Modernist Avant-Garde Aesthetics and Contemporary Military Technology: Technicities of Perception

249 Pages·2010·2 MB·English

by  Ryan Bishop

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Modernist Avant-Garde Aesthetics d M

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and Contemporary Military Technology o d
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TECHNICITIES OF PERCEPTION e n
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Ryan Bishop and John Phillips p t

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‘An intelligent, imaginative, wide-ranging and lucid work. It marks a genuine r
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move forward for the application of deconstruction to cultural studies. And what a
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is especially remarkable about the book is its stunning range of examples and y n
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cases, which include Finnegans Wake, Transformer toys, Malaysian gothic M -
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thrillers, poems by Keats and Blake, the war in Bosnia, ventriloquism, diaspora
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and the cold-war, postcolonial formations in South East Asia.’ li r
Professor Simon During, Department of English, Johns Hopkins University t d
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‘A richly fascinating, very wise book which launches a brave, telling, and at times, r
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devastating cultural critique of the military-industrial complex. The arguments
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which praise the modernist avant-garde for its prescience and also its techniques s
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of resistance to war technology are startling, refreshing and brilliant.’ c h
Professor Adam Piette, School of English, University of Sheffield h e
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This book analyses the operation of current state-of-the-art military technology and o ic
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the experimental art, music and writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth o s
century. Modernist aesthetic renders clearer the operations of the vast surveillance g
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and killing machines of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
A basic aim of visual technologies is to collapse the sphere of perception with that of
the perceived object. Modernist aesthetics, working the same terrain, shows that there
always remains an irreducible element of time and space. Military technology tends
towards the impossible goal of eliminating this dimension, while modernist aesthetics
exploits it. Placing military operations alongside modernist aesthetics reveals the civic
sphere suspended between two incompatible desires.
Through close readings of the art and writing of Djuna Barnes, Joseph Conrad, Marcel
Duchamp, James Joyce, Mina Loy, Stéphane Mallarmé, the Italian Futurists and H. G.
Wells alongside the Apache attack helicopters, Network-Centric Warfare, satellites,
decoys, sirens and radios, the chapters address issues such as: targeting, surveillance, R
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visibility and the invisible, broadcast and media, the military body, diasporas, o a
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geopolitics and beauty. n
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Ryan Bishopand John Phillipsare both Associate Professors in the English Language P is
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and Literature Program at the National University of Singapore. il o
l p Modernist Avant-Garde Aesthetics
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ISBN 978 0 7486 3988 5 and Contemporary Military Technology
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square
Edinburgh
E T E C H N I C I T I E S O F P E R C E P T I O N
EH8 9LF
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www.euppublishing.com i
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Jacket image: Cover art © Joy Garnett. Killbox, 2001. Private Collection. b
Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, New York. u
r Ryan Bishop and John Phillips
Jacket design: www.paulsmithdesign.com g
h
Modernist Avant-Garde Aesthetics and
Contemporary Military Technology
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Modernist Avant-Garde
Aesthetics and Contemporary
Military Technology
Technicities of Perception
Ryan Bishop and John Phillips
Edinburgh University Press
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© Ryan Bishop and John Phillips, 2010
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Janson
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3988 5 (hardback)
The right of Ryan Bishop and John Phillips
to be identifi ed as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Figures viii
Part I Aesthetics, Poetics, Prosthetics 1
1 The Slow and the Blind: Unhinging the Senses to Harness
Them 3
2 Sighted Weapons and Modernist Opacity: Aesthetics,
Poetics, Prosthetics 25
3 We Make It Beautiful 49
4 We Don’t Make It Beautiful 68
