Ann analysis of the creation and role of spatial organisation in the process of colonisation.

1. CRITICAL SPACE PART 1
© Tony Ward
2007
For more free slides see: www.TonyWardEdu.com

2. CRITICAL
THEORY
Critical Education Theory is part of a broader theory
called Critical Theory. Critical Theory is socio-
political theory developed in Germany in the 1930s in
response to the rise of Fascism. It sought to explain the
failure of Marxism to bring about a social revolution,
It challenges received notions of reality, seeking to
demonstrate the ways in which our conceptions are
socially constructed. Critical Theory is reflexive that is,
it is aware that the “reality” that we experience “out
there” does not exist independently of ideology, but
that it is shaped (along with our perceptions of it) by
forces of power and hegemony that have a human
agency. These forces continually try to control all the
means of shaping society and its belief system -
Education, the Media, Religion, the Law, The Church,
Planning Regulations, the Economy etc. They do so to
reproduce their own version of reality, their own
economic, social and cultural supremacy - their
hegemony. Critical Theory views all beliefs, realities,
values etc. in their social and economic context and
asks, “who stands to gain from society seeing things
this way? It then looks to discover how the
beneficiaries of the system have created the system to
benefit themselves at the expense of others

3. WHAKAPAPA
Critical Theory evolves from the wider
discipline of Social Theory, and looks at the
ways in which political ideology shapes
experienced reality as a way of maintaining
existing regimes of privilege and social control.
It casts a critical eye upon History, Philosphy,
Education, the Media, the Law, the Church and
Politics and all of the instruments and vehicles
which shape the way we see things. It holds that
these instruments of social control are
themselves shaped by the ideologies and power
structures of Capitalism, and that their purpose
is to reproduce these conditions in ways which
benefit the already-powerful. Instead, Critical
Theory promotes a counter-ideology which sees
these agencies as potential vehicles for social
liberation and transformation and as a means of
attaining social, cultural, and economic equity.
Initially, it did this from an orthodox (economic)
Marxist point of view, but increasingly has
adopted many of the tenets and theories of
Cultural Studies to demonstrate how control
over culture has come to play a fundamental
part in sustaining the power status quo.

4. CONTEMPORARY
CULTURAL STUDIES
Marx had based all of his theorising on issues of Class difference, which tended to overlook or negate important
class differences that occurred on the basis of or alongside of issues of Race or Gender, with all of the multiple
layerings of meaning and experience with which these are associated. At the University of Birmingham in the 1960s,
West Indian Professor Stuart Hall and a group of Critical Theorists established the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies. The mission of the Centre was to analyse all of the instruments or agencies of cultural production - the
Media, the Schools, The Legal System, the Churches, the Parliamentary system etc., operate to reproduce the power
relations in society through the reproduction of dominant cultural views and values. Their work took place in the
context of a cultural revolution that was emerging in Britain, where the irreverent pronouncements and music of the
working class Beatles and images of Coronation Street were beginning to challenge middle class norms, images and
values. With the advent of the Beatles, it became recognised that it was no longer appropriate to think of culture as
only high culture - opera, ballet, fine art etc. It was now clear that there were cultures, each competing for
hegemonic control over the meanings of everyday life. Cultural Studies therefore focused on all of those institutions
that shape culture and power relations, Media, Politics etc. (see below). One of the most recent additions to the field
of cultural studies has been the study of Critical Space - how space gets created, by whom and for what purpose.

5. CRITICAL SPACE THEORY
Critical Space Theory evolves from the wider
discipline of Critical (Social) Theory, and looks
at the ways in which space is created, named
and given meaning in the context of power. It
casts a critical eye upon the history, the
development and practice of Town and Country
Planning, Land Development and Landscape
Design. It holds that space in the modern
western world is shaped by the ideologies and
power structures that devolve from Capitalism,
and that it’s purpose is to reproduce these
conditions in ways which benefit the already-
powerful. Instead, Critical Space Theory
promotes an ideology of space-creation as an
instrument of social transformation and as a
means of attaining social, cultural, and
economic equity. Initially, the issue of space
was not taken seriously from a Marxist point
of vie. Time, not space was the predominant
variable in Marxist analysis. This was
because Marx conceived his theories around
the economic value of workers’ time in the
production process. Increasingly, it has been
recognised that the appropriation and creation
of space has been a powerful factor in the
Colonisation and in the creation of surplus
value. Traditionally, the Church and the Legal
profession have been its primary proponents.

