“Cultural Geography and the Place of Literary” by Sara Blair: Summary and Critique

1. The Shift from Time to Space in Cultural Studies

• Over the last two decades, there has been a shift from analyzing temporality as the main organizing form of experience to focusing on spatiality (Blair, p. 545).
• Marxist theorists, anthropologists, and feminist scholars argue that space, rather than time, now conceals historical and political consequences (Harvey, Condition, p. 306; Soja, Postmodern Geographies, p. 1).
• This shift highlights how knowledge is localized, and communities are diasporic and globalized in the post-industrial economy (Lefebvre, Survival, p. 17).

2. The Emergence of the New Cultural Geography

• The field of new cultural geography is influenced by Marxist critique, French structuralism, and English political economy, adapting methods from sociology, urban studies, and cultural studies (Blair, p. 546).
• Unlike traditional geography, this new approach studies how space is a social product that masks its own formation.
• The new cultural geography examines how individuals negotiate social relations—such as labor vs. management, immigrant vs. native, and local vs. global—through spatial interactions (Blair, p. 547).

3. The Role of Space in American Studies and Literary Criticism

• Despite its relevance, spatial studies remain underexplored in American literary studies compared to history and other disciplines (Blair, p. 548).
• Literary critics are beginning to adopt spatial analysis to examine themes such as urban form, spatial politics, and built environments as social texts (Blair, p. 549).
• The 1997 American Studies Association Convention saw a surge in panels discussing geography, mapping, and spatiality, reflecting this growing interest (Blair, p. 548).

4. Common Ground Between Cultural Geography and American Studies

• American studies has historically focused on spatial dimensions, from Turner’s frontier thesis to Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land (Blair, p. 551).
• However, literary scholars have often been skeptical of geographical approaches due to past essentialist narratives about American identity and space.
• Cultural geography provides tools for revisiting regionalism, diaspora, urbanization, and transnationalism in American literature, allowing a deeper understanding of how space shapes cultural identity (Blair, p. 552).

5. Spatial Theory in Literary Studies

• June Howard’s work on Sarah Orne Jewett demonstrates how local color fiction maps shifting social and economic relations across regions and time periods (Howard, p. 372).
• Lawrence Buell’s The Environmental Imagination argues that ecocriticism and environmental space have been marginalized in American literary studies, despite their importance in cultural history (Buell, p. 9).
• Feminist geographers such as Nancy Duncan, Linda McDowell, and Gillian Rose have explored the differential impact of globalization and postmodernity on gendered spaces (Duncan, p. 31).

6. Literature as a Spatial Form

• Patricia Yaeger’s The Geography of Identity suggests that literature can help map social inequalities and hidden forms of labor that shape spatial experiences (Yaeger, p. 27).
• Theorists like Fredric Jameson argue that postmodern space-time has created a confusing world where traditional notions of inside/outside, public/private, and local/global are blurred (Jameson, p. 44).
• Feminist and postcolonial scholars use spatial theory to analyze how marginalized groups navigate, resist, and reshape dominant spatial orders (hooks, Yearning, p. 19).

7. Philip K. Dick’s Fiction and the New Geography

• Blair examines Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle as a key example of how literature imagines alternative spatial realities that challenge dominant geopolitical narratives (Blair, p. 558).
• The novel’s depiction of an alternate world, where Germany and Japan won WWII, serves as a critique of American spatial fantasies, such as the frontier and the suburban home (Blair, p. 560).
• Dick’s work illustrates how literary texts provide valuable insights into the spatial logic of power, control, and cultural imagination.

8. The Future of Spatial Thinking in Literary Studies

• The intersection of geography and literary history allows for a richer understanding of identity, location, and cultural memory (Blair, p. 562).
• Literary scholars can contribute to spatial studies by analyzing how fiction represents social struggles over space, such as gentrification, displacement, and environmental justice.
• By integrating spatial theory, American studies can better address contemporary global issues like transnationalism, border politics, and the commodification of space (Blair, p. 564).

Conclusion: Why Spatial Thinking Matters in Literature

• The new geography and American literary studies can benefit each other by deepening our understanding of space as a site of power, identity, and resistance.
• Literature provides unique insights into how spatiality is experienced, imagined, and contested in everyday life.
• Ultimately, cultural geography helps literary scholars rethink the social and material dimensions of narrative space, opening new avenues for interdisciplinary research (Blair, p. 567).

1. Spatial Turn in Literary Studies

Blair argues that spatiality has become a dominant framework in cultural and literary studies, shifting away from traditional temporal and historical paradigms. She engages with scholars like Edward Soja, Henri Lefebvre, and David Harvey, asserting that space is a social product that literature both reflects and constructs (Blair, p. 546). This perspective aligns with New Historicism and Postmodern Theory, as it challenges the notion that literature operates within a fixed historical timeline, instead emphasizing how spatial formations shape human experience.

“It is now space rather than time that hides consequences from us, raising the ‘omnipresent danger that our mental maps no longer match current realities’” (Blair, p. 545, citing Harvey).

