The beginnings of a beginning: Draft 0

Wordsworth’s pastoral poems reveal a verdant landscape in which rustic figures share a special communion with the environment. And yet the relationship between man and nature in these poems while at times harmonious is acutely fragile. As notable as Wordsworth’s ardent praise of the rustic community is its tragic dissolution. Indeed the poet’s contributions to Lyrical Ballads are consumed with images of rural decay, the disruption and despair of families, and the gradual disappearance of the rustic’s uniquely intimate relationship to the land. Michael, The Ruined Cottage, and The Female Vagrant all revolve around the disenfranchisement and subsequent dissolution of idyllic rural families, all of them uniquely situated with the land as farmers, shepherds, and fishermen- figures who’s close kinship with and fluency in the languages of the environment make them at once special and endangered. This repetitive pattern of decay, as I shall suggest, advance an ecological argument about the fragility of human relationships with the environment, and brings to bare important questions about sustainability (I know I need to explain this more…I’m trying to work out my thoughts about these patterns and what they mean.)..........

Hear my ideas go pop, bam, fizz, siz z z z le...

I've been toying with the idea of composing a creative thesis for a couple weeks, and by toying I mean that I've batted the notion of doing and not doing one back and forth in my mind without any real, solid consideration of what a creative thesis might constitute should I undertake one. Until today. As I mentioned in my last post, I've begun sifting through ecocritical writings, principally those in Cheryll Glotfelty and Harlod Fromm's Ecocrtitcal Reader, with the hope of expanding my understanding of what ecocriticism looks like and how I might apply it to my thesis work on Romantic poetry. This morning I began reading William Ruekert's piece in the anthology, Literature and Ecology. Given the title its little wonder I settled on this piece to read- literature and ecology are after all exactly the two fields I am interested in bridging with my thesis. But Ruekerts's essay offered me more than the critical frame work I expected from its title; it offered me what I think might be a door into a creative approach to exploring Romanticism and the environment.

Poetry, Ruekert suggests, "is stored energy, a formal turbulence, a living thing, a swirl in a flow," (108).


A swirl in a flow.


Poetry, he tells me,
is part of the energy that sustains all life.

It feeds community and creativity.
These its greatest recipients.
Ruekert explains, "poems are a verbal equivalent of fossil fuel
(stored energy),
but
they are a renewable source of energy,
coming as they do, from those ever generative
twin matrices, language and imagination," (108).
Language provides a container
for the imaginative energy that it expresses;
it is
the imagination then, not language, that is
the potent fuel of creative energy.

Through reading, the exchange of energy
from poet,
through poem,
to reader
the energy is translated from entropy
(the dissipation or loss of potential)
to sustain the community that depends on a constant flow
of creative energy. It is through the movement
of energy through poetry to the human community,
Ruekert romantically suggests, the higher ideals of literature
might
be
accomplished (111).



Building on these ideas,
I find the following passage from the essay particularly inspiring:




"Green plants...
are among the most creative organisms on earth.
They are nature's poets....
Poems are the green plants among us;
if poets are suns (the vibrant sources
of imaginative creativity), then poems are
green plants among us
for they clearly arrest energy
on its path to entropy and in so doing, not only
raise matter from lower to higher order,
but help to create a self-perpetuating and evolving
system. That is they help
create creativity and community,
and when their energy is released and flows
out into others, to again raise matter from lower
to higher order (to use the most common description of what
culture is)..." (111--- parenthetical insert mine).

Ruekert goes on to explain that following from this line of thought, teaching becomes a vital means of intesifying and perpetuating the process of creative transfer from poetry to human minds, by as he says "providing an the environment in which the stored energy can be released to carry on its work of creation and community," (111). I love the notion of poetry a ball of sustainable imaginative and creative energy with the potential to animate the creative minds of human communities. I love the notion of a poem, like a mouthful of of the richest fruit or a spark from the vaporous finger of a electrified cloud, energizing people to action. And while I do not think that this is how Romanitic poets conceived of the effect of poetry, this is I believe (honestly I believe) the potential power of their poetry on the creative minds its recipients. A great example is I think the fair assertion that romantic nature writing fueled the creative, and active work of later environmentalist writers in at least in America.

But how does this apply to my project? I think I would like to draw from this ecological metaphor to compose creative responses to the renewable creative fuel of the romantic poetry I will investigate. My responses could take many forms. As I am often a writer deeply influenced by the convulsions and densely layered activity of my place in history my writing shifts shapes and resists neat categorization. I might therefore produce poetic prose, free-from poetry, and maybe even include snatches of my own nature writing and reflections from journals and from blogs. All of which though would spring up in response to the poetic meditations of the writers at the center of my project. Sort of like a tangible representation of the creative potency and continuing relevance of the poetry to my own struggle to reconcile the relationship between myself/humanity and nature, which is now just as alluring, estranged, and symbolically important to the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.

Call this is an idea under construction. Call this a serious attempt to enlist my ideas in the construction of something new, something maybe not perfect or tidy but something important I think...at least to me.

Environmental Texts-Environmental Imagination

This morning Debbie provided us with a list of criteria for environmental texts from Lawrence Buell's The Environmental Imagination. According to Buell, environmental texts are characterized by the following traits...

1. The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.
2. The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest.
3. Human accountability to the environment is part of the text's ethical orientation.
4. Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.

