H O M E E X H I B I T I O N S G A L L E R Y M A N I F E S T O A R T  T H E O R Y L I N K S

POST-STRUCTURALISM AND VISUAL CULTURE THE TRUTH IN TEXT Post-structuralism has branched out alongside postmodernity and has put into question the validity of the theories of western metaphysics. The traditional tendency of art historians that historical interpretation has something to do with the truth has been shaken especially by the theory of deconstruction which was developed by J. Derrida, as well as the theories of J.F.Lyotard or, as Habermas puts it: ‘running from Bataille to Derrida by way of Foucault’.1 It is frequently said these theories sprang out of a Nietzschean line of thought.2 One of the questions that arise in Post-structuralsm is the validity of the meaning in language/text as well as the interpretation of the meaning. In this sense, Saussure’s theory of the ‘sign’ can be seen as the pillar of Poststructuralism. For Saussure language is a chain of signs that consist of signifiers (written image) and signified (meaning). The components’ relation within the sign is variable and it follows that there is no ‘real’ connection between the word and the meaning. However, if structuralism shows that we are able to see the truth ‘behind’ the text, Post-structuralsm goes further by pointing that meaning is not fixed and static but active and moving; the interaction of text and reader is also a part of meaning. This stresses the need of equipping the historical narratives with an awareness of how language invests their practice with the values of the present. The ‘younger generation’ of postructuralists (as Madan Sarup puts it) F. Guattari and G. Deleuze in “Anti – Oedipus” (Athlone Press 1984) present the ‘metaphysical’3 pillars of Poststructuralism where, according to Proust: “…the whole itself is a product produced as nothing more then a part alongside other parts, which it neither unifies nor otalises, though it has an effect on these other parts simply because it establishes aberrant paths of communication between noncommunicating vessels, tranvers unities between elements that retain all their differences within their own particular boundaries”4 An analogy of this text can be drawn with J. Derrida’s research in the field of deconstruction of text and meaning. In Double session in “Dissemination” he point to the fact that there is no entity which is more ‘important’ than another and thus forming a meaning: “ Like mimique, the double session has no middle. It is divided into two halves only through the fiction of a crease. Yet each session by itself is no more whole or symmetrical for all that, being but the rejoinder or application of the other , its play or its exercise. Together they are neither more or less than two hemitropic crystals; never in sum, a finished volume. Never making a complete turn, for lack of presentation.”5 Derrida has come through to the term ‘differance’;-differing and diferral. This is both a condition of signification and a signifying act which takes place in a specific context. He is asking where does ‘truth’ come from and whether is really necessary to have an addendum of reading that is apparently decisive to tell the truth for the phrase of a syntactic variation. The phrase – according to Derrida, does not authorise us to accept symbolic equivalencies as ready made ‘thruths’. The difference between individual interpretations and universal symbols depends on the ‘wealth of association’ and this economic criterion concerns variations which can also be deviations without an essential norm. Derrida asks what makes this ‘universal truth’ universal. According to who and what criterion? For him the truth in interpretation cannot be reached ‘too quickly’ by readily accepting certain built in codes / signs within the infrastructure of the language of western metaphysics. In a critique of Heidegger about Van Gogh’s “Shoes” in Restitutions in his “The truth in painting” Derrida demonstrates this: “…one never knows if it’s busying itself around a picture, “real” shoes, or shoes that are imaginary but outside painting; not only disappointed by the crudeness of the framing, the arbitrary and barbaric nature of the cutting-out, the massive self-assurance of the identification: “ a pair of peasants’ shoes”, just like that! Where did he get that from? Where does he explain himself on this matter? 6 Derrida points to the process of identification that takes place when one observes a painting. So the way out would be to ‘fix a certainty that looks axiomatic’. Now, the word “looks” is of some importance; the certainty can only “look” axiomatic and not be axiomatic. The signified is actually only another signifier; a signifier that signifies the signified. This is a never ending circle according to which a postulate can be built of language’s complete autonomy as an entity with its own thickness and materiality. Derrida recalls the “trap” that Shapiro lays for Heidegger in the process of their intellectual battle over the “true meaning” of Van Gogh’s “The shoes”. The lace (whose name – in French is the same like a ‘trap’; the undone lace (in the painting and outside it) is ready to strangle, the trap opens as soon as one is tempted – through self – identification, to (too quickly) put /’stick’ a meaning onto the painting. ‘I owe you the truth in painting’ is what Cezanne said and Derrida wants to erase the ‘truth’ in the word “truth” just as Nietzsche had done with the word “knowledge”. Shapiro and Heidegger both rush to ‘put the shoes back’ onto the peasant (Heidegger) or Van Gogh (Shapiro) because ‘they owe the truth’. So, the laces are loose, the shoes detached, not only from their owner but from their surrounding and from each other and Derrida asks what actually proves that the shoes are a pair: ‘is it not the logic of this false parity rather than of this false identity which constructs the trap?’ 7 So there is not one possible reading of a work of art but several. M. Shapiro and Heidegger ‘owe the truth in painting, the truth of painting and even painting as truth’: “It is of course, necessary to take into account the debt of duty – ‘I owe you’ – but what does speak mean here? And speak in painting: truth spoken itself as one says “in painting”? Or truth spoken in painting, in the domain of painting?