Has Post-Structuralism Gone Too Far?
(Say What?)
College Art Association was held in Philadelphia PA in February, 2002. The traumatic events of 9/11 were just a few months past, and I wasn't alone in being in an ongoing depression. CAA is always notable for the hundreds of art-people running around whatever city, whatever venues, whatever events in black clothes, "like a bunch of crows," a friend noted. Wearing black at my presentation was too much for me, so I decided to choose my wardrobe for its anti-depressant qualities. The jacket came from South El Paso Street and cost a bit less than $20. Speaking to a large audience of crows gave me a good excuse to wear it. It also served as a distraction from some of the tedious and pretentious speeches, mine included. It was a "heady" subject and a transitional time in the arts and arts education. But my colleagues and I did talk that way. Sometimes.
Horse and Cart, Art and Theory:
Observations from the Studio
The question posed for discussion --- Has Post-Structuralism gone too far? --- I will leave to the scholars, philosophers, and theorists among you. As an artist, my role is to bring an alternative perspective, to add questions rather than any definitive answers and to offer, if necessary, a defense of art and the esthetic experience. As an artist who also teaches and writes, my vantage point is tri-partite, but my teaching and writing are shaped by my central occupation as an artist. As an artist of “a certain age,” shaped by late-Modernist formalism (which has not failed me), I do not pretend to be comfortable with the Postmodern lexicon. I may be an outsider to contemporary theory, but, as an artist, am I not the ultimate insider? Am I wrong in thinking that any terms, labels, categories and theories about art are derived from it, secondary and subordinate to it?
In preparation for this assignment, I admit to having dusted off various old texts --- Freud, Fourcault, Baudrillard, Derrida and company --- but I can’t say I actually read them. Instead, I was reminded of a story: Scientists met at an annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose mission is to promote interdisciplinary exchange. In one hotel ballroom, biologists discussed the causes for the extinction of species. In another lecture hall, at the same hour, anthropologists were theorizing over the extinction of tribes. The two separate groups reached the same ironic conclusion: the culprit was overspecialization.1
This anecdote was told as a caution against specialization, but it also illustrates the lack of communication between necessarily specialized groups. As artists and theorists we may function in the same area (university art departments) and influence the same audience (art students), but there is a woeful communication gap between us. Compare the language of specialized theoretical criticism --- signs, signifiers, simulacra, codes, norms, texts, structures, tautology, epistemology, semiotics, syntactics --- to that of the artist and esthetically informed and sensitive critic --- ambiguity, mystery, myth, apocrypha, metaphor, synthesis, essence, transcendence, revelation, awe, moto spiritale --- and the gap widens.
A character in A. S. Byatt’s novel Possession defines vocabularies as crossing loops and circles. We are defined, she says, “by those lines we choose to cross and to be confined by.” Brain science confirms this, revealing that our brains are shaped, individualized, and altered by the words we use, among other things. Our words define us, artist and philosopher, and reveal our differences.
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
And I don’t know the kind of person you are
A pattern that others made may prevail in the world,
And following the wrong god home, we may miss our star.
William Stafford
* * *
(Picture, if you will, a star.
Color it gold.
Call it Art.)
* * *
By definition and in practice, the philosopher avoids metaphor, illustration, and example. But these are the very means through which I must make my points, because art exists by and through those very things that philosophy rejects: the un-empirical, the non-rational, the un-quantifiable, the fuzzy, the gray.
* * *
(Imagine two models: cubicles, rooms. One, filled with an indefinable shimmering mist, is the studio, the realm of the artist, a gray area occupied by the ineffable, by ideas, by the questions and the quest, the search. The other room belongs to the Postmodern philosopher and his theories: lined with mirrors, its shiny hard surfaces offer up endless --- tautological! --- reflections and deflections that ricochet into redundant infinity.)
