Is Beauty in the Eye of Beholder?

Hatice Filiz Unverir

ABSTRACT : 

The aim of this essay is to examine the main criteria affecting people’s decision-making mechanism about what beauty is to understand which factors make things beautiful in their eye of beholder. These include: evolutionary forces, social and cultural factors such as educational background, family structure, cultural norms, religions, traditions, political views, values and economic conditions, which I argue can contribute the uniqueness of human nature by introducing people to different point of views. The paper utilises various examples to reveal how people’s choices change from one person to other by analysing differences lying on human nature.

Key Words : Beauty; choices; decision-making mechanism; evolutionary forces; social factors; cultural factors; human nature; differences

INTRODUCTION

Beauty has a hold on us. We are drawn to it. We go to great lengths to get it. We immerse ourselves in it. Beauty delights us. It inspires us. It makes us ache. It sends us into despair. If myths are to be believed, it can launch a thousand ships  to war. (Chatterjee, 2014: 3)

Beauty has always been a controversial subject because of its feature of subjectivity. Starting from the fact that each person has a unique nature, it can be said that people have different ways of looking at things. This uniqueness affects their ways of perceiving things which surround them. According to Berger (1972: 8) we only see what we look at—and to look involves an act of choice.  In other words, people use their choices as a tool to see things. So how are our choices shaped? How is our decision-making mechanism consructed? Differences based in people’s nature play a profound role in their choices by distinguishing their reactions from one person to another.  People subconsciously make a connection between themselves and what they like derived from hints not only from their unique nature, but also from the areas that contribute to this uniqueness. To understand how aesthetic appreciation works, it should have be considered along various parameters. Basically, people who live in different regions/countries, belong to parts of different societies/religions or tend to different sexual orientations and obviously have various opinions related to beauty, which builds a subjective understanding of aesthetic appreciation from one person to another. According to Kant, beauty can be described as being judged through an aesthetic experience of taste (Tanke & McQuillan, 2012: 249). Thanks to this subjectivity, humans have different taste which influences their choices and so their understanding of beauty perceptively. Thompson defines the term of ‘taste’ with these words:

Taste—whose office is to determine and pronounce upon whatever is beautiful, elegant, sublime, pleasing, or reverse of these…  [Taste then] submits her performance to judgment. (Bayley, 1991: 14)

As it is stated by Thompson our taste is responsible for defining that which is beautiful according to our individual preferences. This paper will analyse main criteria influencing people’s choices by paying regard to ‘beauty’ in terms of major evolutionary, social and cultural factors.

Evolutionary factors and Golden Ratio

Is beauty a property of things out there in the world? Or is beauty to be found in our heads? Is beauty a fiction constructed by culture?… Maybe beauty is not in the object itself but in something that is happening inside us. Maybe these objects are only beautiful in our heads and work by stirring beauty receptors in our brains. (Chatterjee, 2014: 3-4)

For Chatterjee (2014 : 64) the experience of beauty emerges from interactions between the mind and the world because our brains evolved to view some objects as universally beautiful. Based on Chatterjee’s statement, it can be said that, although people have subjective discernment to define beauty, in the end the process of judgement starts with observing some common features related to beauty from a universal base. These features are based on our primitive genetic codes that are independent from our personal tastes or interests developed with external conditions. They are basically responsible for why we do what we do in an evolutionary context. For Aristotle, the main forms of beauty were order, symmetry and definiteness to be found in mathematical science (Pacteau, 1994: 23).

If we examine human beauty, according to Chatterjee’s (2014 : xi) ‘evolutionary forces’ this highlights common beauty features such as: symmetrical faces and bodies, balanced skin colour, bigger twinkling eyes, fuller lips, lustrous hair, darker eyebrows, V-shaped torso in men with waist-to-hip ratio of about 1.0 and fuller hips in women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7. These are considered universally appealing factors because they are related to a healthy body look in terms of the reproductive instincts of humankind. Therefore, it can be claimed that these features play a triggering role to arouse beauty receptors in our brains in the beginning of our journey of individual aesthetic judgment. These factors about human beauty based on our evolutionary forces can be influence the aesthetic judgment of an everyday object or an art piece in our daily life. According to Plato’s thinking the good, is always beautiful and the beautiful never lacks proportion—and ‘proportion’ is remarkably appealing for the human eye regarding to perception of beauty. Proportion and symmetry  play a profound role in our decision-making process by triggering beauty receptors of human brain:

Our attraction to another body increases if the body is symmetrical and in proportion. If a face or a structure is in proportion, we are more likely to notice it and find it beautiful. The universal ratio of beauty is the ‘Golden Ratio’, found in many structures. This ratio comes from Fibonacci numbers. (Abbas, 2017 : 51)

As Abbas mentioned, the ‘golden ratio’ (Fig. 1&2) has been accepted by many mathematicians, artists or designers as the most harmonious proportion observed on all parts of an entirety—this is a very strong proof to measure the aesthetic value of a human figure, everyday object or an art piece.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

For St Augustine, beauty was also the product of an unifying principle of number  or in other words, the golden ratio (Pacteau, 1994: 239). According to St Augustine’s interpretation of beauty, it is this unifying numerical principle that represents the ‘harmonious proportion,’  or Golden rectangle as one of the common ways of application of the golden ratio, which has been used by various artists, designers, painters from the past to now. On the principle of golden rectangle, Chatterjee claims that:

The golden rectangle is formed by two sides comprised of the golden ratio. Portioning off a square within the golden rectangle leaves a smaller golden rectangle, a pattern that can be repeated ad infinitum. Connecting the points of the successively smaller squares gives the golden spiral found in nautilus shells, rams’ horns, whirlpools and galaxies. (Chatterjee, 2014: 59)

The golden rectangle can be found in architectural constructions in Mesopotamia such as the Pyramids, the Parthenon in Athens; or in art piece/ paintings such as The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo or Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. As an illustration, if we analyse the Mona Lisa with respect to the Golden Ratio, we need to draw a rectangle around the face of figure. As a consequence, it can be recognized that the ratio of the width to the height of this rectangle (=1,618…) is identical to the Golden Ratio. (Fig. 1.) Paintings which Golden Ratio applications are found to create a complete visual harmony in the human eye and impact on our perception of beauty considerably.

Cultural factors

According to Chatterjee (2014: 64) even though evolutionary factors affect our very first judgments related to beauty, cultural differences have a remarkable impact and can even change the direction of our opinions,. The fact is that different cultures have diversified values, viewpoints, norms, faith, traditions or taboos, which give them a unique identity—aesthetic judgment is mainly related to this uniqueness underlying the society. That’s why cultures’ aesthetic tastes can change from one to another. For example, in some cultures, large bodies are considered more beautiful in contrast to today’s popular skinny posture, because people believed that larger figures represent the generosity of Mother Nature and fertility, and so they bring abundance to their lands. In other words, larger figures can be seen as people’s metaphors which are related to their beliefs in a traditional base. To illustrate, Prehistoric mother Goddess statue Venus of Willendorf (Fig. 3) can be seen as a symbol of procreativity in its own cultural context because it is obvious that enlarged breasts, belly and hips in this statue recall fertility to us.

In this case, it is possible to make a deduction that in this society, there is a connection between larger figures and people’s taste in their own cultural context. In some other cultures, ‘youth’ can be considered as a symbol of the beauty because it evokes vitality and wellness whereas other cultures give importance to ‘old age’ because they associate it with ‘wisdom’ and they assume that wisdom comes with age. Also older age can be seen as a beauty element. In other example, ‘Kayans’ which are an ethnic minority group in Burma, have an interesting tradition related to beauty. They believed that a woman’s beauty is associated with the length of her neck. In this society women wear one brass ring around their necks for every passing year that they are getting old  (Fig. 4). As they grow older, the one ring is added to another and this causes their necks to elongate. The more elongated neck women have, the more beautiful they are considered in Burma. This can be seen as an extreme example of modification but it is just related to different standards of beauty in different cultures.

Fig. 3

As another example, skin colour can be a distinctive element in terms of perception of beauty in society’s cultural context. In China, there is a strong belief that pale skin is the most crucial component of beauty. This is because, pale/white skin is associated with the higher social-economical class who doesn’t need to work as a slave. That’s why Chinese women use lots of different beauty products to protect their skin from sun damage and even to make their skin whiter.

Social factors

From past to present, people have a tendency to belong a social group or class to establish themselves and get respect from the society. Schools where we study, political opinions we chose to support or occupational sectors we work in, help to place our position slowly but surely in the society. Our family background, educational qualifications, political remarks, economic conditions and even religious opinions are accepted as social factors which build diversity of views from one person to other. This variety therewith affects people’s views on beauty. As a result of this, people develop different filters to percolate their standards and it causes multifarious opinions related to their tastes. Hume’s Of the Standards of the Taste tells us that beauty is not a quality in things themselves: “It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them” and for Hume each mind perceives a different beauty and each individual will give in to their own feelings, without pretending to regulate those of others. So for Hume to seek the real definitive beauty is a fruitless enquiry (Tanke & McQuillan, 2012: 186).

Have you ever seen a couple on the street and thought that one partner is more beautiful than the other? Or have you ever encountered a group of people passionately talking about the subtle meaning of an art piece in an important exhibition while you could not find any reason to define it meaningful?  Apparently, in the first example, it can be mentioned that spouses in question have mutual liking, which means similar tastes and so they chose to be together. In the second example, again, it can be mentioned that people having a common conversation about an artefact and have a similar way of aesthetic appreciation of things. Hume’s opinion about beauty emphasizes this difference between people. According to his view, there is no point to define the ‘ultimate’ meaning of beauty as a common belief because it is all about different point of views that people acquire during their lifetimes. To illustrate this, because of the fact that a person receives an art education in earlier times of his life, s/he is more likely to be able to interpret meanings of art pieces, allegories hiding in the depths of paintings or metaphors to represents the underlying meanings. Thus it can be claimed that the more knowledge people have, the better understanding about things they develop. In this case, their artistic backgrounds push an individual’s critical thinking skills forward and therefore they can build their own aesthetic judgement. Based on this example, it can be said that different educational backgrounds affect people’s interests by shaping their tastes differently because it develops their ability to look from multifarious perspectives to things. Therefore, these type of social differences also influence people’s beauty criteria.

CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, to answer the question of my essay, it is important to analyse to what extent beholders react to things differently. Although evolutionary factors have a huge role in leading people’s opinions to find and appreciate the beauty at first sight, cultural and social factors can chance the direction of decision-making process substantially. Thanks to these factors such as family structure, educational background, traditions, financial status, interests or social norms; people can evolve their own tastes uniquely. Therefore, everyone has subjective opinions about beauty which takes us to the answer of this question. Apparently, ‘beholder’ is a key element to determine the beautiful. Although it is a subjective judgement, it shows us where should we look for the meaning of beauty in the eye of beholder.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbas, S., 2017. Golden Ratio: A Measure of Physical Beauty, India: Resonance, 51-60.

Bayley, S., 1992. Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, New York: Pantheon Books, 14.

Berger, J., 1972. Ways of Seeing, London: Penguin/BBC, 8.

Chatterjee, A., 2014. The Aesthetic Brain, New York: Oxford University Press, xi-64.

Pacteau, F., 1994. The Symptom of Beauty, London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 23-239.

Tanke, J. & McQuillan, C., 2012, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics,  New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 186-249.

Silka P. 2017 The Value of Golden Section in Contemporary Art, Art History Blog, (11/12/2017) https://www.widewalls.ch/golden-section-significance-art-mathematics/

Rachel Blunt, 2012, What is Considered Beauty in Different Parts of the World?, Life Blog, (11/12/2012) http://clubfashionista.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/what-is-considered-beauty-in-different.html

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 : http://royalens.com/golden-ratio/

Date access: 11.12.2017

Figure 2 :  https://fractalenlightenment.com/15668/fractals/digging-deeper-into-the-golden-ratio

Date access: 11.12.2017

Figure 3 :  http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/sculpture/willendorf.php

Date access: 11.12.2017

Figure 4 : http://clubfashionista.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/what-is-considered-beauty-indifferent.html

Date access: 11.12.2017

An Experiment where other’s minds are welcome—How René Magritte values personal artistic expression in his work

Mengxi Yang

 Although René Magritte has been known and remembered for his unique individual identity, icons and the recurring themes in his art, he had also claimed that personal artistic expression was the last thing he would value. Magritte regarded his art works as a collaboration in which the idea of uniqueness was often undermined by himself (Hanson & Wulf, 1993). This paradoxical fact leads to thoughts of the cause and effect of his self-effacement, in which I believe the context of his social relation to the Belgian Surrealists’ groups plays a vital role. In this essay, I will examine Magritte’s evalution of personal artistic expression by first analysing the characteristics and beliefs of the Belgian Surrealists and how Magritte’s value is in accordance with them. Then I will list some examples illustrating the collaboration on art works and look into how Magritte and the Surrealist’s viewed the meanings of his paintings. Finally, I am going to examine how Magritte stands out from the audiences’ perspective. In this study, we can gain an understanding of why Magritte meant to undermine his personal expression and how the artist’s value fits into a social context.

 Fig 1. La goutte d’eau (Drop of Water), Jane Graverol, 1964

 The Belgian Surrealists

Compared to the well-known Parisian Surrealists group, the Belgian Surrealists seem to have always been hiding themselves secretly behind doors from the public, which resonate with the group portrait La goutte d’eau (Drop of Water) (see Fig. 1) painted by the Belgian surrealist female artist Jane Graverol in the 1960s. This portrait may perfectly reflect the philosophy and characteristics of Belgian Surrealists. As if looking into a spy hole, we find a group of kind and harmonious people. Firstly, no one seems to be taking a leading position and everyone is equal, suggesting a friendly and relaxed atmosphere among them; secondly, they look by no means like what our pre-assumptions are about ‘surrealists’ or ‘extremists’. They look like ordinary people who lead a normal life, just like our neighbors without anything special; and last but not least, you cannot say they are as common as they seem to be. Through the viewpoint of the spy hole, we feel like we are peeking into their secrets—the unknown side of their lives and minds (Paenhuysen, 2005). The Belgian surrealists acted like superheroes hidden in the mass public yet secretly fighting against enemies—the bourgeois culture. As distilled from the group portrait, collectivity, anonymity and secrecy formed the characteristics of the Belgian surrealists, who diverged from the fame and public recognition perused by most Parisian Avant-Garde artists at that time (Paenhuysen, 2005).

“Community Art”

As a result of the rejection to fame and wealth, the Belgian Avant-Garde artists adopted ‘Community Art’ as a keyword in their production, which was directed against the individualism and decadence of the previous generation of Impressionists (Paenhuysen, 2005). For the Surrealists, there is no concept of ‘genius’ and they conceived themselves as receivers of universal ideas and someone who present these collective ideas to the public. Furthermore, the Belgian Surrealists were extremists in their execution of this rule. The tactic they used was ‘depersonalization’ where ‘commonplace’ objects were reused in their works. Louis Scutenaire even gave up his identity and published his books under his wife Irène Hamoir’s name. Paul Nougé was even more strict towards this ‘anti-work’ belief and set up the rule of anonymity for the Belgian Surrealist group. His fear of corruption following the public success led him to claim that “the figures whose names were becoming too well known had to renounce their fame” and that: “Only by this selfless act could a genuine freedom be obtained” (Paenhuysen, 2005).

By claiming “to have no talent, no originality, no artistic aptitude” (Whitfield, 1992: 29) Magritte’s philosophy was in accordance with the ideas of Belgian Surrealists and their desire to “conduct revolutionary action from behind the doors” (Hanson and Wulf, 1993). However, it is hard to say whether it was the latter that had influenced the former, because Magritte’s personal philosophy corresponded to the Belgian group from the very beginning and we may even say this is the reason why Magritte chose to join them instead of staying with the Parisian group. He was a “quiet and contemplative man, prone to anonymity and camouflage”, just like his Belgian companions (Hanson and Wulf, 1993). He was not a full-time artist and even refused to have a studio of his own, just like Paul Nougé who was a chemist in a Brussels laboratory and Louis Scutenaire who worked at the bar and then the civil service (Paenhuysen, 2005). Magritte even refused to be classified as a regional artist or categorized into a certain type of artist as he was concerned about a limited interpretation of his artwork due to this categorization (Tyson, 2005). Interestingly, the Belgian Surrealists likewise resisted being seen as a united whole. They were “divided, exploring and being marked by the differences within its own history”, with contrasts as well as shared points (Allmer & Gelder, 2005). All these similarities have drawn Magritte into the circle of his Surrealist friends.

