Non-Time and Hauntology

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Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 07, 2011 10:17 am

.

kelley put this on page 96 (or whatever) of an OBL death thread, but it merits its own. (Thread, that is, not death.)



May 5, 2011

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/140675-/

Non-Time and Hauntology

by Rob Horning

There are lots of plausible and interrelated explanations for why the pop-culture future can no longer occur.

I went to a talk last night at NYU by Mark Fisher about “hauntology,” which refers to a kind of intermediate space-time between places palpably shaped by organic time and nonplaces (shopping malls, etc.—see Marc Augé), which are wrenched out of time and posit an unending nontime, the end of history, an undisruptable retailing present that perpetually recurs. I didn’t really get what hauntology was all about: it seemed to have to do with cultural productions that are aware of the nonplace/nontime crisis—the way neoliberalism has foisted non-space/time on us, along with a subjectivity without depth that must flaunt its requisite flexibility by shuffling the deck of floating signifiers—and are “reflexive” and “critical” and “negative” about this condition. Fisher made this point with music: British pop music now is blithely appropriational of the past without foregrounding that in any particular way; retro has ceased to be a meaningful descriptor. So music made now would not be at all disruptive, he argues, if someone living in 1979 heard it. There would be no retroactive future shock. It doesn’t sound like the future; the future that should be occurring now has been thwarted, lost, effaced. The sense of cultural teleology is gone, vanished, perhaps, in the now pervasive relativism that regards all culture product as potentially valuable.

There are lots of plausible and interrelated explanations for why the pop-culture future can no longer occur, including:

(1) The demise of a hegemonic culture industry (and the rise of digitization and peer-to-peer distribution) brought the end of a shared sense of the cultural moment. We’re not all watching the same TV show at the same time and hearing the same records on the radio. Instead we have access to all culture all at once, on demand—whether it’s, say, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the complete works of Margaret Cavendish, yesterday’s episode of Survivor, or all of them at once. This AV Club article by Steven Hyden about Def Leppard’s Hysteria gets at the idea:

As everything changes rapidly around us, we as music fans in many ways still think we’re living in a Def Leppard world, where winning a Grammy means you’ve arrived, and going to No. 1 on the charts makes you a pop star. In reality, we live in a culture where the terms “mainstream” and “underground” have become virtually meaningless, as practically every song by every band ever is equally accessible, frequently at no cost, to anyone with an Internet connection and the interest to seek it out ... It’s clear that music rarely unites us under the banner of mass-accepted artists anymore; even in a concert audience, we’re all just a bunch of individuals, with little connecting us to one another beyond a shared interest in the artist onstage—one artist among hundreds on our abundantly stocked iPods. Sounds lonely, doesn’t it? Sometimes I yearn for the old world, the one I grew up in, a place where dinosaurs like Hysteria stomped around pop culture for months, if not years, leaving sizable impressions in the hearts of a generation, whether they liked it or not.

The availability of everything means that particular works of pop music lose “symbolic efficiency” to use (and possibly misuse) a term from Žižek. Nothing successfully connotes the zeitgeist; everything invokes a desire to one-up with a better reference or a new meme or detournement of the contemporary. We are too knowing and skeptical to accept anything as unproblematically representative of the now.

(2) Neoliberalism/post-fordism/late capitalism has projected itself as the end of history, normalized nontime, and generalized the reception of conditions of ontological insecurity as freedom. We lack a subjectivity that can experience or recognize historicity.

Fisher links the idea of a “missing future” with the disappearance of negativity and criticality in contemporary pop culture, which (as I interpret it) has no space for anything oppositional or which transforms oppositional gestures into postures that circulate only as signifiers of personal identity. It reminds me of Douglas Haddow’s “Hipsters are the dead-end of Western culture” argument:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.


Hipsters don’t experience non-time negatively, as a loss, as melancholic, as indicative of deep alienation. Instead they seem to be thoroughly subjectivized by neoliberalism to the extent that they regard it as opportunity to show off how creative they can be in their cycle of appropriations. That last thing they want is to be reminded of how their personality is conditioned by the times they live in; in nontime, one can feel transcendent and immortal, one can permanently defer adulthood.

