Moving through modernity Space and geography in modernism Andrew Thacker Manchester University Press Manchester and New York sibwed exclusively inthe USA by PalgraveIntroduction: geographies of modernism ‘We live in spacious times! This bold claim seems to capture how a vocabu~ tary of spatial and geographical terms is becoming increasingly familiar to those working in Literary studies. Much work on postmodern writing, for instance, is indebted to Fredric Jameson's spatial turn (‘always historicise” ‘pethaps being replaced by a newer slogan for Jameson: always spatiaise!)." ‘Jameson's influential notion of a ‘cognitive map’ of postmodernity is, of course, aterm derived from the work of the urban geographer Kevin Lynch. For Jameson also one significant difference between modernism and post- ‘modernism lies in their relationships to the concepts of space and time: We have often been told, however, that we now inhabit the synchronic rather than the diachronic, and I think its at least empirically arguable that our daily life, our psychic experience, our cultural languages, are today dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of ‘time, as in the preceding petiod of high modernism.” If we agree at all with this claim, then it is not surprising that we find many strands of literary and cultural studies being reoriented towards spatial questions, since it reflects only the position and the social world ‘occupied by the contemporary critic? ‘In postcolonial theory and criticism there is considerable attention paid to the political consequences of geographical conquest by imperi- alism. If imperialism and colonisation were projects intrinsically con- cerned with the politics of space, then it appears inevitable that we should discuss how writers produce texts that map empire, and of how resistant narratives attempt the rewriting of imposed cartographies. Edward Said, for instance, characterises his aim in Culture and [Imperialism as a kind of geographical inquiry into historical experience’, ‘and claims the book demonstrates how ‘the struggle over geography’ ‘crucially infuses the cultural forms of imperial power.‘ Interdisciplinary research has also reinforced this crossover between the cultural and the geographic, with a now extensive body of work by geographers such as Derek Gregory, Doreen Massey and Steve Pile thatMoving through modernity adapts conceptual frameworks from theorists such as Foucault, Lacan, or Deleuze and Guattari Franco Moretti’ recent book on the nineteenth cen- ‘tury novel, An Atlas of the European Novel, shows this critical cross-fer- tilisation in reverse: Moretti’s stimulating book reads literary texts spatially through a series of maps depicting various locations germane to the novels. Moretti calls this methodology ‘iterary geography, an approach which attempts to show how ‘geography shapes the narrative structure’ of the novel? However, if space and geography are important theoretical orienta- tions today, then perhaps they only recapitulate some of the central con- cems of modernism. Jameson's distinction between a diachronic ‘modernism and a synchronic postmodernism looks a litle overstated once ‘we realise that the claim ‘We live in spacious times’ comes not from some postmodemist or postcolonial theorist but from the modernist waiter and critic Ford Madox Ford. It is from his fascinating 1905 book The Soul of, London, Ford's impressionistic attempt to ‘get the atmosphere’ of London.” Ford's book is part of that long critical tradition that analyses the urban character of modemity.* More interestingly, Ford's intuition conceming ‘the spatiality of modern life oceurs ina chapter devoted to means of trans- port into London: by motorcar, electric tram or railway. It is that kind of connection, between space, geoqraphy and move- ‘ment, in modernist writing from around 1910 to 1939 which is the cen- ‘al focus of Moving Through Modernity. Although questions of space and geography have achieved a higher theoretical profile over the last few ‘years, relatively little work, thus fat, has been done that specifically locates modernism within a renewed set of spatial or geographic contexts.? Tis useful, therefore, to outline some broad theoretical points that ori- entate this book's spatial conception of modernism. There has been an enduring tradition within critical discussions of modernism that privileges the experience and representation of tempo- nality." From Proust's meditations upon memory to the employment of the ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative technique by writers such as Woo Richardson and Joyce, or from 7. S. Elot’s obsession with time and tradi tion in The Waste Land and Four Quartets to Pound's claim in relation to The Cantos that an epic is a poem which ‘includes history, it seems that temporality and history are the dominant themes that plague, torment and enrich modernist writing. Wyndham Lewis's Time and Western Man (1927), for instance, argued that modernist writing fell foul of an obses- sive interest in the ‘low of time, to the extent of ignoring the spatial characteristics of narrative and culture.” This is not my argument, but Lewis's polemic indicates that we cannot easily disentangle time from Introduction space or history from geography ~ as some scholars of modernism have attempted to do. Indeed, the idea of ‘the modemn’ already implies a cer- fain temporality that distinguishes it from the non-modern.