ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
|
To the people of Baghdad,
who were not defeated
by 'Shock & Awe',
but who suffered from it
in ways I can only imagine.
CONTENTS
The sublime can be regarded as a transformative discourse of the subject literally, a life-changing experience. As such, it held a particular fascination for intellectuals in the eighteenth-century, itself an age of transformation and uncertainty. It has been argued that discourses on the sublime helped to shape the emphasis on the subject as the author of meaning, which manifested in the Enlightenment (Ashfield & de Bolla 1996, 1). Today, we live in an equally uncertain age, and are arguably also equally fascinated by the sublime. Its presence is found everywhere: from special effects blockbusters, to the special effects-based operations of modern warfare. Is this coincidence? Or is there something more symptomatic connecting the sublime and transformation? This dissertation examines some landmark texts on the sublime, as well as outlining my own ideas, in a synthesis I call the 'philosophy of feeling'. Two case studies are included that demonstrate how these ideas may be applied in practice. The first is 9/11, and the second is Shock & Awe: the title given to the U.S. bombing campaign of Baghdad in March 2003.
Abstract .... ..................................................................... Page 5 Chapter 1 - Introduction ................................................ Page 6 Chapter 2 - Edmund Burke, Enquiry............................ Page 12 Chapter 3 - Kant, Critique of Judgement ..................... Page 15 Chapter 4 - Zizek, Sublime Object of Ideology ............ Page 20 Chapter 5 - Sublime Feeling ........................................ Page 26 Chapter 6 - The Philosophy of Feeling ......................... Page 34 Chapter 7 - 9/11 and Shock & Awe ............................ Page 44 Chapter 8 - Conclusion ................................................. Page 59 images ...... ...................................................................... Page 62 References ...................................................................... Page 65 Appendix - End Notes.................................................... Page 68
In 1941, Isaac Asimov wrote a short science fiction story called Nightfall. It told of the last hours of civilisation on the planet of Lagash. Lagash was an unusual place, because it was surrounded by six suns, which meant it was always daytime there. However, all the suns were about to set for the first time in ten thousand years. Nightfall was a worrying prospect, since archaeologists had uncovered evidence linking the rise and fall of civilisation to the length of the planets day. There had been at least nine previous civilisations, whose technology was equal to the present one, but all had ended in a single night of fire and madness. Some Lagashians, living on the outskirts of the capital, Saro City, were trying to make sense of these events. What, they wondered, could have be so terrifying about darkness, to have driven civilisation back into the stone age? Obviously, in a society that had always known daylight, there was an understandable cultural phobia about darkness (no one was brave enough to step inside a cave for instance). But was this phobia sufficient to cause a madness that would wipe out civilisation? The protagonists reasoned not. But at the fall of night, they realised the terrible truth, it wasnt the darkness, it was the stars!
The feeling that this story attempts to evoke is an example of the sublime. Today the term is often misunderstood, taken to mean an almost languid enjoyment. However, the sublime in aesthetic theory describes something almost too terrifying to behold. Susan Sontag captures this feeling, when she writes about her first exposure to photographs of the Nazi death camps:
I think Sontags term negative epiphany, is particularly apt, as it captures the excessive and totalising sense of horrora sort of mental vertigothat is especially characteristic of the sublime. However, the meaning of the sublime is not restricted to describing traumatic events. It can also take the form of a positive epiphany. David Abrams writes about an incident in the mountains of Nepal. Abrams saw two condors gliding between the snow covered peaks of the Himalayas. After a few minutes, he took a silver coin from his pocket and began rolling it back and forth over his knuckles. One of the condors swerved away from its partner and came towards him. Fascinated by this site, Abrams stopped playing with the coin and the condor flew away again. Disappointed, he resumed the game, and as he did so, the condor came towards him once more:
The element that distinguishes these two accounts of sublime experience, is not the sense of being unable to assimilate the images, or the feelings inspired by the events. It is the way in which the authors position themselves in respect to both. Sontag cannot accommodate her negative epiphany into her sense of self, her Weltanschauung as the Germans call it. This non-acceptance creates strong feelings of alienation. Sontags trauma does not take the form of a simple denial, for she can neither accept the pedagogical meaning of the photographs (that she lives in a world of hitherto unimaginable horror), nor can she hide from the fact either. Consequently, she is unable to transcend her feelings of trauma, precisely because the trauma itself cannot be assimilated, either by denying or accepting the message of those photographs. On the other hand Abramss positive epiphany is characterised by feelings of profound communion with the event he witnessed. Like Sontag, his Weltanschauung had been overturned. But his feeling is one of wonder accompanied by a positive sense of elevation. So Abramss experience is transcendent, because he rose above a hitherto limited conception of himself. The sense of elevation in Abramss description is typical of many examples of writings on the sublime, especially in the Romantic discourses of the eighteenth-century. As Helen Maria Williams put it in 1798, "[the sublime calls] the musing mind from all its little cares and vanities to higher destinies and regions" (Ashfield & de Bolla: 1996, 304). The central question asked of aesthetics What is it that moves me?is also a question primarily directed to human nature (ibid., 2). Freed from the sanction of religious prohibition, the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the sublime, arguably led to the subject-centred philosophy of the Enlightenment, which in turn inspired the formation of what Foucault termed the human sciences. These he defined as discourses that take man as the object of their enquiry (Foucault 2004, 375), for example: sociology, psychology, economics, etc. The