On Homi K. Bhaba's The Location of Culture

Homi Bhabha’s “The Location of Culture” examines colonial discourse, the concept of identity, and new perspectives on resistance in a postmodern world. The prevailing and simplistic binaries of this world, like the divisions of Western v. non-Western and the colonial influence on self v. Other, are challenged and shown to be unstable and unsustainable. Colonized peoples must navigate various contradictions such as the fact they are seen as “Other” (mysterious and different) and yet are expected to render themselves entirely visible and knowable. Specifically, marginalized people must deal with a stereotypical fixity in their identities which leads to ambivalence - an unstable, contradictory relationship to all identities that manifests as anxiety and the uncanny. Fixity relies on the concept of stereotype in its repetitive character. For Bhabha, stereotype is not simply a false image directly used for discriminatory purposes. It has the character of a textual overdetermination providing differing strategies in both metaphoric and metonymic capacities. Stereotype is fixed (fixity) and contradictory since it gives a sense of order and predictability but causes anxiety and uncontrollable repetition. Its character is described as a “daemonic [demonic] repetition” which is also used by Sigmund Freud in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle” to describe Todestrieb (death drive). Indeed, the exciting tension and implicit, multi-layered violence of racist discourse is an obvious manifestation of death drive.

The concept of race is like any other signifer in that it’s a social construction and, therefore, has the possibility of being constructed differently - most importantly, it has the possibility of being used outside race-ism (racism). A stereotype causes fixity and denies the signifer “race” the freedom to be applied outside of racism and used as a way to talk about, and respect, real differences. Signifiers are meant to play (circulate and transform) but race becomes bound by racism: “the stereotype impedes the circulation and articulation of the signifier of ‘race’ as anything other than its fixity as racism” (pg. 108). As an historic/social construct, the concept of race can’t simply be removed from discourse by enlightened, well-meaning individuals. It resists expulsion and can’t easily be eliminated from our culture, especially a culture that still continues to produce outcomes and effects based on racial differences. We must develop a non-colonial discourse so we can liberate the concept of race from racism, that is, the ability to talk about the real differences that are associated with the concept of race but in a productive and non-harmful way. To refuse to talk about or “see” race is repression and a disavowal of difference. This repression creates a disturbing tension that fears the re-presentation of the Other. This is exacerbated by a society of surveillance and Hollywood voyeurism that exploits the scopic drive, making the public vulnerable to the spectacle and manipulation of mass media. The play of ethnicities and nationalities is sexualized by Hollywood and placed in relation to the psychoanalytic concepts of Law and desire. The 1958 film Touch of Evil, takes place on the border between Mexico and the USA. The protagonist is a mixed-race police man who goes by two names: Miguel and Mike. His wife is white and their relationship is troubled by the drama between Miguel (causal and familiar desire) and Mike (man of Law). The unconscious fear/desire of miscegenation is a product of superiority claims of one culture over another. Hollywood exploits this tension, giving tacit degrees of excitation and relief thus placating and gratifying the masses to limit discourse.

As an Imaginary object of this scopic drive, the stereotype is one of the official knowledges of colonialism - a type of knowledge that is arrested and fetishistic. It is a “limited form of otherness” (pg. 111) that is closed to the future and mummified in a preservation of the past (a past which we have, supposedly, moved on from). The stereotype prevents the freeing of the signifier “race” by forcing individuals to prove they are not the stereotype (negation). You see yourself as different from the stereotype but this difference is a closed, fixed difference not the “difference and circulation which would liberate the signifier of skin/culture from the fixations of racial typology” (pg. 108). That is, distancing yourself from the stereotype doesn’t get rid of the stereotype. This is a state of double-consciousness as minorities identify with an image while also wanting to subvert it (such as the frequently heard: “I’m an X, but not a typical X”). The stereotype is a fantasy / phantasm that floats over non-stereotypical differences. Like ghost stories that we know aren’t true (literally) yet still desire to repeatedly tell: “the same old stories of the Negro’s animality, the Coolie’s inscrutability or the stupidity of the Irish must be told (compulsively) again and afresh, and are differently gratifying and terrifying each time” (pg. 111). Again, a clear example of the repetition compulsion of Freud’s death drive that emerges in racial discourse. Along with double-consciousness, the stereotype creates an impossible dilemma. One must constantly negate the stereotype (prove they are not the stereotype) or one must present oneself as something entirely new and outside of race (which is an erasure of history and the recognition of meaningful differences that is associated with race). 

Ambivalence is a unique anxiety that colonized people experience that is a result of their split between their own history before colonization and their new history after colonization. These two histories (before and after) are sutured together by the stereotype and its repetition - “a separation between before and after that repeats obsessively the mythical moment or disjunction.” (pg. 118). This stereotype-as-suture is a productive phenomenon in that it produces multiple and contradictory images (signifiers) - “the chain of stereotypical signification is curiously mixed and split … The black is both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child...” (pg. 118). Cultures repeat their great stories (myths) and colonized people have a particular story of a moment of splitting before and after colonialism. Ambivalence is this peculiar state of anxiety; the continual spiraling around the location of splitting that prevents one from grounding themselves in a unifying history and myth. This separation is not masked by colonial discourse as it provides a fantasy of teleology and is visibly propagated through murals and national holidays. Colonialism’s mission of reform and progress for the native casts doubt on the colonized’s autonomy and ability to self-govern.

Colonial discourse and its governmentality rely on fetishtic knowledge since there is pleasure in knowing the stereotype and mastering this knowledge (comedians who are minorities love to talk about how “their people” act). Like folk tales, we know these stereotypes aren’t true but there is still value in them and thus have a certain power. Stereotypes offer pleasure because of their relation to racism (and the jouissance that repeatedly threatens one's identity as a modern, civilized subject). This pleasure is not just in racist comedy but is sublimated into judicial and legal procedures. There can only be governing if there is a system of objects and knowledge about these objects that can be organized. It is, of course, propagandized as a benevolent governance of the colonized people. This is internalized by the colonized themselves as minorities see themselves as split between a rational (white) personality and the supposed wildness of their ethnic roots (the well-manned minority comically threatening: “don’t make me remind you that I came from the hood!”). In governance and mastery of knowledge, the culture of the colonized becomes like dreamwork. Specialists are employed like psychoanalysts to give authoritative interpretations of the abnormalities and deviant symbolism of the dark unconscious of the Other’s culture. Cultural critic and activist Edward Said “refers explicitly to a distinction between ‘an unconscious positivity’ which he terms latent Orientalism, and the stated knowledges and views about the Orient which he calls manifest Orientalism” (pg. 102). Bhabha also agrees with Frantz Fanon that race and identity, not just economics, are important aspects of the colonial situation. Any Marxist analysis can not be limited to economics because the substructure is also a superstructure, in that whiteness is tied to any notion of wealth and class.

