selected poems and discuss the discursive appropriation of the railway, the automobile, and the airplane in the light of conceptual metaphor theory and conflicting discursive societal positions. We aim to show that the appropriation runs through different stages, ultimately leading to a stage at which the mobility technology turns into a metaphor itself. Key names and concepts: Mark Johnson, Zoltán Kövecses, George Lakoff, Jürgen Link, Mark Turner; ambivalence, conceptual metaphor, interdiscourse, technological innovation.

1. Introduction Mobility technologies have exerted an enormous impact not only on the economic and social developments of the modern age, but also on its cultural consciousness, discourses, and politico-social debates. As milestones in the history of technology and driving forces of the economy, the significance especially of the railway, the automobile and the aeroplane is beyond question. But the technological and economic importance of these three mobility technologies does not quite suffice to account for their considerable significance as cultural tokens, i.e. as positively or negatively loaded concepts in the minds of many individuals as well as in the rhetoric of political, economic, and cultural driving forces. In this respect, their reception surpassed by far that of other technological inventions such as the electric bulb, the telephone or the washing machine which also produced substantial

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changes in modern life, but failed to gain similar attention. Still, the greater impact of mobility technologies on the human mind can easily be accounted for by the fact that these technologies produced an outstanding effect on the sensory, i.e. visual and auditory perception of every single observer. Thus, numerous studies have already pointed out the revolutionary consequences for modern consciousness, culture, literature, and art resulting from the bewildering experience of speed, transitoriness, blurred perspectives, and fragmented vision that became possible by looking out of the window of a railway compartment or a car.1 Likewise, their amazing sounds, especially the dreadful noise of the train (cf. Heinimann 1992: 400-01) and the aeroplane, meant a radical break with established modes of perception and made it necessary for a wonderstruck public to assimilate the new experience with the help of a commonly shared repertoire of images, topoi and schematic notions. To study this process of the gradual appropriation of the three new mobility technologies, it became necessary to develop a particular methodological framework which we will introduce in section two of this paper. This will be followed by a survey of the most important stages into which the acculturation process of new mobility technologies can be subdivided. A last section of our paper will be devoted to an explication of the high potential for ambiguity that is a common feature of all the images, topoi, and notions with which the new technologies were conceptualised.

2. Theoretical Framework Our search for a suitable theoretical framework for this project started out from a very basic question in reader-response theory. If the meaning of signs is as unstable as deconstruction has shown, why do people still agree on the meaning of a particular text? The answers to this question can be divided into two groups: on the one hand, there are those who think this is mainly a result of cultural influences on the process of meaning attribution. On the other hand, there are those who stress the influence of anthropological universals in understanding 1

Cf., for example, Reinecke (1992: 102-6); Schivelbusch (2000); Seeber (2007: 11-41).

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texts. It is, of course, obvious that these two options are not mutually exclusive, but for a long time communication between the two camps was sparse, to put it mildly. It was not until new theoretical approaches like Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Stylistics were established that a reconciliation and combination of these seemingly antagonistic camps were considered. Peter Stockwell (2001) was among the earliest proponents of such a reconciliation when he called for an exchange between Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. One of the aims of our project was to test whether such a combination was theoretically feasible and would provide us with tools for actual, concrete analyses of literary texts. More specifically, we wanted to check whether one of the major problems of Interdiskurs-Analyse in the tradition of Jürgen Link (cf., e.g., 1992) could be solved with the help of cognitive theories of metaphor based on the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.2 Link argues that, due to the increasing division of labour, modern Western societies tend towards an increasing specialisation of discourses. These societies need and have a reintegrating interdiscourse to provide a common basis for communication across specialised discourses (Link 1992: 288). If a problem turns up in the field of a specialised discourse that has to be communicated to people that are not part of that discursive community, it is translated metaphorically into the terms of the interdiscourse. This problem is then discussed in terms of the interdiscourse and only then is the result of the discussion re-translated into the original specialised discourse. If, for example, a patient suffers from a heart disease that would be hard to explain to a layman in medical terms, it would not be unusual in Western cultures to choose a metaphorical projection to the realm RI PDFKLQHV ³«@ ,Q domains where there is no clearly discernible preconceptual structure to our experience, we import such structure via metaphor. Metaphor provides us with a means for comprehending domains of experience that do not have a preconceptual structure of their own. (1987: 302-03)

If such a thing as a preconceptual structure exists, it is evident that those symbols and metaphors that link elements of specialised discourses convincingly to this pre-conceptual structure are potentially

