Landscape, absence and the geographies of love

Abstract

Working out from an encounter with a series of memorial benches at Mullion Cove, Cornwall, this paper develops an account of landscape in terms of absence and the non-coincidence of self and world. Arguing that recent work on the topics of landscape, embodiment, perception and material culture has tended to stress presence in various ways, I seek to explore instead here motifs of absence, distance, loss and haunting. The paper further attempts to combine descriptive and experiential accounts of the memorial benches and the views they open with conceptual arguments regarding the limits of certain phenomenological understandings of self and landscape. In particular, Derrida's critical reading of Merleau-Ponty is outlined and explored. The final substantive section of the paper then takes a further cue from the memorial benches to discuss what it terms the geographies of love. The argument here is that such geographies constitute a fracture forbidding any phenomenological fusion of self and world, entailing instead a simultaneous opening-onto and distancing-from. It is within the tension of this openness and distance, perhaps, that landscape, absence and love are entangled. … to be an ambulant point of view is a familiar mystery, but the existence of infinities of untenanted points of view is a destabilising thought. (Robinson 2006, 68) The landscape begins with a notion, however vague and confused, of distancing and of a loss of sight. (Nancy 2005, 53) The memorial benches at Mullion Cove (on the Lizard Peninsula, South-West England)The light ahead was so compelling that we were unstrapping our seatbelts, reaching for the doorhandles -we were halfway out of the car before it even came to a stop, turned into a small gravel recess there by the cliff-edge. Sometimes you'll turn a corner and a view will surprise you, but we ran right up to this one, and then stood, together and apart; different angles on the same encircling scene.We were standing high above Mullion Cove in the clear early morning, looking down into the cove, southward along the coastal cliffs and canyons, and far out to sea. We'd driven for some miles through nondescript farmland to arrive, suddenly, at this vivid, vertiginous scene. And now before us the mass of the sea in particular was a previously unseen and unthinkable electric blue, in response to which all the other colours of the spectrumand all of the other visible blues, too -shone bright and true. Parts of this could at least be described: pools of bottle-green near the rocky coast; further out, seams of indigo stretching across the water's surface. And out on the horizon blue sea and blue sky were pasted up absolutely proximate, absolutely distinct.The overall impression of the scene, though, transcended all particulars. The outlines and shadowed depths of the cliffs seemed archetypal: in all the transience of things, somehow this moment revealed the true and original textures of the

Blue space geographies: Enabling health in place

“…al., 2006;Amoly et al, 2014;White et al, 2013). Similarly environmental and health psychology research on perceived and measurable benefits of coastal encounters can place blue space research in a positive light (Wylie 2009;Wheeler et al, 2012;Calogiuri and Chroni, 2014;White et al, 2013). In encouraging-slightly perversely-work that challenges and even disproves assumed benefits of healthy blue space, future work can be made more critically robust (Duff, 2011).…”

“…Combining quantitative and qualitative methods can help evaluate blue space as a health resource that needs to be protected, developed and managed (Nicholls, 2014). Both routes also offer interesting directions for a range of mental health studies associated with blue space, for example, work with people with severe mental illness and their specific engagements within blue space (Wylie, 2009;Doughty, 2013). The use of new technologies, such as GoPro cameras, accelerometers and GPS/GIS, may help gather affective health specific-responses in and from blue space environments, including the sub-aqual (Merchant, 2011;MacKerron and Mourato, 2013).…”

Atmospheres of stillness in Bristol’s Bearpit

“…Rather, within every such encounter there remains something that is absent or withdrawn (see Harrison, 2009;Wylie, 2009). Corporeal engagement facilitates co-presence of self and Bearpit, making an individual aware or attuned to a particular atmosphere.…”

Crossing Spiritual Boundaries: Encountering, Articulating and Representing Otherworlds

“…The extra-geographies literature is wide and varied, from ghost hunts in the modern landscape, such as Edensor's spectres lurking in 'disorderly urban margins ' (2005: 835) and phantom agencies swarming in city buildings (Edensor, 2008 and; to the identification and location of the socio-cultural ghosts of colonial history (see for example Cameron, 2008;Paterson, 2008;Routon, 2008). Discussion has covered present absences in the landscape of memories (Bell, 1997;Wylie, 2009); and the role that magic plays in the making of the modern city (Pile, 2006). Researchers conclude that these '[e]xtra-geographies are not idle daydreams.…”