Additionally, ambivalence is opposed to the typical attitude that hatred comes from ignorance (the simplistic notion that problems can be solved with education). There is a manifest desire and pleasure in knowing that which is hated. There can be a type of deep knowledge of another group (or an obsessive desire for knowledge) while also hating them. Knowledge can be weaponized since it isn’t, by default, necessarily beneficial or guaranteed to instill Enlightenment values. It is common for minorities to use coded derogatory terms against the majority and the master/oppressor is very invested in knowing the slang as it makes them feel less vulnerable. This view of knowledge connects with governmentality and institutional decentralization. Despite presenting themselves as progressive, institutions find ways of working together with colonial power: “there coexist within the same apparatus of colonial power, modern systems and sciences of government, progressive ‘Western’ forms of social and economic organization” (pg. 119). The apparent separation between institutions (school, barracks, church) makes unified power invisible. Like with the manipulation of the scopic drive by the Hollywood “apparatus”, colonial power no longer uses explicit methods of control but now relies on surveillance through decentralized institutions.

As post-colonialism, Bhabha doesn’t see resistance as a simple choice between sides. All identities are mixed (active hybridity), even white, European ones. However, the identity of minorities are fragmented (with the stereotype-as-suture holding them together) and unification is a dream of modernity that the postmodern condition has left behind. It resists essentializing race and culture that a simplistic multiculturalism can produce (“it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand”). Fanon also warns that fetishism of minority identities can be internalized under the banner of multiculturalism. He suggests repressed histories and cultural traditions must be retrieved without romance and idealization. This is because idealization means distance between the ideal and non-ideal, inevitably manifesting in the split self as a hierarchy and not a true embodiment.

The concept of hybridity is a productive approach to these issues because it sees identity as a process, not just a recognition of a set of social differences. Being attuned to this process takes one beyond binaries and fixed histories of self identity. It is a process of leaving and returning - an encounter that stimulates questions of what it means to be certain identities and a new construction with partial answers that will continually cycle. This experience of the beyond is uncomfortable and avoided because it is an interruption and displacement of sequential narratives both personal and cultural. However, it is, in a way, a classic ethical imperative to face questions that cannot be fully answered (“an unexamined life is not worth living”). Even Goethe recognizes that national conflicts, such as the cultural confusion of wars, inevitably expose one to foreign ideas and problematize a nation’s return to a settled life. In this, there is an opportunity to confront “ previously unrecognized spiritual and intellectual needs” (pg. 16). There is also a danger in this process, such as failing to mourn what is left behind which leads to new eruptions of conflict and war (such is, in psychoanalysis, the paranoid position not progressing to the depressive position).

Rather than the subject of mourning, Bhabha is more focused on resistance to power and the intellectual’s role. Resistance cannot be one-sided (between colonizer/colonized) but occurs in the third space, the liminal space where two cultures intersect. It is where two places exist alongside each other and demonstrate characteristics of both. A boundary between modern and non-modern (or even anti-modern) countries and colonies. It is not just an aspect of physical places but is a place of translation of the social imaginary such as urban v. rural or the public v. private spheres. This can be illustrated by the everyday experience of the difference between home and school. For example, the time a child spends at school but outside the classroom and class time (the fluidity of the school yard / playground). The presence and authority of parents and teachers are diminished and the cultural rules are loosened.

The third place is a key aspect of artworks as well. Bhabha, like Heidegger, sees art as an essential work of truth that exposes “strife” between boundaries (for Heidegger it is the mysterious Earth in conflict with the World of culture). Art is an encounter outside past and present narratives, thus. it is in the beyond since it makes both narratives open to reinvention. This disjunction in temporality allows one to reflect on the performative nature of history and culture, while also working against problematic nostalgia, and is an opportunity for radical and political translation. One example is artist Renée Green’s exhibit and site-specific work Sites of Genealogy where the artwork was placed in auxiliary spaces like the museum’s stairwells and attic. A stairwell is a productive metaphor in that, not only is it a place between upper and lower, but it also prevents one from settling down and becoming comfortable long-term. Additionally, Alan Sekula's photographic essay Fish Story presents the harbor as the representative of globalization and the flux of non-synchronous material exchange. His work presents a scene where the Norwegian national anthem plays through a rusty speaker as a container ship arrives bearing a Bahamian flag of convenience. This ship was built by South Koreans living on the contested border of their split country. The South American crew, overworked and underpaid, hear a foreign melody that becomes familiarized and internalized as a personal beacon of memory. Echoes of the slave trade resonate in this material trade of harbors under capitalism. 

Bhabha’s concepts manifest acutely in the third space. As a “zona de libre cogercio” (free-trade zone) there are dangers but also opportunities for resistance. Authority can not easily target the mixed and hybrid due to its always incomplete presence (as opposed to the predictability of a complete identity). This is the place of resistance and praxis since dominant ideologies are given enough distance to lose their character as obvious and “natural”. Writing and theory is also a third space, and form of resistance, when it goes beyond binaries to create new thoughts (such as Bhabha’s own use of Western philosophy and psychoanalysis combined with militant, anti-colonial characters like Fanon). Bhabha rejects the anti-intellectual position that theory is ineffectual as a political act as he asserts that we are literary creatures. Indeed, this is much like Slavoj Zizek’s reversal of Marx’s famous maxim “The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” and an insistence that we take seriously interpretation of our time and place in the world as essential to political action. It is deftly clear that writing is a force that directly engages with the discourse that defines “the social” in the first place. Through text we can make the social available as an object and target of action. 

