Emily Putnam IDSVA Course # 903 (Directed Reading II, Part 1) Spring 2011 Prof.

George Smith Question 3 April 1, 2011 In specific terms of their intertextual relations, please give me a synopsis of each of the nine texts weve dealt with in 903 Part 1 (one-half to a full page for each text). More particularly, what do you have to say about the problem of mimeses, as it winds its way through the reading list? And how do these texts talk to one another as per the question of humanism, post-humanism, and the post-human? BONUS Question: What are your thoughts (one page) on Nancys description of painting as light (Birth 359) in intertextual relation to Platos Allegory of the Cave (The Republic)? What does this relation say about art as philosophy? And taking the latter question a step further, can you bring the problem of mimesis together with that of humanism & its posts?

Ever since Nietzsche dropped the bottom out of Western metaphysics with the revelation that truth is not universal, but contingent, thinkers have been reassessing the relationship between truth (the Idea) and representation (mimesis). This question goes back to Book X of Plato's Republic and his injunction against the artist. According to Plato, art is mimetic, with mimesis being the third degree representation of the Idea. Therefore, the emotions evoked by mimeses are false, and should be avoided. However, if truth is contingent, what implication does this have for mimesis? Can mimesis still be considered inferior if the Idea is not universal, but varies with each act of unveiling? The writings of Lvi-Strauss, Cage, Foucault, Krauss, Kittler, Butler, Lyotard, Haraway, and Nancy present variations of the phenomenological method that reveal truth to be contingent. Each of their approaches has implications concerning mimesis that go back to Plato's original assertions. The problem of mimesis is not dismissed, but evolves as it is traced through this reading list. At the same time, this query reveals the shifting understanding of the subject in humanist, post-humanist, and post-human terms. Claude Lvi-Strauss's methodology displaces the subject from the individual human being into structuralist discourse. He sought to bridge the gap between empirical reality and abstract thought by searching for unities and deep grammar of society, culture, and the human being. As Wilcken points out, Lvi-Strauss attempted to fuse the apparent contradictions between thought and sensory experience. He states that "in doing so [Lvi-Strauss] believed he was solving a venerable philosophical problem: the relationship between abstract intellectual understanding and raw sensory perception, between the 'intelligible' and 'sensible' as Plato had framed it."i This merger of "intelligible" and the "sensible" has implications concerning Plato's problem of mimesis. Lvi-Strauss attempts to collapse Plato's three-way differentiation of the form of the idea, things, and representations. Instead of treating representation as third degree

imitation of the Idea, Lvi-Strauss strove to identify relationships between representations through the application of linguistic theory as a means of revealing nested networks of thought. While Plato admonished the artist for provoking false emotional sentiments, Lvi-Strauss treated mimeses as a means of revealing systematic thinking. Observations of isolated works in relation to one another led to understandings of social landscapes that transcend cultural and historical contexts. Dispersion of the subject from the individual being to unifying discourse challenges the humanist understanding of the subject. Emphasis is no longer placed on the specificities of the individual human being, but is shifted to explore what the individual reveals in relationship to a larger discursive whole. Lvi-Strauss's methodology contradicted the traditional ethnographic practice of painstaking study of cultures in isolated contexts. His emphasis cross-cultural cohesiveness through structuralism functions as a means of cultural analysis that would go on to inform post-structural cultural critique. The influence of Lvi-Strauss's structuralist methodology can be detected in the work of John Cage. Cage functions as a transitional figure, which can be perceived through his ambivalence concerning structure. While on the one hand, Cage appreciates the function of structure as a means of framing: "structure without life is dead. But life without structure is unseen. Pure life expresses itself within and through structure."ii On the other hand, he created compositions that challenged these structures, such his reliance on chance and interest in letting sounds be themselves. A composition based on chance allows "the sounds to enter the timespace centered within themselves, unimpeded by service to any abstraction, their 360 degrees of circumference free for an infinite plat of interpenetration."iii Cage's treatment of sound in this manner has implications concerning the question of mimesis. Here sound does not function as