* As David Harvey notes, since ‘modernity is about the experience of progress through modernization, writings on that theme have tended to empha~ size temporality, the process of becoming, rather than Being in space and place’ This book argues that although temporality is clearly a signifi- fant factor in understanding the modernist project, discussions of mod femism must now consider also the very profound ways in which space, ‘place and geography occupied the modernist imagination. How do we think about the ‘spacious times’ of modernism using concepts of a geo- ‘graphical hue? Iti useful to try to clarify a number of conceptual prob- {ems in any projected critical literary geography of modernism. ‘The first revolves around the metaphorical nature of the spaces being discussed in literary and cultural studies. Toa geographer like Neil Smith the use, in certain theoretical discourses, of spatial metaphors- such as rapping, margins-centre, deteritorialisation, or location ~ operate at the expense of analysing the material spaces of, for example, the city. For Smith, spatial metaphors have the tendency to view actual spaces as dead ‘or empty containers in which al objects or events can be located. He sug- gests that we seek to understand how metaphorical and material spaces are ‘mnutually implicated’, and to view space not as a neutral canvas but as ‘social space’, produced according to socal aims and objectives, and which then, in turn, shapes social life." This book argues that we should under- stand modernist texts as creating metaphorical spaces that try to make sense ofthe material spaces of modernity. Chapter 1 considers some of the waysin which this approach might progress by discussing work by theorists of spatiality suchas Lefebvre, Foucault and de Certea ‘The second problem concerns the representation of space in cultural texts. I argue in this book that we should think in rather more complex ‘ways about how a text represents space, and to do this we might consider ‘the work of the geographer Henri Lefebvre and his distinction between the representation of space and representational spaces. Lefebvre's sense of socal space, discussed in chapter 1, is very broad: both internal and external, the space of the psyche, the body, the city, the house, or the room. By using Lefebvre and other cultural geographers we can analyse in nore detail, for example, the nature of the specific cities encountered in modernism: Dublin in Ulysses: London in Howards End, Not only the cities in a general sense, however, but specific places within them become our concern if we inject a more developed geographical focus into the study ‘of modernism. Now we might consider how specific streets, stations, cafés,Moving through modernity ‘monuments or shops are represented in modernism, and how such places offer an endorsement or contestation of official representations of space. ‘The debates within geographical theory over the problematical distinction between space and place, considered in chapter 1, are also illuminating for how we conceive literary and cultural texts to represent space. ‘The third problem considers the implications of such representations for the formal properties of modernism. One of the oldest considerations of space and modernism is that of Joseph Frank in his pioneering and controversial discussion of spatial form in modernist writing, published first in the 1940s." Frank's concept of spatial form is an intrinsic theo- retical approach indebted to New Criticism: space is conceived as the spread of text upon paper and page, or the narrative pattern of a text read through time, In Frank there is no real discussion of social space: the spaces of geographical analysis, or even the spaces of literary insti- tutions such as publishers or magazines. Frank thus ignores the kinds of space that are represented in modernist texts. But Frank’s work is salu- tary, I think, when we consider how to discuss the representation of urban and other spaces in modernism. We need to reconnect the repre- sentational spaces in modemist texts not only to the material spaces of the city, but also to reverse the focus, and try to understand how social spaces dialogically help fashion the literary forms of the modernist text. This would reconnect Frank’s questions about the spatial form of mod- emist writing to the social spaces, such as those of the city, that are often obsessively figured in modernism, tracing how social space intrudes ‘upon the construction ofthe literary space of the modernist text. Literary texts represent social spaces, but social space shapes literary forms. Throughout this book I use the term textual space to refer to this inter- action between spatial forms and social space in the literary text. Emphasis is thus given to the spatial features of literature, such as the typography and layout on the page; the space of metaphor and the shift- ing between different senses of space within a text; or the very shape of narrative forms, found in open-ended fictions ot novels that utilise circular pattems for stories. Discussion of how the formal features of literature are influenced by social or historical circumstances are always fraught with difficulty; the links in this book between space, geography and literary forms are no less tentative. Despite this, it is important, I argue, not only to discuss space and geography thematically, but to address them as questions which have a profound impact on how mod- cemist texts are formally assembled. ‘To focus upon space and geography in modernism, however, does not result in a rejection of history; rather I wish to pursue an investigation Introduction into the spatial history of modernism, an account of the precise histori cal fashion in which particular spaces and places were conceptualised and represented. In Postmodern Geographies Soja argues thatthe reassertion of social space in cultural geography entails that we situate the spaces and places we examine within strong historical frameworks.” Clearly there is no sense in trying to understand how a modemist text responds to the creation or adaptation of a particular location without grasping that both social space an literary space operate in relationship to historical co-ordi- nates, Social space, as Soja argues, is dialectical related to history and time, and any reassertion of spatial concepts should not be a simplistic privileging of space over time, Moving Through Modernity is, therefore, guided by a form ofeitical literary geography, a methodology that draws ‘on concepts such as Paul Carter ‘spatial history and Kristin Ros¢'s‘syn- chronic history. Such a literary geography would seek out the historical links between modernism and the production of particular material spaces in modernity, Chapter 2 examines, for example, how Forster depicts the growth of the suburbs in