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highly effective elements of the interdiscourse. And it is exactly this kind of a metaphor for which Lakoff and Johnson have coined the term conceptual metaphor. It was one of the goals of our project to test the hypothesis that the discursive appropriation of new experiences triggered by technological innovation relies not only on the factors described by Link but also on the relation of the collective symbols to preconceptual experience. In other words: we suspected that new experiences would often be conceptualised with the help of conceptual metaphors. As literature, and poetry in particular, makes creative use of the possibilities for metaphorical projection it can be seen as a kind of testing ground for potential elements of the interdiscourse (cf. Link 1992: 300-01). Therefore, we thought that the field of poetic discourse would be particularly well-suited to observe the mechanisms that underlie the appropriation of new technologies and their integration into the discursive framework of the culture under consideration. This specific research interest, however, has a downside for the literary scholar. We are focussing on those metaphorical conceptualisations that have been particularly successful on the discursive field, and even made it into the interdiscourse. But discursive success and creative originality do not always coincide, if anything, the opposite tends to be true: those metaphorical concepts are most successful that make it easy for the reader to link the new experiences brought about by technological innovation to the realm of well-known concepts and phenomena. In other words, the poems that are analysed are very often not the ones literary scholars value most highly for their creative originality. But if some of the metaphors and symbols discussed in this paper will even strike the reader as clichéd, this is partly a result of their discursive success and their integration into the interdiscourse. As far as the analytical tools of our study are concerned, we draw on the typology of conceptual metaphors presented in Zoltán Kövecses (2002: 32-40). This typology proposes a differentiation between the following types of Conceptual Metaphors: a. Structural Conceptual Metaphors: In this type of Conceptual Metaphor functional and formal features are mapped from a source onto a target domain. This is the case when, for example, a train compartment is compared to a coach.

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b. Image-Based Conceptual Metaphors: These metaphors rely mainly on formal features. When a train is compared to a snake or a dragon this happens on the basis of a similarity in form. c. Orientational Conceptual Metaphors: These metaphors are rooted in basic bodily experience. The widespread conceptual metaphor GOOD IS UP is one of the most prominent examples of this type. Typically orientational conceptual metaphors are emotionally loaded and are therefore very useful in all kinds of cultural conflicts. d. Ontological Conceptual Metaphors: This class projects ontological attributes from the source onto the target domain. Personifications and comparisons of objects to divine beings are the most frequent examples of this kind of conceptual metaphor.

3. New Mobility Technologies in Poetry: The Acculturation Process With respect to the metaphorical appropriation of new mobility technologies in poetry, we identify three interactive yet sequenced stages. Stage one comprises the first conceptualisations of the new technology (e.g. trains, cars, planes) along the lines of then-established schemata. Once these conceptualising foundations are laid, the metaphor qualifies for cultivation, as it were, i.e. it can be included into the existing and/or new interdiscourse. If the metaphor proves effective (or defective, in fact), its function and use is negotiated in a next stage. The possible incorporation into particular discursive systems represents stage two. A development from stage one to stage two shows, for instance, when the respective technology is mystified by drawing on classical Greek mythology ± which palpably goes beyond an assessment on the basis of a description of the defining features of the technology only. On top of this approach via mere delineative criteria in stage one, the metaphorical use can be diversified to be exploited for special purposes. Ontological conceptual metaphors, for instance, may thus replace structural conceptual metaphors. Eventually, mobility technology may lend itself well to being used as a familiar symbol,

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as its metaphorical conceptualisation has become routinised to such an extent that it makes for a new bedrock upon which other (new) entities can be grounded via metaphor. If this stage three is realised, the acculturation process of the mobility technology from tenor to vehicle is completed. Let us shed some light on how new mobility technologies have been inscribed in various discourses (cf. stage two). We want to highlight four particular discursive systems that prove to have been exploited noticeably in poetry:3 I. II. III. IV.

Classical mythology Religion (particularly Biblical discourse) Nature, science, cosmology Art

The following instances from poetry will show that the exploitation of such an interdiscourse is performed to take up either a technologyfriendly or technology-hostile stance. Clearly, the precondition for this performance to happen is a positive or negative loadedness of the metaphor in the first place. Further, it shows that an evaluative discussion of technologies in poetry became structurally linked to general binary contrasts. In this respect, deep-rooted dichotomies (e.g. culture vs. nature, high vs. low social class, religion vs. secularity are reappraised with the help of metaphor. As there have been many examples of the metaphorical incorporation of the railway, the automobile, and the aeroplane into the discursive systems (I.-IV.) since their invention, a selected few are presented here to give an insight into the colourful conceptual histories of these mobility technologies.4 When embedding the technology into classical mythology discourse (I.), the reference to the supernatural aids the poet in explaining the subjectively perceived characteristics of the machine: 3

4

This list is by no means meant to be complete. Yet, the categories under concern will prove helpful to exemplify the outlined acculturation process. For the sake of substantiation, we will use examples from nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry. As our examples will additionally show, more than just one discursive system may be µat work¶ at the same time (cf. Wenzel and Strasen (2010) for a more comprehensive account).

200

Sven Strasen, Timo Lothmann, and Peter Wenzel Out from the glare of gas, Into the night I pass, And slowly settle to Titanic toil. (Monkhouse 1865: 4-6)

Here, a train is depicted as a Titan, while we find the automobile virWXDOO\ HTXDWHG ZLWK D 3HJDVXV IRU LQVWDQFH LQ 0DULQHWWL ³'LHX YpKpPHQW G XQH UDFH G¶DFLHU  >@  TXL SLpWLQHV G¶DQJRLVVH OH PRUV aux dents stridentes / [...] / affamé d'horizons et de proies sidérales, / >@´µ9HKHPHQWJRGRIDUDFHRIVWHHO>@VWDPSLQJZLWKDQJXLVK FKDPSLQJ DW WKH ELW  >@  KXQJU\ IRU KRUL]RQV DQG VLGHUHDO VSRLOV¶ (1908: 1, 3, 6; transl. 2002: xxx). Such references emphasise the opportunities the technology offers and are supposed to praise it and/or defend it against scepticism. However, we can observe an opposite bias, for instance in the following example where the author accentuates the momentary, hubris-induced nature of airflight on the basis of the Icarus motif, including the ineluctability of being cast down to earth again: The monster [i.e. the aeroplane] touches the zenith But gravity roused from its spell Reaches toward rafters of sunlight And drags the scorpion down To a crevice of earth. (Sullivan 1950: 18-22)

