Who's Going to Cross this Border?Travel Metaphors, Material Conditions,

and Contested Places

Nedra Reynolds

In "Writingas Travel,or Rhetoriconthe Road,"GregoryClark outlinesa social theory of writing opposed to the rhetorical construction ofterritories. Troubled by metaphorsof territory that attempt to describediscoursecommunities,Clarkproposesanalternativeinwhichhe recon­ceives"rhetoricas somethingmore like travel" (11). In his view, discur­sive exchangewould "function in the transientspace of travel." That is,to write as travelers, we would move across discursive spaces thatcontinuallyshift,andwewouldstoppolicingtheboundariesof discoursecommunities.Ourtask in compositionwouldbeto teachstudentsto crossboundariesand to challengeterritorialconceptionsof identity.

AlthoughClark's essayechoesthefascinationwith"movement"thatwefindinanumberofcontemporarytheories,thetravelmetaphorimplieslimited possibilities for women, workers, and the differently-abled. Inaddition,Clark's concernwith territoriesmightresult from an erroneousassumptionthat places-or theirboundaries-are stable,which is a wayofdefiningplacethatgeographerswouldreject.Travelmetaphorsandtherhetoric of mobility leave the materiality of place unexamined; therhetoricof territorialitymust acknowledgethat places too-and notjustidentities-are always in flux.

Before going further, I should acknowledgemy own position as awriterworkingin a locationthat is far fromhome.Even though I want toquestionthetravelmetaphor,I amalsoentirelycomplicitousin itsappeal.Draftingthis essaywhile on sabbaticalleave in England, I write this, inpart, as one who traveled here to write, as one who embodies the veryprivilege of traveling that Clark assumes.I From this uneasy position,certainthat travelisn't foreveryoneandisn't onething,I hopeto illustratethat currenttheoreticalnotionsoftravel,joumeying, andbordercrossingmust be temperedby the material realitiesof people's lives.

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Clark's article is informed generally by a number of "travelingtheories" and invokes the itinerant sophists so important to rhetoricalhistory. Yet it relies on a problematicbourgeois idealof travel that doesnot fullyrecognizethattravelinginvolvesdifficulties,economicrealities,and safety issues; it is also exclusionaryby race, sex, class, and abilities.Even if the traveler isnotwell-to-door highlyeducated-James Cliffordremindsus thatmigrantworkers,exiles,andnomadsalsotravel-westernculture generally admires those who travel for pleasure and enlighten­ment, and considers the well-traveledmore sophisticated,more experi­enced, or more able to understand cultural differences.Tourism-bothconcept and experience-is not synonymous with travel; in the elitecircles of'truetravelers, touristsare shunned,especiallythosewhogo ongroup bus tours. Travel writer Paul Theroux insists that tourists are notrealtravelers,who,he says,goitalone.(Inhisdefinitionofgenuine travel,I can onlybe a tourist.) In anycase, there areclearlydegreesof travel andmany different forms-all of them complicatedby material factors andthe interplay of identity with place. No single notion of travel exists,althoughmanyofthediscoursesofculturalcriticismseemtopromoteoneview (Wolft).

Clark's proposal ignores the materialside: the real consequencesofthe romantic myth of traveling. Most importantly, imaginingwriting astravel might mean silencing or erasing those whose labor makes travelpossible-or the conditions that make writing possible. For example,didn't servants accompany bourgeois Victorian travelers, and weren'ttheyalsotraveling?(Clifford33).Furthermore,it's importanttoacknowl­edge that not everyone travels-including those who are burdened bydomestic labor or responsibilities, those who are physically disabled,thosewhocan't affordthetimeoffortheexpense,thosewho simplycan'tleave home, Of, quite simply, those who see no need to travel. Thesequestions-when applied to writingas a mode of travel-force us to askwho can afford to write, who has the time and space, or where themotivation to explore new forms of writing might come from.

Still, Clark is tapping into an attractionto travel that has both a longhistory and much contemporary currency. The tradition of touring theContinent-a prerequisite for an educatedyoungman--eontinues todaywithpopularstudyabroadandexchangeprogramsforstudents,andmanyfaculty travel to conductresearchor to teach in foreigncountries.Travelliteratureisahotcommodityinpublishingmarkets,andformsofarmchairtravel (such as the Travel Channel on cable television) contribute toromanticized notions of travel. Faster and cheaper modes of transport

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have made travel more available to the lower middle classes, whileseductive electronic technologies make some of us believe that we cantravel via the Internet. In these ways, the idea that we can now travel withease (that is, if we can afford or have access to the technology) is one ofthe most pervasive and appealing ideas of the current era.

As one result of the seduction of movement and the prevalence ofmovement metaphors, many writers are imagining new places where thesilenced might be heard. Margins and borderlands offer women andpeople of color a place from which to speak, a site to resist the center whilefinding or cultivating an alternative voice. And since margins andborderlands are an imagined geography, these places are more accessible.The work of Gloria Anzaldua-e-a bilingual writer who works in multiplegenres-straddles several boundaries and occupies a space in the border­lands, in the "between." Rooted in a premise of exclusion, the idea ofborderlands or margins offers a theory of communication that seems to betruly empowering and liberating. That is, the occupants ofborderlands areoutsiders to the dominant culture; they have some freedom of movementand the ability to see from the outsider perspective precisely because theydo not "belong."

Clark neglects these places for a good reason: these sites raise the veryproblem of territoriality that he wants to avoid. Borderlands and contactzones do depend on a concept of territory. Even though we should notimagine territories as fixed or stable, with clear-cut or rigid boundaries,the empowerment offered by borderlands rests on an assumption thatspeakers and writers are willing to cross lines and to take risks in unknownplaces. In addition, concepts of border crossing and boundary transgres­sion and forms of travel ignore the evidence that in the "real world" peopledon't move around that much, a point I'll return to. In the next section, I'llshare some of the work that further unpacks the travel metaphor and tumto the work of composition researchers who have theorized writing asmaterial.

