The Topos of Immersion
Framing Marcel Proust’s Description of his Magic Lantern Experience in the Era of Early Cinema
Lianne Veenstra
The Topos of Immersion
Framing Marcel Proust’s Description of his Magic Lantern Experience in the Era of Early Cinema
Name: Lianne Veenstra Student number: S2196360
Email address: l.veenstra.8@student.rug.nl Date: 28th August 2016
Institution: University of Groningen Faculty of Arts
Curriculum: Arts, Culture and Media Specialization: Film, Analysis & Criticism
Master Thesis
Course code: LWX999M20
Supervisors: Prof. dr. A.M.A. van den Oever, Dr. A. van Noortwijk Word Count: 22.791
I would like to thank my supervisor, Annie van den Oever, for her excellent guidance and support in the process of writing my Master’s Thesis, and for inspiring me.
With special thanks to my sister, Corinne, for her encouragement, for reading my Master’s Thesis, and providing useful comments.
Table of Contents
I. INTRODUCTION ... 4
II. MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY AS RESEARCH METHOD...11
II.1 INTRODUCTION...11
II.2 ZIELINSKI, DEEP TIME, AND VARIANTOLOGY...12
II.3 HUHTAMO AND TOPOI...13
II.4 PARIKKA AND MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY AS HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL ACTIVITY...18
II.5 MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY, NEW FILM HISTORY, AND NEW MEDIA STUDIES...19
II.6 THE HAND OF THE OBSERVER...22
II.7 EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY...25
II.8 CONCLUSION...27
III. THE MAGIC LANTERN OF MARCEL PROUST ...30
III.1 INTRODUCTION...30
III.2 PROUST’S MAGIC LANTERN EXPERIENCE ANALYSED...31
III.2.1 The Importance of Colour ...31
III.2.2 The Magic Lantern as a Method of Self-discovery...32
III.2.3 A Parallel between the Magic Lantern Sequence and the Scene of the Goodnight Kiss ..34
III.2.4 The Disruption of Time, Place, Identity, and Habit...35
III.2.5 Distortion and Estrangement...36
III.2.6 The Magic Lantern as a Narrative Subtext ...37
III.2.7 Material Distortion and Habit ...38
III.2.8 Illusion and Imagination...39
III.2.9 The Relation between Memory and Colour...40
III.2.10 Childish Wonder and the Uncanny ...41
III.2.11 The World Perceived Photographically ...42
III.2.12 Dream Versus Reality...43
III.2.13 The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust, and its Affinity with the Stained Glass Window.43 III.2.14 The Magic Lantern as a Precursor to Film ...46
III.3 CONCLUSION...46
IV. A TOPOS STUDY OF MARCEL PROUST’S MAGIC LANTERN PASSAGE IN THE ERA OF PRE- CINEMA AND EARLY CINEMA ...49
IV.1 INTRODUCTION...49
IV.2 CONTEXTUALIZATION: PRE-CINEMA, EARLY CINEMA AND THE EXPERIENCES OF FIRST TIME VIEWERS ...50
IV.2.1 The Topos of Immersion in Framing New Media Experiences...53
IV.3 MEDIA HISTORY AND EARLY CINEMA HISTORY...54
IV.4 ANALYSING MARCEL PROUST’S MAGIC LANTERN PASSAGE IN THE COMBRAY PART WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF TOPOI...59
IV.4.1 The Magic Lantern Experience of Marcel in À la recherche du temps perdu...59
IV.4.2 The Sensorial and Tacit Dimension ...60
IV.4.3 Viktor Shklovksy on the Processes of Perception, and the Uncanny...62
IV.4.4 The Grotesquely Deformed and Its Distorting Powers ...63
IV.5 CONCLUSION...64
V. CONCLUSION ...67
REFERENCES...69
APPENDIX I ...73
APPENDIX II...75
APPENDIX III ...76
I. Introduction
While I was studying cinema at L’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne last year, I became increasingly aware of France’s rich cinematic history, which felt omnipresent, in every corner of every Parisian street. After visiting various famous film locations, the interesting and impressive ‘Lumière ! Le cinéma inventé’ exhibition in the Grand Palais, and having had breakfast in the brasserie Le Grand Café Capucines – known for hosting the first public, commercial film screening with the Lumière Cinématographe on 28 December 1895 – I decided I wanted to incorporate my knowledge of French film culture and France’s cinematic history in my master thesis. Since the beginning of my film studies, I have had a profound interest in and fascination for film history, old and new film apparatuses, and the film viewer’s experience of and reaction to film technologies. Therefore, I also want to include the early film viewer’s experience with moving images and the film apparatuses in my thesis.
Media archaeology is pre-eminently a suitable research method to analyse media and the experiences of (new) media throughout history. Interesting in this regard is the study of topoi, which focuses on and is a way of framing recurring motifs – for example in the discursive framing of experiences – in the history of media.
Figure 1 The Lumière ! Le Cinéma Inventé exhibition in the Grand Palais, 2015
Figure 2-3 Le Grand Café Capucines and the Salon Indien
Media archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo (1997, 2011) presents media archaeology as an approach to study cyclically recurring motifs in media history. An important notion in his media- archaeological research method is ‘topoi’, which create déjà vu effects precisely because of the cyclical pattern in the discursive framing of media experiences. For him, analysing topoi is part of writing history. Topos study goes against a teleological view on technologies, and lays bare the cyclical character of the descriptions of media experiences throughout media history. So, there is a pattern in the discursive presentation of experiences of new media technologies. I want to lay bare the recurring patterns in the presentation, or, framing of media experiences in France at the turn of the 19th century by means of the work of the prominent French novelist, critic, and essayist, Marcel Proust. His reflections on experiences and media are central in my master thesis.
