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Ghostly becoming

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Ghostly becoming

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Content GHOSTLY BECOMING
by
Yew Heng Lim
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulllment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(FINE ARTS)
May 2021
Copyright 2021 Yew Heng Lim
Acknowledgments
I have been extremely fortunate to receive encouragement and nourishment that
ourish
me intellectually and spiritually from: my thesis advisor - Amelia Jones; thesis committee
members - Suzanne Lacy, Mary Kelly, and Patty Chang; as well as all the faculty members
for their generous guidance including Nao Bustamante, Edgar Arceneaux, Jennifer West,
Thomas Mueller, Andy Campbell, David Kelley, Jenny Lin, Karen Moss, and Anuradha
Vikram. I am especially grateful to colleagues and friends who generously support and
cherish me. They include Diane Williams, Rachel Zaretsky, Jiyoon Kim, Jose Guadalupe
Sanchez III, Danie Cansino, Kate Rouhandeh, Hugo Cervantes, Johnny Forever Nawracaj,
Dulce Ibarra, Casey Kaumann, Paulson Lee, Carlo Tuason, Joseph Daniel Valencia, Ana
Cristina Briz, Juan Carlos Morales, and the list goes on. It is an absolute honor to be
supported by the USC International Artist Fellowship Awards, and I am deeply grateful to
Robin Romans and Gordon Alemao for their immeasurable care and support. This project
is dedicated to my family and friends in Malaysia. My wholehearted gratitude to everyone
and everything in my life.
Yew Heng \Hings" Lim
ii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Haunted History of Seeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Paranormal Encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Nonhuman Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Concluding Re
ections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
iii
List of Figures
1 Flaming Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Homo Lantern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3 Vision of Afterlives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4 Monolith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
iv
Abstract
With the questioning of technology, this thesis explores the idea of ghost to lead the non-
dualistic ways of thinking to propose a (dis)embodied and (non)human interrelational sub-
jectivity | a ghostly performativity. This research seeds the thinking process in my art
practice through a rhizomatic exploratory approach to orchestrate several interrelated lines
of thoughts between becoming and ghost; ritual and phantasmagoria; art and technology,
with cross references between culture, nature, Western, Eastern, time, and space.
v
Ghostly Becoming
Introduction
Long had past the hour of midnight,
Lingered yet the coming day-light;
Twice ere now had wakening infants
Risen and sunk again in slumber;
Wrapped in sleep were all the elders,
Far away were pheasants calling,
In the woods the shrill cicada
Chirped and dew came dropping earthwards,
Now lowed oxen in the meadows,
Moaned the bualoes imprisoned,
Cocks, with voice and wings, responded.
And with feebler note the murai.
Soon the rst pale streak of morning,
Rose and upwards soared the night-birds;
Pigeons cooed beneath the roof-tree,
Fitful came the quail's long murmur;
On the hearth lay last night's embers,
Foot-long brands burned down to inches,
Heralds all of day's approaching.
1
| Hikayat Seri Rama
1
Sir William E Maxwell and R. O. Winstedt, \Hikayat S eri Rama," Journal of the Straits Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society June 1910, no. 55 (1910): 99, 24. This mantra is an English translation by Maxwell
and Winstedt from the original Malay oral manuscript: \Tengah malam sudah terlampau / Dinihari
belum lagi sampai/ Budak-budak dua kali jaga / Orang tua berkaleh tidur / Embun jantan rintek-
rintek / Berbunyi kuang jauh ka-tengah / Sorong lanting riang di-rimba / Terdenguk lembu di-padang
/ Sambut menguwak kerbau di-kandang / Bertempek mandong arak mengilai / Fajar sidik menyengsing
naik / Kichak-kichau bunyi murai / Taptibau melambong tinggi / Menguku balam di-hujong bendul /
Terdengut puyuh panjang bunyi / Puntong sa-jengkal tinggi dua jari / Itu-lah alamat hari hendak siang."
1
Ghosts are the beings of in-between realms. They may carry sinister connotations, in view
of the encounter of the unknowns could be horrifying. The idea of ghost is vastly dierent
between cultures, beliefs, traditions, and languages, yet, it is not imperatively cultural. With
the questioning of technology, I explore the idea of ghost to lead the non-dualistic ways of
thinking to propose a (dis)embodied and (non)human interrelational subjectivity | a ghostly
performativity. As noted in the above epigraph, the mantra from Hikayat Seri Rama alludes
to the convergence of day and night, the in-betweenness, and the interconnectivity of the
livings and non-livings.
In Southeast Asia, the shadow play is an ancestral performance tradition that is pro-
foundly in
uenced by the Hindu epics R am ayana and Mah abh arata, much like the story-
telling of Hikayat. The genealogy of shadow puppetry may be traced from ancient India,
Central Asia, or China, and it is notably complex according to its specicity and traditions.
