The Aesthetics of the Center
By Adam Katz
Detecting and articulating boundaries is an aesthetic question. Aesthetics is located on the originary scene, in the oscillation of the attention of the participants between the sign put forth by the other and the object. The desire for the object is magnified when the participant’s attention is directed toward it by the gesture of the other; the object then attended to directly is stripped of that desirability, which then has the participant return attention to the sign. What is aesthetically compelling here, I would say, is the object as presented by the sign: if we imagine this oscillation continuing (which, given the nature of oscillation, we must), with each return of attention to the object some way in which the sign has “glossed” the object remains, eventually leaving the participant with a completed model of the object as marked by the sign, which takes us from aesthetics to sacrality (and then the sparagmos). Sacrality involves representing the gesture as compelled by the object; aesthetics involves discerning the intentions of the center through the attention of others on the scene. This account situates aesthetics on the boundary of both knowledge and the sacred. Knowledge is being able to identify, publicly, two objects, but, really, first of all the same object at different times, as the same. Oscillation between the sign and the object is commanded by the former so as to ensure that all are putting forth the same sign: once this has been ascertained the object can issue imperatives. While we speak of the sign as a gesture, we should see the gesture of aborted appropriation as the tip of the sign considered more comprehensively, which must include posture as well as gesture: the hand must be mock reaching for the object, but the body must be holding back so as to the frame the reach as just a gesture. With each oscillation, more of the body as total sign is encompassed sensually so as to confirm that the sign is the same all around, or determine just how much sameness is necessary to make the judgment.
Like every element of the scene, the aesthetic, over time, is abstracted and brought into new relations to the sacred center. A broader desacralization is necessary before “art” can take on some kind of independence relative to the sacred, but until that point aesthetic considerations would be critical to representations of the sacred. Aesthetics would serve the purpose of introducing, welcoming, drawing participants into the sacred scene, providing ways for those participants to inhabit the scene and minimize the distance between ritual performance and the scene of origin. Participants receive their names from the ritual, which carries the aesthetic dimension into other practices. The separation of art from ritual coincides with the same disruption of sacral kingship that produces politics and the problem of the “tyrant.” It’s therefore not surprising that central to the first works of art is the problem of the tyrant and usurpation of the center more generally. Both Greek epic and Greek tragedy address resentment toward the usurped center in a direct manner, in an attempt to discover ways in which that resentment might be made socially productive rather than destructive. Gans, in _Originary Thinking_ , presents the history of art in terms of whether, and the manner in which, the work of art represents the scene of representation itself. Greek tragedy is a kind of year zero in this regard, as the scene is presented directly, and the audience’s participating is mediated directly through the chorus. In other words, no reason has to be provided for why we are concerned with the fate of the central figure or, more precisely, why we share and fear the resentment toward him. He does not need to come into, or be brought to, our attention. Once the centrality of the central figure is no longer a given, the resentment of the central figure himself must propel him to the center—he must be a
usurper accusing others of usurpation.
