The scope of this research places hauntology in a contemporary context. By combining this hauntological investigation with a psychogeographical interpretation of the urban environment, the objective is to produce an outcome which functions as a visual critique of the prevailing socio–political landscape.
This report sets out to describe the origins and principal components of hauntology and to demonstrate how this philosophical reasoning may be visually articulated through graphic design techniques. By documenting the design rationale employed throughout the project, I will outline the practical considerations of choosing to articulate these metaphysical concepts by using the London Borough of Croydon as a case study.
Specifically, this report aims to illustrate the hauntological consequences of the borough’s town planning decisions of the 1960s’ and to outline the design rationale employed to communicate its materialization.
The project can be summarised as:
DEMONSTRATE A RANGE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN TECHNIQUES THAT CAN BE DEPLOYED IN ORDER TO SUCCESSFULLY COMMUNICATE THE HAUNTOLOGICAL QUALITIES OF CROYDON.
Theoretical Rationale
History In Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ it was argued that the worldwide establishment of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism as the culminate form of government, may signal the end point of humanity’s socio-cultural evolution. Fukuyama referenced Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) who defined history as the progress of man to higher levels of rationality and freedom and that this process had a logical terminal point.
Critics of capitalist, post-modern society have explored this notion of history reaching an impasse as a means of explaining perceived cultural stagnation. As well as an end of history, the monopoly of neo-liberalism worldwide, has brought about an era of political sterility, where agents of dissent are reduced to making a series of hysterical demands which even they don’t realistically expect to be met. It is also claimed that this lack of forward momentum is manifest in a endless craving for revivalism.
It was against this philosophical backdrop that French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s ‘Spectres of Marx’ was published in 1993. This book was highly critical of ‘Fukuyama’s End of History, he proposed that following the demise of ‘real socialisms’ in Europe and the displacement of leftist political formations, the triumph of the neoconservative agenda had brought about record levels of suffering throughout the world. The title; ‘Spectres of Marx’ is a reference to the prophetic statement at the beginning of the Manifesto of the Communist party, written in 1848: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre” (Marx & Engles 1848)
Derrida argued that as history represents a relationship between a present and its past, this linear hierarchy can be deconstructed by the concept of ‘haunting’. He predicted that the West will continue to be haunted by Marx’s spirit of radical critique as an antidote to the apparent ‘death of ideology’. It was within this context that he proposed the philosophical concept of ‘hauntology’;“To haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with the concepts of being and time. That is what we should be calling here a hauntology.” (Derrida 1994:161)
Amongst the analogies used by Derrida to illustrate his theory is the apparition of the spectre in Shakespear’s Hamlet. This scene features the spirit of the dead King. The expected return of this revenant, this non-object, this non-present present, cannot be controlled because it begins by coming back. Like history, it is doomed to repeat itself again and again. Culturally accepted notions of a haunting occur when a spirit visits the present from the past, usually with a warning about the future. This manifestation of space disrupted by a time that is ‘out-of-joint’ is referred to as dyschronia. Dyschronia may be described as the traces of that which has never arrived, but which will never go away.
“The spectral rumour now resonates, it invades everything” (Derrida 1994). Hauntology is defined by its very ambiguity; it hovers in the spectral space, the threshold between being and presence, life and death, departure and return. Today, hauntology inspires discourse across a broad range of cultural specialisms, from visual arts to philosophy, politics, fiction and literary criticism. It encompasses issues of post modernism, metafiction, displacement and longing. It can even be seen as a way of describing the fluidity of identity among individuals as well as the shades of influence that link one person’s experience to anothers.
The present can only be viewed through the lens of the past, with occasional glances into the future. Today’s cultural obsession with revivalism represents a denial of the future in favour of the comforting reassurance offered by the ‘ghost’ of the past. Mark Fisher describes this apparent denial of the future as; “Amnesia of the present, is the complement to hauntology’s nostalgia for the future”. Hauntology proposes a positive alternative to post modernity’s ‘nostalgia mode’. The future can only be for ghosts.