There is also the issue that theory is considered an elitist language of the privileged that is separate and insulated from the tragic history of “the wretched of the earth”. This belief falls into the very same simple binaries Bhabha claims we must overcome in order to have a nuanced handling of real differences. Mixing art and politics, theory and practice, high and low, is complementary to our hybrid identity and culture. The questions on how much these binaries overlap is an unending process with partial answers and, engaging with theories like Bhabha’s, helps us to handle the nuance and openness to change that will persist in the dialogue of history.

In a practical framework for resistance, ambivalence (the tension between two incomplete discourses) offers textual resistance through mockery and mimicry of colonial culture. This mimicry arises in the third space since it offers an opportunity for the colonized to show mastery of the language and knowledge of colonial culture. Assumptions of superiority are undermined in parody as the stereotype is not handled directly (such as simplistically trying to correct an incorrect representation) but is embodied in their ambivalence. It reveals how assimilation is incomplete, leaving a remainder of a supposedly irreversible “backwardness” of the colonized. Thus the civilizing mission has actually equipped the colonized with new “insider” knowledge and strategies. Ambivalence and mimicry expose the stereotype as unstable as well as the whole authority of the greater colonial project.

This third space is essentially the “location of culture” that Bhabha seeks to find. He opens his book with Heidegger: “A boundary is not that at which something stops but [where] something begins its presencing (pg 1). Power structures and the dominant ideology are invisible and self-evident in stable spaces that exist on either side of a binary. They emerge from the invisible background into presence in the liminal space of boundaries. Indeed, all discourse and identity is unstable as we see the qualifier “post” reactively slapped on to any hard-to-define production (post-modern, post-colonial, post-theory). A globalized world lacks an outside and so binaries cannot hold: "we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion" (pg. 2). Real difference is either denied in the universal sameness of liberal discourse (history isn’t relevant to individual choice) or caught in ism-s that bind difference to harmful caricatures. The avoidance of prioritizing and convoluting cultures can be seen in the turn in world literature from the themes of transmission and homogenization of national traditions to the identity-focused narrative of refugees and the colonized. The untranslatable mysteries of real difference are maintained, thus simplistic and comfortable narratives are prevented from attempting to explain and neutralize “freak social and cultural displacements” (pg. 17).

Collaboration and communication is needed for true representation and empowerment but no simple strategies can be utilized and no approach comes without suspicion. Claims between communities who have a shared history of oppression, end up in competition as they run up against real differences. These antagonisms are commonly felt as incommensurable. A proper handling of difference must respect the complex and dynamic negotiation that exists, not just between communities, but individuals with their hybrid identities. Bhabha puts forth a compelling maxim when facing an impasse: “something …beyond control … is not beyond accommodation” (pg. 18). His quotes and references to Heidegger imply that the opportunity for a solution or chance of exchange over this incommensurability may only be an Event: “moments of historical transformation … [that] estranges any immediate access to an originary identity or a ‘received’ tradition … confound our definitions of tradition and modernity [and can] realign the customary boundaries (pg. 3).

Homi Bhabha's "The Location of Culture'' is a seminal work in the field of cultural studies and postcolonial theory. He engages with literature, film, psychoanalysis, and other forms of cultural production to create a multifaceted theoretical framework. His work has had a significant impact on the fields of cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and literary criticism, influencing scholars across various disciplines. It remains a key text for those interested in understanding the impact of colonialism on contemporary societies. As the globalized world connects more and more complex ideas and cultures, Bhabha’s work offers insights and valuable metaphors for maintaining a mature handling of cultural and racial issues. His ideas, such as hybridity, ambivalence, and the third space, challenge traditional binary oppositions and present cultural identities as a state of flux and negotiation which bring discourse an opportunity to develop compelling strategies to challenge established power structures and colonial hierarchies.

Hyperreality and Idolatry:

The Art of Critique and Contradiction at the End of Modernity

(MFA Thesis)

It was during my teenage years that being a Christian made me a target for teasing and mockery. It was seen as old-fashioned and not “cool” (a term always associated with being “with the times”). It was apparent that the modern person had no time for the puritan lessons that were associated with judgemental and bitter grandparents whose “time had passed”. Already lonely and isolated, I turned to a type of radical secularism in order to keep up with the debates and concerns of the modern world. I even rejected holidays as religiously archaic with their confusing mix of paganism, Christianity, and commercialism. When I tried to find like-minded people, I was confronted by so-called “rational” people who appeared completely superstitious. Many non-religious people were enthusiastically sold on witchcraft and occult magic, engaging in it as a way to act out an immature rebelliousness rather than being a serious stance of nonconformity. Many of the people I associated with were so-called “new atheists'' who prioritized critical thinking, yet they were still invested in traditional notions of power and hierarchy. They considered themselves fiercely scientific but their politics accepted massive inequality. They favored backward systems which were much closer to monarchy and aristocracy than the much championed values of the Enlightenment’s “Age of Reason” that, supposedly, has guided the modern world. 

After continually encountering “rational” modern society as hopelessly haunted and derailed by previous pre-modern worlds, the question “what is it to be ‘modern’ (with the times)?” has become a pertinent issue. Modernity is a complex term that describes the societal, cultural, and economic changes, beginning in the 17th century and culminating in the 18th century onwards, that have transformed human life. This has included technological advancements, industrialization, urbanization, globalization, and the rise of capitalism. Modernity has led to the growth of democratic institutions, the decline of religion and traditional cultural practices, and the advancement of scientific knowledge. However, it has not solved issues of mass inequality and has directly led to severe environmental crises. This has led critics of modern industrialization, like Karl Marx, to correctly observe the way modern systems are always generating new crises and states of emergency in order to justify abandoning their principles of ethics and rationality. This theme of disruption is feature of other attempts at descripting the current time period such as Philosopher Nikolas Kompridis defining modernity as “a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present".

These unpredictable disruptions due to speed and technology have fed ever-increasing individualism and isolation. Mass media has grown into a monstrous world of simulation that has undermined people’s ability to find the aspects of a meaningful life that comes from communal ties and authentic personal relationships. Fascism has emerged within the modern condition as a result of the failures of modernity as it insists on endless individualism that inevitably leads to the breakdown of all social bonds. A fascist worldview, itself a spectacle of nostalgic deception, emphasizes nationalism against perceived foreigners such as immigrants as well as ethnic and religious minorities. Fascist regimes have historically implemented policies of racial and ethnic discrimination that escalate into violent oppression (this violence mediated through and hidden behind police, military, and paramilitary support and glorification). It promotes authoritarianism in pursuit of a strong and unified society which results in the suppression of minority groups. The isolation and fragmentation of the fast-paced modern world weakens traditional values and creates a void which tends to be filled by problematic sources of meaning like the nationalism of fascism. Secularism and modernity has tried to remove itself from the past as a way to avoid these issues but a pure secularism with no past is impossible. Furthermore, the modern world is still ideological with propaganda and idolatry, especially in regards to the development of technology, still dominant forces even though we claim to value critical analysis and free-thinking.

