To live as if we are a work of art is to live madly, yet to live as if we are not mad is madness itself.
On Friday, the 21st of April, I concluded my discussion of Michel Foucault’s work on ethics by claiming we must make our life a work of art. Serendipitously, the next work on Michel Foucault I’ll be covering will be his work on aesthetics, method, and epistemology. Today, I will only be reviewing a portion of the immense amount of work Foucault put into aesthetics.
Foucault’s work on aesthetics covers numerous books, but I think there's a common theme that runs throughout a large portion of his work. Specifically, there is a perpetual interplay between the object of discourse and the subject interacting with the object. With deft linguistic constructions, Foucault is able to masterfully weave between the work he’s elaborating upon and his opinions of the work until, after a bout of vertigo, the reader is left feeling as if there’s no difference there; Foucault becomes one with Flaubert, Holderlin, and Roussel, at least. Yet there, ever present in his work, is also the distinction; he is not the object of which he speaks.
Significantly influenced by Nietzsche, Foucault is fascinated with the artists' works, heroic figures, and the fall from grace precipitated by Kant’s Enlightenment. The artist’s work, to Foucault, seems to be an expression of his desire to be part of a world that has alienated him. The artist, to enter into the world which will not have him, must objectify himself by subjecting himself to his work (pp. 8-11). To achieve this self-creating work, the artist must 1.) assimilate themes that pervade his life, 2.) outline fundamental forms of human experience and his experience, and 3.) establish the great gulf between the subject and object so that the two recognized in their similarity (p. 12). The artist’s, the hero’s need, to define himself, to be known, to integrate himself into the whole from the fringes, it can be argued, is a work that simultaneously communicates his madness and defeats it. Yet how can this be the case?
What Foucault argues is that psychosis is the product of a subject not fulfilling themselves or perceiving that others are not fulfilling the roles that define them within their society (p. 16). “The father’s absence, manifested in the headlong rush of psychosis is not registered by perceptions or images, but relates to the order of the signified.” This inability to grasp what one thinks should be there, for it should be there in their mind, results in a torrential outpouring of speech, which Foucault often calls garrulous, which is attributable to individuals with schizophrenic tendencies. The question the psychotic keeps asking himself as if he's fixated in a particular place and time, perseverating: Why aren’t these people behaving the way they’re supposed to behave?
To resolve this discontinuity between the signifier and the signified, the hero or artist must re-establish a continuity of meaning. If he can recognize the enigma of similarity between the sign and the signified, he can disassociate his subjective interpretation of the object from the object itself. For the artist or hero, this is a remarkable feat. The rupture between the subject and object does not cause him to dissociate between his perception of an object and the object itself but between himself as subject and object. As such. he -- in thought and form -- must stand separate from himself as a perceiving, intelligent being. When he does this, through this work, he sets himself apart from himself, establishing himself as both object and subject. Yet, now, where there was no continuity of meaning previously, there exists an undulating gap that enables the artist, hero, or craftsman of the self to realize and intelligently grasp that which was previously confounded by his soul’s madness (p. 18).
At this moment, we have a paradox. Is the work a work of madness, exemplifying the madness of its creator or is it a salve for madness, which through the artist's work, has enabled him to see himself coherently? It doesn’t appear as if Foucault has any definitive answer to this question, only claiming that we must investigate it if we hope to resolve the predicament of our time.
What Foucault does seem to suggest is that this rupture between the self and object, this objectifying, inquisitorial process, is a resolution to our predicament and its cause. In referencing the oft-quoted proclamation that “God is dead and we have killed him,” Foucault highlights the potency of language, and implicitly reason, logic, and, thus logos, to show us the limits of our being. Defining Man as an object, Man gave himself meaning but, in the process, he separated himself from his origin, forcing himself to abandon what could no longer define him (i.e., God, as Foucault sees it) for that which can never be his: the all-consuming, and formless materium into which he plunges (pp. 18-19). Having reasoned himself out of believing in God, Man condemns himself to the use of that object for which he continues to cause his madness, produced by his descent into the meaningless abyss he’s created for himself: The Word. When he cannot conform to the linguistic categories he establishes for himself, there is language, reason, or the Word to limit his being, to punish him, to drive him into the abyss. His only hope: Self-annihilation through the word. He must sever himself from himself; he must subjectify himself as if he were an object. He must endlessly see himself as an object and create for himself an object out of his personhood; a form compatible with the circumstances he’s found himself in, which are the product of his own doing. In freeing himself from his origins, he’s become his own slave.
