tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79273234855688066532024-02-20T05:59:27.450-08:00Communication Arts ForumLebanese International University
Communication Arts Dep.choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-42462803797347013862012-10-22T22:23:00.002-07:002012-10-22T22:23:58.134-07:00The Arab Masses:<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From the Implosion of the Fantasies to the Explosion of the Political<br />
<br />
Hassan Choubassi <br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A lecture presented at the congress on cultural motion in the Arab region “Inverted Worlds”, organized by the Orient Institut in Beirut October 2012</span><br />
<br />
The Arab masses found in the Internet the last resort to live a free life. But this life was only on the virtual level. Virtually people were able to fulfill all their dreams and fantasies in this open cyberspace, a space that is not limited or policed by any authority whatsoever. For the first time people were able to express themselves openly without any reservation and the Arab youth were able to talk politics, to talk about sex to talk with the opposite sex or just talk anything anytime in a way that they can never do in their actual daily life. The cyberspace allowed a new generation to sprout out of social boundaries, a generation that became accustomed to free speech even though it was only in virtual reality. They lived a Utopic virtuality or what Paul Virilio called a “teletopia”, a utopia tele-mediated by the machine namely computers.<br />
Living under severe political oppression the Arab masses resorted to virtual reality where it is a safe haven to express themselves and their most extreme fantasies without any restriction. Cyber societies grew like mushrooms and it was caused mainly by strict social norms on one hand, and biased, cruel regimes of dictatorships that forbid political change and public political expression on the other. The Arab political regimes exercised a heavy censorship on conventional media and enforced a single totalitarian political party that doesn’t allow power devolution and in most of the cases those regimes were corrupt and socially unjust. With the advent of the Internet, the Arab masses imploded in this virtuality to the extreme saturation until they eventually exploded in the actual through revolutions or what is called the “Arab spring”.<br />
<br />
Virtual reality has had a remarkable effect on the Arab societies, after living so many years under the oppression of dictatorships that ruled in the name of the people, most of the Arab countries were enforcing martial laws with the alibi of a big ideological fight against Israel and the imperialist Americans. Now the Arab youth are exposed to new ways of life, namely the western way, through different mediators of chat-room, network games, porn sites, videos, music and more, and they have a chance to experience freedom of speech through another additive to this virtuality, social networks. The Arab masses imploded their most extreme fantasies in this cyber reality and they started to spend exponential periods of time in that virtual simulated environment. But eventually virtual reality becomes incapable of containing political activities because of the sharp separation and contradiction between those two realms of actual and virtual, the Arab youth lived a schizophrenia were they can be free and incognito in one and oppressed and surveyed in the other.<br />
<br />
This explosion came at the exact moment where communication technology evolved into a new level. The advent of mobile connectivity marked a revolution in communication technology. With new technologies of smart phones and mobile tablets, the image has taken a new dimension. This mobile connectivity is totally different than the static one; the notion of space takes new dimension, from being enclosed, private cocooned space and thus disconnected from the proximate environment while connected over distance in a cyberspace to go back again to the actual real space while keeping the connectivity that enables us to be mobile and linked to the web at the same time. This has changed back the notion of private versus public spaces.<br />
<br />
The image produced by the masses in the Arab region after the saturation of the virtual and the explosion in the street is no longer a conventional representation, nor a simulation like Baudrillard argued, nor it is a virtual substitution like Virilio claimed but rather it was actual reality itself mixed with the virtual or what is called “augmented”; An actual reality augmented with the digital parameters of mobile devices and satellite connectivity in the global space, a step further beyond the actual and the virtual into a superimposition of both. “Augmented reality” is a concept that was technically used by Ronald T. Azuma in his study “A Survey of Augmented Reality” in 1997. He defines it as: “a variation of Virtual Environments” along with the actual and it “allows the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world.”<br />
<br />
A group of researchers (Marc Aurel Schnabel, Tom Kvan, Xian Gyu Wang, Hartmut Seichter) presented a paper at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2007 entitled “From Virtuality to Reality and Back”, in their study they divided Reality into several technologically dependent categories. Mixed realities according to them ranges from real reality to amplified reality to augmented reality to mediated reality to augmented virtuality to virtualized reality to virtual reality.<br />
<br />
In an essay entitled “The Poetics of Augmented Space” Lev Manovich cited a number of technological paradigms that enables a space to be called augmented as such, he defines those research paradigms as tools that serve in:<br />
<br />
“Overlaying the physical space with the dynamic data. (…) This overlaying is often made possible by the tracking and monitoring of users. In other words, the delivery of information to users in space and the extraction of information about those users are closely connected. Thus, augmented space is also monitored space”.<br />
<br />
1. Ubiquitous Computing (omnipresent): the shift away from computing which centered on desktop machines towards smaller multiple devices distributed throughout the space <br />
<br />
2. Augmented Reality: the laying of dynamic and context-specific information over the visual field of a user<br />
<br />
3. Tangible Interfaces: treating the whole of physical space around the user as part of a human–computer interface (HCI) by employing physical objects as carriers of information<br />
<br />
4. Wearable Computers: embedding computing and telecommunication devices into clothing.<br />
<br />
5. Intelligent Buildings (or Intelligent Architecture): buildings wired to provide cell-space applications.<br />
<br />
6. Intelligent Spaces: spaces that monitor users’ interaction with them via multiple channels and provide assistance for information retrieval, collaboration, and other tasks.<br />
<br />
7. Context-Aware Computing: an umbrella term used to refer to all or some of the developments above, signaling a new paradigm in the computer science and HCI fields.<br />
<br />
8. Ambient Intelligence: alternative term, which also refers to all or some of the paradigms summarized earlier.<br />
<br />
9. Smart Objects: objects connected to the net; objects that can sense their users and display ‘smart’ behavior.<br />
<br />
10. Wireless Location Services: delivery of location-specific data and services to portable wireless devices such as cell phones.<br />
<br />
11. Sensor Networks: networks of small sensors that can be used for surveillance and environmental monitoring to create intelligent spaces, and similar applications.<br />
<br />
12. E-paper (or e-ink): a very thin electronic display on a sheet of plastic, which can be flexed in to different shapes and which displays information that is received wirelessly.<br />
<br />
Although most of these paradigms might not be so common in Arab societies, but their social implications are still valid in addition to very important and basic tools that are used by a number of activists in different Arab revolutions, especially now in Syria, activists formed media hubs reporting directly what is happening in the street. They use simple but very efficient and most importantly independent technologies, independent from public services and thus governmental control, independent internet connection via satellite, independent cellular phone connection through “Althouraya”, even independent electricity as they carry small generators with them. They used Handycams or just any phone camera, laptops, satellite cellular phones, GPS devices and they used many online applications like YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and Google maps. Although it took a lot of efforts and hardships and a lot of sacrifices that sometime lead to death but they were able to transform their space through these technologies into an augmented space.<br />
<br />
Mobile communication technology has entailed a new mode of image production and thus new social structures exemplified by a shift from static interactivity through the virtual to a kinetic, augmented or mixed actuality. A step further beyond the virtual and the banality of the image through computer-generated mappings, which will overlap actual reality via instantaneous, sensorial devices that can detect physical details and encode them, superimposed with the virtual.<br />
<br />
So, to look at the big picture, what we globally witnessed in a relatively short period of time is a shift from industrial mass production, to a post industrial mass production of information exemplified by the advent of instantaneous digital technologies, to new forms of image mass production which is a hybrid image mixed between the actual and the virtual, an image juxtaposed with the real, an “augmented” reality.<br />
<br />
The image production shifted from the Actual to the Virtual to Augmented reality<br />
<br />
In his essay “The work of arts in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1930), Walter Benjamin suggests that with industrial mass production, the work of art loses its ‘aura’, its value passes from being based on ritual to become based on the political, and with this transformation emerges mass media as we know it. He writes:<br />
<br />
“The instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production; the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice--politics.”<br />
<br />
In the 90s Jean Baudrillard suggests that with instantaneous mass production of information, the image becomes obscene and loses its reference to the actual. Contrary to Benjamin, he suggests that the aura of the work will not be lost until it loses the symbolic exchange, which only occurs when it loses the reference between the image and reality where the image is not a representation of reality anymore but a simulation that is a creation of new reality without any relation to the actual. This can be valid in our region too and maybe we can consider it as the incubation period of the revolution, where the image lost its reference to what was happening really in the street, an obscene image maintained and nurtured by forbidden fantasies in a contained cyberspace where everything is possible. And thus, Saussure’s formula in semiotics loses one of its essential components, the signified (the real). Simulation for Baudrillard is a signifier without a signified, an obscene image that serves to deter the actual. In simulation, reality is deserted and events become non-events until the explosion of the ultimate event. In “Simulacra and Simulation”, he writes:<br />
<br />
“The age of simulation (thus) begins with a liquidation of all referentials (…) It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself. (…) Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death.”<br />
<br />
For Paul Virilio, reality is split into two parts: Actual and virtual, which maybe exemplified the schizophrenic reality that the Arabs lived during this incubation period; and bit-by-bit virtuality takes over actuality by a process of substitution. Virilio argues that with tele-technologies, humans would be totally dependent on the machine to get them through the day. They will be connected to the world through the mediation of a computer network isolating their physicality. Each individual will be isolated, behind her/his computer screen connected to other computers, at a distance and disconnected from one’s proximate environment. Mobility will be mutated and the notions of public and private spaces will be entirely inversed, until eventually the explosion of this “information bomb” as he calls it. In his essay "The Third Interval: A Critical Transition in Re-thinking Technologies”, he writes:<br />
<br />
“Telemarketing, tele-employment, fax work, bit-net, and e-mail transmissions at home, in apartments, or in cabled high rises, these might be called cocooning: an urbanization of real time thus follows the urbanization of real space. The shift is ultimately felt in the very body of every city dweller, as a terminal citizen who will soon be equipped with interactive prostheses whose pathological model is that of the ‘motorized handicapped’, equipped so that he or she can control the domestic environment without undergoing any physical displacement”. <br />
<br />
Through an exploration of the use of different types of technologies in different Arab countries in different periods of time we can distinguish the different effects of technology on social change, from industrial to post industrial, or information technology to new forms of image production juxtaposed with the real or augmented reality that will serve eventually into building an ultimate image that will explode in the street in a form of “violent” revolution.<br />
<br />
An analysis of the Arab online media will show us how the augmented reality created by civil society, with the mediation of few new media technologies, is mobilized to abolish a stagnated media, mainly the controlled governmental media, that is forbidding any possibility of political change as we will also notice the effect of mobile media, its accessibility and affordability on the role of civil collectivity. A new image was created, never before seen in any main stream media institution, whether pro or against the revolution, an alternative image that is closer to the event, closer to the actual closer to “truth”, an image that documented this previously deserted reality and that gained more credibility than any other media. An image which was never possible without the new mobile media, the handy-cam the smart phone the laptop and independent internet connection, although they might seem relatively simple but they proved to be very efficient.<br />
<br />
In his essay “The Masses: The implosion of the social in the media”, Baudrillard depicts how the masses imploded in the obscenity of the image of mass media. This self-intoxication, as he calls it, is the realm of simulation where reality becomes totally deserted, “the way in which events themselves disappear behind the television screen, or the more general screen of information (for it is true that events have no probable existence except on this deflective screen, which is no longer a mirror). While the mirror and screen of alienation was a mode of production (the imaginary subject), this new screen is simply its mode of disappearance. ” This same concept of implosion can be illustrated by the effect of new media on Arab societies too. <br />
<br />
In a video from the begging of the Syrian revolution a group of women activists called for an indoor sit-in. While sit-ins are only efficient in a public space; this one was in a living room mediated by a video on YouTube and thus transforming the private into a public space. Covering their faces they chanted the national anthem holding small banners with slogans against the regime. This video marks the period of transition, the paroxysm of the virtual, just the last minute before the explosion in the street this video depicts the inversion of the notion of public and private spaces, and the last of the incognito masses. In the time that follows people started revealing their identity, nobody cared anymore. The use of technologies of augmented reality has had a tremendous effect on social structures and the interrelations between public and private spaces, but this could not be possible without a long period of incubation in the virtual. Living in the virtual was one of the major factors that helped to mature the political activities of the Arabs. The open discussion of political issues through social media and the fact that they can be incognito, contributed to a general feeling that people can freely criticize their political regimes and to suggest alternatives through continuous debates among different layers of the society from different countries. The connectivity between these different layers and nationalities helped to open the doors for political exchange of ideas and to share experiences of alternative solutions suggested by a set of different understandings in different countries around the world; this can explains the contagious upheavals starting from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria passing by Yemen and Bahrain.<br />
<br />
Knowing that the revolutions are still in progress, it would be pretentious to talk about a conclusion now, it would be an underestimation of a situation that is still in continuous flux and thus it is only legitimate to raise questions that will open the doors for a deeper research about the implications of new technologies on the population movements and social change.<br />
<br />
1. What is the social mode of image production after the advent of social networks and smart mobile technologies?<br />
<br />
2. Will the masses be able to escape the trap of virtual reality, or simulation, that many post-modern theorists argued they are stuck in? And, will they continue to be obsessed and intoxicated by their own image?<br />
<br />
3. Will the image escape its current banality and obscenity with augmented reality? <br />
<br />
4. Can we consider augmented reality as a shift back to representation? Or are we still in the simulation mode of image production?<br />
<br />
5. Will augmented reality reestablish the previous relations that existed between public and private spaces?<br />
<br />
6. Is the Arab revolution a sort of augmented reality that has followed a period of virtual saturation?<br />
<br />
7. What is Augmented space in the Arab world? Does it escape surveillance and control over the masses or is it a space of freedom?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>
choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-66540787392574865872011-09-08T01:45:00.000-07:002011-09-08T01:46:30.287-07:00Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient Events (Excerpt)<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">by: Bilal Khbeiz<br /><br />I. The Body Manufactured with Letters<br /><br />The practice of modern living is toilsome. It requires spending a substantial part of what is perhaps a short existence in preparation before commencing it. This living requires nothing short of long and 'unavoidably exhausting years in educating the mind and acquiring a variety of techniques for caring and hiding, whilst in contact with others, the persistent and cumbersome traces of the body. According to G. Canguilhem, a proper healthy and therefore viable body is a silent body. One which is absent, forgettable, showing no I signs of hunger, thirst, illness or symptoms of sexual excitement; a body which is maintained and schooled in the repetition of standard behaviors and kept at bay from all digressions.<br />Such demands are always appended with newer ones. No longer is it sufficient to hide the body and the signs of its basic needs. The effects of time are also considered ravages that must be fixed and bidden. Tired eyes are reviled. Sufficient sleep or its equivalent is stipulated to maintain the appearance of bloom and vigor. A similar attention is required for sustaining the bright whiteness of teeth so they seem always unused. Perhaps the only respite left for the body, to come forward and express itself, are those rare and intermittent moments of laughter where the body manages to slip away from control and ridicule itself. But those moments are necessarily brief. Modern living forcibly relegates such moments to the distant background, appearing only when the body slips inadvertently from underneath the weight of discipline. The crackling of a stomach is, in this sense, a momentous event. Although unintentional, if not due to it, it solicits one of two responses: either a blatant avoidance of the cause of that very recognizable sound or a short outbreak of laughter, openly ridiculing an undisciplined body. While the second option is often used, it is nevertheless crucial to recognize that laughter precipitates evaluative and classist discrimination. For we are only allowed to laugh at ourselves. Laughing at others, or even in the presence of others, requires permission and a pre-requisite agreement.<br /><br />The Marginalization of the Senses<br />The preparation of the body for disappearance, for an obedient silence, requires considerable effort and skill. All that remains present and visible is that which appears seemingly intrinsic: namely, a constant suggestion of energy and strength, negating the traces of its use, peeling the accumulated crusts of time and powdering it with the signs of rebirth. Through the suggestion of energy, the body emigrates from the domain of smells and tastes and postpones, if not occults, the changes of illness and aging. The list of demands for making bodies disappear extends in accordance with time and place. And yet, what is constant and common in the relationship between moderns with their bodies is the marginalization of the senses and their prevention from acting as arbiter and director.<br />Sigmund Freud remarked that, ever since standing erect, humans have foregrounded the sense of sight and relegated the other senses to the shadows. Accordingly, this preferred sense of sight, maintained as an authority, has conferred upon all that is visible a complete sensorial tangibility. And yet, Paul Virilio, in his La Machine de Vision, traces how photography gradually cancels the mediation of the sensorial world through direct seeing and how in consequence the eye, unable to ascertain tangibility, loses its claims of owning the world.<br />The strenuous efforts required to prepare the body for meeting with the other, tends to make such a meeting a goal in itself. A similar effort is also expected of the other. Both are required to veil their bodies by neutralizing their senses and removing all traces of thirst, hunger, sleep and intimacy. And, by removing the sensorial from the domain of mutual influence, one is left with words. Words which intimate, as they conceal, the physicality of desires.<br /><br />Designing the Quotidian<br />The work of sociologist Erving Goffman, on the preparations required for the presentation of the self in everyday life, constitute a notable contribution for understanding interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, David le Breton remarked on how modern bodies exist in a constant state of effacement, in order to maintain a necessary public mask similar to those frozen faces of allied prisoners during the Second World War. According to Le Breton, faces were fixed into masks in order to resist and deny any form of human - and humane - connection with their Nazi jailers. Between these masks, or what Le Breton terms as the "technique of the dead face" and the practice of chatting over the internet, lie certain - intriguing similarities.<br />Aside from those who loiter in Internet cafes, most chat practitioners tend to exercise an effacement of face and body while in dialogue with friends and partners. They are generally not concerned with their physical appearance and equally uninterested in meeting their interlocutors.<br />A chat-addict does not examine his body but rather, suggests its attributes through language. In other words, the body of the chat-addict becomes something akin to an enigma. According to the logic of chatting, the chatter does have a body which accords with a collective and consensual model. And yet, he or she carries, at all times the element of surprise. When written, the suggested body of the chatter shifts and is reformed according to whim and fancy, ever ready to communicate, or rather correspond, with the other’s fanciful requirements. But such a body is not a product of its own nature but is rather a composite of an ideal that is available and agreed upon by all.<br />This communion through the signs of a cornmon culture makes for the prevalence and dominance of movie stars, pop musicians and singers. These stars and models do not, therefore, only occupy the imagination of internet chat program-users as images, but also figure as references for other attributes such as strength, immortality and eternal youth. Accordingly, chatting over the Internet seems to absolve the personal body, allowing it to don the feats, attributes and vigor of movie stars. This transposition of the personal body into an imagined role makes for a body that is relatively surprising. That which occurs in real life is, comparatively, predictable, since it is often prefigured by cinema. A notable example is the poor replay in real life of the collapse of the World Trade Center, an event already and spectacularly staged in cinema. One remembers here the words of French director, Jean Renoir, demanding of his actors to constantly invent. As he often said, every event in cinema must be unpredictable.<br /><br />The Channels of Desire<br />When speaking of the techniques of feminine seduction, indolence appears as a primary attribute. Understood, in this case, as the opposite of rectitude and attentiveness, indolence, as in the inadvertent caressing of a neck or the playful tweezing of a loose tress of hair, does not go unnoticed. They are, for the companion, arousing indications of a body withdrawn from activity and earnestness and given to a numbness that lulls the brain and limbs. Such a disposition may clarify the shift in the logic of seduction when transposed to the domain of internet chat. There, seduction requires a sharp attentiveness, making it a strenuous activity similar in its demands to pornographic performances. The demands of such an economy of seduction, of alert minds and absent bodies replaced by images, make, for instance, Isabel Allende weary, even fearful, of having to abandon the intimacy of her lived and embodied quotidian world.<br />The body, reconstituted on screens, is an abbreviated body. It is made succinct by reducing it to unequivocal desires solicited for an active connection with an interlocutor. It becomes a body that is well fed, athletic, healthy and capable of excessive exertions just to please. And although attributes for which living humans have often been praised return as specific and abstract qualities to the domain of internet chat, I do not think that globalization still requires the human body to persist in seeking them. What globalization requires on the other hand is a minimal knowledge of languages and a skill in those techniques, which allow a virtual contact with others. And, if the actual physical body lingers in the mind of Internet chatters, it does so as a pampered and cuddled body, an adolescent pet body, always in foreplay. Only as such is the body able to persist within a virtual exchange that, otherwise, has little use for it. In any case, even as it loiters, adolescent and postponed, this body - our bodies - is never allowed to grow into a loving and caring body. With the Internet, the body sits in front of screens, aging and slothful, framed by adolescent desires, which in actuality make of it a rather disappointing, frigid and forgettable weight.<br /><br /><br />II. The Deferral of Pleasures<br /><br />The country of globalization is like that of sex, that is, if one is allowed to call sex a country. To it, we accede only for brief moments and then exit as soon as we tire. And, just like sex, this country of globalization receives us as individuals, divorced from family, clan and community. In its imagined land, we choose our parties, clubs, and friends and define our partialities. And, as in sex, we are also advised to approach it prepared and ready to maneuver across its many paths of seduction. Equally, this country of globalization is fearful, for in it there are no stops and no respite to shed the accumulated signs of fatigue. And, although that is an exorbitant price to pay, the country of globalization argues nevertheless that in it, all desires can be satisfied. That is, if we are still able to carry and entertain any desires at all.<br />In sex, a partner's body is deep and incommensurable. It cannot be delimited. It extends, galvanized, in two opposing directions: outwardly and inwardly. Sex is not mere contact. It is simultaneously a desire for entanglement and separation, for numbness and activity, for indolence and efficiency. In sex, desire is in a sense always twice: to surrender, lazy and solitary and to engage, d curious and investigative. And since the physical body is complex, the moment of sex is dense. So much so, that sex is followed by a sense of defeat, frustration even, as we fail to discover, convincingly, the precise functions of organs. Science is still debating the apparent biological uselessness of female orgasm. While some theories explain it in terms of the necessity for infidelity, others maintain it as a useless vestige similar to male nipples. While scientists await a definitive answer, it is nevertheless possible to assert that generosity, an endangered and dying attribute within society, still finds in the instance of embracing bodies what is perhaps its last manifestation.<br />Let us look a little closer at this attribute: gener0sity.A woman cares for her breasts and tends to their needs. She may not consider either childbearing or nursing. Such a project, or what Lester C. Thurow calls the owning of children, is in fact a luxury only the rich can afford. Without the costly chores of such a luxury, the career of breasts can be a long story of self-care and attention. They can be a part of a body that proves its desire through prodigality and 1avishness.A woman gives her breasts to a man in surplus as a gift. Yet it binds the man to her morally, as in the function of gifts according to the studies of Marcel Mauss. A man has little need for such a gift. And, although his lust is elsewhere, he accepts it and bows to its edicts whether in false modesty, praise, thrill or in borrowing a desire just for the occasion (I suppose that a woman sees in a man's erection sufficient signs of his generosity).<br />As we try to circumscribe sex, we should perhaps add to the notions of gift and prodigality, as in the example of the function of breasts, another notion, namely that of security. Turning the back to the companion and surrendering the body, disarmed, make for a challenge that, in principle, may be based on a sense of mutual security, but it is nevertheless fraught with the possibility of failure. Such is the irresistible magic of our other side: back and buttocks. And no matter how much we may engage the back, no matter how zealously we may try to define its function, it escapes us. It is always more ample than our caresses, more spacious than our grip and too solid for penetration. There is no biological function in sex for this other side of the machine of seduction. And I would venture to say that, like breasts, it is most probably connected with generosity and a sense of security.<br /><br />The Techniques of Mourning<br />With this equation of generosity and security, the body maintains an ability to resist a final, rational definition. It is successful where reason expects it to fail and fails where reason expects it to succeed. Notwithstanding and while most Arab societies remained reluctant, modernity persisted in fashioning a rational body and in segregating its various functions. It classified the body into specific domains and diligently sculpted it into the forms and shapes of ideals. So, we jog, diet, polish and apply all kinds of cosmetics seeking to embody ideals. The price is, of course, exorbitant. The elderly, the ill, the maimed and a wide array of incorrect bodies wither unnoticed on the sidelines. Meanwhile, in the mains of the social world, on televisions and other media, we witness the constant parade of a model and paradigmatic body, which is modernity's most efficacious apparatus for distinction and control.<br />Curiously enough, contemporary societies seem to have realized, as Arab societies have through the ages that bodies cannot be completely fixed. Today's globalization seems to, therefore, avoid - bodies altogether, keeping of them nothing but their surplus images, well chosen and scanned, images of bodies overflowing with health - and channeled with energy. Today, in regard to beauty, we try to suffice ourselves with images of international stars. As for vigor, we make do with language's ability to pretend unhindered by the limitations of actual living bodies. And so, we distance our bodies from all contact and companionship and avoid the embarrassment of trials. As such, the body ceases to be a land of enigmas and miscarriages and appears, instead, endlessly malleable to the whims of the imagination. This malleability precipitates the migration of the body from the province of magic to the domain of functionality, which is in itself a first and irreversible step towards mourning. The same mourning which marks an Arab body reiterating again and again the sovereignty of the discourse of the mind: An Arab actress does not act with her body but with her face, as she does not seduce in cinema with her breasts but with her voice.<br /><br /><br /><br />Indolence Despised<br />Such are the conditions of globalization that can thus be defined in terms of the failure of the body to cope with the imagination. That is why the body is quickly expelled and replaced by another made of the imagined and the fantasized. Therefore, the first thing that virtual sex breaks is the equation of generosity and security. The concern is no longer to please the partner, for that, even if intended, is always dubious and difficult to ascertain. Virtual sex does away with the pleasures of indolence, of lying lazily in the embrace of a companion. What virtual sex does is demand of us to renounce fatigue and deny impotence. (In this perspective, it is relevant to recall that, throughout the Arabic erotic tradition, prime importance was given to the avoidance of intimacy and to male sexual potency while visiting the harem). In virtual sex, alertness postpones pleasure until after contact. Most probably, sex on the virtual web requires two specific attributes: greed and aggression. In it, chatters demand of one another an unfailing power, a lavish expanse of organs and ask of the partner to act out both roles. And, while some users concentrate on the sexual organs and others exchange roles, most practice both simultaneously.<br />Accordingly, chat practices on Arabic internet sites seem - focused on virtual sex activities. Many reasons can be noted for such popularity: a general societal repression of sexuality, the segregation between the sexes, not to mention the ample leisure time that Arab women seem to have due to the social reprimand on seeking a professional career. But what spurs on such an activity lies elsewhere. We must note that it is primarily a kind of sex practiced without costly calculations; not only because it allows women to avoid strict societal rules and traditional constraints, but also because it is a kind of sex that does not require the prodigality, generosity and comfort prepared and given to partners, gifts which are often misplaced and misused. The problems connected with marriages and divorces in Arab societies are often tied to women forced into being generous to the inappropriate man, and to women being slighted as their gifts are often reciprocated with betrayal and infidelity.Virtua1 sex is, of course, unable to replace the difficult realities of the life of an Arab woman often pre-occupied with the demands of fashion, skincare and youth. Such activities amount, in fact, to days spent in strenuous efforts beyond the worth of any man. Consequently, these activities must be justified by making them an end in themselves. That is why appearance is often manifested as self-sufficient. Curiously enough, an Arab woman thus accomplishes the subject of the image and the matter of seduction, in a way; fixing her femininity in as far as Jean Baudrillard defines seduction as a specialty of women.<br />With the internet, we are no longer bound by the demands of lavishness and prodigality in order to make contact with another. The other, virtual as he/she/it may be, must always be as prepared and readily seductive as a kept woman in a harem is supposed to be. This availability of contacts, and their relatively negligible costs, makes globalized and virtual sexual intercourse an attractive venue for Arab societies.<br /><br />III. Kindness Shunned<br /><br />It does not require the diatribes of ecologists and naturalists for us to realize the extent to which our senses are besieged in metropolices. Hearing is constantly drilled with waves of voices, sounds that cannot be organized and noises that must be shut out. Similarly, cities make our sense of smell a burden. As for our sense of touch, we are constantly reminded of the need to neutralize it, avoiding all signs of agitation and excitement, signs that may make one dangerously conspicuous. Not even our sense of seeing is spared. In cities, we are not allowed the pleasure of lingering or contemplating. Both are forms of inadvertence that may lead to accidents. Red in cities is a color of life and death, just as a honk may be the last sound one hears before dying. What remains, then, is the sense of taste which, in comparison with the other senses, is pampered and cuddled into the nuances of complex salads, different temperatures, the delicacies of prepared fish and game and the connoisseurship of wines and cheeses. But such efforts in preparing foods are seen by ecologists and naturalists as unnecessary and affected, even unnatural. According to them, the preparation of foods aims at distancing the pleasures of tasting from the general needs of eating and, as such, breaks with the natural constituents of foods. And yet, it is necessary, by way of a counter argument, to make the simple analogy between foods passed through the mill of fire, spices and mixings and the techniques of perfuming bodies that aim to shun those supposed natural odors from public spaces what is, in fact, being expelled in foods and bodies alike is precisely the natural. Furthermore, skin is also enveloped in safe houses and kept at bay from heat and cold, wind and rain. We walk over buffers made of high heels and synthetic soles. We obsessively clean clothes and iron ties placed around necks, even if threatened with the unfortunate effects of "natural" rain and heat. Briefly said, whether in eating, dwelling or seeming, we must always appear as if untouched by the natural. This passionate struggle to de-activate the effects of nature and remove them from the domain of the contemporary modern body is not only visible in the politics of health and hygiene, as in the studies of Michel Foucault, but clearly exceeds it into the realm of ethical values.<br />In an essay on friendship, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze note the important role played by the act of mutual confiding in the construction of a friendship. A relationship is built on playing, by turns, the role of a confidant. Friendship in this sense is founded on discourse, which, in turn, then marginalizes all physical contacts. The demise of a friendship begins then with touching and so all physical signs of intimacy and longing are kept at bay. To me, that is not only difficult to maintain, but also risks the loss of friendship altogether. For kindness in friendships is essential and requires the "recklessness" of touching, which maintains the body present and relevant.<br />In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison describes Cholly' motives for raping his daughter Pecola, as an act enlivened by kindness:<br />Leaning over a fence staring at nothing in particular. The creamy toe of her bare foot scratching a velvet leg. It was such a small and simple gesture, but it filled him then with a wondering softness. Not the usual lust to part tight legs with his own, as is usual, but tenderness, protectiveness.<br />A desire to cover her foot with his hand and gently nibble away the itch from the calf with his teeth. He did it then ... The tenderness welled up in him, and he sank to his knees, his eyes on the foot of his daughter. Crawling on all four towards her, he raised his hand and caught the foot in an upward stroke." Having raped his daughter, this same kindness returns mixed with hatred to overwhelm Cholly: "She appeared to have fainted. Cholly stood up and could see only her grayish panties, so sad and limp around her ankles. Again the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up; the tenderness forced him to cover her.<br />Today’s cities allow no room for mystery and magic to influence and impress our bodies with visible traces. Every physical contact, even if only a passing touch demands practice and preparation as well as a mutual agreement over time and place. Such is the distance that the modern body has traveled from what is at least apparent in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, where a chill is sufficient reason for heretics and believers to embrace regardless of their sex, age, looks and smell. In a world where clothes were the body's only shield, intimacy denuded all.<br /><br />The Tranquility of the Stripper<br />When an actress undresses in front of a camera and exposes her nude and awakened flesh to millions around the world, she neither fears nor worries about societal censorship. Nude and exhibited, absolved of shame and fear, the body is as tranquil as it is unreachable. It is a body fortified with a thousand trenches and Protected by a thousand shields. The contemporaneous nude body opens unto a space of dance, expansion and relaxation. Nobody intentionally and visibly undresses if shy of its own expansion. The nude body is a free and tranquil body, unlike veiled and covered and thus able to transform the walls, draperies and furniture that surround it into the stuff of its own personal expansion. In cities is not for touching. On the contrary, it is a nudity that accumulates its surroundings. Untouchable, the nude body paradoxically sheds its clothing to be at bay from touching. In any case, this nudity is certainly not the nudity of a starving Sudanese or that of the dead during ablution. Far from it, and forever young, at least in images, the nude body is what marks; for instance, the distance that separates the mortal Marilyn Monroe from her eternally sultry and seductive image. Marilyn's image is necessarily that of an intangible body. For touching inevitably spoils the marble perfection of the skin. If the body is an image, as Paul Virilio claims it is, it is then a body that cannot be owned, quite unlike the actual body of Marilyn Monroe experienced through pleasure, pain and death.<br /><br />A Fear of Barbarity<br />Thinking back through the wars waged by the Americans in the late 90's of the last century and in the beginning of this century, on would venture to say that what precipitated the anti-Vietnam war movement were not the images of dead soldiers returning home black plastic body bags. Nor was it the good intentions of pacifists and activists who believed that war inevitably defeats all involve Rather, what really urged a cessation of combat and an end to the Vietnam War was seeing the specter of barbarity that lives every war. The Americans lost in Somalia because the world saw the images of the mutilated bodies of fallen American soldier. Equally, the distressing and moving images from the Vietnam were not those of the solemn funerals given to American soldiers or the countless rows of body bags. Rather, it was those images that showed wounded soldiers, in need of affection and care, seeking in their mates the kindness of a touch. Images of muddy faces, sweaty and blackened, confessing inhumane strain and effort. Those images of kindness where soldiers tended to their wounded fellows, gently patting their shoulders, were the pivotal point at which rose the idea of terror and fear of war. In comparison, one can think of other anti-war movements that never really happened, since American soldiers in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan remained invisible and unexposed to the disturbing gestures of kindness. And, just as Michelet saw in fidelity a virtue of the barbarians, so kindness today appears to be a virtue of the barbarians and, as such, is to be avoided at all costs.<br /><br />IV. The Reproduction of Nature<br /><br />The nature for which activists struggle, protect and preserve is no more than a palliated image of a wild and dangerous nature. It is a sheer image, in the sense of how an image carries a discrepant separation with the “real.” Precisely as in Rene Magritte’s painting on which the artist drew a pipe and wrote underneath it. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. This image, which acquired a revolutionary tinge during the 1970’s, still seems today like an unadulterated prophecy. For the picture is no longer the shadow of the photographer but has donned flesh and bones of its own and so dominates the object itself. And so, the image continues to dominate the “real,” as in the summer of Tolstoy, a summer that provides protection t o flies and rodents and spawns a myriad of annoying sorts of flying and crawling insects, is replaced by the image of the Californian summer. A new summer bearing nothing but the brilliant sun and bodies, nude and svelte, with vitality so excessive that it all seems like a temple of youth. The Californian summer is the image of summer par excellence. And that is precisely what makes the sun every time it appears in California, the bearer of an extraordinary magic polished, beautiful and utterly vital. It is the complete opposite of the Oriental summer described by Orientalists; a summer swarming with flies, overtaken by beggars and exposing a life of idleness and stagnation.<br /><br />The Preserves of Local Identities<br />On television, an incessant flow of images pervades the world and prods us viewers to adjust our understanding of the environment and adapt to new images of places and creatures traditionally viewed as dangerous and often as mysterious. Today, a documentary film can arguably defend the rights of rats to live in peace, just as it can extol the beauties of what Arabs have traditionally considered as man’s deadliest enemy, the snake. With the televised image, rats and snakes gain a right to beauty and a safe existence. Made intelligible and safely intangible by the mediation of images, all species begin to appear like air, water and other natural elements, churning and turning in natural reserves and far from the human habitat, maintaining only what is necessary for ecology's balance. Against the backdrop of natural reserves, cities stand as a distinct domain made wholly for the urban dweller and a few invented domestic animals. It is through natural reserves that civilization speaks most eloquently of its distance from a state of nature that is, in comparison, inherently violent and barbaric.<br />For a long time, Holland remained a notable example of man’s successful subjugation of nature. It was a model of how to succeed in transforming the flux of nature into an organized environment, able to sustain civilized human activities. The Dutch experience showed what human collaboration can achieve if given the right circumstances. Yet the success of the Dutch experiment cannot be fully assessed without reconsidering the notion of "right circumstances”, through what Regis Debray defines as “the damned feature”. For success in raising oneself out of a state of nature presupposes that one has had to survive the malediction of nature, a relative damnation that may prod a culture, as it may challenge an individual, to invent solutions. In other words, invention is necessarily wrested out of situations seemingly damned with difficulties, not graced with the ease of propitious conditions. In that sense, all great precedents carry this feature of damnation as inevitably as the healthy never worry about their health.<br />The success of the Dutch was unlikely considering the give natural conditions of the (nether) land. The Dutch were afflicted with endless marshlands unfit for human sustenance, in an epoch when the claiming of fertile land and the defining of natural boundaries, namely geography, was sufficient cause for conflict and an obvious excuse to wage wars across the continent. Land, owned and cultivated, was the gold for which humans contended. Besiege by their land, the Dutch had no choice but to turn their marsh into fields and their soil into the most precious and greenest the world. The Dutch experience carried the meanings of human advancement and set its standards. Accordingly, other societies were evaluated and praised. For to be a people blessed, by pure coincidence, with natural riches such as oil, gold or other precious metals, can be a cause for idleness. It is, then, no coincidence t the French economist, Alain Peyrefitte, ranked the Dutch high the list of those cultures most worthy of close study, in terms better recognizing the crucial role played by a culture’s ethos economic development.<br /><br />Pruning Savage Claws<br />Today’s Holland is punctuated with natural preserves, which figure as the emblems of devoted ecologists. Yet to understand the mentality and technology of the Dutch experience is to wonder about the precise attributes of this nature which ecologists for. In Holland, nature is disconnected from its primal state a fashioned anew. Even animals, kept in preserves, are studied and carefully selected for their use and the variable roles that they can fulfill within the larger framework of human civilization. Therefore, it is most probable that the nature for which ecologists march and struggle, is a nature built to perfectly answer the needs of human society and to correspond with its intellectual and civilizational framework. Ecology’s activists’ fight in their belief that what humans may not understand today, will be appreciated tomorrow. And the tendency is to preserve the largest variety of species alive and available for future scientific study and use. Such is the logic Jean Baudillard noted when, in 1971, ethnologists in the Philippines were forced to reinstate the Tasaday tribe back into the depth of the jungle where they had lived in total seclusion for more than eight centuries. The move was prompted as members of the tribe began to fall ill and wither "like mummies" due to contact with civilization. When the ethnologists and the local authorities were finally convinced of the gravity of the situation, they decided to save the Tasaday by transforming their natural habitat into a natural preserve. And so, ethnology succeeded in avoiding its own demise by maintaining its subject of study alive and within reach, while donning the postures of humanitarianism. To have the privilege of survival, a species must fall within the strict control of science. The reactions of that species, its behavioral patterns and rates of proliferation must all be reasoned, handled and monitored. Speaking of his film Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg said that the actual cloning of dinosaurs, unlike in the film, is a dangerous endeavor, for it is a species of such intelligence and strength that it may escape human control. Accordingly, it is important to notice to what extent the preservation of nature is always circumscribed within the dual and foundational condition of control and domestication. In a sense no species is allowed to survive if it is potentially able to exceed the purview of human intelligence. Consequently, all that remains in nature, all that is allowed to multiply and live and all that is treated and tended, must fall within the strict censorship of two authorities: biomedicine and psychology.<br /><br />The Fangs of Intelligence<br />In his book La critique de la pensee politique, Regis Debray argues the simultaneous courses of two human histories. There is, according to the author, a history of the relationships between humans and another history of the relationships between humans and things. Notwithstanding the author’s careful enumeration and argumentation, in his attempt to define the difference between these two courses of history, his basic tenet in crucial and topical. For one argue by implication that humans, represented through their ideas are always contemporaneous and always interconnected. Thus, a Napoleon remains present in the mind of current generals as an interlocutor and as a competitor, while it is hard to claim that the world of things as defined by a Ptolemy stands still in the presence of an Einstein. The consequences of such a distinction clarify, with an almost suffocating irony, why it is no longer obvious to say, following a Socrates and a Darwin, that a creature standing erect and able to speak is necessarily human. The ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan is a notable example where the distinction between humans and things functions as a theoretical and practical framework. In the recent past, when the Afghans were dutifully fighting Soviet occupations, the United States saw them as a controllable agent, a thing, which although capable of expressing anger and zeal, lacked the kind of intelligence which would make it a dangerous and independent agent. In other words, the Afghans were allowed to be barbaric and savage as long as they were fully dependant on the constant care of a foreign custody. Thus, the Afghans, utilized and nourished, could also acquire the dubious privilege of a reversed racism, of being seen, according to some experts, as having the right to be left alone and maintain their own special social and cultural characteristics. Such a situation quickly shifted as soon as the Afghans became intelligent or, to put it more clearly, were able to threaten their custodians. Perhaps one ought to remember Milan Kundera's remark that what occupies civilization is not so much the avoidance of murder as the avoidance of the murderer. If a tiger escapes from a zoo and kills, while prowling, more people than a Carlos during his heyday, the tiger would certainly be handled with more understanding than the terrorist. That is equally true of the World Trade Center. The fact that it collapsed as the result of an act designed and perpetrated by intelligent creatures and not by a natural coincidence demanded a consorted effort to trace, extract and redeem the cause, namely intelligence, away from the creatures and things and back to its rightful human authority.<br />One of the most pressing consequences of such reasoning is the collapse of the theory that posits globalization as a domain in which local cultures may finally flourish after the ravages and repression of centuries of imperialism. Quite on the contrary, all that globalization seeks to preserve is the right to reproduce nature according to strict regulations. Within such a plan, a place is allotted to creatures and things; to servant cultures and natural reserves, all properly and rationally instrumentalized to procure an image of a nature untouched, and of a spectacular savagery unchecked. Without this right to control and police, globalization would lose its entrancing, logical hold in the same way that the logic of unclear armament would become mute and deadly if ever put to the test.<br />Natural reserves and zoos, as well as the peaceful ranges of the Tibet Mountains, are all living proofs traveling the world and made of a million images. And yet, there remains a chill in the Tibet Mountains and perhaps a few nasty odors emanating from animal cages. Flies and mosquitoes may still disturb eager vacationers in the Virgin Tropical Islands. Perhaps also, unannounced, a peaceful and tame Afghan may intimate a desire to speak with tourists. But his words will most probably remain as obscure as a hieroglyph, incapable of initiating a dialogue, not to mention nearness, empathy or a reciprocal kindness.<br />In a special issue of the journal Esprit entitled “Le nouvel age du sport” Michel Forr argues that daily physical exercises, such as walking and jogging, seems to be concentrated in those urban classes of sedentary professionals whose social ethos requires a physical fitness and a youthful appearance. These classes are also the ones most affected by mental fatigue and chronic depression and, according to Elaine Perrin, are required by the nature of their work to repress all signs of aggression and violence, having to sublimate them into logical argumentation, debate, discussions and conversations. This class of urban professionals carries the task of arresting any sign of social aggressiveness while having to contend and bear a high level of competition in their own work. This equation, which binds are repression of physical violence to the strenuous effort of physical fitness, tells of the social edict to inhibit all, and any, physical expression. For violence is, of course, a return to a barbarity while fitness is the fashioning of the body extends into the relation between humans and things as well as between humans themselves. In both cases, intelligibility and a logical understanding – even prediction – of the other conditions for a viable and quite coexistence.</span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-29884934601410829462011-06-15T11:44:00.000-07:002011-06-15T11:50:01.519-07:00The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica">by</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">; Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of pre-capitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or specialisation, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part. Even the aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system. The decorative industrial management buildings and exhibition centers in authoritarian countries are much the same as anywhere else. The huge gleaming towers that shoot up everywhere are outward signs of the ingenious planning of international concerns, toward which the unleashed entrepreneurial system (whose monuments are a mass of gloomy houses and business premises in grimy, spiritless cities) was already hastening. Even now the older houses just outside the concrete city centres look like slums, and the new bungalows on the outskirts are at one with the flimsy structures of world fairs in their praise of technical progress and their built-in demand to be discarded after a short while like empty food cans.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Yet the city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual as a supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him all the more subservient to his adversary – the absolute power of capitalism. Because the inhabitants, as producers and as consumers, are drawn into the center in search of work and pleasure, all the living units crystallise into well-organised complexes. The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular. <u>Under monopoly all mass culture is identical,</u> and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through. <u>The people at the top are no longer so interested in concealing monopoly</u>: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. <u>Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce</u>. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few production centers and the large number of widely dispersed consumption points is said to demand organisation and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. <u>A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself</u>. It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together until their leveling element shows its strength in the very wrong which it furthered. <u>It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardisation</u> <u>and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system.</u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><u><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">This is the result not of a law of movement in technology as such but of its function in today’s economy</span></u><span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica;color:black">. The need which might resist central control has already been suppressed by the control of the individual consciousness. The step from the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of subject, and was liberal. The latter is democratic<u>: it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same</u>. No machinery of rejoinder has been devised, and private broadcasters are denied any freedom. They are confined to the apocryphal field of the “amateur,” and also have to accept organisation from above.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">But any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and official programs of every kind selected by professionals. Talented performers belong to the industry long before it displays them; otherwise they would not be so eager to fit in. <u>The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it</u>. If one branch of art follows the same formula as one with a very different medium and content; if the dramatic intrigue of broadcast soap operas becomes no more than useful material for showing how to master technical problems at both ends of the scale of musical experience – real jazz or a cheap imitation; or if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film script: then the claim that this is done to <u>satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than hot air.</u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">We are closer to the facts if we explain these phenomena as inherent in the technical and personnel apparatus which, down to its last cog, itself forms part of the economic mechanism of selection. In addition <u>there is the agreement – or at least the determination – of all executive authorities not to produce or sanction anything that in any way differs from their own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves.</u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">In our age the objective social tendency is incarnate in the hidden subjective purposes of company directors, the foremost among whom are in the most powerful sectors of industry – steel, petroleum, electricity, and chemicals. Culture monopolies are weak and dependent in comparison. <u>They cannot afford to neglect their appeasement of the real holders of power if their sphere of activity in mass society</u> (a sphere producing a specific type of commodity which anyhow is still too closely bound up with easy-going liberalism and Jewish intellectuals) <u>is not to undergo a series of purges</u>. The dependence of the most powerful broadcasting company on the electrical industry, or of the motion picture industry on the banks, is characteristic of the whole sphere, whose individual branches are themselves economically interwoven. All are in such close contact that the extreme concentration of mental forces allows demarcation lines between different firms and technical branches to be ignored.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The ruthless unity in the culture industry is evidence of what will happen in politics. Marked differentiations such as those of A and B films, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges, <u>depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers</u>. Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. <u>Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level</u>, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type.<u> Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts</u>, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">How formalized the procedure is can be seen when the mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the end. That the difference between the Chrysler range and General Motors products is basically illusory strikes every child with a keen interest in varieties. <u>What connoisseurs discuss as good or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semblance of competition and range of choice</u>. The same applies to the Warner Brothers and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions. But even the differences between the more expensive and cheaper models put out by the same firm steadily diminish: for automobiles, there are such differences as the number of cylinders, cubic capacity, details of patented gadgets; and for films there are the number of stars, the extravagant use of technology, labor, and equipment, and the introduction of the latest psychological formulas. The universal criterion of merit is the amount of “conspicuous production,” of blatant cash investment. The varying budgets in the culture industry do not bear the slightest relation to factual values, to the meaning of the products themselves.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><u><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Even the technical media are relentlessly forced into uniformity. Television aims at a synthesis of radio and film, and is held up only because the interested parties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the thinly veiled identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly out into the open, derisively fulfilling the Wagnerian dream of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Gesamtkunstwerk</i> – the fusion of all the arts in one work.</span></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The alliance of word, image, and music is all the more perfect than in Tristan because the sensuous elements which all approvingly reflect the surface of social reality are in principle embodied in the same technical process, the unity of which becomes its distinctive content. This process integrates all the elements of the production, from the novel (shaped with an eye to the film) to the last sound effect. It is the triumph of invested capital, whose title as absolute master is etched deep into the hearts of the dispossessed in the employment line; it is the meaningful content of every film, whatever plot the production team may have selected.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him. Kant’s formalism still expected a contribution from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to fundamental concepts; <u>but industry robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him.</u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Kant said that there was a secret mechanism in the soul, which prepared direct intuitions in such a way that they could be fitted into the system of pure reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. While the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who serve up the data of experience, that is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society, which remains irrational, however we may try to rationalise it; and this inescapable force is processed by commercial agencies so that they give an artificial impression of being in command.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for him. Art for the masses has destroyed the dream but still conforms to the tenets of that dreaming idealism which critical idealism baulked at. Everything derives from consciousness: for Malebranche and Berkeley, from the consciousness of God; in mass art, from the consciousness of the production team. Not only are the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change. The details are interchangeable. The short interval sequence which was effective in a hit song, the hero’s momentary fall from grace (which he accepts as good sport), the rough treatment which the beloved gets from the male star, the latter’s rugged defiance of the spoilt heiress, are, like all the other details, <u>ready-made clichés to be slotted in anywhere; they never do anything more than fulfill the purpose allotted them in the overall plan. Their whole <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">raison d’être</i> is to confirm it by being its constituent parts. As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does come. The average length of the short story has to be rigidly adhered to. Even gags, effects, and jokes are calculated like the setting in which they are placed. They are the responsibility of special experts and their narrow range makes it easy for them to be apportioned in the office.</u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The development of the culture industry has led to the predominance of the effect, the obvious touch, and the technical detail over the work itself – which once expressed an idea, but was liquidated together with the idea. When the detail won its freedom, it became rebellious and, in the period from Romanticism to Expressionism, asserted itself as free expression, as a vehicle of protest against the organisation. In music the single harmonic effect obliterated the awareness of form as a whole; in painting the individual colour was stressed at the expense of pictorial composition; and in the novel psychology became more important than structure. The totality of the culture industry has put an end to this.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Though concerned exclusively with effects, it crushes their insubordination and makes them subserve the formula, which replaces the work. The same fate is inflicted on whole and parts alike. The whole inevitably bears no relation to the details – just like the career of a successful man into which everything is made to fit as an illustration or a proof, whereas it is nothing more than the sum of all those idiotic events. The so-called dominant idea is like a file which ensures order but not coherence. The whole and the parts are alike; there is no antithesis and no connection. Their prearranged harmony is a mockery of what had to be striven after in the great bourgeois works of art. In Germany the graveyard stillness of the dictatorship already hung over the gayest films of the democratic era.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees the world outside as an extension of the film he has just left (because the latter is intent upon reproducing the world of everyday perceptions), is now the producer’s guideline. The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the straightforward continuation of that presented on the screen. This purpose has been furthered by mechanical reproduction since the lightning takeover by the sound film.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, far surpassing the theatre of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality. The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves, especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound film. They are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Even though the effort required for his response is semi-automatic, no scope is left for the imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the world of the movie – by its images, gestures, and words – that they are unable to supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular points of its mechanics during a screening. All the other films and products of the entertainment industry which they have seen have taught them what to expect; they react automatically.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The might of industrial society is lodged in men’s minds. The entertainments manufacturers know that their products will be consumed with alertness even when the customer is distraught, for each of them is a model of the huge economic machinery which has always sustained the masses, whether at work or at leisure – which is akin to work. From every sound film and every broadcast program the social effect can be inferred which is exclusive to none but is shared by all alike. The culture industry as a whole has moulded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in every product. All the agents of this process, from the producer to the women’s clubs, take good care that the simple reproduction of this mental state is not nuanced or extended in any way.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The art historians and guardians of culture who complain of the extinction in the West of a basic style-determining power are wrong. The stereotyped appropriation of everything, even the inchoate, for the purposes of mechanical reproduction surpasses the rigour and general currency of any “real style,” in the sense in which cultural cognoscenti celebrate the organic pre-capitalist past. No Palestrina could be more of a purist in eliminating every unprepared and unresolved discord than the jazz arranger in suppressing any development which does not conform to the jargon. When jazzing up Mozart he changes him not only when he is too serious or too difficult but when he harmonises the melody in a different way, perhaps more simply, than is customary now. No medieval builder can have scrutinised the subjects for church windows and sculptures more suspiciously than the studio hierarchy scrutinises a work by Balzac or Hugo before finally approving it. No medieval theologian could have determined the degree of the torment to be suffered by the damned in accordance with the order of divine love more meticulously than the producers of shoddy epics calculate the torture to be undergone by the hero or the exact point to which the leading lady’s hemline shall be raised. The explicit and implicit, exoteric and esoteric catalogue of the forbidden and tolerated is so extensive that it not only defines the area of freedom but is all-powerful inside it. Everything down to the last detail is shaped accordingly.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Like its counterpart, avant-garde art, the entertainment industry determines its own language, down to its very syntax and vocabulary, by the use of anathema. The constant pressure to produce new effects (which must conform to the old pattern) serves merely as another rule to increase the power of the conventions when any single effect threatens to slip through the net. Every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight. And the star performers, whether they produce or reproduce, use this jargon as freely and fluently and with as much gusto as if it were the very language which it silenced long ago. Such is the ideal of what is natural in this field of activity, and its influence becomes all the more powerful, the more technique is perfected and diminishes the tension between the finished product and everyday life. The paradox of this routine, which is essentially travesty, can be detected and is often predominant in everything that the culture industry turns out. A jazz musician who is playing a piece of serious music, one of Beethoven’s simplest minuets, syncopates it involuntarily and will smile superciliously when asked to follow the normal divisions of the beat. This is the “nature” which, complicated by the ever-present and extravagant demands of the specific medium, constitutes the new style and is a “system of non-culture, to which one might even concede a certain ‘unity of style’ if it really made any sense to speak of stylised barbarity.” [Nietzsche]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The universal imposition of this stylised mode can even go beyond what is quasi-officially sanctioned or forbidden; today a hit song is more readily forgiven for not observing the 32 beats or the compass of the ninth than for containing even the most clandestine melodic or harmonic detail which does not conform to the idiom. Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system. The constraint of the technically-conditioned idiom which stars and directors have to produce as “nature” so that the people can appropriate it, extends to such fine nuances that they almost attain the subtlety of the devices of an avant-garde work as against those of truth. The rare capacity minutely to fulfil the obligations of the natural idiom in all branches of the culture industry becomes the criterion of efficiency. What and how they say it must be measurable by everyday language, as in logical positivism.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The producers are experts. The idiom demands an astounding productive power, which it absorbs and squanders. In a diabolical way it has overreached the culturally conservative distinction between genuine and artificial style. A style might be called artificial which is imposed from without on the refractory impulses of a form. But in the culture industry every element of the subject matter has its origin in the same apparatus as that jargon whose stamp it bears. The quarrels in which the artistic experts become involved with sponsor and censor about a lie going beyond the bounds of credibility are evidence not so much of an inner aesthetic tension as of a divergence of interests. The reputation of the specialist, in which a last remnant of objective independence sometimes finds refuge, conflicts with the business politics of the Church, or the concern which is manufacturing the cultural commodity. But the thing itself has been essentially objectified and made viable before the established authorities began to argue about it. Even before Zanuck acquired her, Saint Bernadette was regarded by her latter-day hagiographer as brilliant propaganda for all interested parties. That is what became of the emotions of the character. Hence the style of the culture industry, which no longer has to test itself against any refractory material, is also the negation of style. The reconciliation of the general and particular, of the rule and the specific demands of the subject matter, the achievement of which alone gives essential, meaningful content to style, is futile because there has ceased to be the slightest tension between opposite poles: these concordant extremes are dismally identical; the general can replace the particular, and vice versa.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Nevertheless, this caricature of style does not amount to something beyond the genuine style of the past. In the culture industry the notion of genuine style is seen to be the aesthetic equivalent of domination. Style considered as mere aesthetic regularity is a romantic dream of the past. The unity of style not only of the Christian Middle Ages but of the Renaissance expresses in each case the different structure of social power, and not the obscure experience of the oppressed in which the general was enclosed. The great artists were never those who embodied a wholly flawless and perfect style, but those who used style as a way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of suffering, as a negative truth. The style of their works gave what was expressed that force without which life flows away unheard. Those very art forms which are known as classical, such as Mozart’s music, contain objective trends which represent something different to the style which they incarnate.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">As late as Schönberg and Picasso, the great artists have retained a mistrust of style, and at crucial points have subordinated it to the logic of the matter. What Dadaists and Expressionists called the untruth of style as such triumphs today in the sung jargon of a crooner, in the carefully contrived elegance of a film star, and even in the admirable expertise of a photograph of a peasant’s squalid hut. Style represents a promise in every work of art. That which is expressed is subsumed through style into the dominant forms of generality, into the language of music, painting, or words, in the hope that it will be reconciled thus with the idea of true generality. This promise held out by the work of art that it will create truth by lending new shape to the conventional social forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical. It unconditionally posits the real forms of life as it is by suggesting that fulfilment lies in their aesthetic derivatives. To this extent the claim of art is always ideology too.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">However, only in this confrontation with tradition of which style is the record can art express suffering. That factor in a work of art which enables it to transcend reality certainly cannot be detached from style; but it does not consist of the harmony actually realised, of any doubtful unity of form and content, within and without, of individual and society; it is to be found in those features in which discrepancy appears: in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure in which the style of the great work of art has always achieved self-negation, the inferior work has always relied on its similarity with others – on a surrogate identity.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">In the culture industry this imitation finally becomes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but style, it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to the social hierarchy. Today aesthetic barbarity completes what has threatened the creations of the spirit since they were gathered together as culture and neutralised. To speak of culture was always contrary to culture. Culture as a common denominator already contains in embryo that schematisation and process of cataloguing and classification which bring culture within the sphere of administration. And it is precisely the industrialised, the consequent, subsumption which entirely accords with this notion of culture. By subordinating in the same way and to the same end all areas of intellectual creation, by occupying men’s senses from the time they leave the factory in the evening to the time they clock in again the next morning with matter that bears the impress of the labor process they themselves have to sustain throughout the day, this subsumption mockingly satisfies the concept of a unified culture which the philosophers of personality contrasted with mass culture.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">And so the culture industry, the most rigid of all styles, proves to be the goal of liberalism, which is reproached for its lack of style. Not only do its categories and contents derive from liberalism – domesticated naturalism as well as operetta and revue – but the modern culture monopolies form the economic area in which, together with the corresponding entrepreneurial types, for the time being some part of its sphere of operation survives, despite the process of disintegration elsewhere.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">It is still possible to make one’s way in entertainment, if one is not too obstinate about one’s own concerns, and proves appropriately pliable. Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capitalism. Realistic dissidence is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in business. In the public voice of modern society accusations are seldom audible; if they are, the perceptive can already detect signs that the dissident will soon be reconciled. The more immeasurable the gap between chorus and leaders, the more certainly there is room at the top for everybody who demonstrates his superiority by well-planned originality. Hence, in the culture industry, too, the liberal tendency to give full scope to its able men survives.