As Debbie suggests Romantic imaginative texts with their rich environmental imagery may not qualify as environmental writing as Buell defines it. The question at hand is whether or the work of Keats, Shelley, Coleridge and all those Romantic's bewitched of nature constitutes environmental writing. Confronted with the question my first response is a mixture of confusion and unsettled uncertainty. In my conception of Romanticism the environment figures prominently, if not as a vital element to the writer's world vision. But, if we are to take Buell's criteria into consideration it becomes I think difficult to say if Romantic writing is also environmental writing.

That the Romantics express a reverence for the natural world is undeniable. However, I am not entirely confident that the environment in Romantic writing does not operate as resource for the use of poetic and artistic expression; an introspective realm, if you will, rich with metaphor and symbolism that poets tapped and used for human interests. Considering Buell's second point, "the human interest is not understood to be the only interest," and the abundant use of the natural as a metaphor for elements of the human experience it may not be unreasonable to suggest that the Romantics used the environment to advance human interests. To be more clear, I begin to wonder if the natural is more a poetic tool rather than a legitimate interest. For example, Keats Ode to Nightingale takes as its subject the poet, using nature or rather the desire to merge completely and irrevocably with a pure natural state to express the frustration that comes with the impermanence of the imaginative experience. When I say "imaginative experience" what I mean is the process of the romantic imagination that enables the poet to transcend himself and commune with the natural. While the nightingale figures prominently in the poem as an idealized object of the poet's desire; it representative of a state of being Keats both celebrates and longs for, the ode is I think an ode to the poet rather than to the natural. (Insert textual analysis) It it is the poet's desire, the poet's persistent humanity, the poet's lament of the transient ecstasy of imagination that is the subject of the ode. Therefore, the poem presents an interesting, and I don't think unique example, of the use of the environment to express the human. It is easy, given that the natural world is as in this poem often so exalted to believe that Romantic poetry advocates the notion that the human interest is not the only interest. But, how often the environment is represented as a mirror for humanity, a contemplative space in which man sojourns for a time to contemplate himself, his species, and the civilization lingering at the forest's edge. It is not therefore, representative of another legitimate interest, but a resource for poetic contemplation and expression.....

I broke off on the above thought about a week ago with the intention of picking up where I began. Since then however I tipped my toes in the world of ecocritism, searching for a better sense of how others have spoken about the relationship between nature and literature. Today I find myself reading my own thoughts with a new perspective I can only thank Fredrik Turner for. Turner points out in Cultivating the American Garden the very problem of trying to write about nature and culture (or lit as a cultural artifact) as separate entities (as I attempt to do above). My thoughts about romantic poetry and its exploitation of the environment to express human interests hinge on the assumption that man (and his products) and nature are mutually exclusive. Man is the exploitative other to the nature (which I suppose I think of as an untampered with, vulnerable green space).

Now, in his article Turner rightly points out something about ecological discussions that I fail to do in my above thoughts, and that is clearly define nature and culture- but I think more importantly nature. Discussions about the relationship between man and nature often hinge on the (often unaddressed) assumption that the two are mutually exclusive entities. Turner points out, a weakness of such discussions is the failure to explicit consider how nature is being defined, and to consider that man and nature are actually inseparable. What is nature after all? And for that matter what is man, if not nature?

More than a few of us might attempt to define nature as the ecosystem outside, out there. It is the trees and plants, bears, wolves, and the insects in the grass at night (or some other variation on these ideas) isn't it? And yet nature is often also bound up in the notion of wilderness, or wild, unrestrained life. I think it's fair to reiterate an apt point Turner makes when he notes that for many of us there is a clear distinction between the wild nature of uninhabited forests and mountains and the fabricated or manipulated nature of a suburban garden or green house flowers. The absence of human influence is essential to a pure definition of nature. As Turner points out nature is often always "out there" in the green spaces that (and I think this is vital) remain outside the bounds of human interference and habitation. But, and I don't mean to come off like a parrot here, Turner suggest that nature and culture are not in fact exclusive- that in fact humanity, its social matrix, habitations, and interferences are in fact nature. If we are to assert that human culture is not nature after all, if it something separate from nature, then let's face it we are suggesting an alternative source for our existence, behaviors, and cultural artifacts that as far as I know has only been (popularly) described as well God- or a God force. More importantly, as I boldly step out onto some highly political ice here, we would be denying the stacks of evidence (widely accepted evidence I might add) that we are fundamentally animals, and culture as we understand it is evolved. I suppose what Turner is getting at (and what I am beginning to accept myself) is the notion of "natural" social matrices like bee or ant colonies are not any more natural (as in not artificial) than the human colonies we call civilization. Where things start to get messy is when we try to separate the technologies of culture (say agriculture, genetically engineering flowers, crops, or industry) and what we perceived to be that natural touch stone from which these technologies sprung and now encroach upon. I am not saying that I think it is natural to deforest hundreds of acres of land in the name of cattle grazing and ultimately beef production. But in as much as these sort of activities sprung from human evolution (and by that I mean our development overtime into the highly social, creative, if not also destructive, species we are now) they are fundamentally natural. Unfortunate. Depressing. Hopefully abandoned or heavily revised. Yes. Yes. Yes. But I have a hard time after reading Turner's article so easily differentiating these activities and realities from nature. If not nature then what? And if we think of pure nature as that which remains largely untouched- the organisms, communities, and cultures that are not human- then it must be pointed out that even these do not really exist. Are the neatly enclosed spaces of the national parks nature? Are the vistas prepared for strategic viewing (and photographing) of various landscapes in these parks natural? And what I think is most interesting and perhaps applicable to my thoughts about Romantic poetry, is it even possible for us to see nature except through ideological/cultural filters that impose meaning upon them? Did I state that clearly? What I'm asking is when we see the Grand Canyon or stumble upon a yet untred upon spot in a forest somewhere does not just the way we see and apply meaning to these spaces interfere with them? Aren't we always interfering with the natural, putting it in neat symbolic boxes and affixing meanings to its colors, shapes, and sounds that then have significance not only for us as a species but nature, in as much as how it is viewed influences how it is treated in this ever human-dominated world?