…. by the sole means of painting, no longer spoken out – “to speak” being only a manner of speaking, a figure – painted, truth silently painted, itself, in painting?”8 The shoes are detached – says Derrida. Being painted, they are detached and a subject of a painting and therefore non-functioning in that sense. However there is a possibility of them being detached in a double sense – detached from themselves (no proof that they are a pair), from each other and from the feet. Derrida questions the need of reattachment: ‘They are in a hurry to tie up the thread with the subject. Detachment is intolerable’.9 Shapiro’s critique on Heidegger is noted in that the later does not actually describe the picture for itself, but the actual product, (pair) of shoes, not even as an object insofar as it is painted [(re)presented], but as a familiar product. Its qualities can apply to any pair of shoes and have the same features: the usefulness, the belonging to the earth, etc. It is not therefore necessary for the shoes to be painted: ‘The same truth could be ‘presented’ by any shoe painting, or even by any experience of shoes and even of any product in general’.10 For Heidegger the painting “The shoes” is useless11 in a sense that ‘no painting is ever at all useful to us for the apprehension of the usefulness of a product’.12 Following this it can be said that the ‘Foucauldean author’ is pretty dead for neither with Shapiro, Heidegger nor with Derrida is the actual artist – Van Gogh, the creator of the painting – discussed. An interaction between the artist and the viewer via the painting is disputed. The ‘materiality’ of meaning is non-existent not only within the structure of the language but non-existent all together. Not only that meaning is less ‘real’ than the sign, but it is a sign itself. The question ‘why is the painting painted’ is not asked and thus the possibility of the notion that the reason and inspiration of the artist could be a part of the circle of communication between him/herself and the viewer and as a result part of the process of creation of meaning – is not evoked. For Heidegger the painting is useless in giving us the truth about the usefulness of shoes as a product. But is it not that the simple decision on Van Gogh’s part to paint shoes, (a product that the peasant woman doesn’t think about but uses it!) – this simple act of painting the shoes and thus acknowledging the painting’s uselessness of depicting the usefulness of shoes that the actual usefulness of shoes is portrayed – something that we, the peasant woman or the urbanised Van Gogh have taken for granted? So whether Van Gogh’s “shoes” are peasant ones, or city ones, or whether they are (a pair of?) shoes – period, as Derrida has it; and as he admits ‘…an army of ghosts are demanding their shoes’13, what are we left with? This relays the slight obscurity within the methods of deconstruction, for it can be seen that it does not go any further than its empire of signs and text. It does not deal with representation but with the interpretation of the representation which is ironic for this is the task that Poststructuralism sets itself in the first place; it is declaring the autonomy of language by pointing to the relative nature of its discourse. However deconstruction is far from irrelevant to the writing of history, for it gives the ability of seeing how the historical narratives are invested with the values of the present. According to Derrida, signs are arbitrary entities whose significance is variable. Language is in this sense deceptive and it simultaneously produces and erases a meaning. Edward Said in an in-depth analyses, points to the political potential of the principles of deconstruction: “His work embodies an extremely pronounced self-limitation, as ascesis of a very inhibiting and crippling sort. In it Derrida has chosen the lucidity of the undecidable in a text, so to speak, over the identifiable of a text… Derrida’s work thus has not been in a position to accommodate descriptive information of the kind giving Western metaphysics and Western culture a more than repetitively allusive meaning…Neither has it demanded from its disciples any binding engagement on matters pertaining to discovery and knowledge, freedom, oppression or injustice. If everything in a text is always open equally to suspicion and to affirmation, then the differences between one class interest and another, between the oppressor and repressed, one discourse and another, one ideology and another, are virtual in – but never crucial to making decisions about – the finally reconciling element of textuallity.”14 Indeed, Derrida is actually using the very method that he is proposing for historical narratives – in his own writings, that are of an ‘inhibiting and crippling sort’. Keith Moxley also emphasises the fact that the usage of the word to invoke a subject is not necessarily natural and that their relationship is arbitrary. Language is not a mere instrument that we use to describe a meaning, but is a cultural representation with a capacity of its own. It follows that there can be no ‘pure’ description, for the language that is used to describe meaning is itself redolent with the values of its authors. However this then poses the question of what is the object that stops Derrida’s language being redolent with his own values? Furthermore, is this object immune to language, outside it? If so, would not this affirm an existence of an autonomous body of meaning independent from language and thus annihilating the theories of Post-structuralism? For Moxley though, the work of art is in itself an important entity in the search for meaning and this poses and interesting discourse: “…forms of interpretations based on the notions of the artist as an autonomous subject and artistic representation as limited to mimesis have unnecessarily restricted our understanding of the work…An approach that views the work of art as cultural artifact designed to perform particular social functions empowers us to move away from considerations of reception. This different perspective enables us to anylise how the work makes meaning, not only in its own time but in subsequent ages as well. Instead of viewing the work as a repository or a reflection of cultural values, instead of treating it as if it were the final product of social processes that preceded its elaboration, my concern has been to show that the work is itself an active agent in the production of culture. “15 Rather than ‘going through’ the image in order to ‘see’ the meaning, interpretation – according to Moxley, can be drawn from the surface of the image. This ‘surface’ (the signifier) is the location where the new understanding can be derived from in order to be reused in the production of new cultural meanings. However he rightly points out to the dangers of the critical pluralism that can easily arise from theories like Post-structuralism that have tendencies toward theoretical relativity. If it is maintained that there can be more than one possibility of interpreting a work of art, this is in a way admitting that the truth is unknowable. This is enabling us to then state that one possible interpretation can at least give us part of the truth, and therefore that we need several equally ‘important’ interpretations about the work of art in question. The problem arises if pluralism becomes dogmatism and if those interpretations start competing (according to Post-structuralist theories there is a possibility for this) for, then the outcome would depend and be within the structure of language and its power of persuasion. If the ‘whole truth’ is connected to the social circumstances in which it is produced, then the question arises who and what determines which interpretation is ‘better’ or ‘truer’ then the others? This then brings the practice of deconstruction to the postmodernist: ‘Anything goes’. BACK   FORWARD