Other Things Other Things Bill Brown The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Bill Brown is the Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture at the University of Chicago and a coeditor of Critical Inquiry. He is the author of several books, including A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature, also published by the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 07665- 2 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28316- 6 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226283166.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Brown, Bill, 1958– author. Other things / Bill Brown. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-226-07665-2 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN: 978-0-226-28316-6 (ebook) 1. Object (Philosophy). 2. Material culture. 3. Object (Philosophy) in literature. 4. Material culture in literature. 5. Material culture in art. I. Title. bd220.B76 2015 814′.6—dc23 2015014453 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). To Short, in thanks for the gift of culture Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Overture (The Shield of Achilles) 1 One Things—in Theory 17 I The Matter of Modernism Two The Secret Life of Things (Virginia Woolf) 49 Three The Modernist Object and Another Thing (Man Ray) 79 Four Concepts and Objects, Words and Things (Philip K. Dick) 125 II Unhuman History Five The Unhuman Condition (Hannah Arendt/Bruno Latour) 155 Six Object Relations in an Expanded Field (Myla Goldberg/ Harold Searles) 175 Seven Objects, Others, and Us (Brian Jungen) 197 III Kitsch Kulchur Eight How to Do Things with Things: A Toy Story (Shawn Wong) 221 Nine Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny (Spike Lee) 245 Ten Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object 271 Coda A Little History of Light (Dan Flavin/Gaston Bachelard) 291 Notes 303 Glossary 371 Index 375 Illustrations Plates (following page 242) 1 Carl Andre, One Hundred Sonnets (I . Flower) (1963) 2 Carl Andre, 18 Small Field (2001) 3 Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five (1947) 4 Robert Rauschenberg, Bed (1955) 5 Lee Bontecou, Untitled (1959) 6 Lee Bontecou, Untitled (1961) 7 Andre Breton, Poem- Object (1935) 8 Man Ray, Tears (1930–32) 9 Brian Jungen, Bush Capsule (2000) 10 Brian Jungen, Furniture Sculpture (2006) 11 Brian Jungen, Cetology (2002) 12 Brian Jungen, Prototype for New Understanding #7 (1999) 13 Brian Jungen, Prototype for New Understanding #9 (1999) 14 Robert Davidson, Eagle Transformation Mask (2002) 15 Thomas Edstrand, “The Chief” (c. 2010) 16 Advertisement for Nike Air Jordans, Sports Illustrated (1997) 17 Christopher Radko, “Heroes All” (c. 2001) 18 Christopher Radko, “Brave Heart” (c. 2001) 19 Minoru Yamasaki/Emery Roth & Sons, World Trade Center, scenic skyline view from the south (1964–74) 20 FEMA/Bri Rodriguez, Rescue and recovery operations continue at the site of the collapsed World Trade Center (2001) x List of Illustrations 21 Doug Potoksky, “A young woman keeps candles burning at a Union Square memorial” (2001) 22 Window washer’s squeegee handle (2001) 23 NYPD patrol car door (2001) 24 Cell phone used by New York commuter (2001) 25 Dan Flavin, Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi) (1963) 26 Tara Donovan, Untitled (Styrofoam Cups) (2008) 27 Sarah Sze, detail from Tilting Planet (2006) 28 Dan Peterman, Excerpts from the Universal Lab (travel pod #1, #2, and #3) (2005) 29 Marie Krane and Cream Co., Blue Studio Wall (2010) 30 Michael Brown, Elvis (bucket) and Aretha Franklin (mop) (2008) 31 Dan Flavin, Pink out of a corner (to Jasper Johns) (1963) 32 Dan Flavin, Monument 4 those who have been killed in an ambush (to PK, who reminded me about death) (1966) Figures 1.1 Joseph Cornell, Untitled (“Hotel Eden”) (c. 1945) 38 1.2 Giorgio Morandi, Still Life (1949) 42 2.1 Damage to Liverpool Street in London following the Zeppelin raid on the night of September 8–9, 1915 (1915) 69 2.2 Claude- Marie Ferrier or Hugh Owen, Crystal Palace (view of west end of building) (1851) 71 2.3 Bone & fat bucket: Save them for munitions (London, between 1914 and 1918) 74 2.4 [Louis Oppenheim,] German conservation poster (1917) 75 3.1 Man Ray, Object to Be Destroyed (1932) 80 3.2 Mel Bochner, Portrait of Dan Flavin (1966) 84 3.3 Man Ray, Mathematical Object, from Cahiers d’Art (1936) 102 3.4 Man Ray, L’énigme d’Isidore Ducasse (1920) 103 3.5 Man Ray, Cadeau (1921) 105 3.6 Man Ray, Untitled, from Champs Délicieux, Paris (1922) 108 3.7 Man Ray, Untitled, from Champs Délicieux, Paris (1922) 109 3.8 Man Ray, A New Method of Realizing the Possibilities of the Photograph, from Vanity Fair (1922) 