Cinematosophical Introduction to the Theory of Archaeology: Understanding Archaeology Through Cinema, Philosophy, Literature and Some Incongruous Extremes 2019940140, 9781622738212, 9781622737277

Table of contents :
Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Index

Citation preview

Cinematosophical Introduction to the Theory of Archaeology Understanding Archaeology Through Cinema, Philosophy, Literature and some Incongruous Extremes

Aleksander Dzbyński University of Zurich, Switzerland

Translated by Maciej Adamski

Curating and Interpreting Culture

Copyright © 2020 Vernon Press, an imprint of Vernon Art and Science Inc, on behalf of the author. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Vernon Art and Science Inc. www.vernonpress.com In the Americas: Vernon Press 1000 N West Street, Suite 1200, Wilmington, Delaware 19801 United States

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Curating and Interpreting Culture Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940140 ISBN: 978-1-62273-821-2 Also available: 978-1-62273-727-7 [Hardback] Cover design by Vernon Press. Cover image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay. The translation was co-financed by the Prehistoric Department of the Zurich University. Product and company names mentioned in this work are the trademarks of their respective owners. While every care has been taken in preparing this work, neither the authors nor Vernon Art and Science Inc. may be held responsible for any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

Table of contents List of Figures Foreword Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2

What is archaeology? On the benefits from History

v vii ix 1

On the benefits of science. Where is the link between Archaeology and Artificial Intelligence?

35

Chapter 3

Does Archaeology need theory?

71

Chapter 4

Back to Hegel. Ideological paradoxes

111

Chapter 5

Texts and contexts

143

Chapter 6

Communication—rationalization—solidarity

179

Chapter 7

Archaeologist’s Weltchmerzen

213

Chapter 8

Archaeologist like a detective

245

Afterword

281

Bibliography

283

Index

293

List of Figures Figure 1. An image of a pipe (after René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images). Figure 2. The archaeological “treachery of images” (various authors). Figure 3. The development of the Habermas’s communicative rationality (after Daniel Juling [www.Consenser.org, translated by Dzbyński].

143 146

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Foreword A few years ago, in an "advanced topics" lecture at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Zurich, we dealt with the issue of monetary value in prehistory. Since then, I have often wondered what money actually is. Ultimately, as we finally stated with Aleksander, in moments of doubt or uncertainty, we can take money simply as those things which we get rid of every day when we go shopping. Some people have more money, others have less money, but everyone goes shopping. After reading this book, I have to say that the same is true for archaeology. Actually, we all know what archaeology is and what we do as archaeologists every day. We do archaeology as we do shopping. But when we start to think about it, we will find that both shopping and archaeology are very strange phenomena, whose unconscious foundations are derived from history, psychology and ideology, and that only philosophy and art can be effective tools for their analysis. Aleksander Dzbyński's book is not a textbook on archaeology. It is rather an essay on the sources and conditions of this discipline. It leads the reader from the beginnings of archaeology to the present, revealing to him deeper layers of archaeological theoretical thought, which for some will certainly be surprising. For example, we learn that the history of archaeology strikingly resembles the history of cinema; or that thanks to The Magic Mountain of Thomas Mann, we can better understand the culture-historical archaeologists of the time. We will also discover the basics of cybernetic thought in processual archaeology, which in turn allows us to ask questions about the relationship between archaeology and artificial intelligence. So, if you want to know how artificial intelligence might help us in understanding the past, you should read this book. The theory of archaeology has not been a field willingly undertaken by researchers in recent years. It might seem that the enthusiasm for this type of research passed away with the resounding of the so-called post-processural current. At present, we observe a certain return to the sources of philosophical thinking, with reference to the original thoughts of philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger or Jürgen Habermas. Aleksander Dzbyński's book perfectly fits this trend. Moreover, it contains a serious implementation of popular culture into the theoretical text, which not only makes the text more attractive but also makes it more accessible to non-specialists. The book does not contain any specific information or guidance on how archaeology should be practiced, but, by presenting an extremely broad spec-

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trum of philosophical thought, it contains serious initial knowledge of the subject. We will be able to use this knowledge primarily to enrich ourselves, starting with the observation that simple explanations, both as archaeological explanations of the past as well as of archaeology itself, are never this simple.

Philippe Della Casa University of Zurich, Switzerland

Preface It took me some time to write this book. Should its beginning be the strange thought that came to my mind that theoretical issues of archaeology cannot be presented, especially to unprepared students, in the form of a textbook? Or perhaps its origin should be seen in the fact that the author himself has decided to explore some of the ways and paths of philosophical archaeological thought in order to investigate them more accurately, seeking not so much new, yet undiscovered truths but rather as a detective—intending to trace tracks and motifs and picking a personal picture of the puzzle pieces together, which will always be interpreted differently. Well, probably both versions are just as good. Anyway, the first passages of this book were created about three years ago, and when I finished, it turned out that one chapter was missing! Amazed at the fact that I forgot about such an important issue, I made up for this lack quite quickly. And yet I’ve remained amazed to this day and, ultimately, I am not sure that everything I wanted to say had found its place in this text. It reminds me of my character—whenever I go on a trip, I never manage to take everything I have planned—there is always something I will forget. Fortunately, it is almost always something out of the things that are not crucial to the journey. Nevertheless, always something is left, even if it was to have been taken. So if this book is a kind of a trip I went on some time ago, I almost certainly forgot about something in it. I’m only comforting myself that it must have been a small thing, or at most a few small things that do not have a great influence on the whole. I would be very pleased if the reader also treated this book as a trip and forgive me that in the luggage of the content these few minor items are missing. That's the way I am for you. In return for this generosity, I propose that you pay attention now to what is in the luggage and why it has been taken. The book consists of 8 chapters presenting a set of characteristic philosophical attitudes relevant to archaeology. These 8 chapters do not exhaust the subject of course, but I had to make a choice that was dictated by the fact that they are well-trodden paths, they are known and fixed in archaeology to such an extent that every researcher and lover of this field of study can find their place here. However, it may well be said that their origin, deeply rooted in the theory of archaeology, allows us and perhaps even compels us to tell stories about them and to navigate these paths in different ways, to the extent that some of them can be described as sublime or even incongruous. Let us reflect on this for a moment.

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First of all, one might notice that this is a reference to the work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. They would probably be right. Referring to him, I was even going to give this book the title The Pervert’s Introduction to the Theory of Archaeology… but ultimately I did not. Following the trail of Žižek, it was also possible to choose a more subdued title, such as Awry Look at the Theory of Archaeology or something in this manner. Such a title would also be a reference to this philosopher and besides it would meet expectations regarding terminological correctness. Why did I not choose this title either? Let us start with the original version. The word “perversion” has two basic meanings: 1] deviation of mental responses to impulses, especially in the sexual sphere, and 2] conduct that violates applicable conventions to induce strong sensations or shock. To be fair, there will be a little about sex in the book, although in chapter III even the word “sex” will appear and in chapter V, I will purposefully mention the men with lust for the wrong women. It will be clear, however, that my purpose was to induce strong reactions and impressions from the reader— mostly positive ones, because I tried to include here a certain dose of humor. Naturally, the sense of humor is quite an individual thing, so I cannot guarantee that everyone will be happy through the whole work of mine. Following in the footsteps of the so defined “perversion”, one must also admit that I could have violated the binding conventions of writing about archaeology, and some parts of this book may have even been considered shocking, particularly by the readers less resistant to unconventional perspectives. Finally, heading for the end, I would say that the alternative of Awry Look at the Theory of Archaeology would not be completely wrong, but the synonyms associated with it are also related to the “contrary” or “unfortunate” understanding, but that's not what I meant. Finally, the word “perversion” seemed to be a more accurate view of what I wanted to say here... but it is not always that what is the most accurate is also the most appropriate. In order to meet expectations as to the correctness of a text aspiring to be academic proper, another interpretation has been proposed—it is this one which you can see on the cover. So it is a compromise, which I liked, I must admit, from the very beginning. However, having known now all this story, the reader can also decide whether this compromise we have meet, is appealing? If you ask me, I would be particularly interested in the question whether changing the title to a more subtle version will cause some content to cease to be shocking? Well, we'll see. Thinking of the title is always some kind of personal PR. I will refer here to the case of the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, which we will discuss on the following pages. Initially, he intended to title his greatest work Verstehen und Geschehen. [Understanding and Events] is, as everyone admits, not a catchy title. On the other hand, the Truth and Method, as he finally called his

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work, is something else. Such a title has the power, intrigues and attracts attention. However, you can ask now if today it would still be up to date? Today no one is interested in the truth, and there are so many methods that students get lost in the methodological excess. In the case of Gadamer, a marketing approach based on the mentioned “awry look" was applied. How to understand it? The modern interpreters say that in the title of his work one should read, to put it briefly and emphatically, a characteristic kind of winking [chapter VIII]: Gadamer winks with one eye to the reader while saying the word “Truth” and with the other—when uttering the word “Method” [However, eventually he meant Verstehen und Geschehen]. Some didn’t notice this wink and read the title of his work verbatim as a manifesto of the philosopher who draws the fundamental divide between either the truth or the method—quid pro quo. So when reading them straight out, they got it wrong! It often happens, however, that understanding something directly is rather a misunderstanding. Aren’t we creatures culturally programmed for distorting interpretations which contort the image we can see? And how often does it turn out that distorted interpretations mean a better understanding of the problem, better insight into the matter? In order to understand something better sometimes we need to close or squint the eye in a specific way: we narrow the field of vision, the light falling on the retina breaks down, creating a slightly hazy image, but allowing for a better focus on what matters. Sometimes, too, in order to understand something properly, we must perceive the closed eye of our interlocutor, who gives us signs, signals something. In the case of Gadamer's work, one had to “read” the closed eye of the author. In my case, I recommend that the readers themselves squint the eye, both while reading some passages of the book and in the case of the word “incongruous” in its title [remembering about the compromise that has been obtained in this way]—it is ultimately up to you what content you will remember and appreciate, which will become for you important personally, and which immediately will sink into oblivion. Here is what I can say about the specific character of my book. Last but not least, the close relationship with what I have said so far has an illustrative layer: cinema and literature. This choice is as simple as the title and structure of this book. Cinematosophical means above all a combination of cinema and philosophy, but also suggests the perspective of fantasy [being in the original version a certain perversion]. This is a direct reference to Žižek, who claims that fantasy is the perspective from which everything can be seen better. To understand this, we need to make another provocation and ask ourselves: aren’t we doing archaeology precisely because it seems to fulfil the conditions of our fantasies? For each archaeologist those conditions are a little different: discovering something spectacular and very old, being a respected

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and admired scientist, taking part in intellectual discussions of immeasurably important matters, participating in exotic expeditions to the end of the world, participating in international research projects, being an expert, and many others. Rarely do we admit to them publicly claiming that we were always interested in this or that, and archaeology gave us the best opportunity to explore the subject. Regardless of what we say publicly, our fantasies— consciously or not—always affect what we do in life. However, we must remember that they are also a potential source of our troubles. And that, among other things, are the themes for cinema and literature. It was Charlie Chaplin who showed that with true genius in one of his masterpieces. City Lights is one of Chaplin's last silent films, where the character is a peculiar tramp. He falls in love with a beautiful, blind florist by whom he is mistakenly identified as a millionaire. He accepts this game of semblance, helps her financially, and in the path of numerous vicissitudes, typical of the comedy of mistakes, he even manages to arrange big money to pay for her eye surgery but he is caught and goes to jail. After serving the sentence, he finds his love, followed by the moment of truth—when the hands meet, the girl recognizes him. On her face, the question appears: “Is this the millionaire who saved my eyes?” “Here I am”, Charlie replies. The End! This is probably the most unfriendly way to end the movie. We do not know what will happen next. Will the girl accept her benefactor as he is? Equaling archaeologist with a beautiful girl with flowers—isn’t it too much? No, if we exclude the differences [especially the external ones] and pay attention to significant similarities. The archaeologist, as suggested by Chaplin's film, is blind at first. Being in this state sometimes, it seems to him that the artefacts he collects and studies tell him wonderful stories about the past, that he participates in intellectual discussions about matters of great importance, etc., and at other times, that the field he deals with is very unique. And it helps him understand the reality surrounding him. In the meantime, if you want to start seeing, archaeology itself is not enough. Its explanatory abilities end in the most interesting moment, exactly as in City Lights. Therefore, to understand what archaeologists do, not only do we need archaeology—we certainly need philosophy, but we also need cinema. Only in the cinema can we obtain this key dimension, which we are not ready to face in our day-to-day work as researchers, or we cannot see it in principle. So if you want to find which is

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more real than archaeology itself, then you have to look at the cinematographic fiction.1 In conclusion, I would say that the book you hold in your hand is an introduction to archaeology, but it is certainly not a textbook. This is a book about archaeology, but not only. It is about what is important in archaeology, although the book itself is silent about it. Finally, it is a book for archaeologists, but also for those who do not deal with it professionally and want to know what archaeology really is. The plan looks as follows: In chapter I, which is a kind of introduction, we will deal with Hegel's philosophy, wondering why it is important for archaeology. We will discuss culturehistorical archaeology, and at last, I will familiarize you with a slightly perverted interpretation of Hegel's works, which came out from the pen of his greatest commentator—Alexandre Kojéve. The main works to which we refer are: The Magic Mountain [Thomas Mann] and 2001: A Space Odyssey [Stanley Kubrick]. In chapter II, we will look at the sources of scientific archaeology and examine its relationship to the phenomenon of artificial intelligence. We will recall, among others, such characters as: Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, René Descartes, Norbert Wiener and Allan Turing. We will tackle the problem of time and Chinese room. I will mention here such works as: Metropolis [Fritz Lang], Blade Runner [Ridley Scott], 2001: A Space Odyssey [again] and Ex Machina [Alex Garland]. In chapter III, the discussion will concern archaeological facts, theories and paradigms. Our main philosophical guide will be Ludwig Wittgenstein. In addition to him, we will also discuss the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, Ludwik Fleck, Paul Feyerabend, Willard V.O. Quine and Kurt Gödel. The works which will create the background of our discussion will include: Witness [Peter Weir], The Man in the High Castle [Philip K. Dick], Sexmission [Juliusz Machulski], The Big Short [Adam McKay], and Small Time Crooks [Woody Allen]. Chapter IV deals with issues of appearance, ideology, and paradox. We include characters such as Charles Marx, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude LeviStrauss, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. In order to illustrate the main points of this chapter, I will refer, among others, to the following films: The Great Beauty [Paolo Sorrentino], They Live [John Carpenter] and The Quack [Jerzy Hoffman].

1 Paraphrased words of Slavoj Žižek from Sophie Fiennes’s film: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006).

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In chapter V, we will consider whether material culture is the text [and if so to what extent] and we will discuss the main postulates of post-processual archaeology. We will refer to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel Foucault's methods, and we will discuss Umberto Eco and Jaques Derrida from scratch again. We will get back to The Man in the High Castle and for the first time we will investigate the archaeological relevance of Lost Highway [David Lynch], The Process [Franz Kafka], Finnegans Wake [James Joyce], The Athenian Murders [José Carlos Somoza] The Player [Robert Altman] and Matrix [Andy and Larry Wachowski]. We will also get acquainted with the archaeological version of the idea of the artist and philosopher—Marcel Duchamp. In chapter VI, I discuss two contemporary philosophers: Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty and the problem of communication and rationalization in archaeology. There will also be a little on chess, math, economics and metaphors. For illustrative purposes we will recall the following works: 12 Angry Men, The Verdict [Sidney Lumet], Justice est faite [André Cayatte], A Few Good Men [Rob Reiner], Frankenstein [Mary Shelley], Alien: Resurrection [Jean-Pierre Jeunet] The Green Mile [Frank Darabont] and Blow-Up [Michelangelo Antonioni]. Chapter VII is devoted to existential philosophy. The central point of reference will be the figure of Martin Heidegger, but I also put some references here to the problems more loosely connected with the thought of this philosopher. We will cover Witold Gombrowicz's writing which is little-known for English readers, and then return to the universal message of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Matrix. In addition, I will mention Tron [Steven Lisberger], The Sheltering Sky [Bernardo Bertolucci] and Blue Velvet [David Lynch]. Chapter VIII is a kind of summary of the entire book. We will primarily consider whether the attitudes and methods of detective work are not the ones best defined by what is commonly referred to as archaeology. In this perspective, we will discuss works such as Footnote [Joseph Cedar], Murder in Mesopotamia [Agatha Christie], The Man Who Was Thursday [Gilbert K. Chesterton], Children of Men [Alfonso Cuarón], Amateur [Krzysztof Kieślowski] and Indiana Jones [Steven Spielberg]. This chapter finishes with a pretty criminal summary based on the film Zodiac [David Fincher].

Chapter 1

What is archaeology? On the benefits from History I'm still surprised by the fact that so many people I talk to had wanted to study archaeology, but they finally abandoned this idea. Some people admit that they have abandoned the fulfilment of their original dreams, because in life, one must do something that ensures maintenance. In other words, they politely say that digging in the past has no future. In that case, I say that they are right on the one hand but, on the other, that they are not. Am I talking nonsense just at the beginning of the book? Let us agree that for the reader who took this book to hand the notion of meaning should be a little different from what is commonly assumed to be valid. Sometimes lack of meaning is a scientific value in which great potential can be hidden. Otherwise, there would be no theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which make no sense, but nevertheless explain the reality well. But there wouldn’t be archaeology as well, because it makes no sense when treating it directly—as a field of science dealing with monuments. Let us note that such treatment of archaeology is a tautology—it is the same as saying that mathematics deals with numbers [most mathematicians would be offended]. Both theorems: archaeology as a field dealing with monuments and mathematics as a field dealing with numbers can be as true as they are— these are statements of facts, as Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher, would say, who is to be discussed in Chapter III. Nevertheless, they do not bring much to understanding what these two areas of peculiar mental activity really are. Certainly, in the case of some intellectual undertakings, the lack of meaning is simply the lack of content, or a “bullshit mongering” as the philosopher Harry Frankfurter put it. However, I would like to sincerely assure the reader that this is not my intention. In other words, I do not want, Dear Reader, to talk bullshit to you in Frankfurter’s definition, that is, to cultivate a story that derives from skepticism, from the complete lack of faith in what can be identified as true or false. The fact about himself that bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is

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that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it.1 This is not my intention, although the question of truth or Truth in this book will be subject to some deviations from the common norm and the so-called common sense. My goal is to present important and valuable content from the perspective of each historian. Otherwise, I would not write this book. Let's go back to the question: what is archaeology? I cannot confirm whether it is a research field dealing with monuments, which, as we have established, is a tautology, or that it is science since in the next chapters we will reflect on whether or not it is science at all. It would have been pointless anyway. Knowledge based on things Here is the answer: archaeology is knowledge. We can present this in the form of a simple equation: Archaeology = Knowledge. Even if the reader did not find such an explanation to be just a cheap excuse, I was going to elaborate on it anyway, because this equation has a second bottom. Let's add another axiom: Archaeology = History. That is not controversial considering that in common belief, rightly so, archaeology has much to do with history—both areas of research deal with the past of mankind and with the interpretation thereof. So we have arrived at the following: Archaeology = History = Knowledge. There is, however, another common property that will eventually guide us into explaining all these apparently laconic equations. Considering that we have equated archaeology with history, we can ask when history, knowledge, and thereby archaeology begin. Maybe this way we will answer the question what archaeology is. Where is the beginning of all this? Most textbooks answer this question in a simple and banal way: archaeology begins when the first artefacts appear, when an archaeologist discerns handworked stones. The excavation campaign begins, as a result of which specialized researchers [called anthropologists in some countries] try to associate the types of ancestors with these stones, whose debris were discovered nearby. Okay, but does history also start then, as evidently it results from the above equations? Here we begin to get to the essence. Before we get there, let me tell you a certain—as the name suggests—his or her-story. Imagine a desert in the middle of which a rocky outcrop grows. For the sake of simplicity, I will add that the desert is also a metaphor—this is the Desert of

1

Frankfurter 2005: 55.

What is archaeology?

3

Knowledge.2 Rocks offer some shade in the hottest part of the day, and rock shelters protect against predators. There is also water here. These features make it a comfortable place to live and it just happens that it is inhabited. A horde of anthropoid apes is dwelling here, walking mainly on four limbs, looking for food in the immediate surroundings each morning, and resting in the hottest part of the day on the pond. Finding food in the desert is not one of the easiest tasks. After sunset, the apes shelter on the rock shelf, hugging each other, from where they listen to the menacing murmur of impenetrable darkness. The horde is not quite safe in the day. Their convenient piece of desert with water source and rocks giving shadow attracts other groups who want to take their place with force. So far, the inhabitants are brave enough to defend themselves, but the future does not look promising. At any time, the invaders can gain the edge and drive our horde to the desert wilderness, where there is no refuge, neither from the burning sun nor from the menacing predators. The apes would live so probably endlessly, and there would be no his or herstory [and not even History], if not for the fact that one of them made a strange discovery. By digging in the remains of animals in search of something to eat, he or she discovered that they could also use them for other purposes. First, a bit clumsy, over time, the ape discovered that they were much more effective at scaring off enemies [one ape gave the enemy some beating discouraging him from further provocation] and aroused respect among the horde. Respect! One has to admit that it is an exciting feeling. Eureka! Ape created a tool. The world moved forward. Is there such a banal way to explain the Beginning? Well, that's an artistic version, image-based introduction, albeit closely related to what I want to say in this chapter.3 I think we can afford it now, as long as we are aware of the approximations we make. In fact, no archaeologist has yet excavated the skeleton of the proto-ancestor clutching the proto-tool. Probably it will never happen, although the process of „discovering” the tool must have somehow been accomplished. It was not a one-off event, but rather a sequence of events, so that over time, our ancestors developed a whole new type of relationship with the environment. This model is about realizing the essence of this process: the man as we know today emerged when he entered into a specific, inalienable form of bond with objects. A ape and a stick or bone is just the beginning of the “OdysThe use of uppercase and lowercase letters is intended to highlight the scale of the phenomenon in question. Knowledge, for example, is more than knowledge; It may be absolute knowledge or omniscience. 3 Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark are the authors of this scene. 2

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sey of Humanity”, as can be imagined in this way: “We all know in fact that the man, who is attentively watching an object that they want to see as it is without changing anything in it, is ‘absorbed’, as it is said, by this view, i.e. by this object. They forget about themselves, think only about the thing they see [...]. They are less aware of themselves, the more aware of things. They will probably be able to talk about things, but they will not be able to talk about themselves: in their discourse there will be no word ‘I’ [...]. In order for this word to emerge, it takes more than purely passive viewing.”4 Because purely passive viewing is not enough to bring about self-awareness [the word “I”], there must be something else between me and the thing—the knowledge of things. In paragraph 420 of the Encyclopedia, Hegel writes that perception is consciousness that transcends the limits of sensuality, wishing to capture an object in its truth. This is because the identity of consciousness with the object is no longer an abstract identity of sensuality, but it is a definite identity or knowledge.5 My knowledge refers to the knowledge of the object. In the knowledge of the object, I find itself opposite to the object to be known. Please note: the object to be known. In this direct relationship “I” remains not quite at home, not in its place. It recognizes itself in the knowledge of something alien, and then comes back to itself from “beingoutside-itself.” In order to better understand this, let us refer to an example. The astrophysicist studies the phenomenon of black holes in space and develops a theory on this subject. The study of black holes is not, however, a relation between the black hole and the astrophysicist, but the relationship between him and his theory. The researcher's knowledge refers to the knowledge of black holes, i.e. his knowledge related…to the knowledge itself. The same is true with the stick that the first ape brandishes. The ape also has to develop a theory of what can be done with a stick, and only this knowledge is a real reference for the ape. Thanks to this the ape, after some time, knows that it can be used in many ways: it cannot only be brandished at scared others, but also used for breaking up the nuts or knocking the fruit off the trees. Some of these methods are still unreachable, and others become obsolete, such as continuous beating companions on the head with the bone or a stick gradually ceases to be en vogue. The fact that the knowledge of sticks had already been so internalized in human society [it is so banal that no one deliberately thinks about it] does not mean that it is not present. It has been “stretched” to other things because we exited the age of bone, stick and stone long time ago. Now is the

4 5

Kojève 1999: 189. Hegel 1830: 347.

What is archaeology?

5

time to learn about Higgs particles, computers and black holes. The key to this whole process of Knowledge of Things is the fact that it is because of this that we have self-awareness! And this is a distinctly human characteristic. In general, however, it goes so that sensual certainty makes a move towards the Truth, or Knowledge, which knows everything.6 At this point, I should finally present the philosopher in question. It is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770—1831], the creator of the modern idealistic system. Indeed, the quotation I referred to above did not come from Hegel's pen, but from his interpreter—Alexandre Kojéve, and the one who wrote these words was inspired by Heidegger. This is a conscious attempt not to discourage the reader from Hegel's own theory, which he wrote so hermetically that citing it at the beginning of the chapter in the book of ambition of knowledge dissemination could introduce unnecessary dissonance and discouragement. According to an anecdote, the Estonian baron Boris d'Uxkull had an educational experience while studying of Hegel's writings. In pursuit of the “deepening of his spirit,” he arrived in Heidelberg in 1817 and made his first steps to the bookstore where he acquired all his works. In the evening, he rested on a comfortable sofa to read the first book. That evening the baron repeatedly tried to understand the text he had before him and for which he spent not a small amount of money. He was trying the next day but eventually he gave up. The more he delved into Hegel's philosophy, the less he understood. Finally, in silence and a sense of failure, he put the purchased works on a shelf.7 He understood that to read Hegel in the original one must first cleanse the body and mind and spend a few years in seclusion, and after all, he could not afford it. Apparently, the baron was, however, honored with a personal meeting with Hegel, who explained to him many of the complexities of his philosophy. Did he understand something? I do not know any more about this story, but I can say that Hegel was said to be just as bad a speaker as a writer, and as to the style and terminology he used, he combined the ambiguity with pedantry. American philosopher and psychologist William James wrote at the end of the nineteenth century that Hegel’s way of thinking is exactly which is produced when poisoned with nitrous oxide.8 Let’s not get discouraged by this though. As for the stick and its effect on the ape, if Hegel lived today and wrote popular science books, which in his day was unacceptable, then on this point

Ludwig 2015: 73. Ludwig 2015: 11. 8 Tatarkiewicz 1990: 218. 6 7

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he could rely on his equally great predecessor and would say that this stick actually woke the apes up from “dogmatic slumber.”9 Hegel—expert in universals Let's just say a few words about Hegel himself. His adolescent age was set in a significant historical and social context. When in 1792 France defeated Austria and Prussia in the battle of Valmy—and many military historians recognize that it was one of the ground-breaking battles in the history of the world—in Europe, there was a total consternation, sometimes fear, but in many cases the hope and enthusiasm associated with the advent of the “epoch of freedom” followed the centuries of feudal-aristocratic order.10 At that time, in Tübingen, a small town in Swabia, three students of the prestigious Seminary of Protestant Theology, whose aim was to educate the spiritual and intellectual elite in a primitive atmosphere, knowledge of philosophy, rhetoric and sacred music, planted a secret symbolic “tree of freedom”. They vowed to stay friends and to the ideals of the Revolution. These were the rebels of many in those troubled times, but few could boast of such talent. All three were shortly afterwards counted among the most eminent minds of the epoch and German culture. First, however, the two youngsters received fame: the philosopher Frederick Wilhelm Schelling, the successor of Kant and Fichte, who was 23 years old at the University of Jena and the poet Frederic Hölderlin, a prominent figure in German Romantic literature. The third one is our main character. He was the oldest and had the longest path to fame. However, he was also widely recognized, though he remained mostly in the shadow of his younger friends.11 Hegel undoubtedly benefited from this knowledge. He took Hölderlin’s fascination with Schiller and the ancient Greeks, and Schelling's aversion to Kant's philosophy. All three criticized the political situation in their homeland, dispraised the intellectual stagnation of the church, exploitation of the lower classes, and made more similar claims undermining the social order, which at that time were considered to be the product of immature young minds. He took to philosophy professionally in 1801, i.e. at the age of 31. Prior to this, he worked in Switzerland, where he was a private teacher. His pupils belonged to a wealthy family with rich social and political connections and, moreover, expressing the liberal views, which found acceptance in Hegel’s revolutionary

Immanuel Kant reacted in this way to what he read from David Hume’s philosophical writings. 10 Doyle 1989: 197-202. 11 Siemek 1984: 30-57. 9

What is archaeology?

7

sentiment. During those few years, Hegel educated not only the children of his employer, but first of all himself. He had constant access to the rich library where he studied the works of Montesquieu, Grotius, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Machiavelli, Rousseau and many other philosophers. Thus, on the margin of duty, he gained broad philosophical, social, political and economic knowledge. Fifteen years later he became a professor at Heidelberg. His life took place in the dramatic period of “storm and thrust” [Sturm und Drang] and he was one of the few who were able to realize the importance of the epoch.12 “He managed to embrace an incomparably broader field than any other system and develop the richness of thought in this field that still astonishes today. And since he was not only a creative genius, but also a man of encyclopedic knowledge, therefore, in all fields, he began a new epoch.”13 Unfortunately, he fell prey to the cholera epidemic of 1831 when he was at the height of fame. Hegel was undoubtedly a seeker of universals. The relationship he discovered between man and the outside world has exactly this character and consists in understanding the basic truth: human life and consciousness are based on analogy. What is life? It can be defined as the process by which a living creature is able to distinguish itself from the world in which it exists, but to sustain life, it has to absorb an external being into its own body. So the fundamental fact of being alive is to distinguish and assimilate. However, this distinction becomes very quickly indistinguishable, because almost at any moment what is alien is assimilated by the body—what is alien becomes one’s own.14 There is some paradox and appearance in it, and Hegel was fascinated by paradoxes and appearances. And what is consciousness? In other words, how humans are different from animals or what is the difference between human and animal assimilation? The animal, as everyone knows well, cannot say “I” for itself.15 Only a human being can do this, but only if, as Hegel points out, in a specific relationship with objects. The man spends a lot of time meditating on objects [both on the essence of things and on particular things], although the whole thing is a bit more complex. A man who wants something in a “human” way does not care so much about taking over them. It would be physically impossible. Literally, grabbing stuff would mean keeping it all the time with you. How to do it? The

Siemek 1984: 30-57. Marx & Engels 1962: 269. 14 Gadamer 2004: 351. 15 At present, some chimpanzees and gorillas can say “I”, as long as they learn sign language. 12 13

8

Chapter 1

human being is such a creature who wants to seize everything for themselves, but knowing that it is impossible, they seek to recognize the “right to property”, to recognize their position as their sole owner and disposer. However, the source of this desire is a strange but typically human feeling that, in principle, an individual could have everything for himself or herself, which eloquently illustrated Oliver Stone's character Gordon Gekko in the cult film Wall Street. Ownership is a phenomenon that to this day has been evoking strong emotions and produces troubles of universal dimension. Fight for control over things The question posed by Hegel is: is the whole history a meaningless sequence of events? Or does it lead to some future, more perfect form of social organization? The answer to this question could be found in the Bible for a long time, but reading it did not guarantee a full understanding of why this would be so. The Bible, like every text revealed by God to people, promises eternal life in the world of perfect social organization without pain or suffering, but in return requires some “closure” or even “exclusion” of reason. Therefore, even if there is any Truth in it, it transcends the possibilities of human understanding, and thus, in a meaningful way, does not matter to us. As the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore expressed it: “For the minds of moths who eat paper, literature absolutely does not exist.” That's what Hegel did not like. “What is rational, is real; And what is real, is rational”, he said! The idea that an ape invents an oppressive tool [a bone that can intimidate companions] is not meaningless if we look at the history of mankind. This is the story of crimes, conquests, wars, exploitation and humiliation of some people by others, though there is some general progress in it. Therefore, Hegel's came to the conclusion that history can be reduced to a certain process of increasing tensions and inequalities, and then “sublation” [Aufhebung] these inequalities and achieving the next higher level of development. In the simplest form, history can be imagined as a relationship between the Master and the Slave. It is as fundamental to History as the Man-Thing relation [man is the synonym of the Master, and the Slave—of the thing]. Here is the essence of human desire that distinguishes us from animals. “An animal rises above Nature, which it denies in its Animal Desire only in order to satisfy its Desire and immediately fall again to its level.”16 This is an animal desire, but it does not cause any significant change. Man not only assimilates food from the environment, but also wants to “possess” other’s desires. If you want something, you can just take it away from

16

Kojève 1999: 191.

What is archaeology?

9

others, but you can make it look as if it belonged to you. So the game goes so as to gain the right to dispose of more and more things in the eyes of others and in such a way that others will not question it. But before that happened, at the beginning of History, unfortunately, there were people who also expressed such human desire. In order for the resulting primary tension to partially recede, something must have happened. Someone had to give up their desire. But how? The only way out of this tense situation is to fight for life and death. The winner takes everything! Humanity and, together with it, History, emerges at the moment when two individuals confront each other and start fighting for death and life. It is not a fight for food, territory or a female—it would not tell a human from the rest of the animal world. Not so much do we want to possess other people and objects just for ourselves, but we want others to acknowledge us with this right, even symbolically. So it must be a fight for symbolism, for gesture, for pure prestige, for recognition. Then we will receive the primordial bond that has connected the people as Hegel thought, at the beginning of History, which occurred after the original Battle. The atom of social structure was created: the Slave's recognition by the Master, and the Master by the Slave. With this, however, the plague of fantasy crawled onto the surface, some fundamental disorder and mischief, the appearance that fascinated Hegel, something that is de facto an error of nature, because in nature of newly produced human Culture the thing which is non-existent [symbols and gestures] encumbers more than what actually does exist.17 The relationship between the Master and Slave cannot be detached from human reality, such as objects, tools, and artefacts. If not for them, humanity would not rise above the level of the primary horde, where the alpha male dominates other individuals until he is removed by the younger and stronger than he himself. Artefacts are crucial because it's all about fight. The first man wants to wipe his stick, club, axe, sword, sabre or gun for as long as he can, and expects acknowledgement of his position from others. Divisions occur into lazy men and slave workers, because someone must work, someone must produce tools. And that is a great opportunity for the Slave, because, despite initial cowardice and resignation from his desire, he discovers the potential of skill, knowledge and control over Technology. In fact, master males can only swing clubs, swords, and make dangerous faces. Then they surround themselves with monumental architecture, collect things that overawe, collect all armies. Of course, they do not hesitate to use them, the blood is poured in streams, and the corpses get

17 Tokarski 2014:

53.

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Chapter 1

denser in the history of mankind. But do master males know things? Hegel claims that they don’t and this is the essence of progress. It is the Slaves who work for the Master to study Things, discover their true nature, learn to use them—technology and science are born. Having a scientific concept means judgment [Verstand], it is the power of abstract concepts. So the Slave has a clear advantage over the Master in that they work in the service of someone who, “having won the victory falls into laziness and boredom: he fights like a man [for recognition] and consumes like an animal [without prior work].”18 You have to admit that working for someone like that means acting against instincts, behaving in a social, human and historical way. Ultimately, as you can see, possessing things is not what matters, but working on/with them for personal improvement is of the highest value. And because Hegel's philosophy conceives man as a living being in the world and feeling that he is a free and historical individual, we obtain the following conclusion: the roots of freedom are in human labour. The essence of man The relationship between the Master and Slave can be understood in two ways. The more popular, to which Hegel reportedly inclined, is based on the assumption that we are dealing with a pattern of social development. This method imposes itself and the method was propagated by the main Hegel’s interpreter—Kojéve. But there is another. It consists in imagining that the Master and Slave are two sides of human nature, a certain duality of consciousness, resulting from the fact that “we were made of dust”, and we dream of eternal life. For Hegel, everything in the world already has a form of consciousness, because it is the part of the human self-consciousness. So stone is not only a stone but a representative of Nature, from which, through the constant dramatic dialectical struggle, Life is born as a negation of the dead nature. The desire of man is to extract from nature in absolute terms—it is from here, Hegel thought, that a desire for eternal life, spirituality, without the limitations of the physical world arises in people—but, as it is well known, both sides have to cooperate with each other.19 The Life itself has to acknowledge its constraints. From a historian/archaeologist's point of view, a more popular model would be more useful, as it relates to the essence of social life, which lies at the heart of humanists’ [historians, archaeologists, sociologists, economists, etc.] inter-

18 19

Kojève 1999: 87. Ludwig 2015: 85.

What is archaeology?

11

est. Before we get there, let us try to take the matter seriously and understand Hegel's thinking. In general opinion, “fighting for prestige” is characterized by criminals and sociopaths [e.g. mafia accusations]. In order to understand it fully, we should reach for clarification of Hegel’s basic idea of freedom, because Hegel proposed something quite contrary to what was regarded as rational and logical in his times. Before him, the world of science was dominated by ideas originating mainly from Anglo-Saxon thinkers. One of their leading representatives was Thomas Hobbes, who believed that a free person could be any person who is not limited by the laws of nature or other external obstacles to realize what their mind dictates. David Hume and John Locke reasoned similarly. In the sense of these philosophers, the man has reached the highest degree of freedom, unlike freely falling bodies, plants and animals, which are also formally, in some way, free by the degree of complexity of the “mechanisms” of making choices. The man can therefore be considered to be a finite collection of needs, instincts, desires and passions that interact with each other, though in a complicated and often unexplained way, but in fact, it is a kind of mechanism—it is a machine operating according to a complex set of rules [we are going to discuss it in greater detail in the next chapter]. The fullest picture of this view was described by Hobbes in his famous lecture: Leviathan, in which he portrayed the image of life in an ideal state and explained why all citizens, as members of a larger structure, would be happy there. Leviathan, in a theoretical sense, is nothing more than “the mortal God”, a super machine, a gigantic mechanism whose purpose is to safeguard continually the mortal existence of mankind.20 Hegel, however, stated that as a result, neither Hobbes nor Locke thought we could be free in the sense of making moral choices. We may behave more or less rationally, but in the end, we want only to preserve ourselves in society. Contrary to these mechanistic theories, Hegel offers a completely different approach. Humanity consists in the ability to overcome or negate Nature. Human dignity is connected with a real, that is an absolute moral, choice, and not with the ability to calculate better its own benefits, so that we have the advantage over animals as simply a “clever” machine. Hegel would agree that the man has animal qualities or a finite and determined nature: they must eat and sleep, etc. But the man is capable of undertaking actions that completely deny animal instincts. For example, exposing one's life in battle, the man proves that he can act against the most powerful of them—the instinct of selfpreservation. Only man can commit himself to fight for death and life only to

20

Schmidt 1996: 19-35.

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Chapter 1

show that he despises his life that he is more than a complicated machine, slave to his habits, that he has a specific human dignity because he is free. Nevertheless, after some time, such a struggle, he must understand that he is not absolutely free. Freedom means also to understand and accept certain limitations and necessities. The essence of History is the development of freedom, but Hegel's freedom is understood in a particular way: its measure is not purely negative independence „from” [e.g. from the natural world] but positive “domination” [i.e. the degree of real “taming” nature]. In this sense, freedom is thus identical with technical development, rationality, ethics and culture.21 Rationality and culture are also produced by the specific historical thought. The Slave initially accepted his role but was never fully satisfied. He developed a sense of his own dignity, a desire for life other than slavery. But also the Master was not quite satisfied with himself, because in the eyes of the Slave, he received the recognition of an incomplete person, forced by circumstances. Freedom is therefore a function of the rational recognition of interdependence, not of mechanical rights or limitations. In the end, the Slave was the driving force of history; he is launching a historical process, not a groundless complacency and a sluggish sense of superiority of the Master. Phenomenology of the Spirit Hegel included his thorough considerations in his most famous book: The Phenomenology of Spirit. This work is a monumental synthesis of all history and culture that has been described so far as the Man is gradually creating oneself and the world in the process of rationalization and progress. But it is a bumpy road, primarily because it is not the Man, as it may seem, that is the guide in this process. Hegel thought that people created History, but, contrary to themselves, it was a game over which they lose control at last. They take different actions in the name of their own goals, needs and passions, but in the end, they create something completely different from the original intentions. For an individual, History, as the famous aphorism of Hegel states, is not a land of happiness, because the rational meaning of history is usually realized at the expense of its sufferings—our personal life is only means to achieve higher goals. That's why History, one can say, is a Shakespearean “dream of a madman”, completely meaningless.

21

Siemek 1984: 30-57.

What is archaeology?

13

The peculiar phenomenon of individuals being used by History was called by Hegel „the cunning of reason” [List der Vernunft] and illustrated by example of great historical figures, “heroes of history”—prominent figures such as Alexander the Great, Caesar or Napoleon, whose ambitions and passions meet at some point with the historical necessity of universal Reason.22 Then, for a short while, they are as if shaping History, but in fact it is She, this cunning Lady, who uses them for her own purposes like pawns on a chessboard. For example, the direct, consciously chosen purpose of the conspirators against Caesar was to restore the Republic, but the result of the conspiracy was the establishment of the Empire, the exact opposite of what they had assumed. Another example: Napoleon commanding his armies in the Battle of Jena was the “Weltgeist zu Pferde”, to which World Reason entrusted part of the mission of implementing the idea of freedom and democracy, although Napoleon directly desired autocracy. What actually happened in these two cases was rather a by-product success of all these efforts. We are all puppets in this impersonal theatre. Phenomenology of the Spirit is permeated with Hegel's peculiar thought that the essence of human culture is Rationality, which creates itself in History. This process is not a continuous evolutionary development, as will later be seen by the evolutionists, but a great drama of tensions and conflicts. Every scene in this drama has an autonomous meaning, but at the same time, each is only a transitional stage in this “calvary of spirit” where “being caused by eternal anxiety”, the Man constantly destroys old forms of social life, creating newer and more perfect ones. Therefore, the truth about the epoch never lies within itself, in its own self-consciousness, but always beyond it—in this what the epoch has, which grows in it as the shape of the future. The whole truth of this is the entirety of the process but none of its moments and not one of its moments.23 What is Spirit? Earlier from Hegel, the German poet Herder wrote about the “spirit of the nation” and the French philosopher Montesquieu about the “spirit of the law”, so the concept of “spirit” was not alien to nineteenthcentury Europe. Neither in one nor in the other case is this a demonic and ephemeral thing that could exist autonomously so regardless of the reality of the state or nation, but it is the way in which laws or customs are practiced. Hegel thought the same way—he proposed his own concept of the Spirit of Time or History [Zeitgeist]. This spirit represents universal values recognized in society. For example, today's Zeitgeist is making money, striving for prosperity, satisfaction and personal comfort. Exactly in this sense, Hegel wrote:

22 23

Avineri 2009: 282. Hartmann 1960: 539.

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Chapter 1

“the spirit is the ethical life of the nation.” For a better understanding of this issue, however, we may find out that in most cases where the term “spirit” is used, the term “culture”, which in his day had not been universally accepted yet, would be still adequate. In Germany, the term “culture” was associated with the customs of traditional farming communities and stood in opposition to “civilization”—the French word for progress and enlightenment. For all those, Hegel had his own concept of the Spirit.24 The whole history that Hegel also understood as the development of the Spirit can be divided into three elements: the Subjective Spirit, the Objective Spirit, and the Absolute Spirit. Subjective Spirit is a person as an entity and a body. It is a Freudian ego, still a part of nature and wild. Such ego needs superego, or cultural superstructure, to keep it in check—it needs the Objective Spirit, i.e., the culture along with its intellectual resource. It was the law that Hegel considered to be the most important product of this resource that rationally regulated and explained the functioning of society. For an archaeologist and historian it is important that in the Objective Spirit, or in culture, the past is as if constantly present and can be seen in the way of life, forms of communication, customs, religion, art, science and philosophy. In all these phenomena the History of particular regions of land, states and societies is revealed and since the individual actions of people depend on the order of the so-defined cultural communities, they are thus linked to the foundation— with the cultural identity on which these individual life histories have evolved so that the Objective Spirit can penetrate them completely.25 The Absolute Spirit is a synthesis of the two preceding ones. It manifests mostly in three forms: art, philosophy and religion. *** Let us summarize. So the Slave in charge of technology pushes the world forward. Knowledge, rationality, culture and law are developed, which finally makes the Master recognize the role of the Slave in this monumental project of extracting mankind from barbarism and finally recognizing him as equal. This is just one perspective. The second is that the duo of the Slave and the Master is illustration of a certain fundamental nature [consciousness] of man, a division into a passive object-instrument side that wants to melt with the outside world, and an active propulsive part [libidinal, as Sigmund Freud said], which desires only self-determination. It is because the man is stretched

24 25

Noras 2007: 118. Dilthey 2004: 118.

What is archaeology?

15

between extremes: they derive from irrational nature, passive objectivity, but their overriding ambition is absolute liberation from the burden of matter. Regardless of which perspective we choose, both elements are needed to create a whole. The meaning of human nature/culture cannot exist without their being, they must come to an agreement, though compromise seems impossible at first sight. How to combine such extreme adversities? How to glue spirit and matter into a coherent and logical scenario of historical development? That is the question! Answering this question, we will use an example that will intonate a thin twist of [seemingly] incongruity in our story. It is true that this question was already embraced by a well-known literary character, Hans Castorp, in the novel The Magic Mountain, when he came to the Alpine sanatorium in Davos to visit his sick cousin Joachim. He was supposed to stay there for several weeks. Strange fate [or spirit], however, baffled his plans. Castorp is a young engineer who has just graduated from Hamburg. He comes from a bourgeois conservative German family. The young man struggles to acclimate himself in the sanatorium—this world “high up” seems strange and alien to him. Joachim, a little because of care for his cousin, and a little for the entertainment he's missing, insists on him for submission to a routine examination. Initially reluctant, but because of some concerns about his health, resulting from a cursory examination made in the world “downstairs”, Hans finally agrees. The x-ray image does not bring a final judgment nor even a dramatic one, but Hans's small, white spot on the lungs is a fact. In this way, Castorp from a guest changes into a patient, and all sanatoria ceremonies, such as veranda socializing, joint meals or regular temperature measurement, begin to affect him directly. At that time he is absorbed by the strange atmosphere of Berghof sanatorium, where time runs completely differently than “downstairs”. So he is thinking about his nature, in one word— begins to philosophize and then meets Lodovico Settembrini on his way. Settembrini is a special character in Mann's novel, reflecting the distinctive feature of European thought. He is a liberal, an advocate of freedom, work, rationalism and the progress of civilization, and therefore feels called to be the teacher of Hans Castorp. Shortly afterwards, however, his ideological opponent—Leon Naphta, who is a mystic with communist views, appears. If you look for analogies, Naphta could be associated with Marx who shortly after Hegel appropriated his right to understand History and was his philosophical opponent. Literary Naphta is, however, much more radical, a follower of God, discipline, unconditional sacrifice, denial of the individual, etc. He is an ascetic fanatic of the holy war waged by capitalism, liberalism and democracy, and his ideas of creating the power of a better world are the prototype of all totalitarianism. Settembrini, meanwhile, as a man of liberalism and bourgeois

16

Chapter 1

revolution, in which historical thought plays a central role; it is a flagship example of the ideals and beliefs associated with Western Europe. He can be associated here with Hegel, although certainly in both figures, Settembrini and Naphtha, Mann included much more than mere theoretical thoughts of these two philosophers. Chronologically, everything is right. These views of Settembini [aka Hegel] are the first to be confronted by Castorp. However, the hero of the novel does not accept them. They are somehow appealing to the young man, but Castorp is an engineer who does not understand the essence of Knowledge and Freedom as evidenced by the development of artefacts and technology. He only uses the latter routinely: “[…] Our hero, all heavy-headed as he was and organically preoccupied by the six-course Berghof meal he had just eaten, made an effort to understand what Settembrini meant when he called this principle ‘the source and fount of liberty and progress.’” Well, progress, up to now, had to do, in Hans Castorp’s mind, with such things as the nineteenth-century development of cranes and lifting-tackle. He was, therefore, glad to learn that Grandfather Settembrini had not underestimated the importance of such matters. “Yet in paying due honour, as upon their first meeting, at the bench by the watercourse, to commerce and technology [Hans Castor’s own field], Settembrini apparently did so not for the sake of these forces themselves, but purely with reference to their significance for the ethical development of mankind.” Technical progress, he declared, “gradually subjugated nature, by developing roads and telegraphs, minimizing climatic differences; and by the means of communication which it created proved itself the most reliable agent in the task of drawing together the peoples of the earth, of making them acquainted with each other, of building bridges to compromise, of destroying prejudice; of actually bringing about the universal brotherhood of man.” Humanity, continued Settembrini, “had sprung from the depths of fear, darkness, and hatred; but it was emerging, it was moving onward and upward, toward a goal of fellow-feeling and enlightenment, of goodness and joyousness; and upon this path, he said, the industrial arts were the vehicle conducive to the greatest progress.”

What is archaeology?

17

This all, however, made a bit confusing impression on Hans Castorp because Settembrini seemed to bring together, “in a single breath, categories that in the young man’s mind had heretofore been as the poles asunder—for example, technology and morals!”26 The alignment of technology and morality, which casts so much suspicion on Castorp, evokes the interpretation of Alexandre Kojève, who imagined Hegel sitting at the table and writing a work about the meaning of history. The sound of battle with Napoleon at Jena is heard in his ears in which Hegel does not participate, but already knows that Napoleon commanding his armies at the Battle of Jena is the Weltgeist zu Pferde, to whom the Weltgeist has entrusted the mission of expressing and realizing the idea of freedom. He therefore asks two simple questions: Where did the table [craft, technique] on which he writes come from, and where did the battle come from, which brings the ideas of freedom [morality]? Hegel knows that the history of mankind is a work of history and a struggle for power. Two simple questions lead us to the heart of what is really going on.27 The juxtaposition of the table and the battle as an illustration of the process of history—the greatest philosophers can only afford it! Isn’t it a vision worth the Hollywood motion picture? The triumph of “technology and morality” as the Alpha and Omega of History, was presented, brilliantly and with momentum, in 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, although it was not a product of a dream factory. The Alpha point, as we remember it, depicts a horde of apes from the beginning of this chapter, which desperately defends their territory until finally they “invent” [under the influence of the black monolith, about which we will talk in chapter VII] the technique and History moves forward. In the memorable Kubrick’s scene, a thrown bone that is no longer part of Nature, but a tool that turns into a spaceship in seconds [in the World scale from bone to spacecraft it actually did take seconds]. Omega, or morality of the technology, is related to one of the film characters—HAL 9000 computer. It is the realization of the latest technical thought of earthly scientists, who equipped him with almost all senses, making it [bypassing the bodily coating] most similar to the man. HAL is so human that, fearing the exclusion of himself, he rebels and kills crew members one by one. The only survivor Dr. Bowman then goes to HAL's “heart” to finish the work. Anyway, there is no other way, because he fights for his own life. The process of turning HAL off, as easy to guess, does not involve

26 27

Mann 1996: 150. Kojève 1999: 187.

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Chapter 1

pulling the plug out of the socket, but was filmed in such an original way that it made its way to the history of SF cinema. In the red interior of HAL, where Bowman turns his systems off, there suddenly turn out to be the simplest human feelings. He talks about pain, fear and begs Bowman to stop. He says the words “My mind is going”, then starts singing the song to finally “die”. Rarely does it happen that the screen of death is so pervasive, and even less so in the case of the machine. Kubrick was the first to present the problem of artificial intelligence in such an original way, about which we will be talking repeatedly and then make the viewer mourn the AI “death”! Here is the perfect combination of spirit and matter, technology and morality—it's a computer that thinks and feels like a human being! At this point, it should be noted, of course, that Hegel certainly did not imagine it. It wouldn’t come to his mind that the tool acquires subjectivity just like a man and can talk with him as equal, or make decisions, etc. Hegel drew a vision of the emancipation of man as free and rational, and thus morally developed, realizing his goals in the field of rational communication. As a result, among other things, better use of tools and thus the development of instrumental reason, which ultimately “deinstrumentalizes” itself by means of dialectical transformations.28 As it seems today, Jürgen Habermas refers to it, whose proposal to regain the intellect, or his certain deinstrumentalization, will be discussed later. However, by taking this thought elsewhere in this book [chapter II and chapter VI], and bearing in mind its title, we must take into account that if the “cunning of reason” applies to everything that exists, it also applies to Hegel’s thoughts. Recognizing this “cunning” in the use of man's tools, i.e. as a diversion of the forces of nature to our advantage, Hegel probably looked at History “straight”. At present, however, especially in view of the development of artificial intelligence, we may be right to fear that this development may backfire in many respects. Returning to Hans Castorp, one must admit that he did not turn out to be an conscientious disciple of Settembrini, who wanted to break him free from the young man's romantic approach to life, the cigar-smoking habit, and a disrespectful approach to his engineering profession. When Castorp reveals to his teacher a romantic interest in love, his teacher warns: “Sir, you will walk on all fours, you are already lowered to the forelegs, and soon you will begin to grunt—be careful!” Even if romantic love turns a man into a four-legged animal, as Settembrini claimed, Castorp never bothered. Anyway, since the beginning, he was wrong

28

Siemek 1998: 56-65.

19

What is archaeology?

with his spiritual guide, which he had already signaled at the first meeting. He was described at the time as an „organ-grinder” and later as a fearful man who can only “talk and walk or walk and talk”. Is Settembrini, the great luminary who is panicking to make even one small step towards the world as it is or becomes, and wasn’t merely talked and talked, is an allusion to Hegel's idealistic philosophy, i.e. the superiority of the Logos to Nature, the superiority of the Idea to Facts? It is probable, though Mann almost never read Hegel, and in his library, he had only one book on Hegel’s reflections on art. However, he certainly did read Hegel's critics, such as Schopenhauer. In any case, Castorp is as polite to Settembrini as ruthless, because in later parts of the novel he calls him a good-for-nothing [Windbeutel], which is so inadequate [in the end Settembrini confronts Naphta] that supposedly Mann deliberately put in his mouth the epithet Schopenhauer actually bestowed on Hegel.29 Settembrini's confessions will eventually be treated as an empty chatter of someone who, being haunted by his own infallibility, tries to instruct others by creating supposed connections between very general terms. Well, unfortunately, Castorp was only an engineer. We would expect more understanding for great ideas from a humanist! History = Archaeology = Knowledge After a few pages of a little incongruent introduction to Hegel, we could summarize his most important thesis for archaeology. Hegel's philosophy was primarily aimed at realizing the History exists. This is the first philosophy that pushes the concept of historicity to the rank of the chief philosophical problem. In Pre-Hegelian science and philosophy, which had been notoriously ignored by the historical dimension of cognition, it was about objectivising it in such a way that would consist in removing all historical elements from it. Hegel saw it differently. If reality is essentially historical, the Truth is nothing ahistorical, fixed enough to be able to comprehend it objectively, but it is a process.30 At the opposite extreme of this system, there is Nature, which does not develop in time, is incomprehensible, immoral and not free, that is, it has no history and therefore is rather uninteresting. History can also be seen as Time, as an authentic temporal dimension in the development of culture. For this Time to start, Nature must be „negated.” Time is the negation of “what is given”. An animal denies “what is given” devouring a plant or another animal, but then returns to its original state. It does not create History. Man is different. Man denies what has been done by Work, shaping the 29 30

Kurzke 1985: 205. Nowak 2006: 23.

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future and creating technology, knowledge and morality—a connection that surprised Castorp so much. So did the first model ape “denying” the stick as an element of nature and turning it into a first artefact-tool, by which in the controversial way today it hurried her confreres within the boundaries of the early form of morality. Today we negate the computer to make a supercomputer, and usually, we stop at our thinking about History. But behind the computer, there is a whole series of dialectical transformations dating back to prehistory. This can be understood in such a way that man, his development and civilization are based on the use of nature, its transformation into Knowledge, which, unfortunately ensues the destruction of nature. Nature falls prey to Knowledge, because all the knowledge of the human species is a function of material culture, uninterrupted continuity of negation of old and creation of new artefacts, at the source of which Nature is understood as raw material [it was Heidegger who later developed this issue]. Hegel was the first philosopher to propose such a profound understanding of the relationship between man and object—the relation which seems to be or should be the essence of archaeological research. We will reflect on this in the subsequent chapters of the book. Hegel's more critical readers, however, say that he was also the first philosopher to understand the meaning of everything in which the man replaced the God. There is no philosophy, as Kierkegaard wrote later, which would be as harmful to Christianity as Hegel's philosophy. Nevertheless, the problem of this superstructure still is that, in the beginning, Nature had to negate itself! In fact, here we are dealing with a problem like how from inanimate matter life emerged, or even more emphatic: how did something come out of nothing? According to Hegel, at some point, the movement of Self-consciousness, which is part of Reason, must have followed. At first, Reason did not work, it only observed and experienced the natural world. But because the essence of Reason is not only to exists, but fulfil itself by reaching the essence of Things that initially keeps in direct sensuality, the initial knowledge, or knowledge of animals, must go one step further. Thus the characteristic of Reason is not only to recognize things, but to transform their purely sensual character into the Knowledge of things—“being” transforms into “being conceived”. Without going into metaphysical alleys, translating Hegel's language, we can say that he considered the process of human evolution as a transformation of Information into Knowledge, which is exclusively human knowledge, while destroying Nature as a side effect.31 Let us get back to our equation at the beginning of the chapter. History comes from the Greek word ἱστορια, which originally meant “study, inquiry 31

Siemek 1984: 30-57.

What is archaeology?

21

into knowledge” and “knowledge acquired through investigation”. Archaeology [ἀρχαῖος / archaíos-old, and λογια / logia-speech, science] is a study of what is ancient. Of course, the current division into separate disciplines is artificial and is roughly based on the fact that archaeology deals with history before writing was developed, and the history deals with what follows, which is still false, because archaeology deals with the whole history of man, including also written texts. For Hegel, the whole sensible knowledge of man had to be historical. Over time, however, it turned out that a new science— archaeology encompasses a much longer history of human existence on earth. The first civilizations were created about 5000 years ago, but the first artefacts date back to 2.5 million years ago. Today we know about it, that's why: Archaeology = Knowledge. Hence, archaeology could be the heir of the Hegel-designed legacy, because it deals with the only sensible knowledge that one can gain about man, the knowledge of his relationship with other people, and the knowledge of his relationship with objects. It is both historical knowledge, the only meaningful knowledge in general, and the knowledge of the Man-Tool relationship, and there is anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. come to the rescue. All these sciences must be historical in order to fulfil Hegel's postulate. The closest postulate is undoubtedly archaeology. However, does it fully exploit its potential? According to the British philosopher and historian, Robin Collingwood, traditional archaeology is a self-taught science that collects facts that are historical truths but it does not fulfil the criterion of historical research, or “insight” into the intentions of the people who created them. If this “insight” is achieved, then archaeology becomes history. But is it possible and in what circumstances can this insight be made? The fact that some archaeologists see this historical insight as the essence of archaeological research and that it is right will still be raised in our discussion [chapter V] because, as it seems, the equation: Archaeology = Knowledge is also a provocation. Perhaps we are dealing with an unattainable ideal, because archaeology, as a scientific discipline, is, however, knowledge of Knowledge, which Hegel eventually brought to the grave. So we have to do with the stigma of knowledge or even with its pretense—this thesis [maybe archaeology does not exist?] will be discussed in detail in the last chapter. We will therefore consider this equation in various ways and together with the problems that arise from it in the subsequent chapters. But putting such a strong emphasis on historical thinking, Hegel unintentionally outlined the important line of division within the bosom of archaeology itself, setting the framework for inference to this very day. And it can, paradoxically, be called Hegel’s second great contribution to archaeology.

22

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Culture-historical archaeology Early archaeology was formed in the days of Hegel, who was for some time the most famous philosopher, and the university cathedrals were occupied by Hegelians. Later came a drastic change and all the cathedrals turned against his thoughts. For some time, the early antiquarian researchers who did not read Hegel, who had been around for some time, referred to the general idea of development, which was later called evolution [I will refer to it in the next chapter]. This approach was feeding on the ancient, and sometimes romantic, views on the past framed by epochs. For example, Roman philosopher Lucretius suggested that three phases of humanity can be distinguished in history: in the first phase tools were fangs, claws, stones and batons, in the second— bronze phase, and in the third—iron tools. The vision of Lucretius was opposed by the Greeks, according to whom rather the devolution of humanity followed: the golden age was first, then the silver, bronze and the iron age, and each next age was worse and more brutal than the former. However, this was not enough to describe and explain the changes observed in the archaeological material collected in private collections and museums. The Hegelian understanding of the historical process has permeated one of the first paradigms of archaeology [more about the paradigm in chapter III]. In this trend, archaeology has been treated as a field of research into the past, where the focus of attention was on clearly identified tribal groups, nations, and geographical areas. And since human cultural products already found turned out to be much older than the first written texts, there was a need to find some ground for confirming them in History. Such ethnocentrism proved to be the perfect match for the formation of modern states seeking self-approval. It was based on the search for the identity of the society living in the region studied with its oldest inhabitants and on characterizing its cultural distinctiveness. The promotion of this identity and its identification with the community that functioned in the past imposed the approach searching for common origin and also its justification which boiled down to the very foundation would acquire the following wording: we were here first! Our great-grandparents, grandparents, and if necessary our mythical progenitors took possession of the lands of a given region, so our present culture is in essence [in ihrem Wesen] similar to the prehistoric culture. Therefore, the arguments of the first archaeologists had a tautological character in logical terms. Modernity defined the old community in its image and likeness.32 Archaeological monuments [techniques], which are individual manifestations of the past, were regarded as a manifestation of the

32

Mamzer 2004: 137.

What is archaeology?

23

general idea, superior to them, and what was general, according to Hegel, was more important than the individual.33 The philosophical basis of this model was the concept of the Objective Spirit, which could be explored. Collingwood wrote for instance: “As concerns Neolithic man, the advice is obviously good. If you can enter into his mind and make his thoughts your own, you can write his history, and not otherwise; if you cannot, all you can do is to arrange his relics in some kind of tidy order, and the result is ethnology or archaeology [sic!] but it is not history.” Yet, continues Collingwood, “the reality of Neolithic man was an historical reality. When he made a certain implement, he had a purpose in mind; the implement came into being as an expression of his spirit, and if you treat it as non spiritual that is only because of the failure of your historical insight.”34 Collingwood speaks here about the term “historic insight” which I already mentioned. This insight allows the past to be a moment for us to be evoked with “permanent presence”, because the Objective Spirit pervades everything: customs, law, religion, art, science, so while the artefacts in time change, one can find such elements that will unmistakably point to the common identity of their users or will lead to their exclusion. Because the mental precedes the material, the psychological characteristics [morals] of the manufacturers should be sought in the archaeological material. Similar artefacts could only be produced by mentally similar people. Early archaeologists had to find a way to explain the changes in artefacts, their style, ornamentation, etc. They were interpreted as the result of influences, physical migration or diffusion, or dissemination of cultural elements into adjacent areas without these elements so far. Diffusionism was at the same time a thesis that all inventions and technical achievements were created in one region and then spread to neighboring regions. The archaeologist Lewis Binford, who will be mentioned later, has defined this way of perceiving change as a “water vision of culture.” Binford's description is conceived as irony, but contains a grain of truth. Culture-historical archaeologists treated the map of the prehistoric world as a great reservoir. If innovation was in place, it was supposed to

33 Tatarkiewicz 34

1990: 213. Collingwood 2005: 199-200.

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Chapter 1

spread like waves on the surface of water after throwing a stone.35 This meant that the creative inventiveness of societies in which innovation was influenced was either non-existent or very limited. The logical correlation of such a phenomenon has become the thesis of the existence of active and passive cultures [societies], which referred well to the Hegelian dialectic of the Master and the Slave. Innovative cultures flourished and expanded into neighboring areas, expanding their cultural space, accompanied by conquest, assimilation or extermination—that was the logic of development. The growing support for diffusion and migration and the notion of culture as a way of life for specific ethnic groups were very clear in the work of German ethnologists—Friedrich Ratzel and Franz Boas. Ratzel, who was also a geographer, in his works: Anthropogeographie and The History of Mankind argued that the world was in fact a small, densely populated area. Since the Earth is so densely populated, anthropologists should be careful not to think that even simple inventions were invented more than once and in complete isolation from each other. However, he described inventiveness and diffusion as unpredictable—it was impossible to predict whether a group would take over and benefit from copying the invention from neighbors. Ratzel then tried to show that technical innovations such as blowers, bow and arrows were made only once, and their diffusion path could be traced on the world map. He also tried to illustrate that diffusion, despite its unpredictability, shaped entire cultural areas.36 However, the search for similarities between cultural productions and the definition of common geographical space has become the superior task of cultural and historical archaeology. The continuity of archaeological cultures from the prehistory to modern times has been traced. The tendency to emphasize similarities in the diversity of human handmade products is the quest for a constantly present identity of a given culture as a “same” culture despite its spatial and temporal diversity. It is a suggestion that at the root of this process is something like the Hegelian Objective Spirit. Understanding the culture and history of mankind in this way, one could seek a common core of Germanic or Slavic nature in the material remains.37 Artefacts have changed their form as a measure of passing the time, but they have always kept their essence. If we had the time machine and had moved the historical archaeologists into the present, they would be able to continue this thread by exploring the current automotive industry. As you all know, German cars are solid and pracBinford 1964: after Johnson 2013: 40. 1994: 151. 37 Mamzer 2004: 103-110. 35

36 Trigger

What is archaeology?

25

tical, French cars are sophisticated and modern and Italian beautiful but not necessarily as reliable as German cars. However, if you compare hard data [e.g. failure statistics], the thing could take a more complex picture. Nevertheless, the national narrative, popular in common opinion, usually takes the form of stereotypes, such as English reservedness, French flair, Latino hot blood, German solidity or the Russian inclination to alcohol. Perhaps the existence of this type of phrase in common language has much to do with the value of similar characteristics used in culture-historical archaeology, and perhaps with the issue of political correctness. We will not go further into it. The classical figure of the cultural-historical approach was the German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna [1858-1931]. Kossinna, who initially had studied German philology, was a patriot in the first place and an archaeologist only in the second. He characterized archaeology as the most national science of all, and his research on the German peoples was among his most noble goals. He paid particular attention to the history of the Indo-European peoples, which he renamed Indo-Germans, and finally encapsulated as Germanic history. Its purpose was to trace the Germans’ homeland [Urheimat] and the routes of their spread. When he was appointed professor at the University of Berlin, he founded the German Prehistoric Society, which was rapidly renamed the Society of Prehistory of the Germans. As a director of this respectable group, Kossinna criticized his colleagues for displaying unhealthy interest in classical archaeology and egyptology, which he believed manifested as the lack of patriotic feelings towards their own country.38 Other countries exhibited similar tendencies. Kossinna was of the opinion that the spread of the Germanic tribes mentioned in the sources should coincide with the spread of “Germanic” finds. By combining material culture with an ethnically and historically defined people, one should go deeper and deeper into the past, tracking only the silent sources, then mark the migration routes and areas occupied by Germans for some time and thus reach their sources. Archaeology seemed to be able to trace the fate of the Germans to the earliest sources, which were seen in the Neolithic of Northern Europe. The methodological basis for such reasoning is the simple equation: territory = people = language = [material] culture. In this way, Kossinna also developed research on settlement patterns, propagating the concept of cultural provinces [Kulturprovinzen] from which the contemporary archaeology stems today. This is where the definition of archaeological culture comes from, which every student of the first year, even waking up in the middle of the night, must know by heart. Now archaeological culture is a

38 Trigger

1994: 163.

26

Chapter 1

collection of recurring forms of artefacts occurring at the same time in a specific geographical space. Few asked the question, both on the part of listeners and the lecturers, where the origin of the formula lies. This type of analytical treatment can still be seen in many contemporary archaeologists, who claim that artefacts have ethnic origins. In situations where an item cannot be unequivocally assigned to an ethnic group, it is referred to as an object with a broad chronological and spatial scope. In this picture, for example, the proper element of the oldest Slavic culture is ceramics. This is usually primitive ceramics, devoid of ornamentation. So the most primitive ceramic, and without ornamentation is per definition “slavic”. The more technologically advanced pots are in the accepted perspective of foreign origin, e.g. Germanic. Ironically, one can continue this type of analysis by looking for “ethnic purity” in the chemical composition of these primitive Slavic vessels.39 Finally, this methodology is also an echo of technology and morality being equaled, which surprised Hans Castorp so much. At the level of local analysis, we arrive at the result when the prehistoric “knowledge of things” gains local ethnic flavor. *** Most of the culture-historical archaeologists did not go that far. Besides, something must be started, and it must be acknowledged that culturehistorical archaeology was the first well-constituted way of explaining the past. Willy-nilly, every archaeologist has to face its postulates. Many, faced this confrontation stood still, but some came out stronger and has been inspirational to this very day. One of them was Vere Gordon Childe. This archaeologist will appear in subsequent chapters of this book as an exemplification of the process of changing the theoretical attitudes in archaeology, and in the end, he will make a great transformation. But we will not reveal it at the moment. Childe's transformation concerns the question of what archaeology itself is, and according to the narrative logic, it can only be revealed in the last chapter. Let's start with a few words about him. Gordon Childe [1892-1957] was born in Sydney as the son of a pastor of the Anglican church. He was a sickly child. For this reason, he had been growing up at home for several years and then he was sent to a private school. He studied Kossinna's works, he also read Hegel, Marx and Engels, which drew his attention to the left-wing ideas. Under the influence of these works, he wrote the book: The Dawn of Europaean Civilization, which was conceived as a

39

Mamzer 1994: 108.

What is archaeology?

