Dee E. Heddon's essay discusses the ways in which subjectivity and place converge in the practice of "Autotopography" or the writing of oneself in and on the landscape. Her discussion of graffiti, as it appears scattered throughout the landscape, marks the passage of subjects through the environment as it teases out elements of her own subjectivity. Heddon's process of narativizing space, time, and self tells a fascinating tale of appearing and disappearing identities hidden in the cracks and crevices of everyday life.

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes & Selves [printable version]

Deirdre E. Heddon

Preamble

i. Autotopograpy

<1> For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons associated with his five year old self, in that place [1]. (Incidentally, Pearson describes his working process as being archaeological [2], and I am yet to wonder about the crossing of archaeology with autobiography, and how those discourses and practices might inflect, affect or spin each other in revealing or challenging ways. But that's another route.)

<2> Thinking more generally about the interweaving of autobiography and place I coined the neologism "Autotopography." Or at least I thought I had. I later discovered that an article entitled "Autotopographies" was published by Jennifer Gonzáles in 1995. Her application of this term is different from and yet related to my own. Gonzáles uses it to refer to personal objects -- such as photos, tourist memorabilia, etc. -- that are arranged by a subject as physical signs that spatially represent that subject's identity [3]. By contrast, I use the term to signal more specifically the location of a particular individual in actual space, a locatedness that has implications for both subject and place. The subject and place I am about to recite here is only one exploration of what I mean by the term and practice "auto-topography." Other performances, such as Pearson's, undoubtedly provide other examples and practices, enabling in turn different applications.

ii. Graffiti

<3> In this article, I am going to posit graffiti as an instance of autobiographical production, but it is important to signal the fact that I am looking at only one form of graffiti. Other "forms" which I will briefly cite here -- citings that are by no means exhaustive -- merely indicate the breadth of exploration that could be undertaken in this area. Consider, for example, "Prison Graffiti'" writings on prison walls which are, in some instances, and after the event, repackaged with the label of "authentic" and sold to day-tripping tourists. Or "Historical Graffiti'" such as the signals left by resistance movements on various city walls, again, now packaged for the tourist trail. Or "Site-Specific Graffiti" -- those standardised, repeated forms of inscription which are determined by specific sites -- such as the youth hostel bedroom with its scored names, places of origins and dates; or the tree trunk with its declaration of undying love. Or, alternatively, graffiti which attempts to resist such cultural imperatives by writing against the predictable grain. And "Memorial Graffiti'" inscriptions left in the places of unexpected death -- sharp turns in the road or shop doorways claimed as "shelters" by the destitute: "Gone and missed" -- as if the writings can substitute for the now vanished body, recalling it to its familiar place. Of course, most prevalent of all, there is "Tag Graffiti'" whereby surfaces are overtaken by endlessly repeated pseudo-signatures, standing in for absent persons. Described as pollution, dirt, deviance, criminal defacement, or, more benignly, folk art, tagging has also been variously theorised as a marking of territory; or an expression of, or an insistence on, identity; or an anti-capitalist activity in which all property is public and graffiti a "transgression of official appearances" (Cresswell, 58) [4]. Alternatively it is a hyper-capitalist mimicry in which the tag is merely another form of advertising -- in this instance, advertising the self. (Or, on the other hand, tagging is viewed as hyper-capitalist parody, in which the logo is revealed as all, with nothing behind it -- all you get is a name, but in this instance, even the name can't be bought [5].)

<4> It is possible, surely, to consider each of these different acts of writing on various surfaces as different autobiographical events. In what follows I will read graffiti as a moment of identity performance in place; or graffiti as an instance of autotopography, a writing which marks and remarks landscape whilst simultaneously marking and remarking subjectivity.

Amble

<5> The beginnings of this paper are to be located in my own relocation, in 1998, from Glasgow to Exeter. "Exeter? That's in eh, that's down south in eh...?'" my Glaswegian mates flounder. "Devon" I reply. "Oh, right" they nod, now knowing. As if that word -- "Devon" -- contains all there is to know, all you need to know.

Cook's West of England Tours (1876, 3) No one can think of Devonshire and Cornwall without thinking of the host of authors who have written about these counties; of painters who have drawn thence some of their best inspirations; of poets who have sung some of their sweetest songs concerning them, and of travellers who have extolled their beauties.

<6> Of course, my move down South is not really the beginning.

<7> 1994 -- 1998: contagious dizziness, shifting grounds, unfixed self's, multiple I's, fluidity, contingency, promises, potentials, clearings, queerings, in bed with Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, but avoiding Jacques Derrida who could be patented as a cure for insomnia [6] .