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">To do this for the efficient today is still the function of the market, which is otherwise proficiently controlled; as for the market’s freedom, in the high period of art as elsewhere, it was freedom for the stupid to starve. Significantly, the system of the culture industry comes from the more liberal industrial nations, and all its characteristic media, such as movies, radio, jazz, and magazines, flourish there. Its progress, to be sure, had its origin in the general laws of capital. Gaumont and Pathe, Ullstein and Hugenberg followed the international trend with some success; Europe’s economic dependence on the United States after war and inflation was a contributory factor. The belief that the barbarity of the culture industry is a result of “cultural lag,” of the fact that the American consciousness did not keep up with the growth of technology, is quite wrong. It was pre-Fascist Europe which did not keep up with the trend toward the culture monopoly.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">But it was this very lag which left intellect and creativity some degree of independence and enabled its last representatives to exist – however dismally. In Germany the failure of democratic control to permeate life had led to a paradoxical situation. Many things were exempt from the market mechanism which had invaded the Western countries. The German educational system, universities, theatres with artistic standards, great orchestras, and museums enjoyed protection. The political powers, state and municipalities, which had inherited such institutions from absolutism, had left them with a measure of the freedom from the forces of power which dominates the market, just as princes and feudal lords had done up to the nineteenth century. This strengthened art in this late phase against the verdict of supply and demand, and increased its resistance far beyond the actual degree of protection. In the market itself the tribute of a quality for which no use had been found was turned into purchasing power; in this way, respectable literary and music publishers could help authors who yielded little more in the way of profit than the respect of the connoisseur.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">But what completely fettered the artist was the pressure (and the accompanying drastic threats), always to fit into business life as an aesthetic expert. Formerly, like Kant and Hume, they signed their letters “Your most humble and obedient servant,” and undermined the foundations of throne and altar. Today they address heads of government by their first names, yet in every artistic activity they are subject to their illiterate masters.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The analysis Tocqueville offered a century ago has in the meantime proved wholly accurate. Under the private culture monopoly it is a fact that “tyranny leaves the body free and directs its attack at the soul. The ruler no longer says: You must think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property, everything shall remain yours, but from this day on you are a stranger among us.” Not to conform means to be rendered powerless, economically and therefore spiritually – to be “self-employed.” When the outsider is excluded from the concern, he can only too easily be accused of incompetence.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Whereas today in material production the mechanism of supply and demand is disintegrating, in the superstructure it still operates as a check in the rulers’ favour. The consumers are the workers and employees, the farmers and lower middle class. Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them. As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities. It is stronger even than the rigorism of the Hays Office, just as in certain great times in history it has inflamed greater forces that were turned against it, namely, the terror of the tribunals. It calls for Mickey Rooney in preference to the tragic Garbo, for Donald Duck instead of Betty Boop. The industry submits to the vote which it has itself inspired. What is a loss for the firm which cannot fully exploit a contract with a declining star is a legitimate expense for the system as a whole. By craftily sanctioning the demand for rubbish it inaugurates total harmony. The connoisseur and the expert are despised for their pretentious claim to know better than the others, even though culture is democratic and distributes its privileges to all. In view of the ideological truce, the conformism of the buyers and the effrontery of the producers who supply them prevail. The result is a constant reproduction of the same thing.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">A constant sameness governs the relationship to the past as well. What is new about the phase of mass culture compared with the late liberal stage is the exclusion of the new. The machine rotates on the same spot. While determining consumption it excludes the untried as a risk. The movie-makers distrust any manuscript which is not reassuringly backed by a bestseller. Yet for this very reason there is never-ending talk of ideas, novelty, and surprise, of what is taken for granted but has never existed. Tempo and dynamics serve this trend. Nothing remains as of old; everything has to run incessantly, to keep moving. For only the universal triumph of the rhythm of mechanical production and reproduction promises that nothing changes, and nothing unsuitable will appear. Any additions to the well-proven culture inventory are too much of a speculation. The ossified forms – such as the sketch, short story, problem film, or hit song – are the standardised average of late liberal taste, dictated with threats from above. The people at the top in the culture agencies, who work in harmony as only one manager can with another, whether he comes from the rag trade or from college, have long since reorganised and rationalised the objective spirit. One might think that an omnipresent authority had sifted the material and drawn up an official catalogue of cultural commodities to provide a smooth supply of available mass-produced lines. The ideas are written in the cultural firmament where they had already been numbered by Plato – and were indeed numbers, incapable of increase and immutable.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Amusement and all the elements of the culture industry existed long before the latter came into existence. Now they are taken over from above and brought up to date. The culture industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the previously clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of consumption, on making this a principle, on divesting amusement of its obtrusive naïvetes and improving the type of commodities. The more absolute it became, the more ruthless it was in forcing every outsider either into bankruptcy or into a syndicate, and became more refined and elevated – until it ended up as a synthesis of Beethoven and the Casino de Paris. It enjoys a double victory: the truth it extinguishes without it can reproduce at will as a lie within. “Light” art as such, distraction, is not a decadent form. Anyone who complains that it is a betrayal of the ideal of pure expression is under an illusion about society. The purity of bourgeois art, which hypostasised itself as a world of freedom in contrast to what was happening in the material world, was from the beginning bought with the exclusion of the lower classes – with whose cause, the real universality, art keeps faith precisely by its freedom from the ends of the false universality. Serious art has been withheld from those for whom the hardship and oppression of life make a mockery of seriousness, and who must be glad if they can use time not spent at the production line just to keep going. Light art has been the shadow of autonomous art. It is the social bad conscience of serious art. The truth which the latter necessarily lacked because of its social premises gives the other the semblance of legitimacy. The division itself is the truth: it does at least express the negativity of the culture which the different spheres constitute. Least of all can the antithesis be reconciled by absorbing light into serious art, or vice versa. But that is what the culture industry attempts.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The eccentricity of the circus, peepshow, and brothel is as embarrassing to it as that of Schönberg and Karl Kraus. And so the jazz musician Benny Goodman appears with the Budapest string quartet, more pedantic rhythmically than any philharmonic clarinettist, while the style of the Budapest players is as uniform and sugary as that of Guy Lombardo. But what is significant is not vulgarity, stupidity, and lack of polish.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The culture industry did away with yesterday’s rubbish by its own perfection, and by forbidding and domesticating the amateurish, although it constantly allows gross blunders without which the standard of the exalted style cannot be perceived. But what is new is that the irreconcilable elements of culture, art and distraction, are subordinated to one end and subsumed under one false formula: the totality of the culture industry. It consists of repetition. That its characteristic innovations are never anything more than improvements of mass reproduction is not external to the system.It is with good reason that the interest of innumerable consumers is directed to the technique, and not to the contents – which are stubbornly repeated, outworn, and by now half-discredited. The social power which the spectators worship shows itself more effectively in the omnipresence of the stereotype imposed by technical skill than in the stale ideologies for which the ephemeral contents stand in.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Nevertheless the culture industry remains the entertainment business. Its influence over the consumers is established by entertainment; that will ultimately be broken not by an outright decree, but by the hostility inherent in the principle of entertainment to what is greater than itself. Since all the trends of the culture industry are profoundly embedded in the public by the whole social process, they are encouraged by the survival of the market in this area. Demand has not yet been replaced by simple obedience. As is well known, the major reorganisation of the film industry shortly before World War I, the material prerequisite of its expansion, was precisely its deliberate acceptance of the public’s needs as recorded at the box-office – a procedure which was hardly thought necessary in the pioneering days of the screen. The same opinion is held today by the captains of the film industry, who take as their criterion the more or less phenomenal song hits but wisely never have recourse to the judgment of truth, the opposite criterion. Business is their ideology. It is quite correct that the power of the culture industry resides in its identification with a manufactured need, and not in simple contrast to it, even if this contrast were one of complete power and complete powerlessness.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanised work process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the same time mechanisation has such power over a man’s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself. The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardised operations. What happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by approximation to it in one’s leisure time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">All amusement suffers from this incurable malady. Pleasure hardens into boredom because, if it is to remain pleasure, it must not demand any effort and therefore moves rigorously in the worn grooves of association. No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly avoided. As far as possible, developments must follow from the immediately preceding situation and never from the idea of the whole. For the attentive movie-goer any individual scene will give him the whole thing. Even the set pattern itself still seems dangerous, offering some meaning – wretched as it might be – where only meaninglessness is acceptable. Often the plot is maliciously deprived of the development demanded by characters and matter according to the old pattern. Instead, the next step is what the script writer takes to be the most striking effect in theparticular situation. Banal though elaborate surprise interrupts the story-line.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The tendency mischievously to fall back on pure nonsense, which was a legitimate part of popular art, farce and clowning, right up to Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, is most obvious in the unpretentious kinds. This tendency has completely asserted itself in the text of the novelty song, in the thriller movie, and in cartoons, although in films starring Greer Garson and Bette Davis the unity of the socio-psychological case study provides something approximating a claim to a consistent plot. The idea itself, together with the objects of comedy and terror, is massacred and fragmented. Novelty songs have always existed on a contempt for meaning which, as predecessors and successors of psychoanalysis, they reduce to the monotony of sexual symbolism. Today, detective and adventure films no longer give the audience the opportunity to experience the resolution. In the non-ironic varieties of the genre, it has also to rest content with the simple horror of situations which have almost ceased to be linked in any way.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Cartoons were once exponents of fantasy as opposed to rationalism. They ensured that justice was done to the creatures and objects they electrified, by giving the maimed specimens a second life. All they do today is to confirm the victory of technological reason over truth. A few years ago they had a consistent plot which only broke up in the final moments in a crazy chase, and thus resembled the old slapstick comedy. Now, however, time relations have shifted. In the very first sequence a motive is stated so that in the course of the action destruction can get to work on it: with the audience in pursuit, the protagonist becomes the worthless object of general violence. The quantity of organised amusement changes into the quality of organised cruelty. The self-elected censors of the film industry (with whom it enjoys a close relationship) watch over the unfolding of the crime, which is as drawn-out as a hunt. Fun replaces the pleasure which the sight of an embrace would allegedly afford, and postpones satisfaction till the day of the pogrom. Insofar as cartoons do any more than accustom the senses to the new tempo, they hammer into every brain the old lesson that continuous friction, the breaking down of all individual resistance, is the condition of life in this society. Donald Duck in the cartoons and the unfortunate in real life get their thrashing so that the audience can learn to take their own punishment.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The enjoyment of the violence suffered by the movie character turns into violence against the spectator, and distraction into exertion. Nothing that the experts have devised as a stimulant must escape the weary eye; no stupidity is allowed in the face of all the trickery; one has to follow everything and even display the smart responses shown and recommended in the film. This raises the question whether the culture industry fulfils the function of diverting minds which it boasts about so loudly. If most of the radio stations and movie theatres were closed down, the consumers would probably not lose so very much. To walk from the street into the movie theatre is no longer to enter a world of dream; as soon as the very existence of these institutions no longer made it obligatory to use them, there would be no great urge to do so. Such closures would not be reactionary machine wrecking. The disappointment would be felt not so much by the enthusiasts as by the slow-witted, who are the ones who suffer for everything anyhow. In spite of the films which are intended to complete her integration, the housewife finds in the darkness of the movie theatre a place of refuge where she can sit for a few hours with nobody watching, just as she used to look out of the window when there were still homes and rest in the evening. The unemployed in the great cities find coolness in summer and warmth in winter in these temperature-controlled locations. Otherwise, despite its size, this bloated pleasure apparatus adds no dignity to man’s lives. The idea of “fully exploiting” available technical resources and the facilities for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the economic system which refuses to exploit resources to abolish hunger.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu. In front of the appetite stimulated by all those brilliant names and images there is finally set no more than a commendation of the depressing everyday world it sought to escape. Of course works of art were not sexual exhibitions either. However, by representing deprivation as negative, they retracted, as it were, the prostitution of the impulse and rescued by mediation what was denied.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The secret of aesthetic sublimation is its representation of fulfilment as a broken promise. The culture industry does not sublimate; it represses. By repeatedly exposing the objects of desire, breasts in a clinging sweater or the naked torso of the athletic hero, it only stimulates the unsublimated forepleasure which habitual deprivation has long since reduced to a masochistic semblance. There is no erotic situation which, while insinuating and exciting, does not fail to indicate unmistakably that things can never go that far. The Hays Office merely confirms the ritual of Tantalus that the culture industry has established anyway. Works of art are ascetic and unashamed; the culture industry is pornographic and prudish. Love is downgraded to romance. And, after the descent, much is permitted; even license as a marketable speciality has its quota bearing the trade description “daring.” The mass production of the sexual automatically achieves its repression. Because of his ubiquity, the film star with whom one is meant to fall in love is from the outset a copy of himself. Every tenor voice comes to sound like a Caruso record, and the “natural” faces of Texas girls are like the successful models by whom Hollywood has typecast them. The mechanical reproduction of beauty, which reactionary cultural fanaticism wholeheartedly serves in its methodical idolisation of individuality, leaves no room for that unconscious idolatry which was once essential to beauty.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The triumph over beauty is celebrated by humour – the Schadenfreude that every successful deprivation calls forth. There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether conciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear passes. It indicates liberation either from physical danger or from the grip of logic. Conciliatory laughter is heard as the echo of an escape from power; the wrong kind overcomes fear by capitulating to the forces which are to be feared. It is the echo of power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practised on happiness. Moments of happiness are without laughter; only operettas and films portray sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. But Baudelaire is as devoid of humour as Hölderlin. In the false society laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness and is drawing it into its worthless totality. To laugh at something is always to deride it, and the life which, according to Bergson, in laughter breaks through the barrier, is actually an invading barbaric life, self-assertion prepared to parade its liberation from any scruple when the social occasion arises. Such a laughing audience is a parody of humanity. Its members are monads, all dedicated to the pleasure of being ready for anything at the expense of everyone else. Their harmony is a caricature of solidarity. What is fiendish about this false laughter is that it is a compelling parody of the best, which is conciliatory. Delight is austere: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">res severa verum gaudium</i>. The monastic theory that not asceticism but the sexual act denotes the renunciation of attainable bliss receives negative confirmation in the gravity of the lover who with foreboding commits his life to the fleeting moment. In the culture industry, jovial denial takes the place of the pain found in ecstasy and in asceticism. The supreme law is that they shall not satisfy their desires at any price; they must laugh and be content with laughter. In every product of the culture industry, the permanent denial imposed by civilisation is once again unmistakably demonstrated and inflicted on its victims. To offer and to deprive them of something is one and the same. This is what happens in erotic films. Precisely because it must never take place, everything centres upon copulation. In films it is more strictly forbidden for an illegitimate relationship to be admitted without the parties being punished than for a millionaire’sfuture son-in-law to be active in the labour movement. In contrast to the liberal era, industrialised as well as popular culture may wax indignant at capitalism, but it cannot renounce the threat of castration. This is fundamental. It outlasts the organised acceptance of the uniformed seen in the films which are produced to that end, and in reality. What is decisive today is no longer puritanism, although it still asserts itself in the form of women’s organisations, but the necessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The principle dictates that he should be shown all his needs as capable of-fulfilment, but that those needs should be so predetermined that he feels himself to be the eternal consumer, the object of the culture industry. Not only does it make him believe that the deception it practices is satisfaction, but it goes further and implies that, whatever the state of affairs, he must put up with what is offered. The escape from everyday drudgery which the whole culture industry promises may be compared to the daughter’s abduction in the cartoon: the father is holding the ladder in the dark. The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are pre-designed to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure promotes the resignation which it ought to help to forget.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Even today the culture industry dresses works of art like political slogans and forces them upon a resistant public at reduced prices; they are as accessible for public enjoyment as a park. But the disappearance of their genuine commodity character does not mean that they have been abolished in the life of a free society, but that the last defence against their reduction to culture goods has fallen. The abolition of educational privilege by the device of clearance sales does not open for the masses the spheres from which they were formerly excluded, but, given existing social conditions, contributes directly to the decay of education and the progress of barbaric meaninglessness. Those who spent their money in the nineteenth or the early twentieth century to see a play or to go to a concert respected the performance as much as the money they spent. The bourgeois who wanted to get something out of it tried occasionally to establish some rapport with the work. Evidence for this is to be found in the literary “introductions” to works, or in the commentaries on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Faust</i>. These were the first steps toward the biographical coating and other practices to which a work of art is subjected today.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Even in the early, prosperous days of business, exchange-value did carry use value as a mere appendix but had developed it as a prerequisite for its own existence; this was socially helpful for works of art. Art exercised some restraint on the bourgeois as long as it cost money. That is now a thing of the past. Now that it has lost every restraint and there is no need to pay any money, the proximity of art to those who are exposed to it completes the alienation and assimilates one to the other under the banner of triumphant objectivity. Criticism and respect disappear in the culture industry; the former becomes a mechanical expertise, the latter is succeeded by a shallow cult of leading personalities. Consumers now find nothing expensive. Nevertheless, they suspect that the less anything costs, the less it is being given them. The double mistrust of traditional culture as ideology is combined with mistrust of industrialised culture as a swindle. When thrown in free, the now debased works of art, together with the rubbish to which the medium assimilates them, are secretly rejected by the fortunate recipients, who are supposed to be satisfied by the mere fact that there is so much to be seen and heard. Everything can be obtained. The screenos and vaudevilles in the movie theatre, the competitions for guessing music, the free books, rewards and gifts offered on certain radio programs, are not mere accidents but a continuation of the practice obtaining with culture products. The symphony becomes a reward for listening to the radio, and – if technology had its way - the film would be delivered to people’s homes as happens with the radio. It is moving toward the commercial system. Television points the way to a development which might easily enough force the Warner Brothers into what would certainly be the unwelcome position of serious musicians and cultural conservatives. But the gift system has already taken hold among consumers. As culture is represented as a bonus with undoubted private and social advantages, they have to seize the chance. They rush in lest they miss something. Exactly what, is not clear, but in any case the only ones with a chance are the participants. Fascism, however, hopes to use the training the culture industry has given these recipients of gifts, in order to organise them into its own forced battalions.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Culture is a paradoxical commodity. So completely is it subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. Therefore it amalgamates with advertising. The more meaningless the latter seems to be under a monopoly, the more omnipotent it becomes. The motives are markedly economic.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">One could certainly live without the culture industry, therefore it necessarily creates too much satiation and apathy. In itself, it has few resources itself to correct this. Advertising is its elixir of life. But as its product never fails to reduce to a mere promise the enjoyment which it promises as a commodity, it eventually coincides with publicity, which it needs because it cannot be enjoyed. In a competitive society, advertising performed the social service of informing the buyer about the market; it made choice easier and helped the unknown but more efficient supplier to dispose of his goods. Far from costing time, it saved it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Today, when the free market is coming to an end, those who control the system are entrenching themselves in it. It strengthens the firm bond between the consumers and the big combines. Only those who can pay the exorbitant rates charged by the advertising agencies, chief of which are the radio networks themselves; that is, only those who are already in a position to do so, or are co-opted by the decision of the banks and industrial capital, can enter the pseudo-market as sellers. The costs of advertising, which finally flow back into the pockets of the combines, make it unnecessaryto defeat unwelcome outsiders by laborious competition. They guarantee that power will remain in the same hands – not unlike those economic decisions by which the establishment and running of undertakings is controlled in a totalitarian state. Advertising today is a negative principle, a blocking device: everything that does not bear its stamp is economically suspect. Universal publicity is in no way necessary for people to get to know the kinds of goods – whose supply is restricted anyway. It helps sales only indirectly. For a particular firm, to phase out a current advertising practice constitutes a loss of prestige, and a breach of the discipline imposed by the influential clique on its members. In wartime, goods which are unobtainable are still advertised, merely to keep industrial power in view. Subsidising ideological media is more important than the repetition of the name. Because the system obliges every product to use advertising, it has permeated the idiom – the “style” – of the culture industry. Its victory is so complete that it is no longer evident in the key positions: the huge buildings of the top men, floodlit stone advertisements, are free of advertising; at most they exhibit on the rooftops, in monumental brilliance and without any self-glorification, the firm’s initials. But, in contrast, the nineteenth-century houses, whose architecture still shamefully indicates that they can be used as a consumption commodity and are intended to be lived in, are covered with posters and inscriptions from the ground right up to and beyond the roof: until they become no more than backgrounds for bills and sign-boards. Advertising becomes art and nothing else, just as Goebbels – with foresight – combines them: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">l’art pour l’art</i>, advertising for its own sake, a pure representation of social power. In the most influential American magazines, Life and Fortune, a quick glance can now scarcely distinguish advertising from editorial picture and text. The latter features an enthusiastic and gratuitous account of the great man (with illustrations of his life and grooming habits) which will bring him new fans, while the advertisement pages use so many factual photographs and details that they represent the ideal of information which the editorial part has only begun to try to achieve.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its products (factory-like not only in the studio but, more or less, in the compilation of cheap biographies, pseudo-documentary novels, and hit songs) is very suited to advertising: the important individual points, by becoming detachable, interchangeable, and even technically alienated from any connected meaning, lend themselves to ends external to the work. The effect, the trick, the isolated repeatable device, have always been used to exhibit goods for advertising purposes, and today every monster close-up of a star is an advertisement for her name, and every hit song a plug for its tune. Advertising and the culture industry merge technically as well as economically. In both cases the same thing can be seen in innumerable places, and the mechanical repetition of the same culture product has come to be the same as that of the propaganda slogan. In both cases the insistent demand for effectiveness makes technology into psycho-technology, into a procedure for manipulating men. In both cases the standards are the striking yet familiar, the easy yet catchy, the skilful yet simple; the object is to overpower the customer, who is conceived as absent-minded or resistant.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">By the language he speaks, he makes his own contribution to culture as publicity. The more completely language is lost in the announcement, the more words are debased as substantial vehicles of meaning and become signs devoid of quality; the more purely and transparently words communicate what is intended, the more impenetrable they become.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The demythologisation of language, taken as an element of the whole process of enlightenment, is a relapse into magic. Word and essential content were distinct yet inseparable from one another. Concepts like melancholy and history, even life, were recognised in the word, which separated them out and preserved them. Its form simultaneously constituted and reflected them. The absolute separation, which makes the moving accidental and its relation to the object arbitrary, puts an end to the superstitious fusion of word and thing.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Anything in a determined literal sequence which goes beyond the correlation to the event is rejected as unclear and as verbal metaphysics. But the result is that the word, which can now be only a sign without any meaning, becomes so fixed to the thing that it is just a petrified formula. This affects language and object alike. Instead of making the object experiential, the purified word treats it as an abstract instance, and everything else (now excluded by the demand for ruthless clarity from expression – itself now banished) fades away in reality. A left-half at football, a black-shirt, a member of the Hitler Youth, and so on, are no more than names. If before its rationalisation the word had given rise to lies as well as to longing, now, after its rationalisation, it is a straitjacket for longing more even than for lies.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The blindness and dumbness of the data to which positivism reduces the world pass over into language itself, which restricts itself to recording those data. Terms themselves become impenetrable; they obtain a striking force, a power of adhesion and repulsion which makes them like their extreme opposite, incantations. They come to be a kind of trick, because the name of the prima donna is cooked up in the studio on a statistical basis, or because a welfare state is anathematised by using taboo terms such as “bureaucrats” or “intellectuals,” or because base practice uses the name of the country as a charm.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">In general, the name – to which magic most easily attaches – is undergoing a chemical change: a metamorphosis into capricious, manipulable designations, whose effect is admittedly now calculable, but which for that very reason is just as despotic as that of the archaic name. First names, those archaic remnants, have been brought up to date either by stylisation as advertising trade-marks (film stars’ surnames have become first names), or by collective standardisation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">In comparison, the bourgeois family name which, instead of being a trade-mark, once individualised its bearer by relating him to his own past history, seems antiquated. It arouses a strange embarrassment in Americans. In order to hide the awkward distance between individuals, they call one another “Bob” and “Harry,” as interchangeable team members. This practice reduces relations between human beings to the good fellowship of the sporting community and is a defence against the true kind of relationship.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Signification, which is the only function of a word admitted by semantics, reaches perfection in the sign. Whether folk-songs were rightly or wrongly called upper-class culture in decay, their elements have only acquired their popular form through a long process of repeated transmission. The spread of popular songs, on the other hand, takes place at lightning speed. The American expression “fad,” used for fashions which appear like epidemics – that is, inflamed by highly-concentrated economic forces – designated this phenomenon long before totalitarian advertising bosses enforced the general lines of culture. When the German Fascists decide one day to launch a word – say, “intolerable” – over the loudspeakers the next day the whole nation is saying “intolerable.” By the same pattern, the nations against whom the weight of the German <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">blitzkrieg</i> was thrown took the word into their own jargon. The general repetition of names for measures to be taken by the authorities makes them, so to speak, familiar, just as the brand name on everybody’s lips increased sales in the era of the free market. The blind and rapidly spreading repetition of words with special designations links advertising with the totalitarian watchword. The layer of experience which created the words for their speakers has been removed; in this swift appropriation language acquires the coldness which until now it had only on billboards and in the advertisement columns of newspapers. Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes; in this sense, words are trade-marks which are finally all the more firmly linked to the things they denote, the less their linguistic sense is grasped. The minister for mass education talks incomprehendingly of “dynamic forces,” and the hit songs unceasingly celebrate “reverie” and “rhapsody,” yet base their popularity precisely on the magic of the unintelligible as creating the thrill of a more exalted life. Other stereotypes, such as memory, are still partly comprehended, but escape from the experience which might allow them content. They appear like enclaves in the spoken language. On the radio of Flesch and Hitler they may be recognised from the affected pronunciation of the announcer when he says to the nation, “Good night, everybody!” or “This is the Hitler Youth,” and even intones “the Fuehrer” in a way imitated by millions. In such cliches the last bond between sedimentary experience and language is severed which still had a reconciling effect in dialect in the nineteenth century. But in the prose of the journalist whose adaptable attitude led to his appointment as an all-German editor, the German words become petrified, alien terms. Every word shows how far it has been debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">By now, of course, this kind of language is already universal, totalitarian. All the violence done to words is so vile that one can hardly bear to hear them any longer. The announcer does not need to speak pompously; he would indeed be impossible if his inflection were different from that of his particular audience. But, as against that, the language and gestures of the audience and spectators are coloured more strongly than ever before by the culture industry, even in fine nuances which cannot yet be explained experimentally.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Today the culture industry has taken over the civilising inheritance of the entrepreneurial and frontier democracy – whose appreciation of intellectual deviations was never very finely attuned. All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free, since the historical neutralisation of religion, to join any of the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate situation, the choice of words in conversation, and the whole inner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued depth psychology, bear witness to man’s attempt to make himself a proficient apparatus, similar (even in emotions) to the model served up by the culture industry.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The most intimate reactions of human beings have been so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to themselves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odour and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-61898358354097059132011-06-15T11:40:00.002-07:002011-06-15T11:43:46.144-07:00The Third Interval: A Critical Transition in Re-thinking Technologies<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">by: Paul Virilio</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">Translated by Tom Conley </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Helvetica;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">We know about critical mass, critical instant and critical climate: we hear less often about critical space. There is no easy reason for this, unless perhaps it is because we have not yet assimilated relativity, the very notion of space-time. And yet space, or critical extension, has become ubiquitous, because of the acceleration of "means of communication" that collapse the Atlantic (the Concorde), reduce France to a square of an hour and a half on each side (the airbus), or, yet again, tell us that the high-speed train (TGV) wins time over time. These different slogans from the world of publicity indicate exactly how much we inherit old ideas of geophysical space; these advertisements also tell us, to be sure, that we are their innocent victims. Today we are beginning to realize that systems of telecommunication do not merely confine extension, but that, in the transmission of messages and images, they also eradicate duration or delay.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">In the shift from the revolution of modes of transportation in the nineteenth century to the revolution of electronic communication in the twentieth century, there emerge a mutation and a commutation that affect public and domestic space so strongly that we are hard put to determine what its reality may be. When technologies of telemarketing replace those of the classical era of television, we begin to witness how the premises of an urbanization of real time follow on the heels of the premises of an urbanization of a real space. Because of interactive teletechnologies (the teleport), this abrupt transfer of technology moves from the arrangement of the infrastructures of real space (maritime ports, railway stations, airports) to the control of the environment in real time. Critical dimensions are also being renewed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">The question of the real moment of instantaneous telemarketing is effectively refashioning philosophical and political issues that traditionally had been based on notions of Atopia and Utopia. The shift is being made for the advancement of what has already been called Teletopia, which carries manifold paradoxes that take, for example, the following form: "Reach out and touch someone," or even "to be telepresent," meaning to be here and elsewhere at the same time. This so-called real time is essentially nothing other than a real space-time, since different events surely take "place" even if, finally, this place constitutes that of the no-place of teletopical technologies (such as the interface of human and machine, a regime or nodal point of teletransmissions).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Immediate telesales, instant telepresence: thanks to new procedures of telediffusion or of teletransmission, action, or the fabled "televised action at a distance" that the telecommander effectuates, is now facilitated by the perfected use of electromagnetics and by the radio-electric views of what has lately been called electro-optics. One by one, the perceptive faculties of an individual's body are transferred to machines, or instruments that record images and sound; more recently, the transfer is made to receivers, to sensors, and to other detectors that can replace absence of tactility over distance. A general use of telecommands is on the verge of achieving permanent telesurveillance. What is becoming critical here is no longer the concept of three spatial dimensions, but a fourth, temporal dimension, in other words, that of the present itself. As we shall see below, "real time" is not opposed, as many experts in electronics claim, to "deferred time," but only to present time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">The painter Paul Klee expressed the point exceptionally well when he noted, "Defining the present in isolation is tantamount to murdering it."' This is what technologies of real time are achieving. They kill "present" time by isolating it from its presence here and now for the sake of another commutative space that is no longer composed of our "concrete presence" in the world, but of a "discrete telepresence" whose enigma remains forever intact. How can we fail to understand to what degree these radio-technologies (based on the digital signal, the video signal, and the radio signal) will soon overturn not only the nature of human environment and its territorial body, but also the individual environment and its animal body, since the development of territorial space by means of heavy material machinery (roads, railways, and so on) is now giving way to an almost immaterial control of the environment (satellites, fiber-optic cables) that is connected to the terminal body of the men and women, interactive beings who are at once emitters and receivers?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Clearly the urbanization of real time entails first of all the urbanization of "one's own body," which is plugged into various interfaces (computer keyboards, cathode screens, and soon gloves or cyberclothing), prostheses that turn the over-equipped, healthy (or "valid") individual into the virtual equivalent of the well-equipped invalid. If the revolution of modes of transportation of the last century had witnessed the emergence and progressive popularization of the dynamic automotive vehicle (train, motorcycle, car, airplane), the current electronic revolution is now, in its turn, blueprinting the plan for the innovation of the ultimate vehicle, the static audiovisual vehicle, in other words, the coming of a behavioral inertia of the receiver-sender, or the passage from this fabled "retinal suspension" on which the optical illusion of cinematic projection was based, to the "bodily suspension" of the "plugged-in human being." This becomes the condition of possibility of a sudden mobilization of the illusion of the world, of an entire world, that is telepresent at every moment. The very body of the connected witness happens to be the ultimate urban territory, a folding back over the animal body of social organization and of a conditioning previously limited to the core of the old city. In bodily terms, it resembles the core of the old familial "hearth.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Thus we are better able to perceive the decline of the unity of demography. After an expanse of time the extended family turned into the nuclear family, which has now become the single-parent family. Individuality or individualism was thus not so much the fact of liberation of social practice as the product of the evolution of techniques of the development of public or private space. If cities are growing and sprawling at unforeseen rates, so then the familial unit is shrinking and becoming a tributary force. Given that we are witnessing supersaturated conditions in the concentrations of megalopolitan populations (Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles) that are the result of an increased economic speed, it now seems appropriate to reconsider the notions of acceleration and deceleration (what physicists call positive and negative speeds) and, no less, what is less evident, in real speed and virtual speed (the rapidity of what happens unexpectedly, such as an urban crisis, or an accident) to grasp better the importance of the "critical transition" of which we are now the powerless witnesses.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">We would do well to recall that speed is not a phenomenon but a relation among phenomena, in other words, relativity itself, whence the importance of the constancy of the speed of light not only in physics or in astrophysics, but also in our everyday lives. It is experienced as soon as we move, beyond the paradigm of public transport, into that of the organization and electromagnetic conditioning of territorial space. Such is what is implied by revolutions in "transmission" or "automation" of environmental control in real time that has since replaced traditional ways of living in territorial space. As a result, speed is not used solely to make travel more effective. It is used above all to see, to hear, to perceive, and, thus, to conceive more intensely the present world. In the future, speed will be used more and more to act over distance, beyond the sphere of influence of the human body and its behavioral biotechnology.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Helvetica">The Interval of Light</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">How can we account for this situation? It is necessary to introduce the specter of a new kind of interval, the interval of light (or zero-sign). In fact, in relativity the revolution of this third "interval" is in itself a sort of imperceptible cultural revolution. If the interval of Time (a positive sign) and the interval of Space (a negative sign) have given impetus to the geography and the history of the world through geometrical measurement of agrarian space (allotment into parcels of land) and urban areas (cadastral surveys), the organization of the calendar and measurement of time (clocks and watches) have also presided over a vast political and chronological regulation of human societies. The sudden emergence of an interval of the third type thus signals that we are undergoing an abrupt qualitative shift, a profound mutation of the relations that as humans we are keeping with our living environment. Time (duration) and Space (extension) are now inconceivable without Light (absolute speed), the cosmological constant of the speed of light, an absolute philosophical contingency, according to Einstein, that follows the absolute character that until then Newton and his predecessors had ascribed to space and time. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Since the beginning of this century, the absolute limit of the speed of light has, as it were, enlightened space and time together. We are therefore no longer dealing so much with light that illuminates things (the object, the subject, and travel) as with the constant character of its absolute speed, which conditions the phenomenal apperception of the world's duration and extension.2 We do well to heed the physicist who speaks of the logic of particles: "A representation is defined by a sum of observables that are flickering back and forth."3 The macroscopic logic of the techniques of real time could not better describe the macroscopic logic of this sudden "teletopical commutation" that perfects what until now had been the fundamentally "topical" quality of the old human city.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Thus both the urban geographer and the political scientist find themselves torn between the permanent necessities of the organization and construction of real space, with all of its basic problems, including geometrical and geographical constrictions about what is central versus what is peripheral, and new constraints of the management of this real time of immediacy and ubiquity, with its "protocol of access," its "transmission of bundles," its "viruses," and the chrono-geographical constraints of nodal and interconnected networks. An extended time works in the direction of the topical and architectonic interval (the high-rise building), and a short, ultrabrief, even inexistent time in the direction of the tele-topical interface (the network). How can this dilemma be resolved? How can these fundamentally spatio-temporal and relativistic problems be formulated?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">When we now witness the aftershocks of international financial disasters in view of the damages of instantaneous automation of stock futures and junk bonds, or this notorious trading program that is responsible for the acceleration of economic disorder, such as the electronic crash of October 1987 and the crash that was barely missed in October 1989, we put our finger on the difficulties of our current situation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Critical transition is thus not a gratuitous expression: behind this vocable there lurks a real crisis of the temporal dimension of immediate action. After the crisis of "integral" spatial dimensions, which give increased importance to "fractional" dimensions, we might be witnessing, in short, the crisis of the temporal dimension of the present moment. If time-light (or, better, the time of the speed of light) now serves as an absolute standard for both immediate marketing and instantaneous telemarketing, then intensive duration of the "the real moment" now replaces duration. Thus the extensive time of history is relatively subject to control, and can include this long-term duration, what used to comprise at once the past, the present, and the future. In effect, what we might call a temporal commutation, an "alternation" or "flickering" that is also related to a sort of commotion of present duration, an accident of a so-called real instant, is suddenly disconnected from its site of origin or inscription, from its here and now, for the sake of an electronic dazzle (that is at once electro-optical, electro-acoustical, and electro-tactile) where telecommanding, the so-called tact at a distance, would bring to completion the former technique of telesurveillance of what is kept afar, or beyond our grasp.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">If, as Epicurus says, time is the accident of accidents, with these teletechnologies of generalized interactivity we begin to move toward the era of the accident of the present, the fabled telepresence over distance that amounts to nothing more than the sudden catastrophe of the reality of this present instant that constitutes our only mode of entry into duration, but also, and everyone has been aware of the fact since Einstein, our only entry into the extension of the real world. Henceforth the "real" time of telecommunications will probably refer no longer solely to "deferred" time, to feedback, or to time lags, but also to an outer chronology. Whence my constantly reiterated point about replacing what is chronological (before, during, after) with what is chronological or, if another formula fits better, the chronoscopical (underexposed, exposed, and overexposed). In effect, the interval of light (the interface) supplanting henceforth those of Space and of Time, the notion of exposure replaces, in its turn (whether we like it or not), that of succession in terms of present duration and that of extension in immediate space.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">Thus the speed of exposure of time-light should allow us to reinterpret the "present" or this "real instant" that is (lest we forget) the space-time of a very real action facilitated by electronic machines. Soon it will be facilitated by photonic apparatus, that is, by the absolute capacities of electromagnetic waves and of quanta of light, a limit and a milestone for access to the reality of the perceptible world (here I am thinking of what astrophysicists call the cone of light) is colliding head-on with the politics and administration of public service. Thus, if the classical interval gives way to interfacing, politics moves, in turn, into present time alone. The question no longer entails relations of what is global in respect to what is local, or what is transnational and what is national, but above all concerns this sudden </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">ز</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">temporal commutation" in whose flickerings disappear not only the difference of inside and outside and the expanse of political territories, but also the "before" and the "after" of duration and history, for the sake of a real instant over which, finally, no one has control. To be convinced of this shift we need only observe today's inextricable problems of geostrategy in view of the impossibility of clearly distinguishing offense from defense. Instantaneous and multipolar strategy has been deployed in what military experts call "preemptive" strikes!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Thus the archaic "tyranny of distances" between people who have been geographically scattered increasingly gives way to this "tyranny of real time" that is not merely a matter, as optimists might claim, for travel agencies, but especially for employment agencies, because the more the speed of commerce grows, the more unemployment becomes globally massive. Since the nineteenth century, the muscular force of the human being is literally "laid off" when automation of the "machine tool" is employed. Then, with the recent growth of computers, "transmission machines," comes the laying off or ultimate shutdown of human memory and conscience. Automation of postindustrial production is coupled with the automation of perception and then with this attended conception favored by the marketplace of systems analysis while future developments are sought in cybernetics. Thus, the gain of real time over deferred time is equivalent to being placed in an efficient procedure that physically eliminates the "object" and "subject" for the exclusive advantage of a journey, but the journey [trajet], because it lacks a trajectory, is fundamentally out of control. Thus the interface in real time definitely replaces the interval that had formerly constructed and organized the history and geography of our societies, leading to an obvious culture of paradox, in which everything arrives without there being any need either to travel or to leave in the slightest physical sense.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Behind this critical transition, how can we fail to wonder about the future conditioning of the human environment? If the revolution of transportation in the nineteenth century had already prompted a change in the surface urban territory on the whole of the European continent, the current revolution of interactive transmissions is, in its turn, promoting an alteration of urban environment. "Images" win over the "things" they are said to represent: the city of the past slowly becomes a paradoxical agglomeration in which relations of immediate proximity give way to interrelations over distances. In fact, the paradoxes of acceleration are frequent and disturbing. One, the first, of them runs thus: when things "far" are brought into immediate proximity, those that are proportionately "near", such as our friends, kin, neighbors, turn what is proximate, family, work, or neighborhood, into a foreign, if not inimical, space. This inversion of social practices can already be seen in the urban planning of modes of communication (maritime port, railway station, airport) and is underscored and radicalized through new means of telecommunication (the teleport).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Once again we thus observe still another inversion of tendencies. Where motorized transportation and information had prompted a general mobilization of populations swept up in the exodus of labor (and then of leisure), modes of instantaneous transmission prompt the inverse, that of a growing inertia. Television and, especially, teleaction, no longer require human mobility, but merely a local motility. Telemarketing, tele-employment, fax work, bit-net, and e-mail transmissions at home, in apartments, or in cabled high rises, these might be called cocooning: an urbanization of real time thus follows the urbanization of real space. The shift is ultimately felt in the very body of every city dweller, as a terminal citizen who will soon be equipped with interactive prostheses whose pathological model is that of the "motorized handicapped," equipped so that he or she can control the domestic environment without undergoing any physical displacement. We have before us the catastrophic figure of an individual who has lost, along with his or her natural mobility, any immediate means of intervening in the environment. The fate of the individual is handed over, for better or for worse, to the capacities of receivers, sensors, and other long-range detectors that turn the person into a being subjected to the machines with which, they say, he or she is "in dialogue!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">To be a subject or to be subjected? That is the question. Former public services will in all likelihood be replaced by a domestic enslavement for which "domotics" might be the perfect outcome. It would be equivalent to the achievement of a domiciliary inertia, where a generalization of techniques of "environmental control" would end up with behavioral isolation and reinforce cities with the very insularities that have always threatened them, such that the distinction between the "island retreat" and the "ghetto" might become increasingly precarious.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">Furthermore, and for some unexplainable reason, the international colloquium on the handicapped that recently took place at Dunkirk offers numerous parallels with the critical situation that I have sketched in the paragraphs above. It appears as if the recent technical and economic imperatives insert continuities and networks in the place of discontinuities, where there existed an amalgam or mix of different types of urban mobilities. Whence the idea, described above, of a common public transit is replaced by that of a more pervasive chain of displacement. We can thus heed the generous conclusion Francois Mitterrand stated at the end of the Dunkirk symposium: "Cities will have to be adapted to their citizens and not the other way around. We must open the city to handicapped Citizens. I demand that a global politics for the handicapped become a strong axis </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">،</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">f Social Europe. "If every one of us is obviously in agreement about the inalienable right that the handicapped person has to live as others do and therefore with others, it is no less revealing to note the similarities that now exist between the reduced mobility of the equipped invalid and the growing inertia of the over-equipped, "valid" human population. As if the revolutions in transmission of information led to an identical conclusion, whatever may be the condition of the patient's body, the terminal citizen of a teletopical city is on the way toward its accelerated formation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">The destruction of the Berlin Wall? That has been accomplished. The future of a united Germany? The answer is clear. The abolition of borders dividing nations in Western Europe is announced for 1993. What remains to be abolished, and urgently, can only be space and time. As we have just seen, the task is being accomplished. At the end of our century not much will remain of this planet that is not only polluted and impoverished, but also shrunken and reduced to nothing by the teletechnologies of generalized interactivity.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Helvetica">Notes</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Helvetica"></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">1. Paul Klee. Theorie de l'art moderne (Paris: Gonthier, 1963).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">2. The triad described in the parentheses reads "l'objet, le sujet, le trajet," such that "travel"--or "journey," the third term, bears strong graphic and vocal resemblance to the object and the subject. Trans. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">3. G. Cohen Tannoudji and M. Spiro, La matiere-espace-temps (Paris: Fayard, 1986). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">4. Klee, Theorie de l'art moderne. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">5. Cited by Guiseppe Bufo, in Nicolas de Cues (Paris: Seghers, 1964). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="text-align:left"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">6. See Paul Virilio, L'inertie polaire (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1990).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-16930977180576512912011-04-04T22:39:00.000-07:002011-04-04T22:53:12.177-07:00Jeff Wall's “Eviction struggle”by: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzoCqfUzoAZaeszQ6t2JRLekCZpN_Pa9TmyiOxPbG3uhZDfDpPZBSz2VsDceA6G9r9JBduNeUTZkvqdNm4mhhoYr44-onb1oQDVrSl86UlJ6jBX1Mhk_YdzydW_iQzA0XEuPyEYwUgXyIM/s1600/jeff_w5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591972312793474018" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 294px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzoCqfUzoAZaeszQ6t2JRLekCZpN_Pa9TmyiOxPbG3uhZDfDpPZBSz2VsDceA6G9r9JBduNeUTZkvqdNm4mhhoYr44-onb1oQDVrSl86UlJ6jBX1Mhk_YdzydW_iQzA0XEuPyEYwUgXyIM/s320/jeff_w5.jpg" border="0" /></a> Gunter Heeg <br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Three elements:</strong> The scene of the eviction: a man catched by two policemen, who try to pull him out of his home and garden. His wife or lover is running to help him and to avoid the eviction. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">The bystanders (4) in safe distance. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">The landscape of a never ending suburb, overwhelming the scene. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>The intermedia relation:</strong> </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">The scene does not look realistic or natural, it is a staged scene as we know it from theatre and paintings. Especially in old historical paintings there are conventional gestures to express deep and violent passions reaching to the abyss of what can not be expressed. The german theorist of art Aby Warburg called them the formula of pathos. The gestures of the persons in the scene quote some of this formulas, for instance the man between the policemen is a rough quote of the Laokoon in the famous classical sculpture. The hold up arms of the woman is a quote of the gesture of Maria Magdalena on pictures of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But the reason of these quotes is not to reanimate these old passions, they are allusions to what has disappeared from our life. That shows us the stiff and exaggerated performance of these gestures, reminding us of bad overacting actors may be in a daily soap. Once more you can find here the in between of a remembrance of absent passions and their funny returning in the attitudes of every day life. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>The truth of the image or the reference</strong> </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">The french thinker of art Roland Barthes in the seventies of the last century wrote a famous book about photography, La chambre claire, in which he claimed the specific of the medium of photography would be the strict link between the photograph and its reference. For example the young woman on the old photograph in the moment before she is jumping into the sea is a reference of the photograph, which can not be removed. That’s the reason why photographs are taken for serious documents that tell us the very truth, how and what it was. In the times of digital photography of course the connection between the photograph and the object of reference has come loose, also a photograph could be fake before. Nevertheless till in our days a photograph is taken as a document of reality. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">How does Jeff Wall work with the documentary appeal of the photograph? First: Looking at the scene the referents are not real persons but attitudes, posing. The true referent is the pose, the not authentic. Secondly: the method to shoot the pictures and treat the shots: Wall works very hard to stage a scene and then he takes some pictures of the scene and the surrounding. Afterwards he makes a montage, mechanically or digitally, but the montage can not be seen. So you get the impression of one whole coherent picture. This allows him to move the perspective. In “Eviction struggle” there seem to be two different perspectives. One from the outside, the right sight and from above running along the road, the other from down below, from the ground of the street running through the scene up to the landscape of the suburb. In an exhibition of Jeff Wall people are always running here and there to find out the right perspective. Actually there is no one, there is no safe position for the onlooker. He gets involved into the picture, get’s evicted from his own position and has to fight his own eviction struggle within and between the elements of the picture.</span></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-46175773387618824692011-03-24T03:42:00.000-07:002011-03-24T03:50:07.173-07:00Theories of Mass Media<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Agenda Setting Theory</strong><br /> the creation of what the public thinks is important<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />Agenda setting describes a very powerful influence of the media – the ability to tell us what issues are important. As far back as 1922, the newspaper columnist Walter Lippman was concerned that the media had the power to present images to the public. McCombs and Shaw investigated presidential campaigns in 1968, 1972 and 1976. In the research done in 1968 they focused on two elements: awareness and information. Investigating the agenda-setting function of the mass media, they attempted to assess the relationship between what voters in one community said were important issues and the actual content of the media messages used during the campaign. McCombs and Shaw concluded that the mass media exerted a significant influence on what voters considered to be the major issues of the campaign.<br /></span></span><a name="core_assumptions_and_statements"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Core: Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. Two basis assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. In addition, different media have different agenda-setting potential. Agenda-setting theory seems quite appropriate to help us understand the pervasive role of the media (for example on political communication systems).<br />Statement: Bernard Cohen (1963) stated: “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”</span><a name="conceptual_model"></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br />Conceptual Model<br /><br /><strong>Priming</strong><br />media effects<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />Much attention in agenda-setting research, in the 80’s, was focused on the concept of priming. This concept was derived from the cognitive psychological concept of priming.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Priming refers to enhancing the effects of the media by offering the audience a prior context – a context that will be used to interpret subsequent communication. The media serve to provide the audience with standards and frames of reference. Agenda-setting refers mainly to the importance of an issue; priming tells us whether something is good or bad, whether it is communicated effectively, etc. The media have primed the audience about what a news program looks like, what a credible person looks like, etc. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Framing<br /></strong>(media) or (people) decide where people think about<br />also: framing in organizations<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />The concept of framing is related to the agenda-setting tradition but expands the research by focusing on the essence of the issues at hand rather than on a particular topic. The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning. Framing is an important topic since it can have a big influence and therefore the concept of framing expanded to organizations as well.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Core: The media draws the public attention to certain topics, it decides where people think about, the journalists select the topics. This is the original agenda setting ‘thought’. In news items occurs more than only bringing up certain topics. The way in which the news is brought, the frame in which the news is presented, is also a choice made by journalists. Thus, a frame refers to the way media and media gatekeepers organize and present the events and issues they cover, and the way audiences interpret what they are provided. Frames are abstract notions that serve to organize or structure social meanings. Frames influence the perception of the news of the audience, this form of agenda-setting not only tells what to think about, but also how to think about it.<br /><br />Framing in organizations<br />Core: Framing is a quality of communication that leads others to accept one meaning over another. It is a skill with profound effects on how organizational members understand and respond to the world in which they live. It is a skill that most successful leaders possess, yet one that is not often taught. According to Fairhurst & Sarr (1996) framing consists of three elements: language, thought and forethought. Language helps us to remember information and acts to transform the way in which we view situations. To use language, people must have thought and reflected on their own interpretive frameworks and those of others. Leaders must learn to frame spontaneously in certain circumstances. Being able to do so had to do with having the forethought to predict framing opportunities. In other words, one must plan in order to be spontaneous. (Deetz, Tracy & Simpson, 2000).<br /><br /><strong>Cultivation Theory</strong><br />television shapes concepts of social reality<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />With the decline of hypodermic needle theories a new perspective began to emerge: the stalagmite theories. Black et. al. used the metaphor of stalagmite theories to suggest that media effects occur analogously to the slow buildup of formations on cave floors, which take their interesting forms after eons of the steady dripping of limewater from the cave ceilings above. One of the most popular theories that fits this perspective is cultivation theory.<br />Cultivation theory (sometimes referred to as the cultivation hypothesis or cultivation analysis) was an approach developed by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He began the 'Cultural Indicators' research project in the mid-1960s, to study whether and how watching television may influence viewers' ideas of what the everyday world is like. Cultivation research is in the 'effects' tradition. Cultivation theorists argue that television has long-term effects which are small, gradual, indirect but cumulative and significant.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Cultivation theory in its most basic form, suggests that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality. The combined effect of massive television exposure by viewers over time subtly shapes the perception of social reality for individuals and, ultimately, for our culture as a whole. Gerbner argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values which are already present in a culture: the media maintain and propagate these values amongst members of a culture, thus binding it together. He has argued that television tends to cultivate middle-of-the- road political perspectives. Gerbner called this effect ‘mainstreaming’. Cultivation theorists distinguish between ‘first order’ effects (general beliefs about the everyday world, such as about the prevalence of violence) and ‘second order’ effects (specific attitudes, such as to law and order or to personal safety). There is also a distinction between two groups of television viewers: the heavy viewers and the light viewers. The focus is on ‘heavy viewers’. People who watch a lot of television are likely to be more influenced by the ways in which the world is framed by television programs than are individuals who watch less, especially regarding topics of which the viewer has little first-hand experience. Light viewers may have more sources of information than heavy viewers. ‘Resonance’ describes the intensified effect on the audience when what people see on television is what they have experienced in life. This double dose of the televised message tends to amplify the cultivation effect.<br /><br /><strong>Dependency Theory</strong><br />media depends on the social context<br />(or: Media System Dependency Theory)<br /></span></span><a name="history_and_orientation"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br />History and Orientation<br />Dependency theory was originally proposed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur (1976). This theory merged out of the communication discipline.<br />Dependency theory integrates several perspectives: first, it combines perspectives from psychology with ingredients from social categories theory. Second, it integrates systems perspectives with elements from more causal approaches. Third, it combines elements of uses and gratifications research with those of media effects traditions, although its primary focus is less on effects per se than on rationales for why media effects typically are limited. Finally, a contextualist philosophy is incorporated into the theory, which also features traditional concerns with the content of media messages and their effects on audiences. Research generated by this model had tends to be more descriptive than explanatory or predictive.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Dependency theory proposes an integral relationship among audiences, media and the larger social system. This theory predicts that you depend on media information to meet certain needs and achieve certain goals, like uses-and-gratifications theory. But you do not depend on all media equally. Two factors influence the degree of media dependence. First, you will become more dependent on media that meet a number of your needs than on media that provide just a few. The second source of dependency is social stability. When social change and conflict are high, established institutions, beliefs, and practices are challenged, forcing you to reevaluate and make new choices. At such times your reliance on the media for information will increase. At other, more stable times your dependency on media may go way down.<br />One’s needs are not always strictly personal but may be shaped by the culture or by various social conditions. In other words, individuals’ needs, motives, and uses of media are contingent on outside factors that may not be in the individuals’ control. These outside factors act as constraints on what and how media can be used and on the availability of other non-media alternatives. Furthermore, the more alternatives and individual had for gratifying needs, the less dependent he or she will become on any single medium. The number of functional alternatives, however, is not just a matter of individual choice or even of psychological traits but is limited also by factors such as availability of certain media.<br /><br /><strong>Hypodermic Needle Theory<br /></strong>direct influence via mass media<br />Or: Magic Bullet Theory<br />(in Dutch also known as: ‘almacht van de media-theorie’, stimulus-response, injectienaald, transportband, lont in het kruidvat theorie).<br />History and Orientation<br />The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change.<br />Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including:<br />- the fast rise and popularization of radio and television<br />- the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda<br />- the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children, and<br />- Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.<br />Both images used to express this theory (a bullet and a needle) suggest a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver. The bullet theory graphically suggests that the message is a bullet, fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head". With similarly emotive imagery the hypodermic needle model suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. There is no escape from the effect of the message in these models. The population is seen as a sitting duck. People are seen as passive and are seen as having a lot media material "shot" at them. People end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.<br />New assessments that the Magic Bullet Theory was not accurate came out of election studies in "The People's Choice," (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1944/1968). The project was conducted during the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 to determine voting patterns and the relationship between the media and political behavior. The majority of people remained untouched by the propaganda; interpersonal outlets brought more influence than the media. The effects of the campaign were not all-powerful to where they persuaded helpless audiences uniformly and directly, which is the very definition of what the magic bullet theory does. As focus group testing, questionnaires, and other methods of marketing effectiveness testing came into widespread use; and as more interactive forms of media (e.g.: internet, radio call-in shows, etc.) became available, the magic bullet theory was replaced by a variety of other, more instrumental models, like the two step of flow theory and diffusion of innovations theory.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Knowledge Gap</strong><br />increasing gap between higher and lower educated people<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />The knowledge gap theory was first proposed by Tichenor, Donohue and Olien at the University of Minnesota in the 70s. They believe that the increase of information in society is not evenly acquired by every member of society: people with higher socioeconomic status tend to have better ability to acquire information (</span><a href="http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~ichuncheng/reference.htm#Weng"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Weng, S.C. 2000</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">). This leads to a division of two groups: a group of better-educated people who know more about most things, and those with low education who know less. Lower socio-economic status (SES) people, defined partly by educational level, have little or no knowledge about public affairs issues, are disconnected from news events and important new discoveries, and usually aren’t concerned about their lack of knowledge.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />The knowledge gap can result in an increased gap between people of lower and higher socioeconomic status. The attempt to improve people’s life with information via the mass media might not always work the way this is planned. Mass media might have the effect of increasing the difference gap between members of social classes. Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970) present five reasons for justifying the knowledge gap. 1) People of higher socioeconomic status have better communication skills, education, reading, comprehending and remembering information. 2) People of higher socioeconomic status can store information more easily or remember the topic form background knowledge 3) People of higher socioeconomic status might have a more relevant social context. 4) People of higher socioeconomic status are better in selective exposure, acceptance and retention. 5) The nature of the mass media itself is that it is geared toward persons of higher socioeconomic status.