Now, all that I have said here I must admit is extremely uncomfortable for me. I don't know how to make sense of these ideas and my own ecological convictions. On some level Turner's ideas deeply resonate with this until now unvocalized sense that I could never really access nature. It seemed to me strange and uncomfortable that the only way to access nature for one unexperienced in hiking solo in the wilderness is to follow a map, or drive to a state park, or rent a cabin in the woods somewhere. Take a hike I went on with my sister last summer for example. Even as we climbed higher into the mountains we passed troops of fellow hikers, all destined for the same scenic vista. At the top of the track (and the fact that we were following a well trodden track says something I think) there were scores of sunny-cheeked hikers taking the view in while enjoying a lunch or snapping pictures of friends in front of the wide green landscape. While at the time I too delighted in the sense that I had done something deeply beautiful and worthwhile- I'd left the city to climb up onto a high cliff and look out in wonder at the landscape- I look back now in awe of how fundamentally artificial that experience really was. Time and time again I am confronted by that feeling of some how being tricked into seeing nature, when in fact I'm see a designed form of nature. Where is NATURE? I feel always like its beyond me. Like it's this distant other I think about when I shop for organic, sustainable foods at the Coop or take out the recycling. I think about nature sometimes the same way I think about children starving in the Sudan. It is this precious entity I remember while I contemplate what to eat or buy or want or deny myself with a sense of guilt and responsibility. But it is always distant from me. So while some of what I said above sounds almost blasphemous even to me, I have to admit that even as I feel this desperate desire to care for Nature, to remember, and consider the consequences my actions have on it I feel still, always estranged from and unsure about what it really is. It is sad to say I would not recognize the face of my mother if I saw it. Not for all the picturesque simulations we've cut her up in to. I would not know her to see her in whole, and sometimes I think it is no longer possible to see her that way. Now of course as I say this, the mother I am referring to is the primal earth that reared my species up over millions of years like an oyster suffering a very dark, very peculiar pearl. I think she is gone. But I love, even as I lament, her thousand broken pieces.

I have not arrive at a complete understanding of how to define nature, but what I think interests me most is the sheer difficulty and tension inherent in trying to do so. While Turner's thoughts at first threatened to over throw my ideas about romantic poetry and nature it they could instead support my ideas. I'm wondering if the struggle to understand nature, and man's connection or perceived alienation from it that is the very draw of poets to nature, particularly in the 19th century, when modern civilization began to rear its coal-blackened head up from the landscapes of history. And on that note, I will elicit a sigh and say....more on that later.



In book-ending my thoughts with images of nature on one hand and culture in the form of urbanization on the other I am visually representing the place my thoughts churn, ceaselessly. I am some what unsure of how to interpret either image. Are they so totally separate as I have often thought? Is one more or less nature? More or less man? I'm caught between ideas at the moment, in the void between what I understand as nature (the green other) and culture (the city, home). It's a tense, creative, and fertile place to be.

Reading poems I think should always be first an emotional and sensual experience. The desire to pick apart with questions as assign meanings should come only after one has experienced the poem with the heart. Naturally, there is no one way to do anything, particularly something so personal. Poems are of course deeply personal, which is to say that even when they are the product of a stranger half a world or centuries away they speak to profoundly human realities. So while a part of me resists writing as if there is one truly effective way to read a poem I think it is important to encourage certain approaches to experiencing poetry. For one, people tend to want writing that puts its meaning up front. We are a culture that relishes "just getting to the point already." But poetry delights in its sounds, colors, and emotions. These are the source of its life force, the very things that give the words heat and the meanings power. I encourage readers to resist the impulse to know immediately the message of a poem. Instead, consider that perhaps the greatest wisdom of poetry can impart comes through simply feeling its impression on your senses, and on your heart if you let it. I believe that we can begin to demystify the process of reading poetry only when we understand that the effect of poetry on the reader's emotions is integral to arriving at the "meaning" or mission of a piece. Because it is a process like a journey from impression and feeling to understanding.


The journey begins...
With a gaze. The first read should be like looking at a painting in a museum or a photograph of a place you've never been. See the colors, feel the shapes the words make. Take it in without intending to interpret or judge or even speak an impression. Just flow through the lines without asking questions. Close the intellectual mind. Be simply human first.

Try it out:
Gaze at Gustav Klimt's mermaids for practice. Open up and feel the image.



Now read a few lines of Rilke with the same openness.

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

In both the painting and the poem there is so much emotion, so much to taste and smell and touch. The moody colors of the mermaids' waters, her light skin and the eyes. Just like Rilke's rich, thick fluids rising and flowing and the billion stars blazing. The first experience of both poem and painting is thick with impressions of darkness, peace and I think (for me) of something both painful and beautiful. Reading or seeing them first is sensory, and the impressions either evokes begin to signal something about the creator's meaning.

