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The Emancipated Spectator Review by Stefan Szczelkun
The Emancipated Spectator Review by Stefan Szczelkun
The Emancipated Spectator Review by Stefan Szczelkun
Stefan Szczelkun
The first chapter is directed at 'theatre'. He notes that from at least the time of
Denis Diderot's Entretiens sur Le Fils Naturel" (Conversations on The Natural
Son, 1769) the spectator was represented in writing as; "separated from both
the capacity to know and the power to act" p.2. There was a myth instituted
through discourse that the spectator was 'passive'. To remedy this passivity
Bertold Brecht (1898 - 1956) and Antonin Artaud (1896 - 1948) attempted to
create forms of theatre with only "active participants as opposed to passive
voyeurs" p.4. Such theatre attempted to embody the living community. The
Living Theatre, founded 1947 by Julian Beck, was a continuation of this
project. Ranciere points out that they were reacting against a phantom created
by Humanist discourse and not a real world condition, the audience can never
be 'passive'. [1]
Later in a similar mode Guy Debord takes the idea of this passivity further and
suggests that 'The Spectacle' alienates everyone from life itself. The basis of
this, following Ludwig Feuerbach's critique of religion, is that non-separation is
required in order to live authentically by responding directly to your own desires
[2]. Debord persuasively argues that consumerism manages our desires to the
extent of alienating us from our power of judgement. Ranciere sees in Debord's
labelling of spectators as passive, unthinking and stupid the same Humanist
strategy of stultifying the public he had previously identified in education. He
pokes fun at the way that the 'struggle against the society of the spectacle and
in particular detournment is included in all critical art agendas, and is taught to
be conducted in 'standardised forms'. Ranciere does not see a structural
opposition between collective and individual, image and lived reality or, activity
and passivity. Consumerism may be banal but it does not follow that consumers
are powerless idiots. Collectives are made of individuals, images are always a
part of the use of our sensory abilities, and contemplation may look 'passive' but
it is always mentally active.
He sees these left-field theories as perpetuating the idea of a public that are
presumed to be 'ignoramuses' by an intelligensia. If The Society of the Spectacle
tells us anything at all, it is to underline the message about our own inability. "It
thereby constantly confirms its own presupposition: the inequality of
intelligence". p.9 In fact all humans will take a unique path from what they
already know to what they do not yet know if given an environment where this is
possible. A person will translate experience into words and then test the
statements that result. p.11. This of course follows on directly from Jacotot's
theory espoused in The Ignorant Schoolmaster.
Does the desire to reduce the distance between the spectator and the art, that
has become de rigour, serve only to create that distance? Ranciere argues that it
does, by reinforcing or creating "embodied allegories of inequality." p.12. The
class basis of this is underlined: "In the past, property owners who lived off their
private income were referred to as active citizens, capable of electing and being
elected, while those who worked for a living were passive citizens, unworthy of
these duties." "Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition
between viewing and acting: when we understand (that) the self-evident facts
that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing, themselves
belong to the structure of domination and subjection." p.13
Viewing is a routine human activity, an activity comprising of selection,
comparison, interpretation and of making connections. It is part of a process
that inevitably leads to the viewer creating something of her own, even if it is a
negation; a turning away, yawning or choosing another path. As he says,
spectators are "only ever individuals plotting their own paths in the forest of
things, acts and signs that confront or surround them." p.16
What each individual has in common is the fact that their intellectual journey is
unique and it is this very uniqueness that is the basis of our sense of community.
We should not see our expressive power 'embodied' by designated others but
accept it as the normal everyday capacity of each of us as individuals, in the
same way that the power to speak is an equal ability learnt by all humans. p.17
This reminds me of Raymond Williams idea that 'culture is ordinary'. Culture
works through an "unpredictable interplay of associations and dissociations."
p.17. The implication is that as soon as the process is planned or designed as a
process of cultural reception with an effect in mind, it leads to something that is
no longer a place where each individual is using her intelligence to make their
own aesthetic judgement. This point is core to the vertiginous argument in The
Emancipated Audience. However individual freedom as a core value does not
mean he espouses 'bourgeois individualism'. Ranciere's understanding of
community recognises it as an amalgam of myriad individual intelligences.