<br /><br />This example shows that education level or socioeconomic status made a difference in knowledge. The question was whether or not respondents felt astronauts would ever reach the moon. Those with high levels of education (based on three levels: grade school, high school and college) were more likely to agree that man would reach the moon than those with lower levels of education both at a certain point in time and over all four intervals. Most important was that the gap between levels widened over time in that the percentage of respondents in the high education level who agreed rose more than 60 percentage points over 16 years while those in the low level of education category rose less than 25 percentage points.<br /><br /><strong>Media Richness Theory</strong><br />a medium fits with a task<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />Media richness theory is based on contingency theory and information processing theory (Galbraith 1977). First proponents of the theory were made by Daft & Lengel (1984).<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Core: Researchers Daft, Lengel and successors propose that communication media have varying capacities for resolving ambiguity, negotiating varying interpretations, and facilitating understanding.<br />Two main assumptions of this theory are: people want to overcome equivocality and uncertainty in organizations and a variety of media commonly used in organizations work better for certain tasks than others. Using four criteria, Daft and Lengel present a media richness hierarchy, arranged from high to low degrees of richness, to illustrate the capacity of media types to process ambiguous communication in organizations. The criteria are (a) the availability of instant feedback; (b) the capacity of the medium to transmit multiple cues such as body language, voice tone, and inflection; (c) the use of natural language; and (d) the personal focus of the medium. Face-to-face communication is the richest communication medium in the hierarchy followed by telephone, electronic mail, letter, note, memo, special report, and finally, flier and bulletin. From a strategic management perspective, the media richness theory suggests that effective managers make rational choices matching a particular communication medium to a specific task or objective and to the degree of richness required by that task (Trevino, Daft, & Lengel, 1990, in Soy, 2001). </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Medium Theory</strong><br />the medium affects perception<br />(also known as channel theory, or media formalism)<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />McLuhan (1964) challenged conventional definitions when he claimed that the medium is the message. With this claim, he stressed how channels differ, not only in terms of their content, but also in regard to how they awaken and alter thoughts and senses. He distinguished media by the cognitive processes each required. McLuhan popularized the idea that channels are a dominant force that must be understood to know how the media influence society and culture.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Core: Medium theory focuses on the medium characteristics itself (like in media richness theory) rather than on what it conveys or how information is received. In medium theory, a medium is not simply a newspaper, the Internet, a digital camera and so forth. Rather, it is the symbolic environment of any communicative act. Media, apart from whatever content is transmitted, impact individuals and society. McLuhan’s thesis is that people adapt to their environment through a certain balance or ratio of the senses, and the primary medium of the age brings out a particular sense ratio, thereby affecting perception.<br />Statement: Some of the metaphors used by McLuhan are: The medium is the message! The medium is the massage. We live in a mess-age. The content of a new medium is an old medium.<br /><br /><strong>Spiral of Silence</strong><br />formation of public opinion<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />Neumann (1974) introduced the “spiral of silence” as an attempt to explain in part how public opinion is formed. She wondered why the Germans supported wrong political positions that led to national defeat, humiliation and ruin in the 1930s-1940s.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />The phrase "spiral of silence" actually refers to how people tend to remain silent when they feel that their views are in the minority. The model is based on three premises: 1) people have a "quasi-statistical organ," a sixth-sense if you will, which allows them to know the prevailing public opinion, even without access to polls, 2) people have a fear of isolation and know what behaviors will increase their likelihood of being socially isolated, and 3) people are reticent to express their minority views, primarily out of fear of being isolated.<br />The closer a person believes the opinion held is similar to the prevailing public opinion, the more they are willing to openly disclose that opinion in public. Then, if public sentiment changes, the person will recognize that the opinion is less in favor and will be less willing to express that opinion publicly. As the perceived distance between public opinion and a person's personal opinion grows, the more unlikely the person is to express their opinion.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Two Step Flow Theory</strong><br />influence of media messages<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />The two-step flow of communication hypothesis was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet in The People's Choice, a 1944 study focused on the process of decision-making during a Presidential election campaign. These researchers expected to find empirical support for the direct influence of media messages on voting intentions. They were surprised to discover, however, that informal, personal contacts were mentioned far more frequently than exposure to radio or newspaper as sources of influence on voting behavior. Armed with this data, Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the two-step flow theory of mass communication.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />This theory asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content. The term ‘personal influence’ was coined to refer to the process intervening between the media’s direct message and the audience’s ultimate reaction to that message. Opinion leaders are quite influential in getting people to change their attitudes and behaviors and are quite similar to those they influence. The two-step flow theory has improved our understanding of how the mass media influence decision making. The theory refined the ability to predict the influence of media messages on audience behavior, and it helped explain why certain media campaigns may have failed to alter audience attitudes an behavior. The two-step flow theory gave way to the multi-step flow theory of mass communication or diffusion of innovation theory.<br /><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Uses and Gratifications Approach</strong><br />explaining of media use<br /><br />History and Orientation<br />Originated in the 1970s as a reaction to traditional mass communication research emphasizing the sender and the message. Stressing the active audience and user instead. Psychological orientation taking needs, motives and gratifications of media users as the main point of departure.<br /><br />Core Assumptions and Statements<br />Core: Uses and gratifications theory attempts to explain the uses and functions of the media for individuals, groups, and society in general. There are three objectives in developing uses and gratifications theory: 1) to explain how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs. “What do people do with the media”. 2) to discover underlying motives for individuals’ media use. 3) to identify the positive and the negative consequences of individual media use. At the core of uses and gratifications theory lies the assumption that audience members actively seek out the mass media to satisfy individual needs.<br />Statement: A medium will be used more when the existing motives to use the medium leads to more satisfaction.<br /> </span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-29824660007147530192011-03-23T22:47:00.000-07:002011-03-23T22:49:46.983-07:00Deep Remixability<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Lev Manovich 2005<br /><br />During the heyday of debates on post-modern, at least one critic in America noticed the connection between post-modern pastiche and computerization. In his book After the Great Divide (1986), Andreas Huyssen writes: "All modern and avantgardist techniques, forms and images are now stored for instant recall in the computerized memory banks of our culture. But the same memory also stores all of pre-modernist art as well as the genres, codes, and image worlds of popular cultures and modern mass culture." </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B1%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[1]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> His analysis is accurate - except that these "computerized memory banks" did not really became commonplace for another fifteen years. Only when the Web absorbed enough of the media archives it became this universal cultural memory bank accessible to all cultural producers. But even for the professionals, the ability to easily integrate multiple media sources within the same project - multiple layers of video, scanned still images, animation, graphics, and typography - only came towards the end of the 1990s.<br />In 1985 when Huyssen book was in preparation for publication I was working for what was then one of the few computer animation companies in the worldDigital Effects </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B2%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[2]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">. Each computer animator had his own interactive graphics terminal that could show 3D models but only in wireframe and in monochrome; to see them fully rendered in color, we had to take turns as the company had only one color raster display which we all shared. The data was stored on bulky magnetic tapes about a feet in diameter; to find the data from an old job was a cumbersome process which involved locating the right tape in tape library, putting it on a tape drive and then searching for the right part of the tape. We did not had a color scanner, so getting "all modern and avantgardist techniques, forms and images" into the computer was far from trivial. And even if we had one, there was no way to store, recall and modify these images. The machine that could do that - Quantel Paintbox - cost over USD 160,000, which we could not afford. And when in 1986 Quantel introduced Harry, the first commercial non-linear editing system which allowed for digital compositing of multiple layers of video and special effects, its cost similarly made it prohibitive for everybody except network television stations and a few production houses. Harry could record only eighty seconds of broadcast quality video. In the realm of still images, things were not much better: for instance, digital still store Paintbox released by Quantel in 1990 could hold only 500 broadcast quality images and it cost was similarly very high.<br />In short, in the middle of the 1980s neither we nor other production companies had anything approaching the "computerized memory banks" imagined by Huyssen. And of course, the same was true for the visual artists that were then associated with post-modernism and the ideas of pastiche, collage and appropriation. In 1986 the BBC produced a documentary Painting with Light for which half a dozen well-known painters including Richard Hamilton and David Hockney were invited to work with a Quantel Paintbox. The resulting images were not so different from the normal paintings that these artists were producing without a computer. And while some artists were making references to "modern and avantgardist techniques, forms and images," these references were painted rather than being directly loaded from "computerized memory banks." Only in the middle of the 1990s, when relatively inexpensive graphics workstations and personal computers running image editing, animation, compositing and illustration software became commonplace and affordable for freelance graphic designers, illustrators, and small post-production and animation studios, could the situation described by Huyssen start to become a reality.<br />The results were dramatic. Within about five years, modern visual culture was fundamentally transformed. Previously separate media - live action cinematography, graphics, still photography, animation, 3D computer animation, and typography - started to be combined in numerous ways. By the end of the decade, the "pure" moving image media became an exception and hybrid media became the norm. However, in contrast to other computer revolutions such as the rise of World Wide Web around the same time, this revolution was not acknowledged by popular media or by cultural critics. What received attention were the developments that affected narrative filmmaking - the use of computer-produced special effects in Hollywood feature films or the inexpensive digital video and editing tools outside of it. But another process which happened on a larger scale - the transformation of the visual language used by all forms of moving images outside of narrative films - has not been critically analyzed. In fact, while the results of these transformations have become fully visible by about 1998, at the time of this writing (early 2006) I am not aware of a single theoretical article discussing them.<br />One of the reasons is that in this revolution, no new media per se were created. Just as ten years ago, the designers were making still images and moving images. But the aesthetics of these images was now very different. In fact, it was so new that, in retrospect, the post-modern imagery of just ten years ago that at the time looked strikingly different, now appears as a barely noticeable blip on the radar of cultural history.<br /><br />Visual Hybridity<br />This article is a first part of the series devoted to the analysis of the new hybrid visual language of moving images that emerged during the period of 1993-1998. Today this language dominates our visual culture. While narrative features mostly stick to live cinematography and video shot by ordinary people with consumer video cameras and cell phones is similarly usually left as is, everything else commercials, music videos, motion graphics, TV graphics, and other types of short non-narrative films and moving image sequences being produced around the world by the media professionals including companies, individual designers and artists, and students - are hybrid.<br />Of course, I could have picked different dates, for instance starting a few years earlier - but since the After Effects software, which will play the key role in my account, was released in 1993, I decided to pick this year as my first date. And while my second date also could have been different, I believe that by 1998 the broad changes in the aesthetics of the moving image became visible. If you want to quickly see this for yourself, simply compare demo reels from the same visual effects companies made in early 1990s and late 1990s (a number of them are available online - look for instance at the work of Pacific Data Images. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B3%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[3]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">) In the work from the beginning of the decade, computer imagery in most cases appears by itself - that is, we see whole commercials and promotional videos done in 3D computer animation, and the novelty of this new media is foregrounded. By the end of the 1990s, computer animation becomes just one element integrated in the media mix that also includes live action, typography, and design.<br />Although these transformations happened only recently, the ubiquity of the new hybrid visual language today (2006) is such that it takes an effort to recall how different things looked before. Similarly, the changes in production processes and equipment that made this language possible also quickly fade from both the public and professional memory. As a way to quick evoke these changes as seen from the professional perspective, I am going to quote from 2004 interview with Mindi Lipschultz who has worked as an editor, producer and director in Los Angeles since 1979:<br />If you wanted to be more creative [in the 1980s], you couldn't just add more software to your system. You had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and buy a paintbox. If you wanted to do something graphic - an open to a TV show with a lot of layers - you had to go to an editing house and spend over a thousand dollars an hour to do the exact same thing you do now by buying an inexpensive computer and several software programs. Now with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop, you can do everything in one sweep. You can edit, design, animate. You can do 3D or 2D all on your desktop computer at home or in a small office. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B4%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[4]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">In 1989 the former Soviet satellites of Central and Eastern Europe peacefully liberated themselves from the Soviet Union. In the case of Czechoslovakia, this event came to be referred to as the Velvet Revolution - to contrast it to typical revolutions in modern history that were always accompanied by bloodshed. To emphasize the gradual, almost invisible pace of the transformations which occurred in moving image aesthetics between approximately 1993 and 1998, I am going to appropriate the term Velvet Revolution to refer to these transformations. Although it may seem presumptuous to compare political and aesthetics transformations simply because they share the same non-violent quality, as we will see in the later article, the two revolutions are actually related. But we can only make this connection after we analyse in detail how the aesthetics and the very logic of moving images changed during this period.<br />Although the Velvet Revolution I will be discussing involved many technological and social developments - hardware, software, production practices, new job titles and new professional fields - it is appropriate to highlight one software package as being in the center of the events. This software is After Effects. Introduced in 1993, After Effects was the first software designed to do animation, compositing, and special effects on the personal computer. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B5%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[5]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> Its broad effect on moving image production can be compared to the effects of Photoshop and Illustrator on photography, illustration, and graphic design. Although today (2006) media design and post-production companies continue to rely on more expensive "high-end" software such as Flame, Inferno or Paintbox that run on specialized graphics workstations from SGI, because of its affordability and length of time on the market After Effects is the most popular and well-known application in this area. Consequently, After Effects will be given a privileged role in this text as both the symbol and the key material foundation which made the Velvet Revolution in moving image culture possible - even though today other programs in the similar price category such as Apple's Motion, Autodesk'sCombustion, and Macromedia's Flash have challenged After Effects' dominance.<br />Finally, before proceeding I should explain the use of examples in this article. The visual language I am analyzing is all around us today (this may explain why academics have remained blind to it). After globalization, this language is spoken by all communication professionals around the world. You can see for yourself all the examples of the various aesthetics I will be mentioning below by simply watching television in practically any country and paying attention to graphics, or going to a club to see a VJ performance, or visiting the web sites of motion graphics designers and visual effects companies, or opening any book on contemporary design. Nevertheless, I have included references to particular projects below so the reader can see exactly what I am referring to. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B6%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[6]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> But since my goal is to describe the new cultural language which by now has become practically universal, I want to emphasize that each of these examples can be substituted for numerous others.<br /><br />Examples<br />The use of After Effects is closely identified with a particular type of moving images which became commonplace to a large part because of this software and known as "motion graphics." Concisely defined by Matt Frantz in his Master Thesis as "designed non-narrative, non-figurative based visuals that change over time," </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B7%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[7]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> motion graphics today include film and television titles, TV graphics, dynamic menus, the graphics for mobile media content, and other animated sequences. Typically, motion graphics appear as parts of longer pieces: commercials, music videos, training videos, narrative and documentary films, interactive projects.<br />While motion graphics definitely exemplify the changes that took place during this Velvet Revolution, these changes are more broad. Simply put, the result of the Velvet Revolution is a new hybrid visual language of moving images in general. This language is not confined to particular media forms. And while today it manifests itself most clearly in non-narrative forms, it is also often present in narrative and figurative sequences and films.<br />For example, a music video may use live action while also employing typography and a variety of transitions done with computer graphics (example: the video for Go by Common, directed by Convert / MK12 / Kanye West, 2005). Or it may embed the singer within the animated painterly space (video for Sheryl Crow's Good Is Good, directed by Psyop, 2005.) A short film may mix typography, stylized 3D graphics, moving design elements, and video (Itsu for Plaid, directed by Pleix collective, 2002 </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B8%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[8]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">).<br />In some cases, the juxtaposition of different media is clearly visible (examples: music video for Don't Panic by Coldplay; main title for The Insideby Imaginary Forces, 2005). In other cases, a sequence may move between different media so quickly that the shifts are barely noticeable (GMC Denali "Holes" commercial by Imaginary Forces, 2005). In yet other cases, a commercial or a movie title may feature a continuous action shot on video or film, with the image periodically changing from a more natural to a highly stylized look.<br />While the particular aesthetic solutions vary from one piece to the next and from one designer to another, they all share the same logic: the appearance of multiple media simultaneously in the same frame. Whether these media are openly juxtaposed or almost seamlessly blended together is less important than the fact of this co-presence itself.<br />Today such hybrid visual language is also common to a large proportion of short "experimental" (i.e. non-commercial) films being produced for media festivals, the web, mobile media devices, and other distribution platforms.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B9%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[9]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> The large percentage of the visuals created by VJs and Live Cinema artists are also hybrid, combining video, layers of 2D imagery, animation, and abstract imagery generated in real time. (For examples, consult The VJ book, VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled, or web sites such as www.vjcentral.com and www.live-cinema.org. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B10%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[10]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">) In the case of narrative feature films and TV programs, while they still rarely mix different graphical styles within the same frame, many now feature highly stylized aesthetics which would previously be identified with illustration rather than filmmaking - for instance, the TV series CSI, George Lucas's latest Star Wars films, or Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.<br /><br />Media Remixability<br />What is the logic of this new hybrid visual language? This logic is one of remixability: not only of the content of different media or simply their aesthetics, but their fundamental techniques, working methods, languages, and assumptions. United within the common software environment, cinematography, animation, computer animation, special effects, graphic design, and typography have come to form a new metamedium. A work produced in this new metamedium can use all the techniques which were previously unique to these different media, or any subset of these techniques.<br />If we use the concept of "remediation" to describe this new situation, we will misrepresent this logic - or the logic of media computing in general. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B11%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[11]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> The computer does not "remediate" particular media. Instead, it simulates all media. And what it simulates are not the surface appearances of different media but all the techniques used for their production and all the methods of viewing and interaction with the works in these media.<br />Once all types of media met within the same digital environment - and this was accomplished by the middle of the 1990s - they started interacting in the ways that could never be predicted nor even imagined previously. For instance, while particular media techniques continue to be used in relation to their original media, they can also be applied to other media. (This is possible because the techniques are turned into algorithms, all media is turned into digital data stored in compatible file formats, and software is designed to read and write files produced by other programs.) Here are a few examples: motion blur is applied to 3D computer graphics, computer generated fields of particles are blended with live action footage to give it an enhanced look, a virtual camera is made to move around the virtual space filled with 2D drawings, flat typography is animated as though it is made from a liquid like material (the liquid simulation coming from computer graphics field), and so on. And while this "cross-over" use by itself constitutes a fundamental shift in media history, today a typical short film or a sequence may combine many such pairings within the same frame. The result is a hybrid, intricate, complex, and rich visual language - or rather, numerous languages that share the basic logic of remixabilty.<br />I believe that the "media remixability" which begins around the middle of the 1990s constitutes a fundamentally new stage in the history of media. It manifests itself in different areas of culture and not only moving images - although the later does offer a particularly striking example of this new logic at work. Here software such as After Effects became a petri dish where computer animation, live cinematography, graphic design, 2D animation and typography started to interact together, creating new hybrids. And as the examples mentioned above demonstrate, the result of this process of remixability are new aesthetics and the production of new media species which cannot be reduced to the sum of media that went into them. Put differently, the interactions of different media in the same software environment create cultural species.<br />Media remixability does not necessarily lead to a collage-like aesthetics which foregrounds the juxtapositions of different media and different media techniques. As a very different example of what media remixability can result in, consider a more subtle aesthetics well captured by the name of the software under discussion - After Effects. If, in the 1990s, computers were used to create highly spectacular special effects or "invisible effects," </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B12%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[12]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> by the end of this decade we see something else emerging: a new visual aesthetics which goes "beyond effects." In this aesthetics, the whole project - music video, commercial, short film, or a large part of a feature film - displays a hyper-real look where the enhancement of live action material is not completely invisible but at the same time it does not call attention to itself the way special effects usually did (examples: Reebok I-Pimp Black Basketball commercial, The Legend of Zorro main title, both by Imaginary Forces, 2005.) This new hyper-real aesthetics is yet another example of how in the hands of designers the petri dish of software containing all the media creation and manipulation techniques created during human history now produces new hybrids. In fact, it produces only hybrids.<br /><br />Layers, Transparency, Compositing<br />Let us now look at the details of new visual language of moving images which emerged from the Velvet Revolution and the material and social conditions - software, user interface, design workflow - which make remixability possible. Probably the most dramatic among the changes that took place during 1993-1998 was the new ability to combine together multiple levels of imagery with varying degree of transparency via digital compositing. If you compare a typical music video or a TV advertising spot circa 1986 with their counterparts circa 1996, the differences are striking. (The same holds for still images.) As I already noted, in 1986 "computerized memory banks" were very limited in their storage capacity and prohibitively expensive, and therefore designers could not quickly and easily cut and paste multiple image sources. But even when they would assemble multiple visual references, a designer only could place them next to, or on top of each other. She could not modulate these juxtapositions by precisely adjusting for instance, the transparency levels of different images. Instead, she had to resort to the same photocollage techniques popularized in the 1920s. In other words, the lack of transparency restricted the number of different images sources that can be integrated within a single composition without it starting to look like many photomontages of John Heartfield, Hannah Hoch, or Robert Rauschenberg - a mosaic of fragments without any strong dominant. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B13%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[13]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Compositing also made trivial another operation which was previously very cumbersome. Until the 1990s, different media types such as hand-drawn animation, lens-based recordings, i.e. film and video, and typography practically never appeared within the same frame. Instead, animated commercials, publicity shorts, industrial films, and some feature and experimental films that did include multiple media usually placed them in separate shots. A few directors have managed to build whole aesthetic systems out of such temporal juxtapositions - most notably, Jean-Luc Godard. In his 1960s films such as Week End (1967) Godard cut bold typographic compositions in between live action creating what can be called "media montages." Also in the 1960s pioneering motion graphics designer Pablo Ferro who has appropriately called his company Frame Imagery created promotional shorts and TV graphics that played on juxtapositions of different media replacing each other in a rapid succession. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B14%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[14]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> In a number of Ferro's spots, static images of different letterforms, line drawings, original hand painted artwork, photographs, very short clips from newsreels, and other visuals would come one after another with machine gun speed.<br />Within cinema, the superimposition of different media within the same frame were usually limited to the two media placed on top of each other in a standardized manner - i.e., static letters appearing on top of still or moving lens-based images in feature film titles. Both Ferro and another motion graphics pioneer Saul Bass have created a few title sequences where visual elements of different origin were systematically overlaid - such as the opening for Hitchcock's Vertigo designed by Bass (1958). But I think it is fair to say that such complex juxtapositions of media within the same frame (rather than in edited sequence) were rare exceptions in the overwise "unimedia" universe where filmed images appeared in feature films and hand drawn images appeared in animated films. The only twentieth century feature film director I know of who has build his unique aesthetics by systematically combining different media within the same shot is Czech Karel Zeman. A typical shot by Zeman may contain filmed human figures, an old engraving used for background, and a miniature model. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B15%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[15]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">The achievements of these directors and designers are particularly remarkable given the difficulty of combing different media within the same frame during the film era. To do this required the services of a special effects departments or separate companies which used optical printers. The techniques that were cheap and more accessible such as double exposure were limited in their precision. So while a designer of static images could at least cut and paste multiple elements within the same composition to create a photomontage, to create the equivalent effect with moving images was far from trivial.<br />To put this in general terms, we can say that before the computerization of the 1990s, the designer's capacities to access, manipulate, remix, and filter visual information, whether still or moving, were quite restricted. In fact, they were practically the same as those of a hundred years earlier - regardless of whether filmmakers and designers used in-camera effects, optical printing, or video keying. In retrospect, we can see they were at odds with the flexibility, speed, and precision of data manipulation already available to most other professional fields which by that time were computerized - sciences, engineering, accounting, management, etc. Therefore it was only a matter of time before all image media would be turned into digital data and illustrators, graphic designers, animators, film editors, video editors, and motion graphics designers start manipulating them via software instead of their traditional tools. But this is only obvious today - after the Velvet Revolution has taken place.<br />In 1985 Jeff Stein directed a music video for the new wave band Cars. This video had a big effect in the design world, and MTV gave it the first prize in its first annual music awards. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B16%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[16]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> Stein managed to create a surreal world in which a video cutout of the singing head of a band member was animated over different video backgrounds. In other words, Stein took the aesthetics of animated cartoons - 2D animated characters superimposed over a 2D background - and recreated it using video imagery. In addition, simple computer animated elements were also added in some shots to enhance the surreal effect. This was shocking because nobody ever saw such juxtapositions as this before. Suddenly, modernist photomontage came alive. But ten years later, such moving video collages not only became commonplace but they also became more complex, more layered, and more subtle. Instead of two or three, a composition could now feature hundreds and even thousands of layers. And each layer could have its own level of transparency.<br />In short, digital compositing now allowed the designers to easily mix any number of visual elements regardless of the media in which they originated and to control each element in the process. We can make an analogy between multitrack audio recording and digital compositing of moving images. In multitrack recording, each sound track can be manipulated individually to produce the desired result. Similarly, in digital compositing each visual element can be independently modulated in a variety of ways: resized, recolored, animated, etc. Just as the music artist can focus on a particular track while muting all other tracks, a designer often turns off all visual tracks except the one she is currently adjusting. Similarly, both a music artist and a designer can at any time substitute one element of a composition by another, delete any elements, and add new ones. Most importantly, just as multitrack recording redefined the sound of popular music from the 1960s onward, once digital compositing became widely available during the 1990s, it changed the visual aesthetics of moving images in popular culture.<br />This brief discussion has only scratched the surface of my subject in this section, i.e. layers and transparency. For instance, I have not analyzed the actual techniques of digital compositing and the fundamental concept of an alpha channel which deserves a separate and detailed treatment. I have also did not go into the possible media histories leading to digital compositing, nor its relationship to optical printing, video keying and the video effects technology of the 1980s. These histories and relationships were discussed in the "Compositing" chapter (1999) in my The Language of New Media, but from a different perspective than the one used here. At that time I was looking at compositing from the point of view of the questions of cinematic realism, practices of montage, and the construction of special effects in feature films. Today, however, it is clear to me that in addition to disrupting the regime of cinematic realism in favor of other visual aesthetics, compositing also had another, even more fundamental effect.<br />By the end of the 1990s digital compositing has become the basic operation used in creating all forms of moving images, and not only big-budget features. So while compositing was originally developed in the context of special effects production in the 1970s and early 1980s </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B17%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[17]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">, it had a much broader effect on contemporary visual and media cultures. Compositing played a key part in turning the digital computer into an experimental lab where different media can meet and where their aesthetics and techniques can be combined to create new species. In short, digital compositing was essential in enabling the development of a new hybrid visual language of moving images which we see everywhere today. In other words, compositing enabled media remixability in moving image. Thus, compositing which was at first a particular digital technique designed to integrate two particular media of live action film and computer graphics become a "universal media integrator." And, although compositing was originally created to support the aesthetics of cinematic realism, over time it actually had an opposite effect. Rather that forcing different media to fuse seamlessly, compositing led to the flourishing of numerous media hybrids where the juxtapositions between live and algorithmically generated, two dimensional and three dimensional, raster and vector are made deliberately visible rather than being hidden.<br /><br />From "Time-based" to a "Composition-based"<br />My thesis about media remixability applies both to cultural forms and the software used to create them. Just as the moving image media made by designers today mix the formats, assumptions, and techniques of different media, the toolboxes and interfaces of the software they use are also remixes.. Let us again use After Effects as the case study to see how its interface remixes previously distinct working methods of different disciplines.<br />When moving image designers started to use compositing / animation software such as After Effects, its interface encouraged them think about moving images in a fundamentally new way. Film and video editing systems and the computer simulations of them that came to be known as non-linear editors (today exemplified by Avid and Final Cut </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B18%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[18]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">) have conceptualized a media project as a sequence of shots organized in time. Consequently, while NLE (the standard abbreviation for non-linear editing software) gave the editor many tools for adjusting the edits, they took for granted the constant of film language that came from its industrial organization - that all frames have the same size and aspect ratio. This is an example of a larger phenomenon: as physical media were simulated in a computer, often many of their fundamental properties, interface conventions and constraints were methodically re-created in software - even though the software medium itself has no such limitations. In contrast, from the beginning the After Effects interface put forward a new concept of moving image - as a composition organized both in time and 2D space.<br />The center of this interface is a Composition window conceptualized as a large canvas that can contain visual elements of arbitrary sizes and proportions. When I first started using After Effects soon after it came out, I remember feeling shocked that software did not automatically resize the graphics I dragged into Composition window to make them fit the overall frame. The fundamental assumption of cinema that accompanied it throughout its whole history - that film consists from many frames which all have the same size and aspect ratio - was gone.<br />In the film and video editing paradigms of the twentieth century, the minimal unit on which the editor works on is a frame. She can change the length of an edit, adjusting where one film or video segment ends and another begins, but she cannot interfere with the contents of a frame. The frame as whole functions as a kind of "black box" that cannot be "opened." This was the task of special effects departments. But in the After Effects interface, the basic unit is not a frame but a visual element placed in the Composition window. Each element can be individually accessed, manipulated and animated. In other words, each element is conceptualized as an independent object. Consequently, a media composition is understood as a set of independent objects that can change over time. The very word "composition" is important in this context as it references 2D media (drawing, painting, photography, design) rather than filmmaking - i.e. space as opposed to time.<br />Where does the After Effects interface came from? Given that this software is commonly used to create animated graphics (i.e., "motion graphics") and visual effects, it is not surprising that we can find interface elements which can be traced to three separate fields: animation, graphic design, and special effects. In traditional cell animation practice, an animator places a number of transparent cells on top of each other. Each cell contains a different drawing - for instance, a body of a character on one cell, the head on another cell, eyes on the third cell. Because the cells are transparent, the drawings get automatically "composited" into a single composition. While the After Effects interface does not use the metaphor of a stack of transparent cells directly, it is based on the same principle. Each element in the Composition window is assigned a "virtual depth" relative to all other elements. Together all elements form a virtual stack. At any time, the designer can change the relative position of an element within the stack, delete it, or add new elements.<br />We can also see a connection between the After Effects interface and stop motion, another popular twentieth century animation technique. With the stop motion technique, puppets or any other objects are positioned in front of a camera and manually animated one frame at a time. The animator exposes one frame of film, changes the objects a tiny bit, exposes another frame, and so on.<br />Just as with the case of both cell and stop-motion animation, After Effects does not make any assumptions about the size or positions of individual elements. Rather than dealing with standardized units of time, i.e. film frames containing fixed visual content, a designer now works with separate visual elements positioned in space and time. An element can be a digital video frame, a line of type, an arbitrary geometric shape, etc. The finished work is the result of a particular arrangement of these elements in space and time. In this paradigm we can compare the designer to a choreographer who creates a dance by "animating" the bodies of dancers - specifying their entry and exit points, trajectories through space of the stage, and the movements of their bodies. (In this respect it is relevant that while the After Effects interface did not evoke this reference, Macromedia Director, which was the key multimedia authoring software of the 1990s, did directly use the metaphor of the theatre stage.)<br />While we can link the After Effects interface to traditional animation methods as used by commercial animation studios, the working method put forward by software is more close to graphic design. In commercial animation studios of the Twentieth century all elements - drawings, sets, characters, etc. - were prepared beforehand. The filming itself was a mechanical process. Of course, we can find exceptions to this industrial-like separation of labor in experimental animation practice where a film was typically produced by one person. For instance, in 1947 Oscar Fishinger made an eleven-minute filmMotion Painting 1 by continuously modifying a painting and exposing film one frame at a time after each modification. However, because Fishinger was shooting on film, he had to wait a long time before seeing the results of his work. As the historian of abstract animation William Moritz writes, "Fischinger painted every day for over five months without being able to see how it was coming out on film, since he wanted to keep all the conditions, including film stock, absolutely consistent in order to avoid unexpected variations in quality of image." </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B19%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[19]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> In other words, in the case of this project by Fischinger, creating a design and seeing the result were even more separated than in a commercial animation process.<br />In contrast, a graphic designer works "in real time." As the designer introduces new elements, adjusts their locations, colors and other properties, tries different images, changes the size of the type, and so on, she can immediately see the result of her work. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B20%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[20]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> After Effects simulates this working method by making the Composition window the center of its interface. Like a traditional designer, the After Effects user interactively arranges the elements in this window and can immediately see the result. In short, the After Effects interface makes filmmaking into a design process, and a film is re-conceptualized as graphic design that can change over time.<br />When physical media are simulated in a computer, we do not simply end with the same media as before. By adding new properties and working methods, computer simulation fundamentally changes the identity of a given media. For example, in the case of "electronic paper" such as a Word document or a PDF file, we can do many things which were not possible with ordinary paper: zoom in and out of the document, search for a particular phrase, change fonts and line spacing, etc. Similarly, the current (2006) online interactive maps services provided by Mapquest, Yahoo, and Google augment the traditional paper map in multiple and amazing ways - just take a look at Google Earth </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B21%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[21]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br />A significant proportion of contemporary software for creating, editing, and interacting with media developed in this way - by simulating a physical media and augmenting it with new properties. But if we consider media design software such as Maya (used for 3D modeling and computer animation) or After Effects (motion graphics, compositing and visual effects), we encounter a different logic. These software applications do not simulate any single physical media that existed previously. Rather, they borrow from a number of different media combining and mixing their working methods and specific techniques. (And, of course, they also add new capabilities specific to computers - such as, the ability to automatically calculate the intermediate values between a number of keyframes.) For example, 3D modeling software mixes form making techniques which were previously were "hardwired" in to different physical media: the ability to change the curvature of a rounded form as though it is made from clay, the ability to build a structure from simple geometric primitives the way a house can be build from identical rectangular building blocks, etc.<br />Similarly, as we saw, After Effects original interface, toolkit, and workflow drew on the techniques of animation and the techniques of graphic design. (We can also find traces of filmmaking and 3D computer graphics.) But the result is not simply a mechanical sum of all elements that came from earlier media. Rather, as software remixes the techniques and working methods of the various media they simulate, the result are new interfaces, tools and workflow with their own distinct logic. In the case of After Effects, the working method which it puts forward is neither animation, nor graphic design, nor cinematography, even though it draws from all these fields. It is a new way to make moving image media. Similarly, the visual language of media produced with this and similar software is also different from the languages of moving images which existed previously.<br />In other words, the Velvet Revolution unleashed by After Effects and other software did not simply made more commonplace the animated graphics artists and designers - John and James Whitney, Norman McLaren, Saul Bass, Robert Abel, Harry Marks, R/Greenberg, and others - were creating previously using stop motion animation, optical printing, video effects hardware of the 1980s, and other custom techniques and technologies. Instead, it led to the emergence of numerous new visual aesthetics that did not exist before.<br /><br />3D Compositing: Three-dimensional Space as a New Platform for Media Design<br />As I was researching what the users and industry reviewers has been saying about After Effects, I came across a somewhat condescending characterization of this software as "Photoshop with keyframes." I think that this characterization is actually quite useful. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B22%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[22]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> Think about all the different ways of manipulating images available in Photoshop and the degree of control provided by its multiple tools. Think also about its concept a visual composition as a stack of, potentially, hundreds of layers each with its level of transparency and multiple alpha channels. The ability to animate such a composition and continue using Photoshop tools to adjust visual elements over time on all layers independently does indeed constitute a new paradigm for creating moving images. And this is what After Effects and other animation, visual effects and compositing software make possible today.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B23%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[23]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> And while the paradigm of working with a number of layers placed on top of each other itself is not new - consider traditional cell animation, optical printing, photocollage, and graphic design - going from a few non-transparent layers to hundreds and even thousands, each with its controls, fundamentally changes not only how a moving image looks but also what it can say.<br />But innovative as it was, by the beginning of the 2000s the 2D digital compositing paradigm already came to be supplemented by a new one: 3D compositing. The new paradigm has even less connections to previous media than 2D compositing. Instead, it takes the relatively new media that was born with computers in the 1960s - 3D computer graphics - and transforms it into a general platform for moving media design.<br />The language used in the professional production milieu today reflects an implicit understanding that 3D graphics is a new medium, unique to computers. When people use terms such as "computer visuals," "computer imagery," or "CGI" which is an abbreviation for "computer generated imagery," everybody understands that they refer to 3D graphics as opposed to any other image source such as "digital photography. But what is my own reason for thinking of 3D computer graphics as a new media - as opposed to considering it as an extension of architectural drafting, projection geometry, or set making? Because it offers a new method for representing physical reality - both what actually exists and what is imagined. This method is fundamentally different from what has been offered by main media of the industrial era: still photography, film recording, and audio recording. With 3D computer graphics, we can represent the three-dimensional structure of the world - this versus capturing only a perspectival image of the world, as in lens-based recording. We can also manipulate our representation, using various tools, with an ease and precision which is qualitatively different to that of a much more limited "manipulability" of a model made from any physical material (although nanotechnology promises to change this in the future.) And, as the case of contemporary architecture makes it clear, 3D computer graphics is not simply a faster way of working with geometric representations such as plans and cross-sections used by draftsmen for centuries. When the generation of young architects and architectural students started to systematically work with 3D software such as Alias in the middle of the 1990s, the ability to directly manipulate a 3D shape (rather than only dealing with its projections as in traditional drafting) quickly led to a whole new language of complex non-rectangular shapes. In other words, designers working with the media of 3D computer graphics started to imagine different things.<br />To come back to our topic of discussion: When the Velvet Revolution of the 1990s made it possible to easily combine multiple media sources in a single moving image sequence via digital compositing, CGI was added to the mix. Today, 3D models are routinely used in media compositions created in After Effects and similar software, along with all other media sources. But in order to be a part of the mix, they need to be placed on their own 2D layers and thus treated as 2D images. This was the original After Effects paradigm: all image media can meet as long as they are reduced to 2D. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B24%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[24]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">In contrast, in the 3D compositing paradigm all media types are placed within a single 3D space. This works as follows. A designer positions all image sources which are two inherently two dimensional - for instance, digital film or digitized film, hand-drawn elements, typography - on separate 2D planes. These planes are situated within a single virtual 3D space. One advantage of this representation is that since 3D space is "native" to 3D computer graphics, 3D models can stay as they are, i.e. three-dimensional. An additional advantage is that the designer can now use all the techniques of virtual cinematography as developed in 3D computer animation. She can define different kinds of lights, fly the virtual camera around and through the image planes at any trajectory, and use depth of field and motion blur effects. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B25%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[25]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">In 1995 I published the article What is Digital Cinema? which was my first attempt to describe the changes in the logic of moving image production I was witnessing. In that article I proposed that the logic of hand-drawn animation, which throughout the Twentieth century was marginal in relation to cinema, became dominant in a computer era. Because software allows the designer to manually manipulate any image, regarding its source as though it was drawn in the first place, the ontological differences between different image media become irrelevant. Both conceptually and practically, they all reduced to hand-drawn animation.<br />Having discussed the use of layers in 2D compositing using the example of After Effects, I can now add that animation logic moves from the marginal to the dominant position also in another way. The paradigm of a composition as a stack of separate visual elements as practiced in cell animation becomes the default way of working with all images in a software environment - regardless of their origin and final output media. In short, a moving image in general is now understood as a composite of layers of imagery. A "single layer image" such as un-manipulated digital video becomes an exception.<br />The emergence of the 3D compositing paradigm can be also seen as following the logic of temporal reversal. The new representational structure as developed within the computer graphics field - a 3D virtual space containing 3D models - has gradually moved from a marginal to the dominant role. In the 1970s and 1980s computer graphics were used only occasionally in a dozen or so, feature films such as Alien (1979), Tron (1981), The Last Starfighter (1984), and Abyss (1989), and selected television commercials and broadcast graphics. But by the beginning of the 2000s, the representational structure of computer graphics, i.e. a 3D virtual space, came to function as an umbrella which can hold all other image types regardless of their origin. An example of an application which implements this paradigm is Flame, enthusiastically described by one user as "a full 3D compositing environment into which you can bring 3D models, create true 3D text and 3D particles, and distort layers in 3D space." </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B26%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[26]</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">This does not mean that 3D animation itself became visually dominant in moving image culture, or that the 3D structure of the space within which media compositions are now routinely constructed is necessary made visible (usually it is not.) Rather, the way 3D computer animation organizes visual data - as objects positioned in a Cartesian space - became the way to work with all moving image media. As already stated above, a designer positions all the elements which go into a composition - 2D animated sequences, 3D objects, particle systems, video and digitized film sequences, still images and photographs - inside the shared 3D virtual space. There, these elements can be further animated, transformed, blurred, filtered, etc. So while all moving image media has been reduced to the status of hand-drawn animation in terms of their manipulability, we can also state that all media have become layers in 3D space. In short, the new media of 3D computer animation has "eaten up" the dominant media of the industrial age - lens-based photo, film and video recording.<br />This is a good moment to pause and reflect on the very term of our discussion - moving image. When cinema in its modern form was born during the end of the nineteenth century, the new medium was understood as the extension of an already familiar one - that is, as a photographic image which is now moving. This understanding can be found in the press accounts of the day and also in at least one of the official names given to the new medium - "moving pictures." On the material level, a film indeed consisted of separate photographic frames which when driven through a projector created the effect of motion for the viewer. So the concept used to understand it indeed fit with the material structure of the medium.<br />But is this concept still appropriate today? When we record video and play it, we are still dealing with the same structure: a sequence of frames. But for professional media designers, the terms have changed. The importance of these changes is not just academic, nor purely theoretical. Because designers understand their media differently, they are creating media that looks different and has a new logic.<br />Consider the conceptual changes, or new paradigms - which at the same time are new ways of designing - we have discussed so far. Theoretically they are not necessary all compatible with each other, but in production practice these different paradigms are used together. A "moving image" became a hybrid which can combine all different visual media invented so far - rather than holding only one kind of data such as camera recording, hand drawing, etc. Rather than being understood as a singular flat plane - the result of light focused by the lens and captured by the recording surface - it is now understood as a stack of separate layers potentially infinite in number. And rather than "time-based," it becomes "composition-based," or "object oriented." That is, instead of being treated as a sequence of frames arranged in time, a "moving image" is now thought of as a two-dimensional composition that consists of a number of objects that can be manipulated independently. And finally, in yet another paradigm of 3D compositing, the designer is working in a three-dimensional space that holds both CGI and lens-recorded flat image sources<br />Of course, frame-based representation did not disappear - but it became simply a recoding and output format rather than the space where the actual design takes place. And while the term "moving image" can be still used as an appropriate description for how the output of a design process is experienced by its viewers, it no longer captures how the designers think about what they create, who think today very differently than those of twenty years ago.<br />If we focus on what the different paradigms summarized above have in common, we can say that filmmakers, editors, special effects artists, animators, and motion graphics designers are working on a composition in 2D or a 3D space that consists of a number of separate objects. The spatial dimension became as important as the temporal dimension. From the concept of a "moving image" understood as a sequence of static photographs we have moved to a new concept: a modular media composition.<br /><br />Motion Graphics<br />Let me invoke the figure of the inversion from marginal to mainstream in order to introduce yet one more paradigmatic shift. Another media type which until the 1990s was even more marginal to live action filmmaking than animation - typography - has now become an equal player along with lens-based images and all other types of media. The term "motion graphics" has been used at least since 1960 when a pioneer of computer filmmaking John Whitney named his new company Motion Graphics. However until the Velvet Revolution only a handful of people and companies had systematically explored the art of animated typography: Norman McLaren, Saul Blass, Pablo Ferro, R. Greenberg, and a few others. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B27%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[27]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> But in the middle of the 1990s moving image sequences or short films dominated by moving animated type and abstract graphical elements rather than by live action started to be produced in large numbers. The material cause for motion graphics take off? After Effects running on PCs and other software running on relatively inexpensive graphics workstations became affordable to smaller design, visual effects, and post-production houses, and soon individual designers. Almost overnight, the term "motion graphics" became well known. The five hundred year old Guttenberg galaxy sprang into motion.<br />Along with typography, the whole language of Twentieth graphical century design was "imported" into moving image design. This development did not receive a name of its own, but it is obviously at least as important. Today (2006) the term "motion graphics" is often used to refer to all moving image sequences which are dominated by typography and/or design and embedded in larger forms. But we should recall that, while in the Twentieth century typography was indeed often used in combination with other design elements, for five hundred years it formed its own word. Therefore I think it is important to consider the two kinds of "import" operations that took place during the Velvet Revolution - typography and twentieth century graphic design - as two distinct historical developments.<br /><br />Deep Remixability<br />Although the previous discussion did not cover all the changes that took place during the Velvet Revolution, the magnitude of the transformations should by now be clear. While we can name many social factors that all could have and probably did played some role - the rise of branding, the experience economy, youth markets, and the Web as a global communication platform during the 1990s - I believe that these factors alone cannot account for the specific design and visual logics which we see today in media culture. Similarly, they cannot be explained by simply saying that contemporary consumption society requires constant innovation, constant novel aesthetics, and effects. This may be true - but why do we see these particular visual languages as opposed to others, and what is the logic that drives their evolution? I believe that to properly understand this, we need to carefully look at media creation, editing, and design software and their use in production environments (which can range from a single laptop to a number of production companies collaborating on the same large-scale project.)<br />The makers of software used in production do not usually set out to create a revolution. On the contrary, software is created to fit into already existing production procedures, job roles, and familiar tasks. But software are like species within the common ecology - in this case, a shared computer environment. Once "released," they start interacting, mutating, and making hybrids. The Velvet Revolution can therefore be understood as the period of systematic hybridization between different software species originally designed to do work in different media. In the beginning of the 1990s, we had - Illustrator for making vector-based drawings, Photoshop for editing of continuous tone images, Wavefront and Alias for 3D modeling and animation, After Effects for 2D animation, and so on. By the end of the 1990s, a designer could combine operations and representational formats such as a bitmapped still image, an image sequence, a vector drawing, a 3D model and digital video specific to these programs within the same design - regardless of its destination media. I believe that the hybrid visual language that we see today across "moving image" culture and media design in general is largely the outcome of this new production environment. While this language supports seemingly numerous variations as manifested in particular media designs, its general logic can be summed up in one phrase: remixability of previously separate media languages.<br />As I stressed in this text, the result of this hybridization is not simply a mechanical sum of the previously existing parts but a new species. This applies both to the visual language of particular designs, and to the operations themselves. When an old operation is integrated into the overall digital production environment, it often comes to function in a new way. I would like to conclude by analyzing in detail how this process works in the case of a particular operation - in order to emphasize once again that media remixability is not simply about adding the content of different media, or the adding together their techniques and languages. And since "remix" in contemporary culture is commonly understood as these kinds of additions, we may want to use a different term to talk about the kinds of transformations the example below illustrates. Let us call it deep remixability.<br />What does it mean when we see depth of field effect in motion graphics, films and television programs which use neither live action footage nor photorealistic 3D graphics but have a more stylized look? Originally an artifact of lens-based recording, depth of field was simulated in a computer when the main goal of the 3D computer graphics field was to create maximum "photorealism," i.e. synthetic scenes not distinguishable from live action cinematography. </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7927323485568806653#%5B28%5D"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[28]</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> But once this technique became available, media designers gradually realized that it could be used regardless of how realistic or abstract the visual style is - as long as there is a suggestion of a 3D space. Typography moving in perspective through an empty space; drawn 2D characters positioned on different layers in a 3D space; a field of animated particles - any composition can be put through the simulated depth of field.<br />The fact that this effect is simulated and removed from its original physical media means that a designer can manipulate it in a variety of ways. The parameters which define what part of the space is in focus can be independently animated, i.e. set to change over time - because they are simply the numbers controlling the algorithm and not something built into the optics of a physical lens. So while simulated depth of field can be said to maintain the memory of the particular physical media (lens-based photo and film recording) from which it came from, it became an essentially new technique which functions as a "character" in its own right. It has a fluidity and versatility not available previously. Its connection to the physical world is ambiguous at best. On the one hand, it only makes sense to use depth of field if you are constructing a 3D space even if it is only defined in a minimal way by using only a few or even a single depth cue such as lines converging towards the vanishing point or foreshortening. On the other hand, the designer can be said to "draw" this effect in any way desirable. The axis controlling depth of field does not need to be perpendicular to the image plane, the area in focus can be anywhere in space, it can also quickly move around the space, etc.<br />Following the Velvet Revolution, the aesthetic charge of many media designs is often derived from more "simple" remix operations - juxtaposing different media in what can be called "media montage." However, for me the essence of this Revolution is the more fundamental deep remixability illustrated by the example analyzed above. Computerization virtualized practically all media creation and modification techniques, "extracting" them from their particular physical media and turning them into algorithms. This means that in most cases, we will no longer find any of these techniques in their pure original state.<br /><br /><br />Footnotes<br /></span><a name="[1]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[1] Andreas Huyssen, "Mapping the Postmodern," in After the Great Divide (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 196.<br /></span><a name="[2]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[2] See Wayne Carlson, A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animations. Section 2: The Emergence of Computer Graphics Technology </span><a href="http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson2.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://accad.osu.edu/%7Ewaynec/history/lesson2.html</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[3]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[3] </span><a href="http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson6.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson6.html</span></a><br /><a name="[4]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[4] Mindi Lipschultz, interviewed by The Compulsive Creative, May 2004 </span><a href="http://www.compulsivecreative.com/interview.php?intid=12"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.compulsivecreative.com/interview.php?intid=12</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[5]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[5] Actually, The NewTeck Video Toaster released in 1990 was the first PC based video production system that included a video switcher, character generation, image manipulation, and animation. Because of their low costs, Video Toaster systems were extremely popular in the 1990s. However, in the context of my article, After Effects is more important because, as I will explain below, it introduced a new paradigm for moving image design that was different from the familiar video editing paradigm supported by systems such as Toaster.<br /></span><a name="[6]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[6] I have drawn these examples from three published sources so they are easy to trace. The first is a DVD I Love Music Videos that contains a selection of forty music videos for well-known bands from the 1990s and early 2000s, published in 2002. The second is an onedotzero_select DVD, a selection of sixteen independent short films, commercial work and a Live Cinema performance presented by the onedotzero festival in London and published in 2003. The third is the Fall 2005 sample work DVD from Imaginary Forces, which is among the most well known motion graphics production houses today. The DVD includes titles and teasers for feature films, and the TV shows titles, stations IDs and graphics packages for cable channels. Most of the videos I am referring to can be also found on the net.<br /></span><a name="[7]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[7] Matt Frantz (2003), "Changing Over Time: The Future of Motion Graphics"</span><a href="http://www.mattfrantz.com/thesisandresearch/motiongraphics.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.mattfrantz.com/thesisandresearch/motiongraphics.html</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br />[</span><a name="[8]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">8] Included on onedotzero_select DVD 1. Online version at</span><a href="http://www.pleix.net/films.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.pleix.net/films.html</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[9]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[9] In December 2005 I attended thee Impakt media festival in Utrecht and I asked the festival director what percentage of submissions they received this year featured hybrid visual language as opposed to "straight" video or film. His estimate was about one half. In January 2006 I was part of the review team that judged graduating projects of students in SCI-ARC, a well-known research-oriented architecture school in Los Angeles. According to my informal estimate, approximately half of the projects featured complex curved geometry made possible by Maya that is modeling software now commonly used by architects. Given that both After Effects and Maya'spredecessor Alias were introduced the same year - 1993 - I think that this quantitative similarity in the proportion of projects that use the new languages made possible by these software is quite telling.<br /></span><a name="[10]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[10] Paul Spinrad, ed., The VJ Book: Inspirations and Practical Advice for Live Visuals Performance (Feral House, 2005); Timothy Jaeger, VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled (available from </span><a href="http://www.vj-book.com/"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">www.vj-book.com</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">).<br /></span><a name="[11]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[11] Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (The MIT Press, 1999.)<br /></span><a name="[12]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[12] An "invisible effect" is the standard industry term. For instance, in 1997 the film Contact directed by Robert Zemeckis was nominated for 1997 VFX HQ Awards in the following categories: Best Visual Effects, Best Sequence (The Ride), Best Shot (Powers of Ten), Best Invisible Effects (Dish Restoration) and Best Compositing. </span><a href="http://www.vfxhq.com/1997/contact.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">www.vfxhq.com/1997/contact.html</span></a><br /><a name="[13]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[13] In the case of video, one of the main reasons which made the combination of multiple visuals difficult was the rapid degradation of the video signal when an analog video tape was copied more than a couple of times. Such a copy would no longer meet broadcasting standards.<br /></span><a name="[14]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[14] Jeff Bellantfoni and Matt Woolman, Type in Motion (Rizzoli, 1999), 22-29.<br /></span><a name="[15]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[15] While of course special effects in feature films often combined different media, they were used together to create a single illusionistic space, rather than juxtaposed for the aesthetic effect such as in films and titles by Godard, Zeman, Ferro and Bass.<br /></span><a name="[16]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[16] See </span><a href="http://dreamvalley-mlp.com/cars/vid_heartbeat.html#you_might"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">dreamvalley-mlp.com/cars/vid_heartbeat.html#you_might</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[17]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[17] Thomas Porter and Tom Duff, "Compositing Digital Images," ACMComputer Graphics vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1984): 253-259.<br /></span><a name="[18]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[18] I should note that compositing functionality was gradually added over time to most NLE, so today the distinction between original After Effects orFlame interfaces and Avid and Final Cut interfaces is less pronounced.<br /></span><a name="[19]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[19] Qtd. in Michael Barrier, Oscar Fishinger. Motion Painting No. 1</span><a href="http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Capsules/Fischinger/fischinger_capsule.htm"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">www.michaelbarrier.com/Capsules/Fischinger/fischinger_capsule.htm</span></a><br /><a name="[20]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[20] While a graphic designer does not have to wait until film is developed or a computer has finished rendering the animation, the design has its own "rendering" stage - making proofs. With both digital and offset printing, after the design is finished, it is sent to the printer that produces the test prints. If the designer finds any problems such as incorrect colors, she adjusts the design and then asks for proofs again.<br /></span><a name="[21]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[21] </span><a href="http://earth.google.com/"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://earth.google.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[22]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[22] Soon after the initial release of After Effects in January 1993, the company that produced it was purchased by Adobe who are already sellingPhotoshop.<br /></span><a name="[23]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[23] Photoshop and After Effects were designed originally by different people at different time, and even after both were purchased by Adobe (it releasedPhotoshop in 1989 and After Effects in 1993), it took Adobe a number of years to build close links between After Effects and Photoshop eventually making it easy to back and forth between the two programs.<br /></span><a name="[24]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[24] I say "original" because in the later version of After Effects Adobe added the ability to work with 3D layers.<br /></span><a name="[25]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[25] If 2D compositing can be understood as an extension of Twentieth century cell animation where a composition consists from a stack of flat drawings, the conceptual source of the 3D compositing paradigm is different. It comes out from the work on integrating live action footage and CGI in the 1980s done in the context of feature films production. Both film director and computer animator work in a three dimensional space: the physical space of the set in the first case, the virtual space as defined by 3D modeling software in the second case. Therefore conceptually it makes sense to use three-dimensional space as a common platform for the integration of these two worlds. It is not accidental that NUKE, one of the leading programs for 3D compositing today was developed in house at Digital Domain a company which was co-founded in 1993 by James Cameron - the Hollywood director who systematically advanced the integration of CGI and live action in his films such as Abyss (1989), Terminator 2 (1991), and Titanic (1997).<br /></span><a name="[26]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[26] Alan Okey, post to forums.creativecow.net, Dec 28, 2005</span><a href="http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/dev_read_post.cgi?forumid=154&postid=855029"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/dev_read_post.cgi?forumid=154&postid=855029</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">.<br /></span><a name="[27]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[27] For a rare discussion of motion graphics prehistory as well as an equally rare attempt to analyze the field by using a set of concepts rather than as the usual coffee table portfolio of individual designers, see Jeff Bellantfoni and Matt Woolman, Type in Motion (Rizzoli, 1999).