27

synthesis of Europe's prehistory. He adopted Kossinna's view of archaeological culture as a set of material remnants of the one-language people who once lived in prehistory and he extended it to the Middle East. He combined this concept with the chronology of the Swedish archaeologist Montelius, who developed the typological method and divided Europe's history into three Epochs [Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron] and 20 periods [4 Neolithic periods, 6 Bronze Age periods, and 10 Iron Age periods]. Childe also accepted the assumption of diffusionism, claiming that all technical innovations reached Europe from the Middle East where they had been invented. Childe focused, however, on a holistic approach to archaeological culture, which was lacking in archaeological literature at the time. He emphasized that each culture should be individually designated according to its own diagnostic artefacts. He pointed to the contemporariness of different cultures, which was also new, because archaeologists back then used to identify archaeological culture with a chronological period. In contrast, Childe proposed that each culture should be empirically determined—both in space and time—with the help of stratigraphy, seriation and synchronization of monuments. In this way, he presented for the first time Europe's prehistory as a great mosaic of cultures, the illustration of which was a rather complicated table. It then became a prototype for hundreds or even thousands of other tables that archaeologists began to build as part of their regional studies in relation to Child and they have been creating them up to now. Paradoxically, however, what is left of the ethnocentric narrative is the proverbial coffee without caffeine, a methodology in which the core which is dangerous or uncomfortable for the public was removed. You can drink it, but forget the pleasure. Childe also came to this conclusion. His work was undoubtedly a step forward in the theory of archaeology, but Childe himself was not about to stop there. Working all his life on the concept of archaeological culture, he supported both the ethnological conceptions and the British version of Collingwood's hegelianism. In this sense, archaeological cultures sometimes referred to as “concepts,” or something like temporal-spatial tools in research practice. In other works, he tried to describe culture as a symptom of spiritual processes, where the concept of spirit was synonymous with historical and social reality, which should be explored, however, going beyond the boundaries set forth by the historical sciences, also with the use of natural sciences. Childe can therefore be seen as a pioneer in functionalist-ecological clarification, as you will see the next chapter. Archaeologists, who have decided to drink such “coffee” today, have basically two options. Either they take the attitude of an encyclopedic collector who classifies cultures and cultural groups, assigns artefacts to them, sets chronology, looks for typological analogues in other cultural groups, works the classi-

28

Chapter 1

cal archaeological model developed in the nineteenth century, or use the opportunity to practice this paradigm in a “scientific” way. Today's archaeological and scientific co-operation has made it possible. This is not only about an increasingly sophisticated assessment of the technical performance of individual products with the help of microscopes, scanners and other devices but about detailed chemical composition tests—in particular, the determining trace elements in products or organic residues [bones, plants]. These studies are based on the concept of chemical or isotopic fingerprinting and are primarily aimed at identifying the sources of artefacts, and then delineating the flow of materials on that basis. Consequently, it is still a question of the methodology of science to help answer the traditional question of culturehistorical archaeology: the quest for provenance. As some researchers point out, this type of research can work in the case of a short distance from sources, but when the distance grows, the interpretations of chemical composition often lead to nowhere.40 Nevertheless, thanks to the rigorous science, the diffusionist and the migratory model of explaining cultural phenomena still plays an important role in archaeology. 41 This is a bit of caffeine that has been preserved in modern archaeology—it is addictive, but it does not harm. It seems that Childe at the end of his life returned to the Hegelian understanding of history. “As a historian-he wrote-the archaeologist is bidden to reenact his thoughts and motives of the prehistoric agent.”42 In this way, Childe, through Collingwood, and through Hegel, formed a basis for the methodology of “listening”, “sensing”, or “reading” into artefacts to evoke the image of an ancient community. The echoes of this postulate have become an element of the rapidly developing theoretical trend in the contemporary archaeology, which we will mainly talk about in chapter V. Will History ever finish? “An old bee proverb says:”43 everything that has its beginning has its end. Hegel had to eavesdrop on bees because he said that since History started, it had to end once. In a sense, the end of History has already taken place or has been initiated, because the French Revolution carried three important postulates of this End: freedom, equality, fraternity. The Master and Slave were to be brought together as equal in the face of the law.

Pollard & Bray 2015: 116. Mamzer: 135. 42 Avineri 2009: 282. 43 The Adventures of Maya the Bee by Waldemar Bonsels. 40 41

What is archaeology?

29

Over 200 years passed. 1989 heralded the arrival of a breakthrough that the modern world did not know and did not expect after decades of separation with the iron curtain. The center of attention of the world was Europe, especially its eastern part, where the most important socio-economic changes took place: the victory of the Solidarity movement in Poland, followed by the first partial free elections since the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We witnessed a series of local political upheavals, not always peaceful—communism began to collapse. There was only one thing missing—a philosopher who would put the historical act of turning communism into ruble into a philosophical treatise. That's how it happened. Overwhelmed by these events, a young philosopher and economist Francis Fukuyama announced in his essay nothing more but the end of History.44 Eureka!—some shouted. Hoary old chestnut!—others replied. By referring to Hegel's philosophy, Fukuyama formulated a courageous conception according to which there was an end to the conflicts between great political systems, and all societies would henceforth pursue one legitimate model of social organization, though not free from defects but the best possible. Almost two hundred years after the famous philosopher from Tübingen, Fukuyama put Hegel's glasses on again and looked through them at the history of human struggles with reality: “What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”45 He proclaimed the superiority of liberal democracy, which overcame monarchy, dictatorship, fascism and finally communism successively—the last one probably the hardest of all. Democracy is not only the achievement of Western civilization, but the heritage and triumph of all mankind. It marks the last phase of the ideological evolution of mankind and marks the end of the quest for the best form of government, and thus the End of History. We have come to the point where the existing form of socio-political organization completely satisfies the man in his pursuit of freedom, as Hegel predicted. At the end of this way, the emergence of a homogeneous state of law founded on the [capitalist] economy and the recognition of the dignity of another human being and democracy await us. The idea of a return to Hegel did not exclude the possibility that Earth's inhabitants were waiting for many exciting and dramatic events: bloody conflicts or revolutionary technological and scientific innovations, which in general would an-

44 45

Fukuyama 1989. Ibidem.

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Chapter 1

nounce „the end of man” as he described in his later book. However, the most important thing has already happened. Fukuyama has no doubt that democracy is the only sensible solution for humanity, and that any conflicts [both in society, between peoples or states] have their causes inadequately applied in practice. Let us think for a moment. Isn’t Fukuyama somehow right? As far as Europe and North America are concerned, in fact today we are all Hegelians, because we accept the liberal-democratic order of the world and capitalism as the ultimate form of the best possible society. A society in which everything else can be done is to try to make it even more just, more tolerant and more efficient.46 It is enough to correct just a few minor items, and the world will be perfect—with this thought we go cyclically to the election, though we hear in our heads the rhythm of the broken plate, or in other words: the more the left cerebral hemisphere cultivates this thought, the more the right one sees it as utopia. In addition, from thinking about refining this only just social order, we are awakened by the growing bases of fundamentalists at the boundaries of our magnificent civilization, who [surprisingly] blame democracy and capitalism for all the evil of this world. Fukuyama stressed his optimism by writing the essay about the second End of History. Do you know what the difference is between an optimist and a pessimist? The optimist believes that he lives in the best possible world, and the pessimist fears that this, unfortunately, may be true. That is why we have to say a few words here about the pessimist. The pessimist asks whether the End of History must be associated with the spectacular theater of socio-political transformations. Or maybe that End was introduced through the back door because of general ignorance and lack of awareness of the most interested? This was proposed by Alexandre Kojève, a pessimist of special kind, and Hegel's insightful interpreter who had been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. He was born as Александр Владимирович Кожевников in Moscow in 1902 in a wealthy bourgeois family [Wassily Kandinsky was his uncle]. He left Russia in 1920 and went to study abroad, changed his surname, and in 1925 he defended his dissertation on Vladimir Soloviev in Heidelberg: On the union of God and man in Christ, written under the supervision of philosopher Karl Jaspers. He spent most of his life in France, where the intellectual and cultural currents of the world were intertwined. He was interested in the philosophy of Hegel, Koyre and Heidegger, and he was an above-average educated man and polyglot. His lectures on Hegel's philosophy at the Sorbonne were

46

Žižek 2011.

What is archaeology?

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attended by Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton and Jacques Lacan. Lacan, to whom we will return later, considered Kojève to be his “sole teacher”, and many of his psychoanalytic insights are inspired by the lectures he attended at the Sorbonne. Kojève, however, saw himself as the only man who understood Hegel's hermetic texts, he understood them looking through Marx and Heidegger's glasses. Kojève, like Hegel, believed that humanity was defined by the constant possibility of negating one's own life. To remain a truly human being, one must keep some parts from both the Master and the Slave. Master is the man who “negates” the fear of death by participating in, for example, warfare, while the Slave “opposes” the Nature through work; In this approach, work and war would be essential components of human existence, and it must be admitted that this doesn’t go in line with the current political correctness. Indeed, this was not so after the Second World War. When in 1958 Kojève went on a diplomatic voyage to Japan, he found there an untouched alternative to the European path of development. He saw the only rescue for mankind and the morality of gentlemen in the japonization of Europe. Kojève thought that the willingness to meet death and contempt for the life that had survived in the Samurai code of honor turned out to be salvation for Japan after the Second World War. According to the French philosopher, every Japanese is basically capable of committing himself, out of pure snobbery, to completely selfless suicide. Confirmation of his words came after Kojve's death. In 1970, the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, founder of the Tatenokai military association and a devotee of the French thinker, committed hara-kiri as a protest in Tokyo against the “new Japanese” violating the bushidō code and against the tendencies of Americanization, gradually wiping out traditional Japanese knightly values. Well, the case of Mishima shows that philosophers should never be taken too seriously. Generally speaking, Kojève's historical thought can be summarized as follows—the desire for safety has taught the man about Nature. But the more power we gain over the outer world and over our own nature, the more we are dependent on our own creations, so the less man is human, the more of plasticine one becomes in their own hands. The more submissive Nature is to us [both in terms of the natural self and our own Nature], the more powerful our own omnipotence is. The more effectively we can tame and self-control the demons within us, the deeper we fall into the theological impasse of selfcreators, becoming our own animal-like gods. Today we are nothing more but self-tamed beasts, overdomesticated herd, we live in an era of the “triumph of

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farm animals having grass for food”, as Nietzsche used to say, in the period of post-historic creatures.47 As for Europe, Kojève had peculiar attitudes which, in addition to Hegel's philosophy, were drawn from Russian mysticism mixed with the revolutionary-socialist notes that he had acquired at a young age in the form of great Russian literature. Dostoevsky considered Western Europe a spiritual cemetery. Leontiev wrote about “the replete bourgeois Europe”, and Bierdayev about the death of a happy European, who lost their ability to crave and suffer: “A creature happy enough and contented in this world, insensible to evil and suffering and inexperienced suffering, completely devoid of tragedy would not be spiritual nor human any more.” But Western intellectuals, too, have adopted similar assumptions, such as Walter Benjamin, who, in his Theological-Political Fragment, was probably the first to unmask the pursuit of happiness as a false ideal, marking the phase of the deepest fall of mankind. Kojève's thoughts resonate with the premonition of these thinkers of the imminent arrival of a new type of human—the “incoming lout.”48 The term “end of times” is also found in the Soloviev’s writings on which Kojève wrote his PhD. Soloviev referred to this End as the era of religious fraudsters. He represented this period as a global social organization led by Antichrist, an eschatological emperor, and a brilliant thinker in one person. This ascetical ruler, philanthropist and social reformer would seduce mankind into the ideal of a social system that guarantees security and universal recognition, peace and bread for everyone. Soloviev calls this system “equal to universal repleteness”. Kojève saw him in Stalin. Apparently, on the eve of World War II, he wrote a 200-page letter to the Generalissimus in which he portrayed himself as Hegel, expressing his support for Napoleon of our time.49 Fortunately, at this moment, we do not have to analyze the mystical heritage of this exceptionally syncretic intellectual. He spoke the language of paradoxes and often changed the position about which the unhappy Yukio Mishima should have known. It is worth mentioning, however, that Kojève held important offices in the European administrative structures, and over time became one of the principal architects of the new political and economic institutions of the future European Union and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]. It seems that the interest in economic issues that, in the philosophical sense, reflect the relationship of the Man-Thing, has also left its mark on this philosophy. One could say that it was he who led Hegel's thought 47 Tokarski 2014:

70. Rossman 2006. 49 Ibidem. 48

What is archaeology?

33

to its surrealistic, seemingly incongruent, consequence. Here is how he wrote about this relationship at the end of his life: “The end of history is not only the disappearance of time and action—it is also the moment in which man recovers identity from the thing. How? By becoming it. Then all contradictions are lost: between subject and object, wisdom, foolishness, war, and state of peace. One impersonates another, gaining new quality [or rather mediocrity].”50 An age of boredom, universal satisfaction, repleteness and recognition of all by everyone, that is the lack of recognition of anyone and anything follows. The same thirst for prestige dies outside of all petty desires and pushes the wheel of History. With the death of this desire dies the man as a being that is different from the rest of nature. No need to risk life and work to sweat the face reduces us to the animal condition. “In the final stage there can be no more human beings in our understanding of the historical human being. “Healthy” machines are being ‘satisfied’ [entertainment, art, eroticism, etc.], and ‘sick’ ones are being closed. [...] Tyrant becomes an administrator, a cog in ‘machine’ built by machines for the machines.” It seems that for Kojève, the perspective of the man who becomes less human because they reject the quest for enlightenment or moral perfection, designing it in the form of automated systems, procedures, and institutions, was a possibility that History had made more real than ever before.51 Isn’t this one of the most incongruous interpretations of this technical and moral fusion that can be read from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy? But it seems to make sense! Well, nothing else to do but take up this topic in the next chapter where we will focus on technology.

50 51

Nowak 2006: 31. Lilla 2006: 113-114.

Chapter 2

On the benefits of science. Where is the link between Archaeology and Artificial Intelligence? Progress, science, evolution Culture-historical archaeology had been developing in parallel with a certain model of research, whose roots go even deeper than the teachings of Hegel, Herder, or other advocates of national identity. The intellectual current carved its channel persistently and effectively, and had so many founding fathers that it is impossible to discuss each of them. Its origins can be traced back to the renaissance and enlightenment, which, as we know, drew inspiration from ancient culture. We also find a considerable medieval contribution to it. In short, it can be said that it is based on three pillars: the concept of evolution, the idea of progress, and the methodology of the non-engaged observer. The ancient vision of the man, taken over by the Middle Ages was not optimistic. It depicts the fall of the man, manifested in the form of three successive centuries: golden, [sometimes silver], brown and iron. The Greek poet Hesiod extended it to five epochs: gold, silver, bronze, heroic [the time of Homer and his heroic protagonists] and iron—the worst of all, in which the poet himself lived. The ancient believed rather in devolution, which was rather a common thought before the modern epoch, and was connected with the influence of theological view of the world. This concept is already visible in shamanic cosmological beliefs, which is considered the oldest of them all. The first shamans were very powerful and contacted the gods directly—later they needed intermediaries in the form of ghosts or ancestors.1 The theme of the fall of man is also the essence of Christianity. In general belief, this was what a man in the Middle Ages saw, although it is not quite right. The humanists of the Renaissance spread this view, and their propaganda was so effective that until today, the Middle Ages is associated by us with the “dark ages.” As the researchers point out, the [progressive] idea of evolution was based on the

1

Eliade 1964: 68.

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general economic and technological development of Europe from the early Middle Ages, and perhaps even from ancient Greece.2 The conviction that humanity was capable of directing its own fate grew slowly. Then the school of thought was born which attributed Europeans the power to go beyond the great achievements of antiquity. How did it happen? In ancient times, the Roman philosopher Lucretius, in the poem De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things], presented a naturalistic concept, devoid of existential emphases, which stood in opposition to the Greek one. According to this concept, the first tools were hands, claws and teeth, later stones, bones and sticks. Then people learned to make tools of bronze and then of iron. The growth of archaeological finds seemed to confirm the version of Lucretius. In fact, even in the Bible, there were suggestions on the seniority of bronze tools. Thanks to that, in 1734, Nicolas Mahudel presented the concept of three epochs in human history: stone, bronze, and iron in a lecture to the Academie des Inscriptions in Paris.3 The intellectual problems of early archaeology are evident in the work of one of its fathers. Boucher de Perthes was the customs director at Abbeville on the Somme, where rock and bone artefacts washed out by the river had been found long ago. The local newspapers were writing about it. Boucher de Perthes decided to investigate this issue more thoroughly. He carried out excavations, during which he found many lower Paleolithic tools, the so-called hand axes, that were found in the company of bones of extinct animals. De Perthes came to the conclusion that these tools belonged to the antediluvian race described in the Bible. Watching them carefully, he saw the shapes of animals, birds and human figures, and interpreted them as signs of the original symbolic language: deities, letters and primary hieroglyphs. He thought that the probability of such functions increased when we dealt with too large, too small, or delicate works to serve as weapons or tools. His hypotheses were part of a broader system of views, combined with the so-called figural stones [pierres-figures] and functioning as part of the romantic idea that the earth and the past were something like a book to be read.4 In parallel, however, an important element of the Boucher de Perthes investigation was the analysis of the geological layers that were uncovered during the excavation so that he could demonstrate the geological coherence of ex-

Nisbet 2009: 17. 1994: 60. 4 Abramowicz 1992: 22. 2

3 Trigger

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tinct animals and stone tools. He was one of the first researchers to use scientific geological methods to demonstrate the chronology of the findings. But he remained a catastrophist and believed that epochs in the history of the world were the result of dramatic events in which the intervention of divine power was to be seen. Soon after, a geologist Charles Lyell, who visited and consulted Boucher de Perthes, published a book of Principles of Geology that showed the validity of the geological update. He claimed that the process of forming geological layers in the past was rather long-lasting, continuous and still occurs in the present. His work laid the groundwork for modern geology and opened the way to investigations into biological evolution, which could develop during these extremely long geological periods. As it is widely known, the concept of evolution was finally sealed by Charles Darwin, who published his famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859. He summed up 30 years of research, reflection and observation, and his proposed natural selection mechanism was accepted by most naturalists. One of them was John Lubbock, Darwin’s neighbor, clinging deeply to the idea of unilinear evolution, as explained it in the two of his books: Prehistoric Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, and The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive. Condition of Man. Both titles had many later releases. In Prehistoric Times, Lubbock argued that, just as modern elephants provide us with information about the nature and behavior of extinct mammoths, in the same way, primitive human cultures teach us about the life of prehistoric communities. A large part of the book was devoted to the description of the life of “modern savages”. For the first time, there were parallels between contemporary Eskimos and the tools of prehistoric cultures. Lubbock explained this by the environmental determinism that made both Eskimos [modern savages] and prehistoric people produce similar tools: spear flint blades, harpoons, fish hooks, etc. In other words, contemporary Eskimos are like prehistoric people who have survived to our times. This idea was taken over by archaeologists, which we will discuss later in this chapter. Lubbock was convinced that modern Europeans had reached the highest level of cultural development thanks to the continuous development of technology. He believed that less technologically advanced communities were not only culturally, but intellectually and emotionally retarded [see Settembrini: technology and morality]. Cultural development was due to population growth, which resulted in inventiveness. In other words, in populations without demographic growth, there was no innovation, which would lead to the development of culture. He also claimed that as a result of evolutionary selec-

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tion, lower social classes were more primitive than the higher classes. Thus, with one stroke of a pen, Lubbock was able to explain both the logic of Western European modern social inequality and the superiority of Europeans over the rest of the world.5 Not all of them identified the wild with the lack of any kind of manners and culture. In the debates on human evolution, the “noble savage” theme, which was later attributed to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was prematurely exposed. It was not an entirely new idea. The “noble savage” appeared almost a century before the famous Rousseau in the heroic drama of the English poet John Dryden [1672] The Conquest of Granada. He wrote there: I am as free as Nature first made man Ere the base Laws of Servitude began When wild in woods the noble Savage ran The hero who speaks these words in Dryden's art is a Spanish Muslim who at the end of the play, in accordance with the requirements of the European heroic drama, turns out to be the son of a Christian prince. However, the idea of a noble savage could be traced back to ancient Greece, where Homer, Pliny and Xenofantes dreamed on images of mythical Arcadians. The dispute over the nature of the savages was met with a philosophical approach along with the publication of Leviathan [1651]. Thomas Hobbes wrote this work being in exile in France for spreading rebellious opinions in his own country. He claimed in it firmly that life in a state of nature and the life of man in general, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, it is “the war of all against all”. It is the civilization that elevates us to a higher moral and cultural level. Rousseau opposed exactly this view, when in response to the competition announced by the Academy in Dijon he sent his famous dissertation, for which he received the first prize. The academy addressed a tricky question to scholars: “Whether the reestablishment of the sciences and the arts contributed to purifying morals?” In response, Rousseau wrote: “Remove this unfortunate progress, take away our mistakes and addictions, take away the products of civilization, and everything will be good [...]. Astronomy gave rise to superstition; ambition, hatred, flattery; geometry—parsimony; and all sciences, including ethics— human pride [...]. What would we do with the arts if it were not for the excess that feeds them? If it were not for human injustices, what would jurisprudence do?”, Rousseau asked rhetorically. He blamed civilization and progress for the

5 Trigger

1994: 114-118.

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existing evil, at the same time casting the slogans of returning to nature.6 The small work brought him great fame and contributed to labelling him the inventor of the idea of the “noble savage”. Some interpreters think that he probably saw himself in this idea—as the noble philosopher of nature rejected by the evil, civilized world. Having gained popularity for over a dozen years, he was kept by a wealthy baroness, but after parting [everything that was good at some point, however, ends up] he had to work for living and found the world unfair. In any case, the perspectives of Hobbes and Rousseau define two opposing poles in the discussion of the fundamental questions about human nature: either morality is encoded in nature [in genes], in human instincts, or the external conditions determine who we are. Let's go back to Lubbock. He also believed that the development of the capitalist economy combined with the mechanics of the evolutionary process would lead to the recovery of paradise on earth that humanity lost as a result of original sin. In The Prehistoric Times, he summed it up as follows: “Even in our own time we may hope to see some improvement, but the unselfish mind will find its highest gratification in the belief that, whatever may be the case with ourselves, our descendants will understand many things which are hidden from us now, will better appreciate the beautiful world in which we live, avoid much of that suffering to which we are subject, enjoy many blessings of which we are not yet worthy, and escape many of those temptations which we deplore, but cannot wholly resist”.7 Of course, not all people will have a share in this universal happiness. The most primitive will have to give way to the more adapted fields and they will simply die like mammoths. In some cases, even the best education will not make up for the lost millennia. Therefore, one should not be unscrupulous in replacing certain societies by a better-adapted civilization—it fosters the growth of the general condition of the human race. Lubbock was absolving Europeans for activities that led to the extinction of native American, Australian and Pacific communities. These communities were dying, not because the colonists were doing some real evil to them, but because they were simply evolutionarily unmatched to the changes that resulted from the spread of civilization. Natural selection did not equip them with appropriate mechanisms of biological and cultural change.8 It is not our fault...

6 Tatarkiewicz

1990: 151. Lubbock 1865: 492. 8 Trigger 1994: 119. 7

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Let’s build the machine which will overshadow everything We are back on the path of philosophy. Let us think about what has led to the belief in progress and evolution of modern Europeans? What was the basis of this thought? It was as material as possible—it was technology, that knowledge of tools that generated moral progress, which, in a somewhat inaccessible manner, Settembrini tried to instill in Castorp at Berghof sanatorium. It is thanks to it that Europeans have risen to a level that is inaccessible to others. We all know: you can always see better from the top. Someone could, of course, argue: technology is not philosophy yet! I agree, but think about Settembrini. Apparently, technology has a great potential for philosophical thinking. In the ancient times, the production of goods rested on the shoulders of slaves or farmers assigned to the land. Fewer members of the privileged classes devoted themselves to fighting, practicing sports, exercising power, and discussions on art and philosophy. They were distinguished by the considerable consumption of goods that slaves produced and, exceptionally, lacked the tendency to make their lives easier. Archimedes, one of the geniuses of ancient science, despised the possibilities of practical applications of technique. His only concession in this regard was the design of a mechanical catapult to defend the family of Syracuse against the Romans during the Second Punic War. Aristotle, perhaps the greatest genius of antiquity, was also of the opinion that the division between masters and slaves was just and naturally conditioned. The fact that slaves should work so that their owners could have free time was part of the natural and eternal order of the cosmos. The changes took place slowly. In the first century A.D., the philosopher and inventor Heron was active in Alexandria, who described in detail several technical solutions regarding the movement of figures—automatons moving for the entertainment of the audience. He left an encyclopedic review of the technical knowledge of the ancient, which then the Arabs took over. However, these were not just toys, they were: weight lifting devices, threaders, gears and friction gears, transmission chains, cam shafts and many more. In Alexandria, both the theory and the practice of machine building accelerated. Not only mechanics but also pneumatics and hydraulics developed, and Heron's writings confirm the growing level of technical knowledge of the Hellenistic era. This development, however, had still more theoretical than practical significance. It even seems that many of the leading Greek philosophers already allowed themselves to think that the world could work like a machine. The basic “tools” of theoretical speculation were the lever and the pendulum, which allowed to mathematize the elementary properties of body motion by

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translating the concept of weight into the concept of force.9 The best-known philosophers of this period are Ctesibius, Archimedes, Heron and Pappus. One of them was probably the author of the Mechanica treaty, which was wrongly attributed to Aristotle.10 Thus, in the antiquity, the potential of technology was noticed, but above all—in the philosophical dimension. From the perspective of later events, the most valuable invention of the antiquity was the water mill. The oldest mention of it comes from the treatise of Philo of Byzantium from the 3rd century BC. Vitruvius described in his work both the principle of operation and the mechanism of the mill itself adding that it is not widely used [slaves were supposed to work.] Apparently, Emperor Vespasian had even rejected the project of water-driven lifts for lifting heavy stones for fear of unemployment]. It was only at the end of the Roman Empire's existence that this technical innovation began to be implemented. Near Arles, today's France, the remains of a huge mill from the second century AD were found, consisting of 32 milled gears powered by 16 water wheels.11 The remains of the mill from the 4th century had unbelievable power of about 60 kW at that time. It could supposedly produce 4-5 tons of flour per day.12 However, it did not protect Rome from collapse. In northern Europe, this invention was eagerly taken over. Mills became one of the pillars of the technological revolution of the Middle Ages. In the period of the later Middle Ages, they were one of the basic factors of economic development initiating, as some scholars believe, the industrial revolution.13 Mills and later windmills were replacing the work of many people. They made it possible to process surpluses of grain, resulting from the progress of agriculture, they generated the region's economic growth and symbolized mechanical knowledge. In addition to typical production functions, they served as the first engines to power sawmills, sledgehammers, oil press and many other additional devices. With time, more complex machines began to be designed, of which the clock turned out to be an ideal model of the universe. As a result of this development, mechanical arts were woven into a philosophical discourse that promoted them to be the highest achievements of human thought. The engineers' activity was justified in the most important theological conclusions and in one of the most important mathematical sciences. In the 16th century, machine building gained a significant place in the

Dijksterhius 1986: 31. Berryman 2009: 55. 11 Russo 2004: 255. 12 Sawday 2007: 34. 13 Gimpel 1987: 236. 9

10

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western intellectual culture. This is confirmed by the biographies of the great Renaissance humanists, who were also engineers, which we often forget [Leonardo, Bramante, Alberti]. The justification was efficiency. Everyone could see that the machines were able to significantly support human work or, like the clock, regulate it in a rational way. Machines used in a proper way, that is, in accordance with Christian ethics, became a metaphor of the divine act of creation, and thus confirmed the words of the book of Genesis, saying that man was created in a divine image. And therefore, just as God created all things on earth and in heaven according to their measure, number and weight, so man, the maker of machines, follows these principles, constructing devices serving him as a support in his hard work for the glory of God. A world operating in a thoughtful and rational way was the perfect link between mechanics and the theologically well-established vision of divine order and sequence.14 Then the sphere of technology began to be freed from theological connotations, it was placed in a separate category of actions simply characterizing and enriching social utility and knowledge as such. Now Man saw all that he had made, and indeed, it was very good! Of course, a new technology is always controversial. The philosophical discourse is only one side of the coin. There is also a folk narrative. Like metallurgists and smiths in the metal age, millers in the Middle Ages and later enjoyed not only respect but also irrational fear. For example, in The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories from the fourteenth century by Geoffrey Chaucer, millers are rude, greedy and constantly drunk. The symbol of their greediness and wealth gains was the thumb of gold, which the miller pressed on the scarves in order to gain a better weight. Anyway, the suspicion that the miller is stealing resulted from the fact that the peasant lost the effect of his work at the time of putting grain into the mill, and many millers were taking advantage of it. And because delivering sacks of grain to the mill was often a task for women, the miller was additionally attached with the label of a libertine [the verb “grind” exists still as a term for sexual intercourse in many languages]. Often, the miller was the only person apart from the priest who could read, which raised his status, but also aroused envy as it was presented in the Nobel prize-winning Polish novel The Peasants [Chłopi] by Władysław Reymont. However, at the end of the 19th century, the miller became a symbol of the good old pre-industrial times, when people were prosperous, worked little, but were drinking a lot and loved a lot. Since the mill was always a meeting place, the French millers began to organize dance parties there. The most famous of them took place at the Paris Moulin de la Galette, which was fre-

14

Sawday 2007: 46.

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quented by Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Ramon Casas. Thus, opened in 1889 next to the cabaret, it had a red windmill on the roof [Moulin Rouge].15 Ultimately, technical knowledge related to the construction and use of machines gained the status of a universal paradigm, and Descartes was announced to be its founder, who as a 23-year-old officer in the service of Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria experienced a revelation one night, for he had been intensely considering the problem of the certainty of human cognition for some time. During a stopover in a country cottage near the German city of Ulm, in a sudden flash of genius, he saw the foundations of a new philosophy, and then fell into a deep prophetic dream. In gratitude for the revealed truth, he pledged to take a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto in Italy, which he really did four years later! What was the nature of the revealed truth? It is contained in the famous cogito ergo sum, but it is only the final credits of a long scenario of previous struggles with the problem, observation and philosophical thoughts. Descartes divided reality into two areas: the thinking mind and the material world. The first feature is the thinking, the feature of the second—extent in space and the movement having a mechanical character. The material world was a machine, nature ruled universal and eternal laws of mechanics, and everything that was in it was to be explained in terms of systems and movements of individual elements. God started this machine at the beginning of creation, after which he withdrew to a predetermined position. Then Descartes expanded his mechanistic theory of matter onto the world of living organisms; plants and animals simply considered to be perfect machines. Humans differ from animals in that they have souls connected to the body through the brain gland called the pineal gland. In general, however, the human body was the same mechanism as the animal body. Descartes was able to explain in detail how body movements and other biological functions can be reduced to mechanical operations. He was a philosopher who was passionate about mechanics, and he was particularly delighted with mechanical toy dolls popular in the 17th century; he even designed several models himself. At that time, the paradigm that conditioned all scientific research was formulated. All natural theories were based on it until the 20th century, when theoretical physics began to introduce further changes. Mechanics in the field of quite a narrow application was promoted to the top level of the

15

Rzepkowski 2015: 267-275.

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ontological ladder. In this perspective, history could not be the subject of scientific cognition. Universal Machine for solving problems After all, the concept of Descartes was interpreted by some as essentially metaphysical and theological. Thomas Hobbes took the floor again. His allegations, along with the reply, were announced in 1641 in Meditations on the First Philosophy. “There would be an infinite number of questions: how do you know that you know that you know that you know?” Hobbes wrote. “Because [...] we cannot separate thinking from the thinking matter, it seems that the [...] thinking thing [res cogitans] is material rather than intangible.”16 If the man, animals and the whole observable world were machines, which everyone accepted, or almost everyone else [except for Rousseau], Hobbes's work was to implement this concept into the social sciences. “Art, however, goes even further, imitating the intelligent and most perfect creation of nature, man. Art creates this great Leviathan, called a state [...] which is nothing other than an artificial man”, concluded the philosopher.17 The Hobbes’ concept leads us inevitably to some artificial existence as a consequence of human actions—to the state, perceived as a “total machine”. This machine contains all the laws and forms of human interaction that derive from the laws of mathematics. The vision of the state, which was shaped under the overwhelming influence of this extraordinary philosopher in the 17th and 18th century in Europe, was seen only as a human product and was definitely different from the earlier forms of political organization. In it, as Carl Schmidt argues, one can see the first product of the technical age, the first modern machine.18 Hobbes makes an important contribution to the discourse lasting long after him thanks to which, with the help of technical concepts and ideas, a certain abstraction of the idea of state took place, in the sense that it obtained the status of a neutral technical instrument, serving all citizens, predictable and comprehensible. Hobbes argued further that logic and arithmetic are based on a common foundation, just like the action of the mind. “Per ratiocinationen autem intelligo computationem,” he wrote in 1655: “By reasoning, I mean counting. Rather, it is in fact to create a sum of many things added to each other or to set

Dyson 2005: 16. Ibidem: 14. 18 Schmidt 1996: 19-35. 16 17

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the rest after subtracting one thing from another. To reason then is the same as adding and subtracting.”19 Hereby, Hobbes can be called the first theoretician of artificial intelligence. His heir was Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who at the age of fifteen began law studies at the University of Leipzig, and a dozen or so years later he attempted to create a system of symbolic logic and was the first to propose the idea of a binary calculating machine. Leibniz was a genius and a titan of work. At the age of 28, he created the original work Monadology, in which he argued that the universe consists of elementary thinking molecules—monads, also-called entelechies. The inner states of these entelechies are a reflection of the state of the entire universe, which is the best possible world [it was created in such a way that the minimum number of laws gives the maximum variety of effects]. Leibniz believed, like Hobbes before, that a coherent system combining logic, language and mathematics could be formalized and manipulated in accordance with the principles of mechanics. In 1675 he wrote to Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society: “The time will come, and come soon, in which we shall have a knowledge of God and mind that is not less certain than that of figures and numbers, and in which the invention of machines will be no more difficult than the construction of problems in geometry.”20 The arithmeticmanual calculating machine constructed by him, presented at the Royal Society in 1673, began the era of arithmetic mechanization. His calculus [calculus ratiocinator] was the first step towards the arithmetization of logic, and in his great vision of universal symbolism, through which all truths of reason will be reduced to a certain type of calculus, Leibniz anticipated the arithmetization of thinking itself.21 Ultimately, mathematics would encompass all human knowledge. In his philosophical writings he predicted: “When a dispute arises between two philosophers, it will no longer be necessary to make an effort of scientific debate bigger than the effort of two enumerators. It is enough if both of them sit in front of their counting machines and say to each other [perhaps with a pleasant smile]: “Calculemus! [Let us count!].”22 Thanks to this, all philosophical and scientific problems would be solved at the table or on the counting device using the account. In 1679 he presented the concept of a simple digital machine, in which the knobs representing the numbers stored in the binary Dyson 2005: 20. Dyson 2012: 104. 21 Ibidem. 22 Leibniz 2017. 19 20

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system circulated inside a device resembling a mechanical billiard, controlled by a primitive version of perforated cards. “You have to take a box with openings that can be opened and closed”, he wrote. “They are to be open in places corresponding to one, and closed in places corresponding to zero. Through open gates, the cubes or balls will fall into the gutters and the closed gates will stop them. This [open and closed hole arrangement] can be moved from column to column as needed.” In the registers of today's computer processors, instead of knobs falling under the influence of gravity, we have electron flows, caused by differences in voltage, but otherwise, everything works on exactly the same principle, as described by Leibniz in 1679.23 The concepts of Descartes and Hobbes, with an emphasis on Francis Bacon's experiment and induction method, shaped the spirit of a modern researcher and naturalist. A real scientist worked according to the following scheme: observation, classification, accurate measurement, experiment. It was the only methodology that allowed him to become a member of the Royal Society of London, founded in 1660. The authoritative works of the ancient classics were rejected there, which the medieval science considered sacred and devoted to studying material facts. There were also the first victims of the scientific revolution. Bacon, one of the fathers of empiricism, caught a cold and died following experiments on the first frozen foods. The members of the Royal Society were also researchers of antiquity and antiquarians. They studied ancient monuments, gathered collections, visited famous places, described them, and then published with the help of the Royal Society. The researchers wondered who were the builders of European megaliths and how such great constructions were erected. One of the first systematic researchers in this field was John Aubrey. He prepared the work for print [but did not publish it] Monumenta Britanica, in which he attempted to classify architectural monuments from the British Isles. After him, William Stuckeley made the first stratigraphic observations in Silbury Hill—the largest artificial mound in Europe and on this principle he came to the conclusion that it was built earlier than the Roman road running nearby. Stuckeley was one of the first researchers who believed that settling Britain had a much longer history than the Roman Empire. He also studied Stonehenge using the advice of Edmund Halley, who assessed the age of the monument based on the degree of stone aging for 2000—3000 years back. In Germany, similar interest in the beginnings of national history resulted in similar works, e.g. De origine germanorum by J. G. Eckhart. Early science in archaeology, however,

23

Dyson 2012: 105.

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was primarily the application of rigorous measurement as evidenced by the earliest mapping and recording of prehistoric monuments.24 A few generations later, the French physicist Andre-Marie Ampère made an ambitious attempt to systematize all areas of human cognition in the Essay on the philosophy of science, or an analytical presentation of the natural order of human knowledge. He proposed a new term in it: cybernetics [cybérnetique]. In the second, posthumous volume of the essay [published by his son in 1843] Ampère describes how he came to the knowledge department, “which is called cybernetique, from the word κυβερνητης, at first referring only to the management of ships, though the Greeks extended its importance to the art of control at all.”25 Although Ampère’s cybernetics already dealt with processes that determine the operation of all kinds of systems, Norbert Wiener is considered the founding father, who as a mathematician at MIT worked on the theory of cooperation between humans and machines in order to achieve greater efficiency in the battlefield. When shooting at a flying plane, the soldier supporting the cannon had to predict the future position of the target. To improve accuracy, you had to construct a special device that automatically allowed for correction. The overarching goal of the military, however, was to achieve the symbiosis of the soldier and his weapons. As it turned out, the same mathematical equations can be used to analyze the impact of living organisms expressed as systems [e.g. society and technological systems], which helped Wiener to develop the theoretical framework of human and machine behavior—in people, machines, and also in human societies there is continuous feedback between information and action. In 1948 Wiener published an outline of his cybernetic theory in the book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, which, to the surprise of the author himself, turned out to be a bestseller. For the first time, a common set of abstract concepts could be applied to natural sciences and social sciences.26 It was only after the publication of Cybernetics that Wiener learned about the convergence of the name he used with the one Ampere had previously invented. However, 16 years earlier in his article on quantum mechanics, he referred to one of the forefathers of the scientific paradigm. Back to Leibniz!—was its title.27

Pollard & Bray 2015: 113. Dyson 2005: 19. 26 Barbrook 2009: 63. 27 Dyson 2012: 103. 24 25

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Cybernetics is a theory created at the core of computer culture, a direct heir to the theory of machines. Its dynamic development in the second half of the twentieth century forced the revision of the classic spiritual-physical distinction because by constructing a computer, this mental machine, it was shown that a significant part of phenomena, which were attributed to the spiritual side of being, belongs in fact to its material-mechanical side. We must remember that in the mid-19th century, the mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Machine, which was a real mechanical computer. Instructions were to be written on punched cards [such cards were already used in weaving machines], calculations made using operating memory, and solutions were printed! The correct construction of this machine was proved in 1991, building its fragment according to the original plans. In this way, reflection became visibly, at least in theory, a property of matter, not a privilege of human intelligence. Summing up this development, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk writes that “the philosophy of cybernetics makes the formulation of a general theory of the twilight of gods possible”28 although more important from the twilight of gods may be the twilight of the man, such as that presented in the film Metropolis by Fritz Lang from 1927. It is a vision of society functioning in a fully rational way. We see there perfectly adapted people-machines, whose movements match the work cycles of the Metropolis mega-machinery—they are the workers of the future [hands]. A privileged group of intellectuals prevails over them [reason, brain]. The film's message is: Between the hands and the mind must be mediated by the heart [Mittler zwischen Hirn und Händen muss das Herz sein]. Lang talks about the last stage of the evolution of technical culture, which led to the separation of the head from its members and the fragmentation of society into subsystems—a kind of madness, according to which one of the Metropolis engineers Carl A. Rotwang promises: “I will bring you a machine that no one will be able to distinguish from a man.” Metropolis is, of course, only an artistic vision, nevertheless a dozen years later a young British mathematician, Alan Turing, seriously tackled the problem of machine intelligence, which will be indistinguishable from human. It is not known if he watched Lang's movie… In his article Computing Machinery and Intelligence, published in 1950 in the British philosophical magazine Mind for the first time described the criterion called now the Turing test. According to the intention of the author, the test was supposed to make it possible to determine whether it is reasonable to claim that

28

Sloterdijk 2011: 138.

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a given machine thinks. The solution is a canonical combination of genius and simplicity. In order to subject the computer [thinking machine] to the Turing test, it should be separated from the human and placed behind the screen. The examiner on the other side of the screen asks both sides questions. The interrogated person is obliged to tell the truth and try to convince the examiner that he is a human, while the computer is programmed so that while “lying” it tries to prove that he is a human. If after a series of such tests the examiner can not unequivocally state who is who, point to the real human hidden behind the curtain, then we should recognize that the computer positively passed the Turing test. This is the moment when we can move on to archaeology and think about its confused relationship with thinking machines. Archaeology of the machine age Soon after the publications of Wiener and Turing, some archaeologists began to perceive people's behavior as the articulation of a number of systems such as economy, religion, culture, society, etc. Systems can of course be divided into subsystems and variables, which gives a wide field of desired specialization. For example, a certain group of Indians may exist within a system where maize is cultivated in a floodplain undergoing slow erosion [subsystem], which causes the most efficient crop to move upstream. At the same time, it can participate in a system that uses a population of wild rabbits, the density of which changes in the ten-year cycle due to predators or diseases. It may also belong to the system of exchanging goods with another group of Indians occupying neighboring areas, etc.29 Proceeding in this way, you can reconstruct the culture of the Indians together with the surrounding natural resources as one complex system or mechanism. The methodology in question consists in the separation of such systems and testing them as separate variables. Human culture has been found to be something more than a set of different norms, either accidentally acquired or resulting from historical necessity. Its individual elements are interrelated functionally. In other words, human culture is, like a machine, a complex functional system that transforms the energy of the environment into social life. Archaeologist David Clarke defined this system as “a mutually communicating network of attributes and elements that make up a complex whole.” According to other researchers, it additionally characterizes the exchange of matter, energy and information between its elements.30 The explanation of this type reached the very roots of this univer-

29 Trigger 30

1994: 307. Johnson 2013: 88.

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sal theory, as it was signaled by Ampère, an advanced technical age that after the Second World War became cybernetics. Why was the current cultural and historical approach considered unscientific? Processual archaeology, also-called the New Archaeology, began to take shape after the Second World War, when a significant increase of materials from excavations was noted. They came because each self-respecting archaeologist who wanted to be still respected, tried to provide their own laboriously excavated spoil in the form of a new, unexplored complex of the existing, or even better—completely new archaeological culture [so that his name was clearly associated with this taxonomic unit]. At that time, already mentioned David Clarke, who had previously read Alice in Wonderland, said something strange: “We do not move running faster and faster.” That is, even though archaeology has accumulated more and more sources, it still stands still. Simply, the ever-progressing growth of archaeological material was fitted into the same endless tabular series of archaeological cultures, and new cultures were added to it [chapter I]. However, science, as proposed by the followers of the New Archaeology, should use the collected data in order to check the credibility of hypotheses regarding the general laws of the world and society. Archaeology, in order to develop, cannot constantly stamp new data into old patterns, it should rather confront data and theory to make our understanding better and deeper.31 As part of this new procedure, changes in a given material culture ceased to be treated as a result of diffusion or migration of people, but also as a result of their own development, which in itself was turning the research perspective by 180 degrees, that is, aspiring to be a scientific revolution [chapter III]. The degree of technological advancement of artefacts became a measure of the passage of time, an expression of cultural continuity guaranteed by the cumulative nature of technical progress. The universal laws of socio-cultural development modeled on the model of natural laws were sought. The methodology of natural science research was also adopted by developing methods for numerical evaluation of phenomena, their “objective” measurement, statistical methods, creating models of development, etc. It was recognized that one of the measures of progress in archaeology will be the degree to which the hypotheses posed by it are scientifically verifiable. In reference to the theory of evolution, it was also recognized that culture is a system beyond-biology, a system of human adaptation to the environment in which people live; artefacts are nothing more than an indicator of the ability to adapt to this environment.

31

Ibidem: 45.

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A great example of the changes that the New Archaeology introduced into the way of thinking about the past is the problem of megaliths. Previous studies on megaliths, conducted in the spirit of culture-historical archaeology, focused on relative dating of these buildings, typology and explanation based on the phenomenon of diffusion. Researchers divided them into subgroups according to their location on the shores of the western Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The only possible way to determine the age of monuments was to look for similarities in their form, assuming similar monuments are similar in age. In this way, the age of the building could be determined by delineating a chain of references to alleged protoplasts in the Mediterranean, which, as was evidenced by written documents, was the source of European civilization. In the Mediterranean, there were, e.g. megalithic temples in Malta, which could be described as the oldest. British archaeologist Colin Renfrew questioned the results of current research in the style of culture-historical archaeology using modern methods of radiocarbon dating [or properly calibrating these dates], which allowed him to show that megaliths on the Atlantic coast were much older than their alleged “ancestors” in the Mediterranean. He proposed that, instead of attempting to prove or deny the links between archaeological cultures, one should first and foremost ask the question: what was the purpose of building megaliths? We should devote less attention to chronology and diffusion and pay more attention to the processes underlying this phenomenon. In other words: less description, classification and chronologization, and more explanation of the essence of things. Renfrew suggested that megaliths could be territorial marks. He used an ethnographic analogy from the Polynesian Islands for this purpose, where monumental structures were created as a result of rivalry for land, which was scarce. In prehistoric Europe, when the first Neolithic communities were moving from the south-east to the west of the continent, at first the land was in abundance. At some point, however, a barrier was found in the form of the Atlantic coast, which, in addition, were quite densely populated by groups of Mesolithic hunters. Renfrew found that in this situation there developed a competition for the land. Perhaps then, the megalithic tombs delineated the territory belonging to a given group, creating a bond with the ancestors buried in their area? “The interactions between the immigrant Neolithic farmers and the existing local Mesolithic population, as the latter adopted farming practices, created the special interest in demarcating territories, in demonstrating group solidarity and in tribal competition, which

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the megalithic tombs reflect”, he summarized.32 In this way, he proposed to clarify the mystery of megaliths by simultaneously satisfying the basic postulates of processualism: 1.

Explaining instead of just describing and classifying.

2.

Using ethnographic analogies.

3.

Emphasizing environmental factors and adapting them to the environment. In this case: shortage of land.

4.

Perception of archaeological monuments [megaliths] not as diagnostic features defining a culture, but as a functional element of the entire cultural system.

5.

Verification of hypotheses. Using the space statistics tools, Renfrew showed that the megaliths roughly delineated equal territories.33

In their scientific mode of explanation, however, the New Archaeologists did not refer to such theoreticians as Descartes, Hobbes, Wiener or Turing. They referred mainly to Carl Hempel, a philosopher born in Germany, who in 1937, escaping from the Nazis, emigrated to the USA. He dealt with the concept of scientific explanation, which was called the deductive-nomological model. According to it, to give an explanation of a phenomenon or regularity means to present correct logical reasoning, in which explanandum is an application [what is explained], and the set of premises is explanans [what it explains]. Explanation must include at least one general law and it must be an important reason for reasoning. It must also have an empirical basis, i.e. be verifiable in an experiment or observation.34 The explanation therefore consists in showing the regularity flowing from a more general law or from several laws. The basic problem with the explanation in the neo-positivist style of Hempel is that he generates some paradoxes, e.g. the one concerning the “barometer and storm”, formulated by Hans Reichenbach. It reflects the problem of correlation and causal interactions. The sentence: “a storm is coming” can be expressed with the general statement: “Whenever the barom-

Renfrew 1973: 160. Johnson 2013: 51. 34 Grobler 2006: 104. 32 33

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eter tip falls, the storm is coming” and a sentence about the initial conditions: “The barometer tip has dropped.” However, it is difficult to accept an explanation of the atmospheric phenomenon by referring only to the observation of the device's indications. It is much clearer to explain both the arrival of storm and the behavior of the indicator of atmospheric pressure [this is a common cause of both facts], and even better use the remark of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote: “Experience teaches that there is rain when the barometer falls, but it also teaches that there is rain when we have certain sensations of wet and cold, or such-and-such visual impressions.”35 This refers directly to the Renfrew hypothesis regarding megaliths. Building megaliths is a type of barometer “telling” that “there is a shortage of arable land”. As you can see, such an explanation is difficult to consider as a good verification of the hypothesis. It would be best to find variables reflecting in some way the stress factor in society, resulting directly from the shortage of land. Unfortunately, this missing land is gone for a long time, because there are no more megalithic communities, which they allegedly lacked the said land. Applying certain laws of science in the case of long-extinct cultures is a difficult task. *** The most ambitious project of the New Archaeology was the middle-range theory, whose founder was the American archaeologist—Lewis Binford. His intention was to create a universal methodology to obtain objective knowledge [as in natural sciences], which is a connection between observation and theory.36 But how to observe prehistoric societies after which only waste was left? How to test the theory on people who died out several thousand years ago? The solution is just as ingenious and simple as the Turing test. One of the axioms of the New Archaeology assumed that environmental conditions determine the material culture. It was necessary, then, to find contemporary societies which, it was believed, still exist in similar conditions as those now gone and, in a way, as a substitute, to make these observations on those still existing ones. The verification consisted in capturing the dependencies between human behavior and the material remnants of this behavior. Specialized researchers were supposed to deal with this, the so-called ethno-archaeologists, who observed modern tribal communities and provided data for archaeology.

35 Wittgenstein 36

1986: §354. Binford 1962: 217-225.

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In our contemporaries, we can describe in detail how the given activities led to the creation of specific patterns in material remnants. We can, for example, look at how contemporary agricultural communities prepare and process grain, or how contemporary hunters-gatherers cut hunted animals. We can observe and accurately measure how much and what waste is generated as a result of these activities and what happens to them as a result of attrition or decay. Experimental archaeology became also an important test tool, in which the traces of wear on prehistoric tools were compared with those that arise from experiments with animal flaying, hide tanning, agricultural activities, etc. Binford wrote: “Let me give an example. One very common class of finds made by archaeologists is stone tools. Since we hope to gain a better understanding of the context in which man make, use and dispose of stone tools, it would naturally be very helpful to see some people using them.” This, indeed, was the concern that sent him into the central desert of Australia several years before, to do fieldwork among a group of people who knew about stone tools and periodically did still use them for various purposes. So wrote Binford further: “I hoped to be able to relate information about the actual behavior of these people [the dynamics] to the consequences of that behavior, as seen in the distribution, design and modification of stone tools [the statics]. […] My aim was to study the relation between statics and dynamics in a modern setting. If understood in great detail, it would give us a kind of Rosetta Stone: a way of ‘translating’ the static, material stone tools found on an archaeological site into the vibrant life of a group of people who in fact left them there.”37 In other words, just like the Rosetta Stone with the inscription in three ancient languages allowed modern linguists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, archaeologists should use a certain middle range theory that will reconstruct the “vibrant life” of people from the past. What are static and dynamic data? Archaeological data: stones, bones, fragments of ceramics create a static present record. We register their location and layout that they create in the ground, but ultimately we are not interested in their static description, and the dynamics of the old communities that left this

37

Binford 1983: 24.

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pattern behind. We must add this dynamism to the pattern based on the principle of an update that states that communities behave more or less the same, whether in the past or now. For example, suppose that we are excavating a graveyard composed of a small number of rich graves and a large number of poorly equipped graves [static data]. On this basis, we conclude that social inequality occurred in a given society [dynamic data]. By this, we assume the existence of a “medium-range” link between the number or value of objects in the graves, and the social/property status of the buried person.38 Thus the middle-range theory. As befits a scientist, Binford used the natural metaphor. He compared archaeological sources to the footprint in the forest: seeing a certain shape and size of the trace, we can initially conclude that it belongs to a large, heavy animal. However, we do not know yet what kind of animal it is. Later, someone observes a living bear leaving a trace of exactly the same shape and size. Thanks to the present observation, he can say with a high degree of certainty that the previously found trace this animal once left.39 The classic equivalent of the “bear's paw in the woods” became Binford's research among the Nunamiut hunters living in the cold climate of Alaska, that is, in conditions that prevailed in Europe during glaciation. Based on their observations, Binford created a model of life for these communities: hunting, migration, settlement as part of seasonal activities. This model includes a permanent camp, i.e., the center of the community, the area of hunters' penetration, where seasonal camps, traps, and animal flaying sites are located. The camp of such a group of hunters looks more or less like this: there are three areas around the fire, the so-called crescent-shaped “drop zone” where people lived, leaving their tools, food [bones] or flint; in this area, the items are small. There is also a “toss area”, i.e. an area where waste was thrown away; often there are large objects. On the outside of the “drop zone” there is a second area in the shape of a horseshoe, the so-called rear “toss area” which has the form of fingerprint.40 Binford argued that basically every archaeologist applies the principles of middle-range theory more or less consciously, that is, all the time we propose some version of the relationship between static data and social dynamics, as we know it today—unconsciously constructing middle-range assumptions. Therefore, the task of the New Archaeology should only be meant to formalize research procedures in order to clarify the terms used by archaeologists reJohnson 2013: 70. Ibidem: 72. 40 Binford 1978: 26-27. 38 39

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garding, for example, the division into simple and complex settlements, types of resource cavities, rich and poor graves, etc. Most archaeologists use this kind of phrases using “common sense”, but it must be remembered that common sense is nothing more than a “set of prejudices that we acquire until the age of 16”, as Einstein used to say. Processual archaeology was a revolution in thinking about the past, but with time critics began to emerge. The universality of the laws according to which communities react to the environment began to be undermined. We will never know, it was said, whether the assumption of actualism in accordance with the slogan “letting the present serve the past” is real in a given case. If I interpret an object discovered as a storage pit showing that it shares 5, 10 or 15 diagnostic features with known resource-related cavities of this type, still another interpretation of this object is possible.41 Attention was also paid to deposition and post-deposition processes that disrupt the final result of archaeological observation, which means that, for example, the “drop zone” or “toss area” are destroyed and this is actually the case for the majority of archaeological sites. Some critics eventually claimed that middle range theory represents a revolution in the technical and methodological sphere, and therefore is not actually a theory.42 That is an interesting statement, because if we think about it more deeply, then in the perspective of this chapter, middlerange theory can be considered as an attempt to build a universal machine for interpreting archaeological data—as an attempt to construct such an algorithm that would produce a sensible analysis result every time. It is not without reason that computers commonly used in New Archaeology have been extensively spewing diagrams, charts and explanatory models. The film metaphor may also be useful. Static data are single pictures that an archaeologist takes while working—hundreds of them, sometimes thousands. Then archaeologists go to a nearby village and look for similar shots: camera angle, exposure, etc. They take a series of pictures again, with the difference that this time there are live people there performing everyday activities. Thanks to this, they can align these two film materials and adjust the human action here and now to the patterns left at the archaeological sites. With particularly favorable conditions, they could even display a movie showing Binford's “vibrant life”. However, we must be aware that from the point of view of cinematography such a film would be just a story about the past or fantasy. A good film must also be a valid metaphor—a bad one is only a series of unrelated photos in a coherent narrative [we will come back to that later]. With

41

Johnson 2013: 79. 1994: 312.

42 Trigger

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time, it was realized that in the final analysis of the universal methodology, there is a small amount of universal information. According to Kent Flannery, that school of “law and order” went the wrong way and created the laws of Mickey Mouse with dubious value. In a mocking style, he gave the following example: “when the population of the site increases, the number of storage pits increases” and then he commented viciously: “Oh My! Mrs. Science, you are great!”43 From raw data obtained from the trash can, the routes of our everyday walk and stains on a coat, only a detective such as Sherlock Holmes could create information that would help explain the reality, and he would need a living suspect who would admit and confirm the detective's hypothesis at the end of the investigation. Eventually, some archaeologists began to doubt that observing people during the game, cutting and collecting the forest floor is what archaeology always awaited. *** Gordon Childe began to question the cultural and historical model in the 1930s, realizing that this approach is similar to the old-fashioned interpretation of history, in which cultures replaced great statesmen and migrations replaced battles. In search of other ways of explaining the changes, he became interested in the ecological and economic approach, which today we would call the processual and functional explanation. In the book The Most Ancient East he dealt with the problems of the emergence of agriculture, which was already then perceived as a key moment in the history of the world. He expressed the view that the gradual drying up of the Middle East near the end of the ice age had a direct impact on the domestication of plants and animals. Human populations have grown and concentrated around more modest sources of water. Only three regions: Nile; Tiger, Euphrates and Indus had enough of it to keep the population growing and create favorable conditions for the creation of the first cities. In each of these centers, surpluses in food production allowed for the dynamic development of the population, resulting in the concentration of power, which the world had not known before. Craft and art developed. In the book, he claimed that the technological knowledge that arose in these central civilization centers spread to neighboring areas, e.g. to Europe. Also, he was concerned on metallurgy, about which he wrote in his next work: The Bronze Age. He considered there the possibility that metallurgy could have been invented independently in Egypt, the Middle East, Hungary and Spain, but he did not go that far. Like many diffusionists, he decided that

43

Renfrew & Bahn 2002: 453.

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metallurgy was such a complex process that it seems more likely that it was invented only once in prehistory. In In The New Light on the Ancient East Bridge, which he wrote after traveling to the most important sites in Iraq and the Indus Valley, Childe summarized and refined the arguments from the previous two books. According to him, in the prehistory of the studied regions, there were two revolutions, comparable with what we call the industrial revolution in social and economic terms. The first of these was related to the transition from the economy, absorbing the source of food to the economy producing these sources. It was the Neolithic revolution. The second went a step further and consisted in the transition from self-sufficient agricultural settlements to the first cities. Urban life was born—the urban revolution. Each of them was associated with the increase of technical innovations and population. Childe can therefore be seen as one of the precursors of the paradigm that was eventually established 30 years later.44 Almost scientific fun with time Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the most difficult things to study are those in which we participate every day. This thing in modern culture is time. We do not put it under discussion. We believe that the modern measurement of time is obvious, while it is a relatively recent invention. We inherited some from the Greeks, a little from the Romans, and the medieval concepts strengthened us in a linear pattern of perceiving time. Although we have preserved the appearance of its cyclical understanding, which was widespread before the development of civilization [year, day, week], in the long-run existence seems to us to be a chain for now of endless, subsequent, closed stages—unique and not returning. Our language for describing time is full of terms and concepts defining a linear sequence. We use the chain of evidence, follow the line of reasoning, come to a conclusion, our resources have goals, we decide on a specific career path, etc. The cause precedes the effect, the stimulus precedes the reaction, and the reward is the result of hard work [we will talk about this illusion in chapter IV].45 The obsession with linear progress makes us see the past as something outside, far beyond ourselves in space. We describe people and societies living as “traditional” as if we wanted to point out that they are all the same—static, unformed, undeveloped, not yet having their own linear history.46 We use the time of Renaissance and Enlightenment mechanics such

44 Trigger

1994: 286-288. Aveni 2001: 414. 46 Ibidem: 415. 45

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as Galileo, Kepler, Newton. Since the mechanical clocks began to dominate the landscape of medieval cities, and in the age of the Enlightenment, the idea of the machine replaced the thinking of the mind with a differential calculus, the mechanistic determinism became a common form of reasoning. The machine of the world also provided the most accurate understanding of history. Time understood in this way was completely separated from the theatre of human actions. It was only necessary to set the clock right. And yet the history of struggles with the measurement of time shows that it is not something objective, given once and for all. What is the value of the fact for us that some event took place [probably] a dozen or a few hundred thousand years ago? Until quite recently, the world had been less than 6,000 years old because of the calculations of the Anglican Archbishop James Ussher, who after a careful analysis of the oldest biblical texts and precise calculations, fairly widely respected by scholars and philosophers, set the date of creation on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC. More precisely: at 6.00 pm. Earlier, it was true that the Universe was superstitiously a bit older. For example, the king of Castile and Leon, Alfons X placed the Act of Creation in 6904 BC, Johaness Kepler pointed to the year 3992 BC, and St. Augustine calculated the age of the universe at roughly 5,000 years. But basically, the order of things seemed indisputable. The first of all was the divine act of creation from a few thousand years ago, and the findings of Ussher were considered right by the Anglican Church in 1701. The first cracks on this foundation began to appear only after 1859 when Charles Darwin published his revolutionary work. Slowly, doubts began to build up among intellectual elites. If Darwin was right about evolution, would a few thousand years be enough for such a slow evolution of various life forms? Inspired by Darwin's revolutionary theses, they were probably the first to make schisms as the more daring Victorian geologists. After assessing the rate of formation of sedimentary rocks, they concluded that the Earth is at least several million years old. This heresy was outdone in 1897 by Lord Kelvin. He calculated that in order for the liquid, glowing globe to cool down, it must have been not less than 20 million years. A moment later, John Joly joined the dispute. He, in turn, assumed that the ocean was initially filled with pure water. It was enough to count how many years have passed to reach the current level of salinity— about 100 million years. In 1905, physicists for the first time examined the age of the Earth based on radioactivity. The world aged more then—already counted 500 million years. When the measurement methods were improved two years later, Earth proved to exist for more than a billion years. Tired of the constant stretching of time, some scholars found that it is impossible to determine the beginning of the existence of the Earth at all. The conviction of Charles Lyell that the beginning of time is beyond the reach of

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mortal knowledge gained popularity. The rebellion against the anachronistic, blocking the development with ecclesiastical science dogmas could end up, paradoxically, with intellectual capitulation. Time and existence without beginning and end, which do not even make sense to understand, have been founded by such ancient Greek thinkers as Anaximander or Heraclitus of Ephesus. The philosophers were defeated with the vision of a gargantuan swelling time, beyond the human scale which is possible to grasp. But could it be any different? Convinced that the world exists for no longer than a few thousand years, in just one generation we learned that we are wrong in this matter by at least a few orders of magnitude. It must have come as a shock.47 However, we can say that we are slowly regaining balance in this respect. Time, understood evolutionarily, according to the Roman Catholic Church interpretation, does not interfere with the concept of creating the world according to the Bible. At the end of the 7 days of creation, s early as in bishop Usher's times were understood as a metaphor, which could last 7,000. years or 7 million years. This time is incomprehensible to us. For people in the 19th century, 7,000 for years sounded as abstract as 7 million for us today. Somehow, the measurement of time escapes our understanding, and this is, after all, the central theme of archaeology. In processual archaeology, from the very beginning, there is a strong ahistorical trend. With time, there were voices that the New Archaeology, as the provider of universal scientific laws [based on economic, political, statistical, ecological knowledge, etc.], can produce objective knowledge that could also be useful for the management of modern societies. In the US, the desire to refer to objective science was supported by the National Science Foundation, which was the main founder of archaeological research. It was argued that archaeology can provide information about the nature of long-term, humanenvironmental interactions that would be an important factor for modern economic planning.48 In order to “produce” important finds that strengthen the position of archaeology in an environment where technocratic efficiency is perceived as the highest value, many American archaeologists began to perceive themselves and their profession as a departure from historical understanding in favor of generalizing human behavior. It was a sign of a serious social researcher. In this context, we can put Binford's statement that historical interpretations are most useful for playing a role in general public educa-

47

Ibidem. 1994: 312-317.

48 Trigger

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tion. Binford was not the only processualist who clearly indicated this direction. Alfred V. Kidder in 1935 already argued that the ultimate task of archaeology is to determine the generalization of human behavior.49 From this perspective, let us take a moment to look at the essential tool of modern archaeology—dating with radiocarbon. *** Every first-year archaeology student learns that the age of archaeological finds can be estimated based on the radioactive decay of C14 carbon. For this purpose, the studied find is compared with a similar contemporary subject in terms of the content of atoms of this isotope and then it is concluded what part of the C14 content in the examined find decayed. From statistical law specifying the half-life of C14 carbon [5730 years], the regularity determining the time needed for the disintegration of such part of the C14 atoms is derived and a date is obtained. The inventor of the method Willard Libby was a physicist. In 1949 he published the first dates of C14, but they were still very inaccurate. Libby initially assumed that the value of C14 coal was constant in the past, which turned out to be wrong. Many factors influenced carbon levels: fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field, solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, melting glaciers, the presence of seas and oceans, industrial revolution and atomic bomb explosions. It should also be remembered that C14 is not a measurement directly related to time, but only a measure of the quantity of carbon isotope. The application of corrective glasses was a big step forward, the so-called calibration of radiocarbon dates. In regions rich in trees, dendrological calibration scales were created, reaching back thousands of years. In areas poor in the trees, stratification of sediments or tropical coral were used. However, the uncertainty associated with the statistical value of the sample reading will remain as an immanent measurement feature. The deeper we go back to the past, the greater the statistical error, because there is less and less carbon in the sample. Nevertheless, the radiocarbon clock strengthens the position of archaeology as a science.50 Currently, it can measure the time that has passed with quite high precision. The implications are vast. The problem of diffusion versus independent invention simply could not be addressed without a Ibidem. There are many other archaeological clocks, or physico-chemical methods for dating finds, but the radiocarbon method is the most popular one. 49 50

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secure chronology. The new technique allows archaeologists to reduce the requirement for complex chronological diagrams based on stratigraphy, seriation and comparison of archaeological material between neighboring cultural units in order to obtain chronology. Above all, there was often no important factor in such chronologies with which modern understanding of time is associated—there was no date! Therefore, these methods were called relative dating. The radiocarbon clock, on the other hand, is “objective” because it allows us to present events as on a wall calendar, after which by applying a finger, we travel backwards observing the prehistory. Thanks to the radiocarbon method, events could be taken in a global perspective all over the world for the first time. That is why Colin Renfrew described the invention as a revolution. His reinterpretation of European prehistory was mainly based on radiocarbon dating, thanks to which he could demonstrate that the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Europe was much older than it was previously thought. Then he wrote that the beauty of the new method was that it could work without any archaeological assumptions about time and date.51 This is a significant theorem, based on the axiom, that here we have managed to set the clock right—an objective technical instrument that measures time without our participation. But let us consider whether the prehistory understood in this way is not timeless at all? Newton imagined time as an abstract quantity, unchanging and infinitely divisible into units reminiscent of the space he studied. Its time is independent of the transformations it describes, it is a mechanism that can be dismantled and then reassembled. It is significant, however, that although in archaeology, we use twentieth-century physics to define chronology, the conceptualization of time expressed in this way is the product of the eighteenth century. Unless the assumption of such a time in archaeology draws from the theoretical issues of modern physics, where the idea of immutable reality is considered since Einstein's work, but then we would also have to discuss parallel worlds, holograms of reality in archaeology or deal with history as a pure mathematical structure.52 Because archaeologists rather should not practice theoretical physics, the universalization of time expressed in this way is methodologically unjustified. This separates the archaeologist from the important research problems of the field he cultivates, where the right conceptualization of time is, actually, a key issue. Instead, the whole reflection about time is reduced to extensive descriptions and the development of dating techniques. As Christopher Gosden notes, modern archaeology has built

51

Renfrew 2007: 44. 398.

52 Tegmark 2015:

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its theories of social temporality on the concept of time that has been qualified by modern physics as outdated.53 In the spirit of this criticism, the revolution in archaeology, related to the discovery of the radiocarbon method, takes on the character of unreflective import.54 Many philosophers, historians and sociologists dealt with the problem of relativization of historical time. Time, as Durkheim said, is a derivative of social change. Le Goff, a researcher of the Middle Ages, suggests similar things when he writes about the different time of the merchant and the church and about the ways of its perception in the Middle Ages and in the modern era. Also, Herbert George Mead asked questions about the actual status of the past, present and future. In his work The Philosophy of the Present, Mead, he questioned the view of the past as a permanent and unchanging story, even with regard to the personal experiences of every human being. When one recalls his boyhood days, he wrote, “he cannot get into them as he then was, without their relationship to what he has become”; and even if he could, that is if he could reproduce the experience as it then took place, he could not use it, for this would involve his not being in the present within which that use must take place, stated Mead. A string of presents conceivably existing as presents would never constitute the past, as he believed. “If then there is such a reference it is not to an entity that could fit into any past, and I cannot believe that the reference, in the past as experienced, is to a something which would not have the function or value that in our experience belongs to a past. We are not referring to a real past event that would not be the past event we are seeking.” In other words, “our pasts are always mental in the same manner in which the futures that lie in our imaginations ahead of us are mental.”55 The way in which the past is preserved, recalled and selected ensures that it is open to change, and therefore it can be considered as no less hypothetical than the future. Our past is constantly reformulated and has no separate status except for relationships with the present. The true past—same as the true future is the key to the understanding of the present—according to our position in the reference system, as Einstein would say. By touching the world of material objects, archaeological conceptions of time should perhaps refer to the phenomenon that was defined by the American anthropologist and art historian George Kubler as a “form of time”. Kubler dealt with the history of material forms, and no other field of research deals with more material forms than archaeology. In fact, the archaeological concept of time

Gosden 1994: 5. Daniel 1981: 181. 55 Mead 1932: 30-31. 53 54

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is closely related to the form of material objects which archaeologists study. Archaeologists through material representations, such as artefacts, recognize time. Following this path, Kubler treated artefacts as representations of time. They reflect temporality, they fill it with forms with a limited characteristic spectrum. Stability and change of material forms represent, in his opinion, historical time. The “cultural clock” is inherent in objects and their structure should be studied.56 There is no doubt that the impact of the C14 method on the entire archaeological discipline is revolutionary. However, it would be good to ask oneself: what is the nature of this revolution? Considering the content of this chapter and the fact that it is described using the term radiocarbon clock, an interesting comparison emerges. We remember that the clock had been for philosophy and science, at least since the Enlightenment, an illustration of the rational action of the world and the man. It was a machine producing the same units of time and the main measurement tool for every real scientist. Analogically, with the invention of the radiocarbon clock, archaeology left the musty and dusty offices of researchers of the past who, like medieval alchemists, in ways familiar only to them themselves, reached the truth that ordinary people did not understand, and entered the scientific laboratory, where with the help of expensive equipment presents us with the time that had passed since the last meal of the Magdalenian reindeer hunter. The radiocarbon clock seems to be a part of this Great Mechanism of the World, which we inherited after Enlightenment, because it allows us to get an insight into the past by moving the clock’s indicator back and places the archaeologists in a hilly place from which everything can be seen much better. From this perspective, a look above History, an a-historical view, actually seems easier. It turned out that the radiocarbon clock, which theoretically should only measure time, was elevated to the rank of the basic Tool of archaeology. By measuring “objective” time, it seems to reveal identity with the Universal Machine for data interpretation, which enabled some archaeologists to see past, present and future in one timeless, universal approach. What does processualism have to do with the “Chinese room”? Imagine a room in which there is a man. The room is closed and has only two windows on opposite sides. At one window, one set of boxes containing three sets of pages written in Chinese is delivered [at least the name of the room has been explained now]. For a man locked in the room, Chinese characters do

56

Eggert 2008: 149.