Hauntological music (like Burial) tries to at least evoke the feeling of loss, tries to register the missing future as a kind of catastrophe, Fisher argues, though it can’t actually instantiate this missing future. It tries to at least restore meaning to the concept of retro, foregrounding the appropriations of the past by sounding like a scratchy record, and so on. (I don’t know; all electronic music literally sounds the same to me.) I wasn’t persuaded that a work’s reflexivity about how symptomatic it is itself of the impossibility of escaping non-time made it viable as a mode of resistance. I’m probably too skeptical of reflexivity to ever regard it as resistance; I see reflexivity as the quintessential mode of neoliberalist subjectivity—a calculating self-consciousness that can’t be escaped, that forces us to be considering our identity as an alienated thing to be developed and invested entrepreneurially. (The following is highly provisional and may ultimately prove embarrassing): Whatever is reflexive needs to become collective. The problem of non-spacetime is that of an isolated individual subject who admits of no possibility for intersubjectivity, which is perhaps the primary way we experience history, through how our relations with others subjectivize us in particular, contingent ways. Reflexivity about our loss of that intersubjectivity seems to still cling to the individuation, to see and secretly cherish one’s isolated uniqueness and incontingency in the recognition of it as a loss.

In my view, social media have become the extension of non-spacetime, where nothing, no identity or incident, is necessarily contingent or organic, and one is doomed to the “freedom” of endless ontological insecurity, the forever search for a grounding authenticity that can only generate more memes. Social media are where we go to protect our experience of nontime, which is threatened by the Real, by historicity, by death. Facebook is the ultimate nonplace. Being on it is to enter non-time, to maintain a continual pseudo-presence.

The non-spacetime crisis, I think, is a crisis of presence. When we exist in non-spacetime, presence becomes impossible—or it is known by its absence, in a kind of negative theology. To put that less cryptically (or maybe not): technology has basically dissolved the unity of the subject in a particular place in time. Smart phones, etc., let us be in many places at once, conducting any number of conversations and self-presentations asynchronously. This casts an air of provisionality over everything we do; our lack of total commitment to a that place at that moment is always implied, always understood. No one is even bothered anymore when someone they are talking to looks at their phone. There is no ethical requirement to be fully present, and without that, there is no genuine (I know, how can you even ever define “genuine”) intersubjectivity. The refusal to be fully present is a restatement of the refusal to permit our identity to be socially contingent or to be palpably collective. The smart phone reserves our right to check out of any collective identity formation at any time. This is the essence of contemporary “convenience,” which I have long interpreted as being able to avoid interaction with other humans and being forced to empathize with them and recognize their existence as other. (We can only tolerate other people when we regard them as extra in our movie.)

Fisher referred to Jameson’s distinction between psychological nostalgia and formal nostalgia, between the ability to evoke a real lost past and being trapped in pastiche. What I took from this is that the postmodern/neoliberal subject cannot access psychological nostalgia, but can only simulate it through pastiche, as this sort of subject has only existed in nontime as opposed to historical time. My sense is that this subject doesn’t yearn for historical time at all but worries about historical time erupting into nontime via some sort of terrible Event. When something that threatens to be an Event happens, subjects rush to assimilate it to nontime by mediatizing it, “sharing” it in social media, or meme-ifying it. I’m not sure if this holds, but it may be possible to interpret the ad hoc celebrations of Osama bin Laden’s execution this way—an effort to experience a historical moment in a way that dehistoricizes it—puts the partyers back at the center of their personal hermetic history, claims the Event as just an event in their individual story.

Because we have no access anymore to psychological nosalgia, we end up nostalgic for the capability for nostalgia, we feel homesickness for a home we never had. These leads to a compensatory attraction to childhood kitsch, to moribund objects (joining a typewriter club is an extreme manifestation of this), to anachronism, atavism, whatever seems genuinely and indelibly marked by a past. This perpetuates the cycle that denies the creation of a distinctive future, guarantees that the future is a more attenuated and annotated reconfiguration of detritus from the past.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Sat May 07, 2011 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 8bitagent » Sat May 07, 2011 10:40 am

I just re-read this, I'm absolutely floored. I want to pair that with this:
"Wake Up Geek Culture, Time To Die" by Patton Oswalt(hillarious in its post millennial/pre apocalyptic agit prop misanthropy)
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/f ... ture/all/1

And I think is is a very appropriate commercial to illustrate just how far we have sunk as a society. Oh, how I long to go back to another time far far far away from here...

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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby brainpanhandler » Sat May 07, 2011 1:07 pm

in nontime, one can feel transcendent and immortal, one can permanently defer adulthood.


