Writing Wednesday: Fresh from the Notebook

I continue to work on handwriting because so many of my colleagues have assured me that it will unlock my inner creativity (or something). It’s mostly just fun, but sometimes when traveling I lean a bit more heavily on my notebook for notes on ongoing research. 

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Below are my notes from the last week or so on the revisions to my oil, photography, and archaeology book: 

### #124 — 3 March 2026

I’m ankle deep in revisions on my Bakken book and trying to come up with a way to systematically address reviewers’ comments and bring in some recent and adjacent scholarship (e.g. #124).

One thing that is haunting me is that I need to incorporate a chapter (appendix?) that outlines our conclusions (and observations) after a decade of work in the Bakken.

This chapter could appear after chapter 1, or more loosely draw heavily on our previous publications.

My current vision for it would be to organize it around 3 small chapters, lets or sections. The first section would introduce our typology and describe in greater detail what the three kinds of camps (and their sub-types) looked like.

—

## p.164

The second part would be an interpretation of their organization and materiality — i.e. what kinds of things appeared in and around these camps and how did the speak to the needs, aspirations and limits of the residents and camp owners.

The third section would include a bit of a diachronic study which drew upon “Bakkenism” (that is “cruel optimism”) and the decline of camps as the boom settles down.

Part of me is tempted to dump all this stuff into Claude and ask it to write a draft or propose an outline, BUT it is probably best that I just do it…

### #125 — 7 March 2026

I’m in Ft. Myers today and on my walk this morning I decided — more or less — to write an appendix to my book that basically describes the research outcome of my project in the Bakken. [This is a revision of the plan outlined in note #124.]

The appendix will become a pendant to the appendix in *Bakken Babylon*. As such it will give me two appendices that offer different perspectives on the oilpatch and reinforce the notion that the book can support a plurality of interpretations.

The new appendix would begin at the level of the landscape and situate the work force housing sites in the larger Bakken region.

—

## p.165

It will also allow us to discuss the Bakken as a periphery (in Wallersteinian sense) and to introduce the concept of the development of underdevelopment that was so important in our early work.

The section on landscape will situate camps both along the major thoroughfares through the region — Rt. 2 and 85 — as well as in more “peripheral” locations from Alexander to Wheelock, Arnegard, Epping and the little “detached” camp between Minot and Tioga. The type-3 camp nestled in a shelterbelt will be a nice concluding example.

The next section will discuss camps as camps. It will introduce the typology and the logic behind it as well as some intriguing edge cases. This will allow us to discuss the various affordances permitted by dint of the camp infrastructure.

Camps like the large Target logistic camp at Tioga features sewage treatment, for example. The Fisher — Type 2 camp — was “dry” without water or sewage but with electricity. Various other Type 2 camps offered a range of amenities, from wifi to laundry, child care and varying levels of security.

Type 2 camps also seem to have had a greater degree of social cohesion. Type-1 camps seemed to offer the greatest degree of social cohesion — these are ethnographic parallels that can make up for our small sample size.

—

## p.166

The final section will focus on “units” particularly in Type-2 camps. Here we’ll describe the standard characteristics of the form: mud rooms, insulation, outdoor appliances, gardens and p-the ways, social spaces etc. will be the most straightforward.

The conclusion of the chapter will address change over time, with the various fates of Type 2 and Type 1 camps.

### #126 — 8 March 2026

The appendix to my book described in #125 has three parts. The first part, which I am brainstorming here, will focus on the settlement landscape associated with the boom.

It seems to me that there are four types of man camp location. The most visible and expensive exist along major thoroughfares with Route 2 and Route 85 marking the major alignment of camps.

The second most significant influence on the location of camps in towns and cities, with Williston and Watford City attracting large numbers of camps. Of course these cities are on thoroughfares. Tioga, Stanley, Ray, Killdeer, and Arnegard also attracted camps owing to their location along major routes but also because certain towns — Tioga, Watford, Stanley etc. — have both amenities and infrastructure as well as oil field service and other companies.

