What is Dereliction?

Symbolic Dereliction: Curzon Street Station, Birmingham

Definitions

Before going into more detail about spatialities I am going to discuss a definition of dereliction. I will use some dictionary definitions to get started, because they give me a general idea of the meanings commonly associated with the word. But the dictionary does very little to resolve alternate meanings within the definition, leaving me to draw my own conclusions.

So, instead of thinking of dereliction as having a highly specific meaning, I am looking at it as part of a larger pattern of related and evolving meanings. I have decided that the definition of dereliction can be clarified by looking at the meanings of several related words: derelict, relic, relict, reliction and relinquish.

The definition can be clarified further by looking at the meanings of associated words like abandon, neglect and decay. From this group of words I have drawn conclusions which form a broad sense of what it means to be derelict, and have found examples to support this meaning. 

The words that derive from relinquish carry a trace of that meaning: relic, relict and derelict all refer to things relinquished, let go, left behind. This meaning of dereliction is accentuated by the associated use of abandon. From this, I think of dereliction as that which is left behind. But another sense of the word can be derived by looking at the meanings of relic and relict. Both words refer to themes of survival: something that has survived the passage of time, especially through a change in context. Both words describe things which exist after a cultural or environmental change.

The meaning of these two words is therefore about being left behind, but also surviving. In turn, this means that we can look at the circumstances of being left behind as part of the definition. If we think about derelict in this regard, the nautical meaning of the word becomes somewhat ambiguous: is a derelict boat something that survives when its owner disappears? In this example, I want to think about whether the boat is still part of a larger cultural or environmental context. A ship abandoned on the high seas is still within an environmental context (the ocean), but has been severed from its cultural context (crew, itinerary, transport role).

The meanings of reliction and derelict convey a similar sense of disassociation: land left dry by recession of the water line, either by drainage or by accumulation of sediment. In this case, the meaning might be associated with abandonment, but I think the stronger meaning is associated with the sense of survival. In other words, the sea might abandon part of itself, leaving new shoreline to survive on its own. However, this shoreline is contiguous with the landscape it is now part of: there is no separation between new land and old. This presents a conundrum: are reliction and dereliction about being transferred from one system to another; from an aquatic system to a terrestrial system, from one set of circumstances to another?

Property relations

The landscape of ships, sand, cow and vegetation at Muynak is an example of reliction and dereliction. The scene evokes both abandonment and survival. The sea and its inhabitants have disappeared, leaving the ships and the seabed to survive on their own. The derelict ships survive, more or less intact, in a somewhat inert fashion, like a geological relict. The relict land survives and develops a new set of uses: habitat for plants and cows. It has shifted from one system to another. While the scene is a lot more barren than it would have been formerly, it is nonetheless a scene of survivals, and a sort of testimony to the endurance of the ships, the plants, the cow, and their human associates.

But there’s an additional meaning to reliction and derelict that refers to patterns of ownership. In the case of derelict, the disappearance of owners is an explicit part of the meaning. In the case of reliction it’s not the disappearance of owners – because the sea is not a legal entity – but a case of indeterminate ownership. Who owns this land; who is entitled to use this land? Reliction draws attention to patterns of property relations and the fact that some land is outside this system, unincorporated, disconnected. Again, derelict carries a similar meaning: the destitute, homeless, vagrant. A derelict exists outside normative domestic and economic relations, disconnected from mainstream social networks.

In this sense, derelict refers to a certain kind of isolation, an existence outside of prevailing networks and relations. This meaning also works with relic, relict, and is a plausible way of thinking about relinquish, in that ‘leaving behind’ and ‘letting go’ effectively isolates the thing being left, leaving it to survive more or less on its own, as an orphan.

Isolated survivals

After all this consideration, I am ready to conclude that dereliction is about two things: relative isolation and survival. Derelict land is that which exists outside of the legal system, in an ambiguous condition, abandoned by the sea, or by its owner. Derelict things also exist outside of the legal system in that they are neglected by their owners: legal obligations are not maintained, property relations are not sustained in a clear and unambiguous manner, but the things themselves continue to exist. Derelict people exist outside mainstream social conventions, neglected by or neglectful of those relations. Where relic and relict refer to things whose contexts have evaporated, melted away or otherwise disappeared, reliction and dereliction refer to things which are outside of their normative contexts, things which have been wilfully or accidentally cast away, run aground, disconnected, removed. In all of these meanings, things exist in relative isolation from their normative context, and are understood as surviving remnants or disassociated elements of larger systems.

There’s one more meaning to be considered here: the version of relict that refers to a corpse. Even the inert remains of a body can be said to exist in the absence of a former context, deprived of certain connections. Relict becomes ambiguous around the issue of life and death. On one hand, a relict is a dead, inert vestige, a fragment, a remnant or memento of a thing that was once a greater entity. As the sea abandons the shore, life abandons the body, leaving it in an ambiguous condition. But are all derelicts corpses? No. So perhaps we should rethink what it means to be a corpse, to have remains. Not in terms of whether a thing is alive, but in terms of whether that which remains is a survival of some kind. If we are talking of buildings and societies, these things are not dead or alive in the biological sense, so it's probably not necessary to think about a corpse in those terms. If a relict is the corpse of a formerly viable entity, what is the organism, species or object that has survived a change in circumstance? Can a relict be living and dead at the same time? Or does the vestige have an existence in its own right, despite its relative isolation; its disassociation from a former entity?

Surviving a change of context

On the other hand, a relict is a living thing, a survivor, even though it happens to exist outside of certain contexts. I am ready to conclude that a derelict is a thing disassociated from its nominal context, whether it’s a set of property relations, an ecological condition, or an important element like water or life. Furthermore, a derelict can be a thing deliberately disassociated, abandoned or neglected, but which continues to exist in some altered or inert fashion, living or dead.

In this regard, I want to focus on the thing itself and the way it is sustained. A ship, relatively inert whether at sea or aground, exists more or less as a thing unto itself. An living organism also exists more or less independently, but draws some sort of sustenance from its extant connections.  

For example, when I think about the London and Birmingham Railway and note that most of the 1837 right of way is still in use, I see that the Birmingham terminus was taken out of use after New Street Station was built. It is intact as a building but not as part of the system it developed within. It is an isolated fragment of an earlier formation, left behind but continuing its existence. This is analogous to the meaning of relict: something that survives a major change in circumstances. While the station might be properly described as a relict, it can also be described as a relic, in that it is something that has survived, that it is cherished for its historic interest. Furthermore, it can be described as derelict, in that it has become isolated, deliberately disconnected from its former role.

This broader context prompts me to think of dereliction as a condition of isolated, fragmentary survival. A bit of an old railway system, for example. Or a community that has shrunk in size and been cut off from its former livelihood. Or a thing that has been removed from its normal circumstances and abandoned elsewhere, like a shopping trolley thrown into a ditch. This definition encompasses what is normally regarded as dereliction. Houses that exist even though they’ve been abandoned; waste heaps that survive even after the works that produced them have been closed down and demolished. It might seem odd to think of an inert waste heap as a survivor, but in the context of this definition, it is plausible. In this sense, dereliction becomes something positive:  survival in spite of being left behind, disconnected, abandoned, neglected. Orphaned.

In turn this tells me that whatever is at work in producing dereliction is more than just the disconnection, it's also the fact of not being destroyed, not being demolished or replaced. Perhaps this is chance at work, but it provides an opportunity to see what kinds of things are surviving, how they survive, and what that survival tells us.