Complicating TravelPerhaps best known for recent theoretical work on travel is anthropologistand ethnographer James Clifford, whose Routes:Traveland Translationin the Late Twentieth Century is an extension of his influential article,"Traveling Cultures." In much of this book, Clifford's purpose is tobroaden the scope of travel to include "an increasingly complex rangeof experiences: practices of crossing and interaction that troubled thelocalism of many common assumptions about culture" (3). What if

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"dwelling," "home," "the local," "the neighborhood" were not seensimply as the opposite of travel but as concepts that make the notion oftravel possible? Clifford's idea of dwelling-in-travel or travel-in-dwell­ing complicates the relationship between the two. Clifford outlines theissue he addresses:

"Traver' denotes more or less voluntary practices of leaving familiarground of difference, wisdom, power, adventure, an altered perspective.These experiences and desires cannot be limited to privileged maleWestemers-although that elite has powerfully defined the terms oftravel orienting modern anthropology. Travel needs to be rethought indifferent traditions and historical predicaments. (90-91)

Clifford acknowledges that feminist theory in particular has complicatedany notion that home is a safe or immobile place and has challenged thebinary oppositions between the private space of home and public spacesabroad. As Janet Wolff points out, Clifford's effort to broaden the notionof travel and to recognize feminism's contribution nonetheless reinscribesthe fundamental problem with travel metaphors. In "On the Road Again:Metaphors of Travel in Cultural Criticism," Wolff analyzes the genderednature of these metaphors and ultimately rejects.them, arguing that somediscourses are "too heavily compromised by the history of their usage."Most interested in how the metaphors and ideologies of travel operate,Wolffwrites, "My argument is that just as the practices and ideologies ofactual travel operate to exclude or pathologize women, so the use ofthat vocabulary as metaphor necessarily produces androcentric ten­dencies in theory" (180). She asserts that travel metaphors are rife withserious implications because "there is something intrinsicallymasculineabout travel" (184).

Although she acknowledges the exceptions-that women do traveland that much research has been done, for example, on Victorian ladytravelers-Wolff also believes that the suggestion of "free and equalmobility is itself a deception, since we don't all have the same access tothe road." Interestingly, in spite of her strong objections to travelmetaphors, Wolff finds borderlands, exile, and margins less problematicbecause all imply dislocation from a given and exclusionary place (189).Geographer Geraldine Pratt also sees the promise of borderlands"perhaps because the focus is shifted ... to a socially constructed placein which difference and conflict is constructed and lived" (243). As longas place metaphors do not suggest neutrality, they can certainly provideinspiration for those seeking sites of resistance.

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Nevertheless, since spatial metaphors construct reality and don'tsimply reflect it, the problem with travel metaphors remains. Travelmetaphors construct our cultural notions about acts of traveling becauseliberating travel metaphors-such as those that Clark employs-repre­sent only men's experiences with travel. What we need, as Clifford says,is a way of talking about travel that acknowledges and includes a range ofexperiences with or relationships to travel-and, I would add, to place. Inthis vein, Pratt, who is concerned that the rhetoric of movement privilegesdetachment from place, recommends more attention to the meaning ofdwelling, a point she takes from Stuart Hall (242-43). In particular, wemust ask how can languages of travel and dwelling acknowledge funda­mental differences in people's socio-spatial worlds and their unequalaccess to modes of travel or their reluctance to cross borders.

Whether the keyword is travel orjourney or border crossing, how weget there is a crucial part of the equation that is often conveniently ignored.Why do we go, with whom, and under what conditions? These areprecisely the questions about materiality that travel metaphors neglect. AsChristina Haas points out in the context of literacy, "ignoring the materi­ality of literacy, its basis in bodily movements and habits, is no longerpossible" (227). I want to tum now to two studies ofwriting that do insiston materiality and that resist a theory of writing based on some form ofdisembodied movement.

Moving Toward the MaterialMore composition scholars are beginning to recognize that social theoriesofwriting require a direct acknowledgment of the material ways in whichwriters and texts interact. In WritingTechnology:Studieson the Materi­ality of Literacy, Haas makes the most fully developed case for therelationship between writing and the material world. Starting from thepremise that writing and technology constitute one another, Haas wantsto see writing as an "embodied practice" and its tools as cultural artifacts.She is interested inbodily actsofwriting andthe relationshipbetween awriterand his or her text, at least as it can be investigated via empirical methods:

The spatial and temporal metaphors that writers use to describe their textsense problems ... then, make a great deal of sense because computerstransform writing in the realm of time and space-that is, the realm of thebodily. It is through these worlds of time and space that writers move asthey produce written discourse.

Hence, the body ... is the mechanism by which the mediation of themental and the material occurs. (226)

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To makeherargumentaboutthematerialityof literacy,Haasconsid­ers the act of writing in terms of a connectionbetween the body andfamiliar practices (she makes a passing reference to Pierre Bourdieu'sconceptof'rhabitus," which I'll return to below);however,she concen­tratesprimarilyonindividualwritersandtheirrelationshipsto theirtexts.What Haasdoesn't pursue is the ways in whichbodiesengagein actsofwritingundercertainphysicalormaterialconditions.Thebody,ofcourse,is imprintedwith and affectedby the spatialand socialworldin whichitmoves.Whilethe writer in the garret is not an imageendorsedby socialtheories, it's neverthelesstrue that writersneed a place to work: a placeto sit, a surface,and lighting(see Brodkey).