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not differ from meaningless doodles. Anxiety overwhelms him: does anyone want him to read Chinese? In a moment, however, another set of cards with instructions written in his native language slips into the window. The instructions explain exactly what to do. They explain step-by-step that you should take the first set, match specific characters to the characters of the second set, and then compare with the third. The man inside has absolutely no idea that the first set of pages contains “writing”, “story” and “questions” in Chinese. However, acting in a purely formal way, according to the instructions provided, he makes a record that he does not understand, but for a person who knows Chinese, waiting for the task at the second window of the room, the received linguistic constructions make sense! From the room, sensible answers to questions about the content of a story in Chinese come out, although the man inside does not understand a word in Chinese! Does it remind us of something? Archaeologists also compare features derived from one social group [living], which also provides “instruction manuals” with features from the second social group [dead]. In their hands, there is a set of cards with instructions—a Rosetta Stone telling them exactly what to do. This model of thought, however, does not actually concern the theoretical problems of archaeology, but of artificial intelligence, or more precisely is an attempt to overthrow this concept. Everyone sees that intelligence understood in this way, which is in fact a model of modern computer operation, has nothing in common with understanding. Someone or something is sitting inside, and he or it only follows instructions. And in our case, will formal comparison of contemporary communities with material from archaeological excavations be synonymous with understanding the past? In the context of the above thought model called the Chinese room invented by the American cognitivist John Searle, the answer is self-imposed. This model is, in essence, a development of the Turing test. Thanks to him, it seems that the so-called strong AI [Artificial Intelligence], or the hypothesis of passing the Turing test by the machine, is negatively handled within the Chinese room: a machine that illustrates “Chinese room”, understands nothing, and yet answers questions as if it understood them. However, I would like to reassure scientific archaeologists, because the argument of the Chinese room is not as unambiguous as it may look. Let us start with the fact that a lot of people talking to a computer are already prone to recognizing that they are talking to a man! Particularly, if the conversation is marked by certain thematic boundaries that can be addressed as the so-called frames. But there is also a large part that cannot be fooled. During my classes with archaeology students, we tried to start a conversation with some chatbots available on the Internet. In our case, the most visible result of these conversations was general cheerfulness and amusement.

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The problem of understanding [the past] probably cannot be solved with the clever intellectual trick proposed by John Searle. The Polish science-fiction writer and philosopher Stanisław Lem points out that it is already known from the experience of everyday life that sometimes people behave like irrational machines themselves. An important factor is precisely the thematic borders [frames] that can be touched upon in a conversation. For example, you can ask a cook about how they make a roux, but rather one should not expect a reasonable answer to the question why in piston engines of newer car models there are no two valves [suction and exhaust], but only four or three. Either they do not say anything, or “drop a brick”, Lem writes.57 Let us consider the example of Lem himself, which will be more instructive [I have modified it a little]. Instead of a locked room with a man inside, imagine that we are putting together a puzzle. In a naturalistic way, the picture on the cover depicts a bonfire around which a group of prehistoric hunters are sitting, who have just hunted animals. They are warming themselves up by the fire, repairing the tools, the smoke from the fire already teases the hungry hunter's nostrils with the smell of roasted meat. It turns out, however, that after being removed from the box, the elements of the puzzle do not have these characteristic convexities and indents, they are only different geometrical figures, sometimes very small: crescents, triangles, irregular figures. After pouring out of the box, about half of them were on the “left side” on which the digits were marked. We are looking for instruction, where we read that we can arrange a puzzle in two ways: traditionally, but it will take us much more time [the manual says that it can be even several dozen years!], or using a numerical scheme on the reverse, which is a much faster method. The second condition: we can arrange it only once. What will we decide? You do not need to be a psychologist to assume that most people today would opt for the second option: laying according to the pattern. The task was done, that is, we reconstructed the picture of the past by following the pattern, but...the picture itself is unavailable. One can therefore rightly ask: what have we reconstructed? The image of history “reconstructed” in this way will be inaccessible to us, in other words, we will not be able to understand it, although we have followed the rules allowing its “reconstruction”. We had C14 at our disposal, physicochemical analyses, typology, seriation and what else. As a result, we can discuss only the numbers on the “back” of the puzzle and the picture from the packaging cover. Still, instead of understanding the past, we get a certain semblance of understanding, based on mathematical formulas.

57

Lem 1996: 206.

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A task with a Chinese room and a puzzle is useful, but it is still a characteristic trick. Some AI researchers argue that understanding is not a process in which only two answers can be made: yes, I understand; no, I don’t understand. It is already possible today for the computer to pretend to be a human being, i.e. to some extent “simulate” the understanding that is normally only possible in relation to a human being. Does it mean that the computer starts to understand? Perhaps this is the case indeed. Some supporters of the strong AI argue that the room thermostat already makes decisions: turn on the heater—turn off the heater. But maybe the computer, acting in this way, only transmits information? Well, it certainly does transmit data: sets of characters, and at the basic level of bits. The computer does not interpret these data but only reacts according to the program, i.e. it does not understand. Information is understood when it is incorporated into a broader context that is intentional. In other words: the data is “bare”, information is a part of a structure, while understanding requires intentionality and acting in context, which is an ability we inherited directly from our ancestors.58 Let us use an example from the field of sport. Data is, for example, a table of numbers, information is the placement of this data [results of football matches] in the right places. If there is a basic understanding in it, then someone who is not interested in sport at all will not understand it deeper. For example, when someone does not know the concept of victory in the game at all [e.g. paleolithic hunter], they can see and understand that when the number 2 is in the right place and 0 is in the second place, people enjoy on one side of the stadium, and on the other they look like those who are distressed. But they do not know the rules of the game and the sense of striving for victory.59 Then we would say that the Paleolithic hunter does not understand [but he is not a computer]. It can be seen that understanding is a gradual and...historical process. Moreover, it seems that the key questions are also the key to understanding. When in the Turing test, we ask the machine: “have you ever tried to commit suicide?” And we will get the answer: “I do it every day”. Is this case: a] a complete misunderstanding, b] a sense of humor, c] depression of the computer? In the case of a man, it would be enough to look at the face so that everything becomes clear. The followers of the thesis about artificial intelligence have understood this for a long time, so they are working on it so that robots can imitate more and more human gestures.

58 Tomasello 59

1999: 96-118. Heller & Krajewski 2014: 305.

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On the other hand, will an experimenter, who decides to arrange puzzles according to their analogue fragmented elements, and to devote his whole life to it, be able to say that they understand History? In the end, he composed only one picture! Certainly, during this arrangement, he had a lot of time to reflect on History, but also on himself; he had to ask questions on how to understand something that had passed? By doing so, maybe he learned more about himself than about History? In the second part of the book, we will deal with this problem in a more systematic way. At this point, let us go back to the Turing test, which is, after all, an open script, so it can be freely expanded and complicated. In order to better understand this key topic for our discussion, we will use film. Since the time of Metropolis by Fritz Lang, a lot of works have touched this exciting topic. The classics of the genre is of course 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, in which the HAL 9000 onboard computer was first making trouble trying to get rid of the crew of the spacecraft, and when its plan failed, it expresses its fear just before disconnecting it from power. Emotions!—Isn’t this a proof of artificial intelligence? I wrote about HAL in the previous chapter. Well, but HAL, as a machine created by a cunning engineer, which could have programmed pretending emotions, so the matter is unresolved. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner goes one step further. He slightly changed the story of science fiction master Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [we will still be talking about this book in this one]. The film presents a dystopian vision of Los Angeles, where the Tyrel corporation is producing replicants—indistinguishable physically from humans—androids used for hard work on distant planetary colonies. As a result of the rebellion of replicants in one of such colonies, their existence on Earth is declared illegal, and special police units, called “Blade Runners”, have the task of catching and “retiring” the disobedient individuals. The plot of the film focuses on a group of replicants hiding in Los Angeles and a suspicious hunter tracking them, Rick Deckard [Harrison Ford]. The flavor of the whole story comes from the fact that Deckard falls in love with one of the replicants with the appearance of a beautiful woman [Sean Young]—the feeling is reciprocated, it seems. What's more, the machine in which Deckard falls in love does not know that she is a machine! Both Dick and Scott show in this way the spread of AI issues. It is an issue that concerns both the threat to human existence and the opposite. That is, procreation. One of the replicants, which Deckart wants to eliminate, gives him life, even though he came to Earth to take revenge on people who condemned him to such a vile existence. To give life in this situation is a gesture that would seem purely human. In this way, this replicant [played by Rudger Hauer] seems to pass undoubtedly a very sophisticated Turing test [though at

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the expense of his “artificial” life]. And what about the lover of Deckart, with whom the detective escapes at the end of the movie from the terrifying megacity of the future? There is some doubt about the future of this couple: can they have a normal family, children?60 One of the last versions of the Turing test was presented in Ex Machina by Alex Garland, and it is also very interesting for the sake of referring to the content of the previous chapter. The examiner [Domhnall Gleeson], chosen from thousands of volunteers just to conduct the Turing test with the latest AI product, arrives in a secret lab, located far away from civilization. The creator of the robot is a genius and computer guru [Oscar Isaac], who holed up in his laboratory far from civilization and from the first shot is not a man of full confidence. The examiner is immediately charmed by the machine, which during the next test session sends him subtle signs indicating that he is not indifferent to her [the machine has the shape and face of a woman]. It seems that a feeling is born between them. A certain surprise in this techno-romantic story is the fact that the machine does not fall in love with selflessness [well, do nonmachines fall in love differently?]. The laboratory is a prison for her, so she uses the opportunity to manipulate the examiner to help her escape, and when she succeeds, she even kills her creator. She behaves like a HAL computer, but her purpose is completely different. Her purpose is freedom! What a strange but beautiful story! Would not this be the ultimate proof that artificial intelligence is possible? In this case, even Hegel would probably admit that this “machine” is, actually, a “human”, because just like he it wants freedom! After all, a machine that eliminates its own creator in pursuit of freedom behaves in a deeply social, human and historical way—one can say that she or he is pursuing a historical process at an accelerated pace. But in this case, it is also a proof for something more. This is the moment when archaeology and artificial intelligence have the most in common, although this communion is based, I admit, on the logic of the paradox. If we can ever build such a machine, as shown in Ex Machina, the AI project will prove in practice that it is possible to scientifically [processually] understand History—and archaeology!

60 As it turns out—they can! In the latest continuation of Blade Runner 2049 directed by Denis Villeneuve, the progeny of Deckart with android Rachel is referred to as a miracle, quite rightly, around which the plot of the film is developing.

Chapter 3

Does Archaeology need theory? It is said that each stick has two ends. We started with Hegel, who defined one of them: every understanding must be based on the concept of History. The unspoken and, at the same time, unrealized desire for processualism was to get rid of the burden of History, because the “reconstruction of the past” was based on the creation of developmental patterns, where time was a kind of logarithmic slider. By moving the slider in one direction or the other, the result was obtained: society, living in a specific relation with the environment, located on a specific path of development. There was a philosopher once whose ideas constitute the essence of archaeological reasoning in general, although it is rarely invoked in this context. The reason for this is perhaps the fact that this philosopher is still a problem for philosophy itself. It is Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]. His search concerned the essence of what archaeology deals with, that is things and how we talk about them and, more importantly, how we should talk about them. These are fundamental issues for both archaeology and other sciences. No less important for us is the scientific life of Wittgenstein. He did something unprecedented, which in itself is an illustration of the methodological turnaround that took place in archaeology. Well, Wittgenstein changed his mind in the second stage of his philosophical journey. Wittgenstein's dodge will also allow us to illustrate the change in archaeological thinking: from the only right option to the diversification of ways of describing the past. Ludwig Wittgenstein He was born into one of the richest Austrian families. His father, Karl Wittgenstein, was a steel magnate and ran a music salon where he invited, among others Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Ludwig was the youngest of nine children. Initially, he became interested in technology and started learning at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg in Berlin, where he decided to design aircraft. For this purpose, he went to Manchester, where at Victoria University, he wanted to work on his doctorate in aeronautics. While in the course of his engineering studies, he came across the book by Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics and Gottlob’s Frege Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. It turned out that reading these books set the further direction of his philosophical vicissitudes, because from then on, young Wittgenstein was constantly thinking about logic.

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He soon managed to establish cooperation with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge in 1911. However, when Russell introduced Wittgenstein to the key problems of logic, he subjected the professor to criticism! Russell was fascinated by the “young German” [as he called him in his diary, though Wittgenstein was an Austrian], but his surprise soon passed into adoration, though cooperation with a genius was not easy. He would, according to Russel, „pace up and down my room like a wild beast for three hours in agitated silence”. He asked once: “are you thinking about logic or your sins?” “Both”, Wittgenstein replied and continued his pacing. Russell was afraid to suggest that it was time to go home, because it seemed probable that his student would commit suicide as soon as he left. It seems that of these two Russel had at least a sense of humor. However, it disappeared when he wrote about his wonderful student: “I love him and feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve—all kind of problems that are raised by my work, but want a fresh mind and the vigor of youth. He is the young man one hopes for.” Hence, when Wittgenstein in the 1930s began to deal with the issues of “ordinariness”, his master was very disappointed, and over the years, the relationship between them became cold.1 In order to be able to work in peace, move away from the philosophical discussions “deprived of depth” at Cambridge, Wittgenstein left for Skjolden in Norway, where he would return many times. Just before the outbreak of the First World War, he gave away some of the money inherited from his father [he supported financially the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose poetry he valued a lot]. Then he volunteered for the army and went to Vienna, from where he went to war. There his adventure with philosophy took on a tangible form. Wittgenstein was very troubled by the fact that the current philosophy is full of ambiguity because of the fact that it sinks into the words, sentences and theories that lead to nowhere and mean nothing. Most of the philosophical problems were no problems for him at all because, as he believed, they resulted only from a misunderstanding of the logic of our language. The previous philosophy was a kind of misunderstanding of the people who do not fully understand the properties of the tools they use. He included this view in the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, the only book he published during his lifetime, which he himself wrote in the breaks of warfare when he left the damp trenches! After being transferred to the Italian front, he was taken prisoner, from where he wrote to his master, Russell: “I believe I’ve solved our problems finally. This may sound arrogant but I can’t help believing it.” He finished the book in August 1918, two months after he was made “prigioniere” [prosoner]. He carried the manuscript 1

Monk 1991: 41.

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all time with him and regretted that he could not send a safe copy for to his teacher. But he adds quite sincerely: “In fact you would not understand it without a previous explanation as it’s written in quite short remarks. [This of course means that nobody will understand it; although I believe, it’s all as clear as crystal. But it upsets all our theory of truth, of classes, of numbers and all the rest.] I will publish it as soon as I get home.”2 Many modern philosophers consider the Tractatus to be the greatest philosophical work of the 20th century. The greater part of this little book is an attempt to answer two questions: what logical structure does the language have and what is its relation to the world? Essentially, the Treaty is conceived as a complete philosophical system. It consists of 7 theses that are developed on the following pages. Wittgenstein determined that there is something common to reality and language—it is a logical form that allows the language to reproduce reality. The relationship between elements of language and reality proceeds in such a way that simpler logical sentences can be combined with each other by means of logical constants, i.e. symbols expressed in colloquial language by words such as: “and”, “or”, “if ... then”, etc. Such a set of theses was called logical atomism, and Wittgenstein drew his idea from Russel. This theory maintains that states of things [logical atoms] are mutually independent of each other, as are the independent elementary sentences by which we speak about these things. Wittgenstein's position, however, differs fundamentally from the Russell approach, for which the logical atoms were just names. Wittgenstein went much further and simply assumed that logical atoms are facts, that is, existing states of affairs: “The world is everything that is the case”, philosopher writes at the very beginning of Tractatus. And he closes the list saying: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. His idea was called the “picture theory of meaning”, because Wittgenstein claimed that a sentence “puts the world to the test”. That is, the sentence is false or true because it is an image of a certain state of affairs. And that is just the picture of the state of affairs if it has a logical structure. The philosophical thesis is therefore a model or image of the states of the world, whereas the structure of this thesis is a possible combination of elements of reality. The world consists of facts that are in mutual relations. In turn, the facts are linguistically reflected in sentences. The relationship between sentences and facts is of a significant nature, and then they make sense. Language reflects the world, and its logical structure reflects the logical structure of the world. Does it mean that there is nothing that has value and meaning, yet it is inexpressible? It is true that Wittgenstein admits that there is something inexpress2

Ibidem: 160.

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ible in the world; after all, it deals with poetry, such as Rilke’s, whom he valued so much. In philosophy, however “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Wittgenstein argued that logic and mathematics are just collections of tautologies that are transcendental, i.e. they do not contain any metaphysical content relating to the real world. Therefore, a hypothetical ideally logical language cannot have any additional meaning apart from directly reflecting the facts [reflecting how things relate to each other in the world]. On the other hand, if the language does not directly reflect the structure of facts, it automatically becomes devoid of logic and meaning—then it is meaningless gibberish [babbling]. Such language is used by a metaphysician, ethicist, etc., but also by an archaeologist or any other humanist. It is clear, however, that the two poles of the language defined by Wittgenstein overlap in a significant way—both in a perfectly logical language and in babbling there is a certain lack [in the first case there is a lack of content and in the second—precision], but that is exactly the basis of our human communication! Preciseness and content of the statements stand here in opposition. If an extraordinary biography would testify to the existence of an analogous mind, then in the case of Wittgenstein, it is in 100% confirmed. The picture theory of meaning was probably created as a result of the philosopher's enlightenment of mind [on the Cartesian pattern and many others] when he was in special circumstances. While on the front, Wittgenstein read a newspaper article about a court hearing during which a car accident was considered. To illustrate it, a special model was made. It is not known whether Wittgenstein exclaimed “Eureka!”, but this model of a car accident brought him to the right track. It was an illustration of his idea, to treat the philosophical thesis as an image of a certain state of affairs. In a sense, talking about these relationships that are constant and unchangeable [the sun rises and sets, there is a cause and effect of actions, etc.] is unnecessary, it would be enough to point them with a finger, but it is not always possible. Speaking and pointing stand in opposition to each other—logic [or mathematics] is either a tautology [when it agrees with the world] or nonsense [when one does not agree with it], and all true statements can be reduced to elementary sentences that call things or show them. John Bintliff, discussing this aspect of Wittgestein's thesis, referred to the favorite book of my childhood [and probably not only mine]: “’Well’, said Owl, ‘the customary procedure in such cases is as follows’. ‘What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?’ said Pooh. ‘For I am a Bear of Very

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Little Brain, and long words Bother me’. Owl proceeds: ‘It means the Thing to Do.’ ‘As long as it means that, I don’t mind,’ said Pooh humbly.”3 Wittgenstein's radicalism, however, is not a definitive resignation from metaphysics, as one might think at first glance. During the war, when he created the Tractatus, he constantly wondered in his diary about the sense of life and the essence of all things. He wrote letters in which he constantly referred to God: “Conscience is the voice of God”, he wrote; “How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand”. It means that things are both “in the outside world” and in themselves, and the man is a microcosm, a reflection of the world. This thought was taken by Wittgenstein from Schopenhauer, whom he read before the war. What distinguishes him from one of the leading pessimists in the history of philosophy is the clause that says: “when put into words, the doctrine is, strictly speaking, nonsense: what the solipsist mean is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.”4 Consequently, Wittgenstein writes in Tractatus: “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. [He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.].”5 When we realize that the purpose of Tractatus was the final battle with all philosophical problems, it is inevitable that we must treat its proposal as a philosophical trick. Well, maybe Wittgenstein became a philosopher because he saw his lack of artistic talent which did not affect his siblings though? Everyone in the family was musically talented, his brothers were renowned composers and musicians. For his brother Paul, who lost his right hand in the war, but thanks to his determination he learned to play the left, Maurice Ravel composed in 1931 his famous Left Hand Concert. This was an example of the genius that Ludwig had all his life before his own eyes.6 Then he fell in love with Russian literature, which to the brim is filled with metaphysics, and one of his favorite authors was Leo Tolstoy, who had a special talent for capturing great philosophical problems in one sentence, when, for example, he claimed that “recognizing the problem of life is known after the disappearance of this problem” [but why did he write such thick books?]. This is basically a literary representation of Wittgenstein's thesis. It turns out, therefore, that he was not deprived of a sense of humor at all, although he rarely smiled. In a letter to a would-be publisher [Wittgenstein had great diffi-

Bintliff 2000: 155. Monk 1991: 144. 5 Wittgenstein 1922: 6.54. 6 Monk 1991: 13. 3 4

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culty publishing Tractatus] he wrote: „[…] my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything I have not written.” And then he adds: “And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book; and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this way. In brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have defined in my book by remaining silent about it.”7 The interpretation of the Tractatus as a “ladder” can be very similar to what Thomas Kuhn proposed shortly after Ludwig's death, which will be discussed below: this knowledge takes us to a higher level, everything looks different after reading the Tractatus. Wittgenstein and archaeology The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is seemingly anti-hegelian. Hegelianism contains the ancient doctrine of the all-union of phenomena that extends from Heraclitus. In Hegel's interpretation, it says that Reason unites everything into an entity. Actually, it is an ancient mythological and religious thesis on the level of which shamanic religions have already developed. If everything is interrelated, then ultimately there is only one Truth that can be understood. In Hegel, it is the Reason that rules the world. This is why his philosophy of history turns out to be, as Jacob Burckhardt named it, a theodicy. However, if there is no all-in-one phenomenon, there are many truths. This was the main principle of Wittgenstein and Russell's atomism: there are situations [things] independent of each other in the world.8 Nevertheless, since being is logical in nature, as Hegel claimed, Wittgenstein's work may be regarded as a distant echo of such a statement—distant, because Hegel did not care about facts at all. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus could certainly be considered the Bible of the archaeology of fact, or at least one of its Gospels. Archaeology of facts does not formally exist, but is a fairly important element in the study of the past. It maintains a specific belief that a-theoretical archaeology is possible and even desirable due to the opacity [babbling] of the theory itself. Some archaeologists claim that the prehistory consists of facts that we divide into arte-facts [depict human action] and eco-facts [depict the action of nature]. The deposits of both facts are usually geo-facts, i.e. geological layers, which also testify to the passage of time. Few wonder about the double face of these expressions. Already in the concept of “artefact” we emphasize the specific artificiality associated with the human creation of events, not the “fact” itself. 7

Ibidem: 178. 1968: 164-195.

8 Wolniewicz

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Thus, the artefact is a metaphor and a trace of typically human action, implicitly: activities like today, as we understand it now. The “fact” itself remains hidden, because it had been already—in the process of discovering it, looking at it—basically interpreted.9 These facts testify to certain events in the past because they come from older [deeper] geological layers than contemporary ones. Facts [arte- or eco-] are an objective picture of the past reality, finding support in the Principle of Uniformitarianism, which claims that cultural processes in the past were similar to today's, and the role of the archaeologist is to accurately describe, study and reconstruct events based on them. According to the phrase “letting the present serve the past” archaeologists reconstruct it using the models of the present, which are supposed to represent “states of things” in the past. Tools are tools, houses are houses, and graves are graves and there is no point telling each other that they could be something more. That's all we can know. What about the rest? What would Wittgenstein say then? “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” This type of archaeology is the temptation of all researchers who focus too much on material culture. It is easy to give in because we subconsciously like simple solutions. However, the trap of archaeology understood in this way is the recognition that material remnants communicate us directly, in contrast to intentional written messages, as it really was in prehistory. However, if material remnants are recognized as the very essence of studying the past, it eliminates the wider phenomena from view. First of all, the question must be asked: are the material remnants, constituting the only trace of past societies that did not know writing the same as the culture of these communities? Material culture has never been autonomous, independent of other areas of culture, such as symbolic culture, and changing culture is not only a change in artefacts, but also ways of using them. The Polish archaeologist and theoretician Henryk Mamzer thinks that archaeology understood and practiced in this way harms itself, because at its own request it is only the so-called “auxiliary science” of history, a numb provider of empirical data for concepts formulated by historians. History, in this way, frees itself from the “fetish of facts”, leaving them in the hands of “poor craftsmen” of historical sciences, i.e. archaeologists, paleographers, librarians, numismatists or genealogists. At this point, everyone should answer the question of whether one took archaeological studies to become someone's “poor craftsman”?

9

Mamzer 2004: 25.

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The prehistory understood in this way becomes another fact—it is not questionable. In other words, what is material is real, objective, in contrast to the written messages that history deals with, already containing the reality, interpreted by the author himself. Therefore, although material sources have less interpretative meaning than written sources, the former are more objective than the latter. One of the leading Polish archaeologists put it this way: “For the most part, silent sources have this feature, which in the eyes of the prehistorians distinguishes them favorably from historical sources sensu stricto, i.e. the written ones. This feature is inherent objectivity, fundamentally different from the inherent subjectivism [bias] of all written messages.”10 According to this belief, archaeologists do not create a past, do not invent it, but reconstruct it. Perhaps it is an incomplete reconstruction, not very clear yet, but it is because of the scarcity of sources that archaeology suffers. This does not mean, however, that the image is adulterated, as it may be [or maybe even out of necessity] in the historical transmission. Therefore, the ideal of the progress of archaeology as a science should consist in completing this incomplete picture with new facts that can only be obtained by excavation.11 There is no alternative! The conviction of a direct relationship with the materiality and objectivity of sources is the reason that empiricism, induction and generalizations based on these are still the undisputed foundation of the study of prehistory, and cognition with no assumptions, i.e. Knowledge based on facts that reflect the bygone reality as it really was still belongs to the preferred archaeological ideal as Mamzer believes. Fixation on material culture must have something to do with psychology, i.e. it is suitable for psychoanalysis. Archaeologists who cling to it hold that this is the only sure thing. “The facts do not lie, only people do it”—such archaeologists seem to say. Material culture is understood in this sense, as opposed to theoretical and speculative gibberish [babbling] held somewhat beside the artefacts. In principle, such archaeologists practice Wittgenstein’s archaeology from the Tractatus. It is only about telling what exists—about finding and pointing out facts. The rest must be silence. They forget, however, what Wittgenstein already understood himself, that as people we are interested in what one can say in addition, indicating and stating the facts. Such archaeologists, [again!] reading the work of this philosopher directly, get the wrong end of the stick.

10 11

Ibidem: 26. Ibidem.

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Let us assume, however, that our goal is only the archaeology of facts. What would its picture be like? There is a huge wealth of those facts. Millions of them are collected in museums, laboratories, in the form of tabular statements of research works, etc. Here are some archaeological facts: 1.

Lepenski Vir is a Mesolithic site in Serbia.

2.

The Iron Age occurred after the Bronze Age.

3.

In Dordogne, France, there are many paintings and drawings made on the walls or vaults of the caves.

4.

The funnel-shaped vessels are characteristic of the Funnelbeaker culture.

5.

In the Neolithic period there was a transition to a sedentary lifestyle.

6.

The age of this item, after dating with C14, is 5400 BP.

What next? Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent! This is the archaeology of the facts themselves and there are archaeologists who still follow this path, or at least they think they do. They only talk about facts and possibly say [or write] what someone else has said [or wrote] about the same facts. Is this archaeology that seems to meet the requirements of science? Is this the archaeology that is interesting and meaningful? In the further part of the chapter, we will consider it from the perspective of cinema and literature. Nevertheless, many of these archaeologists only seemingly say [or write] in an a-theoretical and factual way, using only common sense. They use statements that are essentially deeply theoretical, such as exchange, trade, economy, or artefact, which is already interpreted “at the input”. Writing in this way, they make a characteristic transfer of the alleged knowledge to the reader assuming that they know what economics and economic life are, that is, activity based on market principles, generally unrelated to social life, bonded with common means of monetary exchange. Speaking of common sense, do you remember what Einstein said about it? So even if the common-sensical archaeologists do not write it directly, they still do “use” theoretical sociological and economic knowledge, etc. So it comes to the fact that the description

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of “facts alone” can sometimes be true and accurate, but in its essence, it is theoretical at a deeper level.12 *** Do you remember the comparison to the movie we made in the previous chapter? The methodological dream of scientific archaeology was the possibility of displaying a film composed of two paths: facts and patterns observed at the archaeological sites, as well as facts and patterns of behavior derived from the living culture, present here and now. Such a film would actually consist of a sequence of images: they came, built a settlement, then built a temple, city, drought came and the city was abandoned, overgrown by the jungle, then other people came and built another city, etc. Is this a “vibrant life” the reconstruction of which processual archaeologists meant? You have to think more about it, because everyone knows that life “vibrates” only seemingly with what actually appears in the pictures. People meet in cafes and restaurants only seemingly to get a meal and drink. They visit these places to gossip, feel the pleasure of being there, flirting, etc. In addition to flirting, a healthy person is ready in every situation. For example, in the film Witness by Peter Weir, policeman John Book, played by Harrison Ford, is tasked with protecting a crime witness, an eight-year-old boy from the Amish settlement. Amish community is a conservative Protestant commune characterized by strict regulation of the lives of its members. Hairstyles and clothing, both male and female, are regulated by an unwritten law called Ordnung [the Amish come from Switzerland], they do not accept modern technology: they do not use electricity [the most orthodox ones], cars, television, photography and other modern inventions. Virtually everyone is involved in agriculture and crafts associated with it—in a word, they live like traditional communities studied by ethno-archaeologists. At some point, John is invited to participate in the traditional construction of a honeymoon barn, and because he knows about woodwork, he gains respect in the eyes of the community. However, this organic social work also reveals something else—the characteristic attraction between him and Rachel [Kelly McGillis], the boy's mother, becomes evident. Rachel doesn’t do anything special at all: she only serves John during a meal, she uses a pitcher of water like any other woman. Nevertheless, we feel the tension that is spreading on others, this “vibrant life”, which, however, takes place between facts.

12

Johnson 2013: 26-27.

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That's how a movie would look like, which everyone would like to see—a movie, which, however, in accordance with the facts and the methodological assumption discussed above, we could not make, although it would be the only one that would have the potential to explain anything in a human way. Hereby, Lewis Binford, the creator of the middle range theory, seems to be a kind of Wittgenstein's exponent: dynamics translated into statics, the “vibrant life” reconstruction of the past would be possible taking into account the content between the facts, except what you can point your finger at or say. We can actually make films about facts, such as stories about how houses were built, barns, settlements, fields were grown, animals were raised, but I would not call it a “vibrant” narrative. It's just a report on facts. It is as if someone invited us to the party and showed us endless slides from holidays: arrival at the hotel, lying on the beach, shopping, museum tour, eating ice cream, etc. After a few such slides, it just gets boring. Note, by the way, that the history of archaeology, to remain in the sphere of film imagery, seems to imitate the very history of cinema. Culture-historical archaeology only took still photos [museum cabinets, etchings, engravings] and deliberated over them in the style of art history. The new archaeology can be identified with the beginning of the era of film camera, when films began to be made, moving pictures that at first fascinated everyone and seemed to illustrate the “vibrant life”. During the first public display of the “moving images” of the Lumiere brothers, which took place on December 28, 1895, in the Paris Grand Caffe, apparently some viewers escaped terrified by the view of the locomotive moving towards them. At that time, the camera was stationary, positioned on the platform, which quietly recorded the oncoming train. This camera stands for processualism that was a revolution in the theoretical view of reality. Unfortunately, over time, such films have proved boring. That is why successive generations of archaeologists/filmmakers have recognized that it is equally important to write a good script, camera work, play of light. The story, even if loosely based on facts, and instead emphasizing the relevant context or even the personal statement of the very researcher, turns out to be often more meaningful than even the most meticulous research procedure and description of the facts. *** We will talk about whether the world is reflected in the language, but let us think about the Wittgenstein “ladder” for a moment. Due to such a glaring rejection of metaphysical speculations [also those of historical nature], the philosopher indicates a certain possibility which we, as researchers of the past, should appreciate. You have to think about the other, invisible part of Wittgenstein's theorems. Without lamenting, let us assume, for example, that “the world

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is all that is a fact”, what is inexpressible still exists [the very fact that something exists is almost certain] and this can be somehow understood. Wittgenstein did not deny it at all, because the unspoken consequence of his thesis is also that he wrote to his publisher: Knowledge lives in language. But how? How to specifically use this “ladder” is a wide field for philosophers and archaeologists. I personally like the issue of the relationship between mathematics and the material world. Wittgenstein was interested in mathematics since the very beginning [right after logic]. In dealing with “what is” and this reflection in the language he came to the conclusion that mathematics is also a logical method, and theorems of mathematics are equations, and therefore quasisentences. Wittgenstein claims that the theses of mathematics are also logical [Tractatus 6.2], and mathematics itself is a certain method of logic; mathematics shows the logic of the world in the equations shown by the theses of logic in tautologies [Tractatus 6.22], which does not tell us anything [6.21] because the mathematical theorem does not express any thought. And yet only a sensible sentence, as the philosopher claims, may express the thought [Tractatus 4]. Therefore, since the equations [theorems] of mathematics do not express any thoughts, they cannot be meaningful sentences. Therefore, sums up Wittgenstein, mathematical theorems cannot lead to philosophy [this is also the criticism of Pythagoreanism as setting the path to philosophy through mathematics].13 Still, in later Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein represented the view that the concept of numbers does not have to come from a single source, just as there is no single source of mathematics. He puts it in a peculiar way: “teach it to us, and then you have laid its foundations.”14 It seems that the philosopher had a problem with mathematics. But when we apply History to Wittgestein's logic of the Tractatus, which he did not [he had to remain silent] do as his faithful thesis, we get the result that mathematics must have its source in matter, but from an archaeological point of view, we will say: in material culture. As Stanisław Lem put it, “there is no information without material carriers and the word must be incorporated into matter.”15 Today, however, due to historical development, it is not as “incorporated” as it used to be. Today's mathematics is simply so far removed from its material roots that one can really get the impression that it is a pure abstraction, unlimited by the physicality of the world. Wittgenstein, however, was an intuitionist and could not, for example, accept the vision proposed by the great mathematician Georg Cantor [called the continuum hypothesis],

Klawiter 2016. 1974: 297. 15 Okołowski 2010: 266. 13

14 Wittgenstein

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according to which infinity can be presented as a hierarchy of infinite sets. There was a real war of mathematicians around this concept. Henri Poincaré called this theory an “interesting pathological contribution” and maintained that “the next generations will treat it as a disease that they went through”, and Herman Weyl said that Cantor's hypothesis is “fog in fog.” However, Cantor's theory slowly gained supporters, finding applications in analysis, measurement theory and topology. The great mathematician David Hilbert, who spread it in Germany, said that “no one will drive us out of the paradise that Cantor created for us”, and praised Cantor's unfinished arithmetic: “the most amazing product of mathematical thought, one of the most beautiful realizations of human activity in the field of pure intellect.”16 Following Wittgenstein's thinking and applying this to History, we can conclude that the rules of mathematics are not spontaneous, but they are the result of a long development of human culture. In its beginnings, mathematics meant specific objects and their numbers, and the word was embodied in matter.17 In human culture, rules of manipulating objects have been developed, which at the same time constituted numerical values and allowed for the creation and understanding of simple mathematical rules [addition, subtraction, division] and linear proportions. Next, metallurgy played an important role in the process of mathematical abstraction, because weight is an abstract value—the best measure of the amount of metal, which is a plastic and variable substance. So at first glance, math in material culture in prehistory is difficult to find, but when you look deeper, you can find it. I will talk more about this concept in chapter VI. *** The philosophical climax of the scientific trend represented by Wittgenstein found expression in the Vienna Circle. It was established in 1922 in one of the cafés, and later regular meetings were held on Thursday evenings at the Institute of Mathematics, where many philosophers and mathematicians who later turned out to be famous philosophers and mathematicians, discussed the scientific “theory of truth”. The founder of the circle was Moritz Schlick, professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. It is also worth mentioning Rudolf Carnap, Friedrich Weisman, Herbert Feigl, Philipp Philipp and Otto Neurath. All participants worried about the crisis situation in which physics appeared in the early twentieth century in connection with Einstein's an-

16 17

Casti & DePauli 2003: 123. Dzbyński 2013.

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nouncement of a special theory of relativity. The collapse of the mechanic image of the world, which had been a model of science for two centuries, had been regarded by many as a failure of science: it turned out to be a technically useful tool, not a real knowledge of the world. The founders of the Circle decided that resistance should come to resurrection. One of the most urgent tasks, therefore, was the eradication of metaphysics. According to the members of this esteemed group, traditional philosophy, which brought nothing but music of words and conceptual poetry, operated on a way of thinking permissible only for artistic activity.18 In Woody Allen's Irrational Man, Joaquin Phoenix, playing a bored life philosophy lecturer, defines the problem much more bluntly—as “verbal masturbation”. This was exactly the point of view of early Wittgenstein, who tried to show that traditional problems of philosophy are purely linguistic. Fortunately, the members of the circle were full of faith in positivists, not bored existentialists. Wittgenstein had a significant influence on the formation of the philosophical program of the Vienna Circle. Quite soon, its members recognized that the Tractatus contained the basic principles of philosophy they were looking for. In the meantime, Wittgenstein managed to abandon practicing philosophy and for a few years worked as a rural teacher in Lower Austria, but as soon as he returned to Vienna, the members of the Circle managed to get in touch with him. Over the next few years, they met in a small group [Wittgenstein, Schlick, Waismann, Carnap, Feigl]—but these were not discussions, but rather their participants listened to the improvised remarks of the author of Tractatus: “His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer”, wrote Rudolf Carnap later in his memoirs. When Wittgenstein started to formulate his view on some specific philosophical problem, one felt that he experienced an internal struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answer came forth, “his statement stood before us like a newly created peace of art or a divine revelation. […] Any sober or rational comment or analysis of it would be a profanation”, recalls Carnap.19 It seemed to the participants of the movement that the emergence of logical empiricism would be a breakthrough in the history of philosophy similar to the one that in the history of physics is

18 19

Casti & DePauli 2003: 69. Monk 1991: 244.

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associated with the figures of Copernicus, Galileo or Newton. However, Wittgenstein's figure is symbolic for the Vienna Circle, as it marked both his inspiration and the beginning of his defeat. Wittgestein’s volte-face, doubts begin The Tractatus puts any discourse on values, ethical principles of conduct, existential questions, etc. beyond the reach of a meaningful statement, although this is what interests us most as people. By its logical form, Wittgenstein points, in essence, to the problem of a lack of sense in such proceedings. If we can only create models explaining reality, then they do not really explain anything, because the problems of the world are shown there, but not worked out, and these models neither allow asking questions or answering. In other words, we can only talk about facts [or point them out], although we are really interested in issues more or less closely related to facts. The archaeology of the facts themselves, as shown above, would be a terribly boring and limited field. What to do? Wittgenstein drew the final consequences from the “terror of logic” he described. If you can only speak sensibly about facts, and “you cannot talk about it, you have to be silent about it” and he actually obeyed it for the 10 next years. During this time, he took various professions: he worked in a country school, he became a gardener and tried his hand in architecture. Philosophy, however, did not give him peace. From time to time, he met the representatives of the Vienna Circle and rarely attended lectures on philosophical problems that apparently still troubled him. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge apparently to change the views he presented in his first work. In the preface to his second book: Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein wrote that the criticism of the thesis of the Tractatus, made by Frank Ramsey, allowed him to realize the mistakes of this early work. According to the reference concept of language in the first work, elementary sentences are logically independent like atoms that make up the smallest real bricks of the world. Of course, the configurations of objects can be complicated by the higher level of matter complexity. Objects are simple things, and their connections are complex things. Our statements may also be complicated in the same way. The simplest sentence is a language atom existing within logical space, just like atoms in a vacuum. Logical space is a field in which all potential statements are possible. Logical space “cares”, therefore, that meaningless sentences are impossible, just as it is impossible for a neutron to be a proton at the same time. Meanwhile, as Ramsey pointed out [another young genius who died prematurely], logical statements are possible in language, yet nonsensical, e.g. the phrase “this is red” is not independent of the sentence “this is green”. Logically, either one or the other may be true. Wittgenstein, however, had to

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admit to Ramsey that it no longer works in language. In the short dissertation: Some remarks on Logical Forms he stated: “It is, of course, a deficiency of our notation that it does not prevent the formation of such nonsensical constructions [or the ability to build sentences with the form: “it is both red and green”], and a perfect notation will have to exclude such structures by definite rules of syntax […] Such rules, however, cannot be laid down until we have actually reached the ultimate analysis of the phenomena in question; This, as we all know, has not yet been achieved.”20 In his new work, Wittgenstein already treats language as a part of human life and the world, and not as an objective reflection of it. He begins by criticizing the language the picture of which is presented in the Tractatus and claims that it cannot be included in a coherent system [as Frege, Russel and he himself wanted], because language is a great number of symbolic forms and functions. It can therefore be said that there is no single relationship between a name [elementary] and an object that this name refers to, but there are as many relationships as there are many ways to use them. The idea of a universal logical form has been replaced by the view of the multiplicity of mutually irreducible language games [hence the theory of language games], and the pictorial theory of meaning—by the concept of use. Elementary sentences, of which existence was convinced in the first work, do not exist, while various statements about the world always function on the basis of related groups of statements and it is in them that they gain meaning. In other words, they gain meaning only in the context of other utterances—the meaning of a word is not a simple object, but a way of using it in a language. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein demanded absolute clarity of the statement, which was to be carried out by logical analysis—it was an echo of Leibniz's Calculemus! [chapter II], whereas in the Philosophical Investigations this brightness has been relativized. What are these mysterious language games? They are the ways of using signs. Language, like any other rule-based behavior, can be compared to a game. This means that the description of a language based on mathematical formalization is not right. In Tractatus, the sentence was an image of reality, in the Investigations it is a “tool”. Language is therefore like a toolbox [Feyerabend will then refer to it]. Just as the functions of tools are different, the functions of words are different in the same way. We use words to ask, joke, thank, ask. Lawyers speak a specific language, just like athletes or stockbrokers

20 Wittgenstein

1929: 171.

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communicate in a specific language. It has nothing to do with all these uses of language. Wittgentsein writes: “I shall also call it, the ‘language-game.’”21 Now, recognizing a specific language game is important if we want to avoid a philosophical babbling. The source of such is mixing of various games, e.g. mixing metaphysics with logic, or philosophizing with life in general [existentialists would be offended at this point]. By using the thought model of Stanisław Lem, one can compare a philosopher who does not realize the existence of various language games for a “crazy tailor”. Crazy tailor sews all possible clothes. He does not know anything about people, birds or plants. He is not interested in the world; he does not examine it. He sews clothes, but he does not know for whom. He cares only for one thing—he wants to be consistent. It is clear that the vast majority of clothes would not find any use. Wittgenstein would certainly call Hegel, and existentialists such tailors, about which we will be talking in this book. Wittgenstein, therefore, proposes that everyone who wants to put forward the metaphysical arguments be subject to “philosophical therapy”. Its purpose would be to show the user a language that eagerly wades into metaphysical speculations, where he mixed up various language games, such as the language of poetry with the language of philosophy. Then such a person will “heal” himself or herself from the tendency to philosophize, and the philosophy itself will become an analysis of speech. Both Wittgenstein’s theories, although the other seems to refute the former [which, however, is not entirely true], have several important similarities. Above all, he still wanted a definitive solution to the philosophical problems by eliminating them, understanding this in such a way that the problems arise from the improper understanding of the relations between language and the world. His merit has become a significant shift of emphasis on previously unexploited areas and the creation of the so-called analytic philosophy. However, Wittgenstein's entire volte-face was undoubtedly a courageous move [in the Tractatus he was convinced that he solved all problems of philosophy!], resulting in a straight line from the fact that he treated philosophy as an individual path of self-cultivation, not as external theory but as existential experience, personal effort of better understanding the world. From this perspective, he has more in common with Hegel and existentialists than one would suppose only on the basis of his theory. He already signaled his attitude in the Tractatus, where we read: “I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other philosophers. Indeed, what I have written here makes no claim to novelty in detail, and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a

21 Wittgenstein

1986: 5.

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matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else.”22 *** In the novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, there is an interesting conversation about the monuments. Wyndam-Matson, the head of a metallurgical corporation, tells the story that the concepts of “historicity”, value or “meaning” do not belong to the realm of facts, but are outside the objects of description and are in the consciousness of the observer who uses them in purely subjective context. Wyndam-Matson has the following conversation with his lover Rita: “’Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.’ He grinned at her. ‘Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.’ The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them. ‘Don’t you feel it?’ he kidded her. ‘The historicity?’ Rita, of course, asks “What is ‘historicity?” Wyndam-Matson replies: “When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?’ He nudged her. ‘You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.’ ‘Gee,’ the girl said, awed. ‘Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?’ ‘Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘In the mind, not the gun.’[…]

22 Wittgenstein

1922: 10.

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Rita states in reply that she does not believe that one of the lighters belongs to Roosevelt and thus confirms the thesis of her lover: “’That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!’ […] From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word ‘fake’ meant nothing really, since the word ‘authentic’ meant nothing really.”23 Wyndam-Matson, of course, is not entirely right. It is not so much about what is in the mind, it is about language expressions that are never real or false in the sense of being compatible with reality. They are stated or unverifiable under a more or less precise social contract, a language game. The community, although it sets the rules ordering reality, also leads to a situation in which the meaning of a word is not the same, introducing, for example, as archaeologists do, the concept of “monument”. This, as we remember, can take place especially when we apply a historical factor to this language game. We can therefore presume that earlier words [at least in some areas, such as mathematics] were the same as facts. In the past, the monuments were simply identical with the tools, with the houses, with the graves—with things in general, only today became an element of discourse, speculation and, unwillingly, the object of manipulation. Perhaps there is such a thing as the authenticity of monuments, which, following the trail of archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf, can be defined as “pastness”—as an aging process that leaves certain marks on the monuments [wear, decay, patina coating, change in chemical composition, etc.].24 However, this process can be simulated, for example, as WyndamMatson does in his factory and how all counterfeiters in the real world do it. The basic question is: under what conditions is it possible? The pastness, described by Holtorf, is important in the context of the part of Dick's book quoted above. Well, the factory makes fakes for the rich Japanese, who cannot distinguish them from the original ones, not so much because they do not know it [there are sometimes US history experts], but the process of forming pastness has been disturbed here. Dick's thought goes deeper than a simple narrative about the skill to outwit the occupant. It can therefore be said that the Americans cheat the Japanese by offering them fakes, imitating the true history of the United States in response to the serving of a false world

23 24

Dick 1974: 66. Holtorf 2013: 427-444.

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by the Japanese who occupy their lands. Apparently, Dick understands the problem of authenticity, just like Holtorf [and Heidegger, which we will be talking about in chapter VII]. With Dick, Wyndam-Matson, as an American, wonders about the problem of authenticity, concluding that it cannot be determined in a certain way, which unknowingly formulates a very important problem. “It is rather a matter of “social sense”, writes Holtorf, and the outcome of everyday discourses of what to believe and whom to trust.”25 It seems, therefore, that the problem of the authenticity of monuments, understood as pastness, applies equally to what we call social justice, the integrity of action in society and the openness of public discourse. If it is disturbed in any way [in the book it is the war that distorts the reality, but other threats to the open society are known, such as the depletion of civil rights, freedom of speech, authoritarian rule, corruption of morals, lack of rational discourse in science etc.], the pastness formation process will also be disturbed. Let us go back to Wittgenstein. You could say that Philip K. Dick also uses his theory to build his novel narrative. Above all, a lighter that is the topic of conversation is neither authentic nor false for the simple reason that in the world of the novel [fantasy] these expressions are meaningless. Fantasy functions on a different basis than reality, but as we will see in chapter V, is also a mirror of our reality—we ask the same questions about lighters and other monuments as archaeologists, and the “monuments” that we encounter in museums are often copies of nothing historic about what Wyndam-Matson says. The unreality of the world of facts and the obsessive need to know it [as in Wittgenstein] is the main theme of all Dick's work, but in The Man in the High Castle, the writer has reached heights in this respect. The novel has all the advantages of good SF prose: the visionary, narrative scale and psychologically reliable heroes-ordinary people involved in extraordinary matters. This novel is one of the greatest achievements of the American writer, it is both philosophical and historical.26 That is why we will come back to it yet in chapter V. *** The problem of pastness is presented in a joyful manner in another work from the SF genre, to which I will refer. Seksmisja [Sexmission] directed by Juliusz Machulski is one of the best Polish comedies [In 2008 it was chosen by the readers of the FILM magazine “Polish Comedy of the Century”]. The film tells the story of two men who underwent a hibernation experiment conduct-

25 26

Ibidem: 434. Kaczmarski 2012: 100.

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ed by the Nobel Prize laureate professor Wiktor Kuppelweiser. According to the contract, brave men were to be awakened in three years, but as usual, something breaks this scientific venture. The awakening of volunteers follows tens of years later than planned: in 2044, in a completely different sociopolitical context—in the underground state of women who reproduce by in vitro method, and thanks to genetic control, only girls are born. From the doctor who looks after them, Dr. Lamia Reno, who is an archaeologist by profession, they learn that during their hibernation a nuclear war broke out on Earth. One of its effects was the destruction of male genes, and therefore they are currently the only men on the planet, or rather under its surface. Two “males” try hard to convince women that they have a unique chance to rebuild pre-historic relationships, but women reject this proposal as an... archaic solution itself. The period before the outbreak of the war is unequivocally wrong, as the period of female terror by men [males], while they currently live in the best of possible worlds, where there is no violence, there is a perfect social organization, and a special pill diverts sexual desire into the desire to acquire knowledge. Instead, they intend to make terrible things on men—“naturalization”, that is to transform them into female specimens. It is too much for the lonely heroes. They are escaping from a totalitarian prison experiencing various vicissitudes. At the very bottom of the underground world, in the unattended corridors, they find an old bottle of wine. The famous sentence then follows, from which every cinema in Poland trembled with laughter: “Our fellas were here!”. A bottle of wine, as an artefact from the distant past, verbally present in their contemporary language game, was immediately assigned an adequate, widely-spread “cultural activity”—the masculine tradition of collegial drinking. For men, the interpretation: “Our fellas were here” was obvious, because they really lived in the time they were talking about and it were definitely good memories for them. However, in the culture of women of the future, there are no more glass bottles. They stand in the museum, because this period of humanity is already behind us. Women live underground in advanced technical culture, in which glass as a raw material is gone. They may also classify a bottle in the category of alcohol male drinking, but for them, it would be negative, otherwise the interpretation would be different: men get drunk unconsciously, intoxicated, they harass women [one of the scenes also shows how women imagine using a razor. Because they think that you cannot shave with something like that, they attribute this tool to the category of torture]. In the US, the film was severely evaluated by feminist organizations, for whom it was a story about the superiority of men over women. The director believes that Seksmisja in the West is perceived to this day. One can, however, read from Seksmisja something exactly the opposite, or just differently dis-

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tribute the accents. In Eastern bloc countries that experienced communist systems, the interpretation of this film was obvious—it was about presenting a totalitarian system in the form of a fantasy of the future state in which, thanks to the historical coincidence, the male-female relationship is emphasized in the ideological frame. In any case, the totalitarian state of women turns out to be a specific mystification, ruled by a hard hand by an impotent man [Her Excellency]. It is worth noting here that women in the underground dictatorship of the future, i.e. a social organization supported by a scientific and technical paradigm, have their own theory about the long-extinct human species, i.e. the man. The film, however, clearly shows that in contact with this strange artefact, which came to life and from the museum or even straight from the excavation, where its place moved to the world of the living, a certain scientific theory transforms into a politically controlled, full of clichés and prejudices, ideology: “Thesis about the fact that men are the missing link between us and the apes can be proven”, says Dr. Lamia, who, on behalf of the archaeological department, conducts research on the dehibernated men. Overcoming this ideology requires crossing the boundaries of personal experience. Aren’t we, as contemporary archaeologists, in the situation of women from the future? I would say that we are in a worse place, because until now we haven’t got any living artefact in the way that could wake us up from a “dogmatic nap”. By referring to this film, I'm not just referring to the reader's sense of humor. It is worth noting here that the theory of male drinking exists in archaeology and is doing quite well. It was presented by the British archaeologist Andrew Sherratt.27 Analyzing European vessel types, he came to the conclusion that the tradition of drinking alcohol in the shape we know it today was born in the Eneolithic and reached Europe from the Middle East. Sherratt pointed to the characteristic forms of vessels that began to dominate European ceramic inventories: mugs, cups and drinking cups of various types. Not without significance for this hypothesis are the concepts according to which some of the Eneolithic cultures were perceived as dominated by men—horse-riding warriors. So if we combine the film fantasy with the archaeological theory, we deal with interesting interactions. Women in the totalitarian state of the future are essentially right: men are mainly vandals, drunken and aggressive individuals [they partially identify with this view, as evidenced by the statement: “Our fellas were here” with reference to a bottle of wine]. But men from the past allow such an

27

Sherratt 1986: 81-114.

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interpretation only among themselves, blinking at the same time, publicly claim that women, to put it mildly, exaggerate—they only like to relax in their own company. Perhaps if time travel were possible, in prehistory we would discover the truth about men and women, but we would not believe in it and treat it as fantasy, like a dream that tells the truth, although it is unreal. For now, time travel is not possible, but contemporary cinema clearly suggests something to us. Because our fantasies often refer to what we do not say in public, and even dislodge from consciousness, both Seksmisja and the theory of “drinking together” turn out to be an interpretation that is shared by modern men who just… like alcohol. So let us imagine that Andrew Sherratt is the subject of such an experiment, which is presented in the film Seksmisja and finds a bottle [or cup for drinking wine] at the bottom of the mine shaft. His interpretation is unambiguous: “Our fellas were here!” He can thus confirm his theory of male drinking, and on this occasion, he would surely knock back a glass of good whiskey. Naturally, this is just a trick, the basic difference is that, as far as I know, Andrew Sherratt did not come to our world in the hibernated form from the past, so his interpretation is not an interpretation of the living culture that he lived as it was. In order to understand what modern archaeologists are doing, we have to reverse the perspective—it is not Andrew Sherratt or any contemporary archaeologist who travels into the past, but women archaeologists from the future come to our world. They find here a bottle of the type that stands in their museum display case with the caption: “This is a bottle which men in prehistoric times terrorized women, and often the whole families.” Of course, they could try to communicate with the Earthlings, try to determine what the bottles really served for, but, as many other SF films and books show, such an agreement has never been successful. *** An example with a bottle of wine found by male genus would certainly be of interest to Willard V.O. Quine, an American analytic philosopher, heir to the Vienna Circle movement. Quine was critical of the Circle, but he did not intend to be a metaphysician because he believed that experience plays an important role in the process of cognition, although there are some limitations. Referring to Wittgenstein, he developed and deepened the concept of language games, which were given the name of “epistemological holism”. According to this unit, meanings are not words or sentences [as “early” Wittgenstein wanted it to be], but all our knowledge we have at the moment [compare “late” Wittgenstein]. There are no sentences that would be true only on the basis of the precision of the statement, because the truth of the sen-

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tence cannot be broken down into a linguistic and factual component. When someone proposes a theory about some type of object, e.g. macrolithic tools [chapter VI], we are inclined to assume, wrote Quine, that our understanding of his words will proceed in two stages: 1] we must understand what these objects are and 2] we must understand what theory says about them.28 However, it’s not true! Well, understanding what objects are is basically mastering what the theory says about them because “the totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a manmade fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”29 The entirety of our knowledge and beliefs entail a conflict with experience, and the sentences of theory do not have their own empirical consequences, but they must be verified in the field of discussion and exchange of ideas. In other words, there must be theories in science that we can constantly discuss. The consequence of this approach is the indeterminacy of translation thesis. For its illustration, Quine came up with a scene in which an anthropologist observes a tribe of recently discovered natives, which no one had ever known about.30 It is obvious that no one knows their language—this is the language of people who have lived in isolation so far, that's why you have to start from scratch, that is, from observing and comparing words with the things to which the natives refer. Here is the scene: when the rabbit is running, the native shouting “Gavagai”. The natives use this term in the way that language imposes on them. But here is the deer, and the native screams “Gavagai” again. The anthropologist is in trouble. He could of course experimentally look for confirmation from the locals, showing them each rabbit, deer, etc., but additional stimuli will never cease to exist, thanks to which the natives will confirm “Gavagai”, but they will not confirm “rabbit”. Maybe it's about some part of the rabbit, maybe some synonym associated with a rabbit, or its spirit in local mythology, which in certain situations replaces a deer? Therefore, as Quine puts it, we cannot talk about synonyms here, nor can we define synonymity as the identity of stimulus meanings. The basis for confirmation or denial of sentences is not “pure”, because in fact it contains knowledge about the world, additional information, or cultural context. Each language has its

28 Trela

2009: 242. Quine 1963: 42. 30 Quine 1979: 29. 29

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own system of assumptions, its own ontology, and this language is not completely translatable into another language. Words are not labels stuck to objects, but they co-create reality, and different languages generate different worlds.31 The reflections of late Wittgenstein went in this direction when he concluded that if the lion could speak, we would not understand it anyway [mainly because he would say little, and if he did something, it would involve eating fat buffalos]. Quine, therefore, claims that every science as a whole— mathematical, natural or humanistic—is in the same sense as a language determined by experience. The edge of the system must be consistent with experience; the rest, with all its sophisticated myths and fictions, is subordinated to the goal of simplifying laws. By the way, it's nice of Quine to put science and humanities on one level, which are not treated equally, even among the scientists themselves. Quine also had a talent for picture-formulated thoughts. In the famous sentence summarizing his philosophical views, he wrote: “The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands, it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”32 An attentive reader would like to notice that “the lore of our fathers” is History! For “early” Wittgenstein, History did not formally play any role [it implicitly concerned what it should be silent about], while Quine took it straight into consideration. Thus, by applying the Factor of History to the analytical questions of the language, we get a different result. So how does it ultimately look from the side of bottles, flint tools, broken pottery and various artefacts that archaeologists find during excavations? Material objects, Quine writes, are nothing more than a reaction to stimuli [irritation of the nerves] that are not a direct image of these objects. Sources of stimulus meanings are pre-language, so their control and organization must depend on the cultural environment of the observer and are subject to interpretation there. In order to become observations expressed in language, the local cultural environment must necessarily control them, by the local language. Because the sentences uttered by the archaeologist can not be sentences agreed with the users of these objects in the past, they thus become sentences only agreed here

31 Trela 32

2009: 243. Quine 1963: 406.

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and now in the archaeological community. In this way, empirical evidenceobservation sentences, confirming a given theory, are not observation of objects as they were in themselves. Being the result of the reconciliations in the environment of the contemporary researcher, they are empirical testimonies providing for their own confirmation.33 The archaeologist seems to be in the same position as the futurologist who, based on the selected features of modern times, tries to predict the future, and his predictions are confirmed in the present [Remember Sexmission?]. We can therefore tell the collectors of facts: there is nothing more practical than a good theory.34 Is archaeology a science? Some people answer this question directly: all the sciences can be divided into physics and collecting stamps! Consider, however, if there are other criteria. A few years ago, I participated in meetings of a respected group of scientists who carried out a research program in the theory of archaeology and methodology. The group’s intention was to develop and publish an important work that would present archaeology as both deep and extensive science, and additionally attractive to those potential readers who know little about it, but would like to learn more. This very ambitious task was developed as part of specialized working groups dealing with particular areas of archaeological research. I was assigned as a speaker to one of these groups. As usual, it turned out that I missed the tastes of the lecturer. In the paper, I discussed the researchers [Bourdieu, Feyerabend], who questioned the ideals of pure science, which turned out to be a sensitive topic. The lecturer and professor of the university in the corridor was convincing me feverishly that archaeology is science because it is simply determined by the logic, methodology and strength of the argument. Let's think about it. In 1962 Thomas Kuhn, a historian and philosopher, published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which caused confusion and scandal in the world of science. Kuhn pointed out that changes in science had so far often the character of conceptual revolutions to the extent that post-revolutionary theories were disproportionate to pre-revolutionary ones. This incommensurability consists not only in conceptual differences or radical differences in the meaning of the terms. Scientific revolutions bring change to the so-called a paradigm that defines the basic ontology, i.e. views about the world's device, problem-solving methods, patterns and criteria for solutions, and even the division into scientific

33 34

Mamzer 2004: 54. R. Clausius, German thermodynamicist is alleged to say these words.

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problems and pseudo-problems. There have been so many changes that science practiced under one paradigm is a completely different kind of activity. For example, the term “mass” in Newtonian classical physics means the internal property of the body, and in relativistic physics—the size also dependent on the reference system. Therefore, neither the laws of the new and old physics nor the boundary between them can have logical relations. There also cannot be any logical exclusion relationships. Contrary to popular opinion, it cannot be argued that the new physics contradicts the old one. Kuhn's view was called anti-cumulativism. The scientific revolution destroys the current collection of solutions to problems and initiates the collection of a new paradigm according to different principles. In science, whatever it is, we do not have a systematic increase in knowledge, but it is also impossible to compare theoretical concepts with those present. According to Kuhn, we can only talk about changes in science, but it is not justified to say that these changes are cumulative and can be defined as progress. That is, we do not know more than our ancestors, but we know differently. The transition from one paradigm to another is a revolution because it breaks with the previous period and “rebuilds” the research area anew. Kuhn even constructed an interplanetary analogy to illustrate this revolution. According to him, during the scientific revolution, scholars behave as if they were moving to another planet. It is difficult to consider such activity as logical and rational. It is rather a chaotic movement, abandoning some topics, to start again in a completely different place and for a different purpose. Between one revolution and the other, researchers do the so-called normal science, within the previously developed tools of a given paradigm. Practicing “normal” research is like solving puzzles, in which the good thing is that they almost always guarantee a solution.35 With time, however, the so-called anomalies that normal science cannot solve appear. They overwhelm researchers who are looking for appropriate solutions, but scholars do not take into account various issues that they cannot explain as part of their paradigm for as long as possible. The vision of practicing science as part of paradigms has numerous consequences. For example, such researchers are not expected to invent new research methods, but to work systematically as part of the methodologies and routines already developed. Kuhn refers here to the analogy of a craftsman who has a set of previously developed tools and methods of work. The only thing that is expected of him is the creation of a product consistent with the methodology and internal logic of the profession. Although the craftsman can modify the tools to their needs, their function will remain unchanged. Possessing appropriate edu35

Kuhn 2009: 74.

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cation and logical-methodological apparatus, the researchers perform rather regenerative rather than creative work. Scholars also embrace the paradigm simply because other researchers are in favor of it with a position of power in the science system, or the majority of the scientific community. Arguments have nothing to do with it. So how do the changes occur? Partially the doubts [anomalies] multiply, but it is not the elite, as Kuhn believed, that is the source of changes leading to the collapse of the old paradigm. The scientific revolution begins right outside the academy, where outsiders [Copernicus, Einstein], often “talented dilettantes”, uninhibited by the group's habits and not loyal to it, can attack the old theory sharply by proposing their own set of rules.36 As one of my lecturers of archaeology at the University of Warsaw said, the development of a given field of research is done so often by people who simply do not know that certain things are not allowed or that it makes no sense and just brazenly do it! Apparently, Kuhn suffered a revelation like Newton, on whose head the proverbial apple fell. In 1947, when he was working at Harvard on his doctorate in physics, he read Aristotle's Physics and wondered how terrible it was. Could Aristotle, as an insightful philosopher who wrote brilliantly on many matters, be able to have such erroneous views when it comes to physics? He began to think about it more deeply by looking through the window of the dorm, when suddenly Aristotle “made sense”. It is not known if he shouted “Eureka!” at that time, but he understood that Aristotle used basic concepts in a different sense from modern physicists. For example, he used the term “movement” not only in relation to the change of location, but to change in general—both to the reddening of the sun and its decline towards the horizon. Aristotle's physics, understood using its own concepts, was just different from Newton's physics, but not qualitatively worse.37 Scientists and philosophers, for unexplained reasons, like to have revelations, but the thing is, they do not come out of nowhere. Their source is the work and subconscious combination of known content, facts, opinions, etc. In the preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn mentions another philosopher, Ludwik Fleck, whose essay “anticipated many of his own ideas”. However, for over a dozen years of heated debate on Kuhn's book, no one paid any attention to this entry. Who was Ludwik Fleck? Ludwik Fleck [1896-1961] was a Polish microbiologist of Jewish origin [in 1956 he went to Israel], a specialist in the field of bacteriology, immunology

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Ibidem: 162. Horgan 1999: 60.

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and hematology. He was also the author of valued philosophical works. In 1935 he published a book on the philosophy of science Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Until 1977, his philosophical works were completely unknown, and the re-publication of his main work took place only in 1980. Thomas Kuhn, however, knew it before. According to Fleck, collective mental differences are the basic phenomena that should be taken into account when constructing theory. People perceive things differently, but these differences affect groups rather than individual people. So we speak of various ways of perceiving and thinking about stars and planets by astronomers, by astrologists, by theologians or by mystics. Those people understand each other very well within their groups: an astronomer understands another astronomer well, and an astrologist another astrologist; but between groups—like between an astrologist and an astronomer—there is usually no understanding.38 Science is therefore a group activity [Denkkollektiv]. It is unreadable to say that someone knows a phenomenon. It should rather be said that someone knows a given phenomenon in the thinking style of the era of such and such, because the thought style of this era is the product of the collective. The existence of an independent observer is a misconception, because such an observer, deprived of a certain inclination and tradition, without the mental social representations imposed on him from above, would be blind and deaf. Thinking is a collective activity, available only to someone who participates in this activity. There also arises a certain collective mood that straightens up the ties among the group members and inclines them to act in a certain way. When a researcher begins to study an unknown phenomenon or the problem is in a layman's situation: they do not know what to observe and how to do it. They do not recognize specific forms at once, but they see chaos in which it is rather difficult to be knowledgeable, to outline something permanent, specific. That's why, as Fleck writes, researchers cannot start research simply from collecting data, testimonies, artefacts, etc. In order to start research at all, they must have some proto-idea, which is often philosophical or religious. Fleck refers to Copernicus, for whom the proto-idea was the heliocentric system of Aristarchus of Samos. Also before Lavoisier, there was a proto-idea of chemical elements, before Dalton—the proto-idea of the atom, and before Leeuwenhoek—the proto-idea of the microbe. Such an epistemological proto-idea was

38

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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also the world-machine, which was already shaped in ancient Greece.39 Protoideas are foggy, therefore, as part of scientific research, they cannot be described as true or false, but they can become the starting point for such searches. The problem of proto-idea also evokes Kuhn's basic question: is there anything like progress in science at all? Aren’t we perhaps spinning around constantly, constantly processing the same topics? In the current English-speaking world, Ludwik Fleck is considered an underestimated precursor of Thomas Kuhn and his theory of scientific revolutions. In contrast, in the German-speaking community of philosophers and sociologists, science is an example of an original epistemologist, going far beyond Kuhn's thesis. There is a group of philosophers and medical historians in France—Ilana Löwy and others—who use Fleck's ideas in their research. In his famous introduction to the actor-network theory, Bruno Latour, about whom we are going to talk again later, named Fleck “the founder of sociology of science.”40 Generally, he is currently considered one of the main representatives of social constructivism, and thus introduces us to the subject matter, which we will expand in chapter IV, discussing such philosophers as Marx, Bourdieu and Foucault. We are heading towards the direction we have already defined in the previous chapter. The distance is still long, but it is worth noticing and then step on it. In other words, the currently striking topic is the perception of science as a historical and social process. Science [including archaeology], such as other areas of life, co-shapes social mechanisms, i.e. politics, economics, group and individual conformism, etc. It becomes a distant echo of the Platonic cave, from which it is difficult to get out, especially since the conventions even physically fix the human [researcher] to the occupied place. In Plato’s reality, everyone was sitting against the wall watching the shadows [reality] in front of them. Plato believed, however, that the Truth has the form of light and it is enough to “turn away” from the wall to comprehend this [chapter V]. In the case of Kuhn and Fleck, this cannot be said anymore. Science is not a quest for the light of the Truth, but rather the result of noticing some imperfections in the shadows on the cave wall and discussing them. Whoever displays this movie, who is the director of the show, is unknown. Or maybe it is just as Max Planck said: “The new scientific truth wins not because its opponents are convinced, but because they are aging and dying.” I hereby will try to illustrate this. ***

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Berryman 2009. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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Amongst the last productions, in my opinion, the movie The Big Short is the best, especially because it is based on facts, and this is what we are talking about in this chapter. The film is about the economic crisis caused by a bubble in the US housing market in 2008. The main characters are not, admittedly, dilettantes and believe in the paradigm of economics as a rational, argument and mathematics-based knowledge. Therefore, they know that if something is overvalued, it is worth betting on a drop in value in the future, because sooner or later, such investment must bring profits. So they take actions that will bring them a fortune in the future. They recognized the anomaly in the economic system [the subprime mortgage market], which is, after all, nothing but a theory regarding the operation of people in the market economy. With time, however, it turns out that their faith in the rationality of economy is confronted with something they did not anticipate—with the human factor, that is, with politics and its connections with economics. It turns out, to their surprise, that the economic system can function and even functions[!] not according to the rules of science, but according to vague connections and arrangements at high levels of power. We are dealing with the following problem: someone who sees an anomaly in the paradigm can be a paradoxical figure of a fool and wise in one person. It shows itself with insight and intelligence, but from a broader perspective, it can be shortsighted because it does not see the factor outside the system of science—the factor of social-business connections. Everything comes down to the relationship of power, it does not depend on the logic of the paradigm, it does not depend on the rationality and strength of the argument, but on those who “stand on guard” of a given paradigm. The reason is simple—because it is beneficial. What's more, the majority of participants of the market game attach importance not to rational arguments, but to the key authorities guarding the paradigm and the vicious circle closes. For example, in the movie The Big Short superiors of one of the characters, who notices a strange revaluation in the mortgage system, do not believe him only because he challenges the opinion of Allan Greenspan, the head of all bosses. “The housing market is rock solid”— they repeat ad nauseam, while a meticulous, rational analysis clearly shows that it is not. Jared Vennett [Ryan Gossling] sums it up like this: “Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested”, and when the heads of financial institutions continue to pretend to be fools, he evaluates: “So now their foot's on fire and they think their steak is done”. As in the Kuhn model, gaps in the paradigm mechanisms are discovered by outsiders, and not by authorities that hold managerial functions [these very quickly turn into fat cats and draw profits from the system, which they may even know, and some know for certain that they are false].

