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The Art of the Real
The Art of the Real:

Visual Studies
and New Materialisms

Edited by

Roger Rothman and Ian Verstegen

The Art of the Real: Visual Studies and New Materialisms

Edited by Roger Rothman and Ian Verstegen

This book first published 2015

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2015 by Roger Rothman, Ian Verstegen and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-7653-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7653-7
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Ian Verstegen and Roger Rothman

Part I: Materialist Ontologies

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8

New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory
Deborah J. Haynes

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27

Toward an Autocatalytic Aesthetics: Ergodic Microtheory
as Epistemological Transposon
Jason Hoelscher,

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 50

Art, Science, and the Nexus
Elie During

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 63

Schiller Upside Down Cake: Recipe for a Materialist Ateleological
Aesthetic
Roger Rothman

Part II: Materialist Politics

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 86

The Radical Subject of the Post-Apocalyptic Generation
Not an Alternative

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 101

Reliving the Rise of Fascism Through the Power of Images:
Meta-Filmic (Anti-) Propaganda in the Film The Wave
Christina Weiler
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 119

Mass Deception as Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image in Art
and Film
Morton Schoolman

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 172

New Materialism and Visual Studies: A Critical Realist Critique
Ian Verstegen

Notes on Contributors.............................................................................. 189

 INTRODUCTION

ROGER ROTHMAN AND IAN VERSTEGEN

Materialism anew
Almost a generation separates the current moment from the heyday of
deconstruction and critical theory, and yet there seems little consensus
about what happened between then and now. Was it, as Bruno Latour
insisted (with regard to critique), that it had simply “run out of steam”?
Did it empty its own tank and find itself stranded on the side of the road?
Or was it the victim of an external force, an alternative methodology that
stormed the gates of post-structuralism with a blow impossible to defend?
Latour’s alternative notion of construction is central here, as reflected
in Josh Toth’s claim that “critics who participate in this theorization of the
end [of postmodernism] typically highlight a recent shift in contemporary
narrative that is marked by the growing dominance of a type of neo-(or,
“dirty”)-realism, and by an increased theoretical interest in the issues of
community and ethical responsibility” (3). Whereas Baudrillard’s critique of
the first Gulf War as symptomatic of the global simulacrum was recognized
as trenchant, by the time of the Iraq war, such diagnoses seemed only to skirt
about the surface, incapable of recognizing the material forces of capitalism.
If this is the broadest umbrella under which materialism reappeared after the
fall of postmodernism, there are other symptoms. Alongside the sense of
fatigue with linguistic models came a new urgency to answer the question of
sovereignty in the era of immaterial labor and the reemergence, via Žižek
and others, of formerly “lost causes” like Communism.
The new materialisms of the present are poised to don the mantle once
worn by the likes of structuralism, post-structuralism, and the Frankfurt
School. In its most iconoclastic mold, contemporary theory aims to revive
outmoded notions of materialist ontologies. Such is the case with the “new
materiality,” “speculative realism,” and “object oriented ontology.” Their
effect is slowly being registered in the arts, mostly through the
blogosphere but also increasingly in new work. Of course, the reception of
such ideas is no simple matter. What prompted this volume was our belief
that this reception has yet to be sufficiently comprehended.
2 Introduction

For example, new materialism has offered refreshing perspectives to

art history and visual studies but it is not clear how these are related to
those that formerly occupied us—gender, sexuality, community. If this
identity-oriented paradigm, with its roots in semiotics and psychoanalysis,
is fundamentally irreconcilable in a Kuhnian fashion with new materialism’s
brute encounters with the object, how is one to determine the superiority
of one or the other? In a related vein, what are we to make of the fact that
the older procedures were largely ones of doubt and suspended ontological
commitments, whereas the new materialisms take these as given? One of
the promises of new materialism is its permission to operate outside the
mise-en-abyme of epistemological bracketing that defined postmodernism
as ironic all the way down.
Here are some possibilities afforded by new materialism: a chance for
art history and visual studies to engage with a new kind of philosophical
discourse, even a changed landscape of philosophy itself (Bryant, Srnicek
and Harman); a blurring of the old division of continental and analytic
philosophy in favor of problem-based questions (Braver); an opening to
attend to the politics of arrangements of matter rather than our
interpretation of those arrangements; a move beyond the emblematic use
of theory—art illustrating theory—toward a more productive engagement
of art and theory in a dialectic (Sinnerbrink).
These are some of the exciting possibilities afforded by the new
materialisms. Each of the authors in this volume seek, in different ways, to
interrogate aspects of materialism as they relate to art history and visual
studies. They chart new theories and their apologists, reexamine figures
from the past, and rehearse answers from a range of points of view, from
the affirmative to the skeptical. Collectively they provide a vantage point
from which to engage in reflexive research from within this emerging
paradigm.

Part One: Materialist Ontologies

For postmodernism, the question of ontology was habitually approached
from the negative, as a specter or bad-object to circumvent, if not obliterate.
In retrospect, the postmodern belief in the inescapability of the frame
ought to have led to the belief that it is not a matter of escaping ontology
but of articulating its tacit outlines. The common denominator of
contemporary materialisms, realist or not, could perhaps be described as
the belief that “objects” and things in general act outside of the regime of
the signifier and have the potential to affect one another outside of any
reference system. The chapters in the first part of this book grapple with
 The Art of the Real 3

the nature of this “matter” and propose a variety of materialisms as the

means by which to move beyond the exhausted state of postmodernism
without falling back on simple historicism and its numbing collection of
well-archived “facts.”
In the opening chapter, Deborah Haynes expresses her weariness with
the “race for theory”: the pursuit of the next paradigm that will save us if
we only have the patience. Using her own grounding in the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin, Haynes seconds Bakhtin’s critique of mere “theoretism”
—theory emptied of the material practice that ought to fill it. The
affirmation of materiality means that each and every theory has to be
understood in its practice-domain. With such “mangling” (Pickering)
permitted, some ontological reflection is possible. Drawing on the
performance art of Marina Abramovic, the net art of Mark Amerika, the
online projects of Margot Lovejoy, and the media art of Bjorn Melhus,
Haynes outlines a political aesthetics of interdependence and ecological
sensitivity. For Haynes, new materialism can reach its potential if it weds
theory and practice while respecting cultural difference in a spirit of self-
conscious modesty.
Jason Hoelscher deploys complexity theory as a tool to comprehend
the art and art theory that characterizes the global art world since the
1960s. With reference to the work of Stuart Kauffman, Ilya Prigogine and
others, Hoelscher shows how the rise of post-Duchampian art transformed
the art world into a self-organizing adaptive system in which theories of
art became enfolded into the practice of art as determining elements. The
result is what he calls the “art intersystem” that functions much like a
biological organism. The art intersystem behaves biologically in the
following ways. First, it is autocatalytic in that it generates new
intersystems. Second, in spite of much low-level variation, at the macro
level it remains largely stable. Finally, the system is ergodic in the sense
that it returns to strange attractors. In a manner similar to Haynes,
Hoelscher shows the potential repetitiveness of apparently novel
theoretical outcomes. Put another way, to complete the materialist turn,
Hoelscher recommends that we take the mathematical formalization and
biological foundations of complexity theory “all the way down” to
reflexively include ourselves within it.
Elie During’s account of art, science and the nexus attempts to recover
a coherent sense of totality while still maintaining a system of local
pluralities that postmodernism—like that of Hoelscher’s adaptive
systems—recognizes as the inescapable horizon of experience. During
rejects the radically non-totalizing claims of Alain Badiou in favor of what
he calls a “kinked classicism” in which the writings of Henri Bergson,
4 Introduction

William James, and Alfred North Whitehead are shown to offer a third
way, between Newtonian universality and the pure multiplicity of Badiou.
Works by Dan Graham and VALIE EXPORT serve as emblematic
attempts to articulate the non-universal totality that During identifies in
works of American pragmatism and its European cognates.
Just as During proposes to reconsider historical conceptions of time
and space within a materialist refusal to embrace an aperspectival totality,
so too does Roger Rothman call for a materialist reconsideration of
historical paradigms—in his case that of post-Kantian Idealism.
Rothman’s essay opens with a proposal to deploy materialism as a tool to
upend postmodern critique. The critical attitude, which has been dominant
until recently, takes as the tacit status quo a suspicion and subversion of all
potential metanarratives. Responding to the recent attention paid by
Jacques Rancière to Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,
Rothman upends the Eighteenth Century Idealist’s thought in an effort to
construct a materialist aesthetic more unforgiving than the one that
Rancière imagines. The result is an “ateological” system in which the
embrace of the new requires a rigorous acceptance of all things, whether
good or evil. As a coda, Rothman proposes the radical openness of John
Cage as the proper heir to the materialism that comes of turning Schiller
upside down.

Part Two: Materialist Politics

The essays in Part One already introduce a range of normative issues
arising from the materialist turn, be it Haynes’ Bakhtinian insistence on
the inseparability of theory and practice or Rothman’s anarchist politics
that arise from an inverted Schiller. The essays in Part Two take on these
concerns directly. Unsurprisingly, Frankfurt School theory plays a crucial
role in a number of these essays. What new materialism brings to critical
theory is a discourse of affirmation that the Frankfurt School found so
difficult to engage. Whereas a dialectic of negation is compelled, as
Adorno recognized, to manage the absence of a “firm criterion… between a
determinate negation of meaning and a bad positivism of meaninglessness”
(Adorno 191), the return to materialism suggests that beneath the dialectic
lies a set of ontological specificities with the potential to proscribe concrete
political actions.
In the opening chapter of Part Two, the New York collective Not an
Alternative reviews the accumulating disaster wrought by global capitalism
and charts the return of the “Radical,” the vital re-emergence of a culture of
protest. Foremost, the Radical has surpassed an accommodationist/consensus
 The Art of the Real 5

approach to politics in favor of antagonism. Opposing themselves to the

Multitude, a species of “horizontalism,” the Radical does not bend to
capitalism but seeks to end it. Against the tactics of capitalism that are
endlessly morphing and therefore can effortlessly reappropriate critical
artistic responses to it, Not an Alternative recommends occupying neutral
institutions, which through their innocuousness prove their symbolic
efficiency. Using the example of the 1980s Slovenian group, Neuwe
Slowenishe Kunst and affiliated industrial music collective, Laibach, Not an
Alternative shows how their fascist imagery exposed the contradictions of
the decaying Yugoslav state.
The return to a politics superseding the liberal also marks the chapter
by Christine Weiler. Focusing on the 2008 film, Die Welle (The Wave),
Weiler reviews the delicate balance that German filmmakers have had to
follow in treating the Nazi past. Needing to balance an identification with
the perpetrator without promoting fascination, The Wave represents a new
kind of movie that de-historicizes the Nazi past but brings its activating
forces to the fore. Responding to a period that is rapidly losing interest to
younger generations, the film investigates a high-school experiment in
group formation and in so doing brings the mechanisms of fascism to
terrifying life. The story is told in a way that acknowledges film’s
complicity in the very process of propagandizing. In this way, Nazism is
connected to rituals of Volksgemeinschaft active today.
Morton Schoolman’s project is founded on the dialectics of negation,
but the focus here lies with Adorno’s critique of enlightenment rationality.
In a manner sympathetic to Rothman’s post-critical discourse of affirmation,
Schoolman seeks to reclaim the mass image—film in particular—as a
positive, aesthetic form of enlightenment. Doing so requires that
Schoolman radically rethink Adorno’s largely dismissive remarks on
cinema by establishing a dialog between a materialist economy of
elements and an idealist economy of images. Further, it proposes to
rediscover in film the aesthetic form of reason productive of the image of
reconciliation that Adorno believed could only be found in works of
modernism. Crucial for Schoolman is the dialectical condition of the
moving image, as it is simultaneously static material (celluloid film) and
ephemeral image (shadows cast on the screen). What emerges from his
account is a conception of images of “reconciliation” out of the twinned
movement of the real and the representational.
Where Weiler’s chapter reinvigorates a search for deep structural
mechanisms in a neo-Marxist vein, Ian Verstegen looks at the new
materialisms from the other angle: not practices that connect to
materialism, but self-named materialisms. Reviewing attempts by recent
6 Introduction

authors to use varieties of materialism to give due to the “agency” of

objects and energize our ideas of matter, Verstegen argues that Deleuzian
and Latourian materiality is strongly influenced by narrow French debates
over immanence; by the time it arrives in visual studies it makes
impossible restrictions on theorizing. Because their French interest in
denying limits creates a radically flat ontology, it is difficult to create any
more differentiations on matter than simply that they should be treated
equally in an unprejudiced way. In the end, such materialisms represent a
kind of status quo that has more in common with previous trends in visual
studies than anything one would propose to stand as its dialectical
overcoming.
In its note of caution, Verstegen’s contribution forces a reflective
consideration of the materialisms offered in the previous chapters and thus
serves as a fitting conclusion to the volume. Whatever comes of the new
materialisms on offer here, they will only survive if they can withstand the
scrutiny of the skeptic.

Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor, “Commitment,” in Adorno, Theodor, Walter Benjamin,
Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukacs, Aesthetics and
Politics. Trans. Ronald Taylor. London: Verso, 1980, 177-96.
Braver, Lee. A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-
Realism. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 2007.
Bryan, Levi, Nick Srnicek, Graham Harman, ed. The Speculative Turn:
Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: re.press, 2011.
Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx. London: Routledge, 1994..
Mouffe, Chantal. ed. The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. London: Verso,
1999.
Sinnerbrink, Robert. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London:
Continuum, 2011.
Tosh, Josh, The Passing of Postmodernism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
2010.
Žižek, Slavoj. In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso. 2007.
 PART I:

MATERIALIST ONTOLOGIES
 CHAPTER ONE

NEW MATERIALISM?
OR, THE USES OF THEORY

DEBORAH J. HAYNES

A Roundabout Introduction
Writing this chapter has presented me with a conundrum, a tension
between my ongoing engagement with, and my fatigue about, theory. In
both teaching and writing, I have long been engaged by cultural theory
construction and theoretical questions. From the early 1990s I regularly
taught about modernist and postmodernist theories of art: neo-Marxism, new
historicism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, structuralism and semiotics,
poststructuralism, feminism, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, queer
and transgender theory, media studies, and performance studies, among
others. Most recently, I taught a graduate seminar on theories of art history,
from Vasari and Winckelmann through Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, to
Franz Fanon, Olu Oguibe, and Judith Butler. All of this teaching has been
enormously rewarding, as I helped both undergraduates and graduate
students to understand the significance of theoretical discourse and its
application within historical, critical, and creative contexts.
My writing around theoretical issues has been more narrowly defined:
a range of books and articles on topics such as ethical aesthetics, the
purpose and function of the arts within the broader culture, and the
pedagogical role of theory in aesthetic education; and two books and other
publications on Russian moral philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin and the
relevance of his ideas to the visual arts.1 Bakhtin coined terms such as
answerability, heteroglossia, outsideness, chronotope, and unfinalizability
that are fruitful for understanding creative processes and artifacts in visual
culture. Other twentieth- and twenty-first century writers have also given

1
Among my articles is a short essay titled “The Uses of Theory” that examines
how Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of theoretism is useful within the arts, religious, and
theological studies (Haynes 2012).
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 9

us a diverse lexicon for describing cultural objects and experiences:

carceral continuum, chromophobia, cultural capital, docile body, floating
signifier, male gaze, ideological state apparatus, and intertextuality, to
name but a few. I have gained much from exploring these and other
concepts in my teaching and writing.
The materialist turn in contemporary theory is connected to what I
earlier called ethical aesthetics.2 We are surrounded by challenges and
dangers ranging from global climate change to ecological catastrophe and
extreme violence in communities all over the world. The arts and visual
culture more generally seem to be undergoing a process of rapid
dematerialization and (d)evolution, where strategies of appropriation,
pastiche, and remix dominate. Even if the arts remain a narrow zone of
creative activity within our bureaucratized and technologized cultures, we
need visual art that is responsive to the intersection of the material, ethical,
and aesthetic, and informed by an apocalyptic sensibility.
These statements directly reflect what I have learned through sustained
study of Mikhail Bakhtin’s moral philosophy. He taught me to think about
the interdependence of the material world with ethics and aesthetics. To
review his perspective: Bakhtin was thoroughly familiar with the Kantian
framework, which separates science, ethics, and aesthetics into three
autonomous spheres. He considered this separation a wrong move with, as
I believe, disastrous consequences. In a world of totally rationalized
science and technology, ethics limited to narrow definitions of “family
values” and the like, and aestheticized arts unconnected to life, it is no
wonder we are in the midst of quarrelsome debates about nuclear energy,
weapons, and waste, about genetic engineering, and about censorship and
freedom of speech. Ethical and material aesthetics do not hesitate to
engage questions about technology. Indeed, such a framework seeks to
reconnect the aesthetic and ethical, as well as the scientific and technical
domains of culture, to the material world. As Diana Coole and Samantha
Frost put it, new materialisms challenge some of the most fundamental
assumptions of the modern world, including, “its normative sense of the
human and its beliefs about human agency . . . [and] its material practices
such as the ways we labor on, exploit, and interact with nature” (4).
Ever more resistant viruses, increasing extinctions of species, ongoing
degradation of the land, water, and air, skyrocketing world populations,
and devastating wars on several continentsmost of us know all too well
this litany that defines contemporary life in the natural world. I do not


2
In the 1990s I published several articles that address ethical aesthetics, beginning
with a pithy essay, “The Technoseduction of the Artist” (Haynes 1996).
10 Chapter One

mean to be melodramatic or glib, but the conditions in which we live elicit

such an apocalyptic sensibility. Ethical aesthetics, materialist aesthetics,
and new materialisms seek to address these issues.
None of this means, however, that theory is always positive. Theory is
never neutral; it is an instrument of power wielded by those who have
power. At least until the last few decades, most influential theories have
been created by men of European descent. Late twentieth-century debates
about modernism and postmodernism, as well as current discussions about
material aesthetics, visual culture, globalization, postcolonial critique, and
identity and subjectivity, are part of the “race for theory,” to paraphrase
the title of an influential essay by African-American feminist Barbara
Christian (40-50). This “race” has left me weary. I find the particular
pretenses and forms of much theorizing tiresome, especially when theory
and practice do not interact to mutually transform each other.

What is theory actually for? How does theory act?

And for whom is it useful?
Thankfully, in its best articulations the materialist turn does not follow
in the problematic direction of many modernist and postmodernist
theories. The new materialisms touch many arenas, including the natural
sciences and humanistic disciplines, where theorists address pressing
global issues such as climate change and population growth, genetic
engineering, economics, politics, and compelling changes in technology.
Returning repeatedly to foundational questions about the nature of matter
and our place in the material world, scholars, theorists, artists, and activists
examine how “materiality is always something more than ‘mere’ matter:
an excess, force, vitality, relationality. . . ” (Coole and Frost 9). Matter is
always active and creative — productive and unpredictable. As I will
explore shortly, this view leads to new ontologies, where there can be no
definitive boundaries between the sentient and nonsentient, between the
material and spiritual. Analogous ideas have led scholars such as Manuel
Vásquez within the study of religion to develop a materialist theory of
religion based on themes of the body and embodiment, of ritual and
practice, and place-making, or what Vásquez calls “emplacement.”
New interpretations of matter and an understanding of the
interdependence of human agency in the material world were espoused in
the twentieth century by feminists. Focusing on experience and the
experiential, on the realities of oppression, on the body and embodiment,
and on the complexities of social reality in a technological era, feminists
have been at the forefront in developing what we now call materialist
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 11

theories. Especially, such feminist theories offer us new ways to question

the old dualisms of human agents who exploit nature for their own ends. I
will have more to say about this shortly. Feminist theorists have posited
ontologies of the new materialism that lie beyond the old dualisms of the
material and ideal, of the natural and human, of mind and body.
In what follows, I approach the uses of theory from three major
directions: the problems of what Bakhtin called “theoretism,” a
perspective on the so-called “new ontologies,” and further reflections on
the new materialisms and digital culture. In the distance, I see an
intersection — a crossroad of theories that defines our present moment.
This crossroad, like the theories that intersect here, is open-ended, uneven,
contingent, and in process of construction.

Theoretism
As Mikhail Bakhtin cogently argued, a theory that remains rooted in
formal or material concerns is only theoretism.3 Developed in the abstract,
as if the unique individual in particular situations did not exist, theories
alone cannot provide criteria for shaping scholarly and artistic practice. To
be effective, theories must be especially attentive to individual and cultural
difference, to the specificity of both the theorist and that which is
theorized. There is certainly a place for theory that uses convoluted
technical language, yet only if it is accessible can such theory become the
groundwork for creative work and cultural change.
Bakhtin used the term “theoretism” to describe his aversion to all such
unified and orderly structures or systems. Like his writing on other topics,
however, his critique of theoretism was neither sustained nor systematic.
He developed this critique early in his intellectual life, while still in his
20s. In Toward a Philosophy of the Act, he wrote: “Any kind of practical
orientation of my life within the theoretical world is impossible, it is
impossible to live in it, impossible to perform answerable deeds. In that
world I am unnecessary; I am essentially and fundamentally non-existent
in it. The theoretical world is obtained through an essential and
fundamental abstraction from the fact of my unique being” (Bakhtin 9).
In this statement Bakhtin made two interrelated assertions. On the one
hand, he was convinced that theory cannot provide the basis for
responsible action in the world, because it does not translate directly into


3
Bakhtin developed a strong critique of Formalist and Marxist material aesthetics
of his time, including dominant concepts of material, form, and content, as well as
ancillary concepts such as isolation (Haynes 1995, 108-120; Renfrew).
12 Chapter One

everyday life and experience. Too often, immersion in the theoretical takes
place at the expense of the practical and mundane aspects of life. On the
other hand, our specific acts or deeds do provide a basis for assessing what
is most meaningful and for creating an adequate orientation in life.
Nevertheless, his resistance to all forms of theoretism did not preclude
writing theoretical texts that are difficult to unpack.
Bakhtin’s view of theoretism may be best understood as a multistep
process and way of thinking. First, it abstracts what can be generalized
from specific human actions. Second, it considers that abstraction to be
whole and complete; then, third, theoretism develops a set of rules from
the abstraction. Fourth, norms are derived from this set of rules. As Gary
Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson summarize Bakhtin’s view: “Faith in
rules, norms, theories, and systems blinds us to the particular person and
situation, which is where morality resides” (1989 9). By abstracting rules,
norms, or theories from actual human actions and mistaking those theories
for the truth, the philosopher or theorist loses connection to the unique
human being and to real moral engagement. Bakhtin avoided systematic
analyses of individual texts and authors, which might have demonstrated
clearly what the implications of this model actually are in practice. He was
ultimately more concerned with poetics, or what Morson and Emerson
named “prosaics,” the messiness of everyday life.
Among diverse contemporary theories, feminism is a prosaic
philosophy that provides a powerful reference point for understanding
Bakhtin’s resistance to theory. Both Bakhtin’s writing and feminist theory,
including recent feminist materialist approaches,4 demonstrate that
theories can be used to understand systems (including the philosophical
constructs) that affect our lives. In this sense theory is not a totalizing, but
rather a partial and fragmentary process, as Michel Foucault and Gilles
Deleuze have also argued (Foucault and Deleuze). Theory is an especially
useful ally in political struggles because of its empowering effects. Theory
and practice are inextricable: practice can be seen as a set of relays from
one theoretical point to another. Theories encounter walls, which practice
helps one climb over. Theories are neither an expression nor translation of
practice; they can also be forms of practice. Theory may be likened to a
box of tools from which we take what we need. This theory toolbox might
hold flexible, useful, and contingent concepts that can be evaluated and
employed for their productivity and innovation (Leitch 10). The toolbox