Foucault continues this exploration of the relation between the subject and object in his work on Roussel. In Speaking and Seeing in Raymond Roussel, Foucault seems to be inviting us into a world where the object of our work is as much a part of our subjective selves as it is an object of our perception, blurring the lines between subject and object once more. With lines such as “death and language are isomorphic” (p. 27) and “the mask is hollow and masks the hollowness,” (p. 29) I could not help but feel as if Foucault is communicating to his readers the lifelessness of the objects we create for ourselves through language; the forms we create for ourselves in a world that prohibits us from acting like honest subjects within it. Such an existence is suffocating and, in the process, creates suffocating figures.
This theme between the relationship of the subject, object, and the environment is carried over from his work on Roussel to his work on Rousseau in Introduction to Rousseau’s Dialogues. Foucault describes Rousseau as an (suffocating), and in response to this, I found myself chuckling. Yet, by the end of this piece, I had a slightly different perspective on Rousseau’s suffocating tendencies, even if that perspective did not significantly change my opinion of him.
Foucault’s work on Rousseau’s Dialogues emphasizes the distinction between the subject as an object, a subject of himself, a subject as an object, and a subject reacting to his social construction and objectification, which necessarily finds itself within his self-manifested object. With respect to his work on madness, i.e., Holderlin’s work, we once again find ourselves facing the question: what is a work of madness? How can it be a work of madness when it is the process by which men come to understand themselves with respect to their environment? Foucault brilliantly explains how the silent objectification of men forces them to objectify themselves, to understand themselves. The separation Rousseau found between himself and his countrymen was expressed through his stifling or suffocating character. His words, their silence, reflecting the silence he was met with from his countrymen, the accusations thrown at him, reflected his oppression and his inability to honestly express himself to anyone (pp. 50-51) but himself. This analysis enmeshes with Foucault’s work on Power-Knowledge, and how particular categories of identity, when imposed on an observed subject, exacerbate the problems of the subject rather than alleviate them; a phenomenon particularly observable in psychiatric settings. Thus, to answer our question: a work of madness is a work done by a man recognized to be made in a mad world whose best response is to reflect the world's madness back, upon it.
Foucault continues to investigate the Subject-Object relationship in So Cruel a Knowledge, specifically as an interplay between personal desire and the object of desire. Foucault uses the Chthonic realm, Hades, to communicate this interplay. In Hell or Hades, our object of desire – our deepest desire – is given its fatal form. We know this realm and object to be a product of our desire because we turn from it. In turning from it, from the passion it evokes in us, we belie the fact we have identified with it. If it did not evoke our terror, trembling, or rebuke, would we not have found ourselves in it, been moved by it, affected by it? Foucault suggests not. We would not fear seeing ourselves within that place of suffering if there were not already something of ourselves present in that place of suffering. Inexpressible ambivalence to our desire could be the only reprieve from our witnessed fate if it were achievable, yet it is not. Expressing our indifference and ambivalence, we show we have been moved by it. We can only sit in silence, and in that silence, torture ourselves.
This knowledge of our self-made suffering compels us to collapse the distinction between ourselves, separate from the suffering, and ourselves entwined in the suffering. In the process, suffering, we use the object of our suffering to reflect on ourselves. We subjugate our desires in the object of our suffering desire to overcome that suffering and, even, to take pleasure in it. In the process, we vampirically feed on suffering. With this power, we can seemingly and potentially liberate ourselves from our suffering and, in so doing, fall into our suffering once more, knowing it is not just the source of our pain but our strength. Suffice it to say, Foucault’s analysis of this cruel knowledge is enthralling.
Preface to Transgression, Foucault explores how the linguistic, dialectical process has affected the philosopher and Man. His exploration is highly mathematical and calculating. Still, what I think Foucault is trying to convey is the interplay between the indefinability of a linear limit and the creative and defining force that limit has for the linear formation. He uses this image, in conjunction with the idea that Man destroys his spiritual limits by depriving them of meaning, to show how Man has now become the force that limits and defines himself and, as that limit, is indefinite. Combined with the act of linguistic communication as a consummating act, Foucault seems to be expressing that Man, through his use of language, which defines and limits him (but also emanates from him) realizes that he has become his own creator and destroyer.