6. ONE WORLD
From outer space, there is no up or down, no
North or South. Outer Space has no separate
and independent reference points. What we see
when we look at planet Earth from “out there”
is a finite, directionless interrelated and self-
regulating eco-system which has supported life
for countless millennia. That life is now
threatened by the excesses visited upon the
planet by one species - our own. Throughout
the history of the human race, the planet has
continued to nourish our species and to absorb
the consequences of our activities. This is no
longer the case. Reliable evidence that we are
approaching a critical point in our survival
continues top mount. Yet this state has only
appeared in the last 100 years. No doubt, the
increase in world population, coupled with the
finitude of resources has contributed. But there
remain enough resources on the planet to
sustain us. What has led to this threat to our
survival is rather the attitude that we have had
to them - an attitude of exploitation driven by
greed and supported by a system of capitalist
production which ensures that the resources
themselves will not be equally distributed.

7. COLONISATION AND SPACE
If the planet Earth, seen from space has no directional reference points, then how is it that all of the maps that we see
represent the Earth in the same way - with “North” at the top and “South” at the bottom? And how come that time is
measured along lines of “longitude” that originate in London? The answer is, of course, that the maps are made by
people who originated from the “Northern Hemisphere” and who colonised the rest of the planet. This colonisation,
driven by emerging capitalism represents the most dramatic historical attempt to define and commodify new space.

8. SPIRITUALITY AND PLACE
Before the advent of capitalism and the
resultant commodification of space, different
places seem to have been invested with a
very special and numinous sense of
spirituality. Throughout history and all over
the world, some places have been continually
singled out as sacred - often in very different
cultures and by very different peoples. The
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (right), for
instance, is sacred to Christians, Jews and
Muslims - all for apparently different reasons
and associations. It is the site where the
prophet Abraham was reputed to have bound
his son, intending to sacrifice him as
commanded by God. Each of the three
religions revere the place. King David built
the first synagogue there, and Jews
worshiped here for over a thousand years.
Later, the prophet Mohammed dreamed that
he ascended into Heaven from this same
place. Such histories seem to indicate that the
place itself possesses this special or sacred
quality, independent of the lives and
perceptions of the people who revere it. But
this theory ignores the processes of power
that drive cultural developments.

9. NAMING/LEGITIMATING:
All the concepts, theories and meanings
that shape our lives are socially
constructed. This is to say that ideas
and things don’t have meanings in and
of themselves but only those meanings
that are given or ascribed. The power to
give meaning - to name - is one of the
most powerful powers that exists
because it shapes all of our views and
beliefs about the nature of the world.
This power, the power to name is not
evenly distributed across society. Some
individuals or organisations have
almost all of the power, which they
exercise through Education, the Media,
the Law, and so forth. Education is a
very powerful agency in the social
construction of meaning. A related
power to naming is the power to
legitimate.
Of all the knowledge available in the world, only a small proportion is viewed as significantly valuable to society and
culture to be included in curricula, published, displayed in museums and galleries etc. A great deal of knowledge is
excluded from this kind of public recognition. Knowledge that is included is said to have been legitimated. Usually,
Universities play a key role in the process of knowledge legitimation, because they have been able to establish an
erroneous reputation for being ideologically-free. But the power of naming and legitimating is inherent in the entire
educational system, and is most noticeable in the area of curriculum. The power to determine what goes into an
educational curriculum and what is left out is enormous. Those aspects of knowledge that are left out or remain unspoken
or unvoiced become invisible in society at large. It is as though they do not exist.

10. NAMING/
REPLACEMENT
The process of colonisation operates on the dual axes of displacement and
replacement. For colonisation to be complete, the colonised must come to
accept the culture of the coloniser as preferable - for whatever reason. All the
concepts, theories and meanings that shape our lives are socially constructed.
This is to say that ideas and things don’t have meanings in and of themselves
but only those meanings that are given or ascribed. The power to give
meaning - to name - is one of the most powerful powers that exists because it
shapes all of our views and beliefs about the nature of the world. This power,
the power to name is not evenly distributed across society. In a colonised
society, the members of the colonising culture have almost all of the power,
which they exercise through Education, the Media, the Law, and so forth.
To name a town after oneself (right) is perhaps the ultimate in egotism,
embodying an extraordinary disregard for the other. But such examples are
commonplace in colonial history either by the original coloniser or later by
their admirers. The naming of mountains (Mt. Cook, Mt Egmont, Mt.
Edgecumbe), rivers (Avon), bodies of water (Cook Straight, Fauveaux
Straight), islands (Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Christmas Island, Norfolk
Island etc.), headlands, rivers etc was part of the re-naming of places that
characterised the re-place-ment process in the South Pacific. As a result,
whole histories were erased and whole cultures were rendered non-existent.
This is why the term Postcolonialism is so dishonest. It presumes that the
process of colonisation is a thing of the past, when in fact it continues through
the present through all of the agenc ies of the State and Civil Society.