4
See Hekman, especially its fine bibliography of feminist approaches in many
disciplines. Also, see Rooney, 139-153; Ahmed, 23-39; as well as books by
scholars such as Elizabeth Grosz and Iris Young.
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 13

concept is especially congenial for artists and other cultural workers, who
use a wide variety of tools for creative work.
But what does it really mean to suggest that theory is like a box of
tools? As part of her criticism of theory, Luce Irigaray pointed out long
ago that the “tool” is not a feminine category, since women do not have
tools (150). Or, in Audre Lorde’s classic language: “the master’s tools will
never dismantle the master’s house” (112). I continue to question these
controversial statements. What do we have if not tools? We have our
perceptions, intuitions, minds, and bodies, as well as material artifacts
such as paintbrushes, angle grinders, and laptop computers. How do we
use them? How do we exercise power with the aid of our “selves”? How
is the self itself constructed? Although I cannot answer these questions
adequately here, I think that theory, as one of the primary tools of radical
thought during the past decades, has helped to expose the hidden agendas
and biases of our language, cultural institutions, and art-making processes.
As I acknowledged earlier, a certain weariness with theory comes from
infatuation with the new — Christian’s race for theory. Waves of interest
in particular theorists crest, names become commonplace (“Bakhtin” is a
relevant example), we search for the newest ideas (new materialisms?),
attention turns to previously little known writers. A powerful consumer
ethos pervades the academic and art worlds, an ethos that drives processes
of global consumption, as well as often-oppressive political agendas.
Christian’s 1987 essay was, and remains, a powerful indictment of current
developments. As she wrote: “[T]heory has become a commodity which
helps determine whether we are hired or promoted in academic institutions
— worse, whether we are heard at all” (Christian 40). She criticizes the
monolithic and often monotheistic constructs that govern theory-making,
where “language as one form of pleasure is immediately restricted, and
becomes heavy, abstract, prescriptive, monotonous” (Christian 47).
Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the new materialist theories is the
concerted questioning of anthropocentric narratives developed during the
Enlightenment that have guided human views of the world as lifeless
object, at least within Euro-American contexts. To the extent that our
theories are grounded in the material (not so abstract), flexible (not so
prescriptive), and polyphonic (not so monologic), they will be creative
resources for our larger projects, including addressing intractable global
problems and sustaining sentient life on earth.
We must constantly ask: what remains viable and is genuinely useful
in contemporary theory? I am aware that all writers necessarily build on
the ideas, theories, and images of others. This is certainly true of my own
thinking and writing. What I criticize are the particular pretenses and
14 Chapter One

forms of much theorizing. I am not against theorizing as such, as should be

evident from my comments at the outset of this essay. However, theory
and practice must interact and mutually transform each other. I think this is
one of the main strengths of new materialist approaches, especially within
the arts and visual culture studies.5
Another pressing question arises at this point. How is it possible to use
our theories to transform ourselves, our relationships and social
institutions, while we and our theories are still changing? In this situation
we may need to embrace the very instability of analytical categories, using
that instability to reflect on our political realities. Such instabilities may
then be a resource for our thinking and action (Harding 18). As theories
change, the process of deconstructing dominant theories of the past must
also continue in order to suspend any pretense that we are producing truth
and univocal meaning. Challenging philosophical discourse is useful
because it remains the discourse on discourse, the theory of theories. We
may go back to it to try to find out what accounts for its power and its
position of mastery. We do not have to give ourselves over to a symbolic,
point-by-point interpretation of a philosopher’s ideas, but instead examine
the way grammar and syntax, metaphors and silences, operate in a
particular discourse (Irigaray 75-9). As Bakhtin seemed to understand, our
own methods and theories for this deconstructive process may elude
systematic definition.
To conclude this excursus on theory and theoretism, I emphasize again
that Bakhtin identified all theories isolated from action as the enemy.
Bakhtin was adamant about the limitations of theory, and we would do
well to heed his concerns as we develop new materialisms. Theories
cannot help us to gain practical orientation in life when developed in the
abstract, as if the unique individual in particular situations did not exist.
This abstract quality means that theories alone cannot provide criteria that
would shape one’s life in the world of action and practice (Bakhtin 9).
Constructing theoretical frameworks and analyzing the theories of others,
therefore, requires critical self-awareness and discernment about the
interdependence of all things, including theory and practice.

“New” Ontologies?
As part of my engagement with theory, I have been thinking about
epistemology, ontology, and axiology for many years, especially as these
philosophical categories relate to the emergence of digital culture and the


5
For a fine example of what this looks like, see the essays in Barrett and Bolt.
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 15

transformation of everyday life through all kinds of mobile devices. Each

of us stands at a unique junction of epistemological, axiological, and
ontological concerns that direct our lives.
In my view, ontology is the study of what Michael Heim once called
the “relative reality of things,” differences between the real and the unreal.
Ontology raises questions about the nature of the self who stands in the
world and questions about the nature of our world or the worlds we
inhabit. The so-called “new ontologies” of contemporary writers such as
Manuel de Landa, Graham Harman, and Andrew Pickering have prompted
my further reflection about these categories as a special kind of theorizing.
De Landa’s ontology of the social originated in his reading of Gilles
Deleuze and has the goal of conveying a sense of the irreducible social
complexity of the world. Related efforts to politicize ontology emphasize
networks, rhizomes, and non-hierarchy — a kind of democratic universe
of objects that includes neutrinos and stars, palm trees and armies, as in
Graham Harman’s writing. Andrew Pickering articulates an open and
pluralist ontology based on embodiment and becoming.
Pickering’s ideas are enormously generative for those of us studying
visual cultures. In The Cybernetic Brain, for instance, Pickering raises a
set of ontological questions about what the world is like, about what sort
of “entities” populate it, and about how they, and we, engage with one
another. He suggests that an adequate ontology refuses, first, to separate
people and things, and second, that its grasp of time is evolutionary rather
than causal. As he put it, we should understand these two features as
thoroughly interconnected: “the reciprocal coupling of people and things
happens in time, in a process that I called . . . ‘mangling’” (Pickering 19).
Pickering’s idea of the mangle highlights “an always infinite horizon of
constructive engagement with the world” (Pickering 406 note 8).6
In a curious way, Bakhtin’s concept of unfinalizability anticipates
Pickering’s notion of mangling, and may be a fruitful addition to the
vocabulary of new materialists. For many, Bakhtin was a frustrating
philosopher and literary critic, for he seldom provided fully satisfactory
definitions or discussions of the implications of his ideas. Plus, there is the
ongoing vexing question of the so-called “disputed texts” and Bakhtin’s
relationship to members of the Bakhtin Circle.7 Nevertheless, his ideas
were, and remain, generative.

6
I find it noteworthy that Susan Hekman integrates his notion of mangling into her
own feminist analyses in Material of Knowledge.
7
There are “many Bakhtins,” as the contentious scholarship about his work
demonstrates. Bakhtin criticized the formalist and materialist perspectives of his
own time, and was neither Formalist nor Marxist. Further, Bakhtin was
16 Chapter One

Bakhtin believed that nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the
world, that the worlds we inhabit are open and free, where everything
always remains in the future (1981 166). Works of literature and art are
ultimately unfinalizable, but this is also an intrinsic condition of our daily
lives, as Pickering also understood. Ultimately, the unrepeatability and
open-endedness of creative acts make personal and cultural transformation
possible.
According to Bakhtin, creativity is ubiquitous and unavoidable, and, as
noted earlier, it should not be separated from one’s responsibility toward
others in the world. What can ever be fully finalized? There is always a
tentative quality to one’s work, one’s action, and to life itself.
Unfinalizability therefore has at least two distinct levels: the ways we need
others in order to finalize the self; and the ultimate unfinalizability of all
things, events, and persons. Art and life are ultimately open-ended. Even
though a person’s life is finalized in death, that person’s work lives on to
be extended and developed by others, an insight we certainly understand in
relation to theorists of the past. The creative process, too, is unfinalizable,
except insofar as an artist or writer says arbitrarily, “I stop here.”
Unfinalizability gives us a way to speak about the problems of
representing the changing world through the lens of our diverse and ever-
changing subjectivities — Pickering’s “infinite horizon of constructive
engagement.”
Works of art can indeed serve as emblems of theory, as the editors of
this volume assert. Bakhtin’s unfinalizability, as well as the open pluralist
ontology that Pickering describes, can be seen in the arts — in examples
such as Brian Eno’s music, Christopher Alexander’s architecture and
writing, and in interactive theatre and sculpture. I see a fascinating
example of such ontological engagement in the 2010 Museum of Modern
Art retrospective of Marina Abramoviü. She became the first performance
artist to be so honored at MOMA.
Born in 1946 in Serbia, Marina Abramoviü began her career in the
early 1970s. Along with artists such as Rachel Rosenthal and Carolee
Schneemann, she is one of the grandmothers of performance art. Her
earliest works were sound environments and photographs, but by 1973 she
had begun formal performances, many of which lasted up to eight hours.
In 1976 she began a 12-year collaboration with the artist Ulay (Frank Uwe
Laysiepen) that ended with the 90-day Great Wall Walk, where each artist
traversed 1,553 miles to meet in the center of China’s Great Wall. After a

surprisingly apolitical, especially given the politics of his time. The fact that so
many intellectuals of his generation were sent to the gulags, as well as his own
illness and frailty, contributed to his choices (Haynes 1995).
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 17

hiatus of a few years, Abramoviü returned to creating performances and

videos. In general, her work explores the interrelationships of performer
and audience, the limits of the body, including working with pain, and
possibilities for working with the mind in complex situations.
Abramoviü’s MOMA exhibition, The Artist Is Present, took place from
mid-March through May 2010. During this period, she sat in a chair for
over 700 hours, first at a table in the museum atrium where visitors would
come, one at a time, to sit facing her. Near the end of April she had the
table removed in order to simplify the setting. This work of art was, as
Abramoviü said, “about stillness and about literally doing nothing and
being in the present.”8 She had earlier created silent durational
performances involving time. For instance, she and Ulay performed
Nightsea Crossing 22 times between 1981 and 1987, for periods ranging
from one to 17 days. Nightsea Crossing also involved extended sitting
across from each other (often at a table), where each performer watched
the rise and fall of presence and the activity of consciousness.
The Artist Is Present invited viewers to open up to the present moment,
even while confronting discomfort, pain, and fear — Pickering’s
mangling. The table, which was a central presence for more than half of
the performance, provides a specific example of Pickering’s concept — a
reciprocal coupling of people and things in time. One can also see the
relevance of another of Bakhtin’s innovative terms here. The chronotope
describes the time-space nexus in which life exists and creative interaction
is possible. As Bakhtin explored in his long essay “Forms of Time and of
the Chronotope,” there is no experience outside of space and time, both of
which always change (Bakhtin 1981, 84-258). Subjectivity dictates that an
artist or writer creates objects that are always constituted differently. All
conditions of experience are determined by space and time, which are
themselves variable, and this means that every cultural artifact exists in a
unique chronotope. Within any situation there can be many different
chronotopes, values, and beliefs, and these derive from actual social
relations. The Artist Is Present made these ideas palpable. With its focus
on the body and embodiment, Marina Abramoviü’s work directly
challenges the viewer to reflect about the real, material, and ontological
dimensions of human existence.
Beyond this, the sum of Abramoviü’s oeuvre visualizes another of
Bakhtin’s longest held convictions: that self and other always exist in


8
From interview transcribed by Julia Kaganskiy, accessed January 29, 2012, URL:
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/06/03/marina-abramovic-the-artist-
speaks. A fine catalogue of this performance is also available (Biesenbach).
18 Chapter One

relationship, interdependently. About Dostoevsky Bakhtin had noted: “He

asserts the impossibility of solitude, the illusory nature of solitude. The
very being of man… is the deepest communion. To be means to
communicate… I cannot manage without another, I cannot become myself
without another (in mutual reflection and mutual acceptance)” (Bakhtin
287). Abramoviü quite literally has given form to Bakhtin’s ideas about
solitude and relationship.
While Bakhtin’s language seems religious, what interests me here is
the way it brings us back to the ontological dimensions of materialist and
ethical aesthetics. Self and other, human being and world, artist and
audience: each word in these pairs exists in a thoroughly interdependent
relationship with the other. Such an ontology is not technically “new,” but
my point is that in the twenty-first century we are called to write theory
and to create out of such an awareness and appreciation of our profound
interdependence with others.

