Atdtda33: Our own age of exploration, 941-942

[Paul Nightingale]

The ownership of ideas is "a meaningless question". Perhaps this is to
challenge agency ("... for them to be deployed ..."); and perhaps this
notion is directly tied to the 'ownership' of popular culture, here
songs/music "their grandparents had sung or played to them". If there is
ownership it is to do with place and community, a pre-modern concept, so
perhaps we go back to the map here, and the inclusion of (different kinds
of) history. There is "an urgency abroad" to preserve "each people's
heritage of song". Something that belongs to 'the people' is pursued by the
individual. And the moment one becomes aware of it, one fears loss, as
though the conscious attempt at preservation (agency again) must invoke the
fear of failure. Here, moreover, the urge to preserve popular culture is
related to technological developments, ie "recent improvements in portable
sound recording"; it is less preservation, then, than transformation, a form
of exploitation (or even trespassing). And modernist quotation, the
appropriation of popular forms, might be seen as an elitist discourse.

The second half of the section then dwells of Yashmeen's reflections, aided
to some extent by Jenny. Bottom of 941, Reef's mock sexism, an allusion to
traditional norms, is quickly succeeded, over the page, by a narrative that
positions the reader with Yashmeen. Jenny--who might or might not be present
in the scene, her words preserved by Yashmeen--speaks of exploring "that
unmapped country waiting beyond the frontiers and seas of Time" (942):
again, the speaker is placed in a position of authority, the "unmapped
country" coming into being once it is known. Cf the earlier attitude to
popular culture, which will only truly exist when it has been
recorded/preserved.