The event of interpellation: an aesth-ethic reading of Rilke

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by  Dror Pimentel

Inscriptions
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Title: The event of interpellation: an aesth-ethic reading of Rilke
Author: Dror Pimentel
Section: Academic articles
Abstract: Contrary to Levinas, the event of hospitality does not take place in the face of the
other, but rather, in the work of art. Art should therefore not be viewed as provoking
pleasure, but rather, as an event of hospitality of radical alterity possessing the power to
shake the foundation of its viewers. This is what endows art with an ethical dimension,
articulated in re-inscribing aesthetics as “aesth-ethics.” Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of
Apollo” is as a perfect example of this claim. The statue is teeming with life and sexuality,
from which a gaze bursts out, shaking the viewer’s existence by calling him to change his
life. As Althusser’s analysis of interpellation shows, the subject is constituted from a call
coming from the outside. However, in Rilke’s case, the call does not originate from the Big
Other, regulating the order, but from radical alterity residing outside the order.
Keywords: Rilke; interpellation; event; ethics; alterity
©
Copyright 2022 Pimentel.
Correspondence: Dror Pimentel, e: [email protected].
Received: 7 August, 2021.
Accepted: 27 August, 2021.
Published: 15 January, 2022.
How to cite: Pimentel, Dror. “The event of interpellation: an aesth-ethic reading of Rilke.”
Inscriptions 5, no. 1 (January 2022): 11-16.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
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The event of interpellation: an aesth-ethic reading
of Rilke
Dror Pimentel1
Abstract
ContrarytoLevinas,theeventofhospitalitydoesnottakeplaceinthefaceoftheother,
butrather,intheworkofart. Artshouldthereforenotbeviewedasprovokingpleasure,
butrather,asaneventofhospitalityofradicalalteritypossessingthepowertoshakethe
foundationofitsviewers. Thisiswhatendowsartwithanethicaldimension,articulated
in re-inscribing aesthetics as “aesth-ethics.” Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo”
is as a perfect example of this claim. The statue is teeming with life and sexuality, from
which a gaze bursts out, shaking the viewer’s existence by calling him to change his
life. As Althusser’s analysis of interpellation shows, the subject is constituted from a call
comingfromtheoutside. However, inRilke’scase, thecalldoesnotoriginatefromthe
Big Other, regulating the order, but from radical alterity residing outside the order.
Keywords: Rilke;interpellation;event;ethics;alterity
The Dionysian Apollo
marred by the vicissitudes of time.
Before turning to discuss the poem, let us
Does art merely provoke pleasure, or is it
read it first in its entirety:
within its power to create an event that will
shake the foundations of its viewers’ experi-
ence? This second possibility is attested to in
Wecannotknowhislegendaryhead
Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of
witheyeslikeripeningfruit. Andyethistorso
Apollo.” Rilke’s choice of the artifacts serv-
isstillsuffusedwithbrilliancefrominside,
ing as the objects of his early poetic medita-
likealamp,inwhichhisgaze,nowturnedtolow,
tions was far from coincidental. As Paul de
Man notes, these objects are all distinguished
gleamsinallitspower. Otherwise
by some type of absence, and hence could be
thecurvedbreastcouldnotdazzleyouso,norcould
termed “negative objects.”2 In the case of the
asmilerunthroughtheplacidhipsandthighs
poem devoted to the torso of Apollo – which
tothatdarkcenterwhereprocreationflared.
Rilke likely came upon during a visit to the
Louvre while living in Paris – this absence is
Otherwisethisstonewouldseemdefaced
evidentinthetensionbetweenitscurrentexis-
beneaththetranslucentcascadeoftheshoulders
tence as a truncated torso with no head, limbs,
andwouldnotglistenlikeawildbeast’sfur:
or thighs, and its ideal perfection before being
1BezalelAcademyofArtandDesign,Jerusalem.
2 deMan,AllegoriesofReading,44.
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The event of interpellation Pimentel
wouldnot,fromallthebordersofitself, ture, heralding its apocalyptic demise during
burstlikeastar: forherethereisnoplace the fin-de-siècle. This preference casts a sort
thatdoesnotseeyou. Youmustchangeyourlife.3 of Dionysian spell upon Apollo, who is trans-
ported from the realm of celestial brilliance,
becoming saturated with sexuality.