Social media are where we go to protect our experience of nontime, which is threatened by the Real, by historicity, by death.


The world would be a different place if those of us living so well and securely that our own mortality is a distant abstraction became fully cognizant that we will die and maybe tomorrow.

Some things are certain and real and authentic in all times and places. Even Shakespeare was a plagarist. He was just a genius at it.

I'll have to think about this a bit more. I've read the piece three times now and I'm still not sure I'm getting it, but I have the suspicion there is something interesting to get, or more interesting than what I am getting so far. I'm struggling a little bit with the terminology.
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 8bitagent » Sat May 07, 2011 6:05 pm

brainpanhandler wrote:
in nontime, one can feel transcendent and immortal, one can permanently defer adulthood.


Social media are where we go to protect our experience of nontime, which is threatened by the Real, by historicity, by death.


The world would be a different place if those of us living so well and securely that our own mortality is a distant abstraction became fully cognizant that we will die and maybe tomorrow.

Some things are certain and real and authentic in all times and places. Even Shakespeare was a plagarist. He was just a genius at it.

I'll have to think about this a bit more. I've read the piece three times now and I'm still not sure I'm getting it, but I have the suspicion there is something interesting to get, or more interesting than what I am getting so far. I'm struggling a little bit with the terminology.



I'm with you, I still haven't been able to fully understand all the points, but I really now want to see this guy's other articles and books by Fisher.
My ultra lamen read of it: that songs like "this must be the place" and "nothing but flowers" by Talking Heads(as well as their film True Stories) along with Arcade Fire's themes and songs about suburbs
serve as a perfect soundtrack in theme to the idea he is getting at. A perfect snapshop of the now that never was, and that in essence culture and innovation stopped awhile back, so it's really a non culture. Non time, stuck in a weird time warp that keeps trying to regurgitate ideas in a mashup hashtag dubstep autotune remix.

I'm very curious to hear other people's read of it, and feel this article is required RI material:)
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby gnosticheresy_2 » Sat May 07, 2011 7:57 pm

reposting my reply to that post as the links are relevant

gnosticheresy_2 wrote:
kelley wrote:sort of a long piece but very descriptive in an abstract ontological way:

<lots of cool Mark Fisher stuff>


His book, Capitalist Realism is excellent and highly recommended. He also blogs at http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

And lol, never in a month of sundays did I think I'd see "hauntology" mentioned on RI :bigsmile


Interestingly, this concept of hauntology originally arose as part of discussions surrounding the legacy of rave culture in the UK, through blogs like Simon Reynold's blissblog, although it's obviously applicable to far wider issues.
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby barracuda » Sat May 07, 2011 9:00 pm

Wasn't most of this phenomena discussed in terms of architechture in the mid 1970's?

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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 8bitagent » Sat May 07, 2011 9:17 pm

barracuda wrote:Wasn't most of this phenomena discussed in terms of architechture in the mid 1970's?

Image


The ultimate beloved indie hipster culture band(of which Im a huge fan of)

"Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all
Meant nothin' at all
It meant nothin

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling and into the night"

- "The Suburbs" Arcade Fire



I think Arcade Fire's "The Suburb" album perfectly captures this stand still foggy desert nowhere land the generation is stuck in
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 07, 2011 9:36 pm

barracuda wrote:Wasn't most of this phenomena discussed in terms of architechture in the mid 1970's?

Image


Sorry fish, I remember this Philip Johnson-designed AT&T building when it went up... in the mid-1980s.

Image
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 82_28 » Sat May 07, 2011 10:24 pm

I saw it on the O(BS) thread and I'm seeing it here. Count me in on having my mind officially blown. This is an order of magnitude greater of speculating about our nature than the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Fucking, chillingly, interesting. Thanks, kelley!
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 82_28 » Sat May 07, 2011 10:27 pm

8bitagent wrote:I just re-read this, I'm absolutely floored. I want to pair that with this:
"Wake Up Geek Culture, Time To Die" by Patton Oswalt(hillarious in its post millennial/pre apocalyptic agit prop misanthropy)
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/f ... ture/all/1

And I think is is a very appropriate commercial to illustrate just how far we have sunk as a society. Oh, how I long to go back to another time far far far away from here...



What's fucked is that that phone the SK 4G is the only phone myself and Pickle Pizza will use. It has the only suitable keyboard on any smartphone. Him and I have had every iteration of this phone for almost 10 years.