111 3.9 Paul Outerbridge, photograph for Ide Collars, from Vanity Fair (1922) 114 3.10 Still from Emak- Bakia (1926) 115 3.11 Still from Emak- Bakia (1926) 115 List of Illustrations xi 3.12 Still from Emak- Bakia (1926) 115 3.13 Man Ray, Percolator (1917) 118 3.14 Man Ray, Object of Destruction, from This Quarter (1932) 120 6.1 “Drawing 5,” from Melanie Klein, Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961) 184 7.1 White plastic chair (n.d.) 207 8.1 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (When I hear the word culture I take out my checkbook) (1985) 229 8.2 Still from Toy Story (1995) 243 9.1 Butterfly Tie Jolly Nigger bank (c. 1890s–1920s) 252 9.2 Dinah bank (1911) 253 9.3 Still from Bamboozled (2000) 259 9.4 Still from Bamboozled (2000) 259 9.5 Still from Bamboozled (2000) 268 9.6 Still from Bamboozled (2000) 268 Acknowledgments When you take a very long while to complete a book, it’s hard to sense xiii that time as coinciding with the time in which life is lived, and in which some cherished lives come to an end. Jay Fliegelman possessed a materi- alism all his own, but his fascination with objects was contagious, and his excitement about my materialism, and his questions about it, always proved catalytic. Miriam Hansen and I taught together (“Modernity and the Sense of Things”), we wrestled over ways to make sense of one or an- other paragraph in Kracauer or William James, and we thought together so comfortably as to complete each other’s sentences, in class or on the page. John Hofstra, while never ceasing to ask, “Why things?,” always ex- pressed an unbridled certainty about the project; he also introduced me to the work of Harold Searles. More than I am willing to say, I miss these interlocutors for whom I continue to write. Three deans at the University of Chicago—Janel Mueller, John Boyer, and Martha Roth—provided the time and the resources for me to pur- sue my research to the best of my ability. A year as the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Scholar at the Huntington Library (in 2012–13) proved essential to the completion of the book’s most difficult chapters; Roy Ritchie made that fellowship possible, and the wonderful staff at the Library made it fruitful. A series of remarkable research assistants— Thomas Kim, Nicholas Yablon, Paul Durica, and Christopher Dingwall— amplified my abilities with patience, efficiency, and enthusiasm. Chris in particular—tracking down images and citations, establishing deadlines, helping to prepare the manuscript—made sure that the project would xiv Acknowledgments become a product, the object it turned out to be. At the University of Chicago, the Object Cultures Project (housed within the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory) has been an environment in which to sense (and to make sense of) different disciplinary investments in materiality and the object world. Anwen Tormey and Amanda Davis make the Proj- ect work. I continue to learn from my graduate students at Chicago, who have been adept at thinking collectively on behalf of giving form to pass- ing insights, and no less adept at articulating both fascination and frus- tration with the current thinking about objects and things, matter and materiality. At the University of Chicago Press, I continue to benefit from the diligence, patience, and keen intelligence of Alan Thomas; his reputa- tion as an editor continues to grow precisely because he has always been so much more than an editor. In the opening notes to the relevant chapters, I credit journals that have published previous versions of the material, and I thank specific audiences and individuals whose observations, questions, and sugges- tions helped to turn a talk into something worth reading. Other friends and colleagues have been engaged across the long haul, responding to chapters, recommending further reading, talking at length about the many topics I run into across the following pages. It is a better book— much better—thanks to the attention of Marie Krane Bergman, Lauren Berlant, Theodore Brown, Andrew Cole, Leela Gandhi, Elizabeth Hel- singer, Gregory Jackson, Patrick Jagoda, W. J. T. Mitchell, Anne Munly, Richard Neer, Deborah Nelson, Jay Schleusener, and Eric Slauter. With other folks—David Alworth, Jessica Burstein, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Heather Keenleyside, Jonathan Lamb, Jennifer Roberts, Jane Taylor, and Babette Bärbel Tischleder—I have had the pleasure of sharing conceptual and historical questions in the midst of working to give new subfields the shape they deserve. With M. L. Fraser Brown I have enjoyed the sat- isfactions of figuring out when and why prose seems to work.