<br /></span><a name="[28]"></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">[28]For more on this process, see the chapter "Synthetic Realism and its Discontents" in The Language of New Media.<br />This text was written as part of a Research Fellowship in the Media Design Research programme at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie Hogeschool Rotterdam: http://www.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/</span></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-67364543285579708892011-03-23T22:45:00.000-07:002011-03-23T22:46:31.762-07:00Simulacra and Simulations<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">by: Jean Baudrillard<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><em>The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth, which conceals that there is none.<br />The simulacrum is true.<br />Ecclesiastes<br /></em></span>If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.(1)<br />Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.<br />In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains. For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. But it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction's charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This representational imaginary, which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory, disappears with simulation, whose operation is nuclear and genetic, and no longer specular and discursive. With it goes all of metaphysics. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models - and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.<br />In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials - worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits its entire vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.<br />The divine irreference of images<br />To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn't. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But the matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign: "Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and preten d he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littre). Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false", between "real" and "imaginary". Since the simulator produces "true" symptoms, is he or she ill or not? The simulator cannot be treated objectively either as ill, or as not ill. Psychology and medicine stop at this point, before a thereafter undiscoverable truth of the illness. For if any symptom can be "produced," and can no longer be accepted as a fact of nature, then every illness may be considered as simulatable and simulated, and medicine loses its meaning since it only knows how to treat "true" illnesses by their objective causes. Psychosomatics evolves in a dubious way on the edge of the illness principle. As for psychoanalysis, it transfers the symptom from the organic to the unconscious order: once again, the latter is held to be real, more real than the former; but why should simulation stop at the portals of the unconscious? Why couldn't the "work" of the unconscious be "produced" in the same way as any other symptom in classical medicine? Dreams already are.<br />The alienist, of course, claims that "for each form of the mental alienation there is a particular order in the succession of symptoms, of which the simulator is unaware and in the absence of which the alienist is unlikely to be deceived." This (which dates from 1865) in order to save at all cost the truth principle, and to escape the specter raised by simulation: namely that truth, reference and objective cause have ceased to exist. What can medicine do with something which floats on either side of illness, on either side of health, or with the reduplication of illness in a discourse that is no longer true or false? What can psychoanalysis do with the reduplication of the discourse of the unconscious in a discourse of simulation that can never be unmasked, since it isn't false either? (2)<br />What can the army do with simulators? Traditionally, following a direct principle of identification, it unmasks and punishes them. Today, it can reform an excellent simulator as though he were equivalent to a "real" homosexual, heart-case or lunatic. Even military psychology retreats from the Cartesian clarifies and hesitates to draw the distinction between true and false, between the "produced" symptom and the authentic symptom. "If he acts crazy so well, then he must be mad." Nor is it mistaken: in the sense that all lunatics are simulators, and this lack of distinction is the worst form of subversion. Against it, classical reason armed itself with all its categories. But it is this today which again outflanks them, submerging the truth principle.<br />Outside of medicine and the army, favored terrains of simulation, the affair goes back to religion and the simulacrum of divinity: "l forbade any simulacrum in the temples because the divinity that breathes life into nature cannot be represented." Indeed it can. But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme authority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or is it volatilized into simulacra which alone deploy their pomp and power of fascination - the visible machinery of icons being substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? This is precisely what was feared by the Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel is still with us today. (3) Their rage to destroy images rose precisely because they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra, this facility they have of erasing God from the consciousnesses of people, and the overwhelming, destructive truth which they suggest: that ultimately there has never been any God; that only simulacra exist; indeed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum. Had they been able to believe that images only occulted or masked the Platonic idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of a distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the images concealed nothing at all, and that in fact they were not images, such as the original model would have made them, but actually perfect simulacra forever radiant with their own fascination. But this death of the divine referential has to be exorcised at all cost.<br />It can be seen that the iconoclasts, who are often accused of despising and denying images, were in fact the ones who accorded them their actual worth, unlike the iconolaters, who saw in them only reflections and were content to venerate God at one remove. But the converse can also be said, namely that the iconolaters possessed the most modern and adventurous minds, since, underneath the idea of the apparition of God in the mirror of images, they already enacted his death and his disappearance in the epiphany of his representations (which they perhaps knew no longer represented anything, and that they were purely a game, but that this was precisely the greatest game - knowing also that it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them).<br />This was the approach of the Jesuits, who based their politics on the virtual disappearance of God and on the worldly and spectacular manipulation of consciences - the evanescence of God in the epiphany of power - the end of transcendence, which no longer serves as alibi for a strategy completely free of influences and signs. Behind the baroque of images hides the grey eminence of politics.<br />Thus perhaps at stake has always been the murderous capacity of images: murderers of the real; murderers of their own model as the Byzantine icons could murder the divine identity. To this murderous capacity is opposed the dialectical capacity of representations as a visible and intelligible mediation of the real. All of Western faith and good faith was engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange God, of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference<br />So it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Conversely, simulation starts from the Utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.<br />These would be the successive phases of the image:<br />1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.<br />2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.<br />3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.<br />4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.<br />In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefic. In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation.<br />The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notmn of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.<br />When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence.<br />Hyperreal and imaginary<br />Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious reveling in real America, in its delights and drawbacks. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit. In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that sufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot - a veritable concentration camp - is total. Or rather: inside, a whole range of gadgets magnetize the crowd into direct flows; outside, solitude is directed onto a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.<br /><br />The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. All its values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pacified. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin does it well in Utopies, jeux d'espaces): digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. To be sure. But this conceals something else, and that "ideological" blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.<br />The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It ~s meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness.<br />Moreover, Disneyland is not the only one. Enchanted Village, Magic Mountain, Marine World: Los Angeles is encircled by these "imaginary stations" which feed reality, reality-energy, to a town whose mystery is precisely that it is nothing more than a network of endless, unreal circulation: a town of fabulous proportions, but without space or dimensions. As much as electrical and nuclear power stations, as much as film studios, this town, which is nothing more than an immense script and a perpetual motion picture, needs this old imaginary made up of childhood signals and faked phantasms for its sympathetic nervous system.<br />Political incantation<br />Watergate. Same scenario as Disneyland (an imaginary effect concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the bounds of the artificial perimeter): though here it is a scandal-effect concealing that there is no difference between the facts and their denunciation (identical methods are employed by the CIA and the Washington Post journalists). Same operation, though this time tending towards scandal as a means to regenerate a moral and political principle, towards the imaginary as a means to regenerate a reality principle in distress.<br />The denunciation of scandal always pays homage to the law. And Watergate above all succeeded in imposing the idea that Watergate was a scandal - in this sense it was an extraordinary operation of intoxication: the reinjection of a large dose of political morality on a global scale. It could be said along with Bourdieu that: "The specific character of every relation of force is to dissimulate itself as such, and to acquire all its force only because it is so dissimulated"; understood as follows: capital, which is immoral and unscrupulous, can only function behind a moral superstructure, and whoever regenerates this public morality (by indignation, denunciation, etc.) spontaneously furthers the; order of capital, as did the Washington Post journalists.<br />But this is still only the formula of ideology, and when Bourdieu enunciates it, he takes "relation of force" to mean the truth of capitalist domination, and he denounces this relation of force as itself a scandal: he therefore occupies the same deterministic and moralistic position as the Washington Post journalists. He does the same job of purging and reviving moral order, an order of truth wherein the genuine symbolic violence of the social order is engendered, well beyond all relations of force, which are only elements of its indifferent and shifting configuration in the moral and political consciousnesses of people.<br />All that capital asks of us is to receive it as rational or to combat it in the name of rationality, to receive it as moral or to combat it in the name of morality. For they are identical, meaning they can be read another way: before, the task was to dissimulate scandal; today, the task is to conceal the fact that there is none.<br />Watergate is not a scandal: this is- what must be said at all cost, for this is what everyone is concerned to conceal, this dissimulation masking a strengthening of morality, a moral panic as we approach the primal (mise-en-scene) of capital: its instantaneous cruelty; its incomprehensible ferocity; its fundamental immorality - these are what are scandalous, unaccountable for in that system of moral and economic equivalence which remains the axiom of leftist thought, from Enlightenment theory to communism. Capital doesn't give a damn about the idea of the contract which is imputed to it: it is a monstrous unprincipled undertaking, nothing more. Rather, it is "enlightened" thought which seeks to control capital by imposing rules on it. And all that recrimination which replaced revolutionary thought today comes down to reproaching capital for not following the rules of the game. "Power is unjust; its justice is a class justice; capital exploits us; etc." - as if capital were linked by a contract to the society it rules. It is the left which holds out the mirror of equivalence, hoping that capital will fall for this phantasmagoria of the social contract and furfill its obligation towards the whole of society (at the same time, no need for revolution: it is enough that capital accept the rational formula of exchange).<br />Capital in fact has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates. It is a sorcery of the social relation, it is a challenge to society and should be responded to as such. It is not a scandal to be denounced according to moral and economic rationality, but - challenge to take up according to symbolic law.<br /><br /><br />Moebius: spiralling negativity<br />Hence Watergate was only a trap set by the system to catch its adversaries - a simulation of scandal to regenerative ends. This is embodied by the character called "Deep Throat," who was said to be a Republican grey eminence manipulating the leftist journalists in order to get rid of Nixon - and why not? All hypotheses are possible, although this one is superfluous: the work of the Right is done very well, and spontaneously, by the Left on its own. Besides, it would be naive to see an embittered good conscience at work here. For the Right itself also spontaneously does the work of the Left. All the hypotheses of manipulation are reversible in an endless whirligig. For manipulation is a floating causality where positivity and negativity engender and overlap with one another; where there is no longer any active or passive. It is by putting an arbitrary stop to this revolving causality that a principle of political reality can be saved. It is by the simulation of a conventional, restricted perspective field, where the premises and consequences of any act or event are calculable, that a political credibility can be maintained (including, of course, "objective" analysis, struggle, etc.) But if the entire cycle of any act or event is envisaged in a system where linear continuity and dialectical polarity no longer exist, in a field unhinged by simulation, then all determination evaporates, every act terminates at the end of the cycle having benefited everyone and been scattered in all directions.<br />Is any given bombing in Italy the work of leftist extremists; or of extreme right-wing provocation; or staged by centrists to bring every terrorist extreme into disrepute and to shore up its own failing power; or again, is it a police-inspired scenario in order to appeal to calls for public security? All this is equally true, and the search for proof- indeed the objectivity of the fact- does not check this vertigo of interpretation. We are in a logic of simulation which has nothing to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons. Simulation is characterized by a precession of the model, of all models around the merest fact- the models come first, and their orbital (like the bomb) circulation constitutes the genuine magnetic field of events. Facts no longer have any trajectory of their own, they arise at the intersection of the models; a single fact may even be engendered by all the models at once. This anticipation, this precession, this short-circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model (no more divergence of meaning, no more dialectical polarity, no more negative electricity or implosion of poles) is what each time allows for all the possible interpretations, even the most contradictory - all are true, in the sense that their truth is exchangeable, in the image of the models from which they proceed, in a generalized cycle.<br />The communists attack the socialist party as though they wanted to shatter the union of the Left. They sanction the idea that their reticence stems from a more radical political exigency. In fact, it is because they don't want power. But do they not want it at this conjuncture because it is unfavorable for the Left in general, or because it is unfavorable for them within the union of the Left - or do they not want it by definition? When Berlinguer declares, "We mustn't be frightened of seeing the communists seize power in Italy," this means simultaneously:<br />1 That there is nothing to fear, since the communists, if they come to power, will change nothing in its fundamental capitalist mechanism.<br />2 That there isn't any risk of their ever coming to power (for the reason that they don't want to); and even if they do take it up, they will only ever wield it by proxy.<br />3 That in fact power, genuine power, no longer exists, and hence there is no risk of anybody seizing it or taking it over.<br />4 But more: 1, Berlinguer, am not frightened of seeing the communists seize power in Italy - which might appear evident, but not so evident, since:<br />5 It can also mean the contrary (no need for psychoanalysis here): I am frightened of seeing the communists seize power (and with good reason, even for a communist).<br />All the above is simultaneously true. This is the secret of a discourse that is no longer only ambiguous, as political discourses can be, but that conveys the impossibility of a determinate position of power, the impossibility of a determinate position of discourse. And this logic belongs to neither party. It traverses all discourses without their wanting it.<br />Who will unravel this imbroglio? The Gordian knot can at least be cut. As for the Moebius strip, if it is split in two, it results in an additional spiral without there being any possibility of resolving its surfaces (here the reversible continuity of hypotheses). Hades of simulation, which is no longer one of torture, but of the subtle, maleficent, elusive twisting of meaning(4) - where even those condemned at Burgos are still a gik from Franco to Western democracy, which finds m them the occasion to regenerate its own flagging humanism, and whose indignant protestation consolidates in return Franco's regime by uniting the Spanish masses against foreign intervention? Where is the truth in all that, when such collusions admirably knit together without their authors even knowing it?<br />The conjunction of the system and its extreme alternative like two ends of a curved mirror, the "vicious" curvature of a political space henceforth magnetized, circularized, reversibilized from right to left a torsion that is like the evil demon of commutation, the whole system, the infinity of capital folded back over its own surface: transfinite? And isn't it the same with desire and libidinal space? The conjunction of desire and value, of desire and capital. The conjunction of desire and the law; the ultimate joy and metamorphosis of the law (which is why it is so well received at the moment): only capital takes pleasure, Lyotard said, before coming to think that we take pleasure in capital. Overwhelming versatility of desire in Deleuze: an enigmatic reversal which brings this desire that is "revolutionary by itself, and as if involuntarily, in wanting what it wants," to want its own repression and to invest paranoid and fascist systems? A malign torsion which reduces this revolution of desire to the same fundamental ambiguity as the other, historical revolution.<br />All the referential intermingle their discourses in a circular, Moebian compulsion. Not so long ago sex and work were savagely opposed terms: today both are dissolved into the same type of demand. Formerly the discourse on history took its force from opposing itself to the one on nature, the discourse on desire to the one on power: today they exchange their signifiers and their scenarios.<br />It would take too long to run through the whole range of operational negativity, of all those scenarios of deterrence which, like Watergate, try to revive a moribund principle by simulated scandal, phantasm, murder - a sort of hormonal treatment by negativity and crisis. It is always a question of proving the real by the imaginary; proving truth by scandal; proving the law by transgression; proving work by the strike; proving the system by crisis and capital by revolution; and for that matter proving ethnology by the dispossession of its object (the Tasaday). Without counting: proving theater by anti-theater; proving art by anti-art; proving pedagogy by anti-pedagogy; proving psychiatry by anti-psychiatry, etc., etc.<br />Everything is metamorphosed into its inverse in order to be perpetuated in its purged form. Every form of power, every situation speaks of itself by denial, in order to attempt to escape, by simulation of death, its real agony. Power can stage its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy. Thus with the American presidents: the Kennedys are murdered because they still have a political dimension. Others - Johnson, Nixon, Ford - only had a right to puppet attempts, to simulated murders. But they nevertheless needed that aura of an art)ficial menace to conceal that they were nothing other than mannequins of power. In olden days the king (also the god) had to die - that was his strength. Today he does his miserable utmost to pretend to die, so as to preserve the blessing of power. But even this is gone.<br />To seek new blood in its own death, to renew the cycle by the mirror of crisis, negativity and anti-power: this is the only alibi of every power, of every institution attempting to break the vicious circle of its irresponsibility and its fundamental nonexistence, of its deja-vu and its deja-mort.<br /><br />Strategy of the real<br />Of the same order as the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real, is the impossibility of staging an illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible. It is the whole political problem of the parody, of hypersimulation or offensive simulation, which is posed here.<br />For example: it would be interesting to see whether the repressive apparatus would not react more violently to a simulated hold up than to a real one? For a real hold up only upsets the order of things, the right of property, whereas a simulated hold up interferes with the very principle of reality. Transgression and violence are less serious, for they only contest the distribution of the real. Simulation is infinitely more dangerous since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation.<br />But the difficulty is in proportion to the peril. How to feign a violation and put it to the test? Go and simulate a theft in a large department store: how do you convince the security guards that it is a simulated theft? There is no "objective" difference: the same gestures and the same signs exist as for a real theft; in fact the signs mclme neither to one side nor the other. As far as the established order is concerned, they are always of the order of the real.<br />Go and organize a fake hold up. Be sure to check that your weapons are harmless, and take the most trustworthy hostage, so that no life is in danger (otherwise you risk committing an offence). Demand ransom, and arrange it so that the operation creates the greatest commotion possible. In brief, stay close to the "truth", so as to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulation. But you won't succeed: the web of artificial signs will be inextricably mixed up with real elements (a police officer will really shoot on sight; a bank customer will faint and die of a heart attack; they will really turn the phony ransom over to you). In brief, you will unwittingly find yourself immediately in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour every attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to some reality: that's exactly how the established order is, well before institutions and justice come into play.<br />In this impossibility of isolating the process of simulation must be seen the whole thrust of an order that can only see and understand m terms of some reality, because it can function nowhere else. The simulation of an offence, if it is patent, will either be punished more lightly (because it has no "consequences") or be punished as an offence to public office (for example, if one triggered off a police operation "for nothing") - but never as simulation, since it is precisely as such that no equivalence with the real is possible, and hence no repression either. The challenge of simulation is irreceivable by power. How can you punish the simulation of virtue? Yet as such it is as serious as the simulation of crime. Parody makes obedience and transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, since it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based. The established order can do nothing against it, for the law is a second-order simulacrum whereas simulation is a third-order simulacrum, beyond true and false, beyond equivalences, beyond the rational distinction upon which function all power and the entire social stratum. Hence, failing the real, it is here that we must aim at order.<br />This is why order always opts for the real. In a state of uncertainty, It always prefers this assumption (thus in the army they would rather take the simulator as a true madman). But this becomes more and more difficult, for it is practically impossible to isolate the process of simulation; through the force of inertia of the real which surrounds us, the inverse is also true (and this very reversibility forms part of the apparatus of simulation and of power's impotency): namely, it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real.<br />Thus all hold ups, hijacks and the like are now as it were simulation hold ups, in the sense that they are inscribed in advance in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the media, anticipated in their mode of presentation and possible consequences. In brief, where they function as a set of signs dedicated exclusively to their recurrence as signs, and no longer to their "real" goal at all. But this does not make them inoffensive. On the contrary, it is as hyperreal events, no longer having any particular contents or aims, but indefinitely refracted by each other (for that matter like so-called historical events: strikes, demonstrations, crises, etc.5), that they are precisely unverifiable by an order which can only exert itself on the real and the rational, on ends and means: a referential order which can only dominate referential, a determinate power which can only dominate a determined world, but which can do nothing about that indefinite recurrence of simulation, about that weightless nebula no longer obeying the law of gravitation of the real - power itself eventually breaking apart in this space and becoming a simulation of power (disconnected from its aims and objectives, and dedicated to power effects and mass simulation).<br />The only weapon of power, its only strategy against this defection, is to reinject realness and referentiality everywhere, in order to convince us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy and the finalities of production. For that purpose it prefers the discourse of crisis, but also - why not? - the discourse of desire. "Take your desires for reality!" can be understood as the ultimate slogan of power, for in a nonreferential world even the confusion of the reality principle with the desire principle is less dangerous than contagious hyperreality. One remains among principles, and there power is always right.<br />Hyperreality and simulation are deterrents of every principle and of every objective; they turn against power this deterrence which is so well utilized for a long time itself. For, finally, it was capital which was the first to feed throughout its history on the destruction of every referential, of every human goal, which shattered every ideal distinction between true and false, good and evil, in order to establish a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of its power. It was the first to practice deterrence, abstraction, disconnection, deterritorialization, etc.; and if it was capital which fostered reality, the reality principle, it was also the first to liquidate it in the extermination of every use value, of every real equivalence, of production and wealth, in the very sensation we have of the unreality of the stakes and the omnipotence of manipulation. Now, it is this very logic which is today hardened even more against it. And when it wants to fight this catastrophic spiral by secreting one last glimmer of reality, on which to found one last glimmer of power, it only multiplies the signs and accelerates the play of simulation.<br />As long as it was historically threatened by the real, power risked deterrence and simulation, disintegrating every contradiction by means of the production of equivalent signs. When it is threatened today by simulation (the threat of vanishing in the play of signs), power risks the real, risks crisis, it gambles on remanufacturing artificial, social, economic, -political stakes. This is a question of life or death for it. But it is too late.<br />Whence the characteristic hysteria of our time: the hysteria of production and reproduction of the real. The other production, that of goods and commodities, that of la belle epoque of political economy, no longer makes any sense of its own, and has not for some time. What society seeks through production, and overproduction, is the restoration of the real which escapes it. That is why contemporary "material" production is itself hyperreal. It retains all the features, the whole discourse of traditional production, but it is nothing more than its scaled-down refraction (thus the hyperrealists fasten in a striking resemblance a real from which has fled all meaning and charm, all the profundity and energy of representation). Thus the hyperrealism of simulation is expressed everywhere by the real's striking resemblance to itself.<br />Power, too, for some time now produces nothing but signs of its resemblance. And at the same time, another figure of power comes into play: that of a collective demand for signs of power - a holy union which forms around the disappearance of power. Everybody belongs to it more or less in fear of the collapse of the political. And in the end the game of power comes down to nothing more than the critical obsession with power: an obsession with its death; an obsession with its survival which becomes greater the more it disappears. When it has totally disappeared, logically we will be under the total spell of power - a haunting memory already foreshadowed everywhere, manifesting at one and the same time the satisfaction of having got rid of it (nobody wants it any more, everybody unloads it on others) and grieving its loss. Melancholy for societies without power: this has already given rise to fascism, that overdose of a powerful referential in a society which cannot terminate its mourning.<br />But we are still in the same boat: none of our societies know how to manage their mourning for the real, for power, for the social itself, which is implicated in this same breakdown. And it is by an art)ficial revitalization of all this that we try to escape it. Undoubtedly this will even end up in socialism. By an unforeseen twist of events and an irony which no longer belongs to history, it is through the death of the social that socialism will emerge - as it is through the death of God that religions emerge. A twisted coming, a perverse event, an unintelligible reversion to the logic of reason. As is the fact that power is no longer present except to conceal that there is none. A simulation which can go on indefinitely, since -unlike "true" power which is, or was, a structure, a strategy, a relation of force, a stake - this is nothing but the object of a social demand, and hence subject to the law of supply and demand, rather than to violence and death. Completely expunged from the political dimension, it is dependent, like any other commodity, on production and mass consumption. Its spark has disappeared; only the fiction of a political universe is saved.<br />Likewise with work. The spark of production, the violence of its stake no longer exists. Everybody still produces, and more and more, but work has subtly become something else: a need (as Marx ideally envisaged it, but not at all in the same sense), the object of a social "demand," like leisure, to which it is equivalent in the general run of life's options. A demand exactly proportional to the loss of stake in the work process.6 The same change in fortune as for power: the scenario of work is there to conceal the fact that the work-real, the production-real, has disappeared. And for that matter so has the strike-real too, which is no longer a stoppage of work, but its alternative pole in the ritual scansion of the social calendar. It is as if everyone has "occupied" their work place or work post, after declaring the strike, and resumed production, as is the custom in a "self-managed" job, in exactly the same terms as before, by declaring themselves (and virtually being) in a state of permanent strike.<br />This isn't a science-fiction dream: everywhere it is a question of a doubling of the work process. And of a double or locum for the strike process - strikes which are incorporated like obsolescence in objects, like crises in production. Then there are no longer any strikes or work, but both simultaneously, that is to say something else entirely: a wizardry of work, a trompe l'oeil, a scenodrama (not to say melodrama) of production, collective dramaturgy upon the empty stage of the social.<br />It is no longer a question of the ideology of work - of the traditional ethic that obscures the "real" labor process and the "objective" process of exploitation- but of the scenario of work. Likewise, it is no longer a question of the ideology of power, but of the scenario of power. Ideology only corresponds to a betrayal of reality by signs; simulation corresponds to a short-circuit of reality and to its reduplication by signs. It is always the aim of ideological analysis to restore the objective process; it is always a false problem to want to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum.<br />This is ultimately why power is so in accord with ideological discourses and discourses on ideology, for these are all discourses of truth - always good, even and especially if they are revolutionary, to counter the mortal blows of simulation.<br /><br /><br /><br />Notes<br />1 Counterfeit and reproduction imply always an anguish, a disquieting foreignness: the uneasiness before the photograph, considered like a witch's trick - and more generally before any technical apparatus, which is always an apparatus of reproduction, is related by Benjamin to the uneasiness before the mirror-image. There is already sorcery at work in the mirror. But how much more so when this image can be detached from the mirror and be transported, stocked, reproduced at will (cf. The Student of Prague, where the devil detaches the image of the student from the mirror and harasses him to death by the intermediary of this image). All reproduction implies therefore a kind of black magic, from the fact of being seduced by one's own image in the water, like Narcissus, to being haunted by the double and, who knows, to the mortal turning back of this vast technical apparatus secreted today by man as his own image (the narcissistic mirage of technique, McLuhan) and that returns to him, cancelled and distorted -endless reproduction of himself and his power to the limits of the world. Reproduction is diabolical in its very essence; it makes something fundamental vacillate. This has hardly changed for us: simulation (that we describe here as the operation of the code) is still and always the place of a gigantic enterprise of manipulation, of control and of death, just like the imitative object (primitive statuette, image of photo) always had as objective an operation of black image.<br />2 There is furthermore in Monod's book a flagrant contradiction, which reflects the ambiguity of all current science. His discourse concerns the code, that is the third-order simulacra, but it does so still according to "scientific" schemes of the second-order - objectiveness, "scientific" ethic of knowledge, science's principle of truth and transcendence. All things incompatible with the indeterminable models of the third-order.<br />3 "It's the feeble 'definition' of TV which condemns its spectator to rearranging the few points retained into a kind of abstract work. He participates suddenly in the creation of a reality that was only just presented to him in dots: the television watcher is in the position of an individual who is asked to project his own fantasies on inkblots that are not supposed to represent anything." TV as perpetual Rorshach test. And furthermore: "The TV image requires each instant that we 'close' the spaces in the mesh by a convulsive sensuous participation that is profoundly kinetic and tactile."<br />4 "The Medium is the Message" is the very slogan of the political economy of the sign, when it enters into the third-order simulation - the distinction between the medium and the message characterizes instead signification of the second-order.<br />5 The entire current "psychological" situation is characterized by this shortcircuit. Doesn't emancipation of children and teenagers, once the initial phase of revolt is passed and once there has been established the principle of the right to emancipation, seem like the real emancipation of parents. And the young (students, high-schoolers, adolescents) seem to sense it in their always more insistent demand (though still as paradoxical) for the presence and advice of parents or of teachers. Alone at last, free and responsible, it seemed to them suddenly that other people possibly have absconded with their true liberty. Therefore, there is no question of "leaving them be." They're going to hassle them, not with any emotional or material spontaneous demand, but with an exigency that has been premeditated and corrected by an implicit oedipal knowledge. Hyperdependence (much greater than before) distorted by irony and refusal, parody of libidinous original mechanisms. Demand without content, without referent, unjustified, but for all that all the more severe - naked demand with no possible answer. The contents of knowledge (teaching) or of affective relations, the pedagogical or familial referent having been eliminated in the act of emancipation, there remains only a demand linked to the empty form of the institution- perverse demand, and for that reason all the more obstinate. "Transferable" desire (that is to say non-referential, un-referential), desire that has been fed by lack, by the place left vacant, "liberated," desire captured in its own vertiginous image, desire of desire, as pure form, hyperreal. Deprived of symbolic substance, it doubles back upon itself, draws its energy from its own reflection and its disappointment with itself. This is literally today the "demand," and it is obvious that unlike the "classical" objective or transferable relations this one here is insoluble and interminable.<br />Simulated Oedipus.<br />Francois Richard: "Students asked to be seduced either bodily or verbally. But also they are aware of this and they play the game, ironically. 'Give us your knowledge, your presence, you have the word, speak, you are there for that.' Contestation certainly, but not only: the more authority is contested, vilified, the greater the need for authority as such. They play at Oedipus also, to deny it all the more vehemently. The 'teach', he's Daddy, they say; it's fun, you play at incest, malaise, the untouchable, at being a tease - in order to de-sexualize finally." Like one under analysis who asks for Oedipus back again, who tells the "oedipal" stories, who has the "analytical" dreams to satisfy the supposed request of the analyst, or to resist him? In the same way the student goes through his oedipal number, his seduction number, gets chummy, close, approaches, dominates- but this isn't desire, it's simulation. Oedipal psychodrama of simulation (neither less real nor less dramatic for all that). Very different from the real libidinal stakes of knowledge and power or even of a real mourning for the absence of same (as could have happened after 1968 in the universities). Now we've reached the phase of desperate reproduction, and where the stakes are nil, the simulacrum is maximal - exacerbated and parodied simulation at one and the same time- as interminable as psychoanalysis and for the same reasons<br /><br />The interminable psychoanalysis.<br />There is a whole chapter to add to the history of transference and countertransference: that of their liquidation by simulation, of the impossible psychoanalysis because it is itself, from now on, that produces and reproduces the unconscious as its institutional substance. Psychoanalysis dies also of the exchange of the signs of the unconscious. Just as revolution dies of the exchange of the critical signs of political economy. This short-circuit was well known to Freud in the form of the gift of the analytic dream, or with the "uninformed" patients, in the form of the gift of their analytic knowledge. But this was still interpreted as resistance, as detour, and did not put fundamentally into question either the process of analysis or the principle of transference. It is another thing entirely when the unconscious itself, the discourse of the unconscious becomes unfindable - according to the same scenario of simulative anticipation that we have seen at work on all levels with the machines of the third order. The analysis then can no longer end, it becomes logically and historically interminable, since it stabilizes on a puppet substance of reproduction, an unconscious programmed on demand - an impossible-to-break-through point around which the whole analysis is rearranged. The messages of the unconscious have been short-circuited by the psychoanalysis "medium." This is libidinal hyperrealism. To the famous categories of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, it is going to be necessary to add the hyperreal, which captures and obstructs the functioning of the three orders.<br /><br />6 Athenian democracy, much more advanced than our own, had reached the point where the vote was considered as payment for a service, after all other repressive solutions had been tried and found wanting in order to insure a quorum.</span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-10258535485208943892011-03-23T11:30:00.000-07:002011-03-23T11:37:45.177-07:00Charles Meryon and Charles Baudelaire<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTIzs1SSQtEbD5NE9leDDcB1VCuIN7igGwazZyRUpA1HyLFUHMEPCrRf9cXr453FnUuL_On9w24FVup7W53_IZ9XsfezyPyaR4FTOlrlS0UEUsKyW5DvDr7s75WpPXfN80et8772nxcqt_/s1600/GR166+-+Charles+Meryon+-+1821-1868+-+Le+Petit+Pont+Paris+%2528The+Little+Bridge%2529+-+1850.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTIzs1SSQtEbD5NE9leDDcB1VCuIN7igGwazZyRUpA1HyLFUHMEPCrRf9cXr453FnUuL_On9w24FVup7W53_IZ9XsfezyPyaR4FTOlrlS0UEUsKyW5DvDr7s75WpPXfN80et8772nxcqt_/s320/GR166+-+Charles+Meryon+-+1821-1868+-+Le+Petit+Pont+Paris+%2528The+Little+Bridge%2529+-+1850.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587345698698845906" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;font-size:16.0pt;color:#FF9900;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The two men had an elective affinity to each other.</span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">by: Walter Benjamin </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">An extract from</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire'</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">in </span></span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in The Era of High Capitalism</span></span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">New Left Books, 1973 </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'Poets are more inspired by the image than by the actual presence of objects'</span></span></span><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon.htm#NOTES"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">1.</span></span></span></a></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> ('</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Les poétes sont plus inspirés par les images que par la présence méme des objets</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'), said Joubert.</span></span></span><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon.htm#NOTES"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">2</span></span></span></a></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The same is true of artists. Anything about which one knows that one soon will not have it around becomes an image. Presumably this is what happened to the streets of Paris at that time. In any case, the work whose subterranean connection with the great remodelling of Paris is least to be doubted, was finished a few years before this remodelling was undertaken. It was Meryon's engraved views of Paris. No one was more impressed with them than Baudelaire. To him the archaeological view of the catastrophe, the basis of Hugo's dreams, was not the really moving one. For him antiquity was to spring suddenly like an Athena from the head of an unhurt Zeus, from an intact modernism. Meryon brought out the ancient face of the city without abandoning one cobblestone. It was this view of the matter that Baudelaire had unceasingly pursued in the idea of modernism. He was a passionate admirer of Meryon. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The two men had an </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">elective affinity</span></span></b></span></i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">to each other.</span></span></i></span><i><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon.htm#NOTES"><span style="font-style:normal;text-decoration:none; text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">3</span></span></span></a></span></i><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> They were born in the same year, and their deaths were only months apart. Both died lonely and deeply disturbed — Meryon as a demented person at Charenton, Baudelaire speechless in a private clinic. Both were late in achieving fame. Baudelaire was almost the only person who championed Meryon in his lifetime. Few of his prose works are a match for his short piece on Meryon. Dealing with Meryon, it is a homage to modernism, but it is also a homage to the antique aspects of Meryon. For in Meryon, too, there is an interpenetration of classical antiquity and modernism, and in him the form of this superimposition, the allegory, appears unmistakably.</span></span></span></i><i><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon.htm#NOTES"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">4</span></span></span></a></span></i><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The captions under his etchings are of importance. If the texts are touched by mildness, their obscurity only underlines the 'meaning'. As an interpretation, Meryon’s verses under his view of the Pont Neuf are, despite their sophistry, closely related to the 'Squelette laboureur': </span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ci-gît du vieux Pont Neuf </span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">L'exact ressemblance <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Tout radoubé de neuf <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Par récente ordonnance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">0 savants médecins, <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Habiles chirurgiens, <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">De nous pourquoi ne faire <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Comme du pont de pierre. </span></span></span></i><i><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Here lies the exact likeness of the old </span></span></span></i><i><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon01.html"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pont Neuf</span></span></span></a></span></i><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, all recaulked like new in accordance with a recent ordinance. O learned physicians and skilful surgeons, why not do with us as was done with this stone bridge.) </span></span></span></i><i><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In seeing the uniqueness of these pictures in the fact 'that, although they are made directly from life, they give an impression of expired life, something that is dead or is going to die. Geffroy understands the essence of Meryon's work as well as its relationship to Baudelaire, and he is particularly aware of the faithfulness with which the city of Paris is reproduced, a city that was soon to be pockmarked with rubble fields. Baudelaire's Meryon essay contains a subtle reference to the significance of this Paris antiquity. 'Seldom have we seen the natural solemnity of a great city depicted with more poetic power: the majesty of the piles of stone; those spires pointing their fingers to the sky; the obelisks of industry vomiting legion of smoke against the heavens; the enormous scaffolds of the monuments under repair, pressing the spider-web-like and paradoxical beauty of their structure against the monuments' solid bodies; the steamy sky, pregnant with rage and heavy with rancour; and the wide vistas whose poetry resides in the dramas with which one endows them in one's imagination - none of the complex elements that compose the painful and glorious décor of civilization has been forgotten. Among the plans whose failure one can mourn like a loss is that of the publisher Delâtre who wanted to issue Meryon's series with texts by Baudelaire. That these texts were never written was the fault of the artist; he was incapable of conceiving of Baudelaire's task as anything else than an inventory of the houses and streets depicted by him. If Baudelaire had undertaken that assignment, Proust's remark about 'the role of the ancient cities in the work of Baudelaire and the scarlet colour which they occasionally give it would make more sense than it does today. Among these cities Rome was paramount for him. In a letter to Leconte de Lisle he confesses his 'natural predilection' for that city. It probably stems from the etchings (veduta) of Piranesi </span></span></span></i><i><span><a href="http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Meryon/Meryon.htm#NOTES"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">5</span></span></span></a></span></i><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> on which the non-restored ruins and the new city still appear as one. </span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">NOTES <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">1. Benjamin's brief discussion of the "elective affinity" between Charles Baudelaire and Charles Meryon follows passages on the urban redevelopment of Paris by Baron von Haussman. The paragraph immediately preceding the passage extracted above reads: </span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Haussmann set to work in 1859. His work had long been regarded as necessary and the way for it had been prepared by legislation. 'After 1848,' wrote Du Camp in the above-mentioned work, 'Paris was about to become uninhabitable. The constant expansion of the railway network . . . accelerated traffic and an increase in the city's population. The people choked in the narrow, dirty, convoluted old streets where they remained packed in because there was no other way.' At the beginning of the fifties the population of Paris began to accommodate itself to the idea that a great face-cleaning of the city was inevitable. It may be assumed that in its incubation period this clean-up could have at least as great an effect upon a good imagination as the work of urban renewal itself." </span></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">2. Joseph Joubert, Pensées précédées de sa correspondance</span></span></span></i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Paris, 1883, vol. 2, p. 267 </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">3. "Elective affinities" (</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Die Wahlverwandschaften</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">) was the title of a novel by Goethe which was the subject of Benjamin's first major essay in literary criticism (1923). Goethe took the term from the chemistry of his day. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">4. Antiquity, modernism, allegory. Compare Benjamin's notes collected under the title 'Central Park' in </span></span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">New German Critique</span></span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> No. 34 Winter 1985</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">5. cf. the dark gothic prison scapes and scenes of urban decay of Piranesi.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><b><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Further notes</span></span></span></b><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In 1936 Benjamin confided in a letter to his friend, Werner Kraft: </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I am currently devoting any time I can find for my book to research in the Cabinet des Estampes. This is where I came across the most splendid portraitist of the city of Paris, Charles Méryon, a contemporary of Baudelaire. His etchings are among the most amazing that a city has ever inspired; it is an immense loss that, as a consequence of Méryon’s whims, the plan to have them printed with a commentary by Baudelaire was not carried out. (Walter Benjamin, Letter 274 To Werner Kraft January 30, 1936) </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the notes to Central Park (collected together around 1938) Benjamin has two further notes on the work of Meryon. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Meryon: the sea of houses, the ruins, the clouds, the majesty and </span></span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">fragility</span></span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of Paris.(section 7:2) [and] Meryon’s Paris streets: abysses, over which high above the clouds pass.(section 33:3) </span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-52973981913809423342011-03-23T10:29:00.000-07:002011-03-23T10:34:09.110-07:00The New Forms of Control<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica; color:black">Chapter I: One-Dimensional Man</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica; color:black"></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Helvetica;color:black">Herbert Marcuse</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. That this technological order also involves a political and intellectual coordination may be a regrettable and yet promising development.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society yield to a higher stage of this society: they are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were-just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect--essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become an integral part. The achievement cancels the premises.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">To the degree to which freedom from want, the concrete substance of all freedom, is becoming a real possibility, the liberties which pertain to a state of lower productivity are losing their former content. Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the Individuals through the way in which it is organized. Such a society may justly demand acceptance of its principles and institutions, and reduce the opposition to the discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the status quo. In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether the increasing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-authoritarian system. Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole. Indeed, at least in so far as the necessities of life are involved, there seems to be no reason why the production and distribution of goods and services should proceed through the competitive concurrence of individual liberties.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population. If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization. The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. The very structure of human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from the work world's imposing upon him alien needs and alien possibilities. The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own. If the productive apparatus could be organized and directed toward the satisfaction of the vital needs, its control might well be centralized; such control would not prevent individual autonomy, but render it possible.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">This is a goal within the capabilities of advanced industrial civilization, the "end" of technological rationality. In actual fact, however, the contrary trend operates: the apparatus imposes its economic and political requirements for defense and expansion on labor time and free time, on the material and intellectual culture. By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests. It thus precludes the emergence of an effective opposition against the whole. Not only a specific form of government or party rule makes for totalitarianism, but also a specific system of production and distribution which may well be compatible with a "pluralism" of parties, newspapers, "countervailing powers," etc.[1]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Today political power asserts itself through its power over the machine process and over the technical organization of the apparatus. The government of advanced and advancing industrial societies can maintain and secure itself only when it succeeds in mobilizing, organizing, and exploiting the technical, scientific, and mechanical productivity available to industrial civilization. And this productivity mobilizes society as a whole, above and beyond any particular individual or group interests. The brute fact that the machine's physical (only physical?) power surpasses that of the individual, and of any particular group of individuals, makes the machine the most effective political instrument in any society whose basic organization is that of the machine process. But the political trend may be reversed; essentially the power of the machine is only the stored-up and projected power of man. To the extent to which the work world is conceived of as a machine and mechanized accordingly, it becomes the potential basis of a new freedom for man.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Contemporary industrial civilization demonstrates that it has reached the stage at which "the free society" can no longer be adequately defined in the traditional terms of economic, political, and intellectual liberties, not because these liberties have become insignificant, but because they are too significant to be confined within the traditional forms. New modes of realization are needed, corresponding to the new capabilities of society.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Such new modes can be indicated only in negative terms because they would amount to the negation of the prevailing modes. Thus economic freedom would mean freedom from the economy-from being controlled by economic forces and relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a living. Political freedom would mean liberation of the individuals from politics over which they have no effective control. Similarly, intellectual freedom would mean the restoration of individual thought now absorbed by mass communication and indoctrination, abolition of "public opinion" together with its makers. The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization. The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">The intensity, the satisfaction and even the character of human needs, beyond the biological level, have always been preconditioned. Whether or not the possibility of doing or leaving, enjoying or destroying, possessing or rejecting something is seized as a need depends on whether or not it can be seen as desirable and necessary for the prevailing societal institutions and interests. In this sense, human needs are historical needs and, to the extent to which the society demands the repressive development of the individual, his needs themselves and their claim for satisfaction are subject to overriding critical standards.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">We may distinguish both true and false needs. "False" are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice. Their satisfaction might be most gratifying to the individual, but this happiness is not a condition which has to be maintained and protected if it serves to arrest the development of the ability (his own and others) to recognize the disease of the whole and grasp the chances of curing the disease. The result then is euphoria in unhappiness. Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Such needs have a societal content and function which are determined by external powers over which the individual has no control; the development and satisfaction of these needs is heteronomous. No matter how much such needs may have become the individual's own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he identifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning-products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">The prevalence of repressive needs is an accomplished fact, accepted in ignorance and defeat, but a fact that must be undone in the interest of the happy individual as well as all those whose misery is the price of his satisfaction. The only needs that have an unqualified claim for satisfaction are the vital ones-nourishment, clothing, lodging at the attainable level of culture. The satisfaction of these needs is the prerequisite for the realization of all needs, of the unsublimated as well as the sublimated ones.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">For any consciousness and conscience, for any experience which does not accept the prevailing societal interest as the supreme law of thought and behavior, the established universe of needs and satisfactions is a fact to be questioned-questioned in terms of truth and falsehood. These terms are historical throughout, and their objectivity is historical. The judgment of needs and their satisfaction, under the given conditions, involves standards of priority--standards which refer to the optimal development of the individual, of all individuals, under the optimal utilization of the material and intellectual resources available to man. The resources are calculable. "Truth" and "falsehood" of needs designate objective conditions to the extent to which the universal satisfaction of vital needs and, beyond it, the progressive alleviation of toil and poverty, are universally valid standards. But as historical standards, they do not only vary according to area and stage of development, they also can be defined only in (greater or lesser) contradiction to the prevailing ones. What tribunal can possibly claim the authority of decision?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">In the last analysis, the question of what are true and false needs must be answered by the individuals themselves, but only in the last analysis; that is, if and when they are free to give their own answer. As long as they are kept incapable of being autonomous, as long as they are indoctrinated and manipulated (down to their very instincts), their answer to this question cannot be taken as their own. By the same token, however, no tribunal can justly arrogate to itself the right to decide which needs should be developed and satisfied. Any such tribunal is reprehensible, although our revulsion does not do away with the question: how can the people who have been the object of effective and productive domination by themselves create the conditions of freedom?[2]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The more rational, productive, technical, and total the repressive administration of society becomes, the more unimaginable the means and ways by which the administered individuals might break their servitude and seize their own liberation. To be sure, to impose Reason upon an entire society is a paradoxical and scandalous idea-although one might dispute the righteousness of a society which ridicules this idea while making its own population into objects of total administration. All liberation depends on the conscious. ness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own. The process always replaces one system of pre- conditioning by another; the optimal goal is the replacement of false needs by true ones, the abandonment of repressive satisfaction.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation-liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable-while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the over. whelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation whic1 soothe and prolong this stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither h it entirely relative. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear-that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Our insistence on the depth and efficacy of these controls is open to the objection that we overrate greatly the indoctrinating power of the "media," and that by themselves the people would feel and satisfy the needs which are now imposed upon them. The objection misses the point. The preconditioning does not start with the mass production of radio and television and with the centralization of their control. The people enter this stage as preconditioned receptacles of long standing; the decisive difference is in the flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and the unsatisfied needs. Here, the so-called equalization of class distinctions reveals its ideological function. If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places. if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Indeed, in the most highly developed areas of contemporary society, the transplantation of social into individual needs is so effective that the difference between them seems to be purely theoretical. Can one really distinguish between the mass media as instruments of information and entertainment, and as agents of manipulation and indoctrination? Between the automobile as nuisance and as convenience? Between the horrors and the comforts of functional architecture? Between the work for national defense and the work for corporate gain? Between the private pleasure and the commercial and political utility involved in increasing the birth rate?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The prevailing forms of social control are technological in a new sense. To be sure, the technical structure and efficacy of the productive and destructive apparatus has been a major instrumentality for subjecting the population to the established social division of labor throughout the modem period. Moreover, such integration has always been accompanied by more obvious forms of compulsion: loss of livelihood, the administration of justice, the police, the armed forces. It still is. But in the contemporary period, the technological controls appear to be the very embodiment of Reason for the benefit of all social groups and interests- to such an extent that all contradiction seems irrational and all counteraction impossible.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">No wonder then that, in the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal "to go along" appears neurotic and impotent. This is the socio-psychological aspect of the political event that marks the contemporary period: the passing of the historical forces which, at the preceding stage of industrial society, seemed to represent the possibility of new forms of existence.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">But the term "introjection" perhaps no longer describes the way in which the individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the "outer" into the "inner." Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies-an individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public opinion and behavior[3]. The idea of "inner freedom" here has its reality: it designates the private space in which man may become and remain "himself."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">This immediate, automatic identification (which may have been characteristic of primitive forms of association) reappears in high industrial civilization; its new "immediacy," however, is the product of a sophisticated, scientific management and organization. In this process, the "inner" dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking-the critical power of Reason-is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition. The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to too dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life. The efficiency of the system blunts too individuals' recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the whole. If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things--not the law of physics but the law of their society.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">I have just suggested that the concept of alienation seems to become questionable when the individuals identify themselves with the existence which is imposed upon them and have in it their own development and satisfaction. This identification is not illusion but reality. However, the reality constitutes a more progressive stage of alienation. The latter has become entirely objective; the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence. There is only one dimension, and it is everywhere and in all forms. The achievements of progress defy ideological indictment as well as justification; before their tribunal, the "false consciousness of their rationality becomes the true consciousxxx.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">This absorption of ideology into reality does not, however, signify the "end of ideology.” On the contrary, in a specific sense advanced industrial culture is more ideological than its predecessor, inasmuch as today the ideology is in the process of production itself [4>[. In a provocative form, this proposition reveals the political aspects of the prevailing technological rationality. The productive apparatus and the goods and services which it produces "sell" or impose the social system as a whole. The means of mass transportation and communication, the commodities of lodging, food, and clothing, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. And as these beneficial products become available to more individuals in more social classes, the indoctrination they carry ceases to be publicity; it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life--much better than before--and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of its quantitative extension.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">The trend may be related to a development in scientific method: operationalism in the physical, behaviorism in the social sciences. The common feature is a total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; their meaning is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behavior. The operational point of view is well illustrated by P. W. Bridgman's analysis of the concept of length [5]:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">We evidently know what we mean by length if we can tell what the length of any and every object is, and for the physicist nothing more is required. To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined. In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Bridgman has seen the wide implications of this mode of thought for the society at large:[6]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand 'concept,' but means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot give an adequate account in terms of operations.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Bridgman's prediction has come true. The new mode of thought is today the predominant tendency in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other fields. Many of the most seriously troublesome concepts are being "eliminated" by showing that no adequate account of them in terms of operations or behavior can be given. The radical empiricist onslaught (I shall subsequently, in chapters VII and VIII, examine its claim to be empiricist) thus provides the methodological justification for the debunking of the mind by the intellectuals-a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching change in all our habits of thought" is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of "Worship together this week," "Why not try God," Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definitions or dictations. For example, "free" are the institutions which operate (and are operated on) in the countries of the Free World; other transcending modes of freedom are by definition either anarchism, communism, or propaganda. "Socialistic" are all encroachments on private enterprises not undertaken by private enterprise itself (or by government contracts), such as universal and comprehensive health insurance, or the protection of nature from all too sweeping commercialization, or the establishment of public services which may hurt private profit. This totalitarian logic of accomplished facts has its Eastern counterpart. There, freedom is the way of life instituted by a communist regime, and all other transcending modes of freedom are either capitalistic, or revisionist, or leftist sectarianism. In both camps, non-operational ideas are non-behavioral and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Such limitation of thought is certainly not new. Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the "great public bodies" untouched, and Hobbes held that "the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best." Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the "great public bodies" and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself "behind the back" of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a "habit of thought" at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The "cunning of Reason" works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives. Theoretical and practical Reason, academic and social behaviorism meet on common ground: that of an advanced society which makes scientific and technical progress into an instrument of domination.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">"Progress" is not a neutral term; it moves toward specific ends, and these ends are defined by the possibilities of ameliorating the human condition. Advanced industrial society is approaching the stage where continued progress would demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organization of progress. This stage would be reached when material production (including the necessary services) becomes automated to the extent that all vital needs can be satisfied while necessary labor time is reduced to marginal time. From this point on, technical progress would transcend the realm of necessity, where it served as the instrument of domination and exploitation which thereby limited its rationality; technology would become subject to the free play of faculties in the struggle for the pacification of nature and of society.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Such a state is envisioned in Marx's notion of the "abolition of labor." The term "pacification of existence" seems better suited to designate the historical alternative of a world which-through an international conflict which transforms and suspends the contradictions within the established societies-advances on the brink of a global war. "Pacification of existence" means the development of man's struggle with man and with nature, under conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer organized by vested interests in domination and scarcity--an organization which perpetuates the destructive forms of this Struggle.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Today's fight against this historical alternative finds a firm mass basis in the underlying population, and finds its ideology in the rigid orientation of thought and behavior to the given universe of facts. Validated by the accomplishments of science and technology, justified by its growing productivity, the status quo defies all transcendence. Faced with the possibility of pacification on the grounds of its technical and intellectual achievements, the mature industrial society closes itself against this alternative. Operationalism, in theory and practice, becomes the theory and practice of containment. Underneath its obvious dynamics, this society is a thoroughly static system of life: self-propelling in its oppressive productivity and in its beneficial coordination. Containment of technical progress goes hand in hand with its growth in the established direction. In spite of the political fetters imposed by the status quo, the more technology appears capable of creating the conditions for pacification, the more are the minds and bodies of man organized against this alternative.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">The most advanced areas of industrial society exhibit throughout these two features: a trend toward consummation of technological rationality, and intensive efforts to contain this trend within the established institutions. Here is the internal contradiction of this civilization: the irrational element in its rationality. It is the token of its achievements. The industrial society which makes technology and science its own is organized for the ever-more-effective domination of man and nature, for the ever-more-effective utilization of its resources. It becomes irrational when the success of these efforts opens new dimensions of human realization. Organization for peace is different from organization for war; the institutions which served the struggle for existence cannot serve the pacification of existence. Life as an end is qualitatively different from life as a means.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Such a qualitatively new mode of existence can never be envisaged as the mere by-product of economic and political changes, as the more or less spontaneous effect of the new institutions which constitute the necessary prerequisite. Qualitative change also involves a change in the technical basis on which this society rests--one which sustains the economic and political institutions through which the "second nature" of man as an aggressive object of administration is stabilized. The techniques of industrialization are political techniques; as such, they prejudge the possibilities of Reason and Freedom.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">To be sure, labor must precede the reduction of labor, and industrialization must precede the development of human needs and satisfactions. But as all freedom depends on the conquest of alien necessity, the realization of freedom depends on the techniques of this conquest. The highest productivity of labor can be used for the perpetuation of labor, and the most efficient industrialization can serve the restriction and manipulation of needs.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">When this point is reached, domination-in the guise of affluence and liberty--extends to all spheres of private and public existence, integrates all authentic opposition, absorbs all alternatives. Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">[1] See p. 50.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">[2] See p. 40.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">[3] The change in the function of the family here plays a decisive role: its "socializing" functions are increasingly taken over by outside groups and media. See my Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 96ff [Eros & Civ. contents]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">[4] Theodor W. Adorno, Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955), p. 24 f.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">[5] P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modem Physics (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 5. The operational doctrine has since been refined and qualified. Bridgman himself has extended the concept of "operation" to include the "paper-and-pencil" operations of the theorist (in Philipp J. Frank, The Validation of Scientific Theories [Boston: Beacon Press. 1954], Chap. II). The main impetus remains the same: it is "desirable" that the paper-and-pencil operations "be capable of eventual contact, although perhaps indirectly, with instrumental operations."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">[6] P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, loc. cit., p. 31.</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-5220772200830681212011-03-13T22:54:00.000-07:002011-03-13T22:55:31.711-07:00The Paralysis of Criticism: Society Without Opposition<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Introduction to the First Edition<br />Herbert Marcuse: “One-Dimensional Man”<br /><br />Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger? The efforts to prevent such a catastrophe overshadow the search for its potential causes in contemporary industrial society. These causes remain unidentified, unexposed, unattacked by the public be- cause they recede before the all too obvious threat from without--to the West from the East, to the East from the West. Equally obvious is the need for being prepared, for living on the blink, for facing the challenge. We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend.<br /><br />If we attempt to relate the causes of the danger to the war in which society is organized and organizes its members, we are immediately confronted with the fact that advanced industrial society becomes richer, bigger, and better as it perpetuates the danger. The defense structure makes life easier for a greater number of people and extends man's mastery of nature. Under these circumstances, our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.