Brian Dillon, The Revelation of Erasure
- Erasure is never merely a matter of making things disappear: there is always some detritus strewn about in the aftermath, some bruising to the surface from which word or image has been removed, some reminder of the violence done to make the world look new again. (p. 2)
This argument is similar to Bataille’s, who perceives architecture as an authoritarian representation, only expressing the ideal being of society.
- Whether rubbed away, crossed out or reinscribed, the rejected entity has a habit of returning, ghostlike. (p.2)
This reminds me of Adolf Loos’ view on architecture making one think that something invisible is present. It makes one perceive an absence.
Is erasure absence ?
- Erasure, it turns out, is just a particularly profound form of preservation. (p.3)
- ‘Violence was shown in and with pictures, but the pictures showed only a terrifying void.’ (p.6)
- Sigmund Freud: One writes upon the celluloid portion of the covering sheet which rests upon the wax slab. For this purpose no pencil or chalk is necessary, since the writing does not depend on material being deposited upon the receptive surface. If one wishes to destroy what has been written, all that is necessary is to raise the double covering-sheet from the wax slab by a light pull, starting from the free lower end. (p.10)
Nice metaphor about defacement. Reminds me of Taussig’s view of defacement as enlightenment.
- Conscious thought or feeling, in other words, is made to vanish into the unconscious. (p.10)
The unconscious reveals this vanished feeling through what Freud calls “slips”. I’d say that even in humans, erasure is a preserved entity which has the habit of returning.