2
Wayang kulit is one of the variations in the Malay Archipelago, particularly in Malaysia
and Indonesia. While dierent kinds of wayang exist in these regions, the four main ex-
isting types in Malaysia are the Wayang Jawa and the Wayang Melayu from the Javanese
tradition, and the Wayang Gedek and the Wayang Siam from Southern Thailand. Compar-
atively, variations of the shadow play as well as the story are the results of centuries-long
transformation, localization, hybridization, and reiteration with certain local cultural and
ritual practices.
Although the prehistoric practice of using shadow for ritual ceremony in a sacred cave is
impossible to verify archaeologically, indeed, wayang kulit is a \psycho-social ritual-cultural
practice" that is deeply associated with shamanism including ritual traditions from Hindu-
2
Fan Pen Chen, \Shadow Theaters of the World," Asian Folklore Studies 62, no. 1 (2003): 25{64.
2
Buddhism, Animism, and Islamic mysticism.
3
During the wayang kulit performance, the
puppet master known as dalang would orchestrate the show as a puppeteer, narrator, con-
ductor, as well as a shaman to recite mantras together with rites and rituals. The shadow
play is deemed to be more than just a human enactment of a story; it is a ritual that unfolds
through the mysteries of occultism and spiritual practices.
4
The wayang often begins with
salutations to supernatural beings such as ghosts, genies, spirits, and ancestors before the
gamelan music begins, with chants and rites to lead o the theatre. The ritualistic per-
formance is also staged as an oering to communicate with the visible and invisible beings
through cosmological connectivity.
5
Once all of the beings have been called forth, the dalang
leads the shadow play with the
at leather-made puppets in hands and maneuvers theirs
shadows between the light and the screen with repertoire, dialogue, and narration.
The shadow cast by the
at leather puppet is a representational silhouette of the mythical
character. The shadow shifts between blurry and dened shapes in relation to the proximity
of the puppet between the light source and the screen. It diracts rather than re
ects the
identity of the mythical beings. The Western traditions of phenomenology, new materialism,
and performance theory oer powerful methods through which to examine how these elusive
shadow plays function. Adopting the analysis of performativity proposed by Karen Barad,
the shadow play refuses the concept of a pre-existing real lurking \behind" the image or, as
Barad puts it, of \representation on the one hand and ontologically separate entities awaiting
representation on the other."
6
Thus, cultural and epistemological beliefs cannot be entirely
3
Siyuan Liu, ed., Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Rout-
ledge, 2016), 72.
4
Tengku Ahmad Hazri, \Performance Art as an Instrument of Spiritual Contemplation: The Case of the
Malay Wayang Kulit (Shadow Play)," Islam and Civilisational Renewal 6, no. 3 (July 2015): 371{387.
5
Hazri, 374.
6
Karen Barad, \Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,"
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (March 2003): 801{831, 807.
3
represented, instead, they multiply.
The multiplicity of R am ayana reveals this dynamic as well. The story of R am ayana is
one of the great Sanskrit epics of ancient India being told throughout the common era across
South, East, and Southeast Asia. It spread through generations from oral to written forms
of storytelling, as well as being depicted in paintings, sculptures, architecture, dance, and
shadow puppetry performances. There are at least three hundred versions of R am ayana,
endless reiterations, and no one version is more or less authentic than the other.
7
This
situation of multiplicity is described as the R am ayana syndrome where \the appropriation of
the story by a multiplicity of groups meant a multiplicity of versions through which the social
aspirations and ideological concerns of each group were articulated."
8
Dierent versions of
the story have their own substantial alternations with the formulation of characters, events,
and meanings hybridized according to local culture, or even shaped by foreign interventions.
Similarly, the modern forms of wayang kulit are the \collaborations" under various forms
of colonialism where, for instance, the Javanese wayang in Indonesia is a recreation of the
Javanese courts under the guidance of the colonial Dutch Scholars during the colonial period.
9
Wayang kulit in the Malay world has developed through transitions of religious belief; for
example, it has changed and \adapt[ed] itself to the new religion of Islam that settled [t]here
some centuries ago and was indeed integrated into the very fabric of Islamic culture and
civilization, even as it has been constantly besieged by exoteric religious authorities."
10
The
7
A. K. Ramanujan, \Three Hundred R am ayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation," in
Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991).
8
Romila Thapar, \The Ramayana Syndrome," Seminar , no. 353 (January 1989), 74. Cited in Paula Rich-
man, ed., Many R am ayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1991), 4.
9
Richard Schechner, The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance, rst published 1993
(London; New York: Routledge, 2003), 193.
10
Hazri, \Performance Art as an Instrument of Spiritual Contemplation," 383.
4
belief in spirits associated with the wayang kulit has shifted since the arrival of Islam in
Malaysia and Indonesia, especially with the prohibition of some spiritual practices in the
shadow play that those practicing the orthodox versions of Islam regard as \un-Islamic."
