We Have Never Been Material.
Andrew Cochrane 2007 - Page 6
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OR DIALECTICS AT STANDSTILL? (Continued)
The placement of cremated remains on the passage tomb floors would have created textured
surfaces that would have altered visual interactions and perceptions. The
recurring material artefacts, such as stone axeheads, decorated pottery
sherds and chalk balls of varying colours, all exhibit enhanced visual,
auditory, olfactory, and tactile qualities, with form and content coalescing
to augment performances that stimulated sensory responses. The combination
of these objects within a decorated structure may reflect material
expressions of believed ideas regarding how people should live, die,
transform, and the world(s) in general.
Following Latour (1993, 139), we may broaden these assemblages of objects to the concept
of the assemblages of societies; thus creating a constant and sometimes
interrupted transformation and mediation of appearance, participation and
being. Yet, material objects are not free in the modern sense of liberation,
but are rather bound together with people in relational ties. Indeed, it is
the things in life that make humans and the humans in life that make things,
blurring human:non-human distinctions (Latour 2000, 20). Within such a
framework, objects do not engender themselves through representation, but
instead through processes of metamorphosis and performance. Passage tombs
are therefore not just containers of objects; rather they actively merge
containment with content.
What we may be witnessing in passage tombs
therefore is the distillation and manipulation of objects and persons (which
again may not be separate categories) within a web of relationships. For
example, following some transactions by the Merina of Madagascar (Bloch
1998, 79), we might suggest that relationships between the 'dry' mixtures
(e.g. cremations) and 'wet' mutable substances (e.g. people or pottery?) may
have been at play, endlessly being altered by the moment and the images on
the structural stones. For the Merina, contact is made during life with the
dead in tombs, establishing never-ending cycles and mixtures whereby the
living increasingly become the dead and the dead become the living, thus blurring these oppositional stances.
CONCLUSIONS
Everything which offends against duality, which is the fundamental rule, everything which aims to be integral,
leads to disintegration through the violent resurgence of duality. Jean Baudrillard
What are the consequences of attempting to understand some past events via the removal of
dialectical approaches and dualities? Baudrillard might answer that the
abolition of distance between opposite poles leads to the discharge of violent
tension as a result of the intimate blending of parts in the world (2005, 75-77;
see also González-Ruibal 2006). After considering how things may intimately
operate, I feel, however, that tactile interaction is not mere reductive
immersion with mixtures of elements, none of which constitute 'pure' forms;
rather it is an effective means of negotiating within environments. These fluid
entanglements or mixing of mixes are enhanced when one appreciates that the
objects in passage tombs were not all deposited at the same time. This suggests
multiple temporalities or 'extra-temporality' (Virilio 2000, 85), with some
being plural, contradictory, scrambled and palimpsestic. By looking in detail at
the assemblages and blending of essences in some Irish passage tombs I have
attempted to tease out some of the threads that help bind these amalgamations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Alasdair Whittle and Doug Bailey for reading and commenting on earlier
versions of this paper - the mistakes and misunderstandings are my
responsibility alone. I would also like to thank
Muiris O'Sullivan and Wordwell
Publishers for kindly giving permission to use several of their images. Chris
Witmore was very kind and supportive by allowing me access to his unpublished
work and ideas. Ken Williams has generously allowed me to use images from his
recent 'Shadows and Stones' exhibition. Respect to
Ian Russell for many late night discussions! Kate Waddington deserves much
thanks for reading many sections of this piece. I would also like to thank
Julian Thomas and Vitor Oliveria Jorge for organising the Tag 2006 session.
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