SITE READING Site Reading FICTION, ART, SOCIAL FORM DAVID J. ALWORTH PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket Art or Photograph: (1) In the grocery with our little helpers © Jaro Larnos / Flickr; (2) Scrapyard / © CG Textures; (3) Roads, © Jacobo Cortés Ferreira / CG Textures; (4) DebrisStone, © Jonas De Ro / CG Textures; (5) Restrain, © Rikke68 / Thinkstock All Rights Reserved ISBN 978– 0- 691– 16449– 6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014959229 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Montserrat, Bulmer MT Std and Sabon Next LT Pro Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For the little collective There is a question implicit in the foregoing analyses and interpre- tations. It is this: what is the mode of existence of social relations? No sooner had the social sciences established themselves than they gave up any interest in the description of “substances” inherited from philosophy: “subject” and “object,” society “in itself,” or the individual or group considered in isolation. Instead, like the other sciences, they took relationships as their object of study. The question is, though, where does a relationship reside when it is not being actualized in a highly determined situation? — HENRI LEFEBVRE, The Production of Space CONTENTS List of Illustrations xi INTRODUCTION: THE SITE OF THE SOCIAL 1 1 SUPERMARKET SOCIOLOGY (Don DeLillo, Andy Warhol) 25 TEST SITES 49 2 DUMPS (William S. Burroughs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) 51 3 ROADS (Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, John Chamberlain) 73 4 RUINS (Thomas Pynchon, Robert Smithson) 96 5 ASYLUMS (Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, Jeff Wall) 121 AFTERWORD: SITE UNSEEN 149 Acknowledgments 157 Notes 161 Bibliography 187 Index 201