The Accomplices of René Magritte

Although Magritte was not the center of the Belgian Surrealists at that time, he is arguably the only one who is still well known today (Paenhuysen, 2005). He might have been the beneficiary of Nougé’s extreme anonymity and self-effacement, as this belief led Nougé—who was the leading figure among the Brussels Surrealists—to “give pride of place to Magritte” (Whitfield, 1992: 29). In a one-man show of Magritte in January 1928, Nougé called on the Brussel Surrealists for an alliance around their painter and in an address stated: “For this very reason we have no reservations about declaring ourselves here and now the accomplices of René Magritte.” The Brussels Surrealists acted in many ways to support Magritte, such as finding titles for his paintings, illustrating his paintings with short poetic texts, thinking up images and writing about his works (Whitfield, 1992).

Finding titles, for instance, had long been a pastime with his friends since the first Surrealist paintings of Magritte, while it was only after he settled back in Brussels in 1930 that it became a more regular activity within the Belgian group. Often taking his titles from literature, films and musical scores on the completion of the picture, he also invited friends to make suggestions (Matteson, n.d.). Louis Scutenaire once recalled the process of Magritte on creating an artwork as: “…he has often been incubating it for months, with all his being… Then, having painted it conscientiously, if not with pleasure, he has taken many days, and called on all the goodwill of his friends, to find its title” (Whitfield, 1992: 39). Camille Goemans, one of the suggestion makers, described this as a game: “They often start humble, because they arise in gatherings of friends as a kind of game, but under Magritte’s watchful, lucid gaze, once these titles have been let loose on the world with the works they accompany, they take on a resonance at which their creators are sometimes the first to be amazed.” Paul Nougé have also helped Magritte title many of his paintings (Matteson, n.d.). In the Perspective: Madame Récamier de David, Nougé thought up the word “perspective” which bears a double meaning of both the temporal and geometrical senses. (see Fig. 2)

Paul Nougé explained how the title finding can both promote anonymity and collectiveness to a painting and maintain its uniqueness of thoughts at the same time:

The title isn’t a programme to be carried out. It comes after the picture. It’s as if it were its confirmation, and it often constitutes an exemplary manifestation of the efficacy of the image. This is why it doesn’t matter whether the title occurs to the painter himself afterwards, or is found by someone else who has an understanding of his painting. I am quite well placed to know that it is almost never Magritte who invents the titles of his pictures.

Magritte himself also expressed the similar opinion as:

The titles are chosen in such a way as to prevent my picture from being situated in the reassuring region to which people’s minds would automatically assign them in order to underestimate their significance. The titles must be an extra protection which will discourage any attempt to reduce pure poetry to a trivial game.

Fig 2. Perspective: Madame Récamier de David, René Magritte, 1949

In spite of titles, Magritte also enquired other forms of inspirations from his friends. Most of the images whose ideas were suggested by Magritte’s friends date back from the 1930s and 1940s (Whitfield, 1992). In 1934, he send Paul Colinet a postcard illustration of the picture he was going to draw and asked him for advice. Colinet engaged in creating famous paintings of Magritte including Ceci est un morecau de fromage (This is a piece of cheese) and La Reconnaissance Infinie (Reconnaissance Without End). He drew out the initial sketches which Magritte’s paintings were based on. (see Fig. 3 and 4)

Fig. 3 Drawing by Paul Colinet, as reproduced in Les Levres Nues, new series, no.12, 1973. scanned copy from Magritte, Whitfield, 1992 (left); This is a Piece of Cheese (Ceci est un morceau de fromage), René Magritte, 1936 or 1937 (right)

Fig. 4 Paul Colinet, pen drawing, 1933 (left); La Reconnaissance Infinie (Reconnaissance Without End), René Magritte, 1933 (right)

Also, as Magritte’s biographer David Sylvester suggests, the paintings in 1927 such as L’assassin menace (The Threatened Murderer) and Jeune Fille Mangeant un Oiseau (Young Girl Eating a Bird) were originally a set of violent and erotic poems by Paul Nougé which transformed by Magritte into pictures (Matteson, n.d.). As some lines from The Threatened Murderer shows:

In the background, at the level of the window sill,

Four heads stare at the murderer.

In the corridor on either side of the wide open door,

Two men are approaching unable as yet to discern the spectacle.

They are ugly customers.

Crouching, they hug the wall.

One of them unfurls a huge net, the other brandishing a club.

All this will be called, “The Threatened Murderer.”

—Paul Nougé

Fig 5. L’assassin menace (The Threatened Murderer), René Magritte, 1927

A Painter or Not a Painter

Although images served as a virtually impressive tactic to spread their thoughts, both Magritte himself and his friends held the belief that it was not the painting that matters, but the collective ideas behind it. As Louis Scutenaire put it in 1942 “Magritte is a great painter. Magritte is not a painter.” The Brussels group regarded him as an “image-maker” instead of a “painter” (Whitfield, 1992). Magritte copied what he termed neutral or “indifferent” images in his paintings, such as postcards, illustrations from dictionary, children’s books and medical manuals and made replicas to be used in his own paintings (Whitfield, 1992). As he said in an interview: “ I always try to make sure that the actual painting isn’t noticed, that it is as little visible as possible…so that the only thing the reader is able to see in his work is the idea he was trying to express. So the act of painting is hidden” (Whitfield, 1992: 28). This explains the reason why Magritte claimed no personal expression in his art work: The images came from ordinary objects and commonplace pictures, and the ideas came from collaborations among groups. However, it is this distilment and expression of the collective wits that have finally contributed to the uniqueness of the art work. Moreover, we cannot deny the fact that the personal preference of Magritte himself also infiltrated into the artistic expressions in an inadvertent way which gave rise to an iconic feature perceived by the viewers.

Independence of Mind

Gamille Goemans once described Magritte as “one of the rare people who can really pride themselves on their independence of mind, and this shows in everything” (Whitfield, 1992: 44). It is true that Magritte himself was an artist with sharp viewpoints and a clear mind about how an idea should be expressed. He also had a strong personal preference of the circle he would like to settle in and the artistic styles he would appreciate. Such examples can be found throughout his life.

The sharp viewpoint is nicely reflected in the title-finding games. Even though adopting a collective creation, Magritte would not accept any notion without careful examination of them. He had expressed explicit rules towards titles: “I think that the best title for a picture is a poetic one. In other words, a title consistent with the more or less lively emotion we feel when we look at the picture…The poetic title has nothing to teach us, but it must surprise us and enchant us” (Selected Writings, 2016: 115). He would also give guidelines to his friends and discuss with them into details. Any suggestions, if not in accordance with his expectations, would be turned down relentlessly (Dillon, n.d.).

In terms of personal preferences, Magritte had more friends from the literary circle rather than having a close relationship with his fellow art students (Hanson and Wulf, 1993). When asked if he had any friends who are painters in an interview, Magritte answered harshly: “The painters I know are concerned with questions that do not interest me. For me, it’s not a question of painting but of thinking” (Selected Writings, 2016: 207). Emphasizing “painting is visible poetry”, Magritte also said there were only two painters whom he thought highly of: de Chirico and Max Ernst, who had shaped Magritte’s personal identity significantly. E.L.T. Mensens has recalled that “It wasn’t until he came across Chirico (and the first collages of Max Ernst) that Magritte was able to become himself”. All these choices he had made independently, together with his insightful views, added to his paintings an obvious personal imprint.

Conclusion

Through an overall examination of the Belgian Surrealists, especially the Brussels Group, we can find that their codes of conduct—collectivity, anonymity and secrecy highly corresponded to the personal philosophy of René Magritte, whose attitudes towards his artistic creation perfectly reflected the notion of self-effacement and community art advocated by the group. Acting as ‘the accomplices of René Magritte’, his fellow Surrealist friends contributed to many of his titles, painting themes and inspirations. This greatly undermined the originality of his works. However, the support and promotion also gave rise to his paintings being widely known and recognized by others.

René Magritte held the same belief as the Belgian Surrealists that the ideas and thoughts behind paintings bear more significance than the images themselves. The collective thoughts and “indifferent” images constitute what Magritte called “scientific enquiry” rather than “self-expression” (Whitfield, 1992). However, with a strong and independent mind, Magritte did not give up the chance to examine, choose, and extract these existing raw materials. His personal preferences and critical thinking have made his paintings distinctive, especially in terms of visual languages. Furthermore, even if the thought is from groups instead of individual, the uniqueness of it still exits.

In conclusion, collectiveness and individual identity are two dominant characteristics in René Magritte’s art works. The reason why the artist values the former so much can be the accordance of his personal philosophy with the belief of the Belgian surrealist groups, as well as the involvement of participation in the process of his creations. At the same time, his personal preferences have also influenced the outcome of the paintings he produced. Although these personal elements may be attractive to the audience, they still belong to what Magritte called “the painting itself” which he would feel reluctant to cover the thoughts behind them—it is the collective ideas behind the paintings rather than personal artistic images that the artist would like to emphasize on in his artistic expressions.

 

Bibliography

Allmer, P. and Gelder, H.V. (2005). The Forgotten Surrealists: Belgian Surrealism Since 1924. Image [&] Narrative, [online] (13). Available at: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/tulseluper/paenhuysen.htm [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Dillon, G.L. (n.d.). Words in Images: Magritte. [online] Courses.washington.edu. Available at: https://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/book/wordsinimages/magritte.html#tcl [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Hanson, A. & Wulf, C. (2000). Teacher Manual: René Magritte. 2nd ed. [ebook] Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, pp.4-9. Available at: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/modernwing/resource/1620 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2017].

Magritte, R. et al. (2016). Selected writings. ALMA BOOKS LTD. pp. 115-207.

Matteson, R.L. (n.d.). Biography – Matteson Art. [online] Mattesonart.com. Available at: http://www.mattesonart.com/biography.aspx [Accessed 10 Nov. 2017].

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Paenhuysen, A. (2005). Strategies of Fame The anonymous career of a Belgian surrealist. Image [&] Narrative, [online] (12). Available at: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/tulseluper/paenhuysen.htm [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Tyson, Janet Stiles (2005) ‘The Persistence of Mystery: René Magritte as a Regional Artist,’ Image and Narrative, Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative, No. 13, The Forgotten Surrealists: Belgian Surrealism Since 1924, http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/surrealism/tyson.htm

Whitfield, S. (1992). Magritte. London: The South Bank Centre. pp. 25-48.

 

 

Social Terror—Art and Anarchism: ritual or reality?

Janco’s masks for the Cabaret Voltaire

Gregori Pujadas

This essay aims to focus on the influence and the synthesis of Anarchism developed by three avant-garde artists to explore whether their approach to Anarchism was a ritual or a reality in their work. Firstly I will describe the avant-garde in relation to anarchy and use the example of Marcel Duchamp’s Wanted $2,000 Reward, to analyze the playful approach of anarchy in how it aligns with criminal activity and then outline Duchamp’s influence in this respect. Secondly I will explain how the term ‘art and life’, implanted by the Dadaists, became ‘art or life’ with the work of Chris Burden, tackling issues and situations where the state of the human body was surrounded by an anarchy of danger and absence. Thirdly I will interpret how artistic inspiration infiltrates the representation of crime with the work of Santiago Sierra, where art is also anarchic as a transgression of the established cultural, economic and social order. The analysis of the representations of anarchy in the artists’ works offers an understanding of it as a form of ‘social terror’—a ritualised anarchism that operates as a phenomenon and activity in a social and political context.

First International Dada Fair at Galerie Otto Burchard, Berlin, 1920.

The notion of the avant-garde as an anarchist practice.

Art and crime have a relationship as close and ancient as the first babbles of the Dada movement in the Cabaret Voltaire. In the period after the First World War, art was in a process of change. In some cases, to speak of the appearance of the vanguards is to speak of a sequence of transgressions outside the framework of legality. This ‘vanguard’ concept is in a close relationship with the political vocabulary, as well as activism, in terms of the will to break with and to revolutionise artistic practice. It is a confrontation with the established order and the criteria assumed by the high economic and intellectual classes. The Dadaists, the Futurists or the Surrealists point to the economy of transgression: artistic movements that enunciated subversion before the art that was produced. This behavior of the avant-garde aimed to develop anarchist and revolutionary roles within the intellectual reception of their manifestoes. They had lost confidence in their ‘culture’ to the extent that they thought everything had to be demolished so that they could begin with a clean slate. The Cabaret Voltaire began by shocking the bourgeois by demolishing their idea of art—but this was to also attack common sense and public opinion, educational institutions, the ‘good taste’ of museums attack the whole prevailing order (Lippard, 2007: 36). The art works that were created during the avant-garde era also worked as weapons to break the barrier between art and life. Ostensibly far from capitalism and its elitist classes the goal of artistic creation was to cause an impact and change in society, this idea combined two key concepts of the time: Anarchism and Communism. A form of Anarcho-individualism won over new recruits from the neo-symbolist, Futurist and Cubist movement (Antliff, 1998: 102). The number of twentieth century artists with an anarchist ideology, who later became Communists, was surprising: this list even included names like Malevich and Picasso. These were radical artists exploring new ways of life and the art of the early twentieth century is an example of the similarity between art and terrorist activity as twin activities capable of breaking the monopoly of thought; capable of making a fissure in the general tendencies of societies; capable of destabilizing the established order and are practically impossible to control—effectively a social terror (Rielo, 2014: 35).

Marcel Duchamp—The playful approach to crime

Due to the First World War, Duchamp moved to the United States, and this move also marks his interest and experiments with different ‘readymades’. He developed the term in 1915 to describe his modified or altered objects, where the relationship between the objects and their meaning was consciously diminished. By using objects unrelated to each other, new relationships and meanings could be created and this playful approach to his proposals gave him a reputation as the great player of modern art. Duchamp’s work was a rejection of behavior as an artist, with an exaltation of absurdity and chance. He attacked social classes and the notion of the artist as a genius. He opened the discourse of new ethics within modernity, where he carried out an exaltation of subjectivity. In 1923 Duchamp made the work Wanted $2,000 Reward, a collage constructed by himself where he reflects on the role of the artist, a character who questions his own identity. Wanted is a readymade based on a police poster that Duchamp found in a showcase of a restaurant in New York. He added two blurry photos of himself; front and profile together with a description of the fugitive, where it said he was also known as Rrose Sélavy, the female alter ego that he used so much during his works. This work reflects the artist’s image like a delinquent, a sought-after artist, but above all one who does not find himself. Duchamp initiates a rather subtle delinquency with Reward. With the creation of the character Rrose Sélavy the gender change is appreciated as a construction to understand his corporeal death.

Marcel Duchamp. Wanted, $ 2.000 Reward. Readymade rectified.

  Can we consider the work of Duchamp nihilist? The central idea of Duchamp was the conception of the artistic creation as a result of an exercise of will, within a purely spontaneous act and without taking into account the previous formation or talent. They are ideas closely related to nihilism to which the Dadaists were sympathetic as a result of the impact generated by the First World War and that put the entire international culture in crisis. The Dadaists distrusted order and reason, and established the idea of irrational nihilism, thus becoming a limited artistic movement. On the other hand, Duchamp sustains his artistic activity as a critique of criticism. Can art be made with a critique of the same work of art? Duchamp demonstrated that yes, art can be the means to interrogate the foundations of culture. It was the Nietzschean ‘overcoming of nihilistic noon’, as well as the most prophetic and literary concept, one of the ‘eternal return’ of the identical and the ‘superman’. These ideas were closest to the nucleus of Duchampian thought (Menéndez, 2001: 126). The superman of Nietzsche imposes himself to the crisis of contemporaneity, but for this the will to power has to be established. In this way the superman emerges as an individual who accepts the epoch that he is living in and understands the existence as a process of overcoming. From here, the art, in this case of Duchamp, was the aesthetic justification of existence—the art was united with the life. From this arises the great importance of Duchamp and the impact he had on future artistic practices. This interest in Duchamp’s work began to assert itself towards the middle of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties. This influence extended to the representation of the dematerialization of art with the use of non-traditional materials, giving rise to Conceptual art, Performance Art or Body Art—considering the body as a place and a means of artistic expansion, as a new material and support.

 

Chris Burden—The materialization of the ‘crime fiction’

Chris Burden, You’ll never see my face in Kansas City, 1971

If I turn now to the artists of the 1970s, they were concerned with art based on action, as well as body art, rather than objects created for an elite market. Chris Burden, an American artist wanted to respond to a specific historical context with a performance that altered the state of the product of artistic activity within the market. This was a response to the Vietnam War and we can understand it as a protest amongst an abundance of high intensity artistic responses to the war. People had to endure psychological and emotional injuries that were installed in the sense and guilt of who we were as a society. Burden put to the limit the anarchy of his body as response and attitude behind the immoral acts of society: he used the body to an excess. We can consider that within the artistic practice there is an evolution of a modified nihilism, where the “negativity” is assumed as a means of expression of the language of the artist, and that it does not abandon the cultural questions of meaning and value.