—

## p.167

The third area that attracted camps are abandoned towns: Wheelock being the most obvious (also perhaps Corinth?). [What the name of the town where we got Fatty melts].

Several under populated small towns such as Epping and Alexander hosted workforce housing sites.

Finally, the fourth location is nearly random — note the large camp near Alexander. These are the most difficult for us to locate and study. Maybe the indoor RV park qualifying? Or were these two camps simply on the periphery of nodes.

It is likely worth describing the development of camps at the intersection on RT 85 and the extension course of RT 2 (?) south of Williston where several large camps aggregated to create a massive temporary settlement.

N.B. Our work did not seek to produce an exhaustive catalogue of camps — although the state sought to create such — but a representative sample of the kinds of work force housing sites in the region.

Maybe highlight 10 camps on thoroughfares: Capital Lodge (?) and McIll(?) or the Target logistics because a very visible camp or “stakeable.”

New cities: Target logistics near Williston, Abandoned America camp near Watford; various camps near Watford.

Abandoned towns: Wheelock and near Alexander. (Was there a camp near Epping?)

—

## p.168

### #127 — 10 March 2026

On my run this morning I began to think through the second part of the appendix that describes our findings in the Bakken.

The first part considered the location of the camps in the regional landscape. The second section will consider the organization of the camps themselves.

The key organizing concept that dictates the structure of the camps was centralization.

The Type 1 camps were the most centralized. They had central dining, exercise and socializing areas. Residents had individual rooms which were much like small hotel rooms.

Type 2 camps were organized around utilities infrastructure. In the case of sewage, for example, this was centralized in a common septic system. Electric and water would have entered the camp at a central point and then flow to individual lots and units.

Each unit housed space for sleeping, cooking, and socializing — as well as space for storage and parking.

—

## p.169

Type 3 camps were largely decentralized. People in these camps tended to self organize in ways that are practical to its residents. The absence of central spaces, infrastructure, or utilities obviated the need for any externally imposed organization.

The lack of examples of Type 3 camps is a problem, of course. BUT I suspect I think I can put Wheelock into this category as well as the venerable Idaho camp in the line outside of Tioga.

Dream Archaeology on Cyprus

This week has been not particularly productive in terms of reading or writing, but I did have a chance to read Michael Given’s recent article in T. Kiely, A. Reeve, and L. Crewe’s edited volume, Empire and Excavation. Critical Perspectives on Archaeology in British-Period Cyprus, 1878–1960 (Leiden: 2025): “Over the landscape, in the landscape? Knowledge and agency in Cypriot archaeology, 1870–1910.”

The article considers the role of Cypriots in developing the archaeology of the island during the British period. Given not only follows the well-understood practice of reading against the grain of texts to find traces of local knowledge in the more formal, colonial, and disciplinary language of archaeologists. Where Given really shines, though, is his understanding that archaeological knowledge even in a colonial context emerges through the interaction of multiple actors. In other places, Given describes this as convivial especially when some of the agents are objects. In this contribution, he focuses on the interplay between Cypriot and colonial knowledge making.

In one example, the place names on the Kitchener map of the island reflect more than just topographic traditions, but local naming practices in the landscape. In another, George McFadden, the excavator at Kourion in the 1950s, representing the University of Pennsylvania, used local dialectical terms for hawthorne — muşmula — that indicates more than just a botanical understanding of local plants, but one grounded in conversations with his Greek collaborators, workers, and friends. 

In Polis, Munro and Tubbs acquired the services of Gregorios Antoniou for his skill as an excavator of tombs. Antoniou had worked previously with Ohnefalsch-Richter, Hogarth, Arthur Evans, and Leonard Woolley. Given suggests, quite reasonably, that Antoniou’s excavation skills developed not simply owing to his time on colonial excavations, but through his “own unlicensed digging.” Of course, this unlicensed digging has both meaning and value primarily within a colonial context through which licenses are issued and certain kinds of artifacts are valued.

