Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form

225 Pages·2015·22.147 MB·English

by  David J. Alworth

SITE READING

Site Reading
FICTION, ART, SOCIAL FORM
DAVID J. ALWORTH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket Art or Photograph: (1) In the grocery with our little helpers © Jaro Larnos / Flickr;
(2) Scrapyard / © CG Textures; (3) Roads, © Jacobo Cortés Ferreira / CG Textures;
(4) DebrisStone, © Jonas De Ro / CG Textures; (5) Restrain, © Rikke68 / Thinkstock
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978– 0- 691– 16449– 6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014959229
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Montserrat, Bulmer MT Std
and Sabon Next LT Pro
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For the little collective

There is a question implicit in the foregoing analyses and interpre-
tations. It is this: what is the mode of existence of social relations?
No sooner had the social sciences established themselves than they
gave up any interest in the description of “substances” inherited
from philosophy: “subject” and “object,” society “in itself,” or the
individual or group considered in isolation. Instead, like the other
sciences, they took relationships as their object of study. The question
is, though, where does a relationship reside when it is not being
actualized in a highly determined situation?
— HENRI LEFEBVRE, The Production of Space

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations xi
INTRODUCTION: THE SITE OF THE SOCIAL 1
1 SUPERMARKET SOCIOLOGY
(Don DeLillo, Andy Warhol) 25
TEST SITES 49
2 DUMPS
(William S. Burroughs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) 51
3 ROADS
(Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, John Chamberlain) 73
4 RUINS
(Thomas Pynchon, Robert Smithson) 96
5 ASYLUMS
(Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, Jeff Wall) 121
AFTERWORD: SITE UNSEEN 149
Acknowledgments 157
Notes 161
Bibliography 187
Index 201