These issues of rational society and ideology ultimately lead to fundamental questions of language. Belief systems are language-based with ideology essentially being language loops that provide a shaky scaffolding of quick answers and platitudes that allow us to navigate the everyday world. Though one can lose themselves in these platitudes, they are like the trappings of past worlds - necessary and, to a degree, inescapable. We must learn to live with inevitable contradictions as we attempt to think outside of historical baggage and free of ideology. Art is the best method for this, as Dada artist Tristan Tzara claims: “I write a manifesto … and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am also against principles … I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together”. By acting out contradiction and playing with absurdity, we can develop awareness of the traps of platitudes and the power of the spectacle. I seek to create a hospitable space where a bit of fun and humor can help us deal with the contradictions of the human condition and renew social connection, authenticity, and rational ethics.

The themes of speed and language (which is always performed in time) make time-based mediums an important aspect of my art. I work in video and conceptual art since the traditional act of image and object making easily falls prey to games of spectacle and cynical economics. I incorporate aspects of the everyday, like disposable objects and food, along with text and video. Screens and projectors interact with common objects and the conceptual presentation of objects reveal contradictions that disarm the familiar and unconscious mantras that keep us divided. This approach to studying the modern condition - contradictions in the double-faced nature of language (literal vs. metaphor) and technology (helpful and time-saving vs. necessary and costly) - is what inspired me to name my 2023 exhibition “DOUBLESPEAK”.

I. Everything is a Machine

Modernity is tied to technology and mechanization with some scholars claiming the printing press as the precursor to modern culture with its essential feature of mass media. The printing press, invented in the 15th century, revolutionized the way books were produced and distributed. It allowed for the mass production of literature, making books cheaper and more readily available to the general public. This led to increased rates of literacy and the spread of ideas and knowledge. The ability to mass-produce printed materials also played a crucial role in the scientific revolution and the spread of the Protestant Reformation. The printing press paved the way for modernity by democratizing access to information and aiding the dissemination of new ideas.

However, every technology comes with a dark shadow and with the spread of information granted by the printing press leads to the contemporary information superhighway of the internet with its rampant fraud, misinformation, and terrorist organizing. This key feature of modernity, mass media and image reproduction, can be seen in Andy Warhol’s use of repeated images in his silkscreens. He was also drawn to the flatness and lack of depth that silkscreens could create, which contributed to his pop art aesthetic that was influenced by commercial imagery and advertising. With the choice of an electric chair, Warhol also sees the harnessing of modern technology for cruel and backward ideas involving crime and punishment. 

Our reliance on strange and violent machines, like the electric chair, is where the Looney Tunes character Wile. E. Coyote becomes a fitting allegory that captures the anxieties produced by this modern condition. The coyote is a God in many mythologies of cultures in the American desert. However, the modern coyote buys machines from the monopoly Acme Corporation as he attempts technological solutions, not magical ones. These machines end up backfiring but he has no other options. With all our swift delivery and endless online catalogs, our lives are not much improved as we end up self-sabotaged and are financially trapped by the need for this technology. We must pay for the upkeep and insurance on cars as well as internet bills, cell phone services, and the latest iPhone. Wiley cannot keep up with his rival, Roadrunner, who is the embodiment of speed.

There is also a very peculiar sense of speed and efficiency in the show’s format itself. The story is as minimal as you can get (Coyote wants to eat the roadrunner) and the jokes are set up and play out quickly. These visual gags have no need for backstory or complicated social context (as is the case with more story and character dependent entertainment) and this allows for efficient consumption. The show is a reflection of commodity culture with its method of reductionism for easy and convenient consumption. In my piece Death Reel, the show is edited down even further to where Wile. E Coyote is rotoscoped and we watch his schemes failing or backfiring in even quicker succession. In this way, our relationship to buying and using technology can be linked with the consumable efficiency of the show’s format in its series of quick, slapstick-style jokes.

Additionally, many of the devices Wile E. Coyote employs are “Rube Goldberg machines”. Rube Goldberg was best known as an American cartoonist and his drawings feature complex and humorous machines that perform simple tasks in a convoluted and indirect way. These arrays of interconnecting and often nonsensical parts, resulting in a chain reaction that ultimately achieves a goal, inspired many of the show's scenarios. The world of smartphone apps and cloud storage is not much different as we shuffle through the messy and ad hoc network of machines that are required to keep up with the modern world. Some days certainly feel like living in the buffoonery of a cartoon world when I frustratingly bounce from one app to another or switch through multiple digital platforms as I try to find a file or make a program function.

As technology becomes more and more necessary but also an uncontrollable and deadly phenomenon, we can understand many of philosopher and cultural critic Jean Baudrillard’s observations about contemporary life. Baudrillard was critical of the idea of progress since many technological advances only served to further entrench societal systems of power and domination. He claimed we live in a reality saturated by images and signs. Signs overwrite the value of real objects. Signs are privileged because they are flexible and can operate more fluidity without the weight of grounded objects. When dealing with modernity, mass media, and consumerism, Baudrillard’s key insight is the inversion of subject vs. object. For most of history, objects were products of the realm of subjectivity (human activity and culture) and it was subjectivity that had autonomy and agency over objects. Baudrillard, however, claims that contemporary technology has flipped this relationship in an unprecedented way and now the Object is in charge - “objects rule in mysterious ways, and people and events are governed by absurd and ultimately unknowable interconnections and predestination”. As a result of our alienation from what we consume, there is an unknowable dimension that maintains an ever-present level of anxiety. The pristine spaces of high-end retail display symbols of wealth and consumables that promise to transform you. We look to these Objects to cure us like medicine at a pharmacy. There are all sorts of cures offered for our sense of inferiority, loneliness and emptiness but, as Jacques Derrida points out, a “drug” has always meant both medicine and poison (the word derived from the Greek word pharmakon). There is an inherent tension and ambiguity in our modern reality (as made manifest by processed foods) that gives both language and products of consumption the capacity to heal and harm simultaneously. The ambiguousness of the gummy bears in my work Vitamins is analogous to language that can both convey meaning (“cure” misunderstanding) and obscure or distort meaning (poison understanding).

