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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

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My five-year-old niece, Lauren, sometimes says: “Aunt Sarah, I like here.” This is usually associated with a shopping trip, an activity that implies time out with her mother and me, while “the boys” go out and do boy-things (in, apparently, boy-places). What struck me in remembering this oft-repeated (and endearing!) phrase is that it is rarely applied to the same place, but is based almost entirely on the activity underway; yet Lauren is surely sincere in applying her emotion to her surroundings. In class, we spoke of non-places and places as distinct (albeit debated) categories, and as far as I can remember there was a distinct, but implicit, underlying dichotomy: generic versus specific, where the non-places = generic (airports, Starbucks, highways) and places = specific (a favorite café in Ayvalık, a particular fountain in Rome, a certain room in an Oxford library) – with, of course, the exception of James’ penchant for beaches. While I would disagree with the actual existence of a dichotomy (much as I would be reluctant to ascribe to the idea that a place can be non-), I think almost unconscious appearance of such a dichotomy highlights an important factor in our discussion of place: the memory of activities and people are a significant part of place-making. Lauren remembers past shopping trips and the people she was with in what may be a first-time-experienced place, but even in its generic nature it still triggers her affinity, and thus she engages with it so that it becomes a “here” she can like. In my mind, this speaks to the idea put forward in several of the responses that it is difficult for a place to remain non-, because as soon as a memory is triggered, it immediately affects the way a “rememberer” engages with that place, even though the memory may not be of that specific place. And even if someone is in a place where they, like some old wizards, “have no memory of this place,” I think that this place can, by its novelty, produce an emotion – fear, awe, delight – that immediately makes that non-place a place.

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A quick mention: especially when thinking about place in the context of archaeological research, I was really intrigued by Ömür’s comment on the phenomena of “limiting history” and making old history a “specific spectacle,” exemplified by the “ethnographic illusion” of coffee production in Ethiopia, or the Acropolis in Athens, which is known as the site of the grand monuments of classical Athens, and often takes quite a bit of pushing to recall any information about its pre-classical history or post-classical changes (the Ottoman and Venetian traces, for example, have been totally removed). Following from [Ömür’s comments, then, when considering a place’s “placeness,” it seems that we should be extra careful to have a more comprehensive angle from which to approach that place, and a conscious avoidance of the simple “here and now” (even if that “here and now” took place over two millennia ago).