Non-Places

Non-places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity
Marc Auge

A Literature Review

Marc Augé posits that non-places, rampant in supermodernity, are a late capitalist phenomenon. He claims that it is due to an excess of three things in society today: time, space, and ego.

First, an excess of time is a symptom of an extended life expectancy. Now, there can be four generations in co-existence rather than three. This expands the collective memory of society, thereby increasing the times that an individual’s own history coincides with history at large.

Next, the excess of space comes from the change in scale. The entire planet becomes more accessible due to technology and the perception of contraction actually becomes an overabundance of space now within reach of all.

And finally, the excess of ego speaks to the rise of the self-obsessed man and the fall of the public man. It is due to the previous two conditions and the increase of the advertising infrastructure based on tapping into individual freedoms.

To distinguish between a place and a non-place, Augé uses the term “organically social” for a place and “solitary contractuality” for a non-place. By postulating that a place is a more anthropological paradigm, it is concerned with identity, the rational and the historical. Whereas for a non-place, there is no integration to an earlier precedent. It only looks at history as a specific spectacle at a distance, and enhances anonymity and alienation. Yet, there is still an illusion of being part of a global network, linking back to the city-world. These gauges for definition fall short of consistency if one looks at the permutation of perspective. For the British Raj period, many buildings erected were a concoction of Victorian, neo-gothic and vernacular Indian styles. The attempt of the British government to assimilate itself into the land and culture of the place generated a building that would be considered a non-place by the definition of Augé. Yet, by its very existence, it bears witness to the struggle in relation to the historical times of the British occupation of India. Similarly, taking the case of Las Vegas, it exemplifies that perhaps a non-place can become a place. The random references of the exotic or the metropolitan is exactly the place that people by the millions flock to in order to obtain an “identity” and be “organically social”. Augé speaks of the paradoxes without the possibility of metamorphosis.

Further along the book, he presents an in-depth narrative of the modern day experience of driving down a highway or walking through an airport terminal. It is very timely that I write this at the start of my travels to Xiamen, China, with the airport lounges and superhighways fresh in my memory. The promised space for a world-wide network, the airport is a no man’s land where people of many walks of life are thrown together for one purpose. The only allusion to individual identity is in the little booklet everyone clutches tightly in their free hand, while the other pulls a trolley. With stopovers in Newark and Shanghai, the memory of each terminal lasted only several hours, as I came and went. Upon arriving to Xiamen, the infrastructure that connects the airport to the city becomes a blur of abstract signs and names. The temporary and detached nature of zooming past indicated locations of hundreds of kilometres away dehumanizes the process of travel and observation. In this sense, Augé was very acute in noting that these non-places result in the profound alteration of our awareness of the world.

Not mentioned in Augé’s Non-places is the common progression of anthropological places to be imitated into non-places commodified for easy consumption by the masses. For example, SoHo as a concept has become a brand. It is even copyrighted as a name of new developments around the world, in particular, the SoHo condominiums located at the centre of the CBD in Beijing. (http://www.sohochina.com/en/about/index.asp)

Yet not all non-places should be regarded as a negative phenomenon. It has its own aesthetic and sends a message to society. Perhaps it is just a reflection of the times; with our times being just slightly nauseating.