Symbolic systems, like language, are intertwined with the physical devices in our communication networks. Besides the obvious corporate branding, their function as specifically “communication” networks shows the prominent role of language. My 2022 assemblage Language Game was a major inspiration to what would become my exhibit DOUBLESPEAK. In this piece, several handheld phones hang from an umbrella with their corded inputs ready to be connected. This imitates how we fumble through the multitudes of communication options that are supposed to increase ease and accessibility. These transmission lines are not direct, but tied up in the messy play of words (represented by a torrent of playing cards covering the umbrella) that we use to navigate the world. This umbrella of gaming cards is the bubble of rules and symbols protecting us from the direct effects of reality’s blunt force. We cannot make our way around without the machinic dimensions of language making us available, and vulnerable, to being plugged into social systems and networks. Language Game explores “machine ontology” which is a philosophical framework that views reality as a network of interconnected parts, all of which are regarded as “machines”. These machines are not limited to mechanical devices but also include biological, social, and linguistic systems. Machines generate and transform relationships through their interactions and even the concept of individual identity is seen as a conglomerate of little machines with no definite line separating the individual from its network. The notion of a stable essence is replaced by the machine and Language Game illustrates the connection between the mechanical phone, linguistic systems, and simple, functional objects like an umbrella. The work is also a direct reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of “language game” which refers to the understanding of language as a social activity governed by rules and conventions (like the learning of games with playing cards). According to Wittgenstein, language games are the various forms of communication that are used in different social contexts with their own set of rules, including writing, reading, and speaking. He argued that language cannot be understood in the abstract, but only situationally and within the context in which it is used.

This use of assemblage rather than 2D image is important when dealing with our modern condition because the integration of found objects seamlessly convey themes of consumerism, waste, and the technological intersection of human culture with the physical world. With the inclusion of text, assemblage can expand its interdisciplinary and intersectional reach into linguistic systems since they are a vital aspect of our basic comprehension. Art utilizing symbols and text can illustrate the way words naturally attach themselves to material reality.

In my artistic practice, the modification of store-bought goods reflects our consumerist society in the way we build our identities around readymade, corporate symbols (the culture wars around Nike shoes, Bud Light, and the “Barbie” movie clearly show how identity is formed through consumption). The consumption and display of corporate symbols is a feature of the evolution of the manufacturing economy into the information economy. This has transformed our society into the hyperreal world of simulation as we've shifted from a production-based economy centered on tangible goods to an economy of signs, symbols, and images. The massive amounts of data produced by the information economy is not used for education or social advancement - that would be a rational use of these technologies and resources. Instead, like the technology of atomic energy, they are first and foremost harnessed for war as we face a new type of misinformation warfare whose goal is to manipulate and exploit societal divisions. This world of consumption as a form of communication and the information economy is why my art focuses on language (communication) and assemblage work that utilizes retail-sourced items.

II. Gimmicks and Simulations

When I showed my work, including the piece Language Game, I was harshly critiqued by an art professor for being “gimmicky”. At that moment I felt like Wile E. Coyote with his haphazardly constructed machine sputtering to a stop and falling short of the goal. The word “gimmick” reminded me of writers like James Baldwin who see gimmicks, a seemingly unique or novel feature designed to attract attention, as becoming the dominant form of cultural expression in capitalist society. James Baldwin wrote about racial and social issues and was a civil rights activist. As Baldwin notes: “every negro boy . . . because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril . . . must find, with speed, a ‘thing,’ a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way. And it does not matter what the gimmick is”. Under the dictatorship of capital and the dominance of signs over reality, we are all in a disadvantageous position, that is, as individuals without community support. When our only sense of freedom is the manipulation of signs (not the ability to actually change the material state of the world), success rides on finding the “right” gimmick and so it seemed a more conceptual bent was needed in my journey as an artist as our world and every inch of our lives becomes increasingly conquered by signs and spectacles.

Our economic paradigm is mediated by signs which do not seek to obscure reality or create elaborate deceptions of reality (that takes a lot of effort and is not efficient). Rather than hide reality, the value of reality is simply removed. In making reality and authenticity meaningless and irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives, simulation and signs can work under their own logic and easily control those convinced of their value. If attention is currency, then is a gimmick bad if it stands out? A stream of shiny gimmicks is a function of the spectacle which cares not for sustainability but depends on disposable moments of attention that are always remixed and repeated (much like the simplistic gags of Wile E. Coyote that are barely altered and recycled into new scenarios). When Andy Warhol was shot in an attack on his life, he said that it didn’t feel real. He claimed that gun violence on television had a more emotional and lasting effect than the actual event. Perhaps modernity is a type of spectacle born of mass media where we are all distracted by images of disaster (see Fig. 1) so that the personal trainwreck of our own lives can never be felt as real. A common defense of abuse and exploitation is that it “isn’t so bad” and this lack of seriousness toward injustices in the world is fed by this mass media spectacle. Hollywood catastrophe films and the cartoon violence of Wile E. Coyote are reactions to the disruptions of industrial modernity as it produces new crises almost daily. Disaster must become entertainment and is, therefore, invested with the charge of desire. This spectacle distracts everyone, allowing the global status quo to continue to function with no room to discuss possible socioeconomic alternatives.

