“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”
Wendell Berry
When I first read about the topic of this class, I was confused: "What does it mean? Aren't place and space the same thing?" Soon the very first one of the readings for this class we had this semester gave me an explanation. By reading Yi-fu Tuan's Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, I got to understand that these two words do carry different meanings that are of importance to each living individual.
In specific, space stands for a physical concept, merely a neutral existence, while place can be seen as an advanced form of space. Place is the product of human’s intellectual and emotional activities. People accrue their experiences in an unfamiliar space by both using their five senses to get acquainted with the surrounding environment, and by building social networks to get involved in the cultural communities. Thus, unlike space, place is an emotional and vivid definition. It reveals that people hold their own comprehension and assign meanings to a space.
But...this was only the understanding of the concepts themselves. I held no personal connection with the. And I started questioning that why they were important to me. Throughout the semester, I practiced several genres that I have not used before to reflect on the relationship between place and myself, and did find that there was a process of transforming a space to a place to me. Recalling thee turning points when my emotions and feeling changed after I came to Atlanta, I found that the initially unfamiliar and mild space had gradually turned to be a place. Integrating my own experience and collecting those significant moments, I explored and touched the differences between place and space. Moreover, I became conscious about the direct conversation between the exterior world and myself.
Place and space that we experience both in the present and past collaborate to shape our identities, arming us to be the individuals that are independent from each other, and at the same time, that are eligible to connect to the surrounding environment. In this advanced writing class of 2014 Fall, we explored this process by using various communication and research skills. I believe that this multi-modal practice and experience would continue benefiting each member of the class in the future.
( Nanjing /Librairie Avant-Garde )