From here....
If the experience is not enough (which I believe sometimes it alone can be) then read again, look again. This time linger on the elements that make you feel or question. Read these words again. Read in you mind. Then aloud. Where do these places figure in the piece as a whole? How to do they appear to operate? For example, Rilke's billion spinning stars "blazing" set up a powerful (yes emotional) contrast to the image of them dead in the final words of the poem. The contrast reinforces something, but what? When an image like this captures your attention, consider what the poet wants you associate with the image. Is it, as in Rilke's last stanza the passage of time? Often, there is a strong relationship between images and repetitive sounds or words and a larger idea the poet is attempting to put across. Remember, of course, sometimes the idea behind the words is not a simple message- sometime the purpose is (returning to where we began) to simply make you feel something. Unsettled. Romantic. Yes, even confused. In such cases the purpose of the poem may rest in you, your time, or times before yours. I can only say that in these case it is useful to consider the poem's relationship to you, or (thanking the library gods for research) go explore what the poem's relationship is to its political, social, or historical context. When all else fails, research and or at least taking the time to read any footnotes can go along way toward interpreting those impressions and sensations that a poem conjures.

Draft

I completely threw out my first draft, and started over. That said, I still feel really nervous about the paper, and I'm having a hard time writing it. I'm posting the draft here (in place of the original blog prompt about drafts). If you have any comments or advice I would love to hear it. I know there are one or two particularly bad (or absent) transitions. I will have those figured out in the final of course.



Hillary Roberts
English 521
22 April 2008

Ice, Ice Baby: Travelogues, National Geographic, and the Arctic in Twentieth Century Popular Imagination

There is something fascinating and fabulous about blankness. The blank face of a clean page, the unfilled outline of a continent, the icy white vastness of the arctic all contain in them the possibility of exploration and discovery. Signifying the boundaries of the known, blankness has long enticed the curiosity of explorers and tantalized the popular imagination. In his essay Geography and Explorers, Joseph Conrad celebrates the profound appeal “Regions Unknown!” - the “exciting spaces of white paper,” that signified the limitations of geographic knowledge in the 19th century. The essay captures something of the profound appeal of the geographic unknown in the popular imagination of the era, and imaginative potency of travel into the blank spaces of the map….

