Obscenities (a suggestion)
Those matters a culture tends to render obscene (whether understood as a totality of seeing, or that which a culture keeps hidden from view) manifest both at the center of the modern and at its outer limits, as one and the same, the ‘other’ and its uncanny double within. For, the production of knowledge in modernity—an operation that organizes itself according to a system of logic based on methodology, on precedent and ‘truth’—is propelled by the descriptive nature of its ever-absorbing and totalizing function, to accumulate until all may be regimented according to the rules of its own logic. The catch being, the very obscenities that escape the ever-accumulating and totalizing bodies of knowledge at the boundaries of ‘what is known’ form an uncanny closet within the modern, consisting in the matters denied by a culture, even as the content of these limits (at once internal and perceived as external) disturb and unsettle the very system that propels its machination.
Or, if Goya’s etching may be some indication of modernity’s legacy at the beginning of nineteenth century, it seems that The Dream of Reason Produces [its own] Monsters. Pictured below are two examples of this obscenity: modern war waged in the name of progress, and society's stigmatization of illness.
Above: "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" by Francisco de Goya, from Los Caprichos (Plate 43, second edition, c. 1803).
Below: "Una pequeña historia de amor" by Alberto García-Alix, from García-Alix Fotografías 1977-1998 (Madrid: La Fábrica, 1998).
Or, if Goya’s etching may be some indication of modernity’s legacy at the beginning of nineteenth century, it seems that The Dream of Reason Produces [its own] Monsters. Pictured below are two examples of this obscenity: modern war waged in the name of progress, and society's stigmatization of illness.
Above: "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" by Francisco de Goya, from Los Caprichos (Plate 43, second edition, c. 1803).
Below: "Una pequeña historia de amor" by Alberto García-Alix, from García-Alix Fotografías 1977-1998 (Madrid: La Fábrica, 1998).
posted by Jon at 11:25 AM
11 Comments:
The picture "Una pequeña historia de amor" reminds me of the time that you made obscenities with one of my socks. I hope all is going well in Spain- medical school is still hard!
Nedzlek
It's worth considering, though, Jon, that denial creates its own nomenclature and its own system of attraction as well - the verb "to deny" is transitive and its direct object has to be named, and that name has to be dwelled upon, with all the charm and fascination that accompanies the sensation of disgust. Here, of course, you can take up Nietzsche's view, to wit: "Where our knowledge ends, there we set up a word."
The marginal object par excellence, the preeminent object of horror in a commodity society, for instance, is that which is ultimately irreducible to either a literal or figurative commodity - the experience of genuine pleasure, for instance. And what is the kernel around which all commodities are organized? Pleasure. And this is the fundamental reason why individuals in commodity societies have rampantly pathological relationships to pleasure.
But what I'm really trying to get at is a sort of augmentation of what you have here: namely that the categories of denial have corresponding, and often transparently linked categories of attraction - and Ross Chambers, for instance, would not be far off to see the grotesque, the queer, or the obscene (as you have it) as being in cahoots with the glamorous and sexy. - Hence, perhaps, your interest in fashion?
Not quite as long as my last comment, but almost as stupid.
I have to ask, though: is it the condom itself, as a prophylactic, that you see as stigmatizing illness, or is it some other 'pictorial' detail I'm missing? (And yes, I can see some sort of residue of a bodily fluid other than semen, in case you were wondering.)
no, mike, not at all long or stupid. thanks for the comments.
there's something to be said about borders and liminality in this whole matter, a relationship between the uncanny closet (interior) and the perceived exteriorirty of the 'other' thing that horrifies. to refer to D&G (not the designer this time, but Deleuze and Guattari) they might call it the breakdown in the machine, no? the flight that escapes the logic of its own system of knowledge; in other words, they identify it as a productive flaw of interiority. whereas, from the little i know of our bald friend Foucault, he describes bodies of knowledge as the sort of menacing 'blob' or mass that accumulates and absorbs what it formerly could not comprehend, at its borders, at the exterior. i'm going to take a stab and say that the two are not far off from each other. but i need another coffee before i can articulate how.
regarding the condom: by comparing the images alone, i think we could arrive at a discussion of the stigmatization of illness. goya stages the intrusion of the illogical (the mad, the dream, the monstrous) into the realm of the reasoning being as horrific, according to the (false) binary oppositions so loved and honored during the Englightenment. Truth/Falsehood, legal/illegal, madness/reason, slumbering/awakening, etc.
this instrusion is dually staged in the 1980s photograph by garcia-alix, where the obscene (here, as in goya, operating as that which a culture would rather keep from view, like goya's monsters, madness, and becoming witness to the consequences of modern war) is displayed for the viewer as a provocation. "hey, look at these secretions! betcha no one wanted to see them!" but i'll say that it's not only a matter of offending the societal norms of good taste (staging too much seeing may also be regarded as the obscene), the knotted condom points toward a similar issue of containment we see in goya, if we get back to those false binaries inherited from the Enlightenment: illness/wellness (alongside madness/sanity) where the impulse of denial (of turning away so as not to become witness) works to hold the monster at bay (that which escapes and/or threatens the logic of the well-fit, functioning machine). i would consider illness to fall into that definition, and society's stigmatization of HIV/AIDS as an object lesson (as you would say) for the threat of intrusion into a well-fit, functioning (societal) body.
