Gavin Lucas co-organised a session entitled “Practice-led Theory”

Session Abstract

A number of archaeologists have started to question the easy importation of theory into archaeological interpretation and have suggested instead, we try and develop theory and interpretation from the particular nature of archaeological practice and the materials it engages with. In sister disciplines like anthropology and sociology, the ethnographic method [...]]]>

BjMembers of the Ruin Memories team participated in a session at the Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) in Reykjavik, Iceland, 21-25 April 2013

Gavin Lucas co-organised a session entitled “Practice-led Theory”

Session Abstract

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The recent turn to things in archaeology for me is first and foremost a turn to realism in archaeology. With realism I refer to the kind of ontological and epistemological realism that not only takes different parts of the world as things-in-themselves capable of holding their ground even after humans are no longer around to experience them and ‘give them meaning’ so to speak, but admits that the correlationist divide between consciousness and reality is [...]]]> by Marko Marila (University of Helsinki)

The recent turn to things in archaeology for me is first and foremost a turn to realism in archaeology. With realism I refer to the kind of ontological and epistemological realism that not only takes different parts of the world as things-in-themselves capable of holding their ground even after humans are no longer around to experience them and ‘give them meaning’ so to speak, but admits that the correlationist divide between consciousness and reality is not the most originary, but is something that all objects have to deal with. In this sense, the new realism does not imply a fundamental distinction between the material realm and the ideal realm, but holds both as equally real and equally existing.

My aim in this essay is to explicate to some degree what it is that the recent turn to things in archaeology means in terms of ontology, the science of the fundamental nature of things and existence, as well as epistemology, the science of knowing things. I have divided this essay into two parts. In the first part of the essay I will discuss what the so-called object- oriented philosophies and speculative realism have to give to archaeologists interested in things. In the second part of this essay, using speculative realism as my philosophical backdrop, I will propose a certain type of alien phenomenology, as introduced by philosopher Ian Bogost (2012). I will present a case of ruin metaphorism, arguing that shapes and lines have an immediate and tacit effect on our feelings, and, furthermore, that metaphorism is one possible way of conceptualizing the relationships between things.

Part I

When it comes to defining ontology within the framework of new realism in archaeology, we have to replace the old idealist ontologies with a non-anthropocentric notion of reality. Ontology and epistemology should no longer be treated as totally separate realms. There has been a resurrection of metaphysics in current continental philosophy, and one of the defining topics has been the relationship between things, including human thought and the rest of the world. Any Kantian philosophy that is based on the idea that there exists an unknowable reality behind the phenomenal reality has been labelled correlationist and many questions revolve around this topic. Correlationism is a term coined by the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux (2008). It refers to the centuries-old idea that there exists a necessary and unescapable correlation between matter, or things, and mind, the human.

According to any correlationist, the world only makes sense as far as it is in relation to our thought and thinking of it. Extreme forms of correlationism rule out the existence of reality as independent of our consciousness altogether.

Meillassoux holds two traditions of the 20th century philosophy responsible for upholding a correlationist position; analytic philosophy, and phenomenology. Analytic philosophy with its preoccupation with language in particular, and phenomenology with its fascination with consciousness. Recent continental philosophies, however, have not only grown a new interest in ontology, but phenomenology as well, and I will return to these phenomenological topics further below. But first I want to discuss some of the ontological principles of speculative realism, a philosophical movement that has grown to challenge correlationist philosophies.

Ian Bogost’s famous assertion sums up the ethos of the so-called object-oriented ontology nicely. In his book Alien Phenomenology he writes that ‘all things equally exist, yet they do not exist equally’ (Bogost 2012, 11). Object-oriented philosophy sets all things on an even level when it comes to their existence or reality. Social constructions, abstractions, and generalizations like politics, states, contracts and so on, are things just as real as any more material things like concrete bunkers or mountains. There are, however, differences in the manner in which these things exist for other things. Crossing a mountain by foot always involves a certain amount of effort and risk, something that can not be avoided under any circumstances. You could call these factors the hard facts of reality. Hit a brick wall with a car going 60 mph and the consequences are often catastrophic. While just as real, and often very effective, social constrains can not be characterized as hard facts. Their effectiveness is, however, similarly based on the anticipation of the consequences that would result if a certain law for example was broke. While laws may not qualify as hard facts (people break them all the time) prison cell walls surely do. So, all in all, we can agree that things equally exist. The question we are next faced with is the latter part of Bogost’s claim: In what ways do things exist unequally?