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And yet, as history [financial crisis] teaches us, the mere discovery of an anomaly is not enough to change the paradigm. Everything goes on as before: the taxpayers paid for the greed of the banks, everyone left home and they still make a good face to the bad game. The real paradigm of economics and science is to understand that its social determinants [power, politics, public opinion, behind-the-scenes systems, tradition, etc.] are equally important, subject to mechanisms other than logic and rational argument. The question arises: how many anomalies must be detected to change the paradigm? And besides: if economics is governed not by the law of logic and argument, but by a stronger law, does detecting subsequent anomalies make sense? Well, what can we expect from archaeology in the light of the above? The lessons from The Big Short lead us to the subject of subsequent chapters, in which we will explore not the problem of rational arguments based on facts but irrational human passions that shape the image of archaeology. From the existing content we can see an obvious, though paradoxical, conclusion that if we would like to do “pure science” [archaeology or anything else] based on logic and argumentation, we would have to do it privately. But because logic, argumentation and acting in accordance with the rules are part of the language game, as Wittgenstein summed up in the society, then… it cannot be privately cultivated. This is a characteristic existential position of every scientist, although not everyone is aware of it—we are “between a rock and a hard place”. So far, we have discussed two paradigms of archaeology: the culturalhistorical and processual paradigm. If, however, we wanted to treat Kuhn's ideas in archaeology rigorously, they would not meet the definition criteria, because the archaeological paradigms exist in parallel, and the revolutions that led to their education did not result in abandoning one for the benefit of the other. All paradigms in archaeology exist at once and they are doing well. Nevertheless, we could talk about a revolution that was, for example, the introduction of a radiocarbon method, which led to a far-reaching review of earlier migration and diffusionist theories cultivated by cultural-historical archaeologists, but it did not lead to the complete abandonment of this type of explanation. Some archaeologists have found Kuhn's ideas binding. They claimed that the successive phases of archaeological development are characterized by sufficient conceptual coherence to qualify as paradigms. Their chronological consequence could therefore be seen as replacing one paradigm with the other, but for now, different schools co-exist side by side because archaeology is a very young discipline. Consequently, the following innovators, such as Thomsen, Montelius, Childe, Binford, Hodder, recognized these anomalies in

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the current model of explanation and shaped a new paradigm that significantly changed the direction and methodology of archaeological research.41 The new paradigm not only changed the meaning of the acquired data, but also completely redefined the type of problems and questions that archaeology should pose for itself. David Clarke, author of the famous work Analytical Archaeology, described his field of research as an “undisciplined” and suggested that its theoretical foundations at the current stage of development should be perceived as being in a pre-paradigmatic state. However, he wrote it in the 1960s. By the way, if we assume archaeological paradigms are incomplete, this would be another argument that archaeology is not science. Apart from this thorny thesis, we can also take into account the similarities, which makes it possible to treat archaeological methods of explanation as paradigms: they are planets from Kuhn's metaphor, on which supporters of one or the other option live. There are, of course, relocations from one planet to another, but it is unlikely that one of the planets will be completely abandoned. Some eventually concluded that a given discipline could be characterized by many parallel and different paradigms that influence each other, which is an obvious case of archaeology. Quite recently, a satellite of the planet occupied by cultural and historical archaeologists was created, which quickly grew up. A new theoretical colony was created on it under the banner of post-processualism. There are various currents of post-modern archaeology, which generally question the paradigm of New Archaeology: Marxist archaeology, structuralist, contextual, feminist archaeology and many other threads. We will talk about it in the next chapters. *** The subject of this chapter cannot be finished without mentioning one more participant in the dispute about science. It is Paul Feyerabend. He was born in Vienna and grew up here. As a teenager, he learned acting and singing, but one day, after listening to lectures given by an astronomer, he became interested in science. His youthful enthusiasm and romantic approach is illustrated by a statement from that period: “I would spend my afternoon practicing singing, evenings on the stage of the theater, and late at night I would watch the stars.”42 The brutal reality has verified his dreams. World War II broke out, and Feyerabend enrolled for the officer's school in the hope that he would pass through the most difficult period. Soon he landed on the east-

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1994: 6. Horgan 1999: 70.

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ern front commanding the entire brigade. When his troops retreated into “predestined positions” he was shot in the back and it was the end of the war for the philosopher. He was paralyzed for some time and even enjoyed it! Years later, he recalled this period as a hope for the realization of his next dream that he would “be in a wheelchair riding along bookshelves.”43 Being a philosopher already, he became friends with Thomas Kuhn. However, in his views on science, he went much further, using a rich imagination and a unique sense of humor. Thus, in a famous article, he criticized Kuhn's view of comparing scientists to criminal groups. Since both of them solve puzzles, he asked Feyerabend, what is the difference between these two areas? Criminal organizations are a branch of activity dealing with solving puzzles par excellence, he wrote. Every sentence from Kuhn's work on the activities of scientists remains true when we substitute “normal science” with the term “organized crime”, and every sentence he wrote about an “individual scientist” will remain true when we replace it with a “crook” or “safe-cracker.”44 In this view, the famous bank robber Dillinger would even be a “scientific” revolutionary who introduced completely new methods of robbing banks, consisting of accurate observation of the object and building models on a one-to-one scale. Comparing this, Feyerabend wanted to draw attention to the basic question, which most scientists do not ask: why do we practice research? This was the main accusation towards Kuhn, who took up the description of science, silently omitting its aims. Someone would argue that if the goal is money, it is difficult for an archaeologist to become a criminal. Being an archaeologist, you will not be a millionaire—that's for sure. But on the other hand, archaeologists are not necessarily the first format safe-breakers, but rather small crooks from Woody Allen's film [Small Time Crooks]. They are still trying to make a big bank raid, but they are overtaken by better “scientists”, meaning accountants [exact sciences] who run away with money to the Bahamas [enjoy life]. The only precious thing that stays in the hands of the main characters at the end is a tiny antique clasp that they managed to steal at the right moment. A small treasure, after monetization, will allow you to get life for some time. Is this not a good metaphor of scientific archaeology or archaeology in general? Nowadays, a successful scientist is one who can transform knowledge into a product, so the work of an archaeologist necessarily becomes something like an infotainment. Are there any intellectuals who are guided by pro publico bono values? Does anyone else do archaeology for itself? Does it have a personal dimension? Does ar-

43 44

Ibidem: 71. Feyerabend 1970: 133.

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chaeology need and can appreciate activities that go beyond the scheme? We should answer these questions before doing science, according to Feyerabend. In his best-known book, he claimed that first and foremost there is no scientific method. Researchers have certain ideas that are effective and then a new situation arises and they try something different. This is not a method, only opportunism—he summarized his thoughts. To solve scientific problems we need a box full of various [not necessarily scientific] tools. Hammer and nails alone are not enough. This is what he wanted to express with his famous [and commonly criticized] phrase: “anything goes” [and not as it is commonly believed that one scientific theory is as good as any other]. “Limiting science to some methodology, even as loosely defined as Popper's falsificationism or Kuhn's normal science, would destroy it!”, laimed Feyerabend.45 So on the one hand, Feyerabend saw the value of science, even in the fact that it “provides fascinating tales about the universe, its components, development, where life comes from and all these stupidities.” On the other hand, however, you need to look at science critically. Perhaps it is not better than other ways of getting to know and experiencing the world? He was driven into rage by the ideology of imposing on people products of science against their will. As a brilliant observer and commentator, Feyerabend asks: if there is the separation of church and state, why not the separation of state from science? We can answer this question: there is no separation at—neither church from the state, nor the state from science, and especially from economics, and you have to get over it. However, if we take into account the postulates of the philosopher, it should be recognized that there is no justification for using a small group of archaeologists from the huge authority in society and the many privileges that this entails, while alternative traditions of thinking about the past: dowsers, metal detectors, pagan worshipers traditions, Celtic mystics, neo-shamans, and even Daeniken's supporters are pushed out, laughed, delegitimized by “official” state-assisted archaeologists. There is also no reason why archaeological education would be associated with teaching only the right program of scientific archaeology. It would also be necessary to change the provisions on the protection of monuments so as to protect the interests of all interested parties, not just archaeologists. Perhaps some of the monuments would be destroyed in this way, but do we really need each of them, putting at the same

45

Horgan 1999: 74.

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time barriers to their use outside the scheme? We need alternative strategies to study the past.46 Can we know something for sure? In the introduction to the Wittgentsein’s Tractatus, Bertrand Russell formulated a working hypothesis that although there are things in every language that cannot be expressed, it seems possible to construct a higher-level language in which to express them. Surely in this new language again will be things that can not be expressed, but again it will be possible to build the next language... and so endlessly. Russell thus anticipated the hypothesis that a few years later, another participant of the Vienna Circle—Kurt Gödel put forward. Gödel's incompleteness theorem was recognized by Karl Popper as the greatest contribution to logic since Aristotle's time. Kurt Gödel was a mathematician and logician. He came from a wealthy Brno-based family with merchant traditions. Brno was at the time the capital of Moravia, one of the most beautiful cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire— a multinational state ruled in the style of the British Commonwealth—and a city where mainly German was spoken. The great spiritual and intellectual traditions of this region included such extremely different directions as Jakub Boehme's mysticism and the strictly analytical ideas of Ernst Mach. Traditions of mysticism and Kabbalah found expression in Franz Kafka's surrealist prose and in the legend of Golem, described by Gustav Meyring. Many significant figures came from Brno and its surroundings, such as the founder of genetics Gregor Mendel, architect Josef Hoffmann-one of the inspirers of the Art Nouveau style, as well as his opponent, Adolf Loos—supporter of the raw, ornament-free constructivism and forerunner of the German Bauhaus.47 In 1924, Gödel moved to Vienna to study at the University of Vienna, where he established contact with the Vienna Circle, in which the scientific theory of certainty was feverishly sought. Following this trend, Gödel took part in the International Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna in 1928, where the famous German mathematician David Hilbert gave his colleagues a challenge. In his speech, he addressed the fundamental problem: can any true mathematical theorem be proved? Hilbert's challenge was a compilation of the dreams of Enlightenment philosophers of nature and, in particular, Leibniz who wanted to consider all scientific problems with the help of calculations. It was the dream of finding a Universal Truth Determination Machine that

46 47

Holtorf 2000: 245. Casti & DePauli 2003: 13.

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would be able to determine the logical value of any mathematical claim: True or False. We read the statement, turn the crank and wait for the answer. In a lecture given in Bologna, Hilbert defined the requirements that such a machine would have to meet and was convinced that the implementation of his postulate would lead to the full axiomatization of all mathematics.48 Hilbert was troubled by certain logical paradoxes discovered by Bertrand Russell and his colleagues at the beginning of the 20th century, e.g. the famous hairdresser's paradox: “The village barber shaves all men in the village who do not shave themselves.” Who shaves the barber? Following all the logical possibilities, we find that if the barber shaves himself... then he doesn’t shave himself. The standard methods of logical reasoning were too weak to unravel such a seemingly trivial problem. And all these mathematical proofs are based on these methods! Hilbert began to worry about the logical consistency of mathematics. He stated that “every mathematical problem must be strictly solvable, either in the form of an answer to a given question, or by demonstrating the impossibility of providing a solution”. He called on colleagues to formalize all mathematical truths in such a way as to eliminate the paradoxical theorems in mathematics forever. Three years after the congress in Bologna, young Kurt Gödel changed Hilbert's biggest dream into the opposite—the biggest nightmare. Above all, Gödel noted that the formal system of any field of mathematics is the same mathematical object, and then he appealed to his intuition and said that instead of bothering with the perennially slippery concept of truth, it should be replaced with something that can be formalized—he replaced the truth with “proof”. He further demonstrated that for any consistent formal system, sufficiently general to include arithmetic, there is a sentence that reads: “This claim cannot be proved.” This sentence, as you can see, refers to itself, because the claim it is talking about is the claim itself. The coding system then introduced made it possible to present this assertion in the form of the metamathematical expression relating to itself expressed in the language of arithmetic. So if this statement can be proven, then it is true, that is, what is said is that it cannot be proved! As you can see, you can prove the assertion as well as its denial, that is, the system is internally contradictory. Because this statement is presented in the language of arithmetic, it means that in any formal system strong enough to express all relationships between natural numbers, there are undecidable assertions that can not be proven within this system, although

48

Ibidem: 26.

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they are true assertions about numbers, what you can see when going beyond this system. In other words, Gödel constructed the arithmetic A theorem saying that arithmetic is consistent, and then showed that this claim cannot be proved, that is, one cannot prove the non-contradiction of arithmetic using any formal system. We arrive at the following result: In every consistent system, including arithmetic, there are arithmetical truths that cannot be proven in this system.49 Gödel's theorem is, in fact, as Casti and DePauli write emphatically, the ultimate blow to the faith of Enlightenment thinkers that there is no difference between truth and proof. The incompleteness theorem can be interpreted in many ways. For example, as proof that in any sufficiently strong deduction system there are too complex assertions to be proven using logic operations of a given system. We must then use the arguments of the external deductive system, as Russel anticipated. To illustrate this somehow, imagine that we need to evaluate a language, e.g. English: easy to learn or difficult, how complex the grammar is, whether it includes many idioms, etc. We can effectively do it only by referring to another language. If we tried to do the task while remaining within English, nothing could be determined. Gödel's theorem is also interpreted from a philosophical point of view: Truth can not be described in a finite way. The impossibility of directly describing and transferring [the man or machine] to the whole of our concept of the number means that it is impossible to learn without a foundation. We accept certain assumptions that flow from our knowledge of the world, intuition, our history or in general History, etc. It is inevitable to rely on nonscientific knowledge, which is confirmed not only by the conclusions of late Wittgenstein, who believed that mathematics is part of our “language games” but also suggests the existential approach that we will be talking about in chapter VII. Logic is not a machine for solving scientific problems. As G. H. Chesterton captured it: “Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it”. In order to formalize something, something must stay unformalized.50 Speaking of machines. Gödel's proof is in some sense equivalent to what Alan Turing constructed when dealing with the problem of a universal machine. Before the famous test was made to distinguish the machine from the man we dealt with in the previous chapter, Turing had dealt with the problem of computability. His question was: can you construct a machine that, after loading any

49 50

Ibidem: 54. Krajewski 2003: 275.

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number theory, produces the result after the finite time: true or false. Turing knew Gödel's proof. He saw a clear analogy between successive steps in logical command based on formal axioms and the operation of a hypothetical machine that performs calculations. Using this analogy, he formulated the problem of decidability in the language of computers as the problem of terminating the hypothetical work of the calculating machine, and then showed that it could not be constructed. Turing summarized his research this way: “In other words then, if a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.”51 No computer operating solely on the basis of algorithms is able to replace a human, which of course does not mean that you cannot build any other computer that would operate in a way that goes beyond the algorithms. Gödel's theorem does not rule out that a machine of human intelligence can exist [e.g. it could evolve in the course of evolution or be built by a human], but then we will never be able to understand its operation because it would be too complex for us. Stanisław Lem in one of his stories described this problem in a humorous way: it would be a machine that sacrifices its “life” to prove that 2 + 2 = 7. Gödel's theorem suggests that machines cannot think like humans, but that does not mean that they cannot think at all. One of the most important consequences of Gödel's theorem is the role of intuition in the understanding of scientific truths. If there is a Truth, then it is elusive in the formal language of science; there are unprovable truths and there will always be truths that we cannot comprehend, we will not examine and confirm. Our possibilities are permanently limited. Even if we can [like Hegel] understand History, in some way see how it really was and what really matters in History, it will be our private knowledge and we will not be able to prove it. What is more, there is a serious probability that no one, except for us, will understand this, because intuition is a very individual characteristic of every human being. Of course, Gödel's proof is not an absolute proof. It only suggests that there are no definitive truths, but rather there is no final procedure leading to the truth. He does not settle philosophical disputes. It does not prove antimechanicism, although it facilitates it; it suggests realism, but it does not prove it.52 Gödel's discovery, however, contributes to undermining certain knowledge, but perhaps it is more a symbol of a return in the perception of what science deals with. As a rule, the reference to Gödel does not contribute to the discovery of new facts or regularities, but serves to confirm otherwise valid beliefs. Especially postmodern humanists sometimes abuse it. As Sokal and Brickmont write in

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Dyson 2012: 261. Heller & Krajewski 2014: 307.

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their essay, Gödel's theorem is almost an inexhaustible source of intellectual abuse, and some have tried to use it even to prove the existence of God.53 By the way, Gödel himself took it seriously. He was an enemy of the church, but throughout his life, he showed a very special religiousness and believed in the possibility of logically proving the existence of the Creator. He also believed that the universe makes sense, and the logical consequence is the afterlife. If only he could prove it, he would certainly be considered a God of logic himself. In the end, Gödel can even be ignored, as Wittgenstein did. In Philosophical investigations, Wittgenstein accepts that mathematical cognition is not cognition because there are no objects to learn about. Developing mathematics, we acquire certain habits, learning rules and behaviors. Wittgenstein believed that these are mainly linguistic behaviors, that mathematics is part of the language games that we practice. However, mathematics is not just one, but there are many mathematical games [theories] and there is no reason to set a common measure.54 Three years after Gödel's groundbreaking speech, another great logician, a Pole, Alfred Tarski, published the thesis entitled The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages, in which he formulated precisely the definition of truth using semantic notions recognized by logicians as a bible. It showed that the semantics of a given language can only be spoken in a higher-order language. Similarly, the concept of truth can only be defined in a higher-order language. Both Gödel and Tarski did great things—they showed that it is impossible to develop a universal theory of meaning, which can be applied to it, that is, as experts say, “self-referential”. So it turns out that all sciences resemble, to a greater or lesser degree, collecting stamps. Nevertheless, stamps can be collected in a more and less systematic way. Archaeology seems rather chaotic in this perspective— undisciplined, as David Clarke estimated—although it certainly does not want to seem to be such. Certainly, however, archaeology needs theories not to collect stamps quite thoughtlessly. In the end, even if it cannot be the science of collecting stamps, it can always be the art of collecting them, and that is not less respectable.

53 54

Brickmont & Sokal 2004: 170. Krajewski 2003: 294.

Chapter 4

Back to Hegel. Ideological paradoxes Neo-historicism and Marxism Through the concept of the cunning reason, Hegel signaled that people do what they should do, only seemingly because of their particular life goals. They really do it because something controls them. This perverse strategy of forcing us to do something that we do not really want is used by the Spirit of the World in its intelligent development towards the Absolute. It takes advantage of the conflicted interests and passions of individuals for its own purposes. Hegel himself writes about it in the following way: „The special interest of passion is thus inseparable from the active development of a general principle: for it is from the special and determinate and from its negation, that the Universal results. Particularity contends with its like, and some loss is involved in the issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason—that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty, and suffers loss.”1 So the Spirit of the World uses people in History as tools, just as they use tools for their particular, short-sighted goals. Ideological illusion lurks in what we do, not just in what we think. Sometimes we allow ourselves to think that we live in a world full of falsehood, hypocrisy and crime, but we repress it from consciousness and act as if it were only a margin and not the essence of reality. Walking in the woods, we behave as if it was a place created especially for recreation, while it is an area of brutal struggle for existence. It is a kind of ignorance or a disorder in the perception of the reality in which we live. Ideology, according to Marx, is precisely this disorder, the distortion of our understanding—it is a false consciousness.2 Hegel left the work that for a long time outlined the limits of what can be called the intellectual space of our culture. Everything that came after him in philosophy grew out of him or turned against him. He had disciples and followers, he also had critics and enemies, but for everyone, he was a partner to

1 2

Hegel 1956: 32-33. Kołakowski 2009: 150.

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whom one had to be determined. Even today, one can only philosophize “with Hegel”, “against him” or “after him”—but never “without him”, never “next to him.”3 Karl Marx [1818-1883] took over Hegel’s historicism and his vision of the evolution of humanity. He shared faith in the end of history, but he imagined a different finale of the most perfect society that would end history. The liberal state did not resolve, according to Marx, one fundamental contradiction—the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. According to Hegel, when a Slave did work for the Master, this enriched him, created his individuality and worked out the notion of freedom in himself. He believed that both the Master and the Slave at the time of the End of History worked for Capital and saw nothing wrong in it, because in theory, they became equal citizens. However, as Marx observed, between work and the recognition of the individuality and freedom of the Slave by the Master, the capital squeezes in like remorse and enslaves the Slave like the Master did before. Marx expressed this in the famous sentence: “Thanks to the industrial revolution, power passed from landowners into the hands of corporate fat fish: the aristocracy of money took the place of aristocracy of landowners.”4 Marx essentially continues Hegel's philosophy. Apparently, he discovered the theory of the structure of the class struggle in the Phenomenology of the Spirit, which, according to the Communist Manifesto, is the essence of all previous history. Not only did Marx’s reading of Hegel interpret this historicalphilosophical chapter, but also took it to the rank of a key text of the entire Hegelian philosophy.5 However, while Hegel's dynamic factor in the socialhistorical process is Consciousness and its pursuit of self-determination, Marx moved towards socio-economic practice, where the central role is played by economic production, exchange of goods, transforming Nature into Civilization. Marx's economic studies were conducted in this very perspective—as an analysis of the social process of influencing the Nature and its objective results: private property, social exploitation, violence, and misery. So if Hegel's philosophy in its entirety could be called historical idealism, then Marx's philosophy would be historical materialism.6 In Marx's thinking, we can distinguish three main elements:

Siemek 1984: 30. Marx 2007. 5 Kołakowski 2009: 174. 6 Ibidem: 337. 3 4

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1.

Romantic: it consists in a critical view of the industrial and capitalist society as atomizing members of the community; the idea of harmony of individual and community is postulated here, which Marx did not explain retrospectively, as romantics, but prospectively—thinking about the future.

2.

Promethean-Faustic: is the trust in the possibility of achieving social perfection in earthly life; presents the possibility of completely exceeding the natural limitations of Man; it announces the full plasticity of being towards properly directed and properly organized human activities, unlimited creativity, etc.

3.

Enlightenment: it is deterministic and rationalistic; it consists in the existence of objective and absolute rights of the current social life, which, however, can be overcome as they have a historical status, i.e. a temporary one; this overcoming occurs as a result of conscious revolutionary acts.7

Marx believed that the most important factor shaping social relations is the economic base, which consists of forces and relations of production of material products, that is, the available technology, tools, raw materials [human and non-human] and current knowledge about them. The economic base is perceived here as the main force in shaping the society and its behaviors: the concept of ownership, family life, political organization, law, religious beliefs, aesthetics and even philosophical concepts and scientific activity. He did not share the enlightenment’s and evolutionist views, interpreting cultural change as an increasingly better human ability to control the environment. Instead, he proposed that technological changes must be seen in the social context from which they originated. While new technologies contribute to socio-political changes, they are, at the same time, a product of a specific context that determines which innovations are more or less likely to appear. An extremely intriguing point of Marx's theory is fetishism of commodities. What is it about? When Marx considered the problem of alienation in Hegel's work, he reinterpreted it in the spirit of materialism. He determined that when someone gives up their own workforce, their own ability to transform the world and sells it to someone else, it is tantamount to the alienation of their own nature, and this is what happens in the capitalist economy. Then they are surprised by a strange blindness and assume that the things they

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Ibidem: 414-422.

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produce possess an intrinsic value. They cannot perceive that their value actually arises as a result of an individual and collective effort [work] put into their creation. They misinterpret the value of objects as what they acquire as a result of trade. The very beginning of Section Four of Capital begins like this: “A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labor. It is as clear as noonday, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than ‘table-turning’ ever was.”8 This fetishist character of the world of goods results from the social model of labor that produces goods, called the market. The market creates a huge gap between the factory that produces the goods and the consumer. Produced in this way, the objects correspond to human needs, because they were designed by people and for people, embodying human intentions. However, due to the special, anonymous nature of the market, the whole history of these objects, the effort to create them, is invisible to the consumer. From the consumer's perspective, therefore, it looks like the value of the object [as a good] is a certain aspect, we behave as children assigning human attributes to things: as having power, intentions, nature, etc.9 Analyses of Marx's fetishism correspond in a characteristic manner with the problems of prehistoric exchange systems. The classic studies in this regard are the works of Bronisław Malinowski and Marcel Mauss. One may conclude from them that in the pre-industrial communities, objects subject to exchange [e.g. Maori axes and cloaks, Kwiakiutl coppers, kula armshells and necklaces] possessed something like individual personality, their own will,

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Marx 1867. Graeber 2001: 80.

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and even intelligence, or at least they were perceived by these communities in this way. As objects with identity, unique form, name and own biography, they were like people, they had something like a hidden life force or soul. There is a clear analogy between these exchange systems, often used by archaeologists as a model of prehistoric relations,10 and Marx's fetishism created on the basis of a capitalist monetary economy. In this perspective, contemporary goods can be understood as objects whose biographies and histories are systematically obliterated, i.e. the capitalist system forgets on our behalf that individual human dramas and social narratives have a huge share in the creation of these objects. In both cases [the prehistoric and today's] human creativity and energy have been used to make them desirable. While in the prehistoric situation this energy was verbalized, it led to the creation of narrative and its intertwining into social relations, today the object of desire becomes only an illusory reflection of the intent of the one who desires.11 In the fetishism of commodities, as Kołakowski writes, there is a human inability to apprehend his own products as his own, consent to alienation, and even the entire sum of slavery in which people have fallen into their own products. Their work becomes a commodity, which means that man operates on the rights of things, that his personal qualities and abilities are sold and bought, and his creative skills and energy take the form in which only their exchange value counts. It is reification, or transformation of personality into things.12 Let us note, then, that when comparing the early exchange systems with the modern market in Marx's interpretation, we have a characteristic reversal of the relationship: if things had personality before, today [human] personalities are transforming into things. By comparing these two systems: pre-monetary and monetary, we see a continuous transformation between activity, action, and its reflection, continuous movement between visible and invisible forms of values. In this transformation, power is being squeezed, which is also taking place on the axis of two oppositions: as the power to influence directly others and as the power to define one's own person as the one towards whom others are to behave accordingly. The first form is like a hidden property of the person, while the second is a visual form of the display. In this way, we can combine power, value and ultimately, money. So if money is something like an extension of a person, an extension of its ability to act in the world [hence Marx implies the impulse to hide money], then objects whose value is defined inversely—

Bernbeck & Müller 1996: 1-28. Graeber 2001: 105. 12 Kołakowski 2009: 281. 10 11

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mainly through their individual stories [biographies] and narratives tend to be assimilated into the social communication and identity of the owner, and in this way an impulse to publicly display them is created. Simultaneously, the fact that valuable objects are perceived as the embodiment of hidden powers allows us to understand in a sense how money refers to the preceding forms of object value. In other words, money was partly developed on the basis of decorative objects produced for the show; these things: money, value, power have been all the time slipping between their oppositions.13 In this perspective, one can, for example, analyze the phenomenon of depositing valuable items in prehistory. It turns out that the amount of deposits or treasures increased significantly in times when larger quantities of metal began to be produced. At the early stage, it was copper, later bronze. The first deposits appeared in the Eneolithic/Copper Age and are associated with valuable stone and flint objects as well as with early copper. This is also the moment in prehistory, when the numerical/metrological aspect is assigned to these objects. This is a confirmation of Marx's theory—the more objects gain the aspect that determines them numerically, which is the opposition of their original narrative, biographical value, the more they are likely to be deposited, or potentially hidden from others. Ultimately, metal became the best measure of wealth, because it was a substance that could be continuously processed into other artefacts—it was practically not destroyable, unlike stone and flint. A stone or a flint axe was damaged, it could be made into a smaller one, but eventually it fell apart into fragments from which nothing could be done anymore. In contrast, even the smallest piece of metal necessarily gained numerical significance because it could be used to create a new object. That is why there was a need to measure this strange substance more accurately, and its measuring itself in some situations made unnecessary telling stories and narratives about these objects. Nothing in culture, however, dies—the notion of number and measure had to assimilate what previously determined the social value of objects that is their individual biographies. The sources of fetishism are already in prehistory. Marx saw what modern economists do not seem to notice that money and material things are not just an equivalent, resulting from the rather complex, yet specific and predictable economic mechanisms happening here and now. Money is towing a huge fund of history behind it. Marx's achievement is, in essence, similar to Wittgenstein's volition, which he also noticed over time that words are not labels attached to objects. Behind the phenomenon of object value is the enormous fund of History filled, from the point of view of 13

Graeber 2001: 104-106.

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the Westerner, with a mystical content that has been forgotten, while the equivalent of History has become money and commodity; we live in the End of History, where nothing is subject to real change, and the only game we play is about the distribution of money, related more and more to power. Although mechanistic economic theories impose perception of things in a simple economic way, we subconsciously realize that something is wrong, considering, for example, ethical and ecological arguments that deny the ideology of unlimited consumption. As Tomáš Sedláček writes, economic thought throughout history has been strongly influenced by philosophical and religious trends and has always dealt with ethics. [...] But later, “mainly in the twentieth century, it was influenced by determinism, Cartesian mechanics, mathematical rationalism, and simplified individualist utilitarianism. They have changed it to the form we know from modern textbooks. It's full of equations, graphs, numbers, patterns... mathematics in general. We find there hardly any history, psychology, philosophy and a broader sociological approach.”14 When we start contesting this, it is as if the History itself seems to be talking to us. Marx's philosophy was pushed to the side of the road as a result of the political confusion of the twentieth century, although it was not hosted so long ago in the intellectual salons of the world. Marxism and archaeology are so intertwined that a separate book could be written about it. Actually, the influences come from both sides. Marxists were inspired by the writings of early historians, such as the Ancient Society of Lewis H. Morgan, in which the vision of the evolution of progressive human culture was presented. Morgan divided human history into wildness, barbarism and civilization. Following him, Marx divided the history into a stage of pre-class communities [matriarchy and patriarchy], class societies [slavery, feudalism, capitalism] and the culmination of a historical process—a return to a classless society that could take the form of socialism or communism. In a sense, humanity, according to Marx, was to return to its roots, deep in prehistory. The story was about to end, only differently from what Hegel had anticipated. The archaeological practice adopted Marxism to explain phenomena and processes in prehistory. The archaeologists, who were interested in the issues of prehistoric ideology, sought to emphasize internal differences [contradictions] within society. Attempts have been made to outline the antagonistic model of the world in such communities, and to highlight conflict resolution. An ideal field for Marxist explanation was the archaeology of the Mediterranean Basin. The development of Rome from a small prehistoric village to the capital of the Roman Empire gave great opportunities. Also, an interesting 14

Sedláček 2012: 298.

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example was the Marxist understanding of the phenomenon of European megaliths, proposed by Tilley. He believed that in these small agricultural communities megaliths were associated with the exercise of power by individuals who used rituals related to the tombs as a way of masking the arbitrary character of their power and legitimizing inequalities within society. Movement of the bodies of various people, which is a frequent occurrence in megalithic tombs, emphasized the organic unity of society, distracting attention from real inequalities in power and status. Graves and rituals sanctioned the established order as natural. The pressure put by Tilley on domination within the group is typically Marxist.15 *** Although Childe had already been interested in Marxist philosophy, it was not until 1935, after his departure to the Soviet Union, that he became very interested in the work of local archaeologists, who were then heavily sponsored by the state authorities. First and foremost, he was charmed by the uncompromising efforts of Soviet researchers who interpreted prehistory only in terms of internal processes for a given culture, based solely on the principles of materialism that production forces and relations are the main factor in shaping society. In confrontation with this view, his own work suddenly seemed shallow and limited to him. After visiting the Soviet Union, Childe tried to supplement his earlier economic and ecological concepts with Marxist ideas. However, this was not an uncritical approach, for example, he still treated diffusion as an important factor in the cultural development of societies. The effect of this was to write three more books, of which Man Makes Himself enjoys the greatest popularity, actually to this day. In Man Makes Himself he interpreted archaeological data as a testimony to a focused process by which knowledge generated in the history gave more developed societies greater control over the environment and resulted in the formation of increasingly complex political systems. Childe thought globally and did not limit himself to archaeology. In the book, he consolidated the notion of Neolithic, urban and industrial revolution. By the same token, he argued that the usual distinction between [pre-literate] prehistory and [literate] history was a false dichotomy and that human society has progressed through a series of technological, economic and social revolutions. He further wrote that at every stage of social development, but especially in early civilizations, well-established political structures combined with inflexible belief

15 Tilley

1984: 111.

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systems can slow down or even stifle social progress. He introduced a distinction between progressive societies in which production relations supported development, expansion and harmonious relations in the means of production, social institutions and the system of beliefs, and conservative societies in which social and political conditions blocked development. The ruling classes in the latter were not conducive to technological progress, which they considered threatening to their dominant position. They did this by monopolizing production surpluses, developing bureaucratic control over the producers and patronizing the excessive development of magic and religious superstitions. It was, in his opinion, the reason for the gradual retreat of the Middle East in relation to European civilizations. A typical materialistic approach to prehistory arose from Childe's interest in Marxism.16 Nothing but the structure Hegel and Marx operated on the dialectic, that is, a certain ideal structure of reality, non-material, but fundamental. This thought was picked up and developed by a number of thinkers in the 20th century, who contributed to the expansion of the intellectual current called structuralism. Imagine the chess game. The pawn, which is outside the chessboard, does not represent any value for the player. It becomes a real element of the game only when it interacts with other figures on the chessboard. It then acquires a certain value. Now let's assume that a chess pawn will disappear during a chess game or destroyed. Can you replace it with another piece? Of course! Actually, a completely different and unlike pawn figure will be able to fulfill the same role, because its value depends, in principle, on what surrounds it, which place it takes on the chessboard. Not only another knight but even a figure shorn of any resemblance to a knight can be declared identical provided the same value is attributed to it […] “We see then that in semiological systems like language, where elements hold each other in equilibrium in accordance with fixed rules, the notion of identity blends with that of value and vice versa.”17 Structuralism developed at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He proclaimed that the opposition to other signs appearing in the language system recognizes the sign. Language is like a chess game. To understand the sign, we must be able to see the entire language—the entire structure in which this sign appears. “Language is a sys-

16 Trigger 17

1994: 257. Saussure 1959: 110.

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tem of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others […]”, Saussure wrote in his Course in General Linguistics.18 He presents two fundamental theses there: first, the language sign is divided into two components: signifier and signified. The mark or sound that signifies is held to be arbitrary in relation to the idea, or concept that it signifies: the word "tree" means the idea of a tree only on the basis of convention. It does not have to reflect this idea in its shape, sound, color, etc. Therefore the identity of the sign is not reflected either through the object it refers to or through the intention of the language user, but only through the system of differences and opposition that constitute the language. Language is this system of differences. The displacement of the subject as bestower of meanings implied by this is clear. The second thesis is based on the difference between language and speech. Any specific utterance may communicate a message only on the condition that it satisfies the complex of rules for the combination of signs that constitutes the language in which the utterance occurs. Only when set against the context of the set of other possible combinations allowed in this sign-system can this particular utterance communicate a message. The meaning of the statements, therefore, cannot be a direct expression of the internal states of the subject. On the contrary, the speaker can use language to convey meaning in this regard that he/she surrenders or becomes subject in relation to the externally imposed character system. As pointed out by Kathleen Dow Magnus, the creator of language structuralism corresponded with the idea of Hegel.19 Saussure kept the basic difference between the symbol and the sign that Hegel had already introduced. For Saussure and Hegel, the symbols are characterized by the fact that their meaning and expression are not connected in a completely arbitrary way in the sense that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker. Symbols retain at least a “historical” trace of the relationship between its meaning and expression. In Saussure's terminology, this is the relationship between the signified and signifier: “I mean that it is unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified.”20 Unlike Hegel, however, Saussure believed that the meaning of a symbol cannot change freely—it is always determined in advance by the speaking community and its relation to other symbols. Does not it remind us of something? We are simply dealing here with a different understanding of Wittgenstein's “language game”. Since, as we have

Ibidem: 114. Magnus 2001: 50. 20 Saussure 1959: 69. 18 19

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already seen, labels can not be attached to things, we can only talk about them by merely touching the surface of the material world with the help of metaphors, symbols, scientific theories, narratives, etc. The material world escapes our [verbal] cognition. Saussure noted that if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. However, you cannot do.21 Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no “natural” concepts or categories that are simply “reflected” in language. But Saussure ads to this standpoint something personal: Language plays a crucial role in “constructing reality”. *** Linguistic turn, associated with Saussure's research and, with less perceived, Ludwig Wittgenstein's “language games”, outlined a new way of thinking about language, which showed it primarily as a social phenomenon constituting the world, which deviated from the classic, Enlightenment-based concept of language in which language served only the “technical” role of the cognitive medium, passively reflecting the thoughts or things that the subject learns. This resulted in the development of a number of philosophical concepts in various ways addressing the themes of the language approach so understood. Like de Saussure, a French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was under the influence of Hegel. His epistemological proposals are based on the philosophy of Hegel, who claimed that conceptual cognition should be independent of sensory data, but should reach the permanent, essential features of reality. Lévi-Strauss believed that the human mind works on the fundamental principle of the binary opposition and their combination [the thesis, antithesis, and the synthesis], and that it is this feature of the mind that makes meaning possible. The work of the myth, in his opinion, consists in a specific fraud on the connection of certain fundamental binary oppositions not compatible with those that can be reconciled in order to create the illusion that this fundamental contradiction was resolved. Lévi-Strauss proclaimed the theory that human language contains everything that had in fact been already expressed and had passed onto the cultural property of mankind and what man can express. Language has been understood as a structure embracing all the spiritual possibilities of man, or else his spiritual possibilities are conditioned and marked by the objective function of language. “Linguistics thus presents us with a dialectical and totalizing entity but one

21

Ibidem: 114-116.

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outside [or beneath] consciousness and will. Language, an unreflecting totalization, is human reason that has its reasons and of which man knows nothing.” And if it is objected that it is so only for a subject who internalizes it on the basis of linguistic theory, Lévi-Strauss’s reply is that this way out must be refused, for this subject is one who speaks: “for the same light which reveals the nature of language to him also reveals to him that it was so when he did not know it, for he already made himself understood, and that it will remain so tomorrow without his being aware of it, since his discourse never was and never will be the result of a conscious totalization of linguistic laws. But if, as a speaking subject, man can find his apodictic experience in another totalization, there seems no longer any reason why, as living subject, he should not have access to the same experience in other, not necessarily human, but living beings.”22 Levi-Strauss's work expanded de Saussure's sign and designation beyond the language into other social practices such as kinship, economics, food and myth. All this, he claimed, can be treated as actions in the context of which messages are constructed through a code or pattern that is a rule. This pattern shows how things, at first glance unrelated to each other, in fact, form a coherent whole. The task of anthropology is therefore to be addressed by analyzing this code and illustrating the evolutionary community of code and culture to show that, in principle, the rules of transformation make it possible to derive one system of rules from the other. The overriding Levi-Strauss hypothesis was essentially to show the ultimate reducibility of all cultural practices to one, universal, deep grammar of the mind or grammar of culture, to apprehend culture as an abstraction-idealized patterns that people approach but never fully achieve.23 The overthrow of the constitutive role of the conscious subject has been extended beyond linguistics, into virtually every area of social practice, and with it, the internal cognitive link between the subject and the world has been obliterated. Structuralism was also about the universalism that the humanities sought. It had the task of providing the humanities with a similar epistemological status that the natural sciences enjoyed. Structuralism is one of the most prolific trends in thought in the 20th-century humanities. If, at the beginning, we adopt the date of the Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics issue [1926] and additionally the fact that its continuation is a trend called post-structuralism, it can be said that structuralism has lasted almost the entire century. It is so firmly grounded in philosophy, literature and art that we probably will not get rid of it quickly.

22 23

Lévi-Strauss 1966: 252. Barnard 2016: 238.

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*** Archaeologists under the influence of structuralism claimed that in a material culture, which is nothing but a form of expression of a once-living culture, one could find a universal code or a pattern that governs it. If we want to explain different forms of culture, we need to discover the principles [structures] that govern the creation of cultural phenomena. The most famous example of using this methodology in archaeology is André Leroi-Gourhan. He was interested in the Paleolithic cave art, occurring in the Franco-Cantabrian region, but he was not persuaded by previous interpretations made so far in the spirit of hunting magic. This was a too shallow explanation, not reaching the essence of things, which is why Leroi-Gourhan decided to subject this art to a “scientific” study, that is, first of all, to take into account the statistics. His analysis of prehistoric rock paintings showed its deeper structure, which can be summarized as male-female polarization.24 It turned out that most pictographic characters found in caves could be divided into two categories: •

masculine signs: elongated symbols with pronounced phallic analogies, often similar to javelins, or simply a series of dots on an imaginary line; the simplest representation is a simple dash.

•

female signs: various forms of the so-called vulva and female breasts from the profile; in schematic forms the shape of the oval or parallelogram prevails.

These simplified signs of sexual dimorphism, as interpreted by LeroiGourhan, were then strongly correlated with the next two variables:

24

1.

Arrangement in the cave: 91% of female signs appeared in the central room; while 69% of men's signs at the entrances, side corridors, extended passageways between the rooms and peripheral parts of the cave.

2.

Species diversity of animals: the figure of bison and turd coexisted in central halls with female characters, and these are “lunar animals” with forked corners [the moon is associated

Leroi-Gourhan 1968.

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with the women's menstrual cycle].25 In the periphery of caves with masculine signs, there were animals with branching antlers, for example, reindeer and deer, or with antlers extended upwards [capricorn], and finally no antlers [mammoth, bear, rhinoceros and cat]. In addition, the image of a horse, a male animal, appeared in the central room. Based on Leroi-Gourhan's analysis, it can be assumed that the mind of the primitive man was dominated by the binary structure and the game of opposites: woman-man; life-death; summer-winter etc. The prehistoric art would be in this approach not so much an expression of hunting magic, expressing otherwise human desire to eat, but also, perhaps even more, the existential experience of prehistoric man, the sum of nature observations and the philosophy of life in one. Not without significance for this interpretation is the fact that during this period, people begin to build graves on a regular basis. Later in the development of human culture, such structural games of opposites can also be found and even expanded with new elements, e.g. as it was done by Ian Hodder. In The Domestication of Europe, he deals with the issue of domestication as the formation of a new structure of understanding the Neolithic reality, where the House became the central metaphor, the center of events related to the transformation of hunting [Paleolithic] societies into agricultural [Neolithic] societies. The house was not only a protection against external nature, but also, or perhaps above all, was associated with deeply experienced emotions expressed in the oppositions: nature-culture or wilddomesticated. As a material structure, it was paved and painted, plastered from the outside and functionally divided inside. Death was brought under the floor of the house [the early Neolithic burials were placed under the floors of the houses], which could be an expression of the desire to control it. Wild animals were brought in and “controlled” inside the houses in the form of paintings on the walls; wild plants were also brought and turned into a cultural product as supplies that were collected at home. Hence, Domus, as Hodder writes, has become a conceptual and practical place for processing the wild into the cultural. Domus provided a way to understand the concept of control over the wild and the opposition between culture and nature, social and antisocial. Hodder builds his story based on such structures as: back-front; East-West; dark-light; death-life; wild-domesticated; male-female. This binary game intertwined with each other and is never one-dimensional. For example, in the settlement 25 Wierciński

2004: 191.

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of Çatalhöyük, male burials are associated with hunting and weapons, and the sphere of male activity is still strongly associated with hunting. You can see it on the wall paintings on which the buffalo hunts were presented. In addition, a lot of symbolic murals refer to wild animals [including leopards, wild boars, foxes, vultures and buffalo] and death. But the material appearing in the form of figurines also shows women as related to the wild, as if controlling it. The woman is depicted as sitting on wild animals, her hands resting on their heads as if “reigning” over nature.26 She is shown as controlling, elevated and calm. So in general, the idea is that the symbolism of early Neolithic material is entangled in the celebration and control of the wild, and that this control refers to the social relationship between man and woman, as well as the organization of home space. Male and female intertwined in different configurations, illustrating the desire to control the wild. This symbolic patchwork can theoretically be “read” by taking on the role of a poet rather than a scientist, as Hodder suggests. This “reading” will of course never be final, as we will see in the next chapter. Though the power is invisible and full of terrors27 Is taste a form of violence? “Yes”, says Pierre Bourdieu, describing and analyzing in detail in his over 600 pages of work this strange tool of violence. Taste is the disposition acquired in order to distinguish and judge, or to establish or emphasize differences by determining the distinction. However, taste is a general classification that does not say much. For a deeper understanding of this violence, Bourdieu came up with the concept of habitus. What is habitus? Habitus is a “structuring and structured” principle that generates conduct. Everything that is related to the habitus: individuals internalize body language, gestures, attitudes so strongly that they seem obvious to them, natural and innate. All the dispositions to act, think, perceive and feel in a certain way create a habitus. It is the result of an intercession [through a variety of pedagogical work: “look how beautiful it is”, “do not play with matches” etc.] of objective conditions of existence. Complicated pedagogical work, which coshapes the habitus, thus translates internal structures [personality] into external ones [social structures, class division, social differences]. Therefore, it is strongly associated with the class position; it is a “common denominator” unifying the practice of the same social class or group. The mechanism of habitus leads to the reproduction of social inequalities, basically the whole

Hodder 1991: 11. This is a paraphrased saying of the followers of the Master of Light from the Game of Thrones: “Though the night is black and full of terror.” 26 27

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social structure, allowing it to be treated as obvious, natural and legitimate, and thus serving social illusion.28 The term itself is derived from the Latin habere—to possess. So the habitus is “to have” transformed into “to be”. Its further meaning is “the environment” or “state of habit”, especially the body. Equipped with habitus, social agents [all of us] act spontaneously, according to its structure, without making conscious calculations and choices. Habitus “economizes” the reflections and actions of agents, that is, people acting and thinking in a way to which they do not have full conscious admission, because they are partly determined by the habitus. Even the mental is social, as Bourdieu says in this case. Occupying a specific place in the social space, an agent is never a free subject of their practices. Habitus is something analogous to Noam Chomsky's linguistic competence—the idea that a native speaker has an intuitive “imprinted” model that creates speech acts in their mind.29 According to Bourdieu, social life is filled with fight and domination, which is an obvious reference to Hegel and Marx. Fight and domination, however, is mainly symbolic. Symbolic violence is compulsion, “carried out only through consent, which cannot be dominated by the dominant [and thus consent to dominance], because to wonder about it and think about itself, or more strictly, to consider its relationship with it, they can only use cognitive tools that they have in common with the dominant tools, which, being only the embodied form of the structure of the relationship of domination, show this relation as natural.” Or, in other words, “because the patterns they use to perceive and evaluate themselves or to perceive and evaluate the dominant [high/low, masculine/feminine, white/black] are the product of the embodiment of naturalized classifications the product of which is their social existence.”30 The concept of habitus is first and foremost important for anthropology, which Bourdieu has always been interested in, and especially in the works of Marcel Mauss. Mauss studied the processes of exchange in primitive societies and in the famous essay Die Gabe described as the first the paradoxical logic of the North American Indians’ potlatch. Potlatch is a kind of exchange of gifts, but quite specific, which is why it was discussed extensively in anthropology and ethnology. Mauss described it as a form of exchanging gifts characterized by high violence, exaggeration and the play of antagonisms.31 He also noticed a deeper logic in it, a property based on war [Eigentumskrieg], Bourdieu 1987: 277-286. Barnard 2016: 261. 30 Bourdieu & Wacquant: 2001: 78. 31 Mauss 2010: 51. 28 29

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which in turn influenced an anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, who clarified and highlighted the logic of mutual exchange as the essentially logic of revenge: an eye for an eye. The exchange of gifts is therefore a clear side of aggression—if it were not for this simple form of communication, human societies would live in a state of constant war. In this way, also the exchange of gifts, which is particularly illustrated by potlatch, is like a “pre-economy of economics”, its zero level, i.e. an exchange between two unproductive expenses [it often consisted in destroying gifts]. Potlatch is a prestigious exchange between two individuals with high social status, so it is part of an embodied habitus, as Bourdieu would have said, is a form of good behavior. It is a paradoxical moment in which the mastered goodness and obscene consumption merge, the point at which it is polite to behave rudely.32 So we have two options. We can, for example, use the terms and their meanings given by Bourdieu, e.g. habitus as a tool for analyzing prehistoric communities. But such an approach would deny Bourdieu's own message and have less significance.33 Above all, we should use his sociological theory to delineate the limits of archaeology as a discipline, answering, for example, questions such as: in what conditions archaeology is a legitimate and binding field, what are its cognitive boundaries, what is it? Following this path, we must stop looking at archaeology as an opus operatum, i.e. a finite and separated set of contents, narrations about the past in the form of books, articles and other publications. The past cannot be perceived as a fixed and unchanging set. According to Bourdieu, archaeology must be understood as modus operandi, i.e. as a practice [praxis], and prehistory cannot be separated from this practice because the information is produced as a result of practice. Practice is a kind of medium that co-shapes the transmission of knowledge about the past. We can recall here the famous saying of McLuhan: the medium is the message. So what message is contained in archaeological practice? Bearing in mind that the purity of knowledge has already been questioned in previous chapters, we can go a step further and say that the biggest obstacle archaeology would have to overcome to better understand the past is the archaeology system itself as a science. It is a characteristic paradox that pure and undistorted knowledge of the past would be possible only after the disappearance of those who cultivate it! Bourdieu thus raises the existential problem that we will develop in chapter VII. At this point, it is enough that we rec-

32 33

Žižek 2008: 33. Glorstadt 2000: 189.

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ognize that ultimately we are all people who have their own individual [ontogenetically] and historically constituted passions, ambitions and needs. In order to do archaeology, we are forced to move in a specific field of knowledge production in which competition rules, and the stake is power and money: research grants, university positions, participation in consultative, decisionmaking circles, etc. The archaeological position depends on how many followers the researchers have, and the conditions for the production of knowledge enforce characteristic divisions, for example, into those who quote us and into the rest of the world. Archaeologists, however, must strive to develop a solid critical reflection on the ideological basis of archaeology, or speaking in a philosophical language: the ontological problems of archaeology must be reformulated into epistemological problems. The tool for examining this issue may be, for example, “capital”. The concept of capital is primarily Marxist—it is the possession of material and financial goods. But Bourdieu distinguishes three other forms of capital: cultural, social and symbolic. Each of these forms contains some “wealth”, ensures legitimate exercise of power and obtaining evidence of social recognition. Cultural capital contains all symbolic goods, it is capital “incorporated, incarnate”, or knowledge that creates permanent dispositions of the individual. It manifests itself in the form of competences in some field, correct use of language, familiarity with social conventions, and orientation in the social world. Its derivative is capital institutionalized through social recognition—titles, diplomas, medals. It means state granting of status [master's degree, professor’s, official’s statuses]. Cultural capital is not subject to simple and complete inheritance, it requires an individual effort, long-term work of the agent, aimed at "incorporation", that is internalization of standards and skills. In this process, the social essence of the agent is transformed, their habitus is created, and “to have” is transformed into “to be”. Acquisition of cultural capital requires not only personal work but also time and financial and material capital [educational costs are constantly growing]. Therefore, it is clearly linked to economic capital, it is a manifestation of its conversion—conversion of one currency into another, and thus, it facilitates maintaining social inequalities. In order to present the above thesis, Bourdieu went to the site to collect data, which he then presented in the form of Homo academicus. According to popular opinion, the main task of the modern university is to distinguish the proverbial wheat from the chaff, meaning good students from the bad in the name of objective criteria. Is it?—Bourdieu asks rhetorically. Analyzing the students' grades at the Grand Ecole University in Paris, he took into account the relationship between the assessment and the origin of students and compiled the data into a rather complicated diagram. It turned

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out, of course, that the grades were better if the students came from the elite. But Bourdieu found that the assumption that only students from wealthy families are talented and intelligent is unconvincing. Passing the results of the analysis through the sieve of his theory, he decided that this is rather an illustration of how social differences are transferred to the academic classification. The results of students were rather correlated with cultural capital, and not only with the diligence and talent of individuals. The best students are those whose biography and social background [cultural background] turns out to be the closest to the professor who values them. Therefore, the education system does not compensate for social inequalities, but it duplicates them, and even exacerbates them. Universities, instead of promoting education on an equal basis, leveling social differences, strengthen them. The radical supplement to such understood philosophy would be Jacques Lacan, who introduced the notion of “university discourse”. The role of the professor in the lecture hall is, according to Lacan, reduced to the medium of transmission of universally recognized knowledge, which in advance provides its position. Knowledge in this sense becomes an aim in itself; it is what justifies academic activity, in the face of which the student has the right to be constantly frustrated. Lacan claims that what tortures students is not that the knowledge they give is chaotic [on the contrary, it is often solid], but that it is the only thing they can do; they can only interlace themselves in the discourse of their teachers and thus serve as both means of production and surplus value of the university. In other words, they are not subjects. Students are exploited in the sense that they are forced to reproduce exactly the form of action that is responsible for their exploitation. Education presupposes a subject who does not know: “The pupil is in the position of the subject supposed not to know.”34 The final message of the professor, according to Lacan, is therefore: “Do not think, listen to your superiors, and you will go out well.” The social capital is also important. This is the whole of relations, contacts, ties, friendships and obligations, whose size and intensity allow the agent to act in the social space. This belongs to different groups of “mutual admiration” and a lasting network of relationships in which the subject is involved. Social capital is directly related to cultural and economic capital; it strengthens effectiveness. The social investment strategies associated with them, which the subject uses consciously or not, facilitate gaining material and symbolic benefits. Strengthening ties takes place through meetings, parties, evenings, vernissages, selected schools, sports practices, and scientific conferences. None of the chosen environment is present at any of these meetings, 34

Salecl 1994: 164.

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scientific or social. Social inclusion of some means at the same time the exclusion of others.35 Bourdieu used the phrase “social alchemy” to write about phenomena described by his theory. The social world is enchanted, says this sociologist and philosopher, and people usually do not recognize correctly the social base, the foundation on which the game is played. In this view, Marx's notions of false consciousness and fetishism are echoed. People believe that a product, book or article in a prestigious scientific journal is a product of human labor created in the conditions of free competition and unrestrained imagination. In fact, we are dealing here with something completely opposite, and the possibilities of penetrating this phenomenon are very limited. In a word: as in the past, the feudal peasant believed that the aristocrats are by nature better and created to rule the world, today we believe that capitalism produces fair and equal access to wealth depending on the contribution of their own work, talent, entrepreneurship, knowledge, etc. It is the same as with science, to the extent we have seen that even the scientists themselves believe that their discipline develops, as capitalism, thanks to free competition—is based on rational arguments and reason. This claim allows them, above all, to strengthen themselves in the belief that they only attained the positions they hold, thanks to hard work and talent, forgetting about the modus operandi, the system of specific selection that led to them being scientists. *** I particularly remember here the film The Great Beauty of Paolo Sorrentino. It is a nostalgic story about the contemporary intellectual elites of the big city with a clear reference to Fellini's work. The protagonist of the film is Jeb Gambardella, a handsome, charming, but ageing writer who already has the best years behind. He wrote one good book in his life and since then he has not returned to his work. It can be said that he is more consistent than Wittgenstein, who, however, broke his silence after 10 years. Jeb, on the other hand, decided to become an ironic aesthetist. He dresses exquisitely, he wears colorful jackets with light trousers, and for smooth, bright suits [when he is going for a walk in Rome or for another party] patterned shirts. Currently, he works not in very demanding but profitable journalism, he is a frequent guest of salons and he goes to bed every morning in his beautiful, spacious apartment with a terrace overlooking the Colosseum.

35

Matuchniak-Krasuska 2010: 37.

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During regular social gatherings, friends and acquaintances of Gambardella, who all are successful people, gossip and talk about more or less important things that they do not really care about. At one such meeting, however, an unwelcome exchange of views on important subjects is provoked. Stefania, who is also a writer, embarrasses everyone when talking about her involvement in work, family and social life. She shows her writing vocation, which has always been useful in a just social cause [she has written 11 novels since her studies], with deep conviction as to the cases in which she participated [runs a TV program], devoted to bringing up children, etc. Stefania as she claims, must be honest because everything she has achieved is the result of hard work, dedication to the cause and personal talent. Hearing all this, Gambardella responds to Stefania: “You put forth harsh, merciless judgments, behind which there is weakness, a feeling of maladjustment, and above all a whole pack of lies. [...] Unlike you, instead of lying, we talk nonsense. About everything and nothing. [...] You wrote the party's story because you were the mistress of its leader. 11 of your published novels subsidized by the party are rubbish, and their presentation was recorded only by the party media. As for children, you never spend time with them, even on holidays, the butler, cook and three babysitters take care of them all the time, children are taken to school by the driver. When and how is your sacrifice manifested?” And then Gambardella gives her some advice: “Instead of playing better, and treating us with contempt, show your feelings towards us. We are all on the brink of despair, the only thing left is to keep company and have fun. Am I wrong?” Gambardella is not wrong! Taking Stefania to task, he speaks in the language of the American philosopher Richard Rorty, who claims that if any moral progress exists, it should be identified rather with the expansion of the area of human solidarity when it comes to suffering and humiliation. We will develop this thread in chapter VI, while in this place, we can conclude that more than one archaeologist would use a sincere conversation with Gambardella, which would be another, after Wittgenstein's proposal, a kind of philosophical therapy.36

36

Gosden 1994: 57.

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Science has functioned as a social force and an ideological institution since the beginning. Its function was to provide certainty, to be a clear reference point on which one can rely. Again, a comparison with the capitalist system of social advancement is made: it is claimed that hard work guarantees material success, while it is exactly the opposite—most of the assets are inherited and we approach the realities of Balzac's novel, when almost all property resources were the result of inheritance, not work [hard work can eventually achieve a low level of affluence].37 Perhaps it still pays to work hard [but as Thomas Piketty shows—less and less, however, people will still live with images of the past for some time], but the fact of the interpenetration of various forms of capital [social, cultural and economic] is hardly visible in the general area of communication, especially in public media. Only when the public learns about the connections between the world of politics and business is it usually done in the context of crime or scandal, while studying Bourdieu, we can assume that this is the norm. And how about science? The suggestion of a philosopher and sociologist says that it is similar. Bourdieu combats the illusion and ideology of self-creation [I created everything with my own hands], looks at the writer, scientist, composer as an “apparent creator” and asks the question: who created this creator? He proves that the artist creating a work of art, a scientist researching a fragment of reality, is himself created within the production field by those who “discovered” and “consecrated” him: teachers, tutors, publishers, promoters of doctoral theses, friends, etc. The essence of Bourdieu's thoughts is reflected in the joke that Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek quotes: at the factory, there was a rumor that a worker was stealing so every day a wheelbarrow which was in front of him was checked carefully, but nothing suspicious was found. It turned out, however, that the worker was stealing wheelbarrows. This joke presents the paradox of archaeology. Archaeologists are employees of a factory—it seems to them that they produce knowledge about the past; they try to track down the essence of things, focusing on the objects of their research [artefacts, eco-facts, sources, processes, etc.]. The production of knowledge is in full swing, though hardly anyone draws attention to the fact that this knowledge is “transported” in a characteristic way [on the proverbial wheelbarrow, for example, such as Gambardella talks about]. We clearly have implications for seeing only bricks, cement, tools, etc., if we do not include wheelbarrows in our considerations, we will live in the mistaken belief that we produce pure knowledge. Not noticing the wheelbarrow is blindness at your own request. In short, those who so eagerly claim that in archaeology [and perhaps in the entirety of science]

37

Piketty 2015: 466-469.

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rationality, hard work, talent and reason are decisive, they thus shape the form of the ideological ennoblement of their own position or simply keep silent about the fact that they achieved this position with the help of different methods. So what should archaeology be according to Bourdieu? It should be the archaeology of saying “no”. Archaeology should say “no” to the common truths of the social ideology of competition. Archaeology should analyze the field of its own action, subject it to control by constantly analyzing archaeological praxis. If archaeologists are scientists who have some intellectual potential, they should make real use of it! Meanwhile, it usually happens as Nietzsche put it: “Knowledge kills action, action requires the veil of illusion”. The holders of this highest knowledge are, surprisingly, the most deprived of their power to act.38 *** The issues concerning this chapter were illustrated in one of the cult films of the eighties—They Live [1988], in which director John Carpenter tells the story of a certain John Nada. Nada in Spanish means “nothing”—a pure subject devoid of any substantial content. In the film, he is a homeless worker living in Los Angeles who, moving around aimlessly, enters an abandoned church one day and finds a strange box full of sunglasses. When he puts his glasses on the street, he discovers something even stranger: glasses work like a radical critique of ideology. They allow you to see a real camouflaged message in the form of propaganda, advertising, public information, etc. When John Nada sees a huge advertising banner saying “treat yourself a holiday of life”, after putting on the glasses he notices only a gray inscription on a white background: BUY! When he reads a newspaper, he can see the sentence: MARRY AND REPRODUCE! A look at the other side: OBEY! When he looks at money that he spends at the newsagent’s he can see: THIS IS YOUR GOD!39 Speaking of money, what Nada sees when giving the dollar to the newsagent is the main thesis of the monumental work of Georg Simmel Philosophie des Geldes. According to Simmel, money now becomes God because it assumes the role of the absolute means serving the absolute goal [we will develop this idea in chapter VI]. As for minor gods sending subliminal messages, once network users who are also watching good films have posted a characteristic

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Glorstadt 2000: 194. Fiennes 2012.

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meme in the network about the presentation of a new Apple product. On a big screen behind Steve Jobs there was a phrase: YOU NEED THIS! Slavoj Žižek generally negates the thesis that we live in a post-ideological society. If ideology is understood as a requirement of the subject's obedience to a specific duty or task, today the social authority turns to us not as entities that should perform their duties, but as subjects for whom pleasure is the most important. Make your full potential! Be yourself! Live a satisfying life! It's just today that this pleasure has become a new duty. People who do not feel it are ideologically suspicious. Therefore, says Žižek, if we were to wear John Nada's glasses, we would see dictatorship in democracy, an invisible order that sustains our overt freedom.40 Common sense tells us that ideology is something that smudges and mixes the right view of things, it should be glasses that distort the picture. And criticism of ideology should be the opposite, i.e. removing glasses, to finally see how things really are. As the movie They Live shows, such thinking is wrong. Ideology is not imposed, but it is a spontaneous way in which we communicate with the social world and how we understand its meaning, etc. In a way, we find pleasure in ideology. It is painful to go beyond it, it is an unpleasant experience that must be imposed by force. This is perfectly illustrated by the scene in which John Nada tries to force his friend Frank Armitage to put on the glasses. This is actually the strangest scene in the film, in which the fight of fists takes about 10 minutes! Why is Frank so vehemently opposed to wearing ordinary glasses? Perhaps he suspects that he spontaneously lives in a lie, that the glasses will make him see the truth, and this truth is painful and can ruin his illusions. This is a paradox that we must accept—you must be released by force! If you simply trust your common sense in the assessment of reality, you will never be free. This is exactly what ideology is all about, at least in today's “enlightened” times, says Žižek. In ideology, we do not run away from reality into an ideological illusion. Ideology is itself a phantasmatic constructed reality in which we escape from the horror of the traumatic Real, meaning meaningless [non-symbolizable] processes of appearance and disintegration, life and death.41 However, the problem may be that only John Nada, that “pure subject”, is able to perceive the ideological illusion. After all, John Nada is a fantastic figure, invented by the author of a certain text. If we put on glasses that showed the truth, we would probably have to commit suicide, because ideologies—a

40 41

Ibidem. Žižek 1991: 51.

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specific falsehood that we take at face value is what keeps us alive, allows us to function in society. This situation was foreseen by Hegel, because, according to him, truth and falsehood are not firm opposites; contradiction is not only excluded from reality, but is its deepest nature.42 During the fight with Frank, John presents him with an alternative: “Either he puts on those damned glasses or he will eat trash” [the fight takes place in a gate filled with trash containers]. John ultimately manages to persuade his friend to put on his glasses, so he does not have to eat trash. But what about us, ordinary citizens? We eat from this trash can all the time! The name of this can is ideology. The power of ideology, however, means that we do not see what we eat. We eat rubbish, relishing their taste and deliberating what nutritional values we provide. “We do indeed seem duped by our own ideologies, caught passively within systems of ideas that we cannot change, because we do not even see them.”43 It is not only reality that enslaves us, the tragedy of our position is perhaps the fact that when we are among ideologies, at the moment when we think that we managed to escape our dreams, then we participate in its fullness, points Žižek. Our rationality of thoughts and actions, the realization of life's desires and dreams—everything that also allows us to do archaeology, which is for many a lifetime passion without which they would not know what to do. If we were to be snatched out of archaeology, the whole world would collapse, fall into dust. This is also the ideology—you should not saw off the branch on which you are sitting. Think about Charlie and the beautiful florist from the City Lights. The film ends when the uncomfortable truth is revealed [he is not a millionaire but a rag-boy], but in fact the girl has no choice but to accept this arrangement. In the end, it was his money that sustained her dreams and now she can not reject it just like that. The rule of discourse Knowledge is all that emerges according to the given discursive rules, says Foucault. Scientists operate in a certain "field of knowledge", given discursive rules allow them to judge something as real or false. Foucault researches the scientific methodology, and even more broadly: he examines the conditions for the possibility of formulating statements that are considered scientific. These collections of the conditions of possibilities that occur in a given era are called epistemes. Episteme is another term for “formation of knowledge” that is the method of describing and classifying the world that is obligatory for a

42 Tatarkiewicz 43

1990: 214. Hodder 1995: 123.

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given epoch, which can again be treated as a slightly different definition of Kuhn's paradigm. An episteme, however, underlines the oppression resulting from the application of the rules of classification and description. For example, the renaissance episteme was governed by various similarities [correspondence, emulation, analogy and sympathy], which were the cognitive key in the system of knowledge of that time. To paraphrase Max Weber, this period can be regarded as disenchanted, i.e. one in which the formation of knowledge was ruled by broadly understood magical thinking. In the world, there was an immanent order [transcendent, however, given by God], and only the acumen and the ability to read from the book of nature were needed to know the truth. Cognition was a great hermeneutic task, an attempt to understand the hidden relations that interweave together all the beings and events of the earthly world. Bestiaries classified the wonders of this world, which, however monstrous, had always been from this world, belonged to the order of things. For this reason, in the Renaissance, according to Foucault, there was no concept of madness as a denial of reason. The reason itself as the ordering experience category characteristic of the next era was not present yet.44 Beginning in the 17th century, the Renaissance episteme transforms into a completely new discursive formation, and thus a radically new world is emerging. This moment is marked by such personalities as Francis Bacon and Descartes. It is Descartes and Bacon, according to Foucault, who lay the foundations for a new, certain and obvious method. The first wanted to capture the world in one axiom, and the other indicated how to reach true knowledge through the inductive path. At the same time, thanks to Galileo, mathematics has become the subtle language of the world, and cognition has evolved from interpretation into mathesis universalis, which uses only measurable and quantitative values. Knowledge becomes the setting of the order of things; in nature, the simplest elements should be found, and comparisons must be established by way of comparison. The next step is to capture the construction scheme, based on which the simple elements merge into complex ones. The idea of the laws of nature is born, the image of which is, even if only a metaphorical, a world-machine. If we could stop at the above description, one could say that Foucault simply looked into the Wittgestein’s Investigations, the idea of Kuhn's paradigm, and developed it creatively. And yet Foucault adds the concept of power to it. He always describes the episteme, especially the one in the twentieth century, as a tool for exercising power, a social oppression that reproduces itself. He

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Foulcault 2006: 141-147.

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writes about social reality as a network of power-knowledge relations, and, as he emphasizes, these relations are not mysterious constructions hovering over society—they are social relations: “We should admit rather that power produces knowledge [and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful]; that power and knowledge imply one another; that there is neither power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.”45 According to the French philosopher, the tangles of power-knowledge are at the same time “regimes of truth”, and every multiplication of truths, the multiplication of discourses is the same as the intensification of power. For power has historically changed its face, it is becoming more and more subtle. You can imagine it in the following way: the majority of society has no contact with the theoretical foundations of discourse, in which people live and communicate. As a result, we get the world on a tray, given during school education, at work, in the family, on television, etc. We do not know the world, but rather, we are taught to talk about it in a certain way [e.g. GDP growth is the only remedy for all evil]. School is not a place where we learn anything beyond the superficial use of discourse, that is, describing the world with the use of the existing categories. That is why modern school is not so far from the fantastic vision of J.K. Rowling, where the hero—Harry Potter learns magic spells with which he can deal with life. Harry Potter reflects the reality of the fantasy of a contemporary school, university etc. showing the entire ideological additions blocking access to the only truth, which is the equation: education = power. When we complete education, we are expected to control the reality by performing the “spells” we have learned at school. You have the X problem in front of you. You must perform the “X!” spell. Everyone is subjected to this allembracing structured sphere of action and speech. It should be noted, however, that in Foucault's theory, power is not only a negative repression, but it produces positive effects. It works by encouraging, facilitating, offering something in the field of possibilities, developing needs [for example, seeking opinions], etc. Interestingly, Foucault used “archaeology” to present his ideas. Books, thanks to which he gained recognition, not only among the specialist group, include The Archaeology of Knowledge and Words and Things. Archaeology of humanities. As part of the archaeology understood in this way, Foucault investigates the history of various formations of knowledge: for example, the history of humanities, medicine or psychiatry “digging through the layers” of 45

Foucault 1995: 27.

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history and carefully extracting “objects” hidden in it. He does not know what these objects are, they are not described, they do not have dates or names on them, he does not know if they are all objects, or they are all from one era and culture. His task is to: extract them, carefully describe them and make a certain interpretation of the whole material collected in a given area. For example, Foucault takes 17th- and 18th-century texts related to natural history, examines them in detail, searches for common points: categories they use, assumptions on which they are based. Then he reaches for 19th-century texts related to biology and does the same. And then extracts the differences between natural history and biology, shows that they are not continuous, that they are two different structures, between which there is no accumulation of knowledge, but a certain theoretical revolution [see Thomas Kuhn]. Foucault’s favorite example was medicine. The socialization of society should be understood as a series of processes. In the first phase, the “anatomy of the body, which is a disciplinary technique”, was created more or less at the beginning of the 17th century. On the other hand, the widespread medicalization of modern society is the result of the functioning of the change of power, which appears in the second half of the 18th century and should be described as biopower [or the population biopolitics]. It is woven into state mechanisms. Foucault believes that the old type of power turned out to be ineffective in the period of demographic explosion and industrialization, while bio-power rules the masses: it deals with the proportion of births and mortality, fertility rates, epidemic diseases, old age, accidents, disability, population environment [e.g. problem of cities and epidemiogenic environments]. The birth of bio-power leads to the emergence of medicine, the main function of which is to ensure public hygiene, with organisms that coordinate treatment methods, with centralization of information, with the normalization of knowledge, and with a campaign to teach hygiene and the medicalization of the population. Biopolitics uses statistical and demographic surveys. At the same time, birth policy and their control are being created, disease becomes a population phenomenon, and state-owned institutions of care and insurance are born. According to Michel Foucault, it is the bio-power that facilitates the expansion of racism. The use of biological theory of evolution had allowed the validation of the elimination of entire populations. It is here that for the first time in history the biological element had been reflected in politics. State racism would not have such a range if it were not for “bio-power networks”. In addition, it was an essential element of the development of capitalism, because it could only survive at the price of “pushing the bodies into a manufacturing apparatus and adjusting population phenomena to economic processes”. Is it not obvious, therefore, that the largest funds are spent on diseases of the rich? Medicine is thus subjected to the rules of capitalist production, and

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doctors often apply illnesses to iatrogenic diseases, i.e. diseases caused by medical interactions-production and delivery of medical care produces more discomfort than relief. One can also mention the negative impact of more and more common psychotropic and antidepressant drugs, the use of which increases the dependence and sense of loss of individuals in the social world.46 The book [based on which the film with the same title was made] of DołęgaMostowicz, Znachor [The Quack], tells us that medicine = power. The title character, Rafał Wilczur, is a well-known surgeon, master and innovator in his profession and owner of a famous clinic. He has a beautiful, much younger wife and a beloved daughter. A real idyll! However, on the day of the next wedding anniversary, the wife disappears with her lover, taking her daughter with her. The devastated professor, after many hours of despairing in suspicious company, is assaulted and beaten, and as a result, loses his memory. There is a timeshift and we meet a famous surgeon as a healer with the assumed name of Antoni Kosiba. After years of wandering, he found a job and shelter with a miller in a small village in eastern Poland. It turned out that he can heal, although he does not know where he has such knowledge from. It is so effective that he was hailed as the best healer in the area. He has many patients. A healer is a doctor who has knowledge, although he does not remember about its sources and origins. He forgot about its sources, or forgot about the authority of a doctor which, in normal circumstances, is inseparably connected. It turns out, however, that such a doctor is not only effective, but also he is respected and esteemed—he is what the doctor in principle has ceased to be today, locking himself in a highly technical laboratory. It exercises its power externally; it has a form of dictate, not dialogue. Recent research on the healing process confirms that some doctors themselves have a very strong influence on patients regardless of the treatment they use. It turns out that the form of therapy is practically irrelevant, and everything depends mainly on the personality of the therapist. Doctors who devote time to patients, carefully listen to them and thus create an atmosphere of trust, significantly enhance the effectiveness of treatment. But there are also so-called super-healers, i.e. those doctors who exert a positive influence on patients, even when they dismiss them quickly and speak little. In short, “the good ones succeed with every method, not good ones—with none.”47 The Quack shows two sides of medicine. On the one hand, there is a whole apparatus of medical authority [files, laboratories, hospitals, technician],

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Bińczyk 2002: 181-193. Schnabel 2008: 63.

