the novel dracula ends on this ominous note. the vampire is eradicated, england is safe, and transylvania has become a pleasant tourist destination. but the authenticity of the record of the conflict is left hauntingly ambiguous.
“the vampire is dead, you idiot,” a man made entirely out of straw attempts to tell me. “that’s all that matters.” you don’t know how wrong you are, straw man. after all, documentation is central to dracula. the entire novel is composed of documents composed by the main characters. they’re created chaotically at first but the latter half of the novel sees them regimented and used as the first line of defence against dracula. documentation, in this novel, is control.
this regimentation, however, also changes the form of the documents they produce. they move away from modes that more thoroughly or purely capture their subjective experience: Jonathan Harker writes a diary in a shorthand script that only he & his beloved can read; Dr. Seward speaks into a phonograph that records his voice on wax cylinders - but is totally unsearchable, and illegible without mechanical interpretation.
one part of the action of regimentation is mina’s transcription of these documents. she converts unreason into reason with her typewriter, translating every encoded word or emotion-imbued phoneme into the controlled, interchangeable letters of type. she also duplicates the records several times.
replication and interchangeability: the hallmarks of reason. atheistic materialism organizes desire through these rational principles. if it can’t be replicated and sold somewhere else, to anyone else, then it can’t exist. but like jonathan harker, reviewing the copies without origin, ppl have grown anxious about authenticity.
to a degree the idea of a product or place or experience being ‘authentic’ is a construction of savvy marketers. but they didn’t make the anxiety about authenticity; they’re only responding to it.
the craving for what is authentic is a craving for what cannot be or has not been replicated; something that has an origin beyond the black box of mass production. it is a desire for a feeling of location that reflects subjectivity. it is a desire for a truth born out of history, not engineered by marketers. it is irrational and undefinable precisely because it exists to demarcate a space where reason cannot enter and begin making copies.
recommended reading Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer) Mass Authentic (Rob Horning) Village Atheists, Village Idiots (Sam Kriss)