The mythology references here stem from the Ancient Greek tradition. Interestingly, the respective metaphors prove to be still µSRSXODU,¶LH understandable and adaptable to modern contexts. In other words, ancient means of cultural (self-)evaluation are revitalised as keys to the conception of the here and now, i.e. of our modern cultures, which are so fond of technology.5 Such metaphors build bridges across centuries and even millennia, while the antique hermeneutics are cast in a new, contextualised (and contextualising) mould. This knowledge transfer is what the authors of the poems under consideration here have achieved. Thus, Titans still embody both physical strength and the divine; Pegasus features as the sublime manifestation of artistic 5

The coming to terms with the occasional elusiveness of the notion culture, as it were, can profit from, or may even require, the cross-time metaphorical basis which myths do offer (cf. also fn. 15).

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creativity and unlimited imagination. The latter, as Icarus, adds a space-consuming, transcendent element to the processing of mobility technologies in poetry. The technology may be entrenched in religious or Biblical discourse (II ³+HQFHWKH0HUFHGHV>@)LOOHGIXOOZLWKWKHIUXLWV 2I DQ KXQGUHG IDW \HDUV >@´ +HQOH\  -12). Henley praises the delights of the automobile via abundant Biblical imagery,6 while 8SGLNHHTXDWHVWKHRXWHUDSSHDUDQFHRISODQHVZLWKDSULHVW¶VOX[XULant vestment: These planes, articulate in every part, Outdo the armor-forgers Tuscan art ± The rivets as unsparingly displayed As pearls upon a FKDVXEOH¶VEURFDGH [...] (1966: 16)

However, the negative side of the technology coin, as it were, has been brought forward with a similar metaphorical toolkit, for instance in the following extract from a broadside ballad where coal-black stokers on trains are portrayed as veritable devils: And them, the chiels [i.e. children] that fed the horse, :HUHEODFNDVDSDLUR¶GHLOV[i.e. devils], man [...] (Anon. c1840: 19-20)

The respective mobility technology, hence, represents an instrument for reaching ± figuratively speaking ± either the salvation or the damnation of man. In fact, metaphors can help establish stark contrasts, thus allowing a range of interpretations, i.e. reactions to the mobility technology. In the event, the used metaphors themselves become subject to negotiation. Yet, their ubiquitousness and the recurring, culturally adapted usage of single metaphors since antiquity brings forth their effectiveness. The discursive systems nature, science, and cosmology, which have been bracketed together here (III.), include reflections on the hierarchy man±nature or the reconstitution of space and time as well 6

Cf. Gen. 41; Ps. 92.14; Isa. 30.23.

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as on ethical values. These reality-structuring fundamentals are seized on in poetry by implementing the mobility technology as a (new) conceptualising variable: Automobile ivre d¶HVSDFH [...] Au fracas des abois de ta voix... voilà que le Soleil couchant emboîte ton pas véloce, accélérant sa palpitation VDQJXLQROHQWHDXUDVGHO¶KRUL]RQ... [...] Enfin, je me détache et je vole en souplesse Space-intoxicated Automobile, [...] At the sound of the pound of your voice... See how the setting Sun hounds Your bounding steps, accelerating its bleeding Palpitation along the horizon... [...] At last, I break loose and fly freely (Marinetti 1908: 2, 12-15, 56; transl. 2002: xxx)

In the same vein, Henley identifies speed as a mysterious cosmological driving force that defies traditional perception modes via new mobility technologies such as the train or the automobile: Out of the infinite Bounty dissembled, Since Time began, [...] Speed! Speed as a chattel: [...] Speed as a rapture: An integral element In the new scheme of Life [...] (1903: 3-5, 7-8, 14-16)

Yet again, the same discursive systems are the playground not for defending, legitimising, and promoting, but rather for attacking the technology as an infringement upon natural order. An example of the latter is William Wordsworth¶VDFFRXQWRIWKHUDLOZD\DVUHSUHVHQWLQJ an actual assault on nature:

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Is then no nook of English ground secure From rash assault? [...] Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong And constant voice, protest against the wrong. (1844: 1-2, 13-14)