Marcel Proust (Auteuil, 10 July 1871 – Paris, 18 November 1922) was born and grew up into a bourgeois environment, and lived during an important and remarkable time in history. American author William C. Carter describes Proust’s era in his biography Marcel Proust: A Life (2013). “Proust’s era, 1871-1922, which he depicted in the Search, was one of the most exciting and momentous in history. His life encompassed the fin-de-siècle, Belle Époque, and World War I years.”1 These years were marked by the introduction of technological novelties to culture – such as film, the telephone, the train, the automobile, the theatrophone, electricity, airplanes, and weapons of war that caused destruction on an unprecedented scale – which profoundly affected and changed people’s life in the beau
1 Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life, xvi.
monde, and their perception of time and space. Proust describes his experiences with these new technologies and their impact on culture in his novel À la recherche du temps perdu.
Carter writes: “By 1910 he had witnessed the arrival of electric lighting, the telephone, the automobile, motion pictures, the Paris subway, and the airplane. He characterized his era as the ‘age of speed’ and showed in the Search how these remarkable inventions changed both daily life and the way people perceived time and space.”2 Carter also notes with regard to the dawning of the new century and Proust’s experience with the new technologies of mass transportation and communication at that time: “Proust left no thoughts on the dawning of the new century, but there are many examples of his fascination with the new technology of mass transportation and communication, fields that supplied him with many analogies about how our perception of time and space is changed by the increased speed in daily life.”3 Later in life, Proust joined the beau monde and thus surrounded himself with highly influential people.
As he became part of the high society of Paris, he was able to enjoy the richness, beauty, and the pleasures of the Belle Époque. As Carter puts it: “Proust’s generation had now reached adulthood and had begun to enjoy all the pleasures of the Belle Époque. The bohemian crowd of writers, painters, and musicians flocked to the café-concerts, cabarets, and music halls to ogle the cancan dancers and hear the most popular singers.”4 During the 1900 World’s Fair, there was “great excitement in Paris, as the city prepared to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution with a world’s fair. On April 1, as part of the fair, the City of Light inaugurated the world’s tallest structure, which soared 984 feet (300 meters) into space,”5 build by the engineer Gustave Eiffel. The 1900 Paris World’s Fair drew large crowds and was an important point in history, since it not only inaugurated the Eiffel Tower, the world’s tallest building at that time, but also exhibited other technological wonders. “The 1900 Paris World’s Fair, with its extravagant exhibitions lining the Left Bank of the Seine, drew huge crowds eager to see demonstrations of the latest technological wonders as well as exotic entertainments.”6
2 Ibid., xvi.
3 Ibid., 290.
4 Ibid., 120.
5 Ibid., 97.
6 Ibid., 289.
Figure 4 Marcel Proust around 19057
Proust transformed the depth of his experiences into lively descriptions. He described in minute detail his experiences with new media and other objects that fascinated him – for example flowers and the architecture of Gothic cathedrals. He had a high consciousness and sensibility of the things and people that surrounded him, and was able to analyse and describe his experiences in an unsurpassed way. It has been stated many times before: A scent or a flavour enabled him to bring back images from his childhood – a phenomenon he called
‘involuntary memory’ – such as the famous madeleine scene in which the entire village of Combray appears in front of him from a cup of tea. For example, Carter describes this resurrection of the past through involuntary memory in his book Marcel Proust: A Life:
To resurrect the past in its true richness – a richness often unperceived at the time – Proust concentrated on the phenomenon he called involuntary memory, a kind of epiphanic or
“invading happiness,” not unlike déjà vu. In drafts for the introduction to Sainte-Beuve, Proust sketched what would become the primary scene of involuntary memory, the “madeleine scene,” in which the Narrator dips a piece of madeleine into tea. Proust wrote: “My old cook offered to make me a cup of tea, a thing I never drink. And as chance would have, she brought me some slices of dry toast.” As soon as he dipped the toast in the tea and tasted it, “something came over me – the smell of geraniums and orange-blossoms, a sensation of extraordinary
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radiance and happiness.” He concentrated on the taste of the toast and tea, “which seemed responsible for all these marvels; then suddenly the shaken partitions in my memory gave way, and into my conscious mind there rushed the summer I had spent in the … house in the country … And then I remembered.”8
The descriptions of experiences, sensations, and effects of the outside world on him, make Proust an extremely interesting object for a media-archaeological topos study. As I have already mentioned earlier in this introduction, he lived in an era of great changes in media and moving images. His descriptions of the effects of (optical) media on him are indeed remarkable, and especially famous is his passage on the magic lantern. This passage has elaborately been provided with commentary and has been analysed in terms of his work by Proust experts and literature scholars in particular, but they have barely been analysed or interpreted by film and media scholars. Film and media scholars can put these passages into a different perspective – that is, the perspective of media and the effects of media on the viewers, and of media archaeology. This perspective is important for film and media studies because the period of the magic lantern and early film is crucial in the development of these studies, partly because of the considerable impact on culture. There is a knowledge gap in the study of the magic lantern scene and this period. So, the magic lantern passage has often been analysed and described, mainly from the field of literature and on an intratextual level, as we will see in Chapter III, but not yet from a media-archaeological (topos) perspective.
Therefore, my master thesis is an original contribution to the existing literature about the magic lantern of Marcel Proust.
In my master thesis, I will situate the magic lantern passage of Proust in the Combray part of À la recherche du temps perdu in the period of early cinema and the arrival of film. I will analyse this passage differently than the authors who have already written about it, namely from a media-archaeological perspective, and place this scene in a topos framework based on Huhtamo. The topos of immersion will particularly play a role in my analysis. My research question is as follows: What is the role of topoi in Marcel Proust’s description of his experience with the magic lantern in the Combray part of À la recherche du temps perdu?
