William E. Deal
Department of Religion
Draft – Not for Citation
Last Updated: 26 October 2003
AAR/SBL Annual Meeting 2003
Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar
In the paper I presented for the 2002 Constructions of Ancient Space
Seminar, “Simulating
Pure Land Space: The Hyperreality of a Japanese Buddhist Paradise,” I explored aspects of the
spatial trialectics of Lefebvre and Soja. Like others in the Seminar, I hold to the idea that there is a need to employ spatial studies
along with historical and social analyses of religious data. For the Seminar, the
spatial theories of Lefebvre and Soja have been central to exploring these
issues. This paper, which is more a series of questions with narrative than a
tightly developed argument, examines issues of religious space from the
perspective of discourse – what gets said about space – and the idea that the
study of religious space is, inter alia,
a textual practice. I
“read” space through the historiographical observations of historian Hayden
White and through perspectives on metaphor delineated in the work of George
Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner. I use a selected passage from Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane as data for
my considerations of the textuality of space.
In the paper proposal I submitted for this year’s Seminar – and that is the published abstract for the AAR/SBL meeting – I said I would write the following paper:
This paper explores ways in which discourses of religious space are articulated from at least three (interrelated) perspectives:
1. Experiences of religious space are typically translated into narratives that become part of discourses with resonances to issues of power, knowledge, subjectivity, and other Foucauldian cultural measures.
2. Contemporary scholarly descriptions of religious space and spatial experiences are often expressed without benefit of any firsthand experience. Yet, academics often talk authoritatively about these spaces. This constitutes an academic discourse of space and has its own problems and peculiarities.
3. Scholarly descriptions of religious space as a generic, cross-cultural category have their own changing discursive history. The discursive logic of, for example, Eliade's notion of sacred space, does not necessarily fit with, say, postmodern notions of religious space. What is at stake in this shifting terminology?
What was I thinking? I foresee no way to pull this off without at least a book-length manuscript. So, I propose now to look at space in terms of discourse and textuality which are the related concepts that tie these three agenda items together. I hope to make comments that are suggestive enough to generate further conversation on these matters.
I start with this question: To
what extent is any space both a physical place and, in many significant ways, a
textual practice? As spatial discourse, space is embedded in knowledge regimes
that broker power and have ideological implications. The historian Hayden White’s
work on “metahistory”
is suggestive for
understanding space textually, and semiotics and metaphor theory is useful for
exploring the textual nature of our representations of space. In short, my exploration
of textuality in a group devoted to the exploration of spatial practices is
meant to suggest that space – although having an external, physical aspect – nevertheless
presents itself to us as a narrative practice. Space may be physical, but it is
also conceptual and its representations largely textual.
There is – for me, at least – a
curious thing that happens whenever space is examined. It always becomes a
discourse about space. Even when “real” material space is described, it is
through language and other spatial representations – either ones we construct
to narrate the space and its meaning(s), or the representations we are
re-presenting through images inscribed in various media, whether film or pixels
or whatever. I keep thinking about whether we can ever “do” space (I am here
trying to avoid saying things that want to emerge out of my reliance on
language, like whether we can ever “talk” about space or “interpret” space
without language) without implicating language, or perhaps better, discourse
that forms knowledge/power in Foucault's sense of discourse.
There seems to me an analogy
between issues of religious space and issues of religious experience (and, by
extension, about any space and any experience). The classic debate among those
who study religious experience has traditionally been over whether one's
religious experience is mediated or unmediated by culture and language. One
view holds that religious experience is primarily unmediated by culture and
prior to language and only secondarily becomes cultural and linguistic in the
relating of the experience to others verbally or in writing. The contrary view
holds that all experience is already “tainted” by culture, language, and
conceptual structures so that the notion of “pure” experience is at best wrong
and at worst a legitimating discourse that seeks to prove or otherwise
authorize the experience as authentic. So the analogy to space: we experience
space through our bodies and bodily sensations. Can we have an unmediated
experience of space such that our relating of our experience can escape
language? It seems to me the answer is no. The interpretation of space – which
is this Seminar’s charge – is largely reliant on language to get its work done.
