No alarms and no surprises; the rise of the domestic non-place. Tim Gregory. PhD 2009 UNSW

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1 4 No alarms and no surprises; the rise of the domestic non-place. Tim Gregory PhD 2009 UNSW

2 Originality Statement I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged. Copyright Statement I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.' Authenticity Statement I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format. Signed Date.

3 2 Abstract The term non-place is defined by Marc Augé as a space that cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity. The key defining factor for Augé is that non-places are transitory; they are spaces we flow through. As such any effect they have on us is temporary. This thesis charts the spread of the non-place from spaces of transit to spaces of habitation and the consequences which ensue. The appearance of the non-place in high schools is examined, looking specifically at the spate of random mass shootings that have occurred in America since The shootings are an act of extreme performance, facilitated by the architectonics of the non-place. In the contemporary office we see how the principles of late capitalism have incorporated the principles of the non-place to isolate and control the precariat employee. The mall presents the first example of how the non-place has become both habitable and desirable. The pure singularity of the mall s consumer community not only makes us feel comfortable but it also enables the oxymoronic position of sincerely performing. The home, the so-called foundation of identity, memory and place, is revealed as a non-place in which we are required to be both the producer and consumer of performed identity. The Internet is not a non-place in itself but it is used as a means of expressing non-place sexuality. The Internet is vital to our understanding of the quotidian practicalities of the non-place individual. The non-place is also examined through the poetics of practice. Produced with this thesis is a series of works which wallow in, critique and challenge the non-place. If the non-place s ambition is universality then the temporary effects becomes permanent. Jean-luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben and George Bataille provide the

4 3 philosophic platform from which these effects can be properly examined. Through an extensive engagement with constructs of community, identity and performance the true ramifications of the domestication of the non-place is revealed.

5 5 Acknowledgments The road, or swap, towards a PhD is arduous. There are many encounters along the way which influence one s writing. Some of these encounters last the whole journey, others are fleeting; all have an effect. There have been hundreds of people who have influenced me during the writing of this thesis, all of who cannot be acknowledged. I take the time now to thank a few of those who deserve special attention for the intellectual, creative and supportive role they played. Firstly I want to thank my lack of belief in God. Without my atheism I would not have sought the answers to impossible questions. I want to thank the non-existent atheist congregation, who in my darkest moments consoled me by reminding me that there is no ultimate meaning or goal. Next I wish to acknowledge my family; their love and support has always been unquestioning. I especially wish to thank my sister, Dr. Heidi Gregory, for her love and financial support, without which I could not have considered undertaking a PhD. She is the only person who has been able to live with me for an extended time. We have lived together for the entire duration of my thesis. She has had to put up with more than anyone and I hope that I will have the opportunity to repay her generosity. I have always relied on my mum, Prue Gregory, for rational advice and problem solving. Her practical support in editing and critiquing my writing was invaluable. My dad, Terry Gregory, has an unjustified belief in everything I do. His persistent desire to help me achieve my goal has seen me through difficulties. I would also like to thank my family for my normal upbringing which spawned my interest in suburbia.

6 6 To my friends who have had to put up with my eccentricities, introversion and general lack of morality. Pete Goldsbsy Smith, without whom I would not have maintained any semblance of sanity. Our musical improvisation sessions reinvigorated my belief in creativity at a time when I thought I had lost it forever. Dr. Uros Cvoro, who has never berated me for my persistent ugly Australianising of his name, gave me invaluable first hand tips on how to get through a PhD. His romantic cynicism, formidable intellect and generosity make him not only a truly great friend but also an academic colossus and now a fantastic dad. To my best mate Bryan O Meally, whose openness, intelligence and creativity first brought us together (after I started cross-dressing to university) and continues to inspire, annoy and traumatise me. He has proven time and time again that alcohol and philosophy do mix. I have often sought his counsel because I am guaranteed an honest answer, something that is almost impossible to find in the art world. He has steered me away from some of my truly abominable ideas. I fell in love with Elena Dixon during the final year of my thesis. She gave physicality to that which I had only theoretically proposed. Elle showed me that all theory has its basis in interpersonal interaction. Our intense relationship inspired me to move towards, and gamble with, us. The rewards have been immense. Elle is also the only artist I have been able to collaborate with. She has reignited my excitement in art. The University of New South Wales and the College of Fine Arts has provided me with an intellectual home for the last eight years, as both a student and a teacher.