Howards End; chapter 3 interprets Imagist poetry alongside the growth of the London underground train network; while chapter 4 explores how Joyce, in Uysses, interrogates the imperial his tory of Dublin's geosraphy. Thinking spatially about modemism involves recognition of the diverse ways in which ‘space’ might be applied to modernist texts. At times it seems a if the term isso semantically vague as to be shorn of all value in ertical discussion. However, this problem can be overcome by staying attentive to the precise nuances within spatial vocabularies, recaling Smith's warning about the relation of metaphorical to material spaces, We can consider, for example, psychic space, taking Freud's topo- graphical model of the mind as one starting point for understanding how ur inner life can be imagined as a set of spaces that must be related and connected in away that is meaningful to ourselves, much as a house must hhave rooms and spaces that connect in some purposeful way.” Stream of consciousness technique in modernist fiction has, quite rightly, long been associated with philosophical theories of time and history, such as that of Bergson; but it also represents a model to explore the psychic spaces of character, Narative techniques such as interior monologue thus offer a method for moving between inner thoughts and outer reality, an approach requiring another sense of spatial terms: inner, outer and the boundary between these. We also need to consider how the intriority of psychic space is often profoundly informed by exterior social spaces. The chapters on Joyce, Woolf and Rhys in particular examine this interplay between interior and exterior space.Moving through modernity Much of modernism, then, moves away from 2 purely psychic per- spective, introducing a whole range of other spaces. Many modernist texts - perhaps as a formal development of naturalist drama ~ are based in, or make great symbolic use of, rooms and domestic space. There i the political longing expressed in Wools Room of One's Own; the oom of confinement in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper; of, to take an earlier example, the door of escape slammed by Nora Helmer in Ibsen's A Doll's House. Moving on again, we can note the streets and buildings of the metropolis as the setting for many key mod ‘emist texts, such as the perambulations of Leopold Bloom in Dublin, or of Clarissa Dalloway’in London. It is significant that city streets and ‘domestic rooms open up the issue of the gendering of spaces in mod- ‘emism, including critical discussions of the fldneur-fidneuse. Chapters 3, 5 and 6 consider the gendering of space in the writings of Imagist poets, and of Woolf and Rhys. A related theme explored is the gendered politics of ‘the gaze’ and looking in the spaces of the city, discussed in chapters 3 and 4 in particular. Tn contrast to the familiar metropolitan flavours of modernism is the often occluded space of the countryside, surviving seemingly asa place of nostalgicrefuge for someone like Forster in Howards End, discussed in chap- ter2. Also of significance for Forster is national space, and how such spaces overlap with the geographies of imperialism and colonialism. European ‘modernism relied, in important ways, upon the imperial spaces of Aftica, the West Indies and Asia, specifically India. The works of Forster and Rhys, ‘examined in chapters 2 and 6, overtly explore these geographical connec- tons, showing how our ertical understanding of modernism must involve the various journeys across and between ‘frst world’ metropolitan spaces ‘and ‘third world imperial spaces. ‘The arguments of critics such as Said, and many others, over the inter- relationships between the great triad of modernism, the metropolis and imperialism highlight how relations between spaces are manifestly rela- tions of power, between the occupancy and dispossession of actual geo- graphical locations in the context of national and international politics. But such relations of power are also registered in the psychic, uzban or domestic spaces described earlier. As Foucault noted in 1977:'A whole his- tory remains to be written of spaces ~ which would at the same time be the history of powers ... from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics ofthe habitat.” Geographical conflict, suggests Said, is‘com- plex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.” And these struggles take place within the literary and cultural texts of modernism, Introduction within the rooms, streets, cities and minds represented in the great mod- mist writing of the early twentieth century. ‘The switch from rooms to geopolitics, and back again, demonstrates, another key characteristic of the modernist engagement with space. The ‘multiple forms of space and geography discussed above cannot, it seems, bbe kept apart, even though there is, for many writers, a desperate desire to maintain borders and boundaries: rooms bleed into streets, anguished minds migrate to lands overseas. What this produces in the modernist ‘text is that keenly felt sense of disorientation ~ at once both thrilling and anxious ~ where, for example, the psychic speculations of a person walking a city street are superimposed upon the national spaces of a ‘great imperial power, as in Peter Walsh's juxtaposition of private thoughts, metropolitan streets and British imperialism in India in a single short passage in Mrs Dalloway.® Modernist textual space, there- fore, registers these diverse social spaces: it traces the various move- ‘ments between and across them; and it tries to find formal strategies to represent these disorientating, thrilling and anxious kinds of expe- riences. Much of this book focuses upon this polytopic quality of mod- cexnist writing ‘Movernent between these various spaces, then, isa key feature of mod- cemnism, and one significant way of interpreting thisis via the emergence of ‘modern means and systems of transport, such as the motorcar, the electric tram or bus, or the underground railway.