Material Aesthetics and Digital Culture

What might a fully ethical and materialist aesthetics actually look like
for the artist, historian, and theorist of visual culture in the digital age? In
the mid-1990s, Sherry Turkle defined three models of cultural criticism
that I still find relevant for answering this question (Turkle). Analyzing the
utopian, utilitarian, and apocalyptic aspirations of new media art provides
a useful interpretative lens.
An artist driven by utopian aspirations might articulate a general
optimism about technology’s role in our lives: the idea that we can solve
our problems by increasing our engagement. From this point of view, the
internet and cloud technologies are presently the place for the expansion of
participatory democracy and community. Especially as issues of access are
worked out, these media will transform opportunities for all of us. Artists
working in this mode may advocate the employment of evolving
technologies to build new communities, to extend the range of human
perception and performance, and to define new notions of the self in relation
to others. Margot Lovejoy’s online projects exemplify this approach.
A distinguished historian of new media, Lovejoy has lectured widely,
written about technology and visual culture, and her installation and web
works have been exhibited internationally. Her Turns (2002) and Confess
(2009-11) projects exemplify the ways digital media are influencing and
changing the notions of the individual self within a social context. In
Turns Lovejoy collected personal stories and turning points in individuals’
lives, represented in her installation and on the original website with
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 19

pebble- and shard-like shapes that could be selected and opened. Visitors
could browse stories according to various categories, contribute their own
narratives, and reorganize the stories through filters such as gender, time,
or age. Seen through these relational filters and links, one’s own story
could be understood as part of a social matrix.
According to Lovejoy’s own description, the Confess project was a
“participatory on-line group therapy project as well as an archive of
personal narratives.”9 When I saw the installation in New York City in
2011, Lovejoy had created a dramatic gallery space with hanging audio
sculptures that one could pull down in order to listen to others’ narratives,
as well as kiosks for submitting one’s own confessions anonymously. The
viewer/listener was free to explore a database of others’ confessions,
sorted by themes such as secrets, betrayal, and violence.
Over many years of watching her art evolve, I have been impressed by
how Lovejoy’s installation and performance works exemplify utopian
aspirations about the self and/in the world. A primary effect of the
proliferation of digital and social media can be described as isolation; and
most of us do not thrive in isolation. These devices and media are,
paradoxically, about separation. Our minds are separated from our bodies.
We are physically separated from one another. We are, in the end, separated
from the non-technological “natural” world. But Lovejoy’s work literally
embodies a new level, albeit temporary, of connection and relationship. She
implicitly asks the viewer to reflect on what it means to be, and to be
connected to others, in virtual space. Lovejoy’s work highlights the
question of what the self is and what it is becoming. The self does not have
a center, but exists in different worlds and plays unique roles
simultaneously. As far as I know, Lovejoy never called her installations
materialist, but her work exists at the intersection of the material and
virtual worlds.
In an interview I conducted with Lovejoy in 2005, she commented that
as women artists get older, it is hard for their work to be shown if they
have not been “anointed” within the art world (Haynes 175-84). Under the
forces of globalization, many artists from diverse cultures are joining the
art world fray. When work such as Lovejoy’s is not material and saleable,
the artist must depend upon websites, artists’ books, and digital
photographs. The question of who one’s audience is and how to reach that
audience is huge.10


9
http://rhizome.org/discuss/42617/, accessed August 17, 2014.
10
During the final months of preparing this essay for publication, I was not only
unable to access the various websites that highlight Lovejoy’s performances and
20 Chapter One

The digital and net art of Mark Amerika takes a less utopian and more
utilitarian approach in establishing new ground rules for virtual relationships
via social media. As an ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is based on the
premise that the rightness or wrongness of an action or idea is determined
by its usefulness in promoting the most happiness and pleasure for those
involved. From this perspective our world, characterized by engagement
with highly entertaining and seductive technologies, is a utilitarian paradise.
A person driven by a utilitarian perspective emphasizes the practical side of
this new way of life. So much information is available to us so much more
easily than it used to be. We engage in research from our homes; artists
create their own online communities; and curators create their own ideal
museums.
Mark Amerika and his collaborators have been proactive in imagining
and creating new types of net art, including the Museum of Glitch
Aesthetics, which was initiated as part of an arts “olympiad” during the
London 2012 Olympics. According to Amerika, this museum “tells the
story of The Artist 2.0, an online persona whose personal mythology and
body of digital artworks are rapidly being canonized into the annals of art
history.”11 The museum highlights the artist’s commitment to “glitch
aesthetics,” an approach that online curator Margot Kittler describes as “an
alternative dream world of inclusion where a utopian collective, comprised
of networks of like-minded artists and intellectuals, use all available new
media technologies to intervene in and/or disrupt global capitalist flows.”12
The website for the museum features a rich and provocative, even
humorous, combination of digital media, including photography, animation,
and video, live performance and installation, electronic music and spoken
word, films made with a mobile phone, 3D game design and conceptual
writing.
Amerika is the author of many books, two of which address theories of
new media and emerging forms of remix writing and art. He describes his
writing, which cannot be separated from his digital art, as “improvisational,
nomadic, surfing on the elliptical edge of its own possibility” (Amerika xvi).
An artist who performs internationally, Amerika also recognizes the
problem that Lovejoy describes: how to survive in a global art world. As
an active cultural publisher of the Alt-X Online Network, he has been able

installations, but also unable to reach her via email. Digital media are powerful, but
also temporary and impermanent, like life itself. A 230-page book outlining her
work is available at http://www.margotlovejoy.net/.
11
Amerika’s diverse writings, net art, and video projects, including links to the
Glitch Museum, are available at markamerika.com.
12
Kittler is quoted on the home page of the Museum at glitchmuseum.com.
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 21

to support hundreds of scholars and artists in further developing their

audiences. He believes in and chooses to work within the “gift economy,”
a term that was well defined by Lewis Hyde in the 1980s.13 As Amerika
wrote: “This means that I have gone out of my way to give away my work
for free over the Net. I also try to invest my valuable time in finding ways
to make the best work being developed by my peers freely available over
the Net” (179). We might ask, how are new technologies reshaping
individual and communal identity? Through such utilitarian aspirations
and attempts to promote the wellbeing of others. Yes, the individual self
has a role, but the work of digital artists such as Mark Amerika and
Margot Kittler emphasizes the interdependent self in relation to material
and virtual worlds.
The artist as radical ecologist may be utopian and pragmatic, but this
artist has a decidedly more apocalyptic vision. To be a radical ecologist
means paying attention to how all things and events are connected. It
means asking if it is possible to modify individual and cultural
consciousness. It does not mean articulating ironically, as performance art
pioneer Rachel Rosenthal did in filename: FUTURFAX (1992), that “We
are all waiting to die with time on our hands.” Many contemporary artists
work in this arena, but I see an especially powerful example in the work of
Bjorn Melhus.
Melhus premiered his installation, Still Men Out There, in 2003 in
Frankfurt. Subsequently, it has been installed in venues including Istanbul
in 2009 and Denver, Colorado, in 2011. Using 18 television monitors, it is
a light and sound installation that brings dramatic attention to how cinema
conditions our responses to war. Melhus presents the spectacle of war
without images, however, instead using soundtracks from American
commercial films such as Platoon (directed by Oliver Stone, 1986), the
Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) and We Were Soldiers (Randall
Wallace, 2002). The soundtracks include speeches and heroic soliloquys,
marching troops and gunfire, as well as nostalgic moments of love. The
result is a dramatic and potent statement about the consequences of war. In
Still Men Out There, the material, aesthetic, and ethical come together
seamlessly.
Listening in a darkened room at the Denver Art Museum, watching the
light change as the screens flashed, I was reminded of Susan Sontag’s
2003 Regarding the Pain of Others. This book, written shortly before


13
The term was defined by Lewis Hyde in The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic
Life of Property (Random House, 1983), reissued more recently with the subtitle,
Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage, 2007).
22 Chapter One

Sontag died in 2004, asks the question that Virginia Woolf posed in her
1938 Three Guineas: “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?”
Sontag is not sanguine. Analyzing the long history of war photography,
she notes that such images may give rise to calls for peace, or cries for
revenge, or, sadly, bemused awareness that terrible things happen. In our
era of information overload, she reminds us, the photograph may help us
to apprehend something or memorize it. But it is not as simple as this, for
images of war and human suffering are so ubiquitous and widely
disseminated that many of us have lost the ability to feel. In our society of
the spectacle, she says: “We don’t get it. We truly can’t imagine what it is
like. We can’t imagine how dreadful, how terrifying war is — and how
normal it becomes” (Sontag 125-26). Without images and without creating
a spectacle, Melhus’s Still Men Out There makes real the dreadful
suffering and inhumanity of war. What is the relationship of actual
phenomenological reality to virtual worlds? To call Melhus a radical
ecologist is a way of acknowledging his creation of a material
environment, using digital means, which makes an enormously effective
ethical statement about the state of human relations in the physical world.
My own apocalypticism still rages. Will the contingency and fragility
of life be of but fading significance if we anticipate a future in air-
conditioned rooms, where all of our interactions are conducted through
screens? I, for one, agree with Herbert Read, who wrote in a now obscure
essay that only those serving an apprenticeship to nature should be trusted
with machines (Read 357).14 This exhortation may be thoroughly utopian,
for who has the time to enter into such an apprenticeship? Nevertheless,
matter matters, as theorists of the new materialism remind us.

By Way of Conclusion
One thing should be clear by now: I am convinced that emerging artists
and scholars should study theories of visual culture that have helped to
define so many categories within the arts. Among contemporary theories,
the new materialisms that are the subject of this book can guide us to
question old assumptions and values that guide creative work. Artists in
particular may be engaged by trying to understand how such social or
aesthetic theories can aid them in developing and interpreting their own
work. Here, I would mention the work of two emerging artists and one
young scholar. Artist Amber Dawn Cobb devoted tremendous energy and
time to studying Julia Kristeva’s difficult concept of the abject. Over the


14
Read’s prophetic essay was originally given as a talk at Yale University in 1946.
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 23

course of a year, this study helped her to find both a verbal language and
new ways of giving form in her art to powerful formative experiences of
childhood abuse and addiction. Her cognitive maps or cluster diagrams are
exemplary explorations of how to link what she was learning with her
creative process. The installations that emerged were challenging to look
at and, for some viewers, enigmatic and nearly impossible to unpack.15
Painter Andrew Williams has spoken to me about how certain aesthetic
theories have been formative for him, especially Kant’s discussion on the
nature and perception of beauty, and Bakhtin’s statement that art-for-
life’s-sake is preferable to art-for-art’s sake. “I more clearly see my place
within a post-post-modern art establishment that is as fragmented as
Duchamp’s Bride Stripped Bare. It is an art world that seems to revel in
esoterica and originality at the expense of genuine human experience. In
spite of an overall relativism, lines are still drawn in the sand, loyalties
stated, deals struck.”16 His clear view of the politics of the museum-gallery
system resonates with what I noted earlier.
Scholar Katherine Morrison is grappling with other issues I have
mentioned: “We can talk all day (and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing)
about aesthetics, postmodern theory, semiotics… but all the while,
marginalized people around the world are creating art that speaks to their
very real, immediate struggle. It would be critical hubris to elide the
identity politics driving these works.”17 She sees visual culture studies as
potentially fruitful for overcoming the limitations of contemporary art
historical practices.
I understand Katherine’s enthusiasm. The forces of globalization
present opportunities for encounters with radically diverse concepts and
applications of theory, but there are also dangers here related to the
consumer ethos. Teaching theory, and especially the new materialisms, we
must address diverse cultures outside of Europe and North America,
including the Middle East and across the African and Asian continents.
But whose theory will aid us? This is certainly challenging for those of us
steeped in European-based philosophy, aesthetics, and theory, but it is not
impossible. I, for one, have chosen to engage deeply with traditions in
central Africa, India, and the Himalayas — with the greatest possible
sensitivity to the material and theoretical norms and values of those
cultures.


15
Cobb’s work can be seen at www.amberdawncobb.com.
16
Personal communication, December 2012.
17
Personal communication, December 2012.
24 Chapter One

This essay is based on the central conviction that the new materialist
theories must be especially attentive to individual and cultural difference,
to the uniqueness, particularity, or specificity of both the theorist and that
which is theorized. Further, our theories should be united with pragmatic
strategies for action in the world. Thus, to paraphrase writer bell hooks,
the broad purpose of studying and understanding theory is to provide a
structure of analysis that synthesizes what is most visionary in contemporary
discourse with strategies of resistance that aid us in our struggles for
personal, social, and artistic liberation (Hooks 35). In order to do this,
theories should be written and presented in ways that are accessible to all,
including those without privileged educations. There is certainly a place
for theory that uses convoluted technical language, yet only if it is
accessible can the new materialisms become the groundwork for creative
work and, in the future, for social change.
All of us who are developing and traversing the terrain of art history,
the visual arts, and visual studies should be conversant with the history of
philosophy and with contemporary theory. I have tried to show here some
of the possibilities for thinking about new materialist theories in relation to
the arts and visual culture. Their interpretive power lies in the ways that
materialisms may help us to overcome the dualisms of mind and body, self
and other, nature and the human world.