Literally situated on the icy periphery of the known world, the poles have long enticed Western “cartographic fantasies”, or romantic, imaginative visions of the unknown (Yan). Interest in the artic peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when attempts to conquer the “last great frontiers” of the earth sent explores into the icy blank spaces of the map. As one of the least known and certainly least accessible regions of the earth, the arctic represented an exotic and anomalous space, persistently outside beyond the reach of Western knowledge and the influence of civilization. Here is a space in which nature rises up icy, and sublime against the push of Western explorers; where ships shatter like tooth picks in the jaws of the ice, and time and space do not comply with Western norms. For this reason, the persistent blankness of arctic signified the limitations of Western power and knowledge. The very blankness of the region thus typifies it as a sublime and mysterious space, wherein the popular imagination could chart fantastic cartographies on the face of the unknown. As Lisa Bloom explains in Gender on Ice, “if (one) was forbidden to color in the known parts (of the world) in any way he chose, (one) was permitted to do what he liked with the blank spaces, which were all brought together to the same plane of representation,” (1). The romantic appeal of the artic is therefore in the inaccessibility and awesome barrenness of the landscape. Both features mark the space out as a sublime and fantastic region, far removed from the known world; a playground if you will for the Western imagination wherein the heroic explorer looms large against an alien and inhospitable background.
The romantic appeal of Arctic exploration at the turn of the twentieth century is indisputable. However, the role of arctic travel writing in the construction and representation of the arctic in the popular imagination of the twentieth century is a largely neglected area of scholarship. A few recent examinations of arctic travel writing have focused on the popular fascination with exploration of the region. Perhaps most notably, Peter Kitson’s introduction to Travels, Explorations, and Empires and Robert David’s book The Arctic in the British Imagination shed light on the influence arctic travelogues on the popular conception of the region as sublime, and fascinatingly remote space. However, few scholars have examined reciprocal role of popular interest in tales romantic heroism and adventure and the construction travelogues at the turn of the century. My paper will focus on the role increasing what Peter Kitson aptly describes as “public fascination with ice and snow, and with the extremes of human endeavor and hardship,” on the construction of twentieth century travel writing. Specifically, I will frame my investigation with in the context of the popularization of science at the turn of the century, a period which emerging popular science periodicals like National Geographic exploited the public interest in the unknown and tales of adventure to proliferate scientific knowledge among the literate masses. Given the abundance of travel writing from the period, I will focus predominantly on construction of Robert Peary’s much disputed 1909 travelogue, The North Pole, and the influence of the National Geographic Society on its promotion as the preeminent narrative of arctic discovery and heroism of the 20th century. Chiefly, I will argue the text actively exploits popular interest in the tales of Arctic heroism and adventure, and oversteps the boundary between travelogue and self-promoting adventure writing; aimed not at illuminating the icy vastness of the north but at validating the heroism of the explorer.
The power of travel writing derived from its ability to make visible that which is beyond the sight of readers, and to illuminate the landscapes hidden behind the blank spaces on the map. In the early part of the twentieth century, Lisa Bloom explains, “the ability to make a faithful record out of what was previously considered imaginary was regarded as a great modern achievement,” (5). Particularly in the Arctic, the ability to push the bounds of knowledge into the “last great frontiers” of the map represented the “crowning achievement” of four centuries of exploration. For Peary however, “a faithful record” of the polar discovery may easily have been eclipsed by the desire to write “the last of the great adventure stories- a story the world had been waiting to hear for nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last under the folds of the Stars and Stripes,”(298-300). That is not say, his 1909 narrative of reaching the pole is a total forgery, but rather, perhaps better characterized an attempt at writing “the last of the great adventure stories,” featuring him as the patriotic and determined hero. Thus, as Bloom aptly points out, “the ‘faithful record’ made at the North Pole was from the start contested and unstable,” (5).
The 1909 saw a strange and dramatic conflict over the discovery of the pole, which is I think inseperable from the nature of Peary’s subsequent narrative production of the journey. Although the Peary-Cook polar conflict was in its time incendiary, it likely unfamiliar to most of us today. Thus, a brief history of Peary, and the polar conflict will provide useful framework for my discussion of the text. A prominent figure in the history of arctic exploration, Robert Peary’s reputation includes both legitimate discovery and accusations of falsity. Most notably, his often remembered for the controversy which surrounds his claim of reaching the pole in April 1909. Peary’s triumphant declaration, dispatched by telegraph from the north, “Stars and Stripes Nailed to the North Pole,” and later “…the North Pole was reached April 6th by Peary Arctic Club’s expedition, under Commander Peary,” inspired a mixture of awe and confusion, coming as it was within days of Captain James Cook’s own professed discovery of the pole. Contemporary, James Marshall, in 1913 explained the confusion as such, “it was far from certain that this (Peary’s telegraph) was not a hoax, the outcome of the sense of humor of some fantastic individual at Indian Harbor,” since when it arrived, “Dr. Frederick Cook was being acclaimed by the crowned heads of Europe and by the world at large as the discoverer of the North pole,”(79). There could after all be only one discoverer of the pole. Thus, accusations flew back forth between camps about the veracity of either explorers’ alleged discovery of the pole. Predominently criticism of Peary’s expedition in particular focuses on the speed with which his crew made the pole and his ability to maintain a northern course over the moving ice without making frequent, precise geographic measurements (cite). In either case, Bloom explains, “both expedition accounts were purported to contain information and were written in a style of scientific precision….(but) the importance given to science alone could not provide a means to determine justly who the winner might be,” presumably because measurements and calculations can be inaccurate and fakery is always possible (5).
Although doubts surrounded the veracity of both explorers claim, Cook would ultimately prove the loser of the battle for the pole. Demands to see Cooks expedition journals met with excuses until finally a diary was produced. The diary did more to undermine Cook’s claims however; it was Flemming explains “branded a manufacture from beginning to end,” as were the photographs Cook alleged he took on the journey (421). The photos, contemporaries argued, came not from the polar trek but from a previous expedition to Greenland six years before (Flemming 421). Topping it all off, evidence appeared that invalidated Cook’s claim of summating Mt. McKinley in 1906. The ascent never took place, and the alleged photograph of him at the summit was in fact taken on a lower hill (Flemming 421). Declared a fake, Cook became the focal point of public outrage and ultimately fled to South America, thus leaving Peary to enjoy the title of Polar discoverer, presumably by proxy of Cook’s invalidation and willingness of the leading popular scientific society to validate his claim.
Peary’s own journals received little scrutiny, and after a cursory investigation the National Geographic Society, also financial backers of the expedition, proclaimed him the rightful discoverer of the Pole (Flemming 421). The involvement of the National Geographic Society the construction of Peary’s as heroic explorer is undeniable, and palpably present in his text, particularly in society president, Gilbert Grosvenor’s foreword to narrative. Chronicling four centuries of polar exploration, Grosvenor’s foreword endeavors to contextualize Peary’s narrative within a heroic legacy of exploration and discovery. Interestingly, the Grosvenor describes the history of polar exploration in terms of riches, adventure, and danger. For example, “the preceding brief summary,” of exploration he says before moving on to focus on Peary’s achievement explicitly, “gives only an inadequate conception of the immense treasures of money and lives expended by the nations to explore the north ice world and to attain the apex of the earth,” (xxvii). The fantastic language with which Grosvenor describes exploration, emphasizes its heroic quality while belittling its scientific importance; science he suggest is “compensation” for the danger and travail of exploration, not the trophy (xxviii). As he says,
“All efforts to reach the Pole had failed, nothwithstanding the unlimited sacrifice of gold, energy and blood which had been poured out without stint for nearly four centuries. But the sacrifice had not been without compensation. Those who had ventured their lives in the contest had not been actuated solely by the ambition to win a race- to breast the tap first- but to contribute, in Sir John Franklin’s words “to the extension of the bounds of science,’” (xxviii).
While he acknowledges the scientific contribution of exploration to the enrichment of human knowledge, Grosvenor’s language emphasizes I think the notion of heroic conquest and competition above all else. The pole is, according to Grosvenor, “the prize of four centuries of striving,” it’s discovery a “victory,” and “crowning” achievement (xxxii). The foreword thus frames Peary’s achievement as the preeminent event in a long and dangerous enterprise. In so doing, the Grosvenor frames the narrative itself as heroic testimony of adventure and discovery, to which his name gives authority.
The addition of the foreward, like the scientific appendices at the back are a clear attempt at imparting a sense of scientific authority to the an otherwise subjective and scientifically impoverished narrative. As the president of the National Geographic Society, by 1900 a major popular scientific community, Grosvenor lends a clear authority to the narrative. Perhaps, no more so than in his statement of confidence at the end of the narrative that “Robert E. Peary has crowned a life of devoted to the exploration of the icy north and to the advancement of science by hard-won discovery of the North Pole,” and expressed dissaproval of criticism of Peary’s claim (xxxii). Grosvenor even attempts to turn the Peary-Cook controversy in an illustration of Peary’s honor, suggesting that no one but the most stalwart, perservering and honorable men could have bore the “scoffing” and discouragement that accompanied his discovery of the pole (xxxii). He therefore attempts to validate, both in adding his testimony to the text and in framing Peary as a legitimate and heroic explorer, to lend authority to the narrative.
Grosvenor’s efforts in the foreword derive from the close relationship between National Geographic Society and the Peary polar expedition. As financial backers of the expedition, the society was keen on validating his as a hero and the discoverer of the pole. Initiated in 1888 as a professional geographic society, the reign of its sporadic scientific journal as the leading publication among professional geographers ended with the 19th century (Rothenberg 28). The Spanish American War, resulting as it did in the first United States colonies, awakened popular interest in geography and exploration (Rothenberg 32). Responding to increased public interest in the world abroad the society shifted its focus, and its publication, toward reaching popular audiences; the goal increasing membership in the organization by appealing to the national public interest…..

