Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Autobiography and History
- 2 Beginnings: Histories and Families
- 3 Beginnings and Myth
- 4 Parents, Crisis and Education
- 5 The Hidden Past and Personal History
- 6 Autobiographies of Displacement
- 7 The Individual and Place
- 8 Fiction and Autobiography
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Individual and Place
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Autobiography and History
- 2 Beginnings: Histories and Families
- 3 Beginnings and Myth
- 4 Parents, Crisis and Education
- 5 The Hidden Past and Personal History
- 6 Autobiographies of Displacement
- 7 The Individual and Place
- 8 Fiction and Autobiography
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On one page of one of Mr Ruskin's books I have counted the epithet ‘golden’ six times. There are ‘golden days,’ ‘golden-mouthed,’ ‘distant golden spire,’ ‘golden peaks’ and ‘golden sunset,’ all of them describing one picture by Turner in which the nearest approach to gold discernible by a precise eye is a mixture of orange red and madder brown.
As the previous chapter illustrated in a negative fashion, place is a fundamental concept to individuals' understanding of themselves, both personally and interpersonally. Place is not a neutral category: it is a historical and cultural one, and by figuring place we figure ourselves. The link between place and self is a complex one. Some see place as essentially fictive (in much the same way as the self is seen as fictive). Nevertheless, it is true that, whilst we ‘make’ our space imaginatively, we are not free to make it wholly as we like. There are not only cultural and historical forces forming the imagination of space, but also physical ones. This is not to say that there is an empirical ‘real’ place beyond culture or the gaze of the individual, but that different landscapes, as well as different cultures and historical narratives, produce different senses of place. That is merely to say, we cannot imagine place by an act of will alone: the physical differences of one place over another affect how place is imagined.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Artful HistoriesModern Australian Autobiography, pp. 137 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996