If history has run out, hauntology only grows more relevant as years go on. Indeed, hauntology may be the closest thing we have to a zeitgeist. (Fisher 2006)
Spectres are unsettling because they are never fully seen. An understanding of that which has never arrived and will never leave is linked to the concept of ‘trace’. Trace can be understood as the mark of the absence of a presence, an always-already absent presence. The metaphysical concept of ‘trace’ had previously been explored by Derrida in “Writing and Difference” and “Of Grammatology” and forms an important role in the formulation of his critical concept of ‘deconstruction’. Deconstructionism challenges the perceived linguistic relationship of binary opposites such as; ‘speech/writing’, ‘life/death’, ‘signifier/signified’. This process of metaphysical re-interpretation, involves overturning traditional hierarchies, adjusting their structure and altering their functionality. Derrida claimed that these contradictions are neither accidental nor exceptions; they are the exposure of certain “metaphysics of pure presence”, an exposure of the “transcendental signified” always-already hidden inside language. It was this “always-already hidden” contradiction, he referred to as ‘trace’.
Hauntology is also an aesthetic effect, a way of reading and understanding design. Works which might be considered hauntological are generally comprised of two opposing layers. The first layer (‘the past’) might express hope and confidence via the incorporation of optimistically archaic imagery such as those associated with ‘retro futurism’. However, this layer can only be seen through the lens of the second layer (‘the present’) which casts doubt on the ‘truth’ of the first layer by expressing a sense of disillusionment. This is often achieved by using discordant ‘lo-fi’ effects, surrealism, fragmentation or collage. This process of obfuscation is a metaphor for memory.
Hauntology provides an opportunity to re-open a dialogue on the philosophical significance of a range of post-structuralist concepts on the discourse of visual communication.
For the past 25 years, graphic designers have generally, been happy to define their output as post modern. This wholehearted embrace of so called ‘low’ popular culture, is a rather desperate attempt to remain at the shallow end of the popular arts. Where design was once a sign of ideology. Consumer society’s ceaseless craving for spectacular representation has rendered design as mere style and personal aesthetic expression. Capitalist culture’s ability to commodify and control renders all forms of criticism harmless. Radical style and commercial style become instantly inseparable. Design that was once deemed revolutionary now looks like standard commercial culture in the dazzling spectacle of infotainment.
We have reached the point where reality is permeated by the spectacle. The contradictions in political, economic and social life are being eliminated by the theatrical gesture, which is immediately and pleasantly consumable. As a result our discipline too has become a spectacle. (Van Toorn 2006:32)
If the “end of history” can explain this loss of cultural momentum and an insatiable appetite for revivalism and the procedural narrowing of the creative spectrum, then digital technologies are dislocating more traditional notions of time and place.
The always online existence demanded by the smart phone, for instance, encourages a reluctance to commit to the here and now. The user simply logs on to arrive everywhere and nowhere simultaneously - Isolated in the connected world. Cyberspace occupies the ghostly spectrum between satellite and screen between upload and download. Technology that looks to the future but is preoccupied with the past. A world surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting the temporary and ephemeral. The internet operates in a kind of “non-time”.
The ‘electrical sublime’ - world-wide-web has also heralded a ‘crisis of over availability’. Every banal detail of contemporary society is documented for the ages, nothing dies any more, everything is reviewed, re-lived, re-mastered, re-enacted everything comes back on YouTube or as a collectors edition retrospective. This inability to consign anything to history signifies the “loss of loss” itself. The overabundance of references, events and space are the main characteristics of super modernity.
The need to give meaning to the present, if not the past, is the price we pay for the overabundance of events corresponding to a situation we could call ‘supermodern’ to express its essential quality: excess. (Augé 1995:24)
Super modernity produces ‘non-places’. The distinction between ‘place’ and ‘non-place’ can be found in the void that exists between ‘place’ and ‘space’. These ‘non-places’ are hypnotically familiar, no matter where we are in the world. They are represented by the ubiquitous modern transport hub, the out of town retail park, the franchise coffee shop, and other homogeneous buildings absent of local flavour and historical significance.