sublime can be seen historically to have acted as a symbolic rupture in meaning, that fissured through old certainties like hairline cracks, weakening their grip on the human imagination. We can detect many examples of the sublime, as a symbolic rupture of meaning, in contemporary culture also. In the sense of a positive epiphany, it is found in the wonder of space travel, the fascination with limit-experiences (drugs, mysticism, extreme sports) and even in the three-minute perfection of a pop song. As a negative epiphany, it can be found in images of horror (Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Vietnam, Iraq) and in the scenes of televised terror that came out of New York on September 11 2001. This dissertation will explore how the concept of the sublime has been thought about historically, by examining three key texts. An Enquiry by the eighteenth-century political theorist Edmund Burke. The Critique of Judgement by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the Sublime Object of Ideology by the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek. This is in order to bring those readers who are unfamiliar with the concept to become more familiar with it. This is because the sublime forms the basis of my own analysis of some of the characteristics of feelings, and how they combine with thoughts to to form the epistemological basis of representation. |
It is claimed that the British eighteenth-century sublime movement was the most important in the history of aesthetics (Ashfield 1996, 1). Today Edmund Burke is considered its major theorist (ibid., 12). His Enquiry was published in 1755. The sublime The primary passion evoked by the sublime is astonishment, a state in which all the souls motions are frozen in horror and the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot reason (ibid., 41). The power of the sublime is therefore not subordinate to the power of either volition, or reason, but hurries the mind on by an irresistible force. In this respect, no passion robs the mind as much as fear, because fear operates in a way that resembles actual pain (ibid., 53). Most ideas which are capable of making a powerful impression on the mind can be reduced to self-preservation, or society (ibid., 36). For instance, beauty charms because we see in it a quality that causes us to love it (ibid., 114). However, human nature is concerned above all with self-preservation, which causes us to fear pain and danger most of all. Therefore the sublime inheres in whatever is terrible to look upon and abhors anything mediocre (ibid., 74). Beauty and the sublime operate on a binary axis of opposition: the beautiful is small, the sublime is vast; beauty is smooth, the sublime is ragged etc. There are four sources of sublimity:
Criticisms |
Prolegomena to Kant's philosophy First, it is predicated on the assumption (more metaphorical that neurological), that thinking emerges out of specialised areas of the mind called faculties; thus there is a faculty of perception; of understanding; of cognition, etc. Second, ideas are taken to mean all that is abstract, general and cognisised through the necessary propositions of logic (Kant 1993, 31); whereas the actual world is empirical, particular and understood through the lessons of experience (Kant 1993, 48). Third, when Kant talks about 'form,' in the sense of an objects formal qualities, he does so always in an idealistic sense. Kant argues that 'form' is not discoverable in the world: for although we can point to many examples of particular forms; we cannot point to form itself because it is an idea. Analytic of the sublime The Mathematical Sublime The dynamical sublime The sublime as a source of moral principles
A possible objection to this, is that a morality based on such hypotheticals is too abstract. But this is precisely Kant's point for it is only when morality is unspecified that the "unmistakable idea of morality" truly emerges. The sublime is always determined by thought, and as such it can never be anything more than a negative presentation, but it is one that nevertheless expands the soul (ibid., 135). This is why Kant says that there is no more sublime passage in Jewish Law than the commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image..."(ibid.). For if our ideas were dependent solely on images, we could never rise above them to contemplate moral absolutes. The idea of freedom for Kant is inscrutable and precludes all positive presentation. The moral law, on the other hand is a sufficiently solid determination existing within us, so that it does not need to cast around for a basis external to itself. Criticism In his first critique Kant demonstrated convincingly that reason was not self-validating without reference to empirical phenomena, but in the second he wanted to prove the opposite: namely that something must be universally true in order that we may have moral laws. Thus he posited the existence of a supersensible realm, defined in the second critique as the laws which govern the perception of empirical reality (Kant 2004). The problem for Kant was proving the existence of the supersensible realm. Since he could not justify this with logic, he turned to aesthetics. For although the sense impressions of beautiful or sublime experiences are particular, it could be argued that aesthetic judgements about them were universal. This is because when we call something beautiful or sublime, this judgement seems to demand the assent of everyone else. Kant reasoned that such universality could not be accounted for in terms of feeling, since feelings were subjective (Kant 1993, 47). So he concluded that there must be something else that tells us what to feel a priori - not surprisingly the supersensible. Now we may accept Kants argument or reject it, but whatever our position we take, I think it is indisputable that Kants motivation for studying aesthetics anaesthetically was political and not genuinely philosophical. On this point I wonder if Kant would have been quite so confident in the superiority of reason if he had lived through some of the negative epiphanies of modern horror, phenomena like the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki which seemed to exceeded reasons capacity to contemplate or contain them and which shook the confidence of philosophers in the Enlightenment tradition such as Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), Arendt (1951) and Bauman (1989). |
Slavoj Zizeks treatise on the sublime is the only text in my selection that does not try to define it. Zizek is more interested in exploring how the sublime functions, especially in relation to Lacanian and Marxist ideology. But I think his definition would be like Burkes something akin to terror (Burke 1998, 38).