<br /><br />And yet this society is irrational as a whole. Its productivity is destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties, its peace maintained by the constant threat of war, its growth dependent on the repression of the real possibilities for pacifying the struggle for existence--individual, national, and international. [page xli] This repression, so different from that which characterized the preceding, less developed stages of our society, operates today not tram a position of natural and technical immaturity hut rather from a position of strength. The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before-which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.<br /><br />To investigate the roots of these developments and ex. amine their historical alternatives is part of the aim of a critical theory of contemporary society, a theory which analyzes society in the light of its used and unused or abused capabilities for improving the human condition. But what are the standards for such a critique?<br /><br />Certainly value judgments play a part. The established war of organizing society is measured against other possible ways, ways which are held to offer better chances for alleviating man's struggle for existence; a specific historical practice is measured against its own historical alter. natives. From the beginning, any critical theory of society is thus confronted with the problem of historical objectivity, a problem which arises at the two points where the analysis implies value judgments:<br /><br /> 1.the judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can be and ought to be made worth living. This judgment underlies all intellectual effort; it is the apriori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself;<br /> 2. the judgment that, in a given society, specific possibilities exist for the amelioration of human life and specific< ways and means of realizing these possibilities. Critical analysis has to demonstrate the objective validity of these judgments, and the demonstration has to proceed on empirical grounds. The established society has available an ascertainable quantity and quality of intellectual and material resources. How can these resources be used for the optimal development and satisfaction of individual needs and faculties with a minimum of toil and misery? Social theory is historical theory, and history is the realm of chance in the realm of necessity. Therefore, among the various possible and actual modes of organizing and utilizing the available resources, which ones offer the greatest chance of an optimal development?<br /><br />The attempt to answer these questions demands a series of initial abstractions. In order to identify and define the possibilities of an optimal development, the critical theory must abstract from the actual organization and utilization of society's resources, and from the results of this organization and utilization. Such abstraction which refuses to accept the given universe of facts as the final context of validation, such "transcending" analysis of the facts in the light of their arrested and denied possibilities, pertains to the very structure of social theory. It is opposed to all metaphysics by virtue of the rigorously historical character of the transcendence[1]. The "possibilities" must be within the reach of the respective society; they must be definable goals of practice. By the same token, the abstraction from the established in- situations must be expressive of an actual tendency-that is, their transformation must be the real need of the underlying population. Social theory is concerned with the historical alternatives which haunt the established society as subversive tendencies and forces. The values attached to the alter- natives do become facts when they are translated into reality by historical practice. The theoretical concepts terminate with social change.<br /><br />But here, advanced industrial society confronts the critique with a situation which seems to deprive it of its very basis. Technical progress, extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of the historical prospects of freedom from toil and domination. Contemporary society seems to be capable of containing social change-qualitative change which would establish essentially different institutions, a new direction of the productive process, new modes of human existence. This containment of social change is perhaps the most singular achievement of advanced industrial society; the general acceptance of the National Purpose, bipartisan policy, the de- cline of pluralism, the collusion of Business and Labor within the strong State testify to the integration of opposites which is the result as well as the prerequisite of this achievement.<br /><br />A brief comparison between the formative stage of the theory of industrial society and its present situation may help to show how the basis of the critique has been altered. At its origins in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it elaborated the first concepts of the alternatives, the critique of industrial society attained concreteness in a historical mediation between theory and practice, values and facts, needs and goals. This historical mediation occurred in the consciousness and in the political action of the two great classes which faced each other in the society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In the 'Capitalist world, they are still the basic classes. However, the capitalist development has altered the structure and function of these two classes in such a way that they no longer appear to be agents of historical transformation. An overriding interest in the preservation and improvement of the institutional status quo unites the former antagonists in the most advanced areas of contemporary society. And to the degree to which technical progress assures the growth and cohesion of communist society, the very idea of qualitative change recedes before the realistic notions of a non-explosive evolution. In the absence of demonstrable agents and agencies of social change, the critique is thus thrown back to a high level of abstraction. There is no ground on which theory and practice, thought and action meet. Even the most empirical analysis of historical alternatives appears to be unrealistic speculation, and commitment to them a matter of personal (or group) preference.<br /><br />And yet: does this absence refute the theory? In the face of apparently contradictory facts, the critical analysis continues to insist that the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever before. Needed by whom? The answer continues to be the same: by the society as a whole, for every one of its members. The union of growing productivity and growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the surrender of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth constitute the most impartial indictment -even if they are not the raison d' etre of this society but only its by-product: its sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth, is itself irrational.<br /><br />The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible. The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful. But this distinction itself must be validated. Men must come to see it and to find their way from false to true consciousness, from their immediate to their real interest. They can do so only if they live in need of changing their way of life, of denying the positive, of refusing. It is precisely this need which the established society man- ages to repress to the degree to which it is capable of "delivering the goods" on an increasingly large scale, and using the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man.<br /><br />Confronted with the total character of the achievements of advanced industrial society, critical theory is left without the rationale for transcending this society. The vacuum empties the theoretical structure itself, because the categories of a critical social theory were developed during the period in which the need for refusal and subversion was embodied in the action of effective social forces. These categories were essentially negative and oppositional concepts, defining the actual contradictions in nineteenth century European society. The category "society" itself expressed the acute conflict between the social and political sphere-society as antagonistic to the state. Similarly, "individual," "class," "private," "family" denoted spheres and forces not yet integrated with the established conditions-spheres of tension and contradiction. With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms.<br /><br />An attempt to recapture the critical intent of these categories, and to understand how the intent was cancelled by the social reality, appears from the outset to be regression from a theory joined with historical practice to abstract, speculative thought: from the critique of political economy to philosophy. This ideological character of the critique results from the fact that the analysis is forced to proceed from a position "outside" the positive as well as negative, the productive as well as destructive tendencies in society. Modern industrial society is the pervasive identity of these opposites -it is the whole that is in question. At the same time, the position of theory cannot be one of mere speculation. It must be a historical position in the sense that it must be grounded on the capabilities of the given society.<br /><br />This ambiguous situation involves a still more fundamental ambiguity. One-Dimensional Man will vacillate throughout between two contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced industrial society is capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist which may break this containment and explode the society. I do not think that a clear answer can be given. Both tendencies are there, side by side-and even the one in the other. The first tendency is dominant, and what- ever preconditions for a reversal may exist are being used to prevent it. Perhaps an accident may alter the situation, but unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about the change.<br /><br />The analysis is focused on advanced industrial society, In which the technical apparatus of production and distribution (with an increasing sector of automation) functions, not as the sum-total of mere instruments which can be isolated from their social and political effects, but rather as a system which determines a priori the product of the apparatus as well as the operations of servicing and extending it. In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the Opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs. Technology serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion. The totalitarian tendency of these controls seems to assert itself in still another sense-by spreading to the less developed and even to the pre- industrial areas of the world, and by creating similarities in the development of capitalism and communism.<br /><br />In the face of the totalitarian features of this society, the traditional notion of the "neutrality" of technology can no longer be maintained. Technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put; the technological " society is a system of domination which operates already in the concept and construction of techniques. The way in which a society organizes the life of its members involves an initial choice between historical alter- natives which are determined by the inherited level of the material and intellectual culture. The choice itself results from the play of the dominant interests. It anticipates specific modes of transforming and utilizing man and nature and rejects other modes. It is one "project" of realization among others[2]. But once the project has become operative in the basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive, and to determine the development of the society as a whole. As a technological universe, advanced industrial society is a political universe, the latest stage in the realization of a special historical project--namely, the experience, transformation, and organization of nature as the mere stuff of domination.<br /><br />As the project unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse and action, intellectual and material culture. In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality.<br /><br />In the discussion of the familiar tendencies of advanced industrial civilization, I have rarely given specific references. The material is assembled and described in the vast sociological and psychological literature on technology and social change, scientific management, corporative enterprise, changes in the character of industrial labor and of the labor force, etc. There are many unideological analyses of the facts--such as Berle and Means, The Modem Corporation and Private Property, the reports of the 76th Congress' Temporary National Economic Committee on the Concentration of Economic Power, the publications of the AFL-CIO on Automation and Maior Technological Change, but also those of News and Letters and Correspondence in Detroit. I should like to emphasize the vital importance of the work of C. Wright Mills, and of studies which are frequently frowned upon because of simplification, overstatement, or journalistic ease--Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, The Status Seekers, and The Waste Makers, William H. Whyte's The Organization Man, Fred J. Cooks The Warfare State belonging this category. To be sure, the lack of theoretical analysis in these works leaves the roots of the described conditions covered and protected, but left to speak for themselves, the conditions speak loudly enough. Perhaps the most telling evidence can be obtained by simply looking at television or listening to the AM radio for one consecutive hour for a couple of days, not shutting off the commercials, and now and then switching the station.<br /><br />My analysis is focused on tendencies in the most highly developed contemporary societies. There are large areas within and without these societies where the described tendencies do not prevail--I would say: not yet prevail. I am projecting these tendencies and I offer some hypotheses, nothing more.<br /><br />[1] The terms "transcend" and "transcendence" are used throughout in the empirical, critical sense: they designate tendencies in theory and practice which, in a given society, overshoot" the established universe of discourse and action toward its historical alternatives (real possibilities).<br /><br />[2] The term "project" emphasizes the element of freedom and responsibility in historical determination: it links autonomy and contingency. In this sense, the term is used in the work of Jean-Paul Same. For a further discussion see chapter VIII below.<br /> </span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-51832314166826078912011-03-09T04:26:00.000-08:002011-03-09T04:27:53.516-08:00The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical reproduction<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:78%;">Walter Benjamin, 1935<br /><br />"Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art."<br />Paul Va1ery, PIECES SUR L'ART,<br />Le Conquete de l'ubiquite<br /><br />PREFACEWhen Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the prole­tariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery--concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.<br />IIn principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the beginning of the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance. With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new stage. This much more direct process was distinguished by the tracing of the design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching on a copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. A film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the images at the speed of an actor's speech. Just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film. The technical reproduction of sound was tackled at the end of the last century. These convergent endeavors made predictable a situation which Paul Valery pointed up in this sentence: "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign." Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two different manifestations--the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film--have had on art in its traditional form.<br />IIEven the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.<br />The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. Chemical analyses of the patina of a bronze can help to establish this, as does the proof that a given manuscript of the Middle Ages stems from an archive of the fifteenth century. The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical--and, of course, not only technical--reproducibility. Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis a vis technical reproduction. The reason is twofold. First, process reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction. For example, in photography, process reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images which escape natural vision. Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room.<br /><br />The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. This holds not only for the art work but also, for instance, for a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie. In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus--namely, its authenticity--is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.<br />One might subsume the eliminated element in the term "aura" and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass move­ments. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most palpable in the great historical films. It extends to ever new positions. In 1927 Abel Gance exclaimed enthusiastically:"Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films... all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions... await their exposed resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the gate." Presumably without intending it, he issued an invitation to a far-reaching liquidation."<br />IIIDuring long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. The fifth century, with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different from that of antiquity but also a new kind of perception. The scholars of the Viennese school, Riegl and Wickhoff, who resisted the weight of classical tradition under which these later art forms had been buried, were the first to draw conclusions from them concerning the organization of perception at the time. However far-reaching their insight, these scholars limited themselves to showing the significant, formal hallmark which characterized perception in late Roman times. They did not attempt--and, perhaps, saw no way--to show the social transformations expressed by these changes of perception. The conditions for an analogous insight are more favorable in the present. And if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes.The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and repro-ducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose "sense of the universal equality of things" has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.<br /><br /><br />IVThe uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual--first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as sec-ularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of “l'art pour l'art”, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of "pure" art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mal-larm~ was the first to take this position.)<br />An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice--politics.VWorks of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent (a contrasting decorative feature used to add interest) is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it. And even though the public presentability of a mass originally may have been just as great as that of a symphony, the latter originated at the moment when its public presentability promised to surpass that of the mass.<br />With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function.<br /><br />VIIn photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value. To have pinpointed this new stage constitutes the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way. At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him, right ones or wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. The directives which the captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and more imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.<br /><br /> <br /><br />VIIThe nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which experienced the development of the film. Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question--whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art--was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film. Whence the insensitive and forced character of early theories of the film. Abel Gance, for instance, compares the film with hieroglyphs: "Here, by a remarkable regression, we have come back to the level of expression of the Egyptians .... Pictorial language has not yet matured because our eyes have not yet adjusted to it. There is as yet insufficient respect for, insufficient cult of, what it expresses." Or, in the words of S~verin-Mars: "What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same time! Approached in this fashion the film might represent an incomparable means of expression. Only the most high-minded persons, in the most perfect and mysterious moments of their lives, should be allowed to enter its ambience." Alexandre Arnoux concludes his fantasy about the silent film with the question: "Do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the definition of prayer?" It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the "arts" forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it--with a striking lack of discretion. Yet when these speculations were published, films like L'Opinion publique and The Gold Rush had already appeared. This, however, did not keep Abel Gance from adducing hieroglyphs for purposes of comparison, nor S6verin-Mars from speaking of the film as one might speak of paintings by Fra Angelico. Characteristically, even today ultrareactionary authors give the film a similar contextual significance--if not an outright sacred one, then at least a supernatural one. Commenting on Max Reinhardt's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Werfel states that undoubtedly it was the sterile copying of the exterior world with its streets, interiors, railroad stations, restaurants, motorcars, and beaches which until now had obstructed the elevation of the film to the realm of art. "The film has not yet realized its true meaning, its real possibilities... these consist in its unique faculty to express by natural means and with incomparable persuasiveness all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural."<br />VIIIThe artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by a camera, with a twofold consequence. The camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole. Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its position with respect to the perfor­mance. The sequence of positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. This is the first consequence of the fact that the actor's performance is presented by means of a camera. Also, the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor. The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.<br />IXFor the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else. One of the first to sense the actor's metamorphosis by this form of testing was Pirandello. Though his remarks on the subject in his novel Si Gira were limited to the negative aspects of the question and to the silent film only, this hardly impairs their validity. For in this respect, the sound film did not change anything essential. What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance--in the case of the sound film, for two of them. "The film actor," wrote Pirandello, "feels as if in exile--exiled not only from the stage but also from himself. With a vague sense of discomfort he feels inexplicable emptiness: his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence .... The projector will play with his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera." This situation might also be characterized as follows: for the first time--and this is the effect of the film--man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.<br />It is not surprising that it should be a dramatist such as Pirandello who, in characterizing the film, inadvertently touches on the very crisis in which we see the theater. Any thorough study proves that there is indeed no greater contrast than that of the stage play to a work of art that is completely subject to or, like the film, founded in, mechanical reproduction. Experts have long recognized that in the film "the greatest effects are almost always obtained by 'acting' as little as possible .... " In 1932 Rudolf Arnheim saw "the latest trend... in treating the actor as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and... inserted at the proper place." With this idea something else is closely connected. The stage actor identifies himself with the character of his role. The film actor very often is denied this opportunity. His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is composed of many separate performances. Besides certain fortuitous considerations, such as cost of studio, availability of fellow players, d~cor, etc., there are elementary necessities of equipment that split the actor's work into a series of mountable episodes. In particular, lighting and its installation require the presentation of an event that, on the screen, unfolds as a rapid and unified scene, in a sequence of separate shootings which may take hours at the studio; not to mention more obvious montage. Thus a jump from the window can be shot in the studio as a jump from a scaffold, and the ensuing flight, if need be, can be shot weeks later when outdoor scenes are taken. Far more paradoxical cases can easily be construed. Let us assume that an actor is supposed to be startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory, the director can resort to an expedient: when the actor happens to be at the studio again he has a shot fired behind him without his being forewarned of it. The frightened reaction can be shot now and be cut into the screen version. Nothing more strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the "beautiful semblance" which, so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive.<br /><br />XThe feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one's own image in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become separable, transportable. And where is it transported? Before the public. Never for a moment does the screen actor cease to be conscious of this fact. While facing the camera he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory. This may contribute to that oppression, that new anxiety which, according to Pirandello, grips the actor before the camera. The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the "personality" outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the "spell of the personality," the phony spell of a commodity. So long as the movie-makers' capital sets the fashion, as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today's film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art. We do not deny that in some cases today's films can also promote revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property. However, our present study is no more specifically concerned with this than is the film production of Western Europe.<br />It is inherent in the technique of the film as well as that of sports that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert. This is obvious to anyone listening to a group of newspaper boys leaning on their bicycles and discussing the outcome of a bicycle race. It is not for nothing that newspaper publishers arrange races for their delivery boys. These arouse great interest among the participants, for the victor has an opportunity to rise from delivery boy to professional racer. Similarly, the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra. In this way any man might even find himself part of a work of art, as witness Vertofl's Three Songs About Lenin or Iven's Borinage. Any man today can lay claim to being filmed. This claim can best be elucidated by a comparative look at the historical situation of contemporary literature.<br />For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writ-ers-at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor." And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man's ability to perform the work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property.<br />All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly in Russia, this change-over has partially become established reality. Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselvesmand primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.<br /><br /><br />XIThe shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery, staff assistants, etc.--unless his eye were on a line parallel with the lens. This circumstance, more than any other, renders superficial and insignificant any possible similarity between a scene in the studio and one on the stage. In the theater one is well aware of the place from which the play cannot immediately be detected as illusionary. There is no such place for the movie scene that is being shot. Its illusionary nature is that of the second degree, the result of cutting. That is to say, in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its pure aspect freed from the foreign substance of equipment is the result of a special procedure, namely, the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the shot together with other similar ones. The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.<br />Even more revealing is the comparison of these circumstances, which differ so much from those of the theater, with the situation in painting. Here the question is: How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the cau­tion with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magi-cian-who is still hidden in the medical practitioner--the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him.<br />Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.<br />XIIMechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to pro­duce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest they control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by pho­tography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses.<br />Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today. Although this circumstance in itself should not lead one to conclusions about the social role of painting, it does constitute a serious threat as soon as painting, under special conditions and, as it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses. In the churches and monasteries of the Middle Ages and at the princely courts up to the end of the eighteenth century, a collective reception of paintings did not occur simultaneously, but by graduated and hierarchized mediation. The change that has come about is an expression of the particular conflict in which painting was implicated by the mechanical repro-ducibility of paintings. Although paintings began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons, there was no way for the masses to organize and control themselves in their reception. Thus the same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.<br /><br />XIIIThe characteristics of the film lie not only in the manner in which man presents himself to mechanical equipment but also in the manner in which, by means of this apparatus, man can represent his environment. A glance at occupational psychology illustrates the testing capacity of the equipment. Psychoanalysis illustrates it in a different perspective. The film has enriched our field of perception with methods which can be illustrated by those of Freudian theory. Fifty years ago, a slip of the tongue passed more or less unnoticed. Only exceptionally may such a slip have revealed dimensions of depth in a conversation which had seemed to be taking its course on the surface. Since the Psychopathology of Everyday Life things have changed. This book isolated and made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception. For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of apperception. It is only an obverse of this fact that behavior items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely and from more points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In comparison with the stage scene, the filmed behavior item lends itself more readily to analysis because it can be isolated more easily. This circumstance derives its chief importance from its tendency to promote the mutual penetration of art and science. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film.<br />By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring common place milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones "which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions." Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye--if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person's posture during the fractional second of a stride. The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to mention how this fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, it extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.<br /><br />XIVOne of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial--and literary--means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.<br />Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry beyond its goal. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the film in favor of higher ambitions--though of course it was not conscious of such intentions as here described. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are "word salad" containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behav­ior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct. Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public.<br />From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: "I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images." The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind. By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.<br />XVThe mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet some people have launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. Among these, Duhamel has expressed him-selfin the most radical manner. What he objects to most is the kind of participation which the movie elicits from the masses. Duhamel calls the movie "a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles." Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace.<br />The question remains whether it provides a platform for the analysis of the film. A closer look is needed here. Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of an the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.<br />Buildings have been man's companions since primeval times. Many art forms have developed and perished. Tragedy begins with the Greeks, is extinguished with them, and after centuries its "rules" only are revived. The epic poem, which had its origin in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception--or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered grad­ually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.<br />The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true .means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.<br />EPILOGUEThe growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Fiihrer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.<br />All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war:<br />"For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaes-thetic .... Accordingly we state:... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying mega­phones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architec­ture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others .... Poets and artists of Futurism! ... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art... may be illumined by them!"<br />This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today's war appears as follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production--in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of "human material," the claims to which society has denied its natural materrial. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.<br />"Fiat ars - pereat mundus," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "l'art pour l'art." Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.<br /> </span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-9086513507058366652011-03-09T04:18:00.000-08:002011-03-13T22:52:00.650-07:00Myth Today<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0nWnaZ-AC5IZybe9SVGHk8THJaOSfo9E18C-k8hYWdTMvaAs2KwvvnA8qkhxqJ-AL9WIbx3V7YGcsT0o4yhsYx6NH_vZlgqO8RI6NMeJi7aXotTd4pGcZN6Ey3-F_aKP3m0IYHgVu-NJ/s1600/paris_match.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583807877916276018" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 238px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0nWnaZ-AC5IZybe9SVGHk8THJaOSfo9E18C-k8hYWdTMvaAs2KwvvnA8qkhxqJ-AL9WIbx3V7YGcsT0o4yhsYx6NH_vZlgqO8RI6NMeJi7aXotTd4pGcZN6Ey3-F_aKP3m0IYHgVu-NJ/s320/paris_match.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUs_HpqSq-ExLI7Zm9Mf7_3FAPQgiNxSdybCN-ofCSWCdcekiR0Tisi8kSoHd_Lp8frJK3wFWTnCSuENLOIQSFxdNtyW1QiPncVRC3odQM7QK6t6EG91q8aQgXM4PghNZz3Y2bLhQFMZoQ/s1600/barthlev.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582062482082837746" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 246px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 117px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUs_HpqSq-ExLI7Zm9Mf7_3FAPQgiNxSdybCN-ofCSWCdcekiR0Tisi8kSoHd_Lp8frJK3wFWTnCSuENLOIQSFxdNtyW1QiPncVRC3odQM7QK6t6EG91q8aQgXM4PghNZz3Y2bLhQFMZoQ/s400/barthlev.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">from Mythologies by Roland Barthes (1957)<br />translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang<br /><br />What is a myth, today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer, which is perfectly consistent with etymology: myth is a type of speech.1<br /><br />Myth is a type of speech<br /><br />Of course, it is not any type: language needs special conditions in order to become myth: we shall see them in a minute. But what must be firmly established at the start is that myth is a system of communication, that it is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form. Later, we shall have to assign to this form historical limits, conditions of use, and reintroduce society into it: we must nevertheless first describe it as a form.<br /><br />It can be seen that to purport to discriminate among mythical objects according to their substance would be entirely illusory: since myth is a type of speech, everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse. Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message: there are formal limits to myth, there are no 'substantial' ones. Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self- indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter.<br /><br />Naturally, everything is not expressed at the same time: some objects become the prey of mythical speech for a while, then they disappear, others take their place and attain the status of myth. Are there objects which are inevitably a source of suggestiveness, as Baudelaire suggested about Woman? Certainly not: one can conceive of very ancient myths, but there are no eternal ones; for it is human history which converts reality into speech, and it alone rules the life and the death of mythical language. Ancient or not, mythology can only have an historical foundation, for myth is a type of speech chosen by history: it cannot possibly evolve from the 'nature' of things.<br /><br />Speech of this kind is a message. It is therefore by no means confined to oral speech. It can consist of modes of writing or of representations; not only written discourse, but also photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity, all these can serve as a support to mythical speech. Myth can be defined neither by its object nor by its material, for any material can arbitrarily be endowed with meaning: the arrow which is brought in order to signify a challenge is also a kind of speech. True, as far as perception is concerned, writing and pictures, for instance, do not call upon the same type of consciousness; and even with pictures, one can use many kinds of reading: a diagram lends itself to signification more than a drawing, a copy more than an original, and a caricature more than a portrait. But this is the point: we are no longer dealing here with a theoretical mode of representation: we are dealing with this particular image, which is given for this particular signification. Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication: it is because all the materials of myth (whether pictorial or written) presuppose a signifying consciousness, that one can reason about them while discounting their substance. This substance is not unimportant: pictures, to be sure, are more imperative than writing, they impose meaning at one stroke, without analyzing or diluting it. But this is no longer a constitutive difference. Pictures become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful: like writing, they call for a lexis.<br /><br />We shall therefore take language, discourse, speech, etc., to mean any significant unit or synthesis, whether verbal or visual: a photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article; even objects will become speech, if they mean something. This generic way of conceiving language is in fact justified by the very history of writing: long before the invention of our alphabet, objects like the Inca quipu, or drawings, as in pictographs, have been accepted as speech. This does not mean that one must treat mythical speech like language; myth in fact belongs to the province of a general science, coextensive with linguistics, which is semiology.<br /><br />Myth as a semiological system<br />For mythology, since it is the study of a type of speech, is but one fragment of this vast science of signs which Saussure postulated some forty years ago under the name of semiology. Semiology has not yet come into being. But since Saussure himself, and sometimes independently of him, a whole section of contemporary research has constantly been referred to the problem of meaning: psycho-analysis, structuralism, eidetic psychology, some new types of literary criticism of which Bachelard has given the first examples, are no longer concerned with facts except inasmuch as they are endowed with significance. Now to postulate a signification is to have recourse to semiology. I do not mean that semiology could account for all these aspects of research equally well: they have different contents. But they have a common status: they are all sciences dealing with values. They are not content with meeting the facts: they define and explore them as tokens for something else.<br /><br />Semiology is a science of forms, since it studies significations apart from their content. I should like to say one word about the necessity and the limits of such a formal science. The necessity is that which applies in the case of any exact language. Zhdanov made fun of Alexandrov the philosopher, who spoke of 'the spherical structure of our planet.' 'It was thought until now', Zhdanov said, 'that form alone could be spherical.' Zhdanov was right: one cannot speak about structures in terms of forms, and vice versa. It may well be that on the plane of 'life', there is but a totality where structures and forms cannot be separated. But science has no use for the ineffable: it must speak about 'life' if it wants to transform it. Against a certain quixotism of synthesis, quite platonic incidentally, all criticism must consent to the ascesis, to the artifice of analysis; and in analysis, it must match method and language. Less terrorized by the specter of 'formalism', historical criticism might have been less sterile; it would have understood that the specific study of forms does not in any way contradict the necessary principles of totality and History. On the contrary: the more a system is specifically defined in its forms, the more amenable it is to historical criticism. To parody a well-known saying, I shall say that a little formalism turns one away from History, but that a lot brings one back to it. Is there a better example of total criticism than the description of saintliness, at once formal and historical, semiological and ideological, in Sartre's Saint- Genet? The danger, on the contrary, is to consider forms as ambiguous objects, half- form and half-substance, to endow form with a substance of form, as was done, for instance, by Zhdanovian realism. Semiology, once its limits are settled, is not a metaphysical trap: it is a science among others, necessary but not sufficient. The important thing is to see that the unity of an explanation cannot be based on the amputation of one or other of its approaches, but, as Engels said, on the dialectical co-ordination of the particular sciences it makes use of. This is the case with mythology: it is a part both of semiology inasmuch as it is a formal science, and of ideology inasmuch as it is an historical science: it studies ideas-in-form.2<br /><br />Let me therefore restate that any semiology postulates a relation between two terms, a signifier and a signified. This relation concerns objects which belong to different categories, and this is why it is not one of equality but one of equivalence. We must here be on our guard for despite common parlance which simply says that the signifier expresses the signified, we are dealing, in any semiological system, not with two, but with three different terms. For what we grasp is not at all one term after the other, but the correlation which unites them: there are, therefore, the signifier, the signified and the sign, which is the associative total of the first two terms. Take a bunch of roses: I use it to signify my passion. Do we have here, then, only a signifier and a signified, the roses and my passion? Not even that: to put it accurately, there are here only 'passionified' roses. But on the plane of analysis, we do have three terms; for these roses weighted with passion perfectly and correctly allow themselves to be decomposed into roses and passion: the former and the latter existed before uniting and forming this third object, which is the sign. It is as true to say that on the plane of experience I cannot dissociate the roses from the message they carry, as to say that on the plane of analysis I cannot confuse the roses as signifier and the roses as sign: the signifier is empty, the sign is full, it is a meaning. Or take a black pebble: I can make it signify in several ways, it is a mere signifier; but if I weigh it with a definite signified (a death sentence, for instance, in an anonymous vote), it will become a sign. Naturally, there are between the signifier, the signified and the sign, functional implications (such as that of the part to the whole) which are so close that to analyses them may seem futile; but we shall see in a moment that this distinction has a capital importance for the study of myth as semiological schema.<br /><br />Naturally these three terms are purely formal, and different contents can be given to them. Here are a few examples: for Saussure, who worked on a particular but methodologically exemplary semiological system--the language or langue--the signified is the concept, the signifier is the acoustic image (which is mental) and the relation between concept and image is the sign (the word, for instance), which is a concrete entity.3 For Freud, as is well known, the human psyche is a stratification of tokens or representatives. One term (I refrain from giving it any precedence) is constituted by the manifest meaning of behavior, another, by its latent or real meaning (it is, for instance, the substratum of the dream); as for the third term, it is here also a correlation of the first two: it is the dream itself in its totality, the parapraxis (a mistake in speech or behavior) or the neurosis, conceived as compromises, as economies effected thanks to the joining of a form (the first term) and an intentional function (the second term). We can see here how necessary it is to distinguish the sign from the signifier: a dream, to Freud, is no more its manifest datum than its latent content: it is the functional union of these two terms. In Sartrean criticism, finally (I shall keep to these three well known examples), the signified is constituted by the original crisis in the subject (the separation from his mother for Baudelaire, the naming of the theft for Genet); Literature as discourse forms the signifier; and the relation between crisis and discourse defines the work, which is a signification. Of course, this tri-dimensional pattern, however constant in its form, is actualized in different ways: one cannot therefore say too often that semiology can have its unity only at the level of forms, not contents; its field is limited, it knows only one operation: reading, or deciphering.<br /><br />In myth, we find again the tri-dimensional pattern which I have just described: the signifier, the signified and the sign. But myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second-order semiological system. That which is a sign (namely the associative total of a concept and an image) in the first system, becomes a mere signifier in the second. We must here recall that the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth. Myth sees in them only the same raw material; their unity is that they all come down to the status of a mere language. Whether it deals with alphabetical or pictorial writing, myth wants to see in them only a sum of signs, a global sign, the final term of a first semiological chain. And it is precisely this final term which will become the first term of the greater system which it builds and of which it is only a part. Everything happens as if myth shifted the formal system of the first significations sideways. As this lateral shift is essential for the analysis of myth, I shall represent it in the following way, it being understood, of course, that the spatialization of the pattern is here only a metaphor:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />[the following is a stripped-down representation of Barthes's original diagram]<br /><br />Language </span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br />MYTH<br /><br />It can be seen that in myth there are two semiological systems, one of which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language (or the modes of representation which are assimilated to it), which I shall call the language-object, because it is the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own system; and myth itself, which I shall call metalanguage, because it is a second language, in which one speaks about the first. When he reflects on a metalanguage, the semiologist no longer needs to ask himself questions about the composition of the language object, he no longer has to take into account the details of the linguistic schema; he will only need to know its total term, or global sign, and only inasmuch as this term lends itself to myth. This is why the semiologist is entitled to treat in the same way writing and pictures: what he retains from them is the fact that they are both signs, that they both reach the threshold of myth endowed with the same signifying function, that they constitute, one just as much as the other, a language-object.<br /><br />It is now time to give one or two examples of mythical speech. I shall borrow the first from an observation by Valery.4 I am a pupil in the second form in a French lycee. I open my Latin grammar, and I read a sentence, borrowed from Aesop or Phaedrus: quia ego nominor leo. I stop and think. There is something ambiguous about this statement: on the one hand, the words in it do have a simple meaning: because my name is lion. And on the other hand, the sentence is evidently there in order to signify something else to me. Inasmuch as it is addressed to me, a pupil in the second form, it tells me clearly: I am a grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the agreement of the predicate. I am even forced to realize that the sentence in no way signifies its meaning to me, that it tries very little to tell me something about the lion and what sort of name he has; its true and fundamental signification is to impose itself on me as the presence of a certain agreement of the predicate. I conclude that I am faced with a particular, greater, semiological system, since it is co-extensive with the language: there is, indeed, a signifier, but this signifier is itself formed by a sum of signs, it is in itself a first semiological system (my name is lion). Thereafter, the formal pattern is correctly unfolded: there is a signified (I am a grammatical example) and there is a global signification, which is none other than the correlation of the signifier and the signified; for neither the naming of the lion nor the grammatical example are given separately.<br /><br />And here is now another example: I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris- Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so- called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier.<br /><br /><br />Before tackling the analysis of each term of the mythical system, one must agree on terminology. We now know that the signifier can be looked at, in myth, from two points of view: as the final term of the linguistic system, or as the first term of the mythical system. We therefore need two names. On the plane of language, that is, as the final term of the first system, I shall call the signifier: meaning (my name is lion, a Negro is giving the French salute); on the plane of myth, I shall call it: form. In the case of the signified, no ambiguity is possible: we shall retain the name concept. The third term is the correlation of the first two: in the linguistic system, it is the sign; but it is not possible to use this word again without ambiguity, since in myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language. I shall call the third term of myth the signification. This word is here all the better justified since myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us.<br /><br />The form and the concept<br />The signifier of myth presents itself in an ambiguous way: it is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other. As meaning, the signifier already postulates a reading, I grasp it through my eyes, it has a sensory reality (unlike the linguistic signifier, which is purely mental), there is a richness in it: the naming of the lion, the Negro's salute are credible wholes, they have at their disposal a sufficient rationality. As a total of linguistic signs, the meaning of the myth has its own value, it belongs to a history, that of the lion or that of the Negro: in the meaning, a signification is already built, and could very well be self-sufficient if myth did not take hold of it and did not turn it suddenly into an empty, parasitical form. The meaning is already complete, it postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions.<br /><br />When it becomes form, the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the letter remains. There is here a paradoxical permutation in the reading operations, an abnormal regression from meaning to form, from the linguistic sign to the mythical signifier. If one encloses quia ego nominor leo in a purely linguistic system, the clause finds again there a fullness, a richness, a history: I am an animal, a lion, I live in a certain country, I have just been hunting, they would have me share my prey with a heifer, a cow and a goat; but being the stronger, I award myself all the shares for various reasons, the last of which is quite simply that my name is lion. But as the form of the myth, the clause hardly retains anything of this long story. The meaning contained a whole system of values: a history, a geography, a morality, a zoology, a Literature. The form has put all this richness at a distance: its newly acquired penury calls for a signification to fill it. The story of the lion must recede a great deal in order to make room for the grammatical example, one must put the biography of the Negro in parentheses if one wants to free the picture, and prepare it to receive its signified.<br /><br />But the essential point in all this is that the form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance, it holds it at one's disposal. One believes that the meaning is going to die, but it is a death with reprieve; the meaning loses its value, but keeps its life, from which the form of the myth will draw its nourishment. The meaning will be for the form like an instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness, which it is possible to call and dismiss in a sort of rapid alternation: the form must constantly be able to be rooted again in the meaning and to get there what nature it needs for its nutriment; above all, it must be able to hide there. It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth. The form of myth is not a symbol: the Negro who salutes is not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence, he appears as a rich, fully experienced, spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same time this presence is tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes the accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality: once made use of, it becomes artificial.<br /><br />Let us now look at the signified: this history which drains out of the form will be wholly absorbed by the concept. As for the latter, it is determined, it is at once historical and intentional; it is the motivation which causes the myth to be uttered. Grammatical exemplarity, French imperiality, are the very drives behind the myth. The concept reconstitutes a chain of causes and effects, motives and intentions. Unlike the form, the concept is in no way abstract: it is filled with a situation. Through the concept, it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth. Into the naming of the lion, first drained of its contingency, the grammatical example will attract my whole existence: Time, which caused me to be born at a certain period when Latin grammar is taught; History, which sets me apart, through a whole mechanism of social segregation, from the children who do not learn Latin; pedagogic tradition, which caused this example to be chosen from Aesop or Phaedrus; my own linguistic habits, which see the agreement of the predicate as a fact worthy of notice and illustration. The same goes for the Negro-giving-the-salute: as form, its meaning is shallow, isolated, impoverished; as the concept of French imperiality, here it is again tied to the totality of the world: to the general History of France, to its colonial adventures, to its present difficulties. Truth to tell, what is invested in the concept is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality; in passing from the meaning to the form, the image loses some knowledge: the better to receive the knowledge in the concept. In actual fact, the knowledge contained in a mythical concept is confused, made of yielding, shapeless associations. One must firmly stress this open character of the concept; it is not at all an abstract, purified essence, it is a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation, whose unity and coherence are above all due to its function.<br /><br />In this sense, we can say that the fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriated: grammatical exemplarity very precisely concerns a given form of pupils, French imperiality must appeal to such and such group of readers and not another. The concept closely corresponds to a function, it is defined as a tendency. This cannot fail to recall the signified in another semiological system, Freudianism. In Freud, the second term of the system is the latent meaning (the content) of the dream, of the parapraxis, of the neurosis. Now Freud does remark that the second-order meaning of behavior is its real meaning, that which is appropriate to a complete situation, including its deeper level; it is, just like the mythical concept, the very intention of behavior.<br /><br />A signified can have several signifiers: this is indeed the case in linguistics and psycho-analysis. It is also the case in the mythical concept: it has at its disposal an unlimited mass of signifiers: I can find a thousand Latin sentences to actualize for me the agreement of the predicate, I can find a thousand images which signify to me French imperiality. This means that quantitively, the concept is much poorer than the signifier, it often does nothing but re-present itself. Poverty and richness are in reverse proportion in the form and the concept: to the qualitative poverty of the form, which is the repository of a rarefied meaning, there corresponds the richness of the concept which is open to the whole of History; and to the quantitative abundance of the forms there corresponds a small number of concepts. This repetition of the concept through different forms is precious to the mythologist, it allows him to decipher the myth: it is the insistence of a kind of behavior which reveals its intention. This confirms that there is no regular ratio between the volume of the signified and that of the signifier. In language, this ratio is proportionate, it hardly exceeds the word, or at least the concrete unit. In myth, on the contrary, the concept can spread over a very large expanse of signifier. For instance, a whole book may be the signifier of a single concept; and conversely, a minute form (a word, a gesture, even incidental, so long as it is noticed) can serve as signifier to a concept filled with a very rich history. Although unusual in language, this disproportion between signifier and signified is not specific to myth: in Freud, for instance, the parapraxis is a signifier whose thinness is out of proportion to the real meaning which it betrays.<br /><br />As I said, there is no fixity in mythical concepts: they can come into being, alter, disintegrate, disappear completely. And it is precisely because they are historical that history can very easily suppress them. This instability forces the mythologist to use a terminology adapted to it, and about which I should now like to say a word, because it often is a cause for irony: I mean neologism. The concept is a constituting element of myth: if I want to decipher myths, I must somehow be able to name concepts. The dictionary supplies me with a few: Goodness, Kindness, Wholeness, Humaneness, etc. But by definition, since it is the dictionary which gives them to me, these particular concepts are not historical. Now what I need most often is ephemeral concepts, in connection with limited contingencies: neologism is then inevitable. China is one thing, the idea which a French petit bourgeois could have of it not so long ago is another: for this peculiar mixture of bells, rickshaws and opium-dens, no other word possible but Sininess.5 Unlovely? One should at least get some consolation from the fact that conceptual neologisms are never arbitrary: they are built according to a highly sensible proportional rule.<br /><br />The signification<br />In semiology, the third term is nothing but the association of the first two, as we saw. It is the only one which is allowed to be seen in a full and satisfactory way, the only one which is consumed in actual fact. I have called it: the signification. We can see that the signification is the myth itself, just as the Saussurean sign is the word (or more accurately the concrete unit). But before listing the characters of the signification, one must reflect a little on the way in which it is prepared, that is, on the modes of correlation of the mythical concept and the mythical form.<br /><br />First we must note that in myth, the first two terms are perfectly manifest (unlike what happens in other semiological systems): one of them is not 'hidden' behind the other, they are both given here (and not one here and the other there). However paradoxical it may seem, myth hides nothing: its function is to distort, not to make disappear. There is no latency of the concept in relation to the form: there is no need of an unconscious in order to explain myth. Of course, one is dealing with two different types of manifestation: form has a literal, immediate presence; moreover, it is extended. This stems--this cannot be repeated too often--from the nature of the mythical signifier, which is already linguistic: since it is constituted by a meaning which is already outlined, it can appear only through a given substance (whereas in language, the signifier remains mental). In the case of oral myth, this extension is linear (for my name is lion); in that of visual myth, it is multi-dimensional (in the center, the Negro's uniform, at the top, the blackness of his face, on the left, the military salute, etc.). The elements of the form therefore are related as to place and proximity: the mode of presence of the form is spatial. The concept, on the contrary, appears in global fashion, it is a kind of nebula, the condensation, more or less hazy, of a certain knowledge. Its elements are linked by associative relations: it is supported not by an extension but by a depth (although this metaphor is perhaps still too spatial): its mode of presence is memorial.<br /><br />The relation which unites the concept of the myth to its meaning is essentially a relation of deformation. We find here again a certain formal analogy with a complex semiological system such as that of the various types of psycho-analysis. Just as for Freud the manifest meaning of behavior is distorted by its latent meaning, in myth the meaning is distorted by the concept. Of course, this distortion is possible only because the form of the myth is already constituted by a linguistic meaning. In a simple system like the language, the signified cannot distort anything at all because the signifier, being empty, arbitrary, offers no resistance to it. But here, everything is different: the signifier has, so to speak, two aspects: one full, which is the meaning (the history of the lion, of the Negro soldier), one empty, which is the form (for my name is lion; Negro-French- soldier-saluting-the-tricolor). What the concept distorts is of course what is full, the meaning: the lion and the Negro are deprived of their history, changed into gestures. What Latin exemplarity distorts is the naming of the lion, in all its contingency; and what French imperiality obscures is also a primary language, a factual discourse which was telling me about the salute of a Negro in uniform. But this distortion is not an obliteration: the lion and the Negro remain here, the concept needs them; they are half-amputated, they are deprived of memory, not of existence: they are at once stubborn, silently rooted there, and garrulous, a speech wholly at the service of the concept. The concept, literally, deforms, but does not abolish the meaning; a word can-perfectly render this contradiction: it alienates it.<br /><br />What must always be remembered is that myth is a double system; there occurs in it a sort of ubiquity: its point of departure is constituted by the arrival of a meaning. To keep a spatial metaphor, the approximative character of which I have already stressed, I shall say that the signification of the myth is constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier and its form, a language object and a metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness. This alternation is, so to speak, gathered up in the concept, which uses it like an ambiguous signifier, at once intellective and imaginary, arbitrary and natural.<br /><br />I do not wish to prejudge the moral implications of such a mechanism, but I shall not exceed the limits of an objective analysis if I point out that the ubiquity of the signifier in myth exactly reproduces the physique of the alibi (which is, as one realizes, a spatial term): in the alibi too, there is a place which is full and one which is empty, linked by a relation of negative identity ('I am not where you think I am; I am where you think I am not'). But the ordinary alibi (for the police, for instance) has an end; reality stops the turnstile revolving at a certain point. Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere' at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. In the same way, if I am in a car and I look at the scenery through the window, I can at will focus on the scenery or on the window-pane. At one moment I grasp the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparency of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the landscape unreal and full. The same thing occurs in the mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full. To wonder at this contradiction I must voluntarily interrupt this turnstile of form and meaning, I must focus on each separately, and apply to myth a static method of deciphering, in short, I must go against its own dynamics: to sum up, I must pass from the state of reader to that of mythologist.<br /><br />And it is again this duplicity of the signifier which determines the characters of the signification. We now know that myth is a type of speech defined by its intention (I am a grammatical example) much more than by its literal sense (my name is lion); and that in spite of this, its intention is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this literal sense (The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good Negro who salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity of mythical speech has two consequences for the signification, which henceforth appears both like a notification and like a statement of fact.<br /><br />Myth has an imperative, buttonholing character: stemming from an historical concept, directly springing from contingency (a Latin class, a threatened Empire), it is I whom it has come to seek. It is turned towards me, I am subjected to its intentional force, it summons me to receive its expansive ambiguity. If, for instance, I take a walk in Spain, in the Basque country,6 I may well notice in the houses an architectural unity, a common style, which leads me to acknowledge the Basque house as a definite ethnic product. However, I do not feel personally concerned, nor, so to speak, attacked by this unitary style: I see only too well that it was here before me, without me. It is a complex product which has its determinations at the level of a very wide history: it does not call out to me, it does not provoke me into naming it, except if I think of inserting it into a vast picture of rural habitat. But if I am in the Paris region and I catch a glimpse, at the end of the rue Gambetta or the rue Jean-Jaures, of a natty white chalet with red tiles, dark brown half-timbering, an asymmetrical roof and a wattle-and-daub front, I feel as if I were personally receiving an imperious injunction to name this object a Basque chalet: or even better, to see it as the very essence of basquity. This is because the concept appears to me in all its appropriative nature: it comes and seeks me out in order to oblige me to acknowledge the body of intentions which have motivated it and arranged it there as the signal of an individual history, as a confidence and a complicity: it is a real call, which the owners of the chalet send out to me. And this call, in order to be more imperious, has agreed to all manner of impoverishments: all that justified the Basque house on the plane of technology--the barn, the outside stairs, the dove-cote, etc.--has been dropped; there remains only a brief order, not to be disputed. And the abomination is so frank that I feel this chalet has just been created on the spot, for me, like a magical object springing up in my present life without any trace of the history which has caused it.<br /><br />For this interpellant speech is at the same time a frozen speech: at the moment of reaching me, it suspends itself, turns away and assumes the look of a generality: it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent. The appropriation of the concept is suddenly driven away once more by the literalness of the meaning. This is a kind of arrest, in both the physical and the legal sense of the term: French imperiality condemns the saluting Negro to be nothing more than an instrumental signifier, the Negro suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the Negro's salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant to establish French imperiality. On the surface of language something has stopped moving: the use of the signification is here, hiding behind the fact, and conferring on it a notifying look; but at the same time, the fact paralyses the intention, gives it something like a malaise producing immobility: in order to make it innocent, it freezes it. This is because myth is speech stolen and restored. Only, speech which is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put exactly in its place. It is this brief act of larceny, this moment taken for a surreptitious faking, which gives mythical speech its benumbed look.<br /><br />One last element of the signification remains to be examined: its motivation. We know that in a language, the sign is arbitrary: nothing compels the acoustic image tree 'naturally' to mean the concept tree: the sign, here, is unmotivated. Yet this arbitrariness has limits, which come from the associative relations of the word: the language can produce a whole fragment of the sign by analogy with other signs (for instance one says amiable in French, and not amable, by analogy with aime). The mythical signification, on the other hand, is never arbitrary; it is always in part motivated, and unavoidably contains some analogy. For Latin exemplarity to meet the naming of the lion, there must be an analogy, which is the agreement of the predicate; for French imperiality to get hold of the saluting Negro, there must be identity between the Negro's salute and that of the French soldier. Motivation is necessary to the very duplicity of myth: myth plays on the analogy between meaning and form, there is no myth without motivated form.7 In order to grasp the power of motivation in myth, it is enough to reflect for a moment on an extreme case. I have here before me a collection of objects so lacking in order that I can find no meaning in it; it would seem that here, deprived of any previous meaning, the form could not root its analogy in anything, and that myth is impossible. But what the form can always give one to read is disorder itself: it can give a signification to the absurd, make the absurd itself a myth. This is what happens when commonsense mythifies surrealism, for instance. Even the absence of motivation does not embarrass myth; for this absence will itself be sufficiently objectified to become legible: and finally, the absence of motivation will become a second-order motivation, and myth will be re-established.<br /><br />Motivation is unavoidable. It is none the less very fragmentary. To start with, it is not 'natural': it is history which supplies its analogies to the form. Then, the analogy between the meaning and the concept is never anything but partial: the form drops many analogous features and keeps only a few: it keeps the sloping roof, the visible beams in the Basque chalet, it abandons the stairs, the barn, the weathered look, etc. One must even go further: a complete image would exclude myth, or at least would compel it to seize only its very completeness. This is just what happens in the case of bad painting, which is wholly based on the myth of what is 'filled out' and 'finished' (it is the opposite and symmetrical case of the myth of the absurd: here, the form mythifies an 'absence', there, a surplus). But in general myth prefers to work with poor, incomplete images, where the meaning is already relieved of its fat, and ready for a signification, such as caricatures, pastiches, symbols, etc. Finally, the motivation is chosen among other possible ones: I can very well give to French imperiality many other signifiers beside a Negro's salute: a French general pins a decoration on a one-armed Senegalese, a nun hands a cup of tea to a bed-ridden Arab, a white school- master teaches attentive pickaninnies: the press undertakes every day to demonstrate that the store of mythical signifiers is inexhaustible.<br /><br />The nature of the mythical signification can in fact be well conveyed by one particular simile: it is neither more nor less arbitrary than an ideograph. Myth is a pure ideographic system, where the forms are still motivated by the concept which they represent while not yet, by a long way, covering the sum of its possibilities for representation. And just as, historically, ideographs have gradually left the concept and have become associated with the sound, thus growing less and less motivated, the worn out state of a myth can be recognized by the arbitrariness of its signification: the whole of Moliere is seen in a doctor's ruff.<br /><br />Reading and deciphering myth<br />How is a myth received? We must here once more come back to the duplicity of its signifier, which is at once meaning and form. I can produce three different types of reading by focusing on the one, or the other, or both at the same time.8<br /><br />I. If I focus on an empty signifier, I let the concept fill the form of the myth without ambiguity, and I find myself before a simple system, where the signification becomes literal again: the Negro who salutes is an example of French imperiality, he is a symbol for it. This type of focusing is, for instance, that of the producer of myths, of the journalist who starts with a concept and seeks a form for it.9<br /><br />2. If I focus on a full signifier, in which I clearly distinguish the meaning and the form, and consequently the distortion which the one imposes on the other, I undo the signification of the myth, and I receive the latter as an imposture: the saluting Negro becomes the alibi of French imperiality. This type of focusing is that of the mythologist: he deciphers the myth, he understands a distortion.<br /><br />3. Finally, if I focus on the mythical signifier as on an inextricable whole made of meaning and form, I receive an ambiguous signification: I respond to the constituting mechanism of myth, to its own dynamics, I become a reader of myths. The saluting Negro is no longer an example or a symbol, still less an alibi: he is the very presence of French imperiality.<br /><br />The first two types of focusing are static, analytical; they destroy the myth, either by making its intention obvious, or by unmasking it: the former is cynical, the latter demystifying. The third type of focusing is dynamic, it consumes the myth according to the very ends built into its structure: the reader lives the myth as a story at once true and unreal.<br /><br />If one wishes to connect a mythical schema to a general history, to explain how it corresponds to the interests of a definite society, in short, to pass from semiology to ideology, it is obviously at the level of the third type of focusing that one must place oneself: it is the reader of myths himself who must reveal their essential function. How does he receive this particular myth today? If he receives it in an innocent fashion, what is the point of proposing it to him? And if he reads it using his powers of reflection, like the mythologist, does it matter which alibi is presented? If the reader does not see French imperiality in the saluting Negro, it was not worth weighing the latter with it; and if he sees it, the myth is nothing more than a political proposition, honestly expressed. In one word, either the intention of the myth is too obscure to be efficacious, or it is too clear to be believed. In either case, where is the ambiguity?<br /><br />This is but a false dilemma. Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflection. Placed before the dilemma which I mentioned a moment ago, myth finds a third way out. Threatened with disappearance if it yields to either of the first two types of focusing, it gets out of this tight spot thanks to a compromise--it is this compromise. Entrusted with 'glossing over' an intentional concept, myth encounters nothing but betrayal in language, for language can only obliterate the concept if it hides it, or unmask it if it formulates it. The elaboration of a second-order semiological system will enable myth to escape this dilemma: driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it.<br /><br />We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature. We now understand why, in the eyes of the myth consumer, the intention, the adhomination of the concept can remain manifest without however appearing to have an interest in the matter: what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but it is immediately frozen into something natural; it is not read as a motive, but as a reason. If I read the Negro-saluting as symbol pure and simple of imperiality, I must renounce the reality of the picture, it discredits itself in my eyes when it becomes an instrument. Conversely, if I decipher the Negro's salute as an alibi of coloniality, I shatter the myth even more surely by the obviousness of its motivation. But for the myth-reader, the outcome is quite different: everything happens as if the picture naturally conjured up the concept, as if the signifier gave a foundation to the signified: the myth exists from the precise moment when French imperiality achieves the natural state: myth is speech justified in excess.<br /><br />Here is a new example which will help understand clearly how the myth-reader is led to rationalize the signified by means of the signifier. We are in the month of July, I read a big headline in France-Soir: THE FALL IN PRICES: FIRST INDICATIONS. VEGETABLES: PRICE DROP BEGINS. Let us quickly sketch the semiological schema: the example being a sentence, the first system is purely linguistic. The signifier of the second system is composed here of a certain number of accidents, some lexical (the words: first, begins, the [fall]), some typographical (enormous headlines where the reader usually sees news of world importance). The signified or concept is what must be called by a barbarous but unavoidable neologism: governmentality, the Government presented by the national press as the Essence of efficacy. The signification of the myth follows clearly from this: fruit and vegetable prices are falling because the government has so decided. Now it so happens in this case (and this is on the whole fairly rare) that the newspaper itself has, two lines below, allowed one to see through the myth which it had just elaborated--whether this is due to self-assurance or honesty. It adds (in small type, it is true): 'The fall in prices is helped by the return of seasonal abundance.' This example is instructive for two reasons. Firstly it conspicuously shows that myth essentially aims at causing an immediate impression--it does not matter if one is later allowed to see through the myth, its action is assumed to be stronger than the rationa l explanations which may later belie it. This means that the reading of a myth is exhausted at one stroke. I cast a quick glance at my neighbor's France-Soir: I cull only a meaning there, but I read a true signification; I receive the presence of governmental action in the fall in fruit and vegetable prices. That is all, and that is enough. A more attentive reading of the myth will in no way increase its power or its ineffectiveness: a myth is at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable; time or knowledge will not make it better or worse.