Thanks very much. I'm very excited to have been given the opportunity to assemble a really stellar selection of speakers for you today. I'll just stop whining. So we're going to trying to tackle this question of extraction and to a certain extent trying to define what we mean by extraction from essentially five very different points of view and five very different styles. If it helps you can think of us as the Spice Girls of extractology. Myself, I'm sleep deprived
spice. I'll try to make a coherent introduction to this afternoon session along with some of my own thoughts on extraction. The first thing to set this discussion in the context of the predecessor of the Penzance Convention two years ago in Falmouth. This was the first time that this the model of field trips was experimented with, one of which was conducted by Herbanonic together with Paul and Kenner of the field club who you met earlier. The trip explored the Gwennap mining area between Redruth, Truro and Falmouth, where a great deal of the industrial mining activity was concentrated throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time, we find references to it as the richest square mile in the world. So it's interesting to reflect on why it's
now one of the poorest areas in Europe, and as you'll know, Cornwall is the recipient of European redevelopment funding. So it's a question already of extraction in the physical and economical and indeed in a human sense something which I'll elaborate on a little later but let's just ask what exactly is this landscape in the tour that we did in Falmouth we wanted to look below the superficial level of this rugged beautiful natural landscape that represents Cornwall to most tourists and to ask how can we understand the production of this landscape as being the result of essentially artificial processes of industrial extraction. So, the engine house. We all know the engine house. It's now become a kind of picturesque symbol of an emblem of Cornwall.
And we rarely think about the fact, perhaps, that it's a relic of Cornwall's implication in a radical and violent process of industrialisation, century-long intensification of extraction technologies. In the popular imagination that the engine house has almost become merged with the natural landscape. In a sense, this is quite appropriate, but I'd like to suggest that a materialist approach is necessary to appreciate in quite what way this kind of aesthetic coalescence is appropriate, This sense that the mine workings have become a part of the landscape. So what struck us in researching for the Falmouth Convention was how the tin and copper mine in Cornwall can't be seen in isolation.
It gave rise to a very, very complex system involving a global commercial trade. It's really the first wave of globalisation we're talking about here. And the extraction of many secondary products. So stops on the tour included his show preaching, the arsenic works at Bizo where arsenic was extracted from mine waste as a secondary product and the once busy port of Deveren were now completely dormant where wood would come in from Norway to build mine props, coal from Wales to fire the engines and tin and copper down in massive quantities and so on. So this was not just mining for one metal or two metals, it was a very complex interconnected system.
And this is reflected in what we call the fault map that we produced for our trip. So this map literalises the metaphor of unfolding the landscape to reveal the complex of natural material flows and man-made processes that remade it during the time of industrialisation. So in brief, what we want to bring to light is not so much the picturesque, natural, aesthetic landscape as looking at Cornwall as the barely cooled remains of a kind of massive geochemical experiment. And so on the map you can see all the different flows of materials that were transported from one place in common to another, and also guano from Peru and so on.
Resources coming in from very, very distant places. Now, the theme of the Falmouth Convention was to think the relation between the local and the global. So obviously, being a philosopher and a megalomaniac, my idea was to try to take this to an absolute extreme by understanding how this very particular episode in industrial history, the Cornish model, related to geological processes and to the very chemical formation of the earth. So in particular, we spoke about the relationship between the depths of the earth and water. And I can't go into detail here, but there is documentation on the urbanomic website about this trip. So this first investigation really aimed to explore how the development of industrialisation
was determined in the last instance by the way in which since the very formation of the earth materials have been laid down and the terrestrial surface and depths have been shaped by natural processes which were then supplemented and complicated by the actions of industrial man. So I look to introduce it in this way because I'd like to position what we'll do today in relation to that first project the first project if you like was a vertical view a view through deep time for one local process of extraction as suggested by the cover of the map the cover of the map has the corner engine house on the Sun not to scale so this vertical approach is a kind of
psychoanalysis it's like traveling through time back to the original trauma the formation of the earth and trying to understand how the possibility of these activities by humans was conditioned by this history and so today what I'd like to do is to move horizontally to look at so that's good so what I'd like to do is to move horizontally to look at various other models of extraction on the surface of the earth and to ask whether it's possible to isolate the general logic of extraction that's common to them all. And in the spirit of the Penzance Convention, I think it's obvious this idea requires an interdisciplinary approach. So in this interdisciplinary spirit, to make a first test of how general this logic extraction is, I'd like to begin with a quote
from a journal I'm sure many of you already subscribed to, companion animal, the bible of veterinary surgeons. So, complications are a regular feature of extraction. While careful correct technique minimises these, it's important to be aware of the potential damage types, their avoidance, and subsequent treatment. It's quite exact, in fact, when applied to all the various modes of extraction carried out by humans on this planet. Because what's characteristic of humans, of course, is that we do complicate things. we don't carefully unfold the earth and fold it back exactly how it was. In fact, we make a terrible mess. There are no careful, correct techniques. Extraction is an irreversible process,
and this is something that Ian Boll spoke about on Thursday. In fact, we can call it a kind of ongoing encryption. If the earth is a kind of record, a material record of its own history, laid down layer by layer, And this contention, of course, is the basis of all geology. It's the basis of everything we know about the Earth. And what humans tend to do is to corrupt and reformat this file system. An encryption that our descendants will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to decipher. So with this in mind, let's take a look at the basic components of extraction. And to do so, I'm going to stay with the local model of mining in a very schematic form, circumscribed by my technical drawing skills. But keeping in mind that, as we'll see this afternoon, I'm sure,
different forms of extraction will differ in various ways from this basic model. And this is really the entire interest of what we'd like to do today. So it involves three components. Firstly, avoid the empty complement of what's been extracted. Secondly, the quarry, that is the substance that's sought after whatever that may be And thirdly, what the extractive industries call slag, or what the Cornish miners call dense, that is the heap of waste that's left over after the quarry has been extracted and refined Now, as I mentioned in relation to the Falmouth trip, following the primary extraction, that is the search for tin and copper Of course it makes economic sense to develop secondary industries to utilize what's left to make lemons into lemonade or to make deads into quarry.
