I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here, but I wanted to thank you, again, for a great conversation last night. Everyone is doing a great job of engaging the reading material, and each week I'm even more impressed with the level of dialogue than I was the previous week. Consider these breaching humpbacks an exhibit of my level of excitement.
As I mentioned last night, we're moving back to a more theoretical approach, so budget your reading time accordingly. As usual, post your questions and answers in the comments here.
Until Tuesday, I leave you with the top hit for a google image search of "Alaska"--a bear walking on water.
Kevin
As I was reading, I was really inspired by the first chapter of Thornton where he was defining place and how the Tlingit understand and conceptualize place. The opening quote by Gabriel George, “These lands are vital not only to our subsistence, but also to our sense of being as Tlingit people.” This idea seemed contrary in a way to the discussions we have had about place and identity. From my understanding, we have looked at how identity shifts or is formed because of the act of traveling, but never specifically about the place. Later in the chapter, Thornton says “People affect places, and places affect people in countless ways” (6) I believe that acknowledgment says a lot about how people conceptualize places that they inhabit. I also wondered how that idea of place contributing to identity relates to a traveler? The traveler may not be in a place long enough for his/her identity to include that area. Similarly, do travelers consider how the place they travel to plays into the experience they have in that place?
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 7, Orogenous Zones: Glaciers and the Geologies of Empire, there is mention of a "glaciated otherness" of Alaska's waters. When reading Edward Said's article on Orientalism and London's "People of the Abyss," we discussed how writers can write about the cultures they experience in a way that "others" the people from that place (whether they do it intentionally or not). Reading the different tourists accounts of the glaciers, I wonder if the othering of a landscape can be just as harmful?
ReplyDeleteAlaska's landscape has been romanticized by writers and tourist agencies for a long time. When engaging with this "ethereal" and "majestic" (226) landscape, the tourists express their awe of the glaciers and the mountains they encounter. It is interesting how even as they identify this as an extreme experience of nature and place it outside themselves as a reality so pure it's beyond comprehension, that they seek to take ownership of it and solidify their identity within their relationship to this place. Wrapped up within their personal window of experience and their visions for the nation's future, they failed to see the native history and culture that are already abundantly present in Alaska. Without recognizing the validity of the culture and people already living in the land, this "wilderness" classification invites the idea that Alaska was a land in need of taming. When reading London's "People of the Abyss," we see that London distances the poor citizens of London from the poor of America by pointing out how inferior they are (citing their stature, poor health, etc.) But interestingly enough, the opposite happens here with the landscape. Alaska is classified as superior to other experiences of nature in many ways. The landscape's "otherness" is embraced and then used to justify the pioneering of place. When a person's identity is integral to place, as Leesha writes about in her blog post, this "othering" of landscape can serve to displace the people who live there.
Out of all the pieces that we had to read for this upcoming class, perhaps the one that most caught my attention was the first part of "In Darkest Alaska." I found Muir's enthusiastic writings about Alaska and its glaciers both interesting and amusing, especially where he and his fellow outdoor adventurers would talk of hiking on and climbing the glaciers to be the "true" outdoors experience. This reminded me of a similar conversation we have had multiple times in class - the one that spawns from the question "what makes you a real traveler?" It was interesting to see that this stigma has been around for so long; for some reason, I imagined it was a somewhat more recent phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteBut I think for my question for this week, I would like to focus more upon the inherent sexism in the culture of "outdoor adventuring" and "true" exploration. On page 17, the author states: "Tourists had been trained through a long literary tradition to see nature as female. ...Gazing upon the mountain landscape was itself a kind of appreciation consistent with late Victorian mores that identified women as guardians of purity. But it was equally a kind of possession, suggesting, in the words of historian Annette Kolodny, 'the female principle of gratification itself, comprising all the qualities that Mother, Mistress, and Virgin traditionally represent for men'" (17). Okay, that's a mouthful, but it leads to my question (finally): do we still see nature as an inherently feminine thing? And if so, why? I don't see why nature has to or should be associated with any gender whatsoever; that being said, though, I will say that I consider it to be more of a masculine thing. I think that's largely because my mother, sister, and I are not outdoorsy people, while my brother and father and their whole Boy Scout troop are and were. Especially living in Alaska, I far more frequently encounter and associate men in the outdoors and the outdoors as a manly thing, rather than this Victorian sensibility of nature being something that is simultaneously fragile and feminine, but must also be conquered.