11. COLONISATION AND SPACE
The dis-place-ment of peoples, the
appropriation and renaming of their
places is not a new phenomenon.
Throughout history there have been
numerous odious examples of the
cultural superimposition of indigenous
communities through the definition and
structuring of space

12. ST. MICHAEL BURROWBRIDGE
The dis-place-ment of peoples, the appropriation and renaming of their places is not a new
phenomenon.Throughout history there have been numerous examples of the superimposition of colonising
cultures on indigenous communities. Here, at Burrowbridge in Britain we see the superimposition of Christian
culture over that of the earlier Celtic culture. The Church of St. Michael stands atop the ancient Celtic mound,
which in its own day was the centre of religious rituals. Similar examples abound throughout Europe, almost all
of them associated with the superimposition of a new dominant culture and associated spirituality.

13. ST.MICHAEL GLASTONBURY
This same pattern of colonisation was reproduced over and over throughout Celtic Britain, as the Church strove to
appropriate the sacredness of these wahi tapu to its own ends. The mound at Glastobury had been the site of ritual
spiral perambulations, complete with prayers and incantations of the ancient culture of the Celts. The Church of St.
Michael aims to capture the sacredness of this place and to use it to achieve the hegemony of Christian beliefs over
the pagan population. In particular, the colonisation of the Celts involved the discrediting and replacement of their
deity.

14. MT. ST. MICHELE
Such ancient places of pilgrimage have for over a
thousand years been surmounted by a fortress-like
churches, proclaiming their dominance to the surrounding
community. Such appropriations were important elements
in the process of hegemony And in France too, the same
process occurs. Here, at the famous Benedictine
monastery and village of Mt St, Michele (right) stands
atop an island-rock that was equally sacred to pre-
Christian peoples. The first chapel was built in 708,
following a vision of St. Michael the Archangel.
Similarly, at Mount St. Michael in Cornwall (below) an
island of ancient Celtic spirituality is now surmounted by
a church dedicated to St Michael the Archangel.

15. ST. MICHEL LE
PUY
Another example is the Chapel of St. Michel at Le Puy, in France.
What each of these sites has in common, of course, is a dedication
to St. Michael, famous in Christian mythology for slaying a
dragon. Not surprisingly, the dragon (horned, winged and
breathing fire) was not only the embodiment of Satan in early
Christian iconography, but also of the Earth Spirit - the source of
the pre-Christian spirituality, embodied in the Mother Goddess
cult. It was the destruction and re-appropriation of this spirituality
that was the reason behind the symbolic skewering of so many
sites sacred to the Mother-religion. The Goddess was replaced, of
course, by a male deity. But she lives on even today in the re-
branded (albeit much less powerful) guise of the Virgin Mary.

16. SILBURY
TREASURE
Before the coming of Christianity there had existed and
prospered across Europe a form of spirituality very
different from that which was to supplant it. It was a
spirituality founded on the belief that the Earth is the
mother of all things, that she nourishes her children,
that she is both infinitely patient and terrifyingly
powerful. She is, literally, The Source. In modern terms,
l
we call her Gaia.
In ancient Britain, her most imposing presence was to
be found at what is now Silbury, in Wiltshire. There, a
great earth mound which has puzzled archeologists for
centuries is now believed to be a supine representation
of the Great Goddess herself. It is the largest human-
made earthwork in Europe.
Elegantly described in Michael Dames’ book The
Silbury Treasure, a compelling picture emerges of life
before Christianity, of the beliefs of the people, of their
reverence for the Earth, and the beauty and integrity of
their culture and their remarkable industry.

