Research Proposition
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-capitalism and neo-liberalism, it is claimed, has resulted in an end of art and philosophy and an endless craving for revivalism. It has also brought about an era of political sterility, where agents of dissent are reduced to a series of hysterical demands which they don’t realistically expect to be met.
It was aginst this philosophical backdrop that French philosopher Jacques Derrida published ‘Spectres of Marx’ in 1993. Derrida’s book was highly critical of ‘The 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 neo-conservative agenda has resulted in record levels of suffering throughout the world. Derrida went on to detail 10 plagues of the capitalist or global system. The title; ‘Spectres of Marx’ is a refence to the prophetic statement at the beginning of the Manifetso 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 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 introduced 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)
He argued that as history represents a relationship between a present and its past, this linear heirarchy can be deconstructed by the concept of ‘haunting’: “the spectre is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only as that which could come back” (Derrida 1994:38).
I propose to conduct a visual investigation into some of the theoretic principles of hauntology. Hauntology - the logic of the ghost, is ephemeral and abstract. Its philosophical reasoning encompasses a range of metaphysical concepts; Culturally accepted notions of a haunting occur when the present is visited by a spirit 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 is manifest in the persistent traces of that which has never arrived, but which will never go away. [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 been explored in Derrida’s earlier works “Writing and Difference” and “Of Grammatology” and forms an important role in the formulation of his critical concept of ‘deconstruction’. Deconstructionism challenges the spectral space that exists between 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. This “always-already hidden” contradiction, he referred to as ‘trace’.
Aims and Objectives
The end of history abandons us in an eternal present, in which events ‘retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. (Plant 1992: 171)
History is increasingly understood in terms of design. History always constitutes a relation between a present and its past. The present can only be viewed through the lens of the past, with occaisonal glances into the future. Today’s cultural obsession with revivalism (retromania) represents a denial of the future in favour of the comforting reassurance offered by the ‘ghost’ of the past. This intellectual realignment of history is unsatisfactory and untenable. Hauntology proposes a positive alternative to postmodernity's 'nostalgia mode'.
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]
Where design was once a sign of ideology. Post modern, consumer society’s ceaseless craving for spectacular representation has rendered design to mere style and personal aesthetic expression. Advertising and PR is the culture of the consumer society. The free market economy and the ability to consume has become a more persuasive marker of freedom than the ability to vote. Capitalist culture’s ability to commodify and control renders all forms of criticism harmless. Radical style and commercial style become instantly inseperable. 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)
Hauntology offers the opportunity for the designer to hold up a mirror to spectacular society without necessarily adding to the spectacle. The spectral rumour now resonates, it invades everything. “One hears”, Marx quotes, “millions of spirits speak through the mouths of people” The future can only be for ghosts. “Amnesia of the present, is the complement to hauntology's nostalgia for the future”. [Fisher 2006]. Late capitalism’s shift to a multinational, trans-global business model, has become more and more ellusive. Just as neo–conservative economic policies have sought to strip the state from the experiences of everyday life. These systems of control have becoming as abstract as phantoms.
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)
Post modern society is based not on ‘facts’ but of signs about facts which are encoded and decoded ceaselessly in order to formulate meaning. This meaning must be confirmed by some contingent piece of the real that can be read as a sign. The Revolutionary critique and agencies of the Left have contributed to an over production of meaning. The media impose imperatives of participation on a silent majority that is suffocating beneath the pornography of information. Genuine acts of subversion, intending to challenge the social and economic relations of contemporary capitalist society need to adopt the hauntological tactics of absent presence. Only the empty sign has the power to dissarm the self-perpetuating - society of the spectacle. In the same way that Dada employed the anti-art tactics of the random & absurd. So the sign which fails to signify stands in stark contrast to the ubiquitous images, simulations and reproductions which populate the milieu of hypereality.
The apathetic silence of the mass, which ‘never participates’, is its ‘absolute weapon’ the means by which it continually verges on the destruction of all forms of power. Apathy is a problem only for those already in power or the revolutionaries who would seize it, both of whom are desperate to identify meaning, Despite having been surveyed to death, however the mass always refuse to answer.
(Plant 1992: 156)
Context
Croydon is a borough of South London experiencing a crisis of identity. Historically, it once belonged to Surrey before becoming Greater London’s largest populated borough. It has since, made repeated, failed attempts to achieve city status. Successive borough councils have attempted to peddle their latest imagining of the towns forward momentum. They appear to spend time and effort wondering where they are going because they are less and less sure of where they are. Each new ‘vision for Croydon’ has been unable to divest itself of a reputation forged by the highly questionable city planning decisions of the late 1960’s
Between 1964 and 1972 nearly 4 million square feet of office space as well as a major ring road were dumped in the town’s centre, largely at the expense of Victorian housing stock. It was the scale of this re-development that is responsible for Croydon’s reputation of a bleak, characterless, concrete jungle. In hauntological terms, the ghosts of 20th century town planning, continues to haunt the splintered rationalization of this dystopian non-place.
