Turner gives us a broad generalization about land expansion that lacks intimacy with the state of

Transcription

1 Susan Fabian HIS 321 Professor Lee The Thesis Turner gives us a broad generalization about land expansion that lacks intimacy with the state of Wisconsin in any significant manner. His omission of perspectives stifles historical understandings, but allows for a framework to build a more solid structure. He is what Freud is to psychiatry. Ubbelohde commissions the curious to understand the composition of Wisconsin as a region worth studying while excusing his disciplines lack of investigation. He leaves the burden of interest on those who are curious enough to kill the cat. Quinney informs us of the common stereotypes of Wisconsin. These stereotypes are used to understand our state in a more intimate way. They are the foundation of what we believe ourselves to be as a distinct group of people among a large Nation. Cronon offers us an environmental tradition that is established with experiencing the land on a personal level. Stegner tells us we must value a place in order to belong. The essays similarly talk of land, but that is where the commonalities end and the differences in which land is experienced begin. The way that land is presented is a building to an ideology of the creation of Wisconsin. It is the culmination of those who have lived on this land, passed through it, ruined it, healed it, and presently remain in it that makes Wisconsin a state. The

2 various texts we utilize instruct us what has occurred in our recent past to give us insight to what our future should acknowledge and consider as we move forward. I Want ie. the Frontier? Broad generalizations are not suitable for understanding a state s history in any intimate way. However, it is useful in understanding the ideology of a period of time. It offers a window into what is considered important and what is not during this period of history. It is clear that Turner s frontier is redefined with each additional conquest of either person, land, resource etc The relationship with the land constantly being determined by a person s ownership or exploitation of it. The expansion into the West clearly determining that which is exceptional while the devastation it brought not being noteworthy. Turner mentions Indians in ways that are significant to land expansion. His lack acknowledgment speaks directly to his limited scope. He has not only a Eurocentric positioning towards Indian but also an outright racist perspective. Women s omission from what is considered a historical text is heavily noticed. The construction of history is by those who are able to record it. The limitations within a historical record are only as great as those who are able to read, understand, disseminate, and articulate voices from a past that is all too often told by one group of people. This historical text is about American exceptionalism in relationship to land. That the frontier is what gave America a combined identity and a spirit of nationalism that previous did not exist is difficult to digest. Exploitation and racism is the glue that bound a nation towards civilization seems to be crude but yet clearly exists. It is the study of shifting lines of the West, the

3 settlements that pursue this expansion, the redefining of the common enemy to colonization, the stages of the frontier from Indian to factory. It is the rambling of broad sweeping generalizations that are easily understood and seem to be beyond stoking a fire to test the steel for impurity. The text establishes the immigration of successive waves of English, German, Dutch, and Irish. It goes into further length to offer over simplified palatable understandings of a very complicated history of westward expansion. Kills the Cat Midwest regionalism itself is a topic of specialization so specific that within its own academy is not valued enough to gain actual validation as an interest worth studying in the composition of history. Arrogantly, Ubbelohde dismisses the value of research within the idea of community and the composition thereof suggesting that this is something that pokes around the point but doesn't quite get to it. I suggest that the very purpose of history is to take it apart by each group and then formulate a generalization about the whole, which seems to be done entirely backward in each of these postulations to explain the west. Ubbelohde varies by asking us to understand the idea of land only in so much as it defines the Midwest. He suggests that we can use different ways to understand that which is already understood. He argues that the Midwest in and of itself is something to be studied and understood separately rather than as a generalization underneath broad simplistic Turnerian understandings. Sadly, he leaves the ideas of regions as things that should be valued to those whom are curious enough in the future to kill the cat. I still don t see a rush of people running to the library stacks in search of how the Midwest was made. Value is not

4 made by asking for a tag team in by the next generation to establish worthiness on a topic that is not even esteemed within its own specialization he makes a case in the argument actually sharing us the sparse amount of information available on this subject. Midwest regionalism will die if those who do not hold authority within academic disciplines cease to make a value of it. Unfortunately, most people tend to be persuaded with oversimplified versions of what is mostly true or will sell institutional worth within academics. The Problem with Romance Quinney anchors himself into a narrative that loves to love itself. American ideology of individualism, hard work will pay off, and the means that made the man are strong reminders of the Midwest s stereotypes. He gives us the stereotypes to better help us understand what it is that Wisconsin is comprised. It is a primary account hidden well and enshrined with tales of hard work, the Midwest, and his personal understanding of what life was like in the years he grew up as a white son of an Irish immigrant farmer. He launches into lengthy descriptions of life being filled with hard work and simple pleasures. The prose contains genealogical measures to draw us into a personal relationship of his familial roots with the Midwest. The lengthy use of personal experience is fully elongated to bring home the stereotypes. The encounters with this region are in part what made the composition of the adult. This piece differs from the rest by instructing us that his boyhood experiences encapsulate what is considered to be the Midwest and its stereotypes. These stereotypes are directly associated with the use of story around his experiences with land. These understandings of the Midwest are promulgated throughout the

