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dolorosa_12) wrote2013-01-30 01:51 pm
dolorosa_12) wrote2013-01-30 01:51 pm
Entry tags:
'When did Temair become Temair?'
I've had a marvellous morning sitting in the university library reading the PhD thesis of a friend of mine (I'm reading it because it's relevant to my own research, not because she's my friend), and this reminded me once again how much I love my subject matter. But it also got me thinking how devalued humanities research is by society at large, and how it's incorrectly scorned as being frivolous or lacking in relevance to people's lives. Now, sure, research on literary representations of the nexus of land, history and claims to power might not be cancer research or studying the effects of climate change. But there is a point to it all, and this point has relevance outside the ivory tower.
I'm talking, in particular, about the tendency of Irish texts in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to carry on endlessly about the names of things - specifically, place-names: the history behind a name, the political group whose identity is bound up in that history, the various claims to power that such names represent, and the increasing need to keep written records of such names and meanings in order to solidify these claims. What you tend to find are a number of texts expressing sentiments along these lines:
'And because of such-and-such an event, Place X became known as Place Y, and this is the name that will always be upon it.'
Along with this anxiety that place-names might change (and displace the claims to authority that the original names represent), you also find authors using toponymic facts on the ground to justify their own contemporary political aims. Thus, in one of the poems about Temair (Tara, in modern-day Co. Meath) in Dindshenchas Érenn ('The Lore of Notable Places of Ireland', a sort of collection of stories about the names of prominent sites), you find the extraordinary claim that because there are multiple other sites named Temair, all of them are clearly satellites to the Temair in Meath. (The name 'Temair' probably originally meant something like 'high/prominent place', so it's entirely normal that numerous hills in Ireland have that name.)
So what? you might be thinking. But this is in no way a medieval Irish phenomenon exclusively. I come from Australia, and we have multiple place-names that are anglicised versions of whatever a place was called by the Indigenous nation who inhabited it before European settlement. (The city of 'Canberra', for example, is an anglicisation of what the region was called by its Indigenous inhabitants.) But there are many places in Australia which have an Indigenous name and a European name. Uluru/Ayers Rock is probably the most well-known. When I was growing up in the '90s, it was normal (in educational contexts at least) to refer to the site as 'Ayers Rock'. I'm not sure exactly when the switch took place, but certainly by the time I became a teenager, everyone called it 'Uluru'. To refer to it as 'Ayers Rock' nowadays would mark you as either an elderly person or a racist.
Then you have place-names such as 'Sydney', which refer to things that didn't exist in pre-settlement times. Certainly the area where the city of Sydney now stands would have had names given to it by its Indigenous inhabitants, but there was obviously no city there, and so the name refers to a transformation of the region undertaken by those who had taken control of it. I make this point because in the Irish literature I study, there are repeated instances where a character or group take control of an area, transform it in some way, and give it a new name in reflection of this transformation. (For example, they build a fort or cut down a forest, and the new name reflects these actions.)
I use the Australian examples because they are things with which I'm familiar, but I'm sure you could find many comparable examples elsewhere in recent history throughout the world. Names matter. Controlling the history and the written record matters. And recognising that people understood this even as long ago as in twelfth-century Ireland gives us a certain insight into human nature. Nothing we study, is, on closer inspection, divorced from reality or irrelevant to the concerns of our own times. We (and by this I mean humanities students) do ourselves a disservice when we play down this aspect of our research.
I'm talking, in particular, about the tendency of Irish texts in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to carry on endlessly about the names of things - specifically, place-names: the history behind a name, the political group whose identity is bound up in that history, the various claims to power that such names represent, and the increasing need to keep written records of such names and meanings in order to solidify these claims. What you tend to find are a number of texts expressing sentiments along these lines:
'And because of such-and-such an event, Place X became known as Place Y, and this is the name that will always be upon it.'
Along with this anxiety that place-names might change (and displace the claims to authority that the original names represent), you also find authors using toponymic facts on the ground to justify their own contemporary political aims. Thus, in one of the poems about Temair (Tara, in modern-day Co. Meath) in Dindshenchas Érenn ('The Lore of Notable Places of Ireland', a sort of collection of stories about the names of prominent sites), you find the extraordinary claim that because there are multiple other sites named Temair, all of them are clearly satellites to the Temair in Meath. (The name 'Temair' probably originally meant something like 'high/prominent place', so it's entirely normal that numerous hills in Ireland have that name.)
