"junk that governed and shaped the space before him" The Anarchives Volume 3 Issue 4 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- A review of / / \ \ "The Space" ---|--/----\--|--- a novel by \/ \/ Patrick Borden /\______/\ "The Space" by Patrick Borden is a literary exploration into the new media-based reality. A mixture of autobiography and fiction, Borden flys between political insight and implicit media analysis. The novel depicts a 'generation' that has been 'neutralized' by drugs, elements of integration supplied by the 'state'. Borden dramatizes the perpetual conflict between the individual and the state, grounding it amidst anarchist history, the decline of the 'left', and the bio-machination of humanity. Unlike conventional book reviews, this review seeks to draw out the 'space', that surrounds the novel "The Space". Borden chooses certain autobiographical figures, to narrate the self-realization of powerlessness in the face of a growing institution. This review chooses to examine the ground that surrounds these figures, drawing out the media analysis that is inherent in the language of this book, thus delving into the cold reality of our present existence. Examining and embracing the ground is a Taoist approach to comprehension, a holisitic rather than linear conceptualization. The Taoist work, "Understanding Reality" by Chang Pu-Tuan, is an ancient text of metaphor analysis, that sought comprehension of one's environement through dynamic non-linear exploration. The modern equivalent of this Chinese text is "Understanding Media" by Marshall McLuhan, which seeks comprehension of one's environment through dynamic non-linear exploration. If Patrick hasn't read McLuhan, he should... McLuhan was not an ideologue, nor was he a scientist. Rather McLuhan was a literary nomad, an explorer of the human mind who wandered through our various extensions, winding among trails through our collective and individual, conscious and unconscious. He studied media as extensions of humanity, all aspects of our conscious and unconscious expression, from language to art, printing presses to television, t-shirts to comptuers, light-bulbs to automobiles. He didn't create a school of thought, nor did he present a general theory. He is best known for his paradox: 'the medium is the message', however this phrase is more of a segue to the world of media study, rather than a be-all and end-all. "Proximity to the drug, he could feel it now. He saw the pharmacist facing him from behind the counter, but it was junk that orchestrated the scene, junk that governed and shaped the space before him, junk that had led him there." The medium as the message is a play on the role of objects within an environment. Whenever a new medium is introduced into an environment it changes and permanently alters the 'space' that is the environment. Throughout Patrick Borden's "The Space", junk or herion is the medium under examination. For the characters in the book, junk is the defining medium of existence. However media do not exist in isolation, but often in direct relationship with each other. With the junk as figure, the ground can be viewed as society-at-large, a society that is itself a 'media environment', arguably an 'Information Age', an era of technological domination fueled by the liberation of information, where everything is bits and bytes within a large automated system. Within the context of a technological society, drugs and propaganda play complimentary roles. "Junk was part of their culture - they just didn't want to admit it. Just wanted to pretend these other drugs were it, that designers would fulfill that role. Marketing. Consumption. Economic growth. So much propaganda. Junk reinforced it, covered its failures." Jacques Ellul wrote that propaganda within a technological society is an act of integration. Propaganda acts against the dysfunctions of the technology, integrating all into the technological order, ensuring that progress is equated with freedom. In the Information Age, we are witnessing the literal integration of humans and machines. Technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and even information networks appropriate humanity in an effort to gain total efficiency. Even tape players with miny headphones that fit into the small parts of our ears indicate our cyborg trends. With the proliferation of telepresence and the totality of the media environment, our psyches are exposed and transformed everyday in the face of thousands of paid-advertisments. As bio-technology continues to develop, our bio-systems are off-set by the technological change. Drugs become agents of balance, media that attempt to engage and deal with the transformative change. Within the context of integration, drugs can become the propaganda, the agent of integration, that can traverse the modern psyche. "It was the drug, it was junk that gave them access, access inside. Inner voice. A call to the muse. It was there - ther in the music, ther in the art. There in that subculture, a commnity, sharing it. It was real, not created by fashion, TV ads. So much more than clothes, slang, posturing." With the proliferation of information, and the immersion into the media environment, the literate identity of the printed word transforms into the tribal identity of the spoken word, or in modern terms the electric word. McLuhan described this process as retribalization. Within "The Space", Borden describes the tribilzation that has occured around the consumption of the legalized drugs. As the individual identity is zapped by the electronic omnipresence of information, lost souls thrive to the perceived collective identity of the drug. Borden depicts social groups wholly defined by their drug of choice. Perceivably, bio-technological integration is so complete that identity is entirely mediated by the substances of integration and control. "They had been neutralized." Wallowing within the apathy of addiction, the protagonist lays a lament for the decline of the left. As the individual is subverted by electronic technology, Borden answers with anarchism, the hidden ground of resistence and revolution. With the development of 'group-think' and the collectivization of the drug experience, Borden cries for the autonomy of the individual to crack through the wall of consumerist homogeneity. The junk addiction however acts as the shroud of sickness that prevents any real political change. "Sitting there exhaling the last of the smoke he was dying along with a dying world." The interdependency of the narco-techno world has synthesized all within the military-industrial-biological complex. Integration on all levels has constructed an institution of incredible power, and incredible destruction. The remains of the individual identity cry out in agony, grasping for air in a suffocating synthesis of collective homogenization. "This was the source. This was the space. It was from here that they had created, from here that so much art had come." For the characters in the book, "The Space" was the environment created by the medium of heroin. An environment which gave the individual temporary autonomy, a temporary get-away from the modern technological world. The irony of course is that the figure of escape is created by the ground of narcotic-dependency, and in this context societal integration. The more heroin taken by the characters, the greather their dependency on the drug, the more they became a part of that drug's culture. A process of consumption that mirrors our technological society. "The Space" by Patrick Borden is an interesting and engaging book, that lends insight into the subconscious activities of our socialization, and the conscious acts of our desire for freedom. Canadian distribution is by the publisher: Empyreal Press, PO Box 1746, Place du Parc, Montreal, QC, H2W 2R7 US distribution by: AK Distribution, PO Box 40682, San Francisco, CA, 94140-0682 http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ ___ ___ ___ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /:/ / /::\ / /::\ / /:/ / /:/\:\ / /:/\:\ / /::\ / /:/ /::\ / /:/ \:\ /__/:/\:\ /__/:/ /:/\:\ /__/:/ \__\:\ \__\/ \:\ \ \:\/:/__\/ \ \:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \ \::/ \ \:\ /:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \:\/:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \::/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ -------------------------------------------------------------- To receive the Anarchives via email send a note to Majordomo@lglobal.com with the message in the body: subscribe anarchives To get off the list, send to the same address but write: unsubscribe anarchives Also check out: http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/