11
That said, after recent decades of alterations, the wayang kulit in Malaysia is now largely
disassociated from spiritual practice; however, spiritual beliefs persist in an oblique form
among practitioners and local communities. The spiritual nature of the shadow play is thus
arguably inevitable, given that the beliefs in mystical forces have already rooted profoundly
among Southeast Asians, either through culture, tradition, or superstition.
12
Henceforth, the
dalang is still considered as a medium that brings forth the presence of immaterial beings
with materials | puppet, screen, light, smoke, gamelan, etc. | on screen and in space while
witnesses of the phenomenon sit on both sides of the screen. H. Ulbricht astutely points to
the kernel of shadow play:
It is unique in that being visible it shares a characteristic with the material world,
and that being non-material it shares a characteristic with the invisible world.
This is where the phenomenon of the shadow comes into the picture. Being
non-material but visible it is, from a philosophical point of view, suitable for the
visible interpretations of non-material forces, and indeed many features of the
Javanese shadow play can only be understood when viewed from this angle.
13
The ghostly presence of the shadow materializes the ghostly beings summoned by the dalang,
fading in and out of the screen. The phenomenological forces in front of and behind the
screen interrelate the visibility and invisibility of the puppets and the ghosts; although
11
Liu, Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre, 80.
12
Beth Osnes, The Shadow Puppet Theatre of Malaysia: A Study of Wayang Kulit with Performance Scripts
and Puppet Designs (Jeerson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2010), 19.
13
H. Ulbricht, Wayang Purwa: Shadows of the Past (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1970), 1.
5
from a technological understanding, the shadow play eects are considered as a theatrical
manipulation by the skillful dalang with the assistance of technology.
The shadow play furthermore raises questions of its philosophical nature, perhaps as
Western thinkers examine the issues of absence, presence, and the role of representation in
our understanding of the world. How can the intensities of shadow be measured? How can
its eects be calibrated? Iterating the idea of intensities by Henry Bergson, an absent (the
shadow) \is thus situated at the junction of two streams, one of which brings us the idea of
extensive magnitude from without, while the other brings us from within, in fact from the
very depths of consciousness, the image of an inner multiplicity."
14
It is a confused perception.
Thereupon the ghostliness of being in time and space, the wayang kulit is projecting a
cosmological duration suggesting that events (stories), things (puppets), bodies (performers
and witnesses), and minds (knowledge and experiences) are intertwined.
By all means, shadow play is a performance medium that \is located at the nexus of
scientic, mystical, and aesthetic practices."
15
It can also be considered as an ancient form
of a proto-cinematic apparatus, as both are similar in their construction and pivot around
the creative production of phantasmagoria through specic visual apparatuses. Expanding
on the emergence of the magic lantern in the seventeenth century in Europe, phantasmago-
ria were exhibitions of optical illusions rst presented in Paris in 1798 by

Etienne-Gaspard
Robertson with the use of a magic lantern.
16
The European magic lantern show, like the
shadow play, manipulates image projections to orchestrate phantasmagoria with the ghostly
14
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, rst published
1889, trans. Frank Lubecki Pogson (London, New York: G. Allen & Unwin; Humanities Press, 1913), 73.
15
Stephen Kaplin, \The Eye of Light: The Tension of Image and Object in Shadow Theatre and Beyond,"
in The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, ed. Dassia N. Posner, Claudia
Orenstein, and John Bell (London; New York: Routledge, 2014), 91{97, 91.
16
\Phantasmagoria, n.". OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-
com.libproxy2.usc.edu/view/Entry/142184 (accessed November 20, 2020).
6
visual eects of theatricality; however, magic lantern shows were purposely designed to
convey an eerie and uncanny atmosphere to frighten the viewer.
17
In his article on phan-
tasmagoria, Tom Gunning highlighted the apparatus itself, which he argues, is not a mere
illusion creator but echoes \the ideological and historical contradiction of the subject mat-
ter of the Phantasmagoria" and foregrounds the contrary experiences between body and
mind.
18
Similarly in that aspect, Stephen Kaplin refers to the cosmic apparatus of shadow
play, where \light oscillates between matter and energy states" and the shadow \spun out
of light and its absence, imbued with breath and motion, shifts eortlessly between spiri-
tual realms and the physical plane | an apt model for the human soul/body construct."
19
However, Kaplin further claims that shadow play stages \real-time, unmediated, line-of-sight
connections between object, image, and audience" in contrast to the mediation of technology
which \increases the distance in space and time."
20
Conversely, I would contest that view
and regard both are technologically mediated in the shadow play at one point. As argued
pointedly in her book, Amelia Jones contends that the \material" body does not assure the
\preexisting representation [as] anchored in the `real'," while technological mediation \does
not necessarily entail a horric disembodiment and/or commodication."