            Chris Burden, Five Day Locker Piece, 1971Chris Burden, Shoot ,1971

In Five Day Locker Piece, Burden responds to these issues of war, where he was locked for 5 days in a box office with 22 litres of water bottled on top of his top locker and an empty bottle of 22 litres located in the lower locker. The Vietnam War is represented as a metaphorical space and, at the same time, the survival of the human body, since it put his health at risk. His objective is to originate knowledge, that is to say, its artistic practice is not ritual, since it creates in the spectator a decisive conscience in terms of body politics next to the pain limit of the social reality. In his work the will to power of which Nietzsche speaks is reflected upon, since it implies a process of overcoming where the positive-negative interaction is reflected in how the meaning of life is inseparable from the meaning of death. These actions involved a criminal activity or a real physical danger to him or to the people who witnessed the action. Such a perspective shows that human existence is never fixed and settled, but rather a continuing confrontation with change, limits and negative forces (Hatab, 1987:103).

With his performances, he proposed a liberation through the limits of collective horror, with the individualization of the body as a weapon of social action. Shoot, 1971, is one of his best-known and most controversial performances, where he shoots himself in an arm with a real gun. This action was a critique about the American culture about firearms, the War in Vietnam and the acceptance and normalization of the violence implanted since then in particularly American society. While Guy Debord denounced the perversion of television, Burden in TV Hijack 1972 carried out a real kidnapping on a television set where he placed a knife in the presenter’s throat threatening her with death if they cut the transmission. The borders explored by Chris Burden shared the transformation of the idea of “art and life” that the Dadaists implanted, to be “art or life”. The representation of the crimes was installed within the artistic practice, where the body with scars was a record of the work itself. Violence became a daily spectacle, thus originating a future approach to the action of art in society and in terms of body politics.

Santiago Sierra—The question of human rights

If I turn now to the contemporary artist Santiago Sierra, his actions have been nourished by the derivations of Duchamp’s concept of readymades, but not the meaning or purpose of the performances of the 70s, where the artist was a transformer and a social activist. The performance of Sierra, where people become ‘performative readymades’, visualized the idea of work as something humiliating, in a sense that makes us reflect on the perverse nature of work and its relationship with moral values in today’s society. In performances, where performers are subcontracted to perform the artistic proposal, they aim to attack the work itself, just as it has been conceived in capitalist societies. Sierra opposes the imaginaries that dignify the worker as a virtue of improvement for society, acts that speak of a social system that is perverse. Sierra does not adopt the position of a political activist and he rejects the role of artist as a social worker. It reverses the dynamics of the capitalist system, thus Sierra is the ‘entrepreneur’ in his artistic actions, where he negotiates with the workers and sets the work guidelines, showing a hierarchy and his position of power. It highlights the role of artist in the art market. It is not that of a simple worker, instead it one of an entrepreneur within globalized capitalism. It transgresses the reality of social order with an anarchic approach. In Spain, in 2000, he tattooed a continuous line on the backs of a group of prostitutes addicted to heroin; line of 160 cm being thus a remunerated action for the price of an injection. This work has a precedent in Havana 1999; a line of 250 cm where he hired six young, unemployed men and also tattooed a line that joined them. Sierra plays with the concept of the border between life and art, since his ‘workers’ are marked for the rest of their lives by their intervention with the tattoo. With these actions, he simply refers us to the precarious working conditions and the exploitation that is characteristic of capitalism. It is said that political freedom is essentially a negative concept, freedom from restriction, manipulation or control (Hatab, 1987: 105).

 Santiago Sierra, Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2003                   

Santiago Sierra, line of 160 cm., 2000

In 2003 he was chosen to represent the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, his action was to cover the word ‘Spain’ with black plastic and tape, and prevented access to the Pavilion by building a brick wall in front of the main door. To access the Pavilion, you could only enter through the back door where two guards asked all visitors to present their Spanish passport in order to gain access inside—an action that refers to those lands of cities and closed countries that define exclusion and social separation. Sierra’s actions do not seek originality, but are connected and involved with reality, where it puts in question the concepts of obeying and ruling within society. Sierra is thus a ‘subject of knowledge’, where he is granted an authority of freedom. In fact he passes the blame to social order. It presents human rights as a term of what a human being is not. Art for him should not change society: it is the political system that has to change, towards the creation of an individual freedom. Therefore, ‘rights’ refer to the ways in which a society recognizes the limits of how a human person can be defined (Hatab, 1987: 106). Sierra believes that not having hope is very useful, and says: a person who has no hope and is not afraid is very dangerous to the system (Sierra, 2012).

Conclusion  

The impact of anarchism caused by the vanguards mentioned above, as we can see, still persists today as an artist’s thought and role in the society. Duchamp was not only an anarchist, he was an influential element and representative of the change in artistic practice from the mid-fifties until today. He created the idea that art is used to interrogate the foundations of culture, and his influence is undoubted today. With his playful character in artistic practice, the notion of art as a social action became the perfect union of ‘art and life’, both for its aesthetic justification of existence and for its dematerialization of art. A Duchampian art became anarchic in the body of artists in the 70s. Chris Burden, during his period of the Body Art, demonstrated that his artistic actions were not pure rituals, it was art with social demands, facing issues of social reality with a negative approach and denunciation. The actions of Sierra provoked denunciation on the part of the critic. This anarchic anti-system vision puts in question the laws of the social order, thus putting in question his own art since he becomes “the system” through his actions. Sierra touches the reality of social order with his fingers, he is an artist turned into a social power. Artists act with anarchy as mediators of reality. Today, the anarchist practice within art has reached such a point that it has become a relation between negativity and meaning, where it is shown that there is no preservation of our individuality and freedom as citizens in the current global society.

 

Bibliography

Antliff, M. (1998). “Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The “Aestheticism” of the “Action d’art” Group 1906-1920”. Oxford Art Journal, 21(2), pp. 101-120. P.102. [Online] Available at: from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360616 [Accessed 17 Nov. 2017].

Hatab, L. J. (1987). “Nietzsche, Nihilism and Meaning. University of Illinois Press”, The Personalist Forum, 3(2) pp. 91-111. [Online] Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20708503 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Lippard, L. R. (2007). Dadas on Art: Tzara, Arp, Duchamp and Others. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Dover Publications, pp. 1-55. [Online] Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zmOyK1e7C0oC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed: 3^rd Nov. 2017]

Menéndez, J. L. (2001). “Marcel Duchamp: crítica de la significación. Lo posible y el estilo”. 1st ed. Departament d’História de l’Art, pp.125-138. [Online] Available at: http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/109848/1/186878.pdf [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Rielo, V. B. (2014) Arte y Terrorismo: de la trangresión y sus mecanismos discursivos. Madrid, pp. 6-46. [Online] Available at: http://eprints.ucm.es/32660/1/Ext23%20arte%20y%20terrorismo.pdf [Accessed 2 Nov. 2017].

Speranza, G. (2012) Santiago Sierra. Como decir no. [Online] Available at: http://www.revistaotraparte.com/n%C2%BA-27-primavera-verano-2012/santiago-sierra-c%C3%B3mo-decir-no [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

 

The Authentic Messenger and the rise of the online Far Right

Benjamin Duax

Walter Lippmann’s concept of the Authentic Messenger is a sociological construct used to explain why certain mediums are seen as accurate, in a way which relates more to social conditioning than material logic. Lippmann’s example is of a woman who has been conditioned to take a cracked window pane as a omen of death. Because of something in her lived experience, she assigned concrete meaning to a random physical signifier. Looking at Lippmann’s metric, I hope to examine the rise of political propaganda on social media. What I argue is that the signifiers of credibility in online political discourse are completely at odds with those signifiers in print media. Rather than legislative or academic credentials, the authenticity of the oneline messenger comes from perceived shared experience (time online) and a successful adoption of tone.

In Public Opinion Lippmann laments that the discourse includes the whole of society, not simply those he calls ‘Normal Members,’ that is, political opinions held by illiterates, the insane, the criminal caste, are included in the consense of public opinion. Lippmann (1922, p. 51) suggests that these partially isolated audiences will distort and exaggerate strands of the popular opinion, “discolouring” them with counterfacts and innuendos based on their specific mass of biases and ideologies.

Over the past decade or so, the shift of political discourse from print and television based, to social media and television based has led to increased polarization. The common refrain is that Algorithms sort users into experiential silos, where they only encounter views that are in line with their own. With no pushback they move to increasingly extreme versions of pre-existing ideology. Lippmann describes the “broad appeal” of messaging required to shift public opinion despite these distorting elements. Because a less focused message is required to reach those with less focused knowledge, the lack of detail functions as a form of censorship. BBC documentarian Adam Curtis claimed that “the Left” moved online as a means of coping with an unrecognizable political climate. In Hyper Normalization, Curtis suggests that the isolating effect of social media algorithms is what caused democrats to be unprepared for Donald Trump’s victory, Brexit, etcetera. Curtis suggests that because of the online echo chamber, leftists underestimated the scale of the right wing surge. Rather, I claim that the shift to platform based publishing, from editorial based publishing has extended the circle of expertise to include those outside Lippmann’s ‘Normal Members of society’, especially socially isolated young men. As Lippmann argues that true dialog can not begin until the facts themselves are agreed on, the primary aim of the far right today is attacking facts themselves. To render authority itself as unreliable is a central rhetorical technique of the online right. The effect of social media is not to isolate critics from one another, but to fundamentally transform the scope of normal argument or opinion.

In the Journal for Deradicalization Daniel Kohler describes interviews with eight former members of German far right groups, and how they were radicalized online. It was not simply the freedom that comes with absolute anonymity, or the silo effect of unanimous agenda, but the ability to shape a movement that was cited by Kohler’s subjects. One former Neo-Nazi describes the powerful feeling of the ability “to create own “schools” or interpretations,” to self idealize as a historical figure because of the degree of access to the center of the movement. With more or less decentralized structure, every participant is capable of imagining the historic gravity of leadership. Kohler also describes a illusory effect of far right chatrooms in that they provide not simply reinforcing perspective, but the illusion of mass perspective. The amorphous scale of online communities allowed users to not simply ignore opposing viewpoints, but to believe that the viewpoints they encountered were the majority. That the people they were talking to represented a critical mass of citizens with similar views who were kept from expressing these views in public.

The Journal for Peace Research, details the perception that an increase in migrants will necessarily result in an increase in violence against migrants. The case example is Germany where the common wisdom is that because the amount of right wing violence increased more or less in proportion to the amount of middle eastern migrants they must be correlated. The authors suggest that the increase in violence is actually more closely tied to a failure of the state to assert its power against right wing agitators: to allow itself to be influenced by public opinion in a way harmful to its own constituents.

In the same journal, Wilhelm Heitmey argues that the radicalization of right wing youth in Germany follows a pattern common to all resurgent far right nativist movements. His argument is that the increase in anti immigrant opinion is based around economic anxiety, and based around a reliable, essentially interchangeable logic sequence. Attacks on foreigners or immigrants are overwhelmingly carried out by those who are themselves of tenuous socio-economic status, even if the rhetoric justifying the attack comes from bourgeois media.

The flawed response of Twitter specifically, and of old media in general to understand the social dynamic of online space directly facilitated the transformation of online pranksters to a disciplined reactionary movement. A 2014 study by Womens Action Media, found that Twitter only took moderating action half of the time hate speech was reported. Twitter depends on documented evidence of a subjective exchange in order to take action, potentially at odds with the non archival basis of the medium. Writing in Feminist Studies Karla Mantilla describes what she calls ‘Gender Trolling’: the mass coordination of online harassment of women, particularly feminist writers. Harris Describes the phenomenon as focused primarily on women writing in tech journalism, specifically women who describe sexism of various forms within the tech industry. A specific case of Gender Trolling described by Mantilla, known as Gamergate, was a year long campaign of harassment against Video Game blogger Anita Sarkiseen, following her writing about the negative portrayal of women in electronic entertainment, she was subject to a campaign of death and rape threats. Several of the key figures in these exchanges went on to become major figures in the Alt Right, the white nationalist vanguard of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Lippmann recites an account of an experiment, where a brawl was staged in front of a group of trained observervers. A group of academics had gathered, and it was surreptitiously arranged for “a clown and a negro” to burst into the hall and quarrel over a revolver. The assembled witnesses were asked to describe what had happened, not knowing the events were pre-arranged. More than half of them described the events either mostly or completely inaccurately. Lippman (1922: 56) states that the images they saw were their stereotypes of a brawl. The men had seen many fictional fights or heard of real fights in their lives, and it was easier for them to recall this assembled gestalt of images then to actually experience what was in their face. I suggest that this form of stereotyping has been used by the Alt Right to falsify political events to manipulate the system. In september of 2016, towards the end of the American election, Hillary Clinton appeared to stagger at an event commemorating September eleventh. Aides were photographed helping her into her car in a way which made her look feeble, or at least weak. Initially citing dehydration or overheating, the Clinton Campaign later revealed that the candidate had been suffering from Pneumonia for several days. Writing in the Telegraph’s, Ruth Sherlock describes the revelation of the suppressed diagnosis as “drawing a line under” questions about her trustworthiness.

Highlighting Clinton’s apparent ill health was part of a coordinated exploitation campaign on social media. The New Yorker details a coordinated series of hashtags, arranged through far right bloggers, in its profile of Mike Cernovich. In large part the key figures of the Alt Right come from the overlapping Gamergate and PUA world’s, reactionary movements carved out in purely online social space. In november of 2016, libertarian video blogger Alex Jones alleged that Hillary clinton was at the center of a child sex trafficking ring centered out of the basement of Washington DC pizza parlour. The story had originally been posted to Reddit by an anonymous user, but achieved traction on Turkish Twitter. Writing for the BBC magazine and the Daily Dot, Efe Kerem Sozeri describes how the rumoured sex trafficking by Clinton campaign staff was used to deflect criticism of the Turkish president after a real sex trafficking scandal. Not only was a rumor manufactured in Lippmann’s “isolated social space” (in this case the overlap between pick up artist Twitter and far right Twitter) but it had jumped from one isolated space to another and back. That Turkish right wing media successfully amplified chatter from American right wing social media, which then became a tenable issue in the campaign, something that mainstream media reported on, even breathlessly, is a disturbing sequence of degrading copies: the imitation of the imitation of a whisper.

A passage from Lippmann’s Public Opinion describes “Lunatics, simpletons, the half-crazy and the crazy turned their darkened brains toward him as toward reason itself” describing “fan mail” to General Joffe, the commander of the French infantry following the first World War. Not only the mass of French society turned to him in adoration, but the dregs of society as well. The “discoloured isolated element” of public opinion, where half truths fester, has been given a central role in American political discourse because of the isolating effect of trumps ascendancy. The Republican party has spent the past decade purging serious intellectuals. There is no William Buckley of the party today, only Mike Cenroviches and Milo Yiannopoulos.

The organizational strength of the far right, supported by dark money has led to a situation in which large corporations cater to online activists in a manner disproportionate to their actual influence. The ability to “game” clicks, to manipulate traffic has resulted in major corporations reacting to the right wing fringe as if they exerted pluralistic influence. The Newsletter of the American Trotskyist organization, World Socialist Website, outlines a shift in search engine optimization, over the past year they claim that their web traffic dramatically declined as a result of Google deliberately suppressing left wing sources, in order to appear more neutral and therefore within the center of public opinion. In a similar fashion to Twitter, capitulating to the organizational acumen of the far right because internet discourse is something fundamentally alien to the middle aged executives who run these companies. According to former New York Times writer Chris Hedges, the number of visitors to the World Socialist Website declined 95% in October of 2017 relative to the weekly average over the past year—just one example of the kowtowing of Media companies to the far right. Another recent example was the coordinated campaign of white supremacists to have MSNBC contributor Sam Ceder fired over a resurfaced tweet where he appeared to make light of Roman Polanski’s rape case. The Tweet in question was clearly a sarcastic defense of Polanski, intended to attack Hollywood’s sheltering of powerful predators, but over a week period, GamerGate and Nazi activists engaged in a bad faith reading, and submitted complaints to MSNBC as if taking it on face value. The organizers of the campaign were prominent members of the far right, including Mike Cernovich, also one of the masterminds of the Sick Hillary campaign, and a former publisher of “pick up” manuals. Again, ‘Old Media’ failed to realize the shift in goalposts, considering malicious actors as real arbiters of public opinion.

I believe that this is the end goal of a market based publishing system, in which platforms are divorced from publishing reality. In order to preserve the commons function as a sounding ground for ideological development, they can not be left to the market. Because of the dissolution of notions of authenticity or expertise in favour of content, the notion of credibility itself has been discarded. A solution I propose is that the government should nationalize social media, because they have essentially taken the function of national levels of social discourse or papers of record.

 

Bibliography

Curtis, Adam, HyperNormalization, BBC, 2016.