** Analysing the significance of ‘transport in Britain in the early years of the twentieth century enables us to understand the spaces of modernity in a more materialist fashion, as called for by Neil Smith. We can also consider how the quotidian experience of moving around the metropolis provided a key impetus to some of the experimental forms of modernist writing.” In this way we can develop a ‘more nuanced account ofthe spatial history of modernism. Itisnot so much the fiéneur, then, but more the voyageur that is discussed throughout this book. ‘The impact of the motorcar, for example, was pronounced: one early commentator proclaimed that the motorcar ‘will revolutionise the world 1. All our conceptions of locomotion, of transport, of speed, of danger, of safety will be changed: Artists and writers were quick to recognise the revolution in modern transport. The painter Fernand Léger noted how movement through a landscape by automobile or express train initiates ‘anew set of sensory relations to the space perceived by the artist: “The condensation of the modem picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms, are the result of all this. It is certain that the evolution af means of loco- motion, and their speed, have something to do with the new way ofMoving through modernity seeing’ By 1914 this opinion was widely accepted, with the Ttatian Futurists being perhaps the most notable of the modernist groups to ‘embrace the euphoria accompanying the automobile. Wyndham Lewis sniffly but perhaps accurately dismissed the Futurists as “Automobilists, while proclaiming that his Vorticist group ‘blessed’ another transporta- tive technology, the ‘estless machinery’ of English shipping.” As well as the general social revolution of technologies like the motorcar, the impact of transport upon literature was also noted. I. A. Richards complained in Practical Criticism (1929): ‘No one at all sensitive to rhythm, for exam- ple, will doubt that the new pervasive, almost ceaseless, mutter and roar of modem transport, replacing the rhythm of the footstep or of horses’ hoofs, is capable of interfering in many ways with our reading of verse:™* Richards has a footnote to this comment citing T. S. Etiot in support of his claim that the ‘intemal combustion engine may already have altered four perceptions of rhythms, Eliot had himself already linked modernity and modernism to transport when, in 1921, he likened the music of ‘Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to the ‘the scream of the motor-hom, the rattle of machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of iron and steel, ‘the roar of the underground railway, and the other barbaric noises of modern tife:** It is this attention to the machinery of modemity, barbaric or euphoric, that thus underpins my choice of title: Moving Through Modernity. For it tries to capture the sense that modernist writing can bbe located only within the movements between and across multiple sorts of space. This is a movement through new material spaces and by means of the new machines of modernity, and which grounds a more abstract sense of flux and change that many modernist writers attempted to artic- tulate in their texts: Forster, for example, has one of his characters bemoan ‘this continual flux of London: This book comprehends that lament by relating the notion of flux’ to material motion through spe~ cific spaces and geographies. In the new topot of the early twentieth cen- ‘tury, transportation emphasised a sense of movement that came to be @ crucial figure for the experience of modernity itself. This book, then, considers the complex relationships between spaces, modernity and modernism. Modernity, as Foucault once sug- gested, is perhaps best understood, not as an epoch or period, but as certain attitude towards the historical present."* A crucial component of how modernists regarded the present was their attitude to space and geography. This book links together an understanding of space as both material and metaphor: the space of the literary text, its form as nar- rative or poem, and how these textual spaces reveal a multifaceted range Introduction of attitudes to the spaces of modernity. Beginning with a discussion of methodological questions concerning space and place, the book then takes a roughly chronological focus upon Forster, Imagism, Joyce, Woolf and Rhys. Again for reasons of coherence and focus, I have tended to concentrate upon a limited range of texts by each author, discussing Forster's Howards End, for example, but little else by this writer. I have chosen these British and Irish writers because of the historical range of their writing across the modemist period, for the variety of styles of waiting they employ, and for the multiple geographies of modernism they explore. This book, therefore, aims to demonstrate both the valid- ity of a literary geographical approach to modernism, and a fuller pic~ ture of the ‘spacious times’ that modernism inhabited Notes 4 Fredrie Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as aSoialy Symbolic Act (london, Methuen, 1981), p. 9 2 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (london, Verso, 1991), p. 16. Cognitive mapping’ occurs in Kevin Lynch, The Image ofthe City (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1960) 3 Recent books on contemporary literature and space’ include Brian Jarvis, astmoder Cartographis: The Geographical Imagination in contemporary American Culture (London, Pluto, 1998); Maria Balshaw and Liam Kennedy, eds, Urban Space and Representation (London, Pluto, 2000); and Glenda ‘Norquay and Gerry Smyth, eds, Space and Place: The Geographies of Literature (Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University Press, 1997) Fora discussion of earlier iterature see John Gilles, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Canbsidge, Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, Vintage, 1994), p 6. 5 Franco Moretti, Atlas ofthe European Novel 1800-1900 (London, Verso, 1998), 8. Fora brief arcount ofthe prospects for a new Uterary geography’ such a5 Mortis, see John Kerigan, ‘The country of the mind’, Times Literary Supplement (11 September 1998), 3-4 6 Ford Madox Ford, The Soul of London, ed. Alan G. Hill, (London, Everyman, 2995), p. 41. Ford, The Soul of London, p. 4. 