Drafts by Dimitrij Mlekuz Vrhovnik
A short talk given at the round table “From Material Landscapes to Cognitive Landscapes”, 30th EA... more A short talk given at the round table “From Material Landscapes to Cognitive Landscapes”, 30th EAA Annual meeting in Rome, Italy, 28—31 August 2024, session 888., exploring the relation betwen subjejct and landscape from the perspective of lacanian psychoanalysis.
Archaeology accesses the past itself through material traces which have survived into the present... more Archaeology accesses the past itself through material traces which have survived into the present. Archaeology establishes a relationship between an event that no longer exists in its complete form and the trace in the present. My point of departure is that these inquiries are acts of memory, while traces themselves comprise a material, non-human memory of the past. The concept of memory connects archaeology with another paradigmatic discipline based on a similar mode of inquiry, psychoanalysis. Both disciplines recognise the past in the present; they explore the multitemporal nature of the present. Working with material memory means that archaeology is a practice of archiving. The archive serves as an apparatus, a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient — in a specific way — the inquiry and discourse of archaeology. Last but not least, the archive also offers a way to think of the big data as the monstrous, uncanny transformation of the archive.
Haunted, sublime, uncanny and abject: human-cave encounters and the roots of human subjectivity
The paper approaches the embodied and material dimensions of human subjectivity through exploring... more The paper approaches the embodied and material dimensions of human subjectivity through exploring the human encounters with caves through concepts of affect, emotion, body, materiality, performance and practice. This approach explores how through pre-personal relations between material bodies, things and places combine to form affective fields. These visceral engagements constitute a background within which the cave is apprehended. But there is always an excess. This affective atmosphere in the cave can be described as “haunting”. Haunting is something attached to a place, it speaks of the sense of uneasiness. This unease can be described in different ways, using interrelated concepts of uncanny, sublime or abject. All revolve around the theme of boundary-blurring, destabilisation breakdown and destruction of boundaries and concepts, make the world intelligible and meaningful. The subject, constructed in a process of creating the meaning of the world, through representations, is constantly faced by abjection. Abject refers to the the raw vitality of material, to the powers of the earth, the meaningless chaotic nature, sublime non-human powers, the meaningless otherness which haunts caves and threatens the symbolic order and culture. Performances and representations emerge as ways of approaching the experience of ultimate alterity, erosion of certainty. Notions of sacred, numinous are ways of approaching the uncanny, sublime or abject. The subject is born out of a traumatic event of an encounter with the haunted, that makes it yearn for a return to someplace before entering into the symbolic order. Human subjectivity is something that emerges as the effect of the symbolic order, constituting a break from the immediate encounter with the ultimate other. In the end, can archaeology contribute to the questions of subjectivity? How can be located within the current landscape dominated by neuroscience on one hand and psychoanalysis on the other?
Kaj dejansko predstavljajo računalniške vizualizacije preteklosti? Kako so narejene? Kakšno je nj... more Kaj dejansko predstavljajo računalniške vizualizacije preteklosti? Kako so narejene? Kakšno je njihovo razmerje do arheoloških sledov? Kako jih razumeti kot kulturne produkte? Kakšne so pasti njihove rabe?
Technical engagement with the world is structured like a language. It is a language, a system of ... more Technical engagement with the world is structured like a language. It is a language, a system of differences between operations. Things, objects, artefacts made through a chain of operations are encrusted with that language and recognised as such within a discourse. This, on the one hand, makes the archaeology of speaking beings possible; on the other hand, it decenters humans; it shifts the agency away from the individual persons to transindividual discourse inscribed in things.
EAA, 2021
Contemporary identity politics refers to political stances rooted in experiences of injustice sha... more Contemporary identity politics refers to political stances rooted in experiences of injustice shared by excluded social groups. It is marked by multiplication of overlapping identities and their use in fighting various forms of oppression. This seems to be a relatively novel phenomenon. How to frame past identities?
I will approach past identities using the Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Identities can be framed within two registers. The first is the “imaginary axis”; this is the domain of inter-subjectivity that functions to support and consolidate the images subjects use to substantiate themselves. This is the register of identity politics and it is usually invoked when we approach past identities (individual identity, visible through personal adornment and ornaments). This kind of identity is most fluid and prone to change.