Mobility technology, further, has been either stressed as standing for a proof of human artistry, joy of discovery and inventiveness or for a danger to free thought and art in general. This discursive system that feeds on metaphors relating to these domains has been labelled art (IV.) here. Pertaining to this, a positive stance is taken up by Gottfried Keller, for example. He claims that technological progress as put into effect by the invention of the airship re-enables man to EORVVRPDQGVLQJDWOHLVXUH³,QGHV das Menschenkind zu blühen / Und VLQJHQZLHGHU0X‰HKDW´(1845: 27-28). ,QFRQWUDVW.HOOHU¶VFRHYDO-XVWLQXV.HUQHULGHQWLILHVWKHDLUVKLS as a veritable horror, thus opposing the progress it represents. This strong call for conservatism is mirrored in several early reactions to groundbreaking technologies.7 Here, the mobility technology is even ascribed the power to wipe out poetry in toto: Träumt er [i.e. the poet] von solchem Himmelsgraus, Er, den die Zeit, die dampfestolle, Schließt von der Erde lieblos aus. The poet, aware of such a horror in the skies, Becomes excluded from the Earth By the steam-addicted age, unlovingly. (1845: 30-32; our translation)

The creative use of metaphor as exemplified so far covers a range of functions. Among others, it helps shape a new aesthetics of the re7

The major technological and thus economic paradigm changes, e.g. from the steam engine to the railway to automobiles have been identified to come to pass in waves. This view seems applicable to the digestion of mobility technologies in literature. There, as a µnatural¶ reaction to the unknown, a first praise of the status quo ante is prompted by an increasing acceptance of times a-changin¶ and thus by a gradual integration of the innovation into the social fabric, until with a new technology a new cycle begins (cf. also Fig. 1 below).

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spective technology, either promoted optimistically or pessimistically by the poet. A complementary, pervasive strategy of metaphorical mapping throughout the discursive systems is familiarisation via personification. The train, for instance, literally iVDVXEPLVVLYHVHUYDQWRIPDQ³I [i.e. the train] seek not to divine; / At his >LH0DQ¶V@command I stir, / , KLV VWHUQ PHVVHQJHU´ (Monkhouse 1865a: 81-83). The automobile, PRUHRYHU LV VSHFLILHG DV D IDW \HW IDLU PLVWUHVV ³You are fat and beautiful, ULFK DQG XJO\´ (Shapiro 1957: 3). With regard to an aeroSODQHH[DPSOHKRZHYHUZHFDQILQGWKHLPDJHRIDKHOOLRQ³*UDYLW\ ORRVHQV LWV JULS  2Q WKH VLGH RI D KHOOLRQ  :KR VFRUFKHV WKH VN\´ (Sullivan 1950: 2-4). These processings of mobility technologies pave the way for stage three, namely for their use as a familiar symbol. In other words, railway, automobility, or airflight may become the canvas for further metaphorical projections. Then, they develop from mere explananda to explanantes (Fig. 1) that can be exploited to conceptualise and reevaluate other (more novel) entities.8 time use as familiar symbol, explanans incorporation into discursive systems (e.g. mystification) metaphorical conceptualisation, use as explanandum Fig. 1: The stages of incorporation revisited

VEHICLE

TENOR

9

Authors can draw on all previously established strategies, i.e. they can adopt more than one in a single text. For instance, as sug8

9

For a detailed discussion of stage three examples, cf. Lothmann (2010); Romich (2010); Schumacher (2010). The stages are to be conceived as permeable and overlapping. Yet, they are not designed to allow for exact dating and predictability of progression (cf. also Lothmann and Schumacher in this volume).

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gested before, in Air Show (1966) Updike embeds the aeroplane into a particular (here: religious) discursive system via metaphor (stage two). Later on in the poem, the author uses this filigreed description of the outer appearance of the machine as an explanans (stage three) to criticise, in turn, aspects of American society.10 Stage three as the final phase of appropriation represents the absorption of the mobility technology into the collective mind. The technology thus becomes culture-immanent and, as such, available as a backdrop piece. In creative literature, such as poetry, it has ± in the vein of Lakoff and Johnson (2003) ± become a powerful new source domain with the help of which specific notions can be mapped onto other targets. In a sense, cultural transformations are thus narrativised and, ultimately, naturalised (cf. Nünning, Grabes and Baumbach 2009: xxiii).11

4. Metaphorical Conceptualisations and Their High Potential for Ambivalent Utilisation in the Interdiscursive Debate What emerges as a particularly noticeable result from the study of the acculturation of new mobility technologies is that these technologies provide a huge reservoir for ambivalent conceptualisation, and that their high potential for advancing, questioning, and subverting positions in interdiscursive debates hinges on the fact that they lend themselves to being tied to conceptual metaphors.12 As has been shown in theory of metaphor (cf., e.g., Kövecses 2002: 79-92), metaphorical mappings between sources and targets are always only partial, and this gives every single user of a metaphor the option of highlighting only those aspects that are welcome while hiding all the other aspects of his 10

11

12

Cf. Updike: ³We marvel at our own extravagance: / No mogul¶s wasteful lust was half so wide / And deep as this democracy¶s quick pride´ (1966: 24-27). Examples are legion ± the temptation to extend the metaphor-based analysis of mind-bending mobility technologies (including submarines, starflight, etc.) to non-poetic registers is apparent. On ambivalence as an important inherent principle of the image potential of vehicles, cf. Link (1992 [1988]: 300) and Haude (2007: 28-32); on ambivalence as a formative influence in modern attitudes towards speed and progress, cf. Rosa (2005: 73).

