#territorealities

[territorealities]

How does your browsing affect your human rights? Find out at Citizen Ex.

[ecogradients]

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No Man's Land poster by Katie Gorman, Drea Bustamante, Alex Rodriguez, and Jenn Schultz.

[ecogradients]

"Clean up your mess" by Stacey Platt

Photos by Yossi Zur.

Definition.  Boundary.  Territory.  Limits.  This is the antidote to disorder and what distinguishes an organized space from a disorganized one. These themes show up consistently in the silverware drawer, a microcosmic example of blissful order.  What makes your silverware drawer stay organized and why can you always find a fork? Certain principles exist here that make finding a fork not only possible, but probable. And these can be applied to any other space to create and maintain order.  (Most of these you learned in Kindergarten, but here’s a review).   

Principle #1:  Keep like things together.  All the forks in the house are kept together.  In most cases, you won’t find stray forks stored in the living room or the bathroom.  Keeping like things together simplifies and brings clarity.

Principle #2:  Assign a single, consistent and defined place for things.  There is only one place in your home where forks are kept.  If I came to your home and asked you for a fork, you’d know exactly where to go to get one.  Can you say the same for a safety pin?  An extension cord?  The receipt for your computer?  Your 2006 tax returns?  If you have a clearly defined place for these things, you would.   

Principle #3:  Create boundaries and therefore limits. There is a fork-shaped cut out in the silverware drawer that lets you know where forks go. And there is a finite space for forks.  Finite space is good.  A huge house with an attic and basement is nice, but it can also lead to possession by one’s possessions.  Boxes of nostalgia literally hanging over your head is a weight, whether felt consciously or sub-consciously.  Living in a 500-square foot apartment is like living with an enlightened master who teaches aparigraha, or non-acquisitiveness, and general self-restraint - boundaries of the mind and spirit so to speak.  These in turn foster conscious consumption, simplification and letting go.  The limited space in the silverware drawer prevents the over-accumulation of forks and teaches us to live within our space means.  Living within our space means is just as important as living within our financial means.  Just as accumulating more credit card debt than you can pay off becomes a financial burden, accumulating more stuff than you can comfortably cohabitate with can be similarly burdensome. 

Principle #4:  Put things back.  The second law of thermodynamics (and the first law of any Kindergarten class) states that things tend towards disorder, randomness and chaos.  Energy must be put into the system to counteract this natural tendency.  There is no law in the physical universe that suggests that forks will migrate back to their rightful place on their own.  And T.S. Eliot concurs, “It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.”  So be good.  Create boundaries and respect them.  Limit expansion.  Clean up your mess.

[ecogradients]

The Land of the Accompong Maroons: Territory and the Jamaican Accompong Maroon Community 1655–1905.

by Michelle Thompson, Doctoral Candidate, History, New York University.

Territoriality was the primary concern of both the Jamaican colonial government and the Accompong Maroons in the period following emancipation, notably 1842 – 1905. Maroons were granted land pursuant to the peace treaty in 1739 and the community decided to hold this land in common. Maroons, in exchange for being allowed to own land, sell goods, and have some free movement across Jamaica had to capture runaway slaves, quell slave rebellions, and fight Jamaica’s enemies. However, after slavery ended in 1834, the Jamaican government saw no continuing need for the Maroons to function this way in Jamaican society. The Jamaican government, in trying to extend their jurisdiction over the sovereign Accompong, decided to try to acquire more control over this population by changing the relationship of the community to their treaty-granted lands. The government passed legislation that required Jamaica’s Maroon communities to change their land ownership from communal to individual and granted the Maroon communities all the “rights and privileges of the Queen’s subjects.” The legislation unilaterally ended the treaty between the Maroons and the government and subjected the Maroons to Jamaica’s laws. Due to the unilateral nature of changing Accompong borders, the Accompong resisted the implementation of the act and subsequent attempts by the Jamaican government to reimagine their communities by way of territorial borders for indeed individual land ownership inherently undermined the Accompong community.

There was more than one territorial agenda during the post-emancipation period. While the colonial government was determined to eliminate the Maroons’ borders, the Accompong Maroons were determined to maintain and possibly expand their borders. Oral narratives from this community reveal that the British took advantage of Colonel Cudjoe (the military leader of the Maroons during the Maroon Wars) and instead of granting him 10,000 acres, instead gave him 1,000. Hence, it is through this narrative we understand the Accompong’s motivations for trying to acquire Cooks Bottom, a place where the superintendent’s house was, which gave them a means of making a claim for this parcel.

This work examines the issue of territoriality from an historical perspective; however, the ability to understand what is going on at this historical moment is limited without integrating other disciplinary approaches. Without law, we cannot grasp what concerned the Jamaican colonial government – they spoke of the challenges of adverse possession without saying it directly; without anthropology, we cannot grasp the motivations and reasoning behind the position the Accompong took on land. Ultimately, land and territory in post-emancipation Jamaica reflected the challenges connected to using “negroe” labor – if the formerly enslaved and the Maroons had their own plots of land, plantation owners would be unable to have access to their labor. In post-emancipation Jamaica, it was access to “negroe” labor that drove how the Jamaican government constructed access to land and therefore land and territory became the primary focus not only of the formerly enslaved, but also for the Accompong Maroons.

[ecogradients]

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Must we admit that the time of discourse is not the time consciousness extrapolated to the dimensions of history, or the time of history present in the form of consciousness? Must I suppose that in my discourse I can have no survival? And that in speaking I am not banishing my death, but actually establishing it; or rather that I am abolishing all interiority in that exterior that is so indifferent to my life, and so neutral, that it makes no distinction between my life and my death?

m.f. 

The Archaeology of Knowledge" (A.M. Sheridan Smith, Trans., New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1972)

[ecogradients]

Last Call for Submissions!

Hello there folks, a quick reminder about the deadline for submissions to our next issue of  E  c  o  g  r  a  d  i  e  n  t  s  :  ~~TOMORROW; Monday Feb 21st.  We are looking forward to curating a very strong collection this time around, so get your contribution in asap to sweeten our editoreal dispositions.  Just as soon as we're able to put it all together, we'll be holding a RELEASE PARTY for the issue: ~someplace at Teachers College (we'll let you know where), on FRIDAY, March 4th, @ 3:30 pm.  We've got some top-notch entertainment planned, including our usual eclectic showing of independent scholars and roguish pedagogues, and the usual mixture of light refreshments and heavy conversation. Please circulate this invite widely, towards all interested parties, in order to help us facilitate the continuing coalescence of a global/local community of interdisciplinary thinkers! The theme of this issue, "Territorealities" is among other things a description of the merging of creative thought and experiential integrity

with ideological criticism, social activism, and infrastructural (interrelational) innovation.  The institutional movement towards 'interdisciplinary' practices will only progress as far as we, its constituent agents, its thinkers and doers and be-ers, can carry it together.  We hope to see you all soon, ~The Ecogradients Editoreal Team.