Vol 11.2 - Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

15 Pages·2003·0.27 MB·English

THE SEMIOTIC REVIEW OF BOOKS
VOLUME 11.2 OCTOBER 2000 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb ISSN 0847-1622
Editorial: Semiotic Life of Plants not a natural, or unintentional one. Although we Gerard J. van den Broek is Director of the
might presume that the world of plants is a natural Provinsjale Biblioteek Fryslân in The Netherlands.
by Gerard J. van den Broek
one, and that it has no inherent meaning, except as
a result of the signs we see and create, it is very References
The semiotic significance of plants for human-
much a matter of perspective. As for the alchemists
kind has not been more poignantly - though im-
and herbalists of the 16th and 17th century, nature Bateson, Gregory (1980) Mind and Nature,
plicitly - described than by the French army physi-
was a universe of Godly signs, intertwining plants, New York: Bantam Books.
cian Julien Offray de La Mettrie in his L’ homme-
diseases, the characteristics of planets and constel-
plante (1748). A human could almost be replaced
lations, future happenings, the weather, and the ef- Bouissac, Paul, Herzfeld, M., Posner, R. (eds.)
by a plant, such was the similarity between the physi-
fects of peripatetic medicine. (1986) Iconicity: Essays on the Nature of Culture,
ology of man and the representations of the veg-
Festschrift for Thomas A. Sebeok on his 65th birth-
etative realm, according to La Mettrie. There are,
Although these proto-scientists - Isaac New- day. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
elaborates the encyclopédiste, significant similari-
ton was a fervent searcher for the transformational
ties between the two.
process of turning any matter into gold - created a Eco, Umberto (1976) A Theory of Semiotics,
meaningful system based on all kinds of signs, the Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fortunately, La Mettrie was only jesting and
mere description of this search for meaning is not a
mocking at the newly defined method of classifica-
semiotic analysis that we would recognize; it is an Goody, Jack (1993) The Culture of Flowers. Cam-
tion developed by Carl von Linné (Linnaeus). His
ethnosemantic analysis at best. Presenting the bridge: Cambridge University Press.
classificatory system, launched in 1735 in his doc-
meaning of plants, flowers and trees merely to show
toral thesis, was based on the sexual organs of flow-
that these have such different meanings and roles La Mettrie, Julien Offray de (1748) L’ homme-plante,
ers and was winning ground in France at the time.
in the course of history of so many different cul- Potsdam.
Though the significance of the botanical world can-
tures (Goody 1993) is much too meagre for proper
not be underestimated for scientific and scholarly
semiotic analysis; neither is it enough for structural Sebeok, Thomas A. (1976) “Iconicity,” Modern
pursuits during the 18th century, and a new para-
analysis, which aims at demonstrating how subsur- Language Notes 91: 1427-56.
digm had been created and in a way still persists, at
face structures order superficial ones, and shape
least with regard to the binominality of the nomen-
their meaning almost unnoticed. Merely making the Van den Broek, Gerard J. (1986) Baleful Weeds and
clature (cf. Van den Broek 1986), the question re-
meaning of the participants’ world visible is not Precious-Juiced Flowers, A Semiotic Approach to Bo-
mains: is a semiotics of botany or a semiotics of
semiotic analysis. The meaning of the meaning of tanical Practice. Leiden Dissertation DSSc.
plants feasible?
the participants must be clear to the researcher for
then and only then may one speak of semiotic analy- — (1997) “Flowers but no Fruit: The Vast Land of
A number of other core questions emerge
sis. Unfortunately, the meaning of the researcher Unsemiotized Culture,” Semiotica 113-3/4: 385-393.
from this principal one. Is there a semiosis of natu-
does not have to be clear to the participants, but
ral signs, for the distinctive features of plants are,
Waddington, C.H. (1977) Tools for Thought.
that is the result of many a scientific analysis. Just
after all, selected by humankind; or, are they? Do
Frogmore, St Albans: Paladin.
as the average person in the street does not under-
natural signs actually exist? Is there a difference be-
stand the meaning of E = mc2 members of a given
tween natural signs and symptoms, the nature of
culture might not grasp the meaning of a scholarly Contents Pages
which has been object of discussion for many years
semiotic analysis. As a result, feedback will be hin- Editorial: Semiotic Life of Plants 1
(cf. Eco 1976, Sebeok 1976, Bouissac, Herzfeld,
dered. But then the question arises: is a meaning by Gerard J. van den Broek
Posner 1986). Much depends on definition and per-
which is not understood by the participants, whose Pokémon as Interactive Literature 2-3
spective.
by Alleen Pace and Don L.F. Nilsen
own system of meaning was the basis of a new sys-
Reading Painting 3-5
tem of meaning produced through scholarship, a
For the alchemical botanists in the 16th and by Anne Urbancic
truly meaningful system? I think it is, or better, might
even the 17th century, there was absolutely no doubt Keeping the Mystery Alive 5-7
about the inherent sign value of plants. They were be, as every subculture has its own system of mean- by Thomas Dunk
ing, its own semiosis, its own vocabulary, and sign
convinced, on the basis of the works of Aristotle The Figured Face 7-12
systems, both verbal and non-verbal. It is the task by K.J. Peters
and Hermetic philosophy, that God in his creation
of semioticians, anthropologists, and sympathetic Video Semiosis 12-15
of the world had hidden signs, perhaps as clues, for
by Jennifer Ellen Way
researchers to investigate the meaning of, for in-
humankind so that the beneficial qualities of plants
stance, the ethnosystem (botany in a given subcul- Web Site www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb
and animals (and, in fact, all natural phenomena)
ture). Mirror Sites
could be discovered. So, while searching for the
Hong Kong http://obelix.lib.hku.hk/semiotic/semiotic
Philosopher’s Stone‚ the alchemical botanists wove
Vienna www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/srb
Alhough ethnosemantics was a notion that
an intricate semiotic system around plants. Perhaps Groningen www.bdk.rug.nl/onderzoek/castor/srb
brought us more than one step further in under- Kuala Lampur http://sts.um.edu.my
their world was even more meaningful than ours
standing one another, it should not be the end of The Semiotic Review of Books is a refereed publication. It is
today, despite the progress of the natural sciences.
cultural analysis, even when we consider that “the published three times a year.
This is not, in fact, surprising, as their conception
work of Conklin, Breedlove and Berlin from the Rates Canada USA Others
of the world was based on the Gnostic notions of
early sixties paved the way for Lévi-Strauss’s struc-
Hermes Trismegistus, the Pater Philosophorum, who Individual $30 US $30 US $35
turalism” (Van den Broek 1997:113). Just as struc- Institution $40 US $40 US $45
paved the way for a cultural substream that influ-
turalism gave greater depth to ethnosemantics, Payable to Lakehead University
enced the structure of the Globe Theatre of Shake-
semiotics has added new notions to structural analy- General Editor: Gary Genosko
speare, and the cathedrals of Chartres and Notre
sis, and ethnosemiotics even emerged from it; still, Associate Editors: Verena Andermatt Conley, Samir Gandesha,
Dame in Paris. His philosophy even led eventually
Tom Kemple, Sophie Thomas, Peter van Wyck
a lot depends on definition and thorough empiri-
to homeopathy as we know it (Van den Broek 1986).
Section Editors: J. Adamson, D. Brooks, Chun Wei Choo, Ersu
cal, falsifiable evidence. And the tools semiotics,
Ding, M.Harkin, R. Kilbourn, D. Lidov, A. Lippit, F. Manjali, D.
structuralism and all varieties of the ethno-approach
In the efforts of the alchemists to discover McLennan, M. Peschl, S.H.Riggins, H. Schwarz, S. Segalowitz,
offer, will provide us in the end with a deeper in- S. Simpkins, Q.S. Tong, A. Urbancic, A. Zeller
the predetermined order in this universum, they
sight into the structuring and signifying capabili- Lakehead Operations Group: Rachel Ariss, Lori Chambers,
were certain about the implicit meaning of all natu-
Todd Dufresne, Tom Dunk, Kim Fedderson, Rick Holmes,
ties of human beings in the various cultural and
ral phenomena. The alchemists were Gnostics in Pat Jasen, Mike Richardson, Clara Sacchetti, Gillian Siddal,
historical settings in relation to their environments.
the strictest sense, that is, they were convinced that Pam Wakewich
they were able to know the world. Indeed, the semi- Founding Editor: Paul Bouissac
Despite the fact that some scholars ultimately
otic system they unraveled in the world of plants Layout: Nicole Sutherland, LU Graphics
believe there is an “implicate order” (Waddington
was actually the semiotics of God Almighty. Address: Department of Sociology, Lakehead University,
1977) or a “mind in nature” (Bateson 1980), a more 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1
prudent way to go about understanding the mean- Tel.: [phone]; Fax: [phone]
So these alchemical botanists had a relatively
ing of plants is perhaps called for. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
easy job since they only had to rediscover the mean-
ing and order God had bestowed upon the world.
They were looking for an intentional sign system,
1
Pokémon as Interactive first, but the one who explores, backtracks, learns, As soon as two or more Pokémon players get
and enjoys the journey. The human characters in together, they eagerly compare notes and share
Literature
the cartoon and in the game include a boy named techniques. Even children who have not yet mas-
Ash Ketcham (his name fits into the slogan of tered basic reading and writing skills are playing the
by Alleen Pace Nilsen and Don L.F. Nilsen “Gotta Catch ‘em All!”), a girl named Misty, who is game at surprisingly sophisticated levels because
the Gym Leader of Cirulean City and specializes in they have been taught by other children. The trad-
About ten years ago, those of us working in water Pokémon, a boy named Brock who is the Gym ing cards are visible evidence of the kind of sharing
adolescent literature were waiting eagerly for what leader of Pewter City and specializes in rock that goes on, but the cards are only the tip of the
was described as interactive fiction. One year we Pokémon, and an older and wiser Dr. Oak and his proverbial iceberg.
even held up the publication of a best-books list son Gary. These people are all caregivers to their
while we waited for those among us who were com- Pokémon, who could be any of 150 fascinating crea- The game is so complicated that few adults
puter literate to send in their evaluations. Finally tures living in Pokéballs and coming out at their have even the vaguest idea of how it is played. One
we got a note saying they hadn’t found anything master’s bidding. of its great appeals to children is that they get to be
wonderful “just yet,” but “maybe, next year.” the caregivers. They are beneficent dictators, the
Gameboy players become caregivers of their role that Alison Lurie (1990) in her Don’t Tell the
“Next year” never came, partly because we own Pokémon (players can carry a maximum of six) Grown-ups: Subversive Children’s Literature, ascribes
weren’t sure what we were looking for. All we knew as they journey forth on what is basically a roman- to Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh. Players
was that this new literature would be more sophis- tic quest as outlined in Northrup Frye’s Anatomy of have the responsibility of deciding whether to trade
ticated than the Choose Your Own Adventure books Criticism (1957). Players put themselves in an ide- Pokémon, what skills or techniques their Pokémon
and it would have something to do with comput- alized world where good things are really good and should use, what kinds of further training and edu-
ers. bad things are really bad. In the words of Frye cation their Pokémon should receive, and whether
(1957:203): in a conflict they should run or stay and fight. If a
Ironically, when truly interactive literature The Romance involves the Journey, Pokémon is injured, the caregiver must decide what
finally arrived, we failed to recognize it. It snuck and the Journey involves the Hero, antidotes, potions, and vitamins should be admin-
into the United States from Japan under the name the Villain, the Quest, the Sage, the istered, and whether the Pokémon should be left at
Prohibition, the Sacrifice, the Dragon,
of Pokémon (“pocket monsters”), and because its a care centre.
the Treasure, and sometimes the rescue
first appearance was in a cartoon format, we dis-
of the Maiden. The epiphany (mountain
missed it as a passing fad aimed at children. top, tower, island, lighthouse, ladder, Our second major reason for recommending
staircase, Jack’s beanstock, Rapunzel’s Pokémon as a rich literary text is that it is filled
And then, when Nintendo began selling hair, Indian rope trick, etc.) connects with interesting language. Many linguists say that
Heaven and Earth.