My hypothesis is that – based on media-archaeological studies – there will be topoi present in Proust’s descriptions of his experiences with the magic lantern and other media, and that these descriptions have certain characteristics, namely that they are cyclically
8 Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life, 466-467.
recurring throughout media history, that they are formed by and influence media culture, and that they contain cultural norms and traditions.
In Chapter II, I will discuss and explain the media-archaeological research method according to four prominent media scholars: Siegfried Zielinski, Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka, and Wanda Strauven. Particularly important for my research of Marcel Proust’s description of his experience with the magic lantern is the notion of topoi as theorized by Huhtamo. I will also address the concept of experimental media archaeology, as explained by Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever, which offers an interesting hands-on approach to media archaeology.
In Chapter III, I will conduct a research on what different authors have written about Proust’s magic lantern passage. I will analyse and comment on these studies of Proust’s experience with the magic lantern. The standard studies on this sequence in À la recherche and Proust’s experience of this pre-cinematic apparatus used in my master thesis will be, among others: Patricia A. Carr’s “Two Studies in Proust: The Magic Lantern and Romantic Analogues of the Death of Love” (1967); Emily Zants’s “Proust’s Magic Lantern” (1973);
Johnnie Gratton’s “Textual Interaction in Combray: The Instance of Golo” (1980); Terry Castle’s “Phantasmagoria: Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie”
(1988); Elaine Scarry’s “On Vivacity: The Difference between Daydreaming and Imagining- Under-Authorial-Instruction” (1995); Michael Taussig’s “What Color Is the Sacred” (2006);
Verity Hunts’ “Raising a Modern Ghost: The Magic Lantern and the Persistence of Wonder in the Victorian Education of the Senses” (2008); and The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Remembrance of Things Past (2012) by Howard Moss.
In Chapter IV, I will analyse the magic lantern passage from a media-archaeological topos perspective. My focus is on the topos of immersion, since immersion plays a great role in the confrontation and experience with new media and technologies. The child Marcel is unfamiliar with the technological working of the magic lantern, and the combination with the coloured, supernatural and deformed images have an estranging effect on him. The notions of the ‘uncanny’ and the ‘grotesque’ play an important part in this passage and my analysis. I will also provide the context in which Marcel Proust lived and grew up, that is, the early years of cinema and pre-cinematic attraction, and take into consideration the magic lantern as a medium specific to this time. I will address media history, Tom Gunning’s cinema of attractions, and the early film viewer’s experience of the first films screenings with the Lumière Cinématographe. Moreover, I will take the notions of habit, (de-)familiarization, (de-
)automatization, and (de)habitualization – Viktor Shklovksy’s processes of perception – into account as an integral part of all new, possibly distorting and disturbing, media experiences.
Figure 5 Carré Lantern, Lapierre, France9
9 The Magic Lantern Society, <http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/events/events3b.html>.
II. Media Archaeology as Research Method
II.1 Introduction
There are many different views on what media archaeology is. As a research method it ranges across academic fields and disciplines where various scholars present their thoughts on media archaeology. Huhtamo and Parikka, for instance, express diverging visions on media archaeology in the introduction to their anthology Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (2011), and note that “there is no general agreement about either the principles or the terminology of media archaeology.”10 Their book consists of a compilation of texts by different authors. Huhtamo and Parikka not only include works that explicitly use the term ‘media archaeology’, but also “acknowledge work that has not defined itself as ‘media archaeology’ but nevertheless has shared similar interests and goals.”11 Strauven also refrains from giving one definition in her overview article “Media Archaeology:
Where Film History, Media Art, and New Media (Can) Meet” (2013); instead, she notes that four different approaches in media-archaeological research exist. These consist of seeking: 1) the old in the new (Marshall McLuhan; Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin); 2) the new in the old (Siegfried Zielinski); 3) recurring topoi (Erkki Huhtamo); and 4) ruptures and discontinuities (Thomas Elsaesser).12 The writings of Michel Foucault (excavation of knowledge), Walter Benjamin, (against a teleology of archaeology), and Ernst Robert Curtius (topos study), to name but a few, have been important sources for theoretical and critical reflections on media within media archaeology, and they were formative in the development of the approach (e.g., the very concept of an ‘archaeology’ goes back to Foucault).13 The German media theorist Friedrich Kittler can be seen as the scholar coining the term media archaeology; he initiated a rethinking of the materiality of media. As Geoffrey Winthrop- Young and Annie van den Oever write in the introduction of the chapter “Rethinking the Materiality of Technical Media: Friedrich Kittler, Enfant Terrible with a Rejuvenating Effect on Parental Discipline – A Dialogue”: “Friedrich Kittler, Professor of Aesthetics and Media History at Humboldt University, Berlin, who passed away in 2011, is generally considered to
10 Huhtamo and Parikka, Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 2.
11 Ibid., 2.
12 Strauven, Media Archaeology: Where Film History, Media Art, and New Media (Can) Meet.
13 Ibid., 2.
be the intellectual father of the relatively new discipline of media archaeology.”14 In general, media archaeology is an approach that provides the tools for excavating the layers of media culture, and aims at understanding the recurring motives in the (textual, visual, rhetorical) framing of new media objects and experiences throughout media history.
In this chapter, I will discuss the media-archaeological research approach to media, and provide explanations of key terms and methods of four prominent and influential scholars – namely, Siegfried Zielinski, Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka, and Wanda Strauven – in the field of media archaeology that are useful for my research project. Additionally, I will address the ‘experimental media archaeology’-approach as theorized by Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever, as experimental media archaeology offers an interesting hands-on approach to media history and media artefacts within the field of media archaeology. In the following paragraph, I will discuss Zielinski and his media-archaeological concepts of deep time and variantology first.
