In Between Art and Politics: Frame, Fold, Judgement

Home , Arthur Danto, Derrida Today

IN BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS: FRAME, FOLD, JUDGEMENT

DENISE THWAITES

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Humanities Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales

September 2013

PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: THWAITES

First name: DENISE Other name/s: PENELOPE

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: HUMANITIES Faculty: ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Title: IN BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS: FRAME, FOLD, JUDGEMENT

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis looks at the relationship between art and politics. It produces concepts that embrace the unstable impurity of artistic and political distinctions, identifying an interstitial plasticity between these fields. Extending Deleuze's cinematic language, it unfolds as a four-stage montage of diverging authors, traditions and ideas. Chapter One reviews how the artistic-political relationship has been discussed through two historically dominant perspectives: 'art for progress' and 'art for art's sake.' By examining the principles behind them, inherited from Plato and Kant and criticized by Nietzsche and Derrida, the chapter emphasises how despite efforts to conflate or isolate art and politics, an unstable region of cross-contamination between them persists within both perspectives. Chapter Two proposes Derrida's concept of the frame as a figure of the constitutive, co-implicating in between, examining its artistic and political applicability with reference to texts such as Danto's Artworld and Derrida's Politics of Friendship. Through a critique of the artistic and political frame of metaphor, Malabou's motor schema of plasticity is proposed as a necessary addition to this liminal figure in between art and politics. Chapter Three considers the in-between of art and politics as situated within a continuous landscape of plastic folds. Through this image, it elaborates a differential, generative plasticity in-between continuous artistic and political singularities. In light of Nancy, Deleuze, Bergson and Massumi's concepts of creative movement and event, a neuronal image of complex relations emerges to contextualise the artistic and political relation. Chapter Four examines subjective transformations in between art and politics in relation to the mittelglied of judgement. With reference to Nancy, Zask, Bal and Malabou, it reconceptualises the mutations of artistic and democratic spaces after accounts of neuronal trauma and resilience. Kant and Arendt's discussions of judgment and communal sense are then used to expand the creative aspect of this middle-articulation. Its creativity is then elaborated as it resonates with Deleuze's concepts of jurisprudence, taste and style. Working in a space in-between academic disciplines, this thesis composes a fragmented image of the artistic and political in-between, through which their relationship can be reconceptualised rather than totalized.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

..... 3/9/2013 ...... Signature Witness Date

The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.

FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award:

THIS SHEET IS TO BE GLUED TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER OF THE THESIS

ORIGINALITY STATEMENT

‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’

Signed ………… …………………………………......

Date ………………3/9/2013……………………………......

iii COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

Signed … …………………………………………......

Date ………25/05/2014……………………………………......

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

‘I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.’

Signed ………… …………………………………......

Date …………25/05/2014…………………………………...... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... VII

LIST OF FIGURES ...... VIII

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

UNSTABLE AND IMPURE DISTINCTIONS ...... 15

INTRODUCTION: THE SCENE OF TWO TRADITIONS ...... 15

ART AND POLITICAL FORMALISM ...... 16

ART FOR ART’S SAKE AND THE POLITICS OF FORMALISM ...... 48

CONCLUSION ...... 83

FRAME: THE PLASTICITY IN-BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS ...... 86

INTRODUCTION: THE IN-BETWEEN AS FRAME ...... 86

UNSTABLE LIMITS OF THE PARERGON ...... 87

FRAMING THE WORK OF ART AND THE POLITICAL ...... 93

AFTER METAPHOR: THE PLASTIC FRAME BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS ...... 124

CONCLUSION ...... 145

FOLDS: THE IN-BETWEEN WITHIN A COMPLEX CONTINUUM ...... 148

INTRODUCTION: COMPLEX PLASTICITY ...... 148

PLASTIC FRAME TO PLASTIC FOLD ...... 149

DIFFERENTIAL PLASTICITY IN BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS ...... 160

EXPLOSION AND EVENT WITHIN COMPLEX CONTINUITY ...... 187

CONCLUSION ...... 201

v JUDGEMENT: MITTELGLIED & COMMUNAL SENSE ...... 203

INTRODUCTION: THE ‘MIDDLE ARTICULATION’ BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS ...... 203

ACCIDENTAL COMPOSITIONS: DEMOCRACY AND ART ...... 205

A PLASTIC COMMUNITY OF TASTE: JUDGEMENT AND SUBJECTIVE BECOMING ...... 215

DEMOCRACY, TASTE AND STYLE: RESISTING THE MAJORITARIAN THREAT ...... 233

CONCLUSION ...... 244

CONCLUSION ...... 246

APPENDIX ...... 257

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a great many people to thank who have helped me along my journey to thesis completion. Firstly, I must thank my UNSW supervisor Paul Patton, who has encouraged and supported my research since my honours year. It has always been incredibly reassuring to have someone as intelligent, respected and knowledgeable as him, believe in my work. I also wish to thank my supervisor at Université Paris 8, Bruno Clément. His incredible wealth of knowledge, good humour, love of the arts and critical feedback have enriched this project far beyond what it would have been. Also, his support in navigating the administrative avenues of the French university system was absolutely indispensible. It has been an honour and pleasure to work with him. On a more personal level, there are many people to whom I owe great thanks. I wish to thank my loving parents, Richard and Dilber Thwaites. Without their endless support, patience, advice and encouragement, particularly over the past months, I would never have finished this project. Similarly, I wish to thank to my big brother Adam, whose intellectual curiosity, creativity and encouragement has motivated me my whole life. I also owe an enormous thanks to my close friends who have shared in my successes and setbacks over the past four years, never-failing to provide laughter and encouragement at times of need. A special thanks goes to my dear friend Victoria Souliman, for her patience and generosity in assisting me with my occasionally wobbly French. Similarly, words cannot express my gratitude towards Yann Guerin and Rebecca Smith, who both leapt into action in my hour of need. I would also like to thank Jessica Newell, whose amazing mathematical mind helped me come to grips with Deleuzian references to calculus. Daniel McLoughlin must be particularly thanked for his invaluable reassurance, advice and feedback during the final stages of thesis preparation, as he helped me focus on the peak of the mountain I was climbing. Similarly, Craig Lundy must be thanked for his encouraging and engaged feedback, as it has helped me feel more at home in Deleuzian thought. A big thank you must also go to the beautiful Bridget Callaghan for sharing the journey from first-year philosophy student to PhD candidate with me – we did it! Last but not least, I must thank my darling Baden, the incomparable bringer of joy and comfort. I would have perished a hundred times over without your daily care. Mon âme, my life would suck without you.

vii LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1. GUSTAVE COURBET, ‘THE STONE BREAKERS’, 1849. OIL ON CANVAS, 160 X 259 CM.

FORMERLY GEMÄLDEGALERIE, (DESTROYED). ARTWORK IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN...... 19

FIGURE 2. EDWARD KIENHOLZ & NANCY REDDIN KIENHOLZ, ‘THE OZYMANDIAS PARADE’ (DETAIL), 1985,

MIXED MEDIA TABLEAU, 152 X 349 X 180 IN. [386.1 X 886.5 X 457.2 CM]. IMAGE COURTESY OF L.A.

LOUVER, CA. © KIENHOLZ ...... 24

FIGURE 3. MYRON, ‘DISCOBOLUS’ (DISCUSS-THROWER), CA. 450 BC. ROMAN MARBLE COPY OF BRONZE

ORIGINAL, LIFE-SIZE. TOWNLEY COLLECTION, THE BRITISH MUSEUM. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE

BRITISH MUSEUM. (GR 1805.7-3.43) © TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM...... 32

FIGURE 4. PIET MONDRIAN, 'COMPOSITION NO. II' WITH RED AND BLUE, 1929 (ORIGINAL DATE PARTLY

OBLITERATED; MISTAKENLY REPAINTED 1925 BY MONDRIAN). OIL ON CANVAS, 40.3 X 32.1 CM. GIFT OF

PHILIP JOHNSON. IMAGE COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK (MOMA NO. 486.1941) ©

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ...... 46

FIGURE 5. JACKSON POLLOCK, 'ONE: NUMBER 31', 1950, OIL AND ENAMEL ON CANVAS, 269.5 X 530.8 CM.

SIDNEY AND HARRIET JANIS COLLECTION FUND (BY EXCHANGE). IMAGE COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF

ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK...... 54

FIGURE 6. ALEXANDER CALDER, ‘MOBILE’, 1932, METAL, WOOD, WIRE AND STRING, 150 X 200 X 200 CM. LENT

BY MARY TREVELYAN 1992. IMAGE COURTESY OF TATE MODERN, LONDON (L01686). © ARS, NY AND

DACS, LONDON 2002...... 67

FIGURE 7. BARNETT NEWMAN, ‘VIR HEROICUS SUBLIMIS’, 1950-51, OIL ON CANVAS, 242.2 X 541.7 CM. GIFT OF

MR. AND MRS. BEN HELLER. IMAGE COURTEST OF MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK. (MOMA

YORK ...... 74

FIGURE 8. J.M.W. TURNER, ‘SNOW STORM - STEAM-BOAT OFF A HARBOUR'S MOUTH’, 1842, OIL ON CANVAS,

123.3 X 153.3 X 14.5, ACCEPTED BY THE NATION AS PART OF THE TURNER BEQUEST 1856. IMAGES

COURTESY OF TATE BRITAIN, LONDON (N00530). © TATE, LONDON 2014...... 75

FIGURE 9. LUCA CRANACH, LUCRETIA, 1533, OIL ON PANEL, 36 X 22.5 CM, MUSEEN ZU BERLIN,

GEMÄLDEGALERIE, BERLIN. ARTWORK IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN...... 90

viii FIGURE 10. ANDY WARHOL, BRILLO BOX (SOAP PADS), 1964, SYNTHETIC POLYMER PAINT AND SILKSCREEN INK

ON WOOD, 43.3 X 43.2 X 36.5 CM. GIFT OF DORIS AND DONALD FISHER. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

THE VISUAL ARTS/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY ARS ...... 96

FIGURE 11. RICHARD SERRA, EQUAL (CORNER PROP PIECE), 1969-70, LEAD ANTINOMY, PLATE (122 X 122 X 2

CM), POLE (210 CM LENGTH, 11 CM DIAMETER). GILMAN FOUNDATION FUND. IMAGE COURTESY OF

ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK...... 100

FIGURE 12. ROY LICHTENSTEIN, DROWNING GIRL, 1963, OIL AND SYNTHETIC POLYMER PAINT ON CANVAS, 171.6

X 169.5 CM. PHILIP JOHNSON FUND (BY EXCHANGE) AND GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. BAGLEY WRIGHT. IMAGE

COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, (MOMA NUMBER: 685.1971) © MUSEUM OF

MODERN ART...... 101

FIGURE 13. YOSHUA OKÓN, OCTOPUS, 2011, SYNCHRONIZED PROJECTION (ONE OF FOUR), DURATION:

18:31 MINUTES LOOPED, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. © YOSHUA OKÓN...... 131

FIGURE 14. ABRAMOVIĆ & ULAY, IMPONDERABILIA, 1977, PERFORMANCE 90 MINS, GALLERIA

COMUNALE D'ARTE MODERNA, BOLOGNA. © MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ...... 142

FIGURE 15. ANDREA POZZO, 'FALSA CUPOLA', 1685, 13M DIAMETER, CHIESA DI S. IGNAZIO DI LOYOLA A

ROMA. ARTWORK IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN...... 154

FIGURE 16. FRANCIS BACON, 'TRIPTYCH', 1976, OIL PASTEL ON CANVAS, THREE PARTS EACH 198 X 147.5

CM, PRIVATE COLLECTION OF ROMAN ABRAMOVICH, MOSCOW. © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS

BACON...... 176

FIGURE 17. SERGEI EISENTSTEIN, 'THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN', 1925, STILL PHOTOGRAPH FROM FILM.

ARTWORK IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN...... 178

FIGURE 18. ANDRES SERRANO, PISS CHRIST, 1987, CIBACHROME, SILICONE, PLEXIGLAS, WOODFRAME,

152.4 X 101.6CM. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND YVON LAMBERT, PARIS. © A. SERRANO ...... 180

FIGURE 19. ANN VERONICA JANSSENS, 'BLUE, RED AND YELLOW ', 2000-2001, PAVILION WITH

COLOURED SIDES FILLED WITH ARTIFICIAL MIST, APPROX. 8.8 X 4.3 X 3.5M, “LIGHT GAMES,” NEUE

NATIONALEGALERIE, BERLIN. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. © ANN VERONICA JANSSENS. . 208

FIGURE 20. KHALED SABSABI, NAQSHBANDI GREENACRE ENGAGEMENT, 2011, INSTALLATION VIEW,

THREE-CHANNEL VIDEO PROJECTION, COMMISSIONED BY CAMPBELLTOWN ARTS CENTRE, SYDNEY.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. © KHALED SABSABI...... 212

INTRODUCTION

This thesis addresses an old problem that has been reformulated throughout the history of philosophical thought, namely the possibility of defining or delineating the relationship between art and politics. Given the complex interactions and agitations between artistic and political fields, it is difficult to create concepts that adequately reflect the diversity and volatility of the domains considered.1 Contemporary art discourse shies away from the audacious definitional projects of previous times that would seek to clearly delineate the terms at play,2 but we are loath to accept the opposing stance in which the impermanence of artistic-political relations precludes our understanding of them. For art in particular, there is too much at stake to retreat from examining the effective relationship between these two fields. Contemporary commentators have highlighted how the ability to position art in relation to politics, to acquire an indeterminate and non-reductive understanding of the shared ground upon which they stand, may enable its defence against totalising images offered by the state and society.3 However, in doing so we must also be wary of unwittingly instrumentalising or englobing art, thereby diminishing its specific visibility and indeterminate creative potential. So how are we to walk this tightrope, avoiding both reductive determination and laissez-faire de-conceptualisation of the artistic-political relationship?

1 John Roberts offers a particular perspective on this problem of conceptualising art’s autonomy while situating it within determining social, economic and historical conditions. In this he relates its endurance to a restless, “vigilant positioning” in relation to its own traditions of cultural and intellectual formation and administration. See John Roberts, "Art and its Negations," Third Text 24, no. 3 (2010). 2 Morris Weitz notorious text ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’ is often considered a turning point in modern aesthetics, as he rejects past definitional projects of analytic philosophy, arguing for an open concept of art for application in description. See Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," The Journal of Aesthtics and Art Criticism 15, no. 1 (1956). 3 For example, Alberto Toscano considers contemporary art’s turn towards cartographic models of thought to orient artistic and everyday experience within the “overwhelming vistas” of capitalism. In particular he outlines the importance of such critical processes according to Jameson, as they function as counter- totalisations of totalising state forces. See Alberto Toscano, "Seeing it whole: staging totality in social theory and art," The Sociological Review 60, no. S1 (2012).

1 Attempting to create a single conceptual model for the relationship between art and politics that can be applied to its innumerable concrete instances, would not only be a potentially reductive approach to the aforementioned problem, but also one that deviates from the particular interests of this thesis. Robin Marriner has noted:

…[T]he predominant use of theory in the art world has been less with a concern for epistemology, less a concern with examining the conditions of meaning, than with asserting meaning, with interpretation.4

This intellectual approach to the study of art in which “[b]odies of ideas, or at least selected elements from bodies of ideas, are drawn upon in order to articulate the meaning of particular works, and to direct and conceptualize practice”5 will not be adopted in our analysis. Although we will draw on the interpretation of works to interrogate and elucidate aspects of our discussion, the primary concern of this thesis is philosophical, as we explore the possibility of conceptualising a complex relationship between these two ambiguously delineated fields of art and politics. We propose that by returning to this question of how we may conceptualise this complicated relationship, we address a foundational problem for positive theory and interpretation. This philosophical project outlined, it is necessary to avoid the crude or reductive delineations that have been historically applied to the fields in question. This thesis thus engages in a methodological shift by embracing a state of epistemic ambiguity with respect to the limits of art and politics. We therefore ask: In order to understand how art and politics relate to one another, must we firstly presume their clear distinction? Or, might a reconsideration of the vague and unstable space that complicates this distinction play a pivotal role in understanding this relationship? Following Gilles Deleuze’s compositional thought, John Rajchman comments that “[t]he vagueness of ‘a life’ is […] not a deficiency

4 Robin Marriner, "Derrida and the Parergon," in A Companion to Art Theory, ed. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 350. 5 Ibid.

2 to be corrected, but rather a resource or reserve of other possibilities...”6 Contrary to the precepts of analytical thought that solve problems through simplification, Rajchman suggests that “it is the multiple complications in things that illuminate or clarify.”7 With this in mind, rather than examining the artistic-political relationship by establishing discrete realms of art and politics between which connections and priorities can be proposed, this thesis considers a series of philosophical figures and concepts that help us grasp the complicated and vague region in between art and politics. In this, we will construct a new image of the relationship that accommodates the dynamic complexity of their transformations.

Method

The conceptualisation of every aspect of the artistic and political relation is a task that exceeds the capacity of a single thesis. To respect the complexity of our problem we must therefore establish a discrete project within the task, as a first step towards its non-reductive conceptualisation. Because this investigation could be approached in many ways, through many disciplines and many schools of thought, an initial statement of the methodological priorities, limits and conceptual foci of this project is necessary.

With respect to choice of vocabulary, the relationship we seek to consider could be expressed in a number of ways: between art and politics, between the arts and the political, between Art and Politics and so on. Certain key thinkers referenced in this thesis, namely Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, indicate clear distinctions or preferences when it comes to the application of these terms. For this project, the simplest, least conceptually loaded usage has been chosen. Unless referring to a specific concept by another writer, the terms ‘art’ and ‘politics’ will be used throughout this thesis to designate the open fields of practice and theory that concern us.

6 John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000). 84. 7 ———, Constructions (Cambridge: The MIT Press, (1998)1999). 24 - 25.

3 Our particular philosophical approach to the problem will reflect Deleuze’s connective method of “holding together” a multiplicity of “disjunctive syntheses,”8 in order to produce an assemblage that releases unobserved “complicities” between divergent spaces of thought.9 It must be emphasised that this is not a work of art history and theory, nor is it a sociological study. Yet it also steps outside some conventions of abstract philosophical analysis. For example, the reader will note the inclusion of references to artist interviews within the body of this thesis. These interviews were conducted with the aim of maintaining links between our theoretical discussion and the concrete realities of artistic practice. They hence inspired concepts that are reflective of current approaches to the problem of art and politics, as expressed by three artists of different ages, practising in different parts of the world. The complete versions of these interviews have also been included in the thesis appendix to provide the reader with an opportunity to interpret the artists’ words in context. By exploiting a multiplicity of methods and modes of thinking about the relationship between art and politics through academic disciplines, the thesis evades clear disciplinary classification. Furthermore contrary to academic convention, the “intensive reading”10 of this project gathers a wide array of philosophical references, enabling encounters between thought that are often considered incompatible: the Anglo-American analytic and continental traditions, the dialectic and poststructuralist modes of analysis and deconstructive and pragmatic approaches to political thought. Looking to the tense and complicated space in between the texts of Plato, Immanuel Kant, Jacques Derrida, Arthur Danto, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze, Catherine Malabou and Hannah Arendt, among others, this thesis considers how the differential space in between distinct forms of thought calls forth new ways of thinking.

8 ———, The Deleuze Connections: 4. 9 ———, Constructions: 13 - 14.

10 This term is used in light of Rajchman’s understanding of the Deleuzian approach to reading. He emphasises the productivity of disjunctive readings, stating: “An intensive reading releases unnoticed “complicities” between two spaces that remain divergent and singular or common “implications” between two things that remain differently “folded” or constituted.” Ibid., 13-14.

4 While our investigation is not strictly confined by any particular disciplinary method, a philosophical vantage point is utilised to analyse artistic and political life via concepts. Our terrain is narrowed as we draw our examples from the fields of literature and visual arts, to the exclusion of the performing arts. This restricted analysis of art is done reluctantly but in view of the impossibility of providing a fair discussion of all relevant artistic media within a project of this size. Literature and visual arts were chosen due to the hermeneutic overlap found between textual and visual ‘reading’, which allows us to maintain a consistent grammar of analysis for this thesis.11 However, this choice should not be misconstrued as a dismissal of the pertinence of our argument for other fields of art. The limits of this project also inhibit us from engaging in an in depth exploration of our question from the standpoint of political analysis. That is to say, from a focused consideration of the interactions between current political structures, policies and their influence upon artistic practices. While we do not diminish the importance of such an approach in any complete response to the overarching problem, this thesis takes only a primary step towards examining this complicated space by considering it through the designated philosophical orientation. The political investigation in this thesis is thus primarily ontological, the major textual references of our analysis coming from the work of thinkers such as Schmitt, Derrida, Nancy, Deleuze and Zask, who focus on interrogating the limits, categories and composition of the political domain, rather than proposing normative models for action. In this thesis, politics will be considered as the ambiguously delimited domain of governance,12 while drawing on thinkers such as Pierre Bourdieu,

11 The links between visual and linguistic literacy are of growing interest, particularly among interdisciplinary scholars. A glimpse into the discourse surrounding visual literacy can be found in Louise Maurer and Roger Hillman, eds., Reading Images, Viewing Texts - Lire les images, voir les textes (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). 12 The definition of governance is of course fraught with ambiguity, its limits being a source of debate for contemporary politicians and theorists alike. While acknowledging this, Bob Jessop provides us with a workable, preliminary definition of governance as implying “the reflexive self-organisation of independent actors involved in complex relations of reciprocal interdependence, with such self-organisation being based on continuing dialogue and resource sharing to develop mutually beneficial joint projects and to manage the contradictions and dilemmas inevitably involved in such situations.” Bob Jessop, "Governance and meta- governance: on reflexivity, requisite variety and requisite irony," in Governance as social and political communication, ed. Henrik P. Bang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).

5 Nathalie Heinich and Joëlle Zask,13 who consider art’s transformations in light of more concrete demands of political and economic organisation. A word must also be said about the relationship between the problem addressed in this thesis and historical contingency. The reconsideration of this relationship between art and politics through the ages has accompanied social, economic and historical transformations. In his text The Rules of Art, Pierre Bourdieu provides an in depth sociological analysis of the emergence of particular literary forms and movements, historically situating them within the socio-economic and political transformations of industrialised nineteenth and twentieth century Europe.14 Jean-Pierre Vernant in The Historic Moment of Tragedy in Greece considers the historic antecedents and social and psychological conditions that produced this particular form of art, arguing that the tragic form of Grecian theatre is its precise historic moment of creation.15 Michael Mackenzie has also considered the current antimonies of art historical discourse. He emphasises the influence of the Foucauldian turn upon art history and theory, exemplified by Thierry De Duve’s audacious archaeology of Modernism in Kant after Duchamp, in which he traces atypical links between Kant’s eighteenth century philosophical text The Critique of the Power of Judgement and the twentieth century event of Duchamp’s Fountain (1917).16 While we must avoid historical anachronisms and be sensitive to the constitutive differences between works and texts produced in different eras, this does not hinder our ability to discuss and reinterpret texts with a contemporary voice. Recognising that there is no common measure through which to reproach or valorise texts, events and orientations

13 See Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire, revue et corrigée ed. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, (1992) 1998)., Nathalie Heinich, L’élite artiste: Excellence et singularité en régime démocratique (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2005). , Joëlle Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003). and Outdoor Art : La Sculpture et ses lieux ed. Philippe Pignarre, Les êmpecheurs de penser en rond (Paris: La Découverte, 2013). 14 For Bourdieu’s thorough discussion of the emergence of an ‘autonomous’ artistic milieu corresponding to the new demands of an expanding cultural market, See "La conquête de l'autonomie. La phase critique de l'émergence du champ" in Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 86 - 191. 15 See Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Le moment historique de la tragédie en Grèce : quelques conditions sociales et psychologiques " in Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne - I (Paris: Editions La Découverte & Syros, (1972) 2001), 16 - 17. 16 Michael Mackenzie, "Marcel Duchamp and the Antimonies of Art Historical and Art Critical Discourse," Modernism/Modernity 7, no. 1 (2000): 158.

6 coming from distinct moments in history, one might instead see their interactions in light of Deleuze’s discussion of Nietzsche’s aphorisms in Nomadic Thought, treating them as machines that can be hooked-up to new intensive sources today, calling forth future interpretations that revitalise the texts in question.17 With our position on historical contingency outlined in this way, this thesis does not undertake the task of historical analysis as well as philosophical argument. These limitations in mind, the thesis will make no claims to trans-historical universality, nor claim global pertinence across the multiplicity of folds of creation that traverse the lived world’s diverse cultures and modes of thought. To neglect the affective differences that a work of art or politics may display according to the specificity of its place in a web of social, political, economic and historical relations would be to turn away from the open differential potential of such practices.

Conceptual Departures

Having specified the particular methodological path that this thesis seeks to pursue, we might also identify the distinctive conceptual direction it takes in contrast to other philosophical investigations into the concepts of the ‘in-between’ and considerations of the affective artistic-political relationship. Firstly, the manner in which we examine the figure of the ‘interval’ or ‘in-between’ through the varied thought of Derrida, Malabou, Kant and Deleuze, distinguishes this treatment from the strictly Deleuzian interpretation with which it is often associated. Our conceptual inheritance from Deleuze is clear, but this thesis is not an investigation into Deleuze and Guattari’s discussions of in between spaces, albeit inspired by the fertility of their concept. Since Deleuze and Guattari’s depiction of the rhizomatic and nomadic ‘intermezzo’ in A Thousand Plateaus, the question of ‘what lies in- between’ has incited vigorous discussion and analysis. Deleuze and Guattari’s rejection of linear and aborescent models of connectivity meant that for many scholars the ‘in-between’ became not only a conceptual interest, but also a methodological point of departure. For example, several authors in John Protevi and Paul Patton’s 2003 text Between Deleuze and

17 See Deleuze's discussion of the right to misinterpret Nietzsche's texts into the future in Gilles Deleuze, "La pensée nomade," in Nietzsche Aujourd'hui, ed. David B. Allison (Union Générale d'édition, 1973).

7 Derrida considered the resonant space in between the seemingly disparate trajectories of Derridian and Deleuzian philosophy; each contributor opening this indiscernible and complex region onto future possibilities of thought. Erinn Cuniff Gilson exemplifies another trend in Deleuzian thought, which harbours a conceptual interest in the in-between as a site of becoming. Examining the role of “zones of indiscernibility” in Deleuze and Guattari’s text What is Philosophy?, she highlights how these in between spaces are ontological domains in which “terms of a seemingly clear distinction” overlap.18 These interstitial zones of indiscernibility are vital in the continual becoming of concepts according to Deleuze and Guattari, since they are composed through the variable relations between conceptual components.19 Our project is distinct from these prior analyses in a number of ways. Firstly, I suggest that while the pertinence of interstitial spaces to Deleuzian thought has been explored by many of his commentators, the consideration of this problem in relation to the specific space in between art and politics has not been so thoroughly examined. Deleuzian theorists of art and architecture such as John Rajchman have incorporated concepts of liminal space and indeterminate relations into their discussions of aesthetic constructions. Likewise, Deleuzian inspired texts such as Simon O’Sullivan’s Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, elaborate ideas of artistic and political becoming-minor in relation to the ruptures caused through forms of encounter. However the distinct direction our philosophical project takes regards the examination of the interstitial space of complication between commonly held concepts of art and politics, along with the in-between spaces of artistic experience. This allows us to question a distinction beginning in thought, which in turn guides practical categorisations and the institutional organisation of aesthetic experience in the world. In this way, our project differs from the thought of two other theorists who play a role in this thesis, Brian Massumi and Mieke Bal. Massumi’s 2011 text Semblance and Event offered a thorough exploration of the political dimension of relational-qualitative processes moving through both art and philosophy. In this he “opens” art and philosophy onto each other and

18 Erin Cunniff Gilson, "Zones of Indiscernability: The Life of a Concept from Deleuze to Agamben," Philosophy Today, no. SPEP Supplement (2007): 98. 19 Ibid., 100 - 01.

8 “into a wider activist understanding of the relational-qualitative processes moving through them.”20 While at moments this project will turn to Massumi’s thought, I would highlight the divergence in our respective investigations, as this thesis’ analysis of concepts of art and politics leads it away from Massumi’s more focused discussion of aesthetico-political processes in art. Similarly, Bal’s analysis of the political experience of artist Ann Veronica Janssen’s work in Endless Andness provides us with potent images through which to see the overlap between political and artistic experience. However, her text focuses on unfolding the experiential transformations that occur through Janssens’ work in relation to a broad concept of politics as “the space we share.”21 While we do not contest her definitions, our project starts at a different place as we analyse the limits of politics and art, rather than interpreting one with respect to the interests of the other. Another distinctive feature of our analysis of the relationship between art and politics can be found in the adoption of a particular motor scheme22 used in the unfolding of this problem – plasticity. Our use of the term plasticity is inspired by Catherine Malabou’s particular development of the “unforeseen” of Hegelian philosophy, in The Future of Hegel, The New Wounded, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, Ontology of the Accident and What Should We Do with Our Brain? Denoting the capacity to be formed and to destroy form, plasticity conceptualises the medium state in between fixed instances, enabling transformations in philosophy, the psyche and writing. A detailed exposition of the particular relevance of plasticity to the transitions, transformations and bifurcations arising in between art and politics is provided later in this thesis, but it can be said that our re- reading of texts by Derrida, Danto, Deleuze, Kant and Arendt, in light of Malabou’s concept of plasticity, will enable the formation of new concepts regarding the

20 Brian Massumi, Semblance and Event: Activist philosophy and the occurent arts (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011). 13. 21 Mieke Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013). 3.

22 Malabou explains that she elaborates this concept of the motor schema from references found in Bergson to a form of coordination that precedes movement. The way she uses it can be understood to signify a hermeneutic motive of thought, through which the events of an era can be interpreted. See Catherine Malabou, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction, Variations I (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2005). 33.

9 transformative qualities of interstitial spaces. This thesis does not specifically analyse the nature of Malabou’s concept of plasticity, but it follows her process of plastic concept formation through the unearthing of an ‘unforeseen’ relationship between art and politics, “in order to transform it into the sort of comprehensive concept that can “grasp” (saisir) the whole.”23

In Between Art and Politics: A Philosophical Montage

With the contours of the problem outlined, this thesis seeks to re-conceptualise the relationship between art and politics through a new conceptual model of relations that creates an “indirect image”24 of their unstable and plastic in-between. Extending concepts found in Deleuze’s philosophy of film, the distinctive structure of this thesis is seen in the particular form of assemblage it composes, as a montage of four discrete images of the artistic and political in-between.25 We will employ Deleuze’s cinematic approach for its capacity to invoke the fragmented, irreducibly complex, and lively impression of a multi- faceted relation. In this we will not seek to classify our montage within Deleuze’s cinematic taxonomy, rather through the application of this cinematic language, we will convey the

23 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic, trans. Lisbeth During (London; New York: Routledge, 2005). 5. « Former un concept signifie tout d’abord transformer une notion dont la présence est discrète dans la philosophie hegelienne en une instance de saisie de celle-ci, au double sens d’un prendre et d’un comprendre, comme l’autorise l’étymologie même du mot « concept ». » ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique, Librarie Philosophique (Paris: VRIN, (1996) 2012). 16. 24 Deleuze’s concept of the indirect image elaborates upon his interest in free indirect discourse in language and literature. Describing its presence in literature as an “assemblage of enunciation,” in both Cinema I and Cinema II Deleuze considers the reformulation of free indirect discourse within modern cinema. As a product of montage, he considers how different kinds of ‘cutting’ produce different forms of indirect cinematic image. The image created by montage is considered as necessarily indirect, as it is deduced from the relationships between different images that are edited together. The particular effect of the indirect image produced through our philosophical montage, will be unfolded through the course of this thesis. For Deleuze’s precise words regarding montage and the indirect image, see Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1 : L'image-mouvement (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983). 47. 25 Our cinematic approach to the philosophical problem can be seen as a further precision of our earlier statement, in which we liken our process to the Deleuzian assemblage of disjunctive syntheses. Montage is discussed as akin to other processes of assemblage, Deleuze stating: “Le montage, c’est la composition, l’agencement des images-mouvement...” Ibid.

10 “rhythmic alternation”26 of an assemblage through which the relationship at stake can be indirectly configured. 27 The four images or ‘shots’ of the thesis will unfold as follows: firstly a long shot, then a close-up, then a discrete set of cross-cut shots, followed by a point-of-view shot. As a deep-focused long-shot, Chapter One will set the scene for our investigation, by considering how the problem of delineating art and politics has been discussed through two dominant perspectives: ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake.’ In doing so, it will examine how the former reduces the space in between art and politics by subsuming one under the prerogative of the other, while the latter implies a space in between art and politics that invokes an isolating expanse entirely inhibiting the interaction of these fields. Tracing their philosophical origins to Platonic and Kantian aesthetic formulations, this chapter will demonstrate how despite attempts to clearly delineate the relationship between art and politics, the clarity of the hierarchies and priorities presupposed in these traditions is ultimately unstable. Our analysis draws on the thought of Nietzsche and Derrida, as well as literary and visual examples from Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Kienholz, Gustave Flaubert, Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Andrew Calder, Barnett Newman and J.M.W. Turner, to demonstrate how neither ‘art for progress’ nor ‘art for art’s sake’ can overcome the pervasive impurity that arises in between art and politics. Chapter Two will follow on from this image of the unstable space, the in-between, with the aim of reconceptualising it. In doing so, the chapter will serve as our ‘close-up’ of the unstable space in between art and politics, examining and elaborating its qualities through a new concept of the plastic frame. The pertinence of the frame as a figure of the limit will be considered in reference to Derrida’s discussion of the ontologically unstable,

26 Ibid., 49.

27 A word may be said about the slippage of this cinematic language into our philosophical project. In recognition of the specificity of the medium of film, we should be conscious not to minimise the differences between cinematic montage and our philosophical montage. However, the conceptual crossover between these fields of literary, philosophical and cinematic analysis not reiterates the approach taken by Deleuze himself, but contributes to a specific field of interest regarding the extension of filmic concepts. See, Tom Conley, "Deleuze and the Filmic Diagram," Deleuze Studies 5, no. 2 (2011). and Louis-Georges Schwartz, "Typewriter: Free Indirect Discourse in Deleuze's "Cinema"," SubStance 34, no. 3, 108 (2005).

11 yet forceful supplementary parergon in Truth in Painting. In light of this discussion, we will consider how the unstable frame might serve as a figure to articulate the unstable limits of concepts of art and politics, with particular reference to Arthur Danto’s texts Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Artworld, and Jacques Derrida’s Politics of Friendship. After exposing how the limits of concepts of art and politics reflect a parergonal instability, we will then turn our focus to the liminal space they imply in between the limits of one another. This parergonal space in between art and politics will thus be analysed in relation to an unstable linguistic form that mediates distinct fields of artistic and political meaning - metaphor. In doing so, we will consider this through the lens of Derrida’s critique of the Aristotelian trope, as it undermines the hierarchy implied between an ‘original’ and ‘secondary’ language, thereby configuring a liminal space that avoids reductive domination of one field by another. Suggesting that more can be brought to this parergonal image of the artistic-political relationship, we will reconceptualise the transformations it allows in light of Catherine Malabou’s discussions of metabolising plasticity. Articulating our argument by way of example with the works of Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, Roy Lichtenstein, J.M. Coetzee, Marina Abramović and ULAY, we will construct a scene of effective continuity and singular distinction between the fields of art and politics. Identifying the limitations that confront a focused and isolated image of the artistic- political relationship, Chapter Three will present a set of cross-cut shots, through which the differential in-between of art and politics will be situated within a broader plastic landscape of unified multiplicity. In this, we will turn to the Deleuzian imagery of the fold that is developed from Leibniz’s monadology, as it invokes a complex image of a multitude of singular, productive and continuous in between spaces. In order to elaborate upon the differential quality of the fold we will look to two particular philosophical figures, Jean- Luc Nancy and Gilles Deleuze, whose parallel thoughts regarding the plastic force of art expose a charged middle ground of artistic and political transformation. We will consider how this differential, plastic force in between art and politics might be seen as a determination of Bergson’s underlying élan vital, that establishes and moves between the

12 cracks of life. The plasticity of the singular articulations of art and politics will then be explained in reference to Massumi’s discussion of conditioned events. Through this final image of an infinitely folding and unfolding landscape that calls forth events through fields of difference, we will reconsider if and how we can clearly position the relationship between art and politics, following Malabou’s image of the plastic brain. The final ‘cut’ is perhaps the starkest of the montage, as we consider the in-between of art and politics through a final subjective ‘point-of-view’ shot. In this, we will examine the role of the mittelglied or ‘middle articulation’ of judgement, as a site of transition and pivotal transformation that expresses the broader character of the artistic-political in- between. We will begin this by looking to Jean-Luc Nancy, Joëlle Zask and Mieke Bal’s descriptions of the artistic and democratic spaces, as they highlight their open and formative relation to the subject who views or participates in these spaces. We will conceptualise the subjective transformations achieved by the work of artists such as Ann Veronica Janssens and Khaled Sabsabi, in light of Malabou’s discussions of neurological trauma and resilience: initially undermining and then reconfiguring subjective limits. This image of destructive and generative plasticity will be elaborated by translating it into Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt’s language of mental activity. Arendt’s reinterpretation of Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgement will point us to the interstitial idea that ‘fills the gap’ between artistic and political becoming: the communal sense. Both shaped by and shaping of judgement, we will reconceptualise Kant’s idea of the communal sense or sentiment as a plastic concept that emerges in between art and politics. This concept will be saved from potential misinterpretations as an oppressive artistic and political norm, as we highlight its connection to democratic compositions and Deleuzian concepts of indeterminate creativity, as found in jurisprudence, taste and style. This final chapter will thus consider plastic life as it indeterminately and creatively self-organises through the faculties and concepts emerging in between art and politics.

In presenting these different images or ‘shots’ of the unstable, plastic in-between of art and politics, we will not seek to clarify the distinction between these fields before proposing

13 their connection. Rather, through an indirect image of the indeterminate interstitial spaces of the frame, fold and judgement, we will embrace the complex and volatile co-implication of these two fields, which call forth new forms of conceptualisation in order to be understood.

14 CHAPTER ONE

UNSTABLE AND IMPURE DISTINCTIONS

Introduction: The Scene of Two Traditions

To compose a new image of the artistic and political relationship requires first an understanding of how this relationship has been previously understood. This can be executed through a deep-focused ‘long shot’ of a historic dichotomy that has dominated this discussion: ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake’. Looking into their philosophical inheritances, this chapter suggests that despite their ideological differences, these traditions reflect a common attempt to delineate and establish hierarchies between the fields of art and politics. This considered, through further scrutiny into the principles and ideas that inform these movements we will see how such ways of thinking about the artistic and political relationship are not only reductive but also conceptually unstable. Furthermore, as we expose the fragile delineations of these fields, we will find an interstitial space of cross- contamination emerge between art and politics. This chapter begins by considering the work and statements of artists usually associated with the socially orientated motivations of ‘art for progress’. As we look to the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, Émile Zola, Gustave Courbet and George Sand, we will highlight how the political engagement of their work was guided by ideals such as truth, which are not purely political. In order to investigate this association between artistic creation, truth and politics, we will turn to a philosopher famously associated with the political instrumentalism of art: Plato. Through a close analysis of his thought in The Republic, Phaedrus and other texts, we will question the direct hierarchy between art and politics often attributed to Plato’s thought. In light of Nietzsche’s discussions of the apollonian in The Birth of Tragedy, we will suggest that both art and politics are fields of articulation for ideas of order, truth and harmony, which mediate the in-between of art and

15 politics. From this, the social functionalism aligned with ‘art for progress’ will be reformulated as an articulation of ideas that are neither strictly political, nor artistic. The second part of this chapter will then look at the formalist attempt to isolate aesthetic value from the political, this conceptualisation implying a dissociation between the two fields. Considering the thought and work of Gustave Flaubert and Clement Greenberg’s discussions of American modernist painting, we will demonstrate how ‘art for art’s sake’ is underpinned by values of freedom and historical advancement. The particular resonance of these principles with Enlightenment values will lead us to consider Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory as articulated in The Critique of the Power of Judgment. Although Kant seeks to distinguish aesthetic value from the political, in light of Jacques Derrida’s critique in Economimesis, we will demonstrate how Kant’s aesthetic delineations and hierarchies are imbued with socio-economic determinations. Turning to the analysis of Mihaela Fistioc, we will further expose how Kant’s structure of aesthetic valorisation is inextricable from his humanist teleology, which is also the cornerstone of his political vision. In this, the continuity between aesthetic and political value through Enlightenment ideals, undermines the pure aesthetes’ claims to their work as liberated from politics. Through the analysis of conceptual distinctions and inheritances of ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’, the complicated in-between of these fields emerges, as they both envisage art within an all-encompassing project of human betterment. Inasmuch as art and politics, for both traditions, emerge as aids and articulations of humankind’s ascent towards an archetype of perfection, we suggest that this shared space undermines the image of the artistic-political opposition as clear and distinct, invoking the image of an impure, fragile and unstable in-between of art and politics.

Art and Political Formalism

The tenet of ‘Art for progress’ can be traced through history in many formulations. Modern articulations of this principle as ‘politically engaged art’ have been associated with a great diversity of twentieth century media and movements, from Dadaist theatre to Social Realist

16 painting to Futurist music and beyond. Art historian Arnold Hauser describes artistic socio- political engagement as implying a conscious stand taken for a “socio-political goal.”28 However, this notion of the artist’s socio-political goal can be illuminated further, as the practice of ‘art for progress’ is associated with particular kinds of socio-political goals or ideals. To illustrate: While it may be a socio-political goal to build a fast train from Sydney to Melbourne, it is unlikely that this goal would inspire artistic engagement in the same way that civil rights movements have done throughout the twentieth century. The common idealism of ‘art for progress’ or politically engaged art can be found articulated in many forms. The use of art to express a socio-political conscience is perhaps most famously associated with the figure of Jean-Paul Sartre, who discussed the capacity of a new ‘literature engagée’ to produce social change in his introduction to Les Temps Modernes.29 Having become increasingly politicised through his writing during World War II, in the 1945 inaugural edition of Les Temps Modernes, Sartre would emphasise the socio- political responsibility of the writer who, due to their status as “situated” in their era, must recognise the manner in which their words and silence “reverberates” through the space of social and political life.30 Sartre emphasises that the writer must not forget their responsibility to serve literature as an artistic form, but that this should be fulfilled by infusing it with a “new blood”, reorienting it towards the destiny and necessities of modern collective society.31 Sartre’s Marxist inheritance is visible in his articulation of the socio- political obligations of the engaged “free” subject to the destiny of the collective.32 However within his piece he also makes reference to another key figure in the history of French politically engaged writing – Émile Zola. Not only would Zola’s historic political participation be seen as particularly courageous and necessary to Sartre, who himself had publicly denounced violent anti-Semitism during World War II, but it would also exemplify a particular conception of the artist’s power in relation to a particular political ideal – Truth. In opposition to a tradition that would suggest that socio-political injustice is “not their

28 Arnold Hauser, "The l'art pour l'art Problem," Critical Inquiry 5, no. 3 (1979): 438. 29 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Présentation," Les Temps Modernes 1, no. 1 ((1945) 1970): 7 - 8. 30 Ibid., 5. 31 Ibid., 21. 32 Ibid., 18 - 19.

17 business”,33 Zola, along with George Sand and Victor Hugo, would reflect a particular conception of artistic force that relates to ideals of truth and just political order. Living during a time of immense socio-economic transformation and technological advancement, Zola’s quasi-scientific literary Naturalism depicted the harsh and determinate conditions of rural life in contrast to the social movements of the turn of the century Paris. Such depictions would see his work received as implicit socio-political critique, in particular of the Second French Empire under Napoleon III. His work would be viewed as “unpleasant reading” by political commentators of the time, such as Frederick W. Whitridge, who would suggest that his works on the middle and upper classes “must, when taken together, constitute either a most unwelcome exposure of French society, or a gross libel on the French people.”34 The exposure of the ‘true’ and socially determined conditions of human existence in France could be read as both stylistically and socially pertinent. For Zola, the naturalist approach would be fore mostly an aesthetic or artistic project, as the bare depiction of the harsh conditions of life cultivated a new style of art making. But the complex interaction between the artist’s choice of a subject - social conditions - and their honest or ‘scientific’ style of representing them, would also allow it to be read politically. This inclination would also be seen in the reception of realist painters. Gustave Courbet’s empirical approach to rural realism can be likened to Zola’s ‘quasi-scientific’ naturalist orientation, as Larry Silver recounts the artist’s insistence on depicting “visible objects” emptied of any “heroics and sentimentality.”35 Echoing Zola’s texts, Courbet’s oil paintings sought to depict an “unadorned vision of the country”36 characterised by the backbreaking and unromanticised labour of its subjects.

33 ibid., 5. 34 Frederick W. Whitridge, "Zola, Dreyfus and the French Republic," Political Science Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1898): 263 - 64. 35 Larry Silver, Art in History (New York; London; Paris: Abbeville Press, 1993). 332. 36 Ibid., 331.

Figure 1. Gustave Courbet, ‘The Stone Breakers’, 1849. Oil on canvas, 160 x 259 cm. Formerly Gemäldegalerie, (destroyed). Artwork in the public domain.

Socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would thus engage in a political reading of Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1849). The tired, stiff and expressionless figures in the painting, would provide Proudhon with a symbol for socialist analysis,37 linking Courbet’s artistic ability to “paint men in the sincerity of their natures and their habits, in their work, in the accomplishment of their civic and domestic function…”38 to his status as a “critical, analytic, humanitarian painter.”39 While both Zola and Courbet’s interests in depicting “unadorned” reality would see their artistic practices associated with a politically motivated

37 It should be noted that Zola criticised Proudhon’s didactic reading of Courbet’ work. Pierre Bourdieu discusses this in further depth in Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 227. This criticism from Zola illustrates how the tradition of socio-political engagement should be reduced to an advocacy using the arts to spread ideology. 38 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny (extracts)," in Realism and Tradition in Art, ed. Linda Nochlin (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, (1865) 1966), 50. 39 Ibid., 53.

19 investigation and exposition of social realities, the former’s personal participation within 40 the political sphere would greatly overshadow this.

The socio-political impact of Zola’s literary writing is often overlooked in favour of his explicit journalistic engagement in the politics of his era, most famously in the form of an open letter to the President Fauré in l’Aurore, during the Dreyfus Affair. Although his journalistic work may be considered distinct from his literary practice, his denunciation of the French government’s anti-Semitic implication in the unjust condemnation of Captain Dreyfus may provide us with insight into the central position of truth within Zola’s conception of political good. Zola’s preface to a compilation text of articles written by him about the Dreyfus Affair between 1897 – 1900 is entitled “The Truth is on the March” (La vérité en marche). This indicates the extent to which the question of truth was central to Zola’s political engagement. This place is amplified in his famous ‘J’accuse’ letter, as the perversion of truth is depicted as the central catalyst for Zola’s denunciation, the repetition of the word emphasising its weight as follows:

I shall tell the truth, for I pledged that I would tell it, if our judicial system, once the matter was brought before it through the normal channels, did not tell the truth, the whole truth. It is my duty to speak up; I will not be an accessory to the fact.41

Although it must be recognised that Zola sought to keep this journalistic engagement with the Dreyfus affair separate from his artistic and literary practice,42 Murray Sachs highlights

40 The potential resonances and divergences between the artistic practices of Zola and Courbet may also be considered through a reading of Zola’s text L’Oeuvre, in which certain scholars have suggested Zola incorporates qualities of his own and those of other artistic contemporaries including Courbet, in the construction of his leading character. See Robert Lethbridge, "Against Recuperation: The Fictions of Art in L'Oeuvre," Romantic Review 102, no. 3/4 (2011). 41 Emile Zola, "'Letter to M. Félix Faure, President of the Republic' ('J'accuse'), L'Aurore, 6 December 1897," in The Dreyfus Affair: 'J'accuse' and Other Writings (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1996), 43. “La vérité, je la dirai, car j'ai promis de la dire, si la justice, régulièrement saisie, ne la faisait pas, pleine et entière. Mon devoir est de parler, je ne veux pas être complice.” ———, "Lettre à M. Félix Faure, Président de la République (J’accuse…!)," in J'accuse…! La Vérité en marche, Historiques-Politiques (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1988), 97 - 98.

20 how Zola rearticulates his engagement in the politics of the era through his 1902 work, aptly titled Truth. Sachs suggests that through this text Zola transposes the events of the Dreyfus affair into the context of the school system as a means to criticise the “widespread prejudices of xenophobia and rabid jingoism,” which result in hysteria that is “knowingly encouraged by the Church and by the press,”43 at the sacrifice of justice and truth. Zola’s transposition of the Dreyfus events into the pedagogical system in Truth, thus rearticulates his political commitment and conviction regarding the unjust perversion of truth enabled by the systems and attitudes of nineteenth and early twentieth century France. For Zola, it seems that this corruption infiltrates different social determinations, thus his application of both journalistic and artistic formats to pursue his socio-political goal of exposing deceit, appears apt. Zola’s artistic and journalistic engagement with the politics of his time would be read, by some, as inspired by the political efforts of another celebrated French writer – Victor Hugo. Whitridge reads Zola’s journalistic participation in the Dreyfus Affair as partially inspired by Victor Hugo’s open letter to the editor of the London News in 1859.44 In this letter Hugo condemns the American judicial process leading to the then imminent execution of abolitionist John Brown after the Harpers Ferry Raid.45 However aside from his explicit participation in political events, Hugo’s political inclinations also found expression in his writing practice. A former director of the Academie Française, during his period in exile the Republican Hugo would write from the fringes of French society producing one of his most notable texts, Les Misérables. Having been an outspoken critic of the corruption of the July Monarchy, his fictional account of the lives, relationships and interactions of dispossessed characters leading up to the 1832 June Rebellion were read as poignant socio-political criticism. Hugo’s socio-political motivations are revealed through his epigraph, as he states:

42 See Murray Sachs, "Émile Zola's Last Word: Vérité and the Dreyfus Affair," Romance Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1998): 205. 43 Ibid., 207 - 08. 44 Hugo participated journalistically in this political event from England, having been earlier exiled from France as an outspoken critic of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and political dissident during the Bonapartist military coup of 1851. 45 Whitridge, "Zola, Dreyfus and the French Republic," 263 - 64.

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age – the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night – are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; […] so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.46

Hugo not only condemns in detail the social ills of his time, but also draws a link between such socio-political problems and the utility of his novel. In this he implies that his description of pitiful characters, injustices and misfortunes can serve a social function, as Sartre would outline almost a century later, as providing a glimpse into the true misery of social reality. The ability of the artist to reveal a ‘social truth’ to the collective was articulated by another thinker from this period, George Sand. In her 1848 introduction to her journal La Cause du Peuple, she describes an ideal form of the truth that must be proclaimed, even when at risk of persecution under the July Monarchy’s censorship laws.47 Pierre Lacassagne explains how during this period the political engagement of socialists of the artistic sphere, such as Sand, reflected an understanding of the division of social duties wherein the artist was assigned the task of proclaiming social truth for the political realm to apply. He describes how this process was seen as the means through which the artist could

46Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Chas E. Wilbour (New York: Carleton Publisher, 1862). 7. “[t]ant que les trois problèmes du siècle, la dégradation de l’homme par le prolétariat, la déchéance de la femme par la faim, l’atrophie de l’enfant par la nuit, ne seront pas résolus; tant que, dans de certaines régions, l’asphyxie sociale sera possible ; […] tant qu’il y aura sur la terre ignorance et misère, des livres de la nature de celui-ci pourront ne pas être inutiles.” ———, "Les Misérables," in Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Jean Massin (Paris: Le Club Français du Livre, 1967 - 1970). as cited in Isabel K. Roche, "Inscribing his Ideal Reader(ship): Victor Hugo and the Shaping of le lecteur pensif," French Forum 28, no. 2 (2003): 25. 47 Sand states: “Cette forme idéale de la vérité, j’ignore si je serai appelé à la dire dans cette publication. […] Je l’ai fait pressentir assez clairement dans de nombreux ouvrages, alors qu’il y avait danger à le faire […]. Sous la menace des lois de septembre, c’était un devoir de proclamer sa croyance individuelle.” George Sand, "L’introduction de La Cause du Peuple" , Questions politiques et sociales, Calmann-Levy,( 9 Avril 1848): 247, as cited in Jean-Pierre Lacassagne, "George Sand et la « vérité sociale»," Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 76, no. 4 (1976): 548.

22 provide the world with “the great spectacle of the triumph of truth.”48 This saw the artist occupy a visionary position within the socio-political sphere, as a figure endowed with the capacity to represent and communicate socio-political truth to the people. In the political engagement of Zola, Hugo and Sand, we find a common understanding of the artistic capacity to represent social truth. Yet this inclination cannot be considered purely as a symptom of the time and place during which they lived. Indeed late twentieth century artistic movements such as The Situationist International, who sought to identify and subvert the alienating consumerist spectacle of modern mediatised capitalism, can be aligned with a similar desire to expose the almost imperceptible reality of modern oppression by the diffuse spectacle.49 Since then postmodern artistic engagement with socio-political realities has reformulated the force of social truth. This can be found in, for example, the work of Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Gillian Whitely describes these artists as “unremitting in expressing their social and political critique” as through a body of confrontational and provocative works they “[deal] with the obscenities of poverty and sexual depravity” as well as “the human cost of war”.50 Arthur Danto described the ugly and unprocessed aesthetic of Kienholz’s work as “a kind of visual growl” that served as “a mode of presentation appropriate to the moral ugliness it became the point of his art to reveal.”51 Utilising characteristically postmodern devices of the abject and disgust, Kienholz’s work sat at a distance from the romantic aesthetic and sentiments invoked in Hugo’s Les Misérables or the naturalism of Zola’s Truth. Yet we still find resonances between these authors and Kienholz’s practice, as they all perform a socio- political function relating to social truth or reality, this exemplified through Keinholz’s work The Ozymandias Parade (1985).

48 Ibid., 543. 49 For Guy Debord’s articulation of the Situationist International’s principles and socio-political critique, see Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle (Paris: Folio, 1996). 50 Gillian Whiteley, "KIENHOLZ," The Art Book 13, no. 2 (2006): 20. 51 Arthur Danto, "Edward Kienholz," Nation, no. June 10 (1996): 33.

Figure 2. Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin Kienholz, ‘The Ozymandias Parade’ (Detail), 1985, mixed media tableau, 152 x 349 x 180 in. [386.1 x 886.5 x 457.2cm] Image courtesy of L.A. Louver, CA. © Kienholz

Invoking Percy Shelley’s image of the declined and crumbled effigy of former King Ozymandias, Kienholz’s work uses found objects to assemble an absurd parade of figures invoking the abuses of a Regan era U.S.A. Thomas Crowe notes the importance of scale in Keinholz’s work, as his “expansive tableaux” expressed the “enormity of the evils he perceived.”52 Furthermore, echoing Zola and Hugo’s use of symbolic characters to represent and explore the social ills of their period, Kienholz composed symbolic figures: an ageing female figure carrying an armed general upon her back, a president riding upside- down on his horse and diminutive figures poised watching the “ship of fools”53 parade past. Through this they construct a tableau of misdirection and exploitation representative of the

52 Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties, The Everyman Art Library (London: Calmann and King Ltd, 1996). 73-6.

53 Sarah Goulet and Lauren Staub, "Kienholz: The Ozymandias Parade / Concept Tableaux," (PACE Gallery, 2012).

24 era’s politics. The “opulent allegory”54 of this work provides us with a panoramic insight into real injuries and social injustices of the time. By revealing the insidious truth, the works were designed to incite anger to fuel intervention, Danto remarking that “[s]ince anger impels intervention, [Kienholz’s] is an art that endeavours to change the world or to create shame in those viewers who do not try to intervene.”55 The use of artistic figuration to communicate and disseminate social truths continues through various determinations today, often achieving success in rendering visible otherwise marginalised socio-political issues. Contemporary Filipina artist Brenda Fajardo, who continues to believe that the “artist has a social responsibility to show the truth,”56 used her PILIPINA Series (1999) to highlight the plight of women living as overseas contract workers, these women having become the “new heroes of the Philippine economy”.57 Although the violence directed towards these women as well as their economic exploitation has been politically documented, Fajardo’s work, through the artistic visualisation of their plight, reveals another, more personalised ‘reality’ of their socio- political condition, which cannot be revealed through political or statistical representation. Echoing Sartre’s understanding of la literature engagée, Fajardo says that through her images she seeks to produce a reflective change in her audience that will “lead them to act for social transformation,”58 reinterpreting the social function of art within her contemporary context.

While a transforming perception of artistic duty that associates it with the capacity to reveal and communicate social truths can be found over different contexts, its socio-political function is rarely conceived in terms of a direct alleviation of political ills such as suffering and corruption, or the transformation of policy. The socio-political function of the artist is thus found in their relationship to another middle term. In the case of Zola, Hugo and Sand, this middle term is truth. Yet why is it that truth can function as a middle term between the

54 Ibid. 55 Danto, "Edward Kienholz," 33. 56 Brenda Fajardo and Denise Thwaites, Asynchronous email interview, 21 Janurary - 9 October 2012. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid.

25 delineated realms of art and politics? To consider how this triple association may arise, we can look to its formulation in Plato’s philosophy.

Platonic Order: The Formal Concerns of Art and Politics

Plato is often described as out rightly rejecting the place of art in his text Republic. However, in The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Rancière points to a common misconception regarding Plato’s thought, suggesting that this reflects a failure to recognise the historic fact that for Plato a distinct realm of art did not exist. During his time, works of art were viewed as forms of making and doing that operate within a broader “ethical regime” of aesthetics,59 in which all productivity serves the state. We therefore cannot attribute a delineated category of art to Plato, because for him works of poetry, painting and sculpture, operated as “ways of doing” within the broader pre- delineated field of aesthetic-political life. However, as modern readers, we can identify within Plato’s texts the way he aligned particular forms of ‘making and doing,’ through their common status as aesthetically mimetic practices. Even if Plato doesn’t distinguish art as a category to be subjugated to politics, he does recognise how drama, literature and painting, are alike in their particular effects as mimetic or representative forms. We may evaluate the place of truth and its consequential relationship to politics and what we would call today ‘artistic practices,’ in light of Plato’s supposed expulsion of the artistic from his ideal city. He lived through a time of political insecurity and cultural transformation for Athens (late 5th and early 4th centuries BC) and Plato’s discussion evinces a deep-seated orientation towards stability and order. Plato’s alleged exiling of the artists from his ideal city is derived from a discussion in Book X of his Republic, 60 as he argues that they “have a low degree of truth” and deal “with a low element in the mind”61. This image of the potential harm of a work of art on the individual and society, is emphasised by Plato as he states:

59 Jacques Rancière, Le partage du sensible: esthétique et politique (Paris: La fabrique éditions, 2000). 28. 60 Plato, "Book X," in The Republic (London: Penguin, 1987), 373. 61 Ibid.

Between ourselves – and you mustn’t give me away to the tragedians and other writers of the kind – such representations definitely harm the minds of their audiences, unless they’re inoculated against them by knowing their real nature.62

Plato’s concerns regarding the ability of such works to excite the lower parts of the soul – the passions- will be addressed in greater depth shortly, but for now, how might we understand the potential dangers of representation for Plato? Plato’s critique of the representative arts as mimesis63 is best understood in light of the greater context of his text Republic. His criticism of the mimetic work stems from his understanding of its status as a third degree removed from the abstract forms, 64 as it creates another dimension of obscurity beyond the material object, serving to block the path of true knowledge.65 Plato suggests that, “The art of representation is […] a long way removed from truth, and it is able to reproduce everything because it has little grasp of anything…”66 In this sense Plato regards the mimetic artist as the skilful, but ignorant creator of illusions, Iris Murdoch suggesting that this places them in league with the Sophist.67 The ‘illusions’ of art, thus exploit and build upon the predisposed vulnerability and ignorance of mankind articulated in Plato’s famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’ in Book VII of The Republic.68 This renowned allegory, which metaphorically expresses the idealist metaphysical dichotomy

62 Ibid., 360. 63 While mimesis is commonly interpreted as “imitation”, Monroe Beardsley suggests that “representation” is a more accurate term to explain Plato’s usage of the term, as he likens “mimesis” to the role of names imitating the essence of things. See Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1975). 34. 64 Plato, "Book X," 363. 65 Ibid., 364. 66 Ibid. 67 Irish Murdoch has remarked how this criticism echoes Plato’s denunciation of the sophist in opposition to the philosopher, as it is found in The Sophist. In this text Plato relays the struggle to distinguish the practice of the philosopher from that of the sophist, concluding that the sophist does not aim at knowledge of truth, rather imitates and distorts the argumentation of the philosopher in order to achieve his own personal ends. Murdoch identifies the similarity between Plato’s understanding of the sophist and artist, describing the sophist as “odious because he plays with a disability which is serious, glories in image-making without knowledge, and, living in a world of fictions, blurs the distinction between true and false…” See Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 31. 68 See Plato, "Book VII," 256.

27 that underpins his philosophy,69 guides the trajectories of his moral, epistemological, political and aesthetic projects, as they all aim to leave behind the transience and inconsistency of material life in favour of achieving immaterial and universal truths.70 For Plato, representational art provides its audience with a false sense of knowledge of the forms and figures it depicts, steering them astray from the righteous, philosophical, path towards abstract knowledge. While the diversionary potential of art as untruthful mimesis is considered detrimental to Plato’s political aim to realise his ideal state, their danger is further amplified by their potential to corrupt the conduct and minds of citizens. This concern relates to Plato’s image of the soul, as he sees it as hierarchically divided, with the pleasure in sensible experiences and emotion reflecting the lowest part of our being. Plato explains in the Phaedrus that: “In each one of us there are two ruling and impelling principles whose guidance we follow, a desire for pleasure, which is innate, and an acquired conviction which causes us to aim at excellence.”71 Plato employs an image of a charioteer controlling two horses, one ill-trained symbolising desire, and the other obedient symbolising reason, to describe the tension between our variant urges. The place of the will, symbolised by the charioteer, is emphasised in the controlling of these distinct urges and achievement of excellence.72 For Plato, the duality between the mind and the body further corresponds to this divergence between reason and desire. In his dialogue Phaedo Plato explicitly condemns the body’s corrupting influence upon the mind and its ability to reason philosophically, claiming:

69 ———, "Phaedrus," in Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 52. 70 This is not to suggest that there is no place for deception within Plato’s political model. Raphael Woolf explains that for Plato “the justification for the deception is in terms of the benefit conferred on those who are being deceived,” suggesting that falsehoods shall be “dispensed as a kind of ‘drug’ (ϕαρµάκου, d2), with the rulers acting as doctors” Raphael Woolf, "Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic," Phronesis 54(2009): 25. 71 Plato, "Phaedrus," 36. 72 Ibid., 37.

28 The body fills us with emotions of love, desire and fear, with all kinds of phantasy and nonsense, so that in very truth it really doesn’t give us a chance, as they say, ever to think of anything at all…73

Plato’s belief that to exercise reason requires the abandonment of bodily motivations “to survey things alone in themselves by means of the soul herself alone”74 becomes yet another basis for Plato’s privileging of philosophy over embodied aesthetic experience. It enhances Plato’s disdain for the mimetic arts, as they divert man’s attention from the noble pursuit of philosophy, stimulating and strengthening “lower elements of the mind to the detriment of reason.”75 Finally, the aestheticisation of the world by the mimetic artist is suggested to be a further element that contributes to their capacity to bamboozle the spectator’s inquisitive or critical reason. Murdoch states that for Plato, “[t]he self-indulgent imagination of the artist and his client tend to smooth out the contradictions of the world of natural necessity”.76 Indeed, through its diversion of Eros, art is seen to “baffle[…] the motive to probe.”77 Through aestheticisation, lesser-truthfulness and a tendency to excite the passions, the group of activities associated with mimetic art are thus perceived, for the most part, as threats to the stability of the ideal polis. With this conclusion in mind, how does Plato suggest that the ideal state can guard against the threats of art? Beardsley suggests that given the power of their influence upon the behaviour and trajectory of citizens, Plato believes that “art is too serious to be left to the artist.”78 Testament to his conviction is Plato’s criticism of the beloved Homer, as he suggests that the Guardians of the state as philosopher-statesmen have “a right to cross-question” him. Through his epic poetry, Homer is considered to “deal with matters of such supreme importance as military strategy, political administration and human education”, yet as

73 ———, "Phaedo," in Dialogues of Plato (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 75. 74 Ibid. 75 ———, "Book X," 373. 76 Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists: 45. 77 Ibid. 78 Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: 90.

29 mimesis, the poems are associated with a third degree of separation from actual knowledge.79 While Plato questions Homer’s authority to depict or represent military organisation, he establishes a condition through which his work may be included in the city. Plato suggests that the philosopher-statesmen must assess Homer’s credentials, providing him with the opportunity to argue that he is “not merely manufacturing copies,”80 but articulating forms of knowledge. In Book X Plato outlines how the poets and tragedians will be provided with the opportunity to state their case, as it were, before having their work potentially exiled. There is thus an implication that while most forms of art are regarded negatively due to their relationship with mimesis, there will be works that make exception of this generalisation. The modality of Plato’s criticism, thus allows room for the censorship of works deemed detrimental to people, while leaving room for the promotions of works he sees as beneficial for the State. Within this structure, the poetry-loving philosopher-statesman must put forward a statement “in prose”, articulating how the work “doesn’t only give pleasure but brings lasting benefit to human life and human society.”81 Dramatically predating Sartre’s call for a literature that fulfils both artistic and social function, Plato describes the potential benefit of art’s combined social and aesthetic power stating, “we shall gain much if we find her a source of profit as well as pleasure.” 82 Thus if we recognise Plato’s provision for arts that “have high value and truth” 83 within his ideal state, it would seem that common readings of The Republic, such as the one outlined by Murdoch that suggests that Plato comprehensively ‘banishes the artists’, are too simplistic. Plato criticises art as third order mimesis, but he does not insist that all mimetic works of art will be detrimental to the citizen or state. While Plato expresses concerns that art can awaken the lower elements of the soul, he also suggests that certain works can produce a positive effect on conduct. Thus Plato does not provide us with an absolutist view of art in general. Rather he sets up the conditions for state censorship by suggesting that the philosopher statesman

79 Plato, "Book X," 365. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 377. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid.