The final section of Given’s piece goes beyond the kind of archaeology mediated by colonial priorities. Here the discovery of the tombs of saints — sometimes made possible through dreams — created sites of healing and veneration. Given notes the tombs of Ayios Konstantinos and his fellow-martyrs in the village of Ormidhia near where we worked for many years at Pyla-Koutsopetria. Of course, the story of the discovery of the tomb of St. Barnabas in 488 which was guided by a vision of the saint. Here we see a tradition of indigenous archaeology that isn’t tied to emerging disciplinary practices but embedded in another tradition both anticipates, in some ways (as articulated by Y. Hamilakis in his various efforts to define an indigenous archaeology), and operates outside of disciplinary practice. Instead, it remains embedded in the social experiences, expectations, and knowledge of communities that existed before and within the colonial encounter.    

Music Monday: Some More Miles and Kenny Dorham

In my quest to get a better handle on Miles Davis’s discography as a way to celebrate his centennial, I’ve been listening to some of Davis’s mid-to-late 1950s material. Last week, for example, I posted about Relaxin’ (recorded in 1956 and released in March of 1958) and the first great Miles Davis quintet with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones.

It made sense to continue to listen to the expansion of that group into a sextet in 1958, Milestones. This album saw the addition of Cannonball Adderley and, more importantly, marked the first gesture of Miles Davis toward modal jazz (which will become “kind of” a big thing the next year).  

At the same time, this album marks out a new direction for Miles, so did Miles Ahead (1957) which was the first album in collaboration with Gil Evans. Of course this collaboration would culminate in the classics Porgy and Bess (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960).

I’ve become so fixated on Miles Davis that I sometimes overlook his contemporaries (or end up thinking of his contemporaries only in comparison to Miles). Kenny Dorham’s work in the mid- to late- 1950s offers a useful counterpoint. For example, Dorham plays Monk’s “‘Round About Midnight” on the live album of the same name from a 1956 date at the Café Bohemia in New York. If Miles tended toward the sparse and suggestive, Dorham had a fuller and even more energetic sound. Miles was already shifting to modal jazz whereas Dorham was exploring the frontiers of hard bop. Check it out here and then go and check out Miles’ contemporary album of the same name. 

Random Stuff Friday

I’m traveling today and don’t quite have time to do a proper blog post. 

We did have a NEW BOOK DAY this week and you should definitely go and check it Sebastian Braun’s Bearing the Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains here.

COVERBurden of Boom_Single.

Here is a little gaggle of quick hits:

Here are some photos:

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Archaeology of Oil

I was pretty excited to read a recent piece in Levant by Shatha Mubaideen, David Petts, John B. Winterburn, Ali al-Manaser & Tobias Richter and titled “Colonial-industrial heritage in Jordan: the case of the As-Safawi H5 pumping station.” 

I have to admit that I don’t read Levant very regularly but I mostly know it as a journal that focuses on the Ancient and, in a pinch, Medieval periods in the eastern Mediterranean. This article is not that. Instead, it focuses on a British Mandate oil pipeline pumping station Jordan at the site of H5 station near the modern village of As-Safawi in the Harrat Ash-Sham Black desert.

The pumping station was one of a series of similar stations along the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline constructed by the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) between 1932 and 1934. This pipeline remained in use until 1948. The pump station was more than just the tanks and equipment necessary to allow the pipeline to function. In fact, the article deals relatively little with that element of the site. Primary to the article was the various buildings built to house engineers, supervisors, and other workers on the pipeline. The site was connected to larger settlements in Jordan and in the larger British Mandate Levant by an airfield (for airmail) and road needed to build and maintain both the station and the pipeline. A pipeline brought water from the Azraq oasis 50 miles to the south.