No, we're not gay.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 8bitagent » Sun May 08, 2011 12:42 am

I reluctantly got a smart touch phone, though I try not to be a slave to it as much as possible. I can just see where we're headed as a society. Films like Wim Wenders "Until the End of the World" and Total Recall only got it part right.

Also damn, after reading all these great new mind expanding articles/blogs people been posting here lately, I definitely need to get my butt in gear with a radio show
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby barracuda » Sun May 08, 2011 2:41 am

JackRiddler wrote:Sorry fish, I remember this Philip Johnson-designed AT&T building when it went up... in the mid-1980s.


Sure you do. But as you might imagine, and likely already know, the theoretical undepinnings which lead to the placement of a neo-Georgian pediment atop a skyscaper were developed and discussed long before the building was constructed. Johnson's building is already fully appropriative, and the philosophy which permitted it allows for the history of art and architecture to be used as a grab-bag of styles and iconography in a very similar, "everything at once", end-of-history vein which is discussed in the OP, the denial of the distinctive future.
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby 8bitagent » Sun May 08, 2011 3:28 am

barracuda wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:Sorry fish, I remember this Philip Johnson-designed AT&T building when it went up... in the mid-1980s.


Sure you do. But as you might imagine, and likely already know, the theoretical undepinnings which lead to the placement of a neo-Georgian pediment atop a skyscaper were developed and discussed long before the building was constructed. Johnson's building is already fully appropriative, and the philosophy which permitted it allows for the history of art and architecture to be used as a grab-bag of styles and iconography in a very similar, "everything at once", end-of-history vein which is discussed in the OP, the denial of the distinctive future.



As a love of film, can you recommend some movies you feel perfectly embody the feeling or themes evoked in the above post and other posts?
Movies that come to mind immediately are Koyaanisqatsi, True Stories, Galaxies Are Colliding, Wim Wenders's Don't Come Knocking and Land of Plenty, The Caveman's Valentine, My Own Private Idaho,
Drugstore Cowboys, and some of the films by David Lynch(like Straight Story or Blue Velvet)
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby gnosticheresy_2 » Sun May 08, 2011 3:57 am

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006/01/mi ... html#links

Simon Reynolds wrote:WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2006

mike powell, evocative and thought-provocative, on ghostbox and ariel pink.

his comments re. half-erased or never-quite-attained songform viz the focus group are interesting--doesn't the word "dub" come from duppy, meaning "ghost"?

also cool was mike's bringing in of the Caretaker's brand-new batch of free downloads. i'd forgotten about the Caretaker stuff completely but that apparational, ectoplasmic sound totally aligns with ghostbox. in fact, back in a may 2004 feeling/really feeling/not feeling i described We'll All Go Riding on A Rainbow thusly:

"makes me think of seances for some reason -- eerie, sort of position normal from beyond the grave, no solid form whatsoever, just tenebrous emanations"

and of course that first position normal record was a big thing for julian house.

what all this suggests is the coalescence (real slow like, and it could certainly do with a few extra recruits; most likely they're already out there and i don't know 'em) of a whole new genre or network of shared sensibility, comparable perhaps to "isolationism".

"hauntology" is my early bid for a name, for the Derrida spectrality resonance, but there must be a snappier--or conversely, more phantasmal and amorphously flavorful one--so get your thinking caps on people!
POSTED BY SIMON REYNOLDS AT 3:56 PM


Derrida's concept in an explicitly pop cultural context.
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Re: Non-Time and Hauntology

Postby compared2what? » Sun May 08, 2011 5:59 am

brainpanhandler wrote:
in nontime, one can feel transcendent and immortal, one can permanently defer adulthood.


Social media are where we go to protect our experience of nontime, which is threatened by the Real, by historicity, by death.


The world would be a different place if those of us living so well and securely that our own mortality is a distant abstraction became fully cognizant that we will die and maybe tomorrow.


A culture that could ask itself what non-time it was when all sense of teleology had vanished from it wouldn't be capable of fully recognizing its own mortality if it were already dead, I feel that it's axiomatically safe to say. However, by the same token, if all sense of teleology had really vanished from it, it wouldn't be asking. Cognition and mortality would be two parallel rather than two convergent lines if the presence of one didn't equate to the absence of the other.***

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*** I mean "as I see it." But that's axiomatic, right?
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