A space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place. (Augé 1995:63)
The concepts of place and placelessness can be linked to unitary urbanism and psychogeography. Psychogeography represents the point at which psychology and geography collide. It can be employed as a means of exploring the behavioural impact of the urban environment. Originating from the Paris of the 1950’s it was devised by the Letterist group, a forerunner of the Situationist International, as an increasingly political tool which attempted to transform urban life. It was defined by, Guy Debord as; “The study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” (Knabb 2007:5)
The concept of a place, or non-place, is where the fundamental qualities of absent presence expressed by hauntology can be mapped out.
Context
Croydon is a borough of South London experiencing a crisis of identity. Historically, a country borough, it was incorporated into Greater London in 1965. The largest populated of the London boroughs, its inhabitants are traditionally dispersed across the borough in three main categories. The working classes densely packed in the declining areas to the north and west. Middle classes in the leafier suburbs of the south and east. While the town centre is home to businesses and retail. Having been comprehensively bombed during the war, it was comprehensively redeveloped afterwards.
Croydon’s personality disorder is manifest in repeatedly failed attempts the town has made to achieve city status. Successive councils have attempted to peddle their latest imagining of the towns forward trajectory. They appear to spend so much time and effort defining where they are going because they are so uncertain of where they are. Each new ‘vision for Croydon’ has been unable to divest itself of a reputation forged by the highly questionable town planning decisions of the 1960s’.
Today the image of Croydon is all to do with the drab, brutalist, concrete office blocks, ring roads and underpasses of its centre. Between 1956 and 1972 nearly 6 million square feet of office space, a major shopping centre and an ill-conceived ring road were dumped in the town’s centre, largely at the expense of Victorian housing, public halls and school playing fields. It was the scale of this redevelopment that is responsible for Croydon’s reputation as a bleak, characterless, concrete jungle. In hauntological terms, the ghosts of 20th century town planning continue to haunt the splintered rationalization of this dystopian non-place.
The non-place is the opposite of Utopia; it exists, and it does not contain any original society. (Augé 1995:63, 90)
The roots of Croydon’s predicament can be traced back to the post-war years or urban regeneration. The council embarked on a road widening scheme that included some small scale office development. They already owned the key site, but they needed the power to acquire further land through compulsory purchase without having to submit a Comprehensive Development Area Plan to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. To expedite the process the borough promoted its own Private Bill in Parliament. This became the Croydon Corporation Act of 1956.
Having acquired two acres of land (then in multiple ownership) the Corporation added two acres of its own, they then leased the land not required for road improvements to private developers for retail and office development. Essentially, the council saw their role (aside from the collection of rateable revenue), as being responsible for clearing obstacles and preparing the land so that others could sow and harvest the best fruit.
Norwich Union, who had recently moved into new offices in Wellesley Road were persuaded to fund a new development scheme. Although not confident of success they ceded to pressure from the council and agreed to include in its plans for a modest shopping development, an additional 200,000 sq. ft. of office space. Three new blocks; Norfolk House, Suffolk House and Essex House were erected.
Around this time the Local County Council and the Ministry of Local Government were encouraging a programme of decentralisation. Croydon was only too eager to answer the Government’s call to provide accommodation for the offices the Government wanted to move out of Central London. Croydon Corporation set aside area of about 45 acres, in the north east part of the town centre. Aided by its convenient rail links, its proximity to London and the low rents, new corporate tenants started to arrive in Croydon. Between 1963 and 1973, 20% of offices & 30% of jobs which moved from Central London, relocated to one of Croydon’s new office developments.
“It’s like a bomb bursting. It’s all happening at once.” “Croydon will be the first town in Britain to rebuild from a town centre which was not already destroyed by the blitz.”
