"We"? "Lucky"? "Affordable"? Walking down the other day I found myself recalling the argument of what might be the last published essay of Val Plumwood, the pioneering Australian ecofeminist who, I just learned, passed away suddenly last year. Entitled "Shadow Places and the Politics of Dwelling" (in the March 2008 Australian Humanities Review, available here), the essay is a frontal attack on the recently fashionable romanticization of place - especially of homelike places, our own special "dwelling" places - as a "false consciousness of place."
The dissociation of the affective place (the place of and in mind, attachment and identification, political effectiveness, family history, ancestral place) from the economic place that is such a f
eature of the global market is yet another manifestation of the mind/body dualism that has shaped the western tradition. (141)"Special places" are refuges from the realities of globalization and consumerism, and make us ignore our responsibilities for other places and those who live there - even as we depend on those other places, indeed, in too many cases, on their despoliation. Since we're in fact not really fully connected even to these places, our attachment to the "places" we think make us who we are often has an ideological abstractedness to it which can quickly morph into nimbyism, xenophobia and nationalism.
As an Australian, Plumwood was especially aware of the way in which Aboriginal ideas of land can be used this way by settlers. The Aboriginal idea of "country" is too quickly assimilated with the false place consciousness of "dwelling" which is, Plumwood suggests, Heidegger's most pernicious legacy. "Country" is better thought of not as "our place" but "our ecological footprint." Truly to learn from the Aboriginal conception we should cultivate an affective connection to all the places which economically support our lives, and a sense of responsibility for all places which are important for anyone. Plumwood proposes
a place principle of environmental justice, an injunction to cherish and care for your places, but without in the process destroying or degrading any other places, where ‘other places’ includes other human places, but also other species’ places. This accountability requirement is a different project, and much more politically and environmentally demanding project, than that of cherishing one’s own special place of dwelling. It is a project whose realisation, I would argue, is basically incompatible with market regimes based on the production of anonymous commodities from remote and unaccountable places. ... [and] with an economy of privileged places thriving at the expense of exploited places. (147-48)
Powerful stuff, and powerfully convincing. It really (and pardon the pun, there's no better way of saying this) hit home.