7 7 The razor sharp mind and ceaseless dedication of my co-supervisor, Dr. Anna Munster, restores my hope in teachers. The CCAP (Center for Contemporary Arts and Politics) has finally provided me with an institution I am happy to be a member of. Its willingness to take a multidisciplinary approach to art gives me hope that art is not doomed to exist in its own rectum. Finally to my supervisor Dr. David McNeil; Socrates writes of the student s erotic fixation on the teacher. The teacher is then supposed to craftily redirect this passion towards learning. I m sure Dave will be pleased to hear that this was not the case with our relationship. Dave s age, sex, time in prison and tanning as a miner decades ago (as well as his love of AFL) prevents me from having any erotic feelings towards him. However this feeling is the only level to which my affection does not rise. I hold Dave in the utmost respect. Dave is not only my mentor, but also my saviour. It was Dave s always open door and persistent encouragement that got me through my undergraduate degree. I had finished my bachelor of Fine Arts feeling totally lost. Dave s understanding and insight led me out of the quagmire. I was fortunate enough for him to be my co-supervisor in my honors year of Fine Arts. During this year I learnt from him the inescapable truth that art, theory and life are all intricately linked. I found intense happiness in the theory and philosophy he directed me towards. My art was at last freed from an aesthetic nightmare of artistic truth. This all occurred before Dave became my PhD supervisor. My joy in combining my practical and theoretical life, which this hybrid PhD allowed, is predicated on the excitement Dave himself expressed towards my work. Extraordinarily generous with his time, he has been the solid rock of my post-

8 8 graduate life. He has listened to every bitch and moan, every wild tangent and arrogant posturing I have thrown at him. His genius mind and life experience has always pointed me towards greener pastures and revealed the path without the troll. It is not only Dave s professional life that deserves attention. Dave s approach to life is to be venerated and celebrated (and if possible imitated). His positivism is never clouded by ignorance nor does it preclude an infective dark sense of humour. He is also the only person I know who shares my passion for free jazz and can dissect the genius of Thelonious Monk. I have learned intellectually, emotionally and socially from him. It is an extreme privilege to know him and count him amongst my dear friends. Self effacing as always, I am sure he will be dismissive by such deserving praise; however I wish it to be known that if I have achieved anything in this thesis it is merely the result of the influence of a great man. Long may he live and smoke.

9 9 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 12 An evolved non-place 16 Identity 21 Chapter One- School s in 30 The Elephant in the non-place 32 Peculiarities of the elephant 32 The trunk (the corridor) 33 The arse and mouth (entrances and exits) 36 The belly (the large interior; hall, café and gym) 37 The wrinkles (the map of the school) 40 Towards the psychology of a non-place student 41 Sincere performance and control 49 Contemporary psychology 54 Identity vs. individuality 60 Post script: After the school shootings 64 Chapter Two- The Office 77 Space in The Office 78 The floor 79 The ceiling 83 Walls and windows 85 Fire escapes 88 Rooms/ setting office furniture 91 Democracy 95

10 10 Post script: taking the office back; death, unwork and seduction 115 Chapter Three- Finding Nemo at your local mall 135 The shape of Nemo: The car park 137 The food court 142 Meaningless proximity. The disingenuous group 147 Semiotic anxiety 149 Mall lifestyle 150 Mall community 155 Egalitarian exclusionism 156 Performance 158 Transcendence at the mall 163 Chapter Four- The Non-place Home 179 Defining the family 179 Suburbia 186 The space of the non-place home: Front door/entry zones 194 Bedrooms 195 Garage 198 Living rooms 198 Kitchen 200 Bathroom 202 The community of non-place home 203 Preemptive architecture 204 Pure singular community 206 The problem with proximity or the compulsion/repulsion of proximity. Living in the clouds 222

11 11 The compulsion of proximity 225 Chapter Five- Internet in the Non-place 242 Identity and the Internet 243 Internet infrastructure 244 Internet porn 246 Sexuality in the non-place 249 Masturbation 251 Who are the perverts that use the Internet 253 Internet sex chat rooms 254 My participation 255 The set up of the chat room 255 User names 256 The type of chat: role-play 258 The nature of the transaction 261 Disinhibition 268 Physicality 272 Minors 275 The effects of lack of proximity 278 Conclusion 296 The end of comfort, the wholesome lovers 300 Listening 306 Appendix 312 Bibliography 321