Though I would personally applaud such an effort, no one as far as I know has
built a material “space” as a way to interpret another space. I'm not sure what
any of us would do with such a material interpretation, and it would surely be
problematic for Jim to get it online. My point is this: in the same way that religious
experience seems to require language in order to do its discursive,
ideological, and other work, so, it seems, does religious space.
Fine. But my concern is that in
our turn to space as a way to expand our understandings of religion as
something that goes beyond or is not limited to “thought” – professions of
belief, creeds, and other verbal markers of how and what we think about
religion – we are thrown right back up against thought. We think about space
and interpret space through language. So, is space, like Hayden White's view of
history, primarily a textual practice when it comes time for academics to have
their “say” about space and spatial practices?
White argues that historiographical self-reflection – looking at scholarly assumptions and presuppositions in the writing of history – is the goal of what he terms “metahistory.” White elaborates: “It [metahistory] addresses itself to such questions as ... What is the epistemological status of historical explanations, as compared with other kinds of explanations that might be offered to account for the materials with which historians ordinarily deal? What are the possible forms of historical representation and what are their bases?” (“The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” 81). I want to shift the focus here to space: What is the epistemological status of spatial explanations? What are the possible forms of spatial representation? These are important questions that I will not pretend to answer in any satisfying way here. But I do want to raise these questions to the Seminar and ask for additional reflection on these questions, and whether or not these are questions worth asking.
White's own answers to
questions about historiography involve the idea that history is a textual
practice. White’s textual or narrative view of history revolves around the idea
that although there are real events occurring in time and space, we only have
access to language about those events, never the events themselves. History, as
a narrative of the past, is therefore primarily textual. While it could be
argued that we do have tangible access to material spaces described, for
instance, in the Bible, it seems to me the analogy still holds: we have no
direct access to these spaces as they were lived and experienced 2000 or 3000
years ago. Our enterprise here is therefore largely about re-constructing space
through our interpretations-in-language of what those spaces must have been
like and the first, second, and third space implications. The only access we
have to these spaces-as-experienced is through textual descriptions of what
these spaces meant to those who lived in them. And, for the sake of discussion,
I will go out on a limb here: I do not think the archaeological record provides
us with much access to Thirdspace because the archaeological record must be
conceptualized and interpreted in a way similar to interpreting a text.
One of the implications of White’s view is that historical truth is always constructed through the narratives crafted by historians. Historical knowledge, therefore, is not simply the apprehension of an external reality, the truth of the past, but is a product of the historian’s discourse. White’s work typically takes aim at binary oppositions that pretend to organize “reality” in a logical, objective way. From White’s perspective, for example, the traditional opposition of history’s facts to literature’s fictions is a false one. Extending his observations to questions of space, we might assert that spatial knowledge is not simply the description of a material, external space, but is the product of discourse replete with binary oppositions, a “plot,” metaphor, and other tools of the narrator’s trade.
White’s notion of the construction of the historical past through narrative involves the idea that history is a discursive and rhetorical enterprise, not one of excavating objective, incontrovertible facts. White’s ideas about historical discourse are contrary to traditional “realist” views of narrative which assume the posture of an omniscient narrator who tells a story characterized by uninterrupted flow. Such a narrative voice masks the usually fragmentary nature of historical sources and evidence. It creates the appearance of a complete and unambiguous story where none exists. Following White, we might argue that studying past religious spaces is a discursive and rhetorical venture. To what extent are our narratives about space addressing or hiding the ruptures and fragments that these spaces possess?
White’s theory of
tropes (tropology) is central to arguments about historical writing he
expresses in Metahistory. A trope is
usually understood as a figure of speech, such as a metaphor. White, however,
uses this term to refer to styles or modes of thought used by historical
narratives to craft their discursive arguments. Through extensive research into
the history of historiography, he shows how historical texts from particular
periods have in common the use of certain tropes. For White, “troping is the
soul of discourse” (Tropics of Discourse
2), and it is one of the chief tasks of the historian to identify what tropes
are used and to uncover their ideological ramifications.
