Des Espace Autres. Trans. Jay Miskowiec. France: Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité, 1984. Print.
Rabinow, Paul. “Space, Knowledge, Power.” Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. 134-141. Web.
Smith, Laura. The University of Chicago. University of Chicago, Winter 2003. Web. August 1, 2013.
Woolf, Virginia. “Literary Geography.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. Palgrave, 1986. 32-35. Print.
Sort of a funky name, but it describes this category of excursions quite well! Green pins stand for the places in London everyone at home told me I “haaaad” to go visit in order to satisfy my “inner tourist.” These places included Big Ben, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Tower Hill, the British Library, the Globe Theatre, Parliament, and Buckingham Palace.
The British Library
Some of the places that I visited I wasn’t sure what the significance of the place was (such as Tower Hill and Parliament), and others I visited because I felt they were important to being an English Major, such as the British Library and the Globe Theatre. In Virginia Woolf’s “Literary Geography,” she writes that some people choose to be “scientific in our pilgrimage and visit the country where a great novelist lived in order to see to what extent he was influenced by his surroundings,” and I tried to do just that by visiting these significant places in London. I took notes in the tourist-y places and tried to see what attracted not only authors but the massive amounts of tourists that frequent them.
Taking a look at my map, I notice that the only pin on the board that’s north of where I stayed in Connaught Hall marks the British Library. Really, the only pin on the map that’s north?! Mhmm. Again, as an English major and bookworm, it makes sense that the highest point on my map is the British Library (for more about the British Library, browse through my other posts!). Since I went a bit more in depth in another post, I won’t dwell on the British Library here, but the library turned out to be a place where an immense amount of knowledge is held, yet it’s not easily accessible to anyone. You must have permission granted by a library card (which is not easy to get, believe me) and know exactly what you’re looking for. I’m looking for inspiration in this library, how am I supposed to know where to find it? Isn’t part of learning not knowing what to expect and finding it along the way?
Another excursion I promised myself I’d go on was to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. I’ve always been such a big fan of his work and couldn’t wait to see Macbeth performed in it’s natural habitat! I spent $40 in the gift shop alone, bought tickets for two different nights just in case I couldn’t make one of the shows, and finally took my seat in one of the balconies to the right of the stage. Thinking back on the experience, I can’t help but hear Woolf’s conclusion to “Literary Geography,” which reads “a writer’s country is a territory within his own brain; and we run the risk of disillusionment if we try to turn such phantom cities into tangible brick and mortar…No city indeed is so real as this that we make for ourselves and people to our liking; and to insist that it has any counterpart in the cities of the earth is to rob it of half its charm.” We don’t know a lot about William Shakespeare; the playbook that I bought at Macbeth explained how part of the original text of Macbeth was lost and there is only one real account of someone seeing it performed at the Globe. Why then was it so imperative for me to see the show in what I called “it’s natural habitat”? The Globe has been completely restored and isn’t the exact stage that Shakespeare and his contemporaries would’ve performed on or been around, yet it was restored to try to preserve what it could of the original theatre. How come I spent so much money to experience something that only faintly lived up to the significance it has historically?
Every place that is marked with a green pin is considered a crucial part of England and the idea of Englishness. The people filling up the space around these places were snapping dozens of photos with them smiling near the building. But how many of them really know anything about the historical significance? Do they stop and think about why these places are still so important today? Circling back to Woolf’s “Literary Geography,” these places that I’ve read about in literature or seen in a movie inspired me too take a step back and look at my surroundings, not just what’s blatantly screaming for attention. My notebook was filled with manic scribbles about how people interact with these tourist-y destinations and what that says about Englishness. Yes, I did snap some photos of myself (I had to satisfy the inner tourist, didn’t I?) but I left with much more than I expected to.
Ah, pubs. Possibly my favorite part of London! White pins on the map stand for the pubs and restaurants I frequented during my trip. Because I obviously had to eat every day and went to countless restaurants, the places I specifically marked were pubs that the group went to more than once during our stay and the main location we ate around (we didn’t really stray more than a block or two from Brunswick to eat). There are five white pins on the board, all conglomerated in one central area, not very far from where I stayed. Why is this? Why didn’t I take the Tube to some swanky restaurant across the map? First, let’s take a step back and examine the places I actually visited.