If the central figure must make his way to center stage, he must also be performing for an audience all his own, one he generates and is reciprocally generated by, and that audience must be represented in the work as well. The boundary between the art work and the audience is therefore represented within the work as well. The more the central figure is stripped of any supplementary features that make him “inherently” central, the more arbitrary the placement of any figure at the center becomes, and the more interchangeable the central figure and the members of the audience, both represented and actual. Centrality can only be asserted against some other social center, which generates the resentful hero of romanticism, who is subsequently systematically humiliated over the course of literary realism. Centrality can be systematically dismantled in the work, in which case the subject of the work is exposing the now discredited means of representing centrality. New figures can be placed at the center, in an attempt to renovate exhausted forms. The boundary between art and audience can itself be placed at the center, in works of art that can only be completed by the reader, or listener. The center here, we could say, is the art “recipient” produced or called forth by attention and devotion to the work itself, a devotion that must be given on faith. What we can trace through all of these aesthetic possibilities is a relation to the secular world, all of the energies of which are devoted to discovering ways in which the central figures at all levels can be deemed “non-tyrannical.” What kind of unqualified devotion will either evade or redeem the resentment toward the usurper? The secular world is comprised of the vast archipelago of disciplines, springing originally from philosophy but also politics and the circulation of money. All of these disciplines are in service to power, including the more narrowly scientific and technological, and their respective objects of study are the myriad forms of super-sovereignty that might remove, at least temporarily, the stain of tyranny from social institutions. Means of discipline aimed at organizing our attention in certain ways toward certain kinds of objects are presented as legitimate by the disciplines because they are dictated by some anthropomorphic model that renders that means of discipline in accordance with nature, the authority which can’t be superseded. Knowledge depends upon aesthetics: only a center free of usurpationist desires can sustain attention on the gap in imperatives issued by the center, and only aesthetic oscillation can dissolve those desires into the manifold forms of attention directed toward that center. But the disciplines must present themselves as prior to the aesthetic because their secularized, object-centered forms of knowledge cannot see the discipline as a scene. This means that the relation between the work of art and the disciplines is satirical: all secular art is a satire of the disciplines. (If it’s not, then it’s not art, but rather promotional material for the disciplines.)
All satire needs to know is that someone else could be at the center other than the one presently occupying it—and that is always the case. Of course, the same is true of any alternative occupant of the center proposed by figures on the margin, and it’s true of whatever power center must be occupied in order to effectively propose an alternative. Satire is effectively total, and includes itself. Satire sees everyone as aspirants for some center who fail to see the inessentiality of that aspiration, which is to say, its roots in mimetic desire and resentment. Such a view of others can be discerned within the aesthetic moment on the originary scene itself: part of the oscillation
between sign and object on the scene is a recursively articulated representation of one’s fellow signers. Running up to the issuance of the sign each member sees his fellows as dangerous—it is fear, not just of physical harm (although very much that as well) but of the collapse of order that leads into the presentation of the sign. Once others have signed, though, they must also fear, and oneself must also be dangerous. What does the other look like, riven by extreme vulnerability and projecting a threat, all in one instance? I think we have our answer if we think about what is perhaps the most typical figure of satire: the blustering bully whose pretensions are easily punctured. Satire is the most pedagogical artistic form, because if we are all capable of seeing one another (and ourselves) in these terms (which is not to say we should always and only see each other in these terms) it will be a great aid in preventing the escalation of resentments: much more so than seeing ourselves and others as tragic heroes, romantic victims, or lyrical soloists, all of which leave residues of resentment once centrality has been demythified and which therefore call for renewed sacrifices.
Orginary satire, then, which is also a very portable aesthetic form, is the manner in which we can carry out the discovery procedure initiated by representing each other as usurpers of whatever position we all occupy by virtue of our utterances. Increasingly proficient satirical performances will situate the respective usurpations within the various disciplinary scenes which enable one or another usurpation—the psychological, sociological, legal, economic, and so on concepts represent means of ascendancy within a given setting while also being the means of demonstrating the limits of those pretensions. Without originary satire, one can’t really get anywhere close to an understanding of the disciplinary social order that would allow one to act in any way other than a puppet of some power center or another. Satire is not infinitely sustainable itself, though—successive and reciprocal representations of others as uniting the extremes of threat and vulnerability reduce those extremes, and one can proceed to obey the imperative to enter scenes of imperative mistakenness and resolve the gap between imperative given and imperative obeyed. Now, though, it becomes possible to stand before the center by treating the disciplines not as imperative frames demanding your obedience to a super-sovereign composed of resentment toward the gesture toward any mode of sacrality (center-directed sociality), but as semiotic materials comprising a scene upon which we can see ourselves participating in resolving the imperative gap. We can know that we know in the name of the center.