Zizeks thesis is that reality (in the naïve realist sense of the term) does not exist. Reality is rather a fantasy construction, a symbolic network whose function is to mask the fact of its own non existence (Zizek 1989, 45).
However, there is something which lurks behind this mask, which Zizek ironically calls The Real, (a term borrowed from Lacan). This Real is actually just another fantasy - a dream-Real, but one whose function is to anchor the symbolic network and give it meaning (ibid., 47). The Real is defined as the reality of humanitys darkest desires, or Jouissance. Jouissance mean negative enjoyment (ibid., 202), it can be likened to the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff and thinking what if I jump? Zizek argues that when a person is asleep and dreaming, it is in this spirit of daring (jouissance) that causes the dreamer to entertain the most perverse and destructive fantasies imaginable. Thus the dreamer awakens, but not into real/reality of course, but into the stable and comforting symbolic network of fantasy/reality. In fact, the reason we have a symbolic network, is to protects us from the terrifying visions of the Real (ibid., 45).
In this way it can be thought of as functioning in exactly the same way as ideology. The paradox of ideology, is that it is not merely the false consciousness of the social being, it is the social being itself, so far as it is supported by false consciousness (ibid., 21).
Reality is therefore an illusion, but the illusion becomes real in its performance (ibid., 33). This can be illustrated in the way we behave towards the immateriality of money. For example the other day my eight year old son asked me how it was that five pounds was worth more than five pence, since one was made of metal and the other was made of paper? I explained that money was not really valuable in itself, rather it was a symbol of the value it stood for. My son looked incredulous. I think for him it was a bit of an emperors new clothes situation. And he was right of course. Zizek says of money that the exchange abstraction is "not thought but it has the form of thought" (ibid, 18). This perfomative sense of ideological abstraction is what Zizek argues creates the space where philosophical reflection can thrive. Thus, action opens up a territory for abstraction. In this sense Zizek likens ideology, not to the performance itself, but to the stage in which the form of truth is acted out before we can even take cognisance of it (ibid., 19).
Now because the conditions for future thought are set in the present, is it not therefore possible to predict the future? Zizeks answer is an emphatic no. For the simple reason that events only become significant in the future when they have been cognised as thoughts. However, because of the existence of jouissance, what happens all the time is that people fantasise about destroying the symbolic network. Hence the existence of films like Deep Impact (1998), Armageddon (1998) and Independence Day (1996), that realise in special effects the dream-fantasy of spectacular destruction. Zizek, who wrote The Sublime Object of Ideology in 1989, illustrated this point by using the Titanic disaster of 1912 (ibid., 70), but the same principle can be applied to 9/11.
Look at these images (Figs, 1 & 2)
If images like Figures 1 and 2 appeared today they would be considered tasteless in the extreme. But they are actually from a time just prior to 9/11, when the idea of flying planes into building could still be joked about (1) . These images appear uncannily prophetic, precisely because our jouissance was realised in the terrible events of that day. But the point is that, if 9/11 hadnt happened, they would not be significant. And Zizek would argue that 9/11 was an event so symbolically overdetermined anyway, that it was bound to create such images in advance. In fact the very reason that al-Qaeda chose the World Trade Centre as a target, was because symbolised global capitalism.
The sublime object of ideology The Real is something that cannot be negated, because it is the embodiment of a pure negative emptiness - a certain void (Zizek 1989, 170). It always resists symbolisation but it is precisely through this failure that we can locate its empty (traumatic) place (ibid., 172). Kant and the Supersensible Criticism If we apply Hegel's criticism of the supersensible to Zizek's use of the Lacanian object petit, it too seems to stand as something outside of representation a 'certain void' as Zizek called it (ibid., 170). However it is inconsistent for Zizek to fault Kantian philosophy for the very thing he extols in the context of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The logical principle of contradiction asserts if something is false it cannot also be true (Copi & Cohen, 1994, 365). Which means that either, the logic of representation is valid, and there is nothing beyond representation, or that the logic of representation is invalid. Arguing for both leads the conclusion that the object petit is something akin to a supernatural force, which is unacceptable. However there is an additional postulate which would resolve the contradiction. I will discuss this in the next chapter. |
The solution to the problem posed at the end of the last chapter is to consider the sublime as a phenomenon of feeling. This requires that feelings be considered somewhat differently to the way they have been thought about in the past, i.e., not as just subjective but in more general terms as a coherent system of internal communication. But this system must itself be thought of as being different from the normal internal communication system (i.e. thinking). This chapter is devoted to making a case for this assertion. However, a case cannot be made for feelings if they are considered as a form of mediation. For then the problem of the logic of representation and the unrepresentational sublime would remain unsolved. What needs to be assumed therefore is that feelings are immediate, for the simple reason that if it were otherwise they would not be able to operate outside of the logic of representation. Now of course feelings are not actually immediate, there must be some kind of causality governing perceiving a stimulis and any kind of response we have to that stimulus. Therefore feelings must occur through some sort of mediation. But I still argue that feelings are immediate to the exent that they come at the very beginning of the thought process. For feelings are what initially instigates the internal dialogue we have with ourselves in order that we may generate thoughts about things. In