He surmises that by the Sixties the use of Marxist ideology had led to two
requirements from its adherents:
1. To teach an understanding of the system to those (ignoramuses) who suffered
from it in order "to arm them for struggle".
2. Ironically the elite Marxist scholars and cadres were themselves ignorant of
the struggle; so they have to go amongst the workers, who they regard as
ignoramuses, in order to educate themselves.
Ranciere who was part of this '68 generation comments: "For me, as for my
generation, neither of these endeavours was wholly convincing" p.18. However,
his own version of 'going amongst the workers' was to research working class
activity and writing of previous century. He did glean some useful education
about workers from these archives and his findings are published as 'Proletarian
Nights: the workers dream in C19th France'.
Pedro Costa's In Vanda's Room (2000): "The system gives the humble the small
change of its wealth, of its world, which it formats for them, but which is
separated from the sensory wealth of their own experience." p.81. This sounds
like a call for working class artists to represent and document the 'sensory
distributions' of their own people and to have the local network of spaces to
exhibit in. Even so, there is not to be a predictable outcome for the viewers if we
artists are to respect their equality of intelligence and freedom of thought.
The mere viewing of shock images intended to reveal the 'sordid truth' behind
the 'brilliant appearances' of the spectacle is, Ranciere insists, merely in
complicity with the system and achieves little or nothing. Harsh realities and the
facade of glamour are two sides of the same coin. He points out that there is still
a literary prejudice against the image and its presumed ability to dupe the
spectator or embroil him in the glamourised gaze. "We must challenge these
identifications of the use of image with idolatry, ignorance or passivity." p.95
He discusses Alfredo Jaar's 1994 work on the Rwandan genocide 'Real Pictures'
and in particular his work called 'The Eyes of Gutete Emerita'. (An image used
as the books cover in the edition I read) "The traditional thesis is that the evil of
images consists in their very number, their profusion effortlessly invading the
spellbound gaze and mushy brain of the multitude of democratic consumers of
commodities and images." p.96. What we see on the mainstream media,
according to Ranciere, is mainly the faces of rulers, experts and journalists
telling us how to interpret images. But even that somewhat dated idea suggests
that we do not choose what to watch and he starts to fall foul of his own
critique. It is now possible to bypass a lot of this with selective viewing of the
personal networks of imagery and text. "The system of information does not
operate through an excess of images, but by selecting the speaking and
reasoning beings who are capable of 'deciphering' the flow of information about
anonymous
multitudes."
p.96.
Is it rather that images are rationed when they offer too many images of say,
mass revolt? Images are held back if their immediacy seems dangerous.
Recently I saw a BBC live video feed of a riot during the September 2012
general strike in Greece. The images were live and the newreaders seemed very
edgy about their responsibilities to make the right response to the events in
Syntagma unfolding live on camera.
He suggests we must overturn "the dominant logic that makes the visual the lot
of multitudes and the verbal the privilege of the few." p.97. Although this
appeals to me it is complicated by the oral verbal also being the lot of multitudes
on the one hand and the growing literature on visual cultures the other. "An
image never stands alone. It belongs to a system of visibility that governs the
status of the bodies represented and the kind of attention they merit."
p.99. Working class artists are likely to find themselves outside the game. Only a
few can emerge into the light of publicity through the chicanery of selective
filters.
After the diagnosis he gives his prescription: "The point is not to counter-pose
reality to its appearances. It is to construct different realities, different forms of
common sense - that is to say, different spatiotemporal systems, different
communities of words and things, forms and meanings." p.102. Well enough but
most artists would think they are doing this. In fact even the episode of Dr Who
that I watched recently could fit that description.
"The current scepticism is the result of a surfeit of faith. It was generated by the
disappointed belief in a straight line between perception, affection,
comprehension and action" "The images of art do not supply weapons for
battles. They help sketch new configurations of what can be seen, what can be
said and what can be thought and, consequently, a new landscape of the
possible. But they do so on condition that their meaning or effect is not
anticipated." p.103
He looks at a photographic series entitled: 'West Bank' or 'WB', by Sophie
Ristelhueber to illustrate the idea of a 'resistance to anticipation'. The idea is to
evoke curiosity and attention without any 'strategic schemata'. The tension
between seeing and thinking when effects are uncertain is productive of new
fresh thinking. Did Ristelhueber not anticipate this? Isn't just that she's just
sophisticated enough to know that an obvious image of a 'checkpoint' would not
evince the more complex and pleasurable response that her image does?
