Calvino’s Invisible Cities worked as an interesting conceptual lens through which to read Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail. As Brown toured the invisible streets of Black Liverpool, I was reminded of Marco Polo’s conversations and descriptions of the many cities within Kublai Kahn’s empire. Each text displaced senses of place, Calvino through the cryptic and colorful descriptions of his travels, Brown through her analyses of the relationship between global and local and their impact on the constructions of personhood and makings of race in the region. Likewise, in both texts, there is a sense of nostalgia. For Marco Polo is it for the home that he constantly confronts in his travels, for Brown, it is for the place in which modern racial constructions are rooted.
Brown puts a new spin on an old mantra. Gender, race, and class, the grand trio of triple jeopardy and intersectionality are expanded upon and situated within location or place. Racial identity is not taken as a given to later be appropriated within analyses and narratives of racial oppression. Rather, Brown examines how these constructions come into being through interactions within places such as Liverpool. In some parts of the text, her use of gender and sexuality is obviously influenced by Stoler, for she examines the organization of sexuality within the context of race.
My main question about this text is: are racial constructions as specific to place in other places? Does Brown’s analysis in Liverpool have a wider application, or is it limited to this specific context?
In Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail, Jackie Brown provides an engaging discussion of ‘place’ in the construction of race and gender in Liverpool. None of the authors we’ve read so far have paid attention to the construction of place as she has. She equates place with power and explains that it is an abstraction, and like race and gender, it operates “powerfully, though not exclusively, through the invocation and naturalization of matter” (9). In a way, I wonder if we can compare Brown’s construction of space with Mol’s discussion of the creation of objects? For Brown place is also enacted, not to be understood as a taken-for-granted materiality. For LBBs the concept of race - of ‘blackness’ - cannot be separated from their identification with Liverpool. With this is entailed a new interpretation of the local/global juxtaposition. She asks the provocative question, “In what ways, indeed, might “the local” and “the global” be understood as cultural categories implicated in the production of race and gender rather than simply analytical indices of scales, scopes, and scapes?” (6). Looking at the production of race in Liverpool does not make this an ethnography of the ‘local’ but rather includes numerous temporally and spatially divergent experiences (LBBs, West Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, White woman, the colonial period, post-world war two, etc). All these together combine to construct ‘blackness’ in her present-day ethnography of Liverpool. Liverpool, as a local that is global by definition (25) complicates the definition of the local. Also, in another way, place is constructed by the ultra-right (the NP) as racism is inscribed in their rhetorical construction of place as Nation (63-64). Yet Brown also brings up the concept of space, and I’m not quite sure how it is different from place. She states that it too is produced and cannot be separated from power (54). Is it that space does not have the particularity of place (as she is writing about diasporic space * a broader concept than that associated with place)? But then again she describes the space (is it not Liverpool?) in which White mothers become Black. This probably isn’t a huge point, but something I was curious about while reading.
I thought one of the really interesting things in Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail was Brown's way of understanding diaspora -- a topic we haven't seen yet in class. Rather than positing it as a typology or as a condition,“an existential state characterized by displacement sensibilities arising from migration”(99), Brown explains diaspora as more of a relation (though she’s careful to note that groups do migrate and do suffer displacement). Instead of studying the complex configuration of community and identity (diapora) through movement/migration, Brown chooses to study it through place. This is ‘place’ in a way that (I don't think) we've seen it yet – imbued w/ meaning and power, not just the ethnographic backdrop that one might initially expect. I thought her account of Scott’s tour of the invisible Liverpool was particularly compelling, in this respect.
Brown seems to back away from diaspora as only a transnational relation, which is how, before now, I had generally understood it. This reformulation was unexpected to me, I guess b/c of the way the title and the cover art conjure seafaring, which in turn conjured Gilroy’s Black Atlantic (which she also references explicitly). I definitely didn't expect such a multi-stranded formulation.
Another point on diaspora that I thought was interesting was her discusson of the gendering of diasporic space (Chapter 2). Brown calls for more attention to be paid to the politics of gender, instead of “women’s experiences”...that by reifying these experiences we don’t learn much. Instead, she says that attention should be paid to how certain practices come to be gendered, and how this then produces differences in physical and social locations (56). This mention of practices reminded me of Mol, though I'm not sure how/if that is applicable to Brown's work...I'll have to think about it more.
In Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail Jackie Brown provides an engaging discussion of ‘place’ in the construction of race and gender in Liverpool. None of the authors we’ve read so far have paid attention to the construction of place as she has. She equates place with power and explains that it is an abstraction, and like race and gender, it operates “powerfully, though not exclusively, through the invocation and naturalization of matter” (9). In a way, I wonder if we can compare Brown’s construction of space with Mol’s discussion of the creation of objects? For Brown place is also enacted, not to be understood as a taken-for-granted materiality. For LBBs the concept of race - of ‘blackness’ - cannot be separated from their identification with Liverpool. With this is entailed a new interpretation of the local/global juxtaposition. She asks the provocative question, “In what ways, indeed, might “the local” and “the global” be understood as cultural categories implicated in the production of race and gender rather than simply analytical indices of scales, scopes, and scapes?” (6). Looking at the production of race in Liverpool does not make this an ethnography of the ‘local’ but rather includes numerous temporally and spatially divergent experiences (LBBs, West Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, White woman, the colonial period, post-world war two, etc). All these together combine to construct ‘blackness’ in her present-day ethnography of Liverpool. Liverpool, as a local that is global by definition (25) complicates the definition of the local. Also, in another way, place is constructed by the ultra-right (the NP) as racism is inscribed in their rhetorical construction of place as Nation (63-64). Yet Brown also brings up the concept of space, and I’m not quite sure how it is different from place. She states that it too is produced and cannot be separated from power (54). Is it that space does not have the particularity of place (as she is writing about diasporic space – a broader concept than that associated with place)? But then again she describes the space (is it not Liverpool?) in which White mothers become Black. This probably isn’t a huge point, but something I was curious about while reading.
What interests me about this book is what I can call "spatial politics".
Though Brown refers to her subject "place" - Liverpool, I think one can easily translate her idea of "place" to "space".
If "place" is a geographical location which we can understand, like a spot on a map, "space" is a place of unknown. This mystery of space is not exactly the same as a place of "unknown", i.e. we know nothing about it, but more related to the "uncanny" in Freudian sense. It is like the feeling after you leave your home for a long time, you now "revisit" your home - the sense of loss of "UN-familiarity".
In this sense, space is not a neutral attribute as the geographical "space" may suggest. "Space" is loaded with meanings, histories, dreams, desire, horror, and sorrow.
While the author suggests, "Historical narratives are generational, gendered, and spatialized." (85). It also alludes to the other side of the same coin: Space is historized, gernerationalized, and genderized.
To understand "space" provides a point for us to understand the other attributes which make "space" possible.
I think nothing is more interesting than the question, "Why Liverpool?" It is not so much a question asked by the author, but a question constantly asked TO the author.
5 Comments:
At 9:40 PM,
Jenny K. said…
Calvino’s Invisible Cities worked as an interesting conceptual lens through which to read Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail. As Brown toured the invisible streets of Black Liverpool, I was reminded of Marco Polo’s conversations and descriptions of the many cities within Kublai Kahn’s empire. Each text displaced senses of place, Calvino through the cryptic and colorful descriptions of his travels, Brown through her analyses of the relationship between global and local and their impact on the constructions of personhood and makings of race in the region. Likewise, in both texts, there is a sense of nostalgia. For Marco Polo is it for the home that he constantly confronts in his travels, for Brown, it is for the place in which modern racial constructions are rooted.
Brown puts a new spin on an old mantra. Gender, race, and class, the grand trio of triple jeopardy and intersectionality are expanded upon and situated within location or place. Racial identity is not taken as a given to later be appropriated within analyses and narratives of racial oppression. Rather, Brown examines how these constructions come into being through interactions within places such as Liverpool. In some parts of the text, her use of gender and sexuality is obviously influenced by Stoler, for she examines the organization of sexuality within the context of race.
My main question about this text is: are racial constructions as specific to place in other places? Does Brown’s analysis in Liverpool have a wider application, or is it limited to this specific context?
At 10:03 PM,
Hugh said…
Rhea said:
In Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail, Jackie Brown provides an engaging discussion of ‘place’ in the construction of race and gender in Liverpool. None of the authors we’ve read so far have paid attention to the construction of place as she has. She equates place with power and explains that it is an abstraction, and like race and gender, it operates “powerfully, though not exclusively, through the invocation and naturalization of matter” (9). In a way, I wonder if we can compare Brown’s construction of space with Mol’s discussion of the creation of objects? For Brown place is also enacted, not to be understood as a taken-for-granted materiality. For LBBs the concept of race - of ‘blackness’ - cannot be separated from their identification with Liverpool. With this is entailed a new interpretation of the local/global juxtaposition. She asks the provocative question, “In what ways, indeed, might “the local” and “the global” be understood as cultural categories implicated in the production of race and gender rather than simply analytical indices of scales, scopes, and scapes?” (6). Looking at the production of race in Liverpool does not make this an ethnography of the ‘local’ but rather includes numerous temporally and spatially divergent experiences (LBBs, West Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, White woman, the colonial period, post-world war two, etc). All these together combine to construct ‘blackness’ in her present-day ethnography of Liverpool. Liverpool, as a local that is global by definition (25) complicates the definition of the local. Also, in another way, place is constructed by the ultra-right (the NP) as racism is inscribed in their rhetorical construction of place as Nation (63-64).