A space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place… The non-place is the opposite of Utopia; it exists, and it does not contain any original society. (Augé 1995:63, 90)
In 1970, ex Croydon Art School student, Jamie Reid co-founded the Suburban Press, a Situationist based, Proto-Anarcho’, Croydon based, community publishing project. They produced their own posters and magazines. They also printed leaflets for squatting movements, prisoner’s rights, the black movement and feminist women’s groups. Issue #5 of Suburban Press ‘Lo! A Monster is Born’ focused on the Croydon Corporation Act, and some of the characters, such as Harry Hyams who were involved in carving up Croydon. This apposite, 20 page blast of nostalgic counter-culture is dripping in hauntological connotations. Conducting a situationist style, psycho-geographical study of the borough is an obvious avenue of enquiry.
Croydon is currently in the throes of its latest metamorphosis. ‘Croydon Vision 2020’ is a regeneration programme by the London Borough of Croydon 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 hot on the heels of the riots of 2010 where the alienated and disenfranchised of South London briefly awoke from their slumbers and took to the streets of Croydon when they were presented with an opportunity to fully engage in the spectacle of conspicuous consumption.
Regardless of the actual booty, what the rioter really takes is the spectacle literally. The spectacle which offers itself as a whole is taken as such: the spell of the shop window is broken and the objects are revealed for what they really are in relation to their subjective appropriation – useful, beautiful, empty or worthless as the case may be. The real desire which begins to emerge is for the power to choose, to assign value, to control what is offered and that which is possible. (Plant 1992: 31
Besides the targeted spectrum of absent presence, the correlation of Croydon as a totem of capitalist society, communication design and zones of metaphysics is intriguing. Derrida’s hauntology is defined by its ambiguity; that is, it hovers in the spectral space, the threshold of being and presence, life and death, departure and return. Today, hauntology inspires many fields of investigation, from the visual arts to philosophy, politics, fiction and literary criticism. It covers issues of postmodernism, metafiction and retro-futurism, displacement and longing. It can even be seen as a way of describing the fluidity of identity among individuals, marking the dynamic and inevitable shades of influence that link one person’s experience to another’s, both in the present and over time.
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 ‘retrofuturism’. 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.
Audience
The philosophical concepts devised by Derrida have had significant influence in the practice of graphic design. Différance was the term he coined to describe the way language depends on the play of difference between one word and another, whilest always deferring its true meaning. He also popularised the graphic device of ‘sous rature’ (under erasure) which had been devised by Martin Heidegger in his work ‘The Question of Being’ – where text is crossed out in such a way as to signify that the word is inadequate yet necessary. Sous rature has been described as the typographic expression of deconstructionism. Derrida’s influence is most closely felt in the output of the design department of Cranbrook Academy of Art during the 1980’s. It was here that Katherine McCoy and her husband Michael were responsible for the formulation of a design course based on poststructuralist litreary theory. Influential designers who prospered under this tutorlidge include; Jeffery Keedy, P. Scott Makela, Andrew Blauvelt, David Frej, Allen Hori and Edward Fella.
Hauntology offers the opportunity to re-open a dialogue on the philosophical significance of post-structuralist concepts such as ‘logocentrism’ and ‘différance’ on the discourse of visual communication. For the past 25 years, graphic designers have generally, been happy to difine their output as postmodern. This wholehearted embrace of so called ‘low’ popular culture, is a rather desperate attempt to remain at the shallow end of the popular arts. At its most basic level, hauntology has associations with faux-vintage photography, a genre of atmospheric, electronic music, and movies such as ‘Inception’, ‘The Shining’ and the TV series ‘Life on Mars’.
Any examination of the recent, social and economic evolution of Croydon would have obvious local interest. Although the condition of Croydon is singularly unique, its story does have resonance in other suburban zones. Slough for instance, has a similarly unglamorous reputation. An examination of the past, present and future of the concept of ‘home’ has an enduring anthropological appeal.
Action Plan
In a first stage of devising an output device, I have commenced an audit of the high-rise (+10 stories) buildings in central Croydon. As well as architectural photography, the information I have managed to source includes the building name and address, building height, number of floors, floor space, architects name, developers name, completion date, and primary use - commercial / residential / retail. I have included information of buildings either under construction or awaiting the commencement of works. In these instances I have used the architects CAD representations. To date, the number of high-rise buildings included in the survey totals 56.