<8> 1994 is the beginning, because it was in 1994 that I first became a lesbian.

<9> Four years earlier, in 1990, my boyfriend Kenny's mother, on meeting me for the first time, tells him I'm nice but that I could make more of myself.

<10> I don't know whether these two events are related, but it would be easy to compose a narrative in which they are, using the mantra of "I always knew" to sew them together, as in, "Even when I was with Kenny I always knew." However, whilst it might, admittedly, have just been a matter of time -- never say never -- I avoid performing that almost compulsory script of "I always knew." Surely there are other scripts waiting to be written, which might just enable different stories to be told, different lives to be lived, in which it would be more difficult to posit "always." Such essences place limits on future possibilities and imaginations [7].

<11> Actually, after Kenny I had another relationship anyway, with Jonathan. I believe that Jonathan's mother quite liked me as a potential daughter-in-law.

<12> In 1994 I become a dyke.

<13> Coincidentally -- or not -- in 1994 I also begin to write a thesis on women's performance art.

<14> In 1994 I also join a women's drumming group. Coincidentally or not.

<15> In 1994 I also go with that group to London Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Pride. Coincidentally or not.

<16> In 1994 I also happen to meet a lot of lesbians. Coincidentally or not.

<17> This is, of course, just one possible route through one possible map, strategically chosen and placed for maximum effect, and I cannot, now, be absolutely sure that all -- or any -- of these events actually happened in 1994. Nor that they happened in this particular order. I'm fairly certain that they did all, at some point, happen. But I am also aware that memory can play funny tricks.

<18> Coincidentally, in 1995 Jonathan met a woman who used to be a dyke, and perhaps who still is. Who am I to say? They are still together and have had twin daughters.

<19> Coincidentally, in 1995, through a friend of a friend, on a weekend visit to London, I am introduced to Rachel. We too are still together. Too many coincidences?

<20> Autobiography. Sidonie Smith, writing of autobiographical storytelling, claims that such stories become one means through which people in the West believe themselves to be or have "selves" (1998, 109-115) [8]. It is in this telling about the self, assumed to be coming from the self, that the sense of a deep, internal self is both constructed and maintained. So, whilst we may tend to think that the autobiographical act is a result of that deep interiority in fact, this very concept of an eternal, truthful, inner self is one effect of autobiographical storytelling, rather than its source or cause. Autobiographical storytelling, then, is arguably performative.

<21> In the year 2002 I continue becoming a dyke. Whilst the compulsory, restrictive script of "I always knew" is avoided, I also know that at certain times, in certain places, it becomes necessary to make a firmer stand.

<22> In 1998 I get a job in Exeter, Devon.

The Book of Fair Devon (1899, 4) To have seen it once is to love it, to have dwelt in it is to have added a brightness to life, and between those who know and love it there must always be a bond of union analogous to brotherhood...And what is it that constitutes the great attraction of the country? It is difficult to specify in few words. The charms are so many and varied. The health-giving breezes, the beauty of the women, the straightforward honesty of the men, the innate refinement even of the poorest classes, and, in addition to all this, the exquisite beauty and variety of the scenery, equalled in but few places, surpassed in none.

 

>

As we write, visions of breezy hilltops clothed in the exquisite purple and gold of heather and gorse rise before our view; visions of seas of the deepest blue, reflecting clouds of swan-like whiteness; visions of leafy vales on their way to the distant sea; of rugged tors crowning the moorland heights, unchanged and majestic as in the days of creation; of white cottages nestling amid the wealth of blossoming orchards; of verdant fields whose greenery is intensified by the deep Indian red of the soil; of the thousand and one beauties that chain our hearts and make Devonshire a memory which can only cease with life.

<21> Of course, everything I've told so far, about myself, could be merely incidental. As Smith writes, "there are many stories to be told and many different and divergent storytelling occasions that call for and forth contextually marked and sometimes radically divergent narratives of identity" (1998, 109).

<22> Here then, in fact, could be THE beginning: "Reconstruction is currently soliciting articles...for its Summer 2002 special issues, 'Auto/bio/geography: Considering Space and Identity'" [9]. But I am not being completely honest now, for before Reconstruction, an earlier solicitation: "CALL FOR PAPERS: Texts of Testimony: Autobiography, Life-Story Narratives and the Public sphere. We invite proposals for papers [etc.]" [10]. And before this, an even earlier one: "CALL FOR PAPERS: From 23rd -- 25th March 2001 Landscapes and Politics Conference [etc.]" [11]. Each "beginning" has a different context with its own demands, all of which can still be traced here. My text, like the graffiti that I encounter, is criss-crossed with previous marks, white-washed only to be written over again, as the ideas continue to seep through, asking to be retraced.