A world of simulation, as the dominance of signs, results in limited agency since “freedom” is experienced as a feeling entirely bound to our role as consumers. Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality illustrates the ways in which consumer society shapes our relationship to the material world. Consumer culture is defined by the systematic creation of a “hyper” dimension to objects. This added layer of reality in consumer objects is designed not only to serve practical needs but also to provide the basis for our identities and social status. Consumption, therefore, becomes a form of communication in which we use material objects to signal our place in society and to establish our relationships with others. It doesn’t take much effort to notice how people use corporate brands to communicate who they are as expensive clothing, purses, and cars are essential parts of many people’s lives. Material objects have always been symbols of power but, in pre-modern worlds, this symbolic show existed exclusively with the upper class. The lower classes, who did not have luxury items, relied primarily on other systems of meaning like folklore, mythology, and religion. The common person’s identity was also strongly tied to labor and skill. In modernity, identities are built on consumption and everyone, supposedly, has the opportunity to escape labor as an identity (the perplexing case of “famous for being famous” where a celebrity has no identifiable skill or talent). In this hyperreality, where the Object overtakes human subjectivity, consumption and spectacle are prioritized over production as society ultimately depends on the creation of desire for goods more than actually goods themselves. This is a break from older critiques and the idea of a linear progress of history since theories, like Marxism,  concentrate on production and ignore the experience of consumption.

Additionally, this hyperreality that is produced by the systematic coordination of consumer objects, causes reality to be obscured or replaced by the more valuable dimension of simulation. This condition makes it difficult to distinguish real value from artificial speculation. However, more importantly, it makes the human subject passive and not care if an object or experience is authentic or not. The value of directly lived experiences has been overwritten with signs and representation since direct experience cannot be bought, sold, and transferred via means of the market. Not only has it become increasingly important for an individual to have or possess a branded sign in order to have a sense of meaning, but this is increasingly devolving into merely the appearance of having that special something since appearances have even more flexibility within communication networks.

The criticism of being called “gimmicky” felt like I was being told I was attempting to simulate art and simulate being an artist. This, again, was part of my turn to conceptual art in my artistic practice since I’ve always been interested in appearance and imitation versus authenticity especially from my past experience in film (where the illusion and appearance of constructed sets is all that matters to get the job done). In exploring simulation, I have found that using projectors can be an effective element in art. My piece Corporate Ladder features a real ladder running into a wall that is virtually extended by a video projected above it. In the hyperreal, the boundary between the real and the artificial is blurred and so, as the title clearly conveys, the game of work and success is not real even though it overlaps and affects the real. At the top of the virtual ladder, pixelated fruits and bonus items from the original Pac-Man temptingly scroll across. The actual food these low-resolution images represent (i.e. cherries, grapes, a carrot) are mundane in real life but their symbolic reality is much more attractive and meaningful. The reward of “bonus points” promised by these signs represent the object of desire that is unattainable and always out of reach (like Jacque Lacan's objet petit a). The vagueness of their value is essential to creating the desire that fuels our motivation and actions. The video portion of a 2D ladder moves upward toward the signs but shrinks into a more complicated Donkey Kong game, then the girders and ladders shrink further until there are only vertical bars without any means to move up further. 

These meditations on commodity culture and the symbols of video game incentives (consumable foods) inspired me to work with medicinal items, since they are an apt metaphor for how consumption affects our consciousness. I briefly worked with pills but, after reading an article about children being hospitalized for accidentally eating THC gummy bears, I began working with gummy bears. These candies are a fitting metaphor for, not just consumption and drugs, but also nostalgia. The sweet memories of our younger days can become poisonous and problematic as our selective memories of the “good ol’ days” impede us from accepting change and progress. Svetlana Boym's "The Future of Nostalgia" discusses the ways in which nostalgia can be both a positive and negative force, offering a sense of comfort and connection to the past while also hindering social development and innovation. Boym interestingly points out that nostalgia had its origins in medicine and not philosophy or literature (an interesting intersection in medical discourse discussed earlier in “drug” as both medicinal and poisonous). Nostalgia was first seen as a disease of excessive homesickness that impeded soldiers from fighting in World War I. Nowadays, it has grown into various forms, including personal, national, and collective nostalgia, and it profoundly shapes our understanding of history, identity, and cultural memory. Boym argues for a more nuanced and critical approach to nostalgia in order to better navigate its complexities in the modern world since longing for the past can be a gateway to fascist sympathies (right-wing discourse always promotes the idea that the past was better, using cherry-picked statistics and images from a supposedly lost national “greatness”). Since gummy bears are associated with childhood, using them is directly relevant to exploring nostalgia since “in the twentieth century nostalgia [has become] privatized and internalized. The longing for home shrunk to the longing for one’s own childhood. It was not so much a maladjustment to progress as a maladjustment to adult life.”

At first, I did some experiments with melting gummy bears onto canvas to see how the texture and colors would blend into interesting patterns. Though this work was enjoyable and interesting, I ended up abandoning the idea. The use of canvas felt too traditional and the fact that I was actively manipulating the object was not true to the reverse relationship of Object domination over human activity. By placing them separately in clean boxes, these objects could exist without my involvement and control. The work became more of a display of retail commodity and existing like the symbols depicted in church stained glass - a shining representation of a transcendent reality (that of the “hyperreal” sign).

This artistic method explores the way consumer culture, with its endless retail offerings, creates a false experience of freedom and agency. Our actions are contained to an “active manipulation of signs [in order to] differentiate oneself from others. Yet this active manipulation of signs is not equivalent to postulating an active human subject that could resist, redefine, or produce its own signs”. Individuality is established by choosing corporate brands (signs) and we feel free because we have options on what to buy. However, all we are doing is playing with pre-made signs. The choice to “not buy” and not engage with the system is cost-prohibitive resulting in a forced participation one could not really call “freedom”. Our personal identity is constructed out of these pre-made signs and success is determined by varying methods of optimization of these signs. The access and delivery of these signs rely on technology so the prioritization of technological progress and efficiency becomes the fundamental value of society. Technology isn’t a new facet of culture but the excessively high value and urgency in its development and progression is unique to contemporary life.  

We can see this in how the study of the arts and humanities has become more and more discouraged in favor of STEM fields - as if another smartphone app would make life better for everyone rather than the emotional and spiritual depth provided by literature and the arts. All cultures have religious expressions and this is true whether or not they’re perceived as religious. These expressions arise from fundamental concerns and values and the fact that technological progress has become a guiding principle of modernity means it has become religious itself.