In his description of the statue, Rilke under-
Thevitalityofthestatueisalsoevidentinthe
scoresitsvitalityandmovement,despiteitsim-
inner movement pervading the body’s differ-
perfection. This is especially noticeable in the
ent parts: chest, thighs and shoulders. Each of
descriptionoftheeyesandsexualorgan,which
these is mentioned in the poem in its genitive
appear to entertain relations of exchangeabil-
form (“of”): the curve of breast; the placid-
ity. The vitality of the eyes is underscored by
ity of the thighs; the cascade of the shoulders.
the slight linguistic diversion in their descrip-
Thegenitivecaseallowseachbodypartinturn
tion: theGermanwordforthepupiloftheeye,
to recede into the background while under-
Augäpfel, literally means “the apple of the eye.”
scoring the movement that pervades it. In this
Rilke,however,usesitspluralform–Augenäpfel
manner, the statue’s parts are transformed into
– thus contributing to its detachment from its
a living entity that contains a current of move-
narrow anatomical context and its diversion
ment, while the statue as a whole is suffused
to an organic context, as if the eyes were in-
with movement like a living organism. To
deedapples. Thevitalityofthestatueisfurther
this, one must add the movement stemming
enhanced by the allusion to its sexual organ –
from the displacement of the statue’s different
“that dark center where procreation flared” –
parts: the smile has run through the thighs to
which contributes to the eroticization of the
thatdarkcenterwhereprocreationflared. The
statue. The emphasis on the central location
smile has a life of its own, which is not depen-
of the sexual organ is also justified in its poetic
dent on the body part carrying it. Just like the
context: just as the sexual organ is located at
Cheshire cat’s smile in Alice in Wonderland, it
the center of the body, so it is mentioned in
continuestoliveinthe statue’sbodyevenafter
the middle of the sonnet.
its face has been removed: its journey ends in
One cannot ignore the philosophical con-
the sexual organ, which becomes its carrier in
text of this emphasis on sexuality, which is
place of the lips.
further amplified by the disturbing absence
of the head from the torso. The absence of The Seeing Body
the head enables us to identify the statue with
the mythical entity of the acephalous (Greek Like the smile, the gaze too is displaced, mov-
for “headless one”), whom Georges Bataille ing from the face to suffuse the entire torso
transformed into a symbol negating the privi- with the act of seeing: “there is no place that
legedstatusofreasonandreinvestingthebody does not see you.” The gaze hosted in the
withvalue. Theprivilegingofthesexualorgan torso is what endows it with life and move-
over the head also echoes Nietzsche’s critique ment. How should this act of seeing be under-
of the glorification of reason in Western cul- stood? DeManidentifiestheseeingstatuewith
3TranslatedbyStephenMitchell.InGerman:“WirkanntennichtseinunerhörtesHaupt,/darindieAugenäpfel
reiften. Aber/seinTorsoglühtnochwieeinKandelaber,/indemseinSchauen,nurzurückgeschraubt,//sichhält
undglänzt. SonstkönntenichtderBug/derBrustdichblenden,undimleisenDrehen/derLendenkönntenicht
einLächelngehen/zujenerMitte,dieZeugungtrug.//SonststündedieserSteinentstelltundkurz/unterder
SchulterndurchsichtigemSturz/undflimmertenichtsowieRaubtierfelle;//undbrächenichtausallenseinen
Rändern/auswieeinStern: denndaiskeineStelle,/diedichnichtsieht. DumußtdeinLebenändern.” Rilke,
“ArchaischerTorsoApollos,”NeueGedichte,83.
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Pimentel The event of interpellation
the mythological figure of Argus, whose one- subject, but is not a subject himself.
hundred eyes were scattered over his entire Yet what if, in the spirit of Heidegger, we
body.4 Yet this reading still perpetuates the were to examine the work of art not as a re-
fundamental difference between being seen presentation of the thing, but rather as its pre-
and seeing, whereas the image delineated by sentation. In“TheOriginoftheWorkofArt,”
Rilkeovercomesthedistinctionbetweenthem. Heidegger argues that the statue at the center
Theentirestatueseesbecauseitisatoncebeing of a Greek temple is not a mimetic image of
seenandseeing: itexistsinastateofseeingvis- the god but rather hosts the god himself, in
ibility, in which the object supplying the gaze his being.5 If we examine the torso of Apollo
with a surface of visibility is itself possessed of in this same spirit, we can view it not as a re-
the ability to see. presentation of the god, but as his actual man-
One can even assume that the statue’s see- ifestation. The brilliance suffusing the torso
ing ability is located in its sexual organ, as if must thus not be identified with the Apollo-
it were a pupil focusing the act of seeing that nian illusion, as Nietzsche would have it, but
radiates from the entire statue. The displace- rather, with the appearance of divinity itself.
mentofthegazeontothetorso,andevenmore This possibility resonates with the Greek term
so, onto the sexual organ, contributes to over- agalma, which is related to the Greek view of
turningthehierarchyoforganstakingplacein the statues of their gods as entities filled with
the statue. Vision has always been considered life, which bridge the gap between the human
the most important sense, due to its identifi- and the divine.