Final Words
I began this essay with a conundrum that is ultimately unsolvable: I
remain committed to theory, even as I experience profound fatigue with its
commoditization. I end it with a few words from Mikhail Bakhtin. At the
1995 Bakhtin Centennial Conference in Moscow, Russia, I had the good
fortune to be part of a large audience that heard, for the first time, the
recording of an interview made by Victor Duvakin in early 1973, when the
ailing Bakhtin was 78 years old. Sitting in a large auditorium at Moscow
State Pedagogical University, we were privileged to hear the final minutes
of the final session of Duvakin’s 18 hours of recordings, during which
Bakhtin recited verses from Goethe, Rilke, Pushkin, and Baudelaire. His
last words bespeak the humility that characterized Bakhtin’s presence and
personal style: “Excuse me for having been so incoherent all this time”
(Emerson 33). May we cultivate such modesty in our own theory
construction.
 New Materialism? Or, The Uses of Theory 25

Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. “Imaginary Prohibitions: Some Preliminary Remarks on the
Founding Gestures of the New Materialism.” European Journal of
Women’s Studies. 2008. 23-39.
Amerika, Mark. Meta/data: A Digital Poetics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press. 2007.
—. Remixthebook. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2011.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays of M. M.
Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1981.
—. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and tr. Caryl Emerson.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1984.
—. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Eds. Vadim Liapunov and Michael
Holquist. Tr. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1993.
Barrett, Estelle and Barbara Bolt, eds. Carnal Knowledge: Towards a New
Materialism through the Arts. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
2013.
Biesenbach, Klaus. Marina Abramoviü: The Artist is Present. New York:
Museum of Modern Art. 2010.
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory.” In New Black Feminist
Criticism, 1985-2000. Eds. Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene
R. Keizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2007. 40-50.
Coole, Diana and Samantha Frost, eds. New Materialisms: Ontology,
Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2010.
Emerson, Caryl. The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. 1997.
Foucault, Michel and Gilles Deleuze. “Intellectuals and Power.” In
Language, Countermemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews.
Ed. Donald Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1977.
Harding, Sandra. “The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist
Theory.” In Feminist Theory in Practice and Process. Eds. Micheline
R. Malson et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989.
Haynes, Deborah. Bakhtin and the Visual Arts. New York: Cambridge
University Press. 1995.
—. “The Technoseduction of the Artist.” In Techno-Seduction. New York:
The Cooper Union. 1996. 15-16.
—. “Interrogating New Media: A Conversation with Joyce Cutler-Shaw
and Margot Lovejoy.” In Ethics and The Visual Arts. Eds. Elaine King
and Gail Levin. New York: Allworth Press. 2006. 175-84.
26 Chapter One

—. “The Uses of Theory.” ARTS 23. 2012. 32-37.

Heim, Michael. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford
University Press. 1993.
Hekman, Susan. The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2010.
hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston:
South End Press. 1989.
Hyde, Lewis. Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. New York:
Vintage. 2007.
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Tr. Catherine Porter. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press. 1985.
Leitch, Vincent. Living with Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2008.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY:
Crossing Press. 1984.
Morson, Gary Saul and Caryl Emerson, eds. Rethinking Bakhtin:
Extensions and Challenges. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press. 1989.
Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a
Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1990.
Pickering, Andrew. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2010.
Read, Herbert. Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism. London: Faber
and Faber. 1962.
Renfrew, Alastair. Towards a New Material Aesthetics: Bakhtin, Genre
and the Fates of Literary Theory. London: Legenda. 2006.
Rooney, Ellen. “Discipline and Vanish: Feminism, the Resistance to
Theory, and the Politics of Cultural Studies.” In Women's Studies on
the Edge. Ed. Joan Wallach Scott. Durham: Duke University Press.
2008. 139-153.
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux. 2003.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New
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Vásquez, Manuel A. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2011.
 CHAPTER TWO

NOTES ON AUTOCATALYTIC AESTHETICS:

SECOND-ORDER COMPLEXITY
AND INFORMATION-ENTROPIC ATTRACTORS

JASON HOELSCHER

The passage from potentiality to act, from language to the word, from the
common to the proper, comes about every time as a shuttling in both
directions along a line of sparkling alternation on which common nature
and singularity, potentiality and act change roles and interoperate.
—Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community

One very important principle is that remarkably complicated things can

result when simple rules act on simple input. This is especially true when
each output serves as input to another round of computation. With
appropriate rules, the longer such a repetitive process operates the more
complex the output may become.
—John E. Mayfield, The Engine of Complexity: Evolution as Computation

Introduction
This paper proposes a model of art and art theory based on a dynamic
equilibrium between flux and stasis—on the tension between creative
exploration and discursive limitations. Since the topic is a large one, the
focus will primarily be on U.S. art since the 1960s, an era when the
discursive complexity of the art world became itself complex enough to
explicitly make note of its own discursive complexity. I believe such
second-order complexity—a recursive transposition of art discourse into
art discourse—catalyzed a self-organizational reconfiguration of art and
theory, a shift from a relatively closed, teleological framework to an open,
iterative and complex adaptive system predicated on cyclic adaptations
and expansions of local possibility space. According to this suggestion,
contemporary art and theory are shown to be autocatalytic, information-
28 Chapter Two

entropic dissipative structures, operative within a flux of microtheories

held in tension between novelty and ergodic self-similarity.
The mesh of ideas here presented can be dense at times; accordingly,
each concept will be defined as it becomes the focal point for any given
section. In sequence, the core ideas to be presented are: complex adaptive
systems and second-order complexity; the inversion of priority from
theory as an epiphenomenon of art to art as a way to locate elements of
theory; the adjacent possible as a mechanism by which art non-
deterministically evolves through exploration of its local aesthetic and
conceptual conditions; the state of dynamic equilibrium by which this
exploratory drive is held in check by ergodic tendencies that settle into
attractor basins of habit and precedent around strange attractors; and a
conception of microtheory and its artistic instantiations as information-
entropic dissipative structures—dynamic entities in a field of feedback
relations that autocatalytically shed indeterminate experience prompts into
their local discursive environment. While the texts elaborated upon herein
come more from information theory and complex systems research than from
philosophy per se, the underlying thought processes occupy a zone where a
Deleuzian mesh of flows, becomings and serial de/reterritorializations overlap
somewhat Heideggerian feedback processes of becoming by which entities
take part in, modify, and are modified according to interactions with their
larger context. Here, art serially modifies its discursive environment and is
in turn modified itself, with a foundation grounded less in concrete
materiality than in a coevolutionary, processual materiality based on
relationship, difference and possibility.

Discourse Recursivity
The year 1964 marked a transition in the awakening of the art world to
its own artistic and theoretic complexity. That January New York Times art
critic Brian O’Doherty, writing of Frank Stella’s stripe paintings, noted that
much of modern art “is a matter of a simple stimulus throwing a switch on
the vast invisible superstructure of ideas the artist’s ideal audience has to
carry around with it” (125). Similarly, in December of that same year,
Arthur Danto described the importance of theory in what he called “the
artworld,” introducing that term while noting of Warhol’s Brillo Box:

Without theory, one is unlikely to see it as art, and in order to see it as part of
the artworld one must have mastered a good deal of artistic theory… It could
not have been art fifty years ago. But then there could not have been,
everything being equal, flight insurance in the Middle Ages… The world has
to be ready for certain things, the artworld no less than the real one. (479)
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 29

I believe in combination these statements indicate a key moment in the

art world’s increasing awareness of its own theoretical and discursive
complexity. From that point on, discursive information about art would be
joined by discursive information about the discursive information about
art, prompting the emergence of an autocatalytic feedback system in
which the conceptual, textual and theoretical spaces around and about an
artwork became as information-rich, dense and unfinalizable as the
artwork itself.
For Danto circa 1964, the increased importance of theory in the
constitution of a thing as “art” had changed the art community—populated
by artists, gallerists and critics with a common set of interests—into an art
world, constituted by members with a shared, specialized language operative
only within very specific institutional and informational contexts. While
such specialized languages have long been part of art, it was the recursive
effects of art world participants’ becoming acutely aware of, and openly
articulating, the constitutive importance of such discourse that I believe
prompted the dramatic changes that have taken place since the 1960s.
Though art has always been complex, such second-order complexity—the
art world’s increasingly complex awareness of itself as a complex
system—changed the parameters dramatically. Discursive awareness of
awareness prompted a feedback effect that became a self-amplifying
information source in and of itself, intensifying in density with each
iteration: the more information generated by and about the art world, the
more complex the art world became, increasing further the amount of
information necessary to clarify and define itself, and so on.
In chemistry an autocatalytic process is one in which the byproduct of
a chemical reaction is itself a catalyst for additional chemical reactions; an
autocatalytic art theory, then, is one in which a perpetual articulation of
idea-complexes emerges in relation to, is prompted by and in turn
prompts, additional idea complexes. The relationships between these
systems become increasingly intensified, eventually being directed as
much toward one another as to the referent around which they initially
formed. A variation of art for art’s sake—what we might call art theory for
art for art theory’s sake—these autoreflexive, recombinant, and autocatalytic
qualities both undergird and reflect the increasing specialization, pluralism
and feedback loops seen in the decades since, leading to an era of the art
microtheory—analogous to the shift from metanarratives to micronarratives
as described by Jean-François Lyotard.
To better explore these ideas I propose updating Danto’s notion of the
artworld—a term articulated when the art scene was more hegemonic and
its interconnectivity less dense—by proposing an art intersystem, a term
30 Chapter Two

that better captures the heterogeneity, dynamic equilibrium, inherited

traits, and recursive causalities of the contemporary, global art scene. I will
define the art intersystem as a system of relations between systems; no
single system takes precedence over any other, being instead a mesh of
syntagmatically positioned systems that operate within a conceptually
reciprocal, relational environment that evolves and expands by exploring
the parameters of its local possibility space. This latter notion of
possibility space can be clarified by way of what theoretical biologist
Stuart Kauffman has called the adjacent possible, the range of potential
“next step” areas a system—whether evolutionary, technological, social or
economic—can expand into or reconfigure based on its current resources
and conditions.
As applied to art and theory, breakthroughs in adjacent possibility
space prompt the crystallization and dispersion of new styles and
discourses. This occurs by way of aesthetic transposition, the transfer and
recombination of aesthetic experience prompts such as art forms, ideas and
theories. In genetics the term transposon refers to a short DNA sequence
that splices copies of itself into other areas of the genome. Such
genotextual transposition modifies, and in some cases mutates, subsequent
behaviors and expressions—chemically in a genetic sense, and
epistemologically or discursively in an art theoretical sense. Similar to
what Boris Groys, writing of Google keyword searches, has called the
emancipation of words from grammar (322), transpositional microtheory
mutates quickly and contingently upon prevailing conditions, shifting
between contexts without settling on any distinct position for very long as
it ergodically explores its local phase space.

From Complexity to Complexity2

While a number of factors contributed to the emergence of art world
second-order complexity in the 1960s, prominent among them would be
the differential tension between a top-down discourse based on
disciplinary limits and autonomy, and a bottom-up discourse of reciprocal
autonomy predicated on a loosening of boundaries. By this I mean the
difference between what complex systems researchers call an abstraction-
based model, in which the actors within a system operate according to a
set of overarching principles, and an agent-based system, in which
conceptual boundaries are less important than the relatively independent
actions of the individual agents. Here, as complex adaptive systems
researchers John Miller and Scott Page phrase it,
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 31

the underlying elements of the model [must be] flexible enough so that
new, unanticipated features naturally arise within the model. Some of the
most interesting frameworks for emergence are those that create general
and flexible structures that get filled in during the course of the
computation […] Useful models arise when we impose just enough
instructions to get objects of interest, but not so many as to preimpose a
solution. (Miller and Page 69-70)

