Challenging peripherality: Cornwall in Pan-Celtic narratives of place

Abstract

Following Bhabha (1994) liminal places can be imagined as situated at a point of tension between the centre and the periphery, as places that belong to more than one oppositional national categories simultaneously, or as focal points for alternative ways of looking at how place is organised. From the perspective of social psychology, the focus is on how the individual experiences, negotiates and identifies with such liminal places, alongside the “collective practices through which specific place identities are formed, reproduced and modified” (Dixon & Durrheim 2000, p.32). Such a focus also draws out the materiality of ‘in-between’ liminal spaces: such spaces are not just amphitheatres for the performance of transgressive identities, but actual places where people need to live their actual lives. This chapter examines Cornwall as one such liminal place. Cornwall has been described by Deacon (2007) as occupying an ‘ambiguous spatial location’, which is simultaneously English county and Celtic nation, while not fully being either. As I will outline, Cornwall’s liminality exists alongside economic and geographic peripherality (Payton 1989). For those who identify with Cornishness, this liminality may act as a resource to challenge being positioned as peripheral: as in the quote above. However, lack of wider recognition of Cornwall’s ‘Celtic’ status may also act as a constraint in expressing such identities. In order to explore this, this chapter draws on ethnographic research at a pan-Celtic festival in Cornwall: in this context, regarded as a temporary liminal space within a more permanent liminal place.