Pokémon Gameboys for something like $80.00(US), the English language is changing faster today than
along with $30.00 cartridges, trading cards, T-shirts, it has at any time since the Norman conquest. This
On their idealized journeys in the Gameboys,
caps, stuffed toys, and every other kind of parapher- means that if people’s only approach to unknown
players may meet and be challenged by such hu-
nalia anyone could dream up, we dismissed words is to look them up in a dictionary, they will
man characters as Ash, Misty, and Brock, who are
Pokémon again, this time because it was so com- be left behind because words can’t get into diction-
aided by their own Pokémon. They might also be
mercialized. aries as fast as they are being invented and spread
challenged by obstacles of nature so that they must
around the world through the mass media.
get advice from characters they meet along the way
However, the phenomenon is getting hard to
or find technical help such as flash to help them
ignore. It was the cover story on the October 30 The names of the 150 Pokémon creatures
escape from dark caves or cut to get past bushes
to November 5, 1999 TV Guide; the far out South demonstrate how new words are made and give
into restricted zones.
Park advertised that it would be satirizing Pokémon children practice in connecting related words to
on its November 3, 1999 show, and our local news- each other. We recently overheard a 10-year-old
In Frye’s sense of a romance, the good guys
paper, The Arizona Republic (October 31, 1999) proudly tell his father he could remember the names
are Ash, Brock and Misty, the bad guys are minor
carried a feature article about the 12,000 kids who of 150 Pokémon. The father’s attitude was fairly
characters appropriately named Jessie and James,
showed up for a two-day Pokémon “training fair” typical as he responded, “Well, how many presidents
the sage is Professor Oak and his Pokédex, the pro-
put on by Nintendo at a local shopping mall. can you name?”
hibition is “Don’t be a bad Pokémon trainer,” the
dragons are Giovanni and Persian, the sacrifice is a
An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel One reason the boy can remember more
loss of Pokémon, while the treasure is the gaining
(September 15, 1999) told about several principals Pokémon than presidents is that the Pokémon
of wisdom which is shown through the picking up
banning Pokémon trading cards from their schools names are descriptive in matching the monsters’
of techniques and tools and the acquisition of more
because kids were so distracted by them that they unique images. For example, Kangaskhan carries a
numerous and more powerful Pokémon.
were missing their buses as well as their teachers’ baby in a front pocket; Tangela is covered with tan-
lessons. gled hair, and Staryu and Starmie are shaped like
The story is interactive in that game players
stars. While the names have their own unique spell-
have thousands of choices to make so that each
Also, younger kids were getting exploited in ings, most of them are created from ordinary words
story is truly unique. Players who want to look for
their trades with older kids. One parent even ac- or sounds that kids know.
water Pokémon head for Cirulean City, those who
cused a teacher of “stealing” cards from her child
prefer such earthy Pokémon as Onyx, Zubat, and
when early in the day the teacher took cards away Without realizing it, players are getting les-
Golem head for a cave, while those who want to
from several children and then, when it was time sons in morphology. Morphemes are the smallest
deal with ghosts and spirits head for Lavender City
to go home, didn’t return the same cards. units of language that carry meaning (suffixes, pre-
and its mausoleum-like tower and funereal music.
fixes, infixes, and basic words and roots). Most of
Principal Tim Duax at Shorewood’s Atwater the Pokémon evolve into more powerful or more
While each player creates a different story,
School banned the cards only from classrooms be- complex creatures so that they come in related sets,
all the stories fit into genre of the picaresque novel
cause he said “Trading cards — like baseball cards using one or more of the same morphemes. For
as exemplified by Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn,
— are part of children’s culture.” He videotaped a example, Koffing evolves into Weezing, Jigglypuff
Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, and Miguel
Pokémon cartoon to show at a faculty meeting say- into Wigglytuff, Sandshrew into Sandlash,
de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Stories about picaros
ing that “It’s such a rage right now, we need to know Magnemite into Magneton, and Venonat into
are usually told in plain language about people with-
the educational aspects of it.” Venomoth. Other evolved sets may not use the
out power, prestige, or authority, who embark on
same morphemes, but their meanings are related
episodic journeys in which they are forced to live
Principal Duax is a man after our own hearts. as when Drowzee evolves into Hypno, Grimer into
by their wits as they come in contact with people
While he praised the cartoon for its themes of Muk, Growlith into Arcanine, and Caterpie into
from other cultures and social classes.
“friendship, cooperation and trying to do good Metapod and then into Butterfree.
deeds,” we are ready to praise the game for being
Many adults who see kids huddled over
truly interactive and intertextual fiction and for While language purists may feel uncomfort-
Gameboys with dazed looks on their faces feel un-
teaching children techniques of modern word for- able about the game’s creative spelling, this is, in
easy and worry that kids are checking out of real
mation as well as for developing their reading and fact, part of modern word formation, especially in
life and transporting themselves off into cyberspace.
social skills, along with their enjoyment and appre- business where to copyright a brand name, or in
Looking at one child at a time, adults could easily
ciation of literary symbols and archetypes. this case, the Pokémon figures, the spelling has to
be led to think of the Pokémon game as anti-social,
be unique as in Krispy crackers, Holsum bread, Jif
but in fact the game is one of the most social phe-
The game is a journey of adventure, caring, peanut butter, Sun-Maid raisins, and Nestle’s Quik
nomena we have seen.
teaching, and learning. The good Pokémon player chocolate syrup. The Pokémon creators are very
is not the one who vanquishes all foes or finishes aware of spelling and the difference a single letter
2 can make as in the name Mankey who evolves into
Primeape and Gastly, with its gas flames, who Ratkos, James and Hollinger, Elizabeth M. (1999) While art historians are often necessarily bound
evolves into Haunter. Pokémon: Prima’s Official Strategy Guide, Roseville, by the parameters of their academic traditions,
CA: Prima Publishing. writers of prose and poetry need not take these
Players also get lessons in symbolism. Col- same limits into consideration. Imagine how dif-
our symbolism is shown through green being as- Schlesinger, Hank (1999) How to Become a ferently the analysis of Géricault’s canvas would
sociated with plant-like creatures such as Pokémon Master, New York: St. Martin’s Press. be if Barnes were an art historian and had “read”
Bulbasaur and Ivysaur, blue with water creatures only what Géricault had actually painted with-
such as Squirtle, Wartortle, and Blastoise, brown out speculating on what had been omitted. Such
with earth creatures such as Geodude and speculation is not diminished by the fact that
Graveler, orange with fire creatures such as Barnes’ work is “officially” classified as fiction,
Charmander and Charmeleon, yellow with elec- and not art criticism. Or imagine if James Joyce’s
tric and light-giving creatures such as Pikachu Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man had indeed
(from the Japanese word for flashlight) and been a painted canvas; or if Oscar Wilde’s Pic-
Electabuzz, and purple for creatures with vari- ture of Dorian Gray had not been read through
ous kinds of poison such as Shellder, Cloyster, the actual character, or even if that “last Duch-
and Pinsir. ess painted on the wall/Looking as if she were
Reading Painting alive” had not had “that spot of joy” upon her
Pink is associated with those who have cheek read by Robert Browning, who saw in it
Louis Marin, Sublime Poussin
magic or supernatural powers. Among these are the hint of marital infidelity?
Translated by Catherine Porter.
two roly-poly characters who have a good chance
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
of becoming librarians’ favourites. They are Marin, of course, is not an author of fic-
named Clefairy and Clefable and each has a fore- tion. Nor is he an art historian in the strictest
By Anne Urbancic
head lock of hair resembling the bass clef sign in sense. On the other hand, as a semiotician, he
music. Their method of attack is by singing or Jacques Derrida (1996) has recently asked is sensitive to art and especially to the works of
swaying back and forth using the hypnotic effect a series of unanswerable questions about Louis Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), who is both artist
of a metronome. Marin: “Who could ever speak of the work of and theoretician of painting. As semiotician,
Marin is clearly intrigued by the speculations
Louis Marin? Who could ever speak of all the
We aren’t suggesting that you replace story work and works of Louis Marin? What is, what that arise when he considers the meaning of pic-
hour with Pokémon cartoons or that you spon- will have been, what will still be tomorrow the torial art and Poussin’s reflections on its mean-
sor trading card sessions or Gameboy competi- energy of Louis Marin?” That energy is intangi- ing. Significantly, he begins his study with the
tions, but you might want to invest in Hank ble, but can at least be glimpsed in the wealth of confirmation that “[w]e read letters, poems,
Schlesinger’s How to Become a Pokémon Master details, and the obvious pleasure, that inform books” (5), precisely those areas, that is, where
(1999), James Ratkos and Elizabeth M. Louis Marin’s study of Poussin. Let us then speak we remain unfettered by the traditions of art his-
Hollinger’s Pokémon: Prima’s Official Strategy of at least one work of Marin. tory and art criticism. Then his leading question:
Guide (1999), and Mark MacDonald’s Pokémon “What does it mean to read drawings, paint-
Trainer’s Survival Guide (1998). These hand- Born at La Tronche (Isere) in 1931, Marin’s ings, frescoes? After all, the term ‘reading’ is
books, packed with information that is challeng- became a life of many works. He began his aca- immediately applicable to books; can we say the
ing even to sophisticated readers, bear testament demic career as a philosopher. Today he is ac- same for pictures?” (5)
to the power of children’s abilities to teach each knowledged not only as a philosopher, but also
other. as one of the greatest researchers into the 17th Marin’s point of departure is a text, in the
generally accepted sense. He begins his study
century, and as a semiotician, a historiographer,
One of our adult students who just re- and art critic. Before his death in October 1992, with a letter written in 1639 in Rome by Poussin
turned from Japan told us in that country it wasn’t he had also been recognized as a cultural to M. Chantelou. Chantelou had commissioned
unusual to see adults playing the game nor to counselor for the Office of the French Ambassa- a painting from the artist who writes to advise
see Pokémon stickers on businessmen’s briefcases. dor in Turkey (1961-64), as well as an academic, him that the painting is about to be delivered.