8 For a recent discussion of this issue see Peter Brooker, Modernity and Metropolis: Writing, Fm and Urban Formations (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002). 9 Two examples of such work are Chee GoGoilt, The Invention of the West “Joseph Conrad and the Double-Mapping of Europe and Empire (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1995) and Elisabeth Bronfen, Dorothy Richardson's Art of Memory, trans, Victoria Appelbe (Manchester, Manchester University10 10 um w 2B 4 6 16 v 18 ‘Moving through modernity ress, 1999). There was algo a successful panel on modernism and geography, ‘organised by Jon Hegglund, atthe Modemist Stuies Association Conference in Houston, 2001. For an overview of how modemism has been theorsed see Astradur Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernism (Ithaca, NY, and London, Comell University Press, 1990). ‘Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Mon (Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1957). For discussion of the problematical idea of the modern’ in elation to tem- porality see Paul De Man, ‘Literary history and literary modernity’ in his Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (London, Methuen, 1983) and Peter Nichlls, Nodernisms: A Literary Gude (Basingstoke, Macmian, 1995), ch. 8. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmoderity (Oxford, Blackwell, 1990), 206. Nell Smith, ‘Homeles/global: scaling places, in Jon Bid, Barry Curtis, im Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, eds, Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London, Routledge, 1993), pp. 98-9. Fora similar ‘riticiom of metaphor of travel see Janet Wolf, On the road again: metaphors ‘of travel in cultural criticism’ in Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995). ‘Joseph Frank, ‘Spatial form in Uterature’ (1945), reprinted in The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Moder Literature (Bloomington and London, Indiana University res, 1968). See also the later debate onthe formalist and itorical implication of the concept: Frank, ‘Spatial form: an answer to cit- ics, GritcalInguiry& (1977-78), 231-52; Prank Kermode, ‘A reply to Joseph Frank, Critica Inquiry 4 (1977-78), 579-88; Eric S. Rabkin, ‘Spatial form and lot, Critical Inquiry 4 (1977-78), 253-70; Wiliam Holtz, ‘Spatial form in smodemn literature: a reconsideration, Critical Inquiry & (1977-78), 271-83; Soseph Frank, ‘Spatial form: some Turther reflections’ Critical Inquiry 5 (1978-79), 275-90; and W. J.T. Mitchell, ‘Spatial form in Uiterature: towards a general theory, Critical Inquiry 6 (1979-80), 539-67. ‘ne interesting approach to modernist space would be to consier the loca tion of some of the institutions of Uterature: where modernist works were published, for example, and the role of little magazines in its dissemination. For such an approach, but without an explicitly spatial focus, see Lawrence Raine, Znstitutions of Modernism: Literary Bites and Public Culture (New Haven, CT, Yale Univesity Press, 1998). award Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London and Wew York, Verso, 1988), pp. 23-4. See Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial story (London, Faber, 1987); Keistin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (London, Macrillan, 1988). Introduction 19, Two forms of space that have nat had room to discuss here concern conten porary scent dscomses, uch the theory of relativity and that of travel titng in the modernist pviod. Fora eonsderation ofthe impact of scientific Uheores see Stephen Kem, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambidge, Ma Harvard Univesity Pes, 1983), ch. 6 ané Randal Stevenson, Hodeist Fon: An Intoduction (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Whestshea, 1992). On travel writing in this period see Paul Fussell Abroad: British Literary ovelng betwen the Wars (Oxford, Oxford Univesity Press, 980) an Caren Kaplan, Questions of favel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Dushar, NG, and London, Duke Univesity Press, 1986), pp. 27-66. 20 Freud considered the unconscious from what he called a"Yopographcal point of view; see Sigmund Fre, ‘The unconscious in On Metapsyelogy: The Theory ofPoyehoanalyss, Penguln Freud Library (London, Penguin, 1986) ol 1. 24 For the impact of Bergson see Sanford Schwartz, Matrix of Modernism: Fund, lot and. Early Twenieth-Gntury Thought (Princeton, NS, Princeton Univesity Press, 1985) 22 Forthe significance of rooms in naturalist drama and the ink wth modernism see Raymond Wiliams, Theatre as 2 political forun’ in The Politics of Modernism Against the New Confrmists (London, Verso, 1988), 23. Wichel Foucault, The eye of owe?’ in Power/Enowiedge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980), p. 149. 24 Sai, Culture and Imperato, p. 6. 25 Viginia Wol, Mrs Delay (London, Granada, 1976), p. 45 Foran analysis of this passage ste eh. 5, this book. 26 Thave been unable to diseuss here the fll panoply of modes of transport in modernism: vehicesehat might play salient role include bigs, aeat, tanks, sips and motorbikes. 27 For, for example, in The Soul of London, condudes his chapter ‘Roads into London’ by daving a Unk between the pathos and disatistation of gazing cut ofa tran window at incidents from dally Life that one never sees com> pleted, andthe desire fr stores to have an ending (. 43). 28 Joseph Fennel, ‘Motors and cycles the transition stage, Contemporary Review (2 February 2902), 18, 29 Fernand Léger, Contemporary achievements in painting’ (1914) in Bana F Fry ed, Cub (London, Thames & Huson, 1966), p. 135. 30 Wyndham Lens, The melodrama of modernity, BLAST 1 (1914), ed Bradford orto, sepinted (Santa Rosa, CA, Back Sparrow Press, 1989), 143; Lewis, ‘Manifest, BLAST, 22-3 431 1A. Richards, Patio Crom: A Study of Literary Judgement (London, Routledge, 1964), p. 318. 