Devon: The Shire of the Sea Kings (1908, 7) Devonshire is the Mecca of the modern holiday-maker be he or she in quest of health, rest, change, sunshine, amusement, instruction, or sport...it is generally recognised that the possibilities of Devonshire as one of the most popular travel-centres of the near future are practically infinite. Exacting indeed must be the intending traveller who cannot find the locality suitable to his or her taste or requirements within the four corners of a county which can offer you at once the mildness of Madeira or Monte Carlo, and the bracing and exhilarating air of the Yorkshire moors or the heather-clad mountains of Scotland.

<23> I'd like to tell you another story now, with a different beginning. The ending of this story is perhaps an electronic journal. (Although perhaps not; I admit to having rewritten this potential ending four times now.) Thinking about beginnings and endings of those stories called autobiographical, Mark Freeman writes that "the outcome in question serv[es] as the organizing principle around which the story is told"; how does one "decide which facts are pertinent unless one already has a story in mind?" (20). The self that is written in autobiography depends very much on context, on aim, on agenda, on tactics, on strategy. Returning to Smith, "autobiographical practices become occasions for restaging subjectivity, and autobiographical strategies become occasions for the staging of resistance" (1993, 156).

The Devon Guide (1935, 7) No artist could do justice with the brush, no writer with the pen, to the manifold beauties of Devon. There is a variety of scenery which is truly amazing...flowery lanes, sweet with the scent of honeysuckle, picture villages of thatched homesteads, safely sheltering in little golden-sanded coves, the misty purple moor, where, in the evening, fancy might so easily conjure up a dancing fairy ring or see the ghost of daring highwaymen galloping down the road; for everything is possible in Devon, where so little changes; and the brave figures of the past, who loved beautiful Devon enough to fight and die for her, will touch you with soft fingers everywhere you go in the by-ways and ancient towns and villages, if only you have the imagination and understanding in your heart to remember the brave dreams that Devon has lived.

<24> In this next story, the self that is being recited is a different "I" to the ones writing this article. This story begins when a woman gets onto a train at her local station, and sits waiting for it to move off. She looks out of the window, and her attention is caught. Next to the name of the station, St. Thomas, is another inscription, in scrawled black ink: "Queer City."

Devon County Council Official Handbook (1953, 1) The unceasing pilgrimage to Devon from all parts of the globe is sufficient evidence of world-wide renown...It enjoys the unswerving loyalty of natives and the unstinted praise of visitors. It lays a magic spell upon all and sundry. Those who have tasted its delights return to them again and again; those who know it only by report cherish the hope of making a close acquaintance with it. There will be none to deny that in the rich variety of its attractions it has few equals.

<25> This woman has not been living in this town for long. She has moved here from a much bigger city. In that much bigger city she has left her partner, with whom she performs her lesbian becoming, and is now performing the long distance relationship. At times, in this new-to-her town, she feels her self disappearing. Here, in this iconic, idyllic, tourist conjured, envisaged, promoted, circulated and recirculated place -- which presumably bears little resemblance to the lives of any of its actual inhabitants -- here, she feels there is no place for her to be. There is no place for her to be seen. She is not seen. She is not considered. She is, indeed, she feels, unfigured. Of course, this place could be almost any other place where she feels too few. Which is, in fact, most places. However, this story is very much about a specific place, and a specific time -- that moment when she looked out the train window and read "Queer City." Whilst it struck her as a ridiculous assertion, given that St. Thomas is not known for its cultural diversity, it also made her ponder.

Tourist Board Description (2001, n.p.) Welcome to the West Country, England's foremost holiday region offering every visitor something special. This is a land of dramatic coastline, beautiful countryside and 4000 years of heritage with a warm climate matched by warm hospitality...Wherever you go in the West Country you will see some of the most wonderful scenery and most spectacular coastline in England...Inland the West Country has some of the most outstanding natural beauty that the English countryside has to offer; visit picture postcard villages with thatched cottages, stately homes with their glorious landscaped gardens, pubs in riverside settings...This is a place of palm trees and flowers, boat trips, rock pools and sandcastles.