this sense a feeling is our first reaction to a given stimulus, and also what draws us to that stimuls in the first place - separating it from what Kant called 'the manifold.' What I am suggesting, in the context of the sublime, is that the disparity between feeling and thinking is what causes the sublime experience. While the normal process of thinking begins with a feeling and ends in a thought, in the case of sublime experiences, the feelings are so intense that they cannot be adequately represented. This then is what causes the feelings of agitation so characteristic of the sublime. It has been traditionally argued that the sublime produces an abyss of meaning: this much is certain from the historical accounts summarised thus far. But this conclusion also implies that the sublime must be cognisable up to the point of breakdown as a representation, for otherwise it would be unlikely that the mind could form any idea about it at all. What I am suggesting is that at the point of breakdown a person continues to 'make sense' of the sublime through the immediacy of her feelings, which the mind later articulates back to the person as the 'sublime something'. The ordinary workings of feeling Now, there are two objections to this. Firstly, it may be argued that feelings must have some stimulus or other, and therefore it is a mere semantic distinction to claim feelings and not objects are the object of thought. And while it is entirely reasonable to suppose this, as a retrospective judgement of reason, I assert that it simply does not describe the process of thinking in actuality. Objects cannot meaningfully exist for us before they are intimated by feelings. To suggest this is to endow objects with intentions, which is in effect the naïve realist position. Secondly, it may be objected that words and not feelings create ideas of objects. This position assumes that language, or more properly language structures, create feelings in the form of values (Saussure 1983, 114). Now it is true of course that we have feelings about words. And we also have to articulate feelings into words. But if this is so, how can words create feelings in the first place? The answer given it that the illusive word which is assumed to have created the feeling is embedded in a language system, which the user has not yet acquired the competence to access. In other words the user sees the language system as a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. But if this is so, why is this inadequacy expressed in the form of a feeling, and not in words? If feelings were not immediate and language not mediate then there might be a case for suggesting that feelings could be formed by words. However, if my claim of the immediacy of feelings is accepted as true, it follows that it is no longer possible even to debate which came first. In the process of thinking, the question always before the mind is, 'what are my feelings telling me about this?' In the sublime experience, the mind struggles to articulate these 'unrepresentable' feelings in conceptual terms. In effect the mind is unable to articulate what feelings are telling it at that moment. What this impliesand I want to emphasis this pointis that feelings are saying something significant, for if this were not so it would be unlikely that the mind could call any experience sublime: it would simply be an incomprehensible experience. This is not to imply that the sublime can never be 'named' in conceptual terms. Sublime experiences are as contingent as any other experience. Consequently, it is quite possible that some hitherto sublime experience, becomes in time ordinary one and therefore no longer holds any peculiar fascination for the person (the sublime here can be thought of as the opposite of cynicism, because while the latter can be said to place a glass ceiling on one's thoughts the former smashes it to pieces). I would also argue that this domestication of the sublime through experience and education is not unusual, but rather describes the normal arc of every person's journey from childhood into adulthood. What are feelings? an instance of that kind of consciousness which involves no analysis, comparison or any process whatsoever, nor consists in whole or in part of any act by which one stretch of consciousness is distinguished from another... any feeling must be identical with any exact duplicate of it, which is as much as to say that the feeling is simply a quality of immediate consciousness (CP 1.306 - 307)(2) Peirce's view of feelings is bound up in his conception of semiotics, so much so that one cannot be undestood without the other. Semiotics, according to Peirce, is about thinking. That which we call reality cannot tell us anything about itself. Reality is just there and as such it is something which is always in need of interpretation. This is what human beings do, they make sense of reality in thinking. This prompts the question what is thinking. For Peirce thinking is quite simply semiosis. We can begin to understand what semiosis is by observing that thoughts come in associative chains, in the sense that one thought prompts another, and then another, and then another. This proces is what Peirce calls semiosis. He states that thoughts are themselves made up three 'elements of thought' (Peirce 1931-35, 1.284). These are the representamen, object and interpretant, which interact with one another in an associative way to produce what Pierce calls the sign.
An imaginary story One day A and B are walking down a street when B hears a growl coming from behind a hedge. Immediately he grabs hold of A to get her to stop. "What is it?" A asks B, and he taps three times on her arm for "don't know." A tells B to go and take a look. B does this and sees it is a dog; obviously not a dangerous one, since it runs away as soon as it catches sight of B. B goes back to A to tell her what he has seen. But of course he cannot say it was a dog. So A has to deduce the answer by asking B a series of questions and working it out from the taps on her arm.
The Peircean Sign The important thing to remember here is that the actual object of a sign--what Peirce calls the dynamic object (CP 4.536)--is always hidden, for the simple reason, that if the object were visible, there would be no need of a sign to represent it. For example, we might see written down somewhere the letters H O U S E (representamen); and recognise that they spell the word "HOUSE" (interpretant): and immediately realise what those letters mean (object), but this realisation of the object comes about through the actions of the interpretant.