21
The diraction
of light is uncertain in both cases where the intensities of \realness" are both measurable
and immeasurable, as Bergson argues:
17
Tom Gunning, \Phantasmagoria and the Manufacturing of Illusions and Wonder: Towards a Cultural
Optics of the Cinematic Apparatus," in Le cin ematographe, nouvelle technologie du XXe si ecle =: The
cinema, a new technology for the 20th century, ed. Andr e Gaudreault, Catherine Russell, and Pierre
V eronneau, Cin ema (Lausanne: Payot Lausanne, 2004), 32{44.
18
Gunning, 35.
19
Kaplin, \The Eye of Light: The Tension of Image and Object in Shadow Theatre and Beyond," 92.
20
Kaplin, 93.
21
Amelia Jones, Self/Image: Technology, Representation, and the Contemporary Subject (London; New
York: Routledge, 2006), 137.
7
[W]hen we turn to our conscious states, we have everything to gain by keeping
up the illusion through which we make them share in the reciprocal externality of
outer things, because this distinctness, and at the same time this solidication,
enables us to give them xed names in spite of their instability, and distinct ones
in spite of their interpenetration.
22
Bergson's point suggests that it might be confusing to argue that the phenomenon of \il-
lusion" is not merely generated via the perception of the human self. In the case between
cinematic and cosmic apparatuses, we cannot assume an essential xed apparatus, how-
ever, cultivates the realm of in-betweenness that is \rather than total illusion, an uncanny
questioning of perception, [...] rather than religious revelation or scientic certainty."
23
Os-
tensibly rather than applying technology towards a technological understanding of the self,
as Martin Heidegger suggested, we could look at technology as nothing technological and
external to the self, but as the techn e and yet the poi esis in the manifold ways to reveal
the \bringing-forth" of this very self.
24
The apparently technologically produced illusion
is linked to the intensities of Bergson's confusing perception; it is a becoming. Therefore,
I propose a ghostly performativity that is a (dis)embodied and (non)human interrelational
subjectivity.
In this paper, I am by no means intending to structure a hierarchical argument. Instead,
through this model I hope to seed the thinking process in my art practice with a rhizomatic
exploratory approach to orchestrate several interrelated lines of thoughts between becoming
and ghost; ritual and phantasmagoria; art and technology, with cross references between
culture, nature, Western, Eastern, time, and space. Drawing on the concept of the rhizome
22
Bergson, Time and Free Will, 231.
23
Gunning, \Phantasmagoria and the Manufacturing of Illusions and Wonder: Towards a Cultural Optics
of the Cinematic Apparatus," 43.
24
Martin Heidegger, \The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology, and
Other Essays, rst published 1954 (New York: Garland Pub, 1977), 3{35.
8
oered by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is strategic: the rhizome opposes the central
or tree-like structure of elaborating relationships, in which they further declare their book
itself as a written form of rhizome that has:
...no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, in-
termezzo. The tree is liation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The
tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction,
\and...and...and..."
25
The logic of the AND that Deleuze and Guattari thus foreground is a model of in-betweenness.
Their model proposes that the multiplicity of a rhizome can be achieved not in unity but
subtraction, as in a ghostly presence. Here, although this paper is composed in the form of
written language, it is understood as rhizomatically performed by you, as you actuate the
immanent lines of my thinking, as a form and not a form.
25
Gilles Deleuze and F elix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, rst published
1980, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 25.
9
Figure 1. Flaming Tower / a tripod stands tall / a biface on top / in
ames / deformed / hold the shape of
time / spherical light / intensities and fallo / shadows. Image by Hings Lim.
10
Haunted History of Seeing
Archaeology is a way of seeing the prehistorical past with material remnants. Studied under
the observational sciences, the excavated archaeological sites and the artifacts made by hu-
man or hominins have vastly expanded the archaeologists' understanding of ancient human
behaviors.
26
The discovery of stone tools from the Paleolithic period, for example, signies
the long origin of tool making throughout the enigmatic human evolution. The ability of
early hominins to learn to use tools and eventually make tools, is a progression of now what
we call \technology." Tracing this prehistoric technology, the unearthed stone tools like the
relics of the past point to the extension of hands and their mediation, which shaped the
future of hominins for the last two and half million years.
While humans are not the only species that uses tools, in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries archaeologists analyzed and construed the prehistoric stone artifacts
with their modern perspective of technology where the lithic technology was thought to
have been produced in a somewhat \industrial" linear process.
27
For example, the term
Acheulean was coined by French Prehistorian Gabriel de Mortillet in 1869 based on the stone
tools discovered from a site called Saint-Acheul in Northern France, and the classication
of Acheulean since then is a predominant one in the eld of archaeology. Thus, the vast
variations of the prehistoric stone tool were \recurrently identied as the requisite emblem
of the Acheulean technocomplex."
28
Among many terms in this typology, biface as in its
26
Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of
Technology, A Touchstone Book (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 18.
27
John J. Shea, Stone Tools in Human Evolution: Behavioral Dierences among Technological Primates
(New York: Cambridge University Press, November 2016), 5.