As an artist I think it is almost impossible not to anticipate a communicative
reception. My video of London's J18 demo in 1999 recorded the events of that
day chronologically with an attention to the visual expressions of dissent. There
is no voiceover to direct peoples interpretation but what I chose to record
reflects an intention to communicate.
We are left with many questions. Does a documentary with a voice-over give too
much interpretation? Can such a didactic form still ask you to think about
something, rather than telling you? Does the selection of what to shoot, how
long to shoot it, what sort of shot to use, still constitute a selection and so a way
of directing the viewer how to think about something? Of getting the viewer to
see the world in a particular way. My hunch is that we should not be concerned
so much about the artworks as the frames and spaces in which they are seen.
What I see in Ranciere is a persistent gnawing away at classism whilst also
carefully keeping his place in the dominant stage with neo-classical references
and clever word play. When Bourdieu admits that extreme expressions of class
disgust had been censored from Distinction he says: "one cannot objectify the
intellectual game without putting at stake one's own stake in the game -- a risk
which is at once derisory and absolute" (p.163).
A basic assumption that I make is that the system must manage the media and
state cultural institutions well enough to insure that challenges to its survival do
not de-stabilise its grip on power. The way this hegemony is maintained is widely
known as Ranciere points out. Gatekeepers or managers, patrons and
politicians, all contribute to maintaining a status quo, a class system. At the
same time they must provide the system with sufficient criticism to inoculate it.
class? Ranciere comments that his idea of the pensive image is an idea of a sort
of inactivity and that Hegel has interpreted the painting for his own uses.
The idea of pensiveness is first ascribed to Honore de Balzac in his novella
'Sarrasine' (1830) via Barthe's famous analysis in S/Z (1970). Balzac ends his
narrative indeterminately by finally leaving the protagonist 'pensive', with the
suggestion of a continuing and undefined thought process that goes beyond the
narrative. Ranciere goes on to discuss the incidental micro events described in
'Madame Bovary' (1856) by Gustave Flaubert. The micro events are like silent
pictures inserted into, but also above, and beyond the narrative. "The
pensiveness of the image is then the latent presence of one regime of expression
within another." p.124
A contemporary example is said to be the contemplative films of Abbas
Kiarostami, like 'Roads of Kiarostami' (2005). Another example is 'Shirin' (2009)
a feature film in which the viewer is confronted by the faces of an audience of
women watching an unseen film. The audience are therefor left to imagine the
events being seen by the women. He then transfers his attention to the
electronic screen via Jean-Luc Godard's mammoth eight episode 'Histoire(s) du
Cinema' (1998). The pensiveness in this video series is: 1. In the form of an
arrested gesture... 2. Which then triggers another story. p.129. Ranciere
analyses this an an 'intertwining' of narrative and 'infinite metaphorisation'.
Godard sees cinema as having "betrayed its vocation by sacrificing the fraternity
of metaphors to the business of stories." p.130 [8]
Reviewers Conclusion
The first chapter puts forward the core idea that there has been a myth of
peoples passivity generated from the established left which has been a central
plank of classism by persuading people of the inequality of intelligence between
them and their masters. Ranciere talks about abrutir rather than oppression.
The crude idea of the inert masses was disposed of well before John Carey's 'The
Intellectual and the Masses: : Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary
Intelligentsia 1880-1939' came out in 1992. Before that the idea of the myth of
the audience as passive victims of the mass media was taken apart by many in
Media and Communication studies. See Ien Ang's 1995 summary in which he
concludes: "Media audiences are not 'masses' - anonymous and passive
aggregates of people without identity. media audiences are active in the ways
they use, interpret, and take pleasure in media products. We cannot say in
advance which meanings and effects media content will have on audiences"
(Downing et al. Sage, 1995, p.219). So Ranciere is following a well established
media studies trend that he probably contributed to with his earlier writings.