When Virginia Woolf called for a room of one's own for womenwriters,shemeantit literally,asAnneAronsonrecognizesinher study ofseveraladultwomenwriters,"Composingin a MaterialWorld:WomenWritingin Spaceand Time."Aronsonidentifiesthe challengesof spaceandtimethatmakeit difficultto engagefullyinprocesswritingforallbutthe firmly middle-class, middle-aged student with a spacious home,grown children, and a supportive husband. The results of Aronson'ssurveys and interviews provide support for Woolf's position andchallenge Ursula LeGuin' s claim that one needs only paper and pen towrite (see Aronson 297).

Metaphorically,perhaps, writing can be travel for the women ofAronson's study. Yet, in the ordinaryworld, writing often occurs in acornerof the bedroomor at a kitchentable in a full household(Aronson289-90).Despiteourfundamentaltheoreticalstakein writingas a socialact, the social circumstancesof writing-being surrounded by otherpeople who have needs or desires--ean distract from the writing, fromgettingtheworkdone.WhileClarkis rightto questionthe consequencesof the territorial notions of discourse communities,writing as traveldisregards the material conditions necessary for the labor of writingandignores the culturaldifferencesthat writers facewhile on the road.

Haas and Aronsonprovide two differentways of seeingwriting asembodiedpractice.' I want to approachthe same goal from a differentdirection in an effort to understandhow embodiedpracticesdevelop inrealandimaginedplaces(seeSoja).My project,therefore,is informedbycultural geography, qualitative research, and a sense of the materialshapedby ordinaryand mundanelandscapes.Startingfromthe view sofamiliar in cultural and postmodemtheories that space is socially con­structed (and that identitiesare constructedas bodiesmove through thesocio-spatial world), I set out to discover students' sense of place-

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however contested and layered it may be-and what their experiencesmight tell us about metaphors of traveling, joumeying, orborder crossing.

In order to begin the process of imagining writing through and againsttravel metaphors, I have been studying geography for several months(with an emphasis on cultural geography). Given the fortunate circum­stances of being a tenured professor who earned a sabbatical leave, I wasable to make arrangements to live in England and to study geography atthe University of Leeds during the spring of 2000. I must admit to"going out in search of difference,"the very criticism that Clifford makesof anthropological fieldwork (85). As someone who only recently ac­quired the means to travel (the money and the time), and as someone whois not immune to the cultural capital of travel (especially as fellowacademics and intellectuals practice it), I could not resist the temptationto move away from the United States-from my university and profes­sional contexts-for a semester abroad. After six months, I can nowunderstand why travelers have insisted on the potential of travel toenlighten or to change one's point of view-at least temporarily ..This iswhy feminists have often argued for the outsider perspective; it alsoexplains why cross-disciplinary research isgrowing..Anxious to make thefamiliar assumptions ofmy own discipline seem strange, I devoted myselfto trying to understand another discipline in a different country. Inparticular, since composition studies as a recognizable discipline doesn'texist in the United Kingdom, I was forced to think differently.

In the next section, I suggest some of the contributions that culturalgeography can make to analyzing difference and to rethinking ourfondness for metaphors of movement. After an overview of culturalgeography, I tum to a discussion of some of my qualitative research in acultural geographies class at Leeds. The mapping interviews that I sharebelow suggest that travel can be local; that even local travel can involverisks or uncertainty; and that most people stick very close to home.Moving through the world-whether from one country to another or oneneighborhood to another-does not occur casually.

Cultural Geography: The Study of DifferenceDespite stereotypical notions, geography is not simply the study of statecapitals, rivers, and major exports. Cultural geography, in particular, isthe study of the interaction of humans with the earth, and it may informand be informed by sociology, anthropology, history, and other disci­plines. Cultural geographers study the ways in which cultures are con­tested spatially and how identity and power are reproduced in the

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everyday-in mundane, ordinary landscapes. Firmly located in the socialsciences, but with some influence from the humanities.' culturalgeography's most significant contribution "may well be to insist on themateriality of the terms place, space, landscape, location" (Gregory eta1. 8). According to Linda McDowell, cultural geographers examine

howtheincreasinglyglobalscaleofculturalproductionandconsumptionaffects relationshipsbetween identity,meaningand place. Attention isfocusedon theways in whichsymbols,rituals,behavioursandeverydaysocialpracticesresultinasharedsetor setsofmeaningsthatare,togreateror lesser degrees, place-specific.Thus a geographic perspective hasbecome central to the cultural-studies project more widely.("TransformationU 147)

Generally, cultural geographers insist that the construction of identity beunderstood as a spatial process, but a process that resists what MichaelKeith and Steve Pile call a "one-to-one correspondence between theimage and consumption ofa place and its reality" (7). For example, justbecause someonespends his or her whole life in oneplace-a neighbor­hood or a house-the result is not a stable identity. In their attempttherefore to understand how identities are constructed in space-throughexperiences with place--cultural geographers insist on explicitly mate­rial notions of culture, not abstract ones. In Maps of Meaning, PeterJackson approaches cultural geography through Raymond Williams'cultural materialism, resisting explanations of culture that are divorcedfrom materiality. In Williams' view, "culture cannot simply be reducedto ideology, narrowly conceived, because it is part of a social and politicalorder that is materiallyproduced" (Jackson 47). According to Jackson,Williams' concept of structures of feeling is particularly important forcultural geographers because it connects to the important geographicalidea ofa "sense of place" (39).

