A work of art does not exist by itself, it exists in the field of strategic possibilities within a regulated system of differences and dispersions bound to all individuals. In other words, I am talking of common references, common frameworks, which in turn become the ‘space of possibles’. The space of possibles invokes the ‘Paradise of Ideas’ which is fraught with divergences of interests among individuals in this fragmented universe. The field*1 of strategic possibilities, is the field of artistic / cultural production, the field is the science of cultural works which corresponds between poles, structure of the works and structure of social forces, internal demands and external determinants, artists and producers, position takings and space of positions in the field of production, styles, genres, so on and so forth.
What happens to the works in all this? How are the desires for fundamental problems, problems of change resolved? What are the different possibles that constitute the space of possibles at a given moment in time? Any change in the direction of artistic discourse depends on the struggle of the competing artists / agents, state of the system of possibilities and certainly on the direction of the socially constituted artists who are aware of their specific capital (artistic capabilities) and are open to newest possibilities. But let’s not forget that the dominant agents, institutions have a stake in conservation, that is, routine and routinisation or in subversion, that is, a return to sources, to an original purity, heretical criticism and so forth. The questions over which the dominants and the challengers confront each other depend on the possibilities inherited from earlier
*1 Pierre Bourdieu,The Field of cultural Production,1993
*2The Mastery and knowledge which is inscribed in the past works,recorded,codified and canonized by the professional experts, critics,becomes a part of the condition of access into the field of production.
struggles*2 which defines the scope of the space of possibilities, position – taking, directing the search for changes vis-a-vis changes in the socialization of the production system. The confrontation between art and money shapes the structure of the cultural field. The clear divide among artists, intellectuals can be stated as = rich cultural capital and poor economic capital vs industries, business = rich in economic capital but poor in cultural capital. The natural tendencies of any change in artistic / cultural practices presupposes a drawing away from demands of the market and as such disinterestedness in material success. Another way of de-routinization could be through laying of works upon works through intermediation of artist who wills to break the spell of the aura of a work of art. Deauratization will envitably lead to the greater autonomy of the specific artistic production.*3 I am not arguing for an alternate pure gaze in a new avant-garde manner, i.e., in the name of challenging the orthodoxy, in order to return to the rigour of beginnings, a purer definition of the genre, one destroys forms and contents and substitutes with another pure gaze. In today’s context one has to re-voke the artistic and philosophical wonder by introducing the ordinary object as it is, by applying a shock treatment *4 in the manner of Duchamp or Warhol, otherwise the pure aesthetic disposition will always define today’s artists.
The paradox of destruction makes language turn
Mechanical reproduction destroys the authenticity of the traditional work of art. Writing, speaking, painting, sculpting are done through stock phrases / styles: this is the form that language takes in the age of mechanical reproduction. In the process of destruction of authenticity, language submits to the technical reproduction. The paradox of destruction is that more tradition is destroyed, the greater
*3 The critical return by the producers upon their own production (the artists moking their own choices in terms of what, how and to what extent o work was to be produced) will help to gain a position to rebuff every external constraint and market demands.
*4 It is not just a ‘denial of Sense’. it is in Benjamin’s view ‘the moral shock effect’.
the risk of destruction itself becoming a tradition through repetition. The invention of unusable concepts / ideas aim at a destruction and are henceforth reconstituted as tradition. All unusable concepts lie beyond or behind tradition, hence it is always there and does not remain.*5 The problematic in Benjamin’s discourse is that he differentiates between works of art (literature, painting) with that of film, the same destructive process reinforces ideology and leaves it to one last resort: destruction itself. Let me mention two different premises in Benjamin’s discourse:
a) A work of art has always been reproducible*6. Benjamin says that traditional reproductive system and tradition as reproductive instrument authenticate the work of art by distance (spatial) and propagation. So, in the first place, a cleavage is necessary between the unity of the traditional reproduction (technique) and tradition as reproductive force (concepts).
b) In the second thesis Benjamin claims that reproduction misses the work of art, because the element of place from where the work originated is never present in the reproduction. Reproduction can at least produce an object but can never reproduce the uniqueness of time and place. To reproduce a work of art, it is necessary to destroy the unity of time and the object,*7 If everything from / of tradition cannot be reproduced / destroyed, if tradition retains its charm, identity, authenticity, originality, the tradition in its Fascist form – succeeds in destroying destruction and all destruction is excessive, fragile, vulnerable. Destruction, the language of destruction exceeds its representation in ruins. But Benjamin is ruthless in proposing a complete de-auratization through technical reproducibility of art which separates the new art forms from the ones that come from uninterrupted continuum beginning from ritual art to the secular, autonomous art in bourgeois culture and society.With these radical destruction, a new era arises – ‘a crisis and renewal of mankind’ in which art is ‘based on another practice – politics’. So, how does one visualise the world without myths, what is the other which cannot be named by Benjamin?