5 country as things that are Midwestern in nature. This is a social understanding of the Midwest s stereotypes as a region rather than an in-depth historical understanding of the composition of the Midwest. It is one piece of a larger puzzle that is the Midwest: the stereotypes/narratives of those who live here. Cronon the Caveman Goes Wild Engagement with land and education impacts decisions with environments. Cronon the Caveman would have us understand that his experience with the land informed him of what Wisconsin is comprised. The composition takes place initially within his exploration but expands with education. He further instructs us on Wisconsin s environmental tradition and implicitly suggests that we all must experience the land in order to appreciate it. His ability to experience it personally helped define what it was to him. Understanding a region takes being part of it, having a relationship with it. The complexities of an area are understood in incremental self-revelations that are only understood when one gets dirty. This dirty work then helps to fit portions into a larger composition. This composition is what we call Wisconsin. Caveman Cronon tells us that his most impressionable moments in creating an understanding of what Wisconsin is to him was done while spelunking. Cronon engaged in his writing as one who mourned the exploitation of the earth. Cronon s wilderness frontier is caves; his thirst for adventure pushed his limitations. He understood himself in relationship to not just any land but, Wisconsin. A symbiotic relationship that

6 started under the earth and grows with age above the ground creating an understanding of what these places are because you have smelt them, felt them, engaged them directly as part of your person. He brings up notions of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and more importantly environmentalism. Turner s simple understanding of conquering land and civilized living in relation to that of the wilderness and the plants and animals it contains does not hold up under the glare of this caveman s spotlight. This landscape is our home and it is in our best interest to know what is included. The calling out of main male figures in Wisconsin history helps us to understand his specific viewpoints. He values land and wants to let us know others have a strong tradition of valuing it too. Wisconsin s heart beats and pumps by grappling with the landscape. It is not through the exploitation of the land that we will come to an understanding but of through a personal relationship with it. Which Way Do I Go? I have dissatisfaction with constant moving. As a daughter of a man who worked in construction myself, I find it to be more irritating than most. The feelings of displacement and permanent cycles of new to old and back to new that I ve experienced has become placed. And similar to Stegner s family, mine did do the RV snow bird parks. Old people that leave and go north and south like a migratory bird flock year after year.

7 It is Stegner who understands what it means to be in a pattern of habitual motion that I most appreciate in this The Sense of Place. My immediate family all still live around one another in Montana with literally less than a mile separating them all- they are hard pressed to find others who understand their odd sense of living. I am the odd one out. I left my gypsy family in pursuit of my sense of place. Stegner says it well and floods one with an idea of what it might mean to have that which he states as being a placed person. There is a hunger that comes from perpetual sequences that become cyclical every two to three years. For some, I realize the cycle of change is quicker. Placelessness has special advantages over that of being placed. For instance, you have the ability to create your own understandings of what you are seeing. The lens in which you view things is consistently changing as much as the geographic location itself. It offers a differing perspective on land, people, and what comprises a location over another. Stegner suggests that the accumulation of artifacts is a sufficient offering of proof that one is living and placed. However, the quantity of such antiquity is not proof of living but rather that one has not known how to love their place. He stumbles to this idea in one spot when he says, The fact that Daniel Boone killed a bear at a certain spot in Kentucky did not make it a place. It began to be one, though, when he remembered the spot as Bear run. In many ways, the transmission of understanding a place and the events that transpired at it are much more important than the actual place. It is neither enough to have artifact without story or story without artifact. It is necessary to have both in order to have an event committed to a place worth a memory and a name.

8 It could very well be argued that some were offered chances to make places while others were not. That despite the consistent change of frontier talked about by Turner, that some were involuntarily thrusted forward into a life described by Stegner as looting and raiding. This type of existence is easily accessible when your country is quite large. A person has the ability to move quite frequently without past reference in future frames, and no one questions because at some point we ve all been there. The fact is that we have all been there and done that. We ve torn through parts of our land with veracious appetites for freedom and self-sufficiency. Stegner says we will not grow out of this in a generation or two even if the motives for restlessness are withdrawn. It is certain that if we do not stop to learn where we come from we will become like every other place. This type of cultural amnesia will fill our caves with water and change the landscape of the Midwest. It is important to find a place to belong. It is an appreciation of the construction of a place called Wisconsin.