In MarxismandLiterature,Williams identifies structures of feelingas "meanings and values as they are actually lived and felt" and "specifi­cally affective elements of consciousness and relationships." Intended asa cultural hypothesis, structures of feeling can be used to understand artand literature in particular-that is, "their specific kinds of sociality"(132-33). Williams asserts that social forms become social consciousness"only when they are lived, actively, in real relationships" (130). Culturalgeographers such as Jackson are attracted to Williams' concept ofstructures of feeling because experiences within landscapes or the builtenvironment are often very much like responses to art and literature.

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These responses are materially produced but are not simply aesthetic.Jackson also sees a relationship between structures of feeling and

Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Habitus attempts to represent how socialbehaviors (or habits) are inscribed on the body, which is a result of "thesedimented history ofparticular practices" (Jackson 39). The concept ofhabitus brings together social class and learned behaviors, the body andthe material, and habits and practices. Like Williams' structures offeeling, habitus is an attempt to theorize the social as an actively presentprocess. The two concepts also have in common the analysis of classdifferences. Williams acknowledges the historical variability of struc­tures of feeling, as well as "the complex relation of differentiatedstructures of feeling to differentiated classes" (134). In his general studyof "taste," Bourdieu proposes habitus as a structure through which toread differences of social identity: "an agent's whole set of practices. . . are both systematic . . . and systematically distinct from thepractices constituting another life-style" (170).

Habitus has become a useful concept for scholars interested in thestudy of social practices. Haas makes use of it in her discussion of themateriality of literacy: "Any embodied practice, including writing, ishabitual ... (cf., Bourdieu) .... [a] habit is a kind of remembering in andby the body" (228). Significantly, Clifford also finds it useful in hisconsideration of anthropology's changing positions on travel: "we mayfind it useful to think of the 'field' as a habitus rather than as a place, acluster of embodied dispositions and practices" (69). Bourdieu's conceptof habitus, as these references to it illustrate, doesn't neglect the body ormaterial circumstances; both together form practices.

Williams' concept of structures offeeling, especially when combinedwith Bourdieu's concept of habitus, gives cultural geographers a morecomplex notion of a sense of place, one that attempts to account fordifference (Jackson 39). This is important because a sense of place cannotbe treated as singular or stable; neither can the identities that are shapedwithin it. Places (or territories) are contested by competing and shiftinginterpretations of their meanings, and these meanings are tied to signs andsymbols that carry cultural weight. (A telling example is bell hooks'"Homeplace," a radical reinvention of home as a site of resistance.)

Habitus and structures offeeling, when applied to a material sense ofplace, might help to account for the gap between metaphors of travel andthe tendency for most people to stay home. As a set of embodied practices,habitus keeps us in our place, so to speak, or defines the tactics andstrategies we may rely on for moving through the world. Modes of

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transport or preferred pathways are part of one's habitus, as are clothingand style, gestures and movement, accent and expressions. As the inter­view data below illustrates, a person's sense of place-while a result ofmany layered effects-is quite directly related to his or her body in space.'

Studying how people construct and reproduce a sense of place is oneof the greatest challenges to cultural geographers. Such an investigationis difficult methodologically and requires qualitative research, sincecheck-the-box surveys cannot capture the complex relationship betweenidentity and place. More important, however, is the need to account forand analyze the implications of different senses of place-what does itmatter or what does it mean? Through the interpretive framework ofcultural geography and the use of qualitative methods, I have tried tounderstand what university students' sense of place might illuminateabout our understanding of cultural difference, and what the implicationsmight be for a material approach to learning and writing.

In order to explore the relationship between the spatial and the socialin a concrete and practical way, I interviewed eight students in a CulturalGeographies class at the University of Leeds about their experiences ingetting around the city and in living and working there.' My purposewas to explore the everyday material existence of university students asit was played out in the "mundane landscape" of their lives: the campus,the surrounding area, their housing, and the otherplaces of their social andspatial lifeworlds. My questions were these: What places did thesestudents believe were contested, or which places did they avoid or feelexcluded from? How are their experiences in space shaped by theiridentities as students? In what ways do they name difference geo­graphically?

These managed conversations took place with volunteers from thethird-year Cultural Geographies module in which I was a participantobserver in the spring term of 2000. While participants were certainly notrepresentative of the student population at Leeds-they were all white,third-year students seeking BA degrees in geography-I believe that theymake valuable contributions to our understanding of the relationshipbetween the social and the spatial. Here's how the interview projectbegan. During a workshop early in the term, the lecturer asked studentsto do aversion of amental mapping exercise as a sort of prewriting activityfor their research project on a place new to their experience. Tom (allnames are pseudonyms) gave pairs of students a photocopy of an Ord­nance Survey map of Leeds and asked them to identify four types of areas:no go, ethnic, conflict, and normal. Using colored markers, students were

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to shade in or outline these types of areas and discuss their shadings.I was immediatelystruck-and troubled-by Tom's terms for these

categories.Iwantedto ask:"Normaltowhom?Nogo forwhom?Doesn'tit depend on gender, race, class, modes of transport, and abilities?" Ididn't raise these questionsthat day, but the classroomactivity sparkedmy interest in one-on-one interviewswith students about their mentalmapsof Leeds.I combined,then,a formof mentalmappingwithone-on­onesemi-structuredinterviews."Theinterviews,liketheactivityinclass,asked studentsto sit with an OS map of Leeds and colored markers andto talk about their personal definitions of and experiences with thefollowing categories (changed slightly from those in class): "no go,""ethnic," and "desirable."

