Relational Place: The Political Relevance of Place

Abstract

In this dissertation I explore the intersection of place and identity arguing that places figure prominently in our process(es) of becoming. To that end, my central thrust is that places matter, politically. My point of departure is that places aren’t vapid, disinterested sites, but are instead ones rich with meanings, values, assumptions and intersecting histories and our engagement in them is formative to a conception of self (and a conception of others because the self is only made intelligibly by being in relationship with others). I aim, then, to theorize the processes by and through which one’s identity (both social and individual) is shaped in and against place. Toward that end, I draw on a few different literatures: feminist and Black theories of embodiment, political theories of space and place and political theories of identity. Reading place through these literatures is critical to understanding its dynamism as one that is productive, produced, lived and embodied. Places, in other words, affect who we are becoming because of how its character settles into us as we move through them, literally affecting the way we comport through the world and at times in modes to which we are impervious. This, however, is the answer to the question: why a political theory of place? If we move to understand place and how it functions, we may better know how it is sometimes constructed to celebrate and affirm some at the cost of oppressing others. More, places are political in that they are implicated in shaping our identities. If some places are constructed to oppress others, one’s identity may be shaped in such a way to see the world as closed-off and projects of liberation and freedom may seem unrealistic and not worth pursuing. Places, therefore, shape what appear to us as options. This is absolutely political.