If and when you believe, I would love to say, my heart is for the Other. Where is the Other. Whence is the Other? And how is it? Blankness (after destruction) cannot remain forever, who will fill the void of the world, the artist, the critic or the logothete? What Benjamin proposes without speaking is the possibility for a philosophical thinking of the present, a specific opening of the present.
We are at the crossing
Why did Jacques Derrida write Glas? Geoffrey Hartman thinks Glas as an extraordinary text in the dissolution of the distinction between literature and criticism. Glas, for Hartman, is too creative to lie a distant cousin of literature. Derrida’s text, we assume possesses all the attributes of a great literary work. *8 Did he then cross the line, from the critic to the author, from the author to the logothete? I believe he passes through all these categories simultaneously, by saying so, I have already presupposed that he was writing Glas in a material vacuum (common, idle, outmoded languages already destroyed). Within this material vacuum, the logothete is at the crossing, engaged in construction of a language, he is a founder of languages, he is a logo-technician, he is an invent or of writing. In this instance Derrida departs from philosophical criticism to enter in authorial inscription, thus weakening the boundaries between the creative and the critical, which is powerful development and
*8“In a work such as Glas ……. I am trying to produce new forms of catachresis, another kind of writing, a violent writing which stakes out the faults and deviations of language; so that the text produces a language of its own ………..”
Derrida
necessary extension of modernism in general. What is striking is that Derrida did not force the rethinking of the relationship between critic and author by declaring the death of the author. In fact, he has expanded our notions of criticism and authorship by writing away from criticism in the only way one can: that is, toward authorship. *9The reason why Derrida took to writing Glas was to rethink the question of the subject outside the context of transcendental phenomenology so overpowering in France since Husserel. His attempt was just not to cross from one intellectual climate to another, from one discipline to another but to raise issues and to debate the question of authorship. In his paper ‘Structure, Sign and Play’, Derrida had said that deconstruction ‘determines the non-centre otherwise than as loss of the centre?
In 1992, George Landow argued in his book Hypertext that with the technological developments a paradign shift, a revolution in thought has occurred which takes us far beyond the book / work of art.*10 The advocates of digital revolution tell us that digital technology has turned the monologic text into a dialogic one, that it will be difficult to tell who is the author of the text, a closed / perfect text will be thing of the past, it will be like an open sea, the boundary between the artist and the author will disappear, art will no longer depend on reflective originality of the author, it will be linked with the total textuality of human expressions. The hypertext will be the ‘ultrademocratic, fatherless and propertyless, borderless and custom-free text, which everyone can manipulate and which can be disseminated everywhere’*11. No doubt hypertext will facilitate editions, manuscript variants, source studies, representaion of links, constructive collaboration. It will praide an external corelative for patterns of thought established in a culture of print. Landow opines:
*9 Explaining his position in the discussion following “Structure, Sign and Play, Derrida said : ‘The subject is absolutely indispensable. I don’t destroy the subject; I situate it….. I believe that at a certain level both in philosophical and scientific discourse,one cannot get away from the………of the subject. It is a question of knowing where it comes from and how it functions.”
*10 It reminds us of the mysterious Foucauldian claim that the ‘ground…… is once again shifting under our feet
*11 Regis Debray, ‘The Book as Symbolic Object’ in “Future of the Book” edited by Geoffrey Nunburg, 1996.
……. As long as any reader has the power to enter the system and leave his or her mark, neither the tyranny of the centre nor that of the majority can impose itself. The very open-endedness of the text also promotes empowering the reader.”
The question is, will this empowerment be ascribed in the political sphere also? How such an empowerment can be undertaken without addressing the question of economic issues of access, of the gap that exists between the affluent and the impoverished cultures. Digital construction of authorship replace the notion ‘view from nowhere’ to ‘view from everywhere’ without situating the activities of the writer / artist. Seyala Benhabib writes;*12
“The situated and gendered subject is heteronomously determined but still strives towards autonomy. I want to ask how in fact the project of female emancipation would be thinkable without such a regulative ideal of enhancing the agency, autonomy and selfhood of women.”
Benhabib understands the need for rematerialisation of subjectivity and authorial placements. But how does such palcement occur in various critical discourse? Neither the texts nor the histories mention the role of the author which creates the passage into looking at life and world. Perhaps a new, situated authorial subjetivity will form out of a New Humanism. The narratives of human destiny await new authorships, new representations, new presents.
*12 Seyala Benhobib, Situating the Self. Gender, Community and Post Modernism in Contemporary Ethics, 1992
Amit Mukhopadhyay
New Delhi
22nd March,1999
published in
Conundrum an Artist’s book
‘view from nowhere to view from everywhere’
Indian Print Makers Guild 1999
