The Making of Identity Through Nature by Andreas Panagidis
Review of Episode 2 “Nature/Culture/Power: A history of the Nicosia Municipal Garden”
The discussion between Dr. Loizos Kapsalis and Dr. Elena Parpa in the most recent episode of the bαhçέs Histories* of Cyprus series may have focused specifically on the history of the Nicosia Municipal Garden, but, I believe, it also raises questions about the wider Cypriot landscape. As Parpa points out, the use of “landscape” as a verb suggests a deliberate effort to shape the land. Through an examination of the history of the garden we can observe how the British in Cyprus actively sought to reshape the relationship between “people, plants and place” through different means. This statement packs a lot of exciting possibilities for uncovering the meaning of landscape in relation to the production of cultural identity which I will briefly try to explore in this review.
From its conception, the garden seemed to fulfil the role of a public space, as a stage for official celebrations of colonial display of authority, but also as a space for the cultivation of plants for agriculture and their supply to different villages. As Kapsalis also mentions, the representation of power in the form of a public garden or public park has been used in England and the United States as a tool for dealing with social change in cities. Indeed, from London’s Garden Cities - conceived in order to solve the problems of the Victorian city - to Frederick Law Olmsted’s planning of city parks in America, the beautification of the city was expected to also guarantee moral order. Parpa agrees that the role of the public park as a civilising element and an answer to urban sanitation problems used in Western states may have been influential in utilising similar ideas in British efforts to shape conceptions of Cypriot identity on the island.
Parpa further reminds us of an interesting historical fact, mentioned as well by Panayiotis Persianıs (1996): Along with the study of the English language, learning how to garden and acquiring agricultural knowledge were goals introduced in Cypriot education by the British, and became the British administration’s principal tools to realize its vision to turn Cyprus into a “depoliticised rural arcadia”. The term, which Parpa borrows from Alexis Rappas (2014) is quite evocative; it introduces the idyllic, pastoral vision of Cyprus in the mind of a coloniser as an island in which rural life flourishes, while at the same time is manageable and controlled by the establishment. In this sense, such visions of pastoralism may not have been so different in the making of the English countryside itself! Drawing parallels between different geographical and political processes is outside of the scope of this piece, but, for the sake of asking deeper questions about the mutually reinforcing relationship between identity and landscape I will pose this question for further research: have the British processes of shaping land in other countries influenced the Cypriot landscape and, as a consequence, Cypriot identity?
What emerges in the discussion between Parpa and Kapsalis is that the new urban spaces planned in colonial Cyprus during the beginning of the 20th century such as the Nicosia Municipal Garden, brought with them the processes of modernity that made nature. Parpa illustrates this by the example of deciding which type of palm tree to plant in the municipal garden. Interestingly, Genadios, the director of the Department of Agriculture at the time, ultimately decided on using the decorative washingtonia variety (a type of palm imported from the western coast of the United States) instead the fruit-producing phoenix dactylifera, more commonly found on the island, responding, as Parpa argues during the conversation, to politics of identity “not only played out through policies but also through choices as simple as choosing a specific kind of plant.”. In other words, as with gardening lessons introduced in schools mentioned earlier, the making of the municipal garden by the conscious decisions for its landscape design involved the making of nature and identity at the same time.
Kapsalis calls attention to an interesting tension in representations of Cyprus: the effort, on the one hand, of maintaining an ‘exotic’ image of Cyprus as ‘other’ (related to the image of the East) while, on the other, projecting a vision of a modernising society. The resulting effect is perhaps a different concept of modernisation for Cyprus that remains complex and uncertain. Parpa highlights another case where a hybrid identity is being produced and interpreted: the architecture and landscaping of the Cyprus archaeological museum nearby. The Greek portico for the museum’s entrance modelled on the Parthenon, the power of neoclassic imagery and associated ideas of democracy, is juxtaposed by two palm trees (this time the dactylifera) on each side, the former being an image of ‘Greekness’ and also western power in architecture while the latter perhaps an image of an exotic island. By involving a range of scales and spaces between buildings and landscapes, the making of urban places and the making of nature overlap during the period of society’s modernisation that was underway in colonial Cyprus.
As Floya Anthias has shown, the hybridity of Cypriot identity remains a contested issue as the polarity between an exotic vision of Cyprus and a more modern vision of urbanity persists (Anthias, 2006). In his article “Aphrodite Delights”, Yiannis Papadakis, for example, observes that the qualities of a “traditional” and “half-oriental” Cyprus may be juxtaposed to the identity of a modernising society in the way the island is marketed to tourists (p. 241). In this sense, a Cypriot post-colonial identity interpreted through architecture and landscape presents a never-ending supply of contradictions that seem to be multiplying in a society that is also more and more disconnected from previous visions of arcadia.
I return to Parpa’s triad of “people, plants and place” to reflect on the discussion in this episode of bαhçέs – a word for garden in both Greek and Turkish –and to Kapsalis’ question surrounding the notion of the word bahçe/μπαχτσές itself, “what is it that a garden represents?”. Of course, on the one hand, a bahçe/μπαχτσές is a representation of people, plants and place “as they are”, because it is indeed in/through gardens (albeit mostly private ones), that much of Cypriot everyday life takes place. On the other hand, people, plants and places that determine the landscape (i.e. the shaping of land) are, in turn, dependent on the politics of representing and reinventing conceptions of Cypriot identity.
References:
Anthias, F. (2006). Researching Society and Culture in Cyprus. In Y. Papadakis, N. Peristianis, & G. Welz (Eds.), Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History, and an Island in Conflict. Indiana University Press.
Papadakis, Y. (2006). Aphrodite delights. Postcolonial Studies, 9(3), 237–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790600824963
Persianis, P. K. (1996) Η εκπαίδευση της Κύπρου μπροστά στην πρόκληση της Ευρώπης [Education in Cyprus Before the Challenge of Europe]. Stelios Livadiotis Press.
Rappas, A. (2014). Cyprus in the 1930s: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict. Vol. 66. IB Tauris.
Written by Andreas Panagidis
