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Stella Flanders as an Instrument of Spacetime

October 4, 2016 by Namita Bhattacharya

Harvey states that in the relational view of space “an event, process, or thing cannot be understood by appeal to what exists only at some point. It crystallizes out of a field of flows” (Harvey, 14) Goat Island is an example of an event/process/thing crystallized out of a fields of flows. The Reach is a story told by the point of view of Stella Flanders, the oldest resident of Goat Island. She is an embodied of the place because she alone can tell the human narrative of the island, as she has never left. But it is not just own experiences that make the place… but rather the web of communication and stories she tells (and even the stories she doesn’t tell, like those of the death of the child molester or the crib-death of an infant) that make up the fields of flows from which Goat Island is constructed. Without this field of flows, Goat Island is just a space but with it, it is a place. It is a place that cannot “be understood by appeal to what exists only at some point”–a place in spacetime. Stella’s narrative is a good example of how we understand things/events/processes in term of relational spacetime. Her own narrative capture sections of other narratives; her memories and visions include people who she may not fully know (like the man from the mainland who once upon a time played cribbage on the island) but whose own experiences help to crystallize Goat Island out of the field of flows. This woven mesh of experiences, memories, dreams, and visions are what define Goat Island in the relational view of spacetime.

Filed Under: Oct 4

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