17. THE GREAT GODDESS
Painted pot, Hactlar, Turkey
Silbury Mound Diagram
Dames suggests that the Silbury Mound is an earth-effigy of the pregnant Goddess. Her body, he suggests, is
strategically aligned with significant points of the solstice compass - a matter of great significance for a people who
lived by what they could grow. Her body is aligned specifically along the East-West axis of the Equinox, while the
Midwinter sunrise aligns with her vulva, and the Midwinter sunset aligns with her breast, The form is so arranged
that the Goddess “gives birth” to the new year, and at the same time devours the Midwinter sun as it sets. The
moon, too is incorporated into the system (as you might expect in a gynocentric culture), as it is born (aligned to the
vulva of the effigy) as a full moon at precisely the time of ancient Lammas Day (appropriated as Harvest Festival
Day in Christianity.)

18. SLEEPING
GODDESS
This supreme deity of the pre-Christian culture was
spread throughout Europe from neolithic times. The
Great Goddess, or Earth Mother.
Here (right) we see a comparison between a
reclining image of the goddess from Malta,
compared illustrating the supine position of her
Silbury counterpart.
The imposition of Christianity across the continent
therefore had a very real gender basis, as the
Goddess was supplanted by a male Judeo-Christian
God. At the everyday level, Gynocentric culture
and behaviours (including matrilineal patterns were
replaced by patrilineal systems and male-
dominance. What was at stake was a cultural
gender war, which sought to break the power of
women, of the priestesses and of the gynocentric
world of pre- Christian Europe.

19. THE WATER OF
LIFE
The replacement of Celtic meaning happened over time,
and to help it along, wells that had nourished the
spirituality of the old religion were “re-branded” with
Judaic-Christian meaning, as here at the David and
Goliath Spring at Tissington, Derbyshire (right).
Examples abound. One of the most famous, is the
Chalice Well at Glastonbury, which is also associated
with the myth of King Arthur (below).

20. SPIRITUAL
REBRANDING
But it was not easy to simply bowl the Earth Mother out of the
way. After thousands of years of belief and ritual she was well
established in the hearts and minds of her subjects. Any attempt
to simply eradicate her would have been doomed to failure.
Instead, the Earth-Mother icon was appropriated and integrated
into the icon of the Blessed Virgin. Shrines that had once
sustained the spiritual life of the community were transfixed by
new Churches dedicated to Our lady (Notre Dame, etc). While
the thousands of way-side grottos like this one at Kilnaganoch
in County Wicklow, Ireland were rededicated to the Virgin
Mary .
Nor was it only the Great Goddess who was ousted by Christian
cosmology. Whereas the old world had been one which both
celebrated and facilitated the natural processes of life -
procreation, birth and death, Christianity shifted all of these into
another framework - Heaven, Hell, Repentance, Forgiveness
redemption. All dependent upon a stern, male God. In order to
retain some of the mysticism of the Great Goddess, Mary, the
Mother of the Son of God remained a virgin, having mated with
the Holy Spirit rather than the body of Joseph.
The separation of sexuality and spirituality and the demonisation
of the former which was the hallmark of Christianity was a
necessary component in destroying the mysticism of the Great
Goddess and remains so down to the present.

21. SHEELA NA GIG
Sheela Na Gig was the quintessential symbol of the sexual
spirituality. She is a Celtic figure who adorns many ancient
buildings, ruins and doorways in the British Isles. Her
origins and meaning are lost in the obscurity of time, but
she seems to have many of the same characteristics of
Hinenuitepo in Maori culture and Kali in ancient Hindu
culture. That is, she is at one and the same time the female
(Godess?) representative of sexual desire and of death. She
represents both the mystery of female sexuality, and is the
guardian of the Underworld. In Maori culture, Maui-a-
taranga, desiring of eternal life, sought to enter the vagina
of Hinenuoitepo. Unfortunately, the piwakawaka (fantail)
saw his feet sticking out, and started to giggle. Hinenuitepo
awoke, to crush Maui between her thighs.
Similar myths exist in many indigenous cultures, linking
female sexuality with death and eternal life, with the lifting
of tapu, and marking the entrance point of sacred space.
The psychologist Carl Jung would have referred to this as a
manifestation of an archetype - that is, a more or less
universal projection of deep, unconscious structures and
experiences. They were all part of the rich cosmology of
pre-Christian Europe, where sexual symbolism was
integral to life itself, and which had to be expunged from
the cosmology of the “pagans”. Sexuality became
conversely associated with sinfulness and Satan - who
reciprocally was embodied in the serpent-dragon slain by
St. Michael.