Presentations

Julie: Right out I want to say that I love that Julie chose a text that focused on an area of personal significance to her. I found your personal awareness of the area your text dealt with leant something unique to your presentation, and it got me to thinking how interesting it would be read an traveler's account of my own home area when it was just a budding community. On another note, I really enjoyed the way you addressed both the important historical context of the text- which of course is closely connected to the traveler's travel, his perspectives, and motives for writing- and the political influence of the book after its publication. To be honest, up until your presentation I had considered the important influence of cultural/political contexts on travel writing, but not the possibility of a reciprocal relationship between travel text and culture/politics. I think that in discussing the influence of the text you opened up- at least to me- an interesting area for discussion: the travel text as not only a product of its historical cultural and political context but as a cultural and political influence of itself. I think we've been working in class with this in mind- for example, talking about centers of calculation and the way travel narrative was both product of the desire (as in produced from the desire) to know and name the world, but also the informative well from which knowledge- or the struggle to understand the world- was drawn. However, I really don't think I grasped the potential power of the scientific travel narrative to shape, reshape, or reinforce cultural/political notions of the world until listening to your presentation. If I'm slow on the pickup with this one...well, I'm slow....but your presentation made it clear to me that scientific travel narratives are not just artifacts of an age overflowing with curiosity and the desire to know, but powerful and potentially influential forces in their own right.

Bravo.

Jerry:
From the get go I think your own curiosity and desire to know- to travel deeper in to the narrative you selected, in search of order and meaning- really came through in the energy and excitement with which you presented. I love that you recognized strange inconsistencies in your text as an opportunity to take on the role of an intellecutal sleuth, and suss out the reason for the peculiarity that troubled you in the writing. What you uncovered, a secret spy voyage disguised as a legit travel expedition, made me a little jealous to be honest. How exciting! I think your presentation could open an interesting inquiry into other similair uses of exploratory travel and travel writing to mask alterior (i.e. political) motives for travel. Is it likely that the prevalence of scientific/exploratory voyages and expeditions, and the wealth of narratives produced about such expeditions made it possible your writer and the expedition about which he wrote (and perhaps others like it) to do what he did? One question that remains for me is why he wrote this account at all. If in fact the voyage was for shadowed purposes why risk sheding light on it by producing an account- especially is said account is poorly writen, suspicious, and not altogether very informative? Seems like the move of someone who didn't realize what was going on and just wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to publish- and perhaps thereby profit some- but I doubt that he would not know the real aim of the voyage he was on. Perhaps, this is a question you might persue further- in a sittuation in which the expedition is decidely not scientific, but actually for more covert political ends, why record it in narrative?

Toria:
Okay, I personally loved hearing you narrate passages of your gentleman traveler's wanderings through the world. I think it's absolutely fitting that your text would include with it's observations of world cultures and politics (and donkey riding) a lot of wit. I appreciated the way you summarized what was truly a long journey in detail, providing also actual textual examples of the language with which your traveler spoke about his observations. Together, the detailed outline of the journey and textual examples- which illustrated both writer's vibrant (somewhat egotistical) persona and impressions of the world (also vibrant and egotistical)- did more than beautifully lay out the text for those who hadn't read it; it beautifully illustrated the concept of travel as a search for self (both individual and cultural) in the world. I'm intrigued by the notion of voluntary displacement as a means of locating one's cultural/individual identity, and I think your text provides some interesting possiblilities for examining this notiton in text. Your traveler, it seemed from your examples, even when he attempted to observe and understand Other, was concerned more with orienting his self and his identity among the scenes and spectacles he witnessed. I recall one powerful examlple being a festival he observed, which he suggests in the text flourished and glittered in performance for HIM (him who was decidedly marginalized and invisible in earlier encounters). It could be interesting to further examine visibility and invisibility of the British traveler in an Other setting, and (cultural) identity preformance in travel writing like your's (both of the traveller and of the "native"). Perhaps the preformance is reciprocal? Perhaps the preformance prevents one from really ever understanding the other, while becoming more near an essentialized vision of oneself? Does that make sense? Like when one is out of country (let's say one is British) in a place decidely different from one's home and culture, among people who identify themselves as let's say of a specific African tribe is it possible that cultural identity becomes a preformance in which one actively esssentializes oneself in an attempt to identify and distinguish oneself?.....I think it would be interesting to look at that in terms of a traveler like your's- how does he react to the festival (a literal preformance of cultural identity), how does he preform his identity as a British man/observer/traveler? If anything, you could say that all these questions- be they interesting or just plain indecipherable- arise from my own personal interest in what was I think a really wonderful and rich presentation and travel text. I loved it.