While reading In Darkest Alaska, I found it particularly interesting that Muir focused on his discovery in a near religious matter. It was a bit unsettling to read how Muir created a sense of utopia in his work, rather than focusing on everything else. I think it coincides with what Leesha brought up in her post about people conceptualize places they inhabit. We see the glacier affect Muir, but do we see how he affected the glacier? If he found a sense of wonder and such through Glacier Bay, he made his surrounding change to fit his specific view. He’s searching for an unmodern world, but by doing so presents a modern world in turn. We see him eventually presenting gold panning and miners to Southeast Alaska, in attempting to make it the new California. “Making sense of their surroundings, Muir and his cohort had in effect made their surroundings.” They insured a booming economy to be built on Alaska’s back as well as continuation of their own exploration. In this came change and erasure of culture that had been thriving. Euro-centric based ideas flooded Alaska thanks to Muir’s (and others) work. Land had become a commodity, just as it always does within a European based mindset. So, through romanticization do we see a destabilization within place as well as where we belong in it? With Thornton we explore something else. “If places are largely human constructions, then it should follow that, in order to understand people, one must know something of their places.” They strive for a sense of place that was disrupted.
ReplyDelete“The Campbell reading” was confusing to find for a minute. Anyway, I’m good friends with Tom Thornton. We’re going to have him s a keynote speaker at the Clan Conference which starts tomorrow evening. I’ve collaborated with him a few times. There is great meaning in places. Thornton meditates on the concept of “at.óow”, which translates to “an owned or purchased thing”. At.óow can be a sacred object like a clan hat, a clan history, a name, or a place. That is one reason why Tlingit places are so embedded with meaning. They are owned clan territories that have meanings that go back multiple millenia. Contrasted with John Muir, who had no idea whatsoever about Tlingit culture, a Tlingit sense of place is not an adventure to explore the majesty of “untouched” territory. The mere mention of a place can bring up many, many contexts and overlapping reference points that touch on the familial, person, spiritual, ancestral, emotional, intellectual and other filters of meaning. One man that Muir spent time with, John Katisha (Khaadashaan), was a genius of Tlingit culture who could have greatly illuminated those meanings to Muir. There were many other people he came across with a similar body of knowledge and genius. Muir didn’t care to look into it. What’s sad is that Muir’s example and legacy lives on to a large degree.
ReplyDeleteIs travel inherently exploitative?
ReplyDeleteIn “Orogenous Zones,” significant verbiage is given to describing how marvelous the Alaskan wilderness is to just about everyone who travels to see it, but especially to John Muir. Muir is a known advocate of wilderness preservation, but a contradiction exists in that he was also an advocate of mining ventures... Alaska is rich in natural resources, scenic resources, and cultural resources and it seems like just about every form of travel to Alaska in some way exploits these resources, no matter how good the traveler’s intentions or how great their love of the wilderness. “The Lure of Alaska” chronicles Alaska’s booming tourism industry and how so many were/are drawn to Alaska’s exotic landscapes and cultures - how appealing it is to actually walk on the glacier or to purchase and take home souvenirs made by natives. This sounds like taking advantage of the place and the people, with little if anything given in return except money. And how far does that money go? This heavy exploitation might be unique to Alaska as a travel destination, but I think it extends to many other places as well. It’s hard to come up with an example of traveling creating more benefit for the place/locals than for the traveler.
Jessika (Bambi) Caudy
ReplyDeleteOctober 27, 2015
Alaska is known for being a wild place. The last frontier. The unconquerable land scape. Often time this is seen as both majestic and dangerous. Everyone wants to see a bear up close until they are actually close to a bear. This majesty juxtaposed to thrilling danger is exacerbated when one looks at what the early European settlers of Alaska had to face compared to what tourists have to face now. The theme I have been exploring throughout the class is of course, authenticity of travel as it relates to background and sense of place. My question this week however focuses less on travel between place and place and more of the travel differences throughout time. How has a place changed for travels across time? Does it eliminate some aspects or heighten them? Maybe both?
Early settlers and miners in Alaska were up against a lot more odds than the people living in Alaska today are. Back then, the beautiful serenity of a falling glacier was felt from a small boat and could be deadly. The wildlife was to be looked out for not out of a tourist need to be thrilled by nature, but out a survivalist need to live in the wild.
Tourists today get to experience the raw nature of Alaska from much more comfort than in the days of the old. The ability to be up close and personal with nature is heightened, but the actual sense of danger is lessened. Controlled exposure to danger is the new name of the game.
In "Darkened Alaska" we are opened to an account of the beauty of Alaska and "picturesque tropes" of the almighty beautiful power of Alaska. When you scroll down the photo however, it is terrifying to see such a little boat in the midst of ice and freezing waters. These "picturesque tropes of the nineteenth century" then seem to dull the tourist mind into imagining Alaska as a place of serenity in nature rather than discussing the sheer violence of nature and its consequences.