22. SEX AND LIFE
In the Pre-Christian era, sexual symbolism was to be
found in all of the ancient earthworks and dolmen.
The crick Stone (above right) and the Men An Tol
stones (below right) - both in Cornwall attest to the
universality of the symbols of life. The Lingham and
the Yoni are their counterparts in Hindu mythology,
But in the European context, they play a wider part in
daily affairs than as simple representations of body
parts. They are located - like the Silbury Mound and
Stonehenge to measure and depict the seasons, so
symbolise every year, the death of the old and the
(re)birth of the new, their alignments carefully
articulated and based upon a deep knowledge of the
yearly lunar and solar cycles.
The old calendar, too, was appropriated. The
Midwinter Solstice became Christmas. The first day
of Summer (Beltane) became Mayday - dedicated by
Christians to the Virgin, The Spring Equinox (time of
rebirth) became Easter, when Christ triumphed over
death. Lammas became Harvest Festival Day, and so
on. Not to put too fine a point on it, in the move to
replace the female deity, nothing was sacred.
All of this was part of the early European tradition, to
be transformed irrevocably by the imposition of
Christianity, and with it, the advancing economic
structure of capitalism.

23. HEGEMONY AND SPACE
We will see from all of this that the creation, appropriation, reframing, re-branding, superimposition of spatiality
is not a simple phenomenon, but involves a systematic effort along a number of fronts:.
• MilitaryForce
• Education
• Law
• Communication systems
• Material Production
• Spiritual Reframing
Until the 15th Century this process continued in a more or less spasmodic way. With the “discovery” of America
and the subsequent and immediate and dramatic rise of capitalism, a qualitative change happened. This involved the
introduction of The Market, and with it, the commodification of all things - including spirituality. The theft of land
and productive resources from the colonised, sanctioned and encouraged as it was by the Church represents the
ultimate reduction of spirituality to the commonest level of greed usury and avarice. While time was considered by
many to be the key to economic and social analysis, it was the discovery, appropriation and creation of space which
drove the engines of capitalism and continues to do so today.
Space is the silent and most powerful partner in the creation of hegemony

24. THE GEOGRAPHY OF POWER
“To see the ghostly outline of an old landscape beneath the superficial covering of the con temporary is to be made vividly aware of the
endurance of core myths. As I write, the New York Times reports an ancient ash tree at El Escorial, near Madrid, where the Virgin makes
herself known to a retired cleaning lady on the first Sunday of each month, much to the chagrin of the local socialist mayor Behind the tree
is, of course, the monastery-palace of the Most Catholic King of Spain, Phillip II. But behind both are centuries of associations, cherished
particularly by the Franciscans and Jesuits, of apparitions of the Virgin seated in a tree whose Eastertide renewal of foliage symbolised the
Resurrection. And behind that tradition were even more ancient pagan myths that described old an hallowed trees as the tomb of gods
slaughtered on the boughs, and encased within the bark to await a new cycle of life.”
So writes Simon Schama in his book
Landscapes of Power. What is elided from
Schamaʻs is any engagement in power that
might have been part of this process of
superimposition. The process is characterised
instead as a natural progression of ritual
experiences, through history, of the same spiritu
loci. He forgets to note, for instance, that the
Jesuits sought specifically to appropriate sacred
spaces of indigenous peoples and to invest them
with their own dogma as a means of colonising
the natives and re-acculturating them to
Christian, “civilised” ways. The progression of
historic ritual behaviours associated with
specific places is not innocent, but is steeped in
the blood of countless generations who have
The Escorial
been the victims of murder and genocide.
Phillip II, and his father, Charles V, for instance, were responsible for the enslavement and murder of millions of
indigenous peoples in South America in their greed to extract its gold and silver. This was accompanied by the
Christanisation of the native peoples in a process which involved the appropriation of their sacred sites.

25. COLUMBUS
The “discovery” of America, while profitable to the
European colonisers (primarily the Spanish) carried a
terrible price for the indigenous peoples. In the Potosí
mines of Bolivia alone, the Spanish brought in six
thousand African slaves to work the silver, but they all
died of altitude sickness. Local Indians forced into slave
labour for the Spanish did not fare much better. Four out
of five died in their first year in the mines over the first
few decades of mining. Nor was the genocide confined
to Bolivia. Reports from Haiti indicate that in the decade
following the arrival of Columbus, more than half of the
half-million Haitians had been murdered by the Spanish.
A young Jesuit priest, Bartolomé de las Casas who
participated in the conquest of Cuba wrote in his journals
that he estimates that in the fourteen years following the
arrival of Columbus, over three million native people
were murdered or died from the results of their
enslavement in South America. All of this was carried
out to accomplish the acquisition of new space for the
Spanish Crown, supported by a system of
colonial/geographical franchises legitimated by the Pope.
The “New World” was divided up for colonisation
among the European countries and legitimated by the
papal bull Inter Cetera Divini which established a right
to colonise and appropriate resources based upon the
legitimating argument of “saving souls. Thus the Church
played a key role in the legitimation of genocide.

