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I n t r o d uct i o n ................................... phenomenology and place Memory as a place, as a building, as a sequence of columns, cornices , porticoes. The body inside the mind, as if we were moving around in there, going from one place to the next, and the sound of our footsteps as we walk, moving from one place to the next. —Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude This book is about places. More specifically, it is about the memory of places that human beings inhabit and pass through. As bodily subjects, we necessarily have a relationship with the places that surround us. At any given moment , we are located within a place, be it in the hallways of universities, the cockpits of airplanes, or lost in the forest at night. Over time, those places define and structure our sense of self, such that being dis-placed can have a dramatic consequence on our experience of who we are, and even leave us with a feeling of being homeless in the world. Equally, the memories we acquire of the places we inhabit assume a value that is both immeasurable and vital. Without the memory of places, memory itself would no longer have a role to play in our conscious lives. Yet, despite its central role in our everyday lives, coming to terms with the nature of our relationship with place is decidedly less straightforward. Consider the following thoughts. Place is all around us and yet not always fully thematized. Place is at the heart not only of who we are, but also of the culture in which we find ourselves. As invested with cultural, ecological, and political ramifications, place does not simply designate a patch of land without value. As proof, humans tend not to be indifferent to the effect place has upon them. At the same time, the question of what constitutes place 2 introduction brings us into a realm in which the complexity of human values are secondary . Although we fundamentally shape our surroundings, ultimately place exists independently of human life in turn shaping us. Returning to a place after a long period of absence, we are often shocked by both the small and the vast changes, effectively alerting us to the radical indifference places have to the sentiment we apply to them. Here, our own selves can become the site of an internal quarrel as to how a place once was; by claiming to cognitively remember the feel of a place, our bodies can provide a different history of the past. The result is that a place can take on a life of its own, quite apart from the way it is experienced or remembered. In naturalistic terms, place is taken to be so familiar as to evade all conceptual analysis. We are already in place. Not simply the room I currently write in, but the condition of there being a place at all. How does this room envelop me? How do I hold myself in this room? To what extent will this room become a significant aspect of my future memories? At which point did I cease feeling a visitor in this room and more a fundamental part of it? Such questions for the most part remain dormant, rising to the surface only when places either lose their familiarity or are otherwise destroyed and lost. The complexity surrounding the topic of place is vast, and the aim of this book is to offer a contribution to the body of phenomenological work contending with the idiosyncrasies of memory and materiality, of which an impressive library is already in existence (Backhaus and Murungi 2005; Behnke 1997; Brown and Toadvine 2003; Carr 1991; Casey 1993, 2000b, 2007; Cresswell 2004; Entrikin 1991; Hayden 1997; Kolb 2008; Light and Smith 1998; Malpas 2007, 2008; Massey 2005; Mugerauer 1994; Steeves 2006; Steinbock 1995; Tengelyi 2004; Tuan 1977). But before this contribution can begin, the methodology of the book needs to be spelled out. In particular, the relation between phenomenology and place requires our immediate attention. After all, to think in terms of a phenomenology of place, we must in the first instance think of a place for phenomenology. The reason is clear: Just as phenomenology, in its appeal to lived experience, would emerge as abstracted, partial, and disembodied without being situated in place, so the term “place” would be vague and cryptic without being thematized through phenomenology. Given this hermeneutical circularity between place and phenomenology, in this book the familiar idea...

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