28
Fernando Diez-Martn and Metin I. Eren, \The Early Acheulean in Africa: Past Paradigms, Current
Ideas, and Future Directions," in Stone Tools and Fossil Bones: Debates in the Archaeology of Human
Origins, ed. Manuel Dom nguez-Rodrigo (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 310{357.
11
name is a general reference of the typical hand-ax stone tool
aked on both faces. Developed
through the Lower Paleolithic period, a biface can be \oval, triangular, or almond-shaped
in form and characterized by axial symmetry," and its cutting edge could be used as a pick,
knife, scraper, or weapon.
29
This example points out that the attempt to determine the
function of stone tools is dubious especially when the archaeologists indicate its functionality
based on the modern technological idea of tool.
In some cases, the materials of some bifaces are considered not practical for utilitarian
usage due to their soft or low density quality. It could be not a tool in the technological
sense but perhaps was an implement used in spiritual or cultural practices. Conceivably, its
aesthetic qualities were considered as the rst art ever made, as proposed in \First Sculpture:
Handaxe to Figure Stone," an exhibition curated by artist Tony Berlant and anthropologist
Dr Thomas Wynn at Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas in 2018. The exhibition claimed
to present \these objects as evidence of the earliest forms of artistic intention, highlighting
the aesthetic qualities of each stone [...] as well as an enriched appreciation for humankind's
early ability to sculpt beautiful objects."
30
The \artistic invention" of stone tool indeed
predates the earliest cave painting ever found, commonly referred as cave art, which perhaps
inevitably referred to as \art" because it is not an \instrumental" and \functional" thing.
What does art mean for hominins? Who invented art? Are we projecting our aesthetic
awareness onto others? The stone tools, as suggested by the curators, are the rst sculptures
that human ever made. The idea of \art" in this case | sculpture, is unquestionably based
on the Western concept of aesthetic. As art critic Jason Farago pointed out in regard to
the assumption of \First Sculpture" that the impulse of art predates modern human, or
29
Barbara Ann Kipfer, Dictionary of Artifacts (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
30
\First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone," Nasher Sculpture Center, accessed January 25, 2021,
https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/art/exhibitions/exhibition/id/535.
12
perhaps humans are \imputing gures into these stones projects modern ideas of proportion
and beauty onto `artists' of not just another culture, but another species."
31
This categorization dening what is art, tool, or craft have prevailed since the origins
of the European museum. The desires of the museum \are grounded in and follow from
the epistemological principles, categories, and assumptions" of the Euro-American subject
to collect and frame certain objects to be interpreted in narratives that \privilege their aes-
thetic signicance (as work of `art') or their documentary status (as relics or as `scientic'
evidence of a time, place, people, spirit or mentality)."
32
Inherently imperialistic and colo-
nial in nature, museums, among the other ideological apparatuses, are structured by this
hierarchical identication and subsequently produce the subjugating perspectival history of
the world. As a product of the Enlightenment, this denitive apparatus with its unitary van-
tage point is contradictory to the multiplicities of histories, whether prehistorical accounts
or contemporary historical accounts of the world.
With that in mind, thinking of the mesmerizing experience of staring into the burning
replace, the re is a phenomenon of the exothermic chemical reactions that releases heat,
light, and smoke, and the rapid oxidation of materials in space and time. The ever-shifting
shape of the
ame is both present and absent at the same time. Indeed, I wonder about
the enigmatic experience of it when the early hominins discovered re and learned how to
recreate it with tools inside of their dwelling cave. The \invention" of re in their cave casts
light and shadow on the cave wall, like the materials are revealing themselves and performing
the worlds. Perhaps that's how hominins learned to see through the invisible, divine, ghost,
or spirit and encrypted their stories on the cave walls.
31
Jason Farago, \Was Australopithecus an Artist?," The New York Times, February 2018, chap. Arts.
32
Donald Preziosi and Claire J. Farago, eds., Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (Aldershot,
Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub, 2004), 4.
13
The cave \paintings" perhaps are the beginning of \history," where the ancient drawings
are like incomprehensible languages and scripts awaiting to be decrypted. In view of that,
the concept of history in its philosophical tradition extends its narrative over what is being
considered to be \factual" through interpretation and analysis. In \The Fictions of Factual
Representation," American historian Hayden White elicits the discourses of the similarity
between histories and stories where, however, the former are often believed to be \true to the
fact" without ideological interpretations in comparison to the latter.
33
Although his eorts in
dissecting the impossibility of written histories being more correct than any other are crucial,
the power of language still reigns while the authoritative subject tells a story/history as if it
is the truth. History, as described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, is \always written
from the sedentary point of view and in the name of a unitary State apparatus," and this
form of apparatus has been weaponized to marginalize the others who \lie outside of history
because they operate at the margins" of the structure.
34
It territorializes the inclusion and
exclusion, and is designed as if it's the singular truthful representation of the world. This
constructed world image produced by the binary hierarchy of the unitary subjects with its
xed apparatus of seeing is doomed to be haunted by the unseen.
