On Transitions and Borders

Balatorium Meetup, 20 October 2023

Hello everyone and welcome on board the train to Lake Balaton. My aim today is to open our discussion on transitional spaces, while connecting it to the case of the biggest lake in Central Europe: Lake Balaton.

It is a privilege to have this discussion on a train and I am excited to be part of this gathering. But, before I start, I need to underline that my task here is not an easy one for several reasons. Firstly, I am a philosopher talking about space and landscape, which is a position, starting from the outside, far from several specialized professions in this realm. From this position, it is quite easy to fall into the trap of
oversimplification on the one side, or of arrogance of philosophy on the other, as philosophy strives to understand everything from an abstract, distant standpoint. Namely, the arrogance of philosophy, which has this tendency to tell everyone and every profession what to think and subsequently how to operate, is one of the oldest and least hidden secrets. I need to stress that I will present just a speculative attempt
to delineate the meaning of transitional spaces on the case of Lake Balaton.

Definitions
I would like to begin with 2 definitions to frame the context of the discussion. To better understand what a transitional space is, allow me to first define the word transition, as the latter could refer to a place of departure, or in our case, an intended destination. If we search for the meaning of transition in an English
dictionary (1) , we may find that it carries at least 4 different meanings. In the first meaning, transition covers 1.) a change or shift from one state, subject, place to another, or a period or phase in which such a change or shift is happening. The second definition marks the meaning of the word transition as 2.) something that links one state, subject, place, etc. to another: a connecting part or a piece, as a bridge, or a coastline for example. This passage, which connects two different entities, can be spatial, literal, or discursive. The third meaning of the word transition marks 3.) a process by which a transgender or nonbinary person comes to live in accordance with their gender identity through changes to their appearance. The fourth meaning of transition makes a jump into the energetic sector and covers the
meaning of 4.) an abrupt change in energy state or level usually accompanied by loss or gain of a single quantum of energy.

It is clear enough that what we are interested is the first and second meaning of transition, namely transition as a shift from one place to another and a common passage that connects two different entities in a spatial, literal or discursive sense. I am interested mainly in the meaning of transition, applied in space.

Starting from those definitions, we could try to define a transitional space as a space that embodies the characteristics of 2 singular entities into one. A significant aspect which should be highlighted here, is that while a transitional space joins 2 elements into one and carries the characteristic of those 2 elements, it also opens a new, third entity, which actually embodies this overlapping. Some evident examples of transitional spaces could be thresholds, corridors, bridges, shores. A transitional
space is where one space ends and where this third entity opens. At the core of a transitional space is then the overlapping of 2 different entities into a 3 rd one, while expressing the characteristics of both previous entities, and where it is sometimes very difficult to mark the line, the border from one space to another. Understanding a transitional space as a border– I will come back to that.

The second definition I would like to talk about is the name of Lake Balaton. In distinction to all other Hungarian endonyms for lakes, which bear the suffix -tó ‘lake’, Lake Balaton is referred to in Hungarian with a definite article; that is, a Balaton ‘the Balaton’ (2). The name has an Indo-European origin and is derived from  Slavic  *bolto or what is used today in Czech, Slovak and Slovenian as blato, meaning ‘mud,
swamp’. The origin of the name is usually traced to the Slavic prince Pribina, who in 846 began to build a fortress as his seat of power and several churches in the region of Lake Balaton. His fortified castle and capital of the Lower Pannonian Principality became known as Blatnohrad (‘Swamp Fortress’), and it served as defensive fortification to protect the region from invasions coming from the east.
What is known today as Balaton, is called in Slovenian Blatno jezero, in Slovak Blatenské jazero, and is a residue of past power-related structures.

What I would like to underline here, is that already by its sheer name—starting from this basic linguistic approach—Lake Balaton stands as something different, as an unusual entity within the Hungarian realm. The name is a constant reminder of past relations, connected to power and ambitions to dominate this land, which was a site of battles, especially until the 10 th century 3 , when the area was conquered by the ancient Hungarians.

Coming to the question of power, I would like to make a digression. Namely, as power probably permeates the whole of humanity, it is also very difficult to define with a single line or sentence. Power is practically everywhere: it seems to emerge the moment two people enter a relationship. Power structures political, social, cultural, economic and private relationships. Within Western societies, power has been fundamentally connected to space from its beginnings. Or, to frame this discourse
with the words by Michel Foucault, The history of spaces is always also a history of powers (4). It is important to note, that architecture has always been one of the crucial manifestations of power.