White discusses modes of emplotment
utilized by historical discourse. Just as with literary narratives, historical
narratives have a plot structure that is utilized by the historian to tell the
story of past events. White identifies four primary modes of emplotment:
romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. These modes of emplotment in turn are
connected to modes of explanation and ideological implications. The narrative a
historian creates from choices of plot, explanation, and ideology serves as an
interpretation of past events. Historical interpretation has, according to
White, at least three aspects: (1) the aesthetic (choice of narrative
strategy); (2) the epistemological (choice of explanatory mode); and (3) the ethical (ideological choice). Historical discourse
consists of these three interpretive aspects and thus presupposes a particular
metahistory. “Every proper history presupposes a metahistory which is nothing
but the web of commitments which the historian makes in the course of his
interpretation on the aesthetic, cognitive, and ethical levels differentiated
above” (Tropics of Discourse 71).
Thus, the issue for historians, according to White – and one that extends to
the historian of religion – “is not, What are the facts? but rather, How are
the facts to be described in order to sanction one mode of explaining them
rather than another?” (Tropics of
Discourse 134).
To what extent are processes
of emplotment, explanation, and ideology operating in analyses of religious
space? I want to make some suggestions about how his agenda might illuminate narratives
of religious space. Like White’s view of the historian narrating a history, is the
academic study of religion primarily a textual practice? Are religious
traditions constructed by the narratives that religionists employ to talk about
past events? Are there patterns of emplotment to religious texts, both those
produced within religious traditions and those written by religion scholars?
To further explore these matters, I offer a brief reading of a single paragraph of Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane to further examine textual attributes of spatial analyses. I am not trying to dismiss Eliade’s work, but simply to show how fundamentally textual his theory of sacred space is. His scholarship on sacred space is well-known and has become a part of our “commonsense” about the nature of religious space. But this commonsense is discursive, not spatial.
Eliade observes the following in a section
titled “The Center of the World.”
The
cry of the Kwakiutl neophyte, “I am at the Center of the World!” at once
reveals one of the deepest meanings of sacred space. Where the break-through
from plane to plane has been effected by a hierophany, there too an opening has
been made, either upward (the divine world) or downward (the underworld, the
world of the dead). The three cosmic levels – earth, heaven, underworld – have been put in
communication. As we just saw, this communication is sometimes expressed
through the image of a universal pillar, axis
mundi, which at once connects and supports heaven and earth and whose base
is fixed in the world below (the infernal regions). Such a cosmic pillar can be
only at the very center of the universe, for the whole of the habitable world
extends around it. Here, then, we have a sequence of religious conceptions and
cosmological images that are inseparably connected and form a system that may
be called the “system of the world” prevalent in traditional societies: (a) a sacred place constitutes a break in
the homogeneity of space; (b) this
break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to
another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to
the underworld); (c) communication
with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which
refer to the axis mundi: pillar (cf. the
universalis columna), ladder (cf. Jacob’s
ladder), mountain, tree, vine, etc.; (d)
around this cosmic axis lies the world (= our world), hence the axis is located
“in the middle,” at the “navel of the earth”; it is the Center of the World (Eliade,
The Sacred and the Profane 36-37).
I want to underscore here that although Eliade is talking about physical space – albeit in a generic fashion – his narrative is ultimately less descriptive of an observable, experienced space that it is textual. The following brief and very tentative comments are an attempt to tease out aspects of textuality found in Eliade’s famous work.
Emplotment
Following White’s claims about emplotment, what kind of plot does Eliade’s narrative utilize? Eliade writes in a realist mode, employing an ideology of objectivity. His narrative appears to speak transparently about observable, experienced space. (Though I have not had time to explore this further, it may well be that others of the Religionswissenschaft school wrote with a similar mode of emplotment.) But Eliade’s division of space into tripartite planes is not a description of physical space in any objective, empirical sense. Rather, it is a construction of space through concepts, tropes, and other linguistic maneuvers.