The interpretants seemingly dual semiotic function, can be likened to the ability of human beings, both to sense something and to articulate to themselves in language what that something is. This can be explained a little better by referring to Peirces three categories of thought: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness (ibid., 1.300). Each category governs a particular domain. Firstness governs qualities, secondness governs existential forces, and thirdness governs mediation. Therefore the duality of the interpretant exists between the immediacy of firstness and secondness and mediation of thirdness. This distinction will become clearer as I explain the function of each category.
Firstness Secondness Thirdness The sometimes difficult marriage of B and A Feeling 'sees' things differently from thought |
Paradoxes which I examined in the context of Zizek are a good way into thinking about the nature of feelings because paradoxes demonstrate the 'sublime' presence of feelings in thought. In wrestling with a paradox, feelings of intense interest compel the mind to keep searching for a solution, while the thoughts just go round and round spiralling into bad infinity. Paradoxes therefore feel more interesting than they actually are, and consequently I define them as: something produced by thoughts, but productive of feelings.
The Philosophy of feeling The philosophy of feeling is predicated on two seemingly contradictory principles:
1/ Feelings are universal.
2/ There is no determinate relationship between feeling and representation.
1/ Feelings are universal However the logic of representation is presumptuous to assume on this account that all feelings lie. This would suggest that we could unwittingly wilfully deceive, which is as illogical as it sounds.
Involuntary feelings are immediate and therefore not representational. In this sense they are not experienced first and felt afterwards, they are simply felt. As such, there can be no distinction made between feelings and expressions--in the sense that one is internal and the other is external--for they are in fact the same thing. To prove this, try to smile without feeling happy or, vice versa, try to feel happy without smiling. I assert that this cannot be done, because a genuine smile is always accompanied by a feeling of happiness.
Feelings can be communicated to others without being represented. In the sense that when we see a person smile we may involuntarily smile back. This is not a representational feeling of happiness; it is the same happiness, expressed in one person and evoked in another. This process is not at all unusual, it is called empathy and when we can speak of the communication of feeling we may do so in terms of conveyance metaphors.
Figures 4 to 9 show a series of images of happy and sad people from different cultures and eras. It would be churlish to ask which is which. I do not have to interrogate the face shown in Fig. 6, for instance, to ascertain that, although the soldiers mouth is turning upwards, he not smiling. Neither do I need to dwell on the posture of the two soldiers in Fig. 8 to deduce that something more melancholic is being communicated by their embrace than affection. Therefore I assert that feelings are universal. Not because it is reasonable to do so (the universality of feeling is not a logical proposition), but I assert it nevertheless because it can be demonstrated as being true. And if the evidence of figures 4 to 9 is not sufficient I suggest the reader looks at other photographs until the point is conceded. Shared repertoire of feeling 2/ There is no determinate relationship between feeling and representation Now it may be argued that feelings do not arise spontaneously ex nihilo, and consequently they must always be about something. This argument can be simply illustrated: Person X is grief stricken by the death of her mother. Person Y knows neither person X nor her mother. Consequently person Y is not upset. Therefore it is argued that feelings are subjective. And this arguement is a powerful one, indeed cognitive ecientists are divided over the question of the universality of basic feelings such as happiness and sadness for this very reason (Pons et al. 2004, 128-9). However, the philosophy of feeling, asserts that grief is a universal emotion. So, for example, if person Y was in the same room as person X, Y would be affected by Xs grief. Note that I say affected not effected, since, although empathy can be seen as a direct transference of emotion, it is not a direct transference of the cause as well, which means that Y only gets a 'feeling' of Xs pain, but without a representation attached to it. Therefore, as long as the feelings remain unspecified in the analysis, i.e. not linked to any particular representation, feeling can claim to have universal extension an involuntary smile means happiness, no matter whose face is expressing it. But all this actually means is that the truth of the universal existence of feeling can never be proved, it can only be demonstrated. Indexical media Meaning defined Feeling and Tautology A tautology is productive of thought An example Fig, 8 For instance what is it that makes figure 8 a sad picture? The gesture of the two soldiers? The way one buries his face in the other mans chest? Or the position of the mans hand, partially covering his face? The answer is yes to all of these, but the photograph also says something profound about the experience of war. The man on the left, like me, is a witness to this scene, but he does not even look up from his reading, while the partly obscured expression of the man on the far right, addresses me directly and challenges my right to look. In analysing this photograph as a series of tautologies, I am are stuck by a series of contradictory feelings within myself. Sadness makes me feel sad, and is therefore a much more powerful emotion than mere interest. Why then is the man on the left more interested in his book than in the grief of the two soldiers? I look at him again and see that his is not even reading the book, and I realise that his 'interest' is in fact masking his discomfort. And then there is the defiant expression of man on the right. Defiance is defiance, which is expressed as hostility: a fortification of the self against the scrutiny of the other. Defiance can be seen as a kind of edifice of guilt; one that pleads understand me as much as it pushes the viewer away. The philosophy of feeling cannot say what he feels so defiant about, for that would be linking a feeling to a representation. But the juxtaposition of three feelings: sadness, studied (dis)interest and defiance, alerts us to the extraordinary tensions in this photograph. And that is why I think it reveals something profound about the experience of war. Tautologies and hindsight However, tautologies have no legislative capacity over future events, and no laws can be formulated using them. So in this way feelings are subjective. But just because tautologies cannot be predictive, it does not mean that they have no jurisdiction oven the past. For tautologies in a sense can be seen as the wisdom of hindsight. And this is why the philosophy of feeling is particularly useful for the discipline of media studies. (4) Every medium adapts its form to the representation of feeling for otherwise it would not mean anything. I will argue in the next section that this is how the grammar of media form actually originates. For instance language has emotive words, and photography expresses the photographers feelings in terms of mood, even if the picture's subject is a landscape: in fact especially if it is a landscape (Fig 10).