representation of the form of a written score, but by letting sounds be themselves, they embody the form of the piece. Indeterminacy and the unforeseen become defining characteristics of this work; qualities not associated with mimesis. For Cage, silence is freedom since it is the state that most effectively allows sounds to be themselves without the imposed will of the composer: "when silence, generally speaking, is not in evidence, the will of the composer is. Inherent silence is equivalent to the denial of will."iv Plato's definition of mimesis involves the technical representation of the thing that stems from the idea. With Cage, silence allows sounds to be experienced without this intervention, and therefore cannot be considered mimetic. Cage's work impacts the humanist definition of the subject. His means of composition attempts to transform a subjective process into an objective experience where the individual composer is displaced through silence in order to let sounds be themselves. As with LviStrauss, emphasis is shifted from particular characteristics to a collective whole. This can be accomplished through the freedom of silence as well as indeterminate compositions that involve multiple participants. This position presents a shift away from humanism and towards a posthumanist appreciation of the collective. Michel Foucault also challenges Plato's formulation of mimesis through his phenomenological method based on the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche. Foucault presents truth as being contingent, not a transcendent idea. Using a taxonomic approach, Foucault describes how ways of thinking, or epistemes, are constructed and change over time depending on context. He rejects the idea of a transcendental consciousness, such as that encapsulated by Plato's Idea. Representations, such as Diego Velzquez's Las Meninas, do not function as mere third degree imitations of the Idea, but instead can provide insight into the systems of thought that existed in that context. In his description of Las Meninas, Foucault points out how through

representation the subject disappears. During this process, representation is "freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form."v Instead of treating the Idea as the focal point of analysis, Foucault turns to mimeses in his theoretical study of discursive practice. He intentionally turns away from knowing subject, which he feels provides an inaccurate gauge, to the order of things. As the subject is dispersed into discourse, it becomes the product of social forces as opposed to individual determination. In terms of the humanist question, there is no individual human subject for Foucault. The human being has been reduced to a point in the matrix of power relations as experienced through discourse. At the same time, agency is removed from the subject, thereby extending a conceptual shift as seen in the work of Lvi-Strauss, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. Foucault's study of epistemes has influenced numerous thinkers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century, including Rosalind Krauss. In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Krauss takes a critical approach of modernist aesthetics, especially the work of her mentor Clement Greenberg. Throughout these essays, she reveals the limitations of Greenbergian modernism, which claims that abstraction is non-mimetic in form and content since it is non-representational and self-reflexive. Krauss argues that this is not the case. Also, she argues that the idea of the original in modernism and the avant-garde is a discursive formation, not an actual thing: "the theme of originality, encompassing as it does the notions of authenticity, originals, and origins, is the shared discursive practice of the museum, the historian, and the maker of art."vi Here, Krauss specifically references Foucault's Order of Things and his discussion concerning the construction of the original. By debunking the idea of the original in modern art, Krauss takes on the problem of mimesis. Instead of treating art as non-mimetic and deflecting Plato's question of mimesis as Greenberg does, Krauss argues that post-modern art

problematizes the question of representation with the simulacrum - a copy for which there is no original.vii The problematization of representation has implications concerning the ongoing humanist debate. For Greenberg (as well as Kant), original art is created by the genius, which can be considered an extension of the Renaissance humanist ideal. While an individual may have created the work, the work itself exists autonomously as an object to be reflected upon by the subject. This process of reflective judgment comes directly from Kant's third critique. When Krauss debunks the idea of the original object as well as the genius subject, she destabilizes the prevalent humanist treatment of the artist. The human is not removed from the discourse, but the individual human genius is replaced by a more collective understanding of how art functions in society. In short, art is the product of culture, society, and history, not the hand and mind of an isolated individual. Michel Foucault also influenced Fredrich Kittler, who explores the influence of media and technology on humanity. Kittler does not treat technology as an extension of humanity, but rather sees it as autonomous. As such, technology follows its own logic that leaves behind the individual being. This anti-humanist turn extends the discursive trend that goes back through Foucault to Levi-Strauss's structuralist methodology. Kittler argues that media theory allows for a complete break from humanism that other approaches cannot accomplish. Kittler states, "in contrast to the arts, media do not have to make due with the grid of the symbolic. That is to say, they reconstruct bodies not only in a system of words or colors or sound intervals."viii Technology transforms memory into data that can be manipulated and re-presented as it is broken from the stranglehold of language. The dissipation of the subject into technological discourse also challenges Plato's problem of mimesis. Technology allows representations to be