One of the central problems that philosophers today are dealing with is, as Levi Bryant writes, the nature of the most originary correlation, or the question about the most fundamental relation. He writes that:

Where for pre-critical, realist philosophers the question was ‘what is the true nature of substance?’, for critical philosophers the question becomes ‘what is the most originary correlation?’ Is it the relation between subject and object? The relation between language and world? The relation between history and world? The relation between noesis [thought] and noema [the object of thought]? The relation between power and discourses and world? Or something else besides?

The current realist metaphysics is therefore not about finding out the one defining correlation but about studying the multiple connections between things. Object-oriented philosophies do not reduce existence to the level of individual particles or atoms consisting of mere inherent or substantial qualities; nor do they reduce being to the level of relations. Contrary to what Descartes may have us believe, there is no distinction between primary and secondary qualities; all qualities are relational, and things never reveal all of their qualities at once. Two of the most prominent object-oriented philosophers Graham Harman and Levi Bryant for example would argue that there is always a part in any object that stays withdrawn from all relations. Objects are never brought into relations that would exhaust them completely. It is Harman’s (2005, 85) view that every relation is itself also a substance, an object. This ‘emergent’ object that comprises of objects, can not be reduced to its component particles, but is an object in its own right. An astronomer, for example, will always remain distant from a star she is studying. According to Harman (2005, 86), its is not even possible to get closer to a star in the sense that we would have a means of measuring how much further into reality we have entered. An important aspect of defining any object, then, is what will result from its becoming into relation with other objects.

In trying to describe the intricate ways in which things are connected, an array of terms has been deployed by philosophers as well as archaeologists. One of the most recent is Ian Hodder’s (2012) dealing with the term entanglement, by which he attempts to convey the stickiness of dependencies between things, as well as their differing affordances. Although he does not refer to any speculative realists or object-oriented philosophers in his book, Hodder has clearly adopted the maxim ‘all things equally exist, yet they do not exist equally’.

All in all, what the return to things in archaeology would primarily entail is the idea that archaeologists are not just studying the relationship between humans and things, or things as they are relevant only to us humans, but the relationships between things as they are of relevance to each other.

Ontology will therefore extend itself from including the study of the nature of reality as it presents itself for humans, to include the realization of reality as a ‘mesh [---] of infinite connections and infinitesimal differences’, like Timothy Morton (2010, 30) writes. A mess that humans are a part of. Put bluntly, there is nothing original or essentially central in the connection between thought (or consciousness) and the rest of the world that would warrant it as more important than any other relation in the world. By the same token, there is nothing essentially central in any relation for that matter, although some things share more relations and are in this sense more central than others.

Part II

Of course one problem will always present itself to anyone trying to figure out what one can really know about a relation that is not a relation between human thought and reality. In essence, how is one to think about something without thinking about it. This is what finally brings us to the epistemological part of my essay.

Again referring to Ian Bogost’s recent book Alien phenomenology (2012), I wish to draw your attention to a certain type of relationship between things, namely the process of trying to understand what it is like to be a thing. Bogost calls this alien phenomenology. The central problem is, on what grounds are we to understand a thing from our human perspective.

Following the ethos of object-oriented ontology, Bogost (2012, 64) claims that we do not have direct access to the inner life of a thing but always understand them through analogy, a form of translation. As Graham Harman writes, all relations between objects are understood metaphorically (2005, 98). Learning to know about the relationship between two things becomes a case of relating ourselves to the relationship between those two things; a triadic relationship of relationships between three or more things. To anyone familiar with Charles Peirce’s triadic semiotics this may ring a bell.

