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Roundtable

How would you define the underground? How does this concept intersect with your research?

Pike: I define the underground as any space below the surface of the earth, but this physical definition, while fundamental, is only the beginning of the figurative applications of the word and concept “underground. ”And while there are material spaces that are inarguably subterranean—a deep tube tunnel, a deep mine, a sewer, a burial vault—there are also tunnels one can enter and exit at ground level; there are excavated mines that are nevertheless exposed to the air; there are open sewers; there are mausoleums that tower high into the sky. Moreover, any space can temporarily or permanently be perceived, conceived, and represented as underground no matter how apparently aboveground it may be—say, the windowless interior office in a skyscraper. So we can also define “underground” as a particular set of associations that can be attributed to any space, although these associations will often be contradictory: there is the dark, wet, dangerous, alien underground; there is the warm, sheltering, and controlled underground; and there are any number of combinations of these and related attributes. The physical underground doesn’t change that much, although its valuation does; the metaphorical underground is always changing, although once you make the list, it is difficult wholly to shake the association.

I call my field of research “subterranean studies.” My work is concerned with defining and describing the underground in the full range of the meanings outlined in the previous paragraph. I am particularly interested in plotting historical changes in the use and representation of subterranean space, and ways in which those changes interact with the ever-growing collection of images and associations that accrue around subterranean space in the passage of time. I am also concerned with the intimate relationship between cities and the underground over the past several centuries, and thus with the underground in relationship to modernity. My current work is focused on subterranean settings in the cinema, and aims to theorize the important role played by the space of the cinema and cinematic space in articulating twentieth-century metaphorics of the underground.

Khactu:

“The underground is better, in any case. There one can at least… Hey, but I’m lying once again! I’m lying because I know myself as surely as two times two, that it isn’t really the underground that’s better, but something different, altogether different, something that I long for, but I’ll never be able to find!” –Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Underground or overboard overlord oh my lord / More remorse pure sonic over joy sworn for shorts / Unseen aquatic bout to get explored / Warriors breakin all the limits twistin’ the laws / Now who said that underground is only just one more?” –Blackalicious

I work on the trope of performing racial identity within twentieth-century ethnic American literatures and film. Because of the institutional positioning of film and ethnic American literature within English departments, I often find my objects of study described as “emerging literatures.” The use of “emerging,” even metaphorically, is telling in how it presumes a space prior to the mainstream vision: what is the space these literatures exist in before they “emerge,” and what kind of violent rupture is needed to allow these literatures to “emerge” from the underground?

Jones: The very general modern concept of underground movements/culture involves a more or less organized group of particular people, working in secret or with a low profile, who share a project or ideal that runs counter to the commonly received societal and ideological structure, which project must be periodically brought to public attention by spectacular acts which nevertheless protect the anonymity of the participants. Far be it from me to state definitively that nothing of the sort existed in the Middle Ages, but I will relegate the question to the domain of conspiracy theorists. Medieval heretics did not possess the defining characteristics of the underground – they did not think that there was anything inherently wrong with the ideological system itself and they did not seek to undermine that system anonymously or secretly.

We must remember that a heretic is very different from an infidel. An infidel is someone who has never been a Christian and can be expected to oppose the Christian order. A heretic is someone who very likely thinks that he is a better Christian than you are and nevertheless undermines the Christian order, that is, the Catholic Church as a political institution. As Herbert Grundmann pointed out in his still unsurpassed study Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, the burgeoning heresies in 11th- and 12th-century Europe grounded their beliefs in a reading of the Bible that demanded an imitatio Christi (or at the very least apostolici) from every Christian. They did not object to the hierarchy of the Church as such, but rather were dismayed by the fact that priests, for example, were invested with privileges and duties for which they were spiritually unfit. Most heretics had no intention of overthrowing the papacy and their efforts were directed towards their own spiritual salvation and that of their immediate neighbors. They worked towards this goal by living as the apostles did – living communally from alms, often becoming itinerants, and preaching. This was usually done openly and with the best of intentions – indeed, during the twelfth century several heretical communities requested recognition from the pope. The last two groups to approach the pope became the Franciscans and the Dominicans, mendicant orders that continued to walk a fine line between ideational heresy and institutional sanction throughout the Middle Ages.