Despite Eliade’s realism – particularly evident in the paragraph quoted above – there is also a mythic drama that lurks just below the realism. In Eliade’s narrative of sacred space, the central event is the hierophany: it ties together different planes, it makes space inhabitable, and it creates a center point for human lives. It is also a very dramatic event, transforming both time and space. One of the ways that Eliade is able to meld realism with mythic drama is by utilizing a sequential plot structure that has a beginning, middle, and end – in that order – that takes spatial chaos and transforms it into spatial cosmos. It is commonly observed that realist narratives have such a sequential plot structure, but it is also the structure of the kind of mythic tale Eliade tells.
A couple of further thoughts:
· It strikes me that the cosmic drama that Eliade unfolds has less to do with space as physical place and much more with a literary construction whose dramatis personae include Kwakiutl neophytes and other human beings, and the appearance of God, or the sacred, in starring roles.
· Experiences of religious space are typically translated into narratives that become part of discourses with resonances to issues of power, knowledge, subjectivity, and other Foucauldian cultural measures.
Binary Oppositions
Among the binary oppositions expressed or implied by Eliade are:
sacred profane
center periphery
upward downward
divine
world underworld/world of
the dead
habitable
world uninhabitable world
cosmos chaos
These oppositions –
inherently linguistic – are necessary to Eliade’s realist plot. It allows him
to create a narrative with clear lines drawn between the sacred and the profane
and to value each accordingly. By extension, oppositions like us/them,
center/periphery, and habitable/uninhabitable can be additionally stated or
implied. Obviously, binary oppositions do not exist in material space, but are
rather constructed to make sense out of an otherwise inchoate experience of
space. Not all cultures construct the same binary oppositions.
Metaphor
Metaphor, as a trope expressing similarity, is central to Elidae’s narrative. He employs such metaphors as:
· space is like a mathematical plane
· sacred space is like a navel
We are once again confronted with the textual nature of Eliade’s conception of sacred space. A plane is a two-dimensional surface – a curious metaphor to describe three-dimensional space when other mathematical metaphors are available, such as the image of a cube or sphere. This mathematical imagery is continued with the idea that a manifestion of the sacred – a hierophany – is like a line bisecting the three planes of heaven, earth, and underworld. The notion of an earthly navel is similarly metaphoric. The earth, being spherical, cannot physically have a central point on its surface. This is another example of using language to conceptualize a space. In short, material space does not represent itself as Eliade describes; rather, Eliade constructs this representation out of metaphors and binary oppositions that are a part of larger patterns of meaning-making.
Paradigmatic
Relationships
Eliade utilizes paradigmatic relations to forge a typology of the sacred that finds sacred and profane space everywhere and which creates a hierarchy of value ranging from “supreme” to “elementary” hierophanies (Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane 11). Hierophanies are symbolized, among other things, as:
· pillars
· ladders
· mountains
· trees
· vines
· people
These terms serve as the paradigmatic, or associative, relations that are containers to “house” the hierophany. They also serve the purpose of valorizing as “higher” or “lower” the religious expressions of different cultures and traditions.
Eliade’s notion of sacred space can be located within the framework of the spatial trialectics of Lefebvre and Soja. I summarize Lefebvre and Soja as follows:
|
|
Lefebvre’s terms |
Soja’s terms |
Meaning |
|
Space 1 |
· perceived space · spatial practice |
Firstspace |
physical, material space |
|
Space 2 |
· conceived space · representations of space |
Secondspace |
concepts/ideas about space |
|
Space 3 |
· lived space · spaces of representation |
Thirdspace |
space as experienced (physically, emotionally, intellectually,
ideologically, etc.) |
Eliade appears to be dealing with both Firstspace and Secondspace,
but not Thirdspace. He describes sacred space as physical, material space (the
sacred, he says, is experienced in space) and he deals with conceptualizations
of sacred space (for instance, the different conceptualizations of how the
sacred manifests itself in space). But, it seems to me, his encounter with the
Firstspace of sacred space is largely textual or literary, not a description of
any really existing space. His sacred space is generic – it is all spaces and
no space at all. Invoking Saussure’s semiotics, Eliade’s conceptualization is
reminiscent of the Saussure’s distinction between langue
and parole. Langue is language in the sense of the entire linguistic system.