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source domain.13 Partial mapping means that all metaphorical conceptualisations allow for biased utilisation, and yet ambivalent exploitation of source domains is most likely in the case of the two classes of metaphor into which conceptualisations of mobility technologies usually fall: image-based and orientational metaphors. Due to their rich imagistic detail, image-based metaphors generally show a high potential for metaphorical entailments that can easily be exploited for very different purposes; and more than any other types of metaphor, orientational metaphors, loaded with directional and spatial notions, provide the necessary fertile ground for bipolar and bivalent fillings.14 Thus, as will be shown in what follows, each of the three new mobility technologies discussed in this article has been conceptualised in such a manner that it could be employed as an argument either for or against the blessings of technology and progress. Being based on the strongly evaluative contrast UP vs. DOWN, the aeroplane provides the most striking example: while normally the notion of climbing upwards is a movement with positive connotations RIWHQGUDZQRQWRH[SUHVVPDQNLQG¶VXWRSLDQKRSHVFI+DXGH 199), the motif can also be employed with a negative metaphorical load, since the act of climbing implies a loss of secure footing on the ground (cf. Link 1984: 74) and may thus end up with a spectacular IDOO (VSHFLDOO\ LQ WKH FRQWH[W RI UHOLJLRXV IUDPHZRUNV WKLV µ,FDULDQ GLDOHFWLF RI ULVLQJ DQG IDOOLQJ¶ FI ,QJROG    KDV DOZD\V RIfered a rich soil for impressive metaphorical concretisations of lofty aspirations and high hopes, but also of hubris and vanity. But even without falling back upon the far-spread myth of Icarus, some poets have devised ingenious perspectives allowing them to highlight negative aspects of an upward movement. Thus in Levine, the focus is put on the great amount of effort that is required for climbing upwards as 13

14

In this function, metaphors are sense-making, i.e. non-neutral worldstructuring devices as well as ³strategies of containment´ (cf. Jameson in Nünning, Grabes and Baumbach (2009: xvii)). What counts as the good or normal place and what as its antagonism is in each case a matter of ideological choice and perspective: while technology-friendly discourses usually exploit the far-spread schematic notion that the top is the positive and the bottom the negative location, technology-hostile discourses often propagate the opposite idea (probably inspired by the traditional notion that heaven is a sphere of the divine that must not be touched by human beings).

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well as on the risk that the goal reached in this way may ultimately WXUQRXWQRWWRKDYHEHHQZRUWKDOOWKHWURXEOH³>&@OLPELQJH[KDXVWV PH>«@DQGILQDOO\WKHUHZDVQRWKLQJWKHUH´,ELG  Though of smaller orientational impact due to its unidirectional movement, the railway, too, has been conceptualised in literature in the most diverse ways.15 In his groundbreaking research on collective symbolism Link (cf. 1984: 87) already designated the stock expression for a locomotive ± WKHVWUXFWXUDOFRQFHSWXDOPHWDSKRUµWKHLURQKRUVH¶ ± DVDFDWDFKUHVLVWKDWPL[HVWKHQRWLRQRIWHFKQRORJ\µIRUJHGLURQ¶  ZLWK WKH FRQFHSW RI QDWXUH µKRUVH¶  1RW VXUSrisingly, the image has thus readily lent itself to being positively or negatively exploited in LQWHUGLVFXUVLYHGHEDWHVRQWKHUHODWLRQVKLSRIµFXOWXUH¶DQGµQDWXUH¶ ± QR PDWWHU ZKHWKHU µFXOWXUH¶ LV DGGUHVVHG LQ D WHFKQRORJ\-friendly manner as superior to nature or regarded, as has frequently happened since the time of Romanticism, as its enemy and ultimate source of destruction. Moreover, there are, similar to the Icarus motif in aviation, numerous mythical images that have been applied to the railway for DPELYDOHQWSXUSRVHV7KXVWKHPHWDSKRURIWKHWUDLQDVDµJLDQW¶RU DµGUDJRQ¶KDVRIWHQEHHQGUDZQXSRQIRUKLJKOLJKWLQJHLWKHUWKHQHZ PRELOLW\ WHFKQRORJ\¶V VXSHUKXPDQ VWUHQJWK RU LWV IHDUVRPH SRWHQWLDO for destruction.16 The use of and the reflection upon metaphor do indeed, in John /RFNH¶VZRUGV³PRYHWKHSDVVLRQV´LELGLQ%DXPEDFK 2009: 123) in the way that metaphors help conceptualise by their potential to polarise. As in the case of the aeroplane, most metaphorical conceptualisations of the automobile include an orientational component, too. 15

16

&I 0DUNXV .UDXVH¶V VWXQQHG VWDWHPHQW ³(V LVW VFKRQ HUVWDXQOLFK LQ ZHOFK vielfältigen Formen die Eisenbahn in die Literatur Eingang gefunden hat und in welch unterschiedliche Beziehungssysteme sie je nach Zeitumständen, 7HPSHUDPHQW XQG ,QWHUHVVH GHV$XWRUV LQWHJULHUW ZHUGHQ NRQQWH´ µIt is truly astonishing in what diverse ways the railway has been adopted in literature and into what different systems of meaning it has been integrated depending RQ KLVWRULFDO FRQGLWLRQV GLVSRVLWLRQ DQG LQWHUHVWV RI WKH DXWKRU¶ (1989: 169; our translation). In the case of the dragon, this ambivalence can also be traced back to cultural roots: while in the cultures of the Far East, especially in China, dragons have traditionally been venerated as symbols of power and luck, in Western cultures they have usually been associated with dread, evil and stealth. In this regard, seen from the opposite angle, metaphor can be identified as a key feature of mythical thinking itself (cf. Baumbach 2009: 111).