Damon , Andrew, Google escalates blacklisting of left-wing web sites and journalists, international Committee of the Fourth International, October 2017 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/20/goog-o20.html

Kerem Sozeri, Esme, How the alt-right’s PizzaGate conspiracy hid real scandal in Turkey, the Daily Dot, November 2016. https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/pizzagate-alt-right-turkey-trolls-child-abuse/

Koehler, Daniel The Radical Online: Individual Radicalization Processes and the Role of the Internet, 2014 http://journals.sfu.ca/jd/index.php/jd/article/view/8/8

Gert Krell, Hans Nicklas & Änne Ostermann, Immigration, Asylum, and Anti-Foreigner Violence in Germany Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 33, No. 2 (May, 1996) http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/425434.pdf

Lippman, Walter Public Opinion, 1922.

Mantilla, Karla Gendertrolling: Misogyny Adapts to New Media, Feminist Studies, 2013 http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719068

Sherlock, Ruth, The illness and the cover up that almost cost Hillary Clinton the presidency—and still might, The Telegraph, 2016 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/12/the-illness-and-the-cover-up-that-almost-cost-hillary-clinton-th/

Women, Action, and the Media, Reporting, Reviewing and Responding to Harassment on Twitter , May 2015. https://womenactionmedia.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/05/wam-twitter-abuse-report.pdf

 

How do feminist artists use language in their work to enable otherwise restricted discourse?

 

Aditi Joshi

Introduction

The standardized definition of an ‘ideology’ is a set of beliefs and ideas, often used politically, both in small groups and larger societies: to study an ideology is to study the ways in which meaning creates and sustains power. In Eagleton’s (1988: 5) definition, a dominant group is able to sustain and mystify their power using subversive means, making the way things are seem natural and inevitable. For the purposes of this essay, the dominant ideology that I will be examining is American patriarchy. Specifically, I will investigate how language is used to create and force a gender binary with an explicit hierarchy and how artists can subvert these forces. I am interested in exploring how language enforces power on three different levels: the semiotic, the metaphorical, and the narrative and how it becomes a way for ideology to mask itself. Since language is part of our daily lives we are unable to recognize it as being used for domination. Analyzing language through a Marxist lense, Voloshinov (1973: 13) argued that the word was the ideological phenomenon par excellence and further argues that language affects how we view our own identity and consciousness. Because the dominant American ideology is enforced through male power structures, its language subverts women. There is resistance, however, in feminist art and below I will examine the work of three artists—Barbara Kruger, Sophia Wallace and Jenny Holzer—to argue that we can see artists using language in their pieces to achieve feminist aims at each of the different levels to dismantle dominant masculine ideologies. What I have concluded is that through their work, they engage the public in a discourse that is otherwise not possible, bringing awareness to the hidden feminine.

Fighting Semiotics: Barbara Kruger

Language can be analyzed semiotically as a system of signs that exist socially. These signs create the smallest units of meaning, our building blocks of language. For semioticians, language hinges on the relationship between a signified and a signifier. The word, the signifier, serves as a representation of a specific object or thing, the signified. Together these two concepts become the sign, or the outcome meaning (Saussure, 1996). Because there exists only one principle signifier for either gender (i.e. “man” or “woman”) each word links to one principle signified concept or image. In using these inherently gendered words, we translate all women and, similarly, all men, to one signified image, rather than the complex gender spectrum that exists. Additionally, since there exists little flexibility between these words (one must be either “man” or “woman”), it is difficult for society to understand the signified of a person who does not exist within this binary. While the prevalence of the singular “they” is gaining popularity, it is by no means universal and often times grammatically awkward. When people use it to refer to themselves, it is usually only after having used a pronoun in the gender binary for some of their lives. This strict linguistic gender classification system inscribes an ideology of gender through language at the semiotic level (Hodge, 1988: 98). The system is replicated often in how we refer to ourselves and each other, and is absorbed into our consciousness at an early age.

Combining semiotics with gender theory in this way, we can deconstruct the linguistically created gender. We uncover what Judith Butler calls a performative phallocentric language. The performativity of language means positioning language as constructing identity and personhood in addition to communication (Butler, 1990: 26). This allows ideology which is implicitly in charge of the dominant language through their grasp on society the ability to control not only our communication but also our consciousness. Ideology uses language to ensure a false consciousness to render power over others, making us subscribe to the stereotypes of the gender binary by contributing to a lack of language to describe or signify anything else.

Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), (Kruger, 1989)

Barbara Kruger’s art seeks to examine and undermine the stereotypes that represent power crafted by the sign-signifier relationship to highlight stereotypes that exist within our dominant western ideology of masculine consumption (Kruger, 1984). Many see Kruger as a “guerrilla semiologist,” a term coined by Umberto Eco, who said that those who want to make change must control communication and the only way to do so is through guerrilla methods (Eco, 1986). Kruger does this by using the form and language of advertisements, but co-opts language for activist purposes rather than economic ones. The text is bright, large catchy phrases that uncover the subversive stereotypes of women. The images that she uses have often been used in magazine advertisements, making them semiotically related to economics, but her text gives it a very different symbolic relationship. Through these messages she brings power relationships to the forefront of public discourse (Maric, 2014).

One of Kruger’s pieces that highlights these methods is “Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground).” This piece is inherently political, as it was created for the Women’s March on Washington in 1989 to protest anti-choice laws (Caldwell, 2016). The phrase “your body is a battleground” became a rallying cry for the pro-choice movement and the phrase specifically highlights the ways in which women’s bodies have been used by males. Additionally, she uses the word “battleground,” with its militaristic masculine connotations. This highlights the dichotomy between militaristic male gaze and feminine bodies. In this way, Kruger engages in a conversation with an audience to help them realize the way in which men view and interact with the bodies of others. Rather than a stereotypical signifier to represent women’s bodies—for example using “delicate” or “beautiful”—she uses an atypical word to help us realize the inadequacies of current semiotic language and how it hides the destruction of the feminine body. Furthermore, the use of the direct pronoun “you” engages the audience in a very personal sense of dialogue with Kruger. This, combined with the fact that the piece was created for a very public political event, allows us to see her art as a public dialogue, trying to bring issues to the forefront that are otherwise hidden in semiotic relationships.

Fighting Metaphor: Sophia Wallace

Metaphors add complexity to language viewed simply as signs. They play an important role in subverting the feminine, taking the semiotic relationship of language and complicating it with another layer of analysis. Because of the nature of metaphors, we have to unpack sign-signifier relationships twice. First, to understand the word and what it means and second to understand what the word is being mapped to in the creation of its metaphorical representation. As such, there is more room for miscommunication and misrepresentation as people have to do more work to unpack these representations. Additionally, the way in which we link two concepts together demonstrates underlying assumptions and stereotypes that society has for both of these concepts. One such usage of metaphors for the subversion of women is how we talk about reproductive systems. We describe them as mysterious organs. When we create metaphors for female reproduction, we craft them to be whatever we wish. It is an opening, a container, expanding and contracting at all moments. It can be “protected or exposed, inviting or introverted” (Angier, 1999: 52). The metaphors that we chose to use make certain comparisons which may not be wholly correct. In the metaphors used for the feminine body, our language shows a sense of mystery around the reproductive system, making talking about it even more taboo. Not only is talking openly about the female reproductive system unusual, but the words used to describe it—for example a “flower”—connect the system itself with a sense of mystery, making the entire body shrouded and hidden from public discourse.

The usage of metaphors for women have another societal role when viewed through the lense of rhetoric. Aristotle saw metaphors as important to making an argument because of their power in connecting concepts otherwise unrelated. He asserted that the three most important aspects of metaphor if used as rhetoric are that it is pleasing, lucid, and strange. The one that is the most relevant to how we use metaphors with respect to gender is their “strangeness.” Aristotle argued that metaphors have to be strange because they connect one part of language to another which are not usually connected. He wrote: “Men feel toward language as they feel toward strangers [xenous] and fellow citizens, and we must introduce an element of strangeness into our diction because people marvel at what is far away, and to marvel is pleasant.” (Moran, 1996: 385-398). Here, Aristotle talks of the power of metaphors as a way of marveling at otherwise uncommon objects, but he also shows how these metaphors are connected to the strangeness between people who are different than the “norm.” Therefore, the use of metaphors for women categorize them as “strange” and different than the “norm.” Vico also writes of metaphors used as rhetorical devices. He argues that a metaphor brings two otherwise unrelated concepts together through a linkage and it is that linkage that brings to light a third concept that is a hidden assumption (Schaeffer, 1981). This assumption demonstrates a stereotype that society holds in the original object. For women, this stereotype is a mysterious strangeness unknowable to man.

Cliteracy, (Wallace, 2012)

Sophia Wallace’s work, however, sheds light on the female body, giving a voice to what is often considered taboo. She seeks to explore the hypocrisy between the fact that the feminine body is overly sexualized but modern society knows very little about its anatomy, especially as it relates to pleasure. Wallace gives imagery and language to the taboo and in doing so starts a conversation about otherwise hidden ideas. Often times she uses phrases that are used in American right-wing politics but positions them in the feminine; for example “Don’t tread on my clit,” thereby bringing together two concepts otherwise unrelated, providing a thought provoking linkage and creating an unexpected metaphor.

The phrases that Sophia Wallace uses relate the misunderstandings of women’s bodies to a misunderstanding of fundamental core beliefs of society—such as “the world is flat.” In this way she is able to highlight the fact that we as a society have been ignorant in understanding women’s bodies, which should be considered as absurd as if we all thought the world was flat. Wallace tries to position the female body as discursively similar to male bodies. She rewrites metaphors to help us better understand reproductive systems, deshrouding them from mystification. She creates linkages that map the female body to the seen and knowable. In this way her work subverts metaphors that the dominant ideology has created and in the process making women themselves more visible.

Fighting Narrative: Jenny Holzer

When the semiotic and metaphorical are put together en masse, they present a larger narrative of the core values and beliefs of a dominant ideology. Often times these narratives are stories that set and force a status quo (Hodge, 1988). For example, for women, these are often narratives of dependence crafted from collective knowledge of society’s mythological canon. The Western, Christian story of the start of life told through Adam and Even demonstrates a female dependence on men. The Bible purports that women were crafted from the rib of Adam. There’s a similar narrative in the Greek gods; it was said that Athena came from the skull of Zeus. These narratives perpetuate the idea that men are the default and women are created from them; always a part of them that has derived from man. Without men, these myths argue, women would not exist. However, as Natalie Angier writes in Woman, “we don’t need Adam’s rib, we didn’t use Adam’s rib; our bones calcified and our pelvises hardened entirely without male assistance” (1999: 43-44). These stories of women coming from men, craft a feigned dependence which finds its way outside of the stories and into our public consciousness, creating narratives of caricatures of men who represent Adam and women who represent Eve. In these stories, Eve relies on Adam for not his rib, but rather for economic, material, emotional, and intellectual needs. These stories and the ways in which we talk about them have perpetuated gender delineation in our society and deepened inequalities.

The powerful have created a set of norms and standards as part of the linguistic paradigm which, when not followed, produce a sense of inadequacy in the speaker (Hodge, 1988). Similar to what Gramsci would call a cultural hegemony, these one dimensional narratives create a kind of linguistic hegemony which make some stories unheard (Lears, 1985). Those who control dominant narratives also control what is presented as social truth. The success of this hegemony hinges on a non-coercive implementation. As postcolonialist theorist Spivak writes, the fact that ideology is tied to language and discourse makes it such that certain speakers and ways of speaking are considered more valid than others. In order to make themselves heard, those most marginalized have to perform the speech of the “ruling class” to pander to their ideology and, in this way, ensure that they are heard. Because often times they cannot do this, they cannot speak (Spivak, 1987). This ensures that the dominant ideology continues to hold its power by silencing the stories of those that would revolt against them. In the system we are examining—that is an American patriarchal one—those marginalized are often non-white women.

Truisms, (Holzer, 2012)

Jenny Holzer is an American artist who works on art that focuses on the delivery of words and ideas in a public space to combat dominant narratives. She created what she calls “truisms” in the 1970s which are plays on commonly held beliefs in society. She tries to help society realize the problems in how we view and interact with one another. Her work is put up in public spaces in cities to engage a large audience in a conversation about what they stand for. She explicitly tries to provoke both an internal realization of these “truisms” as well as a larger conversational debate.

Many of Holzer’s “truisms” highlight an narrative that is not explicitly stated but underlies much of how society functions. For example “sex differences are here to stay” from her first piece of “truisms” make us confront the fact that our society sees and acts on sex differences and is doing little to change this fact. She brings to the forefront many societal facts that are not talked about but are inherent in our consumerism and relationships to one another. In this way she uses language to discuss narratives that already exist in our society but are not talked about openly. To her audience, she encourages an open dialogue about the ways in which not only our narratives are overly consumerist and masculine but how western ideology influences these relationships as well. Since our dominant narratives control societal truth, Holzer’s “truisms” give us a different truth and, therefore, a different set of dominant narratives.

Conclusion

The dominant ideology controls our language on three different levels: the semiotic, the metaphorical, and the narrative. Through all of these methods of power, the Other, in this case the feminine, are hidden from public discourse and placed on the margins of society. This allows men to control power and since language is a large part of our everyday lives, we are often impervious to our own subversion. However, feminist artists attack the linguistic basis of phallocentric ideology at all three of these levels, using text in their work to engage the audience in a conversation about the otherwise shrouded female subject. In bringing these topics to the forefront linguistically through their work, Barbara Kruger, Sophia Wallace, and Jenny Holzer also bring to the forefront the marginalization of women and work to make male ideology less subversive. In this way, they use words in their art to lessen the male grasp on society and make the world a more equitable place for all genders.

 

References

Angier, N. (1999) Woman: An Intimate Geography. Orlando: Mariner Books.

Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Caldwell, E. (2016) The History of “Your Body is a Battleground.” Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-your-body-is-a-battleground/ [Accessed 10 December 2017].

Eagleton, T. (2007) Ideology: An Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Verso.

Eco, U. (1986) Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare. San Diego: Harcourt.

Kruger, B. (1984) We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Hodge, B. & Kress, G. (1988) Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity.

Holzer, J. (2000) Truisms. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-truisms-t03959 [Accessed 10 December 2017].

Lears, T. (1985) The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities. The American Historical Review, 90 (3), pp. 567-593.

Maric, B. (2014) Semiotics of the Popular. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/barbara-kruger-exibition-modern-art-oxford/ [Accessed 10 December 2017].

Moran, Richard. (1996) ‘Artifice and persuasion: The work of metaphor in the rhetoric.’ In: Rorty, A. O. (ed.) Essays on Aristotle’s rhetoric. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 385-398.

Saussure, F. et al. (1966) Course in General Linguistics: Ferdinand De Saussure. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Schaeffer, J. (1981) Vico’s Rhetorical Model of the Mind: ‘Sensus Communis’ in the “De Nostri Temporis Studorium Ratione” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 14 (3), pp. 152-167.

Spivak, G. (1987) Can the Subaltern Speak? In: Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L., ed. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-314.

Voloshinov, V. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wallace, S. (2012) Cliteracy: 100 Natural Laws. Available at: http://www.sophiawallace.com/cliteracy-100-natural-laws [Accessed 10 December 2017].

 

How to deal with the image/word relation instead of focusing on the cognitive difference, or how to overcome dualism?

Matthias Esch

I. In this essay I will try to prove why the image and the word are not in opposition to each other and how this knowledge helps us generate a new approach to their relation (and dualism in general). I will do this by explaining why words and images are different, but while this is important for classification or art history, they are also strongly connected and the transition between these two is fluent. We as a recipient are a third element in this connection, with our thinking influenced by the different media, and yet with the possibility of changing our approach and our attitude towards the word/image relation. This is possible because the definition of word and image is not that clear, they can shift back and forth, and our perception, the contextualisation and customisation plays an important role in this. For me the interpretant by Charles Pierce is the figure of “connecting”. It shows how different points are connected through fluid variables and context. Unfortunately I will only be able to give a short introduction to the complex theory of Pierce. The element of the “us”, the viewer or recipient is able to change this connection to words or images through a different use of words and the understanding of their contextual role in their meaning, as well as trough an attitude W. J. T. Mitchell draws from Nietzsche’s “how to philosophize with a hammer”. In his philosophy Wittgenstein goes in a similar direction by forcing the reader through ideas and language games into a new way of dealing with language. While his philosophy itself is difficult enough to grasp, I believe that his idea of language in a specific context and therefore its thoughtful use is also the right tool to deal with images and their relation to words.

II. Iconology:

William J.T. Mitchell investigated the nature of the image in his Book ‘Iconology’ by comparing it with verbal language and by pointing out certain characteristics of the different mediums. Words and images are not just different for us, but rather opposite kinds and Mitchell points to the impossibility of unifying them in one aesthetic, term or semiotics, and the attempts of critics for theoretical unity. I’d say he also has in mind the various mechanisms human perception uses to process images and words. This intake is mingled together until it gets hard to separate. While the gap between the two mediums of image and words maintain, it separates and shows differences between the arts, which make it possible to discuss in the first place. Mitchell argues that, after Edmund Burke, difference between text and image leads to the two great rhetorical skills: ‘wit’ and ‘judgement’, which as Burke puts it ‘wit’, being “chiefly conversant in training resemblances”, and ‘judgement’ mainly concerned with “finding differences” (Mitchell, 1986 pp.48). My point is, these two criteria indications (text and image) might be important for classification, for critics and art history, but now it is time to put them aside to examine their correlation.