12 12 Introduction Bookend (left) It was written in future history books that the end of humanity occurred in correlation with a mathematical formula. The cliché of six degrees of separation at some point was true. It meant that a string connected every living being. It produced a net, a safety net. This connection was simple mathematics. As the species grew, filling the earth and sky, so did the number of degrees of separation. Passed the Modernist 90, through the directional 180 and back to a stupefying 360. This number kept growing at an exponential pace, until mathematics decreed that it had reached infinity. It had reached the point of absolute elasticity. The tensile strength of the net was breeched and all the strings were simultaneously broken. One millisecond before that point a wave of universal consciousness spread across the entire human race. In that last possible moment before collapse, before individualism became the only thing, everyone thought of each other. In a collective moment, community was realized for the first and last time. In that moment everyone realized that community was nothing. And they were happy. Marc Augé, in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, provides a framework through which one can start conceptualising the apparent inane insanity of the everyday contemporary existence. Augé is cognisant of the active effect space has on our construction of self and community. Space is never a passive backdrop. Space is political in the way it allows and disallows access. i Space is social in the way it organises interpersonal interaction. Space is psychological in the role it plays as other to the self. Space is metaphysical because it is the first assumption of all philosophic enquiry; without space there is nothing (not even the space to conceive

13 introduction 13 of nothing). Space is both the producer and consumer of being. Augé s theoretically defined non-place is the most consequential space humankind faces today. Its comfortable ubiquity has seeped into every part of our lives. We made the non-place; its consequences are our own. It is time for us to behold our creation. As a contemporary anthropologist Augé is interested in how societies are adapting to an increasingly global world. Augé s categorisation of the non-place is an attempt to describe one of these adaptations. He adheres to the anthropological model that societies are made up of local and global relationships, suggesting that place comes from a combination of the global networks with specialized words of the liturgy, of ancient ritual ii and the local networks comprised of the song and chatter of the workshop. iii A global network is usually a rare event (like marriages, religious festivals and voting) that brings together disparate elements of a society. Often these events are openly hospitable and encourage members of different societies to attend as privileged observers. They function not only to unite the society but also to create bonds with other cultures; the repetition and tradition of such events make them a stable and predictable forum through which the other can be accepted without threat. Global networks encourage dissemination of cultural heritage, while forming links with other networks in a conducive environment. iv Local networks are not as rigid, which makes them more adaptable and better suited to everyday interaction and production. However a foreigner has little opportunity to access these networks because of their parochialism. The local networks are where morality is shaped through the friction and improvisation that occurs between people. Over time the outcomes of local networks are made symbolic and ritualised into a global event. v Augé suggests that these local and global networks that create place have dissolved in non-place.

14 introduction 14 Augé defines non-place by opposing it to place; if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space that cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity is a non-place. vi In doing so he sets up the recurring problematic opposition that lends itself to suggestions that a perfect nostalgic place existed in the past. Augé specifically contrasts the realities of transit with those of residence or dwelling. vii Augé uses this categorisation to define a large variety of spaces as non-places. Airports, motorways, theme parks, hotels (especially motels), department stores, shopping centers, tourist spaces and the more abstract and/or virtual spaces of communication and media technologies are all seen to be archetypal non-places. viii The factor that unites these spaces is that they are all spaces of transit and mobility. The idea that the spaces of transit, travel and commerce are somehow separated from place has a distinct history and has been defined previously as placeless, ix abstract x and ageographical. xi To understand the non-place we must understand how the non-place is born; Supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which do not integrate the earlier places. xii In essence a space that deliberately cuts its global ties, concretes over rituals and ceremonies is a quintessential non-place. It is not ideology that drives this approach; it is purely economics. All that is left in a non-place is the chatter of workshops, xiii which becomes credit cards [that] communicate wordlessly. xiv The global dialogue disappears and is replaced by a universal individualism; inaccessible and nonsensical. The local networks are shrunk to the level of the individual. Augé recognises this aspect of the non-place as a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral xv and that the demolition of networks often puts the individual in contact only with another image of himself. xvi Not surprisingly this process

15 introduction 15 subjects the individual consciousness to entirely new experiences and ordeals of solitude, directly linked with the appearance and proliferation of non-places. xvii This same principle sees the individual subjected to a gentle form of possession he tastes for a while- like anyone who is possessed- the passive joys of identity loss, and the more active pleasure of role-playing. xviii This gentle form of possession is indicative of the suggestive power space has. For Augé it is the very fact that the non-place is uninhabitable that gives it its defining characteristics. This position ignores the workers within the malls; the security guards, cleaners and retail staff, who have a very different experience of the mall from consumers (likewise the toll collector on a freeway and the receptionist at a motel). xix However I intend to show that this oversight is now obsolete, as the non-place is clearly observable in spaces of residence. It is not so much that the security guards and retail staff bring place into the non-place but rather that they take the non-place home with them. Augé also has a tendency to generalize the non-place, rendering over some of its scratches that mark it as Galatea rather than Pygmalion. Augé himself acknowledges the theoretical nature of the non-place he describes, conceding that the non-place never exists in pure form; places reconstitutes themselves in it. xx However it is not always the deviant tactics of place that stubbornly reappear. More often than not the utopia of the non-place is simply contradicted by the detritus of its necessarily perpetual incompletion.

