Exploring the Dark Interstices — A Review of Speculation and Media

(This book review was written as an invited assignment; in fact, I did not manage to read this book through, and I basically never got through the second half, “Speculative Economics.” That may have something to do with its postmodern writing style and with the Chinese translation, of course I also never found my footing, so the review below is actually not quite to the point; if I tricked you into reading it, don’t blame me for leading you astray… Of course, if you do manage to read it with a feel for it, you’re welcome to enlighten me~)

Speculation and Media
Amazon price: ￥20.10

http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2014/7/289950.shtm

Born in East Berlin in 1947, Boris Groys is currently a senior researcher at the School of Arts and Media at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe in Germany. As an art critic, he has considerable influence in China; he was once invited to serve as a co-curator of the Shanghai Biennale, and he has given many interviews on modern art. On the internet alone, one can find a dozen or so related reviews and transcripts of conversations.

But this newly translated Speculation and Media goes far beyond the scope of art criticism; it is a profound and difficult philosophical treatise.

Groys begins from a simple question: “What kind of power carries the various archives of our culture and enables them to be handed down?” What determines why some things rather than others are cherished? If the criterion is none other than the value of the things themselves, then why are cultural archives always changing? Why do new things keep joining in and replacing the old archives? Besides, what exactly is the value of things themselves?

Groys attempts to investigate the bearer of the archive, that is, the medium. In other words, only through some medium do preservation, display, and evaluation of the archive become possible. This hidden medium is precisely the secret force that makes the archive an archive.

Someone may ask: what is so mysterious about these media? What carries an oil painting is nothing but linen canvas; what records literature is nothing but paper; behind film there is nothing but the celluloid strip and the projector. What is there to be hard to understand? But Groys points out: “We actually cannot truly get hold of such media carriers, whether linen canvas or media machines. We can only get hold of them when they do not appear as media carriers, but merely as mundane objects in external reality. And at that point a new question arises, namely, what symbol carriers are these machines themselves displayed and borne by?” (p. 11)

In other words, when we turn over a painting to inspect the canvas, when we stop the film and take apart the projector, what we are examining is no longer the medium that makes the object possible to carry; only when it is no longer functioning as medium can it present itself. But the next question is: this thing as object is still borne by other media. Groys says: “The carrier of the archive is constructively hidden behind the archive and thus cannot be directly contemplated. People usually understand the media carrier of the archive as the technical means for storing data, such as paper, film, or the computer. But these technical means are, in themselves, objects within the archive, and behind them are hidden certain production processes, power networks, and economic steps. But what is hidden behind these networks and processes? The answer is more vague: history, nature, matter, reason, … Behind the surface of archival signs, one can speculate an obscure and opaque depth. This dark sub-media space constitutes another part of the archive.” (p. 9)

Here we encounter the fate of the finite creature that is man: that is to say, we cannot, like the omnipotent God, deal with things directly and completely. We are always within a finite spatiotemporal environment, and only by means of certain specific ways can we confront objects. And there is always some kind of gap between human beings and objects; any attempt to eliminate this gap merely adds another layer of interval, and we can never shake off this dark fissure.

Human finitude determines that no matter what way we use, what we see can only be the “surface”; yet people always hope to find what is hiding behind the surface. This, too, is an ancient pursuit: “The observer develops a desire to find out what exactly is hidden in the ‘truth’ behind the surface of media signs—that is in fact the desire of media theory, ontology, and metaphysics. Inquiring into the carrier of media is of course nothing other than a new way of formulating an old ontological investigation—an inquiry into questions such as substance, essence, or subject, which may be hidden behind the world picture.” (p. 10)

Since ancient Greek “ontology,” the mission of the entire Western philosophy has been to investigate the thing hidden behind appearances. But when people discovered that we can never shake off our own finitude, or in other words can never transcend beyond media, that is, when people realized that our relation to the dark space behind appearances is destined to be only a kind of “speculation,” some nihilists gave up the effort, gave up ontology, and regarded these speculations as nothing but subjective fantasies.

But Groys believes that speculation about media ontology “is by no means merely ‘subjective,’ because it does not simply arise in the observer’s ‘subjective’ imagination; more precisely, in a phenomenological sense, speculation about media ontology is ‘objective.’” (p. 31) In fact, it is not as though people can speculate however they like, nor is it as though someone who wants to stop speculating can thereby be exempted from speculation. Speculation is not merely a subjective reverie; it often arrives uninvited in the very act of human beings dealing with the world. Speculation is media, even “the medium of media.” In other words, it is itself also the medium through which things are carried and presented; in particular, speculation allows media to be disclosed as media. Of course, like any medium, speculation is also finite, “fixated,” and somewhat concealed. But also like any medium, the things it brings forth can still be genuine, real, and objective.

Based on a phenomenological perspective, this book draws on various intellectual resources such as economics, anthropology, deconstruction, and avant-garde art, and gives speculative thought its due, launching an inquiry into the dark space of media. The prose is airy yet difficult, and the book is not easy to read; it is not suitable for ordinary readers. But for scholars or philosophy enthusiasts with some background, this book should be a rewarding challenge.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.