(Evening Standard 1959)
As soon as it was apparent to property developers that tenants could easily be found for any new office block, there was a massive scramble by developers to get into Croydon. This Klondike style land-grab that went on in the town centre lasted for eight ‘glorious’ years, until a Labour Government Bill promoted by George Brown (the ‘Brown ban’), sought to restrict further office development in heavily built-up areas. This however, did little to curb the excesses in Croydon. Virtually all the major redevelopment projects were either contracted or in progress, meaning building work continued unabated throughout the duration of the ban. By 1969 over 3.5 million square feet of office space has been completed, 1.5 million was under construction and over 1 million had been approved but not commenced, making a total of some 6 million square feet of lettable office space in the central part of the town.
The Council Planning Department appeared only too willing to sign off any proposal that was presented. Their motivation was obvious. Vast wealth. By 1973 the rateable value of the town had shot up to over £64 million, making Croydon one of the richest boroughs in London. Furthermore property prices in the centre had spiralled to £175,00 an acre.
“We intend to make Croydon the greatest commercial centre outside Central London”
(Ald. A. J. Dunn, Croydon Advertiser, 7 May 1965)
Tall buildings were still something of a rarity. Prior to the arrival of the towns skyscrapers, the Town Hall clock tower, built in 1896 was the tallest building in Croydon. The 1950s’ witnessed a new fascination with anything that reached into the heavens. The abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain in 1951 was a tall metal, mast structure. ‘The Skylon’ was representational of this new ‘vertical future’.
Lord Latham: The future is looking up from the gutter and the kerb, it was heading skyward. (Collins 2004:137)
The first artificial satellite – ‘Sputnik’ was launched into orbit by Russia in 1957. The subsequent ‘space-race’ captured the imagination of a world who saw technology as the salvation of mankind. The ‘Apollo House’ and ‘Lunar House’ office blocks in Croydon were named in homage to this space-age utopianism.
Casting around for a new utopia, science fiction utopians – heads turned upward by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 – toward outer space (Sadler 1999:42)
By 1972 there were 56 office blocks of over 1,000 sq. ft. in the town centre. 29 of these block’s were over ten storeys tall including 8 of over 200 ft.. These drab monuments to capitalism were now the head offices for a host of large companies. These included Nestlé, R.A.C., Tate & Lyle, Brooke Bond-Oxo, Lennig Chemicals, I.B.M., Black Clawson, Roneo, Rothschilds, as well as a collection of insurance companies, financial services and construction industry firms, Government departments and nationalized industries were also represented. The town centre provided employment for over 20,000 workers. Croydon had rapidly become one of the largest centres of office growth in the country, outside central London. At the opening ceremony of the new Nestlés tower in 1965, the Mayor, commenting on the proliferation of big businesses in the town centre was quoted “They could be excused for believing they own Croydon”.
With all those towers, the behemoth of the Whitgift shopping centre, new roads with attendant car parking provision, underpasses and fly-overs, all done at once. Croydon was so utterly transformed during the 1960s’ that for nearly 20 years, virtually nothing else happened. As a result, the place is a living period piece.
The prevailing taste for modern architecture, post-war, was dominated by the type of neo-brutalist ‘slab block’ devised by Le Corbusier. His concept was to transfer the rationality of the workplace to home life and leisure. However, the new breed of architects who followed rarely displayed the same degree of social benevolence.
The large office developments that emerged in Croydon fell mainly into the pattern of a high slab surmounting a low block. The tremendous pressures exerted by developers on architects was to design buildings at minimum cost. In order to maximise their profits they demanded the maximum lettable floor space and the quickest possible construction time. As a result routine commercial architecture was the order of the day. Developers invariably opted for the cheapest possible curtain wall. The result is that not one building erected during this period of extraordinary activity, is of any serious aesthetic or architectural merit. Croydon is saddled with a legacy of out of date concrete office blocks which function poorly and embody a kind of an office culture that is increasingly out of date.
The urban environment isn’t even interestingly bad. Croydon seems so mundane and ordinary that there is no scope here for even the most determined ironist. It is an English Alphaville, created by Rotary Club politicians in which banality has ruled for 30 years.
