Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation

Making the Countercultural Subject in the 1960s

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3977706
AutoresSimon Rycroft (University of Sussex, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen8
Número4
Páginas615-633
Fecha de publicación2007-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649360701529865
OpenAlexW2140567693
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas29

It is in the experiments in the arts, media, culture, politics and everyday practices developed by the counterculture in the 1960s that many nonrepresentational perspectives emerge. Aspects and examples of those experiments are reviewed with a particular focus on the construction of the countercultural subject and on some performative practices developed to shape those subjects, including psychedelics and underground cinema. During the 1960s nonrepresentational practices emerged and thrived in some enclaves of countercultural living, but struggled to develop in others. Although many of the counterculture's practices explored the nonrepresentational realm, they were still engaged in representational practices. The relative success of these practices in situ was closely tied to their representation. In 1960s Los Angeles they remained more represented than enacted and practised in the city. There is a danger in nonrepresentational work of rendering representation a stereotypical concept, one that is unchanging in its capacity to deaden, exclude and enframe. But representation as a practice is also subject to change. During the postwar period various representational practices, whose referent was a newly understood cosmos, attempted to evoke a range of sensory, experiential and subconscious responses in their consumers and performers, creating decidedly nonrepresentational representational moments. Les expériences menées par la contre-culture des années 1960 dans les arts, les médias, la culture, les politiques et les pratiques quotidiennes ont donné lieu à l'émergence d'un nombre de perspectives non-représentatives. Un examen de divers aspects et d'exemples de ces expériences porte particulièrement sur la conception d'un sujet de la contre-culture et sur les pratiques performatives mises de l'avant pour donner forme à ces sujets, parmi lesquelles les psychédéliques et le cinéma souterrain. Les années 1960 ont vu émerger les pratiques non-représentatives qui ont prospéré dans certains milieux contre-culturels, mais ont stagné dans d'autres. Bien que plusieurs des pratiques de la contre-culture aient exploré le monde de la non-représentativité, des pratiques représentatives étaient également courantes. Le succès de ces pratiques in situ dépendait en effet de leur représentation. Dans les années 1960 à Los Angeles, elles continuaient à être représentées davantage que mises en œuvre et pratiquées dans la ville. Dans les ouvrages non-représentatifs, il existe un danger de faire de la représentation une conception stéréotypée qui est figée dans sa capacité pour pouvoir émousser, exclure et encadrer. Toutefois, la pratique de la représentation est appelée à changer. Durant la période d'après-guerre, diverses pratiques représentatives renvoyant à l'idée nouvelle qu'on se faisait du cosmos ont tenté d'évoquer une série de réactions sensorielles, expérimentales et subconscientes autant chez leurs clientèles que leurs interprètes, qui ont soutenu la création de moments nettement non-représentatifs représentatifs. Es en los experimentos dentro de las artes, los medios de comunicación, la política y las prácticas cotidianas desarrollados por la contracultura de los años sesenta que salen muchas perspectivas no-representativas. Estudio aquí aspectos y ejemplos de aqellos experimentos, centrando en particular en la construcción del sujeto de contracultura y en algunas de las prácticas performativas que fueron desarrolladas para moldear aquellos sujetos, como por ejemplo psicodélicos y cine clandestino. Durante los años sesenta las prácticas no-representacionales salieron y crecieron con fuerza en algunos cotos de la vida contracultural mientras que desarrollaron con dificultad en otros. Aunque muchas de las prácticas contraculturales exploraban la esfera no-representacional, también participaban en prácticas representacionales. El éxito relativo de estas prácticas en su lugar estaba estrechamente ligado a su representación. En la ciudad de Los Angeles de los años sesenta continuaban a ser más representadas que actuadas y practicadas en la ciudad. En el trabajo no-representacional se corre el peligro de interpretar la representación como un concepto estereotípico, un concepto que no altera su capacidad de amortiguar, de excluir y de enmarcar. Y sin embargo, la representación como práctica es también sujeto a cambios. Durante el periodo pos-guerra varias prácticas representacionales, el referente de las cuales era un cosmos nuevamente comprendido, pretendían evocar una variedad de respuestas sensoriales, experienciales y subconscientes en sus consumidores y actores, creando momentos representacionales decidiamente no-representacionales. Keywords: counterculture1960sLos Angelesnonrepresentational thoughtKeywords: contre-cultureannées 1960Los Angelespensée non-représentativeKeywords: contraculturalos años 60Los Angelespensamiento no-representacional Notes 1 Many in the counterculture drew this notion of the true self from the work of the psychotherapist R. D. Laing. At the heart of this understanding was a tension within the identity of the self. That tension arose because self-identity was two-dimensional, a conjunction of self-identity for others and self-identity for oneself, with the former ‘false self’ relating to objective existence, and the latter, ‘true self’ concerning subjective existence. One-dimensional society, Laing argued, demanded a balance between the two, a separation of the universes of consciousness and action (Laing 1970: 94–105, see also Laing Citation1967, Citation1972). For interesting accounts of Laing's engagement with the counterculture, see Crossley (Citation1999) and DeKoven (Citation2003). 2 Youngblood followed the light-show and Acid Rock scene in the city and throughout the country in a series of columns entitled ‘Intermedia’ throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. These columns and his journalism formed the groundwork for his book Expanded Cinema (Youngblood Citation1970b). 3 ‘Paleocybernetic is valuable as a conceptual tool with which to grasp the significance of our present environment: combining the primitive potential associated with Paleolithic and the transcendental integrities of “practical utopianism” associated with Cybernetic. So I call it the Paleocybernetic Age: an image of a hairy, buckskinned, barefooted atomic physicist with a brain full of mescaline and logarithms, working out the heuristics of computer-generated holograms or krypton laser interferometry’ (Youngblood Citation1970b: 41). 4 It must be noted that even though I can find no reference to it, ‘Process’ could have been related to the Scientology group of the same name, particularly active in London at this time. 5 Interestingly, the various protest events organized by the local counterculture to resist this pressure rarely entailed the use of performative practices. Rather the battles were fought in the spaces of representational democracy: the court room and City Hall

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Counterculture · Humanities · Media studies · Performative utterance · Political science · Politics · Realm · Representation (politics · Sociology · Subject (documents · The arts · Visual arts · Youth culture · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law