III. Idolatry and Ideology

The discourse around technological optimization has reached a fever pitch as popular science and television shows feature humans downloading consciousness into computers and living forever. This new hope for eternal life shows technology as a new idol. Christianity maintains its relevance in its warnings against idolatry. Since the time of Moses and the Golden Calf, people have “reveled in what their own hands had made”. When considering the worship of images or objects, it might seem like a situation that is impossible to escape within our culture of domineering consumerism. Indeed, the hype around new products and technology supplants the religious ecstasy of the old saints and visionaries. This is further evidence of a pre-modern spiritual fervor being recuperated into the secular world of markets and consumerism. The circulation of these religiously-charged images and objects is technological and so awareness of their delivery systems needs to be part of a critical analysis. Communication theorist McLuhan is known for coining the phrase "the medium is the message," which means that the form of the medium used to communicate information is as important as the information itself. This saying captures the need to acknowledge the methods and means for distributing information just as much as the information itself. According to McLuhan, media, whether it be print, radio, television, or the internet, is not just a means of communicating information, but is actually an extension of our senses and a catalyst for shaping our perception of reality. He also contends that different media have different effects on our mental and social structures. Mass media is a major characteristic defining modernity and the importance in quick and efficient distribution is one aspect of the way modern society continues to structure itself around ever-increasing technological efficiency.

Theologian and Christian anarchist Jacques Ellul saw idolatry in our relationship with technology as well as new “priesthoods” of experts arising around economics and bureaucracy. Philosophical anarchism is part of the critique of, not only hierarchies, but the glorification of political leaders and nations. Anarchism focuses on decentralization in authority and government. That is, accepting power and leadership but avoiding centralizations and concentrations of power beyond community control. This is accomplished through voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and direct action rather than through centralized power structures. 

This has guided me in attempting a universal and balanced approach to the handling of symbols of power. My work Welcome Mat features the Gadsden Flag (also known as the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag) as a floor mat to be stepped on. However, I also wanted to include problems within socialist discourse. In my piece Altar, a customized prayer candle features the hammer and sickle wielded by the Virgin Mary. Not only is this left-wing symbol presented as nostalgic and antiquated, but the text on the back of the candle reads “Genius is Secular Sainthood”. This is a comment on the hero worship and new “graven images” of those who think of themselves as critical thinkers on the political left but use quotes from their old, dead geniuses as a form of argument. Furthermore, the word “genius” has superstitious origins (the word used to mean “guardian spirit” and is related to “genie” and “djinn”) as well as playing into the long history of hierarchy-building that goes against the egalitarian goals of many socialist philosophies.

This anarchist mentality may seem contradictory in its attempt to both organize society while dismantling concentrations of power. However, the attitude of “living with contradictions” that Tristan Tzara wrote about is very much intune with an anarchist spirit. The unavoidable need to organize ideas in a manifesto (in the same way, the existence of power in organizing people is necessary) while also being “against manifestos” is a way we can see an effective handling of contradiction and double-movements. In this way we can open the conversation to critical approaches in other fields of analysis such as those taken up by Jacques Ellul.

Secular culture is full of “graven images” that are a substitute for God (such as in economics and the sciences). However, Ellul mainly targeted technology as society’s highest priority and false god. A number of his writings concern the emergence of a technological tyranny over humanity and, with the religious discourse around a technological society like ours, his predictions have proven true. The critique of hierarchy and power structures within the philosophical context of anarchism should be utilized against symbols of power which, in themselves, are manifestations of power. These symbols of power (national flags, ideologies) are fallen images that replace spirituality. We can clearly see our political leaders putting their faith in technology to solve the world’s problems as “modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.” Technology has been captured by systems of power and, thus, has no desire to address inequality and the task of meaningful existence. The narrow focus on technological progress cannot be society’s only method of problem solving. An approach to solving problems should be focused on egalitarianism and the human need for community. 

These ideas resonate so well with me because of the overarching influence car culture has had on my life. In the suburban lifestyle of the US southwest, not only was the long transit times and unreliability of public transit a reason car ownership was so important, but I never rode a city bus at any time growing up. Riding around in personal cars was the default system with no alternatives ever discussed. Cars were the key to adult life since every job expected you to have “reliable transportation” (the lack of investment in public transit made it, obviously, an unreliable choice). Cars were also important to social life, especially for dating since boys were expected to “pick up” their dates (the car an essential part of the active role of being male while women were encouraged to passively focus on their looks). Under these conditions, I dropped out of my first year of college so I could work full-time and buy a car. Within two years, I was in a major traffic collision that totaled the vehicle and what was once a precious investment for which I had sacrificed my education. Though insurance helped cover the cost of a new car, the derailment of my life over buying it in the first place and the way it put me in a position of being killed is certainly strong evidence justifying Ellul’s use of the word “tyranny”. Traffic collisions, like the one I experienced, are the most obvious manifestation of technology intersecting with our desire for speed. The cost of this wayward value system is clear in the fact that traffic fatalities are the number one cause of nonnatural death and this shows how we have not escaped mass death in our “rational” modern society.

The intersection of speed and car culture is explored in my piece Godspeed which features the words “godspeed” and “god is speed” scrolling across a car hood. In relation to my work on technological failure (with the statistics on car crashes revealing the unnecessary mass death we have accepted), it seemed like a car hood would be an interesting canvas. Since this was a piece on speed, and thus movement, I eventually decided there needed to be a moving element involved rather than painting a static design on it. Projecting letters scrolling vertically also imitated lanes of traffic. Furthermore, the use of a projector points to the role of Hollywood in supporting the squandering and idolatry of car culture. The “Fast & Furious” film franchise, an enormously successful and popular series of action movies that revolve around street racing, is obvious testimony to the skewed values of the world of spectacle. The lead actor of series, Vin Diesel, directly calls the films “mythology” with fellow actor Tyrese Gibson calling the protagonist of these stories “Jesus”. Gibson also praised fans for risking their lives during the COVID pandemic to support the films in theaters, a shocking admission to the death cult status of consumerism. It’s no coincidence that the film series justification for the protagonist's actions is the laughable cry of “family!” (the memes and internet skits that this “family” quote has spawned prove its triteness). The pre-modern world of aristocracy and feudalism (where families are the determining force of your life) still survives in these sorts of pathetic explanations for harmful and criminal behavior. Additionally, the intersection between cars and family is a cornerstone to the suburban form of life that organizes people into environmentally invasive and isolating units. The large-scale sprawl of suburbia feeds back into car dependency and the need to travel quickly.

