A Wandering State

 Matthew R. Berry

 Critical Geography

 11/19/2020

 Professor Simpson

A Wandering State

1) In A Wandering State by Paul Carter, the author argues for a new way of viewing history and space through language. It's a pretty profound and supportive argument. The author states on P. 326: 

"In this sense the value of writing history is that it continues to remind us of our origins. But there is also an opposite implication. The fact that history is essentially an act of interpretation, a re-reading of documents, means that it hides our origins from us. For, by its nature, history excludes all that is not quoted or written down. Only what has been transcribed is available for interpretation. Only documents can be compared, ordered, interpreted and judged. Ironically, the originality of historical personages, like the uniqueness of historical events, depends on their not being original or unique but part of a wider already constituted historical pattern. History has a historical horizon which is constituted by the activity of history itself: the horizon of writing. It offers the mechanism for generating a tradition, but not the means of reflecting on the validity of the tradition itself. In this sense, it may exclude much of the past which matters to us - our own spatiality, for instance."

Carter makes significant bounds here, describing how the articulation of history through writing and language can have a direct impact on the spatiality of our understanding. What is said, what is omitted, what is described in journals and annotated, all have direct impacts to our understanding of history at the time and this creates its own version of space. 

2) The connections to other papers that really struck me was with Bruce Braun's Colonialism’s Afterlife: Vision and Visuality on the Northwest Coast. Braun utilized art through the materialist method as a way to investigate space and it's connections through the artists he described. I felt this was similar, albeit different. Carter utilizes language, writing, and the lacktherof to bring together an argument about how history is remembered and who, in his case, the Aborigines, are disenfranchised as a result. Braun reminds us of the colonialistic aspects of the artwork on the Northwest Coast while Carter uses language to investigate actual colonial writings towards Aborigines.

3) P. 332: "Names made them facts which could be written down time and again. Against names information (Native Names, Probable Age, Wives, Designation of Tribes, etc.) could be tabulated and preserved. Names, in short, made them white history." I really liked this because it made me think of the differences between American naming in Southeast Alaska compared to the Alaska Native names and the etymological differences between the two cultures. By naming the glacier by UAS "Mendenhall" it takes a Native name and makes it a White name, erasing the history of the Natives and replacing it with white history.

4) Is it possible to connect these discussions to current issues like Black Lives Matter? Cultural appropriation? How can we use this method of language to inquire into spatial histories of our current electoral process?