Aalborg Universitet Non-Place Gebauer, Mirjam; Nielsen, Helle Thorsøe; Schlosser, Jan Tødtloff; Sørensen, Bent Publication date: 2015 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Gebauer, M., Nielsen, H. T., Schlosser, J. T., & Sørensen, B. (Eds.) (2015). Non-Place: Representing Placelessness in Literature, Media and Culture. Aalborg Universitetsforlag. (Interdisciplinære kulturstudier). General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: April 26, 2017 Edited by Mirjam Gebauer, Helle Thorsøe Nielsen, Jan T. Schlosser and Bent Sørensen REPRESENTING PLACELESSNESS IN LITERATURE, MEDIA AND CULTURE AALBORG UNIVERSITY PRESS NON-PLACE REPRESENTING PLACELESSNESS IN LITERATURE, MEDIA AND CULTURE AALBORG UNIVERSITY PRESS Non-Place: Representing Placelessness in Literature, Media and Culture Edited by Mirjam Gebauer, Helle Thorsøe Nielsen, Jan T. Schlosser, Bent Sørensen Open Access edition Volume 7 in the book series Interdisciplinære kulturstudier Editors of the series: Steen Christiansen, Brian R. Graham, Louise Mønster, Peder Kaj Pedersen & Jan T. Schlosser © Aalborg University Press, 2015 Graphics on frontcover: Ernst-Ullrich Pinkert Layout: Hofdamerne ApS v/ Lea Rathnov & Cecilie von Haffner ISBN: 978-87-7112-315-9 ISSN: 1904-898X Published by: Aalborg University Press Skjernvej 4A, 2nd floor DK – 9220 Aalborg Ø Phone: +45 99407140 [email protected] forlag.aau.dk This book is published with financial support from Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers, except for reviews and short excerpts in scholarly publications. CONTENTS 5 The Absence of Place and Time: Non-Place and Placelessness Mirjam Gebauer, Helle Thorsøe Nielsen, Jan T. Schlosser, Bent Sørensen Theoretical Considerations and Engagement with the Concept of Non-Place 33 The Newest Place is a BMW X3 in Lagos: Contemporary Notes on Marc Augé’s Non-Lieux, Dan Ringgaard 51 In Search of Place-ness: Non-Places in Late Modernity, Aldo Legnaro 69 No Place Like Home: Marc Augé and the Paradox of Transitivity, Anthony W. Johnson Performing Non-Place 95 From Hell or From Nowhere? Non-Places in Douglas Coupland’s Novels, Bent Sørensen 113 From the Roundabout to the Carousel: Non-Places as Comic Playgrounds in the Cinema of Jacques Tati, Wolfram Nitsch 129 Collision and Movement in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Steen Ledet Christiansen 145 Non-Places and Separated Worlds: Rodrigo Pla’s Film La Zona, Pablo R. Cristoffanini 171 “Between us and Weimar lies Buchenwald” – Places in Euro- pean Holocaust Literature, Ernst-Ullrich Pinkert Actualizations, Revisions and Extensions of Augé 195 Non-Place and Anthropological Place: Representing the M25 with Special Reference to Margaret Thatcher, Gimpo, and Iain Sinclair, Jens Kirk 221 The Monstrosity of Non-Places: Troll Hunter, Jørgen Riber Christensen 237 Provincial Non-Places in Moritz von Uslar’s Pop Reportage Novel Deutschboden, Mirjam Gebauer 259 Northern Jutland as an Intertextual Location: Hyperrealities in Peripheral Denmark, Kim Toft Hansen and Jørgen Riber Christensen Historical Retrofitting of Augé 281 Berlin: Place and Non-Place in Ida Hattemer-Higgins’ The His- tory of History, Jan T. Schlosser 297 Imagined Places – Location in Lars von Trier Films in the Per- spective of Carl Th. Dreyer and Andrey Tarkovsky, Gunhild Agger 329 The Welfare State as Non-Place in Danish Literature: Anders Bodelsen and Lars Frost, Jens Lohfert Jørgensen 353 The Snowy Desert in Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” and Other Non-Places in Modernity, Anker Gemzøe 385 Walking between Worlds: Yeats and the Golden Dawn, Camelia Elias 401 Author biographies THE ABSENCE OF PLACE AND TIME: NON-PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS Mirjam Gebauer, Helle Thorsøe Nielsen, Jan T. Schlosser & Bent Sørensen In the opening chapter of his book Non-Places: Introduction to an An- thropology of Supermodernity (1995), Marc Augé pictures the experi- ence of smooth contemporary travel, using the example of a French businessman. He describes common operations such as drawing money from a cash machine, driving a car on the motorway and checking in to a flight. None of what is depicted will surprise readers. On the contrary, they will recognize these actions as integrated parts of the practices of daily life around the world. Still, to Augé what comprises the experience of the ‘non-place’ is exactly this uniform