Popular media articles in the U.S. stress that having taught in Paris, San Diego and Baltimore. Marin sees his enterprise first as one of compari-
Pokémon is most likely a passing fad of interest I am intrigued by Derrida’s challenge regarding son: how is a text, as opposed to a painting, read?
to children between 7 and 10 years of age. How- Marin. There is certainly much left undiscov- Second, what are the theoretical premises that
ever, at the Pokémon fair held in our local shop- ered for those who study his contributions to the underlie both literature and painting, the legible
ping mall, we saw several young teens. We sus- various fields in which he made a name for him- and the visible? And finally he wishes to specu-
pect that as these children grow older they will self. On the other hand, Sublime Poussin reveals late on how “the dimensions in which the leg-
keep playing the game, thereby extending the much of Marin even as it uncovers the works of ible and the visible aspects of a picture are vari-
interest level upwards, so that it may become for Poussin. While he teaches us to “read” the works ously linked and contrasted”(6). Referring back
tomorrow’s teenagers what Dungeons and Drag- of Poussin, Marin allows us to “read” Marin as to his commendable work on the Port-Royal lo-
ons was for young adults now in their 20’s and well.1 gicians, Marin recalls how for them, to look at a
30’s. picture as an iconic representamen is also to give
it an immediate “reading.” The problem that
This study, published poshumously seven
In the meantime, we recommend a friendly arises from such a position is one of comprehen-
years after Marin’s death, represents the careful
smile for kids with their Gameboys and their trad- sion: is it possible to “understand” paintings in
work of six compilers who have based their work
ing cards because serious players of the game are on an outline drawn up by Marin in 1988 for a the same manner we understand sentences and
learning the very kinds of literary and language study of the same name. As compilers, they ac- propositions? Do the figures of a painting lend
skills that we have long aspired to teach them, knowledge the limitations of their role and they themselves to analysis as signs or as tropes?
and they are doing it with the kind of pleasure advise us in the beginning that their work “makes
that will make them want to lose themselves in no claim to be the book Louis Marin intended to The painting we are to read in this first
good books as well as in good games. write”(1). Surely they are aware of the delightful chapter is Poussin’s The Israelites Gathering the
Manna. As readers of this study, we should be
challenge they set before us: reading a text that
Alleen and Don Nilsen are professors of English the author never wrote, about a subject area that wary: we shall most certainly not be reading the
at Arizona State University and the authors of is not usually overtly read. One is reminded of a same pictorial discourse that Marin was reading
the Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American similar, hugely successful endeavour undertaken in preparing his essay. The painting is reproduced
Humor, just released by Oryx Press. by author Julian Barnes (1989) in his study of for us in a small format, in black and white. Much
detail is unclear. While it cannot be said for cer-
Géricault’s painting of the wreck of the Medusa
References (Scène de naufrage, 1816). The study, found in tain, Marin’s “reading” probably included the
frame of the painting; although Poussin sent the
The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, is
Frye, Northrup (1957) Anatomy of Criticism, particularly fascinating because in it Barnes also painting without a frame, he gave Chantelou
Princeton: Princeton University Press. analyses what Géricault had chosen not to paint. fairly explicit instructions on what was required.
So, in effect, Marin, is not “reading” the paint-
To this we shall return later.
Lurie, Alison (1998) Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: ing the way Chantelou or even Poussin himself
Subversive Children’s Literature, New York: Little Authors of fiction have generally accepted would have read it initially, without its frame.
Brown & Co. far more quickly than art historians what Marin’s Nor are we able to read the painting as Poussin
had intended, in the placement he had envis-
work points to, namely, that painting can be a
MacDonald, Mark (1998) Pokémon Trainer’s discourse and that, as such, it may be “read.” aged for it:”[i]t must be hung very little above
Suvival Guide, Lahaina, HI: Sandwich Islands eye level, if not a little below” (229). In this es-
Publishing. 3
say, Marin is concerned foremost with the gaps ing with pictorial discourse finds himself before Poussin for a painting of the artist, but Poussin
that are created between the textual discourse a greater problem. Reading both the canvas en- was unable to find any painter to carry out this
(the letter to Chantelou) and the pictorial dis- titled Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe, and the request. He thus made the decision to do a self
course (the painting itself). He carefully points letter Poussin wrote to Jacques Stella in which portrait; in fact, he painted two of them. His
out the elements of the painting that allow us to he describes this work, Marin points to the gaps words about them, written to Chantelou on 20
read with him, since for us, hindered as we are between the two discourses. Furthermore, we June, 1649 are intriguing: “I shall send you the
by the black and white reproduction, the gaps must realize that Poussin is attempting to paint one that comes out best, but you must say noth-
cannot be deciphered in the same way. The vis- “things that cannot be painted, such as lightning, ing about it, please, to avoid causing any jeal-
ible, he concludes after focusing on the figure of thunder, and storms: the impossible subject of ousy” (184). He leaves unsaid who will be jeal-
the young woman nursing an older woman at her painting through which the act of painting is ous, although subsequent correspondence points
breast and denying her breast to a young child (a nevertheless consummated” (71). Over and to a rivalry between the two recipients,
figure identified as ‘Roman charity’), is not nec- above his mechanical work of depiction, Poussin Chantelou and M. Pointel. Despite the fact that
essarily the only “readable” aspect. There may is also integrating cosmic time into existential the portraits are of the same subject, by the same
indeed be another story which the picture nei- time, the universal into a moment portrayed on painter, at the same moment of his life, they are
ther shows nor tells but which informs it never- the canvas. Marin notes how the storm can be distinguished by their subjectively qualitative dif-
theless. That particular element in this painting read through the implied movement of the paint- ference: one, according to Poussin, is better than
is the Manna itself, which points to the Eucha- ing, the seeming agitation of all the elements, the other. They are not simply copies or near
rist, an element not represented in Poussin’s can- the bent and twisted trees, the swirling dust, the copies of each other. The artist refers as well to
vas but read in it nevertheless. flashes of lightning. But the sublime remains in his hesitation and to his difficulties in painting
the gap, represented here by a surprising element, his own self. In undertaking this task, he is obliged
In the following essay, Marin focuses on the calm unruffled lake. A trope of to pass from being a subject to being an object,
how the descriptors assigned to a painting deter- inverisimilitude, a fiction, given the ambient agi- and in his case, because there were two portraits,
mine our reading of it. He contends that there is tation. Is this a flaw, wonders Marin? Or is it, in from one subject to two objects, one of which is
a spontaneous “telling” of the painting that takes effect, “a different character, one that is no longer better than the other. What is at stake here, ac-
place, quite deliberately, already at the surface a character belonging to the painting but is cording to Marin, “is nothing less than ... paint-
level. Once described, the painting is no longer rather the great eye of the viewer, of the sage ing itself” (187). He proceeds with a detailed
simply a pleasure-producing entity but, rather, who has been brought back to himself by the rep- analysis of how to “read” the two portraits, and
it “becomes a text on which successive readings resentation of the unrepresentability of the tem- focuses, finally, on the gaze of the painter-sub-
are deposited” (30). He proposes as his example pest and the human passions?”(102) Poussin’s ject and that of the viewer. He shows how, in the
one of Poussin’s landscapes. Art critic Anthony landscape, Marin writes in a subsequent essay Chantelou self-portrait of 1650, we are co-opted
Blunt, in “reading” this painting, assigned it a entitled “The Classical Sublime,” depicts the into following the gaze of the objectified subject.
name indicative of its principal marks or signs: pathetic aspects of the cosmic tempest. Simul- We return his gaze, but we can see so much more,
Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake. But we taneously, in the mirror of still water at the cen- for he cannot see the drama of the half-hidden
have additional texts at our disposal, namely tre of the landscape, it shows the contemplative canvases behind him. At the same, we can imi-
Fénelon’s Dialogues des morts (in which there is a apathy of the painter-subject:”The sublime is tate his ignorance of the drama with our own
fictional exchange regarding this painting be- played out in the place of the figure [of the tem- gap in knowledge because the female figure in
tween Leonardo da Vinci and Poussin) and three pest] that represents it and by the space of its the background canvas, the one he is unable to
texts by André Félibien taken from his Entretiens difference from that figure itself within which it see, is also gazing out at someone whose arms
sur les vies des plus excellents peintres, in addition withdraws”(124). The sublime will go beyond the are stretched out to her, someone we, like the
to the legend found for Etienne Baudet’s engrav- contemplator, it consists in its incommensura- artist-subject, cannot see. In effect, what we see
ing of Poussin’s piece. In reading these, we may bility with the present moment of the contem- and cannot see in the background is the story of
see beyond the painting’s pivotal circumstance, plation. The existential moment becomes the painting, according to Marin, for the half hidden
the man asphyxiated by a snake, upon which cosmic moment. Herein lies the difficulty of theo- figure allows us to understand that there does
Blunt has focused, in order to speculate on what rizing the sublime, for theory implies a certain exist a story of painting and of its painter (208).
is “behind” the painting. The reading will never objective apathy. Marin’s essay immediately brings to mind Michel
be a complete one, however. For example, our Foucault’s (1970) study in The Order of Things
textual readings give no indication as to the func- Subsequently, Marin explored another in which made similar observations on the gaze
tion of the central figure of the canvas, the only problematic posed by our understanding of the of the painter in Velazquez’ Las Meninas. There,
woman, on whose face we recognize horror and sublime. He posited that the sublime necessitates too, is the element of the drama behind the art-
terror. Her presence poses a problem for us since contemplative apathy, as in the tempest pictures. ist, the courtier who enters unseen by the artist
she cannot see from her standpoint what we can What if contemplative apathy is somehow co- but is visible to us. There, too, is the element of
see, that is, the dead man with the enormous opted by the picture? What if the gaze of the our own ignorance of the drama that we see only
snake still wrapped around him. She has created viewer and the gaze of the painted subject meet? faintly, but that the artist sees clearly, namely the
a signifying gap to which Marin points only to This is not a consideration for the landscape King Philip IV and his Queen at whom the art-
show us that in a painting there remains hidden paintings, nor even canvases where our gaze ist-subject directs his gaze, but whom we see only
a signifying polyvalence beyond the guiding tex- meets the closed eyes of the body in repose. The dimly reflected in the mirror behind the artist.
tual descriptions. sleeping body, such as it is depicted in Poussin’s There, too, we must read the story of painting
Echo and Narcissus, or Rinaldo and Armida, rep- through the gaps, the absences, and play
The subsequent chapters on Poussin’s resents for Marin a mute poem, a poem of the of the seen and unseen.
treatment of tempests emphasize once again the concealed possibility of activity. The sleeping
polyvalence of all the signs that may be read into body captures that moment between silence and The final essay of this volume, given origi-
and in a painting. Here the concept of the sub- speech, a moment of metamorphosis “in which nally as a talk for the Association of Seventeenth-
lime enters the discourse. “What is the status of the space of the subject is opened and from which Century French Studies, summarizes Marin’s en-
the sublime in painting?” Marin asks. “And if the I emerges from its sleeping reserve”(169). The quiry into the nature of the sublime in France in
storms are instances of the natural sublime, what sublime is found in the secret ecstasy of that nas- the 1670s. It is a reflection on the “je ne sais
is the status of painting of the sublimity of tem- cent I, the contemplative gaze. If, on the other quoi” of the sublime, a notion that is not merely
pests?” These are questions that have been posed hand, the gaze is returned to the viewer, then we an abstract and perhaps trite locution, but is ac-
in a similar way about more traditional discur- sense not only its reward, a pleasure for having tually posed as a problematic, vis-à-vis the idea
sive texts. I am thinking of the Italian Romantic, stopped to gaze in the first place, but also a cer- of the sublime as it is explored in various con-
Giacomo Leopardi (1797-1837), who perhaps tain displacement. This is felt all the more temporary treatises, specifically in Dominique
better than most was able to read the sublime in strongly when we gaze upon self-portraits of the Bouhours’ Entretiens d’Artiste et d’Eugène (1671).