Le Bleu du ciel gives a singularly precise outline of this movement: early in November, when the earth of German cemeteries is alive with the twinkling light of candles and candle stubs, the narrator is lying with Dorothy among the tombstones; making love among the dead, the earth around him appears like the sky on a bright night. And the sky above forms a great hollow orbit, a death mask, in which he recognizes his inevitable end at the moment that pleasure overturns the four globes of flesh, causing the revolution of his sight, ‘The earth under Dorothy’s body was open like a tomb, her belly opened itself to me like a fresh grave. We were struck with stupor, making love on a starred cemetery. Each light marked a skeleton in a grave and formed a wavering sky as perturbed as our mingled bodies. I unfastened Dorothy’s dress, I dirtied her clothes and her breast with the fresh earth which was stuck to my fingers. Our bodies trembled like two rows of chattering teeth” (p. 83).
Here, Foucault highlights Man’s proclivity to bring himself into union with all those limits, those trembling, indefinable limits, to create himself, establish himself, and bring himself forth from his death through his death.
In Foucault’s essay, Language of Infinity, this exploration of limits and death is continued. Foucault asks a simple but rather disturbing question: What do books tell us about themselves? Nothing, they are as silent as the dead. Here Foucault seems to imply that the infinite meaning of language, stated as such, is as self-defeating as it is meaningless (p. 99). Foucault uses the image of death, even of vast libraries, filled with books that say nothing and everything at once, to show the inexpressible limit of human existence and meaning. As much as this limit gives man a form so he can become knowable and expressible to himself, passed down through the ages, it also serves as his destruction, his end, his death – the point at which nothing more is said and everything is said. The inarticulable forces us to construct forms around it, this death, that point to it (that inarticulable thing), which lacks the words to communicate itself, and in the process, we perpetuate ourselves, give ourselves form, and reconstitute ourselves, ever anon, repeating, destroying, blooming, and repeating. The language of infinity, infinite forms, meanings, interpretations, perspectives, is self-limiting and annihilating. At the point where it annihilates itself, it establishes itself once more as a thing, definable and knowable. Hence, the timelessness of the language of infinity, always there, silent, deathly, and lifegiving.
What can be taken away from these works, these ideas, especially as they relate to establishing oneself as a living piece of art?
The ethics Foucault initially left us with compels us to explore ourselves, embrace our limits, sit in silence, or observe ourselves observing the world around us (i.e., to separate ourselves from the representation). In his aesthetic works, these themes are repeated. The importance of language, silence, self-observation, and the hollowness of our non-subjective objectivity, are all restated poetically but astutely. Through Foucault’s work, I noticed that there was a heavy emphasis placed on form, yet Foucault often let that form destroy itself as it defined itself, as Foucault did in Afterword to the Temptation of St. Anthony. There’s a perpetual contraction and expansion that Foucault identifies that I think emphasizes the nature of the positive feedback loop established through Foucault's ethical Model
Death and sexuality also seem to be repeating themes in Foucault’s work. I previously attributed this to confusion, but perhaps I spoke too soon. As I’ve continued to read Foucault’s work, for him, death is a lifegiving event, a defining limit, a grounding limit, bringing us back down from our limitless state, providing us the necessary form to interact with others in the world effectively. In some sense, this kind of character death is an act of self-consummation. The self brings itself to its limits, to the horizon of that endless ocean, and throws itself into the abyss. Yet, as a definable thing, incapable of existing in an undefinable place, it is spit out, reconstituted, and reformed as a self-recognizing, identifiable thing, no longer undifferentiated from the infinite, undefinable horizon. Sex, as a creative, consummating, and lifegiving act, naturally conforms itself to the death Foucault recognizes. For it is in that death to which Foucault speaks that life is established, a thing formed, and created.
Thus, in any ethical model, Death cannot be a thing we ignore. Death is and is not the end. It defines life, limits life, gives it form, and in that way, gives life its meaning. That hollow mask that Foucault speaks of is, then, probably a product of one identifying with this limitlessness or, in some sense, desiring it. Numbness will be the product and desire of a Man unable to embrace his limits. Hiding behind a menagerie of shadows, the man who cowers from the lifegiving force of death, who does not see it as the form-giving, meaningful subject it is, turns from meaning, life, himself, and hollows himself out until nothing remains but himself as an object. And as an object, he can rest above himself, watching himself rue in his meaningless, consuming himself and his surroundings in the process, for he cannot embrace, accept, and integrate that one variable that would provide him the meaning he seeks: death.
Bibliography
Foucault M. and Faubion J. D. (editor) (1994). Michele Foucualt: Aesthetics, Methods, and Epistemology. Editions Gallimard.