While there is a gap between the image and the word, there also connecting elements. These are connected over the gap, as every distance needs two marking points. In principle we think that if we compare poetry with painting we are using a metaphor, while claiming the difference between poetry and painting would be literal truth.We have to understand that our way and use of thinking is crucial in leading to the results we receive, or it can be “…instituted by figures of difference, figures of discrimination or judgement” (Mitchell, 1986 pp.49).

An example that our definitions are not false in the classic use of the word, but they can change over time, is that the term painting has changed in recent years. Also nowadays it might be a bit odd to speak about the idea of ‘paintings’ vs. ‘poetry’, I would agree that we prefer the more neutral and open terms ‘image’ vs. ‘text’. (Mitchell, 1986 pp.50). So, as Vilém Flusser argues, our perception is formed by a medium and vice versa.

Vilém Flusser:

In ‘Towards a Philosophy of Photography’ Vilém Flusser develops a media based history where he distinguishes between two essential codes: Images and Text. While there are many definitions or thoughts about the ‘core’ of these two points, for Flusser the main definition are the following: An image is a significant surface, directly linked (or a reduction of) the four dimensional human experience into a two dimensional surface (Finger, Guldin, Bernardo, 2011). Thinking linked to images is ‘circle based’, myth like, it helps us to bring world into an understandable form, render it, place images in front of it, so we can imagine it ‘vorstellen’ (placing in front of, imagine).

As the word ‘vorstellen’ already predicts, the image code tends to hide the actual world behind its image. We see, and I might say, therefore think, in the code of the tool we once used to get a hold on the world. To order this ‘mumbling’ ‘murmur’ thinking, and the hidden view of the world, by Flusser’s linear writing was invented: “In doing so, they transcoded the circular time of magic into the linear time of history“ (Flusser, 1984 pp.7).

Flusser argues that by the invention of the technical images man tries to make text imaginable again, changing the way of linear text based thinking to a new ‘murmuring’ text based thinking. He distinguishes classic images based on real conditions (as well as material) while technical images are text-code based (Finger, Guldin &Bernardo, 2011). Nevertheless, writing, or the word, has an effect on our way of thinking, it influences not only what we think, but also how. So while reading, we think linearly, looking at pictures (or numbers) in the ‘circles,’ in a more organic, lively form. In doing so it is possible that the fundamental incompatibility of ear and eye is bypassed by subjecting the eye under the ear, the letters managing to suppress the numbers. We must therefore assume that we also live through the organization of our human perception mechanism in two separate, actually incompatible “realities”.

“Word and Image”

Mitchell often draws parallels to art history as a source for the separation between words and images in representation, presentation and symbols. Then there is the separation in our perception of eye and ear, and this represents how deep seated and wide spread, how manifold the problem is.

Mitchell describes the words I read or you are reading now, as verbal signs. They are also visible marks on the paper, read out loud audible sounds with background noise or in silence . Already inhabited is a dualism of eye and ear, the “visual” or “aural” Gestalt, or the articulated sign in language. And there is the possibility to shift from one way or another. Usually while reading we concentrate on the meaning of the words, but it is possible to analyse the form and typography of its letters which would be more a visual intake, demonstrated clearly in calligraphy (Mitchell, 1989 pp.51-52). So basically words can also be images, they are both, but mostly we fail to see it that way.

The same potential lies in visual images, we can learn the way of reading a certain style of paintings, and Mitchell (1989 pp.51) refers to the philosopher George Berkeley (1709) who argued that eyesight is a complex, learned technique, a “visual language”. The duck rabbit image game illustrates that it is possible to sell two things in one, shifting back and forth. As in (1989) ‘Ut Pictura Theoria’ Mitchell argues in (1996) ‘Words and Images’ that for example art historians defend their territory from interventions through “literary imperialism.” This defensiveness again holds back the possibilities if we mix and investigate word and image (Mitchell, 1996 pp.52). Art history cannot treat words as pure instruments or use images only for textual decoding, the relation between words an images are (not only for them) a central feature of self understanding.

Or as Lessing puts it:

painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbours, neither of whom indeed is allowed to take unseemly liberties in the heart of the other’s domain, but who exercise mutual forbearance on the borders, and effect a peaceful settlement for all the petty encroachments which circumstance may compel either to make in haste on the rights of the other. (Lessing, 1776 pp. 116)

The difficult situation of definition and description is shown in the relation “word/image” which is the name of a problem and a problematic (Mitchell, 1996 pp.53). A common explanation would be the difference between the two senses, words are meant to be read aloud or spoken and therefore heard, the image is supposed to be seen, representing the visual appearance of an object. But of course this is not as clear as it seems. A simplified image of a tree could be easily read as something else, only if we give it the label tree it is fixed in this context. As a hieroglyphic inscription however, a whole different range of symbolic meaning might occur. To realize this fluent core problem is very important and refers directly to Wittgenstein and his theory of the use of words in context.

The Image of a tree in a hieroglyphic inscription is part of the language domain. This means not that there is no difference between words and images—the difference is not simply the distinction between hearing and seeing (Mitchell, 1989 pp.56).

The contextualisation might be clear through the claim that images signify by virtue of resemblances (imitation), words are signs that signify through convention (pp.56). Just as with images, they can change after time and use. Again the problem is that resemblence or conventions are not enough to identify the differences between words and images. Conventions are subjected to many influences and some Images resemble nothing, a Marc Rothko painting for example (it resembles though, convention, a Marc Rothko painting).

Mitchell points out these two different points:

1. Some Image resemble or represent anything
2. Resemblance is not a sufficient condition for images
3. to do their “work” they have to intersect with language through custom and convention

An abstract painting is a representative sample, in the language game “abstract art”, it is a visual form with meaning, although it does not represent anything. While it is difficult to find a basis for the distinction between words and images, this does not mean issues like resemblance are irrelevant. But again, it shows this difference cannot be stabilized by a simple definition, or a static binary opposition. Mitchell calls it a “dialectical trope” (Mitchell, 1989 pp.57).

Abstract Painting and the Repression of Language

In the (1989) ‘Ut Pictura Theoria’ Mitchell discussed the circulating idea that abstract art (especially in modernism and Abstract Expressionism) is repressing language.From a historic point of view there are many examples of the dualism or “sister arts”, painting and poetry but Mitchell focused first on the role of art historians, or generally speaking who else could have an interest in a narration that represents abstract art as repression of literature and verbal language. A well-known example would be Clement Greenberg and his call for pure painterly form. So while there seems to be a historic reason for the brawl between these two arts, Mitchell (1989 pp.360) argues the blurred quasi-philosophical discourse is mainly present in “art theory”, which became the property of a group of priesthood-like circle that were allowed to speak.

It should be clear that without the knowledge of old myths or biblical stories old master paintings can not be “seen”. Nevertheless (despite the different ideas of “true” painting “seeing” or “reading”) this is a necessary connection between the art movements from modernism onwards and written theories (Mitchell, 1989 pp.356). While the early abstract artists build their art on manifestoes they wrote, Abstract Expressionism relied on critics like Greenberg, while after that the Minimalists begun with writing their own manifestoes again. Maybe it is overlooked or caused by a wrong use of words, the fact is that abstract art itself is not repressing language because it is creating a new (visual) language with no literary features to be oppressed (Mitchell, 1989 pp.360). Or, back with Biblical narrative, Greenberg claims that in traditional painting the narrative is what gives us pleasure by reproducing the inherent stories. This could be as well applied on abstract art (Mitchell, 1989 p.366), the description, theory or story is separated from the painting and known only to an elite of intellectuals art critics or theoreticians (instead of people that could read and were familiar with the Bible).

The problem here is again the idea that, even though a painting (an image) and his theory (the word) are different and separated they are an opposite entity. It shows that we can not ignore the sometimes bloated in favour of the “pure” painting, because we can not get one without the other (Mitchell, 1989 pp.367). An abstract painting, is part of the elaborate language game named “abstract art”, which is a function of it and includes the discourse around it. As Mitchell suggests:

to work through the visual verbal matrix that is abstract art, focusing on those places where this matrix seems to fracture its grid-like network of binary opposition (word and image) and admit the presence of something beyond the screen.

Interpretant:

The interpretant is a key factor in Charles Peirce’s theory of the sign and as I think inhabits an important part in the problem I am trying to point out in this essay, I think Mitchell uses “the viewer” as the recipient in his writings, even though he does not immerse in it. Anyway I want to include a short introduction of the concept of “the interpretant” in this essay.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives an overview of Charles Pierce Theory of Signs and his basic sign structure. He classified the sign in three inter-related parts, a sign, an object, and an interpretant. As I mentioned before I am interested in the latter, but for a basic knowledge I will try to elucidate the three parts.

The first element of the complete sign, is “the sign”. Actually the idea is not that complicated, there is the sign as a whole, but we are interested in the signifying part (which is not the whole), Peirce calls the first element by a variation of names, from which the most logical one seems to be “sign-vehicle”. Again, only parts of a sign are signifying, a common example for this is a molehill. Not every every part of a molehill signifies the mole, the colour or the type of the soil does not. It is the mound (we recognise as a molehill) in connection to a mole, the physical connection between these two parts, which is the “sign vehicle” (Atkin, 2013).

The second part is the object. Here again we are only interested in certain aspects of it, only certain elements are enable to fulfill the conditions for a successful signification. Speaking of the molehill, which is the sign, and the object of this sign which is the mole. Whether the mole is big or small, albino, male or female is not important for the signifying function of the object. Again the physical connection between the molehill (sign) and the mole (object) is important, if the molehill should be able to signify the mole, it must show this physical presence (Atkin, 2013). The relationship between the sign and the object is one of determination, a condition of successful signification.

The “Sign Theory” of Charles Peirce is a complex and branched theory, and so is his innovative and important concept of the interpretant. I outline his theory and especially the interpretant because I believe that it plays a major role in the approach (not necessary in the understanding) towards the “word/image” relation. Therefore it is unfortunate that I cannot specify the parts of Peirce’s theory in more detail. Peirce also classified three different types of the interpretant, depending on which features of the object our understanding is focused on. In his later years he introduced many more types, nuances and classifications so this is enough for now.

Nevertheless I think it is important to gain a knowledge of the basics of his theory. The interpretant is a dynamic factor in communication, and therefore especially important in the seemingly static word/image dualism. The interpretant is the transformation of the sign in relation to us. David Savan suggested calling the interpretant “the translatant” (Savan, 1988 pp. 41) since its function is the development, or the translation of the original sign. In connection with us it can also be defined as the understanding we reach of a sign/object relation. Like the object, the interpretant is determined through the sign by certain features in which the sign signifies its object to generate, change and shape our understanding. Smoke (the sign) can not exist without fire (the object) and we and our knowledge of this are the interpretant.

An attitude:

In his (1996) What do Pictures Want?, Mitchell illustrates the approach and the origin of his investigations. He focuses on the image and not on the artist or the recipient. By doing so asking “what does the image want?” in order to examine its power and reason from a different point of view. Images are objects that are marked with human characteristics. They possess a physical or virtual body, communicate with us, return a look or remain silent (Mitchell, 1996) pp.48) over an “Abyss that can not be bridged by language” (Berger, 1972). Mitchell considers the fetish of giving objects a human touch as an incurable symptom, but in order to gain an understanding of these symptoms it also might be possible to transform these into less pathological, damaging forms:

 … in short, we are against objects, and especially against images, caught up in magical, pre-modern acts, and our job is not to overcome that attitude, but to understand them, to work through your symptomatology. (Mitchell, 2012 pp.48-49)

What Mitchell writes here is less a guide than the description of an attitude: it is not possible out of our relationship with images to overcome this quasi-magic relationship. But if the ubiquity of the idea of ‘inspired’ images is established in our culture, how can we handle it?

He avoids the examination via the desire of the image as done by Freud, Lacan and Zizek, preventing presumptions about the nature of the image in order to return to the original question of “what does the image want?”( Mitchell, 2012 pp.92). So he uses the introductory pages of Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols” to develop an attitude, to do something that he calls “critical idolatry” (Mitchell, 2012 pp.44). Nietzsche recommends asking questions with his “hammer” in his preface to the “Twilight of the Idols ” (Nietzsche, 2008 pp.3-4). Use it like a tuning fork (the critical language) to make idols sound. No idlers, but “eternal idols” (that is, indestructible) are those who, like images, receive much of their power through their silence. This playful scanning furthermore avoids the inevitable doomed attempt to destroy the graven images, which naturally only grow through efforts to demolish them. The relationship between word and image is a living form. The distance between the two is nourished by the inner logic of the pictures, the specific function of the font and its impact on us. It can only be tested by a playful, free approach, and this “sounding” is the appropriate way to examine the relationship of these two elements.

Wittgenstein’s Imagery and what it tells us

The problem—or for this essay benefit—with Wittgenstein is that he is not providing us with an easy philosophical system, a method or a clear body of definitions. I say benefit because as I collated so far, the solution or handling of the relation of Words and Images requires more than that. Instead the Austrian-British philosopher might be able to cure us from the need for such impossible definitions.

While literary critics use the word “image” in many different ways, Wittgenstein announced that the “meaning of a word is its use” (Wittgenstein, 1973 pp. 43), therefore there are endless variations of the word “imagery”. To end the confusion, we must end the temptation to think that there must be a specific or general thing devoted to the term ‘imagery’ and to differentiate our use of it (Wittgenstein, 1973 pp. 362). Through Wittgenstein’s language games we overthink our way of talking and on a long-term basis, our way of thinking. While the meaning of the word ‘imagery’ by no means is attached to a picture in our mind, we could differentiate its meaning through “family resemblances”. A term does not necessary need a true essence, but underlying features or “fibres” connected through the “family resemblance”.

Mitchell’s purpose is to suggest how Wittgenstein’s criticism helps us to examine the relationship between the different uses of the term “imagery” (Mitchell, 1988 pp.361). He points out that Wittgenstein’s family of resemblances is more a group of affiliation rather then filiation and calls his treatment of images in the in the manner of a Wittgensteinian family, iconoclastic—as is the idea of destroying the image of dualism, or a pair of the “word image” relation (Mitchell, 1988 pp.363). Mitchell goes on about Wittgenstein’s idea of the “inner” and “outer” image and the act of drawing or describing them as an act of translation (in opposite to the stated claim that they were there all along). He summarises the question of inner image, translation and meaning like this:

…the meaning of expressions is immanent in them; it does not reside in some queer medium called “thought” that gives life to signs that would be dead without them. If I am asked to “give the meaning” of some expression I have uttered, there is no point in pointing to my head and saying, “the meaning is in there.” (Mitchell, 1988, pp.367)

III. Conclusion

The word and the image are in opposition because of certain features they occupy. The Idea though we have of the “word/image” relation is strongly influenced by our perception and the use of definitions, ergo the use of our words. The source for this idea of dualism can be partly found in history, but it is also connected to the mentioned perception mechanism and customisation. This dualism is a problem because actually words and images are not clearly separated. They can shift back and forth, influenced by our perception, and the contextualisation and customisation. Actually the relation is a fluent one, words can turn into images, while images have certain language features.

Words and Images have influence over our way of thinking, but it is this way of thinking that we have to change to a certain extent, adapting to the knowledge of more inter-connected definitions as well as replace the idea of a dualism and two opposite entities. We as the third part in this duo are the recipient in Mitchell’s theory, and the person to which the interpretant of Charles Peirce is addressed to. We are a crucial element in the relation between the two mediums, but we have to change our approach towards it to fully grasp the dynamic connection of words, images, contextualisation and meaning making. The interpretant helps us to understand the complexity of “connecting”. It shows how different points are connected through fluid variables and context. We are a connecting element, we are as well a fluent entity, and a sign (an image or a word) can only be understood in the process of it being interpreted in communication. Besides gaining knowledge of the situation we have to analyse a new approach towards the “word/image” problem, like Mitchell’s interpretation of “philosophize with a hammer”. As he argues some things itself are not to change, like our relationship towards images, but by knowing about there can be a therapeutic cure. So is Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy; through his word games we internalise a kind of truth and as I think, his ideas of language games and family resemblances as well can help us to get rid of many philosophical questions, as well as the word/image “problem”, and a static view on dualism.

 

Bibliography:

Atkin, Albert, (Summer 2013 Edition) Peirce’s Theory of Signs, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/

Berger, John (1972) Ways of seeing, British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.