Such an art world marks a transition from a discourse of controlling

ideas, such as those seen in Greenbergian medium specificity, to one in
which individual agents or ideas define that system’s direction with a
higher degree of autonomy—a transition from working under a particular
discourse to working within the condition of discursivity itself.
Complex systems tend to possess highly fluid boundary interfaces
between internal and external states, thus being notoriously nonlinear and
unpredictable, since even the smallest inputs can reconfigure the behavior
of the total system in unpredictable ways. Such systems are composed of
“diverse actors who dynamically interact with one another [and their
environment] awash in a sea of feedbacks” (Miller and Page 7). The result
of such a system is that “agent interactions become highly nonlinear, the
system becomes difficult to decompose, and complexity ensues” (Miller
and Page 10).
A sign of the robustness of a complex systems approach to art is that it
exhibits what is known as scale invariance, being applicable not just to the
macroscale of an art world or art intersystem but also to individual
artworks. For example, while it would be possible to catalog the colors and
Cartesian grid coordinates of each individual brushstroke and drip of an
Elizabeth Peyton portrait, such a project would yield little insight into the
content, image, or communicative potential of the painting itself. It is only
the integrative effect of seeing the brushstrokes in their relative positions
that yields a complex, emergent phenomenon when the viewer’s brain
resolves the aggregate brushstroke inputs into a recognizable image of a
person. Such an effect illustrates how part of “the innate appeal of
emergence is the surprise it engenders on the part of the observer … in
which the local behavior seems so entirely disconnected from the resulting
aggregate as to have arisen by magic” (Miller and Page 45).
As for complex approaches to art at a macroscale, the multiplicity of
inputs—the “sea of feedbacks” described above by Miller and Page—that
contribute to the formation of the art world range from the networks of
artists, galleries, collectors and critics on the one hand, to specialized
theories and discourses on the other, and the journals, magazines, books
and conferences by which those theories and discourses are spread. As the
32 Chapter Two

network density of these feedback mechanisms increased dramatically

across the 1950s and early 1960s, the process concretized and intensified
when critics like O’Doherty and Danto made note of that very density. Art
at that point, I believe, underwent a transition in which its complexity
scaled up to a recursive, second-order awareness of its own complexity. A
further stage of this process occurred when artists and critics began
explicitly to abstract outward a level, considering not just individual artists
but the discursive possibilities and constraints of the context within which
they worked. Beyond just working through the influence of one’s
predecessors, an overt awareness of one’s controlling narratives and
discourses marks a stage altogether more complex—akin to the difference
between merely being aware versus being aware of one’s very awareness.
It is this latter approach, a second-order complexity in which the
discursive dynamics of the art world became a noteworthy subject in and
of itself, that catalyzed a phase transition from an art scene of artists,
galleries and artworks, to an art intersystem of feedback loops and
recursive, relational exploration. Accordingly, from the mid-1960s
onward, the subject matters of art and theory have become as much about
the discursive and genotextual conditions of art and theory itself as about
subjects based on external reference. The agent-based art world of second-
order complexity here proposed suggests new ways to consider underlying
mechanisms of not only the subsequent postmodernist focus on semiotics,
coding and double-coding, but also of today’s recombinatory “post-
postmodern” art intersystem predicated on mash-ups and hybridizations of
free-floating stylistic and discursive elements.

The Vast Invisible Art World Superstructure

Brian O’Doherty’s description of the modern artwork—circa 1964—as
“a simple stimulus throwing a switch on the vast invisible superstructure
of ideas the artist’s ideal audience has to carry around with it” (125)
contains an interesting inversion of causative influence, a reprioritization
of art object and theoretical context. If art theory and discourse originally
developed over time as epiphenomenally cumulative, paratextual side
effects by which artistic production could be unified and explained, with
O’Doherty we see the opposite: the work of art as discourse activation
prompt, as a particularized, subsidiary instantiation of larger, abstract
forces. Considered thus, a Frank Stella painting—or more contemporarily,
an Amy Sillman painting perhaps—operates as a mnemonic prompt
similar to the memory palaces described by ancient Greek and Roman
writers: a kind of discursive cursor or materialized metadata that helps an
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 33

informed viewer localize and retrieve specific idea complexes by and

about the art world.
As noted previously, that same year Danto introduced the idea of an art
world, which arose from the fact that the art of the era had become
difficult to recognize as “art” without a grasp of the theoretical
underpinnings that defined it as such. Danto described this as a condition
in which a viewer “might not be aware he was on artistic terrain without
an artistic theory to tell him so” (471). Echoing O’Doherty’s description of
an artwork as a discursive stimulus switch, for Danto the terrain of the art
world was “constituted artistic in virtue of artistic theories, so that one use
of theories, in addition to helping us discriminate art from the rest, consists
in making art possible” (471). If an artwork is not recognizable as such
without the theoretical context provided by an art world, it is that very art
world that contextualizes the concepts necessary to prompt that
recognition. The viewing subject is thus constituted by—and constitutive
of—the art world, both subject of and subject to the weave of theoretical
conditions by which a given work is manifest as a densely entangled
ontological and epistemological unit. It is with the inversion from art-
begets-theory to theory-begets-art that the 1950s art scene definitively
scaled up, first to the art world of the early 1960s and then to the adaptive art
intersystem of the mid 1960s onward. Contrast Danto’s description of an
artwork as “a complex object… irreducible to parts” (474) with a description
of a complex adaptive system, the combinations of which “become highly
nonlinear [and] difficult to decompose” (Miller and Page 10).
These differences can be illustrated by considering Frank Stella’s 1964
stripe painting Adelante through the approach described earlier with the
Elizabeth Peyton painting. Unlike the Peyton portrait, there is very little in
the way of an integrative, iconographic effect that causes the material
components of the Stella painting to aggregate into a visually interpretable,
recognizable scene: the painting appears both to depict and to be made up
of stripes, plain and simple. Unlike the Peyton painting’s transition from
brushstroke to recognizable image, the Stella painting fails visually to
crystallize into anything more unless the viewer has at disposal an
awareness of art history and theoretical context up to that point. To one
familiar with the context in which Stella’s work operated—of anti-
compositional and anti-subjective tendencies, and residual discursive
proscriptions against pictorial space—Adelante does in fact offer
something more than just stripes, nonlinearly “up-leveling” into something
much more complex than its visible parts. Unlike the visually emergent,
aggregate image seen in the Peyton work, the emergent aggregate
34 Chapter Two

experienced in the Stella painting is an activation of ideas and context

placement. As O’Doherty pointed out, speaking of Stella’s 1964 paintings:

A hypothetical mass man invited in from the street would have no

difficulty ignoring them. To one aware of the dialectical footwork and
history of modern aesthetics, they could mean a lot… Art like Mr. Stella’s
is a matter of initiation, a sort of conundrum. Once you get it, you get
something out of it. (125)

This “matter of initiation” is the prompt that allows for an emergent

articulation of meaning, not so much at an optical level of image
recognition but at a cognitive level, which recognizes the manifestation of
a concept operative within a specific kind of discourse. In other words, not
of the work’s innate content as much as of its location within a context.
Along similar lines Danto, writing of the difficulty of differentiating
the art of the era from everyday objects, notes, “To see something as art
requires something the eye cannot descry—an atmosphere of artistic
theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld” (477). The emergence
prompts are thus no longer merely a two-part relationship between an
image and a perceiver, but now include a third factor, of learned
perception combined with an internalized language, a complex coding of
the image that changes the role of the viewer from perceiver to decoder.
This triangulated reconfiguration—art + discourse + informed viewer—
creates a multivariate, systemic combination that is, in the language of
complex systems theory, highly nonlinear and difficult to decompose.
The transition from art scene to art world to art intersystem is a fine-
grained distinction: once O’Doherty and Danto pointed out the importance
of theory and context as constitutive of art experience, the phenomenon
being observed—the art world superstructure—was changed by that very
observation. By way of comparison, when Maurice Denis commented in
1890 that “a picture—before being a war horse, a nude woman, or telling
some other story—is essentially a flat surface covered with colors
arranged in a particular pattern” (862), he was pointing out a rather
obvious fact, while also essentially forcing the issue of material flatness.
Once explicitly mentioned, such a fact had to be acknowledged and dealt
with by the artists of the day. Such was also the case with pointing out the
complexity of the vast invisible superstructure of the art world. The
observation and description of the phenomenon changed the phenomenon:
no longer merely art constituted by theory, art would now be made by
artists overtly conscious of the role of theory in the articulation and
constitution of their work. The dawning awareness of awareness, a nested,
iterative incorporation of the importance of discourse into the discourse—
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 35

reterritorializing context from around the artwork to within the artwork, in

other words—catalyzed a rephenomenalization, a phase transition not just
within the art world but of the art world, into a theoretically recursive,
autocatalytic intersystem.

A Topology of Adjacent Possibility Space

As described earlier, an art intersystem is a relational system of
systems, a multi-level complex system of networks in which each node is
itself a network. In syntagmatic and topological flux, no single system
takes precedence over any other for very long. In many ways an abstracted
model of the underlying structure of pluralism, an art intersystem can be
visualized as a conceptual environment that evolves and expands by
exploring the parameters of its local possibility space. Based on feedback
relations across and between multiple levels, the intersystem evolves by
exploring its local possibility space, and it is that very evolution-by-
exploration that constitutes the intersystem in the first place: the
exploration of possibility space expands possibility space, thus creating
still more space to explore (and expand) further, and so on.
Such an intersystemic model explains many aspects of the American
art world of the 1960s. Unlike the relative hegemony of 1950s abstract
expressionism—at least as presented by today’s streamlined art historical
narratives—the explosion of movements in the 1960s is indicative of a
different mechanism at work. The appearance of pop, op, minimalist,
conceptual, post-minimal, performance, and other types of art hint at
underlying mechanisms predicated more on unfolding and on external
exploration than on the existentialist expression of subjective states or the
clarification of self-specific, mediumistic potential. Similarly, the
relatively short amount of time any given 1960s art style was dominant—a
year or two each, compared to more than a decade for abstract
expressionism—shows a different heuristic relationship to both time and
transformation.
Rosalind Krauss provides an interesting test case for this change. For
much of the 1960s operating according to a linear Greenbergian model, by
the turn of the decade Krauss’s understanding of art and context had
undergone a transformation of its own. This is most clearly seen in her
1972 essay A View of Modernism, in which she describes modernism as a
one-way sequence of rooms:

Within each room the individual artist explored, to the limits of his
experience and his formal intelligence, the separate constituents of his
medium. The effect of his pictorial act was to open simultaneously the
36 Chapter Two

door to the next space and close out access to the one behind him. The
shape and dimensions of the new space were discovered by the next
pictorial act; the only thing about that unstable position that was clearly
determined beforehand was its point of entrance. (978)

Further, Krauss notes that modernism had lost the ability to look
beyond the prescriptive spaces it had clarified over the years: “Failing to
see that its ‘history’ is a perspective, my perspective—only, that is to say,
a point of view—modernist criticism has stopped being suspicious of what
it sees as self-evident” (979). What Krauss terms a point of view I would
reframe as a stepping outside the bounds of a relatively closed system,
taking a more expansive view that—as seen in Krauss’s later writings—
incorporates a broad range of artistic discourses positioned relative to one
another. The modernist attainment of a perspective of its own position
relative to a point of view is another way of describing the onset of art
world second-order complexity described earlier in relation to O’Doherty
and Danto. As is the case any time a system becomes aware of and
interested in its own parametric conditions, this recursivity changed not
only those elements within the system but also the very boundaries and
interaction capabilities of the system as a whole.
If the art of the late 1950s and early 1960s—such as post-painterly
abstraction—can be said to have involutionarily operated within a
particular framework of ideas, subsequent art structured itself more toward
the exploration of discursive and contextual possibility. It is this
exploration of possibility that provides another important driving force in
the model of complex intersystems aesthetics here proposed, that of the
adjacent possible. Coined by theoretical biologist and complex adaptive
systems researcher Stuart Kauffman, the term adjacent possible describes
what we might call the next-step possibility space of a given system.
Operating within a set of fluid boundaries loosely articulated by present
and precursor conditions, agents—whether evolutionary, economic,
technological or, here, artistic or discursive—explore the parameters of
their local possibility space. While Kauffman introduced the concept in
terms of biological complexity, it can also be applied to the discursive
diversity and agent-based complexity of 1960s art:

As autonomous agents coconstruct a biosphere, each must manage to

categorize and act upon its world in its own behalf… I suspect that
autonomous agents coevolve such that each makes the maximum diversity
of reliable discriminations upon which it can act reliably… Communities
of agents will coevolve to an “edge of chaos” between overrigid and
overfluid behavior… Autonomous agents forever push their way into
novelty—molecular, morphological, behavioral, organizational. I will
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 37

formalize this push into novelty as the mathematical concept of an

“adjacent possible” [in which biospheres] enter their adjacent possible as
rapidly as they can sustain… [Such self-constructing systems] tend to
maximize their dimensionality, the number of types of events that can
happen next. (2000, 21-22)

If the avant-garde, unidirectional thrust of modernism—at least as

presented in the arborescent diagrams of Alfred Barr or by Greenberg’s
teleological drive toward purification and “self-definition with a
vengeance” (86)—can be modeled as analogous to a progressive Darwinian
evolution, the intersystemic model of adjacent possibility operates more as a
multilateral continuum of change, punctuated by occasional reconfigurations
to new levels of complexity.
In a rare pop culture reference to the concept, a Wall Street Journal
column on innovation, media theorist Steven Johnson describes the
adjacent possible as “a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the
present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can
reinvent itself” (Johnson). Contrast Krauss’s description above, of
modernism as a one-way sequence of rooms, with Johnson’s description of
adjacent possibility:

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its
boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the
possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically
expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors,
each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open
one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each
leading to a brand-new room that you couldn't have reached from your
original starting point. (Johnson)

As applied to the manifestation of new concepts or objects, spaces

opened in the adjacent possible are to an extent bounded by the conditions
of the present. More than just a limit, however, the conditions of the
present also create potential, a next step that becomes increasingly likely
once a certain set of precursor conditions and intermediate stages have
been met. Relevant here is the fact that each new development makes
possible not just another new development, but an entire range of newly
possible configurations by which unpredictable developments might
happen, some more or less likely than others. Noting the existence of a
discursively constituted art world increased awareness of discursive
awareness—a second-order complexity that opened possibility spaces
while simultaneously bounding the overall system, as artists became
consciously and explicitly aware of their position within that system. In
38 Chapter Two

other words, while the boundary conditions of possibility both unfolded

and increased in complexity, the boundary itself was rendered more
concrete in its articulation, creating a reciprocally dynamic tension of
feedback effects between expansive exploration and the limitations of
precedent.