So what? you might be thinking. But this is in no way a medieval Irish phenomenon exclusively. I come from Australia, and we have multiple place-names that are anglicised versions of whatever a place was called by the Indigenous nation who inhabited it before European settlement. (The city of 'Canberra', for example, is an anglicisation of what the region was called by its Indigenous inhabitants.) But there are many places in Australia which have an Indigenous name and a European name. Uluru/Ayers Rock is probably the most well-known. When I was growing up in the '90s, it was normal (in educational contexts at least) to refer to the site as 'Ayers Rock'. I'm not sure exactly when the switch took place, but certainly by the time I became a teenager, everyone called it 'Uluru'. To refer to it as 'Ayers Rock' nowadays would mark you as either an elderly person or a racist.
Then you have place-names such as 'Sydney', which refer to things that didn't exist in pre-settlement times. Certainly the area where the city of Sydney now stands would have had names given to it by its Indigenous inhabitants, but there was obviously no city there, and so the name refers to a transformation of the region undertaken by those who had taken control of it. I make this point because in the Irish literature I study, there are repeated instances where a character or group take control of an area, transform it in some way, and give it a new name in reflection of this transformation. (For example, they build a fort or cut down a forest, and the new name reflects these actions.)
I use the Australian examples because they are things with which I'm familiar, but I'm sure you could find many comparable examples elsewhere in recent history throughout the world. Names matter. Controlling the history and the written record matters. And recognising that people understood this even as long ago as in twelfth-century Ireland gives us a certain insight into human nature. Nothing we study, is, on closer inspection, divorced from reality or irrelevant to the concerns of our own times. We (and by this I mean humanities students) do ourselves a disservice when we play down this aspect of our research.
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This is a constant example of how people interact and affect each other over time in a variety of ways, how language is one of those ways. The changing and ownership of place names and the psychological stressor of them is still felt today, for instance, in places like New York. In my city "new" neighborhood and place names are popping up which gives the current resident (mostly transplant professionals and not long time residents) more ownership and a feeling of a place in the areas history. Once tightly contained places like Little Italy and Chinatown now have even smaller subsets or micro-hoods like NoLIta. Even the Meat Packing District got a new name as it was being revitalized into a fashion and food district rather than a seedy area of derilict warehouses: MePa.
Nerds are awesome!
You are unfortunately right that the academicness tends to trump other people's appreciation of what it is and why it is important. In the states right now there is a lot of grumbling about treating college curriculum like public elementary and high school curriculums, or like the National Curriculum in the UK. Some, equally unfortunately, powerful people have even gone so far as to say that all education should be directly vocational and be dicontinued if it does not immediately result in a job.
Jumping of teacher soap box now.
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I haven't been to New York for over a decade, but I'm fascinated by its history because it seems to be created in layers and waves, with the present building on, and subtly transforming, what came before.
Some, equally unfortunately, powerful people have even gone so far as to say that all education should be directly vocational and be dicontinued if it does not immediately result in a job.
It seems to me that this is a reaction to the problems facing twentysomethings at the moment - you know, the anxiety and anger that, in spite of what we were told and promised, going to university doesn't automatically lead to a stable, materially secure and happy future. It's not a good reaction, but it does make some sense.
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And perhaps I'm misinterpreting your point, but isn't that the other side of pursuing an academic career that you love, instead of one that you think will get you work, you might not have any money coming out the other side? Like if you don't think about how our capitalist society works and try and find a way to slot into that, then it may well be a lot more difficult for you in the future when you do have to find a place in it?
So yes I'm with
I think that the naming discussion is interesting, but I don't immediately make the connection that it is important. Yes we do this, and... what of it? I guess people are looking for that additional link to themselves. Why should I care about this? Sure it's interesting to you (and to me, that ultimately, we haven't really changed, people are just people) but why should anyone else care? What difference does that make to their lives?
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But as I was saying to
I find the naming discussion important because it's ultimately about how human beings use various methods to establish identities as people, and how these identities tend to be exclusionary. It's not that I think 'I'm so clever - PAY ME!', but more that I think that anything that furthers our understanding of the human search for identity enriches us as human beings. Does that make any kind of sense?
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I don't think that this really applies in Australia where unemployment is low. I know I am a lot more sheltered in Canberra and amongst my circles of friends, and people who want work can generally get it. Although I do know people with non Australian partners and they have had a lot of trouble getting work in their field. Especially engineering, I think that's a tough one.
