Abstract
How do migrants make themselves at home—or not—in new worlds and what sorts of work are involved in this process? This chapter’s opening premise is that of an inextricable connection between the material, physical worlds of place and location and the psychical and experiential worlds of memory and the unconscious. Using as a case study my own experience of migrating from London to Melbourne, this chapter draws on Laplanchian psychoanalytic theory to explore the role of memory in the process of making a home in a new place.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Eva Hoffman, “Out of Exile: Some Thoughts on Exile as a Dynamic Condition,” in Julia Beltsiou ed., Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 213.
- 2.
Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London: Verso, 1995).
- 3.
Kuhn, Family Secrets, 3.
- 4.
Kuhn, Family Secrets, 4.
- 5.
Annette Kuhn, “A Phantasmagoria of Memory,” in Annette Kuhn ed., Family Secrets, 104–21.
- 6.
Kuhn, “A Phantasmagoria,” 113.
- 7.
Annette Kuhn, “A Journey Through Memory,” in Susannah Radstone ed., Memory and Methodology (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 189.
- 8.
Kuhn, “A Journey Through Memory,” 189–91.
- 9.
Kuhn, “A Journey Through Memory,” 189–90.
- 10.
“St. Kilda’s History Ain’t No Mystery!” https://www.aclandstreetvillage.com.au/st-kildas-history-aint-no-mystery.
- 11.
Debbie Cuthbertson, “Australia’s First Venice Biennale Pavilion Finds Second Life as New Building Progresses,” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 2014, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/australias-first-venice-biennale-pavilion-finds-second-life-as-new-building-progresses-20141017-117imr.html.
- 12.
Roger Kennedy, The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis, Consciousness and the Human Soul (Hove: Routledge, 2014), 5–6. In his study of the psychical resonances of home, Kennedy suggests that the sense of home resides primarily within us and has its origins in relations with others—relations that fall away as the other dies and the light of their gaze is exstinguished.
- 13.
Leon and Rebeca Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile, trans. Nancy Festinger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 78. Leon and Rebeca Grinberg state that the new immigrant “may feel ‘invaded’ by what are for him ‘chaotic messages’…”
- 14.
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).
- 15.
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Hannah Arendt ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).
- 16.
Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005).
- 17.
Gabriele Schwab, Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
- 18.
Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
- 19.
Benjamin, Illuminations.
- 20.
Genelle Weule and Felicity James, “Indigenous Rock Shelter in Top End Pushes Australia’s Human History Back to 65,000 years,” ABC News, 20 July 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-07-20/aboriginal-shelter-pushes-human-history-back-to-65,000-years/8719314.
- 21.
Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, “Projection,” in The Language of Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac Books, 1988), 349. Projection refers, here, to a psychical operation where aspects of the inner world that are hard to acknowledge are “expelled from the self and located in another person or thing.” My hypothesis here is that an apprehension of there being too few buried remains under the ground may refer, in displaced form to memory’s attenuation under the conditions of migration.
- 22.
Sabine Marschall, “‘Homesick Tourism’: Memory, Identity and Be-longing,” Current Issues in Tourism 18, no. 9 (2015): 876–92.
- 23.
For a clear introduction to Laplanche’s writings on enigmatic signification, see John Fletcher and Martin Stanton eds, Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives, trans. Martin Stanton (London: Psychoanalytic Forum, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1992) and John Fletcher, “Introduction: Psychoanalysis and the question of the Other,” in John Fletcher ed., Jean Laplanche: Essays on Otherness, 1–52, Warwick Studies in European Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
- 24.
Dominique Scarfone, “A Brief Introduction to the Work of Jean Laplanche,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 94 (2013), 554. The enigmatic kernel remains opaque to the adult since ‘“the adult is equally unable to integrate the unconscious dimension of communication inherent in the nurturer’s attuned care.”
- 25.
Scarfone, “A Brief Introduction,” 554.
- 26.
Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Benjamin, Illuminations; see particularly 181–82.
- 27.
Kennedy, The Psychic Home, 44.
- 28.
Kennedy, The Psychic Home, 44.
- 29.
These defensive manoeuvres can also give rise to confusion; see Grinberg and Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 88.
- 30.
Scarfone, “A Brief Introduction,” 556.
- 31.
Dominique Scarfone, “‘It Was Not My Mother’: From Seduction to Negation,” in trans. John Fletcher, “Jean Laplanche and the Theory of Seduction,” John Fletcher ed., New Formations Number 48 (Winter 2003): 74.
- 32.
Scarfone, “A Brief Introduction,” 561.