* * *
The professionalizing and institutionalizing of the philosopher/critic in BFA and MFA programs have created a disturbing trend, a generation of students whose formative work is influenced by and produced from literal and narrow theoretical models and then subjected to prejudiced and often brutal scrutiny based on prescribed social and political positions. I repeat: doesn’t theory best follow art rather than generate it? I suggest that a thoughtful and responsive critical “reading” of art, in all its diversity of form, content, intention, and function, cannot be taught. Certain skills and attitudes can be stimulated, nurtured, and perhaps even learned through both practice and observation, through an informed and deep inquiry, through experience and empathy, but not taught.
The wrestling match between the philosopher and the artist is as old as philosophy (and a lot younger than art). What is new and alarming is the authority of contemporary theory over contemporary art and the sanctity of that position within art curricula, as though it is fundamental to the artist’s education. Who, I ask you, needs the words and theories? The theorists, of course, and the students in their sway who are dependent on requisite courses, high GPAs, and faculty recommendations. But now rather than studio professors --- or in addition to them, or worse, in opposition to them --- it is the theorists and the philosopher/critics who command, to an unnecessary and detrimental degree, the creative process itself.
In On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers lists five conditions necessary for constructive creativity. The inner conditions: 1) Extensionality, an openness to experience. This is the opposite of psychological defensiveness, of rigidity and fixed boundaries in concepts, beliefs, perceptions, and hypotheses. Extensionality includes a tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to receive conflicting information without forcing closure/judgment. 2) An internal locus of evaluation in which the final evaluation of the creative product lies in the person’s own reaction to and appraisal of the creation, recognizing it as right and authentic. 3) The ability to toy with elements and concepts.
External characteristics are: 4) Psychological safety, with --- ideally --- external evaluation absent, and 5) Psychological freedom, with complete freedom of symbolic expression (not to be confused with permissiveness which is indulgent; this is permission to be free, responsible, afraid, wrong, and confused.) The study’s conclusion is chilling. To the degree that the educational, cultural, and political systems foster and support these conditions, beneficial aspects of its creative resources are intensified.2
The very nature of philosophy --- linear, reductive, literal, with a primary emphasis and reliance on theory, abstract knowledge, and compartmentalization --- is contrary to what we know about the creative process. In the preface to My Dinner with André, André Gregory describes an ideal model for creative development. Your early years, your twenties, he suggests, are all about learning: technique and craft, tools and media. Your next years, perhaps your thirties, are a chance to express with conviction and passion everything you think you know about your art and your life. “Meanwhile, though,” he continues, “if you have any sense, you’ll begin to realize that you just don’t know very much --- you don’t know enough.” And so you spend many years asking questions, ideally giving your life and your work over to the questions, only to questions, so that somewhere --- Gregory guesses your mid-fifties, although I think we are more precocious --- you may arrive at some small answer to share through your art. “The problem is that our society (including the community of artists) doesn’t have much patience with questions and questioning,” he concludes. “We want answers, and we want them fast.” Even in the midst of the art world’s current ambitiousness, careerism, and celebrity-seeking, this timeline makes sense to me.3
* * *
(Picture a dinosaur.
Name her Pollyanna.
Call it a self-portrait.)
* * *
The philosopher/critic subjects art to dissection through which its bone, cartilage, muscle, tendon, and tissue are revealed and analyzed. But where is the élan vitale, the art spirit, the soul? Philosophies limit what you see, and if you cannot see it you may conclude that it doesn’t exist. This analogy presupposes a cadaver. I assure you, if art expires, it will not be because it was talked to death!
Contemporary theoretical writings register high on the intimidation scale. The density and obliqueness of their sub-specialized jargon posts a warning --- ACCESS DENIED! --- for even the most curious and serious reader. Dictionary at the ready, I struggle for entry and find myself trapped within a rhetorical Möbius strip! If a reasonably literate person like I cannot penetrate it, or if --- being “of a certain age” --- I decide there are better ways to use my limited time, intellectual curiosity, and creative energy, I conclude that I don’t need it. Again, neither my art nor my critical response to art is dependent on theory.