a storm and dealt with the topic both theoreti- artist; when we are cognizant that the “subject- That this locution may be applied to the sublime
cally and poetically. In his poem “The Calm Af- to-be-painted” is identified with the “subject-of- already points to the fact that it is impossible to
ter the Storm,” he focused on that brief moment, the-painting-process”(188). construct the sublime as a concept. Marin con-
the gap, between the end of the storm and the tinues: “It is easy to re-cognize the sublime in
renewal of after-storm activities in order to read Marin’s study of the two self-portraits ex- discourse, in a poem or a painting, but this re-
the cruel intentions of Mother Nature. But ecuted by Poussin is truly the pivotal and most cognition is in exact proportion to its theoreti-
Leopardi was not obliged to render visible to us fascinating chapter of this volume. Again, he cal indefinability, the impossibility of producing
the effects of a tempest; his poem, in fact, re- begins by relying on a textual discourse, namely rules for the construction of its concept” (211).
volves around the principal verb “I hear” and not the correspondence of Poussin with Chantelou In the 1670s, the question of the sublime is posed
“I see.” In our mind’s eye, we as readers do the regarding the two canvases. The latter had asked through the attempt to integrate the marvelous,
visualizing. Poussin, on the other hand, in deal- what is phantasia, with the mechanics of repre-
4 sentation. According to Marin, the element of
the “je ne sais quoi” is what betrays the sublime Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An surrealist impulse to make the normal strange
as an aesthetic motif. If we are to believe Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: continues to pulsate in his latest work. The world
Bouhours, the marvelous is the union of two terms Pantheon. is turned topsy-turvy: arses become faces; des-
or two thoughts that initially seem incompatible; ecration enhances the sacred status of an object;
it at once causes both astonishment and pleas- secrets are the basis of truth; transgression gen-
ure. Marin puts it in slightly different terms that Keeping the Mystery Alive erates rules; revelation reproduces mystery. Fet-
are just as valid: the sublime is the sense of rec- ishism is still an important concept for Taussig,
ognition of both the construction and Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public but now it is understood through the theoretical
deconstruction, of reading a discourse for what is Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. musings of Nietzsche, Bataille, Freud, and Lacan
there and for what is not there. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. rather than Marx. The basic observation that
Taussig weaves his text around is that deface-
Marin’s studies of the sublime in the works By Thomas Dunk ments or revelations often fail to undermine the
of Nicolas Poussin take for granted the static na- power and mystery with which objects, actions
ture of the discourses he is reading. His initial or persons were imbued before their destruction
The title page of Michael Taussig’s latest
enquiry into whether or not we can read pictures or exposure. A couple of his more straightfor-
book carries an epigraph from Walter Benjamin’s
in ways similar to texts, prose or poetry, has ward examples illustrate his point. Part One be-
brought us inevitably to an affirmative answer, but The Origin of German Tragic Drama: “Truth is not gins with a montage of news clips from a variety
an answer nonetheless that involves our under- a matter of exposure which destroys the secret, of sources about various kinds of defacement, but
but a revelation which does justice to it.” Thus,
standing of that discourse as unchanging, as hav- Taussig’s central example is the attack upon and
ing captured a moment of diachronic and the most general aim of Defacement: Public Se- ultimate destruction of off-beat statues of a na-
synchronic (his)story that allows us to gaze, con- crecy and the Labor of the Negative is itself revealed ked Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip that were
and yet, as Taussig is at pains to emphasize
template, and interrogate, without having to con- erected in a Melbourne park and which became
sider changes to its essential nature. The frame throughout the book, when it comes to public the object of a heated debate and vandalism. In
secrets exposure only generates more mystery.
of the painting may be missing, as Julian Barnes short order, the statues were destroyed and re-
Like so many of Benjamin’s aphorisms this one is
pointed out in his study of Géricault’s painting, moved, leaving an empty space beside a park
as frustratingly obscure as it is fascinating. What
but we may still “read” the painting, as Marin bench. People continued to come to the park to
could it possibly mean to do justice to a secret?
shows. On the other hand, what if the concept of gaze upon the vacant spot where the statues had
For Taussig, it seems the point is to ensure that
reading the sublime, as Marin posits it in the works been. Their destruction apparently empowered
exposure does not destroy the mystery and the
of Nicolas Poussin, were to be applied to more them and, thus, they maintained a presence even
magic which public secrets carry.
fluid works? Can we speak of the sublime in non- in their absence. In Part Four, he discusses the
static pieces that co-opt the idea of marvelous face as a surface that both reveals and conceals.
The book operates on at least three levels
and astonishment into the essential nature of A key example here is subcomandante Marcos,
simultaneously. It offers an intriguing characteri-
change, as Marin, following Bouhours, would leader of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico. As the
have it? I am thinking here (and these are arbi- zation of the nature and importance of public world knows, the subcomandante always appears
secrets in social life, drawing on examples from
trary choices) of art pieces such as Jana Sterbak’s masked and so the Mexican state made much of
the contemporary world and classic ethnographic
Flesh Dress, where the deterioration of the flesh publicly revealing the face behind the mask. But
texts; it provides a critique of the Enlightenment
was part of the “reading” of the piece. Or, for ex- this effort at disempowering Marcos’s mystique
project as it is manifested in the social sciences’
ample, Janet Cardiff’s The Whispering Room, where through unmasking failed. Five thousand masked
our sense of the marvelous was displaced and re- goal of explaining the social world in terms of demonstrators appeared claiming that they were
historical origins and social functions; and it ex-
constructed each time the multi-media piece was all Marcos. Just as the destruction of the statues
poses the gender and spatial biases of northern
“experienced” (not viewed, for the piece was enhanced their meaningfulness, unmasking the
European, male intellectuals, especially anthro-
highly dependent on the audition and mobility of subcomandante seems to have increased his stat-
pologists, when it comes to issues such as truth
the contemplator as well as on visual acuity). ure and rendered him all the more mysterious.
and rationality.
Marin’s attempt to read a static landscape through
its gaps and discrepancies with mimetic repre- Ethnographically, historically, and geo-
Anthropology has a long association with
sentation is a laudable enterprise, and his obser- graphically, the book traverses a huge terrain:
surrealism (see Clifford 1988: 117-85) and since
vations are highly appreciated. In such an impor- from Australia in the early 1990s, to anarchist
his second book on South American peasant/
tant study it is regrettable that the paintings them- villages in Andalusia in the 1940s and 50s, to
workers (Taussig 1987a), Taussig has been busy
selves are so poorly reproduced - in black and nineteenth century Venice as represented by
white and in small format – with the results that fanning the flames of this tendency in anthro- Thomas Mann, to men’s secret societies in Tierra
many of the details so vital to the readings are pology. His first book, The Devil and Commodity del Fuego early in this century; then to Amazonia,
not even accessible. Marin’s concepts and his ex- Fetishism in South America (1980), used Marxist New Guinea, Australia and Africa, as described
categories such as commodity fetishism, use-
plication of these deserve better. and analysed in classic ethnographies, the
value and exchange-value to explain what to
Zapatista guerrillas, and finally back to Australia,
Anne Urbancic teaches in the Department of Ital- Western modernist minds seemed like bizarre this time in the form of Taussig’s childhood
ideas and practices that Columbian and Boliv-
ian Studies at the University of Toronto and in memories. It is an anarchic tour, as Taussig ad-
ian peasant/workers employed to make sense of
the Program in Semiotics and Communication mits, and quite purposefully so. Taussig’s model
the changes they were experiencing as capitalist
Theory at Victoria College, University of Toronto. is a surrealist montage rather than the dry, or-
social relations infiltrated their essentially pre-
Her articles have appeared in SRB and Semiotica. dered narrative of science or logic.
or non-capitalist communities. The Devil and
Notes Commodity Fetishism established Taussig as a name While the cultural range of the book is im-
in anthropology, but the criticisms of more struc-
mense, the core of the argument and the largest
turally-oriented, Marxist anthropologists who
1. Marin had established himself as a “reader” of section of the book is focused on a
argued that Taussig romanticized the peasant
portraits many years before. Other works on a (re)presentation of and commentary on ethno-
communities and ignored more explicitly politi-
similar theme include Détruire la peinture (Paris: graphic descriptions and analyses of “secret” male
Editions Galilée, 1977); Le portrait du roi (Paris: cal and material issues of class struggle, soured initiation rituals. Most attention is paid to these
him on Marxist anthropology and on the aca-
Les éditions de minuit, 1981); Opacité de la rituals as they were performed for anthropolo-
demic subculture of anthropologists (Taussig
peinture: essais sur la représentation au Quattrocento gists early in the twentieth century among the
1987b). Marxist interpretations of stories about
(Paris: Usher, 1989); De la représentation (Paris: Yanama and Selk’nam people of Isla Grande in
pacts between peasant/workers and the devil gave
Gallimard, 1994); and Des pouvoirs de l’images: Tierra del Fuego. The theoretical issue of most
gloses (Paris: Seuil, 1993) way to poststructuralist attempts to represent the direct concern is that the ceremonies cannot be
endless cycle of cultural interpretation, mimesis,
explained in terms of their social functions or his-
and exaggeration involved in colonial and neo-
References torical origins. Among the Yanama and the
colonial relationships.
Selk’nam, the initiation rituals take place in a
Barnes, Julian (1989) The History of the World in special “Big Hut” restricted to men only. The
10 1/2 Chapters, London: Vintage. Since the late 1980s, he has tried to cap- spirits enter the hut and confront the initiates.
ture the rich meaningfulness of life in all its
Women are said to know nothing about what
mixed-up horror and joy. He has delved into and
Derrida, Jacques (1996) “By Force of Mourning,” happens in the ritual; indeed, they may be killed
represented for his readers the epistemic murk
trans. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, if they reveal any knowledge of the proceedings.
of human life, not with the intention of explain-
Critical Inquiry 22/2 (Winter): 171-92. In the course of the ritual the young initiates un-
ing it to them, but rather in the hopes of shaking mask the spirits that they have encountered and
up their unexamined, common sense reality. The
learn that they are in fact people they know, of-
5 ten relatives, in costume. All of the rites of pas-
sage that Taussig discusses involve similar ele- ing northern European prejudice against south- ways like the crab scuttling”(1-2). He wants to
ments of secrecy, exclusion of women, and threats ern Europeans: namely, that the latter are invet- represent the human penchant for wrapping life
against men who reveal the secrets and women erate liars while the more rational northerners in mystery and revealing the nervous riotousness
who discover what actually goes on. They are are bound to be truth-tellers. Pitt-Rivers, like of it all. However, despite his cynicism regarding
also very theatrical and involve a good deal of Thomas Mann’s Professor Aschenbach, discov- efforts at explanation, he cannot resist offering a
fear and pain for the initiates. ers the truth in spite of the dissimilitude of Span- few his own. He concludes a discussion of witch-
iards and Venetians respectively. For added meas- craft and secret societies in Africa with the fol-
Taussig’s main goal in piling example on ure, Taussig throws in a discussion of lowing comment: “we can appreciate the pomp
top of example is to highlight the excessive vis- Schopenhauer’s theory of male facial hair - men and circumstance of secret societies as merely
ceral dimensions of the rituals and the inadequacy being rational and honest need it so that they carefully crafted caricatures of the skill essential
of historical and functional explanations of pub- can lie, while women who are naturally superior to being a person, a social person, no less than
lic secrecy. In a number of the cases discussed, liars do not need a beard with which to hide their storyteller or a poet - knowing what not to know”
women actually do know what happens and re- true intentions. (195) - a disappointingly banal conclusion after
vealing the “truth” about the gods or spirits (that almost 200 pages that are often fascinating but
they are actually other men in costume) is part For Taussig, the Enlightenment project as frequently frustrating and obscure.