30 possesses the unique capacity to recognise and decide whether particular works of art bring the minds of men closer to truth, or lead them astray.

With this in mind, we may now consider the positive qualities that Plato attributes to certain forms of art. The first benefit from including art within his ideal state, relates to its connection to beauty. While Iris Murdoch suggests that Plato’s discussions of beauty do not apply to the artistic realm, I will argue that beauty is the principle idea through which Plato understands the positive influence of art in society. For Plato, the form of beauty is intimately linked with the balance and proportionality of the good. This point is emphasised by Murdoch as she explains “beauty is allowed only an extremely narrow connection with the pleasures of sense, though in so far as it is a proportion-bearing feature of the cosmos it is an aspect of Good, and as such properly attracts our love”.84 Plato explores man’s ability to recognise proportion in mathematics, nature and art, associating it with one of the soul’s higher functions. He examines the relationship between pleasure and the good in Philebus, resolving that neither pleasure nor the isolated cognitive faculties are complete in their satisfaction of men. Plato suggests:

Therefore if we are unable to get the good in a single concept, we must use three to capture it, namely beauty, proportion and truth.85

Plato will thus consider beauty as the appearance of goodness, suggesting, “this property we’re looking for, goodness, has taken refuge in beauty.”86 It should be noted that the link that Plato highlights between goodness, proportionality and beauty can be seen to reflect the aesthetic ideals of the Classical period of Grecian Art, during which he lived. One sees a particular interest in depicting ideal proportions and harmony in the Classical sculpture of the time.87 Myron’s Discobolus (450 BC) is representative of the period’s investigation into

84 Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists: 12. 85 Plato, Philebus, trans. Robin A.H. Waterfield (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982). 145. 86 Ibid. 87 Silver, Art in History: 49.

31 ideal proportion and balance through figuration, as the lines of this sculpture invoke aesthetic equilibrium while depicting energetic dynamism. The three-faceted quality of goodness as it manifests in beauty and truth for Plato, can also be considered to reflect education of this period, as the physical development of the man was considered in proportion to the intellectual. For Plato the balanced development of the physical and intellectual would produce “music and harmony of far more importance than any mere musician tuning strings,”88 this reflecting how beauty and goodness emerge as the manifestation of harmony within the individual.

Figure 3. Myron, ‘Discobolus’ (Discuss-Thrower), ca. 450 BC. Roman marble copy of bronze original, life-size. Townley Collection, The British Museum. Image courtesy of The British Museum. (GR 1805.7-3.43) © Trustees of the British Museum.

Aside from its relation to ideas of harmony and balance, Plato would also praise beauty for the unique form of positive pleasure it produces. In his dialogue Philebus we see a discussion about the experience of pleasure, through which it is resolved, “when harmony

88 Plato, "Book III," 117.

32 is being restored, and the natural state of harmony is approached, then pleasure arises.”89 An example of this would be how, when our throat is parched and we are thirsty, the act of drinking cold water restores the harmony and balance of our bodily system, resulting in a feeling of pleasure. However, Plato values these forms of pleasure less, since they depend upon a negative condition. Plato will hence consider certain types of “true pleasures” that exist independently of a prior lack. Plato describes them in the following way:

Those which have to do with the colours we call beautiful, with figures, with most scents, with musical sounds: in short, with anything which, since it involves the imperceptible, painless lack, provides perceptible, pleasant replenishment which is uncontaminated by pain… unlike other things, they are not relatively beautiful: their nature is to be beautiful in any situation…90

In this way Plato suggests that the pleasure produced through aesthetic beauty has a unique ‘truth’ about it, as a non-contingent and necessary pleasure. The uniquely ‘truthful’ pleasure derived from beauty is further valued by Plato for its effect on the soul. The nobility of one’s experience with beauty is highlighted as Plato suggests “beauty shows itself to the best part of the soul as something to be desired yet respected, adored yet not possessed.”91 This description of experiences of the beautiful highlights how, according to Plato, they engage with the superior elements of being, rather than simply inciting the passions. But finding virtue in the aesthetic, as a worldly rather than an abstract experience, is a challenge for Plato, because it goes against the human teleology he outlines in Phaedrus, as directed towards the immaterial realm.92 Plato avoids inconsistency though, as he articulates how the form of beauty subsists within the abstract world, and thus can be approached through the doctrine of anamnesis. The pursuit of aesthetic beauty can thus reflect a virtuous pursuit towards regaining knowledge as “having

89 ———, Philebus: 86. 90 Ibid., 120 - 21. 91 Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists: 35. 92 Plato, "Phaedrus," 51.

33 acquired [knowledge of] it before birth, we lost it while being born, and later by applying the senses to the things in question we recover that knowledge which once, formerly, we possessed…”93 With this nobility established, Plato relays a hierarchy of souls, within which he places a “seeker” of beauty as among the highest. Within the hierarchy of embodied souls we will find two references to art, where Plato states:

In its first incarnation no soul is born in the likeness of a beast; the soul that has seen the most enters into a human infant who is destined to become a seeker after wisdom or beauty or a follower of the Muses and a lover; the next most perceptive is born as a law-abiding monarch or as a warrior and commander; the third as a man of affairs or the manager of a household or a financier; the fourth is to be a lover of physical activity or a trainer or physician; the fifth is given the life of a soothsayer or an official of the mysteries; the sixth will make a poet or a practitioner of some other imitative art; the seventh an artisan or a farmer; the eighth a popular teacher or a demagogue; the ninth a tyrant.94

We can note that the while a lover of beauty and follower of the muses is among the higher order of souls for Plato, a practitioner of mimetic art is among the lowest. From this hierarchical distinction, we may understand that the enjoyment of experiences of beauty or art are not perceived as necessarily detrimental to society, but that mimetic forms of art are perceived to dull the mind. Plato explains how the embodied soul that seeks beauty, can transition from loving its diluted presence in physical beauty on earth, to learning to love the form of beauty and its connection with truth and the good in their abstract realm. Plato describes this transition in erotics in his Symposium, describing the move from “beautiful bodies to beautiful pursuits; and from pursuits to beautiful lessons; and from lessons to end

93 ———, "Phaedo," 86. 94 ———, "Phaedrus," 54.

34 at that lesson, which is the lesson of nothing else than the beautiful itself; and at last to know what is beauty itself.”95 Unlike other characteristics found in the material world that can lead us to knowledge of the forms (for example, ‘redness’ leading us to better understand ‘red’), experiences of beauty have a particularly potent effect in assisting our ascent towards true knowledge. In Phaedrus Plato discusses how beauty aids us in our journey through a re- plumage of the wings of the soul. 96 Plato explains that “[t]he function of a wing is to take what is heavy and raise it up into the region above”, linking beauty as it is found in the material world to the realm of the divine, “which is endowed with beauty, wisdom, goodness and every other excellence.” 97 He suggests that “[t]hese qualities are the prime source of nourishment and growth to the wings of the soul,” their opposites causing the wings of the soul to “waste and perish”.98 The intensity of the aesthetic beauty is described as it enters “in at his eyes, the natural channel of communication with the soul,”99 feeding the loftier aspects of our being that realign us with the divine and abstract. Aside from its association with the divine, beauty is also understood to have a pacifying influence upon the soul. Plato returns to his image of the charioteer to describe the noble effects of love aroused by beauty. Plato describes how the charioteer must fight the lustful force of the bad horse, but how he overcomes this force as “the vision of the beloved dazzles their eyes” thus “awaken[ing] in him the memory of absolute beauty,” provoking him to fall “upon his back in fear and awe.” 100 In this passage we see how beauty may abate the desires, allowing for reason to more easily prevail. Iris Murdoch suggests that this reflects Plato’s vision of justice, that relates to “anyone who is able to harmonise the different levels of his soul moderately well under the general guidance of reason,” explaining that within such justice the “characteristic desires of each level would

95 ———, "Symposium," 274 - 75. 96 ———, "Phaedrus," 58. 97 Ibid., 51. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., 63 - 64. 100 Ibid., 62.

35 not be eliminated, but would in fact under rational leadership achieve their best general satisfaction.”101 Despite Plato’s comments regarding proportional material beauty, Murdoch insists that because beauty is a “spiritual agent”, Plato excludes art from its possible realm of materially manifested beauty.102 However this fails to recognise the place of the divine inspiration within Plato’s description of artistic process in Phaedrus and Ion. Plato examines the power of “divine madness” within creation in his text Phaedrus, concluding that although it may not initially appear so, “madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings.”103 For Plato, the artistic genius is the vessel through which divine influence and forms may become material in our lived world. Plato describes this as a form of madness or “possession by the Muses”, explaining that “[w]hen this seizes upon a gentle and virgin soul it rouses it to inspired expression in lyric and other sorts of poetry, and glorifies countless deeds of the heroes of old for the instruction of prosperity.” 104 An account this artistic inspiration or “divine possession” is also given in Plato’s Ion, as the rapture of the rhapsode sees him depicted as a mere vessel through which the work of the muses is expressed, rather than a creative force in himself. To draw a further conclusion, Plato states that an artist “untouched by the madness of the Muses” who is reliant simply on his artistic technique, will produce only imperfect “sane compositions” that will be “utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.”105 So once again we find Plato distinguishing between superior and inferior forms of art, the superior divinely inspired form of artwork producing experiences akin to the spiritual. Considering this, I argue that we can comfortably consider the ‘beauty’ of divinely inspired works to function on the spiritual level suggested by Murdoch, further identifying their place within Plato’s vision of human teleology. Murdoch herself states that “[t]he artist must surrender his personal will to the rhythm of divine thought”, drawing parallels between the work of the philosopher who must “understand the Forms through the

101 Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists: 32. 102 Ibid. 103 Plato, "Phaedrus," 46. 104 Ibid., 48. 105 Ibid.

36 cosmic intelligence.”106 Therefore for Plato neither the inspired artistic genius nor philosopher can be purely trained as vessels for divine ideas. Indeed he will draw a link between the fine forms of art and the well formed mind, stating, “[g]ood music, beauty of form and good rhythm all depend on goodness of character; I don’t mean that lack of awareness of the world which we politely call “goodness” but a mind and character truly well and fairly formed.”107 Thus we see continuity emerge between concepts of good aesthetic form and the well ordered, beautiful mind of the philosopher. Through Plato’s many discussions of aesthetic experience, we can find a latent ambivalence towards the practices that contemporary readers would describe as art. This is found as Plato asserts no definitive position through which to generalize the benefit of such a category of artistic practice. While he is cynical about the capacities of most mimetic artists to produce works that approach the true, he seeks to have them assessed by philosopher-statesmen on a case by case basis, allowing for both artistic practices and political practices to be aligned with the forms of the beautiful, good and true.

The Formalist Politics of the Kallipolis

Having outlined how Plato aligned ideas of truth, beauty, harmony and proportion to the political good of certain aesthetic experiences, how might we see these ideas reformulated through his discussions of political form? Raphael Woolf in “Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic” makes use of the Greek term to discuss Plato’s ideal political state – the Kallipolis. Invoking the multiple significations of the Greek kallos, this term highlights the links between the just, the beautiful and the ideal within Plato’s theory of political organisation. Early on in Republic, Plato and his companions agree that the ideal state should be wise, brave, self-disciplined and just.108 However in their discussions of justice they recognise the exceptional position of the virtue of justice, as it becomes difficult to definitively delineate just action due to the circumstantial nature of each judgement.

106 Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists: 58. 107 Plato, "Book III," 103. 108 ———, "Book IV," 138.

37 However, having confidently explained the quality of the virtues of wisdom, bravery and self-discipline within the Kallipolis, they arrive at a description of the condition of justice as that which allows citizens to do their “own job” and mind their “own business”,109 thus facilitating the emergence of three other virtues. The just state is therefore one that, through an order that ensures its citizens do their job and mind their own business, will become wise, brave and self-disciplined. While acknowledging the relativity of just actions, which must take into account social transformations and cultural differences, Plato will link his vision of just civic order to an authoritative idealist framework. Plato’s motivations for this can be seen in his criticism of alternative political structures, in particular that of democracy. A political order in which authority is accorded to none when it comes to matters of wisdom, the democratic state is ruled by the desires of the masses, this quickly aiding the ascent of the tyrant.110 Unlike the political instability and misery of democracy, the just order of the state will harmonise different socio-political strata, as it applies formal ideas of balance, proportion and measure that would normally find determinations in the field of aesthetics. The harmonious form of order that Plato would apply to political organisation reiterates the harmonious composition of the divisions of the soul. Plato’s idea of self- discipline is described as “a kind of order, a control of certain desires and appetites.”111 The idea of self-discipline applies to the harmonisation between opposing forces of reason and desire in the individual through the subjugation of the latter to the control of the former. This order will be reformulated through Plato’s understanding of the just and harmonious order of the state, which should allow citizens to do one’s job and mind one’s own business. This arises as the desires and whims of the masses (the bronze class) are governed by the courage and will of the warrior class (the silver class), as guided by the wisdom of the philosopher kings (the gold class). In this respect the good and just state is ordered in a way that allows the optimisation of wisdom and bravery through the discipline of its harmonious order.

109 Ibid., 147. 110 ———, "Book VIII," 323. 111 ———, "Book IV," 142.

The realisation of this order in the political domain sees each citizen as part of a just condition through which a state can become wise and brave. The bravery of the state, represented through the warrior class, would be of pragmatic importance for the state, particularly when considered within the volatile historical context in which Plato writes. By contrast, the organisation of the just state so that it may become wise, (this wisdom referring to the possible knowledge and understanding gained by the philosopher class), sees the search for knowledge valued as ‘a good in itself’. The guiding force of this ‘good in itself’ within Plato’s political project will be discussed in further depth shortly. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the philosopher statesman is in a curious position with respect to this telos of true knowledge, as they must on one level abandon the purity of philosophical investigation in order to act for political justice as a statesman, but on another level are in possession of the talents required to fulfil the political end of reaching wisdom through purely philosophical endeavours. Raphael Woolf has explained this peculiarity, suggesting that for Plato the philosopher’s just action in the political realm can promote the harmony of their tripartite soul.112 Woolf thus suggests that:

The philosopher, in love with the realm of reason, may understandably feel reluctance at having to return to and remain in the Cave. But the fact is that the embodied philosopher’s soul is not one of pure reason; the orderly structure of a tripartite soul demands for its maintenance those actions called for by obedience to the requirements of justice.113

Explaining that the philosopher-statesman owes their refined rational abilities to their education received within the Kallipolis, Woolf also suggests that the task of ruling is the just course of recompense. Considering that the just life is to be valued over the unjust, and that the philosopher must return to the state a contribution worthy of that gained through his

112 Ibid., 161. 113 Woolf, "Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic," 36.

39 education, Woolf argues that “the life in which one takes one’s share of ruling will in fact be better for the philosopher than the practicable alternatives” as he may have the just harmony of his soul restored. 114

Order and disorder: The Artistic Threat

The harmonious and just order of the state identified as the primary goal of politics, what qualities of the bronze class of producers is seen by Plato as so potentially detrimental to this order, that they require complete control by the guardians of the state? Consistent with Plato’s position that the work of the artist should be monitored by the statesman for its potential incitement of the passions, the social class within which the artist is situated is considered to be driven by the passions. For this reason, Plato suggests that the bronze class requires the guidance of the gold class of philosophers to ensure that their passion-led actions do not disrupt the harmonious order of the state. James Sloan Allen identifies the broader threat Plato perceives in the influence of art upon political organisation, explaining how through it “‘disorder sets in, undermining ‘morals and manners,’ then infecting ‘business dealings generally,’ and from there it ‘spreads into the laws and constitution… until it has upset the whole of private and public life’.”115 The volatility of the bronze underclass, which Plato recognises as being the greatest in population, will see it ideally harnessed and controlled like the disobedient horse in his metaphor of the soul. The threat of the Bronze Class artists upon political order within Plato’s thought, can be read in light of the contrasting associations between the philosophical search for a stable order of truth, and artistic associations with transformation, transience and embodied pleasures. However, if we recognise that the major threat of the artist and bronze class to Plato’s political order lies in its potential derailing of the journey towards truth, we must also question why, on the most fundamental level, Plato sees a life and state in search of knowledge and truth as a ‘good in itself’ worthy of aspiration. Woolf explains how for Plato, knowledge concerns the possession of forms that may be classified within a variety

114 Ibid., 34 - 35. 115 James Sloan Allen, "Plato: The morality and immorality of art," Arts Education Policy Review 104, no. 2 (2002): 22.

40 of “philosophical truths.” 116 These truths are considered valuable in and of themselves, in contrast to the possession of other forms of truth that may assist in the achievement of our particular projects.117 The concept of universal truths that exist on an ideal, abstract plane is considered to have entered into Greek philosophical thought precisely around the time of Plato. Sociologist Jean-Pierre Vernant explains how the notion of an abstract or ideal reality beyond our material existence originated in the development of conceptions of the human soul as an eternal entity, in contrast to the transience and decay of earthly bodily existence.118 In line with this emergent dichotomy, Plato’s teleology would describe mankind’s purpose in life as a journey towards knowledge of this anti-aesthetic region of the abstract forms.119 Vernant points out the qualities originally associated with each end of this dichotomy, the eternal constancy of the soul on one hand and the deteriorating transformations of the body on the other, and we may question whether the stable order of an immaterial world is the basis from which the hierarchy between this dichotomy emerges. Does Plato’s fundamental privileging of the abstract realm stem from his orientation towards stable and harmonious order, over disorder and transience? What is so ‘good in itself’ about philosophical truth and knowledge? While acknowledging that there is “incomparable satisfaction” for the philosopher who through philosophical truths has a grasp of “the fundamental nature of reality,”120 Woolf has further suggested that “the reason this state is so satisfying is connected less with the fact that it grasps the fundamental nature of reality than with what that nature is – namely an orderly structure.” 121 Woolf follows the logic that necessarily imputes an orderly structure to the realm of truth, explaining that for Plato the intelligible realm is “underwritten” by the form of the Good, and that “if the primary manifestation of goodness is orderly structure, then the truths of the intelligible realm will express such goodness.”122 As alluded to previously,

116 Woolf, "Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic," 30. 117 Ibid. 118 For a comprehensive explanation of this development, see Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs: Etudes de psychologie historique (Paris: La découverte/poche, 2002). 368.

120 Woolf, "Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic," 35 - 36. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., 37 - 38.

41 the form of the good is closely linked to formal notions of beauty, harmony and balance - these all concerning the measured ordering of disparate forces and elements. Indeed, the value of order is made explicit in Book VI of Republic, as Woolf points to the description of goodness as due measure (ἐµµετρία),123 highlighting the centrality of balance within Plato’s thought. With the qualities of balance, measure and order necessarily assigned to the realms of goodness and truth, the stability of the abstract realm of philosophy is depicted in contrast to the volatile and transient lures of the material world with which the class of artisans are occupied. So returning to our previous argument, works of art that can be proved to reinforce ideas of beauty, harmony and measure rather than produce simple imitation, can be conceived to assist in the direction of the state towards an immovable order of “philosophical truths” that are good in themselves, due to their orderly nature. This formulation, which sees art as performing a socio-political function through the restoration of a natural order, may be considered to underpin the previously discussed tradition of artistic socio-political engagement. For example, if we reconsider the priority of political ends, we may question whether Zola’s expressions of “truth on the march” in his open letter to President Faure, might indicate the place of truth as a socio-political ‘good in itself’ that Zola, through his revelation and denunciation, seeks to restore. For Plato, the social function of reorienting people toward the order of philosophical truths must be made in resistance to the tendency towards political and spiritual disorder. Vernant describes how the sacralisation of ancient Greek civic order, that is to say the emergence of the abstract idea of the polis, would not only provide the structure through which to organise citizens within the state, but also provide a structure of exclusion.124 The construction of the civic cult in opposition to the Dionysian, which was associated with political exiles (e.g. women, slaves, animals etc.), conveys the place of formal order, or the apollonian, within Plato’s political organisation. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche famously considers the figures of the Dionysian and apollonian in their opposition, describing the intoxicating, musical rites of the followers of Dionysius, as:

123 Ibid. 124 Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs: Etudes de psychologie historique: 356.

Either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the songs of all primitive men and people’s speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrate all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, and as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness.125 Invoking Plato’s description of the dangerous influences of art, the exalting stimulation of the passions in the Dionysian celebration would be in contrast to the ordered and harmonious quality of the Apollonian. This would lead to the association of the Dionysian with the primordial movement of music and the Apollonian with the imagistic plastic arts and epic poetry.126 In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche explains how the Dionysian rites would be perceived as threatening to the order of the state; the frenzied ecstasy of its force defying the Apollonian political order and principium individuatius. Nietzsche describes the moment as follows:

Now the slave is a free man; now all the rigid, hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or “impudent convention” have fixed between man and man are broken. Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and fused with his neighbour, but as one with him, as if the veil of Maya had been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the mysterious primordial unity.127

This Nietzschean description of a primordial community of experience inspired by the Dionysian would threaten the hierarchy of the Platonic republic which, in the tradition of the Apollonian would “grant repose to individual beings precisely by drawing boundaries between them and by again and again calling these to mind as the most sacred laws of the

125 Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy," in The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner (New York: Random House, 1967), 36. 126 Ibid., 50. 127 Ibid., 37.

43 world, with his demands for self-knowledge and measure.”128 Indeed, the measure and formal order of Plato’s proposed political structure, bespeaks a conceptual inclination towards symmetry and pattern that is reiterated through his image of the soul. Mihaela Fistioc has also identified links between balance order and beauty in Plato’s writing and the pre-Socratic Pythagorean influence upon Greek thought, as Pythagoras’ mathematical patterns and balance served as the abstract expressions of formal aesthetic order.129 We might indeed suggest that the articulation of these proportional, mathematical, abstract forms of order in Plato’s aesthetic and political realms reflect his formalist approach to the socio-political compositions. As Plato occupies himself with understanding the ideal shape and composition of the various elements of his Kallipolis, through which he may establish harmonious order, he invokes the orientation of the aesthetic formalist in art, who by recognising the particular qualities of distinct elements within their work, can produce a sense of harmony and order to the work as a whole. The formalist quality of Plato’s approach to political order is further reflected in the privilege he assigns to understanding ideas of harmonious composition, over the skill of fabricating these forms. Vernant explains how the attribute of ‘work’ or production, aligned with the bronze class, is considered inessential to the human character. 130 He suggests that Plato’s negative association between mankind and the quality of work can be traced back to its mythological association with the character Prometheus. He alludes to Wilamovitz’s philological theory of the double origin of the myth of the metallurgist, who would represent both the origin of humanity’s creative power and humanity’s curse for having stolen this divine power.131 Such theft would mark the end of a golden era for mankind during which the fertility of the earth saved men from the obligation of work, as

128 Ibid., 72. 129 For a detailed consideration of the relation between Platonic and Pythagorean thought see Cristiana Mihaela Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras" (The University of Chicago, 2000). 130 See Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs: Etudes de psychologie historique: 270. 131 Ibid., 264.

44 Prometheus’ desire to increase his capacity to work through fire, resulted in Zeus’ punishment of all mankind to an eternal condition of perpetual labour. 132 Nietzsche articulates the threat Prometheus posed to the metaphysical order of Olympus, as “[i]n himself the Titanic artist found the defiant faith that he had the ability to rate men and at least destroy Olympian gods, by means of his superior wisdom which, to be sure, he had to atone for with eternal suffering.”133 In this sense, Prometheus represents a figure of rebellion whose theft of the capacity to create form, rather than knowledge of the “philosophical truths” that should guide form, gave humanity the power to create in disregard of the divine order. The artists and fabricators of the Bronze class being aligned with this power of creation, their subjugation to the guidance of the knowledgeable philosopher statesman in Plato’s political order reiterates the Promethean mythological message. Plato’s order ensures that the creation of the state must be the product of philosophical knowledge, rather than free creation. In this he reflects the Grecian conception of the state as not related to the force of fabrication, but to the understanding of form and order.134 In this model of thought, to create or fabricate is distinguished from man’s ultimate freedom to act, which is associated with political formation guided by knowledge.135 This model of process coheres with the Platonic acceptance of art that is a vessel for the divine, as the rhapsode Ion, for example is described not as the source of the work’s creative power, but one who is acting through divine inspiration. Long foreshadowing the approaches of twentieth century geometric abstractionists such as Piet Mondrian, whose works such as Composition No. II, with Red and Blue (1929) sought to materialise principles of “balance that evoke[…] concepts of justice and truth”,136 Plato’s work of

132 Ibid., 265. 133 Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy," 70. 134 See, Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs: Etudes de psychologie historique: 268. 135 Furthermore, according to this ancient Greek conception of labour, the fabricant of an object is not he/she who most understands its form. Rather, it is he/she who uses the object, who best understands and has knowledge of the form of the object. In this way, Vernant explains: « On comprendra que, dans ce système social et mental, l’homme « agit » quand il utilise les choses, non quand il les fabrique. L’idéal de l’homme libre, de l’homme actif, est d’être universellement usager, jamais producteur. » ibid., 301. 136 Silver, Art in History: 381.

45 political composition - the Kallipolis - would seek to materialise his understanding of principles of harmonious form that balance the dynamic forces of the political sphere. Having recognised how concepts of harmony guide both the aesthetic and political within Plato’s thought, are we still correct to completely conflate the space in between these domains and suggest that within this tradition, art exists solely for the purposes of the political? Earlier, we explored Vernant and Nietzsche’s discussions of the apollonian within Greek thought, as it represented order and harmony pertinent to both political and artistic realms. Its oppositional counterpart, the Dionysian, would on the other hand reflect the disorder and transformations of life outside the ‘cult’ of the civic order.

Figure 4. Piet Mondrian, 'Composition No. II' with Red and Blue, 1929 (original date partly obliterated; mistakenly repainted 1925 by Mondrian). Oil on canvas, 40.3 x 32.1 cm. Gift of Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA no. 486.1941) © Museum of Modern Art

Within Vernant and Nietzsche’s discussions, the apollonian cannot be neatly situated within either the political or the artistic realms. Rather, the force of the apollonian can be seen to emerge from in between these spaces, finding determinations in both. In a similar vein, we might suggest that Plato’s formal ideas of harmony and just order cannot be contained

46 within either the political or artistic domains. Instead, these “philosophical truths” that are good in themselves and find determinations in harmonious works of beautiful art and in the harmonious order of the city, bring us closer to divine knowledge from somewhere in between our worldly distinctions. The socio-political function of beautiful art can therefore be considered in relation to its manifestation of true and immovable orders of harmony, which like mathematical proportions exist prior to its manifestations and interests of the political domain.

Truth: An End in between Art and Politics

If we return to the politically engaged artists we began with, we might question how this exposition of the formal elements in-between Plato’s political and artistic discussions, bears upon our understanding of their work. As highlighted earlier, Zola, Hugo, Sand, The Situationist International, Kienholz and Fajardo all indicated a responsibility to reveal and disseminate a form of truth. While the content of these truths varied greatly between these artists and contexts, we argue that their common interest lies in the transformation of social order through the revelation of social truth. Rather than subjugating artistic practice to political ends, these practices illuminate the ambiguous and complex space in between them. When we consider Zola’s text Truth or Hugo’s Les Misérables, both can be seen to explore injustice through, for example, characters and events that convey a sense of social disequilibrium. As Zola’s character Marc Froment struggles against the social prejudice that condemns an innocent man, and Hugo’s Jean Valjean serves as an image of redemption, we see the motif of the restoration of balance implicated within their studies of social justice. Their urge to reveal corruptions to the righteous order of communal life, shows an understanding of social function relative to ideals that are not purely political. The influence of apollonian concepts within the operations of both artistic and political realms, undermines the supposed subordination of art to politics within ‘art for progress,’ as ideals of order and equilibrium intervene in between aesthetic and political articulations. Senses of balance and order having dramatically transformed through history, we can look

47 to Kienholz as an example of the postmodern reformulation of art’s relationship to truth in an era where Platonic idealism is undermined. For Edward Kienholz, the obscenity imputed and outrage incited by his works was seen as a necessary counterpoint to the repression and deception of modern American social mores. Richard Candida-Smith explains that while Kienholz’s work served as a form of social protest and engaged with highly political concerns of reproductive rights and war, its pulsion came from “Art’s power[…] to reveal the work of nature within and between human beings…”137 In this, Kienholz’s political engagement was mediated by a concept of man’s biological truth of living and dying, and the human experience of pain and suffering. Danto describes Kienholz’s particular approach, stating:

It must be admitted that Kienholz’s mastery of grit, funk and visual squalor abetted him in his new mission. He had learned to create pain: The appropriate response to any one of his characteristic works is a wince.138

By subjecting their audience to the painful realisation of social truths, Kienholz rebalanced the saccharin injustices of the Regan era. In this, their form of ‘art for progress’ satisfied a social function through the revealation suffering, which existing prior to the political, undermines the strict subordination of art to politics.

Art for Art’s Sake and the Politics of Formalism

Contemporary South African author J.M. Coetzee has been described as writing within an ambiguous space in between political and purely artistic expression. In his 1987 Cape Town address,139 he laments the increasingly diminished space between art and current socio-political concerns, stating “the space in which the novel and history normally coexist

137 Richard Cándida Smith, Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California (California: University of California Press, 1996). 324. 138 Danto, "Edward Kienholz," 33.

139 Later published as ‘The Novel Today.’

48 like two cows on the same pasture, each minding its own business, is squeezed into almost nothing…”140 While Coetzee recognises that South Africa’s historic and socio-political climate has enabled the collapse of this space in between the artistic and political, is it fair to suggest that the ‘two cows’ of art and history, have ever entirely minded their own business? Can attempts to isolate the aims of art from their historic and socio-political concerns, ever be fully realised? Having undermined the hierarchical reading of ‘art for progress’ in light of Plato’s ambivalent thought, I shall now consider the supposedly opposing tradition that disputes the continuity of these fields. Turning to the orientation of ‘art for art’s sake’, I will consider how the pure aestheticism of Gustave Flaubert and formalism of American modernist painting, when read in light of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment expose inevitable contaminations between artistic and political value.

In stark contrast to the conscious socio-political engagement of Hugo, Sand, Zola and Sartre, the nineteenth century saw the rise of another great school of French artistic thought – l’art pour l’art. In resistance to socio-economic transformations, such as industrialisation, the greater social mobility of the bourgeoisie and increased literacy, (which enabled an increase in the production and market for popular forms of writing), a culture of artists practising ‘pour l’art’ emerged in nineteenth century France.141 Showing disdain for socio- political engagement, Gustave Flaubert was perhaps the most iconic of these aesthetes who believed that socio-political function should be no business of art, suggesting instead that the artist’s duty was only to their art. In one of his letters to Louise Colet he suggests that “the aesthetic revolution can only be accomplished aesthetically” and that they must “affirm the power that art has to constitute something aesthetically by virtue of form (…), to transmute everything into an artwork through writing’s own efficacy.”142 Flaubert’s

140 J. M. Coetzee, "The Novel Today," Upstream 6, no. 1 (1988): 3. 141 For a detailed account of this transition see "La conquête de l'autonomie. La phase critique de l'émergence du champ" in Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 86 - 191. 142 My translation. “ (L)a révolution esthétique ne peut s’accomplir qu’esthétiquement : il ne suffit pas de constituer comme beau ce qu’exclut l’esthétique officielle, de réhabiliter les sujets modernes, bas ou médiocres ; il faut affirmer le

49 preoccupation with form has been aligned with a de-privileging of subject matter, as he expressed a desire to “write mediocrity well”143 and pen a novel about nothing, which would be a pure exercise of form. In this, the depiction of socio-political milieu or events in the work is approached from a distance, as if written from position outside the writer’s particular socio-economic-political context. Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art suggested that this aestheticism lent towards moral neutrality and was not far from ethical nihilism, as the ‘artist for art’s sake’ sought to distance themselves from humanity in order to retain a purely observational relationship in the name of art.144 The most famous example of Flaubert’s precise and nuanced play with form is his novel Madame Bovary, but an even more impressive application can be found in his historical novel Salammbô. The narrative of Salammbô surrounds the historical event of the Carthaginian revolution. The political content of this work leads one to presume a politicised dimension to the work to be inevitable. However, Salammbô may be considered an early example of aesthetic formalism par excellence, as Flaubert is able to transform the genre of the historical novel away from political interests through his research into form. Indeed, Francois Laforge suggests that Salammbô is an “incontestable aesthetic success” as Flaubert dissolves the trajectory of the genre of the historic novel, imposing “distortions that burst open its form.”145 Flaubert’s literary skills aside, from what ground did the nineteenth century aesthetes of ‘art for art’s sake’ believe that beauty or excellence in artistic form should be valued for its own sake, aside from any socio-political function? The romantic take on ‘art for art’s sake’, expressed by poets such as William Blake and Percy Shelley, would assign a

pouvoir qui appartient à l’art de tout constituer esthétiquement par la vertu de la forme (…), de tout transmuter en œuvre d’art par l‘efficace propre de l’écriture.» Flaubert, « Lettre à Louise Colet », as cited in ibid., 181. 143 “ Flaubert, « Lettre à Louise Colet », as cited in ibid. 144 Ibid., 187. 145 My translation. “Incontestable réussite esthétique, le roman de Flaubert n’en constitue pas moins un échec ou une impasse, du point de vue du genre. Avec Salammbô le roman historique classique, tel qu’il est constitué avec Walter Scott, entre dans la voie de la dissolution. Flaubert impose au récit historique des distorsions qui en font éclater la forme.” (Francois Laforge, "‘Salammbô’ : les mythes et la révolution " Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 85, no. 1 (1985): 28. )

50 quasi-mystic value to artistic expression, as an emanation of beauty or the sublime that elevates the soul from the mundane interests of the socio-political sphere. While these quasi-mystic valorisations of art abound, there is also a rationalist stream from which to value art for art’s sake. A more contemporary movement in art commonly associated with ‘art for art’s sake’ is twentieth century Greenbergian Formalism. Writing during and after World War II as well as through the Cold War period, Clement Greenberg’s exploration of a new kind of American painting reflected a global shift in attention towards New York, as the new hotbed of artistic innovation. His aesthetics was aligned with a “modernist paradigm” that began to emerge in the nineteen-forties, which “understood modernist art as experimental, autonomous and innovative, and conducted by the subjective yet rational individual.”146 Alluding to his specific area of focus, Greenberg proposed that the interests of American modernist painting, in particular, lay squarely in its medium. Among the painters he admired was Jackson Pollock, who in works such as One: Number 31 (1950), utilized an “all-over” dripping technique, to produce what Greenberg described as “masterpieces of clarity.”147 Pollock’s exploration and exploitation of the textures, depth and movement of paint would reflect Greenberg’s conception of Modernism in general, as a movement in which the “characteristic methods of a discipline” are used “to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.”148 Thie priority and autonomy Greenberg afforded to the formal innovation of medium over the historical and social conditions of artistic production, led many to characterise his thought as relegating the political in favour of the aesthetic.149 Indeed

146 Nancy Jachec, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 2 (1998 ): 123.

147 Clement Greenberg, "American type painting," in Collected essays and criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 225. 148 ———, "Modernist painting," in Collected essays and criticism / Clement Greenberg, ed. J. O'Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 85. 149 Jachec, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," 124.

51 Greenberg argued that art should be valued in itself, suggesting that modernist art in particular, has “used art to call attention to art.”150 Although Greenberg’s work was critically characterised by some as neglecting the pertinence of social and political issues to artistic appreciation and merit,151 his complex relationship with twentieth century politics has been the subject of question by others. Nancy Jachec advances a politically situated reading of Greenberg’s work, highlighting how his promotion of the abstract expressionism of the ‘New York School’ reflected the geo-political tensions of the period, during which “a new, specifically American culture was encouraged.”152 Greenberg was an executive member of the renowned American Committee for Cultural Freedom over the year of 1952-53, whose premisses Jachec describes as “the reworking of 1930s liberalism” and “the discrediting of the notion of ideology” which was seen as anti-democratic.153 Jachec emphasises the political implication of Greenberg and his contemporaries within the cultural Cold-War, as the promotion of the ‘New York School’ through Europe was designed to assist in President John F. Kennedy’s projects to further liberal democratic interests while working alongside “an essentially Christian Democratic European union.”154 Greenberg’s opposition to the period’s communist ideology aligns him with the “non-communist Left” during this period, this inclination reinforced by his position as associate editor for Commentary from 1945- 57.155

150 Greenberg, "Modernist painting," 86.

151 Hilton Kramer comments on this critical reception, stating: “In a culture now so largely dominated by ideologies of race, class, and gender, where the doctrines of multiculturalism and political correctness have consigned the concept of quality in art to the netherworld of invidious discrimination and all criticism tends to be judged according to its conformity to current political orthodoxies, even to suggest – as Greenberg’s writings invariably do – that aesthetic consideration be given priority in the evaluation of art is to invite the most categorical disappropriation.” Hilton Kramer, Twighlight of the Intellectuals (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999). 196. 152 Nancy Jachec, "'A Partnership of Equals': Kennedy, the European Union and the End of Abstract Expressionism as Atlanticist Aesthetic," Third Text 16, no. 2 (2002): 106. 153 ———, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," 125-6. 154 ———, "'A Partnership of Equals': Kennedy, the European Union and the End of Abstract Expressionism as Atlanticist Aesthetic," 106. 155 ———, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," 124.

52 The connection between Greenberg’s formal aesthetics and his political resistence to communist ideology can be traced to liberal values of individual freedom and emancipation. Greenberg’s affiliation with Commentary reflects his principled resistance political ideology. Jachec describes the publication as follows:

Commentary was never concerned with art; it was established by the American Jewish Committee in order to examine the political and sociological origins of the Holocaust which, according to the editors, could be broadly defined as the misuse of the 'Enlightenment' values of scientism and rationality for the purpose of social engineering.156

Greenberg’s art criticism and theory can also be read as criticism of the ideological appropriation of art by such movements as Socialist Realism, which as a tool of social engineering, alienated artistic practice from Greenberg’s interest in individual creative expression. The misuse of Enlightenment values by fascist and Soviet ideology may have motivated Greenberg’s particular form of oblique political engagement. By turning to his modernist formulation of artistic value, we find a readjustment of enlightenment values that advances the primacy of free and creative human potential, in contrast to the perceived compromise of this value by communists in favour of a utopian advancement of history. As previously stated, for Greenberg the distinctive quality of Modernist painting is its particular interest in exploring “[t]he limitations that constitute the medium of painting – the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment…”157 However in Necessity of Formalism, Greenberg distinguishes this modernist formulation from the nineteenth century approach to ‘art for art’s sake’, as he explains that “Art is, art gets experienced, for its own sake” but that “this doesn't mean that art or the esthetic is a supreme value or end of life.”158 Although Greenberg emphasises that art in itself is not the

156 Ibid. 157 Greenberg, "Modernist painting," 86. 158 ———, "Necessity of Formalism," New Literary History 3, no. 1, Modernism and Postmodernism: Inquiries, Reflections, and Speculations (1971): 174.

53 supreme end of life, the worth he attributes to artistic experimentation of medium has been linked to his interest in the absolute or universal conditions of human life. Paul Hart reads Greenberg’s promotion of Pollock’s paintings in this light, suggesting that “Above all, in their second-order anticipation of universal freedoms, [Pollock’s paintings] demonstrate the virtues of free and self creative activity.”159

Figure 5. Jackson Pollock, 'One: Number 31', 1950, Oil and enamel on canvas, 269.5 x 530.8 cm. Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund (by exchange). Image courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA number: 7.1968), © 2013 Pollock - Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

It was from this basis that Greenberg sought to encourage artists to focus their critical and creative capacities upon their practice, the most liberated parameters for such experimentation being in the “free and playful essentials” of line, colour and space.160 Jachec aligns the critical aspect of Greenberg’s formalism, where the material conditions of art are advanced and innovated through art-itself, to the enlighnment methodology that calls forth the subject’s innate, individual critical capacities.161 Greenberg directly links the strength given to the artistic medium through this creative and critical process, to Kant’s

159 Paul Hart, "The Essential Legacy of Clement Greenberg from the Era of Stalin and Hitler," The Oxford Art Journal 11, no. 1 (1988): 76.

160 Ibid., 79. 161 Jachec, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," 132.

54 philosophical legacy. Describing Kant as the first modernist, Greenberg states: “Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what remained to it.”162 In this respect, the modernist movement in art, or painting more particularly for Greenberg, would mimic the trajectory of the Enlightenment, the distinction being described by him as:

The Enlightenment criticized from the outside, the way criticism in its accepted sense does; Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized.163

The project of modernist art, according to Greenberg, can thus by understood as an advancement of art by means of artistic form,164 reformulating the Enlightenment project’s aspirations of advancing enlightenment by means of reason.

Not only did Greenberg’s aesthetics reinterpret Kant’s enlightenment methodology, but it inherited Kant’s manner of implying political concerns, while purporting to establish the autonomy of artistic value. We may continue to explore the conceptual movements that shape both nineteenth century and modern conceptions of ‘art for art’s sake’, by looking to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, as it provides a model for isolating aesthetic judgement from the moral and political domains. However, by examining this text in view of Derrida and Fistioc’s observations and analyses, I will show how basic distinctions that ground the Kantian formulation are inextricable from the socio-economic associations of his era, and that the enlightenment premises of his aesthetic theory closely relate it to

162 Greenberg, "Modernist painting," 85. 163 Ibid.

164 “Quality, esthetic value originates in inspiration, vision, “content,” not in “form.” This is an unsatisfactory way of putting it, but for the time being there seems to be no better one available. Yet “form” not only opens the way to inspiration; it can also act as means to it; and technical preoccupations, when searching enough and compelled enough, can generate or discover “content.” When a work of art or literature succeeds, when it moves us enough, it does so ipso facto by the “content” which it conveys; yet that “content” cannot be separated from its “form”…” ———, "Necessity of Formalism," 174 - 75.

55 Kant’s historical project, which resembles the Platonic ascent of humankind through all aspects of life. In this, I will reiterate the difficulty in affirming the position that artistic formalism strictly isolates “aesthetic value” from the values that underpin his socio- political interests.

The Aesthetico-Political Economy of Kant’s Aesthetic Freedom

Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment was a significant point of reference amongst the modern formalists of the 20th century, despite the focus of his analysis upon aesthetic judgements in nature. In this text Kant seeks to reconcile aesthetic judgement with the epistemological and metaphysical theories he had established in his first two major texts The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason. It is only in the final part of the first section “The Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments” that Kant opens a discussion regarding the effect of art upon the human faculties and advancement of the culture of the mind. Like most thinkers of his time, Kant considers the aims of art in relation to judgements of beauty.165 He distinguishes this from the agreeable,166 suggesting that beauty imputes universality in judgement, as opposed to the agreeable’s reflection of personal psychological preference. Kant describes judgements of beauty stating “that is beautiful what pleases in the mere judging”,167 relating it to the general Kantian principle that pleasure arises from the exercise of one’s subjective cognitive faculties as we synthesise the dissimilar phenomena of nature.168 From this general principle, Kant suggests that the imagination and understanding,169 as the two faculties essential in synthesising the

165 An idea explained by Mary McCloskey as she emphasises the importance of Kant’s notion of beauty to his theory of art, stating “Since worthwhile fine art must be dependently beautiful, Kant’s account of what it is for something to be beautiful forms part of what it is for something to be a worthwhile work of art” Mary A. McClosky, Kant’s Aesthetic (Hong Kong: Macmillan Press, 1987). 149. 166 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (New York: Cambridge University Press, (2000) 2007). 95. 167 Ibid., 185. 168 Donald W Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974). 19. 169 Kant’s faculty of imagination as described in his Critique of Pure Reason allows representations to be recalled to the mind, for example by assembling the sense data of angles and planes we perceive when confronted with the image of a house. It is then the faculty of understanding that occupies the role of bringing

56 “manifold of experience” we encounter in the phenomenal world, are the precise faculties exercised in judgements of beauty, producing the distinct pleasure we experience. The activity of these faculties differs according to the type of beauty experienced, as Kant suggests that “There are two kinds of beauty: free beauty (pulchritude vaga) or merely adherent beauty (pulchritude adhaerens).”170 A judgement of free beauty does not imply a determinate concept of what the object ought to be. Conversely, adherent beauty implies a notion of perfection in the aesthetic judgement of the object. This brings a determinate quality to the judgement of adherent beauty, distinguishing it from the purely reflective and “pure” judgement of beauty. Kant understands the particular pleasurable feeling that arises through a pure aesthetic judgement of beauty to be the result of the harmonious, indeterminate or free play between the faculties of imagination and understanding, describing it as follows:

The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. Thus the state of mind in this representation must that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for cognition in general…171

In his explanation there is an important distinction made by Kant to highlight the difference between taking pleasure in the representation of an object and taking pleasure in the form of the object, as “the satisfaction that we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called interest.”172 In a purely disinterested aesthetic judgement is made when we judge the lines, composition or form of an object, rather than the represented subject, by virtue of its use.

phenomena under pre-existing concepts in the mind, for example by taking the assembled image of a house and classifying it under the concept of ‘house’. 170 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 114. 171 Ibid., 102. 172 Ibid., 90.

57 Kant’s distinctions between pure and adherent (which we might call ‘impure’) judgements of beauty enable an implicit hierarchy between beauty that is found in nature and artistic beauty. Due to the anticipated purpose of the creation of a work of art as an object or event that gives aesthetic pleasure, it may establish a determinate interest in the object and concept by which we may judge its perfection. In this sense a judgement of the artistic beauty of a landscape, cannot be as ‘pure’ as an aesthetic judgement of a landscape in nature. The structure of aesthetic judgement as “free play” is analogous to other Kantian formulations, as “the freedom of the imagination (thus of the sensibility of our faculty) is represented in the judging of the beautiful as in accord with the lawfulness of understanding.”173 This echoes the structure of the moral personality described by Kant in The Metaphysics of Morals, in which the freedom of the rational being is subjected only to moral law they give to themself.174 This establishes a symbolic value to pure judgements of beauty, as the pleasurable free-play of our faculties reflects our capacities as free and rational beings in a world that appears predetermined for our power of judgement. While the connection of this model of aesthetic judgement to Kant’s human teleology and Enlightenment project will be expanded further in the following section, it is worthwhile noting at this point how aesthetic freedom also invokes the tenets of Kant’s liberal political thought. Articulated through his Doctrine of Right, Kant’s political liberalism is based on a protection of every individual’s freedom, formulating this principle as follows:

Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law.175

173 Ibid., 228. 174 ———, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 16. 175 Ibid., 24.

58 The primacy of preserving freedom under constraints of universal lawfulness affirms Kant’s position with a history of classic liberal political thought, in which the function of the state is conceived in terms of its capacity to protect the inherent freedoms of citizens.176 This image of the inherent free will of the subject, which is then articulated through free actions that are protected by liberal doctrines, would have implications upon the artistic hierarchies Kant outlines in The Critique of the Power of Judgment. This hierarchy emerges in relation to the categorisation of work as either free or determined. Kant articulates this dichotomy as follows:

Art is distinguished from nature as doing (facere) is from acting or producing in general (agere), and the product or consequence of the former is distinguished as work (opus) from the latter as an effect (effects)177

Recalling the ancient Greek distinction drawn out by Vernant and discussed earlier in this chapter, art considered as ‘facere’ associates it with the skills of craftsmanship or production in general. However for Kant liberal art will be further distinguished from the mercenary arts, as the former can engage in liberal purposiveness only as play, whereas the latter are determined by the remunerated ends of craftsmanship.178 This determining influence of economic exchange upon the classification of an object as either “work” or “play”, exemplifies how socio-economic structures surreptitiously influence Kant’s discussions of art. Derrida has identified this influence, leading to his statement in Economimesis that: “Politics and political economy, to be sure, are implicated in every discourse on art and on the beautiful.”179 While Kant’s enlightenment philosophy suggests that the exercise of one’s inherent freedom is the universal demand of human existence,

176 See Roger J. Sullivan, "Introduction," in The Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xx. 177 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 182. 178 Ibid., 183. 179 Jacques Derrida and R. Klein, "Economimesis," Diacritics 11, no. 2 (1981): 3. “Une politique et une économie politique sont impliquées, certes, dans tout discours sur l’art et sur le beau.” Jacques Derrida, "Economimesis," in Mimesis: Des articulations, ed. Sylviane Agacinski (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), 57.

59 certain hierarchical oppositions that function at the foundation of his formal hierarchy of the arts reveal the socio-economic foundations upon which the structure of valorisation is founded. While all men are capable of experiencing beauty, Derrida points out in Economimesis that the conditions that surround Kant’s hierarchy of the arts reflect an economic dichotomy that categorically excludes the participation of particular socio- economic strata in the creation of works of art. Derrida summarises the hierarchical distinction between Kant’s mercenary and liberal artist as follows:

Distinct from science, art in general (…) cannot be reduced to craft [Handwerk]. The latter exchanges value of its work against a salary; it is a mercenary art [Lohnkunst]. Art, strictly speaking, is liberal or free [freie], its production must not enter into the economic circle of commerce… If art, in the literal sense, is ‘produced of freedom’, liberal art better conforms to its essence. Mercenary art belongs to art only by analogy.180

Derrida highlights in this passage the distinction erected by Kant between craftsmanship and art, as “the craftsman, the worker, like the bee, does not play” 181, despite the fact their creative processes are ‘analogous’ or resemble one another. Derrida paraphrases Kant as he states: “mercenary productivity resembles that of bees: lack of freedom, a determined purpose or finality, utility, finitude of the code, fixity of the program without reason and without the play of imagination.”182 This image of the mercenary artist as a productive

180 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 5. “Distinct de la science, l’art en général (…) ne se réduit pas au métier (Handwerk). Celui-ci échange la valeur de son travail contre un salaire, c’est un art mercenaire (Lohnkunst). L’art proprement dit est libre ou libéral (freie), sa production ne doit pas entrer dans le cercle économique du commerce… Si l’art, au sens propre, est “production de la liberté”, l’art libéral se conforme davantage à son essence. L’art mercenaire n’appartient à l’art que par analogie.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 61. 181 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 5. “L’homme de métier, le travailleur, comme l’abeille, ne joue pas.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 61. 182 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 5. “la productivité mercenaire ressemble aussi à celle des abeilles: manque de liberté, finalité déterminée, utilité, finitude du code, fixité du programme sans raison et sans jeu de l’imagination.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 61.

60 drone is in stark contrast to the image of the liberal arts that, freed from the determining constraints of commercial exchange, can engage in the definitive occupation of art as “the production of freedom by means of freedom.”183 Kant’s description of the craftsman who uses his skill to produce objects determined by market exchange, alienates their creative process from notions of freedom, depicting their labour as a pure commodity.184 In addition to the economic constraints that distinguish the liberal from the mercenary artist, Kant identifies another difference with respect to their free or mechanical production processes. For Kant the craftsman’s process is mechanical, as unlike the liberal artist, it is guided according to a determinate concept of the object destined for market. For example, the watchmaker has a predetermined concept or design for the object he creates, as it must serve the purpose of a watch. Derrida explains how for Kant:

An art that conforms to the knowledge of a possible object, which executes the operations necessary to bring it into being, which knows in advance that it must produce and consequently does produce it, such a mechanical art neither seeks nor gives pleasure.185

Thus Kant’s notion of fine or aesthetic art deems that in order to achieve aesthetic pleasure, the creative process must be unbridled by economic or mechanical determination. Only this results in pleasure rather than disinterested enjoyment. Derrida will thus further identify the fundamental structure to the Kantian argument for valorising Art over craft: Art is the product of freedom through freedom, freedom is the distinguishing property of man, therefore art that reflects this freedom is more distinctively human than mercenary art

183 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 5. “la production de la liberté, par la liberté” Derrida, "Economimesis," 60. 184 In his early work, Greenberg alludes to a similar opposition between mechanically and economically determined “kitsch” and the radical, absolute art of the avant-garde. See Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. John O'Brian (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, (1939) 1986), 6-17. 185 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 8. “Un art qui se conforme à la connaissance d’un objet possible, qui éxecute les opérations nécessaires pour le réaliser, qui sait d’avance qu’il doit produire et le produit en conséquence, un tel art mécanique, ne recherche ni ne donne de le plaisir.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 66.

61 which parallels the determined natural labour of bees. He states: “The free man, the artist in this sense, is not homo oeconomicus.”186 While Kant implies that an artist must fit into one of these two opposing categories, Derrida points to the indiscernibility between these poles as necessity and exchange function within both liberal and mercenary art. Firstly, in regard to the artistic process, Derrida questions the assertion that the liberal artist is unconstrained by the mechanical necessity, that is to say, determinate constraints in production. He argues that “[i]n the exercise of liberal art (of the free spirit) a certain constraint must be at work,” highlighting how “something compulsory (…) must intervene as mechanism,”187 in order for it to be recognised as art within the “immaculate commerce” of pure judgements of taste.188 Derrida explains that the constraint for poetry, for example, would be “lexical accuracy and richness, (…) prosody or metrics” without which the form or body of the work would evaporate.189 In this navigation of the constraints of medium and understanding of the aesthetic rules of nature (grasped through artistic genius), the work of liberal art may fulfil its determined purpose of producing beauty. Therefore the distinction between liberal and mercenary art becomes complicated, as the former is shown to be no less “An art that conforms to the knowledge of a possible object, which executes the operations necessary to bring it into being...”190 Derrida will instead suggest that the relationship between the liberal and mercenary arts need not be considered as a clear distinction, but rather adheres to the logic of the supplement outlined in his earlier text Of Grammatology. In this work Derrida describes the supplement as the techné that “cumulates and accumulates presence”

186 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 6. “Si l’art est le propre de l’homme en tant que liberté, l’art libre est plus humain que le travail remunéré, tout comme il est plus humain que l’activité dite instinctuelle des abeilles. L’homme libre, l’artiste en ce sens, c’est pas homo oeconomicus.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 61. 187 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 7. “Or il faut que dans l’exercice de l’art libéral (de l’esprit libre) une certaine contrainte soit à l’œuvre. Quelque chose de contraint (…) doit intervenir comme “mécanisme”…” Derrida, "Economimesis," 63. 188 ———, "Economimesis," 67. 189 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 7. “”…la justesse ou la richesse lexicale (…), la prosodie ou la métrique.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 63. 190 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 8. “Un art qui se conforme à la connaissance d’un objet possible, qui éxecute les opérations nécessaires pour le réaliser...”Derrida, "Economimesis," 66.

62 – a surplus to nature required for the former’s full presence.191 In this, the mechanical operations that characterise the mercenary arts supplement the work of the liberal artist, who requires such techné to produce his work of art. In this Derrida argues that rather than being conceived as two independent and indifferent totalities, we may recognise that liberal art “cannot produce itself, in its freedom, without the very thing that it subordinates to itself.”192 Highlighting liberal art’s supposition of mercenary art’s “mechanical agency” and laborious navigation of constraints, the two forms of art can no longer be seen to occupy clear and distinct ends of a hierarchy, rather the mercenary and mechanical arts function as a supplement to the liberal arts, enabling its distinction from within. That is to say, that which distinguishes Art from craft emerges only through the supplementary mechanisms of craftsmanship, creating a conceptual passage between the two concepts. Having exposed the mechanism that is carried within the ‘free’ productivity of the liberal artist, Derrida also considers the mercenary quality of liberal art, as its reception results in a particular sort of exchange or economimesis. He reveals the importance of the reception of Art and its relation to a particular economy (within Kant's Critique of Judgement) as he talks about the importance of artistic genius being tempered by taste. As previously explained, for Kant, the artistic genius is not completely free in the production of his work, rather is guided by the aesthetic ideas learned from nature and constrained by the dictates of taste. While not discussed in great depth by Kant, taste relates to the appreciation of works by those determined to make authoritative judgements on the value of a work of art. Kant explains how it also functions within artistic creation as follows:

Taste, like the power of judgement in general, is the discipline (or corrective) of genius, clipping its wings and making it well behaved or polished; but, at the same time, it gives genius guidance as to where and how far it may extend itself if it is to remain purposive; and by introducing clarity and order into the abundance of

191 ———, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, (1974) 1997). 144-5. ———, De la grammatologie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967). 208. 192 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 7. “…il ne peut se produire, dans sa liberté, sans cela même qu’il se subordonne…” Derrida, "Economimesis," 64.

63 thoughts [of genius], it makes the ideas tenable, capable of an enduring and universal approval, of enjoying a posterity among others and in an ever progressing culture…193

While the artistic genius whose ‘pure productivity’ fabricates fine art receives and interprets aesthetic rules from nature, he must also enter into an economy of cultural communicability and recognition. In this way the liberal artist parallels the mercenary artist, as they both create their works under the constraints that will award it certain value in a particular value system. Further to this Derrida highlights how the “poet, when he is neither writing nor singing, is just a man among men, must also eat.”194 He suggests that “ [s]o he may not forget that his essential wealth comes to him from on high, and that his true commerce links him to the loftiness of free, not mercenary art, he receives subsides from the sun-king or from the enlightened-and-enlightening monarch…”195 Referring to the standard conventions of the liberal artist’s patronage by kings and ‘enlightened’ aristocrats, we thus find a form of remuneration that is not only financial, but also ‘loftier’ in its carrying of a cultural and spiritual currency awarded by the social elite. Thus despite Kant’s original dissociation of liberal art from the constraints and processes of mercenary exchange, we can now see an economy that implicates the work of the liberal artist, its distinction from the mercenary economy being simply the how and with whom this exchange occurs. Although the question of cultural economy would catalyse literary transformations in nineteenth century France, producing this camp of ‘l’art pour l’art’, these writers would indeed be implicated in the type of exchange Derrida outlines in Economimesis. While shunning the supposed vulgarity of popular arts for their tailoring to the desires or

193 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 197. 194 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 11. “Pendant qu’il n’écrit ni ne chante, le poète, homme parmi les hommes, doit aussi manger.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 72. 195 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 11. “Pour qu’alors il n’oublie pas que sa richesse essentielle lui vient d’en haut, et que son vrai commerce le lie à la hauteur de l’art libre et non mercenaire, il reçoit des pensions du roi-soleil ou du monarque éclairé- éclairant…” Derrida, "Economimesis," 72.

64 preferences of the public, the disciples of ‘art for art’s sake’ would receive another form of reward. In The Rules of Art Bourdieu explains that the only legitimate recompense for the ‘artist for art’s sake’ to accumulate, was a reputation or recognisable name.196 This reputation would function as a “capital of consecration,” awarding the artist with the power to “consecrate objects (this is the effect of a signature or trademark) or people (by publication, exhibition, etc.), and hence of giving them value, and of making profits from this operation.”197 The artists’ entry into this economy was fundamental to their capacity to continue their practice as artists, Bourdieu emphasising how: “the artist who makes the work is himself made, at the core of the field of production, by the whole ensemble of those who help to ‘discover’ him and consecrate him as an artist who is ‘known’ and recognised – critics, writers of prefaces, dealers, etc.”198 In this way, the ability to be recognised as an artist and receive the social and financial supports necessary to engage in this liberal art, depended upon an exchange of labour for recognition, within the concrete artistic institutions of the elite ‘art for art’s sake’. Thus while the mercenary artist’s work is aimed at specific markets of the public, the work of the liberal artist is aimed at the institutions of the elite and their capital of consecration. In this respect a passage between these artistic practices emerge, highlighting a level of indiscernibility that haunts their mercenary distinction. The other major exchange engaged by the ‘pure’ artist, would be with nature. For Kant the ‘pure’ artist has no worldly master, only a moral obligation to the pursuit of ‘art for art’s sake’. Derrida suggests that “[the genius] receives from nature (from God), besides the given, the giving, the power to produce and to give more than he promises to men…”199

196 Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 247. 197 ———, The Rules of Art : Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel, Crossing Aesthetics (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996). 148. “…capital de consécration impliquant un pouvoir de consacrer des objets (c’est l’effet de griffe ou de signature) ou des personnes (par la publication, l’exposition, etc.), donc de donner valeur, et de tirer les profits de cette opération.” ———, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 247. 198 ———, The Rules of Art : Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field: 167. « l’artiste qui fait l’œuvre est lui-même fait, au sein du champ de production, par tout l’ensemble de ceux qui contribuent à le « découvrir » et à le consacrer en tant qu’artiste « connu » et reconnu – critiques, préfaciers, marchands, etc.. » ———, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 280. 199 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 11.

65 As the pure productivity of artistic genius gives “more than he promises or is asked of him,” he is paid not by someone within political economy “[b]ut God supports him.”200 This exchange with God will equip the “pure” artist with value beyond the quotidian, their rejection of commercial or socio-political ends allowing them to serve the institution of liberty.201 Despite the conscious dissociation of the project from socio-political function, the liberal concepts underpinning ‘art for art’s sake’ cannot be isolated from the socio- political concerns of its advocates. In the case of the nineteenth century’s movement of ‘art for art’s sake’, this liberal artistic ethos was promoted in opposition to what was perceived to be “bourgeois art” engaging with and espousing ethical or political doxa.202 By contrast, in the name of protecting and representing artistic freedom - an “ethical liberty” 203 - the artist for arts sake would reject particular ethical and political doxa. In this respect, the rejection of direct socio-political engagement through art, was itself as socio-political stance adopted by ‘art for art’s sake.’ This liberal orientation would be reformulated in the twentieth century American modernist movement, albeit it with subtle adjustments. Art historian Alex J. Taylor points to Alexander Calder’s declaration that “I want to make things that are fun to look at and have no propaganda value whatsoever,”204 as an example of the American modernist orientation. A regular inclusion in international touring shows of modern American Art during this period, the suspended, kinetic sculptures of Calder, exemplified by Mobile (1932), have been described by Taylor as lacking “the wild violence and anxiety of abstract

“Le poète génial reçoit de la nature ce qu’il donne, certes, mais il reçoit d’abord de la nature (de Dieu), outre le donné, le donner, le pouvoir produire et donner plus qu’il promet aux hommes.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 71. 200 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 12. “Donnant plus qu’il ne promet ou qu’il ne lui est demandé, le poète génial n’est payé, de ce plus, par personne, du moins dans l’économie politique de l’homme. Mais Dieu l’entretient.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 72. 201 Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 424. 202 Ibid., 133. 203 Ibid. 204 Quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961): 140, as cited inAlex J. Taylor, "Unstable Motives: Propoganda, Politics, and the Late Work of Alexander Calder," American Art 26, no. 1 (2012): 27.

66 expressionism”, in this serving as “ciphers for the dizzying freedom on which post-war America’s self-image so depended.”205

Figure 6. Alexander Calder, ‘Mobile’, 1932, metal, wood, wire and string, 150 x 200 x 200 cm. Lent by Mary Trevelyan 1992. Image courtesy of Tate Modern, London (L01686). © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2002.

Despite their avoidance of ideological socio-political engagement within much of the American modernist movement promoted in Europe, Taylor highlights how these exhibitions “used the individualism of artistic expression to demonstrate American freedom,”206 and resist the imagery of communism. In this, their work can be seen to embody the liberal, enlightenment values of Kant’s aesthetics, which celebrated the innate human potential to be free. Like these nineteenth and twentieth century movements of ‘art for art’s sake’ Kant’s particular valorisation of the artist is related to a particular social and historical project and conception of human teleology. We shall now consider whether Kant’s image of the ‘pure’ artist or artistic genius may be used as a symbol of mankind par excellence – this humanist conception being the central figure in the enlightenment historical, social and political project.

205 Ibid., 31. 206 Ibid., 29.

67 Aesthetic Ideas and Socio-Political Enlightenment

While Kant’s transcendental idealism departs from Plato’s idealist conception of a distinct world of abstract ideas, his description of art’s poignancy relative to its connection with his particular idea of freedom belies the platonic inheritance of his aesthetic theory. In Economimesis, Derrida describes this Kantian rationalisation of aesthetic experience as an encounter with an encrypted signification that confirms our superiority as a free and rational species, and where nature “speaks to us figurally through its beautiful forms.”207 In the tradition of Kant, we may value beauty and the sublime for their relevance to archetypal qualities of human nature. Cristiana Fistioc explores the relationship between Platonic and Kantian thought, revealing Kant’s inheritance from Plato in respect to the place of ‘ideas’ within the ascent of man. In Plato’s philosophy we see a literal ascent towards a plane of transcendent ideas, however the transcendental Kantian idea of man directs behaviour in a different way, by providing “a model for a future state of affairs, brought about by one’s actions.”208 Fistioc suggests that Kant’s ideas of the free and rational subject can be understood as an archetype, as “the perfect pattern to which we compare both individual natural objects as well as nature as a whole.”209 In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason he describes the place of the archetypal idea in Plato’s understanding of natural and political progress, explaining:

A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature – probably also the disposition of the whole universe - give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonises with the idea of the most perfect of its kind - just

207 Derrida and Klein, "Economimesis," 4. “Sur le fond de cette analogie on lit le “langage chiffré” (Chiffreschrift) que la nature “nous parle figurément (figurlich) à travers ses belles formes”, ses signatures réelles qui nous la font considérer, elle, comme production d’art.” Derrida, "Economimesis," 59. 208 Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 8. 209 Ibid.