Our group visited three main pubs: The London Pub, Lord John Russel’s, and The Rocket. Most nights we would try to hit up all three of the pubs, starting at the Rocket, stop over at Lord John Russel’s for a pint, then end at the London Pub. Each place had something unique to offer! The Rocket had nice drink specials (and I usually ordered nachos to have some food in my stomach, just in case the night was long. Also, I just really love nachos), Lord John Russel’s was the friendliest and felt like the most “local” pub, and the London Pub was the place where the single ladies of the group could get there flirt on with some Australians while on their Contiki Tour. Out of all of the places I visited while studying abroad, the pubs are where I felt the most at home and also the most enjoyable aspect of Englishness (more of that later).
The other white pins marked the Bloomsbury Hotel where I went for afternoon tea and Brunswick Centre. Most of the places I went to eat were located in or around the Brunswick center. The place seemed to have a bit of everything! There was a burger place, sushi, Indian, sandwich shops, an Italian restaurant, whatever you wanted to eat was right there. I got to try all sorts of food without have to travel all across London (or the world, for that matter. Not that I’m not planning on traveling to the actual places and trying actual Indian, French, or Italian food), which was convenient. My friends from home had told me how great exploring the international food was in London, for it’s an international city. It was true; I had so much fun!
Looking at all of the different pins on the board and how local I stayed for food and beer, two questions pop into my head; Why did I stay so local for food, was it because everything was so conveniently located? If food is such an important part of life (and my life specifically, for I’m an aspiring foodie!), why did I not travel outside of my central location to find and enjoy it? The pins on the outskirts of the map are for religious buildings, museums or some other form of tourist-y things. These places of power and knowledge are out of the way, yet seem to be more important than beer and food. I said earlier in this post that I enjoyed myself more when I was in the pubs than traveling far to see some museum, and it seems that I was sucked in by the reputation of power and importance that the other categories had than experiencing London like I could have.
All of the yellow pins on the board mark the parks, gardens or squares I visited: Russel Square, Hyde Park, St. James Park and Tavistock Square. One of my favorite things about London is that every few blocks there is a park or a square for you to sit in. Every park I went into or passed by was well kept; some had fountains that children could play in or to add soothing noise to the air; others had elaborate gardens with colorful flowers. All of the parks had places to sit and relax, which was such a great way to escape the loud, crowded streets of the city.
What intrigued me the most was what else was inside or around the parks. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the words “sublime” and “beautiful” as “beautiful” as “(1) excelling in grace of form, charm of colouring, and other qualities which delight the eye, and call forth admiration, (2) affording keen pleasure to the senses generally, (3) impressing with charm the intellectual or moral sense, through inherent fitness or grace, or exact adaptation to a purpose, and (4) relating to the beautiful; aesthetic.” The OED defines the adjective “sublime” (in terms of “things in nature and art”) as “affecting the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.” Some of the parks I visited I felt were beautiful, some of the parks I considered sublime.
Tavistock Square, located right outside of my dorm, was one of the beautiful squares on my trip. The layout was simple and open; a few benches lining the walkways, trees that weren’t too tall. Everything was green or brown. There were a few statues in the corners of the park but, because of where they were located, they weren’t overbearing or obtrusive. One tree that I always sat across from had a small plaque underneath, telling us that it was a “peace tree.” The main purpose of the park was to act as a place of rest and relaxation, and there weren’t any obvious statements of power or control that I saw. Russel Square was a similar story; it was a bit bigger and louder, for it had the fountain that little children splashed around in. People laid out on the grass to try to tan, friends gathered around benches or tables at the small cafe in the park. The presence of the cafe was again unobtrusive and didn’t take away from the overall beauty of the square. These two parks were beautiful and not sublime for it brought “keen pleasure to the senses” from it’s simplicity and function; it was appealing to the eye in a subtle way.
St. James and Hyde Park, on the other hand, were examples of the sublime. When I went to Hyde Park, I walked around the Rose Garden and by some of the bodies of water in the park. The Rose Garden was filled with dozens of types of flowers, all very well kept with bright colors and interesting shapes. There were overhangs with vines and more flowers growing on top, fountains of naked women, all located on a winding path with several options of which way you want to experience the garden. It was overwhelming at times to choose the right path that would take me to the part of the garden I wanted to see.
St. James Park was also very large; what made it sublime was the view of Buckingham Palace through the trees. At first the sight appeared to be beautiful due to it’s charm, but the longer you stared at it the more it became obvious that it was sublime. Much of what the palace stands for, the monarchy and power and privilege, is felt by seeing this view of the palace from a distance. It is a reminder that even when you are trying to relax and escape the day’s pandemonium, you cannot escape the power that royalty has, nor will you ever attain it. St. James Park and Hyde Park are sublime because they are overwhelming and meant to leave you with a sense of awe, gawking at the power they present. Overall, parks were quite an important part of Englishness and the London experience.