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From a very early phase in their history, cars offered themselves as a powerful symbol of freedom, because different in this from the much less flexible railway, they are able to move into any ground-level direction (cf. Reinecke 1992: 90-93; Müller 2004: 103-06). Once they have become the most popular collective symbol of modern culture, they often continued to fulfil this symbolic function (cf. Katthage and Schmidt 1997: 170). But as at a certain stage in their discursive history cars changed from frequent objects of mass idolisation into preferred symbols of the seamy side of modern societies (cf. Casey 1997: 6-8), their once glorified manoeuvrability could also be taken for a symbol of aimless haste and apparent lack of orientation. A good exDPSOH RI WKLV LV SURYLGHG E\ 1HPHURY¶V H[HPSODU\ FDU SRHP Fugue (1975), which at the same time nicely shows how a creative poet can easily deconstruct and revalue the prevalent metaphorical impact of a mobility technology. For by shifting the perspective from the cars WKHPVHOYHVWRWKHLUGULYHUVDQGSDVVHQJHUVZKRDUHMXVWµVLWWLQJVWLOO¶ being imprisoned in the cab and fastened to their seats, Nemerov succeeds in turning automobility from a powerful symbol of speed into a SLWLIXOLPDJHRIµVWDVLV LQPRYHPHQW¶FI6RQWDJ  And yet, in spite of all these ingenious metaphorical conceptualisations and reconceptualisations, it remains an open question whether poetry can really be a suitable device for bringing about fundamental changes in the discursive scene. For the substantial shifts in the evaluative history of the mobility technologies taken into consideration in this article were certainly not triggered by victories on the interdiscursive battlefield, but by important events and developments in material reality. Thus, the positive aura of the railway was mainly discredited by such terrible accidents as the Tay Bridge Disaster, the positive image of aeroplanes by their function in the world wars, and the idealisation of the automobile by the oil crisis of the 1970s (cf. Reinecke 1992: 19, 261-63). But even though the actual impact of metaphorical conceptualisations on the acceptability of new mobility technologies may be difficult to assess, it is possible to draw the following conclusions from their analysis: a. In the discursive appropriation of technological innovation, strategies of partial mapping in the use of conceptual metaphors and

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their inscription in various discourses (including interdiscourse) are of essential significance. b. As conceptual metaphors, especially when they contain imagebased and orientational components, easily lend themselves to ambivalent interpretation, they fulfil an important function as standard weapons on the interdiscursive battlefield. c. Governed by these mechanisms, the acculturation process of new mobility technologies in poetry advances in overlapping stages, while their functional range develops from tenor (explanandum) to vehicle (explanans). d. The entire functioning of this process can best be described by combining analytical tools from Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, two disciplines which in spite of their traditional bitter hostility seem to be well-suited to complement each other.

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Primary References $QRQ\PRXV   ³7KH ,URQ +RUVH´ F 9LFWRULD¶V ,QIHUQR 6RQJV RI WKH 2OG Mills, Mines, Manufactories, Canals and Railways. Ed. Jon Raven. Wolverhampton: Broadside. 47-48. Henley, William E. (1903): A Song of Speed. London: Nutt. .HOOHU *RWWIULHG   ³(UZLGHUXQJ DXI -XVWLQXV .HUQHUV /LHG Unter dem HimPHO´ Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 14: Gedichte 1846. Ed. Jonas Fränkel. Bern et al.: Benteli. 252-55. .HUQHU -XVWLQXV   ³,P *UDVH³  Justinus Kerners sämtliche poetische Werke in vier Bänden. Vol. 1. Ed. Josef Gaismaier. Leipzig: Hesse. 71. /HYLQH3KLOLS ³7KH3RHPRI)OLJKW´New Selected Poems. New York: Knopf. 207-8. 0DULQHWWL)LOLSSR7 ³¬PRQ3pJDVH´ La Ville charnelle. Paris: Sansot. 169-72. ±±± (2002): Selected Poems and Prose. Trans Elizabeth R. Napier and Barbara R. Studholme. New Haven et al.: Yale UP. 0RQNKRXVH :LOOLDP &   ³7KH 1LJKW ([SUHVV´ A Dream of Idleness, and Other Poems. London: Moxon. 65-69. 1HPHURY+RZDUG ³)XJXH´ A Howard Nemerov Reader. Columbia et al.: U of Missouri P. 44. 6KDSLUR.DUO ³&DGLOODF´Selected Poems. New York: Random House. 306-07. 6XOOLYDQ $OR\VLXV 0   ³-HW 3ODQH´  On the Wing: American Poems of Air and Space Flight. Ed. Karen Y. Olsen. Iowa City: U of Iowa P. 90. 8SGLNH -RKQ   ³$LU 6KRZ´  Collected Poems: 1953-1993. New York: Knopf. 57. :RUGVZRUWK:LOOLDP ³2QWKH3URMHFWHG.HQGDODQG:LQGHUPHUH 5DLOZD\´ 1844. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Ed. Henry Reed. Philadelphia: Troutman & Hayes. 236.