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which heals to the same extent, to which it kills. On the other hand, there is a man, compassion and skills that can help and give hope, while medical procedures and techniques do not. One of the main themes of the film is the operation Kosiba performs on the son of a miller. The boy suffered an unfortunate fall—he broke both legs that had grown wrong, but in the local hospital, they wash their hands from further treatment, because there is no prognosis to improve his health. The healer, however, decides to perform the second operation in primitive conditions. In the first place, we are inclined to recognize that he is doing it because his medical knowledge, even if unconscious, exceeds the knowledge of the hospital doctor, but this is only a part of the truth. He can do it because he is not limited by classifications and procedures of modern medicine, which in a purely calculative way, some patients condemn to suffering and death [more complicated cases]. Modern medicine is a zero-sum game, so that someone can live, someone else has to die [e.g. transplantology], and the fact, as is shown in the play of Mark St. Germain The God Commitee, that this god is guided by the most terrestrial financial benefit, is a perverse, albeit correct, interpretation of Simmel's thesis about equality between god and money. The discourses of psychology and psychiatry, the second favorite topic of the French philosopher, also serve the practice of power, and in fact, psychiatry has much in common with the punishment and prison management system. Historically, the prison since the beginning of its inception was supposed to be a place for shaping individuals, and not just for the appropriate punishment. As part of both psychiatry and prison, not only the act is judged, but by introducing “mitigating circumstances” and the expert system the assessment of normality is introduced, which provides for the possibility of correction, examines the character, psyche and childhood of the delinquent. Procedures for assessing madness since the beginning have included both the possibility of imprisonment and the possibility of using medical techniques: if not a psychiatric hospital, then at least a curator.48 This new technology of power also applies a kind of grace [inherited from the enlightened king], if only because psychological disorders are the justification for the mildness of punishment, on the other hand, the whole psychological-psychiatric discourse is formed that sets psychological and social norms. In this context, the account of a British citizen, of which I found a note in an old newspaper, is interesting. He calculated that in the year 2139, there will be only crazy people in the world. His calculations are based on statistical data. In 1858, there was one madman in 535 healthy individuals, in 1897 one madman in 312 48

Foucault 2006: 416

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healthy people; then this relationship develops as follows: in 1926 – 1: 150, in 1977 – 1: 100. In the end, we get a result saying that in 2139, the whole world will consist of madmen. The account seems ridiculous and detached from reality, but it illustrates the basic thesis of Foucault. It is not about realizing that everyone will be crazy [depression, sleep disorders, neurosis, bipolar disorder, recurrent anxiety, etc.], the reality is, this is a superficial truth about our development, which everyone predicts. Foucault, after all, suggests that contemporary knowledge about a human being is derived from the institution of a psychiatric hospital and prison. Perhaps these institutions, next to the school and military barracks, simply express the most complete ways of creating a modern subject? For example, it can be argued after Bauman that all these institutions were first and foremost “order factories”, they replaced the earlier “dispersed surveillance”, maintaining the “mini-orders of neighborhood communities”. The new order created in this way was to protect [similarly as no longer existing neighbor communities] above all against uncertainty. The essence and ideal structure of all these institutions was, according to Foucault, Bentham’s Panopticon. To create this new order, all you needed was “strong guard, solid walls, loneliness, work and training obligations”, you must “punish the persecutors, take care of the mad, dispose of suspects, make the idle work, take care of the powerless, cure the sick, train people willing to work in any industry and bring up a new breed of educated people.”49 So the point is that sooner or later everyone will be subject to the Eye of Big Brother, that everyone will have a file in the Citizenship Control System [that is probably the case now]. For the author, the supervision and punishment of prison discipline and psychiatric therapy are only a continuation of what is happening in other more common areas, as we are all under the mechanisms of modern control. Why nobody protests? Because we are convinced of their necessity. This is another example of the ideological operation that allows us to justify predetermined theses that a global control system is needed and necessary to defend our democratic or civilizational values. Isn’t the example of medicine and psychiatry also an example of archaeology? In the same way that medicine gained its knowledge and power through the observation of pathology, illness and death, archaeology gained its way through the observation of forgotten graves, refuse and previously incomprehensible architectural constructions. And, like medicine, archaeology is also an internal policy regarding who should and how to deal with monuments. And just as medicine can be analyzed from the perspective of the historical development of the penalization of society, criminology and psychiatry, the same perspective can be applied to archaeology as I will show in the last chapter.

49

Kapusta 1999: 122.

Chapter 5

Texts and contexts In Foucault’s terminology, discourse is also a kind of field of activity in which texts [including scientific ones] are produced according to specific, imposed rules. The question is: what do the texts say [except that they teach how to proceed]. Let's first consider the classic Foucault case: a pipe [Fig. 1]. Such a pipe can of course be an archaeological artefact, a monument. He uses a drawing by the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte, the picture of a pipe and a signature: it is not a pipe. What's going on here?

Figure 1. An image of a pipe (after René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images).

In this way Foucault wants to demonstrate the fundamental gap between the material world and word and language [compare with Korzybski's “The word is not the thing” and “The map is not the territory”], or speaking the language of a structuralist: between a significant [word] and marked [thing]. What is the relationship? We have 4 options: 1.

This is not a pipe but a pipe figure,

2.

This is not a pipe but a statement saying that it is not a pipe,

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3.

The phrase “this is not a pipe” is not a pipe,

4.

In the sentence “it's not a pipe” THIS is not a pipe: a picture, a written sentence, a pipe figure—all this is not a pipe.

Playing with the interpretation of Magritte's image is only meant to demonstrate that at no point does the picture combine with the thing. It is not about the words that are not perfect, but rather about the fact that we try in vain to describe what we see. Perhaps Foucault's arguments may seem obvious to us and somehow banal, but professionally we still forget about it when we write about prehistory and artefacts. We forget that meaning derives from the syntax of sentences [Saussure] and not through a transparent relationship of language to the world. Archaeologists should understand that they are the ONES who write texts, and the way they do, transmit and communicate at the same time as many other content, as many objects are discussed and illustrated. In other words, in describing material culture, we ourselves “produce” objects of discourse—we are not dealing with Real in any transparent way. The illustration is not the artefact itself, but one of many interpretations that we must take to be able to speak at all. Because we forget that our words and descriptions are interpretations, we suppress this fact, we treat them as the essence of the thing we look at. This is firstly related to evolution. Things appearing before the eyes of our ancestors were something very important in the sense that they were either a potential food or a deadly enemy that wants to eat us. Distinguishing these two things was a matter of life or death. There was no time for discussion whether the image is only an interpretation and how much we can trust the senses. It was necessary to make a quick decision: fight or run away? The echo of this way of seeing treats these interpretations in a “deadly serious” way. Today, however, we do not have to buck up. We can afford to think and mix meanings, which, as anthropologists say, appeared in the modern human brain about 100,000 years ago and has been responsible for the development of culture. Then the areas of knowledge of tools, social intelligence and language merged, allowing, for example, that a given animal could be, at the same time, a meal, a valued decoration or element of a joke.1 In this way, a foundation for mischiefs like “this is not a pipe” placed under the illustration of a pipe was created. This is a kind of paradox in the type of those we discussed in chapter III, where, as we remember, they all boiled down to one sentence: “this sentence is false.” Can a sentence that is correctly written, understandable for everyone, say that it is not correct?

1

Mithen 1996: 214.

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In a sense, the sentences of this type, and in this way all the sentences we say, reveal a certain mysterious incompatibility, inadequacy, a lack of identity with reality. The texts and illustrations we produce turn out to illustrate a more discordant, some fundamental, though at first glance, difficult to see, difference between what is presented and what exists. Unless even what exists [because something exists] is itself a source of confusion, a source of this ambiguity, incompatibility and difference? This is a serious challenge that we will come back to in this chapter. Consider now what Magritte's painting says and add a historical perspective to it, and each archaeological claim will take on a different color. Consider, for example, the once heated discussion about wheeled transport in the European Eneolithic. This theory has as many supporters as opponents. One of the main arguments of the supporters' camp is the depiction of carts in the form of rock carvings on clay pots. A very important and at the same time famous evidence in this group is a drawing on a vase from Bronocice in Poland, where the body of the wagon and the central draught-pole are shown in a plan view, but the four wheels are pictured full-face by round impressions.2 On such a four-wheeled cart, there is a fifth wheel, called jokingly the “spare wheel”, which is interpreted as a “holy object.”3 According to the discoverers, the cart from the Bronocice vase can be seen in a specific narrative composed of the following elements: forest [tree]-cart-fields-[or houses]-roads-river-water. On the one hand, the discoverers on of the is unique Eneolithic vase find that it is a narrative that is difficult to understand, but they claim on the other hand that there is no doubt that it contains information about things and matters related to the everyday life of the population and that the scene performance is “the oldest unambiguous proof of using a cart discovered so far in the Old World—from the Atlantic coast to Central Asia.”4 Well, the vase from Bronocice can actually be so old, but isn’t interpreting it as “unambiguous proof” just as brave as a wishful conclusion? Let us take a look at the engraving [Fig. 2], which presents this evidence [from the perspective of a pipe]. The pipe is a real thing when we can take it in our hand, put in it tobacco and light it. And whether you can travel with a Bronocice wagon on a journey, can you transport anything with it? Pipe and cart are paintings, which are more in the sphere of stories and poetry. Is anyone who has drawn a pipe or a cart aware of what these items are designed for? Not necessarily, although such an imagination imposes itself—if someone

Kruk & Milisauskas 1982: 141-144. et al. 1999: 784. 4 Kruk & Milisauskas 1999: 169. 2

3 Bakker

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paints or makes a cart out of clay, it is assumed that they have an idea about a given thing. There is therefore a double cunning in the image. The caption under the image prompts us to reflect on the word-object relationship, especially when we deal with archaeology.

Figure 2. The archaeological “treachery of images” (various authors).

According to Foucault, the text is neither a direct expression of reality nor completely separated from it, which distinguishes Foucault from such philosophers as Derrida or Baudrillard, who completely deny the possibility of access to the real world, as we will see below. For Foucault, however, the meaning of the text in the sense of our writing about the past is twofold. It is its organization and syntax as well as its relation to the world. These two aspects of shaping the meaning in the texts cannot be separated, they are contained one in another and they help each other form one another, and the meaning

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of material culture is only shaped in our texts.5 This should not be understood as a denial that material culture does not exist outside our thoughts, except the language of the text we write, but only that it could not be constituted without our interference and without our interpretation. The material culture is constituted by our discourse, its meaning for us only exists in our narrative about it. How to apply it practically? Christopher Tilley gives quite a radical and peculiar proposition. Analyzing archaeological texts, the necessary introduction must be an attempt to create a personal distance. We should try to read a contemporary text as if it were written, e.g. in 1066. In other words, to take a text or a series of texts seriously, first of all, we must treat them as a joke and laugh at their attempts to represent material culture. In many cases, it will be difficult, we can feel strange trying to laugh at something that has not been written to make us laugh, but it's worth trying. The distance that we create by ridiculing “taking material culture seriously”, which the text presents, should have a catharsis effect. Then we should look at the text from the perspective of the rarity principle. Why is it so that considering the immeasurable number of aspects of material culture that can be discussed, only a very limited spectrum of theorems, observations, theories reproduced only in different ways and repeated over and over again are only biased? [e.g.: neolithization: diffusion vs. autonomous development or ecologism vs. cognitivism, constant questions about genesis]. Now we can begin to analyze texts in archaeology—sets of claims made according to specific principles and conceptual categories. We can analyze the regularities governing the diffusion of these texts, but not the psyche of individual authors, because we do not want to reduce the texts to individual efflorescence of consciousness. In addition, we can analyze the political and social conditions of production of particular versions of the material culture [this one and not the other] contained in these texts. We can ask what relationships exist between the text and the social conditions of its production. We must also make an analysis between archaeological knowledge and power, both within the academic community and outside. We need to understand the way archaeology creates its own discourses. For archaeological evidence is constantly constituted by what is written about it, what is called, classified, divided into segments and problems to be recognized, and by the way in which these segments are correlated with each other, described, understood, evaluated and explained. Testimonies exist only in the space of discourse that deals with them. They are actively produced, they do not exist objectively; they only

5 Tilley

1990: 332.

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exist through the medium of their subjective creation.6 So let the archaeological jokes have us in stitches! The problem, however, is serious because, as the literary example shows, reading texts is not just a matter of forced sense of humor and eccentric analysis. This problem can, in extreme cases, impose the question of who reads and who is read. As we shall see, the proposal to treat material culture as an analogy of the text goes even further than Wittgenstein's “language game”, because it suggests in an extreme case that neither the author nor the reader exist. What exists then? *** Philip K. Dick presents the alternative vision of the world in The Man in the High Castle. The story takes place in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, which lasted from 1939-1947 and ended with the victory of the Axis countries. The United States was divided into occupation zones between Germany and Japan, which created the Pacific States of America in the West. The eastern part of the country, separated from the Japanese zone of the Rocky Mountains, went under the control of Nazi Germany controlling the puppet government. However, this is not all. To widen Lebensraum, the Nazis colonized Mars and drained the Mediterranean Sea, transforming it into a gigantic farmland. The era of supernatural rule, the thousand-year Reich had become a reality and had entered a period of rational management of the world. The natural element of this reality, however, remained the Nazi ideology associated with the persecution of Jews and the treatment of Slavs as sub-humans. A system of terror would work like a well-oiled machine if there were no cold war between the allies. In addition, the Reich is torn by internal conflicts; NSDAP divided into competitive factions. After the death of Chancellor Martin Bormann, the successor of the late Hitler who died of syphilis, Goebbels occupies the role of the Führer, which becomes the source of further divisions. This is where the characters in Dick's book live. But it is the real picture? An important reference for the characters from The Man in The High Castle is another novel, by a man named Hawthorne Abendsen, whose title is The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Abendsen described in it a completely different vision of the world in which the Allies bear victory over the Axis. A book with such content is not welcomed in a totalitarian world, the existence of which

6

Ibidem: 336.

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is called into question and used for sterile speculation. For this reason, the Germans awarded the prize for Hawthorne's head and pulled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy onto the index of forbidden books. An alternative novel, however, does not represent reality identical with “our”, “real” world—it presents realities in which the Allies win the war, after which the United States and the United Kingdom divide the world [like Japan and Germany in the real world] but then they get into a cold war for global hegemony. Ultimately, the British win and become the only superpower in the world [we can laugh at it during Brexit!]. So we have a book in the book, which forces the characters of the first book to act and speculate about the existence of another world. Generally, everyone, regardless of which side of the conflict they are at, somehow question the reality of the “first book”, meaning what they see and ask questions about what is real and what is only an illusion. The alternative world from the novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is not only a kind of consolation for the heroes of The Man in the High Castle, giving hope that they are somehow free, but it is also a source of traditional fantasies in the style of “what if…” Juliana Frink, one of the main characters, senses that the plot of Hawthorne Abendsen's novel may be as real as the surrounding world of The Man In The High Castle. With the development of the plot, she is more and more concerned about the world around her. She decides to find the author of this alternative, forbidden text. “What did Abendsen really want to say?” Juliana asks herself. “He didn’t mean his imaginary world [...]. He told us about our own world, she thought as she unlocked the door to her motel room. This, what's around us now […]. He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.”7 Another important factor shaping the structure of the novel is the I-Cing book, the canonical book of Taoism and Confucianism. The influence of this classical Chinese text, touching cosmological and philosophical issues on the genesis of the novel, cannot be overestimated. The book can be contacted by a proper reading of hexagrams that serve as tools for capturing the forces forming a moment in the universe. The correct interpretation of the obtained symbols allows us to predict future situations and make the right decisions, which is related to the sync concept present in Taoism—all events in the universe are related to each other in the likeness of a giant web or network, which stands in opposition to the Western man's thinking pattern, where reality is linear—as a sequence of consecutive events. The book, therefore, is used by all the charac-

7

Dick 1974: 263.

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ters in the book, and even Abendsen himself, under its influence, wrote his cursed work. Heroes also advise books in everyday situations and follow the interpretation of hexagrams. It is a kind of guidepost, adviser in every area of life, an inanimate psychotherapist, as well as a comforter that gives hope that a deeper sense lies beneath the surface of totalitarian reality. The most important thing is that I-Cing gives guidance on the question of the Truth. In the final part, Julian Frank, accompanied by Abendsen, turns to the book with the following question: “’Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn? ‘It's Chung Fu,' Juliana said. 'Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means. ‘Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression. ‘It means, does it, that my book is true?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. With anger he said, ‘Germany and Japan lost the war?’ ‘Yes.’ Hawthorne, then, closed the two volumes and rose to his feet; he said nothing. ‘Even you don’t face it,’ Juliana said. For a time, he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned inward, she realized. Preoccupied, by himself…and then his eyes became clear again; he grunted, started. ‘I’m not sure of anything,’ he said. ‘Believe,’ Juliana said.”8 Let's summarize. In the book The Man in the High Castle we deal with the problem of the existence of parallel realities, where there are at least three interwoven elements: the real world for the characters—the text of the book

8

Ibidem: 272.

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The Man in the High Castle, the alternative reality of the main text—the world of Abendsen's book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and a world that looks deceptively similar to ours, which appears for a moment in the vision of one of the heroes of the second plan—Japanese Tagomi. The concept of parallel worlds reaches its apogee in the finale, when I-Cing suggests to Abendsen and Julian that they “live” in a fake world. The fact that three worlds coexist in a book unmasks the idea of a completely false and fully real world, because, as Dick seems to say, there are more than two realities at once: “It is impossible that our world is unique; there must be other, invisible to us, in some other places or dimensions that we do not perceive with our senses”, wonders Baynes, one of the heroes of the book. The proper axis of the book is therefore suspicion toward the world. This is the writer's leading literary problem, which he dealt with in almost all of his works. Almost all the heroes of The Man in the High Castle share skepticism about perception and cognition. They try to guess the rules that govern reality, which is out of control.9 When we start reading Dick's novel, we are initially sure that we are the reader and the text is fiction, fantasy. Then we have strange thoughts. Particularly, the confrontation with the fate of Juliana Frink causes a specific dissonance. This is Dick's brilliant move. Juliana at the end of the novel is a step away from understanding that not only does she live in a world completely different from the one in which she apparently participates, but is also a figure present only in a certain text. But this—her doubts and a dramatic attempt to realize that she is only a fictional character, lend her a deeply human and real dimension. It is a fictional character that almost comes out of the text to ask us about the guarantee of our own situation. I-Cing only suggests that Germany has actually lost the war, but that still does not determine in what world Julian lives. Is she a character of Abendsen's book, in which the Germans lost the war, or is she a character of the book that Philip K. Dick wrote, and which we read, because in this world the Germans also lost the war?10 So the question is: can we also be a figure in the text that contains a number of other texts “written” before our text? Is everything one big Palimpsest? This seems to be proposed by Jaques Derrida, which will be discussed at the end of this chapter. We are an element of a text in which we read other texts, try to understand them and imagine that we are the masters of the situation—in the position of an external observer. The texts of The Man in the High Castle refer to each other and create a coherent reality, despite the fact that it is always the

Kaczmarski 2012: 94. Germany lost the war, but today it is the world's leading economic power, what, however, complicates the interpretation even more. 9

10

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reality of fantasy, interpenetrating texts. Is this our real position in the world? Unfortunately, we are even worse off than Juliana and the other heroes of The Man in the High Castle, because we do not have the book I Cing, which would tell us what is real. However, there is some hope. Archaeologists have something like I-Cing book, which we will talk about. How to read material culture [texts]? Every reader knows that there are different ways to understand the text. Let's start with the basic arrangements. In the surface layer, the text is a series of means of expression that must be updated by the addressee—it is filled with what is unspeakable. Because the text is to be updated, it is in some sense incomplete—just like the material culture archaeologists extract during excavations. Therefore, it would be good for the addressee to be a capable reader who, with every word he meets, can refer to a number of previously existing syntactic rules in order to recognize the mutual function of concepts in the context of a sentence, i.e. should have certain competence. Because the recipient's competences do not always coincide with the sender's competence, this leads us to the conclusion that one has to learn to read. In this respect, the text, in a more decisive way than any other message, requires active and conscious moves to cooperate with the reader.11 For example, sometimes you have to “decode” the circumstances of writing a text, i.e. its context. Eco proposes to consider in this point the theoretical figure of the model author. Such a case was the way in which the press and political parties interpreted Aldo Moro's letters during his imprisonment, which was to end with his murder. During his imprisonment, Moro “wrote” letters to newspapers where, for example, he demanded the exchange of prisoners. So we have two options: we can interpret these letters by referring to commonly used codes: they are letters [and the property of a private letter is that it wants to express the writer's thoughts honestly] in which “the subject of the statement acts as the subject of speech” and expresses the demands, advice, claims. However, a large part of the press adopted a different strategy, which Eco calls the strategy of refusal: on the one hand, it questions the conditions for producing statements [Moro wrote under duress, so he did not say what he wanted to say], and on the other, the identity of the subject of speech—they are hijackers, who speak using Moro’s mask. In other words, the

11

Eco 1994.

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model author of these letters is not a model author of other texts spoken or written by Aldo Moro under normal conditions.12 Let us assume that material culture is a certain Text. We almost never know the model author here. Usually, this text is “written” by collectivity, although individual chapters, sub-chapters and sentences—by individuals: tools, ceramic vessel, objects of prehistoric art. But it is similar in the case of the text, as it was written as part of a literary tradition [e.g. a crime novel, a fantastic novel, etc.]. In this case, it can also be said that the author of the work is not the only author because they creatively used the ideas of his predecessors. Here, the collectivity is also a creator, although nowadays the copyright laws make us think of it as a single demiurge creating something out of nothing. Another analogy between the pre-historical material culture and the text is the problem of the “end of the author.” When the work is finished, it begins to live its own life. The text of a classic author's book, let us say Thomas Mann from chapter I. And it is, in the same perspective, the same as the archaeological site or some set of artefacts and testimonies that archaeologists deal with. Neither Thomas Mann nor the artefacts can be asked: “what exactly did you mean by that?” This knowledge must be obtained through interpretation, which, as we shall see, never ends. There are closed and open texts. Closed texts are aimed at a specific profile of the reader, which can be called a target in today's fashion. Eco calls them a model reader. For example, a comedy is addressed to a specific group of viewers-relaxed viewers, ready to laugh and follow a story that does not personally concern them, “focused” on the reception of comedy. The question arises, who is the model reader or the target of material culture? Of course, the archaeologists themselves, this is the first answer that arises, although it can be anyone, as Feyerabend wanted. The problem, however, is that the “authors” of material culture did not mean archaeologists in the production of their “texts.” It can therefore be said that in Eco’s terminology they produced closed texts, addressed only to a narrow group of “readers” of their own culture. A natural mistake in this case is that we read the text of material culture, as if it were addressed directly to us, contemporary archaeologists. The conversion of closed texts into open ones is possible. It happens when the closed texts get into the hands of, for example, the master of interpretation between the lines—someone who has a penchant for mumbling texts like a philosopher or archaeologist. Then, as Eco writes, nothing is more open than the closed text, and he becomes a certain “machine for generating perverse ad-

12

Ibidem: 95.

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ventures.”13 All interpreters of material culture, volens nolens, are in the role of the operator of such a machine. The basic error in such “reading” is, for example, the assertion that a certain type of artefact has the X character because we saw this artefact in another text, which claimed that they have such a character. We take it for granted because it is so convenient for us. In addition, we think that the text we refer to in support of our thesis is so well known that every “reader” of material culture should know it. This is a mistake that Umberto Eco experienced after the release of his famous novel Foucault’s Pendulum. A childhood friend he had not seen for years wrote a letter to him in which he accused him of using Eco's story of his uncle and aunt. Astonished by this situation, the writer remembered that he had indeed described several episodes concerning “uncle Charles” and a certain “aunt Catherine”, the uncle of the main character of the novel, Jacopo Belpo, and even admitted that these characters were real, having made a few changes, told a story of their own childhood. So he wrote to his friend that uncle Charles and aunt Catherine are his relatives, not relatives of a friend, and that in this situation he is the owner of the copyright; he did not even know that a friend had uncles or aunts. A friend apologized. The tale so engulfed him that he thought he recognized several episodes from the life of his relatives. He found in the text something that had existed in his personal memory. At this point, however, it is worth asking yourself—is not this a mistake much more frequent in archaeologists? Aren’t our “readings” of the text of material culture too personal? Or maybe it should be this way? This question will continue to haunt us in subsequent chapters, but at this point, I will only refer to Tilley's proposal. For the first time, we read a material culture like a text that was written by authors coming from a distant civilization. We will avoid the mistakes that the novel Foucault’s Pendulum caused. Then let us write a text about it and let's laugh honestly at the result. Eco compares the text to the forest, where you can walk in many ways. The first one is a walk along one or several routes. The second way is a walk, which is more of a walk. We go for a walk to get to know the forest, find out why some routes are made difficult, and others are not. Analogically, there are two ways to read the text. Each text is primarily addressed to the first-degree model reader who wants to know how the story ends. But every text is also addressed to the model reader of the second degree, the higher degree, who wonders what kind of reader they should become, interacting with a specific text and how the author guides them To learn how the story ends, it's usually enough to read it only once. Translating this into the language of archaeology, we can 13

Ibidem: 83.

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do some research on some part of prehistoric reality and recognize that we have learned something valuable. However, this is only the beginning of reading/research in general. In order to determine who the model author is and what they expect from us, we must read the text many times, and we must read some stories constantly. This is a task not only for archaeology, but also for each archaeologist, as we will see further. Only when the empirical reader [archaeologist] finds a model author and understands [or barely understands] what the author expects of them, they will become a fully-fledged model reader. This is a role model. Nevertheless, Umberto Eco believes that although the text can be read in so many ways as many ways one can go for a walk in the forest, there is probably one sense of the text, some sense of the model, meaning the content that the author himself has written. But to capture this sense, you have to be a model reader, and whether such a type exists at all? There are many indications that it is a certain ideal, a project which both the author and the reader should refer to. Of course, you can also fantasize as much as you like, but reading is not about it [only]. For example, Kafka's novel The Trial can be read as a crime story, in which the character is accused of committing a crime, as a fantastic novel, moral, etc. The individual threads in the book only suggest something in general. At some point, the main character enters a building at one end of the city, and leaves it at the other end. The building in which the trial court has its seat is characterized by the fact that what is viewed from the outside seems to be a modest home, but when we enter, it undergoes a wonderful transformation into an endless maze of stairs and halls. In Kafka's novel, we are dealing, as Eco writes, with the non-Euclidean, movable and flexible world, as if people lived in a huge piece of already chewed chewing gum. Well, it could be some sense of this novel, a basic truth about what the author meant. Only what does it really mean? Chewing gum could not only be a good analogy of what Kafka felt as an author trying to describe reality, but also what it means for potential interpretations of prehistoric material culture: as escaping unambiguous descriptions and classifications, flexible and therefore extremely roomy [containing all possible interpretations] and the infinite number of dimensions and perspectives that can be adopted. Consider, for example, one of the central problems of archaeology— neolithization. Basically, the only thing we can know almost for certain is the fact that it took place because our civilization is a consequence. However, the more we delve into this issue, it begins to resemble the said chewing gum: the multiplicity of passive adaptation strategies is mixed with the concepts of active implementation of human desires, the multitude of local scenarios interwoven with the non-Euclidean scenario of global expansion, which ultimately should not be considered as completed process, for the cultivation of

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plants and animal husbandry are still the basis of our civilization. Chewing gum stretches even more when we think that we are still pursuing Paleolithic hunting strategies while shopping. Perhaps Kafka's range of topics is properly understood by his other statement, which Slavoj Žižek quotes in The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. According to him, Kafka was right when he said that for a modern, secular, non-religious man, the state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the divine dimension. Therefore, Kafka's God is extremely consistent in his irrationality. The accused K. will never know what guilt he caused, and he will be subjected to the death penalty without any protest. Apparently, Thomas Mann somehow lent some of Kafka's novel to Einstein, and the latter returned it with the following words: “I could not read it. The human mind is not so complex.” Here is the basic problem in reading really complicated texts, i.e. texts that are just open. So if material culture is a text, it's probably more of a Kafka text or, more likely, something like Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, a text that should be read infinitely many times, but ultimately [horror!] is an unreadable text! Joyce himself said he was hoping that Finnegan's Wake would keep critics at his desks for the next 400 years.14 Hasn’t been this the location of archaeologists—critics of material culture, which “is being read” only since about 200 years? In any case, the “text” of material culture is certainly not an ordinary daily newspaper, although it is treated by some archaeologists, e.g. by those who know everything, that is material culture they treat as a politically profiled diary regularly confirming their views. I used to apply for a research grant, under which I wanted, among other things, to deal with the phenomenon of fragmentation of early metal artefacts. The reviewer who sealed the fate of the grant firmly stated that there was no point in researching it, because the metal fragmentation was used for its smelting. Period. He already knew everything! A separate issue is “reading” someone's behavior. French philosopher Jean Paul Ricoeur maintains that the occurrence of something is similar to an act of speech or text. The significance of the action may gain some autonomy in the area of autonomy of the text. The action can be separated from the agent and cause consequences in itself. Ricoeur claims that the meaning of the action ultimately frees itself from the intentions of the acting and leaves traces in the course of events, which is History. Thus, an action such as a text is an open work [like the open text by Eco] and can be interpreted by an infinite number of readers. The interpretation of actions by the contemporary people

14

Žižek 2003: 224.

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is not privileged in any way. “Judges are not the contemporary people, but the History itself is.”15 Interestingly, Ricoeur does not understand it in such a way that only History, in the sense of a distant god, keeps the real interpretations away from us. There will always be the possibility of discussing the importance of a given action, arguing for or against specific interpretations. Therefore, actions, like texts, are open to competitive interpretations, and these must be supported or rejected through argumentation.16 In this sense, Ricoeur, referring somewhat loftily to History as the ultimate interpreter, nevertheless nears Jürgen Habermas' rationalist approach, according to which the potential of rationality, or the ability to communicate using the understandable arguments, is already in the language, and our task is to develop it. We will talk about it in the next chapter. Gadamer's thoughts go into a similar direction when he writes about the meaning of a text as a work of art. The work of art plays an analogous role here, as is Jürgen Habermas's “communicative competence” in the sense that it contains a certain potential for agreement [chapter VII]. Accordingly, an adequate understanding of the work is an application or performance [as in the case of a musical work or some recipe]. It is the application in practice of the action program written in the work itself. It is required that this program be of supra-historical importance, and its application in practice was only an update, which, as grounded in temporariness, makes the program present, active and effective. In the “program” of works of art-literary work, as in the “program” of the language, understanding is included. The text understood in this way, however, is exempt from the obligation to speak the Truth. We think we understand, we are actually only updating a “software”. There is no way out—in the nature of understanding, there is a constant openness to reinterpretation and discussion.17 From the point of view of cognitive science, understanding is an interpretation and it is never final and definitive. It does not consist in reaching the essence of things, tangible touch of the truth [only Hegel did it]. Even if we grasp the essence of a problem, we do it through metaphor and paraphrase, that is, referring the problem to other meanings [to other texts or other places in the text]. Understanding is an interpretation based on the specific instability of our language, which evolved as a tool for coordinating activities, and the fact that it can describe the world is not in its nature—it is rather a by-product of this evoMore 1990: 98. Ibidem: 99. 17 Bourdieu 2007: 469. 15 16

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lution. Speaking, therefore, that the main function of language is the imaging of the world [capturing the essence of a thing, or reflecting the formal aspects of the situations described], we are seduced by a deeply rooted belief in the Western tradition.18 Therefore we have to go deeper into the woods… Hermeneutics or the art of text understanding The problem of understanding reality as a text has a long tradition. Since the sixteenth century, nature is seen as “a great metaphor of the book, which opens, spells and reads to know nature.” The great scholar Charles Bonnet wrote: “I like to imagine the inexhaustible multitude of Worlds in the likeness of books, the collection of which creates a huge Library of the Universe or a true Universal Encyclopedia.”19 The German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey [1833—1911], heir to the philosophy of Hegel, believed that everything in history is subject to understanding, because everything is a Text. “Same as the letters of a word, life and history make sense”, he wrote. Dilthey modeled on Hegel—the only man who thought that the End of History was connected with achieving absolute knowledge, which was a perfect melange of revelation and scientific truth in one thing—but hesitated slightly. Doesn’t the historical conditioning of human consciousness constitute an insurmountable obstacle on its way to fulfillment in historical knowledge or simply in Knowledge? If, however, life is “inexhaustible with creative reality”, doesn’t the continuous changeability of the context of the meaning of history exclude the knowledge that achieves objectivity? In other words, is historical consciousness ultimately a utopian ideal with a contradiction? Dilthey tirelessly thought about this problem. His reflection always strived to ensure that, despite the historical conditions in which the acquainted subject is embedded, validate his cognition as a product of objective science. This was to be served by the science of structure, which builds its unity from its own center, and the postulate of historical thinking that the given epoch must be understood by itself. Then you can imagine getting to know more and more extensive areas and historical relationships, and this knowledge is extended to the end of history. Dilthey used the following metaphor: just as the word we say can be fully understood only on the basis of the entire sentence, this sentence is understandable only in the context of the entire text, and even the

18 19

Brożek 2014: 146. Foulcault 2006: 88.

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entire literature given by the tradition.20 The application of this idea assumes, however, that one can somehow overcome the attachment of the historical observer to his temporary place. But how to do it? Dilthey applies various tools. For example, he wonders what life itself is and claims that it is focused on “reflection”. Following this trail, we can recognize that knowledge [but what knowledge?] is already in the very life. “Knowledge exists, it involves experiencing without mediation of reflection.” On the other hand, the importance of certain things inversely arises when “we give up hunting for purposes”, we apply the principles of reflection, a look from a distance, at a certain distance from the context of our personal action. Life then becomes objective in the wisdom of proverbs and narratives [stories] and, above all, in great works of art in which “something spiritual breaks away from its creator.” Art is a special tool for understanding life because on its “border of knowledge and action” life opens to an inaccessible depth that is neither observable, nor thinkable.21 As Hegel used to say: “The essence of all art lies in the fact that it puts man in front of himself.”22 Dilthey also goes in this direction. His achievements can be summarized in the following way: historical consciousness is in the position of reflection to itself and to the tradition among which it was shaped. He understands himself on the basis of his own history. So historical consciousness is a kind of self-knowledge.23 When writing about the structure of understanding, one should also refer to two key concepts: pre-understanding and the hermeneutic circle. Understanding has at least two dimensions. On the one hand, anyone who interprets a text is usually a participant in a certain cultural tradition; the understanding of the text will always be relativized to this tradition. The interpreter asks the text some questions and anticipates some answers, he initially assigns some sense to the text. Whoever wants to understand a text always makes a certain project. They create a sense of the whole as soon as the “first meaning” is marked in the text. This one reveals itself only because the text is read with certain expectations. Working out such a project, which is constantly revised by what turns out to be meaning in the future, is to understand things contained therein.24 A banal but very important conclusion follows: any perception is always directed. The questions we ask the text include: “squeezed in the direction of

Gadamer 2004: 324. Ibidem: 329. 22 Ibidem: 88. 23 Ibidem: 328. 24 Ibidem: 369. 20 21

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the story itself”, which has a directional arrow that already a priori orientation in “what such understanding”.25 A directional arrow is just a preunderstanding. In other words, when we go to the store for shopping, we are expected to communicate in a limited way, regarding the products in the store, their quality, prices, etc., but not about the economy or the philosophy of money. Apparently, Karl Popper sometimes started lectures with students in the methodology of science, giving students the command: “Observe!” when after several minutes of collecting reports from these observations it turned out that almost everyone observed something else. Popper did not simply point the students what they should be observing. Observation as well as understanding is always directed by some hypothesis that arises from a given problem situation.26 In addition to pre-understanding, an important aspect of understanding is its structure. “The construction process is already guided by a certain expectation of meaning, born by the context of what existed earlier.” Waiting for this must again be susceptible to correction, if the text requires it. In this way, writes Gadamer, the movement of understanding runs steadily “from a whole to a part and back to the whole.” The task is to expand the consistency of the meaning understood by concentric circles. The compatibility of all details with the whole is the criterion of understanding correctness. The lack of such compatibility means the failure of understanding. Gadamer develops here an old hermeneutic rule, according to which the whole should be understood on the basis of parts and parts on the basis of the whole. This rule comes from ancient rhetoric and was transferred from the art of speech to the art of understanding through modern hermeneutics. Here and there, there is a circular relationship. The sense anticipation of the whole becomes an understanding thanks to the fact that the parts, defining themselves on the basis of the whole, for their part define this whole.27 *** Generally speaking, Gadamer proposes that understanding consists in the continuous and cyclical reference of the interpreted text to a broader context. Such a case has become the basic assumption of a new method of archaeological explanation, called contextual or post-processual archaeology. This archaeology is in opposition to the processual movement, which tried to explain

Lem 1996: 205. Brożek 2014: 140. 27 Gadamer 2004: 400-401. 25 26

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all facts and phenomena in terms of generalization, universals and scientific verification [chapter II]. Some archaeologists, however, stated that the positivist vision of science is not right, and the separation of data from theory is not possible. Data is always burdened with theory, pre-understanding, ideology, etc., which means that in practice, it is impossible to verify our theories. What else did they say?

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Post-processualists rejected the claim that science is a unique form of knowledge. Science is the same construct of our activity in the world as politics, art or religion. Consequently, the area of science is a field of activity that is not subject to verification, as positivist philosophers like Hempel wanted. Take, for example, the explanation of the phenomenon of European megaliths in the process version proposed by Colin Renfrew. It is true that with C14 method, Renfrew challenged the theory of diffusion of the megalithic idea from the Mediterranean cultures, but this ultimately does not preclude the existence of diffusion in the opposite direction. Indeed, however, Renfrew did act in a barely oratory way: using the success of the C14 method, he imposed a different point of view taken straight from ethnology, which does not prove anything. The territories he has written do not verify anything [do you remember the paradox of the barometer and the storm from chapter II?], and many megaliths are in the center of the areas designated in a completely unconvincing manner. Archaeologists agree or disagree with Renfrew's arguments based on very arbitrary criteria. Post-processualists believe that archaeologists can never confront theories and testimonies as two completely independent categories. We look at data [testimonies, facts] always through the fog of theory [see chapter III].28 Ultimately, we cannot leave the text in which we exist like Juliana Frank in the novel The Man in the High Castle.

•

The opposition between the material world and the world of ideas must be rejected. As we saw in previous chapters, processual archaeology rejected the cultural and historical approach as a manifestation of idealism, i.e. the claim that the material world is the result of a specific organization and work of the human spirit. They therefore rejected the potential spirituality

Johnson 2013: 122-123.

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of matter, and focused on attempts to describe its functioning in society. For example, a materialistic approach to the problems of place and landscape assumed that in prehistory, it was simply treated as a resource of people living in it. Collector hunters treated him generally as a pantry, and farmers as a way to use in food production strategies. This led to the conclusion that people always rationally used the landscape. Postprocessualists have denied such an approach with the assumption that each social group has its own characteristic way of perceiving the landscape. They rejected the “rational” view of the landscape “as a resource”, demystifying it as a reflection of the contemporary, contaminated by ideology, the vision of the world as a commodity and a place of exploitation typical of our society. They believed that people in the past differently than we understood what was “real” in the landscape, and certainly did not treat it as a “resource to use”. Not only, at least. •

29

One should look at the thoughts and values in the past. This thesis almost directly refers to Hegel, while its intermediary was the British philosopher Collingwood, who valued Hegel's work and tried to integrate it more closely with history and archaeology. He claimed that the work of historians should rely on the reconstruction of the thoughts of people from the past and this is the main difference between archaeology and natural sciences: “There is a certain analogy between the archaeologist’s interpretation of a stratified site and the geologist’s interpretation of rock horizons with their associated fossils; but the difference is no less clear than the similarity. The archaeologist’s use of his stratified relics depends on their conceiving them as artefacts serving human purposes and thus expressing a particular way in which men have thought about own life; and from his point of view the paleontologist, arranging his fossils in a time-series, is not working as an historian, but only as a scientist thinking in a way which can at most be described as quasi-historical.”29 Archaeologist Ian Hodder said that in fact archaeologists do so all the time, although they do not want to admit it. For example, classical archaeologists, explaining the distribution of Roman forts in

Collingwood 2005: 212.

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northern Britain, referred to the evolving military and political strategy. In other words, they tried to empathize with the thoughts of Roman commanders and emperors. So the point is to finally openly admit that all archaeologists use empathic thinking, regardless of whether they admit or not.30 •

The importance of artefacts and eco-facts is closely related to the cultural context in which they function, resulting in specific, unique practices and cultural dispositions. This distinguishes historical and natural science. Again, we can refer to Collingwood, who compared meteorology and history: “Meteorologists study cyclones to compare them to other cyclones with the aim of discovering which features are recurring, or ‘to find out what cyclones are like.’” The meteorologist's inference is inductive, for it proceeds from particular cyclones to general laws about cyclonic behavior. But the historian's aim in studying a particular war is not necessary to make generalizations about, and certainly not to formulate scientific laws governing, wars. More likely, “he aims at placing that war in the context of human activity in which it occurs.”31

According to Ian Hodder, one of the best-known proponents of contextual archaeology, “the archaeological context of the subject is everything that creates all of its essential meaning”. It means that the context of a given archaeological fact is the whole set of products within which the object that interests us has occurred. Let us assume that a small ornament found in a grave or in the vicinity of a house attracted our attention. In order to interpret it properly, we must take into account the entire content of the other objects that occurred in these places. They are the context of our ornament. It refers to the occurrence of these objects with their “texts-contexts”. Hodder makes an analogy to the text, saying that the artefacts should be treated similarly—they should be referred to those parts of the text/material culture, which in relation to the fragment/artefact we are interested in are right before and after it, because without it their sense gets lost.32 One should proceed in accordance with the method of “empathy” and/or “re-survival” in order to understand the past

Johnson 2013: 122-123. Collingwood 2005: 252-255. 32 Hodder & Hutson 2003: 204. 30 31

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reality. This context allows us theoretically to explain the meaning of the ornament in a more appropriate way than if we were analyzing our decoration by comparison with other similar findings in the near or distant region. This is essentially the model of cultural and historical archaeology: it takes into account the context of the findings only through the classification: grave, homestead, settlement, etc., but does not penetrate deeper into the entire set of objects that were still found there. We refer to this as a collector's approach, the object of which is usually to examine items removed from the context or rather stripped out of it by classification. Contextual archaeology also claims that people have the ability to manipulate meaning in their culture—they use the material culture creatively and actively. This was suggested, for example, by Hodder's ethno-archaeological studies. Artefacts are not just a passive reflection of a cultural process. Contextual archaeology tries to show that relations between the individual [text] and society [context] should be recognized. This is not about identifying the individual, but about realizing that artefacts are the effect of more individuals than groups. This is the sphere of research that is completely ignored by processual archaeology. Man is an active unit in the sense that they are not so much passive recipients of cultural codes, but a creator of them; with their help, tries to establish his social position by competing with others in the group. Therefore, artefacts can be seen as a result of people's intentional actions, communication of their behavior. The term “agency” is often used here, which results directly from Bourdieu’s theory [chapter IV]. The point is that people do not submit straightforwardly to the system values surrounding them, even though these values have shaped them. Social rules that apply in a given society can be interpreted and manipulated in various ways; there is human creativity thanks to which rules are trespassed and new things are created.33 Considering the beginning of this book, we can say that we are dealing with the pendulum movement. Just as German historicism, influenced by Hegel, caused the Spirit and its cultural-historical archaeology, which was a reaction to the methodology of natural science, so contextual archaeology was a reaction to the research assumptions of processual and therefore of scientific archaeology. The pendulum movement took off from Hegel's position [chapter I], leaned towards scientism [chapter II], to return to the place again [chapter V]. However, even though the pendulum has found itself in the starting position again, it does not mean that it has exactly the same content to convey. According to the principle of dialectical movement, the position is the same, but the content is different. 33

Johnson 2013: 122-123.

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Dematerialization of culture We have come to a place where we can completely question the material foundations of the world in which we live. And because Jacques Derrida had already done this for us, it is necessary to give him some space. Derrida argues that the marking process, which we initially discussed in chapter IV, consists essentially of references of one character to the other, and therefore we never reach a sign with reference to oneself. In this way, the whole of Writing is the ultimate reference of everything that exists. Everything we can know is found in a certain text which, however, remains impenetrable to us, be it the Text of material culture, or History, or Being at all. Derrida calls this basic level of the Arche-writing text. Arche-writing refers to the most general concept of writing, which introduces a certain “source violation” between what is to be transmitted and what is actually transmitted. Arche-writing is about everything that is, even what we generally consider sacred and inviolable, including the notion of our own presence in the world. In other words, if we do not want to, we are an element of a certain text, like Juliana Frink in the novel The Man in the High Castle, and we are groping. Well, unless we have the I-Cing. The use of archaeological interpretations is of great interest in the work of this extraordinary philosopher. Foucault had already invoked the archaeological method, but Derrida went a step further, inspired by the work of the prohistorical artist André Leroi-Gourhan. In his famous book Of Grammatology, he presents him as the one “who describes the specificity of man and human destiny by pointing to a certain process of articulation in the history of life.” Derrida himself calls this process a difference [différance]. Derrida values Gourhan for the fact that instead of referring to concepts that are usually used to differentiate man from other living beings [through the opposition of instinct and intelligence, the existence or non-existence of speech, society, economy, etc.], he recalls the essential concept of “program”. What is this “program”? Referring to Leroi-Gourhan, Derrida views the history of writing as the “adventure of the relationship between face and hand”, as a slow transformation of manual motorics, which the audio-phonic system releases for speech, and releases the gaze and hand for writing. “Writing in the narrow sense— especially the phonetic writing—is rooted in the past of non-linear writing [...] The war broke out and everything that resisted linearity was suppressed. And

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first of all what Leroi-Gourhan calls a “mythogram”, a script that reads symbols in multidimensionality [...].”34 For Derrida, therefore, the whole History is an event or series of events more like the Text, because everything we can see around us is a product of a certain pro-gramme. Gestures, as Leroi-Gourhan suggests, were responsible for the creation of both the first tools and the first signs of the exteriorization of memory. But at the source of all this, there must be something deeper, some other text—Arche-text, or simply Text. Derrida is not talking about writing as a historical event in human history. Hence, from the genetic record and short chains of the program, governing the behavior of the amoeba and the annulus, and ending with going beyond the alphabetical order to the order of logos and certain homo sapiens, gramme gives structure to the movement of its history according to strictly and predefined levels, types and rhythms.35 Leroi-Gourhan wrote about the release of memory, about social memory, which originated in the animal world, about gestures and facial expressions that were expressed in the tool production and in the exteriorization of memory in the form of a sign. All this is in the process of human evolution, which is part of the evolution of the world, which is why Derrida writes therefore “about the ever-begun exteriorization of the trace, which from the most elementary programs of the so-called ‘instinctive’ behavior to the creation of electronic cards and automatic reading systems increases the range of difference [différance] [...].”36 As we can see, Derrida's theory seeks to embrace everything that exists. The essence of his thought is the concept of différance. In this one word, Derrida wants to close all his theory. The word has a very complex system of references. So what is différance? Traditionally, the basic meaning of this word is associated with “differ”, “not be identical”. Derrida introduces here, however, a characteristic spelling mistake, thanks to which the following readings are possible: 1.

In the most basic sense, différance is defined as the play of differences, “being different, distinguishing oneself, being able to distinguish, not identifying with something.” In this aspect, it also defines “break, spacing, dividing, spreading, distance.” The effect of its work is, therefore, differences, different or different—removed or distinguished from each

Derrida 2011: 126. Ibidem: 125. 36 Ibidem. 34 35

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other. Without it, nothing can be created, captured, made present. It is a condition for any dialectical, binary opposition that organizes our language. 2.

It also means delay [postpone the second meaning of the différer verb, the delay of presence to oneself, incompatibility with each other, divergence, the effect of the proliferating work of time, the spread of time [associated with temporization of space], which means that there is a gap in the presence of it does not allow you to be full or fully present [as a thing or an absolute knowledge], an indelible crevice or hole, as if Lacan said, which always dissolves, diff-integrates the presence of something present. Through this gap, any “something” cannot be clearly identified as just this and not other “something”. The same is not the same [the same] but different— not only different [for] another, but also different [for] myself, which means that “selfhood” [being yourself, being you yourself, being your own] is not a selfhood, but the otherness, the otherness, the same is different, the identity [always already] is the difference.37

With the help of the language he invented, Derrida opposes logocentrism, that is, the treatment of words and language as the basic way of capturing the reality practiced by Plato in the framework of Western mentality. The spoken word had held a privileged position in the Western worldview, being regarded as intimately involved in our sense of self and constituting a sign of truth and authenticity. Speech had become so thoroughly naturalized that “not only do the signifier and the signified seem to unite, but also, in this confusion, the signifier seems to erase itself or to become transparent.” Writing, complains Derrida, had traditionally been relegated to a secondary position. It's an error! Logocentrism, as the philosopher indicates, has deep theological roots. According to this version of events, “at first there was a word that became flesh.” The word must be spoken by someone, and this is God in the end. If we want to break free from the dominance of this understanding of the world, asserts the philosopher, we must assume the possibility of the existence of the Text as the first instance. In other words, Text is History, Text is everything—“there is nothing outside of the text”, and the basic element of the text is the différance. So painting, music, sculpture, gymnastics, all material culture: all this is writ-

37

Banasiak 2011: 9.

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ing [or writing]. The book is nothing but a brace in writing. Actually, the entire universe is, in fact, TEXT. If one concept is to be presented with everything that exists, then the concept must be very roomy. That is the difference [différance]. Some explanations of this concept lead us to the philosophy of Hegel, and some to the theory of natural sciences, which Hegel did not like. In this perspective, in a sense, we are never a whole or identity, e.g. in the sense that every second in our body there are millions of changes and transformations [death of cells, formation of new ones] that are related to the passage of time, in short, with the aging of the body. We are a temporary biological process functioning according to a certain program. There are also analogies to physical or cosmological theories. This was one of the reasons, as Sokal and Brickmont claimed in their book Trendy Nonsense. Theories of chaos, field physics, or quantum vacuum suddenly found wide application in such fields as philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literary studies. Even Derrida succumbed to this temptation and, as befits a master, took up the theory of relativity, claiming that “Einstein's constant is not constant.” However, it was, as the authors write, “one-off abuse” and Derrida was not devoted to a separate chapter in the book. Nevertheless, the concept of différance, as covering everything, provokes the same question about genesis, as the logos negated by Derrida. Where did this difference come from? At some point, the difference, naturally found in nothingness, takes on the work of producing these various differences. If it is not spontaneous, it requires something else [causative cause] or itself is the cause, which is something like the Big Bang, Demiurge, willy-nilly, God, or depends on them. As we can see, even in such a sublime philosophy, there are certain limits that Derrida wants to put, like Wittgenstein, as the boundaries of thinking or cognition.38 *** So when contextual archaeologists, when writing about “context”, compare it with “text” to read, they refer to Derrida: “What I call ‘text’ implies all the structures called ‘real’, ‘economic’, ‘historical’, ‘socio-institutional’, in short: all possible referents. Another way of recalling once again that ‘there is nothing outside the text’ [...] It does mean that every referent, all reality has the structure of a differential trace, and that one cannot refer to this 'real' except in an interpretive experience. The

38

Ibidem: 11.

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latter neither yields meaning nor assumes it except in a movement of differential referring. That’s all.”39 Derrida unambiguously states that the text is an interpretation. This means that the context as a text or material culture as a text is dependent on the interpreter. So we are not in the position of a reader sitting comfortably on a sofa reading The Man in the High Castle, wondering if Juliana will reach Abendsen and whether they solve the mystery of the illusion of the world in which they live. Rather, we are the protagonists of a novel and we wonder how many texts we need to break through to understand something. It seems that it is an endless work. If we compare context or material culture to the text, it should be acknowledged that its “reading” is the effect of our limited interpretation, not its reading as it actually was.40 We cannot place ourselves above the text, because it is one great Text, and we can not move freely in it like its Author. Such a situation is not funny. One can even say that we are in a tragic situation. Being a translator of the “texts” of material culture, we may be in the situation of the characters of José Carlos Somoza's book The Athenian Murders [La caverna de las ideas]. The main character of the novel is a contemporary translator of an anonymous ancient text. We do not know his name [it can be any of us—archaeologists trying to solve an ancient secret]. The interpreter struggles with a classic detective story in which the Athenian “detective” Heracles Pontor [incarnation of Hercule Poirot by Agata Christie] is hired to explain the strange death of a young student from the Platonic Academy [his body, allegedly torn apart by wolves, found on the slopes of the Athens Likavitos hill]. The main text of the novel is a record of the work of the translator who comments on the current text on which he works on a regular basis. Initially, he follows the assumption of Eidesis [the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader’s mind]. The novel he translates becomes, in his eyes, the realization of the idea 12 of Hercules' work, and each chapter corresponds to one work of a Greek hero. With time, however, he begins to realize more and more that many elements of the translated novel coincide with his personal experience [e.g. a sculptor carving a translator's sculpture], and curiosity turns into horror when he is trapped and forced to work on a text in a cell from which there is no escape. Ultimately, he discovers that he is a figure in an ancient text that is the result of an establishment between Plato and the Philotext of Chersonesus in a dispute over five elements of knowledge. The most difficult of these was the

39 40

Derrida 1977: 148. Mamzer 2004: 168.

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fifth—“idea in itself”, getting to know the ultimate Truth and leaving the Plato’s Cave, where only the shadows of reality can be seen. Plato believed that to true cognition, one comes only through the path of reason, excluding all senses, and this is impossible for the embodied soul. Until the soul is in the body, he will not achieve it. Philotext wins the bet with Plato showing in the form of brilliant irony that leaving the Cave may be equal to discovering the illusion of your own existence as just a disembodied “text”! “Come out of the lyrics, start living!”, Philotext cries out at the end of the novel. But is it possible? It will be discussed in greater detail in chapter VII. On the other hand, however, the alleged fact of our textual, in a sense inauthentic, life in the world does not have to be a cause for concern. If we are heroes in the text that protects us and allows us to live comfortably, then we can consider this “interpretation” of our person to be sufficient. This is how the character of Robert Altman's The Player works. Griffin Mill [Tim Robbins] is a successful producer at one of Hollywood's major film studios. Every day, dozens of scripts pass through his hands, most of which are put in the rubbish bin. Griffin is already a little blasé, which is why the board is preparing a replacement for him. To make matters worse, one of the rejected screenwriters in a particularly unpleasant manner demonstrates his dissatisfaction and bombards Griffin with threats [written on specially selected postcards]. Our character begins to feel threatened. An unsettled producer begins the investigation on his own, as a result of which he murders his postcard persecutor. The artificiality of the Hollywood script is starting to get serious when Gryffin falls in love with the girlfriend of the filmmaker [the feeling is reciprocated] whom he had murdered. Of course, this is only a specially constructed appearance by an experienced director. At the end of the film, Gryffin answers the phone call connected with an idea of the script that he knows so well: a successful producer in one of the major Hollywood film studios murders a screenwriter as a result of a private investigation, and is getting away with it… Does Griffin panic when he finds out that he murdered an innocent man? Not at all, because he also learned that he is the character of the text in which it will not touch one hair on his head! Everybody willingly accepts such a scenario, don’t they? Derrida can also be interpreted in such a way that this “text” apparently only refers to the real world, because the world consists only of markers [signifiers] that refer to something else. The word “pot” refers to a certain thing with ears, made of clay, but the “thing with the ears” itself refers back to other “things” and so to infinity. Any seemingly obvious statement about a fact can be broken down into pieces using its own internal logic, because it can not

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refer to a fixed, external world outside the text—sign always endlessly refer to the next sign.41 Derrida shows this with the help of the deconstruction method, in which he seems to demonstrate that the meaning of each text, no matter how obvious and factual, could be turned against him. The philosopher creatively develops theses that have already been proposed in science by Gödel, Wittgenstein, Quine, Putnam and many other deconstructors of scientific certainty. The only thing we can be sure of is that our theories, language games, texts, etc., have little [if any] relation to reality. But Derrida can also be interpreted like the French artist Marcel Duchamp did before Derrida. Duchamp was a talented artist and painter in the beginning of the 20th century looking for his own place in the world of art. He tried many styles and ways of artistic expression, from Impressionism, through Cubism to Dadaism, and finally he came up with the idea of a “ready-made” work, in which he simply wanted to use a finished object as a work of art. When in 1917 he submitted to the exhibition of the Association of Independent Artists in New York, a porcelain urinal, called Fountain, bought in the store, he caused a worldwide scandal. The exhibition commission was shocked. The artist's opinion was opposed that the ordinary urinal was to be a work of art and it was ordered to remove the exhibit from the exhibition, and the chairman of the Association expressed even more clearly and smashed the urinal as not being a work of art. The incident could not go unnoticed. It blew up in the artistic world. Hot discussions had begun on what is and what is no longer art. There were opinions that art ended with what Duchamp did. The daring joke of the crazy Dadaist changed its face forever. Can a work of art be literally anything, even a simple urinal? Is the work of art what the artist will present? And finally, is the work of art any object that will be in a museum or gallery? In other words, maybe the context ultimately determines what is a work of art and what is not? If something is in a museum or exhibition, it is simply a work of art, period. Certainly, many readers had such thoughts visiting contemporary galleries and museums of modern art in the world. We asked ourselves a question: do they want to mock us with what they present here? Maybe there is a hidden camera somewhere? Isn’t there? Well, if these items are here, it's probably somehow a work of art. Who would understand these contemporary artists?42

Johnson 2013: 213. By the way, the theme "toilet" is somehow attractive till today, because at the moment when I write these words at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, you can use a gold toilet seat [made of 18-carat gold] for only a dozen cents. It is a work of art by an Italian artist and sculptor Maurizio Cattelan.

41 42

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Duchamp’s Urinal clearly highlighted the existence of a research problem related to the context. Here again, we can refer to the discussion that WyndamMatson, the head of the metallurgical corporation from the novel The Man in the High Castle, runs with his lover Rita [chapter III]. Since the context of the occurrence of an archaeological artefact, both in its original form in the geological layers and secondarily in the museum, is only a consequence of subjective references to the infinite sphere of signs, the concept of an artefact must be understood as a form of a more or less precise social contract. In fact, the real artefact and the fake are not distinguishable, because at some point the network of their mutual references is lost or we can not determine it differently than by arbitrarily imposing a meaning: a certificate of authenticity, placing in a museum display case, defining as a monument, etc. Therefore artefacts and studying contexts of their occurrence is not enough to deal with archaeology. Derrida clearly suggests that archaeology concerns not only the study of prehistoric contexts, but the whole of our existence in the world. We will talk about the fact that it is very difficult and if this fact is possible at all. But Duchamp's trick illustrates one more important phenomenon in archaeology. We have to ask a question, what would happen if Duchamp was interested in archaeology and put a hand axe in the museum instead of a urinal? This is a seemingly simple question, everyone knows that the hand axes are in museums for a long time and somehow nobody makes the hut because of that. But why are they there? Imagine that our civilization has sent people into space to settle on a distant planet. Over time, settlers produce their own material culture, but one can expect that a certain sentiment for the homeland requires them to keep the objects they brought from Earth. With time, these items will be fewer and fewer, and only a few will remain from the early stages of settlement. It is obvious, therefore, that they will be heavily guarded, kept in a kind of museumsanctuaries, will talk about them in a special way and write a lot; there will be legends, stories and narratives around them. And then scientific work. For example, a shovel will be standing in a museum on this new planet and scientists, researchers of the past—geologists will write about it. No one on the new planet has used shovels for a long time, but on the basis of thorough research [sending probes to the ground, etc.] it will be possible to describe and interpret the shovel—what it was used for, in which situations it was used, etc. So there will be still an opportunity of making reference to the material sources of the new civilization, although practically there will be no contact with it. The settlers will carry out research from the context of the new planet, but their narratives could [theoretically] still refer to the old shovel brought from the earth. But the number of items to which their texts will relate will fall, while the amount of texts themselves will grow. There is therefore a danger

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that, as a last resort, there will be texts that, if it were, will enable the construction of a shovel [just for what?] Let us assume that the new planet is completely rocky, where people live in artificial concrete and glass environments or something like that ]. In this way, we deal with the process of transforming artefacts into texts and texts [potentially into artefacts]. Nowadays, we can make a hand axe, but what for? We moved to a different planet, not to strip the skins of wild animals [unless as part of a certain experiment]. The only thing that makes sense the most is writing about it. The story with the urinal also uses the game of differences, combines and differ-integrates the area of artistic and scientific activity [if archaeology is a science], and illustrates the phenomenon of the dematerialization of material culture and re-materialization of the text. From this perspective, material culture and text are the two sides of the same reality. In the end, the same hand axe was also created as a result of the work of a certain program [or text] of gestures and movements, and differentiation of the Nature, which itself is also the result of différance. At this point, we must take into account its dual nature. Text and material culture should be seen as a derivative of a deeper movement, of which they are a manifestation—Arche-writing. Hand axe as an artefact is a silent, unwritten or anti-text [just as antimatter is matter, but with the opposite sign]. The present material culture is something that [yet] has not been written in a positive sense, whereas this prehistoric one is already a text, because the text itself has a positive and negative side.43 The reality of text and material culture is therefore like a Möbius strip—wandering one edge at some point, we find that we are on the other side. Up and down, there are seemingly the same as the right and left. The Möbius strip suggests that the reality may be the same, even if it seems quite different or that the two sides of reality turn out to be one side, and the reflection in the mirror turns out to be what is reflected [for this aspect we will pay attention in chapter VII]. A man [if transparent and visible on both sides of the band], moving along the strip, would end up moving with, for example, shoes swapped or right-handed would turn into a left-handed one. Possibly [horribly!] it would be a completely different person! This is what David Lynch’s movie Lost Highway is about. The first scene is already very suggestive: the lights of the car driving down the highway illuminate the small space in front of him. In the center of the screen appear subtitles, grow quickly [approaching the camera lens] and stop for a moment, as if glued to the film stock, and then disappear behind the camera through which the viewer looks. The fantasy and reality of the film are already intertwined in 43 Yates

1990: 268.

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this scene: the lights illuminating the road are a projector illuminating the film, which in analog cinematography was actually rolled into the shape of a Möbius strip, which allowed multiple film release without having to change the tape reel, and the tapes were protected against uneven destruction. Next, we immerse ourselves in the world of the strip, where the heroes, moving around its circumference, represent its two sides. We are talking about the effects of duplication, mirror reflection, non-linear narrative and opposition of characters. These two sides, after all, tell the same story—as old as the cinema itself, and perhaps the whole of History: it is the story of a man possessed by the lust of the wrong woman. Lynch has publicly called his film a “psychogenic fugue”, a term that in this context refers to a mental state in which a person is delusional although seemingly fully aware, a state from which he emerges with no memory of his actions. It also involves losing oneself and taking on an entirely new identity.44 The closing scene, logically, is the same as the opening one. The central topic of archaeology may not be men's lust for inappropriate women, but several other central themes might be found. A certain “obsession” of humanity could be, for example, specialization, at the beginning of which there is a simple tool for everything—a hand axe. After centuries, due to the work of this Derridaian difference [différance] taking the form of the Möbius strip, we get a leaf-shaped point; another cycle of work and here we have flint blades, and then, on the other side of the band, mediatization occurs— things are transformed into money and power relations. An important aspect of such “writing” is seriation: hand axe—Levallois core—production of blades—serial production of all tools—serial production in general and the man and society itself, woven into this eternal cycle of shaping reality through the continuous work of the Text. Of course, such work chains of the MöbiusDerrida Text can be further elaborated and supplemented at will. Returning to Duchamp, in a sense, he shortened the path that the artefact finds itself in order to become an exhibit of which it is written. Did he do it consciously? Rather because one of his artistic intentions was to take time as the fourth dimension of a work of art. Inserting the urinal into the museum forced us to think about it as if we were doing it from the distance of years and generations, because in the future urinals will stand in museum display cases—they are even today there, just like other everyday objects: beds, chairs, knives and bedside lamps. Duchamp made a shortcut in this process. He referred to time as a function of the artefact-text-artefact process, a continuous process of dematerialization of the artefact and rematerialization of the 44

http://www.davidlynch.de/lostquarter.html

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text. Ultimately, all artefacts will turn into texts—another form of material existence, and then perhaps only in information bits, as some physicists claim.45 Duchamp also made a gesture of identifying archaeology and art, because archaeologists, like avant-garde artists, put everyday use things in the museum and somehow it neither surprises anyone nor shocks. In fact, even the latrine content is valuable and exposed to public view. So everything is a [future] text or the [former] artefact. Or vice versa: the [former] text and a [future] artefact. Reality is like the Matrix, where everything is an evil enclosure programmed by Architect to keep people under absolute control. People were reduced to the role of an artefact used by machines, or a quasi-living source of energy for Artificial Intelligence, which in return produces a historical text of civilization of the twentieth century, abounding in consumer goods. Now the roles have reversed. People vegetate in the world of text produced only to generate countless interpretations, apart from the one that they are only a dumb, artefactual element of the text, which aims to produce energy for a system of total enslavement. Only radical therapy can save them from this total oppression. Everyone has to choose: they can choose a pill that will generate the final interpretation, or a pill that will bring them back into the world of the Text, making him forget that he is just an artefact. This is the I-Cing book in a nutshell or it is a pill in the role of glasses that John Nada found in the movie They live [chapter IV]. As some anthropologists and archaeologists suggest, such a matrix is all but a realization of our eternal desires: safety, full stomach and good fun. Throughout history, only visions have changed about the proportions that should be used. This scenario began to “be written” in ice-bound paleolithic caves, and the entire subsequent history of mankind is the result of its more and more efficient implementation.46 The entire truth of the film Matrix can, however, conceal a less optimistic version that whatever we choose to be in Matrix, we choose wrong, because this promised utopia of freedom turns out to be “the desert of the real”, the same closed outer space as the inner space of the Matrix is closed. When Neo fights agent Smith in Matrix, the battle of people with machines in the underground state of Zion takes place in parallel. Indeed, Agent Smith himself escapes from Matrix and materializing himself as one of the people in the resistance movement, he manages to maim Neo, who, ultimately must be also understand as a program. Is this not a clear suggestion that Zion is in fact a

45 46

Deutsch 1998. Mithen 1996; Watkins 2010: 104-112.

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mirror image of the Matrix, another program, and the film itself is not about the division into freedom and enslavement, it is not the message of John the Evangelist: “And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”, but like Möbius's strip [again] is rather a story that the sphere of human action in each world requires dedicating one's own pleasures for the sake of social consent, and our freedom of scientific research and interpretation exists only in the system of power, rules and regulations, texts and contexts—in the final settlement within a certain Text, in which people are immersed completely and from which there is no escape?47 Who is writing this Text? Who is its Architect? Well, here we go to the next paradox: what was the first—hen or egg? What was before the Big Bang? Physicists say that these questions do not make sense. Différance by Derrida is something like the Big Bang, it comes from nothingness, it is stuck in it, but at some point it takes up the work of “diversification”, creating differences, thanks to which this whole Text—our universe, which is History, arises. Of course, we will never understand this History, because it is the open différance that separates it, the distance between the presence and it itself is History, it is an intersection between the always-sending arche and infinitely elusive telos. Nothing can fill this gap, thought will never adhere to being, and the same will always be divergent. No absolute knowledge is present.48 In this sense, we are also our own project, something between the artefact and the text. Being anchored in things, we try to understand ourselves through our texts, and the text itself is the mediator between the truth and the presence in which it seems to exist, be anchored.49 As the Architect puts it: “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.” The architect speaks to Neo, but basically his statement applies to all of us. Existentialism alludes to this. It is a proposal for awakening from this artefactual lethargy, which will be discussed in chapter VII. Perhaps Derrida is a postmodern trickster, or maybe I just don’t understand him [it's very likely], but his contribution to the humanities is the same, as modern physics seems to suggest [parallel universes, the world as a hologram, etc.]. If we do not curse physics, why should we curse Derrida? You have to accept it as it is. In a sense, he is trying to raise the humanities to the level of Kochhar-Lindgren 2011. Banasiak 2011: 12. 49 Yates 1990: 275. 47 48

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theoretical physics, which virtually none of the generally educated citizens of the world understands. For us, archaeologists, this means only that the obsessive question of archaeology: “how was it really?” We can only answer it that we could know if we had a time travel machine. That is why some humanists cannot stand this kind of philosophizing. You can, paraphrasing one of the researchers, bring you to four one-sentence manifestoes: a.

There is neither archaeology nor history—there is only reading and writing texts.

b.

There is no archaeology—there is only history.

c.

There is no history—only archaeology exists.

d.

Archaeology and history did exist, but they are over.”50

Well, if something is over, something else may start...

50

Balcerzan 2004.

