Hedged in? Branching out? The hedge as symbol of transition in Jean-Loup Trassard's L'Homme des haies

Abstract

First paragraph: For Doreen Massey (2018: 154), Heidegger-derived understandings of ‘place’ are problematic because ‘[they] rel[y] on an introverted, inward-looking history’ and seem ‘to require the drawing of boundaries’ to support their definition. Consequently, one of the ways Massey begins to work through a more progressive sense of place is by refusing to ‘[draw] its enclosing boundaries’ (2018: 155). A study that focuses on hedges might, therefore, imply a starting point that is in contraposition to Massey. After all, hedges, as vegetative boundaries, are not just fixed and emplaced — literally rooted — but, in histories of agrarian reform, for example, they have served as a means for defining the places they enclose and the ways they are owned, managed and used.