This system is given in culture and constitutes what it is possible to say,
such as words, sentences, and sounds. Parole,
on the other hand, is speech in the sense of the individual utterances an
individual makes. These actual speech acts are constrained by the linguistic
system of which they are a part. One of Saussure’s own examples is that of the
rules of chess (langue) and the
individual moves one makes while playing (parole).
Individual moves can only be made according to the larger rules of the game.
Extending this idea to Eliade’s conception of sacred space, we can understand
his notions of hierophany, tripartite planes, and the sacred as system-level
rules (langue), while particular
manifestations of the sacred – such as pillars, or stones, or people –
constitute particular expressions of the sacred (parole).
Soja describes Firstspace as “fixed mainly on the concrete materiality of spatial forms, on things that can be empirically mapped” (Soja 1997: 10), that is, tangible physical space. But Eliade’s description of sacred space is generic. Scholarly descriptions of religious space as a generic, cross-cultural category have their own changing discursive history. The discursive logic of, for example, Eliade's notion of sacred space, does not necessarily fit with, say, postmodern notions of religious space. What is at stake in this shifting terminology? One possible answer is that Eliade’s realist account of religious space hides a theological agenda. Eliade has been critiqued on this point. Whether intentional or not, Eliade’s textual maneuvers allow him to both speak (apparently) as the dispassionate comparative religionist while at the same time putting forth a theological assertion about the nature of the sacred and profane. At points, Eliade resembles Rudolf Otto more than he does a historian, especially when he contrast an “elementary hierophany – e.g., manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree – to the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ)” (Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane 11). Again, this view is not about a physical space or place, but rather a thinly disguised cultural Darwinistic view of religion and a theological assertion of Christian superiority.
In contrast to Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace, present us
with the significance of language and textuality for understanding and
conceptualizing space. Secondspace, says Soja, is “conceived in ideas about
space, in thoughtful re-presentations of human spatiality in mental or
cognitive forms” (Soja 1997: 10). Thirdspace represents the lived experience of
space, “lived realities as practiced” (Soja 1997: [page number??]),
“that draws upon the material and mental spaces [Firstspace and Secondspace] of
the traditional dualism but extends well beyond them in scope, substance, and
meaning” (Soja 1997: 11). While Secondspace is entirely linguistic, Thirdspace
is both physical and linguistic. Physical space (Firstspace) is also always
conceptualized space – looking out over a natural landscape is still done through
a conceptual lens – and is also always lived and experienced. One’s experience
of space – lived space – is an experience of a conceptualized, physical space.
The point here is that space is never merely a physical location that can be
represented conceptually through a photograph, painting, architectural drawing,
or map, as if the representation was a one-to-one likeness of the physical
space. (I am reminded here of Baudrillard’s recounting of the Borges story in
which a map is so detailed that it covers the entire space it represents and
becomes more “real” that the physical space itself.) Space seems to require the
linguistic or textual in order for it to make sense.
I conclude with the suggestions that spatial textualization is accomplished in at least three ways.
· First, space is sometimes described experientially even when no specific experience has necessarily taken place. In this instance, language “stands in” for the concrete experience, representing it as experiential when it is really a linguistic construct.
· Second, space becomes the focus of a narrative that constructs the significance of a particular space. The space becomes meaningful as a result of this narrative move.
· Finally, space is textualized through the metaphors and other tropes embedded in spatial narratives. The language used to describe space masks linguistic practice, but can never fully escape it.
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Crang, Mike, and Nigel
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edited by Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift.
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R. Trask.
Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” Afterword to Michel
Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and
Paul Rabinow.
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We Live By.
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