This trend in writing has lead to a difference in authenticity of traveling to Alaska. What was once a stunning and difficult track through the unknown, is now a cruise tickets and comfortable cabin through the highlights of nature. What was authentically nature in its rawest form, felt by miners and settlers, is now a falsified sense of danger and understanding of nature. It is as if the purity of "the last frontier" has become some sold commodity of an idea. Alaska has become an inauthentic idea of man against nature because of invention and glorification.
In Chapter 7: Orogenous Zones, I was interested in the relationship between "the tonic of wilderness" that Muir is said to have believed in and the rejection of the tourist imagination. The Alaskan glacial wilderness not only supposedly healed his throat, but "The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal ere we are unaware" (221). Wilderness' ability to heal not only physical but social afflictions is romanticized at a time in which "Americans had outgrown the usefulness of the landscape conventions of the picturesque and sublime, borrowed as they were from European traditions. Intent upon distancing themselves from Europe and its cultural definitions a number of authors have observed that Americans invented a new language that turned increasingly toward a nationalistic identification that fused nature and nation"(225). In the turn from the European distanced revelry, a personal encounter in the wilderness is an antidote. This sounds as romantic as the tourist notions, and is a power assertion like Orientalism. If Britain is characterized by the industrial, soul-crushing cities, then America was characterized by nature: the unnatural v.s. the natural. I really like the assertion that "Nature originated in its opposite" (256). In some ways, nature is a continuation of the metropolitan, "touristy" mindset as it is the romanticized remedy to the industrial disparity the cities created/ continue to create.
ReplyDeletePlace. What a hard thing to define. Or is it? I know this week we are supposed to be transitioning to a more locally focussed view of travel, but with these readings (especially the Thornton) I couldn't but to think of how the indiginous way of being has almost been completely lost in our modern world. Globalization has driven traditional ways of knowing the land out of cultures. Even those cultures that still hold on to their traditional ways and experiences with place still rely on tools and goods from the mainland society. It makes me wonder what kind of expereince I am missing out on by maintaining my far reaching dreams of sailing around the world and seeing new places. Although I feel very at home and connected to Alaska, in no way to I have the kind of close dependent relationship with its land then indigenous people once had or even the kind of relationship that have been maintained today by natives. Is it a dying way of being? Are all the excitements of todays world drawing us out of the land and into.... into what? Into our houses and cultivated land? Into our designer jeans and shopping malls? Does going for a camping trip really bring you to a place of being with the land? Or is it just a comfortable thought on top of a contrasting reality?
ReplyDeleteThere is no defining a right and a wrong or a better and a worse in this situation. Time goes on, things change, and we find out place no mater what conditions are present. When I think about Alaska and what it is to me, I can't help but to want to hunker down in a cabin by the sea somewhere and just live out my days sustainably and simply. Depending on the land and that small about of land depending on me. Sounds romantic...
In Thornton’s book there is a lot of theory concerning the connection between humans and geographical location. I wonder how the basis of this theory affects the people described in “In Darkest Alaska”. Muir is quoted as saying, “These sightseers were disposed to visit the “wilderness” and to aestheticize its terrors because they lived safely apart from its rigors”. Another section describes how the tourists were completely entranced by the landscape – until the dinner bell rang. How does place affect these travelers versus adventurers such as Muir? Tourists seem to only gain a picture of a location when they travel - maybe a slight notion or feeling is associated with the place, but I don’t think they get the true sense of a place like the traveler might. This seems especially true for places like Alaska, where the only way you can truly get to understand her is by climbing her paths and seeing her hideaways. The native Tlingit’s had such a strong connection because they fished from her streams, drank her water, climbed her mountains, and survived her storms for thousands of years. There can’t be nearly the same association as with someone who stays a few weeks to learn her ways or surveys her scenery from the deck of their cruise ship.
ReplyDeleteThroughout this week’s readings one of the main ideas that sticks in my mind is the idea that nobody experiences the land in Southeast Alaska the way that the native people experience it. I’m paraphrasing here, but the idea is the same. This was taken from the Tlingit ideals and relationships to the land and vice versa in Being and Place among the Tlingit. My question is then: How does John Muir experience the land in Glacier Bay differently or similarly to the Tlingit peoples?
ReplyDeleteIn Darkest Alaska was a bit of a different take on the land in relation to people. Muir seemed to be the main subject here, or at least the main traveler. Muir takes a lot of influence on transcendentalism from Thoreau and Emerson. He even mentions a “glacial gospel” in which he spends a Sunday climbing a glacier instead of attending a service put on by his missionary companion. It would be interesting to learn more about the differences between Muir’s experiences and the Tlingit’s experiences in relation to the land in Glacier Bay. It is mentioned in Being and Place among the Tlingit that the peoples reflect as much on the land as the land reflects on them. I wonder how this relationship could be compared to Muir’s on relationship to the land.
