I’m working on a manuscript
in which I contrast classically liberal visual epistemes with neoliberal
affective and audiological epistemes. If classical liberalism thinks with and
through primarily “visual” examples, neoliberalism thinks with and through
examples derived from different modes of sensory experience—affect and sound.
One of the main points of difference between classical liberal viz-centrism and
neoliberal affect-ology or audio-logy is this: the viz-centric episteme adopted
in classical liberalism focuses on objects (static, defined substances),
while the sensible/sonic episteme of neoliberalism focuses on processes
(dynamic, temporal phenomena).
I argue that philosophy
generally, but especially feminist philosophy, tends to theorize “from the
visual.” That is to say, it begins from a set of metaphysical, ontological,
political, and normative (ethical & aesthetic) assumptions that are derived
from Enlightenment/Modern epistemologies; these epistemologies frame the
“subject” or “self” through and in terms of a 16th/17th
century understanding of how sight works. So, “the visual” is not necessarily
tied to how current science understands the physiology of sight and the physics
of light to work. Rather, it is grounded in the account of seeing and being
seen that we inherit from Enlightenment science and, more importantly,
philosophy. (One could argue that this understanding of sight/light focuses on
light’s “particle” properties to the exclusion of its “wave” properties.) “Visibility,”
in other words, “takes on a particular organization that corresponds to our
habits of seeing” (Al-Saji 377). The regime of visibility we inherit from the
classical liberalism/Enlightenment philosophy is consistent with what Foucault
calls (in The Order of Things) the “classical episteme.” Or, perhaps
more correctly, the “classical episteme” is visual or viz-centric (think
about Las Meninas, the painting at the beginning of Foucault’s book…).
I do all that arguing in the
book’s introduction. Here, I want to focus on one very specific aspect of this
contrast between classically liberal “visuality” and neoliberal
“processuality”: the shift from 2D to 4D thinking. I’ve already talked a bit
about the role of 4D in Jasbir Puar’s theorization of neoliberal
superpanopticism. Here, I want to trace this in Alia Al-Saji’s work on
visuality in Merleau-Ponty and Bergson. By showing how various feminist
theorists, each drawing on different source material/philosophical traditions, all
arrive at something like this shift from 2D classical liberal “visuality” to 4D
neoliberal affectivity, I hope to establish this 2D-4D shift as a general
phenomenon, one that is not specific to any one philosophical system, but
reflective of broad and deep shifts in Western theory and lifeworlds.
In her article, Al-Saji
identifies two types or modes of vision: objectifying vision and critical-ethical
vision. Objectifying vision treats
sight as “merely a matter of re-cognition, the objectivation and categorization
of the visible into clear-cut solids, into objects with definite contours and
uses” (375). This objectifying vision is both classically liberal and Cartesian:
it operates in a two-dimensional metaphysical plane, and according to a binary
logic.[1]
(Think about it: the Cartesian Cogitio, the foundation of the
classically liberal subject, fits quite nicely with, uh, the Cartesian
coordinate system…). “Modernity in the West,” Al-Saji explains, includes and is
“motivated by imaginary and epistemic investments in representation and the metaphysics of subject-object’ (378; emphasis mine). This binary subject/object
logic implies a specific type or mode of representation: two-dimensionality. Binaries
like subject/object, inside/outside, public/private, male/female,
black/white—these are all manifestations of an episteme that frames everything
in terms of either X or Y (i.e., the axes in the Cartesian coordinate system). The
idea that social identities—like race or gender—are properties of individuals
(rather than systems of social organization) follows from this 2D
object-orientation. Al-Saji explains:
social
positionality and systems of oppression…are only acknowledged by objectifying
vision insofar as they are made into objects or properties of objects…As the
formative conditions by which objects and ‘others’ are differentiated and
discerned, these dimensions cannot be seen for themselves (378).
Objectifying vision treats identity as an
object: liberal vision can only see identities, it can’t see the “system” or
the “frame’ or the “frame-making process.”