II.2 Zielinski, Deep Time, and Variantology
One of the most famous and influential voices in the field of media archaeology since long is the German media theorist Siegfried Zielinski. According to Zielinski in his essay “Media Archaeology” (1996), media archaeology is an approach as well as an activity that provides the media archaeologist a way to excavate or “to dig out secret paths in history, which might help us to find our way into the future.”15 Thus, a media-archaeological investigation might enable us to examine the heterogeneous phenomena in the long history of the media16, and to envision the future media practices and experiences. Zielinski uses the concept of ‘deep time’
of the media to indicate this profound research into the long history of the media. In Zielinski’s view, one should neither look for progressive and predictable trends in the history of the media nor regard this history as a linear narrative. As he writes in his book Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (2008):
“The history of the media is not the product of a predictable and necessary advance from primitive to complex apparatus. The current state of the art does not necessarily represent the
14 Winthrop-Young and Van den Oever, Rethinking the Materiality of Technical Media: Friedrich Kittler, Enfant Terrible with a Rejuvenating Effect on Parental Discipline – A Dialogue, 219.
15 Zielinski, Media Archaeology, 1.
16 Ibid., 8.
best possible state […].”17 Instead, one should search for and discover hidden side paths in the deep layers of media culture, and to uncover the “individual variations”.18 The media archaeologist might “discover fractures or turning points” in media history that may help to understand and influence “what is currently firmly established.”19 He goes on: “In the longer term, the body of individual anarchaeological studies should form a variantology of the media.”20 ‘Variantology’ is an international research project initiated by Zielinski and Eckhard Fürlus, in cooperation with Philipp Tögel, at the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2007. Variantology investigates the deep time relations between arts, sciences, and technologies. The aim of variantology is a critical reflection on established concepts of media, and a consideration of concepts of media that up to now have remained outside the contemporary media discourses.21 The aim of Zielinski’s media-archaeological approach is not to “seek the old in the new”, but to “find something new in the old”22, and to connect the present with the past.
II.3 Huhtamo and Topoi
The Finnish-American media historian and theorist Erkki Huhtamo has a different view on media archaeology and its aim. In his article “From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Notes toward an Archaeology of the Media” (1997), he presents media archaeology as an approach to study the cyclical path of media throughout history or “such recurring cyclical phenomena which (re)appear and disappear and reappear over and over again in media history and somehow seem to transcend specific historical contexts.”23 Huhtamo calls these historically recurring cyclical phenomena in media culture ‘topoi’ (sing. ‘topos’) or ‘topics’. Put differently, topoi are discursive concepts, clichés, commonplaces, or cultural motives.
Examples of such cultural clichés are romantic love, the evil stepmother, good triumphs over
17 Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, 7.
18 Ibid., 7.
19 Ibid., 7.
20 Ibid., 7.
21 Universität der Künste Berlin, “Variantologie: Zur Tiefenzeit der Beziehungen von Kunst, Wissenschaft und Technik,” Variantology, 2012, <http://variantology.com/?lang=de>.
22 Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, 3.
23 Huhtamo, From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Notes toward an Archaeology of the Media, 221- 222.
evil, opposites attract, and a loving couple in Paris. The aim of media archaeology, according to Huhtamo, “is to explain the sense of deja vu (sic) that Tom Gunning has registered when looking back from the present reactions into the ways in which people have experienced technology in earlier periods.”24 In other words, the media-archaeological method helps to explain and understand the historically recurring and present experiences of media through examination of the media experiences in the past. Moreover, it helps the discursive framing of these experiences.
Additionally, Huhtamo discusses topoi as cultural and ideological constructs that provide pre-existing moulds for experiences. Old topoi seem to disappear when a new topos emerges, but eventually they will resurface in media culture. As he puts it:
Topics can be considered as formulas, ranging from stylistic to allegorical, that make up the
“building blocks” of cultural traditions; they are activated and de-activated in turn; new topoi are created along the way and old ones (at least seemingly) vanish. In a sense, topics provide
“pre-fabricated” moulds for experience. Even though they may emerge as if “unconsciously”, they are, however, always cultural, and thus ideological, constructs.25
In contemporary culture, topoi can be commercially exploited in order to influence and to tempt the consumer to buy specific products. “In the era of commercial and industrial media culture it is increasingly important to note that topoi can be consciously activated, and ideologically and commercially exploited,”26 for instance in the field of advertising. Huhtamo describes this function of topoi in media culture extensively in his article “Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study” (2011), which I will discuss later in this paragraph.
The recurring phenomena, even though they are “wide apart in time and space”, are
“not totally random, produced indigenously by conglomerations of specific circumstances.
Instead, they ‘contain’ certain commonplace elements or cultural motives, which have been encountered in earlier cultural processes,”27 and which reappear in different cultural contexts.
Huhtamo clarifies that topoi are not experiences, but the descriptions or representations of experiences. He writes: “When we deal with topoi – such as the one related to the stereotypical panic reactions to a media spectacle [e.g. the experience of and the first film
24 Ibid., 221-222.
25 Ibid., 222.
26 Ibid., 222.
27 Ibid., 222.
viewer’s assumed panicked reaction to the short film L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat with the Lumière Cinématographe on 28 December 1895] – we deal with representations instead of actual experiences.”28 He points out that we do not know, and that we perhaps will never know, how the first film viewing audience exactly reacted to the first moving images or to “a Fantasmagorie or a Cinematographe presentation”, and if they responded “in the ways depicted in visual or literary discourses.”29 For Huhtamo, “the interesting thing is precisely the recurrence of the topoi within these discourses.”30 His focus is thus on the discourses that guide and mould the development31 of media culture, instead of a focus on the materiality of media artefacts.