16 introduction 16 An evolved non-place Many theorists and artists are attracted to the notion of non-place as a concept fitting the type of alienation stereotyped in the pre-millennial anxiety and post-millennial apathetic existence. Few have evolved the idea of the non-place in a considered and significant manner. Margaret Morse in Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture has presented a different perspective on non-place. Using the term nonspace, which she sees as a development from non-place xxi Morse draws important parallels between the nonspace of the mall, freeway and television. xxii The inclusion of the television is a crucial step towards recognising the domestic non-place. However by examining architecture, consumerism and performance I intend to offer a more complete and broad categorisation of domestic non-place. Morse establishes another important development to Augé s theory. Augé suggests that the non-place produces a perpetual present, however Morse uses the term distraction xxiii to describe a state that is a perpetual present but at the same time necessarily disengaged from it. She uses this distinction to separate non-place from nonspace. This distracted state allows the erasure of identity to occur in a non-place, and provides the framework for examining the performance that replaces identity. Rem Koolhaas provides another important, visceral perspective on non-place. Koolhaas uses the term Junkspace, to describe the imperialistic, bacterial blurriness that categorizes the architecture of malls and airports; Junkspace is a fuzzy empire of blur, it fuses high and low, public and private, straight and bent, bloated and starved to offer a seamless patchwork of the permanently disjointed. xxiv Koolhaas polemic condemnation of this type of architecture is closely aligned to Augé. However Koolhaas gives a much more viscous definition, no doubt because of his background in architecture. Augé, the anthropologist, posits non-place as a utopia (the Greek root of

17 introduction 17 no-place being utopia). Augé paints a completed picture of the non-place, constructing his discussion largely in theoretical terms. Koolhaas reveals that the physical manifestation of the non-place is the Junkspace. Like all utopias non-place is never achieved and the attempt is a space which is best described by the ubiquitous construction sign utopia coming soon. Junkspace is the pending promise of nonplace. The air-conditioning ducts, the fire escapes, the car parks and the perpetual extensions are where the Junkspace is most evident. Hence I will use the term Junkspace when referring specifically to the physicality of the space. Koolhaas also emphasizes that Junkspace is spreading; soon we will have conquered space. The idea of a morphing spreading misé en scene is vital as it underlines the belligerent nature of space, showing how its very construction relies on its global ambitions. I believe that the main area the Junkspace is spreading into is static spaces, spaces of habitation. Hans Ibelings is an architectural theorist who developed the non-place away from anthropology in Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalisation. xxv [Ibelings] brilliantly identified the rise of a Supermodernist architecture Rejecting Postmodernism s emphasis on symbolism-mere nostalgia for place in a world increasingly lacking it- [supermodernists] instead deployed sensation through a play of surface and materials to sway the viewer. Supermodernism was, Ibelings insisted, expressionless and neutral. xxvi Ibelings is not pessimistic about the non-place and sees it as a necessary movement in architectural form. He does not share Augé concern that Supermodernity effaces identity. Ibelings points to the success of architects such as OMA and Frank Gehry, and Toyo Ito who have created the icons of Supermoderism, a phase which would be oxymoronic to Augé s conception of nonplace. It is interested that Ibelings uses the example of OMA, which is Koolhaas

18 introduction 18 architectural firm, suggesting that Ibelings is trying to separate Supermodernism from Junkspace and non-place. Kazys Varnelis proudly proclaims the death of non-place but at the same time is one of the few who uses the term domestication in relation to the non-place; Through both phone calls and text messaging, it is possible to feel the presence of others nearly constantly, domesticating non-places. xxvii For her the process of domesticating nonplaces destroys them. The domestication Vernelis discusses is the influence that the home/place, though network technologies, has had on traditional non-places (the freeway, airport and supermarket). Vernelis lacks a critique of place, simply assuming it still exists. Neither is there an acknowledgment that it is a two way street, with most of the traffic running from the non-place into spaces of habitation and not vice versa. This is because the pathways along which this traffic travels is also a non-place (physically along freeways and virtually along the invisible networks that Augé defines as part of the non-place.) I will be using the parameters of the non-place to examine the contemporary family (based on Australian, American and British research). I believe that the non-place has changed since Augé defined it in 1995 and as such I will be incorporating into my thesis the developments of Morse and Koolhaas. I will also recognize how various world events have effected the development and perception of the non-place. Economic imperatives spawned the non-place, xxviii now its security features and ability to suggest community ensure its survival. Economics still underpins the creation of the non-place. However the movement of the non-place into spaces of habitation increased the importance of manufactured community based on predetermined values (which is the essence of making static spaces economic spaces). Paradoxically the