68 as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions…210

Kant asks us to follow up Plato’s “admirable” thought regarding the necessary place that perfect ideas play in the foundations of political constitution. For Kant, the idea of a “constitution of the greatest possible human freedom according to laws, by which the liberty of every individual can consist with the liberty of every other…”211 may be presently impracticable, however necessary in guiding or directing political transformations. The idea of human freedom functions as a standard of perfection, which the political sphere aims to realise, and beauty symbolises in the aesthetic realm. As we recognise the role of the perfect ideas in guiding cultural and political advancement, how does the process of concept or idea formation play a role within this broader trajectory? The role of philosophers such as Plato or Kant can be aligned to the identification of perfect ideas, as they provide us with the conceptual apparatus through which we may assess and understand natural and social phenomena. Fistioc illustrates how for Kant, this eye for perfect ideas is applied through the mental processes of rendering the manifold of experience intelligible.212 In order to process worldly phenomena, we require not only a mechanistic recognition of parts, but also a totalised understanding of purpose. 213 Fistioc explains that it is through such presentations of the whole in concept-formation that “meaning finding takes place”, as we come to “see a structure which has significance going beyond that of each part.214 This capacity to see the harmony of elements coming together to create a whole, recalls Kant’s description of ‘purposiveness’. According to Kant, the notion of design as an intelligent being’s creative idea emerging in view of a specific purpose would be a guiding idea that frames human

210 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J.M.D. Meiklejohn, Revised ed. (New York: Willey Book Co., 1943). 200. 211 Ibid., 199. 212 Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 9 - 10. 213 Ibid. 214 Ibid., 212.

69 understanding of nature.215 The identification of purposiveness in nature, would allow us to identify unities and relationships within the broader manifold of experience. While appearance of purposiveness would often be accompanied by an identification of its purpose, a particular aesthetic pleasure arises in the perception of purposiveness without purpose in pure judgements of beauty. Kant emphasises that “the judgement of taste is not based on determinate concepts; but in the antithesis, it should say that the judgement of taste does rest upon some, although an indeterminate concept…”216 This experience can be rearticulated as the perception of some design to an object (as if it has been created to serve an end), without the knowledge of that determinate purpose for which it was created. Kant states:

The consciousness of the merely formal purposiveness in the play of the cognitive powers of the subject in the case of a representation through which an object is given is the pleasure itself, because it contains a determining ground of the activity of the subject with regard to the animation of its cognitive powers, thus an internal causality (which is purposive) with regard to cognition in general, but without being restricted to particular cognition, hence it contains a mere form of the subjective purposiveness of a representation in an aesthetic judgement.217

It is this unique experience of cognitive play enabled through the indeterminate concept, which elevates beauty above common pleasures in sensation. Kant explains this through the example of a flower, for which we have no determinate concept of the purpose of its delicate lines and forms, yet feel as if it has some design to it, or “purposiveness”, as it

215 Fistioc states: “A purpose, in his view, is the instantiation of an idea which originated in the mind of an intelligent being, such as God or ourselves. In this light, we can easily regard artefacts, such as telephones, as purposes, since they are the result of ideas in the mind of human beings. However, we cannot do this with nature, either in part or as a whole, since we do not have knowledge of a mind behind it, such as God. All we can say of objects or complexes of objects in nature is that they look designed, that they appear to accord with, to be in the style of (massig) a purpose (Zweck) and so they show purposiveness (Zweckmassigkeit).” Ibid., 186 - 87. 216 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 216. 217 Ibid., 107.

70 allows the faculties of imagination and understanding to engage in this free-play. Dieter describes the activity of these faculties according to Kant in the following way:

…if the activity of imagination develops freely, it will pass through manifolds in various ways and produce traces of forms without aiming at particular forms and without stopping when they have been attained.218

However, the free-play of imagination and understanding that occurs in response to the lack of a determinate concept of beauty, should not be understood as random or chaotic, rather Fistioc suggests Kant’s free-play is to be understood as, “the pleasurable meaning- searching state of the imagination (the power to build images freely in one’s mind) and the understanding (the power to organize experience in terms of rules).”219 For Kant, the ennoblement and elevation of the mind through such pure judgements establish beauty as a symbol of morality; the freedom of imagination resembling the freedom of the will in moral judgements, its disinterest and universality paralleling the presence of these qualities in moral judgements.220 However, Fistioc would further suggest that the free-play of faculties in aesthetic judgement is pertinent to processes of concept- formation. She suggests that the encounter of a purposiveness without defined purpose catalyses the mind’s capacity for creating rule, rather than just following one. Fistioc describes the significance of this free-play as concept formation, as “[t]o see beauty, on this view, is to create a new image of a slice of the world; it is to exercise one’s capacity to see things ever differently, from new angles.”221 We would further suggest that the universality of pure judgements of beauty serves to orient this concept-formation towards a condition of lawfulness, which once again invokes a symbolic relationship with morality. Unlike objective judgements that involve “the bringing of a particular awareness under a universal

218 Dieter Henrich, Aesthetic Judgement and the Moral Image of the World, Studies in Kant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). 51. 219 Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 217. 220 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 227 - 28. 221 Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 205 - 06.

71 or concept”,222 in judgements of beauty we only imply that others should agree with us in view of our sensus communis, even this being “pronounced conditionally.”223 However, pure judgements of beauty are also distinguished from judgements of the agreeable, as they are directed beyond personal inclination. In this, the concept formation that occurs in pure judgements of beauty navigates a universal space underpinned by the constraints of the sensus communis, despite proceeding in freedom. In this respect, the concept-formation that occurs in pure judgements of beauty is also conducted in view of a lawful abiding to conditions of universality, reinforcing its symbolic value. This considered, not only does the symbolic association between beauty and morality further enrich the archetype of human perfection towards which we progress, but it also directly stimulates the human capacity to seek order and intelligibility among the unknown of nature, tying it further to Kant’s archetype or perfect idea of man as a free being in the process of enlightenment.

Although Kant’s analysis of art proceeds in view of its relationship to beauty, it has been his discussions of the sublime that have been perhaps most famously interpreted by modern formalist painters such as Barnett Newman and romantics such as William Wordsworth and JMW Turner. Although the experience of the sublime does not involve the same experience of a ‘purposiveness without purpose’, it relates to human powers that allow the intelligibility of nature. In this I argue that the experience of the sublime also serves as a symbol of the archetypal qualities of mankind, against which we measure our own perfection. Kant distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful as follows: “The beautiful prepares us to love something, even nature, without interest; the sublime, to esteem it, even contrary to our (sensible) interest.”224 The experience of the sublime resembles the experience of beauty in being subjective, universal and disinterested. The characteristic qualities of the beauty in contrast to the sublime are described by Kant as he states that ““[t]he beautiful in nature concerns the form of the object, which consists in limitation”

222 Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: 14. 223 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 121. 224 Ibid., 151.

72 whereas the sublime “is to be found in a formless object insofar as it limitlessness is represented in it, or at its instance, and yet it is also thought as a totality.”225 Donald W Crawford explains how the mathematically sublime appears to us as formless as “we cannot unify its elements spatially or temporally in sense intuition.” 226 He explains that when our sensible limits are challenged by the magnitude of spatial relations in the “starry heavens” for example, “we are immediately led beyond them to an idea which has no counterpart in our sense experience…”227 In this way, the mathematically sublime demands that the spectator cognise nature through suprasensible ideas. We can see an artistic attempt to produce such experiences in the sensorially saturating colour fields of American modernist Barnett Newman. In his expansive work Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950-51), the spectator is invited to stand against the canvas, having their field of vision totally enveloped by the colour field. Disrupting their sense of spatial limits, the spectator’s faculty of reason must intervene to provide a suprasensible concept to represent the expansive spatial and colour relations of the work. For Kant, the pleasure we experience in this challenge to our daily cognitive function, would be derived from its realisation of the power of our cognitive faculties, this grandiose sentiment equally invoked by Newman’s title, which translates to ‘Man, heroic and sublime’. Kant argues that the feeling of the sublime invokes “respect for our own vocation”, which “through a certain subreption …makes intuitable the superiority of the rational vocation of our cognitive faculty over the greatest faculty of sensibility.”228 The mathematically sublime, like the beautiful, reminds us of the superiority of our common cognitive faculties over the sensible experience of the world, as reason provides us with suprasensible ideas that cannot be processed through sensibility. Kant states thus “that is sublime which pleases immediately through its resistance to the interest of the senses.”229

225 Ibid., 128. 226 Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: 99. 227 Ibid. 228 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 141. 229 Ibid., 150.

Figure 7. Barnett Newman, ‘Vir Heroicus Sublimis’, 1950-51, oil on canvas, 242.2 x 541.7 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Heller. Image courtest of Museum of Modern Art, New York. (MoMA Number: 240.1969) © 2013 Barnett Newman Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

However, it is the second type of the sublime aspired to by romantic poets such as Wordsworth and painters such as Turner, which connects the aesthetic experience to the conditions of human freedom and autonomy. The dynamic sublime, involves a similar over-whelming of the spectator, but on this occasion it is the human will which gains its sense of superiority over nature. Kant describes the experience as follows: “Nature considered in aesthetic judgement as a power that has no dominion over us is dynamically sublime.”230 The differentiation is made between the mathematically sublime as reflecting a magnitude of size and the dynamically sublime as provoked by an experience of great force. A classic example associated with this feeling is the sight of a furious sea. This image is invoked in Turner’s Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842), as it depicts the awesome force of the ocean and furious sky as it looms upon a fragile boat.

230 Ibid., 143 - 44.

Figure 8. J.M.W. Turner, ‘Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth’, 1842, oil on canvas, 123.3 x 153.3 x 14.5, Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856. Images courtesy of Tate Britain, London (N00530). © Tate, London 2014.

Kant describes how within dynamically sublime experience we encounter, albeit from a position of safety, an irresistible power that makes us “as natural beings, recognise our physical powerlessness,” while simultaneously revealing to us “a capacity for judging ourselves as independent of it.”231 For Kant experiences of the dynamically sublime raise the imagination to the point at which the mind becomes cognisant of the “sublimity of its own vocation even over nature.”232 That is to say that the aesthetic judgement of the dynamically sublime “calls forth our power (which is not part of nature) to regard those things about which we are concerned (goods, health and life) as trivial,” 233 in this demonstrating that despite the awesome power of nature it has not “the sort of dominion over ourselves and our authority to which we would have to bow if it came down to our

231 Ibid., 145. 232 Ibid. 233 Ibid.

75 highest principles and their affirmation or abandonment.”234 Thus for Kant the pleasure associated with this form of the sublime, is once again linked to his moral project concerning the emancipation of man from self-incurred minority due to the innate force of his free will. Although Kant suggests that the dynamically sublime cannot be produced through an encounter with a work of art, his thoughts on this matter have inspired paradigms of formalism and romanticism, which seek to stimulate these experiences of the intellect and will that force us to step outside our trivial concerns and exercise our vocation as free and powerful beings. Thus in the mathematically and dynamically sublime we see represented humankind’s intellectual capacity to represent nature through suprasensible ideas (in the former) and will to stand individuated in face of the encompassing forces of nature. In this, we approach the perfect idea of humanity as free and capable of gaining understanding of and dominion over its environment. Although Kant does not explicitly draw this link within the Critique of the Power of Judgment, I argue that the drive for consistency between Kant’s formulations would suggest that the value and pleasure of these experiences of the sublime, like that of beauty, must equally be linked to their triumphant representation of ideal human capacities. The representative or symbolic quality of experiences of beauty and the sublime for Kant, further signify the privileged position of humanity within nature as it appears intrinsically suited to the inner workings of the human mind. The pleasure that we derive from beauty and the sublime, as they stimulate the movement and activity of our faculties, communicates the presence of objects in the world “predetermined for our power of judgement.”235 That is to say the existence of a world perfectly designed to stimulate this pleasure in our mental faculties. This suggests the certain privileged place that humankind holds in respect to nature, as nature appears as if it were designed for us, reinforcing the sense of a purposiveness of nature. For Kant, the sense of nature as purposive is central to our manner of making intelligible and ordering the manifold of nature. To see nature as

234 Ibid. 235 Ibid., 129.

76 purposive in relation to our faculties, thus reinforces a sense of corresponding order between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world.236 With this connection in mind, Fistioc suggests:

The purpose of the third Critique, as I read it, is to show that we do not conceive of empirical nature, both inside and outside us, as being random in this way. In fact we do perceive a pattern in nature, both inside and outside us. As far as nature inside us is concerned, Kant shows that we react with a feeling of pleasure to finding meaning in the world.237

So, the pleasure we experience in the catalysation of the free-play aligned with the process of concept formation, the presentation of suprasensible ideas and the force of human will, as these occur in experiences of beauty and the sublime, not only reinforces the sense of our ability to make the world intelligible, but also of a meaningful world made to be understood.

Having shown how Kant’s valorisation of aesthetic experiences is intimately linked with his greater view of the human archetype as free and oriented towards worldly intelligibility, how does he see art as specifically linked to this human trajectory? Mary McCloskey interprets Kant’s views on the value of and purpose of the work of art in the following way:

Not only is a work of fine art beautiful by design rather than apparent design, it is also used to express something. A work of fine art cannot be wholly worthwhile,

236 Fistioc expresses this relation as follows: “To seek such structure is to compare what is with how it ought to be, with an ideal… To say that an object is purposive is to say that it looks as if it were created for us to make sense of it. It is purposive for, or meant for our thought.” Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 215.

237 Ibid., 230.

77 rather than simply inoffensive to taste, unless it expresses and communicates these aesthetic ideas.238

McCloskey understands the role of the artist in Kant’s philosophy, as expressing aesthetic ideas239 through the provocation of the audience’s mental faculties, stating: “the artist gets the mental powers of his audience into full, imaginative activity centring around what has been presented and leading to the reflection on ideas.”240 The ability to form new aesthetic ideas would be the way in which the work of art can advance the life and culture of the mind. The advancement of the culture of the mind can be understood in accordance with Kant’s broader teleology, as the research into and expression of new aesthetic ideas challenges the minds of the audience, provoking the activity of their mental capabilities of concept formation, reinforcing the previously discussed ideas regarding humanity’s freedom and ability to find new forms of intelligibility. While Greenberg’s approach did not match the humanist optimism of Kant’s project, the position of modern art in influencing a culture of thought also featured within his writing in two major ways. The first bears clearer political connotations, Jachec describing how the image of the artist as an independent figure of expression in Greenberg’s later work served to reinforce liberal values among its audience.241 The radicalism and avant-garde expression of modernist painting was seen to direct individuals away from the mass mentality that typified totalitarianism, towards a pluralistic and liberal democratic culture.242 The second was more historic in concerns, the avant-garde American modernist paintings representing new aesthetic ideas through their focused critique of painting through painting. They not only challenged the viewer’s pre-given ideas about the medium, but also challenged and advanced the history and culture of painting surrounding

238 McClosky, Kant’s Aesthetic: 111. 239 “by an aesthetic idea, however, I mean that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought.” Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 192. 240 Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: 122. 241 Jachec, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg," 130. 242 Ibid.

78 them, echoing Kant’s historic project of valuing the advancement of humankind’s culture of the mind. For both Kant and Greenberg, works of art that advance culture and history in this way are rare. Kant will suggest that such works will be products of artistic genius that display spirit, taste and sensitivity. 243 Kant describes spirit as the “animating principle in the mind” 244 that must be accompanied with a unique capacity for representing aesthetic ideas. However, from whence does this aptitude come? Kant suggests that “[g]enius is the inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives rule to art.”245 This mental predisposition is otherwise described as “the exemplary originality of the natural endowment of a subject for the free use of his cognitive faculties.”246 In this respect, artistic genius can be considered to contribute to a community of knowledge, through the exemplary free use of the artist’s faculties such that they establish new forms of aesthetic lawfulness. To return to our previous example, the artistic genius of Pollock for Greenberg is equally found in his transformative contribution to the standards and conventions of painting, this achieved through his original and free thought in exploring the medium and capability of paint. Paul Crowther identifies the similar place of genius within Greenberg’s thought, as intuitive artistic inspiration or originality plays a central role within his notion of aesthetic worth.247 In Kant’s case, artistic genius can be linked to the unique freedom and responsibility it exploits in expressing and exploring the beautiful forms of nature. Crawford articulates Kant’s valorisation of the role of the artist in the following way:

The artist, who combines genius and taste, plays for big stakes. He tries the impossible: the achievement through free play of the imagination of the sensuous presentation of a rational idea, such as love or envy. He can never attain this,

243 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 189. 244 Ibid., 192. 245 Ibid., 186. 246 Ibid., 195. 247 Paul Crowther, "Kant and Greenberg's Varieties of Aesthetic Formalism," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42, no. 4 (1984): 444.

79 however, since an idea is “a necessary concept of reason to which no corresponding object can be given in sense-experience”… the great artist in this attempt to do the impossible (…) does succeed in an expressing an aesthetic idea, though he does not present it.248

Hence the artist according to Kant pursues a noble, yet impossible cause to articulate rational ideas in the name of advancing culture. This on-going devotion to the exploration of aesthetic ideas translates to the progressive trajectories of art history, which as tradition “has to do with immortality and, beyond that, with the idea of ascent to something better.”249 Having articulated the place of artistic genius in advancement of cultures of the mind, Kant then spends time establishing a hierarchy between the fine arts. Kant categorizes the fine arts, stating: “there are thus only three kinds of beautiful arts: the art of speech, pictorial art, and the art of the play of sensation (as external sensory impressions).”250 While Kant suggests that all three types of art may be beautiful, he hierarchically values them against the measure of how they might advance culture through the presentation of aesthetic ideas. Kant privileges poetry about all arts, suggesting:

It expands the mind by setting the imagination free and presenting, within the limits of a given concept and among the unbounded manifold of forms possibly agreeing with it, the one that connects its presentation with a fullness of thought to which no linguistic expression is fully adequate, and thus elevates itself aesthetically to the level of ideas.251

We see that, according to Kant, poetry elevates the subject’s mental capacities such that they may realise their capacity to examine the world around them. The similarity that Kant

248 Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: 121. 249 Fistioc, "The beautiful shape of the good: A reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's thoughts on Pythagoras," 138. 250 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 198. 251 Ibid., 204.

80 sees between the seduction of the poetic and the musical is recognised as they both instigate a “movement of the mind”, however music’s contribution to the advancement of culture is considered to fall short of that of poetry, as it “does not, like poetry, leave behind something for reflection.”252 Kant thus returns to his representative model of thought in which reflection requires an ideal object, an idea, with which thought can play and advance culture. Kant makes clear that a valuable work of art must engage the faculty of understanding in this way, so that the pleasure that arises will not be simply transient, but exercise cognitive faculties in an enduring manner that advances culture. 253

Having thus explored Kant’s understanding of the pleasure derived from Art and how it contributes to culture through its cultivation of humankind’s free mental processes, one must now ask how such thought supported the social and cultural hierarchies implied through ‘art for art’s sake’. Nathalie Heinich in The Artistic Elite; Excellence and Particularities in a Democratic Regime recounts how the cultural contribution of the artist for art’s sake during the nineteenth century translated into a form of moral righteousness. 254 However the “idealisation of art” that is reformulated through modern Greenbergian formalism equally anoints the artist with a cultural and historic value within the context of liberal democracy. While Flaubert proclaimed that “[w]e are workers of luxury. Thus nobody is rich enough to pay us,”255 conveying the double privilege of the ‘pure’ artist as a figure of luxury within his own nineteenth century socio-economic context of an expanding bourgeoisie, a similar sentiment is reformulated through the cultural privilege of the modern avant-garde who acquires an immesurable position in opposition to the growing influence of kitsch in Greenberg’s twentieth century. Thus through our close analysis of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment we find that his efforts to distinguish between the fields of aesthetics, morality and political are

252 Ibid., 205. 253 Ibid., 206. 254 Heinich, L’élite artiste: Excellence et singularité en régime démocratique: 221 - 22. 255 My translation. “Nous sommes ouvriers du luxe, mais personne n’est aussi riche pour nous payer” G. Flaubert as cited in Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art : Genèse et structure du champ littéraire: 83.

81 in vain. It has been shown that his valorisation of works of art, as they invoke experiences that bring us closer to the archetype of man as free and oriented towards the intelligibility of the world, cannot be isolated from the political implications of his Enlightenment project. The position of the free and rationally lawful subject within Kant’s Doctrine of Right, implicates the archetype cultivated through art within Kant’s broader political principles. Furthermore, Kant’s concept of Public Reason articulated in An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? is tied in with the capacity of citizens to realise their capacities as free and rational beings and contribute to a discursive domain that benefits society as a whole through this capacity.256 Thus the activation of these free and rational capacities in the artistic realm through beauty, the sublime and the cultural contributions of artistic genius, cannot be conceived of as irrelevant to the progressions of the political and moral domain. It has been shown in this discussion that the project of enlightenment, understood as an ascent towards the perfect archetype of humanity, cannot be clearly situated with one particular realm. Rather it should be seen as the foregrounding movement that shapes them all, accounting for the transferences and contaminations between them.

In this section it has been shown that attempts to entirely isolate ‘art for art’s sake’ from the domain politics are futile. While seeking to focus on the protection of free artistic creation from the constraints of the socio-political domain, ‘pure artists’ of this tradition have often failed to recognise how the hierarchies through which the domain of ‘Art’ is constituted, implicate them in socio-political interests. As Derrida points out in Economimesis, Kant’s artistic hierarchies are heavily informed by the privileges and biases of particular socio- economic strata, the autonomy of ‘liberal art’ being contaminated by its necessary participation in forms of economic exchange. The concept of artistic freedom was shown to be further intertwined with socio-political interests, as the value of freedom within ‘art for art’s sake’ is underpinned by modern liberal values (in the case of Greenberg) and enlightenment principles (in Kant’s case). In light of Fistioc’s analysis, it becomes clear

256 See this discussion of the public use of reason in Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History, ed. Pauline Kleingeld (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2006), 19.

82 that the relationship between ‘art for art’s sake’ and the archetype of human perfections as free and in the process of enlightenment, implicates their cultural and artistic progress in broader socio-political structures and movements towards human enlightenment. Following this analysis of the socio-political principles and hierarchies that are implicated in the tenants of ‘art for art’s sake’, it appears unfeasible to maintain pretence of isolationism between the fields of art and the political. While this examination is far from suggesting the complete conflation of art and politics, to assert no space of exchange, contamination or interaction in between the principles and practices of art and politics, would reflect a certain blindness towards the instability of the traditional division erected between these fields.

Conclusion

What kind of scene is retained after this deep-focused, long shot of artistic and political relationship? At the beginning we saw two figures positioned in opposition to one another, defining the territory of the artistic and political relationship. As we looked at each, we focused beyond the immediate face of each tradition. In doing so, the clarity of their distinction was disturbed, presenting us with a new space of political and artistic transferences in between. The chapter began with a consideration of the tradition of ‘art for progress’ and its socially functionalist approach to artistic creation. In this, we turned to the work of Sartre, Zola, Courbet, Hugo, Sand and Kienholz to examine the different formulations of this approach through history. Having observed their common motivation by ideas of social truth, we turned to Plato’s discussions of art, truth and politics to see how his understanding of the social function of art might inform these more modern determinations. In doing so, it became clear that Plato’s political and aesthetic discussions do not simply subsume the latter to the demands of the former. Rather, it was shown that for Plato good artistic and political creation concerns the formal, apollonian process of creating order from disorder. We observed that while Plato’s suspicion of art would see him classify most works as promoting disorder, he equally valorises the potential inclusion of art works in the

83 kallipolis that assist in the maintenance of order. Having drawn out the formalist approach to Plato’s political composition, I thus demonstrated how the artistic subjugation to the orderly constraints of truth and the apollonian does not equate to a direct subjugation of art to the political. Rather, both the political and the artistic are directed towards the realisation of harmonious order that operates in between and informs both these fields. Returning to the practices of ‘art for progress’, I thus concluded that such artists cannot be seen to conflate the domains of art and the political, rather they navigate them through an in- between territory, engaging with concepts and issues of truth, harmony and orderly composition. The second part of this chapter then explored the traditionally opposed artistic approach, ‘art for art’s sake’, to consider whether the space of the artistic creation can be successfully isolated from the space of the political. Having discussed the inclinations of the aesthetes of nineteenth century France such as Gustave Flaubert, and the modern formalism of Clement Greenberg and the abstract expressionist painters, I turned to a significant influence that informed the tradition of ‘art for art’s sake’ – the work of Immanuel Kant. Through a focused analysis of the socio-economic hierarchies implicated in Kant’s aesthetic thought, as highlighted by Derrida in Economimesis, I exposed firstly how the field of art (towards which ‘art for art’s sake’ directed its devotion), is always supplemented by the fields of creation it excludes, such as craftsmanship and mercenary art. In this, the very constitution of the artistic field was exposed to be a product of socio- political and economic exchange. Further to this, the ultimate valorisation of liberty within ‘art for art’s sake’ was considered in relation to the tenets of Kant’s enlightenment project. Through this analysis the inherent contradiction of isolating art from politics in the name of freedom became clear, as this valorisation of freedom was shown to be inalienable from the Kantian archetype of human perfection that guides his political project. While the central place of freedom within Kant’s political thought should not lead us to suggest that the space in between the fields of art and the political can be ignored, it does serve as testament to the exchange, interactions and contamination between these fields that challenges the assertion that these domains lie on separate or discontinuous fields.

84 Having undermined the stability of the distinctions of both ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’, we are left with an image of a complicated, messy and perhaps inconsistent delineation between artistic concerns and political concepts. While such an image would traditionally be considered problematic to understanding the relationship between art and politics, is there any way we can conceptualise this space, so as to accommodate for these slippery qualities?

85 CHAPTER TWO

FRAME: The Plasticity In-Between Art and Politics

Introduction: The in-between as frame

At the end of Chapter One, we were left with the image of an unstable, vague and cross contaminating in–between of art and politics. As the rigid hierarchies and delineations of the two historical traditions that configured this relationship have become compromised, we are now faced with task of re-imagining a volatile liminal space through which art and politics are both distinguished and co-implicating. This chapter will “hold together” these aspects by considering them in light of the ontologically peculiar quasi-concept of the frame. To do so, we will progressively close in on the liminal space of art and politics, revealing qualities that account for the indeterminate and indefinite transformations that emerge through both fields. This chapter will transition through two ‘close-ups’. The initial close-up will focus on the structural qualities of the frame as an unstable figure of limitation in both art and politics. Beginning with an exposition of Derrida’s discussions of the parergon in The Truth in Painting, we will identify the key characteristics of this liminal and lacuna structure as a supplement that both constitutes the work and undermines its internal coherence. With these characteristics outlined, we will then consider how it relates to figures of delimitation that function within the fields of art and politics. In this we will look to Arthur Danto’s theory of The Artworld and discussions in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, as they propose an open yet constitutive matrix through which works of art can be identified. From this, we will consider the force of the frame in relation to political delimitations. In this, we will consider the different forms of frame that have emerged and retreated over the twentieth century. We will begin with the antagonistic opposition found in Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political, the effects of his rigid and imposed frame exemplifying the potential violence of these structures. We will then consider the open frames that emerge

86 through the thought of Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, as they invoke the lacunary quality of the fragile parergon. Through these reflections upon the indeterminate limits of both the artistic and political frame, the unstable frame that arises in between them will emerge as our new object for analysis. The second part of this chapter will close in further, tightly framing the transformations that emerge through the parergonal space between art and politics. To do so, we will consider how the trope of metaphor may serve as a model for conceptualising the indeterminate and incomplete transferences between art and politics. Considering Derrida’s discussion in White Mythology and Danto’s comments on metaphor in Transfiguration of the Commonplace we will see how the force of art and metaphor lie in its incomplete, supplementing form. From this, we will consider whether this space of transference in between art and politics might also be one of transformation, turning to Catherine Malabou’s discussion of plasticity in order to conceptualise this. Through this analysis, we will form an image of the plastic parergon in between art and politics through which the distinct articulations and transformations of each field arise.

Unstable Limits of the Parergon

What are the defining ontological qualities of the frame? The concept is usually understood in terms of its instrumentality, as a tool used to distinguish and limit an entity. As an instrumental concept, it has been of particular interest to sociologists since Erving Goffman’s publication of Frame Analysis in 1974, in which he proposed a new way to examine social movement and organization through the definitional capacities of ‘conceptual frames’.257 Fredric Jameson argues that this sociological shift reflected a broader “fundamental change in the character of social life itself” of nineteenth and twentieth century industrialised cities, as secularization and the disappearance of village custom led to an absence of laws, moeurs or “prescribed behaviour patterns” through which

257 See Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (New York: Harper, 1974).

87 to analyse the “raw material” of social phenomena.258 In the absence of clear rules or laws of traditional custom, the indefinitely constituted conceptual frame would serve to organise and analyse forms of social meaning. The function of “framing” in the definition of meaning would be explored by both semioticians and social scientists over the following decades, but a focused conceptual analysis of this structure may be found in Derrida’s text The Truth in Painting published only a few years after Goffman’s work. Derrida considers the ontological complexity of the frame, or parergon, as a "quasi-concept" that functions within Kant’s aesthetic theory. Structurally independent and transportable, the parergon functions as an accessory to a work, mediating the ambiguous threshold of its interior and exterior.259 Robin Marriner interprets Derrida’s parergon as an embodiment of the non-concept of différance, as the spacing that produces the seemingly positive terms it delineates - 'art object' and 'wall'.260 Yet Derrida more explicitly associates the parergon with his notion of the supplement. As discussed in the previous chapter, Derrida’s supplement can be understood as the techné that 'cumulates and accumulates presence'.261 Just as writing supplements the 'natural expression of thought' as speech, both enabling and undermining the former’s status as fully present, so does the parergon function as the adjoined techné that establishes and problematizes the internal integrity of a work of art. Derrida highlights the supplementary position of the “parergon” within aesthetic judgement for Kant, as he suggests that it may “augment the pleasure of taste” if it intervenes “only by its form.”262 In this respect, the frame is not considered a work worthy of aesthetic judgement in its own right; rather it can be assessed inasmuch as its formal qualities “augment” those of the work itself.

258 Fredric Jameson, "On Goffman's Frame Analysis," Theory and Society 3, no. 1 (1976): 121. 259 Jacques Derrida, La vérité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). 63 - 64. 260 See Robin Marriner, 'Derrida and the Parergon', in A Companion to Art Theory, ed. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 353. 261 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, (1974) 1997), 144-5 Derrida, De la grammatologie: 208.. 262 ———, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). 64. “Le parergon (…) peut augmenter le plaisir du goût (…)… s’il intervient par sa forme (…) et seulement par sa forme.” ———, La vérité en peinture: 74.

88 Derrida emphasises the problematic distinction at play in Kant's understanding of the formal impact of the parergon upon the ergon, suggesting that this “delimitation of the centre and the integrity of the representation, of its inside and its outside, might already seem strange.”263 To illustrate the problem, Derrida will turn to Lucas Cranach’s painting Lucretia (1533), to question where the limits of the integral representation and accessory of the parerga lie. As an example of the formal study of the nude, one might say that the form of the female figure in the work serves as the centre of its representation. But how do we then classify the almost imperceptible veil Cranach paints across her form, her jewellery and the dagger she has lightly poised to her skin? Do these elements of representation serve as parerga within the painting, as accessories to supplement the integral figure of the human form? Were they added due to some insufficiency of the central figure of the nude itself? The identification of what is integral to this work, and what is merely added as a by- work, an accessory or hors d’oeuvre, is indeed problematic. Derrida highlights how the act of supplementing the work through the parergon must respond to an internal lack to the ergon. With this in mind, the parergon intervenes by necessity in completing the integrity of the work.264 He thus describes the parergon as something exterior to the ergon, “… but whose transcendent exteriority comes to play, abut onto, brushes against, rub, press against the limit itself and intervene in the inside only to the extent that the inside is lacking."265

263 ———, The Truth in Painting: 57. “Cette délimitation du centre et de l'intégrité de la représentation, de son dedans et de son dehors, peut déjà paraître insolite.”———, La vérité en peinture: 66. 264 ———, La vérité en peinture: 65 - 67. 265 ———, The Truth in Painting: 56. “…extérieur au champ propre(…) mais dont l’extériorité transcendante ne vient jouer, jouxter, frôler, frotter, presser la limite elle-même et intervenir dans le dedans que dans la mesure où le dedans manque.” ———, La vérité en peinture: 65.

Figure 9. Luca Cranach, Lucretia, 1533, oil on panel, 36 x 22.5 cm, Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Artwork in the public domain.

In this respect, it is only through the parergon that the ‘missing’ ergon of the work is seen to emerge, questioning the formal distinction it demarcates. The 'parergon' cannot be considered as incidental to the accomplishment of the work, because the constitution of the work of art presupposes the supplement of the frame. 266 The ambiguous structural force of the parergon extends equally to the other side of the frame, as Derrida points out that the parergon is not only that which is exterior to the ergon, but it is also necessarily separate from the wall on which it hangs, or the space it occupies or the ground upon which is stands. Derrida thus describes the parergon as having a kind of “thickness” as it provides an invisible limit between the interior meaning of the work and the extrinsic qualities of its surrounds. Thus Derrida suggests, “the parergonal frame stands out against two grounds [fonds], but with respect to each of these two grounds, it merges [se fond] into the other.”267 In relation to the work, the frame disappears

266 ———, La vérité en peinture: 65. 267 ———, The Truth in Painting: 61.

90 into its surrounds, but in relation to the wall or physical surrounds, it disappears into the work.268 In doing so, the frame exerts its energies of becoming, while simultaneously dissolving and obliterating itself into the wall.

Derrida’s discussion of the parergon will not be limited to its physical application to works of art, as he considers the pertinence of this quasi-concept to the structure of analysis surrounding the domain of art. Early on in his text Derrida asks:

If, therefore, one were to broach lessons on art or aesthetics by a question of this type (“What is art?” “What is the origin of art or of works of art?” “What is the meaning of art?” “What does art mean?” etc.), the form of the question would already provide an answer. Art would be predetermined or precomprehended in it.269

Derrida illustrates how the history of questions that typify the philosophy of art pre- designates certain qualities to Art as a generality, in particular regarding its unvarying internal coherence that unites the multiplicity of its exemplars.270 In this, Derrida suggests that traditional philosophical investigations into art through history, even before proposing resolutions to the problems they propose, can be characterised by a certain enclosure or “framing” of the work initiated through the questions asked. Kant is among the most prominent thinkers of this tradition; his particular approach to isolating and universalising aesthetic experience forming a point of criticism for Derrida in The Truth in Painting. Derrida points to the violent force of the aesthetic parerga applied

“Elle se détache aussi sur un fond. Le cadre parergonal se détache, lui, sur deux fonds, mais par rapport à chacun de ces deux fonds, il se fond dans l’autre.” ———, La vérité en peinture: 71. 268 ———, La vérité en peinture: 71 - 73. 269 ———, The Truth in Painting: 21. “Si donc l’on entamait des leçons sur l’art ou sur l'esthétique par une question de ce type (“Qu'est-ce que l'art?”, « Quelle est l'origine de l'art ou des œuvres d'art ? », « Quel est le sens de l’art ? », « Que veut dire l’art ? », etc.), la forme de la question y ferait déjà réponse. L’art y serait prédéterminé ou pré-compris. » ———, La vérité en peinture: 26. 270 ———, La vérité en peinture: 26.

91 within Kant’s own ‘oeuvre’ - The Critique of the Power of Judgment. The frame of Kant’s aesthetic analysis is imported from his first Critique of Pure Reason. Derrida demonstrates how Kant’s application of the table of categories from The Critique of Pure Reason, functions as a parergon to The Critique of the Power of Judgment constituting and delineating the contours of its investigation.271 Derrida however then states:

The violence of the framing multiplies. It begins by enclosing the theory of the aesthetic in a theory of the beautiful, the latter in a theory of taste and the theory of taste in a theory of judgement.272

The violent capacities of this frame are emphasised by Derrida, as the imposition of the cognitive frame upon non-cognitive judgements exemplifies the impact of an external force of enclosure. It has “enormous consequences” according to Derrida, and in contrast to cases where such imposition enables “a certain internal coherence,” 273 this exemplifies another form of framing that does “violence to the inside of the system and twists its proper articulations out of shape.”274 The pertinence of such forms of ‘twisted’ framing will be considered further in relation to the violence of political parerga, but at this point we may note that the imposition of the logical table not only supplements the work, but produces an

271 Derrida states : « La Critique se donne comme une œuvre (ergon) à plusieurs côtés, elle devrait comme telle se laisser centrer et cadrer, délimiter son fond en le découpant, d'un cadre, sur un fond général. Or ce cadre est problématique. Je ne sais pas ce qui est essentiel et accessoire dans une œuvre. Et surtout je ne sais pas ce qu'est cette chose, ni essentielle ni accessoire, ni propre ni impropre, que Kant appelle parergon, par exemple le cadre. Où le cadre a-t-il lieu. A-t-il lieu. Où commence-t-il. Où finit-il. Quelle est sa limite interne. Externe. Et sa surface entre les deux limites. Je ne sais pas si le lieu de la Critique où se définit le parergon est lui-même un parergon. » ibid., 73 - 74. 272 ———, The Truth in Painting: 69. “La violence de l'encadrement se multiplie. Elle enferme d'abord la théorie de l'esthétique dans une théorie du beau, celle-ci dans une théorie du goût et la théorie du goût dans une théorie du jugement. »———, La vérité en peinture: 81. 273 ———, The Truth in Painting: 69. “Ce sont là des décisions qu'on pourrait dire externes : la délimitation y a des conséquences massives mais une certaine cohérence intérieure peut à ce prix être sauvée.” ———, La vérité en peinture: 81. 274 ———, The Truth in Painting: 69. Il n’en va plus de même pour un autre geste d’encardrement qui, en introduisant le bord, fait violence à l’interieur du système et distord ses articulations propres. » ———, La vérité en peinture: 81.

92 uncomfortable on-going “liaison” between the logical concepts of the Critique of Pure Reason and non-logical judgements of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. This recognised, the supplementary force of the frame as it responds to an internal lack, means it cannot be considered as operating purely from the exterior. Kant’s logical frame enables an internal coherence from the outside, however it also supplements and activates a work of aesthetics that will in turn press up against and resist the limits imposed from his Critique of Pure Reason, its contradictions demonstrating not only the extent to which its “frame fits badly,” but gesturing towards gaps in the imposed frame itself. 275 Thus, in stating that the quasi-external force of the frame activates the work’s internal force, according to the logic of the frame, we should suggest that this resistance itself is only quasi-internal, as it depends on the quasi-external supplement of the parergon. Thus another self-obliterating quality to the frame is exposed, as through violence it supplements a work, which in turn resists violently to it. Through his analysis of the physical qualities of the frame and his discussion of Kant’s conceptual framing, Derrida thus depicts a liminal structure that is ambiguously delineated and self-effacing, yet violent in its ability to constitute the fields on its limits.

Framing the Work of Art and the Political

Framing the Work of Art: The Artworld

Having examined the ontological particularities of the frame as outlined by Derrida, we may now consider whether this quasi-concept plays an instrumental role in the fields of art and the political, delineating their perimeters from a place of ambiguous thickness. In doing so, we will see how the fragile liminality of each parergon implies an unstable and transformative space in between them.

To discuss Danto’s concepts in light of Derrida’s text The Truth in Painting is audacious, considering the “disgust” Danto expressed at the “pretentiousness” of twentieth century

275 ———, The Truth in Painting: 69. “Le cadre s'ajuste mal » ———, La vérité en peinture: 81.

93 continental critique, comparing Derrida’s particular contribution to the experience of “going swimming in the ocean. You get batted this way, batted that way.”276 Danto’s personal distaste for the style and analysis of Derrida’s text is no secret, but it would be philosophically unsound to ignore the strong resonance between his concept of the ‘Artworld’ and Derrida’s quasi-concept of the frame, due to personal or academic allegiances to opposing schools of thought. Despite their different approaches, in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto invokes very similar questions and conclusions to those expressed by Derrida in The Truth in Painting, regarding the ontological limits of the work of art and the place of supplementary structures in its constitution, leading to the image of an unstable but powerful artistic frame known as the Artworld. Danto’s point of departure in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace concerns the 20th century emergence of the ‘readymade’ work of art. Regarding the movement beginning with Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), Danto considers how the display of a commonplace object as a work of art, constituted a significant event within art history, signalling the ‘End of Art’ in its prior mimetic and ideological form.277 At the moment at which the work of art can no longer be discerned according to the conventions of a single grand-narrative of artistic progress, we find Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box (1964). David Carrier highlights the differing interpretations of Warhol’s work that were offered by thinkers at the time, it having been scorned by conservatives, described by members of the British pop movement as a celebration of consumerism, while being interpreted by Marxists as “a form of cultural critique.”278 Among these, Danto’s analysis has been characterised as “isolat[ing] Warhol's Brillo Box for philosophical scrutiny.”279 Daniel Herwitz criticises the neglect of material analysis in Danto’s discussion of Brillo Box as he ignores “potentially significant visual

276 Arthur C. Danto and James Jakób Liszka, "Why We Need Fiction: An Interview with Arthur C. Danto," The Henry James Review 18, no. 3 (1997): 213 - 14. 277 Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton University Press, 1998). 47. 278 David Carrier, "Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in a Post-Historical Perspective by Arthur C. Danto; Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions by Arthur C. Danto," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51, no. 3 (1993): 513. 279 Ibid.

94 differences” between Warhol’s work and its everyday counterpart.280 He states, “Warhol’s boxes are oversized and made of plywood. They are closed, empty, painted, and silkscreened. They look useless, ironic, and playful, even absurd”, calling on Danto to “tell us why Warhol would have bothered to make his boxes look so different from ordinary ones if he invested no significance in their visually unique features.”281 We may attribute Danto’s materially and politically isolated approach, as Carrier does, to the primary concern he gives to the metaphysical and ontological questions of art raised by the work he discusses.282 While Danto exaggerates the similarity between Warhol’s Brillo Box and real- life Brillo boxes by suggesting that it is a work that by purely sensuous means cannot be distinguished from the commonplace object, we may suggest that the sensuous differences in fact further emphasise the philosophical problem that the work presents. The comic, useless, ironic or absurd appearance of Brillo Box estabilishes the work as a caricature of the original object, a commonplace object that is even more common, gaudy and empty. Warhol’s work is not an exercise in re-creating an exact replica of the original industrially produced object, but rather he creates an object that mimics properties of the commonplace object such that it stands out as even more common than the original. The non-identical materiality of Warhol’s Brillo Box and an everdyday Brillo box thus need not undermine Danto’s philosophical argument. As his discussion rests upon the increased aesthetic indiscernibility between twentieth century art objects and commonplace objects, not the accuracy of Warhol’s imitation of an existant commonplace object, the philosophical question regarding what makes such an object a work of art still remains. Although Danto’s discussion begins from the premise of two objects that are found to be identical with respect to their physical properties, we may take this as an exaggerated thought-experiment inspired by the reality of Warhol’s work, which illustrated that the commonplace appearance of a work does not exclude it from a position within the world of art objects.

280 Daniel Herwitz, "The Journal of Aesthetics and Danto's Philosophical Criticism," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51, no. 261-70 (1993): 263-4. 281 Ibid.

282 Carrier, "Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in a Post-Historical Perspective by Arthur C. Danto; Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions by Arthur C. Danto," 513.

95 This considered we may turn to Danto’s question in Transfiguration of the Commonplace , which concerns how the everyday can be promoted to the status of a work of art. In this, we will propose that the “ontological promotion”283 of the commonplace to art through the readymade movement, marked the fragility of a constructed frame that has historically distinguished the two.

Figure 10. Andy Warhol, Brillo Box (Soap Pads), 1964, Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on wood, 43.3 x 43.2 x 36.5 cm. Gift of Doris and Donald Fisher. Image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA Number: 358.1997) © 2013 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society ARS

The ambiguous spacing between art and life was a fertile territory of exploration for the artists of the 60s, this interest articulated by Rauschenberg as he proclaimed that “Painting relates to both art and life (I try to work in that gap between the two).” 284 With this

283 Arthur C. Danto, "Works of Art and Mere Real Things," in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), 13. 284 Ibid.

96 complicated indiscernibility in the air, Danto turns to the experiential difference between a Brillo box and Brillo Box, advancing an argument that the everyday status of a Brillo Box is transformed into a work of art through the important act of interpretation. For Danto, “to interpret a work is to offer a theory as to what the work is about, what the subject is.”285 He distinguishes this from “neutral descriptions” of “things,” aligning interpretation to literacy, as the process through which one passes “from the realm of mere things to a realm of meaning.”286 While interpretation enables this passage, Danto suggests that the artwork’s interpretation by a subject does not arise in pure response to an inherent physical quality to the object. Rather in order to enable the interpretive response, the art object requires supplementary possibilities for interpretation, these made possible by the framework of an ‘Artworld’. Danto’s depiction of the constitutive force of the theories and discourse that constitute the Artworld echoes Derrida’s discussion of the constitutive power of Kant’s cognitive theories in the delineation and framing of the aesthetic problem. The supplementary force of Danto’s Artworld frame, can be seen in his description of its application to Brillo Box, as follows:

What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification).287

The Artworld’s composition of theory, history and language288 that provide possibilities for interpretation, can be seen to supplement an internal lack to the art object since Duchamp’s

285 ———, "Interpretation and Identification," 119 - 20. 286 Ibid., 124 - 25. 287 ———, "The Artworld," The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. No. 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting (1964): 581. 288 A particular linguistic force of framing can be found in the conventions of artistic titles. Within Danto’s artworld possibilities for interpretation allow the title of a work, such as Fountain, to reframe the object in accordance with a particular history or aesthetic tradition, despite a lack of sensory queues. Derrida also identifies the framing power of the title, questioning its liminal positioning as follows:

97 Fountain, as work of art can no longer be identified by sensory means alone. Lydia Goehr has described the work of art in terms that convey such an internal lack and supplementary requirements, stating: “the artwork admits the transfigurational attribution of art-historical properties generated by the work's placement in a historical art world.”289 In this, the Artworld functions as an hors d’oeuvre to Brillo Box, a supplementary structure distinct from the work itself, but responding to an internal lack within the physical object that requires its own parergon to emerge from the world of the commonplace as a work of art. The effect of interpretation upon the art object is ontologically profound, 290 albeit non- physical. Danto describes the transformative force of interpretation as follows:

By the constitutive character of interpretation, the object was not a work until it was made one. As a transformative procedure, interpretation is something like baptism, not in the sense of giving a name but a new identity, participation in the community of the elect.291

Hence it is through this framing within a ‘community’ of works, (each of them relating to the theory and history which provides possibilities of interpretation), that the object becomes interpretive, thereby ontologically transforming into a work of art. In this sense the frame of theories, histories and languages of the Artworld exert a constitutive force

« Que se passe-t-il quand on intitule une « œuvre d’art » ? Quel est le topos du titre ? A-t-il lieu où quant à l’œuvre ? Sur le bord ? Hors bord ? sur la bordure interne ? dans un par-dessus-bord remarqué et réappliqué, par invagination, au-dedans, entre l’encadré et l’encadrant du cadre ? Est-ce que le topos du titre, comme d’une cartouche, commande l’ « œuvre » depuis l’instance discursive et judicative d’un hors-d’œuvre, depuis l’exergue d’un énoncé plus ou moins directement définitionnel, et même si la définition opère à la manière d’un performatif ? Ou bien le titre joue-t-il à l'intérieur de l’espace de l’« œuvre », inscrivant la légende à prétention définitionnelle dans un ensemble qu’elle ne commande plus et qui le constitue, lui, le titre, en effet localisé ? » Derrida, La vérité en peinture: 28 - 29. 289 Lydia Goehr, "Afterwords: An Introduction to Arthur Danto's Philosophies of History and Art," History and Theory 46, no. 1 (2007): 26. 290 Danto states: “learning it is a work of art means that it has qualities to attend to which its untransfigured counterpart lacks, and that our aesthetic responses will be different. And this is not institutional, it is ontological. We are dealing with an all together different order of things.” Danto, "Aesthetics and the Work of Art," 99. 291 ———, "Interpretation and Identification," 125 - 26.

98 upon the oeuvre, enabling its internal coherence as an art object, from a position on its limits.

However, what is the effect of Danto’s Artworld theory on the independence of the art- object? Just as Derrida’s discussion of the parerga highlights the ambiguity of the physical limit of the work of art, so does Danto’s notion of the supplementary Artworld complicate the work’s ontological frontiers. In “Aesthetics and the Work of Art” Danto alludes to the manner in which the experimental constructions and forms of artistic practices over the past thirty years have challenged our conceptions of the physical limits of the work. Danto describes a sculptural work by Richard Serra entitled Corner-Piece, 292 which was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art New York in 1979. The work consisted of a metal bar that, functioning as a hypotenuse, joined two gallery walls. Underneath this metal bar, a metal plate stood upright. In a very explicit sense, Serra’s work forces us to question where the outer-limit of the work was situated. Are the walls in such an oeuvre an hors d’oeuvre? Is the supplement of the gallery space responding to a lack within the work, thus constituting more than just an accessory to the piece?293 Serra’s work metaphorically highlights how material aspects of the Artworld, such as museums and galleries, play a constitutive role in our perception of the work, once again complicating our understanding of the interior/exterior of the work. The indiscernibility of the frame and the work is even more clearly problematised by conceptual art (exemplified by Warhol’s Brillo Box), as the boundaries of these works cannot be simply drawn at their physical limits. The concepts that accompany them establish an ethereal component to the work, which is further elaborated within its surrounding discourse. The ambiguity of discerning the ontological limits of a conceptual work framed by the Artworld’s concepts, reformulates the problem of the indiscernible

292 One infers that Danto makes reference to the exhibition “Contemporary Sculpture from Collection” held at the Museum of Modern Art New York from 18 May – 7 August 1979. The full title of Richard Serra’s piece is in fact Equal (Corner Prop Piece) (1969-70), however as Danto’s text forms the basis of this discussion, I will utilise his abbreviated name. See ———, "Aesthetics and the Work of Art," 102.

293 Ibid., 102 - 03.

99 barrier between oeuvre and hors-d’oeuvre considered previously in relation to the ambiguous parerga and accessories of Cranach’s Lucretia. Conceptual art further challenges the identification of the central integrity of the work through complex relations with a thick frame of concepts, thus illuminating the constitutive power of the frame in contemporary art.

Figure 11. Richard Serra, Equal (Corner Prop Piece), 1969-70, Lead antinomy, Plate (122 x 122 x 2 cm), pole (210 cm length, 11 cm diameter). Gilman Foundation Fund. Image courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York, (MoMA Number: 728.1976.a-b) © 2013 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The limits of this discourse of the Artworld can thus be considered in Derridian terms as a quasi-external constitutive force upon the art object, supplementing its internal lack through a frame that provides possibilities for interpretation. However like Derrida’s disappearing parergon, the limits of the Artworld are also ambiguous and unstable. For example, one must question whether when appreciating Lichtenstein’s painting Drowning Girl (1963), is its constitutive frame simply limited to the history of Art? Or does this frame disappear into

100 a broader spectrum of socio-political theory regarding mechanical reproduction, which transforms his appropriated comic-book imagery into a work of art?294

Figure 12. Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1963, Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 171.6 x 169.5 cm. Philip Johnson Fund (by exchange) and gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright. Image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, (MoMA Number: 685.1971) © Museum of Modern Art.

The instability and indiscernibility of the limits of the framing Artworld is due, not only to the complex relations between the art work, Artworld, and ‘real’ world, but also the transformation of these relations through history. This historicity of our experience of the work of art is acknowledged by Danto, as he recognises that a twentieth century readymade artwork, would not be experienced or viewed as such prior to the emergence of corresponding conditions for its interpretation. Noëll Carroll has described Danto’s general position on this matter, stating: “What determines whether a particular object at a particular time can be art is, according to Danto's earlier view, its connection to co-existing Artworld

294 Ibid., 110 - 11.

101 theories.”295 However, in this description, Carroll alludes to the coexistence of multiple Artworld theories, highlighting the complex constitution of this frame. He also alludes to instabilities in its constitution, heeding the exclusionary potential of turning “the mode of thinking popular in the New York Artworld into a condition for art status,”296 highlighting the way in which fickleness and disagreement undermine the integrity of this defining frame. Bearing in mind that the constitution of the Artworld frame is not only a product of an on-going history, but also responds to the pluralistic flux of current ideas and conventions that provide possibilities for interpretation, how might we understand the integrity of this structure? James O Young has grappled with the problem of divergence and disagreement within Danto’s Artworld by proposing a particular notion of a ‘critical mass’ to be necessary. He suggests that for an object to be framed or ‘baptised’ as a work of art within Danto’s theory, one only requires a certain number of people to confer ‘arthood’ upon the object that outweighs claims to its ‘non-arthood’.297 In this, the Artworld must accumulate the “thickness” of the parergon, in order to exert is constitutive force upon the ergon. This considered, what of the pluralism of the Artworld? Young suggests that just as we historically relativise claims to Duchamp’s Fountain’s twentieth century art-hood, but sixteenth century non-arthood, so should we relativise claims to present arthood within particular, present artworlds.298 Young’s claims to the relativity of arthood to particular Artworlds, may account for the complex and indefinitely transforming constitution of a broader, heterogeneous Artworld frame, as it is only through such a pluralistic composition that it is “possible to discuss Raphael and De Kooning together, or Lichtenstein and Michelangelo.”299 Although members of distinct Artworlds might not agree on instances of arthood, by virtue of an object’s recognition as a work of art in one such world, they are brought into a greater community of artworks. This allows for works, as Danto suggests, to

295 Noël Carroll, "Danto's New Definition of Art and the Problem of Art Theories," British Journal of Aesthetics 37, no. 1 (1997): 388. 296 Ibid. 297 James O. Young, "Artworks and Artworlds," British Journal of Aesthetics 35, no. 4 (1995): 333. 298 Ibid., 335. 299 Danto, "The Artworld," 583.

102 be discussed in respect to examples from divergent periods or styles, or with respect to works in a more continuous field. In this sense, the frame of the greater Artworld can be considered open and non-saturated like Derrida’s parergon, in contrast to the more exclusive frames touted by members of specific Artworlds. With the plurality, open structure, constitutive power and indiscernible limits of the Artworld frame discussed, how does Danto definitively explain its constitution? In order to account for this peculiar set of properties, in The Artworld Danto conceptualises its structure an open matrix of artistic predicates that forms a loose framework through which we may understand the identification a work of art in distinction from other objects. Accommodating for historical additions and transformations to artistically relevant predicates, Danto instates a logical framework that is compositionally open in order to represent the constitutive but indefinitely constituted quality of the Artworld frame. Danto proceeds as follows: We start from a position that assumes any object ‘o’ that constitutes a form of art ‘K’, can be considered in relation to a pair of K-relevant opposite predicates. These K-relevant pairs of opposites will be expressed as F and non-F, G and non-G and so on. Danto thus proposes that we consider the diverse objects that can be classified as K, and their relationship to artistically relevant predicates, such as ‘is expressionist’ or ‘is representational’. Danto provides a table to illustrate the accumulative composition of this Artworld matrix of predicates,300 however, for the sake of exposition I provide an expanded version below.

K-Relevant Predicates (Predicates relevant to the conditions of the art object) F (is expressionist) G (is representational) H (is fabricated from found objects) (ô)Ko1 + + - (ô)Ko2 + - - (ô)Ko3 - + - (ô)Ko4 - - +

300 Ibid.

103 The constitution of this table can be considered open to the addition of further columns of K-relevant predicates, which will correspond to the addition of new artistic predicates through the on-going historic evolution of the Artworld. As each new predicate is added, each art-object within the matrix is retrospectively re-framed by an increasingly thicker frame of relevant predicates. To expand an example from the table, the object (ô)Ko3 is not (-) expressionist, is not (-) fabricated from found objects, but is representational (+), thus might be considered as an example of Neo-classicist painting, by someone such as Ingres.301 Of course during Ingres’ period, the predicates of “is expressionist” and “is fabricated from found objects” would not have been K-relevant. However as we frame his work today, in light of the addition of these artistically relevant predicates, the interpretation of Ingres’ work undergoes what Goodrich describes as a “retroactive enrichment,”302 as we assign it further properties in relation to this thickening frame (for example we can now say: “the work of Ingres is an excellent example of Neoclassical approach to representational painting”, that sits in contrast to the expressionist inclinations of twentieth century painting). As Danto outlines, it is through this matrix of negative and positive predicates that we may say that (ô)Ko1 is an example of Fauvism, (ô)Ko2 is an example of Abstract Expressionism, and (ô)Ko4 is an example of the readymade, (this final example added by me). In this, the interpretive status of an art-object or ‘(ô)Ko’ is constituted by the transforming range of K-relevant predicates that enable artistic identification. This range of K-relevant predicates, can thus be considered as the thick supplementary and open frame through which Danto’s work of art is supplemented and constituted, as like in Derrida’s image of the frame, art-objecthood does not emerge from inside the work, but from a indeterminate frame of relevant predicate governed by the theories, histories and languages of the Artworld. While Danto’s matrix of the Artworld bears the same quasi-external power of Derrida’s parergon, it also conditions the internal violence or resistance from the inside, which was discussed earlier in relation to Derrida’s formulation. Although the Artworld

301 Ingrès is the example taken by Danto in this text. Ibid. 302 R. A. Goodrich, "Danto on Artistic Indiscernability, Interpretation and Relations," British Journal of Aesthetics 31, no. 4 (1991): 359.

104 provides the possibilities for interpretation that enable the ontological transformation of the object into a work of art, the work of art also exerts a force upon the Artworld. Danto acknowledges how artistic breakthroughs contribute to and expand the horizon of K- relevant artistic qualities. He states:

An artistic breakthrough consists, I suppose, in adding the possibility of a column to the matrix. Artists then, with greater or less alacrity, occupy the positions thus opened up: this is a remarkable feature of contemporary art, and for those unfamiliar with the matrix, it is hard, and perhaps impossible, to recognize certain positions as occupied by artworks.303

For Danto, artistic innovation is thus directly linked to its disturbance of the matrix, as a work such as Duchamp’s Fountain inventively navigates this matrix before bursting through its point of weakness, in turn contributing to the re-constitution of the frame through the addition of another artistically relevant predicate. Goodrich notes how T.S. Eliot expressed a similar understanding of how new additions to the Artworld transform the greater community of works. In his text Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot states:

What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new . . .. for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work toward the whole are readjusted.304

Like Danto and Derrida, Eliot thus sees the work of art as situated in or framed by its relation to other works. This distances these thinkers from a historically prevalent aim to

303 Danto, "The Artworld," 582 - 84. 304 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal 19((1919) 1982): 37.

105 establish a universalist frame for aesthetic appreciation, Danto criticising this trend for isolating “art-works from the historical and generally causal matrices from which they derive their identities and structures.”305 By contrast, Danto’s open frame highlights the way in which the work of art presupposes a network of causal relations with its environment.306 He goes as far as to suggest that even the most formal of aesthetic experiences require a frame or network of relations to, as George Dickie’s suggests, identify an object as a ‘candidate for aesthetic appreciation.’307

It is worth noting that despite Danto’s criticism of particular schools of philosophical thought, he would be insistent upon the necessary openness to plurality within the Artworld. He criticises the reductive framing of the philosophy of art and its influence upon the exclusivity and essentialism of modern art in the 1940s and 1950s. Danto relates the exclusivism of the Abstract expressionists, who “held the fiercest and most dogmatic theories of what counted as art and what did not” to an amalgam of Hegelian interests regarding the philosophical quest for the essence of Art and his religious inclination towards aesthetic monism.308 However, Danto remarks that during the late 1950s, the stronghold of Abstract Expressionism was challenged by the work of artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, who although differing greatly in their style and approach to Art exemplify a transfiguration of the art object that exploits the open or transformative quality of the frame defining it. The pluralism of the Artworld, which Danto situates as reaching a recognisable state during the 1960s, presented the liberating proposition that “that there is no special way a work of art has to look.”309

305 Danto, "Metaphor, Expression, and Style," 175. 306 Ibid. 307 Danto thus criticises the circularity of purely formalist definitions of the work, which seek to establish a work of art purely according to the aesthetic response it provokes. See ———, "Aesthetics and the Work of Art," 91. 308 ———, "Learning to Live with Pluralism," in Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste ed. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn, Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1998), 87. 309 Ibid., 89.

106 Lydia Goehr has emphasized the importance of this openness of the Artworld for Danto, as she reads his philosophy of art and history as a twentieth century American response to the burden of the “European tradition of master narratives.”310 Describing his philosophy of art in terms of “posthistorical pluralism,”311 Goehr sees the open frame of Danto’s Artworld as part of “a sustained democratic argument against the lack of openness and tolerance that follows from a substantive philosophy of history.”312 Indeed Goehr suggests that for Danto, the open frame of the pluralistic Artworld emerges as a Hegelian ‘final harmony’ - the final stage to a historical progression of substantive definitions of art dictated by a ‘master narrative’.313 Art’s continuation, for Danto, is found in the liberating ‘end of history’ as it “enters a pluralist arena in which no single style takes precedence over another.”314 Carrier expands upon Danto’s conclusion, stating: “Perhaps, in a postmodernist age, we need not choose between multiple perspectives. Maybe the political lesson contemporary art teaches is tolerance.”315 With the pertinence of this image as a potential “model for multicultural society,”316 the question must be asked whether a similar fragmented frame can or does operate in the field of politics.

Framing the Political: The Concept of Politics Having considered the manner in which Danto’s open matrix of the Artworld has been taken up as a means to identify the art-object, one must ask whether the delineating of political concerns, tasks and problems may also be the product of particular operations of the frame. As processes of distinction have directed the distribution of political resources through history, one can see how the violent imposition of frames that “fit badly” have served to totalise political communities, while being unable to smother a resistance of difference from within its limits. In light of this, twentieth century thought produced other

310 Goehr, "Afterwords: An Introduction to Arthur Danto's Philosophies of History and Art," 16 - 17. 311 Ibid., 27. 312 Ibid., 16 - 17. 313 Ibid., 25. 314 Ibid. 315 Carrier, "Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in a Post-Historical Perspective by Arthur C. Danto; Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions by Arthur C. Danto," 514. 316 Ibid.

107 ways of thinking about the frame, such that it would not enact violence upon the work itself.

The demarcation or framing of the political, while implicit in much political thought, has been a clear task within a particular vein of applied political theory through history: political realism. Distinguishing themselves from idealist approaches to political theory, which would see politics as the material articulation of higher abstract principles, political realists from Machiavelli, to Hobbes and Schmitt, have profoundly shaped the institutions and relations of contemporary nation states by ‘scientifically’ delimiting the bounds of the political. Bernard Willms has traced the emergence of a concept of the political through this tradition, highlighting how the emancipation of politics “from the constraints of traditional theology and ethics”, saw a shift towards drawing theoretical conclusions from concrete situations.317 Machiavelli’s sixteenth century, ‘amoral’ exposition of political power The Prince exemplifies this approach, as he “emancipates himself from the real and theoretical patronage of theologically defended claims to rule” to focus on the political subject of the Prince, as a “precursor of the modern state”.318 Willms sees this liberation of political thought from moral thought, along with its recognition as a “discrete object of human action” necessary in “maintaining a structural political order which is prior to all other human activities”, as the foundation of the concept of “politics as policy” that typified political realism.319 With this in mind, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would see a focus on the modern centralised state as the primary “factor of order” within disoriented and unstable environments, its formation and protection legitimizing political action.320 In this sense, we may see the evolution of the political realist tradition during these centuries in relation to its narrowing frame and constitution of the object or oeuvre of politics, in distinction from the object of morality or religion. This political oeuvre would be the state.

317 Bernard Willms, "Politics as politics: Carl Schmitts ‘concept of the political’ and the tradition of European political thought," History of European Ideas 13, no. 4 (1991): 373. 318 Ibid. 319 Ibid., 376 - 77. 320 Ibid., 373.

108 Carl Schmitt can be situated within this tradition of political realism, his commentary on laws and the constitution reflecting a view of the state as a “historical concept tied to concrete realizations”.321 That said, Schmitt identifies a limit to conceptions of the political that align it simply to the state, explaining how within such formulations “[t] he state thus appears as something political, the political as something pertaining to the state – obviously an unsatisfactory circle.”322 Schmitt’s thought thus seeks to break through this circle as a “science of action” that establishes criteria for application within the distinct field of political action.323 For Schmitt, “the political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristic way.”324 In order to identify its concept he will adopt a taxonomical method of exclusion, suggesting a “definition of the political can be obtained only by discovering and defining the specifically political categories” 325 distinguishing this from “relatively independent endeavours of human thought and action” in the moral, aesthetic, and economic realms. 326 Derrida describes Schmitt’s attempts to establish such a science of the political or a “politologie”, as a reflection of his “concern for the tableau, spatial and taxonomic concern, methodological and topological concern.”327 Derrida further suggests that these concerns reflect a desire “to frame and to enframe (encadrieren), to put into order (orden)” a limitless problem through hierarchical categorisations.328 Echoing his description of Kant’s violent application of the cognitive tafel to the aesthetic in The Truth in Painting, Derrida suggests that Schmitt’s analysis prioritises the establishing of order in the framing of a confused and vast subject area.