of the ritual. It appears that even once the “truth” seen in typical social scientific searches for func-
about the rituals is known, belief in the spirits tions and origins fails not because of empirical More problematically, he invokes Freudian
and the importance of the rituals is not under- and conceptual shortcomings. Functional expla- psychoanalysis as reinterpreted by Lacan to try
mined. Everyone, or at least very many members nations can only work by leaving out, hence con- to explain the power of the defaced object or the
of the societies at issue, participates in a subter- cealing or mystifying, much of what makes a given revealed secret. Taussig cites Lacan’s reinterpre-
fuge, pretending not to know things that they in practice interesting. Historical explanations work tation of Freud’s analysis of his toddler nephew’s
fact do know. Women pretend not to know what by displacing practices and ideas to a somewhere game (the famous or infamous fort/da game): “this
the rituals involve. The men pretend it is actu- else in time and place and thus unintentionally game [for Lacan] involves the mythic event un-
ally gods or spirits that are invoked. The men create as much confusion and mystery as the derlying the symbol as that which, in signifying
also sometimes pretend not to know that the event itself. The striving for functions and ori- its object, simultaneously signifies its absence:
women actually do know what they pretend not gins has an important symbolic and social func- hence the somewhat overused and trivialized, but
to know. And the women pretend not to know tion for (northern, male) intellectuals: “... the nonetheless highly significant expression absent-
that the men know that they actually do know need on the part of the analyst to preserve ob- presence, which I myself think of, in connection
but are pretending not to. The whole thing ap- scurity and mystery, but now on terms chosen by with unmasking in the Big Hut, as enormously
pears to be an elaborate society-wide ruse. the analyst, displacing the energy of the mystery relevant, in good part because of the intense pres-
onto baffling questions of origin and function, sure it brings to bear on one’s thinking about the
Conventional anthropology seeks explana- which I hold to be - here as elsewhere in social density of nothingness and hence possibilities for
tions for such phenomena in terms of social func- inquiry thinly disguised transcendent mysteries an overwhelming realness, an overwhelming
tions and historical origins. Taussig is convinced designed to eradicate mystery so as to all the bet- presencing, of absence itself” (160). The con-
of the futility of this search. For him the creation ter smuggle it back in. For there can be no mys- cept of an absent-presence is useful although
of mystery is the main point and he wants to keep tery greater than function, unless it be origin, and psychoanalytic musings on a toddler’s game is
the mystery alive. He argues, moreover, that it the mind secures its function in the continuous certainly as flimsy a guide to understanding the
cannot be any other way. The dialectical process deferral of the secrets therein” (162-3). mysteries of social life as often less speculative
of revelation and concealment is infinite; at- theories about social functions or historical ori-
tempted explanations only create more mystery In a comment on the interpretations and gins. Even if we adhere to the distinction between
since the lifting of one veil only exposes another counter-interpretations that anthropologists characterization and explanation, he seems to be
beneath it: have made of male initiation ceremonies among saying that all the events and rituals he describes
the Poro people, Taussig criticizes his forerun- are in some sense the same as the fort/da game.
There is a comical aspect lying in wait for those ners for their reductive logic. An earlier com- To forsake historical and/or functional explana-
who, at their peril, ignore the mix of impenetrabil mentator, Beryl Bellman, had analysed the ritual tions for a highly-debatable theory about univer-
ity and everydayness that constitutes the public as a form of speech play. Taussig argues: sal features of human psychological processes
secret - as when the anthropologist undertakes to
Yet is there not a counter-risk here of being overly does not really expand our understanding or, and
reveal the secret of the Big Hut, yet all along revela
subtle, using Linguistic Science so as maybe this is Taussig’s intention, it merely adds
tion was part of the secret’s secret, part of its secret.
to bleach out all that is crazy and wild in the one more layer to the mystery surrounding the
From this perspective, then, the demystifications
story conveyed by Harley [the author of the
practiced by Enlightenment are already long-in point of these elaborate and highly ritualized
original ethnography]. Is not Harley’s account
cluded in a more inclusive script in which demys public secrets. However, it also means that the
notable precisely because it is so extreme and
tification is not only a preliminary step, but is itself
isn’t it therefore incumbent on us, at the receiving basic anthropological observation about the ir-
mystified ... (162-3).
end of the story, to honor that as, in all likelihood, reducible specificity of different cultural practices
also a quintessential characteristic of secrecy and gets lost.
The visceral pain and pleasure of the perform- secret societies.
ance, the noise, the smells, the public secrecy, My fear is that once you categorize play (as “speech-
Given that the largest section of Deface-
play, for instance), you’ve taken away all the play.
these are the enchanted elements that make so-
To name here is to destroy. Naming it is also to ment is devoted to a discussion of male initiation
cial life what it is, and the very things onto which
break the rules of the game (of knowing what it is rituals, it would seem to be important to pay some
Taussig wants to hold. His inspiration is
to know, for instance) and hence channels the attention to their role in the maintenance of gen-
Nietzsche’s notion of a “Gay Science continu- game’s energy and playfulness into quite other pur
der divisions and male dominance. The rituals
ous with its subject” (188). While at one level suits - an explanation for instance (187-8).
are gender exclusive and revolve around myths
the book dissects various public secrets and acts
about how the men overturned an initial matri-
of defacement, at another level, it is a deep cri- The idea that naming tends to destroy is,
archal social order. They are accompanied by
tique of the entire Enlightenment project and its of course, not new. Naming or labelling is part of
threats of very severe sanctions against women
presumption that social life can be explained. Part explanation, which always involves “reduction”
who learn the truth about the men’s rituals or
of this critique involves revelations regarding the in the sense of claiming one order of event or
the men who reveal the secrets to women.
dissimilitude of anthropologists. So, for example, process is to be understood in terms of its link-
Clearly, part of what is going on is the reproduc-
Taussig destroys the credibility of Julian Pitt-Riv- age to another order of event or process (see
tion of masculine identities and the preservation
ers’ well-known ethnography, The People of the McLennan 1996). Much of what is interesting
of male dominance, however mild a form the lat-
Sierra, by showing how he refused to talk about and exciting at the level of lived experience is
ter may actually take in these societies. Taussig
what was arguably the most important feature of left behind. Yet the point of anthropological or
argues against thinking about these ceremonies
the community - that it was a bastion of Spanish sociological writing that is neither meant to be
as a form of patriarchal ideology. He is more in-
anarchism - on the pretence of the need to pro- explicitly descriptive nor to offer explanations
terested in how public secrecy generates endless
tect the anonymity of the community, an ano- about the social world is not clear, especially when
interpretation since the “deceit, trickery, and
nymity that did not really exist since others writ- the writing is, as it is for the most part in this
never-ending labor of the negative” (173) that it
ing about Spanish anarchism at the time (nota- case, densely-written metalevel reflections on
involves undermines any simplistic conception
bly Eric Hobsbawm) quite readily named the other authors’ ethnographies. Although Taussig
of reality. He highlights the excessive nature of
community which was well-known for its politi- describes his “task” as characterization rather
elements of the rituals - the pain that is inflicted,
cal orientation. In his effort to maintain the se- than explanation, he quickly goes on to argue
the extreme nature of the threats involved, the
cret which never really was a secret, and with his that even this is a doomed project. At least as
exaggerated importance placed upon their se-
focus in the ethnography on the secrets involved he puts it, characterization cannot take “its ob-
crecy - to foreground the fact that functional and
in getting things done in the community, Pitt- ject head-on” and so must trace “the edge side-
Rivers managed only to reproduce a long-stand-
6
historical explanations cannot account for the ability, on the one hand, and the desire to emu- Of course, talking, writing, or reading about
over-the-top nature of so much of what is going late the arts, on the other. The appeal of the sci- any human activities are all in some sense a poor
on. ence model is that it offers the possibility of ex- disembodied substitute for the real thing. At the
planation and even the capacity to predict the end of our days the physical which we have
He is correct to maintain that the excesses course of human affairs. It comes, however, at worked so hard to repress, especially those of us
are an inextricable part of these elaborate rites the price of reducing the beauty and mystery of in academia, does always return and impose its
of passage and to point out the limits of any ac- human life to a series of dry abstractions. Levi- own real logic upon us. Any kind of writing, even
counts which ignore the performative features Strauss’ famous algebra for myth is perhaps the that which wants to celebrate the visceral ex-
of cultural practices. Since, however, he has lit- best known example among semioticians of this cesses in which we wrap and play out our public
tle to say about the historical and functional con- tendency, although the “dismal” science of neo- secrets, is trapped in this cycle of endless return.
text of these rituals, his account is equally “thin.” classical economics surely takes the prize for its Perhaps we can apply to all academic writing the
An obvious function of excess is that it under- efforts to reduce the layered texture of actual ex- Murinbata’s description of their religion: it is “a
lines or highlights the message. One thinks of perience to a series of lifeless mathematical equa- joyous thing with maggots at the centre” whether
the execution of Damiens, the regicide made tions. A good deal of social theory has similar it is historical or functionalist attempts at expla-
famous by Foucault (1979). The extreme vio- effects. Functionalism leads towards a rather grey nation, or Dada-inspired efforts at characteriza-
lence, the ridiculously overblown nature of the utilitarianism - no matter how much fun, excess tion. Whether any of it can do justice to the se-
drawn-out execution, quite logically can be said and confusion an event or action involves; ulti- cret remains an open question, but with his trade-
to have a social function; namely, to illustrate mately, it is its usefulness for the health of the mark pastiche of theoretical wizardry, ethno-
beyond any possible doubt the overwhelming and individual or social system that matters. Critical graphic detail, intriguing associations, and ten-
potentially horrible power of the king. Rituals theories of conflict or change can have equally dency to obscurantism, Taussig has certainly kept
“teach” or “socialize” through repetition and ex- stultifying effects - the excitement, danger, or the mystery alive.
aggeration and, of course, it helps if they are fun craziness of a demonstration becomes the reflec-
or exciting or dangerous. As all university lec- tion or expression of sober and serious political Thomas Dunk teaches anthropology and sociol-
turers know, if one wants to captivate one’s au- interests. The excess of action and meaning that ogy at Lakehead University. He is the author of
dience one needs to perform a lecture, complete overflows the limits of any of these ways of un- It’s A Working Man’s Town: Male Working-Class
with repetition, exaggeration, and colourful or derstanding human action are dismissed or ex- Culture (1994).His current research is on nature,
shocking examples. To put this another way, plained away as somehow not really central to sacrifice, and masculinity in White hunting
Taussig criticizes those who want to reduce so- the important and always serious business at culture.
cial life to utilitarian functions and celebrates hand.