19 introduction 19 non-place became more focused on the individual; virtual identity became the corporeal identity, utilized to predict possible future actions. These systems have always been in a non-place and have only been amplified, the net widened to filter anyone who poses a remote possibility of a threat to the values of that non-place. This is the process of egalitarian exclusionism, a process that means anyone can walk through the doors of a non-place but that simultaneously means we are all vulnerable to exclusion and thus prevents any sense of ownership. This produces a surprisingly homogenous group which believes it is representative of a whole community. Those who are excluded simply cease to exist. This anxiety is particularly obvious in nonplace offices where expulsion would be the end of our (way of) life. The genius of this strategy is to encourage universal individualism. This is the phenomenon where a crowd may behave all in the same way without realizing they are part of the crowd, thus removing the power and potential danger implicit in a crowd. This generates amoral proximity, where being physically close to others creates neither connection nor identity. Amoral proximity only allows the performance of nostalgic notions of community based on similitude. The non-place encourages a perpetual present (or future present) that disconnects us from the past and gives us a type of liberation where any or all action seems possible or even equal. It may lead to impulse buying or mass murder; the decision appears somewhat arbitrary. This peculiar property of non-place was overcome by the observation that these liberated automatons could be easily led; hence the abundance of semiotics in non-places. Arrows, signs, colours, sounds and the architecture direct us. The specific direction is determined by the values of the controlling institution of the non-place. It all works together to encourage us to perform in a certain way, to move

20 introduction 20 (physically and mentally) in a certain direction as if semiconscious. When this occurs in schools, malls and offices we are not in control of the script. However once these principles enter more intimate spaces like the family home, we are placed in the nonsensical position of performer and director. Performing sincerity, which is how nonplaces operate, slips into sincerely performing. De Certeau, in his resonating masterpiece The Practice of Everyday Life, suggests there is a wig that we use in order to mask our true intent, to protect our identity and superficially conform to the controlling institution. xxix However in a non-place I intend to show that the wig (la perruque) of performance becomes our hair, or more correctly we become the wig. We first observe this slippage in voluntary non-places (like malls) however it is most evident in the family home. Because of the non-relationality of and between non-places these scripts and values have no meaning. Hence aberrant scripts can be performed without recognition of their perversion. These scripts can be produced by a maniacal operator of a non-place, but more often then not they occur by mistake. Another defining characteristic of the non-place is its explicitness. The non-place inherits an ugliness akin to hard core pornography, far removed from the seductive suggestiveness of space as prosecuted by Bachelard. xxx Of course not all is visible, as Koolhaas points out air conditioning ducts, access routes, service elevators are somewhat hidden; but the necessity for complete public visibility (and economic misery) leaves the non-place looking like an aging anorexic porn star. Of course this explicitness is highly desirable as all becomes visible and therefore easy to monitor. A massive, almost unconscionable non-place can be entirely observed from a small control room. xxxi We never have access to the string of Theseus, never can lay the trail of breadcrumbs of Hansel; we are perpetually lost in a non-place. However the knowledge of complete visibility not only gives us a necessary audience to perform to,

21 introduction 21 but also destroys any goal of performed rebellion. The Minotaur, the witch, the panopticon do not exist in a non-place, there is no narrative; the power is always divorced from visibility. Visibility has become part of the performance. The institution must remain mysterious because to succeed it must not make sense, it must not be able to be attacked. As Jean-Luc Nancy describes, it is a hierarchy without crown or tiara, without dogma or sacrament, but not without truth and faith. xxxii The always on performer (be they consumer or regulator) in these spaces has moved past performing to becomes the explicitly superficial. Identity Augé claims that a new type of investigation is needed to reveal the nature of people in the contemporary world. He claims old models of anthropology and sociology based on time and place, history and identity, are no longer appropriate and that there needs to be a new model. xxxiii This is my goal. My first step is to show how non-places have moved from spaces of transit into spaces of habitation. I then want to uncover a definition for the individual who experiences the static non-places. The spaces that I focus on are the spaces that the typical family finds itself in. Augé claimed that some experience of non-place is today an essential component of all social existence. xxxiv I want to show that with the non-place s movement into spaces of habitation, the some experience has become the dominant and potentially only experience of social existence. If I am to suggest that it s possible to exist in perpetual non-place it is not enough for me just to examine the home. Firstly I must delve into high schools, looking specifically at the spate of random mass shootings that have occurred in America since I look at the shootings as a type of extreme performance, facilitated by the architectonics of the non-place school. Adolescents are of particular interest because it is possible that the current generation of adolescents have known nothing other than