Kellan:
First of all, I love that you found a text that so perfectly falls in line with your interests in colonialism/postcolonialism. I liked how our texts (your's, Toria's, and my own) illustrated what must be only a small smathering of a truly diverse assortment of travel writings. While my text represented I think an example of predominently scientific exploratory writing, and Toria's text seemed almost ethnographic, your text presented an interesting, specifically political use of travel writing, with important colonial undertones. However, in reflection, I think a case could be made that all of our texts were very much concerned with similair interests- all were very much bound of in (forgive me Debbie) imperialism in one way or another. I think your text though, while commericial and strategic motives likely belied the motives of travel and the specific information recorded, presented some interesting questions that you can seperate from imperialism to focus instead on British print culture, and more specifically the construction of a travel text. Specifically, I thought it was really interesting the way you addressed the somewhat strange construction of your text. Given that the writer/traveller was clearly instructed at the opening to study medicinal plants and other things that could be of use medically it is interesting that the text focuses instead on commerical mechanical things, and (for whatever reason) goats (which appeared to be important enough to illustrate). That, as you pointed out, the text does not include more material of medical interest or even botanical illustrations is curious. Listening to you talk about this strange inconsistency in your book I got to wondering how travel texts were constructed- what determined what was or was not illustrated, and how information was organized/presented? Was it purely financial? Is you text typical, or unusual? More generally, do you think illustrations provide authority to a text, or perhaps are unnessecary? I know that these are not questions you were to answer, only thoughts that your presentation inspired in me. I really enjoyed presenting along side you and Toria. You both inspired me to look at my own text from different angles, and to think about travel literature as a whole in new ways.

map pictures

Anorexia: Looking at the thing inside



The arm: A region of contention, and focus of self-loathing. When I wanted to be thin, during the conditioning phase of the disease and while I was in the process of wasting I hated my arms, and legs, belly, and backside. I saw these parts of my body as large, almost as expansive as continents. I wanted to control those areas, tame, and shrink them. The language (fat, pig, too soft, etc) reflects the way I saw these areas when I was ill. Later, however, when I was in the process of healing, and to some extent recognized that I was thin (my arms, legs, belly, etc were thin) I felt attached to these areas, and terrified to loose them. I wanted to preserve what I created, and the process of watching the body take over again was like watching plant life overwhelm a hard-built city, home- if you will. Currently, I have returned to seeing my arms and legs and other body parts the way I did when I was conditioning myself to starve, and during the process of actually starving. The comments on these body parts are therefore both a reflection and current with the way I understand my body now.
It is difficult to see here, but the legs were and are an area that is although somewhat barren here very finely detailed in my mind. I struggled to deal with this part of my map, as the legs are a point of obsession, pain, and shame for me. Comments like "thick" or "disgusting" knees, thick ankles, fat, cellulite, and too wide reflect both the general contempt I have my this area of my body (both then and now) and the very specific areas (i.e. knees, thighs, and ankles) that are a point of obsession for me. I admit that I am humiliated by the shape and size of my outline in this area, and found mapping it very painful. Interestingly, had I mapped my legs when I was recovering they like my arms would have likely been marked with describing words like "beautiful" "thin" "womanly"- because when I was recovering I was especially attached to my legs and arms, both of which were undeniably thin. I deeply feared watching them swell. In some ways they were the prize of my sickly empire.

Another over-view of the entire disease.



