polity
Originally published in German as Undinge: Umbrüche der Lebenswelt © by Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin. Published in 2021 by Ullstein Verlag
This English edition © Polity Press, 2022
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, 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 the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5171-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949836
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:
politybooks.com
In her novel Hisoyaka na Kesshō, the Japanese writer Yōko Ogawa tells the story of a nameless island.1 Strange occurrences alarm its inhabitants: things disappear without explanation, and they disappear for good. Things that smell nice, and shimmering, glittering, wondrous things: hairbands, hats, perfume, small bells, emeralds, stamps – roses and birds too. And the people no longer know what all these things were once for. Along with the things, memories disappear as well.
Yōko Ogawa’s novel describes a totalitarian regime whose memory police, reminiscent of Orwell’s thought police, purge society of things and memories. The people live in an eternal winter of forgetfulness and loss. Anyone found to be reminiscing is arrested. The protagonist’s mother, who keeps threatened things in a secret chest of drawers, and in this way protects them, is chased and killed by the memory police.
There are strong analogies between Hisoyaka na Kesshō, published in 1994, and our contemporary life. Today, things are also constantly disappearing, without us seeming to notice. Because the number of things has proliferated, we do not realize that, in fact, things are disappearing. In contrast to Yōko Ogawa’s dystopia, we do not live in a totalitarian regime whose memory police brutally rob us of our things and memories. It is rather our intoxication by communication and information that makes things disappear. Information – that is, non-things – obscures things and drains them of their colour. We live not under a violent regime but under a rule of information that claims to be freedom.
In Ogawa’s dystopia, the world is gradually emptied out. Ultimately, it disappears. Everything is seized by disappearance, by a progressive dissolution. Even body parts disappear. In the end, there are just disembodied voices aimlessly floating in the air. In many respects, the nameless island of lost things and memories resembles our present. Today’s world is fading away and becoming information, information as ghostly as those disembodied voices. Digitalization de-reifies and disembodies the world. It also abolishes memory. Instead of memory, we have vast quantities of data. In the place of the memory police, we have digital media, which does its job without violence and with little effort.
Our information society is not quite as monotonous as Ogawa’s dystopia. Information creates the illusion of a series of events. Information feeds off of our attraction towards surprise. But the attraction does not last long; soon, there is a need for a new surprise. We are now in the habit of perceiving reality in terms of attraction and surprise. As information hunters, we are becoming blind to still, inconspicuous things, to what is common, the incidental and the customary – the things that do not attract us but ground us in being.