22 introduction 22 the non-place. Next we go to work, seeing how the principles of late capitalism have incorporated the principles of the non-place to isolate and control the employee. The non-place has always been based on economics, but non-place offices take it one step further fusing the economic architecture with a community of production. The non-place office uses the non-place to make sense of a senseless community of production. The school and office are mandatory spaces, which the family somewhat reluctantly find themselves in. The next space I examine is a voluntary non-place. The mall. Shopping is the activity we do most in our free time and we desire to exist and partake in the role of the conspicuous consumer. I walk through the mall showing the process of how a fake community can manifest in the reward of transcendence. The mall gives us the first real example of how the non-place has become habitable and attractive. Then we SatNav our way through suburban streets into the home. The home, the so-called foundation of identity, memory and place, is revealed as a non-place. Unpacking the implications on identity, action and performance leads to a position from which the nonplace individual stands revealed. My final chapter looks at the influence of the Internet, which is not a non-place in itself, but it is used (particularly in non-place homes) as a means of expressing non-place sexuality. My findings are a result of a sustained investigation and participation in Internet sex chat rooms. It also gives me the opportunity to bookend my discussion with death and sex, a structural homage to my artistic practice. xxxv In order to arrive at a new examination of how people use space, my investigation is predicated on contemporary notions of community and identity. Georgio Agamben provides a sophisticated interpretation of contemporary community, demonstrating how ancient concepts such as Homo Sacer and The State of Exception are being reborn. xxxvi He has developed the specific manifestation and deviations from his earlier

23 introduction 23 theories expressed in The Coming Community. xxxvii He conjures a vision of the nihilism of a community comprised of individuals that is appropriate to the non-place. Central to my understanding of identity is the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Nancy clarifies our existence as a singularity, however goes on to propose the existence of pure singularities (which can be people, institutions or communities). Pure singularities cannot co-exist. In fact pure singularities won t even acknowledge the other s right to existence. A pure singularity has no identity. A pure identity cancels itself out; it can no longer identify itself. Only what is identical to itself is identical to itself. As such, it turns in a circle and never makes it into existence. xxxviii There is no Derridian binary opposition at the centre of a singularity, there are only centripetal meanings. Nancy suggests that these centripetal meanings, meanings closed in on themselves and supersaturated with significance have begun to spread nothing but destruction, hatred, and the denial of existence. xxxix There is no desire for a pure singularity to move towards or away from other singularities; their only existence is in and of themselves. As such it is impossible for an individual with identity to exist within a pure singularity. The only thing that can exist is an individual that can place itself towards the center as an offering. It is a sacrifice which has no meaning; there is no reciprocity. There is only the central absurd meanings. Therefore the individuals who exist within the pure singularity connect only with this abstract center. The interaction between individuals within a pure singularity is not interaction because identity is not invoked. Thus there develops a substantive difference between an individual and identity. The pure singularities of non-place communities are merely groupings of individuals. Pure singularities are somewhat of a theoretical position as are pure non-places. The nonplace sits between a singularity and a pure singularity, it may never be a true pure singularity but it aspires to it.

24 introduction 24 Nancy is important because he offers a pathway through this in Being Singular Plural. This pathway is closed in a non-place pure singularity, however Nancy offers us a method for construction of identity that I use as a counterpoint to the non-place. Despite being singular, almost paradoxically coexistence does not happen to existence; it is not added to it, and one cannot subtract it out: it is existence. xl In defining to be as the verb of dis-position xli Nancy gives us an alternative to the nonplace. I suggest that placement, the ability to place oneself within and without, enacts the verb of place (existence) and is the counterpoint to the noun of non-place (nonexistence). xlii I do not contrast non-place with a mythic communal place of the village. I am not suggesting that there was a perfect time in which place offered us a concrete and valid form of self. If community exists, it is recognized only at the moment of its loss. We mean nothing. However it is the failure of attempting to communicate this nothingness that constitutes existence. The attempt is hopeless, but that is no reason not to attempt. What I am arguing is that the non-place erases the possibility of attempting to communicate this. All that is left is vacation, is actual nothingness, is nonexistence. i Balibar s writings have transformed thinking on contemporary borders, showing how national borders are only one of many that divide and politicise societies. See Manuela. Bojad ijev and Isabelle. Saint-Saëns, " Borders, Citizenship, War, Class: A Discussion with Étienne Balibar and Sandro Mezzadra," New Formations 58, no. Summer (2006). For a comprehensive analysis of borders see Paula Banerjee, "Frontiers and Borders: Spaces of Sharing, Spaces of Conflict," in Space, Territory, and the State: New Readings in International Politics, Hyderabad, ed. R. Samaddar (Andhra Pradesh: Orient Longman, 2002).