Museums!
Blue pins represent the museums I visited throughout the two weeks of my trip. There are four blue pins on the map: The British Museum, Museum of London, National History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Four famous museums catering to various ages and visitors, all defining space and Englishness with their contents.
The Museum of London and National History Museum were both geared to a younger audience. The main exhibit I experienced in The Museum of London used students (both younger and older) to help create and make the experience more contemporary. Glass cases were filled with historical facts next to bottles of sriracha sauce and cell phones, showing us what we would potentially trade nowadays. The National History Museum was packed with young and set up to be easily accessible to children. Everything was colorful and very visual; many of the exhibits had audio and video to explain it’s significance instead of the traditional signs to read. Children could interact and learn from most of the exhibits. To be honest, I felt out of place and awkward in that particular museum. I didn’t fit in or learn anything I didn’t already know.
British Museum
The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum are examples of the heterotopias that Michel Foucault describes in “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias”: “Museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit, the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity.” The Victoria and Albert Museum is a heterotopia because it houses an immense amount of art (over 4.5 million objects!) from around the globe. Objects are placed next to each other that weren’t intended on being categorized together, but are preserved there to be on display for museum goers. Time and space have been broken down, controlled and ultimately erased by how the museum is laid out.
The British Museum, in my opinion, is the best example of a heterotopia. Historically significant artifacts are owned by the museum (the Parthenon sculptures, the Rosetta stone, sarcophagi, etc.) and on display for everyone to see. There is a piece of history from just about every important time period, all kept under one roof. Again, time is no longer linear when one walks through the museum, creating a heterotopia. Though I only visited four (five museums in total, but one isn’t mapped) the amount of museums and their importance defines Englishness. All four of the museums are there to show museum goers the power of the British and to teach people things that the British find important. The National History Museum and Museum of London might be geared towards a younger audience, but they are still displaying the power relations to the children. The Museum of London displays an incredible amount of preserved, animatronic, and reconstructed animals, showing off the technology and the knowledge the museum has (and London, of course). Same goes for the National History Museum, with it’s futuristic feel and high-tech displays. These museums perpetuate the image of the all powerful England that has everything; new technology, ancient pieces of history, more knowledge than anyone else has. A museum goer is meant to experience the museum and be awestruck and overwhelmed by the presentation. My experience in these museums was both enjoyable and critical. Once I caught on to what felt like the “real” purpose of the museums, I saw them in a different light. If you ever get a chance to visit any of these places, think about what the museums are really saying :P!
Let’s begin with religion…
The red pins on the map are for religious buildings I visited. As I said before, some of the places I visited that would’ve fallen under certain categories are not shown, for they are not on my map of Central London. Some people suggested that I guesstimate where the pins would fall and plot them anyway, but I decided against that. This map is the only map that I personally used throughout my entire trip to London. It’s torn and has some highlighter stains on it (as did a pair of my shorts I had to get rid of); the places not shown, such as Highgate Cemetery, were places that I relied almost solely on the directions my professors provided the class with. I didn’t use a physical map to get to those places, so I’ve chosen not to physically map them.
There are four red pins on the board: Westminster Abbey, St. Mary Le Bowe, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and St. Clement Danes. It was hard to find some of the churches on the map because there are so many churches in London! Jeez! Red crosses can be found every few centimeters on the map. This study abroad session has shown me that religion plays many roles on Englishness. I’m not a very religious person myself; yes, I believe in a higher power and try to live a good life and pray sometimes, but organized, institutionalized religion is not exactly governing my life. While in London, I noticed how people, including myself, were affected by the inescapable presence of religion due to the abundance of churches on every corner.
My class went on a church tour, visiting all of the churches mentioned in The London Scene by Virginia Woolf. St. Paul’s was the first stop on our tour, where some very noticeable things happened. Michel Foucault said in an interview that, in order to understand an architectural space, one must consider “the effective practice of freedom by people, the practice of social relations, and the spatial distributions in which they find themselves. If they are separated, they become impossible to understand. Each can only be understood through the other.” While visiting the churches, I kept an eye out for these factors.