altered through cuts, splices, and montages. Through the process of manipulation, experience is presented in alternative contexts as new modes of Being are revealed. As with Foucault and Krauss, truth is contingent based on representation, since a universal Idea does not exist. Judith Butler takes a phenomenological approach concerning the question of gender. She argues: "as shifting and contextual phenomenon, gender does not denote a substantive being, but a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations."ix As with the previous thinkers discussed, Butler sees the subject as functioning in a matrix of discursive relationships. Gender is not constituted by a set of free-floating attribute, but it is performative -- "that is, constituting the identity it is purported."x The representation of gender is not imitative based on a universal Idea. Instead, the performance of gender constitutes the idea, which changes based on cultural and historical context. Gender as performance is not stable nor is it connected to an a priori essence. Moreover, mimeses become sites of resistance since they reveal the instability of a universal Idea of gender. While Levi-Strauss, Foucault, and Kittler dispersed the subject into discourse in a progressively anti-humanist move, Butler returns to the body. However, unlike the humanist subject, Butler's subject is ever deferred. This move continues the shift from the individual subject to a set of communal relationships. Butler's return to the body is significant, since it re-introduces the prospect of agency. A trend that can be noted in the thinkers discussed is the transfer of emphasis from the ends of human action to its means. Plato's condemnation of mimeses rests on the notion that representation is third degree imitation - an observation derived from a study of the work as opposed to its process of creation. As noted, attention is now being paid to the means of creation, and how this informs a contingent idea of truth. This process continues in Lyotard's The Inhuman. Plato rejected art since he felt it interfered with the building of an ideal political

community based on the Good. Lyotard presents an alternative perspective when he states: "I think that there exists a narrow and essential correlation between the art of politics and the fine arts."xi Instead of treating art as distracting, Lyotard argues that aesthetic, or reflective, judgment as associated with the fine arts can be useful to the implementation of a just political society. Mimeses can help build society rather than distract it. Lyotard rejects the master narrative, which results in the dissolution of epistemic coherence and the denunciation of Plato's Idea. Subsequently, the subject's position is destabilized as it moves through altering moments of contingent subjectivity. Lyotard presents an interesting link between the human subject and discourse. In opening essay of the book, "Can a Thought Exist without a Body?," Lyotard explores the relationship of the human body to systems of thought. He states: A human, in short, is a living organization that is not only complex, but, so to speak, replex. It can grasp itself as a medium (as in medicine) or as an organ (as in goal-directed activity) or as an object (as in thought - I mean aesthetic as well as speculative thought). It can even abstract itself from itself and take into account only its rules of processing, as in logic and mathematics.xii At the same time, the human body requires the physical maintenance necessary for life, "to think at the very least you have to breathe, eat, etc. You are still under the obligation to 'earn a living.'"xiii While Foucault and Kittler completely dispersed the subject into discourse, Lyotard acknowledges the significance of epistemic systems and technology while also paying attention to the continued physical presence of the human body. Here Lyotard presents a shift from the anti-humanist to post-humanist and even the post-human since "the body might be considered the hardware of the complex technical device that is human thought."xiv The relationship between the human subject, body, and systems of thought has moved away from emphasis on the individual to a growing emphasis on communal exchange, a trend that continues with Donna Haraway and Jean-Luc Nancy. 8

Like Judith Butler, Haraway's approach can be considered a reaction to the feminist humanism of the twentieth century, which insisted on a universal female identity that could unify women across societies. In response, Haraway utilizes a phenomenological approach partially informed by Foucault in her study of the human, science, and technology that result in a posthuman contingent subject. In order to accomplish this task, Haraway introduces the cyborg metaphor: Cyborgs are post-Second World War hybrid entities made of, first, ourselves and other organic creatures in our unchosen 'high-technological' guise as information systems, texts, and ergonomically controlled labouring, desiring, and reproducing systems. The second essential ingredient in cyborgs is machines in their guise, also, as communications systems, texts, and self-acting, ergonomically designed apparatuses. The cyborg metaphor functions as a means of understanding articulated cultural identities that include various components, such as gender, class, sexuality, and race. Also, this metaphor sets up a porous relationship between the human body and epistemic systems. Like Lyotard, Haraway acknowledges that the human body cannot be completely dispersed into discourse since the body functions as a biological machine. Unlike Kittler, Haraway does not treat technology as an autonomous force, but instead emphasizes the slippage of subjectivity that occurs between the body and technology.xv Since there is no natural matrix of unity, one has been created through the scientific study of nature in order to inform capitalistic, patriarchal agendas.xvi In terms of mimesis, the question is not about the imitative inferiority of representation, neither is it solely limited to how representation informs truth. For Haraway, there is an exchange between the ends and means of representation that is constantly in flux. The human subject retains agency since she is not completely dispersed into discourse. Subsequently, Haraway moves towards a communal understanding of subjectivity: "I prefer a network ideological image, suggesting the profusion of spaces and identities and the permeability of boundaries in the personal body and in