The interview transcripts (a total of approximately seventy-eightpages) touch on a range of issueswell beyond the three categories.Theeight students(fourmenandfourwomen)talkabouttheirmainmodesoftransportand thehabitualroutes theyuse in gettingaroundthe city; theydescribe types of housing that work as signifiers for them; they shareanecdotes of feeling fearful or excluded; they discuss how they have"come to know" about certain places; and they make comparisonsbetweenLeedsandtheirownhometowns.For thepurposesof this essay,however,I will limitmy discussionto the boundariesand territoriesthatconstitutestudents' experiencesin theeverydayandto theways inwhichtheir identities as students determine their experiences with space andplace. Most strikingly,analysisof the interviewtranscripts supports theargument of feminist geographers Geraldine Pratt and Susan Hanson"that most people are fixed in and by space. Understanding theseprocesses provides one way of seeing differences as socially con­structed" (12).

Confined Spatiality: Keeping Yourself to YourselfIn "Geography and the Constructionof Difference,"Pratt and Hansonpoint out the tension betweenpostmodemviews of experiencingspaceand more everydayand down-to-earthrealities:

Much has been made of the shrinking world, of the increasing ease oftravel and communication, and of the resulting homogenisation of spacearound the globe. Although the world is indeed increasingly well con­nected, we must hold this in balance with the observation that most peoplelive intensely loeallives; their homes, work places, recreation, shopping,friends, and often familyare all located within a relatively small orbit.

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The simpleand obvious fact that overcomingdistancerequirestime andmoney means that the everyday events of daily life are well groundedwithin a circumscribedarena. (10-11; emphasisadded)

A passage from my interview with "Elaine," which highlights students'reluctance to stray from well-defined student areas, offers considerablesupport for Pratt and Hanson's assertion. Here's the passage in full:

I: Anything else you want to say about your map of Leeds?E: Not many details are there? [laughs]I: Well, why do you say that? Why do you suppose that is?E: It's just a general knowledgethat I don't really have of the area; I

think I know Leeds well, but all I know is Headingleyto the citycenter. I know the city center quite well, so that's a general lack ofdetails thing.

I: Well, do you think that's because you're a student?E: Uh-huh.I: And your particularplace and time in life?E: I think sobut not necessarily,becausewhenI wasworking in Comet

[a retail store]back in the summertherewerepeoplethere that didn'thave a clue about north of Leeds or where I live.

I: Any part?E: Yeah, and most of them had lived there all their lives.I: So it's not necessarilyabout being a student?It's about ...E: It's like your neighborhoodis your whole life, isn't it? It's like your

surroundings; it's like how, say, in this year we're living here andsomeoneelse is doing somethingelse, but this is our area so peoplego back to their neighborhoods;they identify it to a point with theirneighborhoodand that's if you've got everythingthere then youdidn't needto goout of it andbecauseifyou're safein thisareawhereyou live because that's where home is.

I: Soyouhaven't reallyfeltcompelledtoexploretheareasof Leedsthatyou don't know?

E: No, not really, no. I suppose it brings questionsof home into it,doesn't it? BecauseHeadingleyis my home at the minute, sotherefore that's where I'm going to spend the majority of my time.

All eight of the participants comment on their own neighborhoodsand their limited knowledge of the city of Leeds. Mitchell says, "I don'treally know too many areas of Leeds because when you're a studentyou're only really going between the university, your house, and the citycenter." He repeats the point about his ignorance of Leeds twice more.Anna puts the issue rather succinctly: "Because I have no need to go very

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far out, my knowledge of Leeds is pretty much concentrated into thatstudent area or where students live." Zoe compares her limited sense ofplace in Leeds with her similar experience in London: "I don't really feellike I know Leeds at all because I only know a narrow corridor. [ ... ] InLondon I only knew my borough; I only knew that really well; I didn'tknow that much of the rest of London at all."? Julian believes that mostpeople's familiar territory occurs within a limited radius: "I only knowsort of a limited area. I think you'll find this with everybody else: they'vegot a sort of chunk of Leeds that they know quite well, a sort ofradius. I'vegot a radius of about five miles either side of which I know quite well­which is everywhere within walking distance basically."

Some students are quite matter-of-fact about their ignorance of thecity, while others seem a bit regretful that they have not done more toexplore a wider range of places. Sheila, in particular, seems to feel that asa geographer, she has somehow let down that side of herself; however, sheexplains her tendency to stick to student areas in terms of security andconvenience:

S: I'm totallyashamedofmyselffor the factthat I've just basicallybeenon this road here, which isjust basicallywhere students live. Thetown center and ...

I: Between the city center and ... ?S: I'd say even as far as Headingley.I: Just up the A660, right?S: That's it. That's the areawhere studentsall live; that's where all the

pubs are.The clubsare in town.The areathat I've functionedin is sorestricted I'm almost ashamedof myself.

I: It's not because you're afraid; it's because ...S: No, it's becauseeverythingIwantis here [tapsfingeronmap],which

is really bad. I've got friendswho've gone out into the countrysideand exploredall around,but I'm bored with that because that's whatit's like when I'm at home [in Wales]. Everything I want has beenalongthis road, and studentsdo feelquite securethere, I suppose, aswell.

I: Well it's their culture.S: Yeah,put it this way: [ ... ] I wouldn't not go to Bramley for the day

because I'm a student,but I wouldn't want to live there amongst ...I'd want to live ...

I: With students?S: Yeah! Definitely,and that's probably some sort of security issue

there, and there's four cinemas, there's all my friends, there's loadsof pubs, and it's just ...

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I: Convenient?S: It's convenient,yeah,whichI'm quiteashamedof. I should've been

around a bit more but ...I: Well, it's aboutwho you are right now, I guess.

Students are able to name the reasons for their restricted knowledgeof Leeds-namely, the convenience and a desire to share in "studentlife," defined in part by being surrounded by other students. If "every­thing they need is there" in the student neighborhoods, why should (white,middle-class) college students venture into unknown territory? They relyvery much on what friends and acquaintances have told them about certainplaces-"things they'd heard"-as well as their own impressions ofplaces formed through their regular routes through Leeds. Except forSheila, they accept their confined spatiality as a fact of life, a realityconnected either to their position as students or to their given geographiclocation. As McDowell observes, "for many people in the world, every­day life continues to take place within a restricted locale," and "the'localization' of most of everyday life is indisputable" (Gender 2-3).