“one must take him – his mentality, his attitude – into account as well as his projects, in order to understand a certain number of the techniques of power that are invested in architecture
The actual cathedral of St. Paul’s can be seen from miles away; the architecture is breathtakingly enormous and asserts the power of the church for all to see. How everyone was occupying the space around the building was equally as fascinating as the architecture itself. People on the steps of St. Paul’s were eating lunch in business suits, congregated in groups or taking pictures, students (both elementary and college level) and learning about the history of the cathedral; everyone was casual and seemed to move relatively freely about the stairs. What was interesting was how everyone was talking; the noise level was super quiet and respectful, especially for the amount of people around. Though from a distance it might’ve appeared that everyone outside St. Paul’s was oblivious to it, once you took a closer look (and listen) the presence is felt by all. People control their voices and keep them down to a quiet, meditative level that is unobtrusive to those surrounding. Everyone is a bit more respectful of each other here than in other places I visited.
St. Mary Le Bowe’s and St. Clement Dane’s were quite different from St. Paul’s; the churches were much smaller and this affected how people occupied the space. Mary Le Bowe’s has a cafe in the basement, which seemed to receive more attention than the church itself. Clement Dane’s was located in the middle of the road and the inside is no longer open to the public. The smaller sized churches were easily forgotten about; one can argue that this is because of their size and where they are in the city. Mary Le Bowe’s might be using the cafe to try to get more people into the church, while Clement Dane’s simply faded away. Either way, the people occupying the space around these two churches were almost completely unaware of their presence. Mary Le Bowe’s is a tiny little church wedged into a street; Clement Dane’s is in the middle of a busy highway and out of the way. These factors definitely contribute to the fact that they are less frequented by the public.
I won’t go into detail about Westminster Abbey (there’s a whole other blog post about that one- check it out!) but even though some of these buildings have fallen out of use to the public, they still contribute to the overwhelming presence of Christianity in London. These buildings perpetuate the dominance that Christianity has over Englishness.
Time to string!
String, super glue, wire cutters & scrap paper
Now that the pins are in place, it’s time for the final step!
While in London, I stayed in Connaught Hall, a college dorm located in Bloomsbury. This became my home base during the stay; for this project, I marked Connaught Hall with a silver nail, and used it as the center point. Every string on the board leads back “home.”
Starting on the pin side, I used a tiny bit of super glue on the string and wrapped it around the pin, holding for about 20s. Once dry, I worked the string over to the nail and glued it around there. It started to get hard towards the end! There was just the right amount of space on the nail.
The end result might not be that appealing to the eye, but that will be fixed once the board is hanging on my wall. Seeing how far I traveled to go to certain places and how local I stayed for others is fascinating…Time to ponder that in another blog!
Time for me to start physically mapping my experience!
For this project, I took my map of Central London that I constantly used while studying abroad and glued it to a piece of cork. I also included a map of the tub underneath.
My map of Central London and the Tube on cork
At Michael’s craft store, I bought a box of “map pins” to mark off all of the places I visited in Central London.
Map Pins
Some of the places I went to during my stay are not located on this map, so they will not be included in the “Mapping London” project.
Me mapping!
I hadn’t realized how difficult it was to navigate a map when you aren’t actually on the streets, figuring out how to get to your destination. Even using Google to find the address of the places I was trying to map wasn’t much help!
Why so lonely?
Hmm, this looks interesting…
Ideas about next few blog posts started to percolate…Why is there a group of multi-colored pins clustered over here? What’s the significance of the lonely yellow pin in the corner of the map?
Writing from my room in Bloomsbury
Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album was filled with tension between races and classes, so much so that it’s difficult to discuss all of the representations in one blog post. Another reason this post is difficult that due to the amount of political and historical content in the novel that I didn’t understand, a lot of reasoning behind the tensions in the novel was lost on me. That being said, I’d like to focus on the tensions between Deedee Osgood and Riaz (and his friends), and Shahid and his sister in law. Deedee Osgood, a professor of English, is portrayed as the privileged professor with all of the knowledge. In the beginning of the novel, Shahid, the narrator, is entranced by her wealth of knowledge. “How had he lived so long without this knowledge?” he wonders while in one of her classes, “Where had they kept it? Who else were they concealing it from?” (36). Because of her white privilege, Deedee exists freely in the world. She is invited to insane parties where she has access to whatever kind of drugs she wants to take, her and her husband cheat on each other as long as the person they are seeing doesn’t come into the house, and she can teach the material she deems important to her students. Her position in society had given her these liberties.