25 introduction 25 ii Marc Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London ; New York: Verso, 1995), p 77. iii Ibid. iv A rather humorous example of the efficacy of these global rituals comes from an episode of Yes Prime Minister, in which the astute public servant Humphrey informs the PM that the death of a world leader is good news because more politics are done at funerals than any other event. v The creation of the UN is the first example of this type of movement from local to global where the global tried to include the whole world. The UN was formed after World War Two as a consequence of the lesson learned from local networks on the battlefield. The UN turned these lessons into international laws, conventions and charters that had an important symbolic stability. The UN turned Human Rights into a global immutable ceremony (ceremony because the UN condemnation is rarely followed by any physical action). This distance from local networks has been criticised by both founding members like the US ambassador to the UN John Bolton and fundamentalist states and groups (Sudan, Iran, Texas and the Taliban) who do not ascribe to the UN s views on human rights. vi Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, pp vii Ibid., p107. In this way Augé sets up the home as the contrast to the non-place. In making this distinction Augé is in line with the traditional construction of space that the fundamental dichotomy in geographical space is between home and non-home Home is thus a major fixed reference point for the structuring of reality. Douglas Porteous, "Home: The Territorial Core," Geographical Review 66, no. 4 (1976): p385. It is this assumption that I am challenging. Augé does mention that housing estates are possible non-places but he does not explain why these might be an exception to his transit rule. It is the only time he suggests a non-place might be able to live in.

26 introduction 26 viii Marc Augé, "Home Made Strange (Jean-Pierre Criqui Interviews Marc Augé)," Artforum 32, no. 10 (1994), Marc Augé, A Sense for the Other : The Timeliness and Relevance of Anthropology, Mestizo Spaces (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), Marc Augé, An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, Mestizo Spaces (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Marc Augé, "Paris and the Ethnography of the Contemporary World," in Parisian Fields, ed. M. Sherringham (London: Reaktion, 1996). ix E. C. Relph, Place and Placelessness, Research in Planning and Design ; 1 (London: Pion, 1976). And Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place : Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). x Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). xi Michael Sorkin, Variations on a Theme Park : The New American City and the End of Public Space, 1st ed. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). xii Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, p 78. xiii Ibid. xiv Ibid. xv Ibid. xvi Ibid. xvii Ibid., p 93. xviii Ibid., p 103. xix John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Chichester: Polity Press, 1999). David Morley, Home Territories : Media, Mobility, and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2000). Tim Cresswell, Place : A Short Introduction, Short Introductions to Geography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). xx Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, p 78.

27 introduction 27 xxi Nonspace is not only a literal nonplace, it is also disengaged from the paramount orientation to reality- the here and now of face to face contact, Margaret Morse, Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture, Theories of Contemporary Culture ; V. 21 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p107. xxii Ibid. xxiii Ibid. xxiv Rem Koolhaas and Office of Metropolitan Architecture., Content (Köln: Taschen, 2004), p163. xxv Hans Ibelings, Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalisation (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002). xxvi Kazys Varnelis, "History and Theory, Goodbye Supermodernism," Architecture 95, no. 7 (2006): p55. xxvii Ibid.: p56. It should be noted that while there is little theory specifically about domesticating non-places it is obvious that non-places often try to project domesticity. MacDonald s eating areas are calling dining rooms and airports have lounges. Such labelling doesn t change the space, but because semiotics is so important in a non-place, it does change our perception of it and also of domestic space. xxviii Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, p115. xxix Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). xxx Bachelard s very influential book The Poetics of Space is a nostalgic overdose with dangerous implications. He suggests that the contemporary home is or should be imbued with the spirit of identity and beauty. See Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

28 introduction 28 xxxi It would seem obvious to make the connection here to Foucault s panopticon, however the significant difference is that a non-place works best when the observed is not conscious of the observer. There is only the constant anxious unconscious awareness that we always could be being watched, but this anxiety should never reach the level of the panopticon where the observed is deliberately psychologically destroyed (although in an office non-place it comes close.) See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison, 2nd Vintage Books ed. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). xxxii Jean-Luc Nancy, "Of the One, of Hierarchy," Cultural Critique 57, no. Spring 2004 (2004): p 109. xxxiii Augé, An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, Marc Augé and Jean Paul Colleyn, The World of the Anthropologist (Oxford: Berg, 2006). xxxiv Augé, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, p 119. xxxv And also to Picasso, who is always good for a quote and once said that his art is only about sex and death. xxxvi Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), Giorgio Agamben and Daniel Heller-Roazen, Homo Sacer : Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). xxxvii Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, Theory out of Bounds ; V. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). xxxviii Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), p 153. xxxix Ibid., p xii. xl Ibid., p 187. xli Ibid., p 96.