<br /><br />Secondly, the naturalization of the concept, which I have just identified as the essential function of myth, is here exemplary. In a first (exclusively linguistic) system, causality would be, literally, natural: fruit and vegetable prices fall because they are in season. In the second (mythical) system, causality is artificial, false; but it creeps, so to speak, through the back door of Nature. This is why myth is experienced as innocent speech: not because its intentions are hidden--if they were hidden, they could not be efficacious--but because they are naturalized.<br /><br />In fact, what allows the reader to consume myth innocently is that he does not see it as a semiological system but as an inductive one. Where there is only an equivalence, he sees a kind of causal process: the signifier and the signified have, in his eyes, a natural relationship. This confusion can be expressed otherwise: any semiological system is a system of values; now the myth consumer takes the signification for a system of facts: myth is read as a factual system, whereas it is but a semiological system.<br /><br />Myth as stolen language<br />What is characteristic of myth? To transform a meaning into form. In other words, myth is always a language-robbery. I rob the Negro who is saluting, the white and brown chalet, the seasonal fall in fruit prices, not to make them into examples or symbols, but to naturalize through them the Empire, my taste for Basque things, the Government. Are all primary languages a prey for myth? Is there no meaning which can resist this capture with which form threatens it? In fact, nothing can be safe from myth, myth can develop its second-order schema from any meaning and, as we saw, start from the very lack of meaning. But all languages do not resist equally well.<br /><br />Articulated language, which is most often robbed by myth, offers little resistance. It contains in itself some mythical dispositions, the outline of a sign-structure meant to manifest the intention which led to its being used: it is what could be called the expressiveness of language. The imperative or the subjunctive mode, for instance, arethe form of a particular signified, different from the meaning: the signified is here my will or my request. This is why some linguists have defined the indicative, forinstance, as a zero state or degree, compared to the subjunctive or the imperative. Now in a fully constituted myth, the meaning is never at zero degree, and this is why the concept can distort it, naturalize it. We must remember once again that the privation of meaning is in no way a zero degree: this is why myth can perfectly well gethold of it, give it for instance the signification of the absurd, of surrealism, etc. At bottom, it would only be the zero degree which could resist myth.<br /><br />Language lends itself to myth in another way: it is very rare that it imposes at the outset a full meaning which it is impossible to distort. This comes from the abstractness of its concept: the concept of tree is vague, it lends itself to multiple contingencies. True, a language always has at its disposal a whole appropriating organization (this tree, the tree which, etc.). But there always remains, around the final meaning, a halo of virtualities where other possible meanings are floating: the meaning can almost always be interpreted. One could say that a language offers to myth an open-work meaning. Myth can easily insinuate itself into it, and swell there: it is a robbery by colonization (for instance: the fall in prices has started. But what fall? That due to the season or that due to the government? the signification becomes here a parasite of the article, in spite of the latter being definite).<br /><br />When the meaning is too full for myth to be able to invade it, myth goes around it, and carries it away bodily. This is what happens to mathematical language. In itself, it cannot be distorted, it has taken all possible precautions against interpretation: no parasitical signification can worm itself into it. And this is why, precisely, myth takes it away en bloc; it takes a certain mathematical formula (E = mc2), and makes of this unalterable meaning the pure signifier of mathematicity. We can see that what is here robbed by myth is something which resists, something pure. Myth can reach everything, corrupt everything, and even the very act of refusing oneself to it. So that the more the language-object resists at first, the greater its final prostitution; whoever here resists completely yields completely: Einstein on one side, Paris-Match on the other. One can give a temporal image of this conflict: mathematical language is a finished language, which derives its very perfection from this acceptance of death. Myth, on the contrary, is a language which does not want to die: it wrests from the meanings which give it its sustenance an insidious, degraded survival, it provokes in them an artificial reprieve in which it settles comfortably, it turns them into speaking corpses.<br /><br />Here is another language which resists myth as much as it can: our poetic language. Contemporary poetry10 is a regressive semiological system. Whereas myth aims at an ultra-signification, at the amplification of a first system, poetry, on the contrary, attempts to regain an infra-signification, a pre-semiological state of language; in short, it tries to transform the sign back into meaning: its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but the meaning of things themselves.11 This is why it clouds the language, increases as much as it can the abstractness of the concept and the arbitrariness of the sign and stretches to the limit the link between signifier and signified. The open-work structure of the concept is here maximally exploited: unlike what happens in prose, it is all the potential of the signified that the poetic sign tries to actualize, in the hope of at last reaching something like the transcendent quality of the thing, its natural (not human) meaning. Hence the essentialist ambitions of poetry, the conviction that it alone catches the thing in itself; inasmuch, precisely, as it wants to be an anti-language. All told, of all those who use speech, poets are the least formalist, for they are the only ones who believe that the meaning of the words is only a form, with which they, being realists, cannot be content. This is why our modern poetry always asserts itself as a murder of language, a kind of spatial, tangible analogue of silence. Poetry occupies a position which is the reverse of that of myth: myth is a semiological system which has the pretension of transcending itself into a factual system; poetry is a semiological system which has the pretension of contracting into an essential system.<br /><br />But here again, as in the case of mathematical language, the very resistance offered by poetry makes it an ideal prey for myth: the apparent lack of order of signs, which is the poetic facet of an essential order, is captured by myth, and transformed into an empty signifier, which will serve to signify poetry. This explains the improbable character of modern poetry: by fiercely refusing myth, poetry surrenders to it bound hand and foot. Conversely, the rules in classical poetry constituted an accepted myth, the conspicuous arbitrariness of which amounted to perfection of a kind, since the equilibrium of a semiological system comes from the arbitrariness of its signs.<br /><br />A voluntary acceptance of myth can in fact define the whole of our traditional Literature. According to our norms, this Literature is an undoubted mythical system: there is a meaning, that of the discourse; there is a signifier, which is this same discourse as form or writing; there is a signified, which is the concept of literature; there is a signification, which is the literary discourse. I began to discuss this problem in Writing Degree Zero, which was, all told, nothing but a mythology of literary language. There I defined writing as the signifier of the literary myth, that is, as a form which is already filled with meaning and which receives from the concept of Literature a new signification.12 I suggested that history, in modifying the writer's consciousness, had provoked, a hundred years or so ago, a moral crisis of literary language: writing was revealed as signifier, Literature as signification; rejecting the false nature of traditional literary language, the writer violently shifted his position in the direction of an anti-nature of language. The subversion of writing was the radical act by which a number of writers have attempted to reject Literature as a mythical system. Every revolt of this kind has been a murder of Literature as signification: all have postulated the reduction of literary discourse to a simple semiological system, oreven, in the case of poetry, to a pre-semiological system. This is an immense task, which required radical types of behavior: it is well known that some went as far as the pure and simple scuttling of the discourse, silence--whether real or transposed--appearing as the only possible weapon against the major power of myth: its recurrence.<br /><br />It thus appears that it is extremely difficult to vanquish myth from the inside: for the very effort one makes in order to escape its strangle hold becomes in its turn the prey of myth: myth can always, as a last resort, signify the resistance which is brought to bear against it. Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology. Since myth robs language of something, why not rob myth? All that is needed is to use it as the departure point for a third semiological chain, to take its signification as the first term of a second myth. Literature offers some great examples of such artificial mythologies. I shall only evoke here Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet. It is what could be called an experimental myth, a second-order myth. Bouvard and his friend Pecachet represent a certain kind of bourgeoisie (which is incidentally in conflict with other bourgeois strata): their discourse already constitutes a mythical type of speech; its language does have a meaning, but this meaning is the empty form of a conceptual signified, which here is a kind of technological unsatedness. The meeting of meaning and concept forms, in this first mythical system, a signification which is the rhetoric of Bouvard and Pecuchet. It is at this point (I am breaking the process into its components for the sake of analysis) that Flaubert intervenes: to this first mythical system, which already is a second semiological system, he superimposes a third chain, in which the first link is the signification, or final term, of the first myth. The rhetoric of Bouvard and Pecuchet becomes the form of the new system; the concept here is due to Flaubert himself, to Flaubert's gaze on the myth which Bouvard and Pecuchet had built for themselves: it consists of their natively ineffectual inclinations, their inability to feel satisfied, the panic succession of their apprenticeships, in short what I would very much like to call (but I see storm clouds on the horizon): Bouvard-and- pecachet-ity. As for the final signification, it is the book, it is Bouvard and Pecuchet for us. The power of the second myth is that it gives the first its basis as a naivety which is looked at. Flaubert has undertaken a real archaeological restoration of a given mythical speech: he is the Viollet-le-Duc of a certain bourgeois ideology. But less naive than Viollet-le-Duc, he has strewn his reconstitution with supplementary ornaments which demystify it. These ornaments (which are the form of the second myth) are subjunctive in kind: there is a semiological equivalence between the subjunctive restitution of the discourse of Bouvard and Pecuchet and their ineffectualness.13<br /><br />Flaubert's great merit (and that of all artificial mythologies: there are remarkable ones in Sartre's work), is that he gave to the problem of realism a frankly semiological solution. True, it is a somewhat incomplete merit, for Flaubert's ideology, since the bourgeois was for him only an aesthetic eyesore, was not at all realistic. But at least he avoided the major sin in literary matters, which is to confuse ideological with semiological reality. As ideology, literary realism does not depend at all on the language spoken by the writer. Language is a form, it cannot possibly be either realistic or unrealistic. All it can do is either to be mythical or not, or perhaps, as in Bouvard and Pecuchet, counter-mythical. Now, unfortunately, there is no antipathy between realism and myth. It is well known how often our 'realistic' literature is mythical (if only as a crude myth of realism) and how our 'literature of the unreal' has at least the merit of being only slightly so. The wise thing would of course be to define the writer's realism as an essentially ideological problem. This certainly does not mean that there is no responsibility of form towards reality. But this responsibility can be measured only in semiological terms. A form can be judged (since forms are on trial) only as signification, not as expression. The writer's language is not expected to represent reality, but to signify it. This should impose on critics the duty of using two rigorously distinct methods: one must deal with the writer's realism either as an ideological substance (Marxist themes in Brecht's work, for instance) or as a semiological value (the props, the actors, the music, the colors in Brechtian dramaturgy). The ideal of course would be to combine these two types of criticism; the mistake which is constantly made is to confuse them: ideology has its methods, and so has semiology.<br /><br />The bourgeoisie as a joint-stock company<br />Myth lends itself to history in two ways: by its form, which is only relatively motivated; by its concept, the nature of which is historical. One can therefore imagine a diachronic study of myths, whether one submits them to a retrospection (which means founding an historical mythology) or whether one follows some of yesterday's myths down to their present forms (which means founding prospective history). If I keep here to a synchronic sketch of contemporary myths, it is for an objective reason: our society is the privileged field of mythical significations. We must now say why.<br /><br />Whatever the accidents, the compromises, the concessions and the political adventures, whatever the technical, economic, or even social changes which history brings us, our society is still a bourgeois society. I am not forgetting that since I789, in France, several types of bourgeoisie have succeeded one another in power; but the same status--a certain regime of ownership, a certain order, a certain ideology--remains at a deeper level. Now a remarkable phenomenon occurs in the matter of naming this regime: as an economic fact, the bourgeoisie is named without any difficulty: capitalism is openly professed.14 As a political fact, the bourgeoisie has some difficulty in acknowledging itself: there are no 'bourgeois' parties in the Chamber. As an ideological fact, it completely disappears: the bourgeoisie has obliterated its name in passing from reality to representation, from economic man to mental man. It comes to an agreement with the facts, but does not compromise about values, it makes its status undergo a real ex-nominating operation: the bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named. 'Bourgeois', 'petitbourgeois', 'capitalism',15 'proletariat'16 are the locus of an unceasing hemorrhage: meaning flows out of them until their very name becomes unnecessary.<br /><br />This ex-nominating phenomenon is important; let us examine it a little more closely. Politically, the hemorrhage of the name 'bourgeois' is effected through the idea of nation. This was once a progressive idea, which has served to get rid of the aristocracy; today, the bourgeoisie merges into the nation, even if it has, in order to do so, to exclude from it the elements which it decides are allogenous (the Communists). This planned syncretism allows the bourgeoisie to attract the numerical support of its temporary allies, all the intermediate, therefore 'shapeless' classes. A long-continued use of the word nation has failed to depoliticize it in depth; the political substratum is there, very near the surface, and some circumstances make it suddenly manifest. There are in the Chamber some 'national' parties, and nominal syncretism here makes conspicuous what it had the ambition of hiding: an essential disparity. Thus the political vocabulary of the bourgeoisie already postulates that the universal exists: for it, politics is already a representation, a fragment of ideology.<br /><br />Politically, in spite of the universalistic effort of its vocabulary, the bourgeoisie eventually strikes against a resisting core which is, by definition, the revolutionary party. But this party can constitute only a political richness: in a bourgeois culture, there is neither proletarian culture nor proletarian morality, there is no proletarian art; ideologically, all that is not bourgeois is obliged to borrow from the bourgeoisie. Bourgeois ideology can therefore spread over everything and in so doing lose its name without risk: no one here will throw this name of bourgeois back at it. It can without resistance subsume bourgeois theater, art and humanity under their eternal analogues; in a word, it can exnominate itself without restraint when there is only one single human nature left: the defection from the name 'bourgeois' is here complete.<br /><br />True, there are revolts against bourgeois ideology. This is what one generally calls the avant-garde. But these revolts are socially limited, they remain open to salvage. First, because they come from a small section of the bourgeoisie itself, from a minority group of artists and intellectuals, without public other than the class which they contest, and who remain dependent on its money in order to express themselves. Then, these revolts always get their inspiration from a very strongly made distinction between the ethically and the politically bourgeois: what the avant-garde contests is the bourgeois in art or morals--the shopkeeper, the Philistine, as in the heyday of Romanticism; but as for political contestation, there is none.17 What the avant-garde does not tolerate about the bourgeoisie is its language, not its status. This does not necessarily mean that it approves of this status; simply, it leaves it aside. Whatever the violence of the provocation, the nature it finally endorses is that of 'derelict' man, not alienated man; and derelict man is still Eternal Man.18<br /><br />This anonymity of the bourgeoisie becomes even more marked when one passes from bourgeois culture proper to its derived, vulgarized and applied forms, to what one could call public philosophy, that which sustains everyday life, civil ceremonials, secular rites, in short the unwritten norms of interrelationships in a bourgeois society. It is an illusion to reduce the dominant culture to its inventive core: there also is a bourgeois culture which consists of consumption alone. The whole of France is steeped in this anonymous ideology: our press, our films, our theater, our pulp literature, our rituals, our Justice, our diplomacy, our conversations, our remarks about the weather, a murder trial, a touching wedding, the cooking we dream of, the garments we wear, everything, in everyday life, is dependent on the representation which the bourgeoisie has and makes us have of the relations between man and the world. These 'normalized' forms attract little attention, by the very fact of their extension, in which their origin is easily lost. They enjoy an intermediate position: being neither directly political nor directly ideological, they live peacefully between the action of the militants and the quarrels of the intellectuals; more or less abandoned by the former and the latter, they gravitate towards the enormous mass of the undifferentiated, of the insignificant, in short, of nature. Yet it is through its ethic that the bourgeoisie pervades France: practised on a national scale, bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order--the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more naturalized they become. The fact of the bourgeoisie becomes absorbed into an amorphous universe, whose sole inhabitant is Eternal Man, who is neither proletarian nor bourgeois.<br /><br />It is therefore by penetrating the intermediate classes that the bourgeois ideology can most surely lose its name. Petit-bourgeois norms are the residue of bourgeois culture, they are bourgeois truths which have become degraded, impoverished, commercialized, slightly archaic, or shall we say, out of date? The political alliance of the bourgeoisie and the petite-bourgeoisie has for more than a century determined the history of France; it has rarely been broken, and each time only temporarily (1848, 1871, 1936). This alliance got closer as time passed, it gradually became a symbiosis; transient awakenings might happen, but the common ideology was never questioned again. The same 'natural' varnish covers up all 'national' representations: the big wedding of the bourgeoisie, which originates in a class ritual (the display and consumption of wealth), can bear no relation to the economic status of the lower middle-class: but through the press, the news, and literature, it slowly becomes the very norm as dreamed, though not actually lived, of the petit-bourgeois couple. The bourgeoisie is constantly absorbing into its ideology a whole section of humanity which does not have its basic status and cannot live up to it except in imagination, that is, at the cost of an immobilization and an impoverishment of consciousness.19 By spreading its representations over a whole catalogue of collective images for petit-bourgeois use, the bourgeoisie countenances the illusory lack of differentiation of the social classes: it is as from the moment when a typist earning twenty pounds a month recognizes herself in the big wedding of the bourgeoisie that bourgeois ex-nomination achieves its full effect.<br /><br />The flight from the name 'bourgeois' is not therefore an illusory, accidental, secondary, natural or insignificant phenomenon: it is the bourgeois ideology itself, the process through which the bourgeoisie transforms the reality of the world into an image of the world, History into Nature. And this image has a remarkable feature: it is upside down.20 The status of the bourgeoisie is particular, historical: man as represented by it is universal, eternal. The bourgeois class has precisely built its power on technical, scientific progress, on an unlimited transformation of nature: bourgeois ideology yields in return an unchangeable nature. The first bourgeois philosophers pervaded the world with significations, subjected all things to an idea of the rational, and decreed that they were meant for man: bourgeois ideology is of the scientistic or the intuitive kind, it records facts or perceives values, but refuses explanations; the order of the world can be seen as sufficient or ineffable, it is never seen as significant. Finally, the basic idea of a perfectible mobile world, produces the inverted image of an unchanging humanity, characterized by an indefinite repetition of its identity. In a word, in the contemporary bourgeois society, the passage from the real to the ideological is defined as that from an anti-physis to a pseudo-physis.<br /><br />Myth is depoliticized speech<br />And this is where we come back to myth. Semiology has taught us that myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal. Now this process is exactly that of bourgeois ideology. If our society is objectively the privileged field of mythical significations, it is because formally myth is the most appropriate instrument for the ideological inversion which defines this society: at all the levels of human communication, myth operates the inversion of anti-physis into pseudo-physis.<br /><br />What the world supplies to myth is an historical reality, defined, even if this goes back quite a while, by the way in which men have produced or used it; and what myth gives in return is a natural image of this reality. And just as bourgeois ideology is defined by the abandonment of the name 'bourgeois', myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were made. The world enters language as a dialectical relation between activities, between human actions; it comes out of myth as a harmonious display of essences. A conjuring trick has taken place; it has turned reality inside out, it has emptied it of history and has filled it with nature, it has removed from things their human meaning so as to make them signify a human insignificance. The function of myth is to empty reality: it is, literally, a ceaseless flowing out, a hemorrhage, or perhaps an evaporation, in short a perceptible absence.<br /><br />It is now possible to complete the semiological definition of myth in a bourgeois society: myth is depoliticized speech. One must naturally understand political in its deeper meaning, as describing the whole of human relations in their real, social structure, in their power of making the world; one must above all give an active value to the prefix de-: here it represents an operational movement, it permanently embodies a defaulting. In the case of the soldier-Negro, for instance, what is got rid of is certainly not French imperiality (on the contrary, since what must be actualized is its presence); it is the contingent, historical, in one word: fabricated, quality of colonialism. Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves.21<br /><br />However, is myth always depoliticized speech ? In other words, is reality always political? Is it enough to speak about a thing naturally for it to become mythical ? One could answer with Marx that the most natural object contains a political trace, however faint and diluted, the more or less memorable presence of the human act which has produced, fitted up, used, subjected or rejected it.22 The language-object, which 'speaks things', can easily exhibit this trace; the metalanguage, which speaks of things, much less easily. Now myth always comes under the heading of metalanguage: the depoliticization which it carries out often supervenes against a background which is already naturalized, depoliticized by a general metalanguage which is trained to celebrate things, and no longer to 'act them'. It goes without saying that the force needed by myth to distort its object is much less in the case of a tree than in the case of a Sudanese: in the latter case, the political load is very near the surface, a large quantity of artificial nature is needed in order to disperse it; in the former case, it is remote, purified by a whole century-old layer of metalanguage. There are, therefore, strong myths and weak myths; in the former, the political quantum is immediate, the depoliticization is abrupt; in the latter, the political quality of the object has faded like a color, but the slightest thing can bring back its strength brutally: what is more natural than the sea? and what more 'political' than the sea celebrated by the makers of the film The Lost Continent?23<br /><br />In fact, metalanguage constitutes a kind of preserve for myth. Men do not have with myth a relationship based on truth but on use: they depoliticize according to their needs. Some mythical objects are left dormant for a time; they are then no more than vague mythical schemata whose political load seems almost neutral. But this indicates only that their situation has brought this about, not that their structure is different. This is the case with our Latin-grammar example. We must note that here mythical speech works on a material which has long been transformed: the sentence by Aesop belongs to literature, it is at the very start mythified (therefore made innocent) by its being fiction. But it is enough to replace the initial term of the chain for an instant into its nature as language-object, to gauge the emptying of realityoperated by myth: can one imagine the feelings of a real society of animals on finding itself transformed into a grammar example, into a predicative nature! In order to gauge the political load of an object and the mythical hollow which espouses it, one must never look at things from the point of view of the signification, but from that of the signifier, of the thing which has been robbed; and within the signifier, from the point of view of the language-object, that is, of the meaning. There is no doubt that if we consulted a real lion, he would maintain that the grammar example is a strongly depoliticized state, he would qualify as fully political the jurisprudence which leads him to claim a prey because he is the strongest, unless we deal with a bourgeois lion who would not fail to mythify his strength by giving it the form of a duty.<br /><br />One can clearly see that in this case the political insignificance of the myth comes from its situation. Myth, as we know, is a value: it is enough to modify its circumstances, the general (and precarious) system in which it occurs, in order to regulate its scope with great accuracy. The field of the myth is in this case reduced to the second form of a French lycee. But I suppose that a child enthralled by the story of the lion, the heifer and the cow, and recovering through the life of the imagination the actual reality of these animals, would appreciate with much less unconcern than we do the disappearance of this lion changed into a predicate. In fact, we hold this myth to be politically insignificant only because it is not meant for us.<br /><br />Myth on the Left<br />If myth is depoliticized speech, there is at least one type of speech which is the opposite of myth: that which remains political. Here we must go back to the distinction between language-object and metalanguage. If I am a woodcutter and I am led to name the tree which I am felling, whatever the form of my sentence, I 'speak the tree', I do not speak about it. This means that my language is operational, transitively linked to its object; between the tree and myself, there is nothing but my labor, that is to say, an action. This is a political language: it represents nature for me only inasmuch as I am going to transform it, it is a language thanks to which I 'act the object'; the tree is not an image for me, it is simply the meaning of my action. But if I am not a woodcutter, I can no longer 'speak the tree', I can only speak about it, on it. My language is no longer the instrument of an 'acted- upon tree', it is the 'tree-celebrated' which becomes the instrument of my language. I no longer have anything more than an intransitive relationship with the tree; this tree is no longer the meaning of reality as a human action, it is an image-at-one's-disposal. Compared to the real language of the woodcutter, the language I create is a second-order language, a metalanguage in which I shall henceforth not 'act the things' but 'act their names', and which is to the primary language what the gesture is to the act. This second-order language is not entirely mythical, but it is the very locus where myth settles; for myth can work only on objects which have already received the mediation of a first language.<br /><br />There is therefore one language which is not mythical, it is the language of man as a producer: wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image, wherever he links his language to the making of things, metalanguage is referred to a language-object, and myth is impossible. This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be mythical. Revolution is defined as a cathartic act meant to reveal the political load of the world: it makes the world; and its language, all of it, is functionally absorbed in this making. It is because it generates speech which is fully, that is to say initially and finally, political, and not, like myth, speech which is initially political and finally natural, that Revolution excludes myth. Just as bourgeois ex-nomination characterizes at once bourgeois ideology and myth itself, revolutionary denomination identifies revolution and the absence of myth. The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.<br /><br />I have been asked whether there are myths 'on the Left'. Of course, inasmuch, precisely, as the Left is not revolution. Leftwing myth supervenes precisely at the moment when revolution changes itself into 'the Left', that is, when it accepts to wear a mask, to hide its name, to generate an innocent metalanguage and to distort itself into 'Nature'. This revolutionary ex-nomination may or may not be tactical, this is no place to discuss it. At any rate, it is sooner or later experienced as a process contrary to revolution, and it is always more or less in relation to myth that revolutionary history defines its 'deviations'. There came a day, for instance, when it was socialism itself which defined the Stalin myth. Stalin, as a spoken object, has exhibited for years, in their pure state, the constituent characters of mythical speech: a meaning, which was the real Stalin, that of history; a signifier, which was the ritual invocation to Stalin, and the inevitable character of the 'natural' epithets with which his name was surrounded; a signified, which was the intention to respect orthodoxy, discipline and unity, appropriated by the Communist parties to a definite situation; and a signification, which was a sanctified Stalin, whose historical determinants found themselves grounded in nature, sublimated under the name of Genius, that is, something irrational and inexpressible: here, depoliticization is evident, it fully reveals the presence of a myth.24<br /><br />Yes, myth exists on the Left, but it does not at all have there the same qualities as bourgeois myth. Left-wing myth is inessential. To start with, the objects which it takes hold of are rare--only a few political notions--unless it has itself recourse to the whole repertoire of the bourgeois myths. Left-wing myth never reaches the immense field of human relationships, the very vast surface of 'insignificant' ideology. Everyday life is inaccessible to it: in a bourgeois society, there are no 'Left-wing' myths concerning marriage, cooking, the home, the theater, the law, morality, etc. Then, it is an incidental myth, its use is not part of a strategy, as is the case with bourgeois myth, but only of a tactics, or, at the worst, of a deviation; if it occurs, it is as a myth suited to a convenience, not to a necessity.<br /><br />Finally, and above all, this myth is, in essence, poverty-stricken. It does not know how to proliferate; being produced on order and for a temporally limited prospect, it is invented with difficulty. It lacks a major faculty, that of fabulizing. Whatever it does, there remains about it something stiff and literal, a suggestion of something done to order. As it is expressively put, it remains barren. In fact, what can be more meager than the Stalin myth? No inventiveness here, and only a clumsy appropriation: the signifier of the myth (this form whose infinite wealth in bourgeois myth we have just seen) is not varied in the least: it is reduced to a litany.<br /><br />This imperfection, if that is the word for it, comes from the nature of the 'Left': whatever the imprecision of the term, the Left always defines itself in relation to the oppressed, whether proletarian or colonized.25 Now the speech of the oppressed can only be poor, monotonous, immediate: his destitution is the very yardstick of his language: he has only one, always the same, that of his actions; metalanguage is a luxury, he cannot yet have access to it. The speech of the oppressed is real, like that of the woodcutter; it is a transitive type of speech: it is quasi-unable to lie; lying is a richness, a lie presupposes property, truths and forms to spare. This essential barrenness produces rare, threadbare myths: either transient, or clumsily indiscreet; by their very being, they label themselves as myths, and point to their masks. And this mask is hardly that of a pseudo-physics: for that type of physics is also a richness of a sort, the oppressed can only borrow it: he is unable to throw out the real meaning of things, to give them the luxury of an empty form, open to the innocence of a false Nature. One can say that in a sense, Left-wing myth is always an artificial myth, a reconstituted myth: hence its clumsiness.<br /><br />Myth on the Right<br />Statistically, myth is on the right. There, it is essential; well fed, sleek, expansive, garrulous, it invents itself ceaselessly. It takes hold of everything, all aspects of the law, of morality, of aesthetics, of diplomacy, of household equipment, of Literature, of entertainment. Its expansion has the very dimensions of bourgeois ex-nomination. The bourgeoisie wants to keep reality without keeping the appearances: it is therefore the very negativity of bourgeois appearance, infinite like every negativity, which solicits myth infinitely. The oppressed is nothing, he has only one language, that of his emancipation; the oppressor is everything, his language is rich, multiform, supple, with all the possible degrees of dignity at its disposal: he has an exclusive right to meta-language. The oppressed makes the world, he has only an active, transitive (political) language; the oppressor conserves it, his language is plenary, intransitive, gestural, theatrical: it is Myth. The language of the former aims at transforming, of the latter at eternalizing.<br /><br />Does this completeness of the myths of Order (this is the name the bourgeoisie gives to itself) include inner differences? Are there, for instance, bourgeois myths and petit-bourgeois myths? There cannot be any fundamental differences, for whatever the public which consumes it, myth always postulated the immobility of Nature. But there can be degrees of fulfillment or expansion: some myths ripen better in some social strata: for myth also, there are micro-climates.<br /><br />The myth of Childhood-as-Poet, for instance, is an advanced bourgeois myth: it has hardly come out of inventive culture (Cocteau, for example) and is just reaching consumer culture (L'Express). Part of the bourgeoisie can still find it too obviously invented, not mythical enough to feel entitled to countenance it (a whole part of bourgeois criticism works only with duly mythical materials). It is a myth which is not yet well run in, it does not yet contain enough nature: in order to make the Child Poet part of a cosmogony, one must renounce the prodigy (Mozart, Rimbaud, etc.), and accept new norms, those of psychopedagogy, Freudianism, etc.: as a myth, it is still unripe.<br /><br />Thus every myth can have its history and its geography; each is in fact the sign of the other: a myth ripens because it spreads. I have not been able to carry out any real study of the social geography of myths. But it is perfectly possible to draw what linguists would call the isoglosses of a myth, the lines which limit the social region where it is spoken. As this region is shifting, it would be better to speak of the waves of implantation of the myth. The Minou Drouet myth has thus had at least three waves of amplification: (I) L'Express; (2) Paris-Match, Elle; (3) France-Soir. Some myths hesitate: will they pass into tabloids, the home of the suburbanite of private means, the hairdresser's salon, the tube? The social geography of myths will remain difficult to trace as long as we lack an analytical sociology of the press.26 But we can say that its place already exists.<br /><br />Since we cannot yet draw up the list of the dialectal forms of bourgeois myth, we can always sketch its rhetorical forms. One must understand here by rhetoric a set of fixed, regulated, insistent figures, according to which the varied forms of the mythical signifier arrange themselves. These figures are transparent inasmuch as they do not affect the plasticity of the signifier; but they are already sufficiently conceptualized to adapt to an historical representation of the world (just as classical rhetoric can account for a representation of the Aristotelian type). It is through their rhetoric that bourgeois myths outline the general prospect of this pseudo-physis which defines the dream of the contemporary bourgeois world. Here are its principal figures:<br /><br />I. The inoculation. I have already given examples of this very general figure, which consists in admitting the accidental evil of a class-bound institution the better to conceal its principal evil. One immunizes the contents of the collective imagination by means of a small inoculation of acknowledged evil; one thus protects it against the risk of a generalized subversion. This liberal treatment would not have been possible only a hundred years ago. Then, the bourgeois Good did not compromise with anything, it was quite stiff. It has become much more supple since: the bourgeoisie no longer hesitates to acknowledge some localized subversions: the avant-garde, the irrational in childhood, etc. It now lives in a balanced economy: as in any sound joint-stock company, the smaller shares--in law but not in fact-- compensate the big ones.<br /><br />2. The privation of History. Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all History.27 In it, history evaporates. It is a kind of ideal servant: it prepares all things, brings them, lays them out, the master arrives, it silently disappears: all that is left for one to do is to enjoy this beautiful object without wondering where it comes from. Or even better: it can only come from eternity: since the beginning of time, it has been made for bourgeois man, the Spain of the Blue Guide has been made for the tourist, and 'primitives' have prepared their dances with a view to an exotic festivity. We can see all the disturbing things which this felicitous figure removes from sight: both determinism and freedom. Nothing is produced, nothing is chosen: all one has to do is to possess these new objects from which all soiling trace of origin or choice has been removed. This miraculous evaporation of history is another form of a concept common to most bourgeois myths: the irresponsibility of man.<br /><br />3. Identification. The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other.28 If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself. In the petit-bourgeois universe, all the experiences of confrontation are reverberating, any otherness is reduced to sameness. The spectacle or the tribunal, which are both places where the Other threatens to appear in full view, become mirrors. This is because the Other is a scandal which threatens his essence. Dominici cannot have access to social existence unless he is previously reduced to the state of a small simulacrum of the President of the Assizes or the Public Prosecutor: this is the price one must pay in order to condemn him justly, since Justice is a weighing operation and since scales can only weigh like against like. There are, in any petit-bourgeois consciousness, small simulacra of the hooligan, the parricide, the homosexual, etc., which periodically the judiciary extracts from its brain, puts in the dock, admonishes and condemns: one never tries anybody but analogues who have gone astray: it is a question of direction, not of nature, for that's how men are. Sometimes--rarely--the Other is revealed as irreducible: not because of a sudden scruple, but because common sense rebels: a man does not have a white skin, but a black one, another drinks pear juice, not Pernod. How can one assimilate the Negro, the Russian? There is here a figure for emergencies: exoticism. The Other becomes a pure object, a spectacle, a clown. Relegated to the confines of humanity, he no longer threatens the security of the home. This figure is chiefly petit-bourgeois. For, even if he is unable to experience the Other in himself, the bourgeois can at least imagine the place where he fits in: this is what is known as liberalism, which is a sort of intellectual equilibrium based on recognized places. The petitbourgeois class is not liberal (it produces Fascism, whereas the bourgeoisie uses it): it follows the same route as the bourgeoisie, but lags behind.<br /><br />4. Tautology. Yes, I know, it's an ugly word. But so is the thing. Tautology is this verbal device which consists in defining like by like ('Drama is drama'). We can view it as one of those types of magical behavior dealt with by Sartre in his Outline of a Theory of the Emotions: one takes refuge in tautology as one does in fear, or anger, or sadness, when one is at a loss for an explanation: the accidental failure of language is magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the object. In tautology, there is a double murder: one kills rationality because it resists one; one kills language because it betrays one. Tautology is a faint at the right moment, a saving aphasia, it is a death, or perhaps a comedy, the indignant 'representation' of the rights of reality over and above language. Since it is magical, it can of course only take refuge behind the argument of authority: thus do parents at the end of their tether reply to the child who keeps on asking for explanations: 'because that's how it is', or even better: 'just because, that's all'--a magical act ashamed of itself, which verbally makes the gesture of rationality, but immediately abandons the latter, and believes itself to be even with causality because it has uttered the word which introduces it. Tautology testifies to a profound distrust of language, which is rejected because it has failed. Now any refusal of language is a death. Tautology creates a dead, a motionless world.<br /><br />5. Neither-Norism. By this I mean this mythological figure which consists in stating two opposites and balancing the one by the other so as to reject them both. (I want neither this nor that.) It is on the whole a bourgeois figure, for it relates to a modern form of liberalism. We find again here the figure of the scales: reality is first reduced to analogues; then it is weighed; finally, equality having been ascertained, it is got rid of. Here also there is magical behavior: both parties are dismissed because it is embarrassing to choose between them; one flees from an intolerable reality, reducing it to two opposites which balance each other only inasmuch as they are purely formal, relieved of all their specific weight. Neither-Norism can have degraded forms: in astrology, for example, ill luck is always followed by equal good-luck; they are always predicted in a prudently compensatory perspective: a final equilibrium immobilizes values, life, destiny, etc.: one no longer needs to choose, but only to endorse.<br /><br />6. The quantification of quality. This is a figure which is latent in all the preceding ones. By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply. I have given several examples of this mechanism which bourgeois--and especially petit-bourgeois--mythology does not hesitate to apply to aesthetic realities which it deems on the other hand to partake of an immaterial essence. Bourgeois theater is a good example of this contradiction: on the one hand, theater is presented as an essence which cannot be reduced to any language and reveals itself only to the heart, to intuition. From this quality, it receives an irritable dignity (it is forbidden as a crime of 'lese-essence' to speak about the theater scientifically: or rather, any intellectual way of viewing the theater is discredited as scientism or pedantic language). On the other hand, bourgeois dramatic art rests on a pure quantification of effects: a whole circuit of computable appearances establishes a quantitative equality between the cost of a ticket and the tears of an actor or the luxuriousness of a set: what is currently meant by the 'naturalness' of an actor, for instance, is above all a conspicuous quantity of effects.<br /><br />7. The statement of fact. Myths tend towards proverbs. Bourgeois ideology invests in this figure interests which are bound to its very essence: universalism, the refusal of any explanation, an unalterable hierarchy of the world. But we must again distinguish the language-object from the metalanguage. Popular, ancestral proverbs still partake of an instrumental grasp of the world as object. A rural statement of fact, such as 'the weather is fine' keeps a real link with the usefulness of fine weather. It is an implicitly technological statement; the word, here, in spite of its general, abstract form, paves the way for actions, it inserts itself into a fabricating order: the farmer does not speak about the weather, he 'acts it', he draws it into his labor. All our popular proverbs thus represent active speech which has gradually solidified into reflexive speech, but where reflection is curtailed, reduced to a statement of fact, and so to speak timid, prudent, and closely hugging experience. Popular proverbs foresee more than they assert, they remain the speech of a humanity which is making itself, not one which is. Bourgeois aphorisms, on the other hand, belong to metalanguage; they are a second-order language which bears on objects already prepared. Their classical form is the maxim. Here the statement is no longer directed towards a world to be made; it must overlay one which is already made, bury the traces of this production under a self-evident appearance of eternity: it is a counter-explanation, the decorous equivalent of a tautology, of this peremptory because which parents in need of knowledge hang above the heads of their children. The foundation of the bourgeois statement of fact is common sense, that is, truth when it stops on the arbitrary order of him who speaks it.<br /><br />I have listed these rhetorical figures without any special order, and there may well be many others: some can become worn out, others can come into being. But it is obvious that those given here, such as they are, fall into two great categories, which are like the Zodiacal Signs of the bourgeois universe: the Essences and the Scales. Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types. Just as the cuttlefish squirts its ink in order to protect itself, it cannot rest until it has obscured the ceaseless making of the world, fixated this world into an object which can be for ever possessed, catalogued its riches, embalmed it, and injected into reality some purifying essence which will stop its transformation, its flight towards other forms of existence. And these riches, thus fixated and frozen, will at last become computable: bourgeois morality will essentially be a weighing operation, the essences will be placed in scales of which bourgeois man will remain the motionless beam. For the very end of myths is to immobilize the world: they must suggest and mimic a universal order which has fixated once and for all the hierarchy of possessions. Thus, every day and everywhere, man is stopped by myths, referred by them to this motionless prototype which lives in his place, stifles him in the manner of a huge internal parasite and assigns to his activity the narrow limits within which he is allowed to suffer without upsetting the world: bourgeois pseudo-physics is in the fullest sense a prohibition for man against inventing himself. Myths are nothing but this ceaseless, untiring solicitation, this insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, eternal yet bearing a date, which was built of them one day as if for all time. For the Nature, in which they are locked up under the pretext of being eternalized, is nothing but an Usage. And it is this Usage, however lofty, that they must take in hand and transform.<br /><br />Necessity and limits of mythology<br />I must, as a conclusion, say a few words about the mythologist himself. This term is rather grand and self-assured. Yet one can predict for the mythologist, if there ever is one, a few difficulties, in feeling if not in method. True, he will have no trouble in feeling justified: whatever its mistakes, mythology is certain to participate in the making of the world. Holding as a principle that man in a bourgeois society is at every turn plunged into a false Nature, it attempts to find again under the assumed innocence of the most unsophisticated relationships, the profound alienation which this innocence is meant to make one accept. The unveiling which it carries out is therefore a political act: founded on a responsible idea of language, mythology thereby postulates the freedom of the latter. It is certain that in this sense mythology harmonizes with the world, not as it is, but as it wants to create itself (Brecht had for this an efficiently ambiguous word: Einverstandnis, at once an understanding of reality and a complicity with it).<br /><br />This harmony justifies the mythologist but does not fulfil him: his status still remains basically one of being excluded. Justified by the political dimension, the mythologist is still at a distance from it. His speech is a metalanguage, it 'acts' nothing; at the most, it unveils--or does it? To whom? His task always remains ambiguous, hampered by its ethical origin. He can live revolutionary action only vicariously: hence the self-conscious character of his function, this something a little stiff and painstaking,muddled and excessively simplified which brands any intellectual behavior with an openly political foundation ('uncommitted' types of literature are infinitely more 'elegant'; they are in their place in metalanguage).<br /><br />Also, the mythologist cuts himself off from all the myth consumers, and this is no small matter. If this applied to a particular section of the collectivity, well and good.29 But when a myth reaches the entire community, it is from the latter that the mythologist must become estranged if he wants to liberate the myth. Any myth with some degree of generality is in fact ambiguous, because it represents the very humanity of those who, having nothing, have borrowed it. To decipher the Tour de France or the 'good French Wine' is to cut oneself off from those who are entertained or warmed up by them. The mythologist is condemned to live in a theoretical sociality; for him, to be in society is, at best, to be truthful: his utmost sociality dwells in his utmost morality. His connection with the world is of the order of sarcasm.<br /><br />One must even go further: in a sense, the mythologist is excluded from this history in the name of which he professes to act. The havoc which he wreaks in the language of the community is absolute for him, it fills his assignment to the brim: he must live this assignment without any hope of going back or any assumption of payment. It is forbidden for him to imagine what the world will concretely be like, when the immediate object of his criticism has disappeared. Utopia is an impossible luxury for him: he greatly doubts that tomorrow's truths will be the exact reverse of today's lies. History never ensures the triumph pure and simple of something over its opposite: it unveils, while making itself, unimaginable solutions, unforeseeable syntheses. The mythologist is not even in a Moses-like situation: he cannot see the Promised Land. For him, tomorrow's positivity is entirely hidden by today's negativity. All the values of his undertaking appear to him as acts of destruction: the latter accurately cover the former, nothing protrudes. This subjective grasp of history in which the potent seed of the future is nothing but the most profound apocalypse of the present has been expressed by Saint-Just in a strange saying: 'What constitutes the Republic is the total destruction of what is opposed to it.' This must not, I think, be understood in the trivial sense of: 'One has to clear the way before reconstructing.' The copula has an exhaustive meaning: there is for some men a subjective dark night of history where the future becomes an essence, the essential destruction of the past.<br /><br />One last exclusion threatens the mythologist: he constantly runs the risk of causing the reality which he purports to protect, to disappear. Quite apart from all speech, the D.S.19 is a technologically defined object: it is capable of a certain speed, it meets the wind in a certain way, etc. And this type of reality cannot be spoken of by the mythologist. The mechanic, the engineer, even the user, 'speak the object'; but the mythologist is condemned to metalanguage. This exclusion already has a name: it is what is called ideologism. Zhdanovism has roundly condemned it (without proving, incidentally, that it was, for the time being, avoidable) in the early Lukacs, in Marr's linguistics, in works like those of Benichou or Goldmann, opposing to it the reticence of a reality inaccessible to ideology, such as that of language according to Stalin. It is true that ideologism resolves the contradiction of alienated reality by an amputation, not a synthesis (but as for Zhdanovism, it does not even resolve it): wine is objectively good, and at the same time, the goodness of wine is a myth: here is the aporia. The mythologist gets out of this as best he can: he deals with the goodness of wine, not with the wine itself, just as the historian deals with Pascal's ideology, not with the Pensees in themselves.30<br /><br />It seems that this is a difficulty pertaining to our times: there is as yet only one possible choice, and this choice can bear only on two equally extreme methods: either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history, and ideologize; or, conversely, to posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible, and, in this case, poetize. In a word, I do not yet see a synthesis between ideology and poetry (by poetry I understand, in a very general way, the search for the inalienable meaning of things).<br /><br />The fact that we cannot manage to achieve more than an unstable grasp of reality doubtless gives the measure of our present alienation: we constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. It would seem that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality. This is probably because ideologism and its opposite are types of behavior which are still magical, terrorized, blinded and fascinated by the split in the social world. And yet, this is what we must seek: a reconciliation between reality and men, between description and explanation, between object and knowledge.<br /><br />Notes<br />1. Innumerable other meanings of the word 'myth' can be cited against this. But I have tried to define things, not words.<br />2. The development of publicity, of a national press, of radio, of illustrated news, not to speak of the survival of a myriad rites of communication which rule social appearances makes the development of a semiological science more urgent than ever. In a single day, how many really non-signifying fields do we cross? Very few, sometimes none. Here I am, before the sea; it is true that it bears no message. But on the beach, what material for semiology! Flags, slogans, signals, sign-boards, clothes, suntan even, which are so many messages to me.<br />3. The notion of word is one of the most controversial in linguistics. I keep it here for the sake of simplicity.<br />4. Tel Quel, II, p. 191.<br />5. Or perhaps Sinity? Just as if Latin/latinity = Basque/x, x = Basquity.<br />6. I say 'in Spain' because, in France, petit-bourgeois advancement has caused a whole 'mythical' architecture of the Basque chalet to flourish.<br />7. From the point of view of ethics, what is disturbing in myth is precisely that its form is motivated. For if there is a 'health' of language, it is the arbitrariness of the sign which is its grounding. What is sickening in myth is its resort to a false nature, its superabundance of significant forms, as in these objects which decorate their usefulness with a natural appearance. The will to weigh the signification with the full guarantee of nature causes a kind of nausea; myth is too rich, and what is in excess is precisely its motivation. This nausea is like the one I feel before the arts which refuse to choose between physis and anti-physis, using the first as an ideal and the second as an economy. Ethically, there is a kind of baseness in hedging one's bets.<br />8. The freedom in choosing what one focuses on is a problem which does not belong to the province of semiology: it depends on the concrete situation of the subject.<br />9. We receive the naming of the lion as a pure example of Latin grammar because we are, as grown-ups, in a creative position in relation to it. I shall come back later to the value of the context in this mythical schema.<br />10. Classical poetry, on the contrary, would be, according to such norms, a strongly mythical system, since it imposes on the meaning one extra signified, which is regularity. The alexandrine, for instance, has value both as meaning of a discourse and as signifier of a new whole, which is its poetic signification. Success, when it occurs, comes from the degree of apparent fusion of the two systems. It can be seen that we deal in no way with a harmony between content and form, but with anelegant absorption of one form into another. By elegance I mean the most economical use of the means employed. It is because of an age-old abuse that critics confuse meaning and content. The language is never anything but a system of forms, and the meaning is a form.<br />11. We are again dealing here with the meaning, in Sartre's use of the terms, as a natural quality of things, situated outside a semiological system (Saint-Genet, p.283).<br />12. Style, at least as I defined it then, is not a form, it does not belong to the province of a semiological analysis of Literature. In fact, style is a substance constantly threatened with formalization. To start with, it can perfectly well become degraded into a mode of writing: there is a 'Malraux-type' writing, and even in Malraux himself. Then, style can also become a particular language, that used by the writer for himself and for himself alone. Style then becomes a sort of solipsistic myth, the languagewhich the writer speaks to himself. It is easy to understand that at such a degree of solidification, style calls for a deciphering. The works of J.P. Richard are an example of this necessary critique of styles.<br />13. A subjunctive form because it is in the subjunctive mode that Latin expressed 'indirect style or discourse', which is an admirable instrument for demystification.<br />14. 'The fate of capitalism is to make the worker wealthy,' Paris-Match tells us.<br />15. The word 'capitalism' is taboo, not economically, but ideologically; it cannot possibly enter the vocabulary of bourgeois representations. Only in Farouk's Egypt could a prisoner be condemned by a tribunal for 'anti-capitalist plotting' in so many words.<br />16. The bourgeoisie never uses the word 'Proletariat', which is supposed to be a Left- wing myth, except when it is in its interest to imagine the Proletariat being led astray by the Communist Party.<br />17. It is remarkable that the adversaries of the bourgeoisie on matters of ethics or aesthetics remain for the most part indifferent, or even attached, to its political determinations. Conversely, its political adversaries neglect to issue a basic condemnation of its representations: they often go so far as to share them. This diversity of attacks benefits the bourgeoisie, it allows it to camouflage its name. For the bourgeoisie should be understood only as synthesis of its determinations and its representations.<br />18. There can be figures of derelict man which lack all order (Ionesco for example). This does not affect in any way the security of the Essences.<br />19. To induce a collective content for the imagination is always an inhuman undertaking, not only because dreaming essentializes life into destiny, but also because dreams are impoverished, and the alibi of an absence.<br />20. 'If men and their conditions appear throughout ideology inverted as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon follows from their historical vital process...' (Marx, The German Ideology).<br />21. To the pleasure-principle of Freudian man could be added the clarity-principle of mythological humanity. All the ambiguity of myth is there: its clarity is euphoric.<br />22. cf. Marx and the example of the cherry-tree, The German Ideology.<br />23. cf. p.94.<br />24. It is remarkable that Krushchevism presented itself not as a political change, but essentially and only as a linguistic conversion. An incomplete conversion, incidentally, for Krushchev devalued Stalin, but did not explain him--did not re-politicize him.<br />25. Today it is the colonized peoples who assume to the full the ethical and political condition described by Marx as being that of the proletariat.<br /><br />26. The circulation of newspapers is an insufficient datum. Other information comes only by accident. Paris-Match has given--significantly, as publicity--the composition of its public in terms of standard of living (Le Figaro, July 12th, 1955): out of each 100 readers living in town, 53 have a car, 49 a bathroom, etc., whereas the average standard of living in France is reckoned as follows: car, 22 per cent; bathroom, 13 per cent. That the purchasing power of the Paris-Match reader is high could have been predicted from the mythology of this publication.<br />27. Marx: '...we must pay attention to this history, since ideology boils down to either an erroneous conception of this history, or to a complete abstraction from it' (The German Ideology).<br />28. Marx: '...what makes them representative of the petit-bourgeois class, is that their minds, their consciousnesses do not extend beyond the limits which this class has set to its activities' (The Eighteenth Brumaire). And Gorki: 'the petit-bourgeois is the man who has preferred himself to all else.'<br />29. It is not only from the public that one becomes estranged; it is sometimes also from the very object of the myth. In order to demystify Poetic Childhood, for instance, I have had, so to speak, to lack confidence in Mionou Drouet the child. I have had to ignore, in her, under the enormous myth with which she is cumbered, something like a tender, open, possibility. It is never a good thing to speak against a little girl.<br />30. Even here, in these mythologies, I have used trickery: finding it painful constantly to work on the evaporation of reality, I have started to make it excessively dense, and to discover in it a surprising compactness which I savoured with delight, and I have given a few examples of 'substantial psycho-analysis' about some mythical objects.</span></div></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-60160145214612139172011-02-27T21:04:00.000-08:002011-02-27T21:08:17.144-08:00Introduction to Communication Studies COMM200<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFaEqWq3cdQ/TWstSyl8lkI/AAAAAAAAATc/LQX9f-i90zI/s1600/LIU%2Blogo.png"><strong><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578602364270319170" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 114px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFaEqWq3cdQ/TWstSyl8lkI/AAAAAAAAATc/LQX9f-i90zI/s400/LIU%2Blogo.png" border="0" /></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Lebanese International University<br />School of Arts and Sciences<br />Communication Arts Department</strong><br /></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">SYLLABUS Spring, 2010 - 2011<br /><br />Course Code: COMM200 (A) M.W. 08:00 – 09:15<br />Course Title: Introduction to Communication Studies (B) T.Th. 08:00 – 09:15<br />Instructor: H. Choubassi<br />E-mail: hassan.choubassi@liu.edu.lb<br />Office Hours: MW: 11:00 – 12:30 TTh: 11:00 – 14:00<br /><br />Course description:<br />This course introduces students to the central concepts of image theories in communication and the operation of the media industries. It is an introduction to the history, structure, process and social environment of each medium in the communication industry; an overview of the emerging technology in mass media and its social impact. It is a study of the development, principles and effects of prints, PR, advertising, radio, TV, film and computer-generated communication. Particular attention will be given to the Lebanese and Arab communication media tools and their relations to the historical, sociopolitical aspect on the local level.<br /><br />Objectives:<br />The purpose of this course is to provide the basic concepts and understandings of the theory of image in mass communication industries, defined as the tools of communication exchange, manipulation and mass deception as determinant of the sociopolitical orientation. The overall goal is to develop an understanding of the process and tools of mass communication industries and their political background. Considering that the basis of mass communication tools are the product of social, political and ideological structures and disciplines; we will be analyzing theories of mass communication in their socio-historical context.<br />Specifically we will aim to:<br />*Develop understanding of the mass communication tools process.<br />*Appreciate the diversity of mass communication institutes from different cultures and different political orientations and opinions.<br />*Encourage analytical skills in examining mass communication theories.<br />*Understand how socio-historical changes and technological evolution influences mass communication theories and vice versa.<br /><br />Requirements:<br />-In this course, you must be prepared to read works of politics, literature and arts critically, intellectually, and analytically, be able to express these ideas both orally and in written forms.<br />-Attendance of all class sessions is mandatory as per university rules and regulations.<br />-Continuous classroom discussions and critique contributes greatly to the learning process of the whole class. Special attention will be paid to discussing mass communication theories.<br />-Research project resulting in a term paper to be presented at the end of the semester. Your research may be on any approved topic concerning mass communication theories.<br />-In grading, emphasis is placed on seriousness of purpose, rate of progress, besides the degree of achievement of course objectives.<br /><br />Exam I 15%<br />Projects & Presentations 15%<br />Midterm exam 20%<br />Final exam 25%<br />Research paper 15%<br />Attendance & participation 10%<br /><br /><br />Course Content:<br /><br />I: Semiotics (semiology):<br />Introductory models & basic concepts (F. de Saussure):<br />-The sign: Signifier/Signified<br />-Semiotics and culture: Denotation/Connotation<br />-Semiotics: Paradigm/Syntagm<br />Second and third-order signification (R. Barthes)<br />-Connotation/Myth<br />*-“Myth Today” by Roland Barthes<br />Structuralism and Post-Structuralism<br /><br /><br />II: Mass Media; Modern and Post-Modern<br />-Global reach of the media<br />*-“The work of art in the age of Mechanical reproduction” (1938) by Walter Benjamin<br />The aura of the uncanny:<br />Post-mortem photography of the Victorian era (Memento Mori)<br />*"The uncanny" by Sigmund Freud<br />The uncanny valley of Masahiro Mori<br />-The media’s social impact<br />*-“Simulacra and simulations” by Jean Baudrillard<br />*Screening: “The Matrix” a film by Larry & Andy Wachowski<br /><br /><br />III: The print Media: (Presentations)<br />-Newspapers<br />-Magazines<br />-Book Publishing<br /><br /><br />IV: Mass Media influence and effect<br />-Radio<br />-Popular Music<br />*-“The influence and effects of mass media” by Denis McQuail<br />-Historic press freedoms: a study of the paradoxical press role during the student’s revolution of 1968 in France. (Research and presentation by students)<br /><br /><br />V: The Visual Electronics, TV, Video and Film<br />-Television entertainment / News<br />*-“Welcome to the desert of the real” (2001) by Slavoj Zizek<br />*-“Wars that Never Take Place: Non-events, 9/11 and Wars on Terrorism" by Binoy Kampmark<br />- TV, Cable TV, satellite and Live broadcast<br />-Video as banality<br />-Photographic and graphic communication<br />-The film: commercial and artistic<br /><br />VI: Persuasion and deception<br />-Advertising<br />-Public relations<br />*-“The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception” (1944) by Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer<br /><br /><br />VII: Communication Worldwide<br />-International mass communications<br />*-“Media professionalism in the third world: The transfer of an ideology” by Peter Golding</span>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-69114346048079536752011-02-27T20:59:00.001-08:002011-02-27T21:04:06.947-08:00Theories of Mass Media COM255<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xF2owK0KCE0/TWssdD9MfDI/AAAAAAAAATU/TNAKcLN29sk/s1600/LIU%2Blogo.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578601441218296882" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 129px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 119px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xF2owK0KCE0/TWssdD9MfDI/AAAAAAAAATU/TNAKcLN29sk/s400/LIU%2Blogo.png" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Lebanese International University<br />School of Arts and sciences<br />Communication Arts Department</strong> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljoWUwKu3F5cOxnbJxTxkTzhPF4YybsttpIlR_ep3SImqPGiTjnSLDKZQ3dMROQZX-aRzx0pvg-u0SIn1q7KV7ylY8m1GFEu-y2yyF82gnbYTWkJaosuRLneRUexRyGJDZuP2FcR_gg_I/s1600/LIU+logo.png"></a><br /></span><div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">SYLLABUS Spring, 2010 - 2011<br /><br />Course Code: COMM255 (A) M.W. 9:30 – 10:45<br />Course Title: Theories of Mass Media (B) T. Th. 9:30 – 10:45<br />Instructor: H. Choubassi<br />E-mail: hassan.choubassi@liu.edu.lb<br />Office Hours: MW: 11:00 – 12:30 TTh: 11:00 – 14:00<br /><br /><br />Course description:<br />This course examines the role of mass media in modern societies and the effects of media institutions and messages on individuals, communities and society. It is an introduction to the social responsibilities of the mass communicator in Lebanon, the Middle East, and the world. An examination of the mass media in terms of the social, political and economic forces which influence and shape them, the development, process, principles and effects of print, PR, advertising, radio, TV, film, satellite and computer assisted communication.<br /><br /><br />Objectives:<br />By the end of the course, Students will have an understanding of the important areas of mass communication research and theory, they will learn to be more sophisticated consumers of information and the media and gain an understanding of the structures and processes of mass communication: print, broadcast, online media, and advertising. Students are introduced to theories of mass communication and will experiment with the various media through introductory projects covering the basic media forms. They will be able to understand theories and research about media effects, analyze how media consumption habits affect thinking and behavior. They will apply theories and research about media effects to professional practice and they will critically evaluate the appropriateness of study designs and data analysis techniques used in media research studies.<br /><br /><br />Requirements:<br />-In this course, you must be prepared to read works of politics, literature and arts critically, intellectually, and analytically, be able to express these ideas both orally and in written forms.<br />-Attendance of all class sessions is mandatory as per university rules and regulations.<br />-Continuous classroom discussions and critique contributes greatly to the learning process of the whole class. Special attention will be paid to discussing how mass communication theories and researches can and is used by media practitioners in the real world.<br />-Research about a subject concerning mass communication; techniques, history or functionality, in the form of a written paper to be presented at the end of the semester<br />-In grading, emphasis is placed on seriousness of purpose, rate of progress, besides the degree of achievement of course objectives.<br /><br />Exam I 15%<br />Projects & Presentations 15%<br />Midterm exam 20%<br />Final exam 25%<br />Research paper 15%<br />Attendance & participation 10%<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Course Content:<br /><br />I: Semiotics (semiology)<br />Introductory & basic concepts<br />Modernity and modernization<br />*Screening: “Metropolis” a film by Fritz Lang<br />*-“All that is solid melts into air: introduction” by Marshall Berman<br />Urban Melancholy:<br />Old Testament: Chapter one of Ecclesiastes<br />Hubert Robert: Louvre gallérie en ruines, salon de Paris 1767 (1798)<br />Paul Eluard: Adieu Tristesse<br />Charles Baudelaire: Le Spleen de Paris<br />Arthur Rimbaud: Une saison en enfer<br />Paul Auster: In the country of last things<br /><br /><br />II: An overview of mass media research<br />Mass Media theories<br />Mass Communication as a social science<br /><br /><br />III: The loss of individuality<br />Influencing political attitudes and behavior.<br />*-“One-dimensional man” by Herbert Marcuse<br />Consumption societies<br /><br /><br />IV: Societies of spectacle<br />Global TV<br />*-"The Society of Spectacle" by Guy Debord<br />Mass Communication and the Community<br />The rise of mass society theory (the global village)<br />*-“Myth and mass media” by Marshall McLuhan<br />*-"On Television" by Pierre Bourdieu<br />In front of the camera and behind the scenes<br />Invisible structures and their effects<br />The language of new media (software, database and fragmentation)<br />*-“Deep Remixability” by Lev Manovich<br /><br /><br />V: Communication Technology: reality, virtual and actual<br />Technological determinism as the drives of history<br />*-“Technological determinism in American culture” by Merritt Roe Smith<br />Technological pessimism and mass deception<br />*-“The idea of technology and postmodern pessimism” by Leo Marx<br />New technologies and mass media theory<br />*-“The art of the motor” by Paul Virilio<br />The understanding of ‘reality’ as ‘actual’ and ‘virtual’<br />Under globalization circumstances, the “virtual reality” is taking over the “actual reality” through “substitution”.<br />*-“The third interval: a critical transition in re-thinking technologies” by Paul Virilio<br /><br /><br />VI: The Ephemeral Real and the Everlasting Image<br />The effect of contemporary technologies on the manifestation of the image of pop culture<br />*-“Cool memories” by Jean Baudrillard<br />The physical existence under globalization, an actual simulation of the body and nature<br />*-“Globalization and the manufacture of transient events: the body manufactured with letters” by Bilal Khbeiz.</span></div></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-25327123956378753082011-02-27T20:47:00.000-08:002011-03-29T21:24:39.458-07:00Melancholy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSFzTi7v2HPB9FtKfbYTPWjJozStN-MWg7F87a9uq91IGbLaEKYvrJ5iy0zilgaH3z6ThJ4oJb6V82MYZK8wNFR1JnyVlNofUwcZAiqOoKjBnNHLtD3FoUSo-JdSxB0haM1qJ9rwKpY1Tb/s1600/HubertRobert_louvre.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578604898834709666" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 311px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSFzTi7v2HPB9FtKfbYTPWjJozStN-MWg7F87a9uq91IGbLaEKYvrJ5iy0zilgaH3z6ThJ4oJb6V82MYZK8wNFR1JnyVlNofUwcZAiqOoKjBnNHLtD3FoUSo-JdSxB0haM1qJ9rwKpY1Tb/s400/HubertRobert_louvre.jpg" border="0" /></a> How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!Meditation <br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">by Denis Diderot (1713–1784), upon viewing the landscapes depicting ruins by the French painter <strong>Hubert Robert</strong>. Salon of 1767 (1798), Oeuvres esthétiques, p. 644, Paris, Garnier Flammarion (1988)</div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">باطل الأباطيل الكل باطل وقبض الريح الإصحاح الأول من سفر الجامعة </div><br /><div align="left">كلام الجامعة ابن داود الملك في اورشليم باطل الاباطيل قال الجامعة باطل الاباطيل الكل باطل ما الفائدة للانسان من كل تعبه الذي يتعبه تحت الشمس دور يمضي و دور يجيء و الارض قائمة الى الابد و الشمس تشرق و الشمس تغرب و تسرع الى موضعها حيث تشرق الريح تذهب الى الجنوب و تدور الى الشمال تذهب دائرة دورانا و الى مداراتها ترجع الريح كل الانهار تجري الى البحر و البحر ليس بملان الى المكان الذي جرت منه الانهار الى هناك تذهب راجعة كل الكلام يقصر لا يستطيع الانسان ان يخبر بالكل العين لا تشبع من النظر و الاذن لا تمتلئ من السمع ما كان فهو ما يكون و الذي صنع فهو الذي يصنع فليس تحت الشمس جديد ان وجد شيء يقال عنه انظر هذا جديد فهو منذ زمان كان في الدهور التي كانت قبلنا ليس ذكر للاولين و الاخرون ايضا الذين سيكونون لا يكون لهم ذكر عند الذين يكونون بعدهم انا الجامعة كنت ملكا على اسرائيل في اورشليم و وجهت قلبي للسؤال و التفتيش بالحكمة عن كل ما عمل تحت السماوات هو عناء رديء جعلها الله لبني البشر ليعنوا فيه رايت كل الاعمال التي عملت تحت الشمس فاذا الكل باطل و قبض الريح الاعوج لا يمكن ان يقوم و النقص لا يمكن ان يجبر انا ناجيت قلبي قائلا ها انا قد عظمت و ازددت حكمة اكثر من كل من كان قبلي على اورشليم و قد راى قلبي كثيرا من الحكمة و المعرفة و وجهت قلبي لمعرفة الحكمة و لمعرفة الحماقة و الجهل فعرفت ان هذا ايضا قبض الريح لان في كثرة الحكمة كثرة الغم و الذي يزيد علما يزيد حزنا </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">Old Testament: Chapter one of Ecclesiastes </div><br /><div align="left">1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. </div><br /><div align="left">2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. </div><br /><div align="left">3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? </div><br /><div align="left">4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. </div><br /><div align="left">5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. </div><br /><div align="left">6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. </div><br /><div align="left">7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. </div><br /><div align="left">8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. </div><br /><div align="left">9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. </div><br /><div align="left">10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. </div><br /><div align="left">11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. </div><br /><div align="left">12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. </div><br /><div align="left">13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. </div><br /><div align="left">14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. </div><br /><div align="left">15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. </div><br /><div align="left">16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. </div><br /><div align="left">17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. </div><br /><div align="left">18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="right">محمود درويش من أحد عشر كوكب</div><br /><div align="right"></div><br /><div align="right">وانتظر ولداً سيحمل عنك روحك. </div><br /><div align="right">فالخلود هو التناسل في الوجود . </div><br /><div align="right">وكل شيء باطل أو زائل</div><br /><div align="right">، أو زائل أو باطل. </div><br /><div align="right">من أنا؟