An important aspect in Bogost’s philosophy, when it comes to defining relationships, is the replacement of the term object with unit. According to Bogost (2012, 25) every unit operates on others. Things are not merely what they do, but things do things as well.

Some units are concealed inside others and operate from within. Through this relation the reality of those units can be approached by other units operating on them. Following Graham Harman, Bogost (2012, 66) proposes that a unit, then, can reach the operations of another unit metaphorically, never by entering inside the other unit and somehow fully grasping the inner workings of it.

Of course, for us as human beings, these metaphors remain anthropomorphic. Take for instance our attempts to relate to another human beings experience of pain (as presented by Harman 2005, 103). My experience of headache, although human physiology remains relatively similar between two individuals, is most likely very different from yours. But consider the words used to describe pain. They are always metaphorical; stabbing pain, squeezing pain, cutting pain, burning pain, etc.

Another excellent example of anthropomorphic metaphorism is the way lines relate to certain feelings, or how different shapes convey particular qualities; a form of synesthesia if you will. In their 1924 article in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Poffenberger and Barrows (1924) provide an interesting study of the feeling value of lines. Referring to Kenyon Cox’s 1917 Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical they write:

Straight lines will always express rigidity and stiffness while curves will express some sort of growth or motion The vertical line is a line of stability, of strength and vigor. [---] All these characteristics of lines may be the result of association or they may have some deeper reason, but they are there, in the lines themselves, without regard to what the lines may be used to represent [...].

With a group of 500 people asked to connect lines with feelings, they were able to show that there was considerable agreement as to what shape, or, as they also called them, unit, conveys a particular feeling. The adjective sad for example seems to be identifiable with shapes A, C, and L (see Figure 1), while the word dead seems to connect with curves rather than angles, which in turn are connected to feelings of power and rigidity.

Now, keeping in mind what Cox wrote in his book, consider the ways in which our feelings, relate to a scene of ruination. My example is an old house in Western Finland. What used to be the living quarters until the beginning of the 1920’s has later been used as a storage facility. Wallpapers seldom tear along a straight line (Figure 2), and there is a great amount of debris on what used to be the floor with it’s parallel planks (Figure 3). Furthermore, there are very few straight vertical lines in the scene and many horizontally oriented lines at the bottom of the scene giving rise to feelings of sadness, laziness or death.

Figures 1-4

These scenes of modern ruination, give us a point of view to the operations that are underway in things. An element of the landscape, in this case a line, will provide a tacit way of understanding the landscape more intimately than an extensive description in the form of a list of words, although they, in their written form, are also lines, could ever do. That is also one of the reasons why photographs, drawings, and art in general remains such a powerful medium. While it can be argued that the feelings we connect to particular shapes and lines are anthropocentric and therefore offer us no way of understanding what goes on in the ruins themselves, there is a continuity to be seen between lines perceived and their embodied feeling values. Much of the functions of the human body, like many other organisms, is dependent on the interconnectedness of lines that run across it, like the veins and nerves in our body for example. There are certain shapes that these lines follow, just like a river does when it meanders. Our understanding of the meandering line’s feeling value to water or the sediments that it cuts it’s way across remains metaphorical and translated at best, but there are analogical and functional similarities between the processes in both entities, and that is the common ground that makes communication between things possible.

Acknowledgements

This essay is based on a paper presented at the fourth Ruin Memories workshop in Svanvik, Norway, on September 28, 2012.

References

Bogost, I. 2012. Alien Phenomenology. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Bryant, L. 2009. Meillassoux II: Correlationism and the Problem of Ancestrality. [http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/meillassoux-ii-correlationism- and-the-problem-of-ancestrality/].

Harman, G. 2005. Guerrilla Metaphysics. Open Court, Chicago.

Hodder, I. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden.

Ingold, T. 2007. Lines: A Brief History. Routledge, London.

Meillassoux, Q. 2008. After Finitude. Continuum, London.