The Art Intersystem as Dynamic, Discursive Equilibrium

The positive feedback loop catalyzed by the emergence of the art
intersystem explains the sheer amount of artistic change that occurred in a
relatively short period of time. While the degree of change from a 1950
Pollock painting to a 1959 Stella painting is indeed monumental, it is
relatively small compared to the rate of transformation from a 1960 Jules
Olitski painting to the conceptual work of the Art & Language group in
1969—much less to a contemporary artwork like Petia Morozov’s
hybridizations of bioluminescent bacteria and fiber optic cable. That
said, these latter works might be traced to Duchamp’s readymades,
though perhaps with more compelling technology—compare Morozov’s
Bacterioptica with Duchamp’s wine bottle rack in form and concept. Thus
even with great amounts of exploration and change in a short period, art
possesses a correlative tendency to ergodically revisit its earlier areas of
exploration.
This balance between a great rate of transformation and an adherence
to limitation is indicative of a system in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
Dynamic equilibrium refers to a state of fluid stability, a highly sensitive
balance between stasis and change. Kauffman, who has written
extensively on the subject in relation to adjacent possibility space,
describes dynamic equilibrium as a state “between order and chaos, a
grand compromise between structure and surprise” (1995, 15), and as “an
edge of chaos between overrigid and overfluid behavior” (2000, 22). DNA
is a prime example of an edge of chaos system in a state of dynamic
equilibrium: if it were too stable everything would be a clone of
everything else, but if too unstable the result would be deformity and
eventual species extinction. Information and language exist in states of
dynamic equilibria as well: in order to communicate, a signal must be
neither too orderly nor too chaotic. Similarly, language must be stable
enough to communicate but fluid enough to adapt and change; although
comprehensible from generation to generation, over long periods language
changes dramatically, as shown by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for
example. A dynamic equilibrial edge of chaos is thus perpetually unfixed,
a kind of constitutive unfinalizability and openness that is a defining
 Notes on Autocatalytic Aesthetics 39

feature of complex systems like information, genetics, or language.

Art and theory also exist as edge of chaos systems, in that the dynamic
expansion of art concepts and forms is also bounded by attempts to remain
operative within the context of fine art. For example, the pushing of the
boundaries seen in Robert Morris’s anti-form felt artworks of the late
1960s is dynamic equilibrium in action—aggressively testing the
boundary conditions of what art might be while staying within those
boundaries by still defining itself as art—thereby gaining conceptual
gravitas from the differential tensions thus generated. Considered this way,
the defining characteristic of art might in fact be its unfinalizable quality
of dynamic equilibrium—the knife’s edge balance of a relentless
exploration of possibility space barely held in check by the persistence of
theoretical and discursive boundary conditions. These boundary conditions
serve as a conceptual zone of focus, by which artworks remain just defined
and bounded enough to maintain a coherent identity as art regardless of
how parametrically extreme or exploratory they might seem. Compared to
the relative stability seen across the 1950s, then, the diversity of the 1960s
served to change not only the artwork itself but also the range of options
available for future exploration—a coevolutionary feedback mechanism.
Morris’s anti-form artworks were physically possible circa 1958—anyone
could have dropped a pile of felt onto a gallery floor—but the adjacent
possibility spaces that allowed them to make an impact as art were not yet
present at the time. At the dynamic equilibrial cusp of possibility
exploration barely held in check by existing conceptual limit conditions,
Morris’s anti-form art could only arise in a way that mattered by pushing
into the range of “next-step” formal, anti-formal, and theoretical avenues
available by 1968. These accelerating drives toward increased complexity
and transpositional distribution through possibility space—as seen in the
art and discourse of the 1960s—is a result of transitions described
previously, a state of second-order complexity prompted by the
recognition and incorporation of art discourse into art discourse as
described by O’Doherty and Danto.
Such an autocatalytically recursive, feedback-driven model—in which
information of and about art creates new art based on and about that
information—operates through a range of feedback relations between
nodes. The positions at which microtheory nodes emerge define the
topology of the network, not vice versa. An abstraction-based system such
as American late modernism might be considered a centralized network
within which individual artists and theorists function as nodes—a
metatheory that contains subsidiary units. The intersystem operative since
art’s mid-1960s attainment of second-order complexity, on the other hand,
Another random document with
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 Dear mother, how happy I am to learn all this. I already feel more
love and reverence for God, the cause of all these wonders, than I had
before. If I grew ever so tall, I should not think myself a man, till I
knew something of the works of God.—Can a man be wise who sees
him not in every surrounding object? Charles and I intend to make
all the enquiries we possibly can—we will try to be good and wise.

WILLIAM.
 LETTER XVII.
William to his Mother.

We were this morning, mama, at half past two, in the fields, to see
the beautiful scene of the sun rising. Edward would not go with us,
he rather chose to sleep. He is very lazy, and ignorant of course, Dr.
Bartlett says. Yet, though he plays much more than we do, he is not
so happy; he often seems not to know what to do with himself,
idleness making the hours so heavy. He wishes for his meals long
before the time, and torments insects and animals wantonly to
shorten the tedious interval. I heard Sir Charles say, the other day, he
feared he would never be a man in understanding. That instead of
rising gradually to a man, he was sinking into a brute. But I must
relate our conversation. The stars were yet visible when we went out.
CHARLES.
My father has promised me some excellent books, Sir.
DR. BARTLETT.
The books of wise writers, are useful to make us more easily
understand what we see and experience; but our own eyes may teach
us a great deal. The Book of Nature, the heavens, with all the stars
and planets; this earth on which we are, with all its productions and
creatures, is the best book; but others will serve as guides.
CHARLES.
See, Sir, I think it is lighter.
DR. BARTLETT.
Observe now, how the stars begin to grow dim, before the
approaching light of the sun.
 WILLIAM.
I thought always that the stars went away, when it was day light.
DR. BARTLETT.
There are some which have their appointed revolutions; and
others which are stationary; these we call the fixed stars.
CHARLES.
Are there stars then by day as well as by night?
DR. BARTLETT.
Certainly. But the stronger light of the sun, makes the fainter light
of the stars invisible.
CHARLES.
How beautiful the trees and fields begin to appear.
DR. BARTLETT.
Yes. What just now appeared a scene of confusion, is changed into
a charming country. The fields, which were before not to be
distinguished, now seem green, and decked with a thousand flowers.
The light gives all again their colours.
CHARLES.
What you say is remarkable. I begin to imagine that the light gives
the colours.
DR. BARTLETT.
Without light, would not all be black? But this is a subject you
cannot understand, till you have read and considered things more
maturely. See there, the sun begins to appear. What think you of that
sight?
CHARLES.
Can it be, that most men spend this hour in sleep?
DR. BARTLETT.
Such men make themselves unworthy the favours of their Maker.
The glorious sun, which is sent to make us joyful, to warm us, and to
nourish us, well deserves that we should sometimes rise to bid it
welcome.
CHARLES.
Pray let us often behold the rising of the sun. We sometimes spend
money to see a fine scene; and this scene, which we can have for
nothing, beyond measure surpasses what can be done by the art of
man.

Dr. Bartlett then was moving homewards; but we requested him to

prolong his walk, as the morning was fine, and we knew they would
not wait breakfast for us. But this letter is already too long, and I
must attend my drawing-master; you shall hear the rest soon.
WILLIAM.
 LETTER XVIII.
William to his Mother.

I have not forgotten what I promised you, dear mother. No, you
have told me we should always remember what we promise.
CHARLES.
How beautifully green the fields are.
DR. BARTLETT.
Yes, that green enlivens the prospect, and does not require much
cultivation: a common blessing we often overlook, though our
gratitude on that very account should be excited.
CHARLES.
The garden gives us more flowers, and a greater variety.
DR. BARTLETT.
You are mistaken; the field flowers are innumerable. Look round
about you, and you will see that I have reason to say so.
WILLIAM.
But then the fruits which the garden produces.
DR. BARTLETT.
These fruits are the gift of our Creator, for which you ought to be
thankful; but believe me, these blades on which we tread are of yet
greater value. They support the cattle who yield us such delicate
food, milk, butter, and cheese. The useful horse here renews his
strength; and the sheep, whose wool answers so many purposes,
which keeps us warm both day and night, nip the short grass every
where spread. And all this happens without our labour, or any great
care; while the fruits and the flowers in the garden, require perpetual
attention. Certainly we find here a much greater proof of God’s
goodness than in our flower garden. This grass is necessary, my
friends, but the flowers and the fruits we could live without.
CHARLES.
These wild flowers are very pretty; why do we set so little value on
them?
DR. BARTLETT.
Because we accustom ourselves to consider things in a wrong point
of view; and to imagine those of little value which we obtain without
art or labour. Come, my young friends, let us correct this mistake; let
us not undervalue even the grass; let us always acknowledge it to be
the liberal gift of heaven, intended to support both man and beast.
WILLIAM.
Look what a quantity of fish, that rivulet contains.
CHARLES.
They are beautiful creatures; how can they live in the water? Most
other animals would die.
DR. BARTLETT.
God has given the fish another kind of body; because they were
designed for the water, to inhabit the great deep. They have fins to
move themselves from place to place; and besides that, the tail is of
great use to them in swimming; and the fins, which they have on
their backs and bellies, enable them to keep themselves upright.
CHARLES.
But how can they breathe; have they any air in the water?
DR. BARTLETT.
You must have observed, that they first draw the water in, and
then immediately spurt it out again: they obtain by this continual
motion, the air which is necessary.
CHARLES.
 You have well said, my dear Sir, that in every thing the great
wisdom of God is displayed: for this is truly wonderful.
DR. BARTLETT.
There are yet greater wonders to be seen in the world of waters.—
Would you think, that in a single drop of water, there are thousands
of living creatures, which you cannot see with your naked eye?
WILLIAM.
In a single drop of water?
DR. BARTLETT.
Yes. And to convince yourself of this, you have only to use your
microscope, and you will plainly see an innumerable quantity of
creatures sporting in the comparatively small space.
CHARLES.
You fill me with astonishment. Pray let us go home directly, I long
to view this new world of creatures.
Dr. Bartlett commended his curiosity. We returned home; and
after we had swallowed a hasty breakfast, carried a glass of the river
water into our play-room. We soon saw that what Dr. Bartlett said
was true. Certainly, my dear mother, that glass of water was a sea full
of all sorts of creatures, of wonderful forms. I never thought that
there were such small living creatures. How admirable is the wisdom
of God! for you recollect that so small a body must have members
and bowels, as perfect for the purposes of life as the largest animal.
We have discovered all this through the assistance of the microscope;
but my letter would be too long, if I was to relate all that we have
discovered. Bless your son, my mother. Adieu.

WILLIAM.
 LETTER XIX.
William to his Mother.