321 Ibid., 376 - 77. 322 Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 20. 323 Willms, "Politics as politics: Carl Schmitts ‘concept of the political’ and the tradition of European political thought," 378 - 79. 324 Schmitt, Concept of the Political: 25 - 26. 325 Ibid. 326 Ibid. 327 Jacques Derrida, "On Absolute Hostility," in Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997), 115. «…Concept du politique: souci du tableau, souci spatial et taxinomique, souci méthodologique et topologique…» ———, "De l'hostilité absolue," in Politiques de l'amitié (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994), 135. 328 ———, "On Absolute Hostility," 115. «La tâche assignée, le devoir, c’est de cadrer et d’encadrer (encadrieren), de mettre de l'ordre (ordnen)…» — ——, "De l'hostilité absolue," 135.

109 So how does Schmitt proceed in his project to identify the distinctly political? Schmitt suggests that the political must rest on its “own ultimate distinctions to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced.”329 Just as the realm of morality distinguishes good from evil, the realm of aesthetics the beautiful from the ugly, so does Schmitt suggest that the special distinction, which serves “as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists”, is that between the friend and enemy. 330 That is to say that the concept of the political is hinged on a criterion of distinction between these two poles, as they denote “the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation.”331 The distinction of friend and enemy can thus be rearticulated as a distinction between constitutive elements of an integral unity, and those of an excluded or dissociated exterior. This implication is reinforced by Schmitt’s description of the enemy as “the other, the stranger… in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien…”332 As a concept with force that enables the constitution of an interior through the distinction of its exterior, the political is linked by Schmitt to a frame that has very real influences upon political life. For Schmitt the application of the concept or frame of the political between friend and enemy, will be decided by the state.333 Willms identifies the practical and historical significance of this distinction as it bears upon notions of territorial frontiers and citizenship,334 explaining that for Schmitt “political units require stable and recognised- internal and external-frontiers,” even if those borders are inevitably subject to processes of

329 Schmitt, Concept of the Political: 26. 330 Ibid. 331 Ibid. 332 Ibid., 27. 333 Ibid., 29 - 30. 334 The practical concerns of locating boundaries within the political domain has also been an important topic of analysis among contemporary political philosophers, as they respond to historical, sociological and technological transformations that undermine traditional frames of the nation-state. Sheldon S. Wolin has described this problem as symptomatic of the anachronistic status of the postmodern political state in a context where technological and communicative advances perturb national frontiers. See Sheldon S. Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy”, in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Ed. Seyla Benhabib, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, P. 35. While this problem is certainly of interest, it diverges slightly from the analytical path I wish to take, which is to consider the boundaries of the political and how this process of framing what constitutes as political, resembles the parergonal processes of the artistic domain.

110 historical and political transformation, such as war.335 References to war are fairly frequent within Schmitt’s text, however he makes clear that the distinction between friend and enemy should not be understood as politically underpinning, due to its role in the literal defence of state borders. Rather, Schmitt suggests:

The political does not reside in the battle itself, which possesses its own technical psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behaviours which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.336

The domain of the political in the behaviours and processes that establish the enemy, rather than in the military processes that repel them, once again emphasises the central place of the instrumental frame within Schmitt’s political theory. This said it should be recognised that in Schmitt’s discussion there is little, if any, discussion of the potential ambiguity in this process of distinction. For Schmitt the clarity of the distinction between friend and enemy as the “the other” or “the stranger” is unproblematic. In this way, Schmitt’s frame appears absolute and totalising. Thus as he describes the political as “the most intense and extreme antagonism”,337 further proposing that “[a] world in which the possibility of war is utterly eliminated… would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics…”338 it becomes difficult to isolate his work from a ultra- nationalist reading, fitting for its implication in the Third Reich. The intense and extreme antagonism of Schmitt’s totalising frame, recalls the violent potential that Derrida relates to Kant’s “gesture of framing which, by introducing the bord, does violence to the inside of the system and twists its proper articulations out of shape”.339 As a totalising imposition,

335 Willms, "Politics as politics: Carl Schmitts ‘concept of the political’ and the tradition of European political thought," 380 - 81. 336 Schmitt, Concept of the Political: 37. 337Ibid., 29. 338 Ibid., 35. 339 Derrida, The Truth in Painting: 69.

111 Schmitt’s frame becomes an imposed tool to categorise a heterogeneous body of political subjects under an external logic of friend and enemy. Tracy B. Strong addresses this problematic association between Schmitt’s thought and its implication in Nazism, suggesting, “[f]rightening in Schmitt’s case is the possibility that precisely what many find attractive in Schmitt must, while not requiring them to, open the possibility of the route he took.”340 However, it must be recognised that Schmitt’s political frame did not emerge from a historical vacuum. Despite his attempts to identify the friend and enemy opposition as a political criterion distinct from the moral, as Arthur Versluis suggests, the influence upon Schmitt’s frame of medieval anti-heresiological Christianity’s “horizontal realm of dualistic antagonism that requires the antinomies of friends and enemies” is difficult to disregard. 341 Versulis describes Schmitt’s application of this old antagonism, suggesting:

Thus, it was not too difficult for Schmitt to organize the 1936 conference to weigh the “problem” of “the Jews”—he was predisposed toward the division of “us” and “them” by the triumphant Western historicist Christian tradition that peremptorily and with the persistence of two thousand years, rejected “heretics” who espoused gnosis and, all too frequently, rejected even the possibility of transcending dualism.342

In light of its historical applications, one must question whether Schmitt’s saturated and totalising political frame, makes it particularly amenable to exploitation by totalising and totalitarian regimes.

“Il n’en va plus de même pour un autre geste d’encadrement qui, en introduisant le bord, fait violence à l’intérieur du système et distord ses articulations propres.” (Jacques Derrida, la vérité en peinture, Paris: Flammarion, 1978, p. 81) 340 Tracy B. Strong, "Forward," in Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), xxv. 341 Arthur Versulis, "Carl Schmitt, the Inquisition, and Totalitarianism," in The New Inquisitions: Heretic- Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, (2006) 2013), 8. 342 Ibid., 10.

112 With the constitutive violence of Schmitt’s political frame considered, is there another way in which the concept of the political and its concerns can be distinguished, while avoiding totalising frames? The deconstructive analyses of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy can be read in such terms of resistance to nationalist and totalitarian frames of political thought developed from thinkers such as Schmitt and practised through twentieth century politics. Geoffrey Bennington has described Derrida’s thought as liberating “a sort of energy in the metaphysical concept of politics, so that all the conceptual dealings deconstruction has could be taken to be political.”343 For Bennington deconstruction may be understood as a political practice that bears upon the way in which principles, structures or relationships would play out in society. During the years 1981-82, Derrida having hitherto avoided an overt declaration of his political inclinations, the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political (Centre de recherche philosophiques sur le politique) in Paris held a colloquium to consider the challenges that deconstruction (in particular Derrida’s legacy) and critical theory posed to the way in which politics had been conceived during the modern era. Through these discussions emerged the sentiment that the concept of the political was in need of reconsideration. Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe in their essay Retreating the Political argue that the fascist and communist totalitarian projects of the twentieth century, were similar in their attempt yet failure to realise a philosophical vision of a political destiny. In the decades following the failure and horror of these totalitarian political frames to realise their metaphysical visions, the “political” would be conceptually reduced to the unquestionable domain of the self-evident - that is to the concerns of political economy. This ‘realist’ framing of the political according to the issues of political economy, constituted the “retreat of politics” as described by Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, as politics was no longer treated as a question that could be renewed or readdressed through critical thought.

343 Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida, Warwick Studies in European Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000). 24.

113 Ignaas Devisch highlights how for Nancy, the role of philosophy is not to defend, but “think politics”.344 However, in order to resist the totalitarian framing of politics or its reduction to the concerns of political economy, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe would focus on a different opposition to that found in Schmitt’s conceptualisation: the distinction between the political (le politique) and politics (la politique). Ian James highlights how for Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, ‘politics’ concerns itself with the empirical fields of policy and political resources,345 this perspective characterising the political movements and projects of “Chinese emperors, the Benin kings, of Louis XIV or of German social democracy.”346 Situated in a ‘withdrawn’ position from dominant political dialogue, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe would thus open the investigations of the Centre for Philosophical Research of the Political with the statement: “How to question (indeed, can one), today, what must provisionally be called the essence of the political?”347 Proposing a philosophical re-questioning of the “the political” while avoiding the complete interiorisation of this quasi-concept within the domain of philosophy, Nancy and Lacoue- Labarthe would thus seek to re-treat this figure, which is threatened by totalitarian claims to its self-evidence.348 Simon Sparks would describe the figure of ‘the political’ as marking “the place where the distinction between philosophy and non-philosophy, between philosophy and its unthought, becomes blurred. This place, the place of the political, would always have the character of a limit.”349 In Spark’s description, the figure of the political is

344 Ignaas Devisch, "Nancian virtual doubts about 'Leformal' democracy : Or how to deal with contemporary political configuration in an uneasy way?," Philosophy & Social Criticism 37, no. 9 (2011): 1002. 345 (Ian James , “Community”, in The fragmentary Demand: An introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy, California: Stanford UP, 2006, p. 165) 346 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, "The 'Retreat' of the Political," in Retreating the Political, ed. Simon Sparks and Andrew Benjamin, Warwick Studies in European Philosophy (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), 125. “celle des empereurs chinois, des rois du Benin, de Louis XIV ou de la social-democratie allemande…” —— —, le retrait du politique: travaux du centre de recherches phlosophiques sur le politique (Éditions Galilée, 1983). 186. 347 ———, "Foreward to The Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political," 105. “Comment (et peut-on), aujourd’hui, interroger ce qu’il faut nommer par provision l’essence du politique?” Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "Avertissement," in Rejouer le Politique, ed. Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1980), 9. 348 Simon Sparks, "Introduction: Politica ficta," in Retreating the Political, ed. Simon Sparks and Andrew Benjamin (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), xxvi. 349 Ibid., xvii.

114 liminal, as a blurry conceptual space in between the philosophical and its other. One might thus suggest that ‘re-treating’ this liminal quasi-concept, will serve to reframe the domains it borders upon, the philosophical and politics. The influence of ‘the political’ upon the compositions and transformations of politics are suggested by Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, as they recount how through history transcendent figurations of the political, found in ideas of God, humankind and historical trajectory, were central to activating political change. In contrast to this, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe argue that the dominant immanentism of politics since the 1980s has seen this figure of the political disappear, or retreat. Given the resonance between Schmitt’s desire to conceptualise the distinctly political, and Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthes’ interest in treating ‘the essence of the political’, how might their particular question of ‘the political’ equally relate to a supplementary logic of the frame? We might suggest that the dominant immanentism these authors lament and resist reflects an obliterating camouflage of the frame. In Truth in Painting Derrida alludes to the self-effacing capacity of this structure, as well as its ability to disappear into its surrounds. The complete camouflage of the frame through the self-evidence of political immanentism may be considered to hinder our capacity to consider the manner in which political actions continue to be framed and delineated by ideas and conceptual structures. Thus the self-evidence of the political oeuvre as politics should not be understood as an unframed reality, rather a state in which the camouflage of the concepts that frame and constitute the internal coherence of this work, has been mastered. While it should be made clear that Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthes’ project is not an argument for the return to transcendent political frames of the past, their desire to re-treat, re-trace or displace the political, may be viewed as a shift back to examining the effects and force of ‘the political’ as a frame. Having suggested that the historical retreat of transcendence marked a retreat in the indeterminate spacing between 'the given' that allows for creative political becoming, it perhaps is only through the re-

115 treatment of this in-between space of ‘the political’ that its ‘essence’ or ‘alterity’ can emerge.350 The great difference in the frame that will emerge through Nancy’s texts and that of the previous transcendent order is the ambiguous trans-immanence of the space from which it is constituted. Devisch has discussed Nancy’s broader political project in relation to an “unworking” or désoeuvrement of the “immanent horizon of metaphysics.”351 For Nancy the ‘metaphysical attitude’ sees the relationship between philosophy and politics as a case of the former laying the theoretical foundations for the latter to fulfil. Nancy suggests that this vision of a metaphysical program that frames and determines its concrete realisation in the political, is heavily implicated in the history of European totalitarianism. 352 With this dangerous tendency in mind as well as the insidious implications of the immanentism of politics, 353 Nancy proposes a radical interruption to such processes through a reworking of ‘the political’. Devisch thus describes Nancy’s approach as a “politics of finitude,” whose challenge is “to think through the bare in of our Being-in-common, this naked relationality of our being together as such.”354 Conceived in terms of a differential spacing through which the singular plural of community may emerge, the politics of finitude will resist the fusionality of the metaphysical approach to politics.355

If the contorting violence of a particular frame can be associated with Schmitt’s totalitarian inclined concept of the political, how might Nancy approach this same question of the

350 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, le retrait du politique: travaux du centre de recherches phlosophiques sur le politique: 193. 351 Devisch, "Nancian virtual doubts about 'Leformal' democracy : Or how to deal with contemporary political configuration in an uneasy way?," 1005. 352For a thorough exposition of this point, see Ian James, "Community," in The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy (California: Stanford University Press, 2006), 152 - 53.

353 Devisch further suggests that the ‘self-evident’ rule of political economy as the unquestionable ‘realist’ concept of the political reflects the Hegelian fulfilment of a historical transformation. Devisch reads Nancy’s critique of this metaphysical approach as follows: “If metaphysics is the process of the accomplishment of an identity with itself, it is at the same time a process of mobilizing figures or identity principles to continue the drive of the process towards the completion of it, towards the point at which the Hegelian Geist found itself finally back and presents itself at itself.” (Devisch, "Nancian virtual doubts about 'Leformal' democracy : Or how to deal with contemporary political configuration in an uneasy way?," 1006.) 354 Ibid., 1007. 355 Ibid.

116 political without falling into this same approach? Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthes’ criticism of the metaphysical attitude and the immanentism of contemporary politics stem from their suppression of political becoming through a closed frame. Their criticisms thus reflect the political dimension of the conceptual reworking of deconstruction, articulated by Ian James as follows:

The political dimension of philosophical practice, then, is not about producing a project on the basis of theoretical reflections on, or representations of, the world; it is rather about releasing the possible unthought from that which has traditionally or already been thought, releasing future possibilities from the limit points of what we think we know about the past and the present.356

Through the liberation of a 'possible unthought' from the delimiting conventions of modern philosophy, Nancy would affirm the power of deconstruction to think of existence “as a relation to an unmasterable ground”,357 which in turn “allows for the possibility of a certain kind of decision with a regard to existence or being in which something new might emerge.”358 For Nancy it is only the opening up of this possible unthought, which steers clear from the prescriptive and determining structure of modern theoretical frames, allowing a decision to be a decision, rather than the administration of a programme.359 Devisch will hence suggest that Nancy does not advance any “theory” or “conceptual apparatus” but addresses the question of open political becoming in relation to concepts of community and democracy. 360 Nancy is well known for his work The Inoperable Community, as he reconceptualises the limits of this social-political entity. In contrast to concepts of community that would describe it in terms of a unity of individuals framed or brought

356 James, "Community," 157. 357Ibid., 156. 358 Ibid. 359 Bennington, Interrupting Derrida: 25. 360 Devisch, "Nancian virtual doubts about 'Leformal' democracy : Or how to deal with contemporary political configuration in an uneasy way?," 1000.

117 together by a sharing of a totalised collective identity, Nancy considers community in a manner that inherits from Heidegger’s conceptualisation of a ruptured living with others. For Nancy, experiencing community does not amount to being simply subsumed under or framed by a common identity, but rather relates to the rupturing of being-in-common that allows for the recognition of singularities in communal life. James suggests that this rupture can be conceived as a separation or distinction of those entities living in common.361 The rupturing of community thus operates as the framing movement of singularity, through which communal living with others is enabled.

However, Nancy does not restrict this discussion of separation or distinction to the topic of community, relating its importance to another particular political frame – Democracy. A major distinction of Nancy’s thought from traditional ‘egalitarian’ theories of democracy, articulated in his text The Truth of Democracy, is his suggestion that it must move from a regime of equivalence, to one of inequivalence. He states:

Never from an “it’s all the same,” “it all has the same value [tout se vaut]” – men, cultures, words, beliefs – but always from a “nothing’s the same,” “nothing is equivalent to anything else [rien ne s’equivaut]”362

In this Nancy seeks to review systems of valorisation, proposing a condition of openness to difference enabled through a sharing of inequivalence, or ‘inequivalent affirmation’. Thus Nancy emphasises that “[w]hile politics must make possible the existence of this share, while its task is to maintain an opening for it, to assure the conditions of access to it, it does not take responsibility for its content.”363 As Nancy insists that democratic politics should

361 James, "Community," 175 - 76. 362 Jean-Luc Nancy, Truth of Democracy, trans. Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010). 25. “Jamais d’un « tout se vaut » - hommes, cultures, paroles, croyances, mais toujours d’un « rien ne s’équivaut »… Chacun – chaque « un » singulier de un, de deux, de beaucoup, d’un peuple – est unique d’une unicité, d’une singularité qui oblige infiniment et qui s’oblige elle-même à être mise en acte, en œuvre ou en labeur. » ———, Vérité de la démocratie (Paris: Galilée, 2008). 47. 363 ———, Truth of Democracy: 17.

118 not be viewed as the articulation of the incalculable element of human existence, rather as the structure that creates the space for it, we see its productivity and essence emerging at its limits. Explaining that “politics must be understood through a distinction from – and a relation with – that which cannot and must not be assumed by it,”364 (naming art, love, thought, subjectivity and religion as among these unsubsumable elements), we see Nancy develop a concept of the democratic that contains an internal lack to be supplemented by quasi-external forces. Just as the frame as hors-d’oeuvre in Derrida’s The Truth in Painting supplements and is supplemented by the oeuvre, so does Nancy develop an unsaturated frame for the democratic that depends upon its supplement by the shared inequivalence of love, friendship, emotion, and art, among other things.365 Devisch describes how Nancy’s approach to the question of democracy, which seeks “to escape from the immanent, dialectical horizon which catches our thinking of politics in an infinite logic,”366 demands this reconsideration of the figure of democracy. He points to Nancy’s 1992 text ‘De la figure politique à l’évènement de l’art’, in which he suggests that “[i]f ‘democracy’ still has to have sense, if it has to invent itself, it will be by a (re)invention of the figural.”367 In this Nancy sees democracy as a way to reconsider an indeterminate or indefinite figure of politics that resists the saturating and oppressive frames of the metaphysical attitude upon human becoming. For Nancy the supplementary democratic system, unlike liberal individualism, implies an opening to alterity that does not attempt to equalise the difference of its citizens.368

“Celle-ci doit rendre possible l’existence de cette part, elle a pour tache d’en maintenir l’ouverture, d’en assurer les conditions d’accès, mais elle n’en assume pas la teneur. »———, Vérité de la démocratie: 33. 364 ———, Truth of Democracy: 21. « Ni tout, ni bien entendu rien, la politique doit se comprendre dans une distinction – et un rapport – avec ce qui ne peut ni doit être assumé par elle, non pas, assurément, parce que cela devrait être assumé par une autre instance (art ou religion, amour, subjectivité, pensée…), mais parce que cela doit être pris en charge par tous et par chacun selon des modalités dont il est essentiel qu’elles restent diverses, voire divergentes, multiples, voire hétérogènes. » ———, Vérité de la démocratie: 40. 365 ———, Vérité de la démocratie: 33 - 34. 366 Nancy as cited in Devisch, "Nancian virtual doubts about 'Leformal' democracy : Or how to deal with contemporary political configuration in an uneasy way?," 1005. 367 Ibid., 1004. 368 Nancy, Vérité de la démocratie: 46 - 47.

119 Nancy was not alone in his desire to reframe concepts of the political and democracy. More than ten years after the discussion and research of the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political emerged in response to the ambiguities of Derrida’s politics, Derrida himself published Politics of Friendship, providing a new point of departure from which to conceptualise political and democratic relations. He approached the concept of the democratic, by considering it in contrast to classical formulations of the state. Referring to Aristotle’s contribution, Derrida states: “This concept of democracy is confirmed in the Eudemian Ethics (1236ab): it is a politics of friendship founded on an anthropocentric – one could say humanist – concept.”369 This formulation contrasts with the ancient Greek concept of the polis as examined by Plato, which despite the constant conflicts and rivalries between different Grecian communitis, are united by the sharing of a genetic and racial link (Hellenikon génos). Derrida highlights how this ethnocentric distinction between the Greek and Barbarian races would form the basis of the “original community.”370 He further suggests that racism, ethnocentrism and nationalism through history would utilise such “a discourse on birth and on nature, a phúsis of genealogy” to regulate the oppositions of “repulsion and attraction, disagreement and accord, war and peace, hatred and friendship. From within and without.”371 As with Schmitt’s political frame between friends and enemies, for Plato the state of ‘war’ between the members of the Greek people and the enemy barbarians, is used to further solidify the internal integrity of the ‘polis’, as it defines and delineates the inside from the outside. This considered, the clarity with which Plato seeks to apply the genetic frame in order to delineate the polis’ interior compatriots and exterior enemies is undermined by the internal virus or parasite of civil war, the unity of the state diminishing from its inside.372 Another case in which ‘the frame fits badly’, the

369 Derrida, "Recoils," 198. « Ce concept de la démocratie : c'est une politique de l'amitié fondée sur un concept anthropocentrique, on pourrait dire humaniste.” ———, "Replis," 224. 370 ———, "L'ami revenant (au nom de la "démocratie")," 112 - 13. 371 ———, "The Phantom Friend Returning," 91. « Comme dans tous les racismes, dans tous les ethnocentrismes, plus précisément dans tous les nationalismes de l’histoire, un discours sur la naissance et sur la nature, une phúsis de la généalogie (…) règle en dernière analyse le mouvement de chaque opposition: répulsion et attraction, différend et accord, guerre et paix haine et amitié. Au-dedans et au-dehors.” ———, "L'ami revenant (au nom de la "démocratie")," 112 - 13. 372 ———, "De l'hostilité absolue," 133 - 34.

120 constitutive force of nationalist political frames fail to eradicate resistant violence carried within it. So rather than conceptualising the frame of the political in terms of strict distinctions between Grecian or Barbarian, friend or enemy, insider and outsider, Derrida turns to Aristotle’s alternative conceptualisation of the political in terms of connective force, rather than strict delineation. Aristotle will see the relation of friendship as pertinent to the telos of politics, which concerns the ultimate end of ‘living-together.’ Derrida relays the centrality of friendship to the political, describing the end of positive co-living, as “nothing other than friendship in general.”373 From Aristotle’s text Derrida concludes that “the work of the political, the properly political act or operation, comes down to creating (producing, making, etc.) the most possible friendship…”374 Depicting the basis of political unity in this extension of connections made by political friendship, we should be sure therefore not to interpret Aristotle’s thought as a utopian ideal of infinite friendship. Rather, Derrida emphasises how this maximisation of political friendship is accompanied by its limits.375 Due to the active quality of friendship, as described by Derrida, as a repeated, open gesture towards a possible other, there are necessary limits to its extension. Derrida contrasts such active political friendship to a generalised form of passive friendship to all, suggesting that “[i]t is not the number that is forbidden, nor the more than one, but the numerous, if not the crowd.” 376 Describing this form of political friendship in relation to a capacity to love “in act”, Derrida argues that a finite being is not capable of being a friend to too great a number. 377 With this in mind, Derrida states: “There is no belonging or

373 ———, "Recoils," 199.

“Le télos de l’État (pólis), c’est le “bien vivre” (to eu zēn) et le bien-vivre correspond à la positivité d’un vivre-ensemble (suzēn). Ce n’est rien d’autre que l’amitié en général.” ( ———, "Replis," 225. ) 374 ———, "Recoils," 199. “l'œuvre du politique, l'acte ou l'opération proprement politiques reviennent à créer (produire, faire, etc.) le plus d'amitié possible…” (———, "Replis," 225.) 375 ———, "Oligarchies: nommer, énumérer, dénombrer," 25. 376 ———, "Oligarchies: naming, enumerating, counting," 21. « Ce n'est pas le nombre qui est interdit, ni le plus d'un, mais le nombreux. Sinon la foule. » ———, "Oligarchies: nommer, énumérer, dénombrer," 39. 377 ———, "Oligarchies: nommer, énumérer, dénombrer," 39.

121 friendly community that is present, and first present to itself, in act, without election and without selection.”378 The limitations of active friendship accepted, Derrida illustrates how this same necessity for calculation thus plagues democratic friendship.379 While these relations have no determinate or concrete frontiers (unlike the genetic distinctions of the ethnocentric state), the calculation of the democratic will demands a selection or limitation regarding whose voice will be heard or included, as an active democratic friend. While this limit is not finite, it may expand, or shrink or transform in correspondence to changes in the capacity to love ‘in act’, it is through this calculation that the democratic state (as well as its corresponding concepts of justice and power), are constituted. In this, we may see how the indefinite and unclear site of democratic distinction, is also the source of democratic power. Yet in the same way that Danto acknowledged the impact of artistic breakthrough upon the limits of his Artworld matrix, Derrida recognises a force of unequivocal difference that makes exception of the democratic frame - the force of l’aimance. A term that designates the middle voice in between love and friendship, the active and the passive, this impure desire projects a possible but indeterminable friendship towards an unknown singularity. In this it pushes the limits and calculation of friendship.380 Derrida points to the open gesture of friendship as it is “never a present given, it belongs to the experience of expectation, promise, or engagement” opening up a future.381 Thus the structural frame of friendship, like the frame of democracy, is defined by the absence of its object, a missing piece or permeability of its structure. The transformative force that pushes the calculated frame of friendship, “conjoins friendship, the future, and the perhaps to open on to the coming of what comes – that is to say, necessarily in the regime of a possible whose

378 ———, "Oligarchies: naming, enumerating, counting," 21. « Point d'appartenance ou de communauté amicale qui soit présente, et d'abord présente à elle-même, en acte, sans élection ou sans sélection. » ———, "Oligarchies: nommer, énumérer, dénombrer," 39. 379———, "L'ami revenant (au nom de la "démocratie")," 124. 380 ———, ""Pour la premiere fois dans l'histoire de l'humanité"," 331. 381 ———, "“In Human Language, Fraternity…”," 236. “L'amitié n'est jamais une donnée présente, elle appartient à l'expérience de l'attente, de la promesse ou de l'engagement. Son discours est celui de la prière, il inaugure, il ne constate rien, il ne se contente pas de ce qui est, il se porte en ce lieu où une responsabilité ouvre à l'avenir.” ———, ""En langue d'homme, la fraternité"," 263.

122 possibilisation must prevail over the impossible.”382 In this, the democratic frame of friendship, which is necessarily calculated or limited, is understood by Derrida to contain “the possibility and the duty for democracy itself to de-limit itself.”383 Like Derrida’s parergon and Danto’s Artworld matrix, the frame that constitutes the democratic work (its limitation) thus enables the resistance against its limits (friendship beyond limits). Geoffrey Bennington highlights how the Derridian conception of democracy can indeed be understood as “a thought of an endless progress towards a better political state, but on the other hand, cutting into the teleologism of the structure of the Kantian Idea, obliges an interventionist perception of the here and now, always in the name of the democracy-to-come which will never finally arrive, but never claiming to have established a satisfactory democracy.”384 This tension between applying the interventionist frame of ‘here and now’ in the name of an open-ended future to come, reflects a non-saturated concept of the frame that implies an internal lack. As a supplementary quasi-concept that sees resistance from the force of a democracy-to-come, the democratic frame can be seen to reflect the constitutive tension of the parergon he describes in The Truth in Painting.

In this section we have considered the how a concept of the frame may be found at work within both artistic and political fields. As we see in Danto, Schmitt, Nancy, Lacoue- Labarthe’ texts, the delimiting capacity of the frame enables their distinction as quasi- independent fields, serving to further identify which object, question and concerns should be considered as properly political. Yet, we have also seen how particular forms of framing, exemplified by modern aesthetic monism or Schmitt’s concept of the political, may through extreme antagonism and hostility, smother and pervert the work it delineates. However there is another form of frame that can operate within both these fields, the unclear,

382 ———, "“Loving in Friendship: Perhaps”," 29. « Telle pensée conjoint l'amitié, l'avenir et le peut-être pour s'ouvrir a la venue de ce qui vient, c'est à dire nécéssairement sous le régime d'un possible dont la possibilisation doit gagner sur l'impossible. » ———, "Aimer d'amitié : peut-être - le nom et l'adverbe," 46. 383 ———, "The Phantom Friend Returning," 129. « la possibilité et le devoir pour la démocratie de se dé-limiter elle-même.”———, "L'ami revenant (au nom de la "démocratie")," 129. 384 Bennington, Interrupting Derrida: 33.

123 indefinite and lacunary parergon, which through a supplementary logic may be associated with openness to plurality and the open-becoming of the field it frames. Through this discussion we have shown how different concepts of politics and the normative categories that that ensue from them, can be seen as products of framing. In this respect the broader domain of politics from which particular political ideologies and theories emerge can be seen as a space of questioning and investigation into the limits and composition of its work or oeuvre. Like Warhol’s Brillo Box, the ontological limits of the object of politics is framed by varied concepts, each bringing a different sense of its limits that allow us to identify, for example, political from private concerns, or compatriots from outsiders. While we may judge specific frames for the reductive quality or totalising impact of their concepts upon normative political actions, the contemporary field of politics is itself framed by a complex, fragmented and open matrix of political frames advanced by thinkers such as Plato, Schmitt, Nancy and Derrida, to name just a few. In order to understand the relationship between art and politics, we must therefore recognise in the first instance that the domain of politics is not clearly delimited, but appears through an open and continually transforming frame of thought and action. With the pertinence of the frame to both the fields of politics and art examined, we may now turn to consider how a complicated space in between the two fields may be conceptualised through this same figure.

After Metaphor: The Plastic Frame between Art and Politics

A New Frame: The Ambiguous In-Between of Art and Politics

So far, we have explored the diverse articulations of the frame in different forms and traditions of art and politics, exposing how the limits of the fields they delineate portray a space of indefinite constitution and transgression. With the unstable borders of each field recognised, we are led to ask: how does this space of instability operate? How might we comprehend in more detail the thickness of the frame in between art and politics? This

124 section will tighten the frame of our ‘close up’ even further, in order to further illuminate the matter of the frame. Far from clearly outlining the relationship between art and politics, the first chapter of this thesis shed light on the unavoidably complicated and unstable space of distinction that artistic principles and concepts share with the political. When examining the traditions of ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake’ we saw how key concepts that guided projects from both camps, sat somewhere in-between the artistic and the political. Politically engaged artists such as Zola, Hugo, Kienholz and Fajardo, who were motivated by a desire to present or expose social truths, were thereby guided by Apollonian ideas of just order and harmony that inhabit a space beyond the purely political, informing aesthetic composition as well. Similarly, the creators of ‘art for art’s sake’ such as Flaubert, Pollock or Newman, directed their pursuit of artistic excellence in light of enlightenment principles and archetypes of human perfection, which equally informed the socio-political sphere. In this, we saw how both ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art sake’ were guided by concepts, archetypes or ideals that can be found in both artistic and political fields. One way of conceptualising the force of the frame in between art and politics is as a space of transference. In this, the shared concepts such as truth or order are understood as travelling over a threshold that permits substitution between fields. This image of artistic and political elements circulating through different domains leads us to a familiar trope: metaphor. Used as a means to explain the movement of linguistic entities, we will see how metaphor also explains the particular lacunary force of the work of art. However, is this substitution between fields better conceived of as transformation? We will consider this in light of Derrida’s critique of Aristotelian metaphor in White Mythology and Catherine Malabou’s discussions of plasticity in The Future of Hegel. To finish, we will show how the work of art may inhabit a plastic parergonal in-between, by way of reference to the performative work of Marina Abramović and J.M. Coetzee’s text Disgrace.

125 A Frame after Metaphor

In White Mythology, Derrida analyses the allegorical trope of resemblance under the more general category of metaphor.385 He returns to Aristotle's seminal systemisation of the concept in Poetics, identifying its definitive movements as “[m]etaphor (metaphora) consists in giving (epiphora) the thing a name (onomatos) that belongs to something else (allotriou)…” 386 Derrida suggests that implied within the traditional understanding of metaphor, inherited from Aristotle, is the presumption of an original, privileged 'literal' language from which the metaphorical usage is transported. An example of this might be “the dawn of history”, in which the term for the natural event of sunrise or ‘dawn’ is transferred into a secondary field of language to denote the beginning of history. Within such an allegorical model the reader of, for example, Coetzee’s Disgrace or Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers, may thus interpret the particular hardships of the figures and societies depicted in the work of art as signifiers imported from everyday life to represent political ideas. Derrida takes issue with the closed and hierarchical economy of language implied through the traditional Aristotelian conceptualisation of metaphor. In addition to the incompatibility of these hierarchical substitutions with a linguistic condition that allows thought or ideas to be expressed by several means rather than one ‘original’ signifier, Derrida also exposes how a metaphor is at play within the concept of metaphor itself. Noting the place of the term transference within Aristotle’s definition of the trope of resemblance, Derrida points to the manner in which it “relies upon figures of the displacement or transport of meaning”387 to convey the supposed substitution of terms. In this, the definition of metaphor undermines its own position, as an original, non- metaphorical meaning, because of the centrality of metaphors of movement within its own

385 Jacques Derrida, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," in Marges de la Philosophie, Critique (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972), 255. 386 Aristotle as cited in———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: The Harvester Press, 1982; reprint, First), 231. 387 Derrida states: “La métaphore (metaphora) est le transport (epiphora) à une chose d’un nom (onomatos) qui en désigne une autre (allotriou)…” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 275.

126 definition. The metaphoricity of metaphor is reiterated in ‘Signature, Event, Context’ where Derrida argues that the “the value of displacement, of transport, etc., is constitutive of the very concept of metaphor by means of which one allegedly understands the semantic displacement which is operated…”388 In addition to the undermined status of an original order of meaning within Aristotle’s concept of metaphor, Derrida further highlights the incomplete quality of the transference or substitution that occurs through this economy. Derrida explains that while metaphor relates, “properties extracted from the essence of different things” through resemblance, it does so “without directly, fully, and properly stating essence itself...”389 In this, metaphor is distanced from the notion of a closed exchange or substitution of terms. Despite his general criticism of allegorical reading, Derek Attridge invokes the incomplete dimension of metaphor or allegory by reference to J.M. Coetzee’s work, Life & Times of Michael K. As the medical officer yells after the fleeing protagonist he states: “Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory… It was an allegory … of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it.”390 In this image the anomalous nature of metaphoric meaning is articulated, depicting it as the result of transference from outside, which is never fully absorbed into its interior. In light of Derrida’s analysis and this image from Coetzee’s work, we may thus see metaphor as an incomplete transference that is never a complete transposition, opening up traditional understandings of it as a closed schema of substitution. Far from being associated with a loss of meaning, the gaps or incomplete transposition of meaning in metaphor will be linked by not only Derrida, but also Danto to

388 ———, "Signature, Event, Context," in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982; reprint, First), 310. “parce que la valeur de déplacement, de transport, etc., est précisément constituitive du concept de métaphore par lequel on prétendrait comprendre le déplacement sémantique qui s’opère…” ———, "Signature Événement Contexte," 368. 389 ———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 249. “Celle-ci peut manifester des propriétés, rapporter les unes aux autres des propriétés prélevées sur l’essence de choses différentes, les donner à connaître à partir de leur ressemblance, sans toutefois énoncer directement, pleinement, proprement l’essence, sans donner à voir elle-même la vérité de la chose même.” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 296 - 97. 390 Coetzee as cited in Derek Attridge, J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 34.

127 a vivifying force. Derrida relays the aim of metaphor as consisting in “… presenting an idea under the sign of another idea that is more striking or better known...”391 The poetic efficacy of metaphor is not only examined by Aristotle, but applied within his diverse writing to great effect.392 Alfredo Marcos has explored Aristotle’s usage of metaphor within his scientific works, explaining that “[e]ven notions so central to Aristotelian theories as nature, soul or act are explained by means of analogies, similes or metaphors: nature is thought of as a potter, as a house builder or a painter, and so on.”393 In addition, one must not forget the earlier analysis of his The Nicomachean Ethics, in which Aristotle utilises the image of personal friendship to articulate a range of relational qualities common to his proposed political friendship, vivifying this political field. Aristotle’s application of this trope considered, Marcos and Derrida relay his understanding of its enlivening effect upon meaning, as metaphor represents things “as in a state of activity.”394 Derrida will thus explain how this capacity to “set before us, to make a picture, to exercise a lively action” is associated by Aristotle with the value of energeia. 395 However contrary to potential associations with positive force, Derrida suggests that this energeia can be related to an “energetic absence”, “enigmatic division” or “interval” through which scenes are made and tales told.396

391 Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 234 - 35. “Les tropes par ressemblance consistent à présenter une idée sous le signe d’une autre idée plus frappantes ou plus connue…” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 279 - 80. 392 Similarly, in both the Artworld and The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto employs the image of a mirror. While also using it to explain and explore the pervasive foundations of mimetic concepts of art, Danto also utilizes it to remind the reader of the socially and historically responsive quality of the work of art and artworld. As the process of interpretation implicates the both the individual viewer and the possibilities of interpretation that their socio-historical situation provides, the metaphor of the work of art as a mirror, vividly reminds us of the unstable flux of its constitution, as an object that reflects its surrounding conditions. 393 Alfredo Marcos, "The Tension Between Aristotle’s Theories and Uses of Metaphor," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 28, no. 1 (1997): 127 - 28. 394 Ibid., 134. 395 Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 239. “Mettre sous les yeux, faire tableau, exercer une action vive, autant de vertus qu’Aristote attribue à la bonne métaphore et qu’il associe régulièrement à la valeur d’energeia dont on sait quel rôle décisif elle joue dans sa métaphysique, dans la métaphysique” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 285. 396 ———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 239.

128 To examine the construction of such “energetic absence” in metaphor, Derrida points to the rhetorical ellipsis, or enthymeme, as an example of a structure that exploits such an energetic lack. As the rhetorical device leaves one term missing, the audience or reader is forced to invent it. Derrida explains how for Aristotle “in these cases the impression is stronger and occasionally also truer, more poetic: the turn of speech is more generous, more generative, more ingenious.”397 Danto in Transfiguration of the Commonplace also considers the powerful structure of this rhetorical device. He explains that: “[the enthymeme] involves a complex interrelation between the framer and the reader of the enthymeme” as “[t]he latter must himself fill the gap deliberately left open by the former” leading the auditor away form a state of passivity as he participates in the process of meaning-formation, instead of “just being encoded with information as tabula rasa.”398 Danto suggests that it is this effect of the enthymeme that is also at play in the metaphoric structure, explaining that “if a is metaphorically b, there must be some t such that a is to t what t is to b. A metaphor would then be a kind of elliptical syllogism with a missing term and hence an enthymematic conclusion.399 The missing term of ‘t’ that relates ‘a’ metaphorically to ‘b’ is left inexplicit in the metaphor, provoking the energetic supplement of the auditor to fulfil it. Therefore through both Derrida and Danto’s explanations of the trope, we may relate the lively presentation of metaphor to its call for supplementation, as its internal lack requires the active participation of the reader or auditor. While this lack is the source of its energy, Derrida also reminds us this lack or incompleteness results in the “inevitable detours”400 of metaphor, as it opens up a

“Laissons ouverte la question de cette absence énergique, de cet écart énigmatique, c’est-à-dire de cet intervalle qui fait des histoires et des scènes.” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 285. 397 ———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 242. “Or il y a des cas, remarque Aristote, où l’un des termes manqués. Il faut alors l’inventer. Plus surprenante, l’impression est plus forte et parfois aussi plus vraie, plus poétique: le tour est plus généreux, générateur, génial.” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique." ibid., 289. 398 Danto, "Metaphor, Expression, and Style," 170. 399 Ibid., 171. 400 Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 270. “…économie sans dommage irréparable de propriété, détour certes inévitable…” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 323.

129 “wandering of the semantic.”401 For Derrida the enlivening of thought that occurs through metaphor emerges through the indefinite construction of its own destruction, as it gets carried away with itself, cannot be what it is except in erasing itself...”402 The poetic metaphor can thus be considered to deploy a movement of thought without limit that explodes the dichotomy between metaphorical and 'proper' meaning.403 This power of indefinite interpretive kinesis may be considered the source of artistic affect in other media too. Danto describes the power of the work of art in relation to the structure of metaphor in the Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He states: Art, if a metaphor at times on life, entails that the not unfamiliar experience of being taken out of oneself by art – the familiar artistic illusion – is virtually the enactment of a metaphoric transformation with oneself as subject...404 The power of the work of art to take its audience ‘outside themselves’ through a strategic internal lack has been long recognised and utilised by artists. Indeed contemporary visual artists such as Yoshua Okon, describe the capacities of artistic transformation in such terms, stating: “[w]hen confronted with an openly “incomplete” (fragmented) version of the world we tend to piece things together, to use our imagination and creativity in order to come up with our own formulations, constructions and relationships.”405 Okón applies this principle in his multi-channel video piece Octopus (2011). This work depicts undocumented refugees of the 1990s Guatemalan Civil War re-enacting their experiences of combat in the suburban Los Angeles Home Depot parking lot where they seek work.406

401———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 241. “…la métaphore ouvre aussi l’errance du sémantique.” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 287. 402 ———, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 268. “…le métaphorique ne réduit pas la syntaxe, y agence au contraire ses écarts, qu’il s’emporte lui-même, ne peut être ce qu’il est qu’en s’effaçant, construit indéfiniment sa destruction.” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 320. 403 ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 323. 404 Danto, "Metaphor, Expression, and Style," 173. 405 Yoshua Okón and Denise Thwaites, Asynchronous email interview, 21 Janurary - 21 September 2012.

406 The title of Okon’s work ‘Octopus’ refers to the nickname for the US-owned United Fruit Company that was linked to the CIA- led coup against democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, which in turn catalysed the Guatemalan Civil War.

130 The ‘gaps’ in this work, however, play a vital role in its composition, as the figures point invisible guns at invisible enemies throughout the space. The initial playfulness of the images is transformed as the audience pieces together the movements and story of these politically “invisible” members of American society, who are excluded from the US grand narrative.407 As a porous composition like the rhetorical enthymeme, the work of art leaves space to allow the viewer inside the body of the frame of interpretation, completing the work while resting outside it. In this respect, the work of art enables the transference of the audience between different fields of experience.

Figure 13. Yoshua Okón, Octopus, 2011, Synchronized projection (one of four), Duration: 18:31 minutes looped, image courtesy of the artist. © Yoshua Okón.

So in light of Derrida and Danto’s reconceptualisations of the transference that occurs through metaphor, how might we reassess the transitions previously discussed between art and politics? Attridge critiques the allegorical mode applied to the political interpretation of artworks for its alleged systematisation of artistic experience and events through the

407 Okón and Thwaites.

131 symbolic schema of what the work is “about”.408 Attridge thus seeks to liberate Coetzee's work from the reductive tick of allegorical reading that would “translate the temporal and the sequential into the schematic: a set of truths, a familiar historical scene.”409 However having now questioned the simplicity of this model of semantic, allegorical exchange, we may suggest that the ‘metaphorical link’ between the artistic and political fields, rather than schematising experience, sets off an energetic, errant semantics, which opens or inaugurates a supplementary in-between of art and politics. Danto and Derrida affirm this suggestion through their discussions of the rhetorical ellipsis, through which the energies of both fields may supplement the other. This is because the open “wandering” of meaning enabled through the “energetic lack” of the work of art does not disappear or dissipate at the ambiguous limits of the work. Rather this must be seen to “abut onto” and “rub against” other liminal fields such as politics, as the errant semantics produced through the work of art defer and differ from the concepts of freedom, truth or harmony (for example) found in prior determinations. Similarly in the field of the political, the errant semantics produced through applications of metaphor in political language and rhetoric (exemplified in Australian politics by terms such as “queue-jumper” or “bleeding-heart lefty”), cannot be considered to halt at the hazy limits of the political, as it informs public discourse and further concepts of order, weakness and justice. In this, the “wandering” semantics produced in both these fields can be said to encounter one another at the space of transference in-between art and politics where, for example, transforming concepts of freedom, harmony and order, will turn back to influence these fields again. However with the hierarchical metaphoric space of transference envisaged by Aristotle now deconstructed by Derrida, we must now question whether this space in between art and politics can be understood as a domain of pure movement, or also an ambiguous realm of plastic metamorphosis.

408 See Attridge, J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event: 32 - 65. 409 Ibid., 46.

132 Plasticity and the Frame

In White Mythology Derrida describes philosophy’s determination of metaphor as an “economy of the proper without irreparable damage” that explodes the opposition between the metaphoric and the proper.410 His investigative emphasis on the movement of metaphor as an economy, reiterates the interest articulated in his analysis of différance as “the movement according to which language, or any code, any system of referral in general, is constituted “historically” as a weave of differences.”411 Catherine Malabou in Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing suggests that Derrida’s account of the movement or dissemination of signification reflects a specific “mobility of difference” reinterpreted by Heidegger and his followers, which reduces change of this kind to notions of journey or transfer.412 Based on “displacement”, the spacing and temporization that enables the irreducible deferral of presence central to Derrida’s arche-writing, is thus articulated in terms of mutations and separations without origin.413 Due to Derrida’s rejection of both the primacy and fulfilment of presence, Malabou suggests that for him “[t]he trace is inconvertible into forms”, metamorphosis being understood to have “no deconstructive power, because form is resolutely a concept with no future.”414 Recognising the Derridian dissociation of the movements of trace from notion of formal transformation, Malabou questions whether “by proceeding in this way deconstruction repeats, in another time, another age, the reduction of the metabolic to the phoronomic.”415 For Malabou, the deconstructive reduction of

410 Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," 270. “…économie sans dommage irréparable de propriété…” ———, "La Mythologie Blanche: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique," 323. 411 ———, "Différance," 12. “…nous désignerons par différance le movement selon lequel la langue, ou tout code, tout système de renvois en général se constitue “historiquement” comme tissue de différences.” ———, "La Différance," 12 - 13. 412 Malabou, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 92. 413 Ibid. 414 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing (New York: Columbia University, 2010). 47. “La trace est inconvertible en formes…la métamorphose n’est investie d’aucun pouvoir déconstructeur puisque la forme, résolument, est un concept sans avenir.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 89. 415 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 49. “Or ne peut-on considérer que la déconstruction, en procédant ainsi, répète, en un autre temps ou un autre âge, la réduction du métabolique au phoronomique…”———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 92.

133 metabolic transformation to phoronomic motion, is in stark departure from the Heideggerain metaphysical critique that informed its development. Having considered the supplementary relation between art and politics, as the errant semantics in between these fields impact upon and ‘frame’ the integral unity of each field, might we share Malabou’s concerns regarding the capacity of Derrida’s deconstructive ‘writing’ to provide a motor-scheme to understand their relationship? As she states: “In the end, isn’t a certain play in form always the resource lying behind “supplementarity”?”416 Indeed the status of the frame as a figural “quasi-concept” compels us to consider whether Malabou’s “reprieve of writing”417 might assist in the conceptualisation of the supplementary, parergonal space in between art and politics, as a space of mutation, formation and deformation for both fields. Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing begins with a vivifying metaphor through which Malabou discusses her complex intellectual heritage from Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida, considering how “such differences, such scissions, such periodic diversities, far from entirely dislocating thought, instead form the unity of our time.”418 Through the image of a “transformational mask” borrowed from Levi-Strauss, Malabou reflects upon the various faces of her thought or “conceptual portrait,”419 as an arrangement of simultaneous scissions that constitute the unity of her philosophy. She is thus brought to a question of “the differential structure of form and, inversely, the formal structure of difference,”420

416 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 13. “Un certain jeu de la forme n’est-il pas toujours, au fond, la resource de la ‘supplémentarité’?” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 32.

417 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 61. “La plasticité est la relève de l’écriture.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 114. 418 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 7. “…pourquoi de telles différences, de telles scissions, de telles diversités époquales, loin de disloquer totalement la pensée, forment au contraire l’unité de notre temps?” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 21. 419 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 2. “Pour entrer dans le soir, je vous invite à considérer mon portrait conceptuel comme un masque à transformation.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 13. 420 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 3.

134 which like the transformational mask, accounts for simultaneous continuity and divisibility. This will lead Malabou to a continuing conceptualisation of an “other form” 421 that may better account for the conditions of supplementary metamorphosis between fixed instances of thought - plasticity. Malabou’s concept of plasticity, describes a “certain arrangement of being” or “spontaneous organization of fragments.”422 This concept will appear in Malabou’s earlier work The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, temporality, dialectic, in which she presents this concept as an “‘unforeseen’ of Hegelian philosophy,”423 this functioning as the point around which Hegel’s temporal and dialectic transformation revolve.424 Looking to brief references made to the state of plasticity in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, Lectures on Aesthetics and Phenomenology of Spirit, Malabou conceptualizes plasticity as a condition for both ideal and corporeal transformation. Etymologically derived from the Greek plassein (to mold),425 Malabou points to “[p]lasticity’s native land [in] the field of art,” in particular the sculptural arts whose aims are “the articulation and development of forms.”426 Emphasizing the distinction between plasticity and polymorphism, she explains that the plastic preserves its given configuration, yielding itself to formation whilst also resisting deformation.427 That is to say, unlike the liquid or viscous, the plastic will hold form bestowed upon it, without ever returning to its initial configuration. In addition to these typical etymological associations with plasticity,

“”…la question, précisément, de la structure différenciée de toute forme et, en retour, de l’unité formelle ou figurale de toute différence et de toute articulation.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 15. 421 ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 94. 422 ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 7. “…l’organisation spontanée des fragments.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 21. 423 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 7. “…l’inattendu de la philosophie hegelienne.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 19. 424 ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 28. 425 Ibid., 20. 426 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 8. “Le pays natal de la plasticité est le domaine de l’art. La plastique caractérise en effet l’art du modelage, et en premier lieu le travail du sculpteur.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 21. 427 ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 21.

135 Malabou will also clarify its designation of being “susceptible to changes of form”, while also “having the power to bestow form,” (as applied in the expressions of ‘plastic’ art or surgery).428 For Malabou, these capacities will also imply the “the destruction and the very annihilation of all form” (exemplified by the term “plastic” explosive).429 With these material qualities derived from the world of art, how will Malabou see the pertinence of the motor-schema of plasticity to extend beyond the aesthetic? Malabou sees plasticity as an integral condition in the emergence of both ideal forms and the figural. Malabou points to Hegel’s reference to an “Absolute Relation” in “The Science of Logic” in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, which describes an “activity-of-form” (Formtatigkeit) central to the self-determining transformations of substance.430 Describing it as the “originary operation of plasticity”, Malabou suggests, “[s]elf-determination is the movement through which substance affirms itself as at once subject and predicate of itself.”431 This “activity-of-form” is at the heart of substance’s plastic capacity to “receive form and to give form to its own content.”432 Sebastian Rand reads Malabou’s discussion of plasticity as an elaboration upon Hegel’s “sublation” or Aufhebung, through which we find “the self-transformative structure of ‘‘the Idea.’’ 433 Indeed in her earlier work, Malabou will consider the application of the concept to philosophy itself, as it concerns the “rhythm in which the speculative content is unfolded and presented.”434 In this she will equally state that “[e]levated to its speculative truth, the

428 For this particular clarification See "Afterword" in ———, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 67. 429 ibid. 430 ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 25 - 26. 431 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 11. “L’auto-détermination est le mouvement par lequel la substance s’affirme à la fois comme sujet et prédicat d’elle-même.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 25. 432 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 12. “Cette ‘activité’ témoigne précisément de la plasticité de la substance, de sa capacité à recevoir comme à former son propre contenu.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 26. 433 Sebastian Rand, "Organism, normativity, plasticity: Canguilhem, Kant, Malabou," Continental Philosophy Review 44(2011): 352. 434 Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 10. “Elle qualifie, d’autre part, le mode d’être de la philosophie elle-même, c’est-à-dire le rythme de déploiement du contenu speculatif et son exposition.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 24.

136 relation between subject and predicates is characterized by ‘plasticity.’” 435 Contrary to common understandings of the subject of a proposition as a “fixed instance” that is given predicates from the outside, Malabou emphasises how the self-determination of subject and predicate emerges through a plastic dialectic unfolding. Through such plastic transformation connections are made between “opposing moments of total immobility (the ‘fixed’) and vacuity (‘dissolution’)”, these ultimately unified within a vital whole.436 Through this concept of plasticity Malabou moves away from the model of “displacement” and “transfer” that sees change in terms of negative spacing and breaks between distinct elements, proposing instead an image of metabolism through which form is given and destroyed. Malabou’s concept of plasticity will be further influenced by bio- philosophical concepts articulated by thinkers such as Georges Canguilhem, as well as more recent studies of neuroplasticity, the writer seeing the organisation of the nervous system, (which is characterised by a plastic ability to adapt and reform pathways in response to environmental changes), as a the exemplary model through which to articulate her proposed motor-schema of self-differing transformation.437 Indeed it is through the model of neuroplasticity that Malabou most clearly articulates the particularity of her concept of plasticity, stating: “Thus it appears that synaptic fissures are certainly gaps, but they are gaps that are able to form or take shape. That’s it, in fact: traces take form.”438 With these plastic qualities in mind, how might Malabou’s “reprieve” of Derrida’s ‘writing’ assist in reformulating (i) the transferences and displacements he discusses in

435 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 11. “La plasticité caractérise le rapport du sujet à ses prédicats élevé à sa verité spéculative.” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 25

436 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 12. “Le procès dialectique est plastique dans le mesure où il articule en son cours l’immobilité pleine (la fixité), la vacuité (la dissolution) et la vitalité de tout…” ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 26.

437 For a more detailed look at the relationship between Malabou’s thought and neuroscience, see Rand, "Organism, normativity, plasticity: Canguilhem, Kant, Malabou." 438 Malabou, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 60. “Il apparaît ainsi que les fentes synaptiques sont bien des écarts, mais des écarts susceptibles de prendre forme. C’est cela, en réalité, les traces prennent forme.” (———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 112.)

137 relation to metaphor and (ii) the quasi-concept of the frame? When discussing the metaphoric passage of language between art and politics, we must acknowledge the detachment of these graphic elements from a particular context to the next, this implying a 'spacing' between the two applications. However in this detachment is contained the inherent “risk” of language as writing, this potential set-off with even more force through the vivifying errant semantics opened by metaphor. So if we see the transition of concepts and language between the fields of art and politics in terms of this metaphoric economy of language, its appearance in each instance will differ from the last. In this the language doesn’t just transition, but transforms, its passage not phoronomic, but metabolic. So how might we further conceptualise this spacing in-between art and politics that metabolises the errant meanings of each field? This can be considered in light of Malabou’s description of the plastic “synaptic fissure” as a gap that is able to take shape.439 Between the distinct fields of the artistic and political we find a self-organising spacing that through a plastic “activity-of-form” gives form to the fields it delineates. As it metabolises the explosion of these “opposing moments of total immobility,” the spacing in-between enables the on- going metamorphosis of a vital continuity. From here, I suggest that the plastic space or ‘spacing’ in between the artistic and political fields may bring us back to Derrida’s quasi-concept of the parergon. We can now see how Derrida describes the force of the frame in ways that foreshadow Malabou’s discussions of plasticity, as the parergon’s ability to give form to the work, while destroying formal limits by “merging” into the limen, imply its basis in formal transformation rather than displacement. The violence of certain frames according to Derrida may also be related to the plasticity of the frame, as something that can enact formal damage upon the work, as it bears the potential to not only endow form but also to destroy it, like a plastic explosive. Finally, the supplementary form of the parergon itself sees its force lie in the plastic lacks or “gaps” or “fissures” it contains. These call forth a supplementary energeia, which is quasi-external inasmuch as it emerges from a self- determining “activity-of-form” that metabolises the movement of difference.

439 ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 112.

138 With this in mind, let us turn our analysis to the particular plastic frame, which may characterise the space we have considered as in between art and politics. If we return to our discussion of liminal artistic-political space in relation to the metaphoric passages that occur between them, we may find interpretations that posit its prior existing spatial relations. Samuel Levin suggests that metaphor “does not break new categorical ground; it simply extends a predicate into a position which, from the standpoint of the categories, already existed and was logically prepared for it.”440 However we may go one step further and question whether this force of metaphor is in fact an articulation of the self-organising plasticity of the space itself. We may argue that the indefinite space in between art and politics is plastic, thus implying an inherent activity-of-form that metabolises and gives form to the contours of art and politics, while also receiving form from them, and potentially destroying such form.

We may examine the quality of this space by way of example. Let us take, for example, the predicate “is performative.” We may suggest that the modern usage of this predicate was added to Danto’s open Artworld matrix in the 1960s, with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Yoko Ono and Allan Kaprow exploring the artistic capacities of live enactments and ‘happenings’. However the concept of performativity would also enter the western frame of the political in the decades following, with texts such as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble published in 1990, critiquing identity politics through poststructuralist influenced ideas of gender performativity. Would it be correct to suggest that the predicate “is performative” or concept of performativity has an original formulation within either artistic or political fields? Or that the usage in each field is unrelated to the other? Or that the Artworld, philosophy or politics of the late twentieth century, can lay authoritative claim to conceptualising the predicate “is performative”? A Derridian formulation may suggest that the term “performative” travels and transitions between domains, self-differentiating through the spacing in between. However, in light of Malabou’s concept of plasticity, might we take a further path to suggest that the

440 Samuel R. Levin, "Aristotle's Theory of Metaphor," Philosophy & Rhetoric 15, no. 1 (1982): 28.

139 emergent visibility of terms such as ‘performative’ in distinct fields of art and politics, reflects the plasticity of a parergonal space for this predicate in-between delineated fields? Let us return to concrete examples. The plasticity of the performative between art and politics can be considered in light of the work of Marina Abramović. Beginning in the 1970s Abramović’s work has been interpreted as both politically disinterested and highly political. The artist herself has presented seemingly conflicting accounts of her position in relation to the two domains, having stated that she is “only interested in the artist who makes the kind of works which changes the way society thinks,”441 yet flatly refusing any association with being a “political artist.”442 Describing her artistic interest as primarily in Body Art, Kristine Stiles draws out “the coextension of [Abramović’s] art with her past”, relating it to her early formation in “a nation (Yugoslavia) where control of the body also required mental submission”.443 The continuum between the social, political and artistic for Abramović was highlighted through her 1975 work Role Exchange, in which the artist swapped positions with an Amsterdam sex-worker, taking the latter’s role in the red-light district while she attended the exhibition opening in Abramović’s place. Stankovic discusses how the work undermines the frame of cultural production by “intermingling the sphere of everyday life with the aloof and autonomous sphere of the museum and gallery”, thereby playing on “the possibility of contaminating the sterile museum world with the dirty facts of everyday life and of incorporating the museum world into everyday experience.”444 However further to this, the work calls up a predicate that moves between artistic and political domains – the status of commodity or an object of trade. As Stankovic suggests, the institutional critique engaged by Role Exchange extends beyond the concerns

441 Marina Abramović and Johan Pijnappel, “Interview with Marina Abramovic, February 1990, Amsterdam” in Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economys’ Gravenhage, SDU, Amsterdam, (1990): 303 as cited in Nevenka Stankovic, "An Institutional Travesty: Risk as a Strategy in Abramović ’s Performance Role Exchange " Third Text 23, no. 5 (2009): 569.

442 Klaus Biesenbach and Abramović, "Klaus Biesenbach in conversation with Marina Abramović," in Marina Abramović, ed. Kristine Stiles, Klaus Eisenbach, and Chrissie Iles (London: Phaidon, 2008), 20. 443 Kristine Stiles, "Survey: Cloud with its Shadow," in Marina Abramović, ed. Kristine Stiles, Klaus Eisenbach, and Chrissie Iles (London: Phaidon, 2008), 34. 444 Stankovic, "An Institutional Travesty: Risk as a Strategy in Abramović ’s Performance Role Exchange " 569.

140 of the artworld and its inhibiting mechanisms of cultural production.445 The circulation of trade as enacted by the work’s performative exchange between museum and red-light district, metabolises the transferences that occur in between fields of everdaylife. The trade in this work gives form to the fragile frames that serve to isolate contemporaneous worlds, such as the world of the red-light district and the high society, which remain ultimately linked through the circulation and substitution of commodities between them. However a more direct enagement with the performative was found in Abramović’s work with long-time artistic collaborator ULAY. Kaiarzyna Michalak notes that despite their differing political upbringings, Abramović being born into the Yugoslavian communist context and ULAY in a German fascist context, they did not emphasise this polarization through their work.446 Rather for Abramović/ULAY their work embodied a “synchronized similitude” in which “[t]hey acted between unity and separation” as figures within supposedly universal oppositions of male and female, east and west.447 One work that engaged with the performativity of these oppositions was Imponderabilia, staged in 1977 in Bologna. Imponderabilia, became iconic for the gendered performativity it compelled from the audience. The two artists stood naked, face-to-face in a narrow doorway. Their position forced gallery visitors to move sideways through the small gap between their bodies, provoking them to decide which nude artist to face as they did so. Through this the work compelled an iteration of the subject’s gender through their movements, demonstrating its performativity in contrast to the supposed “stubbornness” of sexual difference.448 As Stiles notes, “Abramovic/ULAY considered their work a negation ‘of the general idea of man and woman’, in an effort to create ‘a more complicated notion of sexual difference.’” 449 This was highlighted by the work’s title Imponderabilia, as it references the indecidability and indeterminability of gender identity.450 Working as a

445 Ibid., 566. 446 Kaiarzyna Michalak notes the exception to this trend in Abramović/ULAY’s work Communist Body/Capitalist Body, (1979), see Kaiarzyna Michalak, "Performing Life, Living Art: Abramovic/Ulay and KwieKulik," Afterimage 27, no. 3 (1999): 11. 447 Ibid. 448 See Stiles, "Survey: Cloud with its Shadow," 75. 449 Ibid. 450 Ibid.

141 “synchronized similitude” Abramovic/ULAY’s work thus gives form to the non-static iterations of difference in between male and female, highlighting the role of performance in creating and challenging polarized images of sexual identity. However the plasticity of the work Imponderabilia, as it creates a space for the metabolism of gender performativity, should not be considered to rest neatly within the perimeters of the artworld. Rather, like the concept of trade that circulates through Abramovic’s Role Exchange, the idea of gender performativity is self-differentiated through each iteration in between. Butler published her exploration of the complex interlocking contours of a heterosexual matrix implicated in gender performativity thirteen years later, which in turn influenced Queer theorists such as José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam’s criticisms of hetero-normative identity politics.451 R. Anthony Slagle has drawn links between Butler’s thought and 1990s political activism by groups such as Queer Nation, as they collectively subverted and resisted heterosexist norms through methods of cultural spectacle and visibility.452 Today other differentiated iterations of gender performativity emerge through the subversive practices of a range of queer artists, such as Justin Vivian Bond, who armed with new self-assigned terms to articulate their personhood (prefix: mx; pronoun: V; gender: trans or T; full name: Mx Justin Vivian Bond) further metabolise the problems of normativity and expectation that were alluded to in Abramović and ULAY’s 1977 work.

Figure 14 has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Figure 14. Abramović & Ulay, Imponderabilia, 1977, Performance 90 mins, Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna. © Marina Abramović.

451 For a focused reflection on the political relevance of contemporary queer theory, see David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz, "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?," Social Text 23, no. 3-4 (2005). 452 See R. Anthony Slagle, "In defense of queer nation: From identity politics to politics of difference," Western Journal of Communication 59, no. 2 (2009).

142 A historical consideration of these movements may attempt to trace a linear causal relation between distinct instances or forms of performativity, or suggest their spontaneous and unrelated emergence in distinct times and places as coincidence. However in the same way that Malabou rejects the organisation of her “conceptual portrait” as a chronological progression through dialecticism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction, we may instead propose a complex and plastic metabolism of “performativity” in between these distinct instances in art, philosophy and politics. That is to say that despite their temporal and formal spacing from one another, as art works, political and intellectual movements, they emerge as fixed instances within a continuous, self-organising in-between of plasticity. This accounts not only for indeterminate transference but plastic transformation in the singular articulations of “performativity” in each field. The supplementary formation, deformation and explosion of “fixed instances” in the political and artistic fields, depicts the co-implicating and unstable nature of the artistic and political relationship, while also “holding them together.”

Finally, we may consider how this concept of the plastic frame might be useful in approaching works such as Coetzee’s Disgrace, whose divided reception reflects his work’s occuptation of an ambiguous and volatile space in-between art and politics. Coetzee objects to a politically allegorical reading of his work, stating that his stories “may not really be playing the game you call Class Conflict or the game called Male Domination or any of the other games in the games handbook.”453 Coetzee suggests that in pursuing this allegorical reading “[y]ou may have missed not just something, you may have missed everything” rejecting the reduction of his work to a message with an aesthetic covering.454 Wang and Tang consider Coetzee’s mixed reception as a writer who is often regarded among the finest of his generation, but who has simultaneously incited anger, as texts such as Disgrace evade the task of contributing to “to the understanding of the historical

453 Coetzee, "The Novel Today," 4. 454 Ibid.

143 situations in South Africa.”455 The non-allegorical character of Disgrace, which provides no model for future South Africa nor clear message to interpret its history, demands another kind of reading in order to appreciate the ambiguous plastic space it occupies between art and politics. Michiel Heyns suggests “ethical abstractionism and political reductionism may be avoided by considering the novel in terms of its narrative dynamics, as a fictional event comparable to other works of fiction.” 456 We must then pose the question: what kind of fictional event might Disgrace be?457 The lives of the text’s major characters, Lurie and Lucy, are framed by events that merge into a matrix of historical, political and social problems. As Wang and Tang have noted, through the perspective of its principal characters Disgrace touches on the reactions of white South Africans to the social transormations brought about by the end of apartheid. They suggest:

With the fall of apartheid and the all-race elections in 1994 in South Africa, the world of the white South Africans has been turned inside out. Political and social roles have been reversed. Black South Africans have been empowered by the changes and white South Africans have been correspondingly disempowered.458

While the text does not explicitly discuss this transformation, through its principal character we find a continuous degradation of personal volition. As Heyns suggests, “[o]nce Lurie has been expelled from his position, he becomes subject to events over which he has no control, and to which it is difficult to ascribe any kind of rational agency.”459 Spivak suggests that Disgrace presents figures that are “asking for dis-figuration, as figures

455 Min Wang and Xiaoyan Tang, "Disgrace of Stereotypical Ambivalence: A Postcolonial Perspective on J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace," Studies in Literature and Language 5, no. 3 (2012): 49-50. 456 Michiel Heyns, "'Call No Man Happy': Perversity as Narrative Principle Principle in Disgrace," English Studies in Africa 45, no. 1 (2002): 58. 457 Ibid. 458 Wang and Tang, "Disgrace of Stereotypical Ambivalence: A Postcolonial Perspective on J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace," 50.