Students' identities as students-their embodied practices-keepthem from venturing into certain areas where they have had strongfeelings that they weren't welcome or would feel "out of place." At mysuggestion, students use the term "no go" to name and discuss placeswhere they personally would not feel safe."Anna talks about one "no go"area, determined for her by one (accidental) drive through the area andinformation from others:

A:Iwouldn't feelcomfortablewalkingdownChapeltownatanytimejustbecause I'm obviouslynot .. '. I don't think I would fit in there. I mean,thekids thathang aboutonthe streetsthere, [ ... ] thepeoplewho are sortof my age tend to be hangingaroundin,we call 'em pikeyswhich is likeAdidaspants, and allthe girlshavetheirhair scrapedup onto theirheadsand spiralpermswithblondehair. Justby standingthere, it'd be obviousthat I wasn't one of them, so I just wouldn't stop.

Students are well aware of the features that mark them as students, andthey use these differences to explain their isolation from many areas of thecity. Elaine couldn't really name the specific areas but says of some areasin south Leeds, "Just because of my position in Leeds at the moment asa student, they wouldn't appreciate us going there." When I ask her toelaborate, she admits that she is stereotyping the areas or basing hernotions on hearsay, but she also is clear that her reluctance to enter these

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areas comes from her identity: "Just because I'm, mind, a student withstudent feelings, putting myself into one of these council estates wouldn'tbe a wise thing to do; you just don't go there-for your own safety."

These students have good reasons to worry about their own safety:most of the participants mention incidents when they have experiencedabuse or have felt vulnerable because of crimes against students. Elaineclarifies that things can happen even in daylight, even in residential areas:"I've had little groups of kids throw stones at me and stuff." Liam talksabout being spat upon as he walked by "kids who sit on walls," but heemphasizes that he doesn't take it personally. In naming "no go" areas,Liam describes an area near his house: "There's footpaths down at thebottom of that-I wouldn't actually go up there for fear of getting abuseshouted at me every now and again; well, all students do I suppose, butthen there's bricks in there and I wouldn't walk down that way at night."While he seems quite casual about the verbal abuse, Liam avoids an areawhere greater physical harm could be done. In addition, both Sheila andAnna narrate the details of a crime scheme in this area of Leeds in which(male) students are grabbed off the streets at night, taken to cash points,and forced to withdraw money to give to their attackers. This pattern hasbeen repeated three or four times over a few months, and most studentsare well aware of it.

In less threatening ways, however, students are also made aware thatthey are unwelcome in certain areas, that they are trespassers in areas that"belong" to other social groups. Half of the students interviewed talkabout their tentative status, even in neighborhoods (in this case, HydePark) full of student dwellers. Mitchell says, "I know people who live inthe Hyde Park area and they've had their next door neighbors who've beenAsian come round and knock on their door and say 'Why are you livinghere? This is an Asian area.'" Anna has a similar story to tell about whobelongs in certain neighborhoods and who doesn't:

A: I went to a friend's house [in the Hyde Park area], and we were allsitting in the lounge having a cup of tea when some kids startedclimbing on the bars in front of the windows, climbing across thebars [imitates them]: "Oy, mister, give us this, give us that." Myfriends can't put any of their washing out, and there are literally barsover the windows to stop the kids coming in. Inside the house is theirterritory-as soon as you step outside the house, then it's almostlike it's Asian people's territory.

I: They'll ask you things like ...A: "What are you doing here? What are you doing here?" If you're in

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the way, or if you're wanting to get past them, it's fine: you keepyourself to yourself. But if there's any attempt to mix in any sense,then I'd be nervous about it, definitely. So you tend to sort of keepyourself to yourself and walk with your head high and hope that noone will bother you.

Anna echoeswhatDavid Sibley,in Geographies of Exclusion, callsa liminal zone: spaces of ambiguity where the categories of inside/outside,public/private,or home/streetbecomeblurredor uncertain.Heexplainsthatfor"theindividualorgroupsocializedintobelievingthattheseparationof categories is necessaryor desirable,the liminal zone is asourceof anxiety"(33).If studentsarein theirhomes,theyare"safe,"butAnna's anxietybeginswhenshehasto enterthestreetsandmovethroughthe neighborhood.

Annaandtheotherstudentsdonotchallengetheclaimthattheydon'tbelong; theyrecognizethat otherresidentsare farmorepermanent,withmore of a stake in the area. Somestudentsarewillingto admit that theydon't alwaysmake"good neighbors."Mitchelltalksabouthow studentsdon't care for their houses (because they'll lose their security depositanyway).Elaine,however,describesan"anti-studentsentiment"that sheclaims is held by most locals:"Oh, it's just that the localsthink that wecomein and make loadsof noiseandcreaterubbishandget drunk-thatwe're hooligans. They've just got quite a lot of negative feelingsagainst us."

Sheila thinks the anti-studentattitudesresult from the very limitedform of contactbetween the two groups: the Asian businessesprovideservices to students, and students are interestedin or dependenton theAsiansonly as "serviceproviders."The studentsare consumers,and thebusinessesneed them to survive:

S: Yeah, the only thing I do dislike about [Hyde Park] a lot is the fact thecommunity's so divided-students and the Asian families and busi­nesses. The only thing you ever come into contact with people forunfortunately is to buy burgers from the takeaway or to take taxis.[ ... ] I think that students are really resented by the locals because wecan really misbehave.