The point I hope to get across is that medieval heresy, however revolutionary we moderns may consider it, was fundamentally different from our concept of an underground movement in two important ways. (1) It did not object to the conceptual program of the established order, but rather felt that the established order was not fulfilling its own ideal. (2) It was in no way secret.

Why does one go underground? Is it usually a political gesture?

Pike: Traditionally, one goes underground for shelter or to seek riches and knowledge, either because one is compelled to do so—as a fugitive or a guerilla or a prisoner—or out of one’s own volition—as a dweller or as a fortune-hunter or as a seeker of hidden knowledge, especially in the underworld. “Underground” in its political sense has only been around the last couple of centuries, although of course there have been political movements literally underground (in caves, tunnels and catacombs) for as long as there have been political movements. Over the last couple of centuries, going underground has often had a political connotation, but quantitatively, the vast majority of persons going underground are probably just taking the subway.

Khactu:
A mash-up:
Invisible Man vs. Notes from Underground vs. The Game’s “300 Bars and Runnin’” vs. Nas’ “Black Zombie”

The voice of invisibility issued from deep within our complex American underground. I wanted to bring before the public with more prominence than usual one of the characters of the recent past. But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and my old way of life: that way based upon the fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible.

At all times I was aware of a great many elements in me that were just the opposite of that. I felt how they swarmed inside me, these contradictory elements. I knew that they had been swarming inside me my whole life and were begging to be let out; but I wouldn’t let them out, I wouldn’t, I deliberately wouldn’t let them out. I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of light.
The point now is that I found a home—or a hole in the ground, as you will. The underground is mine; I treat it like home. It’s the reason n****z saying my name like Mike Jones. Now I live out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything and that only a fool can become something. Mine is a warm hole. I used to live in this corner before, but now I’ve settled down in it.

I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m visible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. You believe when they say we ain’t shit, we can’t grow? They make the world look crazy to keep you inside. Killing shorty’s future, I wonder how we last it underground in they casket. Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.

 

How does the underground affect what lies above?

Pike: In a material sense, most of the infrastructure of modern cities is still located underground, so the underground literally makes life aboveground possible. The vast majority of the productive activity that produces the power that we consume and the goods we buy occursin spaces hidden from view, and thus figuratively underground when not also literally subterranean. To divide the world between what is above and what is below is to divide conceptually different practices that actually occur in the same physical space, be those spaces above or below the ground: there are foremen in mines and supervisors in factories; there are menial laborers cleaning the offices of the powers that be; there is a broad social spectrum in any single car on a subway. But the framework by which we tend to conceive of space vertically, whether we valorize the underground as alternative, oppressed, and revolutionary or demonize it as degenerate, dysfunctional, and criminal, promises a strict spatial and moral separation.  In this framework, what is unwanted, threatening, obsolete, and alien—or needs to be represented as such—is placed “underground”: this is the only way in which the space we think of as not underground can become coherent. The threats to that coherence will be represented spatially and often problematized as thresholds between above- and underground.

Khactu:

« unknown to him the chain was buried in the woods behind his home »
James Byrd Jr / Jasper, Texas / 7 June 1998

Jones: The simplest answer is that the existence of an underground (or a heresy) necessitates that the established order be able to mobilize a hegemonic social mechanism by which the underground can be integrated into the existing order without destroying it. In the late twelfth century, Pope Innocent III must have realized precisely this, because he began to change the curia’s policy on heretical groups. Rather than persecuting heretics as had been previously done and often to the chagrin of local bishops, Innocent III offered deals notably to the Humiliati, the Christian Poor, the Franciscans, and the Dominicans. The first two groups faded from history quite quickly, but the tremendous effect of the recognition of the two potentially heretical groups as mendicant orders should be immediately evident – if only from the fact that Dominicans themselves later primarily carried the burden of conducting the Inquisition.

