Panorama : philosophies of the visible

268 Pages·2002·0.844 MB·English

by  Wurzer, Wilhelm S

Panorama:
Philosophies of the Visible
WILHELM S. WURZER,
Editor
Continuum
PANORAMA
TEXTURES – PHILOSOPHY/LITERATURE/CULTURE
SERIES
Series editor: Hugh J. Silverman, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New
York, USA
An interdisciplinary series, Textures addresses questions of cultural meaning,
difference, and experience.
Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death
Edited by James E. Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray
Thresholds of Western Culture: Identity, Postcoloniality,
Transnationalism
Edited by John Burt Foster Jr. and Wayne J. Froman
Panorama: Philosophies of the Visible
Edited by Wilhelm S. Wurzer
Between Philosophy and Poetry: Writing, Rhythm, History
Edited by Massimo Verdicchio and Robert Burch
PA N O R A M A
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE VISIBLE
EDITED BY
WILHELM S. WURZER
Continuum
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017–6503
First published 2002
© Wilhelm S. Wurzer and the contributors 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted
in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0–8264–6003–8 (hardback)
0–8264–6004–6 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Panorama: philosophies of the visible/edited by Wilhelm S. Wurzer. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8264-6003-8—ISBN 0-8264-6004-6 (pbk.)
1. Aesthetics. I. Wurzer, Wilhelm S.
BH39.P2292 2002
111′.85—dc21 2002074055
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn
CONTENTS
General Introduction vii
Between the Visible and the Expressive: An In-visible Exchange
Wilhelm S. Wurzer
Part One: Postmodern Visions
Introduction: Transgressing the Kantian Sublime 3
1 Rephrasing the Visible and the Expressive: Lyotard’s “Defense
of the Eye” from Figure to Inarticulate Phrase 7
Anne Tomiche
2 Visibility, “Bild,” and “Einbildungskraft”: Derrida, Barthes, Levinas 21
Ludwig Nagl
3 Puncturing Genres: Barthes and Derrida on the Limits of
Representation 34
Dana Hollander
Part Two: Beyond Representational Thinking
Introduction: While Illustrating 43
4 Blanchot’s Gaze and Orpheus’s Singing: Seeing and Listening
in Poetic Inspiration 45
Alessandro Carrera
5 Foucault and the Disappearance of the Visible Subject 55
Reginald Lilly
Part Three: Expressions and the Limits of Philosophy
Introduction: Desire, Displacement, and Laughter 71
6 Frames of Visibility: Si(gh)ting the Monstrous 74
Robert Burch
7 Francis Bacon, the Philosopher’s Painter, and the Logic of Sensation 98
Zsuzsa Baross
vi CONTENTS
8 Bataille’s Erotic Displacement of Vision: Attempts at a
Feminist Reading 117
Ladelle McWhorter
9 Luce Irigaray’s Specular Mother: Lips in the Mirror 128
Lynne Huffer
Part Four: Filming the (In)Visible
Introduction: And Images Ending 141
10 Expressionist Towers of Babel in Weimar Film and Architecture 143
Janet Lungstrum
11 Rewiring the Oedipal Scene: Image and Discursivity in Wim
Wenders’s Journey Until the End of the World 155
Volker Kaiser and Robert S. Leventhal
Part Five: Critiques of Contemporary Image Culture
Introduction: Beyond a Paradigm 167
12 Imagism and the Ends of Vision: Pound and Salomon 169
Lisa Zucker
13 Mediums of Freedom in Photogrammic Frames: Some Exposures
of Bound Transcendence 185
James R. Watson
Epilogue
The Paradox of Philosophy’s Gaze 201
Wilhelm S. Wurzer
Abbreviations 210
Notes 214
Index 242
Bibliography 248
Acknowledgements 252
Contributors 253
Editor 255
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BETWEEN THE VISIBLE AND THE
EXPRESSIVE: AN IN-VISIBLE
EXCHANGE
Wilhelm S. Wurzer
Engaged in a lively discussion on eros, Diotima tells Socrates that human life is
only worthwhile if we understand the relation between the visible and the real.