Finger, Anke K., Guldin, Rainer & Bernardo, Gustavo (2011) Vilém Flusser: An Introduction, Image and Text – Communication Media Theory ab S.102, University Of Minnesota Press.

Flusser, Vilém (1984) ‘Towards A Philosophy of Photography’, ed. Derek Bennett, European Photography Göttingen.

Flusser Vilém (1992) “die Schrift”, Edition Immatrix Verlag European Photography, Göttingen (does writing have a future).

Lessing, G.E. (1776) 1965. Laocoon: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry.

Lukianova, Natalia & Fell, Elena (2015) Beyond meaning: Peirce’s interpretant as a meta-semiotic condition for communication, Essachess. Journal for Communication Studies, Vol. 8.

Lycan, William G. (1971) Wittgenstein, and the Duck-Rabbit, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1986) Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1996) ‘Word and Image’ in Critical Terms for Art History by Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff, University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1989) ‘Ut Pictura Theoria: Abstract Painting and the Repression of Language,’ Critical Inquiry, Vol.15, Chicago Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (2012) Das Leben der Bilder: Eine Theorie der visuellen Kultur, C.H. Beck.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1988) ‘Wittgenstein’s Imagery and what it tells us’, New Literature History, Vol.19.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1996). What Do Pictures “Really” Want? October, 77, 71-82. doi:10.2307/778960.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2008) Twilight of the Idols or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, OUP Oxford.

Savan, D., (1988) An Introduction to C.S. Peirce’s Full System of Semiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1973) Philosophical Investigations, Wiley-Blackwell.

How do the views and criticisms of democracy offered by Plato compare and contrast with the views and criticisms of democracy evident in the Dewey/Lippmann debate?

Michael Davitt

I intend to show that there are clear differences between Plato, Dewey and Lippmann in how they view and criticise democracy. I will argue that both Plato and Lippmann offer a more damaging critique of democracy than is offered by Dewey, who ultimately remains a staunch believer in participatory democracy. I will engage with the Dewey/Lippmann debate and the views of Plato separately before comparing all three thinkers and will show that the issues and criticisms offered by Plato were still relevant and explicitly evident in the Dewey/Lippmann debate. Furthermore, I intend on arguing the point that ultimately each of Plato’s, Dewey’s and Lippmann’s positions are heavily influenced by how they interact with and view the role of the public in democratic society.

When investigating the criticisms of democracy put forward by Plato what is immediately evident is how Plato viewed democracy as an anarchic political system. In Plato’s eyes democracy was inextricably linked with freedom, but this freedom has negative implications when it results in an absence of distinct forms. For Plato the abandoning of forms leads to a sort of radical equality where no distinctions are made in hierarchy, this relates also to the publics’ toleration and pursuit of all desires and its inability to discriminate between good and bad desires (Saxonhouse, 1998, p.279). Within this framework there is the potential for anarchy in the sense that without forms and with radical equality, which makes troublesome the concept of hierarchy, there can be no distinct ruler. I believe Plato also saw this anarchy reflected in the nature of the citizen living under this democratic society. The democratic citizens reflect the anarchy Plato assigned to the democratic state in their treatment of their desires. As I have already stated, radical equality leads to the democratic citizen’s inability to decipher from good and bad desires, however Plato goes further to suggest that citizens have no dominant desires and instead treat all alike (Santas, 2001, p.65). Thus, the citizen’s nature is anarchic, just like the democratic state, in that it too is not ruled in any meaningful way by a dominant desire or enduring element (Johnstone, 2013, p.157). It is clear then that one of Plato’s main criticisms laid at democracy is that its relationship with freedom and radical equality creates the environment for an absence of hierarchy and a tendency towards anarchy.

As well as criticising democracy for its anarchic nature Plato further criticises it for its tendency to result in tyrannical rule. An investigation into Plato’s ideas would lead to the conclusion that this tyrannical rule is made possible as much by the political leader turned tyrannical ruler as it is by the demos at large (Fissell, 2011, p.217). Although Plato suggests the blame for tyranny should rest upon both the demos and their political leaders he makes clear that the overwhelming reason for the move to tyranny is shared greed. Both the demos and the political leader see a usefulness in the other for furthering their own greed and materialistic pursuit for wealth (Fissell, 2011, p228). The political leader is culpable of manipulation of the demos by appealing to their greed and pitting the poorer in society against the wealthier (Sharples, 1994, p8). The role of the demos in the descent into tyrannical rule is evident in its inability to recognise a tyrannical leader in the making and furthermore in its political apathy towards any action of government unrelated to the accumulation of wealth (Fissell, 2011, p.231). By describing democracy’s descent into tyranny Plato makes observations about the inability of the demos to be truly effective in participatory democracy, and by going on to discuss Plato’s alternative to democracy I will make clearer his views on the shortcomings of the demos and the role of the public in society.

Plato’s view of the demos was not a favourable one, he was critical of the ability of citizens to engage effectively with participatory democracy, and this in turn informed his ideas when constructing his alternative. In Plato’s alternative to democracy the participation of the demos is non-existent and instead society is ruled by philosophers (Ogochukwu, 2009 p52). Plato believed that only a certain few in society were capable of ruling and he suggested a hierarchal structure where the philosopher king sits at the top. Plato’s reasoning behind choosing this structure comes back to the nature of the demos. The demos have no dominant desire and are incapable of distinguishing good and bad desires, whereas the philosopher king has only the desire for knowledge and truth and therefore is the only figure capable of ruling over society (Ogochukwu, 2009 p52). The demos have little to no participation in this society as Plato sees no reason in consulting the views of the demos as by definition the philosopher king must know best due to his pursuit of the desires of knowledge and truth (Sharples, 1994, p52).

By looking at Plato’s criticisms of democracy and his alternative system of governance I have presented the main points with which I will engage when comparing his views with those of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann. Equally I have attempted to show how Plato’s position is influenced by how he interacted with and viewed the role of the public in democratic society.

Disagreements between Dewey and Lippmann are less evident in their identification of what they believed to be the problems with contemporary democracy than in their solutions on how to deal with these problems. In many ways Lippmann & Dewey agree on much, and calling it a debate may be slightly overstepping the mark. In fact, David Greenberg has suggested a replacement ‘debate’ in the form of the Lippmann/Mencken ‘debate’ (Greenberg, 2012). I have decided instead to discuss the Dewey/Lippmann ‘debate’, due in part to its popularity and scholarly impact, but also because my intention is to contrast Lippmann & Plato with a figure more sympathetic to democracy and the public’s role within it.

The main criticism against democracy put forward by Lippmann was that there exists a gap between the political capacity of the public and the complexity of the political environment and world at large (DeCesare, 2012, p106). For the most part Dewey agreed with Lippmann’s observation, however as mentioned already they differed in their solutions for this problem. Lippmann took a more pessimistic view of the democratic public and believed it was an impossibility for any individual to acquire the required knowledge in order to participate effectively and govern well. To make up for the failings of the public Lippmann devised a system in which an organisation of experts was to advise the leaders of society on political affairs (DeCesare, 2012, p109). The role of the public within Lippmann’s system would be limited to one of passive spectatorship (Schudson, 2008, p1038), with direct involvement coming only in the form of a binary choice of support for either those in power when all is well or those waiting in the wings to become the next group of leaders when all is not so well (Whipple, 2005, p160).

Dewey on the other hand took a more optimistic view of the capabilities of the public and argued that under the right circumstances the public can be effective and should have an active role in participatory democracy. Dewey agreed with Lippmann that no individual can acquire all the necessary knowledge to be omnicompetent (DeCesare, 2012 p111), however he posits that this is unnecessary and instead argues that a more communal form of shared understanding is required, something Dewey termed ‘social knowledge’. Dewey argued that instead of knowledge being an individual pursuit it should be a build-up of knowledge and understanding about the political and social environment which is created by and serves the public (DeCesare, 2012, p112). Furthermore, similar to Lippmann, Dewey recognises the benefit of having experts work for the good of democracy. In Dewey’s case however, experts are to inform and educate the public with the knowledge required to participate effectively and intelligently in their democracy (DeCesare, 2012 p113). The press and wider media also have an important part to play in Dewey’s democracy by keeping the public informed of the actions being taken by their political leaders. Moreover, in Dewey’s democracy the press is also tasked with making public the knowledge and ideas coming from the experts (Bybee, 1999, p57). In doing so the press and wider media are an instrument used for the public good by making possible the enlightened and informed public Dewey deems possible and necessary. This is in contrast to the ideas of Lippmann who views the role of the press as pessimistically as the role of the public. For Lippmann the job of the press to inform and educate the public is an impossible one (Bybee, 1999, p55). Neither the press nor the public are up to the challenge, and so the role of the press has little importance to Lippmann’s vision of a society indirectly run by experts.

As well as disagreeing on the role of the public, experts and the press in democracy, Dewey and Lippmann had fundamentally opposing views on the reason and purpose of democracy, and I argue it is for this reason we can see two very different solutions to the same agreed problem. For Lippmann the point of democracy was not in its participatory nature but strictly in the results it achieved (Bybee, 1999, p41). Democracy is desirable to Lippmann also as it is a stable form of society. In Lippmann’s solution then we can see his perceived purpose of democracy as a major influence. Participation on the part of the public is sacrificed for the prestige of the organisation of experts and their ability to get results. For Dewey the purpose of democracy is not fully in its results, but instead its purpose lies in creating the “conditions for individuals in a society to develop to their fullest potential” (Bybee, 1999, p42). The influence of Dewey’s perceived purpose can also be seen in his proposed solution, especially on his emphasis of enlightening the public and calling for mass participation in order to give each citizen a say in how their society is governed.

In my comparison of the views of Plato, Dewey and Lippmann I will begin first by looking at Plato and Lippmann to investigate the obvious similarities and more nuanced differences. Both Plato and Lippmann advocate the replacement of participatory democracy for a more exclusive and elitist form of rule. Plato advocates rule by philosophers with the philosopher king as main ruler, and Lippmann supports governance in which an organisation of experts advises leaders on political matters. Both thinkers severely limit the role of the public and look to improve society by entrusting and empowering groups of learned and knowledgeable elites. Despite these obvious similarities there exists a more nuanced difference in that Lippmann still considers himself a democrat, whereas Plato seems to denounce democracy entirely in favour of the Republic. Arguments have been put forward by Saxonhouse (2009, p745) and Hanasz (1997, p54) who suggest that because Plato criticised democracy using the figure of Socrates, who is often interpreted as a democrat, that Plato could be seen as at least sympathetic to democracy if not a democrat himself. Although these arguments are interesting and insightful I find the implied conclusion of Plato as a democrat to be rather unconvincing and would suggest that this point remains a point of difference between Plato and Lippmann.

Going on to look more broadly at the views of all three thinkers, there are very clear points of difference which exist. Some of the more obvious ones I would suggest are; the difference in the role of the public, the confidence each man has in the ability of citizens to bridge the gap between their intellectual shortcomings and the complex political landscape, and the purpose that each thinker ascribes to experts and knowledgeable people in society. However, what I will go on to address at this moment is the interesting and crucial difference of how each thinker perceives human nature. Having previously addressed how Plato perceives the nature of the democratic citizen we know that Plato believes the citizen to be incapable of deciphering between good and bad desires and as a result acts upon all desires equally (Saxonhouse, 1998, p279). Plato also believes the citizen to be apathetic to political matters unless they refer to the citizen’s ability to accumulate wealth and satisfy their greedy nature (Fissell, 2011, p231). Lippmann also ascribes to a more pessimistic view of human nature. Lippmann believed the public to be naturally passive and claims that individual citizens by nature do not have the capacity to form politically effective collective publics (Whipple, 2005, p160). Dewey goes against the more pessimistic view and argued that citizens were active and reflective by nature. He believed that political participation was an extension of human nature and that passivity is an affliction brought about by habits formed by the “passively representative, rather than, participatory political process” (Whipple, 2005 p162). I believe Dewey’s perception of human nature in turn led to his belief that public participation in democracy has value in and of itself. In contrast I believe Plato’s perception of human nature led him in the other direction to the extent that he sees no value in the participation and consultation of the public in political affairs. I would argue therefore that it is evident that Plato’s, Dewey’s and Lippmann’s preferred ideal societies are influenced mainly by how they perceive the public and its role in society.

Finally, I argue it is clear that the principal factor separating all three thinkers, and which leads each to their respective democratic ideals is how they deal with the crisis of the role of the public. Plato believes democracy cannot work due to the shortcomings of the demos, the insufficient basis of knowledge for the public to properly engage in a participatory democracy, and the tendency for that democracy to lead to tyranny due to the inability of the demos to focus its desires on the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Crucially, Plato saw no way of rectifying this situation, much like Lippmann who believed the public cannot and should not be expected to participate meaningfully in a democratic system growing in complexity and instead placed his trust in a community of experts. Dewey also recognised the political alienation the public was experiencing and in many respects agreed with Lippmann that the public as it was presently manifest was not fit for purpose. However, unlike Plato and Lippmann, Dewey believed the public could and must become better equipped to engage effectively with participatory democracy and societal issues.

In conclusion, it is clear when investigating the writings of each thinker that there are distinct differences separating their democratic positions, however I claim that each thinkers’ position is influenced by how they interact with and view the role of the public in democratic society. It is also evident that between Dewey and Lippmann it is Lippmann whose ideas venture closer to those of Plato, nevertheless their democratic views and criticisms are far from identical. Overall, I believe it is evident the issues that Plato addressed in his damning observations of Athenian democracy are issues that proved to be central in the Dewey/Lippmann debate. Although no two men held identical views on democracy the issues with which they engaged, such as the purpose of democracy, the role of the public, human nature and education, are ubiquitous among the three of them.

 

References

Bybee, Carl, 1999, Can Democracy Survive in the Post Factual Age? A Return to the Lippmann-Dewey Debate, Journalism & Communication Monographs, pp. 29-66.

DeCesare, Tony, 2012, The Lippmann-Dewey “Debate” Revisited: The Problem of Knowledge and The Role of Experts in Modern Democratic Theory, Philosophical Studies in Education, Vol. 43, pp. 106-17.

Fissell, Brenner M., 2011, Plato’s Theory of Democratic Decline, Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 216-35.

Greenberg, David, 2012, Lippmann vs. Mencken: Debating Democracy, Raritan, Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp. 117-41.

Hanasz, Waldemar, 1997, Poetic Justice for Plato’s Democracy?, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 25, Issue 1, pp. 37-58.

Johnstone, Mark, 2013, Anarchic Souls: Plato’s Depiction of the ‘Democratic Man, Phronesis, Vol. 58, Issue 2, pp. 139-60.

Ogochukwu Okpala, 2009, Plato’s Republic vs Democracy, The Neumann Business Review, http://www.neumann.edu/about/publications/NeumannBusinessReview/journal/review09/okpala.pdf, date entered 28/11/2017.

Santas, Gerasimos, 2001, Plato’s criticism of the democratic man, Journal of Ethics, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp.57-72.

Saxonhouse, Arlene W., 1998, Democracy, equality, and eide: A radical view from Book 8 of Plato’s Republic, American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, Issue 2, pp. 273-284.

Saxonhouse, Arlene W., 2009, The Socratic Narrative: A Democratic Reading of Plato’s Dialogues, Political Theory, Vol 37, Issue 6, pp. 728-54.

Schudson, Michael, 2008, The “Lippmann-Dewey Debate” and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1986-1996, International Journal of Communication, Vol 2, pp. 1031-1043.

Sharples, R.W., 1994, Plato on Democracy and Expertise, Greece & Rome, Vol. 41, Issue 1, pp. 49-57.

Skidmore-Hess, Daniel; Ellison, Jasmine; Sherrod, Chase, 2017, Policy Point – Counterpoint: Is Democracy the Best Form of Governance? Aristotelian vs. Platonic Thought, International Social Science Review, Vol 92, Issue 2, pp. 1-12.

Whipple, Mark, 2005, The Dewey-Lippmann Debate Today: Communication Distortions, Reflective Agency, and Participatory Democracy, Sociological Theory, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 156-79.

Is Object-Oriented Ontology the latest fashion, or just part of the system?

Mais quelle mouche vous pique? 2011 Coco Fronsac

Joshua Speer

Introduction
This essay will question whether Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is just fashionable theory or situated within a wider system. This will be undertaken through the perspective of being a practicing curator. It can be understood that systems are in fact just fashionable phenomena that operate in cycles within art history, however in this essay I am using the word ‘system’ as an operating framework whereby connectivity and relationality occur, and associations or connections can be examined, whether material or immaterial. This will be done through, as mentioned above, the reading of OOO in relation to thinkers and points within art history; also thinking of exhibitions as systems, introducing the term ‘metaphysical discursivity’. This essay could become easily framed by notions of the art market and capitalism when referring to an ‘object’ [in art], opposed to a ‘thing’ —which is not the intention of this text. To cut confusion I will use objects and things as synonyms, unless specified otherwise.

