Martin - Curious visions of modernity: enchantment, magic, and the sacred

Curious Visions of Modernity

Curious Visions of Modernity

David L. Martin

The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martin, David L., 1971

Curious visions of modernity : enchantment, magic, and the sacred / David L. Martin.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-262-01606-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-262-29810-0 (retail e-book)

1. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Title.

BD181.M37 2012

121dc22

2011002085

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my father Peter James Martin

And in memory of Mike Hurrell

Who both taught me the value of good storytelling.

A Note to the Curious: On Reading This Book

In many ways the book you hold in your hand is an experiment in writing. It attempts to position itself against a way of thinking, conceiving, and knowing of the world that sees the world as an object of rational study. But it necessarily attempts this task from within the folds of that which it is writing against: the rationality of modernity. In doing so it threatens repeatedly to fold in on itself. It necessarily employs the language of the academy; it necessarily does so using the conventions of how such language should appear; it necessarily conforms to the legal and institutional strictures which codify the modern academy as the gatekeeper of this enlightened rationality. Yet at every turn it attempts to resist these impulses.

In writing this book I have attempted to admit and prioritize those things usually deemed improper to, or unworthy of, academic study by giving as much room as possible to the fragment, the narrative, the excursion, the fleeting glance, the sympathy, and the resonance. I have resisted the urge to lock the curiosities which loosely form the content of this book into relationships of cause and effect, or to stamp them with a single narrative which binds them together as a coherent story, preferring instead that you, the reader, may make your own associations between the objects I have gathered within these pages.

In attempting this task I have structured the book much like a cabinet; the kind we will encounter in the princely collections of Renaissance Europe. Such cabinets do not function as definitive statements or encyclopedias, but rather they take sustenance from what each collector brings to them in the unpacking. So although this book necessarily engages in the kinds of referencing which would mark it as academic, I have tried to limit my use of specific theoretical works (in particular) to a valuable few; and then, as much as not, I have tried to be guided by the spirit of these works and their authors, rather than slavishly following the letter of the law or explicating endless definitions. I do this in an effort to leave the necessary room to allow each reader to bring to the text their own interpretations, their own inflections, and their own discursive wanderings. In this regard I have been guided at every turn by the words of Walter Benjamin when he said: I have nothing to say; only show.

Finally, I must mention the function of the Notes section or excursions, as I have called them. Here you will find commentaries, caveats, alternative readings, hidden conversations, as well as blind alleyways. They represent normal academic citations, guides to the researcher, as well as challenges to the narrative disclosed in the main text. They are like the drawers of a cabinet whose opening and closing refreshes the collection anew.

Acknowledgments

For many years now, I have been something of an academic collector, watching out for the fragments and broken pieces of early modern visual culture discarded and scattered by the vagaries of historical discourse. In this venture I have had the great fortune to take instruction from skilled teachers and follow the lead of inspiring guides, while all the while being buoyed by the camaraderie and infectious enthusiasm of those select few like-minded collectors that I have encountered along the way. Gathering my fragments together like so many treasured curiosities, I have found that several of them speak to me at the level of biography; their recollection tracing the friendships and academic influences of the past decade. While such curiosities have served me well as a researcher and a teacher, to my enduring distress their ability to summon those biographies to mind is something that goes largely unbeknownst to the people to whom these biographies refer. This book would not be possible without the generosity and influence of each of them.

This project began its life in Melbourne where, for a time, exceptional people seemed to be doing exceptional things and I was lucky enough to drift into their orbit. To Kirsty Major and Patrick Wolfe, both of whom are sorely missed and underthanked teachers. To Phillip Darby for innumerable opportunities to teach without rein or tether, and for embodying the kind of intellectual generosity and theatricality so dreadfully at risk of being purged from todays academy. To Kaz Ross for being there to share the sparkle of heterotopic anomalies, and to Adam Driver for a friendship and collaborative spark that has kept the world alive with wonder. And of course to Michael Dutton, my teacher, supervisor, and more recently most welcoming colleague and wonderfully supportive friend. His influence is stamped across this book. There are few people whose daily barrage of ideas could be as dazzling or sustained.

In the production of this book I owe a specific debt of gratitude to Bobbie Oliver of Curtin University for alerting me to the crimes visited upon Yagan of the Noongar peoples of Western Australia; Adam Shoemaker of anu for making his unpublished manuscript on Australian currency and heads of state available to me; and Mark Meadow of ucsb for allowing me to publish the Microcosms illustrations. To the first true readers of this text, John Hutnyk of Goldsmiths and Mick Taussig of Columbia University, unlike ros wine, I hope this has matured with time. And finally to the two anonymous readers for the MIT Press: your, at times, unbridled enthusiasm and excitement for this project allowed me the most selfish of pleasuresto enjoy the process of reengaging with its substance, details, and purpose. Doing justice to the sheer wealth of your knowingness will take more than one book; for that I am truly grateful.

Some musings on statues, embodiment, and defacement were taken from this study to form the basis of my short piece Of Monuments and Masks: Historiography in the Time of Curiositys Ruin, Postcolonial Studies 10 (3) (September 2007): 311320, The Institute of Postcolonial Studies. This material is reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals), on behalf of The Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, Australia.

Curiously, in finding a Melbourne (or at least many Melbournians) relocated in London there are, already, the stirrings of new biographies and the excitement of new collections to be had. For their support and advice I am indebted to: Sanjay Seth, Rajyashree Pandey, Huw Hallam, Anthony Gardener, and Ben Smith. Thanks also to John Cash, Ramaswami Harindranath, and Karina Smith for being supportive friends and journal colleagues from afar.

To Roger Conover for confirming that collection is indeed something that strikes to the very heart of who we are. His is one that categorically dispels the comforting gap between who we say we are and what we actually stand for. His influence on me will be there when this book is cracked and moldering.