Secondary References %DXPEDFK6LE\OOH ³7UDYHOOLQJWKH:RUOGVRI0\WKDQG0HWDSKRU7KH0HWDSKRULFDO 'LPHQVLRQ RI 0\WKLFDO )LJXUHV´ Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory. Ed. Herbert Grabes, Ansgar Nünning, and Sybille Baumbach. 111-26. Casey, Roger N. (1997): Textual Vehicles: The Automobile in American Literature. New York: Garland.

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Grabes, Herbert, Ansgar Nünning, and Sibylle Baumbach, eds. (2009): Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory. Tübingen: Narr. Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 25. Haude, Rüdiger (2007): Grenzflüge: Politische Symbolik der Luftfahrt vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Das Beispiel Aachen. Köln et al.: Böhlau. Heinimann, Alfred Ch. (1992): Technische Innovation und literarische Aneignung: Die Eisenbahn in der deutschen und englischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Bern: Francke. Ingold, Felix P. (1978): Literatur und Aviatik: Europäische Flugdichtung 1909-1927. Basel et al.: Birkhäuser. Schriftenreihe der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule Zürich 7. Katthage, Gerd, and Karl-Wilhelm Schmidt (1997): Langsame Autofahrten: Studien zu Texten ostdeutscher Schriftsteller. Köln et al.: Böhlau. Kövecses, Zoltán (2002): Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford et al.: Oxford UP. Krause, Markus, ed. (1989): Poesie & Maschine: Die Technik in der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Köln: Kösler. Lakoff, George (1987): Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago et al.: U of Chicago P. ±±±, and Mark Johnson (2003): Metaphors We Live by. 1980. Chicago: U of Chicago P. /LQN -UJHQ   ³hEHU HLQ 0RGHOO V\QFKURQHU 6\VWHPH YRQ Kollektivsymbolen sowie seine Rolle bei der Diskurs-Konstitution.´ Link and Wülfing 63-92. ±±±   ³/LWHUDWXUDQDO\VH DOV ,QWHUGLVNXUVDQDO\VH $P %HLVSLHO GHV 8UVSUXQJV literarischer Symbolik in der Kollektivsymbolik.´1988. Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Jürgen Fohrmann and Harro Müller. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. 284-307. Link, Jürgen, and Wulf Wülfing, eds. (1984): Bewegung und Stillstand in Metaphern und Mythen: Fallstudien zum Verhältnis von elementarem Wissen und Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Sprache und Geschichte 9. Lothmann, Timo (2010): ³The Imperative to Melt into a Handsome Demon: The $XWRPRELOH DQG 3RZHU LQ )LOLSSR 7 0DULQHWWL¶V µ$Q GDV 5HQQDXWRPRELO¶´ Wenzel and Strasen 105-16. Müller, Dorit (2004): Gefährliche Fahrten: Das Automobil in Literatur und Film um 1900. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Epistemata: Würzburger wiss. Schriften, Reihe Lit. Wiss. 486. 1QQLQJ $QVJDU +HUEHUW *UDEHV DQG 6LE\OOH %DXPEDFK   ³Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking, or: Where Metaphors and Culture Meet.´ Grabes, Nünning, and Baumbach xi-xxviii. Reinecke, Siegfried (1992): Autosymbolik in Journalismus, Literatur und Film: Struktural-funktionale Analysen vom Beginn der Motorisierung bis zur Gegenwart. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Bochumer Studien zur Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft 70. Romich, Tanja (2010): ³/RQHO\ DV D 3ODQH $GULHQQH 5LFK¶V µ6RQJ¶´ Wenzel and Strasen 167-73. Rosa, Hartmut (2005): Beschleunigung: Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (2000): Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise: Zur Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert. 1977. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer.

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Schumacher, Antje (2010): ³Lawrence Ferlinghetti¶V 0RELOLW\´ Wenzel and Strasen 193-207. Seeber, Hans-Ulrich (2007): Mobilität und Moderne: Studien zur englischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Heidelberg: Winter. Angl. Forschungen 371. 6RQWDJ0RQLTXH ³6WDVLVLQ0RYHPHQW7KH5RDG0RYLH-Motif as a Mirror of (VFDSLVW 6RFLHW\ LQ +RZDUG 1HPHURY¶V µ)XJXH - ¶´ :HQ]HO DQG Strasen 125-34. 6WRFNZHOO3HWHU ³7RZDUGD&ULWLFDO&RJQLWLYH/LQJXLVWLFV"´Poetics, Linguistics and History: Discourses of War and Conflict. Ed. Ina Biermann. Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom UP. Conference Papers of the Poetics and Linguistics Association 1999. 510-28. Strasen, Sven (2008): Rezeptionstheorien: Literatur-, sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche Ansätze und kulturelle Modelle. Trier: WVT. Wenzel, Peter, and Sven Strasen, eds. (2010): Discourses of Mobility ± Mobility of Discourse: The Conceptualization of Trains, Cars and Planes in 19th- and 20th-Century Poetry. Trier: WVT.