Sometimes I think about the weird capitalist world that we've created for ourselves (as a global society, although with many players not having much say in things) and just wonder how and why it works. And kind of doubt whether it really does. In other words, I am The Worst Economist In The World, because sometimes I don't believe in the basic market principles behind it. :P Maybe that's a better discussion for a future blog post though.
While I can see your line of thought in relation to naming, I don't quite agree for myself personally, as I have a bit of an objection to the naming of everything. Of course it's useful because you need references, otherwise there'd be lots of "oh you know, that guy with the red hair and freckles... that one" and "that place where I go on weekends that sometimes has mint leaves in the water" which is hardly practical. But beyond the pragmatic reasons, I find it discombobulating how people do use it to segregate themselves. I guess because I think that I'm a very in between person, on so many things (halfway between Chinese and Australian, prefer not to be labelled by my job or regular activities, refusing to have any label for religion) I don't quite understand other people's need to belong so badly. To group themselves with others by taking a name and saying "this is us, this is me". I guess even my name, Trin, is just a weird derivation from a Shanghainese nickname, nothing I chose, but something that I just ended up with. And catpuccino is just a usertag I found in a cute kitten calendar, used for the sake of convenience and cuteness and then was too lazy to change.
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I try to be grateful to have a job that a lot of people consider to be pretty great (in terms of benefits, salary, some people think there's some prestige to it) but I do think about what if I'd taken another choice, one that maybe led to more passion but less job prospects.
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In terms of the relative 'job prospects' of particular courses of study, I actually think it's untrue that there are certain subjects that don't equip you for a job. Certainly things like law, medicine, teaching or engineering have a more obvious path ahead of them, but there are plenty of fields that require you to be able to write well and be reasonably well-informed about the world, for which a good Arts degree is excellent preparation. But it requires you to be a bit flexible in your expectations - you are unlikely to come out of a BA and get a job as a journalist at the ABC, for example (although I have a couple of friends who did), but you should be able to find some kind of editing job, or a job where you need to write reports.
I think everyone leaves their degrees wondering about paths not taken. I'm frustrated, because it's taken me ten years, an MPhil and a PhD to realise that I actually want to work as a counsellor, and I'm in no position to actually train to be one, so I'm going to have to pursue a career in a field that I love as a student, but dislike as an academic. That said, there's nothing stopping me coming back to counselling later in life when I can afford to do it, and I certainly feel that my postgraduate study will enrich any job I end up doing, even if it's not directly relevant.
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But yes I agree that ultimately it's about you and what you do with what you've got, that really matters.
It's funny how many of my friends have said to me recently that they wish they'd gone into psychology/counselling type work! I suppose that reflects the type of person that I am in a way, as like can be attracted to like! I thought about it too, but I really hate studying, so it's not an option at the moment to go back for several years of study.
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In terms of naming - your discomfort with it is exactly what I was trying to get at. There's such a correlation between naming and asserting ownership or identity, and the examples I was giving were intended to be negative. Naming as exclusion, if you will. I realise that's not entirely what you're talking about (you seem to be objecting to identities imposed on you by others? in which case I'm right with you), but I see quite clear parallels.
I don't really have your discomfort with names as a form of identity, although I remember noticing that I am much happier identifying myself with my job now that it's something I enjoy. When I was working in jobs I hated, I always said 'I work as a sub-editor', 'I work in a school' or whatever. But as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with carving out my own identity, and giving it names. Even my name, Ronni, was something I consciously chose as part of a more comprehensive claiming of a new identity (I cut my hair, I got my ears pierced, I made a choice to enter high school and make new friends, rather than sit with people I knew from primary school, and I decided that from then on I would be addressed as 'Ronni' and not my full name). My online username has a long, drawn-out backstory complete with allusions to literature, the person I felt like in high school and various other things. Whenever I had the choice to write on a topic of my choice in high school or uni, I wrote about names, identity, exile or dispossession: my extended essay for the IB was about names and identity in folklore and fantasy, I wrote an essay on names in slave narratives in an American literature course in undergrad, my Honours thesis was about exile and Irish identity in medieval Irish literature, my MPhil was about exile and the twelfth-century renaissance in medieval Irish literature, and my PhD is about dispossession, authority, identity and how that is expressed in people's interaction with the land and with history. So yeah. It's something that I find constantly fascinating, and that I think about a lot.
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I guess in our naming discussion, I think that the issues are interesting, but not necessary. At least not on a day-to-day basis. That doesn't mean it's not worth studying of course! I suppose my thought is that it's good to add to the general wealth of human knowledge, and if it brings the researcher happiness and fulfilment that's a really great thing!
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