(The Guardian 21 Sept 1993)
During this period of comprehensive urban upheaval, Croydon never felt the need for a Chief Officer who was a Chartered Town Planner. Neither were they obliged to produce a Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan. Their one concession to planning orthodoxy was the belated appointment of a consultative panel of architects as a token gesture towards considered urban planning. This panel were given the responsibility of inspecting applications on a piecemeal basis, but had no powers to direct the overall pattern of development. As a result the centre of Croydon became a mess of jumbled, largely unrelated buildings, containing examples of virtually every environmental mistake possible.
From the ground, these tall office blocks dominate the horizon. Their vast frontages form sheer cliffs that dive into the pavement. Masses of concrete concentrated in an area little more than a square mile. All this, plus a six lane ring-road, with its cavenous underpass driving a low-speed wedge between pedestrians and the town centre shops on the opposite side of Wellesley Road. A madhouse in which to work, shop or live. A confusion of people and traffic by day, a ghost town by night.
Buildings with an indescribable variety of size, height and architectural treatment, few of which deserve more than a second glance and some of which are deplorable examples of the worst architecture of the post-war period.
“Everywhere there seems to be a complete lack of any appreciation of the scale of people, lack of architectural feeling and the necessity of creating a coherent and pleasant environment for people to walk, work, shop and live in” (Croydon Advertiser 26 March 1965)
The real ‘architects’ of this new dystopia were a select number of protagonists at the council. They were principally Alderman Basil Monk, borough engineer A.F. Holt and Sir James Marshall chairman of the Planning Committee, a man with a finger in virtually every pie, Sir James reigned supreme in Croydon. A local magistrate and an alderman since 1936 he no longer had the inconvenience of being subject to popular election. As leader of the council as well as chairman of the Finance Committee he had masterminded the Croydon Corporation Act. Later, as a governor of the Whitgift Foundation he was able to influence the lease of the prime, 12 acre Trinity School of John Whitgift to Ravenseft Properties for £1 million, plus an estimated £200,00 annual rental and a share of future profits. As chairman of the Planning Committee, he was then in a position to rubber-stamp the plans which saw the site converted into a 460,000 sq. ft. shopping centre that included 537,000 sq. ft. of office space.
This hard-headed autocrat was in a sense comparable to an American-style town boss. What Marshall said, went. Extremely commercially minded and an orthodox Conservative. He got things done quickly – and they worked. When I talked to him about the transformation of Croydon, he remarked wryly that ‘the best committee, is a committee of one’. (Marriot 1967:186)
Sir James remained an influential figure in Croydon long after his retirement in 1968. Upon his death, the eulogies included; “If you seek his monument, look around.” “He was the architect of modern Croydon.” Indeed, Sir James is the ghost that stalks the concrete battlements of modern Croydon.
Ghost: I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt
and purged away. (Shakespear, Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V)
Croydon is currently in the throes of its latest metamorphosis. ‘Croydon Vision 2020’ is a regeneration programme that seeks to promote Croydon “as hub of living, retailing, culture and business in South East England”. Five ‘master plans’ are currently under development in the latest bid to re-invent the town. These plans include the construction of yet more office space, residential tower blocks and the creation of a sprawling shopping centre. This programme of redevelopment follows earlier re-imaginings; ‘Croydon – The Future’ invited a host of prominent architects to prepare schemes for the regeneration of the town centre. This was swiftly followed by Will Alsop’s ‘Third City’ proposing an architectural makeover of Croydon. However, none of these schemes ever amounted to anything as concrete as the building they sought to obliterate.
This project is an attempt to analyse the hauntological qualities of absent-presence, and dyschronia that are expressed by the double file of stubby concrete slabs that line Wellesley Road. Croydon represents more than just laissez faire urban development. Its bleak concrete banality invokes the ghosts of capitalisms failed futures. This redundant office city is haunted by the spectre of a town that sold its soul to commerce.
Methodologies
My intention in defining a practical output for this project is to formulate a method of visualising the spectral dialogue that exists in the vacant space between absence and presence. To conjure the ghosts of forgotten futures by articulating the power of the non-thing the non-sign.
Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus we are helped by what is not,
To use what is.