practice of following predetermined procedures, often communicat- ing with a counterpart which is a machine or a person wearing a uni- form and fulfilling a job function – rather than communicating with persons who are perceived as unique fellow human beings. Thus, by non-places he means places which facilitate significant aspects of modern life, but do not allow for their user to satisfy important human needs. In this way, a highway is a highly functional place of transit built to facilitate smooth movement. At this location, hu- man beings are supposed to coexist side by side without interacting. Every user of the highway is pursuing his or her respective destina- tion, whereby avoiding making contact with each other guarantees the effectiveness of the place. Normally, social contact at this place occurs mostly involuntarily, for instance as a result of a crash. This 5 example can to a certain extent be transferred to human behaviour at other transit places such as the train or airport where the respec- tive contact between passengers might be perceived as almost as un- wanted as a rear-end collision accident. At least, it would break the conventional code of behaviour at these places, according to which we are supposed to aspire to our respective goals without interact- ing more than absolutely necessary with each other. Although it has been claimed that the notion of the non-place, as it was put forth and framed by Augé, embodies the view of a mel- ancholic modernism, it quickly became arguably one of the most influential concepts in the debate of place and space in supermo- dernity. Also, over the last two decades, non-places and phenomena related to them have only proliferated as for instance the number of airlines and destinations, parking lots and gigantic shopping cen- tres has significantly increased. The emergence and dissemination of new kinds of mediated places, such as cyberspace or other virtual realities has created new possibilities in the production of space and place and a new field to engage with and investigate in terms of the analysis of space and place. Nevertheless, the issues of non-place- ness seem not to have been resolved by this. At best, it has added new dimensions to the issue, and in Augé’s view it has even exacer- bated the issue, as non-placeness now has penetrated the very heart of where the individual is rooted and builds its primary relations – the family home: Today, TVs and computers have taken the place of the fire- place in the center of the domicile. […] Also the individual has experienced a decentring of itself. It is equipped with instruments which bring him constantly in touch with the most distant outside world. (Augé 2010, 124, our transla- tion) This point still seems valid today, however it is only half the truth as mobile streaming devices and services have increased in numbers as well as gained huge terrain in terms of providing a serious sup- 6 plement and alternative to more traditional viewing and production practices; Netflix here being an obvious example. This in turn has consequences for humans’ mediated relations to space and place and for their sense of near and far, homely and functional, place and non-place. As the distinction between places and non-places is blur- ring, the issue of non-placeness becomes unavoidable. In this way, Augé’s concept of the non-place has not only shown its fruitfulness in the past, but has even gained more currency in the present. In a small way the present anthology is a symptom of just that. When discussing Augé’s definition of the non-place, one reser- vation that should be made is that the notion of the non-place does not exclusively revolve around concepts of spatiality and place. In fact, a non-place does not actually exist except through human in- teraction with it, and the sense of absence or shortcoming evoked by this type of place is not always originally caused by the features of certain places themselves, but rather by a discomfort in a certain way of life equally related to the human perception of time. Non-places and their existence as such are not the heart of the matter for those concerned with their negative influence on people’s lives and feel- ing of self. The real issue is the proliferation of the non-places across the world and the attendant continuously increased amount of time people spend moving through and around in functional places of transit.