Morton, T. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Poffenberger, A. T. and Barrows, B. E. 1924. The Feeling Value of Lines. Journal of Applied Psychology 8, 187–205.

Session Abstract

The decaying debris of the modern era, derelict factories, closed shopping malls, redundant military installations and abandoned mining towns enjoy the growing attention of archaeologists and material culture scholars. This is, nevertheless, still a marginal and often somewhat ambiguous concern; despite their lure ruins of the modern are generally seen as environmental problems preferably eradicated or as [...]]]> Members of the Ruin Memories team held a session at the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) conference in Leicester, UK in January 2013

Session Abstract

The decaying debris of the modern era, derelict factories, closed shopping malls, redundant military installations and abandoned mining towns enjoy the growing attention of archaeologists and material culture scholars. This is, nevertheless, still a marginal and often somewhat ambiguous concern; despite their lure ruins of the modern are generally seen as environmental problems preferably eradicated or as aesthetic disturbances in need of drastic management should they be promoted to the level of heritage. In this symposium we present some fresh results from the recently completed research project Ruin memories: Materiality, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past (www.ruinmemories.org). Important to us is a critical consideration of the normative categorization of modern ruins and how this may have grounded their academic and public marginalization. More crucial, however, is to explore their ruin value and the role things themselves play in expressing ineffable dimensions of the recent past and present.

How are Ruins?

No doubt ruins are the stuff of the archaeological; abandoned, forgotten buildings and objects left to decay. And of course discovered, recovered and gazed at; traces connecting us, now with then, that. This also is conventionally the stuff of the archaeological. The (neo)romantic impulse to stand amongst what was lost to (volitional) memory. To connect up settings and things of another time with here and now; to be where we never were.

Yet how are ruins? How [...]]]> by Timothy Webmoor

How are Ruins?

No doubt ruins are the stuff of the archaeological; abandoned, forgotten buildings and objects left to decay. And of course discovered, recovered and gazed at; traces connecting us, now with then, that. This also is conventionally the stuff of the archaeological. The (neo)romantic impulse to stand amongst what was lost to (volitional) memory. To connect up settings and things of another time with here and now; to be where we never were.

Yet how are ruins? How does stuff going about its own way be a ruin? I suggest it is more than semantics. The moment we walk into ruins temporality, clock time is blunted and thing ‘time’, the smell, stillness, disorder, and visible decay – already there, patiently persisting – catches us off guard like an ocean wave and washes over us. We might speak of tidal time. Sometimes we are swept amongst oceanic relics: from the minutiae of golden lichen on south facing concrete walls to surrounding mining structures and contaminated landscapes. On other occasions it is a passing encounter: perhaps moving through a single, saddle-notched cabin in the woods. The materials themselves largely determine the encounter. It is limn: a transitive threshold encounter when ruins, as such, come into being. How are ruins? Ruins are in this orthogonal ‘moment’: chronometrically it does not connect past with present or future. This comes later through archaeological documentation, research and conservancy. Instead, the ruin-condition links the other way, embracing things, buildings, plants, us, and life-fellows. It is more material conduit than temporal connection.

Proximate Ruins

In the Spring of 2003, several archaeologists from Stanford University entered a nearby building in the Silicon Valley that after 100 years of fairly continuous use had been abandoned by its former tenants and was slated for ‘demolition’ (Figure 1-2). Inside, the two-story, open plan felt particularly hollow with wall partitions, pieces of large mechanical equipment and most ‘softening’ decorations removed (Figures 3-17). It was as you might expect from an abandoned locale, reduced to what was unwanted, broken, insignificant or simply overlooked. The fascination consists in abducting the use-value calculus in operation during the final departures. And as our voices reverberated off the exposed, chipped brick walls we performed our own perambulating mathematical tally of sorts, dividing what remains from what must have been to suggest what once was – now removed. This was especially true in the east wing of the building, where the open 300 square feet offered very little visibly except what was suggestively absent. An automotive smell of metal soaked in oil; ruddy stains of rust mixed with grease clinging to spots where once large instruments had been bolted to the concrete floor; tell-tale indicators of the building’s former relations with mechanical engineers (Figures 9-10). There was more that brought to the senses a loud and busy fabricating lab for engineers testing prototypes: a conspicuously yellow compressed air tank left in the southeast corner (Figure 11), stacked lubricating oil cans, high capacity electrical conduit and panel, decade’s worth of fine metal shavings swept from the feet of machinery into the drain running North-South through the floor (Figures 16-17).