References
the excess and how this reflects the human pro-
pensity for creation and expression, but these There has always been a contraflow in the Clifford, James (1988) The Predicament of Cul-
two goals are not dualistic opposites. They can, social sciences, one that seeks to represent and ture: Twentieth- Century Ethnography, Literature
and perhaps must, go together. Surely, a full char- communicate the full mystery and enchantment and Art, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
acterization of human actions maintains its hold of life. Poetry or theatre rather than science is Press.
on both ends of the spectrum of human mean- the model here. With an emphasis on the per-
Foucault, Michel (1979) Discipline and Punish:
ingful activity - the practical and utilitarian, and formance rather than the rules of the game, the
The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage Books.
the creative and expressive. There is no need to goal is to deliver to readers the feeling of joy or
adopt an either-or logic on this question. terror that events and actions carry. The impor- McLennan, Gregor (1996) “Post-Marxism and
tant thing about a ritual is its performance - the the ‘Four Sins’ of Modernist Theorizing,” New
The book is by no means simplistic al- sounds, smells, and sights - rather than its his- Left Review, 218:53-74.
though the core idea that runs throughout it is tory or social function. The point is not to reveal
Pitt-Rivers, Julian (1971) The People of the Sierra,
rather simple. In saying this, I do not mean that deep structures and meanings but to celebrate
2d ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
it is unimportant or uninteresting. Few of us the enchanted nature of human life.
probably do reflect very often on how common
Taussig, Michael (1980) The Devil and Commod-
public secrecy is and how central it is to our per- The limitation on this side is not only that
ity Fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill: The
sonal lives and the societies in which we live. In one is left without explanation, other than rather
University of North Carolina Press.
some cases, it is more important (or more dan- obvious generalities about the human need for
gerous) than others. Terror, as Taussig points out, creative expression. Frequently the result is a pale — (1987a) Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild
works in this way - people quickly learn what reflection of the event or object described or ana- Man: A Study in Terror and Healing, Chicago:
one must pretend not to know to avoid death. lysed. If one wants to know what it feels like to University of Chicago Press.
In other contexts, it is more the game that cap- be a participant in an event one is always better
— (1987b) “The Rise and Fall of Marxist An-
tivates us - kids pretending not to know that off to “just do it,” as Nike advises us, rather than
thropology,” Social Analysis 21: 101-113.
Santa Claus does not really exist. And, of course, read a book about what it feels like to partici-
in between terror and joy is the more mundane pate. No kind of writing can stand in for the ac-
reality of daily life where we pretend to adhere tual experience. Moreover, there is a real danger
The Figured Face
to formal or explicitly-avowed norms and values of social irrelevance. It is legitimate to ask
while frequently engaging in behaviour that whether we should be spending what Marxists
transgresses these norms and values so that we call the social surplus (either private or public) Jill Robbins, Altered Reading:
can get things done. All of this is true and inter- on intellectuals so that they can tell us that life Levinas and Literature.
esting; yet, as Taussig so effectively reminds us, is full of mystery, charm, and meaning. Don’t most Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999.
at the core of many an intellectual revelation people already know the answer? And if they feel
there is a stunning emptiness. The well-known the need to be charmed or engage their desires, By K. J. Peters
story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is referred are they not better off directly indulging them-
to a couple of times in the book and one won- selves rather than reading an academic’s attempt An ethical dilemma resonates in the work
ders if the moral of the tale does not apply to the to conjure a lived experience through writing? of Emmanuel Levinas that is difficult to ignore.
book itself. Taussig mentions the tale both be- Taussig uses a discussion of cane swallowing to Levinas’s position and influence is unquestioned,
cause it is one example of how public secrecy critique the recent academic interest in embodi- but how is a literary critic to understand state-
works and because it illustrates one side of the ment: ments such as, “evil powers are conjured by fill-
dual role children play in our culture. They are Cane swallowing could thus be thought of as a ing the world with idols which have mouths but
celebrated both for their intense honesty, or at medium, like sound and music, for performing dis/ do not speak” (“Reality and Its Shadow” 12). In
least their inability to play by the rules and keep avowal that is the public secret, performing it for
her book Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature,
its inherent excitement and danger. The metaphysi
the public secret, and for their credulity, their which attempts to reconcile Levinas’s discourse
cal mystery of a concealing surface and a hidden
elaborate imaginations in which what adults con- depth, of appearance and truth, is subject to a of the aesthetic with literary theory, Jill Robbins
sider truth or rationality has little place. Perhaps Dionysian ‘eternal return’ - ‘to realise in oneself,’ identifies this dilemma as an “incommensurabil-
academia needs a few more children to remind wrote Nietzsche, ‘the eternal joy of becoming - that ity between Levinas’s ethics and the discourse of
us that often beneath the many layers of fine joy which also encompasses joy in destruction.’ literary criticism” (xx). She continues: “Levinas’s
How shallow our contemporary talk of ‘embodi
wordsmithing and sophisticated concept and philosophy cannot function as an extrinsic ap-
ment’ seem in light of this sort of disembodiment!
name-dropping that we are all trained to cel- Grab a cane! Eat the corpse of the dead man à la proach to the literary work of art, that is, it
ebrate and mimic, there may be nothing more the Gimi women! Then talk to me of ‘the body’! cannot give rise to an application” (xx). Which
than a very simple idea - or nothing much at all. (213-14) again leaves the question, what is a literary critic
The social sciences have always been torn by the to do with Levinas, honored by a PMLA edition
conflict between yearnings for scientific respect- (January 1999) and the subject of a growing
7
number of articles and books, who calls rhetoric appears so. Drawing upon Derrida, Robbins ex- rapport with the other, they enable it. If this is
“preeminently violence and injustice” (Totality plains that the double bind is merely a paradox the case, how can one be sure if an ethical rap-
and Infinity 70), and describes poetry as “spells presented by the structure of formal logic. The port with the other has ever happened? Robbins
and incantations” and thus unethical (“The gift is prior to logic, and the insistence upon com- states,“strictly speaking, it does not happen” be-
Other in Proust” 161). prehension before action (theory before practice) cause there is no force behind the obligatory call
As always, a number of responses are avail- simply reasserts the logic by which the world is of the other (31). Robbins continues, “such is
able. In her book, Robbins suggest that the in- viewed in totality. In essence, the speech of the the risk, the necessary risk of a thought that does
commensurability presented by Levinas’s odd other disauthorizes in that it places my potential not presuppose the other, does not merely re-
relationships with the literary, his philosophy, and as a comprehending “I” in question. An “I” constitute the economy of the same” (31). With-
his approach to sacred texts “may prove to be robbed of its ability to authorize its perceived out this risk, argues Robbins, the alterity of the
only apparent” (xxi-xxii). If literary criticism is world casts the other, who speaks and disrupts, other evaporates into the same once again.
cast as an originary questioning, as opposed to a as a persecutor (16). As Robbins notes, this is Robbins closes the chapter by examining
more totalizing approach, then the distance be- why Derrida says “Nothing is more difficult than Levinas’s attempts to speak the trace in the ex-
tween Levinas and the work of art may be tra- to accept a gift” (qtd in Robbins 14). ample of Moses before the immanence of God.
versable. The challenge for Robbins is Levinas’s . In Exodus, Moses is afraid to look upon God, then
view of literature, and she surmounts this chal- Nonethical speech or rhetoric, to use on another occasion when Moses asks to see God,
lenge drawing upon his own call for an ethical, Levinas’s term, is Robbins’s third point of em- God refuses. For Robbins, Moses’s relation to
nontotalizing approach to the other as a way of phasis. Ethical language has a straightforward- God is an example of a rapport with the trace,
reading Levinas. In the following pages, I will ness, the face-to-face; but rhetoric, as Levinas “precisely because it is an experience of tran-
trace her altered reading of Levinas. There are says, is a violence “ignoring this opposition, ig- scendence, it is missed” (37). She goes on to
of course other responses, some of which Robbins noring the face” (qtd in Robbins 18). Rhetoric argue that Levinas’s reading of Exodus demon-
anticipates in her book. After reviewing Altered views the face of the other from an angle, takes strates that the spiritual narrative of divine
Reading, I will look at two other respondents to the other for a theme and enters the other’s revelation is itself “exposed to interruption” and
Levinas in an attempt to understand the source interiority as a burglar (18). Again, Robbins re- therefore ethical (37).
of the anxiety that an ethicist among literary crit- minds us that ethical language, the language of
ics elicits. Altered Reading is not a book that apolo- the face as Levinas defines it, is prior to rhetoric. Levinas’s understanding of God as “not
gizes for Levinas’s position concerning the figu- Robbins closes by proposing that the face presents contaminated by being,” concludes Robbins, al-
rative arts, nor does Robbins revise Levinas’s phi- a “certain figurality or rhetoricity . . . even at the lows for us to think of God as “a differential con-
losophy. Levinas remains a Judaic scholar and his level of an originary language response to the stitution of (textual) traces, as the other-trace”
aesthetic discourse remains unaltered. However, other” (19). The figurative potential of the face (38). Moses’s experience demonstrates the rela-
Robbins offers an intriguing possibility alluded to will prove crucial to Robbins’s later reevaluation tion with the trace and, states Robbins, we can
in her title, Altered Reading, which asks “whether of Levinas’s position of the aesthetic. “think God, in Levinas’s work, as the name -
Levinas himself might be altered in a sense yet unpronounceable if you like - for the difficult way
to be determined - by his reading of literary texts” In the second chapter, Robbins explores the in which we are responsible to traces” (38).
(xxiv). religious influence that subtends Levinas’s work We are still left with Levinas’s stark statements
and is apparent in his use of the word trace. She concerning the poetic, by which he means all figu-
In the first chapter, Robbins reviews begins by examining the necessary attitude for rative arts, that would seem to excuse him from
Levinas’s analysis of the relation with the other an ethical engagement of the other. The imperi- literary criticism. For Levinas, to turn to the in-
as presented in Totality and Infinity. She empha- alism of Western philosophy, which “insists on toxicating figure is to turn from the face and cut
sizes that Levinas does not intend to overturn bringing everything to light,” results in a con- short the living rapport that may emerge in an
“the imperialism of the same,” the desire of the sumptive approach reducing the alterity of the ethical relation with the other. However, Robbins
“I” to absorb the other into the same existence other to self-identification (21). Yet there is a proposes a defense for bringing Levinas to the
of the one who observes the other. For Levinas, “movement of transcendence” in Western phi- reading of literature that is best described as a
such a move would simply reestablish a different losophy which recognizes an absent God and manner of reading Levinas. In chapter three,
totality (4). Rather, Levinas places in question results in a movement away from the self with- Robbins begins to lay the foundation for this
the radical asymmetry that separates one from out return. This is ethical work, or in Levinas’s defense:
the other. Robbins emphasizes three points which idiom “profitless investment.” The ethical obli- If figure, rhetoric, mimesis, the literary were not
she draws on throughout her book. First, if the gation to the other’s expression is to be patient what Levinas takes them to be, then it might be
other is radically different and remote from vi- and suspend expectations for a return (22). Such necessary not to turn away from figure, as Levinas
does, but to face the figure otherwise, as language’s
sion or grasp, then the other must be thought of an attitude is necessary considering the vulner-
own most figurative potential, as that which is most
as separation and interruption. The interruption ability of the other, given as face, in the world.
distinctive to language, that is, to face language as
disturbs the totalizing view of a world of known The face appears without giving up its alterity,
ethical possibility (54).