In fact, objectifying vision can see neither processes nor relations:
it can account only for “inert and self-same being, subject neither to
contextual variation, nor dependency” (379; emphasis mine). (I’ll
pick back up on this connection between systematic accounts of oppression and
process below.) This classicaly liberal, 2D, identity-centric account of race
and gender privileges a theory of representation like the one Guyatri Spivak
discusses, via Marx, in her iconic Can the Subaltern Speak? The subject/object
and inside/outside dichotomies encourage the view that political representation
(Vertreten), as in the ability to
speak for or as a member of a group, is grounded in 2D artistic re-presentation
(Darstellung). Only those who outwardly, realistically, and authentically
possess the objective properties that index group membership (skin color, eye
shape, organs, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, etc.) are taken as
credible political representatives of that group. More simply, what we commonly
understand as “identity politics” assumes this 2D regime of visuality. (I know
this is more of the summary of my argument than the actual argument—but you’ll
have to wait for the book for the full argument.)
According to Al-Saji, critical-ethical vision is a
“concrete, dynamic and affective seeing that…is forgotten when vision falls
into habits of objectification” (376). If objectifying vision is attuned to,
well, objects, critical-ethical vision is attuned to (dynamic) processes.
These dynamic processes include “the temporality
of [lived bodies’] habits, their dependency on social position, and the
contingency of their material form” (379; emphasis mine). Critical-ethical
vision is 4D in the art historical sense because it, like 4D media, is time-based.[2]
Following Bergson, Al-Saji calls this temporal aspect of critical-ethical vision
hesitation. “Hesitation questions the
seamless mirroring of seeing in the seen; it reveals the difference and
non-coincidence within vision itself” (380). Hesitation is a temporal rupture
in the “ahistorical” (379) subject (seeing)/object (seen) 2D logic.[3]
Time itself is what interrupts the “flat” or “static” two-dimensionality of
objectifying vision. Time, in the form of “the felt weight of historicity,”
draws our attention to the social conditions of vision (what Al-Saji calls the
“diacritical” conditions of vision). For example, objectifying vision, by
overlooking the social conditions of visuality, falsely presents a normatively
masculine/male subject position as both gender-neutral and universal. In
classically liberal theories of subjectivity and agency, “the normative ‘I
can’—posited as human but in fact correlated to male bodies—itself relies on a
certain ‘I cannot’ that excludes other ways of seeing and acting. This
exclusion constructs the teleology of objectifying vision and action as
‘efficient’ and ‘seamless’” (382). This seamlessness is possible because the
“rough edges”—i.e., history, social context—are absent in a 2D “flat” account
of subjectivity. Treating identity and oppression only as objects, 2D
accounts obscure the systematic nature of oppression.[4]
This systematic (historical/diacritical)
character of oppression is, for objectifying vision, “the blindspot that it
cannot make visible directly, but can only marginally see in its moments of
hesitation” (385). Al-Saji implies that hesitation, the introduction of history
and social context into two-dimensional subject/object ontologies, requires us
to think in more than two dimensions. “To glimpse these dimensions,” she argues, “is to witness the virtual multiplication of other ways of seeing and acting, of
alternative routes to those being actualized through objectifying vision” (382;
emphasis mine). Time itself is not
homogeneous; the fourth dimension is multifaceted. The heterogeneity of
time/temporality is a common theme in postcolonial theory: think, for example,
of Homi Bhabha’s discussion of time in The Location of Culture, or Paul
Gilroy’s discussion of black Atlantic counter-Modernity. Thus, Al-Saji argues
that hesitation does more than introduce “time” as an analytical category; if
it accounts for “the weight of multiple pasts, of historicity and habituation”
(385), hesitation can in fact reveal the “temporality and contingency” of time
itself—or rather, it reveals that time, like any other epistemic/experiential
dimension, is structured by “instituting horizons and norms of meaning” (385).
(This perhaps parallels Puar’s discussion of the need to think time non-metrically,
or to relativize “meter” as a contextually-specific regime of
temporality/timekeeping.) Though Al-Saji uses “hesitation”
to describe an epistemic-phenomenological practice (critical-ethical vision),
she models this practice directly on the literal meaning of the term.
“Hesitation” can refer to a visual experience tha tis either (or both)
“delayed” or (and) “already ahead of itself” (387). “Hesitation” thus describes
the perception of something being too late or too soon—something whose
temporality doesn’t follow normative tempi, meter, rhythm, etc.
Painting, 4D, and Sound
It is interesting that
Al-Saji (via Merleau-Ponty and Bergson) glean their concepts of 4D
critical-ethical visuality from painting, because painting is a 2D
medium. Al-Saji uses 4D terms and concepts to describe critical-ethical vision,
so time-based media would offer more appropriate examples from and with which
to theorize critical-ethical vision. She even suggests as much:
More
than mere looking, this is seeing that listens, checks and questions,
that is critically watchful as well as ethically responsive (391).