And Hadrian gave a fantastic example of this with the radium, of course, pitch blend. Another very characteristic Cornish example is Mundic. Now Mundic was this whitish, fairly irritating substance to early miners which was found in the seams of copper and tin. In his Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 1778, William Price talks about Mundic and how you have to carry through all sorts of laborious processes to get rid of it and to purify the metals. but also it was an indicator of where the metals lay so he says there's this phrase that the miners use Mundic rides a good horse so if you see the Mundic
then you know you're near to the tin of the copper in the 19th century Mundic became arsenic so arsenic became extracted and used as a commodity it was used for dyes particularly in the 19th century a very popular kind of greenish wallpaper which is very fashionable was made with arsenic not necessarily a good idea as we know now and eventually this it became less and less valuable as deposits were found elsewhere of course and now interestingly the word mundic is a kind of a slang word for waste once more it just means the waste that's left and you'll find in various places in Cornwall there are houses which are built with what's called Mundic blocks which is compressed mine waves and it's
not necessarily a great building material very toxic and the Halifax won't give you a mortgage if you have a house built with Mundic block so as we know ultimately then whatever's left goes more or less back to where it came but in a different order. And later on, no doubt, the quarry itself, manufactured into new objects, also ends up discarded and returned to the earth. So it's in this sense that humankind becomes a kind of geological force in its own right, reprocessing and churning the planet. Shifting materials both in depth and across the surface, man lives not only in his contemporaneous time, but enters geological time. So we corrupt this file system in a way whose result geologists
might dispute this later, but to my mind the result is not dissimilar to the geological fault. So what you see here is the typical blasted landscape left behind by Cornish mining. And as an incidental aside, I wanted to show you a weird and kind of intriguing example of the kind of irreversibility in the twisted material process that occurs when extraction continues, repeats, and is ramified. Now, you might know that the price of copper has been rising in recent years, and the suggestion has even been made that it may become economical to open up some of the Cornish mines again. But what's interesting in this particular place is that across the road from this particular ex-mine near St Dane is a scrap metal merchant.
And what you see here are the plastic sheaths of copper wires that have been stripped off and discarded so that the copper can be taken across the road and sold for scrap. So among the mineshafts, the voids and the deaths, heaped on top of them, here are the remains of the products manufactured from the original quarry that was brought to the surface in this mine, a kind of twisted return to the source. But the main point that I'd like to address, I think is very important, is that this twisted process of extraction is not just a physical process, a process enacted upon materials by humans, primarily because capitalism is the... The development of capitalism is the condition
for the kind of extraction that we're interested in, right? It's the concentration of capital and the concomitant production of a dispossessed labour force that makes possible extraction on an ever greater scale. Therefore, an extraction also takes place with regard to humans. At the same time as reformatting the earth, using the hidden deposits of a pre-human past, industrial development also reinvents and reprocesses people, using them as a resource. It breaks traditional social bonds, it creates new forms of social life. And this certainly happened in Cornwall. And in a sense we could say Methodism is a cult whose function was precisely to bind together again these communities that were taken apart by this new force that was tearing through the landscape.
So when we realise that the landscape of Cornwall is the remains of this massive geochemical experiment and artificialisation of the earth, we should also realise that the economic and social conditions of Cornwall State are in large part the result of an extraction and avoiding of the people. Now when we were researching our tour in 2010, we came across this remarkable report by the early Gothic novelist William Beckford and his visits to Cormoran in 1787. I think it's a great evocation of the hidden history that lies beneath the surface here. He says, They are situated in a bleak desert, rendered still more doleful by the unhealthy appearance of its inhabitants. At every step, one stumbles upon ladders that lead into utter darkness, or funnels that exhale warm copper's vapours.
All around these openings, the ore is piled up in heaps ready for purchases. I saw it drawn reeking out of the mind by the help of a machine called a whim put in motion by mules, which in their turn is stimulated by impish children, hanging over the poor groups and flogging them without respite. This dismal scene of whims, suffering mules and hillocks of cinders extends for miles. Huge iron engines creaking and groaning, vented by what? And tall chimneys, smoking and flaming, that seem to belong to old Nicholas's abode, diversify the prospect. Fifty years later, a geologist reports, in equally gothic terms, the abrupt discontinuity that made industrial workers aliens to their rural fellows.
