Auge And The Living Room Analysis

In the 21st Century, we are presented with an overabundance of events that we are innately programmed to try and understand (Buchanan, 1999). This overabundance, according to Augé, combined with the limited capacity to understand an overwhelming number of events at once, sets us up for failure, which Augé terms as a ‘crisis of meaning’ (Buchanan, 1999). Multiple signifying universes that demand our attention also confuse the terms local and global. Buchanan presents the example of a television in a living room; “is the local the living room and the global what’s on TV? Or is the TV the local because it is in the living room and the living room global because via the TV it is connected to the whole world?” (1999). What Augé is actually trying to address …show more content…
In a generic space, the individual has the chance to be hypothetically invisible and indistinguishable from the collection of other invisible individuals that also occupy non-places (Matienzo, 2004). Augé explains how individuals can be anonymous in such a familiar place by leading us back to the “so-called” crisis of meaning. The innate desire to categorize and assign meaning to everything is what is causing the crisis and it is because people cannot be identified with a place, or the populations within that place that causes chronic categories that fall in line with government mentality or other categorical issues of inequity (Buchanan, 1999:295). Within non-places, individuals are not forced to interact with other individuals rather the words and texts that non-places offer its temporary occupants (Hill, 2010), leaving the individual feeling independent rather than socialized and