non-location
by jebni on September 23, 2005
I’ve had it with this town
I never saw those shifting skies
I never saw the ground
Or the sunset rise
I want to live on an abstract plain
I need a new address
I want some new terrain
Is it north or south?
I want to live on an abstract plain
– Frank Black, “(I Want to Live On An) Abstract Plain”
Oooooh ooh I want to find a better place
Oooooh ooh I’m searching for a better place
Oooooh ooh I’m tired of living in the sand
Oooooh ooh I’m searching for a better land
Heaven, must be there
Well, it’s just got to be there
I’ve never — never seen Eden
I don’t wanna live in this place
– Eurogliders, “Heaven (Must Be There)”
The city’s a flood
And our love turns to rust
We’re beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled into dust
I’ll show you a place
High on the desert plain
Where the streets have no name
– U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name”
Just been thinking a lot about ways to approach Jameson, mapping and the utopian. Rather than just obsessively identifying representations of present or future systems — an ultimately rather nerdy enterprise — surely we need to engage with affective attempts to abolish the present, with “utopian” acts of deliberate non-specification? Because I think that’s where most of the action is — in the usefulness of the void.
7 comments
Very timely. But isn’t the language of the above not about “the void” or the “non”, but 1) the “new”, the 2) the “better”, and 3) the “higher”? In that case, isn’t it really just settler ideology, where the old and the earthed (or indeed, the primal “under”) can’t be recognised?
by danny on 23 September 2005 at 11:20 pm. #
I guess my point is that I think there’s something that’s fundamentally more dis-orientating that belies the vocabulary of “new”, “better” and “higher” — the abstract, the never, the nameless.
by jebni on 24 September 2005 at 12:15 am. #
Oh, and my post is situated in a wider context of thinking about notions of space within refugee subjectivities, and also the experience of living under occupation — the expression of a colonial logic was in some ways the furthest thing from my mind, so it’s interesting you brought it up…
by jebni on 24 September 2005 at 1:13 am. #
Yeah, the freedom of movement in refugee subjectivities is interesting (and in diaspora literature generally). I guess my interest is raising the question of the indigenous, and maybe to suggest that to invoke white utopianism (whether Jameson, F. Black, the Eurythmics, or U2) in the name of the refugee perhaps brings a whole set of other problems that have, er, unintended consequences when seen in light of the colonial relation. not sure if that is useful…
by danny on 24 September 2005 at 10:05 am. #
I also find James Clifford’s work might be helpful in thinking through “location” and movement in a different way that seems a bit more situated than Jameson’s work. “Indigenous Articulations” from the Contemporary Pacific journal a couple of years back. If you want it drop me an email.
by danny on 24 September 2005 at 10:08 am. #
Sure, I see the dangers you allude to. Although the way those kinds of songs work for me is less as being “in the name of the refugee”, or even as a situated piece of culture, and more in terms of an abstract philosophical question — do you describe/name utopias or not? That’s kinda the way I hear songs in general — in an anti-cultural studies, post-literary way :) … There’s probably a whole bunch of slippages happening there, but y’know, perhaps they need to happen. I remember getting rapped on the knuckles ages ago for offering an image from Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children as a corrective to bell hooks’ insistence on a regime of positive black representation, and while I see the point that there’s a whole bunch of problematic shit that happens when you uphold variations on the bourgeois novel as preferable to the uh, right-on-ness of bell hooks, I’m still unrepentant about those kinds of philosophical appropriations of culture.)
Anyway, it’s precisely the desire not to denote a future in any particular way that I find interesting, and therefore not utopian (or Jamesonian) in the usual sense. Dunno if that makes any sense.
by jebni on 24 September 2005 at 2:32 pm. #
Found that Clifford essay — thanks.
by jebni on 24 September 2005 at 3:10 pm. #