the body politic."xvii Cyborgs weave across these ideological boundaries in the creation of a contingent, post-human subject that is neither an isolated individual nor the product of systemic determination. Jean-Luc Nancy is also interested in a relationship between community, the body, and the subject. He states: "as a singular being, I have a singular history (I exist) only insofar as I am exposed to and as I am within a community, even if I do not have any special or important role to play with respect to community."xviii For Nancy, the subject comes to presence (as opposed to comes into being) through a relationship of its individual identity in conjunction with others through community. This reorientation of Heidegger's Da-sein lets go of the humanist subject in order to attain a non-subjective freedom. The influence of community brings to mind Cage's collaborative compositions and his attempts to turn the creation of music into an objective process. As with Haraway, there is a system of permeable ideological and identity categories at play. Mimesis continues to hold a place in philosophical inquiry for Nancy. In his discussion of Holderin, Nancy points out: "beauty makes itself 'known' through its passage, through the its passing within the poem (the poem is not beauty, but beauty passes through it)."xix The beauty of mimeses is not false as in Plato's description, rather the presentation of beauty is the passage of beauty - it allows beauty to come to presence. Nancy furthers this point through his use of poetic language and structure in the process of philosophical inquiry in the second half of Birth to Presence. Nancy also contributes ongoing discourse concerning the human body: "the body was born in Plato's cave, or rather it was conceived and shaped in the form of the cave: as a prison or tomb of the soul, and the body first was thought from the inside, as buried darkness into which light only penetrated in the form of reflections, and reality only in the form of shadows."xx The

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body is no longer considered the receptacle of the soul, and therefore is no longer supported by the "spine of mimesis, of representation, and of the sign."xxi The human body is experience - it is the means by which the individual comes to presence through communal relations. Bodies expose each other through the process of sharing sense and experience. Nancy's description of the body is nuanced and complex, but the ambiguity surrounding his ideas rejects the simplicity of humanist idealizations while providing the possibility for progress based on community. Nancy's subject is not the humanist isolated individual, rather it is the product of exchange with each other - "I" exist because "we" exist. BONUS Question: What are your thoughts (one page) on Nancys description of painting as light (Birth 359) in intertextual relation to Platos Allegory of the Cave (The Republic)? What does this relation say about art as philosophy? And taking the latter question a step further, can you bring the problem of mimesis together with that of humanism & its posts?

In the essay "On Painting (and) Presence," Nancy describes painting as light in a manner that contrasts Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." Plato argues that exposure to the light (truth) requires leaving the cave and its inferior mimeses for true knowledge - the form of the Idea. For Plato, this was the action of the philosopher. Nancy describes painting as "extravasated light. That is, light in itself--the invisible and the unseeing absolute, the diaphanous concentration of the world in its pure possibility of appearing, the phenomenon of the phenomenon--would be extracted from its own being-concentrated-in-itself, and itself offered, as such, brought light for us, in painting."xxii Art and philosophy are not distinctive as Plato postulated. Instead, art becomes a means of philosophical revelation: a way to practice philosophy. The artist is not a manipulator of representational material, but she is an artist-philosopher. She does not need to leave the cave of representation as an individual subject to experience the light for she can produce light. The lingering questions of mimesis and humanism here come together in the

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deconstruction of the subject as isolated being. The painting is not for the artist's eyes-only but is shared with others - it is something we see. Nancy goes on to say: When we see this painting, or when we see painting as this, we are cross-eyed. One eye on painting, the other on the discourse of extravasated light. One eye empirical, the other theoretical...This cross-eyed vision is important. It teaches us a great deal. It leads us out of a simply ignorant nonvision or a vision reduced to the charm of impression.xxiii There is a point of convergence in the painting where art and philosophy collide, the subject and others come together in order to enlighten us all and bring us out of the cave of ignorance.

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Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Cage, John. Silence. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Kindle ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Krauss, Rosalind. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Lyotard, Jean-Franois. The Inhuman. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Birth to Presence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Wilcken, Patrick. Claude Levi-Strauss: Poet in the Laboratory. Kindle ed. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.

Patrick Wilcken, Claude Levi-Strauss: Poet in the Laboratory, Kindle ed. (New York: Penguin Press, 2010), Chapter 9 Location 4322. ii John Cage, Silence (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 113. iii Ibid., 59. iv Ibid., 53. v Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Kindle ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), Chapter 1 Location 747. vi Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 162. vii Ibid., 38. viii Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 11. ix Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 15. x Ibid., 33. xi Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Inhuman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 75. xii Ibid., 12-3. xiii Ibid., 13. xiv Ibid. xv Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 154. xvi Ibid., 68. xvii Ibid., 170. xviii Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 158. xix Ibid., 76. xx Ibid., 191. xxi Ibid., 192.
i

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xxii xxiii

Ibid., 359. Ibid., 360.

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