Passing through a single doorway in the northwest led up a ramp and into a narrow space cramped with hastily constructed offices, now hosting crumbling drywall and fallen tiled roofing once suspended from the ceiling. Moving around these offices into the West wing presented a very different material encounter. Inert circuit boards aligned in sheet metal cabinets, anonymous pieces of plastica, water control valves, temporary framing for partitions, finished concrete floors along with floor platforms; all materially presenced a more controlled and intimate atmosphere of electrical engineering experimentation.

Prior to ruin refit – mixed-media video 

Figures 1-17

The archaeological team had several weeks to document the building before a process of ruin refurbishment began. By the Autumn of 2005, the temporary ruin was opened as the current Stanford Archaeology Center. Originally constructed in 1902, the Terman Engineering Laboratory was built to be a teaching lab for electrical and mechanical engineers, equipped with both classrooms and large, open air labs with ample room for equipment manufacture and testing. A search in the university’s Maps and Records Department and University Archives revealed the life cycle of this building – designated 02-500 on the university’s campus grid. Until unspecified ‘alterations’ in 1962, the building was continuously utilized. It operated, we might say, as a structural ready-to-hand, caring for the engineers and research activities throughout the academic year. After 1962, according to the archives, the building’s life began to undergo accelerated modifications:

• 1977 ‘women’s restroom remodeling’
• 1979 ‘internal combustion engine lab’ added
• 1982 ‘computer room remodeling’
• 1986 ‘compressor installation’
• 1988 ‘machine shop remodeling’
• 1989 ‘laser lab partition’
• 1995 ‘south wing seismic strengthening’
• 1996 ‘seismic rehabilitation and renovation’
• 2002 addition of ‘wind tunnel offices’

Just a sample of events in the life cycle of Building 500, these are fairly typical of modifications to academic buildings as use and needs change – and for seismic retrofits of buildings near the San Andrés fault. The extensive documents labeled ‘seismic retrofit and rehabilitation’ from 2003, just prior to the archaeologists’ encounter, indicate something more extensive and unique. After 103 years there was a pause, a deep breath and exhale for the building prior to the frenetic activity of ruin reincarnation. One hundred and 15 documents, each consisting of floor plans and explanatory detail, as referenced on the ‘index of drawings’ (Figure 18), present the academic abandonment, disuse, dereliction, then partial demolition, division, reconstruction and transformation of Building 500 over the subsequent two and a half years (Figures 19-27).

Figures 18-27

A minimalist CAD drawing (Figure 19) and the detailed ‘refurbishment plan’ (Figure 20) present the major morphological modifications: the suturing of the East wall to separate the new center from the remaining engineering offices of the Terman Building; the construction of a second story within the formerly open-air East and West wings. As with more conventional archaeological sites, traces of the building’s former life remain: a new door fitted in the northeast corner (Figure 21); the filled passageways in the east wall (Figure 22) and in the northeast corner of the entrance hall (Figure 23); cuts in the Santa Teresa ‘golden’ sandstone and interior brick reveal profiles (Figure 24) that texture the building sectional drawings (Figure 25-26). Reiterative photos of the aerial images of abandonment (Figures 4-8) no longer afford overviews, but are cramped within the newly built second story (Figure 27).

After the archaeologists, equipment, students, and staff begin to inhabit Building 500 in 2005, the documents at the university’s Maps and Records manifest the transformation of the building’s life. The valency of entries marks new activities, while the tempo of maintaining the refitted building resumes (e.g. ‘DNA lab ventilation modifications’ in 2005, ‘DNA clean work room – ancient DNA Lab’ in 2006). The ‘pause’ of ruination was over.

