Art and Authority

[Dave Monroe]

Well, surprised to get any response to this at all,
which I posted largely because B&D (!) later mention
they might have written about, among others, Lawrence,
Bataille and Pynchon as well (none of whom generally
display quite the austerity of Beckett, Rothko and
Resnais, no?), and because it addressed, perhaps
helpfully, I think, that problem of opacity,
difficulty (though Pynchon, I think, tends more to the
difficult than the opaque; I'd've almost put him in
with Joyce, as B&D characterize Ulysses, at least,
although Pynchon certainly isn't so forthcoming with
"keys" ...) in regards to authority, in at least the
literary sense, so ... but I'll skip reposting the
excerpts from Bersani and Dutoit ...

--- Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Is this the debate over aesthetics and fascism in
> another guise- i.e., whether art is somehow neutral
> or arbitrary w/r/t any given moral posture? Can
> great art serve to "compensate" the inevitable
> shortcomings of any master?

I think what B&D are addressing here is the presumed,
or, at least, prescribed, "moral" function of art,
literature, film, what have you.  That such
productions should perform such a function, or, at any
rate, the pressing of service of such productions into
such functions.  That art, literature, film, should
not just have "redeeming" qualities, but that they
should be redemptive, or, at any rate, will be
deployed as such.  I think their proposing that the
works of, say, Beckett, Rothko, Resnais not only
resist such appropriation, but might well have reasons
for doing so.  Did I include this bit?

"We are not interested in comparing a Beckettian
fiction with a Rothko painting.  Rather, our
juxtaposition of the two has been motivated by a sense
that in the careers of both artists there have been
moments ... when their principal concern seems to have
been to discourage an audience from coming to their
work.  It is as if each of them were saying to his
reader or spectator: I have very little (perhaps
nothing) to say to you ... to show you,  To put this
in another way: My work is without authority.  You
will learn nothing from it; you will gain no moral
profit from it; it will not even enhance your life
with that delight or superior pleasure which, you have
been led to believe, artists have the obligation to
provide you.
   "This surly discourse is of course at odds with the
reasons presumably behind recent, and much publicized,
calls for the maintaining of the great classics of
western civilization in university curricula.  Our
culture, though paying little attention to art, is
emphatic about its edifying value.  Not only do great
masterworks ... have much to teach us; they are
expected to make us better individuals and better
citizens.  They may, it is suggested, even save us
..." (pp. 2-3)

Which immediately precedes where I believe I ended up
starting.  Sorry 'bout that ...

> One can always close the book, leave the theater,
> etc. The above premise, which I assume the following
> paragraphs will be debunking is a little grandiose,
> even for a "straw man" isn't it?

And one often does, believe me, I see it all the time.
 If they even bother to pick up the book, go to the
theater, and so forth, in the first place.  People
don't like "difficult" works.   Of course, the "easy"
works are really never quite so innocuous as they
appear, either, there's just an extraodinary amount of
work that's already been done for the reader, viewer,
whoever, which then goes ignored, but ... but just
'cos something isn't true, doesn't mean it doesn't
have real effects in the world ...

> Are they using sadistic here for controlling, and
> "modes of mobility" for perception? If so, maybe it
> is Bersani and Dutoit who are coveting
> unreadability, invisibility, immobilization, etc.
> Why the need to be so arcane?

That "nonsdaistic" comes out of the blue here, but
"sadism" here seems to have something to do with that
"appropriating consciousness" which attempts to
appropriate art, literature, film, whatever, in the
name of said "redemption," or discards what it cannot
appropriate as such as worthless, without redeeming
qualities, not Art, not Lit'rachure, not Good,
whatever.  In the meantime, having tracked this down
in order to attempt to get a handle on (to
appropriate?) Beckett's seeming valorization of
"failure" (see his discussion of Bram Van Velde in
those "Three Dialogues" in Disjecta) and getting
Rothko and Resnais as bonuses, I'm trying to work out
B&D's argument (?) myself ...

> Are we to assume that "fantasmatic mastery over...
> others" is another expression for that "sadistic
> movement" stuff? 

Think so ...

> Just reading this is a bit masochistic, is it not?

There are those who say that of reading Pynchon ...

> "Narcissistic concentration on themselves" is that
> something like self-referential, or am I totally not
> getting this?

Seems to be pretty much exactly like
"self-referential," which is, of course, where I
really start not to get this, either, as I think I've
made my skepticism regarding the possibility of any
absolutely solipsistic self-referentiality pretty
evident here.  And Beckett, Rothko and Resnais are one
thing, but Pynchon?  They do appear to have a certain
take on the notion, but I'm not quite following it yet
myself.  Perhaps simply that unwillingness to give any
quarter to presumed audience requirements,
expectations, demand ...

> Is that kind of like what a non-French speaking
> American experiences in a Parisian
> restuarant: "...they so seldom address us; they
> appear to 'associate' not with the real or with
> their audience [customers] but only with
> themselves." It doesn't improve the quality of the
> food, either.