cation with thought. The perceiving organ And what is this gaze if not the gaze of rad-
is not the eye of the flesh, but rather the eye ical alterity associated with primordial, pre-
of thought, which has the power to capture cultural Being, gazing out from the torso of
the transcendent dimension of reality. This Apollo? The gaze hosted in the statue’s body,
oculocentric stance, which positions vision at displacedontotheshoulders,breastandthighs,
the center, can be found, for instance, in the infusing them with life and constituting their
writing of both Plato and Descartes. In Rilke’s dazzling visibility. Finally, it lands on the sex-
case, the privileged status of vision is negated ualorgan, onlytoerupt, likethelightofastar,
whenitisdisplacedfromtheheadtothebody, shattering the frame of the statue and shaking
and more specifically to the sexual organ. The the very foundations of the viewer. Together
acephalous sees through the phallus. with the gaze, the statue also hosts the primor-
Yet can a statue indeed see? The trivial an- dialworldthatiscarriedbyit. Allthatremains
swer, of course, is no. Only a subject can see ofthisworldisthetorso,animatedbyaspectral
in the deep sense, which involves not only the gaze that traverses time, as it restores a shadow
photoelectric process of vision, but also the act of visibility to a world that once was and is no
ofendowingwhatisseenwithmeaning. Cam- longer. Thisgazeisthatofapanopticoninthe
eras, robots, and animals possess mechanisms double sense of this term: it does not only see
of seeing, be they mechanical or physiological, everywhere, but also sees from everywhere.
yetthisdoesnotleadtotheconclusionthatthey
can see. The attribution of seeing to the torso Aesth-ethic Interpellation
ofApolloisthusanunsustainableclaim,dueto
The statue not only sees, but also speaks. The
its status as an object that merely represents a
gaze commands: “You must change your life.”
4 deMan,AllegoriesofReading,44.
5 Heidegger,“TheOriginoftheWorkofArt,”167–8.
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The event of interpellation Pimentel
Thisisnotamoralcommandbutrather,aneth- of art. The power of art stems from its abil-
ical command, in Levinas’ sense of “ethics.”6 ity to instigate in the viewer a radical change,
Yet in Rilke’s case – and this is the decisive which leads him to encounter his selfhood for
point – the ethical command is not transmit- the first time.
ted through the face of the other, but rather, Art thus has an interpellative character. Yet
through the body of the statue. This is the interpellation in Rilke’s poem is not the same
moment in which ethics is transformed into as that defined by Althusser.7 For the latter,
aesth-ethics: the term “aesth-ethics” must be interpellation occurs in an encounter with a
understood as a displacement of the event of representative of the state, such as a policeman.
the hospitality of radical alterity from the face When the policeman calls out “Hey, you,” to a
of the other to the work of art. Ethics is thus passerby in the street, his call is not addressed
notrelatedtoaestheticsduetoanykindofcom- to a specific person, and there is thus no duty
patibility between the good and the beautiful. to attend to it. Yet Althusser believes that in
Forethicsisnotrelatedtothegood,butrather nine out of ten cases, the person being called
to a radical alterity that lies beyond good and to will stop short and turn to the policeman,
evil. Moreover, aesthetics in this case is by no even though he is not obligated to do so.
means related to the beautiful, but rather, to Themomentofansweringthecall,whichis
the event of hospitality of that radical alterity. amomentofinterpellation,isalsoamomentof
Inthissense,ethicsisrelatedtoaestheticssince, identification, in at least three different senses:
as Rilke’s poem reveals, the ethical command firstly, the passerby in the street identifies him-
is transmitted by means of art. self as the person being addressed by the call,
The difference lies not only in the mode of even though it was not necessarily addressed
transmitting the ethical command, but also in to him. Secondly, in identifying himself as
its contents: the statue calls upon the viewer such, he identifies with the existing order rep-
to instigate a radical change in his life. Lev- resentedbythepoliceman. Thirdly,thisisalso
inas’ reading of the other and Rilke’s reading the moment in which the passerby acquires
of the statue thus have something in common, his own identity, and is transformed from an
for in both cases, the response to the call leads individualintoasubjectresidingwithintheso-
to the constitution of the subject. Yet there is cialorder. Identityisthustiedtoidentification:
still a significant difference between them: in theonebeingcalledknowswhoheisbyvirtue
Levinas’ case, the origin of the call is a God of his identification with the state and its laws.
withoutbeing,whoisidentifiedwiththegood The subject is not constituted autonomously,
and with justice. In Rilke’s case, meanwhile, but rather, in a specular manner, by encoun-
the origin of the call lies in a radical alterity tering the mechanisms of the state and their
beyondgoodandevil. InLevinas’case,thecall representatives.