I will now further elaborate on the notion of ‘topos’ as explained by Huhtamo in
“Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study”. He writes that a topos is “a stereotypical formula evoked over and over again in different guises and for varying purposes. Such topoi accompany and influence the development of media culture.”32 According to Huhtamo, topoi express “cultural desires”, contain cultural traditions, and “mold the meaning(s) of cultural objects” and experiences.33 Thus, topoi may disappear but continue to exist throughout media history, they encapsulate cultural traditions, and (re-)appear in different forms – hence as existing topoi in disguise – according to the current media culture and the desires expressed by this culture. He goes on: “They can disguise culture as nature, and something unheard-of as something familiar.”34 Also, they process meanings and express cultural beliefs through discourse.35
As Huhtamo points out, “topos study was pioneered by the German literary scholar Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956) in the 1930s.”36 This research method became widely known after the publication of his highly influential magnum opus Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (1948).37 Unlike Huhtamo, I will not discuss and criticize the origin of topos study in the work of Curtius. With regard to my master thesis, I am merely interested in Huhtamo’s explanation and analysis of topoi plus their function in media history.
28 Ibid., 222.
29 Ibid., 222.
30 Ibid., 222.
31 Ibid., 222.
32 Huhtamo, Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study, 30.
33 Ibid., 30.
34 Ibid., 30.
35 Ibid., 30.
36 Ibid., 31.
37 Ibid., 31.
For Huhtamo, another possible goal for media archaeology is “identifying topoi, analyzing their trajectories and transformations, and explaining the cultural logics that condition their ‘wanderings’ across time and space.”38 That is, the media-archaeological research method provides the tools to identify topoi and their origins, to analyse their existence and transformations throughout history, and to trace them across different times, places and media cultures. Moreover, Huhtamo describes how media archaeology can contribute or lead to a discovery and understanding of forgotten media objects and practices by excavating media-cultural artifacts, such as topoi, and how this method helps to connect the past with the present. With regard to the function and relevance of this type of research, Huhtamo writes: “Media archaeology means for me a critical practice that excavates media- cultural evidence for clues about neglected, misrepresented, and/or suppressed aspects of both media’s past(s) and their present and tries to bring these into a conversation with each other.”39 His focus is on media use rather than on media objects only. Media use is crafted with the help of the framing of media experiences, in other words, with topoi.
Huhtamo points out that the “origins and manifestations” of topos “are both created and conditioned by cultural forces.”40 That is, the media cultural context conditions the existence and reappearance of certain topoi, including ancient ones.41 “Beside re-enacting topoi from other traditions, media culture gives rise to its own (although they may sometimes prove to be just ancient topoi in disguise).”42 Huhtamo describes a topos as a cultural tradition that temporarily appears in media culture, and that is connected to other cultural phenomena from both the past and the present cultural context. The aim of topos study is to try to understand the interconnections between topoi throughout media history. He writes:
It is best to conceive the topos as a temporary manifestation of a persisting cultural tradition, linked by numerous threads with other cultural phenomena both from the past and from the cultural context within which the topos has made its appearance. Making sense of this intriguing network of interconnections is the real challenge for the topos approach within the wider framework of media archaeology.43
38 Ibid., 31.
39 Ibid., 31.
40 Ibid., 33.
41 Ibid., 35.
42 Ibid., 37.
43 Ibid., 40.
According to Huhtamo, “the phantasmagoria, the kaleidoscope, dissolving views, the diorama, the moving panorama, and many other media-cultural phenomena have given rise to topoi.”44 Media-cultural topoi reappear over and over again in media history, even “long after the thing they originally designated has materially disappeared.”45 The manifestations of topoi are affected by the specific nature of the context in which they appear – with regard to Proust:
the context of early cinema, and the period of other technological innovations, in which he grew up.46
In his article, Huhtamo provides various examples of topoi – “Little people”; “Hand of God”; “Dressing up in technology”; “What is happening behind your back?”; “Seeing at a distance”; to name a few – in order to illustrate that topoi exist and recur throughout media history, and in media cultures across different times and places. The descriptions of (new) media experiences can also be seen as topoi, since there are patterns in and similarities between these descriptions.
Examples of topoi in contemporary media culture can be found in the field of advertising. Advertising companies use topoi to promote and advertise their products as new and unprecedented in order to sell them to the consumers, though these products might be old topoi in disguise. In other words, while these products are comprised of elements “retrieved from cultural archives”, they are “being packaged into formulas” which seem novel.47 New products are thus embedded within molds the consumers already know, whether they are aware of it or not.48 As Huhtamo puts it: “The newest of the new is packaged in the oldest of the old.”49 Huhtamo suggests that “the flow of topoi from ancient traditions to contemporary media culture” may continue to increase “in the era of the Internet” because of the easy and
“unprecedented access to cultural traditions” stored in cultural archives, among which the Internet. As such, “the Internet could be characterized as an enormous topos transmitter” as well as a “topos generator” by giving rise to and spreading (age-old) topoi in media culture.
Huhtamo further points out that “the use of topoi in promotional strategies [not only] exploits their attraction value but also their ‘nonattraction’ value” and that “topoi are used to arrest the eye in accordance with the long tradition of the culture of attractions”50 – a culture that
44 Ibid., 38.
45 Ibid., 38.
46 Ibid., 38.
47 Ibid., 30-31.
48 Ibid., 39.
49 Ibid., 39.
50 Ibid., 38-39.
originated in the period of Proust and early cinema, and which is still applicable to contemporary culture.
In sum, topoi, or the recurring cultural patterns throughout media history, are important in Huhtamo’s media-archaeological approach. A topos is a cultural tradition that temporarily recurs in the present cultural context and that is connected to other cultural phenomena of the past as well as the present in which the cultural tradition reappears. One aim of media archaeology is to understand the network of the various, interconnected topoi in media culture. I will use the notion of topoi in order to frame Marcel Proust’s description of and reflection on his magic lantern experience in my master thesis. Huhtamo goes against a teleological view on technologies and media history; instead he argues that objects follow a cyclical path in media history, and recur from time to time. Likewise, Proust writes about recurring patterns in the experiences of new media.