The complexity of much theoretical literature seems, more often than not, to intentionally impede understanding and to pride itself on its verbal circumlocutions and excesses. As both a reader and a writer, I am drawn to “plain writing” that provides an antidote to hyper-theory and over-specialized vocabularies. Advocated by writers of prose and poetry as well as by literary and art critics, this mode of speaking and writing, by subjecting itself to its subject, provides a welcomed clarity of critical discourse and an allegiance to esthetic experience.
Annie Dillard describes plain writing as being mature, courteous, humble, and lucid, based on one’s respect of the reader/audience. “It does not call attention to itself but to the world (art).” It submits to the world (art) and credits readers with intelligence and feeling. It can be “polished to transparency without losing its strength,” Dillard says, and as in the best art, its form follows its function "so accurately that its purity and simplicity excite.” Plain, lucid writing illuminates and clarifies, functioning as a lamp rather than as “a pyrotechnic display.”4 Oh, if theory were only fireworks, which at least celebrate, entertain, and amuse; instead it is too often the verbal equivalent of carpet-bombing.
My allegiance to plain writing developed by accident as unexpected circumstances diverted my professional life away from increasingly specialized studio teaching. Instead, at mid-career, I found myself lecturing about the breadth of art to students who were majoring in anything except art. My language had to change from a fluent estheto-babble to the vernacular of the educated and intelligent generalist. I learned was that while my vocabulary and style needed to be tempered and simplified, the subject matter, concepts, and lessons did not. On the contrary, I discovered that a basic and exoteric way of speaking and writing gave me the opportunity to load the vocabulary, to fill it with deeper, heavier, and more concentrated ideas. It is not unlike certain works of art (Mondrian’s reductive grids come readily to mind) whose apparent simplicity is necessitated by the seriousness of its content.
As an example of plain writing, I submit to you a summary of Postmodern issues written from a non-scholarly position --- mine as an artist --- that is notable for its brevity and accessibility.
Modernism is so efficient, so neat, moving along in a logical step-by-step response to whatever came
before, a straight line, always progressing forward. In contrast, the Postmodern Period --- now ---
defies a simple model and might be best defined by its characteristics. Postmodernism is pluralistic,
with many ideas occurring simultaneously and with dominating style. It is characterized by rapid change,
globalism, and decentralization. The dominant traditions of Western Civilization --- Eurocentric, white,
male, Christian, heterosexual --- open up to diverse and multi-cultural perspectives. Postmodernism is
holistic rather than linear, and the notion of unending progress is seriously questioned if not rejected
outright. The positive outcome of progress is subject to debate, and its inevitability is scrutinized.
In Postmodern art, new questions require new ways of explorations. Artists reach the end of style
(painters arrive at either a blank canvas, in the classical mode, or an endless, romantic celebration of
me, me, me) and begin to use style as another choice, an expressive element. Freed from the limitations
of style, Postmodern artists erase the boundaries between media: painting, sculpture, video, and text
combine and create new syntheses. Art becomes an event, it is performed, and the viewer interacts
with it and activates it. New media and techniques abound: sound, light, video, text, electronics, the
“virtual world.”
Some Postmodern art is anti-Modernist; full of cynicism and irony, it decries meaning and reflects an
aspect of the contemporary psychological condition. But much of the “new,” while offering a necessary
assessment of Modernism, is the next logical (inevitable?) step in that tradition; it opens up the forms,
media, and functions of art to new possibilities of meaning and hope.5
* * *
Has Post-Structuralism gone too far?
I ask you.
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1 The Aquarian Conspiracy, Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, 1980, by Marilyn Ferguson, J.P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles
2 On Becoming a Person, 1961, by Carl Rogers, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
3 My Dinner with André, 1981, by Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, Grove Press, Inc., New York
4 Living by Fiction, 1988, by Annie Dillard, Harper Collins, San Francisco
5 Getting It: A Guide to Understanding and Appreciating Art, 2001, by Becky Hendrick, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
