…When it is a Perambulatory Hinge!
The theory of ley
lines are attributed to the British author Alfred Watkins (1855-1935). He first
referred to them The
Old Straight Track (1925).
Ley lines are straight lines that connect culturally historic places of
esoteric interest that are woven into the landscape. However, they are often
considered to be more theoretical than material. Ley lines then had a following
in the Countryside Discovery Movement. And following the publication of The View Over Atlantis (1969)
by John Michell there was a 1970s resurgence through the Earth Mysteries
School, which focused on seeing ley lines as ancient paths that connected
monuments and places of spiritual importance, for example in paganism. Interest
was in the hidden energies between significant points. During this phase a
magazine on the subject was spawned, The
Ley Hunter. In contemporary times, the deep topographer Nick Papadimitriou is
interested in them as part of his work in “answering the call of the county”
(Papadimitriou 2009). That county being the geographical region of Middlesex.
While you can
obviously read the Wikipedia page on ley lines, some psychogeographers (1) and
Ley line proponents (and deniers) think that Wikipedia is not clear enough
about what a ley line is. This is how Jeff Belanger opens
his blog about his investigation into them:
A study of leys taught me that the current
general idea of what ley lines are is pretty off base. But in researching the
phenomenon, some truly intriguing earth energy mysteries can be
found. There are fairy paths, corpse roads, geister wegen, and a slew of other
supernatural linear features on our planet where people do come for spiritual
experiences, and there are ‘roads’ that ghosts have been reported traveling
down repeatedly (Belanger 2003).
And
after doing his research into their validity, Belanger summarises his
exploration, thus:
Ley
lines certainly started researchers like Devereux down the road of
investigating true spirit paths and other earth energies, and for that, we’re indebted
to Alfred Watkins. But the term ‘ley line’ is not specific enough to describe
any peculiar linear or energy feature on our planet. There are many earth
mysteries that we need to continue to explore with our open minds (ibid.).
However,
I am not writing an article on what ley lines are, exactly, but on something
that might be considered to be akin to the postmodern equivalent of a ley
line…sort of: perambulatory hinges.
Perambulatory
hinges are generally attributed to postmodern space (2). Or should I say, they
are predominantly a postmodern event, occurrence or manifestation. The reason
for this is that, unlike ley lines, they are not formed at places that are
considered to be sacred in their day or have any religious significance (3).
Secondly, they are actually produced through their effects: they come into
existence as a particular reflexive response. This reflexive feature is largely
a postmodern theme. It is also important to note that perambulatory hinges are
not lines at all. They are more like points or axis and are formed through the
effects of a turning on the spot carried out by an observer in the articulation
of a gaze. However, they cannot be made through the effects of a single ‘turn
on the spot’, but build up cumulatively over time. ‘Turning’ and ‘calling’ are
two key components of the hinge (4).
Perambulatory
hinges work through a kind of ‘call’ made by a particular piece of urban
phenomenon. Because the calling is psychogeographical – that is, a particular
person is responding aesthetically/affectively to the object – it is subjective
(therefore individual) in that regard. However, as well has having our own
personal responses to urban objects, we very often share our reaction with
others. This is the cultural aspect of the hinge. So, when a particular object
‘calls’ to a number of people in a similar way over time, a perambulatory hinge
develops. This is how it works…
Here’s an analogy. You
may be walking to work or shopping in the High Street when an advert calls to
you: it appears to be calling to you – ‘you’ are its ‘audience’. If you
remember the advertising scene from Minority
Report (Steven
Spielberg 2002) when we see the personalised adverts aimed at Captain John
Anderton (Tom Cruise), it is rather like that. But instead the urban phenomenon
has no inherent intention built into it like the personalised adverts do in Minority Report (so it is not ideological in that
sense). Instead what happens is that you, the individual, overwrite a
personalised aspect onto the object in question. You spot something, you make
some personal connection to it, and you turn to look at it. A good example of
this ‘personal’ part of a perambulatory hinge is given to us by the theorist of
how ‘myth’ works, the cultural semiologist Roland Barthes. Barthes gives us a perfect
psychogeographical example in ‘Myth Today’. He provides an instance of being
out on a walk in Paris when he comes across a house with a specific
architectural design that has meaning to him. This house is of a specific
Spanish style and is out of place in its French context. Barthes says: “I feel
as if I were personally receiving an imperious injunction to name this object a
Basque chalet…it comes and seeks me out in order to oblige me to acknowledge
the body of intentions which have motivated it and arranged it there as the
signal of an individual history” (2000: 125). For Barthes “it is a real call,
which the owners of the chalet send out to me” (ibid.).
This
idea of ‘calling’ is important to how the perambulatory hinge works (as you can
see by Barthes’ example, it is personal yet also cultural). It is also this
concept of ‘calling’ that connects the work of Barthes to the neo-Marxist Louis
Althusser in regard to ideology (and it is also what the perambulatory hinge
hinges upon, literally). In Althusser’s and Barthes’ work this calling is the
process of subjecting. The urban object actually subjects you, it interpellates
you (in the hinge it interpellates you materially to the actual ‘spot’ in
space, the potential hinge). It recruits you through its effects. The
perambulatory hinge may not recruit you in the absolutely ideological way
expressed by Althusser. But nevertheless it is through a cultural effect that
it acts upon you, so in that sense it can still be argued to be ideological.
One of the points Barthes makes in regards to the myth is worth mentioning here
in regards to the hinge. He says that the myth operates such that “at the
moment of reaching me, it suspends itself, turns away and assumes the look of
generality: it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent” (2000:
125).
In ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, Althusser
provides us with the example of a policeman in the street shouting out a
general ‘hey you’ to a specific person, but we think he is calling to us (even
if we haven’t committed a crime) and we turn in response to the call
(2006:118). So, like the policeman in Althusser’s example, the urban décor
hails us – well it hails everyone, but we feel it is hailing us, specifically –
and we, sort of, do this 180 degree turn that Althusser says occurs at the
point of subjection (ibid.). Consequently, we recognise the calling of the
phenomenon in its personalised hailing of us. The object, in its expression
which is directed at us, appears in its obviousness. It really is calling us.
The effects of the response to the calling retroactively produces its cause
through subjecting the individual. Therefore, the individual who is responding
to the urban phenomenon, as the subject, is both the cause and effect. This is
the effect of the urban apparatus of which the individual is subjected, but it
is also what produces her/him as the psychogeographer in that moment, as the
cause of the effects at that point in space.
Here are two examples,
one which is likely not to be a perambulatory hinge and one where one might be
developing. In May 2015, I was kindly invited to Birmingham by the local artist
Ally Standing for a psychogeographical exploration of the city. We took a short
trip on the train out to Spaghetti Junction and explored the space under
Birmingham’s internationally famously complex road system. At one point, Ally
pointed out the above pillar to me because it had ‘zine’ written on it. At this
time I was editing a psychogeography zine (S T E P Z), and she was also contributing to it. So she
turned towards the pillar, followed shortly after by myself making the same
turn. In an Althusserian sense it was as if it was us who were “meant by the
hailing” (2006: 118). However, I think this spot would be a tenuous place for a
hinge to develop due to the rarity of this particular recognition. And it is
the multiple recognitions of the call that is the key. Not many people entering
this space will have a connection to the word ‘zine’. However, I am not saying
that there might not be other hinges under development under Spaghetti Junction
that I am unaware of. So, let’s look at a possibly better example in
Birmingham.
At the New Street
Development near the train station is the above section of the new station
entrance. This contemporary structure has one of the classic motifs of
postmodern architecture, a mirror-effect that reflects the surrounding
environment of the space around it: what the architectural scholar Reinhold Martin describes as “feedback loops…a doubling
back of the surface onto itself” (2010: 106). This building is ‘uncanny’ in the
Freudian sense of the word: unheimlich.
Sigmund Freud takes the word from the German unheimlich which means the opposite of what one
might find familiar (heimlich meaning familiar, in other words
homely: but be careful here, because for Freud the two terms become conflated
into what he means by ‘uncanny’). So, the uncanny has the qualities of both the
familiar and the unfamiliar at the same time.
I
would describe the building as producing a strange kind of affective dissonance
in its uncanniness, which is very disturbing. It throws you into this spaceless
space in between binary oppositions (recognisable/unrecognisable,
understandable/incomprehensible). Reinhold says these binaries are an inherent
part of the feedback loop. Also, in regards to both mirroring and the uncanny,
often the thing recognised is known but is out of place. Decontextualisation
can create the feeling of the uncanny. The image creates a doubling and the
reflection of the nearby Redbrick building is both familiar and unfamiliar,
hence uncanny. You recognise it to be a Redbrick, but it appears to be sitting
atop a single pillar that couldn’t possibly support it. I believe it is
possible that this uncanny effect could, over time, produce a perambulatory
hinge in this area.
To
summarise, the perambulatory hinge is not a clear-cut phenomenon, it cannot be
seen and can only be supposed. When the calling and psychogeographical response
is similar within the ‘community’ in regards to a specific piece of urban décor
– and when it occurs multiple times over a period of time – eventually a
perambulatory hinge arises. You cannot see the hinge come into being, you can
only surmise that it might be there. Of course, you can possibly verify it
through discussion. The hinge appears when it reaches a kind of critical mass.
Even though it is invisible, it nevertheless is still material because it is
caused by this 180-degree turn mooted by Althusser (of course, it isn’t
necessarily exactly 180 degrees). Also, while you cannot precisely pinpoint the
exact position of the hinge in space, you can probably work out roughly where
it may be by looking at lines of sight (5). However, unlike a desire line –
which is very apparent – it is not visible, although sometimes there may be
traces…
If
you are fortunate enough you could be present at the making of a perambulatory
hinge. You may be the person on the spot at Birmingham New Street when critical
mass is reached, and that hinge comes into being for the first time. And if, as
the famous and mythical Richard Essex of the London Psychogeographical
Association says, “All ley lines emanate from Porlock”, I wonder where the
‘spiritual’ home of the perambulatory hinge might be?
Notes
(1) Psychogeographers
are urban (generally) walkers who practice a critical form of walking which
investigates particular aspects of the landscape that hold interest to them.
The term ‘psychogeography’ is rather vague and can refer to anything from
analysing the social history of a place to critiquing the prevalence of
neoliberal policy as it appears in our towns and cities. Psychogeographers are
interested in the aesthetics of space and how it affects the psyche.
(2) Perambulatory
hinges are not absolutely a postmodern phenomenon; however, the palimpsest
aspect of postmodern space also makes for it to be more likely to occur in
postmodernity.
(3) We now live in a
secular society and also the position of the State as being the centre of
cultural identity has now been largely displaced in postmodernity.
(4) G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form (1969) may of interest to those of you
who are mathematically inclined in regard to ‘calling’.
(5) I would point
those interested in ‘lines of sight’ to Michel Foucault’s ‘Las Meninas’.