</div><br /><div align="right">أنشيد الأناشيد أم حكمة الجامعة ؟</div><br /><div align="right">وكلانا أنا... </div><br /><div align="right">وأنا شاعر وملك وحكيم </div><br /><div align="right">على حافة البئر</div><br /><div align="right">لا غيمة في يدي </div><br /><div align="right">ولا أحد عشر كوكباً على معبدي</div><br /><div align="right">ضاق بي جسدي ضاق بي أبدي وغدي </div><br /><div align="right">جالس مثل تاج الغبار على مقعدي</div><br /><div align="right">باطلُ، باطل الأباطيل ...باطل</div><br /><div align="right">كل شيء على البسيطة زائل</div><br /><div align="right">الرياح شمالية والرياح جنوبية</div><br /><div align="right">تشرق الشمس من ذاتها تغرب الشمس في ذاتها لا جديد، </div><br /><div align="right">إذا والزمن كان أمس، سدى في سدى.</div><br /><div align="right">الهياكل عالية والسنابل عالية والسماء اذا انخفضت مطرت</div><br /><div align="right">والبلاد اذا ارتفعت أقفزت</div><br /><div align="right">كل شيء اذا زاد عن حده صار يوماً الى ضده.</div><br /><div align="right">والحياة على الأرض ظل </div><br /><div align="right">لماذا لا نرى... </div><br /><div align="right">باطلُ، باطل الأباطيل ...باطل</div><br /><div align="right">كل شيء على البسيطة زائل 1400 مركبة 12000 فرس</div><br /><div align="right">تحمل اسمي المذهّب من زمن نحو آخر ... </div><br /><div align="right">عشت كما لم يعش شاعر ملكاً وحكيماً ... </div><br /><div align="right">هرمت،</div><br /><div align="right">سئمت من المجد</div><br /><div align="right">لا شيء ينقصني ألهذا إذاً كلما زاد علمي تعاظم همّي؟ </div><br /><div align="right">فما اورشليم وما العرش؟ </div><br /><div align="right">لا شيء يبقى على حاله</div><br /><div align="right">للولادة وقت</div><br /><div align="right">وللموت وقت</div><br /><div align="right">وللصمت وقت</div><br /><div align="right">وللنطق وقت</div><br /><div align="right">وللحرب وقت </div><br /><div align="right">وللصلح وقت</div><br /><div align="right">وللوقت وقت</div><br /><div align="right">ولا شيء يبقى على حاله...</div><br /><div align="right">كل نهر سيشربه البحر</div><br /><div align="right">والبحر ليس بملآن،</div><br /><div align="right">والموت ليس بملآن </div><br /><div align="right">لا شيء يبقى على حاله </div><br /><div align="right">كل حي يسير الى الموت</div><br /><div align="right">والموت ليس بملآن </div><br /><div align="right">لا شيء يبقى</div><br /><div align="right">سوى اسمي المَذهّب بعدي : "سليمانَ كان"...</div><br /><div align="right">فماذا سيفعل موتى بأسمائهم</div><br /><div align="right">هل يضيء الذهب ظلمتي الشاسعة</div><br /><div align="right">أم نشيد الأناشيد والجامعة؟</div><br /><div align="right">باطلُ، باطل الأباطيل ...باطل</div><br /><div align="right">كل شيء على البسيطة زائل </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">From: La vie immédiate Paul Eluard </div><br /><div align="left">Adieu tristesse </div><br /><div align="left">Bonjour tristesse </div><br /><div align="left">Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond </div><br /><div align="left">Tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j'aime </div><br /><div align="left">Tu n'es pas tout à fait misère </div><br /><div align="left">Car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncent Par un sourire </div><br /><div align="left">Bonjour tristesse Amour des corps aimables </div><br /><div align="left">Puissance de l'amour Dont l'amabilité surgit </div><br /><div align="left">Comme un monstre sans corps </div><br /><div align="left">Tête désapointée </div><br /><div align="left">Tristesse beau visage. </div><br /><div align="left">Farewell Sadness </div><br /><div align="left">Hello Sadness </div><br /><div align="left">You are inscribed in the lines on the ceiling </div><br /><div align="left">You are inscribed in the eyes that I love </div><br /><div align="left">You are not poverty absolutely </div><br /><div align="left">Since the poorest of lips denounce you with a smile </div><br /><div align="left">Hello Sadness Love of kind bodies </div><br /><div align="left">Power of love From which kindness rises Like a bodiless monster </div><br /><div align="left">Unattached head </div><br /><div align="left">Sadness beautiful face. </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">From: Paris Spleen </div><br /><div align="left">Every Man His Chimera </div><br /><div align="left">Charles Baudelaire </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">Beneath a broad grey sky, </div><br /><div align="left">upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several men who walked bowed down to the ground. </div><br /><div align="left">Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimera as heavy as a sack of flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. </div><br /><div align="left">But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. </div><br /><div align="left">Her fabulous head reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. </div><br /><div align="left">I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. </div><br /><div align="left">He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to walk. </div><br /><div align="left">Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary faces bore witness to no despair. </div><br /><div align="left">Beneath the splenetic cupola of the heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the curiosity of the human eye. </div><br /><div align="left">During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing Chimeras. </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">From: A Season in Hell </div><br /><div align="left">Arthur Rimbaud </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed. </div><br /><div align="left">One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her. I steeled myself against justice. </div><br /><div align="left">I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care! I have withered within me all human hope. </div><br /><div align="left">With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy. </div><br /><div align="left">I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. </div><br /><div align="left">I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. </div><br /><div align="left">Unhappiness has been my god. </div><br /><div align="left">I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. </div><br /><div align="left">I have played the fool to the point of madness. And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot. </div><br /><div align="left">Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! </div><br /><div align="left">I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again. </div><br /><div align="left">That key is Charity. - </div><br /><div align="left">This idea proves I was dreaming! "You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins.</div><br /><div align="left">" Ah! I've taken too much of that: - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul. </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">From: In the country of last things </div><br /><div align="left">Paul Auster </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">“New tolls go up, the old tolls disappear. You can never know which streets to take and which you avoid. Bit by bit, the city robs you of certainty. There can never be any fixed path, and you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you”.</div><br /><div align="left">“So many of us have become like children again. War has returned us to our initial existence. It’s not that we make an effort, you understand, or that anyone is rally conscious of it. But when hope disappears, when you find that you have given up hoping even for the possibility of hope, you tend to fill the empty spaces with dreams”. </div><br /><div align="left">“Everything is falling apart, but so much continues to be there. It takes a long time for a world to vanish, much longer than you would think. Lives continue to be lived, and each one of us remains the witness of his own little drama”. </div><br /><div align="left">It is an odd thing, I believe, to be constantly looking down at the ground, always searching for broken and discarded things. After a while, it must surely affect the brain. For nothing is really itself anymore. There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again. You see what you are up against here. It's not just that things vanish — but once they vanish, the memory of them vanishes as well. Dark areas form in the brain, and unless you make a constant effort to summon up the things that are gone, they will quickly be lost to you forever. . . . Memory is not an act of will, after all. It is something that happens in spite of oneself, and when too much is changing all the time, the brain is bound to falter, things are bound to slip through it. In the end, the problem is not so much that people forget, but that they do not always forget the same thing. What still exists as a memory for one person can be irretrievably lost for another, and this creates difficulties, insuperable barriers against understanding. How can you talk to someone about airplanes, for example, if that person doesn't know what an airplane is. It is a slow but ineluctable process of erasure. Words tend to last a bit longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear — flowerpots, for example, or cigarette filters, or rubber bands — and for a time you will be able to recognize those words, even if you cannot recall what they mean. But then, little by little, the words become only sounds, a random collection of glottals and fricatives, a storm of whirling phonemes, and finally the whole thing just collapses into gibberish. The word "flowerpot" will make no more sense to you than the word "splandigo." Your mind will hear it, but it will register as something incomprehensible, a word from a language you cannot speak. As more and more of these foreign-sounding words crop up around you, conversations become rather strenuous. In effect, each person is speaking his own private language...</div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-89221841362997395032011-02-27T08:06:00.000-08:002011-02-27T08:08:22.654-08:00The Uncanny Valley<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2SqdpYJq4psTJczmag352SOtYCK8WazdQOLEUjA79Ld8s0dVnPimKhbCaGClpuydc4ySEw5mglodg7A6_i349Y2iafeDmZtm8d0i_jbG0cM5jnibNYS4zkzYe8NpkFkAHh8xecG8S9479/s1600/File-Mori_Uncanny_Valley.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 312px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2SqdpYJq4psTJczmag352SOtYCK8WazdQOLEUjA79Ld8s0dVnPimKhbCaGClpuydc4ySEw5mglodg7A6_i349Y2iafeDmZtm8d0i_jbG0cM5jnibNYS4zkzYe8NpkFkAHh8xecG8S9479/s400/File-Mori_Uncanny_Valley.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578401560399280466" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; ">Hypothesized emotional response of human subjects is plotted against anthropomorphism of a robot, following roboticist <a href="/wiki/Masahiro_Mori" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Masahiro Mori</a>'s theory of the uncanny. The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem "almost human". Movement amplifies the emotional response</span></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-48434364136672462672011-02-27T08:04:00.000-08:002011-02-27T08:12:34.524-08:00The Uncanny (Das Unheimliche)<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sigmund Freud</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><b><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is only rarely that a psycho-analyst feels impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics, even when aesthetics is understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the qualities of feeling. He works in other strata of mental life and has little to do with the subdued emotional impulses which, inhibited in their aims and dependent on a host of concurrent factors, usually furnish the material for the study of aesthetics. But it does occasionally happen that he has to interest himself in some particular province of that subject; and this province usually proves to be a rather remote one, and one which has been neglected in the specialist literature of aesthetics.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The subject of the 'uncanny' is a province of this kind. It is undoubtedly related to what is frightening — to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear in general. Yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this common core is which allows us to distinguish as 'uncanny'; certain things which lie within the field of what is frightening.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As good as nothing is to be found upon this subject in comprehensive treatises on aesthetics, which in general prefer to concern themselves with what is beautiful, attractive and sublime; that is, with feelings of a positive nature; and with the circumstances and the objects that call them forth, rather than with the opposite feelings of repulsion and distress. I know of only one attempt in medico-psychological literature, a fertile but not exhaustive paper by Jentsch (1906). But I must confess that I have not made a very thorough examination of the literature, especially the foreign literature, relating to this present modest contribution of mine, for reasons which, as may easily be guessed, lie in the times in which we live; so that my paper is presented to the reader without any claim to priority.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In his study of the 'uncanny'; Jentsch quite rightly lays stress on the obstacle presented by the fact that people vary so very greatly in their sensitivity to this quality of feeling. The writer of the present contribution, indeed, must himself plead guilty to a special obtuseness in the matter, where extreme delicacy of perception would be more in place. It is long since he has experienced or heard of anything which has given him an uncanny impression, and he must start by translating himself into that state of feeling, by awakening in himself the possibility of experiencing it. Still, such difficulties make themselves powerfully felt in many other branches of aesthetics; we need not on that account despair of finding instances in which tee quality in question will be unhesitatingly recognized by most people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Two courses are open to us at the outset. Either we can find out what meaning has come to be attached to the word 'uncanny' in the course of its history; or we can collect all those properties of persons, things, sense-impressions, experiences and situations which arouse in us the feeling of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown nature of the uncanny from what all these examples have in common. I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. How this is possible, in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, I shall show in what follows. Let me also add that my investigation was actually begun by collecting a number of individual cases, and was only later confirmed by an examination of linguistic usage. In this discussion, however, I shall follow the reverse course.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The German word </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'unheimlich'</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">is obviously the opposite of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'heimlich' </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">['homely'], </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'heimisch' </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">['native'] the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">not</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> known and familiar. Naturally not everything that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation is not capable of inversion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We can only say that what is novel can easily become frightening but not by any means all. Something has to be added to what is novel and unfamiliar in order to make it uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">On the whole, Jentsch did not get beyond this relation of the uncanny to the novel and unfamiliar. He ascribes the essential factor in the production of the feeling of uncanniness to intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as it were, be something one does not know one's way about in. The better orientated in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is not difficult to see that this definition is incomplete, and we will therefore try to proceed beyond the equation 'uncanny' as 'unfamiliar'. We will first turn to other languages. But the dictionaries that we consult tell us nothing new, perhaps only because we ourselves speak a language that is foreign. Indeed, we get an impression that many languages are without a word for this particular shade of what is frightening.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I should like to express my indebtedness to Dr. Theodor Reik for the following excerpts:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Latin: (K.E. Georges, Deutschlateinisches buch, 1898). An uncanny place: locus suspectus; at an uncanny time of night: intempesta nocte.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Greek: (Rost's and Schenkl's Lexikons). Eeros (i.e., strange, foreign).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">English: (from the dictionaries of Lucas, Bellows, Flumlgel and Muret-Sanders). Uncomfortable, uneasy, gloomy, dismal, uncanny, ghastly; (of a house) haunted; (of a man) a repulsive fellow.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span lang="FR" style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">French: (Sachs-Villatte). Inquiétant, sinistre, lugubre, mal à son aise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Spanish: (Tollhausen, 1889). Sospechoso, de mal aguëro, lúgubre, siniestro.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Italian and Portuguese languages seem to content themselves with words which we should describe as circumlocutions. In Arabic and Hebrew ‘uncanny’ means the same as ‘daemonic’, ‘gruesome’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Let us therefore return to the German language. In Daniel Sanders’s Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (1860, 1, 729), the following entry, which I here reproduce in full, is to be found<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">under the word ‘heimlich’. I have laid stress on one or two passages by italicizing them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich,</span></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> adj., subst. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (pl. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeiten</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">): I. Also </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelich, heimelig,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, tame, intimate, friendly, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(a) (Obsolete) belonging to the house or the family, or regarded as so belonging (cf. Latin </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">familiaris</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, familiar); </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Die Heimlichen, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the members of the household; </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Der heimliche Rat</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (Gen. xli, 45; 2 Sam. xxiii, 23; I Chron. xii, 25; Wisd. viii. 4), now more usually </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Geheimer Rat</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [Privy Councillor].<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(b) Of animals: tame, companionable to man. As opposed to wild, e.g., ‘Animals which are neither wild nor </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, etc. ‘Wild animals … that are trained to be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and accustomed to men.’ ‘If these young creatures are brought up from early days among men they become quite </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> friendly’ etc. — So also: ‘It (the lamb) is so </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and eats out of my hand.’ ‘Nevertheless, the stork is a beautiful </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> bird.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">( c) Intimate, friendly comfortable; the enjoyment of quiet content, etc., arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and security as in one within the four walls of his house. Is it still </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">to you in your country where strangers are felling your woods?’ ‘She did not feel too </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">with him.’ ‘Along a high, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, shady path …, beside a purling, gushing and babbling woodland brook.’ ‘To destroy the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of the home.’ ‘I could not readily find another spot so intimate and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> as this.’ ‘We pictured it so comfortable, so nice, so cosy and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> ‘In quiet </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> surrounded by close walls.’ ‘A careful housewife, who knows how to make a pleasing </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit (Häuslichkeit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [domesticity]) out of the smallest means.’ ‘The man who till recently had been so strange to him now seemed to him all the more </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’ ‘The protestant land-owners do not feel … </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> among their catholic inferiors.’ ‘When it grows </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and still, and the evening quiet alone watches over your cell.’ ‘Quiet, lovely and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> no place more fitted for the rest.’ ‘He did not feel at all </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> about it.’ — Also, [in compounds] ‘The place was so peaceful, so lonely, so shadily-</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’ ‘The in- and outflowing waves of the current, dreamy and lullaby-</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.’ Cf. in especial </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [see below]. Among Swabian Swiss authors in especial, often as a trisyllable: ‘How </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> it seemed to Ivo again of an evening, when he was at home.’ ‘It was so </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> in the house.’ ‘The warm room and the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> afternoon.’ ‘When a man feels in his heart that he is so small and the Lord so great — that is what is truly </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.’ ‘Little by little they grew at ease and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> among themselves.’ ‘Friendly </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimeligkeit.’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">‘ I shall be nowhere more heimelich than I am here.’ ‘That which comes from afar … assuredly does not live quite </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig (heimatlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [at home], </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">freundnachbarlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [in a neighbourly way]) among the people.’ ‘The cottage where he had once sat so often among his own people, so </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> so happy.’ ‘The sentinel’s horn sounds so </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimelig</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> from the tower, and his voice invites so hospitably.’ ‘You go to sleep there so soft and warm, so wonderfully </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heim’lig.’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> — </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This form of the word deserves to become general in order to protect this perfectly good sense of the word from becoming obsolete through an easy confusion with </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">II [see below]. Cf: ‘"</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Zecks</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [a family name] </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">are all ‘heimlich’."</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (in sense II) "’</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich’? … What do you understand by ‘heimlich’?" "Well, … they are like a buried spring or a dried-up pond. One cannot walk over it without always having the feeling that water might come up there again." "Oh, we call it ‘unheimlich’; you call it ‘heimlich’. Well, what makes you think that there is something secret and untrustworthy about this family"?"’ (Gutzkow).<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <ol style="margin-top:0cm" start="1" type="1"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(d) Especially in Silesia: gay, cheerful; also of the weather. <o:p></o:p></span></span></li> </ol> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">II. Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others. To do something </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, i.e., behind someone’s back; to steal away </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich; heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> meetings and appointments; to look on with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> pleasure at someone’s discomfiture; to sigh or weep </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">; to behave </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> as though there was something to conceal; </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> love-affair, love, sin; </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> places (which good manners oblige us to conceal) (1 Sam. V. 6. ‘The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> chamber’ (privy) (2 Kings x. 27.). Also, ‘the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> chair’. ‘To throw into pits or </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeiten</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’. — ‘Led the steeds </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> before Laomedon.’ — ‘As secretive, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> deceitful and malicious towards cruet masters … as frank, open, sympathetic and helpful towards a friend in misfortune.’ ‘You have still to learn what is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> holiest to me.’ ‘The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> art’ (magic). ‘Where public ventilation has to stop, there </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> conspirators and the loud battle-cry of professed revolutionaries.’ ‘A holy, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> effect.’ ‘I have roots that are most </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. I am grown in the deep earth.’ ‘My </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> pranks.’ ‘If he is not given it openly and scrupulously he may seize it </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and unscrupulously.’ ‘He had achromatic telescopes constructed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and secretly.’ ‘Henceforth I desire that there should be nothing </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> any longer between us.’ — To discover, disclose, betray someone’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hleimlichkeiten</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">; ‘to concoct </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeiten</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> behind my back’. ‘In my time we studied </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’ ‘The hand of understanding can alone undo the powerless spell of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (of hidden gold).’ ‘Say, where is the place of concealment … in what place of hidden </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeit?</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’ ‘Bees, who make the lock of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlichkeiten’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (i.e., sealing-wax). "learned in strange</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Heimlichkeiten’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(magic arts).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For compounds see above, Ic. Note especially the negative </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">‘un-‘: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">eerie, weird, arousing gruesome fear: ‘Seeming quite </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and ghostly to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">him.’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">‘The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">fearful hours of night.’ ‘I had already long since felt an </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimich’, even </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">gruesome feeling.’ ‘Now I am beginning to have an </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> feeling.’ … ‘Feels an </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> horror.’ ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and motionless like a stone image.’ ‘The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> mist called hill-fog.’ ‘These pale youths are </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheinrlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and are brewing heaven knows what mischief.’ ‘"Unh</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">eimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained ... secret and hidden but has come to light’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Schelling).— ‘To veil the divine, to surround it with a certain </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Unheimlichkeit.’ — Unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is not often used as opposite to meaning II (above).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich’’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheirnlich’. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">thus comes to be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Cf. the quotation from Gutzkow: ‘We call it </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"unheimlich"; </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">you call it </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"heimlich".’) </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In general we are reminded that the word </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">‘heimlich’ </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other. what is concealed and kept out of sight. ‘Unheimlich’ is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of’ </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich’, and </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">not of the second. Sanders tells us nothing concerning a possible genetic connection between these two meanings of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Unheimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some of the doubts that have thus arisen are removed if we consult Grimm’s dictionary. (1877, 4. Part 2, 873 ff.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We read:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich; </span></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">adj. and adv. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">vernaculus, occultus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">; MHG, heimelich, heimlich.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(P. 874.) In a slightly different sense: ‘I feel </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, well, free from fear.’ . . .<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[3] </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(b)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">is also used of a place free from ghostly influences … familiar, friendly, intimate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(P. 875: ß) Familiar, amicable, unreserved.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">From the idea of ‘homelike’, ‘belonging to the house’, the further idea is developed of<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">something withdrawn from the eyes of strangers, something concealed, secret; and this idea is expanded in many ways …</span></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(P. 876.) ‘On the left bank of the lake there lies a meadow </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">in the wood.’ (Schiller, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Wilhelm Tell,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 1. 4.) … Poetic licence, rarely so used in modern speech … </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich is </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">used in conjunction with a verb expressing the act of concealing: ‘In the secret of his tabernacle he shall hide me </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (Ps. xxvii. 5.) … </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">parts of the human body, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">pudenda</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> … ‘the men that died not were smitten on their </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> parts.’ (1 Samuel v. 12.) …<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify; text-indent:0cm;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">a.</span><span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Officials who give important advice which has to be kept secret in matters of state are called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> councillors; the adjective, according to modern usage, has been replaced by </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">geheim </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[secret] ... ‘Pharaoh called Joseph’s name "him to whom secrets are revealed"’ (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">councillor). (Gen. xli. 45.) <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (P. 878.) 6. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> as used of knowledge — mystic, allegorical: a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> meaning, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">mysticus, divinus, occultus, figuratus.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(P. 878.) </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> in a different sense, as withdrawn from knowledge, unconscious … </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> also has the meaning of that which is obscure, inaccessible to knowledge … ‘Do you not see? They do not trust us; they fear the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> face of the Duke of Friedland.’ (Schiller, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Wallensteins Lager, Scene 2.)<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9. The notion of something hidden and dangerous, which is expressed in the last</span></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">paragraph, is still further developed, so that ‘heimlich’ comes to have the meaning usually ascribed to ‘unheimlich’. </span></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Thus: ‘At times I feel like a man who walks in the night and believes in ghosts; every corner is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and full of terrors for him’. (Klinger, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Theater,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 3. 298.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Thus </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich. Unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is in some way or other a sub-species of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Let us bear this discovery in mind, though we cannot yet rightly understand it, alongside of Schelling’s definition of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Unheimlich.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> If we go on to examine individual instances of uncanniness, these hints will become intelligible to us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><b><span style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><b><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">II<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">When we proceed to review things, persons, impressions, events and situations which are able to arouse in us a feeling of the uncanny in a particularly forcible and definite form, the first requirement is obviously to select a suitable example to start on. Jentsch has taken as a very good instance ‘doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate’; and he refers in this connection to the impression made by waxwork figures, ingeniously constructed dolls and automata. To these he adds the uncanny effect of epileptic fits, and of manifestations of insanity, because these excite in the spectator the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at work behind the ’ordinary appearance of mental activity. Without entirely accepting this author’s view, we will take it as a starting point for our own investigation because in what follows he reminds us of a writer who has succeeded in producing uncanny effects better than anyone else.</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jentsch writes: 'In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately. 'I'hat, as we have said, would quickly dissipate the peculiar emotional effect of the thing. E. T. A. Hoffmann has repeatedly employed this psychological artifice with success in his fantastic narratives.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This observation, undoubtedly a correct one, refers primarily to the story of The Sand-Man" in Hoffmann’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nachtstücken,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> which contains the original of Olympia, the doll that appears in the first act of Offenbach’s opera, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Tales of Hoffmann.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> but I cannot think — and I hope most readers of the story will agree with me — that the theme of the doll Olympia, who is to all appearances a living being, is by any means the only, or indeed the most important, element that must be held responsible for the quite unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by the story. Nor is this atmosphere heightened by the fact that the author himself treats the episode of Olympia with a faint touch of satire and uses it to poke fun at the young man’s idealization of his mistress. The main theme of the story is, on the contrary, something different, something which gives it its name, and which is always re-introduced at critical moments: it is the theme of the ‘Sand-Man’ who tears out children’s eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This fantastic tale opens with the childhood recollections of the student Nathaniel. In spite of his present happiness, he cannot banish the memories associated with the mysterious and terrifying death of his beloved father. On certain evenings his mother used to send the children to bed early, warning them that ‘the Sand-Man was coming’; and, sure enough, Nathaniel would not fail to hear the heavy tread of a visitor, with whom his father would then be occupied for the evening. When questioned about the Sand-Man, his mother, it is true, denied that such a person existed except as a figure of speech; but his nurse could give him more definite information: ‘He’s a wicked man who comes when children won’t go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes so that they jump out of their heads all bleeding. Then he puts the eyes in a sack and carries them off to the half-moon to feed his children. They sit up there in their nest, and their beaks are hooked like owls’ beaks, and they use them to peck up naughty boys’ and girls’ eyes with.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Although little Nathaniel was sensible and old enough not to credit the figure of the Sand-Man with such gruesome attributes, yet the dread of him became fixed in his heart. He determined to find out what the Sand-Man looked like; and one evening, when the Sand-Man was expected again, he hid in his father’s study. He recognized the visitor as the lawyer Coppelius, a repulsive person whom the children were frightened of when he occasionally came to a meal; and he now identified this Coppelius with the dreaded Sand-Man. As regards the rest of the scene, Hoffmann already leaves us in doubt whether what we are witnessing is tee first delirium of the panic-stricken boy, or a succession of events which are to be regarded in thc story as being real. His father and the guest are at work at a brazier with glowing flames. The little eavesdropper hears Coppelius call out: 'Eyes here! Eyes here!' and betrays himself by screaming aloud. Coppelius seizes him and is on the point of dropping bits of red-hot coal from the fire into his eyes, and then of throwing them into the brazier, but his father begs him off and saves his eyes. After this the boy falls into a deep swoon; and a long illness brings his experience to an end. Those who decide in favour of the rationalistic interpretation of the Sand-Man will not fail to recognize in the child’s phantasy the persisting influence of his nurse’s story. The bits of sand that are to be thrown into the child’s eyes turn into bits of red-hot coal from the flames; and in both cases they are intended to make his eyes jump out. In the course of another visit of the Sand-Man’s, a year later, his father is killed in his study by an explosion. The lawyer Coppelius disappears from the place without leaving a trace behind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nathaniel, now a student, believes that he has recognized this phantom of horror from his childhood in an itinerant optician, an Italian called Giuseppe Coppola, who at his university town, offers him weather-glasses for sale. When Nathaniel refuses, the man goes on: ‘Not weather-glasses? not weather-glasses? also got fine eyes, fine eyes!’ The student’s terror is allayed when he finds that the proffered eyes are only harmless spectacles, and he buys a pocket spy-glass from Coppola. With its aid he looks across into Professor Spalanzani’s house opposite and there spies Spalanzani’s beautiful, but strangely silent and motionless daughter, Olympia. He soon falls in love with her so violently that, because of her, he quite forgets the clever and sensible girl to whom he is betrothed. But Olympia is an automaton whose clock-work has been made by Spalanzani, and whose eyes have been put in by Coppola, the Sand-Man. The student surprises the two Masters quarrelling over their handiwork. The optician carries off the wooden eyeless doll; and the mechanician, Spalanzani, picks up Olympia’s bleeding eyes from the ground and throws them at Nathaniel’s breast, saying that Coppola had stolen them from the student. Nathaniel succumbs to a fresh attack of madness, and in his delirium his recollection of his father’s death is mingled with this new experience. ‘Hurry up! hurry up! ring of fire!’ he cries. ‘Spin about, ring of fire — Hurrah! Hurry up, wooden doll! lovely wooden doll, spin about — .’ He then falls upon the professor, Olympia’s ‘father’, and tries to strangle him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rallying from a long and serious illness, Nathaniel seems at last to have recovered. He intends to marry his betrothed, with whom he has become reconciled. One day he and she are walking through the city market-place, over which the high tower of the Town Hall throws its huge shadow. On the girl’s suggestion, they climb the tower, leaving her brother, who is walking with them, down below. From the top, Clara’s attention is drawn to a curious object moving along the street. Nathaniel looks at this thing through Coppola’s spy-glass, which he finds in his pocket, and falls into a new attack of madness. Shouting ‘Spin about, wooden doll!’ he tries to throw the girl into the gulf below. Her brother, brought to her side by her cries, rescues her and hastens down with her to safety. On the tower above, the madman rushes round, shrieking ‘Ring of fire, spin about!’ — and we know the origin of the words. Among the people who begin to gather below there comes forward the figure of the lawyer Coppelius, who has suddenly returned. We may suppose that it was his approach, seen through the spy-glass, which threw Nathaniel into his fit of madness. As the onlookers prepare to go up and overpower the madman, Coppelius laughs and says: ‘Wait a bit; he’ll come down of himself.’ Nathaniel suddenly stands still, catches sight of Coppelius, and with a wild shriek ‘Yes! "fine eyes — fine eyes"!’ flings himself over the parapet. While he lies on the paving-stones with a shattered skull the Sand-Man vanishes in the throng.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This short summary leaves no doubt, I think, that the feeling of something uncanny is directly attached to the figure of the Sand-Man, that is, to the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes, and that Jentsch’s point of an intellectual uncertainty has nothing to do with the effect. Uncertainty whether an object is living or inanimate, which admittedly applied to the doll Olympia, is quite irrelevant in connection with this other, more striking instance of uncanniness. It is true that the writer creates a kind of uncertainty in us in the beginning by not letting us know, no doubt purposely, whether he is taking us into the real world or into a purely fantastic one of his own creation. He has, of course, a right to do either; and if he chooses to stage his action in a world peopled with spirits, demons and ghosts, as Shakespeare does in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hamlet,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Macbeth</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and, in a different sense, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Tempest</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A midsummer-Night’s Dream</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, we must bow to his decision and treat his setting as though it were real for as long as we put ourselves into this hands. But this uncertainty disappears in the course of Hoffmann’s story, and we perceive that he intends to make us, too, look through the demon optician’s spectacles or spy-glass — perhaps, indeed, that the author in his very own person once peered through such an instrument. For the conclusion of the story makes it quite clear that Coppola the optician really is the lawyer Coppelius and also, therefore, the Sand-Man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There is no question therefore, of any intellectual uncertainty here: we know now that we are not supposed to be looking on at the products of a madman's imagination, behind which we, with the superiority of rational minds, are able to detect the sober truth; and yet this knowledge does not lessen the impression of uncanniness in the least degree. The theory of intellectual uncertainty is thus incapable of explaining that impression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We know from psycho-analytic experience, however, that the fear of damaging or losing one's eyes is a terrible one in children. Many adults retain their apprehensiveness in this respect, and no physical injury is so much dreaded by them as an injury to the eye. We are accustomed to say, too, that we will treasure a thing as the apple of our eye. A study of dreams, phantasies and myths has taught us that anxiety about one's eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated. The self-blinding of the mythical criminal, Oedipus, was simply a mitigated form of the punishment of castration — the only punishment that was adequate for him by the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">lex talionis. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We may try on rationalistic grounds to</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">deny that fears about the eye are derived from the fear of castration, and may argue that it is very natural that so precious an organ as the eye should be guarded by a proportionate dread. Indeed, we might go further and say that the fear of castration itself contains no other significance and no deeper secret than a justifiable dread of this rational kind. But this view does not account adequately for the substitutive relation between the eye and the male organ which is seen to exist in dreams and myths and phantasies; nor can it dispel the impression that the threat of being castrated in especial excites a peculiarly violent and obscure emotion, and that this emotion is what first gives the idea of losing other organs its intense colouring. All further doubts are removed when we learn the details of their 'castration complex' from the analysis of neurotic patients, and realize its immense importance in their mental life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Moreover, I would not recommend any opponent of the psycho-analytic view to select this particular story of the Sand-Man with which to support his argument that anxiety about the eyes has nothing to do with the castration complex. For why does Hoffmann bring the anxiety about eyes into such intimate connection with the father's death? And why does the Sand-Man always appear as a disturber of love? He separates the unfortunate Nathaniel from his betrothed and from her brother, his best friend; he destroys the second object of his love, Olympia, the lovely doll; and he drives him into suicide at the moment when he has won back his Clara and is about to be happily united to her. Elements in the story like these, and many others, seem arbitrary and meaningless so long as we deny all connection between fears about the eye and castration; but they become intelligible as soon as we replace the Sand-Man by the dreaded father at whose hands castration is expected.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> We shall venture, therefore, to refer the uncanny effect of the Sand-Man to the anxiety belonging to the castration complex of childhood. But having reached the idea that we can make an infantile factor such as this responsible for feelings of uncanniness, we are encouraged to see whether we can apply it to other instances of the uncanny. We find in the story of the Sand-Man the other theme on which Jentsch lays stress, of a doll which appears to be alive. Jentsch believes that a particularly favourable condition for awakening uncanny feelings is created when there is intellectual uncertainty whether an object is alive or not, and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one. Now, dolls are of course rather closely connected with childhood life. We remember that in their early games children do not distinguish at all sharply between living and inanimate objects, and that they are especially fond of treating their dolls like live people. In fact, I have occasionally heard a woman patient declare that even at the age of eight she had still been convinced that her dolls would be certain to come to life if she were to look at them in a particular, extremely concentrated, way. So that here, too, it is not difficult to discover a factor from childhood. But, curiously enough, while the Sand-Man story deals with the arousing of an early childhood fear, the idea of a ‘living doll’ excites no fear at all; children have no fear of their dolls coming to life, they may even desire it. The source of uncanny feelings would not, therefore, be an infantile fear in this case, but rather an infantile wish or even merely an infantile belief. There seems to be a contradiction here; but perhaps it is only a complication, which may be helpful to us later on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hoffmann is the unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature. His novel, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Die Elixire des Teufels [The Devil’s Elixir]</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, contains a whole mass of themes to which one is tempted to ascribe the uncanny effect of the narrative; but it is too obscure and intricate a story for us to venture upon a summary of it. Towards the end of the book the reader is told the facts, hitherto concealed from him, from which the action springs; with the result, not that he is at last enlightened, but that he falls into a state of complete bewilderment. The author has piled up too much material of the same kind. In consequence one’s grasp of the story as a whole suffers, though not the impression it makes. We must content ourselves with selecting those themes of uncanniness which are most prominent, and with seeing whether they too can fairly be traced back to infantile sources. These themes are all concerned with the phenomenon of the ‘double’, which appears in every shape and in every degree of development. Thus we have characters who are to be considered identical because they look alike. This relation is accentuated by mental processes leaping from one of these characters to another — by what we should call telepathy —, so that the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other. Or it is marked by the fact that the subject identifies himself with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is, or substitutes the extraneous self for his own. In other words, there is a doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self. And finally there is the constant recurrence of the same thing — the repetition of the same features or character-traits or vicissitudes, of the same crimes, or even the same names through several consecutive generations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The theme of the ‘double’ has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank (1914). He has gone into the connections which the ‘double’ has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also lets in a flood of light on the surprising evolution of the idea. For the ‘double’ was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’, as Rank says; and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the first ‘double’ of the body. This invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction has its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is found of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of a genital symbol. The same desire led the Ancient Egyptians to develop the art of making images of the dead in lasting materials. Such ideas, however, have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The idea of the ‘double’ does not necessarily disappear with the passing of primary narcissism, for it can receive fresh meaning from the later stages of the ego’s development. A special agency is slowly formed there, which is able to stand over against the rest of the ego, which has the function of observing and criticizing the self and of exercising a censorship within the mind, and which we become aware of as our ‘conscience’. In the pathological case of delusions of being watched, this mental agency becomes isolated, dissociated from the ego, and discernible to the physician’s eye. The fact that an agency of this kind exists, which is able to treat the rest of the ego like an object — the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation — renders it possible to invest the old idea of a ‘double’ with a new meaning and to ascribe a number of things to it — above all, those things which seem to self-criticism to belong to the old surmounted narcissism of earliest times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But it is not only this latter material, offensive as it is to the criticism of the ego, which may be incorporated in the idea of a double. There are also all the unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of volition which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will. [Cf. Freud, 1901b, Chapter XII (B).]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But after having thus considered the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">manifest </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">motivation of the figure of a 'double', we have to admit that none of this helps us to understand the extraordinarily strong feeling of something uncanny that pervades the conception; and our knowledge of pathological mental processes enables us to add that nothing in this more superficial material could account for the urge towards defence which has caused the ego to project that material outward as something foreign to itself. When all is said and done, the quality of uncanniness can only come from the fact of the 'double' being a creation dating back to a very early mental stage, long since surmounted — a stage, incidentally, at which it wore a more friendly aspect. The 'double' has become a thing of terror, just as, after the collapse of their religion, the gods turned into demons.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The other forms of ego-disturbance exploited by Hoffmann can easily be estimated along the same lines as the theme of the ‘double’. They are a harking-back to particular phases in the evolution of the self-regarding feeling, a regression to a time when the ego had not yet marked itself off sharply from the external world and from other people. I believe that these factors are partly responsible for the impression of uncanniness, although it is not easy to isolate and determine exactly their share of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The factor of the repetition of the same thing will perhaps not appeal to everyone as a source of uncanny feeling. From what I have observed, this phenomenon does undoubtedly, subject to certain conditions and combined with certain circumstances, arouse an uncanny feeling, which, furthermore, recalls the sense of helplessness experienced in some dream-states. As I was walking, one hot summer afternoon, through the deserted streets of a provincial town in Italy which was unknown to me, I found myself in a quarter of whose character I could not long remain in doubt. nothing but painted women were to be seen at the windows of the small houses, and I hastened to leave the narrow street at the next turning. But after having wandered about for a time without enquiring my way, I suddenly found myself back in the same street, where my presence was now beginning to excite attention. I hurried away once more, only to arrive by another </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">detour</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> at the same place yet a third time. Now, however, a feeling overcame me which I can only describe as uncanny, and I was glad enough to find myself back at the piazza I had left a short while before, without any further voyages of discovery. Other situations which have in common with my adventure an unintended recurrence of the same situation, but which differ radically from it in other respects, also result in the same feeling of helplessness and of uncanniness. So, for instance, when, caught in a mist perhaps, one has lost one’s way in a mountain forest, every attempt to find the marked or familiar path may bring one back again and again to one and the same spot, which one can identify by some particular landmark. Or one may wander about in a dark, strange room, looking for the door or the electric switch, and collide time after time with the same piece of furniture -- though it is true that Mark Twain succeeded by wild exaggeration in turning this latter situation into something irresistibly comic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If we take another class of things, it is easy to see that there, too, it is only this factor of involuntary repetition which surrounds what would otherwise by innocent enough with an uncanny atmosphere, and forces upon us the idea of something fateful and inescapable when otherwise we should have spoken only of ‘chance’. For instance, we naturally attach no importance to the event when we hand in an overcoat and get a cloakroom ticket with the number, let us say, 62; or when we find that our cabin on a ship bears that number. But the impression is altered if two such events, each in itself indifferent, happen close together — if we come across the number 62 several times in a single day, or if we begin to notice that everything which has a number — addresses, hotel rooms, compartments in railway trains — invariably has the same one, or at all events one which contains the same figures. We do feel this to be uncanny. And unless a man is utterly hardened and proof against the lure of superstition, he will be tempted to ascribe a secret meaning to this obstinate recurrence of a number; he will take it, perhaps, as an indication of the span of life allotted to him. Or suppose one is engaged in reading the works of the famous physiologist, Hering, and within the space of a few days receives two letters from two different countries, each from a person called Hering, though one has never before had any dealings with anyone of that name. Not long ago an ingenious scientist (Kammerer, 1919) attempted to reduce coincidences of this kind to certain laws, and so deprive them of their uncanny effect. I will not venture to decide whether he has succeeded or not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">How exactly we can trace back to infantile psychology the uncanny effect of such similar recurrences is a question I can only lightly touch on in these pages; and I must refer the reader instead to another work, already completed, in which this has been gone into in detail, but in a different connection. For it is possible to recognize the dominance in the unconscious mind of a 'compulsion to repeat' proceeding from the instinctual impulses and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts — a compulsion powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle, lending to certain aspects of the mind their daemonic character, and still very clearly expressed in the impulses of small children; a compulsion, too, which is responsible for a part of the course taken by the analyses of neurotic patients. All these considerations prepare us for the discovery that whatever reminds us of this inner 'compulsion to repeat' is perceived as uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now, however, it is time to turn from these aspects of the matter, which are in any case difficult to judge, and look for some undeniable instances of the uncanny, in the hope that an analysis of them will decide whether our hypothesis is a valid one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the story of "The Ring of Polycrates’, The king of Egypt turns away in horror from his host, Polycrates, because he sees that his friend’s every wish is at once fulfilled, his every care promptly removed by kindly fate. His host has become ‘uncanny’ to him. His own explanation, that the too fortunate man has to fear the envy of the gods, seems obscure to us; its meaning is veiled in mythological language. We will therefore turn to another example in a less grandiose setting. In the case history of an obsessional neurotic, I have described how the patient once stayed in a hydropathic establishment and benefited greatly by it. He had the good sense, however, to attribute his improvement not to the therapeutic properties of the water, but to the situation of his room, which immediately adjoined that of a very accommodating nurse. So on his second visit to the establishment he asked for the same room, but was told that it was already occupied by an old gentleman, whereupon he gave vent to his annoyance in the words: ‘I wish he may be struck dead for it.’ A fortnight later the old gentleman really did have a stroke. My patient thought this an ‘uncanny’ experience. The impression of uncanniness would have been stronger still if less time had elapsed between his words and the untoward event, or if he had been able to report innumerable similar coincidences. As a matter of fact, he had no difficulty in producing coincidences of this sort; but then not only he but every obsessional neurotic I have observed has been able to relate analogous experiences. They are never surprised at their invariably running up against someone they have just been thinking of, perhaps for the first time for a long while. If they say one day 'I haven't had any news of so-and-so for a long time', they will be sure to get a letter from him the next morning, and an accident or a death will rarely take place without having passed through their mind a little while before. They are in the habit of referring to this state of affairs in the most modest manner, saying that they have 'presentiments' which 'usually' come true.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the most uncanny and wide-spread forms of superstition is the dread of the evil eye, which has been exhaustively studied by the Hamburg oculist Seligmann (1910-11). There never seems to have been any doubt about the source of this dread. Whoever possesses something that is at once valuable and fragile is afraid of other people's envy, in so far as he projects on to them the envy he would have felt in their place. A feeling like this betrays itself by a look even though it is not put into words; and when a man is prominent owing to noticeable, and particularly owing to unattractive, attributes, other people are ready to believe that his envy is rising to a more than usual degree of intensity and that this intensity will convert it into effective action. What is feared is thus a secret intention of doing harm, and certain signs are taken to mean that that intention has the necessary power at its commend.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These last examples of the uncanny are to be referred to the principle which I have called 'omnipotence of thoughts', taking, the name from an expression used by one of my patients. And now we find ourselves on familiar ground. Our analysis of instances of the uncanny has led us back to the old, animistic conception of the universe. This was characterized by the idea that the world was peopled with the spirits of human beings; by the subject's narcissistic overvaluation of his own mental processes; by the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts and the technique of magic based on that belief; by the attribution to various outside persons and things of carefully graded magical powers, or 'mama'; as well as by all the other creations with the help of which man, in the unrestricted narcissism of that stage of development, strove to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality. It seems as if each one of us has been through a phase of individual development corresponding to this animistic stage in primitive men, that none of us has passed through it without preserving certain residues and traces of it which are still capable of manifesting themselves, and that everything which now strikes us as 'uncanny' fulfils the condition of touching those residues of animistic mental activity within us and bringing them to expression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">At this point I will put forward two considerations which, I think, contain the gist of this short study. In the first place, if psycho-analytic theory is correct in maintaining that every affect belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">recurs</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny; and it must be a matter of indifference whether what is uncanny was itself originally frightening or whether it carried some </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">other</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> affect. In the second place, if this is indeed the secret nature of the uncanny, we can understand why linguistic usage has extended </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">das Heimliche</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [‘homely’] into its opposite, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">das Unheimliche</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (p. 226); for this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. This reference to the factor of repression enables us, furthermore, to understand Schelling’s definition [p. 224] of the uncanny as something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It only remains for us to test our new hypothesis on one or two more examples of the uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Many people experience the feeling in the highest degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts. As we have seen [p. 221] some languages in use to-day can only render the German expression ‘an </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> house’ by ‘a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">haunted</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> house’. We might indeed have begun our investigation with this example, perhaps the most striking of all, of something uncanny, but we refrained from doing so because the uncanny in it is too much intermixed with what is purely gruesome and is in part overlaid by it. There is scarcely any other matter, however, upon which our thoughts and feelings have changed so little since the very earliest times, and in which discarded forms have been so completely preserved under a thin disguise, as our relation to death. Two things account for our conservatism: the strength of our original emotional reaction to death and the insufficiency of our scientific knowledge about it. Biology has not yet been able to decide whether death is the inevitable fate of every living being or whether it is only a regular but yet perhaps avoidable event in life. It is true that the statement ‘All men are mortal’ is paraded in text-books of logic as an example of a general proposition; but no human being really grasps it, and our unconscious has as little use now as it ever had for the idea of its own mortality. Religions continue to dispute the importance of the undeniable fact of individual death and to postulate a life after death; civil governments still believe that they cannot maintain moral order among the living if they do not uphold the prospect of a better life hereafter as a recompense for mundane existence. In our great cities, placards announce lectures that undertake to tell us how to get into touch with the souls of the departed; and it cannot be denied that not a few of the most able and penetrating minds among our men of science have come to the conclusion, especially towards the close of their own lives, that a contact of this kind is not impossible. Since almost all of us still think as savages do on this topic, it is no matter for surprise that the primitive fear of the dead is still so strong within us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation. Most likely our fear still implies the old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his new life with him. Considering our unchanged attitude towards death, we might rather enquire what has become of the repression, which is the necessary condition of a primitive feeling recurring in the shape of something uncanny. But repression is there, too. All supposedly educated people have ceased to believe officially that the dead can become visible as spirits, and have made any such appearances dependent on improbable and remote conditions; their emotional attitude towards their dead, moreover, once a highly ambiguous and ambivalent one, has been toned down in the higher strata of the mind into an unambiguous feeling of piety.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We have now only a few remarks to add — for animism, magic and sorcery, the omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise practically all the factors which turn something frightening into something uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We can also speak of a living person as uncanny, and we do so when we ascribe evil intentions to him. But that is not all; in addition to this we must feel that his intentions to harm us are going to be carried out with the help of special powers. A good instance of this is the ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Gettatore</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’, that uncanny figure of Romanic superstition which Schaeffer, with intuitive poetic feeling and profound psycho-analytic understanding, has transformed into a sympathetic character in his </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Josef Montfort.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> But the question of these secret powers brings us back again to the realm of animism. It was the pious Gretchen’s intuition that Mephistopheles possessed secret powers of this kind that made him so uncanny to her.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sic fühlt dass ich ganz sicher ein Genie,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span lang="FR" style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Vielleieht sogar der Teufel bin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The uncanny effect of epilepsy and of madness has the same origin. The layman sees in them the working of forces hitherto unsuspected in his fellow-men, but at the same time he is dimly aware of them in remote corners of his own being. The Middle Ages quite consistently ascribed all such maladies to the influence of demons, and in this their psychology was almost correct. Indeed, I should not be surprised to hear that psycho-analysis, which is concerned with laying bare these hidden forces, has itself become uncanny to many people for that very reason. In one case, after I had succeeded — though none too rapidly — in effecting a cure in a girl who had been an invalid for many years, I myself heard this view expressed by the patient’s mother long after her recovery.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, as in a fairy tale of Hauff's, feet which dance by themselves, as in the book by Schaeffer which I mentioned above — all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when, as in the last instance, they prove capable of independent activity in addition. As we already know, this kind of uncanniness springs from its proximity to the castration complex. To some people the idea of being buried alive by mistake is the most uncanny thing of all. And yet psycho-analysis has taught us that this terrifying phantasy is only a transformation of another phantasy which had originally nothing terrifying about it at all, but was qualified by a certain lasciviousness — the phantasy, I mean, of intra-uterine existence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There is one more point of general application which I should like to add, though, strictly speaking, it has been included in what has already been said about animism and modes of working of the mental apparatus that have been surmounted; for I think it deserves special emphasis. This is that an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. It is this factor which contributes not a little to the uncanny effect attaching to magical practices. The infantile element in this, which also dominates the minds of neurotics, is the over-accentuation of psychical reality in comparison with material reality — a feature closely allied to the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts. In the middle of the isolation of war-time a number of the English </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Strand Magazine</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> fell into my hands; and, among other somewhat redundant matter, I read a story about a young married couple who move into a furnished house in which there is a curiously shaped table with carvings of crocodiles on it. Towards evening an intolerable and very specific smell begins to pervade the house; they stumble over something in the dark; they seem to see a vague form gliding over the stairs — in short, we are given to understand that the presence of the table causes ghostly crocodiles to haunt the place, or that the wooden monsters come to life in the dark, or something of that sort. It was a naïve enough story, but the uncanny feeling it produced was quite remarkable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">To conclude this collection of examples, which is certainly not complete, I will relate an instance taken from psycho-analytic experience; if it does not rest upon mere coincidence, it furnishes a beautiful confirmation of our theory of the uncanny. It often happens that neurotic men declare that they feel there is something uncanny about the female genital organs. This </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> place, however, is the entrance to the former </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Heim </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[home] of all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning. there is a joking saying that ‘Love is home-sickness’; and whenever a man dreams of a place or a country and says to himself, while he is still dreaming: ‘this place is familiar to me, I’ve been here before’, we may interpret the place as being his mother’s genitals or her body. In this case too, then, the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is what was once </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimisch,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> familiar; the prefix ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">un</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">’ [‘un-’] is the token of repression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><b><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">III<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> In the course of this discussion the reader will have felt certain doubts arising in his mind; and he must now have an opportunity of collecting them and bringing them forward.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It may be true that the uncanny [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">unheimlich</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">] is something which is secretly familiar [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heimlich-heimisch</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">], which has undergone repression and then returned from it, and that everything that is uncanny fulfils this condition. But the selection of material on this basis does not enable us to solve the problem of the uncanny. For our proposition is clearly not convertible. Not everything that fulfils this condition — not everything that recalls repressed desires and surmounted modes of thinking belonging to the prehistory of the individual and of the race — is on that account uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nor shall we conceal the fact that for almost every example adduced in support of our hypothesis one may be found which rebuts it. The story of the severed hand in Hauff’s fairy tale [p. 244] certainly has an uncanny effect, and we have traced that effect back to the castration complex; but most readers will probably agree with me in judging that no trace of uncanniness is provoked by Herodotus’s story of the treasure of Phampsinitus, in which the master-thief, whom the princess tries to hold fast by the hand, leaves his brother’s severed hand behind with her instead. Again, the prompt fulfilment of the wishes of Polycrates [p. 239] undoubtedly affects us in the same uncanny way as it did the king of Egypt; yet our own fairy stories are crammed with instantaneous wish-fulfilments which produce no uncanny effect whatever. In the story of ‘The Three Wishes’, the woman is tempted by the savoury smell of a sausage to wish that she might have one too, and in an instant it lies on a plate before her. In his annoyance at her hastiness her husband wishes it may hang on her nose. And there it is, dangling from her nose. All this is very striking but not in the least uncanny. Fairy tales quite frankly adopt the animistic standpoint of the omnipotence of thoughts and wishes, and yet I cannot think of any genuine fairy story which has anything uncanny about it. We have heard that it is in the highest degree uncanny when an inanimate object — a picture or a doll — comes to life; nevertheless in Hans Andersen’s stories the household utensils, furniture and tin soldiers are alive, yet nothing could well be more remote from the uncanny. And we should hardly call it uncanny when Pygmalion’s beautiful statue comes to life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Apparent death and the re-animation of the dead have been represented as most uncanny themes. But things of this sort too are very common in fairy stories. Who would be so bold as to call it uncanny, for instance, when Snow-White opens her eyes once more? And the resuscitation of the dead in accounts of miracles, as in the New Testament, elicits feelings quite unrelated to the uncanny. Then, too, the theme that achieves such an indubitably uncanny effect, the unintended recurrence of the same thing, serves other and quite different purposes in another class of cases. We have already come across one example [p 237] in which it is employed to call up a feeling of the comic; and we could multiply instances of this kind. Or again, it works as a means of emphasis, and so on. And once more: what is the origin of the uncanny effect of silence, darkness and solitude?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Do not these factors point to the part played by danger in the genesis of what is uncanny, notwithstanding that in children these same factors are the most frequent determinants of the expression of fear [rather than of the uncanny]? And are we after all justified in entirely ignoring intellectual uncertainty as a factor, seeing that we have admitted its importance in relation to death [p. 242]?