459 Heyns, "'Call No Man Happy': Perversity as Narrative Principle Principle in Disgrace," 60.

144 must,”460 Lurie’s agency and dignity being gradually dissipated by the plastic, self- organising space that surrounds him, bringing him closer to the dogs to which he tends. Yet while this character is plastically formed and deformed by the metabolism of socio-political change, the text also contains glimpses of plastic resistance. This is exemplified in Lucy’s response to a violent attack upon her. Stating that the attack has “nothing to do [with her father]”, she explains, “as far as [she is] concerned, what happened to [her] is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is [her] business, [hers] alone.”461 Lucy recognises the plasticity of the frame through which she constitutes her experience “in [that] place, at [that] time”, acknowledging its conditionality upon the constitutive circumstances of life in rural post-apartheid South Africa. In this passage Lucy seeks to form and frame her own experience, thereby excluding her father’s attempts to constitute the event. As Lurie identifies that “[n]ever yet have they been so far and so bitterly apart,”462 his continuing disgrace unfolds in relation to his impotence to resist the violent framing of his and his daughter’s singular experiences by complex and unstable forces. A story that depicts powerlessness and figural deformation, Disgrace puts forth images that inhabit a plastic space in-between the personal and the historic, shaping and distorting the fronteirs between art and politics. In resistance to an allegorical reading of Coetzee’s work that may “miss everything” by reducing it to a composition that signifies political ideas or issues, a reading of this text in view of the plastic frame that constitutes both artistic and political fields positions Coetzee’s work within a vital space of self-organising plasticity.

Conclusion

In this chapter we zoomed-in on the formal qualities of a space through which the distinct contours of art and the political are formed and connected. Singular faces of the problem emerged and transformed as we increasingly closed-in on the parergonal space, leading us

460 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching," Diacritics 32, no. 3/4 (2002): 21. 461 J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London: Vintage Books, (1999) 2000). 112. 462 Ibid.

145 to a conceptualisation of the in-between as a self-organising frame that both takes and endows form. The investigation began with an examination of Derrida’s quasi-concept of the parergon, as articulated in his text The Truth in Painting. Through this we identified the frame’s definitive capacities for self-effacement and violent formal constitution, albeit from a quasi-external, supplementary position. The concept of the frame’s applicability to the constitutive structure of the artistic and political domains was then considered, firstly in relation to Danto’s discussions in Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Artworld, and then with respect to the political frames of Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political, Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Truth of Democracy and Jacques Derrida’s Politics of Friendship. In this we reaffirmed the force of open supplementary parerga in these diverse accounts of how to identify art objects, political concerns and prerogatives. The second part of this chapter framed the face of this relationship even more tightly, as we looked closely at the activity-of-form that arises in the artistic and political relationship. With the image of transferences between art and politics in mind we turned to a trope that has a long configured semiotic slippages between distinct fields. Referencing Derrida’s critique of the Aristotelian trope in White Mythology and Danto’s thought in Transfiguration of the Commonplace, we illustrated how the transfers and rhetorical gaps of metaphor steer it away from reductive readings, linking it rather to the supplementary force of the open frame. We engaged in one last reconceptualisation of the parergonal space considering Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. In this we found a concept of formal self-organisation that returned us to the formal powers of the parergon, as it endows distinct form to both the artistic and the political fields it delineates, while also receiving form from them. Conceptualising the continuity between these fields as a self-organising plastic space through which distinct “instances” or articulations emerge, we were able to reconcile the indiscernibility and instability of artistic and political relations, within their distinct co- implication. In the wake of this analysis, we find an opening onto another field of analysis. At the end of his review of Malabou’s text Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, John Protevi asks:

146 “What of Deleuze and "a new materialism"? What would happen if we engage philosophers other than HHD? Would plasticity still hold as the motor scheme for Deleuze?” 463 Protevi picks up on the potentially interesting reading that could be pursued between these thinkers in light of Malabou’s declaration that “[she does] not believe in the absence of form or in a possible beyond of form any more than [she believes] in transcendence or the absence of negativity…”464 and Deleuze’s commitment to a positivist “New Materialism.” This potential resonance of their thought can be further seen in Deleuze’s resistance to understanding metaphor as a mere effect of syntactical transference, Paul Patton explaining how for Deleuze this “suggestive transference” is better understood as “a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue.”465 The creativity of this event that forces the stammering of language itself, leads to the conclusion that “[i]t is never a matter of metaphor” but new combinations that form or deform, deterritorialise and reterritorialise a vital plane of becoming.466 Proceeding now in light of Malabou’s notion of self-organising plasticity, the next chapter will consider how the plastic force in-between art and politics may be further elaborated in view of Deleuze, Bergson and Nancy’s concepts of complex and creative impetus.

463 John Protevi, "Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction [Review]," http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24301-plasticity-at-the-dusk-of-writing-dialectic-destruction-deconstruction/. 464 Malabou, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 49. “Pas plus qu’à la transcendance, pas pas plus qu’à l’absence de négativité, je ne crois à l’absence de forme ou à un au-delà possible de la forme.” ———, La plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, déconstruction: 93. 465 Paul Patton, "Strange Proximity: Deleuze et Derrida dans les parages du concept," Oxford Literary Review 18(1997): 5. 466 ibid., 3.

147

CHAPTER THREE

FOLDS: The In-Between within a Complex Continuum

Introduction: Complex Plasticity

In the previous chapter we elaborated an image of the plastic parergon in light of Derrida and Malabou’s thought, emphasising its unstable capacity to receive and give form to art and the political. Through this we reconceptualised the indefinite and complicated space between art and politics that emerged through Chapter One’s analysis of ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake’. Malabou’s concept of plasticity provided a means to envisage an unstable self-organising parergonal space in between distinct but complicated artistic and political fields. Though the previous chapter’s close-up of the artistic and political in-between illuminated the plastic quality of the transferences and transformations between art and politics, this image when taken on its own, has limitations. By tightly framing our focus on the in-between, we risk reducing the complexity of artistic and political interactions to a form of dialecticism. While this close-up reveals the dynamic transformation between two fixed instances, we may now consider how the relationship between art and politics arises within a broader system of differential relations. This chapter is thus primarily ontological in interest, as it considers how the interstitial plasticity of art and politics may be opened to infinite potential metamorphoses, through the development of an image of a broader plastic and complex continuum within which the artistic and political in-between can be resituated. In order to frame and develop this image of a complex and plastic continuum, the current chapter will ‘cross-cut’ the analyses of four thinkers, thereby constructing a space of artistic and political relation fragment by fragment.467 The first shot to be cross-cut, will be taken from Deleuze’s discussions in The Fold. As a development from Leibniz’s monadology, Deleuze’s image conceptualises productive differentiation within continuity.

467 This image of spatial construction is developed from Deleuze’s description of Bresson’s manner of constructing a fragmented space through a series of continuity shots in Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc. For a more detailed account of the precise technique of montage, see Deleuze, Cinéma 1 : L'image-mouvement: 153.

148 This will prove essential to understanding the singularity of the in-between of art and politics, within the context of a continuum of variations. The differential quality of the fold will then lead to our second ‘cut’, in which we engage in an intensive reading of Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Gilles Deleuze’s discussions of art. The image of their shared fold will illuminate how differential and destructively plastic intervals function at the heart of the artistic and political relation. Through this, we will be able to account for the complexity of artistic-political relations within continuity. We will then consider how the differential force of the in-between may be an articulation of an underlying complexifying movement and unfolding of events, constructing this image through the cross-cutting of Henri Bergson’s explosive élan vital and Brian Massumi’s image of interstitially conditioned events. Through this we may see plasticity’s destruction of form in response to the accident, as key to the indetermined and infinite transformations it enables. Our final cut will contain a reflection upon how to re-situate the artistic-political relationship, following the complex image of the unfolding plastic continuum we have constructed. We will do so in light of Malabou’s image of the plastic brain. Through these discussions we will not only compose a complex ontological landscape into which we may situate the differential and plastic artistic and political in-between, but we will further enrich our understanding of the micro- politics of artistic events.

Plastic Frame to Plastic Fold

The Plasticity of Deleuzian Folds

In the previous chapter we ended with a consideration of how self-differentiating plasticity may account for the intermingled and unstable distinction between art and politics. By positing a self-organising “activity-of-form” in-between the “fixed instances” of the fields of art and politics, so did we invoke a sense of the continuous, albeit dynamic and transforming interval that shapes each field. But does this image limit our ability to conceptualise plasticity beyond these fields? Malabou suggests that “[p]lasticity designates

149 the form of a world without any exteriority,”468 implying the inability to contain the plasticity that forms art and politics from further plastic relations of life. With this in mind we are obliged to re-situate and thereby transform our image of the artistic and political parergon, so as to account for its singularity within a continuous plastic life without exteriority. In order to do so we may turn to Deleuze’s image of the fold. As a development from Leibniz’s monadology, Deleuze’s image of the fold will be shown to conceptualise productive differentiation within continuity, in a way that addresses the unstable and complicated plasticity between art and politics, while opening it to a plenitude of variations. In “Algebras, Geometries and Topologies of the Fold”, Arkady Plotnitsky considers how the topological model of Riemann’s differential manifold shapes Deleuze’s spatial vision of ontological continuity.469 Louise Burchill considers the complex topology of Deleuze’s continuum, suggesting that his designations of an “ideal or metaphysical surface” (The Logic of Sense), a “plane of consistency” (A Thousand Plateaus) the “intensive spatium” (Difference and Repetition), and “Plane of Immanence” (What is Philosophy?), may be read to “accentuate[s] different aspects of the continuum so designated.”470 Deleuze and Guattari would see the Riemannian manifold as marking the end of dialectics,471 and movement towards a new model of conceptualising difference. The complexity of the continuous spatium was articulated by Deleuze at numerous reprieves, however we find a direct engagement with the topological form of difference that resonates with the concept of plasticity in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Deleuze considers how the Baroque provided a model of architecture, art and thought, in which the separation and interaction of distinct levels was enabled by the form of the fold. For Deleuze, Leibniz exemplifies such Baroque thought of the fold.

468 For this particular quotation, see the Afterword to the english edition of Malabou, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: 67. 469 Arkady Plotnitsky, "Algebras, Geometries and Topologies of the Fold: Deleuze, Derrida and Quasi- Mathematical Thinking (with Leibniz and Mallarmé," in Between Deleuze and Derrida, ed. Paul Patton and John Protevi (London; New York: Continuum, 2003). 470 Louise Burchill, "The Topology of Deleuze's Spatium," Philosophy Today 51(2007): 154. 471 Plotnitsky, "Algebras, Geometries and Topologies of the Fold: Deleuze, Derrida and Quasi-Mathematical Thinking (with Leibniz and Mallarmé," 101.

150 Deleuze began his Leibniz seminar at Vincennes in 1980 by declaring, “I want to present this author and to have you love him, to incite in you a sort of desire to read his works.”472 Pointing to a “kind of madness in Leibniz’s universe,”473 Deleuze describes the abundance of “dishevelled” and “exuberant” concepts created by the philosopher.474 The plenitude of Leibniz’s universe can be found not only in his modal conception of the universe that includes “an infinitude of possible worlds” where “all conditional futurities must be comprised,”475 but also in his understanding of the actual world of substance. Alan Hart describes how for Leibniz, “absolutely infinite substance creates an infinitude of other substances,”476 while a complete concept of this substance implies an infinite number of 477 attributes, emphasizing the character of the Leibnizian universe as both “bountiful” and “infinitely plural.”478 Along with this quality of plurality, the world and universe would also be discussed in relation to the problem of continuity - Leibniz’s principle of continuity finding articulation in his metaphysical and mathematical writings. It is from Leibniz’s discussions of the metaphysical and mathematical problem of the continuum that one might see The Fold gathering inspiration, as Deleuze turns to a geometrical image of the fold to consider the problem of variance within the continuous curvilinear surface of his spatium. Deleuze’s consideration of the figure of the fold in relation to Leibniz’s thought can be considered an interesting elaboration, as the question of the existence of actual distinct forms within the philosopher’s monadic plenum has been a topic of debate among certain Leibnizian scholars. Timothy Crockett suggests that during

472 Gilles Deleuze and Charles J. Stivale, "Vincennes Session of April 15, 1980, Leibniz Seminar," Discourse 20:3, no. Gilles Deleuze: A reason to Believe in this World (1998): 77.“Mon but est très simple: pour ceux qui ne le connaissent pas du tout, essayer d’avancer, de vous faire aimer cet auteur, et de vous donner une espèce d’envie de le lire.” Gilles Deleuze, "Leibniz, Cours Vincennes, 15 Avril 1980," (Le Centre universitaire de Vincennes, 1980), 1. 473 Deleuze and Stivale, "Vincennes Session of April 15, 1980, Leibniz Seminar," 86. “Je voudrais vous faire sentir cette présence d’une espèce de folie conceptuelle dans cet univers de Leibniz tel qu’on va le voir naître.” Deleuze, "Leibniz, Cours Vincennes, 15 Avril 1980," 11. 474 Deleuze and Stivale, "Vincennes Session of April 15, 1980, Leibniz Seminar," 80. “Des concepts échevelés, les concepts les plus exubérants…” Deleuze, "Leibniz, Cours Vincennes, 15 Avril 1980," 4. 475 G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, trans. E.M. Huggard (Illinois: Open Court, 2005). 146. 476 Alan Hart, "Leibniz on Spinoza's Concept of Substance," Studia Leibnitiana 14, no. 1 (1982): 79. 477 Ibid., 83. 478 Ibid., 79.

151 the 1680s Leibniz put forward an argument suggesting that due to the infinite complexity that any shape within the plenum would necessarily bear, we cannot consider there to be any actual distinct shapes within this continuum.479 In his analysis Crockett clarifies that for Leibniz our perception of form or shape in the world is therefore the product of “something imaginary and relative to our perception.”480 We might suggest then that perspective according to Leibniz, as the point of our relative perception, marks the plastic moment of endowing form to the complex and continuous plenum. This considered, Deleuze discusses the possibility of this plasticity, by giving it a figural form itself. Deleuze provides us with an image of Baroque plasticity that enables singularity within a continuous surface through the figure of the fold. Through the geometric particularity of the figure of the fold, Deleuze gives form or renders visible features of Leibniz’s understanding of variance and continuity. Simon Duffy considers Deleuze’s complex application of projective geometry in The Fold, as he revisits the Leibnizian model of divergence or convergence of series to reconsider the problem of continuity despite variance. Projective continuity concerns the compossibility or incompossibility between singularities on a curve. 481 Singularities, in mathematical terms, refer to points of articulation on “complex curves or figures” where “the shape of the curve changes or alters its behaviour.”482 The singularity can thus be visualized in terms of a point of inflection on a continuous surface, which is accompanied by ‘regular’ or ‘ordinary’ points that mark the smooth continuous surface. The image of singularities or points of inflexion within the curve thus articulates Deleuze’s understanding of “the abstract figure of the event.”483 Duffy explains that compossibility of singularities exists where a series of regular or “ordinary” points derived from two distinct singularities, have their values coincide.484 This geometric articulation of an event of distinction within a continuous

479 Timothy Crockett, "The Fluid Plenum: Leibniz on Surfaces and the Individuation of Body," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17, no. 4 (2009).(Timothy Crockett, p. 735) 480 .” (Timothy Crockett, p. 735) 481 Simon Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 15, no. 2 (2010): 140. 482 Ibid., 135. 483 Ibid., 137. 484 Ibid., 140.

152 surface, will build the conceptual foundation from which Deleuze defines the world as “the infinite curve that touches at an infinity of points an infinity of curves, the curve with a unique variable, the convergent series of all series.”485 In this, the world is defined by its continuity or the compossibility of singular points.486 From this diagrammatic consideration of continuity and variance, Deleuze will explore the problem of divergence in relation to the compossibility of distinct perspectives (or points of view) within a continuous world. Deleuze alludes to plastic capacities of perspective to create distinction, as he suggests that Leibnizian perspectival relativism concerns not “a variation of truth according to the subject, but the condition in which the truth of a variation appears to the subject.”487 Duffy articulates how “Deleuze considers the explanation of point of view to be mathematical or geometrical, rather than psychological.”488 In this, he links variance in point of view to the geometric problem of perspective, associating such relativism to the Baroque period’s artistic exploration of perspective. Baroque painting would see the mastering of trompe l’oeil, exemplified by Andrea Pozzo’s ‘False Dome’ in the Church of St Ignatius of Loyola in Rome. Operating through an “impeccable” understanding of the conditioning of spatial perception through ‘point of view’, Michele Emmer would describe the Jesuit Brother Pozzo’s frescos as a form of “fictive architecture.”489 The powerful plasticity of Pozzo’s work as it models space and form from a flat surface is explained by Emmer, as she describes the artist’s meticulous exactitude in imposing a “single observation point” within his paintings, which express “marginal deformations to their extreme consequences.”490 Such techniques are outlined in Pozzo’s instructional text Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum, in which he

485 Gilles Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 24. « la courbe infinie qui touche en une infinité de points une infinité de courbes, la courbe à variable unique, la série convergente de toutes les séries. » ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque, Collection "Critique" (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1988). 34. 486 Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " 140. 487 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 20. “Ce n’est pas une variation de la verité d’après le sujet, mais la condition sous laquelle apparait au sujet la verité d’une variation.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 27. 488 Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " 140. 489 Michele Emmer, Imagine Math: Between Culture and Mathematics (Milano: Springer Milan, 2012). 23. 490 Ibid., 25.

153 takes a highly scientific and mathematically structured approach to the creation of his spatial illusions and also recommends this to others.

Figure 15. Andrea Pozzo, 'Falsa Cupola', 1685, 13m diameter, Chiesa di S. Ignazio di Loyola a Roma. Artwork in the public domain.

The link between the Baroque application of singular perspective and the depiction of a life-like worldly continuity in painting resonates with Deleuze’s discussion of singularity and continuity through projective geometry. To discuss the relationship between point of view, variation and continuity Deleuze turns to the projective figure of the cone, where “the point of the cone is the point of view to which the circle, the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola are related as so many variants that follow the incline of the section that is planned…”491 The conical summit, as the “condition under which we apprehend the group

491 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 20-21. “…la pointe du cône est le point de vue auquel on rapporte le cercle, l’ellipse, la parabole, l’hyperbole, et même la droite et le point, comme autant de variants d’après l’inclinaison du plan de coupe.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 28-9.

154 of varied forms or the series of curves’’492 is described by Deleuze as “an unfolding” and an “invariant of transformation.”493 The point from which variation is apprehended, the point of view, exemplified through the image of the cone, does not express “the infinite series of predicates or states of the world included in the monad.”494 Rather, as Duffy highlights, a “point of view only projects onto the neighbourhood of a single inflection or singularity.”495 Deleuze thus describes point of view in the following terms: “It is not exactly a point but a place, a position, a site, a linear focus, a line emanating from lines.”496 In this, Deleuze’s description resembles the concept of the “visual cone” applied in manipulations of the perspectival grid. This projective image of singular perspective will be reiterated in Deleuze’s lectures on Leibniz, as he describes point of view as “a kind of projector that, in the buzz of the obscure and confused world, keeps a limited zone of clear and distinct expression.”497 This perspectival zone of clarity is not enough, however, to constitute an individual in the continuous spatium. Rather, to further respond to this problem, Deleuze develops a concept of the individuated subject as a ‘‘concentration, accumulation, coincidence of a certain number of converging pre-individual singularities.’’498 Duffy describes Deleuze’s subject as occupying a “simple, indivisible, and dimensionless”, “metaphysical point”, that marks the coincidence or condensation of compossible, or convergent, points of view.499 In

492 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 24. « …le sommet du cône, est la condition sous laquelle on saisit l’ensemble de la variation des formes ou la série des courbes… » ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 34. 493 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 21. « un dépli…un invariant de transformation” Deleuze, Le Pli, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988, p. 29 494 Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " 141. 495 Ibid. 496 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 19. “Ce n’est pas exactement un point, mais un lieu, une position, un site, un « foyer linéaire », ligne issue de lignes.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 27-8. 497 Deleuze and Stivale, "Vincennes Session of April 15, 1980, Leibniz Seminar," 94. “Ce qui définit mon point de vue, c’est comme une espèce de projecteur qui, dans la rumeur du monde obscur et confus, garde une zone limitée d’expression claire et distincte.” Deleuze, "Leibniz, Cours Vincennes, 15 Avril 1980," 18. 498 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 63. « …concentration, accumulation, coïncidence d’un certain nombre de singularités pré-individuelles convergentes… » ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 85. 499Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " 141.

155 view of the monadic structure of this metaphysical point, Duffy explains the multiple and singular quality of this pre-subjective metaphysical point, as “[t]he finite portion of the world that the individual subject expresses clearly is actually constituted by a small number of the points of view of convergent inflections that represent the principal singularities or primary predicates of the monad.”500 Tom Conley highlights how “In Le pli and elsewhere the multiple and the singular are applied as standard measures of consciousness and immanence, of our feeling of and our knowledge about where we are in the Tout, the world at large.”501 Thus in light of Leibniz’s thought, Deleuze suggests every individual “expresses the same world in its totality although it only clearly expresses a part of this world, a series or even a finite sequence.”502 The implied image of the individuated subject in The Fold may thus be considered to build upon Deleuze’s discussion of the individual in Difference and Repetition in which he invokes the “floating and fluid character of individuality” that is endowed with “fringes and margins” which are enveloped by and envelope other intensities. 503 Yet having recognised the complex constitution of the individual as a condensation and coincidence of singularities or points of view within a continuous spatium, one must return to the Leibnizian question of how distinct forms can be considered to exist within the complex, monadic plenum. In order to remain within a field of continuity, Deleuze suggests, “divisions are not lacunae or ruptures of continuity; on the contrary, they divide continuity in such a fashion that there can be no holes… ”504 In this, the singularities that

500Ibid. (Simon Duffy (2010): Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 15:2, p. 141 – 142) 501Tom Conley, “From Multiplicites to Folds: On Style and Form in Deleuze”, The South Atlanic Quarterly; Summer 1997; 96, 3: ProQuest Central, p. 643) 502 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 60. “Aussi chaque individu, chaque monade individuelle exprime-t-elle le même monde dans son ensemble, bien qu’elle n’exprime clairement qu’une partie de ce monde, une série ou même une séquence finie.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 80. 503 ———, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: The Althone Press, 1994). 257-8. « On a souvent signalé la frange d’indétermination dont jouissait l’individu, et le caractere relatif, flottant et fluent de l’individualité même …” ———, Différence et Répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). 332. 504 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 65. “…les coupures ne sont pas des lacunes ou ruptures de continuité, elles répartissent au contraire le continu de telle façon qu’il n’y ait pas de lacune…” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 88.

156 cause the inflexions of point of view, which in turn condense or coincide to form the individual, cannot be considered breaks or independent bodies within a continuous plenum. Rather, through a reconceptualisation of Leibniz’s monadology, Deleuze proposes an abundance of compossible singular folds within a continuous curvilinear surface, each being a singular determination of the entire fabric through which the infinite whole comes to be. 505 Furthermore, the universal unity of these folds is not static or defined, but through complex movements “the multiple is inseparable from the fold that it makes when it is enveloped, and of unfoldings when it is developed.”506 Enabling the complex compossibility of singular yet complicated perspectives within a continuous world, the univocal fabric depicted by Deleuze resembles a labyrinth folded into a multiplicity of parts in a multiplicity of ways,507 or an origami figure created through an infinite process of folding and unfolding.508 The plastic and expressive quality of the folding and unfolding monad is thus highlighted by Deleuze when he states: “[t]he monad produces accords that are made and are undone, and yet that have neither beginning nor end, that are transformed each into the other or into themselves, and that tend toward a resolution or a modulation.”509 The spontaneous self-organisation of the monad, as it forms and deforms while being formed and deformed by a multiplicity of pleats within a united fabric may thus reflect a self-differentiating movement of plasticity, which rather than being confined to a dialectic emergence of the subject from substance, envisages an indetermined plenitude of transformation. With this in mind, how might we reconceptualise the plasticity in between art and politics in light of the plenitude and abundance of the forms it may produce? Through the concept of the plastic frame we posited a supplementary formative space in between the

505———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 35. 506 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 23. “…le multiple est inséparable des plis qu’il fait quand il est enveloppé, et des déplis, quand il est développé.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 33. 507 ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 5-6 508 Ibid., 10. 509 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 132. “…la monade produit des accords qui se font et se défont, et pourtant n’ont ni commencement ni fin, se transfornent les uns dans les autres ou en eux-mêmes, et tendent vers une résolution, ou une modulation.” — ——, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque.

157 fields of art and politics. This enabled us to openly frame the relationship between, for example, the gendered social performativity conditioned by the artists of Imponderabilia and the place of gender performativity within the spectacular political activism of Queer Nation.510 The parergonal space between these articulations was the source of their formal distinction, its continuity maintaining the interactions of these fields. Yet this image does not address how the artistic and political relationship might fit within a broader space of plastic life. But now, in light of Deleuze’s discussion of the folded monadic continuum, we may reconceptualise the concept of the plastic parerga as an inflection within an elaborate labyrinth of unfolding relations. Niamh McDonnell emphasises how for Deleuze, “the world is included in the monad and does not exist outside of its expression,”511 this infinite envelopment echoing an earlier statement cited from Malabou regarding the inability to move beyond plasticity. The fold is the form that articulates a singular divergence from continuity that expresses the whole. Recalling the previous chapter’s reading of Coetzee’s Disgrace, we may see the figures and events expressed in the novel as singular folds that, like the Baroque exploitation of singular perspective, shed a clear and distinct light upon a limited zone within an obscure monadic world. Similarly we might say that Abramović and ULAY’s work Imponderabilia gives form to a ‘finite portion of the world’ that is constituted through the condensation of a number of points of view, thereby expressing the monadic whole while remaining singular. As singular folds within a plastic ever unfolding and re-folding continuum, each work and event is a singularity that expresses the whole. This whole may thus be reimagined as a complex and transforming plasticity, that through its “activity-of-form” produces an infinity of distinct but co-implicating folds. The formal monstrosity implied by this infinitely folding and unfolding plenum might be further related to the Baroque aesthetic considered by Helen Hill. Described by Quatremère de Quincy, as ‘bizzarerie,’512 Hill highlights how the Baroque aesthetic was perceived as

510 SeeSlagle, "In defense of queer nation: From identity politics to politics of difference." 511Niamh McDonnell, "Deleuze's Theory of Singularity and the Matter of Leibnizian Differential," (London: Goldsmiths, University of London, 2010), 2. 512 Helen Hills, "The Baroque : Beads in a Rosary or Folds of Time," Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 17, no. 2 (2007): 50.

158 defective malformation “not susceptible to reformation.”513 In this respect, we may propose that the Baroque is associated with a bizarre effect of plasticity to produce “monster[s] whose apparition[s] cannot be explained as any genetic anomaly.”514 The complex self-organising movement of this ‘bizarre’ monadic and plastic continuum can also be reconceptualised as a vast topology of transforming folds. Louise Burchill argues that in Deleuze’s early writing on structuralism we see his topological mapping of relations of difference, through which he would conjure a non-extensive image of “a space of co-existence, articulated by a system of differences” that operated as relations of “reciprocal determination” between singularities.515 Within such a model of relations the reciprocal determination of elements challenges any possible conception of independence within the field, it being characterised as an intrinsically defining multiplicity.516 This challenges the structural independence of the parergon as described by Derrida in Truth in Painting,517 bringing us closer to a reconceptualised figure of the unstable, thick and supplementary parergon as a plastic interval in between folds. Rajchman invokes the volatility of these in-between spaces, stating, “[m]ultiplicity thus involves a peculiar type of complexity – a complexity in divergence – where it is not a matter of finding the unity of manifold but, on the contrary, of seeing unity only as a holding together of a prior or virtual dispersion.”518 With this in mind, how might we conceptualise the creative capacities of the plastic fold, as an interval of differentiation?

513 Ibid. 514 Catherine Malabou, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity, trans. Carolyn Shread (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012). 2. 515 Burchill, "The Topology of Deleuze's Spatium," 154. 516 Ibid. 517 Derrida, La vérité en peinture: 63 - 4. 518 Rajchman, Constructions: 15 - 6.

159 Differential Plasticity in between Art and Politics

Differential Intervals: Nancy and Deleuze

Through the concept of the infinitely folding and unfolding plenum, we gain an image of relations in transformation as singularities diverge while continuing to express the whole. The tension between a multiplicity of divergences and continuity means that a concept of simple linear-causality in between fields such as art and politics is inadequate, as their singularity emerges in divergence. Simon Duffy highlights how Deleuze reconceptualises Leibniz’s “incompossibility” in terms of divergence,519 Deleuze describing it as “an original relation irreducible to any form of contradiction” reflecting “difference not a negation.”520 Accepting this, how might we elaborate upon such an original relationship of difference, or differential relationship, in order to better understand the place of the in- between of art in politics within the folded continuum? We will consider this by looking to the diverging fold of thought between Nancy and Deleuze, as their differential relationship produces a space through which the differential interval in between art and politics can be reformulated.

In his 1996 text The Fold of Deleuzian Thought, Nancy approached the shared space between his thought and that of Deleuze. Acknowledging a similar inclination and bent in their thought as “contemporaries”,521 Nancy also recognises their divergence as Deleuze inherits much from the unfamiliar fold of Bergson and Sartre, rather than Nancy’s Hegel and Heidegger. Patton describes a similar difference in philosophical orientation between Derrida and Deleuze who, despite pursuing convergent theses, diverge in their argumentative trajectories due to their distinct philosophical affiliations.522 Nancy would later consider this relationship between Derridian and Deleuzian thought in “Les

519 Duffy, "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold " 139. 520 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 150. “[L]’incompossible est chez Leibniz une relation originale irréductible à toute forme de contradiction. C’est une différence et non une négation.” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque. 521 Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Deleuzian Fold of Thought," in Deleuze: a critical reader, ed. Paul Patton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 107-8. 522 Patton, "Strange Proximity: Deleuze et Derrida dans les parages du concept," 1.

160 Différences parallèles Deleuze et Derrida”, emphasising the tension between the space that these thinkers share and their divergent approaches. Nancy states: “Deleuze and Derrida share. They share absolutely. To (re)start: they take part together and each take their part. They participate, depart again or separate.”523 Nancy’s description of the ‘sharing-out’ that takes place between Deleuze and Derrida can be considered in relation to their common concern with difference.524 Indeed both Derrida and Deleuze engage in a different thinking of difference, which differing from the common subjection of difference to identity, challenged dominant regimes of thought.525 This considered, what might be the singular point of inflection from which the trajectories of Deleuze and Derrida diverge? Nancy points to the role of the negative within their thought, as it guides their divergent conceptualisations of the self and sense. In relation to the self, Nancy highlights how for Derrida the self is given and lost in the deferring of difference; while for Deleuze the self is given with and as difference.526 With respect to sense, Nancy suggests, “[t]he gap opens here: on one side meaning relies on differentiation, on the other meaning vanishes into it,” identifying the former with Deleuze’s flourishing of sense and the latter with the Derridian self-annihilation of sense as a promise that can never be fulfilled. 527 Nancy formulated the divergence between his thought and that of Deleuze in similar terms years prior, stating:

523 My translation. « Deleuze et Derrida se partagent. Ils se partagent absolument, pour (re)commencer : c’est-à-dire qu’ils prennent part ensemble et qu’ils prennent chacun leur part. Ils participent et ils répartissent ou ils départagent” Jean-Luc Nancy, "Les Différences parallèles Deleuze et Derrida," in Deleuze épars, ed. André Bernold and Richard Pinas (Paris: Hermann Editeurs, 2005), 8. 524 Ibid., 7. 525 Ibid., 8. 526 Ibid., 13. 527 My translation. « …l’écart se creuse ainsi : d’un cote, le sens s’autorise de la différenciation, de l’autre, le sens s’annule en elle. » ibid.

161 Without a doubt the incision of the fold, the folding itself in so far as it divides between the two veins of philosophy, is related to negativity: either the negative has the simple plenitude of chaos, or it hollows out being’s lack of itself.528

Despite the distance that the function of the negative places between Nancy and Deleuze’s thought as the axis of their diverging pleat within a complex continuum, we must consider how this incompossibility may be considered, in fact, an original relation of difference between Nancy and Deleuze. Indeed we may further question whether it is through this differential interval in between their thought that we may reformulate the plural and plastic force of the arts. We may begin by seeing how the negative unfolds within both Nancy and Deleuze’s discussions of the arts. Nancy considers how the arts are unified, primarily, in their position as technics, practices or savoir-faires to produce what cannot produce itself by itself.529 Nancy suggests that this condition of groundlessness provokes the directive question of the arts, as practices that seek to uncover how to produce “the ground that does not produce itself.”530 However in doing so, technics are related to a form of spacing or deferral themselves, as they mark a “delay between the producer and the produced, and thus between the producer and him- or herself.”531 In this, technics conjure the deferred presence of a never fully accomplished producer and production. Having already begun from a natural lack of ground, Nancy will suggest that the domain of technics is thus “the obsolescence of the origin and the end.”532 This is seen as technics link endlessly to other

528———, "The Deleuzian Fold of Thought," 112. 529 ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," in Les Muses, La philosophie en effet (Paris: Galilée, 1994), 49. 530 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," in The Muses, Meridian : Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 26. « … Comment produire le fond, qui ne se produit pas lui-même, telle serait la question de l’art – et telle est sa pluralité d’origine » ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 51. 531———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 25. « La technique est un écart et un délai, peut-être infini, du producteur au produit, et ainsi du producteur à lui- même. » ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 49. 532 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 26. « …la technique est la déshérence de l’origine et de la fin… » ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ."

162 technics, art as technics thus experiencing itself as the devastation of the ground. For Nancy, it is this groundlessness that serves as the origin of the plurality of the arts.533 The link between an original groundlessness and the plurality of artistic production is further formulated in Nancy’s text Painting in the Grotto. Nancy considers the heterogenesis of the work of art through the intentional act of pre-historic man or animal monstrans, who reaching into the dark of a formless and “monstrous” world shows himself showing.534 William Brown highlights how this formulation of ‘monstration’ or showing by Nancy, associates the image with the visualisation of “a force that enables change, or affect.”535 For Nancy, the “traced figure” of Art has from the beginning been an opening or spacing through which man and the world emerge, describing it as an “event of all presence in its absolute strangeness.”536 The inexhaustible retracing of the figure in Art, which differs in every iteration, is depicted by Nancy as the on-going configuration of an absence of figure.537 It is thus from the negative lack of a “vanishing sense of [their] own presence in the world”538 that the irreducible singular plurality of the arts emerges, as “Art is but an immense tradition of the invention of the arts, of the birth of endless forms of knowledge. For what is properly monstrous, the monstrosity of the proper, is that there is no end to the finiteness of the figure.”539 We thus find within Nancy’s discussions of art the central place of a “hollowing-out” of presence, as it is in response to this function of the negative that the arts continue to unfold. In this sense, a negativity of form is at the heart of its monstrous and infinite plastic unfolding.

533 ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 51. 534 ———, "Peinture dans la grotte," 122-3. 535 William Brown, "Monstrous cinema," New Review of Film and Television Studies 10, no. 4 (2012): 410. 536 Nancy, "Painting in the Grotto," 70. “La figure tracée est cette ouverture même, l’espacement par lequel l’homme est mis au monde, et par lequel le monde lui-même est un monde: l’événement de toute la présence dans son étrangeté absolue.” ———, "Peinture dans la grotte," 122. 537 ———, "Peinture dans la grotte," 132. 538 ———, "Painting in the Grotto," 79. “…l’évanouissement de sens de sa propre présence au monde.” ———, "Peinture dans la grotte," 132. 539 ———, "Painting in the Grotto," 71. « L’art n’est qu’une immense tradition de l’invention des arts, de la naissance des savoirs sans fin. Car ce qui est proprement monstrueux, la monstruosité du propre, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de fin au fini de la figure.” —— —, "Peinture dans la grotte," 123.

163 In contrast to this, in Difference and Repetition Deleuze rejects the role of the negative in the production of difference, such as it has been conceived through the dialectic tradition. While the pervasive Hegelian dialectic, (of which we can see traces in Nancy’s thought) would see the negative as an active force within the synthesis and resolution of problems, Deleuze proposes a number of challenges to this thought. He does so at one point through a consideration of the ‘problem’ within Plato’s dialectic model of philosophical argument. Deleuze recalls Plato’s dialectic as proceeding by ‘problems’ through which a pure grounding principle may be attained.540 The role of the ‘problem’ in the dialectical unfolding appears similar to that of the ‘negative’ within Hegel’s dialectic. However, Deleuze emphasises the distinction between these dialectic models, as the Platonic problem expresses a ‘non’, which is “something other than the negative.”541 For Deleuze this dispelling of the negative will not follow the common path of equally rejecting non-being. For him, “[p]roblematic structure is part of objects themselves” as though there were an “opening, a gap’, an ontological ‘fold’ which relates being and the question to one another.”542 In this, non-being is considering the being of the problematic, rather than the being of the negative.543 Thus Deleuze reconceptualises the negative through the idea of the non-, as a kind of being, albeit a non-being. Deleuze also distances himself from the annihilating sense of the negative in Hegel’s dialectic through a reconceptualisation of ‘the void’ that would ordinarily be associated with ‘negative space.’ We encounter the use of the term ‘the void’ in What is Philosophy? as Deleuze and Guattari define the chaos that philosophy, science and art must traverse, and that art must work with in order to resist cliché. Recalling the plenitude of

540 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition: 88. 541 ———, Difference and Repetition: 63. “”Le ‘non’, dans l’expression ‘non-être’, exprime quelque chose d’autre que le négatif.” ———, Différence et Répétition: 88. 542 ———, Difference and Repetition: 64. “Il y a comme une “ouverture”, une “béance”, un “pli” ontologique qui rapporte l’être et la question l’un à l’autre.” ———, Différence et Répétition: 89. 543 ———, Différence et Répétition: 89.

164 Descartes ‘aether’,544 Deleuze describes the void of chaos as a virtual space rather than a nothingness, containing all possible forms and particles in a state of inconsistency and disorder.545 The transformative intensity of the void is discussed in relation to artistic composition, Deleuze and Guattari describing how the composition of the work of art as a ‘bloc of sensation’ requires ‘pockets of air’ in compositing itself.546 The central place of the ‘void’ within sensation can be seen to play a similar role to the ‘opening’ gap of the non within the problematic, as “[a]ll sensation is composed with the void in composing itself with itself.“547 In this sense, ‘the void’ functions as a spacing, albeit one of plenitude. Accompanying this force of the void in What is Philosophy? is another final return to the negative, as Deleuze and Guattari discuss the non-localized interference of art, science and philosophy in relation to the ‘No’ that concerns them. Like the ‘non-‘ articulated in Difference and Repetition, the ‘No’ is required at every moment of the becoming of art, science and philosophy. Deleuze and Guattari suggest, “if the three Nos are still distinct in relation to the cerebral plane, they are no longer distinct in relation to the chaos into which the brain plunges.”548 It is from this shadow of the ‘No’ that a ‘mass- people’, ‘brain-people’, ‘chaos-people’ and ‘world-people’ may be summoned in art, science and philosophy, leading to the indiscernibility of these fields.549 This formulation of the negative that calls forth the new in art, science and philosophy, has a plastic effect of destabilising the distinctions between the three planes of reference, composition and consistency in the brain.

544 For a focused consideration of Descartes response to the ‘horror vacui’ of emptiness, see Giancarlo Nonnoi, "Against Emptiness: Descartes’s Physics and Metaphysics of Plenitude," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 25, no. 1 (1994). 545 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie? , Collection "Critique" (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991). 111. 546 Ibid., 156. 547 ———, What is Philosophy? , ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 165. «Toute sensation se compose avec le vide en se composant avec soi.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 156. 548 ———, What is Philosophy?: 218. “Or, si les trois Non se distinguent encore par rapport au plan cérébral, ils ne se distinguent plus par rapport au chaos dans lequel le cerveau plonge.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 206. 549 ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 206.

165 The language and orientation of Nancy and Deleuze’s conceptions of the negative are undeniably distinct. Nancy himself highlights his departure from the Deleuzian fold of thought, as he describes his inability to overcome a conception of the negative that “signifies that behind chaos itself, or rather, in the hollow of chaos, and thus also in the hollow of the passage, there is being: not a substance, but the transitivity which bears me.”550 Although Nancy affirms the non-substantial hollow behind chaos, we argue that it cannot be reduced to a re-articulation of the annihilating nihil in Derrida’s thought nor an outright rejection of Deleuze’s virtual positivism. Might Nancy’s descriptions of the force of the negative, for example, in some ways resemble Deleuze’s description of the ‘vide’? We may suggest so, as both Deleuze and Nancy posit a pre-substantial space from which the plenitude of chaos emerges. Indeed in Being Singular Plural Nancy describes an abundant world emerging from the negative, as he argues, “the explosion of presence in the original multiplicity of its division… is the explosion of nothing.”551 Nancy’s choice of words in this text may reflect a more complex sense of the negativity behind chaos than previously attributed, as the term “explosion” connotes a reaction of presubstantial pressures and intensities, rather than the pull of a vacuum. In this, Nancy’s description may approach the heterogenesis of the new emerging from Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the negative in What is Philosophy? as the complex shadow of the ‘No’ calls forth pluralistic becoming in art, science and philosophy. However, by acknowledging the resonance between these conceptions, must we proceed to reduce their divergence? Through the concept of the fold, we can identify an underlying space of continuity in Nancy and Deleuze’s thought, while also identifying that the problem of negation is both their point of divergence and relation. Having recognised a certain incompossibility between their concepts of the negative, we may position Nancy and Deleuze’s thought as singular and divergent inflexions within our infinitely folded continuum. Then how might we understand the

550Nancy, "The Deleuzian Fold of Thought," 112. 551 ———, Being singular plural, ed. Werner Hamacher and David E. Wellbery, trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 3. “l’explosion de la présence dans la multiplicité originelle de sa partition. Explosion du rien, en effet...” —— —, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, 1996). 21.

166 divergence of these philosophers as the mark of a differential relationship that shapes both trajectories? The singular folds or pleats of Nancy and Deleuze’s thought, as they establish a neighbourhood of perspective, can be visualised in terms of a parallelism. We take this image from Nancy’s own application of it to describe the tense relationship between Derrida and Deleuze. He explains the resonance and distinction of Derrida and Deleuze’s thought, suggesting that there is “no common measure” but only a parallelism between their distinct trajectories.552 For Nancy the parallelism of Deleuze and Derrida’s thought relates to their incommensurability, as while they never lose sight of one another they share no points in common.553 We may then imagine the thought of Derrida and Deleuze as singular points within a curvilinear surface, their individuation produced through the condensation of a multiplicity of points of view that express the transformations of a monadic whole. Nancy suggests, “[e]ach is the other of the other. They have in common the absence of commonality. In this they share difference.”554 In this he highlights the tension that emerges in the differential in-between of their parallelism, which distinguishes the incommensurable paths of their thought. Like two positively charged magnets, the force of repulsion between Derrida and Deleuze ensures their plastic integrity as distinct approaches to difference. In light of Nancy’s discussion of Deleuze and Derrida, we suggest that the differential fold between Nancy and Deleuze’s thought can be visualised in similar terms. While acknowledging the parallelism between these thinkers due to their opposing conceptions of the negative, we have also identified an echo of resonance between their notions of a negative plenitude. With this in mind, how might we understand the possibility of their convergence despite their parallel repulsion? We return to Nancy’s text, as he reconsiders the proximity of Deleuze and Derrida’s thought, stating: “They intersect, yes, but the point of their intersection at the infinite uncrosses at the moment of crossing.”555 In this passage Nancy describes the possibility of

552 ———, "Les Différences parallèles Deleuze et Derrida," 10. 553 Ibid., 11. 554 My translation. « Chacun est l’autre de l’autre. Ils ont en commun cette absence de communauté. C’est ainsi qu’ils ont partagé la différence.” Ibid. 555 My translation.

167 an encounter between the thought of Derrida and Deleuze, albeit at the infinite. In this Nancy alludes to the principals of projective geometry, as they describe the manner in which, parallel lines are visualised as touching at the vanishing point of the horizon. This perspectival junction of Deleuzian and Derridian thought noted, Nancy further suggests that the tense space of these parallel trajectories should be understood in terms of their perpetual convergence and divergence.556 How might this undulating convergence and converge between parallel folds be visualised? If we imagine standing upon a pair of parallel train- tracks, at any one point the convergence of the tracks will appear upon the horizon. However this convergence is never actual or arrived at, because as we approach the horizon the intersection opens up before us, remaining at the always out-of-reach vanishing point. Similarly, the convergence of Deleuze and Derrida or indeed Nancy and Deleuze can be considered virtual, as they share problems and questions that are actualised in singular and distinct ways. This said the repulsion between them as one another’s ‘other’ in thought sets them in singular indeterminate paths, reflecting a differential force between their distinct folds. The formative quality of their negation, recalls Malabou’s reference to apoptosis, as a programmed “cellular suicide” that is integral within biological formation.557 As this deterioration of cells produces an “interstitial void” through which fingers and toes may distinctly form, apoptosis is the condition of differential plastic becoming in the body. Likewise, the distinct thought of Nancy and Deleuze is produced through the interstitial void that separates the conflation of their thought.

Rupture and Explosion: Plasticising Art and Politics

We have seen how the differential relation between Nancy and Deleuze’s thought reflects their position as singular inflections within a manifold, which while distinct, share a space through which new concepts of a negative plenitude may emerge. While originally for

« Elles se croisent, oui, mais le point de leur croisement, situé à l’infini, se décroise dans l’instant du croisement.” Ibid., 14. 556 Ibid. 557 Malabou, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity: 4-5. ———, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice (Paris: Editions Léo Scheer, 2009). 11.

168 Leibniz differential relations refer to a totality beyond the monadic world,558 Deleuze points to the Neo-Baroque as the moment of encounter with an “unfurling of divergent series in the same world.”559 This led to a crisis in harmony, emancipation of dissonance and opening onto polytonality.560 In this Deleuze describes the spontaneous organisation of major, perfect and dissonant accords “that are made and undone” without beginning nor end, being endlessly transformed by the monad,561 this inspiring an image of the differential Riemannian manifold of complex folds. The spontaneity of this monadic self-organisation that negotiates differential relations within continuity, leads us back to Malabou’s motor-schema of plasticity, as the transforming relations of harmony within the manifold recall her image of the plastic brain, fusing relations through synaptic gaps. However in adopting this motor-schema, we must also recognise the distinction Malabou makes in The Future of Hegel between polymorphism and plasticity, as the latter enables the crystallization of forms resistant to deformation, whereas the former does not. With crystallization implied, can plasticity relate to both an unfolding and folding continuum? Deleuze clarifies that an ‘unfold’ is not an effacement of the fold, nor its contrary, but the extension or continuation of the act.562 In this, the folding and unfolding continuum bears the qualities of plasticity to give and receive form. Yet, if we consider the crystallization of a form to correspond to a folding, how might we conceptualise the extension, or continuation beyond this crystallization? Through the following reading of Nancy and Deleuze in light of Malabou’s concept of destructive plasticity, we will see how the in-between of art and politics within the folded continuum relates to the plasticising of crystallized and pre-given forms.

558 Deleuze, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque. 559 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque. “Viendra le Néo-baroque, avec son déferlement de séries divergentes dans le même monde, son irruption d’incompossibilités sur la même scène…” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 112. 560 ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 112. 561 ———, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 132. “…spontanéité: la monade produit des accords qui se font et se défont, et pourtant n’ont ni commencement ni fin, se transforment les uns dans les autres ou en eux-mêmes…” ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 180. 562 ———, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 50.

169 When considering the continuity between Nancy and Deleuze’s philosophies of art, we find that both these thinkers identify an avant-garde563 potential of art to rupture and derail totalising discourses. Concepts of the artistic avant-garde conventionally concern artistic practices that challenge normative conventions, be they aesthetic, linguistic, cultural, political or social. A military metaphor, the term avant-garde bears historical associations with the foremost position in battle – the front line that seeks to penetrate the opponent’s military formation and defence. Both Nancy and Deleuze relate art to this image of rupture and transgression, the former linking such practices to the spacing of sense, the latter to the differential capacity of sensation. Laura McMahon discusses Nancy’s concept of art as a force of ‘spacing’ in resistance to “any totalising logic of representation” which defines and appropriates the world.564 One formulation of this totalizing logic is found in Nancy’s description of myth in The Inoperable Community, as he considers its formative power in the creation of communities. Nancy describes myth as the unifying story of a group, as “the story of the beginning of the world, of the beginning of their assembling together, or of the beginning of the narrative itself.” 565 For Nancy, this scene of myth is not a scene amongst others, rather the essential scene that permits the emergence of other scenes in which representation, time and history can continue.566 Indefinitely repeated, the original scene of mythic recitation is itself mythic.567 That said, as a “full, original speech” that responds to an anticipation,568 myth functions as an incantation of worldly disclosure.569 In this way,

563 It is important to distinguish the avant-gardism I relate to Nancy and Deleuze’s thought from that of thinkers of the neo-Marxist tradition such as Guy Debord or Theodor Adorno, who would describe art’s particular power in relation to concepts of authenticity. In contrast to such thinkers, Nancy and Deleuze both criticise the foundations of such thought that opposes “authentic” reality to illusion. In particular, Nancy questions the Situationist critique of modernity, describing it as a re-interpretation of the Platonic concern with mimesis. See Nancy, Être singulier pluriel: 90-1. , and Deleuze, Différence et Répétition: 172. 564 Laura McMahon, "Jean-Luc Nancy and the Spacing of the World," Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 15, no. 5 (2011): 624. 565 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor, et al., vol. 76, Theory and History of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1991). 43-4. “C’est donc aussi bien, à la fois, l’histoire du commencement du monde, du commencement de leur assemblée, ou du commencement du récit lui-même…” ———, La Communauté désoeuvrée, revue et augmentée ed., Collection "Détroits" (Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, (1986) 2004 ). 109-10. 566———, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 112-3. 567 Ibid., 113. 568 Ibid., 122-3. 569Ibid., 127.

170 Nancy suggests that myth is both “the poeticity of the political and the politicality of the poetic” as both the poetic and the political concern this question of a communal living through “fictionning.”570 As a revelation of the community to the community, myth provides a foundation for communal being.571 Totalising in its effects, “myth represents multiple existences as immanent to its own unique fiction, which gathers them together and gives them their common figure in its speech and as this speech.”572 Having articulated its fusional and totalising force, Nancy warns against the reduction of difference through the identitarian politics that myth invokes. McMahon would align this power with “a logic of appropriation and exclusion” characteristic of Nazism’s “murderous bid to produce a communal identity, to collapse the spacing between singular plural beings.”573 According to McMahon, Nancy’s ‘inoperable community’ resists totalitarian models of common identity by calling for “a politics of space as non-unitary and non-identitarian.”574 Indeed Nancy argues for the importance of interruption within the continuity of discourse, as it enables a space for a community of singular persons to arise. Rather than destroying the voice that enables community, Nancy suggests the interruption of myth allows for the voice of an ‘unachieved’ community to be heard. 575 To illustrate his point Nancy employs the image of a resonant silence. He states:

570 ———, The Inoperative Community, 76: 56. “…la poéticité du politique et la politicité du poétique,” ibid., 142. 571———, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 128. 572 ———, The Inoperative Community, 76: 57. « …le mythe représente l’immanence des existences multiples à sa propre fiction unique, qui les rassemble et leur donne, dans sa parole et comme cette parole, leur commune figure.” ———, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 145. 573 McMahon, "Jean-Luc Nancy and the Spacing of the World," 625. 574 Ibid. 575 Before examining the contemporary necessity for the interruption of myth within community, one should acknowledge that for Nancy we can no longer be considered to be living in a mythic society, such as it was found in ancient Greece. He describes modern and postmodern humanity’s loss of myth in the following way: « En un sens, il ne nous reste plus, du mythe, que son accomplissement ou que sa volonté. Mais nous ne sommes ni dans la vie, ni dans l’invention, ni dans la parole mythiques. Dès que nous parlons de « mythe », de « mythologie », nous signifions cette négation au moins autant que l’affirmation de quelque chose. » Nancy, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 132. While Bataille described this contemporary non-mythic society as a state of ‘absence of myth, Nancy advancing Bataille’s thought, will call it the ‘interruption of myth’.’ See ibid., 118-9.

171 When a voice, or music, is suddenly interrupted, one hears just at that instant something else, a mixture of various silences and noises that had been covered over by the sound, but in this something else one hears again the voice or the music that has become in a way the voice or the music of its own interruption: a kind of echo, but one that does not repeat that of which it is the reverberation. 576

Nancy’s description of the sensory effect of interruption as a spacing that allows another unforeseen voice to resonate and be heard, foreshadows the discussion he will continue in the Truth of Democracy, concerning the necessary space such political compositions imply. This said, what has the power to disrupt myth? In The Inoperable Community Nancy associates the ‘the voice of interruption’ with one particular form of art, literature, describing it as ‘unfinished’ and ‘unfinishing’, in contrast to the ‘full speech’ of myth. For Nancy, the voice of the interruption of myth, literature, will be like a cut left by the interruption. It is always singular, being “each time the voice of one alone, and to the side, who speaks, who recites, who sometimes sings.”577 In this it acts as a singular spacing in the dominating history and story of a community, opening up a space of common becoming, or being-in-common, and thus allowing the inoperable community to emerge. Although in The Inoperable Community Nancy focuses his discussion on literature’s force as an interruption of myth, we may relate this to the broader power of the arts articulated at other points in his writing. In Nancy’s text, Why Are There Several Arts and not Just One? he describes the force of art as technics that respond to an inherent lack of ground, extending into plurality. For Nancy, the continual appearance of art as technics undermines

576 ———, The Inoperative Community, 76: 62. «Lorsqu’une voix, ou une musique est interrompue soudain, on entend à l’instant même autre chose, un mixe ou un entre-deux de silence et de bruits divers que le son recouvrait, mais dans cette autre chose on entend à nouveau la voix ou la musique, devenues en quelque sorte la voix ou la musique de leur propre interruption: une sorte d’écho, mais qui ne répéterait pas ce dont il serait la réverbération. » ———, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 155. 577 ———, The Inoperative Community, 76: 67. «…chaque fois la voix d’un seul, à l’écart, qui parle, qui récite, qui chante parfois.» ———, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 168.

172 the perceived “patency”578 or “givenness” of sense that is implied by Husserl’s phenomenology. As each art emerges as “the necessary rhythmic discreteness of a cut or a cutting out [découpe] of appearing,”579 they expose the patency of patency as a process of continual and plural presentation. As such, the ‘cut’ of each art opens up the spacing of patency, Ian James relating this to the event of emergent presence or coming-to-presence in Nancy’s spacing of the world through the “heterogeneous and excessive passage of sense.”580 McMahon points to a similar discussion in Nancy’s The Evidence of Film, as he relates the filmic image to la juste distance that “gives the world back to itself, allowing the world to fold and unfold.”581 This event of world-formation is described as a “ceaseless creation of pre-symbolic sense” involving a “non-appropriable sharing out and distribution between singular plural beings.”582 In this, the just world-formation that arises through the interruption of totalizing discourse through art enables a manner of being-in-common, in which singularity and community are compatible. 583 The political implications of artistic spacing can thus be seen as each work of art inaugurates a community.584 This enables a space within myth for the creation of new myth that will in turn also be interrupted.585 As we acknowledge the political effect of artistic spacing, we may well question whether this space is not another formulation of the plastic interval or in-between of art and politics. Nancy will also liken the interruptive capacity of art to the transgressive potential of thought. In his 2002 interview with Claire Margat he describes the art of Art as “thought at work in a world of form and matter, of rhythms, images, of sounds and colours.586 With this in mind, we can look to Ginette Michaud’s

578 Peggy Kamuf translates Nancy’s use of “la patence” to patency her her translation Being Singular Plural. However Ian Jaames in “Art – Technics” elaborates the term to imply “givenness.” See ———, Being singular plural: 33. Also, Ian James, "Art - Technics," Oxford Literary Review 27, no. 1 (2005): 97. 579 Nancy, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 31. «C’est la nécéssaire discrétion rythmée d’une coupe ou d’une découpe d’apparaître. » ———, "Pourquoi y a- t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 59. 580 James, "Art - Technics," 98. 581 McMahon, "Jean-Luc Nancy and the Spacing of the World," 628. 582 Ibid., 624. 583Nancy, La Communauté désoeuvrée: 162. 584 Ibid., 169. 585Ibid., 158-9. 586 My translation.

173 discussion of the political dimension of thought, as it indicates the potential political force of art. Describing Nancy’s notion of art as ‘the image of the political’, she emphasises its impact upon the dynamic systems of the world, as:

To think ex nihilo, with no preconceptions, with no model, is what art has always done: it is the reason-surpassing reason itself-that should commit us to passing through it in order to ponder the coexistence and the conflict of "a world of bodies, a world of senses, a world of the being-in-the world" (…).587

For Nancy, the capacity of the arts to think in a manner that surpasses reason sees it work on “the question of the world” in a manner that exceeds the abilities of the ‘science’ of government or law.588 In this regard the arts display a capacity to reshape and reconstitute community, myth and thought through a force of interruption or rupture that opens an artistic-political space within the seemingly “full” and totalising formations of sense.

The political capacity of art to disrupt totalizing or dominant political discourse is discussed by Deleuze in relation to sensation, rather than an opening of sense. Deleuze’s definition of art in What is Philosophy? is fundamentally formal, as he describes the work as an assemblage, construction or composition of affects and percepts that can ‘stand-alone’, reflecting its distinction or singularity in the plane of composition.589 Deleuze distances himself from phenomenological approaches to the work, Henry Somers-Hall explaining that for Deleuze, “the element of the flesh is only the world seen under one of its aspects”.590 Claire Colebrook describes Deleuze in similar terms, labelling him a post-

«…la pensée au travail dans un monde de formes et de matières, de rythmes, d’images, de sons ou de couleurs. » Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Margat, "Jean-Luc Nancy: y a-t-il encore un monde? Interview with Claire Margat," artpress 281, no. July- Aug (2002): 55. 587Ginette Michaud and Roxanne Lapidus, ""In Media Res": Interceptions of the Work of Art and the Political in Jean-Luc Nancy," SubStance 34, no. 106 (2005): 122. 588 Ibid. 589 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 155. 590 Henry Somers-Hall, "Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty: The Aesthetics of Difference," Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2006): 219-20.

174 phenomenological thinker that acknowledges an interest in ‘lived experience’, while recognising its indication of only one aspect of the world.591 In order to move away from subjectivist renditions of aesthetic experience, Deleuze will describe how works of art exceed their assigned affiliations with individuated creators or spectators, existing as pre- personal “being[s] of sensation” existing in themselves.592 For Deleuze the work of art is thus composed of percepts torn away from stratified perceptions, and affects torn away from stratified affections, emerging as a pure bloc of sensation. The work of art therefore defeats the “triple organisation” of experience into perceptions, affections and opinions,593 which Deleuze implicates within the broader habitual stratifications of life into social and historic experience. For Deleuze and Guattari the work of art intervenes in the continual processes of subjectification, Stephen Zepke describing the ethico-aesthetic dimension of this process as “the on-going emergence of new affective connections opening onto the outside of a subjective ‘I’.”594 Zepke articulates how for Deleuze and Guattari, sensation arises through the “deterritorialisation of the perceptual co-ordinates of the subject-object,” this occurring through the artist’s catastrophic confrontation with chaos, as they compose a work from its molecularised matter.595 This reference to chaos should not be understood as the work of art’s submission to it, rather following Zepke the work of art can be considered to emerge as the product of chaosmosis, or the “autopoiesis of chaos into expressive matter.”596 For Deleuze it is through such genetic chaosmos that the work of art ‘borrows the arms of chaos’ to ‘vanquish opinion’ and fight its dominance.597 In this the socio-

591 Colebrook does however insist that Deleuze’s relationship with phenomenology is not entirely straight forward, as his philosophy of immanence can be considered to reflect the same “war on transcendence” waged by phenomenological thinkers who wished to radically re-address the pre-suppositions of philosophy. Colebrook comments on Deleuze and Guattari’s criticism of phenomenology in Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? arguing that: “Phenomenology, they suggest, comes close to arriving at immanence, but fails when it places immanence within the plane of ‘the lived.’.” For the detail of her analysis, see Claire Colebrook, "Derrida, Deleuze and Haptic Aesthetics," Derrida Today 2(2009): 29-33. 592 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 155. 593 Ibid., 166-7. 594Stephen Zepke, Art as Abstract Machine: Ontology and Aesthetics in Deleuze and Guattari, Studies in Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2005). 153. 595 Ibid., 179. 596 Ibid., 155. 597 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 192.

175 political force of art relates to its liberation of subjects from the concretisation of particular images of thought that inhibit the processes of creativity, difference and repetition.598 The question remains, however: how does sensation rupture the habitual ordering of perceptions and affections that order our lives? For Deleuze, the force of ‘sensation’ emanating from the work fights against the sensory fatigue that perpetuates cliché.599 In his text Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze looks specifically to the composition of sensation in painting, illuminating how such practices exploit the differential force of chaos that may dislodge the dominance of cliché discussed in What is Philosophy. He describes how sensation “acts immediately upon the nervous system,” troubling the subject-object distinction as through sensation we become sensation.600 Passing through different orders of experience according to Bacon, Deleuze describes sensation as the “master of deformations, the agent of bodily deformations.”601 Moving away from the figural deformations represented in works such as Bacon’s Triptych (1976), how do we understand these works as possessing a capacity for deformation?

Figure 16 has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Figure 16. Francis Bacon, 'Triptych', 1976, oil pastel on canvas, three parts each 198 x 147.5 cm, Private collection of Roman Abramovich, Moscow. © The Estate of Francis Bacon.

598 Ibid. 599 Ibid., 202. 600 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London; New York: Continuum, (1981)2003). 34-5. « …elle agit immédiatement sur le système nerveux… » ———, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation (Paris: Editions de la différence, 1981). 27. 601 ———, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation: 36. « …maitresse de déformations, agents de déformations de corps. » ———, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation: 28.

176 Deleuze suggests that through Bacon’s triptych we “touch the quivering of the bird plunging into the place where the head should be,” thereby invoking the deformative force of sensation that undermines division between sight and touch. This leads Deleuze to hypothesise that through sensation the painter “make[s] visible a kind of original unity of the senses” through a multisensible Figure.602 This original unity is made possible by the direct contact of each particular domain of sensation (i.e. visual sensation, haptic sensation, auditory sensation and so forth) with “a vital power that exceeds every domain and traverses them all,”603 Deleuze names this excess of vital power ‘rhythm’, positing its passage through diverse forms of art. So if we return to the composition of the work of art as a ‘bloc of sensation’ in What is Philosophy, we find its force affected by the style or particular ‘assemblage’ of its components.604 Deleuze’s philosophy of art has accordingly been described as a ‘formalism of force’, as he describes the work as a composition of a primal pre-subjective force.605 This may be related back to the vital rhythm that underpins the diverse formulations of sensation in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, as through a chaosmosis with this complex force, the work of sensation may succeed in momentarily deterritorialising the habitual organisation of sensation into perceptions and affections. As a monument of fabulation and assemblage of percepts and affects, the work of art may thus solicit the event of a people to come.606 To illustrate how sensation and affect ventures into this space in- between art and politics, we can look to the example of Sergei Eisenstein’s film, Battleship Potemkin (1925). James Goodwin highlights the revolutionary impetus behind Eisentein’s

602 ———, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation: 42. « Il appartiendrait don au peintre de faire voire une sorte d’unité originelle de sens… » ———, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation: 31. 603 ———, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation: 42. « …une puissance vitale qui déborde tous les domaines et les traverse. » ———, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation: 31. 604 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 158. 605 It is fair to note at this point that Deleuze does make mention of the essential artistic process of constructing blocs of sensation (a Heimlich) that deterritorialise a territory (Unheimlich). While this could be mistaken to allude to the presence of an intentional subject, it is important to note that Deleuze considers this idea of ‘constructing’ in the infinitive, as an activity that occurs outside the fold of subjectivity. See ibid., 174-76. 606 Ibid., 166-7.

177 films, as from a young age the director’s “concerns were with the inception of revolution.”607 Yet the aesthetic force of his work is also heralded by Deleuze for the qualitative leap it produces through dialectic montage.608 Indeed, Eisenstein’s depiction of the historic mutiny at Odessa, through alternations of intensive and reflexive faces and tightly framed close-ups, influenced artists such as Francis Bacon, who articulated the influence of this work in the figuration of his famous work Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953).