The word power originates from Latin (potestas, potentia, imperium) (5), while the Slavic word for it relates to a land or an area, since it etymologically points to “an area under one ruler”(6). Does this meaning of ruling a space also explain the activity of power? Its meaning seems to be broader. In philosophy, the definition of power has been tackled by practically every philosopher; from Socrates and Plato, to Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, from Hegel and Marx, all the way to Arendt, Agamben and Žižek, which is why it can be compared only with sex in terms of its popularity. And even sex is ultimately a matter of power (7). We could probably define power as a concentration of rights, rules and various tools of repression used for the enforcement of authority in a certain area. In view of the violence accompanying power as a visible or invisible threat of punishment, power is also close to authority
and sovereignty. A quick glimpse into the linguistic history of Lake Balaton can show us that 9th century power structures are still present today, as signified by the lake’s very name. They are inscribed in the name.

If we move from linguistics to an analyse of spatial registers of Lake Balaton, we can say that it lies in the central western part of Hungary and that it is one of the most distinctive and characteristic spaces in the whole region. Lake Balaton is a massive body of water in the middle of a vast, almost endless plain. This extensive amount of water stands within a mostly homogenic landscape of a seemingly persistent plain as an intruder, as a spatial manifestation of a difference located in space. Within this context, the lake, besides its aqueous properties, contributes new dynamics to the area, including ground elevation, and as such, cuts into the predominantly flat landscape as an element of surprise. With its water, the lake introduces a different ecosystem of wetlands and shores, it enables leisure activities in a predominant rural,agricultural area.

If I may take the liberty to simplify, I would like to form a hypothesis that if there is any predominant characteristic of Lake Balaton, is that in its spatial and linguistic realm we are faced here with something different. The lake proposes itself in many aspects as the Other: the other to the surrounding land, the other to the surrounding landscape, an alien anomaly in the Pannonian Basin, the other to the predominant language, the other to all human activities and wildlife in comparison with the
surrounding region. The lake’s shoreline acts as a transitional space, and its encirclement of the body of water in combination with the surrounding terra ferma, the mainland, results in the creation of a distinctive place.

The border and the lake
In the past, the lake did not mark just the geographical entities of water and the mainland, but was often used also to mark a political border. Then, the border was a line of separation, which was present within the vicinity of the lake and was moved after battles. Ruins of various castles and fortifications are scattered around the lake as silent witnesses of those times. This border was a line of surveillance (8), it was a demarcation strip between the enemies and the allies. The lake, which is often called the Hungarian Sea and spreads out so far that it creates its own horizon, used to be a contested space. Today, the lake no longer has a political border in its vicinity. The political border and a visible quest for the control and power of this space has gone, but it seems that other borders, which are more invisible, are applied here.

I would like to bring to your attention again the quote by Foucault, that The history of spaces is always also a history of powers. Within his theory, after the 18th century, the usual control, which were visible in space also with architecture, were replaced by much more invisible lines of control. After the 18th century, architecture and its styles also pursued spaces of pleasure, to trigger the enjoyment upon the aesthetical perfection of space. Namely, the architecture from the modern age onward, according
to Foucault, is the knowledge that enables the invisible functioning of power by conducting surveillance. The forms of space and architecture produce knowledge that is tightly involved in the power’s economic and political relations of production and perpetuates them in order to trigger enjoyments and pleasure.

The shoreline of Lake Balaton is a transitional space, as the shore is exactly the space that delineates the line between the water and the land and brings a more recent border of our contemporaneity, that operates much more on a defragmented, non-unified, less invisible level. I would like to call this line the commodified border. The coast is a transitional space and exactly this establishes its richness, its potential, its capital, that also brings revenues and commodification to this space. In the last 80
years or more, the space registry of this transitional space has invested intensively into commodification by tourism, agriculture and similar economic activities, which turned this region into a popular destination. Within this industry, the shore appears mainly as the place of enjoyments and pleasure. It seems that the border, the line, that marks the area of Lake Balaton as a transitional space has been growing exponentially in the last decade. The commodification of this space, which includes
pleasure hunting and thrill seeking, is expanding.

