In the space between this moment and the next… there is the truth.
On Monday, the 24th of April, I began my discussion of Michel Foucault’s work on aesthetics vis-a-vis his ethical work. Today, I will be continuing that analysis.
What I find most intriguing about Foucault’s work on aesthetics is his ability to give form to the previously formless, untouchable, and indescribable. His ability to wrestle with themes such as alienation, scientific domination, and the existential discourse of writing justifies his distinction from other thinkers of the late, mid-20th Century.
For example, in his work on The Prose of Actaeon, he can give form to the soullessness of Man’s contemporary existence. Through his analysis of Klossowski’s work, he draws out the reality of the persona; the social masks we wear to refrain from stating the inarticulable. People, when we look at them in their social spaces, are like simulacra (p. 127) – imitating the social forms delimiting their social behavior. They play “a game of signs” (p. 132). Yet the games these social actors play are hollow, double reflections of things true and silent. Their silence makes them indefinable and, thus, unintelligible. And so, to give them an appropriate voice – those silent things – we give them a shape, a role that they can play, but as that role is played, all that is there is a copy – a falsehood, a vain double. Foucault seems to be identifying how shallow the roles we play are and how they take up that space of silence none of us can or are willing to fill, communicate, or form. There lies the unspeakable, which if spoken, would cast one as the villain in the feigned play; a lifeless story, mimed by lifeless actors. Who, then is everyone when what must be spoken cannot be spoken: They are liars.
Behind the Fable, Foucault explores the narrator’s role within fiction, assigning the scientist to the narrator’s role. He provides the reader knowledge but also continues to push along the plot by observing what the main characters do not; in turn, setting obstacles in their paths. Foucault also notes this doesn’t really – the knowledge – change the characters within a story. The knowledge the characters receive from the narrator opens their world for them, as the scientist does – he drives the characters’ developments – yet, they never really change. The scientific process the narrator engages in perpetually reopens the character to himself without ever enabling him to learn about himself – i.e., what motivates him blinds him to the world of the scientist, the narrator, and his ability to coldly and accurately describe the world as it presents itself to him. The narrator, the scientist, and knowledge all play a futile game with the narrative's characters, an unspeakable game’s personas, for they will not or cannot break through the frame that defines them without destroying themselves. The liars cannot tell the truth, ascend to true knowledge, or the narrator’s position, because it destroys who they are. Thus, they are fated to live truthfully within a lie, and to, thus, live falsely. They are bound to a game that will consume them for it never permits them to grow.
In my opinion, Foucault’s work on The Thought of the Outside was one of his better pieces. The entire piece is anchored to two statements, though not the ones you might expect: “I think” and “I speak.” The “I think” of the written word interiorizes literary worlds while the “I speak” leads us to the outside (p. 147-149). With respect to Fiction, Foucault states that “[it] consists not in showing the invisible, but in showing the extent to which the invisibility of the invisible is visible” (p. 153). In other words, Fiction must show that the things it speaks of are multifarious representations, i.e., definition-less and meaningless things. Between these meaningless things, in their silence, there is their meaning, unspoken but apparent. Fiction replaces the objective world with a shallow or rather hollow copy of it, causing forgetfulness in its partaker.
This forgetfulness is rooted in carelessness, which is itself rooted in negligence. Out of this negligence, one’s carelessness and, thus, forgetfulness cause one to fall prey to the shadow’s representation. I.e., through negligence, we open ourselves up to new things. Once this negligent being entreats the representation’s shadow, they stumble, casting their attention on that place where it was not before. In the process, the old self is reconstituted and replaced with a new, reconstituted self (pp. 154-157). “One is attracted precisely to the extent that one is neglected. This is why zeal can only consist in neglecting that negligence, in oneself becoming courageously negligent solicitude, in going toward the light in negligence of shadow, until it is discovered that the light itself is only negligence, a pure outside equivalent to a darkness that disperses, like a blown-out candle, the negligent zeal it had attracted” (p 157). Yet, what is this shadow Foucault speaks of?
“The law is the shadow toward which every gesture necessarily advances; it is itself the shadow of the advancing gesture,” which attraction conceals (p. 158). When we use language to communicate, i.e. give form to our desires, to construct worlds and spaces that cause us to become negligent, we fall prey to our shadow – i.e. the law, which is the world external to ourselves; the silently speaking, unspeakable and undefinable that corrects us when we are negligent. God’s silence, rather than undoing His presence, reconfigures it. In neglecting that silent world, casting itself in juxtaposition to the light of our desires, which are multiplied by our garrulous mastery language, the law reconstitutes itself and delimits our being as shadow – the character none dear play for none can.