In a footnote, she qualifies her reference to
audition: “By invoking listening here, I mean to point to the synaesthetic
openness of this vision” (398n74). But I would argue that listening is actually
highly appropriate to theorizing hesitation, as music and sound art are
fundamentally 4D media, and have been 4D long before visual arts caught up to
them in the 20th century with film, video, and digital media. Sound, music, and audition are such
productive means for theorizing “hesitation” that Al-Saji calls on musical
concepts to describe painting:
Paintings,
and cultural productions more generally, teach us to see differently…In this
context, Merleau-Ponty notes that ‘painting deposits in [us] a feeling of
profound discordance, a feeling of mutation.’ (EM 179/63) Painting, it seems,
has its own affective atmosphere, its own way of addressing us that disrupts
our habitual rhythms and perceptions (388).
Painting is a 2D—perhaps the 2D—medium.
However, Al-Saji and Merleau-Ponty both use musical concepts to describe the
way painting, a 2D medium, sparks critical-ethical “vision”: it uses rhythm
and consonance (discordance). Or rather, it critiques
objectifying (2D, ‘regular old’) vision, and these critiques “appear” or rise
to perception as 4D phenomena. The critique seems or feels like delay, syncopation,
dissonance—the interruption in objectifying vision manifests as a temporal
phenomenon. The effects of “destabilizing
the objectifying habits of seeing” (344) present themselves—or rather, are perceived
as—time-lag, hesitation.
Hesitation, 4D, and
Neoliberalism: Or, “seeing
differently” is not always critical or ethical
Hesitation is not necessarily
critical. In my reading of Puar, I argue that neoliberalism is a 4D “medium”.
So, hesitation could function uncritically as the very means and medium of
neoliberal hegemony. So it’s important that Al-Saji focus on the
critical-ethical dimension of hesitation. However, I worry that her account is
too narrowly targeted to classically liberal “objectifying” vision, and that it
doesn’t indicate how a critical “hesitation” or “delay” in 4D vision itself
would work. Because if it’s the attention to process and temporality that
disrupts the 2D logic of objectification, then while this “hesitation” may be
sufficient to critique classically liberal “vision,” it is not adequately
disruptive of neoliberal “vision.” (E.g., Al-Saji frames affect as an
alternative to objectification/sight,[5]
but Puar shows how neoliberalism transmits hegemony via affect.)
Objectification is not
the problem, Power is the problem
One
thing I particularly appreciate about Al-Saji’s account is that it shows us
that “objectification” is situated in a specific framework or regime of vision.
“Objectification” is one strategy, manifestation, or ode of a broader system
of social organization—this is what attention to the diacritical and historical
conditions of vision demonstrates. Just as not all “vision” is objectifying,
not all kinds of power or hegemony are “objectifying.” Objectification is not
the only way that oppression works—it’s not even the only—or perhaps even
primary—way that the media oppresses women and perpetuates misogyny. We can’t
just stop at objectification. We miss a lot.
If we follow Al-Saji, what we miss by stopping at
objectification is the systematic nature of oppression. When we treat objectification
as the problem (e.g., this images objectifies women), we obscure the broader
context in which this occurs—patriarchy. Objectification is not the
problem; patriarchy is the problem. Patriarchy is what makes the
objectification of women harmful. (E.g., men get objectified in images,
too—as athletes, as sexual objects—but the kind and quality of harm is
different.)
Al-Saji clarifies that objectification or
instrumentalization is actually a necessary condition of any type of “vision”:
“These others form the invisibles that have already been laterally implicated
in my field of vision” (389). In her terms, “lateral” implication means historical
and social implication: other people make, maintain, and disseminate the
specific systems of vision that I follow. For example, in order for a
language to live, people have to speak it; I learn it from others, I practice
it by talking with others or reading what other people have written, and it
stays current when people invent new words to describe new things. People make
language and keep it alive, so my ability to talk or read is contingent upon
other people’s linguistic practice. The same is true with “vision”: I can “see”
because other people practice this style of seeing with me. There is a “lateral
dependence of my vision upon others whose affective influence” (390) is a
prerequisite for my own ability to “see.” I can’t see—in any way, objectifying,
non-objectifying, critical-ethical, whatever—without relying on others. I take
them as objects, as instruments. (Knowing her work on Beauvoir, I suspect
Beauvoir’s notion of “ambiguity” is influencing Al-Saji here.)So the problem
here is not that I’m treating others as means and not as ends-in-themselves. In
fact, what quasi-Kantian feminist critiques of objectification forget is
my debt
to others who have accompanied the development of my vision, specifically
parental, communal and proximate others from whom I have learned how to see;
this invisible ‘weight of my past’ institutes a particular way of seeing as
normative for me (Al-Saji 389).
