Last night I attended a workshop on crafting abstracts for conference call for papers. While, yes, I was curious about a new genre of academic writing that I was totally unfamiliar with, I also used the opportunity to workshop the core argument of my paper for Mike's seminar on Thoreau. I submitted the below mock abstract for the workshop:
Henry David Thoreau’s interest in land ownership and different kinds of possession emerges in his discussion of what is “necessary of life” in Walden. He breaks down the necessary into basic categories of “Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel” that humans must secure before they can “entertain the true problems of life” (Thoreau 332). However, I want to focus on his consideration of “Shelter” in particular, especially in relation to assumptions of land ownership, inheritance, and domesticity in mid-nineteenth century New England. I argue that Thoreau experiments with alternatives to these normative assumptions by testing and challenging the legal framework of adverse possession and squatter’s rights. If the law legitimized and made affordances for adverse possession through a long history of case law, why “possess” land through intergenerational title inheritance that may come with burdensome liens and encumbrances? I expand the range of my argument from Walden to other works, including A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Maine Woods, to chart out the different modes of possession and ownership that Thoreau experiments with as he pushes the limits of what adverse possession law enables.After I read my abstract (it was also projected for all to see), Sophia and Katherine, the organizers of the workshop, challenged me to describe in a few sentences what the moving parts of my paper were. I said that on the one hand, I am interested in the history of case law that established the legal frameworks of adverse possession and squatter's rights that enables Thoreau to conduct his experiment at Walden pond. On the other, I am interested in tracing the alternative modes of possession and ownership that Thoreau theorizes not only in Walden but in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Maine Woods. Standing up there, fumbling over my words, I admitted that the greatest challenge ahead of me was to find a formal connection between Thoreau's writings and adverse possession. Once I find that connection, I can begin to make an argument about the relation between the legal framework of adverse possession and Thoreau's transcendental project found in his works.
As I was struggling to find a solid footing for my argument, I realized that Thoreau's many interactions with and descriptions of water and waterways might be a possible formal connection that I can use to move forward. On the one hand, the law establishes a certain kind of landownership, a mode characterized by intergenerational title inheritance and transfer and susceptible to an intergenerational encumbrance that forces landowners into a position of debt servitude to the land. In the "Economy" chapter of Walden, Thoreau criticizes this mode of possession and begins to theorize alternative ownership models. On the other hand, the law also affords for adverse possession of land if the squatter can prove a condition of “disseinsin.” Disseinsin involves the abandonment of a part or parcel of land by its title holder and creates an opportunity for the squatter to take possession of that parcel of land if she can “show an actual, open, exclusive, and adverse possession of the land. All these elements are essential to be proved, and the failure to establish any one of them is fatal to the validity of the claim” (Cook vs. Babcock 11 Cush. 206, 65 Mass. 206, September, 1853). To prove actual possession of the land the squatter must improve and/or gain benefit from the land through labor; and to prove open, exclusive, and adverse possession, the squatter must give notice in some way to the titleholder that she has taken possession.
If we have two sometimes contesting frameworks for landownership enshrined in law, what kind of ownership is possible in the gaps or discontinuities of those frameworks? I might argue that Thoreau theorized a new mode possession and ownership not on land at all but on water. Foucault might be able to help me read water ownership and possession as an alternative model in the gaps and discontinuities of the legal discourse on land ownership. If adverse possession as a "statement" in legal discourse makes possible a dispersal of other statements about ownership, how might we trace this dispersal throughout Thoreau? What strange new discourses are made possible in this dispersal event? I believe Thoreau traces this dispersal event as he theorizes within the gap between traditional landownership and adverse possession to propose a new water-based model of ownership. I don't think I'm prepared yet to analyze the legal discourse surrounding adverse possession (as I've just made contact with a law librarian), and I haven't looked closely yet at the ways in which water and waterways work/are represented in Thoreau. So, I don't think I have enough material to do a close reading of my primary text(s) at this point, but I think Foucault methods of discursive analysis can help move my argument forward and tie these loose strands together.
Hmmm, interesting. Water is huge in Walden and he specifically says it is the water routes that bring him there as it is a good place for business. What do you make of water ways as a circulation network, with implications that, on the water, things are in a flux state-both possessed and dispossessed by the seller, not yet possessed by the buyer? How does that ienract with ideas of land ownership, since land is supposedly fixed?
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