The second register of identity occurs along the “symbolic axis”. This axis provides the subject with a symbolic framework, and it ties them into a variety of roles and social contracts. Importantly, it entails the radical alterity of what Lacan refers to as ‘the big Other’, as an amassed collection of social conventions and laws, an embodiment of authority and truth. It has a kind of supra-agency, of language, of the norms and rules – which speak through subjects and determine their position. This is what we usually refer to as a “culture” and appears to be static and rigid, yet, as Žižek insists, it exists only insofar as we act as if it exists.
What was the relationship between both registers in the past, especially as critics of identity politics insist that particular struggles effectively cover up the universal oppression embodied in the big Other? What is the role of material culture in negotiating to mean, both in intersubjective and trans-subjective (big Other) exchanges?
EAA, 2021
This is a highly speculative take on the relation between embodied mind and material culture, by ... more This is a highly speculative take on the relation between embodied mind and material culture, by juxtaposing the structuralist reading of Leroi-Gourhan’s chaîne opératoire with Lacanian theory of language.
Leroi-Gourhan puts chaîne opératoire as the nexus of interaction between body, mind, social and material world. The gesture cannot be understood in isolation but rather as part of a chain of operations, a dynamic process that refers to the rules guiding the manufacturing process. These rules should be understood as a syntax, as rules about relationships that define the time-spatial organization of production.
In this way, it is isomorphic with language, which is defined by structural linguistics define as a structure composed of differential elements. Language is understood as “chain of signifiers”, a stream of signifiers combined following the laws of grammar.
The gesture is at once individual and collective, concrete and abstract. Leroi-Gourhan emphasizes the collective knowledge that stands behind individual human action.
This is another similarity it shares with language. Lacan uses the term "discourse" is to emphasize the trans individual nature of language. This is the “big Other” where a system of determining relationships between signifiers is put into place. The big Other is the structure that symbolically institutes the subject’s place in an established order with signifiers that pre-existed him.
Is there a material “big Other”? The individuals are born in a world transformed by a deep history of technological operations. Operational sequences are embodied in the material world, changed by previous gestures. Tools, artefacts, material culture, plays a role of technical big Other. The moment the subject begins to engage with the world enters into a relationship of dependency vis-à-vis this material big Other. This makes a relationship between technical and cognitive a recursive one, and structurally different from the language, with several interesting consequences.
This paper is a story about special object, a two and a half millennia old bucket called the Vač... more This paper is a story about special object, a two and a half millennia old bucket called the Vače situla. What powers does it possess? How does it work, how does it shape people? What is its role in the development of the Slovenian state? Why is a bronze bucket from the Iron Age on Slovenian passports and identity cards? Who is the lord of the buckets?
Airborne lidar survey of the Karst plateau revealed numerous new sites and traces of past land us... more Airborne lidar survey of the Karst plateau revealed numerous new sites and traces of past land use. This allows us to broaden the focus away from individual sites to address complete landscapes – from the prehistory to modern era. One of the more interesting traces we have encountered are long straight walls that ignore topography of the landscape and run perpendicular to each other. They form a regular network with module around 720 m. We argue that they are remnants of the Roman land division (centuriation) of the territory of the town Tergeste (Trieste). We discuss the evidence and tackle some implication of discovery for the understanding of the Roman occupation of Karst and formation of Karst landscapes.
The landscape of the Karst hillforts has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of ... more The landscape of the Karst hillforts has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of hillforts, treating them as isolated points in an empty space. Airborne laser scanning survey revealed a very well preserved prehistoric landscape in the settlement niche of the Tabor pri Vrabčah hillfort. It is composed of settlement, large enclosure, brickwork fields, preserved as a network of low walls and terraces. Brickwork fields are crossed by walled track, which connect the settlement with the pastures and outfields. On the edges we can recognise some irregular fields and cairnfields. This example proves a vivid example that prehistoric landscapes were not empty spaces between settlements, but full of features and traces of daily activities.