26. TERRORIST COLUMBUS
In European culture, Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a hero-
explorer who brought “progress” and Christianity to native peoples.
To many of these same native peoples, Columbus is seen as a
terrorist who brought death, slavery, starvation and centuries of
subjugation. This poster (below right) is taken from indigenous
demonstrations such as the one in Columbia (left) during the 500th
Anniversary of Columbus’ voyage in 1992.
Demonstrations such as this
took place all across the all
Americas to mark the start of
their subjugation and
exploitation. But Columbus
did not make his voyage in
social political or cultural
vacuum. As Marx has noted,
the expropriation of gold and
silver from the Americas was
the first and essential moment
in the development of
Capitalism. This moment also
saw a change in the philosophy
of the materialism of space,
where it was now valued for its
productive capacity as a basis
for capital accumulation, rather
than as inherently and therefore
spiritually valuable.

27. THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH
While the late Pope John Paul may seek to defend the activities of the
Church in the process of colonisation on spiritual grounds, there is no
denying that greed for gold was also one of its motivations. As Jack
Weatherford has noted: “The churches of Europe still groan under the
weight of American silver and gold jealously guarded but ostentatiously
displayed. Once simple churches such as those in Toledo suddenly soared
to new heights, expanded, and had new windows installed to let the sun
pour down on the vast collection of gold and jewels from the New World.
The cathedral of Toledo boasts a
five-hundred pound monstrance
(right) made from the Indian
booty brought back by Columbus
himself. Córdoba, Avila and
every other city in the south boast
similar artifacts, even though they
do not always brag about the
source of the precious metals.
Gold became so common in
European palaces and churches
that architects developed a novel
style of decoration emphasising
entering light that could
illuminate the gold and make it
dazzle the observer.” The Church
cannot absolve itself from the
crimes which were committed in
its name!

28. THE CHURCH AND CAPITALISM
The gold and silver stolen from the Americas by Columbus and the Conquistadors brought so much surplus wealth to
Europe that it made investment a necessity, fuelling the surge in capitalist development. But the Church was deeply
implicated in the crimes of genocide. As Jack Weatherford has also noted: “I first saw this wealth of silver and gold in a
Holy Week procession in Cōrdoba…Out marched the Pious Brotherhood of penitents (below right) and the Union of
Nazarites of the Holiest Christ and Our lady of Tears in Sorrow. Dressed in their long robes of purple and white topped
by tall conical hats from which hung veils covering their faces they looked like marchers in a Ku Klux Klan rally. The
first one carried a six foot high cross of silver. Twelve young boys, without masks but wearing twisted lace collars
several inches thick followed him, each of them carried a gold trumpet four feet long and a foot wide at the mouth. From
each trumpet hung a banner of the Hapsburg eagle… Following the trumpet
players marched more boys with tall
silver crosses and more men with
covered faces. Slowly and clumsily…
forty young men followed in tight
formation carrying On their shoulders
a float of Christ on the cross…Every
night during Holy Week three such
processions wended their way through
the narrow streets of
Cōrdoba…(which) alone had twenty
nine such processions, each with two
floats, and in the region of Andalusia
over three hundred such processions
marched during Holy Week…. The
processions and the churches of
Europe offer the most visible
reminders of the deluge of American
gold that showered Europe in the
Sixteenth Century.”

29. ST. MICHAEL CHALMA MEXICO
And as in the case of Celtic Europe, St, Michael and the Church once again played a key role in the process of
colonisation, dispossession and pacification. Here, winged and victorious, the Christian Archangel St. Michael (of
course!) commands the cave at Chalma, Mexico, where an ancient idol stood. The figure of the warrior archangel
recalls an long-abandoned Mexican spirituality, the cult of the triumphant Huitzilopochtli. In the quest for Mexican
gold, the Spanish Conquistadors and their accompanying Jesuits enslaved and murdered millions of indigenous
Aztec and appropriated their sacred sites as a means of pacification.