Mubaideen et al. go on to demonstrate how the H5 pump station is consistent with not only the investment in infrastructure characteristic of the British Mandate Levant (particularly, their growing interest in securing access to petroleum), but also reflects British interests in social, economic, and military control. The organization of the space in the H5 pump compound paralleled the social organization of the operation with senior officials having more spacious and luxurious accommodations, engineers having middle grade accommodations, and various workers necessary for the functioning of the pump-station and pipeline being given more modest rooms in what appear to be dormitories. The Bedouin would camp outside the walls of the compound and serve as security in keeping with the British Mandate’s practice of employing Bedouin as “desert police” who both projected government control into inhospitable terrain and protected Mandate infrastructure. In effect, the remoteness of the pump station made it a man-camp.    

One of the most interesting aspects of the site is that it had a lengthy afterlife as a military base and a research facility. Its location along transportation routes and the presence of an airfield (and water) contributed to the development of a village in the shadow of the pump station-cum-military base. This settlement ebbed and flow with the stability of the region; when the Iraqi border was open in the 1990s, it grew, when the various Gulf Wars closed the border, the settlement contracted.

This project recognized that the experience of the community living beside the pump station was crucial to understanding how this site functioned has modern heritage. Community members recalled inexpensive movie nights at the compound, for example, and the classroom at the camp in the 1970s. The town logo of As-Safawi features an Arab Legion police outpost constructed in conjunction with the pump station. 

This kind of article is more than significant for a journal like Levant. It speaks to the growing awareness that the archaeology of oil is crucial lens through which to study the modern world and the Levant and Near East in particular. This means documenting

Five Minutes on the History of North Dakota Quarterly

I’m up at 3 am to contribute a 5 minute “lightning talk” to panel on regional magazines convened by the editors of the Edinburgh Companion to the Regional Magazine. For those of you who passed on my numerous past posts on this topic (here, here, here, and here) and who retained a bit of curiosity, this is a very short way to learn about my interest.

My short talk today is about the Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota. First appearing in 1910/1911, the Quarterly Journal published 23 volumes before succumbing to the financial pressures of the Great Depression. These volumes represent the development of a university magazine at a crucial time in the emergence of a distinctive form of American regionalism.

First, some context. The Quarterly Journal was founded at the University of North Dakota to serve as a vehicle for both faculty researchers and regional authors. The hope was that this magazine would serve as a token of exchange with other institutions to help develop the university library. At the same time, it had more popular and regional goals to spread the work that would be of “especial interest to the people of North Dakota or of the Northwest.” The state of North Dakota was new, established in 1889 (some five years after the founding of the eponymous university!), relatively large (183,000 sq. kms), and sparsely population with a little over 3 people per square km. The city of Grand Forks, where the university and magazine were based, has a population of only 12,400 people in 1910.

Despite the small population, the state has a busy newspaper scene with over 100 newspapers and printers in the state and four or five in Grand Forks alone. These publications complemented access to magazines published in the nearest major city, Minneapolis, which produced regional magazines, such as De Vestry’s Western Magazine or The Bellman which garnered national attention. In North Dakota, printers across the state produced a small number of relatively obscure magazines which variously catered to newly arrived ethnic groups — especially Scandanavians — political commitments, and a regional interest in the past and future of the new state. In the broader region, the first decades of the 20th century also saw the appearance of regional literary magazines: H. G. Merriam founded Frontier magazine in Missoula and James Frederick The Midland in Iowa City, Iowa. Frederick’s Midland briefly relocating to Moorhead Minnesota some 70 miles south of Grand Forks. It gained a reputation as national platform for regional writers and voices.

The Quarterly Journal both sits astride these various currents in regional publication and traces a distinctive trajectory in the development of regionalism in American little magazines. Unlike The Midland, Frontier, or The Bellman, The Quarterly published mostly non-fiction and scholarly fare. Its regional focus manifest itself in various articles on topics ranging from the potential of mineral resources in the state to history, tax policies, the organization of social services, and educational practice. The first editor, A.J. Ladd was hired as professor of education in 1905. Heavily steeped in progressive values of improvement through systematic research and policy, he cultivated likeminded authors such as the sociologist John Gillette and the historian Orin G. Libby. Gillette is widely appreciated as one of the founders of rural sociology; Libby, a student of the progressive University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, worked closely with Gillette and shared his values.