What has been (or will be) the impact of the Internet upon underground communities and networks?

Pike: One effect of the Internet is to remind us of the inadequacy of the conceptual division between above- and underground that has dominated the representation of space in the west for the last couple of centuries. There is no above- and no underground in cyberspace, nor do alternative communities that exist solely in cyberspace (hackers, for example) appear to have embraced the label “underground” to the same degree as their predecessors in “real” space. At the same time, the “space” of the Internet can help to conceptualize a new kind of space: global space, a space that makes visible for the first time the vast scale of the ways in which the world economy is globalized, and that the world is divided between a tiny elite and a massive army of workers serving the needs of that elite, hidden out of sight. This powerful but simplistic image, drawn from Fritz Lang’s 1926 film, Metropolis, is grossly inaccurate in its occlusion of detail but nevertheless quite correct in its broad contours. Like any other technology, the Internet offers both liberatory and oppressive potential – gains in communication, organization, and ability to disseminate information along with harsher and more effective surveillance and control. The degree to which the Internet can maintain an identity independent of the spatial metaphorics of above – and underground is the degree to which it will retain the potential to change the unequal world for which those spatial metaphorics provide the most accurate description.

Jones: I might tentatively propose that underground networks that operate through the Internet are interestingly similar to groups of medieval heretics in two ways: (1) the beliefs, sentiments, and stances of the underground group are wholly public. There is little or no attempt made to hide the ideational content of the group’s project; at the same time, there is no need to do more than pronounce it (or post it, as it were) in order to spread the subversive message. The most important difference here is that medieval heresy was spread through personal contacts, which is obviously not the case with internet communities. I would argue, however, that itinerancy affords the promulgator a degree of anonymity similar to the invisibility lent by the internet. (2) It is almost impossible to identify who precisely belongs to the underground. In the same way that hundreds of people flocked to listen to heretics preaching in city squares, thousands of people visit and read underground websites without fully understanding or believing the content.

Is there an underground academia?

Pike: Only if you’re a member of the right-wing media.

This is not to say that plenty of members of academia may not also have an underground identity or identities independent of their academic affiliation, or that they may not teach or study underground activities or movements. When occurring under the auspices of an academic setting and structure, however, they are pretty much by definition aboveground. Now, being a conceptual distinction, contradictions will inevitably arise that trouble this distinction; academia has provided and hopefully will continue to provide intellectual space to raise contradictions and an institutional base for the underground activists or artists who raise them. But it would be erroneous to equate that support with an “underground” existence per se; indeed, the aboveground constraints of the university militate against any direct or full realization within its spaces of the oppositional negativity associated with the underground.

For example, the Situationists argued that any abstract theorization or generalization of their practices as Situationism negated any revolutionary potential the group may have had, and insofar as what goes on in the classroom when I teach the Situationists, this is true: I teach Situationism, and if I were to try these days to teach according to Situationist principles in all of their subterranean glory, I would probably be fired and subsequently sued. But this is not to say (pace the Situationists) that some of the students in that class might not take up some of those co-opted ideas and, outside of the confines of the space of academia, retool them in the underground terms as which the Situationists had originally conceived and practiced them.

Jones: There is most definitely an underground academia and I do think that it is underground due to academic politics. Securing oneself a position within this system is the first goal, which often must be prioritized over publishing ideas and arguments that truly reflect one’s theoretical/political/analytical leanings. There is a very fine line to walk between being traditional enough to get hired and being radical enough to garner positive attention. Many people ‘go underground’ until they deem it safe enough to publish their true minds.

Please provide us with links and/or primary sources (film, art, poetry, advertisement, fashion, fiction, performing arts?) that evoke heroes, gods, and myths.