Figure 17. Sergei Eisentstein, 'The Battleship Potemkin', 1925, still photograph from film. Artwork in the public domain.

The revolutionary force in between art and politics exploited by Eisenstein’s work, exemplifies the fabulation of a ‘people to come’ as it developed both a new cinematic and Bolshevik consciousness. This transgressive force may be aligned with Deleuze’s figure of becoming-minoritarian, as the “becoming of everybody” in continuous variation at an “amplitude that continually over-steps the representative threshold of the majoritarian standard.”609

607 James Goodwin, Eisenstein, Cinema, and History (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993). 16. 608 Deleuze, Cinéma 1 : L'image-mouvement: 131. 609 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 106.

178

Through our discussion we have seen in both Nancy and Deleuze’s discussions of art an emphasis on its specific plastic power of rupture and destabilisation. In the case of Nancy, this rupture is the first ‘cut’ that undermines the ‘givenness’ of sense, whereas for Deleuze the work of art serves to “tear” sensation from its habituated forms in perception and affection, undermining their capacity to govern experience. While the difference between Nancy and Deleuze’s foci and method affirms their distinct folds, we may see how both are informed by an awareness of the transgressive powers of art to perturb dominant modes of expression, thought and opinion. The violent artistic rupturing of sense and sensation may be considered in relation to works such as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987). Twenty- five years after its first appearance, the work continues to provoke outrage. The work’s inclusion in Serrano’s 2012 show “Body and Spirit” at Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery in New York, led to vocal protests from community leaders, among them Congressman Michael Grimm who called for U.S. President Barack Obama to publicly “stand up for America’s values and beliefs, and denounce the ‘Piss Christ’…”610 These American protests came after the work had already incited public protests led by the French Christian lobby group Civitas during its 2011 exhibition in Avignon, leading to the eventual vandalism of the work with a hammer. While these reactions can be read as specific contemporary reiterations of an age-old question with religious blasphemy, we may also consider the force of Serrano’s Piss Christ in relation to the rupturing of sense and sensation it implied.

“Cette figure [de la conscience minoritaire], c’est précisément la variation continue, comme une amplitude qui ne cesse de déborder par excès et par défaut le seuil représentif de l’étalon majoritaire.” ———, Mille Plateaux, Collection "Critique" (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980). 134. 610 Rep. Michael Grimm, "Rep. Grimm Asks President to Denounce 'Piss Christ' Return to NYC; Fed-up with Administration's Apologies and Religious Hypocrisy," The Office of U.S. Congressman Michael Grimm, http://grimm.house.gov/press-release/rep-grimm-asks-president-denounce-%E2%80%98piss- christ%E2%80%99-return-nyc-fed-administration%E2%80%99s.

179

Figure 18. Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987, cibachrome, silicone, plexiglas, woodframe, 152.4 x 101.6cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert, Paris. © A. Serrano

Created as part of a series that included Piss Discus (1988) and Madonna of the Rocks (1987), Piss Christ plays with the potency of religious symbols, situating itself on the volatile perimeter of a tradition of depictions of the Christ. The formal composition of the work remains sober, as the central and slightly elevated orientation of the golden, glowing figure retains a sense of otherworldly majesty within the work. On this level, Serrano’s depiction of the Christ may seem like a reiteration of a long tradition of glorifying Christian depictions. However, upon reading the title, we are made aware of the inherent gaps in this production of sense. Submerged in urine, the meaning of Piss Christ quickly transforms from a work of glorification to one of blasphemy, illustrating how the sense of the image is not ‘given’ within a closed system. As a presentation of presentation, Serrano’s Piss Christ exploits the vulnerability of seemingly given systems of meaning that align certain images or symbols with beatitude. Piss Christ presents the vulnerability and the power of the presentation of Christ, as the space for blasphemy, as a differing or deviant production of sense, is necessarily contained within the religious production of sense. In this it

180 demonstrates that orders of religious sense are not closed, but contain a spacing vulnerable to rupture. Yet the power of Piss Christ can also be read in respect to the Deleuzian account of sensation. Serrano’s diagram of a religious presentation may be considered to produce a deformed Figure of the Christ. Through a ‘catastrophic’ encounter with chaos, Serrano creates a bloc of sensation composed of the percepts and affects torn from their habitual realms of signification in religious life. As we sense the warm stench of the glowing, urine enveloped Christ, so do we encounter a multisensible Figure that makes visible the original unity of sensation. By tapping into the vital power that traverses sensation, Serrano’s play with materiality ruptures our sober visual experiences with images of the Christ. His figure reveals an abject, biological Figure of the Christ that taps into intense molecular forces of chaos, deterritorialising the space of its signification.

In this section we have hitherto considered the plastic impact that may be attributed to the arts in light of Nancy and Deleuze’s different discussions of their rupturing and deforming force upon dominant structures of experience. However in light of both their accounts of the “tearing” or “interruption” produced through works of art, we may see the force of art as something beyond a simple break or destabilisation of sense and perception. Rather we may understand the surplus force of the work of art in relation to Malabou’s description of the “annihilation of equilibrium” that forces an explosion.611 We will consider this explosive plasticity in relation to the opening it creates for an immeasurable plenitude of becoming. The destructive force of art upon unified forms of sense and experience can be found articulated in Nancy’s texts The Muses and Being Singular Plural, as the former text begins with a critique of philosophy’s attempt to confine the arts within a singular concept and historical trajectory. In The Muses, Nancy examines the manner in which the modern concept of ‘Art’, in the singular, is product of a particular philosophical inheritance from thinkers such as Kant, Schelling and Hegel. In this, Nancy highlights a certain deficiency of

611 Malabou, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice: 12.

181 the philosophical gesture that has “left in the shadows” the tension between the irreducible plurality and absolute unity of the arts.612 Extending beyond the sublation of Hegel’s aesthetics, Nancy suggests “the self-overcoming of art has as its absolute corollary and symmetry what one might call the induration of the arts in an irreducible material difference.”613 In light of this history, Nancy seeks to explore the plastic ‘excess’ of the arts beyond the end of modern conceptualisations of ‘Art’. An investigation into the complexity and complexifying quality of the arts is initiated by Nancy through the image of the Grecian muses. Nancy highlights how in contrast to monotheistic formulations of divine inspiration, this pagan formulation asserts a pluralistic basis to artistic creation. Nancy describes the force of the muses as follows: The Muse animates, stirs up, excites, arouses. She keeps watch less over the form than over the force. Or more precisely: she keeps watch forcefully over form. But this force springs up in the plural. It is given, from the first, in multiple forms.614 The muses’ pluralist force upon form, which in turn manifests in a multiplicity of forms, establishes a complex relation between diverse, plastic artistic practices. Nancy examines the way in which the arts, while singular, delimit one another through an intensification that both separates and agitates its registers, this evidenced through the way in which the arts “touch one another” through the metaphors applied in their description (for example, a loud colour, a bright timbre, a rhythmic tableau, and so on.) Distancing himself from the notion of metaphor as pure substitution, Nancy suggests that “the artistic metaphor in art is rather an inchoate, never accomplished metamorphosis, prevented by the privilege always given to one register, the register itself formed by an act of forcing of cutting.”615 Nancy’s

612 Nancy, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 21. 613 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 9. « …l’autodépassement de l’art a pour corollaire et pour symétrique absolus ce qu’on pourrait appeler l’induration des arts dans une différence matérielle irréductible. » ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 24. 614———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 1. « La Muse anime, soulève, excite, met en branle. Elle veille moins sur la forme que sur la force. Ou plus exactement : elle veille avec force sur la forme. Mais cette force jaillit au pluriel. Elle est donnée, d’emblée, dans des formes multiples.” ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 11. 615 My translation.

182 description of the distinction and interference between the arts may be read to articulate the incomplete quality of the transformation that occurs in-between. In doing so, Nancy argues that the formal transformations in between the arts never establish an absolutely distinguished heterogeneity of forms. As the singular forms are not permanently defined or distinguishable, Nancy turns to a biological image to articulate the state of unity, difference and transformation between the arts. He states: “Nothing would be more a body than the body of art as an extended, stretched and strengthened body pushed to its extremity.”616 The transforming unity of the arts, as they are composed of parts that are at once singularly exposed and coordinated, is thus considered to produce body of sense that is both singular and plural. As we shall see, the body of art is united in its capacity to deform the “common sense” unity of bodies of sense. To understand the destructive capacity of the body of art, we must turn to Nancy’s consideration of the complexifying or pluralising quality of the arts in Being Singular Plural. In this text Nancy suggests that what “counts” in and “makes” art is “access to the scattered origin in its very scattering; it is the plural touching of the singular origin.”617 This singular origin concerns the unfolding of singular plural sense and its exposure of a world that is necessarily plural and diffracted.618 The term ‘origin’ as Nancy uses it, however, should not be understood as the beginning from which a whole world emerges. Rather this scattered and scattering origin relates to the emergence of each singular presence in the world.619 Nancy’s interest in the constitution of this “unique unity” of emerging singularities will echo Leibniz’s monadic approach to conceptualising variance within a continuum. Nancy himself recognises the resemblance of Leibniz’s and his own project,

« La métaphore d’art en art constitue bien plutôt une métamorphose toujours inchoative, jamais accomplie, au contraire empêchée par le privilège chaque fois donné à un registre, registre lui-même formé par un geste de forçage et de découpe.» ———, "Les arts se font les uns contre les autres," 174. 616 My translation. Emphasis added. “Rien qui soit plus un corps que le corps de l’art en tant que corps étendu, étiré et intensifié, poussé à ses extrémités …” ibid., 166-7. 617 ———, Being singular plural: 14. “c’est l’accès à l’origine écartée, en son écart même, c’est la touche plurielle à l’origine singulière.” ———, Être singulier pluriel: 33. 618———, Être singulier pluriel: 33. 619 Ibid.

183 advancing the importance of such a repeated return to this question, so it may drift towards a new philosophical posture.620 In doing so, Nancy turns to the concept of singular plurality, proposing that this “single stroke” and “continuous-discontinuous mark” may trace out the entirety of the ontological domain.621 Within this argument, Nancy looks to singular plural terms such as the arts, turning to the etymological roots of singular plurality in order to conceptualise the unity and difference between these collective pluralities. He emphasises how the Latin term, singuli, in fact denotes a plural, designating the ‘one’ of ‘one by one’. Singuli is thus necessarily a ‘one’ amongst other ‘ones’, this implying plurality within the singular.622 Plurality will however be distinguished from multiplicity, plus designating “an increase or excess of origin in the origin… the One is more than one; it is not that “it divides itself,” rather it is that one equals more than one, because “one” cannot be counted without counting more than one.”623 This sits in contrast to the multus of multiplicity, which designates the numerous. Nancy hence emphasises how singuli and plus both convey an excess of being, the former indicating a singularity that is necessarily plural, the latter the plurality that is necessarily an excess. This leads to Nancy’s discussion of singularities excess of itself, as “each time, the punctuality of a “with” that establishes a certain origin of meaning and connects it to an infinity of other possible origins.”624 The singularity of each art within the singular plural of the arts will therefore always emerge in relation to its punctual ‘with’ that connects it to an infinity of other possible arts. In light of Nancy, might we suggest that the excess of energy in each singularity of the arts relates it to the plastic explosion of sense, or “explosion of nothingness” he references in The Muses? The energetic excess of the arts is intertwined with its inherent

620 Ibid., 59. 621 Ibid., 57. 622 Ibid., 52. 623 ———, Being singular plural: 39. “C’est un accroissement ou un excès d’origine, dans l’origine. Pour le dire en référence aux modèles évoqués à l’instant : l’un est plus que l’un, ce n’est pas qu’il « se divise », c’est que un = plus d’un, car on ne peut pas compter « un » sans compter plus d’un.” ———, Être singulier pluriel: 60. 624 ———, Being singular plural: 85. « C’est donc aussi en ce point précis que s’aperçoit au mieux l’essence de la singularité : elle n’est pas l’individualité, elle est, chaque fois, la ponctualité d’un « avec » qui noue une certaine origine de sens, et qui la connecte avec une infinité d’autres origines possibles » ———, Être singulier pluriel: 109.

184 plurality. Nancy states: “The singular plural/singular is the law and the problem of ‘art,’ as it is of ‘sense’ or of the sense of the senses, of the sensed sense of their sensuous difference.”625 Drawing upon the Neo-Platonic tradition, Nancy likens this unity of feeling to the concept of the immaterial ‘feeling soul’, which is present in every part of the body without being part of any part of this body.626 Nancy highlights how the emergence of distinct categories of sense arises through a ‘techné’ or kind of ‘art’ that groups, hierarchizes and territorialises sensuous heterogeneity. Recognising the plurality of the difference between the ‘topos’ of senses, Nancy suggests that the distributions of the senses may be “the result of an ‘artistic’ operation, or the artefact produced by a ‘technical’ perspectivising of perception.”627 This artistic techné that allows a distinction between the senses is related by Nancy to a force of interruption or ‘touching’ in the arts. The artistic touch is described as marking “the proximity of the distant” and “approximation of the intimate” that “makes one sense what makes one sense.”628 Art as ‘being-in-the-world’ for Nancy is seen to touch on the “living integration of the sensuous” through a force of disruption, destabilisation and deconstruction, which dis-locates the world into plural worlds.629 This arises firstly as the arts isolate a feature of sense, forcing it to be only what it is outside of any signifying perception.630 Secondly, by extracting this sense from the domain of the lived, the arts dislocate “common sense” through a

625 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 13-4. “Le singulier pluriel est la loi et le problème de l’« art » comme du « sens », ou du sens des sens, du sens sensé de leur différence sensible. Il en va ici comme de l’immatérialité de l’âme telle qu’on la prouve dans la tradition néo-platonicienne : l’âme sent parce qu’elle est tout entière en chaque partie sentante du corps, et pour cela elle n’est en aucune partie, et elle n’est aucun corps.” ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 30. 626 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 14. 627 Ibid., 10. “…cette différence elle-même plurielle et depuis longtemps attestée comme un τόπος (…) n’est peut être, en fin de compte, que le résultat d’une opération « artiste », ou l’artefact produit par une mise en perspective « technique » de la perception. En un mot, non pas la sensibilité comme telle, mais là où les distributions des sens seraient elles-mêmes les produits de l’ « art ». ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 26. 628 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 17. “Le toucher est l’intervalle et l’hétérogénéité du toucher. Le toucher est la distance proxime. Il fait sentir ce qui fait sentir (ce que c’est que sentir): la proximité du distant, l’approximation de l’intime.”———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 17. 629 ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 36-7. 630 Ibid.

185 proliferation and intensification of difference, as sight gives way to tone, nuance, shade, texture, contour and sound gives ways to timbre, tone, dynamic, pitch, rhythm and so on.631 Nancy will describe a third effect of the touch of art, drawing directly upon Deleuze’s discussion of Bacon’s multisensible Figure. We may recall Deleuze’s description of the quivering of the bird felt through the sensation of Bacon’s Triptych (1976). Expanding upon Deleuze’s thought, Nancy suggests that sensation’s exploitation of an “original unity of the sense” produced through a vital movement or rhythm, may be considered to reflect a “singular ‘unity’ of a ‘between’ the sensuous domains.”632 Focusing on the space in-between sensuous communication, Nancy proposes that the vital rhythm should be understood as the “beat of appearing” rather than the appearance of a beat. In this the dislocating yet cross-contaminating sensation of the arts taps into a heterogeneous movement of coming, going and sharing. Nancy states: “the general rhythm of the sensuous or of sense is the movement of […] mimēsis/methexis “among” forms or presences that do not pre-exist it, definitively, but arise from it as such.” 633 Reconceptualising Deleuze’s vital rhythm as a productive movement in between appearing and disappearing singular forms, this complex passage through intervals can be seen as the differential origin of the forms it navigates. Ginette Michaud emphasises the central place of ‘passage’ in between domains within Nancy’s vision of the artistic proliferation of difference, as it creates a world that “surges and withdraws.”634 We may therefore suggest that for Nancy the ‘original’ explosion of difference enabled through art, occurs through each and every art as a punctual beat that surges and withdraws, within a complex rhythm constituted by plastic gaps that both unify and distinguish each element of its singular plurality.

631Jean-Luc Nancy, “Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts et non pas un seul”, Les Muses: Edition revue et augmentée, Paris: Editions galilée, 1994, p.44 632 Nancy, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 45. 633 ———, "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ," 24. “Le rythme général du sensible ou du sens est le movement de cette µιµησις/µεθεξις “entre” des formes ou des présences qui lui ne préexistent pas, en définitive, mais qui en surgissent comme tells…” ———, "Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul ? ," 47. 634 Michaud and Lapidus, ""In Media Res": Interceptions of the Work of Art and the Political in Jean-Luc Nancy," 106-7.

186 For both Nancy and Deleuze, Art dislocates the formal unity of sense, thereby perturbing the dominant discourses of community or the state. Although their discussions unfold in different terms, the differential relation between Nancy and Deleuze sees their trajectories converge with respect to the destructive plasticity enabled through the interval of art and politics. According to both these thinkers, the proliferation or explosion of difference punctually destroys the formal stratification of “common sense” or “cliché,” allowing new forms of meaning and experience to arise in resistance. However, this explosive plasticity may be related back to an earlier vitalist conception of becoming - the bergsonian concept of the élan vital.

Explosion and Event within Complex Continuity

In-Between Singularities: The Complex Movement of the Élan Vital

In this section I will consider how the complex and explosive movement attributed to the arts by Nancy and Deleuze may be directed back to a movement of the in-between of art and politics, in light of readings of Bergson’s élan vital. In doing so we will return to the question of the plastic, infinitely complexifying transformations in-between art and politics, however with a view to their further implication within broader plenitudes or topological folds. The influence of Bergson’s thought upon Deleuze’s philosophy is often read in the context of his resistance to a static, representative image of thought based on recognition. This dogmatic mode of thought, labelled doxa by Deleuze, has its presence traced through Descartes’ cogito through to Kant’s philosophical framework. Deleuze accuses this model of thought of impeding philosophy’s task of creating concepts, as the method inevitably restricts thought by passing it through already recognisable ways of thinking.635 In resistance, Deleuze’s philosopher must harness the force of difference to engage in a kind

635 Deleuze states: « La pensée et toutes ses facultés peuvent y trouver un plein emploi ; la pensée peut s’y affairer, mais cette affaire et cet emploi n’ont rien à voir avec penser. La pensée n’y est remplie que d’une image d’elle-même, où elle se reconnaît d’autant mieux qu’elle reconnaît les choses. » Deleuze, Différence et Répétition: 181.

187 of novel thought that takes us to an unrecognised and unrecognisable terra incognita.636 For Deleuze, this thought without image is a fundamentally genital and creative act,637 which plays an important role in the conceptual resistance to doxa. Deleuze’s critique of representative modes of thought can be read in light of his inheritance from another earlier figure in French philosophy – Henri Bergson. Stephen Linstead and John Mullarkey describe Bergson’s shared suspicion of language and symbolic representation for its alienating effect on “constantly unfolding experience.”638 In his Introduction to Metaphysics, Bergson identifies metaphysics as a science that seeks to “dispense with symbols” and move away from the “generalization of facts,” towards the integral experience of metaphysical intuition.639 In his text Bergsonism, Deleuze describes Bergson’s thought as a reproachment of the “false movement” of the dialectic method, describing its incompatibility with the representative image of thought propagated by Hegel.640 Linstead and Mullarkey emphasise the dimension of Bergson’s argument against the philosophical “spatialisation of thought”, as it takes a taxonomical approach to categorizing phenomena of consciousness into “disconnected characteristics which can be measured, numbered, sequenced and manipulated”, leading to only mechanical or deterministic ways of understanding their relation.641 In a turn against Ockham’s principle of simplicity, Bergson argues that the objective of metaphysics is to perform “qualitative differentiations and integrations”642 that account for the diverse creativity and movements of natural phenomena. He thus considers the diverse and continuous organization of life as a model of process and movement that contrasts with the mechanical image of change by linear, determined cause and effect.643

636 Ibid., 177-8. 637 Ibid., 217. 638Stephen Linstead and John Mullarkey, "Time, Creativity and Culture: Introducing Bergson," Culture and Organization 9, no. 1 (2003): 5. 639 Henri Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences., (Édition électronique; Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France,, (1969) 2003). 123-4. 640 Gilles Deleuze, Le bergsonisme, 4e edition ed., Grands Textes (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, (1966) 2011). 38. 641 Linstead and Mullarkey, "Time, Creativity and Culture: Introducing Bergson," 4. 642 Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences. 118. 643 Linstead and Mullarkey, "Time, Creativity and Culture: Introducing Bergson," 8.

188 For Bergson, life as unceasing creation emerges through a vital impetus, or élan vital. In The Creative Evolution he describes life as a tendency to develop divergent directions, among which the élan vital is divided.644 Eric Alliez describes this conceptual move by Bergson as a “discovery of the possibility of a new monism, the monism of the élan vital as the problematization and becoming of the individuation of being.”645 A presentation of the problematic of life in its multiplicity, Alliez suggests that Bergson produces a philosophy of vital difference based on “an intense pre-individual field, singularized solely through differences of intensity.”646 While Deleuze’s monadic fold and Nancy’s notion of singular plurality can be related to Bergson’s problem, we may further relate it Malabou’s interest in finding “a way to think a mutation that engages both form and being, a new form that is literally a form of being,”647 as Malabou’s interest in the infinite metamorphoses of life echo Bergson’s differential vitalism. The resonance between Nancy, Deleuze, Malabou and Bergson’s thought begins as his élan vital refers to an indeterminate impulse and improvisation that complicates simplistic representations of life through the proliferation of difference. Bergson turns to evolutionary transformation to consider the complexifying force of the vital impetus, suggesting that the unpredictability of its movement and direction likens it to the trajectory of an exploding shell. For Bergson, the evolutionary movement “proceeds rather like a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments, which fragments, being themselves shells, burst in their turn into fragments destined to burst again, and so on for a time incommensurably long.”648 As our perception fixes upon the already differentiated or

644 Henri Bergson, L’évolution créatrice, 11e edition ed., Grands Textes (Paris: Quadridge/PUF, (1941) 2009). 100. 645 Eric Alliez, Tom Conley, and Melissa McMuhan, "On Deleuze's Bergsonism," Discourse 20, no. 3, Gilles Deleuze: A reason to Believ in this World (1998): 235. 646 Ibid. 647 Malabou, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity: 17-8. « Il faut arriver à penser une mutation qui engage et la forme et l’être, une forme nouvelle qui soit littéralement forme d’être. » ———, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice: 23. 648 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, (The Project Gutenberg EBook; New York: Henry Holt and Co, (1911) 2008). 48.

189 “scattered” movements of the exploded shell, Bergson compels us to go back to the “original movement” through which evolutionary differentiation arises. Like the “origin” of the explosion of sense for Nancy, the continuing tendency towards differentiation in life cannot be understood as a simple forward trajectory of the élan vital, rather its complexity arises through “the resistance life meets from inert matter, and the explosive force - due to an unstable balance of tendencies - which life bears within itself.”649 Bergson’s image of the force behind the diverging forms of life that surge at the disturbance of a volatile equilibrium is picked up by Catherine Malabou in The Future of Hegel, as she states that the vital forms of life that may be said to emerge, “to the degree that [they are] made of a concentrated energy, provoke[…] an explosion.”650 The plasticity of life for Malabou, can be related to Deleuze’s notion of complex inorganic contraction that produces life’s diverse forms as we experience them. Malabou relates this pre-individual becoming back to Bergson’s vitalist reference to substances that are “reservoirs of energy” formed from “complex molecules” that require only the smallest ignition to explode, suggesting that Bergson’s evolutionary movement depicts a complex continuity of life between rupture and explosion.651 In this sense, Bergson’s vitalist account of becoming may be seen as the exemplary condition of a plasticity “whose tricks are exhausted by nothing and that never reaches “the end of its tether” by itself.”652

“Mais nous avons affaire ici à un obus qui a tout de suite éclaté en fragments, lesquels, étant eux-mêmes des espèces d’obus, qui ont éclaté à leur tour en fragments destinés à éclater encore, et ainsi de suite pendant fort longtemps…” ———, L’évolution créatrice: 99. 649 ———, Creative Evolution. 48. “Quand l’obus éclate, sa fragmentation particulière s’explique tout à la fois par la force explosive de la poudre qu’il enferme et par la résistance que le métal y oppose. Ainsi pour la fragmentation de la vie en individus et en espèces. Elle tient, croyons-nous, à deux séries de causes : la résistance que la vie éprouve de la part de la matière, et la force explosive – due à un équilibre instable de tendances – que la vie porte en elle” ———, L’évolution créatrice: 99. 650 Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 61. « Contraction et concentration sont l’œuvre de la plasticité de la vie, au sens, d’abord, de la donation élémentaire des formes vitales, mais au sens également de l’explosion que chacune de ces formes, parce qu’elle est de l’énergie concentrée, provoque. » ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 89. 651 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 61. ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 89. 652 ———, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity: 10. « […] dont rien ne peut épuiser les tours et qui ne vient jamais de lui-même « au bout de son rouleau ». »

190 This considered, how might we conceptualise the complex movement of becoming through the élan vital as formation or self-organisation within a continuous or monadic whole? For Deleuze the vital impetus can be related to “a virtuality in the process of being actualised, a simplicity in the process of differentiating, a totality in the process of dividing up…”653 The passage from the virtual to the actual is described as fundamentally linked to self-differentiation, as the virtual creates its lines of differentiation through which it self- actualises.654 The heterogenesis of this passage of the virtual enables the emergence of the new (as deviance or variation) from the continuum. Steven Shaviro relates this virtual capacity for variation to the logic of “double causality” discussed by Deleuze in The Logic of Sense. This logic posits effective relations of causality in the actual realm, coexisting with indetermined, transcendental relations of ‘quasicausality’ in the virtual realm.655 Unlike the determined causality of the actual, the effects and reactions of the virtual plane are largely open. According to Shaviro, the coexistence and interference of the actual and virtual realms, liberates events from “the destiny that weighs down upon them.” 656 Thus the creative conjuring of the new, as it bifurcates the boundaries of sensation and thought, involves the undetermined causality of interactions in the virtual realm.657 The complex heterogenesis that arises through the passage from the virtual to the actual can be reconsidered in relation to the differential becoming of art and politics, in relation to singular events. For example, we may look to Walt Whitman’s poetry and journalism to see how the question and movement towards democracy was articulated in differentiation. Jason Frank notes the influence of Jefferson’s American civic

———, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice: 17.

653 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barabara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, (1988)1991). 94. “Que veut dire Bergson, quand il parle d’élan vital? Il s’agit toujours d’une virtualité en train de s’actualiser, d’une simplicité en train de se différencier, d’une totalité en train de se diviser...’”———, Le bergsonisme: 96. 654 ———, Le bergsonisme: 100. 655 Steven Shaviro, "Interstitial Life: Subtractive Vitalism in Whitehead and Deleuze," Deleuze Studies 4(2010): 109. 656 Ibid. 657 Ibid., 118.

191 republicanism upon Whitman’s work,658 this being evident in his Democratic Vistas. Whitman opens with the statement that “[a]s the greatest lessons in Nature through the universe are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons also in the New World politics and progress.”659 As his political reflections are interlaced with poetic deliria heralding “the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever – the eternal beats, eternal systole and diastole of life in things,”660 we see Whitman’s work elaborating an aesthetic democracy beyond the ‘fossilism’ of inherited political institutions.661 Describing the democratic form in relation to a “surging creativity” at its centre, it “embraces the vitality of the people over formal political institutions and law.”662 The vital and open-ended quality of Whitman’s conception of the democratic people can thus be understood in resistance to the communitarian or identitarian politics of the era. Frank argues that Whitman accesses and poetically translates the “polyvocality of the vox populi”, thereby depicting the people’s “sublime potentiality” to reinvent itself.663 In this, Whitman’s work can be read as tapping into a vital, differentiating and indetermined impetus that exists prior to its determinations in democratic art and politics. We can see the place of this vital and virtual movement in Deleuze’s description of the undecidable and indiscernible effects and processes of the work of art in Negotiations. He states: “Any work of art points a way through for life, finds a way through the cracks.”664 The intensive composition of the work of art as negotiates the “cracks” of determinations of thought and experience through doxa and cliché, taps into the differential movement of life as a whole. The complexifying movement of the rhythm discussed in relation to sensation in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, can be related to the differential movement between sense and thought discussed in Difference and Repetition. For Deleuze, a violent movement of thought may emerge though an encounter with the

658Jason Frank, "Aesthetic Democracy: Walt Whitman and the Poetry of the People," The Review of Politics 69, no. 3 (2007): 405. 659 Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas and other papers (London: Forgotten Books, (1888) 2012). 1. 660 Ibid., 75. 661 Frank, "Aesthetic Democracy: Walt Whitman and the Poetry of the People," 408. 662 Ibid., 427. 663 Ibid. 664 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (1972 - 1990) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 143.

192 being of the sensible. The encounter with the sentiendum can be seen as complexifying as, “[e]ach faculty is unhinged”.665 For Deleuze, violence that forces thought is developed between the sentiendum and cogitandum, the differential effect of this described as follows:

Rather than all the faculties converging and contributing to a common project of recognising an object, we see divergent projects in which, with regard to what concerns it essentially, each faculty is in the presence of that which is its ‘own’. Discord of the faculties, chain of force and fuse along which each confronts its limit, receiving from (or communicating to) the other only a violence which brings it face to face with its own element, as though with its disappearance or its perfection. 666

The differential encounter with the sentiendum resembles the plastic explosion of difference permitted through the élan vital in the contraction of variant forms of life. Foreshadowing Nancy’s description of the explosive “touching” of art that both singularizes and pluralizes sense, in Difference and Repetition we find a violent differential force of the sensible upon dominant orders of thought. Described by Massumi as a “spontaneous, impersonal force of thinking-feeling,”667 the violence to thought by the work of art, as it disbands the doxa of perception and thought, results in a proliferation of difference through the force of repetition and generative thought without image.668 As O’Sullivan’s suggests, we may thus see the work of Art as a singular variance or fold with

665 ———, Difference and Repetition: 141. “Chaque faculté est sortie de ses gonds.”———, Différence et Répétition: 184. 666 “Au lieu que toutes les facultés convergent, et contribuent à l’effort commun de reconnaître un objet, on assiste à un effort divergent, chacune étant mise en présence de son « propre » en ce qui la concerne essentiellement. Discorde des facultés, chaîne de force et cordon de poudre où chacune affronte sa limite, et ne reçoit de l’autre (ou ne communique à l’autre) qu’une violence qui la met en face de son élément propre, comme de son disparate ou de son incomparable.” ———, Différence et Répétition: 184. 667 Massumi, Semblance and Event: Activist philosophy and the occurent arts: 133-4. 668 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition: 217.

193 a plenitude of singular folds in substance, our encounter with it “forc[ing us] to unfold these worlds, that is, to think….669

Events from the Plastic Gaps of Relations of Non-Relation

Having considered the plastic differential force of the arts as a possible line within the complex movement of the élan vital “through the cracks” of life, we may now question whether it might be read alongside a particular conceptualisation of the formative “gaps” between an infinitely differentiated plenitude. An examination of this relationship may begin in light of Deleuze’s references to events that occur in-between the planes of existence. In both Nancy and Deleuze’s thought we find references to transversal and plural creativity. Ginette Michaud identifies within Nancy’s texts a complex “movement- élan” 670 that passes through sense and thought as a complexifying energy “that no longer owes anything to mastery or to autonomy or to the form already given as framework or content.”671 However, the interactions between the distinct disciplines of science, art and philosophy are more specifically explored by Deleuze (and Guattari) in What is Philosophy? Earlier we identified the common task and power of art, science and philosophy, according to Deleuze, to traverse or reterritorialise the chaos of being. While highlighting the complexity of each plane in itself as both multiple and unique,672 Deleuze also describes a rich fabric of correspondences between them.673 He describes three types of interference between these planes: extrinsic,674 intrinsic675 and illocalisable. The first two

669 Simon O’Sullivan, "From Possible Worlds to Future Folds (Following Deleuze): Richter’s Abstracts, Situationist Cities, and the Baroque in Art," The Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 36, no. 3 (2005): 314. 670 Michaud and Lapidus, ""In Media Res": Interceptions of the Work of Art and the Political in Jean-Luc Nancy," 106-7. 671 Ibid., 113. 672 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 204. 673 Ibid., 187-8. 674 With respect to extrinsic interference Deleuze states: « La règle dans tous ces cas est que la discipline interférente doit procéder avec ses propres moyens. » In this the methods and means of the ‘interfering’ field are applied in the exploration of the object of another field. See ibid., 205-6. 675 In an intrinsic interference, concepts and conceptual characters of the plane of immanence slip into the functions or sensations of the plane of reference or composition. Deleuze explains: « Ces glissements sont si subtils, comme celui de Zarathoustra dans la philosophie de Nietzsche ou celui d’Igitur dans la poésie de Mallarmé, qu’on se trouve sur des plans complexes difficiles à qualifier. » ibid.

194 regard the extension of methods and slippage of concepts between the planes, for example in the mathematical analysis of artistic composition or transition of Zarathoustra into the philosophical through Nietzsche’s text. While challenging to the clarity of Deleuze’s initial distinctions, extrinsic and intrinsic interferences are upstaged by the profound effects of illocalisable interferences. Illocalisable transferences occur in the shadow of the ‘No’ described in What is Philosophy?, which was discussed earlier in this chapter. Through art, science and philosophy’s relationships to their respective Non-philosophy, Non-art and Non-science, we encounter a force of chaos that calls forth a “people to come.”676 Like the void, this in-between space of ‘No’ contains the virtual potentialities and intensities of chaos from which the ‘rhythm’ of sense and sensation emerge to explode the dogmatic thought of doxa and cliché. But how might we conceptualise the emergence of the singular plural instances from this shadowy in-between? We will now consider them in line with the concept of a “conditioned event” articulated by Brian Massumi in Semblance and Event, as it may relate to Malabou’s discussions of plasticity’s opening to the accident. In The Fold Deleuze describes the event as a “vibration with an infinity of harmonics or submultiples, such as an audible wave, a luminous wave, or even an increasingly smaller part of space over the course of an increasingly shorter duration.” 677 The ripples of the event extend through time and space, transforming and unfolding the contours of the spatium. In Semblance and Event Massumi describes works of art, as “dynamic unities of event unfolding.”678 Massumi draws on Deleuze’s thought to describe the affective power of the arts in relation to virtuality, suggesting that through compositional and ontogenetic “techniques of existence”679 virtual events are brought forth from the horizon of thought through works of art.680 He links this force to Deleuze’s concept of “powers of the false”, which rather than corresponding to ‘known’ truths, open

676 Ibid. 677 Deleuze, The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque: 77. “une vibration, avec une infinité d’harmoniques ou de sous-multiples, telle une onde sonore, une onde lumineuse, ou même une partie d’espace de plus en plus petite pendant une durée de plus en plus petite.” —— —, Le Pli : Leibniz et le baroque: 105. 678 Massumi, Semblance and Event: Activist philosophy and the occurent arts: 14. 679 Ibid., 170. 680 Ibid., 124.

195 up the creation of new ‘truths’ or ways of thinking and doing. However beyond a simple conceptualisation of artistic force as a trajectory, Massumi suggests that the diverse arts express an infinitely diverse ‘relational field.’ In this, the work of art effectuates “a fusional mutual inclusion of a heterogeneity of factors,” that come together in a species of semblance.681 For Massumi, semblance relates to the “vitality effect” of art as it presents life dynamics virtually as pure appearance.682 Through form, art makes us see the virtuality of object perception as it unfolds in relation to potentialities, “making an explicit experience of what otherwise slips behind the flow of action and is only implicitly felt.”683 Returning to Massumi’s description of the fusional inclusion of heterogeneous factors in the event of semblance, he emphasizes the role of “gaps” or intervals between elements in the effectuation of the event. In The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens Massumi points to Deleuze’s imperative to “cleave things asunder”, highlighting the place of opening up and “giv[ing] the thing its distances back,” in the conditioning of artistic event.684 The interstitial place for virtual “wriggle room” in nature and art is seen as necessary within formations of becoming, as “ [i]f formations were in actual causal connection, how they effectively connect would be completely determined.”685 In order for creative relations to emerge, gaps that allow a “margin of creative indeterminacy” must be present in the chain of connection.686 Massumi compares this vital role of intervals in-between in art, to the participation of non-connective elements that bring forth the natural event of a lightening strike. He states:

The multitude of atmospheric particles – each of which can be considered an occasion of experience in its own right – create the conditions for the strike of lightening by entering into a commotion of mutual interference and resonance. Each

681 Ibid., 142-3. 682 ———, "The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens," Inflexions 1, no. 1 (2008): 5-6. 683 Ibid., 7. 684 Ibid., 12. 685 Ibid., 23. 686 Ibid.

196 actively participates in the production of the whole-field effects that energize the night sky for the coming event. The whole-field effects are a dynamic expression of each contributory element’s remote participation in every other’s activity. The singularity of each element’s activity is fused in the general field activity whose tension potentiates the event, and against which the added novelty of the flash stands out, in the contrasting brightness of its own special activity. The participation of the conditioning elements occurs at a distance: between the elements; across the intervals actually separating them.687

Through this image of atmospheric conditioning, we can consider how the ‘dynamic unity’ of disparate elements that participate in the event, may come together in relations of non- relation, rather than connective linkages. As elements are positioned in tension as a function of their differential,688 the interstitial space or non-connective relation participates in a pure event of becoming. Aside from the activity-of-form that Massumi’s account of the conditioned event contributes to our notion of differential plastic becoming, the meteorological metaphor he employs also alludes to another formative factor in the effectuation of both the artistic and natural event – the accidental. The contingency of the event of the lightening strike upon the “multitude of atmospheric particles” that constitute the field of relation, can be paralleled to the contingency of the artistic event of semblance, conditioned through the fusional inclusion of a dynamic heterogeneity of accidental and formal factors. Malabou considers instances of destructive plasticity as events conditioned by absolutely unpredictable accidents, describing the event of old aging, for example, as precipitated by “an accidental, catastrophic dimension,” such as an accidental tumble, a piece of bad news or sudden mourning.689 Similarly the destructive plasticity of the artistic semblance, which explodes, self-differentiates and deforms sense and daily experience, can be seen to

687 ———, Semblance and Event: Activist philosophy and the occurent arts: 22. 688 Ibid., 20-1. 689 Malabou, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity: 41. « la vieillesse surgisse d’un coup, en un instant, à la manière d’un trauma » ———, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice: 49.

197 precipitate through a contingent conditioning that is always open to the accidental. It is though this openness to the accident, which Malabou describes as “the experiential dimension of ontology,”690 that we may assert the infinite plenitude of metamorphoses that emerge in between art and politics.

Reconfiguring a Complex Continuum

Through our analysis we have arrived at a complex image of an infinitely folding and unfolding continuum, whose continual metamorphosis arises through events conditioned through differential intervals. At the beginning of this chapter we argued that in order to non-reductively conceptualise the relationship between art and politics, we must be able to situate it within a broader complex continuum of life. Having highlighted the infinitely transforming nature of the folded, plastic continuum, we are compelled to ask how it could be possible to position the artistic and political relationship within it. In this chapter we have seen the plasticity of the continuum emerge as it takes, endows and destroys form. The plasticity of this form can be reimagined, as Malabou suggests, “[t]he plasticity of the brain is the real image of the world .”691 A folded organ of abundant and indeterminate relations, the brain invokes our folded plenum’s complex network of transformations. The image of the world as a decentralized organisation is invoked in Ben Fountain’s recent book Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Fountain has described his persistant literary interest in the political as an attempt to get at the truth of “the intersection of big macro forces and particular individuals or groups.”692 In his recent novel, Fountain depicts a soldier, Billy Lynn, on a ‘hero’s tour’ home from Iraq, during which he is plunged into the carnivalesque hysteria of the half-time Super Bowl performance. Among a frenzied stage-show led by Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and the

690 ———, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity: 49. « C’est vrai, l’accident est ici la dimension expérimentale de l’ontologie. » ———, Ontologie de l’accident : essai sur la plasticité destructrice: 58. 691 ———, What Should We Do with Our Brain? , trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). 39. “La plasticité du cerveau est l’image du monde.” ———, Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004). 106. 692 Ben Fountain and Ben George, "A conversation with Ben Fountain," Ecotone 5, no. 2 (2010): 58.

198 pop group Destiny’s Child, Billy Lynn encounters an infinitely folded world of intermingled corporate, sporting, political and Hollywood interests. Billy’s struggle orient himself within this complex form is expressed as follows:

Life in the Army has been a crash course in the scale of the world, which is such that he finds himself in a constant state of wonder as to how things come to be. Stadiums, for example. Airports. The interstate highway system. Wars. He wants to know how it is paid for, where do the billions come from? He imagines a shadowy, math-based parallel world that exists not just beside but amid the physical world, transparent interplay of Matrix-style numbers through which flesh-and-blood humans move like fish through kelp. This is where the money lives, an integer- based realm of code and logic, geometric modules of cause and effect. The realm of markets, contracts, transactions, elegant vectors of fibre-optic agency whereby mind-boggling sums of mysterious wealth shoot around the world on beams of light.693

Billy’s reaction to the dizzying abundance of modern decentralised relations, exchanges and formations of a complex world is resisted by a fundamental desire to gain a sense of “his place in the world,” this being described as both a “matter of survival” and “basic human dignity.”694 Billy’s need to make sense of the world in order to survive in it reformulates the author’s own earlier discussion of the power of literature that tries “to make sense of life in general.”695 Fountain states:

The things that look like decoration—poetry, novels, music, dancing—if you strip away all the layers, are mechanisms for coping, surviving, understanding. They

693 Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (New York: Harper Collins, 2012). 121. 694 ibid. 695 Fountain and George, "A conversation with Ben Fountain," 55.

199 aren’t decoration. They’re the real stuff.696

In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Fountain explores the anxiety that comes with the inability to gain a sense of place within the complex plastic continuum of the world, which cannot be fled but must be survived. While the complex and indeterminate transformations of the plastic brain-world might appear to hinder the process of orienting ourselves or specific relationships within the whole, Malabou attributes an enabling power to this form, through which we regain the capacity to self-organise and self-orient. Elaborating upon Deleuze’s discussions of a new figure of the brain in modern cinema, Malabou states: “poetical and aesthetic force […] is the fundamental, organizing attribute of plasticity: its power to configure the world.”697 Deleuze suggests that in Kubrick’s cinema we see the identity of brain and world, in which the unreasonable brain and irrational world are limited by a membrane of passage,698 whereas for Resnais “[l]andscapes are mental states, just as mental states are cartographies, both crystallized in each other, geometrized, mineralized…”699 Malabou suggests that these films reconfigure the world in the faithful image of the brain that does not work through totalisation, but is structurally fragmented and decentralised.700 We may elaborate upon her brief comments and extend their applicability to the broader domain of art by returning to our prior discussion of the specific force that emerges through the artistic and political interval. In light of our intensive reading of Nancy and Deleuze’s thought, we described the appearance the work of art as coinciding with a plastic gap within the dominant order of sense and sensation, as it dislocates a failing image of the world pronounced by doxa and

696 Ibid., 61.

697 Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? : 39. “[…] la force poïétique et esthétique qui est l’attribut fondamental, originaire, de la plasticité : sa puissance configuratrice du monde.” ———, Que faire de notre cerveau?: 105-6. 698Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 2 : L’image-temps (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985). 267. 699———, Cinema 2 : The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Babara Habberjam (2005). 199. “Les paysages sont des états mentaux, non moins que les états mentaux, des cartographies, tous deux cristallisés les uns dans les autres, geometrises, mineralises…” ———, Cinéma 2 : L’image-temps 269. 700 Malabou, Que faire de notre cerveau?: 106.

200 myth. As it taps into the vital rhythm of difference through which the infinite variations of the world evolve, it opens-up a world of plural sense and sensation without origin. This explosive gap that constitutes the coincidence of artistic and political becoming may also be seen as the site of the on going figuration of the inherently fragmented world. Through this we may suggest that the problem of orientation within a complex and transforming continuum, relates to the demand to reconfigure it outside of a rationalist doxa of thought. As a question of ‘survival’ and ‘basic human dignity,’ our orientation within the world arises through the plasticity of artistic and political configuration, rather than the positioning of oneself within a predesignated map. It is with respect to this demand that the relationship between art and politics can be situated within the complex continuum. The in- between of art and politics as the gap that ruptures sense and sensation, is thus not one relation among other relations, rather it is the interstitial plasticity through which fragmented images of the brain-world allow us to reconfigure our position within it. It is through this process of the in-between that both art and politics emerge as singular articulations within a differentiated continuity.

Conclusion

In response to ontological questions regarding the kind of world in which a complex reltionship between art and politics might exist, this chapter constructed a space, fragment by fragment, into which we could resituate the artistic and political in-between. Turning away from a bilateral image of the unstable relation between art and politics, we cross-cut four shots to create an image of this relation that accounts for its irreducible complexity. The first cut depicted the Deleuzian image of the Baroque fold, as a figure that implies distinct singular formation within continuum. The plasticity of the Deleuzian fold was shown to be a fitting model through which to conceptualise how each work of art may express a portion of the whole within an infinite plenum. In this the artistic and political relation maintained its plastic formative capacity amidst a plenitude of other formative relations. From this we considered how the divergence between folds, such as the fold

201 between Deleuze and Nancy, reflects a differential relation through which distinct variations continue to co-implicate at a distance. Identifying the parallelism of their thought that converges only at the infinite, the differential resonance between these thinkers drew to the fore the role of destructive plasticity in the transformations that shape both art and politics. In particular the plasticization of sense by the arts according to these thinkers, highlighted the indeterminate and infinite metamorphoses that emerge through formal gaps in their appearance. We then cut to the tracing of this concept to Bergson’s discussion of the élan vital. In doing so, we posited the pre-individual plasticity of this vital form of being, emphasising the role of explosive destructive plasticity in the differential becoming of species. With this in mind, Massumi’s discussion of events conditioned through relational fields was brought into resonance with Malabou’s concept of the accident, as the condition that catalyses plastic explosivity. The final cut focused on the monstrous labyrinthine image of the plastic continuum, within which we sought to situate the artistic and political relation. Through Malabou’s image of the plastic brain we were able to situate the in-between of art and politics, in relation to its specific capacity to reconfigure images of the complex, transformative and decentralised modern world. The in-between of art and politics was thus shown to be part of a plastic and plural folding and unfolding of the continuum liberated from the rigidity of doxa. In contrast to the image of disoriented anxiety conveyed through the figure of Billy Lynn, we may thus consider the task of reorientation and reconfiguration within the decentralised world in relation to Rajchman’s positive proclamation that “[o]nce we give up the belief that our life-world is rooted in the ground, we may thus come to a point where ungroundedness is no longer experienced as existential anxiety and despair but as a freedom and a lightness that finally allows us to move.”701 It it through this micro-political capacity to move and reconfigure our complex world that differential movements in-between of art and politics can plasticise each field and their singular articulations.

701 Rajchman, Constructions: 89.

202

CHAPTER FOUR

JUDGEMENT: MITTELGLIED & COMMUNAL SENSE

Introduction: The ‘Middle Articulation’ Between Art and Politics

The previous chapter reconsidered the in-between of art and politics, as situated within a broader, plastic continuity of life. Through this analysis we arrived at a concept of the artistic and political in-between as a fold, or differential relation, between fields that share a differential power to disrupt form. Tracking their explosive force back to a bergsonian vitalism of differentiating life, we closed with an image of the artistic-political relationship embedded within the complex network of folds and conditioned events. Aligning it to Malabou’s image of the world as the plastic brain, the specificity of the artistic and political relationship emerged as a differential gap that enables worldly reconfiguration. So far we have considered the unstable and complicated in-between of art and politics in a way that highlights the difficulties posed when attempting to clearly delineate the fields, while drawing out the formative and differential space they share. Hitherto we have done so from the perspective of one outside the fields, seeking to conceptualise this relationship from a distance and resisting the temptation to discuss it through the paradigms of the molar subject. While the interactions and perspectives of molar subjects should not completely define the parameters of discussion, the experience of the molar subject in between art and politics also warrants some consideration. On a certain level, this statement may seem incongruent with Deleuzian approaches to artistic, social and political analysis, which would focus on the molecular flows of desire generated through modern processes of the state. However, we follow Nathan Widder’s argument that although political considerations through the eyes of molar political bodies risk superficiality, for Deleuze molar formations must also be considered as indispensible elements of socio-political life, worthy of critical thought. 702 In this we further invoke Deleuze’s discussion of the need for prudence when dealing with the suspension and subversion of dominant forms of

702 Nathan Widder, Political Theory After Deleuze (London: Continuum, 2012). 134.

203 segmentation,703 by reconsidering rather than abandoning the artistic and political relationship as experienced through subjective dramatizations. With this in mind, this final element of our montage, as a ‘point of view shot,’ will explore the in-between of art and politics as a transformative aspect of the molar subject’s internal life and becoming. In order to do so, a particular pivot, ‘middle articulation’ or ‘intermediary member’ that constitutes the space of subjective becoming in-between art and politics - the mittelglied of judgement – will guide the development of this chapter. In taking this focus, we hope to gain insight into the destructive and re-constructive effects of a mental activity that characterises both political and artistic spheres of becoming. We will begin this discussion by considering the heterogeneous composition of artistic and democratic spaces, as described by three thinkers: Jean-Luc Nancy, Joëlle Zask and Mieke Bal. As they discuss the complicated interactions between forms of political and aesthetic space, we will consider how the participating subject in both these contexts undergoes processes of destructive and resilient plasticity. This will lead us to the second section of this chapter, in which we consider Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt’s thought regarding a particular mental turn that links the artistic and political: the exercise of judgement. We will emphasise how the idea of communal sense is both shaped by and shaping of judgement, highlighting the plasticity of this aesthetic and political concept. The final section of this chapter will then consider how this notion of the plasticising of common sense through judgement may lead us to explore the relationship between art and one specific political composition: democracy. We will question the majoritarian threat often associated with democratic fora of judgement by considering the plasticity of judgement in relation to Deleuzian concepts of taste and style. In this, the relationship between art and politics will be reconfigured with respect to molar experience.

703 Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, Champs Essais (Paris: Flammarion, 1996). 166.

204 Accidental Compositions: Democracy and Art

The way in which political and artistic spaces form and influence one another, will greatly vary in accordance with the particularities of each field. The assumption of such a dynamic motivated the twentieth century cultural cold war, during which the artistic output of the USA and of the Soviet Union was seen to both respond to and affirm the ideologies of their respective homelands. This considered, we can narrow the field of our discussion by looking to three theorists who establish links between particular forms of artistic and democratic becoming: Nancy, Zask and Bal. Early in this thesis we touched on the question of the limitation and delineation of the artistic and political fields. Having emphasised the ontological instability of the artistic and political frames according to Danto, Nancy and Derrida’s respective concepts of the Artworld, the truth of democracy and politics of friendship, we were led to an image of artistic and democratic compositions as open to transformation. In response to perceived attacks upon the ‘truth’ of democracy over the twentieth century, Nancy saw a need to not only defend the concept of democracy, but to reinvent it.704 In the second chapter we outlined how Nancy’s call for a transition from ‘egalitarian’ liberal democratic regimes of equivalence to one of non-equivalence, emphasised the role of a space left for what exceeds politics - the incalculable – naming art among the domains through which this can be shared. While Nancy does not specify how art may enable the sharing of the incalculable in this text, we may elaborate upon this connection in light of his earlier published discussions of art in The Muses. In The Truth of Democracy Nancy draws a connection between art’s inexhaustible return to figuration and the unfigurability of democracy. Nancy states: “The more the democratic city renounces giving itself a figure, the more it abandons its symbols and its icons in a no doubt risky fashion, the more it witnesses the emergence of all possible aspirations toward new and unprecedented forms.”705 This contrasts with Nancy’s

704 Nancy, Vérité de la démocratie: 20. 705 ———, Truth of Democracy: 27. “Autant la cité démocratique renonce à se figurer, abandonne ses symboles et ses icones de façon peut-être risquée, autant, en revanche, elle voit surgir toutes les aspirations possibles vers des formes inédites.” ———, Vérité de la démocratie: 51.

205 description of art in The Muses, in which he describes the continual return to art to the “traced figure” as its configuring response to a profound absence of figure. 706 While our strange figureless being results in the event of a continual reconfiguration through art, the unfigurable nature of democracy can be seen to further compel the configurations of the arts. Nancy suggests that in the space left for art in unfigurable democracy, we find the proliferation of different forms as “[a]rt turns every which way in an attempt to give birth to forms that it would wish to be in excess of all the forms of what is called ‘art.’” 707 In this respect the open unfigurability of democracy according to Nancy, is supplemented by continually transforming and diversifying figures of art in “rock or rap, electronic music, videos, computer-generated images, tagging, art installations or performance art, or else new interpretations of older forms (such as drawing or epic poetry)”.708 In this democratic and artistic compositions become engaged in a project of continuous supplementary transformation open to future, indefinite becomings. While Nancy does not elaborate extensively upon the dynamics of this supplementary relation between art and democracy, the relationship between artistic and democratic spaces is explicitly discussed by a thinker who has inherited the methodologies of a divergent philosophical tradition – Joëlle Zask. Deconstruction and pragmatism may be considered uncommon bedfellows, as the latter’s interest in the instrumental value of concepts as guides for action, might not usually be associated with the former’s project to overturn the binary structures that have long provided a framework for action. That said, their mutual rejection of the dominant notion of western philosophy as the representation or description of an abstract, universal order, has led thinkers such as Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida to reconsider the potentially interesting resonances between these traditions of thought.709 The work of Zask may be

706 ———, "Peinture dans la grotte," 132. 707 ———, Truth of Democracy: 27. “L’art se tord dans l’effort d’enfanter des formes qu’il voudrait lui-même en excès sur toutes les formes de ce qui se nomme « art » et sur la forme ou l’idée d’« art » elle-même.” ———, Vérité de la démocratie: 51. 708 ———, Truth of Democracy: 27. “Que ce soit le rock ou le rap, les musiques électroniques, les vidéos, les images de synthèse, le tag, les installations ou les performances, ou de nouveaux interprètes pour des formes revisitées (comme le dessin ou la poésie épique)….” ———, Vérité de la démocratie: 51. 709 Elaborating upon discussions emerging at the symposium “Deconstruction and Pragmatism” held at the International College de Philosophie in 1993, a text examining this relation and featuring work by Richard

206 considered in light of her pragmatist inheritances, as her interest in examining what works of art do within experience, recalls the methodology of John Dewey’s aesthetic pragmatism. That said interesting commonalities arise between her account of the artistic and democratic space, and the supplementary role of art as a space of plural and indeterminate formation within democracy discussed by Nancy in The Truth of Democracy. In her text Art and Democracy, Zask considers the power of Art as a socially and historically situated phenomenon. Zask details her image of works of art as “complex knots of relations between the social and political, the past and future, persons and peoples and so on.”710 She thus examines the work of art in relation to the particular artistic space and relationships it creates. According to Zask the space the work of art inhabits is “one which can be visited (and which visits us) but cannot be occupied, or even less so, annexed (because it visits us).”711 This description of the artistic space can be understood on a literal level as, for example, the physical space of the gallery or museum that we (the public) can visit, yet cannot occupy uniquely for our individuated selves. However, Zask also describes this space in terms of a public ‘duration’ that invites an experience that cannot be monopolised. 712 The artwork’s power to inaugurate a shared space or duration is also considered by Mieke Bal in relation to a reconceptualised notion of timespace. Bal develops this term from her interpretation of Bergson’s space time, “where the inextricable bond between space and time does not contaminate time with spatiality,” using it to describe the particular

Rorty and Jacques Derrida, among others, was produced. See Simon Critchley and Chantal Mouffe, Deconstruction and Pragmatism (London; New York: Routledge, 1996). 710 My translation. « ce livre présentera les œuvres comme des nœuds complexes de relations, avec le social et le politique, avec le passé et l’avenir, avec les gens et les peuples et ainsi de suite. » Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 30. 711 My translation. “La différence entre un objet usuel et un objet d’art réside entre autres dans le fait que l’espace qu’occupe le second est un espace qu’on peut visiter (et qui nous visite) mais qu’on ne peut pas occuper, encore moins annexer (parce qu’il nous visite).” Ibid., 36. 712 At this point we may be tempted to question how Zask’s use of the term “durée” may relate to Deleuze and Bergson’s discussions of “la durée.” Zask suggests it may be better to consider art in terms of the “moment” or “instance” it implies, rather than the space it creates. That said, her focus in Art et Démocratie is on the pragmatic relational elements of artistic duration, rather than the condition of enlarged experience Deleuze associates with Bergsonian duration. See Deleuze, Le bergsonisme: 29. Also, Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 167.

207 “thickening” of duration enabled through works of art.713 In Endless Andness Bal considers the particular political quality of Ann Veronica Janssens abstract works. Describing the disorienting experience of Janssens’ works such as Horror Vacui (1999) and Blue, Red and Yellow (2001), both works fabricated from artificial mist that dissipates and replenishes over time, Bal considers Janssens’ work as an exploration “with timespace” and “in timespace.”714 She highlights the way in which Janssens’ work utilises time and space as artistic media, while also emphasising the status of the work as a spatio-temporal event. For Bal, the political quality of the unfolding timespace created by Janssens timespace is found as it “[p]resents a space that is inhabited rather than empty, open for entering but not for occupying, for co-inhabiting but not for appropriating.” 715

Figure 19. Ann Veronica Janssens, 'Blue, Red and Yellow ', 2000-2001, Pavilion with coloured sides filled with artificial mist, approx. 8.8 x 4.3 x 3.5m, “Light Games,” Neue Nationalegalerie, Berlin. Image courtesy of the artist. © Ann Veronica Janssens.

Echoing Zask’s description of the shared duration of art, the political connotations of the heterogeneous space in Janssens’ work are highlighted by the participatory movement

713 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: 204. 714 Ibid., 203. 715 Ibid., 63.

208 demanded by the work, which resemble the diverse assembly of opinions incited by the work that are essential to artistic becoming according to Zask.716 Most importantly, Bal and Zask both emphasise the capacity of the populated artistic space to have a formative effect upon the subject. Bal describes Janssens’ Horror Vacui as “a space within which the viewing subject is welcomed while simultaneously being transformed,” highlighting how the subject’s almost blind navigation of the populated space modifies their movement and manner of inhabiting it.717 Similarly Zask argues that the exercise of aesthetic judgements in the artistic space not only enriches and transforms the work itself, but also provides opportunities for the subject’s transformation and self-realisation.718 Exactly how the sharing of judgement transforms the subject will be considered in further depth in the following section, so for now we may consider how both Bal and Zask understand the plastic capacity of the work of art to punctually transform the subject politically. Both Bal and Zask relate the work of art to the linguistic qualities of a proposition. Bal considers the term ‘proposal’ etymologically as a “putting forward” emphasising its significance in relation to Janssen’s process of putting into effect her work. For Janssens the work of art is something that is put forward, to which the visitor may respond.719 Going further, Zask suggests that all works of art should be understood as a “propositions”, distancing them from the philosophical tendency to describe works as a puzzle to be deciphered. Zask instead claims that artists “give no advice, nor solutions, nor remedies” but provide an example of how action upon the shared conditions of existence can produce a “new environment”, giving rise to new experiences.720 Both of these thinkers thus focus

716 « Le devenir d’une œuvre dépend dans une grande mesure de la pluralité de points de vue qu’elle suscite, de la confirmation et enrichissement que ces points de vue lui apportent. Les parcours des œuvres sont comme l’histoire d’un code donné de la main à la main pour agir dans l’époque. Dans une certaine mesure, les pensées sur les œuvres en viennent à faire partie d’elles” Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 28. 717 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: 63. 718 Zask states, « il existe dans les œuvres un nombre indéfini de vecteurs (formels, symboliques, historiques, anecdotiques…) permettant au spectateur de mieux se réaliser lui-même. » Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 28 - 29. 719 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: 122. 720My translation. « De fait, les artistes ne donnent ni conseils, ni solutions, ni remèdes. Ils se gardent de donner des leçons... Ils ne font que des « propositions »… En avançant dans mon travail d’artiste, je montre un exemple de la

209 on the affective qualities of the work of art that is “put forth” to act upon our “shared conditions of existence”, opening a timespace or “environment” through which the visiting subject is transformed. This considered, how could the artwork’s action upon our shared conditions of life, as a proposal or proposition, be understood to transform the subject? We may conceptualise the subjective transformation that emerges through the artistic ‘proposition’ according to both Bal and Zask, in light of Malabou’s description of plastic reading. In The Future of Hegel, Malabou considers Hegel’s discussions of hermeneutic methods of reading, in particular the conditions of understanding the philosophical proposition. Drawing on the potential analogy between the philosophical and artistic proposition, we may reconsider the transformation of the interpreting subject in the artistic space to the transformation of the interpreting subject or reader in the philosophical text. She relays Hegel’s description of the “counter-thrust” of the speculative statement that challenges processes of understanding, proposing a plastic reading to overcome confusion. She explains how in the act of plastic reading one plunges into the void of the proposition.721 In this, “the reader definitely lets go of every and all form” resulting in the disappearance of a particular self.722 Malabou’s formulation of plastic reading is echoed by Bal’s description of the counter-thrusting experience of Janssens’ “totally opaque” Horror Vacui, that by challenging her “sense of her own boundaries” made her “aware of [her] own dissolution.”723 However, for both Bal and Malabou, such destructive plasticity upon all form is followed by a subjective ‘recovery’ of form. Malabou argues that the second stage of plastic reading leads to the reader’s articulation of another proposition that transforms the content of its reading. In this, the reading subject is transformed from a particular ‘I’, into the philosopher.724 For Bal, the transformation of the subject through Janssens’ artwork is found in the way its disruption of clarity and subjective individuation forces the re- manière dont l’action sur ces conditions produit un nouveau milieu, puis comment ce nouveau milieu peut donner lieu à de nouvelles expériences...” Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 208. 721 Malabou, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 240. 722 ———, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 180. “[Le lecteur] se laisse bien déssaisir de toute forme, comme une cire que l’on modèle… ”———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 240-1. 723 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: xv-xvi. 724 Malabou, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 240.

210 emergence of the subject in coevalness. She develops this notion of the coeval subject of the artistic space from critical anthropologist Johannes Fabian’s use of the term to describe the intersubjective sharing of historic time and space. For Bal, this transformation of the subject is “art’s contribution to the space we share – which [she] call[s] ‘the political,’” this shared ground enabling shifts and yielding “differentials in power relations.”725 While Janssens’ physically immersive and disorienting artwork makes for a clear example of the plastic effects of art upon the subject, may this arise through other less obviously participatory works? The affirmation of this can be seen in the politically plasticising work of Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi. Like Zask, Sabsabi rejects the notion that artistic responsibility relates to the communication of “solutions” or “remedies” to political problems.726. Suggesting, “you can’t empower people though projects – you can only attempt to create spaces and places,”727 through the space created by works such as Naqshbandi Greenacre Engagement (2011) Sabsabi enables a new way of looking in the world. Depicting a casual gathering of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order of Australia taking place in a suburban scout hall in Sydney, Sabsabi’s 3-channel video work challenges historical and social vectors regarding cultural, religious and Australian national identity through the harmonious play of seemingly disparate imagery of the exotic and banal. There is no moral to be deciphered or represented through Sabsabi’s work in Naqshbandi Greenacre Engagement. Rather, we find ourselves immersed in a moment where cultural and religious clichés are problematised and plasticised. Recovering from this, we emerge with a heightened sense of cultural coevalness and the power relations that otherwise exist in our shared, political space. Indeed, our sense of sharing time and space with the community depicted in the work creates a space in which “the word ‘other’ no longer makes sense.”728 The work inaugurates a space in which the social and cultural queues that orient the

725 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: 2-3. 726 See Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 122 - 23. 727Anna Bazzi Backhouse explains thatWaajab is term derived from Arabic, which can be translated to ‘duty’. See Khaled Sabsabi and Anna Bazzi Backhouse, "Eight About Ali or 'Ali: Khaled Sabsabi in Conversation with Anna Bazzi Backhouse," in Ali or ʻAli : Khaled Sabsabi (Casula, NSW: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre 2005). 728 Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 71 - 72.

211 participating subject as a particular ‘I’ within a society coded by us/them, is dissolved. Recovering from this, the image of a new “self-risking” subject emerges with a new way of looking and wondering about “who and what we are and how we live.”729

Figure 20. Khaled Sabsabi, Naqshbandi Greenacre Engagement, 2011, installation view, three- channel video projection, commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney. Image courtesy of the artist. © Khaled Sabsabi.