Her work contributes to the Spatial Turn in Literary Studies, offering a lens to analyze literature through spatial practices, boundaries, and geographies rather than traditional periodization.

---

2. New Cultural Geography and Marxist Literary Criticism

Blair connects the New Cultural Geography movement with Marxist literary criticism, highlighting how capitalism, globalization, and urbanization shape literary spaces. Drawing from David Harvey’s Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (1996), she critiques how literature often masks the contradictions of spatial production, reinforcing power structures between labor and management, regional and global, public and private spaces (Blair, p. 546).

“The new geography constitutes a powerful expressive form, giving voice to the effects of dislocation, disembodiment, and localization that constitute contemporary social orders” (Blair, p. 546).

Her work extends Marxist Literary Theory by exploring how literature participates in spatializing economic and political hierarchies—a theme evident in urban novels, postcolonial texts, and proletarian literature.

---

3. Postcolonial Theory and the Concept of Borderlands

Blair contributes to Postcolonial Theory by emphasizing diaspora, deterritorialization, and borderland identities in American literature. She references Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera to explore how literature constructs contested spaces of migration, exile, and transnational identities (Blair, p. 550). This approach is crucial in postcolonial readings of American literature, particularly for texts that challenge imperial geographies.

“Cultural geography provides powerful new models and vocabularies for revisiting definitive problems in American literary studies, long perched on a contested border between literature and culture, the aesthetic and the social” (Blair, p. 546).

Her argument aligns with Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, showing how literature negotiates fluid identities and unstable geographies rather than fixed national borders.

---

4. Feminist Geography and Gendered Spaces in Literature

Blair engages with Feminist Geography, drawing on Nancy Duncan, Linda McDowell, and Gillian Rose, to analyze gendered spatial experiences in literature (Blair, p. 548). She critiques how literary narratives construct space through patriarchal hierarchies, privileging male-centered geographies such as the frontier, the city, and public spaces while marginalizing domestic, feminine, and embodied spatialities.

“Feminist geographers have gone on to explore the differential effects of globalization, the radical inequalities in the spatial spread of individuals’ lives” (Blair, p. 548, citing Duncan).

Her work extends Feminist Literary Criticism by demonstrating how spatial theories illuminate the intersection of gender, class, and race in literary geographies—a theme relevant in women’s regional literature, domestic fiction, and postmodern feminist narratives.

---

5. Ecocriticism and the Environmental Imagination

Blair discusses Lawrence Buell’s The Environmental Imagination (1995) to argue that literary studies must account for material geographies and ecological realities (Blair, p. 554). She critiques romanticized narratives of nature in American literature, emphasizing how environmental writing constructs spatial ideologies that shape human-nature relationships.

“Attention to traditional spatial forms enables a recovery of the agency of ordinary Americans making do in the era of postmodernity” (Blair, p. 551).

Her argument contributes to Ecocriticism, particularly in analyzing landscape, place, and environmental consciousness in literature—a key concern in American pastoral, nature writing, and indigenous literary traditions.

---

6. Postmodern Literary Theory and Simulacral Spaces

Blair extends Postmodern Literary Theory by addressing hyperreal and simulacral spaces in contemporary fiction. She references Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) to argue that late capitalism produces disorienting spatial realities, which literature both reflects and critiques (Blair, p. 553).

“Public spaces of contemporaneity constitute a historically emergent form of space-time; they instantiate as they symbolically express the monolithic, abstract power of transnational capital” (Blair, p. 553, citing Jameson).

Her work applies Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, exploring how literary spaces challenge traditional notions of authenticity, locality, and embodiment—especially relevant in science fiction, dystopian literature, and urban narratives.

---

7. The Production of Space and Literary Historiography

Blair utilizes Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1991) to critique how literary history has overlooked spatial concerns (Blair, p. 564). She argues that American literary criticism has traditionally relied on periodization, national narratives, and cultural myths, ignoring how literature actively shapes spatial consciousness.

“Literature offers theorists of space and place specific reading practices and canons that affirm the materiality and texture of spatial experience” (Blair, p. 546).

Her argument contributes to Literary Historiography by calling for a spatial rethinking of literary traditions, influencing approaches to regionalism, urban studies, and transnationalism.

---

Conclusion: Rethinking Literary Space

Blair’s work bridges literary criticism and spatial theory, offering new methodological approaches to analyzing space in literature. Her contributions resonate across multiple literary theories:

• Spatial Turn (New Historicism & Cultural Studies)
• Marxist Criticism (Class & Capitalism in Literature)
• Postcolonial Theory (Diaspora, Borders, & Hybridity)
• Feminist Literary Criticism (Gender & Spatial Politics)
• Ecocriticism (Environmental Narratives)
• Postmodernism (Hyperreality & Simulacra)
• Literary Historiography (Spatializing Literary Traditions)

By integrating cultural geography with literary analysis, Blair challenges traditional literary methodologies, demonstrating that space is not merely a setting but a central force in shaping literary meaning.