Sir Charles and Lady Grandison have been for some days from
home; but Dr. Bartlett is with us. The house-keeper, and all the
servants, consult Emilia, and she, in the most modest manner, tells
them what she knows her mother wishes them to do. She is not
allowed to command any of them; the house-keeper in particular, a
respectable woman, Lady Grandison said, ought not to receive orders
from a child; but she behaves with such propriety, they are all eager
to oblige her; indeed she follows her brother’s example. Edward, on
the contrary, does nothing but romp and wrestle, and afterwards
quarrel with them. He hates all employment; I should imagine, those
who do not learn when they are young, must appear very foolish
when they are old. You shall hear what Charles said to him yesterday.
Charles, Emilia, and I sat on one side of the room, drawing; while
Edward tied a thread to a beetle—and often he would jump, as if by
accident, against our chairs, to disturb us and make us leave our
employment. Charles spoke to him.
CHARLES.
Ah, Edward, what pleasure can you find in torturing a poor insect?
It turns me sick to see you; pray let it go!
EDWARD.
And what do you do, when you and William set the butterflies on a
needle to look at them through your fine microscope? That pleases
you, and this pleases me.
CHARLES.
If William and I set the butterflies on a needle, only for our
amusement, it would be wrong; but we do it to instruct ourselves—
yet, though we seek instruction, I could not bear to torture them; the
sight of their agonies would engross my whole attention. Dr. Bartlett
has taught me to kill them expeditiously without injuring their
appearance. I then gratify my curiosity without hardening my heart,
for that tender-hearted man, our dear tutor, often says, that even the
attainment of knowledge cannot compensate for a quick emotion of
benevolence, banished by a habit of thoughtless cruelty. He wishes to
make me wise; but still more ardently to incite me to practise
goodness, to shew kindness to the insects who crawl under my feet;
and to let my love mount up from them to the beings, who, while
they enjoy the blessings of heaven, can recognize the hand which
bestows them.
EDWARD.
Well, if you will come with me into the garden, I will let it go.
CHARLES.
That is to say, that if I refuse to go with you, you will continue to
torment the poor insect. It is not it’s fault if I do not go with you—
surely this is not right; but I will accompany you.
EMILIA.
It begins to rain.
CHARLES.
Shall I read to you? I have got a very entertaining book.
EDWARD.
You know I do not love reading.
CHARLES.
So you do not desire to converse with men.
EDWARD.
Well, yes.—What then?
CHARLES.
Books speak; and make us wiser, while we are amused.
EDWARD.
 I do not desire to be learned; but to be an officer.
EMILIA.
A fine officer, who will not know how to read or write intelligibly!
EDWARD.
Now, Charles, preach, as you did the other day about cards.
CHARLES.
I reproved your too great fondness for cards. You are angry if you
lose; and those who cannot play with temper, in my opinion, ought
never to play at all. It is not amiss to know how to play, because that
cards are so much used in company, and it enables one to oblige
those who are fond of this amusement. I do not find any pleasure in
it; and I hope never, from a false pride, to be induced to play for
more than I can afford to lose.
EMILIA.
Poor Mr. Beverley, who died last week, and left his family in great
distress, my mama told me, first played to avoid being laughed at,
and called a mean-spirited man. He went on from one thing to
another, till he spent his whole fortune, and ruined his constitution.
His wife actually took in needlework to support him during his last
illness, though she had been educated to expect better things. He
died in an obscure lodging, a burden to the woman he ought to have
been a comfort to; and left his half-starved babes, to weep over the
lifeless body of their inconsiderate parent. I wept too—when I heard
of it.
The conversation was interrupted, but I must tell you Emilia had
tears in her eyes, when she told us about poor Mr. Beverley’s
children. I remember now I used to be vexed when young Dulis
laughed at me, and called me a coward, when I refused to do
mischief; and mean, when I saved my money, though I intended to
give it to a poor blind man; but he did not know that. I do not like to
tell any one but yourself that I give most part of my allowance to the
poor; it would look as if I wanted to be praised, and that the love of
praise was my motive; but indeed it is not, the pleasure I feel at the
moment, is a sufficient reward. Besides, I think I resemble my dear
mother, and I am happy.—I am sure you will love me, if I practise
virtue.

WILLIAM.
 LETTER XX.
William to his Mother.

One of the servants has been very ill. You cannot think how
compassionately Emilia attended her. She rose very early this
morning to carry her some refreshment, and tried to amuse her. She
requested Dr. Bartlett to send for a physician; and she took as much
care of her as if the poor girl had been her own sister. Edward
reproached her. It well becomes you, said he, to be sure, to wait on
the maid. And why not, answered she; you play with the servant to
amuse yourself (and such a degree of familiarity is indeed improper)
and I take care of the maid, through pity. A servant is a human being;
we are differently educated, I cannot make them my companions, but
I will ever try to treat them humanely—and remember that they are
my fellow-creatures, when they are in distress. Edward was ashamed
and ran out of the room. My mother, I thought, always acted in the
same manner. I remember well, when our Hannah had the fever,
that you took care of her yourself. But it brings to my remembrance
something, which makes me sorrowful. How unfortunate you are!
Here are so many servants, and you, my poor mother, have only a
little girl to assist; you yourself are obliged to do many things—a
colonel’s widow should have servants to wait on her; it is mean to
work, and do not people despise you for being reduced to such a
condition? When I am a man, and have increased my fortune, you
shall have servants, and live as a gentlewoman ought to live.

WILLIAM.
 LETTER XXI.
Mrs. D—— to William.

I admire Emilia, she is a good, and a pleasing girl; there is not a

more amiable virtue than compassion. It is much to be wished that
all young ladies would take her for their pattern; and, instead of
falling into the two shameful extremes, familiarity and haughtiness,
which are often to be observed in the same character, they would
treat their servants with humanity and decent kindness. You know
how frequently I have praised you for your affability to your
inferiors.—But, William, why are you grieved that I have but one
servant? A number of servants are not necessary; they serve more for
shew than use. Had I riches, I would try not to waste the precious
deposit; I would live according to my station. And while my own real
and artificial wants were supplied, I should think with pleasure, that
though so many servants were not necessary to wait on me, I enabled
some industrious fellow-creatures to earn an honest livelihood; and
by humane treatment made their labour pleasant. But since it has
not pleased heaven to give me riches, I am content, and thankful that
I can keep a girl to do the most laborious and menial part of my
household business, which I could not do without injuring my health,
and neglecting your sister’s education. I am not in absolute need of
any more assistance. And what now is that employment, which, you
say, is unbecoming the widow of a colonel? You wrote hastily, it is
not dishonourable to serve ourselves when we cannot afford to pay
for the services of others. It will be more satisfaction to you, to be
able to say, after my death, my mother provided her own dinner; her
clothes were the work of her hands; her economy made up for the
deficiencies of fortune; and her virtues made her respectable; than if
you heard your parent reproached, for living according to her rank,
and birth. She had a fine house, rich furniture, a number of servants;
but she has left nothing behind her; and what is still worse, has
injured several industrious people who trusted to her honour. What
would then be the son of a colonel? A despised youth, who, though
innocent, must blush for his mother’s want of thought and justice.
The son of a reputable tradesman, would scarcely acknowledge him
as an equal; but I have laid enough, I hope, to dissipate your false
pride and concern for me: you find I am satisfied with my station.
Again let me tell you, your letters are a comfort to me; was I much
poorer than I am, I should still esteem myself rich in the possession
of such a son.
Farewel, my dear William, regulate and follow the good
inclinations I have endeavoured to cultivate, then you will not only
be the comfort of your mother, but the protector of your sister.

D.
 LETTER XXII.
Emilia Grandison to Lady Grandison.

We have been greatly alarmed, dear mother. Mr. Wilson’s house

was last night burned to the ground. Oh what frightful flames! The
air was as red as blood; my heart beat very strong, I trembled lest the
family should be destroyed in their beds.—It was dreadful to see such
devastation by fire; how careful we ought to be to avoid the sudden
horror of so terrible a calamity. If they had been careful, this
misfortune would not have happened; the two Miss Wilsons were the
occasion of it. They had in the evening, without its being observed,
lighted a fire in their play-room; and spread the coals on the hearth
to bake privately some cakes. The fire must certainly have caught the
boards; but they did not perceive it; as they were interrupted before
the cakes were half baked, and obliged to go to their mother, who
called for them. They swallowed hastily the unwholesome, and even
unpalatable cakes, and shut the door without thinking any more
about it. The flames did not burst out till the whole family had been
some time fast asleep. There is not any thing saved. All the furniture,
clothes, and the stock of the farm were reduced to ashes. The poor
girls escaped with only a single petticoat on; and Mrs. Wilson was
with difficulty rescued from the devouring flames, which consumed
all her substance.
What will now become of that pride, which made the Miss Wilsons
treat with such disdain the neighbouring farmers daughters, because
they were their inferiors in birth and fortune—and now they are
happy to find a shelter in the houses they despised. Indeed, mama, I
will obey you, and ever behave with kindness to my inferiors. But I
have something else to tell you, and I am sure you will not be angry
with me; I sent some of my clothes to the Miss Wilson, who is about
my size; I have more than I want—and surely, mama, if that was not
the case, I ought cheerfully to bear a trifling inconvenience to do a
fellow-creature an essential service. Wearing for the first time new
clothes, never gave me half the pleasure—no, it cannot be compared
with what I felt, when I gave away my old ones. I did not send my
best (though I would have parted with them without feeling any
reluctance) as I thought, common clothes would suit her better.
Farewel, dear mother.

EMILIA.
 LETTER XXIII.
Young Grandison to his Father.

I am just returned, my dear father, from visiting poor Mr. Wilson.

Emilia has written my mother an account of the dreadful accident
which happened last night; and I wish, ardently wish, to alleviate the
distress I could scarcely behold without tears—indeed I believe I
should have wept, if I had not been full of a plan, which darted into
my head, when I heard the grey-headed old man lament the disaster,
which, in the course of one night, swept away the hard-earned fruits
of many toiling years. To be plunged into poverty, said he, when my
strength faileth me, and even the sweat of my brow will not procure
the necessaries of life—is sad. And so it is; now I will tell you what I
have thought of. You know my uncle left me five thousand pounds—I
think it a great fortune, and I can surely spare two hundred to help
Mr. Wilson out of his extreme distress; that sum would be sufficient
to stock another farm. I shall be rich enough, and the more so, as you
are so good as to let the interest accumulate. I beg, Sir, you will not
refuse my humble request—I shall have more satisfaction in relieving
this unfortunate man, than ever my two hundred pounds can give.
To rescue from poverty an industrious man and his family, what a
blessing! In this respect, let me be like my father, who is himself so
benevolent,—who has taught me to be compassionate. Were you but
here, I would throw myself at your feet, and—but it is enough, you
will judge if my request merits your attention; my duty is
submission, and I know I need not try to persuade you—you will at
once do what appears to you right.

CHARLES GRANDISON.
 LETTER XXIV.
Sir Charles Grandison to his Son.

You have learned of me, you say, to be compassionate. It has ever

been my wish and endeavour, to make your heart feel the miseries of
your fellow-creatures; and I have laboured to inculcate the virtue,
which next to the love, the goodness of God ought to inspire, is the
noblest ornament of our nature. The request you make is a proof of
the warm generosity of your heart: and so praise worthy a desire
merits a reward. The fresh discovery I have made of your benevolent
disposition, is of more value, in my estimation, than the two hundred
pounds, which you will find enclosed. Go, my Charles, make glad
poor Wilson’s heart, and taste the delight, which flows from
benevolence. But let me tell you, the legacy must not be touched
before you are of age: it was entrusted to my care as a guardian, and
not as a father.

GRANDISON.
 LETTER XXV.
Lady Grandison to Emilia.

You were right, my dear Emilia, when you imagined I could not be
angry with you for following the humane dictates of your heart. As a
proof of my approbation of your conduct, and to reward you for it, I
will give you another opportunity of experiencing the pleasure which
arises from benevolence. You will find in my drawers a piece of
calico; send for the mantua-maker, and desire her to make Mrs. and
Miss Wilson a dress immediately. I know this commission will afford
you more pleasure, than if I gave it you for yourself. But, my Emilia,
why did you mention their faults, when you related the
circumstances which made them truly objects to excite my
commiseration. You might silently have determined to behave
properly to your inferiors, without exhibiting the disagreeable
picture of their haughtiness, when it was receiving a severe
chastisement. Never, my child, add to the miseries of others, even
though the sufferers should be unworthy.—Be tender-hearted in
every sense of the word. I do not mean to chide you, when I point out
an error; you are a good girl.—You were judicious in not sending
your best clothes; you considered the wants of the person you wished
to assist, and your generosity had not that tincture of vanity which
very frequently degrades it. Always, my child, define rather to do
good, than to display your goodness: remember that the best of
Beings notes your secret thoughts; and that it is truly noble to have
sometimes his approbation singly in view.
Farewel, forget not the useful lesson you have given yourself, never
to be proud of clothes or furniture; an unforeseen casualty might
deprive you of them, and even the riches which procured them. “Lay
up then a treasure in heaven; where neither rust, nor moth can
corrupt; nor thieves break through and steal.”
HARRIOT GRANDISON.