The progressive bent of the early contributors to the Quarterly Journal, and at the university more broadly, represented a step in the institutionalization of a late-19th century tradition of regional radicalism. Championed by regionalist advocates such as Hamlin Garland, the late 19th century saw the emergence of social, political, and economic radical populism: ranging from Georgism (i.e. the followers of Henry George) to various forms of collectivism (e.g. The Grange), antimonopolism, and utopianism (e.g. the work of Ignatius Donnelly). These movements marked a growing faith in the experience of rural life in the region. By the early 20th century, populist progressive movements such as the Non-Partisan League sought to institutionalize many of the values mooted by earlier regionalists. There was resistance to this, of course: A.J. Ladd was not only dismissed as editor of the Quarterly after volume 13, but also from the university in an attack by the administration on progressive faculty.

Subsequent editors largely maintained the Quarterly’s progressive regionalist bent, and the state developed distinctly regionalist manifestations of rural, agrarian populism such as a state bank and state grain mill. The Quarterly Journal had a place among these institutions as well as other little magazines, but unlike the mill and the bank, it succumbed to the Great Depression alongside many other early 20th century regional publications.

~

The lightning conference was really invigorating and I’m really excited to develop my paper a bit more in light of what I heard today. One thing that struck me was that the articles in the Quarterly Journal are really extraordinarily boring. And they are relentlessly boring. The absence of polemic especially in the early issues of the Quarterly is striking considering occasionally roiling political debates of the day (and outside a small number of articles such as Libby’s 1913 attack on “Partisan Scholarship”, Vernon Squires’ ham-fisted critique of the “New Poetry,” or the clearly staged back and forth between William Schier and E. D. Shonberger on humor in forensics). It may be that later issues of the Quarterly saw a greater willingness to engage aggressively with ideas (and perhaps there is a greater tendency in the numerous book reviews), but this remains a line of inquiry that I need to pursue more vigorously.

New Book Day: Bearing the Burden of Booms

It is my great pleasure to announce the publication of Sebastian Braun’s Bearing the Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains.

It is the third book on the Bakken to have come out from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and a major contribution to ongoing conversation on the impact of the 21st century North Dakota oil boom on the past, present, and future of the state.

It is also timely.

Recent news that Continental Resources, one of the stalwarts of the Bakken, has paused drilling caused anxieties across the state. On the other hand, Sunday’s jump in oil prices with the bombing of Iran has created opportunities for domestic producers, customer concerns, and a violent reminder of the price we pay for petroleum.

Check out the new book here.

The full media release comes below the fold.

COVERBurden of Boom_Single.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Book on the Bakken Brings Home the Burden of Oil Booms

The Bakken oil boom may well be a fading memory to the national media, but it continues to impact residents of western North Dakota. Sebastian Felix Braun’s new book, Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains, reflects years of field work in the Bakken oil patch and extracts crucial lessons from those who experienced the boom. Braun is Director of American Indian Studies and Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University.

Bearing the Burden of Booms unpacks the complex cultural, social, and environmental impact of the early-21st century Bakken oil boom across the North Dakota landscape. To do this, Braun draws upon years of research in Bakken communities. He gathered dozens of interviews, analyzed political and industry messaging, and developed a deep familiarity with indigenous attitudes toward oil and the environment. Combining this research with the economics of hydraulic fracturing allowed Braun to ask the question whether the cultural, social, and ecological disruptions of the boom were and are worth it.

Braun recalls, “when I started doing research in the Bakken around 2010, I became interested in a question very few people seemed to ask at the time: what will happen to the communities when the boom is over? In order to understand this, of course, we have to know what the boom does in the first place. I am not sure the book can deliver an answer to the original question, but it aims to discuss resource extraction booms from a variety of different perspectives, and I hope the reader can find some answers in that.”