Fig. 10 The philosophy of feeling states that it is possible to retrieve and examine the past captured in indexical media. Humans in society create cultural myths about the past, which in some circumstances can be used as a form of social control. In these instances the philosophy of feeling can be used to critique those myths. I will demonstrate this in the next chapter |
Feeling Patterns 1/ The performance of the actions 2/ Creates a space for abstract thinking (ideology) 3/ Creates the form of abstract thought It is important to realise that Zizek is not postulating a direct deterministic relationship between a performance and the creation of abstract thoughts, for that would be naïve realism. However, as long as the concept of ideology is unspecified in the analysis, Zizek reasons that it can act in the same way to create meaning as Saussure's combination of arbitrary sounds and arbitrary names create language (Saussure 1983, 72). The problem with the concept of ideology is that ideology is already a thought, which begs the question why does a thought need another thought to express it? The answer that is usually given is that ideology is false consciousness, or an ideal that functions to mask its own failure (Lukács 1971, 58). This is fine, as long as there is some person or group directing the ideological deception. However, this does mean that ideology cannot be arbitrary and cannot therefore function in the way that Zizek specifies it should. Replacing the notion of ideology with feelings, eliminates the problem of having to conceive of reality in terms of a fundamental deception. Feelings always have to be articulated in thoughts, which means that feelings are always unspecified before being articulation in thought and can therefore act as the mediator between performance and thinking that is required by Zizek's analysis. I want to stress that replacing ideology with feelings does not imply that the concept of ideology, as it is normally understood, can be jettisoned altogether. Feelings can lie when subjected to the will of an individual or indeed a ruling class. Thus we arrive at a theoretical sketching-out of how feelings can act as the basis of discourse. Although only complex feelings are adequate to performing this task, for otherwise the number of discourses would be as limited as the number of simple feelings, i.e. very few. Therefore I have to assume the universality of complex feelings, but this is problematic because it seems obvious that complex feelings have to be determined by representations, and consequently by my reasoning they can have no universal validity. However this assumption is incorrect because it is based on a conception of complex feelings as an aggregate of simple feelings. The cannot be so because it would imply that feelings can occur simultaneously (whereas if you try feeling happy and sad at exactly the same time you find that it cannot be done - in fact you can feel happy and then reflect on something sad, then perhaps feel happy again, but this suggests that a happy-sad feeling is something which occurs in a given period of time and not all at once). Complex feelings can therefore be defined as a patterning of simple feelings over time. And it is these feeling-patterns that are deterministic of discourses, and furthermore, because they are actually a succession of simple feelings they do not have to be attached to specific representations which means that they can operate tautologically, according to the principles of the philosophy of feeling. Take grief for example, some work has been done, mostly outside of the academy on mapping out the feeling-pattern of grief. It is said to have five (or sometimes seven) stages: denial, anger, negotiation, depression and finally acceptance (Kübler-Ross 1973). Now what is interesting about this is how closely it corresponds to Aristotle's categorisation of the dramatic form of tragedy. Aristotle mapped the feeling of tragedy into several discreet parts - incentive moment, reversal of fortune and recognition, scene of suffering, dénouement and 'katharsis' (Aristotle 1991, 18-9). So the dramatic form of tragedy can be said to map onto the feeling-pattern of grief. In this sense it can be aruged that complex feelings can be structured like narratives.
Case study #1 - 9/11I want to examine the representation of the events of 9/11 utilising of the principles of the philosophy of feeling that I outlined in this and the last section. I begin the analsis with a claim: the trauma of 9/11 (5) was experienced as actual trauma experienced throughout the world. This traume was created because the feeling-pattern of truama was embedded in indexical electronic media, and the traume was structued as a feeling pattern according to the generic conventions of television news. I will now elaborate on the reasoning that I argue will justify this claim.Media embedding The genre of news Analysis In 9/11, the grammar of television news continued to function despite the trauma, As Michael Schudson wrote:
September 11 blew the fuses of preconceived ideas about journalism and just about everything else. Journalists ran on instinct, on professionalism and they did their best to get the story (Schudson 2002, 39 - my emphasis)
Incentive moment
Reversal of fortune and recognition
Scenes of suffering
Editing the narrative
There must also be images of people reacting to the spectacle, that communicate the human cost. The inclusion of such images is what conveys the traumatic meaning of 9/11.
Combining the images of the attack gives a representation of the feeling-pattern of the 9/11 experience...
If this grammar is familiar, it is not because of any symbolic overdetermination of the event itself, this is just the way that visual media represent the feeling-pattern of trauma. As NBCs Katie Couric remarked "it looks like a movie" (ibid). 9/11 looked like a movie because many films take the same large-scale cataclysmic events as their themes as these images from Independence Day (1996) illustrate (Fig. 35).