Yet Brown also brings up the concept of space, and I’m not quite sure how it is different from place. She states that it too is produced and cannot be separated from power (54). Is it that space does not have the particularity of place (as she is writing about diasporic space * a broader concept than that associated with place)? But then again she describes the space (is it not Liverpool?) in which White mothers become Black. This probably isn’t a huge point, but something I was curious about while reading.
At 10:09 PM,
melinda said…
I thought one of the really interesting things in Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail was Brown's way of understanding diaspora -- a topic we haven't seen yet in class. Rather than positing it as a typology or as a condition,“an existential state characterized by displacement sensibilities arising from migration”(99), Brown explains diaspora as more of a relation (though she’s careful to note that groups do migrate and do suffer displacement). Instead of studying the complex configuration of community and identity (diapora) through movement/migration, Brown chooses to study it through place. This is ‘place’ in a way that (I don't think) we've seen it yet – imbued w/ meaning and power, not just the ethnographic backdrop that one might initially expect. I thought her account of Scott’s tour of the invisible Liverpool was particularly compelling, in this respect.
Brown seems to back away from diaspora as only a transnational relation, which is how, before now, I had generally understood it. This reformulation was unexpected to me, I guess b/c of the way the title and the cover art conjure seafaring, which in turn conjured Gilroy’s Black Atlantic (which she also references explicitly). I definitely didn't expect such a multi-stranded formulation.
Another point on diaspora that I thought was interesting was her discusson of the gendering of diasporic space (Chapter 2). Brown calls for more attention to be paid to the politics of gender, instead of “women’s experiences”...that by reifying these experiences we don’t learn much. Instead, she says that attention should be paid to how certain practices come to be gendered, and how this then produces differences in physical and social locations (56). This mention of practices reminded me of Mol, though I'm not sure how/if that is applicable to Brown's work...I'll have to think about it more.
At 10:49 PM,
rheabonita said…
In Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail Jackie Brown provides an engaging discussion of ‘place’ in the construction of race and gender in Liverpool. None of the authors we’ve read so far have paid attention to the construction of place as she has. She equates place with power and explains that it is an abstraction, and like race and gender, it operates “powerfully, though not exclusively, through the invocation and naturalization of matter” (9). In a way, I wonder if we can compare Brown’s construction of space with Mol’s discussion of the creation of objects? For Brown place is also enacted, not to be understood as a taken-for-granted materiality. For LBBs the concept of race - of ‘blackness’ - cannot be separated from their identification with Liverpool. With this is entailed a new interpretation of the local/global juxtaposition. She asks the provocative question, “In what ways, indeed, might “the local” and “the global” be understood as cultural categories implicated in the production of race and gender rather than simply analytical indices of scales, scopes, and scapes?” (6). Looking at the production of race in Liverpool does not make this an ethnography of the ‘local’ but rather includes numerous temporally and spatially divergent experiences (LBBs, West Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, White woman, the colonial period, post-world war two, etc). All these together combine to construct ‘blackness’ in her present-day ethnography of Liverpool. Liverpool, as a local that is global by definition (25) complicates the definition of the local. Also, in another way, place is constructed by the ultra-right (the NP) as racism is inscribed in their rhetorical construction of place as Nation (63-64).
Yet Brown also brings up the concept of space, and I’m not quite sure how it is different from place. She states that it too is produced and cannot be separated from power (54). Is it that space does not have the particularity of place (as she is writing about diasporic space – a broader concept than that associated with place)? But then again she describes the space (is it not Liverpool?) in which White mothers become Black. This probably isn’t a huge point, but something I was curious about while reading.
At 3:21 PM,
Jason Lau said…
What interests me about this book is what I can call "spatial politics".
Though Brown refers to her subject "place" - Liverpool, I think one can easily translate her idea of "place" to "space".
If "place" is a geographical location which we can understand, like a spot on a map, "space" is a place of unknown. This mystery of space is not exactly the same as a place of "unknown", i.e. we know nothing about it, but more related to the "uncanny" in Freudian sense. It is like the feeling after you leave your home for a long time, you now "revisit" your home - the sense of loss of "UN-familiarity".
In this sense, space is not a neutral attribute as the geographical "space" may suggest. "Space" is loaded with meanings, histories, dreams, desire, horror, and sorrow.
While the author suggests, "Historical narratives are generational, gendered, and spatialized." (85). It also alludes to the other side of the same coin:
Space is historized, gernerationalized, and genderized.
To understand "space" provides a point for us to understand the other attributes which make "space" possible.
I think nothing is more interesting than the question, "Why Liverpool?" It is not so much a question asked by the author, but a question constantly asked TO the author.
Post a Comment
<< Home