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  Ten essential “underground” fictions (and one essay):

  Virgil, The Aeneid, book 6. First century BCE.
  Dante Alighieri, Inferno. Early 14th century.
  Margaret Cavendish. The Blazing World.1666.
  Victor Hugo. Les Misérables. 1862.Esp. part 5, books 2-3.
  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. 1864.
  Wells, H. G. The Time Machine, 1895.
  Kafka, Franz. “The Burrow.” 1923-24.
  Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. 1937.
  Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. 1952.
  Pynchon, Thomas. V. 1963. Primary source of the alligators in the sewers myth in New York.
  Murakami, Haruki. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. 1991.

  Ten essential “underground” films:

  Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)
  The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
  Them! (1954, Gordon Douglas)
  Kanal (1957, Andrzej Wajda)
  La Jetée (1962, Chris Marker)
  The Warriors (1979, Walter Hill)
  Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)
  Moëbius (1996, Gustavo Mosquera)
  Dark Days (2000, Mark Singer)
  Kontroll (2003, Nimród Antall)

  Some “underground” art online:

  1. Art Crimes includes graffiti art from around the world
  2. Wayne Barrar’s photographs document what he terms “commodified subterra”
  3. William Blake’s illustrations of the Inferno on the National Gallery of Victoria’s web page
  4. Digital Dante’s Image Collections includes illustrations of Inferno by Botticelli, Doré, and Dali
  5. Andreas Magdanz’s photographs document the Dienststelle Marienthal, an 83,000 m2 shelter built for the Bonn government in a railway tunnel between 1960 and 1972
  6. A selection of Henry Moore’s sketches of tube shelterers during the Battle of Britain, at the Tate
  7. One of Mark Rothko’s subway pictures of the 1930s

  Some general underground links:

  • The London Underground in Film and Television provides an annotated and impressively comprehensive list of the countless media appearances of the Tube (I have not yet found an equivalent resource for any other city)
  • Les Catacombes de Paris dans la Bande Dessinée—unique among the numerous sites devoted by cataphiles to subterranean Paris, this site offers an annotated and illustrated list of appearances of the Catacombs of Paris in comics.
  • The ‘zine Infiltration specializes in “going places you’re not supposed to go”—its webpage has links to pages on literally and metaphorically underground spaces the world over.
  • Subterranea Britannica: “the study & investigation of all man-made and man used underground spaces”
  • www.souterrains.org/: a global guide to human made subterranean structures sponsored by the Union Internationale de Spéléologie

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• Adrian Khactu's suggestions

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  Hogg, Samuel Delany [Fiction]
  Perdido Street Station, China Miéville [Fiction]
  Street of Crocodiles (1986, Dir: Brothers Quay) [Film]
  Kontroll (2003, Dir: Nimrod Antal) [Film]
  The fourth movement (Adagio) of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (in D Major) [Music]
  Dengue Fever’s Escape from Dragon House (2005) [Music]
  “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely,” Claudia Rankine [Poetry]
  

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  The medieval example that has most recently become important is that of Marguerite Porete, a female mystic who was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310. Her writings and teachings (contained in her treatise De l’âme anéantie) are generally assumed to have inspired the heresy of the ‘Free Spirit,’ a movement which ran rampant in the fourteenth century, despite the Dominicans being on the case. Along the same lines, an immense controversy sprang up around Joan of Arc, providing the occasion for Jean Gerson (a prominent Paris intellectual) to spill much ink, as well as bringing the famous poet Christine de Pizan out of retirement to write her last work, La ditié de Jehanne d’Arc.

  As far as contemporary examples go, there are some entertaining films in which medieval ‘undergrounds’ are depicted:

  • Extramuros (film directed by Miguel Picazo in which nuns fake stigmata in order to direct attention toward their convent)
  • The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco (and the fabulous film with Sean Connery)
  • Brother Sun, Sister Moon (a rather silly movie about Saint Francis, portrayed as a medieval hippie)

  Last but not least, in February 2008, Julia Kristeva published a 700-page novel about 16th-century Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila entitled Thérèse mon amour.

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