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is evident therefore, that we must be prepared to admit that there are other elements besides those which we have so far laid down as determining the production of uncanny feelings. We might say that these preliminary results have satisfied </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">psycho-analytic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> interest in the problem of the uncanny, and that what remains probably calls for an </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">aesthetic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> enquiry. But that would be to open the door to doubts about what exactly is the value of our general contention that the uncanny proceeds from something familiar which has been repressed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We have noticed one point which may help us to resolve these uncertainties: nearly all the instances that contradict our hypothesis are taken from the realm of fiction, of imaginative writing. This suggests that we should differentiate between the uncanny that we actually experience and the uncanny that we merely picture or read about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">experienced </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">as uncanny is much more simply conditioned but comprises far fewer instances. We shall find, I think, that it fits in perfectly with our attempt at a solution, and can be traced back without exception to something familiar that has been repressed. But here, too, we must make a certain important and psychologically significant differentiation in our material, which is best illustrated by turning to suitable examples.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Let us take the uncanny associated with the omnipotence of thoughts, with the prompt fulfilment of wishes, with secret injurious powers and with the return of the dead. The condition under which the feeling of uncanniness arises here is unmistakable. We — or our primitive forefathers — once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, we have </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">surmounted </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">these modes of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist within us ready to seize upon any confirmation. As soon as something </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">actually happens</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny; it is as though we were making a judgement something like this: ‘So, after all, it is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">true</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that one can kill a person by the mere wish!’ or, ‘So the dead </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">do</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> live on and appear on the scene of their former activities!’ and so on. Conversely, anyone who has completely and finally rid himself of animistic beliefs will be insensible to this type of the uncanny. The most remarkable coincidences of wish and fulfilment, the most mysterious repetition of similar experiences in a particular place or on a particular date, the most deceptive sights and suspicious noises — none of these things will disconcert him or raise the kind of fear which can be described as ‘a fear of something uncanny’. The whole thing is purely an affair of ‘reality-testing’, a question of the material reality of the phenomena.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The state of affairs is different when the uncanny proceeds from repressed infantile complexes, from the castration complex, womb-phantasies, etc.’ but experiences which arouse this kind of uncanny feeling are not of very frequent occurrence in real life. The uncanny which proceeds from actual experience belongs for the most part to the first group [the group dealt with in the previous paragraph]. Nevertheless the distinction between the two is theoretically very important. Where the uncanny comes from infantile complexes the question of material reality does not arise; its place is taken by psychical reality. What is involved is an actual repression of some content of thought and a return of this repressed content, not a cessation of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">belief in the reality</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of such a content. We might say that in the one case what had been repressed is a particular ideational content, and in the other the belief in its (material) reality. But this last phrase no doubt extends the term ‘repression’ beyond its legitimate meaning. It would be more correct to take into account a psychological distinction which can be detected here, and to say that the animistic beliefs of civilized people are in a state of having been (to a greater or lesser extent) </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">surmounted</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [rather than repressed]. Our conclusion could then be stated thus: an uncanny experience occurs either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed. Finally, we must not let our predilection for smooth solutions and lucid exposition blind us to the fact that these two classes of uncanny experience are not always sharply distinguishable. When we consider that primitive beliefs are most intimately connected with infantile complexes, and are, in fact, based on them, we shall not be greatly astonished to find that the distinction is often a hazy one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The uncanny as it is depicted in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">literature</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, in stories and imaginative productions, merits in truth a separate discussion. Above all, it is a much more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life. The contrast between what has been repressed and what has been surmounted cannot be transposed on to the uncanny in fiction without profound modification; for the realm of phantasy depends for its effect on the fact that its content is not submitted to reality-testing. The somewhat paradoxical result is that </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The imaginative writer has this licence among many others, that he can select his world of representation so that it either coincides with the realities we are familiar with or departs from them in what particulars he pleases. We accept his ruling in every case. In fairy tales, for instance, the world of reality is left behind from the very start, and the animistic system of beliefs is frankly adopted. Wish-fulfilments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of inanimate objects, all the elements so common in fairy stories, can exert no uncanny influence here; for, as we have learnt, that feeling cannot arise unless there is a conflict of judgement as to whether things which have been 'surmounted' and are regarded as incredible may not, after all, be possible; and this problem is eliminated from the outset by the postulates of the world of fairy tales. Thus we see that fairy stories, which have furnished us with most of the contradictions to our hypothesis of the uncanny, confirm the first part of our proposition — that in the realm of fiction many things are not uncanny which would be so if they happened in real life. In the case of these stories there are other contributory factors, which we shall briefly touch upon later.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The creative writer can also choose a setting which though less imaginary than the world of fairy tales, does yet differ from the real world by admitting superior spiritual beings such as daemonic spirits or ghosts of the dead. So long as they remain within their setting of poetic reality, such figures lose any uncanniness which they might possess. The souls in Dante's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Inferno,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> or the supernatural apparitions in Shakespeare’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hamlet, Macbeth</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> or </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Julius Caesar,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> may be gloomy and terrible enough, but they are no more really uncanny than Homer’s jovial world of gods. We adapt our judgement to the imaginary reality imposed on us by the writer, and regard souls, spirits and ghosts as though their existence had the same validity as our own has in material reality. In this case too we avoid all trace of the uncanny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The situation is altered as soon as the writer pretends to move in the world of common reality. In this case he accepts as well all the conditions operating to produce uncanny feelings in real life; and everything that would have an uncanny effect in reality has it in his story. But in this case he can even increase his effect and multiply it far beyond what could happen in reality, by bringing about events which never or very rarely happen in fact. In doing this he is in a sense betraying us to the superstitiousness which we have ostensibly surmounted; he deceives us by promising to give us the sober truth, and then after all overstepping it. We react to his inventions as we would have reacted to real experiences; by the time we have seen through his trick it is already too late and the author has achieved his object. But it must be added that his success is not unalloyed. We retain a feeling of dissatisfaction, a kind of grudge against the attempted deceit. I have noticed this particularly after reading Schnitzler's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Die Weissagung</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Prophecy</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">] and similar stories which flirt with the supernatural. However, the writer has one more means which he can use in order to avoid our recalcitrance and at the same time to improve his chances of success. He can keep us in the dark for a long time about the precise nature of the presuppositions on which the world he writes about is based, or he can cunningly and ingeniously avoid any definite information on the point to the last. Speaking generally, however, we find a confirmation of the second part of our proposition — that fiction presents more opportunities for creating uncanny feelings than are possible in real life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Strictly speaking, all these complications relate only to that class of the uncanny which proceeds from forms of thought that have been surmounted. The class which proceeds from repressed complexes is more resistant and remains as powerful in fiction as in real experience, subject to one exception [see p. 252]. The uncanny belonging to the first class — that proceeding from forms of thought that have been surmounted — retains its character not only in experience but in fiction as well, so long as the setting is one of material reality; but where it is given an arbitrary and artificial setting in fiction, it is apt to lose that character.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We have clearly not exhausted the possibilities of poetic licence and the privileges enjoyed by story-writers in evoking or in excluding an uncanny feeling. In the main we adopt an unvarying passive attitude towards real experience and are subject to the influence of our physical environment. But the story-teller has a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">peculiarly</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> directive power over us; by means of the moods he can put us into, he is able to guide the current of our emotions, to dam it up in one direction and make it flow in another, and he often obtains a great variety of effects from the same material. All this is nothing new, and has doubtless long since been fully taken into account by students of aesthetics. We have drifted into this field of research half involuntarily, through the temptation to explain certain instances which contradicted our theory of the causes of the uncanny. Accordingly we will now return to the examination of a few of those instances.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We have already asked [p. 246] why it is that the severed hand in the story of the treasure of Rhampsinitus has no uncanny effect in the way that the severed hand has in Hauff’s story. The question seems to have gained in importance now that we have recognized that the class of the uncanny which proceeds from repressed complexes is the more resistant of the two. The answer is easy. In the Herodotus story our thoughts are concentrated much more on the superior cunning of the master-thief than on the feelings of the princess. The princess may very well have had an uncanny feeling, indeed she very probably fell into a swoon; but </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">we</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> have no such sensations, for we put ourselves in the thief's place, not in hers. In Nestroy's farce, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Der Zerrissene</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Torn Man</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">], another means is used to avoid any impression of the uncanny in the scene in which the fleeing man, convinced that he is a murderer, lifts up one trap-door after another and each time sees what he takes to be the ghost of his victim rising up out of it. He calls out in despair, 'But I've only killed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">one</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> man. Why this ghastly multiplication?' We know what went before this scene and do not share his error, so what must be uncanny to him has an irresistibly comic effect on us. Even a 'real' ghost, as in Oscar Wilde's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Canterville Ghost,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> loses all power of at least arousing </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">gruesome </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">feelings in us as soon as the author begins to amuse himself by being ironical about it and allows liberties to be taken with it. Thus we see how independent emotional effects can be of the actual subject-matter in the world of fiction. In fairy stories feelings of fear — including therefore uncanny feelings — are ruled out altogether. We understand this, and that is why we ignore any opportunities we find in them for developing such feelings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Concerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness [pp. 246-7], we can only say that they are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free. This problem has been discussed from a psycho-analytic point of view elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <span style="line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">credits: This translation was originally made available for Mark Taylor's course on the Psychology of Religion [http://www.williams.edu/go/Religion/courses/Rel301/rea</span></span><!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-58876478298027434432011-02-27T07:47:00.000-08:002011-02-27T08:01:16.156-08:00Post Mortem Photography<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS';font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">In Victorian and early Edwardian times the infant mortality rate was high and in fact life expectancy in general was far less than it is today. Parents may not have had their child photographed when they were alive and in the event of a sudden death take a post-mortem photograph of them.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Some of these photographs were tastefully done showing the obviously deceased child laying on a bed surrounded by flowers and apparently asleep. However, if the family did not have a photograph of their child or family member when they were alive they would instruct the photographer to give the impression that the deceased was still alive at the time of the photograph.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <!--StartFragment--> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Arial;color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">It was extremely expensive to have a photo taken during Victorian times. Only the wealthy could afford such a luxury. If a child or other loved one died it was a common practice to have a photo taken either alone or with the family.</span></p></span><p></p></span></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqu4rBvMmBhl3S8yOFNwuttpdOpzuUucV7neVV-QhYtal9glDF03ka-otpYnhMZgGUoJ3ZcXgvl8fS8rM54lUvCcBqO-pNr0m_MWYBC8DHSchyphenhyphenc4G2-BRLiJItP7WW3moiNh99bg7j9msA/s1600/Deadgirlwmomsnpops.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqu4rBvMmBhl3S8yOFNwuttpdOpzuUucV7neVV-QhYtal9glDF03ka-otpYnhMZgGUoJ3ZcXgvl8fS8rM54lUvCcBqO-pNr0m_MWYBC8DHSchyphenhyphenc4G2-BRLiJItP7WW3moiNh99bg7j9msA/s400/Deadgirlwmomsnpops.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578398349981083474" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEWG6YEFidjAiRTTtaielK4HzCTGtEZVu-Bp1I6qirPqpUAdXMvq-zt5FgG-ZOTpKeAxT01NXL0b4KDlmeW_j2OpjwVi2dgPHomk4pZtGA1KduUNNnV6-kGcMTVEZrw5fz7AOVBbRXBil/s1600/post-mortem4.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 346px; height: 350px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEWG6YEFidjAiRTTtaielK4HzCTGtEZVu-Bp1I6qirPqpUAdXMvq-zt5FgG-ZOTpKeAxT01NXL0b4KDlmeW_j2OpjwVi2dgPHomk4pZtGA1KduUNNnV6-kGcMTVEZrw5fz7AOVBbRXBil/s400/post-mortem4.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578398161210377506" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjIk6RQBQwm5zqMTqJ-Wnwzvn6Ry9WpUEC2WTpDICWUwn4ZrtrxChOHuY4ATI6W7Z_2Zy1JLSUMrHAJfCjD6EzS0G0K2v0wWa7PNTz0dUF9Fxm2LpTVhM98tlbhepbz68NyDUXbVfnSvx/s1600/376624515_b48655325a.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 247px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjIk6RQBQwm5zqMTqJ-Wnwzvn6Ry9WpUEC2WTpDICWUwn4ZrtrxChOHuY4ATI6W7Z_2Zy1JLSUMrHAJfCjD6EzS0G0K2v0wWa7PNTz0dUF9Fxm2LpTVhM98tlbhepbz68NyDUXbVfnSvx/s400/376624515_b48655325a.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578397899237041138" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCXhz50X1z8JtewRK4t1zSmHNTEAgRkFgS9drgAb6rdNB0Bc1TWKIK-zv_qc8kQc3ZdbdgoFtmLydcTCRNSoFAGfUZSfrE-gGru_tofGwfAEFUNy6PqKYrFln-Kw7wxOefp9Pfd1kp8TP/s1600/6a00d834515b2069e20120a57cc594970c.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 388px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCXhz50X1z8JtewRK4t1zSmHNTEAgRkFgS9drgAb6rdNB0Bc1TWKIK-zv_qc8kQc3ZdbdgoFtmLydcTCRNSoFAGfUZSfrE-gGru_tofGwfAEFUNy6PqKYrFln-Kw7wxOefp9Pfd1kp8TP/s400/6a00d834515b2069e20120a57cc594970c.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578397496223377586" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGsToNCJG2B41xdluX2IcIaTljS_bx7UOMYg1yUQLzM5xQNubxtbRaroYi8X-OA_abRbIH4dRoT1RsjXDMtmEIbGlxiGkO04oWf7TWdGCVoz4M7FPLb1A3r7UhVCeUTz9wKQbpCDZ4UFr/s1600/%255Bdd.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 243px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGsToNCJG2B41xdluX2IcIaTljS_bx7UOMYg1yUQLzM5xQNubxtbRaroYi8X-OA_abRbIH4dRoT1RsjXDMtmEIbGlxiGkO04oWf7TWdGCVoz4M7FPLb1A3r7UhVCeUTz9wKQbpCDZ4UFr/s400/%255Bdd.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578397155583751762" /></a>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-39348400830790901132011-02-20T10:23:00.001-08:002011-02-20T11:14:28.264-08:00All That Is Solid Melts into Air<!--StartFragment--> <h3 style="text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">by: Marshall Berman</span></span></span></h3><h3 style="text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">from "Introduction: Modernity - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, " All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982) pp. 15-23.</span></span></span></h3> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">THERE is a mode of vital experience-experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life's possibilities and perils-that is shared by men and women all over the world today. I will call this body of experience "modernity." To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world-and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, "all that is solid melts into air."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">People who find themselves in the midst of this maelstrom are apt to feel that they are the first ones, and maybe the only ones, to be going through it; this feeling has engendered numerous nostalgic myths of pre-modern Paradise Lost. In fact, however, great and ever-increasing numbers of people have been going through it for close to five hundred years. Although most of these people have probably experienced modernity as a radical threat to all their history and traditions, it has, in the course of five centuries, developed a rich history and a plenitude of traditions of its own. I want to explore and chart these traditions, to understand the ways in which they can nourish and enrich our own modernity, and the ways in which they may obscure or impoverish our sense of what modernity is and what it can be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The maelstrom of modern life has been fed from many sources: great discoveries in the physical sciences, changing our images of the universe and our place in it; the industrialization of production, which transforms scientific knowledge into technology, creates new human environments and destroys old ones, speeds up the whole tempo of life, generates new forms of corporate power and class struggle; immense demographic upheavals, severing millions of people from their ancestral habitats, hurtling them halfway across the world into new lives; rapid and often cataclysmic urban growth; systems of mass communication, dynamic in their development, enveloping and binding together the most diverse people and societies; increasingly powerful national states, bureaucratically structured and operated, constantly striving to expand their powers; mass social movements of people, and peoples, challenging their political and economic rulers, striving to gain some control over their lives; finally, bearing and driving all these people and institutions along, an ever-expanding, drastically fluctuating capitalist world market. In the twentieth century, the social processes that bring this maelstrom into being, and keep it in a state of perpetual becoming, have come to be called "modernization." These world-historical processes have nourished an amazing variety of visions and ideas that aim to make men and women the subjects as well as the objects of modernization, to give them the power to change the world that is changing them, to make their way through the maelstrom and make it their own. Over the past century, these visions and values have come o be loosely grouped to ether under the name of "modernism." In the hope of getting a grip on something as vast as the history of modernity, divide t into three phases. In the first phase, which goes roughly from the start of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, people are just beginning to experience modern life; they hardly know what has hit them. They grope, desperately but half blindly, for an adequate vocabulary; they have little or no sense of a modern public or community within which their trials and hopes can be shared. Our second phase begins with the great revolutionary wave of the 1 1790s. With the French Revolution and its reverberations, a great modern public abruptly and dramatically comes to life. This public shares the feeling of living in a revolutionary age, an age that generates explosive upheavals in every dimension of personal, social and political life. At the same time, the nineteenth-century modern public can remember what it is like to live, materially and spiritually, in worlds that are not modern at all. From this inner dichotomy, this sense of living in two worlds simultaneously, the ideas of modernization and modernism emerge and unfold. In the twentieth century, our third and final phase, the process of modernization expands to take in virtually the whole world, and the developing world culture of modernism achieves spectacular triumphs in art and thought. On the other hand, as the modern public expands, it shatters into a multitude of fragments, speaking incommensurable private languages; the idea of modernity, conceived in numerous fragmentary ways, loses much of its vividness, resonance and depth, and loses its capacity to organize and give meaning to people's lives. As a result of all this, we find ourselves today in the midst of a modern age that has lost touch with the roots of its own modernity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">If there is one archetypal modern voice in the early phase of modernity, before the American and French revolutions, it is the voice of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is the first to use the word moderniste in the ways in which the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will use it; and he is the source of some of our most vital modern traditions, from nostalgic reverie to psychoanalytic self-scrutiny to participatory democracy. Rousseau was, as everyone knows, a deeply troubled man. Much of his anguish springs from sources peculiar to his own strained life; but some of it derives from his acute responsiveness to social conditions that were coming to shape millions of people's lives. Rousseau astounded his contemporaries by proclaiming that European society was "at the edge of the abyss," on the verge of the most explosive revolutionary upheavals. He experienced everyday life in that society-especially in Paris, its capital-as a whirlwind, le tourbilion social.1 How was the self to move and live in the whirlwind?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In Rousseau's romantic novel The New Eloise, his young hero, Saint-Preux, makes an exploratory move-an archetypal move for millions of young people in the centuries to come-from the country to the city. He writes to his love, Julie, from the depths of le tourbillon social, and tries to convey his wonder and dread. Saint Preux experiences metropolitan life as "a perpetual clash of groups and cabals, a continual flux and reflux of prejudices and conflicting opinions... Everyone constantly places himself in contradiction with himself," and "everything is absurd, but nothing is shocking, because everyone is accustomed to everything." This is a working in which "the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, truth, virtue, have only a local and limited existence." A multitude of new experiences offer themselves; but anyone who wants to enjoy them "must be more pliable than Alcibiades, ready to change his principles with his audience, to adjust his spirit with every step." After a few months in this environment,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I'm beginning to feel the drunkenness that this agitated, tumultuous life plunges you into. With such a multitude of objects passing before my eyes, I'm getting dizzy. Of all the things that strike me, there is none that holds my heart, yet all of them together disturb my feelings, so that I forget what I am and who I belong to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">He reaffirms his commitment to his first love; yet even as he says it, he fears that "I don't know one day what I'm going to love the next." He longs desperately for something solid to cling to, yet "I see only phantoms that strike my eye, but disappear as soon as I try to grasp them."2 This atmosphere-of agitation and turbulence, psychic dizziness and drunkenness, expansion of experiential possibilities and destruction of moral boundaries and personal bonds, self-enlargement and self-derangement, phantoms in the street and in the soul-is the atmosphere in which modern sensibility is born.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">If we move forward a hundred years or so and try to identify the distinctive rhythms and timbres of nineteenth-century modernity, the first thing we will notice is the highly developed, differentiated and dynamic new landscape in which modern experience takes place. This is a landscape of steam engines, automatic factories, railroads, vast new industrial zones; of teeming cities that have grown overnight, often with dreadful human con-sequences; of daily newspapers, telegraphs, telephones and other mass media, communicating on an ever wider scale; of increasingly strong national states and multinational aggregations of capital; of mass social movements fighting these modernizations from above with their own modes of modernization from below; of an ever-expanding world market embracing all, capable of the most spectacular growth, capable of appalling waste and devastation, capable of everything except solidity and stability. The great modernists of the nineteenth century all attack this environment passionately, and strive to tear it down or explode it from within; yet all find themselves remarkably at home in it, alive to its possibilities, affirmative even in their radical negations, playful and ironic even in their moments of gravest seriousness and depth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">We can get a feeling for the complexity and richness of nineteenth-century modernism, and for the unities that infuse its diversity, if we listen briefly to two of its most distinctive voices: Nietzsche, who is generally perceived as a primary source of many of the modernisms of our time, and Marx, who is not ordinarily associated with any sort of modernism at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Here is Marx, speaking in awkward but powerful English in London in I 1856.3 "The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents," he begins, "small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. But they denounced the abyss. Beneath the apparently solid surface, they betrayed oceans of liquid matter, only needing expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock," The ruling classes of the reactionary I 850s tell the world that all is solid again; but it is not clear if even they themselves believe it. In fact, Marx says, "the atmosphere in which we live weighs upon everyone with a 20,000-pound force, but do you feel it?" One of Marx's most urgent ims is to make people "feel it"; this is why his ideas are expressed in such intense and extravagant images-abysses, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, crushing gravitational force-images that will continue to resonate in our own century's modernist art and thought. Marx goes on: "There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny." The basic fact of modern life, as Marx experiences it, is that this life is radically contradictory at its base:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labor, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and stultifying human life into a material force.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">These miseries and mysteries fill many moderns with despair. Some would "get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts"; others will try to balance progress in industry with a neofeudal or neoabsolutist regression in politics. Marx, however, proclaims a paradigmatically modernist faith: "On our part, we do not mistake the shrewd spirit that continues to mark all these contradictions. We know that to work well . . . the new-fangled forces of society warn only to be mastered by new-fangled men-and such are the working men. They are as much the invention of modern time as machinery itself." Thus a class of "new men," men who are thoroughly modern, will be able to resolve the contradictions of modernity, to overcome the crushing pressures, earthquakes, weird spells, personal and social abysses, in whose midst all modern men and women are forced to live. Having said this, Marx turns abruptly playful and connects his vision of the future with the past-with English folklore, with Shakespeare: "In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we recognize our brave friend Robin Goodfellow, the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer-the Revolution."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Marx's writing is famous for its endings. But if we see him as a modernist, we will notice the dialectical motion that underlies and animates his thought, a motion that is open-ended, and that flows against the current of his own concepts and desires. Thus, in the Communist Manifesto, we see that the revolutionary dynamism that will overthrow the modern bourgeoisie springs from that bourgeoisie's own deepest impulses and needs:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and with them the relations of production, and with them all the relations of society. . . . Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This is probably the definitive vision of the modern environment, that environment which has brought forth an amazing plenitude of modernist movements, from Marx's time to our own. The vision unfolds:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face . . . the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Thus the dialectical motion of modernity turns ironically against its prime movers, the bourgeoisie. But it may not stop turning there: after all, all modern movements are caught up in this ambience-including Marx's own. Suppose, as Marx supposes, that bourgeois forms decompose, and that a communist movement surges into power: what is to keep this new social form from sharing its predecessor's fate and melting down in the modern air? Marx understood this question and suggested some answers, which we will explore later on. But one of the distinctive virtues of modernism is that it leaves its questions echoing in the air long after the questioners themselves, and their answers, have left the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">If we move a quarter century ahead, to Nietzsche in the 1880s, we will find very different prejudices, allegiances and hopes, yet a surprisingly similar voice and feeling for modern life. For Nietzsche, as for Marx, the currents of modern history were ironic and dialectical: thus Christian ideals of the soul's integrity and the will to truth had come to explode Christianity itself. The results were the traumatic events that Nietzsche called "the death of Cod" and "the advent of nihilism." Modern mankind found its ??? the midst of a great absence and emptiness of values and yet at the same time, a remarkable abundance of possibilities. Here, in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (1882), we find, just as we found in Marx, a world where everything is pregnant with its contrary:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">At these turning points in history there shows itself, juxtaposed and often entangled with one another, a magnificent, manifold, jungle-like growing and striving, a sort of tropical tempo in rivalry of development, and an enormous destruction and self-destruction, thanks to egoisms violently opposed to one another, exploding, battling each other for sun and light, unable to find any limitation, any check, any considerateness within the morality at their disposal. . . . Nothing but new "wherefores," no longer any communal formulas; a new allegiance of misunderstanding and mutual disrespect; decay, vice, and the most superior desires gruesomely bound up with one another, the genius of the race welling up over the cornucopias of good and ill; a fateful simultaneity of spring and autumn. . . . Again there is danger, the mother of morality-great danger-but this time displaced onto the individual, onto the nearest and dearest, onto the street, onto one's own child, one's own heart, one's own innermost secret recesses of wish and will.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">At times like these, "the individual dares to individuate himself." On the other hand, this daring individual desperately "needs a set of laws of his own, needs his own skills and wiles for self-preservation, self-heightening, self-awakening, self-liberation." The possibilities are at once glorious and ominous. "Our instincts can now run back in all sorts of directions; we ourselves are a kind of chaos." Modern man's sense of himself and his history "really amounts to an instinct for everything, a taste and tongue for everything." So many roads open up from this point. How are modern men and women to find the resources to cope with their "everything"? Nietzsche notes that there are plenty of "Little Jack Horners" around whose solution to the chaos of modern life is to try live at all: for them," 'Become mediocre' is the only morality that makes sense."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Another type of modern throws himself into parodies of the past: he "needs history because it is the storage closet where all the costumes are kept. He notices that none really fits him"-not primitive, not classical, not medieval, not Oriental-"so he keeps trying on more and more," unable to accept the fact that a modern' ??? 1 "can never really look well-dressed," because no social role in modern times can ever be a perfect fit. Nietzsche's own stance toward the perils of modernity is to embrace them all with joy: "We moderns, we half-barbarians. We are in the midst of our bliss only when we are most in danger. The only stimulus that tickles us is the infinite, the immeasurable." And yet Nietzsche is not willing to live in the midst of this danger forever. As ardently as Marx, he asserts his faith in a new kind of man-"the man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow"-who, "standing in opposition to his today," will have the courage and imagination to "create new values" that modern men and women need to steer their way through the perilous infinities in which they live.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left: 0cm;text-align:left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">What is distinctive and remarkable about the voice that Marx and Nietzsche share is not only its breathless pace, its vibrant energy, its imaginative richness, but also its fast and drastic shifts in tone and inflection, its readiness to turn on itself, to question and negate all it has said, to transform itself into a great range of harmonic or dissonant voices, and to stretch itself beyond its capacities into an endlessly wider range, to express and grasp a world where everything is pregnant with its contrary and "all that is solid melts into air." This voice resonates at once with self-discovery and self-mockery, with self-delight and self-doubt. It is a voice that knows pain and dread, but believes in its power to come through. Grave danger is everywhere, and may strike at any moment, but not even the deepest wounds can stop the flow and overflow of its energy. It is ironic and contradictory, polyphonic and dialectical, denouncing modern life in the name of values that modernity itself has created, hoping-often against hope-that the modernities of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow will heal the wounds that wreck the modern men and women of today. All the reat modernists of the nineteenth century-spirits as diverse as Marx and Kieregaard, Whitman and Ibsen, Baudelaire, Melville, Carlyle, Stirner, Rimbaud, Strindberg, Dostoevsky, and many more-speak in these rhythms and in this range.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-11593318638755299922011-02-20T00:27:00.001-08:002011-03-27T01:16:42.046-07:00The Failure of Modernity (Germania)<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Germania / the city that never </span>existed</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">The failure of the totalitarian dream</span></span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT6a8c7j_sFfh0GFk2RAdiPPMvydg12MRDCSfhNPnx7Viq0Q2onZayKfzDwE5ZictMr1YU1gCsL12dI3msrSfBCLO4fcQTlwCX_AO2eMC7subNFuGQqAbsGPLs5wqlP8Q9UJOnV8zAP0O7/s1600/Ger+Bild.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT6a8c7j_sFfh0GFk2RAdiPPMvydg12MRDCSfhNPnx7Viq0Q2onZayKfzDwE5ZictMr1YU1gCsL12dI3msrSfBCLO4fcQTlwCX_AO2eMC7subNFuGQqAbsGPLs5wqlP8Q9UJOnV8zAP0O7/s400/Ger+Bild.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575686337404600114" /></a><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBevYMXwPLlwdwk8Ky7D4EQyr6EyYsMZXbBzpBWccPVYYn-YgbTRviHMJExV-Q2l1kp7gExYv48736OT1AV8hwkrTHzerL9MWZteKa9UwN8K6Xo5OT4ZoN-NQPkUR8AqdBgTfjVhynhXr5/s1600/Ger+The+view+through+Hitler%2527s+planned+victory+arch+would+have+centered+on+the+.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 344px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBevYMXwPLlwdwk8Ky7D4EQyr6EyYsMZXbBzpBWccPVYYn-YgbTRviHMJExV-Q2l1kp7gExYv48736OT1AV8hwkrTHzerL9MWZteKa9UwN8K6Xo5OT4ZoN-NQPkUR8AqdBgTfjVhynhXr5/s400/Ger+The+view+through+Hitler%2527s+planned+victory+arch+would+have+centered+on+the+.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575686131690533314" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrlL6zT6tPt7ygspL02NTRxv-lNRlM6VrdeS8j0_4k5aIoIrqqc3My8jKbNrTl5F0FpzuUTsGW0sruN8g7jdXSnHHB1_PSX4H1lxs_Fm4V6IskT6XgfW8haQK9gUlRlvf1hyphenhyphenOgA3Lk4PDP/s1600/Ger+Speer%2527s+.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 330px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrlL6zT6tPt7ygspL02NTRxv-lNRlM6VrdeS8j0_4k5aIoIrqqc3My8jKbNrTl5F0FpzuUTsGW0sruN8g7jdXSnHHB1_PSX4H1lxs_Fm4V6IskT6XgfW8haQK9gUlRlvf1hyphenhyphenOgA3Lk4PDP/s400/Ger+Speer%2527s+.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575686008176103474" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZLVKNtewyjM2QhZs-5QGqAejyV9zahhEENgkh6nBzpVAMMJWHr37EI8pGC0tqjwnyKitevRYGKHv-JnDV0cb5sCPb0oURC6YCbLe70PlFhUkp26ZU4OWJhuyiticMgRgwhvE3L0-2NF0/s1600/Ger+welthauptstadt.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZLVKNtewyjM2QhZs-5QGqAejyV9zahhEENgkh6nBzpVAMMJWHr37EI8pGC0tqjwnyKitevRYGKHv-JnDV0cb5sCPb0oURC6YCbLe70PlFhUkp26ZU4OWJhuyiticMgRgwhvE3L0-2NF0/s400/Ger+welthauptstadt.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575685867734426130" /></a><br /></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-14549659281696173662011-02-20T00:24:00.001-08:002011-04-04T23:15:08.868-07:00The Failure of Modernity (Beirut)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Beirut / The hybrid modernity</span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sectarian identities</span></span></span> <br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjw70TvHIOEFNpJb1i7-Vu7gVZBo1EBOSDrsGMdFBkx3qiDKRPJIpg6ZdO7oGk7ARVMmIMKzqbwbE6Ulz-I4rXkHYCknvUC180ItjDIY8fpPx2iVwqm0EZ3rpsTk4REpX9wZYpz6idaRH6/s1600/demarcation_areil.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589726379984272370" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 399px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 232px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjw70TvHIOEFNpJb1i7-Vu7gVZBo1EBOSDrsGMdFBkx3qiDKRPJIpg6ZdO7oGk7ARVMmIMKzqbwbE6Ulz-I4rXkHYCknvUC180ItjDIY8fpPx2iVwqm0EZ3rpsTk4REpX9wZYpz6idaRH6/s320/demarcation_areil.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKNk-AogibnBgItty_VmYoZySZngtaZb0Gl2aXLgFSHQ9QMSpOUHOjhnFy4in65V79XDScMCFIBfSDV3HRHT5sBmvFF9gieV_ZNfwnZxJ4W8OVhxsdjxjm_BYctcBf3pPmeQNKLb6H0jQ/s1600/Beirut+star.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575685231735721330" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 392px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKNk-AogibnBgItty_VmYoZySZngtaZb0Gl2aXLgFSHQ9QMSpOUHOjhnFy4in65V79XDScMCFIBfSDV3HRHT5sBmvFF9gieV_ZNfwnZxJ4W8OVhxsdjxjm_BYctcBf3pPmeQNKLb6H0jQ/s400/Beirut+star.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p><a name="top"></a><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong>The Crisis of Urban Culture:</strong> <span style="font-size:78%;">The Three Reconstruction Plans for Beirut </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">by: Nabil Beyhum </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">Nabil Beyhum is an assistant professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the American University of Beirut. He is the editor of Reconstruire Beyrouth, les paris sur le possible, Maison de l’Orient, Universite de Lyon,1991. </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">The Master Plan of 1977-78 </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">The IAURIF Master Plan </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">The 1991 Master Plan </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">Projects Adrift </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">A Cultural Crisis: From the Ottoman City to the Wahabi City? </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">Endnotes </span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:78%;">Three major reconstruction plans for Beirut have been put forward to this day: the master plan of 1977-78 involving the old city center; the master plan of 1986 covering the entire metropolitan region of Beirut (MRB); and the master plan of 1991, again covering exclusively reconstruction in the old city center. It is worth noting that during the entire war in Lebanon, fighting virtually did not cease in Beirut. While other parts of the country were affected by fighting, in general, it was for relatively shorter periods of time. Although destruction was more significant in parts of the mountains, and more recurrent in South Lebanon, relatively speaking it was both more continuous and regular in the Beirut area. The old city center and the demarcation line between East and West Beirut were the most severely damaged areas of the capital. At the same time, however, on the periphery of Beirut new development, equal if not greater in size than that of the area destroyed, took place. This led to a shift in the city’s center of gravity to the outskirts. The sociological pattern integrating Beirut’s public spaces at the center was seriously undermined by the rise of single-community ghettos in the suburbs. The city was divided into several unconnected islands, and neutral spaces were either annexed to these islands or destroyed. Local public bodies, too, were either attached to these territories, dismantled and deprived of their resources, or divided, thus limiting their efficiency. The population was increasingly marginalized by the war, isolated in its domestic spaces, and was an economic crisis lasting longer than the era of the militias; although the latter disappeared, the economic and social legacy they left behind remained. If the objective of reconstruction is to transcend the Lebanese war, then it must reverse the profound sociological changes caused by the war at the level of services, public transportation, road networks, and cultural and economic activities. Reconstruction does not simply imply rebuilding, but also includes social processes; it implies well-planned management of technical networks, not just an ability to pay unlimited amounts of money, it is a process taking into account time, and is not merely a transformation of space. [1] Reconstruction must act to regenerate urban society, serving as an example for society as a whole. We will raise the following questions in this essay: How did each master plan for reconstruction deal with Beirut public spaces and their regeneration? How were the integrative roles of these spaces developed? How did the city’s different parts communicate? What memory of the city was preserved? Who was to fund each master plan for reconstruction? How were the city’s inhabitants to take part in reconstruction? How did the public debate on reconstruction take place? How well was the public interest preserved? Did it have priority over the interests of individual communities? What was the relation between public and private interest, between public and private property? These three sets of questions are of a different type: The first deals with the long-term functions of the public spaces to be developed. The second examines whether the reconstruction process will effectively create or re-create a middle class or not. The third deals with the impact of reconstruction of all or part of the city, on the whole of society. </span><a name="master"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">The Master Plan of 1977-78 The Master Plan of 1977-78 was prepared after the 1975-76 conflict, which mainly destroyed Beirut’s old city center. At that time, the militias’ war machines were not really constituted, let alone institutionalized, and alternative centers to the old city were not well-established. Although store-owners, whose places of business had been destroyed in the old section of Beirut, opened new stores illegally in other neighborhoods, this was a somewhat precarious venture as shown by the experience of the souq in Raousheh: as soon as calm returned, merchants were forced by the authorities to return to their original shops, or at least to vacate their new locations. If, on the other hand, the new stores were legal, the resulting decline in profit rates due to the reopening of the old city center, shifted activity back there. More important still, the city center was considered a symbol of coexistence between Lebanon’s various communities. As a result, it was only natural that it became the focal point for reconstruction in the 1977-78 master plan. The plan, prepared by the Urbanism Workshop of Paris (Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme), was completed by Mitri Nammar, the governor (muhafiz) of Beirut, and several urban architects under the aegis of the Directorate Generale of Urbanism (Direction Générale de l’Urbanisme). Gradually, the plan was adopted by the Beirut municipality and the government, and was the first legally approved plan for the reconstruction of Beirut. [2] Influenced by urban “culturalist” models, [3] French architects in charge of the project offered a minimalist vision of reconstruction, preserving the traditional style of the area to be rebuilt, while favoring solutions to pre-war problems which made access to the city center difficult. The intervention of planners was reduced to a minimum, and was limited to public transportation and road networks. From an architectural standpoint, this intervention varied enormously according to the areas, and focused more on regenerating public spaces than intervening in private property. The road network of the city center was reorganized in such a way as to allow access to the maximum number of people during the day (average speed did not exceed 10 kms/hour during the prewar period). [4] The plan’s first novelty was an underground road going from east to west and bordering the coastline. Although highly expensive, the construction of this road would nevertheless have spared expenditures on other infrastructures, and would have offered a solution to the problem of traffic jams. Two additional roads from south to north and backing up the Fouad Shihab flyover were to complete the first. This system was intended to organize transportation more efficiently. The plan also promoted public transportation. The underground road permitted a direct link between the city and the sea and preserved the ecological boundary between the two. A promenade was to be opened to the public, and small squares were to be dispersed throughout the old city. To highlight the different monuments downtown, the plan sought to surround them with small gardens. As to the rehabilitation of buildings, the plan divided the city center into seven different sectors, each requiring different types of intervention. The nature of these interventions was meticulously delineated by sector, and any change affecting the height of buildings, their style, and their surroundings was controlled. The essential thrust of the plan was made clear in the fact that 75% of the buildings were to be returned to their previous state in an effort to safeguard the cultural memory of the city. Thus, the traditional souqs, grouped into two big islands west of Martyrs Square, and the Tawileh, Ayyass, and Jamil souqs were to be rebuilt exactly as they had been. On the other hand, more significant intervention was intended on the sea front in the sector of the Normandy and Phoenicia hotels. A marina was planned, and the height of any resort or hotel surrounding it was not to be above sixteen meters. The built-up area, comprising buildings and leisure installations, was not to exceed 0.5% of the total area of the sector (in contrast to 2.8% in their pre-war city center). The area of the port, however, was to be built up with office buildings, and represented the most significant urbanization effort in the sector. The Wadi Abu Jemil sector was reorganized by means of a new road which cut through the sector, liup Clémenceastreet to Bab Edriss. A pedestrian area, underground parking lots, and a possible subway station were to surround Bab Edriss, while the buildings along the new road were to be restored. In addition, the plan called for converting the areas of Ghalghul, where buildings were heavily damaged, and Saifi, the old red light sector, into leisure and commercial centers. In terms of architectural style and function, the intervention in Ghalghul was conceived of as an extension of the Banks Street, while Saifi was linked to Martyrs Square. The main criticism, which was leveled at the project was that the different religious monuments were to be highlighted by small squares and gardens surrounding them. The religious endowments or waqfs, to whom these grounds belong, would have preferred to use them for commercial purposes. As a whole, however, this plan could be described as gradualist and basically conservative on the cultural level, although it left a wide margin for individual initiative. A few minor and limited interventions were anticipated through the regrouping of property and the creation of two real estate companies in the Ghalghul and Saifi areas. Thus, the plan met the need for limited public intervention, although certain individuals believed at the time that even this minimal intervention was excessive. The plan did, however, rely on public authorities to arbitrate matters and build up infrastructures. The aggravation of the destruction of the old city due to the effects of weather and neglect, the weakening of a national political consensus, and the exhaustion of small private actors made the implementation of this plan quite difficult; as a result, it became necessary to update it. Nevertheless, no new plan for the old city center was conceived before the 1990’s, even if some minor planning, which never came to fruition, was attempted. </span><a name="iaurif"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">The IAURIF Master Plan of 1986 The 1986 plan for the entire Metropolitan Region of Beirut (MRB) was prepared by a joint French-Lebanese working group upon the request of the Lebanese authorities. Drawn up in 1983, it was only completed and presented to the public in 1986. The plan was characterized by a search for a political consensus. Its objectives were: The affirmation of centrality. The restructuring of urban space by building new centers. The development of public transportation. The safeguarding and preservation of natural sites. The Institute for Planning and urbanism of Ile-de-France (Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de l’Ile-de-France or IAURIF), which participated in the preparation of the plan, faced a situation somewhat different than that faced by those who prepared the earlier 1977-78 plan. After ten years or so of war, it seemed only logical in reconstructing Beirut to take into account the extent of the destruction outside the area of the old city center, and the transformation brought about by urban expansion on the periphery of the capital. Thus, the IAURIF plan covered not just the old city, but the whole MRB from Khaldeh south of the capital, to Dbayyeh north of it. In an effort to overcome the fragmentation of Beirut, the master plan sought to restructure the city and integrate it with its various suburbs. In this respect, it was not, strictly speaking, a reconstruction plan. At the time the plan was prepared, only 40,000 of the 300,000 apartments in the MRB were damaged or considered too dangerous to live in because of proximity to a demarcation line. The plan principally proposed a reorganization of traffic networks and the restructuring of the central system, leaving most of the reconstruction to private initiative once peace had returned. The objective was simply to manage the exceptional growth of the suburbs by organizing a return to the center of Beirut. In the pre-war period, all links through Beirut between the north and the south of Lebanon went through the city center by means of the coastal road. The IAURIF plan sought to ease congestion in the city and its center by planning for roads away from the coast which would pass through the interior, close to the boundary between the capital and the foothills of Mount Lebanon. The proposed main road was to be supplemented by other means of access to the city by the coast, whether through public transportation or even a revived railway. The town’s center of gravity was consequently to be shifted towards the periphery, while maintaining its point d’appui in the pre-war city center. Thus a major effort was made to open up Beirut’s suburbs, namely the southern suburbs. The new changes in the city’s urban makeup were taken into consideration, while maintaining the strategic equilibrium of the metropolitan region. There were other concerns as well: green spaces were to be preserved, favoring an ecological equilibrium, and thus many valleys close to the capital were to be declared natural reserves; ridges, however, were given over to urbanization. The IAURIF plan aimed to reconcile the urban impact of the war in Beirut with a return to the pre-war situation existing in the city. The plan assumed that a return to centrality in Beirut which existed prior to the war was, from now on, hindered by the existence of new centers on its periphery. The master plan proposed that a return to the old center had to take into account urban expansion and the necessary reduction of the new centers. In fact, behind this reasoning there was another, more political, objective, since these centers were the product of new social and political relationships engendered by the war. The plan’s objective was to transform the new centers on the periphery by creating or maintaining four sub-centers interrelated and linked with the main city center. The intention was to transform these new centers into nodes of specialized and overlapping networks which would complement rather than compete with one other. This objective would have been difficult to implement; nevertheless, it is precisely this which made the 1986 master plan credible, since it sought to modify the traffic and transportation networks created by the post-war city. Although the new centers to be transformed by the master plan seemed to have been chosen rationally, in reality they were selected to reflect a confessional equilibrium: Nahr al-Mott and Hazmiyeh are located in the predominantly Christian eastern areas around Beirut, while Laylaki and Khaldeh are located in the predominantly Muslim western areas. More specifically, the first two areas are largely Maronite, while the latter two are mostly populated by Druze and Shi`a, respectively. If three of the centers are located on important communication roads, this cannot be said of Laylaki. In addition, the justification for selecting these centers as communication nodes is not convincing, since other, equally adequate, centers exist along the same lines if communication further away. The technical arguments in the IAURIF plan were quite strong. At the same time, it is worth noting what these arguments avoided: namely that what was presented as the decision of the planners was in fact an acceptance of transformations brought about by the war. This was positive in itself, but the political and institutional context of the plan was still deeply affected by the situation and attitudes of the 1980s. In the plan, Beirut implicitly remained a city split into two distinct parts. This explained, in a way, why the reconstruction of the old city center was left open, and was not updated. It also explained why the plan did not touch on the demarcation line nor the coastal road as zones having central functions. If the plan was unable to arrive at a solution regarding the transformation of these spaces, this was probably because its authors were deeply influenced by the thinking of the time. Despite its technical merit, the IAURIF plan was lost in the political discourse, and became outdated due to changes on the political scene. Although the plan suffered from its excessive reliance on attitudes prevalent in the 1980s, and did not sufficiently take into consideration future changes, other aspects of the plan are worthremembering because they werimplicitly directed against the political powers of the time. Thus the fact that the plan stressed private intervention as a means to facilitate integration should not be under-estimated, but rather should be considered a reason for updating the plan. </span><a name="1991"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">The 1991 Master Plan Prepared by the Dar al-Handasah company, the 1991 Master Plan covers, once again, only the old city center. The process leading to the plan’s development is complex. The Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), a public body, initially commissioned the plan, but it was financed by the private Hariri Foundation, or one of its many subsidiaries. The 1991 plan seeks to re-centralize activity in the old city, yet this effort is not accompanied by a plan to transform the city globally: the new plan neither rejects nor adopts the conclusions of the 1986 plan on integrating the new developments on the periphery of Beirut. In reality, however, a number of aspects in the 1991 plan contradict the objectives of the IAURIF plan. When it was submitted to the Superior council for Urbanism (Conseil Supérieur de l’Urbanisme) in July 1992, the 1991 project was severely criticized. This followed a large-scale publicity campaign which accompanied the plan’s presentation in the summer of 1991. The campaign did not, however, prevent the formation of an association strongly opposed to the project, made up of rightful claimants to downtown property, nor did it prevent specialists from engaging in increasing polemics against the plan. [5] What happened for such a debate to arise? If it was the first public debate since the beginning of the war, and the first on urban matters in Lebanon’s history, the debate surrounding the 1991 plan proved to be increasingly divisive; far more so than previous reconstruction projects. In fact, the master plan was just one phase of a complex operational project. The first phase consisted of taking over the CDR by placing at its head the director of the main firm of the Hariri conglomerate. The resulting conflict of interests was heightened by the importance of the stakes, since 1977 the accent had been placed on the fact that the reconstruction of the old city center would determine the future evolution of social relationships in the country. [6] At the same time, however, the CDR’s role in the plan strayed from its declared objectives. Its efforts, focused on rebuilding the old city center, were not accompanied by any serious reconstruction work in the rest of the city or the country. The second phase was the constitution of a real estate company established to centrally manage reconstruction in the old city, which would simply take over the 130 hectares in the city center, thus establishing the biggest instrument of urban management in Lebanon and perhaps in the Middle East. According to the plan, owners and tenants of property downtown were entitled to 50% of the shares in the company, while equivalent contributions in cash were to make up the other 50%. This was supposed to raise some 500 million dollars, which far exceeded the immediate absorption capacity of the project (1977 estimates put reconstruction costs at 450 million dollars, but spread over several years). Nor, for that matter, were owners offered financial compensation for their expropriated properties. Promoters of the plan justified this phase by the fact that the rightful claimants to the city center were unable to finance reconstruction operations. The rightful claimants presented three reasons why they opposed the plan: the project forced them to associate with third parties; it was unconstitutional because it deprived them of their private property, transferring it to a private real estate company; and there was no proof that they were unable to pay or borrow money for the reconstruction of the old city. The great haste of the promoters of the project simply increased suspicion as to their real intentions. [7] The law, which was put severely to the test in parliament, [8] lacked firm guarantees protecting small private property owners, and its implementation was questioned by the Council of State in July 1992. Rumors of prevarication, as well as public criticism, [9] surrounded the way the project was finally adopted by parliament. It is the master plan itself, however, which presents the most problems. Built around three principal poles, it has taken the shape of a futuristic dream for some, and of a falsely modernist nightmare for others. The first pole is constituted by three parallel north-south roads, including a large avenue ten meters wider than the Champs-Elysees in Paris. This new organization of the city wipes out public squares, framing the new city center with motorways and boulevards. Thus, Martyrs Square the symbol of the old Beirut, is opened to the sea and drowned by the wide avenue. For those familiar with the work of the great American town planners, sociologists, and architects, who sought to revive public places destroyed by urban highways, it is astonishing to see that the creators of this project learned so little from their experience. [10] According to the plan, thousands of parking lots are to be built and exploited by the real estate company, yet without any serious study of traffic networks. The plan does not explain where the tens of thousands of cars entering and leaving the city center will feed into, especially since very little interest is given to public transportation such as tramways, buses, and subways. Yet the clogging up of the old city will effectively deprive Beirut’s inhabitants of physical access to the revived center; not to mention the difficulties in social access. [11] The second pole of the project is the construction of a virtual wall of enormous twenty-story towers planned for the sea front, which would reduce to a minimum the famous view of the sea the project supposedly promotes. But are these buildings -- in reality fortresses of glass and iron according to the “modernist” norms of the 1960s -- really necessary, even from an economic standpoint? [12] Moreover, who will fill up the enormous space in these buildings? Besides, isn’t modernism today more concerned with safeguarding or reorganizing one’s architectural heritage rather than overshadowing it? Many considered the new urban landscape set forth in this project as falsely modernist and too radical. Yet the problems raised by the 1991 project can only be understood if what was the third pole of the plan is highlighted. It consisted of developing an island offshore from the seaside Avenue des Français, built on a huge deposit of rubbish and debris left over from wartime Beirut. The symbolism was powerful: from the destruction of the past emerged a new piece of salvageable land offshore. In fact, the plan placed more high-rises and government buildings on the island. Estimated generally at about thirty hectares, [13] development of the island was designed to reap a large financial profit. It was also, according to us, the key to the rationale behind the master plan. At the end of 1992, the intention to develop the island was abandoned. The decision appears to have been a tardy recognition of the criticism leveled at the plan. Nevertheless, this did not lessen the apparent reasoning which was originally behind the island project, namely the isolation of a part of the old city center from the rest of the city. At the same time, the decision not to develop the island had little effect on the rest of the reconstruction project. On the contrary, the move was accompanied by the revelation that the promoters intended to compensate for the loss of the island by constructing a large number of high-rises in other parts of the city center, thus further reducing room for public space, and destroying a larger proportion of older buildings. Nor, for that matter, were any new proposals made on solving likely traffic problems. The technical weaknesses of the plan cannot be considered a reflection of the weakness of the firm which produced it. [14] The monumentality of the city center’s road networks and architecture will one day clash with the appearance of the rest of the city, bogged down in its own unresolved problems relating to cleanliness, green spaces, traffic, the rehabilitation of partially destroyed buildings, etc. In fact, the likelihood is that an island of wealth will arise in the city center, following the examplperhaps, of Manhattan and the Bronx, where a section of New York City continues to be developed, while another is allowed to sink into decline. If the plan intends to limit mass circulation into the city center, it is legitimate to ask whether this isn’t intentional on the part of its promoters, specifically to isolate the city center from the rest of Beirut. This would explain why the project seeks to reduce public spaces where coexistence, interaction, exchange, and trade can take place. It is odd to find that all urban functions such as public administration, offices, tourism for the elite, and luxury shops, are to be concentrated in the old city center. More popular shops, however, are excluded from the project. This is precisely the problem: conceived of as an island of wealth and power, the city center would no longer have a centralizing role, but would instead become an island like all the other urban islands which arose during the war. Yet it is difficult not to see the tenuousness of this aspect of the project, which concentrates authority and wealth in the city center. The buildings offered for sale are enormous in size, and it is uncertain whether their quantity or quality meet any sort of real demand. A gap between supply and demand would be catastrophic, and shows why it would be more prudent to integrate into the plan more middle and lower scale construction and activities downtown. Although the first pictures of the project shown to the public were appealing, the demolition of three hundred buildings in the old city center, without determining whether they could be salvaged [15], generated a contrary feeling. What the fighting had not managed to destroy of the urban memory and the national heritage, the bulldozers of those reconstructing the city destroyed far more radically. Extreme, deceptively modernist, the 1991 project must be modified, otherwise the reconstruction process will be at a stalemate. </span><a name="projects"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Projects Adrift With time, the Beirut reconstruction projects multiplied without being really alike. One thing has changed in each of the projects, however: the interest of the concerned populations. The middle class, which made up the old city center and was its sociological bulwark before the war, has gradually seen its role in a reconstructed Beirut fade away. If middle class participation was at the center of the 1977 project, it disappeared completely in that of 1991. Moreover, the 1991 project definitively pushes out of the center those who had been forced to leave as a result of the destruction from the war. Yet how can one conceive of the city’s reconstruction without it also being an opportunity for the financial, political, and cultural regeneration and participation of the middle class worn out by years of fighting? The 1991 reconstruction plan does not reverse the trends provoked by the conflict in Lebanon. This is clear both in the structure of the new center, developed as an island separated from the rest of Beirut. It is also clear in that the problems resulting from the war are to be solved by acts of authority rather than through collaboration. Moreover, the CDR does not consider the state and its public administration as objects of reform, but as institutions to be marginalized as they were during the war. In order to answer the three series of questions raised in the beginning of this article, we can argue that: As time went by, the master plans tended to abandon the concept of urban integration and to adapt themselves -- too easily according to us -- to the divisions, disunity, and segregation existing between different regions and social classes. Proof of this is the little interest given to the regeneration of public spaces, the predominance of office buildings to which access is controlled, and the urban island which dominated the 1991 project. The message is ambiguous: does it mean recognition of the failure of segregation, or rather an acceptance of the failure of pre-war coexistence? Having answered this question differently, each reconstruction plan chose to develop or reduce the integrative functions of the spaces they sought to rehabilitate. In presenting their vision of a constructed Beirut, the different master plans also had to relate it to different memories of the city. The question was which memory would predominate? Would it be that of a Beirut broken up by communal conflict, or instead would it be a return to the nostalgia of a golden age of coexistence in the capital, which some say never existed, and which many of the young never knew? The different master plans provided increasingly less possibility for private individuals to re-appropriate urban space in the old city center: in the 1977 project, small landowners were financially responsible for rehabilitation of up to 75% of the land. In the 1986 project, this role was gradually shifted to the state; while by 1991, financing was in the hands of a monopolistic private conglomerate. Predictably, the conglomerate has avoided the intervention of external public authorities in the financing of reconstruction, whether by the World Bank or other international organizations. Nor would it be surprising to see it weaken concerned state institutions to insure its continued domination over reconstruction. But most important, the conglomerate will continue to refuse and discourage the financing of reconstruction by the middle class. What appears instead is a will to marginalize civil society and the middle classes, whose participation is necessary to any democratic system. The rationale behind reconstruction has for too long depended on a massive external injection of capital, thus reducing the participation of civil society to a secondary role. Doesn’t protecting small property owners also, paradoxically, mean protecting the public domain? Isn’t time a factor which every reconstruction plan should take into account; time to permit the vital element in a society to participate in the rehabilitation of a city, rather tan depending on an external injection of capital, which has yet to materialize. In our opinion, if these key questions are ignored, the reconstruction of Beirut will be heading towards disaster. </span><a name="cultural"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">A Cultural Crisis: From the Ottoman City to the Wahabi City? The crisis is much deeper than it appears. Peace in Lebanon, like the war perhaps, was imposed from outside the country. In reality, however, true internal peace has yet to be achieved; or rather, the end to the violence in Lebanon was not the result of the victory of civil movements, but of the defeat of the militias. Unfortunately, the transition from a culture of war based on discord, [16] to one based on reconstruction and concord is not automatic. If anything, the recent political landscape of Lebanon has witnessed developments which tended to undermine this transition. What is taking place in terms of reconstruction is as pernicious. What was defended in the 1977 project was a return to the Ottoman city, with its heritage of coexistence between communities and tolerance. What was at stake in the 1986 project was integration through the organization of a more modern city, permitting, but not ordering, relations between its inhabitants, while allowing them access to the center. In the plan of 1991, a new model is presented of a city dominated by one actor through its political and financial capabilities. The concentration of downtown property in the hands of a few, the reduction of public spaces, and the refusal of a public debate, the privatization of the state and its authority, are all major outlines of what we may call the Wahabi city. The major feature of this is a central authority controlling and redistributing wealth, and in the process reorganizing and weakening civil society. Did the Ottoman pattern fail in Beirut because tolerance did not lead to democracy? Was the process of modernization a failure because the warlords hijacked it? Whatever the answer, the three reconstruction projects each presented a certain vision of the city. The vision which dominates the 1991 project is that of a desert city in which the urban elite submits to the uncontested authoof those who control the wealth and who are the defenders of cultural conservatism. It is a vision of a city broken up into segregated islands. But is Beirut really a desert city? Is a city without a history, which one can simply abandon to the bulldozers? How can one explain the indifference of officials when three hundred buildings, many of which made up the heart of the city’s heritage, were allowed to be demolished? Will Beirut be reconstructed without being lost, without closing itself off, without ultimately being forced to deny itself? Will the feeling of tolerance which existed in the Ottoman city be allowed to prevail once again? </span><a name="endnotes"></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Endnotes These themes have been developed in Reconstruire Beyrouth, les paris sur le possible, Maison de l’Orient, Université de Lyon, 1991. VALUE=1>See Mitri Nammar, “Le Plan Directeur du Centre de Beyrouth,” URBA, July 1983. See Jad Tabet in Reconstruire Beyrouth, les paris sur le possible, op. cit. See Abdo Kahi, Le Centre-ville de Beyrouth, Direction Générale de l’Urbanisme, 1980. The conference of the Urban Research Institute, held in Beirut in May 1992, with the support of the Ford Foundation, exemplified this mood; as did a manifesto issued by the Engineers Union, or that of the so-called “six engineers” who met to criticize the plan. A declaration generally attributed to Salim al-Hoss, prime minister in 1977. The great haste of the promoters was particularly noticeable on the occasions: when three poorly written draft law was submitted to the parliament; when the master plan was first presented, despite its containing many technical deficiencies; and when so-called dangerous historic buildings were hurriedly demolished, even before waiting for the adoption of the whole plan or ascertaining whether the buildings were indeed dangerous. In addition, the improper methods used to demolish the buildings damaged sections of other structures which were to be preserved. The adoption of the project by Parliament delayed its implementation for several months. The Deputy from Beirut, Najah Wakim, made public accusations of corruption, and was threatened with having his parliamentary immunity suspended. Cf. the writings of R. Sennett and of other great American urban sociologists, on the disappearance of public spaces in large American cities in favor of culture of highways and avenues. The criticism of the Directorate General of Urbanism (Direction Génénrale de l’Urbanisme) is, in part, directed at this feature of the plan. The economic profitability of such architectural projects turned out to be a disappointing in the Defense quarter in Paris, as well as the London docks area. Other, more fanciful, suggestions spoke of 200 hectares. The Dar al-Handasah firm, which has been responsible for several important projects in the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia, has, in the case of Beirut, presented poorly-studied proposals. It’s amazing, for instance, how no study was conducted of the sea-bed around the proposed island, when it is known that an underwater canyon of about two hundred meters depth is located no more than two hundred meters away from the island’s edge. The weakness of the firm’s studies on means of transportation was also subject to criticism. The destruction took place in the spring of 1992 and looked very much like a surreptitious effort to evade criticism for the annihilation of the city’s memory. The last Ottoman and Medieval remains in Beirut were destroyed, and it is still not known who ordered the demolition. See George Corm on the way the culture of discord was used, in Géopolitique du conflit libanais, Maspéro, Paris, 1989. </span></p>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-4833802271258417332011-02-20T00:19:00.001-08:002011-03-27T01:13:17.973-07:00The Failure of Modernity (Paris)<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Paris / The failure of control</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">The impossibility to abolish public spaces</span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjik600kUojZ69-Jb18wpdNkK8LC6FYaStK5RxWzAWqhey59IPdHnb6lBarnrFu-csVDkJtfxDP7xb5S3bn0nDguek-AtDQQLQVwoU4i5L-U3YPvKiBzePLS0KfDAV1iwUAJWZX6ocMS4KZ/s1600/Paris+arrondissements.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 296px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjik600kUojZ69-Jb18wpdNkK8LC6FYaStK5RxWzAWqhey59IPdHnb6lBarnrFu-csVDkJtfxDP7xb5S3bn0nDguek-AtDQQLQVwoU4i5L-U3YPvKiBzePLS0KfDAV1iwUAJWZX6ocMS4KZ/s400/Paris+arrondissements.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575684095275676114" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JcMQJW4XCz98jjFkFf_hFBUOUnwR4M3cqSD1nX-lDstznM4d4FpFoNvjF1Z_Zrk3b6bfeJcp4CMUkMO2ULOPljTUitsoQOtOX-yQF8Vo0FWHSy__P4vDgdYVf-2z9IEHGdT1yDYfIdJl/s1600/Paris+planarrondt3.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JcMQJW4XCz98jjFkFf_hFBUOUnwR4M3cqSD1nX-lDstznM4d4FpFoNvjF1Z_Zrk3b6bfeJcp4CMUkMO2ULOPljTUitsoQOtOX-yQF8Vo0FWHSy__P4vDgdYVf-2z9IEHGdT1yDYfIdJl/s400/Paris+planarrondt3.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575683600306569682" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></span></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927323485568806653.post-72783271946841640992011-02-20T00:10:00.001-08:002011-03-27T01:12:19.432-07:00The Failure of Modernity (Brasilia)<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Brasilia / The city that failed to be citied</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The impossibility to impose a public space</span></span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThGRE4J6l0lFYHaHWpBG0MA7gyZmnKLzqW6K-tS1Q_Lcn0nzavFS1XTPXVB4Ql19PRl0hKaltW8bnlHn6J6Oue_H_mMkLz7gNGBpUcAzSVBb6HpyYfPcrMl9WYc1cXskYfQMNt68MDhYS/s1600/brasilia-10-miles-high.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 324px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThGRE4J6l0lFYHaHWpBG0MA7gyZmnKLzqW6K-tS1Q_Lcn0nzavFS1XTPXVB4Ql19PRl0hKaltW8bnlHn6J6Oue_H_mMkLz7gNGBpUcAzSVBb6HpyYfPcrMl9WYc1cXskYfQMNt68MDhYS/s400/brasilia-10-miles-high.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575682437705392498" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw8QYJ-XezEofwxzOEv_lUzH_ffxOlI8z13D1YDXpYVZYWSFhyphenhyphenwnVe8UyLtn4H_Cd33wHq3GLpvCrXniV9sLdgy7-5KOzJf4A0YzZwwKqf_JWTkAtHvCN6hDTJqK8p4r1HX1I8x3XICdMH/s1600/brasilia-map.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw8QYJ-XezEofwxzOEv_lUzH_ffxOlI8z13D1YDXpYVZYWSFhyphenhyphenwnVe8UyLtn4H_Cd33wHq3GLpvCrXniV9sLdgy7-5KOzJf4A0YzZwwKqf_JWTkAtHvCN6hDTJqK8p4r1HX1I8x3XICdMH/s400/brasilia-map.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575682069643396610" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div>choubassihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256634123617081287noreply@blogger.com0