The face/mind: In looking back at my journals and blog from the period of conditioning to when I was the thinnest it became clear that the mind of Anorexia (or of the Anorexic) is consumed in ideals. Everything from your sensory organs (eyes, mouth, ears, skin) to your thoughts is consumed with the desire for and obsession with ideal beauty, thinness, and interestingly (for me) romantic and deluded ideas about the world in general. My mouth and tongue tasted only the desire to be thin, in control, and safe. Food became meaningless, beauty became nourishment to starve on. My ears heard only what I wanted to- and often echoed with observations about my body that others made. If someone said I looked great (as people often did when I first began to loose weight) or alternatively if someone made a comment I interpreted as critical their words rung in my head, blocking all else out. Also, my eyes ceased to function properly. I saw only in terms of ideals, and mirrors reflected only what I desired or what I was NOT (i.e. my thighs always looked heavy, my belly was never smooth enough, etc). And my thoughts- oh god- I was OBSESSED with thinness, perfection, and control. Most of the time I would spend thinking about wanting to be thin, how was I going to get thinner, and thinner, who was thinner than me, who I wanted to look like, who I did not want to look like, etc. I also spent a lot of time either chastizing myself for eating to much, not working out enough, or just not being thin enough or congratulating myself for being controlled with food (only breakfast and dinner today, and only 300 calories each), for working out (especially on days when I burnt over a 1,000 calories), and for other "good" or ideal behavoir. When those thoughts were not occupying the fore front of my mind, I fixating on numbers. How many calories, how many calories? Unlike many people who tend to underestimate how much they consume, I would intentionally ad calories on to my count to convince myself to eat less tomorrow, or stay longer at the gym (or often both). Thus, the mind of the disease I felt should represent the idealistic realm that it was. I wanted the mind to appear like a garden, with the central, thin female figures like gods or muses located in the center. I felt that presenting the mind of the disease as a garden appropriately captured on of the many paradoxes of the disease for me when I was ill, and now that I struggle to accept my current "healthy" weight: Anorexia is consumed with ideals, beauty, and the desire for security. Through starvation I tried to make my body a symbol of control, to embody what I understood to be perfection, and through that to achieve the sense of security and acceptance I was so hungry for. In the end, a cancer not flowers grew inside of me.
The heart: To put it simply pain lies at the heart of the disease- pain, ugliness, and the horrible truth that you want to starve away. For me, at the heart of it all, the truth was I was scared, I was hurt, and I felt both undeserving of and denied love and a sense of "fullness." The heart, is a sharp contrast to the mind and stomach of the disease, but all are intimately connected. The heart (the pain) feeds and sustains the ideals that consume and dellude the mind and body. The heart is the essence of the illness, the engine of the disease, the last, hardest thing to repair. If I were to map the heart at any point, be it in conditioning, wasting, or recovery it would look the same. Until you heal this broken, diseased region you are always Anorexic- this thing always lives in you.
The Breast Obsession: My disease is intimately connected to my gendered body. One might say that anorexia was for me conceived at puberty, in the swelling of my breasts, spreading of my hips, and developing fullness of my thighs. The breasts however became a particularly painful region of the body for me, and so an important- if a little odd- thing to map. When I hit puberty and all through adolescents and adulthood my breasts were larger than my female friends', and wildly out of proportion for my body. They earned my nicknames at home and at school that I found humiliating. I felt out of control of my body, which was developing wild animal shapes that the attention of others sexualized. I was ashamed of my body, but I often wore revealing tops that displayed the very things I was ashamed of. In this way I have always been an exhibitionist of my pain- I've always show cased it for others, even though many did not understand what I showed them. I think too I showed my chest that way because I felt that I was suppose to- my body had grown this way without my consent, and my friends, family, and culture suggested it was suppose to, and that these once innocent (or at least insignificant) parts of my body were sexual symbols. I supposes showing them off, like being thin, was an attempt at embodying an expectation, and a meaning imposed on my body as a woman. That said, I must add, that after I experienced wasting my breasts became an even more painful, and hideous area of my body. Suddenly, I had only the debri of what wasting had done to the flesh in my breasts; only empty, hanging skin, ugliness, shame. Even now, my breasts look to me like symbols of a war- monuments to the disease, if you will. Now they are too small, ugly, old-looking. The perkiness, the fullness, the strange sexuality they once had is destroyed utterly, and I'm left with the remains of the destruction. I veiled this area behind tranluscent paper because, despite my honesty here, this is an issue and an area of my body I am both ashamed of, and pained by.

The Stomach (below): The stomach is another strangely paradoxical area to visit. The largest organ on the map, the stomach is full of rich foods and a few hidden images of women enjoying food. The stomach is thus a symbol of my repressed and very rampant appetite (like the breast, the area is shrouded, or veiled). The stomach is also a symbol of my desire for fullness, that sense of security I felt deprived of, and later (during recovery) a positive relationship to food. When I was not obsessing about ideals, my mind was in my stomach, in the emptiness where I sat longing for food, thinking about food, hating other people who could eat without guilt or without thinking, and feeling ashamed and secretive about my own eating. I did not binge, I starved, and I starved out of pain- not out of a hatred or even a disinterest in food. In fact, my stomach, and my battle to control it (its size, shape, impulses, and desires) was a struggle to control my entire body, my life, my family, my world. In many ways, this is the very epicenter of the disease, the battle ground, the focus- and interestingly, perversly even, it is full of hunger, of thoughts of food, of a earnest desire to taste, to feel full, to feel safe, and happy.

Also mapped: The hands
I'm having technical difficulties with the images of these regions, but will post close up's as soon as possible. In the mean time I will explain that the right hand is covered in images of diet pills, each finger "tattooed" with phrases from the cult of pill-dieter's like "two capsules in them morning before breakfast" "ephendra" "caffeine" and "rapid weight loss." Diet pills became a major tool of the disease. I've used them for over 5 years to rapidly drop weight and to sustain impossible thinness. Diet pills not only enabled me to loose weight, they in many ways helped me to affect normalcy in my social and romantic relationships. I took the pills to enable me to eat around friends, family, and boyfriends who as I became thinner and thinner grew suspicious of my eating. In many ways, when I was outed as an anorexic and people began forcing and watching me eat diet pills allowed me to preform eating. I maintain this behavoir on and off today, however more to loose weight than to conceal starvation.

The left hand is full of images of woman before and after using diet pills. The images represent my connection to what is I think a cultural obsesssion with control over the body. I often looked at and regarded these images as inspiration- not necessarily because they suggested I too could drop 20lbs, but because they compelled me to be thinner than these women. I could do more, I could be thinner. Pills, starvation, and hours at the gym were the way.