33
Hayden White, \The Fiction of Factual Representation," in Preziosi and Farago, Grasping the World,
22-35.
34
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 23.
14
Figure 2. Homo Lantern / an empty space / light o and blank wall / projection mapping / moving
illumination / invisible windows / casting light / unidentied object / revolving / shifting shape. Image by
Hings Lim.
15
Paranormal Encounter
The question of when humans became human is certainly an intense core debate among
scientists in the eld of archaeology. Among several found fossils, Sahelanthropus tchadensis
is arguably the earliest known hominin remains to be found to date and is adjacent to the
chimpanzee-human divergence. The discovery of S. tchadensis fossil specimens in Northern
Chad, Central Africa marked the earliest evidence of the human lineage, according to the
research team led by Michel Brunet.
35
Nicknamed as Touma and coded as TM 266, a
fragmented skull and some teeth of a single locality/entity is estimated to be approximately
six to seven million years old. While its human-chimpanzee categorization is up for debate,
the bipedality of Touma is the very central argument for whether it is a human ancestor or
not, where a recent nding of a fragment femur fossil recovered at the same location casts
doubt on Touma 's bipedality.
36
Accordingly, the anthropological investigation of human ancestors to the rst human is
based on taxonomic classication that analytically identies the separation between species,
human and primate. When did a species become another species? When did humans become
fully human? The questions on becoming extend from the anthropological ones to the
ontological one. Becoming, as manifested by Deleuze and Guattari, is not an evolution but
\is always double, that which one becomes becomes no less than the one that becomes."
37
The continuity of becoming is then further illustrated:
35
Michel Brunet et al., \A New Hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa," Nature 418,
no. 6894 (July 2002): 145{151.
36
Roberto Macchiarelli et al., \Nature and Relationships of Sahelanthropus Tchadensis," Journal of Human
Evolution 149 (December 2020): 102898.
37
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 305.
16
A line of becoming is not dened by points that it connects, or by points that
compose it; on the contrary, it passes between points, it comes up through the
middle, it runs perpendicular to the points rst perceived, transversally to the
localizable relation to distant or contiguous points.
38
We are always in-between two proximity points. The continuity of becoming, regardless,
is cut by the punctual system with methods such as taxonomy and categorization. Either
Touma is a human ancestor or not, set alongside the becoming of human beings. Perhaps
we should question if we are human yet.
While human is deemed to be superior to all other species, some \humans" have consid-
ered themselves to be more \human" than the others, and treat the others as subhuman.
Inherent to the humanism that centered by European's claim of universalism is an unde-
niable trait of imperialism and colonialism. In her book The Posthuman, Rosi Braidotti
profoundly critiques the traditional humanistic unitary subject and rejects the Eurocentric
normative humanist ideal of \Man," and she argues:
The human of Humanism is neither an ideal nor an objective statistical average
or middle ground. It rather spells out a systematized standard of recognizability
| of Sameness | by which all others can be assessed, regulated and allotted to a
designated social location. [...] The human is a historical construct that became
a social convention about \human nature."
39
Human supremacy (as articulated in European Enlightenment philosophy) is indeed vig-
orously imperial and colonial with its normative dialectic of self and other, human and
nonhuman, culture and nature. Thus, in deance of that, Braidotti advocates a posthuman
subjectivity that is \materialist and vitalist, embodied and embedded, rmly located some-
38
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 293.
39
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press, 2013), 26.
17
where, according to the feminist `politics of location'."
40
That said, a model of interrelational
subjectivity, such as Braidotti's, is perhaps a way to dismantle the egocentric and anthro-
pocentric subject, with feminist critique of objectivity, when the human subject comes to
the end in the face of its mortality; when human is no longer human, turned into sub-
stances, nutrients, matters; when human is seen to be interrelated with maggots, insects,
microorganisms; when human is becoming nonhuman, becoming ghosts.
Regarding the threshold of death in his intricate text | Aporias, Jacques Derrida notes
that \we are engaged here toward a certain possibility of the impossible."
41
He dissects Hei-
degger's interpretation of death that claims only humans can experience \death as such"
while nonhumans can only experience \demise" because \death" is a cultural construct
and \a linguistic illusion."
42
While the aforementioned death is always \the death of the
other," Derrida acknowledges that their analyses of death are impossible without the lan-
guage and process from their Christian Western experience which is always mired \in its
presuppositions."
43
That holds true as well in relation to my presuppositions in engaging
Euro-American philosophies and theories through my Southeast Asian Chinese Malaysian
experience in thinking of the becoming of ghost. The idea of ghost is perhaps anthropocen-
tric and deeply rooted in cultural beliefs; nevertheless, in comparison to death, ghost is not
entirely cultural, nor natural. The presuppositions about ghosts are far from normal. They
presuppose a paranormal subjectivity.
Spanning the timeline of evolutionary history, if we think far enough into the unfath-
omable distant past, six to seven million years after the creature's death, the unearthed skull
40
Braidotti, The Posthuman, 51.