is transmitted through the other’s face, that is, Religion can similarly be examined as an
in the ethical sphere. In Rilke’s case, the call is ideological mechanism that transforms the be-
transmitted, as noted, through Apollo’s torso, liever through the practice of ritual: the be-
that is, through the aesthetic sphere. What dis- liever knows he was created by the God in
tinguishes Rilke is that the constitution of self- whom he must believe, and that in return he
hoodtakesplaceinaface-to-face(ormorepre- will be awarded God’s love. The scene of the
cisely, face-to-body) encounter with the work BurningBushappearinginExodus3isviewed
6 Levinas,TotalityandInfinity,194–219.
7 Althusser,“OnIdeology,”171–208.
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Pimentel The event of interpellation
by Althusser as an exemplary case of religious ingthatinterpellationoriginatesfromaradical
interpellation. FollowingMoses’declarationof alterity residing outside any given order. Yet
his identity before God (“Here I am,”), God thisisnottheBigOther,theonewhoisatonce
identifies himself as an absolute subject that constituting the order and existing outside of
cannot be defined by anyone but himself (“I it. Rather, this is the radical and primordial
am who I am”), while identifying Moses as alterity, which precedes all forms of order and
the one who must faithfully follow his com- economy. The origin of the call is the call of
mands.8 Inthismanner,Mosescomestoknow the origin. Althusser is right in stating that in-
himself as a subject who has been transformed terpellation has the character of an event. Yet
into God’s servant. Althusser does ponder the the event of interpellation, in this case, does
possibility of also considering interpellation in not confirm the order, but rather disrupts it.
an aesthetic context. One can assume that in Althusser is right in arguing that the event of
his view art, like religion, can serve as an ideo- interpellation constitutes the subject. Yet this
logical mechanism that transforms individuals is not a subject returned to the order to obey
into subjects. the Big Other, but rather, a disrupted subject
Yet the interpellation occurring before the whose place in the order is put into question.
torso of Apollo does not resemble any of these The event of interpellation thus constitutes
cases. Radical alterity erupts from the statue a disrupted subject, who is not fully integrated
as a spectral gaze, commanding the viewer to intotheorder. Hisconstitutioninvolveshisex-
change his life. The statue’s command is thus clusion from the order, as one who was never
the inversion of God’s words in the scene of included in it, or who has long abandoned
the Burning Bush: God addresses himself as it. The order of those excluded from the or-
the sole authority possessingthe power tocon- der includes Kierkegaard’s Abraham, Camus’
stitute his identity, without any fixed, a-priori Stranger, and Kafka’s Josef K., to mention a
definition: “I am who I am.” In doing so, he few of them by name. To these, one must add
constitutesMosesashisservant,withoutallow- the viewer of Apollo’s torso, who can reason-
ing him to determine his identity for himself. ably be assumed to be Rilke himself. These
The statue, by contrast, addresses itself to the figures all witness the event of the hospitality
viewer,commandinghimtotransgresshimself of radical alterity taking place in art and attest
without determining the nature of this trans- to its eventuation. In this sense, being a sub-
gression. It thus frees the viewer from existing ject means being a witness to the event. Rilke
forms of determination, endowing him with is given a double role, both as the witness of
the freedom to be himself: “You are who you the event of the hospitality of radical alterity
are.” in Apollo’s torso, and as the one attesting to
Interpellation as defined by Althusser – the event in his poem. This double role points
which takes place in the social and religious to the affinity between art and the event, and
spheres – validates the subject’s identification thusalsobetweenartandbearingwitness. The
with the social order, and in doing so endows work of art can thus be examined as the work
the subject with his identity. Interpellation as of bearing witness to the event.
defined by Rilke – which occurs in the aes-
thetic sphere – leads the subject to his singular References
self, and in doing so distinguishes him from
Althusser, Louis. “On Ideology.” In On the
thesocialorder. Althusseristhusrightinargu-
Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and
8 Althusser,194–9.
January 2022 – Volume 5 15
Ideological State Apparatuses, translated by G. Krell, 139–212. San Francisco:
M. Goshgarian, 171–208. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.
Verso, 2014. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An
Man, Paul de. Allegories of Reading: Figural Essay on Exteriority. Translated by
Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
Proust. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969.
University Press, 1979. Rilke, RainerMaria. “ArchaischerTorsoApol-
Heidegger, Martin. “The origin of the work los.” InNeueGedichte,S.83. Frankfurta.M.:
of art.” In Basic Writings, edited by David F. Insel Verlag, 1907/8.
©
Copyright 2022 Pimentel.
Correspondence: Dror Pimentel, e: [email protected].
Received: 7 August, 2021.
Accepted: 27 August, 2021.
Financial statement: The scholarship for this article was conducted at the author’s own
expense.
Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests.
How to cite: Pimentel, Dror. “The event of interpellation: an aesth-ethic reading of Rilke.”
Inscriptions 5, no. 1 (January 2022): 11-16.