The diversity of perspectives in Bearing the Burden of Booms makes it a unique contribution to the small, but significant body of work on the Bakken and resource booms more broadly. This book also stands out because it recognizes the urgency facing communities today as the speed and frequency of resource booms accelerates with improving technology and global connectivity.

For Braun, “this book, and others like it, is important right now because we are facing the most important question perhaps in the history of our societies: should we continue to live in a way that is destructive to landscapes, communities, and ourselves in order for some of us to live comfortably and amass wealth, or should we change to another way of life? I hope communities can use it to be in a position to make their own decisions.”

This is the third book focusing on the Bakken oil boom published by The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. Publisher William Caraher remarks: “The Digital Press has established itself the leading publisher on the Bakken and the social impact of oil more broadly. It’s an honor to publish this latest installment alongside my edited volume The Bakken Goes Boom and Kyle Conway’s Sixty Years of Boom and Bust.“

Like all book published by The Digital Press, this book will be available as both a free download and a low-cost paperback. For more on this book go here: https://thedigitalpress.org/booms/

Music Monday: More Miles, Cecil Taylor, and George Russell

I’m started to get invested in unpacking Miles Davis’s mid-1950s recordings. Many of these are the familiar outputs of his first great quintet (Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) who recorded throughout the mid-1950s. Cookin’ (1957) is a particular favorite of mine and was one of my introductions to jazz music in high school. Relaxin’ (1957) was partly recorded at the same time with the same ensemble.

One thing that listening to these albums albums has helped me understand is pace at which Miles and his bandmates accelerated over the mid-1950s. Listening to some of the recordings released as Miles 55: The Prestige Recordings (remastered in 2024) helped me appreciate how much both Miles’s playing and the quartet’s performances transformed between 1955 and 1956 and 1957. In 1955, they were playing advanced hard bop; two years later the seeds of modal jazz were there.   

 

As readers of this blog know, I’m fascinated by the concept of fragments, and I can’t wait to here the Cecil Taylor album Fragments due to drop on Record Store Day (whenever and whatever that is). Recorded life in Paris in 1969, it features Jimmy Lyons on alto, Sam Rivers on tenor, soprano, and flute, and Andrew Cyrille on bass. Like most Cecil Taylor, it is not chill, but it is vibrant and brilliant:

 

Finally, as the Formula 1 season approaches, it seems only appropriate to celebrate The Real George Russell ™. I’ve been enjoying his album, The Essence of George Russell (1971) which was recorded in Stockholm in 1966 and 1967. It involved the innovative use of tape and electronic music as well as a fantastic avant-garde jazz musicians such as Jan Garbarek and Stanton Davis and a big band. This album anticipates his other 1971 album Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature which captured the performance of some of this same music in 1969. It’s brilliant even if it has nothing to do with that other George Russell (the younger).

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

After closing the week with some nice days, this weekend winter will remind us that it is still around for a couple more month with cold temperatures once again. Oh well. It is good reading weather as the saying goes.

This weekend sees the NASCAR guys head to Austin’s Circuit of the Americas for their first road course challenge. It’s usually pretty entertaining. The T20 Mens Cricket World Cup continues with England – New Zealand today and India – West Indies on Sunday catching my interest. On Saturday, Emanuel Navarrete takes on Eduardo Núñez in what the kids call an “all action” fight. To wrap up the weekend, the Sixers play the hated Celtics on Sunday night.

I have some good work to do today and this weekend and after a rough couple weeks of quasi-productivity, I am eager to get back into a routine. To kick that off, here are some quick hits and varia:

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Three Things Thursday: Reading Byung-Chul Han

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve read some Byung-Chul Han particularly his book The Scent of Time (2017). This was prompted by my reading of Arturo Ribeiro’s article in Shadow Archaeology which cites Han pretty extensively.

Han’s arguments about fragmentation and time will be particularly useful for the revisions of my book, Archaeology, Photography, Oil. Workforce Housing in the Bakken. 

