Narratives of Health and Wellbeing in the Construction of Place: Palm Springs in the American Imaginary

How do narratives of health and wellness construct place? In asking this question, I am shifting Ricœur’s focus on how narrative constructs time and the self to its relationship to place. Narrative imbues certain places with particular wellness qualities, as illustrated by the New Age construction of places like Sedona or Rishikesh as centres of healing and serenity. One such place is Palm Springs, California, to which white settlers began flocking in the mid-nineteenth century in the belief that its dry desert climate would heal tuberculosis, displacing the Indigenous inhabitants in the process. When tuberculosis was no longer believed to be climate-related, narratives of the town as a health-giving place nevertheless continued, going through several incarnations and attracting different constituencies, from Continental wandervogel immigrants to hedonism-seeking Hollywood stars to retirees and LGBT+ people. But for these narratives to operate, they must also exclude: originally, the Indian tribe, and then the workers and caregivers, whose access to health and wellness is largely precluded by neoliberal capitalism.