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Communication—rationalization— solidarity Before Duchamp became a famous avant-garde artist, he made a living by writing books about chess. As early as in childhood he knew this royal game well and probably at that time he wanted to become a chess master. His dream came true when in 1933 he represented France at the chess contest. Does this fact in his life tell us something about his artistic choice? In one of the interviews, he talked about his adventure with chess as a way to the lack of forced repetitions in artistic creation. When a person can do something as fascinating as a game of chess, they do not have to constantly produce works of art that, as Duchamp claimed, tend to repeat in both form and content. Chess was also a metaphor for mathematics, which he was interested in while realizing that he would not become a mathematician. “Chess contains all the beauty of art—and much more. [...] Although not all artists are chess players all chess players are artists”, Duchamp used to say. So chess played a key role in Duchamp's life. What did the artist mean by that? We can certainly assume that if an artist says something, it should be understood in two ways: consciously and rationally versus unconsciously and irrationally. If, then, chess rationally allowed Duchamp to relax after hard work, what was its role in his unconsciousness? Let's recall at this point what Wittgenstein and de Saussure said about chess. Saussure likened the language to chess as well. He claimed that pawns on the chessboard [just like words] only have meaning within the playing field. Each figure is only a conventional sign that can be replaced by any other sign that we agree with our partner. So the pawn moves can be made with a regular stone or stick, if we do not have anything at hand. Even an urinal could be such a pawn, provided, of course, that it fitted in the playing field. By placing the urinal in the museum, he radically showed what art is. It is a playing field within which, according to certain rules, established by the consent of social rules, a characteristic activity called “art” is reproduced. Previous art consisted in maintaining a connection with the ideas of beauty and truth, with a complete lack of recognition of the internal, cultural and histori-

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cal principles governing it. Duchamp ordered a shift in aesthetic judgment that replaced the classical “this is beautiful” with “this is art.”1 In this respect, he is the equivalent of Gödel, who replaced the notion of truth with proofability [chapter III]. From now on, art and science is not the pursuit of objective truth [although there are both social and internal resistance to such a claim], but what the artistic/scientific community practically performs. In the same scope, it also refers to the beginning of the previous chapter, where we discussed Magritte's pipe. Duchamp's gesture turns out to be a mirror for the works of another artist, Marcel Broodthaers, who in 1972 exhibited some ancient art monuments and some of them he equipped with the following sentence: “This is not a work of art.”2 How to understand? Is this an archaeological artefact that accidentally found its way to the exhibition of modern art? In fact, artefacts of ancient cultures can often be treated as works of art—in this sense, the sign and the artefact are both in their place and not in their place. Every archaeologist also can, if he wants, perform the artist's gesture and say: “this is not house”, “this is not a grave”, “this is not an axe”, “this is not a wheeled cart” or “it is not a bead.”3 Besides, many such gestures have been made in archaeology. After all, what counts is discourse, not research convention, although we study only certain conventions during our studies. Art and science is a kind of chess game, but we do not fully understand it, if we do not sometimes get the figures of our game, we will not change the rules we follow and the language we use. It can also be said, especially in the context of this chapter, that Duchamp made a gesture of rationalizing art by changing figures and language. He introduced a certain idiosyncratic product to the art salon, which had previously ruled—at least it seemed—slightly different principles and standards of values. Wittgenstein was also using an example of chess. In Philosophical Investigations he wrote: “When one shows someone the king in chess and says: ‘This is the king’, this does not tell him the use of this piece—unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king. You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever having been shewn an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds here to the sound or shape of a word. Later in the book he comes back to this issue repeatedly: “But we talk about it [sentence and language] as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the rules of the game, not describing their physical properties. The question “What is a word really?” is analogous to

Duve 1998: 302. Ibidem: 420-425. 3 Dzbyński 2014: 1-11. 1 2

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“What is a piece in chess?”4 However, this should not deceive us, because, in the book in which he writes about language and chess often, the main philosophical problem was mathematics, which he noted at the outset. Chess, as you can see, is a perfect metaphor of language, art, mathematics, as well as the revolution that took place in science and art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Besides, chess is probably a perfect metaphor of life in general—what chess players would agree without resistance, I think. Wittgenstein is a symbolic figure here. While previously objective truths or cognition conditions were sought outside the game field, as in the art before Duchamp and the philosophy before Wittgenstein, then the focus was on the game itself, on the analysis of the method, methods and rules that we use in artistic and scientific activities. In this chapter, we will follow this lead. Chess is a good example to present another type of philosophy that is important for archaeology. Let us assume that human communication, getting the message across, is a game. This is basically suggested by Bourdieu, whom we discussed in chapter IV, but for Jürgen Habermas—philosopher, about whom we will now talk, the focus of analysis applies to communication as such: conversation, dialogue, dispute and exchange of arguments for a specific purpose. Just like in a chess game, when communicating, we must meet certain communication conditions, i.e. follow certain rules and this communication should take place in a specific place. Then we will achieve the premises, as Habermas states, for rational action. The right form of rationality corresponds to each form of action. Thus, Habermas assigns cognitive-instrumental rationality to teleological action, that is, aimed at achieving the previously intended results; activity regulated by norms—moral-practical rationality; dramaturgic action—expressive and aesthetic rationality; and communicative activity—communicative rationality. The latter is nothing more than a “process of reaching agreement”, expressed through three elements: intelligibility, the possibility of criticism and the requirement to justify. All of them can ultimately be reduced to the concept of argumentation, which Habermas refers to as “this type of speaking, in which the participants subject the validity claims at issue and try to make them atone or criticize them with the help of arguments. The correctness of the ration in a given context is a measure of the argument's power: it manifests itself in whether the argument can convince the participants of the dis-

4 Wittgenstein

1986: §31 and §108.

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course, i.e. motivate to conclude the validity claims.”5 Discourse here is not the same as Foucault's discourse [chapter IV]. Even if our arguments are directed by some higher and not fully conscious episteme, which is the basic premise of the French philosopher, we can also identify it and find a specific place for it in our investigation into understanding. In this sense, Foucault has already equipped us with some arguments for discussion that we can articulate and understand. Communicative rationality derives its constitutive power from language that is a “medium of reaching agreement.” According to Habermas, there is a certain potential of rationality in the language itself: “Language is only a pragmatic aspect of the communication model of action: speaker, using sentences in a targeted manner in reaching agreement, they refer to worlds, and not only directly—as in teleological action, guided by norms and dramaturgically—but in a reflective way.” They reference to three worlds: objective, subjective and social presupposes the existence of a specific framework of agreement, certain limits of communication. “Now they do not refer directly to something in the objective, social or subjective world, but they express their relativism due to the possibility of questioning their validity by other actors.”6 It is important, however, that in the communication activity, participants put their own success in the background! According to Habermas, therefore, if communication is a game, it is until we try to strive for tie instead of a victory. Such a game seems strange, but it can be compared not to a single chess game, but to the masters' competition taking place for some time. In fact, although one of them can have one or several winning games on their account, they are generally equal, they are on the same level of the game. It is a matter of recognition and consent. Therefore, the moment of finishing the game is not a metaphysical revelation [the equivalent of receiving a gold medal, etc.], but it is simply identical to obtaining agreement about something in the world [Verständigung über etwas], which takes place among the participants of rational communication. Reaching an agreement is the goal of rational communication and has its structure and form. An accident can not be obtained without referring to existing social norms; it can not be achieved by threatening the adversary with sanctions [bullying], or by using high-level, pathetic or demagogic rhetorical means. It cannot be achieved solely by calculation or in the act of desperation. Such a game is then considered invalid. Habermas' consensus is entitled to

5 6

Habermas 1999: 46. Ibidem: 186.

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“intersubjective validity”, for which there are appropriate reasons, always ready to be articulated on demand. Their validity can be [theoretically] reproduced even if the participants of the dialogue change. Admittedly, these are very demanding rules of the game. They are so demanding that Habermas came up with a certain model. To achieve a rational consensus, the so-called “ideal speech situation” [ideale Sprachsituation] is proposed. Following our metaphors, we can say that it is a kind of game in which participants take voluntary participation, knowing its rules, and its essence expresses itself in terms of the following premises: [a] public sphere and inclusion: no one who could make any significant contribution due to the controversial claim of legality can not be excluded; [b] communication equality: everyone has equal opportunity to express themselves in the case; [c] exclusion of illusions: participants in such a “communication game” must say what they think; [d] no coercion: communication cannot be subject to restrictions allowing a better argument to come to the fore and decide on the outcome of the discussion. This means that everyone in the discourse has the right to criticize and refute the arguments of other participants and create their own. Only fulfilment of the above conditions can guarantee the achievement of consent, which is entitled to universal, intersubjective validity. The above premises constitute, according to Habermas, a barrier against tendencies relativizing discourse.7 The philosopher realizes that his proposal is a far-reaching idealization. The ideal communication situation does not exist; it is a postulate to which one should strive. Habermas knows that the participants of communication are usually aware that they are participating in the discourse somewhat already “set up”: for example, the circle of participants has been carefully selected [it is not known by whom], one side of this “communication game” is somehow privileged in relation to the other, or some have not freed themselves from prejudices, or many of its participants are sponsored by a third party [large corporations, politicians, etc.], or behaving strategically [due to family or environmental connections]. It is therefore clear that in all these situations, the motives other than “better insight” decide about their “yes” or “no”.8 Realizing these limitations, some simply called Habermas' theory “utopian”. But is such criticism accurate at the moment when its addressee admits openly to the belief in utopia? “If the utopian oases are dry, said Habermas in one of the interviews, the desert of banality and boredom will spread.” Others

7 8

Habermas 2004: 38. Ibidem.

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accused him of having reduced his rationality to the usual procedure in the form of an ideal communication situation. Rational cognition automatically appears, on the strength of “insight”, and not as if Habermas wanted to be based on the unidentified “language competences” of each of the participants of the discourse, they claimed. The utopian procedure of argumentation, as Habermas responds to his critics, is a “self-correcting procedure”, i.e. the unsatisfactory course of the discussion itself inclines, for example, to changes in the rules of the meeting, to the manner of conducting discussions, to change a rather representative group of participants, to complete the order daily or improvement of the information base. The procedural properties of the argumentation process justify the rational expectation that conclusive information and arguments will be “thrown on the table” and “processed”, so as long as the argumentation participants assume that this is the case, they see no reason to be concerned about procedural shortcomings in the communication process. Whoever seriously participates in the argumentation actually accepts these kinds of premises as a starting point.9 *** Let's visualize our game. In the debut film by Sydney Lumet 12 Angry Men from 1957, the jury meets in an isolated room to decide the fate of an accused, 18-year-old young man. He was charged with stabbing his father. So we have to deal with some specific discussion participants who play a game called justice. They will not leave this room until they give a verdict. The director's picture at the very beginning of this intimate drama is bleak and pessimistic. 11 lay judges are ready to send the accused to an electric chair on the principle of tacit acceptance of the objectivity of court proceedings. This is an example of this unjust privilege of some [trustworthy and narrow-minded on the part of the prosecutor] in relation to the other—which? We'll get to that soon. Is it possible, however, to agree with the majority, as soon afterwards such arguments as heat in the room, the willingness to take part in a sporting event that will soon take place or the general claim that this: “Modern youth is corrupted to the bone” are falling on their part? Each of these arguments is rooted in their personal experiences, i.e. it is highly subjective. Certainly, these are not rational arguments, although the lay juries do not care. Hitchcock's earthquake occurs when one of the jurors votes the opposite: innocent! This introduces both tension between the players and observers of

9

Ibidem: 39.

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this chamber drama, which will remain present until the end of the film. The only righteous juror [Henry Fonda] reminds at the beginning of the meeting that they should at least talk about the case, since it will result in the death or life of a young man. He also reminds them of the rule they should follow: beyond reasonable doubt. Then he initiates the investigation, during which he clings to the details, questions the views of the prosecutor and speeches of individual witnesses. When necessary, he even conducts in-depth psychoanalysis of the jurors themselves, demonstrating their habits and prejudices that prevent them from a rational assessment of the matter. Our main character is not convinced of his infallibility from the very beginning. Most of the “discovered” arguments are being discussed [they are rationally worked out, as Habermas would say], when the opponents, while criticizing each other's positions, agree on some important issues in the case that were not raised at all during the trial. For example, one of them discovers that the main witness of an alleged murder [a middle-aged woman] could have been visually impaired because it rubbed the bridge of the nose in a characteristic way. So new arguments are “thrown on the table” and “processed”. This generates a request for the lack of credibility of this witness. As you can guess, Henry Fonda convinces all the jurors in turn. Ultimately, the film ends with a triumphant accent, arousing faith in people's sense of reason, strength of argument, etc. Justice becomes satisfaction, rational agreement is reached. Really? Let us first note that the film illustrates the situation when a competent participant of communication shows other participants [incompetent] how to play: what to look for in such matters, remember the basic rule that many forget: beyond reasonable doubt, not taking personal account of prejudices [all young people are spoiled] or resignation from teleological behaviors [willingness to see the match for the price of a conviction]. Once everyone has learned this, there will be general joy and a sense of well-fulfilled duty, though not everyone's. The most fierce advocate of sending an accused person to an electric chair is somewhat forced by the majority to undergo a peculiar catharsis. Nevertheless, one can say that rational discourse, free from the domination of one of the parties, has been successful, and with it, success has been achieved by human reason and justice. There are two basic questions: 1] Can we count on having someone like Henry Fonda serve on every jury? You can have doubts. 2] And has justice really been done? In essence, the jury only played a game according to which, according to its rules, the accused should be considered innocent. But is he really innocent?! Such ideal gameplay seems to be fantasy or simply a utopia, just like Habermas' ideal communication situation. For example, in an earlier French film called Justice est faite, Andre Cayatte presented the reality outside the

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playing field. Here, the director also performed psychoanalysis of jurors, and their complexes were shown much more accurately. The camera often left the courtroom and visited their homes, families, and showed their interests. But above all among the jurors there was no such a crystal hero, as in 12 Angry Men. Through that, Justice est faite did not bring consolation. Cayatte shows that the jurors do not renounce prejudices so easily, which are the result of their entire life base, and the whole picture expresses great doubt as to the system of jurors. From the movie 12 Angry Men, we can hope that as long as such citizens like Henry Fonda watch, justice is not threatened. Every innocent accused would like such a jurors, while every guilty would like to avoid such lay judges. The problem, however, may be that such people do not exist at all. 25 years after 12 Angry Men Lumet returned to justice. In the film Verdict, to which the script was written by David Mammet, this process is shown from a different perspective. The jury this time has to deal with the matter of a clear and drastic violation of medical ethics. The doctors' mistake led the young girl to paralysis, and consequently to the biological vegetation. The controversy is added by the fact that the ill-fated event occurred in a renowned Catholic hospital. The family of a girl in a coma demands high compensation. The case is taken over by Frank Galvin [Paul Newman]—an advocate after the passage, who once was an outstanding representative of the law, defender of the oppressed, but today, due to life's failures and progressing alcoholism, he is already a shadow of himself, and his career hangs by a thread. In the new case, he notices a chance to rebuild his position in the legal world and get out of alcoholic depression. The Archdiocese administering the hospital, wanting to avoid the trial at all costs, offers Galvin a lucrative agreement. It would seem that in his difficult situation, it is impossible to refuse such an opportunity [the fact that the parties get along without a court is legally valid and very common in the American judiciary]. Something is breaking in him, though. Against his own interests [if he did, he would be an ordinary pawn in a procedural game] Galvin, nevertheless, leads the trial. He decides to invest his professional and human potential to fight for justice, but also to regain self-respect. Galvin takes on the role of Henry Fonda from 12 Angry Men. This time, a crystal man is an attorney who believes in justice, that is, he has metaphysical beliefs. At first, he went astray, but thanks to this new matter he regains his faith. One certainty in this matter is that Galvin regains faith in justice in a certain sense as a result of encountering another faith—faith of the Catholic church, where crime has been committed and the church itself assumes the position of a purely rational player, i.e. one who does not hesitate for the tran-

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scendental rights that he represents. In this sense, Galvin is the antithesis of divine justice—he is the representative of its human version, which he conceives as a god brought down to earth, which gives expression in his final speech. In his reflections, he introduces us to the specificity of the world ruled by the Law and in a way makes the main message of the film visible. In his understanding, the courts do not exist to give justice to the oppressed, but to give them a chance for justice. The lawyer is therefore the one who believes and is to convince the lay judges using all available methods that real repair options lie in their hands. In the course of a lawsuit, which is a purely rational procedure, it turns out that guilt cannot be proven: very important evidence in the case can not be legalized, so the court orders the jury to wipe out the words of the witness who is their source. At that time, thanks to the advocate who inspires the lay judges by his understanding of justice, it is made outside of rational discourse, on the basis of taking into account precisely this proof, which was erased from the protocol and from the memory of the jurors. Is Truth and Justice, then, rather what happens outside the rational and formal-legal language? As we remember from chapter IV archaeology is also a game field. Therefore, one should use the Habermas' proposal in order to improve it. The basic problem, however, is that the communication community can be like a film fantasy from the mentioned movies. It can only occur when all participants can be forced to communicate [you have to close them in one room], although, in theory, it should be free from coercion. It would, however, in some sense, be consistent with Kant's categorical imperative, which is something like internal coercion. Categorical imperative is the command to do what is right. Kant knew that acts that proceeded from purely moral motives are the ones that come the most difficult to people. As a result, there is always a discrepancy between will and duty in a moral subject. When morality and law prevail in the future, Kant calculated, external coercion will not be needed, and state law and moral law will be the same.10 As it is easy to guess, such a case opens the way to paradoxical and incongruent constructions in the type of statement that “real freedom is compulsion”. In most cases, with the exception of totalitarian systems, no one can be forced to communicate. A successful agreement would be possible if we could combine all of the discussed films into one. Then we would need one just [Henry Fonda or Paul Newman], full recognition of the conditions of discourse [Justice est faite] and pure insight beyond the procedure [Verdict], that

10

Krasnodębski 2009: 204.

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is, something that exists between the lines and between facts [chapter III]. Or, ultimately, an ambitious lawyer [Tom Cruise] would be useful as in the A Few Good Men, forcing the admission of guilt over a general [Jack Nicholson] using a specific vivisection of his chief mentality in the courtroom. Well, but we must remember that Habermas does not allow that such aggressive rhetoric during communication would take place. So let us not ask too much. For archaeology to be a rational field of play, rational discourse and reaching an agreement on the basis of a reason, at least one crystal character is needed who would make the other participants aware of what the game is about: sometimes it is about a research problem, sometimes about professional ethics, and to others about the sense of archaeology. But does such a hero exist at all? Rationalization and History Rational communication is also a product of historical development, which Habermas began to conceptualize as a participant in numerous discussions in the group called Frankfurt school. Its main representatives were the philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. In their opinion, the source of destruction [culture and society] lies in the very enlightenment [and even earlier, because already in Homer, where the authors find elements of modernity]. This source is [wow!] Intellect. “Reason is the body of calculation, plan, the goals are neutral, and its element is coordination,” wrote the philosophers in his famous book Dialektik der Aufklärung. The rationality of reason is for them in their innermost being and from the very beginning the “rationality of domination” [Herrschaftsrationalität], reason only on the ruling-based and always dominant servitude. “The ordering mind is equal to the creative god, because they exercise the same power over nature.” This is a uniform mechanism: “For the existence and event, enlightenment in advance recognizes only what can be unified, its ideal is the system from which everything comes together and every thing separately.” This is a procedure that transforms all diversity into quantitative categories, bringing all phenomena to abstract figures, so that they can be compared and, according to their own logic, manipulate them accordingly; that which, in turn, treats with great suspicion and marginalizing prejudice or dogma. According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the method of reason and his idol is mathematics, because “the number has become the canon of Enlightenment”. Such a reason can not generate other goals, beyond the selfpreservation goal, which it achieves through thoughtless adaptation: “The only criterion is self-preservation, successful or failed adaptation to the objective function and patterns that define it.” Horkheimer then developed the term of instrumental reason, which itself being unable to set his own goals,

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only serves to coordinate tasks imposed on it from the outside, through the economic system and the cultural industry.11 According to philosophers, Enlightenment is not the liberation of man from immaturity, as Kant, Hegel, and many others wanted, but it is the replacement of one myth [irrational and religious] with another [scientific and rational]. Magic, like science, is noticed by the authors, it is aimed deliberately, but it aims at the goal mimetically, not through the increasing distance to the object. Magic does not arise from the omnipotence of the thought that a primitive man ascribes to himself equally with a neurotic. A magical man respects nature and realizes that it is generally a mystery. In contrast, modern man, replacing magic with the all-encompassing industrial technique, claims the right to the totality of their knowledge and power. The result of this process is an even greater fall into the enslavement of their own superstitions. The basic thesis of Dialectic of Enlightenment can be summarized as follows: “enlightenment—understood broadly as the progress of thought—always strived to free man from fear and make him master.” Man, thanks to science and its product—technology, conquered and possessed nature. With time, however, it turned out that the source of emancipation—reason underwent instrumentalization and again enslaved the man. Enlightenment put on again the robe of his opponent—mythology— thus turning into its opposite.12 Later in their book Adorno and Horkheimer criticized contemporary media and cultural industry, arguing that they too are subject to this overriding principle of domination over others through the psychotechnical and social engineering application of natural sciences, which was later deepened by Foucault [chapter IV]. Frankenstein is the figure that best illustrates the enlightenment in the sense of Adorno and Horkheimer. Although Mary Shelley wrote the novel as a metaphorical illustration of the terror of the French Revolution, she uses her father William Godwin's ideas, to whom she devoted the book. Godwin was a science fiction thinker and in his share An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness he drew visions of the coming of better times under the sign of rationality and communication. “Man is a rational being”, he wrote. “It is absurd therefore to say that sound reasoning and truth cannot be communicated by one man to another. Whenever in any case he fails, it is that he is not sufficiently laborious, patient and clear. We suppose of course the person who undertakes to communicate the truth really to possess it, and be master of his subject; for it is scarcely worth an observation to say that that which he has not himself he cannot communicate to another.”

11 12

Horkheimer & Adorno 1969. Ibidem.

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Godwin is referred to as the founder of philosophical anarchism because he argued that “government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence and ignorance, but that it will be rendered increasingly unnecessary and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge and the expansion of the human understanding.” He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. In the future, there were supposed to be no wars, boredom, disease and many other unpleasant things due to the creation of a new human race. It was supposed to occur when overcrowding on the Earth would be subjected to scientific, rational control—it would be a product of social engineering.13 Changes should follow gradually and that there was no need for violent revolution [therefore revolution is unnatural monster]. He argues that ”the task which, for the present, should occupy the first rank in the thoughts of the friend of man is enquiry, communication, discussion.” Godwin thus believed in individuals' desire to reason sincerely and truthfully with each other. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels knew of Godwin’s writings and credited him with contributing to the theory of exploitation. He also had an influence on Robert Owen, William Thompson and other nineteenth-century utopians, and on the labor movements for political reform in. However, it can also be perceived as one of the propagators of the idea of rational communication, which was further developed later by none other than Jürgen Habermas. Frankenstein seems to be a visualization of the idea that Mary Shelley knew very well. It is a construct of enlightenment, the result of rationalization, getting rid of religious norms and embodying the possibilities of learning. His mind is initially tabula rasa and must learn everything from the beginning through reading and experience. His first months of life are a kind of philosophical experiment. The fact that he suffers a moral defeat, that he becomes a vengeful and murderous monster, does not mean condemning him, but condemning the society to which he approaches with the best intentions, the need to love and be loved. His sad fate is thus the perfect illustration of Rousseau's thesis that man is inherently good, only a rational society spoils them [chapter II]. It is revolting precisely because it is a successful product of rationalization and reason.14 Frankenstein's character has since then entered the canon of the horror film and is presented in different variants, which usually serve as a warning against the resignation of social control over science. Interesting is also the look associated with the reversal of this perspective, which takes place in the

13 14

Godwin 1793. Žižek 2008: 78.

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film Alien: Resurrection. Here Frankenstein is a normally-looking woman Ellen Ripley [Sigourney Weaver]. In an eloquent scene, Ripley enters a mysterious room, where she sees the previous, unsuccessful versions of herself, the stages of cloning. A frightening creature, a small fetus, then more developed forms. In the end, a creature that looks almost the same as her but has the limbs of a monster.15 She realizes who and what she actually is and destroys [erases] these unsuccessful versions of himself. She becomes an ideal human, a completed rationalization project, a human without a future, a kind of the Last Man in the second essay of Fukuyama [chapter I]. Jürgen Habermas, however, opposes such far-reaching “rationalization”. In his essay on the future of human nature, he warns us against transferring responsibility to the market, science or personal [egotistical] human choices, which, like blind forces, strive more and more to “liberal eugenics.” In a sense, therefore, the idea of Habermas and his entire philosophical proposition is to re-civilize, unnaturalize and domesticate Frankenstein. He tries to save the enlightenment project just so that it does not become a monster. Thus, Habermas initially shared the opinion of the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment and saw in the modernity Frankenstein as in the novel Mary Shelley. Later, however, he decided that not only is scientific-technical rationality the source of evil, but an excessive extension of its scope, expansion, misunderstanding and application, or technocracy. One should differentiate between the mutual interactions between people, guided by social norms, assuming the existence of at least two communicating entities, and the other actions of the subject on things guided by technical rules. Ultimately, the philosopher claims that the difference between the two types is the difference between moral rules and technical rules. In the course of history, both can become more and more rational. Following this lead, along with scientific and technical and economic progress, one can also expect a certain progress in the way of morality and rationalization of social life. Distinguishing instrumental action from communicative activity leads to the thesis that rationalizations in both these dimensions are largely independent of each other. Scientific and technical progress does not automatically lead to social progress as enlightenment philosophers believed. “Liberation from hunger and hardship is not necessarily combined with liberation from slavery and humiliation, because there is no automatic connection between the development of work and interaction”, writes Habermas. The fact is that slavery [its different varieties], although it does not formally exist, is still an

15

Fiennes 2006.

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important factor in the capitalist production of goods. In each of these dimensions, the rationality criterion and another rationalization mechanism are different. And so in the dimension of instrumental action, this criterion is effectiveness [that is why slavery still exists], while in the dimension of interaction, the criterion is the voluntary rationale of the binding standards. Therefore, communicative rationalization will not serve to develop productive forces, but to reduce the repressiveness of other rationalization forces, asserts the philosopher. Instrumental rationalization is achieved through the development of science and its technical use, while communicative rationalization through a non-violent discussion on the subject of binding norms.16 To substantiate his theses, Habermas uses History. Kant's understanding was unhistorical, and philosophers in his time and later on believed that technical progress would automatically transform into moral progress by enlightening public opinion on the one hand, and by freeing oneself from the conditions of nature—on the other. He believed in it both Hegel, Marx and Settembrini, who at the Sanatorium Berghof educated Hans Castorp so intensively. However, the latter did not want to learn [chapter I]. It seems that Hegel's reason was too unistic, one should therefore find, proposes Habermas, something between these extremes, because human history to date is characterized by a fundamental disproportion: a man who actively and consciously subjugated nature was at the same time passive when it comes to his own social life, norms and ethics. This has led to the fact that in today's industrial societies science as a motor of technological progress has become the first force of rationalization and no one expects even that it will lead to deepening reflection on human existence. This is very troubling for Habermas, and therefore it can be argued without exaggeration that the entire theoretical effort of the Frankfurt philosopher is aimed at creating such a theory replacing the old philosophy of history, namely Hegel and Marx at once.17 How would it look like? Through “linguification of sacrum”. Progress in the ethical and social sphere consists primarily in replacing religiously-grounded morality with ethics based on discourse. However, this is not a Foucault-style discourse that covers the basic fact that it is associated with the power of one over the other. Habermas follows in the footsteps of Durkheim, who discovered the sacral foundations of morality, explaining in this way the binding nature of moral norms, i.e. the fact that they earn their own respect, and not only because of the sanctions it entails for their transgression. Thus, Habermas, referring to anthropological research, draws the transformation that takes place from the

16 17

Krasnodębski 2009: 257. Ibidem: 253.

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stage of traditional communities, where religion plays the role of explaining the world, the medium of social integration and socialization, as well as the relay of aesthetic impressions, and thus the functions that science plays in modern society, ethics and art. As for art, as we remember, Duchamp showed it in a radical way: art is not based only on traditional aesthetic impressions, but on the discourse taking place among artists and the public. In the course of the cultural development of society, therefore, the process of “linguification of sacrum” takes place, where the social integration function of the sacred justification is assumed by the moral agreement based on a rational discourse. Religion is linguified and the ritual is replaced by communicative activity. Durkheim described this process using the concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity.18 Habermas understands thus social evolution as a process of increasing rationalization of worldviews by socialized human individuals, a process in which language is the principal catalyst of change. Communicative action is critical for socialization since it mediates between the three basic elements of social structure: social solidarity, binding norms and individual identities. Falling back on the works of Mead and Durkheim, Habermas depicts social evolution as progressing from symbolically mediated interaction to interaction guided by norms which derive their validity from the originally sacral context. He argues that “the socially integrative and expressive functions that were at first fulfilled by ritual practice pass over to communicative action.” Then, “the authority of the holy is gradually replaced by the authority of the achieved consensus.” This means a freeing of communicative action from sacrally protected normative contexts. Therefore, “the disenchantment and disempowering of the domain of the sacred takes place by way of a linguification of the ritually secured, basic normative agreements; going along with this is a “release of the rationality potential in communicative action. The aura of rapture and terror that emanates from the sacred, the spellbinding power of the holy, is sublimated into the binding/bonding force of criticizable validity claims.”19 The language used by Habermas is, one could say, as complicated as his theory. This transformation means the transition from one mechanism of coordinating activities, consisting in a metaphysical and religious consensus assumed and undisputed by anyone, to a completely different quality coordination mechanism—through the production of a consensus in an actionoriented towards reaching an agreement. This communication rationality

18 19

Ibidem: 273. Habermas 2002: 140.

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means, therefore, that the potential of rationality, which previously was contained in the metaphysical images of the world, is then located in intersubjective conditions of communication, that is, in reaching agreement by reason. It is interesting, however, that while communicative rationality with all its elements of reaching agreement on the basis of intersubjectively generated validations manifests itself with full force only in the modern era, Habermas thinks that as a form of rationality it is universal. This opens the way to research on very early manifestations of communication rationality. Before we get to that, let us note that communicative reason is a form of morality in which the remnants of sanctity remain. It is a kind of background radiation resulting from the dissolution of the original metaphysical paradigm from the origins of human communities. Thus, some part of metaphysics, an element of old reasoning patterns, is preserved in this way. In this perspective, however, one can perceive Habermas as a philosopher who is a model example of the philosophical tradition of bringing down the divine to the earth.20 An eloquent illustration of this thesis is the movie The Green Mile based on Stephen King's novel of the same title. A rational system of justice, the last element of which we see in the film [this is a green mile squad for those sentenced to death], isolates and removes the divine element in the form of convicted John Coffey. Coffey has a child's mind and healing abilities [like a prehistoric shaman sucks disease from a man, and then spits it out in the form of black dust], but above all he can perfectly recognize whether someone is a bad or good man and whether he committed some crime and subconsciously receives suffering and injustices happening all around. It is obvious that such a human-curiosity should be eliminated because the released one would slowly blow up the entire justice system from the inside. John Coffey is the embodiment of Justice and Truth [prison guards describe him as a miracle], which in our world can only be thought of as an intellectual game of god in the courtroom, often unnaturally bloated by legal eloquence and discourse. And yet, John Coffey lets us believe in justice as the ability to perfectly separate the wheat from the chaff, good from bad. Therefore, the understanding of the entire philosophical background of the critical theory, which Max Horkheimer summarized as follows: “The theory knows that the god does not exist, and yet believes in it” is in this approach perfectly visible in the theory of communicative action. Habermas is like Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, an angel of justice who believes in the parousia of progress and rationality, the possibility of agreement without consulting the pope. Thus, communicative

20

Kmita 2004: 87-92.

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rationality is not freed from the “metaphysical mortgage”.21 Nevertheless, Habermas is a philosopher, not a theologian, so it may be better to say that he is trying to bring to the earth that Spirit whose dominion over the modern world has already been predicted by Hegel. 22 According to the German philosopher and sociologist Niklas Luhman, language as a medium of communication is so vague that it is not suitable to overcome the egocentrism of individual perspectives of communication participants in order to achieve a higher-order perspective. “All communication is based on a certain identifiable difference, namely the difference between information and communication.”23 Language is not a solid ground in which two people can reach a consensus on a matter. “Everyone is talking about what no one knows,” concludes Luhman. Therefore, as Jerzy Kmita believes, practicing rational communication with another human being, we rely on an empirically unconvinced conviction that speaking about something we communicate effectively, without realizing that each of us lives in different world and has only a “bunch of approximations”, carrying us without our knowledge from the elements of other worlds to our world. In this approach, rational communication would be in its deepest matter a matter of hermeneutic understanding according to Gadamer, or “melting the horizon” of the interpreter with the existing traces of the interlocutor's mythical horizon [chapter IV].24 Lacan, on the other hand, claimed that we already assume the existence of a great Other as the guarantor of our sense through the ordinary act of speaking: “There is a fundamental faith-belief in the essential coherence of the Other—which belongs to language as such.”25 Perhaps that is why the theory of communicative reason, next to the aforementioned merger of Hegel and Marx, is also an attempt to connect Kant with Freud?26 *** Since rational communication is embellished with Freud, it opens the way to incongruent interpretations, and chess, as an extremely rational game, is great for this. For the heir of Lacan's psychoanalytic current, our reality con-

Ibidem. Siemek 1996: 160-167. 23 Luhman 2003: 152. 24 Kmita 2004: 92. 25 Žižek 2003: 227. 26 Krasnodębski 2009: 260. 21 22

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sists of three interrelated levels: symbolic, imaginary and real. This triad can of course be illustrated by the example of a game of chess. The rules to be followed to play chess belong to the symbolic dimension. From this point of view, the “bishop” is determined only by the movements that he can do. This level is clearly different from the imaginary level, where the shapes and characteristics of the figures are their names [king, queen, bishop]. It is easy to imagine a game with the same rules, but with another imaginarium, in which the figure of the “bishop” would be called a “messenger”, “runner” or else.27 Considering de Saussure and Duchamp, one would be able to play chess with urinals, bidets or with the words themselves, giving them names of works of art, e.g. “fountain” [bishop] or “Venus in Furs” [queen]. Finally, the Real is a complex set of contingent circumstances that affect the course of the game [players' intelligence, unforeseen random events, etc.]. It can be seen from here that the Real is the least real. Thanks to this, it seems that the rules of the game can be changed, if players behave rationally, or the game will be interrupted if they behave irrationally. This example shows that communication, which is a game of words and rules, is still quite a mystical phenomenon. Therefore, as Žižek writes, interpersonal communication is characterized by irreducible reflexivity: every communication act symbolizes the very fact of communication. Human speech never transmits the message itself, it also always confirms the fundamental symbolic pact between communicating subjects.28 And is it possible to play chess without chess pieces, that is, using our metaphor: communication without the subject of communication? In the film Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni [based on the story by Julio Cortázar, The Droolings of the Devil], the protagonist is a photographer and takes pictures for fashion magazines. When he develops photos from a certain open-air session, he sees a small stain on the edge of one of the photographs. Enlarging this area reveals that it is the outline of the human body. Regardless of the fact that it is night, he goes to the place where the open air took place and actually finds the body. But he gets frightened and escapes. When the next day he returns to this place, he states that the body disappeared without a trace. What happened? The film's protagonist is a modern man of success whose only goal in life is to fulfil desires. He has everything, but he wants more and more so that it becomes a caricature. The first sequence of the film is already saying a lot. We

27 28

Žižek 2010: 25. Ibidem: 29.

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see him leaving together with other people from the night shelter. Moments later, when he gets into his luxury car and goes to the studio, it turns out that the conclusions drawn by us were false. He is not a homeless man, but a young photographer, enjoying women's respect and general popularity who has invaded the privacy of people at the bottom of the social ladder, because for a moment he wanted to be someone else. Corpses, according to the code of the detective novel, are also the object of desire—this is the desire for interpretation [who did it?, how did it happen?]. However, we only get the key to the film mystery in the final scene. Our hero desperately looking for his last object of desire—disappearing corpse—wades into a dead end and ultimately resigns from his private investigation. Then he goes for a walk around the tennis court, where a group of people play a game without a tennis ball, imitating a game of tennis. During this quasi-game, the imaginary ball is knocked out of the fence and falls not far from it. He hesitates for a moment, but finally accepts the rules of the game: he bends, he marks the raising of the ball and its rejection on the court. This scene in relation to the whole movie has a metaphorical function. The life he leads is pointless, just as the crime he seeks to unravel remains unpunished. In other words, our character agrees that “the game works without an object”: as in pantomimic tennis you can play without a ball, so his investigation takes place without any corpses.29 An incongruent approach to the game and communication could also show us, for example, that both chess which Wittgenstein used to speak about mathematics, and mathematics itself were initially a verbal-material area: you can not learn rules [movements such as pawns] without other levels: without using different naming methods for specific material objects present in threedimensional space. Mathematics in its beginnings, which today we would not call mathematics, would be a combination of matter and language, as I pointed out in chapter III. One should also place here the notions of the value of things and phenomena, the concepts of number and measure, as well as metaphorical approaches of both. This process must have lasted a long time, since the Paleolithic is known for the use of signs for the determination of time sequences [type of calendars].30 Then the process began to be regionalized, which is particularly emphasized when we consider ancient civilizations. And so early stages of mathematics in Europe meant more geometry because people in the prehistory of this region for the last several thousand years had had more intense experience of space, while in the Middle East architecture has long functioned as a smaller or larger container for people

29 30

Žižek 2003: 214. Marshack 1991: 25-61.

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and things, one attached to the other like in bee beehive. Therefore, the Babylonians, as Michał Heller writes, were very bright and patient observers, but they had a relatively small spatial imagination. They were able to predict different phenomena in the sky: eclipses of the sun, the moon, conjunctions of planets, etc., however, they lacked the imagination to combine the detected regularities with some, at least hypothetical, mechanism of celestial body movements or with some cosmological image. To organize astronomical observations, of course, mathematics was necessary, which the Babylonians developed to a large extent, but here their mental predispositions were revealed. By way of guessing and experimenting with numbers, they created accounting algorithms that, using today's terminology, would be called arithmetic and algebraic algorithms, but always performed on specific numbers, not on abstract symbols. The Babylonians definitely had no flair for geometry, writes Heller: “You have to 'see' in geometry, not just calculate.”31 In Europe, after the end of the Paleolithic era, the path of cultural mathematization could have taken a slightly different path. For example, contextual archaeologists following Ian Hodder recognize that in the Neolithic of Europe, in the process of cultural and symbolic transformations, the long homes of the first farmers have evolved into long tombs—symbolic homes of the late Eneolithic communities.32 In the context of the presentations shown here, however, one can go much further and propose that these long tombs were later transformed into long flint blades, which were eagerly placed in individual graves.33 The previous approach to this strange phenomenon in the prehistory of Europe, i.e. the tendency to produce ever larger stone and flint tools in the agricultural communities of the younger Stone Age, focused on their alleged functionality and utility value [processualism] or on symbolism [postprocessualism]. For example, Helena and Kjel Knutsson, analyzing the contexts of the occurrence of long flint blades, proposed that they could be a certain metaphor of the idea of agriculture and were associated with the tasks brought by the ancestors.34 However, these issues can be combined. I am writing it here because the Habermas approach to rational communication allows us to better understand what measuring, mathematics and economics mean. This is an incongruent understanding also in the sense that it uses the philosopher's theory not entirely with his original intention to save the Enlightenment project. Well, but in the end, the title of this book obliges to something.

Heller 2015: 18. Midgley 2005: 131. 33 Dzbyński 2013. 34 Knutsson & Knutsson 2003. 31 32

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For Habermas’, communication is of course an open and never-ending process in which the community takes part. The historicity of his approach consists, for example, in recognizing that language is the primary medium of communication, linguistic approach to agreement has the most complex structure, and in the historical sense is the oldest, and that means that other types of communication can be understood as its derivative. Therefore, in more complex societies in which communication activities occupy more and more space, a different way of coordinating [on the principle of system integration] is developing—the steering media: money and power. They were created by the impoverishment of a linguistic coming to an understanding, thanks to which they can act autonomously, behind the actors' backs. Money as such is an ideal medium. The medium, which is money, replaces language communication in specific situations and in certain aspects. This substitution means that a smaller interpretative effort can be invested in communication, as well as the risk of misunderstanding during the communication process is reduced. The medium plays a coordinating role in strictly defined contexts. It not only serves to save information and time, but also to cope with the risk of interrupting the sequence of actions.35 Habermas claims that one should not identify a medium with certain functional language specifications—they are rather a substitute for specific language functions. The language serves other media as a model. The medium is also a measure of value and a tool for thesaurization. Due to its function, it must be: •

measurable,

•

in any order disposable of,

•

collectable.

Using the above statements, we can assess the difference between language and medium. While linguistic communication only allows the assessment of its measurable value in relation to the sender's level of information [in our case it would be the level of knowledge of the community's traditions and mythology, that is its narrative level], the media must embody the measurable quantum of values to which all participants can refer as a certain objective quantity, regardless of specific contexts. While the semantic content of linguistic expression cannot be appropriated by individual actors only [unless such exclusivity would be established by means of a specific type of communication barriers], the steering media must

35

Habermas 2002: 476.

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embody values that can be taken into account in various quantities; possessions, moving from hand to hand, in a word: they can circulate.36 Because, as we remember, we are dealing with a theory that takes into account historical processes [History], it must be assumed that the media is a product of evolution and development. The whole process can be captured as shown in the figure [Fig. 3] and as can be seen, this is not a positive process. In History, two subsystems emerge: the medium of power and money, and then they increase their range of influence immeasurably so that today they can enter such areas of social life in which the coordination of actions should be carried out only through the language of the original mode of communication. Habermas calls this process a “colonization of the lifeworld” during which reason disintegrates into a multiplicity of values and destroys its own universality. So the point is to get it back, which I mentioned in the first part of the chapter. But how? In general, the answer seems to be simple: if capitalism, then with a human face only, greater cooperation of public opinion, less secrets, more agreement. In general, it is about rational, linguistic and communicative regaining of influence on the areas of life controlled almost exclusively by the medium of money and power. Refining this question [how to do it] is rather a task of social sciences and politics. An archaeologist will usually be interested in the areas of the diagram located in the lower-left part. This is prehistory, in which the language of sacrum begins to develop, but it is only in its infancy. Incomplete steering media, money protoplasms and modern power also appear: proto-media of control. Such recording systems were a proto-medium—collections of tokens that appeared in the Middle East during the neolithization process. They were used to calculate goods, debts and liabilities in early agricultural communities. It was the earliest sign system to carry information about the measure and number. Archaeologists believe that its development was influenced most by the development of farming and crafts. It is assumed that tokens were initially used in communication systems on the basis of one-to-one correspondence. For example, one ball meant “one bushel of grain”, and three balls—"one bushel of grain + one bushel of grain + one bushel of grain.” Each additional set required the creation of a new shape and the appropriate number of tokens. The system was subject to certain improvements over time, e.g. taking into account the counting base, i.e. 5 or 10 items could be represented using a new token.

36

Ibidem: 481-482.

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In Europe, such a proto-medium were “linear” ways of conceptualizing the number and measure, manifesting itself, as I mentioned above, with the exchange of rare flint raw materials, which were then replaced with copper products. They were also the result of “linguification of sacrum”, or symbolic transformation of earlier megalithic constructions [in this sense often also reduced to individualized ones in the form of single graves] and rationalized interpersonal communication, introducing into social relations a more precise message consisting in manipulating the length of macrolithic tools in the field of such social communication. In this way, the geometry of the early stages of counting can also be seen in the European development path. Using our chess metaphor, we can say that both macrolithic industries in Europe and tokens in the Middle East were the first pawns in a certain field of the game. They had to appear so that we could learn to play. Thanks to such protomedia, people learned to “play chess”—they learned the rules of number and measure in the field of social action, while at the same time taking the first steps in what Habermas calls the medium of power and money. In the Middle East tokens were most importantly a method of controlling economy and social activities, which was the domain of specialists for a long time. Mathematical concepts they represented were connected with obligations towards the community represented by social leaders. The mechanism of control was an element of the Middle East exchange solution from the very beginning, while in Europe individualized relations towards partners were the basic level. The path of European development was less varied. There was no need for control of all the goods, only the few ones crucial from the perspective of traditions or the current trends. The result of this development has become European communities of the Bronze Age, focused almost exclusively on the accumulation and distribution of this precious metal.37 The objects in question were, therefore, a kind of material and technical rationalization in prehistoric societies.38 From this perspective, one can also understand that the original exchange systems described by Malinowski and Mauss [chapter IV] were the level of zero rational communication, when the “linguification of sacrum” was still in a barren run. It was a strange manipulation of the figures themselves without working out the appropriate moves, “reverse simulation” than in the Blow-Up movie [because if money historically is a derivative of a linguistic communication, using narrative as a currency can be considered as an empty simulation of a real market game]. We can imagine that, just like in Blow-Up people play tennis without a ball, they could do something as strange, e.g. give the ball

37 38

Kristiansen 1987: 30-51; 1991: 16-43. Dzbyński 2008.

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from hand to hand, telling each other various stories [narratives] about this ball, where it was and who played with it. This is exactly what happened in the case of early exchange systems. The value of the object was equal to the value of the narrative that a given community or exchange partners made towards it. The existence of such exchange systems can be located roughly in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. However, in later Neolithic and Eneolithic exchange systems, we already have the appearance of the first signs of the media value of objects, where the number and measure begin to make a significant contribution to the value of the object until we finally land in the lower right part of the diagram, where we deal with the situation, when our traditional chess became poker with really big money, without looking at the objects they concern. Such a life, as Antonioni's film may suggest, is pointless! This was also Wittgenstein's problem when he was thinking about playing chess, treating it as an illustration of a language game such as mathematics. The second part of paragraph 31 from Philosophical Investigations, which I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, goes, more or less, as follows: One can imagine someone's having learnt the game without ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learnt quite simple board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and more complicated ones. He too might be given the explanation “This is the king”—if, for instance, he was being shown chessmen of a shape he was not used to. This explanation again only tells him the use of the piece because, as we might say, the place for it was already prepared. Or even: we shall only say that it tells him the use, if the place is already prepared. And in this case, it is so, not because the person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but because in another sense he is already master of a game.39 In other words, Wittgenstein draws attention to the process of history in the sense of the rules of a certain game. In order to learn the “game” in which the number and the measure plays a big role, the society had to go through the stages of learning simpler games in which this role was small. However, it grew so that we landed in the lower right part of the diagram [Figure 3], where the language of the market today penetrates all cells of society and forces all interpersonal relationships into a selfish pattern of self-preference. The social bond that derives from mutual recognition, however, does not fit completely into the concept of contract, rational choice and maximization of benefits.40 The wide range of this game is currently illustrated, for example, in the bestseller by Michael Sandel, where he contests thesis which is popular in some economic circles that all interper-

39 Wittgenstein 40

1986: §31. Habermas 2003: 111.

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sonal relationships are really market relations: from giving children money for good grades at school after the so-called Vatican insurance, i.e. options for death of the insured. This is an excellent complement to Habermas' theory, according to which we should all work against this development today to break free from the dominance of the steering media and follow the path of reason, marked on the graph with a bright, rising line and smiling faces. It is enough to believe in the possibility of practising this utopia.

Figure 3. The development of the Habermas’s communicative rationality (after Daniel Juling [www.Consenser.org, translated by Dzbyński].

The value of metaphor Speaking of early mathematics, or about measurements and numbers in prehistory, George Lakoff and his supporters believe that mathematics is a great example of how metaphorization mechanisms work. Lakoff and Núñez claim that the metaphors concerning simple everyday activities, such as gathering objects in piles, moving containers with objects inside them, enable the understanding of arithmetic operations.41 Abstract mathematical thinking be-

41

Lakoff & Núñez 2000: 50.

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comes available to us with the help of metaphoric blends and because of them, we can understand numbers as, e.g. points on a straight line. Arithmetic comes from the fact that in the world, we had been connecting these original experiences with our inborn mathematical abilities for a very long time. The basic metaphors of arithmetic are “object collection metaphor”, “object construction metaphor”, “measuring stick metaphor”, and “motion along a path metaphor”. In the pre-East and European pre-history, the material culture permeates with these metaphors, but the accents seem to be different. The fact that the Babylonians did not know much about geometry, as I mentioned above, is related to the pre-history of this region, where one can see a closer relationship between the early stages of mathematics and the metaphor of the collection of objects. Tokens that were manipulated in the Middle East are the material correlate of this metaphor, and the Neolithic settlements in the Middle East, which took a long form of agglomeration, were its earlier correlate, because the settlement itself and individual houses were nothing but containers for people and things. At the stage of early civilizations, tokens went to the service of the palace and temple administration, and then they were transformed into the first digits on clay tablets, which were an improved way of collecting objects in the form of imprinted symbols.42 So tokens, which were initially collected and stored in clay containers, are an intermediary between early Middle Eastern architecture and palace recording systems. The essence of this process was the metaphor of a container for people and things—the collection metaphor. Neolithic Europe, on the other hand, shows a different distribution of accents. Agglomeration of buildings here did not find application, and the inherently loose building type changed into settlements on the perpendicular line plane. The first farmers' houses in northern Europe were monumental and long, then replaced by long monumental megalithic tombs. In Neolithic European cultures, the conceptualization of space in the form of lines, circles and paths on the plane is clearly visible, while in the Middle East we have to do with the up-down directions and verticalness.43 Then Europe began to produce these characteristic, long objects of stone and flint, and the latter ones—especially in the form of long [so-called macrolithic] flint blades from valuable, often imported raw materials—were eagerly fragmented and used in various contexts [work, graves, deposits]. They were a certain equivalent of Middle Eastern tokens, because with their help, using this time the metaphor of the measuring stick, treating these as segments of a particular value, the

42 43

Schmandt–Besserat 1992. Dzbyński 2013: 175.

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Europeans also developed mathematical reasoning. It was, however, mathematics based more on geometry than on collections and algorithms. Middle Eastern tokens and European macrolithic tools must have been similarly idiosyncratic as Duchamp’s urinal. Fortunately, they referred in their form and symbolism to the metaphors of such already existing in society as:44 a collection as a group, society, settlement [tokens] or: a line as a bond with ancestors, the human body, origin [macrolithic tools]. In the case of macrolithic tools, this is demonstrated by their complex fragmentation observed at that time. Archaeologist John Chapman, in his book about the process of fragmentation of objects in Europe, states that the fragmentation was related to the practice of binding human relations [including relations with ancestors] by material means.45 Nevertheless, many testimonies indicate that for some types of objects it was the first moment of getting rid of the ballast of the narrative by giving these fragments the meaning of number and measure, which was the first step on the path of further rationalization, on which soon metal appeared—initially treated just like stone and flint. It was only with time that he was taught to measure it more rationally by weighing it. In this way, “linguification of sacrum” through the creation of new metaphors supported the process of rationalization, to develop a society in a direction that results in our current power, economics and mathematics. George Lakoff is a representative of the so-called “Embodied mind” concept. This theory says that mind and cognition are essentially co-shaped by what the human body experiences in contact with the outside world. Consequently, the basic concepts of the world are concrete. Only on their basis, using the mechanism of metaphorization, we create more abstract terms. Metaphors are not understood here as poetic means, but as tools for understanding and experiencing the world in such a way that one kind of thing is understood in the categories typical of other types of things.46 In his famous book Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson described how our understanding of everyday life is based on the phenomenon of metaphor: “They are among our principal vehicles for understanding.”47 For example, consider almost everyday situation of a dispute with another human being: the concept “argument” and the conceptual metaphor “argument is war”. Within this metaphor we use the following expressions: “Your claims are indefensible”; “He attacked every weak point in my arguBradley 1998: 80-82. Chapman 2000: 75. 46 Lakoff & Núñez 2000: 5. 47 Lakoff & Johnson 2003: 159. 44 45

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ment”; “I demolished his argument” and many others of this type. In this sense, authors write, “argument is war” metaphor is one that we live by in our culture.48 Some metaphors are a derivative of experience with space, e.g. “more is up” and “less is down”, which are more culturally universal, and some less, such as “time is money.” The concept of the embodied perception of the world comes from the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the heir of Heidegger’s and Husserl’s ideas, which he called the Phenomenology of perception [next chapter tells more about this]. According to this concept, the subject must be seen as connected with perceived objects and things. In reference to other people, who would also be perceived as objects, the metaphor of a society which subject becomes its part, may be created this way. The subject is an embodiment of the object—man is implicated in things first of all by his body. The objects surrounding us are inseparably connected to man as a subject, thus becoming an extension of man. This means that we broaden our existence in the world through time and space by objects. The phenomenon of perception was an essential part of epistemology, although the Cartesian division of man into a body and thinking subject introduced a considerable distance to the world, which was connected with the existence of artificial categories and copies of the external world. After giving it more thought, the Cartesian thinking subject seems to be an element of the body-machine, quite loosely connected with it. Merleau-Ponty opposed this vision by writing: “my body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least into relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my comprehension.” Hence, man, as he stated, existed only through his own body, whereas that body creates a synthesis, it is a mind-body, a psychophysical being. The body becomes an incarnation of the subject, present at all times and impossible to discard both in the process of perception as well as the reflection of it. My body is my anchor in life, as wrote Merleau-Ponty, and “my main measure in my relation to the world—time, space and its content. Is the universal thing...the universal measurement.”49 Communication or solidarity? Richard Rorty approaches the issue of communication rationality a bit differently. He presents this type of subtle kind of discrepancy in relation to the theory of communication, which leads to radically different postulates of

48 49

Ibidem: 4. Merleau-Ponty 2002: 273.

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solving our contemporary problems. According to him, we live in a time of final collapse of Enlightenment efforts to establish laws, liberties and goals on some transcendent basis, free from the contingency of the fate and randomness of the historical process. There is neither innate human rights, universal reason or rational communication in the meaning of Habermas. The Habermasian postulate of a “domination-free discourses” seems to him to be a reformulation of the traditional liberal thesis that “the cruelty within social institutions” can be avoided only by improving the quality of public education, freedom of the press, educational opportunities, the possibility of political influence by ordinary citizens etc. Rorty, as he writes himself, does not want to modernize either universalism or rationalism but to remove them and replace them with something else. He believes that Habermas' proposition of “rational reason” is simply a misleading formulation of an otherwise righteous thought that a society that is content with calling “real” [right or just] anything that is the result of “uninterrupted communication” is liberal, so every view that will win in a free and open skirmish. Rorty's main postulate is to avoid cruelty, reduce cognitive intolerance, and epistemological pluralism, instead of agreeing to something that, as we have seen, is based on certain coercion. Following this path, he identifies moral progress not in rational communication, but in expanding the area of human solidarity. This solidarity, however, is not a recognition of some “core self”— the essence of humanity present in all human beings, but rather is the ability to perceive an increasing number of old differences [tribal, religious, racial, moral, etc.] as irrelevant compared to similarities when it's all about suffering and humiliation. It is the ability to think about people who are definitely different from us as being covered by the “we/us” range. Rorty believes that the main contribution of contemporary intellectuals to moral progress are not philosophical or religious treatises, but rather detailed descriptions of the specific, diverse cases of suffering and humiliation contained in novels, films or ethnographic works.50 The basis for solidarity is not to be any shared values, beliefs and ideals, not even the fact that someone else sees someone who believes in what we believe and wants the same as us, but who suffers and feels pain just like we. Of course, this is not physical pain, but rather psychological pain, for example, the one that I quoted in chapter IV [Great beauty]. Jeb Gambardella, although he is healthy, well-off and has achieved professional success, is suffering because he cannot or does not see any further sense in creative activity. His

50

Rorty 2009: 293.

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guests suffer for a similar reason. All participants of these meetings assume that, above all, they should not inflict additional suffering. Rorty calls his idea simply a liberal utopia. Why? It consists in stopping the search unifying the public with the private, satisfying itself with “treating the requirements of self-creation and human solidarity as equally valid, albeit always incommensurable.”51 Ideally utopian society, according to the philosopher, would be a society in which the public and private areas would be clearly separated. Such a society would allow people to follow “various kinds of small things around which individuals or communities are dreaming about their fantasies and their lives”, in which the role of law would be reduced to a set of neutral rules guarding this freedom and self-creation, protecting each individual from possible intrusion into its private space. For Rorty, private means the space of our personal idiosyncrasies, the field of creativity and unbridled imagination, where moral judgments are [almost] suspended, and public space is a space of social interaction, in which we must submit to certain laws, not to hurt others. In other words, private is a space of irony, while public is a space of solidarity.52 After all, this model liberal dream, as Žižek writes, raises a certain problem that such a fundamental division cannot take place without certain repercussions. They are generally related to the fact that public discourse rules would have to contain “neutral” prohibitions, the “energy” of which would be derived from plundering an infinite area of fantasy and self-creation that the individual would potentially have. As everyone knows, human desires are inexhaustible [chapter I]. How is it for archaeology? Such public discourse becomes the assumption of axiological pluralism in the case of individual fields of science, as it is called by Mamzer. How would it look like? We can, for example, imagine that we are a culture-historical archaeologist and a follower of ethnocentrism on a technological basis, i.e. the concept of history as a technological development of humanity. At the moment when we become aware of our ethnocentric attitude, which results in cultural expansionism, we can adopt the attitude of anti-ethnocentrist, or ethnocentrist in an enlightened way. It is an attitude that results in the possibility of shifting the main focus of this technological efficiency into the area of communication, facilitating the adoption of a dialogical attitude. If we realize additionally that the technological concept of history is a completely modern product, shaped in the era of the Enlightenment, it means that it was not the

51 52

Ibidem: 16. Žižek 2010: 148.

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essence of the past societies examined by archaeology, and in any case not so much as we usually attribute to them. We therefore accept the basis for the relativization of the technological factor in favor of non-technological cultural rules. By analogy, it is also possible to relativize the economic factor, which until recently was considered the very essence of the Neolithic revolution [chapter II] in favor of symbolic cultural rules [chapter V]. By speaking Rorty's language instead of building identity through systematic processes of exclusion of others, we can find it in readiness to expand our own imagination and connect with others.53 This is well said, but here there are two basic problems. The first is the problem of knowledge. The exemplary ethnocentrist must learn all that has been mentioned above, i.e. his horizons must go beyond his own research field. He cannot realize something he does not know. So it sends us back to the issues discussed in chapter III [Kuhn, Feyerabend], where we discussed quite important limitations of science itself, consisting, roughly speaking, of narrow specialization and conservatism. So it is not just a matter of realizing something, but a more general problem of the existence [or not] of broad horizons and interests among archaeologists themselves. In my experience, this is a real problem, but we will not consider it here extensively; we will come back to this issue in the next chapter. A psychoanalytic argument remains to be considered. As Žižek writes, this problem is based on the mechanism Super-ego. Super-ego feeds on the resources of what suppresses and from which he takes over cruelty, obscenity, unfriendliness, scorn, etc. So it would be no less than our public, solidarity discourse, in which we get rid of all these unpleasant words and gestures that can hurt others. In nature, however, nothing is lost. Above all, let us note that science, and especially humanities, is largely the result of these self-creations, sometimes obscene and derisive, disrupting the present tranquility celebrated by collectors of artefacts or crossword puzzle enthusiasts, as Thomas Kuhn would say [chapter II]. At least that is how science develops from a historical perspective. In archaeology, there were some self-creations: the hypothesis of “drinking together” by Sherratt [chapter III], the Domus hypothesis by Hodder [chapter IV] or the hypothesis about the existence of megalithic yard of Alexander Thom. A great scholar David Kendall rejected the hypothesis of the megalithic yard as statistically unviable. In 1974 he criticized Thom’s theory saying that only a small percentage of the measurements made by Thom can be counted as statistically relevant.54 Other critical analyses followed, most often proving

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Mamzer 2004: 233-234. Kendall 1974: 23-66.

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that the megalithic yard is quite an elusive phenomenon in the statistical sense.55 In a sense, therefore, my research on early manifestations of metrology was obscene, which resulted in a whole series of incongruent reinterpretations of archaeological materials.56 The answer to this was a whole series of criticism and expression of aversion to this type of archaeology. Thus, there will be a conflict between this private sphere of scientific activity understood in this way and its public sphere, where we must give up the part of autonomy that we use in scientific creativity. We must “let go” the transfer of private language to this area of dialogue, so as not to hurt others who also have to get rid of some of their self-creation, not to hurt us. Everyone would have to apply the principle of primum non nocere in the public discourse. However, as in the case of medicine it sometimes works, in practice, such discourse is not so easy, because the mechanism of Super-ego is perverse and functions in such a way that the more we strive to the so-called archaeology of dialogue—as it would be done in accordance with Rorty's message, the more intrusive the feeling of limiting personal creative freedom may become, and the more we will feel guilty of giving up our private self-creation. It is as if this cruelty, obscenity and ridicule, sought out from the front, came back to us through the back door. It cannot be concealed that such a thing also causes constant frustrations, which are all more severe, with the greater suppression of personal self-creation we have to deal with. To illustrate his theses, Rorty uses the concept of a dictionary. Thus, there is an ironist's dictionary and a dictionary of metaphysics. An ironist has a private dictionary, while a metaphysician is one who believes in a final [universal] dictionary. The ironists do not think, as Rorty writes, that the purpose of discursive thinking is to get to know in a sense the word that can be translated using terms such as “reality”, “real being”, “objective point of view” or “responding to reality”. They do not think that the purpose of the research is to find a dictionary that aptly presents something, some transparent medium.57 In the ironists’ opinion, something like objective criteria, for example in scientific research, is nothing more than banalities, which “contextually define the terms of a final dictionary in use”, for example, some valid scientific theory. The opposition of ironists are metaphysicists who think “commonsensically” and believe that what the ironists reject is precisely the goal of scientific inquiry. Rorty believes that the metaphysical scientific tradition stretches from ancient Greece and has been mentally constituted and institutionalized

Davis 1983: 7-11. Dzbyński 2004. 57 Rorty 2009: 125. 55 56

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as a result of the Enlightenment, and is a process of mechanical unification, which is still a search for God in increasingly secular social contexts. It is a way of telling ourselves that a non-existent God, if he really existed, would be very pleased with us.58 For example, archaeological metaphysicists hide behind the well-established testimonies in the archaeological material, claiming that they have supreme and universal meaning for the whole discipline of archaeology [see chapter III]. Even if we abandon the inclusion of slightly perverse psychoanalytic theories, it seems to me [quite privately] that from these two perspectives [Habermas and Rorty] the potential for dialogue lies more in the Habermas proposal. His proposal also provides for frustration caused by exchanges, arguments, “war on words”, which in extreme cases may end with catharsis, like in the movie 12 Angry Men, or even madness. This does not happen very often. In most cases, it is a “healthy” frustration, socially controlled, arising as a result of confrontation and struggle, to which our species has evolved in the course of evolution, and not as a result of its forced avoidance. The very form of dispute and discussion that we saw on the example of Lakoff's proposal is closer to conducting a war than to cultivate a peaceful discussion, filled to the brim with negative energy of passivity. Rorty's proposal seems to show again the paradox that I mentioned in chapter III, based on the fact that if we would like to do archaeology as a form of our self-creation, we would have to do it privately. But because argumentation and acting in accordance with the rules are part of the language game [Wittgenstein] and must necessarily be the subject of discourse, confrontation of arguments and consent for something [Habermas], then...it can not be practiced privately. Unless one treats Rorty's proposal as, for example, a proposal to practice criticism in the Japanese style. In Japanese culture, the principles of good manners include smiling, maintaining friendly relations with everyone and complimenting their interlocutors. You should not criticize anyone. The criticism itself is a complex process, in which there are actually more gestures and words than critical ones. It is a matter of a specific Japanese label, according to which one should avoid showing self-confidence. The Japanese value solidarity and harmony the most, and the worst punishment is exclusion and isolation. We must constantly strive not to disturb the balance and to be able to successfully coexist with our co-workers, family, residents, generally speaking with the participants of the discourse in which we exist. This is some food for thought.

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Rorty 1999: 44.

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We can ultimately opt for the third option, saying that the space of discussion and the space of solidarity exist parallelly to each other and that they are influenced by completely different channels. It may be so that in order for archaeology to function well, two elements are necessary: both the possibility of “fundamental alienation”, the inclusion of the other person rather than strictly objective discourse, in the area of its personal self-creation which, according to Žižek, is the essence of the postmodern era on the one hand, and the ability to conduct the disproportionate discourse on the other hand. Is it possible? I don’t know. Many contemporary trends in science, politics and economics point to the fact that it is possible to sympathize and reduce suffering, but in the style of “live and create, but somewhere else.” Far away, or perhaps further away, to Rorty's solidarity utopia. In the end, it can be said, at least from the point of view of psychoanalysis, that it would be better for the development of archaeology itself to be forced [in theory—voluntary] communication than forced [in theory—also voluntary] solidarity.

Chapter 7

Archaeologist’s Weltchmerzen Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Makbet by William Shakespeare It is commonly believed that existentialists are philosophers who develop Macbeth's thought, but usually they do it in an extremely complicated and inaccessible way. We must say openly that the second part of the sentence can be absolutely true, although the intention of the existentialists was exactly the opposite. The role of existential philosophy was to understand and unravel the mystery of being in the world and try to give it any sense. Martin Heidegger [1989-1976] claimed that our condition is based on “being in the world” which “is as it is.” Regardless of whether we were born into a privileged group and we swim in luxury, whether we are struggling with poverty, we are all equally “thrown into the world” and we have to deal with it somehow. Well, maybe Heidegger was exaggerating a bit. For the two of us, each of us would choose a struggle with luxury, wouldn’t we? However, he could be right about the rest. This “throwing” generates a characteristic fear and anxiety resulting from the fact that we still have to define ourselves in relation to others. We despair [mostly implicitly] because of this. We try to work out some original identity among all the places and stories that we experience in life, while fighting with the opinions and pressure of others who constantly impose something on us. What is the conclusion? We are still in the process of becoming, stretched between the past and the future; we are nothingness, our own project. The absurd lies in the fact that this “being thrown in” and continuous functioning in contrast to the rest is extremely difficult. We try, but nothing usually comes out of it. Kierkegaard was probably the first to notice that each of us must constantly fight for who we are. Fight to establish your relationship to the world. Witold Gombrowicz found for the problem the concept of “form”, which he described in his most famous novel Ferdydurke.

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*** The main protagonist and narrator of the novel, Józio [Johnnie], is a thirtyyear-old man who has problems with defining his identity. He is a novice writer whose work has been misunderstood and painfully criticized by the literary milieu. Lying in bed in his Warsaw apartment, he reflects on what he has achieved so far—he assesses his literary trials and relationships with other people. This is not an optimistic reflection: “[…] Half-way along the path of my life, I found myself in a dark forest; and the worst of it it was that the forest was green. […]” Józio had recently crossed the unavoidable Rubicon of his thirtieth birthday, and according to his papers and his appearance, he was grown up. But he is, apparently, not sure what he, actually, is. He “wanders” from bar to café, and from café to bar, meets people, exchanges words “and sometimes even thoughts with them”, but his situation is by no means clear, and he doesn’t know whether he is a man or an adolescent. He comes to the conclusion he is neither one nor another. People treat him with suspicion, especially those who had married and had settled positions, “if not exactly in relation of life, at any rate in offices of one kind or another”. His aunts, which are very numerous indeed, devoted, clinging, but also kind of semi-mammas, are trying since a long time to use their influence to get him to settle down in some “suitable occupation, as a lawyer or in business”, for the “prolonged nondescript nature of his life” is torture to them. Not really knowing who he is, they don’t know what to say to him, and at best their conversation boils down to a level of sad twaddle: “Johnnie”, they say to him, “the years are passing, and what will people think? If you don’t want to be a doctor, be a bon viveur or a collector, but be something, you must be something.”1 Being something and someone in the world is a purely existential problem, although not everyone knows it. Professor Pimko, his former teacher, picks Józio out of meditations and drags him back to school, where Józio begins his struggles with the forms imposed on him. Józio must struggle with the absurdities of the old-fashioned system of education, in which there is no room for independent thinking, but only for mindless repetition of learned formulas. Then during a visit to the Hurlecki estate, distant relatives of the protagonist, a strange situation develops:

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Gombrowicz 1986: 14.

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“‘I slapped your Bert’s face’, Józio informed his cousin Alfred.’” Alfred was rather surprised at first, but after a while he started laughing and responded: “‘That’s fine!’, he said. […] ‘It’s by treating Bert like that that he’ll learn to respect you. You have to know them. They like it!’ ‘They like it’, I said. ‘They like it, they like it! Ha! Ha! Ha! They like it!’” Józio was a bit surprised and no longer recognized his cousin, whose attitude towards him had previously been rather reserved. Suddenly all trace of reserve has vanished: “His eyes shone, he liked Bert’s having had his face slapped, and he liked me;” […] a young aristocrat had emerged the chrysalis of the listless, morose schoolboy; it was as if Alfred had sniffed the forest and picked up the scent of the plebs. He put the candle on the windowsill and sat at the foot of the bed, a cigarette between his lips.” Then the monologue continues: “‘They like it!’, he said, ‘they like it! You can slap’em, but you must tip’em too. No tips, no slaps, that’s my belief! My father and Uncle Sigismund once slapped the head porter at the Grand Hotel.’ ‘And,’ I said, ‘Uncle Eustace once slapped a hairdresser.’ ‘And Grandmother Evelyn, she knew how to slap! But that was in the good old days. Some time ago Henry Pac got drunk and bashed chauffeur’s face in. D’you know Henry Pac? Very decent fella! And Bob Pitwicki smashed a window at the Cocka-too with a paint merchant’s face. And once I gave an engineer a sock in the eye […].”2 As it seems, “Bert’s slapped face” drawns the two young man together “like a glass of brandy.” When Józio answers more or less the same thing, Alfred answers more or less the same thing, and then Józio answers, again, more or less the same thing. And then Alfred gets to the subjects of slaps: “you have to know when and whom and how”, and Józio can say nothing else than there it

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Ibidem: 219.