Fiction(?)
Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is Graham Harman’s variant of the Speculative Realism movement. As an enquiry into the existence of objects it gives objects the same importance as humans. In doing so, humans are not all powerful over objects: we co-existing on planet Earth. Stating that humans are objects is one of the biggest [ethical] issues of OOO. The objectification of humans has been countered by an Object-Oriented Feminism (OOF) theory, as suggested by Katherine Behar (2016). Here, Behar questions the appropriation of humans as objects in the context of people from the working class, children, race and females (Behar, 2016: 7). I would therefore argue that instead of the objects taking authority and control over us, we take control of them. This isn’t to say we become authoritative over objects, rather a kind of anthropomorphism takes place in viewing objects: it gives us an indication of the object’s inner sensibilities. This is ‘Thing Power’. Such Thing Power is when the mute microphone speaks and the sardine can looks back (Mitchell, 2010: 2). Harman’s theory is predicated on a flatness to hierarchy – and ontology – through the authoritative position of being a white, educated male that stabilises this hierarchy, subsequently pushing forward a patriarchal theory. Equally, why is it that since the turn of the millennium when OOO became ‘fashionable’ books have been predominantly published by white men?: Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost and of course Harman to name but a few. Maybe a better term would be Object-Oriented Testosterone?

Is it anything new? Virginia Woolf wrote about objects with a very ontological consideration and it is also suggestive of Breton’s objets trouvés—giving sensibilities and inner identities through fictional narrative. Of course others such as Kant, Heidegger and Husserl also commented on objects’ existence. Whilst OOO is based upon a scientifically aware but philosophically managed way of thinking, it is ultimately fictional. Of course we can never know of the ACTUAL conversation(s) had between objects when placed within close proximity, equally we will not know what the sardine can is actually looking at when the eyes peer upwards, nor what the mute microphone says. It is speculative, and therefore it is subjective, therefore it is fictional.

Fashion
Since the start of the 90s, curatorial discourse has increased in fashion; the study of exhibition histories and curating as their own disciplines had moved away from the seemingly linear trajectory of art history, becoming known as The Curatorial.
I am going to use the term fashion here in two ways: the first is the understanding of fashion as being just a cycle within history that has no real end, often holding appearances within periods along the timeline; secondly as an up-to-date trend that often sits alongside popular culture. In the context of OOO we can understand this enquiry as being just a propelled set of thoughts originating from Kant’s ‘Things-in- themselves’. This notion of autonomy is what Bennett brings forward as the force of the/a thing (Bennett, 2010: 3).

Within curatorial discourse, or the practice of curating, this inner-ness of works is what’s usually displayed. Whilst art works remain contextualised by the artist’s existence they also hold a conversational property that is, in essence, the thingness within. A usual phrase within curating is that curators bring works together through a ‘constellation’ or through initiating ‘dialogue’ between work(s). However, whilst emphasis is given to the conversational properties of the works being, this is not translated into or through the work’s autonomy via its thingness. ‘Metaphysical discursivity’ is the means of describing the conversational thingness of art works when situated within the exhibition context; this is not to disregard its artistic context or denial of the hand, but to acknowledge the inner autonomy of a work; its being.

Fashion as an up-to-date, trendy entity is possibly the most basic and obvious definition. The popularity of something is defined by its coverage by both popular culture and mass media. Since the introduction of the internet there has been a boom in the appropriation of art works and their role within advertising. For OOO this is problematic, it can be understood that OOO is in conversation with some kind of economic structure—as though art economist Magnus Resch and Graham Harman were tag-teaming to create a super theory that would override all current structures. In some respects, this could be true. Harman comments on the Theory of Everything situated within physics, and claims that in fact such theory should not be situated within the sciences, and instead within philosophy (Harman, 2018: 23). However whilst OOO may bring forward a new interest or investigation into objects and materiality, it was not created to directly stop the current art market in its tracks. Exhibitions have been conceived and objects have been circulating long before OOO became fashionable. The capitalist structure of objects seem more apparent in the writings of Israeli curator Joshua Simon under—yet another—neologism: ‘Neomaterialism’ (Simon, 2013). Or possibly Baudrillard.

In both contexts of fashion, a few things become clear: OOO is operating in a system that is running parallel to other systems. OOO uses the future and prospective understanding of other realities as its core: it remains rigid and framed. Whilst its thinking is made up of hybrids of other thinkers and ideas, OOO uses its lack of historical grounding—by possibly denying other historical thinkers, other than Heidegger—to set in stone three capital OOO’s. Of course Harman does give a nod to other thinkers and philosphers: Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray, Žižek, Butler and Latour (postmodernist thinkers) (Harman, 2018: 10), these seem very much cherry-picked and selected purely on the judgement of their propping up of his OOO theory. This is the same when Harman engages with Kant’s ‘Things-in- themselves’, Heidegger’s ‘Being’, Lacan’s ‘Real’ and Aristotle’s
‘Metaphysics’ (Harman, 2018: 13). This is another cherry picked selection, all of which are males. With such propping, OOO becomes more of a brand that is just becoming increasingly recognised, and as with any other brand, with wider recognition comes wider authority and power.

Exhibitions
Thinking of curatorial discourse, and with the bringing together of works/objects, we can understand the exhibition space as a system; a constellation of energies bouncing from one another, instigated by the thingness of the work. This is most prominent in the thinking of Jane Bennett (Bennett 2012). Of course objects are given a narrative through the subjectivity of perception: one person may read an object and its context different to another. This subjectivity of perception is what hits the outside of the object, however within the object is the thing. This thing, or rather thingness, is what is in dialogue with other objects when placed in close proximity. It can sometimes alter or challenge the subjectivity of perception, but ultimately it is a ‘life’ or being that is external to our own. An energy sitting within the atomic core of an object, this is to argue against the anthropomorphisation of an object, and rather acknowledge its autonomous being in relation to the human consciousness. This is not to suggest that objects have feelings or emotions, of course they do not have a consciousness themselves, nor a nervous system. However, they do have an existence which is a life. This life is using atoms as a means of communication and living; this is metaphysical discursivity. Such methodology is appropriate to the exhibition as this is when an active dialogue between the thingness of work(s) play out.

Harman calls for the object as being non-relational and autonomous from human condition(s) or perception(s). In doing so, denying the reality of the thingness within, Harman suggests that objects are not able to ‘touch’, though are in fact able to affect one another (Bennett 2010: 228). Though how can objects affect one another, when you deny their thingness, which is in essence the objects reality/existence? There are two ways of thinking about this. The first is to think of the objects within a composition and the subjectivity of perception being the force or affect of change. This is a denial of the thingness, but to understand that objects become symbolic or fetishised within culture(s). We are sitting at a table, with an open laptop next to a cup of coffee, notebook and pen; we read this object composition as work. However, if we were to remove the notebook and pen for some sweet treats and a DVD, we read the composition as leisure. Although a denial of the thingness, it does give recognition to the object through its readiness to assist, each being a tool in the activity that is being conducted. However, this is a very Heidegger-ian notion of objects, which has been criticised as an exploitation of the object world (Behar 2016: 7).

The second is to contest that objects are not able to touch, and instead give a greater prominence to the object through its being, via the thingness within. If we are to understand the innerness of the object as being the thingness, and thus being the existence, we can understand this as being the point of interaction and dialogue between the work(s) of art—or rather, objects—on display. For it isn’t the perception of the object that is in dialogue, although we may read a composition of objects, it is rather the immaterial energies situated within the atoms of an object that when placed within close proximity with another thing, initiates conversation. As mentioned before, this is metaphysical discursivity.

Moving forward with the second statement, we can understand exhibitions as being systems. These systems are conditioned by the very being or presence of objects within a close proximity, their immaterial connections being the points of contact that presents the notion of a system. If the atom-crashing, discursive properties of work is continuously happening within this, then touch is always occurring, therefore the ability to affect one another is done so through the presence of an object through subjectivity of perception, but also the actual presence of an object, or another alongside; acknowledging their thingness.

One way of acknowledging the thingness of objects, is to question OOO’s placement within pedagogy. If we are to understand the existence of an object through its inner core, then should we be conditioned to realise and accept this? At what point do we learn about objects life in relation to our own? We are born surrounded by objects, using a construct of imagination to animate their lives. Harman talks about the pedagogical engagement of OOO within the humanities and current budget cuts. Whilst before the humanities were given authority alongside the sciences, it has now switched to the extreme opposite with the sciences—maths, engineering and computing—becoming favoured within education (Harman, 2018: 93). In Avram Davidson’s short story ‘Or All the Seas with Oysters’, as examined by Pil and Galia Kollectiv, we can see how we [humans] do not hold a critical use of objects and in turn falsify their true nature (Kollectiv 2008: 2). We need to therefore develop an almost poetic framework in which to form relationships with objects. Acknowledging that even the most mundane of household objects have an existence; a life. It is easy to subvert and therefore agree with Harman and OOO about us becoming objectified. Becoming used by our very own creations through a change of gaze. However, as we grow older and become swallowed up by capitalism, our imagination towards the inanimate becomes commodified. Popular culture tells us we want objects to assist in our lives for either pleasure or economic gain, the importance and/ or autonomous identity of an object—its thingness—is placed into an economic system.

Conclusion
If the internet now frames our very existence and is so closely aligned with the mass media that any kind of revolutionary way of thinking quickly becomes commodified, any kind of system made in response to something, or system attempted to be un- systemised just becomes swallowed by capitalism and made a fashionable phenomena. Everything is turned into capital. Therefore the question: ‘is OOO the latest fashion or just part of a system’ is almost easily answerable. It is both. Fashion is a systematic way of operating, it is an entity unable to be broken or taken apart from another. OOO is a set of thinking operating within one larger system that is in turn a system; assemblage theory.
In Harman’s newest publication, he writes about having read the metaphor essay by José Ortega y Gassett before even encountering Heidegger. In becoming exposed to such way of thinking, it took 18 years of reflection to be at a point of comment (Harman, 2018: 72). Therefore, there is a certain degree of naivety in directly challenging a theory that – in self admittance – is still very new, and in some respects, largely abstract to me. I feel this essay has worked as a means of trying to articulate a stance or viewpoint within OOO for situating my curatorial practice and critical identity. In essence, I have created my own system for trying to navigate the pre-existing system, which is in fact commodified through the current educational structure in which I write this. Equally, being a curator studying such course I am just perpetuating the fashion of a cycle further until someone else catches on. Is OOO just a religion?

 

Bibliography
Behar, K. 2016. Object-Oriented Feminism. United States of America. University of Minnesota Press.

Bennett, J. 2010. Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things. United States of America. Duke University Press.

Bennett, J. 2012. ‘Systems and Things: A Response to Graham Harman and Timothy Morton’. [online]. jstor.org. Available at: < http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/ 23259373.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A868f364cee1803450c33d8ccca807329 > [Accessed 17th March 2018]

Harman, G. 2018. Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. United Kingdom. Penguin Random House UK.

Kollectiv, P & G. 2008. ‘The Life of Objects’. [online]. Kollectiv. Available at: < http:// http://www.kollectiv.co.uk/Objects.html > [Accessed 18th March 2018]

Simon, J. 2012. Neomaterialism. Germany. Sternberg Press.

Has the codification of a postmodern ‘style’ of devised performance in the UK led to a dissociation between aesthetic and ethos in contemporary performance work?

Thomas Scullion

 

In this essay, I align myself with the position taken by Geraldine Harris in her article Repetition, Quoting, Plagiarism and Iterability, in which she proposes that a codified style of postmodern devised performance emerged from the dissemination of the working practices belonging to radical performance companies such as The Wooster Group and Forced Entertainment. These practices were repeatedly presented as ‘models’ of devised performance to theatre students at higher education level in Harris’ workplace, Lancaster University, and she argues that this was happening across the United Kingdom (Harris, 1999:12). I argue that this codification led to what director Pete Brooks denounced as ‘a new orthodoxy’ in an interview with Giannachi and Luckhurst (1999:4), and of what Forced Entertainment’s Tim Etchells described as a ‘set of formal codes and stylistic options’ (Etchells cited in Heddon and Milling, 2006:217) adopted by students and emerging artists; via which they quote or re-present a postmodern aesthetic without necessarily engaging with or even fully comprehending the philosophical positions that informed postmodern performance in its inception.

Re-approaching the essay question another angle, I will draw a parallel between the above discourse with cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s hauntological analysis of contemporary music. Via Fisher’s analysis of the barriers to progress in music culture, I will explore whether this bears any similarities to the challenges faced within the field of contemporary performance practice. If so, I will investigate whether Fisher’s music-orientated argument holds any solutions for artists in performance contexts, in order to avoid a stultifying future dedicated to repetition and proliferation of an aesthetic form that could be said to be gradually depleting in substantial meaning. Finally, I will propose that there is reason to be optimistic; that contemporary performance practice is not doomed to become stagnant and atrophied by the codification of a style which we might currently describe as ‘postmodern’. In fact, I will argue that by revisiting the ideologies and processes of the original performance companies, rather than simply imitating their formal conventions, the contemporary performance maker can have as vital a role in interrogating culture and meaning-making as they ever had.

Many concepts, categories and definitions cited within this essay are, due their very nature, unstable and ambiguous, it is necessary to set some parameters and outline my own position within the discourse. ‘Postmodern’ is in many ways an unhelpful term to describe a mode of performance. A more detailed definition will be given below but in order to be as clear as possible, when I write about ‘postmodern performance’ I am referring to collaborative devised performance work ranging from the 1970s to the present day, primarily made by companies based in the UK or USA, and whose works and practices are in some manner sympathetic with postmodernist and poststructuralist theory.

Concerning my own position within the discourse presented in this essay, I was a student of (BA) Contemporary Theatre Practice (now titled Contemporary Performance Practice) at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow between 2005-2009. Since then, I have been actively participating within the Glasgow contemporary performance community, and for a brief time was based in Bristol where a comparable community exists, largely made up of graduates from the now defunct Dartington College of Arts. As well as drawing on Harris’ journal article, and Heddon & Milling’s book Devising Performance, some elements of my argument are informed by my direct experience of a contemporary performance education and subsequent immersion in the ‘scene’.

 As Heddon and Milling (2006: 203) note in Devising Performance, it is problematic to ascribe the label of postmodernism to any performance practice, as the theories of postmodernism are concerned with the instability, plurality and uncertainty of meaning. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristics which we can use to group performance works together which share a common interest in narrative deconstruction, structural decentralisation and the postdramatic in performance. Two strong examples are the companies The Wooster Group (New York, USA) and Forced Entertainment (Sheffield, UK), notable insofar as their impact on the contemporary performance scene, their longevity, and the prolific dissemination of their working practices within higher education Theatre Studies programmes in the United Kingdom.

Heddon and Milling use The Wooster Group and Forced Entertainment as their primary sources while compiling a list of traits common to what they describe as a postmodern sensibility in devised performance. These kind of performance works tend to be made collaboratively and democratically, with all members of the company contributing to the process of creating and editing the material. There tends to be a single director who takes on a role of guiding the creative process, and will make final decisions on the collation, selection and structuring of material. The performances resist singular narratives, often imposing interruptions to their own attempts to tell stories, or saturating the work with multiple narratives so that the readings of the performance are moving towards an ever-increasing complexity. The performances often self-consciously refer to the conventions of theatre, drawing attention to theatre as a mode of representing reality, and seeking to resist, disrupt or undermine its power as a medium. Poststructuralist theory is firmly embedded into the ideology of the works; The performances are likely to have decentralised structures, that do not seek to fix a dominant idea to the work, before or after it is made. Common descriptions of the devising processes involve ‘accidents’, ‘failures’, ‘disruptions’, ‘fragments’, ‘stealing’, and ‘responses’ (Heddon and Milling, 2006:190-203).

 The above characteristics, common to The Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment and other similar companies, were radical and transgressive when they began producing work started through the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 21^st Century however, Heddon and Milling argue that a ‘house-style’ of performance had emerged, that repeatedly drew on and referred to the aesthetics and philosophical outlooks of the major performance groups associated with postmodernism (Heddon and Milling, 2006:215-220). In making this argument, the authors draw heavily on a 1999 article by Geraldine Harris titled Repetition, Quoting, Plagiarism and Iterability. Harris was a tutor in theatre studies in Lancaster University at the time of writing. She argues that lecturers in UK higher education are disseminating the practices of companies like Forced Entertainent and the Wooster Group as ‘models’, which are then adopted and recreated by students, and that the accumulative effect of this repeated dissemination, adoption and recreation is that the styles, techniques and devices of the origin companies have become ubiquitous, and potentially generic (Harris, 1999:8). Harris also identifies a deficit, with regard to theatre students’ understanding of poststructuralist or postmodern theory. She comments on a misguided appropriation, without full comprehension of poststructuralist sentiments —for example the Derridean notion that there is ‘nothing outside of the text’ or Barthes’ assertion that the author is dead (Harris, 1999:11).