Far from abandoning the visible, she shows that it is not limited to the visual,
recognizing that in its very expression the visible is more real than the visual.
During conversation (logos), in the expressive unfolding of the difference
between reality and image, the visible turns out to be more beautiful than the
image and more real than everyday “reality.” Intrigued by this hermeneutic
circle, and by Socrates wondering what is “real,” Diotima declares that expres-
sion forms reality. She warns Socrates of seduction by images, arguing that
the charm of gilded visibilities is most acute when logos is obscured and the
expressive is no longer the daimon that “mediates” the visible and the in-
visible. Disconnected from the link of expression, the visible becomes merely
imaginal. Diotima’s message still haunts us today. Without the discursive link
between the visible and the in-visible, we are apt to overextend the ahistoric
significance of one or the other. It is possible to avoid ocularcentrism as well as
blind transcendence if the visible is not merely identified with the visual and
the in-visible is not merely reduced to an absolute sovereignty. In the realm of
the expressive, therefore, Hermes excels not only in sending and receiving
messages, but in reading and rereading them, revealing that the in-visible is
expressive in visible regions. Indeed, this collection of essays will show that the
in-visible is not the essence of the visible but rather the expressive “body” of the
visible, as Derrida points out, “right on the visible.”
Inevitably, visibility reveals the in-visible, the unseen whole, “the commerce
of specters” making up our techno-electronic world. Inscribed into relations of
time and capital, culture and infrastructure, the in-visible marks a new econ-
omy of visibility whose expression is in part determined by the digital revolu-
tion. This is the first time in human history that the visible and the expressive
viii PANORAMA: PHILOSOPHIES OF THE VISIBLE
are integrated in a most unusual and intriguing electro-technical manner. It is
no longer a matter of the ocular lording it over the textual. The very nature of
textuality is radically transformed beyond the book and the “text” in a general
deconstructive sense. The text has become a kind of “texting,” an “archiving,” a
recording. More importantly, however, it has become an instantaneous sending
and receiving. This new technique of global conversing exceeds the mere pro-
duction of information. In its peculiar electronic disclosure, it writes new event
horizons precisely by making the informational relations themselves events.
Suddenly, information is not merely the reception of knowledge but the recep-
tion of the event of receiving, arriving, archiving a radically different exchange
– and this above and beyond the techniques of storing and retrieving recorded
data by visibly disseminating them. A new visibility emerges – the machine
that stands beyond other machines and, in some respects, even beyond human
capabilities. The in-visible exchange is newly electronic and ecstatic. Para-
doxically, the machine too has become a Mitsein. Visibly expressive, we now
“belong” to it in the very event of storing, retrieving, and disseminating
recorded knowledge without ever yielding to archivization. Hence, the
importance of recasting the in-visible exchange by means of a certain urgent
in-between the expressive and the visible, the human and the machine – a
post-GadamerianVerstehen regarding new modalities of communication.
Indeed, still of interest to us is a certain transformation of the visible into the
expressive beyond the ecstatic encounter of human being and machine. This
means arriving at an understanding not only of information content but how
we relate to this content and how it may lead to a truly global conversation.
More than ever, the expressive is in need of a rigorous panoramic, interpretive
critique.
Proceeding from a novel archiving of vision, the essays collected here do not
directly address the question of ocularcentrism and whether it has had a “posi-
tive” or “negative” import on our culture. Instead, the contemporary “hegem-
ony” of vision is taken as a techno-economic given and attempts are made not to
delimit visibilities to a dialectical contest of pros and cons. That our cultural
economy is mostly visual is only a problem if the ocular is linked to a
predominantly repressive system. More clearly, ocularcentrism becomes prob-
lematic if it is confined to representation in the narrow sense, i.e., to a politico-
economic exploitation of perception. Since our time is much more complex
than the commonly manifested, conventional critique of capitalism, the ques-
tion of vision is linked to a tangible intangibility demanding rigorous expres-
sion. The essays do just that by inviting concern for a philosophy whose task it
is to turn to art (painting, film, and literature) in order to provide us with more
than one signification of our time.