things and beings – the same. Appropriately, yet it is always subject to the approach which
Robbins reminds the reader that Levinas de- reduces and returns the other as a theme. The To make her case, Robbins locates
scribes a primordial relation that conditions ac- face conserves its alterity in its expression, which Levinas’s bias against aesthetic figures in his dis-
tual relations, but does not override the habitual is not to be confused with what is typically trust of Christian conceptualizations of Judaic
economy of seeing the world as a totality. Totality thought of as expression. The expression of the traditions. Arguing that Levinas’s Judaic thought
and Infinity describes only two modes of relating face does not signify anything except expression, must be excavated from beneath Christian con-
to the other that are nontotalizing: generosity and the only intelligible content of the direct lan- cepts, Robbins turns to Levinas’s non-philosophi-
and language. As Robbins explains, Levinas’s guage attitude of the face is in the form of a com- cal writing which provides the resources for an
ethical language is prior to language conceived mand and an obligation “thou shalt not kill” (25). ethical criticism that addresses the face of the
as signs exchanged. An ethical discourse is not other as a figure that happens in language (54).
an exchange between two equivalent speakers, The approach of the other, the face and Judaism is text dependent because of the second
and it is not easily achieved. Ethical language the expression of the other, is an interruption. commandment prohibiting the making of images.
does not bring the other closer, “it does not bridge “It disturbs absolutely, but . . . it disturbs without The effect, according to Robbins’s reading of
the gap; it deepens it” (8). disturbing,” because as Robbins argues, it is a dis- Levinas, is that “Judaism thinks the ethical. But
turbance that “does not propose any stable or-
precisely to the extent that it thinks the ethical,
Robbins’s second point of emphasis in this der in conflict or in accord with a given order” it finds itself lacking” (44). Like Moses before
chapter concerns the following question. If the (26). This is a bit of an impossibility, so Levinas the burning bush, Judaism focuses on the word
other is radically different and remote, “how does uses the term “trace” which, in his use, does not but perceives no image (44-5). Christianity, ar-
one write in a way that calls upon the other?” participate in the presence/absence phenomenal gues Robbins, oriented towards the internal
(11). In the context of Levinas’s writing Robbins structure. Robbins summarizes by saying, “The drama of personal salvation, emphasizes the world
asks, if comprehension is a totalizing gaze, how trace, as Levinas defines it, leaves a trace by ef- to come at the expense of inter-human relations
can one read Levinas without understanding facing its traces” (28). Robbins then asks, “what in this life (47). Christianity’s forward-looking
Levinas and thereby reduce him to the same? The are the consequences of thinking responsibility neglect reduces the inter-human world of faces
answer, says Robbins, lies in the question itself: to the other as a relation to the trace?” (31). Or, into frozen figures. At issue for Levinas is not sim-
“To receive the Levinasian gift of the gift, to hear how can I be responsible to someone who isn’t ply the turning from the face of the other, but a
its imperative, the reader must do before under- there? violence against the possibility of an ethical re-
standing, must be deaf to Levinas’s injunction . . lation by favouring the figure over the face. This
.” (14). Though this seems to be merely a re- According to Levinas, interruption of pres- is why Robbins sees a Levinasian criticism as
statement of the double bind presented by ence, signification, and the orders by which I much more than a condemnation of the
Levinas’s demand for ethical language, it only comprehend the world do not break or prevent poetic:”The task of criticism becomes all-impor-
8
tant: it serves to reintegrate the inhuman work by which works of art and even rhetoric remove telligibility” which recalls the relation to others
into the human world, to detach it from its irre- the possibility of ethical discourse. Levinas aligns outside and beyond one’s own internal life. As
sponsibility” (52). poetry with both and argues that ethics must Robbins says “the passion that distrusts or in-
break from participation, turn from the idiolatry terprets its own pathos would be precisely the
In chapter four, Robbins begins to assem- of the image, and refocus on the interhuman. In ethical contribution of a “reinscribed Judaism”
ble what could be called a Levinasian criticism Levinas’s words, “every thing that cannot be re- (111). Pathos, suffering or the cry of existence is
by considering the originary rapport with the duced to an interhuman relation represents not not where the ethical becomes legible. Rather,
other that is “the very opening of the question of the superior form but the forever primitive form as Robbins again states in a question that pro-
ethics” (55). To do that, she advances the propo- of religion” (qtd. in Robbins 88). Robbins closes poses its own answer, “is it not precisely in im-
sition that the face has a rhetoricity, made in the this chapter by stating that Levinas comes to see possibility that the ethical experiences that go
first chapter, by asking “can there be a figure for aesthetics as that state of the world, dominated beyond pathos become legible? (116). Robbins
the ethical? A figure for the face?” (55). Robbins by vision, which the spoken word awakens the would seem to suggest, it is in the inability to
recognizes that “to figure the face is to de-face subject from. In speaking, the subject exposes possess one’s own inner life and suffering, the
it”(57). However, she also sees that to encoun- herself or himself in relation to the other (89). inability of writing to capture the il y a that ethi-
ter a face as face is to encounter the face speak- For Levinas, such speech is spoken as a prayer cal experiences become readable. If it is in the
ing in language. The face is remote and its ex- and is ethical in that it interrupts “my existence inability of writing that the access to the ethical
pression provides no intelligible content. And yet, as a subject and a master” (qtd. in Robbins 89). is found, and if Levinas must resort to art to in-
as Blanchot says, it is “speech without compre- The prayer pulls the subject from the aesthetic scribe his philosophy, then perhaps as Robbins
hension to which I must nonetheless respond” dream of totality, and poses the exteriority of the says at the end of chapter seven “it is no longer
(qtd in Robbins 62). How to respond is the chal- speaker before the other. How then, asks certain that we can call poetry ‘poetry’ in the
lenge and the threat to which Levinas speaks. Robbins, can we maintain the separation between sense that Levinas determines it, or in an aes-
The face, as it appears to be part of the world, is the pose of exteriority spoken as prayer and the thetic sense” (130). For Robbins, the first line
subject to the murderous comprehending vision exteriority of the subject dissolved into the par- of Totality and Infinity is a crucial hesitation that
of those who apprehend it; yet the face expresses ticipation of rhetoric? Following Derrida, serves as a suppressed ethical meaning in art.
a resistance to its own consumption and murder. Robbins states that there must be a necessary, Between “the true life is absent” and “we are in
This is the ‘no’ or the ‘thou shalt not kill’ which general contamination between what appears to the world” Robbins sees a middle ground which
Robbins notes is the only intelligible expression be two distinct poles of experience, ethical speech the entire text presents. A middle ground be-
of the face according to Levinas (63). Robbins as prayer and speech as distracting image. “That tween what Levinas calls the violence and alibi
reads the resistance of the face as a citation or a is to say that there is also the possibility of think- of metaphysics “that situates elsewhere the true
figure: ing the ethicity of poetry, or of thinking the ethi- life to which man, escaping from here, would gain
cal and aesthetics together, or thinking in a liter- access in the privileged moments of liturgical,
The face’s primordial expression is a citation, that ary text, as Levinas himself does . . . the tran- mystical elevation, or in dying” and the violence
is, it is characterized not by phenomenality, but by scendence of the other in ‘the proffered word,’ of the “philosophy of immanence in which we
the structure of the mark, with the constitutive
the word of the other that teaches us” (90). would truly come into possession of being when
absence that implies. Moreover, the ‘voice’ deliv
every ‘other’ (cause for war), encompassed by the
ers a commandment from an immemorial past, ac
Chapter six is a demonstration of how same, would vanish at the end of history” (qtd.
cessible to no present: ‘To see a face is already to
hear . . : [T]hou shalt not kill’ (DF, 8). Thus, when Levinas draws upon literature in his approach to in Robbins 119). In the remainder of chapter
Levinas gives the face as voice here, again he gives the il y a, the ‘there is’ or, in other terms of seven, Robbins argues that it is the poetry of
the face as (nonphenomenal, nonplastic, ethical)
Levinas, the “irremissibility of existence” (qtd. Arthur Rimbaud, including the revised first line
figure (67).
in Robbins 92). Robbins notes Levinas’s citation of Totality and Infinity, that allows Levinas to make
of Hoffman, Rimbaud, Huysmans, Zola, this strategic hesitation. Given Levinas’s view of
Robbins argues that Levinas’s understand-
Maupassant, Racine,and Shakespeare in his at- poetry, the apparent question is why use a poetic
ing of the face is “to some extent face-mask or
tempts “to say the otherwise than being” while line to open his text? Robbins argues that, true
figure-face,” which leads to the question Robbins
at the same time “preserve its ontological inse- to his view of poetry, Levinas reads Rimbaud’s
has been working up to for some time, “what is
curity” (95). Reading Blanchot’s Thomas the line “The true life is absent, we are not in the
figure, if there can be face in it?” (68). With this
Obscure, Levinas states that the book “opens with world” as an attempt to overturn its meaning:
question, Robbins problematizes the face/figure,
the description of the there is . . . . the presence
ethical language/rhetoric binary which seems to
of absence, the night, the dissolution of the sub- He ventriloquizes the first phrase of the couplet
excuse Levinas from literary criticism. The ques-
ject in the night” (qtd. in Robbins 96). The dis- and alters the second, by deleting ‘not’ and by add-
tion Robbins seems to answer in the asking is,
tinction between Levinas’s description of the ing the adversative ‘but’. His is the trope of con-
if literature is not merely expression but is also tradiction. By reading the line thematically, as an
‘there is’ as opposed to what Levinas describes
the resistance of face made manifest, is it still illustration of the desire for transcendence, in or-
as Blanchot’s crying of the ‘there is,’ says Robbins,
der to dismiss it, he necessarily elides the more com-
figure or rhetoric in Levinas’s terms? In the
demonstrates the “problematic relation with the plex significance it may have in Rimbaud’s poetic
second part of the book, chapters 5-9, Robbins
il y a”(97). In reading Blanchot’s cry, Levinas finds work(124).
pursues access to the ethical, of Levinas’s under-
a resemblance between the performativity of the
standing, through the work of art. And she draws
cry and his own description, but the question The line comes from Rimbaud’s poem A Season
upon Levinas’s reading of Blanchot, Laporte,
arises, doesn’t Levinas’s reading drain the in Hell which recounts a number of life failures,
Celan, and Agnon to make her case. Her argu-
performativity from Blanchot’s cry of the ‘there criticizes the desire for transcendence, and ends
ments are not against Levinas, nor does she at-
is’? (100). This is Levinas’s double bind which with Rimbaud’s renunciation of his own poetic
tempt to show that Levinas underwent a sea
Robbins formulates as, “when Levinas ‘says’ efforts. Robbins continues by suggesting that the
change during his life. Rather, she makes her
Abraham, he ‘does’ Odysseus” (91). Or, in sim- poem and Rimbaud’s renunciation of poetry af-
case with an altered reading, like Moses before
pler terms, when Levinas calls for an endless pa- ter its writing has an ethical dimension (126).
the burning bush, of Levinas.
tience that expects no return of the other, he Levinas appears to acknowledge an ethical di-
makes the circular trip to the other and back. mension in art when asked during an interview
Chapter five begins with a review of
“how does one begin thinking? Levinas re-
Levinas’s view of the aesthetic. Robbins notes
At stake is the relation with the il y a, and sponded:
that Levinas often associates poetry with terms
a way out of the double bind in which Levinas
of distraction such as intoxication, ritual, magic,
appears to be caught. Robbins again argues that from the reading of books - not necessarily philo
and witchcraft (76). For example, Levinas ar- sophical, that these initial shocks become questions
the double bind must be re-seen by moving out-
gues that “the rhythm” of an image is one of the and problems, giving one to think. The role of na
side of the logic of the world and back through
tional literatures is here perhaps very important
ways responsibility to the other is taken away.