and i'd prefer not to rely on this tidbit, but garcia-alix's photography, to draw a comparison, is close to nan goldin's work: photographic subjects that society has rendered marginal characters, heroin junkies, drag queens, HIV/AIDS patients from 1980s Spain.
that is, if goya contemplates the 'madness' or 'monstrosity' a society propels through the modern project (the dream) of reason--in all its horrifying consequences, such as the waging of war in the name of progress--then perhaps the modern project manifests itself by similar rules of logic in what garcia-alix 'distastefully' exposes for his viewers as that which a culture would rather keep hidden from view-- a sexually transmitted epidemic.
maybe?
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Just a quick question, Jon... why do you say that the photograph deals with illness (AIDS)? I see no indication of that; in fact if I am to interpret the title "historia de amor", I would actually say it has more to do with the excess materiality of affectivity.
As for Goya's sketch, can't it also be read as Goya's pro-Enlightenment, pro-modernity stance?, like, when reason is NOT alert, monsters are produced. I obvioulsy do not subscribe to that philosophy, but it's a possible counterinterpretation worth taking into account, no?
Reading your subsequent comment, it occurred to me that you might want to consider more closely what kind of figurative/metaphorical language you're using to describe bodies of knowledge. From this entry and yr comment, you seem to be relying on an image of systematic knowledge that relies on a figure of spatial insides/outsides (known/understood v. unknown/obscene,etc.), and in particular it sounds like this spatial metaphor has its roots in a sort of oral-digestive logic - the Enlightenment eats the world, in other words, and digests it into its own categories and terms. There's nothing patently wrong with this metaphor, but as your pursue these problems, it might run you into some dead ends that you can actually avoid.
For another metaphor - and this one's pretty fresh in my mind, seeing as how I'm coming from my paper on Gursky - you can think of (Enlightenment) knowledge as the organization of a visual field or as mapping - particularly apropos for some of the objects you want to work with, since it'll allow you to talk about their formal details as rhetorical devices concerning the limits of knowledge.
Another option for modelling knowledge, now that I've broached the idea of rhetoric, is the metaphor of adequate or exhaustive language, knowledge as utterance - a system of rhetorical figures that somehow approximate the real. Here is where your own ideas about the 'stuttering' of history would fit in.
Nonetheless, the metaphors of both visual mapping and linguistic description have a prerequisite: the subject of knowledge must be absolutely separate from the object of knowledge. (In the figure of oral-digestive inside/outside, though, the location of the subject is a little harder to pin down.) And this is where my last suggestion for figures of knowledge comes in: knowledge as (self-)alienation, the constitution of the object of knowledge in separation from the subject, collapsing (in the moment of horror) into unity, the subject objectifying itself. This model may actually ultimately bring you the most juicy stuff to chew on, since much of the real horror that resides in Enlightenment systems of knowledge emerges at those points where the object of knowledge reveals itself as a real or potential subject - Frankenstein, for instance, is the most grisly and hilarious instance of this. So you can also work with a figurative language of knowledge which locates horror in the willful self-alienation of the subject of knowledge in making him/herself an object of knowledge.
Some more ideas, at any rate.
absolutely, andreea. i think the interpretation you suggest here is the one that most critics agree goya was going for. that is, when the faculties of logic rest, the realm of the non-reasoning (monstrous) being takes over. what interests me about goya's image, however, is how the word "dream" of reason may be twisted around to show its "uncanny double" (if you will): that the sueño, or the "project" of reason (a legacy of the Enlightenment), produces its own monsters. i like how the two readings do play off each other productively and (maybe) creatively.
again for andreea: i'm interested to hear how you see the condom as an 'excess materiality of affectivity.' and by that do you mean secretions? in suggesting the condom as stigmatization of HIV/AIDS i'm working through the concept of the obscene here in what i've posted in the comments above, which will hopefully give a taste of where i get 'disease' from what could be just a pretty tasteless b/w photo that makes patty want to toss her cookies.
dear mike: my, you are always two steps ahead. i hadn't fully realized that i was thinking spatially, but you called this to my attention in your last comment. apparently the organic metaphor needs rethinking, as you rightly mention. i'm gonna have to agree with Latour on this one that the object/subject relationship is less distinct than scientific methods would prefer to think of them; or, the modern episteme is motored by a belief in a (false) distincition between the two. but hey, i enjoy functioning based on an oral-digestive model!
i mean, why do you think i love both yogurt and D&G?!?!
I was going to attempt to add something to the conversation, but I'd much rather mention the Hounen-sai.
Leave it to Nicholas to bring up what we all had on our minds anyway: huge wooden dildoes.
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