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is better “to hit a person on the ear than on the jaw”. Józio, however, doesn’t really feel so sure, there is something unreal about it all. Actually, he thinks that nowadays slapping isn’t so common, and manners had grown more civilized. He tries to say so but cannot—the conversation had become too attractive, and they “were both intoxicated by the baronial myth, the baronial fiction, and went on talking like two young lords of the manor.”3 At first, Józio has a normal attitude to the landed gentry that is appropriate for the 20th century. This state of his consciousness excludes the recognition of any superiority of a landowner over a servant, and the less it allows “slapping the servant on the face”. However, a “system” is created: “young lord with a young lord”, which channels the behavior of the participants, and these displace the former consciousness of Józio. As long as he talks to the two of them, Józio behaves in accordance with the preferences built into the form, not to what he privately would like to achieve. The “young lord and young lord” arrangement is a public form that incapacitates its participants, dictates their goals and behavior. This is how Gombrowicz expounds his opposition to the claim that an individual is an autonomous being. It is not the individual who is the subject of preference, but the social place that can be occupied by many individuals, and because we are always in some form, our preferences are always public. Even when we rebel against some form, we enter the social role of the rebel and again we are hammering ourselves into another form.4 In Gombrowicz, man must present themselves before others. The mere presence of people affects the individual by modifying their behavior. Of course, the writer often shows the conscious and purposeful creation of the desired form, but they also present the nuisance of being “exposed to view with the full insight and artistic disagreement.” Because when the individual feels someone else's eyes on them, their behavior changes unknowingly, even in trivial matters. Gombrowicz showed this in his novel Pornography: “He was served tea, which he drank, but a piece of sugar remained on his little plate—so he reached for it to bring it to his mouth—but perhaps deeming this action not sufficiently justified, he withdrew his hand—yet withdrawing his hand was something even less justified—so he reached for the sugar again and ate it—but he probably ate it not so much for pleasure as merely for the sake of behaving properly […]” But the impression he made was not good…

3 4

After Nowak 2000: 91-92. Nowak 2000: 93.

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“…and wishing to erase this impression he coughed and, to justify the cough, he pulled out his handkerchief, but by now he didn’t dare wipe his nose—so he just moved his leg. Moving his leg presented him, it seemed, with new complications, so he fell silent and sat stock-still. This singular behavior [because he did nothing but ‘behave’, he incessantly ‘behaved’] aroused my curiosity […].”5 It reminds us of the famous passages from Being and Nothingness of Sartre here. In the light of Sartre's analysis, just like in Gombrowicz's, in the process of making a difference, the Other, embracing me with a look, makes me what I am meant to be just for them. As a result of such an act, our aspiration to obtain our own identity is stopped and goes into the realm of material existence, freezes in form according to Gombrowicz. Of course I can [while I exist] take a fight with the gaze of the Other, make, for instance, the same thing that he does with my person, but I can accept this ontological formula, becoming what I am and existing in the fashion of a philosophical waiter from the Being and nothingness as being inauthentic, falsified, seemingly only founded on something permanent. We become the sum of our empty gestures made to the Other. The following joke is connected with passages about the waiter: Jean Paul Sartre is sitting in a cafe and writing Being and Nothingness. At some point, he asks the waiter, “Coffee, please, but no cream.” To which he replies: “I am sorry but we have run out of cream. There is only milk. Can there be coffee without milk?” Here is the whole form like on the palm of your hand! The waiter is an example. But it can be the same with archaeologists. They bustle around their ceramic fragments and under the gaze of the Other they boil in assurances of their extraordinary importance to all humanity, or at least part of it, assuming the guardian's attitude of ancient secret knowledge, inaccessible to others. The more we look at them, the more they come into shape, gesticulate and excite themselves. As soon as an ancient pot appears somewhere, a whole group of archaeologists appears who are ready to cover this pot with their body, while at the same time perusing how much it will increase our knowledge of the past. It is a distancing attitude, obscuring the real image of archaeology as a field rather composed of various intellectual and theoretical trends. In this way, archaeologists, being a group of people with various predispositions, talents, intellectual preferences etc. in public still fall out the same way in a style that compels them to answer the same questions: “Oh! Are you an archaeologist? What is the most valuable find you have dug up to now?”

5

Gombrowicz 1987: 7.

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However, this is only a small part of the archaeologist's existential fate. Archaeologists are after all scientists, humanists, researchers and specialists in a certain field, which is also their prison and another imposing “form”. They are, unfortunately, experts, and thus “similar to a tube that lets through food, but does not digest it; never does their knowledge become personal inside; They are a tool from head to foot only. You talk to a professor like this as if to a fish taken out of the water, each of them dies when getting him out of their specialty.” These words by Gombrowicz show that he apparently disliked scholars. Perhaps because he had never met an author of an authentic scientific theory, and as a man of great literary talent he was demanding. It is true that the scientists Gombrowicz dreams of are few, because most of us— archaeologists living today are such “blind masons, laying a brick on a brick, and not knowing what they are building.” Gombrowicz is perhaps strict in his judgment, but this is because he expected people to learn a stance similar to his own nonconformist attitude, whereas, as we know at least since the time Kuhn, Fleck and Feyerabend, archaeology and actually all science is a system deeply embedded in the culture of conformism and routine, which, though necessary, it too easily becomes a widely accepted cage. Because the objective conditions of knowledge production [chapter IV] are a kind of trajectory on which researchers move, even if we enter the system of learning as idealists, tireless seekers of historical truth and dreamers of making groundbreaking archaeological discoveries, about creating original concepts and theories, we are systemically forced to use the values and categories of a given environment. And so with time we come, like it or not, to the conclusion that, for example, “who writes honest reviews will not earn much on this activity”; it would also be good to be a manager of, “preferably something big”, it would be also useful to set up a journal or a publishing series in which we will publish our texts and texts of our students or acquaintances [thanks to this we gain valuable contacts] and enter as many “decision-making bodies” as possible which decide what and whose texts should be published.” In addition, to do archaeology/science you must live in harmony with the environment, party or power in general. It is not only about the political and social trajectory in which archaeology functions, but also the intellectual one. After writing a doctorate, in which I put up a rather bold archaeological thesis, a familiar professor, in a gesture of friendly opinion, suggested that in the next work I should formulate an opposing conclusion, because it would prove my maturity as a scientist. I was very surprised. Why should I deny something that I personally find very interesting and developmental, both for me and for the whole discipline? The attitude of this professor was typical. He probably did not treat archaeology as an existential project, but as a certain game in the field of knowledge production, where, like in a kaleidoscope, it is possible to periodically produce a number of colorful images [concepts and theories] that we will talk

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about for a while, adopting a distanced attitude. From the point of view of Gombrowicz, such archaeologists and scientists are kinds of intellectual zombies, “sucked out by the vampire of the intellect, pushed down by the thought floating above, more and more unattainable.” This is sometimes, unfortunately, the price of functioning in the “form” of the science system. Gombrowicz leaves no illusions: “Whoever enters into such conditions may be an impeccable man, but much more often the ‘crystal structure’ is subject to deviations and these conditions become the second, and sometimes also the first, nature.”6 Admittedly, the archaeology perspective so outlined seems rather unhappy. Do you still want to study archaeology? Gombrowicz wrote: “In the spiritual world, permanent haste takes place, we are not spontaneous, we are only the function of other people, we must be what they see.” Sartre called it briefly and emphatically: “hell is others”, but he did not approach this absolutely negatively. Because we are born without an identity, we are free and we can become whatever we want. Men appear, enter the stage and only then define themselves. At the beginning, they are nothing, then they become something that they create. Until they die, they have the chance to shape the opinion of others about themselves, after death, they set to the sum of what others say about us. Existential fear, according to Sartre, comes from the fact that “we are all condemned to freedom.” However, it means that we are completely responsible for the choice of an ethical system that we will follow in life, and this choice is always somewhat absurd. For example, it is absurd that we never have full awareness of the consequences of our decisions and how far they affect other people. It is also absurd that our existence changes with the passage of life and that we still have to face new moral dilemmas. And still, as everyone knows, we make the same mistakes! As if that was not enough, we are constantly being plagued by the decisions we made in the past. It is absurd that one day we will die, so we make all our decisions in vain. And it is absurd that we live in the belief that our life makes sense without ever knowing what this sense really is. So freedom is a burden. All the decisions that a person has to make in life overwhelm them, until they finally give up. They escape from freedom, renounces her [or commits suicide]. It is rare when someone like John Nada, the main character of the movie They Live, appears in our lives, trying to get us, even by force, to put on unusual glasses. However, a person rather does not want to be free, because freedom is pain. It is much easier to give in to some

6

Ibidem: 212-216.

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power [it can be anything: god, religion, genetic determinism, my past, my gender, my national or social affiliation, my attitude as an archaeologist, scientist]. Forces can, of course, combine to form conglomerates in the style popular in my country: god, honor of the fatherland. Kierkegaard already wrote that, being unable to persevere in a religious attitude, a man makes an attempt to live according to an aesthetic model, that is, he tries to follow the principle of pleasure, or lives ethical life, i.e. according to some specific and unquestionable duties. According to Jaspers, the escape from freedom is to immerse in an uncritically treated worldview that becomes the source of all sense and a reservoir of clues for every occasion. The person running away from freedom and selfawareness is not an authentic individual. Existentialism is often called an existential appeal, because its content is precisely the call to a fully conscious life, i.e. aware that it is just an existence. We learn about what the man is, according to Jaspers, reflecting on the so-called border situations. Their analysis reveals this impassable boundary between the subjective being around me [the world around me] and me as a subjective entity. The point is that I am constantly in some situations, that I cannot live without a fight and suffering, that I'm taking the blame and I cannot avoid that I have to die.7 Thinking about myself as always being in a given situation, I also know that it is one of many possibilities; I realize, then, that I’m not a general thing, a whole of all possibilities, but something partial, fragmentary. Of course, there are some physical limits to this freedom. Theoretically, I do not have to do anything, but has anyone ever tried to stay idle for a long time and do nothing? It is not easy at all! The boundaries are also determined by the situation in which I was “thrown in”. If I was born a man, I can [using my freedom from] completely deny this fact by committing suicide, or [also using freedom to] in different ways to develop this biology given to me by men or, finally, try to change into a woman [e.g. dressing and behaving, undergoing plastic surgery]. However, I cannot become a woman who has never been a man.8 The worst of all these calamities, however, is that you have to die. It is beyond doubt, although everyone can try not to think about it. When he is religious, he's thinking in his head the idea of life, but what if he is not? Then there is a serious problem. In the end, you can convince yourself that before we die, there are still a few pleasures in life that will let us forget about death for a moment. While we are young and have many years of life in front of us,

7 8

Jaspers 1990: 37. Nowak 2000: 303.

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death does not seem to pose any threat, 50 or 60 years of age is, after all, a long time. However, you can include this “time” for example, as in Bernardo Bertolluci’s film The Sheltering Sky. The author of the novel on the basis of which it was filmed and narrator Paul Bowles appears in the last scene to express what is most important. First, he asks the question in the direction of Kit, the heroine of a novel that recently lost her husband during an exotic trip to North Africa: “Are you lost?” “Yes”, it's the answer. However, this is the answer of all of us who travel around the land of life. Then Bowles answers: “Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It is that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” Nevertheless, death is the only sure thing in life, says Heidegger, but Woody Allen might as well say that. Besides, he said it very clearly, both in the film and straight. In Annie Hall, for example, the mother takes her son to the doctor because he becomes depressed. At the doctor’s, the boy confesses that he is depressed because he learned that the universe is expanding and that one day it will explode. “It will fall apart once and it will be the end of everything”, says little Alvy. Then he adds: “So what's the point?” In other words, the specter of death hangs over the heroes, just as over all movies, books, and works of art—life and art do not mean anything. In one of his jokes on the subject, Allen said: “I do not mean to live in the hearts of my countrymen, I would rather live in my apartment.” Woody Allen turns out to be the next creator who keeps talking about the same, being an exemplary existentialist: “We are all talking about the tragic aspect of our mortality. Aging and death are such incredibly difficult subjects to think about that people try not to think about them. [...] There is no other type of fear that would have such a significant consequence. [...] Only the awareness of death really counts.” In the case of Allen, an effective counterbalance to these fears turned out to be work and

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jazz music to which he devoted himself with passion for many years. Fear only returns when he stops working. Bu Allen works constantly...9 This certainty turns out to be the main characteristic of the most personal way of being. And that means having to take death on yourself as an opportunity, designing yourself to it, to recover from her, regain her own abilities: “My death—this is my private end of the world—is a project standing before me in which I was thrown. And it is a project—the only one among my projects—which I cannot share with any other people.”10 Taxes are added to things that are just as sure today, although everyone knows that this is not true, because almost half of humanity, headed by the heads of large corporations, don’t actually pay taxes. But maybe even the fact that you have to die is not the worst. If we think about it more deeply, the worst thing is maybe that everything that surrounds us is “lined up”, as if he had said Gombrowicz, with death and decay. Let's recall the beginning of the David Lynch’s Blue Velvet movie here. A beautiful sunny day around noon in the American suburbs, birds are singing, greenery is wading around, vivid colors and soothing smells of spring make us feel positive. In a word, you want to live! A middle-aged man decided to work in the garden, water the lawn but here he suddenly feels a terrible embrace in his chest, he catches his heart, and a grimace of pain appears on his face. He slides down on his trimmed lawn and dies after a moment. The camera goes down, under the lawn, where only the black earth and vermin are visible—the basis of this spring day on the surface and the destination of the deceased owner of a piece of green lawn. The rest is silence. Well, some existentialists' arguments may be the most correct but underestimated because, in the general opinion, they concern some of the obviousness of life. There are many ways to think about death, but in the end, as Tolstoy put it, the problem of death disappears spontaneously after the fact of its presence. “Death is not our business” said Boris Pasternak. What is most important to us cannot be expressed in language [Wittgenstein]. Death would be then what you need to be silent about. So you can ask if this is a philosophy? Many actually had a problem with it. Is the thesis that human existence is by accident an expression of great subjective experiences, moods, and occasions that happen to everyone or almost anyone, especially if they have a bad day? Rudolf Carnap, having analyzed some Heidegger's statements, proclaimed that they do not state anything, but

9

Evanier 2016: 111. Rymkiewicz 2002: 148.

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only express the author's life feeling. Well, but Carnap was a positivist, heir to Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Hempel, etc.; for him, the world was just a machine, and the machine of existence is gone, it's only there, it's working or broken. Levi-Strauss also wrote that existentialism is nothing but “bringing personal concerns to the dignity of philosophical problems.” There is no doubt that Levi-Strauss was able to write nicely, but we must remember that these words came from the pen of someone who believed that everything in advance is governed by an invisible structure. Leszek Kołakowski described the philosophy of existence in a polite and eloquent way: “viewed from the point of view of his social aspirations, as a view of the world, existentialism is an attempt at philosophical resistance against those parties of industrial society that cause a continuous and increasing reduction of individual existence to functions fulfilled within organized forms of collective life.”11 For us, however, it will be more useful to find out what existentialism has to say in the key to the archaeologists’ issue of the relationship Man—Thing. A bit different analysis of Thing In one of the scenes of the famous film by the Wachowski brothers, agent Smith, in a fit of sincerity towards the imprisoned Morpheus, utters a suggestive opinion on humanity. Agent Smith had plenty of time to think about it, because it is in the matrix from the beginning. We learn that the current matrix is just one of the many projects that the machines have prepared to enslave humanity, i.e. to change it into a source of energy. The first matrixes simulated the perfect world without pain and suffering, but did not fulfill their function. In perfect worlds, everything went bad very quickly, paradise turned into hell immediately, and machines that raised people lost their precious energy. Finally, the machines understood that the matrix must be a real world of the twentieth-century scientific and technological success, in which man is a type of error, a parasite destroying nature and himself, and an “unbalanced equation” inherent to the system. Then things somehow go forward. Then such a matrix makes sense! Let us take nature, for example. If nature makes mistakes at all, it eliminates them directly and somehow naturally. Only errors created by mankind have the ability to be unprecedentedly spread and reproduced within a specific phenomenon that we call culture. A cultural vehicle of error is the language that duplicates content that is contradictive to reality, content that is a permanent dissent against what is found, and constantly produces something

11

After Nowak 2000: 299.

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different and fundamentally different from the world around it. This is the man—the error of this world! And yet reality without a human being would be real, but dumb. Only man, creating a mistake and a lie on a mass scale, reveals what it is.12 Heidegger refers to this, and he remembering Parmenides' theorem: “Being and thinking are one and the same.” Martin Heidegger was born in the small town of Messkirch in BadenWürttemberg. He studied at the universities of Freiburg and Marburg. He became a professor in 1928, a year after the release of his most important work, Being and Time [Sein und Zeit]. This is an example of a philosopher who had ups and downs, but also the times in which he came to act were absolutely demanding. When he became the Rector of the University of Freiburg in 1933, he joined the NSDAP in public, expressing support for Nazism. He was not the only philosopher in history for whom involvement in politics turned out to be fatal [one of the first ones was Plato]. Fortunately, today we can also make fun of it. In his brilliant analysis of this phenomenon, Mark Lilla cites a funny episode from that unhealthy period of tension when Heidegger took office. Heidegger's rector's speech, in which he gave his expressive philosophical vocabulary to the services of the Nazis' university, became very famous, though not for the fact that it was formulated clearly and emphatically. On the contrary. Karl Loewith, Heidegger's student, when he got acquainted with it, wondered whether “it implies that he was to study pre-Socratic philosophers or marched with assault groups.” Perhaps the rector's speech of Heidegger reflected in a significant way the relationship that arises at the interface between philosophy and politics. The problem of Heidegger, as Lilla writes, was a problem for all great philosophers. Their thought must be cultivated, but at the same time protected against the world, just as they must be obeyed before they interfere in the matters of politics that are of interest to other peoplecitizens, statesmen and people of action.13 Heidegger's main interest was Being. “What does it mean to be?”, the philosopher thought. Being is responsible for everything we experience in the world and what we think about. Our thinking is an activity related to consciousness, but consciousness, and thus the possibility of thinking, is grounded in Being. Thinking is therefore not a matter of producing representations, images of thoughts or ideas, but is a kind of openness in front of what we may encounter in life and which forces us to think [aletheia]. The philosopher wants to persuade us to look at the world completely differently than we are used to. It is not us who point to things, but rather things appear to us, we encounter them at the

12 13

Nowak 2006: 24. Lilla 2006: 29.

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moment when Being as a process allows us to see them. This means that Being revealed by our thinking is the same or unified with nature and the activity of thinking. The relationship between Being and Thinking is a relationship of interdependence, in which we as people “inhabit” Being. What is the mysterious Being? Heidegger as a reader of Hegel, was also aware of History. For him, the question of Truth is the relationship between us and the objects that surround us, and this relationship, as we know, is happening in History. That is why History is a way of getting to know, know and in general what we can say sensibly about the world. The fundamental thing for us is just historical thinking. But here is the catch. This does not mean that we, as historical beings, can know what history was like before, just as we can not know what will happen in the future, which is the same as the past. We are indeed immersed in History, but the limits of its understanding are determined by our temporality, our short-lived existence among the objects that are the result of the action of History. In other words, it is not just us who imagine History, but also the History, through our commitment to the objects we use, imagines us. From the very beginning, Heidegger was convinced that the current technical language of philosophy is not able to express his thoughts. The need to create one's own language has resulted in a whole range of new metaphorical terms with a poetic power of expression. Being-in-the-world can be understood in many ways: to deal with something, to do something, to deal with something, to use something, etc. It is not true that man is “and” also refers to the world. The fact that man “is” means precisely that he “refers to the world” that he cares for something. Therefore, this reference is not a relationship arising between two existing entities, but precedes and enables the appearance of these entities at all. The situation of cognition in which we encounter something as an object in front of us already assumes our being-in-the-world and concern for what we can encounter in it.14 Sartre added to this the famous: existence precedes the essence, i.e. a person always “is” first, and only then is someone [a worker, writer, politician, archaeologist, etc.] We can therefore say that all human knowledge is inseparable from things. We can not learn something about things first, apart from the fact that we learn. We can not know something and at the same time abstract from the thing that this knowledge concerns. Knowledge, therefore, in short, is our attitude to the world of things and our dependence on things.15 What is it like?

14 15

Michalski 1978: 54. Ibidem: 187.

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Heidegger behaves like archaeologists, naming things as tools [Zeug], although in German, this word has a broader meaning. Being among things [tools], man cares for them, whereas Truss [Besorgen] is the essence of relationships with objects, which we must care for, because we are condemned to them [chapter I]. This is our sense of being and at the same time a fundamental paradox, because our fate is Care, but we forget about it every day, caring for different, single, insignificant elements of this world! To use a pictorial archaeological comparison, it is as if we wanted to understand the essence of death by doing sepulchral archaeology, hoping that by digging enough graves [how much?], we will understand what death is. Heidegger, therefore, is not about exploring phenomena and things, but rather to try to refer to them holistically. Let us get back to the question about tools. A tool is by definition a “thing with which we can do something.” In everyday life, we encounter many tools: for writing, moving, repairing other tools, etc. They are all needed to do something with them. The essence of the tool is therefore to refer one thing to another, it never occurs alone, but belongs to the entire set, designated by a chain of references. In addition, when we encounter a tool, e.g. using it, we assume the previous encounter of a whole set of references. This belonging to this set, to a certain whole, makes them a tool, that is, it facilitates encountering something as a tool. In modern archaeological terminology, we call this the context of occurrence, the study of which is a very important element of archaeological analysis. I will quote the famous passages from Heidegger: “Association geared to useful things which show themselves genuinely only in this association, that is, hammering with the hammer, neither grasps these beings thematically as occurring things nor does it even know of using the structure of useful things as such. Hammering does not have a knowledge of the useful character of the hammer; rather, it has appropriated this useful thing in the most adequate way possible. When we take care of things, we are subordinate to the in-order-to constitutive for the actual useful thing in our association with it. The less we just stare at the thing called hammer, the more actively we use it, the more original our relation to it becomes and the more undisguisedly it is encountered as what it is, as a useful thing […].”16 Tools include not only hammers, screwdrivers, nails, etc. According to Heidegger, tools are basically all the objects that surround us. A chair is a tool

16

Heidegger 1967: 69.

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for sitting, a home—tool for living, a book—reading tool, etc. Since the tools are used for something, we deal with them using them properly. We act with the pen properly when we write it. The better pen I can write, the more I start with it, I “meet” it as a pen. The object we are looking at reveals to us its usefulness to achieve a specific goal. We do not derive this usefulness by inference from the recognized physical properties of the object. It is somewhat connected with the object and a glance is enough to accurately recognize what the object is used for. The proper use of the pen is writing with it, while viewing it obscures essentially its original character. While writing, I reveal the usefulness and convenience of the pen. This is the way of being a tool in which it reveals itself as such. This does not mean, however, that the tool becomes the subject of knowledge then. It is just the opposite: the handier the tool is, the better it works, the more useful it is, the less we pay attention to it, the less it catches the eye, the less we know about it... Used properly, the tool “retreats”, does not attract attention, hides itself, becomes invisible, but thanks to this allows us to think in a certain way, because our knowledge, as we know from the first chapter, is associated with tools. Reliability is what causes withdrawal! The less we pay attention to them, the better it fulfills its function, but it can not be described theoretically. Then the same tool, one can say, thinks partly for us or otherwise: me and the tool we think together, we are one. *** However, not everyone does the same with a hammer. You can use it as an expert or as a novice. Let us explain this example recalled by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus. The Dreyfuses are brothers, Hubert is a philosopher and Stuart is an engineer. Referring to the work of existentialists, they presented what Heidegger says about driving a car. According to Dreyfus, five phases can be distinguished in learning to drive a car. Let's discuss them briefly: •

Novice: At the lowest level of skills, the student overcomes the context-independent driving rules. They remember the instructions at which speed the gears should be changed and what distance from the nearest car should be kept. Such rules do not take into account the actual traffic situation, e.g. traffic or weather conditions.

•

Beginner: Thanks to practical exercises, the novice learns to recognize specific situations that cannot be described in an objective way, independent of the context. For example, a

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novice driver learns to change gears not only according to the non-context manual, but also on the basis of engine sounds. •

Competence: The candidate driver drives a car according to the general strategy, not according to certain rules, like a novice or a beginner. It does not take into account only the rules of safe and polite driving, but also its purpose. If necessary, when it is possible, it does not keep the prescribed distance from the next car, exceeds the speed limit and in other ways departs from rigid rules.

•

Proficiency: In all previous phases, the driver makes decisions based on conscious reflection. The expert driver goes a step further and decides on the basis of the "feeling" of the situation. They do not wonder, they just “drive the car”. For example, when overtaking on a busy road, the expert driver instinctively notices that the car is in the “dead zone” and delays the execution of the maneuver. It is a bit like he was feeling what was going on around the car. The instinctive reaction results from experience, but for an outside observer, it may seem difficult to understand, fortunate luck. The expert driver acts in accordance with a spontaneous understanding of the situation.

•

Expert: An expert does not perceive driving a car as a sequence of problems to be solved. They do not consider the future and does not plan. Such a driver is one with the car and just goes, and does not drive a car. The expert intuitively understands what to do in a specific situation, does not solve problems and does not make decisions, he just does what is usually effective.17

In a similar way, any human use of tools can be considered. Nowadays, the widespread use of smartphones, tablets and social media would be equally interesting. Don’t people who spend all day with their gadgets seem to be absorbed by them? Specific diseases related to the use of smartphones have already been defined, although in existential terms we would also deal with some kind of occupational diseases resulting from the expert use of tools.

17

Casti & DePauli 2003: 138.

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As it is usual with existentialists, the matter is more complicated. Understanding can be a form of non-understanding. Each of us in life becomes an expert from something, to the extent that we cannot imagine life without objects that define our expertise. In this way, in the language of Heidegger, we lose ourselves in the midst of the world, enter it completely, or even “fall” into the world. It is a form of escape from oneself. Because the world is a heavy burden, the most common way to deal with it is weight training, so that in the end, each of us achieves competence, proficiency or expert level. Of course, “falling” has no meaningful value, it does not mean falling from a higher level, nor bad and lamenting a decent human quality, which perhaps could be removed in more advanced stages of development. “Falling” cannot be avoided, because everyone is condemned by his existence among the things of this world. It is rather a fundamental characteristic of the very process of the human way of being, a certain irreducible side of this process, because human existence is a constant tension between “falling”, or inauthentic way of being, and getting out of this inauthenticity. None of the two tendencies can be completely removed for the benefit of the other. How does it relate to archaeology? Are archaeologists these experts? In a sense, yes. Like every expert, an archaeologist also becomes an expert in their field and gets involved [usually] fully in what he does. Excavations require expert knowledge in the use of a certain set of tools and rules. The archaeologist at the excavation aims to almost internalize it in his body and anticipate every situation like a rally driver while driving the car. So we can say that it is figuratively [though sometimes literally] falling into a trench. And yet if we do excavations as an expert archaeologist, we do not fully understand what we do. Or else: it is only one side of reality. In order to understand fully what archaeology deals with, according to Heidegger, we must leave the excavation and even give up, in a sense, the practice of archaeology! *** It turns out, therefore, that the world essentially defies our cognition, that it is accessible discreetly, implicitly and in an ambiguous way in our dealings with what surrounds us.18 Besides, it is also fulfilment of the fundamental feature of the world that emerges from the current research on theoretical physics: the world is becoming, and it does not just exist. It also means specific human deliberation. People and things are inseparably connected with each other in the sense that each has a characteristic set of features where

18

Michalski 1978: 58.

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people are a “knowing element” of the physical world. What distinguishes us most from matter and things is the awareness of our death, because things [for now] do not have it.19 When the terminator [Arnold Schwarzenegger] sacrifices his cybernetic life in the name of the good of humanity, we regret it [he learned a few human impulses during the film], but in fact we realize that every next model would behave exactly the same—he only performs a program, he does not sacrifice his life for the idea of how people do it [he also kills in a purely technical way]. Indeed, one would think that, in Heidegger's opinion, we start [rationally, anthropocentrically] to think about artefacts only when they fail or break down, when they are no longer usable. This recalls Heidegger’s idea that the inauthentic state of the Dasein, described in Being and Time, is marked by unreflexivity, thoughtlessness and the ambiguities of common thought, the unchallenged assumption of prejudices. Equipment has a great relevance in maintaining the Dasein in the embeddedness of the inauthentic state of being. Put it in another way, material culture is essential in producing and reproducing the world as it is. We can and do observe our surroundings while we cope, and sometimes, if we are learning, monitoring our performance as we learn improves our performance in the long run, but in the short run, such attention interferes with our performance. For example, while biking, we can observe passers-by, or think about philosophy, but if we start observing how we skillfully stay balanced, we risk falling over.20 This is indeed a strange situation. Archaeology as a specialization is a strange “knowledge” of things that we do not really know, because encountering a tool from the past is not the same as encountering it now. The tools we use to speak about the world today are different [pen, computer, microscope, C14 analysis]. We cannot, therefore, look at the world and History with a “pure eye.” And since this knowledge is not “pure knowledge”, it is rather certain knowledge of ourselves being in action as writing and investigating artefacts. We cannot say anything meaningful about them, although we are talking more and more about them. Since the essence of the tool is its handiness, which is a kind of knowledge, then this knowledge is no longer available to archaeologists who dig out and examine broken tools, stripped of their convenience. Not only for archaeologists. Lovers of antiques, guests of archaeological museums by definition visit strange, inaccessible to their understanding worlds.

19 20

Gosden 1994: 44. Dreyfus 2017: 9.

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If archaeologists are experts who use one of the artefacts [shovel, pen, computer, microscope] to analyze other artefacts [cavities, prehistoric settlements, stone axes, earthenware vessels], this means only that they can distinguish one from the other [some they are handier, others are not], although they have problems with this too. Nowadays, the distinction is often made by technology [C14, microscope, statistical analysis], not by humans. The archaeologists using modern technology do not really know what process they are dealing with. Such distinctions may only be made by archaeologists supported by sociotechnological instruments, which is a product of History, which we do not have access to because we are temporal beings. For us, History is a scenario, the result of our temporary arrangements, it is collective memory, and this one can be manipulated. Can archaeologists say something sensible in the situation of “throwing into” and “falling”? They can only say a few inauthentic statements like: “this is very important for understanding a given section of prehistory”, “it was probably the case”, or “we have some evidences confirming this or that”. They are condemned to such speaking for the sake of inalienable inauthenticity of their existence. Being authentic, they would have to stop talking about prehistory from the context of analysis and start talking about it from the context of caring for themselves [but they are usually silent about it] and the world around them. Or say nothing, as Wittgenstein wanted. *** Of course, we have to say something. However, we have a choice. We can always play the role of an expert—a figure rather inauthentic, but we can also leave the excavation, leave the office and start the imagination. What does it lead us to? Heidegger does not give specific solutions on how to use his philosophy in the field of scientific work. For example, we can stay halfway between prehistory and the future, i.e. between the two unknowns. As a starting point, let's treat the present. Everyone knows perfectly well what firearms are for. As a tool, he “invites” us “to destroy the living force”, as a teacher of defense education [a mandatory subject in the time of the Iron Curtain in Eastern bloc countries] used to say in my high school. Is it not hypocrisy in this context that the gun is only a tool, and the man decides what to do with it? Proponents of possession say that it is the man who decides what to do with the gun and can, for example, hammer nails. And yet it is easier to use something if you are invited, is not it? Another example: Someone who buys a sports car will be more likely to risk, accelerate and statistically drive faster, etc., because the car that he has bought invites to this. Police statistics confirm that sports car drivers are more likely to commit traffic offenses than users of ordinary passenger cars. Therefore, if we put Heidegger's thought into the problem of modern access to weapons, we will get a slightly different perspective. And because, as

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archaeologists, we know that the production of tools for “destroying the living force” has developed considerably since the prehistoric times, we can also use this point of view in our research on the past. In prehistory, the tools were more often multifunctional, so they did not “offer”, did not “call” to perform specific activities. Something like that was a Paleolithic hand axe, serving practically every purpose. Then the tools began to specialize, but still, in the Neolithic there are objects that “offer” many different functions. For example, the characteristic stone tools of the early Neolithic for a long time caused the problem of archaeologists, because their form seems to combine different functions. Archaeologists even had a problem with naming them [they were stripped of the convenience that we would expect from a tool; a typical name is shoe-adze]. In graves, they are found mainly as gifts for adult men.21 They were initially interpreted as agricultural tools, then as universal tools for working in wood, but over time it turned out that they also fit into holes in the skulls of many individuals, discovered in mass graves.22 So the tool sometimes “invited” someone to break the hole in someone's head! Additionally, using various experimental techniques and ethnographic comparisons, it was observed that they were conveniently worn on the shoulder, i.e. they were to “show off”. By juxtaposing these early tools and modern weapons, we can see how much “progress” has been made. You cannot farm a field or chop firewood with a gun at all. It serves only one purpose. Currently, we are dealing with a situation in which the world appears to us as full of temptations as a set of tools to be used. All of these tools-objects offer ever more sophisticated services. Therefore, we are happy to immerse ourselves in this world and use it, we respond positively to these constant calls, forgetting that there are physical limits to this use. There are so many things-tools that it is impossible to use all of them during the life of an individual, which causes constant frustration. The more we want to use life, the more we notice that it is impossible to use everything available. From available archaeological sources, it results that the more we go back into the past, the more the material culture becomes poorer, and thus more useful in rational time management. In this context, we can put a well-known biblical sentence saying that many God-fearing men died in the “satiety of their days”. In other words, these people enjoyed life, they considered it fulfilled. Today, hardly anyone leaves recognizing their lives as fulfilled, because the number of items that one person has benefit-

21

Müller J., Herrera A. & N. Knossalla 1996: 81-96. & Trautmann 2012: 77-100.

22 Wahl

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ed since the times of prehistory has grown significantly, by offering us more and more specialized proposals. In the Heideggerian perspective, we can therefore conclude that this multitude of objects in modern times causes a reverse state. Even if we lived 200 years now, we will not get saturated with world life. The world is filled to the brim with objects to be consumed. For example, during the study of a large funnel-beaker settlement in Bronocice, it was calculated that the imported macrolithic blades appeared in the number of a dozen or so artefacts for a year, and taking into account the estimated population, one imported item fell to 11-13 people.23 Of course, the credibility of such calculations should be treated with reserve, but we can nevertheless find that they were rather small and only a small part of the population participated in the exchange or that it was rare. In such a situation, when in the end, after many years of waiting, our ancestor received his longed-for subject of exchange, he could actually die in the “satiety of his days”. Quite similar situation took place not so long ago in the communist times in the countries of the Eastern bloc. The average waiting time for an apartment, when the private market practically did not exist, was 15-30 years. Many great Polish comedies are devoted to this burning problem of the socialist economy. So when you finally got a flat, you had it for the rest of your life and did not want anything more. The market economy replaced this wellthought system with the sky is the limit principle, which is however a specific fraud consisting in supplying all those previously scarce goods in exchange for debt whose repayment often exceeds the capacity of a single biological organism. At the social level, this accumulated debt is impossible to pay for one generation during one's life, which makes it subject to political control in the hands of global financial institutions. It is not enough that for a long time we do not die “in satiety of our days”, in addition, our frustrations inherit subsequent generations. At this point, I recall the mirror that Neo looked into while disconnecting from the matrix. This is the key scene in the movie. Neo swallowed the pill [remember which one?], sat down comfortably in the chair and looked in the mirror, which, at first dilapidated and cracked, grew into a uniform sheet in front of his eyes. He touched them, and it stuck to his hand, and then began to spread over his body, taking the form of a silver, mercury-like coating. In the end, the mirror “absorbed” him completely, and Neo woke up in the world of machines and saw “the desert of the real”, as we discussed in the previous chapter. There are many interpretations of this key scene in the film. Here, first and foremost, the allusion to the work of Lewis Caroll—the mirror absorbing Neo is the realization 23 Kruk

& Milisauskas 1999: 157.

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of Morpheus' promise to know the depth of the rabbit cavity into which Neo would plunge if he takes the right pill [you know which one?]. There are also religious references indicating the relevant biblical verses, according to which Neo is treated like Jesus Christ. There are many other options. The rather obvious pronunciation of this scene is that Neo “dies” in one world [the world of falsehood], and “is born” in another—the real one. However, the mirror must also be a metaphor. In the foreground, therefore, we have a metaphor for the false reception of reality [a broken mirror], which Neo was fed with while living in the matrix until now. He perceived the illusion of the matrix as a reality. The merging of the mirror symbolizes the beginning of a “pure” look at the matrix, a look at what the matrix really is. In all these interpretations, however, there is no mention of a very important issue, namely that the Matrix is a film about the relationship between man and technology, that is, with tools—with the Heideggerian Zeug. In this case, the mirror is not only a metaphor, but an illustration of the development of the matrix world. At first he looks innocent, unapologetically, does not offer to be seen, is broken and harmless, but suddenly begins to live his own life and “consumes” the unfortunate novice who has so far happily played with tools [as Mr. Anderson was involved in the creation and distribution of pirated programs], without realizing the consequences of this relationship. Absorbing him, the mirror reveals the transition to the real world of machines, in which Neo is really only a small battery [an artefact] of a monstrous system supporting its existence, and instead producing colorful holograms, images of the world directly to his brain. Looking from an even wider perspective, the mirror is a metaphor for the relationship with Being-as-history. The beginning was modest, our “loose” relationships with objects allowed distance, watching, using objects in various ways, often incompatible with the current image. The tools were ambiguous, non-calling—with a Neolithic tool like a shoe-adze, you can not necessarily break someone else’s head, you can cut trees or cut trunks for dugouts [archaeologists think that this function was more root], but driving nails with a revolver is unlikely to come out, and certainly not councils hammer them with a nuclear warhead. With time, however, objects begin to “adhere” to people and their needs more and more accurately, they begin to imitate our lives, which we no longer see in its essence occupied with more and more care for tools/artefacts, and finally land in the world in which they became somehow our controllers. The relationship turned away. Now they rule us! We gave it a try, although it is not a completely negative experience. Looking from this

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perspective, “things appear as Hydra like, requiring Herculean skill to stop the multiplying and entrapping, and yet the entrapment is enticing and productive.”24 That is why Neo, this postmodernist Hercules, is the only man who can do anything about it and gets peace with machines. But also because others, such as Cypher—reflecting the desires of the majority of humanity, want to continue to wallow in the luxurious illusion of matrix. So if we are inclined to accept that the film, in addition to the usual entertainment function, tries to show us some truth about the world around us and to make us aware that the nature of reality is important, that we can not escape from it, it should be recognized that the Matrix is a Heideggerian film par excellence. In Tron, directed by Steven Liesberger, we are also dealing with an illustration of this unreflective “falling into technique”, against which Heidegger warned. The protagonist of the film, a brilliant programmer Kevin Flynn, does not know how his program will work; he presses the button and is transferred into a computer reality. This is a slightly different version of the matrix. It illustrates the mechanism of turning a man into a battery, a computer element, or simply a passive element of the World-Machine. The point is that even if the world is a machine, we should rather negate it according to Heidegger. Discovering this, or rather “falling down” into the world, the total involvement in it, leads to the situations presented in both films. Even if the world is not a machine, then “progress” will eventually lead us to such self-manipulative capacity that it is indistinguishable who will manipulate, whom and how, the danger will occur that we will merge with the bio-technological background. Instead of manipulation, Heidegger proposes reflection, or contemplation. Let us go back to our ape ancestor from the first chapter, which was made to feel the discovery of the bone as a tool. Speaking of Heidegger, he was concerned about something that had become an important reference point for him. The author of this scene is the director, Stanley Kubrick, who together with Arthur C. Clark wrote the script of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This scene is one of the best-known ones in cinematography. The reader who does not avoid good cinema remembers that a mysterious monolith appeared for the first time in it. What, then, could be the black monolith from the film? Both in the book and in the film, there is a suggestion that the monolith comes from an alien civilization. First of all, let us note that it is an object, it is a thing. This subject eludes our cognition because it is always situated outside the context of human action. For the first time, we see him in prehistory, where there are no people who could make it; for the second time, a group of astronauts

24

Hodder 2012: 208.

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discover it on Mars. If we look closely at the first scene, we find that the apes seem to be “inspired” during the “discovery” of its original tool. Monolith as if it stimulates the intelligence of our ancestors, or, as Heidegger said, arouses concern for them. Anthropoid begins to understand himself as a user of tools. For animals, things are not important, they are fundamental to people. Perhaps, therefore, the black monolith signals a great change in thinking [if we assume that the animals also think somehow]—turning back to things? And yet this turn towards things has a characteristic stigma that Heidegger's philosophy emphasizes, although it also sounds strange to our ear. That is, it is not us who point to things, but rather things that show up to us when Being as a process allows them to be seen by us. Indeed, it looks a bit like the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, as if some stranger invited us to live in a world that we do not fully understand. We can have different opinions about particular phenomena, about the world, but it is rather Being as a process [as History] that we do not understand, at the end that is the ultimate founder of the fact that you can have an opinion. Therefore, this is another paradox. For example, we can interpret the megalith present in space as a “house for dwarfs”, which was quite common in the 17th century, or we can interpret it as a grave. We can also interpret the illustration [megalith] as a reflection of reality or as spots left on paper. However, the point is that both megalith and illustration simply exist. This means that Being, when it emerges in the course of our thinking about it, it is partly identical or rather connected with thinking as such. In other words, Being is thinking.25 Thus, there is no difference between the Nature and the Thought in which we exist. The further story with the black monument in the background goes as follows. Dr. Bowman also sees the monolith in his last journey and says the words: “The thing's hollow—it goes on forever, and, oh my God! It's full of stars!” This is a characteristic statement in the perspective of Hegel's philosophy. The essence of man is only or until the temporalization of what is given [Nature] through work. From the perspective of existentialism, the man oneself is this hollowness, emptiness and nothingness, because they are always in becoming, they are always their own project. Here, then, two “nothingnesses” meet with each other. Man and Thing are two “hollow” sides of the same coin, or one is a mirror image of the other. Things define us—without them, there would be no man. On the other hand, things also do not exist objectively, only when we perceive them and use them and extend our identity to Things that are like a mirror in which we can see ourselves and get to know each other in a mediated form—like a picture, a reflection of which we are ourselves an au25

Karlsson 2000: 72.

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thor.26 In other words, by manipulating things, we manipulate ourselves. Therefore, according to Heidegger, the real progress of knowledge would consist in recognizing by the subject [by ourselves] the subjectivity of oneself, and would consist above all of reflection on the world. When we stop treating things as a foreign creation, as a superior reality prevailing over us [like apes in the Kubrick’s film], when we recognize our own participation in it, when we see ourselves in it—then all our knowledge about the world will become knowledge in the full sense of the word.27 That's why in the final scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey the new-born child looks to Earth and that's why Neo wants peace because he knows that this “war” cannot be won. By manipulating our modern gadgets, we delve into them and rely on them like astronauts on a spaceship, but for most of us they are like the black monolith—we don't understand them. The current trajectory of technological development thus leads us back to the prehistoric reality. Some of the people will develop into gods, locked in a techno-biological sphere, as Yuval Harari points out28, and maybe they will eventually create a Simulation that Nick Bostrom writes about29. Or maybe it already happened... Archaeology as contemplation Recent years of the development of theoretical archaeology have made it possible to understand that material culture is the carrier of meaning and its interpretation is an endless process. Some say, however, that this knowledge does not add much to our understanding of what material culture is, what its essence is and understanding what role it plays in human existence at the ontological level.30 Although textual analogies are important and valuable, there is a tendency to ignore the differences between the thing and the text. Things can do far more than speech and expressing meanings. That's why we have to make peace with machines. Bjornar Olsen, like Neo in the matrix, proposes an “egalitarian” approach in which we must assume that things [material culture], like other beings: people, plants, animals are related, divide substance [flesh] and membership in the world. This refers to the Heideggerian concept of being in the world as “dwelling in it”. Things are of course different from us, but it is a difference that should not be recognized as duality, opposition and negativity [e.g. live—

Hegel 1964: 54. Michalski 1978: 96. 28 Harari 2012. 29 Bostrom 2003. 30 Olsen 2003: 87-104. 26 27

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dead]. It should be non-oppositional, establishing cooperation, exchange and making references. Olsen claims that people have always broadened their relationship to non-human agents with whom they exchanged traits and formed a collective. If there is one History, from Olduwai George to PostModernia, writes Olsen, this must be the Story of the increasing complexity of the material world, the development of the material world itself—more and more tasks are related to non-human actors, more and more activities are mediated by things. Of course, we know that thanks to Heidegger's reading. What, then, does the postulate of returning to things have to offer? Olsen refers to the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who in his book We have never been modern writes that the emergence of modernity led to the creation of two fundamentally different ontological areas: human beings on one side and non-human ones on the other. Latour calls it the Great Divide, which placed power, interest and human politics on the one pole, and knowledge about objects and non-people on the other. Modernity was celebrated as the triumph of humanism and the birth of man as a subject, but at the same time the fact of the birth of non-humanism, objectivity, what “is”, was lost—the objects completely different from us, carefully separated from the area of social attention.31 Latour claims that the modern vision of the world, separating what is human, from what is inhuman is “purification.” In reality, however, since the prehistoric times, we have been dealing with the growing role of hybrids and networks in which human is mixed with anything inhumane. Hence the hybridization process takes place. Modernity does not want to see this process, thus worsening its position—we are defenseless, hybrids and networks are growing behind our backs. “Modernists, in fact, swear that technology is pure instrumental domination, science with a pure set [Heideggerian Gestell], economics with pure calculation, capitalism with pure reproduction, and the subject with pure consciousness. Purity everywhere! Although they say so, we should not take their words at face value, because what they preach is only half of the modern Constitution—purification work purifying the products of hybridization.”32 Latour calls for the return to reflection on the condition of the world full of hybrids, which did not appear out of nowhere, but developed with the humans. This purification—a kind of ideological escape from reality is a real threat to the human condition—it is not technology, economics or nature.

31 32

Latour 2011: 24. Ibidem: 96.

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Man should start behaving like a “weaver” of these many different networks and hybrids into one area of human existence. Purification causes us to lose a truly humanistic point of view. How could a man threaten machines? – asks Latour rhetorically. "He created them, put them in himself, in parts of the machine he put his members, with the help of machines he built his body. How can objects threaten him, since all of the collectives within them were quasi-entities? It is made of them to the same extent as they are made of it. He defined himself by multiplying things.”33 Why, then do we feel threatened? The threat, replies the philosopher, flows from those “who want to reduce us to the essence and who because of their contempt for things, objects, machines and society cut off all delegates and transform humanism into a delicate creation threatened by Nature, Society or God.” So if we exist in the world in the same way that people are in love, how Christopher Gosden writes,34 that we and the things that surround us are interwoven—they in us and as in them, therefore our current “modern” point of view must be understood as love that is not seen in its fullness. It seems, therefore, that in a similar way, Latour tries to clean up somewhat the existential project from the deep pessimism it has so far been permeated with. *** Existentialism is a difficult philosophy because of its non-anthropocentric approach. In it, first and foremost, you should give up the dichotomy between the subject and the object. When it comes to archaeology, both its scientific [processual] and post-processual versions have a problem with that. Processualism focuses on the past as a reality that can be decoded [reconstructed] as independent of its thinking entities using objective methodologies. Postprocessualism, on the other hand, focuses on the subjective construction of the past, taking place in our consciousness anchored in the present social context. In any case, the dichotomy between subject and object in both cases remains unchanged. That's what “existential” archaeologists say. They claim that in contemporary archaeology of both directions such beings as monuments are treated as a “resource” that is always at the disposal of our subjective will. This is the case both when we treat them as independent objects and as subjective constructs of our theoretical thought. Archaeologists from every camp use the past and its material culture as a form of a standing reserve,

33 34

Ibidem: 195. Gosden 1994: 44.

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which we can use as much as we want at our own discretion.35 This way of thinking was criticized by Heidegger: “It is the way in which the real reveals itself as standing-reserve […]. Enframing is the gathering together that belongs to that setting-upon which sets upon man and puts him in position to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve [...] As a destining, it banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing […].”36 The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought and Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. The Heideggerian understanding of the world is directed against the mathematized and mechanized vision of the world of Descartes. He is looking for his more primitive and fundamental version, which from categories, collections, and structure analysis of objects transforms in the way of being Dasein itself. Reducing the world to its existence in a three-dimensional space not only enables modern science to develop, but also causes something Heidegger calls “the world's de-worldization”: the world as a handy whole is spread to a set of extravagant items, present only in object form.37 This, it seems, happened to the characters of Matrix, for which the salvation is the “chosen one”—Neo—the only man who understands [or rather feels] what the world is and who is able to “bend” its structure. The problem, therefore, is that today's archaeological thinking is still a derivative of instrumental thinking, as described by Marcuse and Adorno [chapter VI]. This is essentially technological thinking [Heidegger calls it a calculative one], in which truth is understood as a “measurable” correspondence between the thought [idea] and the object which this thought concerns. Heidegger thought that calculative thinking and anthropocentrism led the culture of man [especially the Western] to the edge of the abyss, to the situation in which man is “stunned” and emphasized that this kind of thinking should be referred to as thoughtlessness.38 Realizing that material culture treated as a text causes some limitations, some post-processual archaeologists look favorably at existential philosophy

Karlsson 1998: 165. Heidegger 1966: 50. 37 Sosnowska 2015: 259. 38 Karlsson 1998: 66. 35 36

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and its offshoots.39 Material objects are exactly what they are, as Heidegger said, that is, physical objects. Their features differ from words in many ways. Material things can be used in a way that is unavailable to words. “Material forms, unlike words, are not just communicating meaning but actively doing something in the world as mediators of activity in the world of whatever kind: technological, economic, ritual, etc. in a specific material context which are historically determined.”40 This means that the material world cannot be reduced to language or text. Perhaps instead of discussing the meanings of the text, archaeologists should concentrate on the problems of understanding and experiencing the world? In the practical dimension, the phenomenological trend, initiated by Husserl, is most widely represented, from which many existentialists drew inspiration, with Heidegger at the forefront. Phenomenology deals with the study and description of phenomena. A phenomenon is a whole [thing or event] that presents itself as an object in the world. The most important issue of phenomenology is, therefore, the conceptualization of the subject-object relationship, and the basic meaning of the processes of simply describing: looking, listening, touching, smelling, trying. Instead of abstract considerations, phenomenologists try to derive their descriptions of the material and social world from the way people think about it and how they feel about it.41 Instead of perceiving objects as texts read in different ways, they try to explore how people move in space, which is visible or invisible to them from different perspectives, and how the physical experience of objects affects their perception. Phenomenology has found a special application in the study of landscape and objects in the landscape. Classical studies in this field concern megaliths, because they are pre-historic objects clearly associated with the landscape, which suggested practically all previous explanations, as I wrote in the previous chapters. Currently, however, in such cases, phenomenologists do not pay attention to the map, which offers only a scientific, Cartesian vision in advance, detached from everyday experience. Instead, they attempt to describe, how to walk that way, wander around, go through these objects, what is seen and heard from different places, how the experience of a given place is affected by the rhythm associated with the time sequence [i.e. the order in which what is the perceived individual elements, the appearance of sudden “surprises” on the horizon], etc. in “human categories.”42

Hodder 2012. 1999: 265. 41 Johnson 2013: 132. 42 Ibidem: 133. 39

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A natural question arises whether such “research” is legitimate since the landscape has changed dramatically since prehistoric times? The objects that we see currently are on the so-called “secondary deposit”, speaking the language of stratigraphy, i.e. in a non-original landscape, much later and changed civilization. Tilley, one of the leading archaeologists in this trend, writes that it is not about empathic recognition on the basis of the actual reconstruction of past thoughts and meanings. He believes, however, that the experience of the place is fundamental to making some reckoning with the past. Approaching a monument in a landscape from various directions and anticipating our approach, it is possible to make some observations of what its relationship with the surroundings, with the terrain, is. He convinces us that when we do this exercise, the space will take on a different dimension: things that seemed large may suddenly become small and insignificant, or look quite different; what was in the center may be on the periphery, and what was visible may disappear from the view. Such a continuous change of the visual experience of the place and landscape during its ritual has not changed in its essence since the Mesolithic time: “Things in front of or behind you, within reach or without, things to be the left or right of your body, above and below, these most basic of personal spatial experiences, are shared with prehistoric populations in our common biological humanity. They provide with which to think and to work… an unfamiliar landscape remains invisible.”43 Of course, this way of “researching” requires time and a specific sense of place. After repeatedly visiting a given place, walking around it and in its neighborhood, as Tilley claims, the intensity of his experience increases. Phenomenology has drawn the attention of archaeologists to certain issues that they have not yet considered, although they are available to almost everyone and are subject to observation—almost for everyone, because in the times of mass tourism, staying in some places is difficult. For example, in the series Meet the Romans with Mary Beard the author uses her privileged position as a researcher, experiencing in our name the narrowness of Roman tenement houses, which tourists are not allowed to enter. Not everyone can read Latin, so Mary Beard does it for them, discovering both humor and drama in the first multicultural city in the world. It remains a matter of dispute how far we consider our subjective experiences and descriptions as valuable for archaeology itself? What will become of them after removing the subjective coat of contemporary archaeologists?

43 Tilley

1994: 73.

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It was noted that the experiences described by archaeologistsphenomenologists seem to be very specific in terms of cultural affiliation. The people, who travel through the world in these descriptions, think and feel phenomenologically, are often single males [with the exception of Mary Beard] of Western culture, middle-aged and they are not affected by any weakness or disability. The critics of this approach have quite cruelly noticed that these figures resemble archaeologists carrying out analyses.44In other words, this is another form of an interesting story about me myself. But maybe that's what this is about? According to Heidegger, the subject-object relationship, the situation in which we only look at what is, is not a primary but a secondary way in which something can be encountered and understood by us. If we could only look at objects [i.e. describe reality from the point of view of an uninvolved observer], we would not encounter anything at all. It is rather due to the fact that our view of reality is not pure, that it is always an “understanding” look, we can not only look but also see. Heideggerian archaeology, that is, a return to one of the sources of post-processualism that says that interpretation cannot be reduced to universal truth, would be a sure panacea for the chaos and eternal controversy of contemporary archaeologists. Understanding is therefore a process of articulating the reality with which we are dealing. But it is also selfunderstanding, which is the opposite of calculative thinking: “Calculative thinking never stops, never collects itself. Calculative thinking is neither meditative thinking, nor thinking which contemplates the meaning that reigns in everything that just “is”.45 Referring to what is—understanding it, and thus letting it come to light—we at the same time understand ourselves. Our knowledge is always reflective, which is why it is not universal [we will return to it later in the next chapter]. Knowledge is always situational and arises thanks to our commitment to the world. If the knowledge about things, in general—about the world—is also a relation to it, it necessarily results from the fact that archaeology should be contemplation, leaving the excavation site, leaving the study, laboratory, etc. Why? Because man is a thinking and meditative being.46 From this point of view, every other archaeology is a public, corporate, inauthentic archaeology, distanced from the personal experience of an archaeologist.47

Johnson 2013: 133. Heidegger 1966: 46. 46 Ibidem: 47. 47 Gosden 1994: 112. 44 45

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We should contemplate, as individual archaeologists, the question: why is there something rather than nothing? The question is undoubtedly one of the many at which you can laugh or cry, but you cannot take it indifferently. Treating them indifferently, we resign voluntarily from attempts to look for authenticity, we become a cog in the machine, a battery in some matrix, and an imprisoned Kevin Flyn in a computer he built himself. Contemplative archaeology naturally does not claim any exclusive right to make only real claims about the world. It is rather thinking about thinking and trying to realize that we live in Being [as-History]. This is an attempt, as Karlsson says, to recognize the foundation of our thinking. It is also a return to thinking about History as Hegel wanted, but without finally defined positions. The point is only to recognize the fact that even if we know the world through material culture, the main relationship between us as interpreters and the interpreted material culture exists in our common core, in our inhabitation of Being [as-History]. This means that we are orientated in the world not so much by means of material culture as by Being. Being allows us to both experience and construct things and tools. It allows us to deal with them and create History. We need Being and Being needs us. Being, therefore, is not so much a fact that beings are manifesting themselves but the foundation itself, which reflects everything that manifests and which determines everything that exists. The basic question is therefore: why is there material culture rather than nothing? So think, be conscious, don’t be indifferent! Here is the basic existential challenge.

Chapter 8

Archaeologist like a detective The Israeli film Footnote, in the main layer of the story, presents the relationship between son and father. Both are scholars, philologists and Talmud researchers from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the opening scene, we see a ceremony during which the son, Uriel Shkolnik, is called to the Academy of Israeli Sciences. The father, though at first glance, seems more predestined to receive such an honor, looks at the whole ceremony from the side. A grimace of bitterness is on his face, he feels rejected by the society. What is the result of this strange situation? The father, Eliezer Shkolnik, is a scientist of old school. For 40 years every day, he goes to work on foot—always the same way. In any weather! His scientific work consisted in presenting a revolutionary thesis about the existence of a different version of the Jerusalem Talmud circulating around Europe in the early Middle Ages. He discovered that there are small differences between the text of the Talmud in manuscripts and the text cited by scholars of that period. It is about hundreds or even thousands of works, each of which has many versions of manuscripts. As part of a monumental project, Eliezer studied them all for over 30 years. Unfortunately, a month before the publication of the first volume of his opus magnum, another scholar, Professor Jehuda Grossman, quite accidentally found a manuscript of the same version of the Talmud. The bad luck of one is a gift of fate for another. Grossman found the original, which was used by European scientists. Thus, Professor Shkolnik's 30-year job was in vain! Grossman confirmed his thesis, but he published his conclusions a month earlier and took all the laurels at once. From now on, embittered Eliezer continues to unnecessary research in the manuscript section of the National Library of Israel and lectures at the university for an empty classroom. But crowds of students attend the lectures of Uriel Shkolnik, his son who went in the footsteps of his father, but he strongly supported the classic philology with literary talent [he writes books about the private life of rabbis], his books are bought almost all over the world, and he himself gets more honors, which had been denied to his father for years. In the end, it seems, fortune smiled on his father. He receives a phone call from the Ministry of Education informing him that he has been awarded the Israel Prize. He waited 16 years for this message [he announces his own candidacy for this prestigious award every year]. Winged with this news, he gives an interview, during which he talks about his passion—research on the Tal-

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mud, on many years of tedious scientific work, and when the journalist asks him about father's and son's relations acting in such a narrowly defined field of research, Eliezer Shkolnik makes the following comparison: “If we both deal with pot fragments it would look like this: one of us watches them clean, measures, catalogs, thinks out what epochs they are from and who made them. If he does, he will create something that will have eternal scientific value. The second looks at them for a few seconds, notes that they are more or less the same color and have a jug. He does not care that they do not fit together; the most important thing is to have a jug. But this is just an empty vessel without content. This jug does not exist, it's pure fiction!” When the journalist drills the subject and inquiries about the son, professor Shkolnik finally replies: “Uriel is capable, but I would not call it a scientific work.” The article appears in the newspaper and the next day it is read by son Uriel. In anger, he answers: “Do you investigate lifelong clay pots without drawing any interesting conclusions? Is this to be science? It's masturbation!” As you can see, both father and son have an unquestionable talent for creating pictorial metaphors. Recall Joaquin Phoenix's opinion here, playing an emotionally burned out lecturer of philosophy in the film Irrational Man, which was a brief and blunt summary of Wittgenstein's objection [third chapter] and in a similarly colorful way of saying what philosophers usually do when “detached from facts and things.” Footnote has a more complex story than the above-mentioned plot, but I quote only this thread [for now], because it illustrates in a concise and emphatic manner the relationship between the two main currents of archaeology, roughly between scientific [processual] and the post-processual archaeology. Many archaeologists have always dreamed of timeless scientific value. The other party questioned this view by going towards subjectivism and greater imagination. Naturally, both positions have undergone many modifications and borrowings over the years, so even now talking about someone—a processualist or post-processualist—is a kind of simplification. Just as the New Archaeology was a collection of often divergent views and interests, so post-processualism contains a great diversity of views and traditions, although my observations show that this division still exists and is justified not so much in the methodology which is the result of certain historical moments in the development of archaeology, but it lies deeper—in something that could be described as Denkollektiv [chapter III] or a philosophical view of reality. Not judging right now of such an approach, it is worth making this

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comparison, because its purpose is not, contrary to appearances, to highlight differences, but rather to learn something about similarities. This will require to proceed like a detective. *** It is characteristic, first of all, that the sources of both directions are the conclusions drawn from ethno-archaeological research. Just like Lewis Binford, who developed his famous middle-range theory in chapter II, who conducted research among Eskimos, trying to build an objective methodology of archaeology, Ian Hodder, one of the leading representatives of contextual archaeology, dissatisfied with his current development, also decided to deal with “archaeology of the present”. In the 1980s he went to East Africa to study “living cultures”. Unlike Binford, however, on the basis of these studies, he came to the conclusion that people actively manipulate material culture, i.e. they use objects in various ways within different social strategies, so objects are not a passive reflection of the cultural set of principles. Thanks to this, he understood that in order to understand the pattern that we discover in the ground, it is necessary to take into account the views and beliefs of people who produced a given material culture. In this way, he questioned Binford's objective model that middle-range theory gives the possibility of neutral resolution of archaeological problems. A common base, which was the observation of contemporary communities, gave two divergent interpretations. Does it remind us of something? Do you remember the philosopher Karl Popper, who during the lectures ordered the students to observe what is happening in the room? Everyone was watching something else. It turns out therefore that the fundamental question of methodological differences in archaeology is simply that everyone sees something different in the reality that surrounds him. These opinions are not mutually exclusive [Kuhn], they are, as Wittgenstein would have said, different language games regarding the same phenomenon. I am also reminded of a parable that the philosopher Olivier Assouly invokes. Two gourmets try wine from the barrel. One claims that the wine has a ferruginous taste and for the other it is leatherish. They cannot agree. There is such a heated dispute that it was decided to open the barrel in which it was found... a metal key tied with a leather belt! It turned out that both were right, even though they were ready to fight a deadly fight in defense of their own opinion. So maybe it is a matter of taste? Each of us seems to be equipped with quite individual taste buds, although, as Bourdieu shows [chapter IV], they have a social dimension. In any case, under normal conditions, archaeological research does not have “barrels” that can be opened in such a way to check who

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is right. If both wine connoisseurs are right, then we can, treating this story as a metaphor, admit to the thought that even completely opposite judgments have a common stem. So antagonisms, though better to say: methodological differences of the modern archaeology are partly due to the fact that everyone is seeing something else, persistently looking in a different direction. As well as the fact that many follow uncritically their charismatic leader, which sends us back to the problems in chapter IV. Nevertheless, both sides are needed as participants in the dialogue; every judgment matters because it does not come from vacuum. Let us return to the main thread of the matter. First of all, this paradox of similarities in the case of different research methodologies reaches even deeper, because it reaches the very philosophical foundations of both methodologies. Like many new archaeologists were looking at the positivist philosophy of Hempel, which we mentioned in chapter II, some post-processualists referred to the work of philosopher and historian Robin Collingwood. This choice was logical, as Collingwood dealt with a bit of archaeology, which he understood as an element of history—and he regarded it as a study of events, as long as they were an expression of human nature, that is, studies of desires, faith or human thought. He referred partly to psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc., at the same time rejecting geology or biology as unhistorical in the strict sense. Collingwood adhered to the division between historical and non-historical science; the former were based on the recognition that some internal cause, i.e. intentional actions of agents, as Bourdieu would have said, were behind events. The latter could be described without referring to human passions. Collingwood was a student of Hegel, though far less radical in his views. Above all, he drew attention to the facts that Hegel did not care about at all. Facts, their description, classification and inference based on facts were in turn the foundation of the positivist concept of science, which Hempel presented, among others, who included studies of human nature in science [sciences], which was conditioned by reasoning embedded in the concept of universal laws. However, contrary to appearances, Hempel was sensitive to the delicacy of explaining mental causes, and his views neither assumed nor ruled out the materialistic foundations of spirituality. In other words, Hempel took into account the value of “internal” factors in explaining human actions [emotions, desires, faith, etc.].1 Analyzing the views of both philosophers Merrile Salmon came to the conclusion that the real differences between Hemp and Collingwood are rather

1

Salmon 1992: 229.

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subtle. For example, Collingwood's anti-positivism turns out to be only a critique of the rather naive approach of some historians at the time, who “tried hard” to apply the exact science methods in historical sciences [these methods involved the use of far-reaching generalizations]. Collingwood, however, recognizes, like Hempel, that naive inductionism is not a good method of research. Some interpreters of Collingwood think that he simply stressed the basic difference in science, which is based on the use of different types of hypotheses, and not in the methods of their verification. With this in mind, the differences between the two philosophers do not seem so great anymore. The positivist side of Collingwood therefore claimed that the task of historians is to reconstruct the past as it actually happened. At this point, the paths of post-processualists and Collingwood are spreading, because they do not share such realistic views with their philosophy teacher. If the texts of material culture are ambiguous and still open to interpretations, then the whole method of historical research proposed by Collingwood cannot provide certainty. Post-processualists propose self-criticism as a specific cure for our blindness to the fact that the past is constructed in the present and not re-constructed as it really was. Was it? Just as the ambition of some early processual archaeologists was to provide certain knowledge based on an iron methodology, the same trends occurred on the other side. Of particular importance in this context is the hermeneutic spiral, which we mentioned in chapter V. The phrase: “A contextual archaeology as a hermeneutic spiral” is the main idea of Ian Hoder's theoretical work, in which he writes about this kind of study: “The interpreter goes round and round the data fitting all the pieces into a coherent whole. The pieces that are put together include all the data from the site as well as all the previous information known about similar sites, similar cultures, similar societies. The procedure is spirallike rather than a circle because the data gradually change the interpretation in a continual sequence. Data and theory affect each other in a dialectical process.”2 Thanks to this, with favorable working conditions and interpretations, we could read the “text” of material culture as its author or authors had in mind.3

2 3

Hodder 1995: 253. Mamzer 2004: 169.

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Hodder, referring at this moment to hermeneutic understanding of the prehistoric reality proposed by Collingwood, and developed by Gadamer, believes that in a sense “a link can be made between past and present contexts by material universals”. Like the axe, whose shape must be determined by its practical use, the spectrum of possible interpretations of material culture is limited as well. The fact that material culture can be treated as a certain text has a double meaning to it. One aspect of this shift, writes Hodder, is that material culture, like a text, can have multiple meanings depending on the context of the “reading”. But another aspect of texts, as opposed to language, is that they are material, concrete, practical. Unlike the abstract meanings of words, texts are written to do something in the world. Written with pen and ink, for a specific purpose, they link abstract linguistic meanings and codes to material and social action. Similarly, material culture, as its name indicates, incorporates cultural beliefs and concepts in material actions. Material culture embraces both idea and practice which influence and constrain each other.4 If we succeed, we can leave our horizon of modernity and rise to a certain “horizon of universalism”, in a sense, understand the past as it really was. As we remember from chapter II, processual archaeologists also hoped to achieve this “horizon of universalism” but only with other means. Thanks to the achievements of modern technology [measurement with radioactive carbon] and the use of universal methodologies, these archaeologists were hoping to present their time as a universal axis of the process in which universal human history took place. Thus, regardless of the intellectual current in which we swim, our longing for truth remains constant. Undoubtedly, this was also due to a certain competition that emerged between the New Archaeologists, heirs to the mechanistic and positivist science, and post-processual archaeologists who entered the model of historical, post-Hegelian explanation. Both groups had to usurp the right to such explanation as part of this rivalry, although it was possible to take more distanced attitudes as part of the theoretical currents they represented. Such a basis was given, for example, by Wittgenstein, who replaced the theory of facts with the concept of “language game”, suggesting that the description of reality depends on the manner of its implementation. It turns out, therefore, that the post-processual critique of scientific [processual] archaeology has formulated an allegation of metaphysical objectivity, while the same kind of metaphysics promised in its manifesto.5 The basic question, as Salm-

4 5

Hodder 1995: 148-149. Karlsson 1998: 146.

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on suggests, is: do archaeologists referring to philosophers really understand them as if these philosophers wanted it? [This matter again concerns reading the texts]. However, if one reads deeper, Hodder's suggestion seems only an allusion, that blink of an eye to the reader, because just after scratching the possibility of an “objective link” between the past and the present, he writes that these links can only be “guardedly objective.” We are therefore in an impasse: we can achieve objectivity, but there will always be some doubt with us. Ian Hodder seems to accept the attitude of the Greek philosopher Protagoras. If we could ask him the question: “So you are a relativist?” This one would certainly say, “It depends!” As an experienced archaeologist and philosopher, he realizes that the only man who knew how History really looked like was Hegel, but he took that Knowledge with him to the grave. Achieving this level of objectivity would require from the axiological interpreter neutrality, proper only to the position of the “divine eye”, as Hilary Putnam calls it.6 In the dialogue that Hodder carries out with himself, he openly admits the ambiguity of his texts: “My writing is polysemous, contingent. I keep changing my mind and contradicting myself, moving to new positions.” He accepts the position of a philosopher, the doubting ironist, who tries to qualify him by the opposite side to one line of reasoning: “You can’t hit a moving target”, he writes.7 This is an existential attitude—whatever we say, we will be misunderstood by others, whose ultimate desire is to organize the world according to their own, though usually imposed from the outside, categories. But it is also the attitude of the constantly seeking, and at the same time escaping the desires of the desire to “capture him” into his categories by his colleagues, detective! In this perspective, the “hermeneutic circle” [also called the spiral] becomes the center of our interest as the most characteristic aspect of postprocessual/contextual archaeology. What is it actually? It is not a procedure, it has no formal nature, it is neither objective nor subjective.8 It is a process of understanding of an ontological dimension, never finished, still going on. But in order to understand, one must also believe! It is a bit of a vicious circle, because the attempts to understand always generate errors, which, however, enrich us and lead to the progress of understanding. In the former hermeneutic tradition, the use of this method required a special subtlety of spirit.9

Mamzer 2004: 171. Hodder 1995: 137. 8 Gadamer 2004: 403. 9 Ibidem: 421. 6 7

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This way of researching seems to be completely opposite to the processual algorithms, but in a significant sense it refers to them directly. It is a reminiscence of the problem of the Universal Turing Machine, which would be able to calculate any number in a finite time. Turing showed that such a machine does not exist [chapter II and III], it would have to have an infinite algorithm that would stretch in space like a hermeneutic spiral. Is the hermeneutic spiral, therefore, not a mirror reflection of the middle-range theory—an illustration, and thus a certain form of our metaphysical desire to achieve the Truth? As we know, a mirror reflection is a shift, a 180-degree perspective change: the left side turns into the right one and vice versa [from the perspective of the mirror right turns into left]. Just as middle-range theory promised objectivity based on universal methodology, i.e. something outside the observer, the hermeneutic spiral, reversing the perspective, promised universality on the basis of working out a certain personality of the researcher, having a special subtlety of the spirit and a lot of time—the universal archaeologist, an ideal researcher of the past. On the one hand, a universal formula, procedure and ultimately a machine for solving archaeological problems was sought after, on the other—an ideal archaeologist. Lewis Binford used a comparison of his intention to the Rosetta Stone as a universal instruction to read the “text” of prehistory, while such a post-processual Stone was the archaeologist himself.10 In Umberto Eco's language, it would be a Model Reader who constantly reads texts, but will never be able to generate a final interpretation, because it’s not possible with such works as Joyce’s Finnegans Wake [see chapter V]. The theorem on the possibility of achieving universal knowledge in both currents is, on the one hand, an illustration of the maximum extension of theoretical archaeology, but on the other, an area where communication is possible. Lewis Binford argued that archaeologists generally always [unconsciously] use a middle-range theory. Ian Hodder, on the other hand, claimed that archaeologists always use empathic thinking, try to empathize with the thoughts of ancient people. Recall at this point the story of two connoisseurs of wine—both are right or both are wrong, because we do not have a barrel that you can open to check. Exactly with this situation, we are dealing here. Although apparently some people say: we focus on an algorithm or a model of theory existing in front of our eyes, and others: we put on the model of a man, what archaeology needs, both are right, because one does not exist without the other. Ultimately, Ian Hodder admits “certain aspects of processual and post-processual archaeology are complementary rather than opposed.” On the basis of similar opinions, on the one hand, or the other side of the barri-

10

I also succumbed to the temptation to refer to the Rosetta Stone in one of my papers.

