Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity

Marc Auge (translated by John Howe)

Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity Verso, London & New York, 1995.

First published (1992) as Non-Lieux, Introduction k une anthroplogie de la supermodernite

ISBN 185884 956 3 (hbk) 29.95

ISBN 185984 0515 (pbk) 9.95

An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in fronts of TVs, computers and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls "non-space" results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner.'

It is `the logic of these late-capitalist phenomena' that Auge attempts to describe. So far, so good, but this is only from Non-places' back-cover blurb.

In fact the book is very disappointing: the author offers a bland narrative of the experience of modern life, for example, on the supermarket: `The customer wanders round in silence, reads labels, weighs fruit and vegetables on a machine that gives the price along with the weight, then hands his credit card to a young woman as silent as himself-anyway, not very chatty-who runs each article past the sensor of a decoding machine before checking the validity of the customer's credit card' (pp.99-100). He nostalgically contrasts this to some romantic idealization of the (French) past, and mixes it up with what can only be described as pretentious waffle.

To be fair, some of the concepts introduced are interesting. Anthropological places are contrasted to spaces; places in turn are contrasted to nonplaces: `If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a nonplace' (pp.77-78). Modernity is contrasted to supermodernity: it is supermodernity which creates non-places, `spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places...' (p.78). For example, `in the modernity of the Baudelairean landscape ... everything is combined', the old and new are interwoven; on the other hand, supermodernity `makes the old (history) into a specific spectacle, as it does with all exoticism and all local particularity ... in the non-places of supermodernity, there is always a specific position ... for "curiosities" presented as such' (p.110).

It's true that airports, supermarkets, new housing estates, suburbs and so on are alienating (non-)places-just listen to Strummer's lyrics to `Lost in the Supermarket' (The Clash, London Calling, 1979); it is also true that we are forced to spend more and more of our lives in such (non-)places. This is why this little book appeared promising. But the concepts Auge employs are hopelessly inadequate to explain the proliferation and character of these `late capitalist phenomena'. The definition, cited above, of place vis-d-vis non-place begs the questions: relational to whom?, concerned with whose history?; whose identity? Auge's point is, of course, that everywhere is appearing more and more similar, becoming more and more homogeneous. But consider the British Raj, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: they went to great lengths, in their architecture, in their clubs, and in their lawns and gardens, to recreate large parts of India in the image of Britain (or England). For Indians, these places must have appeared as non-places. This suggests that any somewhere may appear/be simultaneously a place and a non-place, depending upon your perspective; this in turn opens up the possibility of struggle, the struggle to create place from non-place-or to preserve (recreate) place from place. It also suggests that non-places, like places, are in fact intensely historical: they are historical in the sense that their very existence bears witness to struggle; and they are relational in the sense that their form reflects the development of capitalist social relations-the problem is that in many ways this (recent) history is depressing: that's one reason why supermarkets, say, are depressing...

There is more to it than this, of course. Non-places tend to be designed in such a way as to enhance our sense of both atomisation and anonymity (which makes struggle more difficult). Auge does in fact recognise this characteristic of non-places: `As anthropological places create the organically social, so nonplaces create solitary contractuality' (p.94). But he can offer no explanation as to why it should be so, or who should wish it. Thus he laments the fact that new towns fail to offer `places for living' (p.66), but that is all, he simply laments it. There are no contradictions, only (unexplained) paradoxes; there is no getting below the surface of what is going on. Auge has no place (pun intended) for struggle in his theory, he offers no clues as to process; and no possibility of change.