Foucault uses the imagery of the Sirens in the and Orpheus, having failed to retrieve Eurydice from the clutches of Hades, to paint the dual nature of Man’s interactions with the Law’s silent shadow. The sirens entice Man with his desires (through fleeting and melodious words) to forget his purpose. Odysseus, binding himself to his sailing ship, can overcome their word’s allure and avoid their snare. On the other hand, Orpheus descends into Hades to save Eurydice but, in the process, loses her. In turn, he is condemned to sing an eternal lament, capturing his inability to bring forth, from the depths (the Chthonic realm), that which his song could not ultimately capture; what his words could not ultimately capture: The thing itself. Foucault argues that Orpheus reflects the sirens of Odysseus’ : Orpheus’ eternal lament, like the sirens’ dulcet tones, causes us to forget language’s dual nature: “All Cretans lie,” the Cretan said.
Swimming Between Two Worlds, Foucault discusses Breton’s work. Breton, according to Foucault, swims through the world of discourse. He does this through the “very act of writing” (p. 173). Breton’s writing does not reflect the world, Foucault says. Rather, it reflects existence, i.e., becoming (p. 174). In this piece, we see the echoes of his ethical model. The discursive mode of writing, writing itself, is presented as an existential, i.e., ethical mode of being.
The glimmers of Foucault’s ethical model can also be seen in his work Different Spaces, specifically emphasizing the places wherein we reside and the effect they have on us. In this piece, Foucault discusses the distinctions between Utopias and Heterotopias and heavily investigates the effect and form of heterotopias. Heterotopias are defined by six principles: First of all, almost every culture establishes heterotopias. Secondly, a society can have heterotopias that exist and have not ceased to exist “in very different ways”; i.e., a heterotopia can have multiple uses. Thirdly, a heterotopia can juxtapose incompatible spaces within itself. Fourthly, heterotopias are connected with temporal discontinuities; they open to multiple spaces of time. For the fifth principle, Foucault notes that heterotopias presuppose a system of opening and closing, isolating them and making them penetrateable at the same time. Lastly, heterotopias relate to the remaining, unoccupied space (pp. 179 -185).
This discussion of mostly heterotopias takes place after a preliminary discussion on Structuralism (p. 175), i.e., the connection between different, disparate points and how they’re configured; Localization (p. 176), i.e., the hierarchy and interconnectedness of spaces; and Emplacement (p. 176), i.e., the relation between the proximity of certain points or elements. Utopias, as Foucault describes them, appear to be models or ideals that reflect how we would like our space to look without requiring it to exist. Heterotopias are the real, living space, undulating with contradictions and modes of being, and their formal ways of existing. Foucault emphasizes these spaces to bring our attention to the new spaces we reside within, which no longer have the fixed, temporal, and hierarchical structure they would have had in the Medieval period. This lack of hierarchy and non-fixed spaces creates anxiety in modern, if not also post-modern, Man. I feel as if this anxiety could be coming from Man’s alienation within these heterotopias, i.e., their soullessness (Entau?erung). This feeling of alienation, soullessness is caused by his fractured identity, the spaces which force him to adopt a lying persona, to play games with his fellow man or be cast out as the villain that speaks the truth; a game whose only truth is a hollow and meaningless lie.
Foucault’s relationship between language and representation is brought to the fore, once again, in one of his most well-known works on aesthetics: This is Not a Pipe. I do not think there is very much to be said about this piece that has not already been said. My aim, then, will be to review the intention behind his statements. What Foucault is clearly expressing is the representation’s inability to express anything. The word, fascinatingly, can throw into the light what is left unstated in the representation itself. Foucault says that “None of these is a pipe; but rather a text that simulates a pie a drawing of a pipe that simulates a drawing of a pipe; a pipe (drawn other than as a drawing) that resembles a pipe (drawn after a pipe that itself would be other than a drawing)” (p. 200), i.e., art affirms itself by representing nothing. Affirmation exists only where there is speech, i.e., discourse. The painting lacks speech and, thus, nothing can be affirmed through the painting. In stating that “this is not a pipe” within the painting, the painting affirms that none of it is what it represents itself as; it is through language, through discourse, that we can spot the lie, without having to express it utterly. In other words, Foucault’s This is Not a Pipe stands as an injunction to abandon the abstract, purely representational world and to seek the tangible real world, i.e., to touch grass; to engage in not just abstracted discourses, but physical, material discourses.