I: Despite their economic clout?S: Yeah, when we come back in September (for the summer holidays we

all go home to our respective homes) the taxi drivers always say, "OhI'm so glad to have you back." You know, students do bring most ofthe money into the area's businesses, especially all the takeaways.

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Hyde Park, a neighborhood near the university occupied by bothstudents and Asians, is the epitomeof a contestedplace, where the localbusinesses' economic dependence on students has bred an attendantfeeling of resentment of them." In this space, students realize theireconomic clout but are equally aware of their temporary status asresidents. The mix of social differences-beyond "race" or "class"­causesboundariesorbordersto shiftandslide;thoseunsureof theirplaceuse tactics such as Anna's strategy of "keeping herself to herself' inorder to get through territory that belongs to others.

This raises the question of how students or other "trespassers"recognize boundaries and borders. How do they know when they don'tbelong?Sensingwhereboundarieslieandwhocancrossthemconstitutesa type of knowledgeor understandingthat's extremelydifficult to nameor to research. Julian might claim "intuition," but he depends upon thevisual, as the followingexchange shows:

I: Well,therearen't anypartsof Leedsthatyourecognizeasbeingscary,dangerous?

J: They're the areas that I don't go to; this is the funnything, I know. Ijust knownot to go there.

I: Right,how do you know? You've heard or ...J: Well, I've startedwalkingup towardsit and as soon as I get near it

alarmbells start ringing.You know, becauseyou notice thateverything'sboardedup, there's nobodyabouttheestates,there's lotsofdamage-the wholeplaceisterriblyrundown.It's likewalkingintoa war zone; it's like suddenlyturningup in Bosnia [laughs].

I: So it's physical,actually,kind of ...J: Yeah,you seeburnedoutcars,you seebrokenwindows,you seehigh

securityfenceseverywhereandrubbishstrewneverywhereanda fewkids perhaps running aroundthe place lookingwild.

Thevisual is cruciallyimportantinour encounterswithplace, apointthat many geographers stress because of the long tradition of readinglandscapes.Werelyheavilyonwhatwe canseeto makejudgments aboutplaces; however, as the interviewsdemonstrate,studentsalso depend onaccounts from others, includingwhat they have been told in their socialgeography lectures and what they know from years of living in thisculture. For example, all of the students interviewed consider the sametypes of housing either desirable or undesirable: back-to-back terracedhousing is the least desirable,while detachedhouses with large gardensare the most desirable. Visual evidence, therefore, joins with a host of

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other factors to signal to students what areas fit with their own historiesand identities. However, while Julian sees a "war zone" and turns aroundto leave,peopledo livethere.What is "no go" for Julian, then, is someoneelse's home. Boundaries that create anxiety for one person can createsecurity for another.

These students' accounts of their experiences in and reactions tothese places raise a number of difficult issues that I cannot do justice tohere, but the passages above do seem to confirm that geographic investi­gations can tell us a great deal about the construction and reproduction ofcultural difference. As Sibley says, "In the interaction of people and thebuilt environment, it is a truism that space is contested but relatively trivialconflicts can provide clues about power relations and the role of space insocial control" (xiii).

Who's Going to Cross This Border?Although an increasing number of writers in composition studies areadvocating border crossing, these interviews as well as geographicevidence of confined spatiality suggest that the liberating promise ofborder crossing may only be for those willing to travel. Travel, even themundane kind, is desirable to those who have the time, access toaffordable modes of transport, and either a confident sense of negotiatingspace or a feeling of safety in new environments. For example, in MentalMaps, Peter Gould and Rodney White report on research that askedresidents of Los Angeles to draw their own mental maps of the city. Afterquestioning a wide range of groups, the researcher then created compositemaps from their responses. Unsurprisingly , the higher the income and thewhiter the neighborhood, the richer and more wide-ranging were resi­dents' representations of Los Angeles. White respondents from Westwoodrepresented tourist areas and the coast, for example, while black residentsin Avalon identified main streets leading to downtown. Other districtswere only vague entities. Finally, Spanish-speaking residents in BoyleHeights constructed the smallest mental maps of all, representing only theimmediate area, the City Hall, and the bus depot (Gould and White 17).Without built-in safeguards afforded by various privileges, manypeople are simply not willing or able to explore unknown areas.

As geographers understand, many people want to stay in what theyperceive to be secure, familiar areas. This fact challenges our theoreticalattraction to the metaphor of border crossing. Educators might payattention to the overall pattern within these interviews-limited thoughthey are-that students want to remain in comfortable territories. Maybe

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students are so challenged intellectually-asked to travel and move andchange-that they are more content with staying put physically. Thisexperience might hold true as well for many academics or intellectualswho are content to remain in their offices or labs or at the same universityfor decades. When we wonder why it seems so hard for people of alleducational backgrounds to embrace difference, this geographic evidencemight clarify how truly difficult it is to travel. Furthermore, acts oftrespassing require considerable cheek. As hooks recognizes, "Locatingoneself [on the margin] is difficult yet necessary. It is not a 'safe' place.One is always at risk" ("Choosing" 149).

In addition, although territorial metaphors in discourse theory may beobjectionable, territory claims do get reproduced in the everyday, espe­cially in contested places such as ethnically and economically diverseneighborhoods. Pratt and Hanson name this process a "hardening ofboundaries around spatially-defined social groups" (11). Ifboundaries dobecome hardened by difference, this fact has implications for thoseresearchers interested in pursuing projects that extend outside the collegeor university setting. In particular, service learning courses and commu­nity literacy projects are giving teachers, students, and other citizensopportunities to work in different areas of town, with different forms oftexts (see, for example, Gere; Cushman; and Peck et at). As thesemovements grow and evolve, however, it's important to acknowledge thethreat of new or unfamiliar places. Places characterized by difference­different types of housing, shops, or residents-may be uncomfortable formany people, not just students. The first question to ask might be: Howare we to try to make these places less strange? How do we overcome this(ideological) inclination to stay home? But the better question might be:should we? What are the consequences of our traveling into, or eventrespassing in, neighborhoods where we don't "belong"? In any case, ourideas that people should "broaden their horizons" -or the value we placein learning about difference, especially through forms of travel-isclearly a middle-class value not necessarily shared by others.