42 Blot, quoted in Lydall Gordon, Et’ Early Years (Oxford, Oxford University rss, 1977), p 108, Fora general overview of artistic representations ofthe u@ 2 36 35 Moving through modernity ‘motorcar in the early twentieth century see Sean Connell, The Car and British Society Class Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939 (Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1998), ch. 6 EM. Foster, Howards End, ed. Olver Stallybrass (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983), p. 184 ‘This is not to imply that transport didnot havea considerable cultural impact on writers and artists in earlier centuries: the case of Charles Dickens and the railways indicates that it id. The focus of this book is, however, on the mod cemist period and the specific nature of the relationship between modernist ‘writing and transport. Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Hamtondsworth, Penguin, 1984), p. 39.‘Theorising space and place in modernism ‘This complex historical geography of modernism (a tale yet to be fully waitten and explained)? is David Harvey's provocative description of Bradbury and McFarlane’s Modernism 1890-1930, the hugely influential account of the emergence of modemism in different cities and countries.? Ina modest fashion I take up that challenge by trying to develop a form of critical literary geography adequate to the complexities Harvey men- tions. This chapter critically considers a number of important theories of space and place as found in Heidegger, Bachelard, Lefebvre, Foucault, de Certean and Harvey. In discussing these writers my aim is to elaborate a critical terminology of space and place with which to begin a geographi- cal approach to modernism. This chapter, thesefore, is mainly expository, outlining a set of arguments and concepts taken from geographers and ‘theorists that will be employed throughout this book. In addition to the ‘road distinction between space and place, several other spatial concepts ‘ill be considered, including Lefebvre’ theory of ‘social space, Foucault's conception of heterotopia, and de Certea’s distinction between the tour and the map. Throughout this chapter these ideas are related, schemati- cally, to a number of modernist texts so that the reader can grasp how ‘these spatial and geographical notions will, in later chapters, be more fully applied. ‘Modernist writing, this book argues, is about living and experienc- ing ‘new times’, not in the abstracted location of literary history, but in specific spatial histories: rooms, cities, buildings, countries and land- scapes. This understanding of the multiple material geographies of mod- cemism is guided by one of the key sets of terms found in recent ‘geographical and spatial theory: the opposition between space and place.? To a number of geographical theorists space indicates a sense of movement, of history, of becoming, while place is often thought to imply a static sense of location, of being, or of dwelling. Much modernist writ- ing oscillates between these twin spatial visions, often in ways that complicate any sharp and easy division between a conservative sense of place and a revolutionary sense of space. In considering these different. attitudes to modernity ~ space or place, movement or location - we can4 Moving through modernity start to elucidate more fully Harvey's ‘complex historical geography of modernism. Heidegger and Bachelard Perhaps the earliest philosophical distinction between space and place is articulated by Heidegger in ‘Building, dwelling, thinking’ (1951). This is ‘a classic statement of the space-place division and is drawn upon by many other thinkers, albeit with quite distinct emphases. Heidegger discusses the relation between the physical nature of a building and the human experience of dwelling within it. To dwell refers to a ‘manner in which we Ihumans are on the earth’; thus ‘[to] be human ... means to dwell. Dwelling is thus a particular characteristic of being human, a basic ontic state, whereby one’s very being is located in a particular place. Heidegger js extical of any abstract conception of space, such as is found in mathe~ matics or physics. Spaces such as buildings receive their being from loca~ ‘ions and the experience of those dwelling in them: ‘the spaces through ‘which we go daily are provided for by locations. We should not think of space as something external to human beings, since space is intrinsically linked to the dwelling experience of humans: ‘Nan’s relation to locations, and throngh locations to spaces, inheres in his dwelling. The relationship between man and space is none other than dwelling’* Heidegger argument is that the true nature of space ~ whether of the extemal environment, ot of the body ~ is conditioned by this exis- tential experience of duvelling: ‘To say that mortals are is to say that in dwelling they persist through spaces by virtue of their stay among things and locations.” To dwell means to preserve, indicating a certain conser~ ‘vatism of tradition that infuses the notion of dwelling in a place. Being 4fself is associated strongly with a sense of place. Heidegger thus priori- tises the nature of place aver space, according to critics, in his insistence that a kind of static dwelling in a particular location is the fundamental core of the relation between human beings and space. This results in place being viewed in an unhistorical and asocial fashion. For critics, Heideggerian dwelling seems to consist of a staying put, a rejection of spaces as products of history and social interaction: Dwelling ... is the basic character of Being in keeping with which mortals exist: It also views place as a fixed and bounded object, rather than as a site formed by spe cific social processes and amenable to future changes.