Symbolism: throwing things together, the measure of authenticity?
Saturday, April 14th, 2007 | Posted in symbolism, architecture, violence, unity, unrest
symbolism 1654, “practice of representing things with symbols,” from symbol. Attested from 1892 as a movement in Fr. literature that aimed at representing ideas and emotions by indirect suggestion rather than direct expression; rejecting realism and naturalism, it attached symbolic meaning to certain objects, words, etc. Fr. symboliste was coined by poet Paul Verlaine (1844-96) in 1885.
symbol Look up symbol at Dictionary.com->
symbol c.1434, “creed, summary, religious belief,” from L.L. symbolum “creed, token, mark,” from Gk. symbolon “token, watchword” (applied c.250 by Cyprian of Carthage to the Apostles’ Creed, on the notion of the “mark” that distinguishes Christians from pagans) from syn- “together” stem of ballein “to throw.” …
… The sense evolution is from “throwing things together” to “contrasting” to “comparing” to “token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine.” …
… Hence, “outward sign” of something. The meaning “something which stands for something else” first recorded 1590 (in “Faerie Queene”). Symbolic is attested from 1680.
First: I’m struck by this notion of symbolism meaning “throwing things together” - I suppose for something to stand for something else, it must put its back up to it and project [blank], that is, project its case for standing for something else.
Second: What is sense evolution? An interesting phrase, because what of the sense remains the same and what changes?
Third: In a curious and potentially unconscious/ conscientious move, “Saudi authorities” in 2004 replaced the three jamarats, obelisk shaped targets in the Stoning of the Devil ceremony that is part of Hajj, with three walls accessible by a great multi-levelled bridge.
The expressed reason for the reconstruction is safety, and that makes perfect sense, but what I see in the wall is an enlargement of the pillars to unrepresentable proportions. To remain a jamarat (a pillar), the community of participants must fill in that which lies beyond the crop marks to its imaginable size.
Thanks to imagination, the wall can secure the well being of the masses as they reject the devil.
Yet this is not the only activity taking place. There is a projection involved in securing a safe site of projection. The act on the day is a “throwing something together”, but so too is the jamarat bridge - this passageway over and upon which the projection is made - a throwing of concrete, a throwing of people. This is the Jamarat Bridge and one can see the three pillars.
The site is being reconstructed again. 362 died in 2006 at the event, something to do with luggage getting in the way of the flow of the crowd. Apparently not everyone makes it over the bridge. According to Alexander Trevi at Pruned:
Dirk Helbing, a professor in crowd dynamics at the Dresden University of Technology, et al., will be complemented by a reorganization of the streets leading up to the bridge, and a time schedule and route assignments as determined in real time through video monitoring and on-site surveillance.
As stones are throne at these pillars/half-done, people are throne across the bridge. And this is how a community of self projection evolves, through conscientious and imaginative commitment to throwing something together. This is how the obelisk is built.
Trevi’s piece on the Bridge pointed me to something analogue to this - the 10 Mile Spiral, a great big coiled rattlesnake of a roadway near Las Vegas that conceptually give you all the pleasure of Vegas while maintaining efficient throughput.
Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, authors of this concept in their book Tool, have, like the developers of the Bridge, decongestion and cultural facilitation as their aim.
First, it acts as a massive traffic decongestion device… by adding significant mileage to the highway in the form of a spiral. The second purpose is less infrastructural and more cultural: along the spiral you can play slots, roulette, get married, see a show, have your car washed, and ride through a tunnel of love, all without ever leaving your car. It is a compact Vegas, enjoyed at 55 miles per hour and topped off by a towering observation ramp offering views of the entire valley floor below.
The obelisk of the 10 Mile Spiral appears to be negative-space obelisk, but I don’t know if I buy that. The folks at BLDGBLOG, who introduced me to the 10 Mile Spiral, point out some scene in J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island, where a character driving around in the madness of London’s motorways loathes the other drivers. The stick shifts of other drivers could quite possibly be our obelisks, but so what if I loathe everyone today and care little tomorrow? There’s nothing very together about it - I still go out driving. I like a spectacle. A mass gathering - congregating to maintaine the etymological integrity of symbol-the-verb. Motorways spin around a city, perhaps that is our obelisk (or obelisk park, since all respectable cities are filled with them.) Washington D.C. spins around the Washington Monument - there’s an obelisk that took a couple of decades to build!
But on the stones we throw in Vegas, I know something:
It is dice we throw together.