So those all-too-standard feminist objections
to “objectification” actually play into the very system of power that
they’re objecting to. By claiming that “objectification” is a problem, one
ignores the ways that we are dependent on others, and de-values all the care
work that is primarily done by women. Who teaches children? Who does this
“parental, communal” labor that Al-Saji mentions? Mostly women, either formally
as teachers or informally as parents. This “oversight” of dependency is an
“appropriation of the flesh of others to whom my attachment is rendered
invisible” (389). By claiming as my own accomplishment what was actually the
work of others, I appropriate their labor. So, the ethical framework (which is
basically Kantian: Treat others only as end-in-themselves, never as means to an
end) according to which “objectification” is a problem actually denies the
moral personhood of women. If we are dependent on others, then we can avoid
objectifying people only if the entities on which we depend—those “parental,
communal, and proximate others from whom I have learned how to see”—are not
moral persons, i.e., do not “count” as beings deserving to be treated as
ends-in-themselves. So, it’s actually a
problem to think objectification is inherently and necessarily problematic.
My
reading of Al-Saji also clarifies another limitation of the “objectification”
objection: If objectifying vision is more or less the regime of classical
liberalism, then “objectification” is a technique that classically liberal
modes of patriarchy, white supremacy, etc., use to perpetuate themselves. If
neoliberalism is more process-oriented than object-oriented,
neoliberalism’s misogyny will not necessarily, or not primarily, take the form
of objectification. If we focus too narrowly on objectification, if we think
“objectification” is the main way cultural products, media, images, etc., harm
women, then we overlook a whole slew of ways that misogyny occurs in
neoliberalism, in 4D forms of power, in 4D media, etc.
So, Al-Saji’s article helps
establish and clarify the connection between the epistemic system of
“objectifying vision” and the political system of classical liberalism. It also
shows how classical liberalism operates in a 2D metaphysical plane. Al-Saji’s
work through Merleau-Ponty and Bergson clarifies how art-historical notions of
4D “vision” intervene in and critique 2D logics. Time is a key element
of experience, one that is not captured in 2D systems. Al-Saji’s critique of “objectifying
vision” also opens up a feminist critique of all-too-standard feminist
objections to “objectification”: objectification is a feature of a specific
kind of “vision” or system of hegemony.
[1] Foucault’s concept of the “classical episteme” is
also relevant here, especially as it relates to categorization and “clear and
distinct” boundaries.
[2] Critical-ethical vision is also 4D in that it introduces additional
“planes” or “axes” of sight into the visual field. “Hesitation makes visible, in indirect and lateral ways, the
processes of habituation, identification and exclusion involved in the
institution of the level according to which I see. Hesitation thus installs an
interval through which both forms of therness, elided in objectifying vision,
can be glimpsed” (390; emphasis mine). The “lines”—e.g., the sine waves or
equations graphing the processes rather than the objects of
sight—manifest laterally or obliquely to the 2D X/Y Cartesian
grid.
[3] Hesitation is a temporal phenomenon that deconstructs
subject-object binaries, and, in so doing, the classically liberal framework
that ties political representation to 2D artistic representation. “At the hinge of passivitity-activity, but
also of inside-outside” (386), hesitation “goes beyond what can be cognized in
the logic of objects, an openness to that which may register as feeling rather than representation”
(386; emphasis mine).
[4] “Hesitation is, then, a response to, and an effort of openness
towards, an affective field that is unrecognizable to the objectifying gaze. In
this sense, hesitation would be a remedy for the blinders and the arrogance—to
use Marilyn Frye’s term—of objectifying vision”
(382)
[5]
AL-Saji argues, “affect is an interruption of habitual action,
a delay that is generative of recollection and that can open within habit other
ways of seeing andn acting” (386)
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