While works of art may produce such plastic experiences, Bal emphasizes their occurrence within a tense relationship with chance. This is due to the work’s inability to impose or compel the plastic transformation of the subject, as indeed not all works of art may succeed in the ‘solicitation’ of such intensity.730 The subject’s transformational experience is always contingent, produced through a serendipitous accident.731 The plasticising effects of the work of art can be considered in relation to both Malabou’s discussion of the accidental in The Future of Hegel and her paradigmatic look at brain trauma in What Should We Do with Our Brain? and The New Wounded. In her earlier work, Malabou considers the self-organisation of substance as it occurs through a relation

729 Bal, Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens: 4. 730 Ibid. 731 Ibid., 206.

212 to “that which happens” - the accidental.732 Derrida describes the central place of this conception of the accidental within Malabou’s earlier text, elaborating its implications within a ‘becoming essential of accident’ as well as the ‘becoming accidental of essence.’733 The accidental as “that which happens” is aligned with “the formation of the future itself,” as the condition of on-going dialectic unfolding.734 Although the emergence of the subjective ‘Ego’ may be understood as just one moment of the greater movement of substance,735 we can see Bal’s description of the formation of the political ‘looking subject’ through the accidental happening of the work of art, previously discussed in terms of the reader, as an expression of the broader self-determination of the subject that arises through substance’s relation to accidents. In addition to this resonance with the plastic metamorphosis of substance, the effect of the political force of the work of art upon subjectivity as described by Bal, can also be related to Malabou’s discussions of destructive and resilient brain plasticity. In The New Wounded Malabou presents a new face of plasticity inspired by studies and personal experiences relating to Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of substantial brain injury. She describes the brain lesion as the paradigmatic example of violent, meaningless, unforeseeable shock, which “transforms the identity of the subject.”736 The particular ‘face’ of plastic transformation she considers in the The New Wounded relates to the annihilation of form, or destructive plasticity “without remedy.” 737

732 Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 12. « L’auto-détermination est donc relation de la substance avec ce qui arrive » ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 27. 733 Jacques Derrida, "Preface," in The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), xii. 734Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 12. « …la formation de l’avenir lui-même. » ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 27. 735 Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative, trans. Jason Smith and Steven Miller (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 5. 736 Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage, trans. Steven Miller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). 157. «Paradigmatiques, les lésions cérébrales le sont au sens où ells sont l’exemple même du choc violent, sans signification, parfaitement inattendu et inanticipable, qui transforme l’identité du sujet… » ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains. (Paris: Editions Bayard, 2007). 261. 737 ———, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage: 188.

213 As an exemplary model of trauma, Malabou considers the wound’s “plastic power upon the psyche,” considering these particular forms of trauma in relation to the subjective state of cool indifference they produce.738 Sharing Malabou’s apprehensions regarding accusations of “forging a false ‘amalgam,’”739 we would not align the plasticization of the subject through the work of art to this particular ‘face’ of brain trauma without remedy discussed in The New Wounded. However in the same text she alludes to another plastic quality that arises in response to the wounds of trauma, which better resonates with the ‘second stage’ of plastic reading and Bal’s transformation of the ‘looking’ subject. Elaborating upon Boris Cyrulnik’s concept of psychological resilience, In What We Should Do with Our Brain? Malabou considers the quality of resilience in terms of its “logic of self-formation starting from the annihilation of form.”740 As a process of reconstruction and self-organisation, the resilient wounded subject emerges from trauma as a transformed subjectivity, laying out a model of destructive and generative plasticity that is “made up of ruptures and resistance.”741 We might apply this paradigm of ‘trauma’ followed by resilient self- reconfiguration to the process of subjective dissolution and metamorphosis that occurs through Janssen’s work Horror Vacui. As the individuated limits of the subject are forced into shock through the immersive work of sensation, the subject’s re-emergence in coevalness can be seen to reflect a ruptured and resistant resilience. As Malabou invokes Cyrulnik’s suggestion that the resilient metamorphosis transforms “ways of seeing and

«Comment penser, sans se contredire, une plasticité sans rèmede?» ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains.: 307. 738 ———, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage: 17. ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains. 739 ———, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage: 156. « On s’étonnera peut-être de ce que toutes ces occurrences traumatiques soient ici mises sur le meme plan. On parlera d’ « amalgame »… » ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains.: 259. 740 ———, What Should We Do with Our Brain? : 76. “Le résilience est bien une logique de la formation de soi à partir de l’anéantissement de la forme.” ———, Que faire de notre cerveau? 741 ———, What Should We Do with Our Brain? : 76. “Mais loin d’obéir à un movement simplement continu, ces reconfigurations et ce devenir sont faits de ruptures et de résistence.”———, Que faire de notre cerveau?: 175.

214 responding to the world,”742 we may see the political force work of art described by Bal as an instance of traumatic violence or shock, from which a form of life or subjectivity emerges in variant, improvisation.743 Understanding the destructive plasticity of the work of art in this way, as its relationship to the accidental links it to the formation of the future as an open or “improvised” transformed subject, we may return to Nancy’s image of democracy to consider how such works may impact upon its constitution. The integration of a space within democracy for the incalculable reiterations of art’s destructive plasticity, demands the plastic resilience of the democratic body as well. While remaining open to future unanticipated difference, the democratic body must be capable of resilient transformation after trauma. Through the improvised and ruptured transformations of the heterogeneous democratic body, the necessary space for the incalculable can be maintained within a transforming democratic formation.

A Plastic Community of Taste: Judgement and Subjective Becoming

A Plastic Life of the Mind

In the previous section we began to consider how artistic and democratic spaces transformed the subject through the disturbance of their parameters of personal identity, implying a link between aesthetic, embodied experience and the disruption of our neural and mental frames for experience. While the diverse ways in which the destructive plasticity of the work may affect the subject through the rupturing of sense and sensation has been alluded to in Chapter Three, we might further elaborate upon the mental process of ‘recovery’ after this destructive plasticity of artistic experience is instigated. While there

742 Boris Cyrulnik, Un merveilleux malheur (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002) as cited in ———, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage: 157. “Cette metamorphose, née de la blessure, transforme en profondeur la “manière de sentir le monde et d’y répondre.”” ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains.: 262.

743 See ———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains.: 300.

215 are ways to consider this movement on a pre-subjective level,744 in this section we will favour an exploration of the power of judgement as an ‘intermediary member’ through which artistic subjects unfold, as it may lead to further insight into artistic and democratic relations. In order to do so, we will turn to two philosophers whose analyses of the mind appear in stark distinction from Malabou’s discussions of the plastic brain – Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt. While recognising the tension in reading Kant and Arendt’s discussions of the mental alongside Malabou’s critical return to the neuronal, we may agree with Malabou’s suggestion that the two domains cannot be absolutely or rigorously distinguished.745 While the movements of the mental life according to Kant and Arendt maybe considered as interpretations or dramatizations of material neuronal events, 746 in this analysis we will suppose a continuity between these dimensions of neuronal and mental life, accepting that the transformative outcomes of mental processes and events may be reiterated in different neurological terms as well.

Kant, a philosopher highly concerned with delineating the machinations of thought, considers how the transformation of particular ways of thinking assists in the maintenance of political right and stability. In What is Enlightenment? and again in the appendix of Towards Perpetual Peace, he looks to the role of ‘private’ and ‘public’ uses of reason in the democratic participation of the reading public within a monarchical political constitution. In What is Enlightenment?, he makes a distinction between private and public uses of reason that allows for an insistence upon obedience to the existing political hierarchy, yet paints enlightened participation of the reading public as of central importance to stable government and perpetual peace.747 The importance of this transition between

744 In a brief return to the previous chapter, one might reconsider Nancy’s discussion of the work of art’s opening up of singular plural sense as a form of scattered and resistant recovery that reflects sense’s resilience and exposure to the accidental. Similarly, Deleuze’s discussion of the deterritorialisation of cliché through sensation that calls forth the new might be re-read in light of the resistant, ruptured resilience of the brain outlined by Malabou. The particular correspondences between Malabou and Deleuze’s interests in the brain as they relate to the force of cinema are alluded to by Malabou: See———, Que faire de notre cerveau?: 106-8. 745 Ibid., 136-8. 746 Ibid., 139. 747 As alluded to in Chapter One, the ties between this inalienable right of the citizen to participate in this free realm for public communication and Kant’s maxims of enlightenment reflect the fact that although Kant’s

216 modes of public and private thought and subjective becoming can be seen as Kant emphasizes its role within the individual realisation of capacities for enlightenment. Through this, it is also the manner in which the enlightenment of the public results in cooperative action towards the goal of perpetual peace. The transformation of the private subject to the ‘scholar’ of the public sphere is enabled through Kant’s transcendental formula, which turns the mind and action towards the space of publicity. It reads: “All actions that affect the rights of other human beings, the maxims of which are incompatible with publicity, are unjust.”748 As the condition of publicisability, publicity functions a priori, as an idea used in order to self evaluate whether our judgements might be wrong or right, before we bring them to the public sphere. Specifically, the application of this maxim to the shaping of thought demands our imagination of a universal, or ‘general’ citizen that while indefinable, represents a world of citizens to which our judgement must appeal. Paula Keating emphasises the constitutive role of this a priori idea in the formation of political thought explaining how it implies “the possibility of a truly public way of thinking” in which one is “oriented towards the world at large” and towards political progress.749 In this sense we might see Kant’s a priori idea of publicity as a preliminary tool through which thought is moulded into a ‘public way of thinking’, this shift enabling the punctual metamorphosis of the private citizen into the public sphere’s ‘scholar’. Through this shaping of thought, the citizen productively contributes to an enlightened and just public sphere, working towards perpetual peace. What bearing does Kant’s discussion of the transitions and transformations between modes of reason have upon our understanding of the formative aspects of judgement? As Keating suggests, the substantive condition through which public reason is exercised can be found articulated in Kant’s text Critique of the Power of Judgment.750 In this text, Kant refers to the idea of a ‘communal sense’ or sensus communis that “in its reflection takes political philosophy is formulated so as to leave the realisation of one’s moral and intellectual capacity to the individual’s free choice, the condition for every citizen’s enlightenment is indeed a political concern. See Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," 22-3. 748 ———, "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch," 104. 749 Paula Keating, "The function of ideas of reason in Kant’s political philosophy" (University of New South Wales, 2007), 131. 750Ibid., 130.

217 account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in order as it were to hold its judgement up to human reason as a whole.”751 In this we see the idea of a communal sense,752 which operates within publicity’s orientation of thought, as derived from the a priori taking into account of the possible judgements of others. Within this context, the idea of the sensus communis anticipates the image of the ‘universal’ citizen implied within the transcendental formula of publicity. In this, the metamorphosis of the private citizen into the public scholar hinges upon an idea that finds its home in the realm of aesthetic judgement. The character of the sensus communis has been a topic of philosophical dispute. John Hicks suggests that Kant’s discussions of the sensus communis reflects a “double legacy” that bears an “anthropological or educational interest in describing the multiplicity of aesthetic experiences” as well as a systematic interest in how aesthetic judgement functions within his broader critical system.753 The former interest was elaborated in the first chapter of this thesis in relation to Fistioc’s discussion of the archetypes of human perfection. The latter leads to the abstraction and universalisation of experiences of taste such that they become “embedded in the structure of Kantian psychology.”754 We might speculate that an interpretation of the sensus communis that was more faithful to Kant’s intentions would maintain its status as a psychologically embedded idea that, rather than being influenced by cultural and social transformations, reflected the constancy of certain human traits. Indeed, Deleuze and Lyotard offer intepretations of Kant’s sensus communis that support a transcendental rather than anthropological or empirical conceptualisation of its nature. In “The Idea of Genesis in Kant’s Aesthetics”, Deleuze suggests that the idea of common sense for Kant is “the manifestation of an a priori accord of all the faculties taken together,”755 which being common to all subjects enables the communication of knowledge

751 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 173. 752 For a focused consideration of the function of the idea of communal sense within Kant’s thought, see Keating, "The function of ideas of reason in Kant’s political philosophy," 131. 753 John Hicks, "Sensus Communis: On the Possibility of Dissent in Kant's "Universal Assent"," Diacritics 40, no. 4 (2012): 107. 754 Ibid. 755 Gilles Deleuze, "The Idea of Genesis in Kant's Aesthetics," Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5, no. 3 (2000): 61.

218 and thought. Deleuze describes the normative quality of this idea in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, stating:

Kant will never give up the subjective principle of a common sense of this type, that is to say, the idea of a good nature of the faculties, of a healthy and upright nature which allows them to harmonize with one another and to form harmonious proportions.756

Similarly in Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime, Lyotard highlights how within judgements of taste the “pleasure of this play reveals an affinity between the faculties that is transcendental and not originally empirical.”757 Lyotard discourages “sociologizing and anthropologizing” interpretations of aesthetic common sense,758 aligning the sensus communis instead to the forgrounding proportional harmony of heterogeneous faculties that enable all human thought. However Lyotard also recognizes the textual grounds from which other thinkers, such as Hannah Arendt, developed anthropological models of common sense,759 this latter’s discussion of judgement subtly aligning Kant’s aesthetic theory to his historical project of Enlightenment. Although Deleuze and Lyotard may provide us with faithful expansions upon Kant’s idea of common sense, we may suggest that Arendt’s discussions provide us with another avenue of thought that creatively extrapolates ideas and relations that Kant alluded to tangentally in his aesthetics.

One hundred and eighty years after the publication of Kant’s original text Arendt reconsidered the potentially political dimension of aesthetic judgement. Positing a complementary relationship between thought and judgement, Arendt highlighted how the exercise of this intermediary faculty was central within the individuation of the political

756 ———, Kant's Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Althone Press, 1984). 21. 757 Jean-François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, California: Stanford Unversity Press, 1991). 89. 758 Ibid., 18. 759 See ibid.

219 subject, as well as the shaping of political life as a whole. In her lectures, Arendt distinguishes judgement from reason as “[p]ractical reason ‘reasons’ and tells me what to do and what not to do,” laying down laws and commands associated with the imperatives of the will.760 This contrasts with judgement’s “merely contemplative pleasure,” which belongs to the realm of deliberation and reflection.761 Although categorically dissociated from the realm of politics and action by Kant, who describes the faculty of judgement as “filling the gap” in the system of our cognitive faculties “without upsetting the border posts” of his previously delineated categories,762 Arendt considers how this mittelglied’s unschematised movement in between spheres of thought and action may be pertinent to the political way of thinking. This can be found in “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” as Arendt describes judgement as “the faculty to judge particulars without subsuming them under those general rules which can be taught and learned until they grow into habits.” 763 It is worthwhile noting at this point, Arendt’s extension of the specific Kantian model of indeterminate judgements of taste to spheres of action that Kant himself would not have made. Indeed Kant makes an important distinction in the Critique of the Power of Judgment between two realms of common sense, one relating to common understanding, and the other to a “community of taste.”764 Kant states that the common understanding is a faculty that takes into account everyone else’s “way of representing in thought.” 765 This is contrasted to the “community of taste” that relates to the communicability of “feeling” that makes our subjective judgements universisable.766 While Kant makes this distinction between common aesthetic feeling and cognition, there is little indication of complete isolation between these processes. As we shall discuss further in this section, their

760 Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992). 15. 761 Ibid. 762 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 44. 763 Hannah Arendt, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," in Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 188 - 89. 764 Ronald Beiner, "Interpretive Essay," in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992), 141. 765 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 173. 766 Ibid., 122.

220 ineraction is implied due to the influential role of the idea of communal sense plays in the regulation of both forms of judgement and action. For Arendt, judgement can be held up as the unschematised form of mental activity directed towards the particular, which evades conformist imperatives of reason. In The Human Condition Arendt criticises an ‘orthodoxy’ of thought through which the mind plays with itself, highlighting how ‘common-sense reasoning’ insulates the mind and restricts it to a particular from dominant thought.767 For Arendt ‘thinking’ denotes a mental activity that relates to bringing representations to the mind by virtue of imagination.768 Following the Kantian model, Arendt distinguishes rational thinking from aesthetic judgement, associating the former with the critical reasoning of the Socratic dialogues. Regarding the aporetic structure of this kind of thought Arendt states, “[t]he argument either leads nowhere or it goes around in circles,” as “[t]o know what justice is you must know what knowledge is, and to know knowing you must have a previous, unexamined notion of knowledge.”769 While recognising the way in which Socrates’ aporetic dialogues ‘purged’ people of opinions that prevented thinking at all,770 Arendt distinguishes this sort of dialogue and philosophical meditation from the process of democratic deliberation, which seeks to end in ‘tangible results’.771 Arendt highlights the potentially paralysing consequences of aporetic thought, as “it is inherent in the stop and think, the interruption of all other activities.”772 According to Arendt, the critical framework through which thought puts everyday understanding into question can, in certain circumstances, result in the paralysis of the subject and their hesitation to exercise judgement. Arendt also notes how this may lead to active cynicism in the realm of action, exemplified by the decisions of the Socratic pupils Alcibiades and Critias, who having questioned definitions of piety elect to abandon the virtue and act impiously.773 For Arendt the threat of nihilism arises “out of

767 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition 2nd edition ed. (Chicago: The Univeristy of Chicago Press, (1958) 1998). 284. 768———, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," 165. 769 Ibid., 170 - 71. 770 Ibid., 174. 771 Ibid., 173. 772 Ibid., 176. 773 Ibid. -7

221 desire to find results which would make further thinking unnecessary.”774 Arendt argues that the state in which thought is rendered ‘unnecessary’ arises not because people become accustomed to the content of particular rules, but rather because they become used to “the possession of rules under which to subsume particulars.”775 Arendt’s consideration of the political consequences of nihilism arising from an absence of thought and judgement is articulated in a number of her texts, being vividly described in Auschwitz on Trial. In this text she describes the “laughing, smiling, smirking impertinence” of the defendants called to the Frankfurt trail in 1963,776 whose criminal defence involved the argument that “they carried out orders as ‘soldiers’ and ‘did not ask about right and wrong.’”777 The cold, ethical indifference displayed by the defendants during trial is contrasted by the sadistic delight and “moodiness” that appeared to govern their behaviour at Auschwitz.778 Arendt describes the supposed “toughness” of the perpetrators as being in fact “like jelly,” their “ever-changing moods” eating up “the firm surface of personal identity, of being either good or bad.”779 Arendt’s description associates the absence of judgement with the polymorphism of the jelly-like defendants, who abandoned self-determination through the paralysis of judgement. This considered, how might we understand the relationship between thought and judgement as possessing a particular plastic role in the emergence of a self-determining political subject? Robert Beiner suggests that as the mental faculty that “verges most closely upon the worldly activities of man,” Arendt’s concept of judgement is “caught in the tension between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa.”780 While guarding against the pure destructive nihilism that eats away at self-organising identity, judgement’s direction towards the particular implicates it within the formative domain of action, the vita

774 Ibid., 177 - 78. 775Ibid. 776 ———, "Auschwitz on Trial," 228. 777 ibid., 241. 778 Ibid., 254. 779 Ibid. 780 Beiner, "Interpretive Essay," 140.

222 activa, through which man distinguishes himself as a unique being within human plurality.781

The political becoming of the subject through judgement can be seen to extend to the artistic field, Khaled Sabsabi, for example, associating the political quality of art with the political problem of “picking” or judging between everyday alternatives, while each time negotiating anew “numerous social, cultural, emotional, ideological and physical structures and protocols.”782 In-between the realm of “quiet contemplation” and the “unquiet” of the political,783 judgement serves as a plastic passage through which a self-determining subject emerges as a political subject. Furthermore, judgement’s response to thought’s destructive plasticity can be seen to reflect the destructive and reconstructive logic of Malabou’s brain trauma paradigm. Arendt suggests that thinking “ceases to be a marginal affair in political matters”, when the purging mental activity destroys values, doctrines and theories at moments of historical crisis “when things fall apart.”784 Thought’s destructive plasticization of values that structure the political sphere “has a liberating effect on another human faculty, the faculty of judgement.”785 Like the resilient self-organisation of the brain after the destructive plasticization of trauma, judgement enables the emergence of a political subject of resistance.

Art, Judgement and a Plastic Community of Taste

If we consider the formative power of judgement as the second-stage ‘recovery’ from the destructive ‘purging’ of thought, we might question which particular conditions enable this resilient transition. The particularity of judgement, as it is discussed by Arendt in light of Kant’s account of aesthetic judgement , relates to its universality despite subjectivity; That is to say, its pivot from the purely subjective to the common through the sensus communis.

781 Arendt, The Human Condition 176. 782 Khaled Sabsabi and Denise Thwaites, Asynchronous email interview, 21 January - 21 May 2012. 783 Arendt, The Human Condition 15. 784 ———, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," 188. 785 Ibid.

223 Like Kant’s movement from the private to the public uses of reason, the substantive condition through which judgement can be exercised, is the sensus communis. As an idea at home in aesthetic judgement yet implicated within the public domain, the communal sense is posited by Kant to establish a ground for general communicability. Hicks identifies that within Critique of the Power of Judgement the communal sense is required only for its effect with Kant’s system of thought, as it allows Kant to account for the notion “that we, and our faculties, can communicate.”786 With this in mind, the question of what form the sensus communis or communal sense takes is best approached by looking to the character of communicability as it functions within both artistic and political domains. In doing so, we will propose a form of communal sense inspired by Arendt’s discussions that is receptive to change, plastically self-forming and deforming through judgement in both artistic and political fields. In this, taste will be shown to be a process of on-going re-constructive plasticity in response to the deconstructive plasticity of the work of art.

Despite their different approaches to examining the political and aesthetic realms, Zask and Arendt are united in their understanding of the conditions of judgement. From Zask’s pragmatic position, the validity of artistic judgement is seen to rest upon the subject’s capacity to defend or explain it to others.787 In contrast to forms of accord that are ‘compelled’ by reason, agreement in the artistic space is unnecessary, its incidence only being the result of a ‘working’ of communicability between individuals and discourses. 788 Lyotard also suggests that being devoid of rules, judgements of taste provide a matter for discussion or interlocution that is irresolvable and ongoing, as the subject feels compelled to communicate their aesthetic feeling.789 He states: “[t]aste is a sensation that immediately

786 Hicks, "Sensus Communis: On the Possibility of Dissent in Kant's "Universal Assent"," 111-2. 787 It is perhaps too optimistic to suggest that every artistic space unfolds in this manner. Indeed, in her most recent text Outdoor Art: la sculpture et ses lieux, Zask highlights how the interventionist discourse that surrounds much public art today results in the universalisation of a general opinion regarding the work of art, rather than the encouragement of a plurality of judgements that would characterise the democratic space. However, Zask also suggests that such discourses impede upon opportunities for individuals to form aesthetic judgements at all. Following Zask I would consider these as examples of failed attempts to produce an open artistic space. For further analysis of such instances, see Zask, Outdoor Art : La Sculpture et ses lieux 788———, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 138. 789 Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime: 208-9.

224 demands to be communicated... This exigency or expectation is inscribed in the sensation, without any extrinsic mediation.”790 Arendt emphasises the importance of communicability in not only sharing aesthetic judgements, but the emergence of beautiful objects themselves, stating,“[t]he condition sine qua non for the existence of beautiful objects is communicability; the judgement of the spectator creates the space without which no such objects could appear at all.”791 Like the public space, the artistic space is constituted by the spectators towards whom the communicability of objects and judgements are directed, rather than the actors or makers themselves.792 This said, she explains that “this critic and spectator sits in every actor and fabricator” suggesting, “without this critical, judging faculty the doer or maker would be so isolated from the spectator that he would not even be perceived.”793 Through this image of the internal critic and spectator Arendt personifies the condition of communicability, drawing her formulation even closer to the Kantian description of communal sense as aiming at “a type of reasoning, whereby the possible judgements of others are taken into account at the same time as the subject is privately judging.”794 Arendt’s use of the term ‘critic’ may invoke both the critical ‘purging’ of thought as well as the judgement’s movement towards the particular. This would further reinforce the coupling we have previously put forward, between critical thought as the destructive plasticity preceding re- constructive plasticity, implicating both stages in the condition of communicability. This has further bearing upon her vision of the political realm, as she links communicability with political responsibility. As she discusses the political impact of the shift from Socratic to Platonic forms of reasoning, she emphasises how the latter transformed political expectations towards giving an account or logon didonai. She describes this transformation of the political realm in terms of a new demand “not to prove, but to be able to say how one came to an opinion and for what reasons one formed it,” this being the means through

790 Ibid., 191.

791 Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 63. 792 Ibid. 793 Ibid. 794 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 122.

225 which Athenian politicians could be held responsible.795 Communicability thus became a condition of political action. Recognising the possibility of such communicability, as exemplified in artistic and political domains, leads Kant to posit the idea of a common ground of understanding between citizens. As an idea that orients a kind of reasoning, it has been described as an “ideal norm,”796 associated with the maxim of common human understanding in which thinking “from the position of everyone else” produces the “broad-minded way” of judgement beyond subjective or private inclination, towards a universal standard.797 While Kant posits the idea’s a priori function within the self-regulation of judgement or public reason towards communicability, the mental process that provides the content of this idea is more clearly elaborated by Arendt. She suggests that the person who judges, as a member of a supersensible world inhabited by beings with reason but without identical sense apparatus, “obey[s] a law given to [themselves] regardless of what others may think of the matter.”798 However in the process of extracting a disinterested judgement communicable to common sense, one “always reflects upon others and their taste, takes their possible judgements into account,” as we are “human and cannot live outside the company of men.”799 With this in mind, we may wonder whether the critical process of purging subjective interest from one’s judgement, is necessarily accompanied by the subject’s construction of an image of the common, against which to distinguish the purely self- interested. As Lyotard suggests, “the “communal” operation thus always demands a kind of purification of the representation of the object judged beautiful or of the “subjective state” that responds in thought to this representation.”800 Beiner rearticulates Arendt’s

795Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 41. 796 Hicks, "Sensus Communis: On the Possibility of Dissent in Kant's "Universal Assent"," 111. 797 Kant’s maxims of human understanding are outlined as (i) to think for oneself; (ii) to think in the position of everyone else; (iii) Always to think in accord with oneself. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 174- 5. 798 Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 67-8. 799 Ibid., 67. 800 Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime: 221.

226 understanding of this communal form of thought as follows: “[j]udgement is the mental process by which one projects oneself into a counterfactual situation of disinterested reflection in order to satisfy oneself and an imagined community of potential collocutors that a particular has been adequately appraised.”801 Lyotard also describes the “gymnastics” of the subject who puts himself in the position of others to escape the contingency of their own judgement, highlighting their primary place within the order of the possible, rather than the real.802 We may suggest that the imagining of a possible community of collocutors during the process of universalizing aesthetic judgement echoes the imagination’s process of presenting unified representations to the mind, as they both imply the synthesis and composition of images from the manifold of experience. That is to say that through an empirical process in which we take others’ judgements into account, the subject constructs a possible representation of common sense, against which they measure the disinterest of their own judgement. Thus the regulative idea of common sense that requires judgement to hold itself up to human reason as a whole implies the productive process of imagining a community or ‘general spectator’ that represents the communal against which we assess the communicability of our judgement. Although differing substantially in its empirical interpretation, this image of common sense inspired by Arendt’s approach invokes a similar process to that implied in Lyotard’s transcendental account of the sensus communis, as in both cases the common serves as a sign or trace that “recalls an Idea that regulates thought from afar as thought takes pleasure in the beautiful and demands its communication.”803 If we further this empirical approach to understanding the implications and influence of common sense in judgements of taste, we may even argue that it influences the content of our judgements. Kant affords primacy to the aesthetic feeling of beauty, which arising from a free-play of faculties that is experientially distinguishable from experiences of ‘enjoyment’ or interested pleasure imputes universality. While recognising a certain interested pleasure that accompanies the universal communicability of one’s aesthetic

801 Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 120. Emphasis added. 802 Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime: 220.

803 ibid., 207.

227 judgement, as it “almost indefinitely increases its value,” Kant insists that this indirect attachment is “of no importance” to the consideration of apriori judgements of taste.804 However elaborating upon Arendt’s discussions of “the idea of mankind, present in every man” that enables both judgement and action,805 we might propose that aesthetic judgements of beauty are enabled through an idea of communal sense, rather than reflecting its pre-existence. While for Deleuze and Lyotard it is the common subjective condition through which heterogeneous faculties are brought into a horizon of unity that enables communicable aesthetic judgements, we may propose that it is the forgrounding image of the imagined common spectator that enables us to project ourselves beyond subjective interest towards the pleasure of pure aesthetic play and the transcendental harmony of the faculties it implies. As such, might our pleasure in the play of faculties through beauty, be activated by forms of ‘purposiveness without purpose,’ which we perceive to be universally communicable? If we accept adjustment in priority, we would see the image of a community of sense underlie the experience of beauty, better accounting for Kant’s recognition of variance between cultures when it comes to matters of taste.806 This would, however, trouble Kant’s distinction between the disinterest in the beautiful and the interest in the good, as the sociability of humankind becomes intertwined with aesthetic pleasure.807 This considered, if we follow this disruptive path between Kant’s delineations, we might argue that the image of a community of judges that shapes the content of judgement, is itself produced through the on going sharing of judgement.

The dynamic plasticity of the idea of communal sense is conveyed through a more historic and anthropological reading of Kant’s discussions of aesthetic judgement. Thierry De Duve is one thinker who has highlighted the anthropological implications of taste, as he considers the historically situated image of communal sense in Kant’s sensus communis. In Kant after

804 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 177. 805 Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 75. 806 The social development of taste in different civilizations is discussed by Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 177. 807 See Kant’s discussion of the potential transition from sensory enjoyment to moral feeling in ibid., 177-8.

228 Duchamp De Duve considers the influence of the Enlightenment frame within Kant’s postulation of a sensus communis, suggesting that there is “a historical correlate to the mere thought of such a thing.”808 As Kant understands the communicability of judgements of taste to be an indication of possibly common feelings shared among humankind, so does he imagine a community of taste in which all men and women are “granted the faculty of aesthetic/artistic Ideas.”809 De Duve describes this egalitarian image as that of “the modern woman and the modern man” who “belong to the historical era that starts with the Enlightenment.”810 Echoing Kant’s sentiments in What is Enlightenment? regarding the “seed” in all men that can call them to freethinking,811 the idea of a communal sense reflects the common basis in all humankind that allows us to communicate aesthetic judgements. If we accept this historicised image of Kant’s communal sense, we may propose its further transformation, as has been suggested by De Duve in his post- Duchampian reading of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. In Kant after Duchamp De Duve re-visits Kant’s text in light of its potential applications within the context of contemporary art, suggesting the substitution of Kant’s central aesthetic statement “this is beautiful” with “this is art.” According to De Duve, despite the supposed de-aestheticisation of art over the past century, the baptismal statement “this is art” remains an aesthetic judgement. Excluding cases of the snob, fraud or ideologue who utilises the term art as a “social password,” De Duve argues that judgements of art are “based on sense experience, but more precisely an aesthetic one, inasmuch as the word ‘aesthetic’ precisely means: that which has to do with a sentimental, not with a cognitive, experience.”812 Like Kant’s aesthetic judgement, a judgement that “this is art” is not determinate, as “[y]ou will never know what art is… You won’t know but you judge; you say, “this is art,” speaking of a quality, not of a status.”813 Through this De Duve suggests a restatement of the communal sense after Duchamp, as “every woman, every

808 Thierry De Duve, Kant after Duchamp, October (Cambridge, Massachusets; London, England: The MIT Press, 1996). 316. 809 Ibid. 810 Ibid. 811 Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," 23. 812 De Duve, Kant after Duchamp: 32. 813 Ibid., 143.

229 man, cultivated or not, whatever his culture, language, race, social class, has aesthetic Ideas which are or can be, by the same token, artistic Ideas.”814 It is through this re-statement of the sensus communis that we may account for the communicability of contemporary judgements of art, as according to De Duve it may now be conceived as “a faculty of judging art by dint of feeling common to all men and women.”815 The communal sense as the idea that emerges from a need to explain communicability is thus transformed by transformations in standards of aesthetic communicability. If we accept De Duve’s argument for the reformulation of the communal sense, we are consequentially recognising how transformations in the conditions of aesthetic judgement impact upon ideas of humankind. In this respect, we may expand and re-state Kant’s description of the faculty of judgement as the mittelglied that enables connection and passage between the sensible and intelligible.816 In our re-formulation we may further highlight how through artistic judgement we form and transform the supersensible intermediary idea of humankind, which determines thought and action within the fields of political judgement. In this respect, judgement is the intermediary member or mittelglied that connects the political and artistic domains of thought and action. As noted in our discussion from chapter two, Danto constructs an open matrix to account for the continual addition of agreed predicates for the art object. With Danto’s matrix in mind, we may expand or further specify De Duve’s initial restatement of the aesthetic problem from “this is beautiful” to “this is art,” to even more specific aesthetic judgements such as “this is expressionist.” As we impute the possible aesthetic agreement of others, we imply an idea of the communal sense that is capable of recognising aesthetic ideas pertaining to specific artistic movements. As with Kant’s case of aesthetic judgement, our judgement that “Edvard Munch’s The Scream is expressionist” does not ensure or imply actual agreement with or the communicability of my statement to others. Rather, as a regulative idea of the communal sense, it will suggest that all members of this community of taste, whether cultivated or not and irrespective of culture, language, race or social class,

814 Ibid., 316. 815 Ibid., 312. 816 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment: 46.

230 is mentally capable of possessing the combination of aesthetic and artistic Ideas pertaining to this judgement.817 The transformation of the communal sense “after Duchamp” posited by De Duve, implicates the transgressions of art and artistic judgement in the processes of re-imagining the community of taste. Just as artistic breakthroughs and their complementary judgement and recognition within the discourses of the Artworld are considered to add a new predicate to the artistic matrix by Danto, the transformation of the community of sense can be seen through the plasticising effects of artistic breakthroughs and the constructive plasticity of judgement in resistant resilience. This is can be considered in relation to the effects of a number of the artistic movements and events already discussed in this thesis, from American modernist painting, to Francis Bacon’s work and the immersive installations of Ann Veronica Janssens’ work. In the case of the American avant-garde modernist painters, their work destructively undermined the language and concepts through which other forms of modern painting and been valued and judged, inspiring Clement Greenberg’s formulation of a new way to judge painting based on the focus of artistic media. Similarly, Deleuze’s account of the potent destruction of the unity of sense through Bacon’s composition of sensation, brought forth new concepts of ‘rhythm’ an ‘intensity’ through which to judge and value the work. We might also suggest that Bal’s discussion of the endless andness through which the politics of abstraction may be understood is the resilient reaction to the destructive plasticization she describes in the introduction to her text. The concepts and theory that emerge from artistic judgement, as Greenberg, Deleuze and Bal address themselves to the power of particular works in the absence of categories under which to subsume them, always remain exposed to the accidental. That is to say that the concepts through which they enable the re-configurations of aesthetic experience, remain vulnerable to plasticization by the purging capacities of thought and art.

817 In the case of the expressionism of Munch’s The Scream, these aesthetic or artistic ideas might be the intensity of expressive colour, its distorted forms and vitality of the brushstroke. Although the classification of the combination of these qualities under the term ‘expressionism’ would not be universally imputed, the combination of aesthetic qualities implied in the term ‘expressionist’ might be universally imputed, within a modern re-statement of the communal sense.

231 Contrary to the inclinations of Deleuze and Lyotard, in the preceding discussions we have seen how the idea of the communal sense cannot be considered a static form that regulates judgement. Rather we have proposed a plastic image of the communal sense that both gives and receives form to and from judgement. Considered alongside the destructive plasticity of critical thought and art, judgement appears as the resilient re-configuration of avenues for action when there are no rules laid-out before us. This resilience, however, is always ruptured, resistant and exposed to accident, as part of an “originary unity of acting and being acted upon, of spontaneity and receptivity.”818 The vital spontaneity of judgement is invoked by Arendt as she associates it with the improbable, spontaneous movement and metamorphosis of organic life stating, “[t]he new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty.”819 Arendt’s understanding of this vital activity can be elaborated further, in light of her references to “natality” and “beginning,” which rather than designating a single origin of life reflect an innate capacity for generation. Inheriting the idea from St Augustine, she emphasises that “man not only has the capacity of beginning, but is this beginning himself…”820 Humankind is thus considered to “have enough of origin within [itself] to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules...”821 Deleuze touches on a similar question of genesis in aesthetic judgement, suggesting that for Kant the spontaneous harmonious accord of the heterogeneous factulties in judgements of taste must be engendered in the soul.822 For Arendt the innate human “fact of natality” is integral to political life, as she describes it as the “miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its ‘natural’ ruin” and

818 Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 186. « La plasticité nomme l’unité originaire de l’agir et du pâtir, de la spontanéité et de la réceptivité. » ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 247. 819 Arendt, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," 189. 820 ———, "Understanding and Politics (The Difficulties of Understanding)," in Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954 (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 321. 821 Ibid.

822 Deleuze, "The Idea of Genesis in Kant's Aesthetics," 62.

232 the ontological root of action.823 The natality of judgement acts in resistance to the “bureaucratic, technocratic, and depoliticized structures of modern life” that encourage an indifferent and indiscriminating mentality that makes citizens “less capable of critical thinking, and less inclined to assume responsibility.”824 Beyond its role in the ascent of 20th century totalitarianism, Arendt sees this indifference and reluctance to judge as one of the perils of modern politics.

Democracy, Taste and Style: Resisting the Majoritarian Threat

In light of these discussions of judgement as a plastic force upon common sense, we may ask whether particular political compositions in which these processes are integral, may share a particular interest with art. In the previous chapter we referenced Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas, highlighting the underlying energies he saw finding articulation in both democratic futures and art. Yet certain thinkers, such as Deleuze, have been associated with the denunciation of democracy for its majoritarian inhabitation of creative political forces. In the following section we will reassess the potential relationship between democratic political configurations and the plasticity of aesthetic judgements, by looking to the complex position of this model of governance within Deleuze’s political thought.

Against ‘The Majority’: The Creative Resistance of Democracy

The impact of certain forms of modern politics that shape life through the conditioning of thought and feeling is explored by Malabou in The New Wounded, as she warns of a global trauma in which we face “the heterogeneous mixture of nature and politics at work in all types of violence,” which results in pathologies of the cool indifference and “flexibility” that displace the plastic capacities of the psyche.825 Deleuze also considers this dimension

823 Arendt, The Human Condition 247. 824 ———, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 40. 825 Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage: 156. « …mélange hétérogène entre la nature et la politique, à l’œuvre dans tous les types de violence… »

233 of politics in relation to majortiarianism and particular forms of judgement. However he equally provides us with an image of vital and creative political transformation through his discussions of jurisprudence, taste and style.

Deleuze’s political convictions and position are often conflated with his understanding of the task of philosophy as a form of resistance to the majoritarian dominance of “opinion” and “cliché” and their stifling impact on creative thought. For many, these discussions paint an image of democratic processes as homogenising or neutralising forces. However the instances within Deleuze’s thought in which he devalues democratic “discussion” and the democratic association with the will of the majority, can be seen to reflect the particular concerns he had about the failures of democracy within his particular historical and political context. This does not, however, equate to his complete rejection of creative potential of democratic compositions. Deleuze and Guattari’s remarks regarding discussion in What is Philosophy?, are often cited as examples of Deleuze’s anti-democratic inclination. As indicated by the title of the text, the interest of this work is in the particular task of philosophy to create and transform concepts. It is Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that this rarely occurs in the uncreative processes of debate, as “[t]he best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing”,826 in this suggesting that “[c]ommunication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous.”827 Deleuze’s description of the failures of philosophical discussion or debate to advance the creative project of philosophy has been interpreted by thinkers such as Philippe Mengue as testament to Deleuze’s resistance to democracy, as “[i]f thought or philosophy abhors discussion, it is difficult to see how it

———, Les nouveaux blessés : de Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains.: 269. 826 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?: 28. “Les discussions, le moins qu’on puisse dire est qu’elles ne feraient pas avancer le travail, puisque les interlocuteurs ne parlent jamais de la même chose.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 32. 827 ———, What is Philosophy?: 28. “La communication vient toujours trop tôt ou trop tard, et la conversation, toujours en trop, par rapport à créer.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 32.

234 would not abhor democracy.”828 However others such as Paul Patton emphasise the problem in reducing Deleuzian politics to questions of micropolitical thinking, highlighting the status of philosophy as a “necessary supplement” to “political activity in the public sphere.”829 A failure to distinguish between philosophical and political forms of discussion may be at the core of interpretations that depict Deleuze as anti-democratic. Looking to Deleuze’s characterisation of discussion and critique of “communicative rationality,” we see that his concerns lie in the potential inefficiency and non-productivity of these events in the creation of concepts to deal with problems. Identifying the inexact transition of concepts between different planes of thought, Deleuze’s criticism is directed squarely at “those who criticize without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life.”830 Deleuze’s description sounds much like Arendt’s criticisms of the Socratic form of philosophical discussion and reasoning’s “playing with itself”, as the circularity of this reasoning stifles man’s vital ability to think in a way that is orientated towards the vital sphere of action. This considered, Deleuze’s criticism of the uncreative aspects of philosophical discussion has little bearing upon our understanding of democratic discussion, as the latter is characterised by creative thinking without rule, in the form of Arendt’s judgement. The gap between Deleuze’s criticisms of philosophical discussion and the sharing of judgements in the democratic sphere is further evident, as he criticises the way in which debaters “speak only of themselves.”831 As highlighted through our previous discussions, the mental activity of judgement marks the subjective pivot towards the shared domain of communal sense, shaping the grounds of communicability. While the actual communicability of indeterminate judgement can only be imputed and never ensured, this does not impact upon the nature of judgement as fundamentally directed towards the

828Philippe Mengue, Deleuze et la question de la démocratie (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003). 43. 829 Paul Patton, "Deleuze and Democratic Politics," in Radical democracy: Politics between abundance and lack, ed. Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen (Manchester & NY: 2005), 61. 830 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?: 28. “Mais ceux qui critiquent sans créer, ceux qui se contentent de défendre l’évanoui sans savoir lui donner les forces de revenir à la vie, ceux-là sont la plaie de la philosophie.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 33. 831 ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 33.

235 dynamic plasticity of the common. One might argue that the “social passwords” of the artistic snob and fraud that De Duve associates with a failure to judge aesthetically, can also be applied to the political realm. It is perhaps this form of self-interested statement of preference that concerns Deleuze in the context of late twentieth century liberal democracy and the philosopher debater who ‘speaks only of themselves.’ That said, we might argue that such self-interested proclamations do not exemplify the poverty of sharing judgement in general, but the failure of many to exercise real judgement in modern life. As the mental activity characterised by the passage from the subjective to the universal, the domain of democratic discussion in which judgements are shared implies the creative production of concepts, as it continually renews ideas of the ‘communal sense.’ While the failures of discussion, judgement or democracy to fulfil this aim can be criticised, from a Deleuzian standpoint it would be strange to criticise all forms of discussion, judgement or democracy because within them there is potential for failure. If that were the case, how could we possibly value philosophy’s creation of concepts, when there are so many philosophers who fail to fulfil this task?

To consider Deleuze’s actual concern with oppressive forms of politics, we must understand his concept of ‘the majority.’ Deleuze’s concern with majoritarian politics reflects his broader criticism of the dominance of certain modes of thought and behaviours to the detriment of the creative forces of life. This considered, it is important to not to reduce this criticism to a denunciation of the democratic structure of rule by numerical majority. Deleuze’s criticism is not directed towards the form of governance by an actual, numerical majority, rather he critiques ‘the majority’ as an image that appears “once in the constant and again in the variable from which the constant is extracted”, thereby achieving a state of domination and power.832 The link between this image of the majority and certain systems of control and power is identified by Deleuze, the role of becoming-minoritarian being the disruption and transformation of such dominance through “the creative potential

832 Patton, "Deleuze and Democratic Politics," 59.

236 of individuals or groups to deviate from the standard.”833 However it is vital to establish that the exercise of becoming-minoritarian need not be considered incompatible with democratic processes. Patton points out the flaw in this association made by Mengue as “he turns difference into opposition by suggesting that the position of majority is by nature opposed to the creativity of the minoritarian” in this implying that democratic politics “inevitably ‘crushes’ creative becomings.”834 Patton highlights the implausibility of this characterisation of democratic politics, as it ignores the progressive legislation by majorities towards more inclusive standards regarding, for example, the political standing of gender-based, sexual and racial minority groups. Such legislation by the majority demonstrates that “democratic politics can have its own forms of creativity.”835 With this in mind, we might emphasise instead the rhizomatic and creative quality of the democratic political association. Indeed Mengue emphasises basic need for political organisation as “the basis of collective power can only rest on the general consent to obey that in turn forms the emotional core [bloc passionnel], made up as much of passions and beliefs as rational perception.”836 In this Mengue suggests that the political consists in knowing how to use these passions and play them off one another “in order to assure a minimum of unity, of stability and agreement in civil society.”837 Mengue further highlights the rhizomatic quality of the democratic association, as a network of “multiple points of entry” with “connections that are unstable, improbable, uncontrollable, unassignable”.838 In this the creativity of the democratic organisation is, in Patton’s words, “played out in the space in-between the orientations or opinions of particular individuals or groups, it is a politics of pure immanence, a politics without foundation…”839 Zask characterises the open affirmation of difference within democracy in a similar way but from her pragmatist standpoint, emphasising how the form of democratic relation “creates a place for the other

833 Ibid. 834 Ibid., 60. 835 Ibid., 59. 836 Philippe Mengue, "The Absent People and the Void of Democracy," Contemporary Political Theory 4, no. 4 (2005): 391. 837 Ibid. 838 Ibid. 839 Patton, "Deleuze and Democratic Politics," 53.

237 without denying its potential for autonomous development, without subsuming or encompassing it.”840 In this, democratic judgement is designed to leave a space for minority becoming, the defence and “continual renewal” of this irreducible image of the democratic subject being “the oldest and most constitutive democratic conviction”. 841 Yet Deleuze’s concerns regarding the threat of majortiarianism can be reconsidered in light of the particular form of French republican democracy, which Zask equally criticises. She explains how within such regimes, democratic “judgement by many” is “summoned to bow before a “law of necessity”, “universal reason”, or our “true interest””, reducing the plurality or diversity of opinions.842 While this form of republican organisation based on universal reason can be aligned with the subjugation of difference to equality, this would sit in stark contrast to the minimal organisation of the rhizomatic democracy alluded to by Mengue, which is aligned with the experimentality of democratic legislative processes that require heterogeneous participation.843 This form of democracy centres on the enabling of encounters between singular articulations without determined ends. Zask considers an encounter as “a point of contact” that “depends on the adaptive potentialities and faculties of different things.”844 This open and indeterminate form of contact can be read as a productive event, this conceptualisation enhanced by Deleuze’s description of the encounter as, “to find, to capture, to steal.”845 Describing the encounter in the infinitive, it

840 My translation. « Ce rapport qui fait une place à l’autre sans en nier le potentiel de développement autonome, sans le subsumer ou l’englober, est au cœur de l’idéal démocratique.” Zask, Art et Démocratie: Peuples de l’art: 29. 841 My translation. « En tout état de cause, cette irréductibilité, sa défense et sa reconduction continue est la conviction démocratique la plus ancienne et la plus constitutive.» ibid., 29 - 30. 842 My translation. « En politique, le « juger à plusieurs » est souvent réduit à l’une des figures d’unanimité dont j’ai parlé plus haut, qu’on soit sommé de s’incliner devant la loi « nécessaire », la « raison universelle », ou notre « intérêt véritable », ou que la diversité des opinions soit ramenée à l’unité par n’importe quelle technique qu’on pourra imaginer. L’histoire des idées politiques abonde en théories monistes, ou « absolutistes ». Il en va de même en théorie de l’art.”Ibid. 843 Patton, "Deleuze and Democratic Politics," 53. 844 My translation. “Une rencontre est un point de contact. L’établissement de ce point dépend des virtualités et des facultés adaptives de choses différentes.” Joëlle Zask, "Pratiques artistiques et conduites démocratiques " Noesis (2007): 3. 845 Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II (New York: Columbia University Press, (1987) 2007). 7.

238 captures the new through a fertile or “nuptial” double-movement. Deleuze’s emphasis on the asymmetry and external liminality of the becoming that arises through the encounter conveys the image of a creative impetus opening up and transforming the limits of composition. Preceding this formulation, the encounter is referenced in Deleuze’s text on Spinoza, as he describes the process whereby bodies or ideas encounter one another and “sometimes combine to form a more powerful whole, and sometimes one decomposes the other, destroying the cohesion of its parts.”846 The event of the encounter thus implies an unforeseeable plasticity, which can be either generative or destructively differential. As places that can facilitate such encounters, the artistic and democratic space can thus be distanced from neutralising difference through majoritarian agreement, providing instead a loose association through which the encounters of difference call forth the new.

Taste and Style Resisting ‘The Majority’

Although we can find hints within Deleuze’s texts that democratic assemblages cohere with his broader philosophy, to assert a creative place for judgement from a Deleuzian standpoint is unorthodox. While critical references to judgement can be found peppered through a number of Deleuze’s texts, his brief discussions of jurisprudence, taste and style provide a concept through which to valorise the kind of thinking that has been aligned with judgement by Arendt. Deleuze’s critical stance regarding judgement can be found in his text Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Aligning it with systems of morality that Spinoza’s philosophy disturbed, he distinguishes judgement from an immanent ethics of joy stating, “[m]orality is the judgement of God, the system of Judgement.”847 Deleuze’s criticism of judgement is

“Rencontrer, c’est trouver, c’est capturer, c’est voler, mais il n’y a pas de méthode pour trouver, rien qu’une longue préparation. Voler, c’est le contraire de plagier, de copier, d’imiter ou de faire comme. La capture est toujours une double-capture, le vol, un double-vol, et c’est cela qui fait, non pas quelque chose de mutuel, mais un bloc asymétrique, une évolution a-parallèle, des noces, toujours “hors” et “entre”.” Ibid. 846 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988). 19. “Quand un corps “rencontre” un autre corps, une idée, une autre idée, il arrive tantôt que les deux rapports se composent pour former un tout bplus puissant, tantôt que l’un décompose l’autre et détruise la cohésion de ses parties.” ———, Spinoza Philosophie pratique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, (1981) 2003). 29. 847 ———, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy: 23.

239 seated in this religious association, as it is implied that because God judges the immoral, judgement is necessarily implicated within the system of moral law. In accordance with this Deleuze associates judgement with a moral imperative that “has no other effect, no other finality than obedience.”848 Anthony Uhlmann explains this impediment on the mind as “[o]bedience and judgement do not set out from knowledge, but from ignorance; furthermore, they obscure understanding, keeping us in ignorance.”849 Uhlmann draws out its medieval, metaphoric connotations with a moment of reckoning, linking it to the determined actions of accountancy.850 Deleuze thus proposes ethics as an alternative conceptualisation to guide action, explaining: "Ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of existence, replaces Morality, which always refers existence to transcendent values."851 In this discussion, we can see the clear divergence between Deleuze and Arendt’s concepts of judgement. It is clear that religious connotations of Judgement largely inform Deleuze’s usage of the term in this text rather than his reading of Kant, as within the Kantian system of morality it is practical reason that compels morality. Deleuze associates judgement with the categorisation of acts according to pre-given moral law, whereas judgement for Arendt applies to cases of absence of law. Uhlmann’s articulation of the medieval religious connotations of judgement as a final reckoning or calculation, further distances Deleuze’s understanding of the term from Arendt’s, as the latter insists upon the status of judgement as a passage or mittelglied in-between the vita comtemplativa and the vita activa. This considered, within Deleuze’s writing we do find a discussion of a particular process of judgement that moves beyond being compelled by law – jurisprudence. In Negotiaions, Deleuze expresses an interest in jurisprudence over law, stating:

“La morale, c’est le jugement de Dieu, le système du jugement.” ———, Spinoza Philosophie pratique: 35. 848 ———, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy: 24. “la loi morale est un devoir, elle n’a pas d’autre effet, pas d’autre finalité que l’obéissance.” ———, Spinoza Philosophie pratique: 36. 849 Anthony Uhlmann, "To Have Done with Judgment: Beckett and Deleuze " SubStance 25:3, no. 81 : 25th Anniversary Issue (1996): 113. 850 Ibid., 117. 851 Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy: 23. “Voilà donc que l’Éthique, c’est-à-dire une typologie des modes d’existence immanents, remplace la Morale, qui rapporte toujours l’existence à des valeurs transcendantes.” ———, Spinoza Philosophie pratique: 35.

240 “Jurisprudence is the philosophy of law, and deals with singularities, it advances by working out from singularities.”852 Alexandre Lefebvre suggests that Deleuze’s “tantalizing remarks” about jurisprudence position this practice as an “institutionalized line-of- flight,”853 which is “capable of unblocking the movements that law arrests.”854 While Deleuze critiques the abstraction of law as exemplified by the concept of human rights, Lefebvre highlights how for Deleuze, jurisprudence creates law by addressing situations to make them liveable, resisting encoding it with transcendent values.855 In this, judgement involves “the construction of a legal plane, one in which the case … is determined in relationship to laws, and conversely, where laws are adjudicated, related, and transformed through the distinct points of the case.”856 So we find in the case of jurisprudence a conceptualisation of judgement that is creative and more closely aligned with Arendt’s understanding of judgement as unschematised thought acting in absence of law. Deleuze’s valorisation of jurisprudence may reflect another particular dimension of his thinking that creeps into many of his texts. Jurisprudence as the “philosophy of law,” reflects a particular skill and juridical excellence in interpreting and expressing principles without prior example. In Deleuze’s writing on philosophy, mathematics, literature and art, one also perceives a keen eye and admiration for individuals who, regardless of their domain, approach their projects with taste, skill and style. Mengue has linked the supposed poverty of discussion to Deleuze’s elitist inclinations that ultimately see an ultimate rejection of the democratic forum. Patton, however, resists this interpretation suggesting that “[Deleuze’s] criticism of the way in which mass media dominate the public sphere” cannot be equated to “a Platonic gesture of retreat from the agora and a form of aristocratic disdain for the multitude.”857 Indeed, might we instead suggest that the practice of sharing judgement might cultivate a certain aptitude or taste for minoritarian political thought?

852 ———, Negotiations (1972 - 1990): 153. 853 Alexandre Lefebvre, "A New Image of Law: Deleuze and Jurisprudence," Telos (2005): 104. 854 Ibid., 103. 855 Ibid., 112. 856Ibid., 115. 857 Patton, "Deleuze and Democratic Politics," 55.

241 Hicks suggests that Kant’s theory of taste inherited from texts written by members of the mid-eighteenth century “British ‘sensibility school,’” such as Burke, Hume and Shaftesbury.858 These figures would see taste and common sense as a skill that could be learned and developed as part of broader Enlightenment society.859 Although Kant himself does not invest his discussion in the educative potential of taste, its relationship to the second maxim of common understanding ‘to think in the position of everyone else’, aligns it to the development of the ‘broad-minded way’ of thinking. The plasticity of this process of judgement can be seen, as the mittelglied in-between the subjective and the universal, reflects the formation of the subject as “an absolute coincidence of ‘interior’ and ‘exterior.’”860 The exemplary state of the subject with the ‘enlarged mentality’ is described by Arendt as one who has trained their imagination to “go visiting.”861 In this, the skill required for judgement involves training in the process of purging subjective interest as well as propelling imagination beyond the limits of subjectivity. The strength of imagination that allows us to “go visiting” also enables someone of developed taste to think “ahead of the crowd” while maintaining the communicability of their judgement. In Kant’s text, taste is discussed as a sense that knows when to intervene formally, to ‘clip the wings’ of artistic genius in the name of communicability. Having recognised the formal intervention of taste within both judgement and artistic creation in both Kant and Arendt’s thought, we find formulation of this skill in What is Philosophy?, as Deleuze describes the necessary ‘taste’ required of the philosopher in the creation of concepts. Taste in philosophy is articulated as “love of the well-made concept”, its regulatory function described as one of “co-adaption.” Deleuze explains:

858 Hicks, "Sensus Communis: On the Possibility of Dissent in Kant's "Universal Assent"," 107.

859 Ibid.

860 Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic: 72. « …une coïncidence absolue de l’« intérieur » et de l’« exterieur ». ———, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 104.

861 Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: 74.

242 If the laying-out of the plane is called Reason, the invention of personae Imagination, and the creation of concepts Understanding, then taste appears as the triple faculty of the still-undetermined concept, of the persona still in limbo, and of the still-transparent plane. 862

Through this comparison Deleuze depicts taste as a “rule of correspondence”863 that intervenes at a point of indeterminacy in the creation of the concept. Deleuze emphasises that taste is not a faculty of moderation but of plastic configuration, giving form to concepts that provoke further conceptual activity.864 The philosophical taste thus appears plastic in its function, composing the “rhythm” at which “content is unfolded and presented.”865 Having identified the important place of taste within philosophical formation and creativity, we can see resonances between this concept and Deleuze’s discussions of style in the “assemblage of enunciation.” Deleuze suggests, “style is managing to stammer in ones own language... Being like a foreigner in one’s own language. Constructing a line of flight.”866 Echoing the embedded line-of-flight discussed in relation to jurisprudence, style implies a plastic skill in judging and composing the new within the limits of language. Naming Beckett, Kafka and Godard among the most striking of stylists capable of making language “stammer”, making language stutter requires both sensitivity to its modes of assemblage, and a call to the outside (‘the foreign’) in order to push its limits while calling forth the new within it. So we see within Deleuze’s thought that despite an emphasis on calling forth the absolutely new and pushing the limits of language, there equally exists a place for sensitivity to “well-made” composition.

862 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?: 77. “On appelle goût cette faculté philosophique de coadaptations, et qui règle la création des concepts. Si l’on appelle Raison le tracé du plan, Imagination, l’invention des personnages, Entendement, la création des concepts, le goût apparaît comme la triple faculté du concept encore indéterminé, du personnage encore dans les limbes, du plan encore transparent.” ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 74. 863 ———, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 74. 864 Ibid., 74 - 75. 865 Malabou, L'Avenir de Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique: 24. 866 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie?: 74 - 75. “Un style, c’est arriver à bégayer dans sa propre langue. C’est difficile, parce qu’il faut qu’il y ait nécessité d’un tel bégaiement. Non pas être bègue dans sa parole, mais être bègue du langage lui-même. Être comme un étranger dans sa propre langue. Faire une ligne de fuite.” Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues II: 4.

243 To judge with sensitivity or taste in philosophy or art, requires the ability to assess when, how or what to choose, change or make, in the absence of law. This practice has an inevitable place within Deleuzian vision of creative artistic and political becoming. In this we may suggest that the spaces in which the plastic mittelglied is launched into operation, such as art, democracy and jurisprudence, play an important role within a Deleuzian vision of becoming of political and artistic subjects.

Conclusion

This final chapter of our investigation into the in-between of art and politics explored this relationship from the standpoint of molar subjects who emerge through participation in both spheres. Through this we identified a passage or ‘middle articulation’ of self- determination operating in between the two fields, reinforcing our conclusions regarding the complicated and indeterminate interplay between artistic and political becoming. The discussion began by identifying how a transformation of artistic and political subjects arises through a play of destructive and resilient plasticity in response to subjective ‘traumas’ enacted by art works and events. In light of Nancy, Zask and Bal’s analyses and representations of the artistic and democratic spaces, we identified their commonality in the capacity to liberate the subject from the opinions and structures that govern experience through a plastic destabilisation of self-defining parameters. From here we sought to explore the complementary movement of the ruptured, re-configuring, resilient self, as Malabou in The New Wounded describes it. This led us to an examination of the precise point at which this pivot from destruction to reconstruction occurs: the moment of artistic or political judgement. Expanding on the thought of Kant and Arendt, this intermediary faculty was shown to not only “fill the gap” between the two forms of plasticity, but also between art and politics. This was found in their relationship to communal sense, as a plastic image of humankind that both shapes and is shaped by shared judgement. The final section of this chapter then considered whether the concepts of plastic communal taste or judgement were particularly pertinent to the rhizomatic compositions of democratic politics. In this we highlighted the vital, open and indeterminate creativity that judgement

244 and taste reflect, in light of their relationship to Deleuzian concepts of jurisprudence, taste and style. Thus at the close of this chapter, we may conclude that the indeterminately complicated in-between of art and politics is not just a problem for conceptual delineation, but a reflection of intertwined forms of subjective becoming that operate through intermediary faculties and ideas.

245 CONCLUSION

This thesis set itself the enormous task of responding to the historically loaded problem of the relation between art and politics. In doing so it adopted an approach inspired by Deleuze’s philosophy of film, composing a disjunctive montage of images that depicted the unstable and complicated in-between of art and politics. The indirect image of the in- between of art and politics that was thereby constructed, led us to present the continuity of its splintered articulations in the condition of plasticity. Through a rhythmic alternation between images of frame, fold and judgement, this thesis presents a faithful image of the fragmented relationship between art and politics.

In order to propose a situated reconceptualisation of the relationship between art and politics, we began by surveying the major traditions that prefigure its perception. This contextualising long shot of the artistic and political relationship followed the movements of two figures: ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake’. We confronted common perceptions of the hierarchies these traditions support, the first characterised by a subordination of art to political utility, the second by the isolation of the two. However, through our analysis we also demonstrated that the clarity of these distinctions is questionable. Starting from a comparison of exemplary artistic practices (Sartre, Zola, Hugo, Sand, The Situationist International and Kienholz), we found reformulated through this tradition an association between the artist’s social function and the revealing of truth. This led us to consider one of the original philosophical figures associated with this reduction of art to political function – Plato. Contrary to common interpretations, we showed that Plato’s discussions of art in the Republic and Phaedrus do not subordinate art to political order. Rather, his entire aesthetico-political domain is subordinated to what Nietzsche outlines in The Birth of Tragedy as the Apollonian. This led us to reconsider the priority of social function in the artistic practices formerly discussed, as a commitment to

246 how not-strictly political ideas motivate their work. In this, the tradition of ‘art for progress’ was distanced from a completely social functionalist conception of art. The next figure we followed through this frame was the tradition of ‘art for art’s sake.’ Gustave Flaubert, Clement Greenberg and his associated American modernist painters were taken as key characters within this movement. Their formalist approaches to artistic valorisation were traced to a common value of artistic freedom and human advancement, reconfiguring Kant’s Enlightenment project and aesthetic theory outlined in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Their complicated political status was emphasised in light of Derrida’s thought in Economimesis, as ‘artistic freedom’ was shown to be constrained by its own forms of economic determinacy. The supposed isolation of art from politics was also exposed as an archetype within Kant’s human teleology, which grounds both his political and artistic thought. It thus became clear that the practice by the pure aesthete of ‘art for art’s sake’ could not be entirely isolated from broader social and historical projects of Enlightenment. Returning to examples, we showed that neither Flaubert’s aestheticism during the industrialised ‘Age of Enlightenment,’ nor the free expression of Abstract Expressionism during the Cold War, can be entirely isolated from the socio-political values of their time. Through this the presumed clarity of the hierarchies and distinctions associated with ‘art for progress’ and ‘art for art’s sake’ were exposed to be conceptually unstable, this highlighting the need for a re-conceptualisation of the artistic and political relationship that accounts for unstable, cross contamination.

Following the conceptual slippage that emerged between art and politics in the first chapter, Chapter Two proposed a new image of the relationship between art and politics articulated through the figure of the plastic frame. Closing in on the ontologically unstable limits between these fields, we began with an exposition of Derrida’s quasi-concept of the frame in Truth in Painting. As the supplementary hors d’oeuvre through which the oeuvre is constituted, we proposed that the unstable and co-implicating constitution of art and politics, as distinct fields, reflects the intervention of an ontologically unstable supplementary structure of the frame.

247 We considered this firstly through a comparison between Arthur Danto’s concept of the Artworld and Derrida’s concept of the frame. We began by recounting Danto’s discussions in Transfiguration of the Commonplace as he questioned the limits of the artwork in reference to works such as Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box and Richard Serra’s Corner-Piece. In an attempt to resolve the problem of how an ordinary object can become a work of art, Danto proposed with his concept of the ‘Artworld’ a parergonal, constitutive structure that accounts for artistic transformations – the open matrix of artistic predicates. In this concept we found the unstable yet constitutive and supplementary operations of the frame at work, as the emergence and disappearance of artistic predicates that construct the matrix depend on unstable and indefinite consensus among different artworlds. This comparative reading of Derrida and Danto’s concepts of artistic delimitation exposed a productive space in between the thought of these two often-opposed writers, with respect to the unstable constitution of the art object. Having seen how the limits of the art object and artworld were marked by unstable yet powerful parergonal thickness, we then considered whether this figure of the frame might also be applied to the problematic limits of the political. In this, we followed the path of identifying the particular political frames proposed by Schmitt, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, drawing out how their formulations articulate different aspects of framing. Our analysis of Schmitt’s frame of politics highlighted the violent capacities of the parergon, as the strict and homogenising imposition of the antagonistic frame totalises and distorts the political body it frames. However, our consideration of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe’s retreating of the political also exposed concerns regarding the complete camouflage of the political frame, which surreptitiously defines the parameters of political discussions. This noted, we showed how Nancy and Derrida’s accounts of the democratic limit or frame emphasise its unstable constitution, emphasising the supplementary role of what lies beyond politics (the incalculable or aimance) in the constitution of the democratic body. Our consideration of these different frames that delimit the work of politics, demonstrated how as a broader domain politics, like art, is constituted by an unstable and constantly retreatable parergon of oppositions, theories and concepts.