<26> Here again, then, all these years later, the same, and now unavoidably mythical, topography of the region. Simon Trezise, in his study of West Country literature, states that the combination of topos, place, with graphe, "writing'" can be used to "suggest how a landscape, once recorded in words, combines solid geographical features with interpretation and a textual presence" (13). I wonder about the possibility, however, of even solid geographical features, because what you choose to see depends on where you are, and the direction you look. Identifying features, then, is perhaps already an interpretation. Therefore all topographical renditions could be more accurately termed autotopographical, a term which would recognise the act of locational interpretation involved in all productions and reproductions of landscapes.

<27> The Tourist Board topography reproduces the landscape as a series of symbols, amongst them: horseriding, sunbathing, surfing, swimming, walking, wildlife zones, castles.

<28> Reading against this Tourist Board topography, she found -- or perhaps, sensing her own dematerialisation, she actively sought and created -- another. One located in the various markings on various Devon surfaces. There, on the wall, in front of her: "Fucking Queers." In the bus-stop in the middle of Dartmoor, within the heart of so-called rural bliss, "Andrew 4 James, Gay Brats." In the underpasses of Torquay, the English Riviera, "Fucking Gay." In a forgotten diary, on a train platform, curiously, "James is double gay." On one seaside esplanade after another, "Homos" "Perverts." Here, on these other surfaces, a different rendering of the Devon landscape than that circulated by the Tourist Board.

<29> I'd like to step back from her for a moment, and look instead at the writing she saw. The subject who writes "Fucking Queers" is inscribing those words with a passion and a purpose. And in that inscription the writer is confirming a) her or his non-queerness and therefore her or his social "normativity" or acceptability b) that she or he is not one of them and therefore c) that she or he is one of "us" -- the majority -- and finally d) that he or she shares the socially predominant and often endorsed attitude to homosexuality [12]. "Danger Queer Ahead."

<30> In that writing, through these various confirmations, her or his heterosexuality is being performed and maintained. Even though the writing is usually about someone else, it is that very someone else that reflects back onto the writer a heterosexual identity.

<31> The Other marked in the writing serves as "that which I am not."

<32> Each time the homophobic inscription is written, the heterosexuality of the writing subject is acted out.

<33> Moreover, such writing tends to be done in the presence of, or with, a peer group. So, this acting out of heterosexuality through homophobic inscriptions made against an other could then be read as an acting out of an acceptable identity in public.

<34> Additionally, even when the writing subject leaves the scene, these writings remain public assertions, assertions of an identity that occur then both in the moment of writing and after that event.

<35> As Smith notes about autobiography, it is "always a gesture toward publicity, displaying before an impersonal public an individual's interpretation of experience" (1993, 159). I would like to read, then, these writings, on these walls, as autobiographical productions, in which the production itself produces the sense of self, rather than the other way around.

<36> This vandalism is performative writing, performing heterosexuality both in the moment of inscription and after the event. Incidentally, it seems that the kids have cottoned on to the notion of "performativity."

<37> In addition to this production of identity through assertion, such writings, in their explicit anti-homosexuality also serve to produce the space in which they appear as a heterosexual space. Irrespective of actual present bodies in this space, this writing stands in for the heterosexual body and continues to speak and perform a discourse of normative heterosexuality.

<38> Let me return to the scene of the encounter between the woman and this less-than-idyllic topography that she had composed. What is surprising in this encounter is that whilst the woman felt herself entirely absent from the Tourist Board imaginings, in these other inscriptions she sensed herself rematerializing, because those words, "Fucking Homos'" were spoken to her. These potential words of hate admitted that she was, at least, a possibility. Continuously confronting those words, she realised that far from being out of sight or mind, she was, in fact, very much there. Ironically, then, the homophobic graffiti interpellated her, and gave her a space to be. Those words, intended to only ever oppress, actually performed beyond their intentions enabling her, in turn, to perform. If the act of homophobic inscription produces a version of heterosexuality, then presumably a different act might enable a different subject. Just as autobiographical writing can be a mechanism of disciplinary control -- only certain subjects and certain stories are accepted and repeated- so too can it be a site of resistance, a potential site for forging other subjects and other stories.

<39> Alongside the other writing, her own now spoke, staging a dialogue. The "I" being written in that "I Was Here'" is hugely important, not merely as an obvious assertion of presence and existence, but as a willing taking on of the name. In the other inscriptions, the first person is always absent. "You are Gay"; "Sarah Gendle is a fucking dyke." There is never any agency. Homosexuality is always about someone else. Here, though, the "I" speaks for its self. Moreover, the "I" is not posited as an "am" -- but is left unfixed as the focus immediately shifts to the space, away from individual claims to identity. We do not know what she "was" only what the space "was" -- and might not be any longer. But that "was" draws attention to the materiality of space and to the embodiment of space, making explicit but simultaneously challenging the previous production of the space as exclusively heterosexual [13].