These images carry a powerful sense of authority. This is the sublime aspect of trauma. As Simon During pointed out, such images attempt to evoke an intensity of emotion in audiences so that reason gives way to faith (During: 2002, 28).
Sublime Discourse Malfunction
What made 9/11 especially traumatic, was that the very discourses of television news, that are supposed to contain such horror, started to break down
Journalists could not make sense of what they were reporting
News anchormen and women, who are famous for their calm demeanour, struggled to maintain their composure
In newsrooms, the television pundits (experts) whose job is to put a safe contextualising frame around the story, were discarded, in preference to showing repeated shots of the second plane hitting the tower, again and again and again
This compulsion to revisit the traumatic event, Freud termed it repetition compulsion (Freud, 1914, 150), is typical of the experience of trauma. "The coverage of the second plane hitting the tower was too much for some people, for others it somehow authenticated their experience" (Allen & Zelizer 2002, 4) Allen and Zelizer documented how the priorities of news organisations were re-evaluated during 9/11. For example four major US networks agreed to pool resources, suspending their normal programme schedules to accommodate continuous coverage (ibid., 4 & 5). Also, cable and satellite stations, normally devoted to specialist entertainment formats, started broadcasting news feeds. And most extraordinarily of all, for two days commercials largely disappeared from the air, resulting in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising revenue (ibid.). 9/11 therefore presented a feeling-pattern of trauma that was felt by television audiences around the world. This is why images of the disaster had the ability to create such profound disquiet and agitation. Of course this was not the only reason. There was also the shattering of certain ideological assumptions, that such things could not happen in the U.S., and the feeling that America's loss belonged to the world. Perhaps because the mediated images of the twin towers were as familiar to some as landmarks in their own town. The shattering of these illusions had the effect for those people (me certainly) of amplifying the feeling-pattern of trauma into something more tangible. This can be likened to comforting someone who is bereft with grief, only to realise that you also knew the person she is mourning, and had done so for many years. I want to stress, I am not asserting that the media embedded feeling-pattern of 9/11 was necessarily traumatic, for to do so would violate the second principle of the philosophy of feeling. And if this were true, we would have to judge Independence Day traumatic for the same reason. This underscores why the philosophy of feeling is not rhetoric, because the philosophy of feeling can only talk in general terms about feelings, and only when they are not attached to representations. Here we raise the problem of the ideological power of the indexical nature of a medium like television. For although there is no deterministic reason why an event should be interpreted in a certain way, there was a sense after 9/11 that it was not permissible to see it as anything other than a traumatic experience. For example the composer Karlheinz Sockhausen who called 9/11 "Lucifer's greatest work of art" was vilified in the media, and at least one of his concerts was cancelled as a result (Didcock 2005). People who disagreed with the received interpretation of 9/11, were wise to keep their opinions to themselves.
Case study 2, Shock & Awe
However in March 2003, when the strategy was (allegedly) tried, (6) Shock & Awe was deemed to be a failure. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concluded:
Analysis Interestingly in this context, Stuart Ullman is quoted as saying, the phrase Shock & Awe was "not helpful" and that he prefer the British term, "Effects-based Operations" (Correll, 2003). This is ironic, given that these effects based operations were employed to realise the objectives of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Cancelling out the redundancy in terms results in Effects-based Iraqi Freedom, which just goes to show that military double-speak can be its own auto-critique. If 9/11 is a model for the mediated sublime, then it is easy to see why Shock & Awe failed. There was no feeling-pattern of trauma in the coverage, no shocked and glazed expressions transcending time and history, for the images of the bombing consisted only of footage like this
In a nutshell, Shock and Awe was all empty spectacle and no feeling; consequently no meaning. The problem with Shock & Awe was not a lack of firepower, or resolve, but the fact that the television cameras were stationed on the wrong side of the Tigris River. This meant that television audiences were but distant spectators, as coalition airpower obliterated targets in and around Baghdad. Shock & Awe can be seen therefore as a typically effects-laden Hollywood blockbuster all explosions and no plot. If the strategists had really wanted to shock, they should have stationed cameras (remotely operated if necessary) at strategic points around Baghdad, in order to capture the necessary shocking images of Iraqis fleeing in terror, as well as the dead and wounded. Then the combination of spectacle and the human cost would have created the feeling-patterns of shock and awe, and therefore the desired effect. However, in an age of smart bombs and surgical strikes, where war must be sanitised and casualties kept to a minimum, footage of dead people would have been somewhat off message. Indeed, General Tommy Franks chastised Al Jazeera for showing them (Tumber and Palmer 2004, 69). Ullman and Wade even voiced these concerns in their report. "The shortcoming.. is clear This model can easily fall outside the cultural values of the U.S. for it to be useful" (Ullman and Wade 1996). What this analysis has revealed is a fundamental clash of discourses, there is no precision targeting with shock and awe for it is the bluntest of blunt instruments. And consequently for the operation to have been a military success, it would have been deemed a political failure. Since the sanitised image of war is essential for the public sanctioning of war. The last thing the US administration wants, is images like this haunting our imaginations again.