248 Having exposed the instability of the conceptual limits of artistic and political fields, our task was then to examine the nature of the parergonal “thickness” in-between art and politics. We identified the slippage and contamination of terms between art and politics in the first chapter, then ‘zoomed-in’ on the ontological instability of their space of distinction. Yet could we draw ourselves in even closer, to see how these contaminations move through this liminal, supplementary space of the frame? Is this transference neutral, or transformative? In order to address these questions we turned to a linguistic trope that has long accounted for the semiotic slippage between distinct fields: metaphor. We approached this through the lens of Derrida’s critique of the Aristotelian trope in White Mythology. As he highlights the metaphoricity inherent in all language through a deconstruction of the trope of resemblance, Derrida undermines the hierarchy implied between an ‘original’ and ‘secondary’ language. In this he allows us to re-conceptualise the conceptual transferences between art and philosophy without privilege or subordination. Yet Derrida’s critique of metaphoric transference has limitations when it comes to conceptualising the unstable parergonal space in-between art and politics. As terms travel between the fields of art and politics and differ through the spacing of their movement, the in-between of art and politics is depicted as a non-place between two distinct articulations. This can lead us back to the initial trap of conceiving of art and politics in terms of the distinct, punctual arrival of articulations in either art or politics. So, can we look even closer at this in-between of art and politics, constraining the frame so tightly that the intensity of the parergonal form itself is in focus, rather than the fields it delineates? To elaborate upon the form of the frame in between art and politics, we looked to Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. Elaborated from Hegel’s Absolute Relation of subject emerging from substance, Malabou’s development of plasticity posits a materiality capable of endowing form while also receiving it. As a self-organising activity-of-form, plasticity designates the metabolism of change between fixed instances. Reconceptualising the volatile frame in between art and politics as a thick transformative limen of plasticity allows us to affirm continuity between artistic and political spheres while also maintaining the movement of difference between them. The potential of this concept of the plastic

249 frame to account for the metamorphoses in between art and politics was articulated through a comparative reading of a key scene in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. In resistance to the schematising allegorical reading of Coetzee’s work, we proposed a reading that responds to the plasticity of the text, drawing out the continuity between art and politics as fields of deformation and reformation, without playing the schematising “games” of political allegory. Through this magnified ‘close-up’ of the in-between of art and politics, we were able to show how despite the instability of its non-delineable contours, it serves as a site of transformation from which the singular articulations of each field emerge. The figure of a self-organising plastic parergon that both receives and endows form allows us to conceive of an indefinite and non-hierarchical space of transference and transformation between art and politics.

The third ‘cut’ of this thesis pulled-back from the tightly focused investigation of the form of the in-between. Aware of the ontological problems in isolating the relationship of art and politics from a broader context of life, the ‘cross-cutting’ of Chapter Three elaborated a complex image of the artistic and political relationship, which takes into account its positioning within the world. In this we turned to Deleuze’s The Fold, in which he elaborates upon Leibniz’s monadology in association with Baroque forms and perspective. His discussion of point-of-view, established through singular variances within the continuum, allowed us to situate the singularity of the artistic-political fold within the continuum it expresses. The particular pertinence of the figure of the fold to the artistic and political relation was then explored with reference to its status as a differential relation. This was elucidated through the ‘shared’ fold of thought between two thinkers: Nancy and Deleuze. While the variance in their philosophical trajectories regarding the negative places them at irreconcilable distance from one another, this distance was shown not to diffuse the interactions of their thought. Rather, through an investigation into the fold between Nancy and Deleuze, we arrived at a new concept of the artistic-political gap within the homogenizing continuity of myth and doxa. As both Nancy and Deleuze discuss art’s political force in terms of its differential rupturing of the unity of sense and sensation, the

250 particular space of this rupture or gap, is shown to be the site where art and politics encounter one another. In this, the in-between of art and politics is understood in terms of the rhythm through which it emerges, which is composed of gaps in between beats. From here, we looked further into the differential force or “rhythm” that creates these intervals, re-reading Bergson’s concept of élan vital through Malabou’s concept of destructive plasticity. We identified a resonance between the differential and generative force described by Bergson and the pluralising disruption of sense and sensation that emerges in between art and politics as described by Nancy and Deleuze. From this we proposed that the plastic gaps in between art and politics are the source of the virtual becoming for singular articulations in each field, and likened this movement to the production of infinite variations in species through the complex movement of the élan vital through the cracks of life. With this image of the infinite varieties or singular folds of art and politics emerging from vital in- between spaces, we then turned to Brian Massumi’s discussion of the conditions of on-going indeterminable artistic and political events. In response to Massumi’s discussion of the conditioning of events through relational fields of non-relation between disparate entities, we considered how artistic-political folds are part of a greater plastic composition. As we proposed that events are conditioned through accidental and complex combinations of relations beyond the artistic and political, we constructed an image of their relation that accounts for non-linear interactions between distanced elements, opening them up to further complex becoming. However, following this image of a differential vitalism that conditions events, we were challenged by the prospect of situating the artistic and political relationship within this infinitely folding and unfolding plastic continuum. Our resolution emerged through Malabou’s “new image of the world” as a plastic, self-organising and fragmented brain. In this the position of the artistic-political gap, as a source of differential rupture upon the continuity of sense, was re-imagined as a fragmenting force of reconfiguration, in the production of a faithful image of the fragmented brain-world.

251 From the conclusions drawn in Chapter Three, the final element of our montage involved a distinct cut to a ‘point of view shot,’ as we approached the in-between of art and politics as it relates to molar subjects and their neuronal or mental becoming in between artistic and political domains through the ‘middle articulation’ of judgement. We looked to Jean-Luc Nancy, Joëlle Zask and Mieke Bal’s accounts of the artistic and democratic spaces that provoke plastic transformations in subjectivity. Through their thought, we elaborated a concept of artistic and political timespace, through which the participating subject spontaneously deforms and reconfigures. This movement was considered in light of Malabou’s study of neurological trauma and resilience in The New Wounded and What Should We Do with Our Brain? In this, we described a ruptured auto-reconfiguring capacity from the destructive to the generative, which takes place for the subject within the artistic space. This led us to consider resonances between Malabou’s neuronal image and Arendt’s discussions of the ‘middle articulation’ of judgement in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, The Human Condition and Auschwitz on Trial. Through Arendt’s thought we find an account of political and artistic subjects emerging through the exercise of judgement. The creative and constitutive force of judgement within the production of subjectivity was highlighted, in that this unschematised form of thought, directed towards the particular, serves as the pivotal faculty that directs humankind towards the shared conditions of life. In this, judgement was shown to serve as the plastic movement that “fills the gap” between the sensible and intelligible, as well as the life of action and life of the mind. The interstitial creativity of this faculty was then elaborated in relation to its on- going construction of the image of communal sense, which operates in between art and politics. The manner in which this plastic image shapes artistic and political fields was highlighted in consideration of De Duve’s analysis in Kant after Duchamp, wherein he points to the need to restate the communal sense in accordance with transformations in standards of communicability. This led us to consider whether democratic political compositions that imply the public sharing of judgement, may have a particular investment in the plastic transformations of common sense through art. In doing so, we questioned

252 often-cited Deleuzian associations between democratic and majoritarian political forms, assessing it in relation to Deleuzian concepts of jurisprudence, taste and style. In the case of jurisprudence, we highlighted the resonance between Arendt’s understanding of unschematised judgement and Deleuze’s understanding of this “philosophy of law,” which implies a necessary capacity for thinking in the absence of law, so as to establish new standards for judgement. Similarly, we highlighted how taste and style enable a becoming that operates between the transgression and instantiation of standards, producing new avenues of thought and expression that make majoritarian convention “stutter.” These formulations highlight how the relationship between unschematised movement of judgement and the formation of communal sense plays an important role in the creation of the new. Through the image of the in-between of art and politics presented on this level of molar transformation, we see how the interstitial plasticity that shapes the conceptual fields, discussed earlier, are complemented by a subjective life metabolised through the plastic in- between of art and politics.

At the beginning of this thesis we questioned whether it were possible to reconceptualise the complex and transforming artistic and political relationship in non-reductive terms. By these terms, the measure of our project’s success will emerge in its ability to construct a non-reductive image of this relationship. Beyond the specific implications that this image may have upon our understanding of artistic and political relations, the broader philosophical influence of this image is found as it provides a model for indirect conceptualisation, which in its disjunctive composition presents a faithful image of fragmentation. At the conclusion of our four chapters we had moved through three discontinuous images of the in-between of art and politics: frame, fold and judgement. The sharp transitions between these distinct ‘takes’ on the in-between of art and politics, resist the philosophical tendency to privilege seamless conceptual flow in argumentation. Neither can our method be seen as an iteration of the Hegelian operation of oppositions, as we distance ourselves from presenting an image that functions as a final synthesis. With the particular

253 style of this thesis in mind, we may consider how it contributes to the constructions of a non-reductive image of the artistic-political relationship. Operating between disciplines and alternating between opposing philosophical voices, our plastic montage depicted different faces of the relationship between art and politics. Our alternation between different perspectives on the problem and appropriation of conflicting philosophical voices aligns our project to Deleuze’s writing, which has been described in terms of a free indirect discourse that enables him to “speak in his own voice and another's simultaneously.”867 Deleuze describes this style of writing and cinema as a form of enunciation produced through the assemblage of utterances.868 Through our montage of philosophical perspectives on the problem, we sought to construct an indirect image of the artistic and political relationship, assembled from the disjunctive utterances of different schools of thought and artistic practice. The assemblage of this image, while unifying in the sense of “holding together,” does not presuppose a latent agreement between the authors considered. Rather, it can be considered to construct a “false continuity” that is “neither connection of continuity, nor a rupture or a discontinuity in the connection,”869 but is the “act of the whole,” through which the hallmark of the relationship emerges. We may return to the particular ‘faces’ brought together by our montage to consider how this ‘hallmark’ is impressed upon each face of the relationship. The first image reimagined the space of direct artistic and political interference, constructing an image of a plastic parergon in between art that was constitutive of the particular forms of each field. The second presented the in-between of art and politics as a fold situated within a broader context of vital differential becoming, arising through the in-betweens of life. The specificity of the artistic and political interval was related to its rhythmic plasticising of sense, which configures faithful, fragmented images of the world. The third image of the

867 Schwartz, "Typewriter: Free Indirect Discourse in Deleuze's "Cinema"," 108. 868Deleuze, Cinéma 1 : L'image-mouvement: 106. 869 ———, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 28. “Le faux raccord n’est ni un raccord de continuité ni une rupture ou une discontinuité dans le raccord… Loin de rompre le tout, les faux raccords sont l’acte du tout…” ———, Cinéma 1 : L'image-mouvement: 45.

254 relationship then illuminated another distinct face of the relationship pertaining to the artistic and political in-between operating within subjective becoming. Thus the hallmark or impression of the whole that emerges through this montage, characterises the artistic and political relationship in terms of its plasticity. Working as a relational interval from which distinct artistic and political forms emerge, forms of sense and sensation are endowed and destroyed within the world, while we as molar subjects give ourselves form through judgement, the indirect and affective image of the artistic and political in-between characterises the relationship of the two fields as inescapably plastic. The condition of plasticity is one of transformation that is open to the accident, so we cannot strictly or reductively define the contours of this relationship. Yet the indirect image produced through our montage of plastic frame, fold and judgement constructs an impression of this relationship that allows us to situate art in relation to politics, highlighting their shared ground in the problems and potentialities of plasticity.

What might be the consequences of such an image upon the way we treat art and politics? As an open and supple concept that accounts for fragmented and indeterminate relations, it allows us to recognise continuity in between art and politics while acknowledging their singularity and pluralism as historically transforming fields. The concept of the in- between, visualised through the montage of frame, fold or judgement, allows us to reconfigure the interactions of art and politics, such that they cannot be reduced to the status of symptomatic or incidental intersections. Rather, re-reading the relation through our fragmented image of the in-between, we may now posit a primitive locus of plastic transformation from which the new in each field emerges. In this, we may form new ways of discussing art in the political realm, not as a tool within an already established and closed system, but a contemporaneous and coimplicating articulation of a primordial plasticity from which creation in both fields equally emerges. However beyond the particular repercussions for art and politics produced through our approach to reconceptualising the artistic and political relationship, the indirect image of the in-between exploits the potential of a new approach to relational conceptualisation in

255 general. Rather than definitively pinning down and then relating the distinct mechanisms and operations of the two fields, our indirect image produces an impression of their fragmented site of indiscernibility that is open to transformation. The fragmented composition of the free indirect image in this thesis extends a process associated with Deleuze’s philosophy of film, embarking on its own cinematic approach to philosophy. The montage of disjunctive philosophical orientations and traditions of thought resists the orthodoxy of linear argumentation. However, it is this fragmented and impressionistic approach that is needed to faithfully conceptualise the vagueness of a life and its complex formations.870

870 Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections: 84.

256

APPENDIX

257 Artist Interview with Khaled Sabsabi, 2012

Investigator/Interviewer: Denise Thwaites (DT)

Supervisor: Professor Paul Patton

Interviewee: Khaled Sabsabi (KS). Born 1965, Tripoli. Lives and works in Sydney, Australia

DT: In both your artistic practice and community work there seems to be a continuing Interest in challenging the authority of presupposed boundaries and hierarchies. To what extent is this exploration of borders a particular feature of your artistic practice?

KS: Every human that has walked this earth has at some point in their life span questioned where they sit, stand or move in relation to presupposed boundaries. What I am exploring and presenting isn't new. The mediums I use and the way my works are presented also aren’t new. The only point of difference is what informs my work. That is to say, the person that I am, my experiences, my knowledge, memories, as well as what I personally see as just, rational and vice versa.

DT: So you would not claim that your understanding of justice and rationality, as they inform your artistic practice, are commonly agreed upon? Are they purely subjective?

KS: At a surface level my work can be seen as subjective, but the aim beyond this is to reach a point where other opinions are heard, not just mine. Besides this, if we all agreed on every issue there would be very limited opportunities for progress and rethinking.

DT: A challenging of supposedly distinct geo-political borders is invoked in your complex, split-location work Ali or Eli (2005), as in this work we see images and the recorded sounds of Lebanon and Palestine complemented by live audio recordings of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre location. In a similar vein, the exhibition you co-curated, The Resilient Landscape (2008) implied a vacillation of borders, as we saw representations of Cronulla, Sydney and Lebanon, exhibited side-by-side in a manner that undermined the geographic distance and frontiers between these places. Some might consider this challenging of geographic borders as particularly pertinent to our globalised society, however do you see this questioning as a recurring issue through history?

KS: I explore geographical distances and borders in relation to the constant shifting of landscapes, noting the many variables that dictate these shifts. One should note that this shift has been on-going since the so-called ‘dawn of time’. On a more micro / human level, points of difference emerge with what a place offers to the individual and the peoples of that place.

258 DT: Would you say that a place can, at any given moment in time, transform according to the connection and significance associated with it?

KS: Change is on-going regardless. If we consider a time-line within specific change, we examine particular forces causing that change, whether natural or artificial. But in respect to connection to land, this emerges with people's emotions, traditions, knowledge and memories, creating an ebb and flow relationship with change.

DT: Do you think this questioning of borders can have significant political implications?

KS: Yes, every action, thought or choice we make is political. How significant that is, will really depend on the ripple caused for the people concerned.

DT: It is an interesting statement to suggest that every action, thought or choice we make is political. This begs the question, how do you define ‘the political’? What makes all action, thought and choice political?

KS: Everything is political because it involves picking a side, so to speak. We have to think about our actions continually, right down to where we shop or what we buy, what we eat, where we school our kids (public or private education?), what paper we read and what media we ignore. Politics is found in the outcomes that result from our daily actions.

DT: You have previously stated that “art has a duty, a waajab, to make a statement and to be responsible, [and] this waajab extends to the artist”i Crisoula Lionis in “Insurgence of the ‘Politizen’” describes how the exhibition you co-curated in 2008, The Resilient Landscape, highlighted this inseparability of the art world from the world outside it, in particular its local and global political landscapes.ii To what extent do you think artistic practices can meet this responsibility to the world outside it? How?

KS: This really depends on the artist or the individual themselves, as it depends on what interests and or drives them to engage with what is important to them, in an ethical and genuine way. This isn't new. Every person does this on a daily basis.

DT: How do you understand this idea of ‘acting in an ethical and genuine way’? How do we ensure that our actions are both these things?

KS: Acting in this way involves numerous social, cultural, emotional, ideological and physical structures and protocols that need to be continually addressed, negotiated and communicated. The processes and approaches are multi-layered and are ever-changing with each encounter.

DT: So will acting in an ethical and genuine way, as an artist, differ in nature according to the way in which each artist addresses and negotiates the social, cultural, ideological,

259 physical and emotional structures that surround them?

KS: Acting in an ethical way means to examine, address and negotiate differently according to each situation. It is being prepared to have preconceived ideas and thoughts challenged and or moved. It also means understanding and accepting that sometimes walking away with an unresolved opinion, issue or question is natural.

DT: In your 2005 presentation to the sustainability forum you stated that “There is no formula to what I do. There are principles that guide it and I feel that with each new project created there is a new formula for that time and place. This changes and should change so that each project lives its own life.”iii Are you a believer in minimizing formulaic inhibitions upon your artistic practice, so as to keep it open towards future changes and transformations? Which principles guide your work?

KS: Formulas can inhibit learning and each artistic encounter is a place for learning. In terms of principles that guide my work, there are many, but primarily to respect and accept people's views, opinions and circumstances.

DT: In your artist talk at 4A gallery in 2008, you discuss the way in which both Jean-Paul Sartre and Malcolm X discussed social and political change ‘by any means necessary’. You associate this phrase with a “strength and symbolism that inspires one to think about their surroundings differently…“iv You have also suggested that art-making, as an “aesthetic resistance against the way things are”, pushes the limits of perceptions in such a way that “art […] becomes expression and through expression one finds a platform for reason.”v It is fascinating to hear this link drawn between art’s challenging of perception and reason. Can you elaborate upon how this connection between art, expression and reason arises?

KS: I really don't know how to elaborate upon this connection. Trying to answer this question is like asking a fish to explain how it swims.

DT: In your 2009 interview with Alt Byte, you state that you are interested in the political dialogue that can be permitted or “filtered out” through Art. How would you describe or explain the role of provoking dialogue in relation to the power of the contemporary art world?

KS: It's interesting that you use the word provoke, because I don't set out to provoke. I just present what I think is another point of view for discussion. If the conversation is truly open, then we should understand a new point of view in this way, even though it may, at first, result in differing, opposing, difficult and contradicting views.

DT: However, would you recognize that the simple presentation of a view point, within the context of a society in which certain points of view and discourses are privileged, can be deemed more provocative than art that is “out to please the majority”vi?

260

KS: Yes, but it is important to acknowledge that there are many artists that have already and continue to work towards ideas of open conversations.

DT: On your website your work is described as exploring “border identities” and “migrant territories”, while resisting ‘overly didactic readings’. Given the strong political connotations and dimensions of your work, is there a risk of falling into contradiction, or a didactic model of politically engaged art?

KS: As a human being, I am a contradiction. But like all human beings I am one that is continually developing and learning. Regarding the question of how the work I make can resist or impose didactic readings, I can only wait and see how it will be received. All I can do is comment on my surroundings with the tools and skills I have. How this is publicly understood will really depend upon the person engaging with my work. We all know that what is seen as politically controversial and provocative in some societies is the norm in others. Also people can choose not to engage with my work not have to deal with, or reflect upon what it may symbolize or represent. These are the realities of our world.

Notes i. Khaled Sabsabi in ‘Eight About Ali or Eli’, ex.cat Ali or Eli: Khaled Sabsabi, Sydney: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, 2005: 5 ii. Chrisoula Lionis, “Insurgence of the ‘Politizen’”, Broadsheet, 2008, p. 63 iii. Khaled Sabsabi, “The Transitions between, CCD worker, artist and welfare worker”, at The Sustainability Forum CCD NSW, 24th February 2005 iv. Khaled Sabsabi, extracts from an artist discussion held at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, 16 June 2008 v. Khaled Sabsabi, extracts from an artist discussion held at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, 16 June 2008 vi. Khaled Sabsabi, “The Transitions between, CCD worker, artist and welfare worker”, at The Sustainability Forum CCD NSW, 24th February 2005

261

Artist Interview with Brenda Fajardo, 2012

Investigator/Interviewer: Denise Thwaites (DT)

Supervisor: Professor Paul Patton

Interviewee: Dr. Brenda Fajardo (BF). Born 1940, Manila. Lives and works in Quezon City, the Philippines.

DT: Your work has been described as crossing ‘the gap between academic training and visual folk culture,’1 as you integrate graphic techniques with traditional Pilipino iconography, materials and colour techniques. Your artistic background also crosses domains of practice, as you have worked in dance, in theatre, as an art teacher, a grassroots co-ordinator and an art curator. To what extent do you think the crossing of borders between disciplines and conventions can enhance contemporary artistic practices?

BF: The crossing of borders between disciplines and conventions has limitless possibilities.

DT: Do you think the traditional distinctions between artistic genres, high art and folk art have any real authority? Or do you think it is something that should be questioned or challenged?

BF: There are many definitions given to folk art. There is always the possibility for them to be challenged, but this depends upon providing an alternative understanding of what it is.

DT: Are you interested in defining folk art, or art in general?

BF: Distinctions between high and folk art have no real authority. In this day and age there should be no distinction. The distinction between high and folk art is a political construct.

DT: Do you see this crossing of boundaries as relevant to contemporary politics? If so, how?

BF: The crossing of boundaries allows for the breakdown of one-track mindedness. Crossing boundaries deconstructs paradigms and allows openness.

DT: Do you see the conservatism of contemporary politics as related to a desire to hold onto old social or political paradigms?

BF: Yes, definitely. Contemporary politicians holding on to old paradigms are afraid of other possibilities, however there is a need to recreate a new politics.

262 DT: An engagement with history is evident your work. Your 2010 exhibition was entitled “Divination: Brenda Fajardo Retells History.” In this vein the work within your Tarot Card Series invokes a collective imagination that constantly re-invents notions of identity and a shared history.2 How do you describe the importance of engaging with history in relation to your contemporary art practice?

BF: Engaging history is a reflective practice on my part. It allows me to view the past, using contemporary eyes. The present is actually meeting us from the future.

DT: How does this practice or contemporary re-engaging with the past inform the relationship between your art and your contemporary political context? How does it allow for ‘divination’ of the future?

BF: It gives me a hint into the consciousness of the Filipino, thus a glimpse of our future. That is to say, looking back can give us an indication of a possible future, as we ask: Is there anything that we would to change? If so, how would it be done? This leads to a forward-looking action plan.

DT: In your Pilipina Series you explore and present the conditions of the ‘new heros of the Philippine economy’ - female overseas contract workers. However you also depict in these works the status of these women ‘as sacrificial lambs of globalization’, identifying some of the complexities that surround Pilipino economic growth in a globalised context. In what ways and to what extent do current social, cultural and political contexts inform or motivate your own artistic practice?

BF: Cultural, social, political contexts do inform and motivate my works. Concern for overseas workers was high during the time I was painting this series, as some workers had recently been abused and even died. In response our women’s artist group did an exhibition on the migrant workers’ phenomenon. This practice is part of our life as a society and focusing on it in my artwork was an effort to tell others about this international phenomenon as it affects us. My interest in the overseas workers and putting them in a series was also meant to allow others to reflect on the phenomenon of Philippino life.

DT: Regarding the political dimension of your work, do you consider your works to communicate a political message, to pose a political question, or simply to raise political awareness?

BF: I would like to believe that my works help viewers to think and reflect about our socio- cultural situation and lead them to act for social transformation.

DT: Technically speaking, how do you try to invoke this kind of response from the audience through your work?

263 BF: During our exhibition on the migrant workers, we organised education forums before, during and after the exhibition. Artists and viewers talked about the work and issues.

DT: The Republic of the Philippines has had a complex and, some have said, ‘troubled’ relationship with Democracy through recent history. To what extent do you think the role of artist and the role of citizen of a democratic state complement and interact with one another, and if so in what ways?

BF: The artist has a social responsibility to show the truth, which is the result of interaction with society. Hopefully having seen this truth, the viewer, who is part of democratic society, could become motivated to work for change individually and society will change as a result.

DT: In this sense, does the artist reveal a certain social truth to their audience, discovered through their experiences and relationships with a people? Is this an eternal truth, or a context specific truth that changes with society?

BF: The artist gives insight to experience; there is no absolute truth because each one sees his/her own kind of truth, which is connected to the individual being of that person. Our truths move with the dynamic movement of life. But there might be truths that are absolute and immovable.

Notes [1] Text for the exhibition ‘The Umbrella country’, Green Papaya Art Projects, Quezon City, Philippines, 2000, http://artprojects.tripod.com/fajardo.htm, accessed: 2/1/2012 [2] Text for the exhibition ‘The Umbrella country’, Green Papaya Art Projects, Quezon City, Philippines, 2000, http://artprojects.tripod.com/fajardo.htm accessed: 2/1/2012

264

Artist Interview with Yoshua Okón, 2012

Investigator/Interviewer: Denise Thwaites (DT)

Supervisor: Professor Paul Patton

Interviewee: Yoshua Okón (YO). Born 1970, Mexico City. Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico.

DT: Re-considering and re-conceptualising our relationship with history and grand narratives has been of interest to philosophers and artist alike, particularly since the 1980s. This considered, in your works Octopus (2011) and Bocanegra (2007), we see subjects who are engaging with recent and modern history in a manner which appears entirely dislocated; Octopus showing former Guatemalan combatants re-enacting the Guatemalan Civil war in a Los Angeles Home Depot Parking Lot, and Bocanegra: The Gathering, documenting a group of Third Reich aficionados engaging in absurd debates regarding the relevance of notions of Aryan supremacy to the ethnic and political tensions that traverse Mexican history and politics. Do you think a sense of dislocation is particularly significant to our contemporary, global, postmodern political condition?

YO: The word ‘appears’ is key in understanding the seemingly dissociative dimensions of Octopus and Bocanegra since, in both cases, the dislocation you refer to is only apparent. The Mayans portrayed in Octopus occupy that parking lot every day, so on that level there is absolutely no historical dislocation taking place. It is precisely their familiar presence in that location that I exploited in making the piece.

DT: Is there something telling about the way in which their presence in the car park is familiar, yet often overlooked?

YO: Our not noticing them, not knowing who they are, where they come from and why they are there doesn't mean that they aren’t present or don't exist. It means, rather, that they are invisible, because they don't fit into the US grand narrative.

DT: One gets the sense that fractured political narratives are a recurring interest for you. Did it influence your depiction of the absurd and disconcerting discourse in Bocanegra?

YO: Equally, in the case of Bocanegra, the absurdity of their debates is not entirely dissociable from mainstream debates. Their conversation is framed within the paradigm of nationalism, an incredibly predominant ideology exported from Europe to the entire world. So content wise it is almost the kind of debate you could be watching on TV. The main difference is that, since those guys are wearing Nazi uniforms instead of ordinary clothing of politician-like suits, we become aware of the absurdity and artificiality of such discourse.

265 So where I find the dislocation is in the grand-narrative of our civilization.

DT: So, is it fair to say that as works, Octopus and Bocanegra are in fact less about highlighting the dislocations or incongruence in your subjects’ existences, as illuminating the invisible connections between their existence and our own?

YO: Yes, you could say that these works are more about illuminating the invisible connections between the subjects and us (us as the real subjects). Or another way to put it is to say that these works are about highlighting certain dislocations and/or incongruences of mainstream discourse.

DT: The exploration of the transposition of symbols and myths through history in relation to your work has been discussed by writer Guillermo Fadanelli, as he describes “a need to abandon attempts to create art and instead focus on creating meaning or guidelines to navigate the contemporary chaos of signs and symbols,”I With regard to these opinions and your own works, how do you understand the way in which contemporary society processes or confronts the ‘chaos’ of symbols inherited through history?

YO: I think that the way we are dealing with such an overwhelming chaos of symbols and signs and with the incredibly rapid changes that have taken place in the last century or so, is through denial. In other words, I think that we are simply not dealing with it. A good example of this failure to deal with chaos and change is found in the huge return to religions and extreme nationalisms around the world, as both phenomena clearly reflect an adherence to old or obsolete cultural modes [of thought and practice], instead of the adaptation of our culture to such changes.

DT: A “fragmentary construction of a worldview” is said to emerge through your work. Is this deliberate, and do you see such fragmentation and absurdity as a particularly pronounced quality of our contemporary condition?

YO: I think that the fragmentation at play in my practice directly enables the participation of an active and creative viewer. Representation never gives us the full picture. But there is a lot of representation that works very hard at creating the illusion of wholeness. When confronted with an openly “incomplete” (fragmented) version of the world we tend to piece things together, to use our imagination and creativity in order to come up with our own formulations, constructions and relationships. Regarding absurdity, this is a concept I can relate to a lot and one I definitely see as a pronounced quality of our contemporary condition. For instance, I can’t think of many things more absurd than the co-existence of the most advanced medical technology and the sickest population in history (75% of the population in the US is malnourished).

DT: Do you think this absurdity is symptomatic or a greater disjunct identifiable in contemporary political thought?

266

YO: For me, the absurdity of the time we live in lies precisely in the huge discrepancy and incongruence between the world around us and our belief systems and views. In most cases they simply do not fit. So, the absurd dislocation that I address in my work responds to the dislocation I perceive all around us. My work simply makes it evident. Maybe we are not biologically fit to process so much information and so many changes in such a short period of time. Or maybe our culture is so incredibly dogmatic that we have a hard time transforming it. Either way, we are not catching up. For example, even if Darwin’s theories are widely accepted in the scientific world, more than a century later his ideas have not yet had their full impact in mainstream culture, as Judeo-Christian notions of our place in this planet still dominate and have a much bigger effect on our institutions and behaviours, even if the result of such ideas is clearly destroying the very conditions that keep us alive.

DT: You have described the political dimension of your work in the following terms: My work is political in the sense that it makes you think about power and social issues. But it’s not propagandistic. There’s no political agenda behind it. There is no activism per se.II In your work there is a clear resistance to a traditionally didactic relationship with the audience, which distances your practice from Art that uses the ‘tools of politics’III to convey a message. How do you relate the political dimension of your work to this resistance to didactics?

YO: I'm not interested in telling people what to think. I think that the paternalistic, and authoritarian tone of our culture’s authorities is a big part of the problem and in some ways what is preventing us from being creative in our thinking. For instance, many people go to contemporary art museums feeling very intimidated and thinking there is something definitive they need to know or understand. I am not, and no one is for that matter, in the position to provide absolute answers to the many huge problems that we face as a society. I am interested in dialogue, in the sharing of knowledge and in the personal and collective process of re-thinking basic notions that concern us all, in the rethinking of our core belief- system. What I try to stimulate with my work is a creative response to the world around us. For a response to be creative it has to come from within the subject, originating from a place where no one tells us how to think.

DT: So, your work doesn’t tell the audience how to think, but possess a kind of force that stimulates or catalyses a kind of creative, original thought that has longer-term political implications? What is it, precisely, about your work that encourages creative responses from people?

YO: Well, I don’t think there is one single thing. I could speak about different strategies that I use. For instance, the juxtaposition of very disturbing aspects, like violence or exploitation, with humour. Once we laugh we have no way of distancing ourselves from what we are experiencing and we have to engage with it. But generally speaking, like I mentioned above when referring to fragmentation, when we are put in a position where we

267 need to piece things together, we automatically have to use our creativity in order to formulate our own constructions. We live in a society of spectacle, a society with little room for interaction. So when an artwork is able to catch our imagination, capture us through humour and seduce us through form, but at the same time presents a scenario which doesn’t fit with what we have been taught and is not giving us a fixed definition of who we are, then art can be very powerful.

DT: You have highlighted the integral role played in your work by “that moment of uncertainty on the part of the audience”IV. To what extent do you think that this play with uncertainty resists the traps of didacticism and brings something important to both contemporary art and the contemporary political sphere?

YO: Uncertainty places us in a position in which we have to come up with our own answers. The dominant attitudes in contemporary society are either to pretend everything is great or to wait for the messiah to come and save us. To me both these positions are very passive. I think we need to take more responsibility than that and uncertainty is a great starting point.

DT: In your 2008 interview with Art Talk, you describe the way in which your work is a ‘hybrid’ of many things, citing the particular influence of documentary and mockumentary upon your work. This influence could be considered to echo your expressed interest in the “tension between what’s incredibly artificial, and what’s incredibly hyper-real.”V In many of your videos you have used the idea of fantasy to question the authority of the opposition between reality and fiction, describing fantasy, in your 2009 interview with Olga Fernandez, as a space which ‘ignores this dichotomy’.VI Ursula Davilla-Villa identifies the way in which fantasy is excited through the artistic space created in your work Poli IV, stating that: “It is clear that in Poli IV the camera provides the space where the cop’s fantasies and desires are projected through his body language and even exaggerated under the guarded “safety” of performing behind the mask of a uniform.”vii In this regard, the ‘reality’ or ‘artificiality’ of the scenario is put into question, as the cop’s performance permits this intermediary condition of fantasy. How do you see this deconstruction of the boundaries between the real, fiction and fantasy, as pertinent to the contemporary political landscape?

YO: The moment in which we question these boundaries is the moment in which we can gain distance from our own ideas, the moment in which we can begin to reformulate. Reality is a construct and the more we can understand that, the more engaged and creative we become. Regarding fantasy, if we understand it as a manifestation or outcome of our imagination, I definitely think it is politically relevant. We desperately need a lot of imagination to re-invent our collapsing civilization.

DT: Do you think imagination is more politically pertinent to contemporary politics than, say, logic or reason?

268

YO: I would not create hierarchies. I think imagination and reason complement each other incredibly well and their healthy balance is essential to our political energy.

DT: Andrew Berardini has explored your work in relation to the term ‘collaboration,’ highlighting both the positive and negative connotations of the word. He equally draws out the dark and light qualities of your work as it utilizes humour yet “delivers our preconceived notions back to us as a very dark kind of comedy, where the jokes and pantomimes made by the community show them playing with their own negative stereotypes.”viii You have highlighted your interest in parody for the way it positions the spectator in an active roles, being prompted to formulate ideas in response to the images and symbols they are presented with. In this regard, Berardini has described the spectator of your work as a ‘collaborator,’ as “[o]ur discomfort, always subtle, becomes our contribution as viewers to the collaboration in the ethical and political transaction that occurs. Everybody, ourselves included, is implicated.”x These descriptions of your work have highly political connotations. Is it your intention to ‘implicate’ the spectator in the historical and political dimensions of your works of art, as described by Berardini? If so, to what purpose?

YO: It is very common in our culture of consumption to be passive spectators, to look from a comfortable distance and disassociate ourselves. We tend to avoid responsibility and to externalize problems. This is very convenient in the short term but also very alienating and politically problematic in the long term. In that sense, it is not only my intention to implicate the spectator in what they are watching but also to make evident the fact that to begin with they are already implicated in the historical and political dimensions addressed in the work.

DT: Juan Carlos Reyna has associated your work, in particular Bocanegra, with the condition of democracy, stating: By unveiling the contradictions that give meaning to our identity, Okón points to a critical void: a wounded and incomplete nation predicated on the existence of identities that are the product of a disorder. Traumatised ego: those of us who make up the nation have been removed from our relationship with the fundamental other….xi How do you think Reyna’s image of a ‘traumatised ego’ relates to the contemporary political concerns and in particular, democracy?

YO: My interpretation of Juan Carlos Reyna’s text relates specifically to the effects of Nationalism. In my opinion Nationalism leaves no room for democracy, there is an inherent contradiction between the two concepts. I think nationalism leads to alienation or, in the words of Reyna, to “trauma” on an individual and political level.

DT: How so?

YO: Nationalism, on the one hand, creates the illusion, partly through the voting system’s

269 farce, that we individual citizens have power and say. And on the other hand, it prevents us from seeing ourselves as the citizens of the world we are. In the end, we are left in a terrible mid-way point in which we cannot exercise our individuality and cultural specificity, nor our universality. I do believe in democracy but definitely not in the “democracy” that is been sold to us. Democracy to me has more to do with the creative process of the collective conceptualisation of ourselves.

DT: So according to your conception of democracy, should a truly democratic process of collective collaboration, considered within our contemporary globalized context, put into question or challenge traditional boundaries of nationhood and national identity?

YO: Yes, I think nationalism gets in the way of democracy and should be challenged. In the end national identity and boundaries of nationhood are mostly abstract constructions and don’t define much of who we are. On the contrary, I think this ideology is the perfect excuse for denial and it creates divisions and hierarchies. Nationalism creates the perfect scenario for double standards. For example: in such and such territory a company is not allowed to dump toxic waste in the rivers. But a few hundred kilometres away it can. The problem is rivers don’t respect borders and pollution will still spread all over. Nationalism prevents us from understanding interconnectivity; it is a very dangerous ideology that is mostly used to justify exploitation. Democracy only makes sense if it is applied universally; otherwise it is something else disguised as democracy.

DT: You have described your work, and in particular the power of the camera, as a ‘detonator’ which catalyses indeterminable interactions between yourself and the participants in your videos. In this sense, your work has been described as creating an open space where historical and political stereotypes and fictions can be played out, explored and critically reflected upon, resembling descriptions of the ancient democratic forum. Could your work, in one sense, be viewed as a ‘detonator’ for the creative relationships and processes necessary within your understanding of creative and collaborative global democracy?

YO: For sure

Notes: i. Guillermo Fadanelli, “Who’s Looking at Whom?”, in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Co-publishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 121 ii. Yoshua Okon, in episode of Art talk, Copyright 2008, VBS IPTV, LLC iii. Andrew Berardini, “A Dark Play” in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Copublishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 105 – 106 iv. Andrew Berardini, “A Dark Play” in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Copublishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 105 – 106 v. Yoshua Okon, in episode of Art talk, Copyright 2008, VBS IPTV, LLC. vi. Yoshua Okon, “Interview with Yoshua Okón” by Olga Fernandez, Tragicomedia.

270 2009, p. 119 vii. Ursula Davila-Villa, “Yoshua Okón: The Psychology of Power”, in Yoshua Okón., Catalogue essay for the exhibition SUBTITLE 1997-2007, Städtische Kunsthalle München., NY: Prototype Press and München: Stadtische Kunsthalle, 2008, p. 3 viii. Andrew Berardini, “A Dark Play” in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Copublishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 104 ix. Yoshua Okon, “Interview with Yohua Okón” by Olga Fernandez, Tragicomedia. 2009, p. 119 x. Andrew Berardini, “A Dark Play” in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Co-publishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 100 xi. Juan Carlos Reyna, “Watching us watch Ourselves: Spectators as Protagonists”, in Yoshua Okón, Ed. Chiara Arroyo, Co-publishers: Landucci, SerieVe, YBCA and MACG, 2010, p. 91

271 Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel B Arts, Humanities & Law

Date: 20.12.2011

Investigators: Ms Denise Thwaites

Supervisors: Professor Paul Patton

School: School of History and Philosophy

Re: The Art of Democracy: Artist interviews

Reference Number: 11 171

The Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel B for the Arts, Humanities & Law is satisfied that this project is of minimal ethical impact and meets the requirements as set out in the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research*. Having taken into account the advice of the Panel, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) has approved the project to proceed.

Your Head of School/Unit/Centre will be informed of this decision.

This approval is valid for 12 months from the date stated above.

Yours sincerely

Associate Professor Anne Cossins Panel Convenor HREA Panel B for the Arts, Humanities & Law Cc: Associate Professor Paul Brown Head of School School of History and Philosophy * http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/

272

REFERENCES

Allen, James Sloan. "Plato: The Morality and Immorality of Art." Arts Education Policy Review 104, no. 2 (2002).

Alliez, Eric, Tom Conley, and Melissa McMuhan. "On Deleuze's Bergsonism." Discourse 20, no. 3, Gilles Deleuze: A reason to Believ in this World (1998): 226-46.

Arendt, Hannah. "Auschwitz on Trial." In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn. 227-57. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.

———. The Human Condition 2nd edition ed. Chicago: The Univeristy of Chicago Press, (1958) 1998.

———. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.

———. "Thinking and Moral Considerations." In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.

———. "Understanding and Politics (the Difficulties of Understanding)." In Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954. 307 - 28. New York: Schocken Books, 1994.

Attridge, Derek. J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Bal, Mieke. Endless Andness: The Politics of Abstraction According to Ann Veronica Janssens. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1975.

Beiner, Ronald. "Interpretive Essay." In Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.

Bennington, Geoffrey. Interrupting Derrida. Warwick Studies in European Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2000.

Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. The Project Gutenberg EBook, New York: Henry Holt and Co, (1911) 2008.

273 ———. L’évolution Créatrice. Grands Textes. 11e edition ed. Paris: Quadridge/PUF, (1941) 2009.

———. La PenséE Et Le Mouvant. Essais Et ConféRences. Édition électronique, Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France,, (1969) 2003.

Biesenbach, Klaus, and Abramović. "Klaus Biesenbach in Conversation with Marina Abramović." In Marina Abramović, edited by Kristine Stiles, Klaus Eisenbach and Chrissie Iles. London: Phaidon, 2008.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Les Règles De L'art : Genèse Et Structure Du Champ Littéraire. revue et corrigée ed. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, (1992) 1998.

———. The Rules of Art : Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Crossing Aesthetics. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Brown, William. "Monstrous Cinema." New Review of Film and Television Studies 10, no. 4 (2012): 16.

Burchill, Louise. "The Topology of Deleuze's Spatium." Philosophy Today 51 (2007).

Carrier, David. "Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in a Post-Historical Perspective by Arthur C. Danto; Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions by Arthur C. Danto." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51, no. 3 (1993): 513-5.

Carroll, Noël. "Danto's New Definition of Art and the Problem of Art Theories." British Journal of Aesthetics 37, no. 1 (October 1997).

Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. London: Vintage Books, (1999) 2000.

———. "The Novel Today." Upstream 6, no. 1 (1988).

Colebrook, Claire. "Derrida, Deleuze and Haptic Aesthetics." Derrida Today 2 (2009).

Conley, Tom. "Deleuze and the Filmic Diagram." Deleuze Studies 5, no. 2 (2011): 163-76.

Crawford, Donald W. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.

Critchley, Simon, and Chantal Mouffe. Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Crockett, Timothy. "The Fluid Plenum: Leibniz on Surfaces and the Individuation of Body." British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17, no. 4 (2009): 735-67.

274 Crow, Thomas. The Rise of the Sixties. The Everyman Art Library. London: Calmann and King Ltd, 1996.

Crowther, Paul. "Kant and Greenberg's Varieties of Aesthetic Formalism." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42, no. 4 (1984): 442-4445.

Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton University Press, 1998.

———. "Edward Kienholz." Nation, no. June 10 (1996).

Danto, Arthur C. "Aesthetics and the Work of Art." In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. 224. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981.

———. "The Artworld." The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. No. 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting (Oct. 15 1964): 13.

———. "Interpretation and Identification." In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. 224. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981.

———. "Learning to Live with Pluralism." In Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste edited by Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn. Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1998.

———. "Metaphor, Expression, and Style." In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. 224. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981.

———. "Works of Art and Mere Real Things." In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. 224. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Danto, Arthur C., and James Jakób Liszka. "Why We Need Fiction: An Interview with Arthur C. Danto." The Henry James Review 18, no. 3 (1997): 213 - 16.

De Duve, Thierry Kant after Duchamp. October. Cambridge, Massachusets; London, England: The MIT Press, 1996.

Debord, Guy. La Société Du Spectacle Paris: Folio, 1996.

Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barabara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books, (1988)1991.

———. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

275 ———. Cinema 2 : The Time Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Babara Habberjam. 2005.

———. Cinéma 1 : L'image-Mouvement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983.

———. Cinéma 2 : L’image-Temps Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985.

———. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: The Althone Press, 1994.

———. Différence Et Répétition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.

———. The Fold : Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

———. Francis Bacon: Logique De La Sensation. Paris: Editions de la différence, 1981.

———. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London; New York: Continuum, (1981)2003.

———. "The Idea of Genesis in Kant's Aesthetics." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5, no. 3 (2000): 57-70.

———. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: Althone Press, 1984.

———. "La Pensée Nomade." In Nietzsche Aujourd'hui, edited by David B. Allison. 159 - 74: Union Générale d'édition, 1973.

———. Le Bergsonisme. Grands Textes. 4e edition ed. Paris: Quadrige/PUF, (1966) 2011.

———. Le Pli : Leibniz Et Le Baroque [in French]. Collection "Critique". Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1988.

———. "Leibniz, Cours Vincennes, 15 Avril 1980." Le Centre universitaire de Vincennes, 1980.

———. Negotiations (1972 - 1990). New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

———. Spinoza Philosophie Pratique. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, (1981) 2003.

———. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Mille Plateaux. Collection "Critique". Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980.

276 ———. Qu'est-Ce Que La Philosophie? Collection "Critique". Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991.

———. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

———. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. European Perspectives. edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. Dialogues [in francais]. Champs Essais. Paris: Flammarion, 1996.

———. Dialogues Ii. New York: Columbia University Press, (1987) 2007.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Charles J. Stivale. "Vincennes Session of April 15, 1980, Leibniz Seminar." Discourse 20:3, no. Gilles Deleuze: A reason to Believe in this World (1998): 77 - 97.

Derrida, Jacques. "Aimer D'amitié : Peut-Être - Le Nom Et L'adverbe." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "De L'hostilité Absolue." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. De La Grammatologie. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967.

———. "Différance." Translated by Alan Bass. In Margins of Philosophy. 1 - 29. Chicago: The Harvester Press, 1982. Reprint, First.

———. "Economimesis." In Mimesis: Des Articulations, edited by Sylviane Agacinski. Paris: Flammarion, 1975.

———. ""En Langue D'homme, La Fraternité"." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "“In Human Language, Fraternity…”." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. "L'ami Revenant (Au Nom De La "Démocratie")." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "La Différance." In Marges De La Philosophie. Critique, 1 - 31. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972.

277 ———. "La Mythologie Blanche: La Métaphore Dans Le Texte Philosophique." In Marges De La Philosophie. Critique, 247 - 325. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972.

———. La Vérité En Peinture [in French]. Paris: Flammarion, 1978.

———. "“Loving in Friendship: Perhaps”." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, (1974) 1997.

———. "Oligarchies: Naming, Enumerating, Counting." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. "Oligarchies: Nommer, Énumérer, Dénombrer." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "On Absolute Hostility." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. "The Phantom Friend Returning." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. ""Pour La Premiere Fois Dans L'histoire De L'humanité"." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "Preface." Translated by Lisbeth During. In The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic. vii-xlvii. London; New York: Routledge, 2005.

———. "Recoils." Translated by George Collins. In Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 1997.

———. "Replis." In Politiques De L'amitié. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994.

———. "Signature Événement Contexte." In Marges De La Philosophie. Critique, 365 - 90. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972.

———. "Signature, Event, Context." Translated by Alan Bass. In Margins of Philosophy. 307 - 30. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Reprint, First.

———. The Truth in Painting [in English]. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

———. "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy." Translated by Alan Bass. In Margins of Philosophy. 175 - 207. Chicago: The Harvester Press, 1982. Reprint, First.

278 Derrida, Jacques, and R. Klein. "Economimesis." Diacritics 11, no. 2 (1981).

Devisch, Ignaas. "Nancian Virtual Doubts About 'Leformal' Democracy : Or How to Deal with Contemporary Political Configuration in an Uneasy Way?". Philosophy & Social Criticism 37, no. 9 (5 September 2011): 12.

Duffy, Simon. "Deleuze, Leibniz and Projective Geometry in the Fold ". Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 15, no. 2 (2010): 19.

Eliot, T. S. "Tradition and the Individual Talent." [In English]. Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal 19 ((1919) 1982): 7.

Emmer, Michele. Imagine Math: Between Culture and Mathematics. Milano: Springer Milan, 2012.

Eng, David L., Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz. "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?". Social Text 23, no. 3-4 (2005): 1 - 17.

Fajardo, Brenda, and Denise Thwaites. Asynchronous email interview, 21 Janurary - 9 October 2012.

Fistioc, Cristiana Mihaela. "The Beautiful Shape of the Good: A Reading of Kant's "Critique of Judgment" in Light of Plato's "Symposium" and Kant's Thoughts on Pythagoras." The University of Chicago, 2000.

Fountain, Ben. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. New York: Harper Collins, 2012.

Fountain, Ben, and Ben George. "A Conversation with Ben Fountain." Ecotone 5, no. 2 (2010): 49-67.

Frank, Jason. "Aesthetic Democracy: Walt Whitman and the Poetry of the People." The Review of Politics 69, no. 3 (2007): 402-30.

Gilson, Erin Cunniff. "Zones of Indiscernability: The Life of a Concept from Deleuze to Agamben." Philosophy Today, no. SPEP Supplement (2007).

Goehr, Lydia. "Afterwords: An Introduction to Arthur Danto's Philosophies of History and Art." [In English]. History and Theory 46, no. 1 ((Feb., 2007) 2007): 28.

Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper, 1974.

Goodrich, R. A. "Danto on Artistic Indiscernability, Interpretation and Relations." [In English]. British Journal of Aesthetics 31, no. 4 (October 1991): 7.

279 Goodwin, James. Eisenstein, Cinema, and History. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Goulet, Sarah, and Lauren Staub. "Kienholz: The Ozymandias Parade / Concept Tableaux." PACE Gallery, 2012.

Greenberg, Clement. "American Type Painting." In Collected Essays and Criticism. 217 - 35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

———. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." In Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, edited by John O'Brian. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, (1939) 1986.

———. "Modernist Painting." In Collected Essays and Criticism / Clement Greenberg, edited by J. O'Brian. 85 - 95. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

———. "Necessity of Formalism." New Literary History 3, no. 1, Modernism and Postmodernism: Inquiries, Reflections, and Speculations (1971): 171 - 275.

Grimm, Rep. Michael. "Rep. Grimm Asks President to Denounce 'Piss Christ' Return to Nyc; Fed-up with Administration's Apologies and Religious Hypocrisy." The Office of U.S. Congressman Michael Grimm, http://grimm.house.gov/press-release/rep- grimm-asks-president-denounce-%E2%80%98piss-christ%E2%80%99-return-nyc- fed-administration%E2%80%99s.

Hart, Alan. "Leibniz on Spinoza's Concept of Substance." Studia Leibnitiana 14, no. 1 (1982): 73 - 86.

Hart, Paul. "The Essential Legacy of Clement Greenberg from the Era of Stalin and Hitler." The Oxford Art Journal 11, no. 1 (1988): 76-87.

Hauser, Arnold. "The L'art Pour L'art Problem." Critical Inquiry 5, no. 3 (1979).

Heinich, Nathalie. L’élite Artiste: Excellence Et Singularité En Régime Démocratique. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2005.

Henrich, Dieter. Aesthetic Judgement and the Moral Image of the World. Studies in Kant. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Herwitz, Daniel. "The Journal of Aesthetics and Danto's Philosophical Criticism." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51, no. 261-70 (1993).

Heyns, Michiel. "'Call No Man Happy': Perversity as Narrative Principle Principle in Disgrace." English Studies in Africa 45, no. 1 (2002): 57-65.

280 Hicks, John. "Sensus Communis: On the Possibility of Dissent in Kant's "Universal Assent"." Diacritics 40, no. 4 (2012): 106-29.

Hills, Helen. "The Baroque : Beads in a Rosary or Folds of Time." Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 17, no. 2 (2007): 48 - 71.

Hugo, Victor. "Les Misérables." In Oeuvres Complètes, edited by Jean Massin. Paris: Le Club Français du Livre, 1967 - 1970.

———. Les Misérables. Translated by Chas E. Wilbour. New York: Carleton Publisher, 1862.

Jachec, Nancy. "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg." Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 2 (1998 ): 123-32.

———. "'A Partnership of Equals': Kennedy, the European Union and the End of Abstract Expressionism as Atlanticist Aesthetic." Third Text 16, no. 2 (2002): 105 - 18.

James, Ian. "Art - Technics." Oxford Literary Review 27, no. 1 (2005): 83-102.

———. "Community." In The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. 296. California: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Jameson, Fredric. "On Goffman's Frame Analysis." Theory and Society 3, no. 1 (1976): 119 - 33.

Jessop, Bob. "Governance and Meta-Governance: On Reflexivity, Requisite Variety and Requisite Irony." In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by Henrik P. Bang. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.

Kant, Immanuel. "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" Translated by David L. Colclasure. In Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History, edited by Pauline Kleingeld. 17-24. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2006.

———. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn. Revised ed. New York: Willey Book Co., 1943.

———. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood New York: Cambridge University Press, (2000) 2007.

———. The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

281 ———. "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." Translated by David L. Colclasure. In Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History, edited by Pauline Kleingeld. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2006.

Keating, Paula. "The Function of Ideas of Reason in Kant’s Political Philosophy." University of New South Wales, 2007.

Kramer, Hilton. Twighlight of the Intellectuals. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.

Lacassagne, Jean-Pierre. "George Sand Et La « Vérité Sociale»." [In francais]. Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 76, no. 4 (1976).

Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. "Foreward to the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political." In Retreating the Political, edited by Simon Sparks and Andrew Benjamin. Warwick Studies in European Philosophy, 105 - 06. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997.

———. Le Retrait Du Politique: Travaux Du Centre De Recherches Phlosophiques Sur Le Politique. Éditions Galilée, 1983.

———. "The 'Retreat' of the Political." In Retreating the Political, edited by Simon Sparks and Andrew Benjamin. Warwick Studies in European Philosophy, 107 - 21. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997.

Laforge, Francois. "‘Salammbô’ : Les Mythes Et La Révolution ". Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France 85, no. 1 (1985).

Lefebvre, Alexandre. "A New Image of Law: Deleuze and Jurisprudence." Telos (2005): 103-26.

Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Translated by E.M. Huggard. Illinois: Open Court, 2005.

Lethbridge, Robert. "Against Recuperation: The Fictions of Art in L'oeuvre." Romantic Review 102, no. 3/4 (2011).

Levin, Samuel R. "Aristotle's Theory of Metaphor." Philosophy & Rhetoric 15, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 22.

Linstead, Stephen, and John Mullarkey. "Time, Creativity and Culture: Introducing Bergson." Culture and Organization 9, no. 1 (March 2003).

Lyotard, Jean-François. Lessons on the Analytic and the Sublime. Translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford, California: Stanford Unversity Press, 1991.

282 Mackenzie, Michael. "Marcel Duchamp and the Antimonies of Art Historical and Art Critical Discourse." Modernism/Modernity 7, no. 1 (2000): 153-63.

Malabou, Catherine. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic. Translated by Lisbeth During. London; New York: Routledge, 2005.

———. L'avenir De Hegel : Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique. Librarie Philosophique. Paris: VRIN, (1996) 2012.

———. La Plasticité Au Soir De L'écriture : Dialectique, Destruction, Déconstruction. Variations I. Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2005.

———. Les nouveaux blessés : de freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes Contemporains. Paris: Editions Bayard, 2007.

———. The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage. Translated by Steven Miller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.

———. Ontologie De L’accident : Essai Sur La Plasticité Destructrice. Paris: Editions Léo Scheer, 2009.

———. Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity. Translated by Carolyn Shread. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.

———. Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing. New York: Columbia University, 2010.

———. Que Faire De Notre Cerveau? Paris: Bayard, 2004.

———. What Should We Do with Our Brain? . Translated by Sebastian Rand. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

Marcos, Alfredo. "The Tension between Aristotle’s Theories and Uses of Metaphor." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 28, no. 1 (1997): 16.

Marriner, Robin. "Derrida and the Parergon." In A Companion to Art Theory, edited by Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Massumi, Brian. Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurent Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011.

———. "The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens." Inflexions 1, no. 1 (2008): 1-40.

Maurer, Louise, and Roger Hillman, eds. Reading Images, Viewing Texts - Lire Les Images, Voir Les Textes. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

283 McClosky, Mary A. Kant’s Aesthetic. Hong Kong: Macmillan Press, 1987.

McDonnell, Niamh. "Deleuze's Theory of Singularity and the Matter of Leibnizian Differential." London: Goldsmiths, University of London, 2010.

McMahon, Laura. "Jean-Luc Nancy and the Spacing of the World." Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 15, no. 5 (2011): 9.

Mengue, Philippe. "The Absent People and the Void of Democracy." Contemporary Political Theory 4, no. 4 (2005).

———. Deleuze Et La Question De La Démocratie. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003.

Michalak, Kaiarzyna. "Performing Life, Living Art: Abramovic/Ulay and Kwiekulik." Afterimage 27, no. 3 (1999).

Michaud, Ginette, and Roxanne Lapidus. ""In Media Res": Interceptions of the Work of Art and the Political in Jean-Luc Nancy." SubStance 34, no. 106 (2005).

Murdoch, Iris. The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Translated by Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. edited by Werner Hamacher and David E. Wellbery Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

———. "The Deleuzian Fold of Thought." In Deleuze: A Critical Reader, edited by Paul Patton. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

———. Être Singulier Pluriel [in French]. Paris: Galilée, 1996.

———. Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative. Translated by Jason Smith and Steven Miller. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

———. The Inoperative Community. Translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland and Simona Sawhney. Theory and History of Literature. Vol. 76, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1991.

———. La Communauté Désoeuvrée [in french]. Collection "Détroits". revue et augmentée ed. Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, (1986) 2004

———. "Les Arts Se Font Les Uns Contre Les Autres." In Les Muses. La Philosophie En Effet. Paris: Galilée, 1994.

284 ———. "Les Différences Parallèles Deleuze Et Derrida." In Deleuze Épars, edited by André Bernold and Richard Pinas. Paris: Hermann Editeurs, 2005.

———. "Painting in the Grotto." Translated by Peggy Kamuf. In The Muses. Meridian : Crossing Aesthetics Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

———. "Peinture Dans La Grotte." In Les Muses. La Philosophie En Effet. Paris: Galilée, 1994.

———. "Pourquoi Y a-T-Il Plusieurs Arts, Et Non Pas Un Seul ? ." In Les Muses. La Philosophie En Effet. Paris: Galilée, 1994.

———. Truth of Democracy. Translated by Michael Naas. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

———. Vérité De La Démocratie [in French]. Paris: Galilée, 2008.

———. "Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? ." Translated by Peggy Kamuf. In The Muses. Meridian : Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. "Avertissement." In Rejouer Le Politique, edited by Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1980.

Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Claire Margat. "Jean-Luc Nancy: Y a-T-Il Encore Un Monde? Interview with Claire Margat." artpress 281, no. July- Aug (2002).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Birth of Tragedy." Translated by W. Kaufman. In The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner. New York: Random House, 1967.

Nonnoi, Giancarlo. "Against Emptiness: Descartes’s Physics and Metaphysics of Plenitude." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 25, no. 1 (1994): 81-96.

O’Sullivan, Simon. "From Possible Worlds to Future Folds (Following Deleuze): Richter’s Abstracts, Situationist Cities, and the Baroque in Art." The Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 36, no. 3 (2005).

Okón, Yoshua, and Denise Thwaites. Asynchronous email interview, 21 Janurary - 21 September 2012.

Patton, Paul. "Deleuze and Democratic Politics." In Radical Democracy: Politics between Abundance and Lack, edited by Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen. Manchester & NY, 2005.

285 ———. "Strange Proximity: Deleuze Et Derrida Dans Les Parages Du Concept." Oxford Literary Review 18 (1997).

Plato. "Book Iii." Translated by Desmond Lee. In The Republic. London: Penguin, 1987.

———. "Book Iv." Translated by Desmond Lee. In The Republic. London: Penguin, 1987.

———. "Book Vii." Translated by Desmond Lee. In The Republic. London: Penguin, 1987.

———. "Book Viii." Translated by Desmond Lee. In The Republic. London: Penguin, 1987.

———. "Book X." Translated by Desmond Lee. In The Republic. London: Penguin, 1987.

———. "Phaedo." Translated by R.S. Bluck. In Dialogues of Plato. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.

———. "Phaedrus." Translated by Walter Hamilton. In Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.

———. Philebus. Translated by Robin A.H. Waterfield. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

———. "Symposium." Translated by Seth Benardete. In Dialogues of Plato. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.

Plotnitsky, Arkady. "Algebras, Geometries and Topologies of the Fold: Deleuze, Derrida and Quasi-Mathematical Thinking (with Leibniz and Mallarmé." In Between Deleuze and Derrida, edited by Paul Patton and John Protevi. 98 - 120. London; New York: Continuum, 2003.

Protevi, John. "Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction [Review]." http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24301-plasticity-at-the-dusk-of-writing- dialectic-destruction-deconstruction/.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. "The Principle of Art and Its Social Destiny (Extracts)." In Realism and Tradition in Art, edited by Linda Nochlin. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, (1865) 1966.

Rajchman, John. Constructions. Cambridge: The MIT Press, (1998)1999.

———. The Deleuze Connections. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.

Rancière, Jacques. Le Partage Du Sensible: Esthétique Et Politique. Paris: La fabrique éditions, 2000.

286 Rand, Sebastian. "Organism, Normativity, Plasticity: Canguilhem, Kant, Malabou." Continental Philosophy Review 44 (2011): 18.

Roberts, John. "Art and Its Negations." Third Text 24, no. 3 (2010): 289- 303.

Roche, Isabel K. "Inscribing His Ideal Reader(Ship): Victor Hugo and the Shaping of Le Lecteur Pensif." French Forum 28, no. 2 (2003).

Sabsabi, Khaled, and Anna Bazzi Backhouse. "Eight About Ali or 'Ali: Khaled Sabsabi in Conversation with Anna Bazzi Backhouse." In Ali or ʻali : Khaled Sabsabi. Casula, NSW: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre 2005.

Sabsabi, Khaled, and Denise Thwaites. Asynchronous email interview, 21 January - 21 May 2012.

Sachs, Murray. "Émile Zola's Last Word: Vérité and the Dreyfus Affair." Romance Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1998).

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Présentation." Les Temps Modernes 1, no. 1 ((1945) 1970).

Schmitt, Carl. Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Schwartz, Louis-Georges. "Typewriter: Free Indirect Discourse in Deleuze's "Cinema"." SubStance 34, no. 3, 108 (2005): 107-35.

Shaviro, Steven. "Interstitial Life: Subtractive Vitalism in Whitehead and Deleuze." Deleuze Studies 4 (March 2010): 13.

Silver, Larry. Art in History. New York; London; Paris: Abbeville Press, 1993.

Slagle, R. Anthony. "In Defense of Queer Nation: From Identity Politics to Politics of Difference." Western Journal of Communication 59, no. 2 (2009): 85 - 102.

Smith, Richard Cándida. Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California. California: University of California Press, 1996.

Somers-Hall, Henry. "Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty: The Aesthetics of Difference." Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2006): 9.

Sparks, Simon. "Introduction: Politica Ficta." In Retreating the Political, edited by Simon Sparks and Andrew Benjamin. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching." Diacritics 32, no. 3/4 (2002): 17-31.

287 Stankovic, Nevenka. "An Institutional Travesty: Risk as a Strategy in Abramović ’S Performance Role Exchange ". Third Text 23, no. 5 (2009): 565-70.

Stiles, Kristine. "Survey: Cloud with Its Shadow." In Marina Abramović, edited by Kristine Stiles, Klaus Eisenbach and Chrissie Iles. London: Phaidon, 2008.

Strong, Tracy B. "Forward." Translated by George Schwab. In Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Sullivan, Roger J. "Introduction." Translated by Mary J. Gregor. In The Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Taylor, Alex J. "Unstable Motives: Propoganda, Politics, and the Late Work of Alexander Calder." American Art 26, no. 1 (2012): 24 - 47.

Toscano, Alberto. "Seeing It Whole: Staging Totality in Social Theory and Art." The Sociological Review 60, no. S1 (2012): 64-83.

Uhlmann, Anthony. "To Have Done with Judgment: Beckett and Deleuze ". SubStance 25:3, no. 81 : 25th Anniversary Issue (1996).

Vernant, Jean-Pierre. "Le Moment Historique De La Tragédie En Grèce : Quelques Conditions Sociales Et Psychologiques ". In Mythe Et Tragédie En Grèce Ancienne - I. Paris: Editions La Découverte & Syros, (1972) 2001.

———. Mythe Et Pensée Chez Les Grecs: Etudes De Psychologie Historique [in francais]. Paris: La découverte/poche, 2002.

Versulis, Arthur. "Carl Schmitt, the Inquisition, and Totalitarianism." In The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism. New York: Oxford University Press, (2006) 2013.

Wang, Min, and Xiaoyan Tang. "Disgrace of Stereotypical Ambivalence: A Postcolonial Perspective on J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace." Studies in Literature and Language 5, no. 3 (2012): 49-54.

Weitz, Morris. "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics." The Journal of Aesthtics and Art Criticism 15, no. 1 (1956): 27-35.

Whiteley, Gillian. "Kienholz." The Art Book 13, no. 2 (2006).

Whitman, Walt. Democratic Vistas and Other Papers. London: Forgotten Books, (1888) 2012.

288 Whitridge, Frederick W. "Zola, Dreyfus and the French Republic." Political Science Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1898).

Widder, Nathan. Political Theory after Deleuze. London: Continuum, 2012.

Willms, Bernard. "Politics as Politics: Carl Schmitts ‘Concept of the Political’ and the Tradition of European Political Thought." History of European Ideas 13, no. 4 (1991): 12.

Woolf, Raphael. "Truth as a Value in Plato’s Republic." Phronesis 54 (2009).

Young, James O. "Artworks and Artworlds." British Journal of Aesthetics 35, no. 4 (October 1995): 8.

Zask, Joëlle. Art Et Démocratie: Peuples De L’art [in francais]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003.

———. Outdoor Art : La Sculpture Et Ses Lieux Les Êmpecheurs De Penser En Rond. edited by Philippe Pignarre Paris: La Découverte, 2013.

———. "Pratiques Artistiques Et Conduites Démocratiques ". Noesis (2007).

Zepke, Stephen. Art as Abstract Machine: Ontology and Aesthetics in Deleuze and Guattari. Studies in Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Zola, Emile. "'Letter to M. Félix Faure, President of the Republic' ('J'accuse'), L'aurore, 6 December 1897." Translated by Eleanor Levieux. In The Dreyfus Affair: 'J'accuse' and Other Writings. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1996.

———. "Lettre À M. Félix Faure, Président De La République (J’accuse…!)." In J'accuse…! La Vérité En Marche. Historiques-Politiques. Paris: Editions Complexe, 1988.

289