- 33.
Scarfone, “It Was Not My Mother,” 72.
- 34.
See note 22.
- 35.
Francisco J. Gonzáles, “Only What Is Human Can Truly Be Foreign: The Trope of Immigration as a Creative Force in Psychoanalysis,” in Julia Beltsiou ed., Locating Ourselves (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 29–30.
- 36.
Heritage Council Victoria, Royal Terrace, https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/481.
- 37.
This quote is taken from Stephen Hudson’s completion of K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation of “Le Temps Retrouvé,” Volume 12 of Marcel Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, In Search of Lost Time, originally published in 1931 by Chatto & Windus, London, available at https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96t/index.html.
In this version, Proust’s original term “l’énigme” is faithfully translated as “enigma”; see https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96t/chapter3.html. In the later and more accessible English version, the term is translated as “riddle”; see Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 6, Time Regained, trans. Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin and revised by D. J. Enright (London: Vintage, 1996), 217. The original French language version of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is available at http://beq.ebooksgratuits.com/auteurs/Proust/proust.htm. The passage discussed can be found in section 15, “Le temps retrouvé,” Deuxième partie, 7.
- 38.
This quote is also taken from Chapter 3 of Stephen Hudson’s translation of Marcel Proust’s “Time Regained.” Marcel Proust, “Time Regained,” trans. Stephen Hudson, Chapter 3, see note 37.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968a.
Benjamin, Walter. “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.” In Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, 155–200. New York: Schocken Books, 1968b.
Cuthbertson, Debbie. “Australia’s First Venice Biennale Pavilion Finds Second Life as New Building Progresses.” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 2014. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/australias-first-venice-biennale-pavilion-finds-second-life-as-new-building-progresses-20141017-117imr.html.
Fletcher, John. “Introduction: Psychoanalysis and the Question of the Other.” In Jean Laplanche: Essays on Otherness, edited by John Fletcher, 1–52. Warwick Studies in European Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Fletcher, John, and Martin Stanton eds. Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives, translated by Martin Stanton. London: Psychoanalytic Forum, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1992.
Gonzáles, Francisco J. “Only What Is Human Can Truly Be Foreign: The Trope of Immigration as a Creative Force in Psychoanalysis.” In Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves, edited by Julia Beltsiou, 15–38. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Grenville, Kate. The Secret River. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005.
Grinberg, Leon, and Rebeca Grinberg. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile, translated by Nancy Festinger. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Hoffman, Eva. “Out of Exile: Some Thoughts on Exile as a Dynamic Condition.” In Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves, edited by Julia Beltsiou, 211–15. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Kennedy, Roger. The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis, Consciousness and the Human Soul. Hove: Routledge, 2014.
Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London: Verso, 1995a.
Kuhn, Annette. “A Phantasmagoria of Memory.” In Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, edited by Annette Kuhn, 104–21. London: Verso, 1995b.
Kuhn, Annette. “A Journey Through Memory.” In Memory and Methodology, edited by Susannah Radstone, 179–96. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000.
Laplanche, Jean, and J. B. Pontalis. “Projection.” In The Language of Psychoanalysis, 349–56. London: Karnac Books, 1988.
Marschall, Sabine. “‘Homesick Tourism’: Memory, Identity and Belonging.” Current Issues in Tourism 18, no. 9 (2015): 876–92.
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Volume 6. Time Regained. Translated by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin. Revised by D. J. Enright. London: Vintage, 1996.
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past: Time Regained. Translated by Stephen Hudson. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96t/index.html.
Scarfone, Dominique. “A Brief Introduction to the Work of Jean Laplanche.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 94 (2013): 545–66.
Scarfone, Dominique. ‘“It Was Not My Mother’: From Seduction to Negation.” Translated by John Fletcher. “Jean Laplanche and the Theory of Seduction,” edited by John Fletcher, 69–76. New Formations Number 48 (Winter 2003).
Schwab, Gabriele. Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
“St. Kilda’s History Ain’t no Mystery!”. https://www.aclandstreetvillage.com.au/st-kildas-history-aint-no-mystery.
Weule, Genelle, and Felicity James. “Indigenous Rock Shelter in Top End Pushes Australia’s Human History Back to 65,000 years.” ABC News, 20 July 2017. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-07-20/aboriginal-shelter-pushes-human-history-back-to-65,000-years/8719314.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Radstone, S. (2019). Hard Landings: Memory, Place and Migration. In: Darian-Smith, K., Hamilton, P. (eds) Remembering Migration. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17751-5_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17751-5_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17750-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17751-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)