Part II Broadcast, Hinge, Emergency 93
5 Ventriloquism, Broadcast and Technologies of Narrative 95
6 The Military Body and the Curious Logic of the Hinge 117
7 Manufacturing Emergencies 135
8 Among the Blind and the Delay 147
Part III Surveillance, Targeting, Containment 167
9 Strategies and Technologies of Containment: Containing
the Political 169
10 Scoping Out 197
11 Satellites of Love and War 213
Index 229
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Acknowledgements
This book has been several years in the making, and we have presented
material related to it in numerous venues. Being able to air the ideas pre-
sented here to engaged and stimulating audiences has helped shape the
project beyond measure. The authors would especially like to thank the
following people and institutions for their support and intellectual engage-
ment: Dean Tan Tai Yong in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
at the National University of Singapore (NOS); Robbie Goh and John
Richardson, heads of the Dept of English at NUS; the faculty seminar
participants over the years in the Dept of English at NUS; Tim Barnard
and Greg Clancey in the Dept of History, NUS; the Science, Technology
and Society research cluster participants at NUS; our graduate students;
Lily Kong, Vice- President of NUS and the director of the Asia Research
Institute; Caren Kaplan, Fran Dyson and the Cultural Studies Program at
UC Davis; Doug Kellner and his graduate seminar at UCLA; The City
as Target and Derrida workshop participants at NUS; Mac Daley and
the Graduate Programme in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the
University of Nottingham; Peter Stokes and the International Critical
Management Studies Conference organisers in Cambridge and Budapest;
and Jonathan Arac, John Armitage, Paul Bove, Mike Featherstone, and
Couze Venn amongst leagues of others for constant intellectual support and
arguments. A very special thanks is owed to Wong May Ee, who tirelessly
helped us with endless details related to fi nalising the manuscript; without
her, deadlines would never have been met. Parts of this book have appeared
in signifi cantly different forms in the following journals: Boundary2, Body &
Society, Cultural Politics, Theory Culture & Society, Culture and Organization,
Critical Perspectives on International Business, and Social Identities. We would
like to thank the editors and reviewers of those journals for their intelligent
engagement with this material. Finally, we owe a special thanks to Jackie
Jones, editor without compare, at Edinburgh University Press, her fantastic
team of colleagues, and the excellent reviewers of the manuscript.
Ryan would like to give special thanks to friends, colleagues, students and
family members who provided immeasurable support while I was working
on this material, especially my father Steve, my stepfather Chuck, my two
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Acknowledgements vii
brothers Eric and Steve, my lovely daughters Sarah and Sophia, and my
dearest collaborator Adeline.
John gives thanks to friends, teachers, colleagues and students and family
members who have helped and contributed to the writing of this book in
various ways, especially to Barty, Pearson, Jane, Phil, Charlie, Phillipa, to my
son Alex and most of all to Chrissie for her love and unfl agging emotional
and intellectual support.
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List of Figures
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Keystone Image, “She Sees Her Son in France”, advert
for Stereopticon images during World War I. 3
Figure 1.2 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). 10
Figure 1.3 Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Olga in an Armchair
(Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil) (1917). 14
Figure 1.4 Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Igor Stravinsky (Portrait d’Igor
Stravinsky) (1920). 15
Figure 1.5 Marcel Duchamp, Network of Stoppages (1914). 17
Figure 1.6 Network Centric Warfare. 18
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Apache Longbow Cockpit, AH-6 4D. 26
Figure 2.2 The Blind Man Cover. 40
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 ‘We Make It Beautiful’, Apache Longbow advert. 51
Figure 3.2 Eadweard Muybridge, Nude Descending a Staircase. 59
Figure 3.3 Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
(1912). 59
Figure 3.4 Marcel Duchamp, The Bride (1912). 62
Figure 3.5 Apache Gunship on Tarmac. 63
Figure 3.6 Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23). 64
Figure 3.7 Apache Longbow in Flight. 65
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List of Figures ix
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 IHADSS Helmet. 111
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Transformer Toy as Soldier and Transport. 127
Figure 6.2 Soldier of the Future. 127
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 ‘Big Joe’ Chrysler Siren Advert. 139
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Marcel Duchamp, Etant Donnés: 2. The Illuminating
Gas (1946–66). 161
Figure 8.2 Decoy. 163
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Visée’. 210
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23). 222
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