Diachronic Fetishisation: Ruin Porn and Pitcairn Island Language, Archaeology, and Architecture

Abstract

Two meanings of the transitive verb to fetishise are "to make (something) the object of a sexual fetish" and "to have an excessive and irrational commitment to (something)." Our use of fetish in this chapter tends towards the second definition. We are diachronic fetishisers, committed to documenting and writing about old tangibles and vintage intangibles across time: crumbling buildings and near dead languages. Without us, much of what we record through viewing and hearing would be lost, because the people whose things we fetishise and archive are largely little interested in these very things themselves beyond any utilitarian or economic value. Time is both our friend and our enemy. It creates the nature and the forms we consider. Ruining, ruin photography, ruin pornography, and ruin language documentation are our methods.