® Many literary texts ‘that eulogise places as locations of significance for the individual writer seem indebted, consciously or unconsciously, to Heidegger's conception of place.” ‘space and place in modernism A slightly different account of space and place, but one influenced by Heidegger’ work, is Gaston Bachelar’s The Poetics of Space (1958). ‘This quirky yet stimulating blend of phenomenology and psychoanaly- sis aims to uncover the primary importance of inhabiting a particular place. Unlike Heideggers abstract sense of ‘dwelling’ and ‘being Bachelard’s is a ‘concrete metaphysis’ that situates the first and pri- ‘mary sense of place in an actual location, that of the house." Bachelard wishes to produce ‘a phenomenological study of the intimate values of inside life eschewing Heidegger's imprecise notion of dvelling for the specific nooks and crannies of the house, particulary the house in which the child first comes to consciousness, Bachelard’s book thus has chap- ‘ters upon various aspects of the house, such as the cellar, the attic, chests and wardrobes, and the experiential sense of comers in rooms or the vertical design of a house. Rather than mere descriptions of such places, Bachelard wants to capture ‘the primary function of inhabiting! ‘that is located in the house; as he suggests, ‘all really inhabited space Dears the essence of the notion of home. Bachelard's term for this form of study is topoanaiysis, and its focus is upon spaces that have ‘been tured into places of pleasurable belonging, the transformation of a house into a home, where the rooms and corridors of the house artic- tate ‘the topography of our intimate being. ™ Space, writes Bachelard, ‘that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indiffer- ent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor." As Edward Casey comments on Bachelard’s conception of the house, itis a kind of ‘place-world, a world of places’ where the exploration is not 50 such geometrical or architectural as imaginative or poetic.** Bachetard’s examples are nearly all drawn from poetry, since this imaginative realm is closest, he argues, to that of dreams and the unconscious, where our most intimate memories of inhabiting easly childhood places are stored, or housed! Bachelard, as Casey notes, provides a richer and more tangible account of the sense of place than does Heidegger, while still privileging place aver space.” Bachelar’s work is suggestive, however, in its demand that space be read as a text: we are said to ‘write a room, ‘read a room, or ‘read a house." The book is interesting also for Bachelad’s sense of bodiy-space, his seeing the house as a kind of body. Our primary experi- fences of home inscribe themselves in our somatic lives, leaving memory ‘races of the rooms and spaces which we have inhabited in the ‘passion- ate liaison of our bodies ... with an unforgettable house.® One example, discussed in the next chapter, isthe intimate intertwining of house and bodiy in Forster’s Howards En. 1816 Moving through modernity However, The Poetics of Space seems restricted by what is its most engaging and innovative feature, its topophilia. In its overwhelming focus ‘upon ‘quite simple images of felicitous space’ we find a conception of place as wholly benign, one which is unable to imagine conflict within ‘the realms of intimate space. The home, which for Bachelard isa place of intimacy and warmth, can quite easily contain many dramas of conflict and unease. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, for exam- ple, the bedroom is not a setting for serene intimacy, but a place of con- finement where a gendered set of power relations is enacted between the ‘imprisoned female and her doctor husband.” ‘Another limitation in Bachelard’s account is his concentration on inte- rior places. Any sense of exterior space, whether of streets, cities ornations, is left unexplored, Arguably, the sense of intimacy and inhabitation he ‘describes as characterising the house could also be applied to exterior toca~ tions. Much of Rhys's fiction of belonging involves a set of national loca tions in addition to the interiors of rooms. Bachelard also does not explore the complex relations between the intimate spaces of rooms or houses and where they are found, in streets or landscapes. Its as if he can feel atender ‘sense of place only when imagining the interior of a house; the passionate attachment to a piece of land, a village, or a city street is never fully dis ‘mssed by Bachelard.” Equally, Bachelard does not address questions such as how the architectural design of a house might influence one's topo- ‘graphic attachments, or how the social and political history of architectural forms might alter one's intimate inhabitation of a place. AS we shal see, for instance when discussing Howards End or Ulysses, a sense of intimate attachment to place can be properly understood only in relation to the his torical constitution of houses, buildings and spaces. ‘This wider understanding of how space and place interact is found in Lefebvre’ The Production of Space, a vital theoretical text for recent cul- ‘tural geography. Lefebvre's conception of ‘social space’ is designed to introduce questions of society, history and politics into thinking about space, and involves both a rejection of Heidegger's ontological valuation of place as a site of dwelling and an extension of Bachelard’s notion of topoanalysis. Lefebvre and social space Henti Lefebvre's 1974 The Production of Space (hereafter PS) has been very {influential in introducing a number of key concepts into spatial and geo- graphical theory, perhaps the most significant being that of social space. Lefebvre argues that, for many years, ‘the word “space” had a strictly Space and place in modernism geometrical meaning: the idea it evoked was simply that of an empty area’ (@, p. 1). This abstract view of space originated with Descartes and was influential throughout the humanities and social sciences, as well as in mathematics and the physical sciences. Lefebvre aims to reverse this wide- spread view by insisting that space isnot a vacuum merely containing other objects and practices: ‘space is never empty: it always embodies a meaning’ (25, p.154). Since spaceiis always produced by social practices t can always ‘be deciphered for specific social meanings: (Social) space isa (socal) prod uct’ (PS, p.26). Here Lefebvre draws on Mary's view of the role of relations of production in society, applying Marx's notion to the way that landscapes, arealtered by human productive practices. This dialectical view of space and society argues that every society producesits own distinctive form of space, from the ancient polis of the Greek world to the city-state of the