II.4 Parikka and Media Archaeology as Historical and Theoretical Activity
In his book What is Media Archaeology? (2012), the Finnish new media theorist Jussi Parikka approaches media archaeology as a theory and methodology of digital media culture,51 and as a historical framework for the study of new media objects. For him, media archaeology thus offers a “theoretical opening to think about material media cultures in a historical perspective.”52 Parikka introduces media archaeology “as a way to investigate the new media cultures through insights from past new media, often with an emphasis on the forgotten, the quirky, the non-obvious apparatuses, practices and inventions.”53 That is, media archaeology aims at an understanding of the new media cultures through a thorough research and subsequent rediscovery of the past new media. During a media-archaeological research, the media archaeologist mainly focuses on the forgotten media technologies and media uses.54 Furthermore, Parikka argues that media archaeology “is also a way to analyse the regimes of memory and creative practices in media culture – both theoretical and artistic.”55 Parikka writes that “media archaeology sees media cultures as sedimented and layered, a fold of time
51 Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?, 5.
52 Jussi Parikka, “What is Media Archaeology – out now,” Jussi Parikka, May 8, 2012,
<https://jussiparikka.net/2012/05/08/what-is-media-archaeology-out-now/>.
53 Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?, 2.
54 Ibid., 2.
55 Ibid. 2-3.
and materiality where the past might be suddenly discovered anew, and the new technologies grow obsolete increasingly fast.”56 So, media cultures are layered constructions in which the past media and their uses remain hidden until they are excavated and come to the surface again. The preceding new media technologies may then instantly become outdated. Similar to Huhtamo, Parikka approaches media archaeology as a way to understand the present and the future of media apparatuses, media experiences, and media uses through excavations of the past.57 In conclusion, small histories, forgotten futures, and neglected materials are the key elements in Parikka’s media-archaeological approach.
II.5 Media Archaeology, New Film History, and New Media Studies
The Dutch-Flemish film scholar and media archaeologist Wanda Strauven has a more distinct focus on an archaeology of the cinema than the media archaeologists I have discussed above.
In fact, Strauven presented the first elaborate and accurate overview of the field in her overview article. In “Media Archaeology: Where Film History, Media Art, and New Media (Can) Meet” (2013), Strauven points out how in the history of cinema the forms and definitions of cinema have changed over time. In each decennium in the 20th century, cinema differed from other types of cinema on a textual level as well as on the levels of the basic apparatus and the dispositif or viewing situation.58 So, different forms and discourses of cinema have emerged and succeeded one another through time, and they will continue to do so. From the 1980s onwards, the New Film History scholars asked the three questions what, when, and why in order to define cinema. The combination of these questions constitutes the triple agenda of New Film History. This triple agenda, as Strauven notes, “has become essential for the emergence of media archaeology: attention for the otherness of the early cinema (“what”), discovery of the multiple origins of early cinema (“when”), and the study of its contextual material (“where”).”59 Thus, New Film History formed the basis for the media- archaeological research agenda in film studies, in which media archaeologists investigate deviations in the history of the media, and the specific context in which media emerge and exist. Also, Strauven argues: “New Film History’s relevance lies precisely in its (pioneering) media-archaeological approaches.” That is, similarly to media archaeology, New Film History
56 Ibid., 3.
57 Ibid., 2.
58 Strauven, Media Archaeology: Where Film History, Media Art, and New Media (Can) Meet, 61.
59 Ibid., 61-62.
questions what is taken for granted or universally accepted as the truth, and digs up forgotten or neglected media, materials, pioneers or unimportant films.60
Strauven addresses the disagreement among media archaeologists about what exactly media archaeology is. The practitioners of the field provide different explanations of the notion.
Strauven asks the question whether media archaeology can be defined as a methodology. She writes:
The main question remains, however, whether media archaeology is indeed (merely) a methodology. Interestingly enough, the various practitioners of the field – those who call themselves media archaeologists – do not agree upon what to call media archaeology: is it an approach, a model, a project, an exercise, a perspective, or a discipline?61
According to Strauven, “there are different methodological schools”, but “there is also the very basic tension between practice and theory.”62 That is, whereas some media archaeologists consider media archaeology as a very practical activity, others in the field regard it as a metaphor or a conceptual model.63 Before Strauven discusses the various differences in methodology, she points out how media archaeology made its way into at least three distinct fields, which she calls the three “branches” of media archaeology, that succeeded each other in history, namely:
1) film history/media history, 2) media art, and
3) new media theory.
As she continues: “These three branches are historically grown layers, successive phases that continue to coexist over time.”64
I will now briefly discuss the three branches of media archaeology that succeeded one another and coexisted in the last three decades, as outlined by Strauven.
Ad. 1 Strauven notes: “In the 1980s, media archaeology emerged […] as part of cinema studies, more specifically early cinema studies.”65 I have mentioned media archaeology’s origin in New Film History and its triple agenda (what, when, where) earlier in this part of my thesis. She continues: “Since the 1990s, the first branch of media archaeology developed in
60 Ibid., 63.
61 Ibid., 63.
62 Ibid., 64.
63 Ibid., 64.
64 Ibid., 64.
65 Ibid., 64.
broader terms as media history.”66 This development, Strauven argues, both led to excavations of hidden, forgotten, and imaginary media, and to media archaeologies’ deviation within media’s history and from conventional media practices.67
Ad. 2 The second branch of media archaeology shifts its focus to contemporary media artists who engage with and resurrect the technological past, often creating a hybrid construction of the past and the present, or explicitly remaking old apparatuses.68
Ad. 3 The third branch considers media archaeology “as a concrete activity” and “as a material engagement with (technological) devices or apparatuses.”69 From the beginning of the 21st century, several new media scholars started to use “media archaeology as a method for a (literal, physical) excavation into contemporary media” within new media studies.70 Central to this media-archaeological approach is questioning the newness of new media, exploring or researching the new and different possibilities of media, and a rethinking of the concept of media.71
According to Strauven, these three branches of media archaeology share at least four important aspects.