30. DIS-PLACE-MENT
If the purpose of colonisation was (and still is!) the
desire to obtain new sources of natural and labour
resources for the expansion of Capital, the means was
(and remains) the displacement of indigenous peoples.
Initially, this meant their displacement from their
natural and traditional environments, accomplished by
military and “legal” means. But for peoples who had
inhabited a space for countless millenia, their
displacement signified more than a mere exclusion. It
meant also their dis-place-ment from their stories, their
place-names, their histories, their spiritual values and
their very identities, and hence their sense and
recognition of themselves as a distinct cultural group.
In this sense, colonisation was and is an act of
genocide. Furthermore, this act of genocide did not
end with the dis-place-ment of indigenous peoples’
identities, but continues down to the present with their
re-place-ment by dominant culture values, beliefs,
histories etc. Indigenous place names, names for plants
and animals, stories of origin etc. are all to be replaced
if the hegemony is to be complete. But it never is! Acts
of resistance continue, so resistance is itself redefined
legally as an illegality, necessitating further
imprisonments, dispossessions and displacements.
Here (left) a group of Zapatista Indians from Chiapas
protest outside the cathedral in Mexico City in 1989,
prior to the Chiapas uprising..

31. COLONISATION
A belief in the inherent superiority in a particular set
of cultural codes has always been the basis for
Colonisation and Colonialism. The American
colonisation of the West, and the dispossession of its
indigenous peoples was carried out under the
ideology of Manifest Destiny. Europeans believed
that they had a superior culture, and that it was their
God-given destiny to occupy the land and to
extinguish the culture of its original inhabitants. In
this illustration, we see Liberty leading the settlers
across the prairie, Bible in hand, stringing telegraph
wires with the other, while the “savages” flee ahead.
This White Supremacist belief system, coupled with
its spiritual justification - Christianity - was the basis
of every genocidal act in the Americas from the
discovery by Columbus in 1494 down to the present.
Its purpose was the acquisition of resources, (land, precious metals and slaves) to fuel emerging capitalist production and
capital accumulation. Christianity became the main vehicle by which European values were imposed upon indigenous
peoples. Its imposition - through Education was both subtle and devastating. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a Maori scholar
suggests that schools were placed in Maori communities like Trojan Horses - to destroy the less visible aspects of Maori
life, through the imposition their cosmologies and ideologies. In other words, the semantic structures of the colonisers have
infiltrated into and replaced over time those of the colonised. The consequence for the colonised, as Fanon suggested, has
been the most odious form of colonisation, and that which has brought with it the greatest pain for the colonised - the
colonisation of the mind - so that they have come to disbelieve and reject the most sacred precepts of their own traditional
cultures and therefore their identities. The late African American writer James Baldwin summed up this experience
succinctly, when he said that he quot;despisedquot; black people, quot;possibly because they failed to produce Rembrandt.quot;

32. LEGALISING GENOCIDE
The profound legal and moral ambiguities and irrationalities raised
by the Church’s participation in colonisation and genocide, and
later by the emerging rationalist movement of the Enlightenment
needed to be resolved. The impact of colonisation on indigenous
peoples spoke to an illegality that could ultimately undermine the
whole process. Throughout the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries a major philosophical debate took place which sought to
resolve these ambiguities in international law. The British
philosophers Hobbes and Locke provided the rationale. First, Locke
defined ownership in terms of work. One did not own land unless
one worked it. This rationale defined a new separation between the
individual and society in which the state of nature (and society and
the needs of its members) were defined in terms of property
ownership and labour which required the protection of laws. Civil
rights were then defined in terms of property ownership. This
distinction then resulted in the new concept of civil society being
defined as superior to indigenous social arrangements, Along with
this, came new legal definitions of civilised and uncivilised peoples
connected to land ownership together with new concepts of
(trading) nations, which excluded migratory peoples. All of this
sought to legitimate both philosophically and legally the
dispossession of native peoples from their lands and resources
under the advancing banner of civilisation. A history of working the
land and a willingness to accept Christianity then became the
hallmarks of the definition of civilised peoples. The rationalist
movement of the Enlightenment grew from this need to legally
legitimate grand theft and genocide.