April 15th, 2007 at 6:37 am
one comment, it’s a bit off topic.
” What is sense evolution? An interesting phrase, because what of the sense remains the same and what changes?” To some extent the beauty of symbolism is it’s ambivalence in so much as it appeals to whom engages with it. It is personal and thus is fluid to inerpretation. If, like a soviet monument (i.e in Estonia at the moment) it lacks an element of ambivalence it does not retain its salience and becomes a piece of propaganda with power isolated to specifics and localisations. It cannot weather out time. The Estonian case is interesting because the gov is attempting to regain memory soveriegnty through depoliticising history, which entails reclaiming history by creating a set of new symbols to subtly replace the old.
Yeah, a bit off topic.
best,
m
April 15th, 2007 at 8:01 am
No not, off topic, I’ve heard something similar said by the historian J. Winter in reference to the “sites of mourning” in Europe post-World War One. The clean plainness of those modern monuments facilitate a diversity of highly personal projections. Except, I think he would say that the “sites of mourning” over Europe are not just state made, but a truly popular activity, because of popular complicity in the brutality that unbecame The Great War.
April 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
it becomes tricky because of the political nature of monuments (state built). They are an important tool for teaching and instructing the nation for historical purposes (despite questions of accuracy) but they can and often are places of mourning for those who experienced the narrative. So they act as a history book as well as memorial–both political and personal.
Winter’s claim of the popular sites of mourning are really what they should be–accessible to all–featuring a common theme such as the suffering, which all can relate to opposed to the erection of monuments that praise victories and so forth (e.g Estonia’s Bronze soldier)
April 15th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Sorry Christo… but I have to say that I was much more fascinated by the crowd dynamic part of this post
Although how so many people want to do the exact same thing at the same time also interest me… instead of reconstruction, why doesn’t the ritual adapts to reality… surely religious leaders have figured out ways to explain their way out of certain practices before.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:00 am
What is the reality that the ritual should adapt to?
I think the success of Winter’s “Sites of Mourning/Memory” work is that he acknowledges and works with media of bereavement, despite how superstitious or fantastic they look to us. Seances, ghost photography are among his sites. If I recall correctly, he also suggests that the process of bereavement can span generations. So what I’m saying is that the symbolic, the throwing together, is the real.
Michael, Kenny - What monuments do you hold in high regard?
April 16th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Um… I am not sure any more. Initially I thought the Hajj is a one-day-of-the-year kind of thing… but apparently not… and they still have the crowd issue… can’t they separate the ritual into multiple site and make them further apart?
I don’t think I hold any monuments that is made to be a monuments with any regards… well… I don’t know… what would you consider a monuments? Is the Great Wall a monument? Haha… I need to look up the definition again… um… to pay tribute or commemorate something… I don’t know… it certainly simplify things by simply replacing an intangible like honor with something physical… but is it too simple?
April 16th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
It is too simple, but it is also important. That’s why they are continuously being constructed and reconstructed.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Is it important because it’s better than nothing or because it is the best we can do due to our limited capacity. I thought it’s interesting how we are in an age where we have vast information that describes many things that don’t last… kind of an opposite of what monuments do?
April 17th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Think of the monuments in your life - our High School is literally a monument, that’s the “Memorial” part of the title. But as a monument it does represent something to us and apparently keeping that meaning alive is important to all those who are attending the reunion (re-union). And I’m certain that a few will throw stones at the building, so to speak.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Haha. I don’t remember how that name came about… and these days, those are consumables anyway… if you have enough money, you can buy your own… what’s the value in that. I guess I went off on a tangent… may be today’s monument is not the same as that of yesterday.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Still it is a site of memory, you still there are those who will go back to Graydon - for what purpose?
April 18th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Um… I don’t think I am arguing the existence/validity/usefulness of memory. I just question the association of that with a physical object. That memory is very well “preserve” on facebook with the reconnection of people and various groups. Now that I think about it… the monuments are for those who don’t have the first hand experience of the memory. They are taught to remember. May be monuments are there to not only preserve but also advocate?
What’s your thought on the shooting?
April 18th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Um… I don’t think I am arguing the existence/validity/usefulness of memory. I just question the association of that with a physical object. That memory is very well “preserve” on facebook with the reconnection of people and various groups. Now that I think about it… the monuments are for those who don’t have the first hand experience of the memory. They are taught to remember. May be monuments are there to not only preserve but also advocate?
April 18th, 2007 at 6:09 am
sorry for the double post.