<40> The taking of this "I" is a tactical act, a tactical acting, conducted in social space, in which the identity is as much constructed in that acting, as the space is.

<41> As she writes her own inscription, she performs into existence a particular self, in that specific time and place, for a specific purpose. Here, on this wall, it is her autobiographical assertion that gives her an identity. Of course, she takes up an identity that has been offered to her, and that is already in circulation. Anything else is an impossibility. And of course, like those other writings, her own may perform beyond her intentions. But her assuming of this identity, here, is intended as an interruption in that reiterative homophobia that promotes and produces certain socially acceptable versions of self, whilst condemning others. She may well take on the identity of the vandal, even -- and yes, it could be read as mimicry or parody, with the use of the phrase "I was here" producing a deliberate echo of other graffiti, whilst the rhyme hints at playfulness rather than anger. Yet she refuses to perform the identity of the writer in the same way, instead challenging those inscriptions which, in their ceaseless repetitions, serve to determine who can speak and what can be spoken.

<42> I would like to end by returning to another self. I get onto a train at my local station, and sit waiting for it to move off. I look out of the window, and my attention is caught.

<43> (Perhaps, then, this was where the story began, and the narrative so far is merely a fictional device disguised as truth, a strategic tactic that lets me end up here? Or perhaps this "return" is the strategic tactic?)

<44> Who knows where she is now? Or in fact what she is? Or indeed what others "I"'s have been prompted by her explicit, strategic staging of identity as a means to remark and remake place; an intervention enabling reinvention. Writing of autobiographical manifestos, Smith contends that "the manifesto offers an arena in which the subject can insist on identity in service to an emancipatory politics, even if...that identity is 'assumed'" (1993, 157). Perhaps other assumed identities and other potential politics have already passed through here for as Smith and Julia Watson assert, "the tactics of resistance are regenerative" (13). Here and now, who knows what that there and then might have become, and what the landscape of Devon might yet be.

<45> Returning, finally, to autobiography, and the words of Philippe Lejeune: "What illusion to believe that we can tell the truth, and to believe that each of us has an individual and autonomous existence! How can we think that in autobiography it is the lived life that produces the text, when it is the text that produces the life!" [14]. Of course, this article is simply another text, and the sometimes supposedly autobiographical texts that it cites are always already, like all texts, socially written.

Post-Script

<46> Months later, she revisits the scene of the crime and is not surprised to find that the wall has been repainted. Already new inscriptions are making themselves heard, ugly representations of bloated, naked women, defensively huge erect penises, boasts of bored pubescent youths -- "Tom shagged Tina here, 10/7/2001." And underneath it all, a hint of pink, a trace of something else, a different text. The wall is a constantly changing palimpsest. Listen closely.

Notes

[1] For a description of Bubbling Tom see Pearson (2000). [^]

[2] See Pearson and Shanks (2001). [^]

[3] See González (1995). [^]

[4] Cresswell provides a reading of graffiti which complements many of the ideas I raise in this paper. Having only discovered this text after I had spent some time working on the idea of "Autotopography" I was encouraged to find that Cresswell also reads graffiti as a "'tactic', of the dispossessed -- a mobile and temporary set of meanings that insert themselves into the interstices of the formal spatial structure (roads, doors, walls, subways, and so on) of the city" (47). [^]

[5] Such interpretations of graffiti practices can be found at the web site of the Institute of Graffiti -- http://graffiti.netbase.org/. See also Walter J. Ong (1990). [^]

[6] Informing this text are Judith Butler (1990) and (1993), and Michel Foucault (1976). [^]

[7] For more on this imperative "coming out story" see Biddy Martin (1988). [^]

[8] See also Smith (1993). [^]

[9] From ART-ALL@JISCMAIL.AC.UK [^]

[10] http://www/livjm.ac.uk/inside/schools/mcca/research/lch/testimony/6332.asp [^]

[11] http://www.english.upenn/edu/CFP/archive/current [^]

[12] For a similar reading of physical attacks on gay men, see Wayne D.Myslik (1996). [^]

[13] See Gill Valentine (1993) and (1996) and Nicky Gregson and Gillian Rose (2000). [^]

[14] Cited in Smith & Watson (1996), 16. [^]

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---. Subjectivity, Identity and the Body: Women's Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993.

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