Pertseva_summary (Видимость как характеристика субъекта в современной французской философии), страница 8

Which makes it possible for us to explain theevanescence of the subjects from Rancière’s aesthetics in a formal way, for in hispolitics, the subjectivization is directly linked to the universality of equalityappearing thus impossible in the aesthetics. However, not limiting ourselves to this“formal” conclusion, in this paragraph, we also make an attempt to trackempirically the actual disappearance of the subjects from Rancière’s aestheticsbuilding on his texts of the late 1990ies - middle 2000s devoted to the literature.

Inthis analysis, we investigate how together with abandoning the project to find theuniversality of “literariness”, Rancière gradually comes to interpret the literaryindividuation (making visible even more effectively than politics) as a completethe antipode to political subjectivization. The logic of becoming brought in thesetexts to its limit levels the activity principle, which made it possible to associatevisibility with subjectivization in politics, transforming thus aesthetic visibility intothe principle of desubjectivization. An analogy is drawn with the problems weencountered in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible.

Inparagraph 3.2.4, this new explanation of the subjects’ position in Rancière’saesthetics is linked with his extremely peculiar criticism of Deleuzian ontology. Itis shown how and why this criticism of Rancière borrows the fundamentals andterminology of the ontology of Gilles Deleuze and simultaneously challenges it,throwing doubt upon the thesis of its inevitable politicity and thus transforming themodernist literature, successor of the principles of romantic aesthetics, into theprinciple of desubjectivization.In paragraph 3.2.5, we sum up these reasonings, questioning the possible32interconnection between the aesthetics of politics’ subjectivization and the aesteticmetapolitics’ desubjectivization of Rancière’s later works. It is there that wesuggest having a look for a more nuanced idea of relations betweensubjectivization and desubjectivization.

In the conclusion to this chapter, we inferthat Rancière’s strong thesis on the link between “becoming visible” and“becoming subject” is applicable only to his radical political subjectivization, theinterest to which is explained by the philosophical moment following the events ofMay 1968. The innovations of his political theory, rather unorthodox for a poststructuralistic context, did allow Rancière to theorize this link in politics, butturned out irrelevant, inter alia, for aesthetics, a particular interest in whichbecomes the specificity of the moment of termination of post-structuralism with“post-deconstructivism” coming in its stead.In chapter 4, we turn to an author indicative for this latter moment, anotherimportant contemporary French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy, in whose creativework we make an attempt to track the development of the topic of a portrait as aspecial aesthetic dispositive, making the subject of representation visible for othersand for him/herself.

In the introduction to this chapter, in order to summarize thefeatures differenting Nancy from Rancière, relevant for our research, we highlightthe importance of art for Nancy’s ontology and the originality of his approach tothe question of the end of the subject, in many respects inspired by German authors(Nietzsche and Heidegger), but irreducible to the simple criticism of a subject. Ahypothesis for the further consideration is proposed: it is at the place of specificvisibility of the subject’s portrait, within the territory of aesthetics, that Nancymakes the transition from the metaphysics of the Subject towards the ontology ofthe singular plural coming in its stead.In paragraph 4.1.1, we give a general analysis of his conception of relationsbetween the subject and art on the material of Nancy’s text being fundamental inthis respect and written in co-authorship with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, under thetitle of “The Literary Absolute”.

We show that in the accompanying articles of thiscollected work presenting extracts from the texts of German romanticists it is33possible to find an interpretation of the romantic concept of literature in itsconnection with the subject, being an alternative to that of Rancière.

Theambivalent thesis of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, according to which the literaryAbsolute of the romanticists “aggravates and radicalizes the thinking of totalityand the Subject. It infinitizes this thinking, and therein, precisely, rests itsambiguity”40 is interpreted by us drawing on the comment of Daniel J. Hoolsemain the sense that a consistent implementation of a romantic project brings it to suchlimits where this project changes its meaning for the opposite.

As though in art theSubject found its completion simultaneously in the sense that it finally becamecompleted and in that it neared its completion, that is lost its status of the Subject.This thesis putting forward a more nuanced conception of relations betweenhistoricity and universality, subjectivization and desubjectivization is associated byus with the idea of representation which, in turn, leads us to the analysis of the roleof vision and visibility in the metaphysics of the subject.

It is supposed that Nancyquestions the subject of representation from within the metaphysics of the Subject,and for that he looks at the subject, making him/her visible. Such visibility isprovided, first of all, within the territory of art and, in particular, portrait art. In theother four paragraphs of this chapter the four key stages of the development of thistopic in Nancy’s works are analyzed.In paragraph 4.1.2, we propose an interpretation of the first significantoccurrence of the topic of a subject’s portrait in Nancy’s thought – the chaptercalled “Larvatus pro Deo” from his “Ego Sum” study related to René Descartes’“Discourse on the Method”. Nancy, as we try to demonstrate, shows the“groundlessness” of cogito and its primordial dependence on the others.

It is theattention to the “aesthetic” dimension of Descartes' text that makes it possible forNancy to propose a comment to this text of key importance for westernphilosophy, amplifying the important remarks of Heidegger and Derrida. Thetypically baroque motives of masks and portraits, on the one hand, allow Descartes40The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism Intersections / ed. Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe,J.-L. Nancy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988. P. 15.34to hide the dependence in question, and on the other – reveal the necessity ofpresentation of the subject at first to others, and only then, by means of the gaze ofthese others, to her/himself, so that the subject appears inseparable from thispresentation.

As though without presentation to others no theory (etymologicallyconnected with the visual sense) of the subject may be possible, the verypresentation is performed in a privileged manner in art. A paradox ofrepresentation of the subject is formulated: there is no subject without explosion toothers; where there is explosion to others, there is no subject.

In paragraph 4.1.3,Nancy’s comment to another key text of West European philosophy of the subject– Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit” – is analyzed. The extract from thiswork on the end of aesthetic religion is interpreted by Nancy as a portrait of art, theautonomy of which, experiencing its end, is performatively asserted in Hegel's textin the image of a young girl offering gifts. Thus, in the text of the author famousfor his thesis on link between painting and subjectivity, Nancy, as we show, tries tobreak this connection: autonomy of art in his portrait is thought of according to themodel distinct from the autonomy of the subject.

The gaze of the portrait of artfrom “The Phenomenology of Spirit” by Hegel as commented on by Nancy is notthe gaze of the subject, but a gaze which does not refer to anybody or anything,does not represent anybody or anything, it is a gaze of an exteriorized, drawnoutside subjectivity.

However we draw attention to that the portrait of art from“The Phenomenology of Spirit” as analyzed by Nancy is not painted, as in thefamous thesis on the link between subjectivity and art from Hegel's “Aesthetics”,but graphical. In paragraph 4.1.4, an attempt is made to interpret a later text byNancy specially devoted to the topic of a portrait – “The look of the Portrait”, asputting together the Nancy’s comment on the portrait of art from “ThePhenomenology of Spirit” with Hegel's thesis on the link between painting andsubject from “Aesthetics”.