Italian, Renaissance, or the high-tech postmodem cities of the present. Forms of spatial organisation, however, also play a dominant role in shaping societies, determining the realms of mental space and physical space. Most spaces, writes Lefebvre, are ‘at once a precondition and a result of social superstructures' (PS, p. 85), and ‘any space implies, con- ‘tains and dissimulates social relationships (pp. 82-3). Once we leave nat- ural spaces such as uncultivated land, forests or heaths we enter a world ‘where space encounters the social relations of production. A national forest park, for example, though it might appear to be an inherently nat~ ural space, assumes certain social characteristics once itis administered by the state or redesigned for visitors or tourists. It becomes a social space because of its relationship to factors such as the economic development of a particular region or a national strategy for tourism. If part of the forest is given over to the timber industry, then this again produces avery different form of social space. For Lefebvre social space is an overtly political concept: Space has been shaped and moulded from historical and natural ele- ments, but this had been a political process. Space is political and ‘ideological. It is 2 product literally filed with ideologies, There is an ‘ideology of space. Why? Because space, which seems homogenous, which seems to be completely objective in its pure form ... isa social product. The production of space can be likened to the production of any given particular type of merchandise.” Lefebvre's work has thus influenced the development of a ‘socio-spatial” dialectic, as Soja terms it:® society shapes spaces according to its needs, bout, equally, space plays a formative role in the construction of social life. W18 Moving through modemity Lefebvre's conception of social space, as he acknowledges, is a very broad one, with a frustrating tendency towards vagueness. Howevet, one clear and significant feature is that social space is inherently composite, mingling heterogeneous spaces together in one physical location. As the forest park example shows, any single piece of land can be analysed into ‘many different social spaces with quite distinct associated meanings: @ place for tourists to walk: a place for timber production; an area for eco- ‘omic development; ora signifier ofa particular regional or cultural iden tity (the highlands of Scotland, the bog lands of the west of Ireland). Unlike Heideggers conception of an attachment to discrete places, Lefebvre's social spaces always intertwine with one another: Social spaces interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon one another. They are not things, which have mutually timiting boundaries... Visible boundaries, such as walls or enclosures in gen- eral, give rise for their part to an appearance of separation between spaces wire in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity, The space of a room, bedroom, house or garden may be cut off in a sense from social space by barriers and walls, by ll the signs of private property, yet still remain fundamentally part of that space. (P5, p. 87) ‘The national and regional levels take in innumerable ‘places national space embraces the regions; and world space does not merely subsume rational spaces, but even ... precipitates the formation of new rational spaces through @ remarkable process of fission. All these Space and place in modernism spaces, meanwhile, are traversed by myriad currents, The hypercom- plexity of social space should by now be apparent, embracing as it does individual entities and peculiarities, relatively fixed points, move- ments, and flows and waves ~ some interpenetrating, others in con- flict, and so on. (PS, p. 88) ‘A house in a street, for example, may appear to be solid and immobile as a space. Analysed as social space, however, both the house and the street are ‘permeated from every direction by streams of eneray which run in and out of [them (PS, p. 93), such as gas, electricity, radio and television sig- nals. The picture of a static space is replaced by ‘an image of a complex of mobilities, a nexus of in and out conduits’ (p. 93). Each of these conduits ‘opens this space out into wider social, political and economic questions and concerns. For Lefebvre, then, place is not to be sharply distinguished from space. Rather, a vriter’s conception of some particular place should be understood in relation to the wider historical and social meanings of that site. Place is ultimately, for Lefebvre, only one form, though with its own ideology and politics, of the many existing discourses of social space. For Lefebvre, the Heideggerian view of place as a universal dwelling for hhuman being embodies only a particular, and historically specific, view of social space and social relationships.” Polytopic texts like Joyce's Ulysses or Eliot's The Waste Land clearly display ‘hypercomplex’ social spaces, with conflicting relations between different spaces being a key element in the formation of their textual spaces. A poem like The Waste Land that represents morbid conscious- nesses, soiled bodies and dingy rooms in suburban streets, along with ref- erences to beaches, mountains, tube stations and other countries, is thus particularly amenable toa Lefebvrean reading. Analysis should attend not only to the particular significance of each discrete space, but to their interconnection and the quarrels between them. This principle of the “interpenetration and superimposition of social spaces’ entails that any “fragment of space’ under analysis will reveal not one but many social rela- tionships, Bachelard’s topoanalysis of intimate spaces can, therefore, be usefully augmented by Lefebvre's notion of the hypercomplexity of social space. In The Production of Space Lefebvre introduces three aspects of social space that are of particular utility fora literary geography of modernism: © Spatial practices refer to the multiple activities that form spaces in ‘each society, embracing features such as production and reproduc- tion; it also refers to the spatial actions of each individual in a 19