Ranciere directs this analysis at some of my favourite French theorists from Guy
Debord to Pierre Bourdieu. Debord's 1967 'Society of the Spectacle', and its idea
of a worId transfixed by consumption, was something I almost revered in my
twenties. In spite of the academic groundwork done in the previous 20 years
that I was aware of, reading Ranciere's analysis felt like shaking off a long dead
leech. Ranciere dares confront the Marxist radical left with their classism,
rather than more technical arguments with Marxist theory.
The criticism of Pierre Bourdieu that follows in chapter 2 is something similar to
what I wrote less elegantly, back in 1993. Bourdieu does not understand how the
stratification of taste that he measures as cultural norms is negated by the
actions of autodidacts and other outsiders who cannot be measured in his
sociological surveys. Bourdieu only recognises individual cultural agency by
young bourgeois. (For his detailed critique of Bourdieu see part 3 of notes on
The Philosopher and His Poor above)
The suggestion in Emancipated Spectator is that things like participation art
only reinforce the idea that the audience are usually passive receptacles.
Ranciere points out that predetermined outcomes cannot be emancipatory
because for an artwork to be emancipatory the viewer has to be making
judgements based on their own knowledge and experience. (referring back to
The Ignorant Schoolmaster).
The idea that individuals need to be thinking for themselves is hardly new and it
is to Ranciere's credit that he refreshes it and leads on to a set of philosophical
problems about the relation between the individual and the collective. The rest
of the book mainly concerns these questions. For Ranciere both conditions are
co-terminus without any need for consensus. In fact dissensus is better.
Dissensus is our condition as autonomous individuals in a dynamic state of
communication from inevitably different subject positions. Emancipation is then
down to "collectivising our capacities invested in scenes of dissensus".
In chapter three he uses a phrase from Mallarme, 'Separes est on ensemble', to
explore how we can be both individuals that think for ourselves and achieve a
liberating 'solidarity' that doesn't flatten our differences. He goes on to discuss
how this idea relates to our contemplations on art. He is emphatic that the
sensory world of the artist is separate from that of the viewer and that there is
no right way to think about art and never has been. Some of the most influential
conventional writing about art has been a celebration of interpretation set free
of any originally intent, use or context. Things that are not used for their
intended purposes.
This is the point at which I start to feel the analysis is unsatisfactory. Up to now
my intuition and previous studies make me think he is right about equality of
intelligence and what follows, but the idea that the reading of art is separate
from any intention of the artist and that artistic intention cannot be at all
rhetorical, if it is to be emancipatory, is more difficult. As an artist focused on
social change it is difficult to imagine the removal of intentionality from work.
Or to be at all precise about how to make work that enables emancipation rather
than adding to 'stultification'.
Recently I saw the 'Seduced by Art' photography and painting show at London's
National Gallery. The show opens with Jeff Wall's large 1978 'The Destroyed
Endnotes:
[1] Against this the early musichall audience were moved from sitting around tables drinking into
the fixed rows of seats - a late C19th commercialised audience - often seen as a strategy to pacify,
but I suppose it could have been a drive to get more paying customers into a space. The bourgeois
audience being politely quiet and immobile did not mean that they were mentally passive.
However held up as a model for rowdy working class audiences to judge themselves against was
used as a way to denigrate the physically active audience and so working class cultural
expression.
As a form of popular mass entertainment, cinema-going did not generally find favour among the
middle class until the advent of sound systems heralded the era of art deco picture palaces in the
1930's. (Gomes, Maryanne. 'The Past As Present: the home movie as cinema of record', m/s 1997)
The inception of sound and the increasingly large sums of money to be made also brought the
mass-market film firmly under the control of the capitalist class. They imported their own literary
culture by way of the script and the aesthetics of good taste. The Charlie Chaplin films of the
1920's can be seen as a bridge to this period. His influences from working class culture and
musichall met a Hollywood system which had an ethos of respectability and taste, and a literary
heritage and articulation. Commercial cinema continued to evolve through the 1930's and 1940s
with an increasing reliance on scripted dramatic narratives. The content was respectable and
sentimental. The illusion of narrative continuity was smooth. There was a sheen of perfection
which created an increasing gulf from the self-generated activity of artists and amateurs. This
dominance was maintained until there was a resurgence of the vulgar in the form of B-Movie
horror, rock and sex genres in the consumer explosion of the 1950's.