Lastly, in Foucault’s work on What is an Author, his emphasis on the written word for ethical development is manifested, I think, in its clearest expression. The author, according to Foucault, is characterized by the following characteristics: “(1) [T]he author function is linked to the juridical and institutional system that encompasses, determines, and articulates the universe of discourses; (2) it does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization; (3) it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to its product but, rather, by a series of specific and complex operations; (4) it does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several selves, to several subjects – positions that can be occupied by different classes of individuals” (p. 216). But what is the relevance to the author in discourse, you might be wondering? The author is the central function of discourse. In particular, the author establishes the founder of a discursive movement. The founder of a scientific discursive movement, like Galileo, has his basis in a fixed schema of laws that allows him to generate new variants within that domain or schema. On the other hand, there are initiators of discursive movements, Freud, Marx, etc., whose work establishes a new domain and, if one were to return to their work, can affect present works. The discursive movement is, thus, a static form whereas the non-scientific, discursive movements can reconstitute themselves and their epistemological structures because they are more of an existential mode of being than a categorical role played by an actor.
For Foucault, the author serves as a delimiting force on fiction (pp. 221-222). “[T]he author is the ideological figure by which one marks the moment in which we fear the proliferation of meaning,” i.e., meaningless representations (p. 222). Instead of focusing on the forms of the author, according to Foucault, this causes us to focus on the author’s existential modes to understand their discursive form. I.e., can we live and see the world as the author does/did? Foucault wants to understand the author as an existential mode. In separating them from us as limited, definable beings, they exist outside of us, as representation, i.e., as nothing. We can inhabit the author as an existential mode, his style, syntax, and his discursive strategy, etc. There is nothing that prevents us from inhabiting the author’s mode. We can limit the author to a mode of living, we can touch grass through writing by limiting by inhabiting the author's style; we can inhabit the author, not as representation, but through the form he has left for us: His word.
Most of Foucault’s aesthetic work ties in nicely with his ethical work. Throughout his work, he really has a central goal in mind: to discover something new, to produce a new perspective on the truth. As we can see, the truth cannot be grasped through representational thinking. It must be established through the word. Yet still, the word – it is not strictly logical. When the Cretan says, “All Cretans lie,” is he telling the truth? Foucault’s logic is not limited by strict laws or absolute chains of causations. Instead, his logic is a lived discourse, an embodied discourse, that enables its speaker to capture the silence that surrounds him. This existential mode of being, rather than being soulless and alienating him, allows him to live within and through multiple formal modes; using their weight against them. Such an idea is evident in his work on Boulez (pp. 241-244). In this way, Foucault’s emphasis on discursive ethics brings to light new forms of being.
Through Foucault's discussion on heterotopias, we have a more refined look at what he meant by mia Khora. The space is defined by the ideal, the Utopia, but the utopia is, as a representation, a non-existent place. Still, this non-existent place, as a beckon of light and desire, causes us to become negligent. Thus, it casts a shadow – the Law’s, God’s silent shadow – that inevitably corrects us, sets us in our place and alters the real. But the complexity of the heterotopia (its intersecting, intertwining, contradictory, asynchronous, and multitemporal structures) prevents complete escape from the facade of its being. The members of this space are cast in lifeless, soulless, and trite roles; they are given their directions, guided by the light of their desires, which is to say beguiled with temptations of nothingness. Yet the representational games these hollows play, these mask-wearing husks… to break their rhythm, to disturb their form as it’s defined by the space (du dehors), is to put one in the role of their adversary yet also to represent that which liberates them: the truth. The mia Khora, then, can be seen as an escape from the representational world, a creative womb within the heterotopia that can give birth to new, contradictory forms that force the supervening structure to alter its mindless behavior or flip the board. And since the husks are unwilling to flip the board, which would result in the loss of their heart’s desire, they must alter their behavior, resulting in the inclusion of the neo-formal, existential mode, even if it is on the fringes of the heterotopic space.
The representative, traditional mode of living (discussed in his work on the 19th Century Imagination (pp. 235-240), living by established , clearly does not sit well with Foucault, nor does it sit well with me. This realm is a realm of unctuous shades pretending to be resplendent stars that feed on the desires of men and subjugate them. In many ways, it evokes the image of Plato’s cave. Yet, Foucault has a point. The shadows that feed on our desires in place of the light that could set us free (yet must cast itself as a silent, undefinable shadow) results in false belief i.e., prevent the ethical actor from making verdica dicta. Caught in Desire’s webs, Man forgets himself, is negligent to the point that he loses himself, his soul, and becomes, not just a mask-wearing actor, but a mask; i.e., a light of shadow; an object of nothingness reflecting the desires of those who seek nothing. In the process, he is lost not to time, but to Mankind itself.
Bibliography
Foucault M. and Faubion J. D. (editor) (1994). Michele Foucault: Aesthetics, Methods, and Epistemology. Editions Gallimard.