41
Jacques Derrida, Aporias (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993), 11.
42
lain Thomson, \Can I Die? Derrida on Heidegger on Death," Philosophy Today 43, no. 1 (1999): 29{42.
43
Derrida, Aporias, 80.
18
of Touma presented in front of us is indeed a cross-space-time relational object, with the
material remnant of the past \mattering" in the present-future. Drawing from the quantum
dis/continuity theorized by Barad, \past" and \future" are \iteratively recongured and
enfolded through the world's ongoing intra-activity" with the shifting patterns phenomena
of quantum entities (a photon, electron, neutron, etc.) resulting from \the entanglement of
the `object' and the `agencies of observation'," she writes:
Phenomena are not located in space and time; rather, phenomena are mate-
rial entanglements enfolded and threaded through the spacetimemattering of the
universe. [...] Memory { the pattern of sedimented enfoldings of iterative intra-
activity { is written into the fabric of the world. The world \holds" the memory
of all traces; or rather, the world is its memory (enfolded materialisation).
44
The quantum mechanical phenomena highlighted by Barad informed the performativity of
the entities when they passed through a diraction apparatus, either as a wave or a particle
which can be determined even after the apparatus, in such a way that the identity of the
entities is not xed but an on-going intra-action. This hauntological nature of quantum
entanglements reveals that the ghostly \relationality between continuity and discontinuity
is crucial to the open ended becoming of the world which resists acausality as much as
determinism."
45
Albeit the quantum entities are incomprehensible at the level of human
sensory perception, they exemplify the ghostliness of matter and, analogously, suggest that
perhaps the existence of \ghost" is im/possible. In parallel, it denotes the becoming of
(non)human which is an interrelational enfolding in the states of paranormality.
44
Karen Barad, \Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/Continuities,
SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come," Derrida Today 3, no. 2 (November 2010): 240{268, 261.
45
Barad, 248.
19
Figure 3. Vision of Afterlives / a cave with two openings / North and South / sunbeam moves / between
the sky, sea, and land / entering darkness / immersion of light / headgear and medium / extended reality.
Image study by Hings Lim.
20
Nonhuman Vision
The essence of technology is nothing technological, as pointed out by Heidegger through the
necessity of questioning it. He further examines the instrumental in
uence of technology
by the Greeks' philosophical understanding of causality and suggests that technology is
essentially enframing. Enframing, translated from his German term | Gestell, is construed
as \a way of revealing having the character of destining, namely, the way that challenges
forth."
46
Continued from his question of being, he infers that the thinking of the enframing
can open up a free relationship with technology and the world. This relation confronts
the \pursuit of instrumental means to technoscientically dened ends" of technology in
human's \technological engagements" and yet \do not close us o from non-instrumental
possibilities."
47
With art, the re
ection on technology perhaps can open up the \constellation of truth"
with its \coming-to-pass of revealing," which is both certain and uncertain.
From the discovery of electromagnetic radiation to the indication of electromagnetic
spectrum in the nineteenth century, scientists have come to understand that the vast range
of colors in a rainbow are only a very narrow band of the wavelength visible to humans'
visual system. Apart from the visible light, the technological advancements in utilizing
wavelengths, like telecommunication, have pushed human ability in transforming material
and energy, to transforming information. Before the common information technology that
already so embedded in our daily life, humans made marks on stone, bone, mud, then on
metal, fabric, paper. However, the encrypted \information" is not all materialistic but there
46
Heidegger, \The Question Concerning Technology," 29.
47
Robert C. Schar and Val Dusek, eds., Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition; an An-
thology, 2nd ed., 33 (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 300.
21
are also mythical and animistic forms of \communication" that is now considered as su-
perstition. While the information that is transmitted through the air is imperceptible to
human sensory reception without electronic apparatuses, paralleling the practice of spirit
mediums, the similar anecdotal experience of telecommunication has often evoked the spec-
trality of \liveness" in electronic media. As Jeery Sconce pointed out regarding \the occult
metaphysics of electronic presence," he examines:
Whether electronic media and spectatorship represent the \death" of human
subjectivity (in the annihilating simulations of television) or its magical \rebirth"
(in the ever expanding architecture of cyberspace), both accounts draw vividly
on the uncanny animating presence so long perceived in electronic media. Behind
our fascination with television's \confusion" of reality and virtual subjectivity's
\liberation" of body and soul remains a highly adaptive metaphysics of electricity,
one that continues to inspire supernatural accounts of live, living, and otherwise
haunted media.
48
Although Sconce's discussions are mainly about television, he explores the phantasmagorical
aspect of media, either on the cultural representation of ghosts or the nature of electromag-
netic phenomena. The technological vision opened by both nature and culture extends
human ability to see outside of their visible spectrum, with the
ow of electricity, revealed
by electrical apparatus, existing in the other realms.