I. The first aspect is “the crucial relation between history and theory. In media archaeological terms, history is the study not only of the past, but also of the (potential) present and the possible futures,” which is also an important part of Zielinski, Huhtamo and Parikka’s media- archaeological research agenda. ‘Possible futures’ is a key term in this aspect of media archaeology.
II. The second aspect is “the vital connection between research and art, researchers and artists.”
III. The third one is “the central role played by the archive.”
IV. The fourth aspect is “a rethinking of temporalities,” which is the most important one for Strauven, since she argues that “the way these temporalities are rethought differs, often to a great extent, from school to school.”72
To conclude her discussion of media archaeology as a research method, we could define media archaeology as a discipline that is still in formation, and that consists of various schools both in terms of (trans)national borders as in terms of methodology.73
66 Ibid., 64.
67 Ibid., 64.
68 Ibid., 65.
69 Ibid., 66.
70 Ibid., 66.
71 Ibid., 66.
72 Ibid., 67-68.
There are four dominant approaches for rethinking temporalities in media- archaeological research, which Strauven discusses in the remainder of her chapter. Although she usefully addresses these approaches and the key figures in the field for each approach, I will only mention them very briefly, since I have already discussed those relevant for my media-archaeological investigation of Marcel Proust’s media experiences at the beginning of this chapter. These approaches consist of seeking: 1) the old in the new (Marshall McLuhan;
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin); 2) the new in the old (Siegfried Zielinski); 3) recurring topoi (Erkki Huhtamo); and 4) ruptures and discontinuities (Thomas Elsaesser).
II.6 The Hand of the Observer
In “The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch” (2011), Strauven questions and rethinks cinema’s position within the history of film, or, in a broader context, in media history. Her media-archaeological research aims at pointing out how film is embedded within a much larger media historical context – that is, a context not limited to moving images – and she focuses on the question whether some 19th century optical devices or toys that are traditionally considered as cinema’s prehistory actually do fit better in a different (or alternative) history of media, one that is not specific to cinema.74 As such, Strauven wants to reposition cinema in media history by deviating from what is generally presented in film historical overviews. In her article, Strauven focuses on pre-cinematic optical toys designed for home entertainment. She discusses manually operated optical devices – in particular the thaumatrope, the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope, and the praxinoscope – and she also addresses token-operated viewing machines, such as the kinetoscope and the mutoscope, which were meant to entertain the pre-cinematic spectator in the public sphere of penny arcades, amusement parks, and fairgrounds.75 These public places are considered to be the birthplace of cinema and, more specifically, of the early cinema of attractions.
73 Ibid., 68.
74 Strauven, The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch, 123.
75 Ibid., 123.
Figure 6 Thaumatrope76 Figure 7 Phenakistoscope77
Figure 8 Zoetrope78 Figure 9 Praxinoscope79
An important aspect in Strauven’s media-archaeological analysis of the pre-cinematic optical toys is the role of the hand of the observer (hence her title), in other words, the (wo)man- machine contact and interaction. The observer was able to touch, and hence to manipulate and interact with these optical devices.80 Strauven questions the cinematic aspect of these optical toys because they are not operated via a machine or an apparatus, as is a prerequisite for cinema. Instead, even though they were involved with movement, the observer had to operate
76 Collection of 19th century pre-cinematic optical toys donated to North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) by Dr. Ralph Wileman.
<http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/opticaltoys.htm>.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Strauven, The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch, 123.
them manually. She looks at the distinction between the hardware and the software in order to question the cinematic dimension of the optical toys. In the case of these optical toys, the observer operated both hardware and software, contrary to the institution of the cinema where the software of the cinematic apparatus is technically operated. Furthermore, Strauven wants to reposition cinema as a home entertainment device – just as the optical toys were designed for home entertainment – thus taking cinema’s history out of the narrow, traditional context of institutionalized cinema. With the advent of home video in the late 1970s and of home cinema with surround-sound system more recently, cinema became such a device used in the context of the living room all over again.81
There was a rupture between the perspectival vision of the camera obscura and the binocular vision of the stereoscope, embodied by the nineteenth-century pre-cinematic devices that “supposedly announced or prepared the birth of the Lumière Cinématographe.”82 Whereas the first type of vision or perception was considered to be a passive mode of reception, the second type was considered to be an active process. Strauven notes: “[…]
instead of offering an objective, rational view of the world, they rely on the specific physiology of the eye, on its persistence of vision and its capacity of perceiving (or creating) nonobjective illusions.”83 Most of the nineteenth-century optical devices are included in the prehistory of cinema, precisely because they involve an illusion of movement, even though some of those pre-cinematic optical toys, such as the stereoscope and the thaumatrope, were not (primarily) concerned with movement.84
Strauven discusses and explains the workings of four pre-cinematic optical toys – the thaumatrope, the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope, and the praxinoscope – and how the nineteenth-century observer controlled the spectacle created by these devices “by interacting directly, bodily, with the apparatuses.” The nineteenth-century observers in this way distinguish themselves from “the imprisoned cinemagoer of institutionalized cinema”, who is fastened in a seat and merely looks at the spectacle of the afterimage.85 Important with regard to these optical devices is their rotation, their manual operation, and the observer’s interaction with and manipulation of the apparatus. Strauven argues that “the involvement of the observer’s hand(s) allows for some manipulation or ‘interactivity’ during the viewing process,
81 Ibid., 124.
82 Ibid., 124.
83 Ibid., 124.
84 Ibid., 124.
85 Ibid., 124-125.
since the speed of rotation can be altered, the action can be interrupted abruptly and/or reversed.”86
In short, the object and the subject’s use of it are central in Strauven’s media- archaeological approach. Strauven focuses on the home environment, the personal, the closeness to the apparatus, and hands-on media experiences. Her approach helps to frame Proust’s childhood experience with the magic lantern as described in the Combray section of À la recherche du temps perdu. The manual operation of the magic lantern allowed Proust to interact with this optical device. Proust was able to manipulate the projection of the images into the surroundings by adjusting the position of the apparatus. I will discuss the manual operation of the magic lantern in Chapter IV.4.2, where I will be analysing Proust’s magic lantern experience within a media-archaeological topos framework.