(Laotze, quoted by McLuhan 1967:145)
Spectacular society has made a slave of meaning. It requires a ceaseless diet of signs and slogans in order to perpetuate itself. As a graphic designer, it becomes almost impossible to hold up a mirror to consumer society without merely adding to the mileu of the spectacle.
Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however in danger of lacking meaning, quite to the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us. As more and more things have fallen into the abyss of meaning, they have retained less and less of the charm of appearances.
(Baudrillard 1988:63)
My intention, is the considered construction of a visual device. This signifier is a construct formed by a series of elements, some of which are merely inferred. Although the subject matter is clearly articulated the resultant meaning is open. This non-sign acts as a dialogue between then and now. The subject matter of Croydon’s arcane rationalisation is full of examples that demonstrate this lack. The Croydon Ring Road, that formed the cornerstone of the original Development Plan was abandoned before completion. The concept of roads that quite literally go nowhere bears all the hallmarks of ‘trace’.
The historical data on Croydon has chiefly been obtained from the Local History Study Archive at Croydon Central Library. The information available ranges from newspaper articles and photographs through to 1970s’ planning maps. The architectural data included; building height, number of floors and total floor space. I was also able to trace the various names the individual buildings have been known by as well as the names of their architects and the original developers.
The focus of my research is the office blocks that were developed as direct result of the Croydon Corporation Act, particularly those that have since been demolished or redeveloped. The ghosts of these buildings and the failed futures which they promised, is significant. The idea of buildings existing beyond their physical limits is linked to the resonance of historical time. The structures that have gone are as much part of the dystopian legacy of the town as the ones that remain. This is the always-already, absence of a presence that defines the hauntological qualities of Croydon.
Contemporary data is concentrated around the media-spun council pronouncements and the commercial bricolage of Croydon’s letting agents. Each of these glossy presentations forms an interesting juxtaposition when compared to the dreary reality of the run-down town centre. These manifestos of hypereality typically contain over enthusiastic phrases such as: “strategic framework” “social infrastructure” “growth potential” “vertically integrated” “return on equity” “premium outlet” “exciting retail destination”. My intention is to détourne examples of this ubiquitous corporate double-speak in an attempt to turn it back on itself like some form of Ouroboros. By employing the tactics of post modernism I hope to expose its vacuous, logo-centric qualities.
A significant inspiration towards the establishment of a link between hauntology and Croydon was an 1970s’ issue of Suburban Press. Issue #5 ‘Lo! A Monster is Born’ focused on Croydon Redevelopment (1956 - 1972), and some of the characters, such as Sir James Marshall and Harry Hyams who were responsible for carving up Croydon. This apposite, 20-page blast of nostalgic counter-culture is dripping in hauntological connotations.
Suburban Press was a Croydon based, community publishing project with a Situationist, ‘shit-stirring’ agenda. It was co-founded in 1970 by ex Croydon Art School student, Jamie Reid, Jeremy Brook and Nigel Edwards. The graphic style employed by Reid is evocative of the low-fi samizdat techniques which existed before the era of the desktop computer. My deliberate use of single colour imagery, détoured headings and typewriter typography is intended to reference the graphic language of the Suburban Press.
A flourishing samizdat tradition continues to produce music, magazines, performance and political interventions in the spirit of ironic violence perfected by Dada; plagiarism, détournement and provocation remain the hallmarks of a thriving and sophisticated world of agitation. (Plant 1992: 176)
By employing the psychogeographical tactics of the flâneur whilst ‘drifting’ in the streets of Croydon, I was able to build up an extensive visual record of my experiences. These images represent the visual language of Croydon. They are comprised of the signs and symbols that litter the urban landscape, images of authority and direction. They also feature portraits of a selection of witness to this visual diatribe. These images of people captured on the streets of Croydon are in stark contrast to their glossy representation in the ‘media packs’ distributed by the marketing agents of Croydon.
Viewed in isolation, these symbols could connote the contemporary urban landscape of almost anywhere in the country. It is their specific association with one particular location that imbues them with significance. In effect, in each of these images, Croydon is the element that is consistently an always-already absence of a presence. Their interpretation can only be derived from what is not there.
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