Automobility in Poetry: A Conceptual Metaphor Approach Timo Lothmann and Antje Schumacher Abstract On the basis of the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor, this paper features an analysis and interpretation of selected poems by Filippo Marinetti and Lawrence Ferlinghetti with respect to their representation of the automobile and automobility. It shows that the integration of such mobility technologies as the car into discourse takes place in clearly discernible stages. In this process, spatial dimensions are pivotal in the revision of the hierarchical relationship between man and nature. Further, the acceleration as enabled by technologies like the automobile has a distinct impact on how space is (re)constituted. Key names and concepts: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Filippo Marinetti, Mark Turner; automobility, conceptual metaphor, space.

1. Introduction Mobility technologies provided new facilities for conveying people from place to place and thus exerted an enormous impact on Western culture. After the locomotive revolution in the nineteenth century, the automobile enabled an individualisation of experiencing ± and conquering ± time and space. This effected a further remodelling of the dialectics of man and nature vis-à-vis technology. Ever since its beginnings, writers have processed the progress related to the automobile in various genres. A prominent example is the use of autoPRELOHV DV V\PEROV LQ )LW]JHUDOG¶V QRYHO The Great Gatsby, among numerous others. Following standard definitions by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (2003) and Lakoff and Mark Turner (1989), conceptual metaphors are knowledge structures that are mapped from a wellknown source onto a new and less tangible target domain to be

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grasped by the observer. As such, metaphor is therefore only secondarily a linguistic phenomenon and primarily a matter of thought processes (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 6). An example, which is clearly dependent on spatial dimensions, is GOOD IS UP and BAD IS DOWN (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 16). This conceptual metaphor ILQGV LWV OLQJXLVWLF H[SUHVVLRQ LQ VHQWHQFHV OLNH ³:H KLW D peak last \HDU EXW LW¶V EHHQ downhill HYHU VLQFH´ /DNRII DQG -RKQVRQ  16). Such metaphors are ubiquitous. As Lakoff and Turner put it, ³PHtaphor suffuses our thoughts, no matter what we are thinking DERXW´[L )XUWKHUWKH\DUH³LUUHSODFHDEOH´/DNRIIDQG7XUQHU 1989: xi) as they enable us to understand the world around us or even to construct reality (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 159). Subsequent and partially overlapping stages ± or strategies ± can be discerned in the process of integrating technical innovations into thought and thus into discourse. Like the locomotive, the automobile is frequently metaphorically conceptualised as some reallife or fantastic beast (Warburg 1958: 169) in a first stage of assimilation. Once the technological innovation has been PHWDSKRULFDOO\ FRQFHSWXDOLVHG ³LW OHQGV LWVHOI LGHDOO\ WR EHLQJ exploited by a particular ideology or political discourse which can HPSOR\ LW IRU LWV RZQ SXUSRVHV´ :HQ]HO    ,Q WKH FDVH RI automobiles or other mobility technologies, the innovation is often discussed in either a technology-friendly or a technology-hostile discourse. In the next phase, mystification strategies are absent and/or deconstructed. The now no longer novel vehicle may again be referred to in a clearly ideological framework. Later, the automobile may become a canvas for further projections itself, serving as a collective symbol, which may in turn be exploited for further metaphorical conceptualisations. In this respect, spatial dimensions prove to be pivotal in the revision of the hierarchical relationship between man and nature. Essentially, the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor permits the reading of contemporary creative writing in terms of a vertical and horizontal (re)mapping of space. This paper will feature a discussion of selected poems by Filippo Marinetti and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Why choose poetry rather than other textual sources such as journalistic prose? Like every ordinary person, poets use metaphorical thought, which finds linguistic expression in their texts. The genre of poetry is characterised by an abundance, even the omnipresence of such linguistic metaphors.

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As Lakoff and Turner observe in More Than Cool Reason³8VLQJWKH capacities we all share, poets can illuminate our experience, explore the consequences of our belief, challenge the ways we think, and FULWLFL]HRXULGHRORJLHV´[L ,QZKDWIROORZVZHZLOODnalyse the discursive assimilation of the automobile in the selected texts, focussing on how the technology is used, as Lakoff and Turner put it, to challenge and to criticise.

2. Filippo Marinetti In the early twentieth century, only few could call a car their own. The European Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944) was among them. Like many of his contemporaries, he was fascinated by everything it represented ± a novel mode of swift locomotion, perfected industrial art, and, most of all, the dawning of a new technocratic modernity. Marinetti became particularly known as a representative of avant-garde Futurism. This radical movement was intended to promote a total transformation of social life towards machinisation. Thus the death of old-fashioned views on time, space, as well as on aesthetics and moral values was claimed. In this view, the machine (or the car) represents the absolute belief in the progress of modern man. :HZDQWWRKLJKOLJKWRQHRI0DULQHWWL¶VHDUO\SRHPVWKH)UHQFK original is titled ³À mon PéJDVH´ µ7R0\3HJDVXV¶,WIHDWXUHVVHYHUDO sets of abundant imagery, the first of which draws on mystification. Marinetti makes allusions to personified horses and exotic monsters to introduce the ferocious rage of the machine, in this case, the automobile: Vehement god of a race of steel, >«@ O fórmidable Japanese monster with eyes like a forge, fed on fire and mineral oils, >«@ $WODVW,UHOHDVH\RXUPHWDOOLFUHLQV«