II.7 Experimental Media Archaeology
Whereas Zielinski, Huhtamo, Parikka and Strauven’s media-archaeological research agendas are discourse-oriented, and more or less neglect the materiality and practices of media technologies, others do not. I would now like to discuss another approach to media archaeology that aims at understanding the past media experiences by means of historical re- enactment. This approach is called ‘Experimental Media Archaeology’. As Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever write in their article “Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New Directions” (2014): “The history of media archaeology has been a history of discourse- oriented analysis.”87 They continue: “While this tradition has produced interesting studies focusing on the discursive construction and symbolic meaning of different media technologies, the materiality of media archaeologies and the practices of use need more attention.”88 It is through re-constructing the historical context or viewing situation of old media apparatuses, and re-enacting the use of these devices, that the experimental media archaeologist attempts to understand the past media experiences. Thus, the media archaeologist is not a mere observer or historian, but rather an experimenter who gains experimental knowledge of media practices and experiences in the past. Fickers and Van den Oever mention this aim of media archaeology in their article as follows:
86 Ibid., 125.
87 Fickers and Van den Oever, Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New Directions, 272.
88 Ibid., 272.
Experimental media archaeology is inspired by the idea of historical re-enactment, acknowledging the historian’s (the experimenter’s) role as co-constructor of the epistemic object. Experimental media archaeology is driven by a desire to produce experimental knowledge regarding past media usages, developments, and practices.89
The historian and philosopher of history Robin George Collingwood introduced this idea of re-enactment as a heuristic methodology or concept of historical understanding in his seminal study The Idea of History (1947).90 He explains how the historian gains historical knowledge of past media practices and experiences by re-enacting the use of, thus actively engaging with, old apparatuses. Collingwood defines historical knowledge as “the knowledge of what mind has done in the past, and at the same time it is the re-doing of this, the perpetuation of past acts in the present.”91 According to Collingwood, the objects and activities whose history the historian is studying are experiences to be lived through in his own mind. They are activities of thought which enable the historian to continue and relive in the present what the mind has done in the past.92 Fickers and Van den Oever expand Collingwood’s idea of “experiencing history” in doing historical re-enactments in practice by actively engaging with the historical artifacts.93 In doing experimental media archaeology, they aim at a hands-on, full sensorial experience of media technologies through stimulating all the senses and critically reflecting on the obtained tacit knowledge.94 So, according to Fickers and Van den Oever, “doing historical re-enactments with old media artifacts is a heuristic method that will offer new sensorial experiences and reflexive insights into the complex meanings and functionalities of past media technologies and practices.”95 This thus means a shift to the sensorial and the haptic dimension of media technologies. I will come back to the tactile and sensorial experience of media technologies in Chapter IV, specifically focusing on the magic lantern and Proust’s experience of this optical device.
89 Ibid., 272.
90 Ibid., 273.
91 Collingwood, The Idea of History, 218.
92 Ibid., 218.
93 Fickers and Van den Oever, Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New Directions, 273.
94 Ibid., 273.
95 Ibid., 276.
II.8 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have discussed and explained media archaeology according to Siegfried Zielinski, Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka, and Wanda Strauven. There are many different views on what media archaeology is, and as a research approach or method it crosses academic fields and disciplines. In general, we could say that media archaeology is an approach that provides the tools for excavating the layers of media culture, and aims at understanding the development of media history (or histories) in alternative ways. Also, a media-archaeological research practice can lead to a discovery of forgotten or neglected media apparatuses and media practices. Media-archaeological research focuses on finding the old in the new, the new in the old, recurring topoi, and ruptures and discontinuities.
According to Zielinski, media archaeology is an approach as well as an activity that enables the media archaeologist to excavate the deep layers of media culture in order to discover hidden side paths in the history of media, and to envision the future media practices and experiences.96 The aim of his media-archaeological research is to “find something new in the old”, and to connect the present with the past.
Huhtamo presents media archaeology as an approach to study the topoi in media culture, that is, the cyclically recurring phenomena or patterns that appear, disappear and reappear over and over again in media history.97 Topoi are stereotypical formulas, cultural traditions, discursive concepts, clichés, commonplaces, or cultural motives that accompany and influence the development of media culture. The aim of media archaeology, according to Huhtamo, is to explain and understand the historically recurring and present experiences of media technologies through examination of media experiences in the past.98
Parikka approaches media archaeology as a theory and methodology of media culture.99 For him, it offers a historical framework to study new media objects.100 The aim of a media-archaeological investigation is to understand new media cultures through a thorough research and subsequent rediscovery of past new media. A media-archaeological research
96 Zielinksi, Media Archaeology, 1.
Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, 7.
97 Huhtamo, From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Notes toward an Archaeology of the Media, 221- 222.
98 Ibid., 221-222.
99 Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?, 5.
100 Jussi Parikka, “What is Media Archaeology – out now,” Jussi Parikka, May 8, 2012,
<https://jussiparikka.net/2012/05/08/what-is-media-archaeology-out-now/>.