Fig. 40 |
Summary This process reveals something of the ordinary working of the human mind: feelings and not objects or language are the true objects of thought, and meaning is the expression of feelings in thoughts. The logic of representation cannot help but conceive of phenomena ex post facto as being objective, but this itself does not justify the existence of objects outside of the logic of representation. The philosophy of feeling has two basic principles: 1/ that feelings are universal 2/ there can be no deterministic relationship between feeling and representation. Analysis of these principles revealed that feelings were structured in a converse way to thoughts. For example in the contemplation of paradoxes, feelings and not thoughts are produced, whilst in the contemplation of tautologies, thoughts and not feelings are produced. There are also feelings of a more complex kind, called feeling-patterns. Grief, for example, produces a feeling-pattern that contains denial, shock, anger, negotiation and acceptance. All feelings are communicated by empathy, and in the case of feeling patterns, this communication is structured like a narrative. Every communications medium adapts itself to expressing feelings. This is the media embedding of feeling patterns. The media coverage of 9/11 had the feeling pattern of a trauma, and hence was felt to be traumatic. The media coverage of Shock & Awe lacked the appropriate feeling-pattern, and so failed to meet the objectives stated in its title. A multi-paradigmatic approach On the other hand admitting the possibility of the coexistence of different paradigms, is what begins the process of theoretical cohabitation and mutual tolerance of a truly globalised existence such utopias should at least be theoretically possible. Therefore the philosophy of feeling works for, not against the logic of representation. The philosophy of feeling and the logic of representation, (7) |
Cover image: The Expulsion from Eden, Artist unknown, URL = http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_modern_2.html Fig. 1 Album cover for Party Music (2001) by the Coup, URL = http://www.sujee.net/albums/2001/world_trade_center_attack/tn/flexon_tower.jpg.html Fig. 2 Flexon Advertisement (2001) by Precision Eye Care, URL = http://www.sujee.net/albums/2001/world_trade_center_attack/tn/pop_cover.jpg.html Fig. 3 In the Shadow of No Towers (2003) by Art Spiegelman, URL = http://www.graphicnovels.brodart.com/dont_overlook_august_2004.htm Fig. 4 Happy aboriginal IMG_0401_aussie_aboriginal.jpg, URL = http://www.rugzakreis.com/wereld-gezichten.htm Fig. 5 Children from the Akha1 tribe - Laoshttp://www.losviajeros.com/elviajero/ Fig. 6 U.S. soldier, Iraqhttp://www.oldmencrying.com/images/iraq_ussoldier1 2.jpeg Fig. 7 African children http://www.transom.org/shows/2001/200112.shows.africa.photos.html Fig. 8 U.S. infantryman, Korean War http://www.voicesinwartime.org/ Fig. 9 Iraqi woman http://www.voicesinwartime.org/VoicesInWartime/Film/ Fig. 10 Tetons Snake River, photographer Ansel Adams URL = http://pda.lenta.ru/culture/ Fig. 11 9/11, CNN Headline News [screen grab 29/4/05] Fig. 12 9/11, CNN Headline News [screen grab 29/4/05] Fig. 13 9/11, wtc25.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 14 9/11, wtc55crop.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 15 9/11, wtc20crop.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 16 9/11, Mvc-018s.jpg URL = http://homepage.mac.com/a4x4er/PhotoAlbum1.html Fig. 17 9/11, TOWER1_IMPACT.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/ Fig. 18 9/11,colapse2 2.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 19 9/11, B8E17AEBA-D293.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/ Fig. 20 9/11, 13.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 21 9/11 wtc5.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 22 Asian Tsunami, 1104423420_3963.jpg URL = http://graphics.boston.com Fig. 23 genocide.rwanda11.jpg URL = http://www.usafricaonline.com/genocide.rwanda11.jpg Fig. 24 somalia.gif URL = http://www.treaty.org/ifst_graphics/media/somalia.gif Fig. 25 ABC news, 11/9/01 screen grab 1 [accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 26 ABC news, 11/9/01 screen grab 2 [accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 27 9/11, CNN, 11/9/01 screen grab 1 URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/ Fig. 28 9/11, 1041288.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 29 9/11, Fox News, wtc9.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 30 9/11, NBC News, hcwwtv12.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/br>[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 31 ABC news, 11/9/01 screen grab 2 [accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 32 CNN, wtc3.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 33 9/11, wtc12.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 34 9/11, wtc26.jpg URL = http://ftp.die.net/mirror/wtc/images/[accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 35 Independence Day, screen grabs, (1996) Dir. Roland Emmerich, 20th Century Fox Fig. 36 Shock & Awe, Cover, URL = NDU Press Book, 1996, URL = http://www.ndu.edu/ Fig. 37 Shock & Awe _38992681_hugesmoke300afp.jpg http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/clubs/efa/downloads.htm [accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 38 Shock & Awe, a-day-shock-and-awe.jpeg [accessed 29/4/05] Fig. 39 Shock & Awe, _38992813_203b_compound_afp.jpg http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/clubs/ Fig. 40 Vietnam Kim Phuc.jpg http://www.doublestandards.org/kimphuc.html [accessed 29/4/05] |
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