Harris composes a list of conventions so repeated in contemporary devised performance as to have become tired clichés. As a former student of a contemporary performance undergraduate degree, I admit that I perpetuated the majority of the devices and motifs she cites. I repeated demanding physical routines to the point of exhaustion, I used microphones and analogue television screens, I performed lists of apologies, lists of goodbyes, I appropriated philosophical quotes and scientific facts in order to construct fairly flimsy metaphors. I re-enacted movie scenes ironically, created choreographies of ‘non-dance’, I made palindromic performance scores; I soiled the rehearsal room floors with cola, with milk, with feathers, with wool, with tacky souvenirs, with beetroot and blocks of ice. In defence of myself and indeed of all contemporary performance students, I would point out that in an educational context there is a value in learning through imitation, and as Tim Etchells points out, how else is a young performance maker supposed to start, other than by looking to the work that they admire? (Etchells cited in Heddon and Milling, 2006:218) Even in Harris’ critique she does not appear to be condemning students for exploring the style of their predecessors, but rather is pointing out the accumulative effect of new generations of performance-makers who only understand the surface-level of the work they are making.

 As stated in my introduction, I will now explore the research question from a different perspective, relating the above discourse to cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s hauntological examination of contemporary pop music. In September 2014, I attended Off the Page, a symposium on contemporary sound and music held at Arnolfini, Bristol. Fisher, whose presentation Another Grey World: The Secret Sadness of the 21st Century examined what he called a ‘morbid attachment to the 1980s’ in contemporary music. In the Q&A after the talk, I asked Fisher if he perceived a counter-culture against the nihilistic mainstream that he had described. He responded by suggesting that ‘the conditions of cyberspace provide this kind of comfortable ghettoism […]’ (Fisher, 2014) whereby everyone can find their own audience and take up their own space without disturbing the mainstream culture. The impact of the internet is arguably less directly relevant to contemporary performance practice than it is to the music industry. I still perceive however, some parallels between the phenomenon Fisher described and the stylistic codification of devised performance critiqued by Harris.

While the early work of Forced Entertainment and The Wooster Group was radical and subversive, today the codified postmodern ‘style’ is an acceptable form, perhaps even genre, of performance (though it is still relatively niche). It could be argued that the postmodern performance has become estranged from the transgressive philosophical underpinning that spawned it. In her article, Harris offers a more meaningful way to engage with the catalogue of performance’s recent past, and that is to interrogate those work with the same level of rigor that the original companies had when deconstructing modernism’s ‘grand narratives’. Harris isn’t so much condemning the ‘quoting’ of established performance companies, but instead is advocating that her students (and by extension all performance makers) take responsibility for the work they make, and the meanings they convey. If they do choose to create work through a postmodernist lens, then they should use this to critique hegemonic power structures and as an approach to examining society and culture, not as a way to wash their hands of how the work operates in the world (1999:12). Director Pete Brooks expresses a similar view, stating that postmodernism is used as an excuse in order to avoid ‘taking a position’ (cited in Giannachi and Luckhurst, 1999:5)

In Ghosts of my Life, Fisher provides us with an example of rich intertextual engagement with the recent past in a music context, through his description of Reggae Dub, in which he describes the sound engineer as a necromancer, and the process of reworking existing material as a political action, a way of keeping the voices and experiences of ancestors ‘alive’ (Fisher, 2014:132). In his afterword to Breaking The Rules, David Savran makes a similar claim of politicisation regarding The Wooster Group’s own practice of deconstructing and reconstructing existing narratives and even reincorporating the discarded waste from their previous devising processes into new ones, recycling and re-examining the past in a way that created something new. Savran posits that this has always been the case historically in theatre; Radical and revolutionary works did not emerge from attempts to make something entirely new, but instead came from transgressive and aggressive engagement with theatre’s own history (Savran, 1986:220-221).

In his essay Replaying the Tapes of the Twentieth Century: An Interview with Ron Vawter, Tim Etchells relays to the reader—in his own distinctive style of fragmenting and restructuring text – a conversation between himself and Vawter, a founding member of The Wooster Group. Vawter describes art in the twentieth century as a continuous ‘review of the tapes’, (Vawter cited by Etchells, 1999:84) using appropriation and recycling as a way to make sense of the times we live in. Again, we can see echoes of the ideas Mark Fisher discusses in relation to music; the idea that artists are obsessively replaying the tapes of the past in a way that has never been technologically possible before. Vawter’s perception of this is much more optimistic however, and he explicitly states that he doesn’t feel uncomfortable about how much material The Wooster Group appropriate from other sources. In fact, Vawter seems to see it as a moral responsibility to continue to re-examine the recent past. When Etchells asks if there will ever come a time when the review of the metaphorical and literal tapes will be complete, Vawter answers that he is looking forward to that time but he doesn’t think it has arrived yet. He describes the review of the twentieth century almost in terms of bearing witness; that we (he is non-specific about who the ‘we’ refers to) are stuck, frozen by our own social, cultural and political demons of bigotry and brutality and oppressive hegemony (Vawter cited by Etchells, 1999:91). In the face of this stasis, Vawter considers it his responsibility to examine and re-examine, present and re-present the events of the recent past. It has been four decades since The Wooster Group was founded. Ron Vawter has passed away. The majority of the company is made up of a new generation of artists. Yet it is telling perhaps, that from 2015 to the present day, The Wooster Group have been developing The Town Hall Affair, a new performance which deconstructs / reconstructs the documentary film Town Bloody Hall (1979), and the actual event that is portrayed in the film; a debate on women’s liberation that took place in The Town Hall in New York City in 1971. It might be argued then that The Wooster Group still feel a responsibility to continue ‘reviewing the tapes’ of the 20^th Century.

In conclusion, I am sympathetic to the position of Harris, Heddon and Milling, and Brooks, when they critique a disconnect between form and ideology in contemporary performance work, the result of which is the proliferation of anemic imitations of the original transgressive performance work of the 70s and 80s, which originally emerged out of a genuine concern with postmodern interpretations of the world they lived in. Not only can we see parallels to Fisher’s critique of contemporary music, we can see similarities in terms of positive ways out of the rut that performance-makers could be argued to be stuck in. A critical engagement with the work of the recent past is necessary, and that relies on a fuller comprehension of the theories which informed that past work. Additionally, in a similar manner to Dub music, young performance-makers should not allow themselves to merely imitate past forms, but instead should aggressively engage with those forms. Through this process, it is possible that something new will be created. Earlier I proposed that The Wooster Group are still doing the work advocated by Ron Vawter and continuing to ‘replay the tapes’ of the 20^th Century. The question then for students of performance and by extension early-career performance makers, is whether they should join in, or whether their job is to move on and make something ‘new’. It is ultimately for them to decide. I propose however, that they should make their choices consciously, and take responsibility for them; that they do not blindly follow their ancestors, nor blindly discard them, but instead commit to a rigorous engagement with the historical context they are operating within.

 

Bibliography

Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment, London: Routledge.

Fisher, M. (2014) Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishing.

Fisher, M. (2014), Another Grey World: The Secret Sadness of the 21^st Century. [online] The WIRE. Available at: https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/in-conversation/off-the-page-2014_mark-fisher_another-grey-world [accessed Saturday 28th April, 2018]

Giannachi, G. and Luckhurst, M. (1999) On Directing: Interviews with Directors, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillian.

Harris, G. (1999) Repetition, Quoting, Plagiarism and Iterability (Europe After the Rain-Again), Studies in Theatre Production, 19 (1), pp. 6-21.

Heddon, D and Milling, J. (2006), Devising Performance: A Critical History, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Savran, D. (1986) Breaking The Rules: The Wooster Group, New York: Theatre Communications Group.

 

Whatever happened to the “actress” as an “object”?

William Joys

In All About Eve where Bette Davis, playing the lead female role of Margo Channing, is arguing with the writer of the play he concludes “it’s about time the piano realized it has not written the concerto!” From this we can ask whatever happened to the actress as an object? To explore this question, I will be comparing both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg’s techniques of acting in relation to the homosexual themes brought up in the film. Firstly, the extent to which the professional ‘actress’ Margo Channing, became thought of and thought of herself as an ‘object’ in the literal sense (a piano) with its misogynistic yet perhaps empowering repercussions will be examined. Secondly, an analysis in the light of the film’s historical cold war context in which the invisibility of homosexuality, as much as the invisible communist was deemed a threat to society,(Corber, 2005:1). Eve Harrington posing as an amateur, resembles a different definition of “actress”, with a similarity to the historical homosexual she is as a Google dictionary definition of “a woman who behaves in a way that is not genuine”. She must lie to achieve her definition of the “object—a goal or purpose” she must attain the highest award in the theatre by playing innocent to the group of people she manipulates to get to the object/trophy, the Sarah Siddens award. The title of this essay therefore is a double entendre which risks a nostalgia towards a misogynistic objectification of women and homophobia in order to explore the imaginative potential of being an actress or indeed a homosexual person who must “Pass” as something they are not. By consequence and because the film is about actresses playing actresses I will also be exploring the potential in creating an uncertainty in notions of “self” in relation to truth.

But what do I really mean by ‘object’ when referring to the actress? A cursory dictionary search supplies the following definition: “a material thing that can be seen or touched”. Scene: late afternoon, Margo Channing played by Bette Davis arrives predictably late to assist in an audition at the theatre in which ‘Aged in wood’ the production for which she is the star is playing. Upon realizing, from theatre critic Addison de Witt that Eve Harrington has read in her place she seeks out who has assigned to Eve, her once supposed fan now dangerous rival, the role of understudy without telling her. The feud ends between writer Lloyd Richards and Margo with a crescendo of philosophical debate where the actress as a subject or object is contemplated: “Lloyd Richards: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they’re her words she’s speaking and her thoughts she’s expressing?” from the enraged delivery we gather the writer, through a certain misogyny, feels threatened by the actress’s potential to have a mind by using the subjective nature of his words to make them object through her performance. And so he continues “Its about time the Piano realized it has not written the concerto!” The objectification here of Margo as a Piano to be played by others could be read as more misogynistic treatment by the writer. However, I would argue that Margo’s embodiment of the object also creates a moment of absurdist potential from which the film unravels its secret homosexual themes.

To embody objects as part of character formation is a large part of actress and teacher Stella Adler’s technique. A founding member of the “Group Theatre” in the 1930’s and founder of her own academy in New York till the 1990’s writes in her book, “The Art Of Acting” when talking of playing Moses “Say the line ‘I’ll throw a stone’, in your normal voice. Now become a marble statue and say it again. How much more powerful your voice becomes when you turn into a statue!” (Adler, 2000:91) Adler here demonstrated the ways in which the imagining of the self as an object enables the actor to become the character, to become in that moment, a different self. Margo’s sarcastic acceptance of herself as the piano, when talking to her lover and also director/co-star of the play, asks “are you the Paderewski who plays his concerto on me, the piano?” and this, like Adler, also demonstrates knowledge of how through embodying the piano she becomes a character that can be “played”. But as the scene of the film is taking place on the stage of the theatre with all cast members present, it becomes evident that although the audience is absent there is a performance going on. With the grandness of camp, this grand piano is supposedly playing herself, the part is the “real” Margo Channing. But in fact what we become aware of what we are seeing is Bette Davis playing the part of the real Margo Channing, of Bette Davis playing out the behind the scenes feuds between herself and the Hollywood studio system that have come to be her reputation. Certainly the reason why director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was surprised to see that Davis had no complaints about the script was perhaps because Davis was able to perform her objection to the misogyny that attempts to belittle and control women, here represented by the actress, yet she does this through adapting the script with her camp and sarcastic delivery that embraces the object given to her in order to “object”. The piano disagrees, the Piano might as well have written the concerto (Mankiewicz, 1991: 238).

We the audience as well as Margo Channing never get to see Eve Harrington’s audition which so impressed all members of the production. Perhaps the fact that Channing is not regretful of this is because Eve is in fact always performing, always being an actress, in the sense of the latter dictionary definition, “a woman who behaves in a way that is not genuine”. This notion is made poignantly and slyly obvious by the theatre critic and sidekick Allison Dewitt who is seemingly waiting in the foyer for Eve. Upon Margo’s arrival he proceeds to inform her of Eve’s audition, “it was not a reading it was a performance.” Eve does not switch her act until a little later in the film (when she outright blackmails the writer’s wife to cast her as the leading role in his new production) but here Allison gives an account of Eve’s response to the praise of the writer Lloyd which has but one telling sign that contradicts his former statement, “that Lloyd felt as he did only because she had read his lines exactly as he had written them.” According to this statement Eve does not believe she gave a performance but that she “read” the lines. According to both the oppositional acting techniques of Adler and her contemporary and rival Lee Strasberg acting is never just “the reading of lines”. Adler goes further and posits, “the play has nothing to do with words… it has to do with ideas” (Brockway, 1989). For Eve to then have given “not a reading but a performance” belies the false modesty and false amateurism that she has been disguising behind her apparent admiration and fandom for Margo.

However the act she is putting on is of deep necessity for Eve. The reverie’s at Margo’s party in which Eve publicly expresses her love of the world of the theatre, “I’ve listened back stage to people applaud its like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up…They want you, you belong.” Sends signals to Addison de Witt who back in the foyer with Margo says “Margo as you know I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist Monk lives in his faith, I have no other world and no other life.” Their sentiments are unified in the theatre, known as a clichéd but arguably historic refuge for gay persons. From this cliché I draw upon what professor Robert J. Cooper has written about how due to the cold war climate in which the film was made “the invisibility of gays and lesbians [where] linked to the communists and fellow travelers who had supposedly escaped detection and where conspiring to overthrow the nation” (Corber, 2005: 1). the film separates the genuine loving relationships of its heterosexual protagonists to the sterile ambition that brings the homosexual couple Eve and de Witt together. Eve with Addison’s support must attempt to fool all parties that she is unaware of her talent and so more deserved of opportunity than Margo, in order to oust Margo and get to her object; the space of love and refuge from detection: the theatre.

We as the audience are at times also given up to a sense that the character Eve may be being her “true” and translucent self. As if Anne Baxter the actress or Eve Harrington the actress, or indeed acting in general where directly from Lee Strasberg’s handbook. In which what he terms “emotional memory” is employed by the actor, he comments “while people thought he was acting, he was truly re-creating his own personal emotional reality on stage” (Strasberg, 2010: 29). Bringing emotional memory from life into the artificial world of the theatre is in fact later revealed to be the inverse of what Eve was actually doing. Eve is in fact an actress of deception. This is apparent from her first appearance in which she is wearing an unremarkable trench coat which conversely gives her a remarkably masculine and pedestrian look. In this moment where she is taken as a mere fan, as someone who wouldn’t dream of being like Margo, she could be the aspiring actor for which Adler writes: “This actor is a killer. Do not take a single step toward his pedestrian world. This actor kills language. He kills ideas because he makes them common” (Adler, 2010: 22). Yet it is more apparent that this sense of commonness is something that Eve parodies with her continual false modesty and self-deprecation all the way till the end of the film. I would assert here that she parodies Strasberg’s notion that character must have “truthful, believable and logical behavior.” She is successful in being believable and logical but she does it not through channeling the truth of her own experience but through imaginative deception, through having to be an actress in the real world.

When I first came to write this essay I thought “Whatever happened to baby Jane?” but then I realized its “All About Eve.” This formative film made within the context of the cold war dealt, indirectly and directly by its cast members, with the ways in which homosexuality was unpatriotic and a threat to national security (Corber, 2005:1). This need to embrace imagination in order to “Pass” and to remain in the refuge of the theatre is represented within the film by the actors’ life and the acting process. Margo Channing (or is it Bette Davis?) must embrace the object of the piano as her character’s “self”. Here she embraces through sarcasm and camp mockery her sense of being an object in order to object to the foolishness of her male protagonists. It is of no coincidence that Bette Davis had already become a symbol within gay drag culture of the 1950’s, saying on one chat show interview “you know you’ve made it once you start being impersonated”. Eve Harrington used her imagination to produce a performance that would fool an entire group of friends in order to get her to her “object” her aim, the Sarah Sidden’s prize. Which in the end truly became her as Margo remarks: “You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.” Both actress’s embrace the notions of the object in order to expand and challenge the ideas of “self” in relation to “truth” in ways that leave myself thinking, whatever happened to the actress as object?

 

Bibliography

Adler, Stella (2000), The Art of Acting, Applause Books.

Corber, Robert. J. (2005), ‘Cold War Femme‘, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol.11 No.1, Duke University Press pg 1-22.

Mankiewicz, Joseph L., films in review, Vol 42, No. 7/8, pg 238-245.

Strasberg, Lee (2010), The Lee Strasberg Notes, Routley Press.

Television.

Brockway, Merrill (1989), Stella Adler Awake and Dream, American Masters.