Auge Place and Non-place

In the Baudelairean sense of modernity, ancient places are not obliterated by time but are integrated within the new. Pushed to the background, anthropological places survive the ages and perpetuate as a sort of hum, a “bass line” (Starobinski, quoted in Augé, 1995, p.77) that marks the passing of time. However, the places of what Augé calls “supermodernity”—which is a shift in the outlook we have on the world we live in due to overabundance of events and spatial excess—do not integrate in this manner with the past. They do not possess an identity defined by historically established relations and shared references and in this sense they are not anthropological places. To distinguish between anthropological place and the place of supermodernity, one that embodies ideas of anonymity and transience, Augé uses the term "non-place" (French: non-lieux).

Augé sees place and non-place as being correlated as opposite polarities: while place is never fully erased, non-place is never fully completed (Augé, 1995, p.79). He traces the original distinction between place and non-place to that of place and space, noting that the idea of space has always been more abstract than that of place. While in fact the idea of place in all its forms has the concrete character of “something happening," that of space in itself applies to a multitude of concepts, and this vagueness in a way erodes the same concepts it tries to express. Augé argues that the term "space" is thus not only capable to adapt and define themes that are at the heart of the contemporary age, but also that its abstract quality and its excess of meaning are precisely what more than anything else encompass and explain the very nature of supermodernity.

The idea of non-place considers space as the "frequented place” and suggests a negative quality of place, an absence. Space is frequented, but not inhabited; it is considered briefly through the words attributed to it, as it happens with the locations on a map that one passes by while on a journey.

Augé quotes as exemplary of the itinerary from place to non-place the accounts of travelers, who collect snapshot-like images of places which they "catch only in partial glimpses” (Augé, 1995, p. 86) to construct their own narrative of journey. The passing through these places, named but not lived in, functions as frequentation, one where the actual emphasis of the journey is on the spectator, while the spectacle in itself has little meaning. But this is not all, as in supermodernity the spectator’s gaze aimed at the spectacle is in turn commodified and turned into the object of another external gaze. This multiplication, which is also a shift in identity, is a figure of what Augé sees as the supermodern overabundance. The altered relation between individual and place is a character of supermodernity, and this is why "the traveler's space may thus be the archetype of non-place" (Augé, 1995, p. 86).

The notion of non-place then describes both the essence of the space itself as a transit area and the relation that those who traverse it establish with it. The connection between the individual and the space is defined by supermodernity’s obsession with commodification. Places are given names that empty them of their meaning from within; they are turned into non-places, into passages, in which identity is lost, at least for a time.

The non-place uses verbal communication, often in the form of text or pictograms, to replace direct interaction and closeness with place with an illusion of proximity in which individuality loses its significance. Complex sets of codified rules regulate entry and dictate behavior inside the non-place. For instance, to gain access one has to be able to prove oneself through identification—by means of transactions as showing one's documents, purchasing a ticket, paying for goods, and so on. Those traversing a non-place, whether a shopping mall, an airport, a motorway, can never ultimately say to be at home in it because the codified rules and the transactions they entail transform them into the "average man,” users of the system; which is to say, customers, commuters, passengers, solitary and yet associated under the same shared identity. In exchange they can enjoy temporary anonymity, a fictitious state of being that is free from the burden of references and as such, to a degree, of responsibilities.

“The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude and similitude,” writes Augé (1995, p. 103). It does not create organic societies either. This is because in the non-place there’s no sense of history, no form of reflection reaching out beyond the present. The non-place is the space of actuality.

Sources:
Augé M. (1995), “From Place to Non-place” in "Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity", Verso, pp. 75-115.