He says, the farmer and the miner seem to be occupying the country in something like the confusion of warfare. The situations of the mines are marked out by spots a mile in length, by half a mile in breadth, covered with what are termed deads of the mine, i.e. slaty, poisonous rubbish, growing in ragged heaps, which at a distance give the place to the appearance of an encampment of soldiers' tents. This lifeless mass follows the course of the main load, and from it, in different directions, minor branches of the same barren rubbish diverge through the fertile country, like the streams of lava from a volcano. It's very interesting here that these reports speak not only of an anthropic volcanism, as if man is a volcano spewing stuff out of the depths of the earth onto the surface.
But also the state of war reigning over this infernal scene. Because since ancient times, the extraction of metals and mining has been associated with war. And mining has been spoken of as a kind of transgression against the divine order. So in the De Re Metallica, 1556, Agricola has a fascinating discussion of this in the first chapter. And he quotes the ancient sources here, Xenophon. The earth doesn't conceal and remove from our eyes those things which are useful and necessary to mankind. But on the contrary, like a beneficent and kindly mother, she yields in large abundance from her bounty and brings into the light of day the herbs, vegetables, grains, and fruits in the trees. The minerals, on the other hand, she buries far beneath in the depth of the ground.
Therefore, they should not be sought. And from Ovid, To which we could add plenty of verdicts here. It's what's concealed from our view, what is sunk far beneath the surface, that urges us to our ruin, that sends us to the very depths of hell. When will be the end of thus exhausting the earth? and to what point will avarice finally penetrate? How innocent, how happy, how truly delightful even would life be if we were to desire nothing but what is to be found upon the face of the earth? Now these warnings which contain uncanny anticipations of contemporary ecological discourse
I think bring into play the question of the proper nature of the human. Is the true nature of man or the true will of God for man? Does it consist in a piety and a compliance with what's spontaneously given to us on the surface of the earth? Or is what's proper to the human an enterprising extraction that will involve him in remaking not only himself, not only the earth, but also himself? In any case, of course, we know it's very hard to think of man now as anything other than homo extractus. So with this association of extraction and conflict in mind, let's finally return again to the human aspect of extraction. Now, capitalism can be understood as a machine that uses problems.
It uses problems, disequilibria, as a fuel for the production of new services. So it tends to return over and over again to the problems that it created, to the debts and to the voids, material and human, that it's left behind, with new technologies and from new perspectives, and tries to extract more than otherwise. And for communities reorganised around the exploitation of labour power by capital, the transformation of the land is doubled by a legacy of social void and residue once the primary extraction process is complete, i.e. once the primary extraction process is no longer profitable and capital has moved elsewhere. But it seems that in this situation of social void, eventually a new process of extraction follows.
Now, very little has been written on the logic of this new process of extraction. Luckily enough, another member of my family in his research came across a volume that speaks about it with great precision. I think this text is particularly germane with respect to Cornwall, where there are now more tourist attractions, art galleries and coffee shops than there ever were mines. So, as human and cultural capital begins to rival mineral wealth as an economic factor, this new extraction process begins to probe other deposits laid down in the first stage, exploring the void and the dead left behind by primary extraction. Redistributed across the surface of the planet, transmuted and transformed
A part of the surplus profits of production Return in a strange new form and begin to alter the landscape again This time, capital creates not a chemical landscape, but a semiotic landscape It turns the earth into a series of signs or images to be mined and consumed In this way, the waste products of the industrial age are reprocessed, extraction begins anew, voids are apparently filled, and debts become undead. So, perhaps a happy ending. It seems that there's always more wealth to be extracted. The land is productive again, and the pixies are gainfully employed.
What's happened? Capital has come back. The Pixies have been put to work and with their own hands, out of the aesthetic raw materials, they've created an identity, a heritage. They've created place, they've manufactured place. But what happens when capital moves on again? When the European funding, the subsidies and the arts grants run out? Well perhaps there's another solution suggested by another primary text Can we have the sound? Hopefully this will
Give us one glory. Ha ha! Paul Van Wiggles caught red-handed in your foul monster-making scheme with your ugly, evil hedgeman. Hedgeman? Young man, we're investors and we're listening to his pitch. So, as I was saying, the old-time mining town. A summer camp for kids where they can have an authentic mining experience. They can dig for 18 hours straight, just like in the golden days of yore. They have the time of their lives, and we get free miners. Mr. Wiggles. Well, as we know, it's in the arts community.
Interns. So, leaving that hanging, I'd like to introduce our speakers. And first of all, I'd like to introduce Alan Buckley. He's one of the foremost among the local historians who work very hard to lay down a record of Cornish industry. I think it's very important to say that probably we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the enthusiasm and the hard work of historians who have made sure that there's a record of what happened during this incredible period of upheaval in Cornish history. We drew a great deal on his research in our original tour, so I'm very happy that he can join us to give us an informed account of the way in which mining intensified during