33. TAXONOMY OF SPACE
Having thus defined itself as a superior
social form by virtue of its (Christian)
civilisation, Western culture now had a
“legal” right to dispossess whoever did not
fit its own self-serving definition. But in
order to maintain the hegemony of its self-
legitimation, it was necessary not only to
dis-place indigenous peoples from their
natural environment, but to re-place their
own norms, concepts, beliefs and social
structures with ones that conformed to the
new rationalist model. Education played
and continues to play a major role in this
process. Concepts of individualised
ownership had to become the cultural norm
in previously collective societies. In
addition, the surveying and taxonomising
of land and resources became one of the
key processes of colonisation.
The Western ways of defining space are clearly different (and one might say opposed) to the ways in which indigenous
peoples define space. The former clearly excludes any spiritual referencing - conceiving of space as only a material
resource capable of generating profit or capital accumulation. Here we see one of the standing stones at Avebury in
Wiltshire - a World Heritage site, with a property line (and fence-line) going right through the middle of it. Capitalist
divisions of space pay no heed to anything that is hard to measure and cannot easily be included in a balance sheet..

34. THE ENCLOSURES
Initially, the surveying, defining and legalised legitimation of private property was to realise and increase its productive
capacity. This was the rationale that was used to enforce not only the theft of land abroad, but to also legitimate the
Enclosure of commons land at home. In England, Ireland and Scotland, people had shared a common use of the lands
for grazing and growing their subsistence crops for millenia. This spiritual and economic space was marked by ritual.
The ceremonial perambulation of this space in Britain was called “Beating the Bounds” (below) and was an annual
event. Developing Capitalism required that these traditional forms of “ownership” be replaced by individual titles which
could be traded. Taking Locke’s definitions of ownership, new legalities were imposed which required proof of
individual title, Land ownership then became the key to civil and political identity. Only land-owners could vote in the
emerging (post revolutionary) society. Peasants were thus rendered politically powerless to overturn the new laws
which were the source of their dispossession and displacement. It was a model that was to be replicated with devastating
effect in the Colonies

35. INDUSTRIALISATION
In his poem, The Deserted Village Oliver Goldsmith describes the complete annihilation of the communal life of the
English countryside and the ruination of the productive capacity of the land as the peasants are forced out by the new
landowners. In village after village, enclosure destroyed the subsistence economy of the poor. Peasants without legal
proof of rights were rarely compensated. Those who were able to establish a claim were left with land inadequate for
subsistence and a disproportionate share of the very high enclosure cost. Millions of peasants were displaced, and forced
to migrate to the cities, forming a vast pool of cheap labour for the new industrialised factories, These of course were
owned by the newly emerging Capitalist (land-owning) class who had now moved the capital acquired by their initial
(legalised) theft into industrialisation and factory production. Those who could not or would not work in the factories
were press-ganged into the army and navy to support the military occupation of the colonies and expropriation of their
natural resources for production. As Foucault rightly points out, it was to absorb the residual population that
institutionalised prisons and asylums were created, and the penalty of “Transportation” initiated.

36. APPROPRIATING PLACE
A place is a site of human event or events which have lodged in the collective memory of a people. Often, places are
marked, identified and remembered through ritual telling of stories or ceremonial activities. Once a Space has been
colonised and appropriated, it becomes a formality that events, people and stories associated with that place become
themselves commodified, colonised and appropriated as here (below) where the realtor uses the stories of the displaced
peoples to sell his house site to eager clients. The irony of associated and romanticised ethnicity serving as a moment of
further colonisation, displacement and appropriation is self evident. The fact that we can recognise the validity of the
characterisation should alert us to its commonality in dominant culture where we apparently search for remnants of that
innocence which we have destroyed to use as a mark of our own cultural capital.
The same irony is evident in the
emergence in the 17th and 18th
Centuries of the Romantic garden
landscape in European culture which
tried to reproduce in a depoliticised
aesthetic the very public space which
its Capitalist beneficiaries had
themselves destroyed through the
Enclosures. In grand estate after
estate the nouveau rich called upon
the services of landscape architects
to develop for their aesthetic
pleasure gardens which both masked
the reality of the theft at the same
time that they recreated symbolised
it. Today, tourists in their thousands
flock to these sites to marvel,
oblivious to the suffering that they
both caused and denied.

37. REFRAMING SPACE
While the appropriation of Space, Meaning, Place, Spirituality has been occurring
throughout human history,the pace and extent of this process has accelerated exponentially
over the last four hundred years. Along with traditional forms of appropriation, another,
more modern form has appeared. This form of appropriation attacks not only spiritual
values and material productivity. It attacks also our understanding of the earth itself. It
does this through the experiential mode of the aesthetic, and its medium is
LANDSCAPE