29 introduction 29 xlii As an intriguing side note the origin of the term thesis is to place. While this fact is not the reason I believe in placement, it does clarify the reason I have undertaken a thesis; thesis late Middle English: via late Latin from Greek, literally placing, a proposition, from the root of tithenai to place.

30 30 Chapter One: School s In The spate of random school shootings in America has shocked the world. Students were shooting up their own schools in random fashion, without clear motive. The frequency of the random school shootings increased dramatically in 1992, with 23 cases to 2001, yet only 5 between 1980 an Since 2001 the number of school shootings has declined, but are still at levels much higher than the pre 1992 figures. The increase in security measures at schools, as well as the taboo of suicide or terrorist attacks after 2001 may be the reason for this decline. The level of detachment and lack of empathy required to carry out such attacks is baffling. Answers were needed and provided, hastily and often without reference to the facts. The media, families and lack of moral teaching were the primary targets. The media was blamed for its if it bleeds it leads policy, xliii which after the Columbine shootings saw ABC, CBS and NBC broadcasting 17 min 10sec, 13min 50sec, and 17min respectively on the story in their prime time news programs; programs which without commercials, only broadcast for 21 minutes. xliv President Clinton argued that it might be the Internet; Newt Gingrich credited the 1960s; and Tom DeLay blamed daycare. xlv Marilyn Manson was blamed, violent video games and movies were fingered. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School wrote that; in America, violence is considered fun to kids. They play video games where they chop people's heads off and blood gushes and it's fun, it's entertainment. It's like a game. And I think this is the psychology of these kids-this "Let's go out there and kill like on television." xlvi Shooters were either dismissed as insane or determined to have come from neglecting families. xlvii The American Family Association reported after the Columbine shootings that the teaching of Darwinism was responsible as it ignored the sanctity of life that

31 school s in 31 creationism offers. xlviii The American Family Association at the same time advocates for the death penalty for crimes like those perpetrated by the teenage school shooters. Darrel Scott, the father of a victim from Columbine attributed the attacks to a lack of a belief in God, "life really doesn't have the meaning that it does to children who believe they are created in God's image and that they have not only this life but a future life as well." xlix He went on to say that this country has turned its back on God, and we have basically taken out all of our spiritual content and our moral content We expose kids to violence through the media and then we ask the question, 'Why does this happen?' The answer is right in front of us if we just dare to look at it." l Darrel Scott is right, the answer is in front of us, but the answer has nothing to do with what he and the general consensus believes. Important correlative information was missed that the media, God, family breakdown, or evolution theory could not explain. Why for instance were all but one random school shooting since 1980 in a suburban or rural school? Why did all the shooters come from relatively stable families with no history of abuse? Why were all the school shooters male? Why did the vast majority of shootings occur in Republican states? And why was there a massive increase in the number of shootings in the early 1990 s? The answer to all these questions lies in a spatial examination of the school space, and the consequences which flow from this. Suburban and rural schools in particular came into contact with the principles of the non-place. The non-place school has particular properties that produce a unique psychology for the students who attend. For the vast majority of time this psychology goes unnoticed and the everyday performances are ignored. However by understanding the psychology of all the students, the spectrum that can lead to school shootings is understood. More importantly by understanding the psychology of the

32 school s in 32 teen, rather than the killer, the picture of the typical non-place child within a non-place family starts to come into focus. The Elephant in the non-place The film Elephant li, written and directed by Gus Van Sant, is based on the Columbine school shooting. Filmed in an actual high school it provides an accurate account of contemporary school space. In order to show how a non-place may function in a school it is necessary to start with an in depth analysis of the space based on Elephant. The spatial analysis provided in this chapter will inform the following chapters on the office, mall and home. Peculiarities of the elephant There are a few general comments that need to be made about the space of the nonplace school. lii Firstly, the school is better classified as a Junkspace than a non-place. This is particularly true of public schools (the focus of my research). A non-place is an icing sugared version of Junkspace. There is very little icing sugar in public schools. It is the raw economic misery of the Junkspace, rather than the utopian promise of the non-place, that made an appearance in schools. Junkspace is always the cheapest space (at least upfront), and it shouldn t be a surprise that this puts it above the pack in public school development. It would be very hard to describe any public school as utopia coming soon but the basic building blocks are the same as in any non-place. In fact the basic building blocks are all there is. This means that some of the non-place properties are amplified, others reduced. The school has amplified and undisguised repetitions, reflections and echo. It has fewer points of identification and an overall sense of similitude. But without the semiotics and comforting accessories of a normal non-place the effect of the controlling institution is reduced. Such a raw space is very