After ruin refit: The Metamedia Lab (zoom in-out | pan around) – QuickTime VR (not supported on iPad/Tablets)

A Modern Ruin-Condition

Was Building 500 a ruin? It is difficult not to think about archaeological ruins across a linear temporality. Ruins tend to be determined based upon what lingers, what endures, from another, different time. Even more, ruins are typically wished for in remote, hard to access locations – another space. That way there is less ‘spoiling’ of ruins before archaeologists are swept up in the ruin ‘moment’. More than what has been termed ‘ruin porn’, we desire ruin wilderness. Consider, for example, how we are similarly disappointed whether we ‘discover’ a ruin covered with fresh graffiti or hike into a nature preserve only to contend with crowds.

Great recent work in archaeology of the contemporary past has challenged these absolute distinctions, realms reified by clock-time and space-time systematics. The present has become more than just the counter-definition to clarify what isn’t the stuff of the archaeological. To be sure, such space-time systematics and the moniker of ‘old things’ are critical to the archaeological project and its developed methodologies. Yet even if we consider ruins within the register of temporality, if we consider the life-cycle of Building 500 for instance, there is an apparent variance of care with time that suggests cyclicality rather than linearity – Time less an arrow than Mandala or Ouroboros. All the myriad documents in the university’s archives and the great effort involved with demolishing and transforming the building speak of degrees of care, a shifting of the ratios of human and object caring. Caring for objects, buildings, features and landscapes, of keeping machinery and constellations of things in working order requires much effort and diligence – on the part of humans and nonhumans. In this instance, the archival documents highlight the care of the former engineers, maintenance staff, and janitors, as well as the Architectural Resource Group, Devcon General Contractor, Rutherford and Chakene Structural Engineers, Affiliated Engineers, Inc., and current staff and faculty. The archaeologists’ mixed-media begin to offer up a nonhuman story, however; the ruin-moment when quietened materials guide the encounter. So the pause of ruination may be thought of as a temporal period – from 2003 until 2005, for example. It may also be considered as a shift of the ratios of care – from human-centered to the abandonment and ‘dereliction’ of object-centered. When we don’t care, when those humans showcased in building, maintaining, refitting Building 500 depart, relations holding amongst objects, parts, and features shift, infrastructures breakdown, landscapes transform, things take on different modes of being. Materials themselves form their own ‘deviant’ relations: oil soaking metal filings, paint chips leaving the facing brick and resting on the concrete floor, drywall breaking its mold to spread across diverse surfaces, dirt obscuring glass of windows; any of the many object-object alignments routinely channeled by human caring. When archaeologists enter such a setting, it is the materially-driven encounter discussed above. It is how Building 500 is a ruin. Care less than temporality is the measure of ruins.

Thinking of ruins in terms of tidal ‘time’, through material connectivity and composition and less framed by conventional archaeological space-time systematics, suggests several implications. Firstly, ruins are perishable. We might consider how modern ruins may be dissimilar to such obdurate materiality that lasts. Pasts that don’t persist. Just like the transformation of ruins into documents for transport – photographs, maps, finds drawings – ruins undergo perpetual upgrades, refits and remodels. We feng shui the past to suit contemporary aesthetes. Ruins as connective events in the ongoing flux of humans, life-fellows and materials, rather than as retrograde or enduring ‘endings’, means that ruins pop-up, percolate and evanesce everywhere, all the time. Secondly, ruins are proximate. Contrary to our desire for ruin wilderness, ruination is closer than it appears, close to home, even next door to our archaeology departments.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the other project members, Ashish Chadha, Bjørnar Olsen and Chris Witmore. Video clips by Webmoor and Witmore. QuickTime VR provided by Michael Shanks. Floor plans and building sections courtesy of Stanford University’s Maps and Records. Thanks to Suman Chaube at the Maps and Records Department for assisting me in the archives. The argument and all remaining imagery are my own.

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]]> Presentation for 4th Ruin Memories Workshop, September 2012, Svanvik, Norway

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