Christian idiomatics to the Judaic spiritual and . . . . in it one lives ‘the true life which is absent’ but
The rhythm is the way an image overwhelms the
ritual life.Compared to Christianity, Jewish ritual which is precisely no longer utopian (qtd. in
audience and catches them up carrying them
life appears to lack “the affective power, the an- Robbins 126).
away. Thus, critical thought and, says Levinas,
guish of self-loss, and the exaltation of self-re-
“initiative and freedom,” are erased (qtd. in The opening lines of Totality and Infinity and the
covery, not to mention the storial character of
Robbins 86). The work of art poses another above comment by Levinas appear to support
Christian existence” (110). However, Robbins
threat to the ethical relation, which Robbins Robbins’s reading that poetry is not what Levinas
reads Levinas as saying the Jewish ritual life does
identifies as participation. Participation is a mode takes it to be, but rather may provide “the open-
not lack the spontaneity of the inner life, but
of thinking that disregards contradiction, it is the ing of the question of the ethical” (127). In any
rather puts into question the ability to possess
ability to confuse one for another, or one for a case, it is clear that Levinas finds in Rimbaud’s
and read one’s own inner life (111). Far from
different species despite obvious contradictions poetry an ethical dimension that serves in the
lacking, Judaism contributes “an alternative in-
(86). The movements of rhythm and participa- writing of his ethical philosophy.
tion (78-9, 84, 86) are the important processes
9
Robbins is consistent and careful, as is gular, yet powerful, piece of evidence in support ment, and ethics, implying prohibition. Such
proven by the way she begins each chapter with of her argument. Robbins ends by resentment is echoed by Gary Peters in his criti-
a review of her previous arguments and a detailed asserting: cism of Levinas entitled “The Rhythm of
analysis of the impediments to her attempts to The polemical vehemence with which Levinas had Alterity.” At the end of his article, Peters
claim a place for Levinas within critical discourse. earlier characterized the image is no longer appar (1997:15) says:
Most of the time, Robbins analyzes not the opin- ent in this summary of Blanchot’s subsequent un
derstanding of the image. This suggests that, on Art will not be judged, and in particular it will not
ions of a rival or contrary critic, but Levinas’s
the basis of reading Blanchot, Levinas has modi (and should not) be cut to the measure of the ethi
own words. The final chapter follows suit. Be-
fied somewhat his understanding of the work of cal, even when, as in the case of Levinas, the ethi
ginning with a review of Levinas’s writing about art, not so much as regards its ontology than as cal plunders art’s own body for the rhythm of
art in Totality and Infinity, Robbins argues that on regards its possible relation to ethics (154). alterity sensed therein and subsequently appropri
occasion Levinas makes exceptions to his own ated for foreign ends (15).
Quandaries of Aesthetics in Recent Critical
renunciation of art. One such exception is art
Literature
It will not be judged, continues Peters, because
that deals with the Holocaust of which Levinas
Attached as an appendix to Altered Read- art “has always already forgotten the ethical and,
repeatedly speaks positively (133). Robbins ar-
ing is an essay by Georges Bataille entitled “From indeed, the philosophical.” Leaving aside ‘art’s
gues that the art of the Holocaust does not rep-
Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” trans- own body’ for the moment, it is clear that Pe-
resent a contradiction nor an example of Jewish
lated by Robbins. She says little concerning this ters’s accusation is formulated on the same
chauvinism. She sees such art as one of many
essay except that it represents Bataille’s formu- grounds as Blanchot’s and Robbins’s praise of
exceptions that lead her to the position, “with
lation of the “convergence between Blanchot, Levinas. Where the later two see an opening up
regard to Levinas’s literary and artistic excep-
Levinas, and himself around the thinking of the of philosophy or an attempt to think and ‘say’
tions, . . art that makes the ethical difference can
il y a (the “there is”), the return of presence in philosophy and ethics otherwise by drawing upon
no longer be conceived as aesthetic” (134). One
negation (xvii). However, the essay had more art, Peters (1997:9), humming with indignation,
exception is the writing of S. Y Agnon, which,
impact than this. It appears to have allowed declares “the aesthetic origin of some of Levinas’s
says Levinas, resonates in the scriptural context
Robbins to develop her arguments concerning grounding ideas ultimately endangers the ethi-
of the past and the modern context of Agnon’s
Levinas’s view of the “there is,” the failings of cal purpose which they are later made to serve.”
own writing “precisely,” says Robbins, “the way
existentialism to transcend and thereby approach Specifically, Peters (1997:9) accuses Levinas of
in which the other signifies” (139).
the “there is,” and the possible approach and ethi- refusing “to allow the aesthetic its own alterity
cal figuring of the “there is” that Robbins reads or rhythm.” Peters’s argument is worthy of ex-
Agnon’s writing also opens to the ethical
in Levinas’s use of the literary to construct his amination for what it says of the artist’s desire to
in its mirroring of midrash interpretation.
ethical philosophy. This ethical approach is best hold on to the body of art and keep it from the
Midrash is a search for problems, a posing of ques-
demonstrated in Blanchot’s cry of the “there is” cold hands of the law and the unfeeling hands of
tions and a search for knots in scriptural texts. If
and Levinas’s description of the cry as discussed the ethicist.
no knots are found, one is posed which calls for
in chapter six. Also, Robbins draws many quotes
an untying. These knots are crucial, says Robbins,
from Bataille’s review in other areas of her argu- Peters’s assertion that Levinas denies the
as they “are cruxes, hidden meanings, sometimes
ment. It is not hard to imagine that Robbins’s alterity of rhythm relies on a reading of partici-
mystical meanings” (140). However, tying and
translation of Bataille’s essay served as an impe- pation quite different from that of Robbins. While
untying risks destroying the cord which one tries
tus for a great deal of Robbins’s impressive work. acknowledging Levinas’s view of rhythm as a dis-
to straighten. Robbins sees Agnon’s writing as
tancing function of art, Peters reads Levinas as
having “the ability to indicate an unrepresentable
In her introduction, Robbins states “any suggesting that rhythm possesses an anarchic
past” (141). Agnon frays the knot of substantia-
approach to the question of the relationship of alterity in that it breaks the monotony of the same
tion. In this way, to use Levinas’s words, Agnon
Levinas’s philosophy to literature has also to deal formulated by a continuous melody. Peters
“breaks away from a certain ontology” (qtd. in
with the incommensurability between Levinas’s (1997:10) goes on to argue that for Levinas, the
Robbins 141). This may explain why Levinas
ethics and the discourse of literary criticism” (xx). aesthetic sensation of rhythm is a dispossession
holds that Agnon’s writing portrays a life that
By a large measure, this incommensurability is in which the self is captivated and passes to an
“does not make up a world” thought with the
due to Levinas’s own position with regard to the anonymity:
ideas of being (qtd. in Robbins 141-2). Levinas
figurative arts. However, by her careful reading
also speaks favorably of Celan whose poetry “goes
of Levinas, Robbins is able to bring her reader to The peculiarity of Levinas’s aesthetics of rhythm
toward the other” (qtd. in Robbins 144). For
the same conclusion as Blanchot: concerns precisely the anarchic character of the
Levinas, Celan’s poetry seems to forestall, via
exotic pulse and, in particular, the way in which
disruption, the improper naming of the other,
the transcendental ego loses its intentional grasp
How can philosophy be talked about, opened up,
which is one of the charges Levinas lays at poet- and is carried away.
and presented, without, by that very token, using a
ry’s door. The Levinas-Celan relation is
particular language, contradicting itself,mortgaging
remarkable,argues Robbins, because in his writ- its own possibility? Must not the philosopher be a According to Peters’s reading, the self is not car-
ing about Celan, Levinas appears to countermand writer, and thus forego philosophy, even while ried away by the aesthetic experience of rhythm,
his own condemnation of art as merely rhetoric. pointing out the philosophy implicit in writing? but carried away in rhythm as an exotic pulse of
(45).
According to Robbins’s reading, Celan’s poetry being. In rhythm the alterity of the other is re-
“negotiates the incommensurability that pre- tained as a disruptive, anarchic, aesthetic event
Levinas counters his own views of the figurative
vented art from being originary enough in the which, argues Peters, is the opening to the ethi-
arts, and not surprisingly with Blanchot’s genre-
first place to be ethical” cal. This is significantly different from Robbins’s
cracking work, when he resorts to aphilosophic
(146). reading of participation, taken from Lucien Lévy-
expression to speak of otherness and the il y a;
Bruhl. Robbins argues that participation is a
happenings that defy philosophy’s gaze yet ap-
It should not be surprising that Robbins mode of thinking that takes an image for an in-
pear in figurative writing. Robbins makes a solid
ends this chapter with Blanchot, Levinas’s friend dividual. Robbins also uses the phrase, “the
yet nuanced argument that requires the reader
and critical interlocutor. Both Blanchot’s blend- viewer is carried away,” but in her reading it is
to adopt the patience and generosity which are
ing of discourse and reason and Blanchot’s “dis- not the viewer that is carried, but the attention
part of Levinas’s ethical philosophy before her
mantling of classical and Romantic aesthetics” of the viewer that is moved away - as if seduced -
rereading of Levinas begins. Therefore, I fear that
seems to have turned Levinas toward a from ethical engagement with the other (86-8).
readers who are suspect of, or unsettled by,
reevaluation of his view of art, argues Robbins Where Robbins reads a distraction by rhythm,
poststructuralism and the recent ethical turn may
(152-3). Levinas’s reevaluation appears in an Peters sees being and alterity expressed as an
not read past the first 20 pages, and this dilemma
essay quoted by Robbins entitled “The Poet’s arhythmic pulse.
brings me to another incommensurability. This
Regard” (1956), concerning Blanchot’s literary
second incommensurability is not brought about
criticism: It is against this pulse, which Peters
by Levinas’s antiaesthetic discourse, but by the
We do not go from the thing to the poetic image by (1997:13) argues is “musicality fundamentally
obstinacy of the artist’s, or the critic’s, vision of
a simple neutralization of the real, nor from every linked to otherness” that Levinas apparently sins.
the other.
day language to ‘the image of language’ which
The phrase “plunder art’s own body,” as used by
would be poetic speaking - by diminution. What
Peters (1997:15), speaks loudly, but it may say
is required, after Blanchot (although he does not The January 1999 issue of the PMLA,
more than intended. Levinas is accused of plun-
utilize the term), is a prior transcendence . . . in which is dedicated to ethics and literary study
order that things may be apperceived as image and and features the work of Levinas, is bound by an dering not art, but the body of art. A body mani-
language, as poetry. The image precedes, in this fested in this essay as “the musicality of being”
image of the law and the law’s enforcer on the
sense, perception (qtd. in Robbins 153). (Peters 1997:9). In making the accusation, it
cover. The choice of this image is telling, be-
would appear that Peters calls for redress. If, as
cause it summons to the discussion of literature
Robbins closes the book in a single paragraph
Peters (1997:15) argues, “the alterity of the aes-
a common resentment to the law, implying judge-
soon after this quote. And it can be said that
thetic is here reduced to the same by being sub-
the entire book has been working up to this sin- 10