Here are three things that I’m finding useful in Han.

Thing the First

Han agrees with any number of other commentators that the modern world is fragmented. He calls this “dyschronicity”. For Han, time literally is falling out of sync with itself. The absence of rhythm or structure to time causes events, experiences, and moments to “whizz about” randomly and in fragments that lack duration. The result is that time loses character; much in the way that scholars have noted the rise of modern non-places (e.g. shopping malls, hotels, airports, et c.), time has lost what makes it distinct or, in Han’s terms, its scent. The reasons for this are varied and complex, but mostly have to do with the collapse of narrative. Because there is no narrative, there can’t be goals or purpose to the passage of time. It moves endlessly and aimlessly causing modern humans to no longer work collectively (motivated, say, by a shared narrative) toward or goal but to work constantly as it is no longer possible to discern when a task is complete (or even the nature of a task itself). In fact, the absence duration and narrative is crucial for the expansive view of the contemporary that characterizes archaeology of the contemporary world. The time of the archaeologist, the event, the experience, and the object are all discrete and distinct. The flattening of time into an ontologically indistinct present opens the future to new relationships with the present and past.

Thing the Second

The decline of narrative is particularly useful for my work because I was drawn to Benjamin’s skepticism surrounding narrative as a motivating agent for contemporary life. Benjamin saw narratives, particularly those wielded by the fascist right, but also embedded in capitalism, as particularly toxic. They resulted in not only narrow minded determinism characteristic of totalitarianism, but also the “cruel optimism” (to use Berlant’s term) of capitalism that drives the worker to an individual future that no amount of work will ever achieve. 

For Han, the fragmentation of time isn’t a cure to the potential domination of the narrative, but the result of narrative collapsed (which perhaps has a parallel with the collapse of authority). Narrative collapse means that it is unlikely that new narratives will emerge that are compelling or meaningful. (And the current political landscape seems to confirm this observation). Instead, we are left with a world devoid of narrative and therefore incapable of any sustained notion of time as duration. As a result, the contemporary becomes an all encompassing space for the juxtaposition of endlessly fragmented presents. Work, data points, information, and images do not lead anywhere but whizz about in the continuous contemporary. 

Thing the Third

Han regards the collapse of narrative and the fragmentation of time and experience not as a crisis that we must overcome through the imposition of a new narratives. There is also no way to “work” ourselves out of this situation through more frenetic efforts to organize or arrange experiences as they whizzed about. Instead, Han proposed that we embrace the potential of fragments as objects of contemplation. Each fragment contains its own time, its own experience, and its own “scent.” Through contemplation, one can recognize the “scent of time” and restore duration as well as our capacity to recognize the relationship between moments and objects. This allows us to subvert the endless and pointless activity of work which leads nowhere and accomplishes nothing and replace it with a renewed connection to existence. Han leans on Heidegger’s notion of dwelling here.

For my work as an archaeologist, the value of Han’s notion of contemplation three fold. First, my project focuses on images — the quintessential expression of modern fragmentation — and Han offers a lens through which to produce meaning from photographs without reducing them to evidence for an argument or points in a narrative. 

Second, this allows me to understand the images as contemporary with the situations that they produce (that is the objects, relationships, and conditions present in the photographs), with the time that they were taken, and with the viewer. This expansive view of the contemporary creates a temporal space for the interplay between fragments and restores a sense of duration to the present without re-engaging with the notion of narrative. It allows for more open-ended and expansive juxtapositions that produce not just meaning, but significance and understanding. This process encourages us to slow down. 

Finally, by presenting images as fragments of experience, it deliberately undermines narratives of production which serve to obfuscate the profoundly unproductive routine of work. Photographs capture the fragmented experience of the cycle of booms and busts, the endless demands of extraction, the experience of life in a workforce housing site in the Bakken oil patch, the sense of precarity, displacement, and contingency. Photographs not only express the material reality of non-narrative existence, but by encouraging contemplative study subverts extractive practices that produce (or assume) narrative.