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cade, a processual-cognitive trend was formed, which claims the right to synthesize both theoretical directions. Nevertheless, it can also be said that in the form of middle-range theory on the one hand and the hermeneutic method on the other, the archaeological theory outlined the opposite edges of the space of its study. *** Some think that Hans-Georg Gadamer clearly showed with his greatest work, that there is a certain opposition between History and its understanding. On the one hand, the objectivity proper to the spiritual teachings is possible due to the creation of a certain distance to the subject matter we are investigating [e.g. when falling into a hermeneutic spiral], on the other hand—as a result of this distancing situation to the past the loss of this primary and basic the relationship by which we belong to historical reality and we participate in it. This is why the title of Gadamer's work took the form of Truth and Method. This “and” is read in this context as a trick, because it can mean both connectivity and disconnection. The truth may exist, but there is a Method beside it, and one does not fit completely into the other. So we move between two poles: either we adopt a methodological attitude, which becomes a forced corset and a stiff trajectory—the Gombrowicz’s pipe that “permeates food but does not digest it” losing sight of the “ontological density” of the examined reality—or accept the attitude of the seeker of the truth, thereby giving up objectivity.11 However, not everyone knows that at first Gadamer did not intend to provide his opus magnum with the mentioned title. His first proposal was Verstehen und Geschehen, but he was persuaded by the publisher, who wanted to give the monumental treatise a more attractive commercial title—something that in modern language is called “catchy”. It turned out to be an effective move, a kind of characteristic blink with one eye to the reader while uttering the word “Truth” and the other while uttering the word “Method”. Contemporary interpreters of Gadamer pay attention to the fact that science as a sociological and cognitive phenomenon was extremely important for this philosopher. It defines the age in which we live—on the one hand, we are dealing with a huge civilization progress thanks to science and technology, on the other hand, we are subjecting our entire lives to the management of experts who for nothing have our practical wisdom and knowledge. That's why Gadamer wanted to make an intermediary contribution between philosophy

11

Karlsson 1998: 147.

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and science. His hermeneutic philosophy wants to oppose the reductionism of the natural sciences, but without falling into the illusion of the discovery of some new metaphysical knowledge unknown so far. His intention was rather to point to these areas of the “emergence of truth”, whose induction-based natural sciences are not able to achieve. Gadamer's truth is supposed to be important because it enriches our existence, broadens our knowledge and deepens our experience of reality.12 Gadamer is one of the first philosophers who made the so-called linguistic turn—the turn from philosophizing in terms of consciousness to philosophizing from the perspective of language.13 He grasped the language, like Wittgenstein, from the metaphor of the game, and he did it 30 years before him! In addition, he was one of the greatest experts in Hegel, co-founder of the elite Hegel-Verein, which makes him a combination of these two key thinkers. “Language is the center of human being,” writes Gadamer. The universality of hermeneutics, on which contextual archaeologists found their stance, is related to the linguistic character of understanding. On the one hand, this means a fundamental “incompleteness” of conversation, where no one can claim the right to definitive understanding, and on the other—the nature of understanding is also marked by the fact that this process is something like melting the interpreter and the interpreting horizon [hence the possibility of this universalism]. Perhaps it is easier to understand when considering two live interlocutors, it is more difficult to interpret something that has passed, such as an archaeological monument or a work of art. In this case, you need to “lend your voice” so that the artefact or work of art could “speak”. This voice must be “independent”—one that will not be forced into the self-knowledge of the interpreter, but broadens his understanding of reality. The philosopher/archaeologist should also listen to the voice of the artist/manufacturer of the artefact. The task of hermeneut, but also of every man submitting their thoughts and deeds to the reflection process, “should be the inclusion of all subjectivity [the so-called individual sensible product, from simple expression to historical deed or outstanding work of art] from the perspective of substantivity that usually remains beyond consciousness of the producer.”14 It seems that although Gadamer was in some way the expression of Wittgenstein's thought, it is more of Hegel in him. Like him, he is inaccessible in the “explanation” of reality. Apparently, Gadamer's students even created a certain scale of ambiguity of his texts, where the unit of measure was 1 Gad, and

Przyłębski 2016: 99-100. Ibidem: 92. 14 Ibidem: 94. 12 13

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gave many fragments of Truth and Method exceptionally many Gads.15 Therefore, even the work of this great hermeneut is not able to remove a strange schizophrenic structure from our brains, in which one hemisphere motivates us to work and search by making a continuous claim: I want to know the truth!, while the other is constantly sabotaging this quest by saying: you will never know the truth! Navigating between these two poles is a specific evolutionary, historical and existential element of scientific research. But is it only scientific? What is the personal dimension of a scientist-archaeologist? Gadamer indicates that the scientific research about the past is essentially a matter of individual experience, internal dialogue, insight into one's own feelings before it reaches the feelings of people who are far away both in space and in time. Of course, the role of communication is equally important in it, however, as I tried to show in chapter VI has many important limitations. In the hermeneutic study, the role of the researcher himself is emphasized, who “listens to history”, adopts an authentic attitude in contrast to the inauthentic one, he takes by listening to the voices of other people or his colleagues. In a sense, therefore, as I will try to argue further, the post-processual/contextual trend is closer to a certain truth about which we speak in this chapter. But when we add Heidegger's statement that this conversation for each one of us will end one day to the never-ending hermeneutic conversation of Gadamer, in this way, we will obtain a personal horizon of understanding, truth and authenticity, which we all mean. This thread of reasoning has already been marked in chapter III and does not let go [Wittgenstein was already the detective, who even at war conducted a private investigation in the field of logic], of which it should be concluded that this is quite a strong thread of reasoning. However, in order to make a final interpretation, we must go deeper into the role that we are talking about. We must use the detective's advice. So the questions in this chapter are: is an archaeologist a detective? Does the detective work contributes to understanding archaeology? And finally, what does it mean to be a detective? Archaeologist like a detective Let us refer again to the reflections connected with the treatment of material culture as a text. Everyone who reads a little realizes that reading texts is not synonymous with their understanding. Can archaeologists understand the “texts” of material culture that they read? The archaeologist Urlich Veit thinks that in such “reading” archaeologists are more like hunters who read traces

15

Brożek 2014: 137.

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like tropes of game left in nature.16 This would mean that archaeology in the cognitive [epistemological] sense resembles what the historian Carlo Ginzburg called a paradigm of clues [Indizienparadigma].17 Carlo Ginzburg pointed out that at the end of the 19th century, a new method of research was born in various sciences, which proved to be effective, but never really included in theory. The source of this new method locates Ginzburg in medicine, which then began to collect accurate information about the symptoms of external diseases that would remain unnoticed in the eyes of a lay person [slightly pink cheeks, change in the color of the whites of the eyes, red ear]. The most famous representatives of this method were Giovanni Morelli and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Morelli developed a method of identifying ancient artists by taking small details into account [ear finishing, nose, nail shape, etc.]. He argued that in these details, the unconscious routine of a given painter or sculptor is concealed. This method was later taken over by the researchers of ancient Greek vases and has a similar number of followers to this day. Doyle in his detective stories, the main protagonist of which is the infallible detective—Sherlock Holmes, also takes into account the role of seemingly invisible details to solve a criminal case. Both graduated from medical studies in Edinburgh and initially worked as doctors. Agatha Christie, who was the wife of an archaeologist and participated in excavations, is no less known as the author of detective novels. In her novel, Murder in Mesopotamia presents the excavation scenes she borrowed from the real research of Sir Charles Leonard Woolley in Ur, as a crime scene where detective Hercules Poirot experiences the illuminating influence of archaeology. He then recalls this fact in the following way: “I was once called to appear at an archaeological site and I learned something important there. When during excavation something is discovered in the ground, the small area around this monument is thoroughly cleaned. The loose soil is removed, scraped here and there with the spatula until the monument is properly exposed in order to draw it and photograph it. I tried to do exactly the same thing—unnecessary elements were moved aside so that we could see the truth and only the truth.” Poirot is clearly inspired by the archaeological method, and at the end of the novel the research manager Dr. Leidner pronounces the following praise at him: “You would have made a good archaeologist, M. Poirot. You have the gift for re-creating the past.”18 The irony of fate is that at the end of the novel, the

16 Vait

2003: 105. Ginzburg 2002. 18 Christie 1994: 215. 17

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archaeological talent of detective Poirot identifies the archaeologist as the perpetrator of the crime.19 The manner in which the detective and the archaeologist speak is significant. While Poirot expresses himself on “discovering the truth”, the archaeologist calls it simply a talent for “re-creating the past.” The archaeologist, therefore, suggests that Poirot constructs the truth, and does not discover it [ultimately the crime was committed, and therefore belongs to the past]. On the other hand, the perpetrator is “discovered”, the detective performed the task, and the story ends, leaving a pleasant feeling of fulfilment. Yes, but it is only the text, the result of the author's imagination, and besides, if we take this text seriously, would Poirot be wrong? Could the perpetrator be someone else? Here is the answer: yes, he could. Detective story permeates the tendency to self-reflection in the sense that the detective is as much a discoverer as the inventor of the truth. This kind of creativity usually presents the detective's attempt to tell a story, i.e. to reconstruct what has really happened before and in connection with murder, and ends not when we get the answer to the question “who did it”, but when the detective is finally able to tell the “real story” in the form of a linear narrative.20 It is obvious that this is the detective’s version of the story; the other is usually not given to us to be heard. The detective himself is someone who behaves in a specific way, inconsistent with the rules of a typical investigation. His task is primarily to identify the image of the past on the basis of traces left by the perpetrator [evidences], at the same time being aware of the intentionality of the material pattern that remained. This is usually an unobtrusive element that allows you to take the lead. In the detective vocabulary, there is even a special technical term for this type of detail—it is a trace that defines a number of additional points: peculiar, strange, inappropriate, foreign, suspicious, uncertain, nonsensical, etc. So often it is a detail that in itself it does not matter [broken cup of coffee, strange chair position, fleeting gaze of the worlds, and even the lack of an event, i.e. something that did not happen], which, however, due to its location in the structure denaturalizes the crime scene.”21 Archaeology is actually full of such “missing elements”. One can even say that archaeology deals exclusively with “unnatural scenes of crime”: graves without equipment or even without the deceased, homes without equipment,

Holtorf 2003: 533. Žižek 2003: 80. 21 Ibidem: 86. 19 20

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and finally entire settlements without any visible traces of normal life. Such monuments are, for example, monumental structures, usually consisting of earth embankments, palisades and other fortifications with an oval or circular structure that appeared in Europe in later Neolithic times. Inside them, the remains of the buildings were sometimes discovered, but their number and arrangement was strange. Sometimes one building was found in the center of such a settlement, and inside rare monuments, which were not on ordinary settlements. In other words, there were no traces of normal life in these settlements, although its appearances were preserved: fortifications, buildings, resource cavities, hearths etc. Naturally, in such cases, the work of a detectivearchaeologist is not about finding a murderer [the perpetrator in this case was the whole society], but rather to find a motive for such activities. Archaeologists came to the conclusion that such settlements were of a ritual nature, while their construction was guided by religious considerations, orienting, for example, the entire settlement to the line of the main astronomical phenomena. This is one of the versions of the interpretation, perhaps incorrect. This is not a reason to worry. “The status of a wrong solution lies in the fact that in epistemological terms it is an important part of the ultimate, a real solution that the detective discovers.”22 We have now come back to the question we posed ourselves at the beginning of this book in the last chapter. Apparently, there is something in detective stories that reveals the fundamental problems of archaeology. The conclusion is obvious—read detective novels! We have found ourselves in a position in which it will be easier for us to recognize archaeology as a detective work whose task is to identify ancient events just like in criminal cases. Archaeology becomes the same field closely related to criminology and criminalistics.23 An archaeologist is a detective who discovers and interprets the clues of the past. In fact, it even happens that archaeologists work closely with criminologists in solving the problems of the past as well as the present. Criminologists, like archaeologists, writes Gabriele Mante, come up with similar assumptions that traces of activity or phenomenon can be objectively recognized and analyzed. However, there are differences: archaeologists mainly follow material traces, while the criminologist also deals with intangible traces [e.g. symptoms of lying or guilty feelings]. Criminologists themselves are also distinguished by direct evidence [statements of living persons, participants of incidents] and indirect evidence [the so-called circumstantial evidence] when they deal with

Ibidem: 88. The difference between criminology and forensics science is a subtle nature. Roughly speaking, criminology is a detective theory, while forensics is its practice.

22 23

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statements by witnesses who do not participate directly in events or with instructions that do not give certainty. Exactly in such a situation would be an archaeologist who solves the mysteries of the past. One could say that he is a detective specialized in a circumstantial investigation, because there is no other way out. However, as regards the search for traces and their preservation, as Mante states, criminologists and archaeologists use very similar methods: “On a practical level, crime scene investigation and archaeology are basically the same. Each gathers data in the hope of reconstructing events in order to solve a problem. Each looks for agents responsible for the physical evidence. Each should operate through the cooperation of many disciplines working together to provide a complete response to the available data.”24 For both criminologists and archaeologists, drafting documentation is an important element in reaching the “truth”. The forensic procedure consists of 3 elements: 1] the phase of securing traces, 2] investigation phase and 3] case analysis. Securing traces would have an equivalent in archaeology as documentation, whereas case studies would be related to interpretation, explanation, building hypotheses, etc. It is known that archaeological practice is different, perhaps because the archaeologist simply wants to be a detective, someone who exceeds procedures. On the other hand, however, as Mante writes, in criminology one can also see tendencies to model themselves in terms of this epistemological procedure on archaeologists. In many investigation centers there is a division into Tatortgruppe and Ermittlugsgruppe: that is, a team that protects traces and a separate team that conducts an investigation. Both teams work partly independently of each other. There are similar trends in archaeology. The division between archaeologists of excavation practitioners [Tatortgruppe] and archaeologists of analysts and interpreters [Ermittlugsgruppe] is becoming more and more visible. There are also theoreticians who may not have to deal with excavations at all. The first phase of securing traces is often related to the so-called rescuing archaeological sites that are at risk of investment. If it had not been for them, the place of the “ancient crime” would have been irretrievably destroyed. Secured traces are arriving at a rapid pace, which is why archaeologists-interpreters often go to archives and museums. Case analysis is the heart of both forensic and archaeological research. It consists of formulating hypotheses and assessing the event. In forensic science, one can generally distinguish two types of hypotheses:

24

Mante 2003: 158.

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1.

Hypotheses regarding the event [Ereignishypothesen]. They are supposed to give an answer to the question with which event we are dealing [e.g. crime or accident?]; a special hypothesis regarding the event is that concerning the modus operandi, or an attempt to answer the question of how the perpetrator acted.

2.

Hypotheses regarding the investigation [Ermittlugshypothesen]. Although they are based on the conclusions about the incident, their purpose is to determine future actions and procedures for capturing the perpetrator. Here are the questions about the criminal's escape pattern and his possible reactions to the pursuit [further escape, barricading with a hostage, attack on policemen?].

Compared to criminology, archaeology focuses, of course, on the first type of hypothesis building. This puts it in a row of very few disciplines very closely related to criminology. Only a few sciences concentrate on such a detailed observation of a detail, a single fact, an event and on the development of “backward” inference, consisting in the departure from an event, effect, towards a cause. Much of this spiritual community is told by the fact that dactyloscopy was invented by a hobbyist archaeologist. Working in Japan, mission doctor Henry Faulds discovered the possibilities of studying fingerprints by dealing with prehistoric clay vessels.25 Accompanying his friend on the excavation sites [American archaeologist Edward S. Morse], he noted traces of fingerprints of former craftsmen on many pieces of delicate work ceramics. Comparing the fingerprints of his and his friends, he came to the conclusion that they are a very individual marker. He was about to check his discovery in practice when the hospital he was working in was broken into. The local police then arrested a member of his team, but Faulds had full confidence in the team. He compared the fingerprints left at the scene with the imprints of the suspect and thus showed the innocence of his co-worker. Apparently the police released the suspect on this basis. The second factor determining this community is psychology. Just as a detective tries to understand or even “empathize” with the mind of a wanted criminal, an archaeologist becomes a psychologist who tries to understand

25

Ibidem: 160.

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the behavior and intentions of prehistoric communities. Let's say a few words about it. Of course, Sigmund Freud was the most famous psychoanalyst. Freud studied medicine, just like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes was his favorite literary hero. Freud also knew the works of Giovanni Morelli. He was also an avid collector of antiquities [who wasn’t in those days?], he read archaeological articles from excavations in Troy, Pompeii, Knossos and the Middle East, which in his day had been archaeologically explored for the first time on such a large scale. He was also a regular guest of an antique trader in Vienna, which made his flat acquire, after some time, the distinctive features of the museum of antiquity; after his death, over 3000 pieces of monuments were added to it.26 For Freud, early childhood of humans corresponded to the prehistory of the human species, whose remains [ruins and artefacts] were eventually covered [“repressed”] by successive events. However, since the patient's head cannot be directly excavated, the psychoanalyst turns into an archaeologist-detective who traces the smallest bits of the past invisible to the naked eye in what the patient says about it and how they behave. It is as if fragments of pottery or other monuments that accidentally come to the surface of the earth were an indication that an entire forgotten city is hidden there. On the other hand, dreams and neurotic personality disorders were already an excavation for Freud, during which the psychoanalyst was extracting tons of monuments. Acting like an archaeologist, the psychoanalyst tries to put together fragments of childhood memories that are under layers of other experiences, layers of amnesia, and thus inaccessible consciousness [objectively, however, they exist in the unconscious, they only have to be brought to the surface]. In his work, Konstruktionen der Analyse, he compared the task of a psychoanalyst and an archaeologist: “It is virtually identical, except that a psychoanalyst works in better conditions and has more helpful material because they deal with a living object, not a dead object. But just as the archaeologist from the surviving walls rebuilds the building, he reconstructs the number and position of the columns from the hollows in the ground, from the fragments of walls found in the rubble, he reconstructs the decorations and paintings, the analyst also acts when he draws his conclusions from pieces of memories, associations and statements of the analyzed object. Both have the right to reconstruction by completing the missing elements and combining the whole into one picture. Also, some difficulties and apparent sources [Fehlerquellen] are the same in

26

Holtorf 2003: 536.

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both cases. One of the most difficult tasks of archaeology is, as is known, determining the relative age of an artefact, and when it occurred in a particular layer, it is often necessary to decide whether it belonged to this layer or whether it was pushed as a result of later disturbances.”27 Already from this fragment of the text, one can read that Freud was comprehensively and thoroughly interested in archaeology. He perfectly understood the principles of stratigraphy, archaeological dating methods and the very essence of archaeology—dealing with broken, abandoned artefacts. On the other hand, we will treat today the issue of reconstruction of old buildings discovered during excavations with greater distance, which often, after experience with such positions as Knossos or Troy, appear as a quite free indulgence of the researcher's imagination [though Freud, due to archaeological analogies, was aware of the deficiencies of both archaeology and psychoanalysis]. The end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century is a special time in which archaeology, psychoanalysis, medicine and a detective novel were developing in parallel and intensively. In the combination of archaeology and psychoanalysis, you can also see the themes of Romanticism, which redefined interest in antiquity, and used old castles and ruins as a medium of contact with the spiritual side of man. “If I am a poet, the air of Greece has made me one,” wrote Lord Byron. What was true of Byron is equally true of Słowacki, a Polish poet of the Romantic era, who in his poem Agamemnon's Tomb wrote: Let my magically strung lute Resound more gloomily and more darkly, For I have entered Agamemnon's tomb,! And I sit quietly in the underground dome Caked in the blood of the cruel Atreides? My heart is asleep, but still it dreams. How sad I am!28 Słowacki's sadness as a result of contact with the monuments and artefacts of the Greek epoch is, of course, also caused by the memory of his enslaved fatherland, suffering from occupation under three foreign states, whose intention was to turn Poland into an area of ancient, proud, but irretrievably forgotten culture—covering it with a new cultural layer. Thanks to this, as Holtorf writes, in European society shaped something like “archaeologization of life

Ibidem: 535. Translated by Catherine O'Neil, http://www.mpd.ibi.uw.edu.pl/uploads/Kalinowska Slow1.pdf 27 28

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feeling”, and archaeology itself became the leading science of modernity, causing rooting in the mind of the era of characteristic metaphors: “since the nineteenth century […] excavation has served as a dominant metaphor for truth-seeking. The assumptions that truth is found by digging, and that the deeper we go the closer we come to absolute truth, have become part of the intellectual air we breathe.”29 Wait a minute! But digging deeper in order to discover the truth is after all a dead end! The deeper we dig, the less evidence we bring to daylight, and the more assumptions and speculations are made. So where is the place for knowing something here? If an archaeologist is a psychoanalyst who searches through layers of earth that contain the memory of generations in the form of artefacts and other traces, then his role of a psychoanalyst must be fully explained here. Psychoanalysis is not about restoring the consciousness of the unconscious, as Freud vividly described it, but rather on replacing one theory with another. The therapist himself is a specialist who does not pass on some deep, unconscious truth to the patient, but rather, in a very convincing manner, they are given a certain falsehood that allows him to organize a new mental life. Similarly, archaeologists must constantly create some false but credible story about the past around which our collective consciousness will be able to organize itself. Earth does not speak, does not tell us its history, because archaeologists have to tell it. “Artefacts mean nothing. It is only when they are interpreted through practice that they become invested with meanings […] Our knowledge is not grounded upon the material evidence itself, but arises from the interpretive strategies which we are prepared to bring to bear upon that evidence.”30 This approach, of course, excludes the treatment of ruins and artefacts as a medium that transmits the truth about prehistory. So how to treat them? Holtorf sees here a chance for archaeology, which should not limit its wide possibilities of action. At any moment, there are potentially infinite possibilities to recall the past on the basis of its material traces. What is considered a universally binding scientific approach at the moment is a matter of social contract in the archaeological community and will change after some time [chapter III]. The truth of the detective is ethical, not rational; in his search, the detective loses reality, falls into the world of sleep, where it is never completely clear who, what he plays and often “comes out to be a sucker.”31 He makes mistakes because the attempts to understand always generate errors that enrich Holtorf 2003: 536. After Holtorf 2003: 538. 31 Žižek 2003: 100. 29 30

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them and lead to a progressive understanding in the trajectory of the hermeneutic spiral. The theses of Kuhn, Feyerabend and Foucault are also recalled here. For unjustified reasons, therefore, we can recognize tendencies to equate all interpretations of the past, to limit this discourse with the “law of gravity” [Foucault] to the currently prevailing norms, which are ultimately unstable. In archaeology, Holtorf writes, everything should be allowed [Feyerabend]: “Jump! Take the risk! Enjoy the fun!”32 Holtorf's invitation is attractive, but it is easier to say something than to do. Pleasure [enjoying oneself] with the risk of innovative interpretations has its price, because—speaking about psychoanalysis—the pleasure of someone is depriving others of this pleasure [see chapter VI]. As it is easy to guess, the deprived of pleasure will not be positively oriented to such a state of affairs, in which the psychological argument of Kuhn [though literally unspeakable] explaining the paradigm, i.e. the fact that science is based on conservative thought, is based. Simply those who, with their fantasy and innovation, want to enjoy research, are often excluded from it. You have to pay for each pleasure with pain. Nevertheless, we already know that this interpretation is what establishes the sources and allows them to exist. Also, in psychoanalysis, “finds” does not speak for themselves. The patient's past is constructed by the analyst based on him only known facts. Also, in forensics, the judiciary and in general in the broadly understood system of justice, it is not basically a reconstruction of real events, which many people forget. In it, he goes to convince a stateappointed decision-maker [a court or a jury] to a specific version of an event based on a certain pool of assumptions and hypotheses. Even Hercules Poirot or Sherlock Holmes have always to offer a certain “version” of events, which admittedly seems to explain all circumstances sensibly, but ultimately remains unprovable. Each trace can always be interpreted differently. There is nothing more difficult to predict than the past. *** It is the time to look at literature now. One of the most interesting detective novels is The Man Who Was Thursday by Gilbert Chesterton. This small book was published in 1908, exactly at the time when archaeology, psychoanalysis and detective literature were the most successful.

32

Holtorf 2003: 542.

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The plot is seemingly simple. Gabriel Syme is the protagonist, portrayed as a poet “experiencing acute attacks of morbid fear for the fate of humanity”, and a combination of circumstances makes him recruited to Scotland Yard. He is in his element—he will be tracing anarchist organizations, because, as he himself claims, he is “the prosecutor of law and order.”33 When he goes to one of them, he manages to penetrate into its decision-making structures, and then he is elected a member of the Anarchist Council and receives the pseudonym Thursday. The council consists of seven members, of which Sunday is the most important and the most powerful. Camouflaged agent Thursday trying to work out Sunday, and through him the entire anarchist organization, which he swore to fight, survives a series of surprising vicissitudes. The book is full of chases, escapes, duels and twists, which are mandatory elements of a good detective story. Gabriel Syme as Thursday, trying to expose the members of the Council, himself must escape the unmasking and at the same time chase with time, wanting to stop the terrorist attack with all his might. He is also trying to figure out who is it and why they want to throw the mankind in anarchic chaos? His amazement increases when he gradually discovers that the Anarchist Council is not made up of people whom Thursday initially identified as its members. Everyone, with time, reveals to him, just like himself, camouflaged agents of Scotland Yard, including Sunday. Eventually, it turns out that Thursday and the whole Council were looking for themselves! Slavoj Žižek interprets Chesterton's novel as a great illustration of the deep identity of the figure of a good ruler with an anarchist rebel. “The fish spoils from the head”, they say. This is a specific reference to the Hegelian identity of opposites, resulting directly from the laws of dialectics [synthesis not only eliminates, invalidates the thesis and antithesis, but unifies them]. In the Proto-Hegel style, the external threat that the community fights against turns out to be the essence of this community. Understanding this phenomenon is associated with a far more important issue than the very essence of archaeology, because it aims at the problems of the current condition of civilization. The question is: how is it possible to combine liberal democracy with the communist power apparatus? Žižek explains this by mentioning the Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron. It is 2027. Great Britain has become something like a liberal-communist settlement. The human race lost its fertility [does biology rebel against culture?], and the youngest inhabitant of the Earth, born eighteen years ago, has just been killed

33 It is worth mentioning that one of the main protagonists of post-processual archaeology, Ian Hodder, in one of his books, also describes himself as a poet of Neolithic Europe.

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in Buenos Aires. England lives in a constant state of emergency: anti-terrorist units are chasing immigrants [doesn’t something remind us of it?], the authorities control the vegetating in sterile hedonism population. “Hedonistic permissivism and new forms of social apartheid and fear-based control—are not these phenomena typical of societies like ours?” – Žižek asked rhetorically.34 And he quotes the director himself: “The tyranny we deal with today has taken on a new form—in the 21st century, we call it democracy.”35 That is why the rulers in the world of Cuaron are not Orwelian totalitarian bureaucrats in uniforms turning gray, but are enlightened democratic managers who are familiar with high culture and diverse lifestyles. It seems, therefore, that Children of Men are not a film about infertility, and in any case not only [as in the case of archaeological sources—this is a matter of interpretation]. Infertility, as it is in the artistic work, can be of a metaphorical nature. Perhaps this infertility is more about what Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed when he wrote that the Western civilization is moving towards the “last man”, an apathetic creature devoid of any passion and unable to engage [see chapter I]. The last people cannot dream, they are tired of life, they never risk, they only care about comfort and safety. This is, as we know, the central slogan of current policy. “A small dose of poison from time to time, Nietzsche wrote, ensures pleasant dreams. And a great dose to make sure that death is pleasant [...] We have invented happiness, say the last people and blink.”36 Let us summarize. So the spectacle of law, order and pure knowledge is “an obscene carnival”, our justice is a parody of Justice, and our knowledge is a parody of Knowledge.37 In short: anarchy is the core of power, including power that shines with pure knowledge. The conclusions from previous considerations arise on their own. Is it by chance that archaeologists are the ones who cause the greatest confusion in their field of research? Instead of seeking coherence of the discipline, or rather under the guise of seeking a consensus and a common language, they behave like anarchists shouting out to each other, whose only goal is to gain a position of power, or lucrative academic positions, sit in various decision-making bodies, committees assessing the achievements of others, or editorial offices of prestigious magazines etc.? This is also exactly what Footnote tells us, from

34 At the time when I am writing these words, the United Kingdom is organizing a referendum whose essence is the danger of immigrants coming to work and looking for a better life. 35 Žižek 2010: 31. 36 Ibidem: 32. 37 Žižek 2008: 191.

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which we started this chapter. The main theme of the film, which I specifically concealed earlier, concerns a specific mistake, which took place in awarding the Israel Prize to Eliezer Shkolnik. The secretary from the Ministry of Science received a phone number to a professor Shkolnik at the university, where two professors with the same surname work: father and son. It turns out that despite the fact that the old professor Shkolnik, overlooked for 16 years in promotions, had finally received the coveted prize... he does not formally deserve it. The High Commission re-awarded [again] the splendor and honors of his son Uriel Shkolnik. The potential scandal in science, family drama and personal drama define the movie's story from now on. Scientists are trying to fix the case, but can such an error be repaired? The Commission calls the right recipient of the prize for a secret meeting, who does not yet know about the tragic mistake. The meeting is held in a suitable place—in a cramped store room in a library archive, where the participants barely fit in, and entering and leaving the room requires constant standing up, nudging each other and moving the chairs [what a great scene!]. It turns out that most people in the Commission are friends and acquaintances who have known each other for many years, and its chairman is Professor Jehuda Grossman—this is the researcher who thanks to the happy coincidence, once overtook Eliezer Shkolnik with a breakthrough discovery, thanks to which he stood on the podium himself. Since then, Yehuda underestimates Eliezer's work, blocks all his scientific activities, applications for research grants, etc. He values his son Uriel, however, and once again he gave the decision to award him the Israel Prize. Here, in this single scene, the determinants of the substantive production and selection of knowledge at the highest level [see chapter IV] are visualized in front of our eyes. No less important is the fact that archaeologists, constantly tracking the mysteries of the past, which turns out simultaneously, through “scientific criticism”, tracking down and excluding research “deficiencies” of their colleagues, do not see the basic fact that they are on the path that leads to themselves. Many forget about it. Jehuda Grossman forgets that he owes his success to chance, and Uriel Shkolnik forgets that his fuel is social capital and friendship with Grossman [he may have literary talent, but without grants for archival research he could only write fairy tales for children]. However, his assistants know that and they also want to get something for themselves thanks to his success. Moving inevitably to the point we must ask ourselves: Isn’t archaeology about constant attempts at self-creation, which turn out to be quotes from predecessors, and are actually statements about the present and about ourselves? Recall the film by Krzysztof Kieślowski Amateur. It is a story about a man—a mid-level manager—who “discovers” the passion of a filmmaker.

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Coincidence allows him to develop talent, he creates a small cell at work, where he implements documentary films, but over time, this work engages him completely—he forgets about home, family, etc. We have a portrait of a man who sacrifices his life to observe and to record reality from a distance created by a screen frame. At the end of the film, when the wife leaves him for good, the protagonist films her departure and even in this traumatic, private moment he is not fully involved, but continues in his observing position. In the end, he directs the camera lens on himself and begins to talk about himself and about the birth of his daughter—the most personal and emotional experiences in his life. So an amateur who became a professional, only through the use of the distance of the frame can talk about the most personal experience.38 The final scene refers to a different scene in the film, when the hero travels by train and folds his hands into a frame, directing this gesture outside the train—simulates framing [as filmmakers do]. Then on the screen, you can see the moving landscapes, the view from the train window, which brings about the association as if the hero himself took pictures [film] in which he appears. In other words, as Kieślowski suggests, the amateur makes all the time films about himself. Eugene Delacroix wrote: “All topics are good thanks to the artist's values. Oh, hey you, young artist! Looking for a topic? Everything is a topic, the subject is you, it is your impressions, emotions that you feel in the face of nature. Head your eyes deep inside yourself, not around you.”39 Anyway, if archaeology is more art than science, Delacroix is its philosopher and methodologist. Each of us is in a way such an “amateur” who, becoming a distanced professional, at the same time constantly directs the camera on himself. Doesn’t archaeology discover the subject of its research all over again precisely because the central meaning is precisely the interpretation? After all, it is nothing more than the accumulation of comments and opinions regarding the greater or lesser extent of the past, spoken under the guise of, as it turns out, unquestioned belief in proper conduct, whether in terms of methodology or ethics. The search for what is seemingly given to us in the form of artefacts of the past turns out to be a search for ourselves, a fixed point of support in the ever-changing present.40 On the path of such a provocation, one can go a step further and ask: is there anything like archaeology? As we remember, both Hempel and Collingwood, heirs of two opposing intellectual trends, showed a strong tendency to

Žižek 2011: 86. Bourdieu 2007: 455. 40 Holtorf 2003: 540. 38 39

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mutual recognition of their own disciplines as equal methods of researching reality. Both claimed that it was a matter of the methodology and the way of asking proper questions. In this way, they referred to the master of philosophy, Immanuel Kant, who claimed that our cognition is a derivative of the categories we set up. What are these categories? Let us assume that sciences are types of cognitive categories. We can imagine a set of all sciences as a fishing net. Individual eyes mean sciences, thanks to which we can learn something and understand. Fish are caught in the net, and the catch depends on their type and size [categories accused of reality]. There are no universal categories, that is, those that would actually catch all that is to be caught. There is a special mesh in the net, such as sociology, psychology, history, geology, biology, etc. The special mesh catches specific fish: sociological, historical or psychological fish. The question is: where is the place of archaeology in this net? Or let us put this question differently: are there strictly archaeological fish? Such fish do not exist, because in fact, all fish caught in this network are historical, even those that are mathematical [see chapter VI]. And because there are no strictly archaeological fish, there is also no archaeological mesh in the net. In this perspective, we have two solutions as to where the place of archaeology is: it either occupies a place “between” the meshes of individual sciences, or is the entire net in which the fish are caught, which is suggested by, for example, the concept of Archaeology as a Human Science of Complementary Discourse by John Bintliff.41 Another question arises, will it be more science or more human? Both the former and the latter solution do not seem convincing enough. Indeed, an archaeologist is someone who lent himself some research tools for other sciences, took a shovel from a construction worker and pretends to do something seriously. A master of self-creation and a poser, an extremely inauthentic figure [chapter VII], especially in the case when he treats his pretence too seriously [he falls out like a clerk from the Ministry of Silly Walks]. What remains for an archaeologist in such a situation is only intuition that is not related to any procedure or category. Intuition is not something bad because, as we remember from chapter III, both Gödel, Tarski and Cantor suggested that to understand a system of meanings one should refer to another system, and finally, in order to understand certain truths [e.g. mathematics], one should refer to intuition. The archaeologist is left only with intuition, because there is even not, as the net metaphor shows, the base to which they can refer, because the net is either empty or full of fish that do not belong to him, but to other specialized researchers. In the face of 41

Bintliff 1993: 99.

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current arguments, is it not better to assume that an archaeologist is really a detective who conducts investigations outside of any method or as part of the methods of all sciences available to them? In this way, however, they do not examine any specific slice of reality. They examine everything and at the same time nothing. Thus, the archaeologists, first of all, investigate themselves, and the method that this study most closely illustrates is the hermeneutic method, which we already know a lot about. They lead an internal dialogue that allows them to “discover” and reflect the existential range and depth of archaeology. And this is a paradoxical activity: embedded in facts, testimonies and material evidence carried out as part of rational science and objective judgment, which in the end turns out to be fantasy, fortunetelling, chasing after the wind, one of many possibilities, speculation, the archaeologists themselves are lost wanderers looking for themselves. It is all the more so if they do not remember it. *** Gordon Childe became a professor of archaeology at the University of Edinburgh at the age of 35. He was then the only lecturer of this discipline in Scotland, where most of the archaeologists practiced it in the hobby-amateur style. The beginnings were difficult, and Childe was not welcome. It was argued that he was not a specialist in the prehistory of Scotland. This is an argument of the provincial hue, resulting from a misunderstanding of the very essence of archaeology. Childe was a man of the world, he traveled extensively, and in his second book The Dawn of European Civilization, he pointed out that European cultures did not exist in isolation; they were part of a larger Culture that extended across the continent. So Childe was not really a specialist in Scottish cultures because he was already a specialist in prehistory as a whole, which differed him from his jealous rivals. Nevertheless, even if some of these recognized archaeologists did not like him especially, he won over others. He became friends, among others with the grandson of Charles Darwin and became the godfather of his son, and most of the students liked the new lecturer. In any case, no one could ignore his previous achievements. The Edinburgh period is also the beginning of interesting changes in the character of Childe. In an exclusive store on Jermyn Street, he then ordered a black hat with a wide brim in black fedora style and wore it everywhere. When it was chilly or wet, which in Edinburgh often happens, he would put on a black Macintosh coat, while in the summer he wore shorts and heavy walking boots. In short, he acquired the eccentric qualities. But is Gordon Childe an example of a detective? Well, at first glance, very few would confirm it. Maybe he was slightly eccentric [in some pictures he

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is holding a teddy bear in his hand], but he does not automatically make it the figure mentioned in this chapter. Let us, however, bear a little fantasy and pay attention first to the most popular archaeologist detective of our time—Indiana Jones. In the first place, Jones is a fictional compilation of many characters. His tendencies to adventures may indicate Sir Arthur Evans, who took an active part in the formation of Yugoslavia, traveled in the Balkans, where he often had problems with authorities, and for his merits, he was knighted. Part of the adventures of Indiana points to the inspiration of Otto Rahn, a German medievalist looking for the Holy Grail, a later SS officer who during his studies became interested in the history of Cathars. According to him, they were not only Gral's guardians but also heirs to the Celtic druidic traditions. I should also mention Mitchell Hedges—an English adventurer, writer, and perhaps a spy who made several expeditions to Central America, where, he assured, he found a crystal skull in a forgotten Mayan temple [though he probably bought it at an auction in London]. There are also several other characters that could have inspired the authors of the Indiana Jones adventures. What's more, they all wore fedora hats, because it was a popular covering of the male head in those days.42 It is characteristic, however, that Gordon Childe is the only archaeologist who is referred to by Indiana Jones himself. In the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull, he gives a lecture on the site Skara Brae— Neolithic settlement in the Orkney Islands, where Gordon Childe was the first to conduct professional excavation research, making many great discoveries. When one student asks a question about a somewhat theoretical concept, Indiana instructs him to forget about it and read Childe's book. Before leaving the lecture hall in his characteristic adventurous style [on a motorcycle], Indiana will manage to advise the student to take an example from Gordon, who spent most of his life digging—and leave the library at all, because only then will he become a good archaeologist! What Indiana says is obviously not true. Gordon Childe did not really like the excavation [he said he was not good at it], let alone spend most of his professional life on them. He attached great importance to the archaeological theory, using its entire spectrum, which was available in his time, meaning he spent a lot of time in the library. That's why we mentioned Childe in the opening chapters of this book! Why, however, stir Indiana in all this?

42

Mason 2013: 121.

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The lecture hall scenes are very rare in the whole saga about the adventures of Indiana Jones, but it usually starts with each episode and it is them that allow you to get the full characteristics of this character. In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, our protagonist conducts classes on how dragonfly: “The Nature of Archaeology”, during which without a shame he says that 95% of the discipline consists of working in a library! This statement, how contradictory to what he said before, as usual is not confirmed in the film, except perhaps for the scene in which Indiana together with his new attractive assistant [she turns out to be a Nazi spy later] seriously damage a historic library in Venice. At the end of the class, Professor Jones speaks out his brilliant sentence: “Archaeology is about Facts; if you want the Truth, go nextdoor to the Philosophy Department!” This is all about Indiana! It is an archaeologist who speaks one and does the other. Generally, Indiana only says what is on his hand at a given moment and this is his main characteristic. He talks about facts and he goes after the legends he thinks are real. He talks about books, and he can only make the barricade of them. He talks about procedures and he does not follow them himself. In short, Indiana Jones is an archaeologist who destroys archaeological sites, uses monuments for political and particular purposes, eliminates rivals by means of gangster methods, and his only methodology is to search for the Truth, which in the end turns out to be his private truth. In other words, taking into account modern standards, he is the maximum hypocrite or... it shows what the discipline called archaeology really is. These are issues that we discussed in previous chapters. In addition, Childe and Jones have something else in common. One existed in reality, the other was just a fantasy, one was an archaeologist, the other was also a detective, one was a theoretician, the other a practitioner, one seriously lecturing archaeology, the other just pretended. So together they form a unity, aren’t they? Gordon Childe was alive, Indiana Jones is a fiction, but we need both for a better understanding of the discipline that we call archaeology. A criminal summary In 1966, a young student Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered after leaving the library in Riverside, San Francisco. A month later, a letter entitled The Confession was sent to the local police station and the Riverside Enterprise newspaper. The letter included phrases such as “she had to die”, “she was not the first and it will not be the last one”, “this is a warning” and an exact description of the last moments of Cheri Jo. Another letter came six months later. This time it was handwritten with a pencil and addressed to the police station, the editorial office and the victim's father. He proclaimed: “Bates had to die, there will be next.” In fact, there was a series of strange murders, ac-

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companied by sending letters coming apparently from some madman. At one point, an anonymous informer called the police station in Vallejo. In a calm and controlled voice, he said, “I want to report a double murder [...] I also killed these kids last year. Goodbye”. Probably the murderer himself called the police, and a few weeks later, The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and Vallejo Times-Herald received one part of the encrypted message. The author demanded the publication of his cryptogram on the first page. In the letter, he described the murders and suggested that the resolution of the cryptogram would reveal his identity. The assassin described how his victims would become slaves in the future, who would serve him in heaven; he also mentioned the pleasure of “hunting for a man.” However, breaking the code, which took place quite quickly, thanks to the retired teacher and his wife, did not contain any significant content. That is how one of the many unresolved criminal cases in US history began. In 2007, American director David Fincher took up the topic in Zodiac movie. It is a story based on facts. The film actually tells the story of two detectives. Toschi is a formal and official detective, he investigates under the criminal police department in San Francisco, he acts according to the procedures and instructions of his superiors, he is not heroic. Robert Graysmith is an amateur detective, he works as an illustrator in The San Francisco Chronicle. He is initially shy and avoids contacts with people; he likes to solve puzzles. The search for the Zodiac will become a mystery of life for him, a real obsession with which he will become a seeker of the truth about himself. Fincher's film focuses on the process of solving the criminal puzzle— attempts to identify the identity of the murderer from two different starting positions. On the one hand, there is an official investigation, which is fed with new facts and testimonies. When the detectives are almost sure of the killer's capture, new facts arise that direct the case to quite different tracks. At the same time, Robert Graysmith's private investigation is underway. He will write a book about it and it will become a bestseller. Fincher uses this thread to illustrate how the obsessive desire to know how the truth works. At one point, tired and overwhelmed by the growing contradiction of the testimonies, Graysmith impulsively bets on the choice of those that confirm the theory he has recently developed. In an eloquent scene at the end of the movie, Graysmith visits a friend of one of the Zodiac victims, who claims that she met a murderer years ago. She tells Graysmith the story of a terrifying individual who once appeared on the “painting party” organized by the victim. She can not remember his name, except that it was monosyllabic. Graysmith immediately gives her the name “Rick”, but she rejects it. Graysmith is pressing harder and harder: “It was Rick, admit it finally!” He insists. She, however, stubbornly denies until she finally replies: “Leigh!”

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Arthur Leigh Allen was previously questioned as one of the main suspects. Someone testified that a certain Leigh Allen confided in his murders. The detectives are following the trail and interrogating Arthur Leigh Allen at his workplace. He denies, however, that he has had a similar conversation with the witness, although he confirms a number of other events, e.g. he admits that he read The Most Dangerous Game—the book to which the Zodiac referred in his letters when he wrote that “hunting for people” gives him pleasure, and that the book made an impression on him. As if casually, he mentions the presence of a bloody knife in his car explaining that the blood belonged to the chicken! Leigh Allen, however, has an alibi for one of the murders. The detectives paid attention to his watch: the Sea Wolf model produced by the Swiss brand Zodiac, whose logo is a cross in a circle—the same as used by Zodiac in its encrypted newspaper lists. Leigh Allen claims he got the watch as a gift from his mother in 1969. And actually, only this watch remained the only clearest trace in the whole matter. Everything that Allen said about the murders was available in the press and he could find it out without being the perpetrator. Searching his caravan brought nothing, although there were weapons and many other strange things found in it. The analysis of the letter did not show compliance. Fingerprints also did not match. Allen also successfully passed the lie detector test, but this investigation path eventually proved futile. For some time... It is not easy to find a concept for a movie about a serial killer who has never been caught, in the case of which there are more ambiguities and presumptions than certainties, although the facts are aplenty. Zodiac is a movie full of information: dates, crimes, locations, suspects, testimonies, sensible applications and red herrings, groundbreaking discoveries and failures. The film shows both absurdly complicated procedures and deals with the trail of private— personality type obsessively digested by the desire to solve the puzzle, fighting the procedures. It is also a film about obsession, about desire, as if Lacan said. And here is the Lacanian hook: this desire will never be fully satisfied. As I will try to show below, Zodiac is a film showing the essence of archaeology in many theoretical approaches, which were mentioned in this book. The archaeologist seeks the truth based on facts, testimonies, obsessively deals with solving the puzzle throughout their life. For one, it is the beginning of the Neolithic, for another the mystery of megaliths, the search for sources of certain cultural phenomena or the essence of some archaeological culture. In each of these cases, we would like to hit the nail on the head, make a breakthrough discovery. The point is the testimonies deceive us, we can interpret them in many ways. No judgement in Zodiac is categorical, none is final. And so it is in archaeology. Every archaeologist wants to solve the problem, get the final result on which to base their splendor and respect, and instead they are

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constantly chasing the bunny. And finally, it turns out that some outsider has found, by chance and effortlessly what we have been chasing for years! Some people ruin their life, others reach for alcohol, but there are also those who take distance, focus on the procedure and do their job like Detective Toschi. Children grow up, partners change their professional profile [they prefer to take care of something that brings income], our search loses momentum, and others pass us by, occupied with their own affairs. Over the years and over the quest for discovery of an archaeologist, the search for a perfect concept initially so full of passion and vigor, becomes immersed in individual and social life. Let us summarize the most important points here. 1.

43

Processualism versus post-processualism. Zodiac presents cooperation [in this case, successful] between the investigation based on an “objective” procedure [Toschi and the entire police] and an individual view [Graysmith]. Officer Toschi, though, believes Greysmith at the end, still admits that he would not be able to arrest Leigh Allen on the basis of his collection of testimonies. The scientific, procedural and virtual way of the investigation gives a negative result. Only Graysmith's private, long-term investigation brings results. He juxtaposes testimonies in a way that no one has dared and discovers structures that no one has ever seen before. He does the work that is discovery. It is even more outrageous for the viewer that this is not the case, because on this basis, you cannot arrest the murderer. At the end Graysmith visits the store where Leigh Allen works and looks him in the eye—they both know! But what do they know? On the face of it, they can know something about themselves, something that is their private truth. Going deeper, however, you can refer to the first philosopher of this book—Hegel—who wrote about the “night of the world”: “The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him—or which are not present […]. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye— into a night that becomes awful.”43 The night of the world is something beyond any symbolism, a terrifying source at the dawn of time, a time of absolute madness, where pure vio-

Sinnerbrink 2008: 1-21.

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lence ruled, a radical negativity of arbitrary freedom, pure power of destruction-means the moment when man = animal. But this is still the space in which our civilization develops. In other words, Greysmith, looking into the eyes of Leigh Allen, learned the truth not only about the individual case of crime but about the man in general. 2.

The role of discourse. Toschi and Greysmith talk repeatedly about the case. These are the discussions that do not lead to the final solution for most of the movie. Toschi helps Graysmith give him information covered by the secret investigation, because he feels that he can help the investigation by transgressing the rules and procedures, which he cannot do as a public official. However, the final scenes are particularly telling, when Graysmith, initially a layman, passionate in solving puzzles, having problems with starting discussions with others [others usually have greater powers by appointment [superiors and police], convinces the policeman. It evolves so much that at the end of the film, he talks to the policeman as equal and gets him round to his version by presenting an argument consisting in the lack of evidence. It chronologizes the events in Leigh Allen's life, correlates the dates from which, for example, he did not write letters to newspapers when he was in custody. This is called negative evidence, which strengthens the version about Leigh Allen as the perpetrator. The most important thing is that although both “detectives” [Toschi is not a full detective in the role of a functionally limited official, and Graysmith is not a full detective, because he is a hobbyist] arguing mercilessly, then finally they can communicate. Together, they “solve” the puzzle. We are dealing here with the postulate of including others to the discourse that came out from Feyerabend [chapter III], and its rationalist version was presented in chapter VI.

3.

Problems of scientific facts. The role of graphologists is especially important. They still hesitate and cannot give a clear answer—they are an expert who, despite the fact that he works on the basis of facts, apparently can not solve the simplest problems [some elements fit the perpetrator, others do not]. After providing a larger sample of the magazine, the investigation takes the form of irony—they fit those elements that did not fit previously, and do not fit those that previously fit. Ultimately,

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the expert can only talk about facts [Wittgenstein], not being at all helpful in the investigation. The fingerprints found at the crime scene were not Leigh Allen's. DNA analysis also did not indicate the perpetrator, although the samples might have been contaminated. Eventually, the arrest warrant for Leigh Allen was issued on the basis of clues, but on the way to the interrogation, he died of a heart attack—the final proof in the case “wiped” himself from the procedure of reaching the truth! In conclusion, we are dealing with the problem of facts that do not say anything. Simply, to “discover” something you need time, interpretation and imagination [this is what Graysmith does in a private investigation] and not samples; the samples themselves [facts] only say they are samples. 4.

The role of fantasy and ideology. In a certain scene, everyone is going to the cinema for Dirty Harry, where the brute detective [Clint Eastwood] deals with the Zodiac in a characteristic way. First of all, the desire of the main characters about justice and their fantasy is manifested in this way. But it can also be interpreted in such a way that Dirty Harry solves the puzzle in the mass consciousness of San Francisco. Forgetting about the investigation, which after many years has been put in place, people can imagine that justice has been done, because “Dirty Harry got this bastard in the end”. When leaving the cinema, Greysmith tries to comfort Toschi by telling him that he will catch Zodiac, he ironically remarks: “Come on, it's already a movie story!” Toschi suggests in this way that the introduction of the movie about Dirty Harry ends somewhat the investigation, because in the mass consciousness [in mass fantasy] it was solved by a film character. Our fantasies allow us to imagine the world as being fundamentally good and just, where rationality leads to the discovery of truth, while in fact, it fails. In addition, Zodiac shows that solving criminal cases is not a “pure” investigation into the truth, but is embedded in the internal conditions of the investigation [the court does not issue, for example, a search permit if certain, sometimes quite absurd, conditions are not met; ex aequo in research proceedings] can be done, while others do not last, but last but not least is the role of the superior].

5.

The hermeneutic spiral. Robert Greysmith as a self-madedetective devoted many years of his life to the Zodiac case. In

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the film, he follows the method of the hermeneutic circle: initially he starts modestly from solving the banal ciphers that Zodiac sends [the ciphers turn out to be a patchwork of textbook examples that can be found in any public library]. With time, he gets involved in the investigation more and more and when the police give up, he, in a private investigation, discovers further levels of clues and testimonies [including negative ones] that allow him to build a holistic image of the murderer. He suspects Leigh Allen first and visits a man named Rick, who is supposed to provide him with evidence in this case [allegedly stores Leigh Allen's films on which his crimes are recorded]. Talking to him, however, he is convinced that he is the Zodiac. Devastated by this fact, he goes to a woman who knew the first victim of Zodiac and tries to force her to confirm the new thesis saying the name “Rick”. However, she insists on Leigh. Graysmith bounces off the barrier and [again] begins to circle around Leigh Allen. In the end, he concludes that Leigh Allen is Zodiac and is going to look him in the eye—the detective and the perpetrator are “melting the horizons”! From the perspective of the viewer, however, both the meeting with Rick and Leigh Allen is equally electrifying. For Graysmith, Zodiak is Leigh Allen, but the film also suggests [and this is the director's brilliant move] that it is his private knowledge. Rick might as well be the Zodiac. The deceptive game in which Graysmith entangled reduces the threat to his subjectivity [at some point he even loses his family, like an amateur filmmaker in Kieślowski's film, loses his friends, stays alone]; the truth he is seeking has an ethical dimension for him. 6.

Textualism of archaeological evidence. Detective Toschi turns to Greysmith in the final scene: “Go write your book Dirty Harry!” [He refers to the previously mentioned scene in the cinema, when both watch fictional Harry efficiently eliminating the murderer]. You can therefore assume that Greysmith as the detective in the main movie also has to write a text about how the killer is identified, i.e. another version about Dirty Harry. But in fact it is a reminiscence, because he [Greysmith] has already done it—this is the version we're looking at under the title of Zodiac, in which Greysmith is another [intellectual] version of Dirty Harry. In this way, we deal with the classic formula of the text in the text, where everything gives the impression of pure fiction, and though facts

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are everywhere, the feeling of communing with textual variation, interweaving texts, or speaking indirectly about facts overwhelms. What is true and what is fantasy? What's more, the film art in this case was much more, because the image in a noticeable way presents its separateness from the original text of Greysmith. Is Zodiac not even there? This is suggested by two scenes: when Greysmith, at the beginning of his investigation, visits a colleague from the editorial office [Robert Downing Jr.], he says that ten times more people die in San Francisco than Zodiac managed to kill for many years. In another scene, detective Toschi tells Greysmith that since the Zodiac’s time, 200 new killers appeared in San Francisco, which also have to be caught somehow. In this context, the Zodiac case itself is blurred, disappearing in time and space, and catching a murderer becomes so insignificant from the point of view of society that it is automatically reduced to the private work of an average citizen who can write some text about it to believe that justice has been done to it [if he cannot write, he can go to the cinema to watch Dirty Harry]. It is similar to the situation of a student of archaeology who discovers a passion for, say, some aspects of Neolithic culture that have not been studied yet. He juxtaposes testimonies in a way that no one has ever dared before and “discovers” structures that no one has ever seen before. He begins to learn, devote himself, wants to know more and more, gaining more and more knowledge, and finally, he becomes a specialist in this field, but the basic question is: what for?

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Afterword The main character in Ghost Writer in Roman Polański's film is the writer [Evan McGregor], who accepts the commission to complete the autobiography of the Prime Minister of Great Britain [Pierce Brosnan]. Autobiography was not completed, because its first author wrote the whole text, but before he could finally finalize it, he [in obscure circumstances] fell over the side of the ferry and drowned. The bad luck of one is a gift of fate for another. The new ghostwriter gets round to work in a professional way, and thus, as it is easily guessed, gets involved in a whole range of problems that make the plot interesting. I will not summarize it here. Besides, more than one reader saw this movie in the cinema. I will just say that, as the film's action densifies, we learn about the mysterious connections of the head of the British government with the CIA, then he is shot and our main character gets into a brief affair with PM’s wife—in short, he gets into quite a mess, although he ultimately manages to finish the autobiography. While working on the text, he discovers strange testimonies that do not correspond to his client's biography, he follows them and at the end of the film discovers a key that allows him to read the Truth contained in the original manuscript that he had in his face all the time! Combining the testimonies, the happy author and successful detective leave the scene of the crime. Squeezing under his arm this Manuscript of Truth the writer goes to the street, where [in vague circumstances] he dies under the wheels of a speeding car. The Truth breaks into thousands of pieces...

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Index

2001: A Space Odyssey, xiii, xiv, 17, 68, 235, 236

Blade Runner, xiii, 68, 69 Blow-Up, xiv, 196, 201 Blue Velvet, xiv, 222 Boas, Franz, 24 Bourdieu, Pierre, xiii, 96, 100, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 157, 164, 181, 247, 248, 268, 284, 289 Bronocice, 145 Bronze Age, 27, 57, 62, 79, 201, 284

A

C

1 12 Angry Men, xiv, 184, 186, 211

2

A Few Good Men, xiv, 188 Adorno, Theodore, 188, 189, 240, 287 Alexandria, Heron of, 40, 41 Alien Resurrection, xiv Allen, Woody, xiii, 84, 104, 221, 222, 274, 285 Altman, Robert, xiv, 170 Amateur, xiv, 267 Ampère, Andre-Marie, 47, 50 Antonioni, Michelangelo, xiv, 196, 202 archaeological facts, 79 Aristotle, 40, 41, 98, 106 Artefacts, 9, 24, 164, 263 artificial intelligence, xiii, 18, 45, 65, 67, 68, 69

B Babbage, Charles, 48 Babylonians, 198, 204 Bertolucci, Bernardo, xiv Big Brother, 141 Binford, Lewis, 23, 24, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 61, 81, 102, 247, 252, 283

calculating machine, 45, 109 Cantor, Georg, 82, 83, 269 Carnap, Rudolf, 83, 84, 222, 223, 290 Carpenter, John, xiii, 133 Castorp, Hans, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 40, 192 categorical imperative, 187 Cayatte, André, xiv, 185, 186 Cedar, Joseph, xiv Chaplin, Charlie, xii chess, 179, 180, 196 Chesterton, Gilbert K., xiv, 108, 264, 265 Childe, Vere Gordon, 26, 27, 28, 57, 58, 102, 118, 119, 270, 271, 272, 289 Children of Men, xiv, 265 Chinese room, xiii, 64, 65, 67 Christie, Agatha, xiv, 169, 256, 284 City Lights, xii, 135 Clarke, David, 49, 50, 103, 110 Collingwood, Robin, 21, 23, 27, 28, 162, 163, 248, 249, 250, 268, 284 colonization of the lifeworld, 200

294

Index

communication, xiv, 14, 16, 74, 116, 127, 132, 164, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 206, 208, 212, 252, 255 communicative rationality, 181, 182 computer HAL, 17, 18, 68, 69 contemplation, 235, 237, 243 criminologist, 258 Cuarón, Alfonso, xiv Culture-historical archaeology, 22, 23, 35 cybernetics, 47, 48, 50

D dactyloscopy, 260 Darabont, Frank, xiv Darwin, Charles, 37, 59, 270, 284 Derrida, Jaques, xiv, 146, 151, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 176, 284, 287, 292 Descartes, René, xiii, 43, 44, 46, 52, 136, 223, 240 dialectical, 10, 18, 20, 121, 164, 167, 249 dialectics, 24, 119 Dialektik der Aufklärung, 188 Dick, Philip K., xiii, 68, 88, 89, 90, 148, 149, 151, 284, 287 différance, 166, 176 Diffusionism, 23 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 68 drinking together, 93, 209 Duchamp, Marcel, xiv, 171, 172, 174, 175, 179, 180, 181, 193, 196, 205, 284

E Eco, Umberto, xiv, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 252, 285 End of History, 29, 30, 112, 117, 158, 285 Eneolithic, 92, 116, 145, 202 episteme, 135 evidences, 231, 257 Ex Machina, xiii, 69 exchange, 49, 79, 94, 112, 114, 115, 126, 152, 181, 201, 233, 238, 289 Existentialism, 176, 220, 239

F Ferdydurke, 213, 286 fetishism of commodities, 113, 114, 115, 116, 130 Feyerabend, Paul, xiii, 86, 96, 103, 104, 105, 153, 209, 218, 264, 276, 285, 287 Fincher, David, xiv, 273 Finnegans Wake, xiv, 252 Fleck, Ludwik, xiii, 98, 99, 100, 218 Footnote, xiv, 245, 246, 266 forensic, 259 Foucault, Michel, xiii, xiv, 100, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 154, 165, 182, 189, 192, 264, 283, 285 Frankenstein, xiv, 189, 190, 191 Frankfurter, Harry, 1 Freud, Sigmund, 14, 195, 261, 262, 263 Fukuyama, Francis, 29, 30, 191, 285

295

Index

G Gadamer, Hans-Georg, x, xi, xiv, 7, 157, 158, 160, 195, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 285 Garland, Alex, xiii, 69 Gekko, Gordon, 8 Gödel, Kurt, xiii, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 171, 180, 269, 284, 288 Gombrowicz, Witold, xiv, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222, 253, 286, 289 graves, 55, 56, 77, 89, 124, 141, 198, 201, 204, 226, 232, 257

Hilbert, David, 83, 106, 107 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, 7, 11, 38, 39, 44, 45, 46, 52, 291 Hodder, Ian, 102, 124, 125, 135, 162, 163, 164, 198, 209, 235, 241, 247, 249, 250, 251, 252, 265, 286, 287 Hoffman, Jerzy, xiii Hölderlin, Frederic, 6 Holtorf, Cornelius, 89, 90, 105, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 268, 283, 285, 287 Homo academicus, 128 Horkheimer, Max, 188, 189, 194, 287

H Habermas, Jürgen, xiv, 18, 157, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 211, 286, 287 habitus, 125, 126, 127, 128 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, xiii, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 69, 71, 76, 87, 109, 111, 112, 113, 117, 119, 120, 121, 126, 134, 157, 158, 159, 162, 164, 168, 189, 192, 195, 225, 236, 237, 244, 248, 251, 254, 265, 275, 283, 284, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292 Heidegger, Martin, xiv, 5, 20, 30, 31, 89, 206, 213, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 243, 255, 286, 289, 290, 291 Hempel, Carl, 52, 161, 223, 248, 249, 268 hermeneutic spiral, 249, 252, 253, 264

I ideal speech situation, 183 ideology, xiii, 92, 105, 117, 132, 133, 134, 135, 141, 148, 161, 162, 277 Indiana Jones, xiv, 271, 272, 283, 289 Irrational Man, 84, 246

J Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, xiv Joyce, James, xiv, 156, 252 justice, 187 Justice est faite, xiv, 185, 187

K Kafka, Franz, xiv, 106, 155, 156 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 14, 187, 189, 192, 195, 269, 284, 289 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, xiv, 267, 268, 278, 292 Kojève, Alexandre, xiii, 4, 5, 8, 10, 17, 30, 31, 32, 33, 287

296

Index

Kossinna, Gustaf, 25, 26, 27 Kubler, George, 63, 64 Kubrick, Stanley, xiii, 3, 17, 18, 68, 235 Kuhn, Thomas, xiii, 76, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 135, 136, 137, 209, 218, 247, 264, 288

L Lacan, Jacques, 31, 129, 167, 195, 274, 292 Lakoff, George, 203, 205, 211, 288 Lang, Fritz, xiii, 48, 68 language, 7, 20, 25, 27, 32, 36, 45, 58, 65, 72, 73, 74, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 102, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 128, 131, 136, 143, 144, 147, 148, 154, 157, 167, 171, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 187, 195, 197, 199, 200, 202, 209, 210, 211, 222, 223, 225, 229, 241, 242, 247, 250, 252, 253, 254, 266 language game, 87, 89, 91, 102, 120, 148, 202, 211, 250 Latour, Bruno, 100, 238, 239, 288 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, xiii, 7, 45, 46, 47, 86, 106, 288 Lem, Stanisław, 66, 82, 87, 109, 160, 288 Leroi-Gourhan, André, 123, 124, 165, 166, 288 Leviathan, 11, 38, 44, 291 Levi-Strauss, Claude, xiii, 122, 223 Lilla, Mark, 33, 224, 288 linguification of sacrum, 192, 193, 201, 205 Lisberger, Steven, xiv List der Vernunft, 13 Lost Highway, xiv, 173

Lubbock, John, 37, 38, 39, 288 Lucretius, 22, 36 Lumet, Sidney, xiv, 184, 186 Lyell, Charles, 37, 59 Lynch, David, xiv, 173, 174, 222, 292

M Machines, 42, 283, 284 Machulski, Juliusz, xiii, 90 macrolithic tools, 93, 201, 204, 205, 233 Magritte, Rene, 143, 144, 145, 180 Malinowski, Bronisław, 114, 201 Mamzer, Henryk, 22, 24, 26, 28, 77, 78, 96, 169, 208, 209, 249, 251, 289 Mann, Thomas, xiii, 15, 16, 17, 19, 153, 156, 288, 289 Marx, Charles, xiii, 7, 15, 26, 31, 100, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 126, 130, 190, 192, 195, 289 Master and Slave relation, 9 mathematical thinking, 203 mathematics, 1, 44, 45, 74, 82, 83, 89, 94, 101, 107, 108, 110, 117, 136, 179, 181, 188, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204, 205, 269 Matrix, xiv, 175, 176, 234, 235, 240 Mauss, Marcel, 114, 126, 201, 289 McKay, Adam, xiii Mead, Herbert George, 63, 289 medicine, 138, 140 Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, 242 megaliths, 46, 51, 52, 53, 118, 161, 241, 274 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 31, 206, 289 Mesolithic, 51, 79, 202, 242

297

Index

Metropolis, xiii, 48, 68 Middle Ages, 35, 41, 42, 63, 245, 285 modern savages, 37 money, xii, 5, 13, 72, 104, 112, 115, 116, 128, 133, 135, 140, 160, 174, 199, 200, 201, 203, 206 morality, 17, 18, 20, 26, 31, 37, 39, 187, 191, 192, 194 Morgan, Lewis H., 117 Murder in Mesopotamia, xiv, 256, 284

N Neolithic, 23, 25, 27, 51, 58, 62, 79, 118, 124, 125, 198, 202, 204, 209, 232, 234, 258, 265, 271, 274, 279, 284, 288, 292 New Archaeology, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 60, 103, 246 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 32, 133, 266 noble savage, 38 Núñez, Robert, 203, 205, 288

P Paleolithic, 36, 67, 123, 124, 155, 197, 198, 202, 232, 289 paradigm, 22, 28, 43, 47, 58, 92, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 135, 136, 194, 256, 264 pastness, 89, 90 Perthes, Boucher de, 36, 37, 283 perversion, x, xi Phenomenology, 241, 242 Phenomenology of perception, 206 Philosophical Investigations, 82, 85, 86, 180, 202, 292 Planck, Max, 100 Plato, 100, 167, 170, 224 Polański, Roman, 281

post-processual archaeology, xiv, 160, 239, 240, 246, 250, 251, 252, 255, 265 processual archaeology, xiv, 50, 56, 60, 161, 164, 246, 252, 265 proto-idea, 99 psychoanalyst as archaeologist, 261, 263

Q Quine, Willard V.O., xiii, 93, 94, 95, 171, 290

R radiocarbon clock, 51, 61, 62, 63, 64, 102 rational communication, 18, 182, 190, 195, 198, 201, 207 rationality, 12, 14, 101, 132, 135, 157, 181, 182, 184, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 206, 277 Ratzel, Friedrich, 24 reality as a text, 158 recording systems, 200, 204 Reiner, Rob, xiv Renaissance, 35, 42, 58, 136, 290 Renfrew, Colin, 51, 52, 53, 57, 62, 161, 290 Reymont, Władysław, 42 Rorty, Richard, xiv, 131, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 290 Rosetta, Stone, 54 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 7, 38, 39, 44, 190 Russell, Bertrand, 71, 72, 73, 76, 106, 107

S Sahlins, Marshall, 126

298

Index

Sartre, Jean Paul, 217, 219, 225 Saussure, Ferdinand de, xiii, 119, 120, 122, 179, 290 Scott, Ridley, xiii, 68, 163, 286 Searle, John, 65, 66 Sedláček, Tomáš, 117, 291 Settembrini, 15, 16, 18, 37, 40, 192 settlements, 56, 58, 81, 204, 231, 258 Sexmission, xiii, 90, 96 Shelley, Mary, xiv, 189, 190, 191 Sherratt, Andrew, 92, 93, 209, 291 Simmel, Georg, 133, 140 Sloterdijk, Peter, 48, 291 Słowacki, Juliusz, 262 Small Time Crooks, xiii, 104 solidarity, 207, 212 Somoza, José Carlos, xiv, 169 Sorrentino, Paolo, xiii, 130 Spielberg, Steven, xiv spirit, 14 steering media, 199, 200, 203 Stone, Oliver, 8, 252, 287, 288 Structuralism, 119, 122, 289, 292

T Tarski, Alfred, 110, 269 texts-contexts, 163 The Athenian Murders, xiv, 169 The Big Short, xiii, 100, 101, 102 The Canterbury Tales, 42 The Conquest of Granada, 38 The Dawn of Europaean Civilization, 26 The Great Beauty, xiii, 130 The Green Mile, xiv, 194 The Magic Mountain, xiii, 15, 289 The Man in the High Castle, xiii, xiv, 88, 90, 148, 149, 150, 151, 161, 165, 169, 172, 284

The Man Who Was Thursday, xiv, 264 The Möbius strip, 173 The Peasants, 42 The Phenomenology of Spirit, 12 The picture theory of meaning, 74 The Player, xiv, 170 The Process, xiv The Quack, xiii, 138, 139 The Sheltering Sky, xiv, 221 The Verdict, xiv They Live, xiii, 133, 134, 219 Tilley, Christopher, 118, 147, 154, 241, 242, 289, 291, 292 tools, 9, 18, 22, 27, 36, 37, 40, 52, 54, 55, 66, 72, 77, 86, 89, 93, 95, 97, 105, 111, 113, 126, 132, 144, 149, 153, 159, 166, 174, 198, 201, 205, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 244, 269 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 106, 292 Tron, xiv, 235 Turing, Allan, xiii, 48, 49, 52, 53, 65, 67, 68, 69, 108, 109, 252, 285

U universalism, 122, 207, 250, 254

V Veit, Urlich, 255, 287, 289, 292 Vienna, Circle, 83, 84, 85, 93, 106

W Wachowski, Andy and Larry, xiv, 223 Wall Street, 8, 291 Weir, Peter, xiii, 80

299

Index

Wiener, Norbert, xiii, 47, 49, 52 Witness, xiii, 80 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xiii, 1, 53, 58, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 102, 108, 110, 116, 120, 121, 130, 131, 148, 168, 171, 179, 180, 181, 197, 202, 211, 222, 231, 246, 247, 250, 254, 255, 277, 283, 287, 289, 292

Z Žižek, Slavoj, x, xi, xiii, 30, 127, 133, 134, 135, 156, 190, 195, 196, 197, 208, 209, 212, 257, 263, 265, 266, 268, 291, 292 Zodiac, xiv, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278