The twentieth century was the Age of Fluorescent Enlightenment. Society progressed beyond the Dark Age of candles with idiosyncratic patterns of melting wax. The decisive embrace of enlightenment came with fluorescent lights.
Leading twentieth-century bureaucratic artist Dan Flavin made his artistic reputation working with commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. Drawing upon funds from the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, the Hirshhorn Museum in 2010 purchased Flavin’s masterpiece, untitled. Flavin meant this work to be “suggesting the possibility of infinite repetition.” The best bureaucracies realize that ideal in the face of insistent failure. They have the persistence of the insistent hum of fluorescent lights.
What makes untitled exceptionally memorable is that, rotated imaginatively ninety degrees, it figures a career ladder. That figurative career ladder is set against a background color evoking Yves Klein’s career-making International Klein Blue. Bureaucrats both engage in infinite repetition and imagine themselves climbing ever higher on a regular career ladder. To appreciate the essential bureaucracy of this paradox, one must interrogate bureaucratic time and praxis, as have important twentieth-century bureaucratic artists Hanne Darboven and Ali Kazma.
Out of 108 Flavin sculptures held in art collections, 65 are titled untitled. That’s a poignant tribute to bureaucratic regularity. Another 19 of Flavin’s sculptures are entitled Monument for V. Tatlin, or slight variations thereof. V. Tatlin of course is the towering Russian architect and artist Vladimir Tatlin, creator of Tatlin’s tower. Tatlin has had tremendous influence on twentieth-century bureaucratic artists. Flavin takes Tatlin’s ideals to a level of bureaucratic realism that Tatlin would have appreciated, had he lived long enough to experience the Brezhnev era. All bureaucrats around the world today, who sit day in and day out bathed in fluorescent light, appreciate the progress to the Age of Fluorescent Enlightenment that Dan Flavin has so repeatedly represented.
In other bureaucratic issues this month, Tremble the Devil observes that Barnes & Noble’s entire fiction order is controlled by one nameless, faceless bureaucrat. That makes business sense. Bureaucrats understand fiction better than non-fiction.
PandoDaily covers an interview with SecondLife founder Philip Rosedale. SecondLife is a virtual world in which participants can create any kind of life for themselves. PandoDaily reports:
Rosedale said one of the biggest surprises he had building SecondLife was how when given total creative license, most of the houses just looked like ones in Malibu. Most people just covet the things they know, he says.
In other words, most people cherish bureaucratic ideals.
The scholarly journal PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review recently dedicated an issue to bureaucracy. The introductory article, entitled “Bureaucracy: Ethnography of the State in Everyday Life” forthrightly acknowledges oversights and failures of anthropologists:
anthropologists have been slow to treat state bureaucracy as a site for ethnography, and bureaucrats as participants in a complex social arena. … The work of administration takes place in the fluorescent-lit rooms of drab office buildings where thousands of bureaucrats type streams of information into outdated computers or file handwritten notes in inaccessible archives. From all appearances, this is not an arena of political action at all.
This description gets the details right (fluorescent-lit rooms, etc.), but misses the fundamental cultural point. Bureaucrats are not petty, axe-grinding politicians like academics. Bureaucrats focus on doing their jobs. Bureaucracy, however, is an excellent site for ethnography. A leading institution of bureaucrat anthropology has been engaged in participant-observer field reporting on bureaucracy since 2006.
That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.
It seems important to note that our society has moved beyond the “Age of Fluorescent Enlightenment “. We are now in the era of LED Enlightenment. This could be devastating for bureaucrats that are dependent upon “fluorescent-lit rooms” and the “hum of fluorescent lights”. Today any bureaucrat worth his salt (or worth his “Rejected” stamp) realizes that in order to continue climbing the bureaucratic career ladder one must forsake fluorescent lights and embrace LEDs.
Bureaucrats should be very thankful that we have moved from florescent lights to LEDs. Florescent light are big and bright. LED are small and subtle. Each LED gives only a tiny bit of light, however, LEDs (like bureaucrats) are everywhere. LED have invaded our homes, offices and automobiles. Every home, office and automobile has dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny LEDs, each doing its little job of noting that this or that appliance is on or off. Each LED may have a tiny task, but each LED is faithful to its task until death. Just like a bureaucrat. Next time you see and LED, think of the equivalent bureaucrat and give thanks,
Excellent points. Let’s give thanks to bureaucrats for letting there be light.