The extensions of optical capability, however also grant human the presupposed omni-
science vision of god. From the invention of perspective machine to all forms of camera
apparatus, a technological vision driven by human superiority that gazes, observes, projects,
invades, and objecties the others. In her article on \Situated Knowledges," Donna Haraway
argues that the technological eyes \have been used to signify a perverse capacity | honed
48
Jerey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2000), 172
22
to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and male
supremacy | to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests
of unfettered power."
49
As mentioned, these perspectival eyes entail centricity that splits the
\autonomous" subject and the \observed" object, and further ensues all forms of supremacy.
The singular vision exemplied by the startling panopticon prison, as investigated by Michel
Foucault, that employ the individualization of political and technological power in control
of the others, is asserted by Foucault:
The moment that saw the transition from historico-ritual mechanisms for the
formation of individuality to the scientico-disciplinary mechanisms, when the
normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement from status, thus substi-
tuting for the individuality of the memorable man that of the calculable man,
that moment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a
new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were imple-
mented.
50
In comparison with the \godlike" power either as a chief of spirituality or the military,
they resolve into technological power that endorse the framing of the others, upholds a
partial humanity, and dehumanizes the rest. Essentially anthropocentric, the celebration
of individuality that humans \conned to their individual worlds, each person would exist
as a mechanical god, an idiot king presiding over a terrain of information," as discussed
by Ali Hossaini on \perceptual technologies" that coordinate society as a whole into Lewis
Mumford's notion of megamachine.
51
Perhaps technological apparatus may well be a dwelling of humans' ego to have ultimate
measurement of everything, however as advocated by Karen Barad, apparatuses \are not
49
Donna Jeanne Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1991), 188.
50
Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 193.
51
Ali Hossaini, \Vision of the Gods: An Inquiry Into the Meaning of Photography," Logos 2, no. 3, 26.
23
mere static arrangements in the world, but rather apparatuses are dynamic (re)congurings
of the world."
52
The possibility to have an open relationship of the world is underlined by
the fore of non-anthropocentric apparatuses where the nature-culture dichotomy dissolved,
thus subverting the illusion of human subject, as Barad further asserts:
Apparatuses are not merely about us. And they are not merely assemblages that
include nonhumans as well as humans. Rather, apparatuses are specic material
recongurings of the world that do not merely emerge in time but iteratively
recongure spacetimematter as part of the ongoing dynamism of becoming.
53
Accordingly, the (non)human vision is an intersubjective and interrelational apparatus that is
both embodied and disembodied, while not mere instrumental or non-instrumental. Possibly
confusing, the ghostly becoming, be it machine, animal, plant, skull, stone, puppet, or the
others, conjugates an imperceptible vision, to see the unseen.
52
Barad, \Posthumanist Performativity," 816.
53
Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and
Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 142.
24
Figure 4. Monolith / solar eclipse / swirling cloud / diraction / between dusk and dawn / on the horizon
/ real-time / hysteria. Image study by Hings Lim.
25
Concluding Re
ections
Re
ecting on the instrumentalization of technology as well as the aestheticization of art,
both in parallel, this thesis is an inquiry of mine in understanding the world through my art
practice in an ongoing material-discursive exploratory process. In relation to Western philo-
sophical idea of becoming, non-duality is fundamentally the core interest of my questioning
self and non-self, which originates from the Mah ay ana Buddhism notion of s unyat a (empti-
ness). The presupposition of my aforementioned upbringing alludes to the idea of the ghost
that is deeply in
uenced by hybridization of the belief, culture, and folklore of ghost from
Buddhism, Taoism, mysticism, and animism in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. I
have never personally seen the \ghost" as represented in media; however, in a (non)human
subjectivity I can see the performativity of the ghost in generating the non-anthropocentric
relationality of the world. In my ongoing process of \intra-action" here in Los Angeles,
amidst the historical worldwide pandemic, memories of Malaysia, and my generational mi-
gration from China, this project expresses my cross-space-time interrelational subjectivity,
my own ghostly becoming.
26
Bibliography
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. \Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/Continuities,
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29

Abstract (if available)

Abstract With the questioning of technology, this thesis explores the idea of ghost to lead the non-dualistic ways of thinking to propose a (dis)embodied and (non)human interrelational subjectivityㅡa ghostly performativity. This research seeds the thinking process in my art practice through a rhizomatic exploratory approach to orchestrate several interrelated lines of thoughts between becoming and ghost

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Asset Metadata

Creator Lim, Yew Heng (author)

Core Title Ghostly becoming

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publication Date 03/25/2021

Defense Date 03/16/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag (non)human,art,becoming,ghost,interrelational,OAI-PMH Harvest,performativity,phantasmagoria,Ritual,subjectivity,Technology

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jones, Amelia (committee chair), Chang, Patty (committee member), Kelly, Mary (committee member), Lacy, Suzanne (committee member)

Creator Email yewhengl@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-431982

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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