Where I have been unable to capture data, I may need to explore alternative avenues of enquiry, this could include accessing council planning records or information held by the Land Registry. To these ends, I am in the process of developing a contact within the council planning office. I will typologies the resultant data, organizing the buildings’’ by size, age, use and provenance. Once these examples have been typologized it should be possible to analyze and critique their hauntological and cultural significance.
My research will aim to include data on buildings that were integral to the original Croydon Corporation Act but have since been demolished or redeveloped. The ghosts of buildings and the failed futures that they promised, has potential significance. The idea of buildings existing beyond their physical limits could be linked to postmodernisms appetite for a ceaseless diet of pastiche and revivalism. This mode of continual documentation and self-refence signifies the ‘loss of loss itself’, nothing truly dies anymore.
The concept of the Croydon Ring Road, that formed the cornerstone of the original plan for the town, is intriguing. The upheaval caused by the construction of fly-overs, underpasses and the imposition of a dual carriageway through the centre of the town, caused such uproar that it was eventually abandoned before completion. The concept of roads that quite literally go nowhere could be explored through the concept of ‘trace’. Documenting the prosaic architectural landscape of the borough is integral to defining the always already absence of a presence that defines the hauntological qualities of Croydon.
During the course of my local research I have been documenting the numerous council media spun pronouncements along with the marketing material for the abundant vacant office spaces. Re-presenting the commercial bricolage of the ‘Foxtons’ letting agent, or adopting the vacuous jargon of the thrusting young Turks in the planning office could provide an interesting juxtaposition when combined with the dreary imagery of the run-down town centre. These PR documents typically contain over enthusiastic use of phrases such as: “ strategic framework” “social infrastructure” “growth potential” “vertically integrated” “return on equity” “premium outlet” “exciting retail destination” “bridging the void” “ sustainable community strategy” “integrated transit hub”. Exercises, similar to those carried out during the word and image workshop could prove fruitful.
By packaging resultant visual material in a way which approximates the ubiquitous visual language of corporate double-speak is an attempt to détourne the media – to ‘turn it back on itself’ like some form of Ouroboros. Hans Haacke used similar tactics in ‘Mobil Observations’ (1980). By employing the tactics of postmodernism I would hope to expose its vacuous nature and demonstrate its logocentrist qualities.
Décolage involves the cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image. Offers opportunities to explore the practical process of deconstruction and trace. Alternative image making techniques I intend to utilise include photographic manipulation in order to approximate the type of over-saturated ‘1970’s postcard’ landscape imagery. I plan to incorporate relevant period portraiture from a series of ‘Fairburn System Visual Reference’ manuals. I have also managed to locate a ‘1977 Argos Catalogue’ which contains some wonderfully arcane / mundane commodities. By creating a series of images which are evocative of 1970’s Britain, I hope to make a commentary on the disturbance to temporality that hauntology evokes.
I also intend to experiment with the creation of a series of glyphs that represent the utopian / dystopian / hauntological aspects of Croydon. The correlation of a glyph image with its corresponding keyboard position could provide interesting connotations. For example; ‘upper case’ glyphs could be images of high-rise buildings, ‘lower case’ glyphs could represent the Croydon populous, as a commentary on their relevant hierarchies. Glyphs accessed via the ‘command’ or ‘control’ keys may be a series of images of authority and direction. Using the ‘alt’ key may access a series of abstract glyphs. The development of a generative method for displaying a random sequence of images may be a suitable device for achieving a non-sign or floating signifier, where interpretation can only be derived from what is not there.
A floating signifier may mean different things to different people: they may stand for many or
even any signifieds; they may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean.
”… present as that which is absent; it becomes an empty signifier, as the signifier of this
absence” (Laclan, 1996: 44)
If during the course of my fresearch I encounter a practioner, whoes work I find particularly insightful, I may take the opportunity to instigate some form of dialogue in order to enhance my research findings.
Throughout each stage of the research process it will be necessary to conduct continuous visual experimentation in order to test findings and generate ideas for thje output stage. Although I’m keen to adopt an output solution which is a departure from traditional print tecniques, I need to take an even-handed approach in order to identify the appropriate field of graphic design for each line of enquiery.
Output devices may provide enhanced levels of meaning (or non-meaning). The photograph and television monitor (or ghost box) have obvious hauntological significance. Modern technologies manifest in cinematography and telecommunication, enhances the power of ghosts and their ability to haunt us. On the whole, new technologies encourage an unwillingnewss to commit to the present, fostering a ghostly presence / absence or ‘non time’. “I update therefore I am not”.
The man who is his own image in the digitally networked world, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere – hypervisibility (Keen 2012)
The practicalities of projecting images of buildings onto buildings in Croydon could warrant exploration.
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