        The theme of DOUBLESPEAK involves, not only the price of the everyday death toll of traffic collisions, but the environmental cost of maintaining roads and the pollution of fossil-fuel dependent infrastructure (this can be seen in the close relation between Godspeed and other works like the leaking toxic waste barrel of Condensed Soup). These costs can be justified only if technological progress is seen as more important than taking care of the general population. The emergence of extreme views like “accelerationism” (wanting to collapse the system by supporting the intensification of capitalism and technology to push it past its breaking point) is a predictable result of this outlook. In tandem with this, artificial intelligence (AI) has become the source of conspiracy theories with its fears of achieving god-like powers in the near future. The recent developments in internet folklore includes new fearful gods like Roko's Basilisk which predicts AI superintelligence will naturally develop time-traveling abilities. This AI will punish those who knew about it but didn't do what was necessary to bring it into existence (which means supporting technological development via capitalism at any cost). This punishment would involve this god-like AI keeping people’s consciousness alive in some virtual/digital state of hell. As part of my work Altar, a prayer candle boldly declares the message “God was the first conspiracy theory”. The fears of AI and world-controlling organizations, like the Illuminati, recoup many ideas from medieval theology that our modern society should have left behind long ago. The tone of conspiracy theory advocates matches the pretensions of those holders of occult knowledge who now organize around secularized theological concepts.

The unhealthy values of secular idolatry is related to the looping text of “godspeed / god is speed” by connecting the language element of ideology. In order to maintain itself, ideology relies on the continual repetition of platitudes and soundbites. My work Blessed, which features a car battery sitting atop and completing a cruciform, further develops ideas of how we prioritize power that is achieved through increased technological capacities rather than communal love and support that is a major feature of Christian teachings. In Blessed, the arms of the cross hold plates with fish and bread. Both of these food offerings are burnt as the hope for technology to solve the world’s problems is a failed miracle. We squander our resources investing in the dogma of technological consumerism as the planet is charred under climate change. A kitschy decal stating “blessed” is placed above the cruciform. The personal privilege granted by the technology-religion machine is twisted by an ideology of individualism into an easily repeated slogan. The inclusion of text in this piece, and my work in general, is important to showing how linguistic systems are a crucial part of our understanding of the world and maintaining ideology. Purely text-based work (i.e. essays, books, prose, etc.) stays within the realm of linguistic understanding while art-making can get at the intersection of conceptual understanding and material reality.

The “blessed” wall decal also gives the exhibit space a domestic feel since similar sayings, like “live, laugh, love”, are commonly used for home decor. Along with Welcome Mat, there is a search, not for final answers to the questions posed by art, but for a space of hospitality. The idea of hospitality, like many integral parts of culture, can be problematic and contradictory. A word or concept can only make sense and have meaning in relation to what it is not. For example, a signaling system of green / red or on / off are the most basic structure that can’t be simplified further. In the case of a value system, it follows that if everyone owned an expensive BMW then the car would have no value as opposed to its value being dependent on deprivation and the lack of others. This is a fundamental part of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy and Deconstruction theory. It is no surprise that Derrida became fascinated with the concept of hospitality and the necessary but unattainable task of rendering justice - “At once, in hospitality, there is the force that moves towards the other to welcome and the force to remain unscathed and pulled back from the other, trying to keep the door closed … letting all the others in is impossible”. In its pure and genuine form, hospitality is unconditional and unreciprocated. It involves welcoming the stranger without expecting them to conform to any preconceived expectations or conditions. In his view, the act of hospitality is not just about providing a temporary space or shelter, but it is also about opening oneself up to the radically different other. True hospitality involves accepting the other with their differences and forces us to confront our preconceived notions of identity and certainty which always requires a level of danger (both to our belief systems and being physically vulnerable to an other that may have malicious intent).

In my work Fence, the contradictory signage that most everyone has seen on fences in different circumstances is placed together (see Figure 7). The two works, Welcome Mat and Fence, are companion pieces that test the notion of hospitality. In the DOUBLESPEAK exhibit, Welcome Mat was placed at the entrance and Fence was placed across so that it would be one of the first pieces a viewer encounters. This brackets the whole space under the theme of hospitality since the two works involve questions of barriers and protective attitudes towards others. True strength and bravery is not in hostile and protective attitudes such as those manifested by walls, fences, barriers and the platitude “Don’t Tread on Me”. Rather, it is facing the dangers of the unknown by being hospitable to strangers and others that one shows their courage.

IV. Conclusion

Though the promise of modernity and its prioritization of rationality and logic has failed in many ways, modernity and technology is not wholly evil. They have made important gains in human rights and improving the quality in many areas. We should not attempt some impossible return to a prior “golden age” of monarchy, nor abandon modernity for some fantasy of the “natural” communities of hunter-gatherers. What is hoped for is a remembrance of the principles of egalitarianism that should always move in tandem with rationality, rather than an instrumental rationality focused only on technologic powers driven by monied interests (which drives the mass deaths of consumerism and car culture). The pre-modern worlds of oppressive hierarchy and the exclusive violence of fascism are barriers to progress that, in most cases, cannot be overtly and directly confronted. They are mostly hidden in overlapping visual and linguistic systems that art has a unique capacity to address. The underlying impetus toward speed that defines modernity and shapes the modern psyche, puts time-based art in a unique position of relevance. Especially when addressing the time-bound performance of language. The way objects overlap with virtual systems is illustrated in my use of video and projectors, and the conceptual presentation of everyday objects can expose unconscious contradictions implicit in our trite belief systems. The double movements of language, in literal vs. metaphor, and in technology, the improvement of convenience and accessibility yet domineering demands of the market, must be acknowledged if art is to step outside this noise and provide an authentic connection.

As modernity reaches its breaking point in the blind frenzy of consumerism and the death march of the ceaseless technological arms race, art can provide a hospitable space to confront the contradictory positions in which we’ve found ourselves. It is a way for us to experience spiritual and child-like play outside the demands of the spectacle. Though my work involves heavy themes such as gun violence, traffic collisions, and environmental destruction, it seeks to take on these anxieties for the viewer and provide relief in irony and humor. By suspending these anxieties and admitting the doublespeak of our contradictory belief systems, we can have a space and time to authentically exist and connect with one another. Art is about truth and we need to be true to this promise of artmaking as we face the end of modernity.