Unlike Deedee, Shahid, Riaz and the rest of his group exist in a restricted part of society. They aren’t ascribed with privilege and by the first few pages of the novel, the characters are acutely aware of it. “Why can’t I be racist like everyone else? Why Do I have to miss out on that privilege?” Shahid exclaims to Riaz. The Muslims in the novel are oppressed and seen as others in the society. Deedee tells Shahid that another student in his position felt that he felt “I am homeless…I have no country,” and this is true for the others in the novel. They are confined to certain parts of the city, specific building, even on the streets; they must be very careful of the space they inhabit. If they don’t stick to the space they’ve been allotted, it might have horrible consequences.
What’s important about Kureishi’s novel is that in the end, both Shahid and Deedee must deal with the repercussions of trying to exist in parts of society they are not allowed to occupy in this tense turning point in history. In one of the last scenes of the novel, Deedee tries to interfere with the burning of the book and the crowd gets angry at her. Deedee is asked, “are the white supremacists going to lecture us on democracy this afternoon? Or will they permit us, for once to practice it?” then told to “get off, white bitch!” The white privilege she uses to get her way throughout the novel is no longer protecting her; the people her privilege has oppressed have taken action against her.
Later that night, Riaz and everyone else invade Deedee’s home with Shahid inside. The Muslims are trying to regain the space that they were denied because of their lack of privilege, and physically storm Deedee’s house as an extreme display of their struggle. Shahid, Deedee and Chili (Shahid’s brother) are all somewhat injured from this attack. At the end of the novel we see that both sides of the battle have suffered some sort of loss. The only person that presumably remains unharmed is the only white male character of the bunch, Dr. Brownlow. Throughout all of this tension and violence, he escapes and isn’t directly affected by it. The most privileged one of the bunch, Brownlow, escapes, while the two oppressed groups duke it out and leave with damage. Kureishi, in the last few chapters of the novel, show the reader through Brownlow that the white privileged male chooses to stay safe and let those less privileged groups, women and Muslims, fight for something beneath him.
Writing from the basement and my room in Connaught Hall, Bloomsbury
Site of King Arthur’s Tomb
This sign, standing among the remains of Glastonbury Abbey, reads:
Site of King Arthur’s Tomb. In the year 1191 the bodies of King Arthur and his Queen were said to have been found on the south site of the Lady Chapel. On 19th April 1278 their remains were removed in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to the black marble tomb on this site. This tomb survived until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539.
Take a second to read over the inscription another time. Initially, the sign seems to be marking something of immense importance, of sheer greatness. But going back and reading it through a second time, the greatness starts to show a few cracks. The bodies of Arthur and Guinevere “were said to have been found,” though there was no definitive proof it was their bodies (let alone they actually existed). And their supposed tombs were moved to this spot “until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539,” which means that the tomb isn’t there anymore. So, why the sign focused on the greatness?
Right after taking this photo, I turn behind me and look out onto the grass between other ruined parts of the abbey. Chairs have been set up, as well as a sound system and an altar, in preparation for what appears to be a mass service. My mind is filled with even more questions: Why hold a church service in the presence of the mythical tomb of Arthur and Guinevere? Yes, an abbey is a religious building, but there is no proof of their existence, so why practice a religious belief it’s safe to assume that people attending the mass full-heartedly believe in? Geoffrey of Monmouth’s passages about King Arthur were believed to be complete fact for years, but then came to be understood as myth. Is the fate of the religion being practiced in the abbey to face the same fate?
I hope it’s become evident that as I’ve been Mapping London, the idea of Englishness continues to be challenged by my experiences. Each blog entry defines and redefines what it means to be English, as seen from the eyes of a 20 year old American student. Glastonbury Abbey and it’s affiliation with the myth of King Arthur is fascinating. Seeing so many people still to this day visiting the tomb of King Arthur and Guinevere makes me wonder what is so important about this myth? Returning to Monmouth’s text, one encounters not only the myth but the importance of religion tied up with it. It’s hard to define what is truly part of the myth and what is truly part of religion, it’s all woven together. Values such as purity, chivalry, and the sacred are presented. If we jump to Sir Thomas Malory’s Arthur, we see the same set of values. Every chapter is marked in time by a Christian holiday; the knights must be pure (virgins) and honorable in order to fully complete quests; men sacrifice themselves. Looking around Glastonbury Abbey, it’s safe to say that people don’t believe in everything written in the Arthur myth, yet the importance of religion is still quite strong. The Arthurian myth seems to be prevalent in contemporary Englishness because the themes and values in the myth continue to be seen as important for one to be considered “English.” But an identity built on myth, how sound could it be? Perhaps as sound as the inscription on the sign seems; mighty at first, but with visible cracks.
Mapping London 