The main thing that caught my attention this week was the discussion of place. There is so much didcussion that we could have on just the idea of place. I also liked the discussion in chapter 2 of thorton on naming and how you can tell a lot about a person and their status based on their names. Then when when the Tlingit people were forced to take on anglicized names they began to give people names like Berners Bay Jim and and Sheep creek Mary which tied namin. Back to status and place.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found particularly unique in the description of historic tourism in Alaska was the mentions of gold mining. How does a touristic or travel endeavor change when the traveler is actually invested in the results of their journey? Here was a draw for people that existed on the very basis that it hadn't yet been explored by others. The success of panners and miners theoretically depended on their being the first to whatever place they found. I would think that the dynamic this produced in the relationship of the outsiders to the land would be much more possessive. Where otherwise someone might feel rightfully foreign and deferential to the native culture and lifestyle, the prospectors could have had a much greater (if false) sense of ownership.
ReplyDeleteIn Thornton's first chapter, the author spends a great deal of time discussing and summarizing the philosophical history of traditional European phenomenology, though I was disappointed that among the many philosophers noted, he does not mention Hegel. Thornton uses phenomenology to try and identify the way in which the Tlinget people relate to space within the dialectic process of "place-making". Quite near the beginning of chapter 1, Thornton states that "Tlingits relate to places through a variety of cultural processes that mediate activity and shape meaning" (Thornton 6). He also highlights the four fundamental cultural structures that mediate relationships to place as social organization, language, material production, and ritual process.My question for this week falls very close to my own academic interests in postmodernity and globalization; considering the four mediating cultural structures, in our late capitalist economy, it is undeniable to recognize how social organizations, language, material production, and ritual process have been altered by globalization. These four structures mediate the relationship between individual and space, creating new conceptions of place (locales) through space, time, and experience. However, when the means of production (that is the means of producing place) are changed, the relationships to that place must also be recognized as altered. In this sense, when the means of producing a local identity have become wrapped up in globalization, they cease to be (locales), and instead locality becomes an ideology which mystifies global processes. What I'm both arguing for, and questioning, is, is it necessary in the postmodern era, to cease thinking of indigenous and local identities in of their self, and rather as now wrapped up in the global economy? How is that even possible? What would an identity that is both indigenous and global look like?
ReplyDeletePlace. This is interesting, is this the first time we speak of this, sense of place instead of travel? This may sound silly and juvenile but when traveling we go places. Do the places we go define who we are? Do places affect us as humans? In Chapter 7 it claims, "'Alaska is an epoch in our lives' one tourist proclaimed. The scenes through which a traveler passed had 'an influence upon his whole being'". (Chpt. 7 p. 228) Can a place influence who we are and who we associate with, or who we become? Personally, I've changed quite a bit since moving to Alaska, in a better way, but is it me actually being here what changed or just me growing older here?
ReplyDeleteAlright, well I would like to say that writing in the comments section instead of a separate program is indeed a bad idea. Why, refresh button, are you so close to other buttons... To summarize what I had written, Language, toponymy and mapping are a huge part of travel. It's incredible how easily it fit the needs of the expansion of the American presence into Alaska. With simple language, Muir and the rising wave of tourists wiped out thousands of years of symbiotic cultural development between the Tlingit and Southeast. It's kind of beautiful, in a terrible way, how well suited the narrative of the frontier, the sublime, and geologic power was at creating this solipsistic colonization.
ReplyDelete“Contrasted with John Muir, who had no idea whatsoever about Tlingit culture, a Tlingit sense of place is not an adventure to explore the majesty of “untouched” territory.” – Ish’s statement is very important when looking at a traveler’s impact on places and cultures that are foreign to them. In both the Mad Libs and White People book during our first class session, we saw the prominent folly of the majority/colonizing culture exploring territories foreign to them. The overarching theme, trope, of travel is the explorer of new frontiers, which, as it stands are anything but new.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple questions – how do we, as colonizing citizens in the age of globalization, honor indigenous cultures while still exploring lands that are alien to us. Is it possible? I love John Muir’s writing. I love that he brought importance to nature in a way that most other urbanized citizens of majority cultures did not. However, I do see my vision is highly tinted by rose-colored lenses.
As Phil stated, “With simple language, Muir and the rising wave of tourists wiped out thousands of years of symbiotic cultural development between the Tlingit and Southeast. It's kind of beautiful, in a terrible way, how well suited the narrative of the frontier, the sublime, and geologic power was at creating this solipsistic colonization.” Would it be different now? Would Muir be more in tune with indigenous history and meaning of place? Have Alaska Natives grown stronger in their voice towards colonizing powers?