[This was first written on 13 September 2011]
Introduction
Today I shall try to weave an account of MATERIALITY into the picture I have been developing. Writing always involves physical materials – something to make marks with and a surface to make marks on. From this, a number of points spring to mind.
Materials and Meaning
The materials used to write a particular text are part of its MEANING. To tattoo someone’s name onto your skin means something different from writing it in the condensation on a window with your index finger and something different again from embroidering it onto a sampler.
If we think of the way MATERIALITY contributes to the MEANING of writing in semiotic terms, the physical nature of the text often works, I think, as a kind of INDEX in the sense developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. [Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Writings, 8 Vols, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-58).] Peirce defines an INDEX as a sign in which there is a direct connection between the meaning-bearing thing (the signifier) and the meaning to which it points (the signified) – the relationship is not completely conventional (as it would be in a SYMBOL) and it is not one of straightforward resemblance (as it would be in an ICON). The signifier may be an image of something caused by the signified. (For example, the traffic sign meaning ‘high winds’ does not directly depict the wind – how would that be possible? – but shows an image of a wind sock. And, in Christian art, Saint Catherine typically holds a wheel because a wheel was the instrument of her martyrdom). To return to examples from our project, engraving a name into stone as an act of remembrance is significant because the hardness of the material indexes the hope that memory will be preserved for a long time. Interestingly, though, when poppy wreaths are laid on war memorials (like the one in Rawmarsh), they often bear handwritten texts, and, although these are usually inside a protective plastic sleeve, water still tends to get inside and makes the ink run. And as the ink runs, it produces a kind of pathos perhaps because it indexes change and loss. Thus, the handwritten texts on the steps of a war memorial produce a complex interaction of references to longevity and transience as a result of the materials used to write them.
To take another example, tattooing derives some of its meaning from its intimate association with the body coupled with its permanence, which indexes commitment in a very strong fashion. This point is endlessly raised when people talk about tattoos: ‘You may like it now but how will you feel when you’re sixty?’, ‘What if you split up?’ Does some of the significance of henna tattoos derive from their less permanent character and the sense that they will fade over time?
Materials and Aesthetics
In some of the contexts we have looked at the connection between MATERIALITY and AESTHETICS emerges quite strongly. I want to come back to AESTHETICS later but we could mention here the sense that some materials are perceived as having a kind of ‘dignity’ and some a type of ‘authenticity’, whereas others are perceived as ‘cheap’ or ‘tacky’. The use of ‘tacky’ materials may give rise to a sense of what I think of as kitsch. From talking to Steve, I suspect I’m using that term wrongly and what I really mean is a kind of pleasure in the ‘tacky’ that operates ironically – things that are ‘so bad that they are good’. Furthermore, some forms of writing – graffiti, embroidery, tattooing – have their own very developed AESTHETICS. And, while these exceed the specific issue of MATERIALITY – that is, they are go beyond the specific issue of what physical materials the text is made of – they do include it. These AESTHETICS may be associated with the IDENTITIES of specific cultural (and counter-cultural) groups.
Economic Dimensions of Materiality
Materials also have their own economic value and this has important results for textuality. It is expensive to build a large structure from stone and have dozens of names engraved on it. It is relatively cheap to buy a marker pen and write graffiti on painted surfaces.
In a lot of cases, the semiotic, the aesthetic, and the economic are closely intertwined. As an example, we might think about writing paper. The nature of the paper and the ink is important on a semiotic level: its weight in grams per square metre, whether you use a biro or a fountain pen, the colour of both materials. To a certain extent, the ‘meaning’ of a heavy paper arises because it indexes expense. But this is not so true of the colour of ink and paper, where the meaning is more conventional. (Broadcasters talk about being able to recognise letters from ‘cranks’ because they are written in green ink.) For children there may be a pleasure in using pens of many colours, ones that, used by adults, would be seen as inappropriate.
Materiality, Power, and Memory
These considerations may help to nuance the discussion of some specific examples from the project and I’m going to write some fragments about these.
(1) Looking at the dispute in East Herringthorpe cemetery over the decoration of children’s graves, for example, the question arises of what was supposed to be wrong with the objects placed on the graves by the grieving parents. I suspect that the objections raised by the private company, Dignity, may well have included a sense that plastic was not a suitable material in the context of cemetery and one wonders what this is about: is it that plastic, because of its artificiality, is felt to lack the ‘dignity’ – an irony there – of materials like stone or wood?
(2) I’m also thinking of the politics of reading cheap materials in an ironised way. For the affluent, there can be a pleasure in cheap materials, ironically displayed, which presupposes the possibility of choosing other materials.
(3) I’m also reminded of the other cemetery on the East Herringthorpe estate: the small one near the Anglican church. As well as stone grave markers, there are also crosses hand-made from scraps of wood and containers for flowers sunk straight into the earth – markers of REMEMBRANCE that are affordable in comparison with the cost of having a mason set up a stone.
(4) I would like to include examples from Kate’s work in this discussion because of the rich significance of textiles and embroidery for some of the people she has been working with, but I need to talk to Kate before I can really do this.
(5) The economics of MATERIALITY are clearly connected with POWER because expensive materials remain largely the preserve of powerful organisations and people. Does this produce a kind of valorisation of cheaper materials in oppositional groups? Is there an AESTHETIC of the ‘makeshift’ that trades upon the relative values of different materials?
(6) Materials can be APPROPRIATED too. I’m thinking of the practice of walking in wet concrete laid by someone else, or writing in it. By doing this, you almost hi-jack the permanence of the material someone else has chosen – rather like appearing in the background of someone else’s photograph and making a rude gesture. In East Herringthorpe there is graffiti that looks as if it has been written with anti-vandal paint.
(7) Some writing involves literal damage to property because it uses that property as a writing surface. The extent to which this kind of practice really constitutes damage gives rise to debate in particular situations: how much damage is involved in writing with a spray can on a disused building as opposed to scratching something into the paint of someone’s car?
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