Er, this is pretty much my experience everyhwere, but
... well, again, I'm looking at this as someone
attempting to answer the recurrent question (about
Pynchon, about Beckett, about Rothko, about Resnais,
about a whole buch of stuff), what the hell is all
this about?  Anything at all?  Why does it need to be
so difficult?  Why is it?  and so forth ...

I'm reminded here of a class I took on "Masterpieces
of the Twentieth Century Novel," which, remarkably, 
covered not only NOT a single work by a female author,
but, with the exception of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
One Hundred Years of Solitude and William Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury, covered nothing beyond
European literature ...
 
So, anyway, somewhere down the line after The
Counterfeiters and Swann's Way and Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man and Confessions of Zeno and The
Trial and Steppenwolf (yes, I know ...) and Man's Fate
(?!), we got to not one but two Beckett novels, Murphy
and Molloy.  

Now, Murphy is one thing, but there was a little old
lady auditing the class for whom I knew Molloy was
going to prove the proverbial straw, but when she
asked, quite sweetly and politiely, for a little
clarification as to why these were great works of
literature, she never really got an answer.  I feel
bad that I still wouldn't necessarily be able to give
her one, and Beckett's second only to Pynchon in my
personal canon ...   

> The above paragraph seems a deliberate attempt to
> obfuscate in order to achieve profoundity. It does
> not seem worth the effort to sort it out.

Actually, I think they were going to some effort to
explicate their notion of "self-referentiality" there,
though I'm not sure I quite follow it myself.  Hoping
the chapters on SB, MR and AR will clarify, but do
note I did skip some specifics in excerpting this
introduction as well ...

> When did anyone ever assert that individuality was
> anything else but temporary. Isn't that the trade
> off and one of the greatest motivations for art
> appreciation in the first place?  These two should 
> brush up on their Shakespeare.

Well, that whole "death of the subject" thing, the
constructedness and contingency and historicity and
multiplicity and so forth of subjectivity, of "the"
self.  Not quite following you about art appreciation
here, but I'm guessing Bersani, at least, is well up
on his Shakespeare.  Just not the topic at hand ...

> Of course, understanding any of this, or the above
> cited artists, requires that one be a card carrying
> intellectual, not to mention elitist, with enough
> free-time to make the effort. These authors and the
> artists cited are the embodiment of "cultural
> authority." Maybe that's the "agitated narcissistic
> concentration" angle- they are really at war with
> themselves.

Reminds me, better get in my renewal so's I can get my
validation sticker for the coming year ... but my
eternal bemusement at Pynchon fans complaining of
difficulties reading anything else.  Anything not
written in a language which one knows aside, and, for
some (say, me), outside of specialized scientific and
technical texts, what's more "difficult" reading than
Gravity's Rainbow?  Finnegans Wake?   

But Beckett, Rothko and Resnais are still none of them
by any means uncontroversially accepted "cultural
authorities."   Beckett's Nobel Prize notwithstanding,
there are still no small number of readers, viewers,
whatever, who are skeptical of the value of their
work, precisely because of its difficulty, its
obscurity, its seeming lack of message, moral,
meaning.  Cf. Pynchon here as well ...

> Or incapable of being understood, perhaps, by anyone
> with a lick of common sense?

One person's unintelligibilty can be another's common
sense, of course ...

But maybe what Bersani and Dutoit are attempting is to
affirm the difficulty, the opacity of such works
without redeeming them on, appropriating them to, such
grounds, moral, message, meaning, whatever.  Which is
sort of what I'm expecting, but, well, still reading,
so ...

> The difference (and long live that difference) is
> that Slothrop wants to understand, and probably
> longs to be understood. That's what provides him
> with a measure of our sympathy. These two are much
> more concerned with replacing the old system of
> control and domination with one of their own.

With a "system of control and domination" of their
own?  With even a "system" of their own?  "Of their
own"?  But on "understanding" ... does Slothrop ever
"understand"?  Do we?  Can we?  Those Pynchonian texts
can generate no end of frustration in these regards
...  

Of course, we sympathize with all those Pynchonian
protagonists who are trying to figure out just what
the hell is going on, because we're constantly asking
the same question ...

But what I was interested in in Bersani and Dutoit
here is that connection of opacity with the
renunciation of authority, a reticence to an outright
refusal to say anything straightforwardly for fear of,
say, seeming to provide definitive answers, much less
a positive course of action, a way out ...

Also, that passage about Slothrop's scattering in GR
makes in particular a connection between the
deconstruction of "the" self and, if not necessarily
resistance to, evasion of, perhaps, authority,
convention ("It's doubtful if he can ever be 'found'
again, in the conventional sense of 'positively
identified and detained" [GR, 712]) ...

But, again, just something I flew to see who'd salute,
or who'd tear it down and burn it in front of the
embassy ...



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