It seems that the tourism industry, with its mission to facilitate a spatial registry of enjoyment around Lake Balaton, which is detached from everyday life of work obligations, stress, and responsibilities, has been building this phantasma successfully here. Those spatial registries could be called narcotic and
phantasmagoric. They are in line with our contemporary society, which is traversed by hedonism and permissiveness. The power structures, inscribed in space, are showing the domination of the neoliberal paradigm in its full swing: the authority at work is the market. This authority brings an invisible border of a totalising commodification into space, which has surrendered to sedative and cheap kitsch, that
generates an illusion of happiness and enjoyment to the visitors. This narcotic, phantasmagoric space is designed to form enjoyment as it needs to be enjoyed.

A lake as a garden of coexistence
The neoliberal paradigms have also resulted in the global environmental crisis, which is the predominant one in our time of consequent crises. We know that we urgently need degrowth, as the neoliberal notion of constant growth has brought us where we are. As a society, we need to evolve from the neoliberal paradigm in order to regenerate.

The global environmental crisis, together with the increased development of the tourism industry, has resulted in a locally endangered site of Lake Balaton, with additional landslides (9) and poor water quality brought by the intensive accumulation of human interventions in the region. It seems that the past political borders, which affected greatly the lives of humans in the region, has never affected the lives of entire ecosystems to such a degree as the contemporary borders of commodification. Lake Balaton and its shores stand as a transitional space, where this difference, this position as the Other, has been used to build up a symptomatic space of the Anthropocene. This begs the question: Can we step out of this machinery to form an alternative, post-Anthropocene space?

Namely, in a time when the environmental crisis threatens all forms of live on the planet, we need a broader, post-anthropocentric analysis, which will provide wider, more inclusive and complex answers. The totalising concept of neocapitalism, with its profit and only human oriented, limited relational modes, that flattens nature, plants and animals, extrapolated from its interconnectedness with the biosystem to a mere object, cannot alone propose a new, post-anthropocentric answer to the pressing ecological crisis, not globally, let alone locally, in such a delicate a delicate ecosystem as is the one of Lake Balaton.

Can we preserve water, can we preserve the existing ecosystems here with a post-anthropocentric approach? Maybe it sounds rather unrealistic, but an all-encompassing garden on the shore of Lake Balaton, where plants, animals and humans could co-exist on the basis of a common aim to preserve the water and the landscape for future generations, not just use it for profit-gaining tourism, might be a
solution worth applying. This would not been a Garden of Eden, but a Garden of Coexistence. A garden, where boarders of this transitional space would be clearly defined, and the quality of life measured by the sustainable coexistence of various lifeforms instead of profit.

Endnotes:

1 Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary. Last access 20.9.2023: Transition Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

2 Source: Lake Balaton – Wikipedia

3 Peter Lango, Migration period settlement history of Balaton Uplands, in: Zatykó, Csilla and Juhász,
Imola and Sümegi, Pál, eds. (2007) Environmental archaeology in Transdanubia. Varia archaeologica Hungarica
(20). Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. ISBN 978-963-7391-94-1.

4 Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power”, in: The Impossible Prison: A Foucault Reader, ed. Alex Farquharson et
al., Nottingham: Nottingham Contemporary, 2008, p. 9.

5 The Latin word imperium means “an order, command, supreme power or command; state, empire”, Veliki
slovar tujk, Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 2006, p. 486; the term power is translated into Latin as “imperium,
potestas, ditio, magistratus” (Fran Bradač, Slovensko-latinski slovar, Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije, 1968,
p. 168).

6 The etymological explanation is based on Marko Snoj, Slovenski etimološki slovar, http://www.fran.si, accessed 19
August 2021.

7 “Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Alenka Zupančič, “A-seksualno nasilje in sistemski
užitek”, Problemi, no. 1/2 (2020), pp. 5–29, Ljubljana: Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo, 2020.

8 More about the border in: Andrew Benjamin and Gerard Reinmuth, “The Garden’s Complex Instrumentality”,
in: Kučan, Ana and Kurir, Mateja. Garden and Metaphor: Essays on the Essence of the Garden. Berlin, Boston:
Birkhäuser, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035626568

9 Kápolnainé Nagy-Göde, F., Török, Ákos “Types of Landslides along Lake Balaton, Hungary”, Periodica
Polytechnica Civil Engineering, 66(2), pp. 411–420, 2022. https://doi.org/10.3311/PPci.18615