In composition studies, it's important to understand the ways in whichwriters feel alienated from certain discourses or institutional practices, orwhy new forms of reading and writing are so difficult. Because theacademy suffers from an acute "hardening-of-the-boundaries" as a resultof its ideological function to define and enforce social difference, thismakes it difficult for its members to think outside of the box. How can weimagine spaces where the borders are continually shifting? Margins andborders are comforting in some ways to those of us accustomed to

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knowing our place-in a text or in an institution.From one-inch manu­script margins to the differencesbetweenbusiness writing and technicalwriting, we recognize and abide by dozens of spatial practices in theeveryday. The clearer the boundaries, the more confident we are aboutkeeping someoutor lettingsomein;however,this "bordermentality"hasmade boundaries more important than the places themselves. We are sointent on figuring out where the borders lie-and who can cross them­that we may be neglecting the places constructed by those borders.Becausewriters don't just "cross over" the marginsof discrete discoursecommunities from alienation to acceptance,we need a sense of place­for texts, classrooms,and cultures-defined by contestations and differ­ences that extend well beyond boundary lines.Places-whether textual,material, or imaginary-are constructed and reproduced not simply byboundaries but also by practices, structures of feeling, and sedimentedfeatures of habitus. Theories of writing, therefore, should reflect thisdeeperunderstandingof place.Writing is an actof inhabitingdiscourses,notjust moving through stagesof a process. Writing is made possible byformsofdwellingaswell as formsof travel;writersdwellin ideasto makethem their own. Writers squat intellectually,so to speak, before movingon. Investigating encounterswith place and space may help us to recon­sider the kinds of movement (and stillness) that characterize acts ofwriting and that invite engagements with difference. As long as traveldoes not denote disembodiedmovement, and as long asdwellingplacesare not constructed as free from conflict or resistance, then both areequally important to a cultural theory of writing.

Exploring the spatial practices that informour lives would give us aricherunderstandingof socio-spatialdifferences,especiallythose differ­ences that extend beyond the visual. More insight into writers' sense ofplacemay offer strategiesforhelpingthemtonavigatetextual spacemoreconfidently,asHaas' work suggests,with moreawarenessof the connec­tion between the body, practices, and the significanceof habits. We alsoneed more studies, like Aronson's, of the placeswhere writers work--orcan't work because of material conditions. Writers work in places thatinformtheir identitiesaswriters,andwe don't knowenoughyet about theconflictsandresistancesthatgo onin the interactionofplace and identity.Finally, rather than advocatingtravel to get us away from the discoursesof territoriality,we shouldworktowardanunderstandingof thecontestedspaces that keep people divided.

University of Rhode IslandKingston, Rhode Island

Nedra Reynolds

Notes

561

1. A sabbatical leave from the University of Rhode Island and a grant fromthe Center for the Humanities at URI made this research possible. I amparticularly grateful for this support after learning more about the realities ofbeing an academic in the U.K. I also want to thank the School of Geography atthe University of Leeds, especially Graham Clarke, Kate Housiaux, and MattStroh, whose help was simply invaluable. Thanks also to the anonymous readersatJAC.

2. Marback has contributed much to the development of a material theoryof rhetoric. He writes, "Rhetoric is always already embodied. Meanings aremade, then, through the ways we occupy, and are asked to occupy, spaces andtexts .... A material rhetoric that situates corporeality, spatiality, and textualityin each other can become a powerful critical tool" (86-87).

3. Jackson observes that in response to a disturbing "denial of humanagency in contemporary social sciences," geographers have turned to thehumanities (20).

4. The body is, of course, the geography closest in. I must unfortunatelyneglect the huge literature on the body in feminist and sexuality studies. Seechapter two in McDowell's Gender,which engages much of this scholarship.

5. Leeds is a growing city of over 700,000 residents. Just half a mile fromthe thriving city center, Leeds University has a student enrollment of21,000.Because of a serious shortage of on-campus housing, most of these students liveoff-campus in the areas of Headingley (where I also lived), Hyde Park,Woodhouse, and Meanwood.

6. For research and context regarding mental maps, I rely on Gould andWhite and Wiegand and Stiell, To ensure that my interviews were methodologi­cally sound, I reviewed the work of qualitative researchers in my own field(Kirsch, Ray, Nelson) and took the opportunity to learn from some new ones(Burgess, Delamont, Valentine).

7. Ellipses that appear in brackets ([. . . ]) indicate that I have cut out apassage from the transcript to sharpen the speaker's point or to eliminate whatI consider to be distracting wordiness.

8. Students recognized, however, that the term "no go" is quite specific insocial geography as places where the police refuse to go. It is a term that evolvedin Northern Ireland (see Keith).

9. Although I'm a bit uncomfortable using the blanket term "Asians," it isthe term that students used. More specifically, however, this area is populatedby Pakistanis, and Hyde Park does have one of the largest concentrations ofethnic minorities in Leeds-much less, however, than areas of Bradford, whichis widely recognized to have the largest ethnic minority population in the northand is just a few miles from Leeds. According to the 1991 census, over fifteenpercent of Bradford's population is composed of minority groups.

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