Without focusing on the ocular vocabulary in the history of ideas, the chap-
ters in this text show that the preeminence of the visible is largely related to
reading not merely what we see but how we see. Thus, we encounter the visible
invariably interlaced with the expressive, a silent witness, taking distance from
a definite, structural content. “What remains to be thought – is that which in
the presence of the present does not present itself.”1 Accordingly, our narrative
begins with a new economy of the expressive. No longer the old “what,”how we
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ix
see/read/write becomes the paradox of our time, the anonymous sovereignty of a
new specularity of being that is neither ocularcentric nor ontological. The new
relations of the visible and the expressive are too complex and diverse to sustain
any centrism. An unexchangeable exchange dawns between language and
world, philosophy and time. How can it be thought? How can it be read? How
can it be written?
Without yielding to a Gadamerian nostalgia, Panorama: Philosophies of the
Visible is still inspired by a hermeneutic reading of the multiple spectralities of
the in-visible. While the present inquiry does not primarily address the ques-
tion of networked electronic communication, it does point to a radical transi-
tion from book to screen, exploring and illuminating various panoramic aspects
of how the visible and the expressive are interrelated. Studying what Merleau-
Ponty calls “the attentive meaning” of being-in-the-world, the essays collected
here highlight the expressive itineraries of art and culture: notably, painting,
film, photography, and literature. These essays contribute to a necessary rewrit-
ing of the liberal arts in view of their desire to choose between responsibility
and carefreeness. The current state of the humanities is exposed in relation to
the cultural and social demands made by such philosophers as Kant, Hegel,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, Foucault, Bataille, Derrida,
Lyotard, and Deleuze.
The contributors of this volume, each in their own way, undertake their
rereading of these thinkers by focusing on a constellation of thematic problems,
clarifying the relations between the visible and expressive in the context of our
world. In an original contribution, these distinguished young scholars argue
with lucidity and an interdisciplinary style. Some of the contributors such as
Robert Burch, Reginald Lilly, Ludwig Nagl, James Watson, and Ladelle
McWhorter are well-known continental philosophers. Lisa Zucker is a dis-
tinguished scholar in English studies. Lynne Huffer and Anne Tomiche are
foremost interpreters in the area of French studies. Janet Lungstrum, Robert
Leventhal, and Volker Kaiser rank among the most creative scholars in Ger-
manic literatures and film theory, while Zsuzsa Baross, Alessandro Carrera, and
Dana Hollander bring eminence to the diverse fields of cultural studies.
This volume is divided into five interrelated parts: (1) Postmodern Visions;
(2) Beyond Representational Thinking; (3) Expressions and the Limits of Phil-
osophy; (4) Filming the (In)visible; and (5) Critiques of Contemporary Image
Culture. Each part explores the current crisis regarding the relation of the
expressive and the visible from a rigorous panoramic context. While Part One
takes a more detailed philosophical approach, Parts Two to Five remain emi-
nently philosophical in reading the problematic of our text from a literary,
historical, and aesthetic perspective. Most fruitful in this volume are the inter-
disciplinary strategies employed in uncovering the subject matter. Creative
new insights are generated precisely because of the distinctive confluence of
deconstruction, phenomenology, critical theory, history, literary criticism, film
theory, feminism, and, last but not least, photography and poetry. That the
essays consist in far-ranging readings and interpretations of all of these tenden-
cies in the contemporary liberal arts indicates the current merit of a theme that
continues to bind us to these disciplines. Additionally, the chapters in this