The secular disciplines all share the same origin: the elevation of the declarative sentence to the primary linguistic form, in accord with the metalanguage of literacy. This doesn’t free disciplinary practices from ostensives and imperatives; rather, it generates imperatives and ostensives out of the declarative order itself. The declarative commands you to withdraw some demand and convert it into an interrogative—declarative sentences are always answers to at least one of at least two possible questions (one concerning the topic, one concerning the comment). The imperative of the declarative order is that questions need to come from some uncertainty regarding imperatives or ostensives generated by a previous declarative. Any declarative sentence can be checked for meaning and reference: can whatever it has doing whatever it is doing do that thing; can we find our way toward possible ostensives in the world (and scenes anchoring those ostensives) that would make the declarative an answer to a question? If the
declarative (and in speech act terms, the constative) is the primary, and the ostensives and imperatives (performatives) are the derivative forms of speech, there shouldn’t be any imperatives or ostensives that can’t be derived from a declarative—imperatives and ostensives are merely implementations of the abstract model of the declarative, which must descend into reality due to some contingency. We should really, eventually, with the help of algorithms and computers, be able to dispense with imperatives and ostensives altogether and generate a complete declarative model of reality that would account for all possible ostensives. Any secular discipline must construct and defend the integrity of its own space by ensuring that this is indeed the case—that there are no stray imperatives or ostensives that the declarative order would be secondary to. This involves establishing and enforcing rules for proper imperatives and ostensives (“proofs”). This is the source of the super-sovereignty that has involved the disciplines in a millennial-long struggle with central authority, which must issue imperatives before they have been “justified” on terms that would be satisfactory to any self-maintaining discipline.
That this is the unspoken imperative of the disciplinary—that the prerogative of the central authority must be usurped and represented as derivative of the discipline—is the starting point of secular satire. Whatever, within the discipline, is represented as the result of an impeccable string of declarative sentences can be represented satirically as resting upon an ungrounded command. The disciplines themselves must incessantly issue commands that they have not themselves “sufficiently” justified through their own metalanguages, and since the disciplines cannot allow for this possibility they are more “tyrannical” than any central authority. The discipline creates concepts meant to apply to its object of study, while the discipline itself maintains its immunity to those corrosive concepts, which situate the “object” of study as dominated by some mythical order from which the discipline is to liberate them. The secular satire applies the concepts of the discipline to the discipline itself, creating an “infra” disciplinary space within the discipline wherein the anomalies generated by unauthorized imperatives and ostensives can be enacted and examined. Satire brings an irremediable, incorrigible mistakenness into the discipline, enriching the declarative order through both convolutions and simplifications, precisely by acknowledging the primacy of the ostensive-imperative world. The ostensive-imperative world permeates the declarative order—in making that statement its author commands you to identify the traces of that world in these and other sentences, and to treat the constitution of the boundary between imperative and declarative as an event, in which declarative constructs make present previously unnoted imperatives in its own predecessor sentences.
Satire is the most mimetic of the artistic forms—often an exact reproduction of an act or utterance, in a slightly changed context, is enough to expose the imperative embedded in the declarative. And it doesn’t take a lot to modify declaratives into imperatives in such a way as to show, as Alasdair McIntyre has pointed out, that the descriptive and explanatory concepts and norms developed by the modern human sciences depend on, are bound up with, and provide instruction to, the institutions and practices that shape the behaviors and the subjects those discourses purport to account for. To characterize the human subject as a “rational decision maker,” for example, is to abstract that subject from its embeddedness in institutions and
traditions and see and respond to only those behaviors that correspond to the model of “rational decision maker.” The same goes for characterizations of individuals as consumers, voters, workers and all the other categories that place individuals and groups external to each other, to themselves, and to any form of centered ordinality, subjecting them to the mode of super- sovereignty making the designation. To describe me as a consumer is to command me to consume, and if I make explicit that command I can, in turn, if provided with the necessary pedagogical resources, represent the world back to my designators as containing nothing but objects of consumption that I chow down compulsively like a PacMan. That would, really, just be me hearing your description as an order and implicating you, through my obedience, in the order you have summoned into being. In which case, are you quite sure you want to describe us all as “consumers”? (What do participants in the discipline, as participants in the discipline, consume?) Satire is a great purgative: whatever survives it might be able to last.
The Aesthetics of the Center — https://center.study/post/book-anthropomorphics-the-aesthetics-of-the-center