OGS Crawford suggested that history is like a carpet whose pattern can only be discerned from a d... more OGS Crawford suggested that history is like a carpet whose pattern can only be discerned from a distance. The reason why historians in the past had been unsuccessful in discerning the pattern of history was due to inadequate data: “You cannot see the pattern of a carpet when only a minute portion is uncovered, and you cannot discern the pattern of history until large portions of it are available for examination.”
The high-resolution aerial datasets acquired using aerial and satellite platforms has been expanding exponentially both in volume, velocity and variety. This scalar stress is providing new opportunities but also complex challenges to aerial archaeology. Massive, variable and complex datasets challenge traditional ways of doing aerial archaeology, this includes historically established practices of managing, processing, analyzing and interpreting data. How to manage, process and analyze this huge loads of data? But even more critical, what potential new insights can this massive quantities of data provide? What new quality can emerge from the sheer quantity of data? What new conceptual frameworks we need to accommodate massive data? Paper addresses the challenge of scalar stress proved with big data and argues that it opens a way towards new understandings of landscapes/archaeology/history. What is this carpet OGS Crawford was talking about?
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Drafts by Dimitrij Mlekuz Vrhovnik
I will approach past identities using the Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Identities can be framed within two registers. The first is the “imaginary axis”; this is the domain of inter-subjectivity that functions to support and consolidate the images subjects use to substantiate themselves. This is the register of identity politics and it is usually invoked when we approach past identities (individual identity, visible through personal adornment and ornaments). This kind of identity is most fluid and prone to change.
The second register of identity occurs along the “symbolic axis”. This axis provides the subject with a symbolic framework, and it ties them into a variety of roles and social contracts. Importantly, it entails the radical alterity of what Lacan refers to as ‘the big Other’, as an amassed collection of social conventions and laws, an embodiment of authority and truth. It has a kind of supra-agency, of language, of the norms and rules – which speak through subjects and determine their position. This is what we usually refer to as a “culture” and appears to be static and rigid, yet, as Žižek insists, it exists only insofar as we act as if it exists.
What was the relationship between both registers in the past, especially as critics of identity politics insist that particular struggles effectively cover up the universal oppression embodied in the big Other? What is the role of material culture in negotiating to mean, both in intersubjective and trans-subjective (big Other) exchanges?
Leroi-Gourhan puts chaîne opératoire as the nexus of interaction between body, mind, social and material world. The gesture cannot be understood in isolation but rather as part of a chain of operations, a dynamic process that refers to the rules guiding the manufacturing process. These rules should be understood as a syntax, as rules about relationships that define the time-spatial organization of production.
In this way, it is isomorphic with language, which is defined by structural linguistics define as a structure composed of differential elements. Language is understood as “chain of signifiers”, a stream of signifiers combined following the laws of grammar.
The gesture is at once individual and collective, concrete and abstract. Leroi-Gourhan emphasizes the collective knowledge that stands behind individual human action.
This is another similarity it shares with language. Lacan uses the term "discourse" is to emphasize the trans individual nature of language. This is the “big Other” where a system of determining relationships between signifiers is put into place. The big Other is the structure that symbolically institutes the subject’s place in an established order with signifiers that pre-existed him.
Is there a material “big Other”? The individuals are born in a world transformed by a deep history of technological operations. Operational sequences are embodied in the material world, changed by previous gestures. Tools, artefacts, material culture, plays a role of technical big Other. The moment the subject begins to engage with the world enters into a relationship of dependency vis-à-vis this material big Other. This makes a relationship between technical and cognitive a recursive one, and structurally different from the language, with several interesting consequences.
The high-resolution aerial datasets acquired using aerial and satellite platforms has been expanding exponentially both in volume, velocity and variety. This scalar stress is providing new opportunities but also complex challenges to aerial archaeology. Massive, variable and complex datasets challenge traditional ways of doing aerial archaeology, this includes historically established practices of managing, processing, analyzing and interpreting data. How to manage, process and analyze this huge loads of data? But even more critical, what potential new insights can this massive quantities of data provide? What new quality can emerge from the sheer quantity of data? What new conceptual frameworks we need